#well. that’s just not real innit

[frankensteincest]

my two cents on the whole ‘evil isn’t interesting to explore in fiction’ take is that (1) yeah it’s a non-issue and this stance seems to me like an extension of the mandarin-sharing, horror is for love, make everything nice and simplistic trend and (2) in the cases when it is an issue. well, I think morality is an interesting concept actually, and good and evil are a part of it. evil has just occasionally been written about in deeply uninteresting ways. blame the interpretations, not the concept.

[water-weaving]

ok yeah i think i might be entering the critical Autumn Madness period actually

[luck-of-the-drawings]

WWWOOOPS FORGOT I MADE THIS. drew this back at around when the hyperbolic time chamber training arc was just starting. remember that? huh? remember the hamspter??? ohhhhhhhh youll remember the haspter!!!! oh my god yknow what else i remember. williams overwhelming love for christmas. oh my god. spooky zombie boy loves the christmas.. literally the best possible thing for him...

[phagodyke]

the masculine urge to take a saucepan off thr draining board and bash myself repeatedly over the head with it until I pass out and no longer have to experience feeling Bad 😍

[explode-this]

.

[mummer]

yes im an adult yes time of the doctor just made me cry. that’s allowed

[nomaishuttle]

aughhhhh i wish i had books 2 read i wanna read books so bad rn 🤓 <- i look like this. 2 pictures of me 👇

[todayisafridaynight]

So the other day I sprained my knee 💀💀 not really in my Top Ten Coincidences but it is a little funny... At Any Rate I'm glad your wrist support glove is helping and I hope the rest of your recovery is smooth :) Would be very excited to see the sick fic you had in mind! (And Also Sorry For Contributing Nothing To AraSawa)

BTW I wanted to introduce you to my new silly little guy Yuhei Kirihara (they told him he sucked at drawing </3)

I'm clipping things as I go to show you later because this is the most insane line delivery I've ever heard from Tsutsumi But Also he's definitely cute tier list material so far

WDYM YOU SPRAINED YOUR KNEE (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)(;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`) some news is better than no news tho: im relieved you didnt succumb to the flu you caught last week, im happy to hear from you (❁´◡`❁) knee bit sucks tho im SO so sorry howdoesthatevenhappen--

AH BUT THE FIC i was thinking on whose pov to write it from all last night but now that I Think i know which one to go with im excited to start writin it soon (๑•̀ㅂ•́)✧ AND NO SUCH THING AS 'NOT CONTRIBUTIN' ARE YOU KIDDIN your enthusiasm alone's made me waaaaay more confident about sharin art and the sor, not to mention chattin with me and Undoubtedly giving me an idea. or fifty-- sure id been A Lil Silly bout em beforehand, but havin someone as energetic bout em as me def gives me a lot of motivation to share more, so ty for all you do as always ♪(´▽｀) i consider that contribution anyhow.. its very important to me in my opinion...

OH BUT HE SEEMS CUTE tbf i can be won over on a ttm chara so long as i see him smilin... my bias my weakness.. MOST interested to see more bout this one youre watchin when you got the time 👁️👁️ espwheniverunoutofnakaimediatowatch--

[koheletgirl]

it's funny i somehow feel more closeted than ever this year. i feel like the ikea couch

[fagmegumi]

the gang's all here!

[osmiabee]

Hi. I'm a biologist of colour with PCOS. There is significant amount of error and misinformation here.

Hirsutism is NOT a diagnostic criterion for PCOS - let alone the most important one - it's one of many indicative symptoms which can include adult acne, infertility, "male pattern" excess hair growth and "male pattern" balding - There are not considered diagnostic criteria as these are secondary symptoms that occur due to excess testosterone.

The diagnostic criteria are all direct symptoms: you need 2/3 for official diagnosis: Irregular periods (self-reported), Visible cysts on ovaries (via ultrasound), and Excess "above range" Testosterone (via blood test),

When you test for what is considered a "healthy range" you have to exclude people who are unhealthy and exhibiting symptoms, as they will skew the data. Worst case scenario this can lead to people NOT getting the diagnosis and treatment they need because they are considered "normal" even while exhibiting secondary symptoms.

The 97.5th percentile is a common statistical tool that excludes the extremes of the data to set a realistic average range. When someone comes in with symptoms of a disease (in the example above, men with osteoporosis) and you test them and find their hormones are different to 95-97.5% of a healthy, asymptomatic population, you can then point at that hormone as a potential cause of disease and correct it.

I cannot describe to you how important it is to exclude people with the "makes too much testosterone" disorder, while testing a baseline population to get an idea of the "normal/healthy" levels of testosterone.

Because PCOS is so common (2-10% of the population depending on your statistical model) that bar/threshold for testosterone in women is set high. Likely because even while trying to exclude people exhibiting PCOS symptoms (including excess hair) so many people with underlying PCOS (and high androgens) are largely asymptomatic (half of cases accourding to the NHS), and either live their whole lives unaware or do not get tested until they have significant fertility or secondary health problems later down the line.

In my own case when I got my results back I was the third woman that *day* that my doctor had to call to say "sorry, your androgen results were quite high but technically within the normal range," likely because that 97.5 percentile bar they're using as a baseline is skewed by the fact that a huge proportion of women have PCOS, and even while exc they can't exclude us all from the baseline based on diagnosis, family history, and secondary symptoms obvious to doctors (like hirsutism) alone!

These are all tools made to inform individualised medicine: despite my "normal range" androgens I am currently taking Spironolactone (a testosterone reducing drug - commonly used in HRT) to combat the effects of PCOS because my "in range" hormones were still clearly too much for my individual body, and caused symptoms that made me unhealthy (anaemic and in severe pain due to periods + painful acne) and put me at risk of things like diabetes and heart disease later down the line.

This isn't about just arbitrarily excluding women with "too much" hair. But about setting a useful baseline for XX-female high-androgen disorders.

BECAUSE BEING ABLE TO ACCURATELY DIAGNOSE PCOS IS A GOOD THING.

The linked study above that was immediately dismissed as weird and racist, looked at the symptoms of a diverse group of american women with PCOS, and found preliminary data that the areas of skin that respond to high androgen levels (due to PCOS) differ depending on race. (for example - African Americans commonly developed facial hirsutism under their chins, while hispanic individuals were more likely to develop it on their arms and legs).

STUDIES LIKE THIS ARE GOOD, ACTUALLY, BECAUSE IF WE ONLY HAVE DATA FOR WHITE PEOPLE, POC WILL BE UNDERDIAGNOSED.

These kinds of studies are important, because it tells dermatologists where to look for secondary symptoms of PCOS in their patients, which is important because 92% of people with PCOS have symptoms affecting their skin, and 1 in 4 undiagnosed people are referred for PCOS diagnosis by a dermatologist.

IN CONCLUSION: This isn't about defining "woman" or "normal female" or setting "arbitrary" "spider eating" statistical rules for what is an acceptable testosterone range. It's about creating an accurate model for disease, which despite potentially affecting 1/10 people with uteruses, is massively underresearched and underdiagnosed. Because of medical misogyny. And racism to boot.

It's true that huge swathes of medical practice are rooted in misogyny and racism, and uphold a gender and sex binary that is, in reality, far more flexible and complicated than historic tests would allow for, but this post is inaccurate and relies on borderline deliberate misinterpretation of the medical data to make that point.

I forget why, but I was on the Wikipedia page for polycystic ovarian syndrome, and I started researching hirsutism in women, and I learned the following things in this order:

there's a diagnostic criteria used to evaluate how hairy a woman is

This is important because being too hairy is a diagnostic criteria of most disorders that cause hyperandrogenism

Disorders that cause hyperandrogenism can be diagnosed by...measuring how hairy you are (this is the main and most important diagnostic criterion for PCOS)

Disorders that cause hyperandrogenism are important because they are correlated with obesity, infertility, and...being too hairy?

I think to myself, wait, what is a normal range for testosterone in women? I find this article...which set reference ranges for "normal" testosterone levels in women...EXCLUDING WOMEN WITH PCOS?

Quote: "Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is another notable condition in genetic (XX) females, which is characterized by excessive ovarian production of androgens. This condition is included for comparison with DSD, as the affected females with PCOS are genetic and phenotypic females. The elevated levels of testosterone in these females can lead to hyperandrogenism, a clinical disorder characterized variably by hirsutism, acne, male-pattern balding, metabolic disturbances, impaired ovulation and infertility. PCOS is a common condition, affecting 7%-10% of premenopausal women."

So: the study claims to demonstrate a clear distinction between the normal range of hormone levels in "Healthy" men and "healthy" women...with "healthy" being defined in the study as...having hormones within the "normal" range.......................

So I researched what the clinically established "normal" range for testosterone in women is

THERE ISN'T ONE????

Quote from the above article: "Several different approaches have been used to define endocrine disorders. The statistical approach establishes the lower and the upper limits of hormone concentrations solely on the basis of the statistical distribution of hormone levels in a healthy reference population. As an illustration, hypo- and hypercalcemia have been defined on the basis of the statistical distribution of serum calcium concentrations. Using this approach, androgen deficiency could be defined as the occurrence of serum testosterone levels that are below the 97.5th percentile of testosterone levels in healthy population of young men. A second approach is to use a threshold hormone concentration below or above which there is high risk of developing adverse health outcomes. This approach has been used to define osteoporosis and hypercholesterolemia. However, we do not know with certainty the thresholds of testosterone levels which are associated with adverse health outcomes."

What the fuck?

What the fuck?

It's batshit crazy to make a diagnostic criteria for medical disorders by placing arbitrary cutoffs within 2-5% of either end of a statistical distribution. What the actual fuck?

"The results came back, you have Statistical Outlier Disease." "What treatments are available?" "Well, first, we recommend dietary change. You should probably stop eating so many spiders."

Another article which attempted to do this

Quote: "Subjects with signs of hirsutism or with a personal history of diabetes or hypertension, or a family history of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) were excluded."

"We're going to figure out the typical range of testosterone levels that occur in women! First, we're going to exclude all the women that are too hairy from the study. I am very good at science."

Anyway I got off topic but there are apparently race-specific diagnostic tools for "hirsutism." That's kinda weird on its own but when I looked more into this in relation to race I found this article that straight-up uses the term "mongoloid"

[duckduckngoose]

The urge to go back downstairs to play rlcraft all night instead of sleeping is real

[hayatoseyepatch]

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Description: Getting kinky with the windbreaker boys. I have so many thoughts about these men and I just needed to get them out of my system. Characters: Toma Hiragi, Ren Kaji, Haruka Sakura, Hayato Suo, & Yamato Endo. Word Count: 2.2k Tags: fem!reader, brat taming, praise, somnophilia, edging, mommy kink, dacryphilia, consent non consent, choking, degradation, oral (fem!receiving), penetrative sex, dirty talk.

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a/n: These are more like thirsts than headcannons but oh well. I might expand on some of these eventually and turn them into full fics if I can sit down and commit to it. It the mental illness, innit? Regardless, I hope you enjoyed these little blurbs! Special shout out to @foxyfiction & @to-eden for helping me with the prompts for some of these, you both are amazing. <3

I also have a masterlist now, if you’re interested that could be found : HERE

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Brat Taming

Hiragi had enough of you today, your skirt pulled up high, a constant switch in your hips while on patrol today with the Tamon team. Constantly teasing him, whether it was pulling him into an alley for an impromptu make out session, bending over in front of him letting him catch a glimpse of your already wet panties, or rubbing against his perpetually hard cock as you “just needed to slip past him real quick”. He was patient, tension building throughout the day coming to a fever pitch when you had both made it back to your shared apartment. He was on you in moments, lifting the back of your skirt to lay a harsh lap to you ass. Grabbing a fistful of your hair as he growls in your ear. “ I want you on that bed and I want you completely bare, do you understand?” He releases you hair, watching as you strip for him, climbing on the bed moments after you do.

Grabbing a hold of your cheeks with a rough hand he forces you to look up at him, eyes glazed over with arousal. Squishing your cheeks he props your mouth open, shoving a long digit past your lips. He grins as your mouth instinctively wraps around the digit, pumping the finger in and out of your lips, eyes rolling back as he feels your tongue wrap around the digit. Sucking his teeth as you shoot him a wink as he stuffs a second digit in your mouth. “Such a fucking brat, you know that?” He forces your thighs apart, free hand punctuating his words with a harsh slap to your dripping cunt.

His fingers sliding down, his fist two digits using your saliva that coated them to rub fast smooth circles against the sensitive bud. “Don’t forget your still getting punished baby.” He tsks giving you a sharp toothed grin. “Look at your pretty cunt, clenching around nothing, poor baby.” He coos, leaning down to your ear, lips grazing the shell to whisper. “You’re going to have to come from just my fingers before you can have my cock baby, think you can do that for me, hmm?”

Praise (Receiving)

Kaji had lost his temper once more, today a fight had broken out. One of the members of the opposing gang had harshly grabbed your arm, tugging you against him spitting extremities about the things he plandded to do to you. The words coupled with the fear in your wide eyes had Kaji seeing red. Completely blacking out in a fit of rage, he hated his, he especially hated you seeing him like this. The few times he had lost his temper in front of you, he ran, unable to face you. But not this time, you wouldn’t let him run from you. Grabbing the sleeve of his jacket you were quick to take him back to your apartment, silencing whatever apologies or exasperations with your lips against his.

Walking him backward toward your bedroom you wait for the back of his knees to hit the mattress. Pushing him to sit down as you climb on his lap. Mouths entangling in a heated embrace, clothes being pulled from each others bodies in a rush of passsion. Kaji trails kisses down your exposed body, lips wrapping arount a perked bud taking your nipple into his mouth. You rocked your hips against his, gronaing into the air. Your hands unfaten his pants, and with his help you pull his cock from his pants. You give him a smile, stroking his cheeks, eyes soft with fondness. “You're such a good boy Ren, always so good to me.”

You coo, the praise falling from your lips as you place one more kiss to his lips. Moving to grab him by the base, positioning him at your entrance, the desperate look in his eyes is all the confirmation you need to sink down on his length. You bite your lip, letting out a whimper at the feeling of his thick cock filling you to the brim. You tangle one hand in his hair, pulling lightly on his blonde strands, while the other moves up to his shoulder, nails digging into the skin. Pulling away only far enough to mumble into his lips. “Fuck, Ren.. Feel so good, you fill me up so good baby. I love you so much.”

Somnophillia

You wake feeling something warm between your legs. It isn’t long before your head is thrown back against the pillows you were once sleeping soundly against, voice crying out in pleasure as your boyfriend’s tongue draws slow patterns on your sensitive clit. You look down at him eyes lidded with sleep and now lust. “Haru.. what are you doing?” You mumble, blinking the sleep from your eyes. Between your thighs you can feel his cheeks heat up, a feirce blush on his features. He barely pulls from your cunt, mumbling against your center. “Couldn’t sleep, needed to taste you, ‘m want you so bad.”

He groans, hips rutting into the mattress, desperate for some friction to his aching cock. Any further arguments are silenced by a loud moan erupting from your lips, Sakura licks a fat stripe up your clit brfore reattaching his lips fully to your nub. He eats your cunt with such desperation, as if he needed to conume you to keep air in his lungs. His tongue is soon replaced by the rough pad of his thumb, head ducking lower to slide his tongue inside of your entrance, sliding against the silk walls of your pussy. He groans deep in his throat, the vibrations of the noise only enhancing the pleasure you’re feeling. ”Always taste so fucking good, need more..” He groans, pulling from your center, he slides up your body lips attacking yours with reckless hunger. He slid the material of his boxers down in one swift motion, grabbing himself by the base of his cock, collecting your wetness on the tip of his cock using it to ease himself inside your velvety walls.

He lets out a loud groan as he fully sheaths his cock inside you, head dipping to capture your lips with his own. The kiss is immediately laced with hunger, teeth clashing and tongues dancing in each others mouths. He pulls away, heavy breaths fanning against your lips as he sets a harsh steady pace from the start. “Fuck baby… can’t even sleep without you consuming my thoughts. Need you desperately… constantly.. feel like I’ll lose it if I’m not inside of you.”

Edging/Mommy Kink

You place a delicate kiss to his lips, trailing your kisses down his body until you were situated between his thighs. Looking up at him with hooded eyes from your current position. “You weren't lying baby boy. Look at how hard you are.” You grin, not letting him answer as you gave a few experimental tugs to his cock. Leaning up to lick a fat stripe from his base to his tip, collecting the pre come that had been steadily dripping since you had begun. Pulling away and leaning up once again, you grab his face in your hand, forcing his mouth open before letting your saliva mixed with his precum drip from your mouth to his. Placing a hand over his mouth, you lean down to his ear. “Swallow baby, I want you to taste us.”

You take his shock as an opportunity to lower yourself back down between his legs, swirling your tongue around his sensitive mushroom tip, taking as much as your throat would allow, hollowing your cheeks. Beginning to bob your head up and down on  his cock. Choji tugged at the cloth around his wrists, restraining himself as much as he could to not buck his hips. Failing miserably as his body writhed under yours He cried out as he felt your warm mouth around his cock, tears collecting by the corners of his eyes. Whimpers and cries falling from his lips as he found every ounce of restraint to not let his body betray him. The could in his stomach building once more for what seemed like the umpteenth time that evening. He didn’t want to fuck all of this up and receive punishment even further. “Mommy, please your mouth is so warm… be careful. I dont wanna come.. too soon.”

You grin around him, looking up at him through your lashes, nearly removing yourself from him before plunging back down, taking him until you feel him hit the back of your throat. You do this a few more times before pulling yourself off his cock with a 'pop'. You make your way up his body, getting impatient yourself, feeling your cunt clench around nothing. Straddling his abdomen, right above where he needed you most,  pressing your lips against his in a heated kiss. Desperately trying not to show that you were just as affected by your actions. You grab a fistful of his hair, tugging harshly, effectively separating your lips as you speak against his lips. “Tell mommy what you want baby boy. Go on, use your words I want to hear you.”

Dacryphillia

Each one of your pleas fog his mind with uncontrollable lust. Wram brown irises drowning in it. “So desperate for me already, darling, we havent even begun the main event.” He teases, directly into your ear, as he finally lines the tip of his thick cock with your entrance. Suo had been teasing you for what seemed like hours. Pulling orgasm after orgasm from your overstimulated cunt. Having made you come undone on his fingers and tongue several times, your pussy having felt desperatly empty without his cock filling you. He grins as you whine, his head just barely probing your entrance. “Please, Haya.” You whimper desperate for him to do something, anything, tears blurring your vision as they collected at your lashline.

“Please?” He tiles his head in mocking obliviousness. “Please what princess? Gotta tell me what to do or I cant help you, tell me what is it that you want?” He coos, free hand sliding up your stomach, thumb circling a pert nipple. Grinning he leans down tugging on your earlobe with this teeth, breaths fanning against your ear as he continues to speak. “Want me to fill this pretty pussy up with my cock? Feeling you flutter against me, whimpering out my name from those beautiful lips. Is that what youre asking for my pretty little bunny?”

He grins eyes lithe with mischief as you continue to babble, words coming out in a jumbled mess of pleas and calls of his name. Fat tears stream down your cheeks, desperation for him consuming your entire being. Suo’s hand coming up to caress your cheek. Thumb swiping at the tears that cascaded down your face. “Oh, sweet baby” He purrs, slipping the same thumb past your lips, letting you taste the salty wetness of your tears. “Crying for me already? We’ve barely even started.” He giggles, hips lurching forward, slamming into you to the hilt with one swift movement of his hips. Groaning as your back arches from the bed, eyes rolling back with a scream of his name being forced from your lips. “As much as I’d love to hear you beg for it, ive been waiting for too long for you my princess.~”

Cat and Mouse/CNC

Your breaths come out in heavy pants, your heart racing in your chest, your feet slamming against the grassy terrain as you run as fast as your legs can carry you. The shadow of the figure on your tail looming behind you. You pushed further, weaving in and out of trees to shake your assailant. The dark wooded area was easy to get lost in. You had only paused your running for a moment, attempting to take in your soundings, looking for a route to escape. Attempting to catch your breath, you were sure you had lost him. Just as you were about to turn on your heel and take off once more your eyes shoot wide, feeling fingers of a large hand wrap themselves around your throat. Your attacker using their grip as leverage  to shove you roughly against a tree, the larger figure looms over yours. Tattooed fingers squeezing just enough to make gaining air flow a bit difficult. Lips grazing your ear as he leans down to your height. “Gotcha~”

Endo’s piercing blue eyes lock with yours, leaning down to capture your lips in a heated kiss. Tongue invading your mouth, free hand coming up to cup your dripping cunt. Fingers circling your clit through the thin fabric of your panties. He smirks against your lips as you moan into his mouth. Pulling from you, he quickly removes your soiled panties, running his finger between your soaked slit. Bringing his finger to his lips taking in the way you taste, moaning around his fingers.

“Fuck doll, you taste so fucking good. Already so fucking wet for me.” He uses his thumb to force your mouth open, spitting a glob of saliva between your parted lips. “Go on babydoll, taste yourself.” He chuckles as you instinctively swallow, turning you in his embrace so your bent over. Flipping up your skirt, he leans back to take all of you in, eyes hungrily wracking over your exposed sex. Parting your folds with a thumb, watching as your entrance contracts around nothing a large grin splits across his face as he lands a harsh slap against your ass. “Gotta remind you who this belongs too huh? This cunt is mine princess.”

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Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed! I already have a part two in mind for this, so keep an eye out. Until then, see you later!

[drunk-poets-society]

man why is that stupid love song so catchy ugh

[phagodyke]

back home and my washing is done and I need to eat lunch and do my ironing and then I've done all the tasks on my list and I can spend the rest of the day having a mental breakdown and then go straight to sleep woohoo

[wifelinkmtg]

TUMBLR POST EDITOR WON'T LET ME TITLE THIS POST ANYMORE SO I GUESS THIS IS THE TITLE NOW. WEBBED SITE INNIT

So let's say you grew up in the nineties and that The Lion King was an important movie to you. Let's say that the character of Scar - snarling, ambitious, condescending, effeminate Scar - stirred feelings in you which you had no words for as a child. And then let's say, many years later, you're talking about it with a college friend, and you say something like, "oh man, I think Scar was some sort of gay awakening for me," and she fixes you with this level stare and says, "Scar was a fascist. What's the matter with you?"

The immediate feeling is not unlike missing a step: hang on, what's happening, what did I miss? You knew there were goose-stepping hyenas in "Be Prepared," but you didn't think it mattered that much. He's the bad guy, after all, and the movie's just pointing it out. Your friend says it's more than that: the visuals of the song are directly referencing the Nuremberg rallies. They're practically an homage to Riefenstahl. This was your sexual awakening? Is this why you're so into peaked caps and leather, then? Subliminal nazi kink, perhaps?

And then one of your other friends cuts in. "Hold up," he says, "let's think about what Scar actually did in the movie. He organized a group of racialized outcasts and led them against a predatory monarchy. Why are you so keen to defend their hereditary rule? Scar's the good guy here." The conversation immediately descends into a verbal slap fight about who the real bad guy is, whether Scar's regime was actually responsible for the ecological devastation of the Pride Lands, whether the hyenas actually count as "racialized" because James Earl Jones voiced Mufasa after all. Your Catholic friend starts saying some strange and frankly concerning shit about Natural Law. Someone brings The Lion King 2 into it. You leave the conversation feeling a little bit lost and a little bit anxious. What were we even talking about?

INTRODUCING: THE DITCH

There is a way of reading texts which I'm afraid is pervasive, which has as its most classical expression the smug obsession with trivia and minutiae you find in a certain vein of comic book fan. "Who was the first Green Lantern? What was his weakness? Do you even know the Green Lantern Oath?" It eschews the subjective in favor of definitively knowable fact. You can't argue with this guy that, say, Alan Scott shouldn't really count as the first Green Lantern because his whole deal is so radically different from the Hal Jordan/John Stewart/Guy Gardner Corps-era Lanterns, because this guy will simply say "but he's called Green Lantern. Says so right on the cover. Checkmate." This approach to reading a text is fundamentally 1) emotionally detached (there's a reason the joke goes, oh you like X band? name three of their songs - and not, which of their songs means the most to you? which of them came into your life at exactly the right moment to tell you exactly what you needed to hear just then?) and 2) defensive. It's a stance that is designed not to lose arguments. It says so right on the cover. Checkmate.

And then you get the guys who are like "well obviously Bruce Wayne could do far more as a billionaire to solve societal problems by using his tremendous wealth to address systemic issues instead of dressing up as a bat and punching mental patients in the head," and these guys have half a point but they're basically in the same ditch butting heads with the "well, actually" guys, and can we not simply extricate ourselves from the ditch entirely?

So, okay, let's return to our initial example. Scar is portrayed using Nazi iconography - the goose-stepping, the monumentality, the Nuremberg Lichtdom. He is also flamboyant and effete. He unifies and leads a group of downtrodden exiles to overthrow an absolute monarch. He's also a self-serving despot on whose rule Heaven Itself turns its back. You can't reconcile these things from within the ditch - or if you can, the attempt is likely to be ad-hoc supposition and duct tape.

Instead, let's ask ourselves what perspective The Lion King is coming from. What does it say is true about the world? What are its precepts, its axioms?

There is a natural hierarchical order to the world. This is just and righteous and the way of things, and attempts to overthrow this order will be punished severely by the world itself.

Fascism is what happens when evil men attempt to usurp this natural order with the aid of a group or groups of people who refuse to accept their place in the order.

There exists an alternative to defending and adhering to one's place in the natural order - it consists only of selfish spineless apathy.

Manliness is an essential quality of a just ruler. Unmanliness renders a person unfit for rule, and often resentful and dangerous as well.

And isn't that interesting, laid out like that? It renders the entire argument about the movie irrelevant (except for whatever your Catholic friend was on about, since his understanding of the world seems to line up with the above precepts weirdly well.) It's meaningless to argue about whether Scar was a secret hero or a fascist, when the movie doesn't understand fascism and has a damn-near alien view of what good and evil are.

There's always gonna be someone who, having read this far, wants to reply, "so, what? The Lion King is a bad movie and the people who made it were homophobes and also American monarchists, somehow? And anyone who likes it is also some sort of gay-bashing crypto-authoritarian?" To which I have to reply, man, c'mon, get out of the ditch. You're no good to anyone in there. Take my hand. I'm going to pull on three. One... two...

SO PHYREXIA [PAUSE FOR APPLAUSE, GROANS]

We're talking about everyone's favorite ichor-drooling surgery monsters again because there was a bit in my ~*~seminal~*~ essay Transformation, Horror, Eros, Phyrexia which seemed to give a number of readers quite a bit of trouble: namely, the idea that while Phyrexia is textually fascist, their aesthetic is incompatible with real-world fascism, and further, that this aesthetic incompatibility in some way outweighs the ways in which they act like a fascist nation in terms of how we think of them. I'll take responsibility here: I don't think that point is at all clear or well-argued in that essay. What I was trying to articulate was that the text of Magic: the Gathering very much wants Phyrexia to be supremely evil and dangerous fascists, because that makes for effective antagonists, but in the process of constructing that, it's accidentally encoded a whole bunch of fascinating presuppositions that end up working at cross-purposes with its apparent aim. That's... not that much clearer, is it? Hmm. Why don't I just show you what I mean?

Atraxa, Grand Unifier (art by Marta Nael)

In "Beneath Eyes Unblinking," one of the March of the Machine stories by K. Arsenault Rivera, there's a fascinating and I think revealing passage in which Atraxa (big-deal Phyrexianized angel and Elesh Norn's lieutenant) has a run-in with an art museum in New Capenna. The first thing I want to talk about is that, in this passage, Atraxa has no understanding of the concept of "beauty". A great deal of space in such a rushed storyline is devoted to her trying to puzzle out what beauty means and interrogating the minds of her recently-compleated Capennan aesthetes to try and understand it. In the end, she is unable to conceive of beauty except as "wrongness," as anathema.

So my first question is, why doesn't Atraxa have any idea of beauty? This is nonsense, right? We could point to a previous story, "A Garden of Flesh," by Lora Gray, in which Elesh Norn explicitly thinks in terms of beauty, but that's a little bit ditchbound, isn't it? The better argument is to simply look at Phyrexian bodies, at the Phyrexian landscape, all of which looks the way it does on purpose, all of which has been shaped in accordance with the very real aesthetic preferences of Phyrexians. How you could look at the Fair Basilica and not understand that Phyrexians most definitely have an idea of beauty, even if you personally disagree with it, is baffling. This is a lot like the canonical assertion that Phyrexians lack souls, which is both contradicted elsewhere in canon and essentially meaningless, given Magic's unwillingness or inability to articulate what a soul is in its setting, and as with this, it seems the goal is simply to dehumanize Phyrexians, to render them alien, even at the cost of incoherence or internal contradiction.

Atraxa's progress through the museum is fascinating. It evokes the 1937 Nazi exhibit on "degenerate art" in Munich, but not at all cleanly. The first exhibit, which is of representational art, she angrily destroys for being too individualistic (a point of dissonance with the European fascist movements of the 20th century, which formed in direct antagonism to communism.) The second exhibit, filled with abstract paintings and sculptures, she destroys even more angrily for having no conceivable use (this is much more in line with the Nazi idea of "degenerate art", so well done there.) The third exhibit is filled with war trophies and reconstructions from a failed Phyrexian invasion of Capenna many years prior, which she is angriest of all with (and fair enough, I suppose.) But then, after she's done completely trashing the place, she spots a number of angel statues on the cathedral across the plaza, and she goes apeshit. In a fugue of white-hot rage, she pulverizes the angel heads, and here is where I have to ask my second question:

Why angels? If you are trying to invoke fascist attitudes toward art, big statues of angels are precisely the wrong thing for your fascist analogues to hate. Fascists love monumental, heroic representations of superhuman perfection. It's practically their whole aesthetic deal. I understand that we're foreshadowing the imminent defeat of Phyrexia at the hands of legions of angels and a multiversal proliferation of angel juice, but that just leads to the exact same question: why angels? To the best of my knowledge, the Phyrexian weakness to New Capennan angel juice is something invented for this storyline. They have, after all, been happily compleating angels since 1997. We could talk about the in-universe justification for why Halo specifically is so potent, but I don't remember what that justification is, and also don't care. Let's not jump back in the ditch, please. The point is, someone decided that this time, Phyrexia would be defeated by an angelic host, and what does that mean? What is the text trying to say? What are its precepts and axioms?

Let me ask you a question: how many physically disabled angels are there in Magic: the Gathering? How about transsexual angels? How many angels are there, on all of the cards that have ever been printed for Magic: the Gathering, that are even just a bit ugly? Do you get it yet? Or do you need me to spell it out for you?

SPELLING IT OUT FOR YOU

There is a kind of body which is bad. It is bad because it has been significantly altered from its natural state, and it is bad because it is repellent to our aesthetic sensibilities.

The bad kind of body is contagious. It spreads through contact. Sometimes people we love are infected, and then they become the bad kind of body too.

There is a kind of body which is good. It is good because it is pleasing to our aesthetic sensibilities, and it is good because it is unaltered from its (super)natural state.

A happy ending is when all the good bodies destroy or drive into hiding all of the bad bodies. A happy ending is when the bad bodies of the people we love are forcibly returned to being the good kind of body.

Do you get it now?

ENDNOTES

It's worth noting that the ditch is very similar to the white American Evangelical hermeneutics of "the Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it," the defensive chapter-and-verse-or-it-didn't-happen approach to reading a text, what Fred Clark of slacktivist calls "concordance-ism". I don't think that's accidental. We stand underneath centuries of people reading the Bible very poorly - how could that not affect how we read things today? We are participants in history whether we like it or not.

I sincerely hope I haven't come across as condescending in this essay. Close reading is legitimately difficult! They teach college courses on this stuff! And while it is frustrating to have my close readings interrogated by people who... aren't doing that, like. I do get it. I find myself back in the ditch all the time. This stuff is hard. It is also, sorry, crucial if you intend to say something about a text that's worth saying.

I also hope I've communicated clearly here. Magic story is sufficiently incoherent that trying to develop a thesis about it often feels like trying to nail jello to the wall. If anyone has questions, please ask them! And thank you for reading. Next time, we'll probably do the new Eldraine set.