#race is a construct

[kosher-salt]

I'm sorry but if Sami people can be understood as other-than-white and lighter featured First Nations people can be understood as other-than-white and individuals of our sisters the Romani when similarly afflicted by melanin deficiency can be understood as other-than-white....

Your classification of Jews, who span the whole gamut of color but share the racialization and experience of being othered among any majority, including whiteness in the north/west, is only further evidence of your racism. Because in doing so you continue to perpetuate double standards for Jewish people, which is dangerous when merged with perspectives that view whiteness as a merit signifier. Not that our identity isn't a fair bit older than this pretty reductive view, but

Regardless, I'll remind that the minority indigenous groups I mentioned are in the context of a white majority, but white people do not have a monopoly on colonialism. Plenty of people don't want to be called Arab in MENA and plenty of people aren't sure that they'd classify themselves as Chinese or Russian in the sense that the West views national identity. But that kind of nuance probably isn't something I should bother with if we haven't made it past point 1.

[fumifooms]

do you happen to have that page that talks about the beauty standards of each race?

Yeah sure. While scavenging pics for this I found this neat reddit compilation & chart & theory talk too. I had um, way more to say than I anticipated (I know you only wanted the one page. I have nothing to say for myself. Like most topics in Dunmeshi things snowball because they’re so interconnected. Mercy…) so, many races and observations are only mentioned near the bottom.

Beauty standards and race in Dungeon Meshi

Not pictured there’s also how elven society is harsh on visibly disabled people, and how the demon took away Mithrun’s silver eyes and ears to take away his pride. There’s also how Senshi might have fit in with the orcs more easily because of the dwarven wide body shape, and how they tend to have more body hair too I suppose. In the extra on orcs we see Senshi living with the orcs and he gets judged because of the hierarchy rather than his looks.

What is fashionable also differs from culture to culture, and there’s how tattoos only seem common with elves, though dwarves and others do also sometimes have some. They seem to not raise much brows, which makes sense since for many essentially they’re for professional (magical) purposes especially with elves. Gender roles also differ in type and importance, but generally they are similar to irl ones for the races we see. Elven society seems to be the least gendered, which would be an unsurprising logical outcome of having lesser sexual dimorphism aka they look more androgynous. Comparing fashions and gender roles and how they affect beauty standards would be a whole other compilation and conversation. Kui has great worldbuilding partially because she’s got such a good grasp on sociopolitics and geopolitics. History affects cultures and beauty standards greatly. Kui’s oneshot Distant Utopia was very eye opening on her way to worldbuild and the consideration she gives these things, I do really recommend reading it.

Out of the big 5, we know the least about gnomes, but their sheet does say both culture and region are similar to dwarves’ and they end up being confused together often, so we can imagine the beauty standards are similar to dwarves’ as well.

I wanted to touch on this in a post eventually, but how one daydream hour page said half-foots tended to be curvaceous like in the artwork below puzzled me for a long time, all the half-foot characters we see during canon are rather slender and lanky after all, Chil’s succubi also being more curvy than plump. Economics are for sure a factor in that I imagine, the half-foots characters we see are all implied to be some flavor of poor or malnourished, as are half-foots depicted as empoverished oppressed minorities in general. Even comparing the artwork with the half-foot sheet’s depicted average half-foot, the ones on the left seem bigger. Wouldn’t it make sense though, if unlike dwarves half-foots don’t have similar naturally wide bodies, yet due to idolizing dwarves they work towards having a similar body shape/type to emulate them?

It’s said half-foots tend to stick to pretty ethnically homogeneous regions (aka half-foots-only communities) unless they move to the big city with ambition to try and make it big (like Chilchuck and his wife & kids did), and that’s interesting imo because then that would mean that in a ton of half-foot communities, they rarely see or interact with dwarves whom they try to emulate. Of course, one thing about beauty standards is that when they get adopted, at one point it stops being "this is how dwarves look and so this is how half-foots should look" and just becomes "this is how half-foots should look", most people feel as though beauty standards aren’t learned but innate, so I figure the half-foots wouldn’t have any problem still seeking dwarvish traits when there are no dwarves around.

There’s also stuff you can glean here and there if you want to extrapolate more. Like how in the race swap artworks, Mickbell is only smiling in the dwarf portrait, and Rin’s elven portrait looks very close to her elven one- Rin who is stated to be beautiful in her profile blurb. Benichidori’s extra does teach us tallmen can definitely have harsh beauty standards, but also since the text portrays her as very dysmorphic that’s likely reflected in her thoughts to a much more intense degree than is common, not an accurate strict baseline to go off. Ah, Kabru’s blue eyes are also why he and his mother lived a rough life in Kabru’s hometown, but that seems to be regional. Good post here on the topic of Kabru’s blue eyes and ties to irl history. There’s a lot to be said about Kabru being a man that in many ways is close to elven beauty standards, and how that might have affected or been affected by his upbringing with elves + his persona as someone that can effortlessly charm most people. Marcille’s section here in this essay also goes into Marcille’s struggles to fit in with the ideal image of an elf.

Looking human

Also notable are beastkins and demihumans: Demihumans are all dehumanized which makes people treat them worse. So if you differ from the visual idea of "human" (an in-world subjective categorization just as much as demihuman is) most people do judge you negatively. Elves and dwarves get to fight about which type of human is considered the prettiest, but demihumans are below tallmen and half-foots, they are considered as simply below the beauty contest, incompatible with it.

Onis are perhaps the demihuman people we know of with the least cultural influence on the dunmeshi world, and with the least intensely different appearance than other demihumans—they seem to be technically categorized as human to people not from the eastern archipelago?— but even them are treated as lesser than human, treated as beasts to slain for reputation points or useful strength to have around and command. It’s said their "magnificient horns" and fangs are often shaven off when the oni lives in tallman towns, so you could easily make the argument that onis are denied the right to have their own beauty standards, having to conform to other people’s and going through mutilation to take away features they might otherwise have taken pride in. Inutade was bought by the Nakamotos from a dangerous sumo fighting ring that got one of Inutade’s tooth broken on her first and only fight, and kept as a low ranking servant ever since. Remember when I said different fashions existed in dunmeshi and how those could also affect beauty standards? Like the elves, if you look at the portraits pages which include a lot of characters that aren’t in the story you can see distinct cultures within the same races, for example one young elf is bald which is in sharp contrast with the usual elven long luscious hairstyles, and that’s especially true for onis I think. Maybe not only from different regions but different eras as well… They have a bit of population in the very north of the western continent, so I like to think some of the ogres live in very cold, maybe even subarctic or arctic conditions. The point I’m getting at here is that within a race, culture/ethnicity like with Kabru will also influence them it isn’t just tallmen as a whole, different communities will have differing beauty standards. The oni history blurb and third row first collumn portrait remind me of Mongolia (which historically was a lot of different nomadic communities with different cultural identities as well. Something something, the oni empire experienced a decline and then tallmen overpowered them, and now they’re governed and split apart by stronger social classes & slavers and the richness of culture was hurt for it especially if they have no real community left of their own), but obviously many of them are dressed and look rather japanese, makes sense considering living in/close to Wa, and first row second collumn portrait reminds me of ainus which again would be logical considering geographical placement, though I’m far from an expert. Interestingly, ainus are indigenous people both in Japan and Russia- Perhaps the northern western continent ogres are meant to be closer to Russia than Canada like I imagined? Ok tangent over.

The kobold sheet says they’re especially sought after as slaves because they’re "adorable", but locally in the western continent they’re repeatedly said to be seen more as ferocious and dangerous. The dehumanization is most apparent in the first comic below. The language barrier and conflicts no doubt worsen this by a lot, but I think it’d be hard to deny that their canine appearance makes the dehumanization worse. "They’re ferocious beasts, they’re demihumans, they can’t be communicated with". Most characters in Dungeon Meshi’s world are desensitized to slavery and most characters are prejudiced one way or another. Point being, kobolds are fully removed from human beauty standards, but no doubt for kobolds, other kobolds are more beautiful than humans are. They’re assumed to be an uncivilized bunch, but just like any other people they like to adorn themselves with nice clothes and jewelry and keep themselves clean and groomed; they too take care of their appearance and take pride in it.

And the orcs! This one we have the most contact with in canon, with not only there being foreigner characters from the ethnicity or hearsay of their homelands and culture but full on contact with a community. We get to see up close what they’re like and what they think, and of course in turn they’re our introduction to how demihumans are harshly looked down upon and seen as inferior, less human and thus less worth valuing and less dignified. It’s text that orcs are ugly to most humans and humans are ugly to most orcs. Since I judged they didn’t need accompanying explanation the pictures showing this are in the pictures dump at the top.

God forbid you sell vegetables to orcs my god- but then again they do basically mandate adventurers to kill any orcs they come across so yeah the world isn’t above that even a little bit.

So yes, my main point here is simply that orcs are yet another evidence of the physical ideal of "human" being an important beauty standard for human societies globally.

Izutsumi is our glimpse at how beastkins are treated in the world, and in Wa at least that’s ending up being caged and mistreated as part of a freak show. Izutsumi hates her appearance and wishes she could leave the feline part of herself behind to only be human. Interestingly, not that we have a lot of info on them so this is very much a take with a grain of salt situation, but there seems to be less stigma around artificial beastmen, those who can shapeshift at will. The main difference is of course appearance, that most of the time they simply look like average tattooed humans. Artificially creating humans is an illegal practice, and no doubt it’s not well regarded, but being able to hide that makes them less likely to be discriminated at any moment, or even just discriminated less intensely. Again, looking human is important, not only for belonging but for safety’s sake. Beauty standards rule the world with harsh hands.

Mermaids and fishmen

Ok we’re done now right? Right-! But wait… Wait…! Mermaids and fishmen are said to be demihumans too, special separate cases to the main three demihuman species however, which is also represented by how mermaids and fishmen both are in the Adventurer’s Bible chapter Monsters meanwhile ogres, kobolds and orcs are in the chapter World. They’re an interesting topic because they directly tackle this topic, not only in a meta way for the readers but also making characters themselves struggle to quantify their humanity with the goal of knowing wether they should be eaten or not, especially Chilchuck. Chilchuck’s "is it really just a matter of feelings?" mini arc.

The party asking themselves "Should we eat this?" is very common, and often they end up playing a little loose on morality, like eating the red dragon’s meat despite it having digested Falin. Not unsimilarly Marcille freaks out a little over the vegetables they harvested having been grown with fertilizer, aka largely human poo. Half of the motivation of "should we eat this perhaps sentient creature" is out of consideration and compassion, but more strongly and more often, the characters struggle with a sense of taboo at eating something too closely related to humans. Even, feel uncomfortable because of the deepseated impression that eating it would dirty them in some way. Cannibalism is an interesting and relevant topic in many ways, but what I want to mention is how there’s the more or less universal belief that committing cannibalism inherently taints you as a person and turns you more monstrous, morally but also literally depending on some myths such as w*ndigos and onis in some cases, like in Touge Oni. Marcille and Izutsumi both express a fear of eating monsters turning them monstrous. Maybe this is part of what Laios was hoping for, honestly. There are two fears here, if eating a demihuman monster constitutes as cannibalism or not, and so, will eating it taint you because it’s a human, or will eating it taint you because it’s a monster? You are what you eat, until it’s a little too literal. You morally are the means by which you get your food, and you physically are the result of your nutrition. Dungeon meshi manages to mix an exploration of humanity with the theme of food because our relationship to food is very deep and complex, psychological as much as physiological.

In the end, the characters sort of shrug and accept that they’ll never quite understand the world of mermaids and fishmen and how they operate, and what that means about them. Laios is the one always challenging these notions other characters take for granted, it’s not obvious to Laios why people are softer on mammals than other animals and plants, it’s not obvious to Laios why people would be afraid of eating a monster just because it’s a monster, it’s not obvious to Laios why some food is gross to Marcille but not fish testicles, it’s not obvious to Laios why you should immediately regard orcs and kobolds badly.

"Cows are probably closer to humans [aka closer to being human] than fishmen, though they’re clearly intelligent", dehumanization to lessen empathy towards them to be able to eat them. Meanwhile, mermaids seemingly have a less noticeable "civilization" or intelligence, they hunt in groups like fishmen, but they don’t use tools and such, they feel more primal and similarly instinct driven, and yet… Do they attract sympathy more? Mammals, humans, is it because of their nature or because of their appearance?

Both the nature and appearance of fish are ones people don’t typically sympathize with. "Fish don’t feel pain", "goldfish only have 5 seconds of memory", "it’s okay to keep fish in completely empty bowls too small for them until they die from it", so many lies and misconceptions exist that make people less considerate of them. The average lifespan of a goldfish is 10-15 years, the record is 43, but they’re not seen as lives that really matter, so a lot of goldfish die in a few weeks of bad aquarium conditions. There’s a lot of research on animals evolving to look cute and appealing to make some predators want to kill them less and parents want to care for them more, including humans. First good google research result gave me this credible short article on the topic. In Chilchuck’s weighing wether a fishman is far enough from being human or not to eat, "face is 100% fish" is his biggest argument for it being more acceptable. The face, the most important thing for empathy and recognition. The face, the decapitated fishman one that falls into his hands next chapter.

To quote @room-surprise: "Chilchuck can't explain why it's wrong to eat the merpeople, even though it's NOT complicated. But the problem is Chilchuck would have to accept and acknowledge that the merpeople might be people? And that's outside of the worldview he passively believes, so he can't just say that, because he doesn't think that's true. But that IS why he "feels" it's wrong. And it's all you'd need to say for Laios to understand! But it would require acknowledging that maybe the way they're treating and talking about the merpeople is wrong."

The idea of Chil not being able to grapple with how maybe some monsters are more humans than they seem, him who had been an advocate of half-foots rights, half-foots who get undermined and treated as inconsequential sacrifices… Grappling with how he could relate to the merpeople’s situation almost, and pulling away because it’s so existentially horrifying. I do not want to see myself into an hostile fish-faced warrior I can’t communicate with. In a way this also relates to Chilchuck being the only party member who doesn’t see Izutsumi as a cat in the relationship chart, the only one to treat her with full human dignity. He knows the struggle to be taken seriously, he knows being infantilized and he knows what it’s like to be treated as less than human.

Below, you will see Chilchuck draws the line of where they become not okay to eat as when "they already look like mermaids". Above, there’s speculation that the algae hair is partly to mimic "the mermaids’ beautiful female form". Is it because mermaids are their enemies and the ambiguity might give them extra seconds to attack or flee? Is it to trick adventurers instead? It’s striking to me that this is what works, with the adventurers. Sure the fishmen are intelligent, but explicitly here, what makes them no longer acceptable prey to Chilchuck is that they look close enough to a mermaid, close enough to human. Mermaids who of course themselves have this form to entice and seduce and charm the adventurers they prey on. Chilchuck considers the intelligence due to the tridents, but most of his internal debate centers around their appearance, and the image of a fishman skewered sickens him. The power of mimicry… Mimic being a beautiful human woman. Mimic being cute, babies being wired to make us feel protective and softened. Half-foots, sometimes pretending to be children for scams or help or avoiding trouble.

The mermaids are only concerned by their differences and not their similarities, and have no trouble treating the fishmen as food rather than peers. To an outside perspective like us, the audience, all these categorization of "more human" and "less human" between onis and orcs and elves and tallmen etc seem stupid and unfounded, but to the people living in Dungeon Meshi’s world, elves may as well be mermaids while onis are fishmen, not alike at all, unworthy of empathy and thus fine to eat.

Ultimately, Dungeon Meshi promotes unity. It’s about seeking to understand the unknown and the misunderstood, the dehumanized and the inhuman. It shows the good that comes from seeking to understand what you do not, even when that’s one another.

[serpentface]

Retconned Wardi firearms- a basic handgun, a highly decorative ceremonial handgun (belonging to Faiza), and a lance-gun.

Gun tech has officially been nerfed down to hand cannons (press F) (this has been a long time coming but I'd been fallacy of sunk costs-ing myself out of retconning).

Handguns are held similarly to a shotgun, with the butt pressed into the user's shoulder, one hand gripping under the barrel, and the other free to ignite the gunpowder. These represent the most advanced firearms in contemporary usage, both in make and in their use of uniform iron projectiles built to match the gun's bore for greater range and efficiency. Lance-guns are the more basal form, usually larger and mounted with the pole held over the shoulder, and are most effectively used by two people (one to hold and aim, one to light the gunpowder).

The spread of firearms is currently mostly limited to the Eastern Inner Seaway peoples (with some additional distribution via overland trade), and actual manufacture of hand cannons and gunpowder at Significant scale is limited to the region's core powers.

The reason for this limited spread is partially due to specific elements of the technology's history. Gunpowder was first synthesized by Burri alchemists and considered to be the discovery of the legendary divine weapon + solar fire of the deity Inanariya, and its formula (along with techniques for ideally refining its components) remained a closely guarded state secret. It was used predominantly in priestly contexts to generate flame and explosive sounds (in conjunction with earlier practices of generating multicolored flames with use of other chemicals), then integrated into combustible weaponry in the forms of fire lances, which would eventually develop into early handcannons.

The treatment of gunpowder as a guarded sacred or semi-sacred substance continued with Wardi adoption, where knowledge of its making is considered a closed rite. It's name (inya tsatsul or just tsatsul, a derived adoption of the Burri iñazatsūya) still reflects a divine solar association (the Burri word means 'sun's thunder', the Wardi 'inya' invokes the sun, 'tsatsul' is an adapted loanword and has no meaning independent of the substance itself), though its priestly use is now predominantly associated with the firearm'ed Odonii (rather than priests of the solar Face Inyamache). The composition of gunpowder can no longer be regarded as a Secret by any means, though efforts to obscure the methods of its creation are still moderately successful and has kept knowledge of gunpowder manufacture more limited than the total sphere of firearm usage itself.

The actual strongest limiting factor of firearm usage is the rarity of natural saltpeter deposits necessary for making gunpowder. The practice of actively producing saltpeter via nitraries has not been developed anywhere in the setting, and all is instead obtained via natural sources. These sources are rare and limited within the current spread of firearm technology, and result in gunpowder being a limited and expensive substance to produce. The weapons themselves are also very expensive to manufacture (a good quality steel SWORD is far too material-cost prohibitive for most people to own), particularly high quality firearms designed for use with standardized ammunition.

These guns are also very basal, and logistical difficulties in their use (weight, very slow loading and firing speed, high visibility, Relatively low reach and accuracy) along with the restrictive cost of production has kept firearms far from rendering conventional weaponry, armor, and projectiles obsolete (even within the societies that have access to them). They are still, however, very devastating in use within their contemporary context, particularly in that high quality guns have a longer range than the best arrow-based projectiles, and utterly negate most contemporary forms of armor at close range.

[menlove]

man the other thing that drives me crazy abt the whole "claiming judaism is an ethnicity and religion is race science just like the NAZIS" is that like....

what the nazis believed in was a mythical race of white europeans who were stronger and better than everyone else. they had 0 scientific, historic, or archeological proof of this. it was just a crackpot theory proposed to explain why white europeans were "better" than everyone else and provided an ideal for them to strive back to bc they thought that "pure" race had been tainted by racial "interbreeding"

jews saying judaism is an ethnicity is not bc it's in the fucking tanakh that they came from judea. it's bc there's MOUNTAINS of historical and archeological proof that jews came from that area. there's historical proof of people encountering jews in the middle east. there's firsthand accounts from jews themselves that survived diaspora that lived in that area. jewish DNA, regardless of other race, has a great deal of similarity w arabic DNA. there's MOUNTAINS of historical and archeological evidence that traces the movement of jews OUT of the area and into the rest of the world and the subsequent movement of jews for the next few thousand years as they kept getting kicked out or murdered

does any of that mean that israel should have displaced the people already living there and subjected them to decades of inequality and atrocity? fucking obviously not. but 1) denying historical and archeological fact to throw around your pet antisemitic conspiracy theory makes you sound like a qanon fuckass and 2) comparing that to white supremacists making up a mythical pure white race is just fucking insane and incredibly deeply antisemitic

like you don't have to make shit up to condemn what israel is doing, I promise you. you can acknowledge the nuance and hardship of history without condoning what israel does. israel doesn't need to be made up of pure europeans for you to criticize it. bc believe it or not, europeans are not the only people on earth capable of committing atrocities or having enough autonomy to do so.

[fredwkong]

Angus, Beef

Dr. Angus Jacobson was a prodigy. At just 35, he was on the tenure track at a major university, researching intersectionality and climate justice. Some people thought it was strange that a straight white man from a middle class family had gone into the field, but Angus just laughed and said he had felt a calling.

Not only was he a great intellect, Angus was also always impeccably dressed in semi-formal or formal clothes. He loved wearing suits, or a polo shirt if it was hot, and keeping his hair short and professional. He thought that being presentable was a huge part of getting ahead in life.

As one of the foremost experts on climate justice in the country, Angus consulted with several large corporations on their eco-friendly projects. Often, that meant touring sites and giving recommendations on how to improve the design or the worksite conditions to better help people. He was always unfailingly polite to any workmen that he met while on his tours, but he found them hard to relate to. They just didn’t seem to have very complex life experiences compared to him. And even if they were working out in the heat all day, he couldn’t help but feel like they enjoyed being all sweaty and never using deodorant. The thought made his skin crawl.

One day, Angus was touring a site where a development company was building carbon neutral high rises. He had just finished speaking to the foreman and was walking away, taking notes on his tablet. The drainage system was going to need a big upgrade if the facility was supposed to stand up to the storms that occasionally came through.

Suddenly the foreman called after him. “Hey, Mr. Jacobson, you forgot this!” he yelled. He was a big, burly Black guy, and his voice carried across the whole site. Angus turned, surprised and a little scared. The foreman held out a small, folded piece of white cloth. Angus was sure he hadn’t dropped anything or handed anything off, but he took it anyway. He didn't want to say no to someone like this. It was strangely damp to the touch.

The foreman grinned at him. “See you ‘round, Mr. Jacobson,” he said, and walked away without another word.

Once he got into his car, a little European EV, Angus unfolded what turned out to be a white undershirt, wrinkling his nose at the thick scent of stale sweat and body odour it gave off. It certainly wasn’t his. Maybe it was some kind of prank? He could just throw it out when he got home. Angus tossed it on the passenger seat and started driving.

The smell was impossible to ignore. Even once he was back home, the shirt safely in the trash, Angus felt like it was following him from room to room, infecting everything he touched with the smell of unwashed man. Even after showering, applying fresh deodorant, and changing into his silk pyjamas, he swore the smell was still on him. He stalked restlessly from room to room, sniffing his pristine loveseat, his freshly ironed slate grey sheets, and his immaculate suit closet to try and find the source. Finally, he gave up, resolving that it was psychosomatic. He would just call the company tomorrow and complain about their foreman playing a prank.

The next morning, Angus was walked out of his bedroom confidently in his usual suit. He had completely forgotten the incident from last night. That is, until he walked into the living room to see a beat-up leather sofa in the place of his rarely-used loveseat, the white undershirt draped over the back of it. “What the fuck?” he breathed.

Angus never used his living room. If he wasn’t in his office, he was in his bedroom. He’d only used it for the few times a date had gone well, and a guy wanted to come watch a movie… Something about that line of reasoning felt wrong. He thought it through again.

Angus spent plenty of time in his living room. He had spent good money on a quality sofa to relax on. Guys loved it, too. They loved the feeling of leather against their backs while Angus pressed down on top of them.

Angus frowned. He was versatile, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to fuck on the first date… was he?

Anyway, he looked proudly at his sofa. What the hell was that grimy undershirt doing on it? He must have dropped it there on his way to put it in the garbage yesterday. He snatched it off—how was it still soaking wet with sweat?—and mentally promised that he would clean the couch after work. The shirt went back into the garbage and Angus headed off to the university.

When he got home that evening, he swore that his house still smelled like sweat. He found the shirt in his office, where he must have left it this morning. It was right where his antique phonograph had been… Where his weight rack was, draped over the back. Angus threw the shirt into the garbage, disgusted, then did his lifting while watching a lecture on climate stewardship. He was so glad he’d thought to put a rack of free weights in his office, it let him multitask so much better. He could tell it was having an effect, too, since his arms were looking bigger these days.

Once he was done his work, Angus found himself feeling horny and bored. It was unusual, since he usually ended his workouts grossed out by his own sweat, needing to shower and lie down… Of course, it was normal, exercising always energised him, and it was too early to shower. He headed out to a bar, and a few hours later Angus found himself lying on his couch, grinding against some hunk whose name he’d forgotten. After they came, Angus gave the guy a goodnight kiss and sent him home. He barely wiped the cum off his skinny chest before he fell asleep, forgetting to shower.

Things continued this way for a few days. Angus kept on finding the shirt, still wet, sitting on a his furniture. He kept on getting hookups, at least one a day. After a few days, he couldn’t smell the sweaty shirt anymore. Between his lifting bench, sofa, unwashed sheets, and dirty laundry bin, there was too much of his own smell in the house anyway. One morning, he found the shirt in his medicine cabinet, and he couldn’t find his deodorant… He had a big tub of curl cream, one of his hookups must have fixed their hair and forgotten it.

Angus found himself hooking up with Black guys more often. He’d never had a strong preference for any one race… He’d always loved big, thick Black men. He knew it was just a fantasy, but something about big, dumb Black guys appealled to him. He downloaded Grindr, found himself drooling over pics of thick men in construction gear.

Somehow, the undershirt was in his car one morning. In the place of his nice, planet-saving EV, there was a manual truck Angus had no idea how to drive... Angus loved his truck. He loved to feel like a real man on the road, even if the gas-guzzler did conflict with his morals. It was fine, though, he would just make sure his next car was an electric truck

One evening, Angus found the shirt on the floor of his closet. His precious suits were gone! Instead there was… The shirt had been hard to find, since most of Angus’s clothes were similar casual wear, half of it dirty on the floor of the closet. Even his work suits weren’t washed nearly often enough, giving off a bit of a stench. Every once in a while, Angus would see someone’s nostrils flare when they walked past him, catching his manly musk on the air. It gave him such a feeling of power and masculinity.

Lounging on his leather sofa in a pair of threadbare boxers, Angus was scrolling Grindr when he got a message. “Hey man, you ready yet?” It wasn’t from anyone he knew, except… It was from the foreman of the work site. His profile was full of pictures of him in hiviz gear, sweating in the hot sun. What could he mean? Maybe he wanted to do some roleplay. He was so hot, exactly what Angus loved imagining.

“Always ready for you, baby ;)” Angus messaged back. A few minutes later, he was texting the foreman his address, excited to see him again.

Just before he let the guy in, Angus realised he needed to put on a shirt. He had nothing clean. There was an undershirt sitting where his bedside table should be… Over his bong. He should wipe that down, see if the foreman wanted to smoke up after sex. He threw on the shirt and went to answer the door.

The foreman looked approvingly around Angus’s apartment. “Looking good,” he said, half to himself. He fisted a hand in Angus’s shirt, almost like he owned it, kissed Angus hard, filling Angus’s mouth with his huge tongue. “Seems to me that you’re way too white and educated for this house. Mr. Jacobson. You live like one of my labourers.”

Angus looked around. The foreman was right. For some reason, despite being a university professor, his house looked nothing like it. He didn’t have an office, just a home gym. He had no suits, no bookshelves, just casual gear and porn DVDs. Maybe it was all in at the university? That didn’t make any sense.

Before Angus could get too confused, the foreman grabbed him. He whispered in his ear, “Seems to me like you want to roleplay. You want to tell me you’re a big, dumb, sweaty construction worker, right, Mr. Jacobson? You want to fuck me with your big Black cock while still wearing your shirt?”

Angus did.

“You like that?” he growled a few minutes later, getting between the foreman’s legs. “I’m gonna open you up with my tongue. I didn’t get any fancy schooling to use fancy words, I just eat guys like you out like you've never been ate out before.”

He drove his tongue into the foreman's ass, enjoying the taste of his unwashed ass. As he did, Angus’s tongue lengthened, his lips darkening as his nose became wider. By the time he had the foreman moaning, his hole starting to gape, Angus’s face was black-skinned, his features strong and masculine.

“Yeah,” he grunted. His voice was deeper, slower. “I work hard in the heat all day, and I fuck hard all night. I sweat and leak so much I basically don’t need lube.”

Angus’s cock seemed to get even harder as he bottomed out in the foreman. He felt a burst of sensation as his foreskin grew back, a continuous stream of precum starting to leak from the tip. The skin around the base darkened, his hair growing in thick and black.

Angus started to rock back and forth as the foreman moaned underneath him. Having this burly Black man at his mercy made Angus feel even more confident. He continued roleplaying. “I’m such a thick Black construction worker, your cock gets caught between our sweaty bellies when I suck your neck. You’re gonna get off with your cock trapped between us.”

He leaned down and started to bite and lick at the foreman’s neck and collarbone as his chest and belly expanded. Angus’s skin darkened as hair grew thick over it, sweat beading as he fucked harder. Just like he’d said, the foreman’s cock was caught between their muscle guts, the foreman’s precum mixing with salty sweat to create the perfect friction.

Angus could feel the orgasm coming. He barely understood the words coming out of his mouth as he said, “Gonna pick you up and fuck you against the wall. I’m a big Black muscle bull, got no brains, just a big muscle ass and thick legs, so sweaty, dumb, smelly…” He trailed off, rocking back as he picked up the burly foreman like he was nothing, slammed him against the wall, and kept fucking.

He felt the foreman’s hands on his juicy muscle ass, tense and round as he rutted against the wall. Yeah, Angus’s body was the product of hard labour, a temple of Black manliness. He was glorious, a fucking god, he was… he was…

Angus came, filling the foreman up with shot after shot of thick Black cum. The foreman came too, his cock still pressed between their bellies, his cum soaking into Angus’s sweaty undershirt.

In a haze, Angus stumbled back from the wall, still holding the foreman off the ground. He collapsed onto the bed with a huge crash. Something had changed… Everything was fine… He was a beast… Angus fell asleep without pulling out.

The next morning, Angus “Beef” Jacobson woke up slow, enjoying the feeling of a mouth on his musty cock. Boss was so good with his tongue. “Morning, Boss,” grunted Beef.

Boss pulled off Beef’s big black cock with a pop. “Morning, Beef,” he growled. “Ready to head to the site?”

Beef grunted. He reached down, grabbed Boss by the shoulders, and dragged him up. “Not yet,” said Beef, lowering Boss onto his slick cock. He started moving his Boss up and down like a fleshlight.

Beef wasn’t the smartest guy. That was how he’d gotten his nickname, ‘cause he was like a big, sweet cow who loved to fuck. He was like a walking stereotype of a Black construction worker: burly, sweaty, musky, and totally dumb. Hell, he’d pretty much worn the same shirt for a week, an undershirt Boss had given him. It was so musky and smelly Beef was pretty sure anyone who touched it would be smelling him for weeks. That was a hot idea.

He didn’t really know much other than the physical stuff, but Boss told him he was helping to save the world, some shit about green buildings. Beef thought that was funny, since the building was grey concrete, not green. He was such a dumbass sometimes. Just a big piece of dumb Black Beef.

This story was part of a trade with @artificial-transmutations. See his half of our trade here.

[chamerionwrites]

Intellectually I understand where people are coming from, but personally I do THE biggest double take every time someone boils down conservative Christian ideology (and/or secularized cultural reflections thereof) to a kind of dour puritanism that proclaims happiness is sin/suffering is a moral good/everyone should be miserable all the time. Like I get it! I do. But also, institutionally, I have never met a group of more passionate worshippers and vicious defenders of their own comfort than evangelical Christians. There is a reason the common thread between my various weird triggers more or less boils down to "toxic positivity." There is a REASON my exvangelical tag is #walking away from omelas.

[bluntloyalist]

[safije]

The more you study history, the more you realize that most ethnicities are based off of self-identification and culture rather than blood quantum or "science".

[mistymeow69]

leaving this here

[virtualcarrot]

Always sparring a thought for how essentialist racism discourse has become, but especially today as I think of this guy that I met two days ago, whom I sincerely believed had origins from the Maghreb/Middle East, and who it turns out is merely part Spanish--with all that entails of historical intermingling, sure, but far away enough that he didn't have anyone to point to as a reference of racialization

Anyway, that "white" dude keeps getting stopped and frisked whenever he's in an airport

[kacievvbbbb]

hmm...His eyes a little crazy, it's givinnnnng..... zealot.

I love you babe but I don't trust ya. the deep blue waters of your eyes scream shark infested 😘.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Have the crude, kneejerk idpol reductionists tried to say that azeris are white while armenians are nonwhite yet

[letters-to-rosie]

🚿Where do your best ideas seem to strike?

I think I get a lot of ideas when I'm thinking about something else--like I'm trying to work through a problem in my head and then all of a sudden I consider writing it. the shower is certainly a place, but so is in bed, on the commute, etc. all inconvenient for writing things down 😆

recently, just last night actually, I had a big idea some in while I was pondering how a lot of TV couples are interracial, more than in real life (in the US anyway), and that makes it look more common than it is. which is of course not bad, but since I'm writing timebomb and I was watching that video I was thinking, those two are kinda wild because in terms of the US they're interracial, but with the way Zaunites are racialized in the show, they're not in the actual setting. makes you think about how race is not real lol (and thank goodness it isn't!). social constructions are interesting. makes me think of Stuart Hall, "Race Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance," where he talks about paying close attention to how oppression plays out in a particular setting

send me asks! status update: folks are almost here. i WISH y'all could all come eat this mac & cheese I did a great job lol

[moonlovesskunks]

1. There is no gene in your body that can says "this person is white" or "this person is black."

2. People of different races don't have different levels of intelligence, different senses of morality, or different physical capabilities.

3. The idea of a natural hierarchy where certain races are "superior" to each other was invented by white Europeans to justify colonization, slavery, and other mistreatment of other societies.

If you agree with the above statements, you have acknowledged that race is a social construct!

[nerves-nebula]

*voice of exhaustion* you guys are like, so moronically white

[shutup-andletme-go]

a Race in the Refuge (working on the title i promise...) snippet for all of you to enjoy on this lovely saturday afternoon (or whatever time and day it is where you live :))

tw the Refuge, claustrophobia, and mention of beating

Race hadn’t done anything wrong. And now here he was, trapped in solitary at the Refuge. It was somehow worse than he remembered. Not enough room to sit comfortably, no light, not even a window, just a slim crack at the very top of the wall letting some air flow in. The skittery feeling that accompanied the Refuge for Race clambered over his skin, settling like a cold sweat. His fingers twitched and he screwed his hands into balls, digging raggedy fingernails into his palms. 

Above him, he heard a crack and then a scream. He forced a breath in. And out. Just like Les had taught him, the first time the younger boy had found Race curled up in an alleyway sobbing silently. Another crack and scream. His chest got tighter and his breaths became shallower. The feeling of worry that came when he was in small spaces grew and a few wet droplets slid down his cheek. 

He pressed his palms into the cold stone floor. In. And out. Again. Race forced himself to breathe. Forced himself to notice what he could hear, and touch, and smell.

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

also a couple of tags @eponine-thenadier & @draigthedragon bc u seem like u want to read it! (lmk if u dont wanna be tagged! - or other people if youd like me to tag you)