#sex ed meta

[catty-words]

the complicated familial dynamics captured in this moment tickle me.

all otis wanted throughout season one was an acknowledgement from the adult world that jean's treatment of him as a case study was inappropriate and crossed boundaries, yet as soon as he gets another adult in his corner about her blurring the lines between her work and her home life, he pushes back because, well, complicated feelings about fatherhood and masculinity but also. he doesn't care for this random dude undercutting his mum, who is very good at her job and taught otis everything he knows.

i love the way he still manages to assert his initial complaint, though, snotty-teenager style.

[amelia-creatrice]

Sac de frustration..

Le sac pour contrôler votre vessie en solitaire ou en couple vous permettra de découvrir un contrôle cérébral hors du commun, dans le même univers que la chasteté, mais appliqué à la vessie. C'est une pratique éducative dans le domaine du BDSM. En cuir véritable toutes mes créations sont fabriquées à la main.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

saw someone be like “why does nobody ever talk abt black pete when discussing toxic masculinity in ofmd?” and like. it’s bc there’s nothing interesting to say abt it. he was sexist abt doing feminine things. then he had gay sex and it fixed him. the end.

[zykamiliah]

what about bingqiu?

this is my response to this post. i didn't want to reply in the same post because it's going to get really long, and i disagree with almost everything, so this way i may avoid the discourse. haha. anyway, i'm gonna try to answer each of op's points.

-why bingqiu are a couple:

♦ because despite everything, they've chosen each other. not because they're soulmates (though mxtx did pull the string of fate thing), but because they genuinely want to spend time together

it's very subtle but they do share some values and similarities: they both repay kindness with kindness and believe that one should pay back those who hurt you twofold/tenfold. furthermore, they are both petty bitches. as @fireandgrimstone pointed out here, they're both busybodies: they get restless if they aren't doing something.

on that note: self-preservation is not a core value they share. sqq is terrible at self-preservation. from the first moment, instead of minding his own business, he risked losing points (which would terminate his account and kill him) just to protect binghe when he was being bullied by ming fan and co. sqq couldn't stand by watching someone being bullied. then during the demon invasion, he was ready to risk his own life to protect all the cqm disciples. he was willing to self-destruct to take out sha hualing.

the thing is that sqq likes to lie about himself and say everything he does is out of self-preservation, but it isn't true.

so, if it wasn't out of self preservation, why did sqq pushed binghe into the endless abyss? yes, it needed to happen, but he didn't do it to save himself. he can't hurt binghe just to protect himself. he did it because he brainwashed himself into believing this was the best for binghe, that binghe needed to in order to become strong and achieve his fate.

(chapter 4: conference)

♦ because they give each other what they need. consistent love, support and understanding was something lbh really needed, and those 2-3 years before the immortal alliance conference did wonders for binghe to allow himself to feel vulnerable and be more in touch with his own feelings. this will get screwed up post-endless abyss but sqq does encourage him in the extras to express his feelings and talk about what he thinks and feels.

now, what lbh gives to sqq may not seem obvious (thank you for the help, luuny!♥), since sqq's layered narration is tricky to deconstruct, but by the end of the novel lbh can get past sqq's tsundere/savin face bullshit. sqq has all his toxic masculinity ideas and internalized homophobia that he keeps dragging everywhere he goes, and his relationship with lbh, who was supposed to be the epitome of masculinity, has allowed him to shed off some of it. but not all. thus, lbh knows when sqq needs to be pushed or coaxed into doing something he already wants to do but thinks he shouldn't want and doesn't know how to justify (sex for example). lbh also gives sqq the whole domestic package: someone to dote on, someone that does the chores and takes care of him, because frankly sqq is good at many things but he fails at self-care.

♦ domesticity and companionship. for bingqiu it wasn't like other couples who were first attracted to each other from one reason or another and from then on the relationship developed. the first period of their relationship is mostly platonic (poor binghe is suffering the teenage hormones), and was based on the easy domesticity and companionship they shared. and honestly that's such a simple yet beautiful kind of love. they genuinely like spending time together, living together, talking to each other. they never get bored of being together or of each other, which brings me to

♦ the obsession. like, it's honestly hilarious how obsessed they are with each other. sy was already obsessed with pidw protagonist bingge, but in svsss he got to love and get obsessed all over again with his own binghe aka bingmei. and from lbh's pov it's more or less the same: he had a complicated relationship with original sqq, which was the start of it all, but the person he loves is not the cold shizun from the past who he needs to prove himself to, but the one that's always trying to protect him, even if it's from himself. in both cases, their relationship started with distance, with the shadow of the other version of each other they'd known before. but what made them fall in love weren't those ghosts from the past, but the person they could see underneath it all: the hardworking boy that just wanted to be loved, and the closeted man who wants to give love and help others and have a purpose and belong to something (binghe understands that sqq would be unhappy if he couldn't visit cqm, qjp and his sect siblings). this relates to the fact that

♦ they understand each other better than anyone else. it takes them time, but that's the point of their journey and by the time we read about their relationship in the extras, we can see that despite everything, they not only understand each other very well but actively try to understand each other better. they already made the mistake of making too many assumptions, and they're not doing that again.

________________

another point that op got wrong:

off the top of my head an example would be how bingge (he-with-no-shen-yuan) took a harem of beauties so he could control xin mo but bingmei (he-with-shen-yuan) decided to just... cripple people's cultivation (...) what i'm getting at is that binghe was willing to pay other people's lives just so he didn't have to be intimate with anyone except shen yuan.

bingge too was cripping other cultivators to get ride of the excess of demonic qi, it's just that after he captured the three nuns from tianyi overlook they taught him how to achieve the same result using dual cultivation. (thanking @stardust-falling for their notes on this topic!)

(chapter 9: borderlands)

[sarucane]

Ed Teach's Stories

From practically the moment we meet him, Ed's identity is unstable. We know who is he (Blackbeard) from context, from the story told by the the room around him, by Izzy and the flag his crew. But the thing is, Ed doesn't fit the story of the Mad Devil Blackbeard. Two of his first few words are "good" and "love" for crying out loud. He's called "Blackbeard," but his beard is grey.

This instability exists because Ed himself isn't sure what story he's telling--or wants to tell. "I shouldn't be bored, I'm fucking Blackbeard!" All through his early episodes Ed is in increasingly desperate tension with his own identity. He's trying to tell stories within stories, wanting all the stories to be true at the same time, yet aware of the reality that the world is constantly trying to wipe one or another of the stories away. And not really trusting that he can tell the whole story of who he is.

In the first season of OFMD, Stede wears a different outfit every episode. Yet Stede remains the same: despite his internal tensions (almost despite himself) there's a stability to his identity. But all through both seasons of OFMD, Ed putting on a new outfit means he's trying to tell a completely different story about himself.

And underneath this cacophony, there's Ed. And Ed is himself a chorus of stories, a living contradiction. A patricidal murderer who was protecting his mother; a paragon of masculinity who longs for softness and fluidity; a man renowned for violence and madness who has in fact carefully cultivated that reputation and is extremely careful with his violence; a killer who doesn't kill, yet who does kill all the time just at a bit of a remove; a half a dozen names and personas and yet always Ed; unloveable, yet deeply loved.

At the beginning of the show, Ed isn't actually good at telling his own story. He's good at listening to other people's stories, and conforming himself to them often without conscious effort. But when he tries to really tell his own story--asking Stede to run off to China, singing his break-up song song, going to become a fisherman--he fails. We don't understand in the first season why his judgement clouds, why he becomes weak when he tries to tell his story. But in the second season after spending half an episode in Ed's mind, a painful truth is undeniable: Ed, like Stede, doesn't think he's worthy of telling his own story.

So instead of telling his own story, Ed let other people tell his story. In the first season, Ed built off what Izzy told him he had to be. But he couldn't lose himself in Blackbeard, no matter how hard he tried. So in the second season, when Ed couldn't face living with his contradictions anymore, he wrote an ending worthy of Blackbeard.

All this, because Ed thinks he can only be "himself" by telling one, single story about himself. By denying his contradictions, rather than embracing them. Splitting himself in two to tell himself a story, rather than telling the story himself.

What Ed doesn't believe or trust is this: For Ed to really be himself, he has to be impossible. Two contradictory things, at the same time.

The second season of OFMD is about learning to embrace all these contradictions. In each episode of OFMD, character look at the same object or situation (a wanted poster, a unicorn, a velvety suit, a relationship, a past trauma) and they tell two completely different stories about it. Sometimes one of those stories turns out to be wrong, but more often than not both are true, and something else--something beautiful-- is born from the place where those contradictions meet. And the characters, Ed most of all, learn to accept and balance this dissonance.

Thematically speaking, I'd argue that's why the second season of OFMD is more fantastical than the first: fantasies are contradictions, real and not-real at the same time. And isn't that what transformation is, in the end? What you are and what you are not, meeting and becoming "you"?

Transformation isn't all good. At first, Ed's fantastic stories hide his pain or invoke despair

But later, the fantasies make their way into reality. The impossible begins to shape reality--and opens a way for hope.

In the last episode of S2, Ed emerges from the waves as the kraken--but there's 3 musical tracks playing, three themes: the kraken, Ed, and Blackbeard. Then he reads a love letter, and has a deeply romantic moment with his boyfriend. He puts on a new outfit to escape the British, yet his personality doesn't change at all. When Izzy first apologizes to him, Ed says "I'm the one who should be apologizing," but then Izzy changes his entire understanding of their relationship. Becomes the first family figure to offer Ed permission to be himself.

Contradictions galore, and yet Ed is still Ed. Both who he was formed into by other people (his father, Izzy, Pop Pop) and yet who he is.

In the final scenes, Ed begins to finally accept the tensions of his life. He tells Zheng that yes, he wants to kill Richie--but he doesn't go on a revenge quest. And while before his forays into being someone else meant changing his name, his clothes and mannerisms, his whole story, he doesn't act like that at all in the last scene of the ep.

And Ed's been able to do all this, to come this far, because of Stede. Stede, who Ed was drawn to because he was a "fancy man who leads a brigade of imbeciles," yet had won a fight with Izzy. Stede, who looked at Ed at his lowest moment, after Ed had admitted that the entire basis of their friendship had been in bad faith, and said, "I'm your friend." Stede who, even knowing Ed wouldn't want to hear from him, poured his heart into letters about how their bond was unbreakable.

Stede is everything he is, all at the same time. And when Ed was drowning in his own contradictions, (a rope tied around him that he could not undo and yet had put on himself) trapped somewhere "inevitable, yet impossible," Stede appeared as a fantastic, beautiful creature and brought him home.

Stede lets Ed be everything he is, and sees it all as true and worthy of love. Even when Ed fucks up, it's all right.

And sometimes, telling two different stories about something doesn't lead to a fragmented self, doesn't drive people apart.

Sometimes, it means understanding. Means acceptance, safety, connection.

From discordance (contradiction), harmony. A gentleman can be a pirate. A man can be a bird, or a unicorn. Izzy can have been one of the good ones and a fucking nightmare. And Ed can tell all his stories, they can all be true--and he can still be Ed.

[chekhovs-tantrum]

Camilla: don't let strangers touch you. don't let strangers see you naked. sex stuff is right out. also breakfast is the sexiest thing.

Nona, left alone for five minutes: *climbs on top of a corpse she's never met to smooch*

[alpaca-clouds]

Let's Talk About Sex

I want to keep talking about issues in this blog whenenver I have time. And one thing that I really want to talk about, is sex and sexuality - especially in terms of popculture and fandom. And let's be honest: Also in terms of the USA, because a lot of the issues originate with US purity culture.

We know the issue in fandom spaces of the "antis", who are anti-shippers, who will try to police other people's fandom experience. It is usually about more than just shipping. It is about the sexual practices that people depict those fictional characters engaging in fanart and fanfiction. It is about characters, who in canon are minors, having sex at all, even if aged up (and even if the writer is living in a country where it is perfectly fine and dandy for like two 15yos to have sex). It is also about characters who have some trauma in the canon material having sex at all. Oh, and it is also about original characters by any writer - and be it in novels - are not holding up to any sexual purity stuff. Oh, and according to some of those people BDSM in general is not alright.

But, like... The fact remains that this is very much connected to American purity culture, that thanks to globalization and the fact that all social media and a lot of influential media in general originates in the US, this is pretty much forced onto the rest of the world. And that is without going into the backstory of bloody colonialism, that brought this purity ideas almost everywhere and is still pushing it onto other cultures.

Remember, a lot of cultures internationally were perfectly fine with homosexuality in one way or another - until colonialism happened.

And we are on tumblr. Who, if not us tumblrites know about how censorship for sexual topics, while a lot more bloody, and violent aspects are absolutely fine? And of course this is true for fandom culture in general. After all, the older fans do remember the purges on FF.net and Livejournal.

Something I will talk about this week is also the fact that a lot of media does indeed go with this: Naked women without any sexual context? R-Rated! Blood and murder? Oh, yeah, that is absolutely PG-13.

And we also of course know that a lot of sexual education online will very much be censored. Even though this sexual education will help people - including kids - to protect themselves from sexual assault and exploitation.

We are too afraid of sexuality, but all-too okay about violence. Hells, when I look at media like some HBO shows, we are often more okay with explicit sexual violence, but consensual BDSM? That often gets censored.

[forpiratereasons]

thinking also about ed wearing a string of white pearls and not wearing stede's black cravat - ed wearing a fine thing, ed wearing a beautiful thing like that instead of the more chainlike necklaces he wore in s1. thinking about the pearls being small and imperfect - they're not huge round pearls that have had lots of time to grow, they're newer, they're delicate. thinking about how pearls are formed by an oyster trying to protect it's soft insides, about how it happens when something unexpected slips in between the hard shell and hurts the inside of the oyster, so the oyster covers it to protect itself.

without knowing the context it's hard to say, obviously. but the symbolism i'm getting from it is: i have been hurt and i have been protected. my protection of self is beautiful and worthwhile and is itself a fine thing and i'm still learning how to do it, a bit, how to protect that soft inside of me.

combine that with ed's tied-back hair, the symbolism of his openness and vulnerability, and it's such a great combination. he's opening himself up but he'll protect himself; he deserves to protect himself. he's cautious and learning but he's also trying to put himself out there to be known again.

in s1, ed and stede fall together so quickly, it's such a whirlwind. in many ways, it's falling in love with the mask of each other - stede never opens up to ed, so ed falls in love with stede as a fun time, with stede as a purveyor of fine things, with stede as full of bravado and so much confidence it makes him stupid, and on the flip side, stede is still considering the mask of blackbeard all the way into ep 10. you can't be blackbeard with your blackbeard! he's absolutely lovely--er, and of course, a bloodthirsty killer.

maybe s2 will be about a more careful coming together. about love as a choice - not as a current sweeping them along but as a deliberate step toward each other, and what it means to love. what it means to choose each other. what it means to choose to act with love even when that's hard. what it means to choose to be vulnerable and intimate even if that might get you hurt. to put yourself in someone else's hands like that, and to trust them to keep you.

to let someone in, knowing they can hurt you and trusting them not to, and to choose to see what beautiful thing you can make together.

[crimson-and-clover-1717]

Inspired by @piratecaptainscaptainpirates amazing post and @saltpepperbeard who mentioned a wonderful song I had never heard before, I made a short video.

[otteranha]

With Hopper gone and Mr. Wheeler incapable of giving a goddamn, Karen and Claudia ambush Steve the week before their boys start high school and implore him to give their boys The Talk- sort of a Birds and Bees 102, if you will.

Obviously the boys know where babies come from, more or less. What they really need is the please-don’t-make-us-grandparents-yet lesson. Only Lucas has a dad present and caring enough to give his son periodic check-ins and chats about >ahem< milestones in a young man’s life. And El may be in California but Mike is begging to spend spring break out there and Hopper’s instruction began and ended with keeping the door open.

Steve is bright red and inching towards the door as they make their arguments for why he’s the best, nay the only option, to take up this responsibility but well- he remembers his own mistakes. His own early misadventures buying condoms, using condoms and so forth. It would have been a huge burden off his teenage shoulders to not be figuring the whole damn thing out through trial and error, absolutely incapable of considering consequences until it was all over and consequences were the only thing he could think about. Until next time. Besides, he thought laughing to himself, Mike would absolutely die.

[catty-words]

rewatching the series because it's been a minute since i've been in my sex education feels and i wanna be in the proper headspace for season four. anyway, this moment in 1.08 caught my attention -

- for the way it's reminiscent of maeve's introduction. we meet the legend of maeve wiley first, not the complex and beloved character we come to know, and her flipping off the untouchables during eric's monologue serves as a refusal to participate in this narrative. her peers can think what they think - she'll be maeve wiley the way she wants to be maeve wiley.

otis hasn't had so strong a backbone. over the course of the season, he lets down eric on his birthday and blames maeve for 'making him' question tom because he can't admit he'd prefer to be doing that in the first place and he lets jackson push him into compromising his friendship with maeve to jackson's advantage and he tries to have sex with lily until he's whipped into a panic because his father made him anxious about having not done it yet. again and again, he allows his fear and neuroticism to dictate his life - until the above moment.

like maeve defying the gossip-mongering, here otis is defying the literal narrative jean has committed to paper. his parents have both contributed to otis' crippling discomfort with sex - they built it into something of legendary proportions, something that has the power to ruin happy lives - and he's done letting that define him.

[sunnykeysmash]

I hope in inflates when Frank finds the bathroom he's actually opening all doors in the Charlie apartment and when he opens the closet the dennis sex doll falls limply on him like a skeleton and he shoves it back inside and says something like "we'll talk about what to do with that thing later"

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

I really want Stede to be good in the sack for his own benefit. Like someone who has never been treated as desirable, absolutely Rocking Ed’s World? It’s a win/win. Ed gets maximum pleasure and Stede gets an ego boost.

ok the best thing is tho that stede doesn’t have to be objectively good in bed to rock ed’s world because stede has the power of true love on his side

like i do think they eventually get to stede learning how exactly to fuck ed and stede having a massive ego boost just knowing that HE can do that to ed at literally any time and that ed wants him so fucking bad. but there’s gonna be a little bit of a learning curve, for BOTH of them tbh. stede might need to start with the basics but ed’s gotta learn to let himself be taken care of, too

[mis-mcgifsten]

Are they as amphibians confusing impotence with infertility? As in they tried to make infertile clones in the past, doing so made the species concerned unable to have sex at all, an army of eunuchs, and thus it drove them all mad? Because in a universe with womb tank technology and cybernetic implants they can't do an artificial dick with sensory wiring and a seed free spooge compartment?

Not being able to sire a child isn't the same as not being able to have sex at all. And like others have observed if the idea was eunuch soldiers would go mad if not allowed to have sexual experiences vasectomy is something easy and quick that works to a high degree for humans.

Basically it looks like the writers just couldn't have their characters have no dicks or dodgy dicks and be seen as the pinnacle of military might. They had to have functional genitals but be socially prevented from using them?!?

It's hilarious is what it is.

someone had to teach the clones sex ed and our options are aliens, space monks, and some bounty hunters who were game to cut ties with friends and family for 10 years with no explanation (excellent at healthy relationships)

[sarucane]

Why did Ed headbutt Stede?

This one is fairly straightforward in the show but also fun to rant about so here goes!

I think the short version of this answer is "because Ed had no other way to communicate FUCK OFF at that moment." Ed can't talk, doesn't seem able to move, and is very unclear on exactly what's going on and what he's doing (even a while later he has a deeply revealing conversation with a confused rabbit--he's definitely not all there in this moment). Still, Stede's wrong when he suggests it was an accident: Ed owns the action later when he yells "I'm glad it hurt, that's the point of head butts!"

That being said, it's worth taking in the context for a sec, because Ed does love Stede and there is a theoretical potential for this to go to a very dark place. Balancing the violence of the pirate world with portraying healthy relationships is quite a challenge for these writers, as it'd be easy to tip over from healthy to very unhealthy.

In the same episode, Mary gets stabbed in the back quite deeply (it's knocking on bones) and it barely bleeds, let alone hurts once it's out. Ed and Stede have both been run through with swords but since "the important bits" didn't get hit, they needed no recovery time. Hell, Ed got shot in the arm and hit in the face with a cannonball in S2E2 and he's fine by halfway through E3. A headbutt is nothing on this show, it's like a kid elbowing another kid on the bus.

Ed head butts Stede because he's angry and in emotional pain, he's a pirate and pirates (not to mention many humans) express emotions through violence, and Ed can't break a chair or smash something--so the headbutt is the only available option.

And in terms of walking that line between health and unhealthy/violent relationship: the headbutt not only does not take place while Ed and Stede are in a relationship, it is itself a way of Ed saying "WE ARE NOT IN A RELATIONSHIP 'CAUSE YOU DUMPED ME FUCK OFF." When Ed is in possession of his faculties, he is still using violence to externalize emotions, but Stede is emphatically not a target of that violence.

Ed doesn't even look at Stede from the moment the anger starts rising, and he turns his back on Stede and moves to another part of the room entirely to smash shit. Not the most mature response, but consistent with Ed's character and history while also pointedly sidestepping that dangerous territory.

And Ed's anger fueling the headbutt is completely justified.

Stede and Ed are often in different emotional places within their relationship, but they're rarely as far apart as at the beginning of episode 3. Stede is acting (in fairness understandably given the near death thing) absolutely no differently than he would if they were, at that moment, in a romantic relationship (which fits with his whole "I didn't dump him, we're on a break" schtick). But Stede quite brutally broke Ed's heart, triggering a crisis that led to Ed being so convinced he's "not loveable" that he despaired of living at all.

Stede says "I thought I lost you," and the only appropriate response to that is "YOU DID," and that needs to be made clear to Stede, because there's a difference between "being on different pages in a relationship" and "being on different pages about a relationship existing." Ed is hurt, badly, and Stede's total lack of acknowledgement of that is absolutely infuriating. Like Ed says, hurt is the point of head butts: Ed was hurting and Stede wasn't, and that distance in experiences demanded a response, so Ed seized on the only one available to him.

[genderkoolaid]

crazy because like. to anyone who has ever spent any time in transmasc/trans man spaces sex ed is such a necessity, especially if youre on t. so many people dont know about atrophy and the effects and how to be safe about it. so many people dont know about bottom growth and expect a trans man 10 years on t's genitalia to look no different to a cis woman - i know countless trans men whos partners left them when they started t solely because they got weirded out by bottom growth. i personally dont bottom and SO many cis and trans people dont even consider that to be a possibility for a sexually active transmasc. the comments being like "oooh its so obvious just talk to them like anyone else" yeah but also itd be great if everyone was more aware, its kind of annoying to explain all this stuff every single time you wanna hook up, and for a lot of people to still get freaked out at the sight of a naked trans man

Fr!! The amount of people in the comments of that post being snarky about "oh just ask" like. it's clear those people haven't read Fucking Trans Women because that zine starts by talking about /why/ having resources for good trans sex is important, how even trans people ourselves often don't have the words or knowledge to express to a lover how we want to be touched or what feels good. It is in fact very nice to have sex with someone who is already familiar with what your body looks like and how it might function.

& the assumptions… for one like you said, people not knowing what a trans man's genitals can look like. People who think every trans man is gonna be clean shaven down there, or who don't realize (like you said) that testosterone Does Things To Your Dick. & the assumption that every trans man who is attracted to women is a stone top & every trans man attracted to men is a bottom. Or that if you aren't topping, you NEED to involve a hole. For me this is less a trans thing & more body-weirdness-possibly-intersex thing, but like. My mind has always been more focused on my clit/dick, and penetration is something that's extra at best. You don't need to penetrate anything. Just because a hole is there doesn't mean it needs something in it.

Also!! We need more appreciation for bottom surgery dicks!!! I'm tired of only seeing them in clinical contexts. I need to see 30 minutes of someone lovingly sucking on phallo cock stat. I need meta dick worship. Even the sex ed things I've seen talk about phallo and meta do so in such… frankly unsexy ways, that don't do much to make having sex with a neocock sound positive. I need us to start romanticizing and sexualizing bottom surgery.