#womanish even

[the-wiggles]

Every time I add a silly little fic idea to my long list of things I’ll never get around to writing I ponder where I’d be if I didn’t make my personality for 5+ years around how much I hate writing

[nostalgia-tblr]

i do feel annoyingly contrarian at times in term of loki/brodinson fandom thoughts but a bit of me (quite a large bit) thinks "maybe if any of you were even mildly critical of this character on occasion i wouldn't feel the need to counter the overwhelming amount of 'Blorbo Did Nothing Wrong' and/or point out that a lot of this Nothing Wrong-ness involves people quoting headcanons as fact even if they clearly conflict with what were shown."

and on a less confrontational level... there's not that much fun potential? there's no challenge in arguing Nothing Was Did Wrong when people will just agree with you on principle and every (even overly) generous interpretation has already been made ad nauseum already.

[nothorses]

Let's Talk About Baeddels.

An (updated) retrospective on Tumblr's movement to make gender essentialism trans-friendly.

This post contains excepts from a longer article on Medium. If you have the time, please read the full article! I also request that you link the longer article if you use this as a source.

All links have been updated with archived versions of posts that have since been deleted (and otherwise might be deleted or lost sometime in the future). I have revised some sections, and included more context and examples, in order to clarify and strengthen arguments.

Disclaimer

Transmisogyny is real, and requires much more acknowledgement than it currently receives. The trans community is very much capable of transmisogyny, and often does enact or enable it; likewise, trans people also often enact and enable transphobia against other parts of the trans community. Trans women suffer at least as much as the rest of us, and trans women — as a class — are not privileged, and do not hold the power to oppress anyone else.

If you take only one thing away from this post, take this:

Trans people all need to work on being better allies to each other. None of us can gain anything without the rest of us.

Establishing an Ideology

The first post on Baeddelism was by Tumblr user @unobject, on October 2nd, 2013:

The post was quickly liked by @lezzyharpy, also one of the first to call themselves “Baeddels”.

This post first provided the name and defining ideology of the Baeddel movement. The implication of the post was, essentially, that because the root of the word “bad” was “baeddel”, and because “baeddel” referred to intersex people and “womanish men”, this old English slur was proof that transmisogyny was the worst form of bigotry; and even, perhaps, the root of all bigotry. (It’s worth noting that this interpretation of the etymology has been problematized.)

While @unobject was the first person to make this connection, @autogynephile (“Eve”) eventually became, in essence, the figurehead of the movement. Of the other Baeddels, some of them were explicitly aware and supportive of the ideology behind Baeddelism, some of them were young or newly-out trans women seduced by the personalities involved, and some of them were tangential enough to the movement that their understanding of it was wholly different from the understanding those at the core of the movement held and promoted. Baeddelism was a sort of trend, for a time, and many participants wore the name without entirely knowing what it meant.

It’s important to acknowledge that as much as there were dedicated members of Baeddelism, and as much as there was a unified ideology behind it, there were also individual Baeddels who did not understand — let alone support — the ideology.

The Ideology

Baeddels essentially built upon the foundation of @monetizeyourcat’s ideology that had been gaining traction on Tumblr in the years prior, with some additions that ultimately defined their movement:

Transmisogyny is the form of oppression from which all (or most) other forms of oppression stem.

Privilege is granted on the basis of assigned sex. (“AFAB” or “Assigned Female at Birth” vs. “AMAB” or “Assigned Male at Birth”)

These fundamentals of Baeddelism were essentially a rebranded form of Radical Feminism. In particular, they drew from the Radical Feminist idea that misogyny was the “primary” form of oppression; that which all other oppression stemmed from. Baeddels only tweaked this idea to replace “misogyny” with “transmisogyny”, which led to the rest of the conclusions Baeddels drew:

There is no “transphobia”

All “transphobia” stems from transmisogyny first, and transphobia as it impacts non-trans-women (or, sometimes, non-transfeminine people) is incidental.

There is no “Trans”

If “transphobia” isn’t real, what else is left of the transgender identity?

While this is by no means the dominant understanding of transgender identity or community, the equivocation of oppression to identity is, in many ways, core to Baeddel ideology (and we see the lasting impact of this in still-widely-used “TME/TMA” termingology). By this logic, if transphobia doesn’t exist, neither does trans identity or trans community (though they obviously believed that transmisogyny, and subsequently trans women, do). Therefore, there are no “trans men”, and belief in the existence of “nonbinary people” is highly contingent on whether an individual believes in the oppression of nonbinary people.

“AFAB Privilege”

The idea that within the queer and/or trans community, people who were AFAB/CAFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) receive unique privilege and positions of power that people who were AMAB/CAMAB (Assigned Male at Birth, a counterpart to “AFAB” and “CAFAB”) do not.

Trans Lesbian Separatism

… was what the movement was ultimately defined by, as the logical conclusion of their other beliefs (much like Lesbian Separatism was the logical conclusion of Radical Feminist beliefs).

Baeddels believed that only trans women can understand, or be truly safe for, other trans women; therefore, contact with anyone who was not a trans woman was deemed “dangerous” and highly discouraged.

Trans Men

… also played an important role in Baeddel ideology, and the resulting treatment of trans men is what is often remembered today. Baeddels generally believed the following, either explicitly or implictly:

Trans men are not oppressed, or experience so little oppression that it hardly matters.

Trans men do not experience misogyny, even prior to transition.

Trans men have access to male privilege, or trans men have an easier time passing, and frequently go “stealth”; thus benefiting from male privilege as well as cis privilege.

Trans men are often (or always) misogynistic and transmisogynistic, and are not held accountable for this.

Trans men oppress cis women.

Trans women enacting violence on trans men is “punching up” at oppressors, and therefore not only permitted, but encouraged.

Trans men are inherently violent, or become aggressive and violent when they go on testosterone HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy)

The impact of this ideology is often discussed among transmasculine people because of the depth of harm it caused, directly and indirectly — and it was very much intended to. Harm caused to transmascs was not only permitted or excused, it was often actively celebrated.

Nonbinary People

… are often overlooked when summarizing Baeddelism, but Baeddels did have plenty to say about them. Baeddel ideology relied on the idea that privilege was granted on the bases of assigned sex, and nonbinary people’s genders were thus treated as irrelevent; they essentially did not believe nonbinary people truly existed.

CAFAB nonbinary people are either trans men attempting to invade women’s spaces, or cis women pretending to be trans.

CAMAB nonbinary people are actually just trans women who haven’t accepted it yet. They must transition, or they are transmisogynistic.

Intersex People

Intersex experiences, and intersex history, were often co-opted and erased by Baeddelism. This was often more a byproduct of their beliefs than an overtly-stated idea, but most notably, the term “Baeddel” itself is likely more applicable- if not exclusively applicable- to intersex people, rather than trans women. Making their reclamation of it as a “transmisogynistic slur”, or their claim that the word’s existence means that “transmisogyny is the root of all oppression”, incredibly ignorant- if not actively harmful misinformation.

Notably, Baeddels also believed that intersex people- being “more androgynous” (a harmful misonception)- were able to pass more easily as the opposite assigned sex, and that intersex people (even within transfemme spaces) had “intersex privilege”. Some even believed, and openly claimed, that intersex people were “hermaphroditic”; a slur against intersex people, and typically implying that the individual has both sets of reproductive systems simultaneously.

Trans Women

… did not receive universally positive treatment, either. Baeddelism was very much a cult-like group built around the firmly-held conviction that they were absolutely correct, and that anyone who disagreed with them was The Enemy. Trans women who disagreed with them were generally seen as brainwashed and self-hating, and trans women who did agree with them were expected to subjugate themselves to the ringleaders of the movement.

Within Baeddel circles, trans women were most frequently victimized by the abusers allowed to run rampant because “trans women do not, and cannot, harm anyone else.” — including, apparently, each other.

“They were also bad shitty abusive people in general. “… a bunch of them passed around a pile of smear campaigns and false rumors about virtually any trans woman that they had a even the slightest animosity for. Including the victim of the kinkster rapist. They’ve done other fucked stuff, like chased two twoc off this site for trying to make a zine, but yeah. That’s like, just some of it. I’m not up for going over the messy details of the whole shitparade. “Full disclosure, I made a lot of excuses for these sacks of crap, even while they were out there spreading false crap about me […] I wasn’t aware of the worst shit they were doing until much much later.” - @punlich

Inside the Movement

Though individual Baeddels often existed in vastly different social circles from each other- particularly offline- those who lived through the movement highlight commonalities in their experiences.

One interviewee recounts the manipulation present in their initial involvement with the movement:

“It came to me at a point where I was very quick to weaponize anything anyone told me about their experiences, because I was always a fighter. I’ve been an activist for a long time, you know, and when these trans women would come to me with their experiences I would believe them. I wanted to. But the way they acted didn’t add up when compared to what they were saying. I felt really lonely there, and stupid all the time. I felt like I was being a bad trans person.” […] “Online they were more willing to say things that were, for lack of a better word, stupid. They would say things that lacked any kind of logical sense. But in person, they would go into this kind of toxic femininity- this weaponization of weakness. And I think that’s because online they were often in these echochambers, but in person they had to rely on much more subtle manipulation.” - Vera

It seems at points that the environment created within this movement- and the social circles that composed it- was almost cult-like in nature and in need for control.

“It was very isolating. I didn’t see my friends for a while, I was kind of just living with them, cooking and cleaning for them, starving myself, and slowly growing crazy. I was just being consumed by this weird academia and theory that had no basis, because everything was online and Tumblr-based.” - Vera

Perhaps most chilling, however, are the patterns in their attitudes toward sexual assault. One interviewer recounts being subject to sexual assault, and upon posting about their experience to a Facebook group, being met with hostility from Baeddels present in the group- who quickly used their social influence to have them banned from some of their only support systems at the time.

“I ended up with pretty much no one to talk to about the experience at a time when I was already really, really struggling, and it’s one of several factors that led to me dropping out. “The Baeddel who got me banned also messaged me directly at some point during all of this, and I tried to get her to understand the pain she was causing me. She basically laughed it offand said it was my fault. She seemed to find a lot of joy in how much it hurt me, and blocked me soon after.” - Anonymous

Another recounts sexual consent violations from a friend-turned-Baeddel:

“[My ex-friend] had previously been fetish-mining me for her mommy kink. I was freshly estranged from my own mum, and she stepped in to be like, “I’m your new mum now,” and would pester me to call her “mum” in Welsh- as at that point she was going by a Welsh name. I played along, but it transpired that she was basically using that to get off, and she had a thing for infantilising transmascs and being this mum/mom figure.” - Luke

And yet another interviewee discusses verbal sexual harassment during interactions with another Baeddel:

“I had one [Baeddel] directly tell me that I’m beneath her as a trans man, and that I should “Shut my smelly cooch up” and only use my voice to uplift trans women. I was a minor at the time. “She then sicced her followers on me, and they bombarded me with messages telling me I’d “never be a real man”, that I needed to “sit on the side and allow them to have the spotlight”, and even telling me to kill myself- because I was inherently toxic to them. I was 16 years old, pre everything, and I couldn’t even pass at the time. They didn’t seem to care that I was a minor, or a newly hatched egg.” - Anonymous

While Baeddel ideology itself does not explicitly condone or excuse sexual assault, it’s striking how common these stories are; especially considering how small in numbers actual Baeddels were.

It was, in fact, this exact problem that would eventually cause the movement to dissolve.

The Downfall of Baeddelism

Sometime between the group’s formation in 2013 and their downfall near the end of 2014, @autogynephile (also “Eve”), the defacto “ringleader” of the Baeddel movement, began what Baeddels referred to as a “transbian safehouse”.

This was apparently intended as a place for unhoused trans woman lesbians and trans women who, in general, had sworn off contact with men; the ultimate goal of the lesbian separatist ideology at the core of the Baeddel movement. It was thus also referred to as a “commune” by some, and as a “cult” by others.

One occupant of the “safehouse”- Elle- later posted to Tumblr that they had been raped by Eve during their stay, and detailed their experiences.

The Baeddels, rather than believing the victim and ousting the rapist from their movement, chose to close ranks around Eve instead.

Various reasons were given for this:

The victim must be lying

The victim- and anyone who believed them- was simply transmisogynistic.

Anyone who disagrees with the Baeddels is an Enemy Of The Movement, a “carceral thinker”, and a danger to trans women as a whole.

Trans women are incapable of sexually abusing anyone.

“Standing with Eve” was the ultimate sign of loyalty to the movement, and thus a mark of pride and honor.

It was okay to keep being a Baeddel no matter what, because Rape Accusations Should Be A Personal Matter.

(You can read more about Eve’s own denial of these events here and here.)

Years later, even people involved in the initial group have spoken out against the movement and actions of those involved:

“I was in ~the Baeddels~ for years and like… we straight up did horrible shit. “We harassed anyone that disagreed for any reason, our politics were terrible, our isolationism made an environmental ripe for abuse that I have firsthand experience of, there is nothing in that group worth salvaging or defending. “Also acting like people are just bringing this up out of the blue is silly like… it’s being brought up because people are still trying to defend the shit we did instead of fucking recognizing that it was wrong. “Creating this myth that hate on the Baeddels is just a way of keeping trans women in line is a tacit defense of the horrid shit we did.” - @lezzyharpy

“like I’m sorry but I served my time in shitty awful Baeddel group in early mid 2012s and it fucking sucked ass.” “… Like it’s straight up cult-like the way you build this self-reinforcing network wherein ayone on the outside looking in with any criticism is unsafe, not to be trusted, only there to hurt trans women, and the only people you can trust is this self-selected group of trans women.” - @lezzyharpy

Why It Matters, and Why Baeddelism Never Really Fell

Baeddelism itself has seen multiple attempts at resurgences by various individuals, including documented experiences with self-proclaimed Baeddels as recently as 2018- well after the movement first “fell” in 2014.

Most proponents of “Baeddelism 2.0”, a revival of the original movement, argue that the abuse that occurred within the original movement was either completely fabricated by detractors (sound familiar?) or, at minimum, not actually inherent to the ideology.

And, of course, there are some original Baeddels still active on Tumblr today.

Baeddelism never actually went away.

“Baeddelism” was only one name for a set of beliefs that existed long before the specific term did, and hasn’t gone anywhere since the original Baeddel movement died down.

What the Baeddels did was put a name to the ideology @monetizeyourcat was cultivating before them, and what Cat did was popularize, centralize, and justify a way of thinking that had existed before she ever made her blog.

This ideology has since been referred to, loosely, as “TIRF-ism”: Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminism.

It is rare that anyone actually refers to themselves as a “TIRF”, and there is no real centralized TIRF movement; rather, a loose collection of radical feminist beliefs circulates various transgender spaces. The validity of these beliefs is generally taken for granted: of course (trans) women are The Most Oppressed People; of course (trans) women are Inherently and Unequivocally Victims In All Situations; of course (trans) men are Inherently Oppressors; of course (trans) men are Dangerous and Evil… and so on.

Like Radical Feminism, and subsequently Trans-Exlcusive Radical Feminism (TERF-ism), those ideas are fundamentally dangerous.

The defining tenants of radical feminism are that misogyny is the root of all oppression, and that rather than misogyny being an issue of power and control on a society-wide level, it is instead, or also, a matter of oppression and privilege on an individual level: men are always oppressors, and women are always victims.

These beliefs fundamentally exclude and erase the experiences of other marginalized people.

Namely, people of color and indigenous people, who’s experiences with and concepts of gender do not fall within the strict and rigid lines that white, western, colonialist people’s do.

Radical feminism is not a redeemable ideology. It cannot be reshaped into something good. It is fundamentally broken, and the movements born from it- lesbian separatism, political lesbianism, TERF-ism, TIRF-ism, and Baeddelism- are proof enough of that. They each promote only surface-level variations of what is fundamentally cult-like thinking: only the in-group can be victimized. Only the in-group is safe; the out-group is inherently and universally dangerous. Only the in-group understands you. All members of the in-group are, fundamentally, incapable of abuse.

We cannot allow these ideas to be perpetuated within or without the trans community.

Learn the Signs & Prevent Harm

Here’s what we can do to prevent this from happening again:

Learn what Baeddel ideology and TIRFism look like, even detached from the name.

Learn what radical feminism looks like, even detached from the name. Even from people who claim to oppose radical feminism.

Act on dogwhistles. Call them what they are.

Do not allow people to downplay the harm all forms of Radical Feminism have caused. Remind each other that Radical Feminism is not a redeemable ideology, and seek out other branches of feminism instead.

Remember the harm that has been caused. Remember that it will be caused again if these things are allowed to go unchecked.

Listen to and uplift marginalized people. Allow them to speak to their own experiences, identify their own needs, and name their own oppression.

Remember who the real oppressors are, and do not pit marginalized people against each other. The people perpetuating and benefiting from transphobia are cis people- and more specifically, cis people in power.

Build solidarity with other marginalized people. One group of trans people cannot gain liberation without liberating all trans people, and one group of trans people cannot be targeted without the rest of us suffering as well.

Remember that there is no group or identity incapable of enacting abuse, violence, harassment, or other harm against another. Victimhood should not be determined based solely on an individual’s identity.

Remember that there are no acceptable targets for violence, cruelty, harassment, and abuse.

For more context and a list of red flags, read the rest of the article here:

[adreamf-spring]

Now apparently not even being born a woman is enough womanish for terfs& co

[catominor]

you are a roman senator, and one of your fellow senators just called you effeminate! what to do?

well, first you have to find out: how effeminate are you, really? take this test to find out!

do you:

like to wear the colors yellow, bright green, light blue, purple, or lavender: +1 for each

like to wear long sleeves: +1

enjoy the company of women: +1

like to wear perfume: +1

curl or style your hair: +1

shave any area of your body (other than your face and/or head) +1

move carefully in order to not mess up your outfit/hair/makeup: +1

wear a loose belt, or no belt: +1

like to wear loose fitting clothing: +1

have a lot of casual sex: +1

ever bottom in sexual encounters: +5

love your wife and are open about it: +1

like to wear translucent fabrics, or silk: +1 for each

wear your tunic longer than knee length: +1

wear more than one or two rings: +1

wear other jewelry (earrings, necklaces etc): +1

wear makeup: +1

have a complex and flamboyant oratorial style: +1

have long hair: +1

like to wear slippers: +1

enjoy living luxuriously: +1

have little impulse control: +1

once you have your total number, match it to these results!

0-4: you are a proper, virtuous roman man. only your political enemies would call you effeminate, and they do that to everyone. even if you scored a couple of points, most people understand that nobody is perfect.

5-10: you're getting into some dangerous territory here... you'd better watch out or your fellow senators will ridicule you for your womanish ways.

11-20: you are effeminate. all the other senators are definitely making fun of you. they're glancing at you, whispering in each others' ears and giggling as you walk in there with your little perfumed hairdo, or your fancy little outfit, or whatever got you a score this high.

21-25: “For one who daily perfumes himself and dresses before a mirror, whose eyebrows are trimmed, who walks abroad with beard plucked out and thighs made smooth, who at banquets, though a young man, has reclined in a long-sleeved tunic on the inner side of the couch with a lover, who is fond not only of wine but of men—does anyone doubt that he does what cinaedi commonly do?" *

26-31: you may as well just embrace it at this point. no one can dampen your effeminate swag if you just don't care what they think! you can even feel proud that you got the high score.

if you want to read more, this is a pretty good article that covers a lot of this stuff: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24616489

*(Gellius, Noctes Atticae 6.12.5, tr. J.C. Rolfe)

[valtsv]

im curious about your thoughts, would you talk a little about the theme of gender in the terror? i just enjoy your perspective!

okay i can't promise you the properly formatted essay with footnotes and citations i would love to write given the time and energy, but sure, i'd love to. because the theme of gender is central to the terror, particularly regarding the victorian ideal of masculinity, as a part of the greater overarching narrative theme of social constructions and structures being stripped away, and what and who remains after (crozier even explicitly remarks to fitzjames at the beginning of episode 7 that the remains of their civilization which they're clinging to for a sense of comfort and stability will begin to 'fall and drop away' as they travel further). we see this not just in the case of fitzjames, whose national identity and sense of selfhood we're given some insight into through the lens of gender, both with the iconic dress scene and his subsequent choice to dress as britannia, the feminine symbol of british imperial power, for carnivale - a juxtaposition which emphasizes the contrast between his private and public personas, and between the moment of vulnerability and honest self-expression in the scene where he holds up the dress and smiles at his reflection, and the ironic mask he dons for carnivale as a shield to conceal his doubts and insecurities, and any 'shameful' desires he might have - but also, for example, in the case of collins, who in the same episode seeks out goodsir, whose emotional availability and honesty have earned him the derision of his crewmates in the forms of scornful looks and derogatory comments denouncing his mannerisms as 'womanish' and thus shameful, but which only become increasingly necessary and shared amongst more of the men as they're forced to rely more and more on one another for support, and societal expectations of how they should conduct themselves become increasingly irrelevant, their fragility exposed and found wanting. collins is rebuffed and reprimanded by dr. stanley in episode 6, who dismisses his emotional distress, but in the following episode with goodsir he's encouraged to confide in him and, upon doing so, breaks down in tears and shares a desperate hug with him in full view of their camp; actions which would have been confined to privacy if they were allowed to be expressed at all earlier on. everywhere, cracks are beginning to show in this ideal construct of masculinity that the men were once expected and so proud to uphold.

silna's presence also highlights the themes of gender, and how they intersect with race and ethnicity; she is almost exclusively referred to as a 'girl' by the men of the expedition despite clearly being both a grown women and far more competent at surviving in the arctic than they are. the empire and its subjects' unwillingness to accept that someone who is both a native to the region and a woman could be more knowledgeable and better equipped than they are to deal with the situation leads them to assert their perceived superiority through how they address and refer to her, using the infantilizing language of 'girl', which although i believe the use of was more common in victorian england than it was today, nonetheless carries these implications, particularly when it's almost exclusively the only term they use to describe her. even those men who are more open to accepting the need to rely on the knowledge and support of the indigenous peoples of the region in order to survive there, such as crozier, don't begin to realize this until it's already too late. we also see the weaponization of femininity as a badge of shame of weakness with, as aforementioned, goodsir, and with hickey when he says to gibson that he "was such a good wife to me all these months" in order to get under his skin after gibson declares their relationship to be over.

we also see this victorian ideal of masculinity physically begin to 'fall away' as the men's bodies and minds deteriorate due to the extreme conditions they find themselves in. as sickness and despair set in, the men are no longer physically able to uphold this construction they've been told their whole lives it is vitally important that they strive to maintain in all their undertakings, further compounding the horror of their experience, but also liberating them. hickey again takes advantage of this, too, demonstrating his intelligence and quick, pragmatic thinking when he castrates irving's corpse after murdering him in order to threaten the remaining shreds of the men's masculinity and inflame them into rash, reactive action. and fitzjames comes full circle in his own gender-influenced narrative when he confesses his long-carried shame to crozier, finally unburdening himself of the idea of 'james fitzjames' that he built on the foundations of that masculine ideal the society he lived in values so highly and as a result is able to let himself lean on a fellow man for support and shed tears for the first time (that we see onscreen at least), and when he asks crozier to euthanize him to help him out of his suffering in his final moments - both poison and suicide have traditionally earned a reputation as means used by 'women and cowards' to escape the brutal reality of death, but they allow fitzjames to die with as much dignity and the least amount of suffering as the at that point truly desperate circumstances allow, and far more than the more ideally masculine, imperial british glory he once aspired to of death in combat or without any medical assistance to ease his passing would have.

[vidavalor]

Knot That Bad

I've a bit of a theory that the end of 1.01's 2008 minisode is actually foreshadowing S3 and how the story ends.

The exchange I'm talking about:

Aziraphale: Well, I'll be damned.

Crowley: *wink* It's not that bad when you get used to it.

This exchange is humorous innuendo on one level. On another, though, it can be read as the characters not knowing quite how correct they are about their story to come and a lot of stories-- particularly, those that are well-plotted, as this one is-- have their endings imbedded near their beginnings.

To see where I'm going with this, you'll need to know that the word bad comes from the Old German baeddel, which meant-- in the phrasing of the time-- "a womanish man." It's an example of linguistic oppression of people who do not fit neatly into societies with a binary view of gender, as it evolved, as we know, to mean wicked and like things.

In modern times, though, bad has been somewhat unintentionally reclaimed by way of people also using the word to mean positive things, even if most do not know they are reclaiming the language in doing so. Crowley seems to love the word as he uses it as self-descriptive twice in the 2008 minisode, both times while flirting with Aziraphale.

So, the bad in question in Crowley's line here is actually also himself:

The joke in here is that Crowley is also saying: knot that bad.

In one way, it's the first of about a dozen scenes in the series referencing Crowley's yen for being tied up. In another way, a knot is also a nautical mile and, in another scene or two later on, it sounds like knot is also being used by these fish-and-the-sea-obsessed two just as general slang for fucking as well. Given Crowley's very happy with his funny and smutty wordplay smile and wink in this scene, it's those connotations he's likely meaning in this 2008 scene.

It's just that there's also a third way to take all of this and that's where the S3 ending foreshadowing comes in:

Aziraphale: "Well, I'll be damned."

Foreshadowing that Aziraphale falls, which would, based on what we've seen since, have to be the end of S2 and that's the kickoff of S3, but...

Crowley: "It's knot that bad when you get used to it."

...by the end of it, Aziraphale knots that bad-- as in, the wedlock slang of tie the knot.

He marries Crowley.

[romanceyourdemons]

with a script written by lesbian feminist activist rita mae brown as a parody of slasher films, repurposed by male producers as a straight slasher, and chosen by amy jones for her directorial debut, the slumber party massacre (1982) is an interesting film. it nominally clings to the lowest-common-denominator trope of slasher films, an analogy-clad rape fantasy with extended voyeuristic shots of undressing high school seniors and a powerfully masculine killer whose weapon (in this case, a drill) is repeatedly framed by the camera as a phallus; schoolgirls push the boundary between girlish innocence and womanish self-assurance, and as punishment for making themselves sexually available they are penetrated to death by a deranged stranger, etc, etc. these well-worn beats have been parodied practically since their invention, and yet this film makes some interesting choices within its narrative. firstly, the film makes a point of establishing the capability of its “final girls” early on, with the girls displaying casual acts physically overcoming men around them. secondly, the killer’s capability is established by expanding the “victim” class from the standard demographic of eighteen years or younger. the killer’s first victim is a telephone repairwoman, a tough and independent blue-collar worker, and his third victim is the adult male neighbor who had even been implied to be a potential threat to the girls. the killer does not prey on weakness, embodied in teenage girls. he simply embodies strength. the third point of interest is the film’s emphasis on community, especially between women. naturalistic dialogue convincingly performed weaves a web of women who act not for the view of men but for the sake of their own relationships—friendly, sisterly, or mentor-student—and danger only arises when they neglect these relationships and isolate themselves away. despite these strengths, of course, the film still invests quite a lot of screentime in eye candy; and its only non-white character is used as a foil to her white peers, with her callousness and rashness contrasting their caution, wisdom, selflessness, and maturity. these harmful standards of the genre, the film seems to decide, are too key to why the audience bought tickets for them to rock the boat fighting. the slumber party massacre (1982) does not function as a parody, willingly bearing as it does the faults of the slasher genre, but it does add some layers of depth to the genre and especially its view of the victims, which i find very interesting and enjoyable

[holylulusworld]

House arrest (1)

Summary: Lloyd is getting on your nerves and more…

Summary: Lloyd Hansen x fem!Reader

Warnings: house arrest, being locked in, arguments, Lloyd being Lloyd, misogyny, a hint of housewife kink? (Lloyd), Lloyd being a shameless horny dog, implied/a hint of oral (fem rec)

A/N: For my story Lloyd got a brother.

“Entertain me, I’m bored,” Lloyd whines. “Come on, Y/N. Don’t you have anything for me to do?”

You look up from your book, frowning as Lloyd paces back and forth. “You are experiencing cabin fever, Hansen. Stop pacing, sit down, and read a book. Or watch tv.”

“You only got womanish books. I don’t want to read about the unfulfilled desires of a lady suck my dick,” he grunts. 

“Womanish, what?” you slam your book shut. “Listen. I didn’t invite you here! It’s your fault we are both under house arrest.”

“Well, shit darling. If only I knew I’ll get locked up with you.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have stormed into my home after getting contaminated with an unknown substance,” you bite back. “I can’t believe I’m dying because of you.”

“Stop being dramatic, muffin!” he mutters. “You’re not going to die. If so, we would already feel the influence of the unknown substance.”

“Thank you, Madame Curie,” you roll your eyes. “If only you stayed away from me, Hansen. I can’t go to work. I can’t go to my yoga studio. I can’t do shit.”

“Please excuse me for being worried about my brother’s sister-in-law,” Lloyd sneers at you. “My brother was worried about your well-being.”

“You mean you wanted to get to know more about the person your brother is dating,” you growl. “I won’t tell you shit about them, Mr. I wear sunglasses even inside.”

“What? Can I not be worried about my brother marrying someone he barely knows?” 

“If you know, you know, Hansen. I don’t mess with someone else’s relationship. You should do the same. Leave your brother alone. He’s in love.”

“Love-“ Lloyd makes a face. He retches and grumbles under his breath, “is for dreamer and people having their heads in the clouds. Love is a construct made up by flower shops.”

“Only as you are less romantic than a punch to the guts doesn’t mean everyone wants to stay alone and fuck their way through the masses.”

“Boring,” he grins at you. “All you do is annoying and boring. Even your food.”

“Well, then order shit from your buddies poking me with their syringes twice a day. Maybe they got better food than me,” you get up from the couch to leave the living room. 

Lloyd is getting on your nerves again, and you’re sure that you’ll kill him if you must spend another minute with him in the same room.

“Eggs again. Boring,” Lloyd watches you make breakfast. For you. Not him. “Don’t you have anything more…existing?”

“Why must everything be exciting? I want eggs. If you want something else, ask one of your buddies to bring you breakfast.”

“Calm down, muffin. I’ll take the eggs. Even though, they are boring,” he plops down on one of your kitchen stools. 

“I didn’t make them for you, asshat,” you point the spatula at the annoying intruder occupying your guestroom for the better of two weeks.

“Aw, I bet you’d made a cute housewife,” he hums while eyeing the eggs you place on a plate in front of you. “You’d bake and cook for your man, make him a drink, and go down on your knees to thank him for the money he brings home.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you throw your orange juice in his face, scowling at the misogynistic asshole. “If not for the bunch of armed assholes parking in the van in front of my house, I’d kick you out of my house.”

“Try me, cupcake,” he snickers. “You should know that you owe me a shirt now.” Lloyd looks down at his now ruined shirt.

“You’re lucky I didn’t cut your balls off for the comment you just made. You misogynic bastard!” you storm off, cursing Lloyd's birth on your way out of the kitchen.

“She forgot her eggs.”

Lloyd grabs the plate and a fork. He sinks the fork into the eggs to feast on them. “More for me then…”

“How much longer?” you bark in the phone. You’re just done having Lloyd Hansen around. “If I lose my job I’ll make you responsible.”

You close your eyes and rub your temple.

“I already called them, cupcake. They want us to wait for at least two more weeks.”

“Fine. If I kill him, it’s your fault alone…”

“You mean if I kill you,” Lloyd grunts. “Being stuck here with you is hell. I haven’t had good food in ages. And we don’t want to talk about my dick.”

“I agree!” you snap at him. “We don’t want to talk about your dick, Hansen.”

‘Now we do the cobra pose.’

You stretch your body to get ready for your next yoga position. 

“Great. That’s my favorite position,” you grumble as the instructor shows you the next position. “It’s just not the same to watch a video.”

You lie on your stomach with your hands facing forward. You keep your elbows by your side and press your hands into the ground. “Breathe Y/N, “you groan as you slowly lift your chest, head, and shoulders to create an arch in your back. 

“Fuck me,” you don’t hear Lloyd sneak into the room to watch you wiggle your ass. He groans and curses as your ass is right there, on full display. “Cupcake got a juicy ass.”

He steps closer, hand reaching out to slap your cheek. Lloyd stops his hand midair. He weighs his options, eyes drifting toward his crotch. “Alright, we get something better…”

“What the fuck!” you squeak and scream as Lloyd grabs your yoga pants to rip them open. “Lloyd!”

“Fuck, I knew you are hiding a perfect little pussy underneath your ugly clothes,” he stares at your exposed pussy with darkened eyes. “Damn it, buddy. We are going on a wild ride today…”

“HANSEN!” you try to get up, but Lloyd is right behind you. He grabs your ass to keep you in place, surprising you with his strength. “WHAT? OH. God.”

You feel his mustache tickle your clit. He hums and purrs as you spread your legs a little wider. “I think I found something less boring, cupcake. Now relax and let me take care of this poor thing. I bet she didn’t get any for a long time…

>> Part 2

Tags in reblog.

[uwmspeccoll]

Steamy Saturday

The novel that dares to tell the truth about a perverse love.

Theirs was a love no man could share!

Draga yielded her long-legged girlishness to unnatural embraces. . . . it was an ecstasy such as Draga had never known.

Her lips were tender and clinging as she pressed them to Jo's voluptuous flesh. . . .

She was on the brink of total perversion. . . . Draga's only hope now was -- a man!

Oh, the steaminess of it all!! Carol Emory's pulp novel Queer Affair was published in New York as a Beacon Book, an imprint of Universal Publishing and Distributing Corp., in 1957, and even by today's standards, the sexual frankness of the novel is pretty steamy. Unfortunately, because it's the 1950s, a fully-realized lesbian relationship will not stand. At least one of the partners has to be off her nut (in this case, Jo), while in the end male heroes come to the rescue.

The story centers around up-and-coming dancer Draga Hamilton who is introduced to celebrity sculptor Jo Stanhope by Draga's lawyer Gilbert Young who is desperately in love with Jo. Jo, however, has other ideas, as she seduces the vulnerable Draga and they begin a torrid love affair, which, as already stated, is quite frankly narrated. Draga is head-over-heels, until of course her old flame Ronnie Marsh shows up on the scene and ruins everything for Jo.

In the end, the whole sordid love quadrangle literally devolves into a barely-suppressed S&M encounter. Jo takes her revenge on Draga's infidelity by grabbing a bullwhip that is inexplicably hung on the wall and beats Draga almost senseless with it. The whipping, however, sends both into a building sexual frenzy until both Gilbert and Ronnie come bursting through the door. Ronnie whisks Draga out of harm's way (at least as he perceives it), and Gilbert gives Jo a taste of her own whipping medicine, to which both react with this memorable passage:

Jo Stanhope looked up at him with misted eyes. "Oh, Gilbert -- you've done something for me. You've rescued me. Why, it--it was --" "Never mind," Gilbert said. "And you won't find it so bad being married to me. After all, I'm sort of womanish, you know."

Meanwhile, Draga is recovering in Ronnie's soothing arms, to which she responds, "Move over a little, sweetheart . . . I want to sit in your lap." THE END. Ugh!!

Despite Queer Affair being mentioned in several texts on early lesbian pulp novels, we could find nothing on the author Carol Emory, who we suspect is possibly a man. Nevertheless, the author makes sure early on that the reader knows Emery has done their homework on lesbianism:

Gilbert had warned her that the sculptress was a lesbian, but at the time the fact had seemed to her irrelevant. Love between women was not altogether a new and startling idea to Draga. She had read many books on the subject, including those by Radclyffe Hall and Diana Fredericks.

Appropriately, Barbara Grier, in her iconic The Lesbian in Literature, gives Queer Affair a rating of A for having "a major lesbian component but not sympathetically portrayed." While we may not know who Carol Emory is, we do know that the butch/femme cover art is by Frank Uppwall and was first painted for another pulp novel, Gutter Star by Dorine B. Clark, published in 1954, and then reissued for the cover of Queer Affair three years later.

View more posts on lesbian romance fiction.

View more LGBTQ+ posts.

View other pulp fiction posts.

[aphrodeiities]

𝔠𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔢𝔯 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔰𝔱 𝔥𝔬𝔲𝔰𝔢

♇ cancer in the first house, conveys about how an individual is first perceived by those who are around them, or by those they meet by the first time. those with cancer in the first angular house will have people think of them to be kept to themselves, private, comforting and protective of themselves and their surroundings. on the other hand, there can be people who'll have negative first perspectives of people who have cancer in the first house and view them to be individuals who are sarcastic and easily offended.

♇ touching the topic of self-identity, it is mostly believed that people with cancer in the first house self-identify themselves as people who are "nurturers" or even "protectors" protecting themselves, guarding the people around them along with their possessions, it could be viewed that whatever cancer is in someone's chart is where someone is most protective of, for example, an individual with cancer in the first house are protective over their life path, what they want to achieve in life, their identity and creations. let's look at angelina jolie, aside from her movies, we known for sure that she is protective over the name she makes of herself and that being a woman who cares about children and those in-need.

♇ along with the impression natives with cancer in the first house make to the audience, when opening up, these people give other people the idea that they are vulnerable and emotional behind that hard crab cloak and are individuals who are affectionate, devoted and sympathetic. it can be debated that people with cancer in the first house are viewed as "fake" because of the hard crab skin that hides their true identity under, other people could have the concept that the particular with cancer in the ascendant are like onions, every time you peel there's a layer.

♇ moving from the topic of how other natives perceive them and singularly to the topic of personality, the ascendant is one of the many things in astrology that conveys the persona stance of someone. it can be debated that cancerian people are comical, howbeit, their persona includes them being of hard-working, generous, nostalgic and sentimental. having the traits that are viewed as smothering, controlling or manipulative, this mostly comes down to the specific individual in if they want to become the best version of themselves, along with afflicted aspects with the ascendant.

♇ the planetary ruler of cancer is known to be the moon, the moon isnt really considered as a planet but in astrology it is viewed as a celestial planet. [along with the sun], with the moon being the ruling planet, this entails that there could be somewhat of a womanish grace every cancer rising has, it doesnt necessarily need to be something feminine but as something that could be viewed as sustenance and providing. that'll always have a handful of people looking up to the cancerian natives. the moon has always been worshipped so people with cancer in the first house might find themselves being adored a lot or might find themselves worshipping something or someone, could be themselves, their partners, a God, a celebrity etc.

♇ coming to what the first house is usually known about, the appearance, i have gathered that a lot of cancer ascendant natives have big eyes, or sometimes their features could be too big for their face, they're sometimes clowned about having a gerbil/baby face. aside from the young features, many cancer risings normally have pointy/long chins, or their chin just has a lot of meat/fat in it [or just a lot of meat in their face] their heads shape is either circular or very structured but still circular, might even have a double chin.

♇ the ascendant in astrology rules over one's personal ambition, it could be beheld that cancer risings personal ambitions would include them being comfortable in their own skin and comfortable in their atmosphere. for example cher, she is expressive about how she is comfortable being without a man, whether she has one or not, and sees men as a "luxury" but not as a necessity, it could be deemed that cancer risings personal ambitions is to live a life where not having something in specific wont internally hurt them and make them insecure.

♇ strengths and weaknesses being a vital point of the ascendant, cancer natives durability being their affectionate, creative, protective and tough self where their weak traits could be studied as them being people who are controlling, smothering, inconsistent and defensive.

♇ the first house in astrology is also centred around how a specific person projects their personality into life; and cancer placements, especially cancer risings are very specific about how they launch themselves, they're very aware, like they can be considered as people who play chess whilst others are playing checkers. they empathise with other people making other people feel like that cancer in the first house native understands them for who they are; they present themselves of being people who are nurturing and receptive, which causes other people to lean onto them or you could say depend on them a lot.

♇ people with cancer in the first house view the world as somewhat unfair, they're emotional and receptive people and are likely people who can easily point out when someone or something is being treated unfairly. besides unjustified treatment, cancer risings discern the world as a place to make memories in, dont be surprised whenever a cancer placement is holding a camera to capture an event, they're people who like to hold onto nostalgia so whenever they feel down, there is a happy moment they can look back onto that reminds me why they can keep pushing.

♇ self-imagery, an important matter of the first house, as the moon that naturally rules cancer is always in the sight of people's gaze, it wont be surprising if there would be cancer ascendants who are insecure with the way people might view them. as cancer is a celestial sign, they might've had to be in the front row of something, there it be a school, family, siblings etc, there was just always something in specific people watched the cancer rising for. which makes up to why they want to, well not necessarily manipulate, but alter the way people perceive them because if they do behave in a way that is considered as wrong, it'll never be unseen so they do feel stressed about self-image, majority of them, but as they grow they'll learn that they cannot always change everyone's perspective of them and comprehend to live with what they know about themselves.

♇ closing off this post with the impact they leave on others, i have forespoken about cancer risings making other people feel understood, it could be stereotypically commented that they make others feel that way because of the feminine or "matriarch" energy they own; the effect they leave on others is to aid other individuals to perceive various outlooks differently and with a more understanding perspective. in my opinion, i feel like their ability to help the way people see specific things in life is the reason why they tend to get worshipped a lot. or think of it as a way of the moon being the only light in the darkness, giving me another reason to why people adore them as such because there could be countless of people who think of them "as the way".

pluto's masterlist

cancer in the houses

paid natal chart readings

[mirimiramiri]

… in a hopeless place

The shadows of the fighters looked like long brush strokes drawn by a restless hand on the dusty canvas of the castle courtyard. In the hazy red light of the evening sun, the master trained his student to prepare him for his great test. Their steps were quick and silent, only the singing of the swords disturbing the peace.

“Folken is good, isn’t he, Mom?” 

“Yes.” Like his father, Varie thought. The dark waves of loneliness once again overwhelmed her inexorably. Using strength that she no longer possessed, she fought her way back into the here and now. 

From one of the castle's countless balconies, she watched the progress of her firstborn. Her youngest son keeping her company. Mother and child were alone, only little Merle was sleeping in her bed in a room behind them. She was exhausted from raging. Once again Van - her tireless playmate - had followed her throughout the castle. Maids complained in secret about the children's wild antics, but the queen didn't care. 

Little did she care about anything these days.

It was slowly becoming autumn. The world was immersed in a cheerful sea of various colors, but red was the most present. Like a harbinger of doom, the forest's crown of leaves turned crimson, as if blood were streaming down the sacred mountains of Fanelia. 

The queen was shivering and the thick cloak around her shoulders did nothing to stop it.

“He will definitely be able to complete the ritual,” explained her youngest son with the confidence of childish inexperience. He reached for her hand as if he sensed her slipping toward depression. "Certainly." 

Folken narrowly avoided a dangerous blow from Vargas, but the tip of his sword robbed him of a few strands of his silver hair. Varie frowned as her son was reprimanded by his master. In her opinion, they shouldn't train with real weapons. It was negligent, an accident could have happened too easily. Goau would surely have laughed at her womanish clucking... 

“Mom?” Van tugged at her fingertips and with difficulty she tore her worried gaze away from her firstborn, who had grown up far too quickly. There stood her second son, the long-awaited latecomer, her late miracle. When she had already buried any hope along with his unfortunate siblings. In the evening light his big eyes shone like two rubies. He looked very serious. 

“Yes, what is it?” she asked and decided to give him her full attention now. She was neglecting him, that much was clear to her. But it was often so painful to dedicate herself to him. She only ever saw his father in his face, his fuzzy head, his thoughtful look. Even his high child's voice sounded like Goau's deep baritone and tore her heart into a thousand shreds every day.

“Once Folken is king, what will become of me?” “Oh, a fair question,” were her words of praise. She cocked her head a little. From his mouth it sounded as if he had not the slightest doubt about his brother's success.

 “Don’t you know?” he pressed impatiently. 

She knelt down. Her blue robe cascaded across the floor. Her long hair flowed over it like a second cloak. Not a single white thread ran through her blackness, even though she was already the age of a grandmother by human standards. 

Their first son, by a quirk of nature, had hair like an old man, but Van looked just like his father. A hand stroked his fluffy, shaggy head, ruffling it even more. “You, my little dragon, can do whatever you want with your life.” His eyes grew even larger. 

"Anything?" 

"Exactly." She tapped his tiny nose, making him giggle. “But most likely you will get married, have a family and take over the administration of one of the southern territories.” 

“Marry?!” Van shouted loudly as if the idea were the most absurd thing in the world. “A girl?!”

 "Boys usually marry girls," his mother smiled. She immediately thought of the day of her own wedding, when she walked down the aisle under countless critical looks and swore eternal loyalty to the man of her life. With great difficulty she withdrew from this all too sweet past. 

“But girls are yucky!” her son complained, putting his fists on his sides. The wooden sword at his hip, a gift from Vargas, clacked just as indignantly. “For example, these two boring blonde princesses from Asturia…” he murmured under his breath because it wasn’t really appropriate to gossip. 

“But certainly not all of them,” said Varie indulgently.

Van seemed to have to ponder this for a long time. He furrowed his little brow and she almost thought she saw smoke rising from his ears. 

“Merle is also a girl and not yucky,” he combined extremely astutely. “I’ll just marry Merle.” 

“Oh Van.” Now Varie laughed. It sounded rusty, her body had forgotten how to do it. "Unfortunately this is not possible." 

“Why not?” Now he crossed his arms and looked at her sternly. 

Varie sighed. Children were truly excellent verbal duelists with inexhaustible endurance. Van was no exception. He may not have been nearly as eloquent as Folken at his age, but he made up for it with his tenacity. 

“Merle is not like us,” she explained gently. But that only made him seem even more determined. True to the motto “especially now”. “Dad wasn’t like you either and you still got married.” 

“That was different…” his mother began, but then she stopped. Wasn't she teaching her son exactly the same kind of prejudice as those who had always met her? Who had almost prevented her marriage to Goau? “You know what, you’re right. If you really want that and Merle does too, then you’ll get married one day.” 

She stroked his hair, which no matter how often she combed it would always remain an untamable tangle. Secretly she wanted nothing less than for him to change his mind when he grew up. If the relationship between her and her husband had already been under difficult circumstances, what about between him and the cat girl? Van should have it easier for once. Easier than her and Goau and also Folken. Without the burden of the crown on his head and the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. Hopefully one day he would meet a nice, uncomplicated girl from Fanelia with whom he wanted to marry.

 “Yes, I’m definitely marrying Merle!” Van seemed very happy with himself and his decision. Then his mood changed abruptly. “Are you going to get married again?” he wanted to know sadly. 

Varie swallowed. She hadn't expected this question. "Why would you ask that?"

 “This lunchtime… a few maids were talking about it. That you find a new man and disappear with him. And that they can’t wait for it to happen.”

20 years. 

For 20 years she called this castle and this country her home, the humans her people and yet in their perception she was a parasite. The black widow who dragged the king into misfortune. It was probably only because of the respect that Master Vargas enjoyed among the citizens that they had not been chased away. Sometimes she wondered whether her sons wouldn't be better off without her... and whether there wasn't something to the curse that supposedly fell on the descendants of Atlantis. 

Varie's heart felt heavy. Then she forced her lips into a smile. It certainly seemed tense, but it was all she could manage. “Didn’t I teach you that it’s not appropriate to eavesdrop?” 

Van waved his short arms indignantly. “I can’t help it! I hid and they talked right next to me! I… I…” He blushed. “I even covered my ears, but they were really really really loud.” 

His mother nodded. “I believe you,” she assured and he stopped trying to justify himself. "And to your question: I won't go away with another man." She tickled his chin and he squirmed back and forth, giggling. “Your dad was my great love and that will only go away when the stars no longer shine at night.” 

And sometimes, in dark hours, she cursed Sora for her prophecy, forever chaining her to the human world and a man who had been taken from her far too soon. 

If she had known this beforehand, would she have avoided her fate? Would she have never gone to that mountain lake that night? Or would curiosity have ultimately driven her there? So that her treacherous heart immediately focused on that tall, beautiful man who climbed out of the thicket to her. With that face that was nothing but stunned admiration. Although she immediately showed him her true, feared nature. But he had loved her wings, the mark of her curse, as fiercely and deeply as everything about her. Despite, or perhaps because of, she was different. 

“The stars will always shine, so will you always love daddy?” Goau’s second son concluded after a long time of thinking. 

“Always…” she confirmed.

Prince Van grinned broadly. In doing so, he revealed a gigantic gap from which the last baby tooth had recently fallen. The clanging of metal resounded from the courtyard again. Mother and son turned their attention downward. Folken now held a round shield in front of him. With this he fended off the attacks of automatically fired bolts that drilled into the ground behind him in a grotesque pattern. He moved quickly and deftly. His spectators watched the exercises in admiration. 

A window was slightly open behind the queen and prince. In the room beyond, a small figure lay in a bed. Her long ears twitched frantically. Merle was wide awake. It wasn't appropriate to eavesdrop, but the two of them were talking nearby. No challenge for her excellent hearing. She heard her own heartbeat louder than anything else in her ears. 

Marry? That's what two people did to stay together forever? Out of love. And her prince wanted to marry her. That meant he loved her. Van, her prince, loved her. 

Merle hugged her pillow and imagined it was her Van. Her future husband. Who worshiped her and carried her in his hands. Inspired by this wonderful future, she felt like the most valuable creature in the world. No longer an orphan, an outlaw, neither animal nor human, a servant, an oddball. She was still looked at askance for it, but soon people would look up to her. 

That she would be Van's wife and great love. She pressed a kiss to her pillow and couldn't wait for his promise to finally come true.

Note: Vargas is the German name for Balgus.

I found the huge age gap between Van and Folken remarkable and wondered if their parents might have had problems conceiving and with miscarriage. I had a lot of fun with small Van and will write more about the little rascal in the future, probably together with his father. He reminds me of Calvin and can join the G.R.O.S.S club :D

Huge thanks to wonderful @eireanness!

[cb-writes-stuff]

“It would be different if it was Ven and Lynn”

Hmmmm….

4- Ven and Lynn

Oh. Oh boy.

Gonna go with canon Lynn rather than first draft Lynn.

Lynn? Ha! Where do I start? Overall, he’s kinda… womanish. All offense intended. (Lynn, if he heard this, would pick up on that and be offended, but at the same time like hearing it and not know why.) He’s short, has long golden hair, and he’s, like, lithe, or whatever the word is. He’s got the figure of a dancer, to be sure. Well, maybe that stuff is fashionable in Delgan, I don’t know. But definitely not here.

And don’t get me started on how he acts. He’s a stuck up, snobbish stickler for the rules, and he’s a prude. He can’t take a little friendly teasing, either. Honestly, he’ll get mad at nothing! I don’t even know why I’m friends with him. …Still am, though.

You want me to describe Vennem Seshti? Well. I suppose Ven is my friend. Barely. Anyhow, he’s quite tall, taller than me by almost a head. His face is fixed in a sneer, and his cold eyes are ever derisive. And he needs to wash his hair more often.

And his manner is another thing entirely. He’s incredibly rude, and entirely too forward with women. It helps nothing that they entertain him in their way. He doesn’t know the first thing of etiquette. He swaggers everywhere he goes. He shirks his work in favor of empty prattle. …I must admit, I did enjoy talking with him and Nauth, before my promotion. But it was mainly Nauth’s company I enjoyed, certainly not Ven’s. But, in all fairness, Nauth and I would not have started talking if not for Ven. Even so, I would not call this coincidence a redeeming quality.

[prince-liest]

God, I was really looking forward to reading the Red Rising series to cure my book hangover from The Will of the Many, but after how many people I've seen wax poetic about this series, I was NOT prepared for the first 50 pages to just be this unending miasma of insufferable chauvanism.

I'm not even talking about the fridging. I was actively impatient for the fridging because I desperately wanted for this guy to stop talking about how his wife is such a gentle, dainty, emotionally sensitive, heart-of-the-world, beautiful-even-in-suffering symbol of the only thing that is lovely on this earth (or on Mars, whatever) that everyone cannot help but adore and treasure for how feminine and lovely she is. At least when he wasn't turning around and using "womanish" as an insult.

Seriously, the writing in this book is so fucking weird. It's like going to Mars turned women into a different species or something.

I can't decide if I should try to power through or DNF in favor of one of James Islington's other books. Harry Dresden pretty much taught me that this kind of attitude permeates a narrative pretty thoroughly even when it isn't being acutely triggered by the presence of an innocently wise sixteen-year-old emotionally mature soft beautiful waif who everyone tenderly adores.

ETA: I tried again and a few pages later we are introduced to two characters. One is "the man." One is "the female." /lays down and stares at ceiling

There's this particularly annoying way some male authors have of writing women where you realize that they probably do not even notice what they're doing, and most male readers probably don't, either, but if you've ever experienced misogyny, the narration itself manages to feel condescending. And it is that way of writing that has made it really fucking hard for me to tell if Darrow is supposed to be like this on purpose or if the non-Darrow aspects contributing to this just mean that Pierce Brown is weird about women.

[horizon-verizon]

is there #dragoncourse now? i always thought 2-legged dragons were more "realistic" than 4-legged ones, just like grrm does. he started out as a sci-fi writer and loves blending it in with his fantasy (see: valyrian dragonlords doing blood experiments; i'm also sure that that "oily black stone" is an alien artifact). he loves imagining how magic, and magical creatures, can be realistic and i think it's cool af. and honestly i agree that 4-legged dragons with wings on their backs look stupid.

There are a lot of "ASoIaF dragons are not real dragons" people out there, and really, as I said in the post I suspect you are responding to, I think it's really stupid.

Why exactly is this a big deal to people except that they want to feel comfortable with creatures such as these they have seen all their lives stay so when they feel they are themselves gone?

So that it doesn't feel like they've "wasted' their lives or something loving/obsessing over these fantastical creatures? We're fantasy readers--since when has it been the MO to subscribe to such strict rules?!

Or is it they still that to "protect" the genre, to protect it from people who think of fantasy as this "lower" intellectual property bc it is highly "unrealistic" (read Ursula K. LeGuin's 1974 essay on why Americans hate fantasy) that they have to be anal about such insignificant properties? But they don't know that by doing so, they have fallen back into the same spot as those who claim fantasy is just escapism or un-valuable bc it is "impractical"--they insisting on this weird seriousness by focusing on the more superficial "rules" or appearances of some conventions in fantasy, they relegate fantasy to this static character of superficiality, unimaginativeness, and "childishness/womanishness" that they want fantasy to be less regarded as. Bec without element of repurpose and "recombination", fantasy becomes relevant and joyful.

By "imagination," then, I personally mean the free play of the mind, both intellectual and sensory. By "play" I mean recreation, re-creation, the recombination of what is known into what is new.

Perhaps it's bc they want to protect, as I have said in that other post, the dragons of their childhoods they way they do other stuff that partially lead to so many damn remakes? In that case, 🙄. Not everything is about the past and nostalgia, people. the past is fodder for new things.

The crazy part is that it's just legs, it's not like Twilight that completely did a reverse on vampires in multiple ways!

Fantasy of any genre--urban, high, "grim-dark", sci-fi, historical--has always "broken" or "strayed" or, truly, repurposed some "traditional" elements of the creatures. think of vampires...even before Twilight, have vampires always been the Bram Stoker kind in popular media? Have we not seen more vampires take on a more pseudo-sciency character, with injections of "viruses" and such? Zombie-like vamps? Hello?! There wasn't even the rule about having to eject one's bodily fluids in the vampiric creation process in the orig Bran Stoker story, not it's damn near everywhere!

It's not even about "realism" for me or how we should or should not strive for the most "realistic" dragon. It's about the flexibility of fantasy writing and the history of the super-genre itself. As long as one maintains the rules they set up for their own lore ANd they stuck to the some basic-basics, I really never cared abt whether they conformed to supposedly, popular description for a cryptid or mythological creature. If it flies, uses the elements (earth, air, water, fire), and has scales, it's a fucking dragon. Some non-EU dragons have NO legs!

I could even let go of wings, bc many non-European dragons don't have wings, esp in Africa. Because, almost near around the world (as all of the current popular cryptids and creatures like werewolves, vamps, dragons, succubi, etc), we have adapted fantasy fiction's villains and monsters from. And this insistence on dragons having 4 legs stems much from the EU-description of a dragon, that as GRRM said in his blog post, itself comes from the long-ago bifurcation of medieval people calling that and that a wyvern vs "dragon". It was arbitrary then, it is so, now. Calm the fuck down. More energy is better spent criticizing the HotD and GoT writers for fucking up so many human characters or, idk, defending enby and PoC/black actors!

If we hadn't been more flexible with how we created lore...would there even be sci-fi and fantasy fiction?! DRAGONS DO NOT EXIST IN "REAL" LIFE and fantasy has not always been about keeping as close to reality as possible but the creation of alternative worlds to explore ideologies and human behaviors/relationships to their worlds--to explore, isolate and work around the "chosen" heart and patterns in human behavior.

To create these worlds, fantasy writers choose fantasy to see/portray how humans may understand what a human/society is not in spite of but because of the environments they grow in! and fantasy affords them much more room for high drama that non fantasy cannot "reasonably" have!

As for myself, I prefer dragons having 2 legs when you want to impress that these are creatures who may or may not have higher cognitive functions but can't necessarily talk to humans or feel emotions like humans can or in the same exact range of reactions, etc. When you want to make them more like nonhuman animals. Whereas, ironically, 4 legged dragons, I associate with more "wise", super-repositories of the knowledge of the earth. It's, again, not abt "realism", it's abt character and role in the story and how we are to understand the symbolism of such magnificent creatures and how they are going to work/be repurposed. Making sure your chosen rules remain consistent and plausible.

Popular dragons are air/fire creatures (water for Asian cultures), but have developed from the humans' observations of lizards', snakes, and other reptiles' proximity and making homes in the ground. They are chthonic, which means associated with the underworld or world of the dead (esp in ancient Greece) and often associated with death in EU cultures more than say China or Japan. Of which dragons are much more associated with bringing life as well as death (the Yangtze river flooding often), but are benevolent rather than malignant anyway. From the chthonic associations, Christianity solidified dragons' symbolism to be "evil" and mainly destructive for popular media to then reuse for its own generations of projects where capitalist execs prefers the the past popular thing to assure the money flow stays consistently in their favor. A "secure" mode of income, lovley.

Am I to expect dragons to look & represent the same associations the same forever and ever and ever in fantasy fiction?! And not only that, but to make them more in line with a European Christian oversimplification of evil vs good?! To hell with that (wordplay intended). Because a few people whine about these dragons not having the number of legs they deem to be sufficient and "real"?!

Anyway, I hope this all made sense?

[johannestevans]

The Butler

The captain's steward used to be a butler. About 1.3k, rated T. Originally published by Prism & Pen.

---

The captain’s steward made some members of the crew uncomfortable, and set them ill-at-ease.

He was a man of effeminate nature, not merely in his appearance — his eyelashes overlong, his lips a dusky pink, his face rounded at its edges, and he was plump with slender, delicate hands — or in his manner of speech and expression — he was soft-spoken with a naturally high voice which lilted musically — but in the very way he moved, the way he occupied a space. Where many men aboard stood with their hands clasped at the small of their back, keeping their shoulders back, and where others took on the same position with their hands over their lower bodies, he held his hands higher, often resting them on top of his belly instead.

He had a habit of clasping one hand over the other like a choirmaster preparing to address his flock of altar boys — he was a Papist, and before he came to sea, he had been a junior butler for two years at a fancy manor house.

“Why’d you leave that behind?” Lupin had asked him once while he was helping clean up after dinner one evening.

“Why did you,” Belrose corrected him. “Wide is an adjective, Mr Lupin.”

“Right,” Lupin had said sourly. “Well?”

“Somewhere to get water from.”

“Mr Belrose,” Lupin had complained, scraping slops into a bucket for the pigs. It was a warm night, and he was in no mood for this back and forth, had only wanted a bit of chatter to make the task go by faster. “Why did you leave behind being a butler?”

“I developed an intolerance of wine,” Belrose had told him. Another man might have primly shrugged his shoulders, but Belrose had had such things as shrugging beaten out of him or trained out of him or whatever it was they did to butlers in training — Belrose had merely met his gaze a moment, lowered his brows slightly, raised them up again.

“You can’t drink wine, so you can’t be a butler?”

“Butler comes from the Old French, boteiller. A butler is in charge of a household, of its keys, but first and foremost, he is in charge of its wine cellar — the soul, therefore, of its hospitality. A butler who cannot drink wine cannot understand his inventory; a butler with no palate is not merely ill-equipped for his position, but entirely worthy of scorn and humour.”

“And you don’t like humour.”

“Do not,” Belrose had corrected him.

He’s not correcting Lupin right now. Lupin had followed him into the captain’s pantry and nudged the door closed, and now Lupin has him with his big shoulders against a cask of wine that he can’t drink, Belrose looking down at him.

“Now, Mr Lupin,” says Belrose softly. “We might well be accused of impropriety, the two of us crammed into a tight little cupboard like this one.”

“Hannity called you womanish earlier,” says Lupin, and for some reason he breaks Belrose’s gaze, not able to look him in the eyes as he says it, a kind of twisting occurring low in his gut. He reaches out and fixes the set of Belrose’s jacket lapel, catching the corner of it and flattening it out, smoothing the fabric beneath his fingers. “Called you a sodomite.”

“I am aware, Mr Lupin. I am in possession of two ears of my very own.”

Mr Belrose is Welsh — he says “ears” as if there’s a y at the beginning of the word, and for some reason, it makes Lupin’s cheeks burn.

“Are you — alright?”

Belrose stares down at him, unblinking in the dark, his lantern blocked by Lupin’s shoulders so that the two of them are standing facing one another almost in darkness.

“Am I alright?” Belrose repeats in his soft, lilting tones.

“Yeah. Are you alright?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Well, he — He called you a sodomite in front of everybody. That in’t right, is it?”

Belrose opens his mouth, and Lupin shoves him before he can say it.

“That is not right, is it?”

“It is,” says Belrose.

“… Eh?”

“Insulting it may be, Mr Lupin, but I would hardly call Mr Hannity’s accuracy into account. I am indeed a sodomite, as anyone aboard this ship and off it can tell to look at me. I make no great secret of it, merely that my impropriety occurs in private, behind closed doors, and never within the workplace.”

Lupin stares at him.

“Is this little meeting over, with that made clear?” asks Belrose mildly, with the slightest upward quirk of one eyebrow. He makes a lot of little jokes, really, just that a lot of them are clever, or subtle, or he makes them while not moving his face at all so that you think he can’t possibly be joking with what a humourless fuck he is. “Shall you write the minutes, and I’ll proceed with my own duties?”

“I’ll,” repeats Lupin scornfully.

Belrose exhales, and he’s about to say something more, but Lupin interrupts him before he can. “So am I.”

Belrose stares at him, and Lupin wonders if for once he’s actually caught the bastard by surprise. He doesn’t show it like some men do, he supposes, or he isn’t obvious — he isn’t pretty or effete or graceful or poetic. He’s just a man, him, and the mollies are surprised, sometimes, that he comes for them instead of the girls. There’s as many like him as not amongst the sodomites of anywhere, though. “Is that why the two of us are sharing this cupboard together?”

“I just wanted to say, is all. It’s not just you.”

“This is a sailship, Mr Lupin. One hardly goes without half a dozen buggerers and catamites aboard.”

“You don’t fuck in the workplace?”

“I do not.”

“The whole ship’s your fucking workplace.”

“Quite correct.”

“So, what, you only fuck on leave?”

“Mr Lupin, I have an inventory to complete.”

“You’re really alright?”

“Why would I be anything otherwise?”

“Hannity’s a big man,” says Lupin. “Frightening.” He’s more muscle than anything else, like as not has muscle in place of a brain, and he’s an angry sort — angry enough that he might take it on himself to knock Belrose about, no matter than Belrose is a big man himself. Lupin doesn’t want that to happen to him, doesn’t want to see Belrose bruised or beaten, or even embarrassed.

Hannity makes a show of his disgust for all manner of habits he thinks to be dirty or ill-mannered — he likes to find excuses to pick on other crew members, likes to beat them down to show how important he is.

“Are you frightened of him?” asks Belrose softly, his brow furrowing. “Of Hannity?”

“Of course I’m fucking frightened of him, Belrose, he’s the size of the mainmast with hammers for fists.”

“Oh,” murmurs Belrose. “Spare it no further thought, Mr Lupin. I am more than capable of protecting you.”

Lupin feels as if he’s been dropped into a hot bath, he’s warm all over, sweat prickling on the back of his neck, his jaw dropped.

“You don’t, you don’t,” Lupin starts, “you can’t, I’m, you really, that’s not — ”

“You know I hardly care for abbreviations, Mr Lupin,” says Belrose softly, his hands alighting on Lupin’s shoulders as he turns him around. Lupin keeps stammering, keeps trying to say that he wasn’t asking for that, that Belrose can’t possibly, that he doesn’t need to, that it’s ridiculous, that he’s a grown man and doesn’t need the captain’s steward protecting him.

Belrose opens the door, and nudges him out of the cupboard.

“I’ll protect you,” he says again.

“I’ll,” Lupin repeats faintly.

Belrose smiles down at him, the expression astonishingly warm, before he closes the door in his face.