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Lily Evans and the Tragedy of Poor Character Writing: How She Could Have Been Interesting but Was Reduced to the Moral Compass for the Men in Her Life
The way Lily is used as a moral instrument for the male characters prevents her from standing on her own as a character with individual depth, aspirations, and personal struggles. While we see hints that she has agency and a personality beyond her relationships, these moments are fleeting and sacrificed in favor of reinforcing the men’s journeys. This lack of consistent development reduces her to what feminist criticism calls the “moral arbiter” or the “redeeming woman” trope, where a female character exists mainly to define or “purify” a male character’s storyline. This phenomenon is particularly evident with Lily, whose interactions serve to validate or critique the men in her orbit but rarely to explore her own motivations, desires, or struggles.
Lily’s relationships with Severus, James, and Sirius reveal moral contradictions that could have added complexity if they were properly addressed. For example, her friendship with Severus is cut off for reasons that appear, on the surface, morally justified—but she doesn’t seem to apply this same standard to James or Sirius, despite their bullying and violence toward others. Her reaction to Mulciber’s behavior is harsh and unforgiving, yet her forgiveness of Sirius’ behavior (he comites attending to murder) as they get older suggests a double standard that’s never examined. These decisions could have made her a compelling, morally gray character; instead, they’re brushed aside to uphold her as a “good person,” an infallible figure who’s somehow always in the right. This sanitizing approach dismisses her potential for growth, change, and inner conflict, flattening her character to fit the role of a flawless moral validator.
Her relationship with James, too, suffers from this one-dimensional portrayal. The narrative pushes the idea that James becomes a better person because of Lily’s acceptance, implying that he is redeemed not through personal introspection or growth but by “winning” her approval. This reinforcement of the idea that men can be “fixed” or redeemed by a woman’s acceptance or love is problematic because it perpetuates the notion that women exist to reform men, placing responsibility on women to serve as emotional caretakers or moral rehabilitators. This is a trope rooted in misogyny, as it frames female characters as moral tools rather than individuals with their own agency.
Feminist theory critiques this kind of portrayal, arguing that it reduces women’s roles to secondary functions in the narrative. Lily becomes a kind of “reward” for James’s perceived growth, not a fully realized partner with her own arc. This approach reflects Rowling’s broader struggle with female characterization, where women often lack agency beyond their relationships with men and are rarely allowed the depth, autonomy, or moral ambiguity afforded to male characters. By framing Lily as a moral gauge for Severus, James, and even Harry, Rowling removes her complexity and potential flaws, opting instead to present her as an idealized figure who serves primarily to validate the men around her.
The inconsistencies in Lily’s portrayal have led to her being a divisive character for many fans. She’s often disliked not necessarily for her actions but for the incoherent, contradictory ways she’s written, and this is ultimately a failure of Rowling’s character development. Instead of being an empowered, nuanced figure with her own voice and flaws, Lily is molded to fit the needs of the male characters’ narratives, leaving her motivations unclear and her personality inconsistent. This reflects Rowling’s problematic handling of female characters throughout the series, where women are often defined by their relationships and reduced to supporting roles. Lily, as one of the most significant female figures in the story, suffers from this treatment, and it’s a major reason why her character often comes across as both underdeveloped and unrelatable. The narrative’s inconsistent treatment of her is not a flaw of the character but a symptom of Rowling’s broader issues with writing female characters, who frequently lack the autonomy, depth, and agency that would make them compelling and relatable in their own right.
And yes, I’ll admit it—Lily Evans really annoys me, but it’s precisely because of everything I’ve discussed here. She’s been reduced to this saintly figure, this ultimate epitome of “good” motherhood and femininity in the narrative, and it’s frustrating because her complexities and contradictions are glossed over or ignored. Lily isn’t allowed to be fully human; instead, she’s turned into a symbol, an idealized version of what a woman should be, stripped of the depth and nuances that would make her an interesting character.
Instead of exploring her flaws, her contradictions, or the ways she fails to live up to the moral standards she seemingly sets for others, Rowling chose to simplify her into a narrative tool. Lily’s personal contradictions—her selective morality, her double standards, her often unquestioned choices—are brushed aside because they don’t serve the image of “perfect womanhood” the story wants to project. Rather than treating her as a fully realized person with her own journey, she’s treated like an object, a measure of how “good” or “redeemed” the men around her are.
It’s this reduction that bothers me the most. In focusing on Lily’s role as the moral benchmark for others, especially the men she interacts with, Rowling denies her the chance to be anything more than a tool for measuring their worth. She doesn’t get to make mistakes and grow; instead, she’s held up as an unattainable ideal, and that’s not just boring—it’s damaging. It perpetuates the idea that women are there to serve as moral compasses for men, to help shape their actions and destinies, while never being given the chance to explore their own complexities or motivations.
This lack of depth doesn’t just harm Lily as a character; it harms the story as a whole. The other characters’ arcs are all defined by how they relate to her, which only highlights how little she’s allowed to define herself outside of them. Lily could have been so much more than just the woman who inspires James to be better or the woman whose approval validates their actions. She could have been a flawed, messy, deeply human character. But instead, she’s been turned into a one-dimensional ideal, and that’s why I find her so frustrating—not because of who she is, but because of how the narrative chose to treat her.
#lily evans#lily evans potter#lily potter#james potter#severus snape#lily evans headcanons#harry potter meta#sirius black#i can be really harsh sometimes but i could also been an intellectual too#lol#not everything is about me hating characters i hate#sometimes is also me explaining why#feminism takes#women portrayals in harry potter kinda sucks#women in art#jk rowling#rowling female characters kinda sucks#ironic since she calls herself a feminist
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Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.
The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.
Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.
On the other hand:
The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.¹
We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats.² The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.
This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.
This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.
THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.
In US terms, just imagine that, five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything, the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems are all purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government under a pro-union left-wing President and an unmarried female LGBT rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House.
This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history. (Edit: She was knocked off first place by a dude in the final result. Boo.)
(On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state. Uh.)
But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points (Edit: from the previous 5% to 10% in the final result!) but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! There Is a representative for Malaiyaha Tamils in the Central Province for the first time in history and it's a young woman! (Edit: now it's two female Malaiyaha MPS!!) This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!
I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, the NPP coalition formed around the nucleus of the JVP that used to be communist but haven't been in 30 years, they're now just social democrats who are left of places like the US and UK, whose "left" is now center-right. They're only threatening to the Western mainstream media for some reason who can't stop bleating about how we have a "Marxist" government now. In reality, the actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is quite high with a super majority government regardless of affiliation.
On the other hand:
What the fuck.
Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.
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¹ Well, nearly. There are a few career politicians and a nepo baby but they aren't so bad either.
² Goddamn it, Baby Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka's answer to JD Vance have wormed their way in using the list of Constitutionally reserved party seats for non-elected members. FUCK the National List.
#five years ago i was working a news desk watching a band of violent ethnofascists known for genocide torture kidnappings and murder sweep in#and take control of the entire country#on the heels of the worst terrorist attack we've suffered that they orchestrated for this purpose#wondering how many of our colleagues would be safe#and watching the people that opposed them flee the country#i cannot tell you the enraging hopeless terror#and now#they're all gone#THEY'RE FUCKING GONE#sri lanka politics#sri lanka news#sri lanka protests#sri lankan parliamentary elections#sri lanka election 2024#anura kumara dissanayake#harini amarasuriya#feminism#leftism#world news#faith in humanity#power to the people#aragalaya#knee of huss#අරගලයට ජය!#අරගලයට ජය
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I am generally very “live and let live“ about these things on an individual basis, and the furthest thing from anti-femininity. I literally don’t own pants, nor do I ever intend to, for example. I respect that some women prefer to wear make up for whatever reason, and that deciding whether you do it for yourself or because of patriarchal beauty standards is a very case-by-case thing. Some people do the soul-searching and come out the other end with the knowledge that they ARE doing it for themselves!
But… Reading Internet discourse about whether women should have to wear make up at work is making me want to bite and tear and rend
“it makes you look more polished! It makes you look more put together! It looks like you’re taking care of yourself and taking your job seriously!“ WHY. Please explain to me WHY women look like we ~aren’t taking care of ourselves~ if we don’t slap extra goop on our faces every morning. Give me a succinct reason that makes sense and doesn’t rely on the assumption that make up is somehow a natural state of womankind
And then explain why the same thing doesn’t hold true for men
(TERFS get lost)
#makeup#feminism#fuck all of that. Not taking care of yourself? I absolutely take care of myself#even in terms of my face – I cleanse and moisturize and wear sunscreen#all the things that are necessary for actual skin health to avoid discomfort and cancer#I get at least seven hours of sleep most of the time. I drink plenty of water. I eat a fairly balanced diet#but you’re telling me that’s somehow not enough because I don’t want to wear face paint? Fuck all the way off
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CATNON I LOVE YOU I WAS TOO SCAREDTO SAY SOMTHING LIKE THIS
I might get flamed a bit for this but… I do genuinely believe this fandom has a bit of a misogyny problem when it comes to sierra.
Now I understand that there’s absolutely no justification for almost all of her actions and what she did to Cody is beyond disgusting. However, it irks me so much that Cody isn’t held to the same standard. “Oh but what Cody did to Gwen can’t even begin to compare to what sierra did to him!” True, but you gotta remember that regardless of Cody’s victim status he still did some really creepy shit. The two things I want to highlight in particular are Cody’s actions in the Amazon and Jamaica episodes- first off, cody flashed his privates at Gwen; she genuinely believed he had underwear on and let her use his x ray glasses knowing she was gonna see his dick without warning if she did and didn’t even try to stop her. He also took a photo of himself getting in her personal space while she was asleep which led to her hand getting seriously burned. Again, sierras numerous violations of Cody have no excuse but it does feel like there’s a big misogyny factor when there are people who will straight up block you for saying anything remotely positive about sierra or coderra because she’s a “predator” yet have Cody as one of their favorites claiming that he’s some precious person who’s completely innocent.
Also with how many people claim that sierra is a bad character because “she’s nothing without Cody.” Sierra has a lot to her character- namely her hyperfixation on the show and how she’s incredibly knowledgeable about all things total drama. I do agree that they should have utilized this trait more but sierra isn’t just some damsel in distress like the fandom makes her out to be, she’s an incredibly intelligent force to be reckoned with and uses her intensive TD knowledge to absolutely kill it in some challenges. There’s plenty of male TD characters who don’t have much going for them aside from their one (1) gimmick or their love interest yet I don’t ever really see this type of complaint made about them.
-🐈
- 🧡
#catnon w#bait anon#rivalry anon#umm tdi#sierra tdi#sierra#tdi sierra#sierra tdi tajes#tdi fandom#feminism takes#i love sierra so much but im scwred of people blocking me#catnon you are everything to me#<- real
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If even acknowledging antisemitism within your community spaces is going to "distract from the cause," maybe that's because the foundation of your beliefs comes down to antisemitism. What you're doing is telling on yourself.
#jumblr#jewish politics#personal thoughts tag#yes if you're in the group chat this is a vague post but seeing that (what i complained about) made me realize this#maybe it wasn't all that bad then???#this has the same energy as people who say that acknowledging transphobia in feminist spaces is wrong#because obviously you can only focus on One Thing At A Time like we're in a video game! (sarcasm)#i promise you can be against bigotry of all kind and it won't take away from anything about your causes#like i'm a Believer In Feminism and i also focus on fixing transphobia within these spaces i am in! it's EASY!!!#it's easy because i see trans people as intrinsic human beings i'll give you that but it's still easy#women are not Missing Out on my activism because i am focused on more than one thing at a time
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why are people so abnormal about female body hair…. i’m aware body hair isn’t the most pressing feminist issue at the moment but the amount of times i will see a video of a women online and go to the comments, just to see everyone telling her she’s gross or to shave? most of the time i don’t even notice she has body hair and 99% of the time it’s completely irrelevant to the topic of the video 🙄 only wanting a woman who is completely hairless is weirdo behaviour idc
#shaving#feminism#women#discussion#this is such a lukewarm take but just needed to rant a little#based on an ig reel i saw recently#the woman had the tiniest bit of pit hair and everyone in the comments was losing it#it wasn’t even a focal point of the video#everyone be normal about female body hair challenge GO#it’ll be the same men who preach about wanting a natural#i don’t want body hair to be considered sexy just normal#edit: i meant to put natural woman in the second to last tag before this one
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adopting misandry is WAYYY easier than adopting radical feminism tbh.
misandry is like i hate males they are the root of all evil which is true but it allows you to be a third-party criticiser.
misandry by itself means little.
radical feminism forces you to question the existence of misogyny in every walk and aspect of life which involves criticising everyone you love, everything you love, your choices, their choices, yourself and whatever you have done EVER.
#i used to call myself a misandrist#until i did not#not to say that you shouldn’t call yourself a misandrist#this is my theory maybe you have another take#let me know in the comments in that case#text posts#desi tumblr#radical feminism#radblr#feminism#radical feminist safe#terfblr#radical feminists do interact#radical feminist community#terfsafe
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wow i love twitter sm.
on a serious note - i think it's funny to portray women not wearing make-up as silly and childish when you're the one apparently caring so much about what other people are doing to their faces.
ask yourself: why do you find bare faces not appropriate for formal events? why does it bother you to see a woman without makeup? how does it effect you? why do you think it effects you?
you're so insistent that there are no societal pressures at play, that women are doing this exclusively for themselves and for the joy of it - then where does this urge to force it on women who don't find joy in it come from? why does it annoy you to see women in their natural way of being? it's a choice, but also there's a right choice, apparently, and anyone stepping out of line shoud be promptly shamed into submission. right?
"a little (whatever) never hurt anybody" okay and neither does a bare face. grow up.
#mona mona mona#anti beauty culture#anti beauty industry#anti makeup#feminism#radfem#every week i see some variation of “every woman should know how to do (specific kind of makeup)” or “i can't take grown women who don't do#seriously" or straight-up shaming women for the crime of having a face and not painting it over to start over#also this attitude that “it's only little x” you say that about everything!!!!!!!!!!! a little of this here and a little of this there and#bit of this and that. that's a full face babe!#also i literally don't care! i don't give a shit about how litte whatever i don't want to do a little of anything. at all.
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Cabin Fever
Pairing: Dark!Joel x Dark!Reader
Summary: Joel saves your life, but help comes at a price.
Warnings: 18+. DEAD DOVE: DNE. NONCONSENSUAL. I’m never ever beating the insane bitch allegations, I fear. Protector-turned-pervert-turned-unwilling-captor-kinda. Corruption kink. Daddy kink. Somnophilia. Misogyny. “It’s too big; it won’t fit” + Joel “I’ll make it fit” Miller. Captivity on both ends. Oral (f!receiving). Gunplay. Oversimplified first-time anal. Uno Reverse Drugging. Evil, inexperienced reader meets evil, feral, slutty Joel. Attempted murder x3. Russian Roulette…as foreplay?
Notes: Both characters SUCK. I condone nothing they do. Please do not take any of their behavior or language to reflect my own moral predilections. That is all 🚬😵💫
You were hardly shaking at all when he’d found you chained, maimed, and frozen half to death on the plains.
He didn’t see that every day, that was for-fucking-sure.
Joel Miller barely got to see his share of happy, grinning girls on the cold and bitter frontier he inhabited. Ones that were tied to posts and clinging to life were even less common, so the sight of you there had almost frightened him at first. He’d approached you like one might advance upon a sleeping bear: with the utmost caution and a Winchester Model 70 levelled directly at your head.
He’d learned you were unarmed and defenseless in less than a second. He’d come to realize you were largely unconscious—and unclothed—even sooner than that.
He had been industrious in freeing your hands and feet from their restraints but never uttered a word as he did.
Even on the two-and-a-half mile trek back home, he hadn’t spoken once. You’d hung off his left shoulder like a pretty, frosted slab of meat, covered only with the sherpa blanket he’d secured around your neck, and dangled precariously down his back for the entire fifty minutes.
Your toes were two shades shy of onyx with frostbite.
Your limbs were hanging like lead over his chest.
A whisper of, ‘You’ll be fine, darlin’, I promise’ had just seemed ill-suited for the circumstances and his nature. In truth, Joel didn’t know if you’d be fine. You might die. The blood wouldn’t be on his hands one way or the other, but he never had liked burying bodies this time of year. He’d have to wait until April to break ground, at least.
Presently, he dropped your limp form to the floor of his cabin and hoped he wouldn’t be needing to bury anyone.
You sort of looked charming in the firelight.
He stomped off to the kitchen and began rifling for pans, preparing to defrost the icy stranger as best he could.
You didn’t die.
You didn’t wake for forty full hours, but you didn’t die.
When you stirred on the floor with warm sherpa around your shoulders and a rough calfskin rug under your ass, you thought you had died—maybe taken a pit stop in cowpoke purgatory while you were at it—but then you blinked. Breathed. Realized you were still very much inside your body and most likely still in Wyoming.
You sat up where you were and looked around.
“Da-a-d?”
You knew it was useless, calling for your father.
He had been dead almost eight months; you just wanted to double-check to make sure you were still on earth.
When dead dad didn’t answer, you tried someone else.
“Momma?”
Still no answer.
Figured, since she was among the ones that had left you chained outside in the first place. It’d been worth a shot.
You started to rise from your place, when a sharp pain in your side made you plop back down on the rug. You winced and lifted the blanket, then your old nightie.
A neat little taped-down bandage had your ribs encased in antiseptics and gauze. You frowned down at a stain in the centre, which looked to you an awful lot like blood. That circle of old fluids must’ve been twice the size of your fist and currently oozing tiny, fresh beads of blood from the strain you’d just exerted. You pursed your lips.
Least they could’ve done is kill me, not leave me here.
You’d take it up with your old would-be assassins another day, you were sure. Right now, you were parched, starving, in dire need of a piss, and reeling on the floor to grab hold of something sturdy to lift yourself. But you were as much a child then as you had ever been, swaying in place and clawing at air like someone who’d never kept their balance before. Or might’ve been drunk.
You rolled onto your good side and cast a sweeping look around the cabin. You smelled slow-cooked barbecue.
Thank fuck, you thought.
Now, if I were a juicy rack of ribs, where would I be?
The kitchen was dark and empty; the smell was coming from elsewhere. You craned your neck, tilted your chin, spotted a loft overhead but figured it wasn’t too likely to find someone grilling up there, so where the hell was it?
And who the hell was it, smoking meats and mending up strangers in the cold and lonely dead of winter like this?
You put a pin in that thought as you searched for a place to pee.
By the time you’d hobbled out of the bathroom, the smoky smell had grown even stronger. It was so pungent it bordered on vertiginous, invading every inch of the cabin with a force. Then it was leading you, teasing you by turns to venture outside. All you had on your feet were some oversized socks and two strips of medical tape.
Against your better judgment, you continued to hobble.
Out the door, down the steps, slowly, then following your nose and the first whiff of smoke you smelled to make it to the place you were almost certain you needed to be.
You trudged around a corner of the cabin’s exterior and stopped. Turned around. Cursed your own senses for being so stupid to miss the huge fucking shed spewing smoke out front—or was it the back?—and plodded on.
Your feet might have carried you a third of the way there before your powers of sight and sound eventually failed you again, and you missed another big something.
Big and beige and coated in snow—baring its teeth and snarling at the unfamiliar presence as soon as it saw you.
The next thing you knew, sixty-two pounds of Belgian Malinois had had you knocked to the ground in less than a second. You hardly understood what had hit you until it was barking and chomping away an inch from your face.
You fought hard and frantic to shove the ugly fucker off, but your bandaged hands were no match for its paws. The dog continued to tear at your blanket, nip at your ears, claw at your neck, and all around snuff out any sense of peace you might have acquired in the dozen-odd minutes since you’d first woken up. You screamed.
You yelled as loud as you could and felt yourself cower and sink lower into the snow as you fought.
Just when you tried to raise a knee—to kick the animal in the ribs or else protect your own—a sound broke out above the buzz.
A voice, clear as day:
“CUJO!”
The dog stalled on top of you a moment, just to be yanked off the next, and the closest thing afterward was a face—kinder than Cujo’s but not by very much.
It was a broad, bearded, pock-marked head with more soot to recommend itself than skin. Lips smeared with ash and grime and curved down in the single most decisive frown you’d seen in your life, the man looked to be beside himself seeing you tits up in the snow.
He gripped one arm of yours, then dropped it.
Picked a leg up, paused, then hauled you into a cradle carry as graceless as you’d ever felt it done before.
“Come!” he snapped, and it took you too long to realize that he was talking to the dog. You’d already wrapped your arms around his neck in abrupt complaisance.
He carried you back into the cabin and kicked the door open in front of you. He held you firm for a second, then, just as he had outside, changed course before you knew what to do and was shortly depositing you on the sofa.
You winced when your ass hit the cushion.
You started to sit, grab a pillow for your back or just bring your knees to your chest, when suddenly a palm was pressing flat on your front. Forcing you to lie down.
“Hey, hey!” you cried when the man started lifting the hem of your nightgown.
If he’d heard you at all, he didn’t show it. He just worked his thick, dirty fingers under the fabric and raised the white satin like he might the hood of a car. He frowned.
It was then that you noticed a blooming red splotch on your side, slowly overtaking the terra-cotta color of dried blood on the bandage and spreading out. Then a pain.
Instead of pushing the man’s hands away, you were holding them tight, wrestling that same touch which was trying to keep you from poking around the area now.
“Quit,” the man said, sedate as could be.
“Hurts,” was all you could think to tell him—and you guessed he’d already had that part down by the outpouring of blood. He shoved your hands off.
The brand new crimson hue had already soaked through the bandage. He pulled it off. You caught a glimpse of a wound that seemed to be weeping through its stitches—oozing pus and blood and a gore you could’ve gone your whole life without seeing. You would’ve liked to run a couple gentle, awed fingers over it, but as it was, your coarse and tight-lipped medic wouldn’t let you.
“Hold still,” he commanded.
“Heystopstopstop!” you implored him, feeling a streak of pain up your side as his calloused hands delved deeper.
At your latest flinch and plea, the man seemed to have had enough. Or just needed to angle your body in a different direction for easier access to the site. He gathered you back up in his arms and walked over to the kitchen, where he set you down again on the counter. Hands moved to your hips, briefly, to push you back on the surface and allow him to stand between your legs. Again, the man frowned as he peeled off your pyjamas.
Two warring fears of pain and overexposure fought like wild beasts in your brain for a second—you yelping and trying to cover your breasts in a hurry, then realizing how much it hurt to lift your arms that way when your ribs were dripping blood, then the man making the decision for you both as he pushed your hands behind your back and said a simple ‘Fuck’s sake’ to keep you pinned.
You didn’t like it.
You didn’t like it, and you let him continue, because you knew that you didn’t know shit about doing this yourself.
Joel must’ve fixed your dressings fourteen times before turning you loose. He’d had you perched atop his counter like goddamned Prisoner-of-War Barbie, all riddled with bumps, bruises, and lesions galore, looked your body up and down just once, and nearly grew sick at the sight.
He’d disgusted himself by feeling as aroused as he was.
Shortly thereafter, he’d toted you off—before the blood could rush down to his dick and start to swell—shrugged your gown over your torso, and stepped away. Simple.
Then you’d had to go and throw a wrench in his plans.
“What if I need to pee?” you’d said as soon as Joel started up the stairs with you in his arms again.
He had meant to drop you off on the bed in the loft, out of sight, but it seemed you were more concerned about the prospect of traversing the steps up and down for potty breaks. Joel had audibly huffed above you.
“I can leave a bucket.”
“Yu-uck.” The latter word had been given two syllables to show the full extent of your disgust, like a child might do.
And that was how you’d ended up here: snug in his bed on the ground floor, curled up in more layers of flannel and wool than you could count and staring blankly up at the man who was standing cold and aloof off to the side.
Your eyelids were growing heavy with sleep.
He figured they would be.
Joel picked up the glass that sat beside your empty one on the nightstand and drank, watching you all the while.
“D’you know my momma?” you asked, voice sounding extra small coming from the depths of your cocoon.
Joel finished his drink in four big gulps.
“Sure hope not,” he said once he’d set it back down.
By the sight of the scars he’d found littering your hands and back alone, Joel was able to surmise you’d come from a pretty rough, ragtag group. Maybe even Raiders. Knowing folks like that simply never struck one’s fancy, so he’d been honest. You might’ve argued, or laughed, if you hadn’t been nabbed so tightly in the grips of those first stages preceding sleep, so instead, you nodded.
“Figured,” you mumbled.
7:11, Joel read on the clock. You’d finished your drink at seven, or somewhere thereabouts. Judging by your size, it wouldn’t take long at all for the medicine to take effect.
‘Medicine,’ Joel thought, sounded a whole hell of a lot better than ‘drugs.’ One was meant to rehabilitate, rejuvenate, bring new life to your worn and weary bones. The other would just knock you cold and keep you there.
On second thought, those were definitely drugs Joel had just slipped in your water before giving it to you to drink.
As your eyes blinked from closed, to open, to closed, then open but slightly less open than the time before, and closed again, he felt a sick sense of accomplishment twist in his gut. If only his former-nurse friend could have seen what he was doing with those morphine sulfate tablets he’d traded for—he likely would’ve slapped Joel across the face. And Joel would’ve smiled all the same.
Yeah, okay, drugging the unsuspecting and defenseless female he’d just saved from death’s doorstep two days ago didn’t look great on paper, he would fully concede.
But this was all in good fun.
Great fun, even.
For him.
“Sick fuck,” Joel muttered as he started to undo his belt. The button and zip were taken apart just as fast, and with two steps, he was standing at your bedside—his bedside—and tugging his trousers down his legs. He took his cock in his hand and glanced over at the clock.
7:15.
He nudged your shoulder.
7:16.
Peeling layers of blanket away from your body.
7:17.
“Hey…honey?”
A lot more nothing from the girl sleeping in front of him. He shrugged his jeans to the floor, kicked them off at his feet, and moved onto the bed. You just looked so sweet.
Joel tried working around the fabric of his boxers but got impatient pretty quick. He hauled those off, too.
Soon, his beefy, bare, and surprisingly tan legs were bracketing your hips as he stroked himself above you. His eyes roamed the lax and tranquil features undeniably characteristic of sleep, and he pumped himself faster. Really, there was no need for theatrics or enhancements now—he was already hard as three tonnes of steel—but Joel would be lying if he said he didn’t like the build-up.
You were no longer in danger of dying, thanks to him. You were slowly but surely on the mend, no thanks to Cujo at all, but many thanks to him, Joel Miller, the man who had pried you off of that post, pulled you out of your chains, ushered warmth back into your limbs, and stitched up your side out of the goodness of his heart.
Any objective onlooker could see that you’d availed yourself of his medical attention and aid without ever asking, so why should he request access to you now? This was the way of the world these days, anyway. Sex was no longer so much a question as it was an answer in most scenarios—a mere transaction, wherein the physically weaker of two parties was forced to capitulate. Not within the four unsullied walls of Jackson and a few other pockets of homestead communities here and there, but on the whole, absolutely. Jackson was down the road a ways away and sufficiently far enough from Joel’s cabin for him to be disentangled from their rules. What mattered now was obtaining what he was owed.
Still, the man hesitated a half-second longer above you. He jerked his cock even faster and felt his stomach start to clench. Was that? No—nerves were fucking juvenile. Getting close to cumming from just the sight of you alone was for chumps. Joel Miller was no chump.
He lifted your nightie and lowered the head of his cock to rest between your folds. Then he shifted his knees so that he could rub himself gently against your warmth.
Joel Miller was a monster, but he was no brute. He also understood female anatomy well enough to know that, well…wetter was better. He started moving his hips.
You exhaled through your nose. Nothing major; you probably hadn’t even felt him long enough to whine.
Joel planted a hand beside your head—a preemptive warning.
“There…” He liked to talk as though you could hear him. Like you might be semi-conscious and dimly aware of what he was doing to you then, “Right there…ah, baby.”
He never did catch your name.
That was no matter. So long as you stayed put and made a nice, wet, pretty little hole for him to fuck, you would be fine. By the feel of your folds alone, he could tell you’d be a fun thing to use. Soft and snug and plied with drugs, you could do, and be, anything he damn well needed.
Or maybe nothing at all, he thought without humor.
Joel brushed your cheek with the knuckles of his free hand and watched you turn away, making a face. He snagged your chin and tilted it back to him, sharply, before gliding those fingers down your chest, then your tummy, then your hips, then dipping between your legs. He found your clit and pressed it with a deliberate touch.
“Hey,” Joel whispered, again, as though you might hear, “You’re gonna stay still and let me do this.”
Your nose scrunched in response, thighs clamping together. Joel pried them apart with one push and continued sliding his cock back and forth. He grunted.
“Gonna let me take what’s mine, hear?”
You didn’t hear much of anything, he suspected, but he asked the question all the same. At least now your legs were staying open and he could rut himself gently into that space without having to keep them spread. A first, gentle ‘mmph’ sounded from your lips, and he was glad. He kept thumbing that spot he knew you would like and rubbing along the seam of your cunt with his erection.
Then Joel felt a weight on his shoulders. Remorse? No. Anxiety? Perhaps. This felt more like a fog, though, seizing his muscles and seeping gently between the grooves of his brain. He gave his head a fierce shake.
“Hold still,” he said, more to himself; you hadn’t moved.
Joel fisted the base of his cock and angled the tip toward your entrance, caring much less whether you were ready or not now that his desires had grown stronger.
He was met with resistance on trying to push in. He dug his fingers in the pillow beneath your head and scowled.
“Quit…clenchin’…like that. Ain’t…fair to me,” he huffed.
He was one to talk.
Now, he’d been with a staggering number of women, experiences ranging all across the spectrum, but even the tightest, most untouched pieces of ass he’d ever tapped had given way more than this. Your walls were unyielding, refusing to give him entry. Joel cursed and rutted his hips in a rough, entirely unsuccessful, thrust.
You hummed in response, eyes still closed, one hand fumbling mindlessly for something to hold. Joel seized it.
“Not lettin’ you off that easy, darlin’, I—”
“Fuck,” you breathed, followed by a low whimper.
Joel froze. Had you heard him? Felt him just now?
Something about the uncertainty laden in those questions sent his mind into overdrive, heart beating a wild cadence in his chest. He realized then that his mouth had gone dry, his vision was skewed just slightly on the outskirts. And his cock was throbbing.
“Ya like that?” Joel seethed, not thinking, still rubbing, “Like givin’ daddy a hard time before lettin’ him in?”
“Uh-huh.” Softly.
You little slut. He knew it all along.
Whatever it was that kept your body from being coupled with his was almost immaterial to him now. Joel’s mind was swimming with desire, cock dragging in desperate, fitful bursts between your legs, never penetrating but still wringing massive jolts of pleasure from that place.
With the way he was feeling now, Joel could cum from just fucking your thighs. And that was alright.
You were moaning underneath him. Even…smiling?
“Fuck, baby, you look so pretty.”
Joel had never called a girl pretty before and meant it. But he hardly knew how else to describe you now with how good and sweet and fine you were making him feel. A strange warmth sank into his chest, making it harder to breathe, and then he was panting above you, as if he were really inside that dripping wet spot. He was close.
“Such a pretty…sweet…fuckin’ thing for me.”
That red, raging, leaky cock of his was almost a blur between your legs, he was thrusting against you so fast. Joel thought for one frightening second that it might be his skull that would explode instead, so high was that pressure between his ears, but his fears were promptly put to rest as the first rope of cum came stuttering out. Then another. Then another. Then another.
By the time he finished, he could’ve sworn he’d left a hundred spurts on your tummy. When Joel glanced down and saw a sea of opaque, sticky white, he groaned.
Then he fell. Fully collapsed at your side with his brain in a tizzy of wild, heady feelings and sank into himself.
He hadn’t even fucked you, and he felt like he had.
He lifted a hand to wipe away his spend, but he couldn’t.
He would get to it in the morning, before you stirred, he thought. He thought. He didn’t have the chance to think much longer at all, as darkness started hedging him in.
He slept.
It was 7:57 when he woke.
The man had no real way of knowing that, though, seeing as he was greeted with a nickel-plated revolver between his teeth the second he opened his eyes.
You were straddling his torso, gun pinched between two calm, bandaged hands. You frowned when he jumped.
“WH—” he started.
“Shut up.”
“ST—”
“I said shut,” you cocked the gun, holding it tighter, then shoving it even further inside his mouth, “the fuck. up.”
The man obeyed.
‘Joel M.’—you’d read the name etched on the butt of his pistol before picking it up some twenty minutes ago.
“Pretty fuckin’ thing,” you mocked the man’s Texan drawl as you wiggled the barrel even deeper along his tongue, “Like givin’ daddy a hard time before lettin’ him in?”
The man’s eyes widened.
How dumb did he think you were?
Offering a semi-clear liquid that should’ve been water; he hadn’t even waited for the morphine tablet to fully dissolve before handing it over to you. Fucking idiot.
You were more disturbed by the fact he’d thought you stupid enough not to notice than him actually trying to drug you. The latter was almost to be expected from predatory, execrable men like him, but the insult to your intelligence? Unacceptable. You’d remedied that affront fairly quickly, though, swapping his glass with yours the second he hadn’t been looking, then nestling into his bed and playing pretend for what had felt like an eternity.
You’d been awake the whole time the man touched you, not knowing what the hell was going on but feeling like you had to stay still. Let him finish. Out of fear, at first, then curiosity, then some strange and unfamiliar sensation that you couldn’t quite describe as anything but a pleasurable itch between your legs. You let the man continue, hearing him grunt and groan and swear up a storm before he shot something hot all over your tummy. By the end of it all, you knew it was wrong, and you knew it was dirty—though you weren’t sure exactly what it was that he had done—but you wanted to learn more.
Which was probably why you hadn’t just shot the old pervert right between his eyes the second he’d stirred.
You shifted atop this ‘Joel M.’ and frowned once more.
“Why’d you stop?”
Gun still wedged in his mouth, Joel’s voice sounded garbled as he spoke, “Wha-agh-at?”
You retracted the metal just long enough to pose the question again. When you had, he still looked stunned.
“Answer me,” you barked, and feeling your patience lapse, got straight to pistol-whipping the motherfucker upside his half-grey head, “You DUMB, or somethin’?”
The man sputtered again.
“No, no— I don’t— dunno what you mean.”
He sounded dumb. You would need to spell this out.
“Why did you stop rubbing me like that?”
If anything, the clarification only seemed to baffle him further. He opened his taut, bearded mouth, then closed it, then eyed you up and down with a look that said he was considering something. Then he stared at one spot.
You glanced down at it too.
“And what is this, anyway?” you asked, swiping one finger at the mostly dried moisture on your stomach, “Why’d you spit this stuff up all over me, huh?!”
“I ain’t—”
You raised the gun as if to hit him again. He jolted back.
“I didn’t mean— shit. Shit, I just…came on you, ‘s’all.”
“Came?”
The word hung in the air like a grenade, waiting. Mr. M was already bracing himself for the impact, it seemed.
“Came?!”
That bracing served him well, because in the next second you were lifting the weapon even higher and eyeing him with the most pointed, putrid look of disdain. You’d never been one for letting grenades go untouched.
“Ejaculated!” Joel hissed, lifting a hand to shield himself, “Felt— felt so good I just couldn’t stop and I-I-I came.”
You paused.
Came. Felt good. Couldn’t stop.
You had felt good when he’d rubbed you. You had not wanted him to stop. But then he had. And you were mad. You’d never been touched that way in your life, and now you were feeling fifteen hundred emotions at once.
Were you supposed to ‘come,’ too? Why did he stop?
“Why didn’t you let me…ejaculate, too?” The words felt foreign and strange on your tongue.
For the first time, you saw one side of Joel’s lips twitch. Evidently fighting the urge to turn them into a smile.
“Girls don’t really…do that,” he said. Then, after a beat, “Why? Ain’t ever had your pussy rubbed on by a man?”
You shortly landed the blow you’d been holding over his head, splitting the skin along his brow with one hit from the butt of his gun. Joel jumped again, then moaned.
“Crazy bitch!”
“Creepy fuck.”
Your eyes narrowed with loathing, unable to comprehend how a man so vile had just made you feel so good. Your stomach was twisting in knots while Joel rubbed his forehead, pawing helplessly at the gash you’d just left.
“I saved your life,” he grumbled, low, “You owed me.”
“Did I?”
Abruptly, and without really thinking, you were sinking the muzzle of the gun into the spot you’d just cut, mouth kicking up in a smile at the sounds of pain it elicited.
“Did I, Joel?” you cooed.
“How the— the fuck do you know my name?”
Momentarily, you yanked the revolver from his face and tilted it to show him his name carved into the bottom.
“What’s the ‘M’ stand for? ‘Molester’?”
“Means ‘mind’ your fucking business,” he spat.
You probably would’ve hit him again had it not seemed as though he were trying to sit up just then. You slid swiftly from his frame—just to take a step off the bed, gun still pointed at his head. Then you backed away.
One by one, rapidly, you unloaded the bullets from the cylinder, maintaining a safe distance from the man all the while. You watched him blink and try to get some thing from his eyes, but he didn’t seem keen to move.
You left just one live round inside. You made a point to spin the cylinder and, again, aim it straight at his head.
The man was blinking even harder. Rubbing now, too.
“I feel…” Joel murmured.
“Drugged?” you returned, “Yeah, that must suck.”
A set of wide, irate, and horrified eyes met yours. His mouth hung open in a stupid look of shock. Trying to piece the last bits of this fucked up jigsaw puzzle together and growing angrier by the second.
“You fuckin’—”
Joel’s words were cut short by the weight of your body barreling back over his. Graceless, you imagined, but still nothing close to something you cared about now. You planted your knees on either side of his ribs and grazed the tip of the six-shooter down the length of his nose.
“Tell me,” you said, “How’d you make it feel so good?”
Your hips twisted for effect, jostling the man’s own parts beneath yours and clearly causing some effect in him. The muscles in his jaw jumped up as he gritted his teeth.
“You know damn well, slut,” Joel griped.
Without another thought, you squeezed the trigger.
Click.
The man’s whole body lurched underneath you. Trembling with the realization that you’d left just one lone bullet for him—and he didn’t know which chamber.
As far as foreplay went, Russian Roulette was probably a first, even for a man as wanton and depraved as Joel. You smiled sweetly and made another gyration with your lower half, which prompted him to grip you. Tight.
“What? Ya want me to fuck you, is that it?” he growled.
“I thought it wouldn’t fit.”
“I’ll make it fit.”
“How?”
Try as you might to conceal it, your gaze likely betrayed a hint of sincerity as you made that last inquiry. Joel’s eyes flickered between yours, searching for something there, and just when those glossy brown irises had found it, they stopped. Blinked. He shook his head, incredulous.
“My mind ain’t…right,” he said, slowly, “But I— I know you know what I mean by that, sweet pea.”
Something in your tummy fluttered at the sound. You gripped the pistol tighter to get rid of the feeling.
“I don’t,” you answered.
Again, Joel was stumped. For the first time, though, there appeared to be some sympathy behind his eyes. Or stupidity. Or just a shit ton of morphine coursing through his veins as he tried to make sense of this situation.
As if to confirm an idea in his drug-addled brain, he lowered a hand between your legs and hovered there a second. He watched you; you watched back but didn’t move.
Then slowly, almost clinically, Joel slipped two fingers underneath you and found a soft, pulsing warmth—far wetter than the last time he’d touched down there. When he pulled his hand away, both fingers and half of his palm were glistening with a fluid. You let out a startled cry at the sight of it and nearly dropped your gun.
“What is that?!”
Joel looked to you, equally awed—for different reasons.
“What do you mean?”
“Why’s it all…sticky?”
You couldn’t even try to hide your horror at the thought of that weird, syrupy stuff leaking out of you. It was strange enough feeling it come out of a freak like Joel, but from your own body? He had to be fucking joking.
“It’s normal.”
“Like hell it is— you— STOP!” The last fragment of your sentence was swallowed by a scream, leaping back when Joel moved his fingers toward your face.
“What? You’ve never seen this?” He sounded like he was teasing. You could shoot him for how smug he sounded.
In very small amounts, you’d seen stuff. Blood every month. Bits and pieces of bodily secretions that, to you, had always seemed gross. But never this. Never big, sticky globs of…whatever the fuck this was. You continued to back away on the bed, gun still tipped toward Joel but now trying to put some distance between your bodies. You didn’t know how else to act.
You did know you wanted to scream when Joel stuck his fingers in his mouth. Bile might’ve jumped in your throat.
He sucked the dew clean off the digits, then wriggled them to show what he’d done. You felt the urge to vomit.
“That came from— from— why are you eating it?!”
Joel grinned. Big.
You weren’t sure why, but he looked psyched to be alive in that moment, and not just because of the narcotics.
Before you knew what was happening, he’d pushed you flat on your back, hips pinned underneath his hands as he moved over your body. He didn’t even try for the gun.
“And here I was thinkin’ you were just fuckin’ with me,” he chuckled, palms sliding under your nightdress. When you felt the residuum of wetness from his spit and your slick stuck together on his fingers, you wanted to squeal.
But you didn’t. You tried propping yourself up on elbows until Joel was sliding your one and only article of clothing over your head, then beckoning you down on the bed in front of him. You watched his gaze flit down to your side.
“Still hurt?” he murmured, tracing over the bandage.
You shook your head no, though it did, a little. At the moment, it seemed the pain was the furthest thing from your mind as you saw Joel slide down your body and try to take up residence between your thighs—with his face planted right there. You kicked his shoulder in protest.
“Quit!” you cried, pulling your legs up to your chest.
“You quit,” Joel returned, yanking them back.
Then you felt you had no choice but to brandish the gun, taking the thing between two palms while you pointed it again—as if he needed the reminder.
“Fine. Why don’t you keep that thing aimed at my head while I give you some?” he muttered. The subsequent ‘See if I give a shit’ was silent.
“Give me some what?”
“Head.”
Head. You’d never heard something phrased that way. Joel’s head was down there, sure, practically grinning from ear to ear as he hooked your legs over his shoulders, but certainly he didn’t mean to do a thing as drastic and dirty as—
“JOEL!”
“Hm?” His voice was muffled by your thighs.
You tried to shy away, but he held you down.
“Joel, I— I pee out of there,” you hissed, “Why the fuck would you wanna put your mouth on that?”
As if your groans of disgust and vehement attempts to get away weren’t enough to deter him, you watched Joel’s tongue dart between his lips and down to yours. The sick fuck was actually licking your folds, tracing the tip across that warm, sticky place and moaning into your skin. Holding you tighter when you pleaded for him to stop. Then, with the hand that wasn’t prying your legs apart, he reached down and started stroking his cock.
Again, it felt dirty and wrong. Beyond the fact that this man was a perfect stranger and easily decades your senior, you were repulsed by the sight of his lips and his tongue and his spit mixing up in that messy, wet place you still didn’t quite understand yourself. You didn’t know much about your body, but it had never once occurred to you to be kissed down there. Joel was roaming every contour and crevice with his tongue like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like he liked it.
“I hate it,” you whined, feebly.
You knew you could’ve easily blown the man’s brains out, but some small part of you was still plagued by curiosity. ‘Hate’ was just the first word that came to mind when you were faced with something that made you scared.
“It’s weird,” you tried again. This time pressing the gun to the top of his bobbing head while you grit your teeth, “And wrong.”
At that, Joel stopped.
His eyes flickered to yours, all glass-like and hooded.
“Why? Practically lickin’ ya clean here,” he said, starting to grin to himself as his words came slightly slurred, “There’s nothin’ wrong about this, sweet pea.”
You felt something flutter between you. He felt it, too.
“Like when I call ya that? ‘Sweet pea’?” he said, pausing to flick his tongue over the spot that had just stirred at his words. He watched you fight back a whimper.
“No,” you choked. You pinched your eyes shut, unsure whether it was pleasure or pure revulsion overtaking you—or both.
Suddenly, you felt Joel’s hand smooth over your thigh, still warm from when he’d been stroking himself below. He placed an affectionate kiss to your belly and grinned.
“Is that what this is? Feel guilty about feelin’ this good?” he murmured, “Think it’s…dirty, what we’re doin’?”
At length, and just barely visible to him, you nodded.
“It is dirty,” you corrected him quietly.
Then you saw that stupid pseudo-sympathetic smirk tug at the corners of his lips, and just when you thought he might nudge his way back up your body—to do what, you weren’t sure—he sank between your legs. This time, he made sure to hold your gaze as he re-assumed the position. His palm continued to rub at your thigh, as if to distract you from the rough brush of his stubble or the fact that his mouth was hovering so dangerously close.
“Sweet pea,” he rasped, “Ain’t nothin’ dirty about this.”
As if to punctuate his words, Joel dragged his lips down your slit to press a kiss to your centre, eyes never leaving yours.
“Not here…”
He pointed with his tongue, moving it deftly between your folds. You gripped the sheets, trying to ignore the pleasure that the simple act wrought through your body.
“Not here.”
He kissed your clit. You squeezed even tighter.
“Not on my tongue, on my fingers, anywhere, y’hear?”
You were about to answer—maybe tell him he was supremely full of shit, then flash the gun in his face—when Joel shifted onto his knees on the bed. He moved slowly and as calm as he ever had, motions languid while his mind was likely steeped in the morphine by now. He snagged one of your ankles. He slid his hand up the back of your calf and tugged you down to the edge of the bed. Then he stood up, right between your legs. The warmth radiating from his bare lower half was immediate, almost suffocating from where you lay. You didn’t like it at all.
You refused to meet his gaze, grip tightening on the gun.
“Joel…”
When that warmth at your front shifted inward, though, you hardly had a say in what your reflexes did or didn’t do. You jumped when you felt the head of his dick slip past your pulsing core, closer to the other hole below it.
“Not here, either,” Joel continued, grin still evident from his tone.
Before you could even think to ask what he meant to do ‘here,’ Joel moved one of your legs up, tilting your hips, and pushed ahead with just the tip of his cock. Not breaching it fully, but nudging—prodding at that hole.
For the first time, you let out a moan.
You hastily clamped a hand over your mouth to stifle it.
“Aw, honey,” Joel murmured, “Did that feel good?”
His words reeked of condescension. You scowled at the ceiling.
“No.”
You felt him push a little further—this time making the head of his dick notch into that tight ring of muscles.
No, the word rang through your skull once more. Your curiosity was shortly supplanted by disgust—how the fuck could you let this creepy old man, this stranger, press into you like that? Talk to you like you were dumb? You seized hold of Joel’s pistol with both hands and aimed directly for his chest.
“Stop doing that,” you growled. When the man’s grip on your leg only tightened and you couldn’t writhe away, you lifted the other and tried kicking him in the gut. Of course, Joel caught your foot midair, and it never landed.
“Just givin’ ya options, darlin’,” he said, easy-going. Not seeming to care about the firearm pointed his way.
Fuck it.
You squeezed the trigger again.
Empty chamber.
If Joel flinched, you didn’t see it. He did, however, knock the gun right out of your hand the next second, sending it tumbling with an unceremonious thump on the bed behind you. You tried to leap back for it, but your arm was quickly pinned. Joel cocked one silver-flecked brow.
“You done?” he asked, almost bored.
Your last—and only—leverage taken away from you, you couldn’t help but feel a pang of anger. And desperation.
“I don’t wanna do this,” you cried, trying to squirm away.
Joel didn’t move his cock, but he did hold you still. Blinking with indifference and a fair bit of drug-induced dissociation, it seemed, from the far-away look in his eyes. He pushed both of your legs so they were folded up to your chest, and ignored your whimpers when he did. At length, he pulled out just enough to smear some of your wetness down to the hole he was trying to fuck.
“You want this,” he countered gently.
“I DON’T!”
Joel continued as though he hadn’t heard you, and moments later, you sensed another slick something pooling against you. From your position beneath him, you could see a bead of spit slip from Joel’s mouth and stretch into a thin, glistening string all the way down to the space between your thighs. You watched him rub the saliva in with his fingers, almost meticulous as he did it.
Then he eased his hips forward an inch, wedging himself back in your ass. He groaned when he felt resistance—and a sharp clench of your muscles.
“I can teach ya…show ya everything…there is to know.”
His words somehow made it out through ragged breaths. That broad, tan chest was heaving with every labored pull of his lungs, and you could tell he was feeling good.
You might’ve been able to say the same for yourself, were your mind not singly occupied by the desire to escape. Still at war with yourself, wondering how it would feel or what you might see that first time, all the while despising the man who seemed hell-bent on forcing it.
He might’ve saved your life, but there was no fucking way he’d get to use you like that and stay breathing.
You were raised better than that.
You could do better than anything this man had to offer.
You resolved to kill him as soon as the drugs knocked him out—just like you’d had planned from the second you woke up on the floor of his cabin that afternoon.
Of course being chained, maimed, and frozen half to death on the plains for some well-meaning stranger to find you had always been part of your mother’s—and the rest of the Raiders’—grand plan. Having this stupid, horny sap take you into his home with the hope of claiming you as his own was just the icing on top.
Now you had a reason to kill Joel and steal all his shit.
At present, he fed another inch of himself inside you and grinned when you let out a startled cry.
“Atta girl,” he said, smirking, “Feelin’ okay?”
“Fuck you.”
“Will do.”
Then, as if to prove a point, he bottomed out, sheathing his cock to the hilt in spite of your cries. Your hands fisted the sheets, and you tried to pull off. It didn’t work.
In fact, all it accomplished was giving Joel more room to thrust back into you. And pull out. And shove back in. The snap of his hips was like cruel and excruciating clockwork, completely unhindered by your words or your gestures or your pleas to stop fucking doing that Joel, it fucking hurts! If anything, the sounds of your censure only got him harder, and with it, made it that much easier to fuck you rougher. His eyes shone with pride.
“What’s’at, sweet pea?” he hummed, strokes coming into a steady pace.
“It’s too…big…doesn’t fit,” you whimpered.
In response, Joel glanced down to see the spot where your bodies were joined. He pushed even deeper.
“Yeah?” he said when you yelped, “I think it fits just fine.”
Motherfucker, you wanted to wail, but then your neck craned sideways—your mouth trying to find purchase in anything you might grit between your teeth—and the only thing that escaped your throat was a sob. You tried burying your face in the comforter, only for Joel to yank it back.
Cupping your chin and pinching both your cheeks in a single, punishing squeeze as he continued to fuck you, “What’s the matter, darlin’? Too much?”
You groaned and clenched your jaw, head jerking away.
Per usual, Joel was undeterred. Even smiled.
“My pretty girl need somethin’a bite, huh?” he hummed.
He probably knew you wouldn’t nod, so he went ahead and decided to oblige that one need he saw anyway. Snagging your nightie, Joel raised a hand to your face and proceeded to push the fabric inside your mouth.
Just as he started to lift his hips to deliver another thrust, he had to stop. A sudden, sharp ‘FUCK!’ left his mouth, then a groan, and his hand retreated fast.
You’d bitten him.
You were grinning just a little, and you’d bitten him.
Joel promptly slapped you across the face. If you weren’t so fucking amused by the sight of his bright red fingers, you just might’ve winced. Instead, the smile stayed on your lips, the slap barely registered, and, to your utmost disbelief, something else had just then started to form.
Pleasure, in the pit of your stomach.
“Fuckin’—” Joel snarled.
“Shit,” you finished, eyes rolling back.
You couldn’t help it. Joel was rutting into you relentlessly. That brief hand bite detour had only stoked the flames of his hatred—and arousal—and now he was practically splitting you in half with the force of his thrusts. He slapped you once more for good measure.
“Oh, that you fuckin’ like?” he seethed, cheeks flushed, “Can’t get off with my…tongue on your cunt, but a slap— and my cock buried deep in your ass gets the job done?”
“Uh-huh,” you answered softly. Mindlessly.
Really, there were no two people more fucked up than you in this moment, you thought. Joel growing harder with each desperate objection of yours, you going all soft and hot and bothered the second he slapped your face and fucked you rougher, and together, the two of you letting out grunts and moans of pleasure while the bed shook like an earthquake just shy of a 9.5 on the Richter scale. Were you not already planning to slit the man’s throat after all of this was over, you just might’ve wanted to marry this Joel M for how wonderfully he fucked you.
You let him know as much when you seized his forearms.
Bouncing into his thrusts, you bit your lip and finally met his gaze. Joel’s eyes were trained in somewhat of a daze, pupils all but swallowing his irises as he fucked you.
“Like being daddy’s little cocksleeve, huh?”
Only the sentence was slurred so bad you could scarcely make out half the words. You nodded just the same.
“Like it when he fucks you in the ass?” Joel panted.
You nodded again.
That pleasure in your belly had worked its way up to a full swell—and whatever it was, you couldn’t bear the thought of losing it now. You gripped Joel’s arms even harder as his chest swayed into you, then sank further and further until your fronts were pressed flush to each other and your ankles were hooked tight around his back.
It almost felt intimate. That coarse, weathered, sweat-coated face spattered with patches of grey seemed to you nearly handsome as his lips hung limply in an ‘o.’
Joel’s cock dragged back and forth between your walls at this new, snug angle, and moans fell out of you both.
“Baby.” His voice was hoarse. Strained.
You couldn’t quite make sense of the expression above you, but there was an unmistakable, muted desperation lurking somewhere beneath it. Joel rutted into you quicker, balls leaving rapid smacks against your ass with every thrust. His hair was disheveled, and his hands were making fists in the sheets on either side of your head.
“Joel—”
“Jus’ lemme use you.”
Words so low they were barely audible as he panted.
“But—”
“Daddy’s…almost done, sweet pea. Just take it.”
You were surprised he’d had it within himself to be so soft. A peculiar sort of haze hung over his face, the pace of his hips picked up even more, and suddenly those plush pink lips were hovering a mere hair’s breadth away from yours. Mumbling. Rambling on and on about how wet you were, how perfect you fit him, how nice and sweet and tight your body felt as he fucked you stupid.
That sensation in your own stomach grew even stronger.
Unsure of what to do, you pressed a palm to his chest.
“Joel, I…I feel funny,” you whispered.
Joel hummed. Didn’t slow.
“I know.”
He knew?
“What’s it—ah, fuck.” Your words broke off in a whimper.
Instead of proffering a verbal response, Joel just slipped a touch between your bodies—thumbing sloppily between your folds to earn a couple more high-pitched moans. Your legs tightened around his middle.
“Joel, s-stop!”
It felt so good it almost hurt. He didn’t stop.
“S’just an orgasm, baby,” Joel panted, “You’re okay.”
And, in spite of his own impending climax and the effect of the drugs likely reaching a fever pitch inside him, Joel managed to slide his other hand beneath the back of your head. Cradled you to him while he fucked you into the bed and made you come unraveled with his touch. You tried to writhe away, but he was used to the drill by now—he just fucked you harder and rubbed you faster.
Whatever he wanted would come soon. You doubted there was anything you could do to stop it, but you tried.
Without thinking, you grabbed hold of the damp locks of hair at the nape of his neck and yanked on them hard.
“Joel, I can’t— I can’t,” you keened.
The hand at the back of your head held you firm.
“You can,” Joel returned, tough but surprisingly calm, “Give it to daddy, ‘s’all ya gotta do.”
What exactly ‘it’ was was still unclear. You just knew you felt good and warm and full—about ready to burst. When you felt tempted to give his hair another tug, Joel’s eyes met yours, and they were soft. Insistent, still, but soft.
Dilated as all hell and probably swimming in clouds of a delirious, bleary haze, but always soft. Almost tender.
“Be a good girl and give it to daddy,” Joel slurred, slow, “C’mon, sweet pea…cum for daddy, please.”
For the first time in that short, rough, utterly deranged time you had known this man, he was begging you. Pleading with you, now, as his body grew overwrought with pleasure and just needed release. You needed it, too, not even knowing how you would get it, but the force of his thrusts, the warmth of his body, the look in those warm, bare, powerless eyes—you fucking loved whatever it was that could make a man like that so weak.
You had to strike while the iron was hot. You slid back.
Joel didn’t notice, too focused on your face and the feel of your body to see when you’d reached for the gun.
Just as you took hold of it, a jolt of pleasure tore through you. Your heels dug into his back, and you nearly lost control of the pistol. Joel groaned in your mouth, begged you once again to cum all over this cock, make a fuckin’ mess of it, baby, please, and you could only whine, grip the metal tighter, and raise it slowly to the side of his head while he buried his face in the crook of your neck.
The peak of your pleasure had come into view. You felt it.
You nudged the muzzle through those soft, slick, salt-and-pepper shaded tufts of hair near the edge of his temple right when the first throes of euphoria seized you.
“FUCK!”
You squeezed the trigger.
#NEED DARK!JOEL TO TAKE ME TO HIS PENTHOUSE AND FREAK ME IN WAYS UNIVERSALLY CONDEMNED BY POSTMODERN FEMINISM#IT'S SOOOOO BAD Y'ALL#this might be too niche but i hope at least one person enjoys LOL#joel miller#joel miller tlou#joel miller smut#joel miller imagine#joel miller one shot#joel miller x reader#joel miller fanfiction#the last of us#tlou#the last of us fic#joel miller x you#dark!joel
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honestly I think there's a huge generation of readers who read 'the song of the lioness' at an impressionable age and it rewired their brains
#I actually wrote a like... not quite scholarship but still a college application essay on Alanna no lie#it was about how the books made me realize that feminism means different things to different people#which I thought was a very profound realization at 17/18#which is not to say Tamora Pierce is perfect#but like#she tries real hard#and when she fails at something it's usually because she is taking an incredibly ambitious swing at something#and is doing so with the best motivations
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i want to know what do you think about Remus since you already talk about James and Sirius i really need to know :3
When someone puts a big topic on the table, in Spain we say: sujétame la cerveza lol So yeah, Lupin is one of THAT topics. Here we go:
Look, I can deal with Remus Lupin having literally zero self-esteem and a massive inferiority complex, and for that reason using Sirius and James as his safety net at Hogwarts, not stopping them when they were complete jerks because he was afraid they'd reject him and he’d end up alone. I can deal with that, I can excuse being an accomplice to bullying just like I can excuse Severus for getting involved with the Death Eaters because he saw himself as vulnerable. I forgive him, seriously. I can even forgive him for being an absolutely irresponsible adult and not taking his potion—Merlin knows why. I can let that slide too. But there are two things I can’t let slide.
The first, and less important one, is that he justified James’ actions to Harry. I mean, it's the least important because I can understand not wanting to tarnish the kid’s image of his father, but when the same kid is telling you that his father and his friends (including you) were assholes, maybe you should admit that you were a total jerk. Or that at least your friends were, and you did nothing. I get why Sirius denied his guilt because, well, Sirius Black. Like, what are you going to expect from him? To him, there was nothing wrong with it. But Remus was aware that it was wrong, and as an adult, he can admit it. You don’t have to make up some story about Snape envying James over Quidditch (lolololol like Severus Snape would remotely care about that gym-bro crap). But anyway, I see this as almost the least serious thing.
What I will never, ever forgive him for in my entire fucking life is that at 36/37 years old, with gray hair already down there, HE WAS ALMOST FORTY YEARS OLD, PEOPLE, he got a woman in her twenties pregnant, had an existential crisis, and was considering leaving her WHILE SHE WAS PREGNANT WITH HIS CHILD. WHAT IS HE DOING?? Like, I don’t even know how to express this in English because my language is Spanish, and I swear I have a ton of adjectives in that language to insult this man, but in English, it’s harder—but hello?? He was ALMOST FORTY YEARS OLD, HIS WIFE WAS TWENTY-FIVE, HE SLEPT WITH HER, GOT HER PREGNANT, AND LEFT??? HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE, REMUS LUPIN?? WHAT’S IN YOUR HEAD?? Like, if he was so terrified of passing on lycanthropy to the child, why didn’t he use a condom?? Or, I don’t know, the magical equivalent—HAVE YOU HEARD OF A VASECTOMY?? And if he really, truly felt so bad about impregnating A WOMAN IN HER TWENTIES—LIKE SERIOUSLY, LET'S PUT THIS IN PERSPECTIVE: SOMEONE THIRTEEN YEARS YOUNGER THAN HIM. THIRTEEN. DAMN. YEARS. Why didn’t he just NOT DO IT? Like, as the adult in the relationship, he could’ve genuinely said no. No, this is unacceptable. No. No, sorry. So many years of gender studies and feminist readings for this. SCREW THE NICE GUYS. Like, his whole “woe is me, I’m poor, I’m old, I’m ugly, I’m dangerous” schtick? Well, you should have gone off to Timbuktu then, but don’t get her pregnant only to then abandon her. A TEENAGER HAD TO GO. A TEEN-AGER had to tell him he was being a piece of shit. This is why I say Rowling doesn’t respect her female characters because if she really did, she would have had Tonks dump him and raise the child on her own because, seriously, what was she thinking?
Just talking about this makes me genuinely angry. It's just that Lupin is THAT KIND OF GUY, you know? The one who acts all nice and soft and like he’s never broken a plate in his life, and he’s all poor me, and I’m super nice and super sweet, but then he turns out to be a huge jerk, like a giant piece of work. He’s the textbook nice guy, and one of the worst, the kind who goes after young women. Look, I’m just saying that if Harry Potter were written today and the topic of Lupin came up, and Rowling didn’t condemn him to the stake in her books, she would have been canceled a long time ago. Seriously. There’s no way that in today’s fiction a man nearly 40 years old gets a twenty-something pregnant and threatens to leave her, and that this guy is seen positively by the narrative. Simply no. Canceled. I’m canceling you, Remus Lupin, not for myself, but for feminism. Thanks.
#I have nothing personal against Lupin#My existence as a woman has something personal against Lupin#I mean#how can you be a fan of Lupin?#HE GETS A YOUNG WOMAN PREGNANT AND LEFT HER#I’M ABOUT TO HIT SOMEONE#The worst ones are the nice guys#pa tu casa Lupin venga ale#Remus Lupin#Lupin#Nymphadora Tonks#She deserved better than this shit of a guy#srsly#Tonks#Marauders#Sirius Black#James Potter#Harry Potter#harry potter fandom#feminism takes
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shipping discourse is so crucial because it encourages people to examine and re-examine their perceptions of female characters. when we actively think about why a ship feels comfortable or uncomfortable, we are less likely to be swayed by patriarchal notions of womanhood disguised as progressive ideals within fandoms.
female-dominated spaces, like many fandoms, are growing more conservative in tone, especially around complex female characters, and there is a growing discomfort with heroines attracted to villains. this trend parallels the conservative impulse to judge a person's morality based on their reading preferences. (a bad, bad thing.)
we are seeing a huge shift towards puritanical ideals of female purity (check out the trad-wifers on tiktok), and it is a rot seeping into fandoms. we have to keep shipping discourse alive. we have to keep talking about female characters and their complicated relationships with themselves, but also with other characters, including their attraction to morally-grey or outright villainous characters. keep asking people to examine and re-examine their perceptions of womanhood. keep them thinking.
we cannot let our fandoms reduce complex female characters and their relationships to simple moral statements. this approach creates a pipeline to conservative radicalisation, where the only shipping discourse allowed is through a tiny patriarchal lens. fandoms are spaces were we should explore, brainstorm, and celebrate female complexity, resisting the urge to flatten characters and their relationships into 'good' or 'bad' based on narrow conservative ideas of female purity.
#haladriel#ghoulcy#oshamir#women using men as the vessels in which to explore their relationship with power and hope and darkness and survival is important#storytelling as a form of survival is deeply woven into womanhood and we can't let the conservatives take it from us#we can't let our fellow women be radicalised by patriarchal ideals in fandom spaces which is very much happening right now and it's scary#feminism tag#shipping discourse is so important#keep it alive#this stuff includes not wanting female characters to be romantically attached at all#which is a growing trend disguised as feminist but is really deeply puritanical
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I wore a dress recently (rare occurrence for me) and one of my friends was like, “Honey you look great but would you like some tips on shaving your legs?” And I explained to her that I don’t really like shaving my legs so I just don’t do it. And she asked if that’s why I usually wear pants and I said no I wear whatever is comfortable to me, shaved legs or not. And it was like I literally blew her mind.
This is what I mean when I say you should have empathy for women with internalized misogyny. I don’t mean having empathy for women who are abusive to you for being a woman. I mean empathy for women who genuinely don’t know that what they’re saying is sexist. I don’t think my friend even knew it was sexist of her to say that at all, she probably just thought it was a little rude (sometimes, when you’re close with someone, it’s okay to be a little rude because you know you love each other). These ideas were not things she had previously been exposed to at all. Instead of telling her to kill herself for having internalized misogyny, WHICH ALL WOMEN HAVE, I introduced her to feminist ideas. And you know what? I’ve noticed she stopped shaving her arm pits recently. And she hasn’t said anything about my legs again. 🤷♀️
#hot take: be kind to women#we all have internalized misogyny#radblr#radical feminism#radfeminism#radical feminist safe#radical feminist community#proud misandrist#feminism#feminist#misandry#female rage
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"Maybe white men wouldn't have overwhelmingly voted for Trump if it wasn't for feminists telling them they're bad all the time!!1!!" Weird how everything men do ends up being women's fault somehow
#men sold women's rights to our own bodies for cheaper gas prices. i could not give less of a shit about their takes on feminism#that one post going around about how misogyny has increased tremendously over the past few years#with all the replies like 'well women tell cishet white men that patriarchy and racism are bad and that hurts their feelings--#--so its understandable they become violently misogynistic and the solution is for you to be nicer to men!!!'#ohhhh my god quit your entitlement for one fucking second. trumps laws are killing women in droves#us politics#(also i feel the need to add that i am fully supportive of lgbt+ and gender non conforming individuals)
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you do realise that women only accept you out of fear right? TIM's like all men, have radical Systemic power over women. They don't refuse to accept you because they actually see you as women, no woman see's you that way. They "accept" you because it's a threat, because they know you'd kill & rape them if they didn't. I mean ffs there's literally evidence of it happening. trans inclusion is a disgusting compromise to hold power over women, that's what it is, do you fucking get it yet?
Leave. Us. Alone.
I showed this to my cis lesbian wife (who is both bigger and stronger than I am) and she said that if you said this to our faces, she'd kill you with her bare hands.
But that aside--most trans women and transfeminized populations over the world are disproportionately impoverished, pushed to the margins of society, and face acute levels of deprivation. They don't possess "radical Systemic power" (a nonsense term that literally means nothing, but I'll humor you and assume you meant something like societal standing or benefits from male-supremacy) because they are subject to gendered violence, brutalization, and total loss of standing under a patriarchal regime.
You don't understand the theory. You are not good at feminism, at empirical or systemic analysis, and you have nothing substantive to inform your baseless hate except feelings of disgust for a highly marginal demographic that you refuse to extend empathy to.
Which is why instead of doing anything remotely impactful, you're anonymously sending vitriol into my inbox on a Saturday.
Marvelous.
Honestly, you and I suffer under the same regime of heterosexuality and misogyny. I see that, and if you stopped seeing me as an inhuman monster and tried to just think about how trans women are treated in the real world, you might be able to see that too.
Do better.
#gender is a regime#materialist feminism#transfeminism#sex is a social construct#social constructionism#degendering#feminism#third sexing#transmisogyny#this is low effort by the way#like at least try to take an approach that might cause me to think a little#instead of saying that my loving wife who seals my weekly injections with a kiss secretly hates me
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I think we need to start reframing abortion as the right not to do something rather than the right to do something - because it's entire purpose is to return someone's body to a neutral state. Abortion is the right to not be pregnant when you don't want to/can't. It's the right to not have your body changed or used in a way you don't want it to be. It's literally the right to return to normalcy. Obviously nothing wrong with choosing to frame it as a choice, but I think this would help normalize it.
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