#essentially yadda yadda people sexualized me in general but also sexualized me when I was cosplaying a MINOR.

[weaselle]

My older brother (52 years old) is like... what I imagine many conservatives were like several generations ago -- before the wreckage of our two party system turned into a useless middle calling itself left vs. an extremist far right, and spewed out its current madness. Which is to say he doesn’t like new things, doesn’t like change, and wouldn’t trust the government to watch his dog for five minutes. But he wouldn’t ever hurt anyone on purpose unless they hurt him first, and he respects people’s right to stand up for themselves and disagree with his curmudgeonly views.

Like, one time he visited me in San Fransisco, and while we were walking around there turned out to be a march of women advocating, essentially, the right to get an abortion. There were a lot of signs and chants. His daughter was with us, about 6 years old, I think, and she asked what the march was about.

He told her “well, some people feel very strongly that women should be able to stop being pregnant if they are and they don’t want to be.” and she asked why they were marching about it and he said “Well some people think that it’s wrong to stop being pregnant once you’re pregnant, so each group does things to show how they feel about it; these women are marching with signs to show how they feel about it.” Later, when I brought up how neutral he had been about it, he just said, “she’s a smart girl, she’ll figure out what she thinks about it when she’s ready to think about it, and if she ever wants to know my opinion, she can always ask.” (which btw, his opinion is he personally believes most abortions aren’t the right thing to do, but he also very much believes everybody lives by their own moral code and it’s every person’s right to decide for themselves -- he CERTAINLY doesn’t think the government should be telling people they can’t... he’s a bit Ron Swansonesque)

Anyway, i was talking to him a couple minutes ago, and he was getting a little sarcastic about “are they a them” and so forth, telling me about how several books he was reading lately had so much gender and sexuality stuff, and one in particular had a whole bunch of confusing awkward yadda yadda, and he was talking about things the author had included and he said

“... and when they were writing about that part they included all these -- “

and I said “You just said they”

and he said “What?”

and I said “Just now, you were talking about the author, and you said ‘they included’”

and he said “Well, it’s a woman who wrote it, the author is a woman”

and I said “And yet, even though you knew that, you said ‘they’, and it was so natural and comfortable you didn’t even notice you did it”

and he said “Well, I.. I mean... yeah. I guess I did.”

and I said “It’s like walking. If you’re thinking hard about the way you walk, it feels awkward, but walking isn’t actually awkward, you do it all the time, you’re just overthinking it” and left him with something to consider.

[pluckyredhead]

Daredevil 101: Eurotrip!

This is going to be a long one, folks. I tried to trim it down as much as I could, since I don’t want these sort of intermediary stories to be taking as long to cover as they have, but I was left with cutting it up into two short chunks or giving you one hefty meal. I chose hefty meal, so loosen your belts and tuck that napkin into your collars, kids!

...This metaphor may have gotten away from me.

Last time, Matt escaped from jail and headed to Monaco to track down Alton Lennox, the elusive lawyer who, for some mysterious reason, hired the convict who killed Foggy - who the reader (but not Matt) has just found out is actually alive! We’re picking up with more of the Brubaker/Lark run, DD v2 88-93. The official storyline name is “The Devil Takes a Ride.”

Content Warning: Image of a dead body, mention of murder made to look like suicide.

We start with Foggy, who is trapped in Witness Protection, unable to contact Ben or Dakota or anyone else who might be able to get through to Matt:

It’s not actually clear who the FBI is claiming to be Witness Protecting Foggy from, at this point? All they know is that he was stabbed by a guy at Riker’s, who is now dead, and also Foggy isn’t in Riker’s anymore. Matt’s enemies in general, maybe?

Anyway, this issue is called “The Secret Life of Foggy Nelson” and it’s basically a love letter to Matt. Foggy's narration boxes are all directed at Matt (who can’t hear him, of course), as he explains that he’s always wanted to do the right thing, but he’s been so afraid, especially with the dangerous life they lead:

I’M CRYING. Also, I’ve always loved that Foggy envisions Matt saving him, not Daredevil. Even after he learns that the two are one and the same, Matt is always the part he loves.

Foggy eventually gets so desperate to escape Witness Protection and talk to Matt that he sneaks out of the house he’s being held in and hails a cab that is...idling around this remote suburban neighborhood...suspiciously...

Hmm, yeah, that’s not good.

Luckily, Foggy is rescued! By ninjas!

Foggy’s face in that first panel is amazing.

Anyway, I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. Elektra is leading the Hand at this particular point in time, and she has ordered them to keep Foggy safe. Matt has no idea she’s doing this, of course - he doesn’t even know Foggy’s alive - but she knows what Foggy means to him. Also, she has a demonstrated soft spot for Foggy. I just love everything this says about all of them so much, even if I don’t know why the mafia wanted to kill Foggy. I guess they just be like that.

Thwarted in his escape, Foggy settles in to essentially wait for Matt to settle things in Europe and come rescue him. Meanwhile, Matt is being tormented by dreams of a bucolic Silver Age life with a living Foggy (and Karen!):

Aw, baby.

You can see that as is traditional for when Matt goes to Europe (or imagines going to Europe), he has dyed his hair black.

Matt is in Monte Carlo, because the only client he can find for Alton Lennox in Monaco, a mob boss named Tybold Lucca, runs a casino there:

Matt and his ill-fitting suit - I’m sorry, “Ray Mallory” and his ill-fitting suit - have been using his powers to win like crazy and thus draw Lucca’s attention. It works, as Lucca’s daughter Lily herself shows up to invite him to an exclusive party at the Lucca estate:

When Matt gets to the party, Lily doesn’t seem to be having a great time:

The scent thing is important. Lily reminds Matt of something, and he’s conscious of it enough to realize it’s making him want to bend over backwards to help her, without realizing exactly what - or who - she reminds him of.

The centerpiece of the event is a bullfight. After the bull is killed (Matt doesn’t enjoy that), Lucca announces the aforementioned deal with his “Spanish associate,” i.e. the bullfighter, Juan: Lily’s hand in marriage!

Matt’s moralizing over these strange cultures in the first panel makes me laugh. I know it’s another continent, Matthew, but it’s the same century.

Anyway, yikes! Juan has just killed Tybold Lucca! Also I don’t know how Matt knows the guy with the gray temples is Alton Lennox but whatever!

Matt Daredevils up, but Juan kidnaps Lily and Lennox and escapes in a helicopter. And that’s when something clicks into place, nose-wise:

I love this page. Why does Lily smell like Karen? Who is the mysterious mastermind behind, uh...a matador stabbing a gangster and said gangster’s daughter being kidnapped? What does this have to do with Foggy’s death? It’s a bonkers and extremely extra way of "explaining” this plotline, Brubaker, and I salute you.

Matt pursues Lily and Lennox, because they’re his only lead and because, well, it would be shitty not to. Lily’s scent haunts his dreams:

I love that all of Matt’s sweaty shirtless dreams about his conflicted feelings towards his love interests have Foggy in them, too. Just bro stuff!

Matt tracks the kidnapping victims to another opulent European mansion and finally catches up with Alton Lennox...but too late:

The man who hired Foggy’s killer has taken his secrets to the grave. But Lily is still out there. In fact, not only is her scent all over Lennox’s room, she’s actively being re-kidnapped:

This is Tombstone, who I don’t think has shown up in these recaps before? He’s a mob guy, gray skin, very strong, basically made of stone. A better sparring partner for Luke Cage than Matt “The World’s Most Breakable Bones” Murdock.

Tombstone gets away with Lily. Matt goes on the hunt:

This just makes me laugh. (In the first panel, I believe he’s saying “I can’t promise that you will land in the river.”)

Finally, one of the people Matt beats up mentions seeing Tombstone - and the woman he’s working for. And the whole plot flips over in Matt’s mind:

Yeah, Lily’s not the victim here - she’s the mastermind, or at least she thinks she is. Tombstone is working for her. She killed Lennox, or at least was there when he was killed. And that dude is Juan, the bullfighter, who killed her father so that they could be together and have all her father’s ill-gotten gangster money.

But how can she smell like both Juan’s mother and Karen? IS KAREN JUAN’S MOTHER??? (No.)

Matt finally catches up with Lily and her “kidnappers”:

Matt, you absolute tart.

Matt manages, rather ingeniously, to take down Tombstone, and the powerless Juan absolutely panics - like, to the point of something chemical going weird on him:

Juan kind of collapses after slicing Lily with the sword (not too badly; also wasn’t it a rapier before?) and Matt knocks him out. Matt then tells Lily he knows she’s been playing him, and demands that she come clean:

And so Matt finally confronts the mastermind behind all of this, the person who had Foggy Nelson killed, who hired Danny Rand to pretend to be Daredevil, who hired Lily and Juan and Tombstone, and who has had at least four loose ends murdered by now:

VANESSA FISK???

But why? Well, as far as she sees it, her life was destroyed by Fisk and Matt’s endless battle, in which she was essentially a pawn. (They don’t mention it directly, but it’s very worth noting that Matt once essentially held her hostage, after she had spent god knows how long as a presumably sexually abused prisoner, in order to manipulate Fisk. Matt didn’t, like, promise not to be a gangster and then marry her and then go back to being a gangster, but he’s not exactly innocent here either.) She is now dying of Killedherownsonitis - seriously, she’s like “the doctors don’t know why all my organs are failing, but it’s because I killed Richard” - and before she goes, she has a deal to offer Matt:

She has enough pull to get the charges against Matt dropped, meaning he can resume his normal life. In exchange, he will get Fisk out of jail. And from then, he’ll know that every time Fisk kills, it will be on his conscience. This is the kind of tortured logic superhero comics end up with, in a world where no one except civilians stays dead and jails have revolving doors, but trust me when I say that this reveal and all of Vanessa’s supervillain explanations absolutely work in context.

Matt’s like “YOU USED TO BE COOL, MAN”:

He refuses to take the deal and storms out. Vanessa tells her minions to put everything into motion anyway, because as she sees it, Matt is essentially selfish, and will ultimately act in his own self-interest.

And so, the FBI Guy who has been trying to bring Matt down for issues and issues and issues is found dead in his apparent from apparent suicide (killing people and making it look like suicide is Vanessa’s signature move, it’s the third one in the Brubaker run so far), along with a note saying he framed Matt who is totally super duper not Daredevil. And Really Incredibly Blind Matt Murdock is found wandering a road back in the States, having “escaped” from being “held captive.”

Matt being Matt, he decides to hold a press conference to explain his kidnapping/disappearance/reappearance, because Matt fucking loves holding press conferences:

Fratt shippers, please take Ben’s line as the gift it is.

Rather than spin the erotic tale Ben is clearly angling for (and that Frank, watching his on his Murder Van TV, is dreaming of), Matt spins some bullshit about Frank hating defense attorneys for putting criminals back on the streets and wanting information on Matt’s clients and yadda yadda. Basically no one actually believes him but everyone likes Daredevil so they’re all like “Welcome home, Regular Matt Murdock Who Isn’t Daredevil!” and then they wink a lot.

Matt is back home, reunited with Milla and Becky and Dakota, when he senses something impossible in the hall:

I will never be over this hug, or those tears, or Foggy’s joyous face in the fourth panel.

Anyway yeah, now that Matt’s officially Not Daredevil, Foggy I guess no longer needs to be protected from Daredevil’s enemies? Or more accurately, the only reason the FBI was really holding him was because of Vanessa’s machinations, and she’s now released him.

What I find really interesting is that she basically justifies it to her minion by saying she’s showing Matt how sweet life can be so that it will hurt more when he inevitably ends up bleeding out in the trash again, but Matt sees it as proof that the Vanessa he knew, the good person she once was, wasn’t totally gone. I think he’s closer to correct.

In return, even though he got what he wanted from her and never promised her anything, Matt gets Fisk out of jail. (Which is, again, the tortured bullshit morality of comics, where you have to get the villain out of jail to do more villain stuff.) The FBI case is so hopelessly compromised that it’s not even hard. But he makes Fisk promise to renounce his American citizenship and leave the country forever, AND he waits until after Vanessa has died so that Fisk can’t bury her, which is pretty vicious. (Matt’s, like...not a nice person, guys.)

And thus this storyline’s all over but the rooftop heart to heart with Foggy!

They are textually talking about Fisk here. They are also textually talking about Karen, who Matt admits that he’s still not over.

But Karen’s death didn’t change Matt so much that the freaking Punisher had to get himself arrested to remind him who he was. Matt has acted erratically since Karen’s death, but Matt has always acted erratically. Foggy’s “death” made him go feral.

So yeah, I think Foggy is talking about two people here (and I think Brubaker wrote the conversation to be about two people). But Matt is talking about three.

Next Up: Lily Lucca comes to New York! It doesn’t end well for anyone!

[polygonaesthetic]

Blog Post #45

Here’s one I wrote back in 2015 and never thought I would release onto my private blog but I feel like it’s worth publishing this out here as I feel this is ever so relevant towards shifting feelings I’m experiencing right now, as I become much more comfortable with expressing my sexuality and being a “gay woman” becoming an important, ingrained part of my own identity. 

Reading through this piece of writing again, I do cringe and it’s hard to not omit certain parts and try and censor myself, when I must come to terms with the fact that these are/were my own thoughts and were exactly how I felt. I suppose by posting this online, despite this being my private blog and my actual identity is unknown to anyone, I’m allowing myself to feel vulnerable and exposed.

As mentioned above, me posting this comes from recent shifting feelings about my sexuality which may lead to me adding onto this post sometime soon, but anyway, here it is: 

----------

GAY: PT. I ----------

So… gosh… awkward isn’t it. Not really used to writing down raw thoughts onto the web.

I’m probably not even going to post this at the rate I’m going now, but oh well here goes.

I need to get rid of something on my chest.

Are you ready?

Here goes. . . . . . . .

I think I’m kinda gay.

//----------------------------------------------------------------------------// SEXUAL BEGINNINGS -----------------

Here I am. 12 years old, casually sitting on the bus when I come across an article on Cosmopolitan. Let me hasten to add that I’ve never really read the Cosmopolitan out of interest before, apart from the odd fitness article (“How to get KILLER ABS in 5 DAYS!111!!”), which I end up skimming over anyway.

To put it bluntly, the article was about sex… and a writer’s incredibly damn raw expression of it. Like: “hands clutching against the bedsheets”, “o lawd I was ramming into her”, “she reached the Big O” kinda stuff. And I’m not gonna lie, I felt something reading that article. Sexual awakening, pretty much.

I’m not going to lie, I stumbled across porn way before I read this article… and yeah… I watched porn a few times.. and yeah… I masturbated, yet I didn’t really know what it meant. I knew it was bad but, I never really understood the whole sex thing. I guess the only reason I found it so... well good... is because it was so "forbidden". I mean the first time I found porn, I was around 9 (roughly 2008/9) and my mum caught me... the same day... because in my scared flurry, I kinda forgot how I could get rid of all of the evidence... so instead of deleting those pages from my history, guess what I did... Yeah, I just cleared my Google search history, hoping that would just magically delete all of the tons of porn I had just subjected my innocent 9 year old eyes to. Woo. Fun.

So, from then on, I just didn't watch porn at all. I was so scared by it that I just didn't touch it. Obviously, after the last fiasco, my mum drilled it into me that I was dirty because I stumbled across porn and basically, only future prostitutes watch porn. Well I guess the whole world are prostitutes then...

I kid. But, as I was saying, I started watching porn again since I was 11, but not very frequently. I found that if I squeezed my legs together while I was watching it, it kinda felt good after a while.

So here I am, 12 years old, on the bus, reading this article, when I'm just kinda reading this article and I'm like, "Oh gosh. This is actually evoking some strange emotions within me, like they feel good, but they're kinda weird. wtf.", so I kinda started exploring in my head. I flicked to an image in my head of the first boy I could think of, so I could kinda attach some sort of personality to this weird man thing I had conjured up in my head and well.. yeah, I won't delve too deep into what I fantasised with this person. Obviously, I knew that I'd never do that in real life and, as a matter of fact, I was questioning whether I was actually comfortable with doing it ever. Like, I wasn't sure I'd be comfortable to do this at all in my life. Which leads me onto the next chapter.

//----------------------------------------------------------------------------// ASEXY AND I KNOW IT -------------------

Next kinda chapter of this, is kinda after me finding out and exploring what sex kinda is, and my sexual feelings, and now after finding out that different sexualities are a thing and don't really discriminate (I'll come to this a little later in this series. Can I even call it a series? idk.). So now I'm kinda questioning my sexuality. This is just after I had a super huge dark spot in my life where I struggled with coming to terms with my Asperger's and it was a huge part of my life and I just tried to stick labels on myself and wow, such confusing stuff, but I'll try to stay on topic, so I'll come back to this in a different blog post.

So, it was on an Asperger's forum where I first heard about asexuality, and previous to that, sexuality was pretty much: you're either straight... or you're gay. So a pretty black and white view. The more I started to read about asexuality, the more it kinda resonated with me.

My thoughts were like, "Hold up. You've been having these feelings for a pretty long time, but wait... remember how you watch porn and you fantasize... obviously you can't be asexual. But wait, you know that you get freaked out about sex and you never truly have any sexual feelings towards anyone.". And let me just point out that at this point in my life, I was a very confused person and just wanted to fit /somewhere/. To fit some sort of label, which I obviously now realise wasn't a very smart move.

So I decided I was asexual. I felt like I finally found out who I was. And to this day, I'm still not sure if I am asexual or not, I probably won't /really/ find out until I try. That's probably the only way that'll work for me. I'm a very hands-on person. I've only just realised how ironic that was. But yeah, essentially, I find out what I like and don't like by doing, trying and just experimenting. But obviously, I would never want to upset anyone by going into a relationship as a means of finding myself out. I could never do such a thing to someone.

Ok. So now I was asexual. I still didn't want to /come out/ to my mum, but I did come out to a couple of my friends at school and they took it fairly well, but obviously still had some questions that even I couldn't really answer myself.

I felt good about myself though. I found something I felt comfortable with and surprisingly enough, a few weeks, maybe month after, it was gay pride. Now at this point, I was still largely in the dark about sexuality and didn't /fully/ understand the whole LGBT spectrum and still had some stereotypes about LGBT+ that were sadly drilled into my head by my vaguely homophobic mother and general upbringing, which I will talk about in the next chapter, as I come to explore other sexualities.

So, where was I? Gay pride. I had learned quite a bit about LGBT+ anyway from Tumblr and the such, but still quite in the dark. So to see gay pride and the gay pride parade, I was like, "Gosh, wow, look at these people accepting themselves and who they are, gosh, that's damn cool!". My mum was also quite *happy* during pride (yet still managed to mock gays after, by saying that they're not "quality" people, go figure). I had considered coming out by that point, but decided not do, due to the "repercussions" of my actions and how "permanent" that would be. (you might have picked up by this point, that I was not /that/ close with my mum and not that comfortable with expressing myself, which obviously is something I'll go into later in another blog post.).

Well, that was it. I was asexual. Still not open about it, but if people asked if I was, I'd explain it to them. That was me set for then, didn't really pay much attention to sexuality that much from them on. Well... until recently. But that's another chapter.

//----------------------------------------------------------------------------// HIKING BOOTS ARE GR8 --------------------

So, here I am now. A so called asexual. Haven't really considered the possibilities of me being gay at all, or liking the same sex at all. Well, not much. There were a few signs, but I kinda just shrugged them away... like I do with every other problem I have! (because that's totally healthy *winks*).

Let me just give you a small brief overview of my life so far. Grew up believing homosexuality was inherently wrong. Yadda yadda. Had friends who came out as gay, became more aware, mind was opened, joined Tumblr and generally became more open and totally accepting and tolerant of all people, no matter where they were on the LGBT+ spectrum. I mean, I was always naturally accepting of people, if they had quirks, I was just curious, because you know... I wasn't exactly your common girl during my childhood either. So I was accepting of all sexualities etc. and I was, well, asexual, but I had never questioned whether I was ever attracted to the same sex, really.

I kinda believed that I was just fluid for a while. I just accepted everyone. If I liked that person, I'd just give it a shot, being non-discriminatory amongst genders etc. Basically, the try, do, experiment, "hands-on" approach I described in the last chapter.

That probably made me pan- or something, I don't know. But let's just say that I was just generally accepting. But recently, I've just decided to question something that was secretly bugging me for a while.

dun dununu.

Do I freakin' like girls?

The answer is: yes I fucking might.

As you've probably gathered from the whole series by now, I had a fairly sexually repressed childhood. Everything I knew about sex was from porn, things I heard from other people and just generally sheer curiosity. That's all.

Whatever I could find about sex, I was like, "woah. sex. woahhhh.".

So, I've kinda been immersed into gay over the last months or so and weirdly enough, it was the pride parade! And it was awesome! And it was great to say the least.

And also, weirdly enough, I started watching Hannah Hart again... and also managed to come across her coming out videos. So I watched them. And I was like, "hm... fuk. i probably do like girls.".

And it doesn't help that I go to a girls' school. And a lot of the people I hang out with happen to be gay (gaydar on fleek *winks* ). As soon as I questioned my stance with people of the same sex, it just hit me like a firetruck.

I've been making sexual innuendos with girls from my school since god knows when. I check out girls damn it. Gosh, even at pride, the way Ilooked at this one woman, only God knows what unholy thoughts were going through my head at that time.

And heck, I even have massive crushes on some of my female teachers. (I'm slighty sure Miss Evans is gay, but even if she isn't, may Jesus praise her body. sweet Jesus almighty).

And Hannah Hart. Where do I even start. (also rhyming).

Not gonna lie, I'm just gonna come clean. Some girls at school just make me go, "hot damn".

But yeah, that's kinda where I'm at at the moment, but in the next chapter, I'll go on to explain my skepticism of whether this is just a phase and my skepticism of my skepticism of whether this is just.. a phase. Yeah. Fun. Woo.

//----------------------------------------------------------------------------// WHERE'S THE RECEIPT TO MY HIKING BOOTS? ---------------------------------------

I might be closer to accepting myself as gay/bisexual/pansexual yadda yadda. But, obviously, as any person would... I have doubts.

Doubts about whether I'm just going through a phase.

I mean, even one of my close(r) friends, after I painfully described what I was going though, asked me whether it could just be a "phase". And I was open about it, and I replied, "Maybe. I don't know. That's why I came for you for help, don't make this any more complicated that it is.".

So the reason I have doubts about being attracted to the same sex, is... well... I'll just be frank.

It's sex.

You see, I'm wondering whether it's because I've just been conditioned to believe that PiV sex is the only one which I would find enjoyable and "satisfying" and that sex with a woman won't be "right" and it'll be "unpure" and not the same. Maybe it's because I've just been conditioned to only be "sexy" for men and "sexy" with women is just downright weird and deserves to be looked down upon.

Go figure.

Maybe it's because the only porn I've been "brought up" (nah, that sounds weird) watching, is straight porn, and is now the only porn I can get off to. And looking at "bulges" feels normal... and I /should/ be aroused by looking at a damn outline of a man's sexual organ. And that only a man will make me feel "right" and you can't have kids with a woman you love, because they just won't be "yours". Whatever.

I guess that I wouldn't really know how to have sex with a woman, if I'm being completely honest. I don't really know and lesbian porn isn't exactly helpful in teaching me that and I haven't really found any resources online.

All I can say now is that, women are beautiful, and funny, and intelligent and hawt. And tbh, everyone, regardless of gender, race, colour, whatever, can be beautiful, funny, intelligent and hawt.

So yeah, that's me done for now, at the time of writing. I might release another chapter, if I feel the urge to do so. I mean writing this has been kinda cathartic and I've kinda managed to accept myself that one bit more.

peace.

    ."".    ."",     |  |   /  /     |  |  /  /     |  | /  /     |  |/  ;-._     }  ` _/  / ;     |  /` ) /  /     | /  /_/\_/\     |/  /      |     (  ' \ '-  |      \    `.  /       |      |       |      |

~felderman

:::::::::::: ::26/05/15:: ::::::::::::

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