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thedreadvampy · 4 years ago

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Hey Ruth! I noticed you've talked in the past about asexuality in quite a negative manner. As an ace-person (who has received backlash for it) I was wondering: do you still uphold these opinions?

Hey! I have in the past said I don’t really...like people popping up in my ask box asking me My Opinion On Asexuality, but I do appreciate you asking me as someone I kinda know and with your face turned on, so I’m gonna aim to answer in the macro. Though I mean it depends on what the opinions...are? I have had a lot of opinions over the time I’ve had this blog and I don’t necessarily know what all of them were or which ones have concerned you. I can give you a top-level view of how I see my views, though (however, since I have been largely holding off on answering this kind of ask for Literally A Year Now this is less an answer to your specific question and more an answer to the last year of asks)

(also if I get dogpiled in my inbox for Having Bad Asexuality Opinions which I do every time I talk about asexuality regardless of what I actually say then. my phone is broken I won’t know about it :) so I feel untouchable)

I don’t think I hold a negative opinion of asexuality as an identity (I say I don’t think bc we all have blind spots)? I have a lot of very important people in my life who are asexual, aromantic or aroace and. I mean it feels pretty condescending to say ~uwu it’s valid~ bc like. ace and aro people don’t really need my input to validate their identity. but a) it seems like a pretty accurate way to describe their experience and b) I know a lot of them have had a really huge boost from finding a name and community to fit their experience and have found that really helpful, and I’ve seen that make a huge difference in people’s lives and I’m really happy to watch my friends come to understand themselves and feel comfortable and accepted in a part of themselves they had felt really alienated or stigmatised by. In a broader sense, I think there’s huge value in decentralising romance and sex in our assumptions of What Human Happiness Means and for some people that’s not the most important thing, and for some it’s just not interesting.

So like. I find it difficult to really express these opinions in any meaningful way because my opinion on asexuals and aromantics is much like my opinion on trans people or idk like people of colour. like very obviously those people exist and very obviously those people don’t deserve to be marginalised or stigmatised but it would feel. weird and performative to just make a post saying like “Asexuality Is Good And Valid, I Am Pro It” bc again like. who needs my permission or cares about my opinion. it’s not a Good Thing To Do it’s just. a thing you are that shouldn’t be treated as a bad thing.

however. and I suspect that this is what you’re referring to. while I love and appreciate ace and aro people, I think building communities and active support for ace and aro people is valuable and needed and, as above, I think Asexuality Is Good And Valid I Am Pro It, I do take some issue with elements of how discussions around asexuality are framed online (pretty much only online, I really haven’t run into the kind of black-and-white thinking in in-person queer spaces)

and I also. think there are some issues with people extrapolating their experience of their own sexuality onto the world in a way which. I’m just going to say a lot of the time when I talk about The Ace Discourse in a negative way it’s around people assuming that the world is split into a binary between ace and allo people, or assuming that only aspec people experience a nuanced or complex or fluid relationship to their sexuality while pigeonholing allosexuality into a pretty flat image of sex and romance focus. and I have always felt like this does a massive disservice not just to people who don’t identify with aspec labels, but also to the general hope that we could work against the expectation that there’s a Standard Amount To Value Sex/Romance - I think that the assumption that there are aspec people and then Everyone Else Has The Normal Type and Level of Attraction just. reinforces the idea that there’s a “Normal” type and level of attraction. which is ultimately pretty self-defeating and also just. observably untrue.

and this division of the world into Aspec People and Allo People also has some other weird knockon effects - I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with identities like gray ace or demi or other aspec labels beyond asexual and aromantic, but I do think that the way those labels are used is often. unhelpful. and they’re defined in such personal, subjective ways that you get weirdnesses sometimes like people Diagnosing Each Other With Demisexual or people saying ‘you can’t talk about this experience you share because it’s an Aspec Experience’ and again. there isn’t a concrete material experience there because the whole experience of romantic and sexual attraction, what that feels like and how sharply divisible it is is very, very personal and subjective. and everyone has different experiences of those and will name those experiences differently.

there’s also. historically a minority of Big Ace Blogs that kind of sneer at allosexuality or who would hijack posts about other issues to derail them to asexuality. but I don’t think they were ever representative of the community as a whole and I certainly think that inasmuch as those blogs remain around they’re a legacy of the Long-Ago (and a lot of them are trolls imo)

but there is. an issue I take that does seem to be more currently live which is the question of allo privilege. I think personally that framing all allosexuals/alloromantics as privileged over all aspec people on the basis of feeling sexual/romantic attraction is provably untrue in a world where people, particularly queer people, are actively oppressed and marginalised for expressing non-normative sexuality. it isn’t that I don’t think asexuality and aromanticism isn’t marginalised and stigmatised, because it visibly is, but it seems pretty reductive to boil it down to a binary yes/no privilege when both sexualisation and desexualisation are so actively tied into other forms of marginalisation (this is what I was trying to express in the argument about Martin a while ago - sex and sexuality are so often disincentivised for fat, queer, disabled and neuroatypical people that it doesn’t...feel like a reclamation that those tend to be the characters that get fanonised as ace where slim, straight, able-bodied and neurotypical characters aren’t. like it’s more complex than a binary privilege equation; sex and romance are incentivised and stigmatised differently at the intersection of oppressions and. for example. in a world where gay conversion therapy and religious oppression of gay and SGA people is so often focused specifically on celibacy and on punishing the act of sexual attraction, I don’t think it’s a reasonable framing to say that a gay allosexual man has privilege over an aroace man on the basis of his attraction)

so those are like. things I would consider myself to feel actively negative about in online discourse (and again. in online discourse. not in how I relate to asexuality or aromanticism or aspec identities in general but in the framing and approaches people take towards discussing it in a very specific bubble).

but also. um. the main criticism I have of the online discourse culture of asexuality is that there are things I don’t have experience of that I have mentioned, when asked, that I don’t personally understand the meaning of but I don’t need to understand them to appreciate that they’re useful/meaningful to others. things like

the difference between QPRs, asexual romantic relationships and close friendships

how you know the difference between romantic attraction and friendship

the distinction between sexual attraction and a desire to have sex with someone for another reason

and I hope I’ve generally been clear that this is. honest lack of understanding and not condemnation. I personally have a very muddled sense of attraction and often have difficulty identifying the specifics of any of my own emotional needs so like. it’s a closed book for me at the moment, how you would identify the fine distinctions between types of want when I’m still at step 1: identify That You Want Something Of Some Sort, Eventually, Through Trial And Error. but I think I’ve always been explicit that this isn’t a value judgement it’s just a gap in my own knowledge and yet. every single time I’ve said anything other than enthusiastic “yes I understand this and I love it and it’s good and valid” (and again. I have not gone out of my way to talk about it I have mostly only mentioned it because people keep asking me to talk about it) I have got a massive rush of anger and accusations of aphobia and “just shut up if you don’t know what you’re talking about but also answer my 30 questions to prove you think Correct Things about asexuality” and. I understand that this comes from a place of really unpleasant and aggressive backlash towards the ace community so it’s a sensitivity with a lot of people but like. it doesn’t seem proportional.

also I feel like ever since I hit like 700 followers my Tumblr life has been a constant cycle of people asking me Are You An Ace Inclusionist Are You An Exclus Are You An Aphobe Justify Your Opinion On Asexuality which. eventually yeah I’ve got pretty snippy about the whole thing. but you know. fuck it I’m just gonna lay it out and if you or anyone else is uncomfortable following me based on those opinions then I’m sorry to hear that and I will be sad to see you not want to engage with me any more but I also think that’s absolutely your prerogative. however I will not be taking questions at this time (and not just bc my phone’s broken) - demands for an argument about this Are Going To Be Ignored so if you want to go then go.

so like the big question I reckon is Do You Think Asexuality Is Queer and

yes. no. maybe. I don’t understand the question what does it mean for an identity to be queer?

there are spaces and conversations where any form of aromanticism or asexuality makes sense as a relevant identity. talking about hegemonic expectations of normative romance. building community. combatting the idea that heterosexual missionary married sex between a man and a woman is the only rewarding or valuable form of relationship or intimacy.

there are spaces where I think heterosexual aros/heteromantic cis aces don’t. have a more meaningful or direct experience of the issues than allo cishets. because while being aro or ace or aspec has a direct impact on those people on a personal and relational level, disclosure is largely a choice, and the world at large sees them as straight. they don’t have the lived experience of being visibly nonconforming that SGA people and aroace people do. they may still be queer but there’s a lot of conversations where they bring a lot of the baggage of being Straight People (because. even if you’re ace or aro you can still be straight in your romantic or sexual attraction and if your relationships are all outwardly straight then you don’t necessarily have an intimate personal understanding of being marginalised from mainstream society by dint of your sexuality). this doesn’t make you Not Queer in the same way that being a bi person who’s only ever been in m/f relationships is still queer, but in both cases a) you don’t magically have a personal experience of societal oppression through the transitive properties of Being Queer and b) it’s really obnoxious to talk as if you’re The Most Oppressed when other people are trying to have a conversation about their lived experience of societal oppression. and they’re within their rights to say ‘we’re talking about the experience of being marginalised for same gender/non-heterosexual attraction and you’re straight, could you butt out?’)

(I very much object to the assumption coming from a lot of exclus that “cishet ace” is a term that can reasonably be applied to non-orientated aroace people though. het is not a default it really extremely doesn’t make sense to treat people who feel no attraction as Straight By Default. when I were a lad I feel like we mostly understood “asexual” to mean that identity - non-orientated aroace - and while I think it’s obvious that a lot of people do find value in using a more split-model because. well. some people are both gay/straight/bi and aro/ace, and it’s good that language reflects that. but I do think it’s left a gap in the language to simply refer to non-attracted people. this isn’t a criticism of anything in particular - there’s a constant balancing act in language between specificity and adaptability and sometimes a gain for one is a loss for the other)

some queer conversations and spaces just. aren’t built with aces in mind. and that isn’t a flaw. some spaces aren’t built with men in mind, but that doesn’t mean men can’t be queer. some conversations are about Black experiences of queerness but that doesn’t mean non-Black people can’t be queer. not all queer spaces will focus on ace needs but that doesn’t mean asexuality isn’t queer, or that queerness is opposed to aceness - sex, sexuality, romance and dating are all really important things to a lot of queer people, especially those whose sexuality and romantic relationships are often stigmatised or violently suppressed in wider society. there should be gay bars, hookup apps, gay and trans friendly sex education, making out at Pride, leather parades and topless dyke marches and porn made by and for queer people, romantic representation in media of young and old gay, bi and trans couples kissing and snuggling and getting married and saying sloppy romantic things. and there should be non-sexual queer spaces, there should be discussions around queerness that don’t suppose that a monogamous romantic relationship is what everyone’s fighting for, sex ed should be ace inclusive, etc.

I think the whole question of inclusionism vs exclusionism is based on a weird underlying assumption that If An Identity Is Queer All Queer Spaces Should Directly Cater To That. like. aspec identities can be queer and it can be totally reasonable for there to be queer spaces that revolve around being sexual and romantic and there can be conversations it’s not appropriate or productive to centre asexuality and aspec experiences in and we can recognise that not all queer people do prioritise or have any interest in sex or romance. in the same way that there’s value in centring binary trans experiences sometimes and nonbinary experiences at other times but both of those conversations should recognise that neither binary or nonbinary gender identity is a Universal Queer Experience.

anyway that one probably isn’t one of the opinions you were asking about but I have been wanting to find a way to express it for a while so you’re getting it: the Ruth Thedreadvampy Inclusionism Take.

uh. it’s 1:30 on a work night so I have been typing too long. if there was an opinion you were specifically thinking of that I haven’t mentioned, chuck me another ask specifically pointing to what you want me to clarify my thinking on. sometimes I gotta be honest I’ve just been kind of careless in my framing (thinking of the Martin Fucks debacle where I spent ages insisting I didn’t say Martin couldn’t be aroace then read back like two days later and realised that I had said “he’s not aroace” bc I had written the post at 2am without proofreading and had meant to say “unless you think he’s aroace”) so I May Well Not Stand By Some Posts or might Stand By Them With Clarification

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whyarewetrying · 3 years ago

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I wonder if I can keep restricting, keep emptying my stomach when anything gets past my mouth, if I can drop the weight I so desperately want to lose I’m near cutting it off, would I finally be beautiful? Will people finally see me as more then just my weight. Will I finally be gorgeous instead of funny? Pretty instead of interesting?

I know I shouldn’t care about what others think. Yet, I question if he would have stayed if I had been able to lose the weight when I still had him. I wonder if I never gained that “happy” weight if it would have stopped him from becoming cruel in our final months. If maybe there wouldn’t have needed to be a talk that lead to so much heartbreak.

I love when they say my weight doesn’t matter, because it matters enough to point it out, obviously. My moms pride when the number on the scale drops even though we both know it’s because I have been skipping dinner. My friends delightful shock when clothes that were form fitting not long ago now hang off me.

The way his eyes skim my body longer than a second when I’ve done good this month barely letting anything sit in my stomach.

There is a pressure that we all are feeling, a knowledge that skinny is the only desirable body type, and anything other than that is less. I mean who can blame them? I look in the mirror and am not sure if there is anything that I hate more in this world than the fat I can’t seem to keep off my body.

There’s always that “if” that hangs in the air “you would be pretty if...” “you’d be happier if...”

They act like I don’t want it too

They act as if I don’t put my body and mind through torture just to watch the number on the scale decrease

I want nothing more in my being than to be skinny

It is appalling that I can be so good at restricting food, I can purge anything that makes it past my mouth besides water, but this fat hangs stubbornly to me, as if to mock me.

I am not sure if anyone knows the depth I would go to just to be skinny, besides you who I am sure have come across this because there is an understanding most people couldn’t fathom.

I look at the way so many people I know eat guilt free, don’t have to count or wonder when they can make it to the bathroom, don’t have to pass on a plate even though their stomach grumbles. How comforting it must be to be content with your body, to not look at the thing meant to sustain you with such detest, you’d take a gamble of starving to death over letting it settle it your belly

There is a self-hate so deep within me to smile in the mirror after I empty the contents of my being into the toilet bowl. There is a shame in the way that even within this struggle I still am not skinny. There is a loathing in understanding that day may never come no matter how large my hunger continues to grow.

My mind is tired, tired from a hate so intense I decide torture is my only option.

A loneliness so great, here I am writing about it because I know they would look at me bewildered if I told them.

The one person I’ve told has not told me to stop, has not told me I don’t need to starve myself to be pretty. The one person I told seems to think as well this is what I deserve for being fat, this is what I need to do to be more human.

So hopefully a day will come where I will be skinny enough, but I doubt it. At least for now, the number is dropping no matter how slowly, and I’ve become good at ignoring the hollow feeling in my belly.

Maybe I’ll never be skinny but at least you can’t say I didn’t try.

#anamia #anorexik #anorexi4 #bulimxa #buliimix #tw ed thoughts #anorecik

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cruelfeline · 5 years ago

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Being in a medical field, I’ve always had a morbid curiosity about Hordak’s defects. And I think it’s high time I made a proper list, don’t y’all?

Come. It’ll be fun!

kind of I mean it’s kind of depressing to look at it all in one go but whatever let’s go!

Altered Pigmentation/Possible Scarring

We now know that a Horde clone should have a white face and an otherwise blue-grey body. The white on Hordak’s trunk and arms shouldn’t be there, though whether the skin there is normal and simply missing color, or actually diseased, is unknown.

The darker blue, somewhat vein-like tissue located where white meets the normal blue-grey does look like it is legitimately abnormal. It is hard to say if this is diseased tissue, scar tissue, or some other problematic lesion. It may be directly due to the defect, or perhaps it is a result of attempts at self-cure.

Cachexia (vs. Emaciation)

Hordak has the typical look of what should be a fairly large humanoid man who has lost a severe amount of weight and muscle mass. The bones of his arms, his spinous processes, and his ribs, are overly visible. One can also appreciate the odd-looking, sharp definition of his shoulders: this exists because his arm, neck, and shoulder muscles have wasted significantly, leaving the bones very sharp and prominent. This gives the illusion of large shoulders, when really, his limbs are so wasted, that the clavicles and shoulder bones simply overshadow them.

Emaciation refers to severe weight loss, involving both fat and muscle, due to starvation or malnutrition. Generally, fat is lost prior to muscle, as this is a condition caused by inadequate caloric and nutrient uptake. It can be a result of simply not getting enough food, or of not being able to digest and absorb that food properly. Once the lack of nutrients is addressed, emaciation can be reversed.

Cachexia, on the other hand, refers to severe weight loss involving predominantly skeletal muscle tissue that is not entirely responsive to appropriate nutrition. This is a complex syndrome that is associated with multiple serious illnesses in humans, including but not limited to muscular dystrophy, neurodegenerative diseases, congestive heart failure, chronic kidney disease, and cancer. It differs from emaciation in that it is not predominantly due to inadequate nutritional intake, but rather due to metabolic changes caused by various illnesses. Even with good nutrition, it cannot be entirely reversed.

It’s hard to be absolutely certain which issue Hordak suffers from, but given that Horde nutrition is likely efficient and complete, I’d guess that the defect causes cachexia rather than emaciation. Even if Hordak had issues digesting nutrients, I’m sure he could find a way to intravenously feed himself. Such feeding, however, would not be able to fully address cachexia.

The predominant symptom of cachexia would be weakness, though more dangerous issues can occur as certain muscles are affected: if throat muscles or the diaphragm are affected, swallowing and breathing issues can occur.

Muscular Atrophy and/or Aplasia

Hordak is missing a significant number of muscles in his forearms, along with the interosseous membrane that should be connecting his radius and ulna. I’ve got a lovely post specifically about this right here. to be brief: he is missing the muscles that would allow him to move his hands and fingers. The nerves and blood vessels crossing that region are also either missing or moved to run along his bones, leading to potential vulnerabilities.

It is uncertain, as of now, if these missing tissues are the result of atrophy or aplasia. Atrophy refers to a tissue wasting away, while aplasia indicates that the tissues never formed in the first place. Either way, the clinical signs are likely similar: inability to perform the movements said muscles are responsible for. In addition, his arms are likely more fragile due to the missing muscle and connective tissues. His ability to lift heavier objects is probably impaired without technology, while an enemy’s ability to seriously injure his forearms is likely higher.

I suspect he’s using internal cybernetics to compensate for this when bare-armed, while the armor provides him with appropriate strength for all of his rage-throwing needs.

Altered Mucous Membrane/Ocular Pigmentation

I am putting one fucking cute picture of him in here you can’t stop me

Hordak’s red eyes and mouth are, according to one of the character designers, part of his defect. Whether this is simply a coloration issue, or whether it is connected to his individuality and free will, remains to be seen. Likely something we’ll learn more about next season!

Syncope

At this point, we have witnessed Hordak suffer an episode of what appears to be syncope once.

Syncope is the medical term for what most know as “fainting” and can be defined as a sudden loss of consciousness due to transient inadequate blood flow, and thus oxygenation, to the brain. Recovery is generally spontaneous. Syncope is thus different from loss of consciousness due to other issues, such as seizures, low blood sugar, or stroke. Given that Hordak’s loss of consciousness was rapid, with likewise rapid recovery and no evidence of convulsions, it is likely that the episode was one of syncope, rather than a seizure or other issue.

While many different conditions can result in syncope, the cause can generally be divided into three main categories: reflex, orthostatic hypotension, and cardiovascular.

Reflex syncope is the most common kind and involves a neurologically-mediated drop in blood pressure. Some sort of trigger activates an inappropriate cardiovascular reflex via the autonomic nervous system (the part of our nervous system responsible for unconsciously regulating our bodily functions). For example: stimulation of certain nerves due to emotional stress, pain, coughing, or a variety of other triggers can lead to simultaneous vasodilation, decreased heartrate, and low blood pressure, resulting in interruption of cerebral blood flow and, therefore, syncope. This is the most common cause of syncope and what most people think of when imagining people fainting in fear, for example.

Orthostatic hypotension refers specifically to a drop in blood pressure upon standing. While this is something that can, in mild form, happen to anyone, orthostatic hypotension is most often seen in the elderly and in those on certain medications or with certain medical conditions. It is essentially an issue caused by the body not being able to properly account for the blood pooling caused by gravity, leading to decreased blood flow to the brain and thus syncope.

Cardiac syncope encompasses loss of consciousness caused by a failure of the heart itself to pump blood to the brain, either due to structural defects in the heart, or due to cardiac arrhythmia that prevents efficient cardiac output. Low output leads to low blood flow to the brain, leads to syncope.

Given that Hordak was already up and standing when he fainted, orthostatic hypotension seems a less likely cause for his episode, though given that he raised his upper body suddenly, it is still possible. Both reflex syncope and cardiac syncope appear viable, though without physically examining him and/or knowing specifics on his cardiac health, it is impossible to tell what the true cause was. Given his emotional outburst, reflex syncope is a real possibility, but if his defect involves his heart in any way, altering either structure or rhythm, then cardiac syncope is likewise a reasonable differential. Or, if he’s particularly unlucky, he could potentially be at risk for suffering from syncope for multiple reasons, mediated by both neurological issues and cardiac problems.

Well! I think that about covers what we’ve seen at this point. I will say that it’s hard to put a specific name to Hordak’s condition (though I feel like some sort of neuromuscular disease or dystrophy, genetic or otherwise, appears likely) without knowing all of the specific ins and outs of his issues, but this list at least covers the visible, clinical signs.

I didn’t really go into the armor-related shocks that he experiences in times of over-activity or stress, as these seem less biological and more mechanical in nature and can likely be mediated by improvements to his armor.

As the series goes on, I’ll likely update this post with additional information, if we get any! For now, I hope it serves as a fun curiosity for some of you, or even a writing resource, if desired. Enjoy!

#hordak #entrapdak #she ra #i legit only put these things into the entapdak tag because i know where y'all live

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for-peace-war · 4 years ago

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do you think "race-swapping" a character in writing matters or is a good thing in representation? (for example, if harry potter who is "commonly portrayed as white" is portrayed instead by a black or arabic boy/man.)

I apologize in advance for how long it took me to get to these questions, and honestly, probably how long the answers will be to them. So if you don’t want to see some discourse on race-relations in fantasy, then smash that J button and keep on moving.

Anyway.

Question 1:

In regard to the first question, that of “race-swapping,” I would compare it to the art concept known as “paintovers.” Although the term is stigmatized in many circles because of how [lazy] it is, the truth is that there is an artistry and skill involved in being able to take something and remain true to its premise, while at the same time modifying its appearance. In that field, let’s just simplify it to: there are good and bad paintovers.

I feel that the race-swap has the same standard of qualification.

The essential question I always ask myself is: why. Why does this character need to be swapped, why did you pick this alternative, why do you feel this enhances the story in some way? Why is not an argumentative or even exclusionary inquiry: it’s asking the creator to return to their first impulse and exam what it is.

So we have “Arabic or Black Harry Potter.” There are a lot of questions that come up there, but I’ll divide them down into this:

Does Arabic/Black Harry Potter represent something White Harry Potter doesn’t?

Can this character be conveyed without an over simplification of some cultural aspect to “mark” them.

Who is this for?

In the case of the first question, I think that a Black/Arabic Harry Potter already has a lot of merit. The issue is, we equate Englishness with Whiteness and to have a titular character in a series, a “nerd,” no less have the qualifications of something other than “just your average white Briton!” then I think you already have something there.

Of course, people will consider this tokenism at its outset, but I’d disagree. While taking a Literary Criticism class, the discussion of Harry Potter actually came up. In the conversation, one of the students said: “Well, I wouldn’t mind fi Ron or Hermoine were black, to be honest.” Which is, on its face, a fine statement—I too am glad that you wouldn’t mind a black character existing — but the beauty of it of course, came from what was being excluded: Harry Potter, by contrast, shouldn’t be black.

This is why I would say that something as miniscule as swapping a color palette on a character is more than tokenism: by the simple act of existing as a marginalized person, the main character has already made a statement that people will take issue with. How often do we see “politics in gaming!” when a main character isn’t a heterosexual white male?

So, if Harry Potter was a non-white character? I’d say it’d be worth examining. But that delves into the second part. Can this be shown without it becoming a series of stereotypes?

I would say yes. Assuming that a person didn’t want to keep the stock nature of Harry Potter’s backstory consistent, which honestly I have no opinion on, there’s nothing wrong with drawing into consideration the places that people of various races/ethnicities are most prevalent. So, if for instance, Arabic Harry Potter lives in an area that differs from White Harry Potter that isn’t bad, but it is worth expressing what this means in comparison to the former: how does this change influence the character’s core self and beliefs? Does it not? At all?

England has always had a fetishitic view of “Englishness,” and as media can [reproduce] life into the format the creator wants, it’s worth really examining what could be said by Harry Potter, the main character of an English series, not being as “English” as the aforementioned view might have indicated. In a post-Brexit world, after all, we have seen that the notion of Englishness has become something of increasing fantasy.

So put Harry Potter the non-white in conflict with something “traditional” in its English nature, and this doesn’t even mean a racially themed motiff, it could be class or even generationally based. Just say something with the change that isn’t already being said.

I’d like to take that point to also say, people probably should break their desire to have non-white represent non-traditional in all other ways. It’s a bit on the nose when people’s avatar for social disorder have to be coded as being non-white. I’ll touch more on this in the second question.

The last part ties back into the first: who is this depiction actually for? Is the purpose of this to show people that it can be done, or children of this background that they are being thought of? Both have good and bad sides to them, with the former’s benefits being that it brings to an end “conventional wisdom” like “Black Superhero Movies Never Sell!” (See: Black Panther), whereas the downside is you risk rushing into doing something with ltitle thought beyond that change.

As to the latter issue, the downside can only be that you may have to essentialize what the acceptable rate for this character is. For black people, I’ll say out the gate that shadeism will always be where you see how an author views their subject matter. If the attractive woman has to be of a lighter hue, then really it comes down to telling black girls and women that their skin needs to be lighter. So in that regard, likely consider the choices you make when you make them.

In closing, my view on race-swapping is have a reason to do it. If you don’t, then probably leave it alone.

Question B:

This is a two part question but I think they can be synthesized down into one answer.

This is going to go back to my “non-white doesn’t mean non-traditional” thing and it’s a point I’ve had before, so whatever. We’ll take “black elves” and look at them as a specimen of fetishitic racism.

Here’s the thing. When we think of elves, generally yes, we do think of white people. It’s just how it’s coded. But the whiteness isn’t even necessary: be it duskwright, kaldorei, or drow: you know what they are when you see them. So an elf doesn’t “need” to be white or maintain whiteness. So why is it whenever the whiteness is removed, the entire semblance of what an elf is switches as well?

In the case of the former: unnatural hues make the “non-whiteness” a non-factor. Duskwrights, Kaldorei, and Drow by standards don’t have “human” tones and so, their non-whiteness is more an aspect of just being fantasy characters. But when people begin working in “shades of brown,” the themes immediately change: fatter, more aggressive, scarred, etc.

Here’s the thing. If your statement is “body positivity is good and I want my black elf to be fat,” then okay. That’s cool. I guess. My issue is that this goes more in line with the notion that black people occupy more space than we should, and as a result, will do no less externally. I’ll just also say right now that fat fetish characters that are about “how much she (almost always a female) eats” or “how many rolls she has,” is not an argument in favor of body positivity. It’s both specifying the deviation from the “norm” and also deriding it through eroticism obsession.

But, I’m sorry. The entire issue here is that dark characters exist to be, well, disgustingly perverse to social norms. I understand that people want to show “badass” characters, but the more “badass” and scarred, the more the skin begins to darken. This is, I believe, a subconscious aspect of what we view in characters: that there is something inherently dangerous, virile, and wild when it comes to darker complexions.

So how does this tie back into elves? Well, show me some elegant black elves.

Elegance and refinement, typically, describe an elf. Outside of any “racial” view, so long as the character has this [traditionalist] allure of an essential beauty and grace and has long ears, then yeah. You have an elf. Simple as. No doubt about it. So why do black elves need to be fat, having missing ears, be angry, etc? Because what the writer subconsciously feels is that these traits are more authentic to the black experience, and that is terrible and dangerous.

When writing a character outside of yourself (which I strongly sugegst people do), I think that you need to be aware of your design choices (research and respect).

So we can use World of Warcraft’s denizens as an example. WoW’s always had a “world is white” standard to it. That’s problematic, I guess, but whatever. Racial representation wasn’t big in the 90′s and still isn’t really that important to most people. Yet even with that being said, players began trying to explain where their characters came from that weren’t white. “Blacks come from Stranglethorn!” “Browns come from Tanaris!” on and on, and yeah, there are problems there, but the more pressing matter is that WoW just dropped the ball on different races of people.

Here’s the thing: there’s nothing wrong with people coming from different places. You don’t need to go all Conan on it and say they came from Iraqistan and Zembabwe, but it’s worth noting that we all come from somewhere and end up where we do. I’d rather authors put more effort into examining that than they do in making up monsters and animals to represent these same groups of people in exoticisized and disturbing portrayals.

There’s also the option that race just doesn’t matter in your world. It’s fantasy, why not? We became so obessed with GRRM reminding us that “fantasy” means “imagine a world where white men have all the power and it’s okay!” and forgot that it can also mean “imagine a world where this problem just doesn’t exist.” So if you do that, then it’s fine. Code everyone together. But make their representation reflect that. If, say, in WOW race just didn’t matter then the breakdown of heroes would reflect that. It doesn’t obviously.

So if you want to theme something like Zulu, then I guess I’d say do your research on it and know it beyond surface level considerations. If you do that, then really do whatever.

And I’ll say, I don’t find people racist for not including non-whites in their stories, to an extent. But when it’s a glaring omission based purely on the desire to “keep Albion pure,” then it’s like, alright. You’re being a racist and that’s your call.

That’s all. A lot of words. Hope whoever sent this even sees it, lmao.

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watch-grok-brainrot · 5 years ago

Text

Attempt the Impossible

Untamed Spring Fest Day 5 (I’m ~15 min late for my timezone, oops)

(Notes: ~2k words, post canon, canon (CQL) compliant, food focused, dreams, memories, Sizhui being darling, happy ending, not beta-read, this got much longer than i anticipated....)

Lan Sizhui bolted awake from a dream. Something must not be forgotten. But what was it? There was so much vivid detail… if only he could remember.

His dreams have become more vivid since he returned to Cloud Recesses. Sizhui assumed his visit to Burial Mounds with Wen Ning was the root cause. The visit had unlocked so many memories from before Cloud Recesses. Lately, these memories would present themselves as dreams. The dreams weren’t nightmares but they did overwhelm Sizhui with scenes from the Wen remnant camp -- Lady Wen bantering with Senior Wei, Granny Wen taking care of everyone, 4th uncle making fruit wine, the desolate landscape being coaxed back to life by Senior Wei’s wild ideas.

Tonight’s dream brought Sizhui back to a day when Wen Ning and Senior Wei had gone into town to sell turnips. After returning, Senior Wei seemed distracted. Although he tried to hide it, Wen Ning, Wen Qing, Granny Wen, and even little A-Yuan could tell something was amiss. Suddenly, Senior Wei stood up and announced he would explore new culinary options for their establishment by growing lotus. Sizhui smiled at the memory of Senior Wei knee deep in mud, rambling about lotus roots and lotus pods.

Lotus roots and lotus pods! Of course! That night Wen Ning had brought a cold bowl of soup to feed him. It was Sizhui’s first taste of lotus root. Little bits of congealed fat floated on top of broth in a small green porcelain bowl. Wen Ning fed him a spoonful at first to see if he would like it. The richness of the fat was balanced by the sweetness of the broth and--

Sizhui’s eyes widened and he jumped out of bed. It was early October, towards the end of lotus root season and getting exceedingly close to Senior Wei’s birthday. He must speak with Hanguang-Jun. Senior Wei often attempted impossible seeming things; it was Sizhui’s turn this time.

----

“Hanguang-Jun, I would like to request permission to visit Yunmeng and Lotus Pier for the purpose of obtaining materials for a birthday present for Senior Wei,” Lan Sizhui proclaimed, kneeling before his father.

Lan Wangji put down the papers he was reading and stared at his son. “A birthday present?”

“Yes. I would also like to invite Sect Leaders Jiang and Jin to visit Cloud Recesses in late October for Senior Wei’s birthday.” Sizhui did not look up.

“Sizhui, I expected more sense from you. Sect Leaders Jiang and Jin’s relationship with Wei Ying is complicated,” Lan Wangji picked up the papers and continued reading.

“Hanguang-Jun, I promise to exercise good judgement. Please indulge me in this,” Sizhui said undaunted. “I want to… to attempt the impossible.”

At the Yunmeng motto, Lan Wangji gazed intently at his son. No, Sizhui was also Wei Ying’s son, which meant he would want to attempt something crazy. But if he’s anything like Wei Ying, that crazy just might work. “Alright. Proceed. Take sufficient provisions and Jingyi with you.”

“Thank you Hanguang-Jun!” Sizhui looked up with a huge smile plastered on his face. “I will go find Jingyi immediately.”

---

The next few weeks passed quickly. Sizhui and Jingyi hermitted themselves outside the walls of Cloud Recesses. Other disciples reported that the two juniors made multiple trips between Yunmeng and Gusu, hauling baskets with them every trip.

By the time Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling arrived at Cloud Recesses, Sizhui and Jingyi felt ready to show Wei Wuxian their efforts.

“Sect Leader Jiang, Sect Leader Jin,” Sizhui said, bowing at the uncle and nephew duo. “Please follow me this way.” He led them to the student dormitories where Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng, and Jiang Yanli stayed during their time studying at Cloud Recesses.

Stepping over the bamboo threshold, Jiang Cheng, took in the sight of the old stone tables and benches. Memories of Wei Wuxian carrying cooked fish on sticks and Jiang Yanli serving soup filled his head. Swallowing, Jiang Cheng reminded himself those memories were from half a lifetime ago. He would never get to have A-Jie’s soup or be so comfortable with Wei Wuxian again.

Jin Ling looked around the dormitories with disdain. “Why did you bring us here? Are we not guests?”

Sizhui bowed politely, “Lan sect rule dictates that food within Cloud Recesses proper must be vegetarian. I have prepared a meal for you that requires our eating outside of Cloud Recesses grounds. Afterwards, Jingyi and I will personally escort Sect Leader Jiang and Jin to your rooms within Cloud Recesses, if you desire.”

As he spoke, he noticed Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji stepping across the threshold. “Hanguang-Jun, Senior Wei! Please, have a seat here. I cannot wait to get your feedback on my cooking!” Sizhui beamed at his fathers and ushered them to sit down next to Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling. He then hurried towards the kitchens.

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian exchanged polite nods. Jin Ling folded his arms across his chest and eyed Lan Wangji cautiously. Lan Wangji watched Jiang Cheng with a mildly disinterested expression.

Wei Wuxian broke the tension, “I don’t know what our son is thinking, inviting you two over and cooking for us… but he’s such a good kid, let’s just indulge him.”

“He’s older than I am!” Jin Ling started to argue.

“Yes. But isn’t it nice that your Sizhui-gege is cooking you dinner?” Wei Wuxian smiled dismissively and reached over to pat Jin Ling on the head.

“You-” Jin Ling’s outcry was cut off by Jiang Cheng.

“Wei Wuxian, he is now the Jin Clan Sect Leader. Show him respect.”

Wei Wuxian gave his estranged brother an awkward smile, nodded, and pulled back his hand. “Right. Right. I shouldn’t disrespect a sect leader like this.” He looked away at an old wutong tree in the courtyard. The branches were almost bare.

Jiang Cheng huffed, “At least you have the decency to sound like a human.”

At this time, Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi started bringing out dishes. Two green and two white vegetarian dishes were placed on the table interspersed with bright red, oily, meat based dishes. In the middle, Sizhui set down a tray with an earthenware pot.

“Senior Wei, Sect Leader Jiang,” Sizhui paused and took a deep breath. His next words rushed out, as if he would lose the courage to speak them if he slowed down. “I recently remembered a delicious bowl of cold soup I had as a child. I have attempted to recreate it for you two. I don’t know if you’ll like it but I made sure to try my recipe both while it was hot and after it had fully cooled down. I would like you to know I mean no disrespect, but thought maybe it would bring back happy memories.” With that, Sizhui lifted the lid of the pot, revealing lotus root and pork rib soup.

As the steam rose into the cold October air, Jingyi and Sizhui quickly served the soup to the four people sitting around the table.

Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng’s hands trembled as they took their bowls of soup. When the steam hit his face, Wei Wuxian breathed in the steam. The rich meat aroma of the pork ribs were cut by a barely perceptible hint of ginger and sweetness of lotus. Sizhui had managed to recreate Shijie’s soup’s aroma. He quickly spooned some broth into his mouth. The fat and the sweet and the pork flavors melded together just like Shijie’s. He looked over at Jiang Cheng and noticed Jiang Cheng had become blurry.

“Hey, Jiang Cheng, my son did a pretty good job, didn’t he?” Wei Wuxian asked, blinking back tears.

“He’s never had it before. He’s never met her before. How? I’ve tried and I can’t even recreate it like this,” Jiang Cheng answered, too shocked to argue. He shook his head and blinked twice, forcing his own tears back.

“Sect Leader Jiang, I did have the soup once, when I was a child. Wen Ning brought it back to me in the Burial Mounds after he and Senior Wei went to town to sell turnips.”

Jiang Cheng looked up at Sizhui incredulously, “And you remembered it?”

Sizhui’s face softened into a wistful smile. “When it’s the most amazing food you’ve had for over a year, it stands out. I had forgotten after Hanguang-Jun brought me here but I remembered again recently. I wanted to try my hand at it since I enjoy cooking. Jingyi and I bought the lotus from Yunmeng and flew it back by sword for this soup. Is it satisfactory? Do you like it, Jin Ling?”

Jin Ling looked between Wei Wuxian, Lan Sizhui, and his uncle. “Did I miss the significance of this soup? It’s really good, but it’s just soup, right?”

“Jin Ling, Sizhui here has duplicated the best soup in the world! This is what your mom’s lotus root and pork rib soup tastes like exactly. You can’t make it unless you use fresh Yunmeng lotus root.” Jiang Cheng’s voice was soft as he explained to Jin Ling. He didn’t know whether to cry at the realization that Jin Ling didn’t know what A-jie’s soup tasted like or to laugh knowing someone else alive can make itl.

“Why didn’t you just ask to cook at Lotus Pier?” Jiang Cheng asked, turning to Sizhui. “Lotus root isn’t light and it’s a long way to travel.”

“We did not feel it appropriate to impose,” Sizhui answered, studying Jin Ling who stared at the soup and started savoring it slowly.

“Nonsense, we’re all family. Your parents pretty much got married at Lotus Pier, or did they fail to mention that?” Jiang Cheng replied with a wave of his hand. “That means you’re more or less part of the Jiang family too.”

“No, we had no right to be there that night. I had been kicked out of the Jiang sect,” Wei Wuxian spoke up, tone bitter.

“You know as well as I do that it was all originally for show. Had you not told me to give up on you, I would have tried to protect you those years ago. Had A-Jie and Jin Zixuan not been murdered, we probably would have found a way to protect all the Wen remnants too.”

“Yunmeng wasn’t strong enough yet. You know Jin Guangshan and Jin Guangyao wanted my Yinhufu and would have done anything to get it. And those reasons don’t change the fact that you kicked me out.”

Jin Ling looked between his uncles as they argued, piecing together their family history. He continued to savor the soup as if no other food would ever be able to satiate him. Tears formed in his eyes but this time warmth started replacing the loneliness in his chest.

“Fine, I un-kick you out then. I’m in charge. I can do that. I’ll eat my words just like you ate yours. Even if you married into the Gusu Lan sect, you can come back to Yunmeng Jiang whenever you want. I --”

Jiang Cheng’s words were cut off by Wei Wuxian flinging his arms around his brother. “Last time I was so stupid. Last time I pushed you away. I’ve learned from Lan Zhan how to express my feelings more directly and --”

“Lan Wangji?! He doesn’t emote at all! How can you learn from him?” Jiang Cheng hollered, elbowing Wei Wuxian out of the way. He pointed a finger at Lan Wangji. “Look at him. He’s had the same expression on his face since you two stepped into this courtyard!”

Wei Wuxian punched Jiang Cheng in the shoulder. “It’s not my fault you’re too emotionally stunted to read facial expressions.”

He then turned to Jin Ling and started serving the young sect leader more soup, “Drink up Jin Ling. Don’t pay attention to your uncle’s lack of emotional depth. You can learn what good relationships are like by hanging out with me and Lan Zhan.”

“Drink up, Jin Ling. Don’t listen to your Uncle Wei. He’s too idiotically in love to make sense.”

After serving themselves, Lan Sizhui and Lan Jingyi sat down at the table to eat. Sizhui nodded at his father and slightly bowed his head, ”What do you think, Hanguang-Jun, did I achieve it?”

Lan Wangji’s lips pulled back a millimeter while watching his husband reconnect with Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling, “Mn. Cloud Recesses will become even more lively.”

#untamed spring fest #fresh #food cw #lsz is a great cook #jl will probably need therapy #jc and wwx work through some things #lwj dotes on his husband and his kid #lwj #wwx #lsz #wangxian but not wangxian focused #ljy as a bkgd character #domesticity #wangxian fluff

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olivieblake · 5 years ago

Note

We have an English paper in which we can write about any academic topic or whatever and I was thinking of writing mine on expecting more from our female characters (I guess mostly in terms of a personality), especially in YA novels since that's what most people my age read, plus I was thinking of somehow including the "not like other girls" thing when its brought to life in the form of a character... anyway, do you have any thoughts/suggestions on this?

I have so much to say that I’m going to try to break it down to bullet points, okay? I’d answer in a vlog but I know you’re working on a paper that I assume is due soon, so I’ll try to be succinct and possibly (possibly!) organized.

I’ve talked before about the fallacy of scarcity, which in this case is the idea that in a male-dominated world, only a few women can succeed. This is applicable in the professional realm, of course, where women in a male-dominated field (aka historically all of them except maybe the sex industry and witchcraft) are competing for fewer spots, and therefore women must tear each other down in order to be the one to get ahead. This is a fallacy primarily because there’s no reason only a few women should succeed outside of the patriarchal system positioning us as rivals rather than allies; isolating us that way is, in a sense, a very effective subjugation (but that’s a point for another time.) In romances, this idea somehow permeates our narratives: that there are only a few good men (arguably true) and therefore we are all competing against each other for them (definitely false).

In romances especially, there’s this idea that one woman prevails because she is a specific subset of qualities; as I mentioned in my discussion of Jane Eyre, Brontë uses Jane’s narrative to highlight how Jane is clever, devoted, headstrong, whereas other girls are not. In modern YA, the “not like other girls” character prevails because she has offbeat interests, quirky opinions, she doesn’t care how she looks, etc. (See below re: male-approved qualities.) But first of all, this is not how relationships work. You do not win someone’s affection by possessing a list of qualities that other women don’t have. That’s issue number one.

Now add in the fallacy of scarcity, aka that you are competing with other women and therefore you must be different and better in order to win. What does this do in reality? It pits women against each other. It presumes there to be more or less value in the way in which you are a woman. But consider this: why should caring about your looks be a sign of stupidity or vapidness when there are entire industries devoted to making women—and especially teen girls—feel ugly or fat or generally imperfect? This is worse for POC women who are underrepresented and criticized for their otherness, of course, but on the whole, women are targets for a marketplace of self-hatred. Adding in the internal misogyny of “I am better than this girl because my desirability meets a male standard for behavior and hers does not” is not helping us. (Besides, the “not like other girls” is usually told she’s beautiful, isn’t she? So it rather undermines the whole thing, and creates an even more impossible standard for perfection: i.e., that you should be perfect without trying.)

Elena Ferrante (by way of Lenù) says something in the Neapolitan Novels about how she’s male in her head, or essentially has taught herself to think like a man, and this is how she has succeeded in her career. This is essentially the same concept as the underlying foundation for the “not like other girls” archetype: a beautiful woman who acts and thinks like a man (and who doesn’t know she’s beautiful, of course, because vanity is a characteristic belonging to Evil Women who ultimately prey on men; yikes!! Poor, poor men). Can you see why this might be more conducive to keeping men in a position of privilege rather than contributing to us raising each other up? Men set an unrealistic standard, and for some reason, women police each other with it. We are women, with women’s experiences; there is no reason we should act or think like men, and yet for some reason we force each other into the same woman-shaped hole by shaming each other for the pieces of ourselves that don’t fit.

The last fallacy is that of the “not like other girls” being a “cool girl,” aka someone who does not have emotional needs. Someone said this brilliantly recently that there is a pervasive belief among women that in order to be worthy of being loved, you must require as little as possible. Carrie Fisher says something interesting in her autobiography about how Harrison Ford “taught her how to be casual,” which I think is a common experience for young women. Yes, boys are often conditioned to reject the “femininity” of emotion and this is equally problematic, but I’m not going to worry about them right now. I want to focus on the idea that as a result of male emotional detachment, women learn that reluctance or ambivalence to make demands is a desirable quality; i.e., they will want us more if we need them less. We are conditioned over and over—particularly as teenage girls—to need less, to demand less, to ask for less. The entire romance genre is built on this idea that a man will one day come along and save us; not from a tower (we’ve progressed at least that much) but from loneliness or desire. That there is a man who will not only know our secret wants, but also give them to us without us having to say what they are. But not only is this unreasonable to expect, it’s unhealthy for both genders. The man who can read your mind or who knows intuitively how to love you does not exist; especially if he is unpracticed in loving others.

I would argue that yes, we should honor our female characters by expecting more from our authors—more truth, more sensitivity, more awareness—but this can manifest by expecting, in some senses, less. There is no universal woman (certainly no Perfect Woman) and thus, female characters should not all feel the same. They should also be allowed to have flaws, and to grow as they go. There shouldn’t be one girl who is so different from the others that only she can be the victor; this is in some senses expecting too much, and also implying all the fallacies above.

IN CONCLUSION (lol), true diversity is about expressing reality; not that there should be an array of female personalities because different female personalities need to be provided, but because the world is occupied by a wide variety of women who ARE deeply unique even while we are sharing the same universal human experience. The same argument goes for just about anything, gender (or nonbinary) experiences in addition to race, ethnicity, religion, culture, sexuality, etc.

#Anonymous #hmmm how to tag this #I'm going to say #writing advisements #even though it isn't really #feminism #big sistering #i really want to teach a course about the sociology of romance novels #put it on the vision board #not like other girls

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thedreadvampy · 4 years ago

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Ok so like I don't really want to kick off another round of Mondays argument but

having had a bit of time to step back I feel pretty confident in saying that there's a real struggle in a lot of communities to understand and accept the concept of conflicting access needs

Like it isn't fundamentally an act of bigotry against Person A when Person B says 'this thing that helps you harms others', nor is it implying that A or B is 'less oppressed' or that their oppression doesn't matter. But these kinds of access conflicts need to be talked about in order to be addressed.

Like in a sphere I spend more time taking about, disability and neurodivergence, where this comes up a Lot - say wheelchair users need the entrance to be a ramp, but somebody with balance issues finds walking up a ramp difficult and often fall. Saying 'it's a problem for me that there are only ramps in this building' doesn't mean you think that it's unimportant that wheelchair users can get in, or that your needs matter more.

Or like, here's an example that's come up a lot for me lately - automated subtitles. Some people find automated subtitles on Zoom calls make meetings possible (people with hearing or audio processing issues particularly) but others find them distracting and find it impossible to focus. Those two things are incompatible needs - you can't both have subtitles and not have subtitles in this context - but that doesn't mean one of them is Real and Important and the other is Fake and Irrelevant just because that would make it easier.

One last example of this in material terms - I am autistic and have real problems with audio processing when I'm tired. I went to a workshop in a smallish space, so the workshop was quite near the crèche. Having a crèche is a vital access need for a lot of people; lone parents and working class mothers in general are often very left out of activist and social spaces because of a lack of childcare. But for me, it created an insurmountable problem - the noise from the crèche meant I couldn't take in any information, I was exhausted and stressed and in pain the whole time, you know? It wouldn't be fair to ask the crèche to shut or to silence the children, who need and deserve the right to play, but equally it wouldn't be fair to tell me I'm selfish or lying for having trouble following the session.

Anyway so that's access clash. Different people have different needs that may be fundamentally incompatible, but they're equally valid needs.

But access clash isn't just personal, it's also political, social and linguistic. And this kind of feeds into a recurrent issue in groups of marginalised people where there's a persistent desire to decide in any given argument Whose Marginalisation Matters More and to accuse the other of lying/arguing in bad faith/ignoring erasing The Struggle.

Some recent examples of that phenomenon in the TMA fandom (pokes bear pokes bear) might be:

1. It's aphobic to say that there's any problem at all with framing fat, traumatised MLM as virginal or naive or inexperienced or non-sexual, because he could be ace and that's important to ace people. But fat, traumatised and gay people have a history of being desexualised, given less sexual and romantic agency, and infantilised or objectified as cute and pure in a way that thin, non-survivor or straight people don't. One way to approach this is to say One Of These Issues Is Important And Valid And That Means The Other Is Being Homophobic/Fatphobic/Ableist/Aphobic and Targeting Marginalised People With Invalid Criticism. That's a very easy task to fall into but it's important imo to make space for the access clash.

2. Bisexual people want an event that focuses on bisexuality. Non-bisexual people want an event that focuses on their own sexuality. Everyone's desire in this situation is to see their own experience reflected.

There's this kind of hierarchy of truth idea where anything that conflicts with what you know to be true must necessarily be false, but the fact is that human experience is infinitely complex and variable so actually something that's undeniably true for some people will always run into some friction with what's undeniably true for others.

And there's such a strong impulse towards assuming that the other is lying or arguing in bad faith, because you KNOW your need is real and important and it conflicts with their needs and that MUST mean they're doing it At You, or in the extreme that they're actively lying to hurt and belittle you. And that's a really natural and understandable impulse, especially among marginalised people who ARE often hurt, manipulated and belittled in bad faith. But I really think that as a community we need to actively work to undercut the idea that oppression is a zero sum game; that if you having the space you need treads on my toes, I can say "you're on my foot and it hurts" without Secretly Meaning "you don't deserve space and shouldn't be given it." Like I do authentically need an untrodden-on foot and you do authentically need enough space to stand in and it's not undermining the truth of either of those statements to acknowledge the other.

idk I just think. Understanding that the other person may have an authentic need being intent/overridden (even though the need may not be what they think it is!) is a pretty important part of conflict management. and believing that if I say "ow you trod on my foot" means I'm actively trying to undermine your need for space is a pretty important part of how conflict escalates into oblivion until I'm yelling YOU DON'T DESERVE STANDING SPACE GO GET CRUSHED and you're yelling I'M GOING TO STAMP ON YOUR FOOT UNTIL IT BREAKS

idk if that makes sense but 🤷‍♀️

#thedreadvampy adiscourse #IT'S DISCOURSE THURSDAY LADIES AND GERMS

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alewyren · 4 years ago

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tumblr is dead but I’m gonna post my thoughts on Inuyasha here too for archiving purposes. cw for (non-detailed) discussion of sexual assault and suicide wrt kikyo

OKAY. SO. MY THOUGHTS ON INUYASHA. warning for some INCREDIBLY hot takes.

it. sure was a journey. I am not sure if I liked the series overall or not. It had some legit good/touching moments, but it dragged SO LONG and there were a lot of things I thought could've been handled better. But it was fun liveblogging it for sure. And I got NarKik out of it, which snapped me out of my year-long creative dry spell, so it was at least a net positive time investment LMFAO.

I liked... mmmmost of the characters? sango, sesshoumaru, kagura, kanna, naraku, kohaku, K I K Y O, and even kagome were all Good. On the flipside, Inuyasha himself is FUCKING TERRIBLE and he sucks and I hate him. Emotional immaturity ain't cute, he gets everything handed to him on a silver platter, rarely apologizes for being a selfish prick, and the other characters are WAY too forgiving of his bullshit. I got tired of the tsundere het romance cliches between him and Kagome pretty fast, as well as how often he was jealous of her. Like, Kagome's insecurities over Kikyo I can legit understand (despite being #1 Kikyo Fucker). But whenever she's so much as civil with Kouga and Inuyasha's all HANDS OFF MY WOMAN I'm like... dude shut up you two-timing hypocrite. If You Like It Then You Should’ve Put A Ring On It. Credit where credit is due tho, they did chill out over time and some of their moments together towards the end of the series were legit sweet. I'm pretty meh on Inukag overall, and iffy on the resolution of her moving to his era permanently, but that last panel of him greeting her as she came out of the well gave me a Feel.

(Actually, on that note, it... would have been legit kind of hella if the series had ended with Inuyasha himself permanently moving to the modern era? Aside from their friends he had far fewer attachments in his world than she did hers, and there's so much more potential with him having to adapt to the modern era, lol. ALTERNATIVELY, kikyo lives and she switches places with kagome and makes a new life for herself in the modern era. thus letting her truly live as a normal girl. But I'll Get To Kikyo Later. smh)

The premise of the series is actually pretty strong, though of course you can poke holes in it. To my knowledge it was the first isekai anime that really took off, and the driving plot of collecting the Shikon fragments is excellent monster of the week material (though I'm not really a monster of the week fan myself). Also, youkai are awesome. Focusing the series on real-world mythology makes my Shin Megami Tensei heart very excited.

I know the series runs on emotion rather than logic, but I REALLY have some questions here. The fact that the well is explicitly stated to take Kagome back in time rather than to another world makes no sense at all. First of all, where are all the youkai in the present day? Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru are at least a couple hundred years old, right? What happened to them in that 500 year timespan? Surely some creature or another from the series would have naturally survived that long. So what happened? Was there a mass-youkai extinction somewhere along the line? Shouldn't this be cause for concern? Also, do Kagome's time-traveling actions create a stable time loop or a branching timeline? If Naraku won in the past, how would that affect the present? The two eras are just completely isolated from each other and I really don't get it. That kind of stuff. Yeah yeah I know MST3K mantra and all but MAN this bothers me.

Which brings me to Exhibit A of stuff I think should have gone differently: Kagome should have stayed the protagonist, and the modern era should have gotten more focus. Not as in her day-to-day school shenanigans, but stuff touching on the questions listed above. There's just a lot of untapped potential regarding How This Shit Works, rather than confining the story pretty much entirely to the Sengoku Jidai With Youkai. Also there could be plenty of shenanigans with characters OTHER than Kagome and Inuyasha hanging out in the present. LIKE KIKYO. okay yeah my kikyo bias is showing but it would be the perfect opportunity to 1. hide her from naraku (unless he found a way into the present, but that just ties into my previous point), 2. develop her friendship with Kagome. Which would have done both of them wonders. BUT I'LL GET TO KIKYO LATER. (I'm dying imagining Kagome introducing Kikyo to her schoolmates as her cousin and taking her shopping though..... teaching her how to ordinary human... like..... HHH.)

Anyway, Kagome as the protagonist. She was very much the protagonist at the start of the series--she took a more active role in a lot of the monster of the week conflicts, and just had a lot more focus and screentime in general. Then Inuyasha got his sword upgrades and her role in conflicts became reduced to sensing Shikon fragments and occasional use of arrows. It took until the last hundred chapters for her to get ANY sort of substantial power-up, and it felt... unearned? I had been looking forward to her developing her miko powers alongside Inuyasha's youkai powers, and getting bow upgrades to match his Tessaiga upgrades, but it just... didn't happen. Her miko powers having been sealed all along felt like an ass pull, and I wasn't really a fan of the test of character she had to go through in order to get the fancy bow upgrade being solely focused on overcoming her feelings of jealousy towards Kikyo... again... like it's valid for her to feel that way but we've been here already! Surely there's more to her character than this! I think it would've been awesome if she actually got some fights of her own too, and maybe Kaede and eventually Kikyo mentoring her growth as a miko? But as far as canon went, it just felt like she got shallower and less interesting over time as Inuyasha slowly took over the protagonist role and that was a damn shame. Let Kagome be the plucky isekai protagonist she was always meant to be! This, of course, ties in with my assertion that the modern era should have gotten more focus too.

okay, so. it's time. kikyo. Kikyo. I fucking LOVE kikyo, absolutely my fave chara, I was not expecting to love Kikyo this much lmao. All that ship war propaganda was a big fat lie. She has an ASTONISHINGLY mature narrative about the effect of tragedy and trauma on people and relationships, but it was SO under-utilized and shafted in favor of the Love Triangle and Inuyasha's Manpain and I'm FUCKING UPSET. Kikyo was (or at least had the makings to be) the best character in Inuyasha but she was not done justice at all, in this essay I

Like, sit down and think about it. Here we have a woman who lost her parents at a young age, taking on the responsibilities of her household, and training to be a miko on top of it--which in the world of Inuyasha is a very emotionally demanding position that requires her to basically devote her entire life to her duties, ESPECIALLY once she's entrusted with the Shikon Jewel. All while being required to live a life of asceticism and suppressing worldly desires. In short, she basically never had a chance to actually, like. Live. Keep in mind that she was a child/teenager throughout all this (she was 17/18 when she died). That's a LOT of pressure on someone that young.

At this point, she's understandably lonely and depressed, and then along comes Inuyasha. She falls in love with him, gets a taste of a life that would truly make her happy, and has it ripped away. Like, there's some really fucking dark subtext to the whole Onigumo plot. She shows kindness to a random stranger, who proceeds to make a deal with the devil to LITERALLY RAPE HER, and her life is ruined as a result. No, Kikyo wasn't literally raped in canon, because even though Onigumo wanted to rape her Naraku's intentions towards her were... more complicated if still incredibly fucked up, but good lord the subtext is THERE. And as a result of the ensuing incident, believing Inuyasha betrayed her, she straight up KILLS HERSELF. Yes, it was partly to protect the Shikon Jewel, but she did not want to come back to life. Let that sink in. Kikyo was driven to suicide by an incident incited by a man who took advantage of her kindness in order to rape her. (nostalgia critic voice) FAMILY PICTURE!

I'm not gonna pretend Kikyo was the only victim here, though. Inuyasha has pretty clear PTSD from the event too, even after learning Kikyo is innocent. But through his relationship with Kagome, he begins to heal and move on. Then Kikyo gets brought back as a clay zombie, fucks up his whole grieving process, kickstarts the love triangle, you know the story. Kikyo's perspective is actually really interesting to dig into though. She didn't want to be brought back. She's PISSED. Even when the dust settles and she learns that Inuyasha is innocent, the anger and trauma have changed her. She's got a good ol' dose of PTSD herself. She's colder, harsher, engages in risky/self-destructive behavior, and distances herself from her loved ones. Like, think about it. Was there any logical reason she had to separate from Inuyasha and his group to fight Naraku on her own? To keep them in the dark about why she surrendered the Shikon Jewel to Naraku? No. That's a character flaw on HER part. And all this puts real strain on her relationship with Inuyasha. They still love each other, but their mutual trauma has completely changed their dynamic. Their love is based on their past relationship rather than their present chemistry. They don't make each other happy anymore. Neither of them are at fault for that. That's REAL AS FUCK. That's what trauma DOES to people and relationships.

So, yes, I'm a hardcore Kikyo stan who supports InuKag over InuKik. We exist. InuKik does not work as a relationship in the present because they've both changed due to trauma and that's the GODDAMN POINT. It's not a story about true love, it's a story about moving on from first love. The problem is that Kikyo's character is largely confined to her role as a love rival to Kagome. Inuyasha's side of the InuKik narrative, of letting go of the past and healing, is resolved. Kikyo's is not. And boy, I was ABSOLUTELY FUCKING LIVID that the love triangle was resolved through Kikyo's death rather than Inuyasha just... fucking, PICKING KAGOME OVER KIKYO BEFOREHAND RATHER THAN HER NEEDING TO DIE. She can still die after that! I swear, I'm not just salty because my fave died. At least 70% of my favorite charas are dead. I literally don't care anymore. I'm mad that she was killed off in a way that reduced her to being Inuyasha's Woman rather than getting a chance to heal and grow apart from him, as he did from her. And this in turn cheapens the narrative around why InuKik doesn't work as a present relationship to begin with, because he never actually picks present love over past love! He just keeps committing emotional infidelity until Kikyo gets killed off to wrap things up in a neat little bow with no character growth on his part! This shit is why I hate Inuyasha (the character).

Kagome's kindness towards Kikyo also plays a part in why she softens up by the end, yes, but that kindness is entirely depicted as "I want to save her because she's important to Inuyasha and I love Inuyasha." Kagome's character growth in these moments hinges on her picking love over jealousy, NOT through actually bonding with Kikyo. On top of that, Kikyo saving Kohaku over defeating Naraku struck me as out of character (have to show she's not a bad person after all? which she isn't, but still). It definitely made her death feel even more pointless. How come Kohaku gets to live and not her!!! Seriously, the fact that Kohaku gets to live and Kikyo doesn't REALLY rubs me the wrong way. She barely even knew Kohaku! He was willing to die to defeat Naraku! NOT killing Kohaku to defeat Naraku almost cost MORE lives! It could've been a poignant resolution to her character arc, but there wasn't enough buildup for it to be a convincing decision for her to make.

And oh my god, there's SO much wasted potential here. Kikyo's resentment towards Kagome is super understandable, and it's never really explored. Kagome replaced her. Kagome is filling the role she should have filled. What's even left for her except her hatred of Naraku? She asserts that Inuyasha cannot forget her (her being lowkey possessive of him is *chef kiss* my wife is a bitch and I like her so much), and he doesn't, but she still straight up tries to kill Kagome lmao. Like I said they do reconcile, but it's kinda half-assed. Kikyo's feelings are never explored in-depth. She's never truly given a chance to heal and realize that she does have a place in the world beyond her decaying relationship with Inuyasha and hatred for Naraku. That her scarred, flawed existence is still just as fucking valid as Kohaku or Rin or Jaken being able to live after being brought back from the dead. Like lemme stress again that the girl experienced INTENSE trauma and COMMITTED SUICIDE. The notion that she's the only one who needs to die in order to restore the natural order, that her death is beautiful and tragic but necessary, is..... gross, tbh. :U

Like, she can still die, lmao. IMO it'd be legitimately more interesting if she lived, if she had an opportunity to carve a place for herself outside of Kagome like Kagome did Kikyo, but it IS possible for her to die without it making ME want to die. Just resolve the love triangle shit first, flesh out some of her relationships outside of Inuyasha himself (ESPECIALLY Kagome), show her healing and softening, and then she can die protecting everyone or some shit. That would've been fine. But No. She just gets killed off for the service of Inuyasha's character, so he can hook up with Kagome guilt-free, with NONE of this addressed. Because it's more palatable for a woman to be dead than broken up with, I guess? I Hate It Here, You Guys.

her (near) last words being "I've finally become an ordinary woman" rubbed me the wrong way too... it like, tried to wrap her character arc up in a neat little bow while ALSO entirely confining its resolution to being Inuyasha's Woman and discarding the narrative of trauma driving them apart. I love the narrative of the girl forced to be inhuman who just wants to be normal. This just felt like... a really cheap way to go about doing that, at the disservice of her character being about OLD love, for a forced (and false) sense of closure. Didn't like it. God fucking damn, typing it all out just made me even MORE pissed off.

tl;dr: kikyo had the makings of an amazing trauma survivor narrative but it got shafted. she deserved everything. thank you for coming to my TED talk.

SIGH. okay. there are other characters I wanna touch on too. Uhhh I actually thought Naraku was pretty cool, though he became way less interesting after Mt Hakurei (for the most part--he was cool again during the direct lead-up to Kikyo's death as well as the final battle). His identity crisis was pretty neat, as was the way he specifically targeted other people's emotions and relationships as a way to compensate for his own utter lack of a sense of self. Not to mention the cold, detached way he regards his own emotions ("my pp stands up whenever i look at kikyo, wish it wouldn't do that :/") and how this leads him to succumb to the influence of the Shikon Jewel, in contrast to Inuyasha and Kagome breaking the cycle. His lack of motivation is actually kind of the point, and I think it's neat as hell! Things got boring once The Baby entered the picture, and I got the sense Rumiko wasn't really sure what to do with Naraku for a while. His style of villainy got a lot more distant and "just as keikaku," when it was the way he got up in everyone's business and pushed their buttons for his own shallow amusement that made me like him in the first place. His fragments aside from Kagura and eventually Kanna were way less interesting, and I think it would've been neat to go more into his role as basically being an abusive dad, but it's fine. The Baby was a fucking boring and atrocious villain though, jfc. The /idea/ of Naraku's own heart rebelling against him was cool enough, but it means jack shit when The Baby is just a bland-ass villain who doesn't remotely represent the character traits that make up Naraku's "heart" in the first place, even aside from Kikyo.

Speaking of which, his fixation on Kikyo is a LOT of fun. Their interactions (which he was apparently secretly into), how he rejected his own humanity and destroyed both himself and the object of his desires, etc. Which is another reason he got less fun after Mt. Hakurei tbh. I fucking hate the way Kikyo's death was handled overall but I liked that he had to reclaim his human heart in order to overwhelm and kill her. That was neat. Something something toxic desire destroying both yourself and the person it's directed at. Then at the very end he realized that his entire existence was completely pointless and empty and his complicated feelings towards Kikyo were the only thing that ever made him actually, like, give a shit. Pour one out for this absolute dumbass. He's a relatable villain because I too would go to absolutely insane lengths to get over a girl I never even dated.

Uhh who else. Sango and Miroku. Sango was my favorite character in the main party. She's the most level-headed of the bunch, has a super cute design, and her story with Kohaku was responsible for a lot of the emotional moments in the series that really landed for me. Her friendship with Kagome was actually super cute and heartfelt. That scene early on where she broke down crying in Kagome's lap because she was scared of being alone again HURT. Also, Kirara is fucking precious. Miroku I've got mixed feelings about, since on the one hand he's a legitimately interesting character and some of his scenes with Sango did hit fairly hard, but DEAR GOD I hate the quirky pervert trope with a burning passion. If it were played seriously, I'd stan him to hell and back a la Adachi. But it isn't, so it's not. I've got mixed feelings about MirSan too. Their resolution was really sweet, but I was kinda like "wha" when Kagome said Sango had a thing for Miroku in the first place. Like, sure okay, but I think more time should've been spent showing her falling for him in the first place lol. Also the butt-grabbing joke got old fast. And when he proposed to her and basically refused to stop flirting with other women I facepalmed so hard. Can't have character growth when you have unfunny running gags! To his credit, he did chill out for the most part, but still kept making jokes about flirting/scoring that clearly made Sango unhappy and I'm like. Why. Then the bit with Hirai-Kotsu needing to be fixed. I liked their mutual resolve to protect each other, but I thought Sango's comment about how she couldn't live without him was..... a bit much. Like what about Kohaku??? But anyway I'm just glad Sango got a happy ending even if I'm still super *SQUINTS* at Miroku.

Sesshoumaru was pretty neat, I get why he's popular, though wasn't really My Type. Sure he's cool, but his /personality/ was a bit lacking and I think we should have gotten some more insight into his relationship with his father for how much focus his quest for the Best Sword got. His development was pretty good, but I've kind of got an issue with how Rin was more of a plot device than a character. Like, okay, one of the reasons I decided to start reading Inuyasha was because the announcement of Yashahime sparked a wave of Sessh/Rin discourse and I wanted to form my own take on it. And, yeah okay I don't like Sessh/Rin either and I say this as a certified Nasty, lmao. Less because it's problematic (though I find it kind of offputting myself, even aged-up) and more because it's bland. Rin has no character whatsoever outside of being a vehicle for his development and I'm REALLY not a fan of girls being objects for male charas' development. Still, I'm not gonna boycott Yashahime if Sessh/Rin is canon or anything. I prefer him with Kagura or even Kikyo but they're dead, so. If Rin has to be his cum dumpster to make this happen, then that's how it's gotta be.

Thats about it I think. I'd put it a rung or two above Naruto in terms of overall quality, but BOY am I still mad abt Kikyo. 6/10 probably wouldn't recommend, but it WAS fun.

#musings

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glasyasbutch · 5 years ago

Note

8, 14, 25, 27, 37! d10 option, but do 2 per question if you wanna answer w all your characters!

finally i have time on my laptop to type this out ........ thank you morgan for my life ................ (i had to roll this d10 so many times cause it refused to pick anything but 5, and while i have a lot of thoughts about gildy, other characters need love) 8. If they were given 1000 acres of land with no strings attached, what would they do with it? Gildy: obvious answer here is build her own forge from the ground up. like hello. how sexy of her to do this. but like, she misses the bustle of being around people all the time so it’d be open to the public for demos/lessons. are teaching forges a thing? they are in my world and she runs it and its full of tiny little dwarven babies who probably shouldn’t be allowed access to burning hot metal but like she’s a cleric so its fiiiiiiine Ezra: this is a toughie for him but the dice are forcing me to think. My first thought for him would honestly be give it away to some farmers or something, since he’s never really been the kind of guy to have personal possessions or things entirely his own. like. he grew up in a temple and then spent the next large chunk of his life doing 24/7 hospice care for someone, he’s never owned a house, or had things just for him. his whole life has been about community and sharing, he’d feel bad using it for any of his own desires.

however, for the sake of the question, if he has to take it and do something with it himself. big fat library. (where will he get the books from? don’t worry about it.) he only has 8 int but he thoroughly understands the value of knowledge, and you know, little selfish bonus. a huge collection of books like that is his best shot at finding something out about cate

14. What’s a personality trait they wish they had?

Ebbie: Confidence. Not necessarily in the sense that he doubts himself, though he does a fair amount, but mainly what he wants is the ability to make other people believe him when he Does think he can do something. He doesn’t want to be “trying to make something of himself” in everyone’s eyes forever. He’s already made something.

Nissy: Absolutely nothing he’s perfect how he is how DARE you insinuate that he could need ANYTHING added to his finely manufactured personali- (Patience. He has so, so many years to go ahead of him and he doesn’t know how to make things last. He’s worried that if he keeps letting people and interests slip through his fingers like sand he’ll have nothing left to hold before he even reaches his final lifetime.)

25. If there was a day held in their honor, what would people have to do on that day? Craving: ooooooooooooooooooooooohohohohohohoho. Oh boy this is ,.... this is tasty. I’m thinking a sort of mardigras crossed with the purge but less murder in which the vibe is “fucking anything goes, you’re the tits so damn well act like it”. extravagancy, over-dressing for the occassion, blatant gluttony, open container alcohol, if you think it’s pretty its yours kinda attitude. tons of costume jewelry on your body and trinkets in your pocket with the expectation that you’ll swipe some and others will swipe yours, and you’ll come home with a new selection of “finery”. the nice things stay locked at home. restaurants offer free food and stores have huge sales, card games and county fair style side shows in the middle of the street. an excuse to indulge recklessly. Udoora: so like, there’s Kind of already a day in their honor cause the whole town has their yearly festival where they pray to the goddess and go yo whats up lady is your champion stepping down or are we re-blessing the one we already have!! but that’s not specific to doora. one Just for her... country town festival. think bilbo’s 111th birthday minus the magic fireworks. whole city comes out to party, tons of food, music and dancing, the streets lined with wildflower garlands. stories and laughing around a bonfire as the sun leaves the sky, reverence for the people around you and the place you call home.

27. What makes a person beautiful to them?

Stella: Gentleness. Now you may read this and go how the FUCK did she end up with craving, and the answer to that is: this question said “beautiful” not “extremely sexy”. she got together with craving because she was horny and THEN she fell in love with craving’s soft side. (Her favorite physical aspect of craving is her hair. she loves to run her fingers through it, because it’s always inexplicably soft, in comparison to the horns and the barbs)

Stella grew up in the woods though, learning to tread light so as not to scare an animal or disrupt a nest. Her favorite place to be as a kid was calf-deep in the slowest part of the river. She knows the soft kiss of the sun on shoulders and the cushion of moss under toes. She was raised in the gentleness of nature, and she longs to see that gentleness reflected in humanity.

Hedja: Now this is an interesting one bc I’d explicitly decided against romance if I ever play them (not that if they don’t pursue romance they’re incapable of seeing beauty but it’s not something i’d thought much at all about). I’d say humor, levity, optimism. The ability to find any speck of brightness you can and kindle it. They don’t care much for physical looks or appearances, but that belief in happiness around every corner is what makes them continue to serve their god, because they find it to be the most beautiful part of life.

37. What do they think is a conspiracy? Tov: so. a conspiracy that he believes is true is that rowan and sloan are fucking to make him and moos jealous. we know this. but a truth that he believes is conspiracy ... you know i’m gonna say that there’s several warlock patrons who are definitely real in d&d canon but he refuses to believe that they exist because he had such shit luck trying to contact them with rax. (don’t ask me which ones i don’t know enough d&d lore for this) Roona: my god. she’s the perfect one for this holy shit ... she’s about 30% convinced that every thing that’s been said to her for her entire life is fake and she’s part of a really fucked up social experiment, so there’s that. she’s also a strong believer in the “we’re all in a simulation” theory, as well as “i’m the only one who’s alive and everyone else is a simulation” theory. she waffles on and off as to whether all the gods are actually just one guy. there’s one town she passed through where she’s sure the king has been dead for years and is being puppeted around by a necromancer group running a shadow government. there’s no fucking way math is real, everyone’s bullshitting numbers bigger than 100. not really a conspiracy but since getting the ass spoon she doesn’t believe in the societal value of forks cause she’s been doing just fucking fine with her spoon and her hands only thank you VERY much.

#thank you again doing this fucked supremely #craving #tov #stella #gildy #ezra #ebbie #nissy #hedja #roona #udoora

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imaginepirates · 5 years ago

Text

The Estuary

The Dutchman

Part 1

When James was dragged aboard the Empress, wet to his bones with water dripping from his clothes, it took him a moment to realize he was crying. Fat tears rolled over his cheeks, spilling from his chin with the rest of the water soaking him through. It was relief, he knew, that made him cry so. Or perhaps it was fear. He didn’t know what to expect next, after all.

A towel was draped over his shoulders. He’d forsaken the wig and coat while in the water, preferring not to be dragged into the depths by their weight. He knew he looked a mess; his shirttails poked out from their place, mostly untucked, and his hair stuck to his face in long strands.

He wanted to find Elizabeth, to know she was okay. The unfriendly men about him set his nerves on edge. He didn’t get the feeling that they liked him much, even after helping them escape.

He found her in the captain’s cabin, pouring over charts. Her hands were shaking, and he wasn’t convinced it was from the cold. Noiselessly, he slipped into the cabin, standing against a red wall.

“Elizabeth,” he croaked. It wasn’t meant to sound so pathetic, but god, that was how he felt.

“James!” She jumped up, the towel around her neck slipping from its position. Her arms wrapped around James’ neck, her face pressed into his shoulder.

There was a feeling so deep in James’ chest, so raw and painful, he struggled to breathe. He knew, no matter how long he lasted here, in this reality, that he’d never have her arms wrapping around him. He’d never come home to her voice. He’d never have her. It hurt. Was it worth knowing what he was missing?

He held her against his chest, stroking her hair with a hand. More than her hands were shaking, now. He held her tighter and thought of what she must be going through. She was just as scared as he was, with no knowledge of what awaited her. She didn’t belong on the sea with pirates. Or, maybe she did, but it was all new to her, and she had to learn her place. Regardless, James buried his face in her hair, knowing it could be his last chance.

“I thought- I thought you hadn’t followed me,” she whispered into his shirt. “I thought I’d lost you.”

The words broke him. She felt alone. Of course; she was bereft of Will and Jack, left in an environment with people who didn’t speak her language, and she was expected to lead them. She was desperate for anything familiar. James should’ve followed her the first time. He should’ve been there for her, taken care of her. I am now.

“Never.” The words passed his lips before he’d even thought of them. “I would never leave you, Elizabeth.”

She looked into his eyes with a fierce determination that surprised him. It shouldn’t have. “Stay with me. Don’t go back.” It was not a request.

“Always.”

One hand curled into his shirt, the warmth of her fingers spreading to the skin beneath the wet fabric. “And James?” She searched his eyes. “I forgive you.”

“Thank you.” He was sure he was crying again. He didn’t care. Let her see his weakness. Let her see that she was his weakness. His hands moved to the sides of her face, cupping it. He kissed her forehead again, letting the touch linger longer than necessary.

He stayed by her side afterwards, trying to remind her that she wasn’t alone. There was a strength to her he hadn’t noticed before. It was in her posture and the depths of her eyes. The decisiveness with which she acted in the face of people who disdained her. The chill in her voice. She was not out of place, and it scared him.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

They arrived at Shipwreck Cove far too soon for James’ tastes. He hadn’t wanted to come in the first place; it set him on edge. Beckett knew about it all, and the last thing James wanted was to see Elizabeth hurt.

The cove was formed almost exclusively out of old ships. They were stacked, one on the other, in a dizzying monstrosity. It was imposing to look upon. James was shocked; it looked like a stronghold out of a fairytale. He only hoped it could last just as long.

Warm light cascaded out of windows. Every room looked to be occupied. The Empress docked next to a massive French vessel, and someone jogged down to meet them. There was an exchange of words between the man and Elizabeth. She promptly set off in one direction, leaving everyone to follow in her wake.

Loud voices echoed out of a room. The crew of the Empress had climbed uncountable stairs, ducked through short halls, and padded down creaking floors. Something came flying out of the room, and James’ stomach rebelled to see it was a bone. A human one.

“May I point out that we are short one pirate lord and I am content as a cucumber to wait until Sao Feng joins us.” The voice slithered out of the room and into James’ ears, souring his mood. Of course Jack would be among the gathered. And even after so much time, there was hatred pent up in James’ stomach that he wanted to release on the pirate.

Elizabeth strode into the room. Ever the attention grabber, James thought. She always did have mine. “Sao Feng is dead.” She said it with such swagger that James, who stood just beside her, watched her through the corner of his eye. “He fell to the Flying Dutchman,” she continued.

A gathering of pirates should not be the place in which a lady looks comfortable. Yet James had a sinking suspicion that she was more comfortable than he was.

The meeting consisted mostly of shouting. It drove James mad. The proceedings of the navy had always been tedious, but the pirates weren’t getting anywhere at all. A large book was brought out by two elderly men who looked like they might topple over at any moment. It was consulted, and the shouting continued.

James noticed the tension in Elizabeth’s shoulders. He rested a hand on one, and she turned towards him. She turned away again, but she didn’t shrug it off. It shouldn’t have pleased him as much as it did.

A conclusion was reached. It gave James some hope that they’d be leaving shortly.

“I call for a vote!” Hollered Jack.

His words didn’t sound promising. They weren’t, either. Each pirate voted for his or her self, leaving a gaping pit in James’ stomach. Beckett was closing in on them, and with no leader, there was bound to be chaos. Beckett would overpower the pirates in their confusion.

“Elizabeth Swann.” For a moment after, nobody spoke. Then, the crowd erupted into manic yelling. Jack’s words had inspired some controversy, but James was glad for them.

Elizabeth spoke. “Gather every vessel that floats. At dawn, we fight.”

James’ stomach dropped. Of course she would fight. It was in her blood, a boiling vat of desire simmering with confidence. And what she desired was victory.

“Elizabeth.” He used the hand on her shoulder to turn her to him. “Beckett’s armada…”

He was never given the chance to finish. “Bugger Beckett’s armada,” Elizabeth hissed. She turned on her heel, leaving him alone in a room full of strangers.

King. The word echoed in his head. She belongs here, in this room of wild people. She basks in the lawlessness like sunlight. She always belongs; she takes command of every room she enters. I have never belonged, and I still don’t. All I ever wanted was to feel like I belonged. I wanted her to give that to me. But she is swept up in her own adventures, and I am not in them.

There is a fire in her, but fire is put out by the rain, and the storms of war approach.

~~~~~

Rain slicked the deck of the ship. The vessel pitched and rolled underfoot, tossed about by the storm. Canon fire echoed in James’ ears, leaving a ringing in them of which he wasn’t fond.

He ended up on the Dutchman, right next to Elizabeth. He didn’t want to let her out of his sight. He hadn’t. He’d watched her marriage ceremony in pain, and turned away for the kiss. He had protected her through it all, though, and would continue to do so.

She was flung into the stairs. William was pinned to the ground. When James looked over at her, there was a pain in her face that made him sick. Of course she couldn’t lose Will.

It was becoming harder to grip his sword. The rain trickled down his hand, making the pommel of his sword slippery. With a hard enough thrust, the sword would slip from his grasp as if of his own accord. And yet, watching the scene unfold before him…

He met Elizabeth’s eyes. His chest was tight, and a spot in his abdomen ached. A phantom pain. Shortly, it was going to become quite real. And in her eyes, he saw she understood that.

I do hope, Elizabeth, that you can live out your years in peace. In happiness. His eyes flicked over to William. Of course.

He could only hope he would be a distraction to Jones long enough that somebody would grab the heart.

He thrust his sword into Jones, and heard someone scream his name. Elizabeth. He tried to pull it back out, but his grip failed him. His hand came off the pommel, sword sliding off the edges of his fingers.

He stood there, defenseless. A low chuckle came from Jones.

It was quick and it was merciless, so much like the last time. The sword was of a fine build. The cut was cleaner.

James could have laughed. Of course that’s what I think of. That the stab wound in my gut is less painful than I remember them to be.

He stumbled back, vision flicking to where Jack held the heart. Stab it. The pirate stared at James in concern. Please.

His entire world tilted sideways as he fell, knees making contact with the deck. Breathing was getting harder, and his breaths were becoming short and shallow. Hands were cupping his face, and he closed his eyes under the touch. A thumb massaged his cheek.

He opened his eyes to meet Elizabeth’s watery ones, tears combining with rain on her cheeks.

“Don’t,” James whispered. He raised a hand to wipe her tears away. It burned. When he glanced down, there was so much blood that he couldn’t tell where he’d been stabbed.

His movements only made her cry harder. She said his name, and her voice broke.

It’s okay, he wanted to tell her. What do I have to live for after this? I certainly can’t return to the navy. Where would I go? Perhaps my death is unavoidable.

Death was made a little easier in Elizabeth’s arms. Her lips touched his, gently but surely, and a hand stroked his hair.

It would be easier this time. He knew what was coming.

•

@bonjour-frens @tesserphantom

#pirates of the caribbean #potc #pirates #james norrington #commodore norrington #norrington #elizabeth swann #elizabeth #drabble #writing #fanfic #mini series #miniseries #the estuary

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smpsm · 5 years ago

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smpsm

My head is trying to kill me from the inside, with its shock-start migraines and its constant alcoholic desires. Where did I learn these things and how can I make them stop? How can I keep from sinking my fingernails into the flesh on my forearms, and does it matter that I spend my days wondering if I’m helping people less crazy than myself? I should have checked in long ago, no doubt, back when my face felt concrete with a frown and my eyes felt fogged with fatigue and indecision; back when every minute brought thoughts of death and my brain told me that no one cared. I should have sought help, more than not, for the years following, for the crying jags and the constant worthless attempts at being loved. But what drove me to the doctor was sheer panic more than anything, that uncontrollable ability my body had to keep me from taking a breath. Nowadays I just pick at my hair and drink to fall asleep, miserable in every intervening hour and lying to my mother that I’m fine. She wouldn’t understand anyway, she who called me evil and abusive ad cruel and fed the fire with the gasoline that my sick heart didn’t need. I tell people there are cures besides pill bottles but truth be told I want the sudden cleansing cool that comes from a benzo fix—I don’t want to be drunk so much as dead calm. The road to hell is paved with half-moon indentations in my flesh and bruises I beg other people to give me. I ask for the paddle so I can avoid hurting myself for one more day, one more week, while I press the fading marks that dot my body. I can sustain physicals hurts I had never dreamed possible, many more than I can emotional blows—love lost is much worse than a caning or a whip’s lash, somehow. I am defensive because I know how vulnerable I am, because I am constantly open to attack and must therefore cover myself constantly—but no one can hate me as much as I hate myself. The idea is absurd.

I suffer from a raging sense of superiority based solely on intellect and the shape of my lips; somewhere along the line I learned I’d better have a personality if I couldn’t at least be normal. And it seems I can’t be, with my propensity to talk myself into a tizzy and my desire to get beaten by strangers. These things aren’t normal, are they? I thought not. Deep down I wonder if I think I deserve it or if I’ve always been like this, and I think back to age five when I laid in the dark, titillated by the idea of public humiliation and the wearing of metal cuffs in childhood cartoons. I wasn’t abused but I feared it, feared that dirty old men would unzip their flies at the least provocation and I could do nothing to protect myself. Being a young girl during the 1990s had its downsides; assault was disparaged yet somehow normalized by its presence on every magazine cover alongside pictures of pretty blonde-haired pageant girls found dead in neighbors’ basements. People are disgusting, I quickly learned, and I can do nothing to fix it. All I can do is rage and secretly quail at any threat to my humanity.

My head hurts nearly all the time and “psychosomatic” does not begin to cover it. Psycho fucking soma, my body is betraying me daily by longing for things I shouldn’t want and by falling to pieces when I misstep on a curb. My bruises have been magnificent, to tell the truth, but perhaps I should not get so much joy from them. Then again perhaps I should not get so much joy from office supplies, jalapenos, and spinny chairs, but there you go. I used to pretend I was not one of those girls, before I realized it was a cunty thing to say, that it was horrible to separate myself from half the population of the world simply because I longed to be different and therefore loved. I don’t know what kind of girl I am, to be sure, but I am probably one of “those,” one of those too big for her britches with a fat head. One of those who could easily be called a bitch. It’s something I can abide.

What I cannot abide is my own weakness, my lingering sadness and constant worry and the thought that I am absolutely crazy, nothing for it. I want meds and I want them all the time, please, even if they solve nothing. They help in the moment and isn’t that what mindfulness is about? The now and now and oh yes now, the constant, continuing crawl of time. Death sounds comforting most days, if only to stop the exhaustion. You don’t have to be depressed to be suicidal—sometimes you can simply be too exhausted to keep moving. Yet somehow you chug down your drink and keep moving, telling yourself things will doubtless look much better tomorrow. So you read dark comedies and you tell yourself that life could surely be worse—trying not to tempt fate and jinx your already miserable life—and you try so hard to focused on the small rays of sunlight shining through the window that splash brightly on the dust-motes floating in the air. You focus on sunlight and the fact that you could certainly be much crazier than you are, and that’s something at least.

You revel in small things, like being loud and drunk with people as miserable and possibly hilarious as you; like stealing things you definitely don’t need. Like stomping roughly on dying leaves after they fall into your path. You try not to focus on the fact that you can barely sleep at night without a steadying drink, or the fact that you always feel like a fuck-up. You try to pretend you don’t feel fat and disgusting every day. You focus on the fact that you have perky tits until you remember how many man-boys have leered and talked about coming on them. This doesn’t please you. Nor does the second-person treatment you adopt half the time, trying to sound literary and artistic when really you’re just sad and exhausted. You think that someone must have to have a personality before having a personality disorder, and you marvel at your own delicious wit and then call yourself a cunt silently. You feel a horrible bitch and a pathetic loser grasping at adoration for something other than her grabbable ass.

Half the things you suffer, you seem to have brought on yourself. You are exhausted because for some ungodly reason you decided to go to graduate school, and you hate yourself for it. But you know you’d hate yourself more if you were living in your parents’ ever-changing homes (east, west, Midwest) arguing over petty things like waking up before noon. You still cringe over the fact that you cried to your father over your GRE scores, that his opinion matters more to you than, in some cases, your mother’s—she didn’t finish college, after all, while he has his fucking MBA. He is one of the smartest men you’ve ever met and he’s miserable just like you. What hope does that leave for anyone, really? You wonder why your parents never got divorced and wonder if they should have. You know their meet-cute is much cuter than anyone else’s you’re likely to meet, and it pisses you off—particularly when your mother begs for grandchildren, saying you’ll be a great single mother. You think she means it as a compliment.

You wonder if she even actually likes you anymore or whether she just needs your presence like hand-salve on chapped knuckles. She needs you for therapy, to back her up when she’s pissed at your father, to perform the quiet role of fixing her in all the ways you can. You know she’s a person unto her own but you have never seen her as independent. You think she mostly hates you. You have no idea what your father thinks 88% of the time but you think it has to occasionally be about running her over with the car. You two discuss books and movies because he disdains your politics, yet you think you have more in common with him than with anyone else in your family. Misery breeds a lot of things, it seems.

Not everyone gets the happy ending even if they deserve it; hard work and determination only get you so far. You wonder what psychosis feels like and why everyone thinks drugs are the worst things in the world. Genocide and blood diamonds are worse than petty theft and graffiti I guess but then they bemoan slippery slopes and the point is lost. Instead of brooding I try to force-feed other people baked goods to make them love me.

I am long-winded, darling, you, me, I, she, we. I suck back water each morning and pretend my head’s not pounding through fuzz. “I hate myself,” I mutter in tempo with my heartbeat and sink my knees in lockstep. I can make it through the day, I can.

#smpsm #spilled ink #poetry #poem #irl #writing #my writing

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ineffablefool · 5 years ago

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Some meditations on being a fat human being, in the era of Good Omens series fandom. Not n//sf/w, really (hi my name is Jack I’m ace and supremely uninterested in sexytimes), but really personal and also long, so I’ll stick it behind a readmore. I suppose if another fat human being had thoughts they wanted to tack on, they could reblog to do so, but I don’t expect this to be a particularly rebloggable thing. Just thinkin’ out loud (via clickety fingies).

I have been... okay, more or less, with how my body looks, for a while. (Minus all the things about it that make me get “she” and “her” and “ma’am” everywhere I go, with exactly three glorious exceptions in the ~4 years since I realized that those weren’t right. That is a whole ‘nother bucket of bears.) I’ve been on Tumblr over on my main account since 2013, and the entire time I’ve been immersing myself in fat positivity and in fat activism by wonderful accounts like ok2befat and bigfatscience and thisisthinprivilege. So I’ve been basically okay.

It sucks how hard it is to find clothing that I like which doesn’t completely exclude my particular set of proportions. It sucks that my saint of a boss had to literally fight our HR department to change the company policy on flights for business, because the previous policy would have forced me to fly 18 hours in an economy-class seat much smaller than I am when I visit India in a couple months. It sucks that my body is still the “oh, is this disgusting thing a dealbreaker for you” question on dating websites, and that it’s still the butt of every third Trump joke. It sucks. But I’ve gotten better over the years at the skill of seeing my body as not the problem, but an innocent bystander in everyone else’s bullshit. Clothing and plane seats and humor don’t spring from the earth to be harvested and consumed raw. People decide how to make them. People can decide differently.

Anyway. I’ve been pretty much okay with Body. Body’s fine. It’s a good pal. It gets me where I need to be, and it lets me run around in little circles pretending to be an airplane when I’m bored. I spend some time with it in partial states of undress now and then (I’m too much of a germaphobe to ever be a naturist, let’s put it that way), just so I can keep myself familiar with what it really looks like. Y’know how the horror movie monster is really scary up until they actually show it? Same thing, except fewer blood squibs.

But here’s all this Good Omens stuff.

A lot of the fandom has embraced the slight pudginess of Michael Sheen’s Aziraphale, and a lot of artists are putting that into their work. And a blessed wonderful few aren’t stopping there. They’re drawing Aziraphales that are more than just a tiny bit pudgy, sometimes that are just plain fat, unquestionably, not just “a little larger than the very thin rendition of Crowley” or “wearing a lot of layers” or “the clothes are just cut that way”. Really, really adorable renditions of fat angels who are clearly loveable and clearly loved because look, the artist drew them together, Crowley is right there and he doesn’t have that look on his face by accident.

(There are book renditions floating around too where people have headcanoned a fatter Aziraphale, but I’m still talking miniseries right now. Also, there are plenty of sort of... cartoony/stylized/silly renditions out there with fatter Aziraphales, but I’m not really talking about those either. There’s a sort of area of artwork where the style or the scene being depicted is such that my brain is surprised when any of the characters is fat, because this is a pretty drawing of two people kissing or whatever and therefore obviously they have to both be thin. Obviously. Internalized fatphobia nonsense. But that’s the kind of artwork I’m thinking when I type all these zillions of words.)

And that’s a choice, to say “I’m an artist and I’m going to draw this character who is worth being the recipient of a 6000-year-long love, and that character is fat, and that’s just how it is”. And to keep doing it in one piece of art after the other.

speremint was the first artist I noticed doing this, drawing an Aziraphale who is loved by Crowley (the sacred apple tree art still cracks me up, poor Crowley) and who is definitely fat and who is adorable, and if you’ve read the notes on any of my fics you know that she singlehandedly changed how I picture my headcanon’d Aziraphale. Then I discovered that dotstronaut and lonicera-caprifolium and toastedbuckwheat are out there too, giving me lovely art to shove into my eyeballs and extend my lifespan potentially indefinitely. I bet there’s more I haven’t noticed yet. I want there to be like a hundred more I haven’t noticed yet.

And this all ticks over into the second half of what’s apparently a manifesto at this point, boy it’s a good thing I’m a fast typist, which is the fact that in addition to being a fat human, I am also romantically and aesthetically attracted to fat humans. It’s something I’ve pretty much literally had no opportunity to ever express, because in my Real Life I don’t really admit to having feelings per se and also I am... not the type of human who is the recipient of romantic thoughts from others. Or who would ever act on my own unless the other party said something first. (Which nobody ever has since 2006, you guys. Supremely not the recipient of romance over here.)

So there’s this fandom environment where a fat character is being celebrated and loved, and I started writing fanfiction for the first time this century, and all of a sudden there’s a place for me to express feelings that I’ve been sitting on since I finally realized in about 2001 what it was about that one guy in high school that made me want to hug him, even though I also couldn’t stand his attitude.

Going through my fics from oldest to most recent, it is clear that I am getting more and more comfortable with that expression. It’s getting ridiculous. At this rate, in three weeks’ time I’m just going to be writing “Aziraphale is fat and beautiful and I just want to cuddle his belly forever” over and over again for five thousand words at a stretch.

But that means Brain is thinking a lot about how Aziraphale is fat, and beautiful, and perfect exactly how he is. And then Brain looks down at Body and is like “hmm. Same hat. ineffablefool is fat too. Therefore, [insert math lady meme here]”. And I will be, like, “okay, so if Crowley were to put his hand on Aziraphale’s belly, what would that feel or look like? How would his internal narration describe it? Well, there’s a belly right here, let’s do some science.” And then the thoughts that I start associating with the experience of my own body are completely good thoughts, all of them, because they’re going to be going in Crowley’s head. And my written Crowley is never going to be anything other than madly in asexual romantic love with my written Aziraphale, and is never going to see him as anything other than perfect, physically, no matter what he looks like.

And it’s just being a really good positive feedback mechanism, I guess is the tl;dr version. External validation (via art, via others’ fics, via comments on my own fics, btw if you’ve left any of those then you are also helping extend my lifespan, especially the people who come back to comment on each new story, yes I recognize you and I do a little happy dance every time a familiar name pops up, please rejoin me on Monday I’m going to post my dickwheelie letters fic) is all well and good. But the mental loop of “own body can be used for realistic descriptions of a fat body -> descriptions based on own body are all lovingly positive -> own body is therefore described by self as lovingly positive” is... it’s nice, is what I’m saying. It’s very nice. Last week I expressed, out loud in a group of coworkers, my desire that something be more size-inclusive. Do you even know how many deaths I would once have suffered rather than say something like that in mixed company. But why shouldn’t I say it! There’s nothing wrong with my being fat! In fact, it’s within the realm of possibility to see it as a positive thing, so let’s just all admit that we have eyes and then move on! Geez!

So those are some of my thoughts on being a fat human being, in the era of Good Omens series fandom.

now if I can just score a hot fat ace Ineffable Significant Other out of this fandom, I’ll be set

#ineffablefool original post #if you want to give me any bullshit on any of this then Please Don't #i am well acquainted with ignoring trolls on my non-GO account #and am equally capable of applying that skill over here #but if you don't have any bullshit or but-what-about-health or but-my-tax-dollars then i'd love to conversate #ineffablefool is on about fat bodies being lovely again #i don't know why i keep forgetting that tag it's a very important tag #ineffablefool does some Deep Thoughts

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feministfataley · 5 years ago

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The Images You Sell Are Problematic - The Importance of Plus Size Characters in Video Games

The video game industry is currently the biggest entertainment industry in the UK in terms of spending. More and more people are choosing to engage with the medium whether it is through mobile apps with the dreaded microtransactions, through more traditional games such as Call of Duty or Fallout or even through the medium of interactive entertainment – Netflix’s Bandersnatch, for example.

With increased audiences must come increased responsibility – video games pull in audiences from all walks of life. To some extent, we have seen improvements. We have seen stories from queer protagonists, people of colour, men, women, children, even mentally ill protagonists. Progress indeed, but there is one area that remains criminally underrepresented.

Despite all these fantastical stories taking place in far off lands, most of the character models adhere to the same mould. Granted, we’ve come a long way since plus size representation was limited to a small rotund Italian man with a mushroom addiction and his imaginary pet dinosaur, but there is still a considerable shortage of larger characters.

Female characters are typically thin but curvy, an ideal that is nearly impossible to recreate without surgery. Male characters tend to be lean and overly muscled – a figure out of reach of most average joes. Taking a cursory glance around you, you’ll see people of many different body types and shapes. So why are we still refusing to accept this in video games?

Anastasia Wyatt, junior artist on indie title Heaven’s Vault, believes pressure from shareholders could be the problem. She said: “With the big companies they've probably been more cautious because they think this is the only thing that sells because that's all that there’s been in the past. A small company has less shareholders and a lot less pressure if they take what they consider as a risk with less idealized looking characters. It's not going to be disastrous for them in that respect if it doesn't sell well.”

It is not just pressure from shareholders here either, players themselves exert pressure on publishers to use idealised figures. World of Warcraft announced a new allied race with the launch of its newest expansion – Battle for Azeroth. The race was called Kul Tiran humans, and feature a much bulkier frame and taller than the standard human model. Plus-sized gamers rejoiced. The rest of the community did not. Within a few hours of the announcement the Blizzard forums were full of people asking for a ‘thin’ version of the character or spewing vitriol about how this character model was ugly and shouldn’t be implemented. It’s a difficult position to be in.

Wyatt said: “I think that's why publishers get nervous because they see criticisms like that. They think that even if they would like to use a plus size character in the people will react badly and they don't want to see those sort of comments perhaps. Which is a shame.”

Regardless of any outside pressure however, representation is very important. Not only for the people represented by plus-size characters, but to combat fatphobia – the fear of being fat. A large amount of stigma still exists towards plus size people in the wild, and games that equate fat to lazy or disgusting do not help. Representation is even more important when you consider the young age children are exposed to this type of media. Dr Peyta Eckler, professor of social communication at the University of Strathclyde, is concerned about the effect this may have. She said: “I think this is an industry that is made predominantly for men and unfortunately it it's feeding them unhealthy stereotypes which are hugely outdated and problematic nowadays. Not just about body types but women in general.

We cannot ignore and be blind to the societal repercussions of such images. I'm not sure if this will come to be regulated at some point, but also I think for young women, there needs to step back and a reality check. Realizing okay what we've talked about these are unrealistic images. Yes they do show what's desirable but they're taken to an extreme and no one can live up to that extreme.”

The erasure of plus-size figures in games contributes to a negative perception overall, especially if children are being exposed to this erasure from a young age. Normalisation of different body types and figures is very important in formative years.

That’s not to say all portrayals are negative however. Take Ellie, first appearing in Borderlands 2 by Gearbox. She is a skilled, fiercely independent mechanic who is unashamedly fat. More than being unashamed, she is proud of her body and who she is. A mission for her involves you collecting statuettes of her from the wreckage of bandit cars. She said they were made to make fun of her, but she loves them and the way she looks. She displays the collected figurines in her garage, clearly delighted with the result. It is this kind of body positivity we need in the industry. Ellie doesn’t let others tell her what to do with her body and loves it the way it is.

Heaven’s Vault reliably uses varied body types and shapes. Huang is chubby, the professor is old. They look like bodies that have been lived in, bodies that have stories to tell. No one is inherently evil because they look different. This also makes the characters infinitely more engaging. Wyatt said: “Not everyone is going to be the man with the same build, in the same stubble. We designed the characters this way because this is what people look like. It's also a good thing to do because then you just get an interesting range of characters. If everyone is the same man with stubble that's boring.

I certainly feel like when you're playing games and especially if it's trying to be a game it's about sort of a realistic story and you're trying to emotionally connect to people; if everyone looks like this idealized super model then it seems less real.”

The world would be terribly boring if we all looked the same. Video game worlds are similar in this respect. Worlds populated with a varied cast of characters are more engaging, more alive. Playing a game populated by varied characters is infinitely more satisfying, particularly from a roleplaying point of view.

Of course, for every good example of plus size representation there are a million bad ones. Look at all the extra difficult and physically disgusting zombie enemies that also happen to be fat. For example, bloaters in State of Decay 2 and boomers in Left 4 Dead. You also have Wario from the Mario series and Dr Robotnik from Sonic, both antagonists and visibly overweight. Depictions of fat characters are not usually kind, coding them as either lazy or undesirable purely because of their size.

Not even the God of Thunder is immune from this character coding. Stepping away from the realm of video games for a moment, the latest instalment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Avengers Endgame saw Thor begin drinking to forget the people he had lost, resulting in a ‘beer belly’. Completely understandable considering how traumatic the previous film Infinity War was to watch. However, they played his weight gain for laughs. Cheap jokes resounded about his weight for the rest of the film. This is the sort of thing more widespread plus size representation would combat. If plus size people were a regular occurrence in these universes, the ability to poke fun of them for being unusual would disappear.

It is clear that change is needed, but how do you change an industry still beset by outdated stereotypes and fatphobia? Dr Eckler said: “I think there has to be change from within. I think once more women hopefully become part of the creators of these games. They would start changing some of the content, forcing change in the content.” Wyatt has a different view. “I think that games where there are different characters, people are really beginning to pick up on them. I think we've been slowly seeing more diverse characters in recent years. More games with female leads for example, when I was younger there were only a handful of games that had female characters in them. It will take time, but I believe we will see more body type diversity as the industry evolves.”

There is hope. The indie games market is doing rather well at telling the stories of all kinds of people and players. Away from the eyes of publishing houses and shareholders, wonderful, beautiful games are being made. In the truest spirt of video games as communication, stories are told about people of all shapes and sizes and races and genders. It is an amazing thing and something it is hoped will begin to be a standard, no matter what level you are publishing a game at.

Video games can be a powerful vehicle to communicate ideas. There is no reason why they couldn’t be used to provide some much-needed normalisation of the existence of different body types. It is the responsible thing to do. The power to create a world as you want it to be, or as you see it is in a developer’s hands. Use that power for good, create a more accepting society. Goodness knows there’s enough hate going around as it is.

#gaming #game culture #inclusivity #game design #ellie borderlands 2 #heavens vault #body positivity #inclusive design #video games journalism

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thedefinitionofbts · 6 years ago

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Chaos of Fate (M)

Pairings: Min Yoongi x Reader (ft. Jeon Jungkook)

Genre: Soulmate Au, Smut

Words: 8.6K

Description: Requested by @mintkookiev

You were seven years old when Min Yoongi held your hand for the first time. Granted he was only helping you up from falling flat on your butt due to an untied shoelace, it was the first time you experienced that pulse of electricity shooting up your arm, that tickle of feather underneath your heart blossoming as roses tattooed on your cheeks. It didn’t take long for you to realize you fell in more ways than one on that day. After all, his hand was the warmest you had ever held and his comforting voice was the softest you had ever heard. There was only one (1), single, solo problem. He was your brother.

Warnings: Explicit Sexual Content

A/N: So this was a bit out of my comfort zone, but I tried lol. Thank you for requesting :)

Being adopted has its perks.

For one, you get scolded less often. The Mins gave you more freedom than you probably deserved, given that you were the younger sister of their only son, they rarely, if ever, made you the culprit of any situation. Anything that went wrong fell on the shoulders of your elder sibling. If you came home late, they scolded him for not making sure you got home safely. If you broke a vase, any form of reimbursement would come out of his allowance. If the two of you returned past curfew for whatever reason, he would end up being the sole receiver of your father’s beating.

Although you were never the type to directly express it, you had always felt bad for him, but he would only ever sigh and accept whatever punishment was in stored.

They always say orphans either turn out to be an asset to society or spoiled beyond help.You clearly fell into the latter category.

Which is how you found yourself fucking Jeon Jungkook with the door to your room open while your parents were away for the weekend. It was their anniversary, so you knew there would be no one home, well, almost no one. In your defense, it was the muscle pig’s fault for slipping his hands down your pants before you had time to tell him your brother was right down the hall. He probably assumed you guys were alone; after all, you didn’t making any motion to stop him from ripping your clothes off the moment the two of you stumbled as a tangled mess upstairs.

“You’re so hot” He breathes into your mouth, barely breaking mouth-to-mouth contact as he speaks.

“Wait, J-Jung-” You wanted to tell him. You really did. It would be embarrassing getting caught mid-sex by none other than your brother or even just having him catch a glimpse of you like this. He hasn’t even seen you naked since you were five, when you used to bathe together to save time and water, or however your mother used to put it.

Jungkook groans before you have a chance to finish your sentence. “God, Y/N, I can’t wait any longer” He whines, tugging your jeans down and moving onto your shirt.

You glance at the door. It wasn’t wide open, and what are the odds of Yoongi walking past and caring enough to take note of whom the hell you were screwing? He’s always in his room for hours at a time doing god knows what, probably making music, so technically he shouldn’t be able to hear you guys either. “Ok, ok.” You unzip his pants and watch as he throws his head back with a loud groan the moment you grab his cock.

“You’re so good at this” He exhales, eyes still closed as you pump with a practiced expertise.

It wasn’t the first time a guy has said the same thing. You’re still staring at the door, torn between doing what you know should and what you actually want. You’ve done this with plenty in the past, and not because you were particularly thirsty for dick but rather because of something you’ve hidden for years up to this point.

You see, forbidden things have a secret charm. At least that’s what they say anyway. It’s like humans were designed to covet that which they cannot have. Unlike the illicit, lawfulness does not excite desire. Well, at least not in the way something that has been inhibited for years does. And that’s exactly what Min Yoongi was- the one thing you could never have or even think about really. It was wrong, sinful…disgusting. What’s worse is you’ve found that having sex with other guys was the only thing distracting enough to suppress your hidden feelings for your own fucking brother.

You absolutely hate yourself.

“J-Jung-K-Kook” You stutter as he enters you in one thrust, stretching you further than you ever have been.

You’re the one throwing your head back this time, biting you lower lip as to hold back a scream. He continues to move in and out, grabbing at your thighs and breasts and whatever he can get a hold of. You’re trying to concentrate on him, reminding yourself that Jungkook is your boyfriend and he’s one of the hottest guys at school. You know for a fact that any girl would kill to be in your position now, but a side of you doesn’t allow you to ground yourself in reality. That part of you that sides with the devil, drags you deeper towards giving into temptation, sin, that which is sickeningly wicked. She infiltrates your mind and distorts your thoughts, so that you lose yourself.

The minute you close your eyes and relish in how good you feel being filled to the brim, you don’t see Jungkook anymore. You forget about what’s wrong and what’s right, how shameful your deepest desires are, and how humuliatingly pathetic you’ve been for years. You throw that all away and you see Yoongi, your older brother that you can never do this with, who you can never, in a normal state of mind, allow yourself to even think about doing this with, and you let all rationality disintegrate. You let it all go and imagine that it’s Yoongi running his hands across your bare body and massaging your flesh, Yoongi pumping in and out of you, dragging you closer and closer to the brink, and Yoongi whispering sensual words into your ear, those things that you’ve longed to hear from his mouth ever since you were old enough to know what a man could make you feel.

“I-I’m c-close” Jungkook’s broken voice snaps you out of your thoughts, pulling you back into the present.

You were too, clenching one last time to force him over the edge.

And there it was again. The euphoric release that acts as a temporary fix for the thirst you can never quench, not even when Jungkook pulls out and plops on top of you before cradling you in his embrace. With anyone else, you would be ridden with guilt, but your arrangement with Jungkook was different. The two of you had agreed before dating that this was all temporary, and that there would be no hard feelings when the both of your turned 18 and saw the names of your soulmates.

Soulmates.

You honestly didn’t care about soulmates, but it’s the only thing providing you some peace of mind when you sense Jungkook’s breathing slow as he sinks into slumber. If anything, you just felt bad for the unfortunate soul assigned to you by fate. What would they think of your repulsive little secret?

The room was beginning to fade in and out, but just before you follow after Jungkook into the realm of dreams, your eyes trail to the door, still half ajar, one last time. Despite your clouded vision and blurry state of cognizance, you’re certain you see a shadow disappear down the hall.

…

You and Yoongi had more in common personality-wise than physically. Of course, the fact that you weren’t blood related was explanation enough as to why the two of you looked nothing like each other. He was a scrawny kid, almost weak looking, pale and delicate, and you were on the pudgier side up until puberty chased all of your baby fat away. Appearance aside, you were almost mirror images of each other, though neither of you would acknowledge that fact, let alone bring it up in conversation.

You both struggled with opening up to people, especially when it came to expressing emotions or conveying to others how much you cared about them. Growing up, it was very hard for you to make friends in school. You had a problem coming off as unapproachable, and you weren’t exactly the type to initiate conversations.

You can’t speak for Yoongi, but you’re pretty sure you’re introversion was a result of spending the first few years of your life in an orphanage. Not that everyone who grows up in an orphanage ends up as socially averted as you, but always watching other kids avoid you must’ve had something to do with it. Funnily enough, it’s also what you blame for screwing you over when you moved in with the Mins. Screwing you over as in growing attached to your new “brother”.

What could you do? None of the other boys at the orphanage helped you up when you fell.

“Get up” Yoongi’s voice is not harsh, but it is by no means tender either. Its just monotone, like every other time he speaks. There’s never any emotion, but for some inexplicable reason the sound of his voice had morphed into a tone that made you feel overwhelmed and comforted at the same time, especially when it came in parallel to knowing he was directing his attention to you.

“I can’t” You stare at the cut on your knee that is oozing blood, watching as the red liquid trickles down your leg and stains the sidewalk crimson.

“Can’t or don’t want to?” He’s waiting for you, but you’re too embarrassed to look up at him.

“It hurts” You sniffle, trying hard not to cry.

He sighs. Even at nine years old, he sighed the way older men did. You didn’t know what he was going to do or if he was annoyed by your clumsiness. Perhaps he was just going to leave you be and walk home himself, and you were almost certain this would be the last time he would ever agree to let you walk home from school with him.

Lifting your eyes to see if he had left, the hand that is in front of your face startles you, palms facing up to reveal how pale and smooth his skin was. Your jaw slackens, eyes wide at the unexpected gesture.

“Come on” He says, almost too gently. It’s first time you’ve ever heard any tenor of softness in his voice.

You reach out a hand shakily, positive that your palms are cold and clammy, but Yoongi doesn’t seem to mind. His hand is warm and his fingers lock around yours securely as he pulls you up.

“Let’s go” He says, with a slight upturn of his lip that is so rare you’re almost convinced you’re only imagining it was a gift for you.

Little did you know, it would become an image that would haunt you for years to come.

…

Puberty hit you in middle school, and let’s just say it wasn’t exactly the smoothest of phases to have to go through. You remember walking down the hallway on a day you were feeling quite sick and noticing the other students, guys and girls alike, trying to suppress a giggle as you walked by. Initially, you had thought there was something on your face or that maybe your hair was extra frizzy that day, but you couldn’t care less because your stomach was bothering you all morning.

You were oblivious to what everyone was whispering about under their breathes, unaware that you were the target of their secretive chattering, that is, until you ran into Yoongi during lunch hour and instead of pretending like you didn’t exist like he always did at school, he actually grabbed your wrist to stop you from leaving.

He stands their looking at you as if he was expecting you to say something, but when you don’t he just begins to take off his hoodie. You were confused as fuck as you watched him practically strip in front of you, but you swallowed the questions bubbling up your throat, figuring he would have to explain eventually.

“Put it on” He finally says, throwing his oversized article of clothing at your face. It wasn’t even a suggestion. It was an order.

“Why? I’m not even cold.” You flash him a weird look.

“Just do it” He sighs; looking around to make sure no one was staring.

You grip on to the fabric before it has a chance to fall to the floor. It’s soft, and it smells like him. “Is something wrong?” You ask as you pull it over your head, still perplexed as to what was going on.

“You’re bleeding.” He says bluntly. “I-, ummm, think you just got your period or whatever it’s called.” This was first time he sounded nervous in front of you.

You groan. “So that’s why everyone was laughing?” You felt like shit, and now you knew why. It was so embarrassing, and it’s not even surprising that no one was nice enough to tell you before the whole school saw you and your blood stained bottom. You wish you could just disappear knowing that everyone is going to remember this little incident.

“Are you in pain?” He queries tentatively, drawing you away from your dreaded thoughts. “You should probably go to the nurse’s office. Do you need me to go with you?”

Hearing the concern in his voice was also a first, and it momentarily makes you forget the humiliating situation you were in.

“No, I’ll be fine” You respond as nonchalant as you could muster. “You think mom and dad will be mad if I just went home? I don’t really feel like staying.”

There’s a pause. “Should I call mom and have her pick you up?”

“I kind of feel like walking” You glance at him hesitantly, knowing that it was idiotic of you to even bring up wanting to walk home in the state you were in. You’re certain he wouldn’t agree, especially since that would only mean a scolding for him if your parents found out. “But yeah, it’s dumb, I’ll just-”

“I’ll walk you home.”

Your stunned by his suggestion, almost to the point where you think your ears are tricking you. Yoongi is looking at you with a forgiving expression, and you’re rendered speechless by how clear his eyes look- how they twinkle encouragingly, comfortingly. You’ve never had the courage to look at him for this long.

He tilts his head, waiting for a response, but you can only manage to nod slightly.

Sneaking out of the school was also a first for you but clearly not for Yoongi because he seemed much calmer, likely a result of repeated escapades. He found it quite amusing that you kept looking back to make sure a teacher wasn’t going to run out and drag you back into the building, glancing at you when he thought you weren’t looking and smiling to himself.

When the two of you make it far enough for you to relax, you opt to take the long route home because you had the entire afternoon to waste away now that school related anxieties were left in the distance. The sun was hanging high in the sky, but it wasn’t unbearably hot because the path you were walking on was lined with trees.

“I’m sorry you have to do this” You apologize, assuming you were probably just wasting his time and being the burden you always were, since he always seemed to have better things to do than talk to you.

“I wanted to get out of there anyways” He tucks his hands into his pockets. “And it’s not like I’ve never skipped class.”

“What?” You cock a brow acting like it wasn’t already obvious. “You mean you do this all the time?”

He nods. “Are you really surprised?”

You turn just in time to catch his smirk. “No, I guess not” Your turn back to the flickering shadows the leaves cast on the cement. “Where do you go?” You inquire, kicking at a loose rock lying on the ground and watching it skip a few times before rolling to a stop.

“Wherever I feel like going” He pauses, and you presume he doesn’t want to go into detail, but he does. “Sometimes down to the river, sometimes to the convenience store, or the abandoned railroad tracks.”

“Interesting” You nod, feeling entertained as you visualize the things he could potentially be doing in those places. “To skip rocks, buy candy, and play games by yourself?”

He laughs. “How did you know?”

“Wild guess” You answer with a grin.

As the two of you continue to walk, the dull pain in your lower belly was entirely alleviated by the fact that you were walking next to a version of Yoongi who was actually enjoying your company. It’s funny that you never really knew much about him until today, despite living under the same roof, because he was a loner and so were you. You find out that he’s getting into music and actually considering entering the underground scene when he’s old enough, of course, he hasn’t told your parents or anyone for that matter.

“So you’re going to sing?” You giggle at the vision that pops into your head of him singing his heart out with a mic in hand.

“Nah, I’m leaning more towards rapping.”

You raise your brows. “Oh, wow…that’s…I can’t really imagine you…rapping… ”

He scoffs. “Are you kidding? I’m going to be a legend.”

“Well, don’t forget about us little people when you do.” You tease.

“Can’t make any promises, but I’ll try.” He smiles so wide that his gums show, and it’s such a beautiful sight you can’t help but stare for an extra second before it’s gone.

It wasn’t long before you started feeling really hot wearing his hoodie that you had thrown on back at school, and it didn’t help that it was black and soaking in all the sun’s blinding rays.

“I think I need to take this thing off,” You announce, stopping in your tracks.

“Yeah, your face is really red.” He comments.

You grab the bottom and pull the entire thing off your head, refreshed by the cool breeze that blows by the moment you take it off. It takes you an extra second to realize that your shirt underneath the hoodie had latched on and came off together with it. No wonder the air was so cooling on your damp skin, it felt nice since you had literally been suffocating in the heat, but you hear Yoongi clear his throat and are immediately reminded of your current situation.

“Oh shit, whoops,” You laugh it off, as naturally as you can, hoping that he didn’t see much, but it was too late. You notice the way his Adam’s apple bobs up and down as you pull your t-shirt back over your torso. Are you sensing nerves coming from him? Or was it just the awkwardness of seeing your sister in nothing but a bra?

You don’t know why you’re enjoying the way he avoids eye-contact, the feeling of knowing he’s been affected by your body in such a way, even though you know you shouldn’t be thinking such thoughts. “Good thing no one’s around” You look around at the trees hiding the two of you from the main road.

“Y-yeah” He stutters, clearing his throat again.

…

When Yoongi entered high school, you saw him less often. He would go out with his friends after school or just lock himself in his room whenever he got home. You’d see him at dinner and here and there roaming the house, which consisted of coming downstairs to grab a glass of water or food from the kitchen and then going straight back into hiding. You couldn’t really judge, since you were almost exactly the same way, and you didn’t really think much of it until you started inviting your friend, Jisoo, over to hang out.

“Who?”

“Your brother.”

“What about my brother?” You turn to Jisoo, eyeing her more suspiciously than you wanted to come off. You knew exactly why you were feeling defensive over her curiosity, and you hated it. She had brought him up in every conversation since she saw him the first time you invited her over, which you are beginning to regret. It’s not even like they spoke to each other. He basically just nodded when she said hi and walked away, but Yoongi merely acknowledging one’s existence had that effect, you guess.

She glances at his closed door as the two of you navigate the upstairs hallway. “Is he always writing songs in his room?”

You make a disinterested face, peeking in the same direction. “I guess”

“He seems mysterious” She smiles mischievously.

“I mean, if that’s what you want to call it.” You shrug, praying to god your best friend is not slowly falling for your brother, which she is, and you hope she isn’t going to ask for your help to get with him, which she does.

“You think you could set us up?” There isn’t an inkling of hesitation laced in her tone. How can it be so easy for her? Well, then again, she is the prettiest girl in your grade.

“Huh?” You’re putting in your best effort to evade feeling a bit defensive, but that clearly isn’t going too well.

“Yoongi and I” She clarifies, looking at you intently with puppy eyes. “Please, Y/N?”

You battle the urge to sigh and fabricate some lame excuse out of pure envy, something that would discernibly raise a red flag, not that one hadn’t already been raised a long time ago. Treading into that territory is not something you want to do when Jisoo is anticipating a simple response of agreement, but she evidently has not seen enough movies portraying all the things that could go wrong with what she has just requested. Isn’t there an unspoken rule that doesn’t allow you to date your best friend’s sibling? Or were you just bitter and unreasonable?

Luckily you settle for the latter.

“Fine, I’ll do it” Reluctant would be an understatement if it were used to describe how you felt agreeing to her request, but you really didn’t have a choice or any plausible excuse as to why you couldn’t at least ask your brother if he was interested in your friend without being reminded of that you have a serious problem and it’s not going away until you address it head on.

His door was opened just a tiny crack, wide enough to see that the lights were off, emphasizing the glow of his computer screen, but too narrow to see what he was doing, though you had some pretty accurate guesses. You knock on the doorframe, wondering if he can even hear through the large headsets that were coving his ears.

“Yoongi?” You call when he twists around to look at you.

“What do you want?” He turns back to his computer screen the minute he recognizes that it’s just you.

“I have a question to ask.”

“Just say it” His voice is low and husky, and it reminds you of how much you missed conversing with him. He hasn’t really changed all that much. Puberty, sure, since he’s right about at that age, but character and temperament-wise he’s still the same brother you’ve always known. He’s just taller and even more unapproachable that he already was…well, to people who didn’t know him.

“You know my friend? Jisoo?” You pause, waiting to see if he’s going to display any sort of reaction, but he doesn’t so you just continue. “She was wondering if you’d be interested in going on a date with her.”

“Sorry, I’m not into her.” He doesn’t even turn around to look at you, but that was the one thing you liked about your brother’s personality. He was straightforward and never the one to play games. You expect him to be the kind to not mess around with girls, which is both predictable and not because he’s so nonchalant about everything, but you know for a fact boys his age have hormones to deal with, and for the record, no, it’s not something that frequently keeps you up at night.

“Ok” You mutter, attempting to suppress the growing joy from his rejection of your friend. You shouldn’t be happy about this, or at least not this thrilled, but you were and you hated it.

…

When you enrolled at the same high school as Yoongi two years later, you thought he would start finding having a sister annoying if he hadn’t already a long time ago. Since you both attended the same school, he would be forced to drive you to and from the institution. Although he never displayed any unwillingness, you were pretty certain he’d rather go alone. There was no reason for him to not find it burdensome, but he doesn’t outwardly express it for your sake…probably.

He’s already in the drivers seat when you walk out to the driveway, listening to music as he stares absentmindedly at the neighbor’s yard, one arm propped against the window, looking bored as per usual. Knowing him, he was most likely still half asleep, just like you, except you were stumbling out of the house with your backpack half open, struggling to zip up your hoodie.

“You’re really going to wear that?” His words startle you, causing you to look down at the piece you were wearing.

“It’s a hoodie,” You state, creasing your brows in confusion.

“Not that…the thing underneath.” He’s not looking at you, but you suppose it’s because he’s too concentration on the road.

“What? I’m not taking it off.” You peek at your tank top underneath, finding it strange that he’s actually concerned about you breaking the school’s dress code.

He doesn’t respond after that, and you don’t think much of it, taking it as a ticket to continue dressing the way you do.

Besides hitching a ride with him everyday, you surprisingly also ended up running into Yoongi more often in school in addition to spending time with him after school, which was both a good and bad thing. Granted you barely saw the likes of him before, the change up was sort of monumental in both the good and bad way. It was good in that it made you actually look forward to waking up everyday and you, shamelessly enough, enjoyed feeling that signature flutter of delight just being around him. But it was bad, if bad was even a severe enough word to describe it, in that you were getting dragged deeper and deeper into that place you know you shouldn’t venture.

During school hours, you would mostly see him in the hallways, walking with his hands in his pockets, earphones in, and more or less ignoring his surroundings. When other girls waved at him, he would scarcely display any kind of response, which you, again shamelessly enough, took satisfaction in. He was a musical prodigy, a star basketball player, and every ounce of the type of mysterious girls like Jisoo would fall head over heels for. But you would always know him as the boy who got flustered when he saw you in a bra, and the brother who indirectly shows his concern for his adopted sister.

His fashion sense was ahead of his time, which was what you assumed to be the reason he was being so weird about you wearing a skimpy tank top under your oversized hoodie. That is, until you decided to take it off one day, because let’s be real, it was getting way too hot and school was out so it technically wasn’t against the rules.

“Hey”

The unfamiliar voice causes your ears to twitch in alarm as you had thought the hallway was empty. You close your locker only to find that said source of the voice had already advanced into invading your personal space.

“And you are?” You eye the tall and muscular boy with disgust as his eyes dart to your overly exposed chest. It’s safe to say you instantly regret not listening to your brother.

“Why don’t we find a more private place to chat and I’ll answer all of your questions?” He traps you against the wall; leaning so close you can smell his foul breath.

You lean back, trying to distance yourself to no avail. “I’d, umm, rather not” You attempt to remain calm and slip out underneath, but he grabs your shoulder before you can make an escape. Panic ensues, and you pray that a teacher or someone decides to show up then. Aren’t there cameras? This asshole can’t seriously have the guts to be getting physical here can he? You consider kicking him in the balls, but let out a breath of relief when you see none other than Yoongi walking in your direction.

“Get lost,” He growls threateningly when he sees you squirming under the large male.

“Whoa, calm down buddy” He throws his hands up, stepping back from you. “I was just talking to her”

“Can’t you tell when a girl isn’t interested? Or are you mentally impaired?” Yoongi half smirks, eyes still shooting daggers at the horny freshman.

You keep your head low, rubbing your arm as the guy finally leaves, undoubtedly too chicken to start a real fight. It was embarrassing, but you were grateful your brother stepped in.

“T-thanks” You murmur, too ashamed to look up at him. You were about to tell him he was right about your reckless choice of clothing, but he speaks before you can find the right wording.

“You should come find me if I’m running late.” He sighs softly as to loosen the awkwardness. “I’m usually in the music room.”

You look up at him astonished, eyebrows lifted and lips parted. “But don’t you like to be alone when you’re…working?”

He exhales, chuckling lightly. “Have I ever said that?”

His retort throws you off. “I-, I just assumed…”

“Well, you’re not wrong” He’s smiling now, and boy does it make your heart do things it shouldn’t. “But I’d rather not have to bluff. You do realize that if he punched me, I’d be a goner right?”

You burst into laughter, unable to remain straight faced, not when he flashes you that gummy smile you know all too well. “I would’ve at least jumped in to help. But yeah, we’d both get crushed. Pretty sure that guy’s built to be on the wrestling team or something. Gross.” You make a disgusted face, and you don’t miss the way Yoongi smiles to himself, pleased by your response.

You never imagined you would be spending even more time with your brother than the drive to and from school, let alone be following him around in his most private of moments. Music was always his thing, so personal that you never really got to see that side of him, always observing him behind closed doors your whole life. You knew your parents were against it, or at least would be if Yoongi ever told them what he actually wanted to do with his talents. They were pretty traditional when it came to career paths and whatnot, so of course it was something he hid quite well.

It was not until you got to see him in his element that you fully came to understand how amazing he is.

“So mom forced you to take piano lessons, but won’t allow you to be a pianist?” Your voice fills the empty room as he finishes the song, hands still lingering on the keys.

“Ridiculous, isn’t it?” He flips to the next page of his music sheet.

“I’ll say.” You scrunch your nose in distaste. “Parents are illogical.”

“Good thing I don’t actually want to be a pianist.” His voice hovers in the still atmosphere, afternoon light surging through the glass windows on the sidewall. Musical equipment from band and orchestra piled in the corner, chairs and empty music stands stashed to the side.

“So what exactly do you want to be? Ugh, if you don’t mind me asking…” You bite your lip, hoping he won’t find your nosiness and ignorance when it came to music annoying.

“Producer.” He states. “The genius behind the music.”

“And they won’t even allow that?”

“Doesn’t matter. When have I ever given a fuck?”

You grin at his bold attitude. “Well, you’re secret is safe with me.”

He chuckles. “I don’t really care if they know or not.”

“Well then, I support you all the way.” You walk over and sit next to him on the bench.

He laughs again, this time nodding ever so slightly and glancing at how you were confidently looking him straight in the eye. The two of you remain in such a position for and extended couple of seconds. You with your lips still stretched into an encouraging smile, thigh pressed up against his as you shared the small space on the cushioned seat. Yoongi with his dark pupils that you could never fully read but catch a glint in them that you want to think was a result of your proximity. His gaze flutters to your lips for a fraction of a second, and though it shoots straight back up the instant you notice, it still makes your your stomach churn with heat.

He swallows, slowly. “Um, would you like to learn?” His voice startles you from your daze, and you blink realizing his attention was drawn back to the black and white keys.

“Y-yeah, I’d love to” You clear your throat, praying that your cheeks are not as flushed as they feel.

…

A few days after his 18thbirthday, Yoongi came home with a tattoo on his wrist, covering the area where his soulmate’s name was supposed to show up. Your parents hadn’t said anything about it when they saw, only shook their head in disappointment and the incident was never brought up directly. It made you wonder if he ended up being one of those people who didn’t have a soulmate because you read somewhere that those cases were becoming more common these days. He never commented on it and pretended like he didn’t hear your mother whispering with concern to your father, even though you knew he did.

It was also when he started ignoring you more, and when those after school piano lessons/playful chitchat hours came to an end. You were old enough to drive yourself and Yoongi preferred to hitch a ride with his new gang of friends, Hoseok and Namjoon, who were also aspiring musicians and closer to his age. The whole thing happened so gradually that you barely took notice; especially since he was a senior in high school, busy preparing for graduation and college. It was just the natural course of events.

As a result, you eventually found yourself back at square one, barely seeing him around and rarely even getting a chance to hear his voice. To be honest, all of it was probably for the best because the more you saw him, the more your unwarranted feelings towards him amplified, and as frustrating as it was to deal with, you actually gave up trying to deny them because it only made it worse. They were clearly here to stay, and you just had to find a way to acknowledge them and move on.

You were a sophomore growing in popularity, especially with the opposite sex, and being able to attract so many guys was what caused your promiscuous activities to commence, that and your new plan of sorts to escape your problems.

You called it short-term dating, but it was really just fucking around…literally.

Kim Taehyung was the first of many. You and him didn’t have all that much in common, other than the fact that you were both in the same year. He was an extremely looking guy, played the saxophone on the jazz band, and absolutely loved children. So much so, that he would volunteer at the local orphanage on the weekends, which you preferred to not think about because it would often make you wonder if he dated you because he felt sorry for you. But you guess it’s not really any different from you dating him just so you could stop lusting after your brother.

Ok, that was too far. You didn’t mean to put it that way, though that doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.

At the time your parents and everyone else just thought you had just found a lovely boyfriend, which Taehyung undoubtedly was, but you really only saw him as a distraction from the real issue. It seemed to be working well, until you started paying extra attention to Yoongi’s reactions to your new style of life, as subtle as they were. You found it strange that he would barely look you in the face, even on the rare occasions that your family would sit down for dinner. He would always give you one-worded responses and act all bored when you spoke to him.

It hurt at first, but then you caught on to what was really going through his head, or at least what you started imagining and overanalyzing. You spotted the way he would stop eating each time you mentioned your boyfriend’s name and excuse himself from the table whenever you started going off about how talented Taehyung was, show off the gifts that he would buy you, and describe your dates with him in uncalled for detail. It was absolutely pathetic because for all you knew, Yoongi might not even give a shit about your love life, but you enjoyed his scowls of annoyance when your mother would laugh gleefully at your stories, and you relished in the thought of him potentially being, dare you say it, jealous.

And that’s when you fell into the cycle of evil; trying everything you could to get Yoongi’s attention. It was absolutely reckless and pitiable, but you couldn’t stop.

“Are you sure it’s fine if we make out on the couch?” Jimin’s voice is timid. He was almost too innocent for your liking, but he was hot and captain of the soccer and dance team so you had to compromise.

“Yeah, my parents are out of town this weekend.” You wave it off as a trivial matter, leaning towards him again. He shifts a little, still apparently uncomfortable making out in public…scratch that, in an open, partially private space. It’s funny, because he was totally fine ripping your clothes off in his room when his parents were away.

“B-but, d-don’t you have a brother?” He nervously glances at the staircase; clearly afraid someone, aka Yoongi, was going to walk down any minute.

“Jimin, he doesn’t care.” You frown, a bit annoyed by how hesitant the kid was.

It wasn’t a complete lie. Yoongi most likely doesn’t care, but you obviously wished he did because you knew this was all a show. Taehyung, Jin, and now Jimin, they were all just puppets. As disgusting as it was, you secretly wanted Yoongi to see you making out with Jimin. You wanted him to see you making out with all the guys you were dating, had dated, and will eventually date. You wanted him to care, to be bitter, to feel a twisted portion of what you’ve felt for the last 10 years. You wanted a reaction from him, but deep down, you knew that was never going to happen.

…

Fast-forward to the present, and you’ve basically lost count of your sins. Jeon Jungkook was the fourth? You think at least. Well, it didn’t really matter because he was probably going to be the last. You had felt bad for wanting him for the wrong reasons, but you’re consoled by the fact that you genuinely grew to like him. He’s the longest relationship you’ve had so far, and you try to disregard it was perhaps because your brother had gone off to college and there was no point in putting on a display without your intended audience.

“Your birthday is coming soon, right?”

The question is as casual as it can be, but Jungkook’s eyes are void of their usual sparkle. The two of you are sitting at the kitchen table with morning sunlight filtering through the blinds, your bodies still a tad bit sore from last night.

“Yeah, a couple more days.” You murmur, stirring the contents of your bowl.

He nods, taking another bite of cereal. “Do you want to break it off now or…?”

“Jungkook, I seriously don’t care about the whole soulmate thing. We can wait until your birthday.” You look at him wearily, smiling because of how endearing his concern always was. Jungkook was younger than you, and maybe that’s why you’ve taken a liking to him. Though it would never develop as far as love, you’ve always found his company comforting and your relationship void of any kind of burden.

“I know I’ve never told you this, but I keep getting the feeling that you’re thinking of someone else when we’re having sex.” He probably doesn’t mean to sound like he’s calling you out, but his words make you freeze in place. A lump lodges itself in your throat and your hands begin to sweat. Was it really that obvious? You didn’t accidentally scream Yoongi’s name last night, did you?

“W-what do you mean?” You stutter, biting your cheek at his sudden accusation.

He lets out a small laugh. “Maybe I’m just overthinking…” He pauses, staring at the table blankly. “Or it could be because you’ll know who your soulmate is soon…”

His words relax you, and you chuckle out of relief. Thank god it wasn’t because he somehow read your mind while fucking you to oblivion. “You and the whole soulmate thing, I swear…” You shake your head, knowing whoever his soulmate is, he or she will have struck gold. Jungkook was sweeter than honey and although he’s far from mature, still happily carrying the heart of a ten year old, he’s more considerate and emotionally woke than most people in his age range.

When the two of you finish eating, he helps you with the dishes and you walk him to the front door. He slings his backpack over his shoulder and reaches for your hand. A habit of his before any departure, a reassuring gesture that whatever you decide to do from this point forward, he’ll respect your choices.

“If you need some time to think about it or talk, I’m always here.” He intertwines his fingers with yours and gives you a firm squeeze.

“I know.” You stand on your tippy toes to give him a kiss on the cheek.

You watch as he puts on his shoes and walks out the door, turning only to wave at you one last time. “See you later?”

You nod. “Yeah, see you.”

You’re still smiling as you shut the door, but you sense someone’s presence the moment the lock clicks into place. It makes the hairs on your back stand up, and you’re almost afraid to turn around until you hear him clear his throat before walking past you as if you didn’t exist.

It was now or never.

“Yoongi” You swallow when he stops in his tracks, desperately clawing at the courage that is starting to slip away. “Last night…” You bite your lip. “You were outside my room.” There you said it.

Silence fills the air. He doesn’t respond, doesn’t even move an inch, and it feels like an eternity. You’re almost led to believe your allegation had angered him or had at least annoyed him in some way, shape, or form. It had to have. The tension was undeniable.

He turns around slowly, a smirk already set on his lips. “Didn’t you do it on purpose?” His voice is too calm for the words that are coming out of his mouth. “Haven’t you always done it on purpose?” The last question slips out as barely a whisper.

You feel a chill run down on your spin, trickling down like melted ice. So he knew? “Yes.” You don’t know how you managed that answer because your mind is racing and you can barely breathe.

He takes a step closer to you, and then another until his face is a mere foot away from yours. His dark pupils are staring directly into your eyes with a hint of something you had never seen in them before…was it desire? “Do you enjoy tormenting me?”

You swallow thickly, not knowing how to respond, but your head nods to it’s own accord. And you must’ve looked more defiant than you felt because the next second his lips are suddenly crushing yours.

His lips are tender, but they move against your mouth hungrily. You can feel every ounce of his own pent up lust with each swallow as he drinks you in desperately. It was intoxicating. You’ve made out with more guys than you could count but none have ever offered you such a cathartic release. The room feels like it’s spinning, but Yoongi’s hands clasp onto your hips to stabilize you.

“I-I’m sorry, this is so wrong” He moans into your mouth, nails digging into your flesh as he desperately struggles to control himself.

“Please don’t stop” You beg, grabbing onto his shirt before he steps back.

He bites his lip, confliction printed all over his features. “Fuck it.” He mutters, crashing into your mouth once more.

Your lips stretch into a wide smile as he kisses you, slipping his hands underneath your shirt and massaging your skin. “My room or yours?” You manage to ask in between gasps for air.

He stops, eyes regarding you with concern verging on fear, pupils flickering with the uncertainty he cannot avoid. “We’re really going all the way” It’s not a question, but rather a statement of disbelief.

You tilt your head impishly. “I didn’t fuck all those guys for nothing, you know?”

He smirks at your sass. “Yours then. You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to fuck you on your own bed like all of those other guys. Last night was torture.” His blunt confession only arouses you more.

“Then you’ll be glad to know I’ve imagined it was you every single time.” You feel your cheeks heat up, but you’re far too excited to get all shy now.

The trip upstairs did not take long. After all, you made the same one about a million times now. The cool air greets you the moment you knock through the door. Goosebumps form on your arms and legs, but your core is radiating with heat. Your clothes were off in seconds, but unrolling a condom over his length actually took longer than normal as your hands were trembling at the sight of it’s swelling. You couldn’t believe this was happening. Despite having imagined this in your head hundreds of times and dreamed about what it would feel like, nothing could’ve prepared you for the real thing. With his eyes glued on you as he caged you under him, breathing heavily, it was more than apparent that he was still running through an internal debate. The way he paused at your dripping entrance for long enough to make you wonder if he was going to change his mind was indication enough that he was tearing himself in two.

“Do it” You insist, lifting you head to kiss him again. “Please” You resort to begging, aware that you would literally die of deprivation if he decided to stop now.

His features relax, and you can feel his tip slowly slip inside. He pauses after the first inch, exhaling at the blissful sensation. You feel yourself stretch as he slips in deeper, and soon he was completely inside, throwing his head back in pleasure.

“Y/N” He moans lowly, squeezing his eyes shut. You could tell he was relishing in the feeling of your walls closing around him while simultaneously being eaten alive by shame.

“This is so wrong” He breathes out, repeating the words that have be replaying in his mind over and over as he attempts to fight the urge to thrust, leaning back over you, a shadow cast over his face by his bangs.

“I don’t care anymore. Scratch that, I never cared.” You state firmly, gazing into his eyes and watching them soften as you lift a hand to cup his cheek. “I love you, Yoongi.”

He begins to move, slowly at first and then picking up speed. “I’m your fucking brother.” He growls. “Of course you love me.” He smirks again, admiring how disheveled you look because of him pushing himself balls deep into you and then pulling out repeatedly.

“I-I’ve .. n-nnever.. seen y-you as a b-brother” You gasp in between his thrusts. “W-we’re not…e-even…r-related.”

You hear him grunt, almost angrily. “We’re both going to hell.”

“Good” You purr as you feel even more heat pool towards your core. You can feel his hands greedily exploring your body, like he’s waited to touch you for years because god knows he has.

The pressure building in your stomach makes you moan his name, verbally doing what you’ve always done in your head. His movements become more aggressive as he edges closer to his climax and yours for that matter. Your high comes in a wave of intense hotness, and Yoongi pauses in his moment of euphoric release before riding you out with the last few strokes.

He collapses next to you as he disposes of his condom, sighing in content. You rest your head against his chest and sling an arm over his torso. There was no turning back now, no way to rewind and pretend you didn’t just fuck the one person you could never fuck, or at least thought you couldn’t. It’s a strange feeling, having actually done the shameful act, but you don’t feel as guilt ridden as you had thought you would.

You’re drawing circles on his skin, trying to think of something to say, when you feel a sharp sting on the underside of your wrist. You hiss in pain.

“What’s wrong?” Yoongi’s lifts his head to check on you.

“I can’t believe it’s happening now” You tense your forearm, afraid to turn it over and see the letters etched into your skin. “The soulmate thing.” You grumble.

“Oh, right…” He shifts his body to move you into a more comfortable position.

You remain still, hesitant to turn your arm. This was a shitty time to decide to appear, or so you think. “Did your soulmate’s name never show up?” You ask, trying to stall facing the moment of truth. “Or are you actively choosing not to look for them because you think it’s bullshit?”

He swallows, internally debating if he should even tell you. “It was yours.” He finally says.

His response makes your eyes go wide. “M-my name?”

“I was convinced it was a curse” He huffs a feeble laugh. “And I was most definitely condemned to hell, but I guess it doesn’t matter now…”

You turn your arm over, curiosity presenting you a burst of courage. The sight of the words draws a laugh out of your own throat. “Well, looks like I’ll be joining you in hell.”

You lift your wrist to show him the name in tiny cursive script:

Min Yoongi

“The universe is fucking with us” He squeezes his eyes shut, groaning loudly, half of him wants to laugh, the other is utterly pissed off.

You almost feel the same way, pissed and relieved at the same time, but mostly content. Content knowing he’s wanted you just as much as you wanted him. Content with the turn of events. Content that you could now love Yoongi the way you always wanted to, the way the universe had intended, and nothing could hold you back from now on.

“So does this mean we’re both cursed? Or is this what everyone calls fate?” You grin, crawling on top of him and playfully straddling his waist.

“Probably both” He sighs, smiling genuinely as he gazes into your eyes, hands landing back on your hips.

You lean back down to kiss him, cupping his face longingly. “Let’s make up for lost time then.”

You can feel his lips stretch against yours. “10 years right?”

“Sounds about right.”

...

#bts fanfic #bts smut #yoongi fanfic #yoongi smut #jungkook smut #bts scenarios #yoongi scenarios #bts soulmate au #yoongi imagines #min yoongi #yoongi x reader #requested #if anyone has any aversion to incest or borderline incest #maybe skip this?#i still don't know how i feel about this #so i'm going to just apologize in advance

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