#fine arts people look down on me for not studying Real art -> society looks down on me for studying art At All in the first place

[steinbit]

tf when u realize you've basically fucked yourself over by choosing a BA degree that makes it so that neither society as a whole NOR the art community itself will respect you... .

[cinnamonest]

Head empty no thoughts just daydreaming about incel scara with groupmate/project member!reader

Imagine them sitting together in a library. They need to be close to share one screen and go over everything while one or the other does some explaining. And scara is just DISGUSTED by her very clearly, very obviously whorish behavior aka her casually jutting her chest, pouting/biting her lips, getting close to him when she needs to lean, when she bends over away from or next to him, he can see her cleavage if he tries hard enough, or see her skirt ride or her lower back getting exposed and if he moves juuuuust a bit closer he can touch her boobs-

Just outright disgraceful and shameless behavior typical of the female 😤 and no, that's not his boner wdym. And reader is just earnestly trying to understand what he's trying to say because he seems so indifferent and almost looks as if dislikes her.

Ahhh it must be because he's annoyed, this isn't her subject after all. In which case, ALTERNATIVELY- consider CS major scara with darling in some non-STEM field passively calling her dumb and insulting her intelligence whenever they come to "study" because: what? She doesn't know how to install Windows? Ha

Only reason she has a decent gpa is because you don't actually need brains or talent for those art "subjects" and they are more suited to females anyway because it's not like they contribute much to society or are very intelligent, unlike him-

I remember my university had these little rooms in their library that were basically tiny study rooms with a couch and chairs, but like no windows, and were advertised as two-way soundproof to help you study and let me tell you. Y’all. People had sex in those. A lot. It happened a lot.

But the thing is they had no tables with desk-type chairs, only like coffee tables and lounge chairs, so if you wanted to work with someone else on something you kinda had to use the sofa which could be very awkward. Anyway

Oh he's absolutely a STEM snob that looks down on humanities majors. They’re for people with no real skills, who lack the ability to do more important stuff… or God forbid, you're a fine arts major of some kind. Very typical girl stuff, they waste money on useless degrees because they insist on having equally useless jobs. You’re probably going to be a future HR person, getting random guys fired for harmless comments and such.

So he always talks to you in such a condescending way, as if the things he’s explaining are so very obvious or simple that it’s a chore to explain it to you. You need to be aware of how intellectually inferior you are.

Also he’s one of those boys for whom “disgusted” is really just turned on, he lacks the ability to distinguish it — like it’s arousing, but it’s irritating that it’s arousing because he can’t do anything about it, so he identifies that feeling as disgust when it’s really just unbearable levels of sexual frustration compounded with bitterness. Ugh.

And as for you, it has to be intentional. You know what you're doing. It's on purpose. You just think it's funny or amusing to torment someone who can't do anything about it. In a fair world, you'd pay for your actions somehow.

And maybe you're even getting good grades in exchange for "favors." That makes sense, it's the only way that explains how you remain enrolled really. Maybe you'll eventually do the same for him, try to get him to do work for you in exchange for something. Not that that would work, he would never ever enable you like that, and definitely has the self-control necessary to reject you.

There’s something so wrong with how things are, that this situation can even arise, that you’re allowed to waste so much money and time on your dumb degree when you have better uses. He’ll probably go home and make some long vent post to some niche corner of the internet about the woes of having to tolerate this situation. Tragic.

[angelofthemornings]

Very annoyed that my back is bad. I am seeing a doctor today and hopefully they'll schedule the surgery I need, because I just got Pokemon Go and I want all the Pokemon. I'm not going to take my back for granted this time if it gets fixed, I'll run everywhere like I'm in a video game. Sometimes I'll even hop.

Well, I'm lucky that I don't have any pain while sitting, so I can use my sister's exercise bike. When I have a little money I will renew my YMCA membership so I can swim as well, that doesn't hurt my back either. As it is, I am greatly annoyed that I can't even stand up long enough to get all my morning pills out of my bottles without my back starting to hurt. Standing is forbidden, God saw my sins and said crawl on your belly like a snake. *complain complain*

I talked about this before, but I decided for good to switch my major again to Art. (If I feel adventurous partway into the degree I will apply for the Fine Arts program, but if I'm doing my webcomic on top of that it may be too much work.) I can't work a real job, but art does not appear to be a problem for me. Especially if I only have to do it a few hours a day.

There's a metalsmithing concentration and I might be able to make valuable things to supplement my disability income. I don't need to make a living, just a few hundred a month to keep my head above water. I can probably sell scrimshaw and jewelry and get that much and it will give me something to do with my hands. And it'll give me an excuse to do more blacksmithing, maybe, if my back gets fixed. (Hard to do any blacksmithing seated.) I can do things like make knives and scrim bone handles, the men will like that. As for the women, I think it would be interesting to incorporate scrimshaw cabochons into jewelry. Need to learn metalsmithing for that. And I have some nice ideas for jewelry in general, I thought about studying to become a jeweler when I was much younger and wandered into a fancy jewelry shop in Hawaii more or less by mistake, the place stuck in my mind, but I couldn't figure out how exactly you became one. But I can still remember the designs I came up with even that long ago. (They weren't very good, I have better ideas now.) This is a little funny for someone who doesn't really wear jewelry (aside from a gold earring and my pufferfish nest sigil, which I wear as a totem to improve my art), but I like looking at it.

There are not many people selling scrimshaw right now and that worries me, the art form shouldn't disappear. If I manage to continue the art of scrimshaw, I'll be contributing to society and won't feel bad about being on disability, especially if I do something like get an apprenticeship with someone and learn very properly. Until then I should make a study of it on my own. I can already scrim a little just out of personal interest, so I know I can do it and I can even freehand fairly well, but there are many techniques I don't know and I am not in any position to start selling anything yet. This year I made some scrimshaw gifts for people because I was being nagged about it, but that's it.

I worry about this already because if it turns out I *can* work then art is a very risky degree, but it's better than just being on SSI alone. They call it Supplemental Security Income because they want you to work on it, and my options there would be limited if I can't stand up longer than twenty seconds without wanting to tear out my spine. And if my back gets fixed my options would go from limited to highly unpleasant. (If my back *doesn't* get fixed, well, they will certainly let me keep my disability and I can even scrim lying down if I want to.) (Sort of. You have to have light at the right angle so you can see what the hell you are doing and lying down is not conductive to that. It's fun to scrim blind and see what you get just as a personal challenge, but. It does look like shit.)

[aestheno]

I'm currently sat in Gail's on Great Portland Street, having paid £7.20 for a mozzarella focaccia that was unequivocally not worth £7.20, purely for the privilege of having somewhere indoors to sit in Central London. Anywhere just off Regent's Street feels like an insight into the life I could have lived had I not dropped out of my internship at JP Morgan: received pronunciation accents and trench coats and fine art seen through the residential windows of Wigmore Street. People who actually have the means to spend £7.20 on a subpar sandwich every day.

These kinds of moments so easily make me doubt what I'm doing. Am I meant to be a creative? Is making music a childish, frivolous pursuit? The structure of a corporate job looks inviting when I'm feeling lost in a time where I'm spinning my wheels. Especially when I know I'd instantly have competition to sink my teeth into. The thing is, if I had done that, there's no way I'd have gotten seven years in and not gone crazy from lack of creative fulfilment. Overall, my creative and my analytical parts of my brain are inherently at war with one another.

I left the house today because I felt like I was going crazy. The feeling of entrapment and boredom in my own home is so overwhelming. I don't have to interact with the wider world if my day doesn't demand it. Being in Central and seeing society in motion is like a tidal volume's worth of oxygen. Brick and mortar lives and a bustle of activity between them. I don't know what the man and woman sat outside the cafe across the street are doing, but I like that they're there. There's an inspiring aura walking past university buildings, the Royal Ballet School, the BBC, etc. - perhaps the issue isn't that the arts are too fluffy; it's that I crave a structure within which to improve. And almost certainly one that resides outside my house.

The path I've chosen to take in life is very independent, and that was always going to be the case. But I miss guidance and academia. I miss training and studying. I never trained in the arts, either. I abandoned ship on my theoretical physics Master's and dived headfirst into a career in performance. There's a fantasy every time I pass down leafy Gower Street and think of the drama and dance students in there, ruthlessly training for the performances of tomorrow. It gets scratched somewhat when I watch the vlogs of people in those worlds, but sometimes all that does is make me ache for the higher education experience I never had thanks to illness, hospital, heartbreak, and laziness.

The story I've had is interesting, unique, impressive, and scrappy. But no one ever knows how close life is to drifting off the rails but you. No one knows how much is a fluke but you. And I am fortunate to have been afforded the chance to get those flukes by a privileged financial starting point, but sometimes I feel like I've squandered that privilege, by not being good enough, talented enough, pretty enough, stand-out enough. So maybe I should have just stuck to banking.

I want to be art and I want people to care. But my life is fractured for structure, and since moving out of a full time broadcasting position, I struggle to know how to get people's attention. What makes them want to watch or listen to me? How do I deal with the feeling of reduced relevance when I'm competing against millions in a very democratised landscape. How do I unleash my potential when I feel limited in my opportunities to grow, learn and train? Ultimately those things aren't a 100% hinderance, but it feels like life is just that much less fulfilling as a result.

I know my potential is good, my environment and circumstances just frustrate me. I need variety in my surroundings. Sprinkles of real world, and politics, and business, and academia; a lunch amongst 9-5ers pursuing different routes, a walk on cafe-strewn side streets, angry cyclists and passer-bys. Things need to feel more storylike, but stories only matter when context is given. Currently mine exists in my house. There is no supporting cast except through my PC screen. And I really just want to feel like a real person again.

[transexualpirate]

i don't know how to tell you that culture and society does indeed affect a person's sexual preferences (not orientation, preferences, as in kink and turn ons) and you know what? if you wanna argue that that in itself is bad, that sexual development in modern society isn't happening as it should, i think maybe you might even have a point. i dunno, id have to do a few more researches, but it seems reasonable. i just don't get why when it's an cis woman affected by this societal structure and getting turned on by hyperfeminiry they're a victim and when it's a trans woman they're the evildoers. but other than that, you might even have a point.

it's just that that's not the discussion we're having. you think kink is a symptom of a broken society? interesting. but that's a whole other discussion. what im saying here is that a specific kink seems to be fine (or, at least, not demonized) when it's cis people doing it, but when trans people do it, it's evil and gross, even if it comes from the same societal structure.

anyways. this has gone on too far so im gonna stop replying soon, so maybe don't bother answering this but it's up to you really. last thing ill say is that "talk to your normie friends" is such a crazy thing to say to someone you don't even know. my country's culture is hypersexualized, ive always thought so. especially in the state i come from - there's some sort of (i dont know the word, culto a? idk how to translate that so things may get lost in translation here but you get the point) worshipping of sexuality in the state ive come from that's present in the typical dances, the songs, all forms of art. my friends from my home state all know about kink, i promise you. they're not all interested, they mostly don't care, honestly, but if i started a conversation with them to randomly bring up kink they'd just be weirded out at the randomness of it. some of them would be interested, but still. and my boss - i work at a museum. im a psychology student and my boss has a part time job as a psychology teacher in another college. my coworkers are almost all history students. they're all "freaks", as you'd say. we're out here, dude. we live real lives, we have jobs and we study and we eat and work out and travel and we like kinky porn sometimes. we get together after our boss asked us to come in on sunday and we drink and eat and put on make up, all of us, boys, girls, enbies, amabs and afabs, we do our nails and we watch horror films and we eat popcorn and we talk about kink and gender. i remember one specific time in one of those get togethers were my friend who's a cis girl begged me and this other cis guy to let her do our make up, and we let her, and we both thought we looked so pretty afterwards that we left early to go make out. i felt so pretty, and he was so beautiful, and it was great. no one was grossed out or disgusted. we did it in our own time with our own privacy and we enjoyed ourselves.

our "normie" friends could not care less, honestly. and i love them for it. i wont shove anything down their throats but i wont actively hide it either, and they respect my privacy and my bodily autonomy. and that's, if you ask me, exactly how it should be. but hey maybe that's just me.

aaannnnyyyways. this discussion isn't even about kink, so nothing of what i said just now is actually relevant. i just thought it was a cool little fun fact to throw in.

we should take autogynephilia back from transphobes actually. it's totally fine to be aroused when you feel desirable and it's totally normal to feel desirable when you're experiencing gender euphoria. go outside and touch some grass

[sumsebien]

by design pt.2 // Prince Friedrich

series masterlist

summary: one room and two very confused individuals.

word count: 3.6k

warnings: none

a/n: don’t ask me how. i don’t know either :) (edited: i added another scene yall)

Friedrich stood awkwardly next to the coffee table, looking out the window while you sat on the couch all the way across the room from him. A queen-sized bed splitting the space into his side and yours that none of you were willing to cross.

“The weather-“ Friedrich began, taking a quick peek outside, “-is lovely, don’t you think?”

“It really is.” You were just going to say that.

It had been 15 minutes and that was the first thing you had said to each other after the doors were closed. Both of you were longing for lunch time to arrive for an escape, any escape from this tragic situation you felt developing.

“I-“

“I-“

“Oh, you were saying?” he asked.

“No, nothing. You?”

“I was just-I think I’ll head out for a minute. Check on where the rest of the luggage is.”

It was confirmed. He absolutely despised your guts. That was not his job. A Prince never had to check on anything. If he wanted to stay, there was nothing that could stop him. Not even some stupid luggage. He must be leaving because he didn’t want to stay in your company any longer.

“Oh, of course.”

Friedrich gave you a small smile, walking towards the door with the least amount of elegance anyone had ever seen. His legs didn’t even feel like they were even his. There went all of his posture and diplomatic training.

As the Prince, he was forced to sit in numerous lessons on the art of making conversation and had to put it into practice almost immediately at dinner with his father. At Cambridge, he spent three years studying international relations, different societies and their interactions.

But somehow, the weather was the first thing he talked about. It was such a poor attempt that he was absolutely certain you found him dull. Even he thought it was dull.

And the walk? He could not explain where that came from. He was a giraffe who suffered an identity crisis and had no awareness of its legs.

There was no way in hell he was going to make you suffer through this the entire day. He thought as he asked his guards to find Heinrich. He was going to fix this.

Lunch had passed and soon came time for dinner.

You sat and watched the plate of beans, stale bread and soup go cold. It wasn’t because you were a picky eater by any means or that you held some sort of contempt for people less fortunate than yourself. It was none of that. It was the voice inside your head, feeding you paranoia every second that passed.

He would probably walk than sit on the same train as you. Remember his face? And the small talk that he kept having to make? Probably did not think you were worth any real conversation.

You stood up abruptly and then sat down again, the skirt of your dress rustling with your movement. You huffed, staring out the window with no intention of admiring the landscape. You just needed something else to think about. But there was simply nothing other than this.

Just as you were about to call your maids in to clear away the food, you heard a knock on the door. Careful this time, you stood up and told whoever on the other side to come in.

It was Friedrich. You scanned his expression with caution, hesitantly. He wore a gleeful grin on his face, his eyes gleaming. The happiest you had seen him. But it was fleeting, quickly wiped off when he saw your face. Were you that terrible?

He took a glance at the neglected tray and then back up at you. “Was the food not good?”

“Oh, I just wasn’t hungry.”

“Your lady’s maids are just outside. Would you like anything? Fruits?”

You shook your head. Through the gap he left, you could see Lea and Ilse’s figures. You walked past him to the doors, calling them in.

Once they saw your face, they immediately rushed into the room, curtsied to the both of you and took the tray away. You just stood next to the door and gazed aimlessly at the floors. Friedrich who was impressed turned to you with a remark that completely missed you.

“Yes?” you asked again.

“Nevermind that,” he smiled, “I have found a solution!”

“What?”

“A solution to our problem,” he gestured between the two of you. A glimmer of hope flashed in front of your eyes, so close that if you had reached out your hand you would have caught it. Your heartbeat hastened, your fingers clenching around themselves.

“I have rented out a compartment for myself. It should work perfectly well! You can have this room!”

Whatever else he said blew away. You heard none of it.

You could still see perfectly clearly though. A smile plastered on his face, his lips moving so fast you could not make out what he was saying even if you tried. He seemed so cheerful, so satisfied with himself that he had dealt with this, with you.

You blinked at him, your arms going limp at your side. Were you so despisable? That he had to leave the entire day just to figure out how to get away from you?

But where is the surprise? Even your own parents struggled to love you. All your life you had to live everyday knowing you were undeserving. Undeserving of your father’s pride from the moment you came into the world a girl. Undeserving of your mother’s affection for not being foolish enough. And undeserving of your betrothal’s tolerance. Not likable enough. Not pretty enough. Not Daphne or even Cressida.

“Y/N?”

His voice brought you back. You quickly ducked your head, rubbing away the tears that were gathering at the rim of your eyes. “Yes. Thank you.”

He paused, tilting his head to try and match your faze. “Is something wrong? Did I offend you?”

You waved him off, turning the corners of your lips upward in a show of pretend. “Not at all.”

“You’re crying.”

You sniffed. “Allergies. I apologize.”

You opened the door, “I believe your compartment awaits you. I will be completely fine, I promise.”

He walked over to the door, prompting you to take a step back and clicked it shut before you. “No,” he said, “there is something wrong. It’s my fault, isn’t it? You can tell me. I won’t be offended.”

You walked away from him, your back to him. “There is nothing wrong. There is nothing else I can say.”

“Y/N. I know you don’t trust me. But we are to be husband and wife-“

You spun around, all of your control gone. “Then why won’t you treat me so?”

Friedrich stared at you, unblinking.

“I know I am not who you expected. I am not who anyone expected,” you laughed bitterly, flicking your eyes up towards the ceiling to blink back the tears. “That much I know very well.”

“Y/N-“

You stopped him with the shake of your head. “But you must know that it is not my choice either. You don’t want to be in the same room as me yet you won’t let me leave.” Your fingers had been gripping on the fabric of your skirt. So tightly that it hurt when you yanked them away, throwing them in the air. “What must I do then? Disappear?”

“Y/N. Why do you think I did that?”

You sighed in exasperation. “You despise me!”

When your lungs were gasping for breath was when you knew you were done. Your breaths became deeper, easing the burning in your lungs but not the burning you felt in your heart. You took your time to watch him, really observe. His lips were pressed into a line as he watched you with pained eyes. Your words had slashed him but you did not know that. You did not think he would care.

Finally, he spoke, his voice barely louder than a summer breeze and calmer than a pond on a windless day. “I don’t despise you.”

“Y-you don’t...?”

He shook his head. “I got us separate rooms and I am giving you your space and your freedom because you clearly did not have in England.”

“I-“

“I didn’t have any freedom growing up either. People have a lot of input in my life. I know what it feels like to be an outsider in my own body, to want to run away and be myself. I may not have had it as bad as you but I still understand. And I am trying to give you your freedom.”

You stumbled onto the chair behind you and sat down. Friedrich sat across from you. The rounded coffee table was the only thing between you. He leaned against the arm, looking at you like he always did. But only now that you realized what exactly it was that he held in his gaze.

Sympathy.

“I am sorry if I made you feel like I despised you. Because that is not what I am trying to do.”

“No. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have lost control of myself like that. I obviously don’t know you enough to assume.”

An idea flashed in his eyes, he sat up, that excitement filling his blue eyes again. “How about we change that? I want to get to know you. And I will tell you whatever you want to know about me. Does that sound fair?”

“Fair.”

...

You were both painfully aware that there was only one bed. The both of you eyed it, wondering what you were supposed to do. It wasn’t as if any of you had any intention of doing anything other than talk. Right?

Well, you’d be lying if you said your mind wasn’t going somewhere else.

You didn’t know about him but you had been preparing yourself mentally for your wedding night ever since your mother gave you the talk. You just never thought that the first time you would share a bed with a man, your husband for that matter was to talk.

It was not that you were disappointed. You just did not know what to do. Somehow, this was more awkward than the ballet performance your father made you perform for his siblings and their children at Christmas. If there was ever a competition amongst the most humiliating instances in your life, that one would win, well, would have won.

“I will sit in the chair, you take the bed,” Friedrich decided.

It didn’t take a genius to see that the little wooden armchair was not going to be comfortable for him. Hell, you yourself had difficulty relaxing against the bumpy wooden backrest. He was essentially twice its height and had much more muscles than you. He simply would not fit.

“No, if anything, I’ll sit. It’ll be more comfortable for me.”

He quickly shut that idea down with the shake of the head. “No, I simply cannot allow that.”

“Why not?”

“Well for a start, I started this mess. You shouldn’t have to suffer the consequences-“

“I started it too!”

“You weren’t the one who placed a bet with my father, were you?”

“Bet?” What bet? He never told you about any bet?

Friedrich could see panic slowly rising in your eyes. He hadn’t meant to say it like that. It sounded as though this was all a game to him. You were probably thinking it was at that very moment.

“I,” he began, searching for the right words for a moment before he continued, “my father always wanted me to marry someone of his choice. It wasn’t ideal for me, I had had my freedom. I wasn’t going to give it all up. So I made a deal with him. If I ended up married at the end of the season, he would not be able to intervene.”

“But you weren’t married.”

He nodded.

Quietly gazing at the ground, you said nothing else and just sat down on the edge of the bed. Friedrich couldn’t see your eyes but he began to worry he had offended you.

Of course, he did. What was he thinking? He basically said marrying you was akin to being in a cell. He might as well have said that. What was the difference really?

Then, out of the blue, you apologized. An apology which felt wholly unnecessary. It sent him into a daze. “W-whatever are you apologizing for?” It was you who deserved an apology.

“I’m sorry,” you repeated, looking up, “about Daphne and about your father. I’m not sure I could have pulled myself together as well as you did at our wedding if I were you.”

Wordlessly, he sat down next to you, the both of you staring straight ahead. He didn’t think he handled it well at all. He just showed up. But then he decided against saying anything lest he ruined the conversation again.

After a little while, you turned to him with a question. “You loved her, did you?”

If you had asked him that question a couple of days ago, before he met you, he would have said yes immediately. He was very certain that he loved Daphne Bridgerton. But now that you were in the mix, he had other feelings to compare whatever he felt with Daphne to.

With Daphne, there was attraction. A lot of it. Perhaps so much that it had temporarily blinded him. There was also the pressure of the bet. Once he found someone he felt like he could love, he made the leap.

But something was amiss. There was always a concern that they wouldn’t quite connect on a deeper level. He knew that if he were to be having this conversation with Daphne instead of you, he wouldn’t have shared so much about his relationship with his father.

Yet, with you, he just knew you would understand.

“Did you love Simon?”

You shook your head, your eyes on your hands. “No, I didn’t. Not in the way I wanted to. I barely knew him. My parents did though. They were pushing me towards him when you and Daphne began to court.”

“And if they had asked you to marry him, would you have?”

The corners of your lips curled up ever so slightly. “I don’t have any other choice.”

Ever since that day at the abbey, he had suspected that this arrangement was forced upon you as well. Having it confirmed by you, however, saddened him. For you, it was never a question of this or that. It was either you did as you were told or you suffered. At least, he had a shot. You never did.

“I have no say in anything. Not even with my own performance at family gatherings,” you added, swinging your legs back and forth gently. The small smile on your lips lightened the mood. It made him smile as well.

“Me neither. It was quite the embarrassment.”

“I once fell flat on my face at Christmas trying to perform a ballet.”

“You did?”

You nodded. “And then I laid there. Like a log of wood.”

“That is still not as embarrassing as the time I got an awful grade in arithmetic. And came lunch time, it was splattered all over the papers: ‘Prince Friedrich does not know how to count.’“

You tried to hold back a laugh. But you couldn’t, your entire body was shaking with laughter. As a last attempt to save some grace, your hand flew to cover your mouth. A habit you had formed over the years living with a strict mother. Well, you weren’t sure if there was any grace left but it certainly sounded less like a hyena and more like a hyena with a rope around its mouth.

Friedrich couldn’t care less though. Very quickly, he joined you, leaning forward with a chuckle.

You found yourself looking at him and thinking how nice his laugh sounded. It wasn’t obnoxiously loud like the ones that echoed all across the estate during one of your father’s dinner parties. It wasn’t too perfectly staged either. It was simply a delightful sound. A laugh anyone would be jealous of.

When the room returned to its familiar silence, his arms accidentally brushed yours. The unexpected graze was so brief that you didn’t think he even noticed. You, on the other hand, were very aware.

To mask your increasingly reddening cheeks and clammy hands, you opted to carry on with the conversation. “I guess gossip papers truly are everywhere.”

“For an appetite so voracious, it is only fair. At Buckingham, everyone reads Lady Whistledown.”

You paused, shaking your head to yourself. “You read Lady Whistledown?”

“I must admit it is quite entertaining when it is not your name on the front page. You read it too, right?”

“Of course!” you grinned,” I am not allowed to but I find my ways. Who could dare dream of missing out on London’s latest?”

“So what are you allowed to read?”

“Nothing. Which is why I read everything I can get my hands on.”

You then continued to recount your late night adventures sneaking into the library. You seemed so proud that he couldn’t help but smile and nod along.

There was also that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he learned more and more about your upbringing. You seemed to know that the nonsensical rules your parents imposed on you were unusual too. But somehow, you had learned to accept it as nothing more than a fact of life. You never spoke of them or referred to them with spite. Certainly not had the same sour taste that Friedrich had on his tongue everytime he spoke about his father.

The Duke and Duchess of Clarence were damn lucky to have you as their daughter. They certainly did not deserve it though. He thought bitterly.

...

You and Friedrich ended up in bed, talking all night.

By the time dawn was on the horizon, you had both finished recounting your childhood tales, leaving nothing behind. In the end, the two of you found in this complicated arrangement so much more than either of you could bargain for. A confidant.

“Who is to say the betrothed can't be good friends?” Friedrich said, leaning against the headboard as he looked up at the ceiling.

You laughed. “Not us apparently.”

“Would you be able to promise me something?” He turned his head to look at you.

If there was one thing Friedrich learned after hours of conversation, it was that you were the best friend he had never had. And he was not going to let that go. Not even for his own feelings.

“Yes?”

“That we will remain friends even if we can’t love each other like we should.”

You grinned, sticking out your pinky. “Promise.”

...

Dear sister,

Everything is in order. All that is left to be done is for my ‘Diamond of the season’ to produce a male heir....

Bernadine closed the letter and stuffed it in her trunk of clothes at the faintest sounds of footsteps echoing in the hallway outside. Putting on the sweetest smile, Bernadine made sure she was the first thing he saw coming into the room.

“Good evening, your Majesty. How was hunting?”

The King entered the room swiftly, slamming the doors behind it. She did not jump, immediately following him and helping him with his cloak.

“Didn’t catch anything,” he said, shaking off his muddy boots onto the floors. “The weather. Too gloomy and rainy. Scared off the deers.”

Bernadine hung the fur cloak up. While the King disappeared into the bathroom, she quickly closed the blinds, of course not missing the bright blue sky and the royal garden bathing in sunlight.

“Yes, the weather has been absolutely terrible these past few days.”

When he came out of the bathroom, she made sure to cling onto his side, steering him towards the desk. “Are you feeling better, my love?”

“Much. Made sure the train stayed right here before I left. Good luck travelling with the lower-class, son.”

The King began to cackle uncontrollably at that, even had to sit down at one point. And Bernadine made sure that he sat right before the stack of paperwork sent for him this morning.

“That is a genius idea!”

“I know it was. What is this?”

“This is everything that needed to be signed while you were gone.”

The King cleared his voice, taking his quill and began to scribble his name on every page. Even the one that had nothing to do there along with the more important national matters.

A contract.

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let me know if you’d like to be tagged

[alj4890]

All Through The Night

A Choices: The Royal Romance Dark AU fanfiction. 

A/N Other than my few Bloodbound shorts, I’ve never written anything with supernatural overtones before. After receiving requests to see Liam and Riley’s story if he was a vampire, this storyline was born. Since it is set in one of my favorite books from Pixelberry, I had to include as many of the main and supporting characters as I could. The following chapters will explain more where they and what our main characters are. Not going to lie, I am very anxious to step out of my comfort zone for this, but I’m also super excited to see how it goes. Along with The Royal Romance, I will be referencing and altering both The Crown and The Flame and The Royal Masquerade.

@gkittylove99​​ @krsnlove​ @kingliam2019​ @texaskitten30​ @yourmajesty09​ @mom2000aggie​ @ofpixelsandscribbles​ @twinkleallnight​ @lodberg​ @twinkleallnight​ @amandablink​ @neotericthemis​  @mm2305​ @sfb123​ @iufilms​​ ​ ​

Masterlist

Prologue

Once upon a time...

"Father!" Zenobia rushed down the stairwell. "Kenna is at the gates!"

King Luthor's frown deepened as he studied the places his troops had been destroyed. His hope to unite the five kingdoms and wipe off the abomination was for naught.

Kenna would not stop until he and his surviving offspring's heads were on pikes.

...until their blood filled the crystal goblets of the Dark Queen.

"What do we do?" His son, Diavolos, asked.

Luthor knew it was only himself Kenna wanted. After he had killed her mother, hoping to stop the monsters once and for all, Kenna would have her revenge.

If only he had known that she was a vampire...just like her mother.

"Listen carefully." His voice trembled at this possibly being the last time he was able to speak to his son and daughter. "A Nevarkis must always be ready to fight the creatures that prey on the weak and vulnerable."

"But..." Zenobia sniffed. "How? How can we possibly kill the unkillable?"

"She can be killed just like her mother before her." Luthor snapped. "Sunlight. A dagger to the heart. Cutting the head off." His features hardened with resolve. "Know that those are our true allies. Continue your training with daggers. Never stop being vigilant. Educate your children. And remember: where there's one vampire, many more lie in wait in the shadows."

Diavolos stepped forward and gripped his father's shoulder. "We will fight for you."

"No." Luthor corrected. "Fight for our people. The innocent. Fight for a chance to live without fear of monsters."

He cleared his throat. "If I should die--"

"Don't say that!" Zenobia screeched. "We'll be--"

"Kenna is coming for me." Luthor interrupted. "I know I must face the consequences of my actions."

"But--" Divalos lowered his head. "What are we to do?"

"Kill her." Luthor ordered. "Let your emotion be your strength." He took their hands. "And remember that a vampire is nature's evil incarnate. They will do whatever they want and kill anyone who they think is in their way." His voice turned to pleading. "Kill Kenna before she has a chance to kill you."

Zenobia nodded in a jerky manner. Diavolos swallowed with tears in his eyes.

"Good. Now prepare yourselves." Luthor pulled his sword from its sheath. "The devil herself is here."

*****************

Two years later...

Kenna cuddled her infant son, humming a lullaby.

Dom came in, a soft smile gracing his lips at the sight of his family.

"How are we this evening?" He asked, placing a kiss first on her lips then one on his son's forehead.

"A little fussy." Kenna explained. "But otherwise perfect."

"Good." Dom stretched then went to stoke the fire. "I will be going out later tonight."

Kenna's head jerked up. "Why? Are there more rumors?"

He nodded, a determined frown formed on his lips. "The Nevarkis brats refuse to let us live in peace." He moved to stand before the window that looked out toward the kingdom he had once lived in.

High in the mountains, the couple and those like them had found sanctuary. They built a kingdom, one of darkness and shadow that allowed them to live freely. He and Kenna were crowned the rulers, chosen by their people...those that were cursed as monsters.

"Si and I will be standing guard." He explained. "I will not risk you or our child."

"Dom..." Kenna pulled him close, capturing his lips in a long tender kiss. "This must end. I was foolish to let my need for revenge take over." Tears sparkled in her eyes. "Luthor might have left us alone if I had given him a chance."

Dom's face contorted into furious hatred. "A Nevarkis can never be trusted!" He gripped her waist, hands heating as he lost his temper. "He would have plunged a dagger into your heart the first chance he had."

"Dom." She said softly when he singed her clothes.

He wrenched his hands from her with a grimace. "I didn't burn you, did I?"

She shook her head. "I'm fine." She tried to lighten the mood. "Just a little overheated."

He took deep breaths to get himself under control. "Stay here where it is safe." His eyes searched hers. "Have you fed recently?"

"No, but I should be fine until you return." Kenna lifted a bottle with blood for their son. "I can call on one of the servants to help me if I need to."

"Promise me you won't go outside." He pleaded.

"Only if you promise to come back to me." She responded.

His lips quirked in that cocky smile she has always adored.

"Always, my queen." He kissed her once more, then slipped out the door to search out their enemies.

******************

Present Day New York...

"Cordonia...land of both beauty and mystery." Riley wrinkled her nose. "Boring."

"No, it isn't." Hana argued. "I think that is the perfect beginning."

"Look at the comments from our last video." Riley swiveled her laptop so her friend could see. "People love our walkthroughs and all but hate my narration."

"Well..." Hana's brow furrowed. "Maybe we should try to add more to it than just narration." She pulled out some sketches. "We could add some animation of the history before showing our footage of the country."

"That might work." Riley mumbled, tapping her pen against her notebook.

The two set to work planning their next project.

After years of trying, they had finally achieved their dream of traveling for a living. The two college friends had taken every class they could on how to make their hopes into a reality. With Riley's love of history and business and Hana's talent with art and fashion, the pair had created a successful travel channel that showcased rarely visited countries and cities around the world.

Hana took care of all the shopping and dining found at their chosen destinations. Her "day trips" were hailed as must see for anyone planning a vacation. Riley took over for what could be found at night. Myths and legends blended in with what could be discovered once the sun set. A place's nightlife was thoroughly researched and reached a wide variety of their audience, causing many to plan a vacation just on her recommendations alone.

"Did your mom suggest where we should go first?" Riley asked, after skimming the same few articles about the elusive country.

"Not really." Hana hedged.

Riley glanced up. "Is she giving you a hard time again?"

"Yes." Hana slumped in her chair. "She told me to call when I was done playing tour guide."

"Geez." Riley grumbled. "Does she not realize that we have created a legit business?"

"Ladies shouldn't be involved in anything that does not pertain to their husband and family." Hana quoted. "I was supposed to have my debut to Cordonian society last year." Angry tears filled her eyes. "She still hasn't forgiven me for missing out on the Masquerade Ball."

Riley wrapped her in a comforting hug. "I'm sorry."

Hana patted her back. "Don't be. I finally feel like I can accomplish anything."

"That's because you can." Riley sat back with a grin. "Especially with planning out what we should focus on first."

Hana giggled as she went to search out some of her old books she had inherited from her grandparents. "These might help you with your part."

Riley's eyebrows lifted over the titles. "The Crown, the Flame, and The Night Queen."

"That is the earliest recorded story of vampires and monsters in Cordonia." Hana explained. "Queen Kenna Rhys and King Luthor Nevarkis both fought over uniting the kingdoms that make up Cordonia." She shook her head in disbelief. "There is a legend that Queen Kenna was a vampire that married a man who could transform into a dragon."

"For real?" Riley eagerly opened the book. "What happened?"

"Luthor died." Hana reached for another history book. "Some say it was a sword fight while others say she ripped his throat out with her fangs."

"Whoa. Either way, she sounds pretty epic."

"His son got revenge though." Hana flipped to another chapter. "He sneaked in one day and supposedly dragged Kenna into the sunlight. Before her husband could save her, she burned to ash."

"Brutal." Riley shivered. "What did the dragon do?"

Hana shrugged. "Supposedly he left with their child to protect him." She pointed at some drawings rendered from the Dark Ages. "Kenna's son came back to extract revenge. He eliminated one entire side of the Nevarkis family tree."

"And let me guess," Riley picked up another book. "The remaining Nevarkis's struck back?"

"It's supposedly been a feud for centuries between the Nevarkis and the Rhys' families." Hana pulled up an image on her phone. "Though one is currently ruling Cordonia."

Riley studied the image. "Queen Olivia Nevarkis. Looks like the Rhys lost the throne."

Hana shrugged. "There's a myth that they still rule Cordonia from the shadows."

"Mythical royal vampires, huh?" Riley laughed at the thought. "I hope I bump into one just so I can figure out who's really in charge."

Hana giggled at the thought. "You would be the only person to ask a logical, government question instead of the usual, whoa you're a real live vampire!"

Riley threw a pillow at her. "Hey! I can be calm and collected when faced with the unknown."

Hana threw the pillow back. "Tell that to the supposed haunted house we visited on our last trip." She broke out into laughter with Riley's defense that squeaking doors were the true villains. "On that note, I'm going to start packing. Our flight leaves first thing in the morning."

"I'll be ready." Riley promised.

Once alone, she flipped to a more current timeline of the supposed Dark Kingdom.

King Constantine Rhys the Third rules over what is his rightful kingdom. Rumors swirl that he is simply biding his time until he can eliminate the usurper, Queen Olivia Nevarkis, First of Her Name. The people know that one day, a Rhys will sit upon the throne, uniting the Dark Kingdom and Cordonia once and for all.

****************

Cordonia's Royal Palace, 2 a.m.

"Heeeerah! Olivia threw her daggers as hard as she could while doing a roundhouse kick.

The blades struck into the chest, head, and groin of the makeshift dummy.

She brushed the few strands of red hair that had escaped her hair clip out of her eyes. With a great deal of scrutiny, she studied her dagger placement.

"The one to the head needs to go deeper."

She spun around with a start at that all too familiar voice.

"You're late." She folded her arms and tapped her foot.

Liam rubbed the back of his neck. "Sorry. Had to stop off for a quick bite."

Olivia rolled her eyes. "That's not funny."

"Not that kind of bite." He teased, holding up a styrofoam box.

"Oh." She blinked in surprise. "I forget that you enjoy normal food too."

He chuckled at that. "There are certain foods that I don't think any man could ever give up."

Olivia decided to ignore that as she wiped the sweat from her face and neck. "Now that you're here, let's get the formalities over with."

"Very well." Liam gestured toward her. "You may go first."

She sat down on a bench lining one side of the palace gym. She motioned for him to join her.

"Not you!" She hissed when she saw his all too familiar guard.

Drake Walker bristled at her tone. His brown eyes clashed with her green.

"Give us a moment, please." Liam asked him.

"Don't let your guard down." Drake warned. "Remember, she's a Nevarkis."

Olivia tensed. "Perhaps you should remember what happened the last time you said something like that."

She quirked one eyebrow at the man and felt a sense of glee when he winced in memory.

His hand automatically drifted to his side where one of her daggers had once struck true.

With a quick bow to Liam, Drake stepped back out into the hallway.

Liam shook his head. "Are you two ever going to get along?"

"Stop talking stupid." Olivia snapped. "Now then, as you know...I must have my revenge."

"I know." Liam folded his arms and leaned casually against a column.

She eyed him for any sign of hatred.

It drove her crazy how unvampiric he could be.

He seemed almost human.

He seemed...kind.

A vampire is nature's evil incarnate. You can never trust a Rhys.

Those words had been drummed into her skull by her parents and then her aunt after their deaths by Constantine's hand.

And yet...Liam had done the unthinkable.

He had actually been a friend to Olivia.

*************

The night after her parents' funeral, five year old Olivia had been sitting alone before the fireplace, weeping over them.

Her aunt had left her to deal with her own grief and to plan the next attack upon Constantine.

As she searched for a tissue, Olivia jumped back with a shriek at the little blonde haired boy that held the Kleenex box.

His eyes were filled with unshed tears as he handed her a tissue.

"Who are you?" She asked, remembering that a Nevarkis must always be brave.

"I'm Liam." He explained. "I wanted to...I wanted to tell you I'm sorry about your parents." He sniffed and took a tissue for himself. "My mom died too."

Olivia blinked and took a cautious step forward. "Are you...are you a vampire?!"

He nodded.

She whipped out the dagger her mother had given her and rushed at him.

Liam moved faster than she could comprehend, gently keeping her hand above her head.

"Let go of me, monster!" She ordered. "You're why I'm all alone!"

"I didn't do anything." He told her, anguish taking over his handsome features. "I don't want to hurt you or anyone."

"Liar!" She snapped. "That's what you do. Lie and kill." Her tears ran faster down her cheeks. "And now you'll kill me."

"I won't." He promised. "I swear I won't hurt you." He ignored his own tears trickling down his cheeks. His blue eyes burned with resolve. "My mother made me promise never to hurt a human."

Olivia shook her head. It had to be lies. Isn't that what vampires and monsters do? Lull you into letting your guard down so that they could have an easy kill.

"Your father will pay for what he did." She said, hoping to see his true, evil nature. "He must die!"

"I know." Liam slowly released her and took a step back.

Olivia watched in surprise as he sat down before her fireplace and pulled out a silk blue ribbon from his pocket.

He motioned for her to join him.

She slowly lowered herself down, dagger poised in her little fist in case he made a move.

"May I have your hand, please?" He asked.

He patiently waited on her to decide whether or not to give it to him.

She tentatively placed her hand in his.

His lips turned up into a relieved smile as he wrapped the ribbon over their joined hands.

"What are you doing?" She asked, lowering her dagger.

"Making a bond." He explained. "I, Liam Rhys, Crown Prince of the Dark Kingdom, promise to never seek out revenge and to end all vendettas against the Nevarkis family." His blue eyes held her green. "Just as my mother, Queen Eleanor wanted me to."

Oliva's lips parted. "You mean it?"

"I do." Liam's voice held a great deal of sincerity. "I would rather walk into the sun than not do as she asked."

"Oh." Olivia sniffed. She could understand that kind of devotion.

"Do you," Liam's cheeks colored. "Do you think we can be allies?"

"A Nevarkis will never be friends with a monster." She repeated the rhetoric that she knew by heart.

"But," Liam's shoulders slumped. "We're not all bad."

"All monsters are bad at heart."

"I'm not." He pouted. "I don't want to be."

"You're so weird." She muttered.

"Am not." Liam grumbled. "I hope I'm not."

Olivia looked down at their hands still bound together. "I guess since you promised something, I should too."

He didn't bother to hide his surprise.

She stuck her tongue out at him. "I, Olivia Nevarkis, The Crown Princess of Cordonia, swear that after I kill Constantine Rhys, I will lay down my weapons." Her brow furrowed. "I'll pick them back up though if you or any other monster tries anything."

Liam's smile grew. Before she could react, he tugged her into a quick hug.

"Now we can be friends!" He cheered.

"Friends?" She shook her head. "I'm a Nevarkis and you're a Rhys. We can't be friends."

"We will be." He vowed, jumping to his feet. "I have to go before Father finds out I've sneaked out. I'll try to come back in a few nights."

Olivia didn't have a chance to tell him whether or not she wanted him to. In the blink of an eye, he had jumped from her balcony and was already out the palace gates.

*****************

That had been the beginning of Liam's visits. Through the years, he had remained true to his promise. He did all he could to befriend her and never tried to sway her from seeking vengeance.

Olivia had once asked him how he could take her threat against his father so easily.

He had merely shrugged, explaining that he knew it was the way of things. His father had killed both her parents, while he had only lost one. He hoped she didn't since he did not wish to see his father or her dead.

Olivia had then told him again how weird he was, bringing another smile to his lips.

And now here he was again, calmly taking her promised vengeance well.

"So what business brings you here tonight?" She asked.

"Father thinks it is time I chose a wife." Liam responded. "I thought you should know that I will be spending more time in your kingdom to find one."

Olivia shot up off the bench. "What? But you promised to never hurt a human!"

"And I will keep true to that." He explained.

"But..." Olivia's brow furrowed. "You'll turn her into a vampire."

"Only if she wishes it." Liam explained. "I won't force her to make such a decision."

"I see." She began to pace while thinking. "You'll have vampire children."

"Only if she's a vampire." He reminded her. "Remember my brother."

Olivia paused. She had forgotten about Leo Rhys, The Great Disappointment of the Dark Kingdom. His mother had begged Constantine not to turn her. It had never been asked before, and in his mercy he had agreed. That was when they all discovered that a monster and a human could only produce a human child. In order for the heir to the Dark Kingdom to be a vampire, both parents had to be the same being.

"And you'll be fine having human children?" She asked. "If you're chosen bride refuses the Vampire's Kiss?"

"Of course." He responded.

"Lord, you're so weird." She muttered.

His smirk flashed. "Let's hope the woman I choose doesn't think so."

"Are there no women in your kingdom you can choose from?" She asked.

"I've looked." He shook his head. "It's hard to explain, but if one doesn't have an arranged marriage, then we must search until we see the one meant for us."

"And you somehow got weirder." She brushed her hands down her pants and held one out to him. "Good luck, I suppose."

"Thank you." He grasped her hand and lifted it to his lips. "I'll keep you updated on my progress."

"There's no need."

"Of course there is." He winked at her on his way out. "We're friends."

Her lips parted to once again remind him that they couldn't be. For some reason, she decided not to say it.

Liam had somehow wormed his way into her life and had become the closest friend she had ever had.

********************

The Lee Residence, Shanghai, China...

Lorelei paled as she reread the report. 

It can’t be. Not Now!

Of all the times for this to happen, it would be when her stubborn, foolish daughter decided to visit. 

Given the nature of her relationship with Hana, she knew that there was no way she could convince her to postpone her trip to Cordonia. 

There was only one course of action left to take. She would have to call the one man who was capable of protecting her daughter. She would promise hiim anything as long as he kept Hana out of Liam’s clutches. As much as wanted her to give up this ridiculous hobby she called a job and settled down with the right sort of man, she would never put her in the path of becoming the next vampire queen. 

Setting down the packet of information from one of her informants, she checked to make certain no servant was out in the hallway and then searched for the needed phone number.

Taking a deep breath, she placed the call.

Her trepidation grew when he didn’t immediately answer.

"Hello."

"Lord Beaumont?" 

"Yes." She could hear a door closing in the background. "Who is this?"

"Lorelei Lee." She replied.

"Lady Lorelei." He responded with a recognition. "How can I help you?"

"My daughter and her friend have got it in their heads to come visit Cordonia." She began. "I'm not certain how long they intend to stay, but I was hoping that I could retain your services."

"For what exactly?" Lord Beaumont asked.

"Protection." She replied. "I have heard through certain channels that the dark prince is beginning to search for a bride." She took a deep breath. "We do NOT want our daughter anywhere near that vile creature."

"I understand." He replied. "I usually don't do personal security. With my brother, Bertrand, retired," he hesitated, "it is left up to me to help protect Cordonia's borders."

"My husband and I would be in your debt if you could watch over her in the evenings." Lorelei cajoled. "I've heard that your brother is planning on extending his vineyards. We would be more than happy to invest in the production and distribution of his sparkling wine. Perhaps even let it be the only sparkling wine we serve in our hotels."

"Send me her information and picture. Call her and tell her that since our family is an old friend of yours, that I've volunteered to show them around. Find out where she's staying and when she plans on arriving."

"Oh thank you, my lord. We--"

"I'll also need a contract prepared and signed for all that you offered." He added.

"Yes of course. I'll get everything to you at once." She promised.

Once he ended the call, she sank back down onto her chair. 

She bowed her head and began to pray that her daughter came to no harm these next few weeks. To lose Hana to one of the many creatures that roamed the night in Cordonia was too horrible to even contemplate.

If anyone could keep her daughter safe then it was none other than Lord Maxwell Beaumont.

[fandomfluffandfuck]

No no don’t be sorry for not responding sometimes or responding later!! Honestly it’s so fun when I send u a thought I’ve had thinking “oh S is gonna love this concept” and I forget about it, and then boom! It’s on my dash a few days later ☺️ but really, please take care of urself and take all the time u need

- 💞 anon who wants u to be relaxed and soft

related to this

Well, that's good to hear! Yeah, I know most people are fine to wait but I still think about needing to respond. I just haven't been Ready to respond to things lately. I have so much energy going into so many other things currently that it can be difficult. And, independent to my emotions there's the whole fucking Russia situation. I'm in the US so, currently, it's not directly effecting me I'm still trying to understand what is happening, trying to help any way that I can, and I'm (like everyone I think) processing that it's real life. Also, to get personal again, in my area (liberal in state level but conservative in local areas y’know?) there are now no mask mandates at all and people are acting even MORE like the pandemic is not still happening endangering themselves and others and- yuck. Lots of things.

Lots of things.

But! Creative thoughts to leave you not in a pit of despair:

I finally finished after a month/month and a half-ish of work (roughly), I finished another sculpture!

If you're curious about imagery here:

When I started my study for this year with 3D, I was thinking about doing ✨human sexuality✨ alone as my theme which is evident in the fact that it's fists with cuffs and chains as modeled after the average leather cuffs you might buy for your first pair after, like, pink fuzzy handcuffs. But with current political climates..... obviously politics slipped into my art (2D and 3D) so it has a double meaning there too. Intentionally. As have my other peices this year (I have a body sculpture of a woman that appears to be melting, the body for the connotations nudity have in our puritan-type society and the melting like a candle burning... burning like Burn Out that so many people experienced over the pandemic). Double meaning especially because rather than looking down at your own fists, meaning your thumbs would be facing out, not in, the perspective is of you, the viewer, looking at someone else in chains. Realizing what the other person is going through. Held down by institutialized racism (espeically with the BLM logo in mind), ableism, etc. Shit that is borne and bred into the good ol' US of A.

Anyway, thank you for your ask, sweetheart!

[phemonoi]

The Thing About Myths — A Rant

This is a very complex topic. It is a topic I personally hate, and a topic that represents a barrier in the community. It is irritating, but it is necessary we address it. 

Myths are interesting sources of inspiration. They are interesting types of literature and they are impactful in each culture, a big part of what makes a culture what it is. Myths come in many ways; they are narratives that can express any truth, idea, or value a certain society holds. And sometimes they tell us a great deal about the idiosyncrasy of a people, which is incredibly useful for historians and sociologists. Myths can also be fun, but sometimes they can become... a tedious topic. In a religious level, I have noticed, myths can be come a hindrance between the devotee and the divine. 

In our path, myths are an important part of the history of our practices. Sometimes myths tells us about the way ancestors related to divinity, and the type of relationship they had. However, I must draw a line between myth as a form of exposition, and myth as a form of “truth”, to put it in some way. 

Let me be more direct: people fear the Gods because of their myths. They resent the Gods because of their myths. They adore the Gods because of their myths. Or they outright disrespect the Gods, and their devotees, because of their myths. 

A thing must be established very clearly right now: myths are not truth. Paganism is not known for being part of a tradition of “revelation”. The stories and the narratives we tell about our Gods, are ours. They’re not theirs. Anyone can write or rewrite a myth, and that doesn’t mean the thing they’re telling is a revelation from the Muses or a truth about the Gods. Mostly myths come from oral traditions, and they are deeply ingrained within the cultures that birth them; they change and evolve, they get adapted, their meaning and significance often changes as well. Myths are more cultural phenomena than religious revelation. 

Let me put it another way. In our western cultural background, dominated by religions of revelation (the abrahamic tradition), we are accustomed to seeing people belonging to these religions argue about their beliefs in reference to their myths, or their books of revelations. We often see them quoting them, and retelling the stories told there with passion, taking them as guidelines in their relationship to the divine. This is completely fine for them because that’s part of their tradition; that’s their method, and it serves a purpose in their spiritual path. However, this does not happen in paganism. 

Pagan religions do not have a book of revelations. In antiquity, the people who believed to hold absolute knowledge of the divine and preached it based on myths were mostly considered charlatans, or not taken very seriously. This is because in antiquity philosophy had the dominance over religious studies, and the philosophies available at the time considered myths to hold hidden meanings about the nature of the Gods. For example, Plotinus argued that one must not take myths in a literal way, but read them carefully and think about them metaphorically so that one could unlock the full meaning of their symbols, which often led towards a kind of platonic conclusion. Sallustius (a philosopher from the tradition of Julian, allegedly Julian himself) talks of myths as being important to our relationship with the Gods, but he doesn’t talk about that as myths being revelations, or prompting us to take everything a myth says as truth about the Gods. Sallustius was very well aware of the bad reputation myths give the Gods. They are rapists, thieves, cheaters, liars, and they often act cruelly and violently. However, because we worship the Gods, and that means being devoted to them, and that requires some level of loyalty and disposition towards them, then we must interpret these conflicting stories as more meaningful than just superficially immoral. Thus, the conflicting actions of the Gods in myths have been regarded as symbols of deeper ideas even before Plato, and even by the Stoics, and the Pythagoreans, and the Aristotelians, and what more. Even the Orphics themselves didn’t regard their myths as literal truth: one of the things one learned when being initiated was the “actual” interpretation of the superficial myth, which was more symbolic.

So this is the thing. Myths can illustrate philosophical ideas if we consider looking at them under the surface. Myths can tell us about a people’s specific values and customs depending on history. Myths can be enjoyable and fun. However, myths shouldn’t pose a conflict in our worship. 

You can do as you please with myths. You can follow Plotinus’ advice and have them be symbolical. Or you can ignore them altogether, as I do (I acknowledge the importance of myth in the plotinian tradition, but I just find them entertaining and that’s it, I don’t have enough interest in them to study them further). Or, alright, you can believe the myths and the actions of the Gods there as true in the context of our path. But then... ask yourself one thing: why would you want to worship the Gods? If you take myths as a guiding tool in your practice, and you do believe Zeus is a rapist, and Athena is an unfair bitch, and Aphrodite is a vane whore, and anything else, then... what’s the point of you praying? What’s the point of you having an altar? What’s the point of you wanting to connect to the divine through the figures of these Gods?

I mean, okay, I concede you can avoid worshipping the deities that you find to be morally conflicting altogether. But trust me; you will find immoral stories about every deity. You say, “alright, I will avoid worshipping the rapist and instead worship Hades, who is not like Zeus.” Surprise. You will come accross a myth that tells something conflicting about Hades. I promise. I don’t know any (because as I said, I ignore myths), but I PROMISE there is one. And you then will have to go through the burden of reexamining your relationship with Hades, the ways in which you disaprove of his actions in said myth, and perhaps even come to end your worship. Is this the type of path you want to walk? A path of fearing the Gods, of avoiding them, of praying to them to “stay away” from you? Really? 

OR you could just acknowledge that myths are not real. They are fiction. The Gods never commit the actions told there. Zeus never came down to earth in the form of rain to get Danae pregnant. Hera never actually made Heracles�� life impossible because of jealousy and rage. Aphrodite and Persephone never actually fought over Adonis. Apollo never really killed Orion or stalked Daphne. It didn’t happen. It couldn’t have happened, realistically speaking. So why do you believe it? Why do you choose to fear these Gods? You could simply take a myth and say, “well... this is bad. This does not align with my moral values. Good thing this is just a story rewritten by Ovid and not actual record of the activity of the Gods”. 

Myths tells us more about ourselves than about the Gods. Do not put yourself in the burden of having to hate the Gods because of their actions in stories. Do not be so immature and absorbed by our culture’s arrogance and end up “cancelling” the Gods for things a man wrote 2000+ years ago based on traditional stories, thinking of poetry and art, and not of religion. 

Stop fearing Zeus. Stop fearing Apollo. Stop fearing Hera and Athena. These Gods are much more than just figures that perform the worst acts of humanity. Give yourself the chance to have meaningful and loving relationships with them, and let others have that as well. 

I hope this post serves its purpose. 

[arumin-arureruto]

Honeytea PT 2

Kyoya x fem reader and Hikaru x fem reader, Kyoya angst, Hikaru slowburn.

Warnings: none

word count: 1.7k

songs to listen to while reading:

What Am I by Why Dont We

Greek God by Conan Gray

hikaru’s outfit:

Reader’s outfit (your outfit can be whatever you want this is just what I had in mind while writing <3):

Cafe Hikaru and reader are at:

you woke up with the sun shining on your eyes, reaching out to feel the spot where your husband had been sleeping cold and empty, he had already left for work. Last night was emotionally exhausting, you had a fight with Kyoya and called Hikaru while your emotions were running high, even though you woke up feeling calmer it would still be nice to see him. You decided to get up and check your phone to see if you were still on for today, there were 6 unread messages from Hikaru.

“checking if ur okay”

“meet me tomorrow at 12pm for lunch at that cafe near my house, the one Honey got banned from”

“btw how the fuck do you manage to get banned from a restaurant for eating too much cake”

*picture of a single spoon inside a sink* “lol me”

“I should probably go to bed now goodnight”

He hasn’t changed a bit since high school, that’s what was so comforting to you about Hikaru. He took you back to a time where everything was much more simpler, lazy afternoons on the grass with the host club, drinking tea by the window in music room 3 with Kyoya, study sessions with Mori and Honey, getting into all sorts of mischief with Hikaru and Kauro, quietly reading with Haruhi, piano lessons from Tamaki…

All those memories started playing back in your mind and you started to feel all warm inside, you really didn’t know how good you had it. It’s not that you weren’t happy, you were married to the man you loved, you were one of the most respected and powerful women in society, what else could you ask for? But sometimes it felt like you were missing out on something, like your world could be so much more. When you mentioned this to Kyoya a couple months ago he suggested you try for children but you quickly shot down the idea, you were 23 and he was 24, having kids right now would be too big of a responsibility.

Shaking those thoughts from your head you checked the time on your phone, 10am. You still had 2hours before you had to meet Hikaru so going back to sleep was a tempting offer, but considering the cafe was almost 30 minutes away and you got easily distracted while getting ready it would be wiser to start picking out some clothes and getting in the shower. There was about 45 minutes before a maid was supposed to come in and clean your room so you figured that should be enough time to take a quick shower, you could just ask them to wait till you were done but you always felt awkward doing so.

After zoning out for a minute you headed for the shower, got undressed, put your hair up and turned on the hot water, you already washed your hair yesterday so there was no point in washing it again. You had always loved showers, the feeling of the warm water on your skin, the sound of the water dripping on the floor and the smell of all your products were enough to wash all your problems away. After about 25 minutes in the shower you turned the water off and stepped out, already missing the warmth of the water. After quickly drying yourself off with a towel you started massaging some lotion into your skin, first your arms and then your legs, this was your favorite part of your routine. When you felt that you had enough lotion on already you put on a robe, walked out of the bathroom and towards your walk in closet. It was september so the weather was still warm, today would be a simple dress day, or as simple as you could. Downside of being married to Kyoya Ootori: having to keep up appearances ALWAYS. After picking out a dress it was time for shoes, you gravitated towards a gorgeous pair of open toed gold heels that would’ve gone really well with your dress, but your legs were still slightly sore from last night so sandals it is.

After scrutinizing every part of your outfit and make up, which in the end you decided to go with a simple eyeliner, mascara and gloss, it was already 11:15. You grabbed your purse and asked someone to bring the car around. You hurriedly walked down the large staircase, excitement clear in your step, you got inside the car and gave a quick hello to the driver.

“Good morning Mrs Ootori, where to?”

“Morning Ryuzaki, Honeytea Cafe.”

“Understood ma’am.”

After giving your instructions you  pressed the button to lift the divider between the driver and the backseat, needing to be alone. You hadn’t seen Hikaru in person since your wedding reception, you talked on the phone occasionally but always for less than 2 minutes, this was the first time in months you would be in the same room again. Was it gonna be awkward? I mean you did call him yesterday late at night crying so what if he thought you were weird? No, no, this was Hikaru, your best friend since your first year of high school, everything was gonna be fine.

The 30 minute ride felt like it went by in less than 15, After getting to the cafe you told Ryuzaki to go back home and that you would call when you were done, since you didn’t know how long you would take. 11: 52pm, 8 minutes till you were supposed to meet Hikaru, meaning you had 8 minutes to get your act together.

You stepped into the cafe and scanned the place, 6 years and nothing had changed. Still the same old tall bookshelves lined the walls. The same paintings on the walls, and just like you remembered, peace and quiet. Since the cafe was a bit old fashioned it tended to attract an older crowd, old people just trying to enjoy their coffee and adults in their 30s that wanted a quiet place to work. While you continued to examine the room, lost in your own world, you felt a pair of slender hands on your shoulders and heard a familiar voice coming from behind you.

“Taking a trip down memory lane while blocking the way huh? Honestly y/n I thought commoners taught their children better manners.”

At first you were startled but then you quickly turned around to face the voice and there he was. Tall, mischievous smile and wild hair, Hikaru Hitachiin in the flesh. “Hikaru I-” you hugged him before you could even finish your sentence. You stood there with your arms wrapped around his neck in silence for a couple more seconds.

“y/n?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re still blocking the way.”

Oh right.

Behind you 2 old ladies stood with unpleasant expressions on their faces, you both moved out of the way to let the ladies through, they walked past you and muttered something about today’s youth having no respect for their elders. You stood there slightly embarrassed, heat rising to your cheeks while Hikaru looked like he might burst out laughing.

You decide to grab a table at the very back of the cafe, away from everyone else. After you sit down Hikaru strikes a conversation. “Haven’t seen you in a year y/n, how’s married life been treating you?” He propped up his elbow and leaned his head on his hand, keeping his eyes focused on you.

Damn so we’re already on that topic.

“We’ve had our ups and downs, what about you? How are you and Kaoru doing?” Hopefully he won't bring up your phone call from yesterday. “We’re doing pretty good, Kaoru actually started seeing someone a couple months ago. Cute boy he met at an art gallery.” You could hear the tiniest hint of jealousy in the last part, but overall Hikaru sounded happy for his brother. “Oh he did? That’s cool” you stay silent for a couple seconds before proceeding with what you were saying. “And how do you feel about Kaoru seeing someone?” Hikaru’s eyes shifted from you to the table and kept them focused there. “In the beginning it was weird, I hated the idea of having to share him with someone else but now, I see how happy he is with Evan and that’s all that matters to me.” He looked up from the table to look at you and smile, then he spoke again but this time in a more playful tone. “So are we eating or what? Man were you seriously gonna let me starve? Typical Ootori.” That comment made you laugh, you really did miss him.

You both ordered and paid separately, since you knew you would argue over who would pay the bill. After you both received your food you sat down to eat, while you ate you reminisced about the past and talked about all the trouble you used to get into back in the day.

“No no, you were the one that tricked Tamaki into dressing up as Haruhi to fool the doctors during the physical exam that one time.” He laughed and pointed at you with a piece of bread. “Whaaaaat? Me? I would never, I was just an innocent bystander” you defended yourself while also laughing, then you remembered something. “No but for real that one wasn’t my idea, actually Kyoya came up with it.” Hikaru stopped laughing but still had a smile on his face, he then asked you a question.

“So Kyoya…” There was a pause before he spoke again.

“You mentioned you have your ups and downs, I’m guessing yesterday was a down?”

The food that was in your throat had trouble going down, you tried to quickly swallow and answer Hikaru’s question. “Yesterday was definitely not one of our best days” You let out a nervous laugh. Before you could elaborate a middle aged man came up to your table and asked if he could borrow one of your chairs for his daughter, seeing that you were both already finished with your food you told him he could have the chairs and got up to leave.

As you were walking out of the coffee shop Hikaru tapped your shoulder.

“Hey my house is just a 5 minute drive from here, we could go there if you wanna talk more in private.”

[sebstanseabass]

Afterglow (A Bucky Barnes AU fan fiction) - Chapter 15

WARNING: Mature scenes ahead!!! ;)

A/N: Future u, i hope ur ok

Afterglow chapters

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The moonlight glimmered among the stars in the now pitch-black skies, fighting off against the bright lights hanging from above the tent. Bucky's digression to topics regarding his real family (or lack thereof, I think) never wore off, clearly avoiding talking about, dare you say, "the real stuff." But the classic "favorites" section of a date was indeed a delight. You had already covered favorite films (his was The Truman Show, while yours was Forrest Gump; but you also talked about other films that you both shared a liking to — Pulp Fiction, Me, Myself & Irene, Dead Poets Society, The Godfather, the Harry Potter series, Inception, and of course, any films that star the legendary Tom Hanks), favorite music to listen to (you both loved vintage rock and roll), and so much more favorites and would you rather and what ifs and if you weres. But you mostly talked about films — an in-depth discourse on their themes, writing, and cinematography (things you never thought you'd be able to talk about with anyone).

"Have you ever thought about shooting films?" Bucky asked.

You were now lying down on the blanket-covered ground, bodies upside down-like: your forehead aligned with his chin, and his chin aligned with your forehead, as if characters from The Fault In Our Stars.

"I did." You replied. "But I wanted to focus more on photography."

"Why?"

You turned your head, your breath fanning the side of his face. "There's something about the stillness of moving things, of people around me, beautiful people that strikes me as fascinating."

He hummed, closing his eyes. He was saying something, about how art, in all kinds of medium, connected people from all walks of life, how the beauty of it all can be different to each, and how he wished he could make one of his own: to give life to a canvas, to freeze a moment in time, to put his thoughts in pen and paper, and to embody a character different from his. At some point, you could feel him peeling down all his layers but then he stopped talking.

You respected the silence between you and took your sweet time studying his face. The wrinkles on his forehead looked like ridges of sand, ridges people would like to walk on for days, ridges that held untold stories of — perhaps — heartache, failure, and pain. His closed eyelids looked like a sleeping moon, gleaming. Almost touching his cheeks were his long, curved eyelashes. Then, my eyes trailed down to his nose, dotted with freckles, his nostrils releasing small puffs of air; then down to his mouth, slightly agape, and then down to the stubbles on the sides of his face. There was a small scar, almost concealed by where his beard started to grow.

You turned your body sideways, tracing the scar with your finger.

Bucky's body tensed under your touch.

"What happened to this fella?" You whispered, tracing the small scar.

He soon let himself relax, opening his eyes. "Car accident." He replied. "But I don't remember much of it. I don't know where it happened, or how it happened or if I hit something or worse, someone. But Tony told me he took care of everything. I haven't been behind the wheel since then. I fear history will repeat itself."

Then, you remembered all the times you've been in a vehicle with Bucky. Not once was he driving. "How old were you?"

"Nineteen? Twenty? I really don't know." He sighed, closing his eyes once again. It was the first time Bucky told you something so real — a fear, something personal, something close to home. "Hey, y/n?"

"Yes, Bucky?"

"Can you kiss it and make it feel better?"

You giggled, poking the scar. "You've got to be kidding me."

He pouted, his eyes still closed. "Please?"

You sighed, feigning exasperation. "Fine." You planted a soft kiss on the scar, your lower lip catching the rough edges of his beard.

"I'm still not feeling better."

"Oh Bucky, you are such a child." You laughed, giving it another kiss, and then another, and then another and then another, until rough edges turned into the soft textures of his lips. With lips entangled in an unusual position, you brought myself onto your knees, and positioned yourself on top of him — knees on each side of his hips, crotch pressed against his, hands on his jaws, lips on his lips, tongue inside of his mouth.

His hands found your neck, then up your jaws, cupping your face and pulling it closer to his. He then started to rake the roots of your hair, tugging it lightly, making a moan escape your lips. You felt one corner of his mouth turn a bit upward at the sound. He tugged your hair tighter and harder until your lips left his with your head pulled backwards, leaving your bare neck exposed.

Without any hesitation, his mouth moved onto neck. Gratified by the series of moans coming out of your mouth, he sucked deeper into your skin, biting every inch of your neck, making sure to leave damn marks. On impulse, you moved your hips against his, grinding his clothed crotch. Bucky groaned against your skin, his hot breath fanning your neck. You could feel your own wetness in between your thighs as you moved your hips more, Bucky's bulge growing under you getting bigger and bigger. The sensation left you breathless.

And you needed more.

You broke away from his grasp, returning the favor. You kissed him on the lips and moved your way towards his earlobes in which Bucky very much liked; so much that he thrusted his hips upwards, slamming loud onto yours.

"Oh, fuck." You moaned, moving your way towards his neck.

Bucky's hands immediately flew under your shirt. His cold hands making contact with your skin, sending you shivers.

"Wait." He said, pulling away from you. "Is this okay? Are you okay with this?"

You giggled and nodded, kissing him on the mouth to give him permission.

He cut the kiss short. "I'm sorry, but we live in a litigious society so I'm gonna need a verbal reply from you, especially that you're years younger than me."

You chuckled. "Yes, Mr. Barnes. You have my full consent."

He smirked. "Keep calling me that and I'll give you my full consent."

"Shut up already, Mr. Barnes."

He lifted the hem of your shirt and pulled it over your head, revealing a cotton white bra.

You bit your lip. "If you'd told me about the date, I would've worn a much better one."

"I don't mind." He breathed, sitting up. "I like white on you." He traced the lining of the bra with his finger, together with his eyes. He licked his lower lip before planting a kiss between your breasts. "So pure. Innocent."

"Innocent is not the word to describe me." You smirked. "Remember what I told you before?"

"Hmm, I seem to have forgotten." He teased. "What was it again?"

"I'm a devil on the sheets, Bucky."

"Then show it to me, doll." He purred.

As soon as those words left his mouth, all the worries and fear you talked about with Nat all washed away. And like always, she was again, right.

It was exactly like riding a bicycle.

And you were ready to be in control, in control of a man your senior, and to unleash something inside you you've never seen in quite a while.

You grabbed Bucky's face and kissed him on the mouth while pulling his shirt over his head. Every inch of his naked sculpted upper body glistened under the lights, like dewy grass under the sun.

You kissed his collarbones, shoulders, and chest. Before you could even move on to his tummy, a strong force came, flipping your body, your back hitting the blanket-covered ground.

"But not before I show it to you first." He growled, reaching something from above. He closed the front of the tent, pulling something from above. Within a second, the lights above went dim. The only light you now had was the moonlight.

You liked it this way. Darkness made you feel safe — but it was the kind of darkness with a sliver of light and Bucky was it. The inside of the tent grew hotter, making your body sweat, or perhaps it was just the sexual heat between you and Bucky as Bucky removed your pants, as well as his, leaving you in just your undergarments.

You wrapped your legs around his waist, pressing up against him, making him feel that you were already dripping for him, that you wanted him.

He moaned inside your mouth as you grinded against each other. His teeth pulled your bra down. With your bare chest exposed, you usually had the instinct to cover them up because they were small for people's taste but you didn't do that with Bucky. He admired them with his eyes, and admired them more with his lips wrapped around your nipples, pulling each of them softly. He then left fluttered kisses on your breasts before moving down to your belly, kissing every curve, every wave fold there ever was, and every stretch mark he came across upon.

His mouth stopped right on the folds of your lower belly, his fingers making their way on your wet cotton panties. His lips went back to yours while his fingers were circling all around you, clothed, making you wetter each second. Then, he slipped your panties aside, taking no time at all in inserting a finger inside.

A moan escaped your lips, opening your mouth more, giving access to Bucky's tongue. With another finger slipping inside, you bit Bucky's lower lip, pulled it away from him. He watched you gasp for air, listened to each moan, and felt you deep inside as he continued to thrust his fingers in you.

"You're quite tight, doll." He said. "I'm going for another to ease you up, okay?"

You nodded then whimpered as soon as a third finger made its way inside. Because you were, in his own words, quite tight, Bucky had a bit of a difficult time moving inside. He pulled away after a few moments, giving you time to catch your breath. He folded your knees, and held your legs in place using his veiny hands. He left a trail of soft kisses on your inner thighs, his teeth grazing on your skin every once in a while. You watched him inched forward, nearing your core. You watched him take delight in each mark he imprinted.

He hooked his thumbs on your panties and slowly slid them down your legs. On his knees, he ravished your body with his eyes, then your face. He leaned down, kissing you

"Beautiful." He mumbled in the kiss.

He soon devoured your pussy, his tongue moving up and down your folds, his upper lip nibbling your clit. You closed your yes, threw your head back and raked his hair with your fingers, guiding his mouth deeper. With his mouth still exploring every bit of you, he inserted two fingers inside. You whimpered at the sensation of both his tongue flicking your clit, and his fingers fucking you.

You moaned louder, arching your back, rolling your eyes at the back of your head. You badly wanted to see him, to watch him greedily eat you but his mouth and fingers felt so good that you couldn't even keep your eyes open. The more you tried to, the faster his mouth and fingers moved. It made your legs tremble under his touch, your thighs pressing closer and closer to his ears, which he didn't like as he kept spreading your legs wider with his other hand.

"Bu-Bucky, please." You gasped. "I'm gonna cum."

"No. Not yet."

With that, he released his mouth and fingers, leaving you suspended in ecstasy. You opened your eyes, seeing Bucky on top of you, his face studying you. Then, he brought his fingers — the same ones that were just inside you — to his mouth, licking them. Now, you really did wish you could've kept your eyes open the whole time.

"You taste good, doll." He said, giving you his fingers.

You opened your mouth and reached for his fingers, sliding up and down, the taste of you sitting on your tongue. You could feel Bucky weaken above you as you continued to suck his fingers. Your right hand moved to his boxers, stroking his clothed hard-on. His eyelids quivered for a moment, losing touch of his dominance. You kissed his fingers one last time and flipped him over, not wasting any damn time taking his boxers off.

He sprung up in front of you. He was big (the biggest you've encountered), and was throbbing under your touch. He was hot, and a little bit wet. You looked at him while you pumped him slowly, then kissed him, returning the pleasure. A breath escaped his mouth as your pace went faster, and faster. His body became weaker under you, his lips agape, surrendering to submission, to your dominance.

Bucky felt so fragile underneath you, not being able to regain the control he once had. He wanted this. He wanted you to show him how much of a devil you were.

You pulled away from his mouth and moved lower on his body, his large, throbbing dick between your eyes. You kissed the top, making his legs quiver. You soon took him in — all of him, which made Bucky grab your head, pull your hair, and guide you all the way. You looked at him as you worked him all the way up, then down, then up and down: his mouth was kept open, a series of moans coming out, and at the same time, gasping for air; instead of eyes closed, his eyes were wide open, looking at the unlit lights above him.

Usually, giving head to people wasn't at all satisfying to you. What would it give you, anyway? It was either forced, or just because they told you to suck them. But with Bucky, you didn't even hesitate on doing so. It wasn't an itch you were trying to scratch away. It was on impulse, an instinct, a desire you wanted. And seeing Bucky in this state gave you so much pleasure.

So much.

Bucky let out the loudest moan, sitting up straight, his chest heaving, trying to catch his breath.

"I need you." He rasped. "Now."

You nodded, satisfied with what you received on his end. You straddled him, grinded on his bare dick, and glazed it with your wetness. He groaned, guiding your hips with his one hand, the other on the ground, keeping himself straight up.

"Don't worry. I'm on the pill." you whispered.

"I thought it's been over a year since you — "

"It's for acne, dumbass." You chuckled. "You can cum inside me if you want. You have my full consent."

"Good."

You held onto his broad shoulders as you lowered myself onto him and within a second, you felt his tip inside.

You bit your lip as you inched yourself lower. With his whole inside you, you leaned your forehead on his shoulder, and let out a small whimper.

"Are you okay?" He whispered in your ear. You nodded and placed a kiss on his neck, reassuring him.

You moved your body up and down, biting your lip to keep small cries from coming out, but soon enough, you were taking in pleasure within pain until all there was was pleasure.

Sweet, sweet pleasure.

You bounced on top of him faster, — god, he felt so big and so good in you — skin slapping on skin, echoing against the thin sheets, with his lips on yours, then on your neck, then on your breasts; his hands on your jaw, on your neck, your breasts (sometimes, together with his lips), on the small of your back, on your hips, then on your ass.

"Oh god, you feel so fucking good." Bucky said, kissing your skin as you kept on bouncing on top of him. "But it's my turn, babydoll."

You moaned at the nickname, making your body frail to move and then the next thing you knew, you were flipped over, with Bucky on his knees, thrusting faster, then deeper as he inched forward, your chests pressed together. Your fingers clawed on his back, his hot breath on your neck, your breath on his ear where he could hear you moaning his name.

"That's right." He whispered, kissing your neck. "Say my name."

You wrapped your legs around his waist (a kind of intimacy you had never done before), and with it, pulled him closer, deeper, giving you an astounding pleasure, making your whole body tremble under him, getting you higher and higher on staggering ecstasy, and sending you over your edge.

You cried out his name one last time, feeling your white juices come on his dick, mixed with his inside you.

"My god," he whispered, "I think I could never get enough of you."

"You just read my mind, Mr. Barnes."

"Hey, I feel a whole lot better now." He winked.

You chuckled.

You caught each others' breaths, kissing one last time before he removed himself from you, and laid down beside you where he wrapped his arms and legs around you, your head on his chest. You weren't the one to cuddle but at that moment, your body, frail and vulnerable, gave in. You didn't want to fight it, anyway. You were both surrounded with each others' pool of sweat but it didn't matter.

You were bathing in bliss.

In this bliss he had given you.

"You're not gonna kick me out the next morning, are you?" You asked, half-joking, scared that you'd be in the same position as that of the woman from before.

"No, doll." He replied, "you have my word," then kissed your forehead.

Bucky pulled you closer, his chin on top of your head. You listened to his heartbeat slow down every five seconds, giving you a rhythm you soon fell asleep to.

[the-phoenix-heart]

Sorting Hat Chats - BNHA

For those of you who don’t know, @sortinghatchats​ has a system for sorting people based off of primary houses, and secondary houses. You can find a run down of that here. Today I’m gonna be sorting eight My Hero Academia characters! Probably gonna be a sequel or two to this post. This one got super long...

(Manga spoilers and like two minor movie spoilers which are marked by “in the movie” so if you wanna skip those you can)

(Also get used to Lions because Hero Society tends to reward Lions with places in hero courses)

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that IZUKU MIDORIYA is a true Lion. It also doesn’t take a genius to see that the guy who wants to do the All Might thing of saving people with a smile on his face seems to be very Badger-y. Izuku could be read as a Badger primary but I think that’s a model he took from All Might. Izuku has punched Bakugou in the face despite the fact that they were supposed to be working together because it felt like the right thing to do, he punched All Might later in that same episode because Bakugou’s inspiring words-well inspired him so much (Lion primaries are such suckers for passion filled words[Bakugou is the same way]), he is willing to break the law and fight a villain without permission or license to save Iida, he’s willing to break his fingers just so he can help Todoroki confront his issues with his father, even after he’s beaten down to the point of not being able to use his arms he can’t take a break he has to protect Bakugou in the Training campe, he’s willing to risk expulsion to save Bakugou after his kidnapping, etcetera etcetera.

He does however share All Might’s roaring Lion secondary. The first thing we see him doing in the series is standing up for a little kid who got beat up. He is also however modeling Bird, after his Lion Secondary was burned both literally and figuratively by Bakugou. When his trust in his instinctive charging head first into situations left he fell back on something that’ll help him, notebooking, studying, and absorbing as much information as he can. He’s good at it and uses it to bolster his Lion, but then you put Bakugou in danger and suddenly “My body just moved.” I think a lot about the Mid Term Exam Deku had with Bakugou. At the end he decides not to keep running despite how risky it is and punch his mentor and idol to save Bakugou. Also, I named numerous times he kept charging in and breaking his body in the previous section. All Might has said it before and he’ll probably say it again, when someone (usually Bakugou) is in trouble nothing can stop him from saving them.

FINE FINE FINE! I GIVE IN! I GAVE UP! I TRIED TO MAKE BAKUGOU LOOK LIKE A BIRDLION BUT HE’S NOT HE’S JUST NOT! BAKUGOU KATSUKI is a fucking Lion primary. A true Lion. I give up. 

Y’know he sorta had the shape of a Bird primary, he sorta takes in information and makes conclusions out of it. Everyone is saying I have an awesome powerful quirk, therefore I’m just better than everyone else. Deku is quirkless, there for he is useless. And he followed these beliefs so hard that when they were proven wrong he was heartbroken, literally having a panic attack, he falls before he picks himself back up at the end of the day. That’s very Bird, and also very Ravendor. And we even see later that Bakugou still takes in information like that. He remembers Todoroki’s backstory when Todoroki says there are other ways to get through to kids and he let’s him take the lead. 

(I might end up talking myself back into Bird primary)

But...It pains me to say it, I was wrong. 

Bakugou’s whole thing is that he isn’t in heroism for saving people or making the world a better place, he wants to be a hero to prove he’s the best and strongest there is (in fact I argue that that is the only reason he wants to be a hero, if this world had professional Quirkastics where you show off your strength and quirk Bakugou wouldn’t want to be a hero). He goes after Deku in the first training session because he couldn’t think of doing anything else. He didn’t decide that, he felt it so strongly he had to act on it. He destroys part of the building in that exam because he’s feeling everything at like a thousand percent and he can’t think despite the fact that it’s a bad idea especially for him as the villain. He has to be talked into calming down and not going after the villains because they were after him and going after them would make him more of a target. The idea that in the Sports Festival his win wasn’t an actual win crushes him. He’s willing to lose the whole damn midterm because he doesn’t want to have to rely on Deku all based off feelings. Bakugou sometimes tries to act before he thinks and figure things out, but he usually doesn’t. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the boy feels everything at 1,000,000% and tends to have some serious tunnel vision. And then there’s the movie, where he listens to Deku, not because he’s doing the Bird thing of taking in information, but because Deku’s words are so passionate and he’s so caught up in what Deku is saying.

And on why Bakugou is not a Snake primary. When you look at where primaries overlap, Bakugou’s primary is very intuitive, which means Lion or Badger (and he’s definitely not Badger), but it’s also very internal because he does not give a fuuuck about what people think, so Lion or Snake. But he’s not a Snake because throw fanon and out tell me, who is Bakugou actually loyal to? Deku? A lot of that seems to be because of One for All and not actually liking Deku. Kirishima? Maybe, but we don’t ever see him choose Kirishima over something else. Kirishima is his friend, but any house can have friends. All Might? Yeah he’s loyal to him, but he loves All Might, not Yagi Toshinori. He’s loyal to the symbol he saw as a child, a very Lion thing. Is he loyal to himself? He’d rather lose a tournament or a midterm than win any other way than what he wants. 

I could go on about his primary. About how he doesn’t think critically about the situation when they’re ‘Saving the World With Love’ and just assumes that they’re all bad guys and need to be thrown in jail. But I won’t because this is long enough and I still have to talk about his damn secondary. Except I’m just gonna copy paste what I originally had written. 

I got confused when I was looking at his secondary because he’s really smart and really good at strategy. He thinks at 10 million miles a minute. In Deku vs Kacchan 2 he literally does a double bluff, he knows that Deku will see him swinging with his right arm and think it’s a feint so he does a double bluff and just hits him. Stuff like that, him wearing down Kirishima and Tokoyami in to figure out their weaknesses he can exploit in the sports festival arc, finding out everything he can on Todoroki before his matches in the sports festival so he can get him to use his fire, amassing an array of special moves, and amassing more gadgets taking into account his own weaknesses to make himself stronger (and if we include the art from the fifth popularity poll where he is dressed head to toe in guns and looks more tank than man then that means even more weapons and gadgets). Even going as far back as the first episode/chapter he says that he took and aced the mock exams before the actual exam. That is shockingly prepared for someone who’s main trait at the beginning of the story is thinking he’s hot shit.

This evidence was enough to convince me that he was Bird Secondary who was modeling All Might’s Lion Secondary. I think it’s far more likely however, that he saw a Bird Secondary, maybe even Deku’s specific one. He does say in Deku v Kacchan 2 that he can absorb information to, and said “I can do that but better.” His real secondary is Lion however. 

His first instinct when he finds out that Deku has a quirk now is to charge at him and demand he tell him what’s going on, he blasts off all the time literally into battles, he flat out refuses to lie even to save his ass, when he finds out that the villains are looking to kidnap him he just keeps fighting and fighting, he yells and lets you know exactly what he thinks about everything, and you can get him to do anything by saying he can’t do something. In terms of what is debatably canon, he sees Deku in the first movie and immediately blasts over to him to yell at him and question him, he doesn’t even question the fact that there are villains in the tower and jumps immediately into attacking them like it’s the most natural thing ever, in the second movie he jumps at the opportunity to attack something and is uninterested with everything else. My favorite example is the “Save the World With Love” special episode where Bakugou has the chance to not immediately charge and pull a more strategic move and straight up gets bored with it and bursts in to find a dead fake villain and doesn’t care about finding out who killed him because the villain is dead. The boy has a good Bird model but like hell he’s gonna let you forget that he is a Lion secondary first and foremost. He’ll straight up throw it away if that gets to boring for him. 

(I think I’m gonna make a separate post for how Bakugou and Deku house sharing affects their relationship, also because this post is so long and tangenty already)

ALL MIGHT said he wanted to be the symbol of peace because the people needed one. All Might shoulders the burden and is willing to destroy himself so that the people can have peace of mind. His heartfelt loyal Badger primary mixed with his charging bursting Lion causes him to sacrifice himself time after time.

And he’s a Lion secondary, but that was obvious. United States of Smash. 

TODOROKI SHOUTO is a healing ex-petrified Snake primary. His primary was burned at a very young age so he could possibly be an extremely burnt Badger primary but I doubt that. He does things because his friends are in trouble and he always goes off on his own to do things for himself. He’s the one who let’s a petty grudge get the better of him, and Deku has to yell at him to fucking get his head out of his ass (ah, Lion communication, don’t you love it?[oh yeah and Deku already told him to get his head out of his ass in the sports festival arc, because Todoroki still needs a lot of help]). After Deku’s speech to him he begins his healing process and it’s clear that he’s building himself a Snake community. As of now he’s got Deku, Bakugou, Iida, Momo, his mom, Fuyumi, Natsuo, and (possibly) Endeavor (ugh) in his community which seems like more than it is.

Todoroki is a Lion secondary, and a powerful one as well which means he can totally get away with charging into battle with boring attacks. Todoroki has met very few problems that he couldn’t just throw a wall of ice or fire at and call it a day. And even then the plan ends up being, I’m gonna stick my hand down this dudes throat and flash freeze/absolute zero him to the point where there’s six feet of ice shooting out of his mouth and HOW IS HE NOT DEAD?!

URARAKA OCHAKO is a Badger primary, who makes friends like it’s no trouble. I thought about putting her as a Snake primary because of her love for her parents and wanting to provide for them, but honestly I think that was too much of a reach. She’s a Badger, she does hero work because she wants to provide for her parents, but also because she wants to see people happy afterwards.

We have our first Badger and not Lion secondary with her as well. She almost always uses teams to win, combo moves on the fly are her bread (her first special move was a combo) and butter. When she’s alone she turns to using hardwork and pushing herself to her limits. Although during her fight with Bakugou she does show some Lion charging, which I think is a sign of the hero society enforcing its ideals on people (and also her copying Deku). “I’ll win and be just like Deku!” (Which I hate, way to take her battle away from herself) Still, she’s a Badger secondary first.

IIDA TENYA is feral, the boy is good at playing a Bird primary (it’s his model), but the boy is a strong Lion primary. Either that or he is a very stubborn Bird and vigilantism was totally justified in his truth, but I’m sticking with my guns on the Lion primary. His brother died and he feels that justice is deserved, so he goes to enact some vigilante justice, but then he gets schooled and also in trouble for doing the vigilante justice and he tells himself he can’t do that anymore. His Bird model was probably built to help him reign in his slightly unhinged Lion primary, and I suspect he might’ve gotten it from Tensei who seems to be Bird primary from what little we’ve seen of him. Tenya later also struggles with his Bird model when the gang wants to save Bakugou and he eventually goes with his gut.

(I suppose Iida could be read as Snake primary, but he seems like too much of an idealist to be a Snake)

Iida’s secondary is obviously Bird. He studies, he analyzes what he’s done wrong, he learns skills to help himself as a hero, he’s really good at it to. When planning his revenge on Stain he researches him and singles out his patterns, he finds the skills for heroism in the smallest things like learning how to cook, and he finds out Uraraka’s quirk and how it works so he can prepare against her. Boy is a strong Bird primary.

(The only time I would say maybe he’s not is that scene where he immediately punches Deku, but I think that’s just frustration, and if you wanna talk about the times he kicks at stuff-that’s hero society forcing people to preform Lion)

KIRISHIMA EIJIROU’S got a Lion primary almost as strong as Deku’s. He wants to rescue Bakugou no matter what during the kidnapping arc, when a Badger primary would probably be more content to let the pros handle it. When he was a kid he tried jumping in to fight a villain because he felt it was the right thing to do, he just didn’t because he was scared (he knew he should jump it because he felt that was the thing to do, but he was to scared to). He does things based on feelings, and saving Bakugou is the biggest example.

He’s also sporting a Lion secondary to boot which I don’t feel I really need to explain. He doesn’t plan, he mostly just attacks and takes hits, and he almost always jumps to help or save people (and if he doesn’t it’s because it’s in the past).

AIZAWA SHOUTA is a lovely double Bird and is the only character in this series that I’ve seen thus far without a hint of Lion. Aizawa decides whats right based on logic and as such his ideas are usually really outlandish, especially considering hero society. Who knew that things that are logical could be so out there. He only keeps the kids in class after the kidnapping incident only because All Might retired and he acknowledges they need more good heroes. Most of his other students he expelled he re-enrolled, as he logicked out that it would help them grow as heroes and give them a wake up call. It would also weed out the students who weren’t willing to put anymore work in after the setback of expulsion. Even as a kid we see he was much more cautious and didn’t just do things based off feelings. Now does that mean his logic is always sound? Well let’s just say that the most recent arc is not fun for me. 

“It was a logical ruse~” I wouldn’t say this is a Snake manipulation but a Bird deciding yes that makes sense. Either way he collected skills in fighting and knowledge because of his quirk and it works well. I’d definitely say the becoming an underground hero is also another notch in his Bird secondary belt. He’s got a knife, caltrops apparently, a scarf he can control and grab people with, and cool ass goggles with eye drops in his pocket. He’s smart. I love him.

In Conclusion:

Izuku Midoriya - Lion primary who models All Might’s Badger primary/Lion secondary who models a Bird secondary to bolster his actual secondary

Katsuki Bakugou - Lion primary who feels everything at 1,000,000%/Lion secondary who models a Bird secondary to bolster his actual secondary

All Might - Badger primary/Lion secondary

Shouto Todoroki - previously petrified but healing Snake primary/Lion secondary

Ochako Uraraka - Badger primary/Badger secondary who models Deku’s specific Lion secondary

Tenya Iida - Lion primary who models a Bird primary/Bird secondary with slight Lion preformance 

Eijirou Kirishima - Lion primary/Lion secondary

Shouta Aizawa - Bird primary/Bird secondary

(me throwing this out into the world, except I’m way less confident)

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Your blog isn’t what I expected for someone who champions conservative values because it is very rich in celebrating culture and strikes a very humane pose. I learn a great deal from your clever and playful posts. Now and again your feminism reveals itself and so I wonder what kind of feminist are you, if at all? It’s a little confusing for a self professing conservative blog.  

I must thank you for your kind words about my blog and your praise is undeserved but I do appreciate that you enjoy aspects of high culture that you may not have come across.

My conservatism is not political or ideological per se and - I get this a lot - not taken from the rather inflammatory American discourse of left and right that is currently playing itself out in America. For example my distaste for the likes of Trump is well known and I have not been shy in poking fun at him here on my blog. Partly because he’s not a real conservative in my eyes but a .... < insert as many expletives as you want here > ....but mainly he has no character. My point is my conservatism isn’t defined by what goes on across from the pond.

Rather my conservatism is rooted in deeply British intellectual traditions and draw in inspiration from Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, and other British thinkers as well as cultural writers like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Waugh. So it’s a state of mind or a state of being rather than a rigid ideological set of beliefs.

Of course there is a lot of overlap of shared values and perspectives between the conservatism found elsewhere and what it is has historically been in English history. But my conservative beliefs are not tied to a political party for example. I wash my hands of politicians of all stripes if you must know. I won’t get into that right now but I hope to come back and and address it in a later post.

As for my feminism that is indeed an interesting question. It’s a very loaded and combustible word especially in these volatile times where vitriol and victimhood demonisation rather than civility and honest discussion so often flavour our social discourse on present day culture and politics.

I would be fine to describe myself as an old school feminist if I am allowing myself to be labelled that is. And in that case there is no incompatibility between being that sort of small ‘f’ feminist and someone who holds a conservative temperament. They are mutually compatible.

To understand what I mean let me give you a potted history of feminism. It’s very broad brush and I know I am over simplifying the rich history of each wave of feminism so I’m making this caveat here.

Broadly speaking the feminist movement is usually broken up into three “waves.” The first wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries pushed for political equality. The second wave, in the 1960s and 1970s, pushed for legal and professional equality. And the third wave, in the past couple decades but especially now, has pushed for social equality as well as social and racial justice. It is the first wave and bits of the second wave that I broadly identify my feminism with.

Why is that?

Again broadly speaking, in the first wave and overlapping with the second wave legal and political equality are clearly defined and measurable, but in the third wave (the current wave) social equality and social justice is murky and complicated.

Indeed the current feminist movement - which now also includes race and trans issues in a big way - is not a protest against unjust laws or sexist institutions as much as it is the protest against people’s unconscious beliefs as well as centuries-worth of cultural norms and heritage that have been biased in some ways against women but also crucially have served women reasonably well in unwritten ways.

Of course women still get screwed over in myriad ways. It’s just that whereas before it was an open and accepted part of society, today nearly all - as they see it - is non-obvious and even unconscious. So we have moved from policing legalised equality opporttunities to policing thought.

I understand the resentment - some of it sincere - against the perceived unjustness of women’s lot in life. But this third wave of feminism is fuelled in raw emotion, dollops of self-victimhood, and selfish avoidance of personal responsibility. Indeed it bloats itself by latching onto every social and racial outrage of the moment.

It becomes incredibly difficult to actually define ‘equality’ not in terms of the goals of the first wave of feminists or even the second because we can objectively measure legal, civil and political goals e.g. It’s easy to measure whether boys and girls are receiving the same funding in schools. It’s easy to see whether a man and woman are being paid appropriately for the same work. But how does one measure equality in terms of social justice? If people have a visceral dislike of Ms X over Mr Y is it because she’s a woman or only because she’s a shitty human being in person?

The problem is that feminism is more than a philosophy or a group of beliefs. It is, now, also a political movement, a social identity, as well as a set of institutions. In other words, it’s become tribal identity politics thanks to the abstract ideological currents of cultural Marxism.

Once a philosophy goes tribal, its beliefs no longer exist to serve some moral principle, but rather they exist to serve the promotion of the group - with all their unconscious biases and preferences for people who pass our ‘purity test’ of what true believers should be i.e. like us, built in.

So we end up in this crazy situation where tribal feminism laid out a specific set of paranoid beliefs  - that everywhere you look there is constant oppression from the patriarchy, that masculinity is inherently violent, and that the only differences between men and women are figments of our cultural imagination, not based on biology or science.

Anyone who contradicted or questioned these beliefs soon found themselves kicked out of the tribe. They became one of the oppressors. And the people who pushed these beliefs to their furthest conclusions — that penises were a cultural construction of oppression, that school mascots encourage rape and sexual violence, and that marriage is state sanctioned rape or as is now the current fad that biological sex is not a scientific fact or not recognising preferred pronouns is a form of hate speech etc— were rewarded with greater status within the tribe.

Often those shouting the loudest have been white middle class educated liberals who try to outcompete each other within the tribe with such virtue signalling. Since the expansion of higher education in the 1980s in Britain (and the US too I think), a lot of these misguided young people have been doing useless university degrees - gender studies, performing arts, communication studies, ethnic studies etc - that have no application in the real world of work. I listen to CEOs and other hiring executives and they are shocked at how uneducated graduate students are and how such graduates lack even the basic skills in logic and critical problem solving. And they seem so fragile to criticism.

In a rapidly changing global economy, a society if it wants to progress and prosper is in need of  valuing skills, languages, technical knowledge, and general competence (i.e critical thinking) but all too often what our current society has instead are middle class young men and women with a useless piece of toilet paper that passes for a university degree, a mountain of monetary debt, and no job prospects. No wonder they feel it’s someone else’s fault they can’t get on to that first rung of the ladder of life and decide instead that pulling down statues is more cathartic and vague calls to end ‘institutional systemic racism’. Oh I digress....sorry.

My real issue with the current wave of feminists is that they have an attitude problem.

Previous generations of feminists sacrificed a great deal in getting women the right to vote, to go to university, to have an equal education, for protection from domestic violence, and workplace discrimination, and equal pay, and fair divorce laws. All these are good things and none actually undermine the natural order of things such as marriage or family. It is these women I truly admire and I am inspired by in my own life because of their grit and relentless drive and not curl up into a ball of self pity and victimhood.

More importantly they did so NOT at the expense of men. Indeed they sought not to replace men but to seek parity in legal ways to ensure equality of opportunity (not outcomes). This is often forgotten but is important to stress.

Certainly for the first wave of feminists they did not hate men but rather celebrated them. Pioneers such as Amelia Earhart - to give a personal example close to my heart as a former military aviator myself - admired men a great deal. Othern women like another heroine of mine, Gettrude Bell, the first woman to get a First Class honours History degree at Oxford and renowned archaeologist and Middle East trraveller and power breaker never lost her admiration for her male peers.

I love men too as a general observation. I admire many that I am blessed to know in my life. I admire them not because they are necessarily men but primarily because of their character. It’s their character makes me want to emulate them by making me determined and disciplined to achieve my own life goals through grit and effort.

Character for me is how I judge anyone. It matters not to me your colour, creed or sexual orientation. But what matters is your actions.

I find it surreal that we have gone from a world where Christian driven Martin Luther King envisaged a world where a person would be judged from the content of their character and not the colour of their skin (or gender) to one where it’s been reversed 360 degrees. Now we are expected to judge people by the colour of their skin, their gender and sexual orientation. So what one appears on the outside is more important than what’s on the inside. It’s errant nonsense and a betrayal of the sacrifices of those who fought for equality for all by past generations.

Moreover as a Christian, such notions are unbiblical. The bible doesn’t recognise race - despite what slave owners down the ages have believed - nor gender - despite what the narrow minded men in pulpits have spewed out down the centuries - but it does recognise the fact of original sin in the human condition. We are all fallen, we are all broken, and we are all in need of grace.

Even if one isn’t religious inclined there is something else to consider.

For past generations the stakes were so big. By contrast this present generation’s stakes seem petty and small. Indeed the current generation’s struggle comes down to fighting for safe spaces, trigger warnings and micro aggressions. In other words, it’s just about the protection of feelings. No wonder our generation is seen as the snowflake generation.

A lot of this nonsense can be put down to the intellectually fraudulent teachings of critical theory and post colonial studies in the liberal arts departments on university campuses and how such ideas have and continue to seep into the mainstream conversation with such concepts as ‘white privilege’, ‘white fragility’, ‘whites lives don’t matter’, ‘abolish whiteness’ ‘rape culture’ etc which feels satisfying as intellectual masturbation but has no resonance in the real world where people get on with the daily struggle of making something of their lives.

But yet its critical mass is unsustainable because the ideas inherent within it are intellectually unstable and will eventually implode in on itself - witness the current war between feminists (dismissed uncharitably as terfs) who define women by their biological sex and want to protect their sexual identity from those who for example are championing trans rights as sexuality defined primarily as a social construct. So you have third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same issues. For instance there’s the sex positive feminists and there’s also anti-porn, sex negative feminists. How can the same thing either be empowering or demeaning? There are so many third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same exact topics that it’s difficult to even place what they want anymore.The rallying cries of third wave feminism have largely been issues that show only one side of the story and leave out a lot of pertinent details.

But the totality of the damage done to the cultural fabric of society is already there to see. Already now we are in this Orwellian scenario where one has to police feelings so that these feminists don’t feel marginalised or oppressed in some undefinable way. This is what current Western culture has been reduced to. I find it ironic in this current politically charged times, that conservatives have become the defenders of liberalism, or at least the defence of the principle of free speech.

To me the Third Wave feminism battle cry seems to be: Once more but with feelings.

With all due respect, fuck feelings. Grow up.

I always ask the same question to friends who are caught up in this current madness be they BLM activists or third wave feminists (yes, I do have friends in these circles because I don’t define my friends by their beliefs but by their character): compared to what?

We live in a systemic racist society! Compared to what?

We live in a patriarchal society where women are subjugated daily! Compared to what?

We live in an authoritarian state! Compared to what?

We live in a corrupt society of privileged elites! Compared to what?

Third-wave? Not so much. By vast majorities, women today are spurning the label of “feminist” - it’s become an antagonising, miserable, culturally Marxian code word for a far-left movement that seeks to confine women into boxes of ‘wokeness’.

For sure, Western societies and culture have its faults - and we should always be aware of that and make meaningful reforms towards that end. Western societies are not perfect but compared to other societies - China? Russia? Saudi Arabia? - in the world today are we really that bad?

Where is this utopian society that you speak of? Has there ever been one in recorded history? As H.L. Mencken memorably put it, “An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.“

I prefer to live in a broken world that is rather than one imagined. When we are rooted in reality and empirical experience can we actually stop wasting time on ‘hurt feelings’ and grievances construed through abstract ideological constructs and get on with making our society better bit by bit so that we can then hand over for our children and grandchildren to inherit a better world, not a perfect one.

Thanks for your question.

[mellomedia]

Youth Culture

For Media & Society’s first blog post, our class watched Euphoria, Mid90s, Mean Girls, Kids, and The Breakfast Club. If you haven’t figured out the theme yet, it’s youth culture. Most of these films were set in the 80s and 90s before this current generation. This is the first generation where our lives are saturated by mobile technology and social media (Divecha, 2017). But no matter what generation, youth culture has many common behaviors, or misbehaviors.

Often when I watch a film or read a comic book, I wonder if I relate to the story or anyone in it. I looked for anything in common I might have with one of the characters in the five films we watched. I can identify with Ray from Mid90s the most. I’m not a die-hard skateboarder like Ray. In fact I can’t skateboard at all, but I dedicate all my time and energy into art and animation. While we have different interests, I can relate to Ray’s passion for something he enjoys and the energy he puts into it. Ray is the top skateboarder in his group and practiced every day. All my spare time is spent drawing and taking online animation courses. My goal is to always do better than what I did yesterday. Words to describe Ray would be the same way I describe myself: down to earth, not concerned with fitting in, my own person, caring, always willing to help, and a very loyal friend. When Stevie joins the skateboard crew in the film Mid90s, he finally digs up some money to buy Ruben’s old, used skateboard. Stevie gets injured while attempting an insane jump over a hole in a roof and breaks his skateboard. Ray sees how much Stevie is trying to fit in, no matter how many falls he takes, he gets back up. Ray has a big heart and builds Stevie a new skateboard. As I mentioned, I’m not a skateboarder, but I enjoy trying to make people smile with my art. I enjoy drawing a cartoon of a friend to help them to get out of a funk or just listen to whatever it is they are going through. 

These films all share a few common themes. One theme is belonging. I admit I looked up the term “fitting in” and it was compared to belonging. Fitting in is defined as to be like other people in a group – what they wear, how they act, how they look. (Pace, 2018) Belonging is a basic human need – it is about acceptance – being where you want to be and being where you are wanted (Pace, 2018). A few examples are Stevie (Mid90s) wants to be accepted into the skateboard crew; Brian (The Breakfast Club) brings a flare gun to school as a suicide attempt because he didn't feel he was good enough; and Cady (Mean Girls) is the new girl trying to get accepted by The Plastics.

My freshman year in high school definitely falls into the theme of belonging. I struggled with speech and have a learning disorder. And at the time I had zero confidence in socializing. I’d walk over to a group of kids in the cafeteria just to try to get involved in the conversation, but I couldn’t form sentences quick enough to jump in. I would be the weird kid just standing there. One day my speech therapist asked me what I wanted to improve and I told her I wanted to gain confidence in socializing. She told me the best way to do this would be to just try to talk to more people. Well in high school that worked with some kids, but not all. I’ll never forget one day in the cafeteria I was trying to find a place to sit and eat lunch. I saw an empty chair at a table where a ‘friend’ was sitting. The group was taking turns roasting one another. At one point another kid challenged me. I was doing fine until he said, “You know people are only nice to you because they don’t want to hurt your feelings.” That hurt like hell. He was referring to my speech impairment. I got up from the table and walked away. And that ‘friend’ at the table didn’t defend me at all. One girl came running over to make sure I was alright. I was pissed and hurt. I was not alright. Just so you don’t think I went off the deep end and had a miserable high school experience, I actually gained a great friend in high school that day. Alex, who was a senior, saw me leave track practice early. My head just wasn’t into track, so I went to sit in the empty cafeteria hoping to clear my head. He asked how things were going and I told him what happened that day. He told me, “It’s not easy finding out who your real friends are. But don’t change for anyone and don’t try to be like anyone else. Just be you.” I’ll never forget how he took the time to talk to me. After his advice, I could care less about belonging.

Another common theme between all five films is rebellion. When they aren’t skateboarding, most of the characters in Mid90s spend their time partying, drinking, and doing drugs. In The Breakfast Club, each character is in detention because they rebelled in some way. Why else would they be in detention? Every character in Kids was a rebel, actually more like a criminal. I bet the writer of the film was too.

A third theme is “bro” culture. “Bro” culture is defined as people who are bullies but at the end of the day they have your back, like a brother (Sloothunter42, 2018). Two great examples of “bros” are John (The Breakfast Club) and Ian (Mid90s). Throughout The Breakfast Club, John constantly insults the other kids in detention. He even insults the principal. The group escapes detention to wander the hallways. When the principal sees them, John saves the group by telling them to go back to the library while he distracts the principal. This link shows you the scene I’m explaining: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Iq7MRlHg5I (Hughes, 1985). Not something you would have expected from a bully, but you would from a “bro.” In Mid90s, Stevie’s brother, Ian, beats the crap out of him every chance he gets. But when Stevie is laying in a hospital bed after a car accident, his brother is there by his side. He even shares his precious orange juice.

Now onto one of my favorite things in life, music! I put together a playlist that relates to my adolescent experience. In no particular order, here are 10 songs and what each means to me. But let me point out that some song lyrics mean something to me, while with other songs it was the energy it gives off. I’m all about positive energy. First song is “Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra. I first heard this song during the movie Guardians of the Galaxy. This song kept me motivated and positive during high school. If I was having a bad day, this was my ‘go to’ song. I also listened to it every day on my way to school. Next is “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley, a.k.a. CeeLo Green. This song reminds me of my mind, imagination, and the stuff I think about. I always have a trillion things going on in my head. I guess that explains my poor focus skills and super procrastination. “Inner Ninja” by Classified is another upbeat song. A few lines that always stuck in my head are, “I find my inner strength and I re-up; Here we go, I know I've never been the smartest or wisest; But I realize what it takes; Never dwell in the dark cause the sun always rises.” My junior year of high school I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. It has and still is life-changing and as much as I don’t let it change who I am, I’m human. But as the song says, don’t dwell on the negative, look for the positive. I always remind myself of the positive. “Through the Fire and Flames” by DragonForce always fueled my brain when I was tired of doing homework or studying. To me the lyrics mean to keep moving forward no matter how difficult. Just look at what your goal is and don’t give up. Plus this song has one hell of a guitar solo that is very motivating. Michael Jackson is one of my favorite artists and “Man in the Mirror” reminds me how important it is to try to do good in the world and make a positive change. Regardless of culture, color, religion, and disability, we are all capable of making good changes in the world. I tried this on a much smaller scale in high school by volunteering at the food pantry and community events. “Clint Eastwood” by Gorillaz is one of many songs by this group that I like. It’s not so much the words I relate to, but I love the animation in their music videos. I remember the first time I saw one of their videos I thought how cool and mysterious it was that we only see the singers as cartoons. We are never shown who they really are. I like the fact that it’s different. Different is good in my world. “Intergalactic” by Beastie Boys reminds me of breakdancing and dancing in general. I love to dance and looked forward to every prom and homecoming dance at high school. “Without Me” by Eminem reminds me that no matter how much people criticize you, you can be very successful at what you enjoy doing. The last song on my list is “Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand. To be honest, I just like the beat of the song and it’s one of those songs I listened to over and over in high school.

So that wraps up my Youth Culture blog. I hope it gave you a better understanding of how I relate to the assigned films. But let me make one thing clear, I do not relate to anything in the film Kids. Not one thing.

Below is my self portrait of what goes through my mind. 

Artwork by: Marcello Laudato

[rhetoricalrogue]

31 Days of Wayhaven, Day 29

Prompt: Veil Rating: G Words: 1,859 Characters: Winona Adams, Nicolo Morelli Summary: Three months into her new life, Winona’s still trying to find her footing.

For the @31daysofwayhaven event.

Agency Facility, September 2017

“How’s it going, Champ?”

Winona jumped at the man’s greeting.  She’d only known him for less than a week, was it Nicolo?  Nick?  “Oh, hello.”  She didn’t want to appear rude, but she also didn’t really feel like speaking with anyone at the moment.  It was in part because while she was starting to adapt to the English language most commonly spoken in this world, she still stumbled on certain phrases.  It was also because after spending three months at this Facility, she was feeling incredibly homesick.

There was too little green in this place.  It was too cold; she craved the warmth of the sun against her skin and the feel of grass underfoot.  She hadn’t been confined to any one space, so she spent as much time outdoors as she could.  Cam, the man she had befriended, was a constant companion, and she was grateful for his presence.  There was another woman, one who reminded her of the women in her world who chose a life devoted to the martial arts, often depicted as tall, strong women with fierce expressions on their faces.  Penelope - at least she thought that was her name, she was awful on names! - would have fit in exceptionally well there.

And this man.  She didn’t need to spend a lot of time with him to know that he was the sort who didn’t take life seriously.  He was a bit of a dandy, always fussing with his clothes or his hair, and apparently the only things he took seriously were the two aforementioned interests and food, so much that she accidentally sent him on an explanation of what pasta was that turned into a lecture and an invitation to introduce her to everything good and right in the world.  This turned out to be several meals of noodle dishes, which she wasn’t going to complain about, especially when she found one that reminded her of a soup that her mother used to make for her when she had been very young and not feeling well.  The flavors weren’t quite right, but it was enough that it had held the feeling of homesickness at bay for a little while.

Nicky, that was the man’s name!  Nicky had found her sitting in the gardens humming to herself as she tried to get over the odd sense of deja vu.  It was the beginning of fall here, where in her world - the Echo World, as these people liked to call it - they had already gone through fall and winter.  Trees had been in full bloom, and she’d had flowers in her hair when she fell through the rift.  Some of them survived, and she’d begged to keep them with her even though some of the scientists who worked in the Facility wanted them for study.  Cam had showed her how to preserve them by pressing and drying them out, and now the last reminders of her homeworld were saved within the heavy pages of a travel book for Scotland, stuck between a description of the north shores and a brief blurb about the local folklore.  She didn’t know what a selkie was yet, but Cam had given her a sad sort of smile when she showed him what page had come up when she randomly opened the book to press her flowers, telling her that it was weirdly meant to be that they had found the other.

“I can go, if you’d like to be alone,” Nicky offered, breaking her out of her thoughts.  

“Oh, no, it’s fine.  Thank you for your company.”  She wasn’t sure if it was the correct phrase, but it seemed as if she got her point across.  “What is this Champ you speak of?”

He sat down on the other end of the bench she was on and stretched his long legs out in front of him.  “Ah.  It’s a sort of nickname.” He noted her slightly wrinkled nose and winked.  “Though perhaps I should work on a better one for you, that was a little too unoriginal.”

They were silent for a while before he started to talk again.  “You seem to be adapting to this world well,” he commented.

She smiled, hoping that he couldn’t tell that her smile was fake.  “It’s been interesting.  This world is very different from the one I come from, though in some ways, it’s similar.”  She played with a leaf that had fallen from the tree overhead, the bright red color reminding her of the one that her father had planted right outside her bedroom window when she had been a child.

Her father.  Time moved differently here than in her home.  Cam had tried to explain, but it was difficult for her to wrap her head around the concept.  She wondered just how long she had been away for them.  Did they worry about her as she worried about them?  Did they look for her as she would have searched for them if their places were switched?  She held the leaf close to her chest.  Would Nelros mourn?  They hadn’t been married even an entire year yet.  Granted, their marriage was an arranged one, but there had been genuine fondness between them that had grown into the start of what she hoped would be a marriage full of love.

“You know, you don’t have to wear that veil all the time.”

She frowned.  “I do not understand.”  She knew what the word meant, but her head and shoulders were bare.

“That smile.  It may fool some people, but I can guarantee it doesn’t fool Cam.  And I’ve been around for so long that I can see through a fake smile when I see one.”

She scoffed.  “You talk as if you are ancient, though you are probably what? A young man barely entering adulthood?”

Nicky laughed.  “Ah, you flatter me.  At least someone here thinks that I’m still in my youth.”  He gave a smirk at her confused look.  “A story for another time, piccolina.”

“I have been here for months, but I still do not know my place in this new world,” she told him.  There were so many things that she was still trying to get used to, but she was slowly figuring them out.  She’d discovered other inhabitants from the Echo World who had suffered a similar fate as she who were more than willing to help her navigate her new home.  The language instructors who were teaching her this common tongue were nice to work with, but she turned more and more towards those who still spoke Echolian when she was sad and yearning for home.

“It will happen.  Take your time, don’t rush things.”

There was another beat and Nicky fidgeted at his end of the bench.  Something told Winona that he was a man who was not accustomed to sitting still.  “It’s okay to not be happy all the time,” he said, grabbing a leaf from the bench for himself and twirling it between his fingers.  “It may come as a surprise, but I am not the overly happy go lucky man that everyone thinks I am. There are definitely moments in my life where I hide what I’m feeling behind this handsome face of mine.”

That earned him a smile.  “You have a high opinion of yourself, do you?”

“Hey, I might as well, instead of relying on the opinions of others to stroke my ego.”  He tossed the leaf to the side.  “But what I’m saying is that it’s okay to be sad, and it’s okay to miss your home.”

His words seemed to trigger a release on the hold she had on her tears.  “I miss them so much,” she cried, hiding her face in her hands as she poured out her grief.  “My brother, I worry about him.  Did he make it home okay?  Is he safe?  Did he fall, or worse, did he jump after me and hit the bottom of the hole I fell through instead of coming through the other side?  My Nelros, what must he be thinking right about now?”  She knew that she was speaking in her own language, but it didn’t seem to bother Nicky that he didn’t understand her.  She was vaguely aware that he had moved closer to her, his arms wrapping around her and his chin resting against the crown of her head as she sobbed into his chest.

“There, there.  We were wondering when you would let yourself cry.  Cam and Penny refused to place a bet on the exact time, but I had a feeling that you would need a good cry soon.”  She curled her hands against the leather of his jacket and calmed her breathing, tears finally spent.

“Tears are a weakness,” she explained.  She was slightly grateful that Nelros had no real standing in the courts, which in turn meant that she would not have to play by society’s games.  Winona was well aware that she held her heart on her sleeve, and expressing sorrow or any other emotion was something her mother had tried to train her to hide to no avail.

“Not all the time.  Tears are a release valve.  We all need a good cry every now and again.”

She quirked an eyebrow.  “Even you?”

He chuckled, his arms squeezing her in a warm hug.  “Yes, even me.”  He pulled back to look her in the eye.  “Though it’s been some time since my last crying session, maybe we could schedule one together, so we don’t have to go through them alone?”

It was strange, but she got the feeling that he was telling her that he would be there for her when she felt lonely and sad without really saying those exact words.  “That sounds like a good plan,” she told him, reaching up and wiping her eyes.  “Thank you, Nicky.”

“Any time, piccolina.”

She tipped her head thoughtfully.  “That is the second time you’ve called me that.  What does it mean?”

He let go of her with one arm to wave his hand in front of him, giving a universal gesture of I’m trying to find the right phrase.  “It’s a word in my language that directly translates to little one, though it’s a nickname that one can use for their friend.”

“Is it because I am short?”  Her height was something that she had been teased about all her life, and instead of being irritating, it was strangely comforting that it seemed as if the same could be said for this world.

“A little.”  He gave her a contrite look.  “I can work on another for you, if you like.”

She shook her head.  “No, this one is fine.”  She smiled up at him.  “I like the way it sounds.”

“Then, Winona, you shall be piccolina to me.”  He moved, gently rocking them together.  “It sounds as if this is the start of a fantastic friendship.”

Winona burrowed closer to Nicky, her arms wrapping around his waist.  The empty loneliness she’d been dealing with these past few months suddenly didn’t seem as bad.  “Yes.  I believe it is.”

[galleryofunknowns]

Unknown Artist, 'Portrait of a Man', oil on canvas, late 1700s, American?, currently in the collection of the Museo Nacional Thyssen Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain.

The portrait, formerly attributed to Gilbert Stuart (b.1755 - d.1828), was previously thought to be of Hercules Posey (b.1748 - d.1812), an enslaved cook in the employ of George Washington. Below the cut is an edited version of of a Philadelphia Inquirer article written March, 2019, on the life of Hercules and the research undertaken in the portrait.

“This is very different from how Stuart would have done it,” said Dorinda Evans, a Gilbert Stuart scholar and professor emerita at Emory University, who was certain that both the painter and subject had been misidentified.

The other scholars, curators, and conservators appeared unanimous. But there was one more blockbuster twist. The hat, perceived to be a chef’s toque for as long as the painting has been known to modern viewers, was in fact not a cook’s hat at all, Evans said, but a Caribbean headdress similar to one worn by free Dominicans in the West Indies depicted in paintings by the Italian artist Agostino Brunias.

The experts’ verdict: The painting is genuine to the late 1700s, and the unknown subject was a person of noble importance. But it wasn’t painted by Stuart. And the subject wasn’t even a chef — definitively ruling out Hercules and setting in motion a cascade of implications for historians at a moment when interest in him and others enslaved by the Washingtons remains high.

In fact, the conclusions of this meeting of experts, conducted in private two years ago but made public only now, helped spur a researcher last month to discover what might in fact be a record of the elusive chef’s burial place.

That chef just wasn’t the man in this painting.

“No American cook in the colonies dressed like that,” said Evans, noting that the now-familiar chef’s toque did not appear until the 1820s. “It’s a fantasized image of what people want, because people want to have an image of Hercules. And people see the things they want to see.”

The painting, long held as a potential key to the chef’s story, turned out to be a false clue, another myth in a Washington universe full of them, “like the cherry tree and the wooden teeth,” said Mount Vernon senior curator Susan P. Schoelwer, who coordinated the study day along with associate curator Jessie MacLeod.

“There is a real possibility of a sense of loss there. It’s such a powerful portrait,” she said. “There is a real hunger for a dignified portrait of an enslaved person we can identify with as an individual. But when I weigh that against something that … really isn’t what it was supposed to be, I’m always going to opt for being a seeker after truth.”

Hercules the man was very real. He was sold to George Washington as a teenage “ferryman” in 1767 by a neighbor, John Posey, as payment for a debt. And his labors for the Washingtons were well-documented at Mount Vernon and in Philadelphia, where he was renowned for the feasts he cooked at the President’s House between 1790 and 1796. He escaped from Mount Vernon in 1797 — on George Washington’s birthday — and was never captured.

These facts, drawn from house accounts, farm logs, letters, and reminiscences, have fashioned the chef as a hero whose culinary talents earned him special privileges from the Washingtons and an income from selling kitchen scraps that afforded him a notable sartorial style. He was recalled by Washington’s stepgrandson, George Washington Parke Custis, as a “great master-spirit” in the kitchen who, after the meal, would don fine black silks and a gold-headed cane for evening promenades down High Street.

Though he was dressed stylishly, walking the streets of an abolitionist-minded city known as a haven for free blacks, Hercules was still an enslaved man — and he was eventually left in Virginia and set to hard plantation labor.

What became of Hercules after his dash for freedom has long remained a mystery. This painting, now owned by the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, was long thought to be a clue.

But fundamental questions about the painting’s relationship to Hercules persisted. They were definitively dispelled in the ultraviolet light of the private study day two years ago when the painting was removed from the walls of Mount Vernon after an exhibition in preparation to be returned to Spain. Paloma Alarcó, the Thyssen-Bornemisza curator who attended, agreed to the examination (and my attendance) under the condition its results not be made public until the museum could conduct its own follow-up studies.

She said that time has now come; the museum has hit a dead end: “We are blind, we must confess. … Maybe we will never know who this guy is.”

This is hardly the first old painting to be misidentified in the often shadowy world of art collecting. Its identification as Washington’s cook was likely added in the mid-20th century to increase the value on a work already misidentified earlier in the century as by Stuart, who famously painted the president in 1796. It remained in private hands and largely unstudied by scholars until it was sold in 1983 to Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, whose massive collection became the museum, which simply cataloged its previously ascribed provenance as the painting arrived.

But Hercules, as one of the most visible individuals enslaved during that era, in part due to this image, carries extra cultural significance because of the growing dialogue about the founding fathers and their troubling involvement with slavery. And as I shared news of the painting’s removal from the record, it brought a mix of disappointment and resignation.

“Although we always questioned it, it’s kind of devastating to find out it’s not him,” said Erica Armstrong Dunbar, a professor of history at Rutgers University whose book, Never Caught (Atria, 2017), documents the escape of Ona Judge from the President’s House in Philadelphia, where she was enslaved alongside Hercules and seven others. “We don’t have any other such portraits of the enslaved who lived at Mount Vernon.”

On Dec. 15, 1801, Martha Washington wrote to Richard Varick, the mayor of New York City, to thank him for looking into the whereabouts of “my Old Cook Hercules. … I have been so fortunate as to engage a white cook who answers very well. I have thought about it therefore better to decline taking Hercules back.”

What Martha Washington did not mention was that she had already freed her husband’s slaves in January of that year, acting early upon a wish from George’s will with an emancipation that also applied to Hercules.

That New York correspondence has long been the last known clue to Hercules’ fate. And it’s a thread that Ganeshram and Sara Krasne, a colleague at the Westport Historical Society where the novelist is executive director, began to pursue in February with a startling new discovery — a New York City death notice that just might be him.

They looked back to John Posey, Hercules’ previous owner, for more clues. They found one. Krasne uncovered the burial record for Hercules Posey, a Virginia native born in 1748 who was listed in the 1812 city directory as a laborer who lived at 33 Orange St. and who died of consumption on May 15, 1812. He was buried at the Second African Burying Ground in Lower Manhattan — a grave that Ganeshram believes is still under the Christie Street sidewalk on the Lower East Side.

“What are the odds with all these factors — being named Hercules and Posey, being black from Virginia and more or less the same age — of it not being him?” Ganeshram said. “People chose to believe the painting was him [despite all the doubts]. I think this evidence is much stronger.”

A pair of historians agreed.

“She may really be onto something,” said Mary V. Thompson, the Mount Vernon research historian who is soon set to publish her own book on slavery at Mount Vernon. “The name, age, and birthplace information are really compelling.”

“[They] may have found the needle in the haystack,” Dunbar, the Rutgers professor and author, concurred. “I would feel totally comfortable speculating that it was him.”

And so, 222 years after Hercules’ daring escape, the great chef may have been found.

“The portrait was not Hercules, but look what popped up instead,” Dunbar said. “He’s totally not trying to go away — he wants you to know.”

“To think he was right there, and may still be, gives me chills,” Ganeshram said. “Hercules is bigger than the painting, and he always has been.”

LaBan, Craig (2019, March 1). 'George Washington's enslaved chef, who cooked in Philadelphia, disappears from painting, but may have reappeared in New York', Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved from https://www.inquirer.com/food/craig-laban/george-washington-slave-chef-cook-hercules-gilbert-stuart-painting-wrong-20190301.html.