#i depend fully on those homos

[bowiesversion]

someone should check on the non-wolfstar shipper marauder fans... like are they okay?? Mentally??

[jpeg-dot-jpeg]

i want to ask about all of those SO BADLY lmao. but i'm most intrigued by Homo et Draconia 👀

ngl, i kinda completely forgot i had this wip going until this tag game lol

Homo et Draconia is a Tim Drake-centric fic (shocker /s) in a kemonomimi type world where people have a secondary species. Tim is, of course, a dragon, and develops typical dragon hoarding tendencies, except the thing he hoards is people. It's a low-key high-key stalker!Tim character study, but the fun part about writing it is that most of the exposition is provided by in-universe sources, like blog updates, articles in scientific journals, elementary school writing assignments, etc. Here's a little snippet!

It is important to acknowledge the extent of profiling within the psychiatric community in regards to second species. It is tempting to attribute certain behaviors to an individual’s latent non-homo sapien DNA, but even behaviors that are commonly associated with a certain second species can have causes completely unrelated to genetics. However, it is still essential for individuals to be aware of any health risks that may be associated with their particular second species. There is a delicate balance to be struck between predisposition and socialization. For example, in popular media and general public opinion, Homo et Draconia are heavily associated with behaviors of kleptomania, hoarding, and anti-sociability, but according to a study done by the Haynes-Davis Clinic, less than 13% of individuals with draconian DNA are convicted of any type of theft between the ages of 18 and 65. There is insufficient data to conclude whether social isolation is more the result of personal preference or discrimination. In fact, the condition draconian-humans are most often diagnosed with is OCD. An estimated 75-80% will suffer from OCD-related symptoms in their lifetime. Dr. Teagan Blackmore theorizes that this could be related to primal instincts that have outlived the situations they evolved for. Where kleptomania and hoarding were once methods of survival in times of resource scarcity, modern day draconian-humans with all base needs met might find these urges persisting to the detriment of the individual. Obsessive thoughts, feelings of anxiety, and repetitive compulsions are experienced by the large majority of this population, often focused in one specific area that varies depending on the individual. Unfortunately, Homo et Draconia is a species on the verge of extinction. Following the 15th and 16th century Dragon Genocides, the population has remained small and continues to steadily decrease. This scarcity of subjects and hesitance of draconian-humans to risk public exposure makes Homo et Draconia difficult to study. Nonetheless, further research is imperative if we are to fully understand the scope of psychiatric conditions among other Reptilia. The Intersection of Second Species and Mental Illness in Chordata Reptilia Chapter 2 of a dissertation by Lee Nguyen

thank you so much @ladytauria and @krizariel for taking an interest in my smorgasbord of wips <3

[oldsargasso]

YOUR WIP SNIPPET I’M GONNA FALL DOWN!!!

Kenta sitting there and waiting with Kim is so cute to me, Kim’s “are you fucking kidding me” look is HILARIOUS, and oh my god Kenta just tell him you want him to grab you by the collar.

That’s a really good point, especially when it comes to their relationship with Kim. It’s easier to accept someone’s flaws when it’s not you they’ve hurt, and when they didn’t target you specifically. Like how long does it take Kim to process what he went through? Does he have dreams about Winner standing over his body? There’s a level of physical trust that has to be built up from below zero. Winner went out of his way to beat on Kim when he was down (and maybe part of him was bitter that Kim hadn’t embraced him as a teammate, and angry that the person who always turned him into a kicked puppy was so easily reduced to nothing, like “You’re supposed to be better than this. Get up,” kind of complicated, misplaced, nasty feelings). 

Another thing I’ve been thinking about in regards to guilt and penance is Kenta and Dean’s relationship, and the way Kenta pushed Dean down the wrong path? I don’t think Dean would particularly blame him—it was his own choice (unless it turns out that Kenta knew Charlie’s death was gonna be faked and let Dean take the fall for it. In which case there would be a lot of anger, since Dean was already upset about being blamed for something he didn’t do).

But I think Kenta would probably blame himself (when does he not), since Dean would never have done anything if Kenta hadn’t suggested it, if Kenta hadn’t seen him as a set of dominoes ready to topple over. I think it’s something they’d probably fight about and would tie into Dean’s issues with wanting Kenta’s respect.

Oh yes Winner you are such a martyr it is sooo terrible to have to sit there and watch all of that glorious action; whatever would they do without you? 😆

Oh Dean. He’s never not gonna make me hurt. I am NOT ready to talk about him and Alan again ahdjfjfja it is so tragic!!!

How DO they all get together SHFJFJF THAT’S SUCH A GOOD POINT. It’s honestly probably very messy and convoluted, given all of their histories and Winner’s resistance to even caring about anyone. I think things would happen between some of them more easily than others. I will think some thoughts on this. 

I am. Not Optimistic about all four of them surviving. LOL. 😬😬😬 But I am prepared to fully ignore some things that happen and and live in canon divergent land ahdjfkfj. I had the SAME thought about Dean, like oh at least he’s safe behind bars! (The episode may have aired by the time this gets posted so I may already be in “lalala ignoring this” land”)

(WINNERDEAN FIC!!!! 🥺🥺🥺)

WAY HAS A CAR DEALERSHIP AS A SIDE HUSTLE 😭😭😭 Winner at least podiums during the races, so maybe he gets a modest amount of winnings? Idk how racing works BUT I do think he has family money. Like he absolutely has those entitled vibes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes from a racing family as well. 

THE SAME GYM, THE SAME LOCKER ROOM, AND THE SAME BAR. Like I know the city is not that small, why are they always up each other’s asses hmmm (homo reasons)

I just keep imagining all the ways it would go down. it's so dependant for me on how well Kim and Kenta knew each other BEFORE. did they meet that singular time Tony came to watch a race? or was Kenta doing like, personal assistant type stuff and helping Kim get settled in? I can't get past the look they share as Kim is taken away it's SO charged and speaks to a bit of an established relationship (of any sort). but yes Kim should grab Kenta by the collar. both of his shirt and the one Kim's gonna give him.

oof I feel like we haven't discussed Kim's trauma from being held captive and beaten up at all, how have we missed this!! it's definitely the way Winner went about it, bitter and vindictive exactly as you say. like when we first meet Winner and Kim in the gym they're aligned together but very quickly Kim is like "um no" - we see him very much against Winner employing dirty tricks but he's also aggressively not on team Winner before that even. if only we had gotten a handful more scenes of Red Racing before everything kicked off! the guys in the garage Winner's drinking with seem to support him, so he's not the worst all the time. but yes to everything you said! there is a huge gulf between where they have to come from to where we most often place them all together. I guess that's the more difficult part of their story and not half as fun to discuss as them all navigating an actual relationship lol.

wasn't it Kenta who sabotaged Babe's car the other time? he got caught on the cameras but literally only by Kim, who's locked up at the time Charlie's car gets sabotaged. couldn't he just. do it again?and also HOW did Kenta know to go to Dean for that? (my headcanon is Winner introducing Dean to Tony as a like, here's a guy who could be on our team kinda thing. like someone had to know to exploit Dean.) anyway YES. Kenta would blame himself and him taking all the blame of it is taking away Dean's agency. because he DID make that choice - he didn't think it was going to kill Charlie but it was always a risk, car racing is not the safest sport at the best of times. it would tie in very well with the age-related respect issues; Kenta reducing Dean's role in it all is akin to treating him like a child, like he doesn't know enough to know what he did was bad. so far Dean's the only one who's faced actual consequences for his actions!

honestly I can see it starting with any permutation of the four of them lol. I often default to it happening WinnerDean + KimKenta -> all four (after various mixing of three of them) - probably the only way I can't see it happening first is WinnerKenta lol. although that would be the most toxic way to kick of this toxic polycule.

Winner is the one I'm most nervous about since he's a true villain in the piece but I'm Very Concerned about a Kenta self-sacrifice play. but yeah I will be joining you in canon-divergent land if anything actually happens to these four. BEYOND what already has lmao we gotta get Dean out of jail.

(SOMEONE has to write winnerdean fic we are starving. I gotta stop using all my words and energy on these asks lmao but I'm having so much fun)

we have now discussed rich kid Winner in our third simultaneously occurring pit babe-related conversation on this website lmao. at some point in the near future I am gonna go through and collect all the exchanges we have had and put them all together.

FOR REALLL though, x hunter seems to despise Winner yet at no point was anyone like "should we go somewhere he won't be?" of course not. surely I am not the only one who believes one of the reasons Winner hates Babe is because he got rejected by him.

[errantabbot]

Active and Intentional Reverence for and of the Sacred

Religion is ultimately about living in active reverence of the sacred. What is sacred has been defined as that upon which our lives depend.

In some religions nature is sacred, in others, its community, and in others still, the sacred is a sense of wholeness derived from discerning the wider lot in which our truest selves abide. Arguably, it’s all of these things.

I would put forth that the sacred is that which draws our attention to wonder, gratitude, pause, and awe. Indeed, that which calls us to reverence.

To be religious most fully is to walk gently, to perceive more than one projects, to appreciate both the small and large things, to reconcile, and to come to know life so intimately that one’s knowing of it transcends the limitations of language and conceptual permutation, beckoning one to stillness and reflection, ever deeper.

This type of religion is not bound to any one set of metaphors, to any one narrative, or to any particular family of analogs. It is to be found amidst all of those spiritual schemas known to history that possess a backbone rooted in the truths of being in the human condition, either through profound foundational insight or the evolution and refinement of those less profound musings, or even those seemingly more bonded to the particulars of passing times and places. Truth ever finds a way.

Religion is a perennial human activity, it is an extension of the very physiology and psychology of homo sapiens, and it tends to reemerge time and time again, both with and without conscious intention.

The end result of mature religious praxis, of spirituality in this vein, is sanity and stability otherwise difficult to encounter, and harder still to cultivate idiosyncratically, on one’s own. This is the value, function, and outcome that living in active and intentional reverence of the sacred has to offer.

~Sunyananda

[illuveterian-archives]

The Last Illuveterian - Part 1

Content Warnings: gore descriptions, death, blood, harm of children, food descriptions.

First Person POV: Raymond

I must begin my story by stating that I am the last of my kind. And because of that, as well as other reasons I will get into shortly, I cannot die. It is a fate I would never even begin to wish upon another being, as it is endless torture on one’s body and mind.

My species carries the name Illuveteris adopted from the Latin phrase “illi veteris lucis” or “those of old light” used to describe us by the humans of old. Though our species existed much before the evolution of Homo sapiens, I don’t know why a name had not been chosen or whether or not a name had even existed before that point; I could never find a reason in any of the texts I read over. Now, before I delve into how I became the last of my kind, and what led me to kill hundreds, if not thousands of humans, I should tell you a little bit about my species so that later occurrences make sense. It will seem like a whole lot of nothing, but it feels important to get out of the way so no inconsistencies occur. However, feel free to skip to the story.

As far as physical descriptions go: think of a glass frog when imagining this, being see-through and all. I do not look like a frog, nor am I shaped like one, it’s just an easy visualizer to begin. We actually look quite similar to humans in terms of shape and proportion. As far as we can tell, our most basic structure of a skeleton is either near or outright identical, however there are plenty of key differences. The most noticeable being the fact that the Illuveteris do not have any organs internal or external, in any sense. The food we eat is instantaneously completely transformed into energy. So, there is no waste needing to leave. And our young come from growing them through magic, sort of similarly to budding, between partners. We also lack the presence of “skin” as it’s known in others. We do have a flesh that encases our bones and lack of organs but the colors range and it’s entirely transparent. The different colors signify different personality traits. My color is important to the story so I will elaborate on those.

The color of one's body tells how they will act throughout the majority of their life. It doesn't mean that someone will always “act their color”, but it summarizes their entire future. There was often a pressure in my society to fully live up to your color, or to fully act the opposite, depending. Red means “honest”, often to the point of detriment. Orange is “gentle natured and calm”, in almost any and every situation. Those with orange bodies are often raised and trained to be decision makers. Yellow means “optimistic” and often end up as entertainers or the creative crowd. Green means “cold natured, un caring, emotionless”. Many were pushed to act as if they were any color but green. Purple means “loyal”. Those who were purple often stood up for those closest to them, sometimes putting themselves in harm's way. Blue means “Big hearted”. They often became knowers of medicine or therapists.

My color is, unfortunately, mostly blue.

Having a lack of organs, or “vital” body structures did not mean that we were impervious to harm. Our bodies are made of a physical condensed magic. We could very much still die. And many of us have. Back before the “incident” by several decades there was a small war waged between us and some other magical species, leaving our population to only about 160 members. I will stop the descriptions here. I have a couple candid photos of myself I took fairly recently, originally intended to document my scarring as I gain more and vitiligo as it spreads; however, they can act as a visual for how most Illuveteri looked, should anyone actually be interested.

How do I know that I’m now immortal? Well, several reasons, actually. Firstly, because of the things I have survived which should end life through mortal injury. I watched someone die of the same injuries I obtained shortly prior to me being the last. Secondly, I went back and read as much ancient text as I could as soon as I was able, and as soon as I located the records of the last time there was a single member of our kind left. This took many weeks of searching the expansive library. Roughly 64 million years ago was the last and only other case of a single member being left. That number probably sparks memories of certain mass extinctions. The texts were all written in the oldest forms of our language. We are all born knowing it, yet like any language, it evolves and meanings change. So making out exactly what they said was completely impossible. What I could piece together is that the magic our body is made of is sort of its own being in a way. But only partly. And it’s apparently a little bit slow as it only realizes something is incredibly wrong once there's only one life force left. If only it had noticed at 2. However, I digress. I’ll move on into the actual story now.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was born in the year 1930 in a castle heavily surrounded by the 17 and a half million acres of forests hidden in Maine. My mother was the queen of our kind. She was always busy, but often pulled away from her duties to bond with her children; and my father, her royal assistant and lead magic researcher. He had a little more free time. Technically, all of my siblings and I were born to him. I had 4 older siblings. My oldest brother, Sage, 68; My sister, River, 46; My sibling, Briar, 27; and my twin sister, Sunni. We may have been twins but the entire family used to swear up and down that she was born first, making me the youngest. 

The first part of my childhood I was spoiled, and I lived well. All the children had human nannies that had been hired to help raise us while our parents were busy. The nanny Sunni and I had was a hearty black woman from Louisiana named Cecelia. She made the best foods I’d ever eaten, and I’d give anything to see her again today. 

On July 23, 1936, the day of mine and Sunni’s 6th birthday, there was an extravagant celebration commencing. Generally around the age of 6 is when Illuveterians begin to gain access and control of our magic, so it is deemed as a very important day. Massive festivities covered the yard and lavish food adorned tables covered in decorations. Both of us were dressed in ornate robes that had been made and set aside for this specific day, and atop our heads were small crowns, each designed to fit our exact specifications and desires. Cecelia had made several of our favorite dishes; jambalaya, etouffee, beignets, the list goes on. I’m glad I got to enjoy the food that day. It remains the only speck of happiness within a memory shrouded in horror. I cannot enjoy that summer's day anymore. All I seem to be able to force myself to do is mourn those lost once it rolls around every year.

My mother came to check on us as Cecelia finished the fastenings on our robes and made sure that our crowns were positioned so they wouldn’t fall off at any point.

“Thank you, Cecelia, for all the work you’ve put in for today. They both look stunning.” My mother smiled at her.

“Ma’am, you know these two mean the absolute world to me. I’d do anything for them.” Cecelia bowed her head slightly. My mother hummed gently.

“I see that Raymond is wearing River’s old crown. It looks nice on him.”

“River said I could!” I called back, hugging onto my mothers dress. I wasn’t anywhere near tall enough to reach anything further.

“He insisted on wearing it.” Cecelia chimed in, “Said it was so pretty and he wanted to wear it for their birthday.”

“Well, so long as River agreed to it, then there’s no issue. Now, I believe it’s time for dinner.” My mother smiled again, putting a hand on both of our heads. Sunni and I ran off to the dining table, being sure to take our seats as quickly as possible.

We had eaten well and played many games. It was just as we were getting to the cake and presents that events kicked off in the entirely wrong direction. I remember I had just taken the first bite of my slice of cake when a guard hurriedly walked forward and whispered to my mother. A look of worry covered her face and she rushed out the door. I turned to Cecelia for an answer, which was met by a smile and a hand on my back. I kept eating. It was a coconut cake paired with pineapple ice cream. The thought of those flavors make me feel sick nowadays. I was 3 bites in when I heard a scream. It was my mother’s. I looked over to Sunni and saw she had also heard it and was visibly scared. Several of the guests began to panic. Every guard in the room took off running in the direction the scream came from. My father was with them. Several loud popping noises sounded nearby. At the time I didn’t know what they were, but now I know very well that they were gunshots. Cecelia took the plates from our hands and set them on the table, picking the both of us up and walking quickly into a nearby bedroom - her own. Admittedly, she was probably a little rougher than she meant to be. As soon as we were within her room she shut the door, and I heard the lock click. She ushered the two of us into the closet, motioned for us to stay quiet, kissed each of us on the forehead, and closed the doors. Through the tiny gap left between the doors I could see her rummage through the bedside table and pull out a large kitchen knife. I remembered having seen her cook with it and wondered when she’d stashed it. She then pushed the dresser in front of the door. Its legs scraping against the wooden floor were loud. From within the closet I could hear more pops ringing out. Several people were screaming. I remember a few of the screams being abruptly cut off. Sunni was crying and I am certain I was as well.

Cecelia sat herself on the edge of the bed, right in front of the closet, yet facing the door. She had such a grip on the handle of the knife that her knuckles were white, a stark contrast to her complexion. I saw a tear roll down her cheek as she grit her teeth. She looked over to the closet and smiled. It was forced and fake, but she was trying her best to keep the both of us calm. It felt like hours before nothing more could be heard. Though, it was probably only minutes. The door handle rattled furiously as someone on the other side tried to open it. They then threw themselves against the ornate oak. It was sudden and the breach of the silence caused me to jump. Sunni whimpered and covered her mouth. The banging continued. Cecelia shook as fear encompassed her person. She stood and pointed the knife to the door, though she looked like she might collapse at any second. Her face seemed to pale to an ashen gray. I, at least, had assumed that it would be too sturdy to be broken through. I learned very quickly that I had assumed wrong.

The wood of the doorframe splintered, loudly cracking as the lock gave way, the door slamming into the dresser, leaving barely an inch of view. I could hear a deep and gruff laugh. It sounded as if whoever it had come from had been smoking for the majority of his life - and I’d bet he had. Once he had the door busted from its lock he simply pushed against it to move the dresser. And once again that awful sound of its legs scraping the floor sounded out. Cecelia was frozen for a moment. I could not see who she was looking at but his footsteps were thundering. Within moments a very large figure towered over Cecelia, blocking nearly my entire view of her. She came back to her senses and swung the knife at the man, who easily dodged and ripped it from her hands. He grabbed her hair with one hand and she let out a cry of pain. He lifted her near effortlessly off the floor to be eye level with himself. 

She held his gaze, refusing to look at us. There was a stubbornness in her facial expression. In pain and imminent danger, yet continuing to protect us. He took the kitchen knife and plunged it into her stomach, dropping her to the floor right after. Unbeknownst to me, Sunni had stood over me to peer out, and she let out a gasp. That was all the indication the man needed. He made his way over to the closet doors, a crimson puddle forming around Cecelia as he did so. He did not throw the door open violently, instead choosing to slowly pull it open, peering down at us with an ear to ear grin on his face. He knelt down to where Cecelia’s body had fallen and removed the knife from her abdomen. He then crawled back over to the closet and began his seemingly endless shower of stabs. I turned away from him in an attempt to cover Sunni. As I did so I saw joy in his face. As I was the closest to the door I took the brunt of it all. The world was silent. I remember crying and screaming, but not hearing a bit of it. At some point I opened my eyes to look at Sunni. She was sobbing. My gaze fell to the floor as I was unable to keep my head up. As I did I felt the knife wiz through my hair just over my head, knocking my crown off. When I looked back up I saw the knife being pulled from Sunni’s face and ripping backwards across my left shoulder. I watched her body crumble and fade to nothing, just leaving her robes in a pile on the wood, covered in my blood. Her crown lay now atop it all. I yelled out for her. I yelled to nobody. That was the point I was officially completely alone. The last of my kind. The man had not stopped. I felt the knife then go through the back of my head a few times. The blade was long enough for it to go all the way through and out my forehead.

I felt a heat then envelop the whole of my body. It was as if molten metal coursed through me.. I had seen those older than me experience surges of magic, but never had I thought to imagine what they may feel like. It was quite an unpleasant feeling. My body at the time was not ready to handle such energy. I could see blue flames spouting out of every wound; yet they seemed to almost be just simple projections to the air around me, as they, themselves, seemed to produce no heat. It was then that my hearing came back as I heard the man behind me yelling out in pain. I could smell the sickly sweet scent of burning human flesh. It was overwhelming. The heat swelled hotter and hotter until a bright flash of white surrounded me. A void of nothingness. This, however, lasted only for a brief moment before I could feel myself falling. My body landed hard against a metal, grated floor; and the sound it made rang through a seemingly endless corridor. As my vision slowly faded out I caught a glimpse of a paper that had fallen off a table next to me. All I could make out on the page was ‘Dr. Z…’. And then all I knew was darkness.

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

How many horns do humans have? What do their tails look like? What color is their fur?

The number of horns you have depends on your genetic makeup. Some people don't grow any, and others can have dozens or hundreds -- for example the famous "golden calf" from Genesis (who in this case is a goat, but I guess a human with an extra set of horns would be kinda cool too) had seven. Tails are long enough to wrap around their body several times if they want, as well as being able to grab things. Fur color varies greatly, like real fur does, but tends toward warm tones rather than cold ones due to an internal light source that reflects off hair follicles. Males are typically larger and stronger than females -- humans have been known to fight over mates -- though some species seem to reverse this trend, such as by having males give birth instead of females.

Some humans tend to look more reptilian, especially when young, since many of them still retain traces of scales at various points along their bodies. However, these individuals usually lose this feature during adolescence, while those who never grew scales remain scaly throughout life. Likewise, there are rare cases where skin becomes so thin that it splits open easily without injury, forming what looks like scars running down one side of the torso; this condition rarely persists after puberty.

Humans also differ markedly in appearance depending on whether they are exposed to sunlight or not: hematophages must spend most of their lives indoors, whereas most photosynthetics live outdoors under bright lighting conditions. Those that stay outside are very pale and sensitive to UV radiation, which causes cancerous growths called melanomas; however, indoor-dwellers often develop large tumors on the top half of their skull called pilocytic astrocytomas, which have similar effects even when benign. This gives rise to two distinct races within our genus: the fairer ones tend to be photosynthesizers, while the darker ones tend to be hematophages.

Though this evolutionary split has occurred in the past 10,000 years or less, both groups continue to coexist quite peacefully because of their geographic separation into different parts of the world -- though some interbreeding occurs between the two groups. Differences in personality traits tend to correlate strongly with differences in pigmentation patterns; photosynthesizing humans tend to be more sociable and extroverted, while hematophagous humans are generally introverts who prefer solitude. The latter group also tends towards violence due to the high levels of testosterone present in their bloodstream -- although some speculate that this may actually result from higher amounts of ultraviolet exposure, giving them greater access to the nutrient content of carrion. As mentioned above, males of the former group tend to be much bigger and stronger than males of the latter type.

Photosynthesis evolved relatively recently compared to other aspects of modern humanoid physiology. In fact, before about 250,000 years ago, all hominids were either fully nocturnal animals whose diets consisted almost entirely of insects and small rodents, or bipeds living exclusively on carrion killed by predators. Even today, despite widespread agricultural activity, human populations still devour far more meat per year than plants. Other significant changes include the evolution of a stomach lining adapted specifically for processing cooked foodstuffs, which led to a loss of teeth in early Homo sapiens; adults now eat only raw flesh, using tools crafted from stone or ivory. Fossil evidence suggests that this change was complete by the time we entered the Pleistocene period, and marks the first instance in which digestion did not depend on the consumption of leaves, fruits, roots, etc. Humans are thus considered omnivores purely by virtue of the fact that they eat neither fruit nor vegetables -- unless you count garbanzo beans as "vegetarian," I suppose... (I consider myself vegan, although my wife occasionally eats eggs.)

This post took me way longer to write than intended. If anyone wants to see anything else done like this, let me know!

[martinshep]

Looking into what little research has been done on therians (mostly within the furry community) and finding participants were asked what percentage of themselves they feel is human, and then wondering what that would be for myself has led me down a mental path

Honestly I think maybe it’s not something that could be a percentage for me? It’s like asking what percentage animal humans are, or what percentage human neaderthals are, it’s not quite an easy question since that depends on what you’re using to define those terms, because in the sense of what I am I’m human-adjacent but definitely not something is human is the sense of homo sapiens sapiens (similar to the neanderthal analogy), but in other facets of my identity I’m mostly if not fully human

[yardsards]

i think it’s bc what “aphobia” is is rlly up for debate depending on the individual person. like are they actually an aphobe or do they just not think asexuality/aromanticism is inherently lgbt? bc you can b an exclus w/o being. shitty to aro/ace ppl but i think the loose definition of what aphobia is makes it harder to fully “define” yanno esp bc homo/trans/biphobia have much longer and more in depth histories

erasing our struggles and trying to kick us out of communities and support systems we rightfully belong in IS bigoted, though. exclusionists ARE inherently aphobic, even if they're not as bad as the more blatant aphobes.

like those people sound EXACTLY like the fuckers who used to tell trans people like me "oh, i'm not bigoted against nonbinaries, you just don't belong in the trans community, you aren't oppressed like real trans people are <3".

[royalreef]

@biteyourcrush​ inquired: 🐶 Feesh time....... for Ravi.............. Muses as Merfolk - NOT Accepting

(( I think Aaravi would be a hybrid of an Abyssal merfolk and a Pacific-Migratory merfolk!

The thing to remember about merfolk and their various species is that I’m basing them off of the various species of human. That is — when there was more than one species with the genus Homo, there have been multiple occasions where those species successfully interbred, and those hybrids were also able to have kids of their own. This is the braided stream concept of evolution, of multiple closely related species being able to add to each other’s gene pools successfully, to the point that there are people today who still have some fraction of Neanderthal or Denisovan in their DNA to act as genetic fossils of that trade. So, when different species of merfolk get together, the resulting hybrids are much like their parents beyond the genetic quirks. Most extant species of merfolk actually do have some traces in their respective gene pools of this mixing, because if you put any two populations close together you will get kids out of it, but their phenotypes fully reflect what’s standard of their species. Time goes on, the kids look more and more like one species because it’s not a perfect and even split between the two, and at the end they’re usually fairly indistinguishable from the more standard mer.

That said, any Abyssal hybrids in the modern day within the Merkingdom are... taboo. 

The exact politics isn’t the same for every hybrid — it very much depends on who the parents are. If they’re both essentially just your average person but different species, then usually it’s not a big deal. It varies based on location to location and culture to culture, but overall, the closer match in lifestyles and positions within society means the greater the chances that a hybrid won’t be an issue.

The issue comes in with Abyssals. Abyssal merfolk started out mostly restrained to a few locations, but not every abyssal was in a position of power and most were still laypeople. But, as the Modern Merkingdom formed, there came a bias towards Abyssals and especially those from those initial populations, and they got placed into more and more powerful positions, and the new royals ( who were Abyssals to begin with, solely because that was just the species of that initial family who started it first ) began inbreeding and having issues associated with it, and pulling from the outside Abyssal population, which pulled them up in power, who began inbreeding again, and so on and so forth. Eventually you get to the issue today, where being an Abyssal is synonymous with the Low Royals, and Abyssals in the wider population is unheard of, similarly reinforced by how heavily the Crown prefers to be seen as the only Abyssals in existence. Therefore, by Merkingdom standards, Abyssal genetics should not be out in the wider population. Either the hybrid was from a marriage between a Middle Royal and a Low Royal, in which case they would have a title, or, if they lack a title, they’re a bastard and a stain on a Low Royal’s bloodline.

In terms of Merkingdom law... It’s an unwritten rule that bastards should not ever occur. They can severely mess up a royal’s inheritance, and it’s seen as dragging a commoner into a position which they are entirely unfit to have. If a bastard is born, but they’re claimed at birth and brought into the title, then there’s still an issue, because it can be seen as a betrayal to the marriage to their intended partner to continue their royal line and thus proof that they aren’t taking their commitment and their duties seriously. To know that a royal has a bastard is a point of blackmail that can be used to extreme effect, even capable of labelling a royal a traitor.

Unfortunately, royals also like to sleep around, and sleeping around with commonfolk is still common, particularly since it’s seen as a no-strings-attached bit of fun, whereas sleeping with another royal means they cannot avoid the inherent politics of the matter. If a royal discovers they’ve contributed to the creation of a bastard in some way, then they are almost guarenteed to try and destroy them. The easier they can dispose of them without anyone knowing, the better, and this makes any bastard meeting their royal parent a major risk. Particularly so, because in effort to cover up the existence of a bastard, the royal will often have the associated family killed or destroyed in one way or another to get rid of witnesses.

In terms of Pacific-Migratory merfolk, on the other hand, they are... fairly ordinary. They were one of the species that existed in the Pre-Modern Merkingdom, and for that, they were already fairly used to the Merkingdom and the Merkingdom to them. Quite a few were grandfathered in and even occupy positions up to being a Middle Royal with fairly little note, but most are fairly ordinary and still tend to the same routes and patterns that they always have. They often tend to shoals of fish livestock that they tend to as they follow those routes, or form thriving trade systems, and are heavily associated with leviathan hunts, as they’re often those best-suited to managing them.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t exactly make having an obvious bastard in their mix any easier. In a way, it’s seen akin to harboring a fugitive, and while there are communities that will work to hide them, there are also communities that are afraid that, by having them around, they’re also in danger. They’re potential witnesses and accomplices, and for that, the royal who sired them would very much want the community destroyed as well. While turning in a bastard doesn’t exactly go well, it’s also sometimes still seen as the better option.

On a biological slant — hybrids come in two varieties. Much like hitting the randomize button in character creation, you get the hybrids that look mostly like one species but a little weird, and you also get the hybrids that look bizarre and are very obviously hybrids. Facial proportions often look odd, as do fins and coloration, and they might be the worse version of what either parents are adapted to do.

In this case : another merfolk would be able to immediately tell that Aaravi has the body of a migratory species of some kind, but her tail isn’t shaped right to reach those higher speeds, as well as heavier plating and scaling to weight her down and produce drag. Fins are too small to be an Abyssal’s and pointed, but they’re also not fused and frilly in a way that no migratory species has. She has the teeth of an Abyssal, but her face is too thin to have the same skeletal and muscular reinforcement Abyssals do to make full use of their teeth. It’s covered up by her fins, but she has four gill slits like a Pacific Migratory and with extra inner lining like an Abyssal, but one gill slit is sealed and improperly formed which makes it unusable. She’s also a VERY obvious red, connected to Abyssals, but the Pacific-Migratory genes both dilute the color down to a nearly metallic sheen, as well as give her markings that Abyssals lack, such as countershading and unique patterns on her tail. She has bioluminescence on her face, shoulders, fins, and tail, but far less than a true Abyssal would.

There’s also other things she’d get from a Low Royal lineage, but it’s not the type of trait that you can see, unfortunately.

[hoekaashi]

3 am Talks - bnha pt 2

a/n: i fimished part 2! i just really enjoy these ones. there will be one more part for bnha before i start working on hq. pairings: todoroki x reader, midoriya x reader, shinsou x reader warnings: mentions of todoroki’s abuse, a lil mary jane taglist: @suckersuki​, @babydabi​, @bakugoustanaccount​, @animoozies​ part 1 | part 3

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾　*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

⇾ god, this child, would mutter on and on for hours if he could ⇾ talking about anything and everything under the sun ⇾ he would jump from talking about his day - the things he can improve on, the things he was proud of - to suddenly talking about all the things he loves about you ⇾ yes. You will be flustered. but so will he so it’s fine ⇾ it would be so cute, because his ass would transport to his own little world and literally forget you were with him as he just goes off ⇾ but that’s what you think ⇾ because with you, after a certain point of being together, you don’t make him nervous and fidgety anymore so while you THINK he’s in his own world, he actually just loves talking about you ⇾ and then he transitions into talking about his goals for the future ⇾ and you’re just like ????? because what kind of transition is that ⇾ but he’s so sweet and cute, he says that he can’t picture his future without you in it

You headed to the kitchen to get some water, but didn’t expect to find anyone else there so late at night. Midoriya was sitting at the table, hunched over a notebook. You had no idea what he was doing so once you got your water, you joined him. “What are you doing?” Looking up at you, Midoriya gave you a warm smile. “I couldn’t sleep so I just came down here to study.” “You looked like you were zoning out, not studying,” you commented before drinking your water. You could see a gentle blush on his face. “I was, you caught me.” “What were you thinking about?” He sat back in his chair. “Well, it started with me thinking about combat training today. I was close to losing my fight with Todoroki today. If he had better control of his flames, he would’ve easily beaten me, but I can tell he’s gotten a lot better than when we first fought in the sports festival. But that got me thinking of other ways I could improve my costume to be able to fight better. And then I started thinking about your fight and how you did so amazingly against Kacchan. It was a tough battle and I could tell he wasn’t going easy on you. It makes me excited for the next time we spar, I can’t wait to see the new techniques you’ve learned the new moves you’ve come up with. You’re a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for. I can see you easily being in the top five in the future.” When Midoriya looked at you, his eyes were filled with so much love for you. You thought he was just rambling off, but just one look from him told you he knew exactly what he was talking about. “T-the top five?” He nodded. “Yeah. I don’t want to be unrealistic and say you’ll be number two, but top five for sure.” You crossed your arms. “Number two? Why not number one?” “Because I’ll be number one. We could be the top two couple.” You laughed at how cheesy that sounded. “Oh yeah?” “Who knows, maybe we’ll be married when that day comes.” Now it was your turn to blush while Midoriya gave you a smug look. Sometimes you really wondered if the timid boy you fell in love with was all just an act.

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ yall would need to be pretty close to get him to talk so late ⇾ otherwise it would be you doing the talking and him listening ⇾ but if he trusted you heart and soul, he would open up completely about his past ⇾ he would bare it all for you and even tell you the things he’s kept to himself all these years ⇾ once he starts, I feel like it would be like a dam breaking, everything would just flow out of him - maybe even some tears in there depending on how vulnerable he’s feeling ⇾ we already know he told Midoriya some of his past trauma without fully knowing him, but with someone he trusts, he would be willing to break down all those walls ⇾ if yall had been together for a while, like a few years, he might even go into his future ⇾ more so what type of father he wants to be, if he even wants to be a father (I see him as wanting a family just to prove to his father that he better than him at that too) ⇾ it’s just a very vulnerable moment for him and he’s not looking for pity or comfort, just someone to listen to him for once

Your head was resting on his chest and you could hear his heartbeat. It was a nice rhythm that had you drifting off until Todoroki began speaking. “Do you mind if I got some stuff off my chest?” “You want me to move?” you joked. Your words only caused his arms to hold you closer to him. “I’ve just been thinking… My father has been trying to become a better man. My sister has forgiven him, but my brother still doesn’t want to, and honestly I don’t know where I stand.” One of your arms snaked around his waist and you snuggled closer to him. “Why?” He sighed. “I can see he’s trying, but does he expect all of his past mistakes to be erased? Mother still has trauma from everything she’s been through. Touya…” He took a moment to gather himself. “The things he did were not correct, but he’s been trying, so I should give him a chance, right?” “I can’t tell you what you should and shouldn’t do. You are the only one who had those experiences with him, just like your sister is the only one who lived through her experiences and your brother’s theirs.” You continued to speak when Todoroki didn’t. “No one is telling you to have an answer right now. Years of abuse and mistreatment can’t be erased so easily. Take your time with it.” “I just know that I refuse to be a terrible father the way he was.” You craned your neck to look up at him. “Aww, you want to be a father?” You were teasing him, the two of you already had this talk. He rolled his eyes. “Only if you want to have my children.” “Children? As in multiple?” This was news to you. Sitting up, you stared at him. “I enjoy the time I spend with my siblings. I want my kids to have those types of memories with their siblings too.” “Wait how many do you want?” The thought of popping out four kids was starting to freak you out. Todoroki shrugged. “Four? Five?” “Five?!” He pulled you back down to his chest. “Let’s talk about this at a more appropriate hour, hm?”

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ oof if this boy is up at 3 am, he’s gonna be high, change my mind ⇾ he would ask, but never force, if you wanted to get high with him ⇾ high Shinsou would listen to music with you and probably talk about the color of the song, or how a specific beat sends shivers down his spine ⇾ but on the other hand, he would also talk about the most RANDOM stuff ⇾ why is the fruit orange named after its color ⇾ who looked up at the sky and said ‘yes we should go there’ but people thought the earth was flat ⇾ make jokes about how before quirks were around, people made and watched movies about superheroes but now those movies are their daily lives ⇾ just random things like that that no one ever thought would be on his mind ⇾ but like, the amount of talkativeness would also depend on his mood ⇾ did he get high for s&gs or was it to destress?

“You wanna join me?” he asked, holding his blunt out towards you. You shook your head and sat down next to him on the blanket he laid out. His favorite place to smoke was the dorm roof because one, he didn’t have to deal with complaints from others about the smell and two, being outside felt freeing. Blowing out smoke towards the sky, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the sound of the music that was playing softy. You were looking out at the city lights that you could see from where you were sitting, holding your knees to your chest. “You ever think that the moon felt violated when the first person landed on her?” You blinked and looked down at the purple haired boy who was now staring at the moon with a hand behind his head. “What?” “Like, did we, as the homo sapien species, ask the moon for her consent before landing on her?” Slowly, you shook your head. “Do you think she would forgive us after all this time? If we apologized for not asking?” You tried not to laugh. “You should do it. For all of us.” Shinsou narrowed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Princess Yue,” he whispered. Before you had the chance to laugh, he started speaking again. “But if time travel were real, do you think someone from the past came here and saw heroes and thought ‘I should make a story about this and get rich’?” “Maybe? Only if it’s real though.” He shook his head. “Capitalizing on our pain, man... how messed up.” Neither of you had said anything after that, just basking in the nighttime breeze and enjoying the music. After a little bit, Shinsou shushed you, even though you hadn’t said anything. “What?” “This part of the song...I swear I’m seeing purple and green.” Your brows furrowed together. “Like Barney?” He sat up, staring at you. “We should listen to the Barney song,” he whispered.

[robotslenderman]

Someone on Reddit was asking why labels were important and I went into a whole goddamn essay because my Vyvanse is kicking in.

TLDR - Labels are important for communication. Without communication, we are isolated. Sexuality is so fundamental to our experiences as human beings that being able to describe those experiences succinctly can mean the difference between feeling isolated and feeling connected. Also sneering at ace people for microlabels dismisses the asexual experience as so unimportant that we SHOULDN'T be able to describe our exact experience of it, when discussing asexuality often requires these labels because of how varied and complicated the asexual experience is.

I've been waffling on the fence about microlabels but I've decided that no, microlabels aren't overthinking it, for the reasons I discuss below. In the past I've reblogged things saying that microlabels are about isolation instead of connection, that further dividing our sexuality into smaller and smaller boxes creates increasingly exclusive clubs.

I no longer believe that. I believe it does the opposite. I believe that being in touch with your sexuality just as much as you need to helps you connect to others even outside your microlabel, not just within it, because then it makes it clearer to everyone involved what experiences you have in common and makes it easier to set aside the ones you don't.

You don't understand how important labels are until you've struggled without one. It's human nature to use language to describe our experiences, and when we don't have the language to do so it is stressful and isolating. Because language is how we connect to other people, so when we can't use easy language to summarise our experiences, it becomes isolating.

My personal experience - I struggled with my asexuality for years, even before I began to realise that I was asexual. Even once I started letting myself admit it, I didn't feel that the word "asexual" was enough. Sure, I could explain to people "I'm asexual and don't want to have sex, but I love sex in theory and in novels and I love reading about romance and daydreaming about them, but don't want a relationship." That's a very specific type of asexuality that people don't think of when they hear "asexual". People hear "asexual" and think "doesn't like sex."

But people use labels because others don't want to stick around and listen to your dissertation on what your sexuality actually is, they want bite sized information as soon as possible and sometimes YOU want to describe who you are without spending a ton of time explaining it. It's not just because I want to understand myself, it's because I want other people to, too, and labels is how we communicate. It's the fundamentals of how language works. Labels are so important that they consist of two entire grammatical categories - adjectives and nouns.

So when I found out about aegosexuality? I was like "oh thank god, I'm not a broken asexual, I'm this specific TYPE of asexual."

Most people haven't heard of aegosexuality. I used to actually roll my eyes at microlabels like that, thinking it was needlessly self absorbed and pretentious. But now I get it. Now I have the ABILITY to summarise my experiences in one word, and it turns out that having that ability to use language efficiently to describe myself has brought me quite a significant amount of peace. Because when I tell people I'm asexual, they often have a certain idea in their heads of what asexuality is, and I don't fit under most of that. Many asexuals don't, because asexuality is the most complicated sexuality there is.

But god is it fucking exhausting to say "I'm asexual" and then have to hold a fucking Q and A session about how I'm asexual and yes, I really am asexual even though I'm not adhering to someone else's idea of what asexuality is. By knowing I'm aegosexual, I can say, "oh, you're thinking of X type of asexuality, which is when you experience Y. I'm aegosexual, which means that I still get horny and love sex in fiction, but I don't personally want to experience it, unlike X type of sexuality which doesn't like sex at ALL."

And then people get it! They don't get "I'm asexual, but different." That just makes them think I'm not actually asexual, or that I'm an allo in denial who needs therapy to be "fixed". They get "I'm asexual, but this specific type of asexuality that has a name." People respond to names. People respond to labels. They GET labels, even ones they haven't heard of, even ones they roll their eyes at because they think we're over thinking it because they assume that because their sexuality is so fucking simple, everyone else's must be too.

I still tell people I'm asexual because a lot of the time my type of asexuality isn't actually important. Actually, most of the time I tell them I'm queer and leave it vague because queer is a wonderful umbrella word and my sexuality isn't anyone's business. For me, "queer" is often enough because it communicates that my experience isn't a straight one, and that's usually all people need to know.

But having that label just on *hand* that describes my experiences, and having the option to use it to people who do know what it means, and being able to hand it to people who are lost like I used to be lost -

That's powerful. It's important. It *matters*.

It's not like needing a label for yourself because you prefer pineapple on pizza, this is sexuality, this is the kind of thing that makes or breaks your experiences with other human beings. When you're straight your sexuality is so simple and easy that you don't even need to think about it. You're straight. That's easy. And as homosexuality becomes more accepted I'm seeing baby gays start to take that attitude as well because they're gay and as homosexuality becomes less stigmatised, it's allowed to become more simple.

But other sexualities don't have that luxury.

Bisexuality and pansexuality are more complicated because often people experience a split attraction model, or they don't have equal attraction to different genders and they're not fully comfortable describing themselves as bi or pan because again, people hear "bisexual" or "pansexual" and assume that you experience the same amount of attraction to different genders and it's important to be able to communicate to people that no, you don't. The whole point of using a word is so that the other people understand you - if they don't understand the word, they don't understand YOU. So I think bisexuality and pansexuality is also a spectrum in that there's different types of both depending on how your attraction works, and that it would help bi and pan people to have more specific words - using bisexual and pansexual as an umbrella term much like queer and asexual - to allow them to better communicate their experiences.

And asexuality is, I think, the most complicated sexuality of all. It's based not just on who you're attracted to, like other sexualities, but if you're attracted at ALL. No other sexuality has a footnote attached of "but this one likes sex" or "this one doesn't like sex" or "this one is indifferent to sex". Even bisexuality and pansexuality don't. It also has the contradictory feature of involving some level of attraction - demisexuals and grey aces experience attraction! Just only under specific circumstances. The split attraction model is also much more significant; whereas some bisexual people are explicitly homo- or heteroromantic, many asexuals are not aromantic, and many aromantic people are not asexual. This is far more common with us.

It's also the ONLY sexuality where the split attraction communities are actively hostile to each other. Aromantic people have lately been slinging a lot of shit at asexual people because in their need to be told apart from us (I say "us" even though I'm aromantic myself because I'm also asexual), some have gone to the extreme of showing outright hostility to asexual people and show offence for being associated with us at all. When I thought that I was bi, for example, I NEVER saw this kind of shit between homoromantic bis, heteroromantic bis and biromantic bis. Only the asexual and aromantic community has this hostility.

I respect that aros don't want people to mistake them for asexual people and that's important for the same reasons I've been discussing in this entire essay, but here I'm referring to outright hostility aimed AT asexuals because of other people's failures to understand them. "Aromanticism isn't the same as asexuality" is not hostility. Treating asexual people like garbage - or even aroace people because they dare to exist as asexual AND aromantic - is hostility. This hostility is rising.

So asexuality is deeply complicated, and when you have completed concepts, you need simple labels to communicate that. And frankly - allos don't fucking get it. Bi and pan people do to a certain level, but their sexuality, while more complicated than being gay or straight, is still not as complicated as asexuality. That's not a bad thing, having a more complicated sexuality doesn't make us superior, nor is complication the same thing as depth. Other sexualities are not shallow for lacking the same level of complication, nor should they be taken less seriously.

But it does mean each sexuality has nuance to it that you can't understand without being that sexuality, and it's vital not to fall into the same trap straight people do that your experience of sexuality applies to everyone else, of assuming that because your sexuality isn't complicated to you that it must be the same for everyone else or we're overthinking it. And it's important for us to be able to succinctly sum up our sexuality so that we can share our experiences.

People who've never faced that don't understand how important it is to feel connected to people by being able to efficiently describe yourself. To use language is to connect, to use language and labels is to communicate. Without that, it's an isolating experience, simply because people do not fucking want to hear you bring out a PowerPoint presentation to talk about yourself when they just want one word. And when you're talking about something that defines your human experience, that makes your ability to communicate it THE difference between being isolated and disconnected, and feeling human.

Having different levels of labels helps, too. Sure, I'm aegosexual, but even if most people knew what that meant, most of the time it's completely fucking irrelevant. Most of the time all I need to do is say I'm queer - because I'm communicating that my experience isn't a straight one (or a cis one, if you're queer because of your gender). Sometimes I need to say I'm aroace, or just asexual, because that's what the conversation calls for. It's only when discussing asexuality itself that I actually need to say I'm aegosexual - but that's important, too.

Discussion of asexuality is no less important than being able to say I'm ace, or that I'm queer, and a lot of allos think that distinguishing yourself from straight people is important, that distinguishing yourself from non straight people is important, but asexuality itself is so unimportant that we're not allowed to distinguish ourselves among each other. And that's just another form of aphobia. It doesn't mean that we're going "ew, we're not THOSE asexuals" like I've been seeing in the arosexual community lately, it's being able to say "this is my experience of asexuality, so I'm viewing our discussion through THIS lens, whereas you might not."

And it's so fucking typical that allos think that that shouldn't be important to us. I regret ever thinking the same.

At the end of the day, we need language. It describes our experiences, and without being able to describe those experiences, we are isolated. We need language and labels to connect.

[a-pretty-nerd]

Devon Characters × Trans Masc Reader

Request: "hii, i wanted to ask you, a Devon (any character) x interssex enby (he/they pronouns) like... you only do cis males and cis females idk it'd be fun if you did a trans man, trans woman or an enby. could u do that for the Ts??? (trans)" ~ Anon

A/N: I love this request. I'm kinda out of my Devon obsession phase, but I'll always think he's amazing. But I really love this request and I'm always happy to write more inclusive stuff! So don't be afraid to ask, I just don't write for Rodrick Heffley anymore really. It just makes me a little uncomfy.

Warnings: NSFW content.

Rodrick:

SFW

Pure of Heart, Dumb of Ass

Has a vague idea of what it means he to trans.

Completely lost at the non-binary part.

You're gonna have to explain a lot to him, unfortunately.

But he's very willing to learn.

He will forget you use both he/they pronouns and probably end up sticking to he/him most of the time.

Says things like, "this is my boyfriend."

Unless you correct him in which case he gets SUPER embarrassed and apologizes profusely.

At first he's nervous to be with a trans masculine person.

It's like the nervousness of any new relationship (because he's a nervous wreck anyhoo) mixed with the newness of a new person.

He's very, VERY proud of you though.

He loves to bring you everywhere and just but like, "THIS IS MY PARTNER, AREN'T THEY AMAZING!?"

And everyone's like, "Yes, we know, we've met before."

He likes to share clothes. Correction, he likes it when you steal his clothes and he steals clothes from you.

It gives him butterflies in his tummy.

NSFW

He's a fumbling idiot anyways.

You're gonna have to guide him through what works for you.

But omg is he eager.

Like he's a horny bastard anyways, but like it's you we're talking about.

He's like, obsessed with you.

He'd be so embarrassed if you knew that, but it's true.

He has a hard on before you're even fully naked.

Sometimes he gets lost in his own pleasure so you kinda have to bring him back down to earth.

But usually he prioritizes you.

It makes him very happy to know how to make you squirm.

Jasper:

SFW

Gender isn't really a priority for Jasper.

He's also not too concerned with what's in your pants.

He's just happy to have a partner, honestly.

He's very emotionally dependent on you at times and that can lead to arguments or complications.

But he works very hard to be a good boyfriend for you.

He does tend to forget to introduce you as his partner sometimes so people just assume you're close friends at first.

But then they see you kiss and they're like, "Oooooh" and everyone moves on because it's the dystopia future and no one has time for homo/transphobia.

Jasper is very protective of you. Like if someone even looks at you funny he's about to throw hands.

You will have to drag him away from fights.

NSFW

I mean he's very new to sex in general so be patient. Especially if you're an afab individual.

Sometimes he can be hard on himself if he doesn't get it right away, but if your patient with him, he'll be too.

That wait is very worth it though.

Like damn.

Jasper LOVES oral.

It's like his favorite, receiving, giving, all of the above.

Adam:

SFW

I imagine that he's mostly dated feminine people, even had some experiences with other trans people but they were usually on the feminine side.

But he's also a horny bastard and is down for almost anything.

I feel like someone that isn't what he's used to would be really good for him.

Like it would force some much needed character growth on him.

At first when you start going out people also assume your his weird little friend.

Until they see you drunk make out.

Or they see the PDA.

Adam's a PDA guy.

To the point where you might have to tell him to fuck off.

His hand is ALWAYS in your back pocket.

NSFW

Hi? Hello. Horny B a s t a r d man.

Reporting for duty.

He can find anything to love about any body.

I think he's probably an ass guy.

He's really kinky but not in a polished, let's have hours of bandages play sex.

Like dirty sex. Like quickies in between classes shit.

Also he's a dirty talker.

You will have to tell him what to call you to make you feel good. But the moment he has that info-

Be ready dude.

Casper:

SFW

Nervous. Very Nervous.

What if he asks you the wrong questions?

What if he offends you?

What if he calls you the wrong thing on accident?! (He never does unless you had to come out to him)

What if he's a bad allie!?!?!

These are all if you take Casper as a cis dude.

Honestly I feel like he could also be trans lol

Honestly all of Devon's characters could be so easily.

ANYWAYS

He's precious.

He's always thinking about you and how awesome you are and he thinks you're really REALLY cool.

He tries to hide all the weird paranormal stuff from you at first thinking that you would think it was weird.

He's so relieved when you're not scared away by him.

He really loves and admires you like no other.

NSFW

Knows nothing about nothing.

Like he's seen porn and he masturbates but like he's never been with someone else.

You are gonna have to guide him through it.

He's always really worried he's hurting you for some reason.

Like you'll moan in pleasure and he thinks he's hurting you.

Lots of encouragement and reassurance.

Silver:

SFW:

I feel like Silvers definitely been with a trans person before. Especially Trans masculine people.

He's very PC, very hyper aware, very active.

You will be joining him for a lgbtq+ or BLM March.

You will also have to be the one to bring the sunscreen and water bottles and other necessities.

He brags about you a lot.

You're gonna have to beg him to take care of himself and baby him.

Like seriously he's really annoying like that.

He's a homemaker though.

Like he will redecorate your shared spaces with some expensive vegan handmade whatever it is.

He burns a lot of incense and candles and then uses those candle holders as bowls.

You'll be eating cereal and look down at the bowl and be like:

"Hey babe, where'd we get this bowl from?"

And Silver will looks over and say:

"Oh that was from my sandlewood and eucalyptus candle from (insert vegan cruelty free small owned business here)."

NSFW

Bottom.

He's a total bottom.

Prepare to top.

Will only top if he's under the influence and feeling particularly fun.

I don't know why, he just has that vibe to me.

He likes out door sex.

He likes scented lube.

He's also pretty affectionate but not like handsy.

Idk why but I feel like he also likes to be dominated?

I feel like it'd be really easy to make him cry.

[sunsumu]

(I hope I’m doing this right) May I request some platonic MANEWN (Mike, Aesop, Norton, Eli, William, Naib)?

MANEWN hcs <3

save eli’s braincells cause hes the only one with common sense in the whole group

william likes to go on long winded tangents about every single minuscule thing that happened to him

hes got story after story to tell to the group. he found a penny on the ground? OMG GUYS LISTEN TO THIS! he bumped into someone? YOU WONT BELIEVE WHAT SOMEONE JUST DID

mike and norton constantly make those ‘bro no homo’ jokes much to literally everyone else’s annoyance

“WE GET IT YOURE BROS PLEASE STOP SAYING NO HOMO AFTER EVERY SENTENCE”

eli tends to rely on aesop to help keep the group under control but aesop likes to fuck with him from time to time

naib and norton aren’t allowed to be alone together. the last time they were alone there were several fires. at once. and somehow an explosion

eli has a hard time going to sleep so whenever hes having a particularly bad night, the group likes to get together and have a sleepover

mike isn’t allowed to have coffee. aesop gives him decaf and pretends that it’s regular

since eli is usually up at ungodly hours, naib will pop into his room at random times just to spew some random bs

“hey eli what if mermaids had the head of a fish and the body of a human”

“naib it’s 3 am please get out of my room”

since matches can only have 4 people, the 6 of them do rock paper scissors to decide who gets to play

naib and william are always the most eager. mike and norton’s excitement varies depending on the hunter. aesop couldnt really care less whether or not he plays. eli just wants to go back to his room and regret his life decisions

aesop bought a fake plant and mike, naib, norton, and william all religiously took care of it. they watered it every day and made sure it was okay until one day eli pointed out “why are you watering a fake plant?”

all hell broke loose after that

they like to prank mike cause he’s just so gullible. y’know that whole “there’s gullible written on the ceiling” thing? yeah mike fell for that. multiple times

they’re in a never ending war about what’s better cats or dogs. eli and aesop like cats while mike, norton, william, and naib like dogs

eli fully recognizes his role as the ‘mom’ of the group. he won’t admit it, but he loves his stupid children

btw i recognize you from totally-correct-idv and i love u very much. thanks for the request! writing for idv is always really fun

-imeda 💞

[fatalism-and-villainy]

Minoritizing and Universalizing

@veliseraptor replied to your post “I’m thinking about the “some scholars are actually biased”…”

say more about minoritizing/universalizing frameworks? I’m not sure I follow but I’m intrigued

Meant to answer this/explain more about this awhile ago, but I’m finally getting to it now!

So in the introduction of Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Sedgwick articulates the use of “minoritizing/universalizing” as a distinct contrast to the “constructivist/essentialist” division in analytics of homosexuality (i.e. the question of whether homosexuality is an innate, individual trait, or, as had been recently articulated by scholars like Foucault, a culturally-bound identity):

I prefer the former terminology because it seems to record and respond to the question, “In whose lives is homo/heterosexual definition an issue of continuing centrality and difficulty?” rather than either of the questions that seem to have gotten conflated in the constructivist/essentialist debate: on the one hand what one might call the question of phylogeny, “How fully are the meaning and experience of sexual activity and identity contingent on their mutual structuring with other, historically and culturally variable aspects of a given society?”; and on the other what one might call that of ontogeny, “What is the cause of homo- [or of hetero-] sexuality in the individual?” (40)

She goes on to explain that the constructivist/essentialist framework has pitfalls as a way of talking about sexuality, because it’s very difficult to lean towards one approach or another without running into some sort of homophobic roadblock. The “essentialist” approach, that people are born gay, being gay isn’t a choice, etc, she identifies as a response to the notion that people can (and should) simply choose not to be gay; however, this approach, as she sees it, has the problem of assuming that biology is rigid and inflexible, while culture is easily changeable and therefore of little consequence, and also opens up another avenue for homophobia, namely in prompting a eugenicist approach to homosexuality (and the AIDS crisis was in full swing at this point). 

What she’s trying to get at in the quoted bit is teasing out the actual analytical questions embedded in both of those approaches that tend to get bogged down with the implied use of the constructivist/essentialist divide as a means of "sourcing” homosexuality. She sees the minoritizing/universalizing approach as being much more useful for analysis, because it takes both the individual and collective approaches to sexuality and asks questions as to the societal and discursive implications of those approaches. To explain a bit more about what that means, and what “minoritizing” and “universalizing” mean: 

Sedgwick uses “minoritizing” to refer to a model of sexuality in which sexual identities are static traits that can be neatly mapped onto each individual person, and that sees the phenomenon of “homosexuality” to be contained in those individuals onto which it can be mapped. This is somewhat similar to an essentialist model of sexuality, but it examines the societal ideologies and implications of such a framing. It’s framed in relation to the question Sedgwick asks in that quoted bit, “In whose lives is homo/heterosexual definition an issue of continuing centrality and difficulty?” And the answer to that, within a minoritizing approach, is that it’s only relevant to the minority class of homosexual people. 

But it’s generally understood that the definition of a normative class is dependent upon first defining a non-normative class. There’s the fact that “heterosexual” was coined after “homosexual,” and the way in which heterosexuality as a codified set of attractions and behaviours came into being as a normative category due to the displacement of anxiety about sexuality in general onto homosexuality. And Sedgwick here articulates the necessity of having a gay minority in upholding heterosexism:

And even more at the level of groups than of individuals, the durability of any politics or ideology that would be so much as permissive of same-sex sexuality has seemed, in this century, to depend on a definition of homosexual persons as a distinct, minority population, however produced or labeled. Far beyond any cognitively or politically enabling effects on the people whom it claims to describe, moreover, the normative category of “the homosexual” has robustly failed to disintegrate under the pressure of decade after decade, battery after battery of deconstructive exposure – evidently not in the first place because of its meaningfulness to those whom it defines but because of its indispensableness to those who define themselves as against it. (83)

So, the heterosexual/homosexual binary, and the idea of an identifiable and containable gay minority, is essential in maintaining heteronormativity, as the norm needs something to define itself against. An obvious example of how this plays out is the way in which straight men will often use gay men as a class, and the gendered and behavioural markers associated with such a class, as an outgroup to distance themselves from, as a way of affirming their heterosexuality and masculinity. I think, in this particular example, the minoritizing/universalizing split is a way of acknowledging the kind of doublethink that so often happens in heteronormative modes of thought: that a particular kind of paranoid homophobic imaginary will be very invested in a minoritizing view of homosexuality, as a means of maintaining its separate, Other status; however, the strength of that investment indicates the necessity of homosexuality in affirming a normative sexuality. A universalizing approach takes the latter into account in analysis.        

(Sedgwick also talks about how a universalizing model of (homo)sexuality is often used as a means of figuring gender by gay individuals themselves, specifically in a manner that classes homosexuality as an affirmation of gender, rather than a form of gender deviance. And example of this would be conceptions of gay male identity that treat homosexual relations between men as a natural result of superiority to women, or, on the other hand, the way lesbian separatism is based on the idea that all women can/should be lesbians. I think this worth pointing out to acknowledge that a universalizing approach, in Sedgwick’s understanding, isn’t inherently non-essentialist or postmodern.)

I want to talk a little more about how this distinction factors into queer studies, and queer analytics (speaking mostly about literary criticism, because that’s what I know). So it was fairly common in the early days of queer studies (or, “gay and lesbian studies,” as it used to be referred to) for critical methodology to simply be focused on locating homosexuality in texts. Making an argument that a particular character was gay, or that the text provided some sort of proof as to the author’s sexuality, etc. Which in some ways was all well and good, given that it was a prevalent attitude in the academy back in the day to vehemently deny those sorts of readings. But that sort of approach runs into some roadblocks - there are problematic implications to trying to psychoanalyze long-dead authors, as well as to mapping modern sexual orientations onto scenarios in dated texts. Not to mention, it’s just very limited as a mode of analysis, and there’s only so much you can do with it.  

So a lot of queer criticism now is much more based on using queerness as a way of approaching a text. Or, to put it another way, going in with the assumption that queerness as an analytic will shed some light on the text. Some of this involves shifting the focus from content to form - i.e., concerning one’s analysis with how the composition and style of a text challenges certain norms. But some of it involves just looking at how cultural perceptions of homosexuality influence a text’s engagements with gender, relationships, social structures, etc. Making the sexuality of a certain character or relationship the thesis of one’s argument is what I would consider a minoritizing approach, because it’s seeing homosexuality as being confined to the individuals to which it can be ascribed. A universalizing approach to analysis, on the other hand, would be less concerned with the inherent and immutable sexuality of individuals, but rather how homosexuality as a discursive concept shapes the text and the interactions within. Or, to repurpose the quote near the beginning, it seeks to answer the question, “How/to what degree is homo/heterosexual definition an issue of continuing centrality and difficulty in this text?”

(For example, in Sedgwick’s Between Men, her analysis is less concerned with whether certain characters are gay, but rather with establishing a framework of normative, female-exclusionary male-male relations, with which homosexuality, or eroticized desire between men, is inherently intwined. And her close readings in that book are based upon examining the way in which the spectre of homosexuality interacts with those male-male relations, even if the characters themselves are homophobic.)

I think another really good example of a critical work that takes on a universalizing approach, as opposed to a minoritizing one, is not one concerned with sexuality, but rather with race and anti-blackness - and that is Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Morrison pushes back against critical approaches in the academy that have tended to assume that literary works in which black characters are ephemeral or peripheral are unconcerned with race, or to dismiss those works as having nothing to important to communicate about race. Rather, Morrison puts forth the argument that blackness is actually essential to white identity, and to Americanism as a whole, and performs a variety of analyses of certain texts that put blackness at the forefront and examine how the white characters’ notions of themselves are built around blackness. Obviously race isn’t a perfect analogue to sexuality, but I think this approach is quite similar to what Sedgwick attempts to articulate with regards to sexuality - it’s based on the assumption that blackness, and anti-black racism, are things that have an effect on everyone, including non-black people, rather than simply the outgroups that those terms describe.        

[starforce-commander]

blending in on C-53: a guide by Yon-Rogg

don’t refer to the planet as C-53

don’t refer to the occupants of the homo sapiens species as “homo sapiens” or “the humans”

don’t land your ship in a populated area unless you are prepared to answer a lot of questions

store your ship in a car park/parking lot or a large garage so it doesn’t draw as much attention as it would otherwise

don’t wear your Kree uniform unless you are in battle

keep your translator with you at all times; I left mine on my ship when I first arrived, and I was rather confused by the multitude of languages in just one area

locate the most populous cities before arriving, that way you can either avoid them of stay near them, depending on your mission

engage in “small talk;” it is quite popular here, despite the fact that it is, for the most part, useless

try vegetable spring rolls, they're a food item, and they are rather delicious

locate people who know of other planets or are from other planets themselves, they will be the ones who can keep you well-informed 

keep your weapons and gear, but do not flaunt either of them

recognize that C-53 is not a fully unified planet, nor do they have a strict military-style upbringing for all citizens, and act accordingly

if you’re in New York, visit a place called The Empire Diner and request to speak to Lauren King; she will be of great assistance and can connect you to one of the elder brothers (beware her trickery)

read some books; they are informative and interesting

do not spend time alone with charming, intelligent, perfect specimens, and, more importantly, do not learn their names because you will become emotionally attached, which is terrifying

avoid country music, Times Square, and fried food

do not try to explain the supreme intelligence--or another planet’s equivalent--to those who do not have previous knowledge of other planets

if a human gives you nicknames like “funky little alien,” there is not really anything you can do to stop them; just accept it (you can still be grumpy about it, though)

find a piece of clothing that is called a flannel top as well as some sunglasses; they are both comfortable and “stylish”

should you accidentally become emotionally attached to a human, it’s too late. good luck. 

-- Yon-Rogg

[biscuitreviews]

Biscuit Reviews Death Stranding

Death Stranding was my second most anticipated game for 2019 (the first being Kingdom Hearts III). It was Hideo Kojima’s first independent game after a very public split from Konami in 2015. Many fans would wonder what would be his next project afterwards. Shortly afterwards he would form his own development studio and make a deal with Sony to create his next game. The small teases for Death Stranding were fantastic. “What is this invisible creature leaving handprints and this black substance with each step? Why is that baby in a pod? Why is Norman Reedus naked on a beach?” These were some of the questions that was on everyone’s mind when viewing these initial teasers.

This is perhaps the toughest game I have had to review on Biscuit Reviews. Death Stranding is already a very divisive game among gamers. Some people have called it “The best game of 2019.” Others have called it “The most boring game of 2019.” As for what I consider Death Stranding. It’s certainly not what I would call the best game of 2019, but rather, “The most boring and innovative game of 2019.”

You play as Sam Porter Bridges (portrayed by Norman Reedus) a Porter who makes deliveries to various cities and compounds throughout America delivery supplies and items. He enters a contract with an organization known as Bridges to “Reconnect America” to form the United Cities of America. His motivation for connecting America is to save his sister Amelie who is being held hostage by a terrorist organization known as Homo Demens.

During Sam’s travels he will come across challenging terrains, MULEs, a group of crazed porters addicted to delivering packages (That is seriously the in-game explanation for this group), and BTs, invisible creatures that will make themselves visible to Sam when they catch him. Sam is able to sense BTs but he cannot see them. That is where the baby in the pod comes in. Known as a BB, they can help Porters detect BTs. BB’s are connected to a scanner device which points where the nearest BT is at. The faster the scanner clicks, the closer you are.

I am going to break down these three obstacles that you will come across as those will be your greatest oppositions in Death Stranding. First the environment. In Death Stranding, you’ll mostly be going from point A to point B delivering packages. If Sam does not have his equipment and packages properly sorted, he is more prone to losing his balance from the weight of what he is carrying. This can be caused by how the weight is proportioned to what you might come across with the environment. Encumbrance is something you have to be fully aware of and must keep in mind throughout your entire journey in Death Stranding.

The environment can also be changed through the new Strand mechanic. This mechanic is perhaps the best thing in Death Stranding. You can place signs, make footpaths, build structures that will appear in other player’s game in a non-intrusive way. Having multiple players connected to a world and shaping that world can make things easier. The great thing is that these additions are not at all necessary and you can choose to use them or not. You can also choose to contribute by building your own structures or leaving items behind for another player to use in their game. Is there a BT infested area you came across? Leave a sign that warns other players of BTs and maybe make a postbox that can have a few items to help them in their journey through the area. Maybe even leave a few likes on that postbox for the player for helping you out on your journey. Seeing messages come across my screen of a player using my structure or leaving a like on something I built was truly rewarding as it felt that I made someone else's experience a little smoother and easier.

Even items that you abandon in the environment and lose can be used by another player that might come across it. This very mechanic is something that Kojima hoped would create a new game genre that he dubbed the “Strand genre.” There is serious potential for this to evolve further and I can’t wait to see how Kojima will further evolve this new budding genre or how far other developers might take it.

The second obstacle are the MULEs. In-game reason aside, their camps are filled with items for the taking so invading their camps are usually a good idea. You can either stealth your way into the camp or you can just take your weapons and run in and take them all out. Personally I found the second method to be better as the environment was not made for a stealth approach, at least against the MULEs, they’re more suited for the BTs.

Speaking of BTs. In the teasers they looked to be very intimidating creatures that spelled certain doom and could be a big challenge if you come across them. This was another disappointing factor for me as BTs are actually really easy to fight and don’t really pose much of a challenge. Even if you’re spotted by one, you can easily outrun them, making this invisible force that is supposed to instill fear just a minor bump in the road.

So you might be thinking, “ok, how about the story, this is Kojima the story has to be good, right?” Well, it’s a bit of a mess. The story feels muddled and messy. The story focuses more on the characters within the story giving you exposition dumps on the happenings of the world and their past history. With this it didn’t feel natural because Death Stranding was too busy trying to get me to know its characters and their history, rather than the conflict within the story. So what is the conflict of the story? Reconnecting America to save Amelie, Sam’s sister and does everyone love to talk about reconnecting America. It you turned it into a drinking game on how many times characters said “Reconnect America” within the first two hours of the game, you would die of alcohol poisoning.

Death Stranding also suffers the same issue that Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain had, which was having crucial plot points in a codex that you have to refer to to understand the main story. I like codex’s in games, but they need to serve as supplementary information for the world you are building, not be a mandatory repository. There is a lot more that I could go into as for what went wrong for the story, but that would involve going into spoiler territory and I would like to avoid that for this particular review. I will however go over those issues in a separate post as I feel they do need to be discussed.

Despite my qualms with Death Stranding, I am glad that this game exists. Not only is it pushing new ideas barely touched upon in other games, it is also prompting the ever going discussion on what a video game is and what matters in one. As divisive as this game is, there are things about it that I cannot help but respect and praise just as much as I cannot help but criticize its low points. I honestly am curious how the Death Stranding world will look in a few months with the many structures built.

This honestly is a game that I think will be highly subjective depending on when a person plays the game. I think a person playing it a few months from now, might find it rather enjoyable because of everything that has and is being built in the world now. It will be up to those future players to upkeep what has been built and maybe even tear down ones no longer needed and build more relevant structures at that moment.

Death Stranding receives a 2 out of 5