#specifically lavender for queer reasons of course

[deconstructthesoup]

Hit with Palaski feels again because I'm remembering that the only color Niko hasn't worn is purple

And on one hand, that should make sense, since purple is Crystal's color and it's best to keep characters distinct, but Niko has worn red and blue before, which are pretty definitely Charles and Edwin's colors. Which does make me think there's a reason why she hasn't worn purple...

And now I'm imagining Crystal and Niko on their first date, and Niko is dressed head-to-toe in a lavender ensemble that compliments Crystal's outfit perfectly

[a-star-aquarium]

Astarium The Magician

Astarium Odeliah Lonn

Nicknames

Asta - commonly referred to this by everyone, and was a nickname Asra gave them

Little leaf, given by Muriel but asra also calls them this at time

Gem, of course, by Lucio as a way of annoying them (they consider it degrading because their lack of wealth in life, they call him 'Puella defututa' which roughly translates to "worn-out whore" in latin)

Sweets, by Portia (They call her ginger snaps in return because they claim she tastes like them)

Star by Nadia 

Dove by Julian (They claim their more akin to a pigeon or an owl, but Julian thought dove fit better with his crow like description)

All of these can be used by anyone but its just what the main 6 refers to them as

Birthday: December 17th

Height: 5′8

Age: 23-26 (they have no specific age)

Gender : Nonbinary (they/them/it/its)

Sexuality: Queer

Astrology: Sun Sagittarius, Rising Leo, Moon Cancer

Patron Arcana: The fool

UPRIGHT: Beginnings, innocence, spontaneity, a free spirit

REVERSED: Holding back, recklessness, risk-taking

Family-Relationships-Friendships :

Asra Alnazer  - Best friend, Lover in Asra’s route, They also own the shop together

Marium, They/she - Deceased, Asta’s mother figure, and bio mom

Larik, He/They- Deceased, Asta’s bio dad

Terra, she/her  - Asta’s aunt, (previously mentioned to be known by atlas)

Zadem, He/Him - Living though he is missing, Asta’s Father Figure

Familiar: Gylfie a Barn owl

Favorites

Favorite Food: Pumpkin Bread {their unoriginal and they know it, but its delicious}

Favorite Drink: Chamomile Tea

Favorite Flower or Plant: Lavender and Rosemary (also cause they love using the seasoning rosemary)

Abilities:

Their magic is prized on their astrological understanding, it’s an odd form of light, not exactly like fire, but more like the essence that makes stars twinkle and shine.

They play the Harp, the only reason you won’t see them do so is their magic begins to spiral when they do so. 

can sew and make clothing 

Was a bit of a scholar, so they know a lot and will info dump. Specifically, they know various languages, like latin and gaelic

Background/Other Info:

grew up primarily loved by their bio parents, up until the age of 11, where their bio father dies, and Zadem comes in to take care of Marium, who later dies of an illness cause seemingly caused by their depression (or at least, that’s what their doctor says)

Asta, due to the recent deaths of their parents, runs away to Vesuvia. But they stay in contact with Zadem, through letters

Meets asra at the age of 13, and the story goes on the canonical route

Fun fact: They're family is very mixed, but their father's side is very Irish!----And yes, they absolutely gained the accent

Character HCs & History:

Astarium, also known as Asta, grew up in prakra; they primarily lived directly next to star lakes. Their parents primarily worked with astrology and water magic, but Asta gained a talent for combining the two. When exhausted, their face lights up like little stars, however, despite its beautiful effect, when touched they can give burns.  Asta grew up loved by their parents, when sick, Asta gained a special way of healing them, but, when the diseases had caught up to their ‘father’, Larik, their healing power was not enough, and they lost them the next year. Asta’s mother, despite being strong winded and determined when faced with Larik’s illness, Marium gains ill when he passes, not being able to handle it. Zadem, previously just a friend, immediately rushes to take care of Marium and Asta. Asta, just being an 11 year old child, can’t mentally cope and runs away due to the fear of abandonment, worrying both Zadem and their mother will die. Asta, meets asra at 15 and primarily stays with him until the canon events of the game, but unlike the canon events, asta doesn’t die from the plague for a while and runs back to prakra to attempt to find Zadem. They die over a year later, right about the time Lucio dies himself. Asra, being mistaken and thinking asta was dead, revives them right after they die, causing them to not only remember most of the events, but hate him for his primary relationship with julian that occurs. But this hatred generally fuels down considering in canon they get with either Julian or Asra. Though, while remembering the events of being left for dead, asta still can’t function properly and needs help remembering basic things, (talking, walking, writing, etc.) Asta, about 4 years (the year right after they take back the fool’s body against lucio) Asta gets in a major fight with Asra revealing they knew exactly what Julian and him had done and now they wish they would’ve stayed in their grave. Unlike the canonical MC, Asta hated being revived, they feel empty like they’re missing a part of themself and they don’t know how to properly be themselves anymore. Asta travels back to Zadith as an attempt to find a home ground. They commonly can be found stealing basic food and they have a bad habit of running into pirates.

Bad habit of biting their tongue when their upset, it’s made them bleed before and they never stop themself in time

Little picky with food, they feel bad so they won’t say so but you might find the food in the garbage later

Expresses most their feelings with magic, their not necessarily, good at using words, so they feel better showing it with their magic

Can heal and create shields from their magic, in canon during asra’s route they do learn how to make weapons with it

When angry, they have a tendency to lose control a bit, hope you can dodge cause they will throw stars at yours ass

They’ve never grown to know the full extent of their magic, while still be young, they don’t completely know how they work

Has a LOT of enemies,when they were younger, they stole A LOT, harbering the stuff so they could pay for food.

They’re quite sneaky.

Sometimes makes deals with pirates to get rides, no matter if it puts them in danger

Style preference / Clothing: 

Tattoos they'd likely have:

One key one that's lore accurate is the anatomical heart they have with the words "till death do us part" underneath their chest. Even though Astarium gains Asra's heart in return for life once again, its not of their own doing or consent, therefore the ink that might've bound their relationship seems to have sufficed; Death had parted them, and for Astarium, that was permanent. {unless they get with them later on depending on the storyline, but still, point made}

Asta is shipped with all the Main 6, and other of the side characters, such as Selasi (love bread man), Nahara, nafizah, and nazali

Considering they are queer, they are open to any pairing, not limited by age gaps either, they don't have a problem with dating someone older. (yes, please I beg of you, if you would like to ship them with a character of yours---arcana universe or not---please just ask)

Playlist:

Others Art of Astarium:

Both are them with @sad-arcana-au's Vee <3

Any other info for Astarium should remain under the tag #astariumthemagician, and always, feel free to send an ask about them at anytime!

[kaylorstree]

Complete Midnights Gaylor Lyric Analysis

Okay so there’s a lot to unpack and I haven’t done an in-depth analysis in a really long time so please forgive me!

To the best of my ability I’m going to analyse the lyrics of every song, and then another day I’ll analyse the 2 music videos. Please be patient with me ❤️

1. Lavender Haze:

I think this is really self-explanatory. As we all know a ‘lavender marriage’ is a bearding agreement between two people. Within this song Taylor talks about the comfort of a lavender relationship, as it gives her freedom to live her life without scrutiny. However, in a heteronormative society people ‘only see a one night or a bride’- essentially to be married, or date around and be endlessly slut shamed for it. They want her to marry Joe, which is the ‘1950s shit they want from me’ which I assume she doesn’t want to do if she doesn’t have to. ‘They’re looking at my history’ AKA they’re comparing this relationship to her others, how long they dated for and if there was a ‘proposal’ e.g. Calvin and Tom being her two most serious ‘relationships’

2. Maroon

I think hetlors have quickly come to conclusion this is about Tom Hiddleston very quickly, which is funny because this is very clearly about Karlie.

‘Like you were my closest friend’

‘Your roommate’s cheap-ass screw-top rosé’ Karlie was her roomate

‘The one I was dancing with in New York, no shoes’ I don’t even need to explain this

‘The lips I used to call home, so scarlet it was maroon’

‘The mark they saw on my collarbone’

‘That’s a real fucking legacy’

3. Anti-Hero

There’s nothing particularly gaylor about Anti-Hero, it’s more of a complex deep dive into Taylor’s worst fears and trying to take accountability to some of the things she’s done.

4. Snow On The Beach

So many parallels to ‘you two are dancing in a snow-globe round and round’

‘My smile looks like I won contest, and to hide that would be so dishonest’

5. You’re On Your Own Kid

‘Summer went away’

‘It’s okay we’re the best of friends’

‘So long Daisy May’ I mean c’mon 🌼

6. Midnight Rain

Again, the hetlors seem to be pretty convinced this is about Tom Hiddleston for some reason.

‘He was sunshine’ Karlie’s nickname of course

My interpretation of this was how much a toll bearding takes on a relationship and your own mental health.

7. Question…?

I would very easily categorise this as a kissgate song. The song uses she/her pronouns throughout.

‘Good girl, sad boy’ Karlie represents Good Girl fragrance

‘Have you ever had someone kiss you in a crowded room?’

‘Did you leave her house in the middle of the night?’

‘She was on your mind with some dickhead guy who you saw that night’ Josh Kushner obviously

‘Did you ever wish you could still touch her?’

8. Vigilante Shit

Nothing particularly gay, I think this is a song about Scooter Braun/Kimye. Maybe you could interpret it as revenge on Josh Kushner for ‘stealing’ Karlie?’

‘Draw the cat-eyes sharp enough to kill a man’ who does we know that always has cat-like eyeliner? 🤔

9. Bejewelled

Firstly, the music video is gay as the cows come home.

Having Dita Von Tese in the video!!!!

The building she enters in the video remarkably looks like the one in the Good Girl fragrance advert.

Is it the Empire State building? Idk I’m British haha

10. Labyrinth

I think this song is sonically very inspired by Imogen Heap. It seems to be very much inspired by anxiety and longing. It’s about being scared to fall in love.

11. Karma

This song is EXTREMELY queer coded.

‘Karma is a cat sitting in my lap because it loves me’ is a euphemism for pussy, obviously.

12. Sweet Nothing

A controversial opinion from me, but the way this song sounds like a nursery rhyme and the lyric ‘The pebble that we picked up last July’ I honestly think Taylor considers Levi to be her son. More proof to support this is in the Anti-Hero music video where Taylor hypothesises she’ll have two sons, which is oddly specific. I think having a Kushner baby to monopolise on that money, power and influence is a great way to ‘get the castle’ in the end. Just a theory, don’t drag me for it. ‘Dancing in your Levi’s’ is a very specific lyric in Cardigan.

13. Mastermind

This perhaps the most gaylor song on the album. It outlines about everything was carefully crafted.

‘And the touch of the hand lit a fuse’

‘All the wisest women had to do it this way’

��What if I told you none of it wasn’t accidental and the first time you saw me, nothing was gonna stop me.’ As we all know, Taylor and Karlie actually met before the Victoria’s Secret Show, at a different event. ‘I layed the ground work’ Perhaps it was always her plan to get Karlie.

14. The Great War

This is definitely about 2016. As we know politics, kimye, Karlie, Scooter Braun- it was a very dark time for Taylor.

‘Maybe it was her’ the gayest lyric ever.

15. Bigger Than The Whole Sky

This is clearly about regretting lost love, it could be about anyone- Emily, Dianna, Karlie? I don’t know.

16. Paris

This is the definition of loving in secret. It talks about staying in a hotel or in the house, but playing make believe you could be anywhere- even Paris.

Paris is a song by The 1975 also.

17. High Infidelity

Firstly, I think it’s important to mention that Zoë Kravitz was on a show called ‘High Fidelity’ which was on Disney+ where she played a queer character. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m planning to so will look for Easter Eggs 🐣🥚

I feel like this possibly could be from Karlie’s POV ‘Storm coming, good husband, bad omen, dragged my feet right down the aisle’ is pretty on the nose. ‘You said I was freeloading, I didn’t know you were keeping count’ could refer to the fact they lived together.

18. Glitch

This is about drugs. Or, it could it be about being bearding because of ‘it must be counter-fit’ ‘Someone else’s playground’ ‘2,190 days of our love blackout’ Weren’t we talking about Love Lockdown a while back? Karlie was in Paris at that bridge?

Lyrical parallels to ‘every bait and switch was a work of art’

19. Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve

I’d like to take a moment to appreciate what a tune this is.

I honestly feel like this is about John Mayer.

This reminds me of a certain abusive relationship I was in, and it really hits home. 😢

Really feels like a particular relationship of a man being emotionally abusive to a younger girl.

20. Dear Reader

This is about Scooter Braun, and Taylor imparting wisdom.

That’s it! Let me know if I should dissect the music videos too! 🌼💎🕰

This is best I can do at the moment! Haven’t had much time to listen to the whole album more closely, but when I do I might add more to this ❤️🦋

[aylaspeaches]

Astarium The Magician

Astarium The Magician 

Nicknames

Asta - commonly referred to this by everyone, and was a nickname Asra gives them

Little leaf, given by Muriel but asra also calls them this at time

Gem, of course, by lucio as a way of annoying them

Sweets, by Portia

Star by Nadia 

Dove by Julian

All of these can be used by anyone but its just what the main 6 refers to them as

Birthday: December 17th

Height: 5′8

Age: 23-26 (they have no specific age)

Gender : Nonbinary (they/them/it/its)

Sexuality: Queer

Astrology: Sun Sagittarius, Rising Leo, Moon Cancer

Patron Arcana: The fool

UPRIGHT: Beginnings, innocence, spontaneity, a free spirit

REVERSED: Holding back, recklessness, risk-taking

Family-Relationships-Friendships :

Asra Alnazer  - Best friend, Lover in Asra’s route, They also own the shop together

Marium, They/she - Deceased, Asta’s mother figure, and bio mom

Larik, They/he- Deceased, Asta’s bio dad

Terra, she/her  - Asta’s aunt, (previously mentioned to be known by atlas)

Zadem, He/Him - Living though he is missing, Asta’s Father Figure

Familiar: Gylfie a Barn owl

Favorites

Favorite Food: Pumpkin Bread {their unoriginal and they know it, but its delicious}

Favorite Drink: Chamomile Tea

Favorite Flower or Plant: Lavender and Rosemary (also cause they love using the seasoning rosemary lol)

Abilities:

Their magic is prized on their astrological understanding, it’s an odd form of light, not exactly like fire, but more like the essence that makes stars twinkle and shine.

They play the Harp, the only reason you won't see them do so is their magic begins to spiral when they do so. 

can sew and make clothing 

Background/Other Info:

grew up primarily loved by their bio parents, up until the age of 11, where their bio father dies, and Zadem comes in to take care of Marium, who later dies of an illness cause seemingly caused by their depression (or at least, that’s what their doctor says)

Asta, due to the recent deaths of their parents, runs away to Vesuvia. But they stay in contact with Zadem, through letters

Meets asra at the age of 13, and the story goes on the canonical route

Style preference / Clothing: 

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

Asta is shipped with all the Main 6, and other of the side characters, such as Selasi (love bread man), Nahara, nafizah, and nazali

______________________________________________________________________

Asta is free for shipping, and there's always prompts if you’d like to send something

______________________________________________________________________

[thechangeling]

Fae, tell me something,

(If you do not have the headspace to read me rant about queer flowers and my annoyance please do not feel the need to reply)

Am I irrational for disliking it when certain flower are used for straight people and couples? I know it sounds ridiculous, but take violets for example!

Violets and their color became a special code used by lesbians and bisexual women. The symbolism of the flower derives from several fragments of poems by Sappho in which she describes a lover wearing garlands or a crown with violets. Violets then go on to be used in activism and as code for centuries.

(Also the violet thing annoys me most because green carnations are used pretty much exclusively for queer men but I dont get to keep violets?????)

Like I KNOW we have no right to just claim them? They are flowers for goodness sake it's not like we created them, and I wouldn't say it about like lavender or pansies which also have queer connections because they are not as historically significant?

I dunno do you think I am being ridiculous?

No I don't think you're over reacting honestly. People kind of have a nasty habit of taking our shit (sapphics.) And no I'm not talking about flannels and iced coffee. And of course I include all trans sapphics, (trans femme, nonbinary or whatever you identify as,) under the sapphic umbrella.

Straight people will co-opt our songs and then say "don't gate keep" or "it's just a song" when it bloody well isn't. They have TONS of romance songs and songs about sex and for some reason the good people of tiktok will take wlw songs specifically and use them to lip sync to or make edits and they'll refuse to mouth the gay parts. My personal favourite is when they use a song that's LITERALLY ABOUT LESBIAN SEX because they wanna dance to it and then not lip synch those parts or cover their mouths like it's something gross or shameful. Which begs the fucking question why did you pick the song in the first place???!!

They just wanna co-opt our shit because they think the girl on girl ✨aesthetic✨ is cool or whatever. But are simultaneously uncomfortable with intimacy between two women, or femme leaning/presenting people.

I woke up and chose violence.

It's not "just a song" because I can literally count the number of songs I've heard about intimacy between sapphics sung by sapphics on one hand.

Also not to mention the new gay pride flag is literally just the lesbian flag with "masculine" colours. It's more then a little insidious considering the ugly history of gay men kicking lesbians out of early gay bars in Vancouver because they didn't want women there. So that prompted the creation of lesbian bars. Only now none of them are left standing in my city. We have a shit ton of fay bars but no more lesbian bars. My guess is gay bars were more popular because straight girls wanted to come party with the gays.

"It's just a song!" "It's just a flag!" "It's just a bar!" "It's just a flower!" No it's fucking not.

I'm sorry this got so aggressive Rua 😂 but yeah I definitely don't think you're overreacting.

[onlyonekenobi]

hiii i wanted to thank you for explaining the dean/cain/destiel thing to me, i hadn't picked up on those things when watching the episode and you did a great job explaining! i hope this isn't annoying but i was wondering if you could also explain the lamp thing to me? i see jokes about it all the time but i have no idea what it means lol 😔

(yeah, of course! I’m glad it helped! season 16 destiel college is a lot to unpack, haha)

So, Lamp. This one is a little more complicated, in the sense that it’s........ less complicated? Idk how to explain that. It’s Destiel tumblr in the year 2021, you’ll see what I mean.

-

The first thing we need to talk about is the Hays Code, which was basically a set of self-imposed censorship rules in Classical Hollywood. No sex, no gays, no overt innuendo, all that kind of stuff.

The next thing, for background parallel info, is this scene from 9x12, Sharp Teeth, which is important for a few reasons. One, this dialogue pretty clearly reads as a queer allegory, even without any other context being held up against it. Two, it’s specifically talking about Garth (who, even though he is now a werewolf, is someone Dean met and knows as a hunter- a peer) falling in love with and creating a life with a werewolf- someone “other.” Three, the fact that Dean can even say something like this and talk about it shows a lot of growth and, dare we say, perhaps the kindling of some self-acceptance, in both the sense of the queer allegory and the sense of the hunter/other dynamic. Four, it is again important that it’s specifically Garth we’ve set this up this conversation with, because:

Now that we’ve covered the background reading, it’s time to talk about the crux of the matter: episode 15x10, The Hero’s Journey.

This is episode with the infamous dream sequence scene wherein Dean does an old fashioned dance routine with a lamp for a partner. Here’s where we circle back to the Hays Code. When the movie-makers weren’t allowed to be as overt as they wanted, they settled for pushing the envelope as far as they could. They suggested relationships in other ways: prolonged eye contact, a man being Really Good Friends with another man and then kissing a woman who was wearing a suit while the Friend was in the shot next to her, dancing with stand-in or inanimate partners(.............. like, say, a lamp), things like that.

It’s also important to note that the song used in this scene is “Let’s Misbehave” by Cole Porter. Cole Porter, rather famously, was a gay man in a lavender marriage. And I’ll let the lyrics speak for themselves about breaking rules and “social norms,” but remember: Porter was queer! So this is inherently a song about queer relationships. And sure, maybe they just used a classic old timey dance song. But whether it’s coincidence or not, authorial intent is dead and there are No Coincidences, so it’s officially a piece of the puzzle.

And then, critically, this episode ends with a shot of Sam and Dean watching through the window as Garth and his wife, Bess, are slow dancing together inside the house. We pan back to the boys and Dean says, “You know, I always thought I could be a good dancer, if I wanted to be.” Sam cracks a joke about Dean being awesome at the Macarena, and Dean has another half second of a wistful look on his face before he drops it to say, “Yeah,” and get in the car. And because everything everyone ever says has subtext- especially in the case of repression king Deano- we absolutely know that him saying “I could be a good dancer” while watching a married couple dance is not about the dancing, but about the couple. Dean is saying he thinks he could be good at that. That he wants to be good at that. And the show literally just paralleled him to it, mere minutes before.

And some might say that the lamp could be a physical stand in for the “lack” of anyone in Dean’s love life, but I have two primary rebuttals to that. One, it doesn’t align with the playing into the Hays Code as well (which is what they were doing, whether they meant to or wanted to or not). And, two, this absolute gem of bts/ meta. Please also note as they drop episode numbers in that post, that the first scene we were just discussing (“Who cares where happiness comes from?”) was from 9x12, right in the the thick of all that happening.

So, in conclusion, the lamp is a metaphor/stand in/allegory/what have you for Cas, and there’s, like, a weird amount of evidence and parallels to back that theory up. A lot of the time now when people reference “lamp” or scream “WHY LAMP” there is an element of joking to it, but you can see here that it is rooted in some very real and very worthwhile analysis.

I hope this has been enlightening (pun moderately intended) and as always please feel free to send follow up questions! (And fellow readers, please feel free to provide further examples or correct any mistakes I may have made.) For supplementary memes, please feel free to scroll through my tagged/lamp and tagged/why_lamp pages, and thank you for attending today’s lecture!

xoxo professor itsinjustbeing

[werejusttouchingeachother]

Divine

Req:  would you mind writing a Sub!Ten smut where reader gives them a handjob and it goes from there? The scenario can be whatever you feel is best but the switch (dom+) in me has been quaking +  something with a really dom reader + any whiny subby nct or exo member that first comes to mind? + pegging

Summary: art student!Ten gets assigned a project with you for your Photography class and although his ideas for the concept initially make you wary, you eventually see the silver lining once he invites you back to his place

Pairing: sub!Ten x dom!reader (both are bi/queer/sexually fluid)

Genre: smut (m)

Words: 6015

Tags: nudity, cursing, handjob, edging, pegging

A/N: I combined quite a few repeated reqs I’ve been getting for sub!nct and pegging in specific so sorry if this took way too long! I haven’t gone full feral dom in this the way I like to (because wbk im a hardcore dom) since i’ve noticed many on here have boundaries with it/not used to it so since this is my first proper sub!member fic, I’m just easing into it ok--i’ll go harder or less next time depending on the response this gets

You raise your hand to knock on the burgundy door, hesitation creeping up your mind and effectively stopping you. Your fist hovers mid-air as you straighten your dress with your free hand and pull out your phone to check your makeup again.

When Ten approached you at the library yesterday, you certainly hadn’t expected him to call you back to his apartment.

Well, then again, you hadn’t expected a lot of what Ten had said at the library when he sat across from you while you were working on your assignment.

Chittaphon Ten is nothing less of popular at your university—with a double major in Art and Dance, a minor in Photography, it’s no surprise that both students and faculty were always constantly in awe of how he seemed to always have his shit together, scoring impressive grades, being extremely sociable and generally was the most well-rounded person that you’d ever seen.

His crazy attractive features weren’t a drawback either.

Like most girls, you admired him from afar without ever making a move. Not because you were too shy to do anything—Lord knows you weren’t, and so did a good majority of the students who you’d been with—but because he was always surrounded by people, the life of every party he went to, the one who never had a problem getting laid and the one whose attention required too much effort.

Which is why you were extremely surprised when Ten sought you out at the library yesterday. He’d called your name, which you didn’t even know he knew until then. It made you recall the first time he’d said it—one of the many faces that you’d been introduced to at the freshmen’s party during your first year at university.

He’d been the cool friendly popular sophomore, a beacon to all the lost freshmen and you’d been one of them as you exchanged names, later drinks and then, you were pretty sure, a tipsy dance together towards the end of the night.

That was the extent of your interaction—with the exception of the friendly smiles and casual ‘Hey’s as you passed each other in the hallway. What’s even sadder is that most of the memories from that night aren’t even clear to you due to all the shots you had downed—it’s only when you saw all the blurry pictures on Instagram the next day that you realised he’d danced with his hands around you but you couldn’t remember even feeling them, nevertheless the dance.  

Needless to say, Ten was probably the only guy to ever make you reconsider the decision to drink at parties.

Regardless of all this, you hadn’t expected to be paired with him in your Photography class that you two happened to share this semester. You never thought he’d attend much since it was only an elective—moreover, attendance wasn’t even compulsory—but you should have known better, of course perfect Ten was there.

And of course, on the one day that you’d skipped classes, you and Ten had gotten a paired assignment.

“The concept,” Ten said in a hushed voice as he leaned over the table at the library, making your gaze unknowingly rivet to his mouth. You had to force yourself to keep your eyes on his as he continued, “The concept for the assignment is Biblical influence on art.”

Still, you’d nodded. You’d shrugged it off in stride.

At least, you did until Ten said the following words:

“I have an idea. Everyone else is going to be at churches and cemeteries and cathedrals and basilicas. For the architecture and lightings. I was thinking, since we both are studying Art, we could paint on you to make you look like a Michelangelo sculpture.”

You’d blinked at him, wondering if you had misheard because he was whispering so lowly. You’d opened your mouth and closed it again, gaping like a fish. When he’d seen your obvious confusion, he repeated the last part, making your eyebrows furrow and then inhale sharply as you realised he was serious.

“Just hear me out,” Ten started before you could start yelling in the middle of the university library. “Think about it. No one would do such a unique concept.”

“Yeah, because it’s crazy?”

“Its art, Y/N. Crazy is kind of what gets you recognition.”

“This is an assignment that isn’t even accounted for twenty percent, Ten. It’s not even going to get published. Make it make sense,” you said in a flat voice.

“Imagine if it does, though, because it’s that good,” he muttered, widening his eyes at you to further emphasise his point.

You didn’t agree. You didn’t disagree either but the way you’d shaken your head and quickly stormed out of the library with an excuse that you needed to get to class let him know that you weren’t exactly in favour of the whole idea.

Then he’d called that night. It was later than you’d expect anyone to call—especially to discuss an assignment—but for some reason, it had worked.

You’re not sure why you agreed. Maybe it was because he’d actually made some good points over the call.

Or maybe because his voice had sounded so lulling over the phone, you’d found yourself nodding along without even paying attention to what he’d been suggesting. You agreed to meet him after your last evening class the next day at his apartment to ‘get it over with as soon as possible’.

Right now, you stood outside his door and tried to recall what all he had said last night. You were wearing a wrap-around dress that dropped only till your knees—the easiest thing to get in and out of—and had washed your hair so that it hung around your face. You’d scrubbed and shaved every surface of your skin until you were polished and squeaky clean, smelling like fresh soap and your mildly-scented lavender perfume.

You took a breath and checked your reflection for the millionth time in just half an hour on your phone’s screen before sighing and knocking on his door.

There was a shuffle of steps and then the door opened, Ten poking his head out and smiling at you.

“Hey,” he greeted softly and held the door open. “Come on in.”

You slowly entered, your mind racing with multiple thoughts as you closed the door behind you. You heard him mumble that he’ll be right back and to make yourself comfortable as he headed to a room at the end of the hallway.

You entered the first room to your left that he’d gestured at, your eyes quickly scanning the place. You immediately notice how he’d drawn all the curtains open and can’t help but smile at the very obvious attempt to have cleaned up—everything had been pushed to the corners of the room and things were thrown haphazardly to a side to clear the floor.

Biting back a smile, you turn right as he enters and hold your hands up to stop him before he starts speaking.

“Before anything,” you start, lowering your raised hands when you notice he’s listening. “Explain to me entirely what your plan is for the project. All of it.”

He nods and grabs his phone, scrolling through his gallery. You listen attentively as Ten explains how he thought it would be cool if he painted your entire body like a marble sculpture with a sheet draped over your body—painting over the sheet as well for a hyper-realistic effect while you posed like a statue.

You bit down on your lip at the idea of getting naked in his apartment with only a slinky garment to cover you, eyes moving from his phone’s screen to meet his. You can see the question in them and he even gives you a polite smile as if to tell you that you can always refuse if you’re uncomfortable with it.

But beneath that, you can see the challenging glint: he is daring you to back down because he knows you’re on unfamiliar grounds with him. He’d surely been naked many times in his apartment with several mutual friends of yours and so had you back in your own place but never with each other.

And maybe it was that or maybe this exciting air of ‘what if this went somewhere?’ and ‘what if one of us leaned in closer?’—but you didn’t want to back down.

So you gave him a firm nod, relishing in the way his eyes slightly widened at your affirmation as you turned to head for the bathroom that you’d seen when walking in. You turn at the last second, right as you’re near the door to see Ten staring at you as if baffled that you’re actually agreeing to this and you ask as nonchalantly as possible, “Ten? The sheet?”    

“What?” He blinks before realising. “Oh, right, right, sorry.”

He grabs an ivory-coloured sheet that laid neatly over the back of a chair and hands it over to you. You still as your eyes fall on the silky satin material you held in your hands, the fabric almost slipping from your fingers because of how smooth it was.

You slowly raise your eyes from the sheet to ask him what exactly you were supposed to do with it and stop when you notice that his eyebrow is raised, expression apprehensive as if to wait for you to drop the sheet and leave his apartment.

Plastering on an overly sweet smile, you nod in thanks and turn to the bathroom.

Once inside, you stare at your reflection in the mirror as you give yourself a pep-talk.

You weren’t backing down. There was just no way—especially when there was a good chance that this was all in your head and you were just making it into a bigger deal than what it actually is. It could just be about the project and Ten’s perfectionistic tendency wanting the highest grade.

So you slowly disrobed from your floral wraparound dress, hanging it over the hook on the back of the bathroom door. You hadn’t put much makeup on except for some gloss on your lips and some mascara—not wanting to be completely barefaced but at the same time, not going fully out.

Taking a deep breath, you take the satin sheet and stare at it as you contemplate how to wrap it around yourself.

You settle for wrapping it around your body, under the arm similar to how you usually do with a towel. You try to wrap it twice but the material is hardly enough to envelop more than once fully around your frame.

You stare at yourself in the mirror and have to force yourself to not get back into your comfy dress and jump out the bathroom window. The material clings to your body like a second skin and despite being layered twice around your front, your nipples still poke through due to how thin and supple the satin is.

Sighing and straightening your back, you turn to make sure that the knot at the back is fastened tightly and feel glad that you’d had the sense to shave your entire body spotless earlier today before coming here.

You meet your gaze in the mirror one last time, narrowing your eyes slightly as you take a deep breath and get your game face on. You walk to the door and step out, immediately feeling goosebumps rise on your skin at the sudden change in temperature from the cool bathroom.

You re-enter the hall and immediately notice Ten fight every instinct in his body to react at your appearance as his eyes swiftly rake over your entire form before quickly flitting back to your eyes.

Raising an eyebrow at him, you stand in front of him and he hesitates before finally saying, “Uh. You. That’s not actually how I thought you’d wear it.”

You narrow your eyes at him, fighting against the urge to cross your arms over your chest defensively because you knew that would only draw more attention towards your breasts.

“What did you think then?” You ask in a deadpan tone and Ten grabs his phone from the table, showing you an image of a marbled woman sculpture that had a similarly thin cloth adorning her body except it fell over one shoulder and was held tight by pressing down the other arm. Moreover, she was postured by leaning her hips against a short pedestal and arching her back with her head raised upwards.

The garment covered her chest and stopped short at the very top of her thighs—barely covering anything but exposing her curvy hips, thighs and sides in their full glory.

You unknowingly release a loud sigh of frustration before nodding. Determined, you reach back to unknot the cloth but Ten stops you with his hand, saying, “Wait, its fine.”

Your hand is caught underneath his, and you look at him with confusion. “What?”

“It’s okay,” he repeats, lowering his hand from your shoulder. “This is better cause I have to paint your shoulders anyway and they’re both revealed this way. We’ll paint your entire body first before putting the satin over it and paint that last.”

“Um,” you say softly, nodding as he gestures for you to sit on the chair. You slowly sit down and contemplate crossing your legs but decide against it as that would cause the material to hike up further than it already is. “Okay.”

Ten stands above you, dipping a brush with thick bristles into a palette. You keep your eyes on his face, watching him carefully and don’t fail to see the way his breath slightly catches when he notices your intense gaze on him. You try to bite back a smirk as he leans over you and presses the cool brush against your shoulder, lightly stroking it over the skin in an experimental brushstroke.

“Could you lean your head back?” He asks you, his voice considerably lower.

“Mhm, sure,” you softly hum in agreement as you arch your neck back, noticing the way his grip falters on the brush as he presses the brush more firmly against your shoulder. The contact with your skin mixed with the air that had suddenly grown thick around the two of you made slight bumps rise along your arms and you feel Ten’s gaze dart to your face, having noticed the effect.

Yeah. This wasn’t about the project. Your senses were tingling and even if you knew nothing else, you could smell sexual tension from miles away.

You deliberately sigh softly, your chest heaving with the release of air and feel the brush still against your skin again. You sneak a look at Ten and notice that he’s completely stopped faking it, watching your face carefully.

You lower your head and turn it in his direction, feeling both your breaths intermingle from how close your faces are. You’re just about to lean in when he says, “It’s not working.”

You blink, momentarily taken aback. “What?”

“The paint.” You glance down at your shoulder to see that the colour was slightly faded and almost runny, not in the thick layers that they should be with the amount of strokes Ten had just made.

“Your skin,” he said, thinking as he leaned back slightly, promptly breaking the moment that you just had. “There’s something that’s not allowing the paint to settle. Did you put something before you came here?”

You think for a moment before answering, “Uh, yeah, moisturiser. Lotion. Is that it?”

Ten swallowed thickly, nodding at your words as he stepped back. “Do you think you can remove it with body wash or soap? I can’t paint your skin otherwise and it needs to be layered thickly for the marble effect.”

You stare at Ten, eyes narrowed as you tried to figure what game he was playing here. You’re almost tempted to just stand up and grab him, press him against the desk and kiss him hungrily.

Did he just want you to shower here? Was he going to walk in? Or was this to just have you smelling like the same sweet-scented soap that he always smelled like?

Or was this really because he was concerned with the project and didn’t want your Vaseline bodycream to stand in the way of a perfect grade?

Did he even want to sleep with you in the first place?

You stand up abruptly, unable to take the million thoughts flooding into your head. Turning around, you made a beeline for the bathroom again while mentally cursing him.

If he was playing hard-to-get, this was the longest you’d ever held out for someone you were interested in sleeping with, despite how much you loved the game.

You’re Y/N. Sure, Ten had a reputation as the campus heartthrob with nights of guaranteed fun and pleasure but so did you—you had entire groups of people who would attest to your skills in the bedroom.

Except you didn’t know right now. The signals you’d been receiving all night were mixed and you couldn’t tell reality anymore from your own fantasies of taking Ten and having him in your own way.

You wished you were right—that he was really interested in sleeping with you. Because you couldn’t get the pretty images of Ten whining and mewling softly out of your head, reminiscing the way his Adam’s apple had bobbed nervously every time he swallowed when he noticed your gaze, loving the way he’d slightly faltered as you’d breathed softly.

You wanted to ruin him so bad—you could feel your core clenching with desire just from the thought of it.

You don’t realise you hadn’t closed the door behind you and it’s only when you turn around, catching Ten standing at the door that you realise.

You stare at him, feeling a slight tingle run through you as you gazed at him. You could see your own reflection on the mirror from your peripheral as Ten leaned on the wall beside it, his eyes transfixed on you.

“How is it that we’ve never ran in the same circles?” He asks, cocking his head.

Is he finally taking the bait?

You smile at his words, crossing your arms on purpose this time. “What do you mean?”

He falters slightly and you know it’s to fight the urge to lower his gaze from your face. He clears his throat, saying slowly, “I mean, we're both...”

“Hoes?” You offer, raising an eyebrow.

Ten blinks, surprised at your word choice. “I was going to say ‘the same’ but uh, sure, I guess that applies too.”

You chuckle, leaning your hip against the sink as you grin at him. “It’s cause we run in different circles that rarely interact with each other and the ones that do are comparatively lesser.”

Ten frowned at that, throwing your earlier question back at you. “What do you mean?”

“You fuck more guys and I fuck more girls.”

Ten’s eyes shot open, a light brush creeping up his cheeks at your bluntness and making you smirk slightly.

You think for a second, remembering all the times you’d spent with girls who were switches or leaned more towards dom. “You’ve slept with Amber, haven’t you?”

He nodded. “Taeyong?”

You nod. “Hwasa?”

“Of course. Mark?”

“Duh. Dahyun?”

“Obviously.”

You smile, glancing at the mirror as you tuck your hair behind your ear. “All right, then. I’ll shower now.”

You start to close the door but his hand is quick to grab your arm, stopping you effectively. You lift your head quickly to meet his gaze, able to smell the paint that was lingering on his clothes and unable to think with the need to just kiss him.

But you had to think, you had to control. He’d toyed with you enough so it’s only fair that you return the favour.

He raised an eyebrow at you in disbelief, unable to say the words that he’s thinking.

“You’re…” He pauses before hesitantly asking, “That’s it? You’re just going to shower?”

You furrow your eyebrows at him, playing genuinely confused. “... Yeah? I asked all that cause I was curious and I never knew you were such a power bottom. So are both Mark and Taeyong so I’m guessing that didn’t work well for you. Unlike the girls you slept with, who are all switches.”

He nods, his fingers still wrapped around your forearm. “I know. But they never... they never...”

He trails off and your eyes widen as you realise what he’s trying to say. “Whoa. What? Really?”

“What’s that expression supposed to mean?” Ten demands, narrowing his eyes at you. “You dommed Mark and Taeyong?”

“No,” you scowled before reluctantly explaining, “I mean I did. But not as much as I wanted to. They chickened out in the last second and we just fucked in missionary.”

Ten hesitates, his tongue darting out to lick his lower lip nervously. “How... how much do you want to?”

As soon as the words leave his mouth, you feel your heart skip a beat, a sense of excitement suddenly rushing through your blood. Your eyes are transfixed on his lips, now glistening with his saliva and you can’t help but imagine them parted wide open, gasping and moaning.

“Why?” You ask, your voice husky with arousal as you lower your lashes at him. “How far do you want me to go?”

“How far can you go?”

You raise your eyebrow challengingly. “Farther than Dahyun or the others would ever dare going.”

He grabs your waist then and your hands are already on his shoulders, slamming him back onto the door.

Your mouths meet heatedly and he moans as you press your body completely up against him.

Ten’s hands are gripping your hips tightly as you trail your one hand down his chest, between the two of you. Your hand passes over the waistband of his sweatpants and you palm his growing erection roughly. Ten gasps aloud and the sound is music to your ears as you take the opportunity to slip your tongue inside his parted lips.

Your fingers grip his length over the soft material of his pants and he’s twitching even with the minimal contact. Ten’s hand grabs your neck and pulls you away enough to breathe heavily, “Bedroom.”

“Yes, let’s go,” you mutter hurriedly and you grab his hand, pulling him in the direction of what you assumed to be the bedroom—the only other room in the small apartment.

You sit on the edge of the bed and yank him to you, loving the way a soft gasp leaves his mouth as he almost stumbles into your lap. Hesitantly he sits on your thighs and you shake your head, noticing that he still had his sweatpants on.

“Take the clothes off, sweetheart,” you say sweetly but with enough firmness to immediately make him get off your lap and peel his shirt off. You lean back with your hands on the bed to support you as you stare at him, watching him as he stripped.

You stand up when he’s bare in front of you, taking his hand and pushing him onto the bed before crawling on top of him.

Ten sits on the edge of the bed with you on his lap and you place your knees on either side of his thighs. You grab the hair on the back of his head, gripping the locks tightly in your fingers to yank his head back roughly and quickly move your mouth around his slender throat.

It doesn’t take long to find the sweet spot that has him moaning, his chest jerking up with his gasps at your relentless lips. You lick a stripe from his ear to his clavicle, sucking on the soft flesh where his shoulder and neck meets.

Ten's whimpers are the prettiest sound you’ve ever heard, his fingers having bunched up the satin sheet around you as he grips it tightly. The material gives away easily and next thing you know, cool air is hitting your skin as the satin is now fisted in his grip. Your legs are splayed over his, feeling his warm skin against yours as you kiss around his neck. You lower your mouth to his clavicle, sucking on the skin enough to leave bruises that you’re sure will darken by tomorrow as you mark him. Ten’s head is thrown back in pleasure as you leave hickeys all over his throat and you use the distraction to slowly roll your hips, rubbing your core over his growing erection. Ten gasps at the sudden sensation and you smirk against his skin, pulling him back hurriedly by his shoulders.

“Y/N,” his voice is a shaky whisper as they leave his lips and you hum in response, kissing him again deeply in a way that let him know you were going to absolutely devour him. Your hands find his hair again and you hold him firmly to you, moving your lips against his and letting your tongue explore the warmth of his mouth in a way that left him dazed and breathless when you finally pulled away.

You settled on his knees, leaving enough space between your bodies for your hands to quickly reach down and wrap your fingers around his length. Ten is deliciously responsive—bucking into your touch, hands reflexively reaching out to grip the sheets behind him tightly and moaning softly.

You’re certain that he can see how lust-crazed you are with the way he looks underneath you, his eyes all big and pleading as he waits patiently for you to move your hand, to go faster, to do anything.

So you do.

You’re gentle at first, barely doing much as you swipe your thumb over the pink head. You take your time, admiring the smoothness and length of his dick, swallowing the urge to just take him into your mouth already as you move the pads of your fingers lightly over his length and stroke him leisurely. You watch his face as you do so, loving how Ten’s eyes dilate with the frustration or pleasure or both, you weren’t sure. As his breaths quicken, you remove your hand and smirk while lazily using just your finger to stroke up and down, loving the way he was twitching even with just a single digit on him.

His whines grow louder and you finally give in, wrapping your hand fully around him, suddenly moving it up and down so quickly that it had him breathing harder as your pace suddenly transitioned. Ten’s hands gently came up to hold your hips and he raised his torso from the bed to lean his head into your neck, warm heavy breaths hitting your skin. He whimpered as you lowered your other hand to his balls, fondling them while stroking his erection. His chest started heaving and you could tell he was close from the soft “ah’s” that were leaving his lips, almost in a way that made you think he didn't know he was making them. His eyes were closed tightly, head now leaned back and fingers clenching the sheets so hard that his knuckles were white and you can’t recall when he took his hands away from your waist and pulled his head back from your neck.

You watched him carefully, feeling yourself grow wetter as he came closer to his high and right when he twitched in your hand and his chest jerked up, his entire skin flushing as he panted, you immediately stopped and pulled your hand away completely, disengaging contact.

Ten’s eyes shoot open and you have to bite back a smile at the way he looks utterly breathless and crestfallen at the stolen orgasm.

You take a breath as you crawl over his body, pushing him back by his shoulders and resuming the kisses on his throat and neck. You let your hand tease up his stomach and chest, feeling the way his slender body shivers beneath your fingers at even the slightest feather-touch as you mutter lowly into his ear, “Where are your toys?”

“Bedside drawer,” he whispers breathily and you pull your mouth away from the reddening skin of his neck as you move across the bed to the small wooden drawers.

You grab the strap-on that you found and the bottle of flavoured-lube next to it, closing the drawers shut as you keep them on the bed. Your eyes fall on the beige satin lying at the foot of the bed where it had slipped from Ten’s fingers and you reach across the bed for the material.

Ten watches you with his chest still heaving slightly as he tries to steady his irregular breathing and you grab his wrists, pulling them above his head and binding them together with the same satin that had been around you only an hour earlier.

You adjust on his lap so that your slit is perfectly aligned with his dripping member, enjoying the way he breathed harder as he felt your heat. You moved your hips in torturously slow circles over his length, sliding it up and down as you watched it glisten beneath you with both your fluids while you busied your hands by rubbing the lube in between them and over the strap-on.

“Fuck,” Ten moans aloud and you almost moan in response at how glorious he sounds—his angelic voice cursing, all soft and desperate for you.

You slid down his body and Ten hissed as your hands that were now cool because of the lube made contact with his cock. The head was flushed an angry red and you almost felt sorry at how sensitive he was already despite not even having gone as hard as you usually do.

Ten’s hands are fisted tightly, fingernails digging into his palms as you support yourself above him with both your hands on his shoulders while you kept rotating your hips over him. His eyes close as you grinded slightly against the tip, spreading your thighs and pushing a bit harder so that the head of his erection would slip inside your slick walls just the briefest fraction before you moved again.

Ten whispers curses again and you finally lower your hand again to wrap your fingers around him.

“Ah!” Ten groans as he bucks reflexively into your hand and you don’t give him a second as you start moving your hand over his length at an almost merciless speed, stroking him quickly and roughly. Ten’s eyes blow wide open at your sudden intense stimulations and lower your other hand down further, feeling his pink hole.

The lube in your fingers helps you to easily stick your finger inside and you feel your own arousal grow as he clenches tightly around your single digit while your hand still strokes him to another orgasm. Hearing his breaths grow quicker as he nears his high, you gradually decrease the speed of your hand while still fucking him open with two fingers now.

Ten is mewling and whining on the sheets now, arms slightly squirming to touch himself for relief when you denied him yet another orgasm. His thighs move under you and you narrow your eyes at him.

“Keep moving and I’ll never let you cum,” you warn and he immediately stills at your words, his entire body going still beneath you. You smile slightly in approval at his compliance and lean down to pepper his chest with kisses.

Ten’s breath echoes softly around his cosy bedroom as your mouth finds his nipple, your tongue darting out to circle the nub in quick motions timed with the pace of your one hand moving on his member and the other fucking him open. You look up to see Ten’s eyes roll back in his head at the overstimulation, back arching off the mattress and you immediately stop your ministrations on his cock, sitting up properly to not miss the reaction.

And its priceless.

Ten’s face is redder than you’d ever seen it, a delicious blush spreading over his entire cheeks, neck and down to his chest and you notice how his eyes are slightly teary and unfocused.

You lower your face to his then, pressing a reassuring kiss to his parted lips as you remove your fingers from inside his ready hole.

“Get on top of me, baby,” you mutter as you pull away and Ten nods, disoriented and dazed.

You fall to his side on the bed, grabbing the strap on and putting it around you as you rub the lube, spreading it over the surface of the cock. The thought that Ten probably fucked himself on this after a night that was less that pleasurable and satisfactory with a girl who didn’t want to fuck him the way he wanted to enticed you immeasurably.

Ten’s hands are shaky as he throws his leg over your body lying back on his bed, knees pressed against your sides. Slowly, he lowers himself down on the length of the dildo, eyes closing and lips parting with a loud moan that he couldn’t suppress as he feels it fill him up.

He opens his eyes, gaze shifting to your face and you watch the surprise that falls across his delicate features as you cross your arms behind your head, not touching him.

Understanding that you wanted him to fuck himself on top of you, Ten leaned back and you felt his hands on your lower legs as he used it to support himself up while he starting moving up and down.

Arching his back, you watched the dancer’s slender and beautiful body manifest into the most breathtaking art that you’d ever seen, more beautiful than any marble sculpture as he bounced and fucked himself on you, mouth open as he sang the most sweet-sounding curses and mewls while his angry-red cock slapped against your stomach with every bounce, dripping pre-cum onto your skin.

You raised your hand to his face then, shoving two of your fingers into his parted lips and he immediately closed his lips around your digits, choking slightly. Your own eyes grew hazy with lust as Ten fucked himself faster, thoroughly wetting your fingers with his tongue as he moaned around them while moving faster.

His grunts grew louder and hoarser—you could tell he was close so you grabbed his hip with your free hand and raised your own hips, bucking up into him. Removing your fingers from his mouth, you lowered them dripping with his saliva to his chest and tweaked his nipples that you’d kisses sensitive earlier.

Ten’s body jerks and he groans loudly as his dick twitches, shooting spurts of thick heavy cum over the length of your torso. He keeps cumming continuously, covering your belly, the valley of your breasts and even shoots all the way to your hair with his sticky white fluids.

You drag your finger over your stomach, collecting the cum and stick your finger in your mouth, humming with pleasure at the taste of Ten’s slightly salty essence mixed with his saliva from when you’d been choking him earlier.

Ten collapses down onto your body heavily, unable to hold himself up anymore and you smile as you wrap an arm around his back.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” you start, unable to keep the smugness from your tone, “but did I just ruin sex with a girl for you?”

“Yes,” Ten replied, leaning up to kiss your lips and you smile in surprise at the sudden tenderness in the gesture.

He smiles tiredly, eyes still unfocused as he says, “Yes, you did.”

“We should change our concept, by the way,” you suggested. Ten blinks in confusion and you explain, “For the project. The way you looked on top of me with your back arched like that was pretty fucking divine.”

Ten let out a short laugh. “I don’t know, Y/N, a photograph of being pegged might raise some eyebrows since the concept for the project is Biblical.”

“I repeat: divine.”

[beckettsthoughts]

i looove all of the botanical asks so id really appreciate if youd answer all of them!! (or all of them that you like)

This is amazing thank you so much! Anon you are wonderful

Baby’s breath: 5 things you associate yourself with:

Crows, strong friendships, sunglasses, shortwave radios, and laughter.

Bleeding heart: What makes you heart go mushy?

@skyward-sheik, in all honesty. All of my friends have the unique ability to melt me into a puddle of warmth and happiness, but Sheik of course holds the true key to my heart.

Bell flower: What’s the title of the song that makes you want to jump around out of joy?

The Last Of The Real Ones, by Fall Out Boy

Evening primrose: What’s your sleeping playlist (Give me 5 songs)?

You know what, I’m honestly just going to give you my whole sleep playlist:

Paris, by The 1975

Those Days Are Gone & My Heart Is Breaking, by Barton Carroll

Fools Rush In, by Eliza Rickman

Stage 4 Fear of Trying, by Frnkiero And The Cellabration

Drugstore Perfume, by Gerard Way

Monkey 23, by The Kills

Rut, by The Killers

I Lied, by Electric Century

Mad Sounds, by the Artic Monkeys

Everyday, by Puggy

Sober, by Broods

Weird Honey, by Elvis Depressedly

Golden Age, by KT Tunstall

New World Towers, by Blur

Coming Down, by Halsey

Time Spent In Los Angeles, by Dawes

Killing You, by Broods

N.M.S.S, by Elvis Depressedly

Busted and Blue, by Gorillaz

Hiding Tonight, by Alex Turner

Barcelona, by George Ezra

Mad at Nothing, by Patrick Stump

Daffodil: What is one plant that you want to have but can never get?

Oh god, I’d love to have so many. More than anything, though, I’d love to have a garden big enough to have a willow tree. If I had that, I would be so incredibly, serenely happy.

Calla lily: Are you more of a sunny day or a rainy evening person?

Here, I’m a sunny day person. I don’t like leaving my flat in the rain, because it’s so hard to get back up the hill when it’s damp. I don’t like the sun so much, but I do appreciate the warmth it brings when I’m walking out and about. At home, though, I adore the rain and I love to spend stormy evenings sitting out in the conservatory so I can hear it against the roof.

Lavender: What is something that you’ve always wanted to be/have/get but can never have?

I’ve always said that in another life I’d want to be a famous singer. I made my peace with that goal a long, long time ago though. In another sense, I’d love for so many things to be different about my body. I want skinnier hips, I want nicer skin, I want a flatter chest, I want a better voice, I want a stronger heart. None of these things are changeable, but they do still haunt me. It’s hard to think about, and most days I can ignore each of them. Some days I don’t want to leave my flat because of it, but I’m trying my best to make peace with these issues as well.

Love in a mist: What is the latest dream that you remember?

Oh, not very recent. I very rarely remember my dreams, and it’s only ever the frightening ones that I can recall. The most recent, then, was actually a strange dream I had back in June. The fourteenth, to be precise. It was the day of the Grenfell Tower fire, the day of my A Level sociology exam, and I fell asleep early in the morning in my mother’s room with the news playing on the television. I won’t go into too much detail because it’s hard to explain and it’s nonsensical in that subconscious way dreams are, my brain making shortcuts and connections that shouldn’t be there. I was in a strange holiday apartment in a row of terraced white buildings, each having different colours accents and trims on the wall. My family disappeared, I couldn’t contact them, and I went to my friend in the next cottage only to find him, his mother and two foreign strangers who were clearly in distress. We tried to comfort them, spent hours with them, and slowly they calmed. My heart absolutely wrenched for them, these two strangers. I think they’d lost their families, they were running from some awful disaster, and the terror of the situation hung heavy in the air. My friend’s mother had left a while back, and then he had left as well, leaving me alone with them. Eventually, they left too. I stayed, watching the disaster on the news, until I noticed some strangers in official-looking suits inspecting each house. They were unfamiliar, detached, inherently alarming. I quickly pulled the blinds. I stayed there, in my friend’s holiday apartment, for almost two more hours. In the end, I braved the strange officials and headed outside, only to find the families of other residents, almost entirely my friends and their relatives, gathered outside and staring at this great, dark, thundering cloud that was fast descending towards us.

That’s when I woke up. I’ll be happy if I don’t remember another dream for a long, long time.

Daisy: What is your favourite flavour of cotton candy, ice cream, and juice?

My favourite flavour of ice is chocolate, although I also love caramel ice cream. My favourite type of juice is apple juice, I don’t have a strong preference between pressed or concentrate. Actually, one unpopular opinion I seem to have is that I genuinely hate orange juice? Like, I honestly can’t stand it. This tends to surprise people, for some reason.

And my favourite flavour of candy floss, is well, candy floss? I didn’t know it came in other flavours.

Painter’s palette: Are you more of a singer, dancer, painter, or instrumentalist?

Singer, for sure.

That said, I’ve tried at my hand at all of those practises throughout my life. I took dance classes several times a week from the age of three, in ballet and tap primarily but there were times when I took modern and street dance as well. Tap was my favourite by far. I quit ballet when I was about eleven, but I didn’t quit tap until I was about fourteen. In terms of painting, I took art GCSE. While painting is by far one of my least favourite art media, naturally I’ve painted quite a lot over the years. Sometimes I even enjoy it, but only if I’m working with acrylics. And in terms of being an instrumentalist, it’s undeniable that I am, by definition, one of them. I play violin, have done since the age of seven, and I also play the ukulele and marching bell. However, I am not a very good instrumentalist, hence why I chose singer. Singing is my most natural talent out of all of these, and it’s the one I enjoy the most.

Waxflower: Are you a bee or a butterfly person? A dog or a cat person?

I am a butterfly person, I used to have a strong fear of any insect that could sting me. These days I try and accept bees for their hard-working selves, but nobody could ever make me like wasps.

And, uh, I’m definitely a dog person. Even though I used to be scared of both dogs and cats, dogs win out on the basis that I’m not allergic to them. You know what, I’d love to have a borzoi some day. If I wasn’t allergic to cats I’d get an oriental shorthair, though. If you were wondering why I’m no longer scared of dogs, the answer to that question is Maya. She’s an adorable, tiny border collie cross who belongs to my amazing partner @skyward-sheik. She’s too cute to be afraid of, so I got over that fear pretty quickly after I started spending more time at his house.

Sugarbush: Do you have sweet tooth? If yes, what’s your favourite sweets? if no, why?

Uh, yeah, you could say. I’m kind of a dessert fiend.

Right now my favourite sweets are M&Ms, but Maynard’s Wine Gums, Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles, Cadbury’s Eclairs and Barratt’s Dolly Mixture.

Sunflower: Would you like to be a fairy or a mermaid?

I’d give my heart to be a sweet little woodland pouque.

Sweet pea: What would you like to call your significant other?

Well, that’s actually a really interesting question. I haven’t talked with him about specific terminology in this regard. He’s my queerplatonic partner, which is actually really difficult to explain in shorthand, but ‘partner’ is the best abbreviation I can find. Obviously QPP works, but that acronym isn’t exactly widely known. 

Sea lavender: Can you swim? Which strokes can you do?

I can indeed swim! I grew up on an island and a mere two minute’s walk from the beach, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d learnt to doggy paddle before I could steadily walk. I took swimming lessons throughout my early childhood, too, both in school and extracurricular. Somewhere in a box at home is a whole pile of badges for achieving my 10m, 50m, 100m, 200m, 500m, etc. I enjoy swimming front crawl the most, and though I dislike them I can also swim backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly.

I don’t get the chance to swim much anymore, though. The sea, though beneficial in the long run, is too painful for my skin to justify that minimal long-term improvement. Most chlorinated pools, while less painful in the moment, leave my skin flared, red and raised for several days after using them. There’s one leisure centre at home I can use without suffering too much ill-effect but I haven’t been there to swim in well over five years. Maybe sometime over the summer I’ll go there with my friends.

Windflower: List 5 of your favourite blogs and explain why you like them

@skyward-sheik, of course. He’s my favourite person, so of course his is my favourite blog. He reblogs a lot of cute and funny posts about video games and other things he likes, which of course makes me really happy. He also reblogs quite a lot about mental health and neurodivergence, and given you follow me you’re probably into that too.

@shark-myths, my queer writer icon, campaigner for the power of LGBT+ friendships and girls’ solidarity. Fellow Fall Out Boy deep lore analyst and encourager in the realms of both lifestyle and arts, K’s is a blog I would highly recommend. K as a person I would highly recommend, actually, and those qualities clearly translate across social media.

@honoraryplantking is a mutual of mine and a blog I love to scroll through. He’s an absolute sweetie and we have a lot of common interests between us. His blog is just a nice and positive place to be, so if you’re ever in need of a pick-me-up I’d recommend checking him out.

@strangerdarkerbetter is a fantastic neurodivergence and chronic illness activist and general person of good will. I first found Sabrina’s blog back when I was first diagnosed as autistic and they’ve been an awesome mutual and point of reference for me ever since.

I actually can’t think of a fifth that really stands out to me. Many of the blogs I check a lot are mutuals of mine, which I like because I find them relatable, I have a similar sense of humour and I like them as people. Other than those, of which there are quite a few, there’s nobody else off the top of my head who stands out as an absolute favourite.

Golden rod: Are you more of a baker or a cook?

Definitely a baker. I’m a really awful cook, executive dysfunction absolutely wrecks me as soon as I’m placed in a kitchen with nothing more than a vague recipe, but I have a lot more experience with baking and while I’m still bad at it, I can at least make a passable cake. I also way prefer desserts to making savoury meals, so that totally works in my favour.

Bloom: What is something that you would like to tell your children?

While I feel the need to clarify that I don’t actually want children, I’d probably tell them about my friends, how I met them and became close to them and how they impacted my life and wellbeing. I just think that, for a kid, it’s important to know that the friends you make in school might not be your forever friends, might not be close enough to consider family. You might be seventeen, twenty-five, you might be thirty or forty before you find them. They’re out there, I promise.

Peony: What is something that you wish your parents could’ve told you?

Honestly, I wish I’d been told more about my family. I grew up knowing nothing about an entire half of my family. I didn’t know a damn thing about my paternal family until I was about twelve or thirteen, and even now I know hardly anything about them. Not that I don’t appreciate my family’s reasons from hiding this from me, whatever they may be, but it’s hard not to feel like I was cheated out of a potentially huge part of my life and heritage. It was nothing out of the ordinary to have divorced parents, and many of my friends growing up lived in single parent families, but I was always the kid who had never even met my dad, had barely even heard his name. I didn’t even know my parents were married until I found the wedding album. I don’t know what happened, I don’t know why my paternal family was effectively kept a secret from me all this time, I don’t know why I was deprived of the chance to know a whole half of my family, not just my father but my grandparents, my half-siblings, my aunts and uncles and cousins. 

Sorry, I actually got really emotional right then. This is one of the few topics that can always bring me to tears and I can’t lie and say I’m not bitter about it. Even to know that they existed would have been better than growing up with no knowledge at all. I’m sorry, I really don’t think I can talk about this any more. 

Prairie gentian: Do you have a significant other?

I do! The ever-wonderful @skyward-sheik is my queerplatonic partner and soulmate. It’s only sixteen days until I get to go home and see him again

September flower: Are you more of a sunshine or sunset person?

Sunset. Growing up on the west coast of a small island meant I’ve always been able to appreciate beautiful ocean sunsets, and I wouldn’t trade those sights for all the tea in China.

Bird of paradise: Do you wake up early? Do you sleep early?

No, I’m pretty awful at both. I have a sleep disorder, Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder, which goes a long way to explaining why I have this problem. I actually sleep for a perfectly normal amount of time if left to my own devices, but my circadian rhythm is just a few hours off what is considered ‘normal’. I naturally fall asleep at about two in the morning, and no medications or lifestyle techniques I’ve tried have ever been able to fix this. Once I learnt more about it my family and I have learnt to work with it rather than against it, and thankfully my new university schedule really helps. I only have to wake up early one day out of the week in this current semester, which has meant that I’ve been properly rested and functioning for the first time in my life. When I was a toddler I had split sleeping and then I’ve been in school ever since with an nine o’clock start, so you can imagine how exhausted I was a lot of the time. Being able to sleep properly has been a revelation.

Marigold: What’s your favourite tea?

I don’t drink hot tea, but I tried iced tea for the first time last week and it was really nice! I went with my friends to a comic book-themed pie cafe called Piecaramba because one of my friends said they did really good iced tea. I took her up on her recommendation and ordered a glass of peach iced tea. I’m really anxious about trying new food and drinks so I was nervous, but it ended up being really nice. So I guess peach iced tea is my favourite type of tea, now.

Peruvian lily: What are the names of your pets?

As much as I would love them, I don’t actually have any pets. Though she passed away earlier, I had a beautiful little canary named Abi for a good eight years. I was already in a really rough spot at the time and losing my sweet little songbird made everything so much harder, not to mention an old bully of mine was mocking me about it online later that day. I think that might have been the same day I decided to start a new blog to get away from him, actually, because that really was the last straw. I don’t know what I would name any future pets and I certainly won’t be getting any in the near future, but I would love another pet someday.

Hyacinth: Do you name your plants?

I do! In fact, I have a whole page detailing my plant collection and their names, where applicable.

Lilac: Would you rather sleep and be cosy or hang out with your friends?

Can I not sleep and be cosy in the company of my friends? I think we both know that that’s the superior answer here.

Poppy: Do you like to dip your fries or do you like it as is?

Dry fries are kind of disgusting, so I always dip them in ketchup. 

Fun fact: a good friend of mine developed a habit in his teens of mixing together mayonnaise and tomato ketchup to create a kind of makeshift, poor man’s Marie Rose sauce so that he could dip his chips in it. That boy is either a genius or a madman.

Dandelion: Any special talent that you have?

I guess some of hobbies count, and my writing? People say I have a natural talent for writing, which I really appreciate. Those kind of comments are a wonder for my self-esteem.

[morethanjustmediocremusings]

In the Details: A Deeper Look into Euphoria’s Prom Looks

Taylor Abouzeid

California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo

Created in a social climate marked with the upheaval of traditional standards and a call to action sung by today’s ready-to-riot young adults, Euphoria came into a world ridden with daunting social issues. Amidst the reigning chaos of the real world, Euphoria followed the debatably hyper-realistic lives of modern high schoolers. This HBO series was highly regarded for its diverse cast and variety of explored topics. Furthermore, throughout the length of the premiere season, Euphoria retained attention from the press with its highly colorful and expressive use of fashion. To fully understand the weight of these garments, one must first look to the concept creation, then to the habitat through which the ideas were fostered, and finally step into the light of the underlying messages behind layers of mesh shirts and mountains of gender ambiguous dressing. Euphoria used visual clothing cues in their final episode “And Salt the Earth Behind you” to shed light on each character’s fully developed significance and purpose within the show given its highly pertinent cultural context.

           Euphoria has come to represent an entire generation. The struggles that the characters face are directly out of pages in our own diaries and journals. Hunter Schafer, who plays Jules in the show, praised the reality of it all saying, “It’s the most current representation of high school” (Nissen, 2019). The current climate of teen life is reflected without the Hollywood glamour that was once acceptable with shows such as 90210 and Gossip Girl. Gone are the days of unrealistic teenage clubbing and drawn-out heartbreak between a jock and a cheerleader. Instead, audiences want to see the poignancy of reality on their screens. In a society that values honesty and vulnerability, Euphoria holds a mirror to our generation’s unique experiences without sugar coating topics of necessary discussion; however, due to the deeply embedded nature of these signals, they could easily be overlooked. By taking a magnifying glass to the distinct looks of the finale, subtle messages can be brought to light and further the identification with its’ viewers. Kenneth Burke believed that rhetoric was aimed at creating identification with an audience rather than aimed at persuading an audience (Kolodziejski, 2019, Pentadic). Furthermore, due to the show’s success, it is easy to assume that many people have come to identify with its messages. It is important to analyze and understand the messages behind these looks because they are representative of an entirety of people, marching to a silent beat of radical self-worth.

Within Euphoria the very real stories of the characters hit home for many viewers. Levinson worked rigorously to diminish any potential glamorization of drug use in the show saying “somewhere around the age of 16, I resigned myself to the idea that drugs could kill me, and there was no reason to fight it,” (Chuba, 2019). He credits this deeply personal connection to the story for the shows unfiltered persona, creating high levels of identification with the viewership. Many viewers have also found his story relatable as one in five teenagers have abused prescription drugs (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). According to Burke (1950) identification is defined as a rhetorical process that leads to persuasion. Within the space of the show, it is used to create a sense of common identity between Euphoria’s audience and the accurate portrayal of characters.

The show follows the lives of a group of teenagers navigating the ups and downs of the modern century. To give some background on the show’s main squad, Rue, the main character, is a recovering drug addict, with no intention to stay sober. Jules, a transgender-icon, has just moved from an ambiguous “big city” and is feeling bored with what this small town has to offer her. Kat, a closeted One Direction fangirl-turned sensational fanfiction author, recently had sex for the first time, it was also recorded and leaked to the whole student body. Maddy has been in an on-again off-again relationship with her abusive boyfriend Nate. Cassie is trying to keep her relationship with her college-age boyfriend alive and well. Nate, the typical quarterback character with internalized homophobia stemming from finding out his Dad is gay, is now secretly experimenting with his own sexuality. This wide range of individual character plots allows for a multitude of viewers to find identification within each of their stories.

            It is, of course, important to note that the creation of this show was in some part influenced by HBO’s need to stay relevant in the competitive streaming market; I would also like to believe that despite this need for high demand programming, the actions of young adults everywhere sparked a flame in the creative community that further added to the show’s exigence. The current climate directly created a collective of educated and empowered young adults who are tired of being talked over, being told to sit down, or being shamed because “back in my day…” other people had it worse. Students these days are not participating in the same high school experiences as their parents, so in order to find a place to relate, many have turned to the Internet, and the many streaming platforms within it. The HBO-exclusive show, Euphoria, has held this identification role for many young students who have never before seen their identity correctly represented on such mainstream media as the giant outlet of HBO.

           With the introduction of new streaming services occurring at radical rates, the need for relevancy remains at the top of many media corporation’s to-do lists. HBO is no different. HBO has been both celebrated and condemned for their raw portrayals of characters. Chen (2019) said, “The show is frighteningly hard to watch—it didn't temper my anxiety one bit all season—but its choice to skid easy definitions around difficult topics is what makes it an important cultural engine of our time.” Although ratings wavered in its early years during the mid to late 1970s, they have maintained steady progression for the last twenty years. In 2011 they were named the most successful network, winning nineteen Emmy Awards in one year alone (Aspden, 2011). The creation of Euphoria specifically came from a need of representation, a public desire to see real reflections of life. The hype for weekly premiers was continuous. The cast posted daily updates and many behind-the-scenes videos to keep the audience engaged. This constant contact between creatives and their fans also helped to maintain the very necessary quality of authenticity that surrounded the show. The season finale, otherwise dubbed “the prom episode,” was no different. Prom in its essence is a highly-gendered, often homophobic, and very public display of tradition, but despite this, for many it marks an anticipated rite of passage. In the prom episode of Euphoria, the queer, gender-ambiguous, and non-traditional characters reconcile this tension; prom became their runway. Dressed to the nines in creative, self-expressing garments, Euphoria’s characters hit the dancefloor with confidence. The episode showed how this generational event has become more accepting and fluid now, more than ever.

The choice to focus on the squad’s prom looks in the last episode allows for a greater opportunity to show character development and emphasize the pungently individual messages hidden in the coattails. Rue, the standout tomboy of the cast, has recently come to accept her budding relationship with her female-presenting best friend, Jules. For Rue’s prom look she wore the makings of a suit, slacks and a black coat, a manifestation of her struggle with feminine expression. But underneath the presumptuous outer shell she adorned her staple converse, one of, if not the only stable things in her life, and a maroon form-fitting, lingerie-inspired slip dress from the closet of the magnificent Jules. Jules stood out in the show as possibly the most comfortable with outwardly expressing her feelings, and her iconic prom look was no let down. A lilac and lavender two-piece crop top and wide-leg pants combo made waves in the sea of traditional prom garments. She also wrapped herself in the pièce de résistance of the night: a dark green, mesh, trench, with the symbol for transgender rights stitched onto the back with ornate black beading. Kat’s bondage and almost masochistic look reflected her growth into a strong woman, while Maddy stayed true to her values of loving yourself in a sexy black sheer halter and fitted skirt combo. Unexpectedly, Cassie was understated, but her more feminine look remained through the champagne gown’s flattering neckline. Nate stayed true to his toxic masculinity and rejected any inkling of creativity; he wore a suit.

In the past there has been a severe push back against “progressive” programming, especially those with highly explicit content. But it is also important to note that these subjects are often not foreign to the audiences participating with the artifact. Sam Levinson, the director, when asked if he was nervous about parental backlash regarding the shows content responded with, “… I feel like this is a debate that goes on constantly throughout time, where people go, ‘Parents are gonna be scared,’ and you go ‘Yeah.’ And young people will be like, ‘Yeah, that’s my life.’ I’m sure certain people will be freaked out by it and other people will relate to it” (Stack, 2019). There has been a very real struggle for liberation of the LGBTQIA+ community, to which Euphoria highlighted a homosexual relationship between its two main characters. Toxic masculinity has come to the forefront of scholarly conversation, to which Euphoria highlighted the mental and physical dangers that the suppression of emotion in boys can have on not only themselves but also the world around them. Toxic relationships have become hot topics in wellness ads, to which Euphoria showed just how serious and sometimes hidden, domestic abuse can be. An acceptance of sex workers is growing amongst younger generations, to which Euphoria explored the world of camming and subjects of porn in general. Trans bodies have come into public discourse, especially regarding the legality of their existence, to which Euphoria cast a trans actress as a lead role and used the platform to spread knowledge of the injustices many people face on a daily basis. The long running war on drugs continues, to which Euphoria used the story of a high school drug addict to bring communities together and create a safe space for all identities to be heard.

           I have chosen the visual rhetoric approach to better examine how all elements of the character’s prom looks may have influenced each corresponding character’s final message. Visual rhetoric criticism is aimed at understanding the intersection between rhetoric and visual elements within an artifact (Kolodziejski, 2019, Visual). Albakry & Daimin (2014) state, “analysis of visual rhetoric considers how images work alone and collaborate with other elements to create an argument designed for [a specific] audience” (pp.29).  Furthermore, I will be applying the deductive approach to this criticism, meaning I will be using the existing theories and concepts and applying them to elements of the visual artifact. I partly chose this approach because I stand firmly behind its assumptions: the visual is rhetorical, what is not shown can be just as important as what is shown. Lastly, how something is shown is as important as what is shown (Kolodziejski, 2019, Visual).

           Within visual rhetoric lies the concept of the semiotic triangle, a figure that shows how an artifact’s referent, sign and reference are all related. Within that, there are three types of signs. Iconic signs are representative of what they point viewers to, such as a photo of an otter being an iconic sign for an actual otter. Indexical signs point to what they represent, like smoke indicating a fire. Lastly, symbolic signs reference an arbitrary relationship, such as the branded Swoosh being a symbol for Nike as a brand (Kolodziejski, 2019, Visual). Euphoria’s prom looks are all indexical signs, meaning they point to what they represent, without directly showcasing the underlying meaning. So, the general semiotic triangle for my artifact would have the referent as the actual look itself, the sign as the nod to what it is representing, and the reference would be the meaning behind it all. As the viewers of Euphoria engage with the show, they rely on their own life experiences to decode the symbols on screen. As articulated by Foss in 1994 “The study of visual imagery from a rhetorical perspective may make contributions beyond providing a richer and more comprehensive understanding of rhetorical processes. In some cases, such study may contribute to the formulation or reconciliation of aesthetic notions…” (pp 213). Through their comprehension of these symbols, the show’s underlying messages are able to speak more powerfully and allow for further resonation between the shows viewers and the characters they are able to identify with.  

           I have chosen visual rhetoric because it argues that everything shown and not shown has a significant purpose within the artifact. Due to the microscopic lens I have taken to the outfits chosen for the characters, this is most fitting. I have also chosen this method to better excavate the hidden messages of the main characters. Upon first glance I, like many, missed some major hints to character expression and development in the finale. But with the fine-toothed comb I took to these garments, I left no lapel untouched and no bead under-analyzed.

(Rue’s prom look).

For Rue, the exploration of expressing gender fluidity through her clothing choices was present throughout the entire season, but subtle. There was no direct mention of the matter until the season finale. While selecting a very feminine outfit for Rue to wear to prom, Jules expresses concern for possibly altering Rue’s gender presentation. I believe that by staying in the dress for prom, and not changing into something more fitting of her stylistic history, Rue was trying to validate her trust and relationship with Jules. In this scene, Rue had let Jules pick out her prom look and rather than opting for something similar to her previous fashion choices, Jules put her in a tight and sultry, lingerie-inspired, corseted, maroon dress. The color choice of maroon was not only fitting to the color pallet of the show, but was also distinctly similar to the color of Rue’s father’s sweatshirt, which she wears daily after he passes away. This choice I believe was unintentional from Jules, but subconsciously reminds the audience of Rue’s inability to move past that time in her life. Rue also adorned a traditional men’s suit pants and coat. This is the key part in her maintenance of gender fluidity and ambiguity within the outfit. The color choice was subtle and reflective of how natural this “tomboy” style has come to her self-expression. The choice of Converse was also only visibly present for a few moments on screen, but the shoes came to represent so much within Rue’s life. So much so in fact that the actress who played her character, Zendaya, made an Instagram post paying respect to the life they lived in the show with “I’m gonna have to get some new chucks for my personal life… I guess I’ll just have them on standby for season2. Til then Rue Rue” (Zendaya, 2019). Rue initially allowed Jules to change her gender presentation via the use of a frilly dress, but later came to regret the decision, as the dress became representational of their constricting relationship. This outfit represented the fluidity of expression and the intimacy that can be shared through clothing choice.

(Jules’s prom look).

Rue’s romantic counterpart, Jules, quickly became a stand-out character on the show due to her extravagant, stylistic choices within the first few episodes, and her makeup has inspired countless other artists’ renditions of the now iconic looks. For her prom look she wore a silky lilac crop top and similarly silky lavender high-waisted wide-leg pants. To top off the look she also adorned herself with a beautiful, almost floor-length, sheer mesh, forest green, trench piece. On the back of the sheer coat was a beaded symbol for the transgender community. The entire outfit was quite the statement, but I got the feeling that she was going for that “I’m not trying, but I tried really hard to look like I’m not trying” look. Due to the casual nature of a crop top and pant combo, the pieces seem haphazardly thrown together. However, the perfect complementary colors, and the identical silky fabrics make that lackadaisical approach almost impossible. I think it is also important to mention that the outfit as a whole read a little mermaid-y. To the untrained eye this might have gone completely unnoticed, but to someone with a recent history in Women and Gender studies, namely me, this reference was another direct tie to the trans community. Popularized by the television show Life With Jazz, mermaids have become an almost superhero-like figure for many people within the trans community, and now serve as a symbol of recognition. In an interview the star spoke on their significance, “Mermaids are just the most whimsical, mystical creatures of all time. A lot of transgender individuals are attracted to mermaids and I think it’s because they don’t have any genitals, just a beautiful tail” (Jennings, 2015). Jules continued to wave her pride flag high and exuded confidence. She held the message of being proud of whoever you are.

(Kat’s prom look).

Kat, a plus-size girl surrounded by a sample-size school, went through many changes this season. After her first-time having sex not only gets recorded, but also then is virally leaked throughout campus, Kat decided to reclaim control of her body. Kat had the edgier version of the “Pretty Woman” makeover. With an entire new wardrobe of bondage-inspired pieces, sexy black and red lingerie, latex, leather, and laces, she conquered not only her sexuality but also gained a whole new world of confidence as well. Throughout this journey, she also struggled with the duality of being a grade-A bad ass and still navigating soft and cute teen romance. For her prom look she wore all red, the color most symbolic for both power and romance. With a red leather corset on top and red silk midi skirt on the bottom, she exuded confidence as a woman in control of her own body. The black lace-up detailing that became a motif in many of her previous outfits also made a cameo in the prom episode running through both the top and the skirt. These specific choices show her character’s development of self-confidence. In the beginning, she was self-conscious and afraid of intimacy, but as the season progressed, the audience was able to see her blossoming into a woman in charge. She was able to reclaim her body after the sex-tape scandal and make a name for herself by camming on PornHub, and also by gaining enough appreciation for herself to see her love for Ethan. Kat struggled with coming into herself as a sexual woman and in her final look is able to show that you can be strong and confident and still express emotion and love.

(Maddy’s prom look).

Maddy, Maddy, Maddy. Where do I even start? Without a doubt Maddy was the most confident female character on the show, but when her boyfriend abused her at the annual carnival she began to break down. Although she was aware his actions were brutally wrong, she forgave him, like a story of Stockholm syndrome. Following his release back into school, they reappeared as a couple only to break up again in the following episode. Their relationship was undeniably toxic. At prom Maddy went with her group of girlfriends, surrounding herself with positivity and love. She wore a see-through black, crystal embedded, two-piece halter top and form-fitting skirt. She also wore a veil. Maddy shone bright on the dance floor and conveyed the message that relationships aren’t everything, and in the end all she needed was support from her friends, self-love, and some serious distance from her abusive ex-boyfriend, Nate. Maddy loves herself, but by ignoring her case of domestic violence she lost a part of herself. Luckily, in the finale, Maddy surrounds herself with good friends and shows that self-worth and self-love are important and still sexy.

(Cassie’s prom look).

Cassie’s prom look showed less of a character arc than the others, but her message remained just as pungent. On the day of prom, Cassie had gotten an abortion. The pregnancy was the unintended consequence of her boyfriend McKay. They came to the decision together, but Cassie made sure that the decision was ultimately her own. Needless to say, she was not dressed as her usual provocative self. She wore a soft pink satin gown, the most traditional of all the looks, and barely-there makeup, which according to the makeup artist was a distinctive choice given the earlier abortion. The makeup artist for the shoot took to Instagram to explain her look, “As much as I wanted to give Cassie a glittering euphoric winter formal makeup look, I didn’t feel like it would help tell her story in this moment. I wanted Cassie’s total absence of makeup here to signal to the audience that she’s reached the start of a new phase of her life…”(Davy, 2019). The neckline was still flattering but she remained quiet and pensive for the rest of the evening. In the same girl group as the others, Cassie took that day to surround herself with those who could support her without their knowledge of the previous event. Cassie’s prom look said that it is okay to not always be okay, and that expressing that is perfectly fine. This message can be gathered through her soft color pallet the contrasted the otherwise bright evening, the simplicity of the silhouette, and the unexpected lack of dark eyeshadow, a typical element of Cassie’s normal look.

(Nate’s prom look).

I intentionally saved the worst for last: Nate. Nate’s look was boring, and quite frankly fell flat. It would have made more sense for him not to go at all, or maybe to show up in hand cuffs as he did for Halloween. But whatever, he did go to prom, and he did wear a suit. Given the extravagance of the rest of the characters’ prom looks, there was an unofficial standard for all the characters to express themselves creatively in some way for the event. However, I believe that Nate’s blatant lack of creativity is his statement. For his whole life he has been molded to become a superstar athlete, and at no point was he given the opportunity to outwardly express himself. We can thank both toxic and hegemonic masculinity for this lack of expression, for in their essence both of these ideas encourage the repression of emotion in boys and men. His outfit shows that when not given the opportunity to find oneself beyond the expectations of others, or not being able to to explore one’s own creative capabilities a person could become a drone, in this case one with severe anger issues. The suit further shows his acceptance and assimilation into the norms and expectations for his character. Rather than expressing himself through stylistic choices, like many of the other characters, Nate’s feelings come out in destruction and violence. He serves as a precautionary tale, of what the dangers of toxic and hegemonic masculinity can have on young men: crushing self- hatred. For many, fashion can serve as a critical outlet for self-expression. Especially for Euphoria’s teenage viewership, style can feel like the only controllable element of their life while the lack of adolescent autonomy is at its height.

           As both a thoroughly engaged audience member and fan of Euphoria, there is not much the creators could have changed about the prom looks to further appease me. Throughout the entirety of the season I found that I was able to relate to every individual character within the show, admittedly even Nate. I was able to see my own life tied into bits and pieces of every character’s individual story. Maddy and Rue stuck out as the characters with which I had the most identification with, and although their characters are almost direct opposites in the show, I felt comfort in being able to compare their stories to my own. However, I feel that it is also important to acknowledge the lack of identification some of my peers felt with Euphoria’s main squad. Some have never had experiences with “hard-core” drugs, struggled with gender representation, bee involved with sex tape scandals, or instances of domestic violence, dealt with the after effects of an abortion, or emotional repression. For many of these people who struggled to find identification with the main characters, the supporting roles served as their substitute. With characters as Lexi, McKay, Gia and Fez, many other identities were explored throughout the season, although in lesser detail. I believe that if these supporting characters had also been given equal screen time, an even wider range of audiences would have been able to engage and identify with Euphoria. By digging deeper into their stories, new plot lines could have been uncovered. Many teenagers struggle with eating disorders, which were left out of the show despite alarming statistics claiming that at least 30 million people suffer from eating disorders in the United States (ANAD, 2019). Nicotine has become a significant outbreak in American teenagers with the Center for Disease Control reporting that “5.6 million of today’s Americans younger than 18 will die early from a smoking-related illness” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019). And topics of bullying were also left unexplored by the show despite its constant prevalence in teenage society. Studies have even gone to show that “Bullying was a factor in 2/3 of the 37 school shootings reviewed by the US Secret Service” (Stop Bulling Now Foundation, 2019). However, including all of these topics could have been destructive to the season as a whole, and overwhelming to audiences. Given the relevancy of these topics, they are explored elsewhere in outer outlets. Euphoria was a show intended for people who had rarely seen their identities presented on mainstream media of this scale before. So, despite the few missing teenage issues that are more commonly explored today, Euphoria was able to uniquely cover some groundbreaking material for a show of its size.

           Euphoria’s characters all held distinct messages within the show. Through the use of visual clothing cues Euphoria was able to further the identification factor of these stories by visually signaling their significance. Created out of a need for representative media and birthed into a world of social unrest, Euphoria became a breakout show on HBO’s streaming platform and now has the power to unify an entire generation. In “And Salt the Earth Behind You” Rue, Jules, Kat, Maddy, Cassie, and Nate give their final send off to the show by highlighting their completed respective messages between satin finishes and starchy, pressed suits. As a result of the creative expression of the prom outfits in the finale, viewers are left with a lasting impression of self-identification closing off the season.  

References

Albakry, N. S., & Daimin, G. (2014). The visual rhetoric in public awareness print advertising toward Malaysia perceptive sociolculture design. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 155, pp. 28-33.

ANAD. (2019). Eating disorder statistics. Retrieved from www.anad.org/education-and-awareness/about-eating-disorders/eating-disorders-statistics/.

Aspden, P. (2011, September 24). How HBO revolutionized television. Retrieved from www.slate.com/human-interest/2011/09/hbo-how-it-revolutionized-television.html

Burke, K. (1950). A rhetoric of motives. Berkley: University of California Press.

Cassie’s prom look [Digital image]. Retrieved from www.usa-grlk5lagedl.stackpathdns.com/production/usa/images/1565025651204007-66121653_654233518429076_5605336542765432610_n.jpg?w=1900&fit=crop&crop=faces&fm=pjpg&auto=compress.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2010, June 3). CDC survey finds that 1 in 5 U.S. high school students have abused prescription drugs. Retrieved from www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/2010/r100603.htm.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019). Youth and tobacco use. Retrieved from www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/youth_data/tobacco_use/index.htm.

Chen, E. (2019,  June 6). In praise of euphoria, the perfect anti-binge TV show. Retrieved from www.wired.com/story/euphoria-anti-binge/.

Chuba, K. (2019, June 5). 'Euphoria' creator on authentic trans portrayals, mining "deeply personal" history to tackle teen drug abuse. Retrieved October 21, 2019, from www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/euphoria-creator-mining-deeply-personal-history-tackle-teen-drug-abuse-1215844.

Davy, D. [@donni.davy]. (2019, August 17). Cassie’s clean slate, episode 8, euphoria [Instagram photo]. Retrevied from www.instagram.com/p/B1SOb1EJcve/?igshid=ork83uq4xhn.

Foss, S, K. (1994). A rhetorical schema for the evaluation of visual imagery. Communication Studies, 45, pp. 213-224.

Jennings, J. (2015, June 8). Jazz Jennings: the transgender teen and wannabe mermaid the internet needs (M. Ruiz, Interviewer). Cosmopolitan. Retrieved from www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/tv/a40068/jazz-jennings-internets-most-fascinating/.

Jules’s prom look [Digital image]. Retrieved from www.usa-grlk5lagedl.stackpathdns.com/production/usa/images/1565024720966459-66659243_159635475163665_1587604092859566839_n.jpg?w=1900&fit=crop&crop=faces&fm=pjpg&auto=compress.

Kat’s prom look [Digital image]. Retrieved from www.usa-grlk5lagedl.stackpathdns.com/production/usa/images/1565025241108497-67911105_2343940372514856_2058399465206680217_n.jpg?w=1900&fit=crop&crop=faces&fm=pjpg&auto=compress.

Kolodziejski, L. (2019, October 16). Pentadic criticism overview [PowerPoint Presentation]. Retrieved from handout sheet.

Kolodziejski, L. (2019, October 23). Visual rhetoric criticism overview [In-class handout]. Retrieved from handout sheet.

Maddy’s prom look [digital image]. Retrieved from www.usa-grlk5lagedl.stackpathdns.com/production/usa/images/1565024910235630-66213364_669264316881864_5463572260054969293_n.jpg?w=1900&fit=crop&crop=faces&fm=pjpg&auto=compress.

Nate’s prom look [Digital image]. Retrieved from www.data.whicdn.com/images/334716009/original.jpg

Nissen, D. (2019, June 6). 'Euphoria' creator sam levinson opens up about drug addiction at premiere. Retrieved October 20, 2019, from www.variety.com/2019/scene/news/euphoria-creator-sam-levinson-opens-up-drug-addiction-1203233881/.

Rue’s prom look [Digital image]. Retrieved from www.i.pinimg.com/originals/01/2f/1d/012f1d3dc6e81ba8e9d1ef7f4970d064.jpg

Stack, T. (2019, June 16). 'Euphoria' creator on why it's okay that some people are 'freaked out' by his controversial new show. Retrieved October 20, 2019, from www.ew.com/tv/2019/06/16/euphoria-creator-sam-levinson/.

Stop Bullying Now Foundation. (2019). School bullying affects us all. Retrieved from www.stopbullyingnowfoundation.org/main/.

Zendaya [@zendaya]. (2019, August 24). Thanks to season 1 [Instagram story post]. Retrieved from www.google.com/amo/s/amp.redit.com/r/euphoria/comments/cuyynl/from_zendayas_ig_story_who_knew_a_pair_of_chucks/.

[the-ladyguinevere]

1. I describe myself as a lesbian but it's more accurate to say that I'm attracted to women and NB people who are not masc-of-center.

2. Lipstick. I own red, purple, and some boring reasonable colors.

3. I.... Don't know?? I kind of like being me, I just want my life situation to be better.

4. September

5. I like to snuggle more than I like to breathe

6. I don't really have pajamas, I sleep nude.

7. I like pens I guess? Specifically the Pilot Precise v5?

8. In the spring and summer, my "Abra-ca-fuck you" shirt. In fall/winter, my vintage 80s purple Butch lesbian jacket.

9. My best friend doesn't have a Tumblr for me to link, sadly.

10. I do not like K-pop

11. Blueeeee

12. Eyes

13. Autumn

14. It changes often. Right now, probably baby bells

15. I have a newborn, so over the course of 10 hours I get 6-8.

16. I do not, but I used to have an audio diary.

17. I don't like to brag, but I am a fantastic cook, and I would love to cook for you.

18. Babe

19. Like a "while you're sleeping" dream? I don't think that's appropriate for such soft asks.

Like aspiration dreams? I want to be a house wife who takes care of the home, cooks, cleans, gets the kiddo off to school, cans and sells jams, talks on the phone to my queer housewife friends, etc.

20. My teacher when I was like 5 I guess? She hopefully never knew. I don't even remember what she looked like honestly.

21. I really liked the Narnia series as a kid? I don't remember most of the kids books I read honestly.

22. I do not have a skincare routine. I am bad.

23. For sure Spirited Away. It's the one I've seen most, and it was also my first.

24. Not really, no. I had characters I imagined, but they weren't imaginary friend types.

25. I really love pears.

26. I have kissed a friend.

27. I do not read before bed but I should.

28. I'm really fond of lavender

29. I am not close to any relatives.

30. I don't really have a favorite actor. :( A lot of people are good at a lot of things.

31. I have a cat, she's an asshole and I love her.

32. I own a dress with a slit up to my mid thigh on both sides. It's grey and has the Vault-Tec Logo above the right breast. It had a matching belt that is a few inches thick and has several vertical strips of leather all around.

33. San what

34. Strawberry

35. Films make me cry when they have healthy parent-child relationships, because I never had that.

36. I don't read a lot of poetry, honestly.

37. I own 3? I have one somewhere that is missing in action, and I need to find him for so many reasons. He's a blue elephant that I understood as a child to be enby with he/him pronouns before I had the language for that.

38. I like orchids and violets.

39. I used to have a butterbeer mug that I loved quite a bit. I got it by buying a butterbeer at universal studios.

40. She/her

soft asks:

cherry - what is your sexuality?

lollipop - favorite makeup products?

daydreams - if you could be anything or anyone, who would you be?

october - what month were you born in?

caress - do you like to snuggle?

ivory - describe your pajamas?

golden - favorite stationary product?

freckles - most-worn article of clothing?

twilight - best friend?

silk - do you like k-pop?

poppy - favorite pastel color?

dimples - most attractive features of a person’s face?

sunkissed - autumn or spring?

buttery - favorite snack?

whisper - how much sleep do you get?

pencil - do you own a journal?

cupcake - are you a good cook?

honey - favorite term of endearment?

clouds - describe one of your favorite dreams?

velvet - who was your first crush?

paper - favorite children’s book?

peaches - do you have a skincare routine?

mochi - favorite studio ghibli film?

backyard - did you ever have an imaginary friend?

strawberry - favorite fruit?

kiss - have you ever kissed a friend?,

nightlight - do you read before bed?

shampoo - favorite scent?

skin - what distant relative are you closest to?

aphrodite - favorite actress/actor?

cuddles - do you have any pets?

lace - if you own any dresses, which is your favorite?

sheets - sanrio or san-x characters?

cream - frozen yogurt flavor?

watermelon - do films ever make you cry?

sapphos - favorite poet?

plush - how many stuffed animals do you still own?

roses - what flower do you find most beautiful?

sweetheart - favorite mug/cup?

sunset - what are your pronouns?

[ignis-scientia-estrogen-brigade]

How about Ignis is bed bound for a week after a hunt gone wrong and his s/o has to take care of him. Funny and nsfw please.

[ISEB Author’s Note: The last longer fic I wrote based off a prompt completely got away from me (surprise, surprise), so I hope you don’t mind that I abbreviated your Ask into a headcanon, dearest Anon. Also, if I’m not mistaken, I think Ignis actually resides in Lestallum according to Talcott, but he somehow ended up in Hammerhead for the purposes of this fic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Very mildly NSFW, but I’m throwing it under a cut just to be safe.]

The strategist might’ve forgiven himself for stumbling onto the occasional oversight, considering he didn’t have the luxury of sight period; Red Giants rarely spawned in numbers greater than two outside of Leide, so when he got the call from hunter headquarters that a few had been sighted terrorizing a shipment of beans intended for Takka’s Diner, he seemed to recall a dozen elixirs being more than enough to take a couple of them down on his own.

But when he had arrived at the location of the mangled freight truck, he found himself face-to-face with not two, not three, but four of the colossal-sized daemons. It was only a small measure of mercy that Prompto happened to be in town at that very moment—the blond marksman scarcely passed up the opportunity to drop by and visit the Grease Monkey Goddess whenever a reasonably legitimate excuse presented itself—although the verdict was still out on whether his ‘assistance’ had truly been a blessing, or if Ignis had perhaps made an error in logic by squandering all twelve of his curatives to aid his helpless friend, rather than simply leaving his destiny in the hands of the nearest Astral and hoping for the best. Ultimately, he had decided that preserving what was left of the Brotherhood was more important than the fate of a few measly legumes; the two had managed to hightail it back to Hammerhead with their dignity—and limbs—mostly intact, but not before the blind strategist had taken a gargantuan fist solidly to the back of his skull.

It’s not that he’s unappreciative of his paramour’s medicinal ministrations; Ignis is not a prideful man, and although he’s adapted remarkably well to his ocular disability over the years, he isn’t so proud as to turn down the generosity of others when offered. It’s just that his lover has a propensity for being somewhat overeager to prove their devotion to him at times; administering a hi-potion at the top of every hour is certainly a useful strategy when striving to mitigate the nauseating effects of a concussion, except when it directly interferes with his pursuit of an afternoon of entirely uninterrupted rest. Likewise, the visor he wears specifically for the purpose of filtering out the bright artificial lights his right eye is painfully sensitive to is admittedly not necessary when the curtains of his bedroom are drawn, but the strategist grudgingly surmises he will be confined to his chambers for a good while to come when he hears the sound of frosted glass shattering on the floor after his partner had attempted to place them out of the way on a shelf.

But it’s not all sleep deprivation and crushed spectacles; his paramour knows their way around a kitchen well enough, and Ignis finds his appetite finally returning when the delectable aroma of Creamy Milk Risotto swirls in his bloody and scabbing nostrils. Indeed, the rich flavor of sautéed Malmashrooms served over steaming Saxham rice helps to quell the dull throbbing in his temples, and he conveys his everlasting gratitude to his lover for their domestic offerings while he is incapacitated—although he can’t quite seem to place the queer hint of tartness agitating his taste buds.

It’s only when his gut has abruptly curdled not long after consuming his meal that Ignis begins to suspect the sheep’s milk used in his partner’s recipe might’ve possibly been expired; determining who was at fault for the severe lapse in judgment is completely irrelevant at this point, because he barely has enough time to lock the restroom door behind him before his stomach is expelling the putrid toxins from his body with the heat and ferocity of the Infernian’s wrath. As he hangs his head above the commode in wretched prayer to the porcelain Astrals—his paramour pacing back and forth nervously just outside the door—the strategist can only hope that the sharpshooter’s recovery is going about as swimmingly as his own.

He knows his lover is only trying to help—broken glasses can be replaced, and anyone with a functioning set of eyes could’ve easily mistaken the number three dated on the dairy label for an eight—but even Ignis reaches the limit of his patience at times. So he summons the last vestiges of civility his shivering and aching body can muster and politely requests for them to fetch a fresh carton of sheep’s milk from the local Coernix Station in an effort to get them out of his hair for a while; momentarily relieved of their incessant worrying, the strategist lowers himself gingerly onto his bed, and his head scarcely has time to hit the pillow before he is falling blissfully toward unconsciousness and dreaming of better days when the flavor of risotto still appealed to him and acute food poisoning was but a distant memory.

The six hours of unbroken sleep he manages to accrue might’ve worked wonders for his healing wounds, but the wheels in his mind begin to race when he realizes his paramour has not yet returned from their shopping excursion. The service station was within spitting distance of his residence, and even a shortage of pasteurized ovine product necessitating a detour down to Longwythe Rest Area ought not to have taken them this long. The strategist resists the urge to bolt out the door sans spectacles in a panicked search for his missing other half, resolving instead to exercise the pragmatic side of his brain by dialing up a few of the locals. But the curious scent of lavender filling the air stays his hand when he reaches for his cellular, and the floral fragrance is soon followed by the sound of his partner’s familiar footsteps passing through the front door.

He can’t quite suppress the bewilderment in his voice when they find him trembling with alarm. Did they not understand the dangers prowling just beyond the radius of the street lamps? Did they not know the risk they were taking to their life by stepping foot outside the safety of Hammerhead’s wrought-iron fences? Of course they knew, they explain, but they couldn’t very well let him suffer in agony for days on end, and Gladiolus had mentioned to them once that lavender contained therapeutic properties that might help to sooth the worse of his headaches. And besides—they feel positively terrible for the misery they inflicted inside his abdomen with their faulty risotto recipe, so perhaps a few drops of lavender oil in his Ebony will ease his queasiness as well.

Measured thought was clearly applied to his lover’s actions, but what was less obvious to them was just what their life meant to the strategist. It’s likely his own fault, he thinks, for deeming them a nuisance, for dismissing their charity, for being too frugal with his outward displays of affection. But as long as they’re here with him now, as long as the Draconian was willing to turn a blind eye just this once to their foolhardy escapades, there’s still time to rectify his mistakes; Ignis does the only thing he can think to do and draws them close in a fierce embrace, then takes them by the hand and gently leads them toward the bedroom.

The strategist generally avoids partaking in any intimacy whenever he acquires fresh wounds from particularly grueling daemon hunting expeditions, since strenuous activity while still injured served only to slow the body’s natural healing process. But there’s a time and a place for caution, and the scent of lavender swirling in the air is admittedly working wonders on his migraine; he ignores his lover’s pleas for him to be reasonable, and silences them altogether with a passionate kiss. It’s only when he’s made it abundantly clear that he has no plans to yield to their opposition anytime soon that they finally acquiesce to his tender probing, but strictly under the condition that he allow them to take the reins of their relations so as not to strain himself further.

An agreeable strategy, to be sure, and because Ignis is not a prideful man by any stretch of the imagination, he has no objection to assuming a relaxed position on his back for the duration of their lovemaking, where he can entangle his long fingers in his partner’s hair when their lips journey down between his legs, can run his scarred cheeks across the soft and velvety smooth skin of their belly, can offer a source of balance and support when they’re straddled across his slender hips and riding him like a feathered steed off into a nonexistent sunset. And he finds that the endorphins presently coursing through his veins as he and his lover inch toward mutual ecstasy appear to improve his aches and pains far better than any consumable remedy or ether he might have purchased at a convenience store.

Evidently, Prompto has yet to enlighten himself on that particular discovery, because he finds his freckled friend resting uncomfortably in a lawn chair outside of Cid’s Garage the next day, moaning feebly to anyone within earshot while he pops the lid off his fourth hi-potion in as many hours. Ignis stretches out his shoulders—there is still some tension there, but nothing warranting any verbal complaints—and greets the marksman jovially; the younger man ponders aloud with mild irritation at how the strategist could possibly be feeling well enough to sound downright cheerful after nearly having their heads handed to them on a silver platter. Ignis cracks a few vertebrae in his neck and shrugs; “None the worse for wear,” he says, “although I can attest to the numerous benefits of physical therapy.”

[femslashrevolution]

Towards A Darker Femslash by holyfant

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

Hello everyone! I hope your Femslash February is going great so far. I was stoked to be asked to write a little something for I Am Femslash, particularly because while I’ve written bits and pieces about my experience as a young, queer, multishipping and writing young woman in fandom, I’ve never really tried to put any of my thoughts together in a truly coherent way. So, here I go, attempting to write about a topic that is dear to me. Feel free to engage me on any of the points I make in this little essay!

So, hi. I’m holyfant, a 26-year-old ESL fanfic and (aspiring) original fiction writer. I’ve been active in fandom for nearly fifteen years, and have written fic for a lot of that time, picking up English and fannishness along the way. Writing fic gave me a way to connect with other people who had to same interests I did – and only later did I realise it also paved the way to more self-knowledge. At some point during my teens, the question of my own sexual and romantic identity became pressing; maybe paradoxically this first drew me to male slash, and only later to femslash – perhaps because the former was and is more visibly present in fandom than the latter, and perhaps also because reading and writing femslash was still too direct a way to engage with my own identity at that point. I still don’t fully understand this; I remember that when I was first playing with the idea that I might not be straight, it felt safer to read about men in love than women in love. Maybe seeing male characters discover their non-straightness was close enough to my own experience to stir up emotion and feeling, but far enough removed from it that it didn’t stir up panic. Who knows?

Either way, when I was more comfortable with who I was, I returned to f/f and found it infinitely rewarding. I read a metric ton of femslash fic and wrote lots myself – for a fairly long stretch of time I enjoyed deep obscurity in the Harry Potter and Greek mythology fandoms as a niche femslash writer with two or three loyal readers, and it was truly a lovely time. I engaged with femslash in a curious, non-discriminatory way – I shipped everyone. I’d take two minor female characters who perhaps had never even interacted in canon and found a way to put them together. I took prompts for characters that were only featured in throw-away lines, and wrote a lot of fic for the now sadly defunct LJ community hp_rarestpairest, which encouraged the nichest of pairings. Basically I was honing my writing skills, while also representing my questions, hopes and fears about my own sexuality at the same time. In my fics I dealt with women falling in love, being rejected, having sex with each other, coming out to their families and friends, dealing with heartbreak – all of these were things that I was thinking about, was experiencing or wanted to experience, or was scared of. I think it will surprise few queer femslash writers to hear that reading and writing femslash taught me a lot about my own identity and sexuality and gave me a community of queer women that I would otherwise never have found.

Despite the fact that I was mostly a femslash writer in my early times in fandom and the fact that I write f/f in my current fandoms today, it remains a curious truth that my growth as a writer from someone who wrote 1,000-word oneshots in one go to someone who wrote novel-length fanfic over several months coincided with going into a different fandom where my main focus was a m/m ship (BBC Sherlock, where I was sucked into the black hole that was Sherlock/John). I said I “shipped everyone” earlier – it would be just as correct to say I shipped no one, because I had no deep emotional investment in the ships I wrote about, and often wrote only one fic per ship. (Perhaps the only exception was Lavender/Parvati, which I wrote often and regularly gave me the warm fuzzies to think about.) It wasn’t until Sherlock happened that I started to understand what people meant when they said a ship was their OTP, or how people could get so intense about their reading of a relationship. As a result of this increased feeling of investment I read and wrote so much fic that I became a much better writer for it, by pushing myself to write more and more complex stories. This was all fine in itself, but even as it happened I was aware that it was curious that this sudden spur of feeling and craft was because of a juggernaut white dude ship, something that had never held much interest for me before. I felt – even at that heady time when you’re in a new fandom and it’s like being in love – like I wanted to continue to write smaller pairings and explore female characters, too. And I did, but the point remains that when I look at my story stats now, it’s clear that my f/f stories are shorter in word count and are less varied in their plot and execution than my m/m stories.

All this to show that I am 100% part of what I am about to describe: not a problem, per se, but an observation that I think is useful to be aware of and think about. The fact is that femslash, across fandoms, remains a niche category, and that while there are great amounts of people who read and write almost exclusively m/m this is barely ever the case for f/f. A lot of the f/f writers I know have talked at some point about the realisation that f/f in general seems to lack novel-length stories and stories that have the diversity of plotting and thematic exploration that we easily find for m/m ships. Most f/f stories are shorter stories or oneshots that focus on meet-cutes, sex and domestic bliss. Longer fics are rare. Darker themes, such as character death and grief, trauma, relationship issues, adultery, abuse and so on are also rare. I am not the first to notice this and not the first to theorise on it, but I would still like to identify why I think f/f fandom has developed in this direction, and to formulate some ideas as how to diversify our creative experiences a little.

I think there are a lot of possible reasons that f/f writers are in general less motivated to write long stories that explore complex themes, and these will surely differ for everyone. For me, I’ve identified three causes, in increasing order of importance: 1. a small audience, and therefore a smaller possibility of extensive feedback, 2. a lack of variation and complexity in female characters and their relationships in a lot of canon materials, and 3. the awareness that f/f is often rooted in a deeply lived experience for many of its readers and writers, and that it’s therefore necessary to be wary of representing “bad” female characters or negative tropes about lesbian and bisexual relationships. The most complex of these is certainly no. 3, which is why that’s the one I will be writing about a bit more.

Statistically f/f is most likely to be written and read by cis queer women, which of course influences our relationship with the characters we portray, because they refer to our own lived existence. This makes f/f different from m/m – m/m is also mostly written by cis women (straight and otherwise), which creates a certain leeway for “true” realism. Anecdotally I can share what happened when my housemate and my best friend, both cis gay men, delved into the world of m/m fanfic on some of my recommendations. While they enjoyed a lot of the stories I told them I’d liked, they also talked about many of the things they felt were inaccurate about gay sex and romance – for instance, they could name several often-described sexual acts that they said didn’t quite “work that way”, and they were generally uncomfortable with the fannish (certainly often problematic) tendency to label characters as strictly tops or bottoms, especially if this was based on stereotypical characteristics outside of the bedroom. If gay men were to write these stories (which they do, of course, only in much smaller numbers), they might look different – they might be less fictionalised, less genre-specific; the language developed to talk about men in love might be different, there might be different focuses. It’s hard to definitively say what it would be like. Either way, it would seem logical that it follows, from the fact that lesbian and bisexual women overwhelmingly write the fannish stories that we have about lesbian and bisexual women, that we should find it easy to access their spaces and write about many different aspects of their lives. In reality this doesn’t necessarily seem to be so. Perhaps the scrutiny, both internal and external, is larger – perhaps because we are writing about ourselves we put more pressure on ourselves to “get it right”, and perhaps our audience, who is looking to see itself represented, does the same at times. Or maybe we simply perceive our audience as being more critical than it truly is.

What is a “bad” female character? Most people will agree that women often get the short stick of characterisation in most media – to such an extent that there are tropey names for them, like the Girl Next Door, the Femme Fatale, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and so on. Women are still often used as crutches for men; their stories are supporting stories, their pain is used to further a male character’s pain. Writing about women in fanfic is often already a rebellious act in itself, one that reverses harsh or flippant treatment by canon writers. While this is fine in se, and sometimes even lends a pleasant sheen of fannish disobedience to writing female-centric fic, I do believe it has the unintended and unsavoury result of effectively also policing the sort of woman that can be written about. This may seem like a paradox, but in reacting to the one-dimensional representations of women in fiction it can become important to “fix” those wrongs, and this makes it hard to write about women who don’t overtly challenge assumptions about womanhood: unsympathetic women, women who are perhaps weak-willed, petty, bigoted, jealous, aggressive, criminal, highly sexual, or abusive. Considering that, at least in a Western vision on literature, stories derive meaning at their base from conflict, removing the option to write “bad” women removes a lot of possibility for thematic conflict. This might be part of the reason why there are significantly less plot-driven f/f stories than there plot-driven m/m stories; plot usually requires conflict, and conflict often requires flawed characters and flawed relationships.

I know that when I write about women I’m conscious of the fact that I have internalised societal ideas about what it “should” mean to be a woman, but I’m also aware that in trying to combat those ideas it’s easy to get mired in different ones. I know that I sometimes interrogate myself about what it is that I’m saying about women when I write about this particular woman cheating on her partner or being generally secretive and untruthful – doesn’t that reproduce a societal prejudice that women are untrustworthy? It’s very hard to separate a single performance of fictional womanhood from the general performance of womanhood – this is not usually a problem with (white) men, who are allowed to represent only themselves, and not their entire gender.

The above paragraphs talk about “women” – clearly the problem of treatment that I write about becomes many times more pressing when dealing with women who are on other intersections of oppression. Women who love women are more vulnerable to prejudice and abuse than straight women, and wlw of colour are again many times more vulnerable than their white sisters. And when these wlw or woc are not cisgender, again their situation becomes many times more dire. These societal realities are often reproduced in media – 2016 was the year in which no lesbian or bisexual woman on tv seemed to be safe, and their pain and deaths hurt all the more because we are confronted with this pain in real life, too. I remember my tumblr dash around the time that The 100’s Lexa died; the pain there for many queer women who watched the show was very real, because – I think – it echoed a feeling of being unsafe, of being cruelly treated in society. I remember fans writing about how hurtful it was to see a brave female character who loved another woman killed off like this; in their pain many people stated that it was unacceptable that lesbian or bisexual female characters should be killed in fiction at all. Of course, this was understandable considering how hurt fans were, and how often they had been disappointed – still, the typical fannish tendency towards lack of nuance frustrated me. In capable writers’ hands, tragedy can be performed very meaningfully. I wrote a little about this on my blog at the time, because I was starting to feel insecure about my own tendency to prefer darker thematic material – was I complicit in my own oppression, and was I hurting other queer women by writing what I enjoyed? Clearly my own privilege was also part of this question: I am a wlw, but I’m white and cisgender, and I hail from a country where legal equality has been realised for the entirety of my adult life. Obviously homophobia is still a problem, but my close environment has been nothing but supportive and accepting from the moment I first came out as lesbian at 16, and again as bisexual at 24. So I haven’t experienced much of the tension and fear that other wlw might have experienced. Does this make me a part of the oppressive machine that performs queer women’s pain for shock value? I seriously thought about this question before tentatively concluding that I had to have faith that I was a thoughtful enough writer to avoid these pitfalls.

It might seem from this essay that I find writing femslash to be an exhausting trial of constantly having to think about what prejudices I’m reproducing – this is not the case. I love writing femslash and I love my femslash-writing friends. I’ve learned heaps about myself and others by reading some of the stellar f/f stories out there, and with every f/f story I write I become more aware of how much I love to write about queer women – and I remind myself that I should certainly do it more often, and more ambitiously. As I stated above, this is something that I’ve noticed in my own writing practice, so it’s not an accusation leveled at anyone else. It’s simply something that I find worthwhile to examine. Judging by some of the conversation that periodically does the rounds in my f/f-loving circles, I’m definitely not alone in that.

Now how to deal with this in our f/f-writing community? There’s no singular answer to that, and whatever we can do is both blindingly obvious and hard to actually do. One of the possible answers is, as it is with so many complex questions that have complex roots, to simply push through and do it anyway, to try to ignore some of the fear and uncomfortable associations we might feel in writing unsympathetic f/f narratives and write them anyway. Diversifying the stories we write will automatically diversify the stories we feel we’re allowed to write. Audience response is probably important too; I think that there must be plenty of people who feel, like me, that it’s a shame that so much of femslash is short and that a lot of it focuses on narrative happiness rather than also exploring narrative unhappiness and conflict, which (in my opinion, at least) yields more fertile literature. And if we feel that way, then we have to try to reward people who write the things we like to read, through our attention, our comments, our kudos, our podcasts, our recs, et cetera.

I write this mere days before the beginning of Femslash February, and I’m certainly planning to walk the walk that I’ve talked in this talk; I’m absolutely sure that the strong core of people who love to read about women loving women will continue to keep this community vibrant and alive and that there are plenty of new directions our stories can go in. I’m looking forward to seeing what the other voices who are participating in I Am Femslash have to say, and I’m looking forward to all of the new content that will be produced. I’m grateful that as a young teen I stumbled upon fandom and that I found my way towards femslash a few years later; I’m pretty sure my own journey of discovery and creativity would have been very different, and probably more difficult, if I hadn’t found this community. So, to all of us: We Are Femslash! <3

About the author

holyfant is a 26-year-old bisexual woman from Belgium, who’s been writing about women and their relationships since she was a budding young wlw. She loves to think about literature and how it relates to the core of our human experiences: the only thing she really wants to be, in the end, is a storyteller.

Tumblr: http://holyant.tumblr.com

AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant