#she got past the religious and cultural homophobia

[applesauce42069]

it took a long time for my gf's grandmother to warm up to the gay thing. we were also worried about her warming up to the jewish thing. she's very christian. but i forgot, she's evangelical. my gf told her we're planning on having a very religious jewish wedding. and vó got SUPER excited.

[peaches2217]

Look, I hate to be the one to say it, but if you grew up in a cult and you’re still religious, you never escaped your cult. You’re not a cult survivor, you’re literally still a cult member. I hope you get the help you need.

(I’m assuming you’re referencing my tags on this post?? Lemme know if I’m off-base! 😅)

Oooookay! Little rant under the cut, because while it is a bit of a sensitive topic, I think I have the right to answer honestly!

TW: Religious trauma, abusive relationships, homophobia, just generally deep shit about toxic religious culture

Friendo, with all due respect, you don’t get to tell me what I am or what I’m not when it comes to my religious beliefs. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but I’ve spent the past five years navigating my own thoughts and beliefs after twenty-odd years of being told exactly what to think and how to believe, and that’s something I won’t allow to be belittled or diminished.

I did grow up in a cult. My lifelong church was an Assemblies of God church, which is a denomination already known for being… kinda intense, but I got the “privilege” of seeing it morph into a fledgling cult as I grew up; gradually cutting all associations with all churches outside the denomination, thinly-veiled messages of fear and hate becoming less and less veiled, increasingly vigilant calls to action against “The Enemy,” which went from a vague way of referencing Satan and his influence to referencing literally anyone who wasn’t part of the congregation. I dated a guy who sincerely believed, and preached to a room full of “Amen!”s, that Catholics are all Hell-bound and non-Evangelical Protestants weren’t far behind. I didn’t even think twice about the logic of suggesting a 2000-year-old religion was wrong and illegitimate prior to the past hundred years or so. I was just enamored by his devotion and wisdom.

I was always queer and suppressed it to varying degrees of success before getting my first taste of freedom in college and falling into a relationship that became abusive. I came back home after dropping out, broken and confused, and ran back to the only place I’d ever felt welcomed, but realized pretty quickly that I’d been deemed one of the very same outsiders I was warned about growing up. I threw myself into repentance. I desperately tried to regain favor in the eyes of the church and the God I was raised to believe in. I made the mistake of finally opening up and trusting the pastor enough to confide in him about my abusive relationship, to which he responded with a lecture about MY wrongdoings, followed by him outing me to the entire congregation. One day after service when I was about 21 or 22, I approached my dad while he was talking with the pastor’s wife, and she stopped mid-sentence when she saw me and just walked away in the opposite direction. That was a pretty common reaction people had to me after being outed, but I think that was the moment I realized I had failed to atone and failed as a Christian.

Through it all, my dad spoke with conviction of a God who was gentle, loving, merciful, and kind. I realized late in my teenhood that, for all his devotion to our church, the God he spoke of wasn’t the same God our pastor spoke of. My dad remains a victim of the cult because he was raised to believe all figures of authority are well-meaning — a few months back, my mom tried to sit him down and explain plainly that several of my psychological issues are a direct result of religious trauma inflicted by the church he raised me in, and he sincerely couldn’t wrap his head around the notion. But even as that church has morphed into a cult, he’s held belief in a God and a Christianity more forgiving. I realized during my last few visits to the church, spread over the course of a couple of years, that he’d also been othered, if not quite as hard and suddenly as I was. Even now he’ll express frustration that no one seems to consider his ideas or opinions when he used to be considered a go-to decision maker.

My dad’s no leftist; he’s proudly conservative, supports Trump, and hides his homophobia behind a veil of sympathy for those “called to celibacy” or with a “propensity towards sodomy” (both terms he’s used to describe me, to my face). I love him, and we have a good relationship, but I sincerely worry about what might happen when he finds out I’m trans. His one deviation from the church, his belief that God’s much more willing to love and forgive than the pastor tells us, is nevertheless enough to have him considered an outlier. Being ostracized and forced to look from the outside in allowed me to see that and realize “Hey, hold up, that doesn’t make sense.”

So for the past half decade, I’ve been doing something that goes directly against everything I was ever taught: examining my beliefs and determining what I truly believe and what I only believe out of indoctrination and fear. Looking at the Scriptures in their original forms and historical-political contexts, and examining its English translations through the same lens. Discerning the difference between what’s biblical and what’s Christlike, how much of Christianity is God’s true word and how much is the agenda of men, challenging myself to question everything I’ve ever known and acknowledge that maybe what I learned was just wrong.

It’s… largely been uphill, but it’s a battle I’m not fighting alone. My girlfriend is a huge source of support; having someone that’s so close to me yet so far removed from the system I was brought up in has been invaluable in opening my eyes to just how fucked up some of the stuff I’ve been taught is. I just earlier this year learned that the Rapture isn’t a widespread belief outside of American Evangelicism, and that it as a concept isn’t even an ancient prophecy, but a relatively recent (like, 19th century, popularized in the 20th century) man made doctrine. My girlfriend, who lacks strong religious affiliation but nonetheless knows her Scripture because she’s from the heavily Catholic Slovakia, was absolutely baffled when I explained what I thought was common knowledge to all Christians. She calls the doctrine “UFO Jesus”.

Since I was at least twelve, I’ve lived in constant fear of the Rapture because I was convinced that, as a “sodomite” who couldn’t bring myself to condemn others like me, all my friends and I would be damned to Hell at any given moment. It’s always been a double-edged sword; fear of damnation is what’s kept me from offing myself several times, but the belief that the Rapture will happen any day and I’ll be tortured for all eternity no matter what I do so there’s really no point in living is a huge part of what got me to the point of wanting to off msyelf in the first place. And I’m learning now that it’s not even a common belief within one of the world’s largest religions, least of all to the extent its importance was pressed within our church. I still struggle to say “I was taught a lie” because that fear of being wrong and suffering greatly for it was part and parcel of my participation in church growing up, but dammit I’m striving to find my own truth instead of the supposed truth drilled into me.

So yes, I’m still religious. But I no longer believe in the God I was taught to believe in. I still haven’t quite figured everything out, and I still struggle thanks to a lifetime of indoctrination, but I’m learning to define my own beliefs bit by bit, and I believe in a God of radical love who mourns what so many oppressive sects of Christianity teach and enforce in His name. And if you don’t believe that, that’s fine! There’s reasons aplenty to be atheistic or antitheistic or religious/spiritual but unaffiliated with Christianity specifically.

But don’t you dare fucking tell me I’m no better now than I was while I was trapped, just because you personally don’t find religion to hold any value. I’m not perfect. I was raised in a deeply flawed ideology and still suffer from holdovers. I’m doing my best to hold myself accountable for those biases as I move forward. But I am, in fact, a victim and a survivor, and I‘ve fought like hell to undo the damage done to me and that I did to others while trapped in that system, and I have every right to be frustrated at those efforts being belittled and to be proud of myself for how far I’ve come anyway.

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

♥️,🥩, and 🍓 From Yunessa!

aww thank you! for this ask game, last one under the read more bc it got longg

❤️ (heart) - Who is the most important person to your character? To what lengths would they go to protect this person?

To Conficcare, Rametta is by far the most important person to him, which is why her rejection of him & his attempts to keep her safe from their mother cuts him so deeply. What lengths? well for as much as its known that he would pick Muro over Tesoro in a heartbeat, he would betray all of them for Rametta.

🥩 (steak) - Does your oc have any coping mechanisms? Healthy or unhealthy?

Celias smoking comes to mind, she used it to calm herself, fit in/seem cool, but mainly to decease her appetite and lessen the hunger pains when there wasn't enough food [which was most of the time] Hes been trying to kick the habit for years with little long term success, but no matter how many gross images of the consequences Conficcare shoves in his face he always ends up rolling up a cig when things get stressful or he needs to think. [I mean, he knows hes gonna die young, its inevitable, why worry about cancer and fucking up your body when your not gonna be around in time for it?]

🍓 (strawberry) - Does your oc believe in anything? Are they superstitious? Religious? Atheistic? Has anything in their past made them this way?

Muro & Cecio [& Tesoro & Conficcare & Rametta] all have a complicated relationship with religion. Raised Roman Catholic [with some influence from Eastern Orthodoxy from the large amount of Ukrainian immigrants in their community] Much of their community was centered around worship, which meant that being rejected due to their trans and queerness was devastating when it happened.

Notably, Paula refused to go to church after she was deemed to be going against the will of god by accepting that Cecio was a trans boy and raising him as such- though given she opposed the priest by punching him in the face it wasn't like she was exactly welcome anymore. Celia also got much side eye when he started presenting fully as Muro.

Despite that [and the homophobia of Tesoros father & Conficcares mother that they justified through scripture and worrying for their childs souls] they all maintain quite a strong level of faith, keeping god in their own way. Muro notably often keeps his mothers rosary around his right wrist, hidden under the cuff of his jacket, Tesoro still goes to church and prays for forgiveness often, Conficcare goes occasionally, while Rametta used to go before she had an annoying atheist phase, but after her brothers death refuses to feel uncomfortable as herself in a house of god [She loves the 'god made us trans for the same reason he gave us wheat instead of bread and grapes instead of wine, so we could partake in the act of creation' [paraphrased] idea, and as she sees the world and many religious leaders become more accepting of trans & queer people she wishes so much that the rest of her family were there to see it]

I need to do more research into Catholicism bc while i was undeniably raised culturally christian i had very little interaction with protestant practice let alone catholic, but they are all very steeped in catholic practices and habits, while they question and disagree with spesific teachings- mainly around queerness- they are very much religious and it is important to them.

[djuvlipen]

Religion, Roma and Misogyny

So I've been meaning to make a post on Roma and religion but I don't know how to properly put my thoughts into words. But basically:

The Evangelical Christian faith is the fastest growing religious movement among Roma

Nowadays, about a third of European Roma are Evangelical Christians (x)

The movement is particularly popular in Spain and in France (x, x), but also in the UK (x,x) and in the Balkan (x, x)

Evangelical missionaries convert Roma by spreading lies about our origin. A common talking point is that Roma actually don't come from India but from Israel. That kind of misinformation is pretty bad because Roma should be aware of our actual history if we want to fight for our rights and for properly educating our children about our past. This talking point also often comes accompanied with anti-Indian racism and anti-Palestinian racism. It also leads to images like these, which are not statements of solidarity but rather, an attempt at blurring Romani identity and conceiling our true origins:

Evangelical missionaries are one of the leading causes of the disappearance of traditional Romani beliefs and cultural practices: fortune telling, saints worship (including the worship of Saint Sara e Kali, a protective figure whose worship among Roma can be traced back to the year 1000, when we left India)

Evangelical missionaries are not only setting back Romani rights by promoting cultural assimilation, they are also actively spreading homophobia and misogyny among Romani communities...

which is clearly bad considering LGB Roma and Romani women are already treated so bad in the community

Here is a list of things I have personally heard or read from Romani evangelical (straight) men:

Homosexuality is an abomination and homosexual Roma should be stoned to death

No self respecting Romani person can be homosexual, if you are both Romani and gay you have to be thrown out of your community

Self respecting Romani girls and women can't wear skirts or shorts or show their knees

Romani girls and women shouldn't be allowed to wear swimsuits in front of men, including in front of their brothers, father and grandfather, lest they be labelled "whores"

Romani women should listen to their husbands and not take decisions. They should cook for their husband, clean for their husband, and remain in the household while their Romani husband works

If you are a Romani woman or an LGB Roma and you want to assert your rights, then you're not really Romani, you are actually white or you have been corrupted by white culture. No Romani woman or LGB would be so assertive or stand up for themself

Here is a list of behaviour and events I have personally seen and witnessed from Evangelical Roma:

An effeminate Romani traveler (male teenager) was making tiktoks about his life as a Romani traveler, pretty casual and chill videos. His comment section got flooded by comments from Evangelical Roma saying: if I were your mother I would be ashamed; if I were your dad I would beat you up so badly; your parents should throw you out; your behaviour is so shameful, I'm ashamed by the youngest generations of Roma. They also spammed homophobic slurs in Sinti language and in my country's official language. Please note that there was no indication this teenager was homosexual, he just had an effeminate voice and mannerisms.

Last summer, a young gitana (Spanish Romani) woman posted a tiktok in which she was wearing a bikini. She was harassed by young Romani men for a week, calling her a whore, a slut, and shameful. They said her father and brother must be feeling so ashamed by her behaviour. That woman eventually made a tiktok defending her right to wear a bikini because she was still unmarried, thus implicitly conceding that a married Romani woman should cover herself.

An old Sinti woman and Holocaust survivor was testifying about her time in Auschwitz. She described the behaviour of some of the Sinti women she was sharing her barrack with. She said some of them had lesbian relationships. She then said, "that behaviour was so disgusting, and is not something we do in Sinti culture. If us, Sinti, ever catch one of our women doing this, we would rightfully beat her up. These people should be lynched and dealt with". That woman became an Evangelical after the Holocaust and said that God helped her and our people survived the genocide.

TL;Dr, I hate Evangelical Christians. They are homophobes and misogynists that make the lives of Romani women and LGB even harder. They are advocating for restricting Romani women's rights and for the murder of LGB Roma. This is happening all over Europe – including in Western Europe, where it is supposedly soooo easy to be gay or a woman. The Evangelical faith is a disaster for us. Yet it is one of the most widespread religion among Roma, and no one knows it because it's barely documented or covered by media. You can't support Romani women's and LGB rights if you support religion, and the evangelical one first and foremost

[aroacesafeplaceforall]

Thanks for the reblog!

I'm so glad you have created a safe space for aroace people! We really need more of those.

I do not have a support group or anything because I do not know anyone who is aroace. But my friends are great and even though they don't understand, they're supportive enough and I couldn't ask for better people in my life.

Anyway, this blog is awesome because I'm always looking for a way to vent. I blabber to my friends all the time even if they're not listening, but I'm seizing this opportunity lol. So here I go (and this goes without saying, but I'm sorry because this is gonna be kinda long probably)...

So I'm a female Indian and I'm Muslim which basically means arranged marriages are a thing and that getting married in your early 20s is also a thing. So if you're a girl, most times the moment you turn 18 or maybe even before that, your family will start looking for a suitable groom for you. Some families value education and so they let the girls study and at least complete their degree. And if you're lucky, the family you're married into also values education and financial independence and will let you continue your studies or work. But not everyone is that lucky. Sometimes even if your in-laws are supportive, your husband might not be, and will stop you from studying or doing something you love.

The maximum age you can be unmarried as an Indian Muslim woman is around 25. And getting till 25 unmarried is very rare. So unmarried women above the age of 25 are even rarer. All the Muslim spinsters are either widows or divorced. Getting married is not a choice here, it's a part of life.

Most people know of the LGBTQ community here. India is not in any way progressive when it comes to the community, since it's only recently being gay stopped being a crime here. Culture and tradition is considered very important and most beliefs are rooted in religion, whatever the religion may be. So homophobia and transphobia is rampant. But the general population is aware of the existence of gay and trans people. Very few of them might now about the existence of aromanticism and asexuality. The idea of wanting to be single and/or celibate is foreign to them. And my family belongs to that group of people (that took a turn eh?)

My family is what I would like to call a semi conservative family. They are religious enough to push us to learn the holy book and pray regularly and follow religious teachings but not that much that they force us to do things that are not compulsory or whatever. They value education and freedom of choice and are not stuck in the past (which unfortunately cannot be said about most Indian families).

My mother actually got married when she was 24 and after completing her degree, which is surprising to me because that can be seen as progressive as it was rare at the time.

So yeah, I'm lucky to be part of a family like this. They're understanding, more than I think they are, but obviously I'm scared because I do not know how much that understanding extends.

I am 22 right now and mentally ill. I have been from the age of 14 or so. I haven't been diagnosed properly but I started therapy last year and my current therapist called my condition high-functioning depression which basically means that I function well enough in society but am depressed. It's apparently something most celebrities have.

My journey with mental illness is a long and exhausting one and it's still not going steady, but what I would like to mention is that what prompted me to take the big step that is therapy after many years was an event...the wedding engagement of my best friend.

My best friend and I have been friends from kindergarten. We were neighbours and classmates and our families are also very close. The news of her engagement shocked me (maybe not as much it shocked her though. It was a very sudden engagement. But she's happy and in love now and I'm happy for her.) and it made warning bells go off in my head. I suddenly felt like I was running out of time. And since I'm scared of getting married and obviously haven't come out to my parents or told them or even ever implied that I wasn't into the idea of marriage, that fear of getting married in the near future pushed me into getting therapy. It was an on and off thing for a while. Me and my first therapist did get somewhere and I'd made some progress before I was back in square one. But I have many underlying and standing issues that I never really got a chance to talk to her about marriage or any of that stuff. I have a new therapist now and I haven't talked to her about it either, I've only mentioned not wanting to get married in passing. I think it's because I know nothing I say will change the fact that I haven't told my parents and thus my future will not change or become closer to the one I have envisioned.

I am now doing a post graduate degree and I will complete it next year, after I turn 23. I don't think my family has actively started looking for proposals but they are open to accepting good ones. I have no hand in this, not right now at least. After my graduation, I will. I will be expected to look pretty and pose and look through proposals and all that shit. It sounds like torture. I've heard enough stories to know it's not a fun process.

I really want to tell my parents because if it means I have to live the rest of my life miserable, then at least I'd have spoken my truth, but I keep waiting for the right time but I've realised there is no right time, there is only a wrong time and that is when they start actively looking for a poor chap who'll want to marry me. I'm just so scared because I'm pretty sure I know what they'll say. They'll either say something along the lines of "you're just lazy and/or unprepared and/or scared" and "that is not even an option. It is compulsory (not true btw)/encouraged in Islam to get married. You will lose your ways and go astray and get into haram (Islamically) unlawful romantic/sexual relationships". Worst case scenario is that I stand my ground and refuse to get married and they'll lock me up or send me off to a mental hospital or just disown me or something. Best case scenario is they agree to not marry me off but insist I become an Islamic nun or something (which I'm not completely against. But I'm not deeply religious enough to devote my whole life to being an Islamic teacher or missionary or whatever. I will and want to do it along with whatever job I get).

Of course, there is a chance it'll not go anything like this and go in a completely different direction I didn't even think of but i seriously doubt it. You see, even if my parents are supportive of my decision to not get married, pressure from the rest of the family and societal pressure will be really strong, that even if they hold on for a while, they'll break eventually.

Now say it will go my way and I get to be a happy (or trying to be happy) spinster, then I will become the talk of the town and considered an outcast. It will not be easy attending gatherings and my family will get the brunt of it, especially my parents. Gossip is after all very destructive.

I could cut off my family after becoming financially independent but I have never even considered that an option. I love my family and I owe them a lot and I would and could never cut them off from my life (assuming that it even is possible. It's not very easy to do that here.)

So I'm stuck and this has been a burden that I've been carrying around for a while now. I knew I didn't want anything to do with romantic relationships from when I was 14 or something but then after I realised I had really low self esteem, I realised that might be why I wasn't interested in being in a romantic relationship but I have thought long and hard about it and I have come to the conclusion (one of many) that it's just something that I do not want for myself.

It had always been at the back of my mind though but this has become a more immediate worry as I'm running out of time, and so I panic every now and then when my thoughts wander and I think about the future. It's getting exhausting being so unsure of something like marriage when I'm also worried about finding a stable career and just surviving because even that is a huge question mark for me when I think about the future.

And that's that. Sorry for any typos/grammar errors! (I'm too lazy to proof read this 😅, not that that proofreading would help 😛)

I should probably go to sleep now. If you read all of that, thank you so much. It really means a lot.

Hey there! I’m glad you found a good place to vent and I hope you find happiness and love (platonic) where ever you go in life!

I honestly don’t really know what to say but I’m here for you! You sound like an incredible person and I know you’ll do well in life <3

Stay amazing and stay safe, remember no matter what happens we are all here for you and you are always valid!! <33

[mtkyllene]

Hello! And welcome to the chaos!

DNI

Terfs/radfems

Bigotry of any kind, including but not limited to: ableism, racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia.

Pro-ed blogs

SH/traumacore/vent blogs

Right-wing/alt-right/maga/anti-blm

Pro-lifers that push their ideals and opinions on others

Lgbtq+ exclusionists, including panphobes, aro/acephobes, biphobes, anti xenogenders, anti neo/xenopronouns.

Anti sfw agere/petre

Additionally, nsfw agere

MAPs, Pedos, and whatever other acronyms y’all are using to ID yourselves. We don’t support pedos here.

Western Medicine/Medication deniers (if it’s not for you, that’s fine, but if you think no one should be on medications, esp for mental illnesses or disorders, get out)

White supremacy/n*zis/n*zi sympathizers

Sandy Hook deniers

Religious/conspiracy extremists of any kind.

Fascist rhetorics, ideologies, and organizations

Now that all that’s out of the way let’s

MEET THE MODS!!!!!

Mod Reg

Hello I’m Regulus or Reg. I use they/them and hy/hym pronouns.

I’ve been a practicing pagan since 2018ish. I began working with Hermes in late 2021 when I was traveling both by myself for the first time, and for the first time since COVID lockdown. I was insanely nervous and began to pray to Hermes before, during, and after my trip. As I began to do more research about Hermes I began to slowly realize that he has been present in my life for most of it, and I started to officially work with Hermes in early 2022. As of right now (June 2023) he is currently my primary deity and the only one I’m working with, however in the past I have worked with other deities including Loki, Apollo, and Aphrodite, and I will probably work with other deities in the future as I continue to grow and explore my path.

Fun facts about me: Audhd babie! My current hyperfixations/special interests include Critical Role Campaign 2, autism (lol), Hozier, and Languages/linguistics. I also have POTS and a handful of mental illnesses/disorders that I’m untangling. I write my own music and Poetry (which you may or may not see on here if I write anything related to Hermes/witchcraft). :D

Mod Fern

hello! i'm fern and i mainly go by he/him pronouns :>

i've been worshipping hermes since january 2022, which kickstarted my ACTIVE hellenic polytheist practice, although arguably i've been practicing since 2016. like reg, i started praying to him when my family was stuck at a hotel and unable to get home for the foreseeable future, and when i finally got home and set up what was supposed to be a temporary altar, he didn't want me to take it down! i have since realised he's my patron (with a mix of the neopagan and ancient greek definition of that word) as i'm a cross-culture kid in ib, a writer, a huge language fan, currently working to become a guardian of the dead, and much more.

i also have been practicing witchcraft since early 2020 and am an omnist with agnostic tendencies (but "hellenic polytheist" works just fine too) as well as an animist with a very eclectic folk-based practice

if you'd like to speak to me outside of this, you can find me as @rainbluealoekitten on tumblr, and i'm occasionally but rarely also active on @hellenic-worship, and i'm @/ferns_n_ravens on insta!!

Mod Lav

Hi!! I'm Lav and my pronouns are she/they.

I'm 19, and I got into witchcraft when I was 12. I'm what my friends call a "creature of chaos". Hermes is my patron god and has worked with me for more years than I can recall. He was the first deity to ever reach out to me (it took years to recognise it was him, though). I'm hypersocial and love talking, so please feel free to strike up a conversation!! Feel free to DM my main @vushadoration

Join us on discord! https://discord.gg/ZhtmfqakUq

tags we use:

WITCHCRAFT: 🕯🔮🌒

#witchcraft, #witchy tips, #spells, #divination, #elements, #cleansing, #neurodivergent witchcraft

HERMES AND HELLENIC POLYTHEISM: 🏛⚱︎☤

#hermes, #general helpol, #hermes epithets, #hermes devotion

OTHER:

#art, #goose moment (<— to clarify this is for non-serious/funny posts), #resources, #spoonie, #poetry, #greek

[butchviking]

I get what that person is saying but I don't think men experience "misogyny". I think it's related to misogyny and it's related to homophobia but can't properly be called either.

Patriarchal cultures are like a cult or religion of male supremacy, utterly obsessed with propagating themselves. That is why they control women brutally as they literally control the propagation of human life. But culturally, they are also obsessed with creating men that can make more men like themselves. There's different molds for different cultures of course and with different acceptable "types" of men even within the same culture (ie being gentle is unmanly, BUT you can be gentle if you make up for it by being violent through rhetoric and community function - think of Priests or otherwise "gentle" seeming very religious men, and how for them it's interpreted as being "dignified" in a way it wouldn't fly for other men). So while there's some room for variation, there's still a strict sort math involved for how unmanly you're allowed to be, and a strong artificial upbringing to mold boy as much as possible.

So going back. That process of molding is what she's getting at. It's not that men experience "misogyny" or that straight people experience "homophobia". Rather patriarchy needs to mold boys into men capable and willing to carry out misogyny, homophobia, and other cruelty to perpetuate itself, and they most certainly are willing to abuse boys just enough to make sure they get those results - if not by directly changing that boy, then by teaching other boys by example what sort of behavior deserves cruelty. And there's an in-built cultural anxiety at people outside of these roles, and even a panic response to them in children. This is why say, even conservative women react violently and urgently to something like their little boy wanting a butterfly face paint instead of something manly. It's a panic response!

Anyway this is just my two cents as a moid, sorry for the essay v_v ... but I think misogyny and homophpbia proper really have to be preserved to define the experiences of people who strictly do experience that on a life-long and systemic basis. But idk certainly thought provoking...

i think it relies upon one being mistaken for the other. a straight man can experience homophobia, i do know that - some guys beating on him for looking like a fag aren't going to stop when he insists "you've got it all wrong! im not actually gay!!" and i do also know that males can experience misogyny, if they're perceived as female - and that does happen to "cis" men too. a lot of ppl have called this "misdirected homophobia" & "misdirected misogyny" in the past but when i was talking abt this last i was arguing that the "misdirected" is kind of neither here nor there. it's happening, misdirected or not. they won't ever experience the full weight of those marginalisations - even the campest straight guy in the world can still marry his wife, and the most female-passing transwoman you'll ever meet will never need an abortion - but they can absolutely still experience facets.

the thing i thought was most interesting in that post was the thought of the straight teen still figuring out their sexuality & internalising the homophobia they recieve bc they think they MIGHT be gay... in a way thats still a case of one being mistaken for the other, but in an internal rather than external way. they're experiencing homophobia externally bc someone else has mistaken them for gay, and experiencing it internally bc they have mistaken themselves for gay. but some day they figure out that they're not actually gay after all - what does that experience leave behind in them? (listen to frank iero barriers to find out)

what ur talking about i would just call gender socialisation. gender is a system constructed for the purpose of misogyny, it's the framework of patriarchy, but i wouldn't argue that men experiencing negative aspects of gender socialisation & enforcement are experiencing misogyny. those are distinctly different.

[tyunni]

HIIII MAY!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR! 🎉 omg i missed you sm. after my break i was gonna reply to you but then it turned out that i was just even more busy with school and everything :/ but how have your holidays been??

yeah no i totally get it. kids sometimes high key annoy me too but then my baby fever just makes my love for them go 📈📈

oooh now you make me wanna travel again and visit georgia 😭 only if it wasn’t for covid 😔🙄,,, and the fact that i’m broke SKSJSJDJ ik you said you don’t know much yourself but if i ever do visit,, do you have any places you recommend to go or sightsee? and oh naur what makes it so bad about living there? 🥺

pLS can you like,, tag me in your cb post or smth? i don’t wanna miss it skdjskjd or do you have a taglist that i can be added to? skdjskdj

ASLHFLAKJSHF ITS OKAY DWDWDW i understand we all got stuff going on HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU TOO <333

and tbh i agree on the baby fever part. i love children but theyre literally so annoying- the thing is that no matter how much my niece annoys me SHE'S JUST SO CUTE THAT I CANT GET MAD AT HER AND IT'S SO WEIRD OH MY GOD ig its just how children are

the thing is like... i don't really like sightseeings in general - i say that like I've visited countless of countries when i haven't left Georgia at all - the things you can see here are mostly religious stuff, we're Christians specifically orthodox (as in most of the population is) and have been since the fourth century so most of the sightseeings here are based on that. so if you're into that stuff then georgia is definitely a good place for you to look at, people here are VERY religious. now i haven't really been outside of the capital city which is where i live, but i have been to quite a few places cuz my dad drags me and my family to road trips and stuff, and to be honest, some of the most memorable places - well at least to me - were the old castles that were built and have been standing for centuries now. also one of the skulls of the very first humans that have walked on earth are found in Dmanisi which is a town in Georgia so that's a place you can visit, we have a museum and everything. you can also visit Vardzia (search it up it looks rlly cool I've been there it's really pretty), etc etc. we also have house-museums of famous georgian writers here, not to flex but i'm gonna flex haha one of them is my grandpa. so yeah we have a lot of stuff, nothing specific i can recommend since we have basically everything one would like to see. from great scenery to great food and places that represent our culture quite well. NFLKJDANFKJA BUT LIKE LIVING HERE IS SO HORRIBLE. since i said people here are... quite religious... there's a lot of homophobia AND I MEAN A LOT. TW: death and physical violence. during pride month (which isn't even a month here its just a week...) a lot of people - some who weren't even part of LGBTQ+ - were injured, beat up and one of the reporters who was filming the scenes even passed away due to his severe injuries. the government is REALLY fucked up, the country is split into two cuz of politics... it's just a lot. can't wait to leave this place tbh-

AND I DO HAVE A PERMANENT TAGLIST SO IG THAT'S SOMETHING U CAN FILL OUT IF U WANNA but i will mention u on my post nonetheless since you asked me to fjndslkjgns also ignore the lack of emojis since i always seem to use them im just on my laptop and can't be bothered to copy and paste them

[jewish-privilege]

In October 2015, I found myself in a frightening situation: My name and face on a Neo-Nazi website identifying me as a Jew along with several hundred other Jews in politics, civics, and philanthropy. The website, which I will not name, warned its readers that Jews were too influential in American life; that we were a corruptive influence on America. While it didn’t advocate actually killing me, I was marked as a person to be silenced.

“How likely are these people to actually kill me?” I asked the expert at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-hate group that researches white supremacist groups. I had called them seeking answers. My husband was sitting beside me, his face full of fear. I felt a tiny kick, a flutter inside me, my hands dropping to my belly. “I should probably mention that I am 8 months pregnant.”

There was a pause at the end of the line. “It’s very rare for these threats to escalate offline,” the nice man began. “They want to scare you. They want to scare you so much you decide that you never want to write again. That’s their goal. What you decide to do next is a personal decision.”

You can see that I decided to keep writing. But thinking back on the advice he gave me, it almost seems quaint: In the four years since those threats, especially since the 2016 election, white supremacists spewing anti-Semitic hatred have marched in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us,” shot up synagogues in Pittsburgh and California, and murdered gay Jewish student Blaze Bernstein. Anti-Semitic assaults are up 105% since 2017, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit on American anti-Semitism. More Jews have been killed in anti-Semitic violence around the world in 2018 than in the last several decades, according to the Kantor Center, based out of Tel Aviv University, which researches and analyzes global anti-Semitism. In New York City, a major center of Jewish culture and life, the NYPD has reported an 82% spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes in 2019. In fact, Jews are reporting the highest number of religion-based hate crimes — this is particularly troubling given that Jews are only approximately 2.2% of the U.S. adult population.

And while the majority of incidents and assaults are committed by white supremacists on the right, there has been a concerning spike in incidents and rhetoric from the left wing, too...

As a child growing up in Boston, I knew anti-Semitism existed. I even experienced it from time to time — including when my childhood synagogue was defaced with a swastika. But overall I felt safe in America... I was grateful for a country that had provided Jews with peace and prosperity. America was a rare safe place for us.

Today, that’s different. The baby I was pregnant with is now a thriving, rambunctious toddler. But when we tour Jewish preschools, my first question isn’t about education philosophy, recess or student teacher ratios — it’s always about security. In just a few short years we’ve gone from history to fear.

To understand what can be done, first we need to understand what it is: Anti-Semitism is the hatred of Jews as a distinct people, as opposed to anti-Judaism that targets our religious beliefs and practices. Anti-semitism is a conspiracy theory. It depicts Jews as a cabal secretly controlling the world for evil ends, hurting innocent people to further greedy, cruel agendas. How those agendas manifest changes based on your worldview. If you are far left, it may be that Jews are imperialists who start wars to enrich themselves. If you’re a white nationalist, it’s that Jews are the ringleaders of the White Genocide. If you’re Minister Louis Farrakhan, it’s that Jews were the secret orchestrators of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Anti-Semitism is an ancient, chameleonic monster. It adapts to circumstances and seemingly new excuses for age-old prejudices to take hold. This is especially true in periods of political and economic insecurity.

...It doesn't help that we are also living in an era when conspiracy theories can so easily spread (from anti-Obama birtherism to Pizzagate to QAnon). President Trump and his cohorts on the far right capitalize and promote them, fomenting hatred and division through fake news and an assault on the truth. They accuse prominent Jews like George Soros of treacherous crimes, while consorting with and justifying white supremacists and their actions (“very fine people” Trump called them.). They act shocked and appalled when fear mongering, the mainstream legitimization of white nationalists, and dangerously lax gun control leave them with blood on their hands (as it did at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue).

And yet while I fear anti-Semitism on the right will lead to more violence, I fear anti-Semitism on the left will cause that violence and hate to go unchallenged. As American Jews face rising hate crimes and domestic terrorism, progressives have grappled with a string of unsettling scandals. At first, it was the way left wing groups downplayed anti-Semitism. In the wake of the 2016 election, for example, the Women’s March conspicuously left anti-Semitism off its unity principles, while left wing groups erased it as a core issue in Charlottesville, and were silent during hundreds of JCC bomb threats. Then it got worse. The anti-Semitism scandal surrounding Women’s March leadership unfolded over several tense months, during which they publicly associated with anti-Semitic Farrakhan and engaged in anti-Semitic dog whistling and bullying.

This controversy was followed by statements by freshman Representative Ilhan Omar, in which she fell into anti-Semitic tropes referencing dual loyalty, foreign allegiance, and Jewish money in her criticisms of Israel. Omar had many defenders who dismissed the charges because Omar herself faces Islamophobia and racism. But such tropes do feed the beast. As Ilhan Omar struggled to contain criticism and put forth multiple apologies for her comments, David Duke, the Grand Wizard of the KKK, came to her defense dubbing her the “Most Important Member of Congress.” It’s not to say that Omar should be held accountable for the words of David Duke. But it does indicate the way anti-Semitism — be it from the left or the right — can connect to amplify the threat.

While the Women’s March has taken positive steps to mend fences, like expanding Jewish leadership in the organization and including Jewish women in their Unity Principles, and Omar and the New York Times have apologized, the situations have led to increased division as anti-Semitism continues to spread, and becomes a political wedge issue, all of which creates increased danger for the Jewish community. In a time of increased concern about Jewish security, these scandals have had a devastating emotional impact on the Jewish community. We were taught by our grandmothers to watch for signs of danger — hateful words from across the political spectrum is one of them.

Over the past three years, I have seen anti-Semitism break and undermine strong community relationships and budding movements for justice. This what anti-Semitism does: It attacks democracy and transparency, giving authoritarian actors scapegoats for national problems. It endangers women, people of color, and immigrants as it strengthens and animates white nationalism, xenophobia, and extremist movements.

American Jews know this intrinsically and are frightened. The jump from hate speech to exterminatory violence has been a short one in the history of global Jewry. Many of us were taught about the dangers of anti-Semitism and how quickly it could rise against us from very young ages, especially for those of us who had family who were Holocaust survivors or who endured violence against Jews in the Middle East or Soviet Union. We need Americans to listen to our fear and take a stand.

The first step is to call it out when we see it in our houses of worship, living rooms, libraries, college campuses and kindergartens. This doesn’t mean we dismiss or “cancel” our friends, families, colleagues, and community leaders who engage in anti-Semitism. It means we tell them they are wrong. We educate. Jewish history is over 5,000 years old, and learning what narratives have been used to oppress Jews can be lifesaving. And then, let’s build relationships between communities that are under attack and frightened.

...This is what we need to do for each other: Come together to fight not just anti-Semitism but racism, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. If we learn each other’s histories, warning signs and dangers and fight for each other, we can make the monsters afraid of us. 

[latter-day-saint-nick]

Here‘s a list of all the books with queer protagonists I’ve read this year. While I do actively seek those out, there are several books on here that I didn’t know had queer themes when I picked them up from the library and then I was pleasantly surprised by lesbians. I‘ll avoid spoilers except when discussing trigger warnings.

 Kaleidoscope Song by Fox Benwell

Neo, a South African teenager, is obsessed with music of any kind. Her love of music brings her together with the singer of a local band and they have a passionate relationship that they must keep secret. The descriptions of Neo‘s life and her tendency to hear music in everything are beautiful and dynamic. The author included a list of the songs Neo is listening to throughout the book, so I was introduced to a lot of cool music from South Africa and other places. TW: Corrective rape and Bury Your Gays. This is a book by a queer (albeit white British, rather than black South African) author writing about a very real problem that exists within our communities, so it feels different to when a cishet author kills off a queer character just for shock value. I still can‘t help feeling that he could have made the same point without having the character die – just have her be injured. Still, I loved pretty much everything else about the book, so it gets a tentative recommendation from me.

The Mermaid’s Daughter by Ann Claycomb

25-year-old opera student Kathleen tries to cope with the constant pain in her feet, nightmares about having her tongue cut out, and desperate yearning for the sea. With the help of her girlfriend Harry she delves into her family history to uncover the secret of a curse spanning generations of women. What’s nice about this book is that Kathleen and Harry’s relationship is accepted by all their family and friends without question, so if you want to read a nice wlw fantasy story with no homophobia, this one’s for you. TW: Some discussion of suicide, but nothing too graphic.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

A teenage lesbian is sent to conversion therapy by her religious aunt. This is basically a coming-of-age story as the title character comes to terms with her identity and the death of her parents. It’s considered an important work of LGBT YA literature, so I really wanted to like it more than I did. Most of the first half of the novel deals with Cameron’s everyday life in her small town in Montana, which was, to be honest, rather boring to me. The pace of the story picks up a bit once she gets sent to conversion therapy, but even then it’s slower and less eventful than I would have liked. But since it is a popular book, that’s probably just me. I did like that the two best friends she makes at the therapy camp are a disabled girl and an indigenous boy, two types of people that are not often represented in queer fiction, so that’s something. TW: Conversion therapy and self-harm.

Proud by Juno Dawson

This is a collection of poems and stories about queerness aimed at a YA audience, and each one is a pure delight! These stories detail moments of joy and pride that make you feel happy and hopeful about being queer. They include a high school retelling of Pride and Prejudice with lesbians, a nonbinary kid and his D&D group on a quest to disrupt the gender binary at their school, a magical phoenix leading a Chinese girl to find love, and gay penguins. All stories, poems and illustrations are by queer writers and artists. Seriously, I cannot recommend this collection enough!

Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

An Irish magical realist story about three girls who perform a spell to find things that they have lost. The spell appears to have wider consequences than they expected, bringing to light things that should have stayed lost. This book has three narrators, two of whom are wlw. It treads a nice line between fantasy and reality, and has some pretty good plot twists. Also, there’s a crossword at the end, which is awesome. More books should come with crosswords.

Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

A space opera trilogy set in the distant future about the embodiment of a ship’s AI who seeks revenge against the ruler of a colonialist empire who destroyed her ship and killed her beloved captain. This is not beginner’s sci-fi, as it is very complex and intricate, but if you’re fine with a bit of a heavier read, you’ll be rewarded with some very interesting concepts. What makes this series queer is that the Raadch empire has no concept of gender and uses female pronouns for everyone. This makes every romantic relationship queer by default, whether we are aware of the characters’ sexes or not. I found it particularly enjoyable when Breq, the protagonist, tried to communicate in different languages that have gendered pronouns, which she had to navigate carefully in order not to offend people. She tries to look for outward clues of gender, such as hairstyles, chest size, facial hair or Adam’s apples, but even then often gets it wrong, because these things are not always consistent. That is just a great depiction of how arbitrary ideas of binary sexual characteristics tend to be. Also, I guess technically Breq is aroace, but since she’s not human, I’m not sure if she can be considered the best representation, though she is a very likeable character that I enjoyed following.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue and The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

These books are a lot of fun! They’re historical adventure stories with a bit of fantasy thrown in, featuring disaster bisexual Henry Montague, his snarky aroace sister Felicity and his best friend Percy whom he is secretly in love with. In the first book, the three teenagers are sent on a tour of Europe for various reasons, but they quickly abandon the planned route when they get embroiled in a plot involving theft and alchemy. The second book details Felicity’s further attempts to become a doctor, which leads her to reunite with an old friend and chase a tale of fantastical creatures.

The Spy with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke

Technically I read this one late last year, but whatever. I just wanted to put it on the list to have an excuse to talk about it. It’s about two Jewish siblings with magic powers who are recruited during World War II to take part in a secret project to fight the Nazis. Both siblings turn out to be queer: the brother is gay and demisexual, while the sister is bisexual, and they each have a love interest. This book is an independent prequel to The Girl with the Red Balloon, which takes place in East Berlin during the time of the Wall, and is just as good, albeit not as gay.

We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia

This book tends to be classified as fantasy, because it takes place in an alternate, Latin-American-inspired world, with a distinct history, culture and religion, but there’s no magic at all, so I’m not sure it counts. But I digress. The country of Medio is built on classism and acute xenophobia. But by hiding her status as an illegal immigrant, Daniela, a girl from a poor background, manages to rise to the top of her class at her elite finishing school and become the first wife of one of the most powerful young men in the country. But her new comfortable status is threatened when she is pressured to join a group of rebels who fight for equality. At the same time, she also finds herself falling for her husband’s second wife. Obviously, this book’s political message is very topical, but beyond that, it’s just a very good story, with a well fleshed-out fictional world and great characters. This is the first in a series, with the sequel, We Unleash the Merciless Storm, coming out in February.

All Out: The No Longer Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages by Saundra Mitchell

A very nice collection of short stories about various queer teenagers in different historical settings, from a medieval monastery to an American suburb on New Year’s Eve in 1999. Most of the stories are realist, but there are a few ghosts and witches to be found in-between. What I found particularly notable about this book is that it featured several asexual characters, which you don’t often see in collections like this. I definitely recommend it.

Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta

This is a thoughtful, heart-warming life story about a woman growing up during the civil war in Nigeria. After Ijeoma, a Christian Igbo girl, is sent away from home, she finds her first love in Amina, a Muslim Hausa. Even after they are found out and separated, Ijeoma doesn’t quite understand what’s so shameful about their love. Still, as she grows older, she attempts to fit into a heteronormative society while also connecting with the things and people that make her happy. TW: Homophobic violence, including an attack on a gay nightclub. The novel makes up for this by having a remarkably happy ending.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

A young man in Victorian London finds a mysterious watch on his pillow, with no idea how it got there. This sets into motion a strange series of events, which leads him to a lonely Japanese watchmaker, to whom he finds himself increasingly drawn. This is an unusual novel that treads the line between historical fiction, fantasy and sci-fi. Most of the characters are morally grey and have complex motivations, but are still likable. I just really enjoy stories that take place in this time period, particularly when they are this thoughtfully written and don’t just take the prejudices of the past for granted.

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

A YA book about a transgender teenager, written by a transgender author. After her mother decides that she is not safe in her hometown anymore, high school senior Amanda moves in with her dad in a town where nobody knows her and she can try to go stealth. But even as she is making friends and experiencing romance for the first time, she constantly worries about what will happen if her secret comes out. It’s a fairly standard story about being transgender, really, but as it comes from a trans author, it feels a lot more personal and less voyeuristic than these stories tend to be when coming from a cisgender perspective. Amanda is a sympathetic and compelling character. TW: This book deals with a number of upsetting themes, including transphobic violence, being forcibly outed and suicide. There is a flashback to Amanda’s pre-transition suicide attempt, which I found particularly triggering. I also wish she could have come out on her own terms, instead of being outed in front of the whole school by someone she thought she could trust. It is still a pretty good book, but it can be very upsetting at times.

As I Descended by Robin Talley

A loose retelling of Macbeth that takes place in a boarding school in Virginia and involves two queer couples. The supernatural elements of the play are amplified in a wonderfully creepy way, and the characters are complex and realistic, so you understand their motivations, even when they do bad things. TW: Out of the five queer characters in the novel, three die, two of them by suicide.

A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss and EG Keller

A charming picture book about the Vice President’s pet bunny who falls in love with another boy bunny and wants to hop around at his side for the rest of his life. This book was written as a screw you to Mike Pence, but even so it is a genuinely nice kid’s book that deals with homosexuality and marriage equality in a way that is appropriate for young children. The illustrations are incredibly cute as well.

Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente

A very strange, surreal tale about four people (most of whom are queer in some way) exploring a magical city that you can enter in your dreams by sleeping with someone who has been there before. I wanted to like this one more than I did, because I really love Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland books for children. But while some of the dreamlike imagery is cool and pretty, I found a lot of it weirdly uncomfortable, along with the frequent sex scenes.

The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein

15-year-old Julia is home for the summer at her parents’ ancestral mansion in Scotland and gets involved with a plot about theft, disappearance and possibly murder. She also has her first crushes – on a man working at her parents’ estate and a young Traveller girl, respectively. This is a prequel to Code Name Verity, which has the same protagonist, though her bisexuality isn’t really alluded to in that, which is why I’ve kept it off the list, even though it is an excellent book. The Pearl Thief is pretty good as well, though it is a bit strange to read after you’ve already read Verity and know that this carefree teenage character is going to grow up to be a spy in World War II and be tortured in a Nazi prison. Do read both books, though. They are great.

Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson

A young scientist falls in love with the wife of the man she’s having an affair with. There’s speculation about quantum mechanics and interconnectedness, all wrapped in very poetic language. To be perfectly honest, I really didn’t get it, so I have no idea what any of it means. But at least the main character is bisexual and polyamorous (and possibly genderfluid – I’m not sure).

Queer Africa by Makhosazana Xaba and Karen Martin

A collection of short stories by queer African writers, discussing themes like love, sex, marriage, family and homophobia. The attitudes towards queerness in these different countries varies. In many of them, homosexuality is illegal, even though same-sex relationships used to be respected before the interference of Western colonialism. In any case, these stories are an interesting and oftentimes beautiful examination of queerness from a non-Western point of view, some joyous and some tragic. TW: The second to last story is about incest.

[suchagiantnerd]

48 Books, 1 Year

I was just two books shy of my annual goal of 50! You can blame the combination of my adorable newborn, who refused to nap anywhere except on me, and Hallmark Christmas movie season, during which I abandon books for chaste kisses between 30-somethings who behave like tweens at places called the Mistletoe Inn (which are really in Almonte, Ontario). 

Without further ado, as Zuma from Paw Patrol says, “Let’s dive in!”

1. Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes / Nathan H. Lents

We have too many bones! We have to rely too much on our diet for survival! We suffer from too many cognitive biases! Reading about our design flaws was kind of interesting, but the best part of this book were the few pages toward the end about the possibility of alien life. Specifically this quote: "...some current estimates predict that the universe harbours around seventy-five million civilizations." WHAT?! This possibility more than anything else I've ever heard or read gives me a better idea of how infinite the universe really is.

2. The Fiery Cross / Diana Gabaldon

Compared to the first four books in the Outlander series, this fifth book is a real snooze. The characters are becoming more and more unlikeable. They're so self-centered and unaware of their privilege in the time and place they're living. Gabaldon's depictions of the Mohawk tribe and other First Nations characters (which I'm reading through her character's opinions of things) are pretty racist. The enslaved people at one character's plantation are also described as being well taken care of and I just.... can't. I think this is the end of my affair with Outlander.

3. Educated / Tara Westover

This memoir was a wild ride. Tara Westover grew up in a survivalist, ultra-religious family in rural Idaho. She didn’t go to school and was often mislead about the outside world by her father. She and her siblings were also routinely put in physical danger working in their father’s junkyard as their lives were “in god’s hands”, and when they were inevitably injured, they weren’t taken to the hospital or a doctor, but left to be treated by their healer mother. Thanks to her sheer intelligence and determination (and some support from her older brother), Tara goes to university and shares with us the culture shock of straddling two very different worlds. My non-fiction book club LOVED this read, we talked about it for a long, long time.

4. Imbolc: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for St. Brigid’s Day / Carl F. Neal

Continuing with my witchy education, I learned all about the first sabbat of the new year, Imbolc.

5. Super Sad True Love Story / Gary Shteyngart

This in-the-very-near-future dystopian novel got my heart racing during a few exciting moments, but overall, I couldn’t immerse myself fully because of the MISOGYNY. I think the author might not like women and the things women like (or the things he thinks they like?) In this near future, all the dudes are into finance or are media celeb wannabes, while all the women work in high-end retail. And onion-skin jeans are the new trend for women - they are essentially see-through. Gary….we don’t…want that? We don’t even want low-rise jeans to come back.

6. The Wanderers / Meg Howrey

Helen, Yoshi and Sergei are the three astronauts selected by a for-profit space exploration company to man the world’s first mission to Mars. But before they get the green light, they have to endure a 17-month simulation. In addition to getting insight into the simulation from all three astronauts via rotating narrators, we also hear from the astronauts’ family members and other employees monitoring the sim. At times tense, at times thoughtful, this book is an incisive read about what makes explorers willing to leave behind everything they love the most in the world.

7. Zone One / Colson Whitehead

The zombie apocalypse has already happened, and Mark is one of the survivors working to secure and clean up Zone One, an area of Manhattan. During his hours and hours of boring shifts populated by a few harrowing minutes here and there, the reader is privy to Mark’s memories of the apocalypse itself and how he eventually wound up on this work crew. Mark is a pretty likeable, yet average guy rather than the standard zombie genre heroes, and as a result, his experiences also feel like a more plausible reality than those of the genre.

8. Homegoing / Yaa Gyasi

One of my favourite reads of the year, this novel is the definition of “sweeping epic”. The story starts off with two half-sisters (who don’t even know about each other’s existence) living in 18th-century Ghana. One sister marries a white man and stays in Ghana, living a life of privilege, while the other is sold into slavery and taken to America on a slave ship. This gigantic split in the family tree kicks off two parallel and vastly different narratives spanning EIGHT generations, ending with two 20-somethings in the present day. I remain in awe of Gyasi’s talent, and was enthralled throughout the entire book.

9. Sweetbitter / Stephanie Danler

Tess moves to New York City right out of school (and seemingly has no ties to her previous life - this bothered me, I wanted to know more about her past) and immediately lands a job at a beloved (though a little tired) fancy restaurant. Seemingly loosely based on Danler’s own experiences as a server, I got a real feel for the insular, incestuous, chaotic life in “the industry”. Tess navigates tensions between the kitchen and the front of house, falls for the resident bad-boy bartender, and positions herself as the mentee of the older and more glamorous head server, who may not be everything she seems. This is a juicy coming-of-age novel.

10. The Autobiography of Gucci Mane / Gucci Mane and Neil Martinez-Belkin

Gucci Mane is one of Atlanta’s hottest musicians, having helped bring trap music to the mainstream. I’d never heard of him until I read this book because I’m white and old! But not knowing him didn’t make this read any less interesting. In between wild facts (if you don’t get your music into the Atlanta strip clubs, your music isn’t making it out of Atlanta) and wilder escapades (Gucci holing himself up in his studio, armed to the teeth, in a fit of paranoia one night) Gucci Mane paints on honest picture of a determined, talented artist fighting to break free of a cycle of systemic racism and poverty.

11. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer / Michelle McNamara

McNamara was a journalist and true crime enthusiast who took it upon herself to try and solve the mystery of the Golden State Killer’s identity. Amazingly, her interest in this case also sparked other people’s interest in looking back at it, eventually leading to the arrest of the killer (though tragically, McNamara died a few months before the arrest and would never know how her obsession helped to capture him). This is a modern true crime classic and a riveting read.

12. A Great Reckoning / Louise Penny

The 12th novel in Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery series sees our hero starting a new job teaching cadets at Quebec’s police academy. Of course, someone is murdered, and Gamache and his team work to dig the rot out of the institution, uncovering a killer in the process.

13. Any Man / Amber Tamblyn

Yes, this novel is by THAT Amber Tamblyn, star of “The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants”! Anyway, this book is a tad bit darker, and follows five men who’ve been victimized by the female serial rapist, who calls herself Maude. Going into this read I though that it might be some sort of revenge fantasy, but dudes, not to worry - we really feel awful for the male victims and see them in all their complexity. Perhaps, if more men read this book, they might better understand the trauma female and non-binary victims go through? That would require men to read books by women though. Guys? GUYS???

14. Ostara: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for the Spring Equinox / Kerri Connor

Yet another witchy read providing more information about this Spring sabbat. 

15. Scarborough / Catherine Hernandez

This novel takes place in OUR Scarborough! Following the lives of a number of residents (adults and children alike), the plot centres around the families attending an Ontario Early Years program as well as the program facilitator. Hernandez looks at the ways poverty, mental illness, addiction, race, and homophobia intersect within this very multicultural neighbourhood. It’s very sad, but there are also many sweet and caring moments between the children and within each of the families.

16. The Glitch / Elisabeth Cohen

Shelley Stone (kind of a fictional Sheryl Sandberg type) is the CEO of Conch, a successful Silicon Valley company. Like many of these over-the-top real-life tech execs, Shelley has a wild schedule full of business meetings, exercise, networking and parenting, leaving her almost no time to rest. While on an overseas business trip, she meets a younger woman also named Shelley Stone, who may or may not be her younger self. Is Shelley losing it? This is a dark comedy poking fun at tech start-up culture and the lie that we can have it all.

17. The Thirteenth Tale / Diane Setterfield

This is my kind of book! A young and inexperienced bookworm is handpicked to write the biography of an aging famous author, Vida Wynter. Summoned to her sprawling country home around Christmastime, the biographer is absolutely enthralled by Vida’s tales of a crumbling gothic estate and an eccentric family left too long to their own whims. Looking for a dark, twisty fairytale? This read’s for you.

18. Love & Misadventure / Lang Leav

Leav’s book of poems looked appealing, but for me, her collection fell short. I felt like I was reading a teenager’s poetry notebook (which I’m not criticizing, I love that teen girls write poetry, and surprise, surprise - so did I - but I’m too old for this kind of writing now).

19. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows / Balli Kaur Jaswal

Hooo boy, my book club loved this one! Hoping to get a job more aligned with her literary interests, Nikki, the 20-something daughter of Indian immigrants to Britain, takes a job teaching writing at the community centre in London’s biggest Punjabi neighbourhood. The students are all older Punjabi women who don’t have much to do and because of their “widow” status have been somewhat sidelined within their community. Without anyone around to censor or judge them, the widows start sharing their own erotic fantasies with each other, each tale wilder than the last. As Nikki gets to know them better, she gains some direction in life and starts a romance of her own. (It should be noted that in addition to this lovely plot, there is a sub plot revolving around a possible honour killing in the community. For me, the juxtaposition of these two plots was odd, but not odd enough that it ruined the book.)

20. Beltane: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for May Day / Melanie Marquis

Beltane marks the start of the summer season in the witches’ year, and I learned all about how to ring it in, WITCH STYLE.

21. Summer of Salt / Katrina Leno

This book is essentially Practical Magic for teens, with a queer protagonist. All that to say, it’s enjoyable and sweet and a win for #RepresentationMatters, but it wasn’t a surprising or fresh story.

22. Too Like the Lightning / Ada Palmer

This is the first in the Terra Ignota quartet of novels, which is (I think) speculative fiction with maybe a touch of fantasy and a touch of sci-fi and a touch of theology and certainly a lot of philosophical ruminating too. I both really enjoyed it and felt so stupid while reading it. As a lifelong bookworm who doesn’t shy away from difficult reads, I almost never feel stupid while reading, but this book got me. The world building is next level and as soon as you think you’ve found your footing, Palmer pulls the rug out from under you and you’re left both stunned and excited about her latest plot twist. Interested in finding out what a future society grouped into ‘nations’ by interests and passions (instead of geographical borders and ethnicity) might be like? Palmer takes a hearty stab at it here.

23. The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay and Disaster / Sarah Krasnostein

When Sarah Krasnostein met Sandra Pankhurst, she knew she had to write her biography (or something like it - this book is part biography, part love letter, part reckoning). And rightly so, as Sandra has led quite a life. She grew up ostracized within her own home by her immediate family, married and had children very young, came out as a trans woman and begin living as her authentic self (but abandoning her own young family in the process), took to sex work and lived through a vicious assault, married again, and started up her own successful company cleaning uncleanable spaces - the apartments of hoarders, the houses of recluses, the condos in which people ended their own lives. Sandra is the definition of resilience, but all her traumas (both the things people have done to her and the things she’s done to others) have left their mark, as Krasnostein discovers as she delicately probes the recesses of Sandra’s brain.

24. Becoming / Michelle Obama

My favourite things about any memoir from an ultra-famous person are the random facts that surprise you along the way. In this book, it was learning that all American presidents travel with a supply of their blood type in the event of an assassination attempt. I mean OF COURSE they would, but that had never occurred to me. I also appreciated Michelle opening up about her fertility struggles, the difficult decision to put her career on hold to support Barack’s dreams, and the challenge of living in the spotlight with two young children that you hope to keep down to earth. Overall, I think Michelle was as candid as someone in her position can be at this point in her life.

25 and 26. Seven Surrenders, The Will to Battle / Ada Palmer

I decided to challenge myself and stick with Palmer’s challenging Terra Ignota series, also reading the second and third instalments (I think the fourth is due to be released this year). I don’t know what to say, other than the world-building continues to be incredible and this futuristic society is on the bring of something entirely new.

27. Even Vampires Get the Blues / Kate MacAlister

This novel wins for “cheesiest read of the year”. When a gorgeous half-elf detective (you read that right) meets a centuries-old sexy Scottish vampire, sparks fly! Oh yeah, and they’re looking for some ancient thing in between having sex.

28. A Case of Exploding Mangoes / Mohammed Hanif

A piece of historical fiction based on the real-life suspicious plane crash in 1988 that killed many of Pakistan’s top military brass, this novel lays out many possible culprits (including a crow that ate too many mangoes). It’s a dark comedy taking aim at the paranoia of dictators and the boredom and bureaucracy of the military (and Bin Laden makes a cameo at a party).

29. Salvage the Bones / Jesmyn Ward

This novel takes place in the steaming hot days before Hurricane Katrina hits the Mississippi coast. The air is still and stifling and Esch’s life in the small town of Bois Sauvage feels even more stifled. Esch is 14 and pregnant and hasn’t told anyone yet. Her father is a heavy drinker and her three brothers are busy with their own problems. But as the storm approaches, the family circles around each other in preparation for the storm. This is a jarring and moving read made more visceral by the fact that the author herself survived Katrina. It’s also an occasionally violent book, and there are particularly long passages about dog-fighting (a hobby of one of the brothers). The dog lovers in my book club found it hard to get through, consider this your warning!

30. Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay / Phoebe Robinson

A collection of essays in the new style aka writing multiple pages on a topic as though you were texting your best friend about it (#ImFineWithThisNewStyleByTheWay #Accessible), Robinson discusses love, friendship, being a Black woman in Hollywood, being plus-ish-size in Hollywood, and Julia Roberts teaching her how to swim (and guys, Julia IS as nice in real life as we’d all hoped she was!) Who is Robinson? Comedy fans will likely know her already, but I only knew her as one of the stars of the Netflix film Ibiza (which I enjoyed). This is a fun, easy read!

31. Midsummer: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for Litha / Deborah Blake

After reading this book, I charged my crystals under the midsummer sun!

32. Fingersmith / Sarah Waters

So many twists! So many turns! So many hidden motives and long-held secrets! Think Oliver Twist meets Parasite meets Lost! (Full disclosure, I haven’t seen Parasite yet, I’m just going off all the chatter about it). Sue is a con artist orphan in old-timey London. When the mysterious “Gentleman” arrives at her makeshift family’s flat with a proposal for the con of all cons, Sue is quickly thrust into a role as the servant for another young woman, Maud, living alone with her eccentric uncle in a country estate. As Sue settles into her act, the lines between what she’s pretending at and what she’s really feeling start to blur, and nothing is quite what it seems. This book is JUICY!

33. Rest Play Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (Or Anyone Who Acts Like One) / Deborah MacNamara, PhD

I read approximately one parenting book a year, and this was this year’s winner. As my eldest approached her third birthday, we started seeing bigger and bigger emotions and I wasn’t sure how to handle them respectfully and gently. This book gave me a general roadmap for acknowledging her feelings, sitting through them with her, and the concept of “collecting” your child to prevent tantrums from happening or to help calm them down afterward. I’ll be using this approach for the next few years!

34. Lughnasadh: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for Lammas / Melanie Marquis

And with this read, I’ve now read about the entire witch’s year. SO MOTE IT BE.

35. In Cold Blood / Truman Capote

How had I not read this until now? This true-crime account that kicked off the modern genre was rich in detail, compassionate to the victims, and dug deep into the psyche of the killers. The descriptions of the midwest countryside and the changing seasons also reminded me of Keith Morrison’s voiceovers on Dateline. Is Capote his inspiration?

36. I’m Afraid of Men / Vivek Shraya

A quick, short set of musings from trans musician and writer Shraya still packs an emotional punch. She writes about love and loss, toxic masculinity, breaking free of gender norms, and what it’s like to exist as a trans woman.

37. The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You / Elaine N. Aron, PhD

Having long thought I might be a highly sensitive person (lots of us are!), I decided to learn more about how to better cope with stressful situations when I don’t have enough alone time or when things are too loud or when I get rattled by having too much to do any of the other myriad things that shift me into panic mode. Though some of the advice is a bit too new-agey for me (talking to your inner child, etc), some of it was practical and useful.

38. Swamplandia! / Karen Russell

The family-run alligator wrestling theme park, Swamplandia, is swimming in debt and about to close. The widowed father leaves the everglades for the mainland in a last-ditch attempt to drum up some money, leaving the three children to fend for themselves. A dark coming-of-age tale that blends magic realism, a ghost story, the absurd and a dangerous boat trip to the centre of the swamplands, this novel examines a fractured family mourning its matriarch in different ways.

39. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground / Alicia Elliott

This is a beautiful collection of personal essays brimming with vulnerability, passion, and fury. Elliott, the daughter of a Haudenosaunee father and a white mother, shares her experiences growing up poor in a family struggling with mental illness, addiction and racism. Topics touch on food scarcity, a never-ending battle with lice, parenthood and the importance of hearing from traditionally marginalized voices in literature. 

40. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay / Elena Ferrante

The third novel in Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet sees Elena and Lila move from their early twenties into their thirties and deal with a riot of issues - growing careers, changing political beliefs, the challenges of motherhood and romantic relationships, and existing as strong-willed, intelligent women in 1960s and 70s Italy. I’ll definitely finish the series soon.

41. Half-Blood Blues / Esi Edugyan

A small group of American and German jazz musicians working on a record find themselves holed up in Paris as the Germans begin their occupation in WW2. Hiero, the youngest and most talented member of the group, goes out one morning for milk and is arrested by the Germans, never to be heard from again. Fifty years later, the surviving members of the band go to Berlin for the opening night of a documentary about the jazz scene from that era, and soon find themselves on a road trip through the European countryside to find out what really became of Hiero all those years ago. Edugyan’s novel is a piercing examination of jealousy, ambition, friendship, race and guilt. And features a cameo by Louis Armstrong!

42. A Serial Killer’s Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love and Overcoming / Kerri Rawson

So Brad and I had just finished watching season 2 of Mindhunter, and as I browse through a neighbourhood little library, I spot this book and the serial killer in question is the BTK Killer! Naturally, I had to read it. What I didn’t realize is that this is actually a Christian book, so Rawson does write a lot about struggling with her belief in God and finding her way back to Him, etc. But there are also chapters more fitting with the true crime and memoir genres that I equally enjoyed and was creeped out by.

43. The Night Ocean / Paul La Farge

This is another book that made me feel somewhat stupid as a reader. I just know there are details or tidbits that completely went over my head that would likely enrich a better reader’s experience. In broad strokes, the novel is about a failed marriage between a psychiatrist and a writer who became dangerously obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft and the rumours that swirled around him and his social circle. The writer’s obsession takes him away from his marriage and everything else, and eventually it looks like he ends his own life. The psychiatrist is doubtful (no body was found) and she starts to follow him down the same rabbit hole. At times tense, at times funny, at times sad, I enjoyed the supposed world of Lovecraft and his fans and peers, but again, I’m sure there are deeper musings here that I couldn’t reach.

44. Glass Houses / Louise Penny

The 13th novel in Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery series sees our hero taking big risks to fight the opioid crisis in Quebec. He and his team focus on catching the big crime boss smuggling drugs across the border from Vermont, endangering his beloved town of Three Pines in the process. 

45. The Bone Houses / Emily Lloyd-Jones

My Halloween read for the year, this dark fairytale of a YA novel was perfect for the season. Since her parents died, Ryn has taken over the family business - grave digging - to support herself and her siblings. As the gravedigger, she knows better than most that due to an old curse, the dead in the forest surrounding her village don’t always stay dead. But as more of the forest dead start appearing (and acting more violently than usual), Ryn and an unexpected companion (yes, a charming young man cause there’s got to be a romance!) travel to the heart of the forest to put a stop to the curse once and for all.

46. The Witches Are Coming / Lindy West

Another blazing hot set of essays from my favourite funny feminist take on Trump, abortion rights, #MeToo, and more importantly Adam Sandler and Dateline. As always, Lindy, please be my best friend?

47. Know My Name / Chanel Miller

This memoir is HEAVY but so, so needed. Recently, Chanel Miller decided to come forward publicly and share that she was the victim of Brock Turner’s sexual assault. She got the courage to do so after she posted her blistering and beautiful victim impact statement on social media and it went viral. Miller’s memoir is a must-read, highlighting the incredible and awful lengths victims have to go to to see any modicum of justice brought against their attackers. Miller dealt with professional ineptitude from police and legal professionals, victim-blaming, victim-shaming, depression and anxiety, the inability to hold down a job, and still managed to come out the other side of this trial intact. And in the midst of all the horror, she writes beautifully about her support system - her family, boyfriend and friends - and about the millions of strangers around the world who saw themselves in her experience.

48. Christmas Ghost Stories: A Collection of Winter Tales / Mark Onspaugh

Ghosts AND Christmas? Yes please! This quirky collection features a wide array of festively spooky tales. You want the ghost of Anne Boleyn trapped in a Christmas ornament? You got it! What about the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future drinking together in a bar? Yup, that’s here too! 

__

So, what were my top picks of the year, the books that stuck with me the most? In no particular order:

Educated

Homegoing

The Wanderers

Know My Name

Scarborough

[acasualgeek]

mdzs slash dai crossover thought exercise

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are in Thedas; I don't know why. Background information says the plot to MDZS has concluded. WWX and LWJ are partners in full, have settled into themselves and their relationship, and are not responsible for anything major. Their disappearance will cause problems with the teaching schedule and emotional distress for Lan Xichen and Lan Qiren but the cultivation world won't go up in flames.

DAI setting is the onset of the prologue for Inquisition - chain rattling surprise, doors thrown open to slam into walls, and Cassandra's ever cheerful demand for reasons why she shouldn't murder anyone on the spot. A nice, traditional opening for a DAI fic.

Who has the mark? Whose got the anchor?

It would make sense for Wei Wuxian to have it; after all, he's most likely to experiment with new cultivation techniques and talismans. Something gone awry would be an easy explanation for how he ended up with it. And of the two choices, Wei Wuxian is most likely to spend his time actively studying it - the most likely to be able to use it in unintended ways, to make it better or worse, or even to solve the entire conundrum and keep his arm. Just the same, he's also more likely to be the one that handles losing an arm better. What's the loss of an arm in the face of having removed his golden core? He has a second arm already and he can make a new arm; he didn't have a new way to make a second golden core.

But that seems rather pat, doesn't it? Beyond the role he normally plays, what would even be the narrative reason to have Lan Wangji there too?

So, let's say it's Lan Wangji who ends up with the mark, the anchor, instead. Now we have someone generally apt to take care of himself, who will be able to study it directly but doesn't have the same kind of drive to experiment, who will be more focused on direct application and direct assistance.. He would handle the ongoing problems better, I think, because he would be diligent about eating and drinking, resting when necessary, not overworking himself, and understanding his limitations and when to push past them. These are things we can't expect Wei Wuxian to reliably do. Lan Wangji has the right kind of stoicism to face any pain head on without running the risk of collapsing during a fight because he didn't meet his 64 ounces of water a day quota.

At the same time, he'll be able to provide valuable assistance in studying it because of his familiarity with Wei Wuxian and how he works as a researcher. Lan Wangji would have the vocabulary in common to convey understanding whereas we can expect miscommunication between those two and any Thedosians.

A Lan Wangji with a magical mark (would the two classify it as a curse? maybe at first?) being beset by people to help them in their time of need with a very concerned and overprotective Wei Wuxian in tow, who wouldn't want to turn these people down either, but couldn't they have at least asked first?, seems like a more interesting story.

Lan Wangji would make an interesting contrast with Iron Bull (rigidity in culture and upbringing) and Cassandra (morality and faith, religious or not).

Conversely, Wei Wuxian would contrast well with Solas himself (always an outsider, is he/isn't he the bad guy, how true are the tales?) but also Dorian (setting based homophobia, family complications, skills and abilities considered scary or bad, academic drive) and Leliana (how much is too much? when does one cross the line into cruelty for cruelty's sake in the name of doing what's right?).

Imagine conversations between Vivienne and Wei Wuxian; who is responsible in the end when it comes to mage-templar and mage-everyone else interactions?

Wei Wuxian and Blackwall, yes, but Lan Wangji and Blackwall. I don't quite know where this one is going but it's going somewhere. I'll come back to it.

I think a lot of people would expect Wei Wuxian and Sera to get on well but I'm not sure.

I do think Cole and Wei Wuxian would be fast friends. A lot of it would be Cole reminding him of Wen Ning.

Varric would find them interesting but I don't think there's a deep, meaningful friendship to be found there. Same for Cullen.

Practical considerations: language acquisition and communication, clothing, and dietary restrictions and culinary experiences.

How would magic in Thedas translate into cultivation? Vice versa?

Would they be considered mages in Thedas? Mechanically, what kind? Wei Wuxian -> main class: necromancer but secondary class: spirit healer ? And for Lan Wangji -> main class: ...? and secondary class: ...? ...?? ...???

How would they react to dwarves, elves, and qunari? Nevarra in general and necromancy as a whole? The mage-templar conflict itself? The role of and belief in the herald of a god?

[shirlleycoyle]

How a Petition to Shut Down Pornhub Got Two Million Signatures

Laila Mickelwait's timing was perfect. It was, in some ways, inevitable that her “TraffickingHub” campaign to shut down Pornhub would go viral when it launched in February.

Right after the Superbowl, an event that's been incorrectly called the biggest human trafficking day of the year for almost a decade—the Washington Examiner published Mickelwait's op-ed titled “Time to shut Pornhub down.” In that piece, she used recent incidents of exploitative content on one of the most popular porn platforms on the internet to argue that Pornhub should be shut down entirely. She highlighted videos that led to the arrest of a rapist after he uploaded child porn of his victim to the site, as well as the Girls Do Porn lawsuit.

Mickelwait told me that readers of that op-ed asked her to start a petition. Now, it has nearly two million signatures in support of shuttering Pornhub. In March, dozens of protestors, some from anti-porn and anti-sex work groups, gathered outside of Mindgeek's Montreal headquarters, in support of TraffickingHub. Mindgeek is the parent company of Pornhub, as well as several other porn sites, including RedTube and YouPorn.

“Pornhub, the world's largest and most popular porn site, has been repeatedly caught enabling, hosting, and profiting from videos of child rape, sex trafficking, and other forms of non-consensual content exploiting women and minors,” the TraffickingHub petition states. “We're calling for Pornhub to be shut down and its executives held accountable for these crimes.”

Motherboard's own reporting on the Girls Do Porn lawsuit has shown how tube sites like Pornhub are used by abusers to dox and harass women and post nonconsensual porn. Our reporting has shown that Pornhub’s held partnerships with companies like Girls Do Porn, which systematically pressured, harassed, and threatened women into doing porn have legitimized them, and that Pornhub's failure to enforce its own policies means it can host illegal content like upskirt videos. There are many legitimate reasons for revenge porn victims and adult content owners to be critical of Pornhub, some of which TraffickingHub points out.

But what people who sign the TraffickingHub petition might not understand is that the campaign, while focused on Pornhub, comes from the world of anti sex trafficking activism—and specifically, from a large Christian organization, Exodus Cry, which opposes decriminalizing or legalizing sex work and wants to abolish porn altogether. On its website, Exodus Cry claims to be “committed to abolishing sex trafficking and breaking the cycle of commercial sexual exploitation while assisting and empowering its victims.”

The people speaking out against TraffickingHub, many of them sex workers and abuse survivors themselves, say its parent organization has a history of homophobia and bigotry, and are peddling a victim narrative to “save” sex workers while harming them with pushes for legislation that doesn't work.

Religiously affiliated anti-trafficking organizations aren't just Bible thumpers. The legislation they've advocated for has done tangible harm to sex workers, on top of upholding stigmas against sex work as work, painting everyone in the sex trade as victims in need of saving from their circumstances.

Exodus Cry's website states that it uses funding to change laws that will “end the sex industry,” and “works with governments and legislators… to implement legislation that creates criminal culpability for sex buyers, pimps, and traffickers, and brings freedom and support to victims.”

As TraffickingHub gained popularity in recent months, years of criticism of Exodus Cry has resurfaced. Some of that criticism stems from a “chapter leader application” form that once appeared on the Exodus Cry website.

The application involved taking a “purity covenant,” agreeing to a detailed, Biblical statement of faith, and answering questions like “Do you believe heterosexual sex outside of marriage is sinful? Yes/No, if No please explain,” and “Are you currently struggling with pornography?; Have you struggled with pornography in the past?; Are you or have you struggled with homosexual thoughts, feelings or behaviors?”

University of Liverpool criminologist Gemma Ahearne, who found and wrote about the application in June 2019, said that at the time it was accessible on the Exodus Cry website and visible through a Wayback Machine archive. The application is no longer available on the Exodus Cry website, and the Internet Archive told Motherboard the entire Exodus Cry domain was excluded from the Wayback Machine as of June 1, 2019, following a response to a request from a rights holder to have it removed from archival view.

On August 19, I emailed Mickelwait to ask about the origins of the chapter application. On August 20, she responded with what she said was “an official statement from Exodus Cry on the libelous accusations.”

The statement, which was published on the Exodus Cry website the same day, said that “Exodus Cry is an organization that since its inception has never advocated, campaigned, or focused on any other issue besides sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. Sexual exploitation is the singular focus of Exodus Cry, and any suggestion that Exodus Cry has campaigned against any other issue is categorically false.”

The statement also includes a quote from Exodus Cry founder Benjamin Nolot in response to a 2013 tweet in which he said “I oppose homosexual marriage on the premise that it is an unspeakable offense to God and His design for marriage between a man and a woman.”

A 2013 tweet from Benjamin Nolot. Screenshot via Open Democracy

“Like much of our nation, a decade ago when the issue was being widely debated, I expressed in a single personal tweet that I thought government had a role to play in defining marriage,” Nolot said in that statement. “Even former president Obama held similar views in the past. Today, like many, my views have evolved and I believe every individual should make that decision for themselves without government being involved in such a personal choice. I advocate for the right of all people to be free from all forms of oppression and that without question includes the LGBTQ+ community.”

Mickelwait and the statement also said that Exodus Cry does not even have chapters, something she's brought up previously on Twitter when confronted with the application screenshots.

“There is only one Exodus Cry. Exodus Cry does not have chapters,” the statement says. “Therefore a 'chapter application' has no relevance to our organization’s work. This claim intentionally misrepresents our organization.”

Exodus Cry may not have chapters now, but it did at one point. A 2009 annual report by Exodus Cry touted the organization had “26 chapters in five different nations (including the United States).” a 2010 annual report mentions a “local Exodus Cry chapter” in Norfolk, Virginia.

I sent Mickelwait these reports, and asked again whether the chapter application, which included the “purity covenant” and the questions about gay marriage ever appeared on the Exodus Cry site.

She sent me another statement, attributed to Nolot: “We have investigated the 'chapters' application and determined that 12 years ago when EC was formed a volunteer borrowed a document that had been used by another ministry as a model for EC and there were sections related to chapters that inadvertently remained in the documents as a relic. As explained, EC does not have chapters, and has not had chapters for over a decade, therefore the application has no relevance to our work. Exodus Cry is in the process of removing those legacy materials now that they have been brought to our attention”

The chapter application is no longer available on the Exodus Cry website, nor does the site seem explicitly religious at first glance. There's a page that notes the organization's original connection to prayer, quotes the Bible, and says that "we have seen the Lord’s mighty hand of deliverance in response to prayer," but otherwise Exodus Cry and TraffickingHub both have slick websites featuring animated explainer videos and photographs of excited and diverse young people.

The organization's own tax filings show it seems to be slowly distancing itself from religious affiliation. In 2015, it stated its purpose as being "built on a foundation of prayer and is committed to abolishing sex slavery through Christ centered prevention, intervention, and holistic restoration of trafficking victims.” In 2017, it dropped the “Christ” part, and by 2018, it made no mention of prayer or religion whatsoever, instead stating its purpose as an “international non-profit organization committed to abolishing sex trafficking and the commercial sex industry while assisting and empowering its victims.”

In 2018, Open Democracy wrote about Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution a documentary directed by Nolot which has been on Netflix since 2017. The film documented spring break in Florida and critiqued “hookup culture,” but didn't disclose the religiously-affiliated background of its production—drawing criticism from women's rights groups for hiding these affiliations.

Primarily by interviewing drunk college students on the beach, the documentary builds the case that sexualization in media and pop culture is to blame for objectification of women's bodies and toxic masculinity. Like the current debate around “WAP” that upset several Republican politicians and conservative pundits, it questions whether women can take full, unashamed and public ownership of their sexuality without harming themselves, and whether that is something people really want or are just told that they want by popular culture. It identifies and highlights issues many people, even those who don't think of themselves as religious or anti-sex, can agree are problems—such as the pressure some young women feel to cater to a male gaze, rape culture, and risky or dangerous sexual encounters in college—without ever making its religious affiliations explicit. Someone can easily browse Netflix, watch Liberated, and largely agree with its message without knowing anything about the people who made it.

TraffickingHub similarly gained support on social media from people who didn't understand what they were signing up for.

Mika Lavallee is not a sex worker or an activist, but when she saw the TraffickingHub petition on Twitter, she signed it immediately.

“I signed the petition for the purpose of allyship. For victims and survivors of sex trafficking,” she said. “The TraffickingHub video really did a good job at villainizing Pornhub, and at a perfect time when many petitions for all sorts of injustices were being shared on all social media platforms. Without doing my research, I signed the petition thinking I was doing a good thing that would make positive change and help victims.”

Ginger Banks, Gwen Adora, and Maya Morena are just three of the many sex workers who have been speaking out against TraffickingHub, posting Instagram, Twitter and TikTok videos about Exodus Cry's conservative roots for months.

“It's such a fucking publicity game, especially with like, 'Oh my god, but it was named 'stop sex trafficking' and you're against it? That means you're for sex trafficking,’” Banks told me.

Banks recently started her own petition, demanding that Pornhub and its sister sites YouPorn and Redtube change their video uploading and verification processes so that content couldn't go up without the owner's consent. As of writing, that petition has over 8,000 signatures.

Adora hosted an Instagram Live about the TraffickingHub campaign in July. “The entire mission of TraffickingHub is not what myself, other sex workers and survivors believe to be effective for their end goal—shutting down a porn site isn't going to stop the abuse that happens in person and online,” Adora told me.

Lavallee saw one of Banks' videos on the topic, and regretted putting her name on the petition without digging deeper. “I truly felt uncomfortable that I had signed that petition,” she said. “I am pro everything they’re against!”

Change.org petitions were flying around the internet around the time Lavallee signed TraffickingHub this spring. Many of them were demanding justice for Black people murdered or harmed by law enforcement. But people across all industries started demanding more for themselves: a newly-invigorated labor movement broke out across the U.S., and this included within the adult industry. TraffickingHub's use of “abolitionist” language has a long history within trafficking awareness groups. The term abolition appropriates 18th and 19th century movements to abolish slavery, and Exodus Cry invokes the legacy of William Wilberforce, a deeply religious 18th century abolitionist against the British slave trade.

Abolition has gained a renewed mainstream popularity during the Black Lives Matter movement, as people call to abolish the police. But in the context of sex work, workers reject the phrase. “Not only do sex workers not see our work as akin to slavery but using this term minimizes and trivializes the experiences of those who have (and do) endure slavery,” according to the Global Network of Sex Work Projects.

TraffickingHub's arrival tapped into something sex workers have been talking about for some time, but has only recently reached mainstream conversations.

“Criticisms of various companies and MindGeek are fairly common in the sex work community,” Morena told me. “Campaigns like this often find something real they can use to push an agenda. For many people, the TraffickingHub campaign is the first time they've ever heard of MindGeek, or tech conglomerates in general that make a business model largely from stolen porn.”

TraffickingHub's website notes that it is “powered by” Exodus Cry. Mickelwait said that she initiated and directs the TraffickingHub campaign, which is supported by Exodus Cry financially, with human resources, technical support, and legal support.

“There are 300 organizations and almost two million people from 192 countries who are part of this effort who agree that no one should be raped and trafficked for profit on the world’s largest and most popular porn site,” Mickelwait told me. “The Traffickinghub campaign is a non-partisan, non-religious effort that consists of a diverse group of individual advocates who share this common goal.”

Exodus Cry and some of the groups supporting TraffickingHub are against all forms of commercial sex work, and are working toward legislation sex workers say will harm them. Eighty-two organizations are listed on the TraffickingHub website as supporting the cause. Almost half of these explicitly support an “end demand” model of sex work (they use the term “prostitution” instead of sex work), also known as the Nordic model, which criminalizes sex buyers and which sex worker advocacy groups say only exposes them to more risk because sex work doesn’t go away, it simply becomes less visible and thus more dangerous.

A few examples: The Coalition Against Women in Trafficking believes decriminalizing sex work would be “a gift to pimps, traffickers and the sex industry.” The UK-based Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation is anti-pornography and against all sex work, and lists several claims about the adult industry on its site, including that “it’s impossible to know for sure whether production was consensual,” which is false. Dublin-based NGO Ruhama states “prostitution has negatively impacted on women’s liberty, bodily autonomy and physical and mental wellbeing.” Space International calls for the Nordic Model. Defend Dignity, one of the groups present at the Mindgeek headquarters protest, states that “prostitution is a form of sexual exploitation, oppression, and violence especially against women and children and seriously undermines their dignity and value” and "prostitution is detrimental to a healthy society.”

So many of these organizations claim to be fighting for exploited women by pushing a model of partial decriminalization—in “ending demand” and the Nordic model—while ignoring the people they're trying to “rescue,” who say that they don't want full legalization or to end demand but rather, full decriminalization of the sex trade. They often set up the argument as legalization versus criminalization, with their own solution in the middle, even though sex workers as well as human rights groups including Amnesty International say that only full decriminalization will make their work safer.

On Exodus Cry's website, the organization claims that “time, testing, and research have demonstrated unequivocally that policies focused on eliminating demand are extremely effective in eliminating sex trafficking,” citing a 2012 paper on legalizing sex work. But this isn't what that paper claims.

“The likely negative consequences of legalized prostitution on a country’s inflows of human trafficking might be seen to support those who argue in favor of banning prostitution, thereby reducing the flows of trafficking,” the paper's authors concluded. “However, such a line of argumentation overlooks potential benefits that the legalization of prostitution might have on those employed in the industry. Working conditions could be substantially improved for prostitutes–at least those legally employed–if prostitution is legalized.”

“Research and the testimonies of survivors have demonstrated that full decriminalization and legalization legitimizes and increases trafficking as well as the violence and exploitation of vulnerable sex workers and we don’t support legislation that would expose the most vulnerable to increased harm and exploitation,” Nolot said when I told him sex workers say the “end demand” model would harm them.

“Partial decriminalization is the only solution that will both protect those who sell or are sold for sex, while holding those who exploit them accountable for their actions,” Nolot added. He cited as research, a paper written by anti-porn and anti-sex work activist Melissa Farley, and SPACE International executive director Rachel Moran, both outspoken advocates for the Nordic model.

One of the biggest organizations supporting TraffickingHub is the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, which lobbies to abolish pornography, wants to pass the EARN-IT bill which a myriad of internet freedom advocates say will be devastating to rights online, and applauded the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which has done material harm to sex workers and made exploitation worse. On August 4, the White House press secretary cited NCOSE's unfounded statement that TikTok enables human trafficking as proof that EARN-IT should pass. Ron DeHaas, chairman of the board for NCOSE, says porn is a tool of Satan.

TraffickingHub argues that Pornhub removed 118 instances of child sexual abuse material in the last three years—a statistic Pornhub doesn't deny. But sex workers who speak out against shutting down Pornhub point out is the culpability of most social networks for abusive content, including revenge or child porn. In 2019, Facebook said it removed 11.6 million pieces of content related to child nudity and child sexual exploitation in just three months. Twitter says it took action to remove more than 30,000 unique accounts reported for child sexual abuse between January and June 2019.

“Being against the organization or their goals becomes ‘you're against these survivors personally”

In response to the TraffickingHub petition, the UK-based child sexual abuse nonprofit Internet Watch Foundation has said that platforms like Twitter and Facebook “pose more of an issue of child sexual abuse material than Pornhub does.”

“But, of course, no one will petition for those social media sites to be taken down—because people are more concerned about porn and sex work than anything else,” Adora said.

“Pornhub has a steadfast commitment to eradicating any and all illegal content, including non-consensual and under-age material, and actively works to employ state of the art, comprehensive measures to protect its platform from such content. Any suggestion otherwise is categorically and factually inaccurate,” a Pornhub spokesperson told Motherboard. “Regarding the group [Exodus Cry] behind the campaign and petition, their history of hateful rhetoric toward women and the LGBTQ community, as well as toward those who don't abide by their vision of purity, is extremely disturbing.”

In a response to Pornhub's previous public statements against Exodus Cry and TraffickingHub's allegations, TraffickingHub published a “Statement of Inclusion,” which says “we do not discriminate based on sex, race, class, political views, religious or non-religious views, or sexual orientations.” The response then quotes support from several sex-worker exclusionary radical feminist and anti-sex work organizations, including abolitionist organization Prostitution Research & Education that denies sex work is real work, and prominent anti-porn scholar Gail Dines.

Politicians, lobbyists, and fundraising organizations use human trafficking as a lever to pull on whatever pet project they want, because trafficking—especially child and sex trafficking—is a conversation-ender. No one, not even people who oppose more funding for trafficking prevention or criticize groups like Exodus Cry, would support sex trafficking or say it needs to be allowed to go on unchecked. But campaigns like TraffickingHub set up a false dichotomy: Either you're for shutting down Pornhub, or you're against stopping saving children from the horrors of sex trafficking.

“Being against the organization or their goals becomes ‘you're against these survivors personally,’” sex worker Maya Morena said. “People sign on largely because of the emotional appeal, they're less likely to look into the orgs, or the possible consequences of pushing for a quick carceral solution. People forget that they're supporting organizations and actual political policies.”

We've seen it happen most recently with the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, FOSTA. After Donald Trump signed the bill into law, Exodus Cry wrote on its Facebook page: “FOSTA/SESTA has already made a significant impact on the ecosystem of sex trafficking… This could be considered the most significant macroeconomic event ever, related to commercial sexual exploitation.” In a way, that's correct. After FOSTA, it became harder than ever for sex workers to vet clients, as sites cracked down on sexual speech in order to avoid breaking the law and incurring fines.

The legislation wasn't even effective at stopping human trafficking. “Not only is the law arguably creating negative side effects for speech online and creating danger for sex workers, it is not even achieving its legal objective,” law associate Emily Born wrote in her study of post-FOSTA impacts for the New York Law Review in 2019.

The way anti-trafficking organizations portray sex workers as needing rescue is apparent throughout their missions. For example, Exodus Cry's “In Her Shoes” campaign tells stories of women who were so moved by abolitionists' messages of salvation from brothels or sex work that they handed over their stiletto heels, as a “symbol of slavery, fastened about the ankles of sexually exploited women.” When Helen Taylor, Exodus Cry's Director of Outreach and Intervention, testified at a DC council hearing against the Community Safety and Health Amendment Act of 2019 (which would have decriminalized sex work in DC, making sex work safer), she pulled out a pair of high heels as a prop.

The TraffickingHub website says that donations made through the campaign go to Exodus Cry. According to Exodus Cry, it's raised almost $200,000 through TraffickingHub so far. “Those who financially support the Traffickinghub campaign are enabling us to further expose the violent injustice of rape and sex trafficking that Pornhub is profiting from,” Mickelwait told me. “In addition, funds coming into the campaign help provide support and legal services to survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation on Pornhub.”

There are no details on the TraffickingHub campaign site as to how, exactly, they plan to shut Pornhub down or hold it accountable, beyond amassing signatures, which in themselves don't do anything. But Mickelwait told me that the plan is “to hold Pornhub accountable to the full extent of the law both criminally, civilly and legislatively.”

Mickelwait plans to keep the petition running until it accomplishes the “aims of the movement,” she said: “To hold Pornhub accountable for enabling and profiting from the mass rape and trafficking of women and children; and until the enactment of legislation that requires third-party verification of age and consent for every person featured in every video on 'porn tube' platforms that host pornography.”

If that accountability comes in the form of a total shutdown of Pornhub and tube sites like it, some sex workers say this will only make things worse for them, as their work is already marginalized. But sex workers don't represent a homogeneity of needs and beliefs. Some sex workers stand by TraffickingHub, in spite of what Exodus Cry stands for, and are willing to look the other way when it comes to Exodus Cry's abolitionist agenda. Others believe Exodus Cry's mission will only harm them more.

“The people that are pushing back on [Pornhub] that still say, ‘I rely on this and I just want them to do better,’ are not getting the same kind of traction publicly, because they're sex workers,” sex worker rights advocate Kate D'Adamo told me. "I think it is disingenuous, and intentionally disingenuous, from folks like Laila [Mickelwait] to pretend like there are people who are pro-Pornhub, [versus] people who want to shut it down… Most people that I've interacted with want Pornhub to do better, but just can't lose that income. But they do have very valid concerns.”

Mickelwait told me that she'd consulted with sex workers and sexual abuse survivors from a range of experiences and beliefs while building the TraffickingHub campaign. Two of those spoke only on the condition of anonymity, claiming that they feared retribution or retaliation from Mindgeek, Pornhub's parent company.

“Multiple people in my industry have told me Laila from TraffickingHub is tricking me and others by claiming to be against child porn, but really they want to abolish porn,” a sex worker who is supportive of TraffickingHub's mission told me. “There's truth to that… It gave me pause, but ultimately, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I don't think anyone is going to abolish porn, that's ridiculous. When you have consenting adults agree to make love on camera, there is nothing illegal about that.”

Most of the TraffickingHub supporters who are also sex workers I spoke to expressed frustration about Pornhub's lack of responses to copyright complaints and stolen content.

One said that they came across TraffickingHub online after getting frustrated with reporting their own stolen content on Pornhub. They say Pornhub didn't take the content down, so they went searching for help.

“I was furious,” they said. “It was on this day when I searched for an organization with like-minded views and found TraffickingHub.”

Another sex worker, who goes by Kai, told me that Mickelwait reached out to them to ask about their experiences with Pornhub. Kai, who is a victim of child sexual abuse, stopped uploading their work to Pornhub recently, after seeing what they said was disturbing content on the platform.

“So many sex workers including myself are survivors of sexual abuse and other sexual violence,” Kai said. “I cannot in good faith support a website that would profit off the torture and pain of children, and even some adults as well. TraffickingHub is necessary to show that no amount of money and no site should ever be able to support and profit off of trauma and abuse.”

I asked Kai what they thought about Exodus Cry's stances on prostitution being a form of exploitation.

“I will not lie, I have seen criticism of Exodus Cry saying they are homophobic and against sex work,” they said. “I am a gay sex worker and honestly if it is true I don't really care. Everybody has a right to their own opinion if it is true and ultimately all I care about is that right now that you're trying to help us."

Shiloh Connor set up a separate petition called “Sex Workers Against ExploitationHub” in June, “to raise traction in sex work circles without being forced to interact with problematic orgs like ExodusCry,” they said. “I don't necessarily think THAT petition is necessary, but I do believe that a dedicated campaign to shut down MindGeek and redistribute its financial assets is necessary," Connor told me.

“We the undersigned formally condemn and demand the shutdown of MindGeek and its subsidiaries, and the funds gained from the company over the past 5 years be redistributed to all models, content producers, camgirls, showgirls, and victims of abuse/trafficking exploited by the company,” the petition, which has raised a little more than 3,200 signatures, states.

Connor said that while they agree with criticisms against Exodus Cry, they still spoke with Mickelwait. “Yes, she has acknowledged her organization's homophobia and SWERFisms [sex worker-exclusionary radical feminists, or feminists who don't support sex work] lightly in the past. But words are not enough,” they said. “I feel that by creating a sex positive campaign to walk alongside hers, I can start a conversation about the inherent humanity of sex workers, and how anti-trafficking orgs and decrim orgs need to work together.”

“That is categorically and demonstrably false as innumerable written and other communications I have had reflect," Mickelwait said regarding Conor's claim that she's acknowledged the organization's past. "Exodus Cry is nothing but loving toward, respectful of, and supportive of the LGBTQ+ community, and any suggestion that I have said otherwise is false.”

Not all sex workers want Pornhub to shut down, because Pornhub can be an important source of income for some: its verified Amateur Program, Modelhub platform, ad revenue on video uploads, and tips from fans all pay out to varying degrees. For many established models, Pornhub is a revenue stream among several other paid subscription platforms like Onlyfans. And because Pornhub is one of the world's most popular and accessible porn sites, even free content can boost a performer's brand if fans find them there and move to paid sites.

“We are the people who depend on these platforms for income, but we also acknowledge and push for change”

Supporters and detractors of the campaign agree that Pornhub needs to do a better job of preventing stolen content from being hosted on the site. Banks' petition for better verification practices voices what most sex workers who've had their work reposted to tube sites without their contest struggle with: that their content can go up on these sites for free, without their knowledge, often without their credit, and without them profiting from the ads that run alongside the content. But for years—and still, today—porn piracy was something most people outside of the industry didn't care to talk about. The only people speaking up about it were sex workers, and people who aimed to use the problem of piracy to accuse the entire industry of exploitation.

“It's not a crazy concept that they should only allow porn on their website from people who want their porn on the website,” Banks said. “There's just no one else speaking out against this, and the only place you have [people speaking out] is the internet, where stuff is so viral… people don't do any of their own research, they just take what they are told at face value.”

In the same way, many of the people criticizing TraffickingHub are sex workers who are often pushed to the margins of the internet thorough shadowbanning or, ironically, platforms kicking them off due to FOSTA or appeasing advertisers and investors—the very same practices they're fighting against.

Holding Pornhub accountable for copyright infringement and lax verification processes is a catch-22 for some sex workers. Because the industry is already stigmatized, speaking out about the issues within it—as many did when accusers of on-set abuses came forward in June—is even more difficult.

“Sex workers are the most critical people when it comes to our own porn platforms and the problems that come with them,” Adora said. “We are the people who depend on these platforms for income, but we also acknowledge and push for change. We participate in our own boycotts—we are the people who make porn companies money so we are vocal about our criticisms and hold them accountable for their wrongdoings. Not many other social platforms can say that.”

The campaign for shutting down Pornhub doesn't stop with one platform. Mickelwait celebrated PayPal's removal of service to Pornhub as a win, and are pushing for other major credit card companies to do the same—despite sex workers saying that fewer payment options in an already highly discriminatory financial situation will only make exploitation worse.

Screenshot of a February 2020 tweet from Laila Mickelwait

We're inundated with sex trafficking and human trafficking narratives every day, from Wayfair conspiracy theories to QAnon being given a platform in the White House.

Now, a trafficking narrative is threatening to advance another harmful bill through Congress: the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act, known as EARN IT. This bill would form a National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention, and develop practices meant to “prevent, reduce, and respond to the online sexual exploitation of children, including the enticement, grooming, sex trafficking, and sexual abuse of children and the proliferation of online child sexual abuse material.” The commission would be made up of law enforcement officials and Silicon Valley industry representatives.

In July, a Judiciary Committee panel unanimously voted to progress EARN-IT to Senate vote, applauding themselves for working toward stopping trafficking.

“I think that EARN-IT and TraffickingHub really play into each other in terms of providing this very glossy cover that a lot of people don't necessarily look into,” D'Adamo said. “At the end of the day it's going to be people who are reliant on—not just Pornhub but porn sites in general—for their income, who are not going to be centered, and whose livelihoods are not going to be considered when we're looking at what the damage is.”

How a Petition to Shut Down Pornhub Got Two Million Signatures syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[chthonic-cassandra]

Recent books, fiction -

- Karina Sumner-Smith, Radiant - Action story about a young woman who can see ghosts in an urban secondary-world fantasy where magic is the mechanism of capitalism. The world-building here was interesting, and the protagonists very likeable, but the plot felt oddly paced and its beats too predictable for me to really get into it. There’s also something unsettling about the way that, even though the premise is so explicitly anti-capitalist, it ultimately can’t help but reify the specialness of marketable attributes/skills in the end? I will likely read the sequels, but I’m not totally hooked.

- Elif Bautman, The Idiot - first-generation Turkish-American girl goes to Harvard in the ‘90′s, studies linguistics, and has personal and existential crises about the meaning of language, intimacy, and Balkan/eastern European culture. This a sharply written book, with a wonderful first-person pov voice, at once sardonic and genuine; it has the peculiarly enrapturing quality of most good college novels. At the same time, I felt like it wasn’t for me, with the way its ironic remove worked, with the ultimate assertion of existential futility that would frustrate me from a classmate or friend. I enjoyed it, and it frustrated me.

- Angélica Gorodischer, Trafalgar - a merchant in a subtly fantastical Argentina drinks coffee with friends and tells them about the nations he’s visited in a set of delicate and interlinking stories. Comparisons to Calvino’s Invisible Cities are obvious and deserved, though Calvino’s book is more philosophical and airborne, while Gorodischer’s remains grounded in small-scale detail. Fun, but not as satisfying or astonishing as Gorodischer’s most ambitious Kalpa Imperial.

- Elliot Wake (published under former name Leah Reader), Black Iris - a teenage girl, our floridly unreliable narrator, plays a long-game of sadistic revenge against everyone involved with the brutal homophobia she endured in high school. I don’t know what to make of this. It’s extremely engrossing (and not only because of the intense and frequent sex scenes), and the double-crossing structure of the writing, which mirrors of the structure of the protagonist , Laney’s, manipulation, is fun to unravel. @juushika compared it in her review to Dangerous Liaisons, which feels unexpectedly appropriate - and yet the differences from Dangerous Liaisons are as illuminating as the similarities, and they leave me feeling somewhat alienated from Black Iris in a way that I am not from the earlier work. As a reader, from my own subjective stance, I can’t countenance and accept Laney’s relationship to violence in the way that the novel’s denouement seems to require. I really can’t accept the novel’s treatment of direct sexual violence as a cliche to be invoked and then cast aside. I don’t know. It got under my skin; there was a lot in it I related to, and maybe that resonance is part of the discomfort. I will be thinking about it.

- Shusaku Endo, Silence - weird, part-epistolary historical novel about the persecution of Christians in Japan in the 17th century. A lot was fascinating in this, but it didn’t hold together for me. I got a little distracted imagining it as a Kobayashi film, as which it would be very good

- Miroslav Penkov, Stork Mountain - young man returns to his grandfather’s village in Bulgaria to confront his grandfather’s past and a tangled web of organized and folk religious traditions in the community which are erupting into conflict. This was a really interesting premise and plot, but confused and inconsistent execution. It didn’t work, though I really wanted it to.

- Kij Johnson, The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe - feminist retelling of Lovecraft, featured a middle-aged academic heroine going on a journey. This felt frail and insubstantial to me; sometimes clever as retelling, but sometimes too enraptured with its own cleverness. The world-building around divinity was shallow. I think it’s a novella that needs to really charm its reader to work, and I can see easily how it might, but it didn’t win me over. Maybe if it was a full novel. Maybe if it felt like it had more real conflict, and character interaction. I don’t know.

- China Mieville, This Census-Taker - Young boy is raised in isolation by a sinister father who does nebulous magical things, eventually leaves. I didn’t quite get the point? This wanted to be a trauma narrative, but got caught up in its own atmosphere and self-conscious mystery, and didn’t get there. If Silence could be a Kobayashi film, than this could be one by Bela Tarr. And that isn’t really a compliment.

- Rosamund Hodge, Crimson Bound - Gothic-ish YA doing a loose secondary-world fusion of Little Red Riding Hood and The Armless Maiden. And vampires. But not?

[Digression - So what’s up with these fantasy worlds that are basically about vampires but try to pretend they’re not vampires? I don’t always mind it (ex. Jemisin’s Dreamblood Duology), but it’s distracting. It’s okay to write about vampires! And I actually thought Hodge’s vampire variation here was interesting (a lot of emphasis on the Mina Harker-esque stage of being caught in between the human and undead states, knowing you will eventually succumb all the way but living in between), but I would have been so much more comfortable with the novel if it owned the fact that it was about vampires and then went from there.]

Anyway. Like Hodge’s Cruel Beauty, I felt that this one had an overstuffed and largely predictable plot, and the emotional beats of the romances and protagonist development were a little too indebted to the conventions and expectations of YA, but it was largely enjoyable. Could have been a lot better with some relatively minor changes - if it had gone darker, been more daring with its characters choices, taken more time to linger in the emotionally uncomfortable moments and sites of character decision. Wouldn’t recommend it, but don’t regret reading it.

- Vicki Baum, Grand Hotel - a scattered group of individuals all differently trying to their path in Weimar-era Berlin all come together in a high-class hotel. This is the basis of the now much-better known Garbo film, and it’s hard for the novel not to suffer by comparison - Baum’s Grushinskaya feels far pettier and less sympathetic when not luminously embodied by Garbo. But Baum’s novel isn’t trying to do quite the same thing - it’s more ironic, less warm, more of a satire. It’s still very charming, and deftly constructed.

[thestuckylibrary-bigbang]

AU

Part Two

This post contains works from sbb2017 that are alternate universe rather than canon compliant. It has the following categories:

Historical AU

Kid Fic

Magical Realism

Misc. No Powers AU

Modern Veteran AU

Neighbours AU

Sci-Fi

Take a look at the amazing works contributors have made!

Also check out Canon ‘Verse | AU Part One | AU Part Three | Masterpost

Historical AU

A Kiss Through A Veil by princeofprinces (tumblr)

Rating: E

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death

Words: 27K

Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers

Tags: Alternate Universe - Renaissance, Alternate Universe - Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Romani Bucky, Trans Male Character, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Torture, Abusive Parents, Racism

Summary: “Don’t be afraid.” The performer knelt next to the pillory and removed his red shawl from his shoulders, using it to wipe away the tomato and egg mixture that had dried on Estienne’s cheek. “I’m sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Art by rancorousrocker

Art by juliabizarre

Anatomy of a Scandal by Rena (AO3 | Tumblr)

Artists: @theprinceofprinces    Art Post

          @king-of-moose​            Art Post

Rating: E

No Archive Warnings Apply  

Pairings: Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes

Characters: Steve Rogers, James “Bucky” Barnes, Sam Wilson, Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff, Peggy Carter, Angie Martinelli, Arnim Zola

Tags: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Alternate Universe - Regency, Mutual Pining, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers

Summary: When Steve Rogers returns to Brooklyn, the marriage arranged for him having proven to be a sham, he is desperate; desperate to regain his footing in Society, desperate to secure a wealthy spouse capable of paying the costly treatments that keep his mother alive and settling his family’s debts. But how is he to do that when people view him as nothing more than damaged goods, someone to be sneered at, ridiculed, looked down upon, or pitied at best?

An opportunity presents itself when Lord Barnes, the renowned carefree Casanova of Brooklyn, forgets himself during one night of drunken stupor, sending Steve a letter that flouts all laws of common decency. An agreement is soon made: in return for Steve’s discretion, Lord Barnes will pretend to court him, taking him to the most fancy events of the season where Steve can be introduced to potential suitors. It all works out perfectly, until Steve comes to understand that Lord Barnes is not as pompous and self-absorbed as he believed….

“I won’t let go (at any price)” by @fuckyfarnes​

Rating: M

Words:32k

Archive Warnings: None Apply

Tags:Alternate Universe - 1980s, Drag Queens ball culture HIV/AIDS, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Gay Bashing, Gay Rights, Original Character Death(s, )Major Original Character(s), Eventual Romance, Slow Burn, Anxiety, Social Anxiety, Self-Acceptance, Implied Sexual Content, Self-Discovery, references to the get down

Summary:

It's the summer of 1981 in New York and Bucky is trying, really trying. He's working hard as a line cook to support himself and struggling to stay in contact with his sister in L.A., all while fighting to suppress his sexuality. He meets Stevie that summer and falls into the world he's been hiding from his entire life; enter ball culture, new wave music, and Aqua Net. Through music, self expression, and Stevie, Bucky finds the freedom that comes with self acceptance. In the midst of it all, the AIDS epidemic breaks out and with it comes a surge in the persecution of the LGBT community. Nothing is easy, and the cost of being yourself is high.

Art by @stuckypocketguide​

swallows still sing by icoulddothisallday

Rating: M

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence  

Words: 54k

Relationships: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes

Tags: Holocaust, Period Typical Attitudes, Religious Themes, Jewish Bucky Barnes, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Medical Experimentation, Loss of Limb, Family Separation, Death of a Family Member, PTSD

Summary:

They move through the doorway and the sun hits Bucky’s face. His eyes flinch closed involuntarily, but the warmth on his face is more than enough. There’s a breeze too, the freshest air Bucky has breathed in months. It’s chaos outside, a clamor of voices in languages both familiar and foreign. Bucky is glad to ignore it, glad to trust that the Captain will take him to safety. He dares to open his eyes. Everything is fuzzy around the edges, like a waking dream.

On April 29th, 1945, US forces liberate the concentration camp Dachau. But Captain Steve Rogers and his Howling Commandos have a more specific mission - the rescue and rehabilitation of prisoners experimented on by Arnim Zola, among them, a man named Bucky.

In light of recent events in Charlottesville and the political climate of the US right now, I want to quote Elie Weisel, a Holocaust survivor who told us, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Art abd banner by @stuckypocketguide  and  Art by ewburnthatshit

The North Star  by littleblackfox  @thelittleblackfox

Rating: E Warning: Graphic Depiction of Violence Words: 60k Relationships: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov & Clint Barton Tags:  Alternate Universe - Pirate, Romani Bucky, Swashbuckling, Historical AU, Because I didn’t suffer enough last time, Adventure on the High Seas, Mutual Pining, Fluff, Smut, Angst, Slow Burn, I will quite literally go down with this ship, Brief mentions of torture, Swordfighting, Brock Rumlow gets stabbed, It’s Pirates okay there’s going to be blood and guts, But also whales and manta rays, and beach sex

Summary:

“I heard rumour that William Fly is swinging from a gibbet in Boston harbour. They say the age of piracy is ending,” Steve utters softly, rubbing the tip of his thumb across his lower lip. Sam glances at him. “You got plans to retire, Cap? Find a nice little beach in the Indies and a good supply of rum? Couple of pretty girls in grass skirts to dance for you.” “Sam,” Steve mumbles, covering his face with his hand. “I’m sorry, a couple of pretty boys?” Sam grins wickedly. “Sam!” Steve looks scandalised, which gets him nothing but laughter from his Quartermaster. “You’re fired. Go throw yourself overboard this instant.”

Art by @brooklyn-bisexual

Art by @rohkeutta

Art by @frau-argh

Art by @frau-argh

The Scottish Boy by Bette Noire

Rating: E

Warnings: Graphic Violence

Words: 120K

Relationships: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes

Tags: Medieval AU, Alternate Universe – No Powers, knights, angst, enemies to lovers, slow build, Hundred Years War, thriller, bamf!steve, bamf!bucky

Summary: The year is 1333. The English are at war with Scotland. 19-year-old West Country knight Sir Steven excels at jousting, but yearns to prove himself in real action. So he jumps when his sponsor, Baron Alexander Pierce, invites him on a secret mission with a dozen elite knights. They ride north to a crumbling Scottish keep, capturing the feral, half-starved boy within and putting the other inhabitants to the sword. And nobody knows, or nobody is saying, why the flower of English knighthood snuck over the border to capture a savage, dirty teenage boy. Pierce gives the boy to Steve as his squire, with only two rules: don’t let the boy escape, and convert him to the English cause.

At first, it’s hopeless. The Scottish boy is surly, violent, hoards sharp objects, and eats anything that isn’t nailed down. Then Steve begins to notice things: that, as well as Gaelic, the boy speaks flawless French, far better than Steve’s own. That he can read it – Latin, too. That he isn’t small so much as desperately under-fed. That when Steve finally convinces the boy – James Buchanan, Bucky – to cut his filthy, matted curtain of hair, the face revealed is the most beautiful thing Steve has ever seen.

Art by maichan | Art by tsumi | Playlist by Penny

Kid Fic

Blurry by MonalisaMontauk Tumblr

Rating: M

Archive Warnings: None

Words: 27k

Relationships: Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes

Tags: Implied reference Child abuse, Implied reference Domestic Violence, Alternate Universe-Modern Setting, Use of Homophobic slur, Police Officer Steve, Minor Angst, Fluff, Minor Smut, Domestic Fluff, first dates

Summary: Bucky, a single father who only gets to see his son on weekends, finds out his ex’s new boyfriend is abusing him. Fueled with rage Bucky sets out on a mission to track him down. Finding him at a sleazy bar leads to a showdown with terrible consequences for Bucky. The police are called and it just so happens that the cop arresting him is a former one night stand. Awkward doesn’t even begin to describe the situation.

Art by Kay Maeryn @kaym-art

Pas de Deux by rhysiana

Rating: T

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 20,767

Relationships: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, (past Steve/Peggy, background Clint/Natasha)

Tags: single dad!Steve, artist!Steve, ballet!Bucky, ballet!Natasha, Badly Healed Shoulder Injury, The Realization That Life in One’s 30s Doesn’t Always Look Like One Expected in One’s 20s

Summary: Steve was pretty sure he fell in love with Peggy Carter the first time she called him a “jumped-up colonial” after a surprisingly heated debate on the first day of their shared history seminar during his semester abroad. He never really stopped. Which was really kind of the main problem he was having now, as he stood there next to her grave under gray skies full of ominous clouds that nonetheless refused to actually rain, as if they, too, knew this was fake. *** In which Steve is a newly single father indulging his daughter’s new obsession with ballet, Bucky and Nat are former stars of the Bolshoi now teaching at a DC ballet school, and no one is really quite as normal as they appear.

Art by @barnessergeant (Please go admire her cute art for this story!)

Banner by @dizzy-redhead, who volunteered to make it out of sheer awesomeness!

Seahorses by Tinzelda (AO3) and Poppyfields13fic (AO3)

Rating: E

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 31k

Relationships: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes

Tags: Post-Captain America Civil War - Freeform, BuckyCap - Freeform, Kidfic, Dad Steve, Fluff, Domestic

Summary: Now that Bucky’s taken over the role of Captain America, Steve feels like it’s finally the time to start a family. Bucky doesn’t know what to feel when Steve breaks the news he’s going to adopt a baby. He wants Steve to be happy, but he’s worried it will affect their friendship. Once Steve becomes a dad though, Bucky can’t help falling in love with the baby. And maybe Steve will finally see Bucky in a different light.

Art by CapCarterandSarge (AO3)

Magical Realism

Deep as the Ocean by themirrordarkly (starmaki)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Words: 20k

Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers Tags: AU Modern and AU Magical Realism, Fisherman Steve and Merman Bucky, Magic and Fairytale elements, Sexual Content, Soulbond, Touch-Starved, Memory loss, Serious Injury and Trauma, Angst, Depression  

Summary:

The newly established charter boat business is booming for ex-military man, Steve Rogers. Being the captain of the charter boat ‘End Of The Line’ is a dream come true–but he doesn’t have anyone to share in his success and good fortune. Everything changes when he finds a sexy, mysterious stranger washed up on the beach. The chemistry is undeniable, like two old souls connecting. But Bucky Barnes isn’t the man he claims to be, having only three months to achieve his goal or suffer the terrible consequences. Can he succeed and claim what he lost? Steve and Bucky’s worlds will collide, changing both their lives forever. A modern retelling of a fairytale, with a twist!

Story by @starmaki (themirrordarkly)

Art by @elendrien

Fourth Floor by @dirtybinary, art by @cbolle & @mithborien

Rating: T

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 41,805

Relationships: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, minor Sharon Carter/Natasha Romanoff

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Shrinkyclinks, Magical Realism, Tentacle Monsters

Summary:

Steve has his life in order, okay. He goes to wizard college, even if he can’t technically do magic. He has his own apartment, even though it’s small and dinky and kind of gross, and forgets to exist sometimes, and might also be alive? Plus, he has a crush on the hot cyborg in unit 404 who cooks fiendishly good breakfast foods, and may or may not have some kind of weird connection to the sentient building they live in. He’s not sure.

He’s dealing, all right, his life is in tip-top condition, or it was until an eldritch monstrosity called the Hydra started posing as a real estate company to try and buy over his new home.

He’s really pissed about that.

(The one where Steve is an angry millennial wizard, Sam is a Disney prince, Natasha is a shapeshifter, and Bucky is a spoiler.)

Illustrations

[x] by @cbolle​ [x] and above banner by @mithborien

Freshwater Memories by @resinonao3 (Ao3)

A collaboration for the Stucky Big Bang 2017!

Header Art by @koreanrage (Tumblr) Papercraft Art by @milollita (Tumblr)

Artwork rating: G Fic rating: Explicit Word count: 50,903 Relationship: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes

Archive Warnings: None

Summary:

Steve hasn’t been back to his family’s cottage for years, ever since the car accident took both his parents and his childhood memories. His therapist seems to think it’s a good idea for him to get out of the city for a while, so Steve decides it’s time to fix it up. He remembers a lot of things when he’s finally arrives, smells the fresh grass, hears the whisper of the trees, and the familiar warmth of a home away from home. The river outside is familiar too, only Steve can’t quite remember the imaginary friend he invented from it, when he needed one the most.

The river remembers him though, and will be damned if it watches his old friend sulk in loneliness instead of play with him, like he used to.

Check out @resinonao3‘s amazing fic on AO3!

From Dirty Paws and Creatures of Snow by goldenraeofsun

Rating: Teen and up

Words: 106k

Archive Warnings: Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings

Tags: Modern AU, Magic AU, Witch Steve Rogers, Familiar Bucky Barnes, Temporary Character Death

Summary

Bullies had mocked Steve's lack of magic for years, emboldened as Steve cast spell after spell that fizzled and died.

Steve didn't believe a word out of Bucky's mouth when he said that Steve was the most powerful witch he'd ever seen, but at least Bucky had until they reached Bonding age to convince him of the truth.

Amazing art by lunalittlelunatic is available here!

I See Fire by MooseKing, samwise_baggins, Steve-Bucky-Stucky (Chemical30)

Rating: E

Words:72k

Archive Warnings: Rape/Noncon

Tags: Hydra Agents, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Mpreg, Rape/Non-con Elements, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Graphic Sex, Minor Character Death, Illegal Activities

Summary:

Steve, an elf, has always wanted to see the fabled dragons, rumored to have been hunted into extinction. He dares enter their domain where he meets Bucky, an actual dragon. But this isn’t all fairy tales and happy endings. Hydra, a group of humans bent on genetic control and manipulation, threaten the existence of all creatures, and it is up to an elf, a dragon, and a handful of other magically inclined creatures to put an end to the kidnapping, abuse, experimentation, and murder . . . if they can.

Repaid, by @waffilicious,

Rating: T

Archive warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 20k

Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers

Tags: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Identity Issues, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Recovery, Mind Manipulation, Emotional Manipulation, Hurt/Comfort    

Summary: Bucky, having been freed from his captivity in Faerie, finds it difficult to readjust to life on Earth. Steve and Sam do their best to help, but it’s not until Bucky meets Wanda and she tells him about the Wakandan Magical Rehabilitation Program that progress is made. Meanwhile, a hidden threat may get in the way of Bucky’s recovery.

Art by @alishawinky

Art by @samthebirdbae

Saying Your Name by brideofquiet Art by @sorrowingsoldier

Rated E

Archive Warnings No Archive Warnings Apply Word Count 43k Relationships Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes Tags  Surreality, Magic realism, Religous imagery & symbolism, Homesickness, Pre- and post-serum everybody, suicide ideation, medical trauma,  Post-TWS, Not CW compliant

Glancing back up, Steve realizes that there’s something off about what he’s seeing. It takes him a moment to place it, overcome as he is with seeing his home—and it is his home, the Brooklyn he grew up in.

But the longer he stares, the more the image starts to distort. His own memories layer over top, a perfect duplication, but it’s like a layer of paint. He scrubs a hand over his eyes, stares harder and—there! The colors flicker out like cheap lights, fading away into grayscale till the sky is off-white, the East River churning charcoal below him.It’s eerie, uncanny, the not-quite-rightness of it all. If he doesn’t focus on anything in particular, the image snaps back into place, right again.

It unsettles him, making him nervous and flighty in place of the warm familiarity he’d felt only moments before.

Then he remembers: Hadn’t Bucky called to him, from just this spot?

Read the story here, and see the art here!

Misc. No Powers AU

Brave Boy by rooonil_waazlib with art by kissuru

37663 words Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers Characters: James “Bucky” Barnes, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Sarah Rogers, Clint Barton, Riley (Captain America movies) Additional Tags: Witness Protection AU, Stucky Big Bang 2017 Summary:

“CHORUS: Brave girl. KASSANDRA: People never say that to a lucky person, do they?” -“Agamemnon”, Aeschylus (trans. Anne Carson)

-

Steve’s always wanted to see Madrid: to have the chance to wander through Retiro Park; to explore the Museo del Prado and the Royal Palace and the Reina Sofía; maybe to light a candle at the Almudena Cathedral; to drink wine and eat tapas at all hours of the night and go dancing until the sun comes up, just once or twice.

Never in his entire life had he expected it might happen this way, though: a terrible memory ground into his brain; a scar the size of his fist knotted over his shoulder; his friends convinced he’s dead; his hair dyed dark; and a bodyguard next to him that’s pretending to be his new husband.

COFFEE AND COMICS by @mmouse15

Rating: Teen and up Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Words: 23k Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Tags: coffee shop AU, modern AU, pre-serum Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes needs a hug Summary: A coffee shop AU that’s not about coffee, but about writing and life, and how a person’s value system influences the choices they make. It just so happens to (mostly) take place in a coffee shop.

ART by @izulkowa

Dreaming of Him by Loneliness_of_Evening

Rating: M

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 36K

Relationships: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes

Tags: Recreational Drug Use, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Mobster Bucky, Nanny Steve, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Modern AU

Summary: New York City hosts millions of different people living vastly different lives. Some people are nannies who dream of being artists, and some are mobsters who dream of being more than the big guys’ drivers. A chance meeting—rather a chance game of nose goes—brings these two people together, and a simple knock at the door becomes fate. But can fate avoid disaster? Or will they both be left alone with only dreams?

Art by @sundaecherries (NSFW)

Art by @happylaune

I Do (please say you want me) by ceeainthereforthat Ao3 / tumblr

Rating: Explicit

Archive Warnings: None

Words: 84k

Relationships: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes

Tags: No Powers Modern AU, Fake Engagement/Marriage, BDSM, RACK, CBT, TopDom Steve Rogers, BottomSub Bucky Barnes

Summary:  Steve Rogers wants to be President of the United States. That’s why Bucky should tell him no when Steve asks him out on a date…but he doesn’t, and the story about the son of former Vice President Joe Rogers and a high ticket BDSM dominant going out on the town is in the media days later. When Steve won’t throw Bucky under the bus to save his reputation–and his popularity ratings–they’re offered Plan B: Love at First Sight. A Whirlwind Courtship. A Fairytale Wedding, and an amicable divorce five years later.

Sure. That’s gonna work

.Say Goodnight and Go by gingertintedglasses

Rating: T

Archive Warnings: Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings

Words:  26,586

Relationships: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes

Tags: Boston snowpocalypse 2015, fluff, copywriter!Bucky, graphic designer!steve, panic attacks and past self-harm mentions, unexpectedly sharing space, pining, bisexual bucky barnes, sarah rogers and rebecca barnes are treasures, super background natasha/sharon that I want to expand in some one-shot follow ups at some point

Summary: Bucky and Steve work for SSR Marketing in Boston. It’s January 2015 and it’s starting to snow in Boston, faster than can be kept up with. Bucky ends up with few transport options to get home and Steve offers to let Bucky crash on his couch until the MBTA is running reliably again. Mutual pining, close quarters, some weather-related mishaps, and some well-timed meddling from a mischievous, well-meaning Sarah Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Rebecca Barnes, do their level best to help Steve and Bucky own up to their feelings. Lots of awkward flirting, second-guessing, coffee, snow, and a puppy.

Art by @whatasaur​  

Art by @comedicdrama​  

The Greatest Show on Earth by youngavengersfeels

Rating: M

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 25K

Relationships: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes

Tags: Circus AU

Summary: When Steve’s mother dies he runs away to join a circus to escape the debt left behind. He finds himself part of something much larger than himself as he falls for an acrobat known only as the Winter Solider.

Art by Brooklyn-bisexual

Art by @buckybarnesbutt

That Would Be Enough by MarcellaBianca Tumblr

Rating: E

Archive Warnings: Chose not to Use Archive Warnings

Words: 62K

Relationships: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes

Tags: AU: private school, AU: Teachers, Pining, Angst with a happy ending, Fluff and Smut, These Two Are Idiots, Brunch, Gym, Bucky Barnes Needs A Hug CW: Eating disorders, references to emotional and psychological abuse, and attempted dub-con sex

Summary: Bucky Barnes, a Columbia University graduate with a Masters Degree in Education, is in his fourth year of teaching AP US History at Shield Academy, a private school in the very heart of the Connecticut valley in the bucolic town of Barkstead. He also helps run the Russian Club with his colleague and best friend, Natasha Romanov. He’s got amazing friends, three nephews he adores, and a beautiful little apartment. The only thing Bucky would change about his life? His luck in love. It’s been two years since Bucky ended an emotionally abusive relationship and he’s just now starting to feel that his heart has healed enough to try dating again. Then, a new Art History and English teacher arrives with tattoos he doesn’t like talking about, a body like a Greek god, and some secrets of his own, and Bucky knows he’s done for. Cue pining, sass, and a TON of geeking out over Hamilton.

Art by alienswearsunglasses

Political Submissive by Samwise_baggins & Steve-Bucky-Stucky

Rating: Explicit

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Rape/Non-con

Word Count: 87,963

Relationships: Steve Rogers/James “Bucky” Barnes, Johnny Storm/ Thomas ‘TJ’ Hammond, Jack Benjamin/David Shepherd

Tags: BDSM, Graphic Sex, Prostitution, PTSD, Rape/Non-con, Abuse, Pre-Serum, Post-Serum

Summary:  Steve’s always struggled with owning a Submissive because of his size, and Bucky with his missing arm doesn’t have a lot of Dominant buyers/suitors. TJ, Bucky’s twin, would be a popular Submissive, though he’s never settled down, mostly one night stands. One night when attending an art show, the twins meet Steve and the world changes!

Artist: Colbaltmoony ( tumblr)

The Selection by worrisomeme

Rating: Mature Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Words: 20k Tags: Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage (kind of), panic attacks, PTSD, disabled Bucky, disabled Steve, tattoo artist Steve, writer Bucky

Summary:

The Department of Spousal Selection. Anyone not married by age 25 gets a spouse assigned to them by the government. And it’s fine, really. The matches are almost always a perfect fit. Steve Rogers is a successful tattoo artist who’s about to have his world turned upside down when he’s matched with a one Bucky Barnes. As they navigate their new life together and learn to deal with each other’s baggage, will their match prove successful, or will their inner demons tear them apart?

[art] by @lasenbyphoenix

Modern Veteran AU

All or Nothing Days by Lacanthrope

Rating: M

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Words: 20K

Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/ Steve Rogers, James “Bucky” Barnes & Wanda Maximoff

Tags: Amputee Bucky Barnes, War Vetran Bucky Barnes, Pre-serum Steve, Alternate Universe- No powers

Summary: Sleeping rough in a big city was a shitty way to live, but Bucky knew it was better than he deserved after what he had done. What he had been asked to do and then did. He didn’t deserve the neatly-packaged leftovers from Wanda, the girl who lived in the apartment building he slept outside of, or the smokes she always shared with him. Most of all, he definitely didn’t deserve Steve, the completely fearless volunteer at St. Benedict’s, looking at Bucky the way he did. But when Wanda goes missing and the cops don’t seem to be doing anything about it, Bucky goes stumbling into the dark underbelly of the city to find her. He also happens to stumble right into Steve, who sticks his nose right where it shouldn’t go and insists on helping Bucky get to the bottom of Wanda’s disappearance. All they have to do is survive stirring up the largest criminal organization in the city and all of the unsavoury characters who come with it.

Art by dire-situations

Getting to the Groot of the Problem by Werewolfinthetardis

Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Words: 32,798 Relationships: Bobby Drake/Steve Rogers, James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers Tags: Friends to Lovers, kid fic (kinda), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Depression, Angst, Explicit Language, Mentions/Depictions of various types of sex and foreplay, Modern Setting- No Powers AU, Amputee Veteran Bucky Barnes, Post-Serum Steve With life winding down new problems pop up, and Steve and Bucky are left struggling with their own personal demons. Steve is trying to figure out what being bisexual really means, while Bucky deals with depression, PTSD, and life with only one arm. Their friendship on the verge of collapse, their lives only get weirder when everyone’s favorite Guardian of the Galaxy, Baby Groot, ends up living in Steve’s apartment. Will the little hell-raiser help fix the problems or will he just create new ones? Amazing Art done by the incredible cancerousmonkey

Shelter from the Storm by ironmanspanties

Rating: T

Archive Warnings: Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Words: 63k

Relationships: James “Bucky” Barnes/Steve Rogers

Tags: Depression, Self-Esteem Issues, Minor Character Death, minor description of violence, PTSD, Slow Burn, Mention of infidelity (not Steve/Bucky), Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bucky’s arm Sucks, Mention of Child Abuse, Past Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers, Past Bucky Barnes/Jake Jensen

Summary: To lessen the pain from his wife’s betrayal, Steve Rogers is headed as far from his problems as he can get. Though he’d reached the Oregon coast, he still felt broken, empty, and alone. When circumstances leave him stranded on the coast during a summer storm, he sought refuge with the local War vet, who was no haggard old man, but rather a handsome recluse with stormy past of his own. What was it about James Barnes that kept Steve from returning to wandering?

Art by laufcysons

You Belong in a Gallery by gr8escap tumblr

Archive Warnings: Chose not to Use Archive Warnings

Relationship: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes

Word count: 55K

Tags:  Modern AU, Artist Steve Rogers, skinny Steve, veteran amputee Bucky, PTSD, mention of past suicide ideation, mention of past drunken non-con, partial deafness/hoh steve

Summary:  Brooklyn gallery owner and successful comic artist Skinny!Steve Rogers has overcome a lot in his life. He just hasn’t figured out the dating scene. Veteran!Bucky Barnes returned home from Afghanistan minus an arm, but after a rough patch, he has goals to become a graphic designer and even a video game developer. He just has to get through his temporary work as a construction worker so he can get back to school. The pair meets and works to overcome their personal struggles at the same time exploring whatever this is between them that’s moving so fast.

Art 1; Art 2; (& header) by @linguastrata

Neighbours AU

i wish i knew you when i was young by bagels-and-seagulls AO3

Rating: G

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 21k

Relationships: Steve Rogers / Bucky Barnes

Tags: Art History Professor Steve Rogers, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Kebab the therapy dog, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Slow Build

Summary:

“You can pet her. I mean, if you want to that is. I’m not, like, demanding that you pet my dog or anything. I’m just saying that you can, if you want. I know that the, uh, vest says not to, but, like, it’s okay, if I say it’s okay. Which I do, so you can, if you want…” What the fuck, Steve? Does your brain to mouth filter really suck that much?

Bucky blinked at him slightly before scrunching his nose up slightly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

or the one where Steve doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut around his new neighbor and his dog thinks it’s hilarious

Art by starlingzinc

To Have or Have Not by blue_pointer on ao3

Rating: E

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 56k

Relationships: Steve/Bucky, Bucky/Falsworth, Steve/Peggy, Steve/Bucky/Falsworth, Steve/Bucky/Peggy, Peggy/Falsworth, Bucky/Tony (poly)

Tags: Boy Next Door, Infidelity, Romance, Fluff and Smut, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Pregnancy, threesomes, Stucky dads, First Times

Summary: Having a little crush on your hunky new neighbor is totally harmless…unless that hunk has set his sights on you. Fidelity is easy when Steve Rogers isn’t doing his best to seduce you.The second Steve sets eyes on Bucky, he knows he’s the one. Peggy’s left it up to him to choose the father of their child. Now how to break it to him…Bucky believes that cheating is wrong. When he discovers love isn’t limited to the confines of a single relationship, can he accept what his heart is telling him?

Art #1 by @drowningbydegrees (NSFW)

Art #2 by @drowningbydegrees (NSFW)

Sci-Fi

Anything But Circumstance by Crave

Rating: M

Archive Warnings: Graphic Descriptions of Violence

Words: 20k

Relationships: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers/Other Character(s) (minor)

Tags: Science Fiction, Action, Space Opera, Alternate Universe - Space, Original Character(s), Implied/Referenced Suicide, Humor, Aliens, Identity Porn, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Implied/Referenced Torture, Panic Attacks, Nightmares, so much sass, IN SPACE!

Summary:

“You are talking to me,” the voice said.

“And who are you?”

There was a pause. “It is probably best if I show you,” the voice said.

One of the walls, the one Steve had been inspecting, began to slide up and up into the ceiling. Steve dashed forward, only to collide with the solid sheet of glass behind the wall. The glass didn’t break, even when Steve pounded it with his fists.

“No need to get hysterical,” the voice said. “Why not step back and admire the view?”

Art by shutupimcreating

The Saughteling by Claudia_flies and zilia

Rating: E

Archive Warnings: Graphic Violence

Important Tags: Star Wars AU, explicit sexual content, past-trauma, references to torture, action adventure, psychic connections, dream sharing, epic lightsaber battles, angst, internalized homophobia, violating the Jedi code, accidental voyeurism, MCU Star Wars AU, Old Republic

Summary: James Buchanan Barnes and Steve Grant Rogers arrive at the Jedi Temple just over twelve months apart.

Many years later, a disillusioned Jedi Knight Steve Rogers returns to the Core Worlds at the summoning of the Jedi Council. Instead of following the will of the Council, Steve chooses a different path. His quest will lead Steve to confront a specter from his past and finally open himself up to the will of the Force

The most amazing art by @hopeless–geek here and @this-simple-mind here (NSFW) and here

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out by OktaviaMiki (pandasubaru)

Rating:M

Archive Warnings: Choose Not To Use Warnings

Words: 39k

Relationships: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes (minor Sam Wilson & Natasha Romanoff)

Tags: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Robot/Human Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Slow Burn, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, AvertedNonCon

Summary: Two years have passed since Bucky was honorably discharged from the army, and still he’s plagued by the scars and memories. While coping by means of drinking, he orders a persocom, a popular humanoid computer, who arrives (naked) the following morning and he names “Steve”. Bucky wants nothing to do with Steve at first, but because of Steve’s kind influence he begins to open up and his outlook on life changes for the better. Lines are blurred when Bucky realizes his feelings for Steve go beyond that of an owner and machine, feelings Steve might return

Art by @frau-argh

Art by @comedicdrama

Art by @10ftalice

Warhawk by Unicornologist

Rating: T

Archive Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Words: 43k

Relationships: Steve Rogers & Bucky Barnes

Tags: Space AU, Stark Strek AU, canon typical violence, war of 1812 au, slow burn, swearing, enemies to lovers

Summary: Twelve years ago, the Terran Revolution ended. Nicky Fury swore an oath to himself and the known universe that he would never return to the empty void of space again. He vowed that he would rather be tried for treason than set foot on another warship. Yet somehow, all these years later, here he stands in front of his captain’s chair watching the endless black surge past his ship. He watched his crew readying for the battle to come; he could hear Rogers and Barnes bickering over strategy while Romanov and Stark readied the long range blaster cannons and checked the shields. “The universe has a sick sense of humor.” He muttered to himself with a sigh.

Art by @sundaecherries (Hannah)

[malenkaya-glosoli]

Stuff I’m tired of hearing as an autistic person

This is a list of things and variations of things I hear from three family members (who shall remain anonymous, keep in mind that they know I’m autistic) that are offensive to me, even if it’s said in a joking manner but especially if it’s said in frustration or anger, and I hope I NEVER EVER hear any of the following responses from any significant other I may have in future. Some of these things I hear a lot in the situations listed below or otherwise rarely happen or have happened only once so far (Warning: Some of the responses I’ve listed here may be triggering for some people, and a massive trigger warning for occasional use of ableist slurs):

1. Response when I tell someone to go away or leave me alone: “You’re being rude” or “Quit being rude”

2. When I’m rocking in public, I hear this: “Stop doing that” I keep rocking; response to this: “You’re being defiant”

3. Another stim I have is picking at my acne and plucking out my eyebrows and eyelashes. The response: “Stop picking” *they even move my hand away from my face even if i wasnt going to pick at anything. On one occasion they started teasing me about it and they said they would tie my hands and then they all got out their phones and started photographing and videoing it. And we were in public, in the middle of a restaurant, but nobody seemed to notice...*

4. Responses when I get very angry about something or if I try to defend and/or justify my need for alone time or if I continuously keep asking to go home from someplace far away: “You know what, you’re selfish”, “You’re such a homebody”, or “You’re acting like a two year old”

5. Response to when I pace around the kitchen: “Stop pacing”

6. Response to me explaining that me being autistic is the reason why I don’t want to talk and/or why I like to stay alone in one room for hours: “I think you’re just making excuses”

7. Occasional response to when I get out a shirt or pair of shorts that I feel like wearing or if I want to leave the house in a shirt that I’d been wearing for a couple/a few days before: “Oh, uh-uh” or “You look like a slob”

8. Response to me saying “I don’t want to talk” and/or me wanting to go into the bedroom for alone time: “You never want to talk”, “You never want to spend time with us”, “Don’t you want to talk?”, “You always have privacy”, “You’re so antisocial”, “Do you love me anymore?”

9. Response to me trying to tell someone the difference between the words “asocial” and “antisocial” and advising for use of the former: “I don’t care!”

10. Response to me leaving the bedroom for a snack or water or to ask something: “Do we know her?”, “Who are you?”, “*overly dramatic gasp* She’s come out of her hole!”

11. Response to my mostly lifelong inability to tie shoelaces: “Even three year olds can do it”

12. Response to me not being able to see something physically obvious that’s being pointed out to me and the person and their tone of voice is getting more and more frustrated when I keep saying I can’t see the thing: “You’re acting retarded”

13. Response to me rage shouting about something: “Quit acting psycho”

Other stuff: They don’t believe that “I don’t know” or “Nothing” is a valid answer but they let it slide anyway, they keep poking me when I tell them to please not touch me, them (one of them) having a frustrated tone of voice when they tell me to “speak up” if I’m talking too quietly...

EDIT 8-11-17 (Trigger warning for an ableist slur) - A few weeks ago I called my mom’s mom and asked her questions about what she thinks about my autistic traits, autism, and autistic people in general. She said that she sometimes thinks it’s “annoying” when I don’t want to talk to anyone and spend hours alone in the bedroom but she also claimed that she’s been trying to understand me better; she also said that she doesn’t think it’s sad for a person when they get an autism diagnosis. But this turned out to be hypocritical because when I asked her if she thought that there should be a cure for autism, she said yes. I felt very disappointed and even betrayed. But I tried not to let on that I was angry and disappointed and I told her that people like Albert Einstein and Thomas Jefferson were autistic and that if I weren’t autistic or if there weren’t any such thing as autism, I either wouldn’t exist or I wouldn’t be the same person I am. I asked her again if she really believed that a cure for autism was necessary, and she insisted that it was.

And last night, while I was getting ready for a shower, my mom called me a “retard”, and she kept asking stuff like “why are you being so disrespectful to me, what’s gotten into you lately?”. If you ask me, I’m only defending myself. She wanted me to brush my teeth, but I’d been eating some food and if I brush my teeth before I eat, then it’ll make the food taste bad until it wears off, my sensory problems make it hard for me to deal with that, so for me, it’s only logical and better to not brush my teeth before eating anything. And in the shower she grabbed my wrist pretty hard and she slapped me, but I don’t remember if it was on my face or my shoulder, but I’m pretty sure it was on my shoulder. She apologised later, and the apology was genuinely sincere, but she has similar complaints when I can’t do basic things that most people take for granted. When I was in the shower, she said ”even your five year old cousin can bathe herself.” Said cousin is neurotypical. I was deeply offended.

EDIT 9-7-17: Here’s a hint as to what I’m going through atm. I have been feeling stressed and exhausted and the source of it is not stopping anytime soon. A mix of intentional procrastination and natural executive dysfunction is worsening it, and I don’t dare try to explain the concept of executive dysfunction to my mom because I just know she won’t understand or even care. I once read aloud these posts to her:

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/143950944846/strangelyschizotypal-neurodivergent-people

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150231283186/autisticliving-friendly-reminder-that-its-okay

and in response to the second one she said “no, it’s not okay”, so I’ve learned that it’s better for me to just stop trying with her.

I’ve tried to tell her that there are some things that I’ve accepted that I might never be able to do without help (washing my hair because the feeling and sight of wet, stringy loose strands of hair on my skin and hands/fingers is a mix of scary and disgusting and shaving because I’m too gentle with the razor) or at all (driving because too overwhelming), and when I talked with her about this yesterday she was like “how the h*** can you say that when you haven’t even tried, i don’t accept that, you’re just limiting yourself”. I can’t even describe how enraging and hurtful that was. I already know I’ll never be able to do those things without help or at all because just thinking about them and imagining myself in the driving scenario makes me feel overwhelmed. While I was in the shower she was saying stuff like “you should be doing this stuff yourself already, do you expect me to do this for you the rest of your life?” and i said “no, my husband will have to do it” (i meant future husband, whoever that’ll be) and mom was like “it gets me angry when you say stuff like that”. stuff like that is a common refrain during showers: “you’re seventeen, you should already be doing this”. Why is it like this for me and lots of other autistic people out there? Why is it that as we get older our families usually get more and more frustrated and impatient with us when we still can’t do basic things that most people take for granted instead of just getting used to it and accepting it like we (or at least some of us) have? This is exactly why I feel very strongly that you should NEVER EVER use a person’s age as a reason for why they should or shouldn’t already be doing something that most people can do without help or at all. It’s ableist and invalidating, not to mention emotionally abusive, whether you mean it that way or no. STOP. IT.

Sometimes I want to leave them, but that’s where I feel trapped. I rarely use money as I rarely buy anything alone and I have no wallet, I don’t drive, I don’t have a boyfriend, I don’t know anyone who I could go stay with, and it’d feel wrong to leave them because it’s my family, the only family I’ve ever really known. I can cook simple meals that are already cooked and only need to be reheated and I rarely use the stove because the hissing noises freak me out and that frustrates mom. My dad is autistic too but if you think he’d understand my inabilities, prepare to be disappointed. He wouldn’t get up and help when I asked him to get some chicken in the oven for me, to the point where a couple times he wouldn’t even respond at all when I asked him to get up and help, which was all i said “Get up and help”. Things have gotten easier in the past year but growing up I never had a really good relationship with him because he would spank and pinch me a lot when I was little, and on two occasions after two upsetting arguments that got physical, the police got involved, although there was never any arrest. He grew up with a dad who abused the entire family and plus he grew up in a place and culture where corporal punishment is seen as discipline, not corporally punishing your child is considered worse than not raising the child properly, it’s considered completely acceptable to spank kids who aren’t yours, and even toddlers aren’t thought of as too young to receive corporal punishment (also that place and culture is VERY openly and devoutly Christian, I have nothing against Christianity and I’m a lot more spiritual than religious but I do believe in God and the whole shebang and I do pray for people, and the culture and place is very homophobic, I’m straight but I’m supportive of LGBT+ people and my favourite couple is a gay couple so when I see any homophobia I still feel hurt and offended). Although the following doesn’t happen often, he does sometimes imply that I need to just stop talking if the person I’m talking to about a certain thing seems disinterested in the subject or has reached their limit, so I can’t say I find much support there. And my mom says that she thinks my autistic friends and I are defiant in the negative way and that we bully people into accepting us and our traits, behaviours, etc. and that I want to be accepted but, as she believes, I won’t accept how others are. Unbelievable.

This is exactly why I wish it were possible for children to be able to pick and choose their families. Because of my troubled relationship with my dad, I started wishing that the couple I mentioned (Jónsi and Alex) could adopt me, even though I knew that would be impossible for multiple reasons, I even wrote a few fantasies about it. But now it’s for another reason: because of the treatment I mentioned. I know that Jónsi and Alex would be awesome dads, if and when they ever choose to adopt a child (they’re not married yet tho), and also because I believe they’d be more understanding, patient, supportive and accepting because they know what it’s like to be different. Also: back in January I got a big crush on Ivar from the show Vikings, and I quickly started work on a modern AU author self insert fanfic about him (I wrote it as an outlet for my crush and my feelings and problems) which, at the time of this update, has 1,149 views and counting, and so far it has five sequels. I quickly discovered that I felt that I could relate to Ivar because:

1. We’re both disabled (I’m autistic, of course, and Ivar was born with his legs deformed)

2. We both feel sad, alone, and mad at the world, I had violent urges when I was younger (even then I knew better than to act on them) and if I’m provoked enough I can get as rageful as Ivar does)

3. We both have to deal with ableism from a relative (the above says it all for me, and Ivar has been emotionally and verbally abused and harassed by his brother Sigurd. He’s dead now because he was abusing Ivar and he mentioned their mother and Ivar just lost his temper and killed Sigurd)

So yeah. Ivar is SUPER angry and violent but he is also sad and he feels alone and unloved. Through my stories I am able to improve his life and love him and I have gained his trust and he always protects me. When I myself am being scolded or whatever, although I understand the difference between fantasy and reality, I silently beg Ivar to help me and sometimes I get teary eyed because it’s impossible, for obvious reason. I’m pretty resilient and I don’t think I’m vulnerable to becoming clinically insane or whatever, it probably depends on the person and how well or not well they’re able to cope with being in this kind of situation, but sometimes I feel like I genuinely want to be with Ivar and I feel like I love him in every way a person can be loved, I can tell from both his canon personality on the show and his fanon personality in my stories that, since he’s lost both of his parents, Ivar would be VERY protecive of anyone he loves, and in my stories, that anyone is me.

If anyone would like to read the story I mentioned, here it is:

https://theeclecticone.deviantart.com/art/Vikings-Modern-AU-fic-Ivar-Finds-Love-661877797

That’s all for now. Again, please feel free to reply, comment, like, and/or reblog.

Posts I’ve reblogged that elaborate on all this (WARNING LONG):

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159857814936/ndgirlfriends-so-to-all-the-girls-who-constantly

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856353686/when-they-say-your-autism-is-not-an-excuse-for

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856337041/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-other-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856320506/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-other-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856301231/sbroxman-autisticquestions-dont-laugh-at-or-mock

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856273001/sbroxman-autisticquestions-sometimes-it-feels

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/158125804696/sbroxman-autisticquestions-that-autistic-problem

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157809830756/cosmicautistic-why-do-people-insist-on-touching

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157808877166/ableist-why-do-you-act-this-way-autistic-person

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157808675211/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-other-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159856232176/happy-stimming-is-such-a-nice-thing-to-see-and-it

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159724609526/introvertunites-if-youre-an-introvert-follow

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/159668391651/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-the-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/158691542131/on-using-autism-as-an-excuse

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/158691153136/but-how-can-you-knooooow-you-dont-like-the-food

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157784200641/do-people-get-annoyed-by-stimming

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157403112936/trans-mom-stimming-is-normal-stimming-is

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157332198686/sbroxman-autisticquestions-i-hate-it-when-people

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/157174323231/autism-problems-2

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156807367896/introvertunites-if-youre-an-introvert-follow

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156718532431

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156505810611/ndgirlfriends-you-dont-deserve-the-invalidation

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156178091191

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156178055291

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156178041551

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156178024041

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156176025301/radsturbate-i-hate-ppl-who-get-personally

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156045245181/rentboy-tony-shout-out-to-people-who-have-a-hard

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/156011656186/serenavampire-neurotypical-voice-stop

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934926521/autism-problem-717

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934918486/autism-problem-608

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934909651/autism-problem-637

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934902666/autism-problem-411

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934895996/autism-problem-588

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934884411/autism-problem-584

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934876216/autism-problem-290

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155934210941/muted-serendipitybubble-ignorance-isnt-bliss

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155933220616/autism-problem-755

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155931816041

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155925440681/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-other-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155859175671/messatmybest-janeysprings-due-to-sensory

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155859150906/parents-we-need-to-talk

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155689458176/reasons-to-avoid-accusing-someone-of-blaming

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155659677701/digitalufo-autistic-ppl-who-get-flappy-and-bouncy

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155426144511/theconcealedweapon-allistic-person-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155425409931/theconcealedweapon-i-hate-when-people-tell-me

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155425281356/theconcealedweapon-theconcealedweapon

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155425121666/theconcealedweapon-autistic-people-are-too

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155424530461/theconcealedweapon-neurotypical-people-you

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/155424322271/theconcealedweapon-allistic-people-its-funny

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154841269766/ladyautie-im-sorry-if-i-didnt-post-anything

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154841055036/ladyautie-keelan-666-seriously-dont

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154727816316/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-everyone

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154721632341/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-anytime

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154655907631/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-people-with-autism

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154647497556/things-to-never-say-to-any-autistic-people

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154645929986/sbroxman-autisticquestions-to-other-autistic

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154629619396/if-someone-ever-accuses-you-of-blaming-autism

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154629164341/butterflyinthewell-sbroxman-autisticquestions

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154628953381/me-doesnt-talk-person-you-really-need-to

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154594676751/autisticliving-if-a-disabled-person-tell-you-they

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/153636602021/npdfox-not-a-lot-of-people-really-understand-how

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/153636586631/little-autism-things-1

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/153636327551/little-autism-things-84

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/153636274181/little-autism-things-96

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150299063241/another-autism-feel-41

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150299046296/another-autism-feel-3

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150298550331/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-you-have

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150296089161/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-nobody

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150296051946/ladystoneshield-that-autism-feel-when-youre

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152172013261/disabilityhealth-excuses-shouldnt-be-seen-so

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152483526466

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152482579361

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152482495726

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152480786081/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-you-do

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/152480760611/autisticliving-that-autism-feel-when-youre

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/150220918916/jaunepois-when-you-come-out-of-your-room-and

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/145819797276/runningfromomelas-them-look-at-me-when-im

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/137690666961/thatautismfeel-that-autism-feel-when-you-feel

EDIT 9-7-17:

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/165091980636/how-to-hold-back-the-tears-when-youre-being

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164655304111/do-as-youre-told-stimmyabby-sometimes-people

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164192864721/never-trust-a-man-that-agrees-with-anything-trump

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/154647497556/things-to-never-say-to-any-autistic-people

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164654794431/vashti-lives-jemthecrystalgem

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/162875121331/spanking-your-children-is-abuse

And here are some excerpts of diary entries I’ve written about my autism and stuff (most are in foreign languages but they have English translations):

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164783034161/%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%8A%D1%82-%D0%BF%D0%BE-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B9%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%89%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%BE-%D1%81%D0%B5-%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82-%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%81

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164782715106/%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0-%D0%B5-%D0%BC%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE-%D0%BF%D0%BE-%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%B8-%D0%BF%D0%BE-%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B5-%D0%B4%D0%B0-%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BC-%D1%87%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164781794476/thuis-is-er-niemand-die-me-begrijpt-niemand

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/164781637616/zal-ik-ooit-vind-iemand-die-zullen-begrijpen

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/163547046451/%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%8F%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BC-%D1%81%D0%B5-%D1%87%D0%B5-%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D1%83%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D1%89%D0%B5-%D1%81%D0%B5-%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%8F-%D0%B3%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B6%D0%B5

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/163547032441/%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D1%81%D1%8A%D0%BC-%D1%87%D0%B5-%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BC-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B8-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B8%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%B8

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/163546629581/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B4%D1%80%D1%8A%D0%B6%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0-%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B2%D1%8A%D1%80%D0%B6%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%B8

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/163546363491/terwijl-ik-meer-heb-nagedacht-over-mezelf-en-hoe

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/163158549021/jeg-h%C3%A5ber-at-jeg-vil-m%C3%B8de-nogen-der-vil-v%C3%A6re-den

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/161902733031/postoji-previ%C5%A1e-ljudi-u-svijetu-koji-su-okrutni-i

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160169300336/%D1%82%D0%BE-%D0%BD%D0%B5-%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%B8-%D0%B5-%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%B4%D0%B0-%D1%81%D0%B5-%D0%B1%D1%8A%D0%B4%D0%B0-%D0%B0%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%B7%D0%B0%D1%89%D0%BE-%D1%85%D0%BE

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160167659301/jag-kommer-aldrig-att-f%C3%B6rst%C3%A5-varf%C3%B6r-vissa

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160167270051/zelfs-toen-mijn-gezicht-dwingt-mij-om-met-tegenzin

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160166845626/en-het-is-nooit-fout-om-te-willen-met-rust-gelaten

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160166658026/ik-ben-niet-ego%C3%AFstisch-of-ondankbaar-ik-ben

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160166447661/daar-ik-ben-autistisch-kan-mijn-emoties-zeer

http://malenkaya-glosoli.tumblr.com/post/160166273081/alleen-mijn-vrienden-zijn-bereid-om-mijn-problemen

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