#saw an opportunity to rant about psychology and took it

[carlostck]

If I ever get into shit I'm contacting you as my lawyer

"... treated as girlbosses with layers upon layers of complexity despite the fact that these characters tend to be very straight forward terrible people. At most, they receive one layer of complexity (Harumi losing her family...)" 

have you watched SoG. Please. did we watch the same show. this is heartbreaking to me.

personally, i think that reducing harumi THAT MUCH into a lacking character no complexity no layers whatsoever JUST because she is evil is pretty stupid. 

EVIL GIRLS CANT BE GIRLBOSSES? EVIL GILS CANT BE COMPLEX? EVIL GIRLS CANT BE MULTILAYERED???? A GIRL CANT BE TERRIBLE ANYMORE????

anyway. i dont know where i was going im just rambling in the next few paragraphs. Yeah i tried justifying her actions whatever crucify me idc

 how would you feel, you are a child. what? 10 at most? with loving parents, they are your WORLD. then suddenly your world is taken away from you. the people who were supposed to be your protectors failed you, because they were careless. your idols failed you. atleast, that is what you believe. 

harumi was a character blinded by DELUSION. 

where does this delusion come from? 

you are a child who had just lost the two most important people in your life. you are adopted by the royal family. sounds great right? a dream come true!!! in Garmadon Rulez, we learn that this is not the case. her entire childhood became full of neglect. she was forced into a position immediately after losing her parents where she has to conform to all these rules, to become ninjagos princess, part of the royal family. 

there was NEVER any mention of how they helped her, aside from housing her. there was NEVER any mention of her being able to cope with the loss of her parents or the monarchs offering any. she was immediately pushed into a life of etiquette and perfection, and as a child, that messes with your head. alot. 

instead of healing and controlling her grief properly, the environment she was raised in caused her to focus on her anger instead. 

"straight forward terrible people" im. ggggsggv. 

whatever. sure. shes a terrible person. however!!! as her defender!!!!!!!! i will stand by the fact that this is NOT her fault. i don't blame her for being a terrible person. 

in garmadon rulez!!!!!! harumi literally!!!! literally heard the voice of garmadon sometime between possession and SoG!!!!!! that PUSHED her delusion EVEN FURTHER that garmadon was her savior. 

IT IS NOT HER FAULT SHES A TERRIBLE PERSON. BLAME EVERYONE ELSE!!!!!!!!!!! THE ROYALS!!!!!!!!! LLOYD!!!!! THE NINJA!!!!!!!! BLAME ME!!!!!!! ME!!!!!! ME BLAME ME!!!!!! 

besides that. SINCE WHEN. since when did being a "straightforward terrible person" stop you from being complex????? villains can be complex!!!! theyre terrible but still COMPLEX. 

GOD. it pisses me off SO MUCH when people call harumi "one dimensional" LIKE!!!!!! GO READ GARMADON RULEZ I BEG YOU. 

[wandaromanova]

Little Sister

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Fem!Reader

Warnings: one cuss word, minor BW spoilers

A/N: hello! i’d like to note that this takes place sometime before the events in the Black Widow movie! if you haven’t seen the movie yet, please skip over this story and come back later if you’d like! happy reading <3

anon requested: hiii i have a fluff request after seeing bw haha: could you do nat x fem reader where they're laying in bed snuggling, and r asks her about her family and nat tells her and r notices how cute she looks when she's talking about yelena and it's so soft and ahhhh

Summary: Natasha tells her girlfriend about a piece of her past that she never talks about; her sister.

Word Count: 2K

| masterlist | request rules/guidelines | wips |

please do not repost or try and take ownership of my work. reblogs, likes, and comments are always welcome. <3

Natasha Romanoff has lived a lot of lives. She has been through more than most.

Nat had been taken as an infant by an organization that trained little girls to become lethal assassins.

She was psychologically conditioned to become a killer, having taken more lives than she could count.

Eventually, Natasha had managed to break free from the cage she was forced into and was recruited as a S.H.I.E.L.D agent; it was a new start for her, an opportunity to compensate for the red in her ledger.

So, Natasha took her job seriously, saving as many people as she could, even more so when she became an Avenger; one of earth’s mightiest heroes.

Natasha found something in the team that she never really had before; a family. She found a home within the dysfunctional team she had been recruited into.

Not only did Natasha find a family within the Avengers; she also found the love of her life.

Natasha hadn’t even considered the possibility of ever finding love.

For starters, the Red Room had instilled the concept that love was nothing but a distraction; a liability.

She had been taught that love was for children and it was nothing but a weakness that needed to be avoided at all costs.

She was quite literally programmed to be emotionally closed off and to always have her guard up. Letting someone into her heart was a risk she didn’t want to take.

When Natasha gained her independence from the organization, she had to do a lot of self-discovering. She had never been able to be her own person, but now that she could, she quickly learned that she didn’t even know herself.

However, it was Natasha’s insecurities that truly turned her off from the entire idea of love.

How could any ever possibly love her? She thought she was a monster for the things she’d done. She has done the unspeakable since ever she was a child.

What if she wasn’t enough? What if her baggage was too much for someone else to carry? She didn’t want to be a burden. She didn’t want to have to protect someone, just to fail them like she had failed so many others.

Natasha was positive that no one would ever be crazy enough to love her.

Little did she know, she would end up finding someone crazy enough to do so; you.

•❅──────────────── ‎⧗ ────────────────❅•

When the Avengers were formed, you were extremely nervous about it.

All of the files that you’ve read on your new teammates were unbelievable; they were all phenomenal in their own rights. A super-soldier, a god, a genius, a trained-spy.

You were a spy yourself, so you knew exactly who Natasha Romanoff was. She was a S.H.I.E.L.D legend, the best of the best.

You were more nervous about meeting her than anyone else. What if she judged you? What if she didn’t think you were good enough to be an agent, let alone an Avenger?

Not only was she your superior, but she was also your crush. Yeah, you’d never even met the woman before, but you were crushing on her hard.

She was drop-dead gorgeous, but also quite literally a deadly force. Natasha could easily take down anyone she wanted to, and honestly, you wanted to be one of those lucky people.

When you met Natasha for the first time, you were a flustered mess. The redhead found it amusing, how your cheeks turned a bright shade of red and you stumbled over your words as you praised her work.

Natasha never told you this, but she was immediately smitten the moment she laid eyes on you.

There was a kindness and positivity that just radiated off of you and it was extremely contagious.

You were this beaming ball of light that lit up the darkest parts of her soul.

•❅──────────────── ‎⧗ ────────────────❅•

You got to know Natasha extremely well while being on the team. From observing her closely and paying very close attention to her actions, you had managed to pick up on little things.

She didn’t put any creamer or sugar in her sugar; opting for strong, black coffee.

She was kind of a clean freak. If she saw something out of place, she would be quick to put it in the correct place or position.

When she was happy, she would let a small smirk cross her features. When she was annoyed, she would raise her eyebrows.

When she was stressed out or angry, three little creases would appear on her forehead as her eyebrows would knit together tightly; a subtle frown on her face.

Of course, when you began dating the redhead, you didn’t really have to survey her so closely anymore because she’d tell you things herself.

No matter the circumstances, Natasha would always come to you and rant about it. Whether it was about how shitty a mission went or how she beat Clint’s ass during training; you were the only person she wanted to tell.

Natasha had opened up to you, something she never did with anyone. She told you all about her past.

•❅──────────────── ‎⧗ ────────────────❅•

You had some knowledge of Natasha’s previous life, considering it was in her files, but you didn’t realize just how horrible her childhood truly was.

The Red Room, the heavy weight of guilt that rests on her shoulders, the nightmares that forced her to relive the murders she committed, her time as a S.H.I.E.L.D agent, and becoming an Avenger.

She’d go on and on about her road to redemption or ‘clearing the red out of her ledger.’

Natasha was terrified when she told you about her demons. She figured you were going to leave her the second she finished talking, waiting for you to get up and walk out the door, but you didn’t.

So, you completely caught her off guard when you pulled her into a bone-crushing hug, placing a soft kiss onto her temple, the redhead relaxing in your embrace.

“You’re the strongest person I know. It’s not your fault, you were forced and conditioned to do the things you did.”

Natasha focused on the sound of your voice and took in your words as you softly caressed her red locks with one hand.

“Baby, the amount of respect I have for you is immeasurable. I applaud you for turning your life around for the better. I’m so fucking proud of you.”

Your words had brought tears to Natasha’s eyes, which was a rare occurrence.

She was expecting you to run for the hills, but you chose to pull her closer instead.

In that moment, Natasha knew she never had to be afraid of love again.

You were the most understanding and accepting person she’d ever met.

You would never judge her for her worst mistakes; Natasha had found the one for her and she wasn’t ever going to let go.

•❅──────────────── ‎⧗ ────────────────❅•

Now, a few months later and a year into your relationship with the Russian, you were both lying in bed and cuddling.

You were both watching a movie when a particular scene came on. It was of a family gathering around a Christmas tree, children excitedly opening up presents with gleeful smiles across their faces.

“You know, my sister and I got to take pictures with a Christmas tree once.” Natasha spoke, her eyes fixated on the screen.

You looked up at her in shock. You didn’t know that Natasha had a sister. She told you that she didn’t even so much as know her parent’s names.

Natasha looked down and noticed your confused expression. She reached for the remote on the bedside table and paused the movie before returning her gaze to you.

“There was a mission I was assigned to in Ohio, as a kid. I was assigned to play the daughter of two other Russian spies, Alexei and Melina. It wasn’t just me though, there was a little girl who was assigned as my younger sister. Her name is Yelena.”

Natasha had a reminiscent, happy smile on her face as she recalled the brief period time of her childhood. She looked absolutely adorable as she rambled on about this part of her childhood.

“We took photoshoots of various holidays to make our family look more realistic. My favorite one was Christmas. Even though I knew they were just empty boxes, I wanted to rip open every single one.”

Natasha let out a small giggle at the thought. Even though she had a smile on her face, you could feel and hear the underlying tone of sadness in her voice.

“Yelena and I would spend hours outside, just playing together. Swinging on the swing-sets, looking up at the stars, bending over backward, and getting into a ridiculous competition to see who could hold the position the longest… I always let her win.”

You could see the fondness in her eyes, the longing. It warmed your heart that there was a small glimmer of light in Natasha’s past. There was at least a sliver of hope that she clung tightly onto throughout her time in the Red Room.

“After 3 years, the mission ended. Yelena and I were sent back to the Red Room and were torn apart from one another.

Natasha’s breathing grew heavier as she recalled the unfaithful day. The sight of her sister being taken, and not being able to do anything to help her; still haunted the redhead to this day.

“There were so many men with guns and armor, they literally ripped us away from each other. I was eleven and she was only six.”

Your heart sunk at your girlfriend’s words as her smile dropped. She tore her eyes away from yours as she blinked rapidly, fighting back tears, but failed. You reached your hand up to her cheek and wiped away the fallen droplets.

“I haven’t seen her since. I’d like to think that she found a way out and got a life of her own; a nice, happy life.”

Natasha placed her hand on top of yours before looking down at you once more. You sent her a soft smile when she let out a shaky breath.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“I knew that the it was all fake, but it was still the best part of my childhood. It was real to me.”

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

You nodded your head at her words. She took a brief pause, trying to regain her composure, before continuing.

“Even if we have no true relation to one another, and even if I haven’t seen her in years, she is still my little sister.”

Natasha finished off with a big gasp as sobs wracked her body. You sat up from her embrace and pulled her into your arms, just like you had many times before.

You rubbed her back soothingly as she cried into your shoulder, her tears hitting the exposed skin.

“She sounds amazing, baby. I’m really happy that you had some sort of happiness back then and I hope one day you get to see her again.”

You whispered and Natasha pulled away from the hug, still in your arms as her emerald eyes surrounded by a sea of red, a result of her crying.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“I doubt she’d even want to see me. I didn’t even try to find her. I’m a horrible sister! I-“

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

You immediately pressed your lips against hers, effectively getting the Russian to calm down. You broke the kiss when her breathing slowed.

“Honey, of course, she’d want to see you again. Like you said, you guys are sisters. I’m positive that it was just as real to her as it was to you.”

You reassured your girlfriend, her eyes a pool of worry and guilt. You rubbed your thumb against her waist, the material of your her hoodie beneath your touch.

“From what you’ve told me about the Red Room, it would’ve been impossible to find her. Stop beating yourself up over it. You’re the best, and I’m totally not biased or anything.”

Natasha let out a small chuckle at that and you smiled at her, wiping away the last of her tears. She collapsed into your hold further, shoving her face into the crook of your neck.

“Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I love you so much.”

Natasha’s words came out muffled as her face pressed further into your skin.

“You never need to thank me for anything. I’ll always be here for you, Natty.”

You hugged her as tight as you possibly could, her cold skin meeting your warmth. Natasha let out a small sigh at the feeling.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

“Wherever you go, I go.”

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

───────── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──────────

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[vanikolya]

Hiya! I found your page a bit ago and I love how you write! I was wondering if I could get a bsd match up please?

I’m an ambivert(I think-), I’m very quiet and awkward around new people but if I click with them I’ll become very outgoing. I can be loud and very sarcastic(as well as threatening but it’s all just jokes-). I’m typically a very funny and joking person, while I can also be calm and have deep conversations with anyone lol. I also might not be the best comforter but I’ll listen to someone rant for hours on end and give advice if I think of any.

I’m intro a bunch of creative things; drawing, writing, editing, etc. I also love music, any type, but I seem to really like electric or rock(never metal and country is rare).

I saw someone put a description of their appearance so I guess I’ll put one-? I’m 5’0 with shoulder length, wavy brown hair and light blue eyes.

I’m also pan so I don’t care about the gender of the character(I don’t know if this matters or not-)

That’s all I can think of- i’m sorry if I did it wrong or if it’s confusing! Thank you!

{hey! sorry this took a while, im on summer break so I'm finally getting round to all my unanswered asks. that i kind of left for the entire academic year T^T college really kicked my ass </3}

i ship you with...

{.⋅ ✯ ⋅.}  OSAMU DAZAI  {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.}

would likely tease you for being all shy when you meet new people, considering he knows how loud and outgoing you can be. speaking of, the two of you wreak havoc. kunikida hates the both of you (/lh) because of your tendencies to go along with each others jokes (which, considering this is dazai we're talking about, will often involve kunikida)

but considering that side of dazai is more of a facade, or just an "outside personality" (i feel like that doesn't make sense SOB but like how you'd probably act differently around people ig), he's glad to have someone who understands his more serious side. probably going to spark quite a few conversations about the meaning of life, or possibilities for what the afterlife may be like. maybe psychology too idk i feel like dazai would like psychology (heard it here first from... your local dazai kinnie psychology student, wow i wonder why i think he likes psych)

dazai's practically the same with listening to rants, the fact that you're so similar to him in that way is comforting in itself because he knows that if you were to come to him with problems, you would understand that he would jump straight to advice rather than sit there and be a comforting prescence for you. that way he wouldn't feel like something he couldn't give was being expected of him. that being said, he is really good with physical comfort, he's very affectionate; he just doesn't have the words

he does give really good advice though. you have a problem that can be fixed with logic? you're going to be absolutely fine. probably the one downside is that he's pretty harsh with his advice on people problems, like if you're struggling with a friend he doesn't know all that well, he'd probably say something like "and if you try everything and they still don't change their behaviour, you'd be better off without them" (he's usually right, just fails to account for how it may be hard for you to let them go if it got to that)

really interested in the things you make, when he sees you working on something creative he'll never fail to ask about it. or cheekily stay there watching until you mention what you're working on without him saying anything. he'd also just ask you to draw him, and probably throw in some joke about how he's always thought his true calling was modelling. as long as your comfortable with him doing so, he'll end up showing off your works to other members of the agency. "my [nickname] is so talented!"

will definetely take every opportunity to tease you for your height (he's 5'11), given you're not self conscious about it. "do you need me to lift you up to reach that shelf?" "hold onto me in this crowd, if we get separated i don't think I'd be able to spot you" so just kick his shins for it, god knows he deserves it (/lh)

he probably gives you kisses on the top of your head though. and probably picks you up to kiss you.

[chaossmagic]

Explain why you hate Jack and Andy so much? I’m only asking because I love hearing your Jack and Andy rants. I hate Jack and Andy too. Poor Robert having to put up with them throughout his childhood 😭

Jack was abusive, mentally, verbally and (in Robert’s case) physically, treated both his sons like he could bend them into whatever shape he wanted them to be and if they didn’t, then it was their own fault for being ‘bad, and generally an all-round Massive Dick. 

Notably in Robert’s case, who resisted Jack’s attempts to force him into the Good Sugden Heir model and therefore Jack saw that as a sign that there was something inherently ‘wrong’ with him. He took that even further when Robert, depressed and lonely after his Mum died (which he witnessed at barely 14 years old) started lashing out because he felt unwanted and not listened to, and when Jack and Andy conspired against him to keep the truth about his mother’s death from him (i.e. it was Andy’s fault, a botched attempt at an insurance scam to get the farm more money). 

The more Robert grew up into Not Mini Jack Sugden, the more his father tried to force him to ‘correct’ his wayward behaviour and do what he wanted him to do. When it didn’t work, he decided that Robert was inherently rotten to the core and wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t behave, wasn’t a ‘normal, decent’ child who could set an example for the next generation. 

He ignored him, belittled him, treated his rebellious behaviour as childish attention-seeking instead of deep-seated trauma and grief, lashed out at him verbally and literally told him he was worthless. He was violent towards him (and not to Andy). He openly preferred Vic and Andy to him. He never wasted an opportunity to tell Robert he was useless and awful and a terrible person. He punished Robert much more excessively for things he did wrong than Andy, even in situations where it was Andy’s fault! (For example, the accident that killed Max was pinned on Robert, even though Andy had been driving and Max had been in Andy’s car).

Jack also beat his child for being queer...and that alone is enough to make him the shittiest, lowest shitstain of a human being there ever was. The fact that even Robert himself believed into adulthood that it was because he was ‘bad’ and therefore deserved it (and that Jack wasn’t what he clearly was - a bigoted, violent homophobe who didn’t just have a problem with Robert being bisexual but with anyone who was not straight - and, while we’re at it, so did Andy) and not something that wasn’t okay is testimony enough. 

And then we have Andy. Complicit in the years of verbal, emotional and psychological abuse Robert endured under his father, he never once spoke up for his brother - even though they were best friends once. He never defended him or tried to protect him when Jack treated him like dirt. He’s a gaslighting piece of shit who even in adulthood refused to treat Robert like an equal and still acted as if they were both teenagers. He told Robert that he was ‘imagining’ his - their - abusive childhood and whenever he tried to speak up about what Jack was like, he got shot down or told he was exaggerating, or just plain making stuff up to get attention.

Because Robert is always the spoiled, whiny brat who throws a fit when he doesn’t get what he wants, and Andy is the Perfect Saint who can never do anything wrong. Even as adults when Jack was long dead.

Andy beat his first wife and went to PRISON FOR IT. He shot Jack by accident because HE WAS AIMING FOR ROBERT. He waited outside Robert’s caravan where he was living ALL DAY waiting for the opportunity to SHOOT HIM when he left. What the hell?! He hired Ross to shoot him a SECOND time. He made Robert’s life hell for the first couple of years or so after he returned to Emmerdale. 

And then he had the gall to beg for his help when the Whites turned on him!

Which, of course, Robert did, because he’s been so conditioned and groomed and gaslit by his abuse that he felt he owed Andy something ‘because he was still his brother’ and that meant that he had some kind of duty to him. Bullshit! I’ve always hated those scenes in Andy’s exit because it just feels so gross knowing that Robert still felt compelled to apologize to ANDY for what had happened and forgave him despite everything that he’d done to him. I hate it so much. I wish those scenes had never happened. 

Robert’s childhood was awful and I wish the show would acknowledge that more (or I wish they had acknowledged it more) and the lasting impact it had well into adulthood for him. He couldn’t talk about it with anyone except Aaron and even then the show didn’t really dive into it to the extent that they should have. It breaks my heart because Robert has been made to feel alone, worthless, unlovable, unworthy of love and ‘defective’ his whole life, and now his worst fears have all come true. He always deserved better.

[cl0ckworkpuppet]

WOAH sorry OP i kinda went off. i just saw your post and immediately took the opportunity to rant so please read at your own leisure to see just how deep this problem of adopted/repackaged radfem ideology goes!

the view that men are inherently "corrupt" or "evil" as a direct cause of them being men, and that women are inherently "pure" or "innocent" or "good" as a direct cause of them being women, is called gender essentialism. the two gender categories as defined by this idea can have any number of traits attached to them, even traits that are completely different to these, but in radical feminism, these are the most common general attributes given.

the equivalent idea for sex, as defined by perisex normativity (i.e. everyone is strictly "male" or "female" and intersex people are either irrelevant or can be put into one of two boxes), is called bioessentialism. think of these two like siblings: same idea, different categories.

typically, in trans-exclusionary radical feminism, gender essentialism and bioessentialism go hand-in-hand, as to TERFs, sex and gender are synonymous. as for trans-inclusionary radical feminism, typically only gender essentialism is found, thus making it seem "more palatable" to trans people. because dang, they're respecting your gender! how can you be mad at them for that?

Gender essentialism and bioessentialism are equally bad. bioessentialism is very obviously bad, because it's reductive and transphobic and intersexist in nature. ender essentialism, in its most common form with TIRFs (note: the I is for inclusionary here, and is different from TERFs), still falls into quite a few terrible traps:

most obviously, this line of thinking ignores the very real threats and discrimination faced by the atypical or "failed"/"incapable" men of society, such as queer men, GNC men, disabled men, men of colour, etc who may not actually benefit from the patriarchal establishments set in place by and for non-marginalized men. this type of discrimination is known as androphobia. this plays into homophobia, transphobia (specifically transandrophobia, the hatred or discrimination against trans men and trans masculine individuals), ableism against men, racism against men, etc. this is a big part of intersectionality, or very simply put, the idea that combinations of different types of discrimination are greater than the sum of their parts.

less obviously, the source of gender essentialism in TIRFs' eyes is made a little unclear. there are two possible sources for this: something inherently biological or psychological about men that makes them dangerous, which traces back to bioessentialism, or the fact that men inherently support, uphold, and benefit from systemic and social misogyny. although that is the case for many men, especially those who are and/or act "typical" by the standards of traditional gender roles (i.e. "man strong" and "woman weak", etc), like i mentioned before, this often cannot possibly be the case for a great number of men. in many others as well, there are men who actively fight systemic and social misogyny, regardless of whether or not they totally benefit from it.

what defines a "man" in gender essentialism is incredibly reductive. oftentimes, someone's proximity to manhood or womanhood is considered before the gender essentialist can make a judgement call on them. yes, even TIRFs do this. gender essentialism is, by nature, highly reductive, so many people who should not be lumped into one of these categories is often shoved there by default. for example, a closeted trans person who is still presenting with their original, outside-enforced gender may be lumped into a category in which they do not belong. closeted trans women, for example, may be denied support by TIRFs. anyone who does not fit into the bimodal gender structure, i.e. any nonbinary or genderqueer person, must either a) be lumped into either the "man enough" or the "woman enough" categories, or b) be lumped into the "well, not a man, so you're allowed to exist" category. this also poses a problem for bigender/polygender/pangender people, who may seek to identify as both a man and a woman, or agender people, who may not wish to identify with either. again, this may also come down to one's sex assigned at birth or whatever sexual characteristics they may have, once again going back to bioessentialism.

even if all of this weren't a problem, gender essentialism fails to realize the nuances and complexity of human gender and personality. people cannot be boxed into categories like these and have it be right 100% of the time, plain and simple. femininity is not inherently good; likewise, masculinity is not inherently bad. there's a term for this that i'm developing: i'm tentatively calling it gender reductionism, whereas gender reductionism creates boxes and forces people into it based on gender, gender essentialism labels those boxes and gives them attributes, be they positive or negative, if that makes sense. regardless, gender essentialism relies heavily on the creation and enforcement of these categories in order to apply vast sweeping labels to many people all at once. otherwise, it cannot possibly exist.

if this post makes you uneasy because it sounds like I'm just shouting "not all men!", it's because... i kind of am. not all men are able to benefit from a patriarchal society, not all men are even willing to benefit from such a society, not all men are immune to misogyny, not all men are dangerous simply for being men, not all men uphold these values that bring the world down.

It is a genuine concern, though, for men to be able to challenge the toxicity that men are enabled to partake in. Toxic masculinity is a very real thing, and all men-- even marginalized men-- are susceptible to it. however, this fact is not an excuse to immediately discredit, ignore, or downright commit the discrimination that men can face, yes, even for being men or being perceived as men.

finally i get to focus on trans men as OP originally did. I mentioned transandrophobia earlier, and I guarantee at least one person will read that and roll their eyes, thinking I'm just another transmisogynist and leave, as what tends to be stereotypical of people advocating for the visibility of transandrophobia. while it is true that trans men are not immune to being transmisogynistic, and there are certainly some who are, the bottom line is trans men are men who deserve to have their voices heard, and their struggles vocalized. stating this fact in and of itself is not transmisogynistic. yes, trans men are men, but trans men are also trans, which does not change their manhood, but changes their experiences in the greater world, even if they're "stealth", which many trans men aren't. myself included.

to say that trans men, who have long been reduced to innocent little girls who are corrupted by the media, or seen as "transtrenders" or "theyfabs" when they don't fully pass/wish to pass, or have been sexually harassed or assaulted because of their gender not appearing to "match" their sex, or have been emotionally abused by maternal figures who didn't want to lose the emotional connection to their "baby girl", or been treated like a baby boy child who's more pure or innocent than "real" men, or been accused of being straight women/fujoshi trying to invade spaces for gay men, or been seen as traitors to feminism or rebels or anything of the sort... to say we have "male privilege" in the same way that cis men might is downright disgusting.

transphobia is not reserved for, or worse for, one specific type of trans person.

misogyny is not reserved for, or worse for, one specific type of person.

discrimination is not reserved for, or worse for, any one group of people.

it is not the fucking oppression olympics. get over yourselves, and stop sitting at the same table as TERFs who think I'm a lost, innocent girl who just needs to be shown how beautifully feminine my body is if I would just embrace my "true nature", aka, the sex they tried to force on me.

some of you took "trans men are men" and ran with it and are now calling us oppressors, saying we benefit 100% from male privilege, saying we can't have internalized misogyny and a ton of other shit like i genuinely think radfems have poisoned your brains whether you realize it or not.

[ruzek-halstead]

something’s brewing

pairing: luke patterson x julie molina

julie is in the middle of writing five exams in four days when a cute stranger dumps her coffee all over her and she ends up crying in the middle of a university coffee shop.

coffeeshop au

masterlist || ao3

Julie cursed the day she ever decided to become a psychiatrist.

If she had known how draining it would be to get her undergraduate degree—that’s not even including the years it’ll take to get her master’s and PhD—she would have hopped on a plane to Europe and never looked back.

Its final exam season and her five exams are all strategically scheduled within four days and she’s about to lose her goddamn mind. She had just finished writing her first exam on cognitive psychology, and still had four more to go.

She nearly cried three times during the exam and all she wanted now was a cup of steaming hot coffee so she could stay up all night studying for her next two exams tomorrow. And that’s exactly what she was in the process of doing but when she turned to put some cream in her coffee, she bulldozed straight into a hard body.

She dropped her iPhone (screen first, obviously), the textbook she was holding and the steaming cup of coffee in her hand. Oh, but it was fine because the coffee spilled all over her cable knit sweater; it easily seeped through and burned her skin. Julie let out a grunt of pain.

Oh God, this could not be happening right now.

“Oh, shit!”

She heard the deep voice of the body who ran into her and felt their arm shoot out to steady her; the arm was lean, muscled and definitively male. “Shit, I’m really sorry.”

Her skin is still stinging and her phone and textbook are still lying on the ground; she can’t picture her day getting any worse,

Oh, but it did.

“Hey, are you alright?” The mystery man was talking to her and she noticed him ducking his head to look at her face when she hadn’t moved or reacted for a good thirty seconds. “I’m so sorry. Please, let me buy you a new coffee.”

Julie still hadn’t reacted because she knew if she moved even a little bit, she was going to lose her shit.

She caught a glimpse of his flannel shirt as he swooped down to pick up her textbook and—oh surprise, her iPhone with a cracked screen.

That is literally all it took to break what was left of her sanity.

“Are you kidding me?”

The stranger in front of her blinked. He clearly wasn't expecting this kind of outburst, considering she had been silent during their whole interaction.

“Are you freaking kidding me?” Julie yelled again, this time directing her withering glare up towards the ceiling.

“Uh — shit. I’m sorry,” the stranger in front of her looked extremely uncomfortable and at an utter loss for words. “I, um —”

Julie was so furious; she couldn’t even appreciate how unbelievably attractive he was. He was on the taller side (well, that was easy to be, since Julie is quite short) and muscular with piercing green eyes. If she wasn’t so distraught, she would be attempting and failing to flirt shamelessly.

The curly-haired beauty doesn’t stop to wait for his stuttering reply. She hastily grabbed her items from his possession and pushed past him, aiming for the exit doors. She ignored how heavy and sticky her cable knit sweater suddenly felt and the overwhelming stench of coffee. She was desperate to get home and forget any of this ever happened.

However, clearly, luck is not on her side today.

The unknown stranger chased after her. He wasn't expecting Julie to slam the glass door behind her and frowned when it collided with his body, but he powered through to catch her before she got too far away. “Hey! Hold on, wait, pl —”

“What?” Julie snapped, whirling around to face him. The venom in her tone and the hostility in her eyes was enough to make his widen in surprise.

“Shit,” he sighed and she rolled her eyes because he’s already said that (multiple times). “Are you okay? You look really upset, and I’m really sorry. I just want to make sure you’re alright.”

Julie stared at him. She couldn't picture anyone being fine after what had just happened, especially if they had as much going on in their lives as Julie did. And just thinking about everything she still has to do makes her even more upset.

“No, I'm not okay,” she replied, surprising herself and the green-eyed stranger at her calm tone. Her temperament throughout their whole interaction had been like a rollercoaster and he wasn't sure where they were at. “I'm covered in coffee; I just failed my exam and I still have four more to write within the next three days. All I wanted was coffee. That's all.”

Her tone dropped from calm to just emotionless and she was so done with this conversation.

Instead of keeping her shit together and just walking away, she started to cry.

His eyes widened. “Oh shit,” he cursed and scratched the back of his head quickly. “Okay, let’s go.”

Julie was so utterly confused at why she was even crying; all she knew was that her brain was exhausted and she had no idea what was happening. But as she watched her mystery stranger grab her arm and move her aside, she jolted back to reality. “Hey!” She started to protest and was relatively surprised when she saw him roll his green eyes.

“You’re crying in the middle of campus,” he hissed. She was truly shocked by the change in his tone, but when he looked at her, his features were still soft. “People are going to think I did something to you.”

Julie hastily wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her sweater. “You did do something to me! I’m covered in coffee!”

He visibly flinched. “I already apologized! I don’t know what else you want me to do.”

He had a point and she knew it, but there was no way she was letting this stranger win this argument.

“What I want is to go home and study for my four exams!” Julie could see his eyes softening with every word she said. “What I want is to take a forty-seven hour nap and get accepted into my master’s program,” her tone was visibly deflating and the exhaustion was hitting her like a tidal wave. “What I want is to get through this week without any more emotional breakdowns.”

The green-eyed stranger listened carefully as she ranted. He could see the obvious distress in her features and the exhaustion within her eyes. He was no stranger to any of those things himself and he completely understood why she snapped the way she did. But all that aside, he also couldn't help but notice her beauty.

“I'm Luke,” he blurted before he could even think about it.

Her brows furrowed and she squinted her watery brown eyes. “What?”

“That’s my name,” he chuckled nervously. “My name is Luke.”

“Oh,” she replied quietly, because she's very confused and this conversation was getting away from her quickly.

A slow smile spread across his features. “So, master’s program?”

Julie looked more confused than ever. He spilled coffee on her, watched her cry, snapped at her, let her yell at him in public and now he’s inquiring about her life? What the hell is going on?

“What is happening right now?” She voiced her thoughts out loud.

Luke bit his lip. “I think you’re very beautiful, and obviously very smart,” he was rubbing at the back of his neck and it was adorably awkward.

Julie's jaw popped open and she wasn't able to close it. “I literally just had my sixth breakdown of the week. Does that not freak you the hell out?”

Luke laughed and it was one of the most beautiful sounds Julie had ever heard. “Not at all, actually. If I was majoring in psych, I would be reacting the same, if not worse,” he gently poked at one of her cognitive psychology textbooks in her hand.

“And what are you majoring in?”

She was still confused as hell, and stressed and covered in coffee. She was still thinking about all the studying she had to do, but this absolutely stunning stranger was showing an interest in her and she would be damned if she just blew it. With all the studying she had to do on a regular basis, she doesn’t have much time to meet cute guys. This is literally a once in a lifetime opportunity.

A slow smile spread across his features when he realized she was slowly letting down her guard. “I’m in the music program actually,” he scrunched his nose adorably and she noticed he had the cutest smile. “I’m uh — I’m actually in a band with my best friends. You should check us out sometime; we play literally everywhere.”

Julie sent him a soft smile and for a minute, he was stuck looking into her eyes.

“Uh —“ He scratched the back of his neck adorably. “I should probably go — I have an exam to study for."

Her face quickly paled. “Oh my god, I have like four.” Reality was closing in on her and it wasn’t pretty. “I’m really sorry, I have to go,” she was already turning around and preparing to walk away when he grabbed her arm hastily.

“Hey, wait, please — can I please get your number?” He asked with a shy smile. 

“Oh,” Julie blinked, “yeah — yeah, that sounds good.”

And so, Julie shyly gave him her number and listened as he promised to call once their exams were done. He apologized once again for spilling her coffee and with a sweet smile, he was on his way. Julie still couldn't believe the encounter and how it had transformed. She was stressed and red eyed and not looking nearly as cute as she should be but somehow, she attracted the attention of an adorable green eyed cutie and she felt giddy inside.

So, she tightened her grip on her textbook and cracked iPhone and set off to fry her brain studying; but in the back of her mind, she couldn't stop thinking about Luke.

[thewondersofsmut]

The Bodyguard Trainer

Summary: After the devastating night of your mission, you opted for a less-life threatening job but something changed when you were met with your batch. 

Pairings: Alpha!Dean x Omega!Reader

Warnings: language, past traumatizing event, loss, angst, smut

Word Count: 4350

Author’s Note: This was supposed to be a series but I wanted to just make it into one huge story, hence the word count! Here’s another ABO fic, hope you guys like it!

“As your trainer, it’s my job to make you break.” You started. You watched them, either knowing how it is, or not knowing at all. “After all, this job you signed up for isn’t rainbows and butterflies.” You added. “You will all be protecting someone, clients, not just yourself. You are their shield in times of need.” You watched these men, Alphas and Betas, clench their jaw. “Being a personal bodyguard isn’t just being physically able to defend your client but also mentally and psychologically be prepared for the ultimate worst.” You continued. 

“My name is (y/n), I will primarily be your physical trainer and my colleagues will be training you with armory.” You said. “And hopefully, you are deemed prepared to protect your client and yourself after this whole training.” You said. And they nodded. “Any questions so far?” You asked. 

“When do we get to the weapons?” Asked this guy, 6 foot 2, at least twice your mass, the scent of an Alpha. You smirked, it was always a question with each new batch of trainees. “Of course,” You chuckled. “Arms and other weapon training will be after you pass the physical endurance test, obviously after your physical training.” You answered. “So what’s in the test?” This other one asked. “Good question.” You said, almost giving them evil eyes. “Couple of course runs, sparring, and most importantly, actually getting me and the other instructors on ground successfully.” You answered. 

The guy raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “Step up, would you?” You said and he went towards you. He was nearly a foot over your head and he definitely covered your frame from the others behind him. “Mike, right?” You asked, learning their names. You placed your right leg back and grounded it and he did the same, lifting your arms in a boxing stance. You circled him and he eyed you. He throws the first punch and you veered left grabbing his upper right arm. You clamped your legs on his left leg and threw yourself down, him following towards the empty spot on your right. You tipped him until he was face down, him grunting under you, his arm was behind him and the other trying to grab you. 

You gently placed a knee on his back whilst holding down his arm. “First rule, never be cocky.” You said, smirking as he squirmed from under you. They didn’t know you were an omega, you had suppressants and you present yourself to them as an Alpha, even with your small frame. You looked up and you caught the eye of this guy, dirty blonde hair, pink lips in a smirk, green eyes smiling like his lips. It almost took your breath away, quite literally, his scent evading your thoughts. You pulled away and helped Mike up. He rubbed the back of his neck and you heard a small applause from the rest, giving them a curtsy. “He covered your frame, head to toe, how was that possible.” The guy said as you met his bright green eyes, eyeing you somewhat suspiciously. 

“Ex marine raider, special forces.” You said and they eyes went wide. “Was also a drill Sargent for two years before that.” You added. Wow. Was what inaudibly came out of his mouth as you watched him, not that you were specifically looking at his lips move, you wondered how those feel— 

You tear your gaze away from him and brought everyone’s attention. “Now that my identity is out there,” You joked, earning a few laughs. “Shall we begin our training?” “Yes, ma’am!” They all replied and you chuckled. 

You needed a partner to spar with, to show the rest of the trainees how to block and throw a punch. No one wanted to volunteer at first, not even Mike. Then Dean, the shorter Winchester out of the two, stepped up. His brother raised his eyebrows. “Be nice to my brother, (y/n).” Sam joked and Dean gave him a bitch face. 

You giggled as well as the others but nodded nonetheless. “Let start with a basic stance, then taking turns, each of you will thrown a jab, uppercut, left, and right hook.” You said, your attention to locked the older Winchester. You momentarily saw him glance down your talking lips, his tongue darting out to lick his. “Understood?” You asked and looked away. “Yes, ma’am!” Everyone got a partner. “Do I get extra credit by being teacher’s partner?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow,. You chuckled. “Maybe if you’ll keep it up you will.” You said. You weren’t one to flirt, if that’s even what this interaction is. 

You continued to spar with Dean. You kept your guard down and let Dean win, which you announced beforehand. Apart from daily bag punches, the pull ups, you noticed how his muscle rippled under his shirt you wonder how his chest will look— “You smell different,” He started, staring you down with curiosity. “Like’s there more to you.” 

You watched Dean’s moves, intently, and just as you guessed his next, there were some that surprised you that he would use. You saw his opportunity and gave it to him. You both landed with a soft thud, his body above you. “There’s something about you that I want to know.” He said, eyes boring into yours, his breath fanning over your face. You chuckled. “There’s nothing special bought me.” You said before realizing, you were leading him on but you kept a neutral face so he wouldn’t see the panic. 

“I think I deserve extra credit for that one.” He said. “Remember rule one?” You asked and before he can respond, you had flipped the both of you earning a grunt from him. “And what would Dean Winchester want as extra credit?” You asked, raising an eyebrow, helping him up. You were so glad your training area is huge and most people are far from earshot, apart from the occasional grunts and groans. “You.” He simply said, looking down at you, before heading to the break area. What was that supposed to mean?

“You.”

It rang in your head the whole entire day up until you left the training room. “Earth to (y/n)?” Fingers were snapped on your face. You looked at Benny, one of your instructors and closest friend. “You’ve never had that face since—“ You gave him a sad smile that he knew he wouldn’t push. “Are you okay? We haven’t had that much Alphas in one batch.” The Alpha said. “Nothing that I haven’t experienced before.” You nodded and went back inside when you decided to stay, heading to the bag room and began punching. 

“You’ve been at it for 45 minutes.” You spun around. “Why the hell are you still here?” You asked. “I forgot something but when I heard you, thought you might need company with your distressed scent.” He answered. “You’re bleeding.” He said, walking closer and seeing your fists. You looked down at your hands and sighed, the bandage loosened. “Need help?” He asked. “I’m okay. Why’d you stay, Dean?” You asked, turning around to the table to aid your wound. “Are you upset about what I said awhile ago?” He asked. You shook your head. “I like to train too that’s why I’m here.” You said.

You felt the heat of his hand close to your back and you breathed deeply as his finger ran over your mark. He moved his hand quickly and you sighed. “I’m sorry, that was crossing the line.” He said and you turned around. He started to move back, as if giving you space. “You’re claimed—sorry, I didn’t—“ He stammered. “Was.” You cut off his ranting. He knitted his eyebrows. He hadn’t suspected that you’re an Omega, considering nowadays, omegas claim their Alphas.  

“Dean, what do you see in me?” You asked, seemingly sounding vulnerable. He raised an eyebrow. “You’re obviously beautiful and your scent just—it drove me nuts.” He said. “Dean, I’m damaged goods.” You said. He knitted his eyebrows, clenching his jaw. “You definitely are more damaged than me but that doesn’t make you damaged goods.” He replied, the Alpha in him coming out with this sense of protectiveness. “But if you don’t feel the same way I do, I’ll back off.” He said. “I do.” You found yourself mumbling. 

“Alright,” You started, the day good as it can ever get. You loved training outside. “Let’s start the course easy, finish it as fast as you can and throughout the day, I want you to beat it, at least once, understood?” “Yes, ma’am!” They scrambled as your ‘Alpha’ senses overpowered. You left the guys alone and you grabbed a water bottle. “(Y/n), someone’s here to talk to us.” Benny said, running to get you. You saw Commander Novak. Your expression was hard and unreadable even in the presence of an Alpha like him. “It’s nice to see you again, (y/l/n).” He said. “Whatever this is, I am done, and I’m not coming back.” You said, starting to walk away. 

“Crowley’s whereabouts is found.” He said. You clenched your jaw. “I don’t care.” You said. “I told you, she wont talk.” You heard Benny say before heading towards the group of people waiting for your instruction. 

You directed the men to their next training and sighed as you got a whiff of Novak. “You’re still here?” You asked through gritted teeth. “If you finish this mission, it will certainly be the last.” Your anger boiled over and you punched the table below you, almost splitting it in half. Novak didn’t flinch just as you suspected an Alpha like him wouldn’t. “I think that’s enough. Commander Novak, will all due respect, (y/n) and I lost our men and we won’t endure that again, it’s best you form a new team.” Benny said, escorting him off the grounds. “Ketch, please finish up with them.” You said as you passed by him. 

It hasn’t been a good day, and Novak appearing out of nowhere and asking you to come back was well to top it off. Heck you broke a table. “I’m sorry, (y/n), I tried my best to stop him from even entering.” Benny said as you both closed up for the day. “He was asking for too much.” He added. “It wasn’t your fault.” “Omega, he was talking about our unit, I know how painful it is.” He said, making sure no one was around to hear him. You sighed and nodded.

Dean’s POV

Everyone heard the distinct crack of wood and looking behind me, (y/n) was storming out of the grounds. Before Ketch notices, I was gone, I followed her. It was probably stepping my boundaries, but above all, I wanted to be there for her. It physically strained me when I caught her distressed scent, not one something I would even get from an Alpha. Who ever that guy was, brought nothing but bad news to her. I didn’t know where she went but after hearing the soft ring of gunshots, I knew she’d be somewhere in the range room. I didn’t want to startle her, if that was even possible, by closing the door a little louder. I saw her head tilt the slightest towards my direction.

I looked at her target and it had at least 5 right on the head and three on the chest, not missing any. “You should’t be in here, Dean, and you should be training.” She said, placing her gun down. I placed a hand on her shoulder and she sighed, slumping down. She unloaded her gun and instinctively backed up into me. “I thought you might want someone to talk to.” I said, watching her closely, inhaling her scent. 

A few seconds passed and I caught it. “You’re an omega.” I stated, barely a whisper, 

I wasn’t sure I said it. Her eyes slightly widened but her demeanor remained authoritative.

“And that doesn’t change the fact that I am your trainer and I don’t care if you’re an Alpha.” She replied. “And that—the way you talk, how you show yourself, is what caught my attention, aside from just how good you smelled.” I continued but not once showing some sort of hierarchy towards her. 

Your POV

His eyes darkened yet his features remained calm and collected, even his whole structure was. No Alpha that you didn’t know allowed you to boss them, especially not in this line of work, hence the suppressants. You obviously caught his scent, how it almost knocked you out with how good he smelled, you were attracted to him the way you were attracted to your late Alpha mate. 

“I just couldn’t help but get closer to you, (y/n), I’m drawn to you. But it will only be with your permission, but I’d be really great if I took you out.” He said. Your eyes glimmered with playfulness at that statement. “Like with a sniper or a date?” You joked. His green pools lightened, joy filling your chest as you saw him this lightness. “I think the latter is favorable.” He said, stepping closer. 

You drew in a breath, he somehow intoxicated you in a way you used to feel but it felt stronger, same yet different. 

“I’d love to.”

He had picked you up from your house about 2 hours later, you sighed and looked at yourself from the mirror, Am I ready? You asked yourself, it was rather, was your heart ready. Your thoughts were cut off by knocking on the door. You opened it and inhaling his scent instantly made butterflies go off in your stomach. His body was rigid and somewhat on the edge. “Come in.” You said and he nodded, stepping inside your humble home. 

“You didn’t use suppressants.” He said and you bit your lip. “No need to, right?” You asked and he nodded. To him, you looked so much more vulnerable but knew you weren’t, not at all. He breathed you in, feeling his body shudder with your presence. “Would you like to go now?” He asked and you shook your head, feeling it was a little bit too early. “Would you like something to drink?” You asked and he nodded and you prepared some coffee. 

You came back to see him looking at the framed photos on the wall. “We were in the same unit.” You whispered.  Dean turned at you, eyes soft. “You lost your Alpha there.” He said and you nodded, instinctively placing your hand where your faded mark was. You felt tears prick the sides of your eyes. He turned to you, cupping your cheek and wiping the stray tear you didn’t feel come down. 

“I couldn’t imagine the pain you’ve gone through, not only losing people but also losing your Alpha.” He said as he sipped his drink. “It was tough, it made me tougher.” You replied and he nodded. After finishing your drinks you stood up. “We don’t have to go today, you’re in distress.” He softly said and you smiled, shaking your head. “I’d want to.” You said, your tone giving him the unnecessary push. 

You smiled as a lovely lady took your orders. “This diner is nice.” You said, looking at your surroundings, mostly Betas and a couple of Omegas, and the lovely owner was a nice old lady, an Alpha, in fact. “I used to go here a long time ago with my family.” He said and you looked at him. “Then my mother died when I was 14, my father went to war a few years later. He—he never came back.” He continued. You sighed, understanding his loss. “It was me and Sammy from then on.” “You should be proud of yourself, you raised him well.” You said, reaching your hand to hold his.

He looked up and gave you a small smile, “I am.” Cradling your hand into his, feeling how soft, yet rough on the edges he was. “You built yourself up considering,” “That I’m an Omega?” You finished for him, he replied with his apologetic look. “My father was a colonel and my mother is major, and she’s an Omega too. It wasn’t hard to trust that their only Omega daughter would get up to the test.” You replied. He was in awe. “My mother despises and punishes whoever looks down upon an Omega. She’s just as strong as my Alpha father.” You said and he nodded. 

“I’m really enjoying my time with you, ‘Mega.” He said, mostly thinking to himself. “You too, Alpha.” You replied with a smile. Not realizing you can actually hear him he froze, looking up. “I—uh, didn’t mean to—“ 

The doors of the diner were roughly opened, and a few people screamed in shock as four men entered.

“Hands up! Nobody move!” 

You looked at Dean as you grabbed something in your bag, while the first guy looked behind him to his little friends, you tumbled from the seat to the floor and shot the first guy with a tranquilizer, his body slamming to the ground fast. You got up and punched the second guy, kicking his leg until he fell but the third guy pounced towards you, “Little Omega trying to pick a fight.” He grunted with a sinister smile, ready to tackle you down, whiffing your scent. You aimed your gun at the guy you had just kicked and shot him on the thigh. You ducked and spun around until you kicked the third guy down and immediately shooting him. The fourth guy grabbed your body, lifting you up, making you groan. You focused all your weight on your body and slammed down, taking the guy with you. You threw your head back, butting his head and shooting him on his stomach. 

You rolled yourself up, dusting your pants, it took you approximately 4 minutes and 35 seconds to get these guys down. Everyone was staring at you and the distinct noise of the siren and red and blue flashing lights in the background made you feel almost like a vigilante superhero. The cops talked to you and the owner of the diner thanked you profusely. You got out and leaned against Dean’s car, watching the police carry 4 robbers that you shot a paralyzing tranquilizers at. “I was hoping for less action tonight.” You commented, chuckling. 

“Well, I was hoping for more action tonight.” He joked, smirking at you. You chuckled, looking down at your feet, feeling your cheeks heat up almost instantly. You felt his fingers on your chin as he brought your face up to look at him. “Can you be anymore badass than that, ‘Mega?” Dean asked. You smiled but shook your head. “I just acted on instinct.” You said, eyes lingering towards his lips rather than his eyes, somehow his calm and protective smell was lingering on you. 

Suddenly, his lips were against yours, your eyes closing, leaning up, letting yourself get engulfed in your own little bubble. Dean pulled away and you looked directly into his eyes, a darker shade of green illuminated by the light. “I acted on instinct.” He whispered, biting his lower lip. He pressed you against his car, gasping as you felt the bulge hit your hip. “Fuck, Omega.” He muttered as he kissed you. “Alpha, let’s go?” You asked as the want—need started dropping down to your core, aroused by the moment and he growled, his body stiffening. 

You unlocked your door, feeling his breath against your neck as he trailed kisses, making you shudder in response. You closed your eyes, trying to concentrate. When the door was finally closed behind you, you turned around, pinning him against the door, kissing him. Dean chuckled, holding your hips. “‘Mega, gotta keep that guard down.” He said, kissing your cheek. He grabbed your thighs and lifted you up, making you yelp. 

He moved to the bedroom and slowly let you down, continuing to kiss you passionately. Dean placed your hands above your head pinning you down, your body arching up to him and he wrapped his other arm around your waist. “Dean,” You moaned. “What do you want, (y/n)?” He asked, looking deeply into your eyes. “You.” You replied. He tugged at the hem of your shirt, sliding it off your upper body then he started to undo your pants, sliding it off easily. 

“Want to see you too, Dean.” You shyly said and he nodded, lifting his shirt above his head. You were damn right about his chest. You didn’t even notice your hand trailing along his defined muscles. He breathed, rippling them. You unbuttoned his jeans and he kicked it off. “You’re gorgeous, Alpha.” You mumbled and he chuckled, grinding his body to you until he met your face, kissing you. “Let me be in control.” He said. 

You felt his hot lips on your neck, your collarbone, and then he had one breast in his mouth, the other being cherished by his soft hand. You were getting wetter, needing friction in between your legs with the way you were moving your thighs together. He moved his hand to part your legs. “Open them up, ‘Mega.” He groaned. The tone in his voice made you snap them open. “Fuck, Dean.” You moaned, eyes closing. He drew circles over your cloth covered core. Your pussy clenched wanting more from his naughty fingers. 

“Please, Alpha.” 

He smirked and pulled your underwear down and unclasping your bra off. He moved your legs up, kissing your inner thighs. “Fuck, that’s—“ You barely whispered before he delved right in. He attached his lips to your clit, sucking slightly. You instinctively closed your thighs and he hummed, sending vibrations up your body. He looked up, raising an eyebrow. “I said keep them open didn’t I?” He said and you slowly nodded. “Do I need to punish you, Omega?” He asked and you smiled small, shaking your head. 

“Good girl.” He murmured and if he didn’t see you shiver, lips parting. He smirked and licked through your folds, sucking your clit and fucking you with his tongue. You couldn’t handle it. Your hands were on his hair, pulling him closed if that was possible. He moaned against you and before you can warn him, your walls clenched, coming apart. “Fuck, Alpha—shit.” You almost screamed. He lapped your pussy like it was the last thing he can have, riding your orgasm as it lasted for god knows how long. 

But before you can get over your high, he thrusts a finger in, a second following right after. He pumped his fingers in and out of you, various noises leaving your parted mouth. Your hands flew to your sides, gripping the sheets in your fists as you hips started to move on its own, you orgasm wanting to get released. You eyes were shut as you felt yourself uncoiling. “Dean—jesus, fuck!” You screamed as you came, your legs shaking. 

His smug face came into view, kissing you up your stomach until he was kissing your lips, making you taste yourself. “You’re very tasty, ‘Mega.” He whispered, his eyes dark and lustful, it wasn’t hard to notice his cock hitting your thigh either. “Fuck me please, Dean. Please, Alpha.” You begged, getting aroused as he looked at you like the true Alpha that he is. He lifted himself up, grabbing your legs to rest right against his chest. 

You felt the tip of his cock enter you. You didn’t even get to touch his guy down there. Without warning, he thrusts into you. “God, (y/n), taking my cock so well.” He groaned. You yelped and your body shuddered. “Your pussy’s so tight around my cock.” He mumbled as he pulled his hips back before slamming back in again.

He set out a vigorous pace, profanities and moans leaving each of your mouths. His hips clicking into rhythm as you moved yours with him. 

“Fuck, (y/n), gunna make me come like that, sweetheart.” 

His hips started to falter as your walls clenched around his cock, getting close to your third orgasm for the night. You moved your fingers to your clit, rubbing just as fast as cock delved into you. You groaned. “Dean, gunna come—please, Alpha.” You moaned. “Fuck—fuck, (y/n), I won’t be able to stop myself.” He said, looking directly into your eyes. “Don’t stop, Alpha, want your knot.” You almost begged. “Fuck, ‘Mega.” He grunted and you can feel the swell on the base of his cock as he knotted you. You instinctively moved your head to the side and his instincts kicked in delving in and biting right beside your mark, claiming you. 

You reached forward opposite of him and bit down between his neck and shoulder, his cock spilling into you as you claimed him, your new Alpha. 

You let your legs fall to either side of him and he kissed you softly, both of you deeply sated. Your body hummed as your orgasm waved, your marks tingling on your shoulder, shaking as you two came down from your blissful high from pleasure. . When his swelling went down, he stood up, getting a damp cloth from your bathroom and helped you clean up. 

He climbed into bed right after, grabbing the covers from the floor to cover you both up, pulling your warm naked body against his. He kissed where his mark was placed and you sighed deeply, sinking yourself into his embrace. “My Omega.” He whispered and you smiled. “My Alpha.” You replied and he tightened his hold. 

“Thank you for saving me tonight.” Dean murmured after awhile. You giggled. “Am I your knight in shining armor?” You joked. He chuckled and you felt him nod. “I’m surprised no one has claimed you.” He said and you turned your body to look at him, him whining at the loss of your heat. “You thought I was an Alpha and if I didn’t use suppressants, they see my mark and back off. Not a lot of people knew my old Alpha was gone, that bond broke.” You answered and he tucked a piece of hair behind your ear. “I promise to live up to him.” Dean said, caressing your cheek. 

“You already are, Alpha.”

Taglist:

@andkatiethings @kpoplover1306xdepressedgirl315 @sallyp-53  @ilovefanfic86 @deviljoonie @incorrect-quoted @malindacath @aunty-peggy @adoptdontshoppets @brindz30 @myloveofdean @miss-kristendior 

[cyanpeacock]

Anyway because I’m still feeling and processing my rage about Dr. Lecter I’m going to rant.

I’m an emotional guy. I didn’t have an inherent understanding of like, facial expressions, to begin with, but emotions, yes. As of this date, I have studied facial expressions very hard, and learned to recognize them, and more complicated combinations. 

What I read from that guy, I did not like.

It was literally, like-- “Mmm. Fascinating.” and I know I’ve said that already, but it’s still causing me like, genuine distress to keep seeing that fucking face behind my eyes again.

That was like, oh, this one is obviously unwell. I’m just going to watch, and see what happens. 

Like... in some cases, that reaction is all that can happen. Sometimes a person is too unwell to accept help. If that’s the case, it should be delivered with empathy, or at least compassion. 

I saw no capacity for empathy in that guy. I saw this like, weird delight in my suffering? It was like the more upset I got with him, the more satisfied he seemed. He was closed, aloof, interested in watching a mind devolve. He wanted to observe people getting worse. I got the impression he went into psychology because just wanted to look very closely at what the human mind does when it’s “sick,” and that he’d never been unwell or in that kind of pain himself.

I went in confused and begging for help, and he asked me what he could do for me. I asked him to tell me what was available, because he’s the doctor. He should be able to offer choices for the patient. 

He did not tell me a word about what support was available.

He did not acknowledge that I was becoming increasingly manic/psychotic, and should have been put on a ward to be supervised through my illness. 

Retrospectively, like, I’m realizing I literally cannot see the guy again. I’m furious. I’m wounded. I’d literally stand up in the case review, point at him, and call him a bastard, or maybe even just walk out the second I saw his face, it’s that intense. 

I hate the guy. I despise him. I hate him even more after hearing (several hands removed) about a story another of his patients shared with a party who shall not be named. 

Alright, I finished the above paragraph and got angry enough to write an actual serious complaint email to the MHS trust for my area. I am emotionally very tired now. That fucking sucked, but at least something might get done about the bastard.

I went there. All like, “I dare to ask he be removed from his post.” Which, well, it’s probably not happening, but I hear a lot of people do not like him. Maybe my email will be the one that gets a bigger dog to say “alright, buddy, it’s time you were gone.” I don’t know.

Also took the opportunity to ask about securing local authority funding for me to keep seeing my private counsellor, so I don’t bottle all my shit up, or just blog about it with no like, professional response, and wind up trying to kms Again(tm). 

All a bunch of fucking maybes.

Really though, fuck Dr. Lecter. I hope he trips on a weird stick and faceplants into dog shit.

[xtattlecrimex-blog]

Speaking Of Pretentious Pseudo-Intellectuals:

Let’s talk about internet psychologist @ravenstag-wytch​ who thinks she knows everything because she took a psych-101 course once and likes to use every cliche trope in the book to “internet diagnose” people with “problems” which if she knew anything about psychology at all she’d know she couldn’t do. So, here’s the little DM she sent me because well...she practically BEGGED me for attention while claiming I’M an attention whore, weird right? Here we go. 

I find this message interesting for a few reasons. 

Look at how she starts this whole thing like she’s about to write a fucking thesis, that’s how we already know we are dealing with someone who’s about to say a bunch crap that they have absolutely know education in. 

1. There are posts on your blog in which you rant and rave about people not listening to you or reading your posts correctly, yet it’s very clear that you didn’t read mine. I never said that you said no other fandom was like this; I was simply pointing out the fact that all fandoms have the crazies (because it’s true).

Yes this is pretty much what the fandom uses to dismiss my argument they never read the rest of what I say which funnily enough despite all her accusations against me she still didn’t manage to see. Even in the original DM I sent her. Where I clarified that, I know there are crazies in every fandom that was never the point I was trying to make. What I was saying is the majority of the Hannibal fandom is crazy and that’s the difference. In larger fandoms, the crazy people are the minority not the majority so they can be more easily ignored. That’s not the case with the Hannibal fandom, and as such, the majority represents the minority who are mostly good people. Weird that she couldn’t finish reading all of that before jumping down my throat right? Moving on. 

I’ve been participating in fandoms for about 15 years, so I know from experience. If anything, your response showed just how quick you are to jump on the defense, to the point where you don’t bother to finish listening to the other party. 

Not true I read all of what you said and what they have to say but it’s very clear from this response you did not finish reading what I told you so you are literally projecting your own problems onto me and acting superior about it. Also if people are “experts” based on how long they’ve “been in fandoms” I’ve been doing it longer so I’m more of an “expert”. Just to clarify this is sarcasm, how long anyone has or hasn’t been in “Fandoms” doesn’t matter. 

These are bad debate skills, and since you seem to have made an entire hobby out of being argumentative on the internet, you should perhaps brush up on debate etiquette; you simply look like a fool. Perhaps you know this, which is why you chose to PM me instead of reblog and make your defense public. 

Bad debate skills? How? I read all of what you said, you didn’t read all of what I said before writing me an essay about everything wrong with me. I’m pretty sure you’re the one with bad debate skills. Also what debate were we even having? This wasn’t a debate. I thought she misunderstood my argument and my point about the majority of the fandom representing the group which makes the normal people in the group look bad. This isn’t a debate, why is she classifying it as such? To make her feel better? To make her feel like she won? Yeah probably. Also I didn’t reply in public because I thought it was more polite to discuss it privately not because I’m a coward or my only hobby is arguments on the internet? That’s a weird conclusion to jump to. 

 2. ...speaking of. I see another, quite long post on the “issue” of the Hannibal fandom being “obsessive”. I find this to be really interesting as well, considering that it’s very obvious that you are inherently obsessed with the Hannibal fandom (and in quite a negative way). You have put in more effort into your posts than some of us have on actually contributing to the fandom. 

I type 90 words per minute anything you’ve seen me write took me 5 minutes at most and 99% of it is copy and pasted from things I wrote years ago and are being cross posted on this blog to get traffic to my website. So...really it’s not taking as much time as you think it’s taking. 

I also see you make YouTube videos doing the same - again, a clear display of obsessive behaviour. That’s quite hypocritical of you, no matter how you look at it. 

Have you watched any of these videos? No? Because the vast majority of these videos talk about people in the fandom running scams, preying on young girls, and stalking celebrities. The vast majority of the videos I have done are not about the show, not about the “general fandom” they are about criminals in the fandom and the crimes they are committing. Now I’m really sorry if it’s “obsessive” to want criminals to be held accountable for crimes they are committing but if it is, then I I guess I’m just a bad person. I’m assuming that you haven’t watched any videos or looked at one or two titles if that’s what you think my channel is about. Also, that channel has existed for I think 5 years? So those videos have gone up over a LONG PERIOD OF TIME not a week. That’s pretty normal non obsessive behavior. Might want to figure out the difference. 

And as an aside... I had the wonderful opportunity of attending a Hannibal convention for the very first time this year, and I was overwhelmingly surprised at how incredibly lovely the people in this fandom are. Many times, I mentioned that I’d never been part of such a frictionless, bright fandom full of caring and just overall wonderful people. 

Just because you’ve never had the experience I have that means I must be lying and it’s not true nor could it have possibly happened. Very mature outlook there. You are “sorry” I had this experience because your very small, only ever attended one convention with cult members was “normal” and “fun”. Except I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that if you found these people NORMAL and inviting you are exactly the type of crazy person I’m talking about and have been all along so lol why am I even trying? 

So many people have said the same. I’m actually very sorry that you haven’t had the same experience. Regarding your claims about sanity/mental illness... First, I see no facts; only opinions. Please present your proof if you are going to argue a point (this goes back to debate skills - innocent until proven guilty and all that), and also be sure to include numbers since you are saying such things as “the MAJORITY”, etc. My experiences with this fandom have been exactly the opposite as yours.

Okay so now she’s repeated herself, and once again she’s trying to make the claim that because she’s never SEEN this happen it couldn’t have possibly happened and is demanding proof which I have all over my website and youtube channel which she’d know if she’d ever watched the videos but she hasn’t. She assumed the content of the videos, then assumed I was lying or something without bothering to do the research because her experience (and this is where the narcissism comes in) differs, she can’t even step outside of herself to see maybe she’s wrong. 

 And I hate to say this, but the only negative I’ve ever experienced in this fandom has been this one... I’ve never encountered someone who is simply so hateful about tearing people down who are just trying to enjoy something (fandoms are an extracurricular activity). If you dislike the fandom so much, just leave it alone. ‘

If you dislike what I’m saying so much how about you leave me alone? Furthermore if you were paying attention and I know you weren’t because you expect people to read what you have to say but don’t bother to listen to them, is that my major complaint with the fandom is how they let scam artists get away with scamming and sexual predators get away with finding victims that’s like 90% of the complaint which you’d know if you were actually paying attention to anything you saw me upload or write. 

On the other hand, you have Mads Mikkelsen who attended RDC several times (you know, despite the fandom being “dead”) who continually says he would love to continue Hannibal (in fact, he and I spoke about this in person - don’t worry, I didn’t stalk him. It was at a PAID meet and greet at the con). Even during interviews for other movies and works he’s doing, if Hannibal is ever brought up he talks about how he loves the Fannibals and the show, and he would make time for it in a heartbeat if the opportunity comes up. This is a drastically different picture than, say, the Sherlock fandom (and I’m not trying to pick on them, it’s just what came to mind based on actual public evidence). So yeah.

Oh because celebs don’t publicly talk about it that means they aren’t bothered by it? Really? That’s your claim here because Mads Mikkelsen has never mentioned it he must have never been affected by it? Are you freaking serious right now? Costas Mandylor who still attends conventions to meet Saw fans has had problems with many stalkers and has never spoken up about it publicly. The only reason people know is because they know who these stalkers were in the fandom, by name, because they made themselves obvious. Think you have no idea what you are talking about if you think that the only proof of people being bothered by stalkers is if they mention it publicly. God DAMN you have a narrow minded view of the world don’t you? 

I guess I just don’t understand your perspective based on the evidence supplied. I also don’t understand your very hypocritical nature, nor why you seem to be such an angry, hateful person. I feel sorry for you, living with all that negative energy. 😞

No actually you don’t understand my perspective based on the 2 seconds of “research” you actually did. The evidence is there, the proof is there, I have put it up and hilariously enough you’ve been to my youtube channel you’ve watched nothing, you’ve decided your opinion based on I don’t know, vague skimming you complain that I don’t listen to you or read what you have to say when I have done that, and then you pull the bullshit “pretending to care” when you don’t really care. It’s condescending and sickening. You are literally every problem I have with this fandom. The projection, the immaturity, the unwilling to listen to anyone who doesn’t parrot back what you hear from your echo chamber. You are 100% the type of Fannibal I have been describing this entire time and you fail to realize it because you are just as insane as the people you are attempting to defend. 

So, sweetie, did I give you enough attention? Though I doubt you’ll read literally any of this since you put SO MUCH EFFORT Into trying to understand me before. (That was sarcasm it’s clear you are too dumb to understand that) and for the record I’ve politely approached several people like I have you on here to get a better understanding but you are legit THE ONLY PERSON who reacted this way. Maybe you need to consider that, sweetie. Hope this is enough for you because I don’t intend to give you more. 

[itslottiehere]

Just saw the anon saying about their Uni.

I'm in the same situation. I want to do my bachelor degree in psychology journalism and English lit. And I'm a bio student, but im not that interested in bio actually, I took that to avoid math.

So now my parents want me to do biotechnology or BZC (bachelor's in botany zoology and chem) . Actually they are not happy even with that . They are mad at me for not choosing math , they wanted me to become software engineer. But I hate math and choose bio. So they almost want to disown me.

And atleast now they want me to study what they want. And also from the place where I'm from we don't have a lot of opportunities to do jobs of what I like. So they are saying to study what they think it's good to me if I want to be successful . I can't convince them no matter what. They are so determined and I have no other choice.

One more shitty thing is , I lost my opportunity to go into my dream Uni. And that's just because of my laziness and negligence. I hate my self for that. If got there it would be so good for me, I would happily live away from my family.

Life sucks. Sorry for the rant.

to the uni anon ^^ just know you’re not alone.

hi angel, i’m so sorry to read this. i can’t imagine the kind of pressure you’re feeling, and i know no amount of “i’m sorry” can come close to make it better. just please know that you’re not alone, and if you’re ever in need to talk, i’m right here.

i’m pretty sure your parents think they have your best interests at heart, even if acting like they do isn’t helping at all. i’m sure you’ve already tried talking to them and letting them know what’s in your heart, and i’m sorry if they didn’t listen.

and for your dream uni, i’m sure you tried your best, and even if it didn’t go as planned, it’s fine. things happen.

i hope everything will be alright. if you’re ever in need to talk to someone, you know where to find me. hope you’re having a lovely day dear <3

[ontherun-writing]

[imitation - 1/2] Elijah Kamski/Reader

A/N: a little wordy, not much young!kamski romance but more like sexual tension and you getting manipulated; ah yes fun-- it’s more about the time he developed an android who could pass the turing test. this conference is prob wrong but ehhhh

this is just me ranting about the turing test and androids tbh

Summary: With the rise of androids, you find yourself in midst of making history as you are chosen by Elijah Kamski to work with him and develop an android who can pass the turing test. Despite being younger than you, he’s proven to be a force of power that has you struggling to find out ways (and reasons) to avoid being wrapped around his pinky.

It was near the end of your first year of college when you turned on the news, expecting another scandal about politicians or a news story about the recent climate change but instead learning that androids now existed. You continued to listen. You glanced down at your statistics homework for only a brief moment before scooting it to the side; you haven’t really touched it for the past hour, and you doubted you would especially now.

You weren’t the only one enthralled by the newscast; everyone in the room looked up from what they were doing to learn that the creator of the most advanced technology ever known to man, the man that will propel the world into another technological revolution was a sixteen year old. No, in fact, you quickly searched up on your phone, the kid wasn’t going to be sixteen until July.

There he was now, on the screen. A scruffy-looking fifteen-year old (three years younger than you, if you did the math right) with a hoodie and jeans was currently on his way to the grand opening of his self-made company Cyberlife. You imagine if he actually dressed up, if he wanted to because he was powerful enough to wear whatever he wanted without repercussions, he would actually look like the successful entrepreneur/scientist he was. His face was more mature that you thought. Confident, mature: the face of a man who knew what he created and what that would get him.

You never imagined actually living through history, but as you sat there, wondering how the existence of intelligent robots who looked exactly like humans would shape your future, it seemed evident that history was being made.

Out of all the things the introduction of androids changed in your life, you did not think that one of them would be you changing your major to psychology. It was a hard-earned change, something you had to convince your parents about, something you had to convince yourself about since you were so intent on becoming something else. But you had a feeling that the emergence of something as great as androids was a sign. You were by no means superstitious, but the existence of androids opened so many doors and offered you opportunities no one else but you, a college student, a person at the place where science flourished and education changed constantly, would have. Adding on to that, the question of their intelligence and the possibility of androids being more than just machines infected you with a passion that surpassed anything you ever dreamed of.

It was your fervent dedication to android psyche and learning about the way they ticked that got you into the Cyberlife research position your last year of college. Or so, that was what Elijah Kamski said when you finally met him face-to-face at the introduction of your research. You were twenty-one, he was barely eighteen. But he was the one that was leading you, and other much more qualified and big wig scientists and researchers on a tour of Cyberlife. The ride up the elevator itself took more than three minutes, and that alone told you enough about how important and powerful Cyberlife came to be in just two years.

“Cyberlife is holding about five-thousand androids per unit,” Elijah explained, walking them through the white themed halls that housed newly-made and often currently making androids. “We expect to be able to expand them to more than ten-thousand by the end of 2025, if all goes well.”

The people around you chuckled, even though there wasn’t really anything funny about the success he so obviously exuded, making your eyes dart to the side. The older man to your right, with the dignified lab coat and ID tag that you saw to present his several PhDs, was much more intelligent, and he seemed to agree the way he avoided meeting your gaze and focused solely on talking to anyone else but you. When you had introduced yourself to him out of common courtesy, the best you had gotten was a polite greeting, but the abruptness of the conversation left you stung.

The group eventually had the tour of Cyberlife, and now all of you were being crowded into a large conference room. Great, you thought dryly, feeling the implicit exclusion from the rest of the research team as they split off into groups of specialties. A few electrical engineers, a few PhD holders of technology and robotics, a huge group of biomedical engineers, and then… you, the psychologist major. There were most likely other psych PhD’s in the room, but you had no time to search for them when Elijah began the meeting.

You thought you were clear of dumb arguments when you got up this high on the ladder rung but evidently, that was not the case. Or maybe you were being too rough-- sure, you disagreed with them, but it didn’t really warrant your frustration, did it?

“The androids are intelligent,” one of the engineers argued, tapping the document in front of him. “I don’t see the need for us to develop superfluous components when we could just make improve on their strengths: their ability to do human-work.”

“I agree, the idea of developing their minds, it doesn’t seem reasonable-- what if they become too intelligent?”

The comment threw the conference into a loud murmur, and you felt words threatening to boil over. Did no one in this room care that they were on the verge of creating an intelligent life form? Was all they cared about was control and superiority? There was always a risk with every action, but if you believed, as rare as it was, that machines could… be alive, for a lack of better words, then they could feel intentions and not blame humans. With androids came android laws, and they would need to be protected, but right now the development of androids was more important.

You wanted to say something, speak your opinion, but there didn’t seem to be a time where your opinion could make a stand. You watched as Elijah, who had been quiet thus far, stand up. He switched to another image, the one of his latest android-- a pretty, blond, blue-eyed android-- and turned back toward the conference. “What of the turing test, then?” He said, scanning his eyes across the room. You tensed in your seat as his gaze lingered on you.

“I had thought our research was meant to bring useful data to the table. The test is subjective, is it not?” The older man with the PhD you had noticed before had the gall to have an exasperated tone, and something in you just snapped.

“Yes, the turing test is subjective.” You said firmly, leaving no room for interruptions, “But in this case, where we’re attempting to give androids the ability to be more than just a machine, the turing test is the best assessment in order to improve their abilities and their presence in our society.” You turned to the scientist, maintaining your neutral tone as you spoke calmly, “If the question of the day is ‘what can we do to expand android technology and better the uses of androids,’ then improving their sense of humanity will allow them to blend in and truly assimilate into society.”

“...is what I think,” you ended weakly, noticing the silence that followed.

You felt your heart leap up to your throat when you heard name being called.

“Please,” Elijah said, nodding toward your direction. You discretely wiped the sweat collecting on your palms on your pants. “Your input is intriguing.” Elijah watched you, unfaltering, and you felt big yet small at the same time as you became the center of attention. “What else do you think?”

Avoiding the gazes of anyone else in the room, you took an inaudible breath in before saying, “I do believe we can and should program an android to pass the turing test.” You looked deliberately at Elijah and continued as if all eyes weren’t on you. “If these androids are going to be welcomed into our homes and society and truly integrate, they will need to be able to indistinguishable from a human. Surely, we have to admit that other robots online such as ‘cleverbot’ is anything except unnerving despite the fact that it can appear as human 59% of the time, according to studies. It is only reasonable that our androids should at the very least, pass the turing test, and be way above the 75% mark if we are to ever have androids be a greater part of our lives yet also achieve something that has not been done yet.”

And there it was, the adrenaline in your veins, the rapid heartbeat in your best; when you started, there was little chance of stopping.

“In addition,” you blazed through, words leaving your lips eloquently, “an android who can pass the turing test will most likely further its usage in society by following orders that are not specifically programmed in its database because it can learn human mannerisms and adapt to situations. Androids need to be fluid, lest we want them to stick to menial jobs. Don’t we want them to understand us? Don’t we want them to be intelligent?”

“Don’t we want them alive? I--”

You faltered, stumbling over your wording. Alive? Alive? No, these people didn’t want living beings, they wanted-- “That is to say,” you finished, “machines that can help us in any situation that calls for them?”

“That, ladies and gentlemen,” Elijah said, letting out a quiet breath of laughter before continuing, “is and was one of my suggestions for today’s research topic.”

“However, if the group is not in consensus then we have no choice but to choose a different component to discuss.” Thoroughly embarrassed at being shut down after your outburst, you gripped the arms of the chair and looked at the desk, boring a hole in it. You knew you should have just kept your mouth shut-- “As for you…”

You spun your neck around and Elijah was behind you; your heart rate spiked again as he leaned down and smiled.

You didn’t know his eyes were teal.

“You and I… I feel like we’ll work well together. You’ll be my research partner for the turing test,” Elijah told you, then quickly leaned away and continued the conference and presentation as if he didn’t just extend an exclusive position to work with him to you. To you.

You hardly paid attention to the eyes that flickered toward your direction with how loud your blood was rushing in your ears.

The sun had set an hour ago, and the rest of the conference group had left long ago. As you stood in front of the android creator’s office door, you hesitated to knock. One, the room was dark and he probably wasn’t even in there. But... the situation from earlier kept replaying in your head, and for some reason, you struggled to provide an ample reason to why Elijah chose you, out of all people, that would convince you to go home, shut up, and just be happy. You wanted to deserve your position, and as much as you wanted it to be, you wanted him to hire you because of your mind, and not because… anything else. Convenience? Were you easy picking?

...Sex?

He was the strongest man in the country as of right now-- you rolled your eyes at your thoughts-- if he wanted to have sex, he wouldn’t choose you and he wouldn’t need to go to this elaborate ruse anyways. Deprecating, but hey, you were realistic. You were attractive, sure, but not drop-dead gorgeous.

“Are you going to come in any time soon?”

You retracted your hand from the door the moment you heard Elijah’s voice who was way too close and completely unexpected. You glanced at him and then at the door. “I thought you were--” You flushed red in embarrassment, as you were wan to do the entire day. “Well, I didn’t think it was right of me to enter your office without you in there.”

At your words, Elijah waved his hands to present himself, to which you quirked a smile at. “Here I am,” he said, amusement laced in his words as he opened the door to his office.

A large aquarium sat behind his desk, and the lights from the tank was the only way you could see where you were stepping. Shelves stood against each side of the wall, holding books and trinkets alike that you could not identify. Above, you could see lights installed, but as you watched Elijah lean on his desk, making no movement to turn the lights on, you guessed that your conversation with him would have to stay in the dark.

“Tell me,” Elijah began, “what brings you to my office?”

“I have one question,” you said. “I hope you have enough time.” Elijah motioned his hand for you to continue. “I wanted to ask you why exactly you hired me for this job,” you said uneasily, “why you chose me to be part of the research team, and-- and why you made me your research partner. I think we both know you could have anyone to work for you,” you said dryly, making Elijah chuckle at your bluntness. You crossed your arms and leaned against his desk, eyeing him warily. “You’re a successful man. I could even call you the man of the century. There’s no way you couldn’t just get what you want; you wouldn’t need to do anything besides existing.”

“I suppose there’s a difference between working for me versus working with me,” he replied enigmatically, walking around the room. “If I told you your mind intrigued me,” he said, tracing his finger on the books he kept out of antiquity, “would you believe me then?”

“You could have a multitude of doctors and professors with minds that could do something I would struggle with for hours,” you answered tiredly. You were winded by the intimidation they exuded from just being around them. Try as you might, they had no desire to talk to you, a person whose education amounted to nothing compared to them. There were nice ones, sure, ones that were willing to educate you, but it was still known that you were out of your league. “I-- I don’t mean to undermine your decision,” you said, dropping your eyes demurely, “but even I… have a hard time understanding your decision. What makes me… any different?”

At this, Elijah turned his head toward you and paused. You swallowed, not sure why the look he gave you, a mixture of amusement and something else, made your heart pick up the pace. He breathed deeply through his nose before continuing as cryptically as always. “In this world, do you think androids are well-accepted?” He asked you.

“Do I think they’re liked?” You furrowed your brows and spoke, “Sure. To an extent. You definitely did your job when you manufactured them to be useful and cost-efficient for the most part, so they helped out in families that could afford it. But the increase in unemployment is still hard for people to swallow.” You wet your lips before continuing quietly, “The number jumped to 20% just yesterday.”

Elijah looked at you in a way that set you on edge. He was compliant with your answer, but it wasn’t satisfactory, apparently, not to his standards. “Yes,” he said, “androids are useful, and we made them in our image.” He walked past you, around his desk before settling in his armchair. “But how do you think we treat them?”

“I-- well, we-- we don’t really know how to treat them,” you stammered, confusion swirling as you tried to decipher what he wanted you to say. “A lot of people are confused because they look like us so much, but at the same time--” you froze, and Elijah nodded slightly for your to finish your thought. You spoke slowly, “At the same time… they don’t treat androids well-- they treat them like…”

“Machines.”

Elijah looked pleased, and you barely stopped a strangled noise from rising up from your throat. You had to look away, knowing your face would only show how embarrassingly thrilled you were to have his approval. You were not, in any way, desperate enough to seek compliments, but… after feeling like your opinion didn’t matter and that you were never good enough in face of greater people, having the so-called ‘man of the century’ send such a look your way made you flustered. It was hard enough not to preen like a peacock.

“In your application to be part of our research,” Elijah said, pulling up your papers with a swipe of his hand on the holographic screen, “you wrote a small thesis regarding androids.” His face lit up by the soft light of the hologram, he looked up at you through the document. “You were only one who wrote about the possibility of their humanity.”

You mouth went dry. “What-- how was--” You cleared your throat and started again, impatient with yourself, “How was I the only one who wrote that? Isn’t the existence of androids-- is that not the beginning of the possibility that there may be the creation of another intelligent being?”

“I think you overestimate science,” he said, your name rolling across his tongue like he was eating candy. “These people may be interested in finding a breakthrough, but they’re more invested in their success as a scientist. Their status as an intellectual that has been elevated by being involved with me, and they wouldn’t dare say something that remotely disagreed with my ideas.” He rolled his eyes at the mention of brown-nosing, and for a moment you were reminded that he was only eighteen. Eighteen and powerful as hell, you thought, wondering how you got yourself into this.

“They’re afraid.”

Elijah took a sharp intake and stood up suddenly, making you flinch as you curled your hand around your wrist and pleaded for your heartbeat to stop quickening. “You, on the other hand, you’re actually interested in androids. Androids and their potential for humanity.” He continued, “I’ve said it repeatedly that androids are only machines, so there would be no reason for you to think that I would ever agree with you, but you wrote about it anyway. Defended your thesis and here you are,” he stepped closer to you, “with me, on the verge of another breakthrough.”

You breathed in deeply when he stood in front of you, shadows shrouding his face with the blue glow in the background. He looked much older like this, and if it were possible, even more intimidatingly out of your league. In more ways than one. “I… I look forward to working with you,” you stammered, not really knowing what you were saying except that it was what you should say in these situations.

At this, Elijah smiled and backed off, turning on the lamp at his desk, finally bringing some light in the room. “Your expertise in psychology, or more specifically, the human psyche will be greatly beneficially to our research as we try to have androids imitate human behavior,” he continued without pause, making you feel like you imagined the predatory gaze and suffocating gaze.

“Yes,” you could only reply. “I hope I can contribute as much as I can.” You glanced at your phone and began to excuse yourself, heading toward the door with quick steps.

“I wonder what you’ll think of this later, the making of androids,” Elijah said airily as you reached the door. “I wonder if you know how your words will shape the world.”

You opened your mouth to question him further. What did he mean? Surely, he didn’t believe that you, a fourth-year college student, could possibly have an impact on anything. “I-- The turing test would have still been your main objective with or without me here,” you said, though a prickly feeling crawled up your back anyways. You resisted the need to shiver.

Instead of responding, he merely smiled with a meaning you couldn’t decipher. Perturbed, you told him to have a good night. As you closed the door behind you, you heard him say lastly, “Looking forward to working with you.”

You had a feeling that you were biting more than you could chew, but you couldn’t understand why.

[humansofhds]

Edwin Alanís-García, MTS ’19

“Ever since I was little I did nothing but read, and I always think, what’s the point of acquiring knowledge if you’re not going to share it and exchange it or try to dissect it with the help of others.”

Edwin is an MTS ‘19 candidate studying philosophy and religion and a writer of poetry and fiction.

Learning to Know

I’m from a small town about an hour-and-a-half outside of Chicago. It’s part of the suburbs, but it is on the edge, so it's very rural. The road leading up to my parents' house is just off the interstate and it's mostly surrounded by cornfields and soybean fields and farm houses. It’s a small and not very diverse town. Population of about 5,000. When we were growing up it was predominately white—about 99 percent white. Our family was part of the other one percent. But we were all working class, that was the one thing in common.

Both of my parents are from rural Mexico. My dad first came to the U.S. as a kid, as a migrant farm worker, and then as a young man living in New York he learned how to weld. In Mexico my mom worked as a receptionist and as a cashier at a grocery store. My dad's training led him to become a union pipe fitter/welder. It was a grueling and dangerous job, but it was extraordinarily well-paying for an immigrant. That's what enabled our family to live very comfortably.

In coming here, I think my family was trying to leave their old world behind. And it wasn't a bad world they were leaving, at least in comparison to small-town Illinois. But one side effect was that it was very isolating to be in America. Our household is like taking a slice out of rural Northern Mexico and dropping it in the middle of small-town Illinois. We couldn't assimilate well, which I'm rather grateful for despite its drawbacks. There's a trope in many immigrant narratives that the first generation kid has trouble learning English. For me it was the opposite.

I started to teach myself how to read when I was around three years old. No one thought there was anything strange about it. It wasn’t until recently that I realized it was unusual. It eventually became one of the many reasons I've always felt like an outsider. One of my most important memories from elementary school was being asked to sit in the corner during recess because I was the only kid who did our first writing assignment correctly. The teacher had to redo the lesson for everyone else. It wasn’t a punishment, but it sure felt like it.

Even the way I speak, when I tell people where I’m from, they say they can’t hear a Chicago accent. I think it has to do with the way I acquired language, which was mostly through an old dictionary and an encyclopedia set my parents got from a grocery store. There was nothing else to do in our town, so I just stayed inside and read. Evidently that did something—for better and for worse.

Leaving Home

As an undergrad I studied philosophy and psychology. I probably would have been better suited for English, which was surprisingly one of my least favorite subjects in school, along with math. I was definitely more interested in the sciences, especially biology and astronomy. It’s kind of painful to say, but coming to literature wasn’t really my dream, but it feels like where I was rightfully placed. I didn't view language as what I was passionate about and loved. I think my success with it was more a product of a weird background and a disordered mind.

After undergrad I did a few years of grad school in philosophy, but after that I didn’t really know where to go. Job opportunities in my hometown were very bleak. They're still bleak. People kept telling me that I should apply to MFA programs in writing, so I applied and got in to a few schools. I was totally shocked. That moment was the beginning of the biggest shift in my life. Where I went to undergrad was a campus literally surrounded by cornfields. Then suddenly I was living in Brooklyn and going to school in Manhattan.

Emerging from the subway for the first time, I had never seen anything like it—so many people. I have bad anxiety in big groups, so it took a while but eventually I got used to it. Culturally, though, the biggest adjustment was class. The cost of living in New York is astronomical. While I was studying there, maybe 150 students passed through our program and out of those students only about 3-4, including myself, came from a working class or low income background. It was the first time ever in my life I met people who said that they had gone to Ivy League schools for undergrad. I always thought that was something that only happened on TV or in books. I had to learn that there was nothing mythical about it.

Cambridge is the quintessential college town, and I feel very at ease here. Growing up, my world was a dictionary and an encyclopedia set, and now I have access to the world’s largest university library system. I can socialize and have a nightlife if I want, and be socially active, or I can keep to myself and camp out in the library if I need to. It feels like I have more options here to go my own way.

Getting to HDS

There are three things that led me here. The first was my general interest in philosophy, especially epistemology of religion. Ever since I was little I never had faith. I went to church but I didn’t understand why we were going to church. It felt like religion was one of the rare domains in which it's explicitly acceptable to believe in something against the evidence. This isn’t to say that reason and argumentation are not used to defend religion, especially with philosophers like Aquinas and especially with contemporary analytic philosophers of religion like Alvin Plantinga. They give well-reasoned arguments for religious belief. Even though I don’t agree with them, it's interesting to hear their approach because I'm more in line with that tradition. But what I am fascinated by are the traditions that don’t follow that path, that say there is something other than just evidence and reason, like experience and faith. Views like pragmatism and fideism. I'm not really on board with these views, but I think they say something important about the nature of belief. Not just religious belief, but belief in general.

What brought me here on a more personal level happened when I was doing research for my MFA thesis. I was researching the city of Monterrey in Northern Mexico, the region where most of my family is from, when I found out that the first European colonial settlers there were conversos, or Sephardic Jews who had converted to Christianity. I knew nothing about this history and no one in my family knew about it, either. I wanted to learn more about this vein of Jewish history because after DNA testing it was confirmed that my family has a significant percentage of Sephardic ancestry. So, part of what I am here to study is this hidden history of people navigating multiple worlds: There’s the Jewish thread that's been partially erased throughout history, and the indigenous thread which has been replaced by the more romanticized Aztec/Mayan civilizations, which don't actually seem to be causally connected to the indigenous tribes that existed along the borders. There's a lost story here, and I'm hoping to find out more about it and hopefully write about it.

The final moment that led me here, that pushed me to studying religion and philosophy, was a craft of fiction class at NYU taught by Zadie Smith. Zadie assigned me to give a presentation on Kafka and Kierkegaard; as soon as I started rereading those authors, I realized that I wanted to return to philosophy, but through the study of religion and literature. Zadie was very supportive and encouraging in my decision to come to HDS, as was Chuck Wachtel, my mentor and advisor at NYU. I wouldn't be here without their support.

Bearing Witness

I didn’t think there was anything ethical about the literary world until I had the opportunity to take a poetry workshop with Jorie Graham last semester. The workshop was amazing, and completely changed my outlook on art and language and really everything. I'm slowly getting over my discomfort in regarding myself as poet. I would've quit writing if not for that workshop. I'm now starting to see writing as a moral activity.

I think my most worthwhile poems aren’t the ones that I purposefully sit down to write; they just sort of come. And often it’s through this emotionally charged rant. My workshop saw it as bearing witness. I was pointing out a classed segment of society—the literary world. There's this willful ignorance that's led to the unfortunate political situation that we’re in now, and the fact that I’m even referring to the situation now is in itself problematic because most of the problems that are being discussed now have always been issues. For example, years ago I wrote a novella that took place in an ICE facility near Brownsville, Texas. In the story, the facility was in a gutted former Walmart that had no walls, only chain link fences, and all the prisoners were children. Then two years later ICE actually built this facility.

I don’t think there’s anything supernatural about this story. To me, it's all just about paying attention and seeing certain patterns and adopting an absurdist sensibility. But this led me to realize that if there's a pattern in society that I'm picking up on, then perhaps writing about it becomes a moral imperative. That’s kind of how I see writing poetry and fiction. I'm fascinated with this element of prophecy in fiction. And apocalypse. Jorie stressed that apocalypse actually means an unveiling. Not just an end to things, but a revealing of truths.

I never did anything with the novella because it was actually really bad. My classmates and instructor were phenomenal, but I was too immature of a writer at the time. Now people keep telling me that if I went back to it, rewrote it, it would get published. But that’s just because it’s timely. I don’t know if I feel comfortable doing that. I don’t want to give this false impression that illusions of representation, and bearing witness to the suffering of others, and simply pointing out injustice—that this all somehow absolves writers and publishers from the evils of society. And I think if the publishing world wasn't interested in this topic back then, in a few years it probably won’t be interested in it anymore. But the problem isn't going anywhere. If that’s the case then maybe we have a moral obligation, especially being in a position of privilege, to always and consistently be critical of ourselves and the powers that be, no matter who they are. The suffering that exists on their watch is ultimately suffering that exists on our behalf. We are all complicit in that.

Returning to Society

I would like to apply to PhD programs and see how that pans out. In any case, I would love to teach. That’s one thing that I discovered at NYU—that I love teaching. It doesn’t matter if it’s at a university or a high school. I'd like to mentor young writers. Shout out to the young artists and translators at Still Waters in a Storm in Bushwick, Brooklyn. They taught me how to be a better listener and to pay better attention to the world. That's probably the most important skill for a writer.  

Ever since I was little I did nothing but read, and I always think, what’s the point of acquiring knowledge if you’re not going to share it and exchange it or try to dissect it with the help of others? It reminds me of the prologue to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where Zarathustra says that he's meditated alone for so many years that his mind has grown heavy from his thoughts. He needs to return to society to share them. Can't just hide in the library anymore.

Interview and photos by Anaïs Garvanian

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

Life Story Part 64

Jumping between living at my father's and my mother's was a challenge. My father had this false sense of promise to get me on track, but what he really seemed more interested in was using my vulnerable and helpless situation to make me feel like a mooch. This isn't to say that he was not charitable in most regards. I never was made to feel like I had to pay for anything I used, water or food. My father liked/likes feeling needed – it gave him some kind of control over me. I didn't have a social security card so I couldn't work. I didn't have a license or the knowledge of how to drive, so I couldn't leave myself to go get those things. I was becoming more and more reclusive. I think all in all, he actually wanted me there forever. It just came to him occasionally that he felt that something was wrong with me being there. Rather than see his own involvement, he would blame me.

I think I read the driver's ed manual about ten times. My father promised he would teach me to drive, and then I would go get the permit and he would never take me out to drive at all. So I would go back, reread the damn manual, go take the test only to let it sit and expire again. It never went anywhere. I soon realized it never would go anywhere, and I gave up. Sometimes, when I woke up in the morning, my father would just start yelling at me about how I needed to grow the fuck up and get a job. I tried to explain that I needed things to go get a job I needed a license to leave Kendrick, I needed the SS Card, a Birth Certificate. Those things had been lost. He would rant about how I didn't seem like I a was living in the real world. I wasn't enough like him I guess. He was in this strange unstable place between being proud and angered by my interest in philosophy and my novels. I seemed very malleable on the surface. I tried to give every indication of believing and accepting what people said. My thoughts about everything where very complicated, but I instinctively tried to play myself off as being painfully simple. It angered him on some personal level because he had now worked at ATK for almost thirty years. He had given up his dreams to become a factory worker. He suffered repeated disappointments with women online. He went from being in love to high levels of resentment. He was aging. He hadn't dealt with any of the bad things that had happened. He was becoming more and more unstable. He knew me well enough to know that I was actually looking for a reason to live. And he had forsaken that a long time ago.

Of course I would have attempted to find work in Kendrick, but people in the town thought I was a heroin addict and I still needed the identity stuff to get a job anywhere. There really was no more than about four or five places to work anyway. Then, Carol, Sarah's mom – who must have felt some need to look out for me found an opening for me to make some money. The bike path that had replaced the old railroad tracks that Rachelle and I used to play on as kids had trees growing besides the trail. The city had decided to appoint some of the city council to a subdivision called the Tree Committee. Carol was part of the city council in some fashion, or was at least politically active in the town, for whatever that was worth, and she was given the role of mulching trees, and keeping the trail and areas around the crick clean. She was busy painting or remodeling someone's home up in the hills, so she instead offered me the job. It would pay 10 dollars an hour, and they had a set number of hours they wanted me to work over the course of the next two months. That was how much their budget would allow. It was warming up again – around March. I stood to earn about 1200 dollars by doing this work. What's more, I could set my own hours, though it seemed kind of necessary to get up early and go down.

I would often go down there, wielding my pruning sheers, my gloves, a small shovel and a hoe. The sky was always elegant in the morning, the temperature was perfect. Birds and trees were shaded differently, and the landscape looked surreal. It was very peaceful work. The job required me to do various tasks. I had to learn from scratch how to build these sort of rock domes that would shade these little trees that had been planted that year. The seeds were sourced from some great trees from Vermont, from what I remember. In fifty more years, I am sure they will be lovely. I grew protective and proud of the little guys. I made sure no weeds built up around them or choked them out. Generally I would do this in the morning before the sun took over. I tried to be done by one in the afternoon, since it eventually became too hot. I would watch the school buses and sometimes my own former classmates, going on to complete their last year of senior year.

Once, Samantha and her new boyfriend, Kyle's little brother Daryl, who was three years younger than us (I thought this coupling bizarre) went down to the bike path area where I was working in order to have a smoke. Sam saw me out there hands deep in dirt. I must have looked a bit ragged. Honestly, though, I didn't feel all that badly. I loved being away from people outside in the morning. I hated waking up of course, but I really did love being out in nature. I enjoyed seeing bear tracks and sometimes even seeing a beaver out there by the water. I felt like I was the free one when I watched all these people I used to recognize or know heading off to the school. There was nothing shameful about what I was doing. I was making money for once. Samantha saw me, and she seemed to look down on me and my work. Later, she talked to Sarah-Mae and told her that she had seen me in a pitiful state working on the bike path, and she had felt bad for me. I laughed. It was such an arrogant assumption to make. It was so basic to judge me for working, or thinking that dirty work was somehow bad.

Mostly out there I would zone out and listen to music in my head. I didn't have an MP3 at the time of course. I think they existed by that time, but it was rather expensive ( especially for me) and I probably didn't even fully understand that MP3 players existed. So I just learned to really internalize music in my mind. I listened to a lot of Billy Bragg. I only knew about three or four songs and I would listen to them intently in my head each morning I went out to work. That, and David Bowie's early album Space Oddity. It really was a nice little summer job overall. Once or twice, I had to go to the city hall and sit through boring discussions on budgeting for city maintenance in the evening. They were god awful boring. Carol seemed to share my sentiments.

I saved up all the money I made, and put it away. I planned to visit with Sarah in Texas with it. Though I didn't quite know when. Then, Sarah told me about how she and Alex had saved up enough to buy tickets to go to the Austin City Limits Festival in Texas in September. The 2007 lineup included The White Stripes and Bob Dylan. I had missed my opportunity to see the White Stripes a few years before, and seeing Bob Dylan obviously would be a dream come true for me. I had to see this guy who's music and thoughts were so integral to my own existence. It was hard for me to even fully believe he was just a person at the time. So I didn't spend a dime of that money. I had just enough to live on for three weeks in Texas, and I planned on visiting in the late summer. Sarah decided she would come visit Idaho for a week and we would take the plane together back to Texas. It was something I could look forward to. I needed to be around someone who actually cared about me as a human being.

There was one day, out working a little later in the evening than I had wanted to (I had taken too many days off), where I ended up getting into somewhat of an accident. Besides keeping the little trees along the path growing happy, I also had a job of cutting dead branches from some of the bigger trees and bushes by the crick, and seeing to it that areas where people liked to make trails to the water itself were kept safe. It was a way to avoid accidents from people who might trip or get hurt. I was having troubles getting to this one tree, so I had to get past these boulders that sloped down into the other side of that tree near the water (kind of hard to explain). I started down the slope, and one of the rocks let loose, and I ended up falling down the hill a ways. I stopped at one point, only to fall again. For the most part it ended up that I was okay. My head was okay, there were no broken bones. But my pinky finger really hurt, and I looked down and realized that there was blood gushing from the side of it. The blood was rolling down my arm and dripping off my elbow. I laid there in shock for a moment, and then realized that there was a snake about a foot away from me. I turned around and there was another one, and another and another. I counted about eighteen snakes all around me. Some of them looked like rattlers. I somehow had managed not to scare them away. For that moment there was a very strange aura of awareness. Snake awareness is very alien to me. They have a strange vibe about them. I mean, I like snakes, but I will never understand them at all. I was worried about getting bit. Many of these snakes were sizable. Thankfully they let me pass and get back on the bike path. I ran home and wrapped my finger, calling it good for the day.

I poured all of my psychological emotion into getting to Texas. It was something to live for, and something to look forward to. I missed Sarah so much. As I worked, I thought a lot of about classism. It was beginning to dawn on me more clearly that not everything about how my life went was freely controlled by the consequences of my own actions. I mean this not to shuttle the blame or my own personal faults away from myself. Obviously the way I reacted to life was part of my own personal set up exclusionary from what came within. But a great deal of the consequences of my life seemed more set by those who had power. Not intentionally. I didn't believe there was anyone who was actively trying to destroy me (save my parents perhaps). What I mean is that there were opportunities and attitudes I had grown accustomed to based on the fact that I was part of the lower working class. And since I didn't really meld well with the lower class, I felt at odds with what was in front of me. Most people from my sort of background would be drinking and getting ready to have a family, more or less.

People who came from the same wealth bracket as myself didn't like me. And then rich people didn't seem to like me either. I was some kind of oddball alienated from the culture I was supposed to have acclimated to. But in other ways, I reacted just the way I was expected to. That was why teachers hadn't wanted me to be an artist. Art is for rich kids. It was never spelled out to me that way. I was supposed to want what I could realistically achieve. I believe ultimately, that was why I had felt so attacked in high school. But the teachers never had enough self knowledge to realize what they were trying to stop me from doing. In their minds, they were trying to prevent me from ruining my own life. Mike saw potential for me in college. But he didn't want me to expect greatness. He wanted me to maybe have a fighting chance of getting out okay. He had shot down a lot of my ideas, but compared to most of the adults I knew, he was an idealist. Both my parents seemed really stuck in their jobs. They were conditioned to not expect more from life or their relationships, and if you tried to talk about meaningful stuff, I noticed they had these subtle cues and their minds would shut down and if you press further they will get aggravated. I have seen this a lot. It's not that poor people are stupid. They just don't have that hope in them anymore that would give them the notion to question themselves the way they would have to to out-think the conditioning. Their parents kill it, and the school system kills it. I think for the most part, those micro knives that kill the inner idealist and artist are well meant by people who lost their dreams so long ago they don't even remember. It is beaten down, and then there is nothing left.

I probably held onto some wild sense of idealism from early childhood because I am a little bit delusional. I can jump pretty deeply into my own imagination. Plus, my parents were never consistent. I found ways to hide from being truly beaten down. I don't know if being an avoidant delusional is really all that beneficial in the long run, or that I would necessarily suggest it. But it did give me a vantage point of being able to contrast my own world view with those around me. People in various social classes, genders, ethnicity and religions are all conditioned to a certain extent to shut down when they get to their limit of what they think about, what makes them functioning.  And there is a precedent for them to resent one another, consciously or not. Men vs. women, white vs. black. Blaming Mexicans for the economy. It goes on and on. I'm not a crazy George Carlin fan, but I really like how he talked about how they want people just smart enough to run the machines, but not smart enough to question why. In every Truly, I realized that there was something very political about asking questions.  Being that I was from a certain social class, a good deal of the backlash I had received throughout my entire life was due to the fact that I had refused to fit into the place I was supposed to.

Living in a class system like I was seemed wrong to me, but if you studied the corporatist -capitalist system you could definitely tell how and why this system existed. I of course understand that we human beings have some natural tendencies to become clannish. Racism for instance, would still exist under any system of government or economics, as would sexism. I felt like both political parties in a sense, betrayed people, by not opening or asking the right kinds of questions. I thought too about how the richer kids at the high school looked down on me for working outdoors getting my hands dirty as they drove by. I couldn't really be mad at them in a sense. They were small minded and conditioned to think a certain way. Of course, this prejudice stupidity is also probably the worst thing about us as humans and we very well might destroy ourselves with it.

Sarah arrived in July. We were ecstatic to see one another again. Sarah had a tan from working outside so often. She looked great. I had gained ten pounds since the previous year. I had sort of lost my sense of style. What worked and matched my personality didn't work or fit me at eighteen anymore. Most of my clothes were old and ratty, and didn't feel like they suited me. My hair looked frizzy and bad. My eyes hurt all the time, and were beginning to water. I kept one of them clenched shut constantly and just looked out of my left eye. I was even worse at making eye contact. Most of Sarah's week in Idaho she spent with her mother and her grandparents, who really were getting on in their years. But there was this one memorable night that I remember she came down to my house. We were talking and having a good time, but Sarah was getting tired. I always do everything in my power to make my friends stay up late with me. It's just this weird thing I do – I know it's probably selfish to deny a tired friend of their sleep – but I can't really help it. I guess I like steering people in the wrong direction – it's a character flaw I guess. I just don't want good things to end. Anyway, she kept talking to me as she fell asleep on my couch, but I sat besides her and tried to talk to her to make her stay awake. After awhile, she started talking nonsense. She started talking about things that didn't quite make sense. I had somehow accidentally hypnotized her.

It didn't really come to much, I was just extremely amused that I had hypnotized her. Similar to how I used to have conversations with my younger sister Allison when she was three as she slept. I couldn't get Sarah to talk about much of what I wanted to talk about. I mostly just asked her to elaborate on what she was talking about. She was flying in her dream into her mother's shop and was explaining how she was flying into this piece of jewelry that was shaped like a triangle and had a rainbow inside. I didn't have any deep dark questions. Eventually, after talking to her about various things she was seeing, I snapped her out of it. She woke up out of the daze. She had no recollection of having discussed anything with me. She had thought she had been asleep the entire time.

We rode the plane back to Texas. We didn't get a window seat. I was frustrated because there is literally nothing I love more than the window seat of an airplane. Almost nothing. It's definitely in the top 5. In the Denver airport I had the tastiest chocolate chip cookie and Thanksgiving Sandwich I had ever eaten in my entire life. It was so amazing to be out of Idaho. It was so nice to be going somewhere with someone who actually liked me and wanted to know what I had to say. As we waited for a few hours for our flight to board, we looked out the window below us in the flat area outside Denver, and watched the airport flaggers and baggage handlers and airplane technicians working and having serious presumably work related conversations. We did voice overs of what they were saying, and though I don't know what we made them say, I remember feeling it was hysterically fun. I continuously tried to read Notes From the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and continuously failed. It was occurring me that I never had any fun anymore. Honestly, I hadn't had fun in years. It's hard to explain what that is like. I often found things I found meaningful and enjoyable. But never was there a time when the rug being pulled out from under me was actually any fun at all. I generally just slipped and fell into new lows. I constantly had to watch my back and guess what people's egos were going to make them do. It became exhausting and mind numbingly soul-crushing business for me all the time. Dare I say, it was beginning to wear me down psychologically.

Texas air was thick and muggy. I had not expected that. I thought Texas would be dry for some reason. Alex picked us up and drove us back from the airport to his place. Texas was mostly dry and flat. New Braunfels actually had a hill in it, and it was sort of a big deal in that area since hills were hard to come by. We drove through this big park, and up into the hill area, where there where the houses were mostly very nice. There were these whacky miniature deer that lived in people's yards in herds. I guess Texas people think they are pests, but they seem to have little fear of people and simply graze among suburban neighborhoods. I had never seen such a thing. I was told that one such deer ran into Sarah and Alex's car and dented it. The insurance company had deemed it an act of God.

We stopped into one of these houses. They parked and we went inside. Sarah was excited her home. Inside their portion of the house, they had their own small fridge, a big area where they had a drumset set up, and a fine keyboard. Alex's computer area was in the corner. Their bedroom was painted dark blue. They had a bathroom and Sarah had a small art table to do her arts and crafts. The floor was made out of fake wood, which I was told was cheap, but I actually think was rather classy compared to the raggedy flooring I was accustomed to. They had a pet turtle that some man had randomly given them. Her name was Ruby. She was cute, but her life must have been painfully empty. She just swam in a very small area. I would think that turtle would want to live somewhere like a pond. I was a little bit afraid of Ruby honestly. We existed on entirely different vibrations.

They had this exercise room, and the first thing I noticed upon entering was Alex's step dad, a strange little man I always felt looked like he belonged in Whoville. He was peddling this exercise bike in this nerdy way that almost reminded me of some kind of comedy skit from Saturday Night Live or something. It took everything I had not to start laughing upon seeing him. The only reason I didn't laugh is because I had been warned in advance that whatever I thought when I first saw him it would give me the strong urge to laugh, and I couldn't. He didn't have much of a sense of humor.

The rest of the house was even larger. Their kitchen was big. They had a sun room, a living room, a study, a dining room and a large bedroom. It was a opulent. Alex's mother Rebecca was a small round blonde lady with a strong southern accent and a certain endearing honesty about her. She was a genuine sweetheart. Alex's mother had met Robert (his stepdad) in some kind of radio contest dating thing. She had gone on one date with him – weighed out her options and happily jumped on board. Robert was incredibly rich. He worked for a university. He had very unique skills in mathematics and had a masters degree. He brought home a lot of money.

The room I was to stay in for three weeks was simple, but nice. Plus, I had my own big bathroom. The bathtub was actually more of a Jacuzzi. It was admittedly, much nicer than what I was used to. I almost didn't know what to do with it. I was so happy to be out of the environment I was used to. I was far away from my parents, or the lonely need that my younger brother and sister seemed to have for me. They had both grown to be quite emotionally dependent on me. When you get away from negativity from your surroundings that is slowly killing you from within and without, it can almost be shocking to step into something where nothing is out to get you and nobody wants to hurt you. I had dyed my hair rainbow (temporarily). I planned on having fun and being myself for awhile. I only read one book in those three weeks – John Steinbeck's 'East of Eden'.

I feel like it was a little boring there sometimes, though I never was bored (I actually don't get bored and don't really know what that feels like – I can always generate something to do). Sarah and Alex laid in bed a lot. Of course, I stayed up all night using Sarah's super old laptop (it was probably a 98) to surf the web and at least attempt to check my MySpace. Sarah and Alex didn't have very much money. While it was true they didn't have to pay the rent or anything, at least after they had rescued Alex's parents fish when their giant aquarium had randomly burst (this endeared them to make the rent free for some reason), they were only making five dollars an hour and working twenty-five hours a week tops, which was terrible money even in 2007. The only thing they could really afford to do was eat and sleep and watch Futurama reruns. I often times would sit at their bedside and try to get Sarah and Alex's energy up. I tried to be humorous and entertaining and engaging. I tried to get them excited about stuff. I think they liked my company, but ultimately I could never get them to do very much.

Texas itself definitely wasn't my style. Texas gets HOT for one. It was oddly rainy that year in that part of Texas, and that helped, but when it was hot outside, I felt like I was walking around on Mercury. I didn't see any rhinestone cowboys as I had hoped. I was told that those types resided in the other parts of Texas, though I am sure they were stuffed here and there and I just never had a good chance to see them. I sometimes played Sarah's drum. I knew little to nothing about drumming. Alex taught me where you were supposed to put your feet and how you were supposed to play the drums, but I disregarded the rules of drumming in favor of making up songs. I mostly came up with made up theatrical military songs about British imperialism for some reason. I played the role of a stuffy egomaniac British officer singing to the beat of the drums about his conquests.

Alex's parents were gone for most of the entire time I was there. They left the day after I arrived. Robert I think had early stage prostate cancer, and he had to go get his final tests and such done to make sure it was gone (it was). This gave us a somewhat freer reign of the house in a way we might not have had if they had been home. I got to know Alex a whole lot better. He liked reading and writing quite a bit – so we did have that in common. I think mostly, he found me entertaining. At one point during those three weeks, we challenged one another to a chocolate chip cookie eating contest at some point. Basically, we spent thirty dollars on Albertson's brand chocolate chip cookies that come in the purple bags that they often sell sometimes at the front. I managed to eat like, twenty-five. It was sooo disgusting after awhile. I eventually started to gag and had to stop. I felt sick to my stomach for the next eight hours. Alex won. Alex and I were officially friends. We were both very competitive and well read. It's hard for me to make friends sometimes, because I when I feel comfortable around people (which is pretty damn rare) I joke hard. I joust with people psychologically and that can be kind of rough for some folks. A great deal of the time people don't know that I am not trying to hurt them, and they back down. Which I don't know why because I am not really that great at comebacks and I generally dig my own grave in my attempt to get one up on the other person. Alex didn't have a problem with that at all. I hadn't really liked Alex all that much before. He was okay. We had got along okay before, but I thought he was pretty pretentious for how he had confronted my sister and his overall nonchalant attitude towards people. Sarah ate half of a cookie and was good.

There were nights when we swam in the pool out back. Water made/makes Sarah a little bit crazy. Her eyes go all black and she gets sadistically hyper. It was great. We sometimes sat around listening to old school rap and play card games till two in the morning. I cannot explain the birds that flew out of my heart sitting there at that table. I had bottled so much of myself up. I had to, but now I was around friends who liked me. And yet I would have to go back to Idaho sooner rather than later.

Not everything was perfect all the time. Much of the time, Sarah and Alex cooped themselves in their bedroom to watch television and I would wander the house. I read bits of William Faulkner books in Robert''s study. I started paying attention to articles online, generally about ghosts and UFO's and mysterious disappearances on list sites like Listverse. There was a night I remember vaguely  where Alex had some kind of change of heart. He told Sarah he wanted to go to college. I guess they had some kind of pact between them where they thought college was pointless and dumb. I was sitting in the dining room reading, and Sarah came in in her pajamas and told me that Alex wanted to go to college rather than work. She felt it was very dumb and she was confused and baffled why anyone would want to go to college. He later recanted the whole college thing. And then there was an evening I faintly remember, where Sarah came in to talk to me. I don't remember what she was saying to me, other than she sounded really confused. I think she might have been trying to tell me she didn't love Alex, but I can't be sure. She said she didn't feel like he knew who she was. She didn't know who she was. She wanted me to be mad at her – like the old days. She wanted to feel something. She started insulting herself and saying I should be furious at her. She said that Alex couldn't see through her at all like I could. I knew what she meant, but I knew myself better than to go down that path. I was never going to cross those boundaries ever again. I loved/love Sarah to death, but I wasn't going to try and fix her anymore. I wasn't going to map out an identity for her anymore. She would have to figure it out for herself. Sarah, deep down, had both resented how harsh I was on her, and appreciated  how deeply I looked into her. In the end, she broke down crying on the floor. I listened intently. I tried to be supportive, but I was also quite reserved and quiet. I wanted  her to know through my silent listening that we weren't going to fight. I wasn't going to try to squeeze emotion out of her anymore. She was on her own.

I think what majorly helped with my boundaries in my friendship with Sarah was that I read a lot of introductory Buddhist and Taoist stuff. I am by no means some great expert in eastern religion mind you. But I felt like I was finally beginning to get what people were deep down, at least sort of. I had thought I understood how people operated when I was younger. Somehow, I had been pretty wrong about just about everything. I understood that part of Sarah's growth was me letting her make her own mistakes. And part of me growing as a person was not taking charge of anyone but myself. We had forged a friendship on codependency. And it had mostly been me who initiated that codependency. Sarah had been a crutch for me, and when I got mad at her – I hadn't truly seen her for the person she really was. Sarah was more just lost and emotionally immature. In a very real way, Sarah moving had saved our friendship. I am pretty damn certain of that actually. I am by nature, a codependent person. Many times throughout my life, I have had to take a step back and witness myself being codependent and make the step-by-step decision not to do or say certain things. It's hard, and it never gets better since I am a bit broken. But I knew now to some degree that in order to get or not get what I wanted, whatever that want was, it wasn't to delve deeply into my fears and ego.

We all three took a very strange and gross adventure to a nearby town called Seguin. I guess, there had been this very weird fifty-something year old man that had washed buses for awhile at the Schlitterbahn when it was open. Alex and Sarah, probably to be nice, had promised to go over to his place to have BBQ chicken for some reason. They made plans to go over to his house, and they brought me along. Seguin was kind of a dump. I was watching television years later, and I think there was some kind of serial killer there at some point – the claim to fame of the town. We drove up to a set of apartments, and we knocked on his door. This pudgy strange babbling man with slicked black hair came out. He kept addressing himself as both Dwayne, and Dwight. Sarah and Alex didn't even know his name. They just called him Dwayne Dwight. He invited us into the apartment. The apartment was gross. All over the walls he had corny nudes he had gotten from dirty magazines. There were nude men as well, but he kept telling us that his brother had put those up – not him, which of course he was lying. The place smelled of masturbation in the worst way. The couch was broken. He had a sticky old computer that I am sure was full of viruses. He didn't seem to understand that going to random porn sites caused viruses, and he wanted Alex to fix it. His fridge had moldy food in it. He said he had a gun because he thought there were people after him because his brother owed people money. This story of his involvement with bad people in organized crime never made any sense. He basically kept saying that people were after him for essentially no reason – which couldn't possibly be true. He probably owed money to people. He struck  me as a gambler and someone who frequently paid for sex. He said inappropriate things to all of us both sexually and none. I had no idea why we were even there. It was so horrific that I was sort of fascinated. But my stomach also gurgled and I was extremely uncomfortable.

By the time we got to cooking the chicken, I wasn't even hungry anymore. We were out in the yard, and the Texas sun was baking us all.  We all wanted to leave, but it was too late to back out now. Looking at the raw meat on the grill, outside the house with Dwayne Dwight contradicting himself left and right, I just wanted to  leave. I watched intently, the flies landing on the meat that was cooked. It was moments like this where I wondered if I even really liked meat. I mean, this is creepy and all, but there is this weird power thing about meat. Like, it's a demonstration of dominance and power, and there is something sort of psychologically addictive about the idea that an animal died and you are eating it's body. This sounds insane coming from a vegan, I realize. It's because I realize this dynamic that I don't eat meat, but it was also the reason that I ever liked to eat meat to begin with. There is some weird euphoria I still get when I think about eating animals. It's not a good feeling, but it's real. And it's not for the taste. Vegan food is pretty fantastic. The euphoria is truly because I am completely split down the middle on the kind of person I am. I like the idea of eating dead animals. And at the same rate, I am revolted by it and find it (in principle – not always in practice [people eat meat for a lot of reasons, some of which they cannot help]) morally wrong and psychologically absurd. I dream about eating meat still. When I wake up, I feel intensely ashamed. Sometimes though, meat is simply disgusting – and these powerful moments have never left me. Some bird's lived a painful life and died a tragic death in a factory farm so that I could sit outside of Dwayne Dwight's disgusting apartment and cook up a massive bowl of fly ridden bits of it's flesh from the bone, coated in a sugary substance. It would have been a lot better had we not.

Eventually we left, and I never saw Dwayne Dwight again, and Sarah and Alex never contacted him again. I guess years later, somewhat recently, Dwayne Dwight was found murdered in his vehicle. He probably borrowed money from someone he should not have. But seriously, looking at this guy for three seconds, he was the stereotype of a man you should never lend money to. I can't imagine how dumb you would have to be to give this guy ten dollars, let alone something in the four or more digits.

PART 63 - https://tinyurl.com/ybosu235

PART 62 - https://tinyurl.com/ybjrvccn

PART 61 - https://tinyurl.com/ybm99k8o

My Life Story in Chapters, PARTS 1-60 (this link below will lead you to a list of all the chapters i have written thus far). 

http://aleatoryalarmalligator.tumblr.com/post/168782771574/life-story-sections-1-60

[t0ngue-tech]

Enchanted | 3 (Final)

“Everyday if you want. Being with you like this is magic in itself.”

↠smut oh my god, plus fluffy jimin at the end↞

word count: 5.5k lordt

↠series: 1 | 2 | ↞

(a/n: this is my first smut and oh my god im sorry this is horrible /runs away/)

You weren’t positive on what it was, but for the past week you spent more hours studying than anything else. Whether it was in the study room in the library or in the comfort in your own dorm, you were hitting the books more focused than ever. But when you dug deep inside, you had a feeling as to what turned you into a study bug.

Park Jimin.

It was a known fact to most people that he excelled tremendously in his classes. He was already smart, but being on the basketball team helped discipline him to keep his grades high at all times. The two of you shared texts over the week, but it was casual talk about how both of your days were going, questions about psychology notes, and some flirting here and there. Jimin was a great guy and texting him lately helped you get to know him better than dirty words or breathless pants in between kisses.

Friday nights on campus were filled with nothing but partying and students freely roaming around. Instead of being apart of that crowd, you were sitting on the floor of your make shift living room completing your biology study guide and philosophy online post. Your roommate was going to be out for the weekend since her boyfriend flew in the previous night. This meant you could sing in the shower as loud as you want or walk around naked if you wanted to.

Your phone lit up beside you with Sana’s contact name on display.

[8:15] Sauna: What are you wearing for tonight’s party? Jihyo said she was going to wear that red skirt she showed us on tuesday

[8:17] You: rain check babe. i have work to do

You could hear Sana’s voice ringing through your head, whining and nagging at you for being a party pooper.

[8:18] Sauna: BITCH WHAT.

The messages didn’t stop there.

[8:18] Sauna: You’ve been studying allllll week!!!

[8:19] Sauna: Just come out tonight!

[8:19] Sauna: It’s a dorm party at the northside dorms

It was tempting because she was right, you’ve been studying your ass off, but you really didn’t feel like dressing up and getting wasted.

[8:20] You: sorry sana, i have an online post due tonight

[8:22] Sauna: UMMMMM the party is at the NORTHSIDE DORMS

[8:22] Sauna: DO YOU KNOW HOW LIVES IN THOSE DORMS????

Your throat dried up. Of course you knew who resided there and that only made the offer to go out a lot more tempting. Last week, you missed the opportunity carry on your business with Jimin and tonight would have been a perfect chance to finally get rid the sexual tension.

Ugh, but this post…

[8:25] You: sana i’m sorry. i owe you one, okay? i promise.

[8:27] Sauna: Fine y/n. You better get a good score on your online post!! Love youuu

[8:28] You: love you more

You smiled at the text and gave yourself a mental pat on the back. It surprised you on how much self control you had despite how badly you wanted to see Jimin.

Well, there was always next time.

↠↞

It took about two hours to complete whatever you had planned for the night. Maybe everything could have been done a lot sooner, but you were distracted by youtube and a quick phone call from your roommate telling you that her boyfriend got you a small souvenir from his hometown. After working for so long, you treated yourself to a well deserved shower.

If you had showered or blow dried your hair any longer, you probably would’ve never heard your phone ring from the living room. You rushed out wearing nothing but a big shirt because since you were alone, what was the point of shorts or underwear?

Your phone almost fell out of your hands when you read who was calling you.

Park Jimin calling…

“H-Hello?” You answered immediately.

“Y/n? Hey! Sorry, were you busy?”

The corners of your mouth stretched upward at the angelic sound of his voice. “No, I just blow dried my hair—is that Sana’s voice?” You could hear the garbled voice of your friend in the background who was obviously drunk.

“Yeah. She found me at the party and begged me to take her to your place to sleep.”

“My dorm? She didn’t want to go to her own? It’s on the second floor, much closer than mine.”

“I told her I could take her to her dorm, but she really insisted on going to your dorm; something about you owing her one?”

Your palmed your forehead. Was she really going to use that card tonight?

“Anyways, I’m really sorry but—yes, Sana, I’m sure y/n loves you too—we’re actually in the elevator right now heading up to your floor. Fourth floor, room 16, right?

Sana’s voice made you giggle. Whenever she was drunk, she always needed constant reassurance of love from you and Jihyo.

“It’s no problem. I’m surprised she was able to give you the right room number and everything even when she’s drunk.”

“Yeah. I was shocked too—I know Sana. I think y/n is beautiful too.”

Your heard the ding of the elevator and blushed whilst feeling the secondhand embarrassment from your friend. You were hoping Sana wasn’t going to blurt out anything more about you because you weren’t there to stop her.

“We’re almost at your door.”

“Okay, coming.”

You sighed and ended the call. Even if you didn’t attend the party, you wound up taking care of Sana in the end anyway.

Unlocking the door, you were greeted with a very attractive yet flustered Jimin and a complete mess of a friend, Sana sticking to his side. Sana leaped from Jimin and into your arms, holding on to you for dear life.

“Y/n!! How are you, my friend?” You held onto her tightly as she giggled into the crook of your neck.

“I’m peachy, Sana.” You scrunched your face at Jimin who was snickering whilst closing your door. He kicked off his shoes and followed close behind.

“I—I saw Jimin,” she turned around and pointed at Jimin who was laughing to himself. “So he became my taxi.”

Jimin helped you take Sana to bed as gently as possible. She continued to stagger against you and even fell the floor a couple times. After multiple tries, you both were finally victorious in getting her to lie down on your roommate’s bed.

“Wow, I didn’t know you had one of the bigger dorms.” Jimin smoothed out his shirt and sat at the foot of the bed.

“Yeah. My roommate and I were lucky enough to snag the last vacant one last semester.” You tucked in Sana who was still mumbling drunken words to herself. You made a mental note to text your roommate about the situation just in case.

“HEY!” Sana grabbed your shirt to pull you down closer to her face. As you bent down, you realized that you were completely naked underneath and if you were to bend down lower, you were easily exposed to Jimin. You shot back up and held one of Sana’s hands as you pulled the hem of your shirt downward.

“Sana, relax.” You said stroking her hair.

“Y/n,” she breathed out closing her eyes. “Since Jimin is here, you two better have sex. That’s why I brought him here.”

Jimin choked on his saliva and cupped your hand over Sana’s mouth to drown out her laughter.

“You’re drunk, Sana. Just shut up now and go to sleep.” You removed your hand and instantly regretted it because her short rant didn’t stop there.

“I’m serious y/n,” she hiccupped. “I can tell you’re sexually frustrated so—” Her voice grew quieter as you gently caressed her hair, hushing her so she could relax. It didn’t take too long before soft snores escaped her mouth.

You sighed and took your roommate’s trash bin to place near the head side of the bed just in case she needed to throw up. “Good night, you drunk fool.”

Jimin just smiled at you and quietly followed you out the door, closing it behind him. Your room was right next door to your roommates’, so you leaned against your door frame and smothered your face into your palms. “Jesus christ! She needs to limit her drinking.”

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and chuckled. “She did have one too many.”

You eyed Jimin who was staring at his feet. His silver hair was slicked back and wore a white v-neck t-shirt and black distressed jeans. Honestly, you never thought a guy would look extremely hot in distressed jeans and Jimin changed your mind about that. There was light smell of alcohol on him, but his head seemed like it was on straight so he wasn’t drunk or tipsy at the least. Jimin was far too handsome for you to comprehend and you really wanted to grab him by the shirt and shove him into your room.

“I missed you at the party.” You snapped back to reality and found Jimin looking in your direction, smiling fondly.

“S-Sorry. I had some work I needed to finish.”

Jimin leaned on the opposite side of the doorframe and watched you tug at the hem of your shirt. The only light that was on was in your kitchen, but he could tell you were blushing a very adorable shade of pink.

“You know,” he inched closer and stroked your cheek with a finger. “I thought to myself what jaw dropping outfit would you wear if you came tonight, but I think I prefer this over any skirt or dress.” His hand glided lower to your shoulder, skimming over your forearm, and settled on the curve of your waist.

“You don’t look too bad yourself.” You smile at him, running your hand over his before interlocking your fingers. After looking at him long enough, you couldn’t deny how badly you wanted him. You finally had him all to yourself; no teachers, since Sana was already here, no one was going to call you to take care of there drunk ass. With a gentle tug, you boldly pulled him against your body. He encased you, one hand holding yours and the other gripped the door frame above your head.

“Uh oh, I don’t think I can control myself like this.” Jimin teased. He let go of your hand to wrap his arm around your waist, his other arm followed to hold you in place.

“Today is your lucky day, Jimin.” There was no stopping you now. After two close calls, you never knew you needed anyone as much as you needed the attractive boy in front of you. “I’m not going to stop you.”

Those words alone was enough to make Jimin capture your lips into a heated kiss. He barely gave you any warning when swirled his tongue around yours, enticing a delicious groan from the back of your throat. You tasted the liquor on his tongue, but it didn’t compare to the sweet flavor of Jimin that you were familiar with.

His hands vanished from your waist to trace the curve of your ass, slide behind your thighs and hike you up around his waist. You took his bottom lip in between your teeth, lightly sucking on his flesh making it slightly swollen. Jimin carried you into your room, never missing the rhythm the two of you created with the kiss.

The back of his knees hit your bed and he settled himself on your mattress whilst you made yourself comfortable in his lap, your knees on either side of his lap. You felt the rough denim of his jeans rub against you, but it only turned you on even more.

“You know, if you never wear underwear in your dorm, I should come over more often.” Jimin broke the kiss, slowly pushing your long t-shirt over your thighs.

“I think you just caught me in the right moment.” You whispered near his ear, sending shivers down his spine. You took the liberty to sneak your hands underneath his shirt to feel the warmth of his back. “You’re wearing too much clothes.”

“Take it off for me, babe.” Jimin breathed against your neck. He had such a way with words, especially when he spoke in a low, seductive tone; it was driving you crazy.

You kissed his swollen lips, grinding your hips down onto him. He cracked a satisfied smile against your lips as you gripped the end of his shirt, lifting it up to reveal the delicious ridges of his abs and toned arms. Jimin let out a deep chuckle and cupped your face, “do you like what you see?”

You lick your lips and nodded your head. If Jimin looked this delectable in his torso region, you were desperate to unveil below his belt. Curiosity scratched at you, so you nipped at his jawline proceeding to go lower, leaving little red bites across his skin. You slid off his lap and sunk down to your knees in between his legs. He smiled down at you, running a hand through your hair.

“You look extremely hot in this jeans, but they have got to go.” You began to loosen his belt whilst he continued to stroke your hair. Jimin’s hands were warm and you loved the way he touched you whether it was gently running a hand through your hair or lightly rubbing your thighs. Jimin lifted himself up to assist you in sliding his jeans off his legs. With one of your hands resting on his thigh, you reach for his erection that was still hidden behind plaid boxers. You give him the softest squeeze and a hushed moan bubbled from his throat. The sound he made excited you and you honestly wanted to hear more, so you begin to slowly rub him with his boxers still on.

“Y/n…” Jimin began, but his words were cut off when you reached passed the waistband to physically hold onto his hardened member.

“Remember yesterday when I texted you about how I was eating a popsicle and you wanted a visual?” You teased him, rubbing your thumb against the head of his cock. Jimin responded by nodding and screwing his eyes shut at the feel of your thumb. “I can give you a visual now.”

Jimin barely prepared himself when you leaned into to suck on a spot on his lower abdomen, but he almost became undone when you lightly sucked on the head. His reaction pleasantly satisfied you, so you inched lower, taking more of him into your mouth before you pulled away with a pop.

“Oh my god.” Jimin hissed and reached down to hold your hair. You smiled flirtatiously and dived in to take him back into your mouth. He dropped his head back and gritted his teeth, “Fuuuuuuuck.”

The noises that erupted from Jimin caused your core to soak up even more than it did when you were in his lap. You hollowed your cheeks and bobbed your head up and down taking him as far as you can.

“Your mouth feels so fucking amazing.” Jimin said breathlessly and you hummed, sending a vibration down his shaft. Feeling the thickness of Jimin inside of your mouth made you feel impatient because you could only imagine what he would feel like inside of you. You reached down in between your legs and ran a finger against the moist folds of your heat.

As you sucked Jimin off, you worked at your clit, rubbing in slow small circles. Within the midst of your flirtatious texting over the past week, he had set you off by sending you texts of the mind blowing things we would do to you if he ever got you to himself. The thought of the text messages made you speed up the motion of your fingers and you let out a soft moan. Jimin looked down at you and noticed the movement of your arm. He loved the warmth of your mouth surrounding his member, but he lightly tugged your head back, removing you off of him. Jimin tipped your chin up and guided you back to your feet. As he stood to his own feet, he held your face in his hands to kiss you. The hand in between your legs vanished to hold onto Jimin’s cock and you pumped your hand, coating him with your juices.

“On your back, baby.” Jimin breathed hotly on the swollen flesh of your lip. Without giving you a chance to move on your own, he picked you up like before with your legs pooled around his waist. You felt the hardness of his cock press against your center and you groaned, painfully impatient to have him inside of you.

Jimin laid you out on your mattress and nestled himself in between your legs. He leaned down, but stopped inches away from your lips and supported himself on an elbow. “I finally have the chance to properly touch you unlike what happened on the roof of your dormitory.” His hand rubbed your inner thigh. “But, I hope you realize that Sana is in the room right next to us.”

A gasp slipped past your lips as you mentally slapped yourself across the face. What if Sana woke up to the sound of you and Jimin? She would tease you about it for god knows how long. You opened your mouth to speak, but Jimin shushed you and traced your bottom lip with two fingers. On an impulse, you pressed your lips together, sealing his fingers in your mouth as you shyly sucked on his digits.

“Be a good girl for me and keep your voice down, okay baby?” The way he spoke rattled your insides. How could you possibly say no when Jimin was asking so nicely?

You nodded and he pulled his fingers out, dragging them down your neck to lift your shirt inches above your belly button. His moist fingers gave you goosebumps as he traced your skin to your heat that was already dripping for him.

“You’re so wet for me, y/n.” Jimin slid his middle finger down the slit of your center then back up to massage small circles on your clit.

“Ah—! J-Jimin—” You shamelessly moaned, but he quickly sealed your lips with a sloppy kiss.

“As much as I want to hear your cute little voice a lot more louder, you have to be quiet.” Jimin’s voice was gentle and he continued the agonizing steady pace of his fingers.

You bit your lip, trying your hardest to suppress your voice, but the movement of his fingers almost made it impossible to stay quiet for very long. A sharp gasp was released once you felt the tips of two fingers prodding at your entrance. He pushed in slowly watching your mouth fall open, feeling more than satisfied with your reaction. The pace he set was slow, working his two fingers in and out of you.

“Jimin,” you breathed. “P-Please…”

Jimin bit his lip and kissed you, teasing your tongue with his own. “I want to keep playing with you, but I don’t think I can hold back any longer either.” He pulled his digits out of you and took them into his mouth, eyes never leaving yours. You thought Jimin was undeniably hot, but he just got hotter.

There was a quiet creak from your bad when Jimin rose to his knees, still nestled in between your legs. He hooked his arms under your thighs, pulling you closer to his center. He aided you in stripping your torso of your shirt giving him a beautiful display of your breasts.

“You’re fucking gorgeous, you know that?” Jimin grunted sliding his boxers halfway past his thighs. You watch with anticipation as he wrapped his hand around his thick base to tease your soaking core with the head.

“Fuck, Jimin can you just—ah!” Your sentence was completely cut off when Jimin pushed into you slowly and without warning. He moved inch by inch, savoring the look on your face and the strangled moans you were trying so hard to bite back. As soon as he buried himself to the hilt inside of you, it was Jimin’s turn to let a breathy moan.

“Jimin, please…” you begged with a shaky voice. He remained still inside of you, waiting for you to finish your sentence.

“Hm?” The smirk on across Jimin’s lips made you want to hit him because of how much self control he had at the moment. “What is it, princess?”

“P-Please just fuck me.” At the sound of your request, he didn’t hesitate to pull out almost completely and then slamming back into you. Jimin’s thrusts were deep and controlled. His member was thick, filling you up perfectly.

“So fucking tight,” Jimin breathed in broken whispers. “You feel so amazing, y/n.”

The moan you let out wasn’t as quiet as you anticipated, but Jimin continuously blurted out praises of how good you felt around him and his words only sent you closer to the edge. His name left your throat like a constant prayer, begging him to fuck you harder because you were so fucking close. Your stomach began to tighten and your toes curled up; if Jimin were to keep going, you could cum any second. But instead of keeping his pace steady, his movements slowed down and you turned into a whining mess beneath him.

“Oh my god, Jimin! What the fuck—”

“Turn around and on your knees.” Jimin ordered, breathing heavily.

You obeyed, thighs trembling as you scrambled to flip yourself around. His warm hands found your waist and pulled you up with his cock flat against your slit. You held yourself up, gripping your bedsheets loving the way Jimin slid his dick along your dampened entrance. He leaned down to your ear and whispered, “you’re my good girl, right?” You nodded, intensifying your grip on your cotton sheets. “I want to hear you say it, y/n.”

The sound of your name along with his teasing almost made you cum. You squeezed your eyes shut, imagining Jimin’s face when he said those words; eyes clouded with need and lust, his chest rising and falling with a sheen of sweat. “I-I’m your good girl.” You whimpered, feeling his head slip into you but not moving an inch. You were loving and hating the amount of teasing he was doing because it made him ten times more sexy, but you just wanted him back inside of you.

“Contrary to what some people say about me, I don’t go around campus screwing every girl I see.” Jimin kissed your shoulder, pushing more of himself into you. “I never wanted someone so badly—fuck, you feel so fucking good.” You dropped your head and groaned finally feeling him all the way inside of you.

At each thrust, the volume of your voice grew and the thought of Sana sleeping in the next room was slipping your mind. Jimin fully wrapped an arm around your waist and gently clasped his free hand over your mouth. He pulled you to him, making your back arch so he could speak into your ear.

“I love the way you say my name, baby.” Jimin praised. You feel his hand release your mouth and once again you caught his fingers in between your teeth. You suck on his fingers listening to his broken pants right up against your ear. “I want to hear more.” With a deep thrust, his tip brushed against a sensitive spot inside of you and his fingers fell from your lips to release a moan.

“Fuck, Jimin don’t fucking stop!” You begged, not caring how loud your voice was anymore. He mercilessly pounded into you repeatedly hitting the same spot over and over again.

“I wouldn’t dare to, princess.” Jimin dug his fingers into your flesh, increasing the speed of his thrusts.

Breathless moans filled your room accompanied by the sound of skin slapping against skin. You couldn’t remember the last time someone ever fucked you this good, let alone remembering the last time you got laid in general. Jimin was your attractive classmate who you never, in a million years, thought would be fucking you in your bed. You thought he had a specific type of girl he was attracted to considering the kinds of girls his friends were seen with, so you thought he was out of your league. But Jimin made it obvious that he was interested in getting to know you better and the two of you completely scrambled up the bases.

The same familiar tightness bubbled in your stomach and you clawed at your sheets. Jimin reached lower and teased your clit, pushing you closer to your release.

“Are you gonna cum for me, y/n?” Jimin panted and you nodded your head frantically. “Cum for me baby girl.”

The combination of Jimin’s voice, sharp thrusts, and his digits on your clit was enough to send you over the edge. A string of curses and a mixture of his name fell out of your mouth as he harshly fucked you through your orgasm. Your thighs shook and your arms gave out, leaving you to crumble and fall against your pillow with your ass still pressed against him. Your core was overly sensitive making your whimpers louder. You noticed Jimin’s thrusts lose rhythm indicating that he was close to his limit as well.

“Jimin, cum all over me.” You spoke over his low grunts. He thrusted deeply into you before pulling out and pushing you onto your back. You watched with hungry eyes as his abs flexed and Jimin used his hand to spill onto your stomach. He looked incredibly sexy as he came; eyes shut and the moonlight shining through your window made his skin glisten.

He almost collapsed on top of you, but stopped to sloppily kiss your lips. He held your face in his hands and pressed his forehead onto yours. “Can I clean you up?” He took deep breaths and whispered.

“Y-Yeah, there should be a towel in the bathroom across the hall.” You smile at him and stroked his face which has small droplets of sweat rolling down. Jimin kissed you again, teasing your tongue with his and adjusted his boxers to retrieve the towel. You laid there dazed and trying to get your breathing back to normal. One moment you were uploading your philosophy post online and then the next moment you were begging Jimin to fuck you harder; your evening escalated quicker than you expected.

Jimin returned to your bedroom with a cloth in his hand and he scooped up his white v-neck before returning to your side. When the cloth hit your skin, you giggled trying to cope with the cool feeling of the damp cloth. The both of you shared a moment of laughter and you felt content with Jimin. You adored the way his eyes turned into crescents when he smiled and the addicting sound of his laughter. You wanted to ignore the weird feeling you had over the past week because you thought that once you and Jimin had sex together, that would be it.

“Up you go.” Jimin spoke pulling you to sit up. He helped you slip your arms through his v-neck and pushed it down to clothe your body. “You looked great in my jacket, so I wondered if you would look just as great in my other clothes too.”

You stood up from your bed attempting to keep your balance because your legs were tired out feeling the after effect of your orgasm. His shirt stopped above your mid thigh and you twirled around. “And how do I look?”

Jimin laughed and pushed back his sweaty strands of hair. “I’m not disappointed.”

You smile at him and glanced at your door, remembering that you had another occupant in your dorm. “Uh, I’m going to go check on Sana.” Jimin nodded and you left your room with a racing heart.

You hesitated at first, but you softly called out her name and twisted the doorknob. When your eyes adjusted to the dim color of the room, you noticed she was still lying down in the same position you had left her in. Sana had one arm dangling off the bed and she was still snoring.

“Sana?” You spoke louder to test if she had possibly heard you from the other room. She still didn’t budge. “Hey, Sana.” You tried with an octave louder than your normal voice and she was still out cold. You smiled fondly at her and took her arm to lay it on her chest and you to your surprise, she still didn’t wake up from the physical contact.

When you entered your room, Jimin was lying on your bed and you noticed all of the clothes that were sprawled out on the floor was neatly folded on your desk. He noticed you approaching and held out his head to reach for yours. Jimin’s had was still warm and when he brought you down to cuddle up next to him, his body was warmer and you loved it a little too much.

“I hope you don’t mind if I spend the night.” Jimin kissed your hair and tugged at your thigh to let it curl around his waist.

“I don’t mind at all.” You said into his neck, hugging his close and drawing small patterns on his back. The moment was perfect; listening to his breathing and the both of you were caressing each other’s skin not saying a word. You thought about the next morning wondering if Jimin was going to leave to go back to his place. He probably would walk out shirtless so he wouldn’t disturb you in your sleep. The thoughts brought down your mood and you subconsciously stopped drawing on his back. He noticed and reeled back to get a good look of your face.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just—just thinking about what I’m going to do tomorrow.” You lied, but held the eye contact to seem less suspicious.

“If you don’t have any plans, I was wondering if you would let me take you out tomorrow.” It was as if he was reading your mind and you failed the hide the smile that bloomed on your face.

“What did you want to do?” You asked feeling comfortable in his arms once again.

“Well, when we wake up, I could wait for you to get ready—or possibly have a quickie,” you playfully slap his back. Jimin just laughed and kissed your forehead. “While you get ready, I can help Sana back to her room and after that you can come with me back to my dorm so I can change my clothes. Then we can go and get breakfast at the diner right across campus, go into town to visit the art museum and have lunch at the cafe there. Maybe once it’s evening we could get takeout and eat dinner back at my dorm.” You nodded your head, impressed with his itinerary. “Since it’s Saturday, there’s most likely going to be another party at the dormitory, but if I lock my door, no one should bother us.”

“You sound like you planned this out for the longest time.” You joked.

“I did have some time to think when I got the towel and when you went to check on Sana—also over the past week, but I’ve been a little too busy to ask you properly.” Jimin’s eyes never left yours. “We did this backwards, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, kind of.” You understood what he meant and you were convinced that he was definitely reading your mind. “Is this okay?”

The question was vague, but he knew.

“Yeah, it’s okay.”

It went quiet again and moved in to bury your face in his chest. The hand that was on your thigh moved to your lower back. The familiar scent of his cologne lingered on his bare skin and you were hoping this was going to become second nature for you.

“Thank you, y/n.” You leaned away and cocked an eyebrow at him. “I think I believe in magic now.”

Your mind took you back to the moment on the roof and it made you chuckle. Maybe none of this wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t entice him with your question from before.

“Do you believe in magic?”

But, of course, you were more than happy with the way things turned out.

“It was my pleasure.” You whispered.

“Stay over tomorrow too?” He asked, his voice became raspy and his the small patterns he drew on your lower back came to a stop.

“Just tomorrow?” You teased feeling the weight of sleep in your eyes.

Jimin let out a sleepy chuckle. “Everyday if you want. Being with you like this is magic in itself.”

/sweats nervously/

/continues to hide/

♡ rae jagi

[mrs-goldie-mcduck]

DuckTales reboot sinks to a new low in its adaptation of “Land Beneath the Ground”

*Spoilers for “Terror of the Terra-Firmians”*

How can you adapt one of Barks’ most wonderfully creative, surreal, imaginative tales of all time and come up with an episode that is none of those things?  

Well, it seems you start by omitting the two most important characters, then exchange an expansive underground world for a boring subway tunnel.  Also take the whimsical creatures at the center of the tale and strip away most of what made them interesting and unique, use them as generic monsters, then inexplicably have them become not scary after all so they can have a quick cameo that amounts to nothing.

I have tried to approach the reboot with the right attitude--times change, new people have new ideas, not everything is going to be to my taste, art is subjective, etc.--and I’ve mostly succeeded in maintaining that perspective.  I’ve had a few nitpicks here and there, but have definitely enjoyed the episodes so far.

Until “Terror of the Terra-Firmians.”

Where do I even begin?

Well, I guess I start with a cut to keep most of the spoilers out of sight.  THEN I rant.

The episode started out fine. I got a laugh at the kids’ half-hearted attempts to tell the adults where they were sneaking off to.  I loved Webby’s notebook doodles, and having her little Terra-Firmian drawing saying “I’m mythical and adorable” was really cute (and accurate).

I understood that earth science has progressed by leaps and bounds since 1955 (when Barks’ “The Land Beneath the Ground” was published), so the original concept of “nobody really knows what makes earthquakes” wouldn’t work anymore.  I was fine with the idea of Huey as a skeptic versus Webby as a fringe science fangirl as a way to update the story.

I even laughed aloud at Launchpad, who, paranoid after seeing a scary movie, asked of HD&L,  “Have there always been three of them?”  Great line.

Lena’s British-themed nicknames for Mrs. Beakley were amusing, and I was excited to see the Magica mystery deepen.

But when I saw that half the episode was already over and there were still no Terra-Firmians in sight, I knew something was very wrong.

Then they showed up, but the show tried to make them scary.  Not in the subtle, “Hey, where did that rock come from?  It couldn’t have moved...could it?” psychological way from the comic.  But in the “glowy red eyes and gaping maws, chasing after the characters who flee in terror” way.

Seriously.

These guys...

...are supposed to be scary monsters.

I mean, the show did succeed in making them genuinely creepy.  I guess I can give it credit for that.  But then the Big Twist Ending(tm) was that they...weren’t actually mean or scary.  It was all a trick of the lighting, I guess?  For some reason?  And then we got an E.T. reference, because soooooo many little kids in 2017 are fans of that 1982 movie?  Just...what?

I remember my dad reading “Land Beneath the Ground” to me when I was a five-year-old kid.  It was one of my favorites, despite or perhaps because of the fact that it was a tiny bit scary in the beginning.  You don’t know what’s down in that dark tunnel, and the ducks get a little creeped out, too.  Then you see the gorgeous, alien world deep under the surface, and it’s not so scary anymore.  Then you meet the goofy, round people that live there, and it’s not scary at all.  Then you find out what they’re capable of, and a different kind of fear sets in, but it’s okay in the end because the ducks save the day--and the world.  So I’m not completely opposed to having some scariness in the story, but it was way more subtle than “being chased by monsters with glowing red eyes.”  The reboot showed a disappointing lack of nuance.

I had even harbored a hope that maybe, just maybe, the show would give the Terra-Firmians natural rock colors instead of bright hues.  I don’t remember the source, but I know I read once that Barks intended them to be camouflaged like that, thus indiscernible from a normal rock when rolled up into a ball.  The original colorists didn’t get the memo, or perhaps decided that wasn’t visually interesting enough for a “kid’s comic” and made the Terra-Firmians look like they’d been rolling around in paint.  Decades of reprints and the 1987 DuckTales continued that tradition.

The original DuckTales made them look like they were made of Play-Doh, to be honest.  I thought maybe the reboot would rectify the situation.  They did have more muted colors than in many depictions, but they certainly didn’t look like rocks.

That’s a small nitpick, though.  If only that was the only complaint I had with this episode!

Perhaps the biggest travesty was that we never got to see their kingdom.  The whole episode took place in an abandoned subway tunnel.  A dark, uninteresting subway tunnel.  We could have had THIS:

That’s one of the most breathtaking reveals in all of Barks’ stories.  The animators could have gone nuts making creative and intricate rock formations!  It’s not like they had to build sets on a huge scale.  It’s drawing!  The sky’s the limit!  (Or, in this case, the opposite of the sky...)

I had hoped that they’d stay true to the comic and include the Terra-Firmians’ distinctive neckwear, maybe even explain their caste system, but nope.  They weren’t wearing anything.

“This rock is wearing a necktie!” is such a great line, and the reveal of the “rock’s” true nature is an amazing surprise.  Look at Scrooge’s expression!  The audience should get to have that reaction, too!  To go from “it’s just a rock” to “it’s a strange creature wearing a necktie, speaking with a Texas accent, and offering to shake hands despite not having visible appendages just a second ago” is wonderful fun.  How could you pass up something like that?

The neckties and the cowboy accents were such delightful quirks, adding to the wild creativity that ran throughout the story.  I mean, who sits down and thinks up something this wild?  Rhetorical question, obviously.  It was Carl Barks.  He devised so many crazy adventures and characters to make up the ducks’ world, but “Land Beneath the Ground” showcased another entire level of imagination.  Most of Scrooge’s best adventures were grounded in history and existing myth, but this one was pure fantasy, proving Barks’ creative power was as versatile as it was timelessly entertaining.

The stakes were also much, much higher in the original.  All we worry about in the show is whether the kids and their chaperones will find their way out of the subway tunnel.  Barks started with a threat to the Money Bin and the hill on which it sat, and worked up to putting all of Calisota (if not the planet) in jeopardy.  Talk about an epic story!

It was a great opportunity to delve into the ducks’ characters, too.  It was the classic setup of “Scrooge drags his nephews into danger trying to protect and/or add to his fortune, then has to begrudgingly put their safety over his own interests.”  In the comic Scrooge begs Donald to compete against the Terra-Firmian champion to prevent a catastrophic earthquake, urging him to “think about your house, and Daisy’s house,” and then Donald puts him on the spot by interrupting with “And your money bin!” It’s a great character moment!  It shows the recurring conflict between Scrooge and Donald, as well as the warring priorities in Scrooge’s mind.

What did we get instead of exploring the dynamics of the core cast?  Um, well, we got...Mrs. Beakley and a new character we just met (Lena) butting heads and eventually getting to know and understand each other a bit more.  Which is fine, I guess, but the priority should be establishing the characters who are the stars of the franchise.  After the intrigue of the pilot episode, with all the simmering tension between Scrooge and Donald, I was excited to explore that.  I don’t want to dislike Lena, but if she’s stealing the spotlight from characters I’ve loved for over thirty years, I can’t help but resent that, and I’m sure that’s not the creators’ intention.

I understand the episodes are airing out of their intended order, which is probably throwing off the balance of characters’ screentime and the pace of their arcs. I try to give the show the benefit of the doubt with regard to that, but this episode was truly egregious in its elevating of the kids at the expense of the adult characters.

There are a million shows where smart-talking kids have wacky adventures.  Only DuckTales can show us the world’s richest duck and his nephews having epic globe-trotting adventures.  So...do that.  Please.  We haven’t left Duckburg since the pilot, and Scrooge and Donald are M.I.A.

There was so much wasted potential with this episode!  If it had been presented as any other random creature in the subway tunnel--actual mole men like Launchpad was scared of, or gremlins, or trolls, or literally anything else--it would have been a decent episode, albeit a disappointingly Scroogeless one.  But to take one of the most unique and iconic Barks stories and turn it into a throwaway “those wacky kids versus the monster of the week” plot is beyond comprehension.

I’m certainly not giving up on the series, as I have enjoyed the episodes up to this point and I expect future episodes to be better.  However, “Terror of the Terra-Firmians” was, well...terrible.

[justafunkylildude]

8 16 24 28

8: Talk about the thing you are most proud of.my personal growth, family and friends, my strength and perseverance! without those i would probably have had a lot more problems on the way until now and in the future as well 😅16: Talk about the best party you've ever been to.santa susanna, 2013. 'twas a beautiful night in spain and my friends and i were on a school trip in our senior year. we had befriended a lot of the local bar owners before and thus got around for free, played billiard and drank 1 liter cocktails and visited our friends at the beach bar we liked to go to. we heard of a foam party at the club qk and had so much fun, it was incredible. i wasn't drunk, but the atmosphere and being with my friends in a foreign country gave me one of the best feelings i ever had at a party ♥️24: Talk about something someone told you that meant a lot.okay so i had this really weird german teacher in high school who i didn't get along with at all. like the whole class didn't like her, partly bc she didn't treat us that well and called us dumb and undisciplined and everything when we first got her as our teacher. during summer vacation in 12th grade, however, someone in her family grew sick and she started changing her behavior. i got along pretty well with her from that point on. now she still had a very peculiar taste in literature that she tried to get us interested in and which i absolutely hated. and if i hate something another person likes, i grow quiet when the topic is talked about until we can talk about something else - if it's your teacher's interest, however, it is pretty hard to ignore. so her biggest love was the works of franz kafka, and even though i appreciate the psychological depth behind his literature, it is a torture to read (imo at least). so one day in class she picked me and said i am pretty quiet about it, if i had something to say. and i told her "honestly? i hate kafka". the class groaned, mostly bc i tend to have my own opinions and they would have liked me to just nod and say whatever. my teacher - she is called ms wagner - studied me quietly for a few seconds until the class calmed down and then asked me why i thought that. and i explained it to her - how he was literally stuck in a hamster wheel and tried to blame everything around him, how i think that even if he lived in a time where therapy wasn't that much of a thing and he felt oppressed by his father, he still had opportunities and blamed his own inadequacy on his family when he could have reacted differently, how it was my personal horror to read another one of his works where he talks about the very same complexes he always writes about. i understood him, but that doesn't mean i had to like his works and his behavior. and when i was done with my rant, the class was so quiet that i couldn't even hear a single breath. my teacher looked at me gently and started smiling really brightly, and then she told me that she has never looked at it like that and that she is amazed. her final sentence before moving on with the lesson is something i will never forget: "ana, if i don't see you on the news in the future giving speeches and changing something in this world, i will be very disappointed in you. you have a very special talent and it shouldn't go to waste. i am proud of you" and i shit you not, that sentence got stuck in my head and heart since that very day. was it bc she was a teacher i used to not get along with and who i had grown to like? maybe. or maybe it was the fact that there was at least one person in my life at the time who saw a certain potential in me. it was freeing.28: Talk about your fetishes....wow that took a 180° turn. umm i think i'm pretty into praising? body worship also, maybe food play. confident women in positions of power who wear a suit or wield a sword are usually my number one fetish, i guess 😂🙊🙈thank you so much for this ask, love! 💕💕💕😄