#like how all those studies show that men think women talk an equal amount in meetings

[lookingforcactus]

My opinion on Brandon Sanderson was formed when I was reading Mistborn back when I was in college

I was happy about the potential of having a really prolific, established, mostly well-regarded new SFF author to read! Cautiously happy, because SFF Has Burned Me Before, but hopeful

I liked the beginning of Mistborn! I really did. I liked the protagonist a lot, and went ahead and dug in

here's the thing though: my first loyalty is almost always to female characters, esp in SFF, because way too much SFF (especially older SFF) has treated female characters so poorly

And as I kept reading Mistborn, I started noticing that...there weren't really any female characters besides the protagonist

And I kept going, "Well, maybe in the next group of characters that get introduced!"

And that kept just...not happening

Eventually, maybe half to two thirds of the way through the book, a second female character was introduced! Nice! Finally!

She ended up, iirc, being a maid or a servant with a bit part at one of the locations (a noble house), and was then never mentioned again

And look, it's been a while since I read Mistborn, and I wasn't inclined (though I was tempted) to go through the whole book to double check, so I can't swear by this

But iirc? That servant and/or maid was the only other named female character in the entire 600+ page book

So, yeah, that's right about when I lost interest in what Brandon Sanderson had to say

[seancekitsch]

Die with your Boots on: Part 3, a Vampire!Eddie Munson x Reader

part one, part two here

warnings: vampire shit, cursing, possessive eddie, steve is fed up with couples arguing, surprisingly sweet smut, maybe angst, insecurities, maybe sinister implications

Things fall into a pattern in the Harrington household. Steve goes to work, you go on job interviews (refusing to apply to Family Video and frustrating Steve to no end), and Eddie mostly just manages. He eats about three times a week, and doesn’t have to sleep during the day, but he does have to stay away from the windows.

Tonight you come bounding into the house, an excited look on your face. It’s something Steve and Eddie were getting used to seeing again. It’s clear you’ve interrupted some conversation between the two men, but Eddie greets you with a tight hug and a kiss to the forehead.

“What's got my lady so happy tonight?” Eddie asks, leading you to the kitchen island where he and Steve were.

“I got a job!” you announce to the both of them, not holding back your voice and nearly shouting.

“That's great!” Steve praises, “Where?”

“At a bar right outside of Marion! Like, thirty minutes from here?”

“Yeah, I know that area,” Eddie says, not exactly sounding like he wants to celebrate anymore.

“What's wrong, Eds?”

He sighs deeply, really wanting to be excited for you, but he knows you and you’ll fight him on this. He knows exactly the type of place youre talking about, dark and dirty, everything in the bar wet for some reason. Married truckers and cops and washed up scuzzballs that rough up the cute young bartenders or follow them out to their car when clearly all they want to do is go home and study for their college courses.

“I wanna be able to come check up on you okay? If you work night shifts, I’ll be there.”

You nod slowly, the smile dropping from your face. Steve excuses himself, something about not wanting to hear a couple fighting even when his parents are absent.

“Do you not trust me?” you ask, already leaning away from him and crossing your arms. He already knows it’ll be a scuffle when you get like this, stubborn to a fault. He loves it an equal amount to how much he absolutely hates it, especially because Eddie always lets you get your way.

“I do, Babe,’ he sighs, “I’ve done shows in little bars near Marion. I don’t wanna see those guys that hang out be gross with you.”

You narrow your eyes at him.

“I think I can handle myself just fine. I don’t need you to eat anyone who gives me a big tip.”

It’s his turn to scoff and get mad.

“What, you think I’m jealous of some slobs who don’t treat women right?”

“I think you might be a little possessive! Don’t you remember high school?”

“All six years of it?” he snarks back, putting his hands on his hips.

“I never got to go to prom because you scared off everyone that asked! I totally believe you would scare off big tippers. We need the money, Eds.”

Eddie only scoffs, muttering something about you having a better time prom night somewhere else.

He runs his tongue over one of his fangs, new and sharp. You sigh and shake your head at him. He’s impossible.

“Might do more than scare,” he says nonchalantly.

“You’re gonna fuckin eat my customers?” You ask, trying to sound angry but your gaze softens and the laugh in your tone is apparent. He won this round.

“Yeah maybe,” he replies cooly.

“If they touch you,” he adds, his eyes raking up and down your body.

You try hard to suppress the shiver going down your spine, but with Eddie’s heightened senses, you can’t get anything past him.

“Oh, did you like that?” he asks, tone immediately changes, and he steps forward, invading your space. You step back until the small of your back hits the stone counter of the kitchen.

“N-no?” you stutter, and his arms come around either side of you to lean against the counter, trapping you between him and it.

“I think you’re lying, Darling. I can smell it on you. I can hear your heart racing,” He dips his head low, whispering in your ear as he presses further against you. For either dramatics or his own selfishness, he inhales deeply as he pushes his face into the crook of your neck

“Maybe I like my guys possessive,” you admit smiling bashfully and turning your head away from him, but that’s not even half of it.

You like Eddie possessive; you like Eddie being so possessive he’d fight (or worse) for you. You liked that even when Eddie was just a friend in high school he was like your attack dog ready to get anyone who looked at you wrong. You just wished that when he scared away your prom date he would have taken you to somewhere a bit more intimate than Reefer Rick’s house and done something a little more with you than just smoked you out and set off fireworks high with you. 

 You can’t even hide the fact that him being some kind of vampire or something is fucking hot to you. His strength, the ease in which he can just carry you both onto the roof to watch the stars and do anything he wants. He has you a blushing mess, even in front of others, when he can throw you over his shoulder like you’re featherlight, when something as simple as your pulse can have him hard as a rock. He’s all over you, and you have a feeling it’s more than just the fact that he can finally say ‘I love you’ behind that.

And it's not like you haven't tried to be… intimate. The two of you try to get down to it, the most recent time he actually had your shirt off and had you writhing beneath him before he had to pull back. It's hard for him, he explained to you, because if he hasn't fed recently the urge can be for him to devour you instead of to ravish you. You notice the way his eyes glaze over and his brow furrows in frustration right before he pulls away from you, ripping himself from your grasp as if he’d been burned. You know it's not personal, but it still hurts a bit to be rejected like that. Part of you worries about his hunger, but deep in your heart of hearts you know he would never hurt you, not really.

“Well I guess it's good you chose me, huh?” he whispers, lips now ghosting over the shell of your ear. Your hands come up over his back, rubbing light circles against his shoulder blades. You practically melt into his embrace, letting him press you by the hips into the counter as he leans forward, your back arching to accommodate him.

“Uh huh,” you mutter, words failing you currently. How was he so fucking hot?

“Uh huh?” he mimics the breathiness of your voice, “That all you got? Baby, use your fuckin words. You know you got a mouth on you.”

His lips find your neck, mouthing at your pulse point teasingly before he presses more kisses down the column of your throat. He holds you close to him, enjoying the feeling of your body against his, taking extra care to press your chest against his. Eddies hands move all around you, groping at any part of you he can reach.

Eddie grabs you under your arms and hoists you up onto the counter, not gently, but then quickly settles in, his hips now between your thighs as he gets himself even closer to you.

“You like this top?” he asks, already pawing at the buttons.

“Eddie, don’t,” you warn, already knowing if you were to hesitate he wouldn’t. He would rip the buttons right off and pull the shirt apart.

He whines a little and pouts, but then gets to work; deft fingers working the buttons from their clasps quickly so he can pull the shirt from where it’s tucked into your jeans and throw it somewhere across the kitchen.

He presses kisses all over your chest and collarbones, mouthing and moaning on you and leaving a trail of spit in his wake.

“So pretty, so fucking pretty,” he groans, and you can only arch further into him, your head falling back as you flourish under his touch.

He makes his way back up, finally capturing your lips in a long awaited kiss, wet and sloppy. He licks at your lips until they part and then is quick to push his tongue into your mouth. It's imperfect and messy and so perfectly Eddie. It's exactly how you always imagined he would kiss you.

When you were just friends, he was still so tactile, always hands on you, any kiss on the forehead or cheek would be messy and smear up your makeup. Now that you think back on it though, his reasons for being all over you probably weren't so innocent.

Your hands roam his body, palms coming up over his shoulders and rubbing against his chest where you can reach, soft skin against the soft worn material of his motorhead shirt. You reach down, towards the hem of his shirt. He seems to anticipate this, and his own hands grasp your wrists and pull them away, stopping your movement. He pulls away, worry in evident in his eyes, previously dilated with lust.

“If we— can we,” Eddie stutters, his bravado and confidence fading fast, his eyes darting between you and the stairs.

“Let’s go upstairs,” you offer, sparing his nerves. He helps you off the counter, removing your hands from under his shirt as he does so and leads you towards the stairs. Almost all of the urgency of his movements has faded away.

He opens the door to the guest room- your bedroom- almost timidly and leads you to the bed, where you instantly drop onto it. Eddie chews his lip, his fangs poking out every few seconds.

“Eds, baby, whats up?” you ask, “Are you… hungry?”

You try to put it lightly, you don't want to set him off. He shakes his head, his lovely curls shaking wildly as well.

“Nah I- I had a go at the meat freezer earlier.”

You stand up to try to embrace him again but he steps back.

“Are you okay?” you ask, a slight edge in your voice. You're not mad at him, you're not, but Eddie is always at least recently direct with you. He tells you what he’s thinking, what different stimuli are doing to his new senses and experiences. If this is a vampire thing, you need to know, sooner rather than later.

He sighs and looks down at your slightly shaking hands. Maybe he shouldn't do it.

“I don't want to scare you away.”

You shake your head, ready to refute him, but he keeps going.

“I don't look like I used to. I know I wasn't exactly Eddie Van Halen before but I’m downright ugly now, sweetheart.”

Your shoulders sag, your heart breaking for him.

“Eddie you know I only said I liked Van Valen was so I could say ‘I have a crush on Eddie’ without embarrassing myself, right?”

Well shit, he didn't. He smiles a little at that.

“You've always been handsome. I promise I’ll like what I see.”

Your hand reaches out for him encouraging him to get close again. He doesn't, but he takes a step closer.

Well, don't say I didn't warn you, darling.”

He lifts up his shirt slowly, refusing to meet your gaze. You were there when it happened, so you know what to expect, just maybe not as scarring. You saw him bloodied and holey. Pale purple and white scar tissue litters his skin, one of his hips looks marred and torn like a road in need of paving. His light happy trail that leads all the way up to the bottom of his belly button is interrupted by another tear of flesh, this one darker than the others you see. Eddie sighs as he pulls the tee shirt the rest of the way over his head, and he continues to look anywhere but at you. Suddenly, it’s like the sneakers Steve had leant Eddie in the corner were the most interesting things in the world.

The scarring gets worse the closer to his neck it gets. His right nipple is entirely gone, his pectoral on that side a shredded flat panel of near white scar tissue so much paler than the rest of his skin.

Your heart is fucking broken. How had he survived this? Vampire or not, he must have been more bloodied chew toy than young man for an agonizing amount of time. Despite this, you don't find yourself missing his old body. This is the body of your boyfriend, the man you love. You can't help but love every scar. It's all part of him. 

You stand up off the bed, and enter his space. He tries to dodge your gaze, but you're nothing if not stubborn, bobbing your head until he can't escape you and he finally looks at you.

“You didn't need to hide this from me,” you whisper, as if you’d scare him if you speak louder. 

Your hands gently reach out to touch him, his cool skin a contrast to yours. His skin is still smooth, where there isn't scarring. The scars don't feel rough like you'd imagine, though; the raised texture doesn't feel much different from your own scars. You run your hands up and down his chest, careful to avoid the purpled scars as those ones look more painful. His eyes are trained on you, dark brown and wet like he's ready to cry.

“You're so strong, Eddie, thank you for trusting me with this,” you punctuate this with a kiss to the top of his marred pectoral, then another kiss right above his heart.

“You're sure you want this?” He asks, his voice wavering.

You only nod, offering him a reassuring smile and all of the silent love in your heart.

Eddie grabs you again, this time with even more force than he did in the kitchen, his hands pulling your bare waist against him. His mouth is all over you, quickly descending to your cleavage. Eddie nudges your bra away to nip at your breast, sure to leave a mark.

“All mine, all fuckin mine,” he mumbles against you, one of his fangs grazing your skin and lighting a fire in you.

What would that feel like? you think. Would it feel good for you? It’s already clear Eddie has some kind of need to taste you, one that he’s a complete gentleman about not acting on, but maybe you’d let him one day.

“All yours, baby,” you moan, loving his attention to your chest, “I want you to take me, make sure everyone knows I’m yours.”

“Fuuuck, babe you sound like a good porno. Keep saying shit like that and I’m not gonna last.”

You're both laughing as he unclasps your bra and pushes you back towards the bed, and then reconnects in a sloppy kiss as you fall over each other trying to climb up towards the pillows. You settle under him, his body between your thighs and pressing bare chests against each other.

“Do you know how long I've waited to see these?” Eddie asks, cupping your breasts in his hands.

“I’m guessing it's not recent?” you joke, hooking your fingers in his belt loops and yanking his hips into yours.

“Since that summer you came back from camp with them, sweetheart.”

About eight years, then. How long had he loved you then?

He squeezes one harshly, and you moan wantonly.

“I think I need you out of your pants too, Eds. I can't wait any longer,” you moan again, starting to buck your hips up against him or any kind of friction you can get. How many fucking nights you had spent with your hand exactly where Eddie currently was and just hoping youd get to feel the real thing one day.

“Guess I can’t leave my queen waiting, can I?” Eddie teases, and gets up quickly, fumbling with his pants at the edge of the bed. You’re just as quick to work your way out of your pants, comically raising your hips off the bed to slide them off of the curve of your ass and almost frantically kicking them away. Instantly you feel better, so ready for Eddie’s cool skin to soothe the fire in your core.

He presses back flush against you, grinding himself against your panties and whining at the contact.

“More, please,” you beg, and he obliges.

He moves quickly, shimmying out of his boxers one handedly as he tries to pry the elastic of your panties down. It’s not smooth or suave, it’s not even the most romantic, but it’s you and Eddie and that makes it perfect.

You help him the rest of the way, and then you lay back to admire him. There’s another large scar on his upper thigh, and another tattoo you didn’t know about. A blade, one that looks like the one he described three campaigns before last ever one he led. His cock is everything you imagined and more. He’s hung, not the thickest, but still girth and slightly curved downwards.

“See something you like?” he teases you again. Yes, yes you do. You’re not ashamed in your staring. He’s more perfect than the statue of fucking David.

“Uh huh,” you nod absentmindedly, distracted by finally seeing your best friend naked.

“There you go again with that shit. Words, babe,” He warns, leaning back down to cage you in between his arms.

“Fuckin handsome, Eds. Godly,” you whisper, still staring down at him instead of looking him in the eye. You don’t even realize where his eyes are.

“There we go. Fuck, you’re beautiful. How are you mine?” he sighs in disbelief, eyes going back and forth down your body to memorize every detail.

“All yours, Eddie,” you echo, already out of it and he hasn’t even fucked you yet.

“You’re sure you want this?” he asks, tilting your chin to make you look at him again, “No going back if we do this.”

He means no going back from fucking your best friend. No running from the full extent of your feelings. No going back from knowing exactly what the stakes are now that this unholy coupling is consummated.

“I’ve wanted this for so long, I think I might cry if you don’t fuck me,” You respond, more sure of this than anything in your life.

“You don’t want me to warm you up or anything? Grab a condom?” he presses, eyebrows knitting in confusion.

“Eddie, I. Will. Cry. Please fuck me,” you beg, squirming under him now for any type of friction or release.

Eddie kisses you on the forehead, the tip of your nose, your lips.

“Anything for you,” He mumbles against your lips, and then lines himself up against you. The tip of his cock bumps against your clit, and an embarrassing squeak leaves your lips. Eddie laughs, dropping his head to lean his forehead against yours as he finally pushes into you.

Eddie moans loudly as he does, not hiding any of his pleasure. You're breathing deeply, unused to the stretch. Its been since high school since youve fucked anyone, and its not like your fingers could do this.

“This okay?” he asks, noticing how you are tensed.

“Better than okay,” you hiss, breathing heavily through your nose, “Youre just big.”

“You sure do know how to stroke a guys ego, pretty thing,” he chuckles, and starts moving, slowly, glacial.

You roll your hips up into his, forcing him that much deeper.

“You’re evil,” he laughs again, and then picks up the pace. He quickly finds a rhythm, rolling into you like a tide to the shore, pressing kisses and words of love into your skin the whole time. You’re massaging your thumbs into his shoulders, holding him in place and kissing your own words of love into him.

“Wanted this forever,” you gasp, lips lazily moving across his jaw.

“Want this forever,” Eddie counters, his thrusts already starting to falter and speed up. Truthfully, it doesn’t matter if this lasts long. You’ve already been wound up since Eddie caught an attitude with you, and you’ve been dying for him to touch you like this for years.

You do want this forever, you know that, and have known that forever. Truthfully, this is exactly how you wanted prom night to end after Eddie had all but threatened the guy that asked you and got you to come smoke with him instead.

“Fuck babe, you’ve got me forever,” you promise, rocking against him to help, “I’m all yours forever.”

“Forever?” he echos, and you just nod aggressively, now starting to lose more of your composure. With each thrust you start to lose control of your moans, little whimpers and squeaks leaving your throat as he bottoms out each time.

“Fuck, those noises, I could get addicted to those alone,” he moans, more ragged and losing his own composure as well.

“Could get addicted to all this,” you manage to say, “Fuck, close.”

“Yeah babe? You're gonna come for me?”

“Uh huh,” you say again, but this time he doesn't correct you, he lets it slide, maybe because of the way you are moaning around every syllable, the way hes the only thing tethering you to this world right now.

“Gonna make you- fuck- gonna,” he stutters, and then trails off focusing all his energy on you, his hand reaching down to rub tight circles on your clit to finish the job, and it works like a charm. You practically scream his name as you tighten around you, your entire body tensing and shaking beneath him.

He fucks you through your orgasm, actually quieter than he always imagined it, but sublime and beautiful moreso than he expected. You're like an angel, a real one, a biblical one, in the way that he's almost blinded by the beauty of this moment and seeing you this vulnerable. It stirs something dangerous inside of him. He’s never wanted to bite into the artery of your neck more than this moment. Never wanted to sink his teeth into you more than right now, with you making love to him and completely falling apart at this moment.

The realization scares him as much as it triggers his own release. As much as he would love to stay buried in you forever, he hastily pulls out and paints your stomach with his come. He’s not sure it would even do anything, but he doesn't want to take any chances or jeopardize anything he has with you.

Fucking ignoring the mess, he collapses on top of you, holding you close to him, hugging you tightly.

You realize your shoulder is wet, and it's not your sweat.

“Eds?” you ask, instantly worried, “You okay?”

He nods against you, not picking up his head.

“I love you, that's all. I just love you so much.”

“I love you too Eddie. You can come hang out on my night shifts,” you concede he won the earlier argument. You like your Eddie possessive.

You fall asleep like that quickly after, with Eddie staying like that with you until the sun started to rise.

He loves you too, as much as it might scare him.

[ktheist]

1 | friend in me.

“don’t confuse your party friends with your real friends.” (x) 

muses. party friend!jungkook x reader ft. bestfriend!taehyung ft. ex-boyfriend!namjoon

genre. university au. fwb. f2l.

words. 6.1k

warnings. mentions of break up, mild exhibition, alcohol use, future mentions of joint, future smut, mature content

alternative title. to my dear friend.

final part. exclusives only (x)

note. this fic hasn’t been showing up in searches no matter how many times i repost and it’s got a special place in my heart so i really want it to reach the audience, that’s why i made a few changes in hopes to beat the odds lol. enjoy!

x

striking up an unlikely pact to look out for each other’s backs at parties, is the last thing you expect to do with jeon jungkook. sure, you may or may not find a reason to laugh at his lousy antics and corny pick up lines - he’s also a great kisser but that’s besides the point.

the point is, you’d like to keep him as that - the friend that you meet at parties and parties only. so when you see him on your campus grounds, naturally your first instinct is to stop, turn the opposite way you’re heading and where he’s coming from - and start fast-walking to the other end of the campus like the devil is after you.

except that devil comes in the form of denim jacket, white undershirt and wavy dark hair that easily falls over doe eyes that seem to sparkle when you freeze at the sound of your name and turn around to face him with an awkward smile.

he breaks into a mini jog, leaving his friends that you’ve never seen before, behind. your own friends who you’ve been walking with and ditched at the sight of him, gawping at you and the new face from the spot where you decided to leave them at.

why couldn’t they have gone on their merry way - regardless if you’d paused and trekked to the opposite direction you were heading to?

jungkook skids to a stop in front of you, pretty pink lips quirking after he tilted his head to shift his hair out of his eyes instead of pushing it back with his hands.

“hey,” he greets, glancing down at his scuffing vans before meeting your gaze again, the tip of his tongue running over his bottom lip before retreating back into his mouth, leaving a sheen of moistness on his lips, “i didn’t know you went here.”

willing yourself to smile, you push your hair to the back of your ear before wrapping your arms around your chest, “yeah,” you drag out with an awkward chuckle, not as oblivious as he is of the stolen glances coming from the people passing through the walkway.

“what are you doing here though?” you notice his own friends that he ditched waiting for him several feet away - a group of attractive men and women who clearly belong to the equally high place group from your own faculty.

and yet here he is, talking to you - the ghost with rounded glasses sitting atop her nose and faded chapsticks on her lips. out of all the days you could have looked more zombie-esque, jungkook had to show up at your faculty today.

he’s nice enough not to point it out though as his lips turn into an ‘o’ shape. if you focus, you’d probably see the light bulb going off in his head as the answer to your question hits him. though at this point, you’ve already been hit by your own realization of the reason for there being more people walking around with mechanical appendages and remote control of every kinds. it must be-

“we’re here for the robocup tournament,” he grins, excitement apparent in the way his eyes seem to widen as you can almost hear the screws in his brains working before the question tumbles out of his mouth-

“what about you? are you joining?”

you want to laugh.

and that’s the thing about jungkook - he’s so good at reading you that he knows something’s up. brows knitting together, “what’s... up?”

the shaking of your head is purely reactionary - you’ve made a few friends who came around to compete at times your faculty was the one to hosted it, like now. it’s not as serious as it seemed to be but it’s not entirely something you joke around either since it involved someone’s blood, sweat and tears to make the cut but-

“guess you haven’t heard about the long standing tradition of the circuit breaker’s string pulling. the competition’s rigged.” despite your too willing trip down memory land, you still let your eyes dart around in case anyone’s listening. after you’re sure no one was, only then do you finally go on, “every year, they pick a judge’s kid as part of the team - even if they weren’t enrolled in seollyu and were in some other non-robotics related university, they’ll get close to them and keep them around until the competition. one year, one of them even went as far as dating a judge’s daughter when they couldn’t recruit her into their team.”

swallowing down the bile, you pretend not to notice the complete downturn of his lips as you roll your shoulders in a shrug out of the need of having something to do that doesn’t require focusing on the conflicted, purse lipped frown on jungkook’s face.

“oh wow, we never heard anything like that in beongju.” he murmurs, eyes drawn to the grass a feet away as he contemplates.

“it’s okay, what matters is you guys have fun.” you wave a dismissive hand, smile more natural but still sporting its awkward tucks.

“yeah,” jungkook nods before he meets your gaze, smiling in a half-hearted attempt to ease his own mind, “who knows? maybe this year, beongju will come out victorious.”

you nod, chest blooming with hope - a wishful thinking perhaps, “maybe.”

it’s when his eyes twinkle with a different kind of excitement that you know the matter of the competition is past him, and that’s your cue to go.

“hey, are you-“

“i have a class to-

you both stop at the same time, staring at the other for the longest moment before jungkook offers for you to continue, “you first.”

“um,” you would have deflect it back to him out of politeness. that is, if you didn’t know that he was going to ask you if you were free. possibly to grab lunch or a smoothie somewhere. but that’s the thing, outside of parties, you’re a completely different person altogether. right now, you’re the all-work, no-play study-hard. none of your equally study hard friends are aware of how you are at parties - none of the people you know, know how you are at parties because you made sure to attend only those you’re sure you wouldn’t run into acquaintances. of course it’s difficult and there are a few familiar faces you can identify as people from your faculty at every party but barely which is a safe amount. so it doesn’t make sense to break the unspoken, mutual understanding of the core you and jungkook’s friendship is built on. he might have forgotten how important it was for you that you were strictly ‘fun’ friends, so it’s your job to remind him, “i have class right now.”

you take a step back in preparation to bolt towards said nonexistent on-going class, “but hey, good luck on robocup. oh yeah, what were you gonna tell me?”

jungkook’s “oh - uh,” shouldn’t have sent waves of relief to you the way it does, but when he mumbles a “nothing - it was nothing.” you couldn’t help but suppress a grateful sigh.

on any other occasion, with a person completely separate from jeon jungkook, you would have pressed on - encouraged them to say what they initially wanted to say. but instead, you shoot him a smile, “oh -okay. guess i’ll see you around?”

“uh,” it’s clear as day that he doesn’t want to just leave it up to chance to bump into you in this big building with at least a thousand occupants coming and going everyday throughout the competition but the way smacks his lips shut tells you he there’s something holding him back, so he settles with a, “yeah... see you around.”

x

“you know,” you pause, tendrils of reluctance forbidding you from relaying the tale of how you and jungkook met in hopes it was indicative enough but judging from the way jisoo has her eyebrows raised, lisa with her knowing smile, taehyung and jimin expectantly waiting but with the first actually shooting you an meaningful stare - it seems like you have no choice but to say it-

“we spoke a few times at different parties and realize we have the same party mutual and get invited to the same parties so... we decided to hang together... at parties.”

“hang,” lisa echoes, underlying tone couldn’t have been more obvious as she grins from ear to ear.

“please, no way in hell do you just hang with jeon fucking jungkook when there’s booze and a dozen of empty rooms involved.” jisoo comes barreling through like a bulldozer, hands in the air as she squeals at whatever scenario her mind is cooking up in her head.

laughter trickles out of your mouth as you hide your face in your palms in an attempt to avoid jisoo and lisa’s eyes and the things that they’re hinting at with a mere gaze.

“why?” taehyung’s baritone finally hits the air as he leans back against the recliner. once the silence settles in a second later and all eyes turn his way, he adds, “not that it’s any of our business but,” he shrugs, “he’s not really your crowd - not any of our crowd.”

that’s the million dollar question. taehyung hates beers and crowded places - which is a surprise given his social butterfly-ness among all five of you. jimin, jisoo and lisa do go parties - those that your closest friends would be at. otherwise, they aren’t adventurous as you.

maybe jimin has a another side that you don’t know - it’s a known fact that he has other friends. dance friends, drinking friends, and whatever type of people with similar interests who flock a certain direction.

just like how you had jungkook and the group of friends you hung out with at parties.

“i mean, my dance friends aren’t exactly your kind of crowd either,” jimin interjects from the floor, head lulled to the back to look at taehyung, “remember how you wanted to avoid hoseok at all costs after i brought you to a practice once?”

“yeah,” you instantly second, hand gesturing to the man in a ‘exactly what he said’ manner before turning to the taller guy, “everyone makes friends where their usual friends aren’t.”

“i guess,” he cedes after what felt like the longest pause in your history of friendship.

it is that moment, just as your muscles begin to relax, that your phone dings with a notification. unbeknownst to you that you still command the attention in the entire room, you cluelessly let check out the new text message.

koo: we lost ):

“it’s him.” lisa announces, the bed shaking as she scoots away when you try to swat her thigh.

“and she has him saved as koo,” she - without any trace of intentionally constructed pun, coos, hands clasped together next to her tilted head as she bumps it with jisoo who’s mimicking her gestures.

“he just texted to say he lost,” you clarify, shaking your head at the two girls’ antics.

not that it changes anything as jisoo leans her whole body against lisa, an arm on her forehead in a troubled manner, “now i wish i had a boyfriend.”

lisa hums in agreement, her long limbs extending to wrap around the older girl’s torso as she rests her chin on top of jisoo’s dark brown tresses.“me too, sweetie. me too.”

typing out a ‘i’m so sorry. it’s okay they don’t deserve your talent anyway ):’ with a mixture of emojis, you hit send just before turning to what jimin is saying.

“...go to one. i heard alpha sig is having one tomorrow,” then he turns to you, as though you bear an abundance of knowledge about which place is having a party and on what day, “right ____?”

it takes you a moment to piece together what he said. you didn’t hear the beginning but you’re sure it’s something along the lines of jimin setting the two lonely singles to break their 2 month no-party streak and maybe get that boyfriend they wanted.

“jimin, i’m not sure,” you say shortly before turning to the two girls,“not that that many good, upstanding citizen of men go to the parties i went to though but maybe there’s a miracle waiting for you girls,” you smile in genuine hopefulness while referring to an entirely hopeless place. but it turns into an emphatic one as the two girls fake cry about the minimal chance they have to get a - in what you could make out of  jisoo’s fake bawling - hot, sexy party boyfriend. whatever that meant.

you don’t have the time to confirm it when your phone dings again.

koo: thanks i can always count on you to be real w me 🥺🥰

another grey bubble pops pushes the text you’re reading upwards.

koo: you coming to alpha sig’s party?

koo: we have to be here for the closing ceremony tmr anyway

koo: help me make good memories before i leave seollyu 🥺

you suppress the urge to roll your eyes at that. he’s only been here for one day and he got invited to one of the most hard-to-get-in parties on the campus.

naturally, you and jimin were invited from your underlying reputations. and naturally, whoever you bring is invited too.

except you’re not a fan of going to parties that you know you’d meet the exact people you didn’t want to meet.

lisa peeks at your phone the second time - and you didn’t even notice until she screams, “___’s going to alpha sig’s!”

“oh my god, will he be there?” jisoo leans her entire body over lisa in a reckless abandon to get a peek of what the younger one saw only to have you hold your phone away.

“um? privacy? anyone?” you offer while jisoo pouts.

“duh, she’s going because of him.” lisa says im a matter-of-factly, “otherwise, she wouldn’t even entertain the thought of going to any party infested with people we already had to see sober.”

“am not.” you counter, the matter of replying already long forgotten as you cross your arms over your chest, phone tucked in between the side of your boob and hand, “if i’m going, it’d be because i want to!”

“so you’re going?” jisoo blinks, eyes twinkling with hope. so are lisa’s.

you have no choice but to turn your cheek to a laughing park jimin on the floor. his pupils disappearing behind his lids. clearly, he’s not going to back you up. so you turn to the only other person who you thought would.

“if tae’s going then i’ll go,” you declare, already feeling the triumph of what the man would choose from his precedent choices. “not that you guys need me to get in since jimin’s already-“

“sure.” the taller man announces.

you’re forced to make a double take while your jaw drops in your lap along with jisoo and lisa’s while jimin blinks in surprise from your periphery.

completely conscious of the gazes boring into his skull, taehyung attempts to casually shrug it off as a- “since you guys are going, you know.”

jisoo yelps in celebration before going “great, who’s up for some chicken?” shooting up and sending the mattress shaking as she takes big steps over your legs and hops off the bed. hands planted on her hips, she glances around the room with the residue of a pleased smile from the decision of all five of you finally going to a party together.

“me!” lisa follows suit with the exception that she’s crawling on her hands and knees to get off the bed.

“me but i don’t want to get up.” jimin whines, unmoving from his spot which is lying on the fluffed pink carpet as taehyung’s birthday present to his otherwise creme themed room.

“come on, park. get your ass off the floor and to the parking lot - get it, park jimin goes to the parking lot?” jisoo begins tugging on his wrist, the sight rather comical considering how she’s trying to make a man twice her size sit up, let alone move to get to the car seeing as he’s the only one with one.

lisa shares a doubtful look with you and taehyung at the poorly made pun, questioning why jimin seems to be the only one chuckling but then again, he’s always been the easiest to entertain.

after huffing and puffing, jisoo finally plucks the boy off the floor. but getting him to walk the distance from his apartment to the car is another feat.

it’s when their voices echo in the hallway, and you and a certain taller man is left in the room, do you notice the difference in this silence compared to the rest as he pushes himself up.

“are you going for real?” you finally ask, throwing your feet over the bed.

taehyung’s lips pucker as he contemplates the pros and cons, “what’ll i do if i don’t go? binge watch maze runner and be reminded of the fact that all third movies suck?”

maybe he doesn’t hate parties as much as you initially thought. after all, it’s been a year since he vomited all over kim sowon while making out on the couch at alpha sig’s.

you grin, elbowing the man as you both make your way out of the room, “hey, maybe you could find yourself a girlfriend while you’re at it.”

taehyung’s laugh doesn’t reach his eyes but you chalk it up with the jitters of the thought of having alcohol course through his veins and surrounded by bodies on the dance floor, “huh, yeah.”

x

the day fly by between getting to classes and getting lunch - it was a feat to convince everyone to go to dumpling place just a little bit off campus but you’d managed and subsequently successfully avoided running into jungkook for the day.

“bih, what the fuck?” lisa gawks, jaw descended to the ground as she stares at your mini black crop top that stops a few inches above your high-waist ripped jeans.

if you didn’t show up to classes in sweats and oversized sweaters, round glasses and hair always up in your laziness to make them look presentable - every day, maybe your ability to throw on some eye make up and highlights over your foundation wouldn’t have been so much as a surprise.

unlike you, your friends have always been on top of their game when it comes to appearing like functioning members of society. the clothes they have now have also been worn to class before - that’s how you know their confidence is sky high while yours require a little bit of help depending on what you wear.

why they decided to adopt a munchkin like you into their otherwise perfect clique, you’ll never know - but maybe it had something to do with you looking like a lost puppy in your first year with your round glasses and the thick books you carry around. it was a matter of time you ran into someone and drop them - that someone being jisoo.

after that, the rest was history - your prejudices towards groups of attractive people have never been so diminished.

your hair bounces gently as you hop into the passenger seat, giggling shyly at the attention you’ve garnered with your otherwise usual getup for a fun time.

“if i knew you won’t have any problems surviving off skinny jeans and cute tops, i would have burned those baggy clothes a long time ago.” jisoo confesses, red lips curled into an impressed ‘o’ as she takes in your appearance.

you gasp, truly offended to know your day-to-day choice of outfit has never been any of your friend’s preference yet only now do they make it known - talk about fake friends! “don’t you insult my comfy clothes like that!”

a light bump on her shoulder forces her to tear her gaze away and turn her cheek to the grinning girl next to her, “maybe she has a reason to dress cute.”

and just like that, the two breaks out into coos. sending you signals with their entire face muscles as jimin chuckles from the driver’s seat.

“but you know, this is how ___ usually dress up for parties even like before she met jungkook.”

you send praises to the gods for sending you this blessing of a friend as you fix the two girls a smirk, posing like a model as much as the cramped space allows you, “nah, i got it from my momma.”

an onslaught of protest - denials - mixed with cheers erupt as you begin to poorly mimic that of models with your limbs pointing in every direction and body bending in weird angles. it doesn’t take long before laughter tumbles out of everyone’s mouth, the front seaters included - taehyung had achingly turned in his seat to attend your fashion show while jimin stole glances in the rearview mirror.

x

yoo jeongyeon is the first to wave you over. if there’s a grey area where party friends and real friends merge together, it’ll be her. you’ve gone to parties together and had fun - though the last time you did, you ended up waking up on the same bed with some guy on the floor.

jin? jun? jeong? j-something grinned when he woke up to the sight of you two, “so... can i get you girls’ number?”

jeongyeon didn’t bother to hold back her grimace and you’d strutted into the bathroom as if you didn’t hear him.

“kim taehyung, lisa manoban and kim jisoo.” she studies each one with an impressed, “how did jimin and ____ manage to haul your asses out and over here?’

“the single life they’ve been walking has finally slapped them in the face and they finally want-“ you get cut off by lisa’s fake chuckle that sounds every bit forced.

“-wasted.”

“-boyfriends!”

they end up saying at the same time. while jisoo is finds no fault in her confession, lisa’s face is heating up - coming second next to you when it comes to shying back into her shell when topics like these come to light.

“taehyung too.” jisoo hooks her hand around the aforementioned man’s arm, stopping him from slowly disappearing into the crowd like a certain park jimin has, her other one around younger girl.

“jeongyeon, you have introduce us to cute guys or we’ll end up dying from all this single-ness!”

at that, the woman burst into laughter, hand on her stomach as she tries and fails to suppress it.

“i don’t know,” she wipes a tear from the corner of her eyes, “isn’t that more of ____’s specialty?”

“uh,” it takes a heartbeat for you to register what jeongyeon is saying before the same heart in your chest crashes against the ground at her next words.

“everyone knows,” a meaningful smile quirks on her lips, “about you and-“

“i- uh, i think i heard jackson calling me - something about a group project.” you quickly say, cursing yourself for the less than plausible excuse to get away.

and the three girls think so too as they call you out for it but you don’t stop until they’re out of earshot and out of the spotlight, ending up at a table full of booze.

you pop a can open, letting the bitter taste wash over your suddenly dry throat. the alcohol hasn’t got to you yet but you know it will and maybe that’s the only thing you have going on as you walk around, waving to people you know and lingering to talk with some, noticing that most of them are halfway to getting drunk.

some time later, you spot jisoo, lisa and jeongyeon dancing with some of your close friends. beer in their hands. you wonder how they’re going to find a boyfriend or even a hook up if they just keep to their circle - that was the clear as day distinction between you and them.

where they feel the most comfortable surrounded with familiar faces - regardless of whether they like them - you find comfort on a room full of strangers and the knowledge that you wouldn’t see them anymore after that.

but that wasn’t the case for jungkook. after one too many parties and several ‘hey, i was hoping i’d see you’s, a sense of camaraderie starts forming. of course, rules don’t apply where it would in a normal, socially sober setting.

you were friends as much as you were fucking like rabbits. finding comfort in mornings where you wake up without a sense of recollection, a throbbing headache and a lump of body underneath the sheets only to sigh in relief upon finding out who it was as though to say ‘oh thank god it’s you and not some rando i won’t know how to politely kick out while emphasizing that i have class in like 5.’

you embark on a visual searching journey to look for the same boy who wouldn’t mind if you had to shut the door in his half-awake face on mornings you had to get ready for class and still smiled at you later that night when you meet at a different party - until your gaze lands on a pair of brown eyes.

instead of wide and doe-like, the one that captured yours are hooded and heavy, boring into the windows of your soul. all of a sudden, you’re brought back to the same time last year. back when you were just a freshie with a stomach full of butterflies as you shyly look away from those piercing eyes.

but now, all you feel is your stomach rearranging and bile almost rising to your throat as you take a swig of the beer before melding into the crowd.

alpha sig is known for their closeness with circuit breaker, having been been sponsored by your own faculty for those with outstanding achievements to stay on-campus.

but none of the circuit breakers ever come to these parties - or at least, he never did.

almost as though the stars and planets aligned to manifest your only thought, a familiar voice wraps around the syllables of your name. and you would have continued on your merry way and pretend like you didn’t hear anything, if only you’re not in a hallway where there’s least people and subdued music compared to the dance floor you just escaped from.

“i heard you’ve been around,” kim namjoon stands at the end of the hallway, decked in plain gray t-shirt underneath a leather jacket and black pants. he takes easy, casual steps towards you with a dimpled smile that couldn’t have been more vain, “but i couldn’t believe my ears,” his shoulder line jolts as he shrugs, “well, until now, at least.”

“who would’ve thought? the cute ___ who blushed from a simple peck would have this side to her.” he stands a good half a head over you, his cologne’s changed from the last time you’d come in such a close proximity like you are now.

“yeah,” you drag out in a half-singing voice, face schooled into an unfazed expression, “i mean, it’s better than going around tricking girls into sleeping with you, right?”

at that, his smile instantly drops into a hard set frown as he lowers his voice, “i didn’t ‘trick’ you into having sex with me,” his lips quirk up at possibly a recollection of that night, “as i recall, you begged me to take your virginity.”

“that was before i knew your shitty motives to get brownie points from my dad just so you could win a stupid competition,” your voice is equally low and threatening, body heating up from the remembrance of those unreplied texts and the look in his eyes when you approached him that monday after the tournament - like he didn’t even know you.

namjoon laughs - the sound dripping with mockery as he throws his head back slightly, “come on, that was like a year ago. get over it.”

that’s it.

that’s when your mind is the clearest. no amount of beer could tell you otherwise - that this man right here doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt on the occasions that your friends begin spilling hot tea about the leader of circuit breaker and the things the members have done to win. they didn’t know about you and namjoon - nobody really does. you should have known those late night meetings and nothing but a polite smile when you pass in the hallways - were all red flags.

ones that you willfully ignore in the guise of ‘i’m not ready to tell everyone yet’s and ‘it doesn’t matter, if nobody knows, right? as long as i know you’re my girl’s

“you’re a dick.”

you push past him, cursing internally when he doesn’t budge and you’re the one who ends up with an almost dislocated shoulder.

it is only when you’re pushing a through the sea of bodies and swatting hands that try to grope your ass, does a certain doe-eyed, bunny smile enter your vision.

almost instantly, the urge to pinch the hand on your lower back disappears after knowing who its owner is. you’re pressed up against each other - the dance floor doesn’t allow much room for personal space and you’ve shared your personal spaces with each other far too many times to need that kind of distance from each other.

“i was looking for you,” the alcohol in his breath doesn’t feel all that repugnant as he nears his mouth to the shell of your ear, igniting a fire that kim namjoon had set up with the previous exchange.

he stands straighter, lips puckered sulkily as he swayed your bodies together, “we lost and everyone in my team had girlfriends or boyfriends to comfort them-”

your hands that cup his face and digs into his messy tresses make him clamp his mouth shut. the gentlest protrusion of his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows in anticipation.

he asked and you shall grant it.

girlfriend. fuck buddy. what difference does it make?

“i know, koo. i’m sorry you wasted your time on that dumb competition.” you purr, noticing how his gaze becomes glazed as he steals a glance at your lips before meeting your eyes again.

a heartbeat later, you’re pressing your mouth against the softest pair of lips you’ve ever known. mentally, you make a note to ask what he uses to keep them smooth and kissable.

he snaps out of his stupor a moment later, hands snaking down to grab your ass like he’s done this a million times before and knows just how to get you moaning into his mouth. almost as natural as breathing, he slips his tongue past your lips tasting you.

another moan escapes you when he begins kissing down your chin, trailing sloppy kisses on your neck and suckling on the one spot that gets your heart palpitating on your chest. hands tucking on his pleated outer shirt for the sake of having something to hold.

you bring jungkook’s face to yours, noticing the sheen on his pinker lips before pressing another deep kiss. he doesn’t to think twice to react. one hand on your free hand slipping underneath your crop top. when someone shove into jungkook, almost sending you tumbling backwards and ending up doing the same to another person - jungkook curses. “fucking drunktards.”

a giggle escapes your lips, “pot calling the kettle black? we were probably bumping into people on nights we were shit faced drunk.”

“probably.” he shrugs, fingers lacing around your wrist as he guides you off the dance floor and into the kitchen where he doesn’t waste a second in hoisting you up onto the counter and slips in the space between your legs.

“hello.” you murmur, resting your forehead against his, cheeks hot and body aflame.

“hey, beautiful.” he fixes you a lazy grin, lips drawing closer to your mouth but before he manages to close the hair breadth’s distance, he stops.

“wait.” he murmurs against your lips, eyes glued to them as though he’s picturing another part of him on them.

“what?” you whisper, just as enticed by his own lips as your try to pull him closer with your arms that’s wrapped around his neck.

“are you drunk?” are his next words and you’re well aware the basis of where it spurred on.

once upon several parties ago, you’d included stopping you from putting on a risque show if your drunken self ever abandoned your self-restraint. jungkook, on the other hand, doesn’t love attention per se but he doesn’t shy away from it either.

“i’m not,” you assure, drawing closer to his lips by the second like moth drawn to flames. but you have enough sense to tilt your head to steal a glance towards the direction where you’ve been feeling a hole being drilled into your skull. your heart skips a beat when you catch namjoon’s eyes - he’s leaning against the wall with his friends either standing or sitting on the couch, beer in one hand.

“but i need your help to make someone jealous.”

jungkook follows your gaze towards namjoon and his friends a few feet away. it doesn’t take much for him to piece two and two together - especially after your a apparent animosity while telling him about the competition being rigged.

“ah,” he hums - you could just hear the smile in his voice. your knees weaken at the touch as you begin kissing the patch of skin closest to your lips which is his jawline. “i don’t know if i should be sad or happy that you’re finally agreeing to have sex in public with me because of some what’s-his-face guy.”

“not have sex sex,” you correct, delight filling your chest when he shivers - whether it’s from your touch of the image your words are painting in his head, you’re not sure, “but make out with me like you’re a kiss away from fucking me senseless?”

“i thought that’s a given?”

not needing to be told twice, you find yourself being devoured like a little rabbit in the arms of the beast. the background around you blurs together as you inhale jungkook’s scent, feel the warmth seep from his body to yours. your hand snakes down in between your bodies with one goal in mind: the gentle protrusion brushing against your own crotch.

“fuck a show,” jungkook hisses harshly against your mouth, breathing becoming labored as you caress him over the layer of his jeans, “where’s the closest room we can get to?”

you nod in agreement, hopping off the counter and tugging on your top to keep your nipples from being exposed after jungkook’s hand fall away from your breast at your retreat.

“they might have empty ones upstairs.” you tug on jungkook’s hand, making your way to the staircase and trying not to step over drunken bodies making out on the ground or simply passed out.

it’s when you get one foot on the stairs, that a clamoring thud erupts from somewhere on the dance floor - the air that was once blaring now pin drop silent. jungkook’s cheek presses against your back as he wraps his arm around your torso, a peck landing on your shoulder, not telling you to move but not really interested at the reason you paused to peer through the gaps of bodies that seemed to be looking at something just around the corner.

“shut the fuck up, dickhead!” a voice thunders against the walls after another thud that sounded like heavy equipment falling against the ground - and possibly breaking.

“must be those football guys fighting over a girl.” jungkook comments, uninterested.

on any other occasion, you would have agreed and gone on your merry way but it’s the unsettlingly familiar baritone that made you freeze in your spot in the first place. it’s with a rattling realization and the sight of jisoo among the throng of people, calling out “taehyung, leave it!” that gets you to trudge back to the floor, vaguely aware of jungkook trailing from behind with a “what’s wrong?”

eyes bore into your skull as you finally push through the throng of people and burst onto the scene. jisoo has her arms around taehyung’s while jimin appear miniature as he stands between the taller man and an unnervingly calm namjoon. the latter wipes a trace of blood from his busted lower lip as chills run down your spine when the man’s eyes falls on you, lips curving into a vain smile.

“why don’t you ask her yourself?” his voice drums against the walls - loud and clear to those who are watching which is basically everyone here.

“come on, ___, everyone wants to know if you begged me to be your first and how we fucked in the back room of the student lounge.”

[bloodyshadow1]

Beauyashaweek 2021 day 2 Classical Art: Birthed from Stone

Beauyashaweek 2021 day 2 Classical Painting Art

Technically, the prompt is Classical Painting, but I couldn't really think of anything to write for that so I decided to do Classical Art as the prompt and thought of this. There's more to it, but I decided to cut it short because it was getting too long and not ending. I hope you enjoy my story, if you do please leave a comment, they help more than you know.

It was Saturday, there were a million things Beau would have preferred to be doing on her Saturday, one of the few days off she had, than going to the Zadash Museum of Art. That wasn’t fair, she liked the Museum, she liked the artwork, but she hated that she was here on an assignment for school rather than because she wanted to which meant she hated the Museum currently.

Beau had only taken Art Appreciation 110 on her best friend Jester’s suggestion. The blue tiefling art major thought it would be fun to have her best friend in the class she was TAing and assured Beau that it was an easy class being a 100 level. Beau didn’t mind an easy A, she was a double major history and sports medicine in her senior year, she figured she might as well since the rest of her course load was killer.

Unfortunately, unlike most of the classes Beau had taken though her time at Z.U. Art Appreciation 110 wasn’t a blow off class that she could just take the tests and write papers to pass with an A. The teacher Mr. Artagan was more eccentric than most of the faculty at Z.U. full of new age ideas how to run his class. No tests at all and only a few papers, which would be fine for most people, but the fact that participation was worth 60% of her grade made the class a living hell for Beau. He thought that children (despite them all being college students) should be rewarded for showing initiative, not just memorizing facts, something that Beau relied on. She was a smart girl who read the assigned reading before the class had even started hoping it would mean she didn’t have to show up for class only to have Jester’s hippy mentor ruin that dream the first day.

Artagan, as he liked them to call him, no mister for him, was one of those ‘cool’ teachers who thought they were changing the world in their 100 level course that contained mostly freshmen trying to get their gen ed credits out of the way. The teacher who wore an actual green cloak to class everyday that clashed horribly with his tangle of reddish orange hair, but went well with his inhuman green eye, knew he was put on this earth to reach the kids. Beau hated him instantly and thought if not for his laziness, his biggest weakness other than a wicked case of ADHD that no amount of Adderall would fix, he would probably be a cult leader. Luckily for the class, Jester took her job as his TA seriously, or at least as serious as Jester could leading a class taught by Mr. Artagan about appreciating art, so she was at least a competent teacher when the actual teacher decided to take a nap in the middle of a lecture or jump out the window to chase a bird. She would call on Beau whenever she could because she knew her best friend at least knew the information even though she wouldn’t volunteer the information willingly. It saved Beau’s average from tanking in class, but by the time the semester came to a close it didn’t look good, Beau was sitting at a low C which again, wouldn’t be bad for most people in their blow off class, but was horrible for Beauregard Lionett, the disgraced daughter of the Lionett wine family in Kamordah.

Without getting into it, Beau’s relationship with her family, especially her dad Thoreau, was horrible to be kind. She was only at Z.U. due to both academic and athletic scholarships, and losing one would mean she wouldn’t have enough money for her final semester, and she needed at least a B in all her classes if she wanted to graduate. Technically she would still be able to graduate, but her diploma would remain as property of the school until her debts were paid up, which meant she couldn’t get a job with her diploma unless she lied on her resume. And while, no one could say Beauregard Lionett was against lying, she wasn’t a self destructive teenager anymore she knew it would only hurt her in the long run.

Luckily, having her best friend as her T.A. meant Jester begging Mr. Artagan to let Beau have some extra credit so she could pass. Artagan agreed and told her to write a paper on how a piece of art makes you feel. If Beau didn’t desperately need to pass this stupid class she would have thrown it in his face, but instead as a self destructive adult who at least was aware of her money problems, she gritted her teeth and took the extra credit assignment.

Beau had been to the museum at their school a bunch of times, she had given tours for a bit as a work study gig until the people in charge realized how bad she was with people. But there was something about being forced to go there for an assignment that soured the whole thing for her.

“Let's check out the Emon exhibit first Beau,” Jester said taking her and dragging her to the Tal’Dori section. Beau didn’t mind it, but there was too much…, cleanness in the artwork of their neighbors to the West. Tal’Dori was really similar to Wildemount in a lot of ways, without the whole equally large enemy neighbor country that you’ve been in a Cold War with forever. Emon had its own set of problems, but propaganda or not, whatever Beau read made the other continent sound like a less shitty version of the Dwendalian Empire.

Still, the paintings and sculptures were nice enough to look at even if she didn’t have Jester’s excitement. There were a lot of paintings of naked people in some of the exhibits, which Beau enjoyed since there weren’t a lot of men as the subject. She had to hand it to the old masters, they might have been a bunch of old pervs, but they painted a pretty dame without her clothes. Even if they did give their works pretentious names like, “the Sin of Sarenrae,” or “the Seducer of Nations,” as if the women who were the subjects were at fault for being beautiful enough for men to want to paint them naked.

Eventually Jester got bored, it didn't take long, and they moved on to the other wings of the museum. “I’m gonna check out the Xhorhasian exhibit for a bit Jester,” Beau said, needing some alone time. She loved her best friend, but the girl could talk forever on her worst day, a day surrounded by hundreds of years of artwork around her meant she hadn’t stopped since Beau mentioned her paper.

The Xhorhasian exhibit was small and quiet, they were technically at peace, legally and all that, but two powerful countries can’t be neighbors without a lot of animosity. With only the Ashkeeper Peaks between them, there had been a long cycle of wars and ceasefires between the two nations that could break at any moment. That meant not a lot of people congregated in this out of the way exhibit. Most of the artwork and relics were probably technically stolen. Beau wasn’t happy about that despite being a citizen of the Empire, born and raised in Kamordah, less than a day from Zadash.

Maybe after she graduated she could break into the museum and somehow send the stolen goods back home where they belonged. Jester would probably be into it, and Veth wasn’t exactly opposed to petty theft or grand larceny. But that was for Future Beau with her bachelor’s degree to think about. For now, since they were here, Beau was going to enjoy the things from the Empire’s oldest enemy and learning about them, despite how they were procured.

Technically, the Empire wasn’t enemies with Xhorhas, they were enemies with the Krynn Dynasty, the country that had been the dominant power in the Wastes of Xhorhas for thousands of years. There were other people living in Xhorhas that were roped into the conflict, or so Beau heard, most of the stories from the East were about the Cricks or Krynn and the rest were hardly mentioned at all.

As Beau walked around the empty exhibit, for the most part it was bleaker than the other exhibits. Xhorhas seemed like a dreary place, all their artwork lacked the color of other nations artwork. Most of the paintings, few of them as there were, tended to be battle scenes of Drow soldiers in their dark insect like armor tearing through Empire soldiers like paper, it's a wonder citizens of the Empire never come to look at this exhibit. The rest was mostly pottery or weapons, the placards said they were souvenirs from survivors of perilous expeditions into enemy territory. Beau had read them all before.

But surprising her, there was something new in the exhibit. In the center of the exhibit, in a place of honor was a statue with lights pointing down on it. It was made of white marble and depicted the most beautiful woman Beau had ever seen. She was large, tall and wide, if she wasn’t made of stone she would tower over Beauregard, with arm muscles larger than Beau’s head. Long wild hair that the sculpture had managed to get across in the marble. She wasn’t just standing still either, she was swinging a sword like some goddess of battle. The massive feathery wings exploding from her back, that almost looked soft to the touch despite being made out of rock, made her seem even more divine. But even more than the wings, Beau was drawn to her eyes, they were perfect. Despite being just another part of the woman carved from the white stone, they seemed so dark, holding so much anger and sadness that it made Beau’s chest hurt to look into them, but she didn't have the willpower to look away.

The only flaw Beau could find in the sculpture of the beautiful woman, was the smile. Unlike the rest of the statue, the smile was just off. It was just too plain. The rest of the work from the woman, from the way the marble simulated how her arm muscles tensed like a real person would when swing a sword to fight, to her large soulful eyes, to the massive two-handed sword that looked like it was a real metal blade turned to stone, was the work of a master. Yet the smile was clearly the work of an armature, it looked like the smiles Beau had drawn on posters to look extra goofy to passersby. It didn’t fit such a beautiful woman, especially when the rest of her was clearly ready for battle.

It looked so off Beau immediately looked at the placard to find out if it had been damaged in shipping and the archeologist or smuggler did their best to fix it with a smile. The sign didn’t say anything about the smile, just that the sculpture had been found 3 years ago in an ‘expedition’ in the south of Xhorhas. The title of the piece was ‘Angel of Beauty,’ which made Beau gag. Sure the woma-, the sculpture was beautiful, but it was such a boring shitty title for such an awesome bitch. She was wielding a sword ready to chop someone to bits and ready to take on a whole army, Angel of Beauty was such a generic title for a real work of art. Skimming the rest of the paragraph for any more info, Beau learned the locals called the work ‘The Orphanmaker,’ before the archeologist procured the work.

Beau thought it was a bit better, at least more metal and fitting for such a bad bitch, but it still didn’t fit the woman or the sculpture in Beau’s unasked for opinion. Still, Beau couldn’t let her dumb lesbian brain that made her have a crush on the only more unattainable woman in the world than Jester, stop her from getting her paper done. She took a picture of the placard to get a reference and took a few more of the statue itself from as many angles as she could. You weren’t technically supposed to take pictures of the artwork, but no one was around and Beau needed the pictures for her project…, and nothing else.

Still, the more time she spent with the statue the more Beau was enthralled. The more she stared at it, from every angle it felt like the woman was ready to come alive at any second. That one second Beau would be staring into eyes of white marble and then she would blink alive the next. The skill of the sculptor had practically tricked Beau into thinking the woman would have a pulse if she touched her, like she wasn’t carved out of stone.

It got to the point where Beau, who would never break the law, especially when it came to stolen art, got so fed up she decided to touch the statue just to prove to herself it wasn’t a real live person. Just a quick tap on the arm to prove to herself that the woman wasn’t alive, that’s all it would take to make her crazy thoughts quiet for a bit.

Unfortunately, or perhaps very fortunate given the outcome, Beau was wrong, very wrong. The moment she touched what would be the flesh of the woman, not her sword, or hair, or clothes, the moment her finger touched the skin on the woman’s arm, it felt warm. So warm that Beau couldn’t believe it, until the woman’s pulse woke her up. She tore her hand away like the statue was made of fire, but even as she did, she could see cracks forming in the sculpture starting from where she touched the woman on the arm.

“Shit,” Beau yelled, as she slammed her back into the wall, she didn’t even know she had backed away that far. She desperately tried to search for glue or anything that she could use to fix the crack she made, but the cracks only got bigger. By the time Beau looked back, they had shot down the woman’s arm and were coming down her body, and Beau only had time to swear every curse she knew in the five languages she spoke fluently (which you would think would take a while, but Beau had always been quick with her mouth and was well practiced with it and cursing) before the statue exploded.

The room was full of dust clouds and the only sound other than the hammering of Beau’s heart was the sound of a large woman breathing heavily. It only took a moment for the dust to clear and give Beau a good look at the Orphan Maker. On a whole, she was pretty much the same as the statue, same massive frame, same gorgeous face that Beau had gone gaga for, same strong arms holding the now sharp steel blade, and older Xhorhasian garb, not from the Krynn Dynasty. Now that she wasn’t a statue anymore though, there was a big change, even if she was mostly the same, there was a big difference between a beautiful woman carved out of white marble and a real gorgeous flesh and blood woman.

Her skin was pale, almost as pale as the white marble, but the rest of her and her clothes had splashes of color, mostly black, but not white stone. The biggest change though, other than being a living person of course, was her wings. When she was a statue the wings on her back had been white and feathery, now, they were black and skeletal. As if they had been burnt to cinder’s but still attached to her. She has heterochromatic eyes, one is light green, the other is violet, they are filled with rage, but it’s not directed at Beau, the woman who burst from the marble is just angry.

“Where am I,” the strange woman demanded once the dust cleared enough to see Beau.

“The Zadash University Museum,” Beau said trying to stay on the good side of this strange Amazonian goddess that just flexed out of a statue.

“Zadash,” the woman said slowly, like it was a foreign word. “That is a is a name from beyond the mountains,” she asked more than said.

“Yeah,” Beau nodded, “or I mean I suppose. We’re on the other side of the mountains from Xhorhas if that’s what you mean.”

“Then I am a long way from home,” the strange woman said seeming to calm down.

“Are you a spy from Xhorhas,” Beau asked, immediately realizing how stupid that sounded. Beau could handle herself in a fight, but this woman was massive and had a sword almost the size of her. It would be really hot if it was in a movie or a book instead of real life.

“No,” the woman shouted, “I am from Xhorhas, but I am no spy.”

“Alright,” Beau said, throwing her hands up to show she meant no harm, “I believe you.”

“I think…, I am lost,” the woman said calming down, her voice was a lot softer than Beau would have guessed when she wasn’t angry. “I was in my homeland, I was fighting something and then…, nothing.”

“Well, maybe you could start with something you do remember,” Beau asked, trying to keep things calm. “Do you remember your name?”

“Yasha,” Yasha apparently answered after a moment, “Yasha Nydoorin. And I think I need your help.”

It probably wasn’t a great idea to agree to this, she didn’t know Yasha much other than she was big, gorgeous, and popped out of a marble statue. But despite her well above average intelligence, she was also a lesbian with a dumb lesbian brain sometimes, and all she could say was “sure.” Maybe she’ll let Jester drag her off to the museum if this happens all the time.

[hlizr50]

Revelations

Chapter 1: This is Wrong

Hawke eavesdrops on the Duke's lessons with Poppy and realizes what is happening within the walls of castle Teerman

Read on AO3

Casteel… Hawke… stared at the door as it clicked closed, the Maiden having entered the Duke’s office.

“Penellaphe, I am so incredibly disappointed in you.” Duke Teerman always sounded so haughty and condescending.

Something didn’t feel right.

“I’m sorry to have disappointed you. I –“

The Duke cut her off, “Do you even know what you have done that has disappointed me?”

Was this why she and Tawny had been so apprehensive of the Duke’s summons? A scolding? A dressing down? It couldn’t have been just that, considering how Penellaphe had frozen before the door.

He took up a position not too close to seem suspicious to the two men standing guard. No matter. He was Atlantian, and even though he leaned against the wall a few feet from the door he could hear every word spoken in that office. He didn’t know what he should expect.

“I don’t. But I’m sure whatever it is, I’m at fault. You are never disappointed in me without cause.” Her words were measured. Careful. And careful wasn’t really her style.

“You’re right. I wouldn’t be disappointed for no reason at all. But this time I find myself blindsided by what I have been told.”

Hawke had been her guard for barely a day, but he found it hard to believe that Penellaphe would have committed a crime so egregious to blindside the Duke. Although, if her escapade to the Red Pearl was any indication maybe she had.

“Remove your veil, Penellaphe. You do not want to test my patience.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that we… we are not alone, and the Gods forbad me from showing my face.”

“The Gods will not find fault in today’s proceedings.”

They were not alone? His amber eyes narrowed slightly. Who else was there? Had he not experienced the meeting yesterday he would have also wondered why she was apparently hesitant to remove the veil. But he knew the Duke likely wanted to take the opportunity to comment on her scars.

“Lift your eyes.”

A pause.

“You grow more beautiful each time I see you.”  Hawke grimaced. His insides roiled at the thought of the Duke looking at her with those deep, empty eyes.

“Thank you, your Grace.”

The Duke made a cluck with his tongue. “Such a shame. What do you think Bran?”

It was Lord Brandole Mazeen, then. Gods above, what was he doing in there? His lust and depravity were well-known throughout Castle Teerman. The maids were often warned not to earn his attention, good or bad.

“As you said, such a shame.” The Lord answered.

“The other scars are easy to hide, but this? There will come a time where there will be no veil to hide this unfortunate flaw.”

How many years had Penellaphe been here? How many times had the Teermans and their lackeys taken an opportunity to cut her with those words?

“Do you know what that new guard of hers said? He said she was beautiful. Half of her is truly stunning... You look so much like your mother.”

Hawke had said that. He meant it.

“You knew her?” Penellaphe gasped.

“I did. She was… special. You do realize that the guard wouldn’t have said otherwise. Wouldn’t have spoken the truth. I suppose it’s some small blessing. The damage to your face could have been far worse.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have stayed. It was difficult to for him to keep his expression neutral as the Duke continued to berate her. So he kept his eyes down, studying the stone floor of the hallway. It had likely once been rough and uneven, but the years of scuffing boots had smoothed the cobbles to satin.

“You do have such pretty eyes… And a well-formed mouth. Most will find your body pleasing… For some men, those things will be enough.”

He didn’t like the way the Duke paused between his backhanded compliments. Was he looking at her? Touching her?

“Priestess Annalia came to see me this morning,” Duke Teerman paused, as if waiting for a response. “Do you not have anything to add?”

“No, I’m sorry. I don’t know what Priestess Annalia would have to say. I saw her last a week ago in the second floor parlor and all seemed fine.” Penellaphe sounded confused.

“I’m sure it did, since you only spent half an hour there before leaving unexpectedly. I was advised you didn’t once pick up your embroidery set, nor did you engage in any conversation with the priestesses.”

So… this was the crime? She hadn’t completed any of her needlework? Penellaphe had sounded confused, and Hawke had to admit that he was, as well. With all honesty and due respect (which was none, if he was being honest), who the fuck cared?

“My mind was occupied with my upcoming Rite. I must have been daydreaming.”

“I’m sure you’re very excited about the Rite, and if this had been just one situation I would have easily overlooked your poor conduct. But I’ve learned that you were just in the atrium.”

“Yes, I was. I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to be. I don’t go often, but –“ she was interrupted again.

“Spending time in the atrium is not the issue and you’re smart enough to know that. Don’t play coy with me. You were speaking with two of the ladies in wait. You know that is not allowed.”

She had barely spoken two sentences to them! Who had run so quickly to report her to the Duke for that? The ladies had been too busy trying to get Hawke’s attention. He grinned at that, recalling the spilled rhinestones and fainting young women. But Penellaphe, who was not to have any interaction with, well, anyone… she had been in the atrium before anyone was there. The ladies had chosen to sit at the same table. Was she just supposed to just stand up and leave?

“Do you have nothing to say?”

“Such a demure Maiden.” Lord Mazeen’s words dripped like acid against Hawke’s skin. He did not have to know the Lord well to know that he would get an inordinate amount of pleasure in killing him. He felt ill knowing that Penellaphe was alone in that room, with those two beasts.

“I’m sorry. I should have left when they entered, but I didn’t.” He didn’t think he’d ever heard anyone apologize so much in his life. What had happened to the woman from the Red Pearl? That Penellaphe was so full of heart and fire. The girl on the other side of that door was…

Defeated.

“And why not?” The Duke prodded.

“I was… curious. They were talking about the upcoming Rite.”

“I’m not surprised to hear that. You were always an active child with a curious mind that flicked from one thing to the next: something I’ve warned the Duchess you wouldn’t grow out of easily. Priestess Annalia has also informed me that she fears your relationship with your lady’s maid has become far too familiar.”

Good Gods, how many imaginary transgressions could there be? How was she not supposed to be familiar with someone who had literally been tasked to be at her side at all times?

“Tawny has been a wonderful lady’s maid, and if my kindness and gratefulness has been mistaken for anything else then I apologize.”

Hawke knew that had struck a nerve. Penellaphe and Tawny were close, and the Maiden was allowed so little in the way of… of anything that made life bearable.

“I know it may be hard to keep boundaries with someone you spend so much time with, but a Maiden does not seek intimacies of the heart or the mind with those who serve them. Not even those who are to become members of the court. You must never forget that you are not like them. You were chosen by the Gods at birth, and they are chosen at their Rite. You will never be equals. You will never be friends.”

He inwardly scoffed.

“I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. You were chosen at birth, Penellaphe. Only one other has ever been chosen by the Gods. It was why the Dark One sent the Craven after your family. It was why your parents were slaughtered. That hurts, doesn’t it? But it’s the truth. That should have been the only lesson you ever needed,” Duke Teerman had a talent for cutting words, Hawke noted. “But between your lack of awareness regarding overstepping boundaries, your lack of attention with Priestess Annalia, your blatant disregard today for what is expected of you, aaaaand the attitude you displayed yesterday toward me. What? You thought I wouldn’t address your behavior while we discussed Ryan’s replacement? You stared back at me as if you wished to do me physical harm.”

The Duke chuckled then. “The meeting would have ended vastly different if others had not been present, and we weren’t there to discuss Hawke replacing Ryan-“

“Rylan! His name is Rylan, not Ryan!”

There she was, that spirited woman that had so intrigued him.

“THERE it is! Not so demure now!” Lord Mazeen sounded… almost gleeful.

“You mean, his name was Rylan. And does it really matter? He was just a royal guard. He would have been honored that I even thought of him. Either way, you just proved that I must double my attempts to strengthen my commitment to make you more than ready for your Ascension. Apparently I’ve been too easy on you. Unfortunately, that means you require another lesson. Hopefully it will be your last, but somehow I doubt it.”

“Yes. Hopefully.”

Hawke sighed inwardly in relief. How long had been here listening to the Duke ramble on about imaginary transgressions and basic human interactions painted as crimes. They should be finished soon.

“I believe four lashes should suffice.”

He froze.

Lashes.

Hawke could barely breathe. This was no mere dressing down, no raised-voice scolding with some hurtful words.

“Are you sure that’s enough? I wouldn’t want you to feel as if you haven’t done enough.” Gods, Penellaphe’s fire roared to life at the worst possible moment.

“How does seven sound? I see that number agrees with you. What do you think, Bran?”

“I think that is sufficient.”

This was no “lesson”.

“You know where to go,” the Duke directed.

This was abuse.

“You’re not ready, Penellaphe. You should know better by this point.”

Hawke strained to hear. It was far too quiet. The Duke was waiting for something. Could he hear the soft rustle of fabric? His restraint was thinning by the second.

This was torture.

“This is for your own good. This is a necessary lesson, Penellaphe, to ensure that you take your preparations seriously and are committed to them, so you do not dishonor the Gods.”

This is wrong. This is wrong.

“Brace yourself, Penellaphe.”

He heard the faint whistle… then a crack… it had to be a cane that the Duke was using on her.

A cane. Sweet merciless, sleeping Gods.

Swoosh. CRACK.

Two. Was this the fitting punishment for not touching her embroidery set? For speaking a word to a lady in wait who needed to be put in her place?

Swoosh. CRACK.

Three. Was this the fitting punishment for daring to have a friend? For not cowering when the Duke had hoped to humiliate her the day before?

Swoosh. CRACK.

Four. His eyes were wide, but when he looked to the guards at the door they avoided his questioning glare, acting blissfully unaware.

This… this travesty…

It was as if…

As if this happened all the time.

Swoosh. CRACK

Five. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. He was back there… in Carsadonia. In his cage. Made to bleed. Made to feed. Forced to take and be taken.

Swoosh. CRACK.

Six. The Blood Queen took pleasure from his pain. For decades. He couldn’t understand how any living being could be so monstrous.

Swoosh. CRACK.

Seven.

He let out an unsteady breath. It was over.

Penellaphe hadn’t made a sound.

How?

“I truly hope, Penellaphe, that this lesson… sinks in.”

His rage was white hot behind his eyes. He had to keep them closed. The guards would have been… disturbed… if they saw how they glowed with his ire.

Duke Teerman had signed his death warrant. And it was not going to be quick and painless.

Breathe. You have to breathe. You have to get ahold of yourself. This is not the time and place.

Hawke took a few measured breaths, and his heart began to slow. He couldn’t wrap his mind around what he’d just witnessed.

The door clicked and his head whipped up, amber gaze falling on the veiled woman who gingerly pulled the door closed behind her. She looked up and saw him, and Hawke could see her entire body tense. He just stared at her, willing her to meet his gaze behind the veil. He could tell that she avoided it. Penellaphe then straightened slowly and did her best to walk toward him, past him, as if nothing had happened.

But it had.

Her breathing was labored and he could tell that every step she took caused her pain. He followed her down the hall, cursing to himself when the effort became too much for her and she started whimpering softly with each pace. They made it to the narrow spiral staircase that would lead them down to the main floor. He opened the door for her to enter, and she dared not look at him as she passed.

She was already attempting the first step, grunting with effort to lower her body down through clenched teeth, when he closed the door behind him.

“Penellaphe,” his voice was low. Cold. Raw.

She continued to work on the next step, acting oblivious to his call.

“Penellaphe.”

She stopped.

“How long?”

“What?” she tried to sound surprised, but he could only hear the pain lacing the word.

“How long. How long has the Duke been doing this to you?”

Silence. It hung heavy over him. He felt like he was being smothered, waiting for an answer that he knew would likely ruin him. He could hear her pain-laden breaths sawing in and out. It had taken such effort for her to go down two steps. He watched her shoulders rise and fall with a deep, calming breath.

“Since Ian returned to the Capitol.”

Gods, why weren’t they somewhere with something he could break? Blood red rage roared in his blood. Hawke could feel himself trembling.

“That’s… that’s been years,” he whispered.

“It has.”

And then she began struggling down the steps again. As if that were the end of the conversation.

It wasn’t. Not even fucking close.

He practically leapt the three steps down to stand in front of her. “Is that all you have to say? Poppy this is wrong. You know that, don’t you?”

“Don’t call me that. Only my friends call me that.”

“Am I not? Do your friends know about this? How have your friends helped you?” Hawke spat, clenching his quaking fists at his side. “From what I can tell, I’m the only person who seems to give a flying fuck about what just happened. Tell me how that doesn’t qualify me as your friend.”

“There’s nothing that can be done to help,” she whispered and turned her head to the side, suddenly finding the stone wall quite interesting. He uttered a curse and reached for the chains that held the veil on top of her head.

“Take this Gods-damned thing off,” he growled as he pulled it away. He couldn’t stand trying to speak with her without seeing into her eyes, seeing her face. She was a person. Her emotions and expressions mattered. But she barely even flinched, keeping her gaze fixed somewhere near his boots. Her face was flushed and her eyes lined silver.

“Look at me.” When she made no move he reached her hand to her. He lightly traced his fingers over her left cheek down to her jaw, pulling gently so her face was lifted to him. “Please, Penellaphe. Look at me.” Her emerald gaze met his, shining with pain and sorrow and shame.

“I… I used to try. I used to do everything I thought I could to fix whatever it is that I’d done that had disappointed him,” she blinked, allowing a couple stray tears fall. “But it was never enough. No matter what I did, no matter how demure I was, no matter the eggshells I walked on and the dedication I tried to show… I realized eventually that my dedication was never the point. It was never about what I did or didn’t do. It didn’t matter how hard I tried. He would find anything-“

“Like not doing your fucking cross-stitch?”

She sucked in a breath and pulled away from his fingers. “How much did you hear?” the fire-haired beauty clasped her hands in front of her heart. He held onto her gaze and her eyes roared at him with hurt.

“Everything.”

She shuddered and bowed her head. Her hands trembled as she brought them up to cover her face. Hawke could feel humiliation rolling from her in waves and saw the tension in her shoulders. She was weeping before him.

“He will find anything that could possibly be an offense. He’s punished me for walking too quickly and breathing too loudly. And I have come to realize that… he only does it because he wants to hurt and humiliate me. He knows that his words make me flinch and his touch make me want to peel the skin from my body. And he relishes that. And I hate that he has that kind of power over me.”

Hawke’s ire sharpened into something cooler, more calculating and thoughtful. He had come to Masadonia to kidnap and ransom the Maiden, a symbol to all of Solis. He’d come to send a message using their precious prize, a privileged brat that was no better than those soulless creatures who had raised her.

He took a measured breath and ran a hand over his face in realization.

She was... innocent. She was a pawn, a possession. She was a victim, kept in a cage just as he had been, albeit far more gilded. And even though there was an illusion of life and choice, she was guilted, berated, and beaten into submission.

And Gods, she was still brave and vivacious enough to risk the Duke’s ire. Reckless enough to step into a brothel and send all of Hawke’s expectations straight to hell.

There is nothing that can be done to help.

There was. He could take her away from this. He had planned to do that, in a way, but now? How could he deliver her back to the Ascended knowing that this is what her life would be? And how could he convince her of the truth? She was smart, and Hawke knew that she didn’t agree with everything the Ascended ordained. Her reactions at the council meeting had been proof of that.

He reached out to her again, taking her hands in his and pulling them away from her tear-streaked cheeks. He stroked his thumbs over her knuckles and spoke her name to draw her gaze.

“This is wrong. You hold no shame in this. He has done this to you, and that is evil and terrible and monstrous. Tell me you realize that, Penellaphe,” he urged. She nodded softly. He gave an encouraging quirk of his lips and continued. “He does these things to make you feel weak and powerless, and you are neither of those things. He knows that you are curious and full of life, and he is afraid that you will be able to see past his façade and into his own weakness if he cannot keep you squashed under his heel.”

Hawke let go of her hands and gingerly held her face between them, using his thumbs to wipe away any remaining dampness that fell there. He looked down for a moment, and then brought his eyes back up, a burning golden stare.

“I need you to make me a promise, Penellaphe. Can you do that?”

“A promise?” she whispered.

“Promise me. Promise me that you’ll trust your instincts. Question everything. You are fierce and intelligent, so think about what they do and what they say. Think about it… you are the most important person in the entire kingdom. They should be worshipping at your feet, not taking a cane to your back,” he was afraid he’d said too much; pushed too hard. Would she be suspicious? Would she balk at his request? Her gaze was green as springtime, and her eyes stared into his, trying to process what he was saying.

“Can you promise me that?”

The knight endured her gaze for a few tense moments, her face still in his palms. She closed her eyes after a sigh and placed her hands over his, dipping her chin.

“I promise, Hawke.”

Thank the Gods.

He pressed his lips to the crown of her head and the Maiden inhaled sharply. Chuckling, he let her go and reached down to the discarded veil.

“I will make you a promise, as well,” he extended his hand with the soft fabric. She moved to grab it and he clenched her hand with both of his. Startled, she looked to him again.

“He will never hurt you again.”

She smiled wistfully then, and he could read in her expression that, as much as she wanted that to be true, she didn’t believe that anyone had that power. Then she pulled the veil from his hand and attempted the next step in front of her.

It would take forever to make it down the stairs.

“I have an idea,” Hawke smirked. “I think it will help. But you have to trust me.”

“I… I don’t trust you. Not when you have that look in your eye,” she laughed lightly.

“Here, if I squat down can you climb on my back?” he turned around on the step in front of her. He knew he was still much taller than she was, even on a step below. “It may be painful to get there, but if you can wrap your arms around my shoulders and your legs around my waist we could make it down much more quickly. And hopefully without too much strain on your back.”

Hawke felt a hand on her shoulder, but she hesitated. “That would be… incredibly inappropriate. What if someone sees?”

“You’re hurt. If someone opens one of the doors we’ll hear it and have enough time for me to set you down and throw that Gods-forsaken sheet over your head,” he scoffed over her shoulder. “Now wrap your arms around my neck, and I’ll grab your legs when I stand up.”

He was surprised when she didn’t argue and her forearms crossed in front of him.

“Ready?” He asked, knowing the first time he lifted her up would probably cause her some pain.

“Yes.” Her grip tightened around him. She gasped into his shoulder as he stood straight, putting his hands under her thighs. He waited a moment, listening for her breath to even out as she adjusted to the soreness.

��I’m sorry. Are you alright?” Hawke gave her legs a light squeeze. She nodded against his shoulder, and he started gingerly making his way down the stairs. He thanked the Gods that he was Atlantian, strong and light on his feet. He knew he could practically glide down without causing her any additional discomfort.

They reached the bottom landing and he gently set her down, heart constricting when he saw her wince as she slowly lowered her arms to her sides.

“Here,” he grabbed the veil from her hand and placed it over her head. He studied the tiny chains that were supposed to hold it in place, and he had to admit that he wasn’t sure what to do with those. A giggle escaped from behind the veil.

“Give me that,” she grabbed the chains. “It’s not far to my room. We should be able to make it there without it falling off.”

Hawke grinned and pulled open the door. “After you, Milady.”

They walked down the corridor slowly and silently. He would look down at her from time to time, wondering how she could possibly have the strength to be so spirited and brave knowing the consequences that could await her. What would the Duke do if he’d known about her little trip to the Red Pearl? He frowned to himself and looked forward. That had been reckless, but he understood her need for life. For freedom. She had wanted to experience things that everyone else in the world took for granted. They said she was Chosen, privileged. But she was also alone.

Well, no she wasn’t. Not anymore.

As they stopped in front of her door he turned to her. “Are you alright? Is there anything you need?”

“No,” she shook her head. “Tawny gets an ointment from the healer. It will help, but I may not be… I may stay in my room for a while. But I heal pretty quickly, and this isn’t the worst I’ve had…”

The anger roiled through him as she trailed off. Of course it wasn’t. Of course seven lashes for not touching her embroidery set and her attitude hadn’t been the worst that he’d done to her.

“I… he…” he swallowed and took two deep breaths. “I’m going to calm myself so I don’t do anything reckless about what you just said.”

“I’m sorry,” she answered quietly.

“Don’t you dare apologize, Penellaphe. None of this is your fault. I am simply… staggered by his cruelty,” he managed a soft smile that he knew didn’t reach his eyes. “Get some rest.” Hawke reached down and squeezed her hand before he opened the door and motioned for her to go in. He began to close the door behind her when she stopped.

“Hawke?”

“Yes?” he answered, looking for her eyes behind the veil.

“You can… please, call me Poppy,” she gave a shy grin and shuffled into the room. He pushed the door closed behind her and leaned his forehead against the wood.

He was shaking.

Breathe, Hawke. Breathe.

His ragged breaths seethed out from between his teeth. In for four counts, out for four. In… out… in… out...

After what seemed like ages of breathing exercises he pushed away from the door and stalked down the hall.

He needed to think. And talk to Kieran. He would be none-too-thrilled at the change of plans.

But plans would change.

Duke Teerman would die.

They would have to find another way to get his brother back.

Because nobody was going to hurt Poppy again.

[kashuan]

All right, there are quite a few things that come to mind with a question as broad as this, so here’s my best attempt to sum up what character design means to me in like 5 minutes :,D. I’m going to start with a few very quick sketches that talk about more my general approach to drawing, but I’m going to build up to how it all connects with character.

Step 1) Find reference! Whenever you can, use reference, it will always make your character’s posing look 100 times more genuine than anything you can pull from your brain, and that’s nothing to feel bad about. It’s not cheating because we’re not stopping at Step 2 either, which is where the misnomer comes in that you’re just ‘copying’ (protip: even step 2 isn’t a straight Copy; as long as you’re not tracing, you’re not copying, and even tracing has its uses for personal studies). I could do a whole answer of it’s own about picking your reference, but I’ll keep it short by saying: not every reference will fit every character. Keep in mind your character’s attitude when choosing your ref. Some poses are so generic they’re one size fits all, but even this very simple pose has unique character to it. The way the legs are posed, to me, gives it a young and girlish feeling, and depending how you played with the expression, you could even make it come off shy. An overbearingly confident character, while also taking an arms crossed pose, will likely position their legs differently, assuming a stance that takes up more space, etc.

Step 2) Draw pretty much exactly what you see first, but keep it simple. Think of the body like individual shapes; anatomy is not the focus right now, and you’ll actually hinder yourself if you hone in on that first. What you want to do at this stage is capture what the pose is generally doing; character isn’t involved yet Step 3) Now, working off 2′s framework, start considering body type. If you skip the previous step, you might have a hard time capturing the gesture correctly, since it’s a lot for your brain to juggle at once. When I sketched these two different body types, I built it straight off the first drawing, erasing lines as needed.

So the first image includes some extremely basic body type variations, this one pushes that idea further. 1 is the basic frame from the last image, while 2 is about playing with proportions. There are a lot of ways you can play with proportions, and as I’ll come to sound like a broken record about: make those decisions thoughtfully. For example, when I made this version shorter than the reference base, I had to consider exactly where I wanted her to lose that height. Here, I made her shorter waisted, took a little length from the legs, and gave her a squatter neck as well. You can do one of these or all of them. Just keep in mind those are all individual options. Letting your train of thought stop at ‘this character is short/tall so I’m just going to generally shrink/stretch their body’ means you’ll run out of variety pretty fast, and sometimes the overall proportions can end up looking wonky (though there’s always exceptions to the rule, remember that the individual body parts should remain correctly scaled in relation to each other). Image 3 is another approach to proportional manipulation, except rather than focusing on height, it focuses on fat distribution and to a lesser extent bone structure. Again, there’s so many individual places you can focus on here, make sure to mix them up. Arm size, shoulder broadness, chest and hip size, leg thickness and musculature, foot and hand size and so forth.   Image 4 is a further exaggeration of image 3 and the lines have started to get a little more stylized. While image 3 is still reasonably realistic, 4 is just starting to cross into cartoon territory. Advantage of 4 is that when you are able to push the proportions further due to the leniency of style, you can sell a clearer idea and a clearer character. Downside is, well, it looks more cartoonish now, and depending on the needs of your image that might not be what you want ie: it can look like a mistake rather than a purposeful choice if everyone else around the character is drawn more realistically.

Also… I see variations on this general advice quite a lot for women, but don’t forget about doing the same for men. It’s great to see how eager a lot of artists are to experiment with the female form that is simply absent in a lot of mainstream media, but I find that men really tend to fall by the wayside here even though they often get equally shallow treatment in the mainstream. There’s usually like 2-3 ‘go-to’ body types for men and that’s it. Men’s bodies can have the exact same amount of variety as a woman’s, including the individual ways the fat can be distributed on it, and the assorted ways their proportions can be played with. Whenever I find an artist that does this it’s like striking gold to me tbh. 

So there’s some very rough hows. But, perhaps even more importantly than any of that, is WHY you make these choices. This is going to get a little stream of consciousness, but with a question this broad, I tried to hit on as many general points I could think of in regard to my own process.

-When I start to design a character, I really need to have an understanding of them first. This includes things like backstory, personality, habits, so and so forth… Yes, all of this stuff shows up in their design, even if it’s just a drawing of them standing straight up. This isn’t just like ‘this character got this scar at age 7 so I need to know where it goes′, I mean in depth info about them. I touched on this a little bit earlier, bringing up the different ways a character would assume the same general pose, but let me expand on that. -What do I mean by personality? So there’s the most obvious answer, which is that a bubbly character will assume bubbly poses, a sullen character will slouch more, etc… But let’s take it further than that. This is a concept I’ve touched on in past tutorials, but here’s a quick recap. A character’s personality involves their opinions, for one; how do you make that show up in their design? Well, one of the most obvious questions I always ask myself is: what is their opinion on their own appearance (the thing we are drawing)/how do they want to be perceived by others? Consider a strong character. I see a lot of artists who take this thought as far as: okay, this character is strong, so I’m gonna throw a 6 pack on him, maybe a nice pair of guns, and call it a day. Which leads to like, nice art, but also...kind of bland? I think that’s because this is a rather half-baked approach. How can we take it further? Ask yourself more specific questions. Is your strong character concerned with being perceived as an ‘ideal’ sort of fit by others (the type you give that showy 6 pack to) or does that not matter to them? (more likely to look ‘chubby’ if not outright fat, though probably is just as if not more capable of actually doing some real heavy lifting than saran wrapped abs man). If they’re some kind of mystical being that can look like whatever they want (ie: the anime waif that can also lift 1000 lbs-trope), you should still take into account their personal perspective on appearance. Don’t just stop at ‘this guy/girl is strong so they’ll look super shredded’ or ‘they’re magic so I’ll do whatever’. Doing this, you’ve instantly lost a chance to inform the audience more about the individual there beyond ‘they’re strong’ -Break it down further with their habits. What is their daily life like? If they’re running ten miles every day they should probably have some strong looking legs. If their job involves a lot of lifting, maybe focus on the upper body more and leave the legs less defined. Do they eat a lot? Or drink? The way the fat distributes in both these cases will be noticeably different (and this isn’t even taking into account points like an endomorph vs an ectomorphs body, which I always suggest reading up on). I’d definitely recommend drawing as many different body types as you can just as studies, in order to add these variations to your mental library. I’m sure every artist has seen this popular athlete line up by now, but really study images like this. Don’t just mindlessly copy what you see when you create your own characters though; think about why those athletes have the bodies they have, what they specifically did to get them like that, and how that can apply to your character’s own life. -One thing that has always bothered me is how often artists are afraid to use the head (not the features; I’ll get to that in a second) as an extension of the body when it comes to imbuing it with variety and character. While it is absolutely possible to have a thin face and a fat body (as is any combo), it’s another missed opportunity not to experiment with chubby cheeks, a soft jawline, etc. It’s a cliche to mention him at this point as an inspiration, but one of my very favorite things about Mucha’s art was how he was able to make fuller faces look so beautiful despite being a rather nontraditional approach (so many art books try to tell you this is a big NO). example, example. These faces actually look like real individuals to me than a drawing that focuses too hard on being generically aesthetically pleasing. -So, facial features. A face with less traditional features isn’t just going to be more memorable than Stock Beautiful Face #73, but it’s basically a more zoomed in version of informing the audience about the character in the same way the body does. -Know tropes, play with tropes, do not rely on tropes. Sunken bone structure, long features-guy will always pretty much read like a villain (or at least someone off-putting), but find somewhere to make the formula your own. Give him thicker eyebrows or big ears. Give the girl with the standard doll-face a nose that sticks out a little more prominently or a crooked smile. -Speaking of are so many different ways to draw a smile, do not underestimate the mileage you can get out of this one feature alone. Artists tend to have a favorite way to draw smiles, in my experience, but remember your character. Would they have a big toothy grin, a handsome ‘cool’ looking smile, a small shy lopsided one, ones that touch the eyes, ones that don’t… This is probably a repetitive point by now but just do whatever you can not to draw the exact same feature on two different characters, and make sure to think through your reasoning for every choice you make. To me, it’s always immediately evident if an artist really knows their character or if they’re just trying to make something aesthetically pleasing. The former is always more attention grabbing in my opinion. -One of my favorite things to consider when designing a character who’s part of a family: genetics and how you can play with them to inform the audience more about the character’s story. Does this character take after their mother or father? How? Why? Why why, you might ask? This isn’t a photo of a real person, this is an illustration that you should be making deliberate choices about every step along the way. It’s one thing to draw a character that looks like their parent simply because logic dictates they should, another to make meaningful decisions as to where and why they do. Some examples: He has his father’s eyes because they carry the same intensity and other characters are a little put off by him because it (conversely, maybe he’s such a gentle character that this detail stands out twice as strongly). He has the same hair as his father, but he styles it differently to avoid the association. She has her mother’s nose which everyone compliments her on so shes happy to be seen in profile. She has her father’s broad shoulders and she’s a little self conscious about it so she tends to wear baggier clothing. Etc etc! In all these cases, you can communicate these details through even a simple drawing of the character standing alone, and should try to as often as you can. -In the end, the only way you’re going to know how to draw all these different details, whether they be different body types or different facial features, is by studying real people. Draw as many different kinds as you can, add them to your mental library. Your reference will never give you everything you need to work it, and I’m not sure if that’s maybe what this question as getting at-- if I have a reference folder of go-to ‘types’ or something. I don’t. I have a folder of poses labeled with characters I think they’d fit, and that’s about it. If you’re just imitating what you see in a photo, you’ll always be drawing That Person, not Your Character. So you are going to have to pull some of it out of your brain. Note, however, the important difference between just ‘making it up’ and recalling information you’ve studied in the past. That said, while on this last topic of expanding your mental library, that includes not just doing studies, but also learning and observing the ways other accomplished artists work. Here are some of my book recommendations when it comes to those which have most helped me in regard to this particular subject. This includes books that specifically tell you how to vary your body types, but also ones that just have a lot of examples of different kinds: Morpho: Anatomy for Artists Morpho: Fat and Skin Folds Famous Artists School Course in Illustration and Design (If anyone is interested in this one and has trouble finding a non $500 copy, hit me up and I’ll help you out) Spirit of the Pose Anatomy Lessons from the Great Masters Drawing People: How to Portray the Clothed Figure Figures from Life (my favorite currently; not the most varied array of figures but he goes in depth on how to successfully grow an academic study of a model into an illustration influenced by your own ideas and personal style) If you found this answer helpful, although it isn’t specifically about character design, I go a little more in depth about some of the topics I briefly covered here (such as choosing the right reference, good vs bad reference in general, honing in on shapes, pushing the pose, etc) in this short book of mine :>

[sinkix]

《What your fav Haikyuu!! Character says about you│Nekoma Edition》

Yo-hoo! Here’s another part to this potential(?) series! I hope you enjoy the possible call-outs in some of these lmao. Writers block been kicking my ass recently but I had a lot of fun writing these. Enjoy <3

You can find the Karasuno ver. here 

✧✧✧✧✧ ✧✧✧✧✧ ✧✧✧✧✧ ✧✧✧✧✧

Kuroo:

Have a hand fetish and will not say no to choking.

Daddy kink™

Will not accept anything below 6 inches.

More of a dog person but would love to own a black cat.

You drool over tattoos.

Your grades are mostly B’s but you know in your heart you deserve that A, and tbh you probably do. Chase ur goals bby.

Halloween is likely your favourite holiday.

You have to resist not to carve a dick into the pumpkin EvEry GodDAmN YeAr.

You either study for 6 hours consecutively or cannot study at all and you get very frustrated at this.

Have the potential to be a good leader and command the room but probably don’t put it to use as much as you should.

Your playlist parkours from sad 3am crying into your pillow songs to aggressive punk music you could rob a store to.

You like bad boys who hang around bars and look like they would put out a cigarette on your forearm and call you a slut. Just stating facts sweaty xoxo.

Either dress very feminine and girly with a ‘smol girl uwu’ aesthetic or a hardass punk who would kick your ass for a can of beer no in between and tbh both are equally hot.

You’re a big softie at heart either way and just want to be held and told everything will be okay.

Ur a hoe for when people stroke your hair or caress your chin it’s your ultimate weakness.

Watched Rick & Morty.

Twice.

Sleeves rolled up veiny forearms and donning a silver watch are your muse and something you fantasise about frequently.

Most of your memes are shitty top text bottom texts that are somehow funny and I don’t understand why lmao.

You call someone ‘bro’ even if it’s someone you’re immensely attracted to.

Did someone say ties? No it’s just ur dirty ass thoughts thinking about that hot business dudes attire from across the street and how you wish they were tied around ur wrists.

Probably had a crush on Jeff the Killer as a tween and are relentlessly haunted by your old Wattpad library. 

Tbh any dark-haired dude with bedhead that screams rugged and probably not good for you is something that draws you like a moth to a flame.

You often question why every person you’ve fallen for has been a Scorpio and curse that tendency of yours.

Dw man they’re hot so I feel u.

Kenma:

Went through a ‘I’m not like other __’ phase and it’s something that you think about a lot and wish you didn’t.

Watched dan & phil as a kid.

Any mention of Pokemon has you turning into a rabid beast you get way too excited.

It’s cute though dw bby.

Pretty antisocial but interesting to talk to.

Your family often question how you’re able to sleep in till 3pm and judge you heavily for it.

Nocturnal night owl gang rise up.

Frequently have bags under your eyes but somehow manage to pull it off.

Listen to ASMR on the down-low and will never admit it to a single soul.

Frequently go on BL binges and have many related book marks.

You pray that someone will never find your laptop bc holy fuck the amount of smut on that.

You wear scarves & beanies even when it isn’t that cold outside.

100% went through a scene hair phase/attempted to.

You dye your hair a lot or REALLY want to.

You have a voice kink low-key so anyone with a pleasant/soothing sounding voice just gets u goin’.

Cats are your favourite animal and you either do or want to own several.

Would name them after video game/anime characters u fuckin nerd lol.

Speaking of cats ,you fantasise heavily about cat-boys and have a folder dedicated to them.

Oversized hoodies are your vibe and always ball the sleeve hems in your fist as a comfort mechanism.

Shopping centres are your worst nightmare and trigger your claustrophobia or social anxiety and honestly I feel that spiritually.

Have a cute sticky note collection.

You like a lot of music consisting of guitar and slow/soothing beats.

You also fw EDM/ techno on occasions.

Honestly wouldn’t wanna anger you since you have a seething temper when pushed far enough.

It’s the kinda temper that’s eerily quiet but no less terrifying, like the other person can tell you are graphically plotting their demise.

You love sleeping to the sound of rainfall and often play those nature ambience videos while you sleep.

Never tidy your sheets and it’s just a big scrunched up heap of fabric in the centre of your mattress most of the time.

Make your fucking bed.

Lev:

Your ships are chaotic and shamelessly controversial.

Would do something just for the sake of creating mayhem lmao.

You were the fucker who stuck their chewing gum under the desk, I see you.

Your brain never stops whirring it’s a constant hurricane of crackhead energy and you have no idea how to turn it off. 

Would eat a stick of pencil lead for $2

You don’t help your situation with the amount of coffee/energy drinks you consume.

The class clown who cries themselves to sleep.

Such a wholesome dumbass but somehow kinda intimidating??? 

Even if you’re not confident you can do something you’ll try anyway and honestly I respect that about you.

You !! use!!! a lot??!! of!! random punctuation!!! so you always??!?!? seem!!111!! excited!!!!!11!?

Every time you’ve ever tried to make a sandcastle it has failed.

You tried to eat the sand once but we don’t talk bout that.

You would  also pick up slugs and snails and chase your friends around with them.

Can never tell whether people are laughing with you or at you and while you don’t let it show it high-key bothers you when you’re laying alone in your room at night.

Not one to hold grudges, you carry a ‘shit happens’ mentality which is v good but it sometimes leads to people taking advantage of it or walking all over you.

Your meme collection is both questionable and horrifying.

Like how many cursed images and heavily distorted pictures does one person need.

Never organise the files on your PC/laptop so it looks like a complete dumpster fire.

The one at sleepovers who persistently woke everyone else up with their snickering and refusal to sleep till dawn.

For the love of Asahi charge your damn phone.

I see that red bar and ‘12%’

Charge it now.

Bought a plant one time, gave it a name and talked to it frequently.

It died not long after bc u forgot to fucking water it.

No one better ever make you responsible for a pet.

Type of person that when someone asks you to tag along on an endeavour no matter how stupid it is you will agree.

2am skydiving in france? hell yeah.

Midnight shopping spree and spending over half your pay check? count you in.

Exploring an abandoned hospital and performing an Ouija board to summon the demons of hell? you’re damn right you’ll be there.

I hope you have a mum friend by your side bc if not how are you still alive.

You sometimes put the milk in before the cereal and it’s something I’ll never forgive you for.

Yaku:

Very responsible and usually make the right decisions.

You do have moments where you act like a complete dumbass though.

Like u go from 50 year old to 5 year old in the blink of an eye.

A hopeless romantic but it’s a side you don’t often reveal.

Prefer strawberry milk over any other flavour.

You’re the type of person to shower twice a day w/o fail.

Where that stank smell coming from? Not you clearly bc your skin is basically 90% The Body Shop’s rose scented soap at this point.

You get stomach aches a lot and you can’t figure out why.

Probably an allergy to everyone’s bs.

Really good at dirty talk even though you don’t seem the type so people are always taken aback.

You have to be really in the mood though otherwise it falls flatter than Oikawa’s ass, use your skill wisely.

You often call people clowns when you know you’re secretly the biggest one going.

Honk honk, hoe.

You send messages in one paragraph rather than multiple texts unless you are REALLY excited.

People underestimate you at times then are shocked when they realise you are capable of being a fire-breathing dragon from the flaming pits of hell.

You like spicy chicken wings.

Such a petty little shit at times lmao.

Enjoy the view from the top of mountains so you either hike a lot or really want to.

Way more of a cat person since it’s just much more convenient for you.

Usually pretty cheerful or calm and people are drawn to your stable/friendly aura.

Went through a phase of drinking mountain dew and your body still feels the awful effects

Fav element is probably air.

You’re 5′6″ or shorter.

Box dyed your hair brunette several times and can never get the pigment out to this day.

Yamamoto:

Whenever you smell something weird in the room you always internally freak out and think it’s you.

Head-butting walls is your hobby.

You fell off your bike as a kid and still have the scar on your knee.

Probably have tons of ear piercings.

Would tame a pigeon and call it Larry.

You get frequent nosebleeds and can never tell if it’s a medical issue or your extreme simping for fictional men/women.

Hopefully the latter.

You constantly chew your pen/pencil in class so you never lend them to anyone out of embarrassment.

I really hope no one ever lends you stationery bc 30 minutes later it’ll look like it was mauled by a rabid rottweiler.

You really want to own a dog and would call it something intimidating like Banshee or Diablo.

You bleached your hair that one time and it almost fell out so now you’re forced to stay at least 10 metres away from all at-home hair dye products.

You tried your best though bby so A for effort, even if it did look like dehydrated ramen afterwards.

Your grades are mostly C’s and you’re barely passing bc you just don’t care about your classes lol.

Still though you’re actually pretty smart so put it to good use you lazy oaf, channel that crackhead energy into something good.

Your phone screen has several cracks in it from when you dropped it on the bathroom floor while shitting and you’ll always be angry at yourself for that.

You have some really weird quirks but you make it work.

Actually a v chill person but you just kinda attract chaos/trouble wherever you go.

Carry a lighter with you even when you don’t need one.

Shy texter but once people see you irl you are the complete opposite, you just dk how to text without coming across as awkward.

One of those people that’s unintentionally funny and always get confused when you make someone laugh but it makes you feel good regardless.

Have a cool necklace collection and own at least one dog-tag/army style pendant.

Should really consider buying a rabbit you would look so cute w/ one.

You have really nice legs and people should compliment them more.

Either severely dehydrated or overly hydrated to the point you are peeing pure tap water so for the love of god please learn moderation, your kidneys and bladder will thank you for it.

Inuoka:

Your favourite character would be Hinata but you like people taller than you so your love for Inuoka spawned.

You really enjoy using the double spiderman meme.

Cannot correctly verbalise your feelings without creating a minimum of 10 misunderstandings but once people are used to it it’s kinda endearing.

You usually wake up in a good mood and people can never fathom how or why.

You either stay up till 5am or you wake up at that time no in between.

A morning person bc you love the sunrise.

Change your lock-screen very regularly bc you get bored.

Your humour consists solely of poop jokes.

When you don’t understand a joke you laugh anyway and hope they don’t ask you if you actually get it.

Happened once and you’re still traumatised from the cricket silence that fell upon the room.

Really like the taste of lemonade and drink it more often than you should.

Often think about what you would look like with a shaved head.

More of an extrovert but def have occasional introvert tendencies where you wanna be left tf alone.

Never allowed to pick up anything in stores bc the last time you did you sniffed a scented candle and it shattered to the floor.

Constantly have spontaneous ideas of what to change about your appearance.

You use a lot of hand gestures like thumbs up and peace signs.

‘Dude’ and ‘lmao’ is 90% of your vernacular.

Your nails are a disaster, some are down to the nub while others are pretty grown out bc you only bite a select few please sort it out.

Look really good in red.

Your laptop has way too many tabs open from random google searches of words you didn’t know the meaning to.

You read a lot of books but for like 10 minutes at a time bc you have the attention span of a walnut.

You are the type of person to nuke your AO3 tags with things that aren’t even relevant purely bc you found them funny.

Your Tumblr drafts are a nightmare, you have like 100+ in the works yet keep starting new projects why do you do this.

Happy sunshine but you have a LOT of mood swings like that shit comes out of nowhere.

Cry pretty often but no one ever sees and it’s usually because of said mood swings.

You always smile and pick yourself up again though which I commend you for.

TYPES IN CAPITALS IN SITUATIONS THAT DO NOT REQUIRE SAID PUNCTUATION SO YOU SEEM LIKE YOU’RE YELLING ALL THE TIME.

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

princess-nazario:

It's ok, thanks for clearing things up. See, everytime theres a post that might just be different the tumblr-fad! Version you speak or questions how tumblr might be romanticizing them theres always annoying people in the replies saying that theres a version where she wanders down the underworld herself, or that the version where shes kidnapped is...weak or a damsel in distress since it doesnt fit into tumblrs made idea of empowerment?? Its so annoying honestly. I saw this kind of stuff in a lot of posts while exploring the greek myth tag and its just... infuriating. I definitely should ignore them but it seriously makes me kind of sad and angry at the same time? The hades and persephone posts are everything(mostly tumblr-fad!) Version I reread your original post and yes I do agree, tumblr-fad! Persephone does take away a lot of the complexities and archetypes I read you examine. I think Hadestown might portray Hades and Persephone's power struggle well, it doesnt completely ignore the implications its giving off for the sake of some romance. This is what tumblr is doing and it's really annoying. By doing this and reducing the characters here to simple boxes it's taking away your interest in the myth, I think that's what you meant? I think your study of Hades/the underworld being Persephones self, cthonic meaning "spirit of nature within, inner self" while I dont fully understand that's really cool. I especially dislike how woobified and depowered he usually is in the tumblr-fad! Theres a lot you can work with him as the antagonist in a retelling I think. In fact maybe itd be great to have a retelling that explores the power struggle between Hades and Persephone and shows how Persephone gets through adversity and becomes of equal power through oppressive authority? Thatd be really cool. Tumblr-fad! Version is the twilight of myths but kind of the opposite. In twilight, the author itself romanticizes the creepiness and power struggle that might be there between Edward itself(although Bella does have a lot of agency so I think that's why it resonated so much with female readers?) while the Persephone has a various amount of versions, most versions being she was kidnapped/abduction with many meanings and metaphors and allegories to things, and tumblr-fad! Version ignores nuance in favor of their ships. Thanks for being so open and honest about this, I honestly was stressed because I thought my response maybe being immature or uninformed might be irritating or annoying. I haven't been sneaking through your blog or anything like that, I just saw your original post in the goddess demeter tag so I searched up "Persephone" on your stuff since I was curious with what else you might have to say about it. I wish Tumblr could maybe bother to learn something called not everything is entirely not THIS thing or the OTHER and maybe do something different from what Hades and Persephone coming to be known as the peak of all love stories on the website.

@princess-nazario I hope you don’t mind, I copy pasted your last reblog into a new post thread because the last one was getting massive.

I think I’m starting to understand what you’re getting at regarding the perception of victims as “weak,” and it makes a lot of sense. Thank you for clarifying regarding the “damsel in distress” trope because that’s when it clicked for me what you were talking about. I actually agree on that point, I think there is a tendency for pop feminism to kind of portray more vulnerable, sensitive or fragile women as less feminist, so I can see how you’re applying that to your views on how people on tumblr perceive the story of Hades and Persephone.

That said, I think you have a lot of different angles you’re looking at this whole thing from, and that’s great! However I think there’s so many subjects you are trying to tackle here that it seems like you are kind of are only half informed about, maybe from exploring discussions online. I think this is resulting in conclusions that are kind of confused and lacking in more solid foundations, if that makes sense. I think maybe you might benefit from exploring each element further on their own merits.

For example, did you know that there are a lot of different feminist viewpoints on Twilight itself? And not all feminists completely condemn it? In my opinion, there are a lot of things about Twilight to criticize, however there was a distinct element of hatred for the interests and desires of teenage girls involved with how people responded en masse to the Twilight phenomenon. I don’t think you were old enough to be directly familiar with all this at the time. I think a decent primer would be this video from Lindsay Ellis (tho please keep in mind that some of her most recent content is not for younger audiences). It doesn’t cover all angles of the topic, but it does give an alternative perspective in retrospect about the raging Twilight hate that swept through pop culture for a long time:

Also, there is a whole conversation to be had about the concept of “woobification,” and why that word exists, as well as how it is used in conversations about girls and women’s fantasies. The original post I made shows that I have my own frustrations when male villains and darker archetypes are whittled down to something seemingly non-threatening and “socially acceptable” myself (like...turning the beast into the prince in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast), but in my experience, people have often used the word “woobie” to describe any explorations of the vulnerability of these types of male characters when women do so because they find those men intriguing or attractive, and that can get kind of tricky because in many ways, those conversations can harbor a subtle resentment and shaming towards female fantasties, period.

I’m getting the impression that maybe there’s something about Hades and Persephone, or at least the archetypes they embody, that really intrigues you, but you’re not sure what you are supposed to think and feel about it from a feminist perspective. That’s ok, ultimately you’ll figure it out on your own. I can’t tell you what to think about the myths themselves on their own, separate from contemporary feminist media because that’s ultimately it’s own thing, and you can springboard your own perspectives and reimagining off of the original in any way that feels right to you.

 What I can do though, is leave you with some age-apropriate content that I was consuming at your age, as well as a link to a site that explores stories with similar archetypes that Persephone embodies. 

The site is called Girls Underground, and it explores and catalogues stories about girls who go on heroine’s journeys in the “Cthonic” context like I was talking about, as in exploring their own inner psyches through the experience of traversing a strange, scary, magical place. Sometimes these stories involve the trope of a spooky attractive male character who takes on an adversarial role that is sometimes also romantically charged, but not all of them do. I think the resources page may be of particular interest to you because it links to essays on subjects within this genre of storytelling. The Examples page has a ton of other stories not listed here that you can take a look at, however not all of them (but many of them!) are kid friendly.

Movies that I would recommend: 

Labyrinth (1986), which was my favorite film since early childhood, and is the reason I love these types of stories to begin with.

Legend(1985), which doesn’t depict a healthy dynamic, but is a great film and does have a big place in the general conversation about this type of storytelling.

Howl’s Moving Castle, either the book or the film. 

Pan’s Labyrinth is rated R for some gore and violence, and it has scary moments, but I think it’s fine for most teens. The character of Pan is not part of that whole “demon lover” trope because the heroine is a small child, but he takes on a similar role in terms of being a figure that embodies the underworld and thus a major part of the heroine’s psyche.

Honestly, I would consider Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (the original, not the live action remake) a good rendition. It was written by a woman.

Jean Cocteau’s black and white La Belle et La Bete.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, or a film adaptation of the same.

Rebecca by Daphne DuMarier, which is what my username is from. I’m fond of the Hitchcock film adaptation.

Honestly, the 2004 adaptation of Phantom of the Opera is...flawed, but it was my introduction to Phantom, and it’s a lot of melodramatic fun. 

It’s worth noting that in a lot of these stories, there are not perfect, healthy relationships depicted between men and women. There is cruelty, there is harm. But in many cases, that does not mean these stories have nothing to say about relationships between men and women, nor does it say that they are solely tales about abuse and we cannot find romanticism within them. Each story has it’s own flaws, it’s own strengths, hold deeper meanings beyond the surface. They contribute something distinct to a rich history of artistic explorations of the dynamics of power in romance and the female experience with our own desires within a patriarchal society.

[all-things-lgbtqia]

JK Rowling continues to spout TERF ideology, continues to say she’s not a TERF.

JK Rowling, best known as author of the world-renowned Harry Potter series and the decider of who is and isn’t gay, took to Twitter within the past 24 hours to make what I can only assume was supposed to be a joke in response to a Tweet about efforts to help create a more equal world “those who menstruate” in a post Covid-19 world, saying that “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people.”

When called out for her erasure of trans men, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people - all people who can be assigned female at birth but do not identify as women - Rowling went on the defensive, criticizing the idea that “sex isn’t real”.

Here’s the thing, Rowling: sex is real. Trans people know this. That’s kind of what makes most of us trans. Their biological sex, which is a real and tangible thing, does not match the identity they see for themselves, which is also real although it can be a lot harder for us outsiders to see. This is why many trans people opt for modified clothing (such as binders and gaffs), hormones and surgeries to make the exterior body match the internal sense of gender. Granted, many trans people will not do this, and they are not obligated to do so, but the vast majority of us will opt for such measures, not just to make ourselves more comfortable in our skins, but also so people like you don’t keep misgendering us and then pretend to be the victim when we call you out on it (which you’re doing right now). Absolutely no one is arguing that biological sex isn’t real.

She then goes on to say that saying women like her, “who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades”, hate trans people “because they think sex is real and has lived consequences - is a nonsense”.

Like I said Rowling, sex is real and absolutely no one is saying otherwise. You’re the one who keeps saying it. You said it during the Maya Forstater debacle and you’re saying it now. “Woman” is not a term that refers to someone who is biologically female. An overwhelming amount of the time it does, but not always. “Female” and “female-bodied” are somewhat controversial terms when it comes to afab transgender people, but they always refer to someone who is biologically female. “Afab” is an acronym for “assigned female at birth”, which can even refer to cis women. So as you can see, there are better terms to refer to someone with female reproductive organs than “women”. And believe it or not, a lot of those “lived consequences” are often the same for a lot of afab people. Not everyone has the privilege to transition at 6-years-old, before the horrors of the real world affect most of us. Many afab trans men (I would like to quickly acknowledge that some trans men may be biologically intersex), non-binary and gender-nonconforming people will have lived as females or a somewhat “female experience” up until they come out of the closet and begin their transition, if they do so at all. Pre-transition afab people are still subjected to the same amount of sexism, misogyny, sexual harassment and general dangers that come with being a woman because even though they are not women, society sees them as women. And yes, these people will even menstruate, because they have a female reproductive system (although it is worth noting that some people born with these parts may not menstruate at all, because biology is weird and sometimes things don’t function the way they’re supposed to). And on top of all that, trans women will also face the same hazards during and after the main stages of their transitions. In fact, statistically speaking, transgender women are even more likely to experience male violence than cis women, so let’s not pretend they aren’t involved in this whole conversation at all.

And just a quick sidebar, like I said, some people with female reproductive parts don’t menstruate because their body just never kicks that system into gear. If a cis woman never menstruates because she’s one of those people, is she no longer a woman, J?

I would also like to take the time to comment on how she pretends trans people don’t exist when she wants the spotlight and only references them when she gets called out for it. This is a lot like the, “I can’t be racist, I have black friends” “argument”. We’re not tools that you can use and then put back in the closet when you’re done (only we can decide if it’s time to go back in the closet, and I would rather not do that again, thank you very much). We’re not accessories you can flaunt to show how accepting you are. We exist even when you’re not making exclusionary remarks and pretending that the issue at hand is exclusive to cis females only.

She goes on to claim she would support trans people if we are discriminated against. I don’t have a Twitter account so I can see only very limited Tweets online, but so far I haven’t seen her comment on the proposed UK bathroom bill that would force trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with the sex marker on their birth certificates. If she has commented, let me know and I will update this section of this post appropriately.

She tries to justify herself by saying she is well-read in scientific journals and transgender experiences, so she knows the distinction between sex and gender. But if this was the case, she wouldn’t still be using “woman” to refer strictly to cis women, and she certainly wouldn’t be using it to describe all  people who menstruate.

She says, “Never assume that because someone thinks differently, they have no knowledge.” And she would make a good point, if saying that only women menstruate and implying that if you menstruate you are a woman, plain and simple, wasn’t TERF rhetoric. Listen, you can know all about a subject as complicated and relatively new as gender identity, but knowledge and acceptance are two different things. Just because you major in Africana Studies and can name just about every major figure in black history doesn’t make you less racist when you clutch your purse tighter when you see a black man jogging down the street. Having a degree in Women’s Studies doesn’t make you any less sexist when you tell a woman to make you a sandwich because you disagree with her opinion. And reading scientific papers about transgender people and what it all means doesn’t make you less transphobic when you make sweeping claims that only women menstruate, and that transgender people don’t understand the struggles of being a woman.

In what is her most damning move so far, Rowling then Tweets out, “‘Feminazi’, ‘TERF’, ‘bitch’, ‘witch’. Times change. Woman-hate is eternal.” One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong...

I get it, there are plenty of terms and phrases used with the intent of shutting up women you don’t agree with. TERF is not one of those terms. TERF is in the same category as racist, misogynist, neo-nazi, etc. NOT the same category as women-silencing words like ‘bitch’ or ‘feminazi’. A TERF is a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, someone who discredits the existence and experiences of transgender people (primarily trans women) because they feel like it (the transgender experience) doesn’t belong in discussions of women’s rights, or even that it threatens their identity as women. Sounds kinda familiar, doesn’t it? Calling someone a TERF is not a silencing behavior, and you’d figure a feminist would understand this. Calling someone a TERF is calling them out for behavior, while also letting the transgender community know that this is not a safe person to be around. If anything it’s a warning label. 

And look, don’t take this all to mean I hate women. I don’t. I only hate it when we pretend that an issue such as menstruation is exclusive to cis women. It isn’t. Women’s issues typically aren’t restricted to cis women. Trans women will experience violence and hate, usually at a disproportionately high rate when compared to their cisgender sisters. Trans men will often experience discrimination pre-transition, and maybe even post-transition from people who still see them as women. Not only that, but trans men typically experience the issues that come along with being biologically female (again, those that are afab). Most transgender men will menstruate and experience all the absolutely wonderful symptoms that come along with it. Some transgender men even get pregnant and have babies. No one is arguing that women have it easy. Transgender people - regardless of if they’re trans women, trans men, non-binary, agender, gender fluid, or gender-nonconforming - don’t want to erase women’s experiences throughout the years. We just want to live our lives in peace like everybody else. I just wish Rowling would stop pretending otherwise.

Is JK Rowling a terrible person? I don’t think I can go that far. She has made some serious contributions towards the acceptance of LGB (although notably not T) themes in children’s media, supports the Black Lives Matter movements, and even showcases fan art from very young fans on her Twitter. Although, she did share an article talking about the lesbian experience with discrimination and erasure, which is very important (hell, I admittedly don’t come across a lot of lesbian content on my Tumblr feed so I don’t get a chance to reblog a whole lot of it), but it also says that “ask my pronouns” is decidedly anti-lesbian, and paints the entire LGBTQIA+ community (referred to as “LGBTQ” with the quotes) as greedy, money-hungry, well-supported, and even predatory against children. Is this just a subject I’m not all that knowledgeable in? Perhaps, but I have a really hard time taking your arguments seriously LGBTQIA+ community is decidedly predatory against children, but I digress. I will say, however, that I am just disappointed. I’m disappointed someone who has been all about standing up to bullies and fighting against oppression has been using her platform to side with bullies and take part in said oppression. I’m disappointed she lumps “TERF” in with “Feminazi” and other terms designed to discredit women with opinions. And above all, I’m disappointed that she claims to offer us support when her actions support just the opposite. But, after all we’ve seen over the years, I can’t say I’m surprised.

[tenbees]

You’re so right they always make so that lesbians are the ones showing affection to mlw. Some months back there was a post on a “lesbian” subreddit and it was a picture of a princess and prince. The poster titled it lesbians and bi women. The prince was kissing the princesses hand. Guess which one was labeled as the lesbian in the picture. The prince of course. I don’t exactly know why but when I see shit like that it bothers me.

yeah. it goes right along with all those ‘lesbians drink your respect trans woman juice’ memes where lesbians, who are oppressed by both bi women and trans women but portrayed as allogay oppressors in queer spaces, are expected to praise and validate their oppressors and accept them into the gay club. i tried looking for examples of this and there are a lot where lesbians are the protectors or admirers of bi women just like your example:

basically, Good Lesbians are lesbians who unquestioningly support and love bi women and Bad Lesbians are lesbians who gatekeep or point out any difference between bisexuality and homosexuality. it’s an adult version of the helpmeet theory of homosexuality, but instead of homosexuality existing so that we can help bihet women raise their children, homosexuality exists so that we can offer constant emotional support to women attracted to men and in relationships with men. life is so easy as a lesbian, after all! we don’t have to deal with male violence or hubby troubles so what else could we fill our time with (: it reminds me of sespursongles’ post on lesbian socialization and how we are taught that “it’s in your best immediate interests to care more about manloving women’s feelings than about lesbian oppression.”

i also think it’s interesting that the prince in that picture was the lesbian, because that fits in with what a lot of lesbians have said about their experiences with dating bi women–the bi woman would expect them to take on a male role in the relationship and would be confused or offended when the lesbian wouldn’t replicate het roles within their relationship. you could also say something about how the lesbian is kissing the bi woman’s hand in the picture–it’s a form of deference and bihet women often expect lesbians to defer to them and treat them as authorities on womanhood, because loving men is part of being a woman and as homosexuals we couldn’t possibly experience womanhood to its fullest extent. it’s also literally an oppressed person kissing the hand of an oppressor, so.

while i was trying to find examples of this, i also saw some where the emphasis is on mutual respect instead of just lesbians respecting bi women and those rubbed me the wrong way too tbh:

you could read into the fact that the lesbian’s wine glass is much bigger than the bi woman’s. but what rubbed me the wrong way is the fact that lesbians and bi women are portrayed as equals: two groups of women in love with women coming together to defend each other from biphobia and lesbophobia. but that isn’t what it is. instead, it’s one group of women who are attracted to both sexes and who overwhelmingly choose to partner with men even while talking about wlw solidarity. on the other side, there are women who are only attracted to women, who are only capable of being in relationships with women, and who cannot have a relationship that does not mean facing homophobia. to pretend that both groups are on equal footing or face equal problems is ridiculous. so much of ‘biphobia’ is just homophobia; why should lesbians spend any time trying to fight it when fighting homophobia would get to the root of the problem? why should lesbians collectively defend a group that has societal power over us? why should lesbians ‘respect’ bi women (and what definition of respect is being used here? i assume by respect they mean ‘validate and never question or differentiate themselves from’) when bi women are frequently homophobic and are in socially sanctified het relationships? also the thought that most bi women spend any amount of time defending lesbians from lesbophobia is… lol.

this also gets more complicated when you realize that the majority–60%-80% according to those studies–of ‘lesbians’ are actually bi women in denial about being attracted to men. so what these memes are is actually… a bunch of bi women bonding over how they watch out for each other and respect each other. which, good for them, but don’t do it while shouting down the few homosexuals who dare to mention that there are life experiences that are unique to being homosexual.

also, funnily enough, i found The Exact Same Meme but with bi women/lesbians in a thread where someone talked about how both gold star lesbians and bi lesbians are disgusting. i think it’s interesting how, even while supposedly showing support to ‘lesbians’ (aka kinsey 4/5 bi women), this bi woman Still decided to use an image where lesbians are the ones kissing her:

[workersolidarity]

Marxism and Anarchism

The more I study Revolutionary Theory and think about the various ideologies and strategies, the more clear it becomes to me what the real difference between Anarchists and Marxists really is.

Like Anarchists, as a Marxist-Leninist I believe in abolishing class society and the State. You can't abolish one without abolishing the other. Class Society and the Bourgeois State are intimately intertwined. The Bourgeois State exists only to enforce through violence and collective power the oppression of the lower classes by the dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. It does this through it's intensive focus on protecting Private Property relations.

Both Anarchists and Marxists want to smash the Bourgeois State, and the Private Property it protects to enforce Bourgeois dictatorship.

Our differences doesn't even really lie in strategy so much. Both Anarchists and Marxists believe a Proletarian Revolution is the only way to destroy Class Oppression, Private Property and exploitation.

Sure our tactics may differ. Marxists, especially Marxist-Leninists believe we must form a Centralized Vanguard Party made up of Professional Revolutionaries who will lead the Proletariat in Revolution against the Bourgeoisie.

Whereas the Anarchists remain skeptical about the Party form and Centralization, or anything else that smacks of unequal power dynamics. And certainly they have every reason to remain skeptical! Any time you have unequal power dynamics, you have the potential for the abuse, manipulation and coercion of those who make up the base of that dynamic. I understand their reluctance.

Instead Anarchists favor the Organic Insurrection. Those moments in history when the anger of the peasants and proletariat finally boils over and leads to a spontaneous insurrectionary moment that topples the power superstructure.

These are real differences, but they're not the point of my focus here. Instead I want to focus on what I see as the ultimate irreconcilable difference between Anarchists and Marxists. Our difference in our philosophical understanding of the world around us.

The biggest difference that separates Anarchists from Marxists isn't the Party form or Centralization, it's Idealism vs. Materialism.

Anarchists are in many ways ultimately Idealists. They hope for the spontaneous insurrection which will topple Capitalism and the Bourgeois State, and they wish instead to replace it with classless forms of Organic Democracy. A Democracy that rises spontaneously out of the ether as community relations spontaneously form into small governing Communes made up of the whole of the community with no dominating power from above, whether that power be led by the Bourgeoisie or the Proletariat. They want no Centralized overlords making law over their heads and enforcing it on them through power dynamics and violence.

This is an absolutely understandable position. It's a wonderful Utopian society to imagine and maybe one day, Marxists will be proven wrong, and such a society will be capable of existing. In which case Marxists will have to admit we were wrong and join the Anarchists to help them perfect such a society.

But Marxists don't believe in Utopias. We are not Idealists in the Hegelian or Kantian sense. We are Historical Materialist, and as of yet, we have seen no historical evidence that such a society is possible. It's not that were unwilling to work towards a better world that's never been achieved, but rather we are aware of historical precedent, and wish to be prepared should such Idealism fail.

Instead, Marxists look at History, and what we see is a long history of violent counter-revolution, Reactionary backlash, and an Organized Bourgeoisie willing to destroy us all in defense of Private Property, Capital, and Class domination. We wish to be well prepared for such an inevitable, long, drawn out struggle fought with ruthless violence. We are prepared to organize the forces of the peasant and proletariat in defence of the Revolution. We are prepared to smash the Bourgeois State, reorganize the working class into a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, recreate a new, equally violent Revolutionary Proletarian State and use it to oppress and destroy all of our Counter-Revolutionary enemies and the forces of Reaction.

Marxists are prepared to use every bit of our reorganized Proletarian State power to smash the Bourgeoisie until they can never again return and recreate a Class Society or bring back Private Property relations.

Marxists are under no illusions about what it will take to create a Socialist society. We understand the great amount of sacrifice and bloodshed it will take to sustain the Revolution. We won't just be able to seize power and lay down our arms, as Marx, Engels, and Lenin talked about long ago.

During the transition to Socialism, and again from Socialism to Communism, we will need the unparalleled power of oppression only a State can create, in order to make that transition and sustain the Revolution.

We believe that by first destroying the Bourgeois State, and then, out of it's ashes creating a new State beholden to the people, we can defend the Revolution from those forces of Reaction. Otherwise the Bourgeoisie will just lay in wait until they can gather those forces of Reaction together and come back to destroy the Revolution. Or they may infiltrate the Revolution and destroy it from the inside.

We believe only a State apparatus could ever provide the tools necessary to protect the new society from outside attack or inside infiltration. Marxists believe the history of Social Revolutions shows to us the necessity of such a reorganized State and it's retention of violent potential.

As the Socialist Society progresses, Marxists believe that the need for such State violence will become lessened over time until eventually Class Society disappears for good and with it, the necessity of the State. That when Classes no longer exist, eventually we will see "the withering away of the State" until Communism is fully realized. Communism being a fully developed Classless, Stateless society of abundance, where exploitation, homelessness, hunger, and suffering no longer exist.

Marxists believe we these steps are necessary based on a scientific evaluation of the history of Revolutions and evolution of political economy. We don't try to predict the exact forms the State under Socialism will take, or the form Communism will take after the transition.

Such Idealism should never be the purview of a Marxist or anyone making a Historical Materialist analysis of history or the evolution of the organization of society.

We see the Idealism of the Anarchists as being dangerous to their own cause. We disagree in substance on what must be done post-revolution to create a Classless, Stateless society. But we do recognize that we are on the same side.

Should Revolution occur in my lifetime, I wouldn't hesitate for a second to fight along side my Anarchist Comrades. Whatever or philosophical differences, we want the same things. Together we despise oppression, coercion, exploitation and violence in support of Class suppression. We both despise the power dynamics in our present organization of society that allows the few to dominate the many, the rich to dominate the poor, men to dominate women, straight to dominate gay, trans, or non-binary, and all of the other ways people dominate others through power and violence. We all wish to abolish such a society, and replace it with a new, more equal one.

I believe Anarchists and Marxists need to work harder to understand our differences, as well as those goals we agree on. As I mentioned before, I would gladly fight alongside my Anarchist Comrades without hesitation, and I hope my Anarchist Comrades would do the same for me.

Perhaps after the Revolution, we could create a Federation of sorts, where one region can be organized under Marxist principles while the other is organized under Anarchist principles with understanding that neither shall interfere with the other.

We have far more in common than we do that divides us and there's nothing that should preclude us from working together. We both have far more in common with each other than we do with Liberals and Social Democrats.

And that needs to be the focus moving forward. Two different tendencies, two different movements, both with Liberation and Class Struggle as goals, working side by side but apart in strategy.

That's how we should look at our two movements, working together where we can and going our own way where we must, but never fighting with each other.

[zithjen]

Some Core Issues of this World

Before we dive into the execution of a revolution we should probably address why change is necessary and why it is so important that it happens soon.

The issue that has always bothered me personally the most is that of the exploitation of the worker. To think that the t-shirt I was wearing was sewn by a girl my age or younger, in a run-down factory, breathing in poisonous gases, continuously working her hands bloody (literally) because she has no real choice but to let companies exploit her, just to ensure that her family can afford the barest necessities of life. It is one of the most disgusting things I can think of. She doesn’t have the option of doing something with her life that fulfils her. She has to sell her labour at a wage that is no where near enough to provide for her loved ones. And to top this off employers could not care less for their employees’ safety and thus the working conditions are often insecure and endanger the workers. Phew, all the topics that come to my mind when thinking about this. Apart from endangering their workers, big companies and employers take away people’s means of living by for example pressuring them to sell their farmland which has been their main source of food and income for generations or buying up a vital fresh water source, bottling it up and selling the water these people used to get for free straight from nature for money which they simply do not have (not to mention the pollution created during the process if plastic bottle-making and then the shipping of the goods (I tip my hat to you if you also immediately thought of companies like Nestlé who are one of these monsters)). Or, which I might find even worse, such factories polluting their environment with chemicals either out of self-servitude or ignorance. Excuse me, I get carried away. Awful things that we let happen.

Now, as for the reason why this is an issue that could and needs to be ended by a system change is that this exploitation is the absolute base on which capitalism is built. Capitalism relies on the means of production getting cheaper and cheaper and the market to continue expanding. And seeing as we as consumer ship expect less expensive products the money we do not want to pay needs to be taken from somewhere. I can guarantee you that CEO’s will not part with a single penny which means that labourers (this includes office workers as well nowadays, contrary to Karl Marx’ time where this particular class struggle was first properly studied and where Marx’ oppressed class, the Proletariat, was made up by all workers (meaning factory and manual labourers) of the world) will have to deal with worsening working conditions and even less pay.

Instead of having only a handful of people in a company call the shots, make most of the money and not care about the people doing the actual work, anarcho-syndicalists as well as communists suggest self organisation and the complete abolishment of hierarchies, as well as a reconnecting with the work we are doing. The people working in a factory deciding how, when, and what they want to do that is, however, just a small part of that change.

While we are on the topic of exploitation, something else that is grossly being exploited is our earth and her resources. I don’t know where or when people got the idea that the earth is a 24 hours unlimited all you can eat buffet but it isn’t. Get that idiocy out of your heads. On the bright side, not all people are completely unaware. So there have been multiple trends in recent years such as a ban of plastic bags in supermarket chains all over the world and the most recent trend of refusing plastic straws. While it is admirable that some people are doing something it is hardly enough. What needs to change is again the system. 100 companies are responsible for 70% of emissions and although I do not know the numbers for the responsibility of ocean pollution I’d wager our plastic sins, while despicable and under all costs needs to be reduced, if not stopped, are nowhere near as harmful as that of big companies. Now, more important than continuing to reduce the harmful ways in which we impact our planet as individuals, is that we pressure big companies to either do the same or make sure they disappear forever. Aside from harmful emissions and plastic, in order to make profit, companies destroy enormous amounts of forest (especially in South America) for mono cultures of plants such as soy and palm trees. I have to admit geography is not my area of expertise, however, if I’m not mistaken then the hummus layer (which is the layer with most nutrients) in the ground in the rain forests is rather thin and can only be used for a short amount of time before yield is close to non existent without massive fertilisation. As though removing a big chunk of our planet’s lungs, our oxygen provider, wasn’t bad enough, using such amounts of fertiliser is incredibly harmful. And eventually these big stretches of land will have to be abandoned and by then the ground is so exhausted of nutrients that the forest struggles to reclaim the land. I can not even express my disdain for such reckless and stupid actions. And again we have only scratched the surface of these atrocities. We have yet to address the massive loss of life and habitat during deforestation. But I’ll leave that to organisations such as WWF and Green Peace.

Another topic close to my heart is discrimination. This will take me some time to cover as we are talking about discrimination against different ethnicities, people in the LGBTQ community, women, and, tied to the discrimination against ethnicities, xenophobia, and I’ll scrape the topic of the absolute brainlessness of borders and keeping people out of a country.

As a foreigner who grew up in the central European country I quickly learnt how normal discrimination is. As a child I got harassed and called slurs due to my origins. I wasn’t alone in this. If you didn’t absolutely adapt to the predominant culture you would have a though life. While this can be rather traumatising it is nothing compared to what prejudices for example black people in Europe as well as the US have had to live with. Shot at, killed, unjustly taken into custody, wrongly imprisoned. To name a few. I can’t believe that I am explaining this because the only right thing, on which I will not argue with anyone, is to judge a person based not on their skin colour, clothes, physical appearance, piercings, tattoos, hair colour, headscarf, burka, or anything like that, but on their actions and their capacity to show kindness. Back to the topic at hand. While there may be a lot of minorities, such as black people who live in poverty, which in no way represents their laziness or inferiority, they are not given the same opportunities as other people because of their skin colour. Prejudice and decades of oppression has forced them into impossible situations, where for many survival is their biggest concern. Being denied access to education or having to “sit with the brown kids” at lunch is what keeps them imprisoned in a lower class. This struggle is exceptionally painful as black people freed themselves of slavery mere decades ago just to be continuously mistreated.

Unfortunately, discrimination is not limited to people of colour. Modern women’s rights movements, which have been going on for over 100 years also still struggle and have to fight for each scrap of equality. I will not delve too deep into the topic. I will say though. My body. My choice. You can fuck the hell off if you tell any woman who did not specifically ask for your opinion how she should live her life. This is regarding clothing choices, choices regarding children, or how many or few sexual partners she has. Aside from that, many people see equality between men and women as achieved when plain and simple it has not been. The pay gaps being the smallest issue. Women are denied jobs for which they would be the perfect candidate for the reason of being female. The annoying thing about this is that many are not aware of their own prejudices, which makes it that much harder to battle. Women are naturally assumed to be the stay-at-home parent and are pressured into the “right” gender role. This applies to both men and women of course and the issue of bigenderism will be another point of discussion in the future. DISCLAIMER: Just because you do not do one of these things that does not automatically make you a non-sexist. It just makes you not quite such a sexist. Treat women as equals and there you go. Now actively say or do something for equal rights for women and you’ll be a feminist. This includes all women; white, black, Muslim, Christian, trans, etc. (We will discuss feminism and the fears connected to it at a later point as well.)

Speaking of trans (great TRANSition). Acceptance towards the lgbtq community is lacking as well. Not only is there a lack of acceptance but people actively hinder lgbtq members from being happy and living their lives the way they want to. I will try to make this very clear: they are not harming you by loving who they love and fucking who they want as you are. Who do you think you are, attacking them when they do nothing to harm you. Instead of complaining or hating queer people you might want to judge people based on their morals, as I have said before. A gay guy that’s rude is just as much of an unlikable person as a straight guy. He is, however, not an unlikable person because he’s gay. Never. Let people do what they want as long as they don’t harm anyone. And no one has a right to harm them for being who they are. Not civilians, not police. We just passed pride month, which, apart from reminding us to love who we love, should remind us of those who have fought for the rights of lgbtq members. It should remind us of those who were crushed and prohibited from loving and those who were suppressed by their governments and their police. Hatred will not stand against love.

And it is in these times, I believe, that we need love for one another more than ever before. We have reached a certain standard of living in western society that we do not have to fear for our lives. Unfortunately, not all people are that lucky. People flee from their home countries, whether it’s because it’s at war, or they can’t provide for their families. For whatever reason they flee, they are looking for a better life for their families and themselves and they need to be given a chance. Of course the problems in their countries need to be solved, but until they are these people need a home. Instead of pretending that they are all evil you could get over yourself and get to know some of them. Yes, there may be a cultural difference but it might be interesting to get to know it, broaden your horizon. Everyone is a human as you are. Some where just more or less fortunate in where they were born and how their country has been or is being governed. They have worries enough. Be kind to them. There is no need to put them in concentration camps, build walls to keep them out, separate children from their families, or be scared of them altogether.

Speaking of concentration camps (aka ICE). Many anarchists will agree that we hold no love for the police. I only briefly mentioned police brutality in the paragraphs about discrimination. I did not even scratch the surface of the disgusting things they do. They have been given the power and the right, by their government, to use force when they deem it necessary. Keep in mind they choose when they want to use force. It is no coincident that there are more black people being shot than white people by police, or that more lgbtq members are beat up than cis men. There is an imbalance in the distribution of power. We are governed from the top down and it is all we can do not to submit and accept this injustice.

If you take anything from this, let it be that we are all human beings, who deserve to live our lives as we choose, without fear for survival. Assuming we are different from one another because we are born in different places marked only by an imaginary line, or the colour of our skin, sexuality, or gender (which is also an ide constructed by our society).

It is not a coincidence either that all the oppressed are not white, straight, old men who sit in positions of power and assure that these few named injustices continue. It is our duty to ensure that no innocent is harmed and every moment we fail to do just that, is one moment too much. We need to fight this. Now.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

At a campaign event in southeastern Iowa in December, a graduate student named Charlotte Moser was waiting to ask Sen. Elizabeth Warren a question. As we sat and talked in a crowded union hall before the event began, Charlotte told me she felt a little guilty that it wasn’t about Warren’s plans or policies. But what she really wanted to know, she said, was how Warren coped with sexism on the campaign trail. “She’s faced a lot of that recently — being called elitist and unlikable and angry,” she said.

The previous day, a similar version of Charlotte’s question had cropped up at another town hall, when a middle-aged woman named Kris stood and asked Warren why “so many Americans would rather see a man with a tie” in the Oval Office. And the candidate got another twist on the same query a few hours after I talked to Charlotte, at another event in a neighboring town overlooking the Mississippi River. This time, it was from a reporter in a scrum who wanted to know why Warren thought sexism was such a preoccupation for the voters who had come hear her speak.

In both cases, Warren had an answer that amounted to this: It shouldn’t be. “I think a lot of the world changed after 2016,” she told Kris, going on to describe the flood of women’s protests in the days after President Trump’s inauguration and the wave of women elected to state legislatures and Congress in 2017 and 2018. “And I think in 2020, women are stepping up, friends of women are stepping up, and this is when we’re going to make it happen.”

It was a practiced response to a question that can turn into a trap for female candidates, even when it’s asked with the best of intentions. During the Democratic debate last week, Warren disputed on national television what she says Sen. Bernie Sanders told her in a private meeting in 2018: A woman couldn’t defeat Trump. Sanders denies ever saying this, but when asked about the exchange by a moderator, Warren used it as a moment to attack doubts about women’s electability. “Look at the men on this stage: Collectively, they have lost 10 elections,” she said. “The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women.”

Studies do show that when female candidates run for Congress, they win at about the same rate as men. That doesn’t mean the playing field is level — the women who win are generally more qualified than their male counterparts, and perhaps held to a higher standard by voters — but what often gets lost in the debate over electability is just how adept women are at responding to sexism in politics, whether it’s from their opponents, voters or the media. Still, it’s hard to know what will reassure voters whose fears mostly seem to be grounded in one specific election, and one specific candidate — 2016 and Donald Trump.

That tension is something I’ve been rolling around in my head ever since I got back from Iowa, because it’s hard to figure out how gender is shaping a race while it’s unfolding. What I saw in Iowa was far from an overwhelming consensus that Warren was doomed to fail. Nor was it especially reminiscent of the “you go girl!” excitement of the 2016 election. Instead, voters were grappling with a conundrum that felt very familiar to me: How do you acknowledge the reality of the challenges that women face without going too far and contributing to the forces that keep them from winning?

On the one hand, there’s evidence that in the last few years, voters are increasingly likely to identify gender discrimination as a major reason women are not elected to top positions. And people who study gender and politics still argue that voters’ biases remain a real barrier for women who run for office. But those factors don’t necessarily determine the fate of Warren or any other female candidates. Women win elections all the time. And there is a clear risk that if these doubts are given too much weight, concerns around a female candidate’s electability will become a self-defeating cycle where even the people who are most excited about the prospect of a female president are too afraid to vote for one.

On the campaign trail, Warren brings up her gender in subtle ways, like when she was fired from her job as a teacher after getting pregnant. But she still frequently gets questions from voters and reporters about how she navigates sexism in politics.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

“I thought Hillary would be our first woman president. I wanted her to be,” said Chris Moore, 70, at a town hall in a brightly lit school gymnasium as snow started to fall outside. It wasn’t her first time seeing Warren speak, and she told me that of all the Democratic candidates, she thought Warren would probably make the best president. “I guess the question is, is she electable?”

I asked Moore what she thought might harm Warren’s chances. “I hope being a woman isn’t a negative,” she said. “But it could be an issue for some people — maybe not for Democrats, but we need to attract independents in order to win.”

This was something weighing on many of the voters I spoke with. When the conversation touched on Warren’s gender, it seemed difficult for them to not at least briefly contemplate a future in which another woman went up against Trump and lost. Part of the trouble may be that while men’s failed presidential runs have become routine, Hillary Clinton’s loss was entirely novel and therefore harder for voters to move past. But some also recognized their own role in that process, and said they’re trying to resist the temptation to look to the past for clues about which candidate to support.

“Look, I get that people are afraid about what happens if Trump wins again — we’ve got to beat him,” said Matt Falduto, 48, who had brought his daughters to a Warren town hall on a chilly Sunday morning. “But you can’t let those fears make you second-guess your instincts about which candidate is the best.”

Few of the voters I talked to in December had fully committed to a candidate, and a month later, the race in Iowa still looks like a free-for-all. And as I moved through bunting-adorned elementary schools and knelt next to voters on the floor of a sandwich shop turned rally space, it was clear that anxiety about sexism was only one part of the equation. For some, Warren was too liberal; others thought she wasn’t liberal enough. I heard worries about whether she’d be able to connect with voters of color or people who were less educated. But this year’s election also seemed to be a reckoning of sorts for many voters who were struggling with how to wrap their heads around the reality of sexism in politics and figure out what — if anything — it should mean for their vote.

On the campaign trail, Warren doesn’t talk much about what it would mean to be the first female president. Instead, she brings up her gender in subtler ways, like when she talks about being fired from her job as a teacher when she got pregnant. Her affect is folksy and down-to-earth — she jokes about her snap decision to go to law school but delicately skirts her decades as a professor at Harvard Law School. When I saw her in Iowa, she was in the midst of an attempt to pivot away from the health care debate she’d found herself mired in and back to the bread and butter of her candidacy: her pitch to voters that economic populism and an anti-corruption agenda are what’s needed to beat Trump in 2020.

In some ways, being a woman could help her make that pitch. Research has shown that elected women are generally perceived to be more honest than their male counterparts, which could give Warren’s anti-corruption message extra heft. And there are other reasons to think that Warren should be more appealing to primary voters than her rivals at the top of the field, who are white, male and either gunning to be the first octogenarian president or the youngest to ever be elected.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted in November found that 83 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they would be enthusiastic about voting for a female candidate — substantially higher than any other type of candidate mentioned in the poll, including someone under 40 (62 percent), a white man (53 percent), and someone over 70 (31 percent). In surveys conducted recently, Democrats say they favor female candidates over male candidates, all else being equal.

Democrats are enthusiastic about a woman candidate

Responses to a November 2019 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll of Democrats asking whether they would be enthusiastic about candidates with the following qualities

Type Percent A woman 83%

–

Someone who is gay or lesbian 69

–

Someone under 40 62

–

A white man 53

–

A socialist 37

–

A business executive 34

–

Someone over 70 31

–

From a survey of 453 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents conducted Nov. 11 to Nov. 15, 2019.

Source: NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist

But there are also signs that in the aftermath of the 2016 election, voters are more cynical about women’s chances in the presidential arena — and especially against Trump. Surveys of Democratic voters by the left-leaning group Avalanche Strategy, for instance, have found that Warren is most popular when respondents are given the ability to pick a presidential candidate without having to worry whether they’ll beat Trump. In follow-up interviews, many of those would-be Warren supporters said the negative impact of gender was a big part of their calculus. Other polls have found that while most Democrats say they are comfortable with a female president, they think their friends and neighbors might be more reluctant to support a woman.

It’s not clear that these fears are entirely baseless. A survey conducted by The New York Times in October found, for instance, that Warren performed worse than Sanders or Biden in head-to-head matchups against Trump in key battleground states — a pattern that can also be seen in head-to-head national polls. Admittedly, Warren’s liberal views are a confounding factor. In that New York Times survey, 52 percent of voters who said they’d vote for Biden but not Warren in a matchup against Trump (Sanders wasn’t part of the equation) said it was because she’s too far to the left. But 41 percent also agreed with the statement that women who run for president “just aren’t that likable.” Those groups represent only a fraction of the electorate.1 But in a close election, they could make a difference.

Democrats think others wouldn’t support a female president

Responses to October 2019 Morning Consult/Politico poll of Democrats answering “Yes, definitely” to the following questions

Question Percent Do you think you are ready for a female president? 71%

–

Do you think America is ready for a female president? 57

–

Do you think your neighbors are ready for a female president? 31

–

From an online survey of 736 Democrats conducted Oct. 25 to Oct. 28, 2019.

Source: Morning Consult/Politico

Whether it’s helpful to dwell on these fears or emphasize the barriers female presidential candidates face is up for debate, even among the people who spend their lives studying gender and politics. After I got back from Iowa, I called Kathleen Dolan, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to get her take on how much gender bias really seemed to be hurting Warren. She told me she found the media’s focus on it exasperating. “I would give my eye teeth for a process where no reporter asks questions about what it’s like to be a woman in politics, how they deal with sexism, whether a woman can win,” she said. “Then we’d have a genuine sense of whether voters are actually worried about this.”

But other researchers have argued that sexism is probably hurting Warren and the other female candidates. Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, concluded from a recent survey experiment that sexist views are fairly widespread among voters — particularly male voters — and many of those voters are less motivated to support a female candidate. “Eventually, we will get to a point where enough women have run for president that it’s entirely unremarkable,” he said. “But we’re not at that point yet, and I think the Democrats will probably lose some votes if they nominate a woman.” I asked Cassino how much of a difference it could make, compared to other factors that voters care about like age, ideology or political experience. “Could those lost votes be offset by a million other factors?” he said. “Absolutely. If it’s a choice between a worse male candidate and a better female candidate, you still want the woman. But it’s a calculation.”

The trouble is that weighing those trade-offs is hard to do in hindsight, and nearly impossible to do in real time. Case in point: Nearly four years later, political scientists are still trying to figure out exactly how much of an impact sexism had in the 2016 election. The consensus among most of the experts I’ve spoken with is that sexism does seem to have moderately helped Trump and hurt Clinton — but seeing the attacks on Clinton may also have galvanized some of her supporters. And all of this might not tell us much about how a different woman, with different policies, in a different year, would fare.

Warren speaking at a town hall event in Des Moines, Iowa, just days after the January debate.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

In Iowa, some of Warren’s supporters told me they were trying to resist the urge to compare this year’s crop of female candidates to Clinton. “I really hope people don’t assume that all women who run for office are kind of cut from the same cloth,” said Robin Flattery, 31. It would be a mistake, Flattery added, to allow Warren’s gender to obscure the aspects of her biography and candidacy that are very different from Clinton’s — her working-class roots, her unapologetic progressivism or the fact that she hasn’t weathered decades of scandal and controversy.

There is one inescapable similarity between 2016 and 2020, though: the Republican opponent. And while the research doesn’t suggest that a majority of American voters simply won’t accept the idea of a female president — the fact that Clinton won nearly three million more votes than Trump is pretty good evidence to the contrary — it’s not hard to understand why some voters are worried about another woman going up against Trump. “I think the conversation would be different if the Democrats weren’t facing the prospect of a scorched-earth campaign by a president who’s willing to use sexism and what had previously been socially unacceptable language and attacks against a woman,” said Danny Hayes, a political science professor at George Washington University.

As Warren is fond of pointing out, of course, the world has changed since 2016. The Women’s March happened; the #MeToo movement happened; a historic number of women ran for office and won in 2018. The problem is that it’s not clear how much those changes help her. There was never much reason to believe that female voters would coalesce around Warren simply because she was a woman. Plus, a general electorate may be less inclined to get behind Warren’s particular brand of liberal politics.

So it’s worth thinking about the lessons we’ll take from Warren’s candidacy, not only if she wins the Democratic nomination — but also if she loses. The risks in failing to confront sexism in politics may seem obvious. And if nothing else, the spat between Warren and Sanders brought the issue into plain view, perhaps forcing more voters to grapple with it as the Iowa caucuses draw closer. But there’s also a danger, Dolan said, in taking for granted that it’s a decisive factor, particularly as women running for president becomes more routine. “Yes, we need to call out sexism when we see it,” she said. “But we also need to avoid the assumption that when a woman fails, it’s because she’s a woman.”

[womeninpodcasting-blog]

Podcasting Research

When we live in a world of side hustles, accountability seems to be further and further from reach than ever. Who should be held responsible for gender discrimination in the podast business? Should it be the platforms that the programs are on, the individuals who run the podcast, or is it even possible to seek justice? Podcasts featuring women are not being showcased as much as men’s, and we must encourage women to follow their podcasting dreams through female leadership.

In most industries, it is rare to have an almost even split audience between genders. According to the Nielson and Edison studies, the percentage of podcast listeners between female and male are 48 percent and 52 percent respectively (Whitner). Sadly, this does not reflect the percentage of podcasts that feature women. Robin Kinnie, a prominent female podcast producer, conducted a study earlier this year and found that women only host 22 percent of podcasts (Kinnie). Statistics are pretty easy to come across, but the reasons behind them required more digging. Since podcasting is still a brand new entity to the world, there has only been a handful of sources documenting the issue regarding women in podcasts. With that being said, I had to discover these issues myself, and the sexist acts towards women in podcasts are happening right in front of our faces.

On the front page of Spotify’s, “Spotify Podcasting”, it’s stated that “Spotify was designed to help artists get discovered [...]” (Spotify), this is the sentence that inspired me to start fact-checking. Do they help the minority get discovered, or do they just promote the programs that generate the most revenue for them? I feel like you know where this is going.  

Now that I had a deeper understanding of some numbers, I went “undercover” in order to figure out why they were so low. To minimize suggested podcasts catered to my own Spotify account, I made a completely random email and signed up for Spotify. I then looked towards three podcast categories that related to the industries that women seemed to face some of the biggest adversity: business, music and comedy. Entering the business section of podcast seemed hopeful from the beginning, as the banner picture showcased a woman working on a computer, sleek and eye catching. 

Sadly, out of the top twenty business podcasts on the front page, zero of them featured a sole female host. Only three of the top twenty podcasts had a recurring female host alongside their male co-host (Spotify). On top of this, none of the podcasts featuring women showed a female as their picture, while twelve of the male-run programs featured both their picture and their name. Did Spotify actively choose to set their banner to a female to try and “balance” their decision to promote mostly men? 

Both the music and comedy sections were just as disappointing, each having only three of the top 20 suggested podcasts even featuring a female co-host, let alone a solely female-driven podcast. These findings left me disappointed and dumbfounded, and lead me to wonder about the cause. Since podcasting is a relatively new, the buzz about gender inequality within it is very minimal. I decided to look towards listeners’ reviews of podcasts to see if there was a difference between how they rated and talked about female hosted podcasts versus male. 

I was able to find (after a lot of searching in the library), an article in a magazine that has given dedicated space to talk about culture, race, sexuality, and other pressing topics in today’s society. This article was written by Nicholas Quah, and titled “10 Essential Conversational Podcasts That Shaped The Genre”. Out of the ten podcasts, Quah focuses on programs run by both men and women equally. With nothing but praise, he describes some of the male featured podcasts (both featuring white males might I add) as “[...] probing and revealing, collaborative and investigative, comprehensive and singular”, and another as “[...] one of the more interesting and innovative podcast creators in the business” (Quah). 

When describing female-driven podcasts, he describes a program run by two African American females as a “[...] rich space for sharp, compelling, and revelatory feats of cultural criticism”, and an “[...] exploration of all the things in our lives that we usually feel uncomfortable discussing” (Quah). The reviews of both the male and female podcasts were uplifting, inviting, and offered fair thoughts without bringing gender into the conversation. 

So, when the podcasts are out, they seem to get an overall same sort of treatment when it comes to reviews. Although fair in the research I’ve found, there is no doubt that there are people in the world that are very quick to switch a podcast simply because it features females. I then began to think about the responsibility of the mediums where podcasts live, and the roles they must take on when having hundreds of millions of listeners. Should companies such as Spotify and Apple Music be held liable for emotional and monetary damage based off of gender inequality in podcasting?

In a section of an Equal Rights Advocates pamphlet, gender inequality could include “[...] anguish, stress, anxiety, pain and suffering, loss of sleep, damage to your reputation, and loss of enjoyment of life resulting from discrimination” (Equal Rights Advocates). I’m certain countless women experience some, if not all of these, even simply due to the lack of representation as mentioned above, or from negative reviews based off of their gender. I don’t think that Spotify or Apple Music should be held fully liable for these damages, but they absolutely should take more measures to fairly represent women in podcasting. But even after looking out for those who do make that journey into podcasting, I was still hung up on why there are a lack of women. I went to Amazon to look into some books that people would read when starting a podcast, and right off the bat, it gave off some issues. 

With the authors of almost all of the top podcasting books on Amazon being male, it seemed a little intimidating and could be worrisome for some women to continue or follow their podcasting ventures. Mike Migas, the producer of a very popular podcast called “Casefile: True Crime”, is the author of one of the top podcasting books on Amazon. He began talking about why certain men, become famous radio hosts/podcasters, because of their “powerful and charismatic” voices (Migas 22), not even a mention about female podcasters. He then goes off on long tangents about the minute details of the frequencies the human ear can pick up, and putting across this falsely given pompous attitude.

In a lot of sections throughout this book, he comes across as pretty stern and “This is how it works, there’s no other way because we’re successful”. He also goes into a lot of meaningless details, in my opinion, to fill a book with pages that could be written in a quick Buzzfeed article. Another book, “Podcasting For Dummies: 3rd Edition” was the top selling book on podcasting on Amazon. In the author’s Tomasi and Morris’ “Getting The Right Gadgets” chapter, they begin to explain the specifics of the electrical equipment needed to get a podcast rolling. With their use of technical terms such as “Omnidirectional”,  “shock mounted microphone”, and “condenser microphone” (Morris, Tomasi 33), seems like it could scare people away from podcasting. 

I believe that the lack of female voices (quite literally) in the podcasting world is due to the fact that a lot of women feel intimidated and don’t feel as if their voices are respected. This could also stem from women being treated throughout history as having low intelligence and being incapable of doing things on their own (a statement that is disgusting and I hate that has happened in our world). We put so much pressure on the women who do actually end up making podcasts, and since it seems to be very few of them, if they’re not wildly successful, people are quick to blame gender. As a society, we need to encourage women to bring their ideas to life, and not only in the podcast world.

But only so much can be done by individuals who support women in podcasts, the companies that act as a home for podcasts must step up and address the issue as well. We cannot wait for Women’s History Month to get the world to care about these issues. In the same token, we have to find a way as a society to stop labeling and dividing accomplishments and projects to “female fronted” or “male leader”. Doing so forces people into deciding on whether on not to support them based off of gender alone. 

As there are over 73 million women listening to at least one podcast every week in the United States alone (Whitner), there are obviously a large amount of women wanting to learn and to be inspired. Liam Neiyemer, nicknamed ‘The Podfather’, addresses the issue perfectly in his article about sexism in podcasting, “The future and growth of podcasting depends on more female producers, hosts and storytellers in the industry”. We must lean on strong females that are going against criticism and following through with what they want to accomplish, and hope that females all over the world are inspired by their actions. 

Citations

Edison Research. “Women Podcast Listeners: Closing the Listening Gender Gap.” Edison Research, Edison Research, 22 Jan. 2019, www.edisonresearch.com/women-podcast-listeners-closing-the-listening-gender-gap/.

“Gender Discrimination at Work.” Equal Rights Advocates.

Kinnie, Robin. “The Growth of Women in Podcasting.” Podcast Business Journal, 26 Feb. 2019, podcastbusinessjournal.com/the-growth-of-women-in-podcasting/.

Migas, Mike. How to Start a Podcast: Practical Tips from the Producer of Casefile: True Crime Podcast. Independent, 2018.

Morris, Tee, and Chuck Tomasi. Podcasting For Dummies, 3rd Edition. For Dummies; 3 Edition, 2017.

Niemeyer, Liam. “Podfather Reviews: Sexism in Podcasting and What Needs to Change.” The Post, 16 Apr. 2018, www.thepostathens.com/article/2018/04/sexism-podcasting-stereotyping.

Quah, Nicholas. “10 Essential Conversation Podcasts That Shaped the Genre.” Vulture, 4 Oct. 2019.

“Spotify for Podcasters.” Spotify for Podcasters, podcasters.spotify.com/#targetText=Spotify%20has%20over%20200%20million,since%20the%20start%20of%202019.

Whitner, Gavin. “Podcast Statistics (2019) – Newest Available Data + Infographic.” Music Oomph, 5 Sept. 2019, musicoomph.com/podcast-statistics/.

[rolereversalclassifieds]

Preferred Name: Artemis (a name I used to go by online :D)

Gender: Female

Age: 21

Location: Germany

Type of relationship:

Friendship/Longterm relationship. I don’t do FWB or casual relationships, so I’m looking for either something serious or friends. Also, I’m very much monogamous.

Are you okay with long-distance relationships?

Yes, but only if there is a realistic chance we will be able to meet up eventually.

A bit about yourself:

Physically, I’m 160cm/5ft3 and currently at 58kg. Brown eyes, brown hair (shoulder-length), pale. My style can fluctuate a little between more feminine/masculine. I like comfortable clothes most of the time (I looove flannel) but occasionally I do like to dress up.

I’m a university student and pretty passionate about it so a lot of my time is spent on my studies. Apart from that I love to read everything I can get my hands on, non-fiction books, fiction (love the classics), blogs, even fan-fiction. I also love to write and have recently started to get into photography. I really enjoy cooking/baking, used to play video games but I don’t really find the time anymore. I’m an introvert, so I spend a lot of time at home but I enjoy going out with friends, too, especially on the weekends. Occasionally, we go out drinking as a group, although most times I just meet with them one on one.

For more active hobbies, I like to go to the gym, go hiking in the woods and play badminton. I’m interested in a lot of different topics, ranging from history to linguistics to natural sciences and whatnot. I enjoy comedy a lot, I’m a huge fan of British comedy especially. If I’m feeling lazy, I just binge-watch YouTube videos. I’m a dog person but love cats and other animals as well. I like to travel and have been to a few places already, but I’m definitely planning on seeing more in the future.

I consider myself generally cheerful; I tend to laugh and smile a lot around friends, although I would say I’m naturally more pessimistic. I’ve worked for years on gaining a more positive outlook on life and I do think I’m doing a decent job of that. People seem to feel comfortable around me and I’m good at putting them at ease. I would say I’m a good judge of character and often able to tell how people are feeling/what mood they are in just from their behaviour. I can be a little stubborn (okay, a lot) and sarcastic, although I’m very conscious of not hurting people with my words.

Honesty and open communication are very important to me in any relationship, whether it’s a friendship or a romantic partnership. I want to know what my partner likes/doesn’t like, if something hurt them etc. I do believe problems can be solved by calm and rational discussions rather than by arguing. I tend to be very protective of those I care about and like to check on them often. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so I can get frustrated when things don’t work out on the first try. I would also consider myself to be something of a workaholic; it’s easy for me to lose track of time once I’m really immersed in my work.

I love learning new things and I do try to improve myself continuously. I treat people with kindness and I would say I have an even temper but I’m absolutely not a pushover and will definitely defend myself if someone tries to push my buttons. I tend to be pretty talkative with friends and I’m able to hold a conversation easily.

Additionally, I’m also what some might consider a closeted romantic, I don’t think people would expect me to be but I enjoy doing all these sappy things for my partner when I’m in a relationship, like writing notes for them to find or buying their favourite pastry just because I know they will enjoy it.

I’m bi and have previously only been in relationships with women, mainly because I prefer to assume the role that is typically played by the man in straight relationships and I can’t see myself ever being happy in a relationship where I would be forced to change that and conform to society’s expectations in this regard. That means I prefer being the one to ask out my partner, being the one who plans dates, buys gifts (maybe even flowers if that is something my partner enjoys?), and I generally enjoy taking care of my partner.

I love being the big spoon; I love it when my partner is the ‘pretty’ one in the relationship (not that I don’t think I’m good-looking, just that I love it when I can make my partner feel like the most beautiful person in the world).

I would identify as a complete top (so I don’t think we will be a good match if you’re a switch/hoping to switch, sorry). That means, you should be sexually receptive.

Things you’d like in a partner:

I’m looking for someone who is in general just kind and gentle and sensitive. I absolutely adore shyness in guys and I’m very attracted to those that are confident enough in themselves that they don’t care about society’s notions about how men are supposed to behave.

Someone who will let me take care of him, who lets me shower him with affection and lets me call him 'beautiful’ or 'cute’. Someone who is open with his emotions or at least making an effort to be as open about them as he can. Someone who is passionate about his interests and hobbies and likes to talk about them and who, in turn, will also enjoy listening to whatever his partner has to say. Someone who has a sense of humour, who is thoughtful and compassionate.

Someone who, like me, tries to be positive (even if it’s not always successful, that’s okay! We can both try to work towards it) and generally also wants to improve himself. Someone who can hold his end of the conversation. I do enjoy initiating things a lot, but nobody likes to feel like their efforts are in vain because the other party doesn’t show any interest. Someone who will also put in effort into making the relationship work and who is also willing to support his partner.

Physically, I’m looking for someone who is around my age and has a cute face and butt :D I love skinny guys, but more muscular is fine as well, as long as you’re not overweight. I don’t really care about height; someone around my height would be lovely but I realise that most guys are way taller than me so it’s no big deal either way! I do adore guys that are feminine while still male-presenting, if that makes sense (that is, I’m not interested in crossdressing apart from cute panties, sorry!). I really don’t like body hair and prefer 'twinks’ (those are just my preferences and are not meant to hurt anyone!). But even if you appear more masculine outwardly, it doesn’t mean I won’t be attracted to you, I’ve found it’s mostly the 'energy’ that someone has that makes me attracted to them.

Even if you don’t fit this description 100%, message me anyway! I realise we all have things we still struggle with, so even if you’re not someone who’s always confident sharing his emotions with others (for example) that doesn’t mean I won’t be interested in talking to you at all!

What I look for in a relationship:

I’m looking to have a relationship that is built on mutual trust and support, in which both partners are honest and caring and both can be themselves around the other. A relationship that feels 'comfortable’, that is built on a strong friendship. Positivity and loyalty are also super important and the Feeling that both partners put in equal amounts of effort so it won’t end up being too one-sided. A relationship that involves a lot of open communication, I want to be able to have both serious conversations and to laugh freely and frequently. It would be nice if we both complemented each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Emotional stability is important as well. Since I’m a university student and I work part-time it means that I don’t always have as much time as I would like to be with my partner, but I will always try to make as much time as I can and to tell in advance if there’s an exam (or something similar) that will be getting in the way of this. I would hope that both of us still had interests/friends/hobbies outside of the relationship and that both of us could also respect the other’s need for alone-time every once in a while. Ideally, I would prefer a relationship with someone who doesn’t mind staying in and just cuddling or being 'alone together’ most of the time but who still likes to go out on fun dates occasionally.

Kinks:

Definitely a lot that falls under GFD. I’m open to talking about this more in depth but keep in mind that I would only consider actually engaging in any of this with a long-term partner so please don’t message me if that’s the only thing you’re after.

Anything you’d like to add:

Thank you for reading all of this! I realise this is pretty long, but I hope it gives an idea of who I am and what I am looking for!

Message me:

I don’t check tumblr as often as I should so please use this e-mail to contact me: just-someone-on-the-internet@freenet.de

[silviasutton1989]

The True Kings Ch. 7 “1985″

A/N: Hey guys...so this chapter is a little different I am not going to go into detail because I need to see how well I actually did at fleshing out this story. SO.....I need your help!!! If you are reading this (and you have read the other stories) please leave a comment on what you think is going on...who is Persephone? what is she doing? what is going on in this chapter? and if it has answered any questions for you from the previous ones. It is ok if you don’t understand what is going on (that will actually help me in being more clear in other chapters) and it’s ok if someone comments your answer (that will help me see how many people are understanding and how many are not. I thank you all for your help I hope it is as fun to read as it was for me to write.

Count:1800

Rating: NSFW (smut-ish not that bad though) Happy Thirsty Thursday!

Catch up: Chapter 1  1.2  2  3  4  5  6

Summary: All I’m going to say is WELCOME to 1985!!!  (click 1985 to get into the decade lol I told y’all I had fun with this one)

Persephone stands before the round table. She shifts her feet as the judgmental eyes of the men seated around her watch her every move. Her clammy hands unknowingly adjust the pins in her rose colored hair. She worked so diligently on it a few hours ago, hoping it would make her seem older, more dignified. She takes a deep breath before she speaks, making sure her tone at lest shows the confidence she lacks.

"Good evening gentlemen. I would like for our first discussion, today, to be the matter of the ever growing protesters. It seems our king feels that--"

"If I may ..." a young equally red headed man stands from his chair. "While we appreciate your drive and ambition as the first woman inductee of the True Kings...well.." he chuckles as Persephone's dark green eyes star daggers into him. "Well, we don't involve ourselves in the king's matters. Our organization is built on the basis of legacy and--"

"Thank you, Oliver, you may have a seat now." Oliver opens his mouth to speak but as her perfectly arched eyebrow rises he obeys and returns to his seat, 

"I am well aware of the importance of legacy and heritage in this organization. I learned it just as you all during my orientation, and I respect the values that I must uphold as a new member. But this room has more than legacy, it has power. Untapped power. We have councilmen, dukes, lords and now your first duchess-with her own independent duchy in all of Cordonia might I add."

She watches as the men murmur in agreement with her words.

"With the amount of clout we have in this very room surely we could be doing more than smoking cigars and drinking 30 year old Conyac.

"Speaking of Conyac I've just required a rare--"

"I'm not finished." Her tone is piercing and the men quietly stir in their chairs. "These protesters want to end the monarchy. And I think--"

"That's exactly why the king is extinguishing them." Another man interjects.

"But what if we change their narrative?" The men stare at her in confusion.

"Listen. If the protesters have their way there will be no king. Meaning no councilmen, no nobles and no true kings. The end of any monarch means the end to this very organization."

The men talk among themselves clearly disturbed by her words. The only one not unmoved is Oliver. He watches the woman before him unable to wipe the smile from his face.

"So I propose we work with the commoners, turn them into a direction that doesn't rid Cordonia of a monarch but just of the one we currently have. We can give them a king...or queen that will have the backing of its citizens and some of the highest of the court."

"So you want us to switch out kings?  You want us to form a coup? To commit treason?"

"I'm saying we give Cordonia the royal it deserves, The True Kings' motto is legacy and heritage yet you all are afraid to admit that some of us in this room have more lineage to that throne than the current king does.! He has lied cheated and murdered to keep the crown. Robbing our country of its true lineage is treason, not reinstating it! I believe it is up to us to give Cordonia the monarch it deserves, we give them their true king!”

"It sounds as if you already have someone in mind." The older man to her left inquires.

Persephone straightens where she stands, "As a matter of fact I--"

"How about we reconvene this meeting to next week. We can have some time to reflect on Persephone's theories and then put to a vote if we would like to proceed."

"But I have more--"

"All agreed?" The men nod. to Oliver. "Good. So we will vote on our decision next week until then you all may go to the study where a brand new bottle of Cuvée Léonie is waiting for you."

The men all raise from their chairs and quickly out the door. Persephone stays behind furiously stuffing the books and papers she had planned to show during the meeting into her bag. Oliver waits till the last man closes he door behind him before handing her one of her books.

"I had them Oliver!" she spats as she snatches the book from his hand. "Why would you cut me off like that? They were eating out of the palm of my hand!"

"Your so impatient Prue, those men, they like what you  have to say but...they are never going to agree with you." Oliver sits on the table as Persephone flops back into her chair. "I mean it's 1985 and we just inducted our first woman! Clearly they are not going to be too inclined in supporting a trade of a king for a queen....no matter how beautiful or brilliant she may be."

Oliver gives her a flirtatious smile. She rolls her eyes in annoyance before jumping to her feet. "They will come around...And I will recruit more women. I can prove my lineage I can prove that I belong on that throne, not him!" 

"That may be true but you will need a king." He takes her hand in his. His thumb rubbing circles over her knuckles. "If you want to do this all you need is time...and a husband."

"Is that some sort of proposal?" She can see the edges of his mouth pulling into a smile she she straightens her spine tossing her heavy bag over her shudder. "Because if it is you will have to be willing to change your last name."

"Woah...what?" Oliver scoffs, the smile on his face stays but he is stunned by her statement.

"My family name is important. So if you are considering marriage you have to be willing to forfeit your last name." She says matter-of- factly as she saunters towards the door.

"Well...how about we go discuss that over coffee?" He stands from the table unable to look away from the way her hips sway as she walk. He's been infatuated with her since the moment he meet her.

"Unfortunately I have another engagement today." She stops in her tracks and turns to see that smile one more time. She hates that damn smile, it's far too tempting. "But I will take a rain check."

She is out the door before he can respond.

Soon she finds her way to the throne room of the palace. She has gone there many times. The room is beautiful, royal blue tapestries, golden painted works of art from floor to ceiling. But it's what sits in the middle of the room that has always had her main focus. The thrones of the monarch, king and queen.

She stands and stares at them, as she has done on many occasions for hours on end. 

"What are you doing in here?" Persephone doesn't turn around to see the tall blonde at the door. He locks the door behind him before taking off his suit jacket and walking over to her.

"Percy, you were supposed to meet me in the library." He says before wrapping his arm around her waist. He lowers his head to graze her porcelain neck breathing in her perfume makes him moan louder than her.

"I made a detour, Connie." She says as as she leans her head back onto his broad shoulder. She pulls on the nape of his blonde locks as he subtly rolls his hips into her. She wants to close her eyes and enjoy where his hands are roaming but they are focused on one thing: the throne.

Connie pulls away, "Guess what? Father has finally approved my social season! Do you know what that means?"

Persephone finally looks at her lover his blue eyes so wide and happy. "It means you will be king soon." She cup his strong chin and tries her best to force a smile. But it doesn't mater, he doesn't notice...he never does.

"Just think in a few short years that throne will be mine. And if I can convince you to participate in the social season you will be my queen." He holds her tighter to his chest with a sigh of relief. "Jeeze... father has been trying for decades to fully merge Lythikos and Cordonia and all I have to do is marry Persephone Nevarkis, the woman I love, and BOOM I claim it!"

She twitches as he says the word "claim". 

Connie works the buttons on her blouse, the sight of her satin black bra almost brings him to his knees. Her eyes stay onto the the throne as she rocks her hips into his stiffening length. She feels his hands bunch up her skirt before her panties fall to her feet.

"Constantine, we need to talk-"

"Shhh...baby. I know you don't want to jump through hoops just so we can marry. But.." Constantine begins to unbutton his own shirt her legs begin to quiver at the sound of his belt buckle hitting the marvel floor. "But maybe I can convince you." 

He walks in front of her. His perfectly sculpted body blocking her view of the throne. 

"Go have a seat Percy, and I will give you everything you want." He licks his lips, knowing how much that thrills her. She pulls him into a searing kiss, her tongue toying with his, he moans inside her mouth as if the kiss was his very first.

She pulls away smiling, going straight for the grander throne, the King's throne.

"Hey where are you going? The queen consort sits here." He motions her to the smaller one. She sits and watches as Connie lowers to his knees. "Percy, I have never felt this way about anyone in my whole life." He begins to kiss one of her breast so softly as if her entire body was the most precious thing he has ever seen. He does the same to he other flicking his tongue over her perky nipples. 

"Connie...." she moans as she watches him kiss even further down. His tongue leaving a cool wet sensation down her belly.

She she makes room for him between her legs as he bites his lips watching her beautiful sex open before him. "Oh Percy, we are going to be so happy. I'm going to show you baby."

His mouth devours her and she cries out. She wants to let go, she wants to love him but..."Claim" and "Consort" blocked those desires. The Nevarkis legacy and land would never be his to claim and being a consort could never be her destiny.

The future king of Cordonia's head is between her thighs lapping up her juices like he was dying of thirst, but even through her moans her eyes stayed focused on one thing: the larger throne that sat so close beside her.

DON’T FORGET TO LEAVE A COMMENT.

Tag List: Ok so I do not want to upset anyone so I’m going to put this with the tags every time. If you want to be on the tag list permanently (this one is randomly selected with some permanent in as well)  let me know. If you DO NOT want to be tagged ever just send me a message I will not be upset.

@walkerismychoice @darley1101 @speedyoperarascalparty@mfackenthal@jadedpixiescribbles @boneandfur @andy-loves-corgis @blackcatkita @missevabean @snyggflicka@stopforamoment @agent-zephyrkah @endlessly-searching-for-you@indiacater @choiceswreckedme  @tmarie82 @liam-rhys @viktoriapetit