#i feel like this goes without saying but all critiques i hold come from a place of loving the story given

[datastate]

i think the thing that gets to me most about nankidai’s writing is the lack of confidence in some aspects for his story/characterizations to shine through, to the extent he overcompensates. prior to the ministories, it’s shown most in how reko’s doll is overly emphasized as being out of place.

but usually, he’s really good about being subtle!!! with joe being more clever than he typically lets on (and in the death game, letting his cheery attitude drop once he’s out of sight of sara), the tension between alice and reko not being exaggerated and we can see where reko’s torn, with keiji’s slow appreciation for sara over the course of the game, etc.! and actually, speaking of ch2 + regarding the satous, their role in the story is intentionally in the background by nature of their role as the ‘in-between’ asunaro and casual life (most prominent with kai; though it also shows up with gashu who is - for the most part - more 'normal’ compared to the other floormasters while still maintaining his menacing role. this is something i deeply appreciate in contrast to the other floormasters - it presents a different, and arguably more terrifying, aspect)

but with the ministories in play... i do feel like sei would be better off if he were involved solely with kai, rather than directly with gashu. i’ve stated my issues with how sei’s existent feels redundant with the dichotomy of kai and ranger already in play, though he remains a deeply important character to kai himself and should not be removed entirely. (but that is not the point of the post atm)

see, it’s already heavily implied / outright stated that ranger and kai are meant to resemble and contrast one another.

- with ranger’s referring to gashu as “dad” (contrast to kai’s “father”) - shin’s wondering if rio was meant to be a successor (sara’s comment of “in place of a son?”) - rio’s inferiority despite fulfilling what kai states he never could; the two on opposite sides of what gashu wanted (kai’s unwavering commitment (unfortunately, to human life) versus ranger’s utter disregard for human life (with only gashu as the exception)) - and these are just listed off the top of my head, as i’m. very tired lol :P

we already had an established unknown dynamic between rio and kai - through gashu! as his creation/son respectively.

with sei’s involvement as gashu’s other apprentice, it seems to take away from the parallels we already had with gashu’s established children - specifically in kai’s case. there are no longer any messy strings left behind with kai and gashu under this lens, as gashu has completely moved over to the other apprentice he once took on instead. which honestly feels very unrealistic for how close they once were and how gashu justifies how he treated kai after being told only ‘one’ could survive after the assassin’s trial - out of a desire for kai’s survival, not only for his ‘potential’ but out of his own... clear ‘love’ for his family. this became a necessity.

sei physically resembling ranger could’ve simply been a case of being the next-best survivor of the assassin’s trial, who still met his end by another’s blade because of how much he cared for kai (who could’ve been training with him, where they earned their friendship; both were waiting on the instructors to report back to each house, rather than gashu specifically), and gashu saw that as the reason for both kai and sei’s failures. if kai was never a factor in sei’s life, would he be the assassin asunaro sought out...? <- that sort of thing

though, honestly, i don’t think sei needed to tie in with any current timeline-relevant character at all!! (esp as it was never implied in the main game). ranger’s design can stand on its own, and sei’s effect on kai wouldn’t be lessened if he didn’t resemble rio. tying ranger into the past seems to overcomplicate what was already implied beforehand regarding gashu’s difficult feelings toward his family (wishing to keep his child by his side, even in replica) versus asunaro (the intense faith he holds in its ideals, to the point of committing suicide to retain the purity of the death game) and how he both resents and wonders where he went wrong with kai for him to be unable to kill anyone else or complete asunaro’s objectives, where all other assassins would’ve in its name. he was searching out a replacement for kai - that is all we’re given in-game, and that’s honestly all we need to know for ranger’s existence to make sense and have a deeper meaning than just being a malicious floormaster! he is underdeveloped, and that is the intention of his character; he was always meant to be in the shadow of the child he was based upon, the one who gashu truly cared for.

...in any case, it’s an issue solely with the ministories in general! i feel like nankidai did wonderfully with enhancing dynamics we were already aware of and adding in characters that could have a lot of potential on how they influence the yttd cast’s lives (ie. ryuu, sei, and more solid characterization for ursheen/stronghold!) and i absolutely adored the alice & reko events!!! the subtle references to how much reko cared about alice to set up a ‘secret hideout’ just for the two of them, still taking the time to explain music things he didn’t quite understand (and in turn, also trying to pretend she didn’t know as much about piano as she did so she had more time to hang out with him), etc etc - it’s heartbreaking seeing how coldly they regard each other in present day by contrast! with that small set up of just how their personalities/desires began to clash and leaving the rest to be assumed from there. reko & alice’s is by far my favorite of the ministories, though i do appreciate what nankidai is trying to convey with the others... i just wish he weren’t so overt with kai’s :’]

[luvhughes43]

don’t have to pretend | blake hughes au

blake hughes au

summary: how blake hughes and nico hischier finally confess their feelings for each other

word count: 4.1k

“Nico, you know you don’t have to keep coming over anymore,” Blake whispered. she had been thinking a lot about their relationship lately, or lack thereof. she didn’t know how much longer she could take being so incredibly infatuated with him but unable to say anything. 

Nico looked confused, like the idea of not coming over to visit Blake was incomprehensible. Blake stared at Nico, waiting for him to respond. she hoped he would say that he wanted to be with her, that he had feelings for her… anything to suggest that he wasn’t just here to make her brothers playing less sloppy. she had watched the games, she knew that Jack was struggling and the reason was probably her. 

“I want to come over,” Nico finally responded, and although that's what Blake wanted to hear it wasn’t as satisfying as she thought it would be. 

They both sat in silence for a moment, drinking hot chocolates out of mugs decorated with little ice skates. “yeah but, if you’re here just because of Jack then-”

“I’m not,” Nico butted in. They both stared at each other. 

“Right well,” Blake was the first to shift away from Nico’s heated gaze, uncomfortable in whatever awkward tension she had just created. 

Nico cursed himself in his mind. She doesn’t want you like that, he kept repeating over and over again. Although, no matter how many times he told himself that Blake wasn’t interested in him, he would still hold out on any string of hope that he had. 

They had really connected over the few months that they had gotten to know each other, and either would be damned if they let that all go to waste. So, they both held on without knowing that the other person felt the exact same way. 

*

“You're going to get cold,” Jack had pointed out to Blake as he picked her up to go out. but of course, she decided against better judgement and had decided to wear her sluttiest top without any form of coverup so that she wouldn’t chicken out.

Jack hadn’t mentioned Blakes tiny top, and so she counted it as a win that his critique came in the form of needing something warm. “Like, I'm seriously not going to give you my jacket when you start complaining,” he continued with the roll of his eyes. 

“If all goes well tonight i won't need your jacket,” Blake had rebutted to Jack's distaste. 

“Yeah well, with your luck you're going to be single forever so I'll be waiting for you to complain about the cold,” Jack teased. 

“Right and… where’s your girlfriend?” Blake played into the sibling banter. “Last I saw your ex was on a lingerie mag and here you are… coming over to your sister's place before going out so she can help you pick out an outfit….” 

“Right, okay I'm done fighting now!” Jack said, lifting his hands up in mock surrender. “But seriously, do these pants match with this top,”

“You're wearing black skinny jeans, anything you wear is going to match, now go!” Blake responded, shooing Jack out of her apartment and into the hallway. She looked at her reflection in the mirror one last time before leaving, making a mental note to put on some more lip gloss in the car. 

“Who are you trying to impress anyway?” Jack had shouted once he and Blake got inside the bar. He was trying to find his teammates among the crowd, but it was no luck.

“None of your business!” she shouted back, catching the boy of her affections eye from across the bar. “Nico’s over there!” she yelled, turning to her brother who was already being pulled into conversation by somebody else. It seemed like fate was on Blake's side as she made long strides over to Nico who was, luckily, alone. 

Nico looked hot, and god… the things Blake wanted to do to him… she should be locked up. 

Blake wasn’t the only one appreciating the view though, because Nico was very clearly checking out his teammate's sister. His eyes trailed down Blakes face and onto her top, and if Blake had noticed him shift in his seat she hadn’t said anything. 

“You look good tonight!” Nico had leaned over so that Blake could hear him through the loud music. Blakes face burned at his comment, and she was glad that the bar's lighting was dim otherwise it would be very obvious that she liked her brother's captain. although, liked seemed like a very meager word when her whole world turned upside down upon seeing his dimples. 

“And you look very handsome!” Blake had turned her head close to his. She was going to need a few drinks if she was going to be this close to him all night. Especially, when all his teammates were here. 

Nicos face lit up with a smile, and Blakes immediately matched it with a bright smile of her own. 

“Sit beside me,” Nico said, pulling out the last empty chair beside him. He was still waiting for his drink. 

Blake easily complied, smoothly sliding the bar stool as close to Nico as was possible without raising suspicions. “So….” 

“Soo…” Nico copied Blake, both giggling at each other. They were two lovesick fools and yet, they didn’t recognize that the other was also helplessly in love. 

“So, how have you been?” Blake smiled, leaning an elbow onto the bar so that she was even closer to the brown eyed man. She was so down bad…

“I’ve been good, just waiting for a pretty girl to come sit with me, you?” he replied flirtatiously. 

“I’m really good! just waiting for a hot man to order me a drink…” she trailed off, focusing her gaze away from Nico and back to the bar staff.

“What do you want?” he said, already pulling out his wallet. 

A bartender came over to their section, dropping off a cold beer in front of Nico while offering all sorts of apologies for the wait time. He waved the waiter ramblings off, and instead looked towards Blake for her order. 

“A vodka cran,” she told the bartender, “double shot” 

Nico had handed over the cash. 

After some more harmless flirting, Nico led Blake back to the team’s table where she was greeted by everyone. 

“Nice outfit,” one of the boys piped up, eyes trailing down Blakes body. she was wearing some jeans and a tight corset top that pushed her boobs up just right…

“Don’t talk to my sister,” Jack huffed, swatting the guy in the chest. 

At Jack's words, your eyes immediately turned to catch Nico’s who was already staring at you. He looked torn, and before you could make any sort of move to question him he was shuffling chairs and sitting as far away from Jack as was possible. 

All night, Blake had been trying to catch Nico’s attention from down the table. He barely glanced in her direction for the rest of the night, and now she was afraid that when he did she’d start to cry. She felt so pathetic as the other guy's attention fell to her chest, reminding her that the guy she was trying to get wanted nothing to do with her at this moment. 

“I'm going to get another drink,” Blake said as she swirled the ice around in her cup. Jack nodded at her, and then she was walking towards the bar by herself.

Blake let the bartender make her “something special”, and she sat at the bar watching him pour a shit ton of juice and gin into her cup.

“Hey, you new here?” Some guy, blond and skinny sat in one of the many available seats next to Blake.

“uh no i’m not. Is that your opening line?” she huffed, giving the bartender a tip when she finally came back with her drink. Yes, Blake was being rude to the guy but she wanted nothing more than to be alone. Something that was impossible to happen in a bar at 1am. 

“Uh, can I have this dance?” The guy tried to correct himself, and Blake cringed as a mix of two songs from 2010 blared through the bars speakers. 

“No you cant-” Blake said, just as her head turned just enough for her to see a girl approach Nico. she couldn’t make out what they were saying, just that he was smiling in the same way he was earlier.  

“Actually,” Blake corrected herself, and the blond guy turned to his group of friends as if to say “i told you so, girls cant resist my charm…” 

the girl touched Nicos arm… “I’ll dance with you!” Blake forced a smile onto her face, turning back to the bar one last time to take a large swig out of her drink.

The blond guy grabbed her hand, and with a deep breath Blake let herself be dragged onto the dance floor which was coincidentally right beside the table filled with her brother's friends. 

The blond guy, who still didn't have a name, spun Blake around so that her back was against his front. she tried to lean back into him, but it all felt so wrong. 

The guy guided her hips, and her face heated up in shame as her brother's teammates started turning their attention towards her. 

Blake turned herself back around, now facing the guy who brought her to dance. they swayed together for a few more minutes, and as soon as the next song finished Blake was immediately bidding her goodbyes. 

She rushed over to the table, ignoring the blond guy's shouts for her snap. she grabbed her purse from her brother's chair. “Can we please leave Jack,” she practically yelled in his ear. 

he turned to his sister with a look of concern in his eyes. “Did he do something..?” he said, gesturing to the guy from earlier who was now retreating back to his group of friends. 

Blake shook her head. “I think i’m getting a headache,” 

Jack stood up then, waving to his teammates as he bid them all goodbyes. 

Nico had tried to catch Blakes eyes, but she refused to look in his direction.

By the time she and Jack got out to the car, she could feel tears of frustration threatening to fall. She had to keep her head glued to the window so as to not raise any suspicions with Jack, who was well… oblivious to all things that weren't in his direct line of sight. 

“Thanks for driving me home!” her words were rushed as she scrambled out of his car. “I’ll call you in the morning!” 

When her apartment door slammed shut behind her, Blake broke out into quiet sobs. She just wanted the mood from seeing Nico at the bar to continue for the rest of the night. It seemed that despite how hard she tried, nothing would ever come out of whatever she and Nico had going on. 

*

When Blake was 15, she had dated this guy who had lived a few doors down from her. The relationship didn’t last long, but sometimes Blake liked to think about the boy who broke her heart. Usually at night, usually when she was upset, and usually when she had nothing better to do than upset herself with her own life's events.

He had been nice at first, someone Jack had talked to a few times when he was out playing street hockey. She couldn't remember if Ryder had ever joined Jack and her brothers games, but that didn’t matter much anyway. 

What mattered was Blake overhearing him tell his group of friends that the only reason he was dating her was because she was going to compete in the olympics. 

“she’s like, the perfect girlfriend to have,” he had said to his friends. “i never have to see her, she's a champion, and like, I can make out with her and shit whenever i want,”

The last part hurt the most. Ryder was the first guy she had ever kissed and really been with. She didn’t have time to have boyfriends that weren’t always at the rink or the gym. Her seeking out Ryder and being with him was her own little act of deviance. 

Now that she’d gone to enough therapy sessions though, she was sure that the reason she wasn’t upset that he was with her because of her titles was because she wanted to be with herself because of her titles. When she was younger, she was solely defined by her medals. Therefore, it came to no surprise to Blake that her relationships would be defined by her achievements too. 

Anyway, that didn’t stop her crying to her older brother about the whole thing. 

She had bursted through Quinn’s door, tears silently streaming down her face as she fell face first onto his bed. He had brushed her hair from her face, asking her what was wrong. 

“He’s using me,” she had said, and Quinn looked upset enough for the both of them. 

“He’s such a fucking asshole,” he had said, looking at his younger sister with so much pity. “He doesn’t deserve somebody like you,” 

At the time, Blake wasn’t sure what “somebody like you,” had meant. All her life she was defined by her skills, her body, her wins and loses… she wished figure skating and relationships didn’t have to be so difficult. 

She hadn’t seen Ryder again after that. She had made no effort to go and see him, and Blake could’ve sworn she saw him slowly sneaking back inside his house whenever her brothers would go outdoors. 

Now at 20, Blake lays in her bed and reminisces on all the shitty parts of her life with a new lens. She remembers Ryder and how he had used her, her coach and how she forced Blake to compete through injuries, and then her mind turned to Nico. who hadn't necessarily done anything to hurt Blake but his lack of action made her feel pathetic. 

How is it that a man can flirt with you at a bar, make you believe for weeks that he truly likes you, and then refuse to make eye contact with you later? 

Blake’s head spun like one of those spins she used to practice. She had thought of calling Quinn but then what? She had already told him how convinced she was that Nico had liked her. It would just be embarrassing now to have to tell him that now she wasn’t so sure.

So, Blake did what she did best, wallowed in her own self-pity until she eventually drifted off into sleep.

*

A few days later Nico came knocking on Blakes door. She wasn’t surprised to see him, but she had already decided that she shouldn’t talk to him anymore. 

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come over anymore,” she had told him. She hadn’t let him step through the threshold of her apartment, and she hadn’t changed her mind under his soft gaze. 

“But… Blake?”

“Nico, I'm really busy right now. There's a lot of stuff that i’m going through and I cant handle-”

“You can’t handle hanging out with me?” he had said, voice quiet. 

Blake had to look away from his pointed gaze, wanting nothing more than to just confess her feelings. But if Nico did like her like she thought he did, then his reaction to what Jack had said at the bar a few nights ago just proved to her that a relationship just wouldn't work out. And so, as Blake always does, she prioritised what she thought would end up working in the long run. Instead of pushing through pain to win medals, she was pushing through her feelings for Nico to protect her heart. 

“I’m sorry,” she had whispered to him, gaze falling to the floor when he finally walked away from her. 

*

Nico had thought that he was doing the right thing. Sure, he had let things go too far when he started flirting with Blake at the bar. But come on, she was so gorgeous, and she was exactly the kind of person that he wanted to be with. Forget “kind of person”, Nico thought. She was literally the only person he wanted to see or talk to. 

He thought that maybe he was taking advantage of her in some way. after he had started stopping by her house and visiting, and they had become friends… Jack had started telling him stories of Blakes abusive childhood. He couldn't even imagine growing up in a sport so toxic. And then of course there was her career ending injury, which is the reason behind them even starting to hang out. 

Blake Hughes was vulnerable, she was hurt and she was upset, and Nico wasn’t sure if love was even something she was looking for right now. He felt like he was stepping over some sort of invisible line, and that if Blake didn’t reciprocate his feelings, she wouldn't want to talk to him anymore. 

But he was proven to be right regardless, because Blake wasn’t talking to him and he had no idea why. 

*

blake.hughes added to their story!

The devil’s holiday event was lackluster. Jack had caught the eye of some pretty brunette and so he was off flirting and doing god-knows what. She had hoped that by now that Jack would stop insisting she came to these kinds of events and outings. But Blake guessed watching Titanic every night for the last week counted as a setback in her recovery journey. 

She swirled the drink in her cup, watching mindlessly as couples mingled and talked amongst themselves. This was just getting depressing. 

As the night continued nothing changed. She sat in her spot by the bar, conversing with the bartenders with as limited a vocabulary as possible. If her mother were here, she would definitely be scolding Blake for being rude. 

“You okay?” one of the girlfriends had asked Blake as they waited at the bar for another drink. Blake had nodded respectively, and when that didn’t appease the girl she sighed. 

“Boy troubles, you know?” she laughed, hoping that the awkwardness would be too much and that the girl would take the hint and leave. 

“Hit me,” she had said instead, and so that’s how Blake spent the next 45 minutes explaining to Jesper Bratts girlfriend all the ways in which an anonymous man had shown feelings for her. 

“I mean, it really sounds like he likes you. you know how men are, maybe you should make the first move?” the blonde had replied. 

“But there’s a lot at stake here… this guy is.. Well,”

“Standing over there?” Bratts girlfriend said, pointing to Nico Hischier. He looked gorgeous, and if Blake wasn’t so shocked that she had guessed correctly she probably would have melted to a puddle on the floor. 

Blake fumbled with what to say, opening and closing her mouth pathetically as her gaze moved from Nico to the girl perched in front of her. 

“You guys aren’t very subtle, Blake” she said, patting the girl on the shoulder before launching into strategies in which Blake could “get her man”.

After the talk and another drink, Blake was ready to pour out all of her feelings to Nico because when she really thought about it, could life get anymore awful? she was already never going to be able to figure skate again, and she and Nico weren’t talking… nothing could possibly be worse than this. 

Wrong. 

In the 35 minutes it took for Bratts girlfriend to convince Blake to confess her feelings to Nico, he had moved on. Like, literally moved on from the group of guys he was talking to and onto a far too attractive blonde. 

Life was actually cruel. 

Like they always do, Blake and Nico caught eyes, and before he could make a move to come talk to her she was pushing past people to get towards the exit. She’d text Jack that she left when she was far, far, away from this cursed event. 

*

Blake had just taken off her heels and pulled the backs of her earrings off when loud knocks echoed off her front door. 

“Jack, I literally told you I was going home. I’m fine!” she stressed, yanking open the door without really looking at who was standing outside. 

“It’s not Jack,” Nico’s voice was soft. Blake paused where she was standing, slowly turning so that she was face to face with the man of the last few weeks… Nico. 

He looked even better up close. His beard was shaven, tie a little loose. He was her weakness if that kind of thing even mattered anymore. 

“Nico,” she had breathed out, like she hadn’t imagined a single possibility in which he could be standing right in front of her. The weeks had seemed that long. Like there was no possibility that he’d still be waiting for her. 

“Blake,” he sighed, walking into the apartment and shutting the door softly behind him.

“I really like you, you know that right?” she admitted. “Like, every time I'm with you I feel so calm and yet so overwhelmed with the idea that you were made for me?”

Nico didn’t have a chance to react before Blake continued saying her thoughts out loud. “Whenever I'm near you I get butterflies and I've never felt that way about anyone before. You're, youre so different to anyone I've ever known. And I know that you're Jack's captain and that I'm his sister and that could make things really awkward for you but I really don't care! Because I like you and Jack’s just going to have to get over that when the time comes,”

“I bought your jersey! I don't even own my twins jersey!” she continued, pulling out her phone from her small shoulder bag. She flicked it open, pulling up her duolingo streak. “And Duolingo! I have Duolingo to try and learn Swiss German!” 

“Nico, if you don't feel the same way that's fine. I'm so sorry for thinking there was something between us,” Blake began apologizing, dropping the phone to her side as she started to calm down from the shocks of the evening. 

“I have a notes app filled with all of your favourite things,” he interrupted Blakes ramblings. 

“When I'm missing you, I make two portions of my dinner and bring some over to you as an excuse to see you. When Jack told me I didn’t have to come over to visit with you anymore, I was upset. My first thought was that I really liked you and that I didn't want whatever we have going on to end,”

“you liked me?” Blake spoke, her timid voice breaking through Nico’s speech.

“I still like you,” he responded, and not a second later was Blake’s purse falling to the ground as her hands wound themselves around Nico’s neck. 

He grabbed her by her waist, fingers dancing over the small of her back as he brought her into a passionate kiss. 

By the time they realized what they were doing, Blake was backing Nico into her room. “Are you sure?” he whispered, breaking away from their heated make out session to rest his forehead against hers. 

“I need you,” she was basically whimpering, but Nico paid that no attention as he slowly started sliding the straps of her dress down her shoulders. 

“You're gorgeous,” he whispered, trailing kisses from her lips all the way down to her cleavage. 

Blake moaned, gripping onto Nicos hair as the both of them sunk down onto her plush bed. 

*

In the morning, Blake woke up to her and Nico cuddling. Blake ran her hands lightly through his hair, all of last night's events rushing back to her with pleasure. 

Nico groaned when he finally came to, head moving against Blakes shoulder as he tried to shield himself from the light that was shining through her curtains. He placed a few soft kisses onto her shoulder before snuggling closer to her.

She set one of her legs over his, and then allowed him to pull her as close to him as possible. 

They would discuss the nature of their relationship later. but now, all the two cared about was spending as much time with one another as possible before life got in the way. They went back to sleep peacefully, knowing that they don't have to pretend anymore.

[shalomniscient]

Hi sev! came up with a nsfw fic idea where deren resolves the tension between her and the reader. due to being observant, she may or may not have been aware of all the reader's brief and stolen glances that wandered elsewhere other than her face

wrote this with the deren skin in mind anon if that's alright, because damn i wouldn't be able to stop stealing glances either 👀👀👀

ACT THREE: RESOLUTION || deren x reader [NSFT][MDNI]

cw. cunnilingus, semi-public (?)

notes. this is the simpiest reader i've ever written im ngl

Truly, you don't know if you want to throttle Garofano or thank her on your knees, because in the name of all that is holy Deren looks so insanely hot right now it's unfair.

Her dress hugs every curve of her body, the little mesh cut-outs offering a teasing peek at her smooth skin below. The part by her waist seems like a personal attack against you because God you haven't been able to take your eyes off her, your hands itching to just hike that dress up and run your fingers along her long legs.

But this is a formal event—the fucking DisCars—so you hold yourself back as best you can, even though Deren makes it all the more difficult by casting sultry, knowing glances your way from across the table you're both sat at. The grip you have on your flute of champagne turns your knuckles white as you sip on the bubbly alcohol, and try to not look at the ridiculously plunging neckline of her dress, or the way her necklace rests so perfectly on her chest, just above the swell of her breasts.

Fuck, it's so god damn warm in here.

The entire event drags on at a snail's pace, and by the time a short break is announced, you're about ready to get the hell out of there to get some fresh air in your lungs, before a firm hand catches your wrist and tugs you back. Your heart jumps into your throat when you come face to face with none other than Deren, an amused smirk on her lips.

"Come with me," she says, and it's more like an order. You swallow thickly, and obey—not like you'd do anything else, really. Deren leads you past the throng of other celebrities, all huge household names in DisCity, but you can see nothing but her. Nothing but Deren and the way this fucking dress makes her ass look criminally good, or the way her hips sway as she walks. You're not even down bad anymore, you're down horrendous.

The long walk ends at a bathroom. It's pretty much the kind of bathroom you'd find in a house, though without the shower and twice as large, with a disproportionately massive sink and a terribly tacky gold-lined tap. Your critiques of the interior design are interrupted however, by Deren pinning you against that very sink, leaning close enough to whisper in her ear.

"Been liking what you see, baby?" she croons, and you shiver at the warmth of her breath against the shell of you ear. Your hands grip at her biceps and you nod frantically. Deren laughs at that, her hands finding your waist to pull you close. "I'm flattered."

"Wanna kiss you," you get out, almost petulantly, and Deren grins. She leans in close, ghosting her lips against yours, before turning away at the last second, making you whine.

"Sorry, baby, can't mess up the makeup, now can I?" she teases with faux sympathy. "Wouldn't want anyone to know what we're getting up to, now would we?"

Your fingers curl into the sleeves of her dress and you genuinely feel so close to crying, the need in your veins burning you alive. Deren coos at your desperation, patting your cheek.

"Shh, don't look so sad, baby," she says, grinning. "You can still kiss me—just not where anyone can see, hm?"

You look up at her in confusion, before it all clicks in your head and your mouth goes dry. Deren's eyes turn dark and half-lidded once she sees the understanding bloom on your face, and the hand on your cheek drifts down to your shoulder before she's pressing down on you, urging you lower. Not that she has to do much, because you fall to your knees as quickly as possible, fingers digging into the fabric of her dress.

Deren undoes the clips on each side of the thin cloth, letting the front separate from the rest of the dress. She gathers it up in her hands, and you exhale slowly at the sight of her pretty pussy, covered by a set of black lace underwear. You stare at her for a while, entranced and motionless, before a hand winds into your hair and tugs you forward.

You drag your tongue along her clothed cunt, nosing at her clit through the fabric. Deren groans despite the dulled sensation, eyes fluttering shut as you continue to lap at her until her panties are absolutely ruined, her slick seeping through the lace and onto your tongue. You moan as the taste of her blooms in your mouth, and your fingers find the waistband and finally pull them down low enough for you to put your whole mouth on her dripping cunt.

Deren gasps at the first touch of your tongue on her, directly, without anything in the way. You lick along her wetness, the angle making your neck ache but you truly do not give a fuck right now. The world could be ending, but even that wouldn't be able to pull you from between Deren's legs. Your tongue goes from her twitching hole to her stiff clit and back, the wet sounds echoing throughout the bathroom.

"C'mon baby," Deren hums, though her voice is shaky, "we gotta be quick, or else they'll start looking."

You whine against her pussy, disliking that you can't take your sweet time to savor her, but speed up your movements nonetheless. Deren fully moans when you plunge your tongue into her tightness, the hands in your hair forcing your further against her cunt as she bends over, bracing herself with one arm on the sink. You shudder at the sensation of her blunt nails against your scalp and go even faster, ignoring the burn in your jaw in favor of making Deren cum into your mouth instead.

"That's it, baby, just like that, so fucking good," she gasps out, and with one more harsh shove of your tongue into her hole she cums with a strangled groan, hips twitching against your face as she rides out her orgasm. Her slick spreads along your lower face with each movement, but you just stick your tongue out and let her use you as she needs, drunk on the taste of her spilling into your mouth.

Once she's finally done, she releases your hair and steps back, legs quivering. She grabs a few tissues and wipes herself clean as best she can, and tugs her ruined panties back up, drenched in a mix of you spit and her own wetness. It makes her shiver, but then she helps you up, smiling apologetically at the wince you make as your knees straighten once more after kneeling for so long.

You let her wipe your face with more tissues, your mind still foggy and heady. When you finally regain your sense of higher thought, Deren is fixing your collar and patting your face affectionately.

"Ready to go back, baby?" she asks, and you nod, leaning in to her touch, satiated for now. Deren smiles at you, and kisses your cheek—lightly, so none of her lipstick accidentally transfers to you. But this close, she take the opportunity to whisper into your ear.

"When we get home, I'm fucking you until you can't walk."

Shit, you're not going to survive the next few hours, are you?

[dgcatanisiri]

I saw a critique of Picard season three put forward as "a story about how only boomers can save the day from the bad thing," and... I can see it, I'm not saying that it's an invalid critique, but at the same time, I don't think it's altogether fair.

Like, for one, I feel like if there's any age-based or generational-base of the storytelling, it's in the realm of "being old does not mean you have nothing to contribute." Which is kind of a big deal when most of the time in media, you see Hollywood specifically trying to draw in and appeal to the demographics of youth, to hook them in and hold them for life. Meanwhile, Picard centered on a character in his nineties played by an actor in his eighties, and aside from Jack Crusher and Sidney La Forge, every major character and actor in the season was older than forty, at least, with the TNG cast all over sixty, with only two under seventy.

It's a pretty big deal, especially when you remember that the last time that Star Trek was directly addressing the aging of its cast, the characters involved were in the fifty/sixty range, and talking like they were near the end of their years of being able to contribute something, that they'd come to the end of their road and were just going to fade away soon after. So while the TNG characters weren't necessarily on the front line and acting as line officers, doing the day to day field work, they were also very clearly shown as being able to contribute to the world they lived in, being able to make the difference.

Plus the framing of Seven of Nine, I feel, makes a refutation of the idea as well - she is, despite being a returning character we the audience already knew, at the head of the "new generation," we see that throughout her framing, particularly in her relationship with Shaw. Not just with her advancement to captain, but also in particular in that last message from Shaw in the finale, where he acknowledges that he's representative of the old ways standing in her way and that if she's writing a new book, it's because the old one needs to be rewritten.

Now, maybe you could look at this in like a "boomers versus millennials/Gen Z" thing, but - and maybe it's just my general trend towards optimism, particularly in my Star Trek - but what I see is NOT generational conflict, but more of a call for generational UNITY. Y'know, the first half of the season, we saw how Sidney's faith and trust in Seven helped save the Titan, because she respected Seven to call her by her name, stopping the infiltrator. Although it was part of the Borg hijack, Jack's connected nature helped to save the day multiple times. And Seven also trusted that Picard and crew could do something against the Borg.

Hell, I could even take this further, and call this a metaphor AGAINST generational conflict, that it's saying that others will try to use generational differences to divide and disrupt, and we need to overcome that - this is something I KNOW I've seen talked about plenty on Tumblr, how we have all this stuff trying to pit millennials and Gen Z against one another, in the same way that millennials and the baby boomers are. That this is an effort by the forces of power (power that goes beyond generation) to keep the masses divided against one another so that they aren't a threat to that power structure.

Because sure, the Supercube and the Borg Queen were destroyed by the TNG crew flying in and saving the day, but Seven and company retook the Titan and held off the assault on Earth long enough that they could do that without Earth and the Federation falling, and a major point is that Jack had to CHOOSE to leave the Collective, that it had to be his decision. Everyone had to work together for that happy ending, rather than alone.

Maybe I am being overly optimistic and taking the best faith interpretation at the expense of something else being involved and at play... But then, isn't that something that Star Trek has always tried to ENCOURAGE, to believe the best in things?

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

I have a bunch of thoughts related to your recent post on lefty antisemitism, but I don't want to dump a big long thing in your inbox - let me know if you want me to send it, other than that just know you're not alone trying to wade through the messiness of it all.

I know leftist antisemitism is alive and well, I know Jewish perspectives/experiences/identities are not valued, and I know there’s a load of misinformation out there when it comes to the conflict (though honestly, I don’t trust info from any side because everything is propaganda at this point). But I listened to a podcast episode (Joyous Justice - a Jewish racial justice podcast hosted by a Black & Cherokee Jew) that was a bit of a gentle kick in the pants.

To summarize some of the key thoughts: There is antisemitism in lefty spaces because there is antisemitism EVERYWHERE - and racism, sexism, transphobia, classism, ableism, and the like. Leftists are not immune to these things. And so when someone like me says “well I’m not going to engage with some progressive cause because I’m bothered by the antisemitism” it’s like, anyone else of another marginalized identity could have the same excuse for not participating because they will inevitably run into someone who is being shitty about their identity. It’s good that we have ways to process these harmful experiences, and we should try to hold people accountable, but it’s not a good idea for our self-defensiveness to stop us completely from engaging.

I’m not solidly feeling any of this right now, but I am trying to sit with it in the discomfort.

Hi there,

Look, I definitely see where you're coming from and where this podcaster was coming from at least in theory, but I don't agree.

Leftists absolutely have all the same problems any other group has, and obviously we all have to work on our biases and movements all the time to try and root these things out.

This is different and goes beyond that though, because the brand of anti-Zionism that is mainstream amongst American goyische leftist movements and individuals is deeply antisemitic as a part of the cause. Anti-Zionism as an intra-Jewish discussion need not be [internalized] antisemitism, and there are plenty of ways that one can critique specific actions of the Israeli government that are proportionate, fair, and necessary (yes, even as an outsider.)

However, calls for the literal dissolution of the entire country without a thought or care for the safety and well-being of the affected Jews or the Jewish people as a whole, combined with a deep suspicion (and frequently outright hostility) towards Jews who bring up antisemitism (especially as it pertains to rhetoric around Israel) and then adding your regular run-of-the-mill antisemitism on top, are common and accepted in leftist spaces. In short: antisemitism isn't just one unfortunate pimple amongst many other expected blemishes on the face of modern leftism - it's actually frequently taken up as one of the causes of leftism. This form of antisemitism is seen as social justice, and so arguing against it is seen not for what it is (begging for people to add even a little nuance and critically examine a belief system that leads them to call for the genocide of half the Jewish population worldwide) but rather as arguing for whatever terrible thing they want to paint Israel as this week, whether or not it's true and whether or not such a label could just as easily be applied to groups and nations that they will give a pass to.

Meanwhile, most of the goyim arguing in support* of Israel are frequently right-wing conservatives whose other views on human rights and moral progress I find rather repugnant and who frequently utilize standard conservative talking points about Israel's more strident critics to attack them on other levels. For example, I cringe basically any time I see any right-wing critique of, say, the very real antisemitism of Cori Bush or Rashida Tlaib, because I just know it's gonna be racist as hell.

(The * is because I don't honestly classify a lot of this as support for the Jews, so much as a handy vehicle for their anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia, and unfair painting of all Palestinians and/or Palestinian rights movements as terrorism. I would also be remiss if I didn't say that the same is frequently true of certain batches of leftists whose anti-Zionism is more of a handy vehicle for antisemitism than genuine, thoughtful, and helpful advocacy for Palestinians.)

But there are some conservative voices that do have genuine support for Jews and are pro-Israel in a way that is more nuanced and doesn't just use it as a tactic. And when I see that, and especially when I hold it up next to leftist comrades who would never in a million years advocate for policies that would wipe out half the world population of another minority group but will happily repeat those talking points against Jews as if it were a social justice cause, it makes me question the validity of everything else they're saying.

And so I re-run that calculus on every social issue I'm passionate about, to see if maybe I'm on the wrong side of it, and every time I conclude I'm still very much not. So then I go back to the drawing board and reconsider Jewish history, identity, and peoplehood, and the conclusions I've come to about Zionism from those things, only to return to the same position I was in before. I've heard the arguments. I've actively sought out and considered the other side on this issue, hoping to understand something new, and each new source I read solidifies my opinion.

So then I'm stuck with concluding that my best option is to seek out like-minded Jews and when outside allies or work is needed, just kinda go into it accepting that a significant portion of the people I'm necessarily aligning myself with for other important causes would likely leave me and mine for dead under the right circumstances, and view that as good and right and just.

And while I don't let that change my voting behavior or advocacy at a practical level, it also doesn't change the fact that it fucking hurts and that I'm morally right to be angry about it.

[argesta]

Thinking about Perfect Victims again, as I frequently do, and I’m curious, is there a particular reason for the title choice??? Because I really like it, but am curious!

Omg bless you for this. Taking a break from chapter 4 edits and coming online to this question is sooo rewarding right now 😭

Hope it’s okay to answer publicly because it's a topic very close to me that I’d love others to at least summarily know about - but do let me know if you’d rather I private this post (and ofc it goes without saying, my tumblr direct IMs are always open!)

Content warnings below for mentions of SA, inter partner violence & structural racism and anti-Black. You know, as one does when discussing Western perceptions of abuse.

The title comes from the “perfect victim” myth, which is in itself a revisiting of anti-criminologist and victimology scholar Nils Christie's “ideal victim" concept. It is essentially saying that both public reception & structural validation of victim’s experiences require victims to fulfill an unattainable (not to mention racialized and gendered) model of ideal victimhood, i.e. the white woman or better yet young white girl who can do no wrong or who really exhibits no agency to “detract” from her victimhood. It holds all marginalized identities to a higher standard than their white counterparts, which contributes to both the initial marginalization & victimization itself.

It also asks victims of violence (all kinds, but most notably SA, domestic violence, power abuse, revenge porn and all such charged interpersonal dynamics) to be perfect people in a way that is never demanded anywhere else. (Un)victims must be morally, aeshtetically and socially beyond reproach before their stories can be heard - let alone taken action towards. As you can imagine, this is only compounded when you take into acount race (particularly in the context of the police state and the Black experience) and sexuality (such as inter partner violence in MSM - men who have sex with men, as well as in queer people that do not subscribe to a given framework through which gendered victimhood can be filtered).

It’s a field that saw a lot of contentious revisiting & critique in recent years which I’m all for, and what draws me to it is the psychological hook of internalizing ideal victimhood in ourselves. Like, people are really out here policing their own self-experience of being neglected/abused/subjected to all kinds of treatment because they somehow think that the agency they proved by ‘choosing’ that or ‘staying’ through it or even harbouring positive feelings & memories towards it nullifies their victimhood. Having agency does not mean you cannot be victimized - just like being victimized does not mean you lost all agency forevermore & cannot victimize others in turn.

Having agency really means no more and no less than just being like, an adult person on this earth. Of course you will make choices and of course you will adapt to all kinds of situation because it’s what you knew to do at the time. Agency is sort of inescapable - and yes, while of course in abusive situations or structural realities that leave you with very few options, your agency will always be limited, and in some cases even taken away, at the end of the day equating an image of “true victimhood” with “individual with no agency” is perhaps the most dangeorus and insiduous extremity of the perfect victim myth. Because it doesn’t just ask people to be good if they want to be validated as victims - it asks people not to be people.

Anyway! So sorry for this! I am among many things a decolonial scholarship post-grad and this ends up being everyone’s problem. I can be fun in Q&A's too - just ask me about chapter titles! No content warnings there! Not even a mention of Frantz Fanon, swear down!

[chloewatcheswrestling]

Wrestling Love Letters

The Ring General: Reigning after Roman.

Gunther's journey as the Intercontinental Champion is now etched in the history books, securing him the esteemed title of 'longest-reigning Intercontinental Champion of all time.' Yet, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, paving the way for even greater achievements. But how do you book the end of such an epic run without harming the dominance and significance of this championship reign? Gunther has ran through the majority of the superstars the WWE roster has to offer, so let’s explore a path for Gunther to ascend to the pinnacle of the wrestling world, cementing his legacy as a world title holder.

With a reign nearing 500 days (at the time of writing), Gunther undeniably deserves a shot at the top title. His longevity as Intercontinental Champion gives him a claim superior to many on the roster. In a previous blog post, I explored why I’m backing Shinsuke Nakamura to take the World Heavyweight Championship from Seth Rollins but, as a future feud, Gunther doesn’t seem the right fit here. Shinsuke would be a fresh champion with his own reign to cement and whilst I love a villain vs villain clash, this one doesn’t seem fitting.

Doesn’t Roman Reigns vs Gunther for the WWE Universal Championship at Wrestlemania XL (2024) sound appropriate for the longest reigning IC champion of all time? Champion vs Champion? Tribal Chief vs Ring General? Now that’s a Wrestlemania main event.

With Roman currently taking a break, WWE has some time to manipulate the moving parts in this potential matchup. Maybe they could continue to add fuel to the fire of the Giovanni Vinci storyline and identify Vinci as a pivotal figure in Gunther's journey moving forward. The Triple H era has seen the re-emergence of faction-based storytelling but, recently, every faction seems to be experiencing turbulence. Imperium should be portrayed as an impenetrable fortress, a united force that remains dominant and cohesive. Amidst the descent in the other factions on television, Imperium should stand tall, keeping their internal conflicts off-screen and projecting an aura of strength. At Wrestlemania, Vinci could have the opportunity to prove his loyalty to Gunther and Imperium and play a crucial role in Gunther emerging victorious, further solidifying their alliance. Perhaps intercepting a Solo Sikoa run in? Or perhaps putting himself in the path of a superman punch?

To prevent another instance of a champion holding multiple belts, Gunther should make a significant announcement. Given the lack of formidable contenders for his Intercontinental Championship, he was forced to explore new horizons. Gunther will be relinquishing the IC belt to focus on establishing a historic reign with the Universal Championship.

The future of the IC title could be determined by a tournament that features hungry and determined competitors. This not only showcases the talented WWE roster but also ensures that the next champion feels like they have truly earnt their place. This could be a great time to showcase all the talent that have come up short against Gunther but who still remain worthy contenders, roster members who deserve title shots but have been overlooked and perhaps even some hungry NXT stars.

Now, picture this: Gunther, seated at ringside in a sharp suit, proudly draping the Universal Championship over his shoulder. The Intercontinental Championship sits on a silk-covered platform, flanked by Ludwig and Giovanni. The tournament unfolds each week, with Imperium observing, analysing, and critiquing the suitability of the competitors.

For the brackets, after much consideration—taking into account Sheamus's injury and other superstars tied up in different storylines—I settled on a mix of suitable contenders. When it comes to showcasing NXT stars, while Ilja is a personal favourite, Carmelo Hayes or Bron Breakker would also shine in this spotlight.

As for the winner, recognizing that LA Knight is a huge fan favourite, my vision for the IC title aligns more with Drew McIntyre. It presents Drew with a well deserved opportunity for a dominant championship run playing out in front of real life crowds.

The legacy of Gunther's historic Intercontinental Championship reign will undoubtedly leave an enduring mark on the sport, setting the tone for an exciting new era and setting the stage for another unforgettable chapter in WWE history.

With pins, submissions, and a whole lot of heart, Chloe xoxo

05.10.2023

[capnjaket]

The Opposite of Lost - Chapter Five

Pairing: Josh Kiszka x Female OC

a/n: Be ready for a sneaky short pov from Jake :) Please share your thoughts and critique!

Warnings: Slow-burn, fluff, loss of family/loved ones.

Word Count: 2.5k

Chapter Five

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆ Joshua

I peeked over the edge of my book, watching as Rosemary’s eyes subtly darted between each tiny leaf on the small twig she twisted in her fingers. A small smile played on her beautiful lips, and I wondered what it was from. She sat on her butt and feet, knees up in the air where her elbows could rest. With our jumpers discarded, we soaked in the warm sun, I was looking at her smooth, tanned back where her tiny tee had ridden up—

“Josh!” Jake’s barking whipped me out of my headspace.

“What?”

“I asked you if you’re cool to hang out with the gang on Saturday afternoon. Rosemary said she has the shift off.” I sobered into the moment, looking around at the lunch table.

“Oh yeah for sure.”

“Can Rosemary bring her guitar? I want to hear you play more.” Jita said as she turned to the girl and grasped her shoulder. Everyone looked at her excitedly.

“If you guys want… but I’m no Jake Kiszka!” Rosemary blushed.

We were all sitting in Lilah’s living room, and with her parents away for the weekend, we had the night to ourselves to be as loud as we wanted. Thus, we took up as much space as we pleased, sitting in a bit of a smoke circle. The girls took to the couches early on, so Jake, Zach and I were situated on the floor. We’d long finished our pizza takeout, and we’d been contentedly sitting in conversation for the last hour or so.

“I need to stretch my legs. Anyone want to go for a walk?” Zach groaned from his uncomfortable seat on the floor below Lilah. As he stood, he grabbed Lilah’s hand and leant back on his heels to pull her up.

As much as we tried to form a big line walking through the center of the neighboring streets, as they got windier we walked two by two, naturally walking with Zach and Lilah in the front, Jita and Rosemary in the middle and Jake and I at the end.

I noticed Jake kicking a little stone along in front of him as we walked, and I could feel his clouded, slightly upset and angry emotion wafting into me. “What are you all upset about?” I whispered.

“Don’t act like you don’t feel it too – this twin telepathy thing goes both ways and you are seriously exuding some angsty feelings. You want to walk with Rosemary.” His words made it really click into place for me. He was right – I really did want to walk with Rosemary.

“Not as much as you want to walk next to Jita ya swoon!” I hushed and pushed him a bit.

“I’ve been spending this whole walk trying to figure out how I can smoothly change partners.” Just as he angrily mumbled that, Rosemary knelt down to tie her shoelace, while the others continued on without her. “Rosemary you sweet angel from heaven above.” Jake quickly exclaimed in my ear before hastily walking in tow with Jita, leaving me and Rosemary alone again.

I stood and waited as she quickly retied her shoe. “Thanks for waiting back, Joshua Michael.”

“Anytime Rosemary June.” I replied. I stuck my hand out for her to hold as she got up, but was shocked by the feeling of her stone cold fingers against my palm. “My god you’re freezing! Why didn’t you say anything?” I started taking off my coat.

“I’m really okay!” She laughed as I placed the coat over her. “Thankyou.”

“I know what will really warm you up.”

“What?” She pulled her arms into the coat.

“Race me back to the house?” She pondered for a second.

“Well what about the rest of them?” She pointed at the group now at the other end of the street.

I turned to look their way. “They’ll be back event—” I heard the scuffing of boots and whipped around to see her take off in the opposite direction, back the way we came. “Oh no you don’t!”

Her giggles turned into hysterical laughter and a little bit of screaming as adrenaline took over and I chased her. The energetic, happy Rosemary I knew was showing today, coming out of her shell as we discarded the others. I couldn’t help but notice the way that even though she was much less shy with our group as a whole these days, she was still more of herself with me than ever. I tried not to think about that too much. She didn’t like me that much. 

As hard as we tried, we could only run so fast with all the laughing. She was able to just stay ahead of me, cutting the corners into people’s yards and nearly hitting a couple of mailboxes on the way. That was until the final stretch, where she turned back to me in victory as I used every last bit of my energy to run into her, enveloping her in a big hug and lifting her off the ground to spin. 

I wished I could take a photo of her face in that moment, lit by the streetlamp a couple houses down, smile wide as a soft exhausted laugh pulled from her lips, and her eyes large and round, staring at me so close. I put her down, still holding her sides, and as we both stopped laughing we realized how close our faces had become, each taking in the details of one another’s face. I caught myself looking at her reddened lips from the cold, wanting nothing more than to kiss them in that moment.

“We should go inside. It’s getting colder still.” I said; I forced myself out of it. I couldn’t kiss her. She didn’t want me like that. Despite this, my body refused to cooperate and I was still stuck holding her close to me. “And one of us isn’t wearing a coat.” I joked, trying anything to diffuse this tension.

“Uhh… Yeah. Let’s go.” She stepped away from me, and I finally let my hands drop from her waist.

“You brought your guitar right?” I followed her up the driveway past the cars, looking into Rosemary’s bronco.

“Yes I did.”

“Wanna play for me?”

“I don’t know Joshua, what would I play?”

“I don’t know – anything! Whatever you want.” She didn’t seem very convinced. “Come on, it’s only me! I’ve sung for you so many times! It’s only fair.”

I sat down next to her on the couch as she started playing ‘Landslide’ by Fleetwood Mac. She had one leg hanging off the side as the other folded to rest her guitar upon, facing towards me in a way so that the guitar fit between us. I mirrored her arrangement, only I donned a tilted head and entranced, lopsided smile. I noticed her slightly humming along and couldn’t help but join in with the lyrics. She smiled as I started and peeked up at me, smirking in a glad sort of way, rather than in smugness. We both seemed to blush. She looked back down to the guitar. I sang very softly, unlike how I ever sing with the band. We both swayed ever so slightly as she perfectly plucked out the solo before I joined in again. 

Rosemary’s eyes rested shut, slightly fluttering as if she had no control over them; her brows similarly furrowing as she absentmindedly played the song. She darted her tongue out to wet her pretty lips and added a subtle hummed harmony in the last few lines. 

As she finished, we both snapped out of the trance, Rosemary quickly turning back to being nervous and unsure. She opened her eyes but kept her gaze locked on the details of the guitar, tracing her eyes around the glistening mother of pearl inlays that hemmed the entire guitar body.

“You are extraordinary Rosemary. I’ve never heard a song played like that.” I said. She looked up, doe eyed.

“I’ve never heard you sing like that.” She breathed out. I looked at her lips again. Shit. Stop it. 

“And so I told the guy, ‘look if you want to listen to some real blues–’ Oh! Here you guys are! We wondered where you two ran off to.” Jake and the rest of the gang strolled in, breaking the moment between Rosemary and I and taking their seats around the room once again. “Wow sweet guitar Rose.” Jake said.

“Oh my god it’s gorgeous, Rosemary!” Jita chimed in, “Just like the rest of you.” She smiled, “Isn’t that right Josh.” Was she– was she wingmanning me right now? Did she know I liked Rosemary? My wide eyes darted to Jake, who pulled a similar expectant face to Jita. Did he tell her something? I looked over to Rosemary. She’s gorgeous. Fuck that didn’t help.

“Uhh, yes. Just like the rest of her.” I regretfully sounded quite uncertain. Rosemary looked flushed and confused, but gave us each a grateful little smile nonetheless.

Jake continued to enquire about the guitar, breaking the weird tension. “You know, that guitar looks exactly like the one John Denver used to use. Mom made us watch all his live stuff, I’d recognise that model anywhere. Where’d you get it?” Nerd.

“It was my Grandfather’s.” She replied simply. I could see the way the edge of her eyes dropped by just a fraction at the thought. Everyone started up talking again and I silently reached over and flicked her hand that had dropped against the couch cushion, her other hand dangling from the guitar body. Her eyes lurched to mine and they looked even worse than a second ago. I grabbed her hand in mine and gave it a squeeze, then held it lightly as my thumb brushed back and forth across her knuckles. We stayed like that as the group continued their conversations until someone suggested Rosemary play a song for us all, and Rosemary finally squeezed my hand back and let go. 

After a few more hours filled with warm conversation over Rosemary’s humble strumming of Hozier, Cat Stevens and the lumineers, amongst others, we retired to our sleeping positions; Zach and Lilah off in Zach’s bed, and the rest of us slouched into the couches. 

��� ⋆ .⋆*･ Jacob

I was in heaven. Jita had rested her head onto my shoulder, curling her body into mine as we laid back to sleep on the reclined couch. I could feel her chest rise as fall against the side of mine, the rhythm slowing to the point where I guessed she must have fallen asleep. I lazily looked over at Rose and Josh, who were in a similar, yet less compromising position. Though not quite curled into one another, Josh’s head had fallen onto Rosemary’s shoulder in his sleep. He snored a little and Rose and I made eye contact through the moonlight. 

She looked at me then nodded towards Jita, wagging her eyebrows with a cheeky grin. I couldn’t help but grin back. Without jostling Jita, I pointed my free hand towards Josh’s head on Rose’s shoulder, and gestured my hand upwards in question. I watched as she looked down at his fluffy head of hair covering her collarbone, smiled, then settled her head atop of his. The grin she returned told me everything I needed to know.

Rosemary liked Josh. 

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆ Joshua

“Josh, what I’m saying is that it’s time to make your move on her! You’ve waited long enough. Just do something to show her your feelings. Hell tell her straight up for all I care! You’ll get your answer and I’m 99% sure you’re gonna like it.” Jake had finally given up on listening to my late night rambles about the confusing situation between me and Rosemary. 

Sometimes I feel like she really does want me in the way that I want her. Like under the streetlamp for that moment, when I thought I was going to kiss her. Or when she played me the guitar. But sometimes I feel like she’s thinking the opposite; that I’m nothing more than a close friend. Like every sparkly, exciting, romantic moment I’ve had with her has been all one sided - completely delusional. I can’t trust my memory; I’m so entranced by her that every time she gives me a smile it looks to me like heart eyes.

Of course Jake thinks it really is heart eyes. But I find it hard to believe. Maybe I should just take his advice and go for it. What’s the worst that can happen? I lose her. God.

“Okay I’ll talk to her.” I decide. “I think I should just tell her. It’s easier than having to sort out some move.” Jake nods. “I like being honest with her. I think we’re both good at telling the truth in the end.”

“Except for telling the ‘truth’ about how much you love each other!” Jake pokes.

“You better shut it or I’ll change my mind again.” I said sternly. He rolls his eyes. “I promise I’ll do it the next time we hang out, most likely next Sunday. I should have enough time to think of what to say by then, right?” 

“I fuckin’ hope so.” As Jake said that, my phone lit up with Rosemary’s contact. “This girl and her otherworldly timing lately.” I shh’d Jake to shut him up as I answered the call.

“Hey what’s up?”

“Wanna come over?”

a/n: Sorry for the cliffhanger! I should have the next chapter updated before Christmas.

[quills-of-freedom]

Hange Zoe Relationship

Aesthetic, Vibe & Various

🤪

👽

🤎

💦

🖖

🤝

🫀

👩‍🏫

🦸‍♀️

🧗‍♀️

🦉

🪶

🐬

🦠

🪴

🌰

🎢

☄

♟

🎭

Hange is an extremely focused, dedicated and loyal person to her job. It’s pretty rare you’d get some one on one time - but she always makes sure she does indeed get that special quality time with you, now and again.

That’s not to say she won’t squeeze in little visits here and there; because she will. Just… don’t expect her to stay too long, most of the time.

Hidden under her distracted and “crazy” persona, is a caring and very thoughtful individual. Expect her to think of you when she sees something she’d know you’ll like. She’ll probably buy it for you too, for next time she sees you.

It’s the little things like that and the effort she puts in to make you feel loved and wanted, that makes up for the lack of her presence.

Ideal dates:

When Hange does have some spare time, her most favourite thing to do with you is either snuggle up in bed with a book, just reading in a peaceful, comfortable silence OR she’s quite partial to a nice long walk to clear her head, relax and just talk to you about whatever flies through that fast-flowing mind of hers.

She’s pretty fond of the theatre, she likes critiquing the structure of the script and stage directions. …And she loves the ice-cream there. Not to mention she’s a thrill seeker. Rock climbing, roller coasters and skydiving all get her to her happy place.

She’s not huge on PDA, but she doesn’t mind if you initiate it. Hold her hand or peck her on the cheek as much as you’d like. Just dont expect full on make out sessions in the movies. She has a reputation and a sense of professionalism to keep. She’s a soldier. And a damn good one, too.

Modern AU

Modern AU probably wont surprise you that she’s probably working in a lab of sorts. Medical or testing, even teaching. Whatever it may be - anything that arouses the mind, that’s what she’ll be doing.

I could also see her working as a CSI, cleaning up and figuring out crime scenes. She’s good at it too.

Hange loves all gadgets and widgets. Always has the latest phone/tablet/software and owns a drone too.

Likes to take her gopro out for adventures. Probably has a youtube channel (she doesn’t really show her face) and talks over her footage.

“So, here I am scaling that little doozy of a ledge. I was around 300 ft up by that point and - wait for it… Haa! There’s goes my foot! Almost got me there, nature huh?” *laughing*

NSFW

Hange is a dom/sub switch. She’s also pan. She owns strap ons, vibrators, cock rings… you name it she’s got it.

Very sexual. She’s pretty loud too. Her genitals are extremely sensitive and she can cum pretty easily and it won’t be long until she’s calling out your name again soon after.

Can be a pretty rough dom, if she’s horny enough.

Sex with her gets messy. She squirts and gushes.

Gets hysteric too. Pulls her own hair if you tease her too much, writhing on the bed.

Kinks

One of her Kinks is being as full as possible. So that’s toys in every hole. As well as you if you’re male bodied.

She has a love/hate relationship with teasing. God she’ll absolutely loathe you for it, but it’ll give her the best, earth shattering orgasm of her life when you finally allow her to.

One of her more dominant kinks is praising you while having you tied up, totally at your mercy while she has her way with you. She’ll be rough too.

Aftercare

Aftercare with the section commander is one of the best, without a doubt. She’ll hold you, cuddle you and kiss you. Especially if she’s on a hormonal come down from being a rough dom. She’ll kiss and nurse and markings she’s left.

As we know, Hange isn’t the cleanest of people. She doesn’t mind falling asleep in cum soaked sheets.

Will massage you if you had done a lot of work in that sex session. She’ll praise you too. You fucked her so good.

Dates 10/10

Thoughtfulness 9/10

Affection 7/10

Sex 10/10

Aftercare 8.5/10

Anyone would be lucky to have this queen as their so. She’s mind blowing in so many ways. ❤

[abalidoth]

🌻

Oh shit I totally missed this one, I'm sorry! I was doing Weird Tessa Stories for these, right? Alright, a long one to make up for the delay -- the worst photo experience of my life.

So the year is 2017, I'm finishing up my Ph.D. in Laramie, WY. I'm massively stressed and dissociating all the time from both the stresses of academia and four years in the closet. This was distinctly in my "nail polish and skirt goes on Friday afternoon and comes off Sunday evening" era. I'm also looking for jobs to get OUT of Laramie.

My parents see my LinkedIn picture, which at that point was a selfie, and as a birthday present they offer to buy me a professional photography session to get a nice looking picture for my website/linkedin/etc. Okay, this seems fine. They find a photographer, I go meet with her.

I immediately get Weird Vibes from her. Her office is in this loft thing downtown with tons of example pictures, it looks like she specializes in senior photos and wedding photoshoots but in a way that feels very pandering to that crowd? Also she's talking about her second vacation home in Colorado so I'm like, lady you're already wealthy why the fuck are you doing this

She's incredibly solicitous, all praise and flattery and fluff. Her emails are downright florid, and she's the same way in person. She's the walking incarnation of a Hobby Lobby wooden Bible verse sign.

But the most salient part of the consultation for this story is that she insists on COMING TO YOUR HOUSE to critique your wardrobe.

She comes over and paws through my selection of Guy Clothes (which despite making up most of my wardrobe, I don't care that much about at this point) while constantly making comments to Emma about "Oh, haha, he's such a guy, you know how men are!"

(Emma, for her part, is doing a valiant job of defending me against this dysphoria without actually outing me, because she's the best.)

So, a suit that fits her specifications is selected and the day of photographs comes around. At this point, if I was paying for this myself, I would have bailed long ago; but it was a gift from my parents and I'm debilitatingly conflict averse, so out I went.

Immediately she takes me to a back alley in Laramie. I ask her why, she says she wants to get some casual shots of me first. I tell her I'm just here for business shots, she tells me to loosen up, it'll be fun!

Did I mention I'm conflict averse?

So I'm standing there in an alley, holding my suit jacket over my shoulder in the most awkward possible way, staring at a piece of graffiti that says "JESUS SUCKED YOUR DAD'S COCK", when I start to realize that maybe this has all gone a little off the rails.

Eventually we do get some good professional shots by the river.

A couple weeks later she calls me in for a consultation. I bring Emma along for moral support, because the weird vibes at this point are getting pretty overwhelming. The photographer sets up a projector and shows off these hugely blown-up portraits of me on the wall, saying "Oh, getting a print of this size is only $930, I have one above my couch!"

(Also, she's showing off the alley pictures. I do not want the alley pictures. I think maybe Modern Tessa could pull it off in like a crop top or something, but Awkward 2017 Closet Tessa in a suit could not. We tell her we do not want the alley pictures. She shows us more alley pictures.)

Each time, she's trying to talk us down and down to smaller and smaller sizes of print. My dysphoric ass at the time doesn't want ANY picture of myself hanging on the wall; also, that's just not the tenor of our decor at all. We keep politely saying no.

Also keep in mind that MY PARENTS HAVE ALREADY PAID HER FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHS.

Eventually we're just blunt with her: my parents already paid, can you just give us the digital files? We hired you for a LinkedIn photo, you have taken the photos, we don't want prints.

She says "I don't give out digital files."

Not once during this whole process has she mentioned this; not once in all the times that either my parents or myself have told her that this is for job hunting. We say this, and additionally say "When we hired our wedding photographer, she gave us a thumbdrive with ALL the pictures she took, AND the retouches, as part of the package."

This woman has the fucking gall to say "Well, I'm sure some people do that, but not serious portrait photographers."

We manage to get out of there without buying a fucking poster-size print of Jesus Cock Alley Tessa. I call my parents and tell them the situation. My parents, eminently practical people, say they'll deal with it.

Two days later I get an email from her, forwarded from my dad. It has the subject "linked in photo attached", no text, and a single medium-resolution picture from the river photoshoot, and I never hear from her again.

[insaneshane]

Now! Onto the cool shit! Jk armour is also cool shit. But still.

Regarding my new format, I wanted to do shorter posts, but I'm still on the fences. This would entail one sword or set of armour per post. Let me know if that's something you guys would prefer, or if you like my longer posts.

Furthermore, I'm going to try to include the specs of the swords I review, (length, weight, etc.) I will be doing this to the best of my knowledge/what I can find, so don't come at me if your dude bro who thinks katanas are the greatest sword in history is like "actually, Aragorn's sword is-", I don't care.

Speaking of Aragorn's Sword first up is Andúril, for obvious reasons.

Length: 52.8 inches, or 134.1 centimeters

Weight: 3.9 pounds, or 1.81 kilograms

These are the only two important measurements (/j).

Firstly, this thing is heavy. Ik, "duhh, it's longsword," but still, it's heavy. I personally wouldn't use this in any fight ever, but that's just me.

Other than the weight, this thing is fucking amazing. I've held a replica before, and damn if it doesn't feel good. My only issue was the ends of the crossguard somewhat get in the way if you use it wrong.

I do like the grip being half leather, I think it's an interesting idea. Normally, I'd say bare metal grip is atrocious, because it normally is, but this is a nice balance.

Realism: 9/10

Appeal: 9/10

Name: 10/10

Overall: 9/10

Next, we have Thorin's sword, Orchist:

Length: 37 inches, or 93.9 centimeters

Weight: 3.7 pounds, or 1.71 kilograms

Firstly, I think it's so fucking funny how petty Thorin is. He sees a perfectly preserved sword lying in a cave, and (rightfully) goes to take it. Gandalf says it's elven and the look of pure *disgust* that crosses the sons of Thráin's face is golden.

Anyways, onto the actual sword. If I remember correctly, it’s a one-handed sword for elves, but since Thorin is a dwarf its two handed. That's where my biggest problem comes in, as a two-handed sword, I hate it. The fact that it's single edged and shaped like *that* just horrify me. That’s only if I'm looking at it as a great sword. I could just critique it as a one-handed sword, but that's not how it's used in the movies, soooo

Another thing, the grip is a really strange shape imo. Firstly, I don't like that much taper, it looks as though it'd be unwieldy. And again, the shape of the grip and crossguard just encourage a one-handed hold.

Realism: 6/10

Appeal: 8/10

Name: 5/10

Overall: 7/10

Next, The Witch King's sword, unnamed:

Length: 54.6 inches, or 138.6 centimeters

Weight: 4.4 pounds, or 1.93 kilograms

This sword has a really bare bones design, and I am all for it. These dudes don’t care about flashiness or anything like that, they care about getting the job done. They might benefit from some sword care though, that blade looks a little rough.

Okay now to focus up; I think this design is fabulous. The handle is rather longer than I’d have expected, but I don’t actually mind that much. In fact, I’ve always been rather partial to extended grips. The thing is, I meant it when I said it was bare bones, but there’s not a damn thing wrong with that. 

For fear of being repetitive, I’ll just say that it’s an overall good design, and that I’d love to use it. 

Realism: 8/10

Appeal: 9/10

Name: N/A

Overall: 8/10

Next up, Aragorn's Ranger sword, unnamed:

Length: 47 inches, or 119.38 centimeters

Weight: 4.4 pounds, or 2 kilograms

I'll be honest, I wasn't going to put this one on here, but then I bought the sword. It feels great in the hand, and the grip is really nice. Again, it's a very simple design, so it's hard to say a lot without being redundant.

I will say that for what its purpose is, it's a great sword. Definitely one of my favorites. Appeal does get a lower rating because it's a little bland comparatively.

Realism: 10/10

Appeal: 7/10

Name: N/A

Overall: 9/10

Next, there's the ringwraith sword, unnamed:

Length: 53 inches, or 134.62 centimeters

Weight: 12.1 pounds, or 5.49

Okay really quick, I'm a little skeptical about the weight here. My usual method is to look at the swords available for purchase and see how much those weigh, and this seems wildly heavy.

Anyways, as far as the sword itself goes, it's definitely...unique. It's cool looking, no doubt, but it looks really uncomfortable to hold honestly. The crossguard is my main concern, it seems like it could easily hurt the wielder. Other than that, it doesn't seem so bad.

It's clearly meant to be used like a single edged sword, and it very well may be single edged, which is another part that confuses me. Most two-handed swords - because let's be clear this *is* a two-handed sword - are double-edged, and symmetrical, so this particular sword doesn't make much sense to me.

Ignoring those two aspects, I wouldn't mind using it to be honest, if not just because it's cool looking.

Realism: 3/10

Appeal: 8/10

Name: N/A

Overall: 6/10

Next is the Bilbo's Sword, Sting:

Length: 23 inches, 58.42 centimeters

Weight: 2.3 pounds, or 1.06 kilograms

Okay this thing is insanely small; in my opinion it'd be extremely awkward to wield as a full-size human. I'm aware it was meant to be a dagger, hence Bilbo using it as a sword, but even as a dagger I think the dimensions are wack.

Aside from the weird proportions, it's a nice blade. The shape of the blade is different, but it doesn't necessarily take away from the functionality of it. If given an edge, this blade will hold an edge and work just fine.

The hilt is okay, it just doesn't work well for a sword. And since I judged Orchist as a two-handed sword, I have to judge this as a sword as well. For that reason, I dislike the grip and crossguard. They're disproportional to the blade if it'd being treated like a sword. Honestly, they're disproportional in general.

Realism: 7/10

Appeal: 5/10

Name: 4/10

Overall: 7/10

Next is the Morgul Blade:

Length: 25 inches, or 63.5 centimeters

Weight: 5.7 pounds, or 2.6 kilograms

Holy hell do I have notes. Firstly, why are all these bad guy weapons so dirty, like guys take care of your weapons please. Frodo was only so messed up because he got tetanus from this thing, I swear.

As far as the actual weapon, the blade is fine. It has a really harsh point, so it'd be more susceptible to chipping and or breaking off entirely. The grip also has a really intense taper, which I've always found to be uncomfortable and unwieldy.

Now for the most obvious problem. The horrible, disgusting, Gods-awful crossguard on this thing. Why, why does it point *towards* the holder!? That's the worst and I hate it. I'd rather fist fight a white warg than use this thing.

Realism: 3/10

Appeal: 0/10

Name: N/A

Overall: 3/10

Last but not least (because the morgul blade was the least), Thorin's Regal Sword, unnamed:

Length: 37 inches, or 94 centimeters

Weight: 3.9 pounds, or 1.8 kilograms

First of all, there's no way that weight is correct, it's got to be at least five pounds, but alas. I *do not* like this sword at all. It looks more like a wood splitter, there's no way that can hold a good edge. Not to mention how wide it is, good luck wielding it with one hand.

The grip in itself looks uncomfortable, even if it weren't stupidly short. The crossguard wouldn't be very helpful at all, it barely comes out passed the blade. The weird points coming out of the edge, I'll be honest I'm not sure what those are, or what their purpose is.

I've saved the worst bit for last, the massive hole in the ricasso of the sword. That is obviously one of the most important parts of the sword regarding integrity, and they have put a big hole through it. Fools, I hate it.

Realism: 0/10

Appeal: 2/10

Name: N/A

Overall: 4/10

Okay, that wraps up the Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit posts! I left out Gandalf's sword, Glamdring, because it's so similar to Aragorn's Ranger Sword. As always, let me know if there is anything you'd like me to review specifically, let me know! Hope you enjoy!

[jesskasb]

EXTREMELY LONG POST AHEAD YOUVE BEEN WARNED. DO YOU LOVE THE COLOR OF MY WORDS?

i've been so scared of posting my opinions about recent media because i want to maintain some kind of unproblematic agreeable image out here. i don't want to say i enjoyed something for fear that enjoying it means i am morally required to reblog or discuss every critique others have to make sure people know i am aware that it is not perfect. i suppose this comes from this increased ideology that people who like things need to do so critically at all times, and they need to demonstrate that or they're a bad person; which is stupid, obviously, but i have somehow internalized that because i wanted to make the small of audience of this blog to know im not stupid or "problematic" or whatever. which is another stupid thing to want because this blog is supposed to be for ME and not other people, and ive always tried to uphold that mentality by posting whatever i wanted and always saying my thoughts in the tags. but obviously, my feelings have had something else to say about it and ive been holding back opinions and expressing my enthusiasm for things because of how that enthusiasm may be perceived and misinterpreted, even though im aware that everything ever will be misinterpreted by somebody eventually and that is out of your control and its ok. this dissonance between what my logic tells me and how i actually feel has been bothering me a lot. even now im like oh i should put this under a read more so it doesnt bother people! while logically i know i want to post this as is because its some meaningful introspection for ME and thats what matters, truly. it's why i have this app in the first place. so i can express myself through text in eays i can't in real life for one reason or another.

either way it seems i've fallen into the social media trap of making everything content and palatable to as many people as possible, making things relatable and clever so others will enjoy it and i will be known as someone to be liked. all for the fleeting dopamine of a like and a reblog or a follow.

and then, because these feelings frustrate me and i have been in denial about them, i have also fallen into the trap of the "let people enjoy things" mentality. that scares me because it just goes to show how easy it is for someone to slowly get on the side of perpetuating a lack of media literacy or even shit like proshipping and stuff, when actually my feelings are not related to that at all but rather a dissonance between wanting to be palatable for everyone and wanting to talk about my interests when the reality is that there is not really anyone stopping me from saying whatever i want except for myself. im the only one who cares about this and the only one that is bothered. i've always looked down on a "what will they say" mentality and i hate that i've become so used to the way ive been thinking that i started ignoring the fact that i shared the mentality.

ok im just repeating myself now. point is. i want to work on getting back the mentality of posting for myself and being honest with my opinions not because i want to start discussions or get clout for being opinionated but rather because i truly enjoy analyzing things and expressing my thoughts. so. in an effort to do just so ive decided to unpack some of the media that have really reinforced the need to conform.

• let's start with the biggest elephant in the room: oppenheimer. i know! i know. no fucking wonder. "but hear me out!!!!" (headass need to justify everything i say and do so i wont be perceived incorrectly). i went to watch it with my stepdad at 11pm after the rest of our family went out to have boba tea without us bc we were resting, even though we LOVE boba and they couldve simply asked if we wanted to go. so the whole outing to the movies was spontaneous revenge and i loved that. it was a great bonding experience. in the parking lot we found two 20 dollar bills on the floor and the way we both dived to pick them up was hilarious. he was faster than me. we got some shitty churros and no popcorn and into the movie we went. now, the movie itself, i honestly did not like it and didnt have a good time, i was trying soo hard not to fall asleep. i was sleep deprived, tired, and honestly science and politics arent my thing at all. and that is obviously beside the fact that the whole plot was hard to follow because they tried so hard to make the audience sympathize with oppenheimer and frame it as if he really knew no better than to participate in the war and making the choice to kill thousands of japanese civilizatians. i was trying not to chew my arm off at the theater. ugh.

i will say i found the use of audiovisual distortion to represent dissociation and high stress brilliant. obviously its not the first media to do this but i think it made amazing use of the audio of a theater and the nature of film. i saw that post about how "if i cant see a movie in the comfort of my house and i have to go see it at the theater to get the full experience then its not very good" and i honestly think thats bogus. in fact im glad and i agree that something that can only be experienced in a theater full of people with good audio and a giant screen has value. chris nolan may be pretentious about it and fuck him but its like. the nature of a thater itself is not stupid and streaming it is different. theaters are about getting together with fellow humans and seeing something live and valuing the fleetingness of not being able to replicate that same exact experience again. whether its a musical or a play or a film youll never see the exact same thing with the exact same audience. and theres beauty in that.

• barbie was fun. it was different and refreshing from the usual stuff in mainstream theaters and i can really respect it for that. i cant believe mattel allowed that depiction of their own company to be in there but yeah theyre winning in the end. really good marketing. when the girl called out barbie for doing irreparable damage to the feminist movement i thought that was very based... im really biased because when i was younger, as a little hispanic poc girl who was chubby and kind of weird, i was just so bitter about everything that barbie was. because she wasnt me. she wasnt like me. she was like everything everyone said was pretty and that idea of pretty wasnt me. and i hated it. i wouldnt play with my blonde white barbies and i was obsessed with the one tan barbie with curly haired i had. she was a ballerina in a blue leotard and a tutu. i took off the tutu because i thought it was too feminine and i wasnt too feminine and i wanted her to be like me. but i still knew i could never be a ballerina because i was chubby and not athletic. it was the closest a barbie doll would ever get to being me though, and i was satisfied. i ended up relating more to my entire collection of g3 ponies than barbies.

going back to the movie; i think the message is important even if it wasnt handled perfectly. its a step in the right direction. we've been talking about this for YEARS and it has finally made its way to be told directly in an extremely mainstream movie. thats good! im glad! and i had fun laughing my ass off at the funny parts with my friends. i was ready to watch it alone after a hangout with my friends but some of them decided to join me and i love it. im very happy ive found people who want to go out with me and include me and like being around me and respect me. its been a while. i coughed a lot during the movie and my friend said "...do you need a cough drop, alex" at the end of the movie and i was so embarrassed and it was funny. my car keys fell in between the seats and it was scary but the employees were really nice about it. when magic ring ken appeared i yelled COCKRING KEN! and it sent my friends and a stranger next to me into hysterics. i had a great time and i wont forget it.

• good omens. neil gaiman has been a figure of great dissonance for me. i genuinely like his books and posts but im also aware that saying you like his work comes with all this other stuff that people assume is true, especially on tumblr, because he can also be really annoying. i dont support EVERYTHING he does of course but i love good omens and at the same time i was scared of what people would assume about me for sharing posts of season 2 and being excited about it. loved the first season of good omens and i was criminally deranged about it back in 2019. i liked the new season a lot! (SPOIILERS AHEAD SKIP TO AFTER THE Picture IF YOU WANT TO AVOID THEM) i missed the characters a lot and michael sheen and david tennant are just such stellar actors and you can really tell how much they like aziraphale and crowley. and gosh i just love when everyone involved in a production is as passionate about it as fans are. i will say michael and beelzebubs thing felt really fanservicey and i wasnt the target audience for their relationship. heres some more thoughts i want to share

besides that i mean fuck i would watch aziraphale and crowley talk about the weather for an hour. their banter is amazing. i also love the final episode drama. i just love mythology and exploring how all the fantastic bullshit fits into the real world. its why i like percy jackson so much, and i think gaiman really succeeds at urban fantasies (or magical realism?? not sure) extremely well. im not familiar with the work of terry pratchett but someone whose opinion i value likes his books so i wanna check em out one day. i had a good time with good omens and im excited for season 3. got a lot of theories but im lucky i have a friend to talk that to about so i wont keep you here much longer.

• the witcher. im SO passionate about the witcher show you guys have no idea i got my entire family to watch it and im able to connect all the dots and shit i love the world building i love the characters i LOVE LOVE JASKIER. but i hate the writing. i hate that i havent read the books and im progressing incredibly slowly through wild hunt so i feel like a poser and not a true fan. i hate that its so mainstream and i hate the way that i hate that. my feelings about this are not as dissonant and strong as the past three media i listed but i feel like it was the first straw. i just have this need to justify liking it and saying oh its not a good show but i like it haha sorry. IM NOT SORRY! I ENJOY IT A LOT, FLAWS AND ALL! AND I THINK ITS GOOD BECAUSE I AM STILL WATCHING! but i will stop watching after this season i refuse . liam hemsworth makes me puke while henry cavill is not only attractive but he genuinely cares about geralt and the witcher series and i dont want to watch something where the lead is just a replacement for someone who wanted better conditions and treatment and didnt receive it. fuck

• young royals. i just shat on it heavily back when it started trending on tumblr bc i thought it was some stupid teen drug show that had some shallow romance but honestly i think it was the internalized homophobia talking idk i gave it a shot and im LIVING for the drama and the cringe that comes with being a teenager and i love the setting and i love that everyone is so flawed and human and real.

• alice oseman's work. i actually dont know much about her as a person and author but i also shat on heartstopper when it became mainstream because the tv show annoyed me. i tried it, but the first episode left me feeling uncomfortable and icked so i quit and have been hating on it since without even giving the graphic novels a glance. i read the synopsis of her novel solitaire and a review compared it to catcher in the rye and i thought that was so fucking stupid. catcher in the rye, really? the creator of HEARTSTOPPER, making something that can even be of the same tone as catcher in the rye? bah, impossible. when i picked up i was born for this, i thought itd be a shitty and fluffy fan/celebrity book but i was just so desperate for trans rep. and then i pulled an all nighter to read it and i realized it was GOOD and had a lot of layers that impressed me. i had underestimated alice oseman's writing skills by SO much and i dont like thar i was so cynical. i started reading solitaire and man. it is dark. and evidently inspired by catcher in the rye. i am not done with it yet but from what i read so far.... holden, you have some competition.

solitaire is told from the pov of the sister of one of the heartstopper voice. through this book i learned that actually the heartstopper boy has a LOT of serious issues. i wonder if the graphic novels handle it better than the tv show. i hope they do! if they dont, then , well, i can say with confidence that i enjoy her books even if heartstopper isnt my thing.

ok i think thats all. if you read all that, post picture of an animal. i dont know. like and subscribe! i am growing as a person and i think thats beautiful. whatever. rolls my eyes and walks away

[nellie-elizabeth]

Grey's Anatomy: Cowgirls Don't Cry (19x13)

I'm just... I don't know. I'm frustrated.

Cons:

I've been so uncertain on how to come down on the Winston and Maggie debate this whole time, because honestly I thought it was an interesting premise for marital conflict, and I was really willing to see where they took it. But here, we get some things coming to a head, and it turns out we're pinning the majority of the blame on Winston for always running away when things get tough. Yeah, honestly, Maggie is sort of right, but one thing this episode fails to fully address is that while being too conflict-averse can be a bad thing, being too ambitious/ready for a challenge isn't always a good thing either. There's this sort of clumsy metaphor about following one's passion. Maggie sees herself in a patient, a girl who won't stop bull riding even though it might end up killing her. Maggie says it must be so painful for her to be told she's selfish and wrong for wanting to pursue her dream.

But like... Maggie, come on. Pursuing dreams is good, it's a wonderful value to have, but pursuing harmonious married life is also a good goal, and acting like everyone else is unreasonable for having some qualms about your ambition isn't doing anyone any favors! Maggie steamrolls people. She sees what she wants and she goes for it without examining the consequences. She holds to her opinion so tightly that it erodes all the relationships around her. It happened with her ill-fated romance with Jackson, it happened with her ailing mother. I'm completely on board with Maggie's critique of Winston. I think it's right on and should be further explored. But to act like at the end of the day Maggie is the victim here, that she's the one being abandoned? That's a stretch. I wish this was going to get to play out more thoroughly, that we got to explore it in a nuanced way with a reasonably balanced ending. Instead, it seems that Maggie will be leaving us next week, and the only question is whether Winston is going with her. Frankly, I hope not, I liked Winston a lot and would be down to see more of him. But at the same time, what an annoying and lackluster conclusion for Maggie on the show. Really frustrating.

While I liked the story of Lucas and Simone figuring out their patient's pain and not dismissing him as an addict, I felt like there were some aspects of the story that were too on the nose, even for Grey's Anatomy. Having the patient literally say: "you screw up once, you're a screw-up forever" was like... yeah, okay, thank you. We get it. Also, Simone asking Lucas to be her man of honor at the wedding is such an awkward idea. Super unforced error there for Simone. Force Mika or Jules or even Blue to do it, I'm serious. This is weird.

And finally, Jo and Link. They're really laying on the sweetness, showing how well Link knows Jo, how good he is to her. I feel like someone's trying to pitch me on a product I'm never going to want to buy. If they hand this romance to me on a silver platter, I'll take it, I guess. I feel sort of defeated, because it's clear that's the direction they're heading. I don't want it, and yet there it is. I like Link, I like Jo. I want them both to have something good and comfortable and peaceful. The concept of them having a little blended family with their two babies and all that is honestly very sweet on paper. But the energy I get from these two is so familial. Even still, I just see them like a brother and sister, and nothing has been able to change that so far!

Pros:

But I did like that Richard had to be reminded to give people another chance, and that Lucas decided to trust his gut, even though it meant disobeying Richard and Schmitt. He needed that victory to boost his confidence, and I'm glad he got it!

The part I liked best about the whole bull riding story was Blue talking about how cruel it is to the animals. Because like... yeah, he's right. What their patient is doing is her "dream" or whatever, and her parents talk about how taking her away from it would kill her more surely than allowing her to do something that dangerous. But she's not the only factor here. Sometimes you don't get to just chase your bliss without thinking about the other factors. And it frustrated me that everyone else in the hospital seemed to nod their head sadly when told "it's her dream" as if that was the end of it. Maggie's speech about slowing down wasn't actually designed to discourage her in the long-run either. So I really liked that Blue was pointing out how fucked up the whole thing is, from a different angle. I don't blame Jules for being into it!

I liked Schmitt having to learn a lesson about what kind of leader he wants to be. Over the course of this season, he's had to learn to stop conceptualizing himself as the victim, the sad-sack, always at the back of the pack. But he's got a position of actual authority now, and he needs to figure out how he's going to handle that. Bailey talks about how they used to call her "the Nazi", and Schmitt is horrified by how inappropriate that is. I appreciate them bringing that up, it's a sign of how long this show has been on the air that back when it started, that was the kind of thing you could say as an exaggeration of someone being a hard-ass. Instead of like... an actual indication that said person is a literal present-day fascist. Which is what it would mean now. Oof.

And Schmitt takes Bailey's words to heart, complimenting the interns and taking them out for free drinks, trying to engage with them on a more personal level. I love Helm as the wise bartender offering advice; I think it's so cool that they had her quit being a doctor and then actually had her stay on the show. I'm waiting for the romance with her and Yasuda to heat up, that should be fun.

And speaking of Yasuda - I like that Mika was able to connect with her patient and encourage her to go into debt to get the x-ray and treatment she required. I mean, I don't like it, that the system is set up in such a way that people have to risk serious financial strife just to avoid death, but I like the way we're tackling this here. This is an issue that doesn't just affect one type of person in one type of way, but that can seep into so many areas of the world. Mika was able to get through to someone who needed help, and the fact that her personal experience leads her to be an advocate for others is quite heartwarming!

I'll stop there. Still vibing for the most part with the intern stuff, still pretty frustrated by some major developments for our more long-standing leads. Let's see how long we can keep this streak up of Teddy and Owen barely being in the episodes and thus not having a chance to annoy me! :)

6.5/10

[karasa]

The Philosophy of Doing; How the Girl Scouts Saved My Sanity

Originally Published April 9th, 2021

The Philosophy of Doing; How the Girl Scouts Saved My Sanity

To do is to be. Be active, be respected, be wonderful. To do anything is to commit yourself to what you’re doing, whether you care about it or not. I’ve never been much of a do-er.

Maybe, yes, I did a lot and arguably too much in high school, I do extracurriculars and I do my homework on occasion. But it never felt like Doing Anything. It’s always felt like work, like a chore. I wasn’t really doing anything persay, but rather I was on autopilot, doing what others told me, but not necessarily doing for myself.

This feeling of inadequacy, of lackluster personality traits and hobbies came in strong during the period of time I’ve been social distancing. It pushed me to ask: what do I do? My partner frequently goes out for bike rides or roller skates around the neighborhood, he holds meetings with group members to finish up assignments, cooks me dinner when he finds a good recipe, and talks to his friends everyday. I can’t say I’ve ever felt as fulfilled as he does at the end of the day, because I don’t do much. After classes I’m in bed for at least 2 hours, scrolling through twitter with a Youtube video in the background and a snack within arm’s reach.

I used to paint with my friends when they invited me to, host movie nights or dinner parties, help my friends with their various helping hand chores and go out to the club almost every weekend. But without friends to do anything, I realized that I don’t really do much at all.

I’ve always been an ambitious person, with my life plan mapped out by 7 years old and still following the plan as I turn 24. I’ve dipped my toes into a few different ponds along the way: graphic design, costume design, pastry arts, spoken word, film critiques, activism, education, drag…. The list stretches for miles in all of the things I’ve tried to do. But have I ever succeeded?

Without knowing what I do on a daily basis, I instead turned my attention to the question, “what can I do?” I was disappointed at the results. While I *can* do a number of things, My self-confidence in these fields is low, because I’ll never be able to convince myself that I can do any of them particularly well. I don’t do anything because I’m afraid of not doing well enough.

Enter: the girl scouts.

Many of the memories I have from elementary school draw up scenes of seeing my teacher at the grocery store, and feeling the same feeling of embarrassment and nerves when I ran into one of my classmates behind a girl scout cookie booth. While this quiet judgement manifested itself into me seeing the Girl Scouts as a child labor cult until rather recently, I’ve always felt envious. All of those girls who meet for snacks and seminars on Thursday nights, they’re doing something with their life. They have a journey set out in front of them, everything that they do is geared towards making them a better person. And so in April I realized: I can probably do that too.

A lot of my friends during this time in isolation are venturing on things they’ve never done before: writing more, baking bread, cooking meals, spending $60 to be in debt to a raccoon. But at first, not much for me had changed. I was still in school, still in a relationship, still spent at least 3 hours after classes in bed. I tried new recipes and enjoyed posting them on Instagram, but after one of my close friends passed, my inspiration was lost to continue that. And it never felt substantial anyway. Working for 3 hours to post 1 picture does not come with a satisfaction guarantee. While my partner shoots into the kitchen for seconds, I can’t help but judge what I’ve made as not good enough.

I started thinking about different hobbies I could do that wouldn’t take up a lot of space or cost too much. Because of all of the changes that have affected me, I’m having to pay rent without a job, and my partner and I have stuffed our lives into a bedroom that we can lay down in and touch each of the four walls. I stumbled across an old page of notes from a seminar I attended in the fall titled “Goal Setting” and I thought about how difficult it is to follow through with passion projects. That dream that we have one night that kicks us out of bed and onto the workbench fades over time. We forget details of our vision, we start to prioritize other things. Soon enough the project gets shoved into the corner while other things in life take charge, and once that happens, I can’t say that I’ve ever had the willpower to go back.

The girl scout idea came to me when I thought about one of the first and most relaxed grocery trips I’ve had in Ohio. A harrowing mirror of my elementary school days, there was a girl scout with her mother standing right in between the entrance and exit of the store. Her mom waved us over, promising that they took all methods of payment including venmo, and the little girl smiled as she started to stack up our cookies.

“What’s your favorite badge?” I smiled. I kind of hate kids but my partner really wants them in our future, so i’m trying to get better at relating to the youth.

“This one.” she pointed to a circular badge with a rocketship on it.

“Cool! Is it your favorite because of how you earned it, or because of how it looked?”

“It looks really cool. But my favorite thing to do was this one!” she spun her sash so we could see another intricate badge on the back.

“Woah! That's awesome.” I was ready to ask her more questions, about how she got it and what else she liked to do in Girl Scouts. But our transaction was complete, and while I’m proud of myself for actually holding a conversation with like, a 9 year old, I suddenly felt red in the face for being so interested in something made for little kids.

We thanked the duo and continued into the store, but for some reason I haven’t stopped thinking about that conversation.

So I got curious. After not really doing much for 6 weeks, I hopped onto the girl scout website. They had all of their badges on a neat little pdf, where I could see all of the hardwork it takes to rise up the ranks and continue to be a part of this organization. To my surprise, only a few of the badges that you’re able to earn are about the cookie sales. I started perusing the badge explorer page, and found that some of the badges are kind of badass. Without even realizing it, I started taking stock of all the badges I’d like to complete. Some are fitness focused, which makes sense because I’ve been putting off getting in shape. Some are focused on Financial Literacy, and encourage researching smaller things that we were never really taught throughout life. I jumped out of bed and raced to my partner. “I’m going to be a girl scout.” I beamed, full superman pose with no pants on. “You’re non-binary.” he replied, barely looking up from his sandwich. “Then I’ll be a Star Scout.” I shot back. He smiled.

“Good Luck!”

I’ve never felt such a ferocious drive for a project, and perhaps that’s because I’m well aware of the fact that I can go at my own pace. My goal is to earn 23 badges by the end of the pandemic. I created a task list for each badge I want to earn, which equals out to about 99 tasks that I expect to complete. Having this task list feels so much more empowering than the 3 to-do lists I keep for school, for housework, and for my personal life. I don’t need to worry about the deadline, I don’t have anything to prove to anyone. The only thing I have to do is Do.

My motivation levels vary. With bipolar disorder, it happens frequently that my drive for something can run so rampantly that I forget to sleep, while other times i can barely manage to eat something that doesn’t come straight out of a box. There is a task for every energy level I may have. Everything that I am planning to do is something that I want to do. I would like to write a screenplay, I want to break a bad habit, I would very much like to know how to make a first-aid kit. All of these tasks are such wonderfully simple things that I don’t wake up feeling stressed about what I have to do, but instead I wake up, go to my checklist and say “what do I get to do today?” the feeling is indescribable. It’s comfort, it’s accomplishment, it’s pride, it’s Something. Honestly, I can’t judge myself for not doing well enough because it’s so absurd to begin with. I personally can’t tell you how many 20-year olds are scrolling through the girl scout’s website after a couple margaritas, and I don’t care. This isn’t a contest with my peers. I don’t have to worry about not doing as well as someone else, or not doing well at all, because I make my own rules! Hell, I’m the one who's gonna be embroidering the damn badges for myself, so I better feel like I’ve earned it before I put in that work!! The tasks aren’t graded. They’re not meant to prove anything to anyone aside to show you a new side of life and show that you’ve learned something from your experiences. Already, I’ve learned so much, even if it is just how to take the first steps towards writing something I’ve always wanted, but have never known how.

It’s always felt silly to worry about what the future will be like 10 years from now, but I can never help but wonder. Would my life be different if I went to grad school? What if I get divorced? Am I still going to live in the United States? It feels like I’m already so sure that my life will be full of regrets, because my expectations will never match reality. I can ponder and hypothesize all I want, but I will never know what 2024 is like until I’m there. I doubt that 7 year old me would’ve expected me to join the scouts after all this time. It’s a hard truth that I often have trouble facing, but I know that as long as I do something, I’ll be doing the right thing. Consider this your sign: If you wanted to do something but you weren’t sure about it; do it. Be active, be respected, be wonderful. You can do it! I believe in you.

[scyllas13thtentacle]

Review and Critique of Detransition Baby

Detransition Baby attracted a lot of attention and earned a lot of very intense reactions from it's readers when it came out in 2021. It is still probably the one book of fiction by and about trans women that progressive cis women will have read or heard of.

Throughout reading this book I found a lot of issues with it just as a novel, which interfered with my ability to enjoy simply reading it, so to speak. This write-up started as a basic review of those things, which it still is in part-- just because Torrey Peters is a fellow trans woman doesn't mean I'm going to hold back picking apart the storytelling issues and roasting them piece by piece.

However beyond the plot/prose/characters of the story are within it baked a few potent ideas about queer family, and unashamed expressions of experiences of being trans in today's world (at least from a certain point of view); and these ideas and expressions are insightful, penetrating even, enough that they deserve to be engaged with on their own terms, in isolation from whatever issues I have with the book as a novel. Particularly, the main character Reese dropped a few very spicy hot-take interior monologues on gender, womanhood, and desiring men, which have attracted a lot of intense reactions of disgust, a lot of which I don't think are warranted.

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Part 1, Basic review of the story

So firstly, let's just go over the storytelling issues in this book before getting more philosophical.

Detransition Baby mostly reads like some kind of platonic dialogue between abstractions and archetypes rather than interactions between real people. The common critique I've seen that this book "self indulgent" is well deserves. Half the book sounds like the author talked to the disembodied voices in her head so much it became therapy, and then wrote a book around the transcript. Plot and character are at best minimalistic skeletons upon which to hang a little shadow puppet stage play, rather than feeling more organic.

A huge hole in the story is the question of Katrina's motivations. Both Amy/Ames and Reese have an obvious interest in raising a child in some sort of queer, unconventional, more or less polyamorous family; but Katrina's attraction to the concept is unclear, even though the whole premise of the book hinges on Katrina being somehow invested.

The most that we get on this is a bit where Katrina explains to the other characters that she's more or less in a phase in her life where she's looking to try something unorthodox, maybe even reckless, because she's coming from a place of deep disillusionment with the heteronormative nuclear family structure.

In other words, it sounds like Katrina's deciding to embark on starting a whole family and raise a child with two trans girls, one of whom is a totally uninvolved stranger to her with whom she has absolutely no pre-existing bond-- a decision that would change the lives of everyone involved including the unborn child-- all on a whim.

I'm not saying no one would ever make a decision as odd and crazy as this, but it's really stretching my suspension of disbelief and more importantly I think it weakens the narrative. For this to be a more compelling story, Katrina's character motivations also need to be more compelling, more than just disillusioned recklessness. There are plenty of divorced cis women in America and most of them don't start thinking the way Katrina does.

(The author even dedicates the book to divorced cis women, writing "To divorced cis women, who, like me, had to face starting their life over without either reinvesting in the illusions from the past, or growing bitter about the future." Somehow in a book about trans women the Dedication goes to "divorced cis women", whose struggles are, in a twist of the books themes, now comparable to that of queer trans women, which is a weird flex but ok 😂. I guess it has not really been my experience that divorced straight cis women suddenly become disillusioned with heteronormativity and become open to reinvention around how they conceptualize gender, but maybe that's more on me lmao.)

I also don't understand how even though Katrina is down for the possibility of this unconventional family involving Reese (Ames' ex, and a total stranger to her), what really gets her to doubt the whole arrangement is Ames/Amy's resolution that he (/she) is eventually going to re-transition. If you've already accepted this unconventional family, what's the big deal if Amy/Ames retransitions to becomes a woman (again)? Apparently Katrina can only accept a non-traditional family up to the point where there's still a father/husband figure that she needs to be in a relationship with.

The only way I could move forward at all with this story is to just indulge the author and handwave the issue away.

The failure of the narrative to provide a more compelling motivation for Katrina is especially disappointing because there absolutely are lots of unconventional families raising children that exist in real life, many of them with trans parents, all of them who have had to think long and hard about what a family can, could, or should look like outside of the confines of conventional heteronormativity. A 100% realistic plot would consist of Katrina coming to terms with co-parenting with a re-transitioned Amy, despite no longer being sexually or romantically attracted to her, but still nevertheless forming an emotionally and materially co-supportive family unit. That itself is already plenty queer. Perhaps both of them would date other people without that jeopardizing their co-parenting partnership. Amy might rekindle things with Reese, or maybe they'd simply start speaking to each other again and be good friends; and maybe one way or the other Reese becomes friends organically with Katrina, and over time earns enough trust with both of them that she essentially becomes recognized as the 3rd co parent.

This would be far less dramatic than the actual plot and would probably make for a boring book if written exactly the way that I speculatively outlined above, but stuff like this literally happens in real life. In my short life I've had the privilege of briefly meeting one or two queer families like this who have similar-ish stories, often involving a trans partner who transitions after having a child but the co parenting partnership remaining intact afterwards.

Despite the storytelling flaws, I still managed to enjoy the book. Some of the platonic dialogues were spicy, and there were a few moments where the platonic dialogues are punctuated by truly dramatic confrontations. Despite the minimalistic plot (something I usually dislike) I found the book to actually still have a decent amount of forward momentum to keep me invested, certainly more than many books of "literary fiction". Detransition Baby's constantly overhanging central question of will-they-or-won't-they (*have a baby and raise it in an unconventional queer family) kept me invested enough to keep me reading. The slice of life segments full of small moments of micro drama, the very spicy commentaries on the trans experience, were individually entertaining enough that I didn't get *too* bored while waiting for the main drama to resolve. Some readers on goodreads didn't appreciate that so much was told through flashback but I didn't mind that, in fact I think some of the flashback structure may have helped the pacing a little bit.

Furthermore, even at Detransition Baby's worst moments, it's still not quite as utterly self indulgent as other works of realist fiction written by trans authors. This may be a little harsh to trans authors as a whole, and please don't come after me, but unfortunately, I have found all of the recent sub-genre of transgender literature that I've read to be rather self indulgent. Like Detransition Baby, the books Nevada, and A Safe Girl to Love are also about white, terminally-New-York trans girls who are really stuck up their own assholes. Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars's main redeeming quality is that it isn't white and isn't pathologically set in New York City, and also that it embraces a magical realism as opposed to the very niche subculture of white tgirl poser-punk realness which I already find cliche, but it still lacked a coherent plot and the characters didn't come together (sorry Kai Cheng Thom, as a fellow chinese trans girl I really wanted to like Fierce Femmes but unfortunately it fell flat for me). At least Detransition Baby has a sense of direction and thematic coherence from beginning to end and never lets go of it's central drama.

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Part 2, Engaging with Reese's monologues on womanhood

After storytelling issues, the second category of criticism that people have of this book those people having some very strong, visceral reactions to the content of a couple of Reese's monologues on gender in and of themselves. The monologues are full of interesting things to unpack, and it strikes enough of a nerve that I think it's worth taking a look at them in isolation

Some choice excerpts so you get an idea:

She meant to show him that he was just as disposable to her as she was to him, that she had him figured out, and if he fucked with her in any way that she didn’t find, at minimum, sexy and fun, she’d take his money and lie to his face. This unexpected declaration of her power, which they both understood to be communicated as an insult according to the rules of their ritualized unfriendliness, is why he slapped her. But in ways that both of them felt but neither could fully admit, the entire saga of the boots that led to the slap was a form of pageantry. Beneath it lay Reese’s own sense of womanhood. The reason Stanley hit Reese reversed everything both of them wanted to be true: Stanley hit Reese because she wanted him to hit her. Reese wanted to end their games, to get hit in a way that would affirm, once and for all, what she wanted to feel about her womanhood: her delicacy, her helplessness, her infuriating attractiveness. After all, Every woman adores a Fascist. Reese spent a lifetime observing cis women confirm their genders through male violence. Watch any movie on the Lifetime channel. Go to any schoolyard. Or just watch your local heterosexuals drinking in a bar. Hear women define themselves through pain, or rage against the assumption that they do, which still places pain front and center. Hear the strange sense of satisfaction when they talk about the men who have hurt them—the unspoken subtext of it being because I am a woman. The quiet dignity of saying ow anytime a man gets a little rough—asserting that you are a woman, and thus delicate and capable of sustaining harm. A girl could be twice the size of the man—that little ow reminds him that he is a man, she is a woman."

And also this:

"Anyone who had shared a hotel room wall with Reese and Stanley could attest that Stanley had laid hands on Reese before. He took his belt to her ass on their second date and told her he wouldn’t stop until she cried—tears fell after six strokes, she sobbed after eight, and twenty minutes later she shuddered her way to a tectonic orgasm. A few years back, Reese might have thought their play extremely racy, titillating, and far beyond the sexual ken of most women—she thought of the desire for violence in sex as some kind of resulting damage from being trans. Then, at around age twenty-three, she watched the Catherine Deneuve film, Belle de Jour, and recognized her own sexuality in the upper-crust Belle’s secret desire to be mistreated and abused as a whore. Which meant that the strain of masochism that ran through her sexuality was only as racy as a fifty-year-old film that shared a marquee with romances starring Doris Day. Everything about Reese’s sexuality, she realized, was banal. Sex at the edge of abuse is banal. And when it comes to gender, consent makes it all pretend, which left consensual violence lacking real value in Reese’s tally of gender affirmation. In old books she had read, Reese remembered women saying that if your husband doesn’t beat you, he doesn’t love you, a notion that horrified the feminist in Reese but fit with a perfect logic in one of the dark crevices of her heart. And yeah, liberal feminists—especially the trans-hating variety—would have a field day with her. She supposed that they would accuse her of misogyny, of being a secret man, a Trojan horse in slutty lingerie who sought to recapitulate under the guise of womanhood all the abusive tropes that they, in the second wave, had sought to put in the past. But you know what? She didn’t make the rules of womanhood; like any other girl, she had inherited them. Why should the burden be on her to uphold impeccable feminist politics that barely served her? The New York Times regularly published op-eds by famous feminists who pointedly ruled her out as a woman. Let them. She’d be over here, getting knocked around, each blow a minor illustration of her place in a world that did its gendering work no matter what you called it. So yeah, Stanley, bring it on. Hit Reese. Show her what it means to be a lady.

Femininity is conceptualized around the biological ability to give birth. Women are valued and protected by society for this ability. Under a patriarchal mentality, this ability is what makes women treasured possessions, and men expendable.

For us trans women, when this isn't possible (at least not yet), we psychologically seize onto any signifier of femininity like drowning sailors onto driftwood in an effort to be valued, to not be expendable.

Perhaps indeed because we don't have wombs, men-- meaning our own romantic partners-- often treat us as expendable. Violence against trans women is accepted by society because we are viewed as expendable so no one cares if we are harmed. But paradoxically for many trans women, especially who were raised in toxic environments (unfortunately all too common), violence from a lover or family member actually sends the opposite message, that you aren't expendable-- because after all why would he spend the effort to beat you if he just didn't care? "if your husband doesn’t beat you, he doesn’t love you". If he didn't care he'd just leave, he wouldn't try to control you and maintain power over you, you'd just get ghosted. The fact that he's trying to punish and control you means you have value as an object to be owned-- like a real woman. It's amazingly affirming, highly recommend (for legal reasons this is a joke).

Not even in full on genre smut have I seen offered a full throated, fully spelled out articulation of these kinds of ugly, politically incorrect, anti-liberatory desires. Torrey Peters said the quiet part out loud, and honestly bless her for it.

I have seen a lot of the negative reviewers express anger and disgust by how much Reese buys into what they rightly identify as a misogynistic, white centric worldview. But I think being upset really misses the point. Reese's monologues are an intellectually honest look at the act of sexually desiring and fetishizing one's own sexual oppression. Reese isn't stupid, she knows how problematic her desires are, she knows how disgustingly white her conceptualization of womanhood is. And trust me, more than just white women are capable of wanting things which are politically incorrect and bad for them while being fully self aware of it. Lots of women want the patriarchy-- carnally and in the biblical sense. Desire is a complex thing, there is some aspect of it which is no doubt innate or biological, and a large aspect which is socially conditioned, but very little of it is within our individual control as a conscious choice.

I think it's not news to most feminists abreast of The Discourse (tm) that womanhood is constructed to be oppressive, that many white women use their hard earned white womanhood in oppressive ways while themselves being still oppressed in certain ways, and that all women are socially conditioned to desire this.

But just understanding that intellectually is not enough, because just understanding something is bad or immoral doesn't automatically make you not want it. How do we deal with it when we desire our own oppression, and by extension the oppression of others? It's not just trans women, and it's not just white women who have this dilemma. And most of us cannot simply make these desires go away just by being defiantly woke. I'm truly sick of people shouting things like "queer existence is resistance", "queer joy is revolutionary". Like ok? You may be right but that doesn't change the fact that I still want to be fucked by Silvia Plath's proverbial fascist . These slogans and arguments are a complete emotional non sequitor. All they do are make me feel shame about my desires and put me into a cycle of self loathing about being a fucker of fascists. So much for Pride.

Those who are disgusted with Reese and by extension the whole book are therefore missing the point. We know that all of Reese's dark desires about wanting subjugation and complicity to patriarchy are "problematic". The author knows it, and even Reese knows that, the lady isn't stupid. The point is that despite knowing it, we still want it, no amount of woke education and feminist shame will make the lust go away.

Let me quickly sidetrack for a second to talk shit about a fictional character. I would hate Reese if she were an actual person. She's a bitch, she's petty and judgmental, she's small minded in a way that I find to be infuriatingly common among white queers, she's self aggrandizing and rationalizes away the completely unforced harm she inflicts on others. Just because she has some self knowledge and interiority about why she yearns for toxic men doesn't give her the right to cheat on her partner Amy in order to go sleep with these toxic men. For like the first 75% of the story, Reese goes off multiple times about how pissed she is at Ames/Amy for emotionally checking out and detransitioning; yet our unreliable narrator Reese conveniently leaves out that fact the fact that Amy is the way she is due to Reese's own shitty actions. Reese my darling, my buddy (feminine), my pal (gender neutral), that shit is kind of your fault. My transsexual sister in christ, that blood is on your hands.

Despite that, I found myself really relating to all the problematic sentiments in her dirty little monologues, things like: "I want to be beaten until I feel like a woman", "To be a woman is to be penetrated and used", etc. I, just like Reese, have always deeply resonated with that Silvia Plath poem about how "every woman adores a fascist". I remember reading that poem in english class in high school, long before I figured out I was trans, and being very confused at how much it resonated with me. Honestly, all the things she said are things which I've directly written into my embarrassing private journal, but never dared to speak aloud. I even used a lot of the same words and concepts, it was kind of freaky to see them written out by someone else. Thankfully, these thoughts are now published in well articulated, naked prose, courtesy to Ms. Peters, all without me having had to do or risk anything, which feels quite liberating actually.

My only disappointment is that evidently, the only people who are willing to give voice to these filthy desires are the chosen messy self destructive white girls of whatever is the given generation. Is no one else is going to admit that being sexually abused by men is probably one of the most gender affirming thing a woman can experience?

There is something inherent in how we understand womanhood which involves submission to patriarchal authority, the eroticization of our complicity in our own oppression and the oppression of others, and being the handmaiden to hegemonic power in all it's forms-- patriarchal, often imperial, often racial. I know I'm not alone in this; there's me, Silvia Plath, Torrey Peters, every other Lana del Rey fan, every BDSM kinkster, every unironic "bimbofication" enjoyer (and I'm not talking about the re-appropriated ironic bimbofication as shamelessly self indulgent hyper feminine self adornment and female self enjoyment outside the male gaze, but rather talking about the male serving fetishistic bimbofication as a destruction of female autonomy replaced with endlessly pliable and conveniently exploitable libido), every woman who's ever had politically inconvenient rape fantasies, every woman of color who's ever had a "preference" for white men. For as long as I can remember, and despite every feminist critique, I desire with every ounce of my being to be the colonizer's whore, the master's house slave, the patrician's mistress. There is a reason why romance literature is filled with problematic tropes, thoroughly enjoyed by women who should know better.

All these cis girl reviewers saying the author is a misogynistic fetishist (which is full on a transphobic trope and you all ought be ashamed) and shit like that are just mad that trans women like Torrey Peters say the quiet part out loud. Being trans in our world is inherently debasing, unfortunately, and perhaps it takes a certain amount of accepting one's debasement to get to the point where we are willing to admit these things.

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Part 3, Themes of Queer family

But merely pointing and diving into all this mess of contradiction and problematic desire is not where this book stops. The real mastery of Detransition Baby is that after all of that, it still acknowledges the fact that deconstruction and self knowledge is not enough, and then it goes even further as far as to offer a possible answer to this dilemma: the queer family.

The queer family gives us something else to desire in place of the old, a vision of love that does not rely on patriarchal sensibilities and conceptions, that does not rely on bio-essentialism and "blood ties" as the basic pre-condition for affection and care. The book does not offer a conclusive answer, or determine for us if the queer family could actually be a viable alternative to heteronormative patriarchy. Torrey Peters is not trying to be some kind of speculative feminist sci fi oracle, like some transsexual terminally-new-york Octavia Butler, and that is OK. No one has conclusive answers.

An honest explorations of one small potential family's practical and emotional pitfalls during the nascent period of coming together is the main redeeming quality of Detransition Baby, which makes me want to look past all of the storytelling flaws that I talked about earlier. For me, a concretely detailed and earnest suggestion, even if tentatively proposed, is enough. I'm ok with the book ending with the hanging question of the narrative unanswered. Will they have the baby? Will finally being an actual mother make Reese a less shitty person? Will Katrina be a supportive partner and/or co-parent when Amy inevitably re-transitions? Will Amy learn how to actually feel things instead of just disassociate all the time? Will Reese get over her whiteness? Will Katrina get over her own patriarchal pre-conceptions about what a parental bond needs to look like? Will the damn child turn out ok? To find out the answer to these questions and more, go devote your life to creating your own queer family, healing from patriarchal trauma, and trying to avoid the heteronormative pitfalls of living in A Society (tm)! Let us know how it goes!

[lilareviewsbooks]

“Senlin Ascends”’ Odd Choices For A Romance

3/5 stars

448 pages 

Contains: a shy nerd; a tower full of crazy things; steampunk! Let’s go steampunk!

Senlin Ascends required stepping outside my bubble, something I’ve been periodically doing this past year in hopes of reading all the fantasy “classics” or important works in the genre. My bubble, of course, being my little gay SFF books. Senlin Ascends is most definitely not queer, not in the slightest. In fact, it is so straight I feel like I need to make a proper complaint: there’s no gay people! Not to mention the shocking absence of people of color from the cast of characters, save for the occasionally ambiguous “olive skin”. And this was published in 2013!

Anyway, before I go on my tirade: what is this book about? It follows Thomas Senlin, the headmaster of a school in a tiny village, and his wife Marya. They’ve just gotten married and chosen a fantastic honeymoon destination – the Tower Of Babel, which Thomas idolizes as the pinnacle of civilization. Tragedy strikes, though, as soon as they arrive – Thomas and Marya lose each other at the base of the Tower, and it’s up to Thomas to navigate its many floors in search of her. However, his previous impressions about the Tower might be completely wrong – maybe it’s not all that civilized, after all.

When it comes to social concerns, I have an even bigger one. The main relationship in the book – Senlin and his new wife Marya – has a 10 year age gap, which I guess is fine if both parties were consenting adults when the relationship began (which, as I understand, they were). The problem I have is that they were teacher and student when they met, and Marya was a minor at the time. And listen: I hate student teacher relationships with a passion. I don’t care if it’s fictional – do you know how many kids will read these kinds of books while still in school and internalize that this is normal? Like, no! This is bad! 

But even without this social issue, I think this is just so, so avoidable. In Chapter 13 of Part 2, it’s established that Marya was a student at the school when Senlin became headmaster – that is, he wasn’t teaching there when she was first enrolled in the school. Now, this makes sense because Senlin is a headmaster and the only teacher in a small town, which only has one multi-serial school. He must’ve taught almost all the village’s younger citizens. But if Marya was already a student, why not age her up a little bit (a matter of 2 years, or some such, so the big age gap between Senlin and Marya can be kept, in case that’s important) so that she wasn’t in school at the time Senlin took the helm there? Why must they have been student and teacher at some point? It’s just so incredibly predatory – the age difference might already raise a few eyebrows, but the fact that he knew her since she was underage, and had power over her? That’s so weird!

And although this book and its series are very popular in the fantasy sphere of BookTube, for example, I haven’t heard comments on this at all. I had no idea that they were student and teacher, at all, because I’d never heard anyone mention it. I think this isn’t something we can ignore, and it says something about the message the book is trying to convey. 

Of course, as always, I hold out hope that this will be some sort of critique, or that the narrating voice or the characters themselves will condemn or discuss this issue, in further installments of the series. But, judging from the lack of representation for any minority groups in this at all, I’m assuming social consciousness isn’t at the top of the author’s list of priorities – which I guess is fine? I don’t know, I don’t want to tell anyone how to live their lives or write their books. 

Apart from this concern, Senlin Ascends is – and I’ll put it as eloquently as I can – meh. 

It has strong characters, that’s for sure. Quirky ones that appear and reappear as Senlin goes through the Tower, whose personalities are convincing and well thought-out. Senlin himself evolves as a person throughout the story, which is satisfying to watch, especially when it intermingles with other characters’ arcs. But there’s something quite predictable about the structure, as Senlin continues to go up the Tower, find something odd and vaguely steampunk-y, and then leave to continue on upwards. This is held together by short chapters, which almost always end in either a cliff-hanger or in a revelation. This is a common tactic in popular writing, and I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, it just loses its efficacy and all meaning when it's done so much – not to mention how tiring it is. The short chapters sometimes fall flat, as it feels like there’s something missing and the atmosphere needs a little tending, which would’ve happened if Mr. Bancroft had opted for longer chapters.

Senlin Ascends is the first book in a series, The Books of Babel, which spans four books. From what I’ve heard from BookTube (specifically, I’m thinking of a video by Tall Guy Reads), the books become more epic, as the scope of the story shifts from “trying to get to Marya” to “saving the world”. This doesn’t really entice me. What led me to Senlin Ascends in the first place was its premise – and I liked how contained the story felt, how small it was in comparison to other fantasies. This was what would’ve kept me on track to finish the series. Unfortunately, given the mediocre experience I had with this first book, not to mention the weird origin of the main relationship, I think I’ll be calling it quits now. I’m really not interested in seeing this expand and become a “saving the world” story. I think the strength of the book lies in its protagonist and supporting cast, all of which don’t have much to do with saving the world, and whose backstory was compelling enough without it being fuel to do something heroic. 

If you’ve read this one, I’m curious to know your thoughts and would love to hear them! I’ve seen so many people love this one, so I’m wondering what I missed and if it was just a matter of not connecting with the story as much as others.