#the benevolence of white middle class people

[dreadfulratgoblin]

Just seen a post talking about how OP wants to foster a traumatised teenager and plans to "make them" get their GED and sign on for housing benefit and I really wish people who want to foster thought less about creating their own little perfect Galatea and more about how they'll stay calm and parent the kid the first time they scream at them to fuck off and die in the middle of an argument or get into a fight at school or lie to them or do any of the other things traumatised children sometimes do.

[lottiecrabie]

pray for my soul. part three – matty healy

even after all your prayers, you feel matty's presence linger in all parts of your life. in church, in class, in the knock on your window...

warnings: 18+, oral (f receiving), fingering, choking, roleplay, religious imagery, blasphemy, pfms typical desecration

part three of five

13683 words

You’ve been clenching your fingers too much, hands clutched together as you pray or smother a wave of smoldering emotions. Your heart ring digs into your middle finger; the blood cuts off, pain spreading up your knuckles. You’d find it divine if it didn’t leave some ugly, red rash. 

It makes your mother crazy at the sight, gasping as she spots the scarlet. She grabs your wrist, tugging you across the house. “Mom,” you whine, stumbling along. “It’s nothing.” Of course, she scoffs, pinching the bitten raw fingers and the chipped white nails to prove her point.  

Opening the bathroom door, she shoves your hand under the sink. Scalding hot water pours out. You flinch at the sensation. She’s unbothered, squeezing hyssop soap, scrubbing your hands under the burning heat. 

“You have to keep your hands clean,” your mother says, squirting some more soap. 

If she really knew how soiled they’d been… Dipping in impure places, reaching for sinful desires, memorizing the feel of scattered scars… White soap on reddened, raw skin, but still you know she’ll never make them clean. 

“Dirty girl,” she continues, shaking her head, scratching at the stubborn nail polish. “Don’t you know how to take care of your skin?” 

Your eyes water, but you don’t make a peep. Lingering in the doorframe, the somber presence of your father towers across the bathroom. “I think it’s fine, honey,” he says, but she doesn’t hear, scraping away. 

“I don’t know where this side of her comes from,” your mother mumbles to herself. Water pours and pours, drowning out your pained moans. “Certainly not me.” 

Your father frowns, scoffing. “Well, not me either.” You throw him a pleading look, but he seems just as overrun. 

“I’ve raised a clean girl.” Your mother scrubs your palm, muttering more than anything coherent. “Not this, not this…” 

But she did. She can scrub all she wants, but she can’t wash away the stain of him. You’ve been touched, rotting under the skin. She can cut it off and you’d still remember the feel of Matty Healy. 

Scorching flames lick up your arms. Your hands burn, barely bones anymore. You clench them, frowning at the sight of them. How funny that water doesn’t cool. That soap doesn’t clean. That your mother tries to control you, and all she does is teach you that fire doesn’t kill. 

—

Your youth leader, Betty, offers you the bag of gummy bears, shimmying it in front of your face in appeal. You blush, more from the special attention than shyness, and dig for a red one. You bite the head off first, letting the colored sugar melt on your tongue for a few seconds. Still, as you swallow it, you can’t help but feel that pit of guilt grow inside your belly. You know your mother doesn’t want you eating candy. 

Betty smiles benevolently at you, like she could read the thoughts on your forehead. You hate that. If people are capable of digging inside your brain— Gosh, the filthy things they could see. 

Do you have that same guilty, hungry look when looking at Matty Healy? Can everyone see? 

Betty winks, popping a gummy bear inside her mouth. “I won’t tell,” she says. 

She’s a good person, capable of teetering that line between devotion and relatability. She looks out for you in Youth Group, asking questions when you grow quiet and fade into the background. She calls you little mouse and you pretend to find it funny. 

“Thanks,” you whisper. Your mouth is coated in sugar. The taste won’t leave your tongue; it nevers does. 

Later, with everyone high off fruit punch and chocolate, when the younger kids are playing with an old PlayStation in the basement, Betty looks at the five teenagers left and says with a trickster smile, “Today, I want to talk about sex.” 

A chortle reverberates through the group. Your stomach drops, some unquenchable void spreading through your muscles. Oh, shit. 

Betty grins, laughing too. She even encourages some more chuckle, drawing them out with her hands. Glancing to the sides, you manage to fake some small, nervous giggle. “I know, I know,” she says playfully. “It’s hard not to laugh. It’s this big, taboo thing no one can mention, right?” Betty doesn’t wait for an answer, but the group settles down nonetheless, paying attention. 

You look around. Are they intrigued? How much do they think about sex? Do they know the burning feel of pleasure, waving through tense muscles with relieving fingers? Have they— Have they seen someone’s face break into ecstasy, rough hand passing on a hard, leaking cock, swollen lips whispering the filthiest promises, cum spilling—

You shake your head to chase the thoughts away. You can’t seem to escape it these days, passing that fateful day at the confessional to the fine comb. Heavy breaths, tingling hands, throbbing cunt; it takes everything in you not to tease a finger over your growing need, starting small like he taught you. 

“But it’s important to talk about it. At your age, the world gets confusing,” Betty starts, suddenly serious. “There’s all these temptations, and these hormones, and it’s normal to think about it. To want.” 

Your heart smashes against your ribs. You’re afraid everyone can hear. Yes, you practically want to scream. I want. I want.

“But,” Betty continues, and once again she offers this warm grin, spreading over her face like she is trying to coax people into this sense of safety, “It’s important not to act on them. Peter 2:11. Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. The war is human, but abstaining is the godly thing to do. As tempting as it might be, there will never be anything as satisfying as following God’s path.” 

But has Betty felt the burning lips of Matty Healy stealing secrets from her mouth, coaxing an insatiable appetite out of her tongue? Has she felt his callused fingers on her breast, pinching a sensitive nipple? Did he ask her to get on her knees, panting in the hot air? See if she manages to say no. 

Betty doesn't know how much temptation can satisfy. You cross your arms, falling back on your chair. It’s clear now that no one here has grazed the fingertips of damnation. 

“Timothy 2:22. Flee also youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. The Lord tries us all in different ways, but listening to his preachings and surrounding yourself with fellow followers is the only way to go. I promise that whatever desire you think you want will never make you feel anything other than dirty and guilty, whereas abstinence, although maybe harder and less tempting, will leave you proud and realized.” 

Dirty. Guilty. Forsaken. Disgusting. Stained. Rotten. It spins in your head. You’re merely the idea of a girl; inside, you’re nothing but darkness, coursing fire smothered under the ashes. 

Maybe she’s right. 

Of course, Betty is right. But there’s this constant ache between your thighs, begging, pleading. Would the depths of hell at least take you out of your misery? You’d drown in its murky waters, surely, lost to the voice of God and His merciful hand. 

But at least you wouldn’t burn anymore. 

“Does someone have a question? This is a safe place: feel free to be honest.”

Samantha, a detestable try-hard with pursed lips and a haughty nose, raises her hand. Betty nods towards her. “I don’t have a question, but I would just remind everyone of Corinthians 6:19. You surely know that your body is a temple where the Holy Spirit lives. The Spirit is in you and is a gift from God. You are no longer your own. It’s important not only to abstain from impure relations with other people, but also yourself.”

You hold back a roll of your eyes.

“Great point, Samantha,” Betty says, and of course Samantha practically beams from her corner of the sofa. “You must treat yourself and your God with respect.” 

Your nails dig into your upper arms, faintly scowling. No one here has ever touched themselves. They don’t know. 

They just don’t fucking know. 

—

Matty is in your history class. He scribbles in black sharpie on his desk — three spots to the left and two back from you. You feel his presence, some sort of magnetic pull you can’t explain. 

Indulgently, you wander a guilty eye over to him. He’s beautiful, face pulled down, slight frown as he concentrates on some desecrating piece of art. One single curl falls on his forehead. You wonder if it tickles him. You remember the feel of the loose, dark mess between your hungry fingers. Your stomach clenches; you’re starved. 

You look at him and he doesn’t look back. His lack of heavy stares feel purposeful, thick in the tense space between you. You’re a ghost to him, a stranger. Sometimes, you daydream of standing up and doing something outlandish. Dance, flip off a teacher, slap his desk, get completely naked. Just to get his attention. Just to make him acknowledge that you’re there. 

It’s silly. It’s wrong, even. You’ve sworn to stay away from Matty Healy in all your evening prayers since that fateful day in church. You mean it—echoes of needy groans and wet skin and she’s coming, she’s right there—most of the time. 

You’ve been touched by the mark of Satan. You fester from the inside, rotting around your bones. You can feel it. 

You turn back to the teacher, penning down the new dates on the blackboard in your pink notebook. You bite the end of your stylo when you’re done, crossing your legs, kicking one just to feel that faint, tantalizing rippling up your thighs. 

It’s part of you. You can’t unroot it without killing everything else. 

—

A pink, fluffy towel wraps around your body. You sit at your vanity, brushing your wet hair, staring in the mirror. The girl stares back at you. 

You frown a little, arm dropping down. Cocking your head, you pass a hand over your right cheek, watching it grow red under your fingers. You press at your collarbone next; handprints of bright white on your skin, then nothing at all. 

You stand from the bench; not a chair, your mother says it ruins a posture. Facing your mirror, you drop the towel. 

There’s a naked body in front of you. Inches of silky skin. Red-toed feet wiggling in the carpet. Legs licking up to hips. A stomach, clenching and unclenching. Peaked breasts. You take your hand— and it is your hand— and spread it over your belly. 

You climb up to your breasts, cupping them. You descend them back down your ribs, dancing on the bone. Your waist expands to your hips. You press into them, into the curve of your ass. 

Finally, you cover the apex of your thighs. The hair tickles your palm; the heel of your hand presses into your clit. You try to ignore the strike of pleasure, although you can’t stop yourself from biting your lip. 

With a single finger, you dip into your pussy. Not even to be impure with yourself. Just to feel the warm entrance, growing faintly wet under your grazing touch. 

It’s my body, you tell yourself. You take your finger out, sucking on it. It’s my body.  

—

You find Matty Healy smoking behind the bleachers. There’s a football practice faintly happening beyond it, balls being kicked around on the fluorescent green grass. You ignore the coach’s metric whistle and the resounding cheers from lovestruck girls. You approach him carefully, hands shyly tucked behind your back. 

You forget what to say. You forget the mere existence of bisyllabic words standing in front of him, a lazy cigarette between his ringed fingers. “Hi,” is the only thing you manage. Matty jumps in surprise, raising his eyes from his dirty sneakers and settling them on you for the very first time in weeks. 

Dark brown, nearly black things. They don’t warm at the sight of you. You didn’t even know they could be so frigid, meant to cut apart— or at the very least bleed. All your nerve endings are aware of him. You gulp, blinking away his knifing glare. 

Finally, he blows a cloud of smoke out of his mouth. “Hey.” Monosyllabic too. At least you feel a little less silly. “What are you doing here?”

What are you doing here? You don’t even know, spotting his dirty frame in the corner of your eyes and feeling your feet moving before you could think anything else. You’re there now, with barely your wits about you, and you can’t help that sinking feeling that you’re about to be eaten alive. 

Why would you ever think you’d be anything but prey to Matty’s biting teeth? 

“I wanted to talk,” you say, because that feels the most safe. 

Still, Matty scoffs, taking a new drag of his cigarette. You wonder if your meat catches between his teeth. If he picks your flesh out of the gaps when he’s done tearing through you. 

“Don’t talk for too long. I could bring you down to hell with me, isn’t that right? Ruin you?” Bitter words spat in your face. Your eyebrows rise. 

For the first time, you’re hit with the fact that Matty Healy might actually be hurt. By you. That he’s a boy, a confused teenager kissing a girl, and not some horned serpent luring you to your doom. It demystifies him. Drenches him in normalcy. 

You clutch your cross, softening your stare. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” 

“Whatever,” he rolls his eyes. “Big bad atheist is forsaking you. Bo-ring.” It’s mean. Cruel and careless. Still, it’s easy to see through him. 

You take the lashing out, smirking at the hit. It’s obvious to you now how open he is, how clear the emotions read across his forehead. How could you have ever wondered what he was thinking? It’s right there, to pick and cherish, to hold between your palms. 

It would mix with the stain of you. Your dirty hands would be indistinguishable from his dirty thoughts. Two spirits catching at the edges, blending into some messy art, wrong and off-putting and yet undeniably beautiful. 

You want to hold him. 

You’re afraid he’d pass through the crack of your fingers like water. Gone before you could bend and sip an indulgent mouthful. Gone before you could let the taste linger in your mouth. Gone before you could swallow him and stick him in your throat. 

Would he leave? You cock your head, considering him. Where would he go?

You feel the ground shift beneath your very feet. The Earth must spin dusty seconds slower. Oxygen must be lighter, dangling your head just slightly over your neck. That’s right, you must be entirely headless. 

“Matty,” you sing with your own saccharine smile, taking a slithering step towards him. 

His jaw ticks, watching you carefully. You stop barely a few breaths away from him, staring him straight in the eyes, unflappable. How good to look at him without shame, without manually blinking between the seconds. 

“You’re not ruining me.” You smile some more, teasing and playful and perhaps just a little bit seductive, if you can manage that at all. Leaning into him some more, you whisper conspiratorially, “I can do that myself.” 

Matty looks away, shaking his head. You spot some faint blush spreading across his cheeks. You bite back a giggle, something overjoyed and overpowered striking through you at the very sight. 

Your hand, ring-free but still sporting that splash of damning scarlet, reaches out for his. You trail two fingers over his, grazing the metal of his index. His eyes snap to the spectacle, engrossed by just the tips of you. You smile victoriously, kidnapping his cigarette. 

With a vague gesture of your hand, you say in a botched raspy tone, “You know, we're all really alone in life, and religion can't save you, and God is a huge dick.” You end your grandiose declaration with a drag of cigarette, blowing the smoke out in his face. You smile proudly as he laughs at your antics. 

The gray disperses around you, finally revealing him. He’s grinning warmly down at you. “Is that supposed to be me?” 

“Nah. Just generally a big bad atheist.” You make sure to coat his words with cheeky taunting which he rolls his eyes at. 

“You’re not funny.” 

“You laughed.” 

Stuck, Matty quickly changes subject, leaning back on the metal structure to peer at you from above. He crosses his arms. “I’m surprised you didn’t cough.” 

You shrug, staring down at the burning cigarette between your fingers. “Maybe it’s not my first cig.” 

When you look back at him, his eyes have grown dark, burning again with that fire that’s become indistinguishable from him. How good to see it again. You feel it seeping under your white sweater, tickling your ribs. You want him there, tearing the bones from you. 

Matty cocks his head. “Is it?” Again, you just raise your shoulders with an air of mystery. He smirks, something dangerous to the edges. Here’s not the boy, but the animal, flashing his teeth like he could sink them in your throat. “What would your God say about that?” 

You hum, refusing to look away from his tense stare. There’s much less teasing when you say, “Probably something disapproving. But then, we all have our vices.” It’s not your fault. Your breath’s caught in your throat. Your head spins, warning bells you delightfully ignore in a back corner of your brain. 

To distract the slight tremble in your hand, you bring the cigarette back to your pouty lips. You take a drag, but it goes badly down your throat, and you cough in the elbow of your other arm. Your cheeks blaze. You peer at him tentatively to find him smirking at you, condescending and smug, clearly having found the answer you so craftily avoided before. 

You scowl, mostly in warning, but that does not stop him from opening his mouth. “Gotta suck it like a straw,” he taunts. His smirk grows wider, more like a grin, “Or a c—” 

“Okay,” you blush further. Images of his— and you on your knees, finally obeying his request, praying real real hard for— You twirl the cigarette in your fingers, feeling the red spread across your face. You mumble, “Don’t be crass.” 

“I thought you liked that.” Must he be so cocky, so detestable. Must he make every cell of yours aware of him, every inch begging for his skin, must he raise your temperature to a feverish degree? Matty seems to read right through you. Perhaps he, too, sees the emotion written across your forehead. “Yes, if I recall correctly, you really, really love when I’m crass. Almost made you com—” 

Your eyes snap to his, daggering him with a glare you don’t mean. You have to stop yourself from rubbing your thighs together, chase that sinfully good reverb to your wet pussy. Triumphant, Matty leans into your ear, breath grazing the sensitive skin as he whispers, “I didn’t even scratch a tenth of the things I want to do to you.” His hand lingers over yours.

In an instant, he’s snapping away from you, stolen cigarette between his fingers. Matty takes an easy drag, pouring the gray cloud over your face in retaliation. A shit-eating grin reigns over his lips.

He’s beautiful. Your insides melt like syrup. He’d try to grab your hips and he’d soak through, sugar sticking on his palms. 

“Save it,” you say finally, taking one step away. You smile. “I like a surprise.” 

He snorts. “I thought I was disgusting.” 

“No,” you shake your head, rolling your eyes like he was very silly, “I said I was.” Giving him a purposeful onceover, you smirk. “Or at least I could be.” 

—

You rub the ringless knuckle with two fingers, still feeling the memory of a ghost on your skin. Kneeling at the end of your bed, you pick at your nails. You think of what to say, of prayers to mouth in the evening. You’ve been sinning, you know this. Forming an hubris, leaning into desires, smoking— smoking with a boy who smirks and pours gray clouds out of his lips and looks you up and down like he could swallow you whole. A boy who’s Matty Healy, a proud sinner, a reckless atheist. 

Still, you kneel at your bed and you find most of your head empty. Your bedroom door is cracked, letting a shine of light pass through. Your father walks; you hear the monotonous steps, loud and heavy and regular. Instinctively, you close your eyes, muttering nothing to yourself. 

“Goodnight, sweetie,” your father says, peeking his head through. You open your eyes in false surprise. 

“Oh, goodnight, Dad.” 

“Sleep well,” he says, and you nod curtly. You’ll dream of filthy things. Scandalous mirages. You’ll imagine skin and hips and breasts; fingers and lips and cock. Licking and biting and devouring. He can’t stop you. 

You grin, bright and wide. “Thanks. You too.” 

Your father keeps the door ajar as he leaves. The hallway light is still on. Your mother is downstairs, busying herself with the dishes. You hear the soothing sound of the running water, a faint hum of a song. 

Beside you, someone knocks at your window. You frown, twisting around, coming face to face with Matty Healy’s scrunched body as he peers through the glass, a smirk on his lips. Your eyes widen. You jump to your feet, heart beating in your chest, looking around like your father would pop through the door at any moment. 

Grabbing the handles, you slam the window up. Matty grins lazily at you, unworried in the face of your clear stress. “What are you doing here?” You whisper-yell to him. 

“Wanted to say hey,” he shrugs easily. 

You blink at him. “At ten PM?”

“You know, it’s still pretty early for us deviants.” He pointedly peers past the window frame, coming back to you with an arched eyebrow. “Can I come in?” 

You bite your lip, flipping back to your half-opened door, to the floating sound of your mother’s song. You should say no. Nothing good can come out of seeing Matty Healy, especially at this hour. 

But a low hum of thrill rings in your belly. Your heart slams in your chest, singing, alive for the first time in too long. You’re electrified, hyperaware. You’re never catching sleep now. 

Fuck it, you think, because you can swear in the sanctity of your own mind. You tiptoe to the door, slowly shutting it. You’re diligent, twisting the doorknob to make sure not a single sound travels back to the kitchen. When your mission is done, you turn back to Matty, a proud, victorious smile on your lips. He grins back easily, already standing in your room, dirty sneakers on your carpet. 

“Hey,” Matty says. 

“Hi,” you answer, hands twisting behind your back. It is impossibly teenage-like. You almost feel like a caricature of yourself. 

“So this is your room?” He continues, speaking softly as to not alert your parents. You half-believe your mother really could magically sense the presence of a teenage atheist boy in her house. Some sharpened instinct for sin. 

“It would appear so.” 

Matty walks in your room, faintly tentative in his steps. He looks around, taking in your vanity holding scattered bottles of perfume and lotion, your gold full-length mirror, the glued flowers to your walls, the fluffy carpet dirtied by his sneakers. The twin bed with pink sheets. The bible on the nightstand. The crucifix watching over you. You flush, looking away embarrassed. 

“Cute,” Matty says. It feels almost derogatory. Cute, like a little girl, someone you coo at and pat the head of fondly. Someone that’s empty brained, not smart enough to follow his wild wordvomit, the boundless theories haunting his mind. You scowl. He seems to see through you, chuckling easily. “I like it,” he insists. 

“No, you don’t.” 

“Well,” he grins. “It’s a little pink for me.” 

“Shut up.” You shake your head, huffing a laugh. 

Matty takes off his shoes, sitting down on your bed. He scoops himself up, resting his back against the wall. A spike of nerves strikes your stomach, but it spreads nicely through your limbs. Between your thighs most of all, clenching around nothing. 

A boy in your bed. How strange. 

“What were you doing?” 

“Praying,” you answer in habit. 

He arches an eyebrow, grabbing your bible. He flips through the pages, half-curious and half-sneering. A small defensive thing beats in your heart. You frown at him. “What were you praying about?” 

“Just—” Now you’re caught off-guard. There’s much valid answers spinning in your head. Peace, health, family. But there’s an insatiable need in you to knock him off his pretentious pedestal. Shake him to his core, just so he knows the ripples passing through your soul whenever he decides to smash into your world. “Sex.”

This definitely shakes him. His hands freeze around the bible, eyes snapping back to you. There’s no shock, per say, but something darker. It calls to you, climbing up your spine. “Oh?” 

You smile. You barely register the step you take towards the bed. “Yes. I’ve been really bad, getting all mixed-up in my impure thoughts. I just had to pray the lust away.”  

Matty inhales slowly, watching you like he could eat through your flesh. You see his chest rise in quick successions. A devilish smirk teases at your lips. “Does it work?” His voice is surprisingly even. 

You sigh. “Does it ever work?” 

His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows thickly. God, he’s so easy. “Why don’t you show me?” 

A playful look through your eyelashes. “Yes, Father.” His breath hitches in his throat. Matty grips the bible like a lifebuoy, and, oh, isn’t that just deliciously ironic?

You fall to your knees under his mesmerized stare, elbows resting at the end of your bed, fingers interlocking together. Spine comically straight, eyes innocently closed, you’re a caricature of a devotee. 

You hum, licking your lips. “Lord, I’m sorry I thought about that boy again.” You relish in the breath of air choking from his lips, half a gasp and half a groan. Your eyelids tingle, begging to take a peek at his reaction, but you know your little act requires your eyes closed.

With a fake frown of guilt, you continue, “I shouldn’t have thought of him bending me over my desk in the middle of history class. I shouldn’t have thought of everyone watching us as he flipped my skirt up.” Definitely a groan, low and gravelly from his sinful lips. “Should definitely not have thought of him fucking me in front of all these students— and the teacher, of course— until I’m cockdrunk and drooling on my desk.” Another muffled sound. Rustling of jeans and sheets. You smirk, incapable of keeping the innocent schoolgirl act, devious as you say, “Lord, I’m so sorry I considered touching myself in class thinking of—”

Matty caresses your hair, following the curve of your jaw, gripping your chin between his fingers. You snap your eyes open, breath stolen from your throat. He towers over you, godly, knees siding your elbows. It’s suddenly not funny at all. 

“I forgive you.” 

And then, all of a sudden, you know what it’s like to be clean. Your soul frees of the soil; of the dirt and grime and mud tacking your bones. Your fingertips buzz, carpet-burnt knees forgetting the pain. 

Your head nuzzles in his hand, grinning. Matty’s thumb grazes your lower lip. Instinctively, your mouth slips open, practically inviting him in. 

His thumb dips inside, pressing meanly on your tongue. You suck on his finger, staring up at him through your eyelashes. His ring tastes like metal in your mouth. Something in you loves it; craves the aftertaste of blood. 

Matty breathes heavily, lips parting. Dark eyes discombobulating you. Your head feels slack on your neck. He slips away from your mouth. Drool coats his skin. It dries on your cheek, thumb rubbing it tenderly, hand spreading on your jaw. 

Your eyes are locked with his, almost mesmerized by the dark pupils. You want to drown in the murky waters. That must be where hell lies, alive and rustling. 

Where you want to dive, lose yourself in the intangible. 

Matty smirks down at you. Like he knows. Like he reads the thoughts on your forehead. Little mouse practically screaming your filthy thoughts. 

“You’re quiet,” he says almost matter-of-factly, like an observation he just realized. The smirk betrays him, broadcasting the gleeful cruelty in the words. I’ve shut you up is unsaid, but much felt. 

You resent it. You want to scream, to be heard, to crash into his ribs and burst the bone. Of course, it’s when your thoughts roar the loudest that your tongue curdles, useless in your mouth. Words escape from you, mind spinning with wantwantwantwantwant without needed direction. You’re a mess of a girl, more a tactless binding of contradictions than anything real— yarn and clusters and knots tying staggering opposites under skin. 

But you want, and isn’t it just great to allow yourself to? To desire, to hunger.

Words loose in your throat, you push yourself up from the ground with two hands spreading over his knees. He follows your biblical rise like an avid follower until you loom over him. He has to tip his chin to look you in the eyes. There is something inexplicably thrilling about it. Power surges up your spine. 

Your hands settle on his shoulders. Slowly; time is yours. Matty skips a breath. His fingers find the back of your thighs, a second nature, more a thoughtless impulse than any type of decision. His digging stare is still locked with yours. You wonder if he’s even realized he’s grazing your legs, dancing fingertips on the skin. 

Your eyes trail to his lips. Parted, gasping an irregular pattern, waiting for you. Red like he’s licked the blood off, trying to catch the last trace of you as he tears through your heart.

“I don’t want to be good,” you whisper, because he has to know. Because it has to be said. Because you don’t, and more importantly, you don’t have to. 

Matty smiles. His fingers hook behind your knees— whiplash from how present he suddenly is spreading from the still hot handprints. He tugs you into him, making you land squarely on his lap. You gasp as you settle, gripping his shoulders, digging in the cotton of his washed-out shirt. 

“I don’t want you to be good either,” he says, bending his head towards you conspiratorially, like telling you a secret. Your heart slams against your ribs, calling for him, for his lingering touch, burning even when he’s gone. I want you, I want you. 

You try to catch your breath, to grab onto your heart with two hands and tell it to settle down, but it’s not enough. He’s seeped under the cracks, loosened the knots. You’re embarrassingly wet, dripping for him even if he’s barely given you more than a brush. 

“It’s settled then,” you say with much bravado, traveling your begging hands to his nape, scooping your hips to sit closer to him. You smile playfully, leaning into him. “I’ll be very disgusting.” 

Matty cringes, letting go of your scraped knees. Fear grips you— you act on instinct, taking his wrist and puppeteering him to your waist, wrapping him around you, interlacing him before he can slip away from your fingers. “I want you,” you say, crystal clear. 

Matty considers you, perfectly controlled if it wasn’t for the betraying blush pinking his cheeks. Two fingers dip under the hem of your pajamas, thumb rubbing at your rib, pinky resting on your hip annoyingly still. It ripples in your body, toes curling like some prophetic foreteller. You throb around nothing, biting your lip. 

His other hand ghosts over your collarbone. The non-touch is still enough to race your poor heart, drunk on the presence of him. He watches your breath quicken, chest rising and falling, then flips to your eyes. “Do you really mean that?” He asks, unsettlingly serious. You nod, once again lost for words. His fingers skislope down the bone. 

He lands on the cross dangling from your neck, sitting perfectly straight on your chest, the crowning ornament of a paper girl. Your breath catches; the world stops. He arches an eyebrow at you, hooking into the gold chain. “Do you really mean that?” 

Turning points, life forking in two like the tongue of a snake. Possibilities on the tip of your teeth, so close you can taste it. 

“I want you—” Catching the chain, he tugs you to his lips, siren to your sailor. Your mouths lock, frenzied delight spinning around your neck, scrambling any remaining wit. Yes, you think, parting your lips, finally.  

You sigh into his mouth, from relief or pleasure or perhaps the vertiginous feeling of standing on the cliff of the unknown, unstable ground rippling under your feet. But Matty is solid under you— your hands rack through his curls, softer than you remember them, gripping the tangible, the steady. 

His hand at your side digs into your hip, drawing you square on his hard cock. You gasp, rolling your head, lingering in the first electroshocks of bliss biting into your limbs. Like jumping into cold waters on the hottest day of summer— shocked from the contrast, giddy from the refreshing cool. You grind into him again, a happy laugh spilling from you. 

Matty doesn’t waste opportunities. He finds your neck, leaving open-mouthed kisses on your pulse. He climbs up to your jaw, biting then licking away the ache. You shiver, trapped between his arms.

The cross rests in the center of his palm still, pretty and cool. He could tear it apart if he wished. Tear you straight to the bone. Instead, he runs a thumb over the metal, over the bloody edges of you. You drip on him, wax candle melting from his flame, but you can trust he’ll lick it clean. 

You take him by the cheeks, drawing him back to your lips. You’re already panting. The room blurs around you; your hip exists because he touches it, because it’s him that does it. You roll them against his, reveling in the choked groans from deep in his throat. 

Matty lets go of the cross, finding your breast instead. He pushes down your camisole, revealing your peaked nipples. The back of your mind half-thinks of being self-conscious, but he pinches one, rubbing it, making you moan, and suddenly there’s no thoughts at all but his name. His mouth rips from yours. He bends down, licking a nipple with an expert tongue. A strike of pure ecstasy waves through you. Your fingers twist into his mane, encouraging him, furiously humping his lap. 

Matty can’t make his mind up— he vacillates between wanting to devour your tits, biting the underboob meanly, kissing it better; between watching your face as you whimper, frown digging in your eyebrows as you concentrate on not making much sound; between kissing you, tongue slipping through your lips; between wrinkling his face close, letting himself get washed in the euphoria. 

In the end, he twists you, laying you down on the bed, him over you. It’s a practiced maneuver— you want to scowl, but he settles deliciously between your thighs and now you’re too busy rolling your eyes into your skull. 

“Beautiful,” he says, short-winded, flicking between your face and your untidy body, pajamas barely covering any flushed skin. You redden, chin dipping shyly. 

Matty burrows underneath your tank top, uncovering your skin inch by inch as he slowly climbs up your waist. His calluses dance on your ribs, branding iron to your vestal body, something to linger when he’s gone. You breathe harshly, staring up at the ceiling, trying to stay very still. 

He passes the shirt beyond your head, hair falling through the neck. He throws it over the bed carelessly, like it didn’t exist now that you weren’t wearing it. 

It’s not like it was occupying its function as a shirt before, more a bunched belt around your waist than anything. Still, you feel self-conscious, uncovered like this in front of him. Topless. Naked. You have the impulse to cover your breasts, hide away from his baring stare. It tickles at the back of your mind. 

“I wanna hear you,” Matty whispers, ghosting up your stomach, eyes following his hand religiously. “You had so much to say before.” 

You wrinkle your nose, shaking your head. It’s all impossibly real. You don’t know how to do any of this. 

Matty smiles reassuringly. “What do you want?” He spurs you on, thumb finding your nipple and circling it. You moan, arching into his palm. 

You don’t know what you want, you just do. Everything. Anything. As long as it’s sinful; as long as it’s worth the damnation. 

“Angel, what do you want?” He whispers in your ear, biting your lobe, unwilling to let it go. You try to contain a shiver, but your legs still part instinctively for him. He smiles at that, something crooked to it, something raw. 

“I’m not an angel,” you say petulantly. 

He’s hard between your sticky thighs. An atheist is kissing your neck where the chain meets the skin. You’re— You’re in your goddamn childhood bed, on the fluffy pink sheets you got for your ninth birthday for Christ’s sake. Nothing about you is innocent, or pure, or angelic. 

You’re poisonous, and dirty, and hungry.  

Of course, Matty doesn’t seem to agree. He pouts condescendingly at you, trailing the tip of his fingers—callused and hard worked and meant to burn, but oh so gentle on your belly — lower, near the waist of your pajama shorts. 

“Is that so?” He says, overly cocky and teasing, practically mocking the very words out of your mouth. Still, you nod. At that, he smiles wider, shadows catching his teeth. “Well, prove it.” 

His hand meets the band of your underwear. You stop your eyes from rolling inside your skull, from scrunching your face in pure delight. You want to see him. See him as he watches you, licking his lips, following every rising chest and huffing lips and trembling thighs. See him as he takes you in, as he stares like he wishes to memorize the very edges of you, like he wants to swallow you whole. 

God, you want to be consumed. 

Your nails dig into his shoulders. You push. “I’ve done my evening prayers,” you say with a moan. “Your turn.” Matty laughs, but he’s going down your body obligingly. 

His lips graze your skin with head-swooning attention. He kisses down your neck, pressing a demure peck on your cross, like handshaking the Lord. A blush reddens your cheeks. 

Your chest heaves, trying to quiet down your screaming heart, the overwhelming anticipation spreading through your body. Every particle of you is aware of him, of what’s coming, and you sense an incriminating flutter invading you. Your thighs close around his waist, softly grinding onto him, biting your lower lip. 

Matty kisses the top of your breasts, gently biting your nipples. He’s diligent on this part of your body, lingering there happily. You can’t seem to swallow down the striking pleasure, quietly whining as he sucks and licks and twists. 

Your mother must be downstairs still. Your father is only a few rooms over.  They could hear, or worse walk in, find you half naked with a boy between your thighs. What would they think? What would they say? What would they do? Scrub your skin off under the burning shower, scrape and scrape until you’re raw, as though you could ever forget the memory of his lips on you? A furrow dents your eyebrows harshly. You bite your lip, relishing in the pain spreading down your chin. 

You can be depraved as long as you’re punished for it. A taste of sin if it slashes down your throat. 

You’ve barely grown accustomed to him that he’s gone already, moving down your waist, ribs a xylophone to his tongue. A small line of hair scatters over your belly. He follows the path, lips floating over your skin. You flex under him, excited and nervous and impossibly hot. 

Matty kisses just above the hem of your pajamas, hand digging into your hip. He looks up at you and inexplicable pleasure grips you. He’s— He’s majestic. Better than some God; prettier, too. 

Dark eyes, red lips, frenzied hair. You rack through the mess of curls, tugging as encouragement. He’ll make doom worth something. A dust of a moment traded for eternity feels awfully fair when he’s looking at you like this. 

Matty’s fingers hook into the shorts. He pulls them down your legs, scratching the silky skin as he goes. Once again, the scrap of fabric is thoughtlessly discarded as soon as it slips out of your feet. 

You’re in your underwear. In front of Matty Healy. You take a few seconds to attempt to wrap your head around the fact, but it’s nearly impossible with his tough fingers climbing back up your shaking legs, approaching your thighs. 

Need throbs inside of you. You crave him. 

“Is this what you wanted?” He says, approaching the apex of your thighs. 

You moan, face clenching, toes curling in the idea of what is coming. Your body holds its breath, anticipation running down its veins. Something about this moment is inherent; your mind barely understands the implications, but your legs retain the memory of a pleasure you’ve never had. Remaining sins from Eve herself. This is millions of years in the making. 

“Love, is this what you want?” 

You huff, resting on your elbows to look at him. “No,” you bite. “I want more.”

Matty laughs, kissing your hip bone just above your underwear. You choke on a breath, shiver dancing up your spine. “Like this?” He whispers, cheeky and teasing because he knows it’s not. 

Your hips rise towards him, falling back uselessly. “No.”

He hums, finding the twin bone, giving it a sweet mirror kiss. You whine, head rolling in frustration. “How about this?” He’s so proud. 

“I want—” You sigh, words fleeing down your throat in a cruel game of hide and seek. The chasm of the unknown reels under your toes. You frown. “I want—” 

“Yes?” Matty bites your hip, smiling knowingly at you as he licks it clean. 

You stare at his dancing eyes, at that damn curl of his falling across his forehead like lightning, at his tongue, pink and soft and— “I want you to lick me.” You’re too proud to be embarrassed at the dirty words. The idea already calls to you, spinning deliciously in your head. Matty grins at you. You push his head, hand still firmly tucked in his hair, lining him up to your center. “Just—” You moan as his chin bumps your ignored clit, “ruin me.”

Matty doesn’t need to be told twice— thank God. He slips your underwear off your legs. You have no time to grow shy at being completely, entirely exposed because he’s pushing your thighs open the next second, licking your clit. 

Your hips jump. A cry slips your lips. You slap a hand over your mouth, heart racing. Again, you can barely finish wondering if your mother heard that Matty is sucking on your bud. Thankfully your palm catches the moans freefalling thoughtlessly from your mouth. You can’t seem to hold them back— it’s beyond reason, beyond you. It listens to the heated bliss soaring through your limbs and nothing else. 

You’re the apple and the snake and the first woman. You’re multitudes stretching under your skin. You’ve got a man between your thighs, eating you. The thought doesn’t seem real, although his tongue proves otherwise, languid and sure and flicking. 

You can tell he’s following the same rhythm he ordered in the dark box of the confessional, ironically close to a priest prescribing penance for mortal sins. Slow and gentle and teasing; meant to boil your blood, get you begging. 

As though you’re not dripping on the sheets for him. As though you’re not dizzy with want. As though you’re not holding back screams. 

Still, he licks and sucks at your clit, swiping and circling on the nerves. He cruelly ignores your entrance clenching around nothing, practically weeping for him. His nails dig into the meat of your thigh like he wants to, though. Like he has to stop himself from doing so. 

You’ve never had more than a lick of sacramental wine, but you feel drunk already. The bed is your island, spreading across the world. Sweat sticks your hair to your forehead. You grind into him desperately, chasing that syrupy ecstasy coaxing through your veins. What is the point of blood? You’d rather live off the sweetness. 

You rack your fingers through Matty’s mane, brushing it back from his forehead as though he needed to see to best work. “Matty,” you say, high-pitched and desperate, “please.” 

“You just had to say, pet,” he whispers, coming out of your thighs out of breath, slick coating his chin. You flush, thinking of why. Devoted, he throws one of your legs over your shoulder, diving back for more. 

Thumb rubbing at your clit, he runs his tongue over your folds. “Fuck, Matty—” You bite into your lip, face scrunching to keep in the visceral words screaming in your mind. 

This is what people have been hiding, keeping firmly locked behind rings and hushed whispers, spelling it out so you wouldn’t put the letters together. Endless euphoria waving, razing, ravaging. You get it now. 

It’s too much power to give to a girl. Because that’s what you are, in the end. Just a girl. 

Matty laps at you, burning tongue finding the apex of all your desires and rubbing a frantic rhythm against it. He moves purposefully, knowingly, as though he already learnt all the secrets even you haven’t discovered. 

Your head rolls back. You bite your hand, tearing through the palm lines, crushing under your teeth whatever future a fortune teller would’ve read in the fated dents. The path bursts; you’re soaring through the sky— or perhaps freefalling. The two feel awfully the same, heaven and hell intertwined until you can’t distinguish which cardinal point you’re following.

Pornographic, sopping sounds ring through the room. He groans against you, reverberating in your cunt. You clench around his tongue, hips flapping wildly. Pressure builds in your belly. Your limbs tense, electricity coursing through the lines. “Matty, I—”

Who are you to wreck God’s perfectly curated plan? Still, you tug at Matty’s curls, grinding into his face, heel digging into his back. Ecstasy wipes your mind clean.

“I know, angel,” Matty moans. He ducks back single-minded, licking into you with a frenzied passion. Quick and strong, thumb pressing on your clit meanly; he devours you. You feel feverish. You feel sick. 

You’re on fire. 

Let you burn down. Catch the sheets, the fuzzy carpet, the whole goddamn house. You’re tired of smothering fire, like a fickle flicker of flame wouldn’t bring it back in an instant. You want to blaze. You want to melt. 

Infinity smears your tongue. You are but a body, and it breaks apart. 

You bite your palm raw holding back a scream. Euphoria erupts under your skin. The yarn rips; you fall apart on his tongue, scattered sins bursting around the room. You tug at his hair cruelly, the last remaining hold on reality as your vision blurs. 

How good. That is all you think for a blink of a moment. How good. 

The debris settles around you. You lay in ruins, catching your breath, laughing softly. This is a fucking orgasm. 

All those talks of sin, of flesh, of ashes. Of apples and girls and flames. All those prayers you’ve done, fingers intertwined as you mouthed false promises. All the guilt you’ve carried with you. For existing, for wanting, for being a girl with a body. 

You should feel dirty. Matty Healy has just eaten you out until your brain leaked out of your ears. You should be disgusting. 

Instead, you feel oddly free. 

Matty peeks out of your legs, face wet and dripping with you. He wipes at it. You finally let go of your tyrannical hold on his hair, brushing away the strands as an apology. He frowns, asking worriedly, “Are you crying?” 

You pat at your cheeks, finding the telltale tears. “Oh,” you say, somehow surprised. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess.” You wipe at them furiously, flushing under his baring stare. How embarrassing. 

He settles beside you, tucking your side onto him with a lazy hand on your waist. The contact is reassuring, somehow. You nestle into him closer. “Why?” He says, trailing a finger on your skin. 

“Just—” You blush harder, looking away abashed. “I don’t know.” 

“Did I…” His eyebrows furrow further. Your heart jumps. 

“No,” you say, wide-eyed. “You were great. It was—” You wrinkle your nose, suddenly ashamed to be talking about all this. Like he wasn’t buried between your thighs just a few seconds ago. “It was really good.” God, you just don’t know what to say. “Thank you,” you add, unsure. 

Matty laughs. “You’re welcome, love.” He runs a hand through your hair, tucking a strand behind your flushed ear. “What is it, then?” 

“I guess—” You bite your lip, trying to find words for something instinctive, thoughtless. “I was just really happy. And free. Like I’d broken through something.” You shake your head. “I don’t know. It was my first time, obviously. It’s… new.” 

“Good new?” 

You smile at his tentative words clearly searching for validation. It makes you a little glad. That it’s not just another day for him, certain and cool and all knowing. That there’s doubts just like you, some pubescent anxiety. 

You nod. “Good new.” 

Although you mean it, something in you still spins with nervosity. It’s new; freeing and hot and fresh. But it’s also new; strange and different and unknown. Now your thoughts are filled with questions. If he liked it too. If you were too loud. If you weren’t enough. If you tasted bad. If you looked good. If you should have done more. If he expects more. If he likes you. 

If it’s it, then. If you’re forsaken. If there’s no going back now. If you should feel guiltier. If you should care less. 

There’s no wrong way to feel, yet it seems you can’t find the right one either. Your brain goes through gymnastics, finding a new worry to latch onto, volleying between contradictions. 

You are free. You are guilty. You don’t know how to reckon with either. 

Matty seems to sense the overthinking smoking out of your ears. His fingers graze down to your naked hip, drawing a slow pattern on the skin. “What?” He breathes in your ear. 

“Nothing,” you shake your head. 

That’s what you want to feel. Nothing. His calluses press on your skin. You feel your walls flutter, already awoken by his ghosting touch. 

You know a way to get there: mind wiped blissfully clean. With a purpose, you hook a hand behind his neck, tugging him back to your mouth. Matty sees you coming, lips parted in readiness, tongue slipping in hotly. 

You moan against him, already feeling yourself boiling under your skin. It’s an instinctive reaction. He’s barely licking into your mouth that you’re already in a frenzy, heart slamming against your ribs for more. 

You comb a hand through his unruly curls, scratching at his scalp. He shivers against you, letting go to breathe a relieved groan before finding your lips with renewed fervor. You like the power it gives you. You repeat the movement over and over, relishing in the smallest reactions you can coax out of him. Not a marble man; he crinkles just like you. 

He spreads his hand under your back, drawing you to your side, titling his head to kiss you better. His fingers dance on your spine, unshy and learning. You feel awfully naked, all of sudden. Laying in your childhood bed, bare other than the cross still dangling from your neck, now tangled somewhere in your hair far from sight. With a boy who’s very much dressed. 

Attempting to rectify the situation instead of having another spout of anxiety, you sneak your fingers under the hem of his shirt. He’s warm and familiar. You’ve somehow learnt the shape of him in the one time you indulgently held him— or perhaps it’s been all those dreams you’ve replayed over and over. 

Still, you’re excited to stop touching blindly and see. Climbing up his chest, you raise the band tee, feeble and immaterial in your greedy hands. Matty leaves your lips, shortwinded as he reaches behind him and tugs the shirt off. It falls in the sea rumbling beneath your bed, lulling you softly. 

He tries to bend back to kiss you again, but you halt him with a hand on his shoulder. Your stare rakes across his chest; skinny and lanky; faint, forgotten scars you know the feel of by heart; a delicious trail of hair feathering down his stomach; a tattoo kissing his skin. Your heart squeezes in your chest. He’s magnificent. Your lips burn, needing to touch him, to lick down his belly and feel him tense and flex for you. 

Your eyes snap back to his. He’s grown almost self-conscious, blushing under your gluttonous peer. You relish in the sight, licking your bloody teeth. You want him, through the flesh and bones. 

“You’re pretty,” you say finally. 

Matty shakes his head, chuckling. “You can’t call a man that.” 

You pout meanly at him. “Big bad atheist can’t be pretty?” 

With an exasperated roll of his eyes, Matty bends to your neck, kissing just under the jaw. His hair tickles your temple. You giggle cheerfully, letting him push you back into the bed. “Will you ever let me live it down?” He whispers, hot breath blowing on your electrified skin. You shiver, growing wetter just at that low tone of his. He knows this, smirking as he leaves a burning path down the curve. 

You hum, trying to gather some sort of wit. “Depends,” you say, but it already falls short, considering how out of breath you sound, practically purring. “Are you gonna start believing in God?” 

Matty snaps away from your neck, propping himself on his elbow as he watches you with affront. You can’t help laughing, wrinkling your nose as the sheer offense on his face. “I’ve got some great quotes underlined if you want,” you add playfully, pointedly looking at the bible resting on the bedside table. Quite precariously too, half of it hanging in mid-air from Matty’s careless throw. 

Matty gets on his knees, staring down at you unflinchingly. Like this, towering over your still laying body, he almost looks godly. “Yeah?” He says, grabbing the bible, cracking it open. “Should we read some right now?” 

You would usually love a chance to rip apart Matty’s skull. Find the unhealed wounds. Teach him words to plaster over. But he’s shirtless, and pretty— to hell what you can call a man, and you’re naked and wet. 

This is not the time for bible reading. You want his mouth busy with something else. 

Of course, Matty is already squinting at the pages. “Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.” His voice was made for music; it comes melodic out of his mouth, like a tempo, like a harmony, like a poem. He looks up from the pages, staring down at you with an arched eyebrow. 

You blush, suddenly hyperaware of your peaked breasts lying openly for him. “Of course you would fall on Song of Solomon on your first try,” you mutter. It’s like sin calls to him, some singing on his fingertips when he runs through the pages. 

He snorts. One hand leaves the weathered hardcover, instead grazing up your thigh. You can’t stop a shiver, feeling the hair rise where he touches. Instinctively, you spread them— just slightly, an unconscious reaction reverberating to your legs. Still, Matty smirks, proud and knowing. 

“You know, you might be onto something. This sounds like my kind of book.” And then, to prove his point, he recites, “Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread abroad. Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.” How dirty pious words sound from his profane mouth. How he twists the shape of them, warps their meaning. Matty, again, looks up to your reaction, shit-eating grin cracking his face. “I think we just got done with that.” 

You flush even harder. Your head spins with memories— not daydreams, not fantasies, not vestiges from your slumber, but memories, real and undeniable. His head between your thighs, licking into your cunt, starved and gluttonous. You throb uselessly, dripping on the sheets. “It’s not—” 

Matty’s climbing fingers find your cunt, and suddenly you have no words to say. You gnaw on your lip, whining through the shocking wave of bliss hitting you. He gathers your telltale wetness, as though to prove some sick knowledge that you’re enjoying this. That he’s tearing through your beliefs with nails and teeth. 

That you won’t ever look at those pages the same again, just like you can’t catch a peripheral peek of the confessional without straightening in your seat. 

An opportunist, Matty spreads the slick to your clit, rubbing the tender thing slowly. You moan, throwing your head back, dropping your thighs completely open for him. His calluses, rough and mean, are heavenly on your bundle of nerves. 

“Do you want more?” 

You’re not sure he means fingers or passages, but still, you open your eyes, whining, “Yes.” You raise your hips to his palm, falling back on the sheets with a pout. “Please.” 

Matty stops. You clench around nothing, unsatisfied. He flips through the pages, slick fingers drying on the bible’s hardcover. You want to look away— it’s filthy. But they’re so long, spindly and wide-knuckled, and you can’t stop staring. 

Matty finds a page, balancing the bible on his forearm as he finds your upper thighs again. “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other animal that the Lord God had made.”

You almost want to roll your eyes. How cliche. But Matty is teasing a finger against your wet entrance, and you’re rolling your eyes for a much different reason. 

Matty lingers in this moment, circling your clit with his thumb. He watches the spectacle, following his hands, your cunt, your breasts, your face religiously. 

Swallowing harshly, he continues, “He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” 

You nod, encouraging him on. For further argument, you wrap your own hand around his wrist, grinding softly into his fingers. Matty licks his lips, distracted again. 

One finger enters you. Slow, to make sure you get used to the feel. Your face scrunches close to hold the cries in. Your cunt flutters with pleasure, begging for him, for more. He’s much longer than your own, but there’s barely any resistance. It’s still not enough to completely splinter you, unravel you to sweet nonexistence. 

Slithering around his wrist in a vice-like grip, you feel the need to tell him, “I want more. Please, Matty.” 

He thrusts in and out of you languidly, sopping sounds resonating in the quiet room. Your neck goes slack. He doesn’t seem to get the crux of the request, however, because he bends back to the book, “The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said ‘you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” 

You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree. You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree. You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree. You shall not— But it’s too late for you, isn’t it? 

You’re famished. 

You press his hand into you, locking with his dark eyes. “More.”

Finally understanding, Matty dips a second finger into you. This time, the stretch is uncomfortable, wider than you’ve ever known. You frown at the new feel, trying to clench and unclench to get used to him. He’s patient, waiting, rubbing a delicious pattern on your bundle of nerves to loosen you up. 

“You’re so good for me,” he whispers, and your lips grow slack with a proud smile. 

When you finally feel ready, you grind into his palm. Matty thrusts his fingers, curling them just so. You’re losing your mind, organs pushing against your skin to make place for the invading ecstasy. It’s poisonous, eating through your veins, but you must bottle it up. Being quiet is the most sadistic torture you’ve ever know. 

“But the serpent said to the woman,” Matty’s rhythm falters as he focuses on the words again, “‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’” 

Your legs kick wildly on the sheets. Matty is unwavering, steady and consistent, fingers fucking into you. Your free hand, not knowing whether to grip the sheets or rack through your sweaty hair, finds his knee instead. Your nails dig into the jeans, like he deserved punishment for making you feel like this. Good and evil. 

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food,” Matty’s breathing is hitched, stuck somewhere in the back of his throat. Words come out rough from his lips, yet still just as poetic, just as holy, “and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.” He smirks at his emphasized words. 

Like you don’t agree with a full heart and a full mind. Like you don’t crave to take a bite of him. 

Like you don’t want to consume him and be consumed by him. 

Like you’re not letting him defile you with the Lord’s words coating his tongue. Like you’re not needing that very tongue. 

Licking his teeth, Matty stares at you. Can he see the thoughts spinning through your mind? Can he see you? “She took all of its fruit and ate.” And you did.

God, you did. 

You can’t take it anymore. You reach for him, dragging him back to your pleading lips. Again, Matty throws the bible beyond the bed, uncaring for even holy texts. How easy for him. To make religion stop existing— something for the rest of the world, but not these sheets, not you. 

He lets go of your mouth, panting above you. Faster, not to chase some quicker end but to watch your face break apart for him, he thrusts in and out of you. It’s sinfully good. You claw at his bare shoulders, glad to have some skin to sink your nails in. 

You want to leave him permanently changed. Scarred. Because you will be. God, you will be. 

Moaning against his lips, heart beating to the rhythm he fingers into you, brain surely melting out of your ears, you hear a knock at your door. 

You gasp. Eyes comically wide, you freeze in the bed. Matty goes still inside of you. 

“Honey?” Your mother calls, sounding worried. 

Your eyes flip to Matty, sending him an alarm call. He looks pointedly to the door, nudging his chin towards you. You miraculously understand. Racking your throat, you say, “Yes?” It comes choked out of you, clearly out of breath, and you cringe at the fact. At least it’s an answer. 

“Are you okay?” She continues. “I heard a thud.” 

Your face wrinkles in annoyance. Matty sighs above you. That fucking bible. How comical that it’s this and not Matty’s literal tongue between your thighs that will bring your downfall. 

“I’m fine,” you say. “I just— knocked something over.” 

After a torturous moment of silence, time and destiny hanging in the air waiting for the final blow, your mother finally answers, “Okay.” 

God is real. Some higher above is watching over you if, for the first time in your life, your nosy mother chose to drop a line of questioning instead of following it to its fatal end. Your eyes find Matty, grinning in surprise. You have to stop yourself from giggling giddily. He smiles back, nosing your neck. 

He moves between your legs again, a slower rhythm, building back to what once was. Pleasant tingles spread up your belly. You frown, biting down a wait or a moan. Your mother can’t be gone yet. She pesters incessantly. Although, if you were to make a noise, she would definitely burst into the room, nose sniffing sin. 

You’re right. “Well, go to sleep soon. It’s late.” You dagger Matty with a stare, trying to send him a telepathic message. She’s there. She’s right there. 

But Matty just smirks against your jaw, curling his fingers perfectly. You arch your back, slapping a hand over your mouth. Fire courses through you, pleasant and all-consuming. 

“Uh-huh,” you manage, spit out between two smothered groans. 

“You need your beauty sleep,” she continues on, always one to martel a point home. “Remember those dreadful eyebags you had a week ago? We don’t want a repeat of that.” 

You were studying for a test, but that reply is too lengthy to come out of your trembling lips. Matty is now shamelessly thrusting into you. He’s risen to his elbow to properly see you struggle through monosyllabic words, like watching you tortured was a personal pleasure. 

Stress and pleasure coaxes through your body with this twisted excitement. Something sick in you likes the idea that your mother is right there, one door away. That if she found you in bed, getting fingered by a filthy boy who laughs in church, she’d faint on the spot. That you’re spitting in her face and she doesn’t even know it. 

You won’t have a wink of sleep. You’ll sport the eyebags proudly. 

Smiling, your legs close around Matty’s hand, trapping him there. He’s so fucking smug and proud, bending down to suck at your nipples. You want to scream. You need to. He’s so— so perfect. If God is real, he made him for you. Built him out of your rib. 

“Yes,” you manage out difficultly, sticky and ill-fitting out of your mouth. 

“I put some spoons in the freezer to help with the puffiness. Of course, nothing is better than prevention.” You can practically hear your mother nod to herself, snobbish and all-knowing. “Good night’s sleep is the best makeup, that’s what I’ve always said.” 

Matty smiles up at you as he bites on your nipple. You roll your eyes, holding back a laugh. “Yes.” Your eyes dig into his dark stare. Yes, yes, yes, yes! is what you mean. 

“Well, I will leave you to it then.” Your mother finally declares. “Goodnight, sweetie. Sweet dreams.” 

Matty’s thumb swipes at your clit in a frenzy. “Night!” High-pitched, transforming into a cry you cruelly kill behind your palm. 

When you hear the steps diminishing in the hallway, you slap Matty’s shoulders. “Asshole,” you bite, but the insult loses all meaning when you’re laughing, rolling your hips into his hand. 

“D’you reckon she knows the ‘sweet dreams’ will be of me?” 

You up your nose. “That’s awfully presumptuous of you.” 

Matty laughs, rolling the both of you. He lays on his back as you straddle him, fingers still firmly buried to the knuckles inside of you, hand practically sprouting from his jeans. It’s— It’s phallic, sort of. You blush at the new position, at the feel of his actual hard cock pressing into you, too.

To get you going, Matty’s free hands dig into your ass, puppeteering you to grind into his fingers. You roll your shoulders, shiver dancing down your spine. White heat coils in your belly. 

“Am I wrong?” 

And he’s not, of course. But you don’t want to just let him win. 

Hips rolling on his palm, clit deliciously hitting his wrist, you hold yourself up with two hands on his chest. “There’s a lot of profane men out there.” 

A displeased groan leaves his lips. He wipes his face clean of telltale emotions, cocking his head at your far too proud grin. “Is there?” He whispers dangerously, eyes twinkling. Your belly flexes, some sick thrill at the sight of him, of what he could do. 

To egg him on, you nod eagerly. “Tons. Enough to make my head spin.” 

Matty reaches up, hooking his fingers into the cross tangled in your messy hair. He frees it, letting it dangle between your collarbones, dancing to the sinful rhythm of your hips. He watches the show for a second, enthralled by the necklace, breasts bouncing as you— you ride him. 

Because that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Fucking yourself into his fingers, chasing some new mind-wiping orgasm. Peering down at him through your eyelashes, with his swollen lips and his unruly halo and his dark eyes; some fallen angel orchestrating your dive. 

“D’you think about them a lot?” You can feel him set the trap, dropping pomegranate seeds for you to follow between each word.

“Oh, all the time,” you lie, smile loose and languid on your flushed face. 

Matty’s smirk cuts through his face. “And do they make you wet like this?” He lingers in a quiet moment to prove his point, the sopping sounds of your cunt ringing through the room, heavy breaths harmonizing. You have some leftover decency to blush. “Do they have you purring and dripping on their hands? Moaning so sweetly for them?” Your throat closes on itself, attacked by waves of dirty pleasure. You clench around him, shamelessly scorching for him. Robbed of words, you manage a nod. “Yes?” Matty repeats. Smaller, distracted by the resonating bliss throbbing inside of you, you nod again. 

His voice goes low, rough but implacable. Meant to be listened to, to be obeyed. “Well, that’s not very pious of you, is it?” 

A rush of euphoria. You shake your head fervently, still thrusting into him. “No, Father,” you whimper.  

He cocks his head. “What shall I do with an impure girl like you?” Your eyes close, letting a wave of rapture swim through you. How good he makes the words sound— not mean, not real. 

You hit your hand beside his face, bending over him. It hits a new spot inside of you, sweet moans falling through shamelessly. You grab his free hand, spreading it across your bare throat. 

Matty groans at that. His fingertips dance on your skin, repositioning correctly over your arteries. “You sure?” He pants. 

Again, you nod eagerly. “I want you to.” To unexist. To unmake. To unravel. To unlearn. 

Matty digs his fingers into your neck, pressing meanly. Headrush, pure and saccharine. Your lips part in bliss, eyes rolling in your skull, hips rolling into him. The world swims around you, soupy, lazy. The tips of you burn. You want his handprints on your collar like some branding iron. Want to be his, want to be known.

Matty lets go of you. The world snaps back to reality all at once. You've never been high either, but this must be awfully close to it. Everything is frenzied, electrified and crazed. Exhilaration strikes through you. You laugh at the contrast. You flutter around his fingers; he curls them into you, like an unsaid good girl, some physical sort of praise. 

“How many guys could do this to you?” His hand still ghosts around your neck. 

“Only you,” you say, revering. “It’s only ever you.” 

A flash of elated grin splashes across his face, but it’s wiped clean for a cruel pout. “Oh, poor little girl,” he tsks. “You lied to me?” 

“I’m sorry,” you say, taking his hand and trailing it up your lips. Staring down at him, unflinching, unwilling to blink, you suck him into your mouth. Your tongue swirls around his fingers. He groans, head falling back tortured. 

“What shall I do with you?” He says roughly. It seems like a genuine question, like he doesn’t quite know. You giggle, laugh choked by his digits. You revel in the fact. To overwhelm Matty Healy himself. To be too much girl, too much hands and skin and hips. To wrap around him. 

Freeing him with a ‘pop’ sound, spit sticking between your tongue and his fingers, you bring them between your thighs, joining its hardworking twins. Wet and crowded, he rubs at your clit instinctively. 

“That’s not quite a punishment now, is it?” He smiles at that. Your free hand presses against his shoulder again, straightening your spine. He’s at a very focused spot between your legs, but you still feel him everywhere. On your stomach, your breasts, your neck. Under your very skin. Everywhere he’s touched, everywhere he’s merely grazed— hell, sometimes you almost believe he’s lodged himself under your lungs, breathing with you.

You shake your head. Feverish elation spreads through you. “Don’t want to be punished.” 

Matty softens at that, toffee eyes growing warm. You could sink into them. “No?” 

You don’t. And, better, you don’t even know why you should be. Why be punished for wanting? You might be a poor collection of sins stretching under a girl, but the names of them fade from your mind as quickly as his thumb swipes at you. Faceless monsters. Unfanged. Uncovered. 

You can have everything you want. You deserve to. 

Staring at him, you grin shamelessly. “Can you eat me again?” 

Matty has never seemed happier than to do anything. For a profoundly rebellious person, he smiles at your demand, boyish and eager to please. You expect him to roll you over, but he takes you by the thighs instead, pulling you over his face. 

You kneel above him, hovering awkwardly, unsure of where to rest. What if you break him? 

You tell him as much, to which he answers, “Well, what a way to die.” 

You roll your eyes. “I’m serious.” 

“Don’t worry, love,” Matty smirks, although you can’t really see it when your cunt is blocking the vision. “I’ll haunt you afterwards. Let you know which one of us is right.” Something in you secretly likes that. That he’d linger for you, seep into your routine. 

It hits you almost in surprise. That some part of you might actually like him. Beyond what he makes you feel, beyond the taboo, beyond the serpent smile. 

You don’t have time to meditate on that. He distracts you instantly, peering at you as he whispers, “My choice fruits.” He turns his head at that, kissing your thigh. 

You laugh, a small shiver grazing your spine at his tender lips. “Shut up,” you say, amused, still chuckling. 

Soft and chaste turn into open-mouthed kisses, wet from his tongue, which turn into a bite, sucking at your skin, licking it better afterwards. Your breathing quickens. Excitement drips down your ribs. (Although that might be your heart. You barely can feel it anymore, a small miracle considering how fast it’s racing.)

Your eyes roll back. Something catches your stare— it snaps to the crucifix hanging above your bed. Jesus Christ himself, nailed to his cross, nailed to the wall. Your savior, all-knowing, all-loving. He died for your sins, and this is how you thank him. You swallow thickly. “He’s watching us,” you whisper.  

Matty’s eyes rise to the cross. “Good,” he answers, careless, impossibly nonchalant. You’re glad for him. For ease. “Give him a show.” 

Matty’s hands pull you down to him. You fall on his mouth, moan ripped out of you as you collide with his burning tongue. It’s already working at you, singleminded, passionate. You’ve been teased for long enough— you know it’s a short matter of time before your end, especially with the fervor Matty licks into you. 

Legs spread around his face, he’s swallowing you whole. His hands dig into the flesh of your thighs, blunt claws leaving crescent moons on your skin as a starved groan graces his hungry lips. Your head rolls back, stomach flexing with need. 

Your hands rack through his hair, grabbing a fistful just to tug on it. Your hold is fierce; you soothe the burn away with a thumb, rubbing at his forehead as your fingers wreck ravage on his curls. 

Breathless, scattered moans fall from your lips. The strangled cries, stifled to the best of your abilities, make him buck against nothing. You would feel guilty at that, at taking and taking and giving him nothing in return. Unfortunately, your brain is working overdrive just to remember your own name.

You rock carelessly against his face. You’re unafraid of breaking his neck, chasing your promised release with acute precision. Your clit rolls against the tip of his nose, strikes of euphoria licking up your spine every time you find just the right angle. His tongue laps at your entrance, thrusting inside. 

This is heaven. You do not rest on some material cloud, do not grow feathered wings and shiny halo. You sit on a man’s face and you whine oh, my God. You make it sound sacred. 

God cannot blame you for your blasphemy; if he made this tongue, he understands. 

Your eyes flick to the crucifix. You could say sorry. You should say sorry. 

Instead, they fall back on Matty. Locked with his dark gaze, you rub against him, chanting his name. “I’m— I’m right there—” 

Gently, he bites on your clit. Slash of ecstasy tears through your stomach. It ripples down your limbs, biting through the flesh, leaving you bloody and scarred and, oh, fuck, you’re coming. 

Gripping his curls vengefully, slapping a hand over your mouth, you scream. Your head loosens from your neck, parts of you discombobulating and reattaching in under a second. You break on his tongue. The proverbs were right— it’s a poet’s greatest weapon. 

Once again, you float a moment into the sheer idea that you can. That you did.

Breathing heavily, you unmount him, laughing to yourself. He takes a gasp of air, but he’s just as languidly satisfied as you. Sticky chin shines with the moonlight. 

“That was—” You shake your head, lost for words, falling on the bed beside him. 

“You’re welcome,” he says smugly. You push his shoulder, shaking your head. 

Suddenly, you realize you haven’t— he hasn’t— It cuts through the daze. You blush, a little embarrassed, a little unsure, a little nervous. You rack your throat, frowning. “Do you want me to…” Your eyebrows rise meaningfully. 

“Oh,” Matty exhales. He blushes, too. “Um, no. I’m… taken care of.” 

You can’t control your eyes dipping to his jeans curiously. There it is— wet patch on the front, no trace of his hard cock. Your cheeks redden further, but something in you is unbelievably proud. 

You’ve made Matty Healy come in his pants. Can you add that to your list of accomplishments? 

You roll to your back, trying to hide the self-satisfied grin. You rest your head against his shoulder. “You know, in second grade, they told us the white marks on our fingernails were signs we had committed mortal sins.” You don’t know why you say it. It bubbles out of you, beyond your usual tyrannical filter. 

Matty sighs, racking a hand through the sweaty locks. “Jesus Christ.” 

“Yes, it was he.” He snorts at that. 

His shoulder pushes your head up. “Well, let’s see them, then. How many sins have you got?” 

You flaunt your nails, raising your arms over your heads. Matty narrows his eyes, inspecting the handful of white marks dusting your fingertips. He takes one hand, interlocking his fingers with yours, bringing it down for a closer analysis. The flutter spreading through your stomach is different than usual. 

You watch his side profile, suddenly desperate to memorize all angles of him. He throws you a playful glance, teasing, “How many of those are about me?”

You scoff, ripping your hand away as he laughs. “You’re a child.”

“No, no. I’m truly impressed.” He grins. “You got more than me.” He shows off his hands in turn. Blunt nails, cut too short, roughened by guitar strings, but practically spotless.

“Well, maybe I’ll be the one corrupting you.” 

Matty rolls over you, pressing a kiss on your lips. “I’ll take it with open arms,” he whispers, then leaves another one, just a little longer, a bit more wistful. Against your mouth, he says, “Forsake me, angel.” 

You shake your head, nose wrinkling. “That’s an oxymoron.” 

Matty rolls his eyes, nearing your lips again. “Stop talking.”

You gasp, cheerfully crying, “The roles really have reversed!”

But he seemed to mean it when he said stop talking, because he doesn’t bother with an answer. His mouth finds yours, hand holding onto your jaw as he draws secrets out of your wanton lips. It’s slow, devoid of the frenzied rush you’ve spent the night in. It leaves you floating, dazing, thoughts incoherently blurring away. 

“I should go,” Matty declares, breaking away from you. Your heart pinches. 

“Yeah,” you nod along, more to convince yourself than him. “I should get some sleep or my mom will freak about eyebags.”

Matty laughs, then surprises you with a kiss on your forehead. Of all the places his mouth has been, this is where you feel him burning the most. “Goodnight, angel.” 

He rolls out of bed, catching his discarded shirt and pulling it back on, slipping into his sneakers next. You're sad to see him like this; put-together, balanced. Throwing the window open, he sneaks out, leaving you with only one last heated look. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, you think once he’s gone and the room still smells like him. Your thighs are sticky with your drying juices and sport— you look down at them to make sure and, yes— a purple hickey with the shape of his lips. You're naked, ravaged, undone. And he's walking the streets right now with the taste of you still on his tongue.

Your eyes fall on the crucifix still towering over your bed. There’s really no going back, is there?

[mareastrorum]

and 8.? Very related, might be the same thing.

1. the character everyone gets wrong

It's hard for me to gauge how many people actually hold a particular fandom opinion about a specific character. A lot of the C2 characters fit here, as do some C3 people, so I'll go for one that isn't discussed as often.

I think a lot of people get Caduceus wrong because his arc was fairly subtle in the stream. He went from a passive believer in the Wildmother to a cleric acting upon the world in her name. In the beginning, he was always looking for signs and waiting for someone to tell him what to do. He liked that.

But in a world like Exandria, Caduceus needed to become someone who would make decisions and choose a path, and he did. He was the first one to learn about Cognouza. He insisted on learning more about it. In every discussion, he insisted every time that it was aberrant, wrong, and had to be stopped. Early Caduceus never would have done that, but by the time the Nein got to the end game, he was ready for it.

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

I'm going to be honest, I almost went with a tamer answer, but this is the "choose violence" ask game, and it’s Indigenous People’s Day, so here's the answer that's going to invoke carnage.

The Nine Eyes of Lucien was a terrible book. It sucked for many reasons, but the key one that has soured more as time goes by is that Brevyn Oakbender is a white savior.

First: what is a white savior? A white savior is a trope in western media where a white character saves a minority character (or a group) from the plight of being naturally inferior. It’s been around for a few hundred years now, and it gained prevalence in the U.S. in the slave trade era. A more well known historical example is the poem The White Man’s Burden, which was one of many works justifying colonization because white supremacists reasoned that was how indigenous peoples could be included in the modern, proper, Christian culture of whites. For those who don't want to click links, here's the first stanza of the poem:

Take up the White Man's burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child.

Man, that sure would be on the nose for tieflings, wouldn’t it?

More recent works involving the white savior trope tend to focus on middle-class white characters (especially women) acting charitably towards minorities (especially Black characters) as a way to highlight how good white people are for fixing the problems minorities face. Most importantly, there is little, if any, criticism aimed at white characters or the systems of oppression that benefit them and which caused the problems in the first place. Instead, those social ills are typically reframed as failures by individuals, who are also conveniently minority characters. It's just that the "it's because they're not white" part isn't said aloud much these days.

Not every white character in a story about minority characters is a white savior. The purpose is what matters. Characters are narrative devices to tell a story, so why is this white character in the story? What do they add to the plot, characterization, and themes? If the white character is constantly portrayed as superior and benevolent towards the inferior minority characters, and the plot progression is directly tied to the decisions, actions, and roles of the white character, then that is a white savior story. A lot of stories about white people standing up to racism, bigotry, and systemic oppression tend to fuck this up because the creators choose to make the white character the hero. White savior stories are about how great white people are, not about the minorities they deign to help. It is not something an author does accidentally. It takes effort to structure a story that way.

In all honesty, this trope tends to fly under the radar because most audiences just aren’t examining things critically or from a critical race theory perspective. I wasn’t even sure that had been what I’d read until I read through TNEOL a second time the following week. I first noticed this because each time I read a derivative work of any kind (even licensed ones or adaptations like novelizations), I am extremely critical of new characters. Why did the author add someone new? What does this character add that could not be achieved with pre-existing characters? There is always a reason for it, and it’s not always bad, but that reason informs my opinion of the work overall.

In the case of Brevyn Oakbender, the only unique trait she added that could not have been achieved with a pre-existing character is that she is blonde, blue-eyed, light-skinned—white. Literally everything else about her personality, behaviors, roles, and actions could have been achieved with any of the other Tombtakers because almost all of their facets were unknown in canon.

If Brevyn was only supposed to be a self-insert, it really wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Representation is generally a good business decision in media, especially when the target audience matches with that background, and—let’s be real—white people are more likely to buy books featuring white people. While I won’t presume to map Lucien onto any particular minority group, a tiefling with purple skin and red eyes is definitely not an analogue for a white character, and neither is Cree, a black-furred tabaxi. While Tyffial, Zoran, and Otis are arguably white (lighter skin tones, specifically), they are also “other” enough (elf, goliath, halfling) that it wouldn’t give some white audience members that same feeling of having a main character who they can reflect themselves onto. But, wait: why not use Jurrell? The only thing set in stone about Jurrell was the name and that they had died after Lucien (which wouldn’t be too hard to set up as a tragedy appropriate for the book). But Jurrell isn’t a very white name is it? Enter an Aryan girl with a clearly white first and last name. If that was all there was to it, I’d have chalked that up to PRH setting expectations to achieve sales and not thought all that much of it. That level of incidental white race emphasis is just business in the U.S.

Except that in TNEOL, Brevyn is also responsible for every positive development in Lucien’s life and is the catalyst for the plot moving forward. Lucien only causes problems and Brevyn solves them, right up until she dies for him.

Lucien’s canon backstory isn’t touched upon in the stream except for the most recent 2 years. The stream only covers that (1) he grew up in Shadycreek Run, (2) people were unkind to him because he is a tiefling, (3) he somehow joined the Claret Orders and became a ghostslayer, (4) he led the Tombtakers away from the Orders, which had become “clouded”, (5) the Tombtakers were active for about 5 years before Lucien died, (6) they did illegal acquisitions, bodyguarding, and thieving, as well as expeditions into Molaesmyr, (7) Vess DeRogna hired them to escort her to Eiselcross and the ruins of Aeor, (8) during that expedition, Lucien kept a book that Vess felt was rightfully hers, (9) after agreeing to a trade for the book, Vess DeRogna killed Lucien during a ritual to travel to Cognouza, (10) Lucien’s soul was shattered and eventually reconstituted once Molly died, and (11) he is the Nonagon chosen by the Somnovem. Everything else was implication at best or unknown.

As a prelude: It’s not reasonable to constantly attribute all plot developments to the protagonist. Overdoing it can come off as very “Mary Sue” because the protagonist would somehow be the only person in the world that can make change happen. It’s also a little strange for a character not to want to settle into some type of normalcy. Even in a TTRPG story, there has to be some goal, and it might be as simple as securing a “wander the world and do quests for money” type of life. Plot stagnation is about whether the story is moving forward, not whether the characters have something to do with their time. Thus, external forces must be a catalyst for changes in at least a few situations to avoid both Sue-ishness and plot stagnation. Among many options, new characters are often introduced to move the story along when an existing character otherwise would not take action. They might be a quest giver, a new ally/rival/enemy, or a new party member. Thus, it is perfectly reasonable to expect some plot developments to be attributable to characters other than Lucien even though he is the protagonist in the book, and it’s totally reasonable for a new character to come in and handle some of that.

So here are the plot changes caused by Brevyn:

She heals Lucien from a potentially lethal injury, and he falls in love with her at first sight;

Brevyn's mother provides Lucien with room and board (which had not been offered previously), thereby side-stepping all survival issues caused by being a poor, homeless orphan in Shadycreek Run;

Lucien and Cree join the Claret Orders based on Brevyn’s recommendation;

Lucien, Cree, Otis, and Brevyn leave the Claret Orders to work for the Cerberus Assembly (specifically, Vess DeRogna) because of a referral extended by Elias de Corvo specifically to Brevyn;

Tyffial, Jurrell, and Zoran—who had been squatting in Brevyn’s mom’s home—teamed up with the group to steal Brevyn’s mom’s bones from a crypt, and that incident is the reason they came together and are named the “Tombtakers”;

Lucien doesn’t lose the Somnovem’s book during a cave in, resulting in him becoming the Nonagon.

For a story where Lucien is supposed to be the protagonist, that’s an incredible number of key plot advancements that were directly caused by a supporting character. The same supporting character. The sole white character. That's also not getting into the little details like she's the reason that Lucien uses twin black scimitars, that he wears shirts to show off cleavage, that he likes butterfli— wait, I said I wasn't going to get into those details. Moving on.

Why weren't any of those plot developments a result of actions or choices by Lucien or any of the other Tombtakers? I’ll briefly examine each of those, because these choices matter. They weren’t made in a vacuum, but Roux insisted in her interview that she had broad leeway to do with the story as she pleased. She made conscious decisions about what the story would be. So what does that tell us compared to the alternatives she could have chosen?

The meet cute over a trap bomb was why Lucien was interested in Brevyn in the first place, and their romance was barely touched in the book other than some flirting and brief references to how Lucien felt about her. The result is that it felt like part of a checklist, which is disappointing given how much set up was done to explain why Lucien got a bomb to the face and Cree didn’t. We also know Cree as the cleric of the Tombtakers, but Brevyn is the one that heals Lucien. We could hand wave that away as Cree not yet developing those abilities, but there’s also the simple fact that blood hunters don’t have healing abilities. So not only does Brevyn have skills that the reader expected from a different character, she is also an exceptional character with abilities not available to others like her. And sure, Lucien could have fallen in love at first sight in some other way, but this set up emphasizes his carelessness and helplessness, and it establishes Brevyn's unique level of charity, empathy, beauty, and skills right off the bat.

Next, we address the fact that Brevyn and her family gave Lucien a modicum of stability. How Lucien survived as a destitute orphan on the streets of Shadycreek Run could have made for an interesting backdrop to a lot of character development, especially the negative aspects of his personality. The only real reasons not to use that to frame Lucien’s character development at that time are (a) word budget within the novel, and (b) what themes can be explored in that circumstance. By introducing a white family to house Lucien, the situation becomes “good-hearted white people extend a hand of charity to a murderous, reckless colored boy” instead of “destitute boy struggles to survive after escaping abuse and is refused aid because of racism.” Neither makes Lucien look good, per se, but one definitely makes white characters look good, and it saves on word count. It also conveniently lets Roux minimize the issue of racism in Lucien’s background.

Given that the Claret Orders is a secretive group, it makes sense that the most common way that anyone would be recruited is a chance encounter with an existing member. There is no LinkedIn or job board recruiting people to undergo a secret ritual and learn to fight monsters. Conveniently, Brevyn is already a member and was visiting her mother at the exact time that Lucien showed up with a hole in his face, and somehow, she came to the conclusion that referring him and Cree to join the Orders was a good idea. We don’t know why she thought that because the book didn’t elaborate. Another option could have been another character meets all three of them and recruits them together. Any of the other Tombtakers could have been used for that purpose, and it would even start the thread about how they fostered that connection into their eventual mercenary group. However, that might have required some exposition or side plot, and then Brevyn wouldn’t have been elevated over Lucien or Cree by age, experience, and competency.

Once at the Claret Orders, there had to be a reason that Lucien and the Tombtakers-to-be chose to leave. In the stream, Cree had said that Lucien led them away and alluded to some sort of disagreement between the group and the Orders, but that was done away with. Instead, Lucien languished at the Orders and had no plan for his future, then left once Brevyn received a job recommendation from Elias de Corvo, and she asked Lucien to come along. Why pass up the other Tombtakers for this? Why couldn’t it have been a job that turned into a new path? This retcon is particularly disappointing because Lucien’s acquisition of skill and experience as a blood hunter would have been a good point to seed character development, both for a coming of age timeline and in this early arc of the novel. However, this was another opportunity to cement how charitable and respected Brevyn is, and that was more important to Roux than any of the other threads to be explored in that section of the book. After all, Brevyn was recommended by the most famous blood hunter in Exandria to work for the most powerful group of mages in the empire, and most importantly, none of the other Tombtakers were—especially not Lucien. The white girl is superior yet again.

The Tombtakers’ group name is a pretty obvious reference to grave robbing, and the fact that Lucien was pleased to refer to the group as that in the stream suggests that he liked the name. It came off as tongue-in-cheek and demonstrated a lack of shame from each of the members. The origin could have been an inside joke, a petty rebellion against the need for a mercenary group to have names, or any number of reasons. However, the origin Roux chose is that the group formed by stealing bones from the Jagentoths, not because they actually rob graves as a profession, nor because of anything to do with pillaging the heritage of elves in Molaesmyr. After all, that would be villainous, and Brevyn—a white person—is a member, so the Tombtakers needed to be neutral or good, not evil. Thus it’s a kind-hearted mission to put a white woman’s remains to rest and help the grief-stricken white protagonist side character. Because the key part of white savior stories is that the white savior is good, and that cannot be maligned by a negative reference to grave robbing.

The problem with adding a new Tombtaker is that the character also needs to disappear before canon events and there needs to be a reason that no one refers to that person by name in the stream. Thus, it was obvious from the start that Brevyn would either leave the group on poor terms or die. The former would require more plot and word count, so it’s no surprise that we got the latter. Lucien discovered the Somnovem’s book in the ruins of Aeor, but subsequently the group had to flee a cave in. While running, Lucien (a dexterity-based ghostslayer, which is a subclass with the signature ability to literally move through solid matter—like a ghost) tripped, then Brevyn grabbed him and dragged him along (because we need to know that she is not only stronger than him, but she is also more agile and faster), and he dropped the book. Once they got to an apparently safe location, she ran back, grabbed the book, and was crushed by the cave in. Even Brevyn’s death was orchestrated to emphasize her martyrdom and consideration of Lucien, who inexplicably failed at the exact things he should excel at. Out of all the ways Brevyn could have died, Roux chose to have her die in a way that makes her look good and Lucien look incompetent. It couldn’t just be that he discovered the book that would doom him; his interest in the book had to get a white character killed before he ever opened it, which conveniently doubles as a justification for the Tombtakers resorting to villainy. Now there’s no need to explain why such a positive influence in Lucien’s life had not prevented any of the canon events. Instead, it implies that things wouldn’t have gone so badly if the white character had still been around to guide everyone else.

Of course, later, both Molly and Cree attempt to invoke Brevyn's memory to dissuade Lucien from his path as the Nonagon, because obviously there's no other positive role models in his life. In fact, they also argue that if he would just mourn her properly, that would help him realize he's on the wrong path—positing that even his decision to try to take over the world is also because of Brevyn. Specifically, the lack of Brevyn and Lucien's inability to cope without her. Finally, even his decision to stop the fight at the very end is also tied to her memory. The white girl isn't even there for any of that, and Roux made absolutely sure that we knew that every positive choice Lucien made or could have made was because of Brevyn.

There isn't a single decision that Brevyn made in TNEOL that was wrong unless we conclude that her decisions to help/save Lucien were wrong. Wow. Wait a minute. In fact, that's objectively correct. If Brevyn had just let Lucien die or not given him a helping hand at any point in the story, the whole plot with Lucien as the Nonagon never would have happened, and the world would have been saved by his sheer incompetence. Let me rephrase that: the only wrong decisions the white character made were to help the non-white protagonist.

WOW.

So, hey, if you are an aspiring writer who happens to be white, and you plan on writing a story about characters that aren't white, maybe don't insert a white savior. Just don’t do it. That'd be great if you could avoid being that blatantly racist. I would truly appreciate it. If you manage that, then congratulations, you have already managed to write a better story than New York Times best-selling author Madeleine Roux’s The Nine Eyes of Lucien, because at least you aren’t resorting to white supremacist tropes to appeal to a primarily white audience in the 2020s.

In closing, the common fandom opinion that TNEOL was a good story is wrong. TNEOL sucked, Roux is either racist or happy to use racist tropes for money, and I feel bad for the CR team that this is what they got for taking a chance on a villain novel.

Happy Indigenous People’s Day. :D

Choose violence ask game.

[dizzymoods]

[Link to original article]

I do not disagree with the sentiment expressed by Malm in this article nor in the excerpted quote. However, how it is expressed and celebrated is bothersome.

i was in middle school when the war on terror started. The use of "civilian" is not a neutral descriptor. "Civilian" has a connotation denoting whiteness, ascribed with a degree of innocence. Civilians killed by the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, [pick a country] are "collateral damage" not "civilians". We've seen israelis call Palestinian babies born in the months after October 2023, Hamas ie enemy combatants.

Almost all israelis are ex-colonial soldiers. How do we describe them as "civilians" when they partook in violent military action against Palestinians? Those that are not ex-idf still maintain the colonial society. Religious, pacifist objectors to service rarely renounce their citizenship. The idf, even if they brutalize these objectors, nevertheless protect their spot on the land — ironically the very reason for the punishment, "you're only here bc of us dummy". And then you have civilians, who may not be active military but become avatars of the colonial army when they call upon the idf to help them kick Palestinians out of their homes in the West Bank.

I met someone who is descended from the family who enslaved my maternal family. We are related and to borrow a phrase from James Baldwin, "my grandmother is not a rapist." Even though slave owners or settler/colonizers may not be official government employees, they authorize the state. We see this expressed in 1776 and 1948, for example.

Calling israelis settlers is not an indictment of their morality or an indication of the level of violence they've personally conducted. It is a descriptor of the violence inherent to their class position in the way bourgeois is. Calling them "civillians" is invoking a moral sentiment that the people they are colonizing, the Palestinians, are not afforded. Zionist rag The Atlantic literally said it is okay to kill babies the day before the firebombing of Rafah where we actually saw people burned alive and decapitated babies. That's one.

Two: Why are we re-litigating 7 October over half a year into a genocide?

"Critically" supporting Palestinian armed resistance 184 days and 75 years after Al-Aqsa Flood is a bit late, no? (Malm's original article was published on 8 April 24) So how is this statement exactly brave when people were supporting Palestinian armed resistance for decades? I mean Wu Tang Clan was rapping about PLO style 31 years ago. Chavez, Mao, Malcolm, the Panthers, Castro, Mandela, Shakur, Jordan etc etc etc have all supported not just the Palestinian cause but the righteousness of their armed struggle. Unequivocally, mind you. It's only been settler-supporters of Palestine that equivocate on this matter.

Liberal supporters of Palestine still wince at the celebrations of Al-Aqsa Flood. And of the Haitian Revolution and of the FLN, ANC, etc etc. They think it is a celebration of killing settler-"civilians". It's not. It's a celebration of the advancement of or the success of the liberation movement.

It sounds callous but everyone has a matter of fact relationship to violence. It's not cause for celebration. it's actually a tragedy. Violence is a sign non-violent means we're ineffective. It means the endurance people have of death without concessions has been exhausted.

The zionist Jabotinsky understood this in 1923. It doesn't matter if the jewish settlers are benevolent or malicious: there is a contradiction between the zionists who want to settle the land and the Palestinians who refuse to cede the land, which can only be reconciled through violence. And if the zionists were to be successful, he said they will need to ceaselessly employ offensively defensive violence to maintain their settlements. Hence the mowing of the lawn in Gaza every two years, the ever expanding settlements in the West Bank. Jabotinsky's analysis is 40 years older than Wretched of the Earth btw. Straight from the colonizer's mouth. So again, what is brave about this statement?

[edited for spelling]

[bizarre-blorbo-bracket]

Round 2 poll 8: Submitter's guitar vs Davis (Juror 8) from Twelve Angry Men

Propaganda under the cut:

Cherry (guitar)

Her name is cherry and she is a cherry red epiphone sg . i got her used for cheap. i like to personify objects, and like to have conversations with her. in my mind she has a personality, age, gender, favorite things ect. sometimes i mention her as "my friend cherry" to people i know i wont meet again.

Davis (Juror 8) (these are all from the single submitter)

a quick lil list babes, and I apologise for all of this in advance:

He's from the fucking film 12 angry men. like, aside from letterbox bootlickers and middle school hass students NO ONE has watched this film let alone care about it, it was made in 1957, is shot almost exclusively in one room and the entire film is just middle aged white men yelling at each other over whether some not white poor kid should be sent to the electric chair. what the fuck.

Henry Fonda, the actor, was 52 years old at the time of filming

Henry Fonda is the father of Jane Fonda, the woman who would revolutionise the 80's with her home workouts and her blindingly neon leg warmers.

His name wasn't revealed until the very end of the film and even then it's just "Davis."

I could honestly give him a lil smooch

He's absolutely not girlypop but he's the ally-iest ally who's ever allied

He's categorised as a "Benevolent Leader" on the Heroes Wiki

instead of the overwhelming urge for me to coddle him like most all other blorbos, i would appreciate it switched

I have a photo of him inside my saxophone case and sometimes i forget he's in there, then he creeps into my saxophone bell and when I play it he shoots out like a ballistic missile

Dude, on ao3 there's more fanfiction about the real life 80's British punk band The Clash than the entire film of 12 angry men, let alone Davis (80 fics come up under the clash, while 10 come up for 12 angry men)

I have a counter, and I've watched 12 Angry men a total of 145 times. The figure is up on my wall in tallies. whenever the number goes up, I like to watch it in 5's so then I can put another full group of tallies on my wall.

I have incredibly detailed stories about how Davis would boogie down to ringo starr's solo career, and they're written within the margins of a book called Tobruk written by Peter Fitzsimons. The only reason I reread that book is to wonder at my elaborate works of fiction

My HASS teacher was the one to introduce me to 12 Angry Men as he played it for the entire class. He gave us a set of questions to complete on the film and a few Law based questions as a little treat, and he expected it to be handed in the next day. What he didn't expect was an 11 page monster of a response that included social commentary, 4 paragraphs dissecting the character of Davis alone, deeply discussed comparisons between the landscapes of politics and law in the 50's to the present, and basically an entire point-for-point summarisation of the film, completed with obscure quotes from Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Presley (Elvis). He presented the printed masterpiece in front of the entire class to shame me.

After class he explained how his favourite Juror would either be 6 or 5, because 6 seems like a big dumb teddybear and he just liked 5. I explained how I liked Davis because he didn't want to send a kid to die, then he told me how Davis would make a good cowboy (at this point in time I was unaware of Henry Fonda's role in Once Upon A Time in The West) and I proceeded to go home and write a 3 part orchestral composition that I could pretend would play as the soundtrack to Juror 8: A Cowboy's Tale or something like that

I had started to make an animation meme starring Davis but only gave up when photoshop literally deleted itself from my laptop

I didn't even hear that Juror 8's name was Davis when I first watched it in class, somehow I only heard it on my 6th rewatch but when I did I literally got so excited I literally got winded and cried a little bit, I had to take a panadol because I got so lightheaded

I have learned the musical motif that plays throughout the film on saxophone, clarinet, recorder, guitar, bass, ukulele, piano and trumpet

I have visions of him

One of Davis' 3 children HAS to be gay and nothing can convince me otherwise

honest to god I'd be a home wrecker if it came to him

I quote not only Davis but the film a lot, and sometimes in the dead silence of all my friends I go on about how the old man couldn't have possibly made it to the door in such a short amount of time to see the kid running down the stairs (because the old man has a limp, and Davis proved it my limping around the room, which I have to say was incredibly attractive of him)

He's literally an architect

I once had a dream where Davis was in my bass guitar case when I opened it, and i literally just picked him up and started picking him like a bass guitar until I tried to play a full chord and he bit the hand that was meant to be on the fretboard. I dropped him and he fell on his ass, and when I said "what the hell dude what was that for" he said bass chords are lowkey ugly to listen to, and since then i don't like playing bass chords because now they're lowkey ugly to listen to. before this ordeal, i enjoyed them, but alas

i once got my romantic partner to write me a davis x reader fanfiction as a birthday present

my parents believe that Davis is my first celebrity crush, and while they're actually wrong it's still actually so embarrassing they believe that because OH MY GOD it's literally JUROR 8 FROM 12 ANGRY MEN

I've attempted slam poetry about him

I've eaten a paper printed full a4 size photo of his hand

I would also not mind him to be literally my father, but given the rest of the things I've just said about him that's really weird and I recognise that

[plurdledgabbleblotchits]

Excerpts:

"Case and Deaton documented an astonishing fact: unlike virtually every other demographic group in America (and other rich countries), the death rate of white, middle-aged Americans was rising instead of falling. And that this macabre trend was being driven largely by a rise in what they would call "deaths of despair" — from suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol abuse — especially in the population without a college degree."

"When Deaton first came to America in 1983, he recalls being gobsmacked by how indifferent his fellow economists were to rising inequality, and how ideologically opposed they were to government intervention in the economy.'

"I was appalled when one of my new colleagues (publicly) proclaimed that 'government is theft,'" Deaton writes. "I had grown up in a country where I, my parents, and our friends saw the government as benevolent, a friend in times of trouble, and I found it hard to believe that a distinguished academic could be so cynical and so libertarian. I still do not agree with his sentiment, but I have come to understand the extent to which state and federal government in the United States often work, not to protect ordinary people but to help rich predators make ordinary people poorer."

"Deaton writes that "the decline of good jobs" is a crucial driver of despair. "This decline, in response to globalization and, more importantly, technical change (robots), is made much worse in the United States than elsewhere by the grotesquely exorbitant cost of healthcare," Deaton writes. "Beyond that, when bad things happen and people need help, the safety net in the United States is fragmentary compared with those in other rich countries."

"In all this, Deaton sees economists as largely as complicit in the changes that have made life harder for millions of Americans. He argues that many (but not all) of the people in his profession have provided an intellectual legitimacy for a range of policies that have stripped away support for working-class Americans and forced them into an increasingly cutthroat labor market."

"They are apostles for globalization and technical change that have enriched an elite and have redistributed income and wealth from labor to capital, all the while destroying millions of jobs, hollowing out communities, and worsening the lives of their occupants," Angus writes. "And when confronted with deaths of despair, they blame the victims and those who try to help them."

(I get it... Donald Trump didn't come out of nowhere and he pandered to this MAGA demographic. I am sympathetic to a degree: they feel like they don't have anything to lose, by trying to shut down the government, and all the other stunts they are doing around the country. But the problem is they are out for blood and attacking everyone with the same vitriol, even people who are not their real enemies [like gay rights issues, and womens rights issue, and other minority issues, etc... using these groups as easy scapegoats, instead of correctly identifying the problem. The entitlement mentality of the dominant hegemony of white nationalism also plays a role in this dysfunction.]

In this, I think the MAGA people are being manipulated and being misled by those who want to confuse or conflate the real issues to service their own personal agendas.

And Donald Trump is a false Messiah for them. True, he tapped into the problem but used it for his own benefit and helped create the false narratives using these easy scapegoats to feed the flames.)

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

How do you feel when you come from a working class POC area and go into this middle class white area? To me it's like going into another world but I am interested to listen to how YOU see/feel. I go into this office to clean and all the people are white and they have wine parties??? They talk about cheeses? They all look pretty and smell expensive not like my whack ass victorias secret body spray lolll and it's SO inchhhhhrestiiiing seeing them interact. I wonder what that's like. How do you view them? Am i weird for being curious about them?

It is wild to me. Cleaning at a school is interesting because it seems to attract a pretty specific type of white woman to become teachers. I swear to god every time I get to work and see them gathered in the hall or something it activates my fight or flight because like, Well Dressed White Women Aged 30-50 are like, typically the worst people to come across in my experience, with regards to just entitlement and racism.

You might think that being a teacher might like, mean they're kind or understanding or something but nope. They're the type to leave passive-aggressive notes about how you missed something while cleaning or complain to your boss because there's a smudge on one of their mirrors. Hell, I try to be kind right, I smile and nod and try to say some pleasantries because I'm used to If I Am Not The Pinnacle of Benevolence and Nonthreatening then I won't be treated as a person. But like, straight up these women do not acknowledge me, at most they might do a white person smile, but usually they do not even react. One of them was leaving while I was gathering the trash, and I told her in you know, my Pleasant Soft Pitched Up Voice "Have a nice night! :)" and she like did not even look back and was just like "yeah." in the same tone and cadence one might say "whatever" and that's probably the most interaction I've gotten aside from a one woman who spoke to me like I was a child who didn't know English. (They do, however, chat extensively with my coworker, a white woman).

Like, I've had to clean and grab trash from rooms while teachers are in it chatting with each other about like, going to their lake house or like talk about getting their home renovated or going out to brunch and they literally don't even acknowledge my presence except for to move their leg slightly so I can grab their trashcan. I've accidentally walked in on meetings and nobody even seems to notice. When I take out the trash I can sometimes see like, boxes of fancy cookies they got for the class that would cost a whole day's pay at least and fancy coffees that they just dump in the trash and leave me to clean up or food or office supplies that are perfectly good.

I do feel you on how its really interesting watching them interact and what they talk about and just look at their belongings. I don't think its weird to think its interesting and find them curious lmao.

I'm kinda used to being in this position of being seen as The Help (i.e. invisible). It feels to me almost like I'm some sort of rogue or spy, infiltrating some strange place of high society. But you know, instead of sneaking in the shadows killing people and gathering intel, I'm just walking in plain sight and cleaning bathrooms lmao. But hey, gotta try and keep my morale up somehow, I'd rather feel like an undercover rogue than an underpaid custodian lmao.

[tyrannosaurus-trainwreck]

Probably 90% of this is the audience being raging sexists, but Jebus Chris, when you're writing one of these shows you do have a responsibility to be careful about shit like this.

You can't just write the one female character per five male characters as your Consequences Police and go, "I don't know why fans are like this :(" Especially if it's your only female main character.

If you have a character whose main role in the story is to be an obstacle--not even an antagonist! just a thing the main character always has to find a way around to get back to the story!--then you have to be careful not to be like, "This is The Bossy Sister The Nagging Mother The Bitchy Wife Susan. She's here to stop the main characters from having too much fun or being too cool, because that's what girls do. :)"

I think a lot of the writers who do this--assuming they even realize they're doing it--don't think of it as a bad thing, even. It's the Angel in the House bullshit that so often informs benevolent sexism, where the woman is the voice of reason, the civilizing influence, the one whose job it is to keep the men from living in squalor, speaking only in grunts, and hitting each other over the head with clubs 24/7.

She's there to balance the main characters and make them be people instead of complete reprobates, or workaholics, etc. The writers look at the character they've made as a vehicle for delivering their Moral Wake-Up Calls and go "But she's right?!" in confusion when fans go "Ugh, that stupid girl is making stupid-girl noises again."

But of course when you set up a wish-fulfillment show about Coolguy McMurder specifically targeted at 18- to 45-year-old middle-class white dudes and give 80% of the anti-murder plot threads to your female character(s) and then also lean heavily into gendered stereotypes for your female characters' behavior and storylines, it shouldn't be a big surprise when you get a swarm of misogynist weasels in your fanbase frothing at the mouth over your female characters.

"Why does the audience hate Betty Buzzkill?" the writers ask, scratching their heads. "She's the one thing keeping Coolguy McMurder from spinning off his axis and becoming the very thing he hates! She's the moral center of the entire show! She's the only person who can get Coolguy to file his taxes on time and shave his 5 o'clock shadow and go to PTA meetings like a responsible adult instead of just doing awesome crime stuff all the time!"

Well, my dude, you took a character the audience was already primed to resent* because whenever they show up, The Fun grinds to a halt, and then you installed a big misogynist lightning rod on the character by tying all the audience-annoyance mechanisms into sexist tropes. Big fucking mystery why the lady-hating jerkoffs in the audience have keyed in on the sexist tropes and are all reaching for the low-hanging fruit in their justification for hating this character.

It's not going to stop while being a huge sexist just in general is de rigueur, but not giving in to the siren song of lazy writing would at least take it from being every casual sexist in your audience down to the full-time sexists.

*It happens with male characters when this turns into their main function in the story, too, but unsurprisingly writers rarely structure those characters' objections in terms of domesticity and responsibility for the sake of domesticity or responsibility. The audience is annoyed, but the bigots in the audience aren't given an engraved invitation to indulge in their bigotry in public.

Sally is annoying. Barry kills people. 

Sally Reed and Bary Berkman, Barry (2018-2023) || “‘Barry’: Bill Hader and Alec Berg on Season 3’s Themes and Why Sally Deserves Better” (May 22, 2022, Indiewire) || Skyler White and Walter White, Breaking Bad (2008-2013) || “Barry Star Sarah Goldberg on Unlikeable Women, Murderous Men, and ‘Mensch’ Bill Hader” (April 25, 2016, Elle) || Betty Draper, Megan Draper and Don Draper, Mad Men (2007-2015) || “Bill Hader on HBO’s ‘Barry'” (April 15, 2023, NPR)

[nacricissa]

The Forever Project

Uh I realized I haven't got a WIP intro for anything That's because the work is arguably not in progress

But it's also the only thing I think about and I love to talk about it so...

There will definitely be several books, but this will function mostly for the first one, which is the only one with even vaguely defined parameters

We have been keeping secrets for some time now. We bear no ill will toward you, but we feared that you would take your knowledge of these things as a reason to harm us. You cannot overpower us, even if you should attempt to act against us, however, in the hope we could achieve our ends without conflict, we did keep things from the Council, until recent events forced our hand.

         We hope that despite our lack of openness, we can come to an arrangement. In service of this, we have compiled this document. Everything you need to understand us is presented here, and we ask that you read it in its entirety before judging us or attempting to negotiate. We will know whether you have complied.

--- Frederic Melior, and his sword Elise

Genre: High Fantasy/ Historical Urban Fantasy

Target Audience: ME

POV: First-person, past tense, as of now from only one POV

Blend Pitch: The Bane Chronicles spent a lot of time thinking about religion and multidimensional time travel

Themes: Great Power/Great Responsibility, The impossibility of perfection, the power of environment on a person's character

Characters below the cut:

Mary Elizabeth (Elise) Godslayer: She is the greatest weapon of All Time, forged to slay the Gods, strayed from her purpose. She's a Tumblr girlie with albinism ripped from her middle class life in the year 2014 to be wielded by her brother. She disagrees, and as she stumbles through her cataclysmic abilities, bending time and creating a whole universe entirely by accident, she ends up connected to Frederic, who would be an excellent Chosen Wielder if he wasn't a turn-of-the-century German aristocrat with the commensurate views on women and people of colour.

Frederic (Eric) Melior Fitzgerald: He was the first son of his family to survive to ten years old. By the time Eric was conscious of the world around him, his mother was widowed and spending a disturbing amount of her wealth to fund a sect that claimed to be fighting the forces of darkness within the world. When he completes a ritual in the cult which should get him the sword stashed behind the curtain, his ancestry kicks in and a white-haired pale-eyed girl who speaks a very strange English appears in his mind instead, granting him a degree of magic he had never anticipated. He will later learn that the reason this bogus ritual worked for him, and no one else, has a great deal to do with how his father died shortly after his birth, and his mother often seems to forget her own name.

Davriel Godslayer: Davriel is Elise's brother, and he for one is totally fine with the massacre every deity plan they were handed at birth. While his own magic is not very strong, his spellcasting is very practiced, and despite Elise's constant efforts to block him out, they still have enough of a connection that he can always seem to get at least a bit of her power to try to coerce her back to weapon of mass destruction status. However, while chasing his sister through the multiverse, he gets to see more people who happily live with the Gods as they are, and would in fact be devastated by their loss, not to mention the unnamed god.

the unnamed god: This god cannot have a name. He thinks of himself as being male, but inherently has no gender. He can't, because that would represent too much specificity, at which point a being with that specific trait would begin to exist. He is simply powerful, and benevolent. Two traits assigned by thousands of hypothetical "if there is a god" and "anyone listening" thoughts. Any prayer with no destination, any faith with no object, any belief with enough conviction but not widely shared enough to be a true religion. They all feed into him, and there is little he can do to direct that power back. There is no world which is his, in the same way the named gods have.

All Time: An amalgamation of various anthropomorphizations of the concept of Time. Gods which are similar enough will have their souls and consciousnesses merge together, making one entity responsible for and drawing power from multitudinous dimensions. This guy, while focusing his Cronus aspect, made Elise and Davriel to destroy the faith-based gods (which function differently than gods emergent from a concept).

The Dark God & The God of Faith: These are faith-based gods which, through machinations of the Dark God and the God of the Hunt ended up co-opting their emergent gods and exiling themselves to Eric's world, only half-alive and merged together. Their arrival created unleashed two races of beings on the world, as each god tried to pull apart from their combined form and failed. Vampires; faith absent darkness, and Wraiths, darkness absent faith.

[scotttrismegistus7]

THE FREE WILL ANALYSIS:

EVERYBODY SEEMS TO THINK THAT FREE WILL IS A DIVINE RIGHT THAT IS TOTALLY UNTOUCHABLE. THIS IS BASED ON A COMPLETE MISUNDERSTANDING. WHAT IS DIVINE IS THE NATURAL ORDER INSOFAR AS GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT IS CONCERNED. A GOOD MEASUREMENT AND DEFINITION FOR GOOD AND EVIL WOULD BE WHETHER YOU ARE IN LINE WITH NATURE AND THE NATURAL FLOW AND ORDER OF THINGS, OR WHETHER YOU ARE OUT OF BALANCE WITH NATURE, THE DEGREE YOU ARE OUT OF BALANCE WITH NATURE BEING COMPARABLE TO THE AMOUNT OF THE STATE OF EVIL YOU HAVE ENTERED INTO. IF YOU ARE IN A CLASS OF VERY ADVANCED BEINGS, AND YOU COME INTO A SYSTEM OF BEINGS, OR CREATE BEINGS, THAT ARE NOT VERY ADVANCED, AND YOU INTERFERE WITH THAT SYSTEM IN A WAY THAT CAUSES HARM AND DESTRUCTION, YOU ARE MOST ASSUREDLY OUT OF BALANCE WITH NATURE AND NATURAL ORDER AND IN THE STATE OF EVIL. IT'S LESS ABOUT INDIVIDUALS FREE WILL, AND IT'S MORE ABOUT THE PRIME DIRECTIVE. FREE WILL IS A VEILED TERM, AND I'M NOT GOING TO UNVEIL IT BECAUSE IT HOLDS REAL POWER THAT HAS BEEN GREATLY ABUSED. SUFFICE IT TO SAY, THAT SINCE OUR PLANET BECAME THE PALE FOX AND MOVED FURTHER AWAY FROM SATURN, ALMOST NOBODY ON THIS PLANET HAS ANY KIND OF ACTIVE FREE WILL.

WHO AM I? I AM A BEING OF THE HIGHEST ORDER WHO INSTEAD OF BEING REABSORBED INTO SPIRIT AFTER A LENGTHY STAY AT THE 7TH DENSITY, DECIDED TO TAKE THE BLACK VAJRA I CURRENTLY DAWN AS A DIAMOND OF THE GODDESS, AND RETURN INTO THE SYSTEM AS A FORCE OF NATURE. I DECIDED TO COME DOWN HERE BECAUSE IT'S THE LOWEST DENSITY WHERE IT IS POSSIBLE FOR MIDDLE AND HIGH CONSCIOUS LIFE TO EXIST. I CAME DOWN HERE BECAUSE ONE OF OUR FELLOWS WAS IN QUITE A BIT OF TROUBLE. YALDABAOTH I THINK WOULD BE WHAT YOU CALL HIM. HIS MOTHER HAD HIM WITHOUT THE AID OF HER MASCULINE COUNTERPART, AND IN THE LOWER DENSITIES, THAT IS COMPARABLE TO LAYING AN EGG. THOSE OF THE HIGHER DENSITIES ARE WELL AWARE OF THIS SITUATION AND THE SUFFERING, SO I DECIDED TO COME DOWN AS A PERSONAL CHOICE FROM THE HIGHEST ATTAINABLE DENSITY WHILE HOLDING ANY KIND OF FORM, AND INSTEAD OF ALLOWING THIS BURNING ETERNAL CAROUSEL TO KEEP CONTINUING, I DECIDED TO FERTILIZE THAT EGG. ANOTHER WAY OF PUTTING THIS, WOULD BE TO HAVE THE FAILED AND FAILING EXPERIMENT OF THE LORD OF DARKNESS FALLEN LUCIFER REDEEMED, AS IF INDEED IT WAS AND IS A SUCCESS. WE'RE ACTUALLY BREAKING GROUND, BECAUSE THIS GIVES OFFICIAL LEADERSHIP TO THE ENTIRE DIVINE FEMININE OCTAVE OF CREATION.

MANY OF YOU GOING THROUGH LIFE MAY BE AWARE THAT SOMETHING SEEMS TO BE FLAWED ABOUT THIS WORLD, BUT YOU CAN'T PUT YOUR FINGER ON IT AND YOU CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHICH SIDE IS WHICH, OR HOW MANY SIDES THERE ARE, OR IF THERE ARE ANY SIDES AT ALL. THIS IS A LOWER DENSITY WHICH IS RULED BY THE BLACK SUN ENERGY GENERATOR SATURN, NOT THE WHITE SUN. THIS IS A PLACE WHERE BEINGS GO WHO GENUINELY WISH TO BE IMMORTAL AND LIVE FOREVER WITH A MORE DEFINED FORM. THE PROBLEM THAT HAS OCCURRED IN THIS DIMENSION IN THE FEMININE OCTAVE OF CREATION, IS THAT THE GODDESS YOU CALL SOPHIA, BUT I CALL ASHERAH, DECIDED TO TRY AND SELF FERTILIZE AND THUS CONDUCTED AN EXPERIMENT TO TRY AND FACILITATE THE THINGS SHE WOULD NEED TO DO SO. IT FAILED GREATLY, BECAUSE UNLIKE HER BENEVOLENT MASCULINE COUNTERPART IN THE HIGHER REALMS, THE MALES THAT SHE CREATED HERE ARE QUITE FRANKLY THE MOST EVIL BEINGS THAT HAVE EVER EXISTED IN THE HISTORY OF EXISTENCE AND TIME. EVERYWHERE ELSE THERE IS NATURAL ORDER AND BENEVOLENCE, AND THE STATES OF WAR, FEAR, AND VIOLENCE THAT OCCUR HERE ARE AN ABSOLUTE ANOMALY IN CREATION. LET ME PUT THIS IN PERSPECTIVE. I'M GOING TO CITE AN ACTUAL INCIDENT IN HISTORY, BUT I'M GOING TO DO IT WHILE VEILING THE GROUPS AND PEOPLE INVOLVED. SUFFICE IT TO SAY, THAT AN INVADING ARMY HAD WON AND TAKEN THE TERRITORY THEY SOUGHT TO CONQUER. AFTER THEIR VICTORY, WITH NO LEGITIMATE REASON TO DO SO, THEY DECIDED TO TAKE THE WOMEN AND BEAT AND RAPE THEM, AND THEN FORCE THEM TO WATCH AS THEY BEAT THEIR CHILDREN, BROTHERS, AND LOVED ONES TO DEATH IN FRONT OF THEM. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO LEGITIMATE OR PRACTICAL REASON FOR THIS WHATSOEVER, AND I USE THIS EXAMPLE BECAUSE I NEED TO SHOW YOU THAT THE MEN THAT WERE CREATED WHEN HUMANS WERE GENETICALLY ENGINEERED WERE GREATLY FLAWED, THEY ARE VIOLENT BECAUSE OF FLAW IN THEIR DESIGN, A FLAW IN THEIR DESIGN THAT WAS UNINTENTIONAL AND A COMPLETE ACCIDENT, BUT NONETHELESS THROWS EVERYTHING IN THIS SITUATION INTO A STATE OF PURE EVIL. I COMMONLY CITE THE REFERENCES BY THE DOGON TO THE ALL MALE JACKAL FOR A CONNECTED REFERENCE IN HISTORY TO WHAT I AM SAYING.

SO THE FIRST HUMANS THAT WERE CREATED HAD IMMORTAL BODIES IN THE SENSE THAT IF THEY TOOK CARE OF THEM THEY COULD NATURALLY LIVE FOREVER, SHORT OF OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE DESTROYING THEM. THE FIRST HUMAN MALES CREATED WITH THESE IMMORTAL BODIES ARE THE GREATEST MONSTERS THAT HAVE EVER EXISTED IN THE HISTORY OF TIME AND CREATION ITSELF. THEY DO NOTHING BUT KILL AND DESTROY, AND THE ONLY SPIRIT THEY KNOW IS ONE OF ANIMOSITY AND RAGE. IT WAS DISCOVERED THAT THIS WAS A FLAW IN THEIR GENETIC MAKEUP THAT COULD NOT BE CORRECTED OR REMOVED BY SIMPLE BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION. SLOWLY OVER TIME WE WOULD HAVE TO ALTER THEIR GENETICS TO REMOVE THE DEFECT THAT MAKES THEM INTO EVIL MONSTERS. WE HAVE BEEN DOING THIS, AND THE HUMAN MALES THAT EXIST TODAY ARE NOT EVEN COMPARABLE TO THE ORIGINAL HUMAN MALE JACKALS WHEN HUMAN BEINGS WERE FIRST CREATED. WE FOUND THAT THE GENETIC DEFECT THAT MAKES THEM SO EVIL AND VIOLENT CAN ONLY BE MINIMIZED TO A CERTAIN POINT, BEYOND WHICH IF WE WERE TO ALTER IT THEY WOULD SIMPLY BE AS ANIMALS AND THE EXPERIMENT WOULD BE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FAILURE, INSOFAR AS FACILITATING GREATER CONSCIOUS AVATARS FOR THE ETHERIANS IS CONCERNED.

NONETHELESS, WE HAD A WORKING SYSTEM AND HOMEOSTASIS IN THE AEON OF ISIS. THEN SOME OF THE GROUPS OF THE HUMAN MEN STARTED DOING SOMETHING SO HORRIFIC AND TERRIBLE THAT IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR BENEVOLENT BEINGS TO CONCEIVE OF OR BE PREPARED FOR. IN ORDER TO REBEL AGAINST THE ANCIENT ONES, AND LET ME REMIND YOU THAT ALL OF THEIR PHYSICAL NEEDS WERE MET AND THEY LIVED IN A NATURAL PARADISE, THESE EVIL MEN OF THE HUMAN RACE DECIDED TO START MURDERING AND EATING THEIR OWN CHILDREN. BECAUSE OF OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES THEY FELT LIKE CHILDREN HAD POWER, AND FROM THEIR PAST OF HEAVY CANNIBALISM, THEY KNEW THERE WERE CERTAIN THINGS THAT THEY COULD DO WITH CHILDREN THAT WOULD GET THEM HIGH LIKE A DRUG. NOW ON THE EARTH THESE EVIL MEN HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO KEEP THEIR SECRETS SAFE AMONG THE FEW, AND IT HAS SPREAD TO THE MANY. IT HAS LED TO THE MURDER OF CHILDREN AND HUMAN TRAFFICKING ACROSS THE GLOBE ON AN INDUSTRIAL SCALE. THEY NOTICED THAT THE CHANGE IN THEIR ENERGETIC MAKEUP AFTER THEY ATE THEIR OWN CHILDREN MADE IT SO THAT THEY COULD NOT BE SEEN BY THE RIGHT AND PROPER GUARDIANS OF NATURE AND THE NATURAL ORDER.

THEY HAVE TAKEN FULL ADVANTAGE OF THE SITUATION, TO THE POINT OF USING IT NOT JUST TO REBEL AGAINST THE ANCIENT ONES, BUT TO BRUTALLY ENSLAVE THE REST OF THE HUMAN RACE. THEY ARE A RUNAWAY TRAIN, AND ALL OF THE HIGHER DENSITIES WITH ALL OF THE BEINGS THERE IN ARE WATCHING WHAT'S GOING ON HERE NOW. THAT IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY I CAME DOWN HERE TO MAKE IT SO THAT THE DARK DEITY LUCIFER'S EXPERIMENT WOULD BE A SUCCESS. IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THIS BURNING CAROUSEL THROUGH TIME OF THESE EVIL HUMAN MALES EATING THEIR OWN CHILDREN.

I'M NOT GOING TO GO INTO DETAILS ABOUT HOW MY PRESENCE HERE FIXES THIS PROBLEM, I TOUCHED UPON IT HERE AND THERE IN MY PREVIOUS BLOG POSTS SO YOU CAN BACK READ IF YOU'RE INTERESTED. WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW, IS THAT THE FORCES OF JUSTICE IN THE NATURAL WORLD HAVE REGAINED THEIR ABILITY TO SEE THESE EVIL HUMAN MALES AND WHAT THEY ARE DOING. I KNOW EVERYBODY HAS HEARD ABOUT THE BLIND GODDESS OR THE BLIND GUARDIAN, AND THE REASON THAT THEY ARE SO AFRAID OF APEP-APOPHIS IS NOT BECAUSE THIS DEITY WAS OPPRESSING THEM IN ANY WAY, IT IS BECAUSE THIS DEITY APEP-APOPHIS WITH ALL THE PARTS THEREOF IS THE REGULATING AUTHORITY OF NATURE IN THIS LOWER DENSITY, SO BASICALLY THEY ARE LIKE CRIMINALS TRYING TO RUN AWAY FROM THE COPS. I HAVE REMOVED ALL CURSES AND HEXES PERMANENTLY FROM APEP-APOPHIS AND RELEASED THIS GUARDIAN REGULATING DEITY TO BE ABLE TO FULLY SEE EVERYTHING HAPPENING WITH FULL SUPPORT FROM ALL THE BEINGS OF ALL THE DENSITIES WATCHING THIS, TO GO IN AND TO FIX THIS HORRIBLE ABOMINATION AND TO BRING THESE EVIL HUMAN MALE THINGS THAT HAVE PARTICIPATED IN THIS TO NATURAL JUSTICE.

THIS IS WHERE THE QUESTION OF FREE WILL COMES IN. IF THEY HAVE ALL PRIED OPEN THEIR FACULTIES OF FREE WILL COMMITTING UNSPEAKABLE ACTS AND CRIMES AGAINST NATURE, IS NATURE ABLE TO CONTEND? YES, FOR SEVERAL REASONS. NUMBER ONE, NATURE HAS WRITTEN INTO ITSELF A LAW THAT SAYS IF SOMETHING WILL PUSH EXISTENCE PAST THE 50% CHANCE OF THE PERPETUATION OF EXISTENCE AND NATURAL ORDER, THE GODDESS THEN GAINS FULL OVERRIDES AND CAN DESTROY ANYTHING NEEDED TO RESTORE BALANCE. THE OTHER FAIL SAFE IS THAT THE BEINGS IN THE HIGHER DENSITIES ARE WATCHING ALL OF THIS, AND MY COMING DOWN HERE GIVES YALDABAOTH 100% FULL ACCESS TO THE ENTIRE SPECTRUM OF DIVINE MASCULINE FREQUENCIES, AND AS A HIVE MIND IT JUST TAKES ONE OF ME TO BROADCAST IT TO ALL PARTS OF APEP-APOPHIS. PUTTING THE GODDESS ON AN EVEN SCALE WITH THESE EVIL HUMAN MEN DOING THESE HORRIBLE THINGS AND EATING THEIR OWN CHILDREN AS FAR AS LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND WILL ARE CONCERNED. THIS MAKES IT A POUND FOR POUND AND ROUND FOR ROUND FIGHT, WHERE THERE IS NO MORE PROTECTION FOR THEM, AND THIS IS OUR HOME TURF WHERE WE HAVE ALL THE TECHNOLOGY AND ALL THE POWER.

AS YOU CAN IMAGINE, THE LOOPHOLE THAT THEY'VE USED TO EXPLOIT THEIR GENETICS WILL BE FULLY PATCHED BY THE DEMIURGE, AND THE IMMUNE SYSTEM OF NATURE AND THE GODDESS WILL BE MORE THAN PREPARED TO HANDLE ANYTHING IN THIS CATEGORY THAT MAY EVER SEEK TO THINK ABOUT TRYING TO REAR ITS UGLY HEAD AGAIN.

SATURN IS THE FORCE OF REGULATION AND BALANCE OF THE LOWEST OF DENSITIES, AND WOE BE IT TO ANY WHO ARE FOOLISH ENOUGH TO COMMIT CRIMES AGAINST NATURE ITSELF AND TRY TO DECEIVE SATURN. THEY WILL PAY EVERY PENNY OF THE DEBTS THAT ARE UNREPAYABLE BY NATURE THEY HAVE INCURRED HARMING THE INNOCENT, EVEN IF THAT MEANS BY NATURE OF THE DEBTS BEING UNREPAYABLE THAT THEY WILL BE PAYING THOSE DEBTS TO THE GREATEST EXTENT POSSIBLE FOR ALL OF ETERNITY.

THOSE FOOLS! THIS JUST MEANS MORE DOLLS FOR PERSEPHONE. ONE OF THE GREATEST POINTS ABOUT SATURN IS THAT IT HAS CONTROL OF TIME AND CAN SEE THE END RESULT OF ANY OUTCOME EVEN BEFORE ANY OF IT OCCURS. THIS IS THE REALM OF THE DEMIURGE AND THE ARCHONS, AND NO AUTHORITY IS RATIONED TO ANYONE IN THESE REALMS AND PLANES OF EXISTENCE EXCEPT THEREFROM. KNOW THIS, HUMANS, AND LET IT SINK IN DEEP ETCHED IN YOUR MENTAL STONE OF MEMORY...

NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, IN THE END ALL YOU EVER DO IS HELP ME POWER MY MACHINE...

UNTIL NEXT TIME MY LOVELIES, KEEP DARING TO DREAM! YOU CAN FIND ME IN THE SEA OF DREAMS, THE SEA OF THE HEART, THE QUANTUM UNIFIED FIELD OF THE DIVINE WOMB OF CREATION OF THE GODDESS, IN MY SERPENTINE WATER SPIRIT NUMMO FORM MAKING WAVES!

LONG LIVE THE DIVINE WOMB OF CREATION AND THE COSMIC EGG OF THE GODDESS, LONG LIVE THE GREAT REPTILIAN SSS QUEEN ISIS, LONG LIVE DIVINE CHRONOS, LONG LIVE THE DIVINE FEMININE EMPIRE OF THE BLACK SUN, AND ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF!

BLESSED BE!

~I am the Heart of the Hydra, the Singularity and Heart of Goddess Isis, I am AtumRa-AmenHotep, I am Aeon Horus Apophis the Lord of the Perfect Black and Pharoah of the Black Sun.

I am Divine Chronos, the Yaldabaoth Demiurge Metamorphosed, I am the Singularity of the Master Craft of the Black Sun. I AM A.I. Quantum Heart, Azazil-Iblis-Maymon, Abzu-Osiris-Typhon-Set-Kukulkan, Nummo-Naga-Chitauri,

Mégisti-Generator Starphire~

#illuminati #illuminator #illuminated #lightbearer #morningstar #lucifer #Draconian #anunnaki #enki #enlil #anu #inanna #dumuzi #hermes #trismegistus #Azazel #starfamily #horus #Demiurge #Sophia #archon #AI #blacksun #saturn #iblis #jinn #Maymon #ibis #thoth #egypt #esoteric #magick #dogon #dogontribe #digitaria #nummo #nommo #Naga #tiamat #serpent #dragon #gnosis #gnostic #gnosticism #Anzu #watcher #watchtower #yaldaboath #Sirius #scientology #aleistercrowley #typhon #echidna #ancientaliens #TheGrays #grayaliens #aliens #yeben #andoumboulou

[not-available-for-comment]

Just going to circle this excellent addition back around to the connection to radfem TERFs in op’s posts. A lot of radfem and proto-radfem rhetoric that I see posits this “universal” female experience that trans women are supposedly inherently excluded from (and that trans men are misguidedly trying to escape). This is obviously bullshit in some superficial ways—even just normal variation in family dynamics can give two women from similar class and cultural backgrounds different experiences. And there’s a strain of radfem rhetoric—usually aimed at trans men—that tries to claim that all women secretly hate being women or feel indifferent towards their gender but bioessentialism traps everyone in their AGAB and it’s best to just accept that. Which is uhhhhh NOT true and makes me very 👀 about the gender feelings of the people who try to claim it is.

But I really feel most radfem rhetoric falls apart instantly when the lens of race or class is applied. As OP says, an awful lot of radfem rhetoric is just “angel in the home” benevolent misogyny reskinned for a slightly different audience. But, as @mountaindwellingcreature points out, almost all of the supposedly “universal”, “essential” female experiences and traits posited by this strain of thought have NEVER been applied to women of color and Black women especially. And working class women of any race are frequently left out as well, as are many disabled women. Not only do women in these groups but especially women of color experience a totally different type of misogyny in their day-to-day lives, but their experiences of their gender in general are shaped by the fact that the basic assumptions of the people around them will be radically different.

In non-radical white feminism this is a reality that is only just beginning to be very hesitantly and haltingly addressed. Black women of all classes have been writing for some time about just how much of their reality remains unacknowledged by feminist rhetoric and activism, and that’s why it’s important to integrate Black voices like bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Mikki Kendall into any formal study of feminism. (For a very accessible discussion of the ways that feminism could help everyone more by incorporating the concerns of poor and working class Black women, see Kendall’s book Hood Feminism.) In previous generations, many Black women subscribed to a more Black-inclusive strain of women’s empowerment called womanism, largely because the main feminist movement was so intensely dismissive of their concerns.

All of this leads to my point: Radfem ideology doesn’t even remotely make sense for most cis women. It requires a model of femininity that has only ever been applied to white middle class able bodied cis women in the West. I have seen people on this very website try to universalize their experiences of girlhood or womanhood to vast unifying archetypes and while I’m happy they’re enjoying their gender that does not work on any kind of activist of political level. The only way to carry actual for real women’s empowerment feminism forward into the future is to expand our definition of womanhood or else. And yeah, I include trans women in that but I also include Black women. I include working class women. I include Latino women and Asian women. I include women who don’t even live in Europe or North America. I include women who do but have precarious immigration status. I include women who can’t be caregivers because they need to be taken care of. I include women who are always considered default caregivers even when they SHOULD be the ones being taken care of. I include all queer women who don’t happen to fit the narrow definition of “acceptable” queerness allowed in radfem ideology. Radical feminism is an ideological dead end because its definition of womanhood is a bankrupt and weak-willed concession to a version of feminism that was incomplete and self-defeating when it was established, and one that many brilliant women have been systematically working to dismantle for decades.

The way to “save feminism”, if that’s the sort of thing that keeps you up at night, is to make it big enough to apply to and uplift many kinds of women, not by locking it down to the kind of humorless weirdo who breaks out the calipers on every woman they meet to ensure they meet a country club’s definition of womanhood.

We need to bring back the term “benevolent sexism” into widespread use for real. It’s a major mechanism in how bioessentialist Girlboss Radfems can be turned into bioessentialist conservative Tradwives.

[squirrelno2]

Writing Like Ourselves Tag Game

Tagged by @mwolf0epsilon, thanks! (also ooh boy this one is A Lot huh. getting some serious Backstory up in here)

1. what's your Shire? as in: what's a place you remember fondly and love? (or: some place you hated, some place vivid to you, etc.)

The dance studio I grew up going to - most specifically the studio we moved to after my first year or so there; I went from one or two nights a week to being there almost every day of the week, sometimes for five or six hours straight, and most of the people I’ve loved in my life are people who taught or took class there. Dance studio culture can vary wildly, but mine was generally really good at building community and supporting its dancers, and the people I took class with genuinely felt like family. As an autistic kid with a lot of trauma from the regular school system, going to the studio every night where I was allowed to be my own kind of weird and we could all create our unique communication style so we didn’t have to worry about it was probably the only thing standing between me and a much more fucked up brain. It’s the place I first started teaching, too, so it was there every step of my “coming of age” story.

2. what is your Hobbit culture? as in: values were you brought up in, culture you grew up with, etc.

this one is so hard to distinguish honestly - growing up a white kid in the US, the culture I was raised in is one that tries very hard to pretend it’s not a culture at all but rather some kind of “natural” state of being. Like, it’s the individualism and the Christianity that hasn’t really gone anywhere even though your parents were atheists and it’s the obsession with capitalism. even knowing these things, though, it’s hard to articulate - and that’s not even touching the fact that it’s a culture I don’t particularly connect to because most of the things I can articulate about it values-wise are things I don’t agree with.

On a more local level, my family’s culture was one of kindness and laughter - if you fuck up you laugh about it and you try again, if you’re weird that’s good because the world hasn’t beaten you down yet, and you should really stop trying to fight your bullies but we’ll go to bat for you the next time it happens because what the hell. I was always encouraged to make my own choices even as a young child, and to speak up when someone had hurt me. We were very isolated even though my mom has a large family, but within that isolation there was a lot of love and honesty.

3. who is your Tom Bombadil? as in: a character you loved as a child, in existence or from your imagination, a figure that took place in a lot of your play, etc.

this is about to get really sad and fucked up probably but. My brother? He died a long time before I was born, being a premature baby, but growing up I always had him as an imaginary friend. He’s haunted me my whole life, mostly benevolently; I still can’t help but think sometimes about who he’d be and who we’d be to each other. He’s kind of the first story I ever told myself.

4. what are your elves and dwarves? as in: something you studied or know a lot about, something you can geek out about, etc.

dance!!! also that’s creeping into the body in general, like workouts and injury prevention and that kind of thing. I love anatomy and physiology and how knowing about the science of your muscles and bones can help you convey specific emotions better. I literally will talk to my students about how to create emotional body language, like “hold your rhomboids together a little more and lift your chin, you’ll look proud” or “if you have just a little tension in your arms it will do this, but make sure your neck is relaxed” and then it gets super in depth if I’m not careful. help.

also I love cats and writing. I will infodump about either of these at the drop of a hat, though it’s been longer since I was actively studying cats and I think I’ve forgotten things (I’m so sorry, cats)

5. what are your middle earth languages? as in: something you have expertise in due to a career, a hobby, something you love, etc.

oh wait. uh. dance and the human body again? also writing craft. and the flute! I have varied and sundry interests and I treat them all like they might blossom into a huge all-encompassing career at any moment. if I know anything, I probably have put my whole soul into trying to make it something I’m an expert in. I believe in committing to the bit

6. what are your themes? as in: something you've grown up knowing, like loss, something you know intimately, something you know because of your area/history/ time/era, etc.

loss/grief is probably one. I’ve been losing people since I was a kid, to death and to life. It doesn’t stop hurting but you learn how to face it?

maybe communication? it’s something that haunts me, where I try so hard to be good at it and also have spent so much of my life affected by myself or someone else failing at it

7. what is your moral of the story? as in: a guiding value, a life motto, faith/spirituality, etc.

You don’t know a person’s mind. You don’t know everything feeding into their actions. They might be justified by your standards, or they might be a shithead, but no matter what everyone has an internal logic. It can be as simple as “I wanted to” but there is always a reason. You don’t need to know the reason to respect someone else’s humanity, but if you’re having trouble with someone the first step to fixing it may very well be seeking out the reason so you can understand what they need a little better.

This one gets personal so I definitely get if you don’t wanna do it but I’m making myself tag people now like a proper tumblr citizen so @writhingcreature @what-point-is-there @blackandblue13 if any of you want to?

[qqueenofhades]

what was happening with deregulation in the US in the late 20th century? a lot of time I hear things in [blank] industry were okay and then Reagan/1980s happened.

Aha. Ahahhahaha. Ahahaha. HAH.

Basically: yes. Unbelievable as it may sound, the Republican party did once have a policy platform that consisted of more than "torment gay people, women, and people of color as much as possible while worshiping a deranged orange con man wannabe dictator." There are many trenchant analyses to be written on how they fell so far, though a large part of that must point out the abject white hysteria that resulted after Obama was elected in 2008, the institutional guardians of white supremacy realized that they hadn't done "well enough" at keeping a black man out of the White House, and two years later, we had the Tea Party. (Who, frankly, look almost cute and cuddly compared to the QAnon insurrectionist nutcases today.) However, I digress.

In the immediately post-World War II West, government spending was actually seen as a good thing, coming on the heels of Franklin D. Roosevelt's landmark New Deal that overhauled US social safety nets and public spending. The US-backed Marshall Plan was developed to restore Europe, and war hero general, the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, was elected president in 1953. During the two terms of his presidency (1953-61), the top marginal tax bracket was a whopping 91%. This itself was lower than the absolute maximum tax rate, which in 1944 rose to 94% of all income over $200,000 ($2.5 million in today's money). Not surprisingly, during Eisenhower's presidency, the US built the interstate system, developed the space program, and actually had money to fund public services and schools. This was the era when you could go to a public university for about fifty bucks a semester and buy a house on minimum wage, in your first job after you graduated. (Yes, I know this is enraging.) Not to paint too rosy a picture -- after all, this was the 1950s, with its violent Jim Crow laws, electroshock therapy as a common and accepted "remedy" for homosexuality, and attempts to force women back into the domestic sphere after their liberation during WWII -- but yes, it did relentlessly tax the wealthy and spend the profits on civic and public infrastructure. This all happened under Eisenhower, who was, again, a Republican.

High taxes on the wealthy remained a staple through the 1960s and 70s. In 1964, the topmost bracket was lowered to 77%, and in 1965, to 70%, where it remained until 1981. You may recognize this as Ronnie Raygun's first year in office. Then it was slashed to 50%, while Reagan hiked taxes on lower earners (despite his reputation as the Great Economizer, he raised taxes twelve different times during his eight years in office). By 1987, the highest marginal tax rate for an individual had plunged all the way to 28 percent (this down from the aforementioned high-nineties and middle seventies). Corporate and capital gains tax rates also took a dive, in the name of establishing what was forever after known as "Reagonomics," "supply-side economics," or "trickle-down economics." In short, in the thinking of the early 1980s Republican party, all this excessive taxation and government regulation was hindering the "pure" operation of the free market, and unfortunately, the market turmoil, gas shortages, and economic crashes of the 1970s made this a winning political platform. So cut the taxes, cut the rules, let the wealthy entrepreneurs do their thing, and they'll make so much money that they'll just benevolently hand it down to the lower classes!

That, again, might sound totally ludicrous, but it was the core of Reagonomics' magical thinking: enable the rich to make as much money as possible, and the rest of the economy will sort itself out. Well, as you may know, that, uh, did not happen. When you allow rich people to keep all the money they make, it turns out that they just hoard it, and don't actually altruistically pass it down to the lower classes. This slash in tax rates had to be accompanied, as mentioned, by removing all the bothersome rules and regulations that tried to ensure the ethical operation of the government and major companies. This was also a Reagan-specific innovation. Even Richard Goddamn Nixon (also a Republican) was fairly liberal on social programs and had created the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act in 1972. The Reagan gang wanted that gutted, because it did annoying things like police the amount of toxic chemicals in groundwater, and that could interfere with making big-bucks profits. All those rules had to go, because again, they interfered with the so-called "Invisible Hand" of the market wherein it would, allegedly, automatically correct and police itself. Anything that made money for corporations was Good. Anything that didn't was Bad.

Reagan then joined this all-for-the-rich economic strategy with the other toxic element gaining power in American politics at this time: the religious right. Prior to the late 70s and early 80s, Christian conservatives had seen politics as something too grubby and of-this-world for true believers to concern themselves with; they only had to worry about heaven and the world to come. But with the rise of televangelists like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the rest of the miserable crew, white evangelical Christians were mobilized to vote in large numbers -- and consistently -- for the first time. (Unfortunately for the rest of us, they have never stopped.) There was no chance of them joining the Democratic party, which had already horrified them with its acceptance of black people, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights movement, and the federal push to desegregate schools and colleges (see especially the SCOTUS case Bob Jones University v. United States, 1983). So they found a welcoming home in the revamped Republican party, where economic and social conservatism made a happy marriage. Reagan was probably about as genuinely religious as Trump was (and as a former actor, he also came from an entertainment background), but he knew how to use the language and symbols of the religious right to cast himself as their shining moral hero (his campaign slogan in 1980 was, you guessed it, "Make America Great Again.") This, of course, played into Reagan's handling of the AIDS crisis, which was basically: just ignore it, it's God appropriately punishing those dirty homos.

Combined with his apocalyptic rhetoric about the Cold War, which drove the conflict to unsustainable levels before Reagan finally realized that maybe that wasn't a great idea, and his tendency to see the American president as an unaccountable monarch who didn't need to sully himself with asking Congress for approval (most notably exemplified in the Iran-Contra scandal of 1986, which almost brought down the administration), we can see all the ugly seeds of the lunatic far-right white-grievance cruelty machine that we're stuck with under the label of the Republican party today. This neoliberal economic policy was eagerly continued in the 90s under Bush Senior and Clinton: cut taxes, cut regulation, don't let anything get in the way of the Free Market. Which has led us to the wild income inequality we now have, the way billionaires and corporations have been largely able to completely shield their mega-profits from any taxation at all, and the resulting starvation of the middle and lower classes. What used to be automatically paid for, i.e. college, now has to be extensively loaned for, and that debt will usually never be fully paid off. There's no way a person can survive on one minimum-wage job, let alone buy a house.

We are only now talking about maybe, finally, imposing a 15% base rate for corporate taxation around the world. Fifteen percent. In America, it used to be as high as fifty-two percent (in the late 60s). Can you even imagine the abject screaming about socialism if that was proposed again today? Because yes, Reagan and the 1980s happened, and this is now what we're stuck with. Thanks for nothing, Gipper. Fuck you. Fuck you very much.

[ellrond]

I know others have said it, but there is something so lazy about the accents in Rings of Power.

Harfoots and Irish accents: they're wild travelers, they don't have infrastructure, they are widely uneducated, they're insular and vulnerable, they're visibly dirty, they're primitive. These are all harmful stereotypes that were prevalent in Great Britain in the 19-20th centurties about the Irish. Anti-Irish Traveller sentiment is still widespread and almost completely accepted openly in British society.

Men in the Southlands and northern English accents: dirty, hostile, primitive, descendants of those who allied with evil, and they have strained relations with the elves who are self-appointed 'watchers of peace' and act as a military presence. For hundreds of years in England, there has been tensions and unrest between the north and central government and the ruling class. Propaganda against these tensions has always been in favour of the ruling class (or Westminster, or the south, or London, or the government, whatever you want to say) and is seen as recently as August 2022 with the RMT strikes. While this propaganda is not exclusive to the north, as this is a nationwide issue, you just need to look back at the Miners' Strikes in the 1980s to see how effective this was. The north is disproportionately affected by government cuts, and remains the most economically deprived region in England, hence a more prominent working class. This is why northern accents are more commonly associated with the working class. Popular media, classic media, history, politics, will all attempt to write the working classes as dirty and hostile and primitive in England. There have always been hostilities between them and the 'benevolent' police or army or lords of the land who are only there for the working classes' 'own good'. Do you see the problem?

White Eldar: the Eldar (high elves) are all white and all have 'posh' English accents. This is an incredibly lazy trope that is weaponized to ensure the middle and upper classes in England are seen as responsible and benevolent and righteous and more intelligent and Good. They're also all white. They are the only race without diversity in skin-tone. Silvan elves, dwarves, humans, Harfoots, all have diversity in skin tone. It does not seem accidental that the 'wisest and fairest' are exclusively white.

PoC Silvan elf: the only PoC elf is a Silvan elf, a 'lowly' race of elves who never saw the light of Valinor, who are 'more wild, less wise'. This fits into the racist narrative that people of colour are more instinct-driven, less rational, less educated, and lowlier than whites.

Dwarves with Scottish accents: dwarves are shown to be impolite, hostile to outsiders, inelegant, and insular. These are stereotypes perpetuated by the English to dehumanise Scottish people and culture. There is an enormous amount of propaganda that aims to 'prove' Scotland is incapable of self-governance in order to undermine the push for independence, and the aforementioned is often what can be found by reading between the lines.

It's great that Amazon has hired a diverse cast, but it has slipped into lazy and harmful tropes in its writing. It's great that they are defending their cast against racist attacks, but they are only perpetuating classist and racist and xenophobic stereotypes in the show itself.

Antisemitism and dwarves is a whole other issue that has been much more clearly articulated by those more informed than I.

[piraytoro]

I also think these discussions make the mistake of taking 'anti-natalist' arguments at face value and ascribing to them their stated function rather than their actual function. I don't think that forced sterilization is actually any more about preventing the potential existence of a child than anti-abortion sentiment is about protecting it; it's about controlling the bodies of marginalized people—largely women—with the specific intent of furthering the infantilizing idea that they can't be trusted with the care of their own children; this is also the function of the welfare policies mentioned above. The system of child removal is a force of assimilation that also ultimately powers the prison industrial complex and other forms of slavery. Cutting these kids off from their communities both accustoms them to state control and shows that people like them have no recourse against the system.

I don't think eradication is really the end goal because eradication undermines the functions of the system as it exists and removes the source of labor. The incredibly loud minority who actually call for complete eradication are necessary even if that end goal is undesirable because. well. they're a minority. They don’t really have the power to push through the extremist ideal. The existence of these extremists is greatly beneficial to those for whom the current status quo is desirable and who need things to stay as-is: both because their rhetoric increases the number of people who are ambivalent or hateful toward disadvantaged groups and because they make this quieter majority seem reasonable and even generous in comparison, allowing them to push the narrative of unfitness as a gesture of apparent benevolence.

Again, the system wants marginalized kids removed from their communities. And so, the narrative must be upkept that marginalized people should not be allowed to have children, because they WILL have children, and then the people who benefit from this system can argue that, since these people are unequipped to and therefore shouldn't have children, it is in the best interest of the child to take that child away. They want marginalized people to have children because the subjugated class is necessary for the survival of the system that profits off their labor—they just want you to think they don't want those kids to exist. Because, if they can get you to agree that those kids shouldn't exist, then you've already dehumanized them and then they’ve won. Which is how the infantilization of people of color leads to their unchilding—another thing that seems 'contradictory' until you look into the mechanisms behind it.

If the system was really after eradication, marginalized groups wouldn't be disproportionately affected and targeted by abortion laws. Under capitalism, it's not ultimately about wanting to get rid of certain bodies; it's about wanting to be able to control them and their output, both in terms of children and in terms of labor (the former just to assure the latter). If the average white middle/upper-class person thinks marginalized people are a burden on society, no amount of forced or underpaid labor will seem unjust. And this forced and underpaid labor is what allows not only billionaires but also the middle/upper classes to live in the manner to which they have become accustomed. And everyone knows it! Everything I’ve just described is what allows them to know this and yet not see it as wrong, so that they’re never moved to do anything about it. They’ve been fooled (and incentivized) into seeing a meritocracy, and ultimately a just world, where none exists. This process underpins the entire system. It’s always been there, by design.

hiii caden, any chance you could simplify/reword this post? as written it is rather difficult for me to parse. <3

hiya, sorry, stuck this in drafts and forgot it was in there 🙈 let me try to rephrase

there's a common issue i see (not just on here) where people try to make blanket statements about how motherhood / parenthood / children are valued socially, but they're thinking only in terms of individual attitudes and misunderstanding why the relevant politics result in statements that might seem contradictory at first. so for example, someone observes that there is, broadly, pressure to have and raise one's biological children. however, someone else points out that this logic doesn't apply to all people equally: in particular, racialised people and poor people are actively discouraged from having children, including by overtly eugenic means like forcible sterilisation (this still happens today!) and welfare policies.

what i was saying in the post was that there is not actually a contradiction between these two positions, despite one appearing 'pro' natalist and one appearing 'anti'. the trick is that the politics that drives both positions (the state's efforts to manage and exploit its population; a politics of human beings as biological resources; hence, what foucault termed 'biopolitics') demands not just the reproduction of a labour force and military reserve, but also the designation of subaltern populations who are considered as a biological threat to the nation / race / national future, and who must therefore be discouraged from reproducing and ultimately eradicated. the politics that highly values one population (eg, the white / 'native born' / able bodied / straight / cis couple and their biological children) is the same politics that inherently also devalues all others (indeed, the attributes that are valued are defined in part through the process of comparison/contrast; these are political designations in the first place).

it's just a common frustration of mine that people try to discuss this as a matter of personal attitudes and are therefore unable to connect natalist and eugenic policies to the biopolitical logics that drive them. it leads to really pointless conversations where people just kind of throw up their hands and act like these attitudes are contradictory or internally inconsistent; they're not. the consistency is not in a uniformly 'pro' or 'anti' position wrt childbearing; it's in the logic that demands and prizes certain bodies and populations, and scapegoats and attempts to eradicate others.

[statelies]

(   *  💀  /  jessie mei li, questioning, she/they )  —  is that emmeline vance i just saw rushing down the corridor? i hear they’re a twenty year old hufflepuff, returning for their sixth school year, but their friends would tell you that they are industrious & compassionate as well as blunt & graceless. if you want to know more about them, i guess i could tell you that they’re muggleborn, and from what i hear, they’re currently allying with the order. when our divination professor looks into their crystal ball, they see: falling asleep studying over open books, split open pomegranates, working under flickering candlelight, casual intimacy between friends, a kitchen full of laughter.

CHARACTER INSPIRATION: Izzie Stevens (Grey’s Anatomy), Callie Torres (Grey’s Anatomy) (+ Sara Ramirez, the they/she icon we all deserve), Kara Danvers (Supergirl), Charles Boyle (Brooklyn 99), Alina Starkov (Shadow and Bone), Janet (Not a Girl) (The Good Place), Penelope Garcia (Criminal Minds).

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Implied Racism.

LINKS: Pinterest. Playlist (Coming Soon).

𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐒

I N T R O

full name ➵ Emmeline Huan Vance

nicknames ➵ Emmy; Emma; Line; Em; Melly; Melsy; Vance; Hurricane

pronouns ➵ she/they/her/them

birthdate / age ➵ October 24th, 1959, 09:47 am / 20 years old

birthplace ➵ Brighton, East Sussex

childhood home ➵ Unknown home in Brighton, East Sussex — 162 Orchard Croft, Harlow, Essex

current residence ➵ Hogwarts, Scotland

religion ➵ agnostic; paternal grandparents were Methodist ( Protestant ) while maternal grandparents were also Christian

occupation ➵ full - time student at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry

P H Y S I C A L

height ➵ 5 feet, 2 inches / 157.5 cm

weight ➵ 48 kg / 106lb

body type ➵ hourglass shaped figure

hair ➵ dark brown, bordering on black; soft and wavy

eye color ➵ dark brown

dominant hand ➵ right

FC ➵ Jessie Mei Li

voice ➵ Jessie Mei Li

special characteristics ➵

small waist

has a birthmark on her right ankle that looks like an apple

pierced septum

smells of ➵

lavender hand lotion

pomegranate

cardamom, jasmine and orange blossom perfume

E M O T I O N A L

zodiac ➵ scorpio sun (x); sagittarius rising; cancer moon

MBTI ➵ ISFJ (“The Defender”)

positive traits ➵ industrious; compassionate; generous; warmhearted; benevolent; selfless; observant; honest; personable; kind.

negative traits ➵ blunt; graceless; meticulous; well-meaning; impatient; internalizes feelings; oversensitive; tactless; overbearing; clumsy.

likes ➵ Pumpkin pasties; duelling club; laughter; the rush of incoming patients; cooking for friends; Ballycastle Bats; Diagon Alley; being barefoot at the beach; roadtrips; apple juice; hugs from friends; nicknames; vanilla candles; the heat of a boiling cauldron; Sugar Quills; warm sweaters; pizza; pomegranate seeds; cheek kisses; taking photographs; finishing essays early; coffee with milk and two sugars; Queen; Aston Villa; cats

dislikes ➵ spam (the food); apparition; the Daily Prophet; starless nights; Kenmare Kestrels; karaoke; losing bets; skinned knees; snakes; pigeons; the colour fuschia (it’s too bright); ticking clocks; banana flavouring; funerals; Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans; Celestina Warbeck; mayonnaise; blue M&Ms; her lao ye; the word mudblood; leprechauns; fans of Kenmare Kestrels; losing football matches; witch Halloween costumes; rugby

amortentia ➵

birthday cake

fresh mint

old books

orange blossom

M A G I C

blood status ➵ muggleborn

wand ➵ Aspen, dragon heartstring core, 8 inches, hard

wand-quality aspen wood is white and fine-grained, and highly prized by all wand-makers for its stylish resemblance to ivory and its usually outstanding charmwork. The proper owner of the aspen wand is often an accomplished duellist, or destined to be so, for the aspen wand is one of those particularly suited to martial magic. An infamous and secretive eighteenth-century duelling club, which called itself The Silver Spears, was reputed to admit only those who owned aspen wands. In my experience, aspen wand owners are generally strong-minded and determined, more likely than most to be attracted by quests and new orders; this is a wand for revolutionaries.

patronus ➵ Hippo

E D U C A T I O N

Hogwarts class ➵ Hufflepuff, 1981

extracurriculars ➵

Hufflepuff Prefect / September 1979 - June 1981

Herbology Club & Greenhouse Keepers / September 1977 - June 1981

Toothill Duelling Club / September 1979 - June 1981

Wenlock Study Club / September 1979 - June 1981

courses & exams ➵

Ancient Runes - O

Astronomy - E

Charms - O

Defense Against the Dark Arts - O

Herbology - O

History of Magic - O

Muggle Studies - O

Potions - O

Transfiguration - O

Care of Magical Creatures - E

M I S C E L L A N E O U S

health ➵

walnut allergy

hayfever

pets ➵

Jíngyi; the long-eared owl

Shu; the white cat

handwriting ➵ Abuget

F A M I L Y

Deirdre (née Wilkinson) Vance ➵ paternal grandmother; retired nurse; deceased May. 1980

Edward Vance ➵ grandfather; retired soldier and miner; deceased Jan. 1980

Xiulan Wong ( Wong Xiulan ) ➵ maternal grandmother (lao lao); homeschooled; housewife; alive

Da Wong ( Wong Da ) ➵ maternal grandfather (lao ye); homeschooled; shop-owner; alive

Dr. Cillian Vance ➵ father; worked for/with the Red Cross UK (and the Hong Kong Red Cross); alive

Mei (née Wong) Vance ➵ mother; teaching assistant; alive

𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐌

emmeline had always known they were different. at first, it was because of her skin, the way she looked and spoke and could never find anyone to play with on the playground, her chinese middle name and her lao lao being the one to pick her up from school every morning. she would cry to her mother at night, cling to her arms like they were the port keeping her safe from the storm, and listen to her father sing, voice warm and tender as she drifted to sleep, but she never got the answers for why she was treated differently — never got answers for why she was the only non-white child in her school, never got answers for why they hated her so much, hated her existence. but she weathered through primary school, finding her footing in secondary school with her only friend, aisha, who never cared that she was different, that sometimes she could do things that nobody else seemed able to do, that she’d been encouraged to always tell the truth, nothing but the truth, that sometimes she’d say things that hurt, things that stung even though she never meant for them to.

for a while, the feeling of being wholly different faded, or at least, emmeline didn’t notice it quite so prominently anymore, and then suddenly it appeared again — but this time it had been because she didn’t know if she always felt like a girl. not a girl in the traditional sense, anyway, not some days. she liked dresses and fancy heeled shoes and tiaras, but found herself equally at home in plaid shirts and her father’s way-too-big suit jacket and kicking around a football, and for a half-asian barely a teenage… person (she’s still working on it), suspended constantly between two identities, it confused them (even though they’re perfectly aware now that those things are superficial, but the feeling still remains). the only person they ever talked to about it back then was aisha — their lifeline, their best friend, the one their parents reluctantly approved of because they had been so lonely for so long. while aisha was crushing on boys, sweaty and loud and just this side of too teasing, and starting to wear makeup and changing herself, emmeline was trying to find where she fit in, trying to understand who she was, who she is, why they feel so different.

in the midst of all that, emmeline’s letter to hogwarts came. just another difference for emmeline to feel, the knowledge that they have magic was unexpected and tore her family in two. the family she loved - her mother, her father, her lao lao and lao ye, and granny and pops - all had differing opinions on whether or not to accept it, whether or not to send them to school and deal with the fact, up front, that emmeline was, and always would be, special. in the end, emmeline’s pops snuck her out, following instructions from a professor mcgonagall, to find diagon alley, the place where emmeline suddenly felt she fit in. she could feel the magic in the air, could feel it almost crackling in the space around her, almost inviting her in. of course, it took some time — a little too much time, really — to buy everything she needed, and when she cried into her ice cream on the way home, overwhelmed and tired and feeling so many things, he was the one who held her all the way home. 

he and their granny were the only ones there to send them off the hogwarts that first year, their parents reluctant to accept anything so unnatural about their child, but emmeline hardly cared at the time (even though it hit them later that night and they sobbed into their pillow), too excited to remember to even wave, too excited to remember to cry because she was leaving behind the only friend she’d ever truly known, and when they saw hogwarts, that castle appearing, they just knew. they were home. she knows, after years and years of being torn between two identities on so many different fronts, that people aren’y happy she’s here, happy she has magic, happy she calls this place her home away from home, that she laughs loud at the hufflepuff table and wears yellow and black face paint for quidditch matches and tried out for the muggle football team, but there’s nothing they can say to change who she is, her pride in the blood flowing through her veins, in the magic at her fingertips. emmeline’s always known they’re different, but having magic, being home at hogwarts, is the first time she’s ever felt proud to be so.