#it’s something I’ve been thinking of a lot but haven’t seen anyone else address so wanted to mention it | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sophieakatz · 1 year ago

Text

Thursday Thoughts: Ace Week – What If People Don’t Believe Me?

This year for Ace Week, I want to address a concern I’ve seen expressed a lot recently in asexual-spectrum communities and forums: What do I do if people don’t believe me when I tell them I’m ace, or just as commonly, I told someone I’m ace, and they don’t believe me. What do I do now?

I have been in this position – both the preemptive anxiety, and the reality. Other people’s responses to me coming out as ace over the years have included, “I don’t think that’s really a thing,” “You just haven’t met the right person yet,” “That’s just how it is for girls,” and “I just don’t see why we need to have all these labels.”

There are harsher responses that I’m fortunate enough to have never experienced personally – like someone telling the newly-out ace that they should see a doctor for medication, or that they should be raped and then they won’t be ace anymore.

But even when the response is tamer, or even well-meaning (to be clear, someone who says that you should be assaulted does not mean well), they can still leave a harsh impact on the ace person who hears it. When someone says, “I don’t think that’s a thing,” we hear, “I don’t believe you. I know better than you about what you feel and what you want. I don’t see you, I’m not listening to you, and I don’t want to understand you.”

And that sucks, right? Wanting to be understood is the most natural thing in the world. That’s why we come out, why we use labels for our sexual identity at all – so that other people can understand us! So that we can find people like us! So we can all understand the true diversity and beautiful complexity of the world a little better!

The unfortunate truth is that not everyone is equally ready to understand that complexity. I am ace, and I still didn’t know that that was an option until I was a legal adult! If I hadn’t joined my university’s Feminist Union ten years ago, and if I hadn’t happened to stumble across that Tumblr post that mentioned demisexuality around the same time, who knows how long it might have taken me to figure it out? A lot of people have never had the opportunity to learn about the asexual spectrum before, or never “needed” to know that ace identities exist as a completely healthy kind of normal.

Unfortunately, we can’t expect someone who has never heard of something before to immediately be on board with it. We can hope they will be, and we should give them the chance to be, but we can’t expect it.

So what do you do if you tell someone you’re ace, and they don’t believe you?

You live your life.

It’s okay if they don’t believe you. It’s okay if they don’t completely understand you. Yes, we crave that perfect understanding – but there’s a lot that we as human beings just don’t get about each other. People can care about you, and you can care about them, without you completely understanding each other. As long as they’re not hurting you, it’s okay if they don’t believe you.

Now, if they are hurting you, take that seriously. You get to choose who to spend time with, after all, and it’s better to spend time with people who treat you well. If all this person wants to do now is talk about how you need to see a doctor and get your asexuality fixed, you have every right to walk away from them. If they try to force you to have sex with them, run the hell away from that person.

The thing is, your ace identity doesn’t have anything to do with anyone else. It has everything to do with YOU. So live your best ace life. Go about your day. Be as visibly ace as you’d like to be, be as vocal about it as you’d like to be, and do all the other things that you do every day, like work, or school, or reading books, or going on walks, or playing video games. Live your life.

Speaking from experience, it’s difficult for people who love you to keep believing that there’s something wrong with you when you’re clearly not suffering. Someone who loves you or cares about you is someone who is invested in your happiness. So live your life – do what makes you happy – and show that what makes you happy includes being true to yourself and your sexual identity. They’ll figure it out eventually, and how long it takes them to figure it out doesn’t change anything about you.

You’re going to be okay.

#thursday thoughts #writblr #ace #acespec #ace week #ace pride #coming out #asexual #asexuality #demisexuality

8 notes · View notes

builtbybrokenbells · 1 year ago

Note

I absolutely loved, loved, loved, the first part of belladonna, it was so wonderfully written. I also felt like you portrayed addiction in a very real and humane way. Addiction is an incredibly tough conversation and you managed to include such a difficult theme in your writing whilst also being respectful and I can’t tell you how appreciative I am of that! Furthermore, I feel for the main character because I too have an insanely strained relationship with my parents, especially my mother, reading the part about y/n and her issues with her mother made me feel so seen and heard. I wish Danny would come in and sweep me off my feet like that too. You wrote him so beautifully, like he’s a rainbow in her murky skies. I can’t wait for the next part!! Kisses💋💋💋!!!!

hi, lovely 🤍 this ask has touched my heart in so many ways, and i can’t thank you enough for the smile it’s put on my face all day. I took some time to formulate a response, because words as impactful as this deserve to be responded to in the same manner.

to know the first chapter was so enjoyed made me incredibly happy, because I had a lot of fear posting it. As you said yourself, it includes some topics that are incredibly tough to understand, let alone write about, and I worried that it might not be well received. To hear you say that I did a good job at writing about it in a respectful and real way is very important to me, because addiction itself is very important to me.

I chose to write belladonna not only because I wanted to address topics that are not often discussed, but also because when it is addressed, it is often in a poor and villainous manner. More than that, I needed to write it because I myself am an addict, and I am tired of the stigma and the fear that surrounds it. Although I haven’t been in active addiction for some time now, I will always be an addict; I say this because it leads every single decision, thought, and desire I feel every single day. It means the world to me that you think I have expressed it well, because it is a topic that is so near and dear to my heart. Belladonna is important to me, because she is me. NA, detox, and being surrounded by active addicts who do not realize the impact of their own actions is something I’ve spent my whole life learning about, because I’ve spent my whole life dealing with it and the consequences of it.

I am eternally grateful that you had the courage to share your thoughts and feelings, because relating to the main character in any way is also relating to me, and I know that speaking about a strained parental relationship is incredibly difficult. I was born from a woman who was destined to be my demise, and it is a struggle to cope with that every single day. I hope that throughout this story (that I am using as my own form of free therapy) you can not only continue to relate, but maybe find some peace in the topics that i plan to explore.

Danny is definitely her rainbow after the storm, and he is a little sweetheart, but as we progress through this story, I hope that you and everyone else can see that although he is intended to be the saviour, the truest one is the main character herself. Us as individuals have survived every cruel thing life has to offer, and we continue to do it every day, which means we are the only ones responsible for the accomplishments we’ve achieved. In saying that, I do have to agree that it definitely would be nice to have a Danny by our side, because he would undoubtedly make the whole thing so much easier.

I cannot thank you enough for reaching out and sharing your thoughts; this ask has brightened my day in so many ways, and it makes me so excited to continue writing and sharing this story with you. if you ever need an ear, my asks and messages are always open, to you and anyone else who may need it 🤍 words like this are what encourages me to keep writing, so thank you and everyone else for all you do for me.

I am so sorry for the long response, but your words have inspired my own words, and as we know from this blog, i love talking 😉

4 notes · View notes

kinetic-elaboration · 1 year ago

Text

December 12: Work Shit

Today was such a shitty day. And for the most dumb-fuck reasons too. There was work drama in the morning so incredibly inane I am embarrassed to post about it in a pubic space but the tl;dr of it is that I had no opinions about the thing, but was still the brunt of others’ (an other’s really) annoyance about it. We kept saying ‘it’s not personal’ as we spoke harshly to each but it felt SO personal, and I just couldn’t get over it for pretty much the rest of the day. I am quite sure it wounded me more and affected me for longer than anyone else. I want to be like ‘please don’t do this to me, I am a sensitive flower, I am easily emotionally decimated’ but also like ‘I am not bothered at all (lying), I am strong and fine, I am above this, I am not engaging because there is nothing to engage with.’

Again, there was nothing to engage with. But it just made me feel so shitty. I still feel kind of sad even now, to be honest. I was so bummed out and tired that I took a nap as soon as I got home (after a bus ride sitting in front of someone who was yelling into their phone and kept saying ‘no one can hear me! It’s the bus!’—um? We can all hear you because it’s the bus?). There was probably nothing else for me to do but of course now I am up late because it takes a while to wake up again from a nap, then I am all riled up and easily distracted. So I will go to sleep at a stupid hour again, and also have accomplished nothing with my paltry post-work hours.

Fuck I’m so depressed. This is such a depressing train of thought.

Anyway, yesterday I mentioned at work that I had never seen a single episode of Doctor Who (this is the truth: I think I saw a partial episode on TV, but not even the whole thing) and this shocked my co-worker considerably. She said it was incredibly surprising of me or something of that nature. And I do not know how to take this. I mean, probably what she means is ‘you are known as someone who likes science fiction and is rather nerdy’ and these are true things and also positive reputations to have. But I have literally never given the slightest fuck about Doctor Who lmao. I can’t tell you why, but it obviously doesn’t feel weird to me that I don’t because I never have! Obviously I’ve been in a lot of spaces that are sort of Who-adjacent (fandom, tumblr, nerd-dom, crossover appeal with other stuff I like) but it’s never been tempting or intriguing at all. It’s not on my list.

What I said was just like… a non-answer that sounded like an answer based on my tone of voice. Like, ‘Hmmm, well I’ve seen a partial episode on TV and I’ve seen Torchwood.’ This is all true but does not at all address the surprise or the reasons of my not being interested. I was surprised by her surprise, I don’t have good reasons, and also all I could say would probably read as insulting to Who fans, one of whom was in the room.

I think part of it is, honestly, that my mom isn’t into Doctor Who, and so I did not have anyone getting me into it at a formative time. Not that people can’t get into Who independently and not that I haven’t gotten into things independently but I just… I really think that in this particular instance, if she had been into it, I would have been. My mom being into Torchwood is the reason I watched it (well… 2-ish seasons). She thinks Who is a kids’ show and while it’s probably more a family show, that opinion really influenced my non-desire to watch it.

Another part is that I’m sort of a sci-fi poser in a way. I hate to admit it but it’s true. I love that people think of me as a sci fi fan and I think of myself that way too but I am NOT well read. I’m more like an ST:TOS fan with aspirations to sci fi fandom. This isn’t to say I want to pick up Who (or Dune, the other piece of science fiction I was strangely assumed to be familiar with), but I do want to be more well-read in some classic sci fi literature, as well as be more aware of like modern sci fi stuff. Especially books. There are very few sci fi TV series that interest me. A couple but not a ton.

I also have a weird definition of science fiction which is, it’s science fiction if it FEELS like science fiction to me, personally, the arbiter of all things. Some media are in the sense that they can’t be anything else, I guess, but they don’t feel like science fiction to me and so I’m not interested, which is a weird and irrational and unreasonable thing for me to say, but it’s the middle of the night and I’m sad so there it is.

#the year 2023 #2023: rl #better for me if everyone thinks i'm a closed book.... i'm really not but maybe i should be?

2 notes · View notes

mona-the-vampire · 9 months ago

Text

When I decided to watch @strange-aeons's video about reality jumping or whatever the hell it was, I was expecting to have a chill few minutes learning about a weird side of the internet. I got that right up to the point where she said “maladaptive daydreaming” and I have not known peace since.

When I first learned about dyslexia I thought ‘huh weird that sounds a bit like me I wonder if…’.

This was not like that. This was someone in two words directly hitting an element of my psychology so precisely and so unexpectedly I half expected little cartoon stars to float around my head.

Unfortunately for anyone reading this, I also have a philosophy degree, which gifts me the ability to be very annoying about any given topic, and I’ve chosen this one.

Before I learned of the existence of the term maladaptive daydreaming, I had very little awareness of what I was doing, the daydreams were just there and then, when I was focused on something else, they weren't. They didn’t seem to have ever existed when I was truely not thinking about them, so I didn’t think of them at all unless they were consuming me at that given moment. They are a lot like real dreams in that way, a little bit hard to get a fix on.

I have since been trying to quit, for the last three or so days. But while I have seen online lots of discussions about what counts as ‘maladaptive’, I haven’t seen much about what counts as daydreaming. I think daydreaming has become so entwined with thinking for me that I have found that I have lost a great deal of my cognitive abilities.

Let me explain, right here now as I write, it feels very similar to daydreaming, time passes and I am just here in my head. I am a pretty good typist to my hands move without much conscious thought across the keys. Its a lot like mouthing the words of a conversation with a daydream character, except the character is you, my reader. Or I suppose its not you but my imagined version of a reader. So have I really given up daydreaming then?

Back to philosophy, my first hate, for a moment. In philosophy there is a field where people talk about what value is, and I have a friend who is a bit more of a serious philosopher, she has a theory that value is something like the intersection between truth and happiness, meaning that a thing is the most valuable when it both makes you as happy as possible and is true. Thats a bit of a ms paint version of a whole complex system but bear with me. Daydreaming is not “true“ (?) but makes you happy (kind of, sometimes it makes you sad or angry but in a satisfying way but I am using happy as short hand for any positive feeling.) Therefore, according to my friends system, its kind of a positive, but because its not true its limited in value. It would be less valuable than a more traditional ‘hobby’ like painting or sport that gave the same degree of satisfaction. I can see where she’s coming from with this most people probably do think its better to be really into sport then daydreaming.

Personally I don’t like her system of value however. It just always sat unhapplily with me, it felt insulting. I think I found it insulting because almost all of my thoughts happen in an ‘false’ way or contain a bit of falsehood.

Here now, the falsehood is that I am talking to the imagined reader. Thats not true theres nobody there. In a great deal of my normal though process I am talking to a character or a imagined self who also isn’t there. Sometimes after reading a really good book all of my thoughts are addressed to, my imagined reader and they are all structured a little like this;

“She considered whether of not she would make a cup of tea, but a deep wearyness took her to the couch for a nap instead.”

I know that that is a utterly BANANAS way of thinking, truly batshit! But it’s just how it be. The style of thought changes with the last author I read as well so after reading a Terry Prachet all of my thoughts are suddenly hilarious, after reading the Bible (for my studies, or boredom in a hotel room) all of my thoughts are grand proclimations;

“And then, on the Wednesday she rose from her bed, and thought about the long day that awaited her. The sun had risen with her on this day that she should go to the dentist.”

I think I know why I think like this, but I’m not talking about the why right now. Its the fact that none of this thought process is grounded in the truth. Yes, it might have been true that I decided to have a nap, but it’s not the case that this happened in a book, so by thinking like this, my friend would say I am tanking the value of each of these thoughts. Its not like it always makes me happy to think that way. It’s mildly entertaining for a little while, but if I’ve just read the Ent scene in Lord of the Rings it takes my twice as long to get ready in the morning unless I can get out of that rut.

Strictly speaking I am not sure if all of this is really daydreaming, but ‘tis certainly daydreaming adjacent.

What almost definitely does count though, if after I have watched a TV show or film that I have particularly bonded with, then my thoughts are a conversation with a character from the show. These sometimes weave in and out of being about real events, when I am showering or listening to music these turn to more traditional daydreams. But I am the kind of daydreamer that has a kind of idealised self (ish?) and that self must be in someway also me.

As in I might be a dragon but there needs to be an in plot reason I am a human thing right now that needs to do the dishes (while she chats to whoever the character is about whatever drama is going down). Unless I am on a train with headphones on or something like that then I am usually connected to my real world life while daydreaming.

This means that my daydreams are entwined with my… me, my real me. This leaves my sense of self in a difficult position. Because, while its worth being clear about this, I always am fully aware that none of my daydreams, or daydream adjacent thoughts are real, without those chats about politics with The Doctor or about relationships with the Evil Queen (OUAT), or about trauma that I have experienced the characters of Supernatural I am not me. So with the understanding that they are false, all of them, it because very difficult to construct a Me that is true.

I can’t fully tackle all of this today. So I am going to leave it with loose ends for now. I do wonder if other people have similar thought systems though. At the moment I have been trying not to daydream at all. So far I have bought the same pair of shoes twice, because I forgot I had already bought them, and showed up to my theory test 2 days to late. I really don’t know if this is going to work or if I am just a bunch of falsehoods stuffed into a human suit.

#immersive daydreaming #maladaptive daydreaming #spilled thoughts #philosophy #My thoughts on MaDd

1 note · View note

hoghtastic · 1 year ago

Note

“Why is acting goofy and speaking different languages or dancing funny, somehow mocking disabled people? Isn't it mocking disabled people to say that's how they act and it's typical? Like you cant dance goofily and it be ok? It must mean they (she) are all doing something bad or wrong? It's not like shes Donald Trump mocking disabled people for real.”

“Many of you are just nitpicking and making a disaster out of it. Are you aware that not only disabled people make strange sounds and speak funny, but also small children? And I remember Alex saying that he has such a style of humor that he sometimes likes to act like children. What are you even talking about, my God? Many of you seem like crazy fans who are really jealous but are afraid to admit it. At first I was interested in reading, but the more I read, the more I notice how strange things are written here... “

Well if you read what I said and comprehended it, I said “I think it’s odd how chucky had been called out for (in quotes because I’m quoting what someone said in a previous ask) “mocking disabled people” when she tries to be funny, but I’ve never seen anyone call out Alex for doing the same thing” (like I also stated I haven’t seen physical proof of what was addressed as “mocking” other than the dancing video and obviously that was only referred to or compared to a reenactment of someone about to projectile vomit) Which means it was confusing to me that they would even begin to call out Johanne and not Alex for acting the exact same way IF they really had thought she was doing anything wrong. Simply, like the other anon stated, I thought they were “nitpicking” and claiming she was doing something she wasn’t, while using a very wrong and stereotypical agenda to boost their claims even more.

What are YOU even talking about, anon?Where are you seeing jealousy being shown by anyone on this blog? (Jealous definition: feelings or showing envy of someone or their achievements or advantages) (envy definition: a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck.) I’m sure we wouldn’t be jealous if we were pointing out our opinions on how we think they are embarrassing themselves by acting out. No one is jealous of that, no one envies acting that way. Also being in tune with your inner child and simply acting like a child (as a grown, almost 30 year old man, as I feel really needs to be reiterated more here) are two completely different things. If it was Johanne (let’s all be so honest right now) that said she liked to act like a child because she thought it was funny or cute, you would find that weird, but just because it’s Alex that said it it’s cute and funny and it should be ignored and not questioned as something weird. (As many times as we’ve talked about thinking Alex is with johanne because she has been compared to his “mom” due to her seemingly controlling attitude, his comment about liking to act like a child for fun should be raising even more eyebrows should it not? That could be one of the many reasons why his relationships never got anywhere because he acts like that, and the girls want a boyfriend not a baby) so no babe, I’m not a “jealous fan whose scared to admit it” I’m just pointing out the things a lot of fans (like you) likes to ignore because your too far up Alex’s ass to see that he is weird as hell. You yourself are part of the “crazy fans” you mentioned who are jealous. And because of that you feel the need to go and “defend his honor” anytime you find the chance because you know that’s as close as you are gonna get to being with him yourself.

Anon to anon, in response to this ask. 😊

#anon asks #anon to anon

0 notes

capricioussun · 2 years ago

Text

Read more for spoilers though I will try to keep it vague

Since I myself was avoiding spoilers so stringently up until a couple days ago I haven’t seen many theories or anything floating around but I have not been able to stop thinking about what the hell was going on in that movie. I’m thoroughly convinced Miguel was lying, at least about some stuff, and I have a few ideas on what’s really going on but next to no evidence to back it up lmao. I’m also thinking a lot about Hobie. It definitely seemed there’s more going on there than what was super briefly addressed. I’m also thinking about when he pulled that thing from the wall, “joking” about it doing nothing.

Anyway my current biggest theory is that, whatever’s going on, it was a partial set up. I don’t know who else might know, but I think Miguel and Jessica both know, definitely. I think Jess sent Gwen to Miles’ verse knowing full well she’d fuck up. Like, seriously? Out of anyone they could send, they sent the one spider person most likely to be emotionally compromised. She’s also listening in on Gwen later, she knows they’re in the “wrong” place, and yet…

And Miguel. Honesty before I even saw the movie I was convinced there was something more going on. That he wasn’t telling the whole truth and hiding his true motives from the other spider people. The movie mostly just convinced me Jessica knows and is on his side, too, but who else? And what exactly is Miguel up to? I know he’s been known to be a rather morally grey, self interested character, but I doubt they’d just make him a straight up villain (and I wouldn’t want them to).

I think it’s worth pointing out he mentions multiple circumstances of “failing” but only really talks about the time with the alt verse where he tried to replace himself.

Also of important note, the boys in 42 don’t seem very surprised or taken aback by Miles’ appearance, which means they likely somehow already knew about the multiverse..?

Take this w/ a grain of salt tho, I am not someone who is super familiar with a lot of the comics and deeper lore of most of the individual spider people. Despite being a lifelong fan I’ve never really read any comics lmao Maybe people who are already Know but I don’t! And I’m excited to find out in the next movie :*)

I am having so many thoughts about spiderverse oh my god

#I wanted to go more in depth and list the more specific theories but I also wanted to keep it vague #who knows #sunny with clouds #across the spiderverse #atsv spoilers

7 notes · View notes

sineala · 4 years ago

Note

How would you say fandom culture has changed over the years? What are some differences you notice between older and younger fandom folks?

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to answer this, and I’m not sure I have a really good answer, but I’m going to try.

I’ve been in fandom since approximately 1995. Maybe 1994. At that point, the world wide web was a relatively new part of the internet, and the fandoms I was in had most of their activity on privately-hosted mailing lists (predating eGroups/OneList/Yahoo Groups) and on Usenet newsgroups, with fiction beginning to be available on websites as part of either fandom-specific or pairing-specific archives as well as authors’ individual pages. Fanfiction.net did not yet exist. LiveJournal did not exist. AO3 definitely did not exist. If you wanted real-time chat, there was IRC. I was coming in basically at the tail end of zine fandom; zines were no longer the only way of distributing fanfiction, as fandom started to move online. So I have a selection of zines from 90s-era Western media fandoms but even by then zines weren’t where I was doing most of my reading.

I think in terms of generally “what it was like to be in fandom,” the big-picture stuff hasn’t changed. Fandom still produces creative fanwork and likes to, y’know, get together and talk about fandom. Also, almost every fight or complaint that fandom has about something is a thing that has been going on for actual years. People complain that, say, the kudos button is ruining comment culture because back in the LJ days the only way you could comment on a story was, well, by leaving an actual comment, or sending an email on a mailing list, and this might mean that people who would have otherwise commented have left a kudos instead. But back in the LJ and mailing list days, people were complaining that commenting was going downhill since the days of zines, when in order to comment on a story you had to write a real paper letter and mail it and because you had to do that, the quality of feedback was so much better than you got nowadays because people could just dash off a quick email or comment. You get the idea. Top/bottom wars are not new either. Pairing wars are not new. If you’ve been in fandom a while, you will pretty much have seen all the fights already. I think one thing that is new, though, is the fandom awareness of things like privilege and intersectionality and various -isms, as well as things like “providing warnings might be nice” (do you know how much unwarned deathfic I have read? a lot!) and I sure won’t say we’re perfect at any of this now, but I think fandom is trying way way more about all that stuff than it used to.

There are some fights we actually don’t have anymore, as far as I can tell. I feel like it’s been years since I’ve seen the “real person fiction is wrong” battle, but also I don’t hang out in a whole lot of RPF fandoms, so it’s possible that’s still going and I just don’t see it.

There also used to be a recurring debate about whether gay relationships that were canonical were slash or not. When slash started, obviously this wasn’t a question because there weren’t canonical gay relationships in fandoms, period. But as gay characters began to appear in media, people started to wonder “does slash mean all same-sex relationships, or does slash mean only non-canonical same-sex relationships?” Now, you may be reading this and think that sounds like an incredibly weird thing to get hung up on, but that’s because what appears to have happened is that the term “ship” (originally from X-Files Mulder/Scully fandom) has, as far as I can tell, come up and eaten most of the rest of the terminology. Now people will just say, “oh, I ship that.” For any pairing, gay or not, canonical or not. Fandom seems to have decided that for the most part it no longer actually needs a term specific to same-sex relationships as a genre.

Similarly, there are a few genres of fic that we used to have also pretty much don’t exist anymore. There are also plenty of genres that are well-entrenched now that are also extremely recent -- A/B/O comes to mind. But there are some kinds of fic we don’t write a lot of now. Like, I haven’t seen smarm in years! I also haven’t seen We’re Not Gay We Just Love Each Other in a while. There was also a particular style of slash writing where you’d basically have to explain, in detail, what made you think that these particular characters could be anything other than straight. You’d have to motivate this decision. You’d have to look at their canonical heterosexual relationships and come up with a way to explain why all those had happened in order to reconcile how this one guy could have romantic feelings for another guy. When had he figured out he wasn’t straight? Who might he have been with before? How does he interact with people in ways that make you think he’s not straight? That kind of thing. You had to, essentially, show your work. And these days a lot of fanfic is just like, “Okay, Captain America is bisexual, let’s go!” It’s... different.

Fandom also used to skew older, is my sense. A lot older. I don’t know, actually, if it really was older, but I get the sense now that there are some younger people who are surprised that adults are still in fandom. I have seen people saying these days that they think they’re too old for fanfiction because they are not in middle school anymore. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the barriers to access fandom are a lot lower than they used to be. You used to basically have to be an adult with disposable income (or know an adult with disposable income who was willing to help you out; but even then if you were reading explicit fiction you also had to swear you were 18+, usually by sending in an age statement to whoever you were buying the zine from or to the mods of the list you wanted to join, so a lot of fandom was very much age-gated). Internet access was not widely available. Even if you had internet access, you maybe didn’t have your own email address, so you couldn’t sign up for mailing lists; free email providers didn’t exist. If you wanted to buy zines, you had to have money to buy them. If you wanted to go to cons, you had to be able to afford the cost of the con, travel to the con, et cetera. If you wanted to have a website you had to know HTML. Social media did not exist. You want to draw art? Guess what, you’re probably drawing it on paper! You might be able to upload a picture to your website if you have a digital camera or a scanner, but both of those things are expensive, and also a lot of people don’t have the capability or the money to download pictures from the internet (some people have data caps with overage charges, and some people have text-only connections!), so they won’t get to see it. Maybe you can sell your piece at a con! You want to make a fanvid? We called them songvids, but, anyway, you know how you’re doing that? You’re going to hook two VCRs together and smash the play and record buttons very fast! If you want anyone else to watch them, you are either making them a tape personally and mailing it to them or bringing your vids to a convention. Maybe you can digitize them and upload them, but it’s going to take people hours to download them!

(Every three hours my ISP would kick me off the internet and I’d have to dial in again. If it was a busy time of day, it might take me 20 or 30 minutes to get a connection again. And that was assuming no one else in the house needed to use the phone line. Imagine if your modem went out every three hours now.)

And now, for the cost of my internet connection, I can read pretty much whatever fanfiction I want, whenever I want it. I can see all the fanart I want! I can watch vids! Podfic exists now! Fanmixes exist! Gifsets and moodboards exist! If I want to write fic I can write it with programs that are completely free, and as soon as I post it everyone in the entire world can read it. If I want to draw or make vids that may require some additional investment, but I may also be able to do it with things I already have. Do you have any idea how good we all have it?

There are a couple of kinds of fan activity that don’t seem to exist anymore, though, and I miss them. I know that roleplaying still goes on, but I feel like these days most people who do real-time text roleplay have switched to things like Discord. I know that in the LJ days, RP communities were popular. But I really miss MU*s (MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, MUXes..), which were servers for real-time text-based RP with a bunch of... hmm... features to aid RP. There were virtual rooms with text descriptions, and objects in virtual rooms with descriptions, and your character had a description, and they could interact with the objects as well as with other characters, and you could program things to change descriptions or emit various kinds of text or take you to different rooms, and so on. Just to, y’know, enhance the atmosphere. It was fun and it was where I learned to RP and I’m sad they’re pretty much gone now.

I also don’t think I see a lot of fanfiction awards in fandoms. Wonder where they went.

Going back to the previous point, the barriers to actually consuming the canon you are fannish about are way, way, way lower now. You can pretty much take it for granted that if right now someone tells you about a shiny new fandom, there will be a way to read that book or watch that show or movie right now. Possibly for free! Of course you can watch it! Why wouldn’t you be able to?

This was absolutely, absolutely not the case before. I’m currently in Marvel Comics fandom. If there is a comic I want to read, I can read it right now on the internet. I have subscribed to Marvel Unlimited and I can read pretty much every comic that is older than three months old; the newer ones cost extra money. But I can do it all from the comfort of my own home right now. I was also, actually, in Marvel Comics fandom in the nineties. If I wanted to read a comic, I had to go to a comic book store and hope they had it in stock; if they didn’t, I had to try another store. Not a lot of comics were available in trade paperback and they definitely weren’t readable on the internet. I used to read a lot of Gambit h/c fic set after Uncanny X-Men #350. I never found a copy of UXM #350. I still haven’t! But I did eventually read it on Unlimited.

Being in TV show fandoms also had similar challenges. Was the show you were watching still on the air? No? Then you’d better hope you could find it in reruns, or know someone who had tapes of it that they could copy for you, otherwise you weren’t watching that show. It was, I think, pretty common for people to be in fandoms for shows they hadn’t seen, because they had no way to see the show, but they loved all the fanfic. The Sentinel had a whole lot of fans like that, both because I think it took a while for it to end up in reruns and because overseas distribution was probably poor. So you’d get people who read the fic and wrote fic based on the other fic they’d read, which meant that you got massive, massive amounts of fanon appearing that people just assumed was in the show because it was a weirdly specific detail that appeared in someone’s fic once. Like “Jim and Blair’s apartment has a small water heater” (not actually canonical) or “Blair is a vegetarian” (there’s an episode where his mother visits and IIRC cooks him one of his favorite meals, which is beef tongue).

Like, I was in The Professionals fandom for years. I read all the fic. I hadn’t seen the show. As far as I know, it never aired in the US, and it certainly never had any kind of US VHS or DVD release. I’d seen a couple songvids. I eventually saw a couple episodes in maybe 2003, and that was because my dad special-ordered a commercial VHS tape from the UK and paid someone to convert it from PAL to NTSC. I didn’t get to see the whole show until several years later when I got a region-free DVD player someone in fandom sent me burned copies of the UK DVD releases and then I special-ordered the commercial release of the DVDs from the UK myself. But if I were a new fan and wanted to watch Pros right now? It is on YouTube! For free!

I think also one of the things about fandom that’s not immediately evident to new fans is the way in which it is permanent and/or impermanent. There are probably people whose first fannish experience is on Tumblr or who only read fanfic on FFN and who have no idea what they would do if either site, say, just shut down. But if you’ve been in fandom a while, you’ve been through, say, Discord, Tumblr, Twitter, Pillowfort, Imzy, DW, JournalFen, LJ, GeoCities, IRC, mailing lists. And sure, if Tumblr closed, it would be inconvenient. But fandom would pack up and move somewhere else. You would find it again. It would, eventually, be okay. Similarly, if you’ve been in a lot of fandoms, if you’ve made a lot of friends, drifting through fandoms is like that. You’ll make a friend in 1998 because you were in the same fandom, and then you might go your own ways, and ten years later you might be in another fandom with them again! It happens.

But the flip side of that is that I think a lot of older fans have learned not to trust in the permanence of any particular site. If you like a story, you save it as soon as you read it. If you like a piece of art, you save it. If you like a vid, you save it. Because you don’t know when the site it’s on will be gone for good. I have, like, twenty years of lovingly-curated fanfic. And I feel like people who have only been in fandom since AO3 existed might not understand how much AO3 is a game-changer compared to what we had before. It’s a site where you can put your fic up and you don’t have to worry that the webhost is going out of business, or that the site might delete your work because they don’t allow gay fiction or explicit fiction or fiction written in second person or fiction for fandoms where the creator doesn’t like fanfiction, or whatever. Because all of those things have absolutely happened. But, I mean, I still save pretty much everything I like, even on AO3, just in case.

So, basically, yeah, fandom is a whole lot more accessible than it used to be. I think fandom is pretty much still fandom, but it’s a lot easier to get into, and that has made it way more open to people who wouldn’t have been able to be in fandom before. There is so, so much more now than there ever was before, and I think that’s great.

#Anonymous #replies

2K notes · View notes

stagefoureddiediaz · 2 years ago

Note

hey kym!💕 i’m probably the 100th person asking, but what can you tell us about the checked shirt and black undershirt buck is wearing in that bts? i feel like black is a rare occurrence for him…?

thank you!

Hey Iri!!!

You got in first with the ask so gold stars for you!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️

To all the Nonnies who also asked - I’m answering you here!!

I have definitely not spent to long staring at this 😬😬😬😬😬

andI very definelty haven’t spent any time trying to figure out if he’s wearing a necklace!! 👀👀👀👀👀

I don’t think he is - I think its the way the light is hitting the monitor screen - I’d die if he was wearing a necklace - because there is only one reason Buck would suddenly develop a taste for neck jewellery and that would be if he was given a St. Christopher by a certain someone - its way to early for that to be something like that happening imo so I’m happy to rule it out! as a concept!!!

This outfit is the same as the one from the bts with Ryan - I’ve brightened it and altered the contrast so you can see Oliver lurking in the background (Sorry Ryns arm!)!

As for what I think about Buck in Black - its actually a colour we’ve seen him in a fair amount - mostly around Taylor - when we saw him in lots of either black or black and white check (and some grey and navy blue) or in connection with something Taylor adjacent (the trip to the equestrian centre for example)

Then we have the more recent black top from his lunch with Connor and Kameron.

The fact that Buck has been wearing almost entirely blue (and white) tops since deciding to end things with Taylor, with the exception of the russet one in 6x04 and then we’re presented with two black tops is a pretty loud connection if you ask me - especially as this latest one is for either 6x05 or 6. The choice of black directly connects Buck to that lunch - and this is important to do - as it keeps the sperm donor theme running in the background even when its not directly being addressed. Putting him into check/plaid and black in this way is foreshadowing that the sperm donor topic isn’t going to go smoothly when it does come back up (seemingly in 6x07 Cursed) - this isn’t just a generalised plaid = bad things inbound - because they could’ve put him in any plaid they wanted, so the choice to use black and white - it directly connects it to this specific storyline and I love the wardrobe team for doing this!!

This likely to be the next time we see him doing something social (as in multiple people and not just one other al a Hen or Eddie) with the firefam, and the fact that its in the Grant-Nash back yard - which is interesting considering that last time we saw Buck outside at theirs he was also wearing plaid and then promptly coughed up blood all over the patio! (and for something to happen that leads into cursed and thus draw that parallel would be something!)

(above you can see the string lights that prove the bts content we’ve had is in the G-N back yard this is from 3x06 Monsters if anyone was wondering!)

We know Hen and Karen are there and you can in fact see Karen in the bts video - her skirt under the monitor and the top of her head above it - the way it looks to me - Buck is talking to Karen (and possibly Hen) while looking at someone or something else (possibly Eddie we keep our fingers crossed). The thing with this is that I’m also intrigued by the fact that Karen is in the same colour way (green and white) that she was wearing when Buck, Hen and Karen had their conversation about HenRens sperm donor in 3x01 - never mind it being the last time we saw Buck in the G-N yard, its the last time we saw any of the firefam outside in the Grant-Nash yard in this way - my brain is whirring at the speed of light over this fact!!! 👀👀👀

Tagging @theladyyavilee as she’s sent me several asks on t he subject and I’ve answered them all here!!

#kym answers things #Iri asks #(Sarah also asks!)#bucks black check shirt #911 costumes #kym costume thoughts #911 spoilers #911 on fox #911 fox #evan buck buckley #buck #bucks costumes

33 notes · View notes

frostedfaves · 4 years ago

Text

Naive (2)

Masterlist

Pairing: demon!Wanda Maximoff x fem!reader

Summary: You quickly discover that Wanda is different during the night.

Warnings: 18+ ONLY, dark!fic, demon things™️, mental manipulation, smut: oral, fingering, overstimulation, edging, penetration, sex toy use, dom/sub dynamics, biting, slapping(? just a lil)

A/N: no more thoughts except please share your own after reading this! writing this slutty shit kept me sane today so enjoy

Previous part

To your surprise and relief that eventually transformed into disappointment, Wanda didn’t make an appearance at all for the rest of the week. You spent each shift for the next few days anticipating her return, watching for her over the heads of shorter customers and through the shelves on your way in and out of the bookstore. You were starting to think that she was simply passing through your town and you were just lucky enough to cross paths with her.

“Hi there.”

“Wanda!” you yelp after looking up from your phone hidden behind the register, clearing your throat as you tuck it in your pocket. “Um, can I get you anything?”

“I’m surprised you remember me,” she laughs. “I’m sure you get hundreds of customers a day.”

“You left a lasting impression,” you admit before you can stop yourself and she grins.

“So did you.”

There’s a brief pause before she adds your name to the end of her sentence with a flicker of something unrecognizable in her eyes that sends a shiver down your spine. Not knowing what else to do with yourself, you go to ask again what she’d like in the same moment she places a bottle of water on the counter.

“I got a really good recommendation the last time I was here, and I’d like to have it again.”

“Coming right up.” You ring up the exact same order, letting your gaze wander to her hand again as she inserts her card. “I never got to tell you how much I love your rings.”

“What?” She lifts her hand after removing her card and chuckles breathlessly. “Oh yeah, thanks.”

A frown appears on your features when you notice the way she grabs the receipt from you, almost as if she’s actively avoiding brushing fingers with you in the same way she did during her last visit. You’re able to replace the frown with a customer service smile, but you can’t shake the feeling that you experienced rejection before even posing a question.

“I’ll bring it out to you soon,” you tell her before moving to the glass case, grabbing the food items and frowning again when you find her staring at you from the other side. “Is there something else I can get you?”

“What time do you get off today?” she asks in a rushed fashion.

“What?”

“I mean do you have any plans when your shift is done? I meet people all day long and you’re the first person that I’ve wanted to have a conversation with that lasts longer than a few minutes,” she explains a bit slower.

“I only have an hour left,” you tell her as you slide her food into the oven. “What did you have in mind?”

“Maybe you could show me what fun things I could get into in this area. I’m a bit further away, Lane County, but I’m starting to enjoy it here more.”

“Well there’s a fair happening on the other side of town, if you don’t mind a long bus ride. I’m guessing you don’t since you live in Lane and you somehow ended up here.”

“Oh, I have a car.” She holds up her car keys with a grin and you laugh.

“Well then…” You pause and look over the counter to see that she’s wearing pants today. “I hope you’re not afraid of rollercoasters.”

Aside from the occasional flirting when you have no customers, Wanda waits patiently at the same table as before, standing and joining you the moment you reappear on the other side of the counter without your apron. Her rings are tucked away again, and she dares to brush her knuckles against yours as the two of you leave the bookstore.

“Let me get that for you,” she insists, jogging ahead of you to open the car door and you laugh.

“Is this a date? Should I be nervous right now?” you ask in a joking tone, well aware that you’re genuinely wondering.

“Only if you want it to be.”

You take a deep breath while she crosses to the driver’s side, offering her a casual smile once she’s seated next to you. She denies your request to give her the address, insisting that she’ll be able to follow your directions better instead of admitting that she just wants to hear your voice as much as possible. So you lead her to the expansive fairgrounds on the other side of town, feeling excitement build in your heart the closer you get to your destination.

“This place must hold some memories for you,” Wanda acknowledges your wide grin as she parks.

“No, I just haven’t been in a while,” you admit as you both get out of the car. “Friends are too busy and I try to avoid nighttime bus rides as much as possible.”

“You know, I don’t mind giving you rides at night. I’m well aware that public transportation isn’t the safest form of travel.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that! You live too far.”

“Okay then.” Wanda meets you near the fair entrance and grabs your hand, sliding her fingers between yours. “I won’t give you the chance to ask.”

The two of you are latched onto each other, fingers intertwined the whole night aside from being secured on rides or bathroom trips. You’re walking into the games area, each holding a drink when you suddenly pull Wanda over to a booth.

“Sorry, I just saw that huge giraffe and wanted to try to win it!” you explain as you release her hand to grab a ticket from your pocket. “Can you hold my drink?”

While your back is turned, Wanda sets both drinks on a nearby table and slips her rings onto her hands, returning just in time for you to finish the game. She hands your drink back to you carefully and reaches out to grab the small stuffed toy you’re offered, brushing her fingers against the attendant’s hand as she did so.

“She wants the giraffe,” she threatens, retreating with a pleased smile when he immediately pulls it down for you. “Thank you!”

“How did you do that?!” you question as she hands it to you. “I mean thank you so much, but wow. I’ve never seen anyone give in so easily.”

“I’ve spent most of my life figuring out how to get what I want, love,” she tells you in a low tone, and a shiver travels down your spine when her hand makes contact with your hip. “What do you think about getting out of here?”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” you agree quietly, starting to feel as if every other thought that enters your mind is incoherent. “Where do you want to go?”

“I’m taking you home.”

You assume she followed up on her word because you find yourself outside of your apartment building, and her hand closes around your wrist before you can leave the car.

“I had a lot of fun with you tonight.”

“Me too,” you admit, unable to prevent the smile that appears. “I guess this means you’re interested in more than friendship with me.”

“Is it that obvious?” She chuckles quietly as she raises her free hand to your jaw, watching you silently fall against her palm. “I’d bet you’d be a wonderful partner. My best girl.”

“I’d be so good for you,” you reply without hesitation, beginning to feel fuzzy and warm the longer she holds onto you.

“Yeah?”

Your wrist drops onto the center console as the hand that isn’t resting on your jaw slips under the elastic waistband of your pants and underwear. You gasp when her fingertips begin teasing your entrance, bucking your hips slightly when you feel pressure on your clit.

“Wanda--”

“Shh, it’s okay, darling,” she assures you, slipping her thumb between your parted lips and grinning when they close around her without a fight. “I want to see how good you can be for me.”

She uses her middle finger to stroke slowly over your clit, eyes flickering over to your hips occasionally as they follow her movements. Her thumb slips further into your mouth, and your eyes flutter open when her ring touches your lips and a new sensation follows.

“You’re fine,” she soothes you when you let out a muffled whimper, sighing when she notices a group of people turn the corner at the end of the block and begin heading your way. “Let’s go inside. I don’t need an audience.”

Her fingers are removed from your underwear and in her mouth in seconds, and she practically growls as she cleans the bit of mess you left behind. You hurry out of the car and lead Wanda to your apartment, even in your haze able to remember to get her inside before Ruth sees you. In a few blinks, she’s hovering over you on the bed, and just when you think you can’t handle any more overwhelming sensations, she kisses you.

It’s breathtaking, quite literally you feel air leaving your lungs as if she’s stealing it herself. Your eyes feel like they’re glued shut and the grip she has on your waist is almost painful, but you can’t bring yourself to complain when she’s guiding you to grind on her thigh. Her lips are replaced with two of her fingers as she begins making her way down your body, carefully undressing you with her free hand and biting and kissing the skin she exposes.

“You’re unbearably wet,” she comments from between your legs, dipping her tongue inside you while stroking yours with her fingertips and humming loudly so you’ll arch into her more. “So fucking good.”

Her tongue is replaced with her fingers, and she begins slowly pumping in and out of you while sucking on your clit just to get a reaction. She grabs your hands as they go for her hair and hold them together by the wrists, readjusting so that her thumb can circle your clit when she pulls her head away.

“Being good means not touching unless I tell you to,” she scolds.

“I’m sorry,” you apologize breathlessly through moans as she picks up her pace while adding another finger.

“You’ll have plenty of time to learn. I’ve decided to make you mine.” She continues to finger you as she brings herself back over you, ignoring your gasp when you notice her darkened eyes and pinning your hands above your head. “I can’t wait to make it official.”

Her head dips down and you fall over the edge just as she sucks your earlobe into her mouth, thrusting into you forcefully as she continues you fuck you well past the end of your orgasm while her other hand pushes your pinned wrists into the mattress as hard as she can. You’re just about to cum again when she pulls away entirely, quickly unzipping her pants and freeing a toy she had tucked away.

“That’s really big,” you comment with wide eyes that immediately flutter closed when she pushes the head of the toy inside you. “Fuck.”

“Watch your mouth,” she warns you with a quick slap on your cheek, lowering her hand to hold onto your neck just below your jaw while thrusting into you more. “If it’s so big, why is my pussy swallowing it so easily?”

“Because I want it,” you whine, releasing a loud moan when she slams her hips against yours. “Please please please, I want it.”

“I know you do, love.”

Her other hand pins your wrist against the mattress again as she leans forward and begins fucking into you as hard as she can. She slips her thumb back into your mouth to reduce your screams to muffled whines, grinning to herself when you sink your teeth into her flesh a few times.

“Begging for something you can’t even handle,” she teases, prying your mouth open with her thumb as she lowers her head closer to yours. “Perhaps we should start over.”

She waits until you start to cum and slips her tongue into your waiting mouth, and everything goes dark.

#wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x reader #dark!wanda maximoff x reader #avengers x reader #marvel x reader #frosty's dark!fics #frosty's smut

772 notes · View notes

marvelwritings · 3 years ago

Note

Hi could you write something hc/imagine for Xu Shang-chi where he falls in love with the reader (shield agent) at first sight? Thank you so much!!

A/N: thank you so much for the request, I hope you like it! Let me know what you think!

‘Close you mouth Shang-Chi, you’ll catch flies’, you hear someone hiss as you listen to Wong’s explanation. It’s almost entirely reflective when you turn around to take a look, too curious sometimes for your own good.

You notice immediately what the woman’s voice was referring too, as you see a man blinking in surprise at the eye contact, straightening and pretending to look somewhere else. He’s just a step away from cliche whistling, while the woman next to him rolls her eyes in exasperation. It’s cute, he’s cute, but you’re here to do your job, and that does not include looking at handsome man. It would be fun if it did though.

‘We haven’t gotten any closer to figuring out what the rings are trying to communicate with us- Hey, Y/N, are you listening?’

Snapping out of your reverie, realizing that you were the one staring now, you turn back around to Wong, acting all innocent.

‘Yes Wong, I have been listening to your monologue for the past 20 minutes now. If you want to know what Shield knows, I’ll keep it short; Nothing, they know nothing.

Wong takes a step closer to you, urgency in every word he’s trying to convey. ‘But are you sure? If they do, and they go and investigate this could turn out badly for everyone. ‘

You laugh, once again taking a look at the artifact that Wong has shown you. ‘I only know what this is because you told me, if I didn’t, I would think it was an art piece gone wrong. Shield has no idea this is even happening. Trust me,’ You vehemently enjoin, relaxing your posture once you realize this isn’t going to be another life or dead situation.

Working at shield is stressful at the best of times, but having to relay information about mission to the avengers, under heavy secrecy, on top of the that, is a heavy weight on your shoulders. It’s nice to be to relax for once.

‘Now, are you gonna tell me who the two other people in the room are or am I not allowed to know’, you tease, knowing that Wong would never purposefully forgo any introductions.

Oh, yes of course, Y/N, these are Shang-Chi, and Katie,’ he gestures to them, and almost on cue, the both of them wave at you at the exact same time. The man, Shang-Chi, who had been staring at you as soon as you walked in, goes a little jaw-slacked once more.

‘Hi’, Katie says, shuffling your way. ‘So cool of you to help us. I bet you’ve seen a lot of things on our mission too, crazy world right?’

Her infection personality and cheerful tone make it impossible for you not to smile and chuckle. ‘Yeah it sure is.’

‘So eum’, she asks, wiggling her eyebrows in a way that reveals she’s about to ask something brazen. ‘Where do you live, are you seeing anyone, how long have you been doing this job, also Shang-Chi over there is single.’

‘Katie’, it’s Shang-Shi’s turn to hiss at her, but you can’t help but feel enlivened. The question were a little personal, and as an agent, you would never reveal them, but

‘She doesn’t mean that, I mean she does, I am single but not into you- I mean I am- I totally -It-I.’ he sighs, shaking his head once, then twice in embarrassment. ‘I’m Shang-chi’, He tries again, trying to appear more collected then he really is. You can’t stop the laugh bursting out of you.

‘So I’ve been told’, You explain, referring to both Katie and Wong addressing him by his name.

‘Right,’ he flushes, rocking back and forth on his heels.

‘I’m Y/N,’ you mention out of sympathy, capture by his timid, but stunning smile. ‘You’re bus boy right?’ You inquire, recognizing him from the video. ‘You’re clearly a very good fighter.’ You don’t mention that you had seen the video, and had immediately been interested in the man and his story, and that you curious to find out just who Shang-Chi was.

‘Yeah, that was me. I learned from a young age.’ For a moment his eyes change, and the innocent look he had switches out for something more mature. Someone who has seen the horror’s this world has to offer. You urge to comfort him somehow, but you don’t know how to respond, or what to do.

‘I shot a dragon,’ Katie interjects, smile so wide her teeth or showing.

‘that’s cool,’ you agree, making eye contact with Shang-Chi, the both or you bursting out in laughter.

‘So what are the kind of thing you need to do at Shield, is it just another boring desk job?’

‘No, although sometimes I wish it was. I’m an active shield officer, which pretty much means I get to arrest people.’

‘Do you fight?’ Kate demands, eager to see it in person.

‘Sometimes yeah, want me to show you?’ You glance Shang-Chi’s way, asking him a silent question. ‘Are you up for it?’

‘Oh, well I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ he explains hesitantly, scratching the back of his head with one hand.

You smirk, challenged as you reach out and grab said hand, twisting it around until Shang-Chi has no choice but to bend the way you direct him. You don’t put enough pressure to actually hurt him, but to show him just how good you are, you do pull him forward and flip him, so he falls to the ground on his back. He stares up at you dazzled, eyes twinkling with something you can’t decipher.

Leaning down, you get up close to him and goat. ‘They usually surrender pretty quickly.’

‘He smiles, and again, you struck with an urge to get to know him, to understand the man better.

‘I bet,’ he whispers, seemingly unaware of his quiet his voice has gotten.

You lend him a hand and tug him up, the two of you now standing a mere distance away from each other. Despite your earlier assumption, that you were working and shouldn’t get too interested in Shang-Chi, you can’t come up with a good reason to step back.

‘Have they been doing this the entire time I was gone?’ Wong questions as he reenters the room, his voice merely in the background.

‘Yeah,’ Katie whisper-yells, ’They’re definitely into each other. Want to take bets on how long it’ll take?’

‘Do you-‘, Shang-Chi starts, then huffs and laughs a bit shyly. ‘We always go to Karaoke nights, Are you up for joining us.’

With a smile, you agree. It’s the start of the best part of your life.

#Shang-chi x reader #shangqi x reader #Shang-chi imagines #my writing #marvel imagines #Shang-chi and the legend of the ten rings #Shang-Chi #mcu x reader #marvel #requests

145 notes · View notes

libraryofloveletters · 4 years ago

Text

Love Delivered To Your Doorstep

Evan Buckley x Reader

Warnings: fem!reader, mentions of cheating, break ups and killing/serial killers. (<in a joking context)

Category: fluff for the most part.

Word Count: 3.9k

Author’s Note: Doesn’t follow canon, it has a little of buck begins in there but it doesn't follow a strict timeline. It also is written like Buck moves to LA and has his apartment from the moment he moves there while trying to figure out what he wants to do.

-----

Texting and calling was never your choice method of communication.

Letters had always been more of your thing.

Truthfully, they hadn't been your thing until your boyfriend moved halfway across the country for university. The two of you met in high school, freshman year and became inseparable since. Growing together and promising to always love each other no matter what -you always knew that couldn't be true but it never stopped you from telling him.

When he told you that he was going to be applying to UCLA during your senior year of high school, it came as a bit of a shock to you. The plan was always going to college together, get engaged when you were done school and then married with a house by 30.

You held out the hope of that being possible until the day he showed you his acceptance letter.

You were incredibly proud of him but it was real now, he was leaving.

You watched him pack up his entire life and uproot himself from New York and moved across the country. You sent the first letter to him at what was supposed to be his apartment.

September 30th.

‘Hi baby!

Just writing to see how you're settling in. How’s UCLA ? Have you gotten a chance to go around and get to see the place ? I know you’re there for school but you've got to live a little too. Hope your neighbours are sweet, your mom told me it’s a pretty nice place and it’s got a good view, sounds like your type of place. Hopefully I can come visit you soon.

I started my classes last week. My chem professor is a pain in my ass already, he expects us to read an entire textbook in a week - well not exactly an entire textbook but you get the point. My biology professor is a sweetheart, she showed us pictures of her kids and talked about them for an hour, I didn't realize being a mother was so interesting but she was cool. Also showed us a video of an appendectomy that one of her colleagues performed last week. How are your classes and professors ?

Did I mention I bumped into Sam at the grocery store ? Yeah, he’s back and he’s not fine to tell you the truth. He seemed like he was ready to snap but that might just be my judgment. He said to tell you hello if I spoke to you so- hello :)

I’m going to sign off here, I know this one is short but I don’t have much to update you on. Life’s been pretty dull without you. Hope you’re having fun out there, soaking up the sun for me.

Write me back soon, I love you.

Yours always, y/n’

You mailed the letter the next day, a few weeks had passed before you received a letter back. Except this letter had a different sender name but the same address.

October 22nd.

‘Hi y/n,

This isn't your boyfriend. (I'm assuming that’s who you're writing too based on the context of the letter) I’m Evan, I live in the apartment you thought belonged to your boyfriend or maybe you got the address wrong, I’m not sure. I know you were waiting for an update on all these exciting things that are happening at UCLA. I do not go to UCLA nor can I update you in anything exciting that’s happening there, sorry.

Anyways, the reason I'm writing you back is because I figured you’d want to know that this isn't the correct address and the person you were looking for isn't here before you send another letter and get no response. I was debating if I should have even written you back, but here I am, writing you back.

Your professor for chem seems like an ass to be honest (hope that’s not rude) and your biology professor sounds great, is she hot by the way ? because bonus points for that. Anyways, are you studying medicine ? I'm guessing yes because of the classes you're taking. I'm thinking of signing up to become a first responder but I haven’t decided yet on what yet or if I'm actually going to do it. Anyways, good luck on your classes and the shitty chem professor.

Hope you find your boyfriend (again, assuming)

Peace out,

Evan.’

To say you were shocked would be an understatement. How could the letter you sent to your boyfriend’s apartment belong to someone else ? Why was there someone else living in his apartment ? You dug through your apartment, searching for the paper he left you with the address, you finally found it buried in a drawer.

The address on the paper was identical to the one that Evan sent to you and to the one you sent prior to that. Either your boyfriend was lying or you were losing your mind.

November 4th.

‘Dear Evan,

I'm sorry that I sent the first letter to you and as you guessed, I was looking for my boyfriend who seems to be a bit MIA right now. His mother says that’s the right address and the place that she helped him move into. So I'm not really sure what’s happening there. Anyways, sorry for unloading all of that on you.

To answer your question, yes, I am studying medicine and no, she isn't hot. My bio professor is a 65 year old woman who loves her college aged kids very much. If that’s your definition of hot, then yes - she's got milf status

Have you decided yet if you’re going to sign up to be a first responder ? That’d be pretty cool. Imagine all the girls swoon over you and how many girls you’d pick up just for being a paramedic or a firefighter.

Wait, are you into girls ? Or guys ? You know, whoever you're into, just imagine how many of them you’d pick up.

Also, you’re not a murderer or anything right ? because I rather not answer questions when the police come asking about why I've been sending letters to a serial killer.

Anyways, signing off for now.

Yours always, y/n.

ps. if you do end up bumping into or meeting a guy that looks like my boyfriend, (tall, brown hair, brown eyes. he’s got a pierced ear and a little butterfly tattoo by his collarbone- though not sure why or how you'd see his collarbone) let me know or tell him that his girlfriend is looking for him.

Double ps, what size shirt do you wear ?’

Buck laughed at your absurd question. A person he didn’t even know was asking what size shirt he wore. The letter was set on the coffee table with the rest of the mail, getting buried under all of the stuff he had on there. It was almost the end of December when he realized that he hadn't written you back yet.

December 21st.

‘Hey y/n,

Sorry I've taken so long to get back to you. Things have been hectic over here. I’ve been doing some ‘soul-searching’ - I guess you could call it that and honestly, I don’t think if this whole first responders thing is for me.

I tried out bartending or well, the technical term is mixologist and I’m liking it so far, I think i’m going to stick with it for now.

How have you been ? How’s school ? Surely, you’re on break for the holidays right about now or at least when you get this letter. I hope that you're spending the break doing something fun.

I’m not going to make this very long, I’m sure you’ve been busy with whatever you’re doing right now.

Also, I’ve been meaning to ask. Have you located the mysteriously disappearing boyfriend yet ? I haven't seen anyone that fit your description.

well, that’s not true- I did and just to be sure I asked to see his collarbone, he looked at me like I was a mad man so I guess it wasn't him ?

Anyways, I hope you have a good holiday and you're probably gonna get this sometime between holidays, so merry belated (?) Christmas and happy New Years y/n.

Peace out,

Evan.

ps. medium or large, depending on what it is. Hopefully that answers your question weirdo.’

January 13th.

The morning of the 13th, he went down to check his mail. A box was there with his name on it, the return address was one he had only seen on an envelope. The box returned upstairs with him, setting it on the counter before opening it.

Upon opening it, there was a letter and some colourful tissue paper with what seemed like a sweater under it. He opened the letter first.

‘Dear Evan,

Happy New Years! How was your holiday going ? Did you do anything fun ?

I’ve been good and school is good too, I'm almost done my first year, isn't that crazy ? Just a few more months to go.

How’s your job as mr. mixologist going ? I'm sure you’ve met some wild people and heard some interesting stories.

As for the boyfriend situation, that's over. I’m not surprised to tell you the truth but it still kinda sucks. Anyways, so what happened was that his older brother had come home from college last year and brought a friend with him. She went to the same school as his brother but transferred to UCLA- anyways long story short, they hooked up while he and I were still together and he moved in with her after his mom helped him move into the apartment I thought he had.

But! I’m single and chilling now so it’s all good. (bonus, she cheated on him and left him so yeah)

I got you a little something for Christmas and as a “sorry for unloading all my boyfriend drama on you” present. I was in the gift shop and it made me think of you. Do you celebrate Christmas? I forgot to check oops. If you don't, count it as a just a “sorry for unloading all my boyfriend drama on you” present?

I got a large because I wasn't sure if it would fit. I hope you like it. That’s all for now.

Yours always, y/n.’

He unwrapped the tissue paper to see a blue sweater with the letters NYU on it. He smiled, he assumed that’s where you went. It was sweet that you took the time to get him something, even if it was a by the way thing. Not a lot of people would send something to a person they had been talking to via letters and halfway across the country.

February 12th.

2 days before Valentine's Day, your least favourite holiday of the year. You weren't looking forward to watching all your friends going on with their boyfriends and girlfriends. The mail had arrived while you were out, you picked it up and headed in. There were two envelopes with your name on it, a plain white one and a red one. The red envelope was more squared than rectangular, you assumed it was a card- both had the same sender name.

‘Hey y/n!

Thank you for the sweater, it was nice of you to think of me and get me something. I didn’t know we were doing gifts or I would have sent you something as well and yes, I do celebrate Christmas.

My job as ‘mr. mixologist’ was going well until I quit. It just didn’t feel like the right fit for me you know ? I'm going to see what else is out there for me.

Sorry to hear about your boyfriend, he seems like a douche. Who would cheat on you ? You seem great I mean at least you are on paper (did you get my joke, it’s hard to tell)

Also, remember how I was thinking I might actually give that first responder thing a try? Imagine me as a firefighter, that’s pretty cool right ?

So I kinda did a thing and signed up and then I got in. I started two weeks ago and it was kicking my ass at first but I've gotten a hang of it and things are going pretty well. There's three other Evans in my class so everyone calls me Buck-I kind of like it.

The other envelope, hopefully you opened this one first, is a little something for you for valentines. Hope you like it.

Peace out,

Buck’

The red envelope was on your lap, you pulled the edges carefully not wanting to rip it. Inside was a plain white card with bright red letters that made you laugh. The cover read ‘I’m not sick of you yet!” Opening the card, a $20 fell onto your lap. There was a little message inside that went along with the cash.

‘Since we aren't together and can’t spend valentines together, there’s some cash to get yourself a box of chocolates and a teddy bear. Happy Valentines Day y/n

Love, Buck.’

You smile, this was the first time that Buck had signed with ‘love, buck’ it had always been ‘peace out, buck.’ You tucked the card into the drawer, one you didn’t use very often so you knew it’d be safe there.

*4 years later*

A few weeks had passed since Buck had last heard from y/n. His last letter to her was at the end of June, telling her all about the day he had spent at Hen and Karen’s. He always described every little detail so vividly that it made her feel like she was there with him- but it was now July, end of actually and moving into August.

4 years had blown like nothing.

It felt like just yesterday he got the first letter in the mail. 4 years and they still had no idea what each other looked like but they knew every intricate and intimate detail about each other, their lives and the people in it.

Y/n and Buck had grown rather close over the last few months- more than they already were. Y/n just went through a pretty shitty break up and Buck wasn't exactly big on relationships as of right now.

He had just gotten home from work, his keys set on the counter when he realized that he forgot to check his mail. Stepping back out, there was a woman in the hallway and boxes scattered across her, leading into the apartment down the hall.

She must be his new neighbour.

He wanted to go over and introduce himself but she was busy telling the movers where to set her couch so he decided that he would check the mail and then introduce himself when he returned so he did just that.

Except, she was still busy.

She leaned against the wall, watching the movers move what looked like a coffee table. She glanced up to see Buck walking by, she smiled and he returned the smile.

Buck reaches his apartment, the mail in hand and steps in. He sorts through the pile, bills, ads, coupons and no letter from y/n.

---

Your new apartment was a mess. You decided it was time for a change. You applied to a few hospitals after your break up and the one in LA hired you. So you dropped everything and moved- no family, no ties.

A fresh start.

It was a nice neighbourhood and the building was quiet. The neighbours you met were pleasant and welcoming. When you were having the furniture moved in, there was a blonde man who smiled at you and you assumed he lived in the unit down the hall because that’s where he stepped into.

It was almost 11pm when you finally sat down. You had been on your feet all day and just wanted to eat something. The box with the dishes was beside the couch, you pulled the tape off and opened it. There was an envelope sitting on top of the stack of plates.

Buck’s last letter to you.

You must have tossed it into the boxes while packing and you forgot to write him back. Tumbling through the boxes, you find a sheet of paper and a pen from your bag. Sitting on the floor, the paper resting on an unopened box, you begin writing.

‘Dear Buck,

I’m sorry I've taken so long to get back to you. I quit my job, and uprooted my entire life. The break up sucked major ass as you know, so I decided it was time for a change.

Guess where I decided to go ?

Did you guess yet?

No, not Canada, why would you guess Canada ?

LA!

Yeah, isn't that crazy that I ended up here of all places? Maybe we could get together one day (if you haven’t turned into a crazy serial killer that is.)

Anyways, that’s why I've taken so long to write. I was packing when I got your letter and I tossed it in a box and just found it again. Anyways, I hope you’ve been good, how have things been at the station ?

I promise I'll write again with more details soon, I just have to get settled in first.

Yours always, y/n.’

Folding the paper, you slipped into an envelope. The address being scribbled into the back of the envelope. You were about to seal it when the building number caught your eye.

It was the same number as the place you moved into. The same address, the building number, the same floor.

The unit number was the only difference.

There was no way you moved into the building that Buck lived in.

You knew the address felt familiar when you saw the listing but you didn’t think anything of it nor did it occur to you that you knew the address.

Stepping out of your apartment, looking at the number on the room and back down at the envelope in your hand. Buck’s apartment was down the hall.

Part of you just wanted to mail it and keep things as it was but another part of you wanted to meet him, to see what he was really like in person. So there you were walking down the hallway at a quarter past 11 in the dead of the night to meet a man you had been sending letters to for the last 4 years.

The end of the hallway, you stared at the black wooden door in front of you. Your brain weighing the options right now: he’s a sweetheart and welcoming and makes you feel comfortable or he’s a weird guy who’s been lying to you this whole time and you told him everything about you and now he’s going to kill you.

Before you could register what you were doing, you knocked on the door.

Glancing down at yourself, you were wearing a pair of old shorts and a t-shirt from high school that you found in a drawer while packing. Not an ideal outfit, maybe he’s sleeping and you can go home and change- the door opened, a man wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt stood there. He looked like he had just woken up.

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

“It's alright,” he yawned, his hand covering his mouth as he blinked away a few tears. “What can I do for you ?” he leaned against the door.

“Um, this is an odd question-” you shifted, glancing down at the envelope in your hand. “Are you Buck ?”

“I am, who are you ?”

“Y/n.”

You had never seen a man wake up that fast, he seemed surprised, confused and concerned all in one. “How- uh, are you- What ?” he mumbled.

“I found your letter in the box after I moved, I moved into the apartment down the hall” you point to your left, Buck sticks his head out of the doorway and looks at the door you were pointing to. You were the woman in the hallway that he saw earlier, he knew you looked familiar.

“I just wrote your letter and I noticed that the addresses were the same, just a different unit number so I decided to come check. Sorry if I bothered you, we can talk another day- it’s late and you probably have work” “Would you like to come in?” he opens the door a bit more, looking to you for an answer.

“Um, okay sure.” stepping in, you can’t help but glance around. The apartment was similar to yours, the layout was a bit different though. “Can I get you something to drink ? Coffee, water ? A beer ?” he rounded the kitchen counter, you took a seat on one of the chairs by the counter.

“Water’s fine, thanks”

He reached for a bottle from the fridge, sliding it over to you. You gave him a smile, he leaned against the counter and was now looking- studying you.

“I know we’ve talked to each other for 4 years but this is kinda strange” you chuckled awkwardly, Buck can't help but smile.

“Yeah, it is, isn't it? but can I ask why you moved to LA?”

“Well all of that was in the letter” you slide the envelope across the counter and he picks it up, opening it. Giving him a few moments to read, you watch his expression like you were hoping for some insight as to how he was feeling or what he was thinking. He let out a laugh, “how’d you know I'd guess Canada ?” you smiled at him, a small wave of relief washing over you for some reason. “Lucky guess I suppose”

“Do you-” “What are-” the sentences cutting each other off, the two of you awkwardly smiling at each other. “You first” looking at him, he hums.

“Do you have work tomorrow or are you busy ?” His eyes meet yours, you found yourself leaning forwards towards the counter- towards him. He made you feel comfortable, you’d go as far as to say safe, in a way you’ve never felt before.

“No, I don't start until the 21st. Why ?”

“I was thinking - if you're not busy and if you want to, of course. Maybe I could take you out for breakfast and I could show you around ? Or lunch or dinner ? Whatever works for you actually” he rambles, fiddling with his fingers to avoid eye contact.

A small laugh slips past your lips causing him to look up, his brows furrowed as he studies your face, looking for an answer.

“Breakfast sounds good, what time should I be ready for ?”

“Uh, is 10 okay ?” he asks, you nod. “I’ll be ready for 10 then.”

“Okay, I'll pick you up” he smiles.

“Buck, we live in the same building.”

“Oh right,” he chuckles, “well I'll be by yours at 10 then” the two of you smiling at each other.

“Okay.”

----

taglist: @advicefromnixxxx @dralexreid @keenmarvellover @beth-winchester21 @fernandaweasley2 @yikesyikesyikes95 @hotchsdarling @duhbar1975 @hailsstormthings @averyhotchner @captainxholmes @venusrosepetal @luke-alvez @looney-literature @caitsymichelle13 @artemishunter18 @anxiousblanketqueen

789 notes · View notes

tyrannuspitch · 4 years ago

Text

Jumping off @kidrat ’s recent post on JKR, British transphobia, and transphobia against transmasculine people, after getting a bit carried away and too long to add as a comment:

A major, relatively undiscussed event in JKR’s descent into full terfery was this tweet:

[image id: a screenshot of a tweet from JK Rowling reading: “’People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Rowling attaches a link to an article titled: “Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate” /end id]

This can seem like a pretty mundane TERF talking point, just quibbling over language for the sake of it, but I think it’s worth discussing, especially in combination with the idea that cis women like JKR see transmasculine transition as a threat to their womanhood. (Recite it with horror: ”If I were young now, I might’ve transitioned...”)

A lot of people, pro- or anti-transphobe, will make this discussion about whether the term “woman” should include trans women or not, and how cis women are hostile to the inclusion of trans women. And that’s absolutely true. But the actual language cis women target is very frequently being changed for the benefit of trans men, not trans women, and most of them know this.

Cis people are used to having their identities constantly reaffirmed and grounded in their bodies. A lot of cis women, specifically, understand their social and physical identities as women as being defined by pain: misogynistic oppression is equated to the pains of menstruation or childbirth, and both are seen as the domain of cis women. They’re something cis women can bond over and build a “sisterhood” around, and the more socially aware among them can recognise that cis women’s pain being taken less seriously by medicine is not unrelated to their oppression. However, in the absence of any trans perspectives, these conversations can also easily become very territorial and very bioessentialist.

Therefore... for many cis women, seeing “female bodies” described in gender neutral language feels like stripping their pain of its meaning, and they can become very defensive and angry.

And the consequences for transmasculine people can be extremely dangerous.

Not only do transmasculine people have an equal right to cis women to define our bodies as our own... Using inclusive language in healthcare is about more than just emotional validation.

The status quo in healthcare is already non-inclusive. When seeking medical help, trans people can expect to be misgendered and to have to explain how our bodies work to the doctors. We risk harassment, pressure to detransition, pressure to sterilise ourselves, or just being outright turned away. And the conversation around pregnancy and abortion in particular is heaving with cisnormativity - both feminist and anti-feminist cis women constantly talk about pregnancy as a quintessentially female experience which men could never understand.

Using gender-neutral language is the most basic step possible to try and make transmasculine people safer in healthcare, by removing the idea that these are “women’s spaces”, that men needing these services is impossible, and that safety depends on ideas like “we’re all women here”. Not institutionally subjecting us to misgendering and removing the excuse to outright deny us treatment is, again, one of the most basic steps that can be taken. It doesn’t mean we’re allowed comfort, dignity or full autonomy, just that one major threat is being addressed. The backlash against this from cis women is defending their poorly developed senses of self... at the cost of most basic dignity and safety for transmasculine people.

Ironically, though transphobic cis women feel like decoupling “women’s experiences” from womanhood is decoupling them from gendered oppression, transmasculine people experience even more marginalisation than cis women. Our rates of suicide and assault are even higher. Our health is even less researched than cis women’s. Our bodies are even more strictly controlled. Cis women wanting to define our bodies on their terms is a significant part of that. They hold the things we need hostage as “women’s rights”, “women’s health”, “women’s discussions” and “support for violence against women”, and demand we (re-)closet ourselves or lose all of their solidarity.

Fundamentally, the problem is that transphobic cis women are possessive over their experiences and anyone who shares them. Because of their binary understanding of gender, they’re uncomfortable with another group sharing many of their experiences but defining themselves differently. They’re uncomfortable with transmasculine people identifying “with the enemy” instead of “with their sisters”, and they’re even more uncomfortable with the idea that there are men in the world who they oppress, and not the other way around. “Oppression is for women; you can’t call yourself a man and still claim women’s experiences. Pregnancy is for women; if you want to be a man so badly why haven’t already you done something about having a woman’s body? How dare you abandon the sisterhood while inhabiting one of our bodies?”

Which brings me back to the TERF line about how “If I were young now, I might have transitioned.”

I’m not saying Rowling doesn’t actually feel any personal connection to that narrative - but it is a standard line, and it’s standard for a reason. Transphobic cis women really believe that there is nothing trans men go through that cis women don’t. They equate our dysphoria to internalised misogyny, eating disorders, sexual abuse or other things they see as “female trauma”. They equate our desire to transition to a desire to escape. They want to “help us accept ourselves” and “save us” from threats to their sense of identity. The fact is, this is all projection. They refuse to consider that we really have a different internal experience from them.

There’s also a marked tendency among less overtly transphobic cis women, even self-proclaimed trans allies, to make transphobia towards trans men about cis women.

Violence against trans men is chronically misreported and redefined as “violence against women”. In activist spaces, we’re frequently told that any trauma we have with misogyny is “misdirected” and therefore “not really about us”. If we were women, we would’ve been “experiencing misogyny”, but men can’t do that, so we should shut up and stop “talking over women”. (Despite the surface difference of whether they claim to affirm our gender, this is extremely similar to how TERFs tell us that everything we experience is “just misogyny”, but that transmasculine identity is a delusion that strips us of the ability to understand gender or the right to talk about it.)

I have personally witnessed an actual N*zi writing an article about how trans men are “destroying the white race” by transitioning and therefore becoming unfit to carry children, and because the N*zi had misgendered trans men in his article, every response I saw to it was about “men controlling women’s bodies”.

All a transphobe has to do is misgender us, and the conversation about our own oppression is once again about someone else.

Transphobes will misgender us as a form of violence, and cis feminist “allies” will perpetuate our misgendering for rhetorical convenience. Yes, there is room to analyse how trans men are treated by people who see us as women - but applying a simple “men oppressing women” dynamic that erases our maleness while refusing to even name transphobia or cissexism is not that. Trans men’s oppression is not identical to cis women’s, and forcing us to articulate it in ways that would include cis women in it means we cannot discuss the differences.

It may seem like I’ve strayed a long way from the original topic, and I kind of have, but the central reason for all of these things is the same:

Trans men challenge cis women’s self-concept. We force them to actually consider what manhood and womanhood are and to re-analyse their relationship to oppression, beyond a simple binary patriarchy.

TERFs will tell you themselves that the acknowledgement of trans people, including trans men, is an “existential threat” that is “erasing womanhood” - not just our own, but cis women’s too. They hate the idea that biology doesn’t determine gender, and that gender does not have a strict binary relationship to oppression. They’re resentful of the idea that they could just “become men”, threatened by the assertion that doing so is not an escape, and completely indignant at the idea that their cis womanhood could give them any kind of power. They are, fundamentally, desperate not to have to face the questions we force them to consider, so they erase us, deflect from us, and talk over us at every opportunity.

Trans men are constantly redefined against our wills for the benefit of cis womanhood.

TL;DR:

Cis women find transmasculine identity threatening, because we share experiences that they see as foundational to their womanhood

The fact that transphobes target inclusive language in healthcare specifically is not a mistake - They do not want us to be able to transition safely

Cis women are uncomfortable acknowledging transphobia, so they make discussion of trans men’s oppression about “womanhood” instead

This can manifest as fully denying that trans men experience our own oppression, or as pretending trans men’s experiences are identical to cis women’s in every way

#transphobia #transmasculinity #transandrophobia #this could maybe do with one more proofread but i've spent way too long on this so whatever!

782 notes · View notes

folksy · 2 years ago

Note

🔥i don’t go here but give me an unpopular buffy opinion please >:)))

SAT THIS IS SO FUNNY. like yeah talk about buffy kir you’re the buffy bitch on my dashboard ! well I feel I just spout my unpopular buffy opinions (especially regarding angel and spike) pretty regularly unprompted. trying to think of something that I haven’t addressed. especially something angel related as that’s my brand 😭

okay so there’s been some talk I’ve seen on here that says that buffy and spike’s relationship together is queer or lesbian coded. however I really either disagree or think that buffy having a relationship with ANY vampire is inherently queer by their standards. basically spike before he was human was a lovelorn poet during the victorian england era who only had his mother as a female figure in his life who accepted him. as a vampire, he was in love with his sire drusilla, who he was with for over a century before they broke up in the show. the introduction of spike and drusilla as this loving vampiric couple who retained some sense of humanity breaks the previously established vampire lore of the show of them as these despicable creatures. I believe this romantic notion spike has always had and his relationship with drusilla is what causes a lot of people to say that his later relationship with buffy is queercoded as spike is presented as a rebel type of figure but is still sentimental. he and buffy’s relationship comes out of him being obsessed with her and she is depressed and feels alienated from those around her. thus she partakes in aggressive sex with spike that she keeps a secret and feels ashamed of, it could be categorized as a form of self harm for her to be able to feel something by having a relationship with someone she shouldn’t and he is able to match her sexual prowess (it has been established that some human men in the show have had sex with buffy and are impressed by her due to the increased strength and stamina she has- she inherently has more power when she has sex with humans due to her slayer abilities) and is part of her world.

HOWEVER. angel is a character who is constantly called feminine both derogatorily and complimentarily (both tend to happen regarding him being presented as fashion savvy) and multiple times characters assume he’s gay. in fact spike himself regularly calls angel a “ponce” or “poof” which are literally akin to saying faggot. angel in contrast to spike, represses his vampirism and feels not quite human but not quite demon/vampire due to being an ensouled vampire (which spike is a soulless vampire in the aforementioned relationship he had with buffy but he later gets a soul as a means of redemption after he sexually assaults her which actually repairs their relationship). sure angel’s existence and arc are allegorical of addiction, but there are very much aspects of angel that COULD be interpreted through a gay lens. so I’m like. if you’re going to say that about spike and buffy it’s also applicable to angel and buffy but they want to gloss over it due to how sappy their romance is and they don’t like angel (or they do but not buffy and angel as a couple). angel and buffy are presented as thee forbidden romance as he is a vampire and she’s a vampire slayer. this dynamic is further complicated due to angel’s curse of whenever he has a moment of true happiness, he loses his soul as his existence is meant to be suffering for his past (he’s cursed with a soul after killing a romani girl). buffy and angel are these two individuals unlike anyone else in the world and are drawn together because of it and try to seek “normalcy” within each other but they will never get normalcy. they aren’t “normal” and will never be “normal” no matter how much they try. in fact, there’s an episode of angel where he gets turned human after fighting a demon but he gets it and the day reversed (which he spends with buffy eating and having sex and being domestic, doing what they could not otherwise do) as it stunts both of their development and purposes in the world (fighting evil, and it was said that buffy would die younger in this timeline with human angel). he does lose his soul after he and buffy have sex and they are sleeping in bed together, content and at ease with each other and the world. he does get his soul back but this event affects his relationship with buffy and his future relationships. he’s afraid of intimacy and getting close to others due to his past and current struggles, along with the possibility he could lose himself again. both buffy and angel’s shows attribute sex to what could cause angel to lose his soul, but it’s important to note that he did not lose his soul after cumming or during the act of sex itself. it was afterwards where they were cuddled together asleep and he suddenly wakes up, feeling something is off. yet he and other characters attribute sex=angel goes evil. he has multiple failed relationships because of different factors, like what I described with buffy, a relationship with an old flame that’s pretty similar to the dynamic of buffy and spike, external factors influencing the show because of misogyny towards one of the main actresses that practically dissolves the relationship that the show was setting up between them. later in his show he is able to have sex without losing his soul as he comes to realize through the help of a friend and acquaintance that true happiness in a relationship is extremely rare. seeing angel’s curse and his fear of intimacy through a gay lens seems interesting to me!

this got soooo long. YOU ASKED FOR IT SAT!!! admittedly, I haven’t delved too much into the queercoded argument of spike and buffy but I feel this is the gist or at least how I interpret it lol

#ask

9 notes · View notes

juneisafantasyaddict · 4 years ago

Text

If LB wanted The Darkling to be pure evil, there are literally a lot of things she could have done. But giving him a sympathetic backstory that is actually a legitimate reason for him to turn out the way he did was definitely not the way to do it. If she wanted pure evil, she could’ve given him a backstory that’s just a ridiculous sob story, not “for hundreds of years my people have been hunted and killed because of prejudice and no one did anything about it until I had enough power to.” Do you even realize how easy it is to get people to be on your side when what you want more than anything is for your people to be safe from harm?? That’s literally why we don’t get mad at heroes for killing people, it’s because we know they are protecting vulnerable people.

I’ve seen people say The Darkling is like Magneto (re: his fight against what was happening to mutants), and while that comes close, I think The Darkling is even more sympathetic because at least the XMen had the good sense to have Charles Xavier there to provide a more humane/viable alternative to Magneto’s solutions, and we got to see the difference between their methods. But, in the Grishaverse, we have a monarchy in Ravka that only sees the Grisha as useful for war but also doesn’t let them own property, we have a heroine who doesn’t seem to care about anything except meadows and her childhood crush, we have the entire country of Ravka that seems to only like dead Grisha because “new saint to build a cult over,” then we have the only person who seems to prioritize the protection of these people who have no one and we’re supposed to care that he’s ruthless with anyone he perceives as a threat to his people? When you haven’t given us a viable alternative to his methods? To make matters even worse, he’s not even imagining these threats, he is literally reacting to their aggression, e.g Fjerdans come for Alina, he uses the cut, Zlatan sends an assassin to infiltrate his secure building and kill Alina, but ends up killing another Grisha under his care, he kills the assassin and does Novikribirsk, etc.

This is not a justification of his ruthless methods of punishment for those who are threats to him and his people, this is a “you cannot expect me to focus entirely on his methods when he’s literally the only reason why his people have any semblance of protection” rant. The heroine who we think is going to save the day is basically dragged through her character development and all her progress is destroyed very quickly because of this ridiculous need to pretend that the underdog is always right (Mal, power is evil, blah blah blah).

Somehow, we’re supposed to just be ok with the fact that a group of people who haven’t exactly showed that they care about Grisha suffering are going to save them from prosecution? I mean, let’s not forget that this group includes: Mal who we already know is prejudiced against Grisha, Alina who *sigh* so much potential wasted there, Nikolai who I have decided exists for comic relief because I will not be convinced that a “maybe prince who is also a Jack sparrow type pirate should be king of a country with very complex social and political situations.” Like, I’m looking at this group of supposed saviors and honestly, I would rather take my chances with the 500 year old extremely powerful Grisha who scares everyone. Let’s not even forget that we’re somehow supposed to consider Baghra one of the good guys for “warning Alina,” even though 2 episodes later, we basically see that Baghra doesn’t exactly care about the survival of the Grisha.

Give people a truly evil villain and we will act accordingly. Don’t give us a Magneto type villain with legitimate points and then expect us to treat him like Voldermot or something. You can even decide to not understand Magneto because hello, we are given real alternatives to his problem solving skills right away. But with The Darkling it’s just “he’s pure evil because I said so, but like also this is how he got here, but also he’s super evil, but like do you understand where he’s coming from? but also he’s super evil even though he has points.” That’s not a villain dear, that’s a good person doing bad things and needs to be shown a better way.

You can’t give me an antagonist with a compelling, truly tragic backstory and then be like “now that you understand why and how this character ended up in this dark place and you can see that all this was probably avoidable if so and so did/didn’t happen, let’s totally blow up their life because so what if they’ve deeply suffered?” Especially when there’s a path to redemption right there in the protagonist who you have made sure to establish has a deep bond/connection with this person.

You want to write pure evil? Give me a character that has no remorse, no capacity to care for anyone or anything else, no reason for his cruelty, etc. Don’t give me guy who uses his power to keep his people safe and then falls in love with his soulmate so deeply he can’t stop looking at her and holding her hand in front of the whole country.

Also, can we like actually address the issue that got Nina kidnapped, made the Darkling who he is, and forces all Grisha to basically only have one life plan?

It would be so much easier to believe that The Darkling is a villain if there was an actual alternative to him, but there isn’t.

And btw, in this age of social justice, the fact that LB didn’t think people will see the value in a person from a marginalized community doing whatever is necessary to free his people from oppression is just LOL.

Ok, incoherent rant over.

#aleksander morovoza #darklina #alarking #alina starkov #the black heretic #the darkling stole my heart by being a compelling anti hero #Aleksander Morozova is an anti hero #shadow and bone netflix #grishaverse #shadow and bone #the darkling #rant post

253 notes · View notes