#we are running in circles. I am seeing discourse from a long time ago that I thought we all sorted out but it’s clear some people are more c

[urfaveautisticlesbian]

I may lose followers for this but sometimes I wish I was back in 2014/2015 bc I think I’d rather the discourse from then than the weird lgbt discourse we have now. I feel like our unity in online communities is diminished or slowly fading into oblivion. What the fuck happened

[yellowloid]

you knew this was coming. buckle up because this is going to be long and boy oh boy do i have things to say. i actually have so many things to say i don’t even know where to start. jesus.

this fandom’s ability to take drama and turn it into discourse that makes absolutely zero sense and involves people that have nothing to do with the original drama never fails to amaze me. the fact that people here are now taking the whole louise drama from a couple of days ago and dragging miles into it by overthinking their way through possible (see: made up) scenarios about people we know absolutely nothing about is astounding. people blaming her for defending herself against haters and saying she’s basically spoiling the end of the tour for us and the band, people being scared that the recent drama will influence miles and alex’s interactions in ireland (which – again – doesn’t make any sense considering their friendship has nothing to do with random people hating on louise on ig and her responding to that hate), which feels exactly like people making up conspiracies about the whole paparazzi drama back in august when i had to read with my own two eyes of people being scared that she staged the whole thing just to “boycott” or steal away the attention from the release of one man band, since it was only a matter of days before it’d come out. which is absolutely insane. (edit: i BET some people will drag miles into the new paparazzi thing. i just know it. mark my words someone’s going to do it)

now don’t get me wrong, you are absolutely entitled to your opinion on louise as a person and as alex’s girlfriend. i don’t really like her myself. she’s a human being and some kind of “celebrity” or rather public figure, so it’s only normal people either like or dislike her. that’s okay. but going from innocuously disliking her to actively villainizing her for everything she does, claiming she’s basically the worst of all girlfriends and basically saying her existence and involvement with alex is ruining everything about the band itself (to the point that you wish they’d do something as drastic as disbanding), alex’s relationship with miles and/or your experience as an am/alex fan is just… odd. it reeks of misogyny. and mind you, i’m absolutely not saying she’s faultless, because she very much isn’t; i can’t stand the way amtwt goes about idolizing her, putting her on a pedestal and acting like she’s an angel (very much like amanda and matt do on a daily basis), because no one is. she did some problematic stuff in the past, not to mention the start of her relationship with alex was ambiguous as fuck, their whole relationship is a big, frustrating question mark and yes, maybe she could handle the hate in a different way than the one she usually goes for. but that doesn’t mean she’s the fucking devil. it doesn’t mean she’s an absolute evil mastermind who brainwashed alex and everyone else in his social circle while also trying to boycott miles and milex in her free time simply by existing in alex’s orbit.

first of all, if we really want to compare her to other girlfriends, let’s at least get the facts right. she’s far from being the first girlfriend who responds to “trolls” or however you want to call them. back when she was with alex, taylor was out there calling people cunts, telling them they didn’t have a life because they spent their time on the internet running fanpages about her boyfriend’s band. she called fans delusional, went off at milex shippers; she called herself ari*n, basically said reverse racism was a thing, and refused to acknowledge she was in the wrong when confronted about it, instead calling people ignorant and basically just going on block sprees. now of course louise has done some shitty stuff too – the rape/racism jokes were disgusting and she also goes around blocking people, but the biggest insult she’s thrown at people is “ignorant” or something along the lines of “get a life”. she hasn’t really beefed with fans to the extent that taylor did – this woman literally called her boyfriend’s fans cunts without a social life because they had fanpages about him and probably left some kind of hate comments on her because they didn’t like her, and she very comfortably forgot that the very people who ran those fanpages were the ones paying for her boyfriend’s bills and her luxurious LA lifestyle. far be it from me to defend louise – because she’s just living that same life in a different font – but if you think she’s toxic, horrible, bitchy, you name it, then i’m sorry to break it to you but you wouldn’t have survived taylor fucking bagley.

with the recent drama, she defended herself much better than taylor would’ve ever done, because she’s not as aggressive. she addressed it and said something that some people aren’t ready to accept – that she’s a human being that has every right to be with him, like all the other girlfriends did. and whether we like it or not, that’s true. she might not be anyone’s favourite (definitely not mine lmao) but 1) just because she’s dating him now, in the present, doesn’t mean it suddenly makes everything his previous girlfriends did (notably taylor) absolutely innocuous, while she’s the wicked witch of the story just because she’s here now – please stop idealizing the past and start being rational about the present; and 2) this should go without saying, but i’ll say it anyway: she still doesn’t deserve to be publicly and constantly harassed on her socials just for living the y/n life she was lucky enough to create for herself thanks to the right connections and whatnot. you can gossip all you want in private, in your group chat with your friends, on twitter, tumblr, whatever space you want – provided it’s a fandom space. created by fans for fans. where none of these people will ever set foot, and if they do, then it’s on them. but not under her own posts or comments on ig, where everyone included her can see. that’s just nasty, and i don’t particularly like to say it but i’m on her side on this. she has every right to defend herself and no matter what you think of her, no matter what she did in the past, she still doesn’t deserve the constant public harassment people put her through. people on ig really need to learn how to be fucking decent human beings.

also about her controversies. the fact that she apologized for liking those “””jokes””” on ig years ago is meagre comfort, yes, but 1) what she did is still “”“less””” problematic than what taylor did, because taylor said all those things herself, louise “””only””” liked posts made by others. obviously i’m not saying that makes it okay, because it certainly doesn’t, but at the very least she apologized for it, while taylor never did – or i mean, she did once she was out of the spotlight, made irrelevant by alex dumping her and finally in her “new me” healing hippie era. we all have every right not to accept either of their apologies, but the idea that celebrities that did some ""“minor”"" problematic stuff in the past don’t even get a chance to genuinely regret their actions and apologize for them and at least try to better themselves is a direct consequence of cancel culture (which is utter bullshit) and in this case – you guessed it! – the result of pure misogyny. because we accept an apology from a man like miles (who, like it or not, did make those inappropriate comments to that interviewer and we can’t pretend he didn’t) but we refuse to accept it from them. and mind you, i’m not saying we shouldn’t accept miles’ apology – i’m his fan too and i do genuinely believe he regretted doing that. i’m also not saying we should accept their apologies just because they’re women. i’m just saying the double standards are through the roof, and that’s really interesting food for thought.

speaking of men. i’m a fan of alex, the band, miles, all of them. i love them. i also know they’re not only human beings, but also celebrities and rich white men. just like we don’t know their girlfriends, exes or whatever, we also don’t know *them*. we can have an idea of what they might be like, but we’ll never know how they really are backstage. like every public figure, their stage/celebrity personas are not a direct reflection of what they really are in private, because to an extent, the way they present themselves to us is part of the business. we are not entitled to their private life, and all we can do is speculate. that being said, the fandom’s tendency to idolize, idealize, and either sanctify or villainize them as well as their social circle is just so… ugh. especially when we go from general am discourse into milex waters, where the fandom theories and fanfiction influence seem to blurry the line between fiction and reality. are we all aware that theories are just… theories, right? that no matter how much they make sense we have no way of knowing if they’re true, and actually we might all be very much delusional? we all know that and don’t actually take those theories as 100% truth that’s set in stone… right? because some people seem to not be aware of that. with the milex theories as well as the ones about the way alex’s relationship with louise started (which, again, is all about double standards but i’ll get to that in a minute).

i do believe there was something between miles and alex; i also believe (unrelated) that alex cheated on taylor with louise and that’s how their relationship started. i don’t believe she’s a beard like some people are so adamant on saying (about that, there’s also some very thinly-veiled biphobia in some of those beard statements but i’m not going to talk about that now). i also believe louise wasn’t the only one alex cheated with - because if we believe that him and miles were romantic back in 2015-2016, then he was definitely cheating. no way taylor would’ve allowed that. she literally hated milex shippers and the idea of what their existence might have been implying. however, some people’s tendency to only see things as radical black or white/good or bad is concerning. people villainize and basically slut-shame louise for “stealing” alex from taylor, or miles, or even alexa despite the fact that they broke up an eternity ago; but fail to hold alex accountable for the fact that he was ultimately the one cheating. she was in the wrong for pursuing someone in a relationship, sure; but he was the one who fell for it and actively did the cheating on his at the time girlfriend. and yet people either ignore that, or just take out all the blame on louise for “manipulating” him into cheating. if (and again, this is just speculation) he really cheated (which probably wasn’t the first time with taylor as well as probably other girlfriends lmao) they were both nasty for it, but he was worse than her. taylor was annoying and rude to fans, but one thing’s for sure – she really loved him and she didn’t deserve the way he ended up treating her. obviously we don’t know how things really went, but my guy here definitely isn’t innocent, yet people throw all the blame on louise for what happened (hence the double standards i was talking about), like he wasn’t a grown ass man who could’ve just kept his dick in his pants but instead decided to be an asshole to the woman he was with.

with milex, roles are reversed. a lot of people here seem to be 100% convinced that theories are 100% real, that what you read in fics is exactly what happened between them, and that by default things can be very roughly simplified as alex = evil bitch who broke miles’ heart and miles = perfect little angel ray of sunshine who never did anything wrong and does nothing but suffer for said bitch who doesn’t deserve him – basically villainizing one and sanctifying the other. like alex is just a depressed and repressed whiny baby while miles is his boyfriend against all odds uwu or alternatively his emotional punching ball. the tendency this fandom has to woobify them in different ways is definitely something. and i’m not talking about fanfiction, because you can characterize them and their story however you want there (it’s fiction for a reason), but here it’s about real life. if you’re going to drag the real miles into the recent drama involving the real alex and the real louise, when – again – he has absolutely nothing to do with it, then at the very least treat all of them like the actual people they are, not some extreme caricatures of what their fanfiction personas are. because those are real people we’re talking about, and it’s essential to differentiate between fiction/theories and reality. regardless of you “shipping” alex with miles, taylor, alexa or anyone else. those are real people. none of them are angels, none of them are to be put on a pedestal. all of them are human and they probably fucked up more than a couple of times in their lives. hell, it would be weird if they hadn’t! their experiences are nuanced because they’re – guess what! - real life experiences, and not being able to recognize that nuance and analyze it at such, instead reducing everything they do or say to either black or white, good or bad, angel or devil behavior is… incredibly naïve to say the least.

Having said that, and regarding the recent drama (but also the paparazzi thing), trying to “protect” the real miles from controversies that don’t regard him by babifying him and spitting out his name in discourse where his name has never even been taken into consideration (because, for the millionth time, that drama has nothing to do with him) ultimately ends up having the opposite effect. by putting his name where it doesn’t belong (that kind of fandom discourse) you’re dragging him into it without even having a concrete reason to do so. by trying to “make sure he doesn’t get involved” you’re dragging him into things that aren’t about him when no one was even saying they were about him to begin with. and then people like the ones you find on amtwt that hate him/milex see those posts, and they use it as ammunition to hate on him and milex even more. you claim louise and amanda are feeding the trolls while you’re literally doing the same - feeding miles, milex and yourself as a shipper to the amtwt trolls lurking here who idolize louise and are just eagerly waiting to find a “crazy milex shipper” post to screenshot and bitch about on twt, jumping on the train of you making miles’ name so that they can talk shit about him, milex and milex shippers. it’s like serving it to them on a silver platter. you end up doing the very thing you were trying to prevent.

we can admit that celebrities make mistakes because they’re human beings like everyone else, while also believing they can genuinely change for the better and learn from said mistakes. you can also like/dislike someone without idolizing/villainizing them to the extreme. once again, it’s real people we’re talking about, and real people as well as real life experiences are all about nuance. we can gossip all we want, but we’re never going to know the truth about them, what they do and why they do it. most importantly, they’re never going to be perfect - and holding them to such an unrealistic standard is guaranteed to set you up for disappointment.

[wonderful-wells-writing]

Fanclub; Chapter 1

EoWells x Reader

Some of the STAR Labs employees have a secret fanclub where they discuss Harrison Wells and share pictures they take when they think he isn't looking. Problem is it's not quite as secret as they think it is. The man himself seems to have taken an interest in the the little group, finding it to be the perfect place to find willing partners to satisfy his needs. And you're his next pick.

Work is dying down for the evening at STAR Labs. Chemists are checking that all the storage units are set to the proper temperatures. Engineers are making sure that everything that needs to be powered down is. Lab techs are cleaning up their stations. But nearly everybody is discussing their plans for the weekend.

There is one worker who is not engaging in such conversations. You are currently crammed between two sections of machinery, determined to get this wiring finished before leaving for the day. That way, Monday, bright and early your team can start doing test runs.

You are not engaging in conversation with others but rather are talking to yourself as you work. “Some red over here, blue wire over there.” Your grin would light up the room if anybody could see it. “I just love when a color-coded array comes together.” There’s a buzz on your right butt-cheek, and you squeal in surprise.

“Everything alright in there?” One of the other scientists looks up from the desk.

“Yeah, Bri,” you extract yourself from the machine parts. “My phone just went off, and I thought something shocked me.”

“Girl, I can not tell you how often that happens to me,” Bri takes her purse from a drawer and a jacket off the chair. “So, what are your plans for the weekend. More number crunching?”

You pull your phone from your back pocket. “Actually my college roommate is having a bachelorette party tonight. So I said I would swing by the bar for a bit.”

“Sounds fun,” Bri gives a wave before heading to the door. “Don’t party too hard.”

She returns the wave before opening a group chat app on her phone to see what the notification is about.

KittyCat42; O.M.G did you see Dr. Wells today? a shirt THAT tight can not be workplace appropriate!!!

Attached is a photo taken from a smartphone at an angle in which the subject does not seem to be aware their picture is being taken. Dr. Harrison Wells is leaning over a desk, examining something on a monitor. Kitty is right; his shirt is very tight, his biceps bulge through the long black sleeves.

You grin, considering sending a reply, but another message comes in first.

YummyBitch73; Think he’s got plans? Looking that good, he’s got to be going out tonight.

Your thumbs move across the screen to type a quick response.

BabyDoll14; Maybe he has a date tonight?

KittyCat42; wonder who the lucky girl is?

You lean against a nearby workbench, smirking at the screen.

---

On the other side of the lab, somebody picks up their phone to check the barrage of notifications coming in. They chuckle before adding their own two cents.

Speedy22: Hey, who knows, it could be a lucky guy.

YummyBitch73: Oh you wish, he is a lady killer through and through

BabyDoll14: I mean, who are we to judge if it’s a lucky lady or gent. Maybe he swings one way, maybe he swings both ways. Who cares, we’re just here to talk about his ass behind his back.

“Speedy’ nods, almost respecting the woman on the other side of the screen for staying objective about objectifying her boss.

Speedy22: Speaking of ass, I got this one yesterday

He opens his gallery and scrolls until an ‘appropriate picture is found. A nice shot of Dr. Wells from behind; the quality is incredible for a smartphone shot. The man’s shirt is riding up, showing a nice strip of the skin of his back, even a bit of where his boxers rise above the waistband of his hands.

YummyBitch73: Damn Speedy, you always get the good ones. You’ll have to teach me some photography lessons sometime.

KittyCat42: what kind of camera are you using? The quality is so gooooood.

“Hey,” a woman’s voice draws his attention away from his device. “Are you staying late again tonight?”

Harrison Wells takes a breath to look her up and down, mentally running through his mind all the employees to try and remember who it is at his office door. “I’ll be headed out soon; I just have to wrap some things up.”

He recalls who she is when he sees the look she’s giving him. Brianna Masters, a specialist working down in Lab C. She would have had to go out of her way to get to his office before leaving. Self-proclaimed president of the Dr. Wells Fanclub, he had just been interacting with the group chat of; after the former president left with a job offer at Mercury Labs. She had been making goo-goo eyes at him since her interview three months ago.

“Well,” Bri twirls a curl of her hair, fluttering her eyelashes. “Harrison, you know I was wondering if you might like to take me out to get some drinks tonight?”

Dr. Wells tries to hide his displeasure at the thought. She wasn’t his type, physically, mentally, emotionally, “I have plans in the morning that require a clear head. Miss. Masters. Now is there anything of importance that you need?” The man was not adverse to flights of fancy to pass the time; he wouldn’t be keeping an eye on the little Fanclub of his if he wasn’t willing to look for ‘interested parties,’ but this particular woman has been of no real interest to him.

For reasons such as how she pouts at his response, “Well, having fun is important.” She mutters before wandering off down the hall, turning her attention to her phone.

YummyBitch73; holy Shit! He just asked me out for drinks. It sucks so much that I have to drive out to Coast City; I”d have taken him up in a heartbeat otherwise.

----

Back in Lab C, you finally finish with the maintenance on the machine. You check your phone once more while heading over to the desk and nearly cackle at what you’re reading. Everybody knows that Bri is full of shit, but there’s no point in calling it out and causing discourse.

You mute the phone to focus on your computer. While humming a quiet tune, you work on moving files to the USB stick plugged into the monitor.

“Fuck,” you whisper, seeing the download time in comparison to the clock on the screen. Of course, you could just leave it be, take the weekend off. It’s not like you get paid extra to run calculations at home.

17 minutes later

“Nonononono, wait, please!” You’re half running to the street as the bus pulls away, leaving you in the illuminated circle of a streetlamp, cursing yourself. That was going to be the last bus coming this way for the night. If you walk home, you’ll never make it in time to change for the party. You might not even make the event at all. You pace up and down the sidewalk, contemplating your options.

A car pulls up beside you, tinted window rolling down, “Need a lift?”

You stop, shocked, “Oh, no I…” you pause, looking through the window, “Dr. Wells, hi...hey.” You swallow your pride. “I would really love to get a ride on-with, with you.” Internally you cringe at how that came out, but figure he probably wouldn’t have heard such a minor slip.

The lock clicks open, and you reach for the door.

“Maple Apartments on South 11th street, right?” Harrison glances at you as you get in the car.

You pause before shutting the door, “do I want to know how you know that?”

He laughs, and you jump a bit at it, “I can see how that would sound a little suspicious.” His smile is reassuring, and his blue eyes are kind behind his glasses. “It was on your registration forms when you started. I enter new employee data myself. Total recall can be useful even for small matters.”

You breathe a sigh of relief, shutting the door and buckling in. “I really appreciate this Dr. Wells, I would have been so late tonight if I didn’t get home to change soon.”

“Bit plans tonight?” Harrison asks as he starts driving. Truth is he had suspected you’d be missing her bus. He had seen you running after the last bus or driven past you walking home numerous times out his way out. You had quite the habit of working until the absolute last moment.

You smile, twiddling your thumbs to keep your hands occupied. “Yeah, I’m meeting a friend at the new bar that opened down the street from my place. She’s getting married soon, and since I can’t make the wedding, I promised I would spend at least a couple hours at her bachelorette party.” You aren’t exactly sure why you’re volunteering this information to your boss. It would be inappropriate to be so casual with him; then again, it’s also inappropriate to be part of a Fanclub that secretly takes pictures of him and talks about how great his ass looks.

Harrison ‘hmms’ in thought. “Why can’t you make it to the wedding?” He glances at you out of the corner of his eye, taking a moment to take in the way you sit, act, look, before returning his eyes to the road.

“Oh, they scheduled it for a Wednesday, so,” you look towards him just moments after he looks away. The first thing you notice is his hair; whenever you’ve seen him in the morning, it’s perfectly combed and straight, but it seems like as the day went on, it began to take on a life of its own. While the back is still nice and neat, the front is sticking out in all kinds of directions.

“You could have asked for the day off,” Dr. Wells offers, “Am I such a terrible boss that you think I”d deny you some vacation after all your hard work?”

You feel a heat rise to your cheeks at what seems to be a compliment to her work ethic, “Oh no, I don’t think that at all. It’s just that, well, we have so much work to do. Every day we get a little closer to your dreams of the particle accelerator, and I want to contribute absolutely everything I can to that dream.” You smile. “You’re going to do such incredible things for the world of science Dr. Wells, and I don’t want to waste any time that could be spent helping you.”

The man is somewhat stunned by this. He’d attributed her long hours and determination to personal ambition. “What about you? Do you want history to remember you for your achievements?”

You bite your lower lip in thought at the question, “I mean sure, it would be nice to be recognized for my contribution, but,” she takes a deep breath, “I’m more concerned about how my work will impact the world, not so much if I’m remembered for it. Anyways you’re the true genius. I can tell that STAR Labs will make big changes and put humanity on a path towards the future. As long as I get to be a part of that, it’s all I really need.”

Harrison does a low chuckle at your sentiment, amused by the naivety. You speak with such hope and wonder and admiration. If you knew the truth, how horrified would you be? The realization of the end goal of the particle accelerator, the effects across history that your determination would wreak.

He grins, “Well, I am glad to have such a dedicated employee, but I do believe that one off day is not going to hurt our progress.”

You purse your lips, “You don’t come down to Lab C very often; you’d be surprised how off the rails things can go when I’m not there. Anyways I would rather work than go to a wedding. It’s not my kind of scene.”

He can sense that you are holding something back but doesn’t press the issue any further. He’s reached your apartment building anyways.

“If you change your mind, I’ll be more than happy to give you the time off,” he says as he parks.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” you reach for the door handle, “oh, and thank you so much for the ride. I really owe you one.”

Dr. Wells makes a mental note about cashing in that favor later. “You just stay safe and enjoy yourself tonight.” He smiles warmly at you as you wave goodbye, but when the door shuts, his grin turns a bit darker. He watches you walk away, eyes tracing the curve of your figure, resting on the beautiful shape of your rear, right up until you disappear into your building.

As he begins to drive away, he catches sight of himself in the rearview mirror. There is something about this form of his that seems to drive the ladies crazy, and he wasn’t opposed to taking advantage of that. While pulling back into the street and driving away, he thinks on his situation.

For 13 years now, Eobard Thawne has been trapped in this god-forsaken time period. For a while, he had focused solely on his mission, rarely interacting with others unless it served a greater purpose. But he was still a man, subject to desire. At first, it was almost enough to make him regret allowing Harrison Well’s wife to die, she could have filled his needs easily. But that woman had been intelligent; she’d have discovered his identity eventually, so allowing her to die had been for the best.

Still, after a few years of isolation, Thawne had found the need unbearable and began seeing ways to fill the hole that was forming in his chest. Little flings, one-off nights where he indulged his carnal side, allowed himself the pleasure of another’s body before quickly parting ways with them, when he discovered that a fanclub devoted to him had been formed amongst his employees, that made the whole thing easier.

Joining the group chat under a false name was easy enough. It inflated his ego every time he read them discussing how great they thought he looked, and he was more than happy to provide material for them to gush over. And with that, it was like he had been given a list of women who would fuck him with no questions asked. All he had to do was choose. Of course, he has to be wary of those who might get too clingy or go off telling other people. But it’s not that hard to week those types out of the pack.

Thawne notices magenta neon as he’s driving. A club with a grand opening sign out front. He smiles, knowing that now not only does he have a new prey lure in, but the perfect hunting ground as well.

[sitp-recs]

i saw your recent draco!pinning and oblivious!harry rec and wondered if you knew any either-pinning/other-oblivious rec with a lot of angst. buckets upon buckets of angst. thank you so much!!!!

Hello there! Oof this was hands down one of the hardest lists I’ve ever made. Angst can be so so subjective and I second guessed my picks for a long time, until I said “fuck it” and decided to include all stories that speak the most to me. I’ve read lots of angst over the years but these are the ones that come to mind when someone says “buckets of angst”.

I’m naming this list “angst with a (in 98% of the cases) happy ending” 😂 all of these hurt damn good and have lots of pining. I tried to include different flavors of angst too, so that everyone can find something for their tastes. And I left a few suggestions at the end - of fics that didn’t quite work for me but might be someone else’s jam. Hopefully I did a decent job. Enjoy!

Closure is a state of mind by @quicksilvermaid (2020, E, 12k) - bittersweet ending

After Harry's husband Charlie is killed, his Mind Healer recommends a Polyjuice therapy company, so Harry can see 'Charlie' again and find closure over his death.

Kissed by @potteresque-ire (2015, M, 12k)

Draco Malfoy was attacked by a rogue Dementor on the night of his Azkaban release. He self-exiled to Muggle London and opened a late-night chocolate shop called Kissed.

Voices From The Fog by @noeeon (2010, E, 13k)

After years of running away, Harry crosses paths with an all-too familiar face and follows him to Amsterdam.

And I Know the Spark by @firethesound (2014, E, 15k)

All Draco cares about is keeping Potter alive, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that happens.

I'll never be your chosen one by @andithiel (2019, E, 15k)

Draco doesn't know what exactly he’s doing with Potter, he doesn't know how their unspoken agreement even started, and doesn't know where it will end. The only thing he knows is: he's not in love.

you've got the antidote for me by Kandakicksass (2018, M, 20k)

When Harry Potter unintentionally severs their soulbond before it can fully form, Draco Malfoy resigns himself to a slow death and decides not to burden Harry with a soulmate he's made it very clear he doesn't want.

In His Nature by create_serenity (2015, M, 20k)

Harry agreed to have sex with Draco once a month in order to keep him alive, what he didn’t agree to was Draco popping up all over the place and disrupting his life in more ways than one.

Tuxedo Angel by tryslora (2013, E, 25k)

Harry and Neville are looking for the infamous Dragon Lily, a Dark witch active throughout Europe and Asia. Instead, they find the Tuxedo Angel, a beautiful witch performing in Rome.

Exposure by GallaPlacidia (2020, M, 27k)

When Seamus uncovers Draco Malfoy's camboy profile, he, Harry and Ron decide to anonymously book a private show so as to humiliate him later.

Stain of Silence by brummell (2013, E, 28k)

After the war, Draco serves out his sentence in Harry Potter's house.

(The Piece) I was Missing All Along by lauren3210 (2014, E, 30k)

Draco and Harry have been flatmates and best friends for years, and Draco thinks life is just perfect that way.

Make Me a Headline (I Want to Be That Bold) by @dictacontrion (2015, E, 31k)

Draco never expected to see Harry doing that again. Especially with someone else, in a grainy photograph that's landed on his desk one Monday morning.

The Bucket List by GallaPlacidia (2020, NR, 32k)

Draco will die in six months if he can't get Harry Potter to fall in love with him. Since that's not going to happen, he might as well spend his last days working through his Bucket List.

On One's Knees by pir8fancier (2008, E, 33k)

The war is over and to the victors go the spoils.

All Roads by @korlaena, Saulaie (2019, M, 36k)

Draco hates his job at the Prophet. He hates it even more when he’s assigned to write an article on Harry Potter, who left the country three years ago after their falling out.

He Who Must Not Be Normal by @letteredlettered (2013, E, 41k)

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[mamadoe]

🍁 The Forgotten Sister - Chapter 2

Althea's dinner with her father takes a turn she doesn't expect.

~~~

Complete Masterlist

Also on AO3

Warning || human trafficking; emotional damage; familial discourse; adult themes

Word Count ||  5335

~~~

Down, and down, and down we step, my feet screaming in my shoes. I hold my skirt in one hand, the other ghosting the wall, helping me maintain my balance as we make our way down. My father wasn't kidding when he said he would put me in the tallest tower of the castle once I came of age.

Galena follows behind me, holding the back of my skirt, the dinner basket looped around her arm. We descend in unspoken silence; the only sounds are our shoes on the stone steps and the whispers of our skirts swishing in unison.

How long had I been in the tower? It takes a moment for me to remember that I have lived up here for well over a hundred years, but the exact amount of time escapes me as I focus on my steps. None of my brothers had to deal with such treatment, not even Lucien, who was our father's second least favorite child who just so happens to be the second youngest as well. Cynically, I realized long ago that I am number one in one thing - our father despises me the most, and if it were up to him, he probably would have drowned me at birth to avoid ever being associated with having a daughter after having seven sons. At least that was one thing Lucien had above me, but to be honest, it wasn't much. Beron hates him, too.

Lucien's face flashes through my mind, the few memories I recall of him being either torturous or tender. His eyes, one his natural russet to match our mother's and the other a mechanical piece which replaced the one he lost far before I was born, always intrigued me. Our eyes don't match the rest of the boys'. Out of all the family, though, aside from your mother, he was the only one to look at me with kindness. I wonder if that's because my existence took Beron's vengeful wrath off him and in turn that let him breathe. I think maybe he appreciated that heat being removed, which is fair, even if it meant I had to now take the brunt of our father's distaste. Lucien always seemed to give me an olive branch when we were able to see each other. The thought of him makes my heart ache slightly. I haven't thought of him or any of my brothers for who knows how long.

From the day of my birth, I had been separated from them almost completely, only seeing them from a distance during events which were held in the large, overly decorated ballroom, crammed full of guests and socialites, the chorus of music and conversations mingling into one. Words were shared only briefly between my brothers and me when the time would allow, which would be never if our father had anything to say about it. Despite not knowing much about one another aside that we all existed in completely different circles, it was indisputable - we were a matching set, taking after your mother with her red hair. Together we are the heirs of the Vanserra line, but only one would replace High Lord Beron upon his death. Who that would be hasn't been decided yet, but my best bet is one of my three oldest brothers. They have always been vying for our father's approval, and sometimes it got vicious, even cutthroat amongst the three. Still, there is time left for that to be decided, so until then, that competitive nature will only continue.

"Ah, better hurry, miss!" a high-pitched female's voice calls from below, snapping me back. "You don't want to be late!" I recognize the voice as another of the handmaidens, and I soon see her standing at the bottom of the stairs, ringing her hands together nervously. She is a newer member of the castle staff, a nervous mouse compared to many of the other servants who had already figured out their pecking order and how things are run here. I recognize her face but can't recall her name since she hasn't been assigned to be one of my direct handmaidens yet.

"I'm coming, I'm coming, hold on! I can only walk so fast in this ugly thing," I call to her and gesture to the billowing gown and tiny shoes as I speed up my steps, Galena following close behind. Within moments, the three of us meet at the bottom of the stairs, and the unnamed maiden bows in respect.

"How are things?" Galena whispers as she straightens out my skirts.

"Lord Beron is already being difficult. What do you think?" the nervous girl whispers in return, her voice tinged with nervousness. "They keep raising their voices." Ah, where her nervousness stems from. That's fair; my father's voice has the ability to boom over any crowd if he wishes, especially when he's angry. Just the thought of him directing that tone at me makes my stomach do a flip.

"Fantastic," I say sarcastically in the same whisper tone. This is my first time out of my room in what feels like an eternity, and I can already feel the tension across my skin from just thinking about how he will scold me for doing something that distastes him at the dinner table. In Beron's case, it is never if, but when.

"Come, come quickly," the mouse girl beckons and leads Galena and me down an adjacent hall, through an archway, down another fae-light lit hall to double doors which open to yet another hall that snakes around behind the dining hall. It is meant only for servants to be able to dart around behind the scenes, but here I am, taking it to have dinner with my father. I can already hear multiple men's voices echoing off the walls, making your stomach flip into knots. So we have guests, I think as I try to process what that means for me. Some voices I recognize; some I don't. I steady my nerves with a deep breath but can only breathe so deep because of how constrained I feel in this slightly-too-small gown and its accompanying corset, but I try to not think about it too much as I approach the main entrance to the dining hall.

Voices are bouncing back and forth off the stone walls, words finally starting to be clear enough for me to understand. A chortle here, a laugh there, casual conversation carrying between, over, and through each other. However, a few stand out above the rest - my father's, my oldest brother Eris', and a male voice I don't recognize. Galena's light touch on my shoulder gets my attention, and when I turn to her I realize the mouse girl has already scurried away. She gives me a nod of assurance coupled with her gentle smile, which grounds me, before she steps away to return to her other duties. With another pathetic attempt of a deep breath, I take the final steps to stand in the arched entrance of the well-lit, extravagantly decorated dining hall.

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong. If we aren't prepared, we are set up for failure," the unknown male's voice speaks clear as a bell over the rest of the chatter as I stand there in the archway. No one has noticed my presence yet, so I take the time to analyze the table and all who sit before it. Dinner hasn't been served yet, so I'm not technically late, but I can tell I am the last to arrive. Great, I think, I'll hear about that once I’m alone with him afterward to get the rundown about how much of a failure I am. Brushing my thoughts from the forefront of my mind, my eyes quickly make their way across the room. The long, wooden table is laden with goblets from which to drink and empty plates awaiting the meal to arrive. Before each table setting sits various males, all very different looking but undoubtedly high fae, and the occasional female is sitting next to whom I assume is her partner or lord. As my gaze glides from one face to the next, I realize I don't recognize any of them, which isn’t a huge surprise since I don’t directly interact with most people from beyond the courtyard walls. It's only once I focus near the head of the table that I see my gaggle of brothers and their vibrant hair, which makes them stand out against the array of black, brown, and white hair of the crowd. Then at the head of the table sits our bastard of a father. He's sitting, looking somewhat disinterested yet exasperated from the conversation, and I realize the unknown male isn’t speaking with my father but with Eris. A quick glance tells me everything - Eris is sitting to our father's right, leaning into the conversation from across the table, his short hair groomed back, his eyes intense as he maintains eye contact. It's now I see this unknown male is sitting to our father's left, usually where our mother would sit. I shouldn't be surprised - like Galena warned before, she isn't present. Still, her absence sends an unnerving feeling down into my belly. Eris opens his mouth to respond to the unknown male, but High Lord Beron speaks over his son, quickly hushing him into silence.

"Regardless, this isn't what we need to discuss right now," High Lord Beron draws the attention of the table guests to him. His voice raises as his gaze returns mine from the hall entrance. "Come, Althea, sit," he commands as the guests hush down and turn to look at me. I can feel their eyes, scrutinizing and analytical as I make my way along the table to the empty spot next to my second youngest brother. Lucien isn't here, I realize, and there isn't an empty chair for him across from me as it usually is when we sit for these political dinners. He must not be in the castle anymore, a reality that makes my heart ache. A pity really, he was the only one I really got the chance to talk to personally. In the same breath, I wouldn't wish our father's fury on anyone, and if Lucien's happier where he is, I am glad for him. I wonder if under different circumstances we would have been closer, if our father hadn't gotten in the way of us kindling that siblingship.

"I apologize for the delay, my Lord," I speak formally as I take my seat and adjust the skirts of my gown. "Please, don't stop your discussion because of me." I return my eyes to his gaze to gauge whether my formalities have gotten me anywhere, and it hasn't. His almost distasteful look down his nose from the head of the table doesn't change and bores into my face. If looks could kill, I would have been dead long ago.

"That isn't the concern right now," he dismisses me in an instant as he turns his attention back to the unknown male, so close he can reach out and touch him. Still, I find it really odd for him to be sitting amongst our family instead of at the other end of the table with the rest of the guests. Who is he to earn that place? "We will discuss these matters another time," Beron again affirms, signaling the end of what sounded like a discussion of war tactics, leaving the subject of conversation open.

"Ah, well then, Eris, you will have to show me your study sometime. I'd love to see it." With that, the unknown male relaxes back in his seat. Eris, too, gets the hint and seems to drop it, lifting his goblet to his lips. Casual chatter amongst the remaining guests picks back up, and I'm left in my own little bubble, no one acknowledging my existence except for the other females at the table. Their gazes trail over me, raking over my exposed skin and analyzing my facial features, making me suddenly very self-conscious of the fact that my gown isn't the right size, squeezing in all the wrong places. I feel smothered, and my chest feels like it is tightening around my heart. I try to breathe through my nose and out through my mouth discreetly, but the heat of embarrassment as they too also dismiss me rises under my skin, making me feel hot. This isn't the first time I've been to a dinner like this, I remind myself. The males will talk about boring political tactics and discuss communications with the other courts, dinner will be had before the males all leave to go drink, and the females will start banter over their personal lives. At least, that's what I expect, but that's not what happens.

"Um, Althea," the voice of my brother next to me along with the small nudge he gives my arm draws my attention, and I realize the unknown male has been talking to me, but I didn't hear a single word he said. This is the first time I actually take note of what he looks like. His features are strong and stand out with his darker skin against his long pale hair, which is almost white but not quite. I have seen similar hair on the fae from the Winter Court when I was just a child, but I don't think he hails from there. His clothes don't give away any specific region either with their simple cut and coloring. Maybe a lord’s squire? I’m not sure. His eyes meet mine, and I find they are hazel. His brow raises slightly as if to ask from across the table if everything is alright.

"Ah, sorry, I was lost in thought. What was that?" I manage to return as I compose myself. He responds with a small smile and a nod.

"It's all right. I was asking how you are feeling. You look pale, at least more pale than you were when you first arrived," he says with a softness that eases some tension in my chest. "I'm Farren, from the Dawn Court." Suddenly the simplicity of his clothing makes sense; the Dawn Court is known for its practical fashion while also being the epicenter for our technological advancement as a country, and most fae who have an interest of the tinkering kind migrate there to find work.

"Oh, yes, I'm alright," I respond with some brightness in my tone to feign that all is well, though I feel like my stomach is still in knots. The last thing I need is for my father to think I'm vying for this male's attention by being ill. Farren's eyes hold mine as if he knows I'm lying, but he doesn't press. His slight nod of understanding dismisses the subject, and he turns to continue speaking with my father. I take a breath, realizing everyone else is minding their own business now, eyes no longer scanning my every move. How long will this dinner go on for, I wonder. It already feels like time is trudging by, and my mind drifts as I already start fantasizing about my bath that will be waiting for me once I return to my room.

Before too long, dinner is being served, and I see Galena and the mouse maid bustling around, working quickly alongside the other servants to meet Beron's high standards. The meal goes over without any snags, but I can feel Beron's piercing eyes on me as I eat. I dare not make eye contact with him. Conversation ebbs and flows, but for the most part I remain silent, keeping my ears alert as my focus bounces from one conversation to the next. That's when something piques my interest.

"Just look at her," one of the females down the table whispers to her partner, thinking she's being quiet. Because of Galena, my ears are used to listening for whispers, though, and I make out the words just fine. "She would be perfect." With my head tilted down slightly as if to focus on dinner, I glance up between my lashes to catch her sliding her hand onto his lap. His eyes are meeting hers, and I quickly realize she's sneaking a touch of him under the table. A hot flush meets my cheeks as his eyes slide from his partner to me, and I quickly avert my eyes. It's now that I'm aware of the faint smell of arousal in the air. How long had it been lingering before I noticed? Another conversation lifts above the others.

"Imagine having her in our court, what that would mean for us ," a couple of males a few chairs down from me whisper to each other between bites. I become more aware of my cleavage being on display, and the heat rises to the tips of my ears, turning them red. Cauldron boil me, what is going on here?

"That red hair, imagine the babes she could bear..." a sentence trails off into nothing as a knowing look is passed between a group at the other end of the table. Oh my Gods...

"Althea." Lord Beron, the son of a bitch, calls to me, and my anger immediately ignites when I make eye contact with him. He sees the puzzle pieces clicking together in my mind, my rage etching my features. It becomes clear that's exactly what is happening when he nods slightly, as if reading my mind and confirming my worst fears. These fae are here to barter for my hand. Do they all know that, I think as I glance between my brothers, all who seem disinterested, picking at what's left on their plates. They are here more as a formality at this point. What do they care - they don't know me aside from the fact that we share blood. My gaze passes down the table once more as the guests continue to discuss amongst themselves what my hand, my body, and my position in their courts would mean for themselves. It dawns on me that none of them are high lords, but they hail from all over Prythian based on their looks and attire. I would be a status symbol, a piece in their games, a shiny trophy good enough for lower lords but below the belt for someone like a High Lord or his heirs. The lone daughter of the Autumn Court gets passed off to whoever in the Cauldron buys me. The words burn as if seering themselves into the fabric of my being.

I slowly sit back in my uncomfortable chair, taking it all in. My gown feels like it's constricting me thoroughly, my shoes squeezing my toes, my scalp aching as if my hair is done up too tight even though Galena took care to keep it as loose as possible. The pearls she had so carefully secured around my neck feel like they are winding around and around my throat, tightening and limiting my breath. The whispers amongst the guests begin to overwhelm me, swarming and assaulting my mind. All I can think is that I want to stand, to flee, to run as fast as my legs can carry me in this Gods-forsaken dress and never look back. I want to kick off these blasted shoes and fly down the halls so fast that I lose sight of my father, my brothers, the guests, the maids, everyone within the confines of this stone castle turned prison. I want to feel the stone beneath my feet dig in and cut into my tender skin as I find my way to a back exit, flee across the courtyard grounds until the stone turns to dirt beneath my feet, and I can run through the trees.

But I can't.

I am locked under my father's punitive gaze with nowhere to go. No one is in my corner to save me. Even Galena, who is a dear friend, can't do anything to help from her position as a handmaiden. I am alone. My mind is buzzing as I swim through swirling, cloudy thoughts, trying to find something, anything to say to counter this reality. What precisely would my life be in another court? Could it be better than my life here? Undoubtedly - at least I wouldn’t be under Father’s shoe anymore. But on the other hand, my choice has been taken away, making no matter where I go a prison. No matter what the cage looks like, it will still be a cage, and your choice in the matter has been burned to ash.

"Where is mother?" I barely let out a whisper to my brother seated beside me. He tenses slightly and shifts uncomfortably in his seat. I wait a moment before turning my head slightly to address him again, my tone firm. "Where is she?" He can't even look at me. My eyes bore holes in the side of his face. Out of anyone, she would be the only one who could say anything against this and save me from this fate.

"Althea." Beron repeats, and this time his tone is exasperated as if he’s tired of my pushback. His voice lifts up above the chatter at the other end of the table, causing them to quiet and turn to him once more. "Althea is the youngest of my children," he announces, level-headed and stern. His piercing eyes stare unwavering down his nose at me. I feel like I'm going to lose whatever dinner I managed to eat at that very moment.

"Where is mother, Lord Beron?" I ask him directly, this time anger tinging my tone, no longer concerning myself with how I come across. My hands tighten on the arm rests of my formal dining chair. I feel the guest to my right shift away nervously as if I might turn and bite him like a feral animal.

"Althea, hush." Beron's tone bellows through me, but I refuse to back down; not this time, not about this.

"Where is she?" I raise your voice, slight panic tinged with desperation dripping off my words. Farren in my peripheral vision looks alarmed and glances between me and Father, who is refusing to back down either, so we continue our stare off. The intensity of my anger and feelings of betrayal are palpable in the air. However, I can't say this revelation is a surprise. I knew one day he would throw me to whoever would take me to get me out of his court, but not like this, never like this.

"Althea, please," Eris' cool voice from beside Beron strikes my ears, making me swivel around our brothers dividing us only for a moment to spit words at him.

"Shut it." My voice is a venomous hiss. "This isn't about you. I asked, ‘where is mother?’" My rage is boiling over in my veins as his next words hit.

"We don't know," Eris breathes almost a whisper, slow and careful, knowing his words are putting him on thin ice. "You need to take a breath." I freeze at his words.

"What do you mean, ‘we don't know?’" I reply just as careful, my voice lowering harshly, coming out as almost a growl.

"We don't know. She's been missing for a while now." Eris' composure breaks slightly as he leans back to make eye contact with me behind our middle brothers who are too uncomfortable with this whole situation to say or do anything, hunching down in their seats as if to make themselves invisible. I stare back at him, hands tightening even more on the wooden arms of my chair, knuckles turning white. Even though in recent years, I wasn't close with her anymore, that doesn't change that she is my mother. I would like to believe she would be in my corner. I grapple at threads in my mind, searching for any response other than demanding to know why no one told me or if they had been looking for her. With my overwhelm taking over my mind, though, I come up with nothing.

"Althea." Beron starts again. "That is not why we are here." His tone is cold as ice, contradictory for the male who can summon fire on impulse. "It is time." He gestures to Eris, and in turn he rises slowly to his feet before speaking. His voice is tight but collected.

"Now, Althea is 156 years old. She is educated, has a talent for music and dance, and she is well built for and at the prime age to be bearing children," Eris' voice almost catches at the last bit as if saying it makes him uncomfortable. My eyes widen, and his next words strike me like lightning. "Those who are interested, please stand." Damn near all the males to my right stand, even the ones with their partners present. My cheeks flush with heat once more, my heart pounding in my throat. Then I notice in the corner of my eye that Farren slowly stands, but his eyes aren't on Eris; they're on me, a look of concern gracing his features.

"Well then, this is impressive," Beron relaxes back into his throne of a chair, finally seeing some results from his youngest child's upbringing and seeing he has all his guests right in the palm of his hand. His voice almost purrs as his prior anger melts away at the freedom this gives him. All the possibilities lay before him, but before making a decision, he wants to hear just how badly these fae want his daughter and what they are willing to do to get her. "Who wants to make their case first?" I'm absolutely flabbergasted. How could these Cauldron-damned fae be so cruel? How could my father, the bastard that he is, use his oldest son to sell me to the highest bidder? How could these fae look at me, a living, breathing female, as property when I am right there witnessing it all before my eyes?

"We are highly motivated," the male with his partner who has the wandering hands I eavesdropped on before speaks first, confidence never waning as he casts his eyes from Eris, to my father, and then back to me, his eyes dark with what looks to be lust. His partner still seated beside him nods in agreement, and I can just barely see her hand on the back of his thigh, a possessive power move, as she, too, eyes me. My courage returns, and I snap my head to meet her gaze, letting her see the fire in my eyes, but they don't retract their statement.

"You must be joking?" my voice cracks, not necessarily directing my words only at them. The whole room is filled with lust-drunk and power-hungry fae. What should I expect?

"We will pay whatever you like to have her in our court," one of the men from the end of the table speaks up as if I didn't even speak. My breath catches in my throat, and I can't breathe. This isn't happening. I slam myself into a standing position, knocking my chair back with a loud clatter. My brothers seated on my side of the table flinch away from me, and I slam my hands on the table, making the dishes nearby rattle. My next words leave me, strengthening my will and stoking the burning of my fury.

"The next person to speak, Cauldron be damned, will regret it!" my voice is unwavering as I turn to speak directly to my father. "You can't do this. I don't consent to this." However, my voice quickly loses some steam and resolve as I see his consistent, disinterested look, yet now his eyes are tinged with his own fiery anger for his daughter speaking out of turn in such a way.

"Althea. Sit." he demands.

"No. I refuse. I will not sit idly by while you decide what happens to me," my voice continues to boil, but it doesn't fail to crack as I feel the tears begin to grow in the corners of my eyes, blurring my vision. "You can't," I command a final time, realizing just how much I look like a child throwing a tantrum while begging for my life to be mine. My strength leaves me as Beron slowly stands, causing the rest of the room's air to heat. He is pissed, and the atmosphere absorbs his heat, quickly causing sweat to slick everyone's foreheads, and I can feel a bead of sweat make its way down the back of my neck.

"I can, I will, and you will follow my demand." His voice is cold, colder than I have ever heard it. A hand signal towards a couple of his guards who had been positioned at either side a few paces behind his seat step forward. "Take her to her room. She doesn't need to be here for this now. I believe our guests have seen enough." They move on command, and I immediately shudder under his triumphant glare, realizing no matter what I said, my fate was already decided long ago. Long before I was a woman, a teenager, a child. From the day I was born, my fate was sealed. I don't know what to say anymore, my mouth dry, and my soul crushed. The absolute overwhelming feeling of defeat and despair wipes away all my rage and births a new level of pain. As the guards close in, I turn on my heels and storm out of the hall, but my ears burn as I hear Eris' voice pick back up in a lighter tone in an attempt to settle the group after our exchange.

"Well, now you see she is a spitfire as well. Even more fun to break..." His words trail off as I put distance and walls between us, and I’m thankful I can’t hear how the rest of this conversation is going to go. My stomach is wound so tight in my core that I fear I will lose my dinner. I hope I will over this dress, so I will never have to see it again. With quick feet even in these shoes, I make my way quickly back through the halls, the guards close on my heels to make sure I make it back to my room. As much as I want to just take off and run for the hills, I know it's futile. They are faster than me. Once at the stairs, I rip off these damned shoes and throw them one by one at the guards the hardest I can, but of course, that doesn't stop them. Damn the Mother if I were to wear these another second and try to scale these damned stairs with them again.

"I'm going; leave me alone!" I raise my voice, and it goes a bit shrill. I lift my skirts and start the long run up the cold stone stairs, tears burning like fire on the sensitive skin of my cheeks as I direct all my emotions down into my feet. I refuse to break down on these stairs. Each driven step pushes me up, and up, and up until I am in my room. A solid slam of the door behind me seals me in, my breath hot and heavy in the most painful way as I quickly scan the room for a tall-backed chair and slam it under the doorknob, blocking out all behind it. Almost instantly, my body caves, the emotional coil that has been winding all evening snapping, and I fall back on the cold, hard floor, letting my primal sobs finally wreak havoc through my body. The loud cries echo off the tall walls of my room. My throat is sore; my skin is burning; my veins are boiling still with my anger and pain. The reality is washing over me - I have nowhere to go from here. ~~~ Previous Chapter --- Next Chapter

[gendercynicalgrantaire]

A little bit ago I saw you make a comment about how radfems fail to realize there are trans normies. I've been thinking about it and I wanted to ask, other than yourself, do you know very many trans people irl who are normies who don't have any explicitly homophobic or misogynist ideas about gender and sexuality? I know they exist. But I've been disappointed by more than 1 transman who I thought cared about me and respected me as a lesbian when we really got into discussions about sexual orientation. Like I try not to become jaded but its really hard when I have trans friends I trusted for a long time and then they tell me same sex attraction is harmful or that gender roles are innate (ie: "I know I'm not a woman bc I don't vibe with xyz stereotype that I believe is true for every other woman I meet unless she identifies otherwise". I don't think every trans person is a actively toxic or anything but I feel like homophobia and misogyny is so rampant and explicit from the trans community in current year it's really hard not to be jaded as a defense mechanism.

Hi! So I found the post you were talking about. The intention I was trying to communicate wasn’t so much that normie trans people are unproblematic in their views of gender, but more so that there are trans people out in the world just trying to live their lives who aren’t narcissistic manipulators like a lot of internet TRAs might come off as.

When I call trans people “trans normies,” I’m defining that as trans people who are mostly not online and mostly not involved in trans discourse. And trans normies, like other kinds of normie, sadly tend to have some unexamined assumptions about how things work based on the dominant culture they were raised in.

Most of the trans people I know irl fall into one of two categories: the ones I meet at PFLAG meetings or trans-centric spaces, and the very rare ones encountered out in the wild. I’m going to hazard a guess that most trans normies are the latter-- they tend not to run in circles with many other trans people, and they also tend to be more interested in passing to blend in, both of which make them more difficult to find. They, like me, tend not to really run in the “trans community.” And admittedly, it’s even rarer that I meet a visibly trans person in the wild that I grow close enough to that I learn all about their gender philosophy, because I too have internalized assumptions about other trans people’s feelings that make me jaded against them (I’m trying not to fall into the idea that I’m “not like other troons” lol), and I’m trying to work through it to find and see if there are ones who have gender philosophies I can vibe with.

Most trans people whose gender philosophies I have heard, then, are the ones I meet in PFLAG and trans-centric groups. So probably a little less normie, but there are still normies mixed in there. And I’m not gonna lie, some of the ideas I hear make me cringe a little or feel like they would quickly fall apart if poked at. I don’t know if there’s a single trans philosophy out there that’s going to satisfy the gender critical community. But what I can say for trans people is that the vast majority of them that I have met irl believe in the following (paraphrased):

- If someone’s sexuality/dating pool excludes me, that’s their business. It can be a little disheartening knowing how small my dating pool is, but trying to convince people who don’t want to date trans people to date trans people is not a solution. I want a partner who loves me for me, not one who pretends to love me for woke points.

- XYZ stereotype does not mean that someone is a man/woman/nonbinary. (Insert just about anything in the XYZ. The trans and nonbinary people I meet in real life are also some of the most pro-gnc-cis-people people I know.)

- I am consciously aware of how I make cis people uncomfortable, and I make a conscious effort to mitigate that discomfort to the best of my ability while still living authentically and keeping myself safe.

- Cis women can have their own spaces. It doesn’t concern me.

- Obviously there are issues that only impact natal females and ones that only impact natal males.

- I understand that I have the biology of a certain sex. I might be uncomfortable with having a body of that kind, maybe even to the point where I don’t like to use the anatomical terms to describe my body in contexts where I can avoid it, but I’m obviously different from a [cis man/cis woman]. If I didn’t understand that, I wouldn’t be calling myself transgender.

I make these points because of their relationship with gc discourse. It’s inconvenient for gendercrits and radfems to acknowledge that there are trans people who feel this way. It’s even more inconvenient to know that the number of trans people who feel this way is not insignificant and thereby easy to dismiss.

In particular, I want to focus on the second point: stereotypes do not a gender make. Because honestly, most of the trans women at the PFLAG meetings aren’t talking about how they played with dolls as kids or how they just love being expected to wear make-up (often in an effort to pass, because unfortunately our gendered society does turn make-up into a tool for reading as female), and the trans men there run the gamut from hyper-masc to fairly feminine. There are a variety of trans philosophies I’ve listened to that stray away from the idea that simple gender stereotypes make a gender.

More often the story is one of alienation -- alienation from one’s body, from one’s appearance, and/or especially from society. And this alienation usually disappears (or at least fades into background noise) once transition has been undertaken. The trans person in question might not always have a satisfactory explanation for why that is -- and again, I don’t think any explanation fits the radfem/gc ideal -- but it is distinct from the rhetoric “wigs and dresses don’t make you a woman,” “lack of those things doesn’t make you a man,” which trans people are generally well aware of. This is what I hear most often from other trans people regardless of sexuality, mental health history, class, or any other dividing lines that gendercrits like to use to explain trans people away as simple, easily dismissible categories (think Blanchardianism).

Hmm...I hope that answers your question? I know I probably went off the rails there. Again, I can’t claim that trans normies can’t be problematic, or even that most of them aren’t problematic. Most normies in general are problematic because they tend to live less examined lives. But I also know there are trans people out there willing to listen to and calmly discuss the other side of things, especially if their viewpoint is just parroting what they’ve generally heard from the mainstream side of trans discourse.

In that regard, you’ll have the most luck with passing trans people and trans people who’ve been settled into their identity for a while. Non-passing and newly-out trans people tend to be defensive and self-conscious in a way that more seasoned and socially integrated trans people just aren’t. That’s another post in and of itself though. If a trans friend of yours says something along the lines of “I know I'm not a woman bc I don't vibe with xyz stereotype that I believe is true for every other woman I meet unless she identifies otherwise” (if they use that wording -- not sure if that second part is what they actually say or just the implication you’re picking up on, but chances are they don’t think every woman vibes with it and just need that pointed out) but they also seem like a chill person and you feel safe doing so, don’t be afraid to calmly and casually bring up a point of disagreement. It might not be something they fiercely cling to or have even really thought through all that much.

[roswelldetails]

RNM 2x13 - Mr. Jones

EPISODE SUMMARY:

SEASON FINALE — Having realized that a deadly threat has infiltrated CrashCon, the busiest event of the year, Liz (Jeanine Mason) realizes that she can’t save everyone she loves — and with Max (Nathan Dean) facing immediate danger, she and Isobel must make a heart-wrenching choice. Meanwhile, Michael (Michael Vlamis) finds himself caught up in the conflict between Jesse (Trevor St. John) and Alex (Tyler Blackburn) once again, even as Maria’s (Heather Hemmens) life hangs in the balance elsewhere, and Kyle (Michael Trevino) faces a moral dilemma when the enemy requires medical attention. Jeffrey Hunt directed the episode written by Christopher Hollier & Carina Adly MacKenzie (#213). Original airdate 6/15/2020.

DETAILS:

The episode opens with Isobel trying to hold back the fire. They don't actually show Rosa convincing Liz to go stop the explosion. But she runs up to Isobel and explains her science:

"I have to activate the ingredients first, but once I introduce my solution to the system it should kill the cellular matrix."

Liz literally squirts the console with her "solution".

Rosa is doing CPR on Max and praying. Max wakes up just as Kyle runs up.  Immediately Max directs Kyle to Flint instead of himself. It's interesting. When Max previously killed with his hand, in 1x06, he instantly knew that he killed the drifter. This time he wasn't sure (and he didn't. We eventually learn). Rosa and Kyle take Flint to the hospital.

Meanwhile Helena is saving Charlie's life.  

"Jesse Manes was the only one supposed to get hurt."

Which is...not what happened.  Jesse, Flint, Max, Maria...even Liz got hurt.  She burned her hand on the console.

Maria is being rolled into the hospital. She got there really really fast. Cam is by her side.

Liz is still squirting her solution onto the console. It turns red.  Liz asks Isobel to get people away but Isobel refuses to leave Liz alone.

Jesse, Greg, Michael, and Alex are still mid-standoff.

"Gregory, listen. You and I have had our differences in the past, but you should stand with me now."

"You're not well, Dad."

Jesse hits Gregory with the atomizer and appears to knock him out. He tries to shoot Michael, but Alex tackles him.

"Guerin, get the atomizer! Get it away from my brother!"

"Alex, I can't."

Jesse gets the upper hand in the fistfight with Alex and steals Alex's gun. Turns to shoot Michael again.

Liz makes more solution and squirts more of it on the console.  This time it starts to crack. Isobel pulls Liz to safety and the console shrivels and dies.

The dying console just doesn't work as well in still form, so @maxortecho giffed it for me! Thank you!! 😘

Max runs up to them.

"You disabled it. You saved everyone."

"Is Flint dead? Did you kill him?"

He looks at Liz with some heavy heart eyes for her being the hero. She looks at him with fear.

Back to the Maneses and Michael. Jesse has a gun on Michael. Michael has the atomizer.

"Drop it, Guerin. Drop it!"

There's a gunshot. Jesse Manes falls and Michael has blood on his face.  Gregory shot Jesse from behind.

"I should have defended you from him a long time ago."

"There are no more Manes men left."

Jesse dies.

Indeterminant time jump.  Liz is late for work.

"Sorry, Javi.  I just...I haven't really been sleeping."

"You've said that every day since CrashCon. You still having nightmares? …Did you read the papers this morning."

"Oh, I've kind of been trying to avoid the papers."

"Did you hear about that veteran who died at the carnival? They're going to have a parade, build a statue. Did you know he was disabled?"

Customers at the counter are discussing CrashCon:

"The CrashCon discourse is saying aliens invaded and killed the guy."

"That should be good for tourism."

"Newspaper said it was smoke inhalation though."

"He was making sure all the kids got out safely and the smoke overwhelmed him."

"We need more people like him."

Soooo much to unpack here.  And most of it is addressed by Helena and Rosa's exchange at the end of the episode. But the big question to me is… who is spreading the rumors and covering this up? Is it Flint? Is he even well enough to take the lead on that? Is it someone else with Project Shepherd that we haven't met? The mayor? I mean, Jesse was shot! There was a lot of blood! Plus, remember what happened in 1x11 and 1x12: it's a small town. People notice gunshots. 

Liz goes to take a table's order and, surprise! It's Diego. Who had gone back to Denver after CrashCon. He brought Dr. Margot Meyerson to Roswell to meet Liz.

Michael is visiting Maria at the hospital:

"What are you doing?"

"Oh they cut your bracelet off during surgery. How are you? You look better."

"Liz has been dropping by every day to inject me with witch serum."

"Ooh the synthetic nucleotide excision repair genomogenate? We're lucky you're only part alien, otherwise there wouldn't have been enough left of you for her to save."

"Listen, do you think you could use your telekinesis to open this box? Mimi left it when she visited. It's a family heirloom, but she forgot the key."

"Mimi hasn't exactly been leading you in the right direction lately. Her psychic visions led you toward a bomb instead of away from it. Seeing you like that -- all sick and pale and quiet -- I started praying."

Max and Isobel are at Max's house. Isobel is studying the photos of the console and alien symbols.

"I wish I understood why Louise and Nora would spend a year building an alien weapon of mass destruction."

"I don't think it was a bomb. I think it's a communication device. It's like a remote, you know, it just happens to be combustible."

"Are you mad at me, Max? Did I do something wrong? Is it that we're not related, or are you upset about the abortion? Because I…"

"Whoa, hey, God no."

"Because you're not talking to me."

"You're not the only one.  I didn't want everyone to worry, you know, 'cause I've been taking some of Liz's antidote. And things are coming back to me. Little flashes, sort of, mostly. Like vague memories."

"Michael said that you kind of zoned out when you touched that alien bomb...remote thing. Did it trigger a memory?"

"When I touched the console, I heard whispers that I could almost understand. All right, it's like the same with those symbols. I mean it's like their meaning is just beyond reach. Except for one word. I took this from Graham Green's display at CrashCon. See that? It's an aerial photo of some crop circles from Roswell in 1948. This farm belonged to a guy called Jones. Pretty sure it says savior... This is my name. Maybe that means you and Michael's parents weren't the only ones that survived the crash. Right, maybe I had a family too. You know, maybe my mom was just across town."

"Max. I really wish that you could just focus on the present. You know, I mean, as a recently deceased man, I really feel like you should be enjoying the simple pleasures in life, you know, like reading nerdy books, the smell of leather, and that feeling when you wake up before your alarm and the person you love is still asleep and they're kind of snoring a little bit. It's like the best thing that ever happened to you. Stuff like that."

"I want all those things too.  But I feel like if I only know half of myself, I'm only half living. And I know you understand that, Iz, because I've watched you this year become your entire self. And it is so beautiful. Okay, I am not at all mad at you. Are you kidding me? I am so proud of you. I am so proud that you're my sister."

Michael and Alex in the shed. For all that the shed is such a key location in this show's canon this is the first time we've seen it since 1x06.

"Maria made me bring food over.  I gave it to Gregory.  Seems to be holding up okay."

"Everything my family touches turns to crap. My dad used to talk about how my Grandpa Harlan built this she'd with his bare hands when he was, like, seventy.  For a long time it was my safest space. And the one night my dad destroyed it."

"You're right. This place sucks."

Michael and Alex start destroying the shed. In the next scene Michael breaks a floorboard revealing a skeleton. The skeleton is wearing dog tags, so Alex grabs them. In his shirt pocket Michael spots and grabs the key to Maria's box.  The tags say Eugene Manes III.  So this is Tripp's body. Which confirms for Alex that his grandfather killed Tripp.

Max and Liz are walking in the plaza.

"I don't understand the violence, Max. Flint could have had brain damage given how long he wasn't breathing. You risked your life to hurt him and he had already thrown the weapon away, Max, so why? I can't get that image out of my head.  You trying to kill Alex's brother."

"I know. I snapped. Last year Noah told me that we were energized by killing and not by healing. Even then I knew he was right.  I… Obviously I can usually fight that, but I guess this time my better angels just didn't show up."

"We have to stop keeping secrets from each other, Max. There's a scientist in town.  She's a supervisor at Genoryx.  She has a job for me in California. She's offered to sponsor my dad's citizenship. And it could put me in a position to help Rosa too. I mean, I'd be able to do a lot of good with the grant money they're offering, and I know that all sounds too good to be true, but…"

"It sounds like someone finally realizes how valuable your mind is."

"I think that a change of scenery will be so good for us. I mean, we could get a place by the beach and you could write."

"You want me to come with you?"

"Of course I do."

"Well, I mean, I just told you I have this killer instinct, and you want me to come to California with you."

"We'll figure it out. Okay? We'll figure all of it out together. Run away with me, Max Evans?"

"Anywhere."

Max goes to see Cam at work. She picks on him for getting arrested and has his mugshot as her desktop background because friends!

Max asks about Charlie.

"Yeah she texted me from a burner phone that she was all right and then she vanished again."

Max tells her that he has a doctor's appointment and then asks her to do some undercover work for him.

Michael visiting Maria at the hospital.

"So Alex thinks Harlan found out that Tripp was an alien sympathizer all that time and he offed him."

"So Mimi must have known that you would find it. That's why she left the box. Look, I know you don't trust my mom's visions, but I was the only one who could grab that atomizer and run with it. If it had been you, you'd be dead."

Maria takes off the bracelet.

"What are you doing? Maria, that prevents brain damage."

"I'm only part alien, but it is a part of me. Even if it's dangerous I can't just turn off a piece of myself."

"So I'm supposed to sit around helpless as you fade away? Maria, I cannot watch you disappear. I love you."

"I love you too."

"So can we just let this go?"

"You have it wrong. Mimi hasn't disappeared. Yes she can be inconvenient, she can make people uncomfortable, but maybe she's supposed to be an uncomfortable inconvenience that saves lives. And now I need to be inconvenient, and I don't want to be someone that hurts you. I think that we should find out what's next, apart from each other."

"Wait, so you think that if we break up, I'm gonna be able to stop caring about you?"

"I learned so much, being with you. You sacrificed yourself without hesitation when Alex needed you."

"I would have done the same for you."

"I know. I don't doubt your capacity for love, 'cause you made me so happy this year. And I loved being someone that made you happy. I just think that we should leave it be, before I wonder if someone else could make you happier. Open the box, Guerin. Let's see what comes next.

Skip forward to the Crashdown where Michael has the box in a booth with Alex and Isobel. He opens the box and pulled out a journal, which they in turn read aloud.

I did a separate post on the journal's content and the Tripp and Nora flashbacks here:

Kyle visits Steph in the hospital

"What do you think will happen?"

"What do you mean?"

"When I die, idiot."

"You know, Socrates thought that death was a blessing, because only one of two things could happen. Either consciousness ceases, and it's like falling into a dreamless sleep. Or you go to where all who have died before you have gone. Your loved ones, people you admire. If you lived a good and just life, you will be surrounded by goodness and justice, in a place without fear. Sorry.  I thought a lot about this when my dad passed, so I…"

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I'm putting you through this again."

"No...I want to be here."

Liz interrupts them. She clearly wasn't expecting Kyle to be there and comments on Max's appointment.  Kyle gets up to leave.

Diego and Margot are talking in the Wild Pony:

"I was very impressed with her work when we first pursued her, but when I met her today, not so much."

"Why? 'Cause she had a little ketchup on her uniform?"

Undercover!Jenna staggers up to them and spills her drink on them, tells Margot that she's beautiful, and plants a listening device.

"Anyway I think we should move on."

"Okay, wait a sec.  Liz has been working on something recently, but she signed this NDA. Although I guess she can't be blamed if we took a peek, you know? Without permission."

The line that will haunt me for the next year. Kyle to Max while showing him what appears to be chest X-rays.

"You know what I'm saying here, right Max?"

Cameron calls:

"You were right. It is too good to be true. Diego just told some woman he can get her access to Liz's lab. He must have followed her there."

"Well, there's a security system."

"The way he's talking, it sounded like Diego's pretty certain he can get access. They just left here, Evans.  You need to tell Liz to get anything incriminating out of there - now."

Max arrives at the lab and immediately sees that the security system was manufactured by Genoryx. He uses his powers to break the system and get into the lab. He quickly searches through all of Liz's records and then pours what appears to be gas or lighter fluid or some other flammable substance all over the place and then uses his powers to set a fire.

He listens to the notes on Liz's recorder, which by the way has 22 minutes of recording on it. Some of what we hear:

This is my record of the dissection of specimen NB.

... immunoglobulin harvested from alien DNA can be transferred to a human recipient.

Commence dissection of the dorsal side of the spinal nerve.

I hypothesize that the female specimen's plasma…

Bracken's seminal cells indicate a pH level double that of a human counterpart.

I'm now extracting the grey matter to measure alien voxel signals.

Note that Max doesn't seem to have any chest pain this time when he uses his powers.

Right as Diego and Margot show up the lab explodes.

Max comes home to find Michael and Isobel waiting for him.  He's clearly exhausted and upset after the lab.

"Can whatever this is wait until tomorrow?"

"Jones? That's the guy who grew the crop circles in the shape of my name."

"Nope. We spent the day reading Tripp Manes' journal. Caffeinate, Max... Okay, so, when I asked Sanders about this photo of Nora, he said he didn't know whose hand this was. He was all, Mr. Bernhardt, Mr. Jones, Old Man Gibbons. Could've been anybody."

"Ten points to Hufflepuff."

"So in October '48, Nora decided not to finish building the ship with Louise. She decided to go to the reservation with Tripp."

"But then little Walt convinced her to go to the fall festival, where after successfully avoiding him for a year, she finally ran into the alien stowaway who had crashed the ship. He'd been masquerading as a farmer."

"Mr. Jones."

"Tripp saw Jones approach Nora, and he recognized him from the night of the crash, but he didn't have a chance to ask Nora about it before Harlan called for a raid on the farm."

"Yeah. And after the massacre, Jones was never heard from again. Crop circles were all that was left."

"If you were in hiding, why would you grow corn in the shape of an alien symbol?"

"Maybe they just grew that way.  It's the same way that this symbol just shows up everywhere, you know?"

Michael reveals his tattoo and it's the first time Max has seen it.

"Wait, when did..?"

"Oh, I got it when we weren't sure if you were coming back. It didn't feel like it was ever gonna be the same again."

"All right. There. Now can we all cowboy up and focus, please? Let's feel our feelings after we've solved the mystery of the unknown alien. After the raid on the farm, Nora was held by Project Shepherd."

Note...not actually accurate. Michael didn't get the tattoo until Max was out of surgery.

See Journal and Flashbacks post for the flashback.

Jenna and Charlie reunite. Relevant quote to remember:

Liz and Rosa find the destroyed lab.  Liz sees the fractal burn that indicates that Max is the one that destroyed it.

"I fought so hard to become who I am, and I just trade her in every time I get scared? No. I don't want to be on the run anymore."

Back to Max's house:

"Whatever happened to that thing that she and Louise were building out in the desert? I mean, did she ever tell him where it was or what it was?"

"Nope. And when Tripp asked Louise about it, she was silent."

Liz walks in and interrupts.

"Why'd you do it, Max?"

They go into the bedroom to fight.

"I'd been asking you for weeks to clear out that lab, okay? I knew it wasn't safe."

"Alex installed a military-grade security system."

"A system designed by Genoryx, okay? Diego could have hacked it. He could already know everything."

"And his nefarious plan is to what? Set us up with a condo in L.A.? Give my family a second chance?"

"Okay, I have a family to protect too."

"Yes, and you could have stopped Diego without destroying a year of my work!"

"I had to act fast."

"So your first instinct was to go with the one method that would break my heart?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking about your heart when I'm staring at jars with Noah's liver and his brain. I mean, what else did you harvest from us, Liz?"

"Those are just cells. I wasn't hurting anyone. I don't know what you thought love was gonna be like when we were 17, but it isn't just sunsets and horseback rides."

"You can't put this all on me. Okay you were sneaking around behind my back…"

"I apologized. I stopped. Max, you died this year. I was all alone because of a choice that you made, but still every single thing I did was for you and about you and with you. So when you were back, when I could finally touch you. When I could finally breathe. I needed to take just one moment to remember where I end and where you begin. To just be whole in who I am. I am a scientist. I am fighting for something that is bigger than me. I am trying to leave this world a better place. And I am in love with you. And right now, I hate it."

Liz leaves and Max takes another dose of the antidote.

Time jump. No idea how long or what has happened in between.  Liz and Rosa on the Crashdown roof saying goodbyes.

"Dad is checking your oil and making sure you have enough chile...also you left this in our room. Mom's been texting."

"Trying to come up with a better response than, go duck yourself… You should come with me. The Ortecho sisters take California."

"I wish. But I can't. I'm going back to rehab tonight. I want to see the program through. Sorry."

"Don't be. It's the best possible thing you could have said."

"You know… Max should be your road trip buddy. You love him.  You're gonna forgive him.  Besides, we both know if you try to leave town without him again, he's just gonna show up with some big, grand romantic gesture to stop you."

Open mic night at the Pony.  Alex and Kyle have a drink together.

"So how does it feel to have your father's murder officially avenged?."

"Feels like my dad's still dead. Flint should be okay. He'll live to become the new Jesse Manes."

"No he won't. I'm not gonna let it happen."

"After everything you still believe in redemption?"

"Well, I have a pretty good example of it right in front of me."

Alex sings his song. Michael, Isobel, Greg, and Forrest are all there listening.

Flash to Kyle going to Steph's hospital room.  The bed is empty...because she's up doing her makeup, her hands steady.

"Your hands are better.  Did they give you morphine?"

"I woke up this morning feeling incredible. Look at my chart. My numbers are up. It's a miracle."

"Or just really good science."

Liz is preparing to leave, her suitcase beside her in the empty Crashdown as she stands at the juke box one last time. Kyle runs in.

"What you did was reckless. And dangerous. And unethical, Liz. Thank you." 

Back at the Wild Pony, Michael watches Forrest listening to Alex sing.  He turns to leave. Isobel tries to stop him.

"It's a sad story, me and Alex. I have to walk away so we can start a new one someday. It's not our time right now."

"But it will be."

"I think so."

Rosa walks up to a bar.  She hesitates before going in, her hands shaking.

Liz buckles into her car, ready to leave.  She looks in the rearview window and waits.  She's clearly expecting Max to come.  But he's at home studying his alien symbols. She gives in and pulls away, leaving Roswell. Her season ends with her looking out over the ocean.

Alex finishes his song and Greg and Forrest are still there and are proud of him.

"Well, damn. How do you feel?"

"Like I just sang a song about a guy in front of a bunch of cowboys, and...I don't care."

"Oh, lucky guy, with a song like that."

"Yeah it was a long time ago…can I?"

Alex and Forrest kiss.

Rosa walks into the bar. Helena is there.

"If you came to tell me what I did wrong, your sister already texted."

"Did you get what you wanted, Mom? Is your score finally settled?"

"No. I wanted everyone to see Jesse Manes humiliated and weak. I wanted him to die knowing shame. But the papers say it was a tragedy. People like him - bad white men - they die heroes, no matter what they've done. People like us - we die villains."

"Yeah I know. I've done it. But I also got a second chance. So I get to leave a different legacy. The last time that I saw you, I said that I hated you. That's not true. I love you, Mom."

"I love you too, mija."

"I also told you to leave and I was right about that. Liz was free and it should have stayed that way. Manes is gone. There is no revenge to be had. No closure and no redemption. Don't come back, mom. Don't bother Liz again. I really hope you get better. Maybe you can have a second chance too."

Another possible time jump. Michael and Isobel pull up to where Max is out in the desert.

"How'd you guys find me?"

"Freaky twin thing. What's going on?"

"I took more of the antidote. Sorry, I should have called you guys."

"Save it. We are sick of being pissed at you for being so obnoxiously yourself. Why you look so scared?"

Pod Squad is investigating a cave. There's a door or opening covered by alien text with the alien symbol on it. It sorta looks like there's something behind it.

"Um, well, when I touched the alien console at the fair, something happened. I heard whispers that I couldn't understand...until now. I think when I touched it I unlocked something... Like a cage? The whispers led me here. I know it sounds crazy, but would you guys help me find a tunnel?"

"It's sealed up."

"I feel like we should learn more before we just busy that door open."

"Yeah, you're probably right."

There's a knocking sound and a voice calls out.

"Help! Is someone there?"

"If Max unlocked something at CrashCon, whoever that is has been down here for days without…"

"I need water. Please."

"There has to be three."

Note that we now know which symbol represents each of them.

The door shatters and they all react (Isobel's face is priceless).  

We flash back to the mysterious stowaway/alien hoodie dude/Jones. Louise fighting him.  Now we can see that it's Max. Nora kneeling after the crash with the hand on her shoulder. It's Max's face. He attacks/burns the military men/Hector Valenti.

The stowaway/Jones looks exactly like Max. Only with a really bad beard. 

"Howdy partner."

MUSIC:

1. Hootie & The Blowfish "Time"

2. Tyler Rich "Leave Her Wild"

3. Clay Rigdon "That Kinda Kiss"

4. Marc Danziesen "See Yourself"

5. Gloria Hart and Art Kassel "Frankie And Johnny"

6. The Score "Legend"

7. Sarah May Byrom "Rhythm Of A Memory"

8. Tyler Blackburn "Would You Come Home"

9. The Well Pennies "The Echo And The Shadow"

10. Valerie Broussard "Dark Side"

[norgestan]

I’ve tried to have this discussion before, but the context of the fact that so many fans from Spain (and even the cast) say stuff like “pansexuality isn’t real” or make fun of/insult people who identify as pan and say “that’s not part of our culture” is exactly the reason WHY some fans take issue with skam espana’s “bisexuality vs pansexuality” scene more than other versions. Because you just can’t separate the intention of the scene and how +

I’m sure the creators knew it was going to be received by the home audience, from the dialogue and message of the scene. Does that make sense? I don’t know if I’m getting my point across. I just feel like so many people like to pretend that certain fans are just being hypocritical for being upset by that scene in skam espana more than the og/other remakes, but that added context IS there. (2/2)

i can totally agree with you on the first bit, i feel like there’s definitely people who have taken it too far. i myself agree with the spanish view of pansexuality yet i would never go out of my way to attack people for identifying as pan (in my ideal world everyone takes a look of what the debate should really be about so we can be civil in regards of this issue... but this is social media and stan circles we’re talking about, so LOL).

however, and at the cost of stirring this fully rotten issue one more time... how is the dialogue and framing of the scene in itself a form to validate the “pansexuality isn’t real” debate in spain??? like, let’s look at the facts. this is how the dialogue goes down like:

viri: so does this mean you’re a lesbian?

cris: no! i mean, no. i don’t know. i know i like joana, and that’s it.

eva: either way, you used to really like guys. a lot.

cris: yeah! fuck, i still like them, girl, i don’t know, i’ve always liked them.

nora: then, you can be bisexual, no?

cris: maybe. it’s just that i don’t know what the categories are, i mean, how am i supposed to know what’s mine?

viri: let’s see, there’s not that much confusion anyway? you’re either lesbian or bisexual, no? and now "pansexual” is there too, no?

nora: girl, that’s the same thing. bisexuals like the people of their same gender and the opposite gender... i think.

eva: well now, you guys are getting intense. the important thing is, [to cris] are you happy?

this is the point in which the conversation clearly deranges. when viri begins to talk about how cris could be a lesbian, bi or pan, amira is literally facepalming herself and eva is laughing in the background. when nora jumps in to correct viri, eva realizes that it has gone for too long and dismisses the two girls to shift the conversation back to cris. i actually really appreciate how awkward this entire scene feels lol, because it’s a realistic outcome and it really balances the girls’ love for cris vs their incapacity to handle this subject well, as they’re all (so far) cis and straight girls. and to an extent, that’s the intention of the scene, to show that they all have good intentions but can say the wrong things anyway (discussing cris’ sexuality when she had just told them she is not sure/doesn’t know enough, viri immediately asking if they have had sex, eva implying that cris can’t be attracted to girls because she was really into guys some months ago and then the comment about their sex life, etc). and it’s the same thing that happened with lucas’ coming out scene in s1: eva told lucas that she and jorge had discussed the possibility of him being gay, and then she fires back at him with the whole cristian drama. but in both scenes, the important thing is that despite their ignorance regarding conversations of LGBT+, they’re supportive of them and there for each other, and in the long run, willing to learn and create a safer space for them (see: lucas’ youtube video where eva and him discuss homophobic microaggressions). and of course there’s never gonna be a perfect reaction: skames did a really good job showing a realistic coming out that is positive for the protagonist and in line with its imperfect characters’ personalities and experiences.

so like, in what universe is this scene meant to discredit pansexuality and pansexuality alone, when the phrase happens in the context where the girls are discussing something that literally NO one in the room understands? and it’s not like you have to look reaaaaally hard into it to come out with the fact that 17 y/o cishet girls aren’t the most versed about the lgbt+ community, it’s LITERALLY explicitly stated that no one is sure about what they’re talking about (cris outright says she hasn’t done any research, viri is trying to be supportive all while having conflicted feelings about cris being with a girl lol, and nora’s straight to the point “...i think”). and even then, it’s not like nora says anything incorrect: i’m pretty sure pansexual people can agree that both pan and bi people are attracted to the same group of people. and when i was in high school, most people around me couldn’t tell the difference between the two either. (way better than saying matter of a fact that pan people are attracted to genders and bi people are atracted to sexes, cough cough)

anyone could watch the scene and understand what the intention was. when i watched the clip years ago, i had no idea of the spanish perception of pansexuality and didn’t until i entered the fandom (although i had heard the discussions about pansexuality in other circles) and the scene does NOTHING to educate you about LGBT+ culture and history in spain (how can they when it’s established that these girls aren’t well-versed on the subject?). the only thing you could come out from that scene, is that these girls... kinda don’t know shit about it.

i can totally see why people can have problems with the pansexuality discourse in the skames and skamverse fandom, as well as the comments that came from the cast. and as i’ve said multiple times now, you don’t have to justify yourself if you don’t wanna watch a remake, and no one can tell you what to do about it: the decision is entirely yours. however, i completely disagree that the showrunners’ intention was to make a statement on the validity of pansexuality because of spain’s culture. and i lack the knowledge to make this point, but i find it hard to believe that the pansexual issue in skames is the only example on the skamverse of creators, actors and fans sticking up to a plotline/comment that invalidates or harms a minority group.

[asublimehimbo]

Hundreds of Lovers, Only One Love

Inspired by this quote from Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: “I encounter millions of bodies in my life; of these millions, I may desire some hundreds; but of these hundreds, I love only one.”

A DunBerg fic under the cut! Also on AO3.

I have met so many people; mostly girls (mostly girls I've had sex with). But before I met Pete, I'd never really felt that... specific emotion before. I'd got down lust. I can do that, I'm great at lust. It's what people know me for. I can do the coy infatuation-dance too, I've done it with Bethany and a few other girls. Few and far between, but they were there. At least they were there, and I'll never forget them. It's amazing how the truly special relationships in my life have grown out of the people who wouldn't immediately fuck me.

I have met so many people, but none of them have been like Pete.

"Berg? Are you in there?" Pete asks, nudging my side with his elbow. Miami Vice reruns play on the tv in front of us; we're on the couch. Sonny is saying something about volleyballs.

"Yeah," I murmur, and I can feel Pete's eyes on me. There's a heat to his gaze; maybe it's just me. It makes my skin buzz like when you run your really cold body under really hot water.

"You're not usually this subdued, are you sick?"

I glance at him. "No, I'm thinking."

Pete shrugs, takes a swing of beer, and goes back to watching Sonny comment on Tubbs' good looks for the fiftieth time in a row. Tubbs always gives him that smile-- the one that looks passionate and hungry.

Pete's right; I am more subdued. I've barely drunk tonight. I've barely spoken to him. There's this stupid thought in my head that won't stop circling, a vulture to my roadkill emotions... I should probably talk to Pete about it, but I don't want to.

I really, really don't want to.

                                                      *******

Pete's pressing kisses to my spine. My eyes are fluttering.

I am feeling everything all at once, my brain spinning the wheel of things I could say, because I have to say something.

His hands are next to my head.

"C'est..." My mouth finally spits out. "L'amour!"

He thrusts into me and I scream and ecstasy rushes through my veins and--

And I wake up.

I sit up in bed, my heart racing. My shirt is soaked through with sweat. The door to my bedroom creaks open, and I glance. It can't be anyone but...

Pete's head peeks in. "Nightmares?"

I nod against my own will.

"Can I come in?"

I nod again and curl my legs under me so he can sit on my bed. He sits down and cocks his head at me.

"Are they like before?"

"No," I say. Even my voice sounds groggy. I rub my eyes. "How'd you guess?"

"I heard a scream."

I blush. "That was the neighbors."

He sighs. "Alright. Well, can I help?"

"Can we take a walk?"

He blinks sleepily (adorably-- shut up, head) and nods.

                                                         ******

The night air is brisk and it feels good against my skin. Neither of us got out of our pajamas, so I can feel it everywhere and this coldness is exactly what I needed to get my head back on straight. I am not feeling things that are exceptional or special or once in a life time. I am being friends with my friend.

Pete is walking next to me. I can feel the warmth of his skin. Every step he takes makes me sure our hands will collide.

I blink.

There's no one out here but us, and it would be so easy to press him against one of these buildings and kiss him.

He wouldn't like that, the sensible portion of my brain says. The lying portion chimes in: You wouldn't either.

"Berg, something's on your mind," Pete mutters. His voice is still soft with sleep.

"No, you're not," I say before I can stop myself.

He gives me The Pete Look. "What is going on?"

I roll my eyes. "Alright. Fine. If you must know... I'm secretly a marmot. I eat leaves and insects. That mac-n-cheese... it was just for fun."

Pete stops. I stop too. He crosses his arms. I cross my arms. He glares at me. I glare right back at him. "Berg, stop copying me and stop fooling around and tell me what is wrong with you, so I can go back to sleep. I have a presentation tomorrow."

I hold up my hands. "Fine, fine. It's just..." My heart is thudding against my chest, and I think I might be about to pass out. Or die. "I don't want this to be a promise I can't keep," I whisper to Pete, and he raises an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?"

I look at him. Eyes glittering in the dimly lit Boston night. He's so pretty, so much more than me. I mean, people say I'm good looking, but those people have never seen Pete right now, or in the morning before he gets dressed, or when he's eating something he really likes, or during the soft moments in the evening when he comes home from school and he just stays still for a moment. Those people haven't really seen him like I've seen him.

No one sees him like I see him.

"Just..." my voice gets really quiet and I don't have the strength to keep speaking, but somehow I do anyway. "Stand still."

"Alright..." he eyes me cautiously, but doesn't move.

I take a step towards him, and lean in until our noses are touching.

He's barely breathing, and I quit a long time ago.

"I promise you are not like the ones I just have sex with for sex," I whisper, and he nods ever so slightly. His mouth has lagged and now it's partially open. Inviting me in.

I bring our lips together, one of my hands brushing his jaw, the other clasped around his waist, holding him close to me.

He tastes like beer and the instant mac-n-cheese we had for dinner.

He doesn't kiss me back but doesn't push me away either. I lean into him and he lets out a strangled sort of moan, breathy and soft. In its mercurial sound, I hear my name.

I pull away and he stands there, still as a statue, eyes closed and mouth open and breath heaving. My breath is rough and short, too, and I feel like I may have just ruined everything.

All of a sudden, he's animated again, moving towards me and talking loudly and I'm not processing a word. His hands are waving and he's heading towards me, and the lamplight is making him look so beautiful. The city looms up around us, the tall buildings like stone trees. He is so pretty and I feel so much for him.

"Pete?"

He stops moving. "Yeah?"

"I want to do that again."

For a moment, he pauses, and I feel like time has completely stopped. I can see him take a deep breath, and then he runs his hands over his hair and shakes his head and says, impossibly: "Me too."

He runs up to me and kisses me again, and this time our mouths are open, and it feels so good, and we are the only two people in the world. Our noses bump once or twice in the frenzy, but both of us are so entrenched by the simple act of kissing each other we don't care. There are no pauses or reservations. His chapped lips against my soft ones, his warm hands messing up my already too-messy hair, my cold hands under his shirt, our bodies pressed up against each other like there was never anything else in the world. We are the world.

I pull away, and Pete is laughing, his face aglow. I can't help but smile and laugh along with him.

Out of these millions of people I have met, I have fucked over a hundred. But outside of the hundred lies Pete, smoldering with the kind of beauty that lasts well into the grave. Pete is the only one I really want. The only one I have loved for longer than I care to remember.

[her-leading-man]

It seems like You have a variety of political affiliations following You... how do You handle this? Does that change how You treat people in Your personal life?

Such is life in our binary, polarized world.  The great thing about the American idea is that we are a melting pot of different races, creeds, religions and orientations.  I really like that idea.  I’d like for us to keep it that way.  And I am fine with Tumblr being a melting pot as well.  I really don’t care if Tumblr followers support the cult of Trump.  It may lead me to not want to see what they post about the cult.  You see they have a choice in whether or not to see what I post.  I also have a choice in whether or not I want to see what they post. 

In real life, my #nevertrump outspokenness did impact my standing in Alabama social circles.  I lost a lot of friends from 2015 to 2017.  What’s worse is that I lost a lot of respect for people whom I previously respected.  Men who I looked up to who intentionally spread lies and were absolutely careless when I confronted them with the lie.  This includes the Pastor of my former church who stood in the pulpit and showed a poorly Photoshopped image of a reviled Democrat and lied to the congregation.  And when I called him on it, he refused to apologize to the congregation.  Honestly, it made it so much easier to walk away from that congregation.  It just breaks my heart that my children are still there being exposed to such lies from men who should know better.

To this day, I avoid Facebook because it depresses me to see how far Alabamians have fallen into the cult.  If you want cult followers, it made sense for Trump to target followers of another cult.  Promise them judges that are friendly to their cause.  Have photo ops where you let them pray over you.  Pretty soon they have replaced their god with a new god.  And they have latched on to him regardless of how morally repugnant he is based on the teachings of their other cult. 

Mark Twain reportedly said that “History does not repeat itself but it often rhymes.”  For some reason there is something in sapiens’ evolutionary wiring that is drawn to cult leaders.  Think about King Saul of the Bible where the sinful people want a human king, and they found him in Trump.  Right prevailed and God replaced him with a new King.  Think about how many “Christians” in Germany found themselves staying silent about or supporting the torture and murder of millions of Jews and gypsies.  But right prevailed eventually.  As late as the middle of last century, Christians believed that those with darker skin than them were less than human and that devaluation crosses being burned and men hanging from trees by the neck.  Just a couple of years ago a white man running for senate in Alabama said he wants to us to go back to the days prior to the civil war.  And people in my former church lifted him up as the only moral choice on the ticket.  For whatever reason, times like this are a part of the human story.  I am not saying that President Trump is Hitler or wants to lynch African Americans.  I am saying that he has successfully tapped into that piece of us that is capable of such atrocities.  When you start banning Muslims, putting kids alone in cages, taking away food stamps and referring to immigrants as animals, rapists and murderers, there is a segment of our population that silently acquiesces and a segment that shows up to rallies with a red hat and applauds.  I don’t understand this about humans, but it is our unfortunate reality.

It is sad.  But life goes on, and I trust that what is good and right will prevail.  I don’t want to silence those who have different political beliefs.  I want to listen to what they say and reason for myself as to whether or not what they believe lines up with what I believe.  Based on the situation, I will either engage them in polite discourse or I will choose to stay silent and walk away.  Cult followers are loyal to their cult, and they generally don’t turn on the cult. Sometimes walking away from the conflict is necessary.  I hope they wake up before it is too late.  Both cults will die eventually.  I long for that day.

HLM

[ashcourse-blog]

My A-spec Experience.

Dear exclusionists and aphobes,

My name is Ash, and I am demisexual. I have identified as a-spec since I was 12, after coming across asexuality via a Tumblr positivity post about specifically aces and aros. I was so happy. I had finally found something that I could resonate with, and it made me so excited to know that there were others out there like me. 

Now, because exclusionist Tumblr was not as prominent then as it is today (from my personal experience), I never came across any aphobic posts that discouraged me from identifying as asexual. So I carried on, proud to be ace. I quit using Tumblr due to personal reasons for a couple years, so when I came back (at around 14-15), I was expecting the same positive vibes and welcoming arms from everyone. 

I was wrong.

Aphobes and exclusionists were flooding the tags with horrible aphobic material and nasty call-outs about how a-specs didn’t belong in the LGBTQIAPD+ community. There were many that actually discounted some a-spec identities as “fake” or “attention-seeking”. I was hurt. I was sickened. I was sad. I remember crying myself to sleep that night, hating myself for who I was. 

I experienced internalized aphobia for a while after that. I had immense difficulty struggling to accept myself, and I was definitely discouraged from identifying as ace.

Until I attended my school’s GSA. My counselor, who I was out as ace to, informed me of the club during my sophomore year of high school, and at first, I was against the idea, saying that I wasn’t sure if I’d be accepted as LGBT+ there, but she assured me that everyone there was very friendly and inclusive.

I timidly attended my first meeting at the GSA, and everyone was so excited to see a new face. My social anxiety prohibited me from interacting with anyone at the time, but over the course of a few weeks, I slowly warmed up and came out of my shell. However, when I was chatting with a few of the members in a little “friend circle”, someone asked me what I identified as. I froze. I panicked. I almost started to cry. I was so scared that the people who were criticizing my identity on Tumblr were right in front of me at that very moment. Then it came out of my mouth suddenly, without warning.

“I’m asexual.”

I did it. I said it. I was out as ace to near strangers at school. I wanted to run away, but something stopped me. I stayed. I was expecting backlash. I was expecting hate. 

But they accepted me like I was one of their own. And I was. I was LGBTQ+. And I still am. But the point being, I felt free. I felt like I could finally be myself.

But my identity was bound to change, as all identities are. When one of the girls in my GSA said she was demi, I got curious. I asked her what she meant by that, and she explained demisexuality and demiromanticism to me like it was common knowledge. I was pleasantly shocked to know that, hey, there IS an asexual spectrum, and it ISN’T just black-and-white. When I said I wanted to learn more about it, she was happy to oblige, and I discovered that there were TONS of asexual identities out there, not just aro and ace.

I started to think about my label a bit more that night. Was I really asexual or was I something more than that? After a while of thinking of myself with that term, I became more and more comfortable with myself. And I rejoiced. I’d finally figured it out.

I am demisexual.

But that’s not where the story ends. 

Just a couple weeks ago I came out to my “best friend” as demi. I thought we were friends. I thought I knew everything about her. I thought she was a good person. I thought I loved her (as a friend).  But I was met with the same aphobia as what I’d previously experienced on this hellsite a while back: “Demisexual isn’t a thing” “It’s just a glorified term for straight” “You just want to be special” “You’re not LGBT” “You’re broken” And she cut off all contact with me (she was a long-distance friend).

I was hurt. I felt broken. And I’m still wounded today. But after coming back to Tumblr with a brand new account and blocking/ignoring as many exclusionist blogs as possible, I felt a little bit better. Especially after seeing all the a-spec positivity blogs everywhere in the discourse tag. (We can do this!)  Now, I’m not out to my parents. They only see me as asexual. I’m much too afraid to tell them that I’m demi. 

But I AM demi and I’m PROUD.

Now, before I wrap this post up, I just wanted to clear something over. Yes, I AM heteroromantic. Yes, I AM demiHETEROsexual. But that does NOT make me ANY less LGBTQ+. Don’t you DARE say that, especially after reading this post, that I am NOT a part of the community. Aphobia and asexual oppression/discrimination is VERY real, especially in today’s sexualized society, where if you don’t find “so and such” celebrity “hot” at first glance, then there’s something wrong with you.

I hope any a-spec person reading this has found some sort of hope. I hope they’re having a good day.

EVERYONE on the a-spec is beautiful and valid, and 100000% LGBTQ+.

Exclusionists and aphobes, kiss my demisexual ass.

love, Ash <3

[chibicrow]

otp meme: datastorm, and I'm an indecisive trashcan so I say... all? or at least as many as you want/can?

*sob* I’m so glad the first two Anons for this meme want me to give Stardust Boi so much love I’m appreciative. 👏😭 (listen I love making fun of Ryoken, but also. he needs hugs.) 

also giving me the opportunity to gush about Datastorm that much.... Giving me too much power here, Anon. >:3c 

(I omitted #19-21 and #26-27 tho mostly b/c I didn’t think those questions would apply to them dlkafjalksdjf) 

(also this REALLY got lengthy and tumblr won’t save the read more cut for whatever reason so sorry y’all aSDLKFASLFKASJF) 

For the OTP Question Meme!! 

1. Who is the most affectionate?

def Yusaku. like he would drown Ryoken in affection ok. (after the initial “do I really want to be that physically close” + finding out Ryoken’s boundaries phase lmao)

2. Big spoon/Little spoon?

good thing I just looked this up ‘cause I was like “I have no hecking idea what this means.” lmao

anyway, Yusaku’s big spoon, Ryoken’s little spoon don’t change my mind.

3. Most common argument?

Going on the “Ryoken has severe mental health problems thanks to his asshole dad + once he realizes his dad was indeed an asshole” train, Stardust Boi has a tendency to be super self-deprecating, and this freaks Yusaku out a bit, so he just. Unleashes a tirade of compliments on the guy. 

And Stardust Boi’s like “No I’m not. No. No. That’s not true.” until Yusaku hugs him to get him to stop. Usually works for the time-being. :3c

4. Favorite non-sexual activity?

BESIDES CARD GAMES? Taking naps. Particularly naps on the floor. Particularly with Yusaku sleeping on top of Ryoken. Actually it’s more like Yusaku sleeping on top of him and Ryoken just staring at him while smiling the entire time. 

5. Who is most likely to carry the other?

I mean, not that Yusaku ever does it, but he probably could carry Ryoken if he ever wanted to. 

6. What is their favorite feature of their partner’s?

*sharp inhale* AAAAAAAA -

Ryoken about Yusaku: the rare (to him) and elusive Super Soft Yusaku Egao(tm). Gives him butterflies every damn time.

Yusaku about Ryoken: oddly specific, but Ryoken’s hair when it’s just washed (which is.... not everyday lets say. b/c he doesn’t need to. he’s a thick-hair boi) and conditioned. it’s like Supreme Soft(tm) at that point and Yusaku likes running his fingers through it (after Ryoken’s like “YOUR HANDS BETTER BE CLEAN I S2G” + Yusaku’s like “what do you take me for.”) 

7. What’s the first thing that changes when they realize they have feelings for the other?

uh about Yusaku, just watch VRAINS like right when he realizes Revolver-sama’s That Person(tm) i’m pretty sure the answer’s there. //punted

I’M KIDDING.

Definitely the way they refer to each other IRL. RIP calling each other Playmaker + Revolver in real life. But then they’d just stick to surnames @ first b/c calling each other by first names? woah there. 

But then, Ryoken’s actually the one who says Yusaku’s name first (probably right before he confesses his feelings) + Yusaku’s like “did u just.”  

8. Nicknames? & if so, how did they originate?

I...really don’t see them as the “giving each other disgustingly cute nicknames” couple lmao. 

now them doing that is a different story but

9. Who worries the most?

Yusaku. Poor guy. With a guy like Ryoken tho, I don’t blame him lmao. 

10. Who remembers what the other one always orders at a restaurant? 

Omg Ryoken hands down. Like he’s probably got Yusaku’s orders memorized to the condiment preferences for different meals of the day at different restaurants 😂 And Yusaku gets so embarrassed about it asdlkfalkjdf. 

11. Who tops?

SADLFKJSALKFJ WAIT WASN’T THERE DISCOURSE ABOUT THIS FOR DATASTORM A WHILE AGO IN THE VRAINS FANDOM? Glad I didn’t get asked this then.... 😂😂😂 heckin’ rip. 

Ok, this is gonna get super specific but uh, the gist of it is.... it depends, really? (as it should)

So like, if Ryoken + Yusaku are both in a good mood and are just like “hey we haven’t done this in a while” kind of thing, it’s Ryoken.

If Yusaku’s kinda down but still up for it, also Ryoken.

But if Ryoken’s the one who’s down, it’s Yusaku.  

And then that once in a blue moon moment where both somehow get horny af . . . Yusaku. 😂👏👏

and those are my two cents *drops mic*

12. Who initiates kisses?

Ryoken! I mean, I think Yusaku’s affectionate (*gestures @ #1 answer lmao*), but he’d let Stardust Boi take the lead in the kissing department b/c.... well he never knows what he’s gonna get there, so..... 😂

13. Who reaches for the other’s hand first?

ok I know this probably goes against episode 105 when Yusaku just looked at Aoi’s hand like “tf am I supposed to do with that”, but I’m sure Yusaku would reach for Ryoken’s hand first. It wouldn’t be like a gradual “reaching toward the hand” thing either. Yusaku would just. Speed-grab it like “it’s mine now”. 😂

bonus: so like if Yusaku does that while they’re sitting or something, Ryoken will massage his hand by rubbing little circles into his palm. CUTE DATASTORM AMIRITE?!?!?!

14. Who kisses the hardest?

DEFINITELY Ryoken. hot damn lmao. 

15. Who wakes up first?

Ryoken. He wakes up at super weird hours too like boi do u even sleep. 

16. Who wants to stay in bed just a little longer?

Yusaku~ <3 also he definitely tries to keep Ryoken in bed with him too lmao. 

17. Who says I love you first?

ok this is kind of a tough call, but Yusaku, I’d think. 

18. Who leaves little notes in the other’s one lunch? (Bonus: what does it usually say?)

Yusaku definitely leaves notes for Ryoken <3 Just a simple “have a great day ^w^” usually suffices lmao.

....yes Yusaku would def write ^w^ don’t change my mind.

22. Who cooks more/who is better at cooking?

ok so originally I was gonna put Yusaku and leave it at that, but then I realized that it’s possible BOTH of them are hopeless in the cooking department. But, I guess Yusaku would still be my answer b/c at least he knows how to read the instructions on microwavable stuff. 

23. Who comes up with cheesy pick up lines?

RYOKEN.....AND HIS PICK UP LINES ARE LITERALLY SO BAD.....LMAO. But of course Yusaku loves them + falls for them every time b/c of course he does.

24. Who whispers inappropriate things in the other’s ear during inappropriate times?

Yeah still Ryoken dlsafaklsfja. Followed by Yusaku blushing like mad. 

25. Who needs more assurance?

Ryoken...... Good thing Yusaku is an understanding cotton candy boi 💖

28. What do they do when they’re away from each other?

they’re like. super big into FaceTime (or whatever the VRAINS universe equivalent app would be) whenever both of them are up to talking a lot that way (which isn’t often b/c lmao introverts.) But they both know they need their alone time, so.

29. one headcanon about this OTP that breaks your heart

......hello darkness my old friend..... (EVEN THO I TECHNICALLY DON’T HAVE TO ANSWER THIS BUT. alas. I am a fic writer.) 

anyway y’all remember how VRAINS used to emphasize that Yusaku had nightmares for a decade about the Lost Incident? 

well, considering Dr. Kogami (fuck him) let his own son listen to the sounds of screaming children as they’re electrocuted, I’m damn sure Ryoken has nightmares about that and has problems sleeping b/c of it, even having a few panic attacks. Yusaku can help him with those (b/c he’s been there), but he’s not sure what else to do other than be like “Ryoken pls go to therapy I beg you.”

(but Ryoken refuses to go b/c he really thinks talking about it w/ a complete stranger makes it worse)

anyway super unrelated to this entire meme, but wow, fuck you Dr. Kogami. 

30. one headcanon about this OTP that mends it

ok but relating to the above, imagining Ryoken finally decides to go to therapy b/c Yusaku keeps insisting. And with the first few sessions, Ryoken gets worn out with every session b/c “wow emotions I didn’t know I had.” But Yusaku, being the real sweet boi that he is, always waits for him and always gives him a long hug. \ .D. / YAY HUGS. 

[shanastoryteller]

I just love your gods and monsters stories! I have been a fan of mythology since I was old enough to read and your takes on the stories are a modern breath of freshness. I was wondering if you were going on touch on Eris maybe?

a continuation of X

It hasn’t even been a day, the party for the wedding isstill in full swing. There are pockets of arguments, but nothing interesting haseven happened yet when Ares corners herand says, “I know it was you.”

Hebe goes cold. She wants to deny it, to lie and worm herway out of it, but if he already knows then there’s no point. She can’t dodamage control by pretending that the damage isn’t there. “Have you toldanyone?”

He raises an eyebrow. “And ruin all your hard work?” Hesounds sarcastic, but like he’s serious too. She just stares at him, waiting,and he sighs. “No, I haven’t told anyone.”

“Are you going to?”

“I should,” he snaps. “This is dangerous, and stupid. Thereare better ways to get power. There are easierways to power. You don’t need to do this.”

She grins, because he’s not going to stand against her. He’sgoing to glare and lecture, he might even nurse a grudge, but he’s not going totell. She doesn’t need his approval, only his silence. “I don’t want power tobe given to me. I want to take it.” She hesitates, because she doesn’t meanthis in a hurtful sort of way, but says it anyway. “Father declared you the godof war, and so that’s what you became. Hephaestus made himself from nothing,made things from nothing for the mortals, and so that’s what they named him. Themortals declared him to be a god of crafting and so that’s what he became. ButI don’t want to depend on Father or mortals.”

“If your power comes from neither from the Pantheon nor thepeople, then where?” he asks, and thankfully he doesn’t seem hurt, onlyskeptical.

“From where the first gods got theirs,” she answers. “Theywere granted nothing and took everything. I’m going to do the same.”

He blinks, then smiles for the first time during thisconversation. “Chaos bore the gods, and so you will become a god of chaos?”

It’s not quite the same, the chaos that birthed the universeand the chaos she’s capable of claiming are not one in the same. But they’relinked, and she plans to use that link to her advantage. “Yes.”

Her brother frowns and rubs at his chin. His hair is looseand long around his hips, how he likes to keep but is rarely able to because itgets in his way during battle, and his chiffon is silk, something else he likesbut doesn’t often get the opportunity to experience. “One golden apple and acouple of feuds aren’t going to cut it, not if you want it to last. A slowbuild is all well and good, and worked fine for Hephaestus. But that’s not whatyou need. You need this to be a stone in a river, you need ripples, and largeones at that.”

“A couple of feuding major goddesses are pretty big ripples,”she points out.

“It’s not a bad start,” he agrees, and she’s going to smackhim. “But it can be bigger. It can be more, you can make it be more, and you knowthat. Why aren’t you doing it? Why aren’t you pushing it further?”

She looks away from him and admits, “I don’t want to causeyou more trouble.”

He’s talking about a war. If she really wants to be thegoddess of chaos, then a terrible war would be a wonderful beginning. Butstarting a war when her beloved brother is so hurt by them seems cruel, and shedoes not aspire to be the goddess of cruelty.

Ares grins, sharp and dangerous. He did not want to be thegod of war, but no one can deny he’s good at it, that he’s molded his unwantedpower into something deadly and different and entirely his own. “There willalways be war, my dear sister. The humans simply don’t know what to do if they’renot spilling blood. Maybe they learned that from watching us. There will alwaysbe another war, I will always inevitably be summoned to the battlefield. Onemore terrible war won’t change that.”

“You really don’t mind?” she asks, cautious, because shewants it so badly she can taste it, but she won’t run roughshod over herbrother just to get when she wants.

“What do you care?” he asks, but he’s still fond. “You wishto claim the primordial power of chaos for yourself. Strike fast, and strikehard. I’ll take care of myself, whatever destruction you bring.” She throwsherself at him, and he catches her easily, pressing a kiss against her cheek. Heputs her back on her feet, then pushes her back into the party. “Go. You havemore work to do.”

Hebe grabs a flute of nectar out of the hand of the closestnymph, who is outraged at the audacity until he sees who has taken his drink,and then he only bows his head ins submissions.

For now, they cower from her because she is the daughter ofHera and Zeus, because she is the sister of Ares and Hephaestus. But that won’tlast.

Soon, they will cower from her because she’ll have the powerto unmake them all, and this is her beginning.

~

To the fairest,says the apple, and she’d left it ambiguous on purpose, because she wasn’t surehow she was going to play it. An argument about beauty among goddesses is allwell and good, but not something they’ll wage war over.

“Who could it be for?” she asks, eyes wide and innocent, thesad and simple daughter of Hera. “Is not death the great equalizer of men?Perhaps it is for Hades.”

Minor arguments of beauty have been brewing all evening, butat this, everyone pauses, and looks at the golden apple with renewed interest.

“Clearly it is for me,” Aphrodite proclaims, who hadn’tcared for the apple when it was only a trophy to physical perfection. “For lovecomes to all, no matter the status and circumstances.”

Athena’s eyes narrow. Hebe is never quite sure if the twogoddesses loved or hated each other, and often it seemed as if they didn’t knoweither. “Oh, how can love be fair, when it cuts so deeply? Perhaps it is inmatters of intellect and warfare where true fairness lies, for all people can excelregardless of their history.”

Hephaestus usually sticks close to his wife, but at themoment he’s nowhere to be found, which is strange, because Hebe had seen himearlier. But what it means is there’s no one to restrain Aphrodite when shesteps into Athena’s space and says softly, dangerously,“The pursuit of intellect belongs to the privileged and the lazy, while lovestrikes all equally.”

“Please, don’t fight!” Hebe cries, stepping between them. “Letus settle this without discourse. Perhaps an outside party to decide who isfairest between you? A mortal, since it is upon your fairness to mortals thatyou each claim the prize.”

“A fine idea, daughter.” Hera’s voice rings like the tollingof a bell across the party, and all fall silent as their queen walks towardsthem. Hebe tenses, because if anyone besides Ares can see through her, it isher mother. But Hera barely glances at her, instead striding into the middle oftheir semi circle with hair in complicated curls and piled high, a moreintimidating crown than any gold or jewels she could wear. “But truly thefairest of us is I. For I am the goddess of family, and even those who have nointellect nor love to claim for their own have a family connected either byblood or by choice. Clearly I am the fairest of the Pantheon.”

For a moment, Hebe fears this will be the end, and bothAphrodite and Athena will lower their eyes and acquiesce the title of fairestto their queen.

But Hebe had not spent months calling magic from chaos andpressing it into molten gold for nothing. Without her influence, without thecall for conflict her golden apple exudes, perhaps it would have been nothing,perhaps it would have all amounted to nothing.

Her golden apple refuses to be nothing. It tugs and pulls atthem, it’s enticing strife demanding to be used.

Aphrodite and Athena, the motherless daughters of Zeus,stand against Hera, Queen of the Gods.

This is still small, still a not-quite-argument, but sheknows what it will grow into. This is the beginning of a Great War, one born andnurtured by her magic. It will be of chaos, and so shall she be of chaos.

By this war’s end, they will curse her name. Eris, chaoschild, the child of nothing more than the elements themselves.

Hebe will always love Hera, but Eris will have no origins.Chaos came before all else, and it has no mother.

~

Hades is walking down the hall of his palace, and then in thenext moment he is not, he is in a place that is not quite here nor there, norreally any other place either.

There are only three beings who can move him in such a way,and he’s looking at all of them.

“Fates,” he murmurs, inclining his head. “To what do I owethe pleasure?”

“It has begun,” Lachesis rasps, a woman in the prime of herlife and empty eye sockets.  “A primordialgoddess will soon walk this earth once more.”

An equally blind little girl runs her hand down the air infront of her, and for the briefest moments Hades sees a shining silver thread,one of the millions that the women are constantly weaving. “We could change it.Alter the destiny. It would just be one little snip.”

“All things must end,” comes the creaky, barely there voiceof the crone, the single violet eye the fates share between them in her face.Atropos glares at her counterparts, and he knows that they can tell, eventhough they don’t have eyes. It was them that taught Charon to see withoutseeing so long ago, after all. “So this girl is the beginning of the end. Weare born, and we will die.”

“Then we will be born again,” the child adds. Clotho remindshim of Styx too often, and he must remember that though she may look like achild, she’s not one, not even in the same way that Styx is no ordinary child. Thefates play by a different set of rules. “Perhaps I like this world. Perhaps Ido not want to leave it just yet.”

“We have time,” Hades says, and they all turn and look athim, swinging their bodies around in unison in a way that he doesn’t think he’llever get used to seeing. “The beginning of the end may be here, but the end isstill a far off thing.”

Atropos says, wry, “To master time is not to be a master toall that works within it, Kronos.”

Hades flinches. No one calls him that. Very few even know tocall him that. It’s been a long time since primordial gods walked the earth, long before Cronus and Rhea came together to make his current form. “I know that.”

“From chaos we were born and into chaos we shall fade,”Clotho says. “How long can you avoid your end, Father of Time? How long untilnot even your time can save you?”

Hades almost smiles, but restrains himself. He’s doesn’tthink they’d appreciate it. “Thank you for the warning, Fates. I will keep myeye on the ticking clock.” On the clock he controls, of course.

Their hands are moving through the air, touching strings hecannot see and rearranging them faster than his eyes can follow. “Goodbye, Kingof Death, Father of Time.”

Hades inclines his head, but doesn’t bother to voice his owngoodbye. Once they resume weaving, he knows they can no longer hear him.

He returns to his castle under his own power, and goes insearch of his wife. Persephone must be told first, after all.

Hebe is not the first god to reach for the power of chaos. Butmaybe it is time for the beginning of the end, maybe they should let her keepwhat she’s so desperate to steal.

Just because it nearly destroyed Dionysus doesn’t mean itwill destroy her.

gods and monsters series, part xxviii

read more of the gods and monsters series here

[thegreenwolf]

Bella Morte

Note: This was first published on No Unsacred Place around 2011-ish, which went defunct a few years ago (RIP–it was a good site). Then it was on Paths Through the Forests, but I split from Patheos a couple of years ago due to philosophical differences with their new ownership. As they have not honored my request to have my writing taken down, and I don’t want to direct more traffic to them, I am slowly reproducing my work from there here. That way if I want to share this post with someone it will come from my site and not theirs. Please help me by sharing this link around–thank you!

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The beauty of the wild is the long gesture of life in time. The beauty of skin and fur and feathers, the beauty of blood, the beauty of bones sinking into grass.

–John Daniel, from The Soul Unearthed

That is the quote I painted on a recent creation of mine, shown in the picture above. My canvas was a piece of rawhide left over from a drum kit. The visual punctuation of the entire piece included an eclectic mix: a rooster feather; a coyote toe bone; a sea urchin spine; and two pieces of deer hide, fur and leather.

I chose the quote deliberately for that piece. There is a certain ambiguity to the words, flowing from one end of the life-death cycle to the other. “Life in time” breathes and pounds its heart, while the “bones sinking into grass” create a vivid image of the core structure of the animal, all the rest borne away, disintegrating into nourishment for the flora. In between, the hides and the blood are left open; they may be alive and running yet, but the blood may also be sluiced upon the ground, and the skin stripped from muscle and tendon and prepared for preservation.

In much of the United States, people have a poor relationship with death, to include that of nonhuman animals. The idea of the “poor, dead animals” (particularly those that aren’t carved up on a dinner plate) is often enough of a shock that no one wants to think, let alone talk, about it. We eat beef and pork, not cow and pig, and very few of us ever eat anything that’s looking back at us; even the shrimp are conveniently decapitated for our culinary comfort. The most common discourse about dead animals seems to come from some animal rights activists who quite often use guilt, shame, and shock to try to convince unsuspecting leather-clad omnivores into changing their ways. When the choices are either silence or stigma, there doesn’t seem to be much room in between for more moderate discussions.

I choose what I perceive as one potential moderate path, tempered with much awareness. For over a decade I have been an artist of animal remains, part aesthetics and part spiritual work. On the one hand, I very much appreciate the lovely curve of bone and the lush texture of deerskin, the intricately veined colors of feathers, and the varied structures of the hairs of all sorts of furs. Beyond animal parts as an artistic medium, though, the core of my work is funereal. From the beginning my art has been about reclaiming these remains from being trophies or status symbols, and a significant portion of my “supplies” is made of old fur and leather coats, reclaimed taxidermy, and the like.(1) I guide these remains to a better “afterlife” with others, as has always been my role with them, and everything I make with animal parts gets a full ritual purification as part of my pagan practice.

Over the years I’ve gotten a wide variety of reactions to my work, from awe to indifference to outright hostility. Thankfully the responses have canted toward the more receptive, whether in person or online. I get the distinct feeling, though, that most people, regardless of their views, are highlighting certain individual facets of the work that, together, I tend to take as a whole.Most of the people who favor my work seem to primarily connect with it on an aesthetic level. They like having something pretty, whether as something to wear, or as a “powerful” ritual tool. They appreciate it as art, which is perfectly fine. At the other end of the spectrum are the occasional activists who come in swinging; they see the death and the remains, to the exclusion of anything else.

On some occasions, though, I will meet people who bring my art home both as art, and as sacred remains. They haven’t glossed over the fact that what they hold was once living, often combining the parts of animals that never would have met in life (such as the cow and the sea urchin in my wall hanging above). But they still see the beauty in those remains, and in the fact of their death. They can appreciate the loveliness of a long-dead deer’s ribcage seated in a field, and the arrangement of those same ribs into a totemic shrine. They know they carry lives in their hands.

I have not lost sight of the living end of the cycle, either. I have always donated a portion of the funds I make from selling my art to nonprofit groups that work to preserve both animals and their habitat, as well as informal donations to friends and acquaintances in need of help with emergency vet bills and the like. I think my partner, S., put it best when he told me that my most powerful alchemy was taking the remains of animals that had often died cruel and inhumane deaths, and turning them into funds to help those creatures still living and the environs that support them.

And I do my best to educate people about the sources of the remains; I maintain a database of international, federal and state laws on possessing and selling animals parts in the US to help them make educated decisions. Nor do I lie about those of my “materials” that are byproducts of the fur industry; I do not claim they’re roadkilled or “natural deaths”, or wild instead of farmed, to try to assuage people’s guilt or to make me look more ethical in their eyes. To do so would be an insult both to the people I speak with, and the animals themselves, never mind my artistic and spiritual work.

This work with the remains is another foundational part of my nature-based path, and as I write in this place over time, you may see me refer to the “skin spirits” as a collective term for the spirits of all the animals whose remains I work with, skin, bone and otherwise. My nature-based paganism is rooted in all of the life-death cycle, and this is how I seek the beauty in that which is all too often ignored, or so symbolized as to be almost entirely removed from the gritty reality.

(1) I have become so known for collecting dead critters in certain circles, in fact, that I have been over time gifted with a number of antiques that were inherited by people who had no idea what to do with them, and so decided I was a good next stop for Grandma’s fur coat, or Uncle Doug’s deer heads.

Did you enjoy this blog post? Consider picking up a copy of my book Skin Spirits: The Spiritual and Magical Use of Animal Parts, or The Tarot of Bones, or my other books (some of which also have dead things in them!) Or you can check out my artwork made with hides, bones and other natural and found items. And I have a forthcoming book about Vulture Culture, the subculture that has formed in recent years around the appreciation of taxidermy and other dead things.

[themaninthelighthouse]

A Sudden Look Back

Ever since high school, I've always been quite public about my political beliefs. I've always enjoyed engaging discourses about various political themes as I've been surrounded by people who do the same. That essentially became a part of who I am; I was always mindful about what I chose, said, and supported. I've been pretty critical of what the government does and what they should do. I mean, it's not just politics, it's basically us talking about the future of our lives, so I was pretty much quite eager when I got to speak about it with others I meet. Although I do not jump straight into that kind of discussion when I meet a person as not everyone is that interested in politics like me, I guess, which I understand. Still, it's rather disappointing since politics is something everyone should be worried about. We all must genuinely be aware of topics like this as it is literally our lives that are placed in a scenario where if we don't fight for what we deserve or simply just our rights. We will be abused by those in authority.

Especially now that we're moving closer and closer each day for the forthcoming May 2022 elections, which is probably the largest choice I still am going to make, and it's also my first time voting, which is exciting, I suppose. Recently I've had a debate with my friends or people I know about who they're going to vote for, and to be honest, I'm delighted that most of my friends support the same person as me. It's wonderful to see that someone truly cares for their rights and is actually aware of what's happening right now in our country. Especially towards the marginalized people with whom I truly have a soft spot. However, not everyone in my circle feels the same way as me. Some of them genuinely favor the other side, which upsets me because how could they support someone who technically has been convicted and has been accused of things that were eventually accurate. The fact that they support someone who doesn't even attend debates or discussions, which I believe is crucial for one candidate to do. I mean, as much as I want to respect their opinions for voting this candidate, I do want to listen and know why they genuinely had thought of supporting this political figure. Like can you at least come up and explain to us what your platforms are and how you could be someone people can trust. Of course, candidates are given the opportunity to decide whether they want to attend a debate or not, but what bothers me is that it's like they're tricking people because aside from them not being able to provide their platforms to the public properly, they're actually avoiding to attend these events since they're avoiding the chance where they would get contrasted by other candidates. Aren't debates practically the least thing a running candidate could do for his supporters? It's simply these obvious things that sadden me that are genuinely very obvious out there, and, nonetheless, people still choose to support candidates who do this.

What makes it worse is that my parents also support the same candidate. It's simply frustrating to know since I've been very vocal about what I think and have continuously informed them about my political beliefs and what I believed they should be aware of. It's almost as if they weren't listening to me when I said those things since they still voted for that politician. Although I'm not giving up hope, we're still months away from the big day, and I'll do all I can to help open the minds of individuals I care about and make them see things they should've realized long ago. In the end, they're still a part of what we're fighting for, which is the good of our country's future.

[acehotel]

Got a Girl Crush: in conversation with Kristen McCallum

“Do you believe that sex is a prerequisite for commitment? Could you be in a long-term relationship without it?” “How can we liberate some of the heteronormative and toxic relationship models that we still fall into?” These are just some of the questions included in Visibility Packs, a discussion-based card game for safe space discourse launched several weeks ago by SafeWordSociety. Originally a podcast, SafeWordSociety is a QTPOC (queer, transgender people of color) visibility company founded by CEO Kristen McCallum. Kristen started the project with a group of friends in Brooklyn last February, and now works to fill the gaps of QTPOC visibility in media in as many ways as she can; her mission to increase visibility is clearly working – the SafeWordSociety podcast has been highly reviewed by listeners across the QTPOC spectrum and has gained an international listenership.

SafeWordSociety has grown over the last year from just a podcast to a blog, consultation and production for mission-aligned organizations, and a product line. With a live tour and new products in the works, Kristen is optimistic that “everything is going all the way up” and SafeWordSociety will become a cornerstone for queer visibility and community.

The following interview with SafeWordSociety founder Kristen McCallum has been republished in partnership with Got a Girl Crush, a blog and annual print magazine about women, by women, for everyone. Words by Rachel Lee; photos by Amanda Stosz for Got a Girl Crush.

How did SafeWordSociety get started? Where did the name come from?

I’m the friend in the group chat who starts all the discussions. At brunch, I always want to have discussions; we got into such good conversations, and I really wished everyone could hear the things we talked about. One day I thought, “Why can’t people hear what we’re talking about?”

I had never listened to a podcast, I didn’t know anything about audio equipment, but I gave myself a week to find out what to do, what equipment to buy, find out how to edit audio on YouTube. I scheduled a recording session with my friends in my living room at the end of the week, and episode 1 was created!

I was so nervous about recording the first episode of the podcast. I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to sound like, or how long it was supposed to be. We used some janky mics from Amazon, and I had no idea what to do on the audio mixer. I had only known what I was doing for six days at the time. The concept for the episode, online dating as QTPOC, was amazing — we had just had that conversation over group text, so it was like a conversation we would normally have.

As for the name: me and my friends went to a house for my birthday, and again, I started a random discussion and we started talking about safe words.

Like sexual safe words?

Yes, sexual safe words. It got me thinking — for people who don’t experience sex with safe words, what are the safe words for marginalized communities? What are things that are non-negotiable for us and that allow people to understand they’re non-negotiable? To me, those are pronouns. There’s no conversation about that — this is who I am, this is how I identify, that’s it. So I thought it would be cool as a way to talk about discussions in the community, create something around what is non-negotiable. That’s why we start every episode with an introduction of our pronouns, with the guests also.

We were on a bus trip back to New York from an all-women’s day party at a strip club in DC, and I realized the name should be “SafeWordSociety.” I explained the concept to Lamika Young, [Kristen’s podcast co-host], and she loved it.

What is an all-women’s day party at a strip club? What goes on there?

A lot. I had never been to an all-women’s day party (I didn’t even know strip clubs had day parties), but this strip club in DC shuts down the first Saturday of every month. It’s for all women-identified people to come and have a space that’s free of ogling men and have a good time. It’s essentially drinking, eating really good wings enjoying beautiful bodies and empowerment, and having a good time. It was amazing.

Circling back to SafeWordSociety, the company has branched out from being just a podcast to a blog, and a card game. Where did the idea for the Visibility Packs come from?

When I started the podcast, I didn’t think about anything past episode one. I had no idea what I was doing, I thought people wouldn’t listen to it, and that the quality wasn’t amazing. People did listen to it, because it was filling a gap. People got more interested, and our listenership started to grow – one of our biggest listenerships is in Uzbekistan, Uganda, all places outside of the country. I realized we need to expand and engage people who don’t have access to the podcast, so I created an umbrella company, SafeWordSociety, and started to make projects within it. The podcast became a project.

SafeWordSociety as a company has many services outside of the podcast. For New York Fashion Week in 2017, we produced a gender-neutral evening wear show. A designer came to me and told me what they wanted to do; I had never produced a whole show before, but I’m all about visibility and I have a background in production, so I took a stab at it. This is exactly what we offer as a company: creative strategy and branding for mission-aligned brands, services, and businesses.

I’m a published writer and a lot of times, I’m wary of submitting my writing for websites. Everyone is looking for content that’s applicable; sometimes it’s difficult for a person who has a narrative like mine to send something, then be told [by a publication] they are not interested. You have to ask yourself, “What part of my marginalization are you not interested in?” It’s been difficult to get people interested in our work — it’s not less quality or less of anything, but people focus on what is trendy, and QTPOC aren’t trendy. We created the blog because I wanted to figure out a way to publish writing I care about, and a place for interviews with people I would love for this community to know more about, but might not be able to make it to the podcast. Now that we’re in season four, and we’re booked until the end of season five, so the blog is the place for writers in the community who want a platform, or aren’t ready to submit to huge publications.

I have been thinking about the visibility packs for a long time. Cards Against Humanity is triggering as fuck, and especially in this time, it’s not fun to laugh at that kind of stuff. The Visibility Packs are a form of learning and engagement. I’m sure other people want to have conversations but aren’t sure how to start them — I’m from a Jamaican family, and it’s really hard to have discussions when you don’t have the appropriate language. If we write the questions that we think should be asked, then you can never say the information isn’t there — you just have to go get it.

Visibility Packs. Image provided courtesy of SafeWordSociety

You mentioned there’s a gap in media that SafeWordSociety is filling — do you find that there are opportunities for queer creators of color, especially in the podcasting world?

There are other podcasts that focus on queer creators of color, or queer creators of color who focus on pop culture. We’re so inundated with [coverage on pop culture] from everywhere else, it’s not specifically something I wanted to focus on. I wanted to talk about things QTPOC are doing and allow people to tell their own stories. We’re the ones to do interviews and introduce people to a large arena of listeners. There aren’t a lot of places where I can see what my path could potentially be if I wanted to open a yoga studio as a marginalized person, or learn a victim of gun violence can focus on how to love their community. That’s a gap where tangible things are offered.

What kinds of topics do you try to focus on when you think of episode ideas? Do you try to focus on the intersectionality between the two communities the podcast serves?

SafeWordSociety is a visibility company for all QTPOC. When I’m thinking of topics, I’m intentional in thinking just about the topic, not the identity of the person. If I want to talk about cooking, I look into the community for chefs that identify as QTPOC. Our topics cover literally everything — music, art — then we just look for guests in that field.

What is your favorite episode to date?

Season 1, episode 8. It’s about forgiveness, and it’s with Anyanwu Uwa who identifies as a love activist. She’s a survivor of gun violence and talked to us about how that experience has helped her love her community more and be more forgiving. She went through a really heinous event and has a response that is understanding and wants to put love into a community so these things don’t happen again. That episode was by far my favorite because I recognized what we were doing, and what I had built.

You were featured by Autostraddle, which is every queer woman’s dream! What kind of impact is SafeWordSociety making in the queer media circles? What do you hope the listeners are taking away from it?

I think it’s making a really big impact. I know what I needed, and I don’t think I ever recognized the importance of creating things that I need. You don’t know what other people are looking for. Because it’s my genuine heart work, I recognize the impact it has on other people, because they can feel that I love it and I mean it, it’s important to me also.

I hope listeners are taking away a lot. What I try to do in each conversation is for people to see that even though we have struggles, we have grown through a lot of them. There’s a lot of trauma in the QTPOC community, but inside of that, people are having genuinely good times in their lives. We laugh too, we have bad dates, and we burn things when we cook. We get married, run businesses, make money. There are a lot of things to be proud of, and I hope listeners see things they don’t otherwise see. Before I started the podcast, I didn’t know a lot of successful QTPOC people existed as chefs, or successful entrepreneurs, because no one chooses to highlight that.

“I want my eight-year-old niece who’s thinking about identity to be able to access resources that are positive and make her feel uplifted. If you don’t find them, create them!”

Who are some QTPOC you’ve been inspired by? What are some of your favorite podcasts, or queer-run media?

Lately? All my guests, seriously. We recently published an episode with Ericka Hart. She’s a breast cancer survivor and coined the term “topless activism.” I was exceptionally inspired by how she’s so positive. A lot of our guests are so positive through difficulty — our community deals with things as a part of our daily existence — but when they come on the podcast, it’s the opportunity to shoot the shit. I’m hosting the podcast through my life, while I’m going through personal issues, and my guests are helping me move forward. I’m inspired by the work they’re doing and realizing I need to step my game up. My guests are grateful for the opportunity, which I’m always taken aback by. You’re grateful for this? I’m grateful you’re even on the podcast!

I love Dear Queer hosted by Robin Cloud, who was also one of my guests. She’s a comedian and she’s hilarious. Her podcast is essentially how she is. It’s an opportunity for me to listen to something if I want a break from everything. How many places as a queer black woman do I get to laugh about stuff?

I read a lot of Autostraddle and all of the queer media that’s up because I just want to be in the know. A lot of it is missing POC representation, and it’s hard to read sometimes. I started SafeWordSociety because I felt left out and because I have a media company, the feeling of being left out is amplified now. I ingest as much queer media as possible because you have to be supportive of your community, but I try to stay away from it. I’m a human — feeling left out doesn’t feel good, and that’s what happens more often than not.

I don’t want this to be a super high-pressure question, but what’s the future of the company, of the blog, and the podcast?

I’m a Virgo, remember? I’m high pressure all the time! 

Everything is going all the way up! That’s my intention. For the podcast, I’m completely shocked by the trajectory it’s taken. People are checking for it now. I should have expected this — I put my whole heart into the work — but do you ever do that? I still think nobody’s going to listen to it, four seasons in. We’re working on going on a tour and doing live shows. I want to go to new places, be with live audiences, and see what format a live-show takes.

In terms of the website and the blog, I want to build the blog out to an outlet where writers can submit and it’s a go-to place for QTPOC narratives of all kinds. The visibility packs are coming, and I’m so excited. I want to tour with those – we have specific workshops we’re building out for the packs, and I want to take those to conferences, college campuses, classrooms — wherever people can facilitate these conversations, and create open dialogue and safe spaces. This first visibility pack that’s coming out is the original pack, but we’re going to partner with past guests and influencers on custom packs and partnership packs (focused on specific topics). I’m also working on another product I want to release in the summer — I can’t say anything about it yet, but the thought process is in the work.

The company itself is just going to grow. There are so many things I want to do. I want to get into TV, and that’s something I’ve never had the capacity to do it, but I can actually do anything if I teach myself how to. I have been working on pilot ideas and ways to make SafeWordSociety a huge ass media house. It’s necessary. I want us to be the staple for visibility, to have events and workshops and feel empowered to do anything they can and know anything is possible with community. There are other people who care about what you’re doing and your experience. It may not be the same experience, but they’ll work with you and help you out. I don’t know how I became this person, but I’m so dedicated to getting our voices and our work created, uplifted, and archived. It’s so important to have an archive of this moment. I want my eight-year-old niece who’s thinking about identity to be able to access resources that are positive and make her feel uplifted. If you don’t find them, create them!

Find SafeWordSociety's podcasts and resources on their website, Instagram, and Twitter.