#lots of people in their early 20s have kids! or have been supporting themselves for many years! lots of people do not go to university!

[greatwesternrailway]

it’s easy to ignore the stupid bits of age gap discourse bc people always say things like “people in their early 20s are all basically children with no life experience, the only possible life status they can have is University Student”. people who say stuff like that have a severe case of Not Knowing Any Working Class People disorder and therefore do not need to be taken seriously in any way.

[gx-gameon]

Does Jaden ever feel guilty about Yugi 'giving up' his early adult years for him? I can picture Jaden in high school now finally realizing just how young Yugi was when he adopted him and maybe hearing a comment from the other students (not about him specifically maybe just some high school drama) that being a teenage parent is like throwing your life away.

Like he knows his Dad loves him and doesn't regret but he can't help but let his mind wonder to what Yugi's life could have been like with out him.

Oh yes.

Obviously he doesn’t get it when he’s small but when he goes away to school he starts to understand.

He can hear people talking about teen parents and the ‘waste of potential.’ He can hear his friends talking about their much older parents ‘who established themselves in their careers before having kids.’

His parents/family is young. Closer to older siblings than adult family members. But they did a great job being his dad/Oto-san/Uncles/Aunts. They went above and beyond for him. But they also sacrificed a lot.

He’s always seen the rumors in the media or at school. ‘Yugi Muto secret teen dad?” “Yugi Muto hides child for four years!” “Is Seto Kaiba ready for a family?” “Can the CEO have it all?” He grew up with the gossip rags and the social media speculation. His family shielded him when they could but they couldn’t always do that.

He’s know for a while that their family ain’t normal but it isn’t until Duel Academy that he starts to get over whelmed by guilt.

His friends are hanging out and some one brings up Yugi and his early career. And someone makes the comment that “Man I wish I could have seen where Yugi could have done if he wasn’t held back by his kid.” Yugi Muto is still the king of games and undefeated. But he doesn’t go to every tournament. (Jaden knows this is impart to work schedual and the fact that his Dad and Soto-San don’t trust all everyone who runs the tournaments. Zigfried for one. But people commonly blame the kings absences on his son. It’s rarely Jaden’s fault but the public opinion was already set against him.) Jaden can’t even defend himself without giving away his identity so he has to sit there and listen to his friends debate whether or not his adoption ruined his Dad’s life.

It happens several times.

People will even bring Seto into it. A delay happens of something gets put back. ‘I bet his son got in the way again.’ A different Deul Academy gets more funding or a unique opportunity. ‘He’s showing favoritism cause his kid goes there.’

But the guilt really doesn’t hit until Jaden is 18. He’s saved the world a dozen times (just like his Dad) but unlike his dad he’s traveling the world and finding himself. He has so much freedom and family supports him so much. But he’s also the same age Yugi was when he adopted him.

And he has to wonder. How much of the world did his dad get to experience before taking Jaden in? How much freedom did his Dad give up to give him stability? Jaden feels awful, he stole his Dad’s youth. He stole the whole DM cast 20s instead of being young and finding themselves and parting they were taking care of him.

And it kills him. He’s not worth it. He ruined their lives

Note the DM cast does not think this at all.

Jaden has been a blessing to them all. They all adore him and think he’s one of the greatest things that ever happened to them.

He brought Atem back (accidentally)

He reunited the friend group. They were all starting to drift towards their careers but Yugi needed help with Jaden gave them a concrete reason to still all hang out.

Friend group drift after high school. Unless they put in the effort to stay together. The DM cast loved each other and would always be close. But Jaden was a reason to get together regularly.

(Jaden’s first Christmas. Jaden’s birthday. They wanted to give him the best childhood and that meant being around when they could and calling when they couldn’t. Téa might have been in America and Mai might have been traveling but they are still Auntie Téa and Auntie Mai because they are there for Jaden.

Yes it was hard work. And they couldn’t do things normal people in their 20s can. But they also gained a lot with Jaden. If they wanted to do a friend trip Gramps could watch Jaden so they could be young and crazy or they took the kid and had a blast introducing Jaden to different things and experiences.

They all love this kid. He was worth it to them.

Jaden’s just is a real dark place already and being hit with the guilt of ‘forcing’ his family to give up their youths is hitting him at an awful time. Couple with the trauma from the dark world and wooooo.

Someone needs to sit the kid down and remind him how much they love him.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Nintendo-vember Level 2: Howard and Nester: How you are not supposed to pay tribute to a comic

Ahhhh, Nintendo Power. Published by Nintendo of America from 1988 till August of 2012, this magazine was part of the childhood of many Nintendo fans. A magazine that functioned as a gaming guide, advertisement for new games and just fun overall for people enthusiastic for Nintendo.

While we did not have Nintendo Power like that where I am from, we had a similar magazine called “Club Nintendo”, which ran from the 90s up till the early 2000s (2002 to be precise), after which it unfortunately got unceremoniously canceled. I had access to these issues thanks to relatives who enjoyed them a lot and honestly, I enjoyed them too. Very informative, highlighting many games and filled with some really fun comic stories here and there.

Now, Club Nintendo wasn’t entirely like Nintendo Power though. For example, among our comics in the magazine we did not have the subject of today’s post: Howard and Nester.

Now for those unaware who they are, a short explanation: Howard and Nester were the characters of a short series of comic strips from the very early days of Nintendo Power. Howard was an adult business man with a bow tie that Matt Smith may like, while Nester was a ten to eleven year old redhead NES player. In other words, he was a little shit.

Howard himself btw was based on Howard Phillips, initially a warehouse manager for Nintendo of America, who at a very young age (he was only in his 20s when he started working for Nintendo) joined the company and would play a major role in the marketing of the NES launch in America. He was also an avid videogamer of the “olden times” so to speak and was Nintendo of America’s spokesperson number uno. Liked by many within the industry, he did however eventually leave Nintendo in 1991 (at only 32 years old), to pursue careers in other companies. Which did not work out quite as well, according to Wikipedia. Though he is still hanging around, kicking, playing and working in the industry, for some german firm no one really knows about.

Man, he even looks kinda like the eleventh Doctor.

Anyway, back to the comic itself: The comic strips were essentially just meant as short, two page fillers ad would feature the caricature of Howard Phillips and Nester, the later supposed to represent Nintendo fanboys, finding themselves in environments related to a current videogame and dealing with whatever situation. Most of the time just ending in some comedic pratfall for a rather impatient Nester to suffer.

Then, after 25 strips, Howard, in relation to Howard Phillips leaving Nintendo, also left the comic, resulting in the thing ending and Nester going on some mini adventures on his own.

Now honestly, reading those strips I don’t think they are really bad. Howard as a character is rather supportive, there are small hints to games they thematically integrate in the comics here and there and some of the scenarios are kinda fun. Plus even the linework is okay for this sort of comic.

However, I genuinely think that Nester is a little bit of a shit. Especially in his first two strips.

He just comes off as smug and a bit of a know it all. Believing he is better than Howard, not grateful for any advice and trying to come off like he is an expert in the eyes of younger, impressionable kids.

Oh god, he is Dobson!

Though that may be what adds to the pratfalls he suffers then. In addition, I am a bit baffled by what games they supposedly star in or how some of the games they talk about are executed in comic.

I mean, the Ducktales comic for example has nothing to do with Ducktales really aside of the moon duck enemy thing kinda being in it (though that may have been related to Disney telling them not to use Scrooge)…

And then there is the fact, that a comic based on the Golgo 13 game was made.

You know, THE Golgo 13? The game based on the famous manga about an assassin for hire?

I mean, what next? A comic based on them in the setting of Home Sweet Home? Though that may have been cool.

It is just, I can see how the duo left some impression on early readers, but I can’t see how they could get quite the appeal, that back in 2008 Nintendo Power would release THIS comic, featuring a now adult Nester talking to his son about the good old days. A little manga-esque like tribute, some people enjoyed.

Not so much You know who though, who decided to draw instead THIS comic in order to “honor” the two and the style of the comic. And in doing so just ended up showing that he kinda never understood the character of Nester, nor the concept behind the original tribute in the first place.

So, why does the comic suck? Because it is just an excuse for Dobson to project his own shitty opinion about how Nintendo “dishonored” the origins of the characters he claims to love onto Nester. All while making also both characters accidentally come off as losers and creepy. Particularly Howard comes off as horrible in the comic. After all, based on the set up established via the first two panels, I can only assume that the guy kidnapped a ten year old boy against his will and put him into cryostasis. Separating him from his family and friends, only to thaw him up again twenty years later. And for what? To show him how far games have come since then?

I get that the comic is supposed to be a joke (though I see nothing in it that makes me laugh), but… well..

For that set up is rather unfortunate and feels more like it should be part of some existential horror story about someone finding themselves completely displaced in time and seeing, how their disappearance tore apart their loved ones. I for one rather ask myself, what happened to Nester’s parents? Were they accused of killing their son and send to prison? Did they commit suicide? Did Howard just kill them to get to Nester in the first place?

And the “motivation” to freeze him -I want to show you how games are played in the future- is just�� that doesn’t even feel like a plan. I am genuinely at loss for words to explain the “logic” that Howard must have had and how none of that helps “the joke”.

Like look, the idea that Howard would e.g. pull out some magic item or machine to show Nester how in the future games are played and giving him a bit of a cultural shock only to return back to the present, feels like a set up that could have worked. But this is not the set up of this comic. This comic has Howard use an extreme measurement to achieve his goal, that comes just off as psychotic.

But hey, why bother elaborating on the ramifications of Howard having tortured a child like that (which feels like a great disservice to the real Howard Phillips), when there are games to play.

Or rather, complain about, because that is the only thing Nester does, starting from his shock at seeing Link now having blond hair.

Which is stupid as shit. I am sorry, but considering the kid had been on ice since the late 80s according to this comic, I think his first reaction to seeing game graphics from around 2008 would be “holy shit” as a result of a cultural shock. Not the fact that Link now has blond hair.

Also, way to prove how Nester is only a phony Nintendo fanboy, because he calls Pit by the name of Kid Icarus

See, little trivia bit here: The tendency of calling little Pit (btw, one of my favorite characters in the Nintendo canon ever since I played Uprising. I love that little shota) Kid Icarus, came mostly because of the awful Captain N: The Game Master cartoon from 1989, which named him by his game title. All while the game was a stable of the NES library since 1987 and Pit’s name was a stable in its freaking manual

Look for yourself: Page 7.

Also, getting riled up over Mario not being from Brooklyn when that was NEVER a point in the actual games anyway or Link’s hair color?

Hm, doesn’t that sound familiar…

Look, I am not much a fan of Nester based on the strips I saw, but it would be obvious even to Helen Keller, that Nester here is not himself. He is a stand in for Dobson and his shitty opinions on how Nintendo “betrayed” the old NES fans by making Mario and Co more marketable and ignore their “true and honest” origins. The “real” Nester based on the strips comes off to me more like someone who would freaking geek out at seeing his favorite game characters being these detailed, cartoony badasses fighting equally great villains.

After all, playing as Link who can ride on a horse and fights a giant sized pig demon? Mario throwing planets at Bowser? Mario and Link duking it out with other heroes? Seeing Pit and Palutena in Smash Bros Brawl? Which btw came out in January of 2008, so Nester complaining about not seeing Pit- oh I am sorry “Kid Icarus” would be inaccurate too.

The point I am trying to make is, that if you grew up with the bare minimum presentation some NES games had, you would be gushing over anything “modern”

Heck, considering the sort of stuff Nester played or was into in the comics, he would likely drop the Wii once he learnt about stuff like God of War, Ratchet and Clank and other “badass” and “cool” games other consoles can offer.

But no. Nester is simply overwhelmed with the concept of 3D and “realism”. Though lets be real here, I think realism in videogames is an oxymoron, independent of what console we talk about. I mean, what is e.g. “realistic” about Mario, Sonic, God of War, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil etc? I know at least half a class of biologists who cry each time a new Resident Evil scientist comes off with a new variant of the virus.

Anyway, he is so overwhelmed, he simply just wants to go back to the old days and the game he used (or rather “use”. Btw, great job at even failing at simple past tense) to play.

Only loving the Nintendo Wii once Nester tells him about the online shop and that he can play on it the same shlock he already likely has memorized before Howard put him into cryostasis and as such deprived him of a proper childhood.

Meaning that Howards “plan” to show Nester the future of gaming failed, because instead of embracing the new while also loving the old, he simply rejects the former and embraces the later even more tightly, putting it on a pedestal the same way Dobson does.

Which frankly, is one of the aspects I find the most annoying about Dobson in general when it comes to Nintendo. I get it. He grew up with the NES and I admit, the console had some really great games that build the corner stones of many franchises and the Nintendo empire.

But, and you can crucify me for saying that, by modern day standards (or heck, even standards set up by the follow up console, the SNES) the NES era was kinda bad and many games, even a lot of the classics, can’t stand the test of time as much anymore than they once did.

Before you burn me on the stake, let me explain: I myself grew up with the SNES and GameBoy as my first consoles, so I never played the NES games, even though I was aware of them through Club Nintendo. Only in recent years, thanks to the NES mini and some game collections I downloaded on the PS4, I got to play some of the classic games. And frankly, I think a lot of them suck in some regard. Like the technical limitations of the time, the at times unfair programming to make certain games extra hard and how quick you can actually get through the game once you know what to do, make some games a bit of an underwhelming experience.

Granted, unlike Dobson I will admit, that my opinion is very biased. Coming from my own love of the SNES, as well as decades of playing other games too, including sequels to many of these starter games that managed to polish up things in term of gameplay and presentation. And there is no denying, that there have still been many great games on the console by Nintendo itself, but also third party publishers such as Capcom, Squaresoft, Enix or Konami.

Kirby, Mario Bros 3, Megaman 3 up to 6, Ducktales, Castlevania 3, Contra, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and Earthbound are at least some titles that come to my mind.

But it was also the console that gave us stuff like the LJN published videogames, got a shit ton of unnecessary equipment like the Power Glove, established the term “Nintendo Hard” and frankly, I find myself unable to genuinely play the NES Zelda games or Kid Icarus without feeling them quite underwhelming and a bit flawed. So bottom line, I think it was important, I think good stuff came out of it, but it was only the first steps into the right direction. The NES learnt how to walk, so the Switch could run.

Dobson meanwhile worships the era like it was the greatest thing ever, never topped and shoves his opinion into Nester’s mouth. Resulting in the strip’s entire message boiling down essentially to the following:

The past was greater than what we have now and is the only thing I love. Oh, and fuck you for making me try new things.

Which is ironic, coming from the person who among other things would claim that such a behavior is toxic years later. Going onto rants how Kylo Ren is such a nostalgic nerd and criticism of “toxic fans” when he ranted about Star Wars – The Last Jedi and that critics of it are all Nazis. Even though Kylo is the one saying “let the past die”.

There is also just the fact, that the comic obviously misses the idea behind the original Howard and Nester tribute comic from Nintendo Power.

Like sure, the comic in the magazine was flawed. The manga inspired art work wasn’t that great and Nester felt like he grew up into the sort of young adult who made videos on youtube in the late 2008s, trying to emulate the AVGN by reviewing old NES games and acting like he is hardcore for enjoying “The Wizard”. All while being in reality more of a dork, especially in the eyes of a son that actually comes off as way older than he likely should be if Nester is only in his late twenties or early thirties.

But I think that was kind of the point. Making Nester more a caricature of the “gaming nerd” of the time period, while also indirectly playing a decent tribute to the old days and showing Nester having gotten older, though not necessarily wiser. But considering his kid seems to be doing okay, I doubt he is that terrible of a dad.

Which begs the question though, what is it about the comic that pissed Dobson off that much? The “manga” style? Granted, I think they could have gone more with a style akin to what the original comics had, which is the only thing Dobson has going for his page, that I can actually appreciate. But it could have been worse.

Is it the idea of Nester actually changing as a person, growing up? I mean, considering how allergic Dobson was often times to the idea of change (except when it was related to dumb reboots that may piss off republican strawmen in his head), I could actually believe that.

But if that was what pissed him off and his idea was to make a comic doing a tribute to these two the “right way”, Dobson failed miserably. Because all he did was make Howard come off like a psychopath for freezing up a kid to show him some games and Nester like a moron who can’t appreciate positive change in the media he consumes. All because Dobson was rather focused to vent his own frustration about Nintendo through their mouths, rather than respectfully draw a story with them. Something he even admitted

The artwork may be decent here, but the writing is a failed assignment.

The most ridiculous thing about that being, that either some time later or before, Dobson made a way better comic starring NEster, that actually gets the vibe of the original

And before someone claims I can only complain and not bring some alternative to the table how to execute the comic, here is what I may have done:

Start the comic as Howard and Nester in the Back to The Future NES game, supposedly having just finished it. Only for Nester to end up playing with the controls of the DeLorean and in doing so transporting him and Howard into the future. Materializing in 2008, they then learn about the actual positive things happening to videogames ever since , though Howard may also learn to some degree about the bad stuff whe he reads up an article titled “Rise and Fall of videogames” or something related to Jack Thompson). Have Nester for example geek out about Smash Bros, question what a Pikachu is, hitting himself in the head accidentally with a Wii Remote, but overall try to also give a positive message to it all.

Like Nester befriending  bunch of kids via Wii playing. The comic then ending with the two travelling back to 1988, Nester all pumped up about the prospect how great videogames will turn out in the future -perhaps also being a bit impatient at the prospect to wait 20 years to play Smash Bros Brawl again- while Howard muses about the things yet to come. The final panel perhaps being set in 2008 with an older Nester looking over a little brother who befriended by accident his younger self, challenging the younger one to a rematch he had “lost” in the past.

I know, sounds corny as fuck, but it at least would nullify the entire “I kidnapped you and froze you up” implications of the original comic by Dobson.

Now, unlike Dobson, I do not intend to leave a bitter taste in the mouth of the readers, so I want to end this post on a sweeter note by informing you about the following:

When Nintendo Power eventually ended on issue 285 in December of 2012, someone at the editorial team must have remembered Howard and Nester, because they decided to have this little two page comic in it.

Nester, drawn in the classic style, as a way more well adjusted adult than in the 2008 comic, reminiscing about the magazine that he owes his existence and had brought him many hours of joy. His son helping him accept that it may be over for the magazine, but that the enjoyment will never 100% go away. Even adding a little framed bow tie in the background of the last panel, symbolizing that in hindsight Nester likely came to appreciate Howard as more than just an annoying mentor sort of figure. All before heading out to play a new Mario game with his son. Leaving the past behind but close, while embracing the future.

A comic, that in my opinion hits on the sweet “bittersweet” spot of such things as Fullmetal Alchemist or Amphibia. Giving the “story” a proper wrap up and assuring people that it is over, but that the characters themselves in a way are -unlike Dobbear- never gone.

And if you want to read all the strips of Howard and NEster, here is a link to the archive I found for this post.

Level 2 is done. Time for some bonus round and then the next level soon. Cause now we are really going deep into his whinning over the superiority of the old Nintendo canon

[mrmeowziii]

Rodney’s DAD, Daryl- the grief-ridden lumberjack stereotype.

Daryl was born on the farm his family still inhabits to this day, one that he would later pass to his son Ryan. The oldest of three children, Daryl was the classic oldest sibling, and a hard worker too. He’d always been the quiet type, though deep down he’s a really sensitive guy. His large stature easily gave him a spot on his high school football team, and he was good enough that he could’ve moved up to college football if he’d wanted to. He ended up deciding to stay near his hometown and marry his high school sweetheart Charlotte O’Connor, while taking over the family farm. (They met when he was a junior and she was a freshman.) They got married when Daryl was 20 and Charlotte was 18. They waited five years before having any children, wanting to sort themselves out before they added more mouths to feed.

The couple were deeply in love with each other, and each new child brought more joy. (And a little stress). At first both of them worked on the farm and had separate jobs, but after Robbie was born Charlotte became a stay-at-home mom. A big reason they kept having kids was because Charlotte really wanted to have a daughter- unfortunately that would never come to fruition. Still, they two of them loved all their children equally. Daryl always found himself worried that his wife would overwork herself, but she would always wave him off. He had a hard job in construction- alongside the farm, she would say. Still, it had never felt right to him. Eight boys was a LOT. And even then, she helped with her fair share of farm work herself…

His younger siblings Benny and Victoria respect him quite a bit, and have been there for him during the hardest times of his life. Both were there when Charlotte gave birth to their first son, Richard. That followed with Ryan, and then they returned the favor by being there for Victoria’s first child Scott, and Benny’s eventual daughter Maybelle (later Crimson). That stayed true when Charlotte passed away in a horrible accident involving a tractor and a (never again used) molasses tank. Daryl was the first to reach her, but he was too late- she was already gone. Her death would scar him so much he would never date again. More often Victoria, but sometimes Benny, would come for a week or two at a time to help watch Daryl’s children, as he still had to work often to support his family. Even more so after his wife’s death. Scott, Albertha, and rarely Maybelle would come along too, though only Albertha really got along with any of Daryl’s kids.

As time passed, more and more responsibility was passed to his son Ryan, who was forced to grow up much too soon for Daryl’s comfort. It pained him to watch his children become adults so early in life, and he was practically helpless to stop it because he just couldn’t stop working. They simply would run out of money if he did. Because of his frequent absence, he missed out on much of his children’s early lives, something he would never forgive himself for. Despite his children all loving and respecting him, he can never shake the guilt of basically abandoning them, especially towards Ryan.

Daryl has positive relations with all of his kids, even the more rough around the edges ones like Robbie, Rowan, and Richard. Though he often wasn’t with them, they all know how much he worked to keep their family afloat. For that, none of them will tolerate any slander of his name.

In the future, Daryl lives on the farm with Ryan and his family, taking care of his grandchildren. Later Richard steps up to parent Ryan’s kids after his death, and Daryl connects with him during that time. They’ve both seen the loss of people very close to them, and they’re able to help each other process the grief they’d been living with for much of their lives. Daryl dies at age 87, proud of his children and loving his grandchildren deeply.

(Daryl’s siblings and their families aren’t getting posts like these, but they’re on my family tree post. Scott gets enough attention from me anyway, lol. Also a sad fact is that Daryl’s mother also dies young, echoed by his wife and son also dying early in their lives. Poor guy.)

[alarrytale]

Sorry if this is a little off topic.. it is somewhat about H+L but mostly about closeting in general. Your blog has been really educational for me. How would you tell if a celebrity is going into the closet permanently, like nailing the closet door shut? That they wouldn't be coming out for a long long time or maybe never at all. Do you think there would be signs in advance or it can come from out of nowhere. What do you think the signs would be? A lavender marriage maybe, or long term public relationship? I wonder about this a lot because I don't want to be caught out again. I had this recently with my fave actor who is in his late 30s and I've been a big fan and followed him since his early 20s. I was sure he was gay and I knew who his male partner was, another actor. His male partner was always in the background and they hung out a lot publicly but also with a beard, as if she was providing a cover. There were also many slip ups on ig from their families like the Tomlinson sisters slip up. About their sexuality and being in a relationship. Well recently my fave is engaged and his supposed girlfriend is pregnant. I wasn't expecting it, it really surprised me. The other guy is still around so it's not like I think they broke up. I still think he is closeted, I can't forget everything I've seen. But I feel really disappointed. If I am to think of the signs in hindsight, well he didn't queercode and he's really straight presenting. People don't question his sexuality, only if they have followed really closely and since early on in his career when he was more open about it. He had a long term beard. He's really ambitious with his career. I just didn't expect it, I'm so disappointed and can't quite believe it. To bring it back to H+L, theoretically if they were never going to come out what signs do you think we would see? Would there be signs?

Hi, anon!

So happy my blog has been educational for you! If a celebrity were to shut the closet door firmly shut, i'd expect to see a few different things. No queercoding, at least not concious and intentional queercoding, and a more permanent solution for a beard (long term and possibly with a low key, non-attention seeking beard), and if they ever want a family, kids or/and lavender marriage. I would also look for a turn towards more masculine and stereotypically masculine environments and behaviour. More straight presenting. Think of T*m Crui*e and Joh* Trav*lta. I would also expect to see them shy away from anything queer affiliated aka not show up at Glaad awards or publicly support queer charities. They don't want focus on their queerness and would try to dispel and counter any queer rumour, without drawing focus on it. It's image management basically.

If H and L never want to come out or at least not come out until they're grey and old, i'd expect them to tone down their queeness, try to sever their connection to each other and get into steady longterm relationship with non-attention seeking women. I'd expect them to attempt to play along and not sabotage their own efforts. They'd go all in to sell their straightness to get people to back off and to ease the pressure on themselves.

[coolgrandmasworld]

Hello Mrs. Grandma ♡ I am also a bit new to the whole radqueer space, but I would like to share some of what I have discovered in order to maybe ease your nerves and help you better understand your grandbaby ♡ I hope this helps you a bit; I was very moved by your message to Miku

In terms of transage, specifically permachild, which is what you've implied they may be, there are a lot of ways for them to be taken care of and succeed in life.

The first, but perhaps most uncomfortable one, is putting on an "adult face" at places like work, and then in private, allowing themselves to be and act the age they feel/are. They may have childish items in their home and may make it into a safe space where they can experience their age euphoria, even if they cannot do so outside.

The second is simply that your grandbaby may remain the childish sort out and about. Depending on the age they are/+identify with, they may be able to be completely themselves and support themselves, especially if they have a loving family like you, and friends to act as a support system.

In terms of taking on a partner, should they choose to, there will most certainly be options for them in their community, as well as open minded people and people who just genuinely love them. You would be surprised as to what kind of people are out there, and how many of them would be happy to take care of someone like that. Similarly, they may find someone else who is transage! The world is full of opportunities for love and acceptance, after all ♡

One of my very close friends is perma17, and bodily(/"chronologically" as they say) 26 as of today. They have a whole server of people who love them, and a doting partner they live with who ageslides between 5-16, even in their early 20s. They both have an apartment together and manage their jobs, and although it's stressful, they always have a place to destress ♡

Your grandbaby will be able to be happy and themselves. They will find allies and while it's tough sometimes to ignore the haters, there will be safe spaces. People like you help ♡

Thank you very much 🥰🥰🥺 This helps lots. I just want my grandchild to feel comfortable and succeed in life. Their mother is still getting used to it but my place will always be a safe place for them to be themselves ❤️💕 I want to get them this Disney Princess blanket I saw at Walmart. They used to love those movies when they were that age 🥺 They would always ask to watch them when they visited.

Remember that the world will always progress. I think that's why I'm more accepting of everything than people my age 😁 Ive always been progressive even if I didn't know something there are always kids who help me. Like now ❤️

Even we have to put on adult face too I wish I grew up in this generation. There's so much more freedom and choice 🥹 It makes me happy to see progressive values win.

Thank you for sharing Nee 😊 Lots of love to you and your friends

[weirdthoughtsandideas]

How do you imagine the Violetta characters careers after the studio?

I imagine, for most of them, they do some tours and stuff right after graduation, but they don't wanna just go around singing and touring forever. Eventually people want to settle down and start families (not every single one, but a lot).

When the people who settle down have kids, they take a little break the first years just to spend time with them, but I think they might do another tour eventually after their kids are a little older.

But, especially when writing and composing music, I think a lot of them will be able to work from home (thus can also be home with their kids a lot for the ones that get them), so they have their little studios to compose and write.

I think none of them really are like "big superstars" the way they were when they were teenagers. Rather, I think it's like with a lot of singers that were famous when they were younger, they appear at galas and events, and occasionally release some new music, but they live pretty humble lives. And they might do some "anniversary tours" sometimes, too. But to be honest, I think a lot of them might be a bit burned out after doing so much touring and performing in their teenage years, and most likely early 20s, that by the time they reach their late 20s/early 30s, they both have some breaks to settle down and start families (or, those that don't wanna do that, maybe just travel the world, find themselves, do other stuff), and start instead doing some smaller singing events as mentioned above - singing on galas and televised events, maybe appearing as a guest performer somewhere...

Camila seemed to be into acting too by the end of the show, and for her I think she may try some more acting, but she's also one of those people who jumps around with what she wants to do in life. So she might do a bunch of stuff. Act a bit, sing a bit, maybe she suddenly decided to become a teacher in... something.

Yeah! I do think some of them eventually could be either singing or dancing teachers, OR possibly theatre coaches (Napo is canonically an drama teacher in my next gen fic). I can imagine some of them eventually collabing to make a musical, or just a show together.

I get reminded of a swedish celeb, who had one (1) hit single in the 80s, she still does some gigs where she sings like the same 5 songs, and she's also done a bunch of random stuff like... her and her brother hosted a kids show together in the early 00s where they sang a bunch of songs (the songs from that kids show were bops btw), she's been a host or a guest star on a bunch of random shows, she has also her own reality show about her life and now her kids are more famous than her (her son represented Sweden in Eurovision 2018). ANYWAY, where I am getting with this, is that she also does theatre. And she's done some self-written shows where she every time has the same people she picks for the cast and productions. This is because she feels comfortable with them and knows the shows can be good with them.

And I definitely think that, when anyone in Violetta is gonna put on a show, they call in all their old friends from On Beat Studio and is like "hey, I'm doing a show, can you come help me composing songs, maybe help me with the scenery and maybe even perform in it" and they are like "absolutely let's go!!" And they will always have at least one little dedicated audience that shows up every time because of course they go support their favorite former youmix on beat stars!!

[sepublic]

David Kress, Tamara, Nick Dragomir Kajumon, and Sally the Slicer

            There are three alumni of Arkley’s who side with Trexdis, consisting of David Kress, Tamara, and Nick Dragomir Kajumon. And among these young adults, I’ve thrown in Sally the Slicer, who is no alumnus and has only ever opposed Arkley… But as part of the ‘main’ group of seven protagonists, she’s part of this age group of adults in their early 20’s. Sally’s obviously an outsider as someone who doesn’t share this camaraderie, and her additional issues don’t help. But she’d make a perfect fit as an alumnus in a different life, being a young person trained into a weapon, and Talikal’s always encouraging Sally to hang out with the other kids. So with all that, let’s talk about the four’s relationships with one another.

         Nick and Tamara get along fairly decently; Tamara’s got the confidence and leadership to guide Nick, so he’s basically the Brawn to her Brains. Tamara is patient with Nick’s antics and even supportive and chill, they’re the closest to casual friends, with no particular issues or baggage to deal with in their interactions; They can actually talk and bond over past experiences as students, unlike with the cold Kress. And the two are fond of this second generation of new students, taking it upon themselves to protect these kids and guide them.

         If Nick ever feels doubtful of himself, Tamara is here to back up the big lug and vouch for him, remind him he’s got plenty of worth! Likewise, Nick would die for his friend. They might not have been proper friends growing up, but there was nothing in the way when they reunited under Trexdis, so these two are happy to be dinguses with one another.

         Nick and Kress? This is different. Kress holds a lot of jealousy and resentment towards Nick; As a burnt out gifted kid who was cast aside for not being good enough, Kress has this whole complex and is frustrated by Nick’s relative incompetence when it comes to using his powerful body and its abilities. Nick is incredibly dangerous, mind you; But he could be even MORE efficient, and that’s what bugs Kress. Like a lot of people, it bothers him that Nick wields himself like a child in clothes several sizes too big for him.

         Likewise, Kress finds Nick frustratingly simple, and overall not worthy for the type of power he has at his disposal; So much potential wasted on a dingus like Nick. Kress had to work hard to get where he is, whereas Nick didn’t, and because of his simplicity, he was never as far up the ranks as he should’ve been. Nick could’ve been a rival but he wasn’t, and this is both good and bad to Kress; And surely he won’t be a rival now, right? Not when he’s stayed the same. On Nick’s end, Kress is a reminder of the pressure he’s under, but he’s not a total pushover in response to him, either.

         It concerns Nick how obsessed and damaged Kress was by the Arkley Gang’s teachings and abuse, and how close to his heart he took it. While Nick has taken a moral stance against the Arkley Gang, he recognizes that Kress is operating more from a place of revenge, and as such is a little wary regarding what Kress is willing to do to accomplish his goals, and the difference between them in ideology…

         Kress and Tamara are like siblings who really like to annoy each other. It was started pretty much purely by Tamara, who immediately liked to tease and egg Kress on, because ultimately she’s curious about her classmate and what’s up with him. She might seem a bit mean-spirited at times with her ribbing, but Tamara DOES care and wants Kress to lighten up. That said, they didn’t start off super chill…

         Kress is naturally abrasive and Tamara has to remind him to be a part of the group; But of course, Kress snaps that he never asked for HER opinion. Pretty quickly, the two remind the other of their shortcomings in life; Tamara notes to Kress that he was replaced as Valedictorian by another, while Kress bites back that at least he occupied and was considered for that position at all; Tamara isn’t exactly a weakling, but there just isn’t much remarkable about her either among their class.

         It’s mostly Tamara who keeps her cool as she gets on Kress’ nerves, being much more lighthearted and chill, and reminding Kress to be so. Kress on the other hand is obsessive and frustrated over Tamara’s playfulness, as well as the others’ tendency to ‘waste time’ providing emotional support for the kids. Tamara’s taken on a bit of a big sister role to the second generation of students, so that puts her at odds as she reminds Kress to be patient with the kids, as well as Nick.

         But over time, Kress and Tamara open up to one another more, until they reach a breakthrough where Kress lets go of a lot of toxicity and is overwhelmed by the simple fact that he’s part of a family now, he’s found unconditional love after never imagining that for himself. And Tamara, who’s been inviting Kress the whole time, gives him the space to cry over this fact. There is no judgment, no I told you so during this intimate moment of vulnerability.

         Tamara terrifies Sally, rather than the other way around. This is baffling to Sally, given she’s an actual serial killer (technically former, now an assassin), although Tamara is no saint herself. While Sally seems like the intimidating, messed-up one of the group, there’s something to be said about Tamara seeing Sally in all of her horrific, murderous glory, and deciding firmly that she’s interested and wants to know more. That social curiosity of Tamara’s unnerves Sally, as does her straightforwardness and superior experience when it comes to social interactions; It’s around Tamara that Sally’s fundamental social awkwardness becomes truly apparent.

         To Sally, Tamara is the popular kid everyone expects to be passive-aggressive and mean, except she isn’t. I mean, Tamara isn’t TOTALLY nice either, she is willing to kill. But with people on a general level, she’s friendly! Sally’s wondering what Tamara sees in the ravages of her twisted soul. Tamara forces Sally to confront the mortifying ordeal of being perceived, and maybe Sally should take the chance, why not? If she can take it with one, then two people… Maybe another? Tamara’s got a certainty that surprises the contemplative Slicer, even concerns her a little. It’s probably nothing to worry about, but it sure is ironic that the actual serial killer is more reflective and questioning of her sins than her approachable pal.

         Sally and Nick bond over the fact that they’re weapons; Unnatural, artificially-made, with bodies designed for destruction. They’re failures in different ways; Sally has made the most of her body, but Nick hasn’t. Yet they’ve both defied their ‘creators’, the ones who made them this way. Likewise, there’s a wistful curiosity Nick has over the physical sensations people have; Stuff like touch, smell, taste, etc. But while Nick can only ever wonder about a world he’s never known, for Sally she’s haunted because she does remember, and lost it.

         Neither can totally relate to the predicament of the other. But they can relate to each other more than they can others, so they work with that, as well as not being human. While Nick is hesitant about murder and destruction, Sally is a professional. She’s more lenient on him than Kress, but not as much as Tamara. They’re the powerhouses, the brutes of the group and aware of the roles they must step up for; Their unliving state grants them protection against many hazards for the living, as does their inability to tire, supernatural strength, and so forth.

         They’re VERY hardy compared to the others, and much more suited to open combat, fighting back to back in natural synergy, not having to worry about the other keeping up. They keep each other in check, with Nick curbing Sally’s murderous tendencies and being one of the only people who can safely subdue her with little threat to his own wellbeing; Likewise, Sally has a focus and stoicism Nick really needs to keep him in line. This is all well and good, because Nick and Sally are prone to getting into trouble together.

         Sally and Kress are definitely the most morally bankrupt of the young adults, although Sally has more self-awareness than Kress at least. Still, they’ve reached a mutual understanding of the dark sacrifices they must make for their goals, the necessary evils, and so there’s a recognition and appreciation for how they’re the most twisted, the most ‘villainous’. They don’t talk much and don’t really intend to, they’ve reached a professional agreement to work together and keep it relatively silent, and they’re grateful they’ve come together on this arrangement.

         Because of their shared darkness, it also means they’re willing to collaborate on some more messed up tasks, which leads to bonding moments where Kress feels a bit more willing to vent his frustrations over the pesky inefficiency and morality of the others. Sally, who did come from the same place, feels like someone he can trust more when she offers her own opinion; Because yeah, she’s been there. She’s felt the same, and this empathy and compassion stuff comes easier to Kress… And yet! Sally worked it through, contemplated, and chose it.

         They don’t really get it, how these others can relax and be at peace with themselves for the most part; Be so chill and hang out with others, make friends so easily. They’re outcasts in their own right; Kress was cast out of the Arkley Gang even before Trexdis’ defection, and was declared a pariah by the organization to the rest of the Alumni. He’s been fighting on his own before Trexdis, and he isn’t as loyal. Nor is Sally, who is more beholden to Talikal, and isn’t even an alumnus herself!

        There’s a shared awkwardness over trauma and its isolation that enables them to feel more at ease in admitting certain things towards one another, such as their struggles and attempts to ‘get’ the rest. They don’t have to worry about the other judging them for admitting the darker thoughts and feelings they’ve had, the callousness, because the other gets it too. So there’s a wordless trust when they reach a mutual idea and go off on their lonesome to perform ethical violations the others might be less receptive towards… Except Talikal, who’s giving a thumbs-up of approval too!

[georgiaeveritt]

The Janes - Documentary Film (2022)

31.01.23

Summary: Police arrested seven women who were part of a clandestine network. Using code names, blindfolds and safe houses, they built an underground service for women seeking safe, affordable, illegal abortions calling themselves JANE.

In state of Illinois and most of rest of nation abortion was illegal, not a medical practice - it was a crime.

Women were suffering in variety of ways - because abortion was against the law.

"Call this number and ask for Jane."

Based in Chicago in the 1960s and early 70s.

JANE members: Sheila, Heather Booth, Jeanne, Jody, Ruth, Laura Caplan, Peaches, Judith Arcana, Eleanor Oliver.

Anti-war movement and civil rights movement were all happening at the same time.

People were throwing bags of shit, pulling earrings out of women's ears - at the protestors.

A friend of Heather's was raped at knife point in her university halls - when she took her to student health she was lectured on her premonscuity and they didn't go gynaecology exams.

Women didn't have the power to make decisions - had to be married to get a diaphragm.

When the pill came in you had to be married to have a prescription for ills.

Contraceptives were not widely freely openly available.

Women would have to buy fake rings and call themselves 'Mrs' when asking the doctor for the pill.

Doctor Howard - the doctor who agreed to perform these illegal abortions.

County Hospital - Dr Allen Wallen med student.

15-20 people a day - septic abortion ward full every day.

Women would try to use objects to terminate the pregnancy - one tried carbolic acid.

19 years old young girls either self-induced or somebody else did it.

He called the morgue every week that he was on that ward, because somebody would have died.

Mostly students.

Dr Howard was arrested.

They found another doctor called Mike - who agreed to the terms.

The red squad - division of chicago police who monitored civil rights activists.

Police were sent to watch them outside their homes.

Every night 1968 you could watch the war live on television.

Richard Daley.

"Radical lawyers" helped bail out the youngsters.

Chicago women's liberation union started.

Women catcalled, all the restaurants downtown were ruled by men.

You couldn't work as a pregnant woman - she was main income for her and her husband who had only been married a year - she had an abortion.

All performed without anesthesia because she had to "get up and walk out of there as if nothing had happened".

JANE started and they ran an ad in an underground paper - phone number on posters, bulletin boards "Pregnant call Jane".

Used Eleanor's phone but came up with name JANE because nobody was called Jane anymore.

3x5 contact cards which they would write their details on, first and last name, medical details, finance status, age, whether they have kids or not, how far along the pregnancy they were.

They would handle the cards around at their meetings to take each one for counselling.

They would invite the women to their home and explain the whole thing to them - contrast to what they had to go through, the unknown.

"This is what you'll experience the whole day of the abortion".

They made it clear to them they didn't have to justify themselves for wanting an abortion.

Sometimes they would bring moral support - sister, husband friend, kids etc.

'The place' - where the abortions would carry out.

'The front' - where people would wait and a driver would pick them up and drive them to 'The place'.

Had to pay for the abortions - especially when the men carried out the abortions, they only did it for the money.

"Abortions were like coats - lots of women wanted them but only some women could afford them".

Usually doctor's were very condescending, wouldn't tell you what was going on - Mike doing the abortions illegally was very kind, told them exactly what he was going to do etc.

Each week planned different locations - set up to be a clinic in 15 minutes and get out of there in 5 minutes if they had to.

Had to find apartments to be used.

Jody - "Felt like a prisoner of the medical system".

Hard to find a doctor who wouldn't cause harm to the girls they were performing abortions to.

Chicago is largely catholic.

New York legalised abortions in the 70s.

The lower middle class and poor women were stuck - couldn't fly out to NY to get a legal abortion.

Legal abortion at the time cost between 500-600 dollars.

Women of colour were on the oust because they just couldn't afford it.

There were more women of colour, for the people who consumed the abortion services.

Peaches "Ignorant of the class services".

Jane predominantly consisted of middle-class white women.

Their services were particularly for poorer women.

'Our bodies Ourselves' - Book.

Women are driven to the hands of criminal and illegal abortionists.

Reproductive rights for women.

Mike was willing to teach the women of Jane how to perform abortions.

This was because Mike wasn't willing to do them anymore, since they wanted to do so many for free.

They kept in touch with the women for 2 weeks after their abortion to make sure they were okay.

They would help roughly 30 women a day 3x a week.

Homicide department in Chicago were told to get involved investigating JANE.

May 3rd 1972 - detectives followed the driver driving a woman from the place back to the front and up the elevator.

They started eating the index cards in the back of the police van with women's details on them.

7 of them were arrested.

Released on bail.

Joanne Wolfstone was their lawyer - aware that roe v wade was being considered by the supreme court - she brought up multiple laws which kept delaying their sentencing.

January 1973 the supreme court legalised abortions throughout the US.

The charges against all 7 women were then dropped.

Between 1968-1973 JANE provided an estimated 11,000 safe, affordable, illegal abortions.

After roe v wade cook county hospital closed its septic abortion ward.

[childabusesurvivor]

Childhood Trauma and ACE Scores in the News Again

New Post has been published on https://www.childabusesurvivor.net/reviews/2022/12/29/childhood-trauma-and-ace-scores-in-the-news-again/

Childhood Trauma and ACE Scores in the News Again

Yet another study gives us more proof that childhood trauma creates a higher risk for mental and physical health issues later in life:

Childhood Trauma Impairs Both Physical and Mental Health

I’m not here to knock Dan or his coverage of this new study. It’s newsworthy, and the numbers are very interesting. It’s also not breaking any new ground. We have known this now for a while. There have been other studies, and this new one is adding to the pile of information about childhood trauma’s impacts. That is good. Science is like that. You need to confirm and re-confirm the results of studies to ensure we are making the right decisions.

On the other hand, every time I see a chart like this one that I am quoting from the article, there is another number that sticks out to me and that I wish we could get a deeper look at:

When we look at the chart, we can see that among people with four, or more, trauma events in childhood (ACEs), 55% of them have had depression, 51% anxiety, 25% PTSD, and 20% deal with substance abuse. That’s just pulling out the most common items on the list. We can see those rates are significantly higher than the overall prevalence of these and very much higher than the prevalence among people who self-identified with less childhood trauma.

I think that makes sense. This is consistent with previous studies. What I want to know about, though, are the 45% who don’t have depression, the 49% who don’t have anxiety, the 75% without PTSD, and the 80% with no substance abuse issues. What was different for them? What kind of help or support was available for them as children compared to the others who did suffer from these issues? What kind of trauma were they dealing with? What kind of community did they live in? What resources were made available for them?

These, I think, are the questions that might help us understand and support the adults who find themselves now struggling. By comparing and contrasting the population with similar traumatic childhoods yet different outcomes, can we determine actions that we can take to help provide treatment that can heal trauma better than we do now? I would love to see some group take on that kind of study and tell us, for example, if getting kids into therapy early significantly impacts these percentages for adults.

There’s a lot to look at for sure, but the potential impacts are great. Let’s hope we do more studies and learn how to help more people.

– For the record, the original ACE survey and an acknowledgment of the limitations of that survey can be reviewed here. I think the survey severely undercounts and underrepresents certain types of childhood trauma, and the impact is even more significant than we see.

#ACE, #Anxiety, #Depression, #Hope, #MentalHealth, #PTSD, #Trauma

[edge-oftheworld]

okay buckle up!! i've written entire posts about this in reference to some songs (ydgtp, efyts, maybe blender) so i'll try and post links to them either edited onto these words (if they're underlined i succeeded) or in the comments. if i find these posts that is.

anyway, most of it i'm going to include under a cut because it would require trigger warnings, and i still don't know which ones to use. so, proceed at your own discretion, and if you're reading this and are unsure please ask me in the comments, just so we can be safe and all look after each other. hopefully by the end of writing this I'll know which trigger warnings to use. but this has been my life for several years now, and it is confusing.

I'll start with a bit of background: I went to a Christian school in my high school years, so age 12-17 or so for anyone unfamiliar with Australian schooling. It was like some wannabe American school meets Norwest. I was a gifted kid, not like child prodigy outstanding but enough that people were like, work hard academically, you might go somewhere with it. I also did a bunch of sport and music stuff, it was very 'glorify God by doing your best' and I was a Christian, this seemed legit, I tried to put in a sustainable effort. Meanwhile I'm going to church and youth group and also discovering I really love people and social justice, and there we were hearing a lot about how Jesus does these things, how God always cares about people, he cares about us, I'm like, I can see so much hurt in the world (I'd recently moved to a middle class area in Brisbane from a poorer area in Sydney), I wanna show people a bit of God's love. and damn if I'm meant to work hard academically I better do this a hundred times more because people are so much more important than notions of success (this was near the core of my beliefs then, honestly still is now). I'm young and energetic and the kind of neurodivergent that gets energised by connecting with people, seeing different perspectives, and solving novel challenges (the latter of which unfortunately meant I was quite good at high school maths).

I'm an extrovert and I'm good at making people feel included and welcomed--friendly and outgoing and empathetic and also I've been on the outside hoping people like me enough times to know how to spot someone who's feeling uncomfortable. And I've spent my life looking for the kind of connection that's fulfilling (not realising until my 20s that I need such a safe feeling of autonomy in it). I kind of started to associate what worked the most for me with church? so of course I'm going to work so hard to make that community functional. so that more people can experience that. I'm not great with executive function so having a routine where I know I will see my social circle (I'd graduated school by this point, and so I didn't have the ready made routine school brought) meant it would actually happen and in theory, I'd get my social needs met. so i'd do my bit, hope I get my needs met in return, pray in the times I don't, at first it's nice having to rely on God 24/7. then when in multiple circles my needs are going unmet for long times, the ecosystems I invest in aren't bearing the fruit that I can see and feel as others have their needs met too. what else could I do but try harder? it's all I know how to do. and then the people I love working with, I lose them in different ways--some don't stick around to be overworked, and I support that. some retreat into themselves behind the tasks, and we're a bunch of ex-friends separated by what we're doing together. it seems like they don't care. I didn't realise how much of my effort was me chasing connection. but it's such a normal human thing to do. why does no one else seem to need it?

you don't go to parties hit me pretty early on when 5sos5 was released with its catchy tunes and it's easy to relate to the connection I was missing when I went out to serve in community (maybe not quite a party. but not too different. parties are only as good as the people and chats you have there) and came home too drained to do anything but collapse and cry. and then i had words for it. i could start processing--literally that same week it came out i left probably the last major ministry I was still in (there were many. through the ages of 17-21. i was also studying my undergrad, working, trying to play sport, and had responsibilities on the family property). it'd been a long process of deciding what to do over several years during which at multiple points my mental health was so bad I had to give myself the ultanium of 'it's gonna kill me if I stay, and if I want to have impact for more than a couple more years, I have to do what is gonna keep me alive'. easy for you to say helped me realise how much I was forgetting the life I had in sydney before my family moved (and I still have friends from my primary school days I keep in touch with regularly now, and can in many occasions be a lot more honest than with many people in Brisbane, who I've known through a time where I was trying to be more than I am) and how trapped I felt and how it was messing with my mental health. BLENDER uniquely expresses something a lot like sensory overload, but more emotional/intuitive, and I've experienced that for years but never seen anyone else talk about it. heck, even me myself & i (possibly my least favourite on the album) reminds me of my own stupidity committing to all these things (and I did always have the choice not to, people asking me if I was definitely okay doing things. I just wanted that community so bad I thought the benefit was worth the effort even though it never was for more than the first month or so)--but also how my unknown at the time neurodivergence meant I didn't really have the resources to do any better.

I could write similar things about every song on the album pretty much. the breakup arc and the hope in bleach to start over--how much it reminds me of trying to find my own feet apart from this community I'd gotten myself addicted to working to better care for people in. when I'm overwhelmed by the need in the world or my nervous system is just fried from a big day (always the late nights for church events. I never did learn to sleep in, nor could I ever wind down quickly). when I'm taking out all that frustration on myself. I lost whatever motivation I'm supposed to have for the whole heaven thing for me personally, or maybe I never had it. but I appreciate the salvation of humanity in general. and I keep going a day at a time and I remind myself that I'm human and I can make my life which has been a stressful performance for so long, liveable. TEARS! emotions, red line, CAROUSEL. caramel, when my need for authenticity and connection didn't end up coming from where I'd invested in in the hopes of unselfish interdependence, ignoring all the red flags. bad omens. for the friends who ended up being real throughout it all and the way I probably don't understand heaven in the way I always thought I was 'supposed' to. COMPLETE MESS. you get the picture. I'd listened to 5sos for years, but i never felt so seen as in 5sos5, and it's still incredible to think, it's so hard to find anyone, friend to connect with or creator of art I consume, who i can connect with on a 'we kind of long for the same things' level but here are four of them. and one day I'll have a network of irl people but I'm not there yet.

and so I can look at my adolescent years without the heavily rose coloured glasses of 'being a Christian means to LOVE EVERYONE and I don't have time to feel anything else' that they were when I lived them, when I listen to sgfg. I can unpack my motivations and the ways I do get hurt by connection that goes wrong but there's so much beauty in it when I listen to superbloom. the burnout and the depersonalisation and derealisation that especially did kick in during the aftermath, during which time I somehow finished undergrad, listening to wfttwtaf. I can see these threads all through youngblood and calm and self titled and the non-album singles too--2011 is special for me as well because I left sydney in 2011. and i'm hopefully moving back properly this year!! it's all just exactly what I needed at every time. and I do see God looking after me. I'm finally doing what I wanted to do all along (urban design) and I have a vision and a dream on how to create community in a much more functional way, which reflects much of Christianity. I can put words to my story a bit more every day (and there is so much more to it, like I know this is a long post but it's really the short version) and I'll gradually share it to people I trust who didn't know how to look after me back then, to educate and call out what is unhelpful where necessary--it may not change everything but I'll at least have done my part. so i'm still optimistic in the end. more so for feeling it all. and wouldn't you know of a couple of albums that reflect really well this difficult to capture sentiment--

you mentioned being very active in your church in the past, would you like to hear about how 5sos5 got me through ministry burnout?

Well, why not? I'm not in the church anymore but I still have Christian friends and am always interested Christian lives. Xx

[erisenyo]

Do share your very strong feelings about Ozai eroding the traditional divisions between adult and child.

@eshusplayground ask and ye shall receive in spades haha, I've been thinking about this a lot recently as I think through what adulthood vs childhood in general means across the nations.

TLDR - Zuko and Azula are treated as adults by Ozai and everyone around them, which strips them of the traditional protections of childhood. It's a transgressive act that entrenches Ozai's perceived absolute authority and establishes his ability to essentially punish now for what someone *might* do later.

I get the strong sense that Zuko and Azula both think of themselves as adults, and a big contributing factor to that (outside of the very real life experiences they’ve had) is the way everyone else treats them that way.

And this, in my opinion, is a dynamic primarily set by Ozai.

If we look at the other Fire Nation kids we see, kids roughly Aang’s age (so like 12/13) are shown going to school as their primarily ‘responsibility.’ On Ember Island people in Zuko and Azula’s peer group (so 14-18ish?) are seen relaxing with friends and partying (including Chan, the child of an admiral), even with the country itself ramping up for the Day of the Black Sun and then Sozin’s Comet. Even Mai is shown living at home and under her family unit's authority before Azula comes to get her. (Ty Lee can maybe be read as having a job? Though I get distinct ‘ran away from home vibes,.')

This suggests the Fire Nation very much has a sense of childhood as a time of learning (which includes the safety to make mistakes), of spending time with your peers, of lessened responsibilities and obligations, and that there would likely be a transitional period into adulthood that probably coincides with your late teens/early 20s.

Contrast Zuko and Azula.

We see Zuko at 13 wanting to join the war meeting to prepare to rule the nation, which could suggest he’s already feeling pressure to ‘grow up’ as Crown Prince. And unless we think the Fire Nation allows children to fight to the death, the right to issue an Agni Kai and have it accepted is a privilege of legal adulthood. That Zuko is able to do this (vs having it treated as a childish tantrum), and that Ozai goes on to publicly and permanently maim him (vs allowing Zuko to learn from his mistake), suggests that Ozai is now treating Zuko as an adult and expects Zuko to assume adult responsibility for his adult actions. There is no transitional period. Zuko-the-child transgressed into the adult realm by speaking where children are supposed to be silent, and it is taken as an act that permanently ends Zuko’s right to a childhood.

And afterward, Zuko becomes incredibly isolated from his peer group (a hallmark of Fire Nation childhood from what we have seen). Zuko, as far as we know, hasn't interacted in a real way with another teen between his banishment and basically meeting Jet. And Azula seems to be having a similar parallel experience. She seems to have been separated from Mai and Ty Lee for some time prior to Season 2. This means they're primarily interacting with adults, and in both cases we see them expecting themselves to have authority over those adults, or at least to be taken as peers.

That Azula is experiencing this at the same time as Zuko suggests that the erosion between childhood and adulthood is now accelerating. What Zuko encountered at 13 she is encountering (potentially) at 11. And the way Zuko at 13 was expected to observe policy conversations, but Azula at 14 is expected to actively contribute, suggests that there has been further erosion in the intervening three years of the boundary between childhood and adulthood.

Azula is comfortable in this setting. She’s *already* become an adult in the room, and already assumed adult responsibilities like leading adults into battle, putting her life at risk for the country, accomplishing strategically vital national security missions with little support, and eventually ruling an entire country. She’s also now responsible as an adult for the outcomes of these responsibilities, too--childhood is where you are safe to make mistakes, and Azula is no longer allowed one of those.

And as the line between childhood and adulthood blurs, the protections that come with childhood also disappear—safety to learn and not have all the answers, safety to make mistakes, not needing to be fully responsible for things beyond your emotional and mental maturity, space to learn about the consequences and outcomes of your actions on an appropriate scale to your age.

(Consider also that Azula has seen the dangers of being a child (e.g., someone who makes mistakes) when someone is determined to treat you like an adult. She saw what happened to Zuko, after all. Might as well seize the privileges of adulthood if you are going to face the consequences of it regardless, and so she gets sucked into participating in her own adultification and spreading it to others (Mai, Ty Lee) as a way of seeking short-term safety.)

And if the children of the Fire Lord don’t get the protections of adulthood, do anyone’s kids? If the Fire Lord can transgress against the cultural standards around childhood, how much more broadly can he exercise his power? Is his behavior setting standards that others feel obligated to follow lest it be taken as criticism of the Fire Lord?

I also imagine that as someone who killed his own father and stole the throne from his brother, Ozai's aware of the limits of familial loyalty. I can see him viewing Zuko and Azula as potential threats first, as tools second, and as children somewhere at the bottom of the list. Was Zuko, as a loud, opinionated Crown Prince with a strong sense of right and wrong and a poor sense of reading a room, a potential rallying point as he approached adulthood for opposition to Ozai’s reign? Was Azula, as a stunningly powerful prodigy, a risk in a might-makes-right environment that’s already established that 13-year-olds are adult enough to issue Agni Kai?

Ozai came to power through a highly transgressive act. It's likely in his favor to continue to erode societal standards so that his own behavior seems less transgressive, and so his ability to flout boundaries is further entrenched. And being able and willing to hold a child responsible as an adult for the things that *might* happen when they grow up is a chilling threat—it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, it matters what Ozai thinks you could potentially do. So don’t put yourself in a position to be accused of anything, don’t miss an opportunity to show your vocal and effusive support, don’t dare to even think the wrong things. Because it might be your children facing the consequences.

It’s very emblematic of Ozai’s general scorched earth approach to things, in my opinion. He doesn’t really care about the future of the Fire Nation, he cares about himself, and he’s fully willing to sacrifice children (his own and others) in pursuit of personal power and glory, and to take drastic action in the short-term regardless of its consequences down the line.

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

“Elliot Page doesn’t remember exactly how long he had been asking.

But he does remember the acute feeling of triumph when, around age 9, he was finally allowed to cut his hair short. “I felt like a boy,” Page says. “I wanted to be a boy. I would ask my mom if I could be someday.” Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Page visualized himself as a boy in imaginary games, freed from the discomfort of how other people saw him: as a girl. After the haircut, strangers finally started perceiving him the way he saw himself, and it felt both right and exciting.

The joy was short-lived. Months later, Page got his first break, landing a part as a daughter in a Canadian mining family in the TV movie Pit Pony. He wore a wig for the film, and when Pit Pony became a TV show, he grew his hair out again. “I became a professional actor at the age of 10,” Page says. And pursuing that passion came with a difficult compromise. “Of course I had to look a certain way.”

We are speaking in late February. It is the first interview Page, 34, has given since disclosing in December that he is transgender, in a heartfelt letter posted to Instagram, and he is crying before I have even uttered a question. “Sorry, I’m going to be emotional, but that’s cool, right?” he says, smiling through his tears.

It’s hard for him to talk about the days that led up to that disclosure. When I ask how he was feeling, he looks away, his neck exposed by a new short haircut. After a pause, he presses his hand to his heart and closes his eyes. “This feeling of true excitement and deep gratitude to have made it to this point in my life,” he says, “mixed with a lot of fear and anxiety.”

It’s not hard to understand why a trans person would be dealing with conflicting feelings in this moment. Increased social acceptance has led to more young people describing themselves as trans—1.8% of Gen Z compared with 0.2% of boomers, according to a recent Gallup poll—yet this has fueled conservatives who are stoking fears about a “transgender craze.” President Joe Biden has restored the right of transgender military members to serve openly, and in Hollywood, trans people have never had more meaningful time onscreen. Meanwhile, J.K. Rowling is leveraging her cultural capital to oppose transgender equality in the name of feminism, and lawmakers are arguing in the halls of Congress over the validity of gender identities. “Sex has become a political football in the culture wars,” says Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU.

(Full article with photos continued under the “read more”)

And so Page—who charmed America as a precocious pregnant teenager in Juno, constructed dreamscapes in Inception and now stars in Netflix’s hit superhero show The Umbrella Academy, the third season of which he’s filming in Toronto—expected that his news would be met with both applause and vitriol. “What I was anticipating was a lot of support and love and a massive amount of hatred and transphobia,” says Page. “That’s essentially what happened.” What he did not anticipate was just how big this story would be. Page’s announcement, which made him one of the most famous out trans people in the world, started trending on Twitter in more than 20 countries. He gained more than 400,000 new followers on Instagram on that day alone. Thousands of articles were published. Likes and shares reached the millions. Right-wing podcasters readied their rhetoric about “women in men’s locker rooms.” Casting directors reached out to Page’s manager saying it would be an honor to cast Page in their next big movie.

So, it was a lot. Over the course of two conversations, Page will say that understanding himself in all the specifics remains a work in progress. Fathoming one’s gender, an identity innate and performed, personal and social, fixed and evolving, is complicated enough without being under a spotlight that never seems to turn off. But having arrived at a critical juncture, Page feels a deep sense of responsibility to share his truth. “Extremely influential people are spreading these myths and damaging rhetoric—every day you’re seeing our existence debated,” Page says. “Transgender people are so very real.”

That role in Pit Pony led to other productions and eventually, when Page was 16, to a film called Mouth to Mouth. Playing a young anarchist, Page had a chance to cut his hair again. This time, he shaved it off completely. The kids at his high school teased him, but in photos he has posted from that time on social media he looks at ease. Page’s head was still shaved when he mailed in an audition tape for the 2005 thriller Hard Candy. The people in charge of casting asked him to audition again in a wig. Soon, the hair was back.

Page’s tour de force performance in Hard Candy led, two years later, to Juno, a low-budget indie film that brought Page Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations and sudden megafame. The actor, then 21, struggled with the stresses of that ascension. The endless primping, red carpets and magazine spreads were all agonizing reminders of the disconnect between how the world saw Page and who he knew himself to be. “I just never recognized myself,” Page says. “For a long time I could not even look at a photo of myself.” It was difficult to watch the movies too, especially ones in which he played more feminine roles.

Page loved making movies, but he also felt alienated by Hollywood and its standards. Alia Shawkat, a close friend and co-star in 2009’s Whip It,describes all the attention from Juno as scarring. “He had a really hard time with the press and expectations,” Shawkat says. “‘Put this on! And look this way! And this is sexy!’”

By the time he appeared in blockbusters like X-Men: The Last Stand and Inception, Page was suffering from depression, anxiety and panic attacks. He didn’t know, he says, “how to explain to people that even though [I was] an actor, just putting on a T-shirt cut for a woman would make me so unwell.” Shawkat recalls Page’s struggles with clothes. “I’d be like, ‘Hey, look at all these nice outfits you’re getting,’ and he would say, ‘It’s not me. It feels like a costume,’” she says. Page tried to convince himself that he was fine, that someone who was fortunate enough to have made it shouldn’t have complaints. But he felt exhausted by the work required to “just exist,” and thought more than once about quitting acting.

In 2014, Page came out as gay, despite feeling for years that “being out was impossible” given his career. (Gender identity and sexual orientation are, of course, distinct, but one queer identity can coexist with another.) In an emotional speech at a Human Rights Campaign conference, Page talked about being part of an industry “that places crushing standards” on actors and viewers alike. “There are pervasive stereotypes about masculinity and femininity that define how we’re all supposed to act, dress and speak,” Page went on. “And they serve no one.”

The actor started wearing suits on the red carpet. He found love, marrying choreographer Emma Portner in 2018. He asserted more agency in his career, producing his own films with LGBTQ leads like Freeheld and My Days of Mercy. And he made a masculine wardrobe a condition of taking roles. Yet the daily discord was becoming unbearable. “The difference in how I felt before coming out as gay to after was massive,” says Page. “But did the discomfort in my body ever go away? No, no, no, no.”

In part, it was the isolation forced by the pandemic that brought to a head Page’s wrestling with gender. (Page and Portner separated last summer, and the two divorced in early 2021. “We’ve remained close friends,” Page says.) “I had a lot of time on my own to really focus on things that I think, in so many ways, unconsciously, I was avoiding,” he says. He was inspired by trailblazing trans icons like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, who found success in Hollywood while living authentically. Trans writers helped him understand his feelings; Page saw himself reflected in P. Carl’s memoir Becoming a Man. Eventually “shame and discomfort” gave way to revelation. “I was finally able to embrace being transgender,” Page says, “and letting myself fully become who I am.”

This led to a series of decisions. One was asking the world to call him by a different name, Elliot, which he says he’s always liked. Page has a tattoo that says E.P. PHONE HOME, a reference to a movie about a young boy with that name. “I loved E.T. when I was a kid and always wanted to look like the boys in the movies, right?” he says. The other decision was to use different pronouns—for the record, both he/him and they/them are fine. (When I ask if he has a preference on pronouns for the purposes of this story, Page says, “He/him is great.”)

A day before we first speak, Page will talk to his mom about this interview and she will tell him, “I’m just so proud of my son.” He grows emotional relating this and tries to explain that his mom, the daughter of a minister, who was born in the 1950s, was always trying to do what she thought was best for her child, even if that meant encouraging young Page to act like a girl. “She wants me to be who I am and supports me fully,” Page says. “It is a testament to how people really change.”

Another decision was to get top surgery. Page volunteers this information early in our conversation; at the time he posted his disclosure on Instagram, he was recovering in Toronto. Like many trans people, Page emphasizes being trans isn’t all about surgery. For some people, it’s unnecessary. For others, it’s unaffordable. For the wider world, the media’s focus on it has sensationalized transgender bodies, inviting invasive and inappropriate questions. But Page describes surgery as something that, for him, has made it possible to finally recognize himself when he looks in the mirror, providing catharsis he’s been waiting for since the “total hell” of puberty. “It has completely transformed my life,” he says. So much of his energy was spent on being uncomfortable in his body, he says. Now he has that energy back.

For the transgender community at large, visibility does not automatically lead to acceptance. Around the globe, transgender people deal disproportionately with violence and discrimination. Anti-trans hate crimes are on the rise in the U.K. along with increasingly transphobic rhetoric in newspapers and tabloids. In the U.S., in addition to the perennial challenges trans people face with issues like poverty and homelessness, a flurry of bills in state legislatures would make it a crime to provide transition-related medical care to trans youth. And crass old jokes are still in circulation. When Biden lifted the ban on open service for transgender troops, Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che did a bit on Weekend Update about the policy being called “don’t ask, don’t tuck.”

Page says coming out as trans was “selfish” on one level: “It’s for me. I want to live and be who I am.” But he also felt a moral imperative to do so, given the times. Human identity is complicated and mysterious, but politics insists on fitting everything into boxes. In today’s culture wars, simplistic beliefs about gender—e.g., chromosomes = destiny—are so widespread and so deep-seated that many people who hold those beliefs don’t feel compelled to consider whether they might be incomplete or prejudiced. On Feb. 24, after a passionate debate on legislation that would ban discrimination against LGBTQ people, Representative Marie Newman, an Illinois Democrat, proudly displayed the pride flag in support of her daughter, who is trans. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, responded by hanging a poster outside her office that read: There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE.

The next day Dr. Rachel Levine, who stands to become the first openly transgender federal official confirmed by the Senate, endured a tirade from Senator Rand Paul about “genital mutilation” during her confirmation hearing. My second conversation with Page happens shortly after this. He brings it up almost immediately, and seems both heartbroken and determined. He wants to emphasize that top surgery, for him, was “not only life-changing but lifesaving.” He implores people to educate themselves about trans lives, to learn how crucial medical care can be, to understand that lack of access to it is one of the many reasons that an estimated 41% of transgender people have attempted suicide, according to one survey.

Page has been in the political trenches for a while, having leaned into progressive activism after coming out as queer in 2014. For two seasons, he and best friend Ian Daniel filmed Gaycation, a Viceland series that explored LGBTQ culture around the world and, at one point, showed Page grilling Senator Ted Cruz at the Iowa State Fair about discrimination against queer people. In 2019, Page made a documentary called There’s Something in the Water, which explores environmental hardships experienced by communities of color in Nova Scotia, with $350,000 of his own money. That activism extends to his own industry: in 2017, he published a Facebook post that, among other things, accused director Brett Ratner of forcibly outing him as gay on the set of an X-Men movie. (A representative for Ratner did not respond to a request for comment.)

As a trans person who is white, wealthy and famous, Page has a unique kind of privilege, and with it an opportunity to advocate for those with less. According to the U.S. Trans Survey, a large-scale report from 2015, transgender people of color are more likely to experience unemployment, harassment by police and refusals of medical care. Nearly half of all Black respondents reported being denied equal treatment, verbally harassed and/or physically attacked in the past year. Trans people as a group fare much worse on such stats than the general population. “My privilege has allowed me to have resources to get through and to be where I am today,” Page says, “and of course I want to use that privilege and platform to help in the ways I can.”

Since his disclosure, Page has been mostly quiet on social media. One exception has been to tweet on behalf of the ACLU, which is in the midst of fighting anti-trans bills and laws around the country, including those that ban transgender girls and women from participating in sports. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves says he will sign such a bill in the name of “protect[ing] young girls.” Page played competitive soccer and vividly recalls the agony of being told he would have to play on the girls’ team once he aged out of mixed-gender squads. After an appeal, Page was allowed to play with the boys for an additional year. Today, several bills list genitalia as a requirement for deciding who plays on which team. “I would have been in that position as a kid,” Page says. “It’s horrific.”

All this advocacy is unlikely to make life easier. “You can’t enter into certain spaces as a public trans person,” says the ACLU’s Strangio, “without being prepared to spend some percentage of your life being threatened and harassed.” Yet, while he seems overwhelmed at times, Page is also eager. Many of the political attacks on trans people—whether it is a mandate that bathroom use be determined by birth sex, a blanket ban on medical interventions for trans kids or the suggestion that trans men are simply wayward women beguiled by male privilege—carry the same subtext: that trans people are mistaken about who they are. “We know who we are,” Page says. “People cling to these firm ideas [about gender] because it makes people feel safe. But if we could just celebrate all the wonderful complexities of people, the world would be such a better place.”

Even if Page weren’t vocal, his public presence would communicate something powerful. That is in part because of what Paisley Currah, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, calls “visibility gaps.” Historically, trans women have been more visible, in culture and in Hollywood, than trans men. There are many explanations: Our culture is obsessed with femininity. Men’s bodies are less policed and scrutinized. Patriarchal people tend to get more emotional about who is considered to be in the same category as their daughters. “And a lot of trans men don’t stand out as trans,” says Currah, who is a trans man himself. “I think we’ve taken up less of the public’s attention because masculinity is sort of the norm.”

During our interviews, Page will repeatedly refer to himself as a “transgender guy.” He also calls himself nonbinary and queer, but for him, transmasculinity is at the center of the conversation right now. “It’s a complicated journey,” he says, “and an ongoing process.”

While the visibility gap means that trans men have been spared some of the hate endured by trans women, it has also meant that people like Page have had fewer models. “There were no examples,” Page says of growing up in Halifax in the 1990s. There are many queer people who have felt “that how they feel deep inside isn’t a real thing because they never saw it reflected back to them,” says Tiq Milan, an activist, author and transgender man. Page offers a reflection: “They can see that and say, ‘You know what, that’s who I am too,’” Milan says. When there aren’t examples, he says, “people make monsters of us.”

For decades, that was something Hollywood did. As detailed in the 2020 Netflix documentary Disclosure, transgender people have been portrayed onscreen as villainous and deceitful, tragic subplots or the butt of jokes. In a sign of just how far the industry has come—spurred on by productions like Pose and trailblazers like Mock—Netflix offered to change the credits on The Umbrella Academy the same day that its star posted his statement on social media. Now when an episode ends, the first words viewers see are “Elliot Page.”

Today, there are many out trans and nonbinary actors, directors and producers. Storylines involving trans people are more common, more respectful. Sometimes that aspect of identity is even incidental, rather than the crux of a morality tale. And yet Hollywood can still seem a frightening place for LGBTQ people to come out. “It’s an industry that says, ‘Don’t do that,’” says director Silas Howard, who got his break on Amazon’s show Transparent, which made efforts to hire transgender crew members. “I wouldn’t have been hired if they didn’t have a trans initiative,” Howard says. “I’m always aware of that.”

So what will it mean for Page’s career? While Page has appeared in many projects, he also faced challenges landing female leads because he didn’t fit Hollywood’s narrow mold. Since Page’s Instagram post, his team is seeing more activity than they have in years. Many of the offers coming in—to direct, to produce, to act—are trans-related, but there are also some “dude roles.”

Downtime in quarantine helped Page accept his gender identity. “I was finally able to embrace being transgender,” he says.

Page was attracted to the role of Vanya in The Umbrella Academy because—in the first season, released in 2019—Vanya is crushed by self-loathing, believing herself to be the only ordinary sibling in an extraordinary family. The character can barely summon the courage to move through the world. “I related to how much Vanya was closed off,” Page says. Now on set filming the third season, co-workers have seen a change in the actor. “It seems like there’s a tremendous weight off his shoulders, a feeling of comfort,” says showrunner Steve Blackman. “There’s a lightness, a lot more smiling.” For Page, returning to set has been validating, if awkward at times. Yes, people accidentally use the wrong pronouns—“It’s going to be an adjustment,” Page says—but co-workers also see and acknowledge him.

The debate over whether cisgender people, who have repeatedly collected awards for playing trans characters, should continue to do so has largely been settled. However, trans actors have rarely been considered for cisgender parts. Whatever challenges might lie ahead, Page seems exuberant about playing a new spectrum of roles. “I’m really excited to act, now that I’m fully who I am, in this body,” Page says. “No matter the challenges and difficult moments of this, nothing amounts to getting to feel how I feel now.”

This includes having short hair again. During our interview, Page keeps rearranging strands on his forehead. It took a long time for him to return to the barber’s chair and ask to cut it short, but he got there. And how did that haircut feel?

Page tears up again, then smiles. “I just could not have enjoyed it more,” he says.”

[testudoaubrei-blog]

Content note for discussions of eternal damnation, and all sorts of other shit that will trigger a lot of folks with religious trauma.

Before I get started I might as well explain where I’m coming from - unlike a lot of She-Ra fans, and a lot of queer people, I don’t have much religious trauma, or any, maybe (okay there were a number of years I was convinced I was going to hell, but that happens to everyone, right?). I was raised a liberal Christian by liberal Christian parents in the Episcopal Church, where most of my memories are overwhelmingly positive. Fuck, growing up in the 90’s, Chuch was probably the only place outside my home I didn’t have homophobia spewed at me. Because it was the 90’s and it was a fucking hellscape of bigotry where 5 year olds knew enough to taunt each other with homophobic slurs and the adults didn’t know enough to realize how fucked up that was. Anyway. This is my experience, but it is an atypical one, and I know it. Quite frankly I know that my experience of Christianity has very little at all to do with what most people experienced, or what people generally mean when they talk about Christianity as a cultural force in America today. So if you were raised Christian and you don’t recognize your theology here, congrats, neither do I, but these ideas and cultural forces are huge and powerful and dominant. And it’s this dominant Christian narrative that I’m referring to in this post. As well as, you know, a children’s cartoon about lesbian rainbow princesses. So here it goes. This is going to get batshit.

"All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." - John Calvin

“We’re all just a bunch of wooly guys” - Noelle Stevenson

This is a post triggered by a single scene, and a single line. It’s one of the most fucked-up scenes in She-Ra, toward the end of Save the Cat. Catra, turned into a puppet by Prime, struggles with her chip, desperately trying to gain control of herself, so lost and scared and vulnerable that she flings aside her own death wish and her pride and tearfully begs Adora to rescue her. Adora reaches out , about to grab her, and then Prime takes control back, pronounces ‘disappointing’ and activates the kill switch that pitches Catra off the platform and to her death (and seriously, she dies here, guys - also Adora breaks both her legs in the fall). But before he does, he dismisses Catra with one of his most chilling lines. “Some creatures are meant only for destruction.”

And that’s when everyone watching probably had their heart broken a little bit, but some of the viewers raised in or around Christianity watching the same scene probably whispered ‘holy shit’ to themselves. Because Prime’s line - which works as a chilling and callous dismissal of Catra - is also an allusion to a passage from the Bible. In fact, it’s from one of the most fucked up passages in a book with more than its share of fucked up passages. It’s from Romans 9:22, and I’m going to quote several previous verses to give the context of the passage (if not the entire Epistle, which is more about who needs to abide by Jewish dietary restrictions but was used to construct a systematic theology in the centuries afterwards because people decided it was Eternal Truth).

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

The context of the allusion supports the context in the show. Prime is dismissing Catra - serial betrayer, liar, failed conqueror, former bloody-handed warlord - as worthless, as having always been worthless and fit only to be destroyed. He is speaking from a divine and authoritative perspective (because he really does think he’s God, more of this in my TL/DR Horde Prime thing). Prime is echoing not only his own haughty dismissal of Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s view of her, but also perhaps the viewer’s harshest assessment of her, and her own worst fears about herself. Catra was bad from the start, doomed to destroy and to be destroyed. A malformed pot, cracked in firing, destined to be shattered against a wall and have her shards classified by some future archaeologist 2,000 years later. And all that’s bad enough.

But the full historical and theological context of this passage shows the real depth of Noelle Stevenson’s passion and thought and care when writing this show. Noelle was raised in Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity. To my knowledge, he has never specified what sect or denomination, but in interviews and her memoir Noelle has shown a particular concern for questions that this passage raises, and a particular loathing for the strains of Protestant theology that take this passage and run with it - that is to say, Calvinism. So while I’m not sure if Noelle was raised as a conservative, Calvinist Presbyterian, his preoccupation with these questions mean that it’s time to talk about Calvinism.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that Calvinism is a systematic theology built entirely upon the Epistles of Romans and Galatians, but only -just- (and here my Catholic readers in particular will chuckle to themselves and lovingly stroke their favorite passage of the Epistle of James). The core of Calvinist Doctrine is often expressed by the very Dutch acronym TULIP:

Total Depravity - people are wholly evil, and incapable of good action or even willing good thoughts or deeds

Unconditional Election - God chooses some people to save because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not because they did anything to deserve, trigger or accept it

Limited Atonement - Jesus died only to save the people God chose to save, not the rest of us bastards

Irresistible Grace - God chooses some people to be saved - if you didn’t want to be saved, too bad, God said so.

Perseverance of the Saints - People often forget this one and assume it’s ‘predestination’ but it’s actually this - basically, once saved by God, always saved, and if it looks like someone falls out of grace, they were never saved to begin with. Well that’s all sealed up tight I guess.

Reading through these, predestination isn’t a single doctrine in Calvinism but the entire theological underpinnings of it together with humanity’s utter powerlessness before sin. Basically God has all agency, humanity has none. Calvinism (and a lot of early modern Protestantism) is obsessed with questions of how God saves people (grace alone, AKA Sola Fides) and who God saves (the people god elects and only the people God elects, and fuck everyone else).

It’s apparent that Noelle was really taken by these questions, and repelled by the answers he heard. He’s alluded to having a tattoo refuting the Gospel passage about Sheep and Goats being sorted at the end times, affirming instead that ‘we’re all just a bunch of wooly guys’ (you can see this goat tattoo in some of his self-portraits in comics, etc). He’s also mentioned that rejecting and subverting destiny is a huge part of everything he writes as a particular rejection of the idea that some individual people are 'chosen' by God or that God has a plan for any of us. You can see that -so clearly- in Adora’s arc, where Adora embraces and then rejects destiny time and again and finally learns to live life for herself.

But for Catra, we’re much more concerned about the most negative aspect of this - the idea that some people are vessels meant for destruction. And that’s something else that Noelle is preoccupied with. In her memoir in the section about leaving the church and becoming a humanistic atheist, there is a drawing of a pot and the question ‘Am I a vessel prepared for destruction?’ Obviously this was on Noelle’s mind (And this is before he came out to himself as queer!).

To look at how this question plays out in Catra’s entire arc, let’s first talk about how ideas of damnation and salvation actually play out in society. And for that I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, Gin Lun’s Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (if you can tell by now, I am a fucking blast at parties). Lun tells the long and very interesting story about, how ideas of hell and who went there changed during the Early American Republic. One of the interesting developments that she talks about is how while at first people who were repelled by Calvinism started moving toward a doctrine of universal salvation (no on goes to hell, at least not forever*), eventually they decided that hell was fine as long as only the right kind of people went there. Mostly The Other - non-Christian foreigners, Catholics, Atheists, people who were sinners in ways that were not just bad but weird and violated Victorian ideas of respectability. Really, Hell became a way of othering people, and arguably that’s how it survives today, especially as a way to other queer people (but expanding this is slated for my Montero rant). Now while a lot of people were consciously rejecting Calvinist predestination, they were still drawing the distinction between the Elect (good, saved, worthwhile) and the everyone else (bad, damned, worthless). I would argue that secularized ideas of this survive to this day even among non-Christian spaces in our society - we like to draw lines between those who Elect, and those who aren’t.

And that’s what brings us back to Catra. Because Catra’s entire arc is a refutation of the idea that some people are worthless and irredeemable, either by nature, nurture or their own actions. Catra’s actions strain the conventions of who is sympathetic in a Kid’s cartoon - I’ve half joked that she’s Walter White as a cat girl, and it’s only half a joke. She’s cruel, self-deluded, she spends 4 seasons refusing to take responsibility for anything she does and until Season 5 she just about always chooses the thing that does the most damage to herself and others. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that Catra is morally culpable in every step of her descent into evil (except maybe her break with reality just before she pulls the lever). The way that Catra personally betrays everyone around her, the way she strips herself of all of her better qualities and most of what makes her human, hell even her costume changes would signal in any other show that she’s irredeemable.

It’s tempting to see this as Noelle’s version of being edgy - pushing the boundaries of what a sympathetic character is, throwing out antiheroics in favor of just making the villain a protagonist. Noelle isn’t quite Alex ‘I am in the business of traumatizing children’ Hirsch, who seems to have viewed his job as pushing the bounds of what you could show on the Disney Channel (I saw Gravity Falls as an adult and a bunch of that shit lives rent free in my nightmares forever), but Noelle has his own dark side, mostly thematically. The show’s willingness to deal with abuse, and messed up religious themes, and volatile, passionate, not particularly healthy relationships feels pretty daring. I’m not joking when I gleefully recommend this show to friends as ‘a couple from a Mountain Goats Song fights for four seasons in a cartoon intended for 9 year olds’. Noelle is in his own way pushing the boundaries of what a kids show can do. If you read Noelle’s other works like Nimona, you see an argument for Noelle being at least a bit edgy. Nimona is also angry, gleefully destructive, violent and spiteful - not unlike Catra. Given that it was a 2010s webcomic and not a kids show, Nimona is a good deal worse than Catra in some ways - Catra doesn’t kill people on screen, while Nimona laughs about it (that was just like, a webcomic thing - one of the fan favorite characters in my personal favorite, Narbonic, was a fucking sociopath, and the heroes were all amoral mad scientists, except for the superintelligent gerbil**). But unlike Nimona, whose fate is left open ended, Catra is redeemed.

And that is weird. We’ve had redemption arcs, but generally not of characters with -so- much vile stuff in their history. Going back to the comparison between her and Azula, many other shows, like Avatar, would have made Catra a semi-sympathetic villain who has a sob-story in their origin but who is beyond redemption, and in so doing would articulate a kind of psychologized Calvinism where some people are too traumatized to ever be fully and truly human. I’d argue this is the problem with Azula as a character - she’s a fun villain, but she doesn’t have moral agency, and the ultimate message of her arc - that she’s a broken person destined only to hurt people - is actually pretty fucked up. And that’s the origin story of so many serial killers and psycopaths that populate so many TV shows and movies. Beyond ‘hurt people hurt people’ they have nothing to teach us except perhaps that trauma makes you a monster and that the only possible response to people doing bad things is to cut them out of your life and out of our society (and that’s why we have prisons, right?)

And so Catra’s redemption and the depths from which she claws herself back goes back to Noelle’s desire to prove that no person is a vessel ‘fitted for destruction.’ Catra goes about as far down the path of evil as we’ve ever seen a protagonist in a kids show go, and she still has the capacity for good. Importantly, she is not subject to total depravity - she is capable of a good act, if only one at first. Catra is the one who begins her own redemption (unlike in Calvinism, where grace is unearned and even unwelcomed) - because she wants something better than what she has, even if its too late, because she realizes that she never wanted any of this anyway, because she wants to do one good thing once in her life even if it kills her.

The very extremity of Catra’s descent into villainy serves to underline the point that Noelle is trying to make - that no one can be written off completely, that everyone is capable of change, and that no human being is garbage, no matter how twisted they’ve become. Meanwhile her ability to set her own redemption in motion is a powerful statement of human agency, and healing, and a refutation of Calvinism’s idea that we are powerless before sin or pop cultural tropes about us being powerful before the traumas of our upbringing. Catra’s arc, then, is a kind of anti-Calvinist theological statement - about the nature of people and the nature of goodness.

Now, there is a darker side to this that Noelle has only hinted at, but which is suggested by other characters on the show. Because while Catra’s redemption shows that people are capable of change, even when they’ve done horrible things, been fucked up and fucked themselves up, it also illustrates the things people do to themselves that make change hard. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, two of the most sinister parts of her descent into villainy are her self-dehumanization (crushing her own compassion and desire to do good) and her rewriting of her own history in her speech and memory to make her own actions seem justified (which we see with her insistence that Adora left her, eliding Adora’s offers to have Catra join her, or her even more clearly false insistence that Entrapta had betrayed them). In Catra, these processes keep her going down the path of evil, and allow her to nearly destroy herself and everyone else. But we can see the same processes at work in two much darker figures - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime. These are both rants for another day, but the completeness of Shadow Weaver’s narcissistic self-justification and cultivated callousness and the even more complete narcissism of Prime’s god complex cut both characters off from everyone around them. Perhaps, in a theoretical sense, they are still redeemable, but for narrative purposes they might as well be damned.

This willingness to show a case where someone -isn’t- redeemed actually serves to make Catra’s redemption more believable, especially since Noelle and the writers draw the distinction between how Catra and SW/Prime can relate to reality and other people, not how broken they are by their trauma (unlike Zuko and Azula, who are differentiated by How Fucked Uolp They Are). Redemption is there, it’s an option, we can always do what is right, but someone people will choose not to, in part because doing the right thing involves opening ourselves to the world and others, and thus being vulnerable. Noelle mentions this offhandedly in an interview after Season 1 with the She-Ra Progressive of Power podcast - “I sometimes think that shades of grey, sympathetic villains are part of the escapist fantasy of shows like this.” Because in the real world, some people are just bastards, a point that was particularly clear in 2017. Prime and Shadow Weaver admit this reality, while Catra makes a philosophical point that even the bastards can change their ways (at least in theory).

*An idea first proposed in the second century by Origen, who’s a trip and a fucking half by himself, and an idea that becomes the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which protestants vehemently denied!

**Speaking of favorite Noelle tropes

[sooniesspot]

Coming Down | myg

Okay, so here's the second installment of my BADLANDS Series. This is loosely based around Coming Down by Halsey. I realise I haven't really done them in a specific order, just the one I am pulled to next to write.

Warnings: Dom!Yoongi, Sub!Reader, mentions of slight work stress and societal pressures of being a woman, you know. All that good stuff.

Reader is a F E M I N I S T and proudly so. Loose mention of not wanting kids (which is fine btw) this is just a whole load of smut, not much fluff as it's FWB but.

Okay so, oral, f & m receiving, face fucking, fingering, multiple orgasms, rough sex, light spanking, choking (for like a milisecond) use of ties, slight sensory deprivation, slight body worship, overstimulation. Slight name-calling?? Yoongs says kitten ironically. Use of safe word/safe signal. Yoongles has a Sir Kink. (I can only apologise) Reader has a hand kink (obvs) just wants to get off and relieve stress, Yoongi is happy to be their relief.

word count: 9.8k 👀🐸☕ don't @ me

'I found God, I found him in a lover'

It was a normal Thursday evening, you'd finished work at 6pm on the dot and took the bus home. Fishing for your keys as you approached the front door of your apartment. Key in the lock, turn. Open. Silence. Walking into your hallway, slippers not quite on the rack by the front door as you rushed out of them into your heels this morning. Just where you left them. Sliding off your heels with a sigh as you trudged into your slippers, immediately comforted by the soft memory foam that supported your tiresome toes. Returning your heels to the rack. Shrugging off your bag and long coat, reaching nearly 2 feet above you on your tiptoes to hang your bag and coat on the coat rack. Muttering to yourself like you did every day. 'Coat and bag, then heels. Won't have to stretch so much.' Venturing into the living room. Magazine on the coffee table infront of the sofa where you had left it last night.

Empty. Not that you expected anyone to be home. No one making you dinner you didn't want, or taking up the whole sofa, or hogging the remote. You lived alone, and you liked it. Sure, for a pretty young girl in her mid twenties you often had looks and questions.

'When are you going to find the one?'

'When will you settle down and have a family?'

And truth be told, you didn't want to settle down. You had told your mother from a young age that you didn't want children, whether that would change over time or not you weren't sure. It hadn't changed. You still wanted your independence and that was okay. Women were not put on this earth just to bear children and you were the firmest believer in that. You liked your life just the way it was. A job you loved that you worked hard for, an apartment you were proud of and nearly every night you got to sleep in your own bed, alone, no one to whine at when they snored or your body being used as a warmer for their cold feet. The few nights you were away from your bed came from your once in a while rendezvous with an acquaintance of yours. Although you knew eachother more than mere acquaintances should.

You met at a bar some time ago. Lights flashed, sure to give you a migraine and music so loud your eardrums could burst at any given moment. You were dragged out to this stingy bar by your bestfriend in her attempt to finally get noticed by that one guy. Even in her twenties she was still as smitten as when you were both back at school. You wore a simple black dress with a low cut front, skirt just above the knee and plain black heels. Hair not much different to your everyday, maybe a few waves here and there and some more mascara than your normal work volume. Trying your best to blend in but still having the ornate ability to have eyes on you in any setting.

You spent a lot of time on the dance floor until your friend had found her prey and you circled around the bar. Much rather wanting to stay at home with a tub of ice cream and your cat watching some terrible reality show about Cabin Crew on a cruise ship. Shouting at the TV to throw the nasty woman overboard; waving your spoon at the screen as your cat looked on in understanding almost. But here you were, slumped against a sticky varnished oak bar, propped up on an old velvet stool, twisting your straw in your glass, nonchalantly spinning the steadily melting ice as you listened to your friend talking to her guy. Suddenly feeling a hot hand against your lower back and someone lean over the bar between you and your otherwise occupied friend. Looking up at a pale man to your left.

" Whiskey on the rocks. " came his order to the bar tender; sharp, leaving no room for anything blasé.

Catching his eye, he looked you over once with a subtle bite of his lip and the flick of his tongue at the seam of his mouth; eyebrow raised with a lingering smirk before he vanished into the sea of people again with his drink.

Dumbfounded, you sat there, staring at the now empty spot where he had been mere seconds ago, the now cool expanse of your lower back where his large hand once was, fizzing. Swinging round on your stool, propping your elbow on the bar behind you, your eyes scanned the room. It wasn't the biggest bar. It wouldn't take long to find him.

Soon you caught eyes with him across the dance floor, stood with his taller, tanned friends as he held the whiskey glass firm in his hand; talking amongst themselves. Dark Brown, almost black hair feathered across his forehead, just above his twinkling chocolate eyes. Thin upper lip pressing to his plumper bottom lip before perfect white teeth graced your vision in an endearing gummy smile. Eyes still not catching you between the bodies of people dancing. Several silver hoop earrings in each ear. He wore a long black sweatshirt, black ripped jeans and boots. A couple of silver rings adorned his strong fingers.

You took a sip of your drink, gaze intermittently fluttering in his direction as you scanned the room, your friend had left to go and dance. Eyes found her and you nodded, knowing she was fine. As your stare focused back on the man before you he finally looked up, catching your eye with his, dark and mysterious. His lips pulling into a smirk again as he gazed at you. Heat bubbling in your chest from his wandering eyes on your body through the gap in people on the dance floor. He eventually made his way over to you and whispered a few words into your ear. Cool and calm.

" Come back to my hotel. "

And so you did. One slightly drunk, intense one night stand later and here you were, 6 months down the line sleeping with eachother whenever he was in town. A classic Friends With Benefits situation, although you weren't really friends.

You walked into your kitchen, greeting your ginger tabby cat with a kiss as she meowed at you in greeting. Grabbing yourself a glass for water and pouring kibble into her bowl on the floor, your routine monotonous but you didn't mind. Your cat tucking into her dinner as you filled up your glass, taking a sip. Looking at delivery menus on your fridge under old magnets from previous travels, deciding on Chinese; plucking the menu from the fridge, you had a training day for other colleagues at work tomorrow which meant a day off for you. No needing to cook dinner and get an early night tonight. Placing your glass and the menu on the coffee table in the living room, you switched on the tv, chucking any random show on then bumbling along to your room, opening the door. Greeted by quiet and serenity. No dirty pants on the floor or unmade bed. You smiled with contentment, unzipping your dress to pool at your feet before tossing it into your wash basket. You looked at yourself in the mirror, your most dependable black bra and panty set glaring back at you as you fixed your hair into a ponytail and wiped off your makeup. Throwing on a sweatshirt and some leggings. A short while later you plopped yourself down on the sofa and switched on the tv, greeting your cat with a scratch under her chin as she sauntered into the room, hopping up on the sofa with you.

Zoning out to the world around you as a terrible drama played on in the background as you glanced over the menu, not really paying attention to anything in particular. You had been a little stressed over the past couple of weeks, mounting pressures of a new senior in your department threatening to change everything you had sculpted into a balanced working environment over the last 3 years. Societal pressures and backhanded compliments from your mother's 'garden party' friends concerning whether or not you were defective in choosing a man. Or having one choose you. But in reality, the truth is, you had a stable relationship previously, unfortunately he was a dick and you're not stupid. So the single life had been your rather quiet reality for the last 18 months. No one to answer to or to worry about. Just you and your cat.

Your mothers friends never seemed to understand that, always too engrossed in whether or not you had a man on top of you every night to see that their husbands had found other, much younger women to be on top of. All of this filtering through the crack in your hardened shell, filling your mind with alternate realities until you got a text coming through. Cutting through all the fuzz that piqued in your brain. Picking up your phone, you saw who it was. Him.

'I'm in town, come over?' 

Your reply was short and sweet.

'Sure, be over in 20.'

Snapping out of your previous thoughts and placing the menu back on the coffee table you sat and pondered for a minute. This was fine. This was what you needed. To let off some steam, in a judgement free setting. No cold glances your way, or harsh words uttered, unless it was you being tied to the headboard again like you had been convinced to try last time with his unadulterated gaze looking down at you writhing underneath him. The thought alone had your hair standing on end and a shiver running through you as you stood from the sofa, heading to your room.

Sifting through your wardrobe to pull on some old trainers, checking yourself in the mirror not really knowing why. In your hallway you made sure the lights in the apartment were off and your cat was happy, tucked up in the corner of the sofa snoozing away. Making sure you had your keys and phone in your bag, you left, key in the lock, turn. Locked. Walking down the hallway and down to the ground floor, heading out of the building to head right. The hotel he always stayed at was only a block or so away so the walk was relatively short. The sun was setting now as it hid behind the skyscrapers that canopied the city. Passers by making their way home or even to work. Still lots of cars on the road and bicycles that weaved in and out of traffic. The breeze was light and cherry blossoms danced in the air, separating from a tree as you passed a nearby park. The air was cool, as it would be in early May. Not too hot. Reminded of your journey, that first night.

'When his hair falls in his face and his hands so cold they shake'

You had left swiftly after his original proposition, making up some story about your cat or an early work meeting or something. Anything to get you out of there and with him. His hand returned to the small of your back as you left the bar, being ushered into an awaiting taxi outside. Shuffling all the way over to the other side, he slid in next to you blurting out the address to the hotel at the driver. Hair falling in his face. Eyes wild as they sparkled from the reflection of the dim streetlights. Smirking at you as the same powerful hand you had grown accustomed to on your back, made a home on your knee, slightly tucked under the skirt of your dress. It was now cold to the touch. Strong and intimidating as the taxi started to drive away. Not being able to take his eyes off you he leant forward and whispered in your ear.

" You look so delicious. " His voice low that reverberated through you, straight to your core as he squeezed your knee. Uttering the last syllable with a kitten lock to the shell of your ear.

To this you bit your lip and shifted uncomfortably in your seat. His hand, in turn sliding further up under your dress to the wider expanse of your thigh. The material of your dress pressing his hand taught against your skin.

He swooped down to your ear again, pressing an open mouthed kiss under your ear before he whispered " can't wait to taste you. "

You keened away from his grasp to no avail. He knew what he was doing to you, breath shallow and flighty in your chest as his teeth tugged at your earlobe.

"Please " You breathed, the first word you uttered to him.

Not really sure what you were pleading him for but the fire in your chest and the dampness of your panties flourished an urgency within you that was incorrigible. He smirked again at this, eyes dancing like Fireflies in the night. The hand that was to his side while the other hid between your thighs came up to cup your cheek, turning your face towards him.

"Soon. " He chuckled before biting your lip.

Drawn back to reality, passing people and cars. Your trainers pulling you towards your destination as your head had an argument with your feet. Was this a good idea? You didn't want to get yourself into a situation where either of you caught feelings. You were a pro at being a cold hearted bitch now but the odd sincere glance your way, especially from him seemed to melt your resolve, even just a little. Recounting the previous times you had taken this walk and what it would lead to.

After your first night with him, it was like a drug. You always wanted more. To say he was good in the bedroom was a complete cop out. He was...He was something. Made you feel things you'd never felt before and noises you'd never in your wildest dreams imagine yourself making. At decibels only a dog could hear. So once the addiction started, you started seeing one another everytime he was in town. Sometimes a couple of times in a week. That went on for a solid 4 months and as work pressures mounted, you fell distant. Always busy catching up with work or having some alone time with your thoughts and your cat. He also got busy, having to travel more for work. You didn't really know much about except it was important and you felt based on the guitar he always packed with him, propped up against the wall in the corner of the room, it was something to do with music.

'I found a devil, I found him in a lover'

The last time you had seen eachother had been a little over 2 weeks ago. That night you'd stayed, which didn't come easily. You were adamant you would leave as soon as you'd cleaned up, even telling him so as he helped you wash in the bathroom, almost requesting a second round when he looked at you through the mirror with those sparkling brown eyes like the devil, but you had been so wound up and pushed to your limits that you felt sleep take you as soon as your body hit the mattress again. Memories of restraints, dark water colours that created the murky palette of his hotel room and the low thumping of your heart, even as you entered the apartment, seeing him there, a tie in hand and a coy smirk. That night he had called you. He never called.

" You busy? " He sounded gruff like he'd just finished working out - which you knew not to be the case.

"When am I ever busy? " You rebuttled with a laugh.

He joined you, then you could hear him grin down the phone. A different sort of grin. A devious one.

"I wanted to try something. "

There was quiet, you wished him to continue silently.

"Something I can't stop thinking about doing to you. " He whispered lowly.

Your ears on fire and furiously red in the face you hung up. Chucking a quick 'omw' text to him in return. That night had been the best sex you'd ever had. That's why you'd stayed. For fear of walking into oncoming traffic at 2am because of your disorientated state.

Your heart skipped a beat at the anticipation of what was to come once you knocked on the door and it sent a thrill through you. Rounding the corner you were met with a bleak grey concrete block of apartments that made up the hotel with a black sign. Crossing the street after looking both ways you jogged up the steps as you saw the door beginning to close after a couple just exited. Sliding in you headed straight for the elevator.

He always had the same hotel room which avoided any confusion. You ran to the elevator that had just opened and pressed the 7th floor. Alone again your mind wandered to your first night here, in this lift.

You'd both stumbled out of the taxi and shuffled over to the lift, he pressed the elevator button furiously as he got impatient; leaning against eachother. As soon as the lift doors were closed he pressed you against the wall, face millimetres from yours as his nose skimmed over yours. Both of your breathing, laboured and slow. His large hands roamed your body; your waist, up and down your thighs. Gripping at the flesh as if he owned it. You wanted him to. God you wanted him to own all of you in that moment. Gaze intense and unwavering as the mysterious glint in his eye grew. His hands slid around the curve of your ass which made you stutter, giving it a harsh squeeze that made you lose your breath.

"I'm gonna ruin you." He whispered devilishly in your ear as he bit the shell.

Pulled out of your reverie as the elevator doors dinged open, signalling you had reached your floor, face burning as you stepped out of the lift, cold fingers pressed to your cheeks to try and cool them. Preparing yourself for what man would greet you at the door. You never knew which one you would get. Sometimes he was ravenous and you never made it to the bed, lipstick smeared and tights ripped as he never had time to waste when he felt such a desperate need for you. Or you would get the cool calm and collected man that caught your eye that night all those months ago. That was, until he got you here. Alone with him.

Walking down the corridor to his room now, counting the doors as they seemed to go on for miles, dark in wood with numbers etched in gold with golden handles. Your breath starting to slip away from you as you imagined as soon as you opened that door you wouldn't be able to breathe steadily again for a while. Room 93. (Shoutout to Halsey's first EP) There it was. You slowed to a stop, almost nervous to knock. 'Just knock' You muttered to yourself. Rolling your eyes as you fidgeted on the spot, sighing as you raised your hand to knock on the door. Knock. Wait. Silence.

You were waiting for a little while which was unlike any other time. Checking your watch and the door number. You waited a little longer and you were just about to walk away when the door opened slowly. You turned; met with the same dancing brown eyes you caught in yours all those months ago, although slightly sunken, maybe he hadn't been sleeping well? His lean frame propped up against the door. Arms folded over his broader chest. Hair fluffed over his forehead, slightly damp. Pale skin flawless and glowing against the dark background of his hotel room and the darkness of his simple black tee and sweatpants. Silver hoops still adorned his ears and rings still glistened on his beautiful hands. Eyes unwavering as they honed in on you. Smirk playing on his thin lips.

"You're early." He mumbled all knowingly, looking at the rings that adorned his knuckles, as if he were about to connect them with a wall.

You stuttered, heart in your mouth as you gawked at the man. Feeling like a naughty school girl that was about to get a ruler spanked across her a-. You stopped the thought for fear of collapsing in the hallway. His eyes still on you, looking you up and down. You mentally slapped yourself for your attire. Sweatshirt and leggings. Not sexy in the slightest. Anyway. Why did you care? Not like you wanted to impress him, right? After another beat his strong arm pulled you in the room by the collar of your sweatshirt, closing the door swiftly behind you and pinning you up against it.

"Just means I have more time." He whispered against your lips.

Sweeping strands of hair out of your face delicately, tucking his fingers behind your ears. He smiled at you, his gummy smile. You never thought that smile would be directed at you. Let alone in this setting.

'With his lips like tangerines, and his colour-coded speak'

His lips moulded to yours with a sudden urgency. Teeth and tongue caressing your lips with power and want. Heavy breaths exchanged as you dropped your bag; hands trying to find purchase somewhere sturdy and stable. Deciding upon the strength of his arms. Eyes closing as you were swept away in the moment of teeth and tongue and pent up tension and wanton need for eachother. His fingers pulling out your hairband so your hair pooled around your face. His fingers lacing through the soft locks as he grinned against your lips. Always having an ornate infatuation with how silky your hair was. How good it felt wrapped around his fist as he fucked you into the mattress. How it spread out behind you like waves across the crisp white bedsheets, framing your face perfectly as you slept.

He missed this. Maybe he missed you. Jolted back from his sweet thoughts, hearing you start to mumble against his lips as he continued to pin you up against the door, your head firmly in his hands.

"Yoongi." You murmured again, slurring the word slightly; drunk off the potent lust he cradled you with.

He never let up from your lips, intent on breathing you in. Hands untangling themselves from your hair as his cool calm hands landed on your shoulders, moving you away from the door to pin you to a wall, nearer to the bed. An eventual destination set in his mind. He couldn't get enough of you. Your hands travelled to cup his cheeks. His lips dry against yours gaining moisture from the saliva rolling around in your mouths as your tongues fought. Small whimpers beginning to swim their way into the air. Music to his ears. Of all the music he'd ever had a hand in creating, he wished he could emulate your tiny whimpers. Your cries for more of him. All of him. Wanting to devour him whole.

"Fuck" He exclaimed, finally pulling away from you, heavy breathing as his forehead was against yours.

Not even giving you time to breath he reached for the hem of your sweatshirt, pulling it over your head to reveal your gorgeous body to his hungry eyes. Knowing now that hiding from his gaze would be futile. An attempt at covering up would leave your ass raw and marks all over every single inch of your body. God's above. He made you feel like the only girl in the world, to him you practically were. He never sought out for any other attention or company from other women. The taste of you as often as he could have you was more than enough to satiate his heart.

He made quick work of your bra before throwing his own shirt off onto the growing pile on the floor. His hands, rough against your soft, plush breasts as his thumbs circled around your pebbling nipples. His teeth latching onto your bottom lip, humming as he looked into your steadily closing eyes. Teeth venturing south along your jaw to your neck and collarbone as he began to grab at the skin of your waist after he finished moulding your breasts; as if trying to memorise the feeling of them in his hands. The weighted comfort he had grown to adore about your chest. Teeth sinking in, enticing low gasps and the tiniest of squeaks as he would bite too hard on already sensitive flesh, intent on getting every inch of your skin covered in small indentations from his teeth. Tongue lascivious against the contours of your neck and collarbones, sickly sweet taste of your skin that drove him wild.

'Now we're lost somewhere in outer space, in a hotel room where demons play'

All you could do was pant and mule against him, your hands in his steadily drying locks. Suddenly pulling away as he untied the drawstring of his pants.

"Knees, now." He whispered authoritively and you happily obeyed.

Flicking your hair off your shoulder you sank down onto your knees. Eyes ignited with a fire he practically stoked out of you. You admired his body on the journey down. Body lithe and pale, defined arms and chest with a flat stomach, no six pack or defined v lines that led to the promising tent that you saw in your line of sight. Just a small happy trail of hair from below his belly button sneaking into the hem of his sweatpants. Swiftly taking them down and off you were greeted with black boxers, looking tight around his cock cased within. You licked your lips in anticipation as his fingers forked through the hair on your scalp. Looking up to his face as he gazed down at you with a stern look in his own eyes; burning into your already flushed skin.

"Someone looks like they've missed this." He smirked as your hand rose to palm him through his boxers.

He released a low hum at the feeling of your hand cupping his balls. You knew that he was very sensitive there, from past experiences.

"Does the slut want my cock?" He asked, a feather of a chuckle rumbled in his chest at your immediate nod as you ran your tongue over the seem of your lips.

Your fingers delved underneath the fabric as you began to pull them down. Sudden slap to your hands had you shying away from him.

"Hungry sluts have to wait don't they, kitten?" His eyes zeroing in on your reaction to the pet name.

You gritted your teeth in vague annoyance at the name, after the first night, you told him you had to be home for your cat. Finding it oddly adorable you were a cat lady he called you kitten ironically, now it's stuck. Your eyes looking away from him, turning your head slightly towards the large window that showed the rest of the city. Twinkling lights now shining in the moonlight. His hand gripped your chin, pulling your attention back to him, forcing you to look up into his devious eyes.

"I don't think you answered me, slut." He snarled; releasing your chin from his grasp.

Your heart jumped in your chest.  "Y-yes, sir."

He smirked again, feeling triumphant he patted your head, thumb smoothing over your hair line with ghost like touches before running it along the seem of your mouth, popping his thumb in, flat against your tongue. Closing your lips around him, beginning to suck, big eyes gazing up at him.

"Good girl." He whispered before removing his thumb from your mouth and yanking his boxers down and stepping out of them.

His fingers danced through his damp hair as his cock sprung up against his stomach, a muted groan as the cool air touched his reddened and straining cock. Your eyes widened, never getting used to the sight of his cock, inches away from your salivating mouth, making your panties pool with a carnal need for him to be inside you. Your hands began to rub up and down your jeans clad thighs, waiting with baited breath for him to give you the command. This man and the things you'd do for him would have others question if you were a feminist or not. How a strong single woman with a steady career and bustling social life could want to be so utterly defiled by a man and be at his every whim really flipped your ideology on its head. But a drug was a drug, and you were high on him like cocaine.

"Alright, stop giving me those bedroom eyes." He gushed, dominating voice faltering as he gazed down at you, waiting and ready for him to let you begin.

You fluttered your eyelashes at him, big and bold. Biting your lip as your hands rubbed along your thighs again.

"Fuck, just get over here." He laughed, holding the base of his cock in his hand as your hands slunk up his sturdy pale thighs.

Fingertips sending sparks through his body. Your lips reaching his tip, you looked up at him again as you kitten licked his bulbous tip, testing it. Like testing a car. He hissed to which you smirked. You took your tongue to lick the underside of his cock lightly, teasing his frenulum before swirling your tongue round his tip several times. He puffed out a harsh breath but never said a word, fingers beginning to weave into your hair with a softness you were unfamiliar with. Surrounding the tip with your lips as you slowly sunk the head into your waiting mouth. Giving kitten links to the underside again as you sucked on his tip for a moment. Yoongis breath was heavy, you could tell by his chest moving, half lidded eyes looking down at you as you took more of him in slowly. Tongue still licking everywhere you could. Your other hand still positioned on his thigh as you rubbed small circles in it with your thumb.

Starting to take him deeper in your mouth and pulling him back out for breath had him seeing double. His vision was blurred as he could feel your heavenly lips wrap around his strained cock, precum and spit starting to pool at the corners of your mouth; threatening to spill as you bobbed your head back and forth on his dick. Setting up a rhythm you plunged him in deep so your nose touched his abdomen and he threw his head back with a grunt; gritting his teeth.

"Uh, fuck. Your mouth is so good" He whispered into the air.

'I've got a lover and I'm unforgiven, I'm such a fool to pay this price'

Your mouth worked on him as well as it could. You would take a lot of him in and proceed to gag which made him grunt. As your hand began to work at the base of his shaft. Giving him your all. Making up for lost time.

"Fuck, I'm not gonna last." He hissed. His hands in spearing through your hair as his thumbs rubbed at your scalp.

"I should've kept my hands to myself... Always impatient." He chuckled menacingly to himself; shaking his head.

Your breath was heaving as you pulled back from him. Hands gripping his thighs tight as you looked up at the man towering above you.

"What do you say, will you let me fuck your mouth like a good pet?"  He asked, hands still in your hair.

"Make me cum, then it's your turn? How about it, kitten?"

No hesitation in your eyes as you gazed up at him as if he had hand painted all of the stars in the sky. You nodded profusely and he grinned at you; swiping the spit away from the corner of your mouth with his thumb.

"Good girl, remember your safe signal?"  He asked, almost sweet in his tone.

You tapped the back of his thigh 3 times with your finger and he nodded. Feathering his fingers through your hair again, your hand still at the base of his dick lining him up to your waiting mouth. You gave him the go ahead as he thrusted shallowly into your mouth at first. Finally in your mouth his hands speared through your hair behind your ears to hold you still as he began to move his hips back and forth. You had done this before. Let him do this. But this time was so raw and so needy you honestly couldn't fathom how much you needed this. And it wasn't even your turn. He began to set up a rhythm working his length deeper with every thrust; starting to make you gag as you tried your best to relax. He breathed in sharply, his head thrown back as he pumped in and out. His shaft gliding smoothly across your tongue and beginning to slip down your throat as you sputtered around him. Hands firmly gripping the back of his thighs, the same way he was gripping your hair.

"Fuck, fuck. Your mouth. Kills me." He mumbled to himself; thinking you couldn't hear.

You looked up at him, a picture of bliss. Arms locked in place, keeping you still as he slid in and out of your mouth, picking up speed now. The veins in his neck; protruding under a velvet blanket of Frosted skin. Teeth gritted and brows furrowed. He looked down to see you already watching him. To this he groaned deep within his chest at the sight of you so willing and ready for him. Setting his nerves alight he could feel his orgasm approaching. Gripping your hair even tighter as he gave you a moment to breath before jackhammering into your mouth with a low whine.

"Fuck. Holy shit." He whispered before you felt his cock twitch deep in your throat and thick ropes of cum travel down it as he came; hips jerking at weird angles as you noticed sweat beading across his neck and collarbones; reaching up to his hairline.

After he had composed himself he pulled out of your mouth and you swallowed everything still left in your mouth before opening your mouth to show it was empty. He ran a solid hand through his own hair before he pulled you to your feet; planting a heavy kiss to your lips as he walked you back towards the bed. Practically pushing you back on it with a soft bounce. He suddenly rounded to the other side of the hotel room rummaging through a suitcase. Soon returning with several black ties in hand. Giving you a knowing smirk. You felt your stomach sink at the memory of your last adventure with this man. In this hotel room. With those ties. But judging by the look on his face and the fact his previously lifeless cock had begun to spring to life again; you knew it was different.

'I found a martyr, he told me that I'd never'

He began to move you up the bed to where he saw fit. Nodding when he had got you where he wanted. Straddling your waist he grabbed an arm tying the tie around your wrist to then loop it around the headboard. He soon did the same to the other one. Then finally you saw him gazing down at you from above before he slipped a soft silk tie over your eyes fastening it behind your head. Everything went black, but you could hear him; feel him. All around you. Feeling weight either side of your head you suddenly felt breath over your nipple; squirming at the sensation and your clothed pussy clenching around nothing. You felt him kitten lock his way along your breast before landing an unexpected bite against your neck, causing you to pull against the restraints with a sharp intake of breath.

"Remember your safe word, kitten?" He whispered in your ear.

You nodded. "Seesaw."

He sat back on his heels; still straddling you. Crossing his arms with a nod.

"Why is it Seesaw, again?" You ask, a grin sliding onto your face.

He chuckled at this before you felt weight lifted from the bed. You skin crawling with goosebumps as you waited with anticipation. Suddenly feeling deft fingers pulling your leggings and panties down in one swift movement. A beat of silence. Feeling like forever until you felt the same fingers, calloused but oh so soft against the skin of your collarbone.

"You don't remember?" He whispered into the darkness.

You shook your head no as your body began to squirm. Feeling his finger trail delicately down to your chest, followed by his other pointer finger on his left. Circling your nipples in precise motions. You sucked in a breath and your back arched as you felt him blow cool air onto the perking bud.

"Oh kitten, it was the bar where we first met" You could hear the smirk evident in his voice as his fingers trailed underneath the curve of your breasts.

"The night I took you home and ate you so good you nearly passed out." A dry chuckle left his lips at the gasp that left your own.

He began to drag his sturdy fingers slowly; tantalisingly, in soft motions towards your belly button where he would branch out with delicate touch; placing more fingers on your skin as they circled your hipbones. Finally sloping down to your thighs where his grip became firm and he pryed your legs apart to expose you to him. Heat flashing across your face as you whimpered at the action. Oh god. The things he made you feel. You felt electricity surge through your body, bouncing off your bones as you heard him hum.

"Mmmm. So wet, just from sucking my cock, kitten?"

You bit your lip with a whine; nodding profusely. Blush creeping across your cheeks. He seemed to like this as you heard a deep rumbled in his chest in approval. You could feel the bed dip slightly due to transferred weight. Right between your legs. Shit. If only you could see him. What was he doing? Was he pleased? Oh fuck, you didn't shave your le- your thoughts were far removed as you felt lips across the inside of your thigh; just above your knee.

"Shit, I can't wait to taste you." He whispered; sending cool air rushing up to your core.

Feeling his lips drag effortlessly along your thigh to where you wanted him most; needed him. He was tender; savouring the moment. He had missed this, giving you what you wanted. Watching you underneath him. Tasting you; devouring you. That's why he was so quick to cum the first time around. Too excited by the thought of having you again he had started to touch himself in the shower. Thinking of your soft, sweet body; Bending to his every whim. Your mouth stuffed full of his cock. Your enticing wet pussy that always made you blush at the sounds it would make, as he would fuck you. Hard and rough. He groaned at the thought before his face was level with your heat. Soft breaths that made your body wriggle; desperate to escape and want more; all at once. He hooked your knees over his elbows as he held your legs down. blowing against your exposed clit and watching your pussy clench around nothing; glistening with your essence he hungered for.

'With his educated eyes, and his head between my thighs'

"Mmmm. Sweet pussy baby girl." He kissed the apex of your thigh watching you writhe against the restraints. He hadn't even started yet. You were in for a long night.

You didn't seem to notice the name at first. It wasn't what he had called you any of the times before. But as the air thinned out around you; feeling the silence weighted around the room like a thick curtain and nothing was corrected, it almost felt affectionate; coming from his sinful lips that had just attached themselves to your-

"Fuck." Your breath caught as you threw your head back against the mattress.

Feeling lips suckling against your clit with vigor. He knew what you liked and knew how to get you where he wanted you. His tongue began lapping at your clit as his lips sucked where they could. Your breathing was heavy and you tried to pull against the restraints; your legs restless as the odd whimper left parted lips. His eyes although you couldn't see him, were focused on you. Watching every bite of your lip, every salacious moan or whimper; every gasp. You began rocking your hips in a rhythm against his tongue and he moaned at the pressure you posed against him. Trying to feel some friction as his throbbing cock had sprung to life from your first whimper; sandwiched between his abdomen and the mattress.

"God, this pussy is so good." He moaned; muffled by your legs trying so hard to clamp around his head as he continued his ministrations.

Soon enough you could feel the familiar rope spread throughout your body, begin to coil; tight as a spring before you felt a nip to your clit and you unravelled underneath him. Feeling weightless and weighted all at once. Stars beneath the blanket of the silk tie; delicate against your eyes. Head thrashing around as arms pulled with all their might against the restraints. Your back arched as you moaned loudly; legs starting to shake at the force of your orgasm. But that wasn't the end.  He flicked his tongue against your swollen clit with more intent. Determined to push you through another orgasm before he even started using his fingers. God his fingers. Your lower body began to lift off the bed as his grip on your legs only got tighter.

"Fuck, fuck Yoongi. Oh my fucking g-"

You heard an animalistic growl as you felt another nip to your clit; yelping at the sudden spark of pain amongst your pleasure.

"Sir. Stick to the rules." He punctuated with a slap to your clit. Back arching for a moment as you felt a pulse throughout your body.

"Or I'll keep biting." He mumbled the last part.

You pouted. "Yes sir." You could feel your orgasm beginning to ebb away as he took longer to return to your clit.

You whined and you felt breath on your clit again as he chuckled. Although your predicament was purely casual. Wanting to get off essentially was your main goal. Neither of you ever rushed. Enjoying one another's company. Feeling his slick, swift tongue dancing along your clit again you moaned; trying so hard to keep quiet out of respect for neighbours as you tried resting your mouth against your arm to muffle your high pitched moans. His tongue retracted until you felt the tip of his tongue tease the edge of your entrance before dipping his tonulgue in for a moment. Your hips bolted you forward at the intrusion before settling back down on the bed. His tongue running up and down from your entrance to your clit in long strokes. Quickly settling his tongue back against your throbbing clit. You yelped as he applied more pressure.

"Fuck, I love this cunt."

Slurping noises ensued as he dove in deeper. You orgasm building again and again, holding on for dear life. Holding onto your sanity. His tongue swirling around the pulsing bud as you continued your previous rhythm rocking against his face. Your knuckles were turning white at the sheer grip you had on the ties; feeling yourself drift away.

"Fuck, please, yoo-"

He pressed his face even further into your heat as you cried out in pleasure. Tongue flicking mercilessly over your engorged clit. Reaching the summit again to fall all the way down into the abyss. He never let up from you as his tongue lapped at your juices spilling from your entrance. Nerves alight and pulsing throughout your body. A thin layer of sweat was evident against your face, collarbones; the whole of your body. Sweat beaded from his own forehead and he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth as he watched you regain your breath. Stilted in the silence. Only your chest rising and falling as your lungs gasped for air.

He loosened his right arms hold around your leg and brought his fingers forward to your sensitive pussy. Humming to himself as he gathered the Juices on the tip of his fingers and spreading it all over your pussy as it glistened in the dim hotel light. Knowing how much you lost your collective shit over his hands he couldn't help but watch his hands tip toe up to your breast; squeezing the flesh roughly in his hand before slinking it over to massage your neck for a second. Only to grab it a moment later. Your breath caught quite literally as you could feel the bed move from where he was sitting up. He could feel the pressure against your soft skin and the way your breath constricted; only for a moment as he loosened his grip. His fingers still flush against the skin. His veined hand looked like it belonged around your neck. He thought to himself before sliding his thumb into your mouth again; which you accepted with enthusiasm.

'I found a saviour, I don't think he remembers'

"One more from you, kitten. Then I'll fuck you. Okay?" He hummed.

Your reply was noncommittal as you nodded vehemently; still sucking on his thumb. He looked down at you with a certain adoration. Laying there, naked for him. Tied up and blindfolded. If he'd have thought this would be the case after that first night, he would have laughed. But here you both were.

His fingers began to trace the outline of your entrance; whisper like touches that made you clench around nothing. He began experimentally pushing his long slender middle finger inside you a little; chuckling lowly as you let out a whine. Your pussy trying to suck him in further. Wanting to feel him. All of him.

"Sir. Please." You murmured, legs that were now free from his grasp allowing you to rotate your hips.

He wanted to tease. God. He wanted to tease you until the sun came up. But he was desperate and so were you. He removed his finger earning a cry from you. Until he slid in two fingers to your shock and set a brutal pace. Feeling those godly fingers of his curl into you. Moulding you perfectly to him. Tapping against that sweet spot inside. He used his other hand to press your hips to the bed; preventing movement as you felt a touch of sensitivity kicking in. But you put it to the back of your mind; focussing on the way his fingers were drilling into you at an inhuman pace now.

Your senses heightened due to his silk tie that blocked your view. Oh how you wished you could watch his fingers sliding in and out of you like you had done countless times before. Acquiring quite the affinity with the mans hands. Pale, veiny; strong in their ability to hold you but soft when he caressed your cheek, wiping the spit away from the corner of your mouth or the pad of his thumb sweeping away tears from overstimulation. God you loved them.

"Fuck. I'm so close." You cried out, to someone. Anyone who could hear you as he continued his ministrations.

"Yeah? The slut loves my fingers doesn't she?" Yoongi spat; his voice laced with venom.

"Loves my fingers fucking her, huh?"

All you could do was mewl as you could feel your body going into overdrive. Your head slamming against the pillow as you could feel yourself near the edge. Just needing one final push.

"But you love it best when my hand's around your throat. Isn't that right? Slut?"

You hadn't felt his hand move. Too lost in the pleasure he was giving you. Until you felt it grip your throat. Not hard. But just enough. Squeezing when he said slut. Sparks flew and your fingers and toes felt as if they were set to a light simmer. Your body going numb at the feeling and your pussy throbbing as you came. A high pitched moan of his name left your bitten lips as he continued thrusting his fingers in and out of you. Body moving in time with your spasming cunt as you began to feel the overstimulation kicking in, rearing its ugly head once more. The pain was excruciating as he continued but the pleasure washed over you again as your entrance continued to clench around his fingers. Silence as a moan caught in your throat. This had to be the biggest orgasm you had ever had. Nerves set alight with matches and turning into a forest fire that exploded like gasoline until it set to a simmer when Yoongi slowed his fingers down ever so slightly. Enamoured by your head thrown back and your mouth in the perfect shape of an O. He would've cum right there, just at the sight of you convulsing beneath him.

"Cause he's off to pay his crimes, and he's got no time for mine'

"Fuck, me." He breathed, shaky breaths too.

Quickly flipping you onto your front, your still tied arms now crossed over one another. Propping your legs up so you were on your knees. A sharp smack to your ass sent you reeling into another sobbing mess. Beginning to plead with him. For something; anything.

Soon enough you felt his hands returning to your hips and ass, caressing them carefully. Your ass flinching at the contact of his lips on your lower back, you could hear a slight slapping sound behind you, assuming he had started to touch himself again. You whimpered at the thought of not being able to watch his veiny hand slide up and down his equally veiny cock. Fuck.

His lips still against your skin as he whispered "I nearly came just like that, watching you cum all over my fingers baby."

There it was again. Baby. Nothing more nothing less. There was a pregnant pause before he sighed, beginning to speak again.

"You're so fucking hot" a groan sounded as the pace of his hand quickened against his length. The slapping sound intensified.

You whimpered, beginning to move your ass up and down, wiggling it at him to invite him in.

"Yoongi, just fuck me already." You whined.

A sharp slap sounded against your ass, reverberating through the room. You winced at the pain, taking in a quick breath before a hand returned to your ass kneading it in his palm.

"Slut is so impatient today. I'll fuck you, don't worry." His words were menacing.

'Now we're lost somewhere in outer space, in a hotel room where demons play'

His hand continued to knead at your reddening cheek before pulling it aside with his thumb, showing your dripping, waiting entrance for him. He almost lost it. Almost. Deciding that you had both waited long enough he lined his throbbing condom clad cock up with your entrance and pushed in with great speed. Hissing at the feeling of your tight wet walls surrounding him.

"Oh god." You managed a strangled whimper into the mattress.

Breath caught in your throat as you could feel his dick beginning to move swiftly inside you. His hips slapping against your ass that was sure to bruise tomorrow, your wrists were aching, your body going numb to every other feeling apart from the feeling of him ploughing into you. Your vision was starry eyed and you hated it. But you loved it. Sobs began to rack through your body as he spanked you once again, sending waves of pain and pleasure through you.

His pace continued as all you could do was lie there with your hands tied, begging for anything he was willing to give you. But also feeling the familiar sting of too much. But it was never too much. You willed your body to continue on. To not give up the ghost yet. You prayed for your body to fight on. To take every thrust he battered into your throbbing, weeping pussy.

The coil you had almost forgotten existed now in the plains of numb, vacant ability to even string a sentence together, began to tighten again, expecting a fraying spent body, not one this eager for your umpteenth orgasm this evening. Your pussy clenched as he continued, hollow groans you imagine him with his head back as he thrusted into you, licking his perfect lips with that sinful tongue. God, he made you crazy.

"Yoongiiiiii, fuck I'm gonna cum, I'm gonna cum, please" your tone indescribable as you panted for breath that escaped you with every thrust as his skin continued to slap against yours.

Suddenly feeling him pull out which almost made you weep but being turned back over onto your back, the tie being ripped from off your head. You were greeted by a furiously sweating Yoongi. Sweat dripping from his dark chocolatey hair just above his eyes. His lips swollen pink from where he had probably been biting on them so much, not to mention when he had used the same lips to devour you not 20 minutes prior. His chest was heaving and lips parted as he gazed at you for a moment.

"I'm seeing that gorgeous face when you cum, no way I'm missing that." He stifled a laugh as he lined himself up with your entrance again after wrapping your legs around his torso.

'They run around beneath our feet, we roll around beneath these sheets'

Sliding in once more you rattled your wrists against the silk tie restraints as you cocked your head back in pleasure. You let out a high pitch moan, almost exasperated in tone, your back arching up into him before slumping back on the bed in defeat. Yoongi almost reading your mind whilst still thrusting inside of you began to untie the ties that bound your wrists. You thanked heaven for your saving grace. You could run your hands through his hair now, feel his sweaty skin beneath your fingertips. And soon after your hands were free he laced them in his own. This also being new to you. You knew the drill when having sex with him. He laid down the ground rules early on. No kissing. No cuddling. No hand holding. So what he did next really sent you through a loop.

"Fuck I'm close." He sighed before leaning down to kiss you.

His lips were salty, battered and bruised much like your own but you didn't care, you kissed back with all your might as he continued to thrust away inside you. Feeling his cock hit that sweet spot again you mewled, breaking the kiss with your head thrown back.

"Here kitten?" He asked, smirk evident in his voice.

You whimpered with a nod as he continued to thrust in the right place, hitting your spot so deliciously you couldn't help cry out when his pace turned rampant and he held your hips in his bone crushing hands, sure to bruise tomorrow. The punishing pace was set as his hips bucked into you and you tried to grab at anything you could, finding no sturdy comfort in the crisp white hotel sheets beneath you. Your breathing was erratic, you hadn't realised you'd been sweating until now, although not as much as the man above you. You watched in distracted awe at the sweat running down his broad chest, along his stomach and down to where his cock was pummelling into you.

You could feel it again, serious this time. Your orgasm creeping up on you faster than any bullet. Your legs tingled and your toes curled. Your knees felt like they would break and your arms felt detached from the rest of your body. In the last moments you saw him gazing down at you, exasperated, fucked out beyond belief. But smiling. You reached up at the nape of his neck and pulled him down to you, pressing your lips against his as you succumbed to the pleasure that wreaked havoc throughout your body. A heart wrenching shout came from your lips. In every moment, a glitch of your body as it spasmed with unruly disregard and poor timing. Your pussy clenched repeatedly on his cock while he continued to thrust inside of you.

"Oh fuuuck, I'm coming." He groaned into your neck as he used hard, purposeful thrusts as he came in the condom.

'He's coming down, coming down'

The sweat that accumulated on both your bodies cemented you together for moments after. All pretence and notions suspended as you both caught your breath back. Heaving. Breathing one another in. Soon Yoongi peeled himself off of you and went to remove the condom. You lay there, staring up at the ceiling. Stars still there. You weren't imagining it in the end. Scraping your hair from off your face as you wiped the sweat from your brow. Soon he returned, bouncing onto the bed next to you, looking up at you in adoration almost. A nervous smile present on his lips as if he didn't just drag you to the 7th layer of hell with him. Or was it heaven? You could never be sure.

You looked over at him with heavy lids, inquisitive look on your face as he swept hair from your shoulder. Looking down at you with that same smile. Before -

"You fancy going on a date, some time?"

© sunnysidejoon - 2021 - do not repost on any site, or translate without express permission from author.

NOW Mr Min is usually not my main man but i can't help it, just, shit okay Min Yoongi.

I realise I'm probably going to hell for this but we joon

Hope you guys enjoyed, working on the next installment as we speak 🤪 if you want to be added to a taglist let me know 🥴

Love Always

Mac 🧡💜

[solarlotus]

We need to talk about Yoda

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. I first saw the OT in my teens and Yoda was always a fave, he’s cute, funny and wise. I spent loads of money (for the time) on a Yoda backpack, with his little head poking out like when he’s on Dagober with Luke.

But lately I’ve been having a reappraisal. I’ve contributed to discussions before about how I don’t hate the jedi, but am jedi critical, I believe they share the same flaws that most large, long standing institutions do (e.g. church, government) and have strayed from their core principles. They have allowed themselves to be a tool and miliatary arm of the senate, they are overly fixated on process and rules, more than listening to the living force.

Which brings me to Yoda, he is grand master through all this, we are continuously told he’s wise and powerful, but what evidence is there for his wisdom? He, along with others, humilates 9 year old Anakin in front of the council in TPM, that’s just not a nice way to treat a kid, that conversation should have been with Qui Gon. He is fixed on Anakin’s age and fear, with no empathy shown for him having been separated from his mother, or awareness the situation he is putting Anakin is will be exacerbating that fear.

Again, in ROTS, Anakin seeks Yoda’s counsel on his nightmares. I watched this again recently and was struck by how awful his advice is. It is obvious that Anakin is dreaming about someone he loves very much. Yoda doesn’t know who, but the whole let go of attachments is fairly useless practical advice, Anakin is not advised how he should do this, is not given alternatives, it kind of sums up the problem with the jedi at this period,  more concerned with their doctrine than the PTSD of a young man with a difficult childhood who has been fighting a war for years. Anakin is still in his early 20s at this point, so very young still.

When we meet Yoda in Empire Strikes Back he is introduced as a fun character (seeking Luke’s possessions no less), but has a very pessemistic view from the start about Luke, dismisses him without Obi Wan’s intervention would send him away. Luke is an innately good person, of course he has fear in him, no training, lost his adoptive parents and thrust into a war. Luke is again not given any useful advice, just riddles and platitudes.

Then we have Yoda’s alleged powers. Well, he’s pretty handy with a lightsaber for a tiny alien dude, but so are lots of jedi. He completely fails to spot Darth Sidious in their midst, fails to support Anakin, fails to stop the jedi losing their way so much. Given his age it’s fair to assume he’s been on the council longer than anyone so bears quite a bit of responsibility for the way the jedi currently are. 

I now find Yoda quite inflexible, like a priest attached to church doctrine far more than the spirit of Christ, condescending and as another jedi master points out in Rogue Planet, ‘what does a green tree stump know of a human child or a human child’s emotions?’ Not a lot. The speaking backwards thing is funny and was obviously done to amuse the audience, but it also means he’s never straight with anyone and that’s not very useful when people need advice and leadership.

In short, under his watch the jedi were corrupted and destroyed, lost their chosen one to the darkside and became a military arm of the senate. So I guess I lay a lot of their failures during the prequel era at Yoda’s door as he was in charge. I don’t think his personaility traits are a spieces thing either as Grogu has attachments and is emotional. (I adore little baby Yoda, he is everything with his space dad).

I realise most people adore Yoda, so please don’t flame me, just needed to get this off my chest!