#this post is not long enough and there is still so much to say

[f1fantasys]

Thought you were mine all along, guess I was wrong - Part 2.

Summary - What happens when you meet Lando again? So, this was supposed to be angst only, but ya girl can't post anything without smut, so, enjoy!

Warnings - 18+ minors DNI, smut, p in v sex, dirty talk, creampie, angst.

Part 1

The next two weeks following that morning had whizzed by in a blur. Both you and Lando had extremely busy schedules and took every free second you got to text or call each other.

It wasn't easy with the time differences, but the cyber sex was honestly the best you'd had since the start of your 'relationship...' It was intense, mind blowing phone sex, leaving you both desperate and eager to see each other, although you'd have to wait a whole extra week because Lando had some media obligations in America. So that meant it was a whole two more weeks before you could get your hands on one another.

On one particular day, you'd texted Lando in the wee hours of the morning, knowing it was late night where he was, and since he'd said he planned to spend the night in, you were expecting a quick response from him.

You didn't get one.

But you thought nothing of it, not even worrying the slightest bit, and eventually, you got on with your day. It wasn't until evening when you saw that there was still no response for him, though you could see he had been online.

You tried to call him, it just rang and rang.

Still, you didn't think much of it. Maybe he just needed space, and you were happy to oblige.

The next few days as well passed with radio silence from him. You could see from social media that he was out and about, doing whatever media he had to do, getting on with it all, except you it seems, though you willed yourself not to let it affect you.

Newsflash it did.

Deciding it was best to throw yourself into work, you were now working ungodly hours overtime, getting as much done to try and block out the fact that Lando was clearly avoiding you by now. It had only been a week of absolutely no contact, but it definitely felt much longer than that. You missed his goofy laugh, his adorable dimples, his banter, and you missed the orgasms he gave you...you missed his dick.

It was now past 8pm, and after a long day of grinding you stopped at the shops to get some food that you could just throw in he microwave to get hot. Busy scrolling the aisles at your local store then you stopped in your tracks. You'd never miss those god damn perfect curls, even in a sea of a million people.

He had his back to you, and before you mind could make a decision on whether to leave or talk to him, he turned around, bit his bottom lip when he saw you.

It was no surprise that Lando was a handsome man. His physique alone was hot. And so seeing him stand in front of you - in the flesh, already had a wetness pooling through your cunt.

Quickly, you out those thoughts to the back of your mind as he approached you.

''Didn't know you were back'' you said breaking the silence. You were curious to hear what his answer would be, because you were always the first person he'd call the second he was back in Monaco.

''Yeah, just been caught up..'' he trailed, letting out a breath, bringing his hand up to massage the back of his thick neck.

Caught up enough to toss me to the side... you thought to yourself.

It was awkward. Awkward as fuck. The both of you standing there, not knowing what to say to one another. Really, it was a first.

Until...

It wasn't 10 minutes later and you were riding Lando in his McLaren.

Your panty thrown somewhere in the back seat.

You should have known better, should have stopped yourselves, but clearly your pussy, and his dick, had a mind of their own.

You rode him like your life depended on it, watching with hooded eyes as your nipples disappeared into Lando's mouth, his teeth grazing and biting down hard before using his tongue to sooth over your bud.

''Fuck, Lando, yes..ri-right there, please'' you begged as even in the small of his sports car, he was lifting his hips to meet your half way, thrusting in and out of you pussy relentlessly, letting out a series of guttural moans and grunts.

It wasn't even a few minutes until you felt your orgasm nearing, your walls clenching almost painfully around Lando's cock as he bought his hand down to flick a thumb at your clit.

''So tight, fuck..need to stretch you out some more'' he murmured before capturing your lips in a heated kiss.

''I'm close'' you barely managed to say between nips and licks, your body was shuddering, shaking uncontrollably as Lando has two tasks at hand - one, keeping your body in control, two, chase his own orgasm.

And not two minutes later Lando was emptying his load into you, sheets of warm cum filling you up to the brink while lewd grunts left his mouth, his dick twitching as you rode him through it.

You finally stilled your bodies, chests heaving trying to catch your breaths as you leaned back and put your weight on his steering wheel behind you.

''Fucking hell'' he said, panting as his eyes stayed trained on the state you were in - disheveled hair, boobs slipped out of your bra and dress, looking red and bruised.

There was an unspoken tension filling up the car, and you could feel him softening inside you, the both of you looking down to the place you were still joined, almost as if you were avoiding looking at each other.

You watched as Lando gently pulled himself out, gasping when he saw a mixture of both your cum oozing out of your cunt, the both of you moaning at the sight, and then suddenly his eyes were trained on yours, as he very quickly pushed his dick back into you, pushing the cum back in.

''Fuck'' he whispered as you let out another moan, your walls clenching tightly around him.

''Lan..'' you murmured, closing your eyes and trying to etch the feeling of his dick inside you to your brain, because something told you this wouldn't happen again, though you prayed you were wrong.

He was suddenly hard again, no surprise to him because just the sight you all fucked out and dripping with his cum got him all excited again. Call it his good stamina.

''Come here'' he softly said, pulling you forward again, your boobs in his face as he lifted you ass up slightly before slamming you down in one hard thrust.

You braced your hands on his shoulders again, leaning down to lock lips with him for the first time since you last saw him.

It was sloppy and dirty, tongue and teeth clashing, almost as if you were just licking each other where possible - not properly kissing, all the while Lando bounced you up and down his dick, each thrust getting harder than each.

You pulled back for air, Lando stuffing his face back into your boobs, letting a series of staggered breaths and groans leave your mouth, feeling your orgasm approaching fast.

''Lando, I- fuck, I can't. Too much'' you were barely able to say. He was being ruthless and as much as you wanted it, your body was overly sensitive today.

''You can baby, one more for me, yeah? Fuck please'' he sounded like he was begging, and how could you refuse him?

You couldn't form any words by now, so all you did was nod your head, while his hand raked down to pinch at your clit.

''That's it baby. Please just be a slut for me. You're already doing so fucking good, letting me fuck you so good. Fuck'' he grunted, through gritted teeth, knowing his dirty words would send you over the edge.

And he was right, within seconds your cum was coating his dick again, your body quivering in his arms again, feeling like jelly, releasing pornographic moans into the confinement of the car.

And Lando - as soon as he felt you walls closing up on him, his own release spluttering his cum through your pussy, warm and sticky as he slowed his movements and eventually came to a standstill.

''Ah, fuck y/n'' he mumbled, causing you to giggle because yeah, ''fuck'' was the word of the day.

You stayed close together, breathing in each others air as your bodies shivered with cool air on your sweat, Lando busying his hands by combing your hair back through his fingers.

This time, he pulled out, and he stayed out, using his fingers instead to gently push the cum back up your pussy before bringing them up to his lips and licking them clean.

And this time, your eyes didn't avoid each other.

Lando kept opening and closing his mouth, wanting to say something though falling short every time.

You didn't miss how his body language changed all of a sudden, how he stiffened underneath you, and suddenly you felt cautious.

It was awkward as fuck - you sitting on his naked thighs, dress bunched up you stomach, pussy bare and leaking, while his jeans and boxers were pushed halfway down his legs, cock soft and twitchy resting against your stomach.

Finally, he cleared his throat. His words knocking all the air out of his lungs.

''I...I'm seeing someone..Magui. I mean. I'm gonna start seeing Magui. So this - he gestured between the two of you - can't happen again.''

Your breath hitched, you could feel the color draining from you face as your own body now stiffened.

He said it so casually, like what you just did meant nothing. Like the last 6 months have been nothing, just tossed off to the side.

''Say something..'' he whispered.

You were sure your words would get stuck in your throat, already feeling your cheeks flushed with embarrassment at the whole situation.

Lando was done with you. He basically 'dumped' you while you were both naked in the smallest space possible.

You cleared your throat and leaned over to his passenger seat to grab a tissue, your mind racing as fast as his cars go. Some many thoughts overwhelming you as you willed yourself not to let tears spill out your eyes.

This is it. He's not yours. He's back with her, an ex fling. He's leaving you for her.

''Y/N'' he said your name softly, gauging your reaction.

You sniffled, concentrating on cleaning your cunt - that was still on full display, before you finally pulled your dress down and looked up at him.

Gone was that look that was reserved just for you, and you heart broke at the cold eyes staring at you.

''So that's why you've been avoiding me..? Too busy fucking someone else? Why did we just do this if you're with her? You've just used me to basically cheat on her....thought you'd have more respect for the both of us...'' you questioned, almost whispering the last part, and wincing at your words because you didn't want to know the answer.

Lando coughed, shifting underneath you as he slyly tucked his dick back into his boxers.

''Not seeing her yet...but yeah I guess there are unresolved feelings so we're gonna give it a shot'' he said. ''As for us... guess this was a moment of weakness. But I'm done. We're done.'' he said matter of factly.

You suddenly felt like you couldn't breathe, needing to get out of this space asap because the man in front of you wasn't the Lando you knew.

Not 10 minutes ago was he calling you baby...swallowing a mix of your cum, and now he's done with you.

You're heart clenched not just at the fact that you were losing your fuckbuddy, but Lando as your best friend. From the way he was talking, it was clear that the friendship part of your relationship was also done with.

You needed to get out of here before you broke down in front of him. He didn't deserve to see you vulnerable like this.

So you took one last longing look at him, memorizing each and every freckle and line on his face as you body tingled from the warmth of him.

Surely he could see the hurt on your face, right? He knew you better than most. But still, his eyes didn't soften, nor did his words.

''You should go..now..forget the last few months...'' he said, already moving to open the door for you to climb out of his lap.

You cleared your throat for the umpteenth time today, mind fuzzed when your body finally lost contact with his, and with one last look at him, you turned on your heels, shamefully walking to your car, and not a few seconds later, he was zooming out of the car park.

The next few days were spent wallowing in bed, avoiding any events in town with the fear of running into them.

So George's girlfriend Carmen took up residency at your apartment to keep your mind busy.

You needed to heal, and move on from something that was nothing to even begin with.

A whole week later as you were scrolling Instagram, the photo slapped you in the face.

There he was, with his tongue down her throat, hands groping her ass.

You had no right to be mad, sad, angry, whatever emotions that were over taking your senses. Lando wasn't yours. Not anymore at least. There was never any label between you.

But the more you thought about it, you were more so longing the guy with whom you could talk about anything, truly be yourself around and not get judged for silly things.

The universe had other plans for you though...because in just two weeks time, you were to host an event in London for McLaren. Oh, what could go wrong......

A/N - hope you all enjoyed this...side tracked part! Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!

Taglist - @somanyfandomsbruh @lanf1an @annimausi @ernegren @plotpal @hurtblossom @rbv3rstappen @tylerstacobell @wanderingreigns @bowielovesyou @alexanderachillesisgay @sarx164

[arihi]

Charmed! 2025 (A Community Recap)

Charmed 2025 happened this past weekend, the 10th anniversary. My con recaps of years past desperately tried to fit in as much detail and information of each day, play-by-plays as I tagged everyone I could remember, talked about all the classes I'd been to, the people I'd met. Nowadays, I'm content to just do a general overview.

I spent a lot of time pensive and thinking about my time spent in the community and during cons. The 10th anniversary for Charmed meant that marked 9 years since I'd come out to my very first one. Longer in the community when I was still only online. How does the time fly by so quickly? It doesn't feel real. I still feel very new, and yet when I look around I'm surrounded by unfamiliar faces, cons growing too large and too quickly for me to recognize every face like I used to at the beginning. This sentiment is far from unique, and I had several conversations during the con with people who echoed similar feelings. At one point, I found myself in a group of people who all predated me in the con-going circuit - a rarity as more and more time goes on. We talked about the growth of cons, my first one. Though I'd spent a lot of the day feeling listless without realizing why, I found myself feeling comforted by the company, and realizing I had been lonely.

It's not at all a bad thing, and I'm genuinely happy that more and more people are finding community at these events - god knows I did. It's an adjustment is all, an ever-shifting growth of my own. It's plain to see from my blog activity over the years that I withdrew from talking as often. Not good, not bad, but also for good, and for bad. It's probably good that I don't reveal as much about myself at the drop of a hat. It's probably bad that I'm more avoidant now than I'd like to be. I'd remarked to a friend a while back that I didn't miss the old MMO that we met each other on and spent our days playing, but that I missed the period of time in my life that it defined. Similarly, I think I was going through a huge shift in life and perspective at the time I was first finding my feet at these events, these gatherings of people that taught me that it was worth it to seek my own happiness, that *I* was worth it. I know this inherently now, but it was much more of an impact back then for obvious reasons. I suppose it's like the honeymoon period of a relationship vs. settling into its stability. I suppose you could say I'm in a long-term relationship with myself! And it's some of the healthiest it's ever been. And now that I'm doing better and more stable these days, I should try to push myself to be out there more often.

Every time someone tells me that I've grown so much, I can't help but tear up and cry. (I'm doing it now as I type this.) And wouldn't you believe it, that happened to me like FOUR TIMES during Charmed!! Come on y'all!! What the hell. There's nothing that solves feeling stagnated in life like hearing that from someone else. I resolved myself at the beginning of this post not to feel like I had to document every interaction and tag every person, but it's difficult to fight the urge to yell it from the rooftops, how each interaction genuinely touched me, how they were the highlights of my con. How I miss them again, and how I can't wait to see them again. It couldn't come soon enough. Thank you to those who have watched my journey and always encouraged me. (I feel like I say this often, but, please know that I mean it every time. Except this time like triple it. That's how much it means to me.)

Charmed changed my life. I will say it to my dying breath and I will always be forever grateful for it. I learned people could be happy. I learned I could be happy. The connections I made at the first Charmed and subsequent years have changed my life beyond what a 2015 version of me could ever imagine. Tangibly, too -- beyond just a shift in perspective and mentality and wanting better for myself, I wouldn't have been able to move out without the chain of events that started at this first con. So- thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

I challenge myself not to document every interaction because in the past, that was how I had to live. Every post was proof I had experienced hardship (and lived). Every con meant a new lease on life and I had to memorize every single one and struggle to do hours long voice recordings about each day of the event to remember as much as I could because, that was all I could bring back. And I don't need to anymore - not because I don't want to remember, but because I'm in a better place now. These aren't the desperate emergency infusions of care I didn't know I could have; now, they are cherished moments with friends old and new, a drop in the bucket of happy memories. And part of life is to forget and talk about old stories and remember them again with good company.

Until the next one, and the one after that, and the many more after that.

-- Ari

[omgfangirlland]

The Shadows That Nurture 4

I may have girl bossed a bit too close to the sun and finished Chapter 5 and 6 too- I'm not quite happy with those so I'll go through them again before posting Ch5 😅

Masterlist || First || previous<< Chapter 4 >>next

Well, we all knew they would never have time for you. They never do until it’s too late. That’s why funerals are for the living to say goodbye, to mourn, to let go of the guilt. It still hurt… It hurt so much to be brushed off by Alfred, to be ignored by Bruce, to be yelled at by Dick. You couldn’t even think of Jason without tearing up, and Tim was just straight-up mean. But at least he was honest. Cassandra and Barbara’s avoidance hurt the most since they were your only female interaction in years.

Everything you tried to do to prove yourself was, at best, ignored, at worst, compared to someone else and diminished. You had nothing in common with Richard besides knowing a few of the same bands. But that wasn’t enough to raise his interest in interacting with you. Every time he looked at you it was like he was angry and sad at the same time.

Jason and you were so similar. Finally, someone you could relate to, who knew how life on the streets was, how terrifying the big space of the Wayne residence was compared to the lives you once had. And yet he was more interested in Dick, no matter how rude the oldest boy was. You couldn’t blame him, you also wanted Richard’s attention. Your heart felt like it was rolled through needles and lemon juice when Jason got everything you wanted just for you to watch him get buried. Dick was angry when Jason first showed up, jealous, but by the time Jason grew up he was just as angry. You hoped that wouldn’t happen to you.

You were a great student, thriving in your classes and finishing middle school earlier than others, what else were you supposed to do when you had no friends? Of course, that was nothing to Tim’s brilliance. And every time you tried to bond with him on that or show him your achievements it would be a tired “I don’t have time for you.” or an uninterested “I achieved that when I was younger than you.”

Barbara is everything you wanted to be when older, smart, beautiful, had friends and the family's attention. It hurt so much to see her get along with Cassandra but not you, never you. And Cassandra… You tried. You tried to befriend her without overwhelming her, but since the first introduction, she had started ignoring you too, downright leaving the room if you entered it. Bruce went to all her recitals, but he never had time for your galleries or competitions. You stopped asking everyone to come when you found the invites and pamphlets balled up and thrown in the trash bins.

By the time Duke and Stephanie came around you had given up, what use was it? It’ll be another rejection, so you just took care of the garden and did more art, your room overflowing with it. You spent at least half of the monthly allowance Bruce gave, and yet you could still be a millionaire.

You gave up on the Waynes, only speaking to them if they spoke to you. You were done with them, with their secrets, with how they would talk between each other in whispers and then get quiet when you stepped into the room. They’d always look at you like you were a stranger, an enemy. And perhaps you were. So, fuck them. Fuck the boys, fuck the girls, and fuck Bruce and Alfred too.

Sneaking out was the best thing you have done for yourself- sure it was a long way from the Manor to the city and back, but it was all worth it. It was worth it to see the other street kids, to hear their stories, to hang out with the homeless and the girls on their smoke break, it was worth everything when you found your mom’s grave. It was nice, it felt like home.

Was it dangerous? Yes. But as long as you stuck to Red Hood’s territory you were fine, his rule of keeping kids safe seemed to also apply to you. He was nice, even if he never spoke around you beyond hums and grunts, but you enjoyed how gentle he was with the other kid, how he ruffled your hair, and how he helped you clean your mom’s grave. He was nice, and surprisingly so were most other rogues.

Ivy enjoyed helping you with tips for the garden, some of the flowers you grew there on every 13th of the month were made into bouquets for her, your mom’s grave, and Jason’s too. Two-face was surprisingly nice about your inquiry of the law and Penguin enjoyed helping you with your business classes. The Riddler made you want to smash your head against a wall most of the time, but boy was he good with philosophy.

You avoided the Joker like the plague. You couldn’t find it in you to care for him when Harley reminded you so much of your mom when she came with a black eye or busted lip asking if you could take care of Bud and Lou for a jiffy. You could never say no to her.

If Red Hood wasn’t keeping an eye on you, it was Bane or Killer Croc, both men letting you climb and swing from them like a spider. They enjoyed seeing a kid not tremble in fear at the sight of them, despite whatever they may tell you. Mr. Freeze was nice too, lonely like you. Sad you simply couldn’t take the cold for long no matter how many layers you put on.

You loved them all to a degree, but Catwoman always made you feel like her kid, not just a kid. Sometimes you felt guilty for wanting to call her mom, you had a mom. But she made you feel all soft and mushy, calling you her kit, crying with you when you first heard her call you that. She thought she had hurt you, oh, how panicked she was. But her hug was so warm, so loving once she found out that no one had called you their kid in so long.  You wish she would steal you away, she does too, but she made a deal with Red Hood. Selina wishes she had just taken you and moved across the country, everyone be damned.

Unknowingly, you had created the garden to hold flowers that reminded you of all of them, even the Waynes. You couldn’t bring yourself to kill their flowers, to make bouquets of them or sell them- you just didn’t have it in you. So, you just kept on growing them, talking to them, and telling those flowers what your alleged family would never listen to. And then Bruce ruined it all.

He wasn’t sure why he did it, exhaustion or paranoia, maybe both? But all Bruce knew he was seeing is his mom’s garden flourishing after years of it being neglected, of Alfred overlooking it at Bruce’s request to focus on what rooms were being used inside the manor instead. He didn’t think twice about grabbing the pesticide designed for Poison Ivy, didn’t think about asking Alfred, about asking the kids, he just reacted.

Bruce was drinking his guilt away in his office, forehead pressed against his desk as one hand held a whiskey glass and the other gripped at his hair. He had never seen his youngest that angry, crying so much-… He wasn’t sure when the last time he saw her smile or hang around the family was.

“What have you done?!” He remembers how pained and angry you sounded as he killed the last flower, his flower. He remembers how he acted, how annoyance rose in him as he explained, and he remembers how his heart fell out of his ass when you said that you took care of the garden and that you spent years building it.

His face remained unmoving as his hands shook, as his jaw clenched, as he could feel the sky crash on his head in tempo with your tears falling down your cheeks. He tried to justify himself, come up with a lie, something that would make him feel less guilty, but- “Yeah?! Well, maybe you would have known if you actually spared a glance in my direction from time to time- You should have left me in an orphanage, no- it should have been you instead of mom!”

You were hurt, you didn’t mean it, he was sure. Even after you went into the manor, crying your heart out, Bruce still sat there. He wasn’t sure what he could do, the pesticide ruined the soil, he didn’t even remember what flowers he saw. The man just went into his daytime office, grabbed his father's liquor, and drank. Bruce knew he should go and apologize and try to talk to you. He poured himself another full glass, instead. Tonight, Batman will be sleeping, and tomorrow Bruce will raise your allowance. If he remembers.

You knew to some degree Bruce didn’t like you, but for him to not even notice that you poured your blood and sweat into that garden when Alfred and even Cassandra did felt like a punch to the gut. You were a good kid, you tried your best to be, so why was this the hand you were dealt? Did he honestly think the flowers in the manor were bought by Alfred? The old man was so busy the last thing on his mind was to buy flowers for the house.

You couldn’t believe him, you could only cry for the lost plants, for one of the three things that brought you happiness. You curled into a ball under the warm duvet, crying into your knees until you could not anymore. The shadows did their best to soothe you, lulling you to sleep as the exhaustion of crying helped them.

Dreams didn’t come easy to you, sure, you had the usual nightmare, but calm dreams were a rare occasion. And this one felt so nice as you drifted in the endless dark space, two figures you couldn’t quite make out helping you stay afloat as they talked… chanted? You weren’t sure. It sounded like Latin, but it also didn’t. No matter, it was soothing, warm, it was what you needed.

You felt light as a feather. You felt free and- you hit your head… The pain not only confuses you but also wakes you up, the throbbing on the side of your head making you groan. Your tired eyes looked around trying to figure out what you hit as your hand rubbed the sore spot.

Maybe you were still dreaming. You must still be dreaming. Panic set into your veins- there was no way this was actually happening, it couldn’t be happening. You couldn’t be a meta- Batman hated metas and he worked for your- he worked for Bruce- You were fucked.

It didn’t matter that as soon as it happened and you panicked your body hit the floor so hard it rattled your nightstand, making a framed picture fall and break, it didn’t matter that you didn’t register the pain, or notice that you broke the floorboard where you hid all your diaries and drawings you made for the family- all your brain knew is that you should leave before Batman throws you in Arkham or GSP.

So that’s what you did. You grabbed your sports bag that you used for art supplies, stuffed it with some clothes, your laptop, phone, the chargers, took a few sketchbooks and pens, and the card with Bruce’s money. Not like he’ll notice, he didn’t notice that you spent thousands every other week at a fast-food joint for the homeless and street kids, didn’t notice that you spent millions every other year at retail stores for the same people, he didn’t notice the donations. He was as blind as a bat.

“Leap of faith” is what Superman once said in an interview about how others with the power could learn to take off. “It’s just a leap of faith.” He was right- you almost pissed yourself, but he was right. You understood why he always was floating above the ground; it felt so freeing to fly, circling the manor to the top, feeling the air around you. It was so nice. You should move, fly away, and yet your eyes can’t leave the destroyed garden. You should make a few stops before fully leaving… just a few.

When each of the rogues found one singular flower in their favorite seat, their window sill, on the weapons and cars they owned, all withered and falling apart, they knew what it meant.

Ivy was the first, she knew the second the plants died. After all, she helped keep the plants alive, nothing could thrive on the Wayne land anymore, almost like it was cursed, as if Death herself lived on the grounds. But seeing the burned and greying orange trumpet vine told her everything she needed to know, that it wasn’t you who destroyed them. Bruce Wayne and the Bats didn’t know what was about to come their way.

You’ll miss your friends, the kids, the rogues. You’ll miss Catwoman, but she always told you to be a bit more selfish. This was the moment for that. Doubt settled in at some point, but you had nothing holding you attached to the Waynes, Catwoman couldn’t or just wouldn’t take care of you, it was time to let go and abuse Bruce’s ignorance, make a new life for you where you don’t need to hide in the night for some social interaction.

New York City should be the perfect place for it.

Tag List: @bat1212 @trashlanternfish360 @shycreatorreview @syrooo @a-lurking-fae @alittletiredcry

[oracleofdiscord]

#arthur was genuinely more pro-magic in s1

#like. that is a huge part of why merlin saw his potential lol

#arthur actually has worse negative development than merlin but ppl don’t see it that way because it’s heavily obfuscated by 2 things:

#1) development ‘rewrites’ where arthur seems to have learned his lesson but then makes the same mistakes again

#(but how can he not when he isn’t applying those morals universally? as long as he bans magic he is highly susceptible to his own hubris)

#2) narrative bias. the writers wants us to believe that arthur is vastly improved — and in some areas he is — but even in those areas

#it’s a bit of a lukewarm attitude adjustment. he still bullies merlin through and because of their power imbalance

#which feels almost worse with an older arthur. haven’t you outgrown this by now? hasn’t merlin earned your respect?

#and arthur still fully bans magic in the late seasons as king. he at least questioned these beliefs to a certain degree when he was younger.

#regularly and without external influence!

#i think the writers wanted us to see this negative development as entirely merlin’s fault because you can pretty well track the end of this#to 2x08 (which… greeeeaaaaattt plotline… as we know it is never the oppressor’s fault that they oppress people; only the oppressed people’s)

#but back on topic: the narrative very much uses a biased tell-don’t-show structure to present arthur as a matured and just king in s5

#(post time-skip which is in and of itself a tool of tell-don’t-show)

#for example: a villager in 5x03 has to bring to our attention that uther would have just let that woman burn (forcing our focus)

#all the while this ignores that arthur still bans magic. if this woman *is* found guilty then arthur will have her executed all the same.

#a similar writing tactic is used in 5x01: the writers actually deplete merlin’s characterization in order to use him as a contrast to arthur

#does it seem uncharacteristic of merlin — who always tries no matter the sacrifice — to ask like a lost child how arthur can possibly be#holding out hope with his life on the line? something that merlin does every episode — including this one?

#a heroic trait that merlin presents as well ~randomly disappears~ for this one episode (which happens to be our intro to Mature King Arthur)

#essentially the writers believe that they must lower the characters around arthur in order to make him appear wiser and more just

#why present him in this way though? the writers simply want us to see arthur as wiser and more just. but they do NOT want to develop him.

#arthur cannot experience the character development necessary to actually appear good to the audience

#so the writers *hollow out* every other character’s lines and personalities as a way to embellish arthur’s

#it’s very cheap and manipulative but clearly it works

#on reddit arthur has ride-or-dies claiming that he actually *legalized* magic by season 5 & that everyone around him was just unreasonable

#case in point: arthur doesn’t have to do any of the work of becoming a better person if other characters become blank slates

#(GUINEVERE especially in that deleted scene from 4x03)

#and as long as other characters will say lines that clearly position arthur as better than everyone else (uther merlin morgana gwen whoever)

#it’s very sad to see when they could have just. developed arthur as a character. but the writers thought he was good enough as is

(tags via @sneakyboymerlin)

MERLIN REWATCH ✦ 1.08 The Beginning of the End

[dolphin-diaries]

Detrans/Uncis (Part 2)

Originally published on Dolphin Diaries.

My first steps on a detransition journey were underscored by a peculiar mantra: “but I’m not detransitioning though.” I don’t feel like a man, so I’m not a trans man, but I’m still taking hormones, so I’m not detransitioning. I’m getting laser, but I’m not doing anything to my voice—hold on, actually I am. I’m lowering my dose of testosterone, actually, but I’m still taking it, and it’s not like I’m a woman. Only I want to be gendered by strangers as a woman, but that’s different. Actually I’d hate to have any further changes from T, so I’m not taking it at all—but I’m still not detransitioning though. Actually, could you speak of me as she? And her, too? No detrans though.

At a certain point it started to approach total absurdity. My friends and loved ones, well-versed in the queer gender soup, said nothing of it, but I am myself strongly averse to repression, denial, and self-deceit. So I was the first to say I was wrong. The first to say, “I am, though.” And at no point, from the beginning to the end of my epistemic conga, have I encountered any meaningful pushback from my close circles. No implications of betrayal, no cold shoulders, no silence when I walk in the room.

So why the mantra, then? Why was I so averse to the idea?

A large part of that was the politicisation of detransition; how indelibly it is associated with the Right—I said as much in my first essay. On a personal level, though, it was trivial to realise I wasn’t doing a grift. I was confident I hadn’t been brainwashed into anything. I’ve never had any meaningful contact or affiliation with any sort of gender-conservative person or movement.

And I did encounter pro-trans detransitioners. Some of them sniped back at the right-wing ones, some merely told their stories independently. Regardless, they—just like me—did not receive great or meaningful pushback from their trans friends, nor even strangers. They weren’t always understood or necessarily celebrated, but they were taken at their word, believed, and more or less respected as much as any gender deviant. Before I had any thoughts to detransition myself, I had seen detrans people beyond the pale of the rhetoric multiple times, and…

And I hated them. They made my skin crawl. I was never rude or condescending, and as those encounters were online-only, it was trivial to maintain respect and civility. I also realised I had no real cause to hate them. They’d done nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all. It was easy enough to say that in principle, when they talked in the abstract, but when they spoke of their bodies, their lives, the flesh and blood of it all, I felt such visceral revulsion as I might’ve never felt before.

Or have I? Have I known this already, this knee-jerk lip curl, this morbid disgust with another’s aberrant sex? This idea in my mind, spreading like cancer, that these people were wrong? That they’ve violated something inviolable? And how civility and compassion chiselled this violent core into arrogant pity towards an untouchable other?

No, I have known this. And not such a long time ago.

The Body Horror

When I first came out as trans to my university class—cis-majority if not totality, naturally—the perverse fascination with my body was hard to escape. They were mostly polite, of course. My university was very ‘decadent Westian’ (pardon the quasi-inside joke). We were hip with it. Nevertheless—

“It’s okay for you, of course, but if my future children—”

“You mean to say you date women? How do you—”

“You mean to say you date men??”

 “I wasn’t looking at you like that in the bathroom—I mean—uh—”

You don’t need to say it outright. Sometimes you don’t need to say a thing at all. I see it. I know.

That’s to say nothing of the doctors’ dehumanising dissection and the conservatives flashing the least flattering post-operative pictures like they’re gore. As a transsexual, you don’t even need dysphoria; you will be informed of your physical monstrosity in great detail and in every possible manner, from the subtlest glance to the bloody megaphone.

You learn to see transsexual bodies this way very young and not voluntarily, but I was not just any random person. I transitioned aeons ago, and I did not find the flesh of my fellow transsexuals a subject of psychosexual fascination anymore. We were just people. I’d learned that.

I thought I did, anyway.

That’s the thing about the biases that systemic oppression seeds and wields. They are, in my experience, nothing less than psychosocial cancers. Leave one cell alive, and they will surely regrow. Maybe into a new shape, maybe into something old, but they will never die left alone.

Although I’d mentally graduated to gender abolition and genderfuckery-as-political-stance, to activism, to gender constructivism and to queering everything, especially feminism, I’d first come to see transsexuality through the lens of the DSM. Not my fault or anything—that’s what was available to me. Transsexual transition, then, was first presented to me as a linear transformation, a path from A to B, at the end of which laid gender nirvana. Or, like, happiness and fulfilment, I suppose. White-people Buddhism was fashionable at that time, so please excuse my French.

So genderfuckery was all well and good, but you know, done respectably. For me, that was performing picture-perfect transsexuality, just a little spiced-up. So long as I still appeared cis. Anything that marked me as ‘clocky’ was unseemly; although I no longer needed to see any doctors about it, I’d been trained to sniff out such features and weed them out for the sake of gaining medical access. But that’s not the only way ‘respectable gender’ is ensured in queer circles. I’ve also observed it to be an absence of transsexuality. That is, gender is to be fucked with in words and pronouns and haircuts and porn—but to transition about it would be kind of gauche, don’t you think? A little gender-conformist?

Different outcome, but for the purposes of this discussion, same principle: it is disgust with transition. Visible transition, obvious transition; transition at all. My case was not altogether different from ideological non-transitioners; it was just modified to accommodate for some alteration of sex.

After nearly a decade of virilising HRT, my detransition wasn’t simply a matter of changing my name and putting on lipstick. That would just make strangers say ‘yas gurl.’ No, if I wanted to live as a woman beyond my immediate social circle, I needed to make more invasive changes. More than that, I wanted those changes. I didn’t merely wish to say I’m a woman—I wanted to look in the mirror and believe it.

The first truth a detransitioner learns is this: to detransition, you must transition again.

Again?!

Oh, it’s not the same as your first time ‘round, sure. Not just because of the difference in desired sex; if you’ve never had your gonads removed and have no prior issues with hormone production, you can simply cease to take HRT and stop depending on the vagaries of medical supplies. Doctors will, generally, be a little more understanding of your desire to change sex. Often, from their perspective, you’re not changing it; you’re fixing it. So if you were allowed to take the so-called ‘cross-sex’ hormones, you’ll probably be allowed the ‘same-sex’ ones. Conversely, because no such thing as a ‘detransition procedure’ usually exists, it’s a dice roll if any surgery will be covered by the state, your insurance, or anything. Yes, you’re ‘fixing’ your sex—but the fact you’ve ‘damaged’ it at all renders you a bit of an unreliable witness to your own mind. A little bit crazy, you could say. Isn’t it all quite literally your own fault?

However, the day-to-day mundanities of detransition would be highly recognisable to any trans person. Indeed, I got all the ideas on how to relieve my gender dysphoria from my transfem friends. I learned of laser hair removal from them, and they advised me on voice training. Some of the professionals that serviced me had no idea I was detrans—how would they? Kind of an odd thing to randomly bring up while getting your beard fried.

‘Detrans woman’ is not a legible social category (nor any other kind of detrans person). People know what these words mean—at least, if they’re up on the latest gender lingo—but they don’t truly know what that looks like. Maybe they imagine a particular grifter when you say ‘detrans,’ maybe it’s just a void—but it’s never you. No one will ever assume that’s what you are.

So how does a detrans woman move through the world? She passes, of course. She is either assumed to be a cis woman, having worked to file off any signs of testosterone’s magic touch, or she stands out with those features. If she transitioned after adolescence, she might have a leg up on passing, but should a stranger’s transvestigation radar starts beeping, they will surely scan her for other hints. Sometimes they’ll find what was never there, and sometimes they’ll decree a feature that occurs in all women, cis and trans, a sure sign of inborn manhood. I’ve always had a visible Adam’s apple, for instance, but it didn’t use to be proof I was born a man. Now, though, take that and a bad voice day, and I don’t have a leg to stand on.

And if someone decides I don’t belong in a women’s bathroom, do you think it’ll help if I cry I was born to piss here?

Here’s the second truth a detransitioners learns: it doesn’t matter how many times you transition, to what end or for what reason. If you do it at all, you will never be cis again. It’s the real red pill—the one the Wachowski sisters intended, not what the chuds on the internet made of it. Your body, your social and legal history, your continuity of self—it is different now. Not the way it’s supposed to be. Changing sex at all was never meant to be.

Regime and Treachery

Um-actuallying people who think I’m a trans woman will not help me under most circumstances. It won’t help with a strange man in an alley, and it won’t help with an employer that discovers my last manager knew me under a male name. In one case nothing but a good run will help, and in the other—come on now, they won’t think any better of me.

It will not make me cis, and it doesn’t help—under most circumstances.

Detrans women aren’t the only ones which may be assumed for trans women. Cis women that never touched a drop of testosterone get transvestigated too—not nearly as frequently, but it happens all the same, and regularly. The case of Imane Khelif is one that probably jumps to mind first these days, but she is perhaps in the minority of women that never responded to such accusations by loudly proclaiming she is completely and utterly unlike those filthy transsexuals—she is a real woman!

Detrans women have the whole transsexuality thing in common with trans women, of course. But they aren’t quite the only ones—intersex women that were assigned female at birth are also often assumed to be transsexual. They are also subject to severe medical violence and neglect. Some require exogenous hormones to stay healthy. Some wish to take ownership of their body via voluntary sex alteration, for a change. It is rather transsexual-like, all in all.

But yet you will not search long to find similar underbus-throwing. The AFAB intersex woman is not like that trans woman—she deserves gender-affirmative treatment. She’s a real woman. The birth certificate said so.

And so too the detrans woman, despite all her history, despite the indelible mark of transsexuality, looks at the dangling carrot of Real Womanhood—and like a dog, jumps.

She will never be allowed the full extent of it. It is irreversible damage, after all. That’s important. The detrans woman that betrays her sisters—her class, even—must forever cry about the wounds transition left on her, must never heal from them. And trust me, the cis aren’t nice about it behind her back. The detrans woman is promised a shred of cis-ness, of real-ness—but only so long as she divorces herself from all things transsexual. Loudly, repeatedly. The moment she stops, she will be reminded: she too is transsexual. She has seen sex/gender for what it is; her body is evidence. She has eaten of the tree of knowledge. It’s only at the regime’s great mercy that she can peek into Eden—but god forbid, never enter.

Because what would happen if the ‘damage’ wasn’t irreversible? If society allowed the detrans woman to be a woman wholly and totally—its woman, real woman? Why, it would mean sex can be changed without repercussion. It would mean you could leave gender.

It wouldn’t quite mean that trans women are women and trans men are men—it would only allow that your birth sex can be ‘returned to.’ But if even that much was permitted, it would make transition no longer a threat. You could do it and come back just fine, see? What’s there to fear? Why not just try it? And if you can just try it, just leave and come back as you please—how can you force people to obey gender?

It would mean I could opt out of womanhood any time. Of the mandate of reproduction, of subordination, of sexual and domestic servitude—of the constant fight to break free of those things. I could opt out even if I didn’t like being a man. I’d always have one foot back in the door, if I pleased. And that’s the thing about the patriarchy: women must never be allowed to leave. Or to desist, or to fail. For that they must be punished. Want fewer lashes? Kick the weaker bitch out the door.

Cis-ness is a regime. A status quo. To define it merely by the relationship to birth-assigned sex is erroneous—intersexness reveals this, but if you’re the kind of person who thinks the intersex are some sort of rare and bizarre exception (they’re not), perisex detransitioners must surely hammer the nail home. To be cis is not merely to self-identify as the sex on your birth certificate; who’s even looking at those? It is to live in accordance with your biological destiny, and every social law that entails. This destiny is assigned at birth, yes, but it does not end there: it follows you all the way.

Cis-ness is not an identity—it is a reward for doing as you’re told.

The Freedom of Sex

It is obvious, then, why detrans medical care is a pain to get even though you’re complying with your birth sex assignment. That is the true engineer of detrans misery, of dysphoria and resentment. To come to dislike the features you’ve acquired during transition is one thing—but to be prevented from changing them? To be looked at like a lunatic? To not know what to do, because information about de/transition and how it works is so understudied and obscured?

If transition was easy, known, free—more people would detransition, certainly. But that wouldn’t mean much. Because they’d be people like anyone else. Their bodies—transsexual bodies—would be just the same, just as worthy. They would be real.

The implications are even greater than that. Freedom of sex, as Andrea Long Chu puts it, means a freedom to change anything about your sex, in any way, for any reason, without restriction. Not the A->B path I was first taught under the illusion of two wholly distinct, non-intersecting sexes—rather, the tweaking of individual aspects. It is to really examine how sex works and take it apart on your person. It is what some trans people already do, with microdosing and what you might call small acts of detransition. If you don’t like the beard after T, why not zap it off? If you want to be on oestrogen but don’t like the breasts—double mastectomy works just the same regardless of initial sex. The idea of customisable, ‘nonbinary’ transition is one that’s gained prominence in recent years, even as attacks on all transition have exponentially increased.

Linear transition was written in an attempt to enforce a kind of gender austerity. Only those that really need it can get it, and so there must be competition, a hierarchy of haves and have-nots. There must be doctors that will prescribe you wrong dosages based on irrelevant research and leave you to wonder why you feel so off. You must not pick and choose the changes you want, because your sex is not for you to decide—it is to be granted to you, justified via a constant defense of self-identification. For the crime of violating sex/gender, your autonomy is branded as harebrained desire until proven otherwise. You’re not allowed to simply want something; you have to need it, hence the attempts to naturalise and essentialise transsexuality—you have to be real, you have to be born with it.

Above all you must be kept in the dark and hurting, so that any time someone suggests anything as ‘frivolous’ as the freedom to have their body as they wish, you snipe back: Shut up, vapid idiot! You’re going to hurt yourself in your stupidity! I’m not like you—I’m the one who’s really hurting!

To look at de/transition from the perspective of liberation is to ask: why? What’s the austerity for? We have the hormones, the surgeries, almost all the treatments we want, and the science isn’t calling it quits tomorrow last I checked. What horrible thing are we preventing by stopping people from doing to their sex whatsoever they wish? Are we running out of gender juice?

But of course, I already told you why. A smarter woman than me has also written extensively why. It is because sex and gender come with a fine print, a set of prescripts, which must be enforced. Irreversible damage to fertile wombs must not be allowed. The pedestal of Man must not be tarnished.

Freedom of sex, then, is the patriarchy’s anathema.

Detransition is part of freedom of sex. To accept acts of detransition as neutral is to allow that changes wrought by transition—just like naturally developed sexual characteristics—can be changed at will. Even disliked. To be free is to embrace the possibility of discontent, too; to allow oneself to do something you may regret later, and to be free to go back. To accept that nothing is final. Finality is one of the ways transition is made more difficult than it needs to be: you must be sure, must be happy with what you get—or else, it is argued, you never had a real need for it anyway.

That is plainly not true. I know that from my own example.

Transition served me well way back when. I do not know of an extant, realistic alternative that could’ve helped me as effectively. I was happy with my transition for years, and suicidally discontent before then. So who cares if transitioning proved in the end an imperfect permanent solution for me? Why must transition be held to perfection and permanence before it is allowed? It worked and it saved my life—who are you to tell me I shouldn’t have done it? And who are you to hold me hostage to it?

What if, even now, I enjoy that I’ve been constructed rather than simply born?

Not So Fast

Now that’s a nice thought, isn’t it? I can feel the gender nirvana coming on already.

Unfortunately, it can’t be that simple. To dream of a world you want, you must first contend with the world you already live in.

There’s a particular aspect that’s been largely absent from my essays so far: forced detransition and conversion therapy. In part, that’s because I argue from the perspective of a willing detransitioner with no shadow of a right-wing past or influence; a viewpoint which is lacking in the public conscience. Plenty of trans writers and thinkers already staunchly argue against forced detransition. They omit the detrans by virtue of either irrelevance or ignorance or both. When voluntary detransition is mentioned, people tend to merely point out there’s not that many of us. In actuality there’s very little statistical research to give definitive numbers, but it’s certainly true we are the minority of transitioners, and the absence of statistical evidence only further confirms: the Right are pulling numbers out of thin air.

Except, saying that is missing the point. The Right never cared about numbers. Or facts. Or logic. Their argument is that willing detransition ought to be the nail in the coffin for transition. If you retort that, um actually, there’s only half as many willing detransitioners, you still concede we exist and are a contradiction to you. That is enough to prove the Right’s point. I, therefore, wish to argue we are not a contradiction to trans rights or existence, but in fact on a continuum with both. That by virtue of our needs and lived realities, we are trans. Differently trans, but trans nonetheless. Some (trans and detrans) may not enjoy that assertion for a number of reasons, but the empirical fact is that we are irrevocably cast out of cis-ness, and we are in need of support structures that are near-identical to those of trans people. If by every function we are trans, then it’s under that name that we should be understood, because it is the only thing that makes sense and yields results.

But.

Detransition is not a neutral act in practice, even if it has the potential to be. Just like transition isn’t. Both are politicised, and the nature of detransition’s politicisation diverges from that of transition quite sharply.

In the current political climate, as trans people are being denied medical care and the anti-trans rhetoric pollutes every information space, this cannot be avoided or denied. Transition is reviled, and detransition is said to be the cure and is wielded as a punishment. Detransition-as-sex-freedom cannot be understood without also grappling with the other two kinds of detransition I distinguish based on motive and emergent needs: forced and coerced.

Forced detransition is the simplest to define. It is detransition that occurs when circumstances necessitate it as the only possible course of action, or it is altogether done unto the transitioner without any pretense of choice. The starkest example is, say, the new law in Florida which forcibly detransitions the incarcerated. But it needn’t be so wholly dystopian to qualify as ‘forced.’ Detransitions due to family or peer pressure, poverty, lack of access, or social isolation are all forced in nature, even if in the most technical sense you made the ‘choice’ to undergo it. If you wish you were still transitioning, it is forced.

Coerced detransition is a grayer area. It is motivated by an individual’s choice—not a lack of one or a pseudo-choice, as above—under circumstances in which transition is possible, but highly discouraged. You will naturally recognise conversion therapy as an extreme example, but it needn’t be so blatant. Often it isn’t.

Say, for instance, your closest circle of friends regards transition as a frivolous neoliberal excess. Or, let’s say, your cis boyfriend is perfectly happy you’re a man now, he swears, but—well, he’s not gay, you know? Just for you. It’s different with you. Except he still treats you the same way he did before your transition—but that’s a good thing, right? Good thing he still wants you at all? He would probably prefer a girlfriend, and he’s never dated men—actually, is this whole thing really that important to you? Aren’t you rushing into things? Do you really know what you want? You don’t mind if he slips up on pronouns when you’re not in the room, do you? 

Or maybe your general practitioner keeps insisting any time anything is wrong with you, that it’s the hormones’ fault. The classic ‘trans broken arm’ syndrome. And when something actually might be wrong with the hormones, the solution is always to just stop HRT altogether. And the surgeries—they’re just so dangerous; look at how horrifying post-op pictures are! It’s just biology, just facts, which don’t care about your feelings (but remember: it’s only a fact if it makes you feel worse.)

In other words, the decision to go through coerced detransition is made in a state of reduced agency, often caused by social pressure and/or misinformation about transition. Nothing is explicitly preventing you from doing as you will to your sex—and so it is precisely your will which must be subverted and undermined.

Notice that I make no claim whether detransition is right or wrong for the person in question. Perhaps they would’ve arrived at this decision another way, perhaps not. The point is, they are led to believe detransition is simply more sensible, healthier, better. It is the superior choice—so of course, they make it. In the end, coerced detransition is not truly dissimilar from the forced kind. What merits it separate consideration is that it’s designed to make you relinquish your own judgement, and your very own sense of self. Under such conditions, even if you would’ve ultimately detransitioned regardless, your relationship to your sex/gender is made maladaptive, and your independence as an individual is maliciously compromised.

The needs of coercively and forcibly detransitioned people are closely aligned. The forcibly detransitioned, naturally, require that the circumstance which necessitated their detransition is removed, and that their retransition is facilitated and supported. The coercively detransitioned may or may not require the same thing—some detrans people do, in fact, discover they genuinely desire detransition in less-than-ideal circumstances—but what they certainly need is a pathway to recovery from conversion. They are to be given their agency back, as well as access to accurate information about transition and transitioners, so that they are free to make the choice to retransition or to keep detransitioning as they see fit.

Both cases run counter to detransition-as-sex-freedom, to voluntary detransition—which is to say, a choice made due to a shift in self-perception, under circumstances in which continued transition is unhindered. The needs of a voluntary detransitioner are also starkly different, and most resemble that of a transitioner. A voluntary detransitioner requires a facilitated pathway to sex modification and gender recognition, from hormones to surgeries to legal procedure. It is the same thing for which trans people fight; it need only be recognised that voluntary detransitioners are part of that fight.

Grouping voluntary and involuntary detransitioners under the same umbrella makes little sense. We may superficially share some experiences, but such an equation falls apart from the perspective of rights and needs; it obfuscates motive, absolves abusers and systemic injustice, and it smooths over radical differences in our stories and perspectives. It draws a false equivalence that either condemns voluntary detransition or celebrates forced and coerced detransition, thus making it impossible to either embrace or reject detransition in good conscience. Thus no progress can be made.

In other words, conflation of voluntary and involuntary detransition only works from the cis perspective—from the perspective of the regime, which observes its deviants and wishes them gone, and rejects understanding them on principle. From either the trans or the detrans perspective, it is nonsense.

Except…

How do you know, though? How do you know? How do you know, when everything from your very cradle is telling you trans people are aberrant for existing, and when trans life is so hard? The coercively detransitioned wholeheartedly claim total autonomy; they are not really lying; from a strictly liberal-minded perspective, they are not wrong. How exactly can continued transition be ‘unhindered’ when society is engineered to always make it difficult?

How do you really know it’s your choice and your choice alone?

We all realise the answer: you don’t. You can’t. Not with complete certainty. There’s no such thing as a pure, unadulterated, individual choice, and there’s very rarely such a thing as an unhindered transition.

We live in a world that reviles transsexuality, that denies and despises the mutability of sex and stamps out any proof that gender is smoke and mirrors. The regime of cisheterosexism seeps through every layer of society and through every aspect of life. Purely voluntary detransition is, in the strictest sense, impossible. Sex/gender is a regime, and no act under it is free; all are forced to exist and be legible within its framework, or else be totally exiled. To exist socially is to exist under sex/gender.

This is not whatsoever unique to detransition. Or detrans people, or trans people. Cis women, for instance, must grapple with what it means to be a woman when Woman is defined as subordinate to Man—even as most do not transition about it. So, too, do men grapple with what their gender means when Manhood is defined and enforced via violence towards women, other men, and the gender-deviant. Even the cissexual must contend with the demands placed on their bodies—almost all transsexual treatments originate in cissexual healthcare. There is no exit from this struggle, because patriarchal sex/gender is constructed to be all-encompassing and mutually exclusive. Woman is everything Man isn’t, and vice versa; never the twain shall meet, and no stone will they leave unturned. No matter what you do, it will be sexed, it will be gendered, and though the conclusion will shift from occasion to occasion, in any particular instance it will allow for no ambiguity. Even when someone yells at you on the street, “Are you a chick or a dude?!”—that is not ‘ambiguity.’ It’s just a longer version of a slur.

Similarly, this is not the first (nor the last) time when sex/gender alteration has been contorted and weaponised against transsexuality—that is, sex-mutability’s most blatant, most acute manifestation. The Cass Review has notably cited the existence of non-transitioning nonbinary individuals as ‘proof’ transition must be curtailed:

“Secondly, medication is binary, but the fastest growing group identifying under the trans umbrella is non-binary, and we know even less about the outcomes for this group. Some of you will also become more fluid in your gender identity as you grow older. We do not know the ‘sweet spot’ when someone becomes settled in their sense of self, nor which people are most likely to benefit from medical transition. When making life-changing decisions, what is the correct balance between keeping options as flexible and open as possible as you move into adulthood, and responding to how you feel right now?”

Doubtless, the Gender Criticals wish the nonbinary non-transitioner to be as non-existent as their more deviant sibling. But while a greater deviant still exists, those that happen to be more acceptable, more assimilate-able, are called upon to do the one thing they’re good for:

Kick the weaker bitch out.

Such too is the final fate of detransitioners under the patriarchal regime. They are to be the knife in the back of their siblings, and when those are gone, they will find their own backs perforated.

So far I have provided eloquent arguments towards clear and singular conclusions—at least, I hope you’ve found me eloquent and clear. Today, on this matter, I offer no such thing. I have nothing to offer but this: so long as transition is reviled, so long as the transsexual are persecuted in any manner at all, there is no freedom of sex and there is no neutrality. Insofar as this pertains to detransition: so long as the transsexual are persecuted, hated, and forced into obscurity, we are likewise bound to their persecution, hatred, and abandonment. So long as that holds, voluntary detransition can never be free.

What Now?

I know. I’m a killjoy. It’s a fate all serious anarchists and college dropouts must contend with: if we’re really sincere about what we think, the mood will be thoroughly murdered.

The fight is clear. The fight is needed. And, the fight is hard. But there is life to be lived in the meanwhile, and it’s worth living even if we don’t see a victory during our time. Total certainty may be impossible and foolish to seek—but you have to make choices anyway. Doing nothing is merely choosing passivity and inertia; you face the consequences either way.

So I ask again: how do you know?

If you’re someone contemplating detransition, here’s the second best thing I can offer: have the courage, the self-insight, and the compassion to face yourself and be honest. Have the intelligence and the disobedience to measure what you’ve been told about transition and transsexuality against the things you have seen and experienced. Have the audacity to be wrong, to make mistakes as many times as you need. Have the pride to ask for better things than you are offered. Have the humility to not think yourself exceptional. Above all, never relinquish the responsibility over your life and your choices to anyone or anything else. No, no one else knows any better. No, there is no easier way.

The first best thing I can offer—to anyone, detrans or not—is to tell you how I knew. In the end I speak from my own experiences, and so it’s only fitting that the message I broadcast is incomplete without a degree of testimony.

Oh, it is to my chagrin, believe me—well, kind of. For all that I love attention and getting told I write oh so powerfully well, a part of me also detests personality pieces. I’m just one woman; I don’t mean much; I shouldn’t mean much. But you must’ve wondered, right? Especially if you don’t recognise yourself in me. I’ve spoken briefly about aspects of my de/transition, and let’s say you took all that for granted, but you must’ve wondered: how did I get here in the first place? How did it feel? How does it feel? Really, truly, how? And why?

I don’t like personality pieces because I think they mine for compassion. That can be a catalyst for a great many things, but just as often I’ve had people treat me with total nicety and then vote for a politician that would kill me, or exile a child that used to be me. Compassion is common, human, and incredibly cheap.

It is also required for kinship. For comparison, for legibility. And one of the issues that plagues detransitioners is illegibility. Silence. A lack of reference by which to see yourself. Community is best known by example.

So an example I shall provide. Next time.

Recommended Reading

On the freedom of sex: Andrea Long Chu, The Right To Change Sex.

On the nature of sex/gender hierarchy within the patriarchy: Talia Bhatt, Understanding Transmisogyny, Part 1.

On the mechanisms of gender-conservatism among women: Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women.

[tooturtly]

Need to go on a rant about the feudal system (more specifically manorialism) and Gideon the Ninth (spoilers through Harrow the Ninth ahead)

Gideon is very specifically described as living in a feudal system in the Ninth house. She is a Serf. She lives and serves under a ruler, she has specific legal, social, and economic obligations to the House and its ruler as a result of this system.

Feudalism exists within a specific sociopolitical context. It’s not equivalent to slavery, though it can appear that way to a modern audience. Muir wouldn’t have picked the term “serf” to describe Gideon if she didn’t mean it, or if she meant something else (such as slavery or indentured servitude)

Serfdom is not ownership of an individual, like in slavery. It’s more like an intense landlord/employee relationship, if we’re looking for a modern touch point. A serf is bound to the land they live and work on because they are a valuable source of labor. They owe labor, goods, or a payment in equivalency to, the lord who runs the lands they are bound to. If they want to go elsewhere, they have to pay back the lord for what labor/goods they won’t be providing anymore, and the lord could refuse them.

Because this is also a reciprocal relationship, the lord also has certain responsibilities to the serfs, including protection, the maintenance of the law, and maintenance of the lands. The lord runs their holdings as ruler, but also can’t just do whatever they want. This is a social, economic, and political system, if people didn’t like it or benefit from it and had the capability to do so, they would rebel.

(Sorry for this long tangent. It’s important to set context and also discuss this history. Feudalism/Manorialism looked different in different places and times, and originally came from Roman villa systems, but this post is already long enough)

So what does this have to do with the locked tomb?

Gideon is a serf, very explicitly. She is also a ward, which puts her into an interesting spot when it comes to legal and financial responsibilities. This means she owes labor and fealty to the Ninth, essentially in repayment for raising her.

When she tries to head to the Cohort, she would otherwise be allowed to do that as a free citizen of the Ninth House. But, she has prior responsibilities to the House as a serf, so she would need the Lord’s (Harrow’s) permission to do so. Despite these obligations, she is not required to do any particular jobs in the Ninth. She is not forced to be a nun, or to do labor. From what is described, it seems like she’s relatively left to her own devices.

In a system of slavery, Gideon would be forced to enact specific labor, to learn a specific trade, and to generally do whatever the fuck Harrow or the Reverend family wanted. But she’s not.

Again, Gideon can train to join the cohort as much as she wants. She can lock herself in her room and avoid people as much as she wants. She can avoid prayers or choose to go to them. She can do what she wants, but she is not allowed to leave to take her labor elsewhere without authorization, because of her legal and financial obligations in this sociopolitical system.

Ortus puts it very well in Harrow: he must follow her orders and fulfill the responsibilities he socially is obligated to fulfill, but when he lays his head down at night he is allowed to feel however he wants about himself and his actions, he is still a free person. Ortus is in a slightly different situation as his position at birth obligates him to be Harrow’s Cavalier, as opposed to Gideon who is in a lower social position and is the only option left, but he still owes a large amount of loyalty and labor to the Ninth House.

(Sorry again this is so long. I repeat myself quite a bit. But I saw someone say that Gideon is Harrows slave and that is a misconception that brushes over a lot of the complexities of the books. The relationship is complicated and full of social dynamics that we don’t see as modern readers because there are so many layers that require historical context. This is also not a defense of the feudal system or to say that their relationship isn’t toxic. It is. But that’s a different post)

[n0tamused]

Could I request Dr Ratio's s/o defending him when people insult him (calling him a boring lover and a man of loose morals)?

A/n: This request was long coming, but I hope you enjoy this nonetheless! Dr. Ratio defense squad, assemble! I feel a little rusty writing this, so I hope it's all good :,)

Contents: Veritas Ratio x GN!Reader, fluff, headcanon format

Words: 1163

-It is well known that Dr. Veritas Ratio is well known throughout the entire cosmos for his feats, but however good or grand those accomplishments may be, not everyone looks at them fondly

-Not to mention that one particular hater he has noticed posting about him for 10 years, without a stop? He honestly admires their persistence. It takes a lot to be a hater too y’know

-There was a time where even Veritas wasn’t made of tougher skin, when the comments really did get to him; thankfully, he had the patience and pride to get him through without publicly reacting in a way that would only fan those flames further. Still, some words have left their mark on him - even diamonds can suffer scratches and cracks

-You, as his partner, naturally knew of these things. You’ve picked up on them from the things he has told you and from his body language when put in certain situations. And when you did openly ask him about it, although he appears stiff, he did not lie to you in private

-Knowing his innermost opinions and his background was, probably, what drew you to be particularly defensive over your the plaster-head-donning professor. They were all so quick to judge, yet none of them took a moment to think how much hard work it actually took for Ratio to reach the position he was in now. Knowledge does not fall into your hands, you have to work for it.

-And one day, this inner justice seeker had gone short of patience. The academy was always filled with wandering students and professors alike, all chattering among each other during breaks. And you just happened to pass by a couple conversing about him. 

-Ears perked and focused on the little group, you heard them speak rather unsavory words about a professor. Words ‘hard exam, unpassable, books that were too thick and chalk being thrown’ were all mentioned in their conversation, and it truly didn’t take a genius to figure out who the person in question was. Then they began to throw out insults they wouldn’t dare speak in front of another professor, let alone Veritas. But worst of all, they touched upon the subject of his relationship, your relationship, making such wild claims you had to wonder whether they were really talking about Veritas or someone else. Even worse - since it can always get worse - an assistant professor joined in on this gossip, spilling a “fact” that he even had other lovers than you and that he had loose morals.

-WHAT?

-Feeling your blood boiling and teeth grinding together, you couldn’t hold it within yourself. It was wrong! Ratio worked for his place and knowledge and pay, and sure - his exams and classes were tough, but he was neither a bully or an unjust professor! 

-That little group heard you loud and clear, and one did try to argue back but was quickly silenced. And one tried to walk away - you didn’t let that happen either. The people close around stopped and gaped, and perhaps they saw similar or shared characteristics between you and Veritas, maybe that’s why they also didn’t feel brave enough to keep talking or leave before you’re done. Who is to say? But what’s true is that they listened to you. 

-As you were getting to the end of your speech of defense, a familiar figure walked out of one of the classrooms close by. Clearing his throat he sent you a look, ‘enough’ he said without a word, but he was not angry. The students were dismissed after he feigned ignorance to the situation, as if he hadn’t heard a peep outside of those four walls of the classroom. 

-”I am done for today, have you wanted something of me? Anything you need?” 

-He spoke calmly, but his eyes showed some softness you barely ever saw. It was a rare sight, a look reserved for when he looked at you in bed, having you in his arms or when you held him, when he told you he wasn’t staring or being ‘too sappy’, but he was just looking at you, perhaps even admiring ‘if he may be so bold as to say that’.

-”A walk would be nice, I even got us a spot at that restaurant for lunch”

-And so it was. The walk towards the location was unusually quiet, and somewhere along the way he uttered “You shouldn’t have caused such a scene in the hallway”, his tone once more lacking the anger many expected of him. 

-”I should have, and I did. They were being rude and such behaviour is not fit for any student” You have been a student once, and there were terrible professors and your own opinions of them had been sour at some points in time, sure, but to openly spit venom? That was ridiculous. Or were you perhaps being stubborn, hypocritical? You wouldn’t say so. They were being rude, period.

-”They are students, they are also young. Gossip, however much unsavory, and however much I do not like it, is natural for them. It is not something that needs to be challenged, especially in a situation like this”

-You gave him an unsatisfied look, and he returned it in equal measure. It would take a while to convince him.

-”It doesn’t matter.. I did what I did, because I had enough of hearing people spread lies about you.. Disagree with me as much as you wish, but I’d do it again”

-He sighed and shook his head. He wanted to say something more, but for once he chose to keep quiet. It was better to leave it be as you were still not cooled off from the encounter 

-The rest of the evening went well, and you touched upon the subject briefly, not going too in depth. Ratio told you about his day, the upcoming events and plans, and you told him about yours. It was enjoyable, and it certainly helped to calm you both down

-But once you both came home and changed into more leisure wear, you told him of the thorn you felt whenever people spoke badly about him. He only looked at you, told you he understand, but “My name has been through a lot, I can take it”

-You weren’t sure if you wanted to slap some sense into him or kiss your reasons into his skin. He may be used to it, but you weren’t and you didn’t plan on getting used to it. And even as you took his face firmly between the two of your hands and brought him closer so he could hear your crystal clear, even as you saw the defiance melting from his eyes, he looked more vulnerable than ever; not angry, not sad or shocked or disappointed - vulnerable.

-So with conviction you kiss his face more times than you care to count and tell him he is someone worth defending, no matter what

Ⓒ n0tamused/jarttavia_. Do not repost, translate, edit, and/or copy any of my works. Likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated.

[fraudulent-cheese]

You know, funny you bring that up, i actually kinda went on a rant/analysis about this in discord the other day... More centered on the kids themselves than their parents but yes, i'd argue the parents of the kids post gen 1 are at best a little neglectful or too hands off, and at worst just do not care about their child's safety whatsoever.

To get a concrete answer answer on this however, we kinda need to know exactly how the more dangerous and absurd aspects of Total Drama were considered in canon. Like. was the ending scene of world tour actually aired in canon? were all the scenes in mike's head only there for our convenience or did they actually convince this italian boy to dress up as his alters and reenact their discussions? Do the people in universe think the more dramatic scenes or harsher injuries were exaggerated for the cameras, or is the promise of a million dollars enough to sway concerns? (because let's be real here: a million dollars is a fuck ton of money. i calculated for fun what money Cameron would actually be giving in his ending and if every camper takes him up on his offer they get around 77 grand. which is crazy)

If we're talking specifically Gen 1 parents, basically every parent except Sierra's and Alejandro's gets a pass for letting their kid on TD, since it's kinda plot relevant that they were duped into thinking it would be on a luxury hotel and not. crappy summer camp except there's a middle aged guy torturing you for clout. (if you want i'll drop what i said about Ale and Sierra's parents in a seperate reblog because i had. alot to say.)

HOWEVER. I cannot give this pass to the Gens 2, 3 and (maybe) 4 contestants or their parents. Outside of the ones that didn't know (Damien, maybe Dave, unknown if Anne Maria or Ella watched more than just a couple episodes since they only talk about the singing), they really watched the "get thrown out of planes" season or god forbid the "toxic waste" season and decided "yep, auditionning this show is a great idea, actually".

Yes, it was the most popular reality show in universe at some point, but REALLY? Are you sure this is a good idea? ZOEY ARE YOU SURE THIS IS A GOOD IDEA YOU SAW THE VOLCANO FINALE

This goes double for the Pahkitew Island cast, btw. based on their audition tapes + Leonard's stated age in Ridonculous Race, they had to have had sent their tapes close enough in time to the actual filming of the season itself. Which means this was after Revenge. Like at that point auditionning for TD would only be something you'd do if you either:

desperately needed to be away from your family/get that mil

considered the more outlandish happenings to be staged in some way

have the ultimate "Nah i'd win" mindset and just think the bad shit won't happen to you because yes

In any case, their parents HAD to have let them be on the show. How. Especially for the Roti cast's parents, actually (i hc that TD's ratings started dropping after World Tour but this isn't confirmed in canon) because as established, this shit was POPULAR popular. They at least had to have heard about it, and i wouldn't understand why you wouldn't at least double check to see if the show wouldn't make your kid get life long consequences from it. Then again, maybe im overestimating what regular people know about Reality TV and all of it's possible consequences on their contestants or whatever.

So yeah. Gen 2 and Gen 3 parents are not off the hook whatsoever on this... but im not sure about Gen 4.

Listen. Listen. Hear me out. I don't know how much the reboot cast knew about the show. Idk how much teenagers care about 10+ year old reality shows, no matter how popular they got outside of youtube videos talking about the more negative sides or keeping up with the former contestants. or something. I sincerely doubt the show wouldn't have developped an Action Park-like reputation, but... people still went to Action Park when it was open. Even after people fucking died. Maybe it morphed into daring your friends to submit an audition or hoping you could get major clout out of it?

But im still giving Gen 4's parents the major side-eye. They were VERY MUCH alive and aware of the show while it was airing, Priya's parents are proof of this.

On one hand, the most recent related season to TD in canon was most likely Ridonculous Race, and from what i know it got less extreme than TD? In terms of injuries? Like the worst that happends is a broken arm and a concussion i believe. Trends get forgotten quickly. Maybe they promised it would be safer somewhere in the contract??

On the other... They were alive during the time TD presumably aired in canon. They had to have heard about some things, right? Unless Chris burried the intern deaths, the injuries, the everything, (or it was covered up as staged/it was actually staged) shit had to have come out eventually right? RIGHT??? Did no one do any double checking? Granted some of the reboot parents already seem neglectful in canon (Ripper, Chase, Scary Girl, Julia even come to mind), but... Did Damien's parents not ask about it at all? Did neither Raj or Wayne's parents double check what their kids would be doing for summer? Do their parents even know they're going on Total Drama at this point???

uh, TLDR: Something is up with the Gens 2 and up parents, but i'd argue there's something up with the contestants themselves as well.

when u think abt it a lot of td parents are shitty like lightnings dad wouldnt even pay attention to him, duncan’s dad questioned if they really loved him, heather’s parents were celebrating she was gone, sierra’s mom is neglectful of her to the point she puts her idols before her own daughter, trent’s dad doesn’t support him being into music, cody’s parents forget his bday, courtney’s parents have pushed her so hard to succeed she feels inadequate when being anything but successful.i’m p sure u got good td parents like dj’s and cameron’s moms, but like….jesus christ dude

[gatorbites-imagines]

Okay okay so like I absolutely adored your kinktober Logan fic ❤️😭 it was like, perfection!

I was wondering if you could make a sequel with that same reader, it can be anything you want, I just loveee their relationship!!

Love you gator! 💋

Logan Howlett x mutant male reader

Headcanons

This is connected to my kinktober post, which you can read here. I’m starting my internship Monday, getting my license, and listening to nothing but Rammstein. Other than that, I’m chilling, how are yall?

After your little romp in the hay, or should I say woods? The two of you became a thing.

Neither of you ever put a word to what you were, boyfriends, partners, mates? It didn’t really matter. You scented him and he scented you, and by god did you try to mark him, fighting his healing factor with all you had.

The wolf pack accepted your presence, mainly because the whole dynamic thing feral mutants had didn’t matter to them. You didn’t stick around at all times though, since coyotes don’t form packs but are social animals.

But you always like to bring whatever you’ve killed when you do come back. The wolf pack Logan is staying with also casually accept that whatever you bring is for Logan, even if he always shares.

Logan has a feeling that if the wolves could speak, then they would approve of his “mate”, since you singlehandedly chase down anyone threatening their territory and bring back prey, mainly to impress Logan

You’re like a new young alpha trying to prove themselves to the old scarred omega, doing everything in your power to woo Logan even if you already have him. The many shared moments of passion are proof enough.

This also means you’ve taken to guarding the packs territory, as well as your own. Which means that whenever the x-men show up to find Logan, you spot them first.

you get mistaken for Logan for a moment, since they only assumed there would be one guy running around naked in the woods. But your more lithe and much less hairy build makes it clear that you are not Logan.

Good thing Logan had a feeling and was nearby though, as you almost launch yourself at the closest X-men to rip into them for coming to take your partner away.

Logan doesn’t ask you to come back with him, since he knows how comfortable you are out here away from everything. He can’t get himself to demand that, even if he yearns for you to stay.

Luckily for Logan, you would never leave your omega behind, especially when his scent so strongly yearns for you to stay with him. Getting you to wear clothes is a lot more difficult though. In the end you only agree to wear one of logans tank tops which is just long enough to cover the most important bits.

Logan does all the talking, since you two have spent most of your time just grunting and growling to communicate. You do yip though, compared to Logans more guttural noises. You have also perfected that howl scream noise coyotes do, which almost gives Scott a heart attack when you do it out of the blue.

Meeting the rest of the x-men has you on edge for a while, which results in you just kinda walking the perimeter of whatever property they are on, be it the mansion or Krakoa. They still can’t get you to wear clothes, outside of Logans laundry.

Its only when they start smelling like pack that you open up little by little, you even start talking to some of them, but most of that is kept for your lovely omega.

Speaking of feral mutant dynamics, you have a bit of a posturing problem when it comes to Hank. At least, in the beginning. Hes a big, very strong, very smart guy. And hes an alpha. Its very clear though that his secondary dynamic doesn’t matter as much to him, or control him.

But your instincts still want to square up, making you circle his lab every now and then, or give him a couple of nips before you jump back. These are not the same nips you gave Logan when you were flirting, these are more “don’t fuck with me, fellow alpha, and I wont fuck with you”

Hank is a great sport about it and knows its just biology and psychology, and that you will grow more comfortable over time. Like Logan, you will most likely always be close to your feral instincts, but it becomes more manageable with time.

You and Logan still like to spend time away from the x-men, be it to chase each other naked in the woods, or just to cuddle in the shade of a large tree.

Not being able to bring Logan big prey as gifts, you scramble for a while, since your instincts are still wailing that you need to woo him one way or another. Especially when you learn Logan has flirted with, dated, or slept with some of the many attractive mutants around you.

It results in you fighting extra hard during fights, it’s impressive when you somehow rip the head off a sentinel and bring it to Logan, presenting it to him with a puffed out chest and little proud yips. You look like you fought a blender and lost, but you are very proud.

The urges become more manageable with time like it does for Logan, but they are always present. And yeah, Logan and you have weeks off every spring and fall for biological reasons, that may involve getting naked in the woods again.

That, or wherever you guys live need to be soundproofed, something the x-men learn after the first time. But who are they to judge, everyone knows every member of the team are wild in some way.

Logan ends up being the more dominant out of the two of you , mainly because hes stronger and older. He may be an omega, but you have a type, and he fits it perfectly.

You are very much a “whatever you say gorgeous” kind of alpha, even if you want to square down for Logan with any alpha you guys cross. That’s mainly instinct, but Logan still finds himself at least a little charmed at the prospect of being worth fighting over.

He always makes sure you reward you for being such a good alpha to him, which only pavlovs you to do it more, even if it grows more subtle over time.

It just becomes a quirk of yours to be a little extra possessive over Logan, no one really thinks about it after you start actually wearing clothes, talking and joining the team. It’s only something people remember when you two leave to go live in the woods again for some time.

Before it was just logan, but now you go too, in the end its just a normal day for the x-men.

[tsumuus]

Hello hope you’re doing well!! I’m looking at ur valentines event and I just have to request teddy bear + Bakugou!! :3

Valentine’s Day wasn’t really a holiday you paid much attention to. Sure, the pink and red decorations were cute, and the chocolates on sale the day after were a bonus, but the whole romantic aspect? Yeah, you preferred to ignore that. Especially when your long-time crush happened to be your best friend, Katsuki Bakugou.

So, when the inevitable pity party formed among your single friends, you gladly joined. The evening was filled with shared complaints, dramatic groans, and enough junk food to make recovery from the sugar crash seem impossible. It was fun, a perfect way to forget about the couples posting their gifts and love confessions all over social media. Eventually, though, your friends trickled out one by one, until it was just you and Bakugou left in the common area.

You were used to moments like these with him. Comfortable silence, an occasional quip from his end, and the warmth of just existing near each other without any pressure. But then, as he stood to leave, he turned to you with a careless, “Oh yeah, got you somethin’.”

Blinking, you barely had time to process before he tossed something soft at you. Reflexively, you caught it, eyes widening at the sight of a plush teddy bear resting in your hands. It was soft, warm from where his hands had just been, and oddly adorable.

You looked back up at him, completely stunned. “You… got me a teddy bear?”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, rolling his eyes. “Yeah? What, you don’t want it?”

“No! No, I-” You scrambled for words. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

He shrugged, already turning toward the hallway. “It’s nothing. Just ‘cause.”

Just ‘cause.

On Valentine’s Day.

You barely managed to stammer out a thanks before he disappeared down the hall, leaving you sitting there, heart pounding against your ribs. Your fingers curled around the plush fur of the bear as your thoughts began to spiral.

It’s just a friendly gesture. Nothing weird about that. Right?

But this was Bakugou. The guy who didn’t do things without a reason. The guy who scoffed at sentimentality, rolled his eyes at grand romantic gestures. He had never given you a gift before- not even for your birthday. And now, on Valentine’s Day of all days, he decided to just… casually give you a teddy bear?

You spent the next several minutes pacing your dorm, the bear sitting accusingly on your bed as your mind raced a mile a minute. What if you were overthinking it? What if it really was just a friendly thing? But what if it wasn’t? What if-

No. No, you couldn’t just sit here and drive yourself insane. You needed answers.

Before you could lose your nerve, you grabbed the bear and stormed down the hall to Bakugou’s dorm, knocking firmly on his door.

A few seconds later, the door swung open, revealing him in sweats and a loose t-shirt, hair still damp from a shower. His eyebrows lifted slightly at the sight of you standing there, looking somewhat frantic. “What the hell are you doing?”

You swallowed, gripping the bear a little tighter. “I need to ask you something.”

He stepped aside, letting you in, and you wasted no time turning to face him once the door shut. “The bear,” you started, voice a little unsteady. “It wasn’t just a friendly thing, was it?”

His eyes flickered to the plush in your arms, then back to your face. For once, he didn’t immediately respond with some snarky remark or insult. Instead, he exhaled sharply, rubbing the back of his neck.

“No. It wasn’t.”

Your breath hitched. “Then what was it?”

His jaw tightened before he finally muttered, “What the hell do you think?”

Your heart stopped. “Bakugou-”

He cut you off with a frustrated groan, crossing his arms. “I like you, dumbass. Alright? I have for a while. Didn’t know how to say it, so I figured the damn bear could do the talking for me.”

Your brain short-circuited. Your long-time crush- your best friend- liked you.

“I-” Words failed you, emotions flooding in too fast to process. You looked down at the bear, then back up at him, and before you could stop yourself, a smile broke across your face.

“That’s really stupid,” you murmured, voice fond.

His scowl deepened. “Yeah, well, so is pacing around for twenty minutes before stormin’ over here.”

You laughed, light and breathless, before taking a hesitant step forward. “Bakugou-”

“Katsuki,” he corrected, softer this time.

Your heart squeezed, and you took another step, closing the space between you. “Katsuki,” you echoed, voice barely above a whisper. “I like you too.”

For a moment, he just stared at you, expression unreadable. Then, with a quiet scoff, he muttered, “Took you long enough,” before reaching out, pulling you against him.

And just like that, the bear wasn’t the only thing warm in your hands anymore.

valentines event | masterlists

a/n i love this request this prompt is so bakugou coded ugh love you💋 hope you liked it! :)

[coichii]

winter ✭

—(🎧)—> when han realizes something’s wrong with you before you realize it yourself

pairing - newbf!han x fem!reader

genre - comfort, cheers to me failing a test !! ☻

word count - 0.8k

warnings - implied seasonal depression & post hiatus writing

Maybe it’s the winter air, maybe it’s the warmth of the beach being replaced with snow fall of small ice crystals in the sky. You don’t know, but it’s making you feel off.

It’s a feeling quite indescribable, but if there were a you could equate to it, it would be numbness. The source? No idea.

It always comes and goes during the cold, a shiver cold air radiating through your body as the feeling of winter does.

It’s hard to stick to a routine during the winter. Getting up at 7:00am, taking walks, exercising, drinking water? You can pretty much say those are all in the garbage.

The only sense of consistency left in your life is Han, and even that is a fairly recent addition. Knowing him isn’t, but kissing him and cuddling him? Yeah, that’s different.

It hurts so say the feeling doesn’t go away with him. It definitely gets lighter and fades away, but it’s still there lingering.

It could be school too, and you’ve already noticed the A’s slowly fading into B’s, into C’s, and slowly but surely, D’s.

To say it’s taking a toll on you would be an understatement.

< —— >

Fuck. No no no.

31% is what the computer screen infront of you reads. A final score for a critical quiz in your major class.

A buzzing starts in your head, one that rings your ears like a gong had just been hit next to them. One that is so heavy that it begins to blur your vision alongside the fresh hot tears in your eyes.

As if it couldn’t get worse, a faint knock is soon heard on the door of your college dorm room. You begrudgingly get up, groaning as you quickly shut your laptop and wipe the moisture from your eyes.

God I swear. I can’t deal with my roommates right n-

“Y/n? I’ve been wondering why you weren’t answering my text. It’s been days.”

Definitely not who you were expecting to be on the other side of the door.

“O-oh hi. Come in.” You usher, pointing him and softly closing the door behind him.

“I didn’t know it’s been that long, I’m sorry, Hannie.” You say half heartedly. You did genuinely feel bad, but you can’t muster up the energy.

You move to peck a small kiss on his lips, but he places his hands on your cheeks to stop you. He places his forehead on yours, eyes staring into yours as if he’s trying to read what your lips won’t give up.

“Is everything ok?”

You can feel a sting make its way through your body, but you ignore it. You have to ignore it.

“Yeah, I am. I promise I’ve just been b-“

“Baby, don’t lie to me. I’ve known you for long enough to know when you are. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

Maybe it’s the fact that it’s been building up for so long, or it’s the look on his face or the tone of his voice. Whatever it is, it’s coming out.

“I-I really don’t know. I’m sorry Han, I don’t even know what I’m feeling.” You choke, a feeling of helplessness escaping its way from your heart.

“It’s like everything that I’ve been working for is falling apart in front of me, and it’s scary.” By now, he’s already wrapped his strong arms around your body, enveloping you in a comforting scent of lavender and love.

“I know. I know it’s scary. But you want to know something?” He proposes, and you sniffle and look at him, eyes filled to the brim with sincerity.

“You’re doing so well. You’re so smart, so strong, so independent. It’s okay to take breaks, it’s ok to struggle. Especially, it’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to have moments where you feel like every thing is falling apart, but it’s important that you know it’s not.”

Have you ever felt a feeling like an immense weight being lifted off your shoulders? A feeling like a deep breath even though there’s no oxygen? If not, that’s surely what you’re feeling now.

“I love you. I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you.” You sniffle, scrubbing dripping tears off with your fist.

“Don’t say sorry. I forgive you. Forgive me for not coming sooner.” He says, rubbing the silk of your hair in a comforting manner.

“You have nothing to be forgiven about.” You mumble, clutching a fist onto his shirt where you hold yourself, still in the same area from where he had come in.

“Now you know how I feel when you keep saying sorry.” He teases, a small chuckle coming out as well. “Cmon, let’s get you something to eat and I’ll help you with anything you need.”

“Ok” you nod, following him as he opens and walks out the door of your room.

That’s what it will be. Everything will be okay when you have him.

[starrihan]

Lipstick Stain (Woonhak Fic)

-> Pairing: Woonhak x afab! Reader

-> Plot: your 6 month anniversary spells surprises as your boyfriend has the perfect night set up for you

-> Genre: tooth rotting fluff, like its so sweet, Woonhak is so cutie baby i love him so much, mentions of kissing and a little kiss at the end, Jaehyun and Sungho act like his parents

-> Warnings: none (not proofread!)

-> Word Count: 1,377

-> Notes: idk where this idea came from but i wrote this in like 2 hours and in one sitting (say youe proud of me please my attention span has been nonexistent since school started). i also typed this with long nails on (theyre press ons) so literally my fingers hurt but I hope you guys enjoy this 🫶🏽😘

-> Notes pt. 2: this is my 50th post 🤧🫶🏽

༄ ༄ ༄

Even though you had been together for a little bit now, you and Woonhak were still romantically shy around each other. You guys had only kissed a handful of times, but it was always so sweet and romantic. Everyone adored your guys’ relationship, and his members were no exception. 

Here you were, at his doorstep, dressed in a cute pink dress, ready for your weekly date. When you knocked on the door, you weren’t surprised to see that Jaehyun was the one who opened it. His reaction to you dressed so cute was priceless, like a father seeing his daughter go on her first date. Granted his reaction was like this every time you and Woonhak went on a date but still, it was very endearing. 

“Woonhak! Y/N’s here!”

Upon hearing the news of your arrival, Woonhak stepped out of his room, fixing his shirt cuff, hair slicked back. You felt your jaw drop, gawking at your stunning boyfriend. Jaehyun is equally as shocked, not knowing how much more handsome Woonhak could get. Woonhak looks up, pulling a mocking face at Jaehyun but smiling when his eyes travel down to you. You’re beaming as he walks up to you, arms open to give him a hug. You let out a yelp when, instead of hugging you normally, he picks you up, spinning you before putting you down and planting a quick on your forehead. Your blush is heavy as you try to hide your face in his chest, careful not to mess up your makeup.

“Y/N! I missed you! You look so gorgeous.”

He says, pulling back to look into your eyes. Your cheeks heat up even more, blush growing deeper at his adoring compliment.

“I could say the same to you. You’re so strikingly handsome.”

The way you two were staring into each other’s eyes was enough to get Jaehyun to fangirl, pulling out his phone and taking a picture of the sweet moment. 

“You’re so embarrassing.”

Woonhak says, stomping his feet like a child throwing a tantrum, which you find so adorable. You both take your leave, walking to the restaurant nearby that Woonhak had reserved for the both of you. Today was your 6 month anniversary and he insisted he take you out somewhere nice, despite not having a lot of money. You found him so charming, how could you not? He was so sweet to you, always taking you out or just having you around. 

Upon arriving at the restaurant, the waiter led you to your table. You’re awestruck when you see the big bouquet of flowers sitting in the middle, something that Woonhak personally went out of his way to set up for you, knowing you love cute gestures like these. His smile is almost as wide as his face upon your reaction, finding your reaction so adorable. 

“Woonhak… this is so sweet. Thank you!”

You fight the urge to jump on him and hug him, sitting in your chair, that he pulled out for you, and smelling the flowers again. 

“And my favorite flowers too… you’re so perfect.”

He chuckles as he takes his seat across from you, taking your hand in his, intertwining your fingers while you look through the menus together. 

༄ ༄ ༄

At the end of the night, Woonhak walks you back to your house. Hand in hand, you guys take your time walking back, talking about anything and everything. You even stop by a small ice cream shop that’s near the restaurant you were at, indulging in the sweet treat despite having eaten dessert already. You take your time savoring the sweet, not wanting the night to end yet. Woonhak swears he can watch you eat forever, smiling never fading the entire time he’s with you. 

“Woonhak stop staring, you’re making me blush!”

You laugh as you look away, avoiding his playful yet strong gaze. He just smiles even harder, getting up from his seat to kneel in front of you, playfully continuing to watch you. He opens his mouth, indicating that he wants a bit, to which you oblige, feeding a spoonful of the strawberry ice cream into his mouth. He cutely eats the cold dessert, winking at you as you throw your head back, laughing at his antics. This truly was the perfect night.

After your ice cream detour, Woonhak takes the scenic route home, stargazing on the way back. To you, he was being oddly affectionate, in a good way. He was never one to express his feelings much through words, but he always tried for you. 

“Not even the amount of stars in the night sky could amount to how much I care about you.”

You were taken aback by his confession, smiling to yourself as you lean into his taller frame.

“You’re so verbal about your feelings today. Are you gonna tell me something crazy like that you’re going away forever or something?”

You thought your joke was funny, but Woonhak gulps, body tensing when you bring up him having to tell you something important. 

“Actually, I do have something really important to tell you.”

Now you’re worried as he stops in his tracks. You’re only a couple doors away from your house, so you tug at his arm, forcing him to continue walking. When you arrive in front of your door, you swallow the lump in your throat, preparing for the worst. Your mind is racing at a million miles a minute, worried that he’s going to break up with you. You try to calm yourself down from those thoughts, turning to face him. 

“What is it that you have to tell me?”

You tilt your head, trying your best to steel your nerves and prepare yourself for what you’re about to hear. Woonhak’s hands are sweating like crazy as he pushes loose strands of hair out of his face. 

“Y/N… we’ve been together for a bit now. First of all, I can’t believe we’ve spent 6 months together. These have been the best 6 months of my life…”

His pause has tears welling up in your eyes, afraid that your worst nightmare is coming true.

“Truthfully, I’m not very good at expressing how much I care about you with words, but I hope it's not too early to say this. I love you, Y/N…”

He closes his eyes like he's waiting for your rejection. But he is instead met with your hands cupping his cheeks, smile so big it could scare a child as a single tear falls from your eye. He panics, thinking that he scared you with his confession.

“Y/N, you're crying. I’m sorry if it was too early I didn't mean it haha–”

“I love you too, Woonhak.”

Now it's his turn to be silent as he relaxes in your hold, the biggest sigh of relief leaving his mouth as he can’t help but laugh at the situation. 

“You love me? For real?”

“Well I don’t love you for jokes. You scared me with how many pauses you took. I thought you were breaking up with me and leaving the country.”

You guys both laugh, looking into each other's eyes when you realize your hands are still on his face. You sigh lovingly, pulling him in for a short, but sweet kiss. 

“I love you so much, Kim Woonhak.” 

༄ ༄ ༄

His walk back to his dorm was spent dazed. He couldn’t believe he told you that you loved him. He couldn’t believe that you had reciprocated his feelings. He can’t wipe the stupid grin off of his face as he enters his dorm, Jaehyun and Sungho already waiting for him on the couch. 

“You finally told her, huh?”

Jaehyun smirks as he knows exactly why the younger looks so lovestruck. 

“You can tell she said it back, he has a big lipstick stain on his lips.”

Woonhak stands there, touching his lips delicately, like he’ll wipe off the lipstick if he dares touch it too much. 

“Our Woonhak has finally grown up. I’m so proud of you.”

He doesn’t even fight off Jaehyun’s hug, too much in awe to care. He finally told you how you felt, and you felt the same. That’s all that mattered. 

༄ ༄ ༄

[loca4moony]

Loving schemes

Hi! This is my first time posting here. I want to thank the sweet @ellecdc not only because she was so lovely to encourage me to share when I was (maybe still are) shy and nervous about it, but also because I was inspired by her, her writing and her gorgeous portrait of Barty 🤍.

Barty Crouch Jr x reader | 560 words

The one with Barty feeling down and reader comforting him.

Masterlist <3

Mornings at Hogwarts were never quiet, much less if Barty was by your side and, let's be honest, when wasn't he?

To an outsider, you were having a normal breakfast. Barty made your and his drinks while you stuffed a shared plate for both of you to eat from.

But none of you were outsiders, that's why Evan looked around protectively, Dorcas tried oh so hard to make your boyfriend utter a single sentence instead of the occasional nod, and Regulus and Pandora kept brainstorming as quietly as they could the reason behind all of this.

You touched Barty’s thigh hoping he would look at you. He tensed. One, two, three you counted until he finally relaxed. He looked at your hand, never your face. Something was definitely wrong.

“Barty, baby, can we skip classes today? I feel a little under the weather” You tried.

Mhm is all you got as an answer, but he took your hand in his and started walking back to his dorm.

Once you got there, he took off your shoes and grabbed comfy clothes for both of you.

Before he could begin with his, as he liked to call it, ‘treasure caring 101’, you stroked his arm and said - in the most calming voice you could muster - “Can we lay down first? I want to cuddle” while pulling him to lay on top of you.

After a minute of scratching his head, he finally whispered “Why are you doing this?” “Because I love you Barty. I'll always be here for you, as long as you'll have me.” With that he looked at your face with something that could not be described as nothing but awe.

“Can I tell you something?” you asked, continuing when he nodded the affirmative “The very first thing I loved about you is how ‘too much’ you are. You know… talk, help, smile, read so much.”

You could tell that he was in shock. “How did you know I'm feeling insecure about that?” “Well,” you joked “maybe you won't believe me but some people think I'm a witch” you whisper as if you were telling him a secret.

Although he gave you the faintest smile, it was enough to make your heart jump in your chest. In return, you gave him a bone-crushing hug. He never felt more loved in his life.

You laid like that for what could have been twenty seconds or twenty years. “Not everything is fixed though…” he said with his usual mischief in his voice.

“What happened?” You asked, finally feeling like you could breathe again.

“Well…you told me that you didn't feel well and I know it was just a scheme to get me into bed with you”

“And help you and be there for you,” you interrupted “but okay”

“So you lied to take advantage of me and I think I need something in return. For the trouble, you know. And for the pain it might have caused me. I think I deserve a kiss” he said as if he didn't only have to ask for you to kiss him for hours on end.

“Mmm…” you pretended to think “how about three? Just in case you know, I wouldn't want to leave you wounded.”

“I think that's fair”

And let's just say you kissed him a lot more than three times that morning.

Thank you so much for reading <3

[aclikeairconditioning]

I wrote a little thing for the brilliant @technically-human ‘s amazing reverse verse dbda au. It’s kind of a post canon character study of rv!Edwin, because I’ve been having FEELINGS about him. I really hope I did them justice (Aixa, please notice me, it would be such and honor)

-

It had been a rough case.

The blood was still coating Edwin’s hands, his croquet mallet similarly splattered and discarded next to the door to be cleaned later.

“This is why we try not to take cases with demons.”

The sentence only broke the silence for a brief moment, Charles at its origin. Edwin’s thoughts echoed a similar sentiment, though with more finger pointing.

It was Niko’s fault that they took this case, with her kind heart and soft words that managed to convince Charles that the young girl with the demon stalker was worth their time. It was Niko who insisted they finish the case even after it became clear that Charles was uncomfortable (a sin punishable by death as far as he was concerned.) Which means it was Niko’s fault that the demon ended up recognising Charles, making many pointed threats about where he would be taking him.

No.

It wasn’t fair to think like that, not to Niko who was only trying to help a girl in a similar situation to herself, not to Charles who had just as much say regarding the continuation of the case, and not to Edwin.

Edwin who hadn’t protested nearly hard enough about taking on the case in the first place.

Edwin who’d only smashed in the demon’s head after he’d already recognised Charles.

Edwin who was supposed to protect him.

(Them. Protect them.)

No, it wasn’t all Niko’s fault. It was all Edwin’s.

His first instinct, drilled into him long before his death, was to go to his church. To confess his failings to a priest unable to see him and pray for forgiveness to an altar he rightly shouldn’t be around to see.

So he did.

Without a word he moved towards the mirror, phasing through with the sound of Charles calling his name behind him.

[kayrma]

See You At the Next Stop

Lily Evans meets a posh-looking bloke with messy hair on the way back to London, and for once in her life she actually enjoys a train ride. Maybe having a spontaneous seat partner isn't that bad after all.

Read on AO3 (2.9k words)

happy birthday, lily evans-potter! didn't have enough time to finish my punk!lily fic but i realized i never actually posted this fic from two years ago to tumblr so this is my contribution for today <3

Lily stared down the document in front of her, willing her brain to start writing words again. She had been on the train for nearly two hours now, travelling from Edinburgh to London. Visiting home had been yet another disaster, with Petunia continuing to judge Lily for moving to London after school and finding an inner-city job.  Her sister liked to say that Lily was wasting her money trying to live on her own (which was a lie, Lily had a lovely roommate named Mary), and that she’d be better off staying home and finding a husband. Sometimes, Lily thought Petunia was stuck in the nineteenth century, but she blamed most of that on her horrendous boyfriend Vernon, who worked for a drilling company or something else of the sort – it seemed far too boring to keep track of. 

Really, Lily had only gone home to visit their mum, following the two-year anniversary of her father’s death. His death had hit their family hard, despite them all knowing it was coming. Her father had suffered from cancer in his final years, but it still hurt knowing he was gone. Mr. Evans was Lily’s biggest supporter, encouraging her to attend Cambridge despite the monetary toll it would put on their family. He had helped her search for scholarships, and she ended up going to university for much lower than she ever could have expected without her father’s help. He was the one who helped her move to London, being there to help her move into her tiny flat despite him slowly growing weaker. She missed him every day, and she missed her mum, but she needed to be back in the city for work tomorrow.

Snapping out of her painful memories, Lily looked back at the half-empty document, with only a title and an introduction on it, not even in Times New Roman yet. She switched the font, the Arial irritating her, and leaned back into her seat. Even though she was on the high-speed rail, the train ride had felt impossibly long. She was seated next to some messy-haired Indian bloke, his glasses on top of his head and earbuds plugged in as he typed away on his own laptop. The man was gorgeous, to say the least, especially since he had unbuttoned the top collar of his dress shirt, and was wearing Converse with his slacks. Really, she couldn’t not admire him. Lily had a personal policy of not sitting next to men if she could avoid it, but he looked around her age and seemed relatively unassuming when he got on at Newcastle about an hour after her, and Lily found herself unable to say no. A part of Lily had wanted to ask him for his name, to know more about him, but he seemed to be a little bit of a mess as he got on the train. All he offered her was an apologetic smile as he struggled to shove his duffel into the overhead compartment as the train started moving. She smiled back at him, perhaps a little too eagerly in comparison to his semi-grimace. He had rolled up his sleeves as he sat down, and what was Lily supposed to do but stare at his well-defined tan forearms? He probably worked in some posh company, considering his attire (not that Lily could judge, she was still wearing business casual as well). Any time she peeked over at his laptop, he was typing furiously into some form of sheets that she truly could not decipher no matter how much she wanted to try. Looking away from him and turning her attention back to her own laptop, her brain felt like it was about to melt. 

Deciding to take a break, Lily closed her laptop, ridding her mind of thoughts about her struggling article. She pulled out her phone, and seeing that her plan was about to run out for the month, she started to play some silly game that didn’t require any data. At that moment, the messy-haired bloke looked over, saying “Oh, I love that game!”

He had said it extremely loud, presumably because he was blasting music in his earbuds, but Lily laughed and turned towards him.

“Really? All my mates make fun of me for playing it – what level are you on?”

“Oh, don’t worry, my mates do the same. They say it’s because I still act like a ‘bloody child’ but I think I just enjoy a bit of mindless fun, y’know?”

Lily nodded, glad to see that she had something in common with the gorgeous bloke. He hadn’t told her what level he was on, but his smile and enthusiasm more than made up for it.

“Regardless, I’ll let you get back to the game, this project might be the death of me.”

She slumped back as gracefully as she could, disappointed that he was busy, but she shot him another smile and went back to playing her silly little game. After exhausting her thumbs, she genuinely felt like she had lost brain cells, choosing to just put away her phone and relax with some music. Putting her head against the seat, she closed her eyes and tried to stop thinking entirely. However, no matter how much she tried to empty her mind, the bloke next to her kept popping into her mind. She ended up just embracing it, allowing her mind to fill with thoughts of who he could possibly be as she felt herself drifting off into sleep. 

Lily had no idea when she woke up, but she felt an impossible crick in her neck as she opened up her eyes. Quickly checking her watch for the time, she realized she had only been asleep for a little over half an hour, and sighed in relief – she’d still have time to try and work on her article again. However, as she tried to get up, she realized there was a weight on top of her head. Glancing upwards, she realized she had fallen asleep on the bloke’s shoulder, and he was leaning back on top of her head as his hands were stilled on his laptop. His shoulders were sturdy and broad, and Lily thought that she wouldn’t mind staying there forever. Not wanting to disturb him as he seemed utterly relaxed, Lily stayed put, hoping he’d wake up soon. 

After a few minutes (that felt like a lovely forever), his head lifted off of hers, and she took the opportunity to escape. Before she could even look at him, she heard the sound of his neck cracking as he stretched it, and Lily’s jaw dropped wide open. 

“That sounded like it hurt,” she commented discreetly, hoping he wouldn’t take it the wrong way. 

He smiled at her, glasses almost slipping off his nose now, rather than tangled in his messy hair. Shaking his head, he said “I always do it to wake myself up, it feels rather good actually.” The bloke proceeded to crack each one of his knuckles, and then his wrist. Lily grimaced at the noise, but couldn’t help herself from laughing. She figured she should probably apologize to him for falling asleep on him, even though she didn’t know how she ended up on his shoulder. 

“I’m Lily, by the way. Sorry I fell asleep on you. I’ve been working on an article and my brain genuinely felt like it might have melted if I hadn’t taken a break.”

“No worries Lily, it’s lovely to meet you,” he stuck out his hand, “Potter. James Potter.”

“Bond-like, are we?” Lily took his hand and gave him a firm handshake, trying to put on as serious of a face as she could in order to mirror his own expression. 

“Of course, milady Evans. What takes you to London this fine weekend?”

“Why Mr. Potter, I’m heading back to work. I visited my mum in Edinburgh, and I’ve got a roommate and a flat and a job to get back to tomorrow.”

“Is that so?” James flashed a smirk that would have brought her to her knees if she hadn’t already been sitting down. “Well Evans, I’ve just done the same, except that I visited my mum and dad in Newcastle, and am heading back to the flat I share with my brother and our friends, and a job as well.”

Lily giggled, of all things, and looked down to realize that their hands were still intertwined from when he had reached out to shake them. She dropped it before she could get too flustered, and tried not to notice the disappointed look on James’ face. 

“Right then, Potter, where do you work? I’d bet it’s somewhere posh, with the clothing you’re wearing and those sheets you were typing away on.”

Clearly surprised she had noticed, James’ quick reaction gave away that she seemed to have gotten everything right.

“Stalking me already Evans? And then falling asleep on me? Have you got some sort of ploy going on here, an evil scheme or whatnot?”

“Oh of course, I’m a journalist for The Daily Prophet, you see, and you’re the subject of my next story. James Potter: The Posh Bloke with Messy Hair and Unfinished Work.”

James let out a loud laugh at that, startling the other people in the full cabin. They all seemed to glare at him, despite his laugh being perfectly beautiful in her opinion.  He raised a thick eyebrow, questioning her with just that one expression.

“Alright, well you’re not the subject of my next article Potter, sorry to disappoint. But I do really work for The Daily Prophet, and I’m afraid I’m the one with unfinished work seeing as my article’s barely hit a page yet.”

“And you’re sure it can’t be about me? My messy hair just won’t do for The Prophet?”

“Afraid not, sorry, unless you’ve got a secret as to how you manage to keep it that messy. You’ve run your hands through it more than I can count in just the time we’ve been talking, and it’s not shown a single sign of being tamed.”

“Well Evans, I suppose I’ll let you in on a secret then.” He leaned in close to her, his lips almost brushing her ear as his breath made her shudder. “My dad’s actually the creator of Sleakeazy’s Hair Products, and I refuse to use it out of principle.”

Lily’s head snapped around so quickly it nearly gave her whiplash. She looked at James with an incredulous look on her face – there was no way he was telling the truth. But his face looked so earnest, completely devoid of his teasing demeanor, and Lily ended up just staring at him in bafflement. He snickered as she continued to stare him down, and his hands went right back up to muss up his hair.

“Yeah, I know. My brother ended up with the good hair genes, considering Sleakeazy’s has never really been able to do much for me anyways. Well, he’s not really my brother, we took him in after he ran away from his shitty family, but he’s my brother in everything but blood.”

James seemed like he was about to continue rambling, almost like his mouth was moving quicker than his brain. Lily reached out to put her hand on his wrist, but whether she did it to calm him down or for her own benefit, she didn’t quite know. 

“That’s really sweet of you and your family, James,” she gave him a small smile, “You’re clearly of the good sort. Maybe I will write my article about you after all. James Potter: A Bloke with Messy Hair and a Penchant for Being a Good Person.”

“All that from a bit of rambling, eh, Evans?” He was evidently smug, happy with the perception he’d given of himself. Something about his smirk made Lily want to wipe it clean off his face with a kiss, but it was far too early and far too public of an area to do that. Instead, she humored him with a laugh, and pulled her laptop out of her bag. 

Opening a new document, she enlarged the font into the awful old-Gothic newspaper style that came preloaded, and wrote up all the silly titles she’d come up with today. James reached for it slowly, wordlessly asking permission to take her laptop. She nodded and passed it to him, curious to see what he’d possibly type. He deleted all the words she’d put in, and changed the font to fucking Lobster, of all things, and then turned the laptop away from her. James seemed to be taking his time to think about what he was about to type, mussing up his hair yet again. After a minute or so of anticipation, he turned the laptop back to her, and it read: “James Potter: A Bloke with Messy Hair Who’d Like to Take One Lily Evans on a Date.”

Lily gave him what might have been the goofiest grin of all time, snatched back her laptop, changed the font to a respectable Times, enlarged it, and wrote in “Yes” so that it would fill up the page. James smiled back at her with the same reckless abandon, and leaned over to hold her hand. And then the computer nearly slipped off her lap.

They both reached for it, knocking heads in the process, but managed to save it from a horrific death on the train (she was a journalist, she needed to make use of her sensationalizing skills sometimes), and they both started laughing. They kept going even as she quickly put her laptop back in its bag. The passengers around them were definitely staring at them with irritation now, but that meant nothing to her if it meant seeing James’ smile. She leaned back into him and grabbed his hand to hold it properly this time, looking up at him like she could ravish him right there. He stared back at her with the same dark look in her eyes, and kissed her forehead and her nose. 

God, this boy and his ability to make her giggle. She whispered, “If you’d like to kiss me, you can just do it, y’know?”

He leaned in for a chaste kiss, “Right, but if I kissed you like I wanted to right now, we’d probably get a complaint for public indecency. Besides, it’s just another half hour to London, and my flat’s not too far from the station.” And then he winked at her. Lily gaped at him with an open mouth, and James pushed it back closed after a beat, saying “Don’t catch any flies in there, love.” Truly, James Potter was an enigma she could write an article on. 

“Well, I suppose I’ll get back to writing my article then. It seems I might be busy after we get off this train.” 

James stared her down as she pulled her laptop back out of its back, tied up her hair, and for extra flair, picked his glasses off his head and put them on. 

“Fuck, nevermind, you’re blind as a bat, Potter,” Lily blinked furiously, and shoved them back onto his face. James ruffled his hair (of course he did), and reopened his own work. Before he started working though, he reached over and pulled her closer to him, so much so that she was nearly on his lap, and then took his arm right back away once she was squished into him. Embracing the position, Lily opened a new document, abandoning the pages she had previously written, deciding that her next article would just have to be about something more lighthearted than the current foreign affairs of the UK government; her boss Minerva could probably appreciate some good news anyway. Pulling up the notes of an old interview she had done. Finally finding a rhythm as she typed away, Lily was startled by the “London, next stop!” that blared over the train’s PA system. She glanced over at James, who seemed just as rattled, and they both put their things away in unison. As everyone else on the trains stood from their seats to take their luggage, James immediately bumped his head as he got up.

“Bloody hell, these have no right being so low,” He grumbled as he stretched out and reached for his duffel.

“Sure you won’t need help with your bag this time, Potter?” Lily felt the need to tease him, just to humble him with her first impression of him from when he boarded the train. As if to prove a point, James swiped her bag off the overhead carry bin as well, and held on to both of them as the cabin started to clear out. Lily did a final check of their seats, and lightly jogged to follow him out.

“Well Potter, I recall you saying your flat wasn’t too far from the station. Are you planning on making good on that?”

“Of course Evans, what kind of man do you take me for? I’ll have you know I don’t put out on the first date though, I’ll be making you food since my flat’s got a stellar kitchen.” She raised an eyebrow at him, willing him to continue, because she wanted to know what he could possibly be making for her. “My mum’s aloo tikki recipe, I think you’ll like it.”

“This feels like a dig at me for being half-Irish, but I never mentioned that, so I’ll accept it. I look forward to seeing your cooking skills since you’ve got the sort of hair that would catch on fire in a kitchen.”

James gave her that stunning smile again, and grabbed her hand as they walked out of the station, and on the way to his flat. Lily had a good feeling about this bloke with messy hair and enough charm to create a whole new world.

[eridanidreams]

A little something I worked on today for my ongoing Starfield longfic stars through my fingers like grains of sand. I just posted a new chapter, and this is the beginning of the next.

***

Cait shivered as she stepped into the ready room; Devine hadn't spent too much money on insulation, and the howling wind outside sucked the heat right out. The Constellation suits didn't have the same kind of protection she'd built into the Mantis and Paladin suits—but the Constellation suits wouldn't give away their secret identities, either. Fortunately, there was a workbench; she could probably cobble something together to give them a little more oomph. "Bring your suit over here," she said, resolutely keeping her teeth from chattering. "I want to give them a once-over before we go out. Just to be on the safe side."

"Mei's people would have had access to the suit storage lockers," Sam observed, following her direction.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Wouldn't put it past them to get 'creative'."

He made a derisive snort at the idea. "Hey, hang on a sec." She turned to see him half-out of his jacket. "Put this on—you're cold enough you're about to make me start shivering." He gave a mock-shudder. "See?"

Cold as she was, she wasn't about to argue. As she slid into it, she was surrounded by the warmth of his body that still clung to it, as well as the faint scent that was, now and forever, lodged in her memory as Sam. "You'll tell me when you need it back," she said.

"Don't worry about me. You know I like the cold." He winked at her. "Warm all the way down, remember?" There was something about the satisfaction coming off him that went beyond just warming her up. "Gotta say, you wear that old thing almost as well as I do."

Cait thought about it for a moment as her practiced hands started the diagnostics going. "This is one of those guy things, isn't it?"

"What's a guy thing?" Sam sounded innocent as the long day, but his silent laughter fizzled against her skin.

"Me wearing your jacket?" she responded tartly.

"Ohhhh," he said, in tones of sudden—and feigned—understanding. "You mean the desire of a man in a romantic relationship to see the woman of his dreams wearing a piece of clothing recently removed from his body, so that the intimacy of touch is transferred via the garment?" She turned to look at him incredulously—he looked like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "That guy thing?"

"Something like that," she said slowly.

"Maaaaaybe…" His eyes crinkled, and his lips curved into a warm smile. "Not that I would admit to such a base urge." He took a step closer to her, his voice softening. "And I sure wouldn't want to distract you from being all knotted up with tension before we throw ourselves into danger, now would I?" Behind her, the diagnostic continued to run. "That would be just terrible." Cait managed to keep her suspicious face through most of his spiel, but the mock-gravitas he laid on the word 'terrible' broke her into a fit of giggles. "There we go." His voice dripped satisfaction. "Feeling better now?"

"Much," she sighed, as the diagnostic beeped. "You're a bad, bad man, Sam Coe, and one of these days I'm going to give you exactly what you deserve."

Sam chuckled and pulled her into an embrace. "Don't threaten me with a good time, darlin'." The kiss they shared was slow and lazy, a promise rather than a demand. "Might just take you up on it."

She was laughing when she turned back to the workbench.

Gooooood Morning! It’s WIP Wednesday Thursday!

Just:

Reblog this post with a snippet of what you’re currently working on attached, and I’ll rb with comments/encouragement !

It doesn’t have to be Dragon Age, it can be whatever you’re working on!

Very chill, no pressure! Thanks for sharing, and have fun!