#to the point someone is only worthy of being in a country if they come with a working contract

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

not me doomposting about l*ona again

I pointed out in an older post that Leona seems to demonstrate a unique ability to unite others under a common cause. This is in spite of the lore stating that it's very difficult to get different kinds of beastmen to see eye-to-eye, so much so that Sunset Savanna's acting king, his older brother, has yet to really unify their people.

WELL.

***Spoilers for Leona's Nightmare Suit vignettes below the cut!***

A central theme to Leona's Nightmare Suit vignettes is figuring out what makes someone worthy of being "king". At the start, everyone is reminded of Jack Skellington's status as the "King of Halloween, which makes him the most important person in town. However, Leona's quick to point out that the title isn't what's important, but what one achieves is. He then expresses interest in what it is exactly that Jack Skellington does around here to earn his crown. His opinion of Jack isn’t that good; in the event story, Leona thinks Jack doesn’t pay attention and doubts that he can have deep thoughts. Jack describes his duties as making Halloween the scariest it can possibly be. He drives around in his buggy, walks his dog Zero through the local cemetery, studies and conducts experiments, and reviews the proposals from Halloween Town residents. An important part of his job is considering his people's ideas! But Leona thinks there could be a more efficient way to do this rather than having the king read the proposals one by one. We can see a divide between their ways of thinking; Jack is willing to hear individuals out whereas Leona is focused on efficiency. This is also reflected in how they assign tasks later in the vignettes. Jack has everyone going up one ladder to decorate, while Leona commands the witches to do this task, as its much faster for them to do on their brooms. I don't know if this was intentional, but the way Jack rules feels reminiscent to how Leona often describes his older brother, Farena/Falena. So often does Leona mention that Falena is too kind and cares too much for others, which impedes on the political and economic gains he could be making if he were just more focused on his goals. “[Falena] could just focus on the kingdom’s affairs–you know, his JOB–but nooo, he’s gotta be the caring big brother who’s nice to everybody." (If you want to read a more in-depth analysis of Falena vs Leona's priorities when it comes to ruling, please read this post.)

Leona claims that the qualifications for king around here are actually really simple--and yeah, maybe there's nothing more to his line than this, but considering that in his home country one's order of birth is also a strong determinant, a merit-based system like what's seen in Halloween Town probably is simpler to him. And that means it's his time to shine and be acknowledged when he wasn't successful at earning this recognition back home.

Now, what REALLY surprised me in these vignettes wasn't that Leona knows how to boss around his peers and put their strengths to use (for example, he tells Vil, who has an eye for detail, to look over the embroidery, and Idia, who is a science and math whiz, to handle difficult calculations). It's that Leona is also perfectly aware of the abilities of the Halloween Town residents--people he has only known for less than three days--and uses them and their skills well too. That's an insanely short amount of time to get to know an entire TOWN'S worth of people and what each of them are like... yet he just pulls it off effortlessly????? HUH... This earns him the praise of Dr. Finkelstein, the mayor, Jack, Sally, and Skully. Sally in particular highlights Leona's strengths very concisely, stating that he can accurately assess the situation and give appropriate directions on how to act in that situation. Skully adds that Leona technically doesn't move himself or do any of the dirty work, he's focused solely on giving orders. This makes him a "king" and a leader of equal standing as Jack Skellington. And then Skully--SKULLY, THE OBSESSED HALLOWEEN OTAKU THAT THINKS HALLOWEEN SHOULD BE A VERY SPECIFIC WAY--says that Halloween was made possible by not one, but two great kings this year. It just goes to show how much one can truly accomplish when not barred by a negative environment and a lack of social support.

One definition of "king" that is offered in these vignettes is "the one who can bring everyone together". That's certainly something that both Leona and Jack do, albeit in very different ways. But then, at the end of the Halloween Town segment of the vignettes, Leona acknowledges that "king" can be defined another way. He realizes that Jack is recognized as king not just because he's a leader, but because he's also needed and loved by the townspeople. This, too, is a "king". However, it seems that this is a definition that Leona somewhat looks down upon, as he basically apologizes to Jack for not thinking highly of him at first. Again, Leona prioritizes getting shit done, no matter what the cost of it may be--and even if it earns him the ire of others. This, as I said earlier, puts him in stark contrast to Jack, as well as his own older brother. But here and now, we have Leona finally seeing the strength that a different kind of ruling can have instead of always speaking so disparagingly about it. Even if it's just a little... it feels like he's growing and learning, doesn't it?

The vignettes end on flashing forward to Leona back at Savanaclaw dorm. A few of his freshmen students are goofing off right before magift/spelldrive practice is about to start. As soon as Leona shows up, the freshmen snap to attention and rush off to change for practice. Jack (Howl, not Skellington, lol) remarks that usually the other first years are so lazy, but their attitudes completely changed when their dorm leader appeared. Ruggie chimes in, saying that Leona keeps the entire dorm in line... THJBAEBVUFAEIYAFIOYBVADFILH ThEN HE CALLS THEIR KING THE BEST... AND JACK AGTREESS... WHAT DO YOU MEAN, SHUT THE FUCK UPAS ALREADY STOP POGINTONG OUT HE'S A AGOODFK leADER DFOR YOUE AEPEOPLE YADFJKHAFLIYVDGVYUADGVUEGAVN

In response to the praise, Leona says that simply scolding misbehaving students doesn't make you a king. If it were as simple as that, it would be a pretty cheap throne build only on flattery. The vignettes end with him telling everyone to move their asses to practice. lh WDBHFAIYOEAIYEIYF BUT TAHAT'S PRETY YMASSIVE FOR HS CHARACTER... These vignettes demonstrate that Leona's not fixated on the title of king, but what it means to truly "be" a king and leader. He doesn't value being called a "king" if he feels it's easily earned, he wants to prove himself worthy of it and earn that title through his talents. This all circles back to a thought I had a while ago: that what Leona is after isn't the literal seat of king, but all the things that come with it but was denied of in his childhood. Respect, admiration, recognition for his abilities.

And 💦 Leona doesn’t realize it yet (either that, or he’s in complete denial) but… He also fits that second definition of “king” 😭 He’s the type of person that gets things done (like what he believes should define a king) BUT GIS DORM MEMBERS ALL ALSO NEED AND LOVE HIM…

OOoogohoggoOGH... OTL I hate how well it comes together...

[dolphin-diaries]

Death Of The Woman

Originally posted on the Dolphin Diaries substack.

The following essay is not my usual fare. It’s my personal story as a detrans woman, and as such, it will lack in abstracted theory or argumentation. After this I will be publishing a special interview, and then I’ll return to my usual programming.

For now though, be advised this isn’t quite light reading material. There is some cursory description of sexual violence. If you do not feel like you can engage with that, skip from the paragraph beginning “At one point, …” to the next titled section.

Girl/Flesh

Before there is an adult, there is first a child—a not-so-blank slate, a state of being with an expiration date. Boys must be made men; girls must be made women. To the end of that becoming, childhood is a prelude and adolescence a ritual.

Contemplate for a moment, without any input from me: how is a girl made a woman?

My upbringing was rather feminist, compared to the average for my country. My mother did not take my father’s name; she earned more; they had a whole and loving marriage. A husband-and-kids were expected of me eventually, but ever nebulously and not quite yet; my own family’s example seemed perfectly encouraging. For the time being, the biggest expectation placed on me was intellectual accomplishment. You might think a boy child would be preferable to such an endeavour, but it was quite the opposite. Boys will be boys, after all: rowdy, willful, lascivious, ever in need of someone else’s care. Handed gently from the mother’s hand to a wife’s, they’re basically eternal children. But girls? Girls are born older. Mature faster—biologically, essentially, fundamentally. Girls listen. Girls obey.

By all accounts I was a fantastic foundation for such a purpose. Tallest, strongest, bursting with curly dark hair. You couldn’t possibly mistake me for a fragile doll, no, not like some other, more childish girls; I was obviously ready for responsibility. And not just in superficial appearance. Speech came to me quickly and easily; writing flowed from my fingertips with perfect calligraphy; I made art worthy of fridges and walls; I took to learning with all the energy of an insomniac puppy.

Did other kids like a fat, moustachioed girl that beat them at everything, and after class also won at arm-wrestling? Fuck no! But that was alright. I was born into intelligentsia, and envy was our natural curse, one to be proud of. At any rate, someday puberty would come. A body-shedding into something physically desirable; combined with all this accrued talent, it would ensure I’d have the pick of good men. Though I didn’t yet know men, only the irksome boys from whom they hatched. I lived for the attention of adults and for making other girls laugh—if clever ogres are good for nothing else, it’s humour. There was something transcendent in seeing someone fae-pretty and so unreachable be made happy by my effort. Even if they bullied me after. Of course, that meant I was too rowdy—oh, and too stubborn. Girls are supposed to understand the rules of the world exist for a reason; I didn’t. I needed things explained before I obeyed.

The rule I didn’t understand most of all was touch. I was brutish, and my brutishness marked me for disgust—and yet, I was constantly touched, even as I was told I’d never be touchable. My body burgeoned with entirely too much flesh, and every hand was drawn to grab it, to pinch and assess it in some unannounced Try-Before-You-Buy. Teachers, children, family members. It would not stop and it made my skin crawl, but it was also normal. The adults I liked did it. My peers did it. No one remarked on it.

When womanhood was yet a distant prospect, I dreamt of something ethereal. Power-suited. Someone that looked like mother, or like Barbie. Someone untouchable. Because surely this was all a growing pain. I was a girl, and that meant all the things that made me revolting, naive, and unruly would be purged by shed blood.

That’s not how that goes, though. How is a girl made a woman?

When adolescence finally arrived, it was rather early, eleven or so. I always was an overachiever. And I discovered I was not yet becoming something better. I was just myself, but more. More flesh. More hair, in all the wrong places. Same moustache, same swollen face, same ungainly buffoon demeanour, only now with hips bursting through trousers and a boyish deep voice.

The leering and touching did not cease—they got worse. The older I grew, the older my mother dressed me, dolling me up in heels and arse-hugging skirts with the vicarious glee of someone who got another chance at making a woman, and who was emboldened by the powerlessness of my ‘no.’ The dress-up had a goal in mind, of course. Same as my obligation to intellectual accomplishment; the only difference was, I was now failing, while the prospect of adulthood loomed ever closer. So I had it spelled out to me: it was all to ensure I could return to my family the debt I incurred with the costs of my existence. To birth them a child and uphold their reputation. If I was unfeminine, untouchable, unfuckable, they would not get a return on their investment. If I preferred girls—which, big surprise, I did—that would invite untold humiliation on the family name. That I was given to choose my would-be boyfriends, nudged to enjoy the makeup and skirts, was a just bit of carrot to the whip. If I sneered too much at the carrot, I’d get the whip.

So on I wobbled, a fleshy, moustachioed doll. Every new softness and curve invited a groping hand or a disgusting comment. Every fault of my body was bared as proof I should be happy to get this much at all. In old deformity and in newfangled woman-ness, I was just a girl.

I sought other ways of being. An escape from the barbed chain link of The Family. I had limited recourse in my small town, but the internet is a wide-reaching thing. No lesbian community existed for miles, but I could still read about the ring and the hanky code and whatever else. I could look at pictures.

(Although those were at times alarming, because all these lesbian women I glimpsed looked rather like me—whereas I had hoped that, by the time I grew up, I’d be something better.)

Regardless, I tried the codes and the cargo trousers, as much as I could—which wasn’t much. I stoked fascination in my classmates with giddy and secretive coming-outs. Only some showed me compassion and dignity, but I was even happy enough to be seen as a weirdo monster. At least they saw me. Worse was their dissecting vigilance. Their attention to the way I moved or spoke. The moment I’d do something girly, they’d cry, they knew it! I was just a girl. I did have a boy crush, and I should admit it; I was surely—as they put it—a faggot. Yes, really, literally ‘faggot,’ that word precisely. Even when I flicked my wrist like so while all dolled-up from head to toe, no one seemed to quite stomach believing me a real woman.

Giddiness over coming out doesn’t last. Disobedience brooks punishment. Through the listicles of lesbian identities and vocabulary, you dig through to testimonies. To rape. To abjected and dysphoric butches. To abuse at school, university, work, home. To the loss of all those things. To death. Elsewhere lesbians sometimes got their happily-ever-afters, loving families and the luxury of walking free, but here, we have not earned it. Visa-barred from leaving, doomed to die fighting for a future we would never live—even as far away, someone already got it just for having been born.

When I Saw The TV Glow

2011. A documentary, in all the glory of 480p. I’d heard of trans women before in concept—dear, some men just become women, it happens, okay?—but I’d never heard of trans men before. Never conceived of it.

I watched the screen like it was a revelation. A man in a white tee tucked into light jeans, cut like a Ken doll, strutting down a springtime street in low resolution.

Before then, I’d accepted that the burgeoning breasts and hips was simply something I had to contend with. That the way the boys around me were growing stronger while I was ever-groped was simply nature asserting itself. My body was proof of my place in the world.

I looked at the screen and thought, So that was a big fat lie.

The moment I knew it was possible, I wanted it like nothing else. The broad shoulders, the muscles, the dapper swagger. I wished for my body to take the shape of my being, instead of my being contorting to the body’s mould. Perhaps I could be loved for all the things that made me a deformed monster. Perhaps I didn’t need to watch every step to prove I wasn’t just a girl. Here was a place already in the shape of me, rather than a stifling lot I had to constantly fight against.

How could one go about changing sex? According to the documentary, it started with a psychiatric assessment—and so, my little twelve-year-old self took to studying the DSM. As I scoured it, I learned I could not be described by its standards as a true transsexual. I’d never before thought of myself as a boy nor had wanted to be one. Yet in the same breath, the DSM claimed no girl could ever desire physical masculinity beyond what came naturally to her. It was either transsexualism or some fetish or self-harming disorder. I had neither of the latter. My desire to inhabit masculinity was undeniable and crystal-clear, and the only kind of person that could’ve felt this way was a transsexual man—so that meant I must’ve simply remembered my life wrong. Or interpreted it wrong. If I twisted my memories this way or that, discarded one as an anomaly and repainted another in baby-boy blue, it would all make sense. It had to. Trans people online talked about a sense of mis-belonging, and I did feel like an outsider among the girls—what did it mean to feel like a gender, at any rate? I only knew what I felt like. And I felt like something sorry and misshapen.

Somewhat later, circa 2013, I did hear of weirder gender concepts in the distant West, mostly as just definitions of words. Genderqueer, nonbinary, et cetera. I comprehended them rationally but I did not understand or relate to them. Wherever I read about it, genderqueerness was described in a manner parallel to transsexuality—the sex-changing—or else as an exotic alternative to hormones and scalpels. But I desired body change so desperately, and regardless, I could not envision living as a nonbinary gender in my own country. Maybe in the West that was possible, but here nothing but derision would entail. It just wasn’t for me.

Naturally, trans men’s testimonies of hardship met and rivalled those of cis lesbian women. But the vast majority of them were concentrated on the times before and during transition. After that—sure, all of medicine reviles you and you’re at risk of a heinous hate crime. But the same has been true before; now though, when you walk down the street or meet a new friend, when you live, you’re just some guy. Your life is tinted by your queerness as much as any other sex/gender-deviant, but that constant, unabating struggle against a blistering torrent of humiliation, of being forced into the place of a woman? That seemed to end. Eventually. And then—who knows? Move to a new town, a new country even. No one need ever know who you had once been.

At that time though, I was still very young, and the thing about discovering a solution to a problem you thought inescapable is that it makes the problem itself feel that much more acute. So I did the stupidest thing imaginable: come out.

Dear reader, it wasn’t a good idea.

It is, after all, rather trivial to exact whatever punishment one desires upon one’s queer children, for children are parents’ property. It is true everywhere, but if ‘in some fucking America’ there is something called ‘child-protective services,’ here nothing short of murder, starvation, or exceptionally unsubtle and repeated rape could possibly broker an outside intervention. The debt you incurred to your parents for being born still holds, and you’ve just betrayed its very foundation. A woman still needs to be made of you. And anyway, who are you gonna call? The police? For what, total social isolation? For derision and humiliation? For the hours spent unmaking all your agency, all your desire as nothing more than delusion brought on by that damned internet? For total control over you, over every movement, every manner, every gesture, every word? For what you claim was assault? For what you claim was an attempted murder? I mean, it’s all rather sad, but it’s not a crime; not provably. Not against faggots.

I Win, Bitch

I am first and foremost a problem-solver. Even in total solitude, without access to the internet or to kindred spirits, there are plans to be made. I did not want to die, and I was still in the questionable position of being my family’s pride. Had to be. My parents couldn’t have any more children; they had to get it right with me.

So of course, if I got free admission to a prestigious university many kilometres away, and if I proved I’d learned my lesson enough to be trusted with leaving—who was to gainsay me?

Getting out was a decision I made almost the moment my abuse took on a corrective and violent turn. I knew what I had to do, even if it cost me immeasurably. Overnight I had to call quits on any remnant of childhood and learn to steal money to ensure future independence. Had to play my woman’s part convincingly. Had to look as if I’m enjoying it, convincingly. If I’d found the role stifling before, now it was as razors under my skin. Everything that ‘woman’ encompassed had been weaponised for my constant abuse, and I could not stomach a second of it—but I had to. Until I broke free.

Besides the severance of any familial support, financial or otherwise, my psyche was thoroughly shattered. All the times I’d been told, at length and for hours, that I was suffering a dangerous delusion, that I had to be forced to conform to my true nature—every single time, I knew that it was wrong. Even when I was as young as twelve, I knew I deserved none of it. I knew it was abuse and injustice. All the same it broke me. There was no pride and no resilience strong enough in me to withstand years and years of it. For a while I could barely look at women that whatsoever resembled me; the very concept, the very idea was a trigger. When it came to my own mind, I struggled to tell what was real, what I did and did not feel. Everything laid under panes and panes of ice, and that disassociation was the only way I could maintain a grip—or else everything erupted in screams.

The worst of my C-PTSD would be dealt with in the ensuing years thanks to NGO-sponsored therapy for queer patients. Unpacking pane after pane, unwinding coil after coil of the rage I had to swallow, piecing together shards of abandoned and dissociated memories. But I’d be paying mental dividends on my damage for longer still, and in ways I couldn’t even imagine.

For now though: I won.

Social transition was easy for me. It took little more than cutting my hair and swapping out wardrobes to pass as a man pretty reliably—well, a teenage boy, but I was only seventeen, so it didn’t raise eyebrows. I felt freed. Like I could walk and speak and make friends without chains attached to me. Only the softness of my shape gnawed at me, how it had shifted from despicable womanly maturity to boyish youth. I hated not having my coming adulthood recognised. Hated that other young men got to grow stronger and larger while I was stuck in perpetual pseudo-adolescence. I was free, I was no child, no property of adults; I wanted to be seen.

But it was also the first time I discovered queer spaces in person. Mixed and trans ones—especially trans ones. For the first time, I walked among people who understood. Really understood, the dysphoria and the otherness and the abuse and the whole lot. I’d found my home amongst the gender criminals; we talked feminism and activism; we braved protests despite threats of alt-right retaliation; we stumbled through relationships. Like most trans people, I harbour no nostalgia for my childhood or early youth—but for that time, I do. Not because it didn’t have its share of struggle, but because of my then-partner A. and my friends. Because it was the first time I felt the mutability of sex/gender, and breathed the freedom that entailed.

Things don’t last though, especially not in youth. Relationships fall apart; social circles reshuffle. I was leaving university to pursue a career—after all, I could not afford to be on HRT without income.

Moreover I felt… insecure, you could call it. Most of my social connections were to trans people and/or women. But I was a man. Shouldn’t I—commit? Make an effort? If cisgender men did not accept me as one of theirs, didn’t that make me a kind of impostor? I chafed in the body of an eternal adolescent, and the rift I felt between myself and cis men salted the wound.

Brain/Worms

The first problem was easily addressed with exogenous testosterone. Starting it was a euphoric experience—the rapid swelling of muscle, the spike in energy and hunger and libido. I loved the changes to my body, and I wished all traces of insidious womanhood would wilt from me.

The second issue was more difficult. I’d always felt at an arm’s length from cis heterosexual men, and never got much closer. No matter what, I simply felt other. That made sense, though. Once I re-conceptualised my gender as male, I did not identify as straight. I didn’t feel so sure anymore I was solely attracted to women, and that feeling only solidified the more I transitioned. If gender and sex were uncertain, how could I be so sure? I had no genital preference. What did it mean to be attracted to a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ anyway? Some men could be as pretty as women. Wouldn’t giving a definitive answer be a little bioessentialist? Aren’t we all, as they say, a little bisexual?

Yes, I thought, it made perfect sense that I, a bisexual man, would find no belonging among cishet men. And the more I thought about the sort of relationships I desired, the more I realised I could not possibly be fulfilled in a straight relationship. I attempted facsimiles of a straight man’s role, and they all left me feeling hollowed. The attraction and relationship calculus of straight women was an arcane language to me. The sorts of women I liked were distinctly dyke-y; sure, some of those happen to be bisexual, but if they were to date me, they’d still be dating a man. I’d hate that as much as I’d hate not having my manhood acknowledged or recognised. And that’s to say nothing of how sleazy and dishonest it felt to intrude on queer women’s dating scene as a man. Now that I lived as a man, what made me so different from cis men? Innate birth-assigned woman-ness? Misogyny-flavoured childhood trauma? The vagina? All excuses felt like pathetic, opportunistic self-humiliation. Debasing myself by appealing to someone else’s cissexism so I could appear like something I wasn’t.

So naturally, I pursued community and companionship with gay men. As any gay trans man will tell you, it is usually a thankless and annoying task; transphobia is insidious and oft-unchallenged in gay male circles. The way they treat trans men ranges from hostile to patronising to weird. But overall I had a better time of it than most, and cultivated a few long-lasting friendships. The gay men around me had more class consciousness than average. They were not shy about liking me, even after apologising for speaking ill of vaginas. It was ego-boosting. But I was still afraid that when we took our shirts off, they’d stop seeing me and find a woman in me. Fuck me like one. Erase me.

A new ghost began to haunt me. It’d coalesced from pieces that already existed within me, but never before had this shape. What were fragments of my desires and thoughts coalesced into a singular fixation that constricted all of my libido, all of my sexual being. Fantasies of being fucked into womanhood invaded my mind and would not let go of it. In them, men were personless and barely corporeal, but the women existed in graphic detail. I myself was either completely disembodied and not present, not even as a voyeur—or else oddly, vaguely within the woman, both me and not-me at once.

I was horrified. Not even by the fantasy itself; its contents were murky and not particularly original. By my singular lust for it. I felt as though I’d discovered a monster within. A violent misogynist puppeteering the woman’s image to quench a fetish for sexist humiliation. A depraved and lowly creature fed on my own abuse.

But it made a kind of sense, I thought, the horror aside. I’d experienced plenty of misogynistic violence, the sexual kind included, and I guessed I’d sublimated it. Except—

There was a problem with that interpretation. That coercive return to womanhood, what I feared men might do to me—it was not the same as what aroused me. In the fantasy, I was not returning or reverting; I was not giving in to transphobic violence, which these scenarios notably lacked; I just was.

Despite all my efforts, this creature within responded to no self-insight, no cross-examination, no rationalisation. Everything I learned from the handbooks of either trauma therapy or kink-positive thinking failed utterly. I could not unlearn shame. I could not arrive at an epiphany. Like a hungry tapeworm, the unnameable thing inside me gnawed and gnawed, and any attempts to understand my desire, to make it less dissociative, only caused it to mutate to something more esoteric. The images morphed from banal patriarchal brutality to anonymous men forcibly feminised via sex by domineering, ultra-feminine women. Once my mind arrived at image, it sank its teeth into it so completely that it began to hollow my waking life, which now paled by comparison to the fantasy. And yet the thing still resisted knowledge even as it drained blood from me. I could not comprehend what pleasure I derived from this, what desire this fulfilled. When looked upon in the light of day, beyond the haze of arousal, the monster within me became only fear, a terrifying and nameless anxiety that liquefied all efforts to understand it.

In any case, the only ‘gay man’ I ended up dating long-term was a severely closeted trans woman. I failed thoroughly at sourcing validity from gay male partners as I realised I never wanted them in the first place; it’d all been a self-delusional charade whose only purpose was to forestall loneliness and to quench the thing within. So I settled on helping a girl find her gender. My perversion remained my little secret. No one in the world could’ve possibly shared it, and if they did, it was probably for the best that I did not know them.

A strange and nameless discontent festered. Past the initial joy in well-sculpted shoulders, the more virilised my body became, the more difficult it was to differentiate myself from the Average Cishetero Man, or even the Average Gay Man (which do not, in the end, look that different)—and it felt existentially important to be differentiated somehow. Looking like that made me feel dead. Whatever ‘that’ was. I found myself confusedly wishing for jewellery and makeup and feminine fashion—things that were once violently forced upon me. So the desire itself made me squirm. At the same time though, it’d been a while since my abuse. Years. Therapy, time, et cetera. I knew it was normal enough for someone later in transition to mellow out on strict gender expression, now that doing it ‘incorrectly’ no longer threatened misgendering. I’d met plenty of people with that exact experience. So, I thought, maybe that was my damage. Desire for gender-nonconformity, which I’d repressed in a bizarre manner.

Of course, experimenting with being a feminine man in public would get my head kicked in; discovering a craving for femininity was very inconvenient for me. I wasn’t pleased to regress back to stifling my gender presentation for social security. But no one could stop me from crossdressing in private—so, bit by bit, I tried.

When I finally built up the courage to order proper womenswear and put it on, I looked in the mirror and saw a man in a dress. I did exactly as I wanted and achieved exactly what I thought I would. Except, instead of relief or joy, a wave of such profound disappointment hit me that I could neither understand nor describe its nature. I could only comprehend it as a compulsion to tear my skin off. As dysphoria.

Well, duh. I was a trans man. Of course dolling up would make me dysphoric. Especially after all that’d happened to me. What did I expect? This had all been a waste of fucking time. There was nothing to discover behind my desires. I abandoned my pursuit, resigned to the daily kaleidoscope of sexual depravity that I couldn’t stop my mind from spinning; I’d given up on understanding the source or goal of any of it; I would simply entertain it in the privacy of my head and carry it to my grave.

Or at least, I’d try.

At one point, a cis woman took an interest in me. That interest was not reciprocated; something about her person was off-putting to me. She acted towards my friends with extreme jealousy, and even though I rejected her advances in no uncertain terms multiple times, she would not stop offering. At the same time though, now that I realised I did not belong among gay men, I felt extremely alone. And revolting. How many women were out there that’d even want to touch me? I really shouldn’t look a gifted horse in the mouth.

We were drunk, and I a complete mess. I’d bristled before when she pointedly asked if I knew she was bisexual—the implication being, she wasn’t afraid of vagina—because there was nothing un-straight about a woman wanting a trans man. But with so much wine in my veins—you know, maybe I wasn’t such a trans man after all? Maybe I was—I dunno. Like a girl—like, only for sex, though. I had stockings and lingerie in my bedside drawers and shit. If you squint and turn off the light.

I remember a shift in her gaze, once it finally sank in. From giggling and alcohol-addled to something sharper. Not quite homicidally disgusted, but still vicious; like I’d been made a thing. I didn’t know what I did wrong; I didn’t tell her about any of the truly despicable things—I was still me! Wasn’t she bisexual? Wasn’t she queer? We don’t have to do it, I said, forget it.

The next thing I remember is a body forcing me down. Vicious, gleeful lust. “Oh, you’ll be a girl, alright.”

My whole body stiffened. I snapped at her to stop, tried to push her away, but she only pressed down harder, fingers sinking into flesh.

When I threw her off me to the floor, blood split her lip. She cried and shrieked. So much for a feminist man! How dared I hit her! She just did as I asked!

I yelled at her to get out, but once the door slammed shut, I thought of the unending parade of rapacious fetish in my head. Of how well I knew this woman didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and how I caved to her anyway. And, well, I couldn’t help feeling like—

Didn’t I ask for it?

Unmoored

A few years later, I found myself abroad. Far from family, and from most friends—except one. Shortly before I moved, I had met my once-partner A. from my university days and felt drawn to her all over again. Our relationship rekindled, and hand in hand, we flew westward. It was a dark time for unrelated reasons, but in a twisted way, it granted me as much of a ‘clean start’ as I could’ve ever hoped for. I was untethered from traces of growing pains I left all over the city I once called home, from the messy parts of transition—it’d been, at that point, well over five years since I started.

No one here needed to know who I’d been.

I’d never doubted it. In fact, I was then in the process of fighting bureaucracy to re-ensure my access to hormones. They were the only way I could ever hope to rid myself of that bodily displacement I’d been feeling. That was how it went with trans men; it helped them, so it should help me.

Only I’d already been on T for a while then. Whatever ‘feminine curves’ I had left, had melted away; a beard had sprouted from my face, which now increasingly resembled my father’s. Even if I stripped naked, I looked more like an intersex man than anything else. That was basically what I’d expected. I’d always been rather cold-blooded about my transition expectations and proud of that fact; I’d sourced my information from many sources and first-hand accounts, and I neither underestimated the changes nor hoped for the impossible. All in all, I got what I sought. The thing I kept waiting for had already happened.

And I felt nothing. The disappearance of features I used to despise evoked naught more than a quiet oh well. My photos seemed oddly unfamiliar. A numbness had subsumed me, as if I’d been encased in wax.

But I had more pressing problems. Relocation, unemployment, the lot. Dealing with a subtle and unnameable depression seemed like a waste of time. Perhaps there was just something broken about me—that much had been clear for a while now. If I just kept a lid on it, I could live a happy enough life. On and on years went.

Lesbians In My Phone

What to do, when you’re hopelessly unemployed and feeling like there’s a black hole inside you threatening to swallow it all? Try to find a Discord to distract yourself, of course.

E.: mostly girlies in here so I hope you won't feel too out of place! we do strive to be an inclusive place

Me: haha i hope i got here thanks to a diversity and inclusion programme

My excuse for entering a transfem-majority space was an invitation thanks to my writing and editing. I’d put out a short story myself, and I was eager to help fellow authors. Of course, I was still a community outsider on the gender side of it, so I didn’t expect to get much out of that space personally. It just felt good to be involved in something, anything.

But, it turned out, many of the women on that server were good and easy company regardless. Unfamiliar subcultures are easily learned when its members are not hostile to you; they seemed to like me.

Most of the server members were transfem lesbians writing and reading sexually explicit fiction—some of which resembled my personal nonsense kaleidoscope, if… unpacked, let’s say. It was rather surreal to see the sorts of things my mind inflicted upon me being discussed in jest or dissected for the purposes of creating more elevated, self-conscious art. When I thought about it from the perspective of a trans woman, escapism via fancies of forced feminisation only made sense. Trans women internalise what society deems to be the place of women as much as anyone else, but also, trans womanhood is violently flagellated for existing in any way whatsoever. The fantasy would then revolve around removing the element of choice from it—so you could not be punished for wanting it.

Intellectually fascinating, but why it appealed to me made no more sense than it ever had. I wasn’t a trans woman—quite the opposite. They just wanted to be women; what the fuck was my problem? Although it calmed me somewhat to see normal people have experiences so similar to mine, I still felt like an intruder, stealing away pieces of someone else’s intimate life for my own shallow pleasure. I spoke nothing of it. No one would take kindly to me skin-walking their innermost desires this way.

As I spent my time in the company of trans lesbians, silent or not, I was still exposed to a stream of art and stories and images. Their depictions of women differed drastically from what I’d seen before. Two metres tall, or tiny as a gnome, or more muscular than a Greek god, or more voluptuous than a fertility idol, or werewolf-hairy, or covered in scales, or made completely of metal. A thousand melodies in fractal variations of flesh, all desired and lauded. I was no stranger to ideas of body positivity or ‘celebrating queerness’, but that all came wrapped in stipulations and activism. Always a statement, a process of battling or quieting shame. Never before have I experienced such utterly shameless, sincere, and carnal fanfare for everyone and anyone who claimed the space of ‘woman,’ in such a way that ‘woman’ meant nothing more and nothing less than simply ‘human.’ Not for statements. Just because it made them happy.

It was as alien as it was beautiful.

It’s not that I felt like I was missing out. Or that I wasn’t sufficiently fanfared. There were other spaces that did the same for men, run chiefly by gay transmasculine people, and they seemed to be having a great time of it. I just didn’t personally care for them one bit. I wanted this.

Naturally, it was all only fantasy. Art and books. That’s great, but that’s not real. In reality I was a twink with a receding hairline. It seemed prudent to know my limits rather than get too hung up on the fact I couldn’t be a two-metre-tall lesbian cyborg.

Except that some of it is real. Not the cyborgs and werewolves, but the diversity of body; the desire for its freedom and customisation. Women discontent with taking simply what they’re given. Through acquaintance and anecdote, I met lesbians with the same ‘unnatural’ desire I’d had. Lesbians on testosterone, desiring embodiments which, according to all I’d ever known, were never meant to be. Lesbians who wished for phalloplasty or for top surgery or both; lesbians that went on T temporarily to drop their voices and grow more muscle and body hair. Lesbians that weren’t women at all. Only there was no DSM attached. No packaged deal of ‘total’ transition, no script, no chain of demands that followed one to another.

No requirement of man.

It felt like anathema—and like a revelation. Whereas before genderqueerness seemed hypothetical and divorced from my reality, now I suddenly understood it. Now that I saw it, I knew it.

And I felt only directionless, ennui-steeped anger. As if someone stole the last ticket to a train that would never again leave my station. I didn’t know—how could I have known? No shit the things that helped trans men didn’t help me. I looked at all the past incongruences I’d revised and sanded over to fit the fucking DSM transsexualism diagnosis, and found only someone groping in the dark for a path they couldn’t even imagine existed. Except this realisation was arriving some fifteen years too late. Had I been younger or born elsewhere, then sure, I could’ve been one of those lesbians middle-fingering gender and microdosing T. But I wasn’t. I was a man. And when I dared think of relinquishing my grip on manhood, memory clawed at me. The assault. The humiliation. The un-personing. What would I be asking for? And what would that even yield? Look in the mirror, idiot. You are a man.

It wasn’t a rational calculus of consequences. It was a buzzing storm inside my head, pitch-black, impenetrable. I’d long stopped seeing women in their totality as my conversion-therapy prison, but even still—to see myself attached to ‘woman’ even slightly, even tangentially, even if I wanted it—this all evoked visceral, horrible fear.

But: knowing that a problem has a solution only makes it that much more impossible to ignore. My off-handed remarks and jokes about my miseries had my transfem friends looking funny at me. As if they recognised something.

T.: do you mind if I ask what you conceptualize your specific gendered deal as, or is that invasive?

Me: great question, i’ll get back to you in 5 to 10 business years.

Although I still loved the early changes I received from my HRT, everything I’d accrued since then was undeniably eating me alive. It was becoming difficult to dismiss dysphoria as mere vanity or body image issues; through all my attempts to make peace with my flesh, nothing helped even slightly. When I stopped binding, that felt better. When I lowered my T dose, that accomplished nothing in particular, but it felt comforting in a placebo sort of way. I tried to schedule laser hair removal—and that was too much. I panicked. Too obvious. What if someone noticed? What if someone asked why? I couldn’t deal with it. What if my partner noticed? She didn’t sign up for this shit. She was dating a man. What if—

No, it couldn’t go that badly. My partner wasn’t like that. Still, I felt paralysed. If I just did nothing, it couldn’t get worse. No one needed to know.

T.: hey, what’s up with the depression beard? do we need to get you laser?

Fuck it. I understood what my friends were seeing in me now. At first I thought myself definitionally far-removed from any transfeminine experience, but now that I’d met trans lesbians in truth, I couldn’t stop noticing patterns. And I wouldn’t have treated a transfem friend with the same denial or nihilistic abjection that I reserved for myself. She would’ve deserved help. A way out.

Didn’t I, too?

Detransition, Lady

The date I mark as the start of my detransition is April 16th, 2024, although I wouldn’t be calling it that for a few months yet. It was the first time I told anyone I was not a man, and that I was a lesbian, even though I didn’t exactly feel like a woman. On the surface it seemed a small thing. I had not yet decided on any particular body modifications (except laser—god, someone flay that thing off my face), and I felt deeply uncomfortable changing my gender presentation too much. So it seemed almost a question of semantics alone. Inside me though, it was a titanic shift: I allowed myself to name that which I’d been avoiding at all cost. To voice a desire I thought would brook only disgust, humiliation, and exile.

It did not.

The reaction of my partner and friends was, across the board, positive—none of my worst fears came to pass. Apparently I’d been far too obviously depressed, despite my best efforts to hide it—and now, I was far too obviously happy and, as some put it, ‘unclenched.’ Nothing in my loved ones’ behaviour should’ve led me to believe they would ridicule and hate me; still, it felt monumentally difficult to stop seeing myself as uniquely undeserving and pathetic.

I pursued my detransition incrementally. I pinpointed sources of dysphoria and addressed them. Laser, first. When my droning bass baritone started getting on my nerves, ensuring as it was that I’d always be gendered male—voice training. Soon I discovered that, despite the kinship I felt with transmasculine lesbians, I did not quite belong with them; whereas they relished the virilisation they’d carved out for themselves, my situation was different. I’d lived as a man for far too long to experience the world the same way they did. Most of them did not share my degree of distaste and distress at getting dude’d and he/him’d; they did not quite match my flavour of alienation from ‘woman.’ They usually strove to distinguish themselves from the category that would have them stifled and consumed—whereas that category now repelled me almost definitionally, whether I liked it or not. When I braved the outside world, there was no amount of social signalling that would make strange cis women see me as akin to them, or at least as not akin to men. Often not even lesbian cis women. Markers of an androgenic puberty singled me out as something categorically Other, and I’d not yet been in detransition long enough to change that.

Only among the transfeminine was I witnessed. Trans women I didn’t know loudly and protectively she/her’d me. The pronouns I actually used at the time were they/them, and my internal gender was nil with a side of ‘dyke,’ yet I found myself unwilling to correct anyone who decided I was a woman. Trans women that did know me playfully teased me for being ‘transfem-coded.’ Beyond initial recognition of repeating patterns, I’d started to realise that of all the people I knew, I belonged with them the most.

It was… confounding. In a way, it made no sense at all. And there were clear lines that delineated us: they would not relate to my visceral hatred of my first puberty, and I would not relate to theirs; I did not share their childhood of a girl trapped among boys. My ever-unchanged legal sex now granted me a degree of protection they could never take for granted. My birth sex gave me leverage to sacrifice trans women for a shred of acceptance—to shriek that I, unlike them, was a real woman. Even when no one but them saw me as one.

But in my daily existence and in much of my psychology, I was indistinguishable from my transfem peers. I’d transitioned a decade ago, right out of school; socially, I’d once been a girl a long time ago, but never a woman. Now I danced a dance I’d only before witnessed as an outsider; longed for and imagined, never performed. I had not the same continuity of belonging that cis women did, and nor did cis women know what it was like to walk among men, a secret alien, slowly realising every step you take is wrong.

I supposed, it made an intuitive kind of sense. Transition works. Not my now-distant history, not my birth, and certainly not my chromosomes or genitals had made me somehow more innately or inexorably woman. As all transsexuals learn sooner or later, lived experiences and hormones trump the rest of sex/gender with ease. So, although I wasn’t a trans woman, when I applied the same logics to myself, it simply worked. Despite the imperfect match, all my current problems had answers from the same solution sheet, from the way I treated myself to the way others treated me.

Well, almost all my problems.

Now that I compared myself to women and not to men, body insecurity cut much deeper and bloodier. I despaired no one would ever believe I was anything woman-shaped; they barely did before I took testosterone. Which I was still taking. I looked at the small dose of T gel I’d been applying, then at the finasteride pills I’d been chasing that with. And I thought, What does this even do? What is this even for anymore?

Stasis. It was for stasis, and a little placebo. I feared that if I stopped T, I’d tumble all the way back into the spiral of dysphoria I felt as a teen and young adult. That my body—for all its flaws still mine, still fought-for, still tailor-made—would dissolve again into an adolescent blob hatefully sculpted by others into the image of a future child-bearer. Only now I hated most of my virilisation and would claw at walls if I received any more of it—and my fear was not exactly rational, was it?

I breathed out. The testosterone wasn’t going to spoil the moment I put it away. I could try, and if it didn’t work out—a short period of a second-and-a-half puberty could not be that extreme. Whatever new changes I’d cause would likely revert fast.

For a while, nothing much happened. Nothing dissolved or melted. But little by little, my skin smoothed; my face softened; my wiry limbs lost their mesh of veins. My hips and breasts, once so maligned, swelled and enveloped muscle. I didn’t look the way I used to—of course not. I was stronger and a decade older; all the things I’d done to build my own self did not vanish, but merely, well—feminised.

I’d never met myself in an adult woman’s body before. In a self-made body. Although this flesh too did not feel mine, but for a different reason; I felt as if the moment I looked away, it’d all be gone. It wasn’t mine because it couldn’t possibly be. I wasn’t allowed this, I was never allowed this—the only shape of woman allowed to me was future-husband’s broodmare, mummy’s doll. I wasn’t allowed this.

But I did want it. And now I knew I could have it. Now, that gnawing monster inside my head had dissolved like it was never there at all. No disassociation, no torment, no total death of all other desire, no compulsion to retreat from the real world into a singular fantasy. Just… me.

At almost midnight I walked into mine and A.’s bedroom rambling. What does it fucking mean to feel like something, like a category; I only ever feel like me; what does it mean when you’re a forever-outsider; what does it mean when it’s been used to fucking hurt you, how can you then feel like anything at all; but what if I want it, what if I want it anyway. What if I want to be a woman anyway, the way my friends are women. The way lesbians are women. What if I want to belong among them? How do I know if I feel it? How do I know I’m real? How do I know I deserve—

In a space where freedom is possible, how is anyone made a woman?

Blearily, A. looked up from her Crusader Kings and said, “Look, uh—it doesn’t have to be that deep. If you want to be a woman, you can just do that.”

Could I?

I knew my transfem friends could. They built new shapes of ‘woman’ to their liking, in spite of all outside insistence they cannot. I had no reason nor unkindness to believe that their efforts amounted to less or more than mine. If they could, so could I. If I saw them, they would see me. They already did.

Perhaps sometimes, what makes a woman is who she calls a sister.

Recommended Reading

On embracing the constructed nature of one’s sex/gender: Susan Stryker, My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.

On the asymmetric forces behind patriarchal gender enforcement: Talia Bhatt, Degendering and Regendering.

[moongothic]

Rereading Dressrosa for the first time in quite a few years, after having become a Crocodad Truther specifically, was a really interesting experience, mainly due to the relationship between Kyros and Rebecca and Luffy's very strong feelings about those two in particular

Starting with the latter point; watching Luffy get really passionate about making sure Rebecca reunited with her father, instead of the two never seeing each other again as Kyros had planned, was just really facinating to me.

Now there ARE layers to this; Luffy saw first hand how much Rebecca and Kyros love each. Even if he didn't know or understand all the details, he knew these two were family forced to live apart due to Doflamingo's rule and that, even though Rebecca didn't know Mr Soldier was her father all those years, he still looked after her and did all he could to protect her. Luffy understands how much they matter to each other. Luffy also gets that Kyros was trying to make a sacrifice out of self-loathing; Kyros saw himself as a bloodstained monster who did not deserve to be by his daughter's side, thus his insistence on them going their separate ways. But not only is that "sacrifice out of loathing" not a thing One Piece rewards within the narrative*, but Luffy emotionally understands what Kyros was trying to do was stupid as hell. *(See; Robin trying to save the crew in the CP9 Saga, Sanji trying to offer his head to Kuma to spare everyone else (because he saw himself as the "least worthy", compared to Zoro who believed he was the only one who could actually tank Kuma and survive), Sanji again during Whole Cake Island, etc)

Adding to that, in what I feel also harkens back to Alabasta (vaguely important since Dressrosa in many ways is a reflection of Alabasta); Vivi made her decision to stay in her home because that's what she wanted deep in her heart, because she loved her country. Just the same way, dethroning Doflamingo, getting revenge for her mother and reuniting with her extended family were all fine achievements. But all Rebecca wanted deep in her heart was to stay with Mr Soldier (regardless if he was her father or not). That's what mattered the most to her.

How could Luffy even think about leaving without making sure Rebecca was able decide on her own if she wanted to stay with her father, instead of him making that decision for her, not because it was truly "for the best", but out of Kyros' own guilt and self-loathing.

All of that to say; Luffy becoming so emotionally involved in Rebecca and Kyros' father-daughter relationship is perfectly normal and on-brand for him, it's not strange at all.

...At the same time. I could not help but to wonder if those two's relationship could somehow reflect Luffy's relationship with his estranged parent(s), and more importantly, kind of debunk the fandom idea of Luffy as someone who 100% does not care if people are related or not and has ZERO interest in Dragon etc

Like I have discussed this before but I've been meta posting for so long on here I'll repeat myself just a lil; I feel like it's less "Luffy doesn't care Dragon is his father" and more "Luffy doesn't know HOW to feel about Dragon". We don't know what Garp told Luffy about his parent(s), presumably and based on the conversation post-Enies Lobby it just seems like Garp never mentioned ANYTHING to Luffy? Like he didn't even tell Luffy a white lie about why his parents weren't there for him? We simply do not know. But what we do know is these three things: 1. Luffy hates being alone, even more than "being hurt". Being alone is his worst fear 2. Although Garp was responsible for raising Luffy, he wasn't always there, meaning other townspeople and Shanks' crew alike were equally "responsible" for looking after Luffy. 3. Meaning Luffy was essentially an orphan. Fans will joke about Luffy's surprise at him having a father being because he's stupid, an asexy and doesn't know where babies come from, and while I may not be fully able to debunk that conceptually. Like. It's just as possible that because Luffy was raised like an orphan, he might have assumed that either his parents were dead or had abandoned him because they didn't want him. And I'm going to argue that if that's what Luffy always assumed was what happened, yeah, it'd contribute to his fear of being alone. It'd explain why he'd be surprised to find out he actually does have a father out there somewhere. And yeah, Luffy might not know how to feel about Dragon if that's the case. Should he hate Dragon because he wasn't ever there for him (from Luffy's POV)? Why wasn't Dragon there for him? Did he really not want Luffy, or did he have some reason for leaving Luffy? What is he like anyways, is he nice or cool or a dickbag?? Should Luffy even care about any of that stuff??? All of that to say; I don't think Luffy is completely disinterested in Dragon, I think he doesn't know how to feel or think about Dragon, and it's not relevant to Luffy right now anyways because Dragon's like, out there somewhere while Luffy is on his journey. Where as, if Luffy were to meet Dragon, get to know what he's like, why he wasn't there for Luffy and most importantly, how he feels about his only son (does he care about Luffy and his wellbeing? Is he a Kyros or a Kaidou?)- yeah, I think then Luffy COULD learn to be interested in Dragon and care about him Not out of obligation (because of their blood) but out of Luffy's own will, out of Luffy's acknowledgement of Dragon's love for him

And yeah, then we get to add the ever-delightful layer of Crocodad Trutherism to this mess.

You know how my personal theory goes; that Crocodile's been trying to find a way to overthrow and nuke the WG (potentially with an Ancient Weapon) to make sure his long lost child would be able to live freely and do whatever the hell he wanted without having to fear the WG would ever target him because he has Evil Revolutionary Leader Blood coursing through his veins. That's what makes the most sense to me as Crocodile's ultimate motivation. To protect his child, no matter the cost, even if he had to become the devil himself.

And hey, what was the story between Kyros and Rebecca again? Kyros trying to overthrow a corrupt government (a fallen Tenryuubito to boot) to protect his child so she could live freely without having a target on her back?

I don't need to explain how One Piece does have repeating themes and motifs, surely. (Also there's something to be said about fathers in One Piece who would go to hell and back for their daughters, Kuma being another example, but that's a whole different essay. But Oda's Girl-Dad Agenda is showing)

But yeah, what's even more interesting here is how Kyros believed he didn't deserve to have a reunion with Rebecca. He commited a murder decades ago, and although everyone else seems to have forgiven him for that crime, Kyros himself still thinks of himself as a horrible murderer with bloodstained hands. Not helped by how Kyros thought him teaching Rebecca self-defence skills was a failure on his part as a father (instead of him doing all he could in the horrible situation they were stuck in; teaching Rebecca how to defend herself was absolutely justified, and Kyros shouldn't have blamed himself for anything there).

Kyros didn't think he deserved to be with his daughter because he wasn't a good father, because was a monster. And Kyros could not believe anything other than that until Rebecca essentially forgave him, by explicitly telling him she wanted them to stay side-by-side. That she wanted him, and no one fucking else, as her father.

And I once again repeat myself just a little as I ask; how would Luffy feel if he found out Crocodile was his father? How would Luffy feel if he found out the reason Crocodile was going to destroy Vivi's country was because he was trying to protect his son from the WG? And that son was Luffy himself? How would Luffy feel that the asshole who stabbed him through the gut, mummified him and poisoned him was his very own family? Who also saved Luffy's life the second he learned of their blood connection? How would Luffy feel in that situation, if he found out Crocodile cares about Luffy, and wants him to be okay? And how does Crocodile feel? After stabbing Luffy through the gut, mummifying him and poisoning the brat, does Crocodile feel like he has any right to call himself Luffy's parent, let alone father? He knows Luffy rightfully hates him for all the horrible things he has done, how could Luffy ever accept him?

The past is in the past and it can't be changed. But you always have the choise, the free will, to change yourself and become a better person. You can choose to do better things, to help others and be kinder. You can have a second chance.

Robin was given a second chance. Hacchi was given one too. Kyros was given that chance to become better. So why not Crocodile?

[nikid-aze]

TOKYO ON EDGE. ˒˒ ﹙ niki! ﹚

╰┈⪼ moving to Japan wasn’t really on your plan through the year, but with your specialty being Japanese you had no choice but to accept. arriving in the middle of the year you found it strangely easy enough to integrate into your well-known class but over the days everything seemed to become boring and everything looked the same, the only thing that seemed to interest you was discovering the streets of Japan and the cultural differences with your native country. but, what you hadn't imagined was coming face to face with a car race, where one of the participants was one of your classmates, Nishimura Niki.

pairing ‎⸝⸝⸝ street racer!niki x student!reader 𓄷 iηcℓudᥱs 𓈓 older brother!jay, best friend!sunoo, best friend!haerin, bully!woonhak and heeseung.

genre﹙💬﹚⸝⸝⸝ serie, street racing au, enemies to lovers, kind of bully!niki, slow burn.

warnings ‎⸝⸝⸝ harsh talking, mention of violence and bullying, mention of drinking and smoking, cursing, mention of mental health, niki’s really dumb sometimes.

taglist ‎⸝⸝⸝ @r1kification @cherryrikis @moonpri @who-tf-soddhi @heeswif3y comment to be added to the taglist !!

rain’s note ‎⸝⸝⸝ i wanna scream so bad because I love the prologue so much I really hope you would like this story as much as I do

all feedback and reblogs are welcome! ♡

MASTERLIST | NEXT >>

000. boys like him get all the girls, except one.

guys like Nishimura niki thrive on danger, beautiful, intelligent beings drunk on adrenaline and always in the spotlight when trouble is on the front line.

those who have a reputation established by rumors and stories told across the school grounds, established by behavior worthy of the high school bad boy. the rumors stuck to their skin and all the bad choices followed him like their shadows.

guys like Nishimura riki had their populations following them no matter where their feet landed, for good or bad reasons.

those who noticed every girl pointing at them in the corridors of the establishment, who heard the whispers said about them no matter what room they set foot in. The hateful looks of the other boys falling on them while their girlfriends were fangirling over them.

guys like Nishimura Niki were known for their troublemaking behavior, who were fearless and who did not hesitate to use the strength of their hands to resolve any conflict.

those who had no shame in ending up with scratched, bloody hands at the end of a fight if that required it and who would be proud to see their opponents unable to get up without the help of someone.

guys like Nishimura Niki were the very definition of bad boys, who had no shame in behaving rashly around a teacher and ended up in the principal's office.

those who had no shame in taking responsibility for their faults before anyone with greater authority. just as they had no shame in disrespecting authority when the moment required it.

guys like Nishimura Niki were the type who came to class with bandages on their arms and hands after boxing practice.

those who spend their time in gyms, hitting punching bags for hours and venting all the hatred they felt.

guys like Nishimura Niki abandoned their boring student lives for late-night escapades and unconscious decisions to find themselves in the heart of pure danger, who loved the sound of cars through the empty streets of the night.

those who spent their nights behind the wheel of cars, adrenaline coursing through their veins as their feet mashed the gas pedal and the engine roared through the streets of Japan, seeking that freedom.

guys like Nishimura niki were the boys who were way too popular with the girls, who made every girl who saw them scream and who enraged the boys who weren't as popular.

those who spent their time rejecting girls who confessed to them no matter how they said it, who broke many hearts a day simply because they were in no way interested in love.

guys like Nishimura Niki didn't care about love and have no interest in it.

those who had no time to think about love, who simply did not prefer to have this waste of time.

guys like Nishimura who had no interest in shy, good girls, with only good grades and who had this cute and innocent look.

who didn't like girls like that. . . well normally they weren’t supposed to.

since your arrival in Japan and in this high school you had always hated boys like Nishimura Niki. No, you hated Nishimura Niki. Since you unfortunately met him in the corridors you had felt this feeling of disgust.

his name being whispered in every corridor, his first name which absolutely did not leave the lips of each of the girls you met no matter the day. you had always despised this name since you met him and you had never understood the interest that all his girls had for him.

every day he would walk into the classroom and while all the girls would whisper and be in complete awe of his good looks and demeanor, you would find yourself spitting out his every flaw while your best friend listened to you every time.

your eyes rolled in annoyance almost automatically when he was close to you. even when he wasn't close to you. he was so popular that you heard about him no matter where you were and it had the potential to drive you absolutely crazy.

the worst of all being that, despite all your efforts Niki did everything to make your life complicated, entering into challenges with you regarding exam grades, annoying you with just a simple sentence and this way he had of destroying the plans you made for every event, simply because he was popular and had no problem placing himself above you, despite your best efforts.

his behavior making you scream no matter what he did, making you on edge when you just wanted to spend some quiet time in the library.

oh you really hated Nishimura niki.

[rosewaterandivy]

I. a strange thing, mystifying - canticle

summary: if you strip away the myth from the man

pairing: e.m./f!reader

w.c.: 2K

a/n: I would like to blame myself and @bangaveragewhitewine for this. songs referenced: where do I go - HAIR (rip Gavin Creel), what’s the buzz/strange thing mystifying - Jesus Christ Superstar

What he wouldn’t give for a stiff drink.

Nevermind, that it was a respectable ten in the morning at some studio space in Midtown. He’d arrived, promptly mind you, an hour prior and has been subjected to a myriad of vocal stylings ever since.

This is the last time he ever does anyone a favor.

He winces behind dark sunglasses as the latest hopeful ends her audition number.

“Thanks,” Robin says, suspiciously cheery after what anyone would consider to be a lackluster performance.

Mediocre by New York standards, Broadway-worthy elsewhere in the country.

“We’ll be in touch.”

The actress scurries out with a nod and a wave, lingering by the door with hopes of catching someone’s eye.

Eddie rolls his neck and revels in the satisfying crack of bones. He lets the chair legs land with a thump onto the floor, already twirling a cigarette between his fingers on his way outside.

“Five minutes!” Robin reminds him with a pointed glance in his direction, before she’s corralled into a conversation with the casting director and producer.

Lighting up, he feels an immediate relief that only nicotine can bring, letting it fill his lungs as he inhales deeply. The alley, luckily, is fairly empty. People pass by lost in their own world with nary a glance in his direction.

He’s always liked the anonymity of the city.

Someone always clocked him in LA, and he felt like he never had a moment’s peace. Constantly making an appearance at an event or party, walking a carpet or, bullied into being someone’s plus-one.

No wonder he couldn’t get any work done.

So, while Corroded Coffin was on their hiatus that wasn’t really a hiatus. Eddie figured he’d do a friend a solid and help them out with a passion project. Leave it to Robin to be vague on the details.

“It’s a fuckin’ wash anyway. I’ll be in and out in ten minutes, no harm, no foul.”

The voice carried from the studio’s entrance down the alleyway and straight into his ears.

Ashing his cigarette, Eddie turns to investigate because he swears he knows that voice.

“Yeah, yeah. Just a favor for a friend of a friend. Shame that it’s such a good concept though, and due for a revival too.”

He pauses, waiting for their response. He assumes they’re on the phone and about to walk into the studio. Maybe he can catch them before and—

“I know, a fuckin’ musician. At least LA actors are somewhat trainable for the stage, but a frontman? Gotta be kiddin’ me— too much baggage and too many bad habits.”

Hmm, well then. Maybe not.

“Right, sure. Uh huh, I’ll call ya. Byyyeeee!”

The door snickers open as he stubs the cigarette out with the toe of his boot. Well, he supposes, trudging back inside, there’s that infamous New York hospitality at least.

_

You slump into a nearby chair after checking in with the front desk. Tote bag at your side nearly sweating through your audition blacks because you’d booked it from the subway. Not that you cared, exactly. This was just a favor to Steve because he’d asked nicely and you had nothing better to do on a Tuesday.

There’s fewer people in the room than you’d anticipated, and you try to will your nerves away. It doesn’t matter how many auditions you go on or how many roles you land, it was still anxiety-inducing in the worst ways.

Taking a quick sip from your water bottle and a few deep breaths, you’re ready when the assistant director calls your name.

Dropping your tote by the door, you greet everyone politely as you hand off your music to the pianist. Robin gives you wink as the opening chords come in. And suddenly, you’re glad you opted for this song. It wasn’t as easy as breathing, signing rarely was, but it was in the comfortable part of your range and from a musical you recollected fondly.

Is there an answer in their sweet faces

That tells me why I live and die?

Two minutes is standard for an audition piece, but since this was a favor, Robin had graciously waved it off. And as you were the final audition for the day, there was no rush.

Not that you could tell from the guy lounging on the chair to her right. He’d kicked up the front legs and was balancing precariously, his boot resting against the edge of the table. Dark hair, darker sunglasses, and a devil-may-care attitude.

Lovely, positively great.

Unfettered, you continued the song. Robin softly sung the chorus portions, though you hadn’t asked. You knew she was a sweetheart from how Steve droned on about her, but you weren’t anticipating her kindness— especially for someone she’d only met in passing once or twice.

And, it’s not like you were counting on this gig. So the fact that you’re giving maybe fifty percent is a-okay.

Tell me where

Tell me why

Coming to a close on that high C, you breathe a sigh of relief. There’s a smattering of applause as you collect the sheet music from the pianist and step aside.

“Actually,” Robin begins before you can turn the handle on the door. “If you don’t have anything pressing, would you mind staying a few more minutes?”

“Uh,” you stammer, turning back to where she sat. “Yeah, sure.”

Giving you a bright smile, she turns toward the man in black whispering something.

He scoffs at whatever she’d said, and leans further back in his chair with a groan. So much so, that you’re hoping he falls.

“Ugh, fine.”

Standing up, he grabs the sheet music from Robin and stomps over to you at the piano. The pianist takes the music and gives it a quick scan.

“Who’s who then?”

You pluck the paper from his hand— didn’t even have the decency to offer it to you. Skimming the piece, you fear your heart may plummet to your gut.

“Okay!” Robin proclaims with a gleeful clap of her hands. “Ed, if you could do Jesus’ part first and then we’ll switch? I just want to see something real quick.”

Clearing your throat pointedly, you ask, “Could you take those off?” nodding toward his sunglasses.

He does so with a grimace.

Well, at least they’re not bloodshot.

“Thanks.”

It’s a shame really, because his eyes could almost be mistaken for kind— brown with flecks of amber. If only they weren’t narrowed at you as if you were a piece of gum on his shoe. Whatever, you’re a professional for chrissakes— you’ve certainly dealt with worse scene partners than him.

It seems to me a strange thing, mystifying

That a man like you can waste his time

On women of her kind

And it’s not like there’s a lack of chemistry between you if the pure contempt radiating from him is anything to go off of.

If your slate is clean, then you can throw stones

If your slate is not, then leave her alone

He clearly doesn’t want to be doing this, but then again, neither do you. And his rendition isn’t bad, his voice works for the part— that raspy snarl as it scales the notes, he’s had some training at least.

So, not totally hopeless.

“Nicely done!” Robin crows from her seat, “Okay, from the top but switching parts now.”

It’s not that I object to her profession

But she doesn’t fit in well with what you teach and say

From the corner of your eye, you can see Robin turning to her casting director and whispering. Her eyebrows are liable to disappear into her hairline with how much she’s raised them. She confers with the producer as well before turning back to face you.

I’m amazed that men like you

Can be so shallow, thick, and slow

There is not a man among you

Who knows or cares if I come or go

There’s a beat of silence that’s near deafening before Robin is scrambling from her chair, limbs akimbo, as she dashes toward the pair of you at the piano.

You may be shit with directions, and math, and a myriad of other things, but you’re gifted at reading people. Robin’s excitement is overwhelming, she’s smiling and bright-eyed as she congratulates you and—

“Eddie, this is gonna be so great!”

Assessing the situation, you’re not quite sure that’s the case. But somehow, you’re not the least bit surprised. This’ll be the last time you do Steve Harrington a favor.

He stands frigidly almost like a deer caught in headlights. If a deer could look wry instead of doe-eyed. He’s definitely annoyed, eyes flitting from you to Robin and back again.

You consider throwing him a bone, anything to alleviate the tension, but one: he’d probably glower at you if you tried, and two: you just…couldn’t.

Instead, you inquire, “What’s gonna be great?”

“The show, duh! With you two as my leads, we’ll be Broadway bound in—”

“What?!” He’s incredulous, and loud.

“Are you serious!?”

“Jeez,” she huffs, “Keep your voices down. S’not like this is a happy occasion or anything, worthy of celebration.”

Eddie stalks off without so much as a goodbye, door slamming in his wake.

“Well,” Robin clears her throat, “That went better than I expected.” She claps your shoulder, “Trust me, this’ll all work out.” And bounds off to go call Steve with the good news.

There’s an itch at the back of your throat, one that never quite clears out and is all the worse when you’re annoyed. So, you can already tell, that this guy is gonna be the biggest thorn in your side.

Grabbing your bag, you yank the service door open and step into the alley only to come face to face with Eddie, a cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. There’s a tiny furrow of his brow, eyes narrowing as you attempt a hasty exit.

“Congratulations,” you offer lamely over your shoulder, turning onto the sidewalk.

“Don’t even bother,” Eddie drawls. “Too much baggage and too many bad habits, right?”

And, despite the sounds of the city, it’s quiet.

That is until a mocking voice breaks the silence.

“Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. I’ve been called worse and I’ll be outta your hair in no time.”

“I dunno,” you sigh, “Think you kinda like it.”

He blinks.

“The attention that is.” You adjust the strap of your tote, “A musician of a relatively successful band headlining a guaranteed smash, it’ll be cake.”

“I think I liked you better before you opened your mouth.”

“Aww, you think about my mouth?”

A sly bend to your lips sends his guts upside down. A tilt of your mouth, jerking up in that haughty and pursed manner, one that he’d very much like to smack from your face. Kiss it clean off.

“Or maybe you just like me.”

He’s resentful and determined to control a situation he’s really never had any control over, fucking hell. And now, he has to deal with you. Your presence. Your illogical need to fuck up his day, and now his foreseeable future. Taunting him about liking the limelight, liking you, when he knows to the inside marrow of his goddamn bones that he sure as hell does not.

The sheer fucking insolence.

“Keep it cool, Romeo. Noticed you staring real hard back there.”

Heat blooms from the back of Eddie’s neck up his throat and it takes barely a second to catch the rest of him. His head is swimming when he backs you against the bricks, bracing himself above you. Irritable, flushing skin high on adrenaline as the fire in his spine ignites.

“Yeah, in my fuckin’ nightmares maybe.”

You swoop underneath his arm, stepping out into the sun.

And you’re both painfully aware that it’s only because he let you.

Neither of you find each other’s eyes, not even to glare. There’s a soft snort as you turn on your heel and leave. He watches as you slip into anonymity without looking back or saying bye.

A spark of recognition that refuses to wink itself out.

And in this moment, you know each other.

[itoshiexx]

mi vida

synopsis: sae never thought someone could become his life, but that changed when you came.

pairing: itoshi sae x gn!reader | words: 749 | warnings: established relationship, fluff

notes: welcome back to "things i wrote on a whim when my boss wasn't at the office"!! apparently i write a lot better in english without much planning, so yeah. this idea came to me based on a personal experience, since i call my boyfriend "minha vida" (which is the same for "mi vida"/"my life" in portuguese) and i never really thought i could consider someone to be my life before him.

i really really hope you like it, and i wanna thank you all so much for all the love you've given to Unworthy (but chosen), every note and follower made me super happy! <3

and also, i'm so sorry if my description of the spanish culture is not accurate and for any english mistakes!

during his time in spain, sae learned a lot of things. mainly, how to improve his soccer career even more, striving to become the best in the world after already being the best in his country. 

he was a genius, of course, so it wasn’t really hard to learn the language or get acquainted with the city of madrid, which was a lot warmer than japan — in many ways. however, it was really fucking hard to get used to the customs of the spanish people and its culture, considering it was so different from the japanese. they were extremely welcome, and sae was anything but. if anything, he was even more closed than typical japanese people. 

in spain, people were always greeting each other with a kiss on each cheek, showing off bright smiles and making conversation with strangers. friends talked loudly among each other, giving hugs and always touching somehow. the concept of personal space? totally nonexistent. in short, it was weird. 

but nothing was weirder than couples. 

the concept of love was already foreign to sae. he didn’t understand how a feeling could envelop one so much and make it forget about the rest of the world. he didn’t know how such an abstract thing, with no sense of logic whatsoever, could be so overwhelming to the point of taking one’s life completely, until all you could see, think and feel was your significant other.

most of all, he couldn’t fathom how someone could become your life. 

“te amo, mi vida,” was what he used to hear an old couple say to each other. they were the owners of sae’s favorite restaurant, a small little place in the suburbs of Madrid, and always treated him with a kindness he didn’t deemed himself worthy of. 

at first, he wasn’t able to comprehend what the sentence meant. he could barely write it on google translate to try to get its meaning, and he didn’t really care enough. though, as the time went by and sae became more fond of the couple, he eventually gathered the courage to ask the woman about it. and he was very surprised to hear the answer. 

“it means ‘i love you, my life’,” she said, smiling from ear to ear and handing a glass of salted kombucha tea to sae. it was one of the reasons he adored the place so much — it was the only restaurant he found that served his favorite drink. 

the older itoshi could only stare, dumbfounded, and mumble, “…why?”

the woman laughed at the boy’s naiveté. “why, you ask? because that’s what he is to me.” 

sae only stared in silence, too stunned to speak.

“i… i don’t understand,” he confessed. it sounded silly, and kind of pathetic, but at that moment he didn’t really care. the woman gave another smile, this time an understanding countenance, and placed her wrinkly hand on his shoulder. 

“you will understand one day, boy. and when your person comes, make sure to bring them here, right? i’d like to meet them!” 

the soccer player wanted to tell her that it would never happen. that the itoshi sae had no time for foolish things like love, and he most certainly would never love someone so much to the point of seeing them as his life. his life was soccer, and his goal was to become the best in the world. 

there was nothing else. 

oh, how he bit his tongue. 

it was at the age of twenty two when he entered the restaurant once again, and this time, not alone. you were walking by his side, with your hand intertwined in his, chatting excitedly while he just listened. a small smile was on his face, and his features were impossibly soft, in a way they only got around you. 

you, who were light in the darkness, who were comfort after a long day of practice, who was the one he loved most. you, who was the definition of home in every sense of the word. the only one that could make his heart swell so much it made it hard to breathe. 

he pulled your chair for you to sit like a true gentleman, and sat right next to you, always in need to touch you somehow. a hand was placed on your thigh while the other one opened the menu. and he turned to you, voice gentle like you could break:

“so, what would you like, mi vida?”

you, who was his life.

© 2023 itoshiexx. do not plagarise, translate, or repost any of my work on here or other sites.

[taragreenfield]

A little more on Alina

In addition to this post

The problem with Alina's character is not that she is deeply flawed, but that the narrative tries to present her as some sort of pure-hearted, virtuous heroine who fights for the greater good. The thing is, she has nothing to offer but the light shining out of her ass. She's riding the coattails of her status as the Sun Summoner while having the mindset of a wet paper towel. One might argue that it's a classic "chosen one" trope - a girl who has nothing discovers she has a power that can change the world, that she is young, naive, and traumatized, so it's understandable she's reluctant to take such a massive responsibility upon herself. And yes, in the beginning of the story I would agree. However, the whole point of the "chosen one" trope is that your young, insecure heroine grows as a person, embraces her identity, learns there are bigger things than her fears and personal wants, gets her naive beliefs challenged, and becomes a person who knows what they are. Yes, she doesn't have to become the queen. She might decide that she's not really a fighter or a ruler but still find a way to help people in real, meaningful ways. But it never happens. Alina is worshipped as a saint solely because she can summon light. She doesn't earn her "sainthood" in any way, not by the acts of kindness, not by her selflessness and compassion, not by her devotion to her beliefs. She's appointed by Nikolai as the general of the second army, even though she has zero combat or strategic skills and is literally a deserter. Someone is looking for amplifiers for her, even though nothing about her shows that she has enough mental strength or willpower to wield this immense magic. Once again, she's the Sun Summoner; therefore, she's worthy. In her "connection" with Aleksander, her being the sun summoner does all the heavy lifting, since Alina herself not only never understood him, she simply lacks the mental and emotional bandwidth to be his rival, counterpart, or his "balance". Even in the end, she doesn't get to destroy the Fold, as she lost her powers before that, but the Apparat cooks up a story that she heroically died "protecting the country".

She is an impostor in her own story, occasionally reaping the benefits of the power she never deserved and never even comprehended. She's not "morally grey", she's intellectually and morally bankrupt. Her moral rigidity doesn't come from a place of hard-earned experience or strong, however idealistic, principles and conviction. It comes from a place of cowardice, because entertaining the idea that she might be wrong can implicate her and force her to deal with the accountability she desperately tries to escape. The story needed the sun that could burn the rot of the corrupt, oppressive system and light the way to something better, but all it got was a damp squib.

The ending makes a weak and unconvincing attempt to "punish" her, but completely misses the mark. An orphan girl who spent her life feeling powerless and invisible wanting to embrace and expand her newly found power is not the flaw that should be punished. This is actually one of the traits that makes her relatable and human. Her selfishness, her lack of empathy, her inability to own up to her mistakes, her misplaced self-righteousness, and her cowardly bury-your-head-in-the-sand mentality is what really needed to be addressed. And her ending, where she gets to live under a false name, pretends that the mess she created wasn't hers, and plays a tragic martyr who was "punished for her greed," conveniently blaming all her failings and less than commendable traits on amplifiers' corruptive effects without having to see how her actions affected other people or, heaven forbid, do something about it, only reinforces her worst traits - an unwillingness to take responsibility, blame-shifting, a victim complex, and moral cowardice. She stays insular in her own warped narrative.

[yonkokraven]

Leak night and A Little Rant: Soulless ending for a Hero Journey (MHA 430 Spoilers)

Horikoshi now I understand why you were afraid that your manga would be cancelled, because you don't deserve that position

Seriously, there are so many things wrong here, not only because you contradicted yourself from the previous chapter and doubled down on making us ignore it completely, but you expect me to feel like this ending is worthy of being called bittersweet when it doesn't qualify as an ending to any of the plots presented.

Midoriya Izuku, someone who at the time I saw the potential to be a Superman, a Spiderman, a genuine hero reduced to a teacher with the same expressionless image for 8 years before being given a suit to be a hero (Which he didn't need because Midoriya's strength without the OFA is already superhuman)

No, I'm not going to start the Rant like this, sorry, but I'm seriously upset with the insult that this chapter has become.

The Chapter

Chronologically, the chapter tells us that time passed normally at the academy before the war, Bakugo adapted to being ambidextrous, Gran Torino seems to have recovered although he probably died at most a year later, Tokoyami and Hawks talking, Aizawa and Mic in the cemetery (unfortunately Aizawa is still alive), the League of Villains book is on sale and several other things.

And then...

“I was able to live a dream that should have been impossible. The story that began when my body moved before I could even think has come to an end alongside the embers of One For All”.

Midoriya loses the last embers of One For All during the last days of the academy as indicated in the full panel, so it seems that he did not become a hero with his classmates.

8 years after graduation, the perspective changes to Dai, this young man who appeared at the beginning of the final war arc. And we have mentions of La Brava (who has her own IT company and is married to Gentle), Doctor Yoshida (the doctor Yoshi) and Hatsume (who seems to have a very renowned Laboratory)

Dai is being bullied for his quirk, and one of his classmates says that now that the number of heroes has stabilized, only the strongest quirks will have a chance in the academies.

Dai says that unlike the others, he did not change, he feels like a child for wanting to be like All Might, Endeavor, Jeanist, Deku or Dynamight, and his insecurity guides him to the Statue of All Might.

There is another scene change that shows us more of the students of class A

Shoji receives an award for resolving prejudiced conflicts in a peaceful manner, and he thanks all the heteromorphs who went to the hospital 8 years ago and who are only there thanks to their will.

Uravity, Ingenium, Froppy and Creati are now a team of heroes (possibly oriented to everyday and rescue situations) who go around the country's schools explaining a new and important aspect of society: the expansion of quirk counseling.

And Eri attends a music club with friends from her school.

Aizawa talks to Midoriya and shows him a video of Bakugo yelling at a civilian for filming him too closely, and points out that this will cause Bakugo to fall in the Ranking and Todoroki to rise (we are told that Shoto works day and night, yet he is still kind to his fans and people)

Shoto is no longer known as "Endeavor's Son", but as his own hero identity.

Aizawa asks Deku if he feels lonely, and Deku answers that since his talk with Fuwa (in chapter 425) he realized that he can use his knowledge and experience to help other people even without having a quirk. And he says he thinks this is a cool way to live.

Midoriya asks Aizawa if he agrees with him, but Aizawa says that he should be strict with his students, since many who enter UA believe that they are guaranteed passage into the profession and tend to become arrogant if there is no one who is strict and corrects their path.

Midoriya says that since graduation he has barely seen his friends as their days off don't coincide. As he walks home, Midoriya looks out at the scene, Tokoyami or Kirishima products on TV screens, or children playing in the street.

One of these children trips and Midoriya goes over to help, and notices Dai coming over as well.

Dai talks to him about his insecurities and how he comes to see the statue of All Might every time he feels that way, and asks Midoriya,

"Can I be a hero like All Might and You?"

Midoriya remembers his conversation with All Might and begins to analyze Dai's Quirk, a Quirk that allows him to create plates from his hair. Dai is somewhat surprised by Midoriya's way of speaking but understands that he is trying to help him.

"Now it's my turn to give people dreams"

Midoriya tells Dai that he will be okay, because he helped that kid and confirms that he can be a hero. The next panel shows us the new statue of All Might with new additions, statues of civilians rooting for him. Midoriya tells Dai to do his best.

"If I said I'm not a little sad, I'd be lying. However, I can at least encourage other people like that. And that was the story of how we all became the greatest heroes."

All Might appears before the chapter comes to an end and destroys the "END" with his own hand.

All Might apologizes for the delay, while Midoriya tells him that he could have met him at the airport, but All Might says that he wanted to give him a surprise gift while explaining that the data collected from his fight against All For One 8 years ago opened up huge possibilities. All Might gives his disciple a Briefcase.

"Technology evolves just like quirks."

Midoriya says it must have cost a fortune, but All Might says it was created by a friend of US (possibly Melissa and her father) and Hatsume, and the expenses were paid jointly by all the students of class A, especially Bakugo.

“Take this to heart, kid. You've earned this power too, fair and square.”

Deku smiles, we get a panel of Bakugo calling Midoriya, and then Hawks being informed about a landslide on a highway and he asks for any heroes who can to report to the place immediately. Midoriya jumps up using his new support and looks down for a moment, seeing the "ghost" of Shigaraki.

The last page is a double spread of Class A as adults in their hero outfits.

"This is the story of how we will continue to reach out."

A Rant

Well, to begin to understand this chapter and give it a proper rant, I summarized it, and for that reason I want to talk about some things and say again that it is a deteriorated ending for how the Manga began.

Things seem to change but at the same time they stay the same, it's basically like raising the sails of a ship to half mast, you go in the same direction, but slower.

Horikoshi doesn't have a clear perspective for Midoriya in the chapter since he alternates protagonism with Dai, this student who barely appeared once

Dai gives us the perspective of the new generation, and again strength prevails over heroism since Hawks didn't start to reward what really mattered, precisely: Heroism.

Midoriya decides that he will be a teacher since he doesn't have a Quirk to practice the profession of hero, a stupid thing because in previous occasions we were shown that Midoriya's physical strength without the OFA was abundant, although it is understood that Midoriya wants to teach we don't see anything about his class or how he teaches.

The heroes are still people without personal lives, and this is highlighted by the little interaction time that Midoriya had with his friends in a span of 8 years, in addition to Shoto patrolling day and night.

The plot of Shoji and the heteromorphs seems to improve as well as that of Uraraka, both being heroes they try to educate civilians so that people like Toga are helped or the heteromorphs can live with dignity.

Spinner released his book but we didn't see a reaction from the people, but from Compress who had no relevance in this manga.

There is something very wrong with all this and it is that they build us up to the idea that change will happen in the long run, when Horikoshi had the means to immediately begin said changes (And no, I'm not referring to civilians).

Midoriya should have had recognition and interviews for his motivations, even if you don't want to tell the whole story Midoriya would say that he brought Shigaraki to where he was (ridiculous reason but it would be a way to justify it) and people would stop looking the other way

Uraraka could have done what she does now from the academy and interviews, but you didn't allow it either.

Shoji and the heteromorphs was a beautiful plot but you did everything so off-screen that it loses the impact of these two panels that you dedicated to the chapter.

Hawks is now at the head of the commission, and the only thing you did was fix half the problem by adding the top "Eiyuu" when you should also have eliminated the old top that makes people perceive power as something rewardable.

And do you know, readers, why all this is happening? Because Horikoshi most likely has a sequel prepared, because if not, it would not explain the amount of inconsistencies that arose in this last final arc and later this attempt at an epilogue (It literally still makes me sick that he wasted the portal resource like that.)

I would detail for the umpteenth time the inconsistencies when writing the League of Villains or the lack of evolution outside of panels, but you already know my opinion about that and more.

I only hope that on August 5th the news is not a sequel or I will have to mentally prepare myself to see another decade of inconsistencies.

and yes, Deku will have a new OFA in part 2, the ghosts (Shigaraki) don't appear on the street just because.

[blasphemousclaw]

i think rykard had a tendency to disregard formality except as Ritual or as Political Ambition, like as just a headcanon. the way he marries tanith and deeply adores and confides in her, when a lot of her descriptions emphasize the potential gulf in social power between them (drawing on a lot of tropes heavily associated with the character of Lowborn Sex Worker Consort) and how he held a disregard for the way the Golden Order handles itself (creating a strict orderly hierarchy of power between its peoples and appropriate mannerisms between one class and another (see the pages and how kenneth haight talks)) and how he has a studious scholalry streak from his archeology at mt gelmir and his sorceries, i can see him as being this larger than life figure who takes the formality inherent to ritual worship and power and really pushes that to its limit to get the kost bang for his buck, just going all in, which builds up this idea of a figure out of legend, and then its immediately contrasted by a frank, casual manner of speaking outside of those circumstances, a way where he holds himself as a singularly powerful lord but despite that hes easy to talk to, and he values the opinions and ideas of those who would normally be his "lessers" or "beneath him" and takes them seriously and treats them with respect

a lord who takes counsel from prince and pauper alike, who married a dancer, who speaks bluntly and without shame but encourages others to do so as well, who embraces the blasphemous and heretical such that you never feel you have to hide anything from him, but when he conducts a ceremony for the great serpent its like the whole world stops to bend its ear for the way he channels such power and authority that you cant help but believe that hes truly something different from all of you, and yet despite this you speak freely to him anyways. such a man could inspire ruthless loyalty to the bitter end with ease, throughout the most horrible of wars, all until it hits that critical breaking point of the serpent, and even then some still cant bring themselves to break away from him

ok theres ABSOLUTELY a theme of repudiating the conventions of nobility and class with Rykard… I think his belief system is based on the idea that the gods are no better than mortals, and they have no inherent divine right to rule: “When Rykard turned to heresy, taking by force became the rule. The gods were no different, after all.” The gods “take by force” just like any common mortal tyrant, so why should we accept that they have an inherent authority over us? There’s this theme of seizing one’s own fate and taking power for oneself — like Bernahl calling out to the Greater Will directly that “we refuse to become your pawns” — which I think would be really inspiring to like, a common soldier who’s felt disrespected and taken for granted all their life. Though Rykard is as noble as they come, he too is fighting against a suffocating Order. Tanith explicitly likens the plight of ordinary Tarnished to the Shardbearers… they’re all made to “scurry about, fighting over what miserly scraps they allow us.”

Speaking of Tanith, Rykard making her his consort is such a deliberate political statement? Lords like Kenneth Haight would no doubt look down on her because of her commoner foreigner background, like he even calls Godrick, a demigod, a “country bumpkin!” Marrying Tanith instead of someone from Erdtree nobility shows that Rykard doesn’t care at all about established class structure… why is Tanith any less worthy than an Erdtree noble? I think Tanith is speaking from experience when she says this about Rya: “Besides, no-one should be blamed for their heritage. Think about it. We are resisting the ways of the Erdtree itself. What matters one's lineage in such a crisis.”

basically one of Rykard’s blasphemous beliefs is that the gods are only gods because they are strong enough to stay in power and keep people under their control. he would have a society where every person is the master of their own fate. at least I think that’s what his followers thought before he fed himself to a serpent god and started eating people

[chevelleneech]

I'm honestly appalled at how some people are desperately seeking validation for their theories about the members' relationship with X idol, especially from us Kookminers. Why are you trying so hard to convince us? To be honest, it comes off as pretty pathetic. You're bending over backward to justify your argument and trying to seek validation from us. We get it loser damn WinterKook is real and happy in your eyes. Cool. Next. 💆🏻‍♀️

That’s what I’m saying! Just because I don’t care about the rumors circling them, doesn’t mean others can’t. Which that anon refuses to accept. They can ship Winter and JK or whomever all they want, because it has nothing to do with me, lol.

Getting mad and coming back to argue about ships neither of us know are real anyway, is ridiculous. Someday eventually, the members will likely branch off into public relationships, and that’ll be that. If any of them are queer, particularly gay, we will likely never know. The only signs will be a “friend” they hang out with all the time, who is constantly seen in their entourage no matter where they are. Or a “roommate” whom they never move out from.

If they’re queer and into women, we’ll likely only ever see them settle down with a woman, if a woman ends up being their person. Bisexual, pan, it doesn’t matter. At no point do I truly believe any of them will make grandiose statements regarding their sexualities, unless they decide to be even more blatant in their music. Which I can see happening, but I don’t foresee them explaining the lyrics if so.

The members are pretty private people, and talk about stuff when they feel like it. But homophobia is still rampant around the world, and could ruin their careers in their home country. So while I do think JM and JK are currently involved, I have no doubt in my mind that it is something we will never get a definitive answer on. Even if they become the “best friends and roommates” who never part. Because it’s either going to go that route or they’ll breakup and settle down with other people.

Either way, confirmation is not coming, meaning Jikook shippers will always technically be wrong. Trying to argue against why another ship is more likely, especially a het ship, just means anon (and others like them) believe a confirmation is possible. It means they think either JM or JK dating someone else publicly will confirm they were never a thing, which is silly. It could be true, but to me, it’s not likely. The most sensible reasoning to me would be they finally put an end to their whatever, and moved on.

If that happens soon, okay. If that happens later, okay. But again, what’s never happening is an official, headline worthy coming out.

[alicent-vi-britannia]

12 characters, 12 story arcs, 1 theme

A few days ago, I tried to synthesize in a single word the narrative arcs of the Code Geass characters (at least, the ones I know they have) with the intention of extracting the theme of each one. I will briefly explain my conclusions. Or, put another way, what each theme means for each character. I'll leave Lelouch for last because he's the main character and his theme is supposed to be that of the series. We go from bottom to top.

Self-fidelity / Milly: "the girl who learned to be in touch with her own desires and chose to be true to herself to bring out her best version." I think the phrase explains it perfectly. Milly found happiness and she became more mature once she decided to stop serving her family's wishes and focus on herself and what she wanted to be and do.

Confidence / Ohgi: "the man who learned to trust himself to become the leader his organization and his country needed." Ohgi's arc is inspiring, if you take off your toxic fandom glasses and take his journey seriously. It is true that he made certain mistakes, but he always thought of the welfare of his people and his comrades. That was his main motivation and what led him to overcome his personal insecurities. I was going to make a comparison, but you guys won't like it and you'll attack me.

Happiness / Euphemia: "the girl who dreamed of a world in which all people were happy." This is the only arc that was cut short and did not come to fruition for reasons that I don't need to detail. Euphemia was a selfless princess without a purpose until she met her brother again and wanted to restore happiness to him, Nunnally and the rest of the Japanese.

Truth / Nunnally: "the girl who had to discover the truth to grow up to become the empress who could rebuild a new Britannia." She is literally blind and cannot see the world as it is, but as it should be (hence her idealism). She also can't see through her brother's and her friend's lies, until her determination and her circumstances push her to do so. It doesn't seem strange to me that the breaking of the seal coincides with the moment in which she learns the truth and decides to face it.

Justice / Nina: "the girl who had to seek justice for the murder of her beloved and her own acts and thus be a better person." Nina's arc is a revenge arc. Obviously. But the anime gives it a negative treatment, as Nina only gets worse with each new chapter. It's not until she understands all the destruction that her revenge can cause (in a literal sense) that she stops and reconsiders. The Zero Requiem gives Nina the opportunity to redeem herself and give justice to her beloved since the culprit pays for her crime. It's at this point that she begins to heal.

Honor / Jeremiah: "the man who managed to win back his honor after offering his loyalty to his enemy." The entire arc of Jeremiah revolved around honor. He believed that he had failed his empress and his prince, made a fool of himself on a live broadcast, was demoted and fell to the bottom. From there, he only lived to seek revenge. But then again, it wasn't the way. He only redeemed himself by putting himself at the service of a lord worthy of his loyalty: his enemy.

Humanity / Rolo: "the murder weapon that regained humanity from him through love." Another phrase that explains itself. Rolo had been used and manipulated his entire life as a tool. But when he created good memories and a sincere bond with Lelouch, he started to make decisions, think and feel like a human being.

Forgiveness / Shirley: "the girl who learned to forgive thanks to love." We find another arc of revenge. Like Nina, Jeremiah, Suzaku, and Lelouch, Shirley lost someone important to her, was overcome with grief and rage, and was tempted by revenge until she discovered that the killer was the man she loved. In the end, her noble feelings prevail and her love gives her the strength she needs to forgive.

Freedom / Kallen: "the girl who embraced her freedom became a hero who fought to liberate her country and the world." This is going to sound strange, but I barely realized that Kallen is who she is because she is free due to a fanfic that featured an anti-Kallen who was in many ways trapped. Kallen is a free spirit and performs as an autonomous individual. She chooses the friends she wants (be it Britannian or Japanese), she loves the man she wants, she champions the cause she wants, she has the value system she wants. However, there can be no freedom without equality, and Kallen and her people live in a society that promotes inequality. The freedom of some (the Britannians) cannot coerce that of others (the Japanese and even half-blood like her). So Kallen works to change the world to a place where everyone has full freedom. That's her motivation to grow up and become the hero her people and the world need.

Love / CC: "the girl who only until she received love from others was able to love herself." CC's arc ties directly to Lelouch's because they both express a nihilistic philosophy. In short, CC wishes to end herself and the world (through the Ragnarök Connection) because she considers her immortal existence to be meaningless and thus unimportant. Worse still, an immortal life implies eternal pain. Something she can't live with. But she wants to be loved, because all human beings cannot live without love. It is in the nature of the human being to give and receive love. Therefore, love will always prevail in the darkest moments. So, when Lelouch offers his affection to CC, she becomes more human and renews her will to live (see how her arc connects to Rolo's arc). Let's say that she transitions from a negative nihilism to an agathonism (that philosophy that it proposes that you have to enjoy life and help to live a pleasant life).

Peace / Suzaku: "the boy who was able to find peace of mind by creating a peaceful world." Without going any further, the lever that moves Suzaku throughout the series is "guilt". Suzaku feels guilty that he killed his father, he feels guilty that the Japanese are oppressed by the Britannians, he feels guilty that he failed Euphemia in his duty as a knight, he feels guilty that he can't protect everyone… Guilt, guilt, guilt. What is the opposite of guilt? We may all think of different things, but I'm leaving for peace because Suzaku didn't make peace with himself until he got the punishment from him and when did that happen? When he made sure to create a new world with Lelouch with the Zero Requiem, in which all his loved ones could live. No wars, no racism, no terrorism, no hate. In peace.

Will / Lelouch: "the boy who twisted the will of others found the value of the will of the human being and began to dream of tomorrow." It's very ironic. Lelouch's Geass is described as the power capable of bending the wills of others to the mercy of his own. As he progresses on his journey and interacts with other characters, he realizes that human beings actively seek happiness and persist despite adversity. They doesn't give up when they falls, but gets up and continues to fight. That is what it is to be human. Arthur Schopenhauer, in fact, said that the will was the essence of the human being. But I think that the approach of Lelouch and Code Geass goes more for nihilism in its most positive aspect. The one who proposes the destruction of everything to establish new values that allow the übermensch to live in freedom. "Emperor Charles searched for the past, you search for the present. But I search for the future. […]. Because no matter how much time passes, people will continue to search for happiness. People who struggle with sadness, those who seek the future. How everyone keeps wishing for happiness. Human nature is the reason I chose Geass and wearing a mask." This is the key to human survival. This is the meaning of life and what this series wants to teach you.

If you start to examine each of the arcs, you will see that they are all connected in one way or another (after all, they are concepts that appeal to the human condition). And, if you reflect carefully, you'll realize that the arcs of our two main heroes (Lelouch and Suzaku) correlate with the extremist views of Charles and Schneizel respectively (this was something I was planning to address in a discussion on CG antagonistic figures).

I hope you have learned something or found something interesting in this post. If you liked it, don't forget to support me with a comment and/or a reaction. I would really appreciate it as that will help the algorithm.

PS: Don't ask me to come up with an exhaustive analysis of the philosophies raised in this series. Although it may not seem like it, I have a hard time handling philosophy (I don't mind going overboard like I did here).

[waves-after-dark]

i finished reading The Promise and for it being the first events after a:tla its pretty good. there are things that had me grinning, holding back laughter and other parts i did not agree with

• toph and sokka's dynamic had me smiling ear to ear the entire time. it was so well done and well in-line with their characters

• i liked that tophs metalbending school was taken (returned?) from master kunyo. it showed another layer of the politics that was going on

• aang and katara's "sweetie talk" was gag worthy like every young teenage couple who are in the puppy-dog stage of their relationship

• aang's reaction to the yu dao chapter of the avatar fan club is understandable. however, him making them air acolytes is a fair response. they value his culture and want to be a part in preserving it. katara made a good point that aang cannot preserve air nomad control alone. regarding the tattoos specifically, i can understand the implications in a pre-modern setting but in my modern-western perspective, it is not as serious an offense

• zuko and ozai's dynamic in this was honestly awesome. i was surprised he was involved in zuko's politics. it looks like that is not so much the case in future graphic novels but i think it should be. i think it would create tension within zuko and his reign. i actually found ozai to be an interesting character, he used a family memory. that made him more complex. personally, i was raised by an evil psychopath and he could not remember my birthday let alone memories from my childhood. allowing ozai this ability gives him more depth and i would look forward to zuko walking the line of keeping his father at arms length - but only arms length

• mai's choice to break her relationship with zuko is valid and i think it makes sense zuko does not entirely understand why, yet (maybe? hopefully?) zuko comes from a culture (i will say particularly the elite class) where it does not seem women have as much say in the politics of the fire lord. he is above any and all, particularly the women of his family (wife, sisters, children, etc). mai appears unconventional and so it keeps in line with her character; her aim to not just be the fire lord's girlfriend (and wife) but involved in the future of her nation (which is why she is upset not knowing what zuko is doing). by breaking up with him mai does not carry the same habits in the royal family and without realizing is carving a new path for women in the family.

• im also glad the threat of war and assassination attempts on zuko's life are part of the immediate aftermath of the war ending. i read an opinion piece once where someone said they didn't like that and felt it would be unlikely. i completely disagree. if these things didn't happen the world would be too hunky-dory too soon and not keep in line with the theme of the a:tla story and universe which confronts real and hard issues people and countries face

• my biggest disappointment was earth king kuei. i agreed with his characterization in the first half but by the second half i did not. his cowardly reaction in the last (almost?) battle did not make sense. ignorance does not equate cowardice. i dont think the writers really sat with these concepts long enough. it felt like his cowardice was there to give katara something to do and prop up her lack of involvement up to that point. that's just bad writing and i'll leave that there.

kuei's reaction to not invade yu dao falls in line, partly, with his character. in a:tla he is someone, despite ignorance, being willing to hear out multiple perspectives but he does have a stubbornness to him. if said perspectives are not "good enough" he will easily discard them. granted, fleshing out the critical details of a ruler coming to this decision would be too much to compact in The Promise. i did see in scenes posted on here from other graphic novels that kuei does not seem to develop past his ignorance so his || might of will || shown in the beginning of this book was a matter of plot tension and had nothing to do with his overall character development.

it seems the writers always planned on kuei failing his city because of the state it ends up in The Legend of Korra. in The Promise, gene yang mentions kuei's decision for the earth kingdom correlated directly with the decisions china was having to make in the late 1800s. if this is true, it seems the creators followed what happened next which china's imperial family was removed and the state of china's economy collapsed. therefore, republic city is a representation of western expansionism and its success in the face of ba sing se (19th century china) failing (lack of ingenuity/modernism?). interesting choice since so much of the story pushes back against colonialism. i wonder why the writers did not re-write history and have the earth kingdom triumph because the history it is based on, economically speaking and in other ways, was in disarray

• i agree with nothing regarding azula's direction. i sum it up as the writers wanted to maintain azula as a villain for zuko (instead of creating a new, original one that corresponds with the colonies since their contention could create multiple storyline threads). i think zuko and azula's dynamic as enemies should have been left in a:tla. its' hand is overplayed at this point. their opposition should have been left on the field of the agni kai since it was the peak of their dynamic. nothing can top that so everything thereafter is going to feel sloppy

• on a lighter note; momo and bosco's relationship is adorable

[damnmmmmmmmmmm]

I’m sure I’ll get a lot of hate for this but I’m glad Sebastian didn’t win the Oscar. Yes he works hard and I do believe he deserves recognition for his work and talent but does he really want his first Oscar to be for a role where he plays someone the majority of the world despises? That would have just put a huge target on his back. If the president didn’t come after him, his supporters would have.

I wish they had campaigned harder for ADM instead. His acting in it was phenomenal, the makeup team was on point & it brought attention to some important topics in Hollywood.

He’s the first Romanian in history to be nominated for an Oscar that there is phenomenal. But had he won it not only Sebs name but Romanians as well will forever be known in history as “that man and that country whose first Oscar was about Trump” is that really a topic Seb wants to be known and go down in history for playing?

We KNOW Seb is Oscar worthy, his roles in I,Tonya & A Different man prove he’s an amazing character acter, he can really embody a person not just in his line delivery but his body movements & how he puts the whole character into his body, like he becomes the person. One look at his IMDB page and you can see how versatile he is as an actor as well. From comedy, to horror, to action & playing actual people. Only thing he hasn’t done is a RomCom but we know he’d knock that out of the park too.

I understand why folks are upset, they really wanted him to win, especially against a film that used AI. But I’m glad he didn’t win. I want him to win for something worth going down in the history books for, not some movie about Trump. All that will do is forever stain Sebs name because of how hated Trump is across the globe.

In addition, had he won, you KNOW Annabelle would not let go of him, she’d dig her claws in deeper. It’s very clear after this weekend, real or PR, all she cares about is having the spotlight on her. She clearly cares more about herself & the fame being attached to his side brings her, than she does his actual happiness & well being and he deserves so much more than that. Real or fake, she doesn’t truly care for him or she wouldn’t be putting on such a show for the cameras all the time. She’s be there to comfort him, when he’s clearly hurting after losing.

Instead, she paid for how many articles? Faked how many smiles? Left him alone at the bar to go do what? Invited herself to the Oscar’s when he had said he was taking his mom, why? Did photo shoots while getting ready and walking the red carpet like it was her weekend and not his, because?

I’m glad he didn’t win. He deserves to win for a much more meaningful role, and he deserves someone who isn’t hanging off his shoulder, grabbing him by the neck, 🍑 and 🍆, trying to manipulate him to her will, because she’s so fame hungry.

We KNOW he will win, his talent & work ethics probe that, but I’m glad he didn’t win this time around.

[weirdowithaquill]

Traintober 2023: Day 27 - Record-Breaker

Mallard Broke the World Speed Record; It Broke Her:

4468 Mallard broke the world steam speed record in 1938, changing her life forever…

1938:

The quiet, almost timid engine sat in the works, listening to the workers. “You hear? That engine there is fastest in the world!” one said, pointing to the famous engine. Mallard blinked, amazed. She’d never been told if she’d actually broken the record – but to hear that she had, and to hear that it was major news! It was incredible.

There was no one better than her in that moment – she was the greatest!

“Ah, the engine of the hour!” cheered a voice. Mallard gazed down, spotting Sir Nigel Gresley himself walking over. Mallard gasped in amazement. The Chief Mechanical Engineer almost never visited his engines. “I came to congratulate you again, Mallard. I am proud of you – you are truly a credit to this railway. The poster child for what every Northeaster engine should strive for. Well done, and keep up the good work, Mallard.”

Mallard beamed, thanking her designer. Then, she turned to the gossiping workers. “Well? You heard him – I need to be back in service now! Hurry it up!”

1963:

“So, which of us is to be preserved?” asked Silver Link, staring down apprehensively at the members of the British Railways board. The men had come to decide on a Gresley Pacific to save from the scrapper’s torch.

“Who do you think?” snorted one of the men in the bowler hats. “We must choose the locomotive that achieved the greatest feat of a steam locomotive – 60022 Mallard, you are to be restored to your LNER looks and sent to the Museum of British Transport Museum. The rest of you… hope someone purchases you.”

Silver Link just stared in shock as several diesels sniggered in the background. “But I… but… She didn’t even make it back to London! I am the first! I reached 114—” “Stop speaking 60014, there is no reason for you to complain. You are already withdrawn, and shall be sent away once we have the time.” “Mallard… are you going to allow this?” asked Silver Link, eyes wide in horror. “Well, elder sister, some of us are just… more important than others. I represent our class, and I am the best at such an honour.” Silver Link went red in the face, but Mallard was already steaming away, blowing smoke at her elder sister.

Behind Silver Link, Flying Scotsman and Silver King shared a nervous look.

1975:

Flying Scotsman sat on the points outside the brand new York National Railway Museum, Green Arrow on one side and Gordon on the other. It was the first time that the four had seen each other – the fourth being an indignant Mallard sat opposite them.

“What do you mean, he’s worthy of being the same level as me?” sniffed Mallard. “He’s a mixed traffic engine!” “Green Arrow is an LNER engine, same as us,” reminded Scott crossly, facing down his cousin. “And there are only nine LNER Pacifics left, so your levels are completely worthless! We need to end this… this… this…” “Elitist garbage!” Gordon snapped. “We are long past this, cousin. What’s stopping you from accepting Green Arrow?” “Green Arrow is a simple mixed traffic engine,” hissed Mallard. “I am the greatest steam engine to have ever been built! No one has ever, or will ever, beat my record. There’s a reason that I am in this museum, and you are out slaving away to keep in steam.”

“Slaving away?!” Gordon let off steam furiously. Scott just clenched his jaw. “There’s no point arguing with her,” he sighed. “We’re better off just getting the rest on side.” The three steamed away, leaving Mallard to be pushed gently back into the grand museum by a timid diesel shunter.

None of the other engines in the museum spoke to her as she was shunted into place. Not Evening Star, not Aerolite, not Coppernob. They all just shot her dark glances.

1988:

Mallard sped along the line, feeling the wind rush past her face. “I forgot what this was like,” she huffed, finally arriving back at Doncaster after crossing the country to reach Scarborough and back. Several relatives of her crew from back when she’d broken the world record sat in her coaches – but they were inconsequential. After all, any crew could have gotten her up to her record-breaking speed.

“So, how was the run?” asked Gordon politely, sitting in the next platform over. Mallard ignored him. Gordon rolled his eyes. Green Arrow and Spencer shared a look.

“I’m impressed,” hummed Spencer. “Though I’ve heard that the East Germans have built a steam locomotive that’s almost able to match Mallard’s speed.” Mallard’s eye twitched. “No they haven’t!” she suddenly snarled, spooking several of the passengers on the platform. “I am the fastest. That’s my role! Don’t talk such drivel around me.”

Spencer sighed. As the only one of Mallard’s siblings willing to speak to her, and one of only four engines that had spoken to Mallard (he’d checked with Duchess of Hamilton) in the last ten years, he was uniquely able to see just how much his younger sister had changed.

Where Mallard had once been a healthy pale, her pallor had grown almost dangerously blue – while her formerly vibrant eyes had gone dull, with just a hint of something… unsettling in them. And yet her paintwork was spotless, her brass polished until it glistened in the sun, even after a full run with passengers.

“Are you alright?” asked Spencer quietly. Gordon and Green Arrow pretended not to hear. “I beg your pardon?!” roared Mallard, spooking yet more passengers. “Are you insinuating something?! That such a simple run would tire me out? I am the fastest steam engine in the world – I am more than competent, thank you.” “I just wanted to ch—” “Well don’t!” sneered Mallard. “I am fine.”

Spencer’s tentative frown turned downwards into a scowl, and the great silver engine hissed steam as he started away. Gordon watched him go, knowing deep in the pit of his boiler that the silver engine wouldn’t be back.

Silver King had never truly forgiven his younger sister for the way she’d spoken to Silver Link, even if his name had changed, as had his owners and his lifestyle.

2013:

Spencer, Bittern, Dominion of Canada, Dwight D Eisenhower, Union of South Africa, and Sir Nigel Gresley all stood in awkward silence. Their sister – Mallard – was being wheeled out of the museum for a photoshoot. “So… did you hear her last night?” asked Dwight quietly. “She was screaming at the shunting diesels again.” “I can’t believe they made me agree to his,” hissed Spencer. “I promised myself after 1988 – never again. And yet here I am. At least Scott gets to hide in the workshops.” “It cannot be that bad?” tried Woodcock – only the humans called her Dominion of Canada, “I mean… she has to have made some friends in there, right?” “Unlikely,” snorted Osprey – the humans had given her that name in the 1980s, and she much preferred it to ‘Union of South Africa’, “she spends most of her days just glaring at everyone. Last I heard, it’s a real treat for them when she gets brought out here to be gawked at.”

“Shh! Shh! She’s coming,” warned Bittern. The six all went silent as Mallard was dragged off the turntable and over to the line of engines.

“Ah, good, you all made it,” Mallard said haughtily. “It’s what I deserve, getting the humans to bring you all here to celebrate our class’s greatest achievement.” “What you—” Osprey cut off, indignant. Beyond her, Dwight gawked in shock while Spencer just rolled his eyes. The shunter braked the famous engine to a stop, jolting slightly.

“Did you just jolt me?” hissed Mallard, voice deathly quiet. The shunter gulped. “Don’t you dare!” snapped Spencer, speaking to the world-record holder for the first time in nearly thirty years. “You cannot deride these hard-working engines, I refuse to allow it!” “Oh? As if you are any better, Mr Private Engine,” sneered Mallard. “Silver King, the weird runt of the class who galivants off to that backwards island where our Crewe-rebuilt cousin lives.” “Gordon still pulls his express!” roared Spencer, letting off steam furiously. “Gordon treats everyone with respect! He’s a far better representative of our railway than you are – he’s out there, pulling passengers and acting as the ambassador for Gresley’s work. He holds a record for the longest-serving express engine in the world!”

“He has Midland parts,” snarled Mallard. “He’s a mongrel of parts, and I can’t stand him! I can’t stand him and his righteousness! This is my celebration, my record, my museum! He can talk when he has a proper record of his own. Let’s see him try and beat me – oh wait, didn’t he lose his dome last time he attempted that?”

None of the other A4s spoke, and the moment the photoshoot was over, all four in steam left, taking Dwight and Woodcock with them, leaving Mallard alone.

2016:

Flying Scotsman sat outside the NRM, steam wafting from his funnel. He was the last one left. Spencer had permanently relocated to Sodor after 2013, the other A4s steered clear of York Museum, Gordon had his own work, and Green Arrow had moved to Shildon. So, it was only him left to talk to her.

“Oh, it’s the money pit.” “Mallard. I came to say goodbye.” “Goodbye? Where are you going, Gresley Disgrace?” “I’m going to run mainline excursions,” Flying Scotsman replied evenly. “I’m not going to have to listen to you anymore when you scream abuse at the others or rant about the new PRR engine.” “Rant? Abuse? 4472, you don’t understand! I am Gresley’s pride and joy! I am the greatest – he would roll over in his grave if he saw you now. It’s my destiny to be the greatest – and everyone needs to accept that!” “Sir Nigel Gresley loved us all equally,” snapped Flying Scotsman. “And don’t you forget, any one of your class—”

“I did it!” roared Mallard. “Me! Not any of you! I am the world record breaker – I am the greatest steam engine of all time! You’re nothing compared to me! I am Sir Nigel’s triumph! I am the legacy of the Northeasters! Me! How dare you speed to me like that?! Learn your place!”

Flying Scotsman stared evenly back at the shrieking engine. “I have,” he said simply. “And it’s not here. The other engines can survive listening to your abuse, but I don’t have to. You’re nothing, Mallard. Not anymore. You sit here, on this siding, in this shed, and you cling to the past because that’s all you’ll ever have.”

Flying Scotsman puffed out of the shed, the wrecked screams of his cousin following him through the sliding shed doors. They transformed from howls of rage into a hail of screeching tears, as Mallard’s entire self-worth crashed down on her. The former icon of steam and speed finally lost it, all the rage and anger and simmering hatred growing inside her frames boiling over as she cursed her cousin.

Flying Scotsman couldn’t help but feel sorry for the engine – but all the same, she had spent decades wrecking their designer’s good name with her attitude. Her stardom had placed her up on a pedestal – one where the loneliness of fame had engulfed her.

Back to Master Post

[bratzboykai]

I've said this for years but the way the community absolutely has an undiscussed dislike or idk disregard for closeted people has bothered me for years. Yeah theres that sheen of being understanding but I've seen and had to have so many conversations with people to have more empathy for closeted people, especially closeted partners because I understand full well how complicated that is. Btw I'll be using gay as an umbrella term for most of the following cause I'm sometimes uncomfortable with using the q word too much, please respect that.

Like it got especially bad after gay marriage became legal here in the US and most of Western Europe and like every mostly white gay living in liberal areas started acting like everyone should be out already and if you weren't you were idk probably ashamed of yourself, or worse someone faking it. You become some kind of half baked gay person who their behavior implied couldn't possibly connect to queerness in the right way.

But like it doesn't work like that. Some of us very much live in unsafe places to do that and we also don't have the financial privilege to leave to safer states/countries or move out of homophobic/transphobic households. I can't imagine especially how disabled and closeted members of our community feel trapped by these kind of circumstances.

Plus some of us live in cultures where the emphasis on family and community is an essential tenant of our makeup and learning to separate ourselves from the abuse present in those communities towards us is difficult, much like any abusive relationship. There is so much nuance, especially outside the lense of whiteness, that out people sometimes seem to forget or even dismiss instead of helping to foster relationships or community to help the people in their lives who are closeted find refuge safely.

And it really comes to a head when out people I know date closeted people. They seem understanding enough at first but then start questioning if the person they're dating "actually really loves" them if they're not willing to out themselves and the conversation can at time turn progressively meaner as if closeted people are all inheritly selfish. Yes it is a romantic notion for someone to risk everything to be openly with you, and its something frankly all of us deserve including closeted people, but life is far more dangerous and complex than that and I think some people have forgotten that.

And look, I even empathize with open people in that kind of circumstance cause yeah the pressure of having to keep something that incredibly special to you under wraps can be very daunting. But often I've found, most open people have a chosen community to fall back on and talk about it with because they're not as inhibited or cut off from the larger, while closeted people often dont have anyone except their partner because being closeted has severed most pathways of finding the community. Their partners are usually their first connection to the community.

I even sometimes think this sort of mind set extends into how white people perceive gay poc as inherently closeted too. We're either not open enough or being closeted is weaponized against us. Like we could be out and white people still presume we're not and act like were straight lite and we could talk about how we're closeted and white people, again, think it's ok to treat us like straight lite. This is especially evident when we say something that makes them uncomfortable and angry. Like the only time they take cultural nuance into account is to use it to dismiss us, as if all of us must be in hiding and cant be as gay as them.

Point is, being closeted is complicated and frankly miserable as someone whose got one foot in and one out lol and although some peoples only space to be open is online, it doesnt makes them fake, doesnt make them less gay or trans, or less part of this community. It doesnt make them less worthy or deserving of love and community despite their circumstances.

[vulpisnocturna]

Itachi x reader who wants to break up with him saying that she has never loved him and she's going to another country for studies or make some excuse I don't know I'm feeling sadistic today

But know that Itachi will be broken and hurt

Anon, I think you guys are doing it to mess with me now 🤧 and I’m not writing it with 2nd person POV because you all can reject Itachi and break his heart, not me though, I’m making him dango and taking him to his favourite cafe 🤍

Guess what though- Itachi’s not a wet wipe, and he’s about to enter his girlboss era 💅🏻

-When y/n starts talking and her tone shifts into a cold, demeaning, harsh voice that Itachi’s never expected to hear directed at him, he freezes. He’s wondering what on Earth she might say. He has noticed that she has been getting colder and more distant with him lately, and being as observant as he is, he thinks she might want to break things off

-‘I don’t think I have ever loved you, Itachi. Besides, I’m going to another country to continue my studies, and having a long distance relationship never works’ (me who’s been with the same partner for 4 yrs and did 2 yrs long distance: BULLSHIT!!)

-Her voice is muffled, and it echoes in his head, clattering around like a sword. Why would she say something so cruel? He had never come to know her as a cruel, cold person. It was not the person he’d fallen in love with. He swallows, but he’s quick to conceal his emotions. He’s not going to show her just how hurt he is by what she said.

-‘Was it all a lie, then?’ he asks, calm, detached, hiding the pain in his chest. She shakes her head.

-‘No, I just think I was foolish to think there was something where there wasn’t anything. Sorry’ she says, though her face is impassive. Itachi nods slowly.

-‘Well then. I hope you find happiness’ he says, his lips set in a hard line. Her brow furrows, her lips parting in mild surprise.

-‘You’re just going to take it?’ she asks, staring at him. Itachi’s jaw tightens. Does she expect him to grovel for that kind of treatment? To beg someone who clearly has never valued him to stay with him? He’s not such a pathetic man.

-‘I see no point in continuing a relationship with a person who sees no worth in me and cannot treat me with basic decency. I am not about to beg for cruelty and pretence’ he says simply, starting to gather his things around her flat and putting them in a bag. She blinks, rooted to the spot in the hallway until he passes by her to put his shoes on.

-‘Goodbye, y/n’ he only says, closing the door behind him before she can answer.

-at home, Itachi does not know whether it’s anger or sorrow that dominates his heart. Why has he let himself get so attached? Why has he failed to see the extent of her indifference towards him? Why has he fallen for a lie? Why does it hurt so much, despite knowing now what type of person she is?

-When Shisui comes knocking at his door, he thinks he might not answer, but in the end, he lifts himself off the bed and walks to the door

-Shisui listens to him calmly as he speaks about it, but at the end, his expression is almost comically angry, all narrowed eyes, wrinkled nose and downturned lips.

-‘Fuck her. You’re better off without her, Itachi. And she expected you to fight for her? Tsk. You’d gain more fighting for crumbs at a buffet’ he says, waving his hand dismissively. Itachi smiles slightly. Shisui is always so honest and forward in a way that he values greatly. And he trusts him wholeheartedly.

-‘It still pains me. It was not a lie, to me. I thought I had found the person I wanted to build a family with’ he says absentmindedly, nursing a cup of tea like it‘s whiskey.

-‘You’ll find someone who’s worthy of that. And if you don’t, I’m always here’ he winks, and Itachi scoffs, amused.

Itachi to y/n in this: