#hey. it's okay. incest allegories.

[hiskillingjar]

Hey! I hope you're having a nice day. I'm the anon that asked about the inside names a while ago, I really appreciate you getting out of your way to answer me! <3. I was thinking, could you please write Ren x Strade where Ren gets jealous of one of the new victims and Strade "consoles" him by letting him watch TV with him in the sofa and *maybe* having some fun only the two of them? I firmly believe that Strade canonically did those kind of things (even if we didn't see it) to keep Ren closer and not make him want to escape. You're free to decline the request btw, no pressure intended! Hope you have a great day (:

huh…the poison really DOES drip through (that's a succession reference because i enjoy quality television)

1700+ words, she/her for a fem mc

Ren had grown accustomed to his new routine in Strade’s domain, for lack of a better word.

In the mornings (or early afternoons), he’d wake up, make breakfast, clean up after himself, then maybe, occupy his time with a new show or his filtered internet access. Mid-day, he’d eat lunch, take a nap, and, of course, try not to get himself killed (an important task!) In the evenings, if he made it that long, he’d make dinner, clean up, and maybe have a bath to balm his new wounds, before going to bed.

Then the cycle would start all over again, day after day.

It was easy, despite the danger, and it was stable, and though he was smart enough to know that this wasn't what a life should be, living like a captive animal, too scared to make even one mistake lest he be punished for it, there was a certain comfort to knowing exactly what he was going to do, every day for the rest of his life.

Hence, his irritation when a new pet had come in and fucked all that up.

And hence why now he was cleaning up after a dinner he hadn't even made (or enjoyed enough to warrant his exchange of chores. She was a vegetarian, for god's sake.)

He seethed silently to himself, dragging the metal scouring sponge up and down a greasy frying pan, sticky with brown sauce and burnt tofu, turning the dishwater a muddy brown colour.

This was just about the chores, he told himself, this was about the disruption to his routine throwing him out of wack and disorientating him, it was just that.

His anger surely had nothing to do with the beaming smile Strade gave her when she presented dinner, reminding the young man of a husband and a new (inexperienced) wife, or the way he pet her hair all the while as he ate, or even the way he complimented the meal, commenting that she should make dinner more often, because "Ren's got a routine about his cooking" and he’d grown bored of it.

It was nothing to do with that, surely.

No way. 

“God, I can see that scowl from the other room.”

Ren let out a surprised yip when he heard Strade’s voice, dropping the pan in the soapy water and soaking the front of his tank top.

He always had a way of sneaking up on him.

“S-Strade,” Ren replied, looking over his shoulder to the older man, who was idling in the doorway of the kitchen, picking his teeth. “Sorry, I, um…I’m just doing the dishes.”

“I can see that,” Strade replied as if it was obvious (and it was) before he crossed the threshold of the kitchen and paced towards the younger man. "You're looking pretty dour, Ren. Why the long face, hm?" He then asked, raising a brow and leaning against the kitchen island, his hip slightly cocked.

"It's…it’s nothing," Ren murmured softly, his gaze going back and switching between his shaking hands, bunched up in the front of his murky grey tank top, and the dirty dishwater where the pan was still waiting to be cleaned.

"It's not nothing, otherwise you wouldn't be in such a mood," Strade retorted with a huffed chuckle. "Come on, tell me what's on your mind. I can’t deal with you acting bitchy for the rest of the evening."

"I just..." Ren sighed, forcing himself to relax. He had a tendency to be on edge around Strade, though. 

“Just?” Strade drawled out. “Don’t lie to me, Ren. You know how bad you are at it.”

"I…” Ren’s voice was barely a whisper as he glanced off to the side, his face heating up and feeling hot. “I miss you, I suppose."

"You…miss me?" Strade sounded genuinely surprised as he took a step closer, encroaching on the younger man’s space, as he so often did. "Well, that’s pretty silly. We live in the same house, buddy. I see you every day."

"You know what I mean," Ren replied quietly, biting his lip, his sharp, little fangs hooking over his lips and marking them with stark indentations, about to bleed. "It’s like….since you picked up the new girl, it's just been...different, ya know. Like, with everything and not just…mm, between us."

Strade was quiet for a good while, his golden eyes drifting upwards with thought, before he let out a good-humoured chuckle (low and pleasant and rumbling), shaking his head fondly as he stepped even closer to the young man and slid his big palm along the exposed skin of his back. 

"Are you jealous, Ren?" Strade murmured, his voice low and almost teasing.

"Of course, I'm fucking jealous," Ren replied openly (he was never good at lying anyway), his voice an irritated rasp as his extremities bristled with nervous (quietly delighted) energy at being touched so intimately. "I’m all alone and you've got a new...thing to play with. She's even doing all my chores, like...like you're husband and wife or something"

"Mm," Strade hummed with subdued amusement, resting his stubbly chin on Ren's shoulder and rubbing at the space where his skin and tail met. It was incredibly sensitive. "See, I always thought you didn't like my games...you fought back hard enough that I thought that way, anyway..."

"I-I don't," Ren said, his fingers curling into tight fists, trying to ignore the little jolts of pleasure that shot through his back as Strade pressed his thumb against the nub of flesh at the base of his tail. "But I, ah...i-it was worth it when you were nice to me, you know. Now, you just...ignore me. I hate it."

"Hmph," Strade huffed out a chuckle, so effortlessly charming, so easily likeable, no wonder he had no trouble picking up new prey. "Come now, there's no reason to be jealous. You know you're my first, don't you, fuchs?"

Ren said nothing but shivered as he felt Strade lean in even closer, felt his hot breath on his skin, the warmth and lowness of his accent when he said his pet name for the younger man enough to make every part of his body throb with desperate, needing want. 

He was a sucker, that was for damn sure. 

"You'll always be my first. Having someone new here doesn't get rid of that." Strade's hand ran further down, stroking over his tail before landing on his backside, giving it a firm grope. "There really is no reason at all to be jealous of someone new...though I have to admit, it's incredibly cute."

"Strade-" Ren whimpered, shaking hands gripping the edge of the marble counter (expensive, bespoke, how much blood had been spilt for him to afford this kitchen, this house, this life?)

"If I were a worse person, I'd use that to my advantage, you know." He continued, his fingers greedily palming Ren's ass before slipping beneath his shorts and reaching to the front. cupping and squeezing his slowly hardening cock as he pressed his cheek to Ren's, stubble-dotted skin against his, smooth and youthful and ripe for the taking. "Take this opportunity to see you really rip into my new pet, tear her apart, just for you to prove how loyal you are to me."

Ren bit his lip hard enough that he felt the slow trickle of blood bead down his chin, but the pain didn't deter him from shifting his hips forward and seeking more of Strade's warm grip.

"But, well..." The older man mused. "I'm pretty bad, but I'm not that bad."

"Mm," Ren moaned, bringing his fist to his lips to keep himself quiet (and to wipe away the blood) as Strade worked his cock to full hardness, his knot swelling with blood. "You're awful..."

"Ah, I don't think you mind," He quipped with another low chuckle, pressing his lips to Ren's cheek and squeezing him a little tighter. "Otherwise you wouldn't be jealous."

"Ngh-" Ren's hands went down to Strade's, his weak grip pulling at his wrist and his hips shifting forward even more, desperate for any degree of attention that the older man would give him, no matter the cost.

"You're my boy, Ren," Strade reminded him, his lips trailing down his trembling jaw, in a gesture as close to a kiss that someone like Strade could manage. "My number one. I'll never be able to replace that. You do know that, don’t you?"

"Mmhmm, yeah," Ren stammered, his voice weak and quiet and so utterly submissive that it made his legs (and cock) twitch. "I'm...mm, I'm your boy..."

"Yeah, you are," Strade growled indulgently, pushing his own hips forward and letting Ren feel the growing hardness of his cock through his khakis. "I hope you don't forget that, fuchs...I'd hate to have to remind you."

"Mm...n-no, sir," Ren replied quickly with a jerked nod of his head. "I won't forget, promise."

"Good boy," Strade praised, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head (right next to his twitching ear) and prying himself away, idly groping his cock as he did so but looking as casual and easy and so fucking untouchable, like he always did. "Hey, how about we have a night together, just us two?"

"H-Huh?" Ren looked towards the older man with a confused look (apparently unaware or uncaring just how much his cock was tenting his loose shorts).

"Yeah, I've got one of those, ah…those nature shows you like recorded." He beamed, just as he had with the girl when she'd made dinner, and it was enough to make Ren’s heart hurt. "How about it? Boy's night?"

Ren didn't care about nature shows. 

But Strade did, and it was one of the few things they actually did together, before the girl had interrupted their peace. 

So, Ren smiled back, his tail wagging and his ears perked up high on his head.

"Y-Yeah! That sounds...really great." He nodded eagerly. "Um, let me just finish the dishes and then we can...yeah, watch it."

"Wunderschon," Strade laughed handsomely and crossed his thick arms over his chest. "That’s great, I'll get it queued up.” He turned to leave the kitchen. “But don't take long, buddy, or I'll start without you."

"Sure, won't take long." Ren smiled to himself again, turning back to the dishes.

"Oh, and Ren?"

"Hm?"

"You really should warm up to our new guest already, hm? I never said I minded sharing her with you...and she's a better fuck than you probably give her credit for~"

[friendly-eldritch-horror]

My Review of Star Trek Picard

TL;DR: It is Trump news cycle crossed with TOS reboot movies with an unnecessarily big budget crossed with the most stupid “why optimism in Star Trek is wrong” review, cut by a film student who just learned about switching scenes and was told to give things a sense of “mystery” who interpreted that as  no background information. 

In conclusion: it is not a implausible theory that the original people involved with Star Trek are trying to torch the franchise.

Don’t watch it. It is less of a Star Trek story than Threshold (VOY:S.2,Ep.15) is, and that ends with the captain and the navigator having lizard babies and abandoning them on a planet due to “evolving” into a “previous form of humanity” (which was apparently lizard) because of “breaking the warp 10 barrier”. None of that description is made up. But Picard lacks the core of optimism that all of the old series always had, even in defeat.

Here’s my experience with the show, as I remember it unfolding. I don’t actually remember if this is the precise chronological order, and I don’t care enough to check.

(Spoilers for Star Trek Picard below, tw violence mention, tw torture mention, tw weird mind manipulation bullshit mention, tw questionable romance things mention, tw mention of mercy kill)

[you can see from these tags why I don’t like it, because these things are all on screen, but hey, here’s the reconstructed live-blogged version because I am pissed]

Star Trek Picard: We’re going to begin with Picard giving a cool speech, perfectly encapsulating the spirit of TNG. Apparently lots of bad things happened in the past, but Picard has a moral compass. We want to make sure you know that.

Me: That was a great speech. This is going to be cool

Star Trek Picard: Okay, we’re going to make Starfleet cynical and have all of the problems of the current day US. And we’re going to introduce a cool character and kill her off immediately. This is definitely not episodic.

Me: Okay, maybe this is a bad beginning and the world is going to be better? The lack of stability makes me feel bad but that’s probably just a me thing.

Star Trek Picard: You know that speech Picard made? That was a bad idea. And we’re going to leave the two characters most qualified for this particular mission behind on Earth doing presumably farm work, to probably be killed by assassins and no one comments on this or thinks it’s a bad idea.

Me: Okay, my friend is still invested in this... 

Star Trek Picard: Hey, we’re going to add in an allegory for 9/11 truthism being correct. And not tell you anything that’s going on in any coherent format. Also, there are scenes where we wanted the characters to argue but didn’t nail down what their positions actually were before we wrote it, so the dialogue makes no sense. Hope you don’t mind

Me: ...i guess it’s good i swallowed TVTropes? i think i can mostly pin down the tropes they’re trying to use... Okay, at least there will be good fanfics of this which go back and sort out everything other than the main plot thread. Because that does have some promise

Star Trek Picard: And Picard is an asshole. He abandoned his son figure and his former first mate for fifteen years and never even said hi. And doesn’t apologize for either of these things. And he’s also willing to be performatively insulting to Romulans for being Romulans.

Me: Is ... is Patrick Stuart just trying to torch the whole franchise?

Star Trek Picard: Here’s some romance scenes where both characters are trying to manipulate the other. And they have sex. Lots of scenes like this. Most of the screen time of the most plot-important new character is just her getting intimate with this random Romulan guy who’s trying to find out what she knows before eventually intending to kill her. But hey, she wants to know something from him too, so it’s fine. Except that it’s not clear that she consciously knows what she’s trying to do. The person who would be manipulating her is probably supposed to be good. Also here’s some suggestions of incest. And vague prophecies that are plot important.

Me: I suppose most people like the romance. I don’t, but I know I’m not a good judge of things like that.

Star Trek Picard: Oh hey, you know that character from Voyager you liked and sorta named an OC after (Icheb, former Borg kid and awesome)? Yeah, well, he’s going to get graphically tortured to death in the cold open of the episode, then mercy killed by his mother figure. In a flashback. (And we do mean graphically because we have a fancy effects budget and think this is a good place to spend it.) All for the sole reason that we need to show his mother figure, Seven of Nine, that Starfleet cannot be depended on and that the world is dark. And this is the only thirty seconds of screen time he has. I’m sure you enjoyed seeing him again!

And in the present day, Seven doesn’t forgive this like we think old Star Trek would have asked her to and instead she wants to shoot the person who cold-bloodedly ordered this done to her son (and the person just wanted to make a profit and didn’t see him as human, just so we’re clear). And we’re going to say that this desire for revenge demonstrates that Seven isn’t fully human. Have fun :D Also, p.s. we’re killing off another character from the old Star Trek after under two minutes of screen time, who we spent the entire episode finding. Because ... why not? He could have given you some context for what was going on, and we don’t want that.

Me: Fuck you. 

If we take this as cannon, which I don’t, shooting is the least thing that should have happened. Seven should have assimilated the bastard; shooting her is far too restrained. If this monster going to disassemble Borg for their parts, she should be faced with the logical consequences of that.

Also, anyone in production who thought that this was a good idea is hereby formally invited to absentmindedly acquaint their eyes with muscle relaxant menthol cream residue.

[cafeleningrad]

Okay, what?!

This is exactly what "ship whatever you want" is about.

The discourse is getting redundant because the same accusations and debunka are constantly coming up again and again. (Not to mention the oberwhelming majority abuses technical terms without a whims of research, or do a stretch to act as if their dislike for a ship was related to a greater moral cause...)

So, some people ship to cope, others have ships without seeing them as romantic, others straight out like the dynamic including imagining romantic plot. They all come from different points, ending up to like the same dynamic for various reasons - funnily enough all shippers of darker dynamics, even downright morally shocking dynamics are aware of what these dynamics are about.

Here's the crux of the game: their imagination lays in fiction with fictional characters, beings nor feeling pain in real life and so on and so on. It's fiction which will stay fictional whereas dark!shippers would never approve of in real life, they habe the chance to explore themes which are unsettling in a safe environment.

And yes, there're dynamics I don't like or some which squick the hell out of me but it can be helped:

1. block! tumblr expanded the tag block function to mobile devices so you can eliminate the amount of content about the ship you don't like.

2. shipping is not activism. For some reason people these days think that hastags and likes on FB already bring change but it's real life action, visible protest bringing change to political or social places. And somehow tumblr thinks that overpoliticized discussions and allegories on pieces of fiction of which many older or simply not US-productions don't take US-viewpoints and US-liberal values as topic of story telling.

Fandom is the least effective way to force change in story telling. Tumblr is a seperate internet community, pushing an US-identity-politics bias on the rest of the community. A lot about the way tumblr fandom communities are not critical and act without respect is wrong. Thinking that a small community could bring change to productions where executives with money have the mast say over a yelling social media platform, none outside of tumblr itself takes too serious, is dellusional.

In short; stop thinking US liberal values are applicable to everything you read. You can be an activist in fandom but whatever you try to achieve as activist, it will have the most minimal effect in these limited spaces.

3. Get your facts straight. Is that really incest/abuse etc.? Use a simple sylollogism to check if these terms directly apply with every aspect of which the term is made. (By example: Term; Apple; Definition: round, fruit, juicy, grows on trees, ripe in autumn. If something is round, juicy, a fruit which grows and trees and becomes edible in autumn it's an apple. The moment one aspect falls away, let's say not grosing on trees, it's no an aple anymore)

If you have to use analogies to get the aspect in question, highly likely that you have to overthink using that term. Do you just dislike the ship, and it's not morally questionable. Hey, that's fine. You can dislike something without a higher moral reason. Sometimes it's just your personal preference, or writing which you found badly executed. This is enough of a reason to it like a ship.

4. Block the tag! Do yourself a favour, block content. If there is any ship you don't like, go ahead, some ship making you uncomfortable, avoid it!

It's your free time on tumblr, enjoy it with content you like.

you're allowed to dislike a certain ship other's will probably still like it - they all have their own reasons.

There is nothing in tumblrs anti rethoric which couls not twist a fictional relationship between two perfect saint characters into a farfetching meta of abuse/incest/brainwashing etc.

Your ship can also fall on that.

To conclude: People will like the stuff you deem problematic anyway. If these ships make you uncomfortable, that is perfectly fine. Block the tag or the content creators to avoid ship content, enjoy your freetime and keep in mind: the dark!fiction creators can distinguish fiction between reality well.

“ship what you want” when used correctly: it’s okay to ship two characters who haven’t interacted that much in canon but you think look cute together. Use your imagination! Additionally, there’s no shame in self-insert. All in all, have fun!

You fucking demons: abuse/pedophilia/incest is ok because it’s fictional uwu

[elenajohansenreads]

Books I Read in 2020

#25 - Beauty is a Wound, by Eka Kurniawan

Mount TBR: 25/150

Around the Year in 52 Books: A book set in the southern hemisphere

The Ultimate PopSugar Reading Challenge: A book with a great first line

The Reading Frenzy: A book with four words in the title

Rating: 1/5 stars

DNF at page 90.

I picked this up because, hey, Indonesia! I've never read anything about Indonesia or by an Indonesian author! Won't this be fun! And I definitely want to be a better world reader. But this is not the book for me.

I wasn't put off at first by the "gleefully grotesque hyperbole" quoted on the book flap because I dig absurdist humor and allegory, so the idea of grotesqueness was okay...until I actually started to read it. In those first 90 pages, there's more rapes than I can list, more bestiality than I wanted or expected, and some light incest thrown in for extra flavor.

Even if this is all integral to the plot, deeply important to the symbolism, I simply don't want to read it. I don't want to read about a man sexually abusing sheep and chickens. I don't want to have basically every female character I've met raped, even if the scenes aren't graphic. In some ways, having them raped in a single declarative sentence is worse, because it's so mundane, so every-day, that it doesn't even need to be described. And every woman (so far) is mostly characterized by how available for sex she is, and nothing much else. Every male character is mostly characterized by who or what he has sex with...so I guess that's equally awful?

In the end, even though I find all of that distasteful to read, the real failure of this work for me is the absolute lack of character development. By telling this in a magical-realism style with a fairy-tale-thin characters, I can't connect with anyone enough to care, certainly not enough to sit through the "gleefully grotesque hyperbole" that saturates every page.

[horrible-monstrosity]

So apparently Ikuhara's working on a new project... Fuck, I am so fucking ready. My small intestine is so fucking ready to accept Mr. Ikuhara's new sexy white-hot load of fucking bullshit

Unless it was just the After the Revolution manga thing, that is. Which I just read. It was... okay?

The first chapter... it wasn't quite a Random Events plot, just an... events plot. Things just happened. The whole thing was kind of like that- it was like, "hey, remember this thing from the show??" "yeah, what about it?" "oh, nothing *about* it, just... do you remember??? (:" Touga and Sa-seaweed hair argued about something with a forced dichotomy neither of them really had any reason to care about but they were both given basic opposing points of view on so they could come into conflict. Whatever.

The second chapter was probably the best. It had the most coherent plot, the best balance of supernatural elements/Utena literally being plot ex machina where it could actually have been all just a dream and Juri just projecting Ruka's face onto a woman who looks somewhat like him because of her current problems and her past issues... oh, and the story was actually good, with character developments and revelations and shit. It feels like something that was covered already during either the show or the manga in a more vague/confusing way- Juri hated Ruka for taking her lesbo crush away from her, but really she was projecting her bitterness onto his ghost/her hallucination of him while suppressing the memory of him drowning to save her. Him complimenting her fencing skills and generally being a good dude might have been unique to this version fleshing him out somewhat, I don't fucking remember... but whatever, it was good enough that I dgaf it;s fine i guess

Third chapter though? FUCKING DISGUSTING. Kozue, your attraction to Miki isn't the problem, but for fucks sake he is NOT INTO YOU. NO MEANS NO, KOZUE REEEEE And yet... he's apparently, somehow, expected to reciprocate her feelings, and him not wanting to get in on her freaky incest bullshit makes him responsible for putting her in a coma, and he has to face up to his aaaaactions. Oh, and she has a generic abusive husband from nowhere that barely does anything but something to advance the victim plot. What?? The chapter ends on a weird ambiguous note where their relationship is "evolving", because even in Ikuharaland explicitly saying a guy should submit to his sister's incest boner is just a step too far... oh, but saying he's allowed to say no and she should maybe vaguely consider backing the fuck off and getting over herself is a bit more of a step too far, I guess. So they have to move towards it but can't ever actually reach it, and just fucking stopping isn't an option.

Putting this right next to a Juri chapter makes it real interesting. Both involve characters lusting after someone who is just categorically not interested in them, but the way they're played off couldn't be any more different. Juri has very, very much not gotten over her lesbo crush on a straight girl and hateboner for her heterosexual boyfriend, but at the very least she keeps this shit to herself and doesn't try to force whatshername to love her (I mean she might have, briefly, in the series, that might have been the plot of an episode at some point, I don't remember; point is generally she doesn't). But Kozue, meanwhile... it's not even that she doesn't learn when Miki tells her off, her learning to back off isn't even on the table. Instead it's he who needs to learn to get over his not being into incest, and if he it's entirely reasonable to blame him for her drama queening herself into a coma. Which leads to this situation where he needs to cwonsider hew feewwingsss~~~, we're not saying he has to give in to unwanted incest sex but we won't get off his dick about what she wants and literally the only way to fufill that is to give in, but we're not actually saying he has to do something so terrible so somehow it's okay.

Interesting isn't it, that when the "target" is a female must maturity and a hands-off approach be required but when it's a male the very concept of him having his own say in things inverts on itself so hard it becomes a black hole and it's the "attacker"'s feelings that must always be considered. reee something something gynocentricism reeeee

I remember one time I found someone theorising that Miki is the one who killed Jozue in the movie (I forget what happened in the movie but I guess Kozue fucking died or whatever) but people were all just like "oh he would never do that~~" Kozue's sexual creeper tendencies were even more pronounced in the movie. These fuckers will go on and on bout muh battered wife syndrome but a guy snapping and killing a female abuser, even by accident, is beyond consideration. ree

... Oh, I found the teasers for Ikuhara's new thing. What's that more reused imagery (specifically from Penguindrum)? Hey guys, remember how Yurikuma was full of pointless callbacks to Utena and Pengindrum imagery for no reason besides "remember when I did something" wanking and that fucking killed it? This one's dead on arrival! I love it! Just fuck me up, daddy Ikuharaaaaaaa! ... Wait, is this a fucking yaoi? http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2018/05/17-1/enigmatic-tv-anime-sarazanmai-reveals-main-character-designs That's... new for him... They have women's names tho. Is this going to be about how male oppression is actually female oppression in disguise and women are always the victims via allegory? I don't even