#who also kind of created the gender binary in the first place by forcing it on a species which as far as we know didnt have a particularly | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vrisrezis · 1 year ago

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Aj the furry we are kissing /joking

. Reader is a furry animal like rocket . From the same place he was from too

Cw for like . Reader with internalized transphobia (kinda?) reader comes out to all the guardians individually so this kinda long

You had come to realize something, about yourself. Something you had never considered, something as to which you were unsure how to handle. Something you weren’t exactly familiar with, and you weren’t sure was exactly normal. Gender had been a topic you weren’t always the most comfortable with discussing, at least when it came to you. There was a point in time, you had considered yourself to be male, and another time you had considered yourself to be female. But as you’ve come to realize you do not find yourself comfortable with either label. You’re not sure what it could’ve been, as you find yourself comfortable with masculine compliments, feminine compliments too. However being referred to as a boy, a girl, specifically, felt uncomfortable. Rockets boyfriend, rockets girlfriend. This was something you forced yourself to shrug off, assuming this strange feeling must be related to your lack of self esteem in general. Of course you had an issue with how to presented yourself, you didn’t like yourself much at all generally speaking. You had been created by somebody else, your existence was not your own will. It’s only natural there are things you do not like about yourself, as certain things that make you… well… you, are not your choice. You were raised to be a weapon, a shield, a fighter, and yet despite all of that, despite all the power and strength you are granted it is not what you desire for yourself. Your personality shows who you truly are inside, a kind and happy soul. Not a cold heartless killing machine. Because there’s so much you do not like about yourself, this just feels like another thing about you that you wish you could change. Perhaps it has something to do with feeling like your own person, having your own will, rather than being nothing more than a pawn to someone else, rather than just some science experiment. You had built that for yourself, with the newfound family you have made. Because even with all that strength, they love you for who you are rather than for how competent you are.

On an evening where you were extremely drunk and emotional you had talked to gamora about this issue you were having, and gamora had came to a simple conclusion. “Maybe you’re neither, then. Or perhaps both.” she shrugged, “I wouldn’t say you’re agender, maybe you’re non binary.” as to which you stared at your friend blankly. “Those words aren’t in the Bible.” “Shut up and listen to me for once. Also, the hell is a Bible?” You shrug, “not sure! Pete mentioned it.”

Ever since your long conversation, you’ve come to the conclusion you’d like to be referred to as they, instead of she or he. And upon gamora using those pronouns for you, as well as gender neutral language when discussing you, you’ve found yourself significantly more comfortable in who you are. This took some time for you to adjust to but you found yourself loving it a lot. However the first step to allowing others to accept you, is accepting yourself first. Realizing that just because this way of gender expression is something you yourself never heard about, doesn’t mean it’s not a very real identity that makes people comfortable. You have had to realize the way you feel doesn’t make you weird, or a freak. There’s many people in the galaxy, it is preposterous to think there will only be two gender identities throughout the course of the universe.

“There’s… nothing wrong with me… is there..?” you ask, looking up at your best friend. She shakes her head, “No. Of course not.” She says, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I should hit you, for even thinking like that.” and that’s all you needed. Gamora was unyielding in terms of her support of you and who you are.

Next stage, which took a very long time for you to be ready for, was telling everyone about your feelings, about how you identify and how you’d like to be referred. Admittedly, you were scared. You were terrified of rejection, but you knew gamora would be right behind you and kick anyones ass that disrespected you. Especially any of the guardians.

You went to groot first, as you feared him the least. Groot was just a innocent baby, and you know he not only would accept you but he wouldn’t even question it. And upon telling him, you were correct. You explained to groot as delicately and as clear as possible that you don’t think you’re a boy, nor a girl, completely. From your understanding, despite the fact groot clearly uses pronouns like he and him to refer to himself, he doesn’t actually have a gender. He does not hold to traditional gender values that you and the other guardians may, so because of this fact groot is completely understanding. In fact for him, it’s common knowledge. It’s clear he doesn’t understand why you’re telling him this, because it should be as obvious as night and day, but regardless he shows his support and you’re thankful for the little tree.

You make him promise not to say anything yet, as you want to tell them first. Especially rocket! And the little guy agrees, albeit a bit confused as to why it’s being made such a big deal.

Next, was Mantis. Mantis is such a sweetheart, you could only hope she would also be supportive of you. If she isn’t, then you know how you feel cannot be possibly right. You feared that, if even Mantis didn’t support you there was truly something wrong with you. After all, Mantis is the one in tune with emotions. She’s the one always encouraging others to be more open about their feelings and being more vulnerable. That no feelings are bad, so long as you don’t act upon them in a negative way. You second guess yourself, as Mantis notices how much your sweating. Typically, when people like you and rocket sweat it is not noticeable, so the fact Mantis is able to notice simply by looking at you, means you’re sweating an unhealthy amount.

However, once you finally come out haha and say it, she seems relieved. “Why do you look so relieved?” you say, finally catching your breath, since you’ve been holding in so much all at once. You look so tired, just from that. Which lets gamora know that this coming out process might take more than just a day. This is something you really have to work towards. “oh, well…” mantis trails off, looking to the side before looking back at you, “I’m just relieved it wasn’t anything serious, that’s all.” her statement makes you feel even more tired. “It was serious!” “Oh…? Really? Well… I am very happy for you y/n! You have finally discovered who you truly are inside, and I’m very proud of you for opening up to me.” she says, and for a moment you forget how scared you are to tell the others. “I love you, you’re a dear friend. You’re family. But…” Mantis trails off again, and you’re almost scared for a moment. “I kinda already knew.” she says, as a matter a factly. “When I touch you, I feel your emotions, as I’ve told you many times.” she starts to explain, “one time I touched you and felt… confusion about gender expression and identity, you see. So I’ve known for quite some time.”

You sigh, “would’ve been great to know that sooner, mantis.” “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to ruin your … yknow… confession thing. It was very appreciated, I’m glad you trust me with this. I won’t tell the others, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Next on your list was quill, because for as big of an idiot that guy is, gender expression seems to be a huge thing for terrans as far as you know. They even had a whole month dedicated to people like you, and not only that, parades. “Clearly they are people that are celebrated” Gamora states, giving you more reason to open up to her boyfriend about such a matter. While you were a bit nervous, given that you told two other people, your nerves had calmed a bit in comparison to before. But seeing your friend in person, confronting him about these feelings you’ve felt for so long, you curled right back in at yourself. This was such a vulnerable position, and you could possibly be ruining the guardians as a group due to wanting to open up about feelings that can be kept to yourself. This was selfish of you to ruin something for everyone-

Gamora nudges you with her foot, given the height difference between you both she would’ve been unable to do so with her elbow. You shake your head, snapping back into reality. There was no turning back now that you’ve already began the process. You look up at your friend, who was probably expecting the worst given your nervous demeanor. You see the shock on his face as you come forth with what you’ve been wanting to say, and he shakes his head. You almost panic, before you see a smile etch Quills features. “That’s it?!” he asks, “you know I don’t care about stuff like that, y/n.” he says before patting you on the head. “Glad you came and told me though.”

Next, was the lovely drax the destroyer. To be honest, he’s one of the last people you wanted to tell simply because of his big mouth. His opinion was not one you found yourself fearing, and given how accepting everyone’s been so far you found yourself mostly at ease. However you did have to remind yourself of the people you haven’t opened up to yet.

Opening up to him proved to be less difficult, for you’ve known drax to be accepting of his family for all of their weirdness. He has never been overly judgmental. However, he seems to raise a brow at you for this information, making you regret your decision for a brief moment. “Why are you telling me this?” he asks, genuinely. “What do you mean?” you ask in turn, and he continues “has somebody been addressing you any differently?” he asks a second question, “I thought it was simply common knowledge you are not male nor female. Who shall I smash for disrespecting you?” ah, now you understand.

And finally, your boyfriend. The one you were the most nervous about. If this affected any of your relationships with the guardians at all, this was the relationship that would affected the most. Once again, you find yourself extremely nervous. And as gamora noticed, much more nervous than anyone else you’ve had to confront.

“You’ll be fine.” She reassured you. “I’ll be right outside the door” she says, wanting to respect your privacy with your boyfriend. You nod, thanking her before walking in your shared room with rocket. Groot lived in this room too, but he was out and about with quill currently.

As you strike a normal conversation with your boyfriend, he assumes things are as normal. He’s tinkering with something and you’ve come to bother him as per usual. However, something in your demeanor is off to him. He wonders if you’ve done something to possibly upset him, and are trying to break the news to him. Whenever you accidentally broke something of his, you did this. You spoke in that nervous tone and started pacing as you tried to talk about random things with him. It always ended the same. He pretended not to notice and then you’d be ridden with guilt and you’d say “rocket I have something to tell you!”

But he did not expect such urgency in your voice. The way you said it, sounded like it was much more serious. In the past, it sounded more shameful or embarrassed, this time it sounded much more than that. Like the shame and embarrassment was much deeper, stronger, and like you were genuinely afraid to tell him what it was. At that alone, he stands up, now done tinkering with a new potential bomb for him to randomly set up. He looks you in the eyes and nods for you to continue. You take a deep breathe, preparing what you were gonna say to him. You said these exact words to everyone else, it should not be any different with him.

“Rocket. Im non binary.” you simply say, as a matter a factly. “And I understand if that bothers you, but I cannot hide this part of myself any longer.”

In all honestly? He’s never seen you so serious. He can’t help but laugh, and your ears flop down for a moment at the thought of him not only rejecting you, but laughing at you. He shakes his head, “I’m laughing at you for a totally different reason hun.” he says, “I just can’t believe you seemed so scared to tell me something like this.” he laughs a bit more before grabbing your hand. “Listen, I don’t care what you identify as. Be who you are, me and you are surrounded by misfits and you think I’d care about something like this?” he asks, and suddenly you feel stupid. “I love you, as you are. And I always will. Flaws or not. Not that being non binary is even a bad thing anyway.”

You sigh, giving him a genuine smile. “Thanks rocket.”

“Anytime.”

#rocket x reader #rocket the raccoon x reader #rocket racoon x reader #rocket raccoon x reader #mcu x y/n #mcu x you #mcu x reader #marvel x y/n #marvel x you #marvel x reader

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voroxpete · 1 year ago

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Yes to all of this. 100%.

The issue of hyperspecific labels, in particular, is something that I've thought about a lot.

What it comes back to, for me, is one simple thought; all definitions of our identities are bullshit. You cannot, in fact, create a useful or meaningful definition of gay, or pan, or bi that applies perfectly to everyone who uses those terms to define themselves (and by "useful" I mean clearly distinct from how any other term is defined).

There are people who sit at a 5 on the Kinsey scale and still define themselves as gay. There are people at a 1 or a 2 who define themselves as straight. Whatever meaning you ascribe to any of these terms, there is someone out there who will define it differently, and you are now in the uncomfortable position of defining someone else's identity for them.

And the reality is that it doesn't matter. Because we don't define ourselves by what hair colour we're into, or what shape of nose we find most attractive. So why define ourselves by our feelings towards the entirely socially constructed concept of gender? If a straight man feels attracted to a really femme presenting man does that make them less straight? Is it the presentation or the identity that matters more?

And most of all, who cares?

Here's what matters; these labels are important only because of two things; they offer community, and they communicate ideas.

Let's unpack the second one first. Communication is important. Saying "I am asexual" is a quick and easy way to express to a potential partner that you see sex in a way that's probably very different to how they see it. What "asexual" actually means is pretty complicated. Some people are sex repulsed, some people are just indifferent, some people are fine with some kinds of sex but not others, but the broad strokes have still been successfully conveyed. Figuring out the details is a matter for a more extended conversation between you and the other party, if it's appropriate. Sure, you can try to invent a hyperspecific term for your exact relationship with sex, but then odds are you'll still just end up having to define it for the other person anyway, so the hyper-specific term probably didn't help much.

Communication is also important because of how it intersects with that other purpose; community. So much of our existence is about breaking free from the crushing weight of social norms. For most of us that starts just knowing that different is possible. If I had heard the word "bisexual" at a younger age I suspect my life would be radically different. That knowledge, that awareness, is incredibly important. And along with that comes the ability to identify people who share that experience, who you can learn from, or teach in turn, people you can share your struggles with.

And this is why it's so important that these hyper-specific labels should not be allowed to lead to the balkanization of our community. Because yes, sometimes you do want to talk to people with the same very specific experiences as you, and that's OK. But we must never forget that all of us, ultimately, have the shared experience of being something other than what has, for most of our lives and recent generations, in much of the world, been defined as normal and acceptable. Queer matters because it is all of us. It is the identity that we all share together. And that identity can contain those many smaller things within itself without erasing or overriding them. Just as "human" contains "man," "woman," "non-binary," and so on, queer contains every part of the LGBTQ+ spectrum in a way that reminds us all that we are more the same than we are different. That we only need to define ourselves in the first place because we have been forced to live in opposition, and that opposition will do anything it can to divide us.

So, this is going to be a little meandering and all over the place. But I'm trying to express this...web of thoughts I've been having lately around this issue of queer, and labels, and the way we talk about our history and the way the community conceptualized itself in this very digital age. And it's still kind of half formed, so...let's see.

So. OK.

One thing I see a lot online, especially with people who are just now coming out, is a sort of...overfixation on increasingly niche labels. Im not saying that having a very specific or newer label is bad, to be clear. Labels are rhetorical tools, use what is useful. They help with visibility and discussing specific issues. No issues there.

But watching people quibble over bi vs pan vs omni vs abro or non-binary vs genderqueer vs demigender vs genderfluid vs agender vs xenogender vs bigender vs gnc. Asexual or gray ace or demisexual or queerplatonic. And whether they are a biromantic lesbian demigirl or bisexual greyaromantic genderuid. And it's always just a little exhausting, ya know? Again, if those labels are meaningful and useful, that's great, but I see people *agonizing* over which they "really" are. Like if they pick the wrong word to describe themselves, they are coming out the wrong way, like they are wrong about themselves if they can't find the exact correct word on an FAQ list of lgbt vocabulary.

And how I think that relates to the way people talk about our CURRENT labels as though these labels have always been there and like the people described by these labels now have no common experiences with other labels. Like lesbians and bisexual women have absolutely nothing in common. Like butches and trans men have no shared history. As though trans women and drag queens have always been completely separate and unconnected groups. As though ace folks and nonbinary folks are somehow new to the scene, and not community members who were always here and just didn't have a separate label until more recently.

I *remember* watching the community make the switch from transvestite and transsexual, to differentiating between transsexuals and transgender, to basically just using transgender/trans. Those labels are not stagnant. None of our labels are some ingrained biological unchanging objective truth. Labels are rhetorical shortcuts to summarize this facet of our identity and lives and experiences- but they are just words.

And maybe this connects to the way people get really...weird about historical figures too. Like whether Sappho was a lesbian or bisexual, as though either of those words would have had any meaning to her. About whether Shakespeare was gay or bi, like he would have conceptualized his own identity that way. About what modern label Dr. James Barry would have used for himself if anyone could travel back in time and ask him.

And then I think about why queer feels so much more affirming, so much more a place of strength, than LGBT+. Not that LGBT as a label is bad, and I honestly probably prefer it for allies and outsiders to use. But as a community label- Queer, to me, says that all our experiences are queer experiences. Queer can be many things, but they are all queer. Regardless of how many genders or which specific genders you like, whether you have a romantic and or sexual attraction to whatever collection of genders, whatever thing your gender is doing today- all of it, ALL of it, once you step outside that cis, straight mainstream sexuality and gender norm- is queer. Equally queer.

Lgbt+ feels like we are still keeping all those labels separate, little boxes all lined up next to each other- different but a coalition. And while that isn't bad, I also think it isn't totally true.

[A caveat here, that there are times when more specific labels are very helpful. We don't want any specific kind of queer experience to be overshadowed or erased, and having more specific labels facilitates those discussions. Again, I'm not saying that we should eliminate or erase our more specific labels.]

But I think imagining our community as a collection of wholly separate groups that are just allied together, instead of one group that we are all equally in, can make it far too easy for exclusionists to sneak up and say "well ___ isn't REALLY lgbt. THEY aren't REALLY one of us. ___ dont belong."

If we take all the labels off all the crayons- red and pink and purple and blue and teal and green are not hard and fast divisions. They are artificial distinctions we have made- all of them are light, all of them the rainbow.

Anyway. I just think that, while everyone should use whatever labels bring them joy and are useful for them, we might be better off if more folks were ok with ALSO accepting the vast ambiguity of being queer.

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cake-n · 2 years ago

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From what I've seen and searched, xenogenders choose their gender based on vibes and stuff they like, I saw some with a huge list of their gender, including, springgender, pupgender, lemonpiegender.

Well, for me, certain concepts, abstractions & themes are important to my identity & gender, as well as important to me as a person, but not everything that's important to me as a person or my general identity is related to my gender. I conceptualize my gender to be in relation/tandem with those things, I assume it's similar for others as well. Beyond that I also have a "normal" core gender identity, though, but even that is confusing to most people, as others perception of gender is more simplistic and trinary, so I simplify it even further.

Also, I searched and I've never seen or heard about an old person using these. Have you seen a 70 year old queer identity as a lemon pie? A 45 mother identify as a male puppy?

Well, they wouldnt "identify as a male puppy". If you phrase it in another way though... "How would you describe your gender with only things that are abstract?" then you might actually get answers.

I don't understand why you feel the need to include that in the LGBTQ community if you just like clouds

It's not "just liking so-and-so"; you can like something without it being conceptually a part of your gender, as I do with many of my interests that are dear to my heart but dont have anything to do with my gender, but, it's considered LGBT because this identification is considered to be a specific form of non-binary — not a boy, not a girl. Most people who identify as xenogender are additionally and/or at their core, trans and/or non-binary. Though I've seen people be cisgender & xenogender, but even those people tend to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, etc.

Anyway, on pronouns, why call it pronouns if they're nicknames between friends? Because they want to feel special and have a community.

Pronouns (refering to "he, she, they, it" and words of a similar function) are words to address someone without using their name, and replaces their name, for ease of convenience and to make sentences go smoother. Always using names sounds a little... clunky.

Instead of saying "he, him, his, himself", you'd say "xe, xer, xem, xemself"; you wouldnt use the same grammatical conjunctions with a nickname or name.

I say it's used between friends or those who can adapt, because there's no other option, it's not because "people want to feel special", it's not like you can force someone to use your pronouns. It's a niche community as it is, so there's a smaller amount of people able to/understanding enough/open to using them in the first place, so you'd have fewer people (as compared to the wider population) to address you with neopronouns.

It's only within those already niche circles, because anyone outside of it would likely be unable to adapt, ignore, misunderstand, belittle, mock or assault you for it. There is not really another choice.

In daily life, I usually refer to myself with my neopronouns in my head... I dont feel special because of it, it's just a different kind of identification. I havent done so recently, but if I participate in the community, I do so because I like to be surrounded by like-minded people — people who will not viciously mock me for my identifications, who are more likely to refer to me with neopronouns (as I dont tend to do it publically), etc. I also like to share things about myself (to some degree... I favor anonymity & privacy), my creations, etc. It also ties into my interests... I have an interest in poetry & writing (describing genders is very similar), I enjoy artwork, symbolism, and working with colors (designing flags), and I find etymology and neologism (creating new words) fun.

About cis people I'm not concerned about their validation fr I do not care and they probably think my gender is fake too (I'm nonbinary and uses they them) but I do care about the safety of my fellow trans people, they are being murdered and discriminated against, obviously xenogenders aren't the reason but they do contribute to the stigma of trans people who existed since the dawn of time.

Yeah, it must seem silly and a foreign concept to the average person who's not used to approaching/thinking about gender in abstract/tangible/atypical terms (or, in your case, if you completely lack gender LOL), but respectability politics will not decrease violence against trans people. If you're unfamiliar, respectibility politics refers to people consciously setting aside things that are deemed as disrespectful for the sake of being paleatable to more people — so "a small portion of trans people should not express themselves to avoid contributing to propaganda, (which is already warped as it is)" is a form of respectibility politics. They will use anything deemed unusual as transphobic propaganda. They will take their assumptions and run with it.

I've seen and experienced xenogender people calling trans people (myself included) transphobic, ableist and got send death threats because of our concerns and opinions.

Reactionary people are an... issue, yes. This isnt exclusive to the MOGAI community though, you see this stuff in every communify.

It's not inherently ableist, persay. NT people can be xenic. More prominent and common to be ND (seemingly), but not exclusive. It's a common misconception for people think its ND-exclusive, though.

Trans people can still be transphobic, though.

But still they should use nicknames like everyone, my username is cake since I love it but it isn't what I am.

People do use several names, me & many others. Pronouns are conjuncted differently than names.

If there's something different about someone, they shouldnt be expected to conform, especially like, online, in the privacy of their own home. People should not face violence for not conforming because it's "socially unacceptable", especially for expressing such online, where you can express yourself with less restraint.

People can use whatever pronouns they like. Sometimes words dont "fit" or "click" as names but work with pronouns, or vice versa. Most people who use neopronouns give auxillary (alternative) pronouns to use in daily life and/or for people who cannot adapt (i.e. language-processing issues, english as a second language, etc)

Also... Yeah, you have different facets of identity. Some may or may not correlate with gender identity, and it just doesnt in your case.

Having a strange/atypical identity does not contribute to stigmatization. Misunderstandings or a lack of understanding, assumptions and transphobic propaganda contributes to stigmatization.

thank you so much for you answer 😊 I'm gonna me quick. but they are not part of the lgbt community if they only uses differents pronouns. xenogenders are not genders in my opinion, since their xenogender is abstract stuff or based on feelings they should not speak up as trans people if they are not , if a cis straight male identify in his mind as something poetic or some kind he is a cis straight male and should not speak as a trans person and try to integrate lgbtq spaces and make 9000 flags . it is personal, you can write about it and it can be beautiful in my opinion but trying to pass this as a sexuality or gender is a big no. it should be an aspect that shouldn't be categorised and again I'm repeating not be a part of the lgbt community, it can be influenced or be a part of many queer People but shouldn't step up in these spaces

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oh-hush-its-perfect · 3 years ago

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do you think there is any significance that alex's colour scheme is green and pink? or do you think rr went "u know what this character needs? to look like a watermelon"

((Prefacing this by saying that I'm giving RR way too much credit here, but you shouldn't take anything an author does for granted— even a serial author who often makes blunders and mistakes.))

A while ago I saw a (pretty unfair) assumption that RR made it green and pink because blue and pink would be too obvious, but that his intention was obviously to reinforce the gender binary by using two distinctly gendered colors for a character with two distinct genders. Of course, they did not phrase it so delicately. No offense to whoever made that post, but I disagree.

Although that may have had to do with it, there's other things to consider. One of them is color symbolism. And oh. OH. I ADORE symbolism— especially flower/plant symbolism (Language of the Flowers and all that jazz), seasonal symbolism (there's a reason that evermore is my second favorite Taylor Swift album), and color symbolism.

GREEN

Let's talk about green first. Green can symbolize a lot of different things, and there are a few that can be applied to Alex's character. The most obvious thing that green often represents is jealousy— hence the expression "green with envy." But envy is not really one of Alex's character traits. Feel free to argue with me if you think that Alex is significantly envious. Just because I couldn't think of substantial textual evidence for it does not mean that there isn't any.

One of the traits that Alex does have is wealth. Green is the color of American currency, and since both RR and Alex are American, it's safe to take an American lens while looking at this color. Alex's socioeconomic background effects her in a big way. I mentioned in a previous post that I think that Alex's fatal flaw is her sense of entitlement. That kind of entitlement is a quality not exclusive to but common among the upper class. However, her distance from her wealthy background enhances the sense of irony in the story, which is a VERY big thing that we NEVER talk about within the fandom.

This is kind of a little thing, but it's worth noting that when it comes to Valhalla and everything, Alex is "green"— as in new and inexperienced.

The color green also emphasizes Alex's connection with nature. This is one of the parts of Alex's character that the fandom consistently underplays, which is an absolute shame. I don't think I have to explain why the color green is associated with all things natural. Alex's association with nature provides a few key things to her character:

It makes her a more well-rounded character. Another criticism of Alex I believe is totally unfounded is that "being genderfluid is her only personality trait because it influences her philosophy on pottery, which is her only hobby." I'm probably going to make another post in, like, a few minutes about why I find that argument a little silly, but the primary problem is that pottery is not Alex's only hobby. She also loves camping, hiking, and ice wall climbing (I bet y'all forgot about that last one!)

It gives her a connection with Magnus. I mentioned in a previous post that Magnus and Alex are foils, but I neglected to bring up why that also makes for very good chemistry between them. Of course, yes, they have different goals and philosophy, which is what makes them foils in the first place. But foil relationships function best when the characters also share some traits. As it turns out, Alex and Magnus share several hobbies, and one of them is a mutual love for nature. This is a very unexplored thing in fics. Start doing it more plz.

Finally, and this one's kind of minor, but the Alex's green gives her a connection to Natalie. I know, whenever Alex and Natalie are compared, either in canon or in fandom, everybody kind goes "eww. Oedipus complex." Which is very fair and true. But they really do have a lot of similarites. The green of Alex's hair and clothes connects her to the green of Natalie's eyes. It's worth saying, too, that Alex has one amber eye— and amber is pretty close to dirty blonde, like Natalie's hair.

If I had more faith in RR, I might bring up the concept of intextuality and how Alex wearing green is an allusion to The Great Gatsby and how Alex is elusive to Magnus, just like Daisy is to Gatsby. But I don't.

PINK

To give credit to the person who wrote the post I mentioned at the beginning of this spiel, I do believe that part of the reason pink was used was to support femininity. Please keep in mind that Alex dresses in an androgynous way— not that there is an actually "gendered" way to dress, since gender as we perceive it is mostly made up. But Alex's existence as a transfemme person (which I will maintain until my dying day) means that pink has a certain significance to her. A lot of AMAB people embrace traditionally feminine things because if they don't, they will not be accepted as genuine women or genuine nonbinary folks, since masculine dress is unisex and kind of the default. So Alex wearing pink probably had something to do with her gender, yes. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's certainly not an unrealistic thing.

Speaking of Alex's gender in relation to the color pink, let's talk about pink's use as a queer rights symbol. Alex was RR's first character to be introduced as a queer character from the start. This was not an insignificant thing, especially in the year of our Lord 2016 (which, despite popular belief, seriously had an entirely different landscape of queer rep. Though it's commonplace now to include genderqueer characters, it was exceptional at the time— especially by such an accomplished and mainstream children's author.).

Let's go back in time to Nazi Germany. Some of you might know this, but for those of you don't this transition must seem jarring. I swear there's a point. In addition to Jews, Romani individuals, people with disabilities, and Poles (among others), gay men were victimized by the Nazis. If you're wondering why lesbians weren't persecuted, it's because the Nazis didn't see them as a serious political threat, or as a threat to the perpetuation of the Aryan race since they assumed gay women could be forcefully impregnated if need be. Yeah, ew. Anyway, much like the Star of David being used to mark Jewish people, gay men were forced into concentration camps and forced to wear a pink triangle. Years later, after the gay population somewhat recovered, the pink triangle was reclaimed and used as a symbol for gay men. Some people who were not gay men used it, too, but that's somewhat controversial since it wasn't their symbol to reclaim. When the first pride flag was created, it had a pink stripe at the top to signify sex (this was later dropped so flags could be more easily produced). The pink triangle (inverted) was used during the AIDs epidemic with the caption "Silence=Death."

My point is that this is a very important color to queer folks. Having one of the first genderfluid characters in kid's lit wear pink...... I mean, it makes sense.

The last and final thing that pink represents, in this context and in general, is innocence. Granted, this kind of connects to feminitity since women (especially white women) are often infantalized and seen as innocent— which is another issue. In any case, the use of pink to represent innocence in Alex's dress is ironic. Alex has been robbed of her childhood innocence, first by her abusive parents, then by her life on the streets, and then by her eventual death at age sixteen. But then she actually regains her innocence. At the beginning of the—

Hold on. I just had a revelation. I'll make a post about it soon.

At the beginning of SotD, Alex is acting a little childish. The most obvious example is him jumping on Randolph's bed to "make noise." Alex's life is stable and relatively healthy for the first time in the years, and she experiences something that a lot of queer folks experience: a re-emergence of childhood at a late stage.

I imagine you didn't expect a post this long. I either make essay responses to asks or I add on one sentence and post it. Oops. Anyway, I believe the mcga fandom can be more creative than calling Alex a watermelon. Here are some other (kinda romantic) pink-and-green alternatives:

Roses

Dragonfruit

Grapefruit

Cherry blossom trees

#mcga #magnus chase #alex fierro #mcatgoa #magnus chase and the gods of asgard #sorry for the long response lol #thanks for the ask! I had a go of it!

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feelingthedisaster · 6 months ago

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im saying this as someone who is from latinamerica, spanish is my first language (duh, i lived in a spanish speaking country my entire life and i still do but in social media i use english) and is probably outside the gender binary (gender crisis not the point), what the actual fuck?

"white people arent allowed to speak spanish" WHAT???? in latin america we have people of EVERY race. indigenous/native, black, white, asian, mixed, etc. you can be white and latino, and if you are latino you probably speak spanish (no, when i say 'probably speak' its isnt to include gringos with a latina grandma who make no effort to interact with the culture, its for brazilians and people from other non-spanish speaking countries of latin america). to be latino you have to be raised with the culture or/and (preferely and) be from a latin american country, it doesnt matter how you look like. i dont know what your gringa friend thinks but its so funny to me, like all the white latinos who actually live in latin america will just stop talking to everyone they know bc wHitE pEoPlE aReNt aLloWeD tO sPanIsH, like yeah, just stop communicating bc a random gringa says so

also, how learning a language is culture apropiation??? with the same logic, im apropiating british culture bc i learned english in school and use it on tumblr. learning languages allows cultural exchange, the possibility to meet new people and can be a way of appreciating a culture.

but also, yta bc its a language, a medium of communication, just like any language it has its perks and it changes it over time.

also, did you know there is a gender neutral pronoun in spanish? bc being in non-binary spectrum isnt something that only exists in usa/europe and of course, enbies didnt felt conected to fem pronouns (ella/la/-a) or mascs (el/el/-o), so the pronoun elle/le/-e was created

so, instead of 'no-binaria' or 'no binario', it is 'no-binarie'

here is an example of how it works

el es el amigo

ella es la amiga

elle es le amigue

the reason it didnt appear when you google is because it isnt formally accepted, but well, its kind of expectable, as most gender neutral pronouns arent, even in english

actually, when i learn english. i wasnt teached that they/them could be singular, in the formal english that is teached singular they/them doesnt exist. i had to learn how to use it through social media. spanish isnt the only language that doesnt formally accomodate for gender neutral-ness (as you can see in many other examples, such as the aunt/uncle situation).

i get being mad about being forced to the binary, but this isnt the place to get mad at, as spanish DOES have gender neutral pronouns/options

was I TA for saying I hate Spanish, a gendered language?

so the other day I (25NB, white) was on Twitter, where I'm v active as well as my two best friends who we'll call Tess (25F, black) and Laura (24F, Mexican). we've been friends since we were kids and tbh I rlly appreciate them both.

Laura has offered to help us learn Spanish on a few occasions. I said yes ofc! Tess repeatedly said no bc she considered thats cultural appropriation and she thinks Laura should protect her culture. Tess also berated me because "white people aren't allowed to speak Spanish", but eventually she changed her mind and apologized after Laura said that she loves it when people show interest in her own culture and language, that white Spanish-speakers exist and that a healthy cultural exchange can help people of different cultures understand one another better.

so Tess and I started to learn Spanish with Laura's help as well as Google translator. and that day I searched for "non-binary" and it gave me two translations "no binario" and "no binaria". in other words, in masculine and feminine. I felt invalidated and angry so I tweeted "I hate Spanish so much". Laura was upset by this and replied saying she knows it can be a frustrating language to learn to non-natives but that I shouldn't insult her language. I tried to play it off saying that I don't hate Spanish language, I meant to say I hate the Spanish, the people of Spain. for being colonizers and all that.

this only made Laura angrier because apparently, more than 90% of Mexicans have Spanish blood since the colonizers chose to stay in Mexico. Laura was clearly hurt, she said that she won't hate a part of herself, that she won't hate Spanish people who are alive today, and that one of her online friends is Spanish (Tess and I are her best friends but Laura also has a group of online friends from different Spanish-speaking countries. I know she has a Puerto Rican friend and a Venezuelan one but I didn't know they had a Spanish friend in the group). I apologized and I genuinely meant it. I also admitted I was talking about the language and not the people.

Tess is clearly against me and supports Laura bc she said something like "I guess you can never fully trust white people" and Laura replied "no, white people aren't the problem, white Americans certainly are". I've apologized and I will do so again if I have to. I literally reacted the way I did because I felt invalidated, I don't hate Spanish or Spanish-speakers. I'm scared of losing my two closest friends, I apologized but other than that idk what to do.

was I justified in feeling invalidated? should I have joked about Spanish being a gendered language instead of saying I hate it? and most importantly, AITA?

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4lph4kidz · 3 years ago

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How would the cherubs interact with alpha kids in a kidswap?

Mmm, idk. I'll have to think about it. Who's to say how much would change in the long run? it would depend on a lot of factors, especially if the cherubs' alignments and/or class and/or aspects are also swapped. if they're not swapped or not significantly different then i guess calliope will still attempt to foster friendships with all the kids, and caliborn will direct his, uh, attentions whoever he considers the most admirable & masculine of the group to be. (in at least one version of the kidswap that person is jane, idgaf)

I ended up rambling a bit more abt the cherubs and the species in general so its going under the cut

So, I'm having a bit more trouble with the cherubs because they are in an atypical position in the story. Theyre heavily linked to the alphas, which is very unusual for a supposedly solitary species, and while you might assume that this is a bad thing the fact is both calliope and caliborn are only able to survive because of their friendship with them! Calliope is supposedly 'made weak' by her friendship, but is ultimately saved by Roxy; and Caliborn is able to survive & escape his manacle because Dirk made him a prosthetic leg. (The alphas also fucking create lord english in the first place, so, there's that.)

Also, like... the cherubs in hs canon are like, governed by these extremely binary notions of morality and gender, with 'active' class caliborn being the culmination of the association between (toxic) masculinity and destruction, and 'passive' class calliope with femininity and creation. so if calliope switches class/alignments and presumably becomes the more destructive or dominant of the pair... would she attempt to do so while also trying to embodying some kind of feminine ideal? (their ideas about gender being based in a rejection/rivalry with their sibling i think) would she care about friendship at all or would she be more impersonal like her alt self? idk. gender in homestuck is weird.

Cherubs seem to be key to the overall mythos of the homestuck universe, with their snake forms appearing on the god tier clock and being able to access 'the enigmatic forces presiding over all that is eternal' that also grant god tier immortality. According to the authors notes they are linked to the genesis frog cosmology, with 'good' cherubs acting as an immune system of sorts - 'When you look at the role they play in a universe, and the fact that they're utterly microscopic compared to the frog they dwell within, they start seeming like extremely potent pathogens and antibodies in the frog's bloodstream. Nasty ones like Caliborn fly around attacking the "cells" (planets, stars), wreaking havoc, while good ones like Calliope fly around fighting them and defending the health of the system. Cherubs are not technically reptilian, but they aren't far off either. There aren't really any other examples like this appearing in the story, but I often pictured a whole range of cosmic life similar to this, all playing the same kinds of roles that microbes perform in our bodies.'

Unfortunately I think this is kind of cool.

I got way off topic here, I think this was just an excuse to ramble incoherently about cherub lore instead of write my thesis, sorry its so incoherent

#ask #kidswap bs

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thechangeling · 3 years ago

Text

But you like her better: Part 2

Sorry it's been a minute! I hope you like it.

Cw: Some brief ableism, mentions of internalized biphobia, and self injurious stimming.

2013

It was raining when 16 year old María Machado Sotomayor first met Kit Herondale.

Marí had always loved the sound of the rain. It was peaceful and rhythmic, creating a nice tingly feeling in her skull running straight down her spine. It also good for the plants. Which meant that Marí arrived (on time for once) at her favorite class in a pretty good mood.

Marine biology was their one of their three special interests, the other two being lacrosse and Base guitar. So Bio was usually pretty fun for them. However this time was different.

Her mood was instantly dampened when she walked into class and saw someone new sitting in her usually seat. A blond, short and white kid who looked far too pretty for his own good. A new kid most likely.

A new kid who didn't realize that Marí always sat by the window every single day. It was their spot. Still Marí was determined not to overreact. They marched over to the new kid and approached him with their best masking smile.

Remember eye contact. She told herself. Keep your tone light and breezy but not too lifeless. Smile. Appear friendly and non threatening. Try not to sweat. Try not to scream.

"Hi excuse me," Marí began in a sickly sweet tone. "That's actually my seat! Sorry!"

The boy instantly looked embarrassed and apologetic. "Oh I'm sorry!" He blushed. "I didn't realize there was assigned seating." He had an American accent, California maybe?

Wonderful. A white American boy. Just what they needed.

Marí chewed their lip and fought the urge to rock or tap. "There isn't actually," they admitted. "I just usually sit there. So can you please move?"

Now the new kid looked a little offended. A cold look settled over his face. "Well why should I?" He bristled. "This seat isn't really yours. It's not like it has your name on it."

Marí rolled her eyes in frustration. "I tried that already but then I got in trouble."

He stared at them curiously for a moment. Marí took the opportunity to break eye contact finally and scuff their heel against the floor. They were wearing the new black suede chunky heels with the gem stones that Marí had gotten when they went thrifting with their friends.

"María!" The harsh voice of her teacher snapped her back into reality. Everyone had arrived and taken their seats while she was arguing with the American and now everyone was staring at her. "Could you please explain why you are not seated young lady?" She snapped in her extra pretentious sounding posh English accent.

The one that said, "I'm better than you."

Marí tried not to growl at being called a young lady. They weren't feeling particularly female today. Not that Marí was going to bother explaining that to some old British hag.

"He won't get out of my seat!" Marí protested. Instantly laughter broke out around the classroom. Cruel mocking laughter that made Marí feel like her skin was crawling.

"It's ok!" The new kid cried out, practically jumping out of Marí's seat. "I'll move! I'll go sit over here." He grabbed his bag and moved to the back of the room as quickly as possible.

Marí smiled in spite of themself. His random act of kindness was surprising, but they were grateful. They took their seat near the window and sighed in relief.

Marí would always look back on that day with fondness no matter what. It may not have seemed like much to him, but it meant the world to her. After Bio class she had asked Kit to come eat with her and her friends. They had made their introductions and the rest was history.

They became close friends very quickly, bonding over movies and music. They sent each other playlists of their favorite songs and songs that reminded them of each other. Marí made Kit a queer playlist with songs by queer artists and told Kit that they were bisexual and a demigirl. They hadn't even told their friends that last part yet at that point.

Marí also told Kit that they liked to use she/they pronouns, but so far was only using them online. Kit asked Marí a lot of questions then confessed to Marí that he was also bisexual but he was still kinda getting used to it.

"I grew up in a shitty situation," Kit had told them. "I guess I still have a lot of shame."

Marí didn't hold it against him. She bought him queer literature and resources for queer history including "Bisexuality and Queer Theory" and her printed copy of the article published in the 90s called "The Bisexual Manifesto." She gave him advice on websites and people to follow online.

They also just talked. Talked about life and their experiences. Their feelings and their relationships with their sexualities. Bonding with another queer person was always special but spending time with Kit always made Marí feel so...light.

Despite how close they were getting, Marí didn't always want to touch him. They were touch averse in most cases unless they were very comfortable with someone. Sometimes it just depended on the day. On the days where Marí found they could not hug Kit they had invented their own way to show affection.

They would place a hand over their hearts and tap it, as if to say "I care about you" or "I love you." Sometimes Kit would say "tap my heart" as a substitute for actually doing it.

He introduced her to his close friend Janessa, the wayward vampire who was incredibly hot and kind of made Marí all nervous and tounge twisty at first. But as they got to know her, Marí realized that she was also incredibly kind, passionate and clearly cared at great deal about Kit. Janessa was a gamer who had named herself after a video game character. She drank cups of warm blood in novelty mugs with giant swirly sparkly straws and was pretty good at making people laugh.

Janessa, or Nessie as Kit had affectionately nicknamed her, was flirtatious and charismatic, but also brutal and deadly in a fight. She was full of surprises. And maybe, just maybe Marì was a little bit into that.

However as much as Marí didn't want to admit it, they were also were starting to realize that they were way more into someone else. Someone with perfect golden curls that Marí wanted to curl their fingers into.

Eventually Kit came out to Marí as genderfluid and requested that she use alternating he/they pronouns for them. They both made the decision to collectively tell their friends their pronouns. Marí, Kit and Nessie sat around her gorgeous leather couch and talked for hours about gender, identity and transness. Kit pointed put that they may never be able to fully explain their gender to the other two, just like Kit might have a hard time fully understanding Janessa's relationship with gender, or Marí's because everyone was different.

"It's personal Nessie," he had said. "Everyone has their own unique perspective on gender and every trans person has their own complicated feelings about gender and what their own gender identity means to them, and those feelings might not completely match up with another trans person's. But that's ok. You don't have to understand the other person but you do have to respect them."

Janessa's understanding of gender came from being a trans women. It was about a strict binary with clear lines and rules. Rules that Kit was starting to make a habit of fingerpainting all over and Marí could tell that it was stressing her out.

And Marí had no idea where the hell they fit in these rules. They had stopped playing the game.

But those two loved each other more than anything, and Marí knew they could work anything out. And sure enough approximately seven hours and four margaritas later (only two for Marí,) they had come to an understanding.

2014

She kissed Kit for the first time a month into the new year.

They had been trying on clothes in Marí's room and Kit was wearing one of their old dresses that Marí thought they looked amazing in, but Kit wanted to give it away. It was dark navy blue and sparkly with spaghetti straps, coming to about mid thigh. There were cut outs on the sides, filled in with black sheer fabric, and it had a low v cut at the neckline which was also filled in with black sheer.

Kit had been infodumping about one of the Marvel movies again, Marí couldn't remember which one, and she had kept getting distracted by his tan smooth skin peaking through the sheer fabric and fullness of Kit's moving lips. He smiled excitedly and Marí had stepped forward and kissed him.

Their first thought was that Kit tasted like chocolate. Their second was that they should have done this months ago.

Kit had melted into the kiss, smiling slightly against her mouth and pulling her closer. They kissed her feverishly, sliding their tounge inside Marí's mouth and moaning when she deepened the kiss eagerly. They moved against each other with almost lazy, comfortable precision, kissing each other for what could have been hours or days or maybe only seconds.

Marí couldn't have said.

When Kit finally broke the kiss and pulled away from Marí, his eyes were practically gleaming with joy and love. And that was when they knew.

I love him.

2015

I love him.

Ty's words ran in her ears. Repeating over and over again, maddenly bouncing around inside of her skull until she was forced to utter out loud,

"I love him".

They whispered it under their breath but Marí could tell that both Alyssa and Ty had heard them. It was so quiet you could probably hear a pin drop.

But of course. Of course he does. It was obvious. This whole time Marí had noticed there was something wrong with Ty. Just like there was something wrong with Kit. The way they stared after each other when they thought the other one wasn't looking. The loving and worshipful glances mixed with the bitter glares.

Marí had already known that Kit was in love with Ty of course. But the way they had told the story made it seem like they were positive that Ty couldn't be in love with them.

But then again maybe that made sense. Given Kit's history and who he was. But then Marí couldn't help but think of Ty and how confused he must have been. God it was a giant mess.

Speaking of...

The room was still silent. Marí found that she couldn't read Ty's expression as he stared back at her flatly. But his body was shaking, his fingers fluttered at his sides. She wanted to soothe him.

They stepped forward carefully. "I'm not mad at you," Marí assured him. "I was hoping we could talk?"

Ty's left eye twitched. "We are talking," he pointed out. Alyssa snorted.

"Ty, they mean about the proverbial bomb you just dropped a few seconds ago," Alyssa said with a laugh. Marí smirked to themself slightly.

It wasn't really a bomb. More like a flare.

She really needed to talk to Ty. The only problem was Alyssa had an annoying tendency to never leave his side. It wasn't like she had a problem with the girl. Of course not. But her presence meant that Marí hadn't had the opportunity to talk to Ty one on one.

They cleared their throat. "Alyssa could you please give Ty and I some space to talk?" They asked. Marí hoped they didn't sound too rude. Alyssa looked to Ty and he nodded slightly, signaling that he was ok with her leaving.

That was so strange to Marí. Their relationship. The way Alyssa, a werewolf who hated shadowhunters even more then Marí did, essentially took orders from him and clearly trusted him more than anyone else. But perhaps she wasn't one to judge.

After all, she loved Kit.

Alyssa left the room with a pat on Ty's back and a quick, "call if you need me." Marí shifted their weight back and forth as they rocked slightly from side to side as they waited for Ty to speak.

He stared back at her silently, most likely doing the same. Marí blew out a loud breath and forced herself to stay still, crossing her arms.

"Are you going to say something or should I?" Ty asked expectantly. Marí bit their lip and shrugged.

"I'm still thinking of what I wanna say," she admitted.

Ty smiled at her softly. "So am I."

There we go. Cracks in the armour.

"I'm sorry," Ty whispered suddenly. "I never meant to-"

"You don't have to apologize!" Marí blurted out. Whoops they had interrupted him. "Oh shit sorry you were still talking!" They reached for their hair nervously and realized that they were wearing that Morticia wig for their costume.

Great. Marí moved on to chewing on her knuckles.

"It's ok," Ty reassured her. "I don't really know where I was going with that sentence. And you shouldn't do that." He pointed to her hand.

Marí scoffed, "yeah well you shouldn't dig your nails into your palms." He glared at them and they laughed.

"Not so fun playing a game of Mirror Image is it?" They teased. Ty didn't respond, just stared at Marí solemnly.

"You know I really admire you," he said, aiming his gaze close enough to hers to create the illusion of eye contact. "I always have. I never wanted to hurt or upset you."

Marí wished for a brief moment that they could touch him and then shrugged the impulse off. "I know love," they cooed. "Me too."

Without really understanding why, she pressed her hand to her chest directly above her heart and tapped, just like how she did with Kit. Ty studied Marí for a moment and then followed suite.

Marí in spite of themself, actually felt bad for him. They could clearly see the toll the last three years had taken on him, specifically the last few weeks. Maybe his family couldn't see it, and they definitely knew that Kit couldn't, but Marí could.

Marí of all people could see past the mask because they knew what masking looked like. It wasn't just about appearing normal, whatever that word meant. It was about hiding your feelings. Taking that heart you wore on your sleeve and locking it up tight. But everytime Marí looked at Ty, they could see it. And it was bleeding.

Ripped and bloody and broken, just like her own and yet they both still had the sheer audacity to keep breathing. Marí was proud of them both.

"You need to talk to him," Marí prompted. "You both need to be honest with each other."

Ty furrowed his brow. "Honest? About what? He doesn't feel the same way." He had gone back to flicking his fingers as he stared at her, looking puzzled.

Bloody hell between the two of them, Kit and Ty were giving Marí the mother of all headaches.

They took a deep breath. "Yes they do Ty," Marí tried not to sound exasperated. "Kit is in love with you, believe me. They told me."

It hurt Marí's heart to have to say it, but it was true and Ty deserved to know the truth. And they knew deep down that Kit wouldn't really be happy, he wouldn't be Kit until he had Ty. And Marí had to make their peace with that.

Ty looked understandably confused. He ran a frantic hand through his hair. "But why are you telling me this? Why are you helping me?" He asked. "Don't you love them?"

She fought the urge to cry as tears gathered in her eyes. She found herself digging her nails into her palms despite chastising Ty for doing it a few minutes ago.

"I'm telling you all of this because I love them" she cried desperately. "Because Kit cries out your name in his sleep Ty! Because everytime he sees you, he stares at you like you are the moon the sun and the stars! Because everytime you speak they hang onto absolutely every word, and when you laugh-" Marí cut herself off.

They squeezed their eyes shut and took deep long breaths. Ty said nothing. Marí opened their eyes to see Ty staring at them in dismay. He looked like he was trying to think of what to say to help.

Marí shook their head. "I know Kit loves me. And they probably always will. We were close friends even before we started dating." Marí groaned and shook out their entire body this time, jumping up and down a few times as well to get rid of the tension. If Ty thought this was weird he didn't comment on it.

Marí wiped her eyes carefully trying not to smudge her mascara. "But you Ty?" His eyes refocused on her again at the sound of his name. Marí chuckled humourlessly. "Fucking hell, he is in love with you. And right now he is thinking that you hate him and I know it's tearing him up inside."

Ty stared at Marí hopelessly, looking overwhelmed and exhausted. "So what do I do then? What am I supposed to say?"

Marí shrugged. "I can't help you with that I'm sorry. It has to come from you." Ty looked even more panicked.

They gave him what they hoped was an encouraging smile. "Don't be scared Ty," they murmered. "It's Kit remember. They're not scary. You have nothing to worry about."

Ty didn't answer her. He had wrapped his arms around his body, squeezing tightly. "Marí do you remember those dead moon jellyfish we buried on the beach?" He asked.

She was a little confused as to why he was bringing this up now. "Yeah? Why?"

"That's what I feel like right now," Ty admitted. "Like I've washed up on the beach and now I'm just waiting for someone to come along and step on me."

Marí's heart sank. "Oh Ty," they breathed. "I promise that won't happen with Kit. I can't make any promises for anyone else, but I do know that Kit has absolutely no intention of hurting you again love."

Ty looked pensive. Marí could only hope that Ty would make the decision to trust them.

With a sudden jolt Marí remembered the party.

"Hey we still have the Halloween party to go to," she said, shaking Ty out of his stupor. "Do you still wanna go?"

To their surprise, Ty nodded. "Sure. I think Alyssa might kill me if I back out now."

Marí snorted. Alyssa Reyes could be pretty terrifying at times.

With surprise Marí found that their spirts were lighter having cleared the air with Ty and with the prospect of a party being renewed.

She smiled. "All right then let's head out!" Marí smoothed down the long black wig over her shoulders and quickly smoothed out the long skirt of her black slinky dress before turning and exiting the training room.

She knew that she would have to talk to Kit at some point and that conversation would be brutal. But at least they could have one last night together.

It's better this way. Marí told themself as they walked back towards the main living room where everyone was gathered. At least now Kit can be happy.

It's for the best.

It has to be.

So I'm actually planning on writing a part 3 from Kit's pov because the drama isn't over yet! 😏

Tag list: lmk if you wanna be added/removed.

@playwithravenclaw @lavender-scented-rat @jazzkaurtheglorious @waterlillies @nott-the-best @stxr-thxif @magnus-the-fabulous-entp-bane @foxglove-airmid @littlx-songbxrd @clarys-heosphoros @queenlilith43 @arangiajoan @hardlymatters @thomas-gaypanic-lightwood @tired-vin @phoenix-and-dragon @the-blackdale @adoravel-fenomeno @the-wckd-powers

#tsc #twp #kit x ty #marí the werewolf #the wicked powers #maría machado sotomayor #we stan autistic bonding #we stan queer bonding

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foreverlogical · 3 years ago

Text

A controversial piece of legislation commonly known as the "Don't Say Gay" bill passed the Florida Senate on Tuesday after being approved by the House last month. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has signaled that he plans to sign the bill. Why is the bill getting so much national attention?

What's in the bill?

The legislation, more officially titled the "Parental Rights in Education" bill, seeks to restrict the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity with public school children, especially from kindergarten to the third grade.

The text of the bill, which was filed on Jan. 11 by state Rep. Joe Harding (R), stipulates that "[c]lassroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate."

"If that language seems vague, it is," writes CNN. "But vague legislation can have massive consequences."

The bill also empowers parents to sue schools and teachers that violate this ban, enhancing the ability of Florida's parents to object to their children's curricula.

Notably, the "Don't Say Gay" nickname was created and spread by activist opponents to the bill. The bill does not seek to prohibit the use of the word "gay" in schools, supporters note.

Will schools be forced to "out" LGBT students?

Maybe.

The final text of the bill requires schools to notify parents "if there is a change in the student's services or monitoring related to the student's mental, emotional, or physical health or well-being." A student coming out as transgender or non-binary would require changes to the student's "services and monitoring" — such as altering the student's sex in school records or stipulating the use of different pronouns in the classroom — and could therefore fall under this definition.

The legislation does, however, include a carve-out that allows schools to "withhold such information from parents" when there is a risk of "abuse, abandonment, or neglect." So, for example, a transgender student who wears girls' clothes and uses a feminine name at school but lives as a boy at home because of parental threats would not have to be "outed."

An amendment Harding introduced in February would have required schools to "develop a plan … to disclose such information [to parents] within 6 weeks" even if "a reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect," but Harding withdrew the amendment a few days later.

Is this bill the first of its kind?

No.

Laws placing some level of restriction on discussing LGBT issues in the context of sexual education have been repealed, overturned, or rendered obsolete in several states. Texas has a pair of 1991 statues on the books requiring all sex-ed programs to teach that "homosexual conduct is not an acceptable lifestyle and is a criminal offense." Anti-sodomy laws in the state were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2003.

In 2008, Tennessee State Rep. Stacey Campfield (R) introduced a bill prohibiting "the teaching of or furnishing of materials on human sexuality other than heterosexuality in public school grades K-8." The bill failed relatively quietly.

In 2011, Campfield — by then a state Senator — re-introduced the legislation, which also included language that could be interpreted as requiring educators to "out" gay students to their parents. This time, it attracted national and international attention, and critics quickly coined the phrase "Don't Say Gay" to describe it.

After several years in legislative limbo, Campfield's bill passed the state Senate in 2015 but never became law.

How are people reacting?

Proponents of the bill tend to focus on the part of the bill that bans instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity "in kindergarten through grade 3."

"Ask any non-deranged parent if they want their six-year-old to talk about their sexuality with their teacher and they'll look at you like you're crazy," Alex Perez wrote at The Spectator World.

Harding said the bill is "designed to keep school districts from talking about these topics before kids are ready to process them."

Detractors meanwhile emphasize the phrase "in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate," arguing that such imprecise language could lead to lawsuits from parents who believe any discussion of LGBT identities is inappropriate at any grade level.

Amit Paley, CEO of the LGBT suicide prevention group The Trevor Project, wrote at CNN that the bill "would effectively erase entire chapters of history, literature, and critical health information" and "silence LGBTQ students and those with LGBTQ parents or family members." He added that, according to his organization's research, "LGBTQ students who learned about LGBTQ issues or people in classes at school were 23 percent less likely to attempt suicide in the past year."

LGBT advocacy group Equality Florida threatened to "lead legal action against the State of Florida" if "the vague language of this bill" is "interpreted in a way that causes harm to a single child, teacher, or family." Kara Gross of the ACLU's Florida branch told Time the bill could infringe on teachers' First Amendment rights.

In his State of the Union speech, President Biden told "younger transgender Americans" he would "always have your back … so you can be yourself and reach your God-given potential."

Some of the bill's critics took its nickname literally. Occupy Democrats writer David Weissman falsely claimed Republicans had "banned the word gay in the state of Florida." Florida state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D) shared a TikTok montage of various people saying "Gay" into their phone cameras in protest.

More than 500 students at one Florida high school walked out in protest of the bill before it passed the state Senate.

Why has the name of the bill been so controversial?

The bill's full name is almost 400 words long, so naturally, some sort of nickname had to be devised.

Supporters refer to it as the "Parental Rights in Education" bill, but so far, the bill's opponents are winning the PR battle. Google searches for "Don't say gay" vastly outnumber searches for "Parental rights in education." Media outlets including CBS, ABC, NBC, The Associated Press, and The Week have all referred to the legislation as "Don't Say Gay" in headlines.

When a reporter for Tampa Bay's NBC affiliate used the nickname when asking Gov. DeSantis about the bill on Monday, DeSantis accused him of "pushing false narratives."

Christina Pushaw, the governor's press secretary, suggested on Twitter that the legislation ought to be called the "Anti-Grooming Bill."

According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network "grooming" refers to "manipulative behaviors" that a sexual "abuser uses to gain access to a potential victim, coerce them to agree to the abuse, and reduce the risk of being caught." Florida state Rep. Carlos G. Smith (D), who is gay, blasted Pushaw for "openly accus[ing] opponents" of the bill of being "pedophiles."

What happens now?

DeSantis is expected to sign the bill into law. He has repeatedly expressed support for the legislation, though he hasn't explicitly said he will sign it if it reaches his desk, ABC News reports. If he does, however, the law would go into effect July 1.

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suspendnodisbelief · 4 years ago

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A non-essentialist approach to the Mando’a binary dala & jag

Oya, Mando'ade! For Mando'a enthusiasts and Mando-reconstructionists alike - groups which have significant LGBTQA membership, and who consequently don't appreciate binaryist and biological-essentialist rhetoric - the terms "dala" and "jag" are more than a little yikes. I want to approach dala with an interpretation which does not assume anything about anyone's physical anatomy, but rather which represents social role differentiation between combat and infrastructure... and the bio-essentialist view is just aruetiise naturally misinterpreting these as gender-based divisions of labour.

Dalab does literally mean scabbard, but the term jag isn't actually tied into any literal sword or blade, and therefore isn't necessarily anatomical. A scabbard needn't be a gestural similarity to anatomy; it can be a philosophical thing: where something goes when it is resting, home, not conducting warfare. Likewise, if you call someone "like a scabbard," it's easily a way of saying "they don't like to draw their weapon." Jagyc is macho, and definitely has combative connotations; dalyc could mean restful and recuperative, or oriented toward building and maintaining the structures and institutions of a society.

Outside races misinterpret these roles as being equivalent to gender, because in those outside societies, war is (erroneously) regarded as men's work, and the business of maintaining home, base camp, and medical facilities is regarded (erroneously) as women's work.

A warring society can't get by without base camps and medic tents. A sword without a scabbard rusts. This binary division in social roles or personality traits is more about whether a person is more frequently agitated, restless, spoiling for a fight or at least urgently needing to be on the move... or more prone to building home, infrastructure, making sure people rest and eat and take downtime and let their injuries heal properly. This kind of division is already well established in living languages; the words 'lord' and 'lady' are etymologically "bread keeper" and "bread kneader." Who guards the bread; who makes the bread exist in the first place? If dala meant 'oven' or 'furnace,' we could choose to interpret that as a gross euphemism for a womb, but we could also interpret it as 'cooking and forging armour are the responsibilities of this social category.' This division is only as binary as "combatants and noncombatants." Everyone is still ultimately responsible for considering their own self-defense AND contributing to the common good through shared labour at construction and maintenance of constructions (such as cleaning up after themselves). Which of those things is someone enthusiastic about, and which one do they gripe and groan when they're required to do it? That is what makes them jagyc or dalyc: which tasks they take to with gusto. It's rightfully a little insulting to call someone either one, because being too eager to scrap is foolish and puts others in danger, and being too fixated on infrastructure (and too averse to defense and movement) can cause the culture to get more anchored in one place, complacent, subject to arasuum, than they want to be. Their mobility and the sheer sprawl of the diaspora are integral to their survival. Being too dalyc may mean "too comfortable doing simple honest work that doesn't involve risks; too willing to let others take risks for you." Being too jagyc may mean “too prideful and self-centered to perform a fair share of tedious and inglorious tasks, forcing others to clean up after you; too willing to make messes and create problems that other people are forced to live with.”

Importantly, we can take away from this an understanding that a Mando'ad is expected to balance these qualities. There are times in life (such as elder years) when the abundance of life experience and the limitations of physical athleticism encourage being more dalyc. There are times (such as the prime of youth) when being jagyc is an asset, but can also lead to accumulated injuries which may become disabilities over time. A Mando'ad is not expected to be completely invested in both qualities all of the time, but to understand that the course of their own life will make them better at one or the other. To allow their identity to be enmeshed with only one of these qualities, is to lead them down a self-destructive and socially-detrimental path, in which a too-jagyc Mando may see themselves as useless after sustaining an injury, or a too-dalyc Mando may see their skills as devalued or wasted when forced to be on the move for too long. This ultimately isn't a matter of gender at all, but of understanding what one has to offer to one's society, and accepting that change - a desirable quality - is the only constant in Mando life, for changelessness is arasuum.

Now, am I suggesting that others have to adopt this interpretation to be correct Mando enthusiasts? Nah. If you want to cling to Karen Traviss' own remarks on the subject, that's up to you. I just don't feel it's remotely necessary to pretend that's the only interpretation available to us, when we're talking about a fictional culture with an enormous diaspora of thousands of species and races, many of whom certainly have more than two genders. No fictional society is going to be free of all discomfort for all demographics who read about them. Thankfully this isn't some real-world ethnoreligious population who we are fetishising or disrespecting by rebranding their language and concepts in an image we find more palatable. It's a fictional language; we don't have to let it gross us out when we have options.

#mando'a

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comrade-meow · 3 years ago

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Spell-caster's notebook, 2nd half of the 19th century - 1st quarter of the 20th century, Haute-Saône. Photo credit: Musées départementaux de la Haute-Saône

“When total war is being waged with words, one must make up one’s mind to engage in another kind of ethnography.”

—Jeanne Favret-Saada, Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage (1977)

One of the best studies of the power of language and its relationship to violence is Jeanne Favret-Saada’s Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage (1977). In this groundbreaking ethnography, Favret-Saada discusses how witchcraft employs language to gain power and catch the subject within a web of words. For Favret-Saada, the ethnographer is the unwitcher who lets herself become entangled within a network of power in which words create spells. She calls this being “caught.” For “those who haven't been caught” spells simply “don’t exist” (15).

Similar to Favret-Saada’s work on witchcraft in France, today’s cultural-political economy is immersed in another politicisation of language. This time the catching of subjects, government and institutions is happening in the public sphere under the guise of linguistically codifying identity. All this necessarily relies upon a previous “bewitching” of subjects who are willing to recycle the language of the magical spells despite the absence of evidence.

In witchcraft, language becomes the contested space that Favret-Saada rightfully notes as having taken hostage the very premise of communication, writing, “[I]t is no longer truth or error that is in question, but the possibility of communicating.” Addressing those who have been caught within the spell of language—the bewitched and the suffering—Favret-Saada asks:

In what way are the bewitched right when they say they are suffering? And the unwitchers, when they say they “take it all” on themselves? (And what of the alleged witches, who remain obstinately silent, or claim they do not believe in spells?) What, then, is at stake when such a discourse is being used? These questions led to other, more fundamental ones, about the effect of spoken words and the very rationale of this discourse: why is talking in this way so like the most effective kind of act? How do words kill as surely as a bullet? Why do people talk rather than fight or die, why do they use precisely these terms? And why this kind of language rather than another? If one talks in terms of witchcraft, it must be that the same things cannot be said any other way. (13)

Although Favret-Saada asks these questions about rural Normandy of the 1970s and the role of the ethnographer in studying her own culture, we can easily expand upon Favret-Saada’s premise here. For as she posits in the Bocage that one need not believe in sorcery, there is an accounting that takes place by virtue of the group’s symbolic code where “you have to be caught to believe” and where those who haven’t been “caught” have no place speaking about spells. Favret-Saada poses this question to herself: “What ultimate authority could I invoke, in talking about spells to a bewitched person or an unwitcher?” Does being an insider lend to the currency of language and belief such that any interaction with an outsider necessarily invokes a turf war over space, bodies and language?

For Favret-Saada, words do not merely represent or communicate beliefs—they have noticeable effects on the vitality and well-being of both the bewitched and the dewitcher. Where her work examines how words “kill” and “heal,” today we are in the throes of a culture war where the claim—contrary to fact—of words causing death, of words being “literal violence” are now thrust to the fore. Indeed, words are laden with such potential for “violence” today that many think twice before speaking or writing. The mere accusation of violence has become the negative reinforcement of a movement that has been allowed to make up facts, statistics and now even the very non-reality of violence.

If we are to move forward through the current debates over gender, race, and various other orbiting identities whose moral framework rests almost uniquely upon claims of victimhood, often in direct opposition to material fact, we must return to some of the primal tenets of reason posed during the Enlightenment. We are in the throes of a society caught within a hall of mirrors—many of which are firmly and uniquely fixed within the virtual world of social media—where the narcissistic output is unparalleled even by a three-year-old having a strop on the playground. Where words are “violence” and opinions akin to “murder,” we are witnessing the conflicts created when a direct antagonism between perceived identity and material reality is met on the social stage.

In order to understand what is driving this culture of identifying with oppression—often feigning oppression—our task must be to address those who claim to be suffering. While the subjects caught in the spell of words have been at the centre of media and political attention in recent years, these communities rely upon the language “witchcraft” to divorce themselves even further from ontological and empirical reality while surrendering themselves to a language that holds no resemblance to the material world. There is something to be said for the punishing efforts of these lobbies which seek to project phobias and other -isms into any thoughtful debate or prose on issues of “race” and gender.

Favret-Saada noted that those who resist the language of sorcery will be made to suffer. Today, we must ask ourselves if those fighting for the recognition of their identities even if the older remedies of psychiatry or religion have failed:

The priest and the doctor have faded out long ago when the unwitcher is called. The unwitcher’s task is first to authenticate his patient’s sufferings and his feeling of being threatened in the flesh; second, it is to locate, by close examination, the patient’s vulnerable spots. It is as if his own body and those of his family, his land and all his possessions make up a single surface full of holes, through which the witch’s violence might break in at any moment. (8)

This study considers how the aporia left by the fading grip of religion and medicine has been filled by outside forces coming to confirm the subject: the suffering subject. Having worked with those who were caught up in a spell, the dewitchers and the wives and families affected by witchcraft, Favret-Saada notes how suffering forms the core of how witchcraft is exercised in this community and she explores the reasons for this suffering.

Today, suffering is undergoing a cultural redefinition in the west through the recycling of historical tropes of violence and oppression injected throughout identity politics. Unlike the distant witchcraft of Favret-Saada's fieldwork, historical atrocities cannot simply be cut and paste into a present-day reality in order to rejuvenate a fresh violent act of suffering through which the subject identifies. Where Favret-Saada shows how working with the bewitched and their unwitchers implicates the constant manoeuvring of “good and evil," she claims that all unwitching "is impossible to cure without switching to a position of indirect violence.” Violence is a discursive marker for Favret-Saada where "he who does not attack automatically becomes the victim."

To understand the political forces that revive discourses of racism and sexism today by those claiming victimhood, we must ask those suffering why they suffer. Then, we must also ask why the spell involves converting others to their ideology so that the subject might suffer less. The symptom of suffering that we see by those claiming to have a gender identity, for instance, is inextricably linked to their need for others to mirror their self-image through language. This is similar to what Favret-Saada claims about dewitching, “a technique that neutralizes and exteriorizes venomous self-doubt." There are clear ideological manoeuvres meant to inscribe healing through fiat.

We need to understand how people weaponise emotionally-laden discourse today. The public shaming of those who do not confirm the suffering or pronouns of another seems to be part of a larger network of “sorcery” where the current structural functioning of our society rewards those individuals who engage in the aforementioned language games while punishing those who refuse.

Favret-Saada’s identification of power as the primary element in the effectiveness of ritual forms is a crucial contribution to our understanding of such rituals. Still, we can see the pitfalls of reducing the language of witchcraft to a tidy binary of the subject who suffers and the dewitcher who does violence. Where “the sufferer can choose to interpret his ills in the language of witchcraft,” it is also the case that those who do not claim to suffer are deemed de facto oppressors.

Where oppression is a historical and current-day fact, the truly oppressed subject is mostly not heard. What time has the underpaid or economically destitute worker to chime in on Twitter or to write her local politician? We are captured within a political field where segments of the population use words like “literal violence” to refer to another group whose push back on their notion of oppression. Those who use the stage of oppression in order to be heard are as numerous as is their narcissism expansive. When the media prints that something is “oppression” or “murder” today, we can pretty much bet that what is being communicated is invariably the opposite. In a world where narratives of oppression have taken hold of democratic processes with fury and where the mere claim to victimhood is tantamount to fact, we must concede that we are living in a post-truth era.

Emotions are given enormous weight over facts in media today and all it takes for one to be considered oppressed is to use the “magical spell” of language. The only way out of this chasm between truth and narcissism is to revert to the institutions of science, philosophy, journalism and law. Let us not forget that long before smartphones it was possible—even pleasant—to have heated discussions over a meal with friends and strangers, everyone chiming in with their thoughts and disagreement.

We must reject illogical, illiberal hokum being fed us as the "new progressive" language of the day and instead we should return to the table of dinnertime debate where facts outweigh feelings and where individuals are held accountable for good-faith debate. I have often wondered if the current popular authoritarianism would have ever taken hold without the cloaked anonymity that social media affords. Still, I am quite certain that the current stifling of free speech, academic debate and the media's drive of anti-science narratives are all directly linked to the fact that politicians are not held to account for their performances that have zero political vaue. From AOC's sporting her "tax the rich" dress at the Met Gala for which attendees paid £25789 to attend to David Lammy who claims that males have cervixes, the left is in dire straits with a political class of professional liars who use words to bewitch us all.

I suspect that were the online debate moved to the salon or dining room, we would all be able to see the ruffian sulking silently in the corner, angrily seething because his arguments were unconvincing. His fist banging on the table evidence his every iteration as less rational and credible than the one before. As he struggles to bully all those in disagreement around him, his turbulent behaviour reveals him to be fundamentally an irritable prig who harbours deep-seated misogyny and homophobia.

Real-life interactions are part of the remedy to the addiction-addled cycles of social media use. We cannot replace the vacuum left by religion's demise with political or ideological orthodoxy any more than we can unwitch the possessed who identify with their fictional oppressions.

One of the options we have at our disposal is to unplug and go outside. I’m heading there now. Come join me.

#Anglo.txt

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allegedlyauser · 3 years ago

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thoughts on loki episode 4

I’m not usually one to share thoughts on episodes of a show but this last episode was weird to say the least and I feel like I need to talk a bit about the fundamental problems I found with it.

I have a lot of things to say and don’t really know where to start so I’ll just start by saying that I loved the show so far, esspecially the episode before this one. Episode 3 for me really gave us depth in both Loki’s and Sylvie’s characters, I depth I personally didn’t think we were going to get at all. I want to focus esspecially on Loki confirming that he isn’t straight during the episode, which in my opinion was executed exactly the way I wanted. The show doesn’t seem like it’s going to focus on it much further, so I honestly doubt that we will see anything happen on screen between Loki and anyone who isn’t female, but I’m glad they acknowledged it. I feel like most of the time people just ask for sexualities and identities to be acknowledged and to be treated like what they are: a part of the character and who they are. Loki confirming that he had been with ‘a bit of both’ wasn’t weird nor out of place, it was a normal response in a conversation, and I feel like that it’s a perfect example of how to give representation even if the story isn’t necesarilly about love or sexuallity or identity. And since for me this show is about Loki, who he is and who he could become, it was amazing to see that they respected the character and touched all the points they did.

That being said however, I feel like they took several steps back from the steps forward they had taken on episode 3. And what happened on episode 4 and the problems it brings with it go far beyond any ship or headcanon I may or may not have on this show.

Starting with Sylvie, I have to say I wasn’t really feeling her at first. She was a weird combination between Lady Loki and the Enchatress which I didn’t really understand and wasn’t what I wanted when I said I would love for Lady Loki to appear on the show. However, I came to actually respect the character and how it was portrayed. In episode 3 we could see that Sylvie actually was a well rounded character which didn’t fall in a lot of the categories or cliches female characters are usually held upon, esspecially in superhero movies. I didn’t feel like she was strong because she was held to the standards of a man or because she acted like one. She wasn’t there to be pretty, but she also held a glimpse of femininity which wasn’t seen as a flaw. Overall I appreciated that she had a story of her own, and that she is strong while still being a realistic woman, and not one that is either completly unrealistic and seen through the male gaze or a woman who has to act and be like a man to be considered strong. I liked that we actually got to see her have emotions, which sounds weird to say, but its more often than not that women who are considered strong in movies and shows lack emotion and see femininity as something to avoid. Sexy and emotionless is usually the role given to strong women. Don’t get me wrong, there are really well written characters that would technically fall into those categories, but it’s the lack of characters like Sylvie which makes me appreciate the way she is, and that goes from her personallity to the way she’s dressed. And I have to say that in general the females in this show are really appealing to me and I enjoy watching them on screen.

And Sylvie was such an amazing opportunity on the show too, not only as a character but also because of what she represented. She could have started a conversation among the themes in the show regarding how Loki sees himself. Being a gender fluid character I felt like this was such an amazing opportunity to actually see an explicit conversation about it on screen. About how Loki didn’t question having a female counterpart of himself, and what that means to how he viwes himself and his identity. I was excited to see that, esspecially knowing that Sylvie was going to be there to do so so so much more than just helping Loki find himself. It was such a amazing dance that could have been created with the dynamics of these two characters, bringing questions about who the other really is while still being their own characters. I was esspecially excited because representation of the lgbtqi+ community is usually reduced to white young gay men, and when it comes to identity and gender esspeciafically, gender fluidity or non-binary identities are almost never talked about. And on top of all of that, this show involving these two romantically is disrespectful to both characters and makes absolutely no sense.

I gave it much thought yesterday, what it was that I really hated about this relationship being settled. There are so many heterosexual couples in books and movies that are so amazing and well written, and for some reason since the first moment I knew this wasn’t one of them.

I feel like the biggest problem I have with it it's the development of the couple itself. They talked once on episode 2, and it wasn't about themselves really so it isn't like that first conversation added to them falling in love. Then they spend not even a day together and out of nowhere they are in love. If something had happened that really made them bond and trust each other I would kind of buy it I guess, but looking at episode 3 in an objective way, their relationship being now romantic comes out of nowhere. They have a couple of deep conversations sure but them being in love feels so forced. They essentially don't really know the other and haven't lived enough together for them to fall for the other either. It doesn't have any emotional weight to me. They are doing Loki wrong by having him literally fall in love with the first person who slightly understands what it's like to me him. It feels plain, forced, and really out of place, especially with where Loki is at story wise.

I feel like if it was well written and we'll developed, and it happened later in the series (not literally one episode after the female lead appears), then I would have been weirded out but I feel like the character arcs they deserved wouldn't have been so messed up. I don't ship them so it's not like I would be rooting for them, but I wouldn't be as mad for sure. The fact that this forced love story is there affects the character development of both characters, which clearly deserve better.

First with Loki, it's an ongoing theme that has been brought up that he doesn't want to be alone. Having him fall in love, esspecially as quickly as it happened, is just sick. It feels like the way for him to feel whole and okay is by him being with someone else which I feel misses the whole point of the show. Second with Sylvie, it just completely breaks all the praises I gave to the character some moments before. Don't get me wrong, it's perfectly possible to have a female character who is also in a relationship without her being watered down to nothing more to a love interest, but the nature of the relationship here, it being so underdeveloped, breaks what she had build up. Sylvie right now feels to me like a means to an end rather than her own character. That conversation I believe she was going to start for the show, which I talk about earlier, doesn't go both ways anymore. I'm really upset because for me it feels like the second they explained who she was, introducing who she could become, she immediately became the love interest. We haven't even had time to really enjoy the character knowing now who she is.

On top of all of this, I feel like a love story this early in the show is going to take the main focus of the Loki series away. I'm scared the show is going to go from Loki discovering who he is, what he wants and how he feels, to him wanting to go back to Sylvie all the time and him being in love becoming the main focus of his arc. Same with Sylvie, I don't want her character's arc to go from wanting to come to terms with who she represented in existance and with how to live with what happened to her and be happy, to her wanting to go back to Loki all the time too. Love stories like that are amazing too, but not with these characters at this point in the show.

Honestly when the nexus appeared I thought it was because Loki finally had loved himself, which is something we don't see happen at any point in his story (including the Loki in the sacred timeline). It's a sad thought but I believed that what had happened is that after talking to a different version of himself and before dying, he had realized he finally accepted himself and that wasn't supposed to happen. I still hope they go with that rather than the love story, for both the characters and for the plot of the series.

But yeah that's it, it ended up being really long but I hope I was able to explain well what I was trying to say. Hopefully the show continues to treat these characters and their stories well and doesn't make any unnecessary decisions like the one they just did.

#loki #loki episode 4 #loki series #loki episode 3

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phcking-detective · 4 years ago

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FOUND

Find Familiar: ch 1

Rating: E

Summary: Nines cast the spell Find Familiar, but instead of an animal, they accidentally summoned a werewolf. Gavin is just happy to have finally found his mate and start pack bonding with the half-elf wizard. His best idea for a fun bonding activity? Touching his dick of course!

***

Gavin wakes up with a warm, breathing body pressed against his own, and it's all he ever wanted.

Then reality seeps in like cold rain and he realizes it's just the one person, not a dog pile, because he doesn't have a pack. Only a wizard who maybe sort of magically owns him now.

So that's a great start to the morning.

He gets a stew started like he promised, once he finds some potatoes and carrots, one lonely haunch of meat in an icebox, and no spices beyond salt. There aren't many places to look, since the whole room is five, maybe six hundred square feet.

Gods. Gavin's a lone wolf living half-feral without a tent or even a fire half the time, and he still thinks this is pathetic.

He knows better than to touch any of the books scattered around—fucking wizards—so he doesn't try to clean anything while he waits for his new … boss? Alpha?? person, to wake up.

(He does risk moving a stack of papers to sit in front of the black leather collar on the desk. Not hidden. Just. Out of sight.)

"No celery?" the wizard asks.

Gavin bites down on a flinch and a few choice swears. Sweet Selûne shift him. Who the fuck goes from asleep to awake completely silent like that?

"No," he growls.

Nines blinks themself more awake. "Is your negative an agreement to my question or simply a negative?"

"Baby, I have no idea what the fuck you mean, but there's not any celery."

"Oh. Thank you."

The conversation ends there when he dishes out a bowl of stew, that Nines eats at their desk, one agonizingly slow bite at a time, almost as an afterthought as they work on creating papers and papers of writing.

Since the wizard is so absorbed in their scribbles they can barely notice food, Gavin strips down and takes a bath. The water runs hot straight out of the faucet, even without any signs of pipes. Sinking into a whole tub of it feels goddamn luxurious.

He's half-shifted before he even realizes, but Nines probably wouldn't notice he got out and swung his dick around like a propeller, so he doesn't force himself back. His hybrid form always feels better anyway, the best of both animals, with human hands and wolf senses, still able to stand and walk upright but with stronger muscles and thicker protective body hair.

He's still sunk down and amusing himself by blowing bubbles in the water with his near-snout when Nines finally surfaces for air on their own side of the tower.

"Gav—oh."

They turn around and blink at him. Gavin hunkers down lower in the water and prepares to force himself back, but even without actively poking the bond, he can tell there isn't any fear or revulsion from the wizard. He still pulls his snout of out the water and scents the air just to check, but … nothing.

"Good. Yes. Feel free to utilize any of the …" Nines pauses, stuck on the words. "Accommodations. Can you read?"

It's probably a fair question—especially since the answer is barely—but Gavin still hauls himself out of the bathtub and onto the sand pit so Nines will have to look at him. All the scars, the body hair almost thick enough to be a pelt, the way his bone structure is clearly halfway between one form and the other right now.

But instead of making the wizard flinch away and stop asking questions, Nines just grabs a different notebook and begins sketching him.

"Why?" Gavin growls out.

He can still speak, but just like his amount of literacy, the amount is barely. With lots of effort.

"Hmm?"

Nines looks up. Sort of. They lift their head at least, but their eyes stay focused down on their notebook, reluctantly dragged up at the very last second.

"Mm? Oh. Yes, here is your contract," they say.

They place the small stack of papers they'd written onto the dining table in the center of the room, then the two of them meet in the middle, each awkwardly taking a seat across from each other at the table, then staring at each other even more awkwardly.

"That is my brother's seat," Nines says.

Gavin raises an eyebrow but doesn't move his ass out of it. At least he put pants on before sitting down.

"I have never had another visitor," the wizard continues. "So. That has always been …"

They trail off, then grab their notebook and begin reading from it.

"My name is Nines. I am a wizard. I am thirty-two year half-elf. I do not have a gender. I use they-them pronouns. Pause for—"

They stop abruptly and look back up at him.

"… Gavin," he says. "I'm a fighter, thirty-six, werewolf. Born, not turned, so we don't really keep track of any races. You're either a wolf or you're not. Probably human though. Uh, he-him."

If they don't bother with human binary genders, maybe they'd understand just … switching genders? He thinks about it while Nines writes down what he'd said, like anything he says is actually important enough to be recorded.

Maybe he should let them get a little more attached to him before he tells them about the other crazy, evil wizard with a claim on him—and all the transformations they'd done on his body.

"Does your entire pack consist of born lycanthropes?" they ask, drawing him back into the conversation.

"Can just say wolves," Gavin grumbles. "And yeah. Haven't taken in a stray for a while."

No one does. That's why he's still—ugh, stop it. Fucking feeling sorry for himself.

"Is there a significant cultural difference between born and turned … wolves?"

Gavin stares at the wizard. Significant cultural difference, Selûne shift and collar him.

"Turned wolves don't have a pack," he finally says. "No one to share the mental load—most of the poor fuckers don't even know what's happening until they're already shifted and scared and starving. They've got just enough instinct to go back home, and then the screaming and running starts …"

He assumes he doesn't have to finish it from there. A hungry wolf sees something run, and they think prey, not child.

"I apologize if I ask simple questions," Nines states while still writing. "But I have never had the opportunity to meet a wolf in person, and so my knowledge is likely biased and incorrect. Is a coastal environment a suitable habitat for you?"

Gavin shrugs. "Sure. You gonna let me run around outside at some point?"

"Yes, of course. You may come and go as you please," Nines says. "How much land will your pack need? I do own the surrounding—"

His pack? Gavin stares at Nines as they ramble on about this land they own and how it's too rocky to support farming but has access to a cove, and the ensuing treaty with the local pod of merfolk, and—

And his pack. He has no idea what game the wizard is playing, but he never imagined it would include letting him "come and go as you please" and providing land for his—

"I don't have a pack," he blurts out.

Nines stops and blinks at him.

"Got kicked out."

He doesn't explain. It's impossible to explain just one thing, because it's all tangled together, in his mind, the words stuck in his throat. Refusing his pack's Alpha, bargaining to have his body changed and transformed, his womb scooped out so he could never be bred, never ever—

And where exactly that got him. They sit together in silence for a long, horrible moment.

"No one has need of a ninth child," Nines finally says.

"You really call yourself that?" Gavin asks in return, for lack of anything less dick-ish to say.

"Yes." Nines looks at him without any self-pity and factually adds, "It states all that most need to know. They do not need me, and I do not need them."

Gavin nods. "Fuck 'em."

"Yes. Well. I—" Nines stops and abruptly pushes the small pile of paperwork closer to his side of the table. "Here is your contract. It details what I … do need. And, expectations. I suppose the fifth clause is no longer necessary, unless you intend to create your own."

"My own … pack?" Gavin asks slowly.

"Yes."

He snorts. "I'm not going to run around and start turning people."

"Yes, that is included in the clause," Nines says. "Subsection A. Not to offend, but I thought it best to lay out a certain number of precautions first. B notes that you will be beholden to all the same laws as any other citizen, and C states you will make adequate arrangements for the full moon with myself or Knight Commander Anderson."

Gavin pulls a face at the rank. That shit's almost definitely a paladin. No sense of humor, holier than thou, and allergic to critical thinking. Just because you pledged allegiance to a deity society deemed "Good" doesn't actually mean literally everything you do is always going to be right or kind or morally just.

"He is also a lycan—" Nines stops and corrects, "A turned wolf, you called it? If expecting the two of you to … have commonalities … is unreasonable, then the subsection can be adjusted accordingly. The point is merely that you arrange for a safe and secure location each month."

"Yeah, we're not going to sniff each other's butts and be best friends," Gavin tells him. "It's probably how you feel about sorcerers and warlocks. Magic just looks like magic to me, but—yeah."

He stops when he sees Nines's face collapse into itself in the purest form of affronted disgust he's ever seen. This time, he can't stop a chuckle before it slips out.

"I can just stay here though?" he asks.

Nines unfurls their face enough to nod. "Yes. My power may be my own, achieved through my own studies, but I was sent to the same monastery as my twin. I acknowledge you have been sent by my patron deity, and I will fulfill my responsibilities to you thusly."

Gavin's eyebrows shoot up. "You're religious?"

"I worship Selûne," Nines answers.

Gavin stares at the wizard.

"Children born under the full moon often have enhanced magical ability," they explain. "She is also the goddess of navigation, quests, and all who work by night. It was the battle with her own twin that caused the formation of Mystral, the goddess of all magic. Many arcane users still worship her as such."

"And werewolves," Gavin says as how this shit all happened clicks into place.

"Your duties outlined in the contract." Nines stops and clears their throat. "Every power has a price, and mine was enacted at my birth. I have always needed certain accommodations. I realize now a mere animal would not be enough to serve as my familiar, yet a person has never been summoned before. A familiar that is both animal and person, however …"

Gavin nods at the stack of papers. "So am I your familiar or your employee?"

"Well, both," Nines answers. "You are magically bound to me, but you obviously are not a simple animal. I have made adjustments due to these extenuating circumstances, but this is a standard contract for all minions, assistants, and others employed by wizards."

He snorts. "Do I have a union?"

"Yes, subsection E, although you will need to opt-in," Nines replies, very sincerely.

Gavin taps the top paper to make a point when he asks his next question, and the paper suddenly yells the word "HEREFORE" at him.

"Oh, my apologies." Nines takes the stack from him and scribbles a few marks in the top corner. "There, the volume should be properly adjusted."

Gavin cautiously slides the papers back over, being careful to only touch the sides of the stack. He takes the first page off the top and pokes his name, one of the few words he recognizes.

"Gavin," the paper announces.

"I have paperwork I must complete to officially register you as both my familiar and my new minion," Nines tells him. "I trust you can be left to your own devices to review our contract?"

"Yeah," Gavin says.

"Very good."

Nines gets up and returns to their desk. Still no collar, only … this contract. Gavin runs his finger along the first line.

"The entity known as Gavin, herefore referred to as THE FAMILIAR, will enter into a magically binding contract with Nines, herefore referred to as THE WIZARD, to serve in the capacities of both a FAMILIAR and a MINION, as outlined by the Wizard Coalition of …"

***

Gavin nuzzles into his bed and groans. Three days of barely stopping to hunt and sleep to get here, and now it's been another three days of slowly figuring each other out.

Which hasn't been bad or anything. He got to run around outside, do a few laps around the borders of Nines's land. Cold, wet, and rocky, but he has to admit, he's kind of digging the melodramatic sea-side vibe. The air smells like salt and storms all the time, crowding out all the memories of soft earth and dense forest.

And he's got a contract. A "boss." That's the word Nines wants to use, so Gavin says that, but they both know he means Alpha.

It's good to have a job, food, and a bed, blah blah blah, he's really grateful and all, it's just—

Maybe not everyone has them or wants to indulge in them, but Gavin does for both.

And it's been nearly a week.

"Nines," he finally says.

He pokes at their bond too for good measure. The wizard won't pay attention to him unless he does. They'll look up and point their face at his face, but somehow their hand will keep writing in the scroll and they won't hear a goddamn word he says.

Even with the mental prodding, Nines barely turns their head. "Hmm?"

"I need to jack off."

Nines keeps writing for half a second before they blink and actually look at him. "… now?"

Gavin half-shrugs, still laying down. "I mean, tonight, yeah."

He's a werewolf using testosterone cream—kept in a jar in his coin purse, which was much more important to enchant to shift with him than shoes—who just formed a mental pack bond again. Full moon already past or no, his hormones are screaming at him that he needs to fuck.

But that's probably not Nines's idea of a fun bonding activity.

"Do you have adequate lubrication?" Nines asks, then continues with narrowed eyes before he can even reply, "Do not use my spell components."

Gavin barks out a laugh. "What—I'm gonna jack it with oblex ooze? That'd melt my fucking dick off!"

"Yes, it would."

He pauses. "Do … you know that for sure?"

Nines sighs. Deeply. "I attended an academy meant to train paladins, clerics, and perhaps the odd druid."

"All the most repressed spellcasters, huh?"

Nines doesn't deny it. Gavin snorts, imagining all the magically-inclined tithe-children being told to keep themselves pure so they can be properly donated to the gods turning into magically-inclined teenagers hit with guilt and libido in equal measure—and all the idiot fuckery they probably got up to without any actual education about their bodies.

"Do you have adequate lubrication?" Nines asks again. "I do not keep supplies for that on hand."

"You don't keep supplies or you don't uh, keep anything on hand?" Gavin wiggles his eyebrows.

Nines flushes and glares like they're still a prefect at that academy. "I—that is not—"

Gavin raises his own hands to prove they're above the sheets. "If that's not any of my business, sure. Figured that, honestly. Which is why I'm telling you that I've got needs, but I can just go downstairs if you want."

"Downstairs?" Nines frowns less furiously.

"That little entranceway at the door is large enou—"

"I'm not going to send you out into the hall," Nines says, like that's what will make them clutch their pearls in shock. "You can stay in your own bed."

"Yeah?" Gavin gives the wizard a once over. "I'm good with that. So good. But what I'm willing to do with pack and what you think is appropriate for a roommate probably isn't the same thing."

Nines's frown turns more calculating, like they're correcting the runes in a spell. "We are discussing you staying in your bed to masturbate while I continue my studies, correct?"

"… yeah?"

"Are you going to call me names, attempt to touch me, or—"

"No, no," Gavin rushes to reassure them. "I can just …"

He moves his hand down and cups himself, just to demonstrate that he's only going to be touching his own body, before he remembers that's not socially acceptable around humans either. Nines only cocks their head to the side though, a mild curiosity leaking through their mental bond.

And fuck, just his hand feels good right now. It's been nearly a goddamn week.

"Do you have adequate lubrication?" Nines asks.

Gavin shivers under the sound of their voice. "Don't need it. Get wet enough myself."

He feels the bond pulse again with that academic sort of curiosity, like Nines is going to start taking notes on him again while he jacks off. He pushes his trousers down, moving slowly enough to give his boss plenty of time to look away. He isn't wearing smalls of course. They'd just be another piece he'd have to pay to get enchanted.

Nines eyes his cock like they might sketch it in exact anatomical detail.

Gavin doesn't mention how he got it—his bargain and the Collar, the collapsed tower, the vows of vengeance—he'll get around to confessing it all eventually. But in the meantime: a fun bonding activity.

Gavin grips his cock and gives it a few strokes. Nines blinks in a way that's more like shutting their eyes repeatedly. He exhales slowly and makes himself stop, although he does still keep his hand held loosely around the base.

"If you don't want echoes, you'll have to wall off your mind on your own end," he advises Nines. "I'm uh … a little too busy here to concentrate."

"Echoes," Nines repeats.

Shit, right. Human. Doesn't seem to specialize in any divination or enchantment magic—so they probably don't have any experience being inside someone else's head.

"Yeah, that's why I offered to," He jerks his chin at the door. "Distance helps, some."

Nines does that tiny little head tilt again. "May I observe?"

Gavin licks his lips. "Yeah."

"May I ignore you?" they ask next.

"Uh, sure?"

He doesn't have any human hangups about nudity, but he's not going to whip his dick out and waggle it at anyone who doesn't want to see it. Jacking off in the same room is probably already pushing it, but then again, the rules seem to be different in boarding schools and barracks and sometimes bars but sometimes not—humans have so many weird fucking rules.

"Then," Nines says. "You do as you please, and I will do the same."

"Works for me."

Gavin gives his cock another squeeze, and Nines turns back to their scroll. Yeah, he's a little disappointed about that, but it's enough just to have his pack in the same room and know he's not alone.

Since the wizard isn't watching anyway, Gavin rolls over and shoves a blanket down around his crotch. He has a whole nest of them, all piled up on top of a mattress Nines insisted he have. They'd tried to bring in an actual bed, but it's just weird, sleeping so high up and away from the ground for no reason.

He gets a soft little mound built up and grips himself again through the blanket. Even if Nines makes him wash it after, this will make his bed smell like him and home and—

Gavin buries his face into his pillow and inhales. It still has Nines's scent on it. All the blankets do too, so now they'll smell like the both of them, like pack.

He feels a fresh jab of interest spike back through their bond and guesses Nines is watching him again. Maybe jacking off right in front of them like that was a little too much, but with everything mostly out of view now, they're back to curious again.

It only takes him a minute to build up a steady rhythm, rutting into the blankets and his own hand. He groans into the pillow and hears Nines breathe in sharply.

Echoes. He grins and keeps going.

He doesn't know what kind of needs Nines has or wants to fulfill, but he likes the thought of making them feel good. Would like it even better if he could crawl over between the wizard's legs and find out what they're working with by licking it.

"Gavin …"

The wolf whines in response to his name in his Alpha's mouth. He squeezes his hand tighter at the base of his cock against the knot trying to plump up there, just in case Nines wants it.

"Yeah, baby?" Gavin manages to growl.

"Oh."

Nines breathes the word, and Gavin can feel a small simmer of arousal bounce back and forth between them—this time from the wizard's end, not his.

"Does it always feel like this?" they ask.

He groans in answer, the only response he has to the soft wonder in their voice. He knows humans' senses are weak and dull, that they don't get hit with lust and frenzy the same way wolves do.

But hearing the awe in his human's voice the first time they feel it too makes him want to show them how good it can really feel.

"Yeah," he bites out. "Better with … you."

His canines get in the way of the words, the partial shift rippling through his body. He's never had particularly good control of it, so there's no stopping the change now when his blood's up.

"Are you wet?"

The question stabs through him. Gavin loses his rhythm with a whimper, nearly overcome with the instinct to crawl over and show his Alpha, present his cock or his mouth or whatever hole they want to use.

And he is wet. He can feel it dripping down the length of his cock, more pooling at the head, smearing into the palm of his hand.

"Uh huh," he pants.

Gavin bites down into the blankets as he ruts harder, but a sharply clicked tongue brings him back to awareness. He turns his head to the side and blearily stares up at Nines as he continues fucking his own hand.

"I would like to hear you," Nines says.

"Baby," Gavin breathes in reply.

Nines closes their eyes and shivers. Well, if they like his voice …

"Wanna lick you," he says. "Suck on you and make you—ahhh, make you feel good."

"I—" Nines stares at him with wide eyes.

"Shh, shhh." Gavin keeps making the noise in a low mumble as he slows down his pace into a dirty grind. "Gotcha baby, get my mouth on your nipples an' your neck, your mouth, make you wet too."

"I don't usually like to be touched," Nines admits.

Gavin's brain snatches onto the word usually, but he doesn't want to push. There's some shit he knows for sure he won't ever do, but then there's a lot more he just doesn't know if he really doesn't want, or maybe only in the right situation, with the right pronouns and body parts, the right person, but then how is he supposed to know if he wants it enough to try it if he won't know if he actually wants it until he's already tried it?

So that's a whole big nest of wyverns, and neither of them need to try to sort it out right this moment.

"Can give you this though, yeah?" Gavin asks.

He twists his wrist on the upstroke against the head, but then stops and holds completely still. Nines tries to strangle a whine in their throat at the lost sensation.

"… yes."

That confession sounds much better. Gavin grins at the wizard and starts thrusting again, still looking at them. Their long eyelashes and shoulder-length hair almost soften their face into pretty, but then thin lips, a straight nose, and strong jaw sharpen the effect back up again. And the ice-blue eyes set against pale skin and black hair just sends it all careening past beautiful or handsome into big words about being scary-haunting-magical that the wolf can't think of right now.

He can feel his orgasm building up, drowning in those eyes staring right back at him, but he squeezes harshly at the base of his cock. The sensation strangles at the root, like the little moans Nines won't let escape their mouth.

He probably shouldn't tempt it, but he sinks into the feeling of tightening and loosening his grip around his knot and the waves of pleasure that sends rolling through them both.

"You," Nines says but can't seem to find anymore words.

"Mmgff." Gavin huffs into the pillow and tries to make his own words work. "Good, feels good. Sorry. Won't knot if—fffuck."

If that scares you. Disgusts you. Bores you, to be stuck listening to him come and come and come while the exasperated wizard is trying to focus on their studies.

He pries his eyes back open when he hears footsteps and stares up at Nines paused in an awkward-half crouch over him, like they're not sure if they're allowed to touch. His tail makes the decision for both of them by immediately wagging in anticipation of pets and attention.

"May I touch you?" Nines still asks.

Gavin nods past a desperate whine. A hand slides up the back of his neck first, while another soothes over his bare flank. Must've kicked off his trousers at some point. All that matters is the hand on the back of his neck, pinning him down, holding him place, exactly where he should be for his Alpha.

His tail wags harder.

"May I see?"

The hands urge him to roll over, and he does, without hesitation, like a dog showing his belly when his master comes home.

Laying on his back like this, he knows the partial shift is even more apparent. Just about everything humans think they know is bullshit, but his hybrid form really does look like those shitty illustrations of big scary wolf men.

And that's without the thick, hairy cock jutting out between his legs.

He's proud of it, wanted it, needed it, but that was for himself. He wasn't trying to impress anyone, and he's not expecting a human to like it.

"Does your phallus typically have this appearance, or is it increasingly engorged due to your partial transformation?" Nines asks.

Gavin stares up at them and tries to impress through their mental bond just how many fucking words that was.

Nines flushes and tries again. "Does it get bigger when you shift?"

"Yeah," he says. "Touch me?"

He holds his cock slightly out toward the wizard in offering. Nines hums in consideration but doesn't make any move toward it. That's fair.

"Do you knot without …" They struggle with the words again. "Sex?"

Gavin strokes himself, tugging upward and pause at the head. It leaves his knot free below, not quite there yet, but noticeably swollen under the attention.

"Can. Sometimes."

"Will you show me?"

Nines stares down at him and meeting their eyes is like looking at the moon. Humans want so badly to sort everything into Good or Bad, even the deities they worship. But some things aren't good or bad, only intense.

Gavin nods, mouth slack and panting. He wraps his left hand around his knot to work it while his right keeps stroking the rest. Nines's eyes sweep up and down him like a search light scanning for a rogue.

"Feel … good?" he asks between pants.

Maybe he's already asked, but it's hard to think right now. He tugs at the bond, trying to pull Nines's mind closer to him, get them to come down out of the sky and feel it with him. The wizard's hands clench into the robes draped over their kneeling legs.

Then they open their eyes again, and Gavin could swear their irises really have turned a silvery-blue.

"Behave."

The order thunders down their bond and into his chest. Gavin groans, the tightness coiled inside him easing another measure. He's not quite ready to unspool, but maybe—maybe just a little?

"I am asking about you."

Nines's voice changes from questioning and a little stilted to informing him of how it is, like casting a spell. Gavin doesn't have any ability himself, but as far as he knows, that's kind of how they do it. Spell casting is just telling reality what to do with enough conviction that reality up and does it.

"Do you want to be mine?"

Gavin thrusts into his hands in answer. It's sloppy and a little pathetic, because there's nothing for him to rut into. But he starts nodding again, just in case that wasn't enough.

"Like this?" Nines touches him for the second time, one hand gently curling around his throat. "To be mine."

He's coming undone. Falling apart. Food and shelter and an Alpha, their own little pack of two, someone touching him and promising to claim him.

"Suh … 'posed to be … yours."

He knows it's true, it's true, true. The call in his mind, their contract, both of them bound by Selûne.

"Yes," Nines confirms. "Show me."

Gavin comes almost before they finish speaking. He tries to hold eye contact as long as he can, but eventually his own squeeze shut as he curls in on himself with a shudder. The first wave passes deceptively quick, with just a few spurts from his cock.

But he's not done.

"Good boy."

Those hands are back again, just like before, this time encouraging him to roll back onto his belly. They stroke through his hair and scritch behind his ears when he obeys, and he thinks life couldn't possibly get any better until there's a warm body sliding onto the mattress behind him.

Then he's being spooned and everything inside him unravels without any warning.

When he's done coming for the second time, he's aware of a few things: the hand wrapped back around his throat, first. That the gangly half-human, half-elf is tall enough to almost envelope him completely. The soft murmur of praise in his ear, shifted halfway up his head now and nearly wolf-like.

Yours.

It's harder to send the thought out when he's only partially shifted. Even with other wolves, they all share best as animals, some basic concepts as hybrids, and only faint echoes when unshifted.

But being the wizard's familiar must be different, since he'd heard the summons in his head from damn near across the country, in all forms, while Nines can't shift at all.

You are mine. I will take care of you, if you allow me to keep you.

Oh yeah, that's definitely different. Wolves share senses and feelings, not full sentences.

Keep me, Gavin manages to think back.

"Yes," Nines murmurs aloud.

The third wave hits him, and he sobs as he comes for his Alpha. His body is just doing the best it can to please, still managing to pump out another two shots of cum. He can finally feel a tinge of mild revulsion from Nines, but it seems to be aimed more at the mess than himself. Bold feelings from a wizard who left a hunk of bread to mold so long they mistook it for a stoneshroom.

"Perhaps I should invest in a toy," they muse. "A sleeve somewhat akin to a bag of holding, so that it can contain all this mess."

Gavin groans in a not-sexy way. "Don't make me fuck a void."

"No, the pocket dimension would only be applied at the tip of the—"

He can't help but start laughing. Pocket dimension applied at the tip—and said completely straight. Goddamn wizards.

Nines expresses their irritation at being laughed at by nipping his ear, and yep, there's wave number four. To their credit, they do continue to hold him until he gets another brief reprieve.

"How many times does this occur?" they ask when he's done.

"Depends," Gavin scrapes together enough brain matter to say. "More with … partner."

"Hmm," Nines says, like the feral scientist they are.

Gavin flips off his pride and goes straight to begging. "Please."

He's not sure what exactly he's begging for though—not to be forced into multiple orgasms while Nines observes or takes notes, or that the wizard will get started on that right away.

"Please, please, baby."

Nines pulls him back to rest half on top of their body, which lets them switch their right hand for their left hand around his throat without him laying on top of their arm. And that in turn frees up their right hand to drop down to his cock.

"Yours, yours," he mumbles. "Alpha."

"What do you need?"

Their hand brushes his own, the one gripping his knot. He lets go for an agonizing second to press their hand against it instead. Nines lets him wrap his hand back around theirs, using both of their hands to squeeze and lightly tug the knot.

"Ah … ahhh …"

"Ask properly," Nines orders.

"Alphaaa!"

He practically wails the word, shaking apart in Nines's arms and beneath their hand, but he can't now, it's not enough on his own anymore, not without permission.

"Hmmm."

Gavin cries freely, but doesn't make Nines grip him tighter or stroke him off. His Alpha will give him what he needs, and he'll take what he's given, like a good boy.

But that doesn't mean he can't ask for more.

"Baby," he groans. "Need it, need it, I—phck, please!"

"Yes."

The final wave sweeps over him so hard he goes blind, or his eyes shut, or he's back on his belly again, face smushed into the pillow, Nines's hand still around him and the blankets beneath his cock to rut into and it's not the last because Nines tells him Again and Again, until he's coming dry, throat hoarse from crying.

And then once more after that.

When he regains consciousness again, his whole body feels sore in the best possible way. There's drool running down his chin, tacky and drying to the pillow. He has his knees tucked up beneath him, but that's OK, because this is how he's supposed to present anyway.

Except the hand reaching between his legs doesn't breach him. Something soft and wet swipes over him instead, and he can't even muster up the mental energy to be scared, to explain why that's still there, that he managed to bargain for a working cock and all his insides scooped out, but that's still—

"Hush." Nines soothes him with another hand rubbing his back. "You did very well. All you must do now is rest."

Gavin sinks back down into the delicious ache and doesn't move while Nines cleans the slick from between his thighs, then further up to his cock. The blankets he'd rutted into have already been removed at some point. He knows from experience not even the best wizard on the material plane could wash his scent out though and takes a moment to feel a little smug about it.

"Yes, you came a truly impressive amount," Nines says. "Excessive, actually."

Gavin smacks his mouth before he can speak. "Your fault."

"Hmmm."

Nines stands when he's done and moves away. Gavin manages to flop onto his side and curl up. His boss did say he could sleep now. He just needs a little nap.

He gets a flask of water shoved in his face instead. The hand petting him goes back awkward again, pat-pat-pat instead of real pets. Nines doesn't seem to know exactly what to do now that they're done, but clean up and water was still really nice of them.

Gavin finishes gulping down the flask and heaves in air.

"I have work I need to finish," Nines informs him. "Have your needs been sufficiently met?"

Sufficiently met? Fuck, he's had orgies that didn't wear him out this good.

"Yeah," Gavin answers. "Need to sleep now."

Nines smiles at him. "Excellent. Good boy."

Gavin grins lazily back at them. "And when I wake up, I'm gonna crawl over between your legs and make you feel good too."

Nines flushes and half opens their mouth to protest.

"When you need a break from your scroll-thingy, and only if you let me," he adds.

Nines closes their mouth. They don't say anything else, but that means they also don't say no. Their blush doesn't go away either. They simply stand back up and sit down at their desk, spending far too much concentration fussing over the exact alignment of all their inks and quills instead of looking at Gavin.

Who keeps grinning, even as he yawns and snuggles down in his bed. He just needs a little nap, and then after that … he has all sorts of ideas for fun bonding activities.

***

This fic was commissioned by one of my followers to continue the first drabble! Subscribers to my Patreon get early access to all my commissioned fics 2 weeks before they’re posted to AO3 and tumblr ^^

#reed900 #gavin reed #dbh #dbh fic #detroit: become human

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calliecat93 · 3 years ago

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ST: The Next Generation S3 Watchthrough Episodes 14-17

A Matter of Perspective: So we have Riker being accused of murder and Picard and the others having to piece together the events to find the true story. We have a bit of a unique way of accomplishing this as they use the Holodeck to recreate the various accounts… which causes a problem. Not everyone’s accounts line up. They may feel like they’re telling the truth, but may be remembering things wrong, going off second-hand information, misunderstanding wich affects the testimony, and all that fun stuff. Now we know that while Riker can kill if he has to, he likely didn’t commit murder (or do anything like force himself on a woman like the one recreation protrayed), or if he did there would be a reason for it. It sucks to see Riker int his situaiton and Picard wanting to believe his First Officer but having to follow his duty as Captain and with the evidence mounting against Riker… yeah.. So it was fine. Nothing to really complasin about, but nothing to really praise eiher. I guess it shows how messy it can be to get to the truth with so many people believing different things which causes so many muddled up accounts. We never get the true story (though Riker’s is probably the closest to the truth), but we get enough to prove Riker innocent so yay~! Just a solid episode all in all. 3/5.

Yesterday’s Enterprise: YAR! OH MY GOD!!! So in this episode, we end up in an alternate timeline where I guess the Bad Ending of The Undiscovered Country occurred and Starfleet is at war with the Klingons. Only Guinan can tell that something’s out of place. Yar is alive, Troi and Worf are gone, Wesley’s an actual officer, and they have found the believed to be destroyed Enterprise-C. They even bring back the movie-era red uniforms for the Enterprise-C crew. Yar pretty much gets far, far more material to work with than she did in her one season which I guess is how they convinced Denise Crosby to come back for it since I think that’s why she quit in the first place. I still feel very conflicted about her death in Skin of Evil. The senselessness cetianly added to the cruel reality, but left me upset to see her character thrown away like that. Here she will die again no matter what, but this time she decides to let it be on her terms and do something that will at least matter. The whole episode is darker than usual due to the war, allowing them to get away with killing characters and the Enterprise-C’s lose-lose situation is just… it’s just depressing. All while Guinan is trying to convince Picard that this whole reality is wrong, and he’s understandably struggling with being told that what he knows is his reality and life is fake. Guinan watching Yar, knowing that her being alive is wrong, also added ott he unease and lets Yar piece together that she didn’t survive in the true timeline. Seriosuly, Whoppi Goldberg is always awesome, but she was amazing in this episode. The only real downside is because this is an alternate timeline that essentially gets wiped out of existence, the impact is minimal and while Yar got a much better sendoff … it doens’t change that the real Yar is dead and her death was empty (though Guinan asking Geordi about Yar to know more about her was an excellent end note). It holds me back from giving this a perfect score, but this was still an excellent episode and at least shows that even in death, even in another reality, Yar was very much a part of the Enterprise and that she mattered. Clearly the writers realized that they made a mistake and did what they could to make some form of ammends, and I can respect that. 4.5/5.

The Offspring: Data’s a daddy! I thought this sounded kind of silly when I read the description… but Dear Lord this broke my heart. I just wanted to hug Lal through this entire episode. She was just created and experiencing life and already has her own feelings and thoughts, like not liking the other children treating her as different. Data is trying his best and overall I think that he was as good of a parent as he could be. He genuinely wanted to raise Lal, he educated her and even enrolled her in school, went to Crusher for parenting advice, and I think that he truly loved her as any good parent would for their child. It makes the ending just utterly heartbreaking and how the admiral who comes to check things out being just feels so God awful. Hell the fact that they consider taking what is essentially a young child away from her parent without taking her feelings into account just because she’s an android already exceeding Data’s funcitons essentially because of prejudice and claiming to know better than the parent/father who is clealry not abusive or anything like that… yeah, the allegory hits hard. Data having to say goodbye to Lal as she died… yeah that hit me hard. I cried. That was just… God I don’t even know how to describe it, but it hurt. The episode has it’s issues. Like while I do like that Lal was allowed to choose her own gender, it’s a painful reminder that no one could even consider non-binary an option. I also felt like Picard was off in the first half since while he does ultimately defend Data against the admiral and I understand his concerns about Data not telling anyone and how Starfleet will react, him acting like Data even able to fathom wanting a child or if Lal even counts as a child just feels… horribly dickish. At least Troi was on Data’s side, and liek I said Picard did ultimateley defend Data and his and Lal’s rights so that’s good. And while I get that Data views himself as unable to feel… he clearly did love Lal and I need to keep reminding myself that we didn’t have the understanding of neurodivergence or the like back then, but I legit cannot tell what the show is triyng to say concerning Data’s ability to feel. Can he? Or can he not? They only allow one or the other. Still, the episode was sweet in a lot of ways and just brutal/sad in others and just a painful reminder of the prejudice against Data/androids that The Measure of a Man illustrated. Hopefully, happier things for Data are on the horizon. 4/5.

Sins of the Father: So after that heartbreaker, lets do more father-related stuff but time with the Klingons! This time we have a Klingon, Kurn, working on the Enterprise as an acting FIrst Officer and not only does it turn out that he’s Worf’s unknown brother… but that Worf’s father was accused of treason and thus he and his family are facing dishonor, hence why Kurn is there. Until that revelation it looked like we were getting the reverse of A Matter of Honor, but when that twist comes in? Ho boy… As the oldest son, Worf has to face the challenge that will either clear his family or end in his execution and of course Worf feels bound to do so. This certainly was something. We get to see the Klingon homeworld, we plunge straight into Klingon politics, and damn is it intense from the moment we warp to the planet to the very end. While we sort out that Worf's father wasn’t a traitor… unfortunately the one whose family was is in a high position of power who tries everything possible to keep the truth from coming out. It’s a whole conspiracy and Worf is forced to accept the dishonor just to prevent the planet from plunging into Civil War. It’s clear that no one, not even the other Klingons like this and knows that it’s wrong… but they turn their backs on him anyways. Worf even forces Kurn to do so so that he won’t have to suffer the same fate when the truth about his identity becomes known. It reflects on Worf’s character, his honor and devotion to his family despite them being either dead or only just finding out that he had a brother at all. Not to mention to the Klingon Empire since he’s also allowing it to save them from war. But it’s also just so cruel that he and his family got scapegoated all because of one asshole to cover his own family’s dishonor, especially since we’d watched Worf trying so hard to uphold the Klingon ideals and beliefs despite having grown up among humans. Now he’s been shamed by his people and viewed as a non-entity, which may be even worst than mere dishonor. IDK if this plot will continue in TNG or when he joins DS9, but I hope it does because Worf didn’t at all deserve this. It makes me respect his character so much more though and Picard was freakin’ badass as well. At least in the meantime, he has the Enterprise crew standing by him. 4/5.

#st watchthrough

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