#young women and not like. the shitty state of the general world.

[musical-chick-13]

I think. I think there's still a lot of "Well I don't want to be like THOSE girls," even among plenty of adults who truly do genuinely care about feminism. And I just want to say that trying to assure someone who is attempting to parse all of that out with "Oh, don't worry, YOU'RE not like One Of THOSE™️ Girls" does not........actually help.

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

Taking this out of Faith's notes because it's not fair to clog them up but seriously I feel like Tilney is very often boiled down to charming man who knows about muslin but to me honestly the people who are like "hmm seems like a fake flakey guy" are more right because it's definitely got this underlying cynicism to it which put together with the charm gives a fairly calculating feel. But to me it's like! Imagine your mother dies and your father didn't murder her but when you describe it later you say he as good as killed her by his slow cruelty and disinterest, and you're left with your sister, your older brother who is also AWFUL, and that same father in an old obscure abbey. What do you do? a. you stop really liking or trusting many people because 2/3 of the people you're meant to like and trust are awful, and b. you get Really Good at being liked. Because that's going to get you out of that house, and it's also going to, as much as possible, save you when you are still in that house. It's not the ONLY response to an essentially emotionally abusive situation like that, but it is a clear response.

And this also explains why Tilney doesn't seem to take things seriously very often, because making a joke out of everything is also a tried and true way of surviving a life like that. If you laugh at it then it won't hurt you so he laughs at his family and he laughs at the shitty parts of society and at the Thorpes and at everything.

Except Catherine then turns up and she's not calculated, she's the opposite of calculated. She's charming because she's so honest, she runs up and pours out how sorry she is that she didn't make the walk and how much she wanted to and had been whisked away, and she tells it without an inch of propriety and it's impossible to keep being angry with her. She's silly but she's also inexplicable clear-eyed, she sees the unhappiness at Northanger so clearly even if she imagines the source wrong! That's always been so important to me as part of her character that she was RIGHT there WAS something rotten in the state of General Tilney!!! It just wasn't Literal Murder. And I think Tilney sees that and he loves that because it's so different from the twisted nature of his own past and upbringing, because it's true and honest and good and he still strives for those things (because even if his charmingness IS calculated, he still sees young women and their chaperones unhappy and abandoned and immediately steps in! he is still very much kind! I might speculate about how it's possible to live an identity for so long that it becomes true, but in this case that would just be speculation because we don't have enough information so I won't.) And then I think he does come to love Cathy properly with more time and all, but the original attraction I think is how straightforward she is.

And I KNOW this isn't the only interpretation of the characters but it's the one that makes Tilney make sense to me, he's too cynical and slightly bitter to truly be the perfectly kind charming man he makes himself out to be, but he genuinely cares too much to be a fraud. I think the complexities arise from the survival mechanisms he's created which make sense given his background, and how they intersect and interact with the rest of his nature and the outside world.

[queerism1969]

Medical stuff I wish cisgender people knew

Medical transition does not make someone a man or a woman. A trans woman is a woman, and a trans man is a man, regardless of what medical treatment they have or have not had. Medical treatment just makes life a hell of a lot easier for a lot of people

It is not true that 40% of trans people commit suicide. The infamous 40% statistic refers specifically to rates of suicide attempts which occur before transition. Most of these attempts fail and the person survives.

Transition vastly reduces risk of suicide attempts from 40% down to around the national average, while dramatically improving mental health, social functionality, and quality of life for those who need it.

Being trans is not classified as a mental illness by either the American Psychological Association or the World Health Organization. Gender dysphoria (in the DSM) or incongruence (in the ICD) is recognized by both as a medical condition, and transition is the only treatment recognized as effective and appropriate medical response to this condition

When able to transition young, with access to appropriate medical care, and spared abuse and discrimination, trans people are as psychologically healthy as the general public

Transition-related medical treatment is not new or experimental; it has existed for over a century

Transition-related medical care is recognized as necessary, frequently life saving medical treatment by every major US and world medical authority

Transition is the only treatment for dysphoria that has proven to be effective. Attempts to "cure" trans people, alleviating dysphoria by changing the patient victims' gender identity to match their appearance at birth (aka "conversion therapy" or "gender identity change efforts"), are such utterly worthless and actively destructive train wrecks that this "therapy" is condemned as pseudo-scientific abuse by all major medical authorities

Transition is a very individual process; not everyone needs or wants the same things

"Regret" rates among trans surgical patients are vanishingly rare, consistently found to be about 1% and falling. This 1% includes people who are very happy they transitioned, and often are still glad they got reconstructive surgery, but regret only that medical error or shitty luck led to sub-optimal surgical results. That's a risk in any medical treatment, and a success rate of about 99% is astonishingly good. And only about 6% of trans people have had reconstructive surgery, so rates of surgical regret among trans people as a whole are about 0.06%.

Transition "regret" is vanishingly rare. Of everyone who starts even the preliminary steps of transition, like trying a new name or pronouns socially, only about 0.4% eventually realize it is not right for them (see p108-111). Most realize this soon after starting transition, when physical changes are minimal or nonexistent. Many do not regret exploring transition as an option, even if ultimately it wasn't what they needed.

Hormone therapy is pretty cheap, is generally the first line of treatment most trans people get, and dramatically impacts one's appearance

Most trans people socially transition long before they get reconstructive genital surgery, if they ever get it at all. Not everyone needs or wants surgery, and even those who do need it are often unable to afford it. Genital surgery for trans women costs tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket. Surgery for trans men can cost between tens of thousands to over $100k, depending on the procedure one is getting.

25 US states currently have laws prohibiting health insurance companies from having "trans exclusion" policies, where they categorically refuse to cover medically necessary transition-related treatment. This means that a small but growing number of people are able to get treatment, including surgery, covered by insurance

When a child or adolescent transitions that does not mean they are being rushed into irreversible surgery

Transition for predolescent children is 100% social; changing hair, clothes, name, pronouns, and/or the gender they are recognized as by their family and community. No medical treatment is necessary or provided before the start of puberty

The first line of medical care for trans adolescence is puberty-delaying treatment. It is gentle, fully reversible, and has been used for decades to delay puberty in kids who would otherwise have started it too young. It does nothing but buy time, and has no long term effects

Transition-related hormone supplements do not cause serious long term health problems

Reconstructive genital surgery for both trans women and trans men can provide excellent results

[lastoneout]

Hey so uh y'all know this is straight up radfem rhetoric that will do fuck all to actually combat the rise of fascism in this country while putting young people further at risk of being indoctrinated into conservatisim, right? Like this is 100% the basis of political lesbianism and is a direct pipeline to becoming a fucking TERF which is a direct pipeline to holding hands with Nazis, we should NOT be supporting or promoting the idea that the only way for women to be safe is to completely isolate themselves from men, especially in the coming years where unity with our allies, a group which includes men, will be the key to survival for so many people. The state of the world right now is based in part on the rampant spread of individualism and exclusion and distrust, why the hell would perpetuating that help??

Also this alienates women who cannot or will not abandon their connections to men(wanting to marry and love and have sex and children with men is morally neutral) and strips us of our ability to find allyship with marginalized men who are on our side and also will face extreme violence under this new administration. This will cut us off from black men and disabled men and intersex men and queer men and will absolutely be used as justification to completely fucking abandon trans men, who have already been completely abandoned by current mainstream feminism to the point that I cannot go five seconds without someone saying reproductive rights are an issue that only affects women when that is in NO way the case. Basically no one has been including trans mascs/men, nonbinary people, and intersex people in the abortion and birth control discussion this election cycle despite those groups needing just as much help and support on this front and that is a PROBLEM. Like trans men and intersex people who can get pregnant are going to be at a hellish level of risk going forward, infinitely more so than the average cishet perisex woman. We cannot abandon them further.

Plus for some of us marriage will potentially keep us safer or help us escape this country should we need to, I'm disabled and can't work I cannot just move to another country, but if I get married and my fiancé goes first and finds a job that can support us both that will help me. And like you can also get married to a man and still refuse to have kids in protest? Most of the people in our generation aren't having kids anyway? And tbh those of us who want to are not bad people nor should we have to put our entire lives on hold for god knows how long to stick it to the men. We live in hell right now, why the fuck should we be asking people to completely abandon things that could make them happy in a weird form of protest that won't work and is a gateway to being a raging Nazi transphobe??

And on top of all of that this also lets the hundreds of thousands of women who voted for Trump on purpose because they too have bought in to his rhetoric off the hook, which again, is where radical feminism leads because it is fundamentally based on the idea that men are always dangerous and harmful no matter what but women are always innocent brainwashed victims who can do no harm. And writing off men as a lost cause who are evil by nature and thus cannot be saved is also not only radical feminist bullshit, it's legit just conservative "boys will be boys" bullshit with a progressive hat. I am not giving shitty men a free pass to suck forever by pretending they are incapable of change, they can, should, and MUST be held to a higher standard. That is what I mean when I say radical feminisim is a conservative ideology, it doesn't believe a better world is possible because it assumes men will always be evil and should be avoided at all costs which upholds the status quo, it does nothing to actually challenge it.

(And hell, if all that wasn't enough, this is also flawed because the kinds of women who are left leaning enough to consider doing something like this likely already only associate with progressive men, so who are we even punishing here? No woman riding the tradwife MAGA waterslide is going to do this, so the only men who get punished are the good ones who are on our side, which helps who, exactly?? Like christ y'all this falls the fuck apart so fast the second you actually think about it.)

There are men who will be my allies in the coming years and women who will be my enemy. Women are just as capable of being bigoted fascist pieces of shit as men are, this election proved that. We waited for women to save us and most of them fucking didn't. How the hell am I supposed to believe women are inherently safer or better while looking at the breakdown of what demographics voted for Trump. Some of the most vile, traumatizing misogyny and biphobia I have faced in my life was at the hands of other women and some of the most outspoken feminists who work tirelessly to tear apart the patriarchy I know are men. My fiancé, a cis man, legit checked MY toxic masculinity yesterday, I recently came out as butch and have been trying to live up to that by staying as strong as possible right now, and HE had to tell me to knock it off and let myself cry. Gender and sex are not indicators of morality and acting like they are is pure, unadulterated radical feminist bullshit.

We can and should absolutely talk about the rise of alt-right beliefs amongst men in this country, especially young men, but we cannot ignore that young women are buying into that shit too and a lot of it is COMING FROM RADICAL FEMINISTS, I cannot fucking stress enough radical feminism is a direct pipeline to becoming a conservative, the TERF to tadwife waterslide is real and likely WHY so many young women are voting conservatively. The more we concede to this rancid bullshit the more women wander directly into the alt-right's open arms.

The problem isn't men, it's systemic misogyny perpetuated by both men AND women, and also fascism. Don't lose sight of the true enemy.

[gaykarstaagforever]

Another fun editorial from my "favorite" publication, Business Insider.

This was written by the 57 year old rich man who founded it and is currently the CEO. But notice how the choice of picture tries to trick you into thinking a hot younger woman wrote it.

Which is odd, because BI can, and does!, hire hot younger women to write crap like this, all the time. Traditionally targeting Millenials. But I guess our persistent refusal to get knocked up has finally driven BI off to go harass our younger siblings. And Old Henry just couldn't contain himself around all these new young empty wombs anymore.

I read it to see why exactly, on a planet with too many people and too little affordable houses, this rich white man is so upset that people under 40 aren't breeding like they used to. He doesn't give a good reason, just something about how "giving children life" is brave. Which it isn't, by any definition of the word.

What he does take pains to do is explain why all our reasons for refusing to breed are bullshit. Well, he doesn't say it so harshly. Because obviously he's figured out that Elon Musk ordering white people to provide babies for his new crazy experiments isn't a method that's working. So Henry soft-pedals it. He admits war and climate change and political chaos are real, but not THAT real (I have no idea; you figure it out). But even if they are, and I'm paraphrasing here, don't worry, some heretofore unknown wizard or Superman shall appear and fix everything. So no worries, ladies! Be filled with seed!

What Henry doesn't seem to understand is that climate change and general violent chaos may be two of the stated reasons people have for not having kids, but aren't the only ones, or even the major ones. Most people who aren't as mostly-gay and mostly-asexual as myself are under the constant pressures of horniness and family expectations to not let the coming doom of the world at-large change their stances on condom usage.

People avoid having kids because of a perceived lack of support for their personal child-rearing, be it financial or social. If they are having issues with long-term commitment or financial security, they aren't going to sign up for 20+ years of raising another human being. And because we aren't willful idiots, we know financial security is ALSO a big reason people have problems maintaining long-term relationships.

Henry, no one under 40 is going to have kids if they know they're going to have to find a new apartment or a new job, in a new place, every 3 to 6 years. That instability is what is frosting everyone's nethers. And that isn't a philosophical problem, that is a systemic capitalism problem.

That guys like Henry caused. Because Old Henry here had to pay $4 million to the US Government back in 2003 for tricking people into investing in shitty 1990s dot-coms he knew were about to fall apart. He is banned from trading securities and working in the financial services industry anymore because of this.

People don't have babies on a roller-coaster, Henry. And you help build that roller-coaster. They aren't breeding because of YOU, you idiot. So you're hardly in a position to be lecturing anyone about how they aren't doing enough bareback.

...Also, back to the question of why old rich men like Henry Blodget are so worried about "population decline," a thing that isn't a thing. Sans him actually giving the game away, I'm free to speculate, and I will. This is probably that thing where he's worried about America's garbage social security system getting even more pointless without enough young people to steal from to pay the bills. Which is, AGAIN, only a problem because guys like Henry engineered both it and the economy in such ways that it is. They made a joke of a system that runs on bad stupid rules and now blame us for not following those rules. And one of those rules is "you (white people) all need to breed like rabbits," because every system these people make, including their religions, has that same weird rule.

Because these are weird, bad people. Who do financial crimes.

And that's why we don't listen to them.

[thelonesomequeen]

NOPE. But I won’t pretend that the world isn’t full of shallow men who go for physical appearance over anything // Let's not leave the door open for the implication that Chris is one of them when we know nothing of the sort. It's the same vibe as people who say he's only with her because she looks young.

The comment was generally stated. If I meant Chris specifically, I would have said that. But I’m also not going to act like the world isn’t full of shallow misogynistic men who only look at women as objects. It’s why there’s so many stories about cheating men, men who leave sick wives, and men who body shame their own wives after childbirth. We’ve all heard them. I’m not saying all men are bad men, but there are a lot of really shitty ones out there 🦎

[anewbeginningagain]

Skate Canada's pushing of Piper and Paul was penny smart and dollar stupid. At least I think they woke up towards the end of the season and we'll see more investment in Marjo and Zak moving forward.

I think C/B will def retire, P2 could go either way (they will if they're smart, their criminal overscoring gave them the wrong impression and Canada needs a young team to be able to move up), FB/S will stay if they're able, and I'm pretty sure the Italians will continue. The only thing that could throw a wrench into things is if Russia is allowed back in - they'll be aggressive and they'll push for a podium finish to secure spots (otherwise why would they be making StepBuk contintue?). So the only medal I can see F/G potentially squeezing out is a bronze this upcoming season. If the situation continues like this, I can easily see P/C try to come back because these teams are truly holding the door open for them.

As for the Finnish team, we have to look at it from the perspective of how Finland has stepped in to host events and these medals have sort of been their repayment for it. The best thing about it is that Pirihara get to go to Europeans and Worlds next year. We also have to look at how the different feds are trying to court Italy because it's hosting the upcoming Olympics. The Finns are with an Italian coach, a lot of teams/skaters are training in Italy, so on and so forth. What's interesting is that it looks like the Russians are trying to adopt the Montreal model and moving all the teams to Zhulin to concentrate power (I'm 98% certain that's where Khuda/Bazin are going). There are too many unknowns atm to say anything for sure, but in terms of who will cement themselves within the next 2 years as the team to beat, my money is on LaLa - they have the talent and the tenure.

Yoooo I was right! Khuda/Bazin to Zhulin! Lmfaoooo if he can't get skaters from multiple other countries to come train there, his dream of being Russia's response to Marie-France is dead. I thought he was considering retirement after he got pummeled in the team event? I wish he'd just go tf away already.

As mentioned, I fully tend to believe all top 3 are sticking around. Though I will stan both Madi and Piper if they opened those 80s spotify playlists just to fuck with fs twitter, that will be hilarious tbh.

Not doubt Finland stepped up in a big way, and I also do think T/V are a good team, but their scores and especially the GOE does not match what is being shown of the ice and that's my main criticism. Like they have great lifts but was their combo lift the best of the season? Hell no, their twizzles are often horrible, some of their moves are basic, and the themes they use are repetitive. That should be reflected in the scores.

Also agree about the Russians, I legit fear their return, men is tolerable but the rest of the disciplines are legit suffering tremendously from their presence as much as it's unfortunate to admit as I don't like generalizing about skaters from the same federation this way. But no way in hell should they return, not while they are still state-funded and institutionally doped.

The russian federation is 100% trying to make Zhulin as a copy of I.AM, it's basically I.AM if they were racist, abusive, and sucked at choreography and packaging. They are now sending most teams to him and I won't be surprised if Krylova's team will be convinced to move to him as well. And once he will have top 5 Russian teams and Russian is allowed back in, they will push for teams from Italy, Georgia, Spain, and so on to go to him as well until he will become a dance hub like I.AM is and increase his political force. And this might be the worst development of them all (maybe tied with having Eteri and her minions ruin women skating again, and having Russian pairs doing shitty programs with sbs 3Lz and quad throws and winning stuff). Sigh this is depressing.

[myopicry]

Helloooo long time no see!

Read the post you reblogged about men always thinking that they're always right and objective, and honestly I think it might be (partially) bc if they DIDN'T act or think this way, then they'd have to analyse their own thoughts and behaviour in relation to the patriarchal society (even the most mysoginistic man knows he lives in a patriarchy imo).

They'll have to put so many things about themselves into question as well as the system they're part of, and that's something which I believe is harder to do when you're in a position of privilege in said system. Sure, they might have no problem recognising their privilege in terms of "men are better than women har har har I am part of the superior sexe", but not in the "negative" way.

I feel like it could tie into the "not all men!!" thing which sometimes gets obnoxious these days. There's a defensiveness and wanting to not go TOO in depth in analysis because of what that'll inevitably lead to. There's a need to retain positive thoughts about this particular aspect of society because of the part they play in that aspect.

I'd probably have more things to say but I just woke up lol. (keep in mind I have not proof read this so apologies in advance) Hope to hear from you soon!

~🪼

lolol ironically I am answering this as I just woke up time zones are funny

the thing is I kind of get it, why men are so reluctant to think about this kind of stuff. it is a bit challenging on anyone to upend their entire comfortable worldview for something more truthful because it does come with having to confront all the ways you've been wrong and have wronged in the past (literally my experience of peaking and desisting lmao) so, to me it definitely makes sense that the last thing men want to do is truly confront their privileges and their place in the world in relation to women, because they're probably going to find themselves on reflection quite guilty for many, many transgressions and things that probably conflict with their moral character and self-view. that being said, imo it's more than a bit cowardly that men won't ever really take this step to truly reflect.

it's not even misogynistic men either, I've talked in depth with a few self-proclaimed progressive men (back when I thought I still needed to actually talk to men lmao) and even if they were "feminists" or were trying to be a different, more respectful of women, person, they would never really interrogate their own treatment of other people, ESPECIALLY women* and make a meaningful effort to change that would require them to put themselves in a vulnerable or lower position than they felt used to. I've seen women reflect and change so much, I think when you're born and raised in a world that tells you all your perceived flaws and works to put you down into a handful of easily digestible roles there's not as insurmountable of a mental hurdle to overcome. still not an excuse for men! if anything, if they're supposed to be so much smarter and reasonable, I'd think they'd jump at the opportunity to become enlightened or whatever.

*god I wish I could do spoiler text on tumblr uhh just look away from this page break dear readers if you don't want some personal blog moments about how men are shitty. nothing explicit just general implied yuck and discussion of sexual harassment.

wow I have no idea why I'm so willing to lay my boring shitty backstory all out on tumblr but here it is!

but essentially of the two men (self-described as progressive or feminist) I knew pretty well, like talking about childhood trauma and personal deep topics, both at some point ended up pushing my boundaries and contributing to I guess the worst mental states I've been in as a young adult. the first time I was too much of a clueless teenager driven by zero self esteem, very untreated anxiety, terrible self deprecation skills, and also zero social awareness coming off of the pandemic, so I ended up in a relationship I didn't really enjoy at all because I wasn't attracted to him romantically or sexually but stayed in out of aforementioned self-loathing and the "obligation" of it all to fit in with my straight girl friends (did not help that I recently realized I had a crush on one of them and really wanted to push down that feeling) and the cultural norms I saw around me and my family. the second time I was lost in the gender juice, dissociated from my body to the max, and IDed as aroace lmao but was also very lonely (and once again was developing feelings for a straight girl holy shit I'm writing this and maybe I should stop knowing so many straight girls lmao) but luckily I was older and cut that shit out (not fast enough to not have experiences and time to regret and have boundaries violated ugh) anyway this guy told me his sad backstory about being a sexually harassing little shit in middle school but also had a really bad home life and high school experience and even after I kept giving him (not to brag) amazing advice to get his shit together and see women as people, he kept avoiding actually doing the work. In hindsight, I think the only reason he even listened to me talk and told me all this was because he believes in the "queer identity culture" stuff (bisexual + he/they lmao) and since I didn't label myself as a woman + was attempting to pass he must have "not considered me a woman" enough to immediately write off. yet he still assumed he could push my boundaries unlike how he would treat other men. curious.

anyway, tldr!! yeah men are shit and even progressive men are their own kind of self-blinded shit. they're fine as acquaintances, even some could be okay as friends, but I guess I've learned to not expect much out of them. maybe this is cynical, but it becomes much easier when you look for their value first, before leading with the natural empathy to befriend on an equal level. always keep the upper hand. this might not make a lot of sense I should write a separate post about it hmmm anyway

anon thank you for visiting again!! I'm sorry for the wall of text followed by the wall of text but I assume you keep coming back because you actually enjoy walls of text, so I hope you get something out of this set of walls of text!! and more walls of text to come! I've been in a very "sorting through the archives of my life and coming to terms with everything leading up to now" and it's been great for a lot of self-reflecting writing ideas. unlike men, I hope after truly confronting the events of my life and breaking it down, I will change and be aware of my (many, many) faults and become a much better person for it.

[erikassideblog]

you're gonna totally hate me for saying this but i don't think every man is inherently born shitty? and at least i think the kind of old fashioned "sexist" where they want to protect women and think they need guidance whatever is preferable to the new type of misogynist men who view women as sex objects who deserve no protection at all.

a lot of your points are based on the disparity between men and women in contributing to child raising and homemaking but honestly i don't think that's a problem? like there's a reason women and men have developed these roles similarly across societies for thousands of years, because it's what suits our biology. i think the modern world and neoliberalism is erroding how clear that is so it's fair to come to that conclusion as a quick fix.

and my point isn't that labour is hard so a traditional family is easier, it's that a traditional family is more desirable for a functioning, healthy society and it's honourable to pursue that. it's not a quick fix it should be the end goal.

and as for women feeling empty after children leave :

1. why not pursue further education, traveling etc then, when you're brain is even more developed and you have potentially moreonry saved? you're brain isn't going anywhere whereas your fertility definitely is.

2. people in the west should start having their parents move in with them again, it would be more cost effective and safer for the elderly and then families wouldn't be so isolated without young children.

completely completely agree on all proposals for the state making having a child easier AND support for single mothers.

and i much prefer the risks of the traditional model than the risks of the current one where women can easily have to turn to prostitution and end up being sex trafficked, abused, etc. and it's not always easy for women to get away from abusive workplace situations or just awful ones in general because they can be completely trapped and reliant on the income.

if our countries were sensible and cared about their future there is a lot they could do to offer protections and support programs for women to make having a family a lot easier and safer.

obviously i don't think there's anything wrong with individual women choosing their careers first, after all they could easily be the best for the job and we'd be better off with them there, but that's not true for every women and it's a significant negative for the country and lots of women to move towards a society where having family is incredibly difficult

„barbie is always saving the world and has all the careers, she is a great role model for girls“ no barbie teaches girls that no matter what they accomplish they still have to fit traditional beauty ideals and maintain an impossible body shape. girlbossed so hard she got rid of her organs to be skinny with big tits

[wizzard890]

how do you deal with liking an author's work when you find out the author has done something shitty/harmful? i found out yesterday that hilary mantel made terf-y comments and i'm (what feels like) unreasonably devastated. thought you might have a good perspective on this, thx.

There are two questions here, as I perceive it. So I'll answer both, separately.

1.. You're basically asking how to separate the art from the artist. This is a question that has been litigated to death, but my thoughts are blessedly short: you decide it for yourself. If someone has done something or holds opinions that irrevocably color your opinion of their work, that can be all there is to it. How you choose to engage with art is your own business, and so are the things you think are a bridge too far. However, we all should appreciate that other people don't have the same cut off points as we do, and let them navigate their own feelings in peace.

2. A few things, right off the top. At this point, TERFs are a fascist hate movement. They're no longer exclusionists, or uncomfortable, or confused, or asking bigoted questions. They're like (and often allied with) Nazis: their goal is to suppress and destroy people in order to make the world fall into line with their politics. A seventy year old woman getting her dander slightly up about The (British media's largely fictional) Gender Wars is not the same thing as TERF apologism. I understand that it can be upsetting to see an author whose work you love espouse views you feel are self-evidently wrong, but at this point we need to be very very clear about what it means to be a TERF. What we could call "terf-y comments" in 2013 are a world away from what TERFs have become.

With that said, I'd like to take a look at the comments in question, which I'm quite familiar with. I've thought about them a lot.

(They're all from this interview in la Repubblica, a centrist Italian newspaper, if anyone wants to play along at home.)

The conversation is wide ranging, but eventually the questions begin to hone in on nationalism and the state of the country, and the interviewer asks Mantel about the future for women in the UK.

You are also a great example and symbol for all the women in this country and worldwide. Are you optimistic about the future of women’s equality? Mantel: "I would say, as I did above, that from where I stand, the world seems to be getting better. But I would hardly feel that if I were a young Afghan."

This response reaffirms Mantel's attitude in the larger piece: she approaches liberal ideas of progress with a grain of salt, and emphasizes that the world does not improve for all people at the same rate or through the same means.

The interviewer then pivots somewhat sharply into a question about JK Rowling.

From the point of view of a woman, what’s your opinion on the TERF-accusations against your colleague JK Rowling? I recently interviewed Margaret Atwood and she defended her. What’s your opinion about all this?

Mantel's answer is long, and has therefore been pull-quoted by all sorts of people in all sorts of different ways. So let's break it down a section at a time. First, her response to the direct query about Rowling:

Mantel: I have never met JK Rowling, but I know her to be a woman who has brought much pleasure and done much good. I think the attacks on her were unjustified and shameful. It is barbaric that a tiny minority should take command of public discourse and terrify those who disagree with them.

So here's the thing. JK Rowling has brought much pleasure and done much good. Does this uncouple her from the fascist shitheels she pals around with? Absolutely not. But we are on Tumblr, we all know how much joy people have taken from her books. It's also a matter of public record that Rowling has been very generous with her wealth.

She also has been viciously harassed online. This was happening long before she went full TERF, when she was circling the top of the radicalization funnel, liking gross tweets and "just asking questions." I understand why some people, especially trans and GNC people who have a fraction, a skerrick of the power JK Rowling has, lashed out at her when they saw her teetering at the top of that long drop. She was deluged with threats of murder, rape, and violence.

Two things are true at once.

One: JK Rowling's decision to loudly side with a hate movement is hers and hers alone. It is her responsibility and her inexcusable moral failing.

Two: a woman who has been a victim of domestic violence and sexual assault getting inundated with online harassment absolutely sucks. The fact that it happened at a delicate point in the radicalization process, and at the hands of people she associates with the entire trans rights movement, likely shut off some routes that might have been used to reach her.

What a shitty, ugly situation all around. But, returning to Mrs. Mantel, it is worth remembering: this is a shitty, ugly, very online situation all around.

The legacy media has covered Rowling's harassment. Beloved author devoured by her own fans! That's news. Online radicalization and the struggles of the trans community? Less so.

Mantel is famously analogue. She has no internet presence, and used a typewriter for comms with her editor at The London Review of Books until the mid-aughts. She presumably knows about JK Rowling what your grandma knows about JK Rowling: she wrote the Harry Potter books, and used that money to become a famous philanthropist. People on the internet are harassing her for -- vague reasons, reasons that those big articles in the Guardian never quite manage to explore in depth.

What does Hilary Mantel know about cancel culture? The same thing, again, that your grandma does, because that's the moment of moral panic we're in. This doesn't come from exclusively right wing sources, either. You know what The New York Times writes, you can find ten fuckin...coastal media listicles on this shit right now.

Cancel Culture, as a concept, is an amorphous blob of lies (trigger warnings are for kids who Just Can't Handle Shakespeare), actual infighting (the cultural elite just can't decide whether watching a movie about about rape makes you a rapist), and the complex rendered flatly as possible (someone said that abortion is in many ways a women's issue and now everyone is screaming at one another). And then this whole blob is just thrown, undifferentiated and sensationalized, into the opinion sections of every newspaper in Britain and the United States.

What a seventy year old woman is going to glean from this pearl clutching from the papers of record, rightly or wrongly, is that a small group is taking "command of public discourse and [terrifying] those who disagree with them."

Is that what happened with JK Rowling's harassment? It's more complicated than that. But you know what else is more complicated than that? An elderly woman's uncertainty as to whether gains that she fought for, struggles she lived with, will be elided by a fast moving world with no grace for nuance. I think you can see a genuinely confused and defensive human moment in the second part of Mantel's answer to the interviewer, something that makes me take her comments in much better faith:

"I recently found myself ‘misgendered.’ I received a university publication, with news items relating to alumni, where I was referred to as ‘they,’ not ‘she.’ My books were ‘their books.’ I wasn’t singled out – the other alumni were similarly treated. I thought, ‘Being a woman means a lot to me. My sense of it has been tested. I have thought deeply about it. I value it, even though it has meant struggle and pain. I do not want my womanhood confiscated in print. It is not right to deprive an individual of identity on a whim, and make him or her into something neuter, plural. I have not given my consent to become a grammatical error."

You see this sentiment a lot with older women. You see it with Gen X and Boomer lesbians. You see it with second wave feminists who have fought for reproductive justice. Women who have had to really fucking knock their heads against a brick wall in the mid-20th century, trying to establish themselves as creatives or career people or someone who wanted to have a fucking abortion, or a lesbian who didn't want to give dick a chance because who knows she might Change Her Mind. Being a woman means a lot to them. Accomplishing what they have, as women, means a lot to them.

I have empathy for her dismay at seeing herself misrepresented, especially in such a top-down way, from a university publication that was clearly covering its ass rather than reaching out to the authors in question to discern their pronouns.

Unfortunately this adds fuel to that Cancel Culture moral panic: you will not have a say in how you are understood or perceived, you will have something personal and intimate about yourself dictated to you by a group that does not know you and cares for you only insomuch as you acquiesce to their worldview.

(Note: this is what trans people go through at the hands of a cis-oriented culture every day.)

Older women have been through a lot, and I want us to remember that they can and should be our allies. Often all it takes is for someone to explain to them what the trans rights movement actually is. Away from splashy newspaper articles and the shit that they have swimming in our brains that we heard somewhere once and take as unconfirmed but emotionally urgent concerns. If a person is, overall, thoughtful and compassionate, I think it's best to extend a hand to them in good faith, and see what can be achieved with dialogue.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I was born fully formed with a nuanced and evolved and sensitive understanding of trans people or their struggles or the social aims of their justice movement. I'm not going to pretend I had one five years ago. Or even now. I'm just trying my best here, and I only can because people who knew more than I did gave me the benefit of the doubt when I said dumb shit.

So, in conclusion, how do I feel safe saying that Hilary Mantel is thoughtful and compassionate, and would hopefully respond well to a larger conversation about trans rights? Here is an answer she provided earlier in the interview, to a question about racial justice:

Do you think Britain and England are places of “systemic racism” as Black Lives Matter and other activists say? Is England more racist than in the past? Mantel: "To me – but what would I know? – it seems that we are going in the right direction, and most people aren’t as racist or misogynistic as they were  when I was growing up. But once sexual and racial discrimination are ‘baked in’ to a country’s opinions and institutions, it takes generations to scrub them out; language may be made over, but real-world change takes longer. I fully concede that the changes may be cosmetic, and I have great sympathy with those who say radical action is needed."

That seems to me like a promising person.

[blind-rats]

The Rise & Fall of Joss Whedon; the Myth of the Hollywood Feminist Hero

By Kelly Faircloth

“I hate ‘feminist.’ Is this a good time to bring that up?” Joss Whedon asked. He paused knowingly, waiting for the laughs he knew would come at the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer making such a statement.

It was 2013, and Whedon was onstage at a fundraiser for Equality Now, a human rights organization dedicated to legal equality for women. Though Buffy had been off the air for more than a decade, its legacy still loomed large; Whedon was widely respected as a man with a predilection for making science fiction with strong women for protagonists. Whedon went on to outline why, precisely, he hated the term: “You can’t be born an ‘ist,’” he argued, therefore, “‘feminist’ includes the idea that believing men and women to be equal, believing all people to be people, is not a natural state, that we don’t emerge assuming that everybody in the human race is a human, that the idea of equality is just an idea that’s imposed on us.”

The speech was widely praised and helped cement his pop-cultural reputation as a feminist, in an era that was very keen on celebrity feminists. But it was also, in retrospect, perhaps the high water mark for Whedon’s ability to claim the title, and now, almost a decade later, that reputation is finally in tatters, prompting a reevaluation of not just Whedon’s work, but the narrative he sold about himself. 

In July 2020, actor Ray Fisher accused Whedon of being “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” on the Justice League set when Whedon took over for Zach Synder as director to finish the project. Charisma Carpenter then described her own experiences with Whedon in a long post to Twitter, hashtagged #IStandWithRayFisher.

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Carpenter played Cordelia, a popular character who morphed from snob to hero—one of those strong female characters that made Whedon’s feminist reputation—before being unceremoniously written off the show in a plot that saw her thrust into a coma after getting pregnant with a demon. For years, fans have suspected that her disappearance was related to her real-life pregnancy. In her statement, Carpenter appeared to confirm the rumors. “Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working on the sets of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Angel,’” she wrote, describing Fisher’s firing as the last straw that inspired her to go public.

Buffy was a landmark of late 1990s popular culture, beloved by many a burgeoning feminist, grad student, gender studies professor, and television critic for the heroine at the heart of the show, the beautiful blonde girl who balanced monster-killing with high school homework alongside ancillary characters like the shy, geeky Willow. Buffy was very nearly one of a kind, an icon of her era who spawned a generation of leather-pants-wearing urban fantasy badasses and women action heroes.

Buffy was so beloved, in fact, that she earned Whedon a similarly privileged place in fans’ hearts and a broader reputation as a man who championed empowered women characters. In the desert of late ’90s and early 2000s popular culture, Whedon was heralded as that rarest of birds—the feminist Hollywood man. For many, he was an example of what more equitable storytelling might look like, a model for how to create compelling women protagonists who were also very, very fun to watch. But Carpenter’s accusations appear to have finally imploded that particular bit of branding, revealing a different reality behind the scenes and prompting a reevaluation of the entire arc of Whedon’s career: who he was and what he was selling all along.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered March 1997, midseason, on The WB, a two-year-old network targeting teens with shows like 7th Heaven. Its beginnings were not necessarily auspicious; it was a reboot of a not-particularly-blockbuster 1992 movie written by third-generation screenwriter Joss Whedon. (His grandfather wrote for The Donna Reed Show; his father wrote for Golden Girls.) The show followed the trials of a stereotypical teenage California girl who moved to a new town and a new school after her parents’ divorce—only, in a deliberate inversion of horror tropes, the entire town sat on top of the entrance to Hell and hence was overrun with demons. Buffy was a slayer, a young woman with the power and immense responsibility to fight them. After the movie turned out very differently than Whedon had originally envisioned, the show was a chance for a do-over, more of a Valley girl comedy than serious horror.

It was layered, it was campy, it was ironic and self-aware. It looked like it belonged on the WB rather than one of the bigger broadcast networks, unlike the slickly produced prestige TV that would follow a few years later. Buffy didn’t fixate on the gory glory of killing vampires—really, the monsters were metaphors for the entire experience of adolescence, in all its complicated misery. Almost immediately, a broad cross-section of viewers responded enthusiastically. Critics loved it, and it would be hugely influential on Whedon’s colleagues in television; many argue that it broke ground in terms of what you could do with a television show in terms of serialized storytelling, setting the stage for the modern TV era. Academics took it up, with the show attracting a tremendous amount of attention and discussion.

In 2002, the New York Times covered the first academic conference dedicated to the show. The organizer called Buffy “a tremendously rich text,” hence the flood of papers with titles like “Pain as Bright as Steel: The Monomyth and Light in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’” which only gathered speed as the years passed. And while it was never the highest-rated show on television, it attracted an ardent core of fans.

But what stood out the most was the show’s protagonist: a young woman who stereotypically would have been a monster movie victim, with the script flipped: instead of screaming and swooning, she staked the vampires. This was deliberate, the core conceit of the concept, as Whedon said in many, many interviews. The helpless horror movie girl killed in the dark alley instead walks out victorious. He told Time in 1997 that the concept was born from the thought, “I would love to see a movie in which a blond wanders into a dark alley, takes care of herself and deploys her powers.” In Whedon’s framing, it was particularly important that it was a woman who walked out of that alley. He told another publication in 2002 that “the very first mission statement of the show” was “the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it.”

In 2021, when seemingly every new streaming property with a woman as its central character makes some half-baked claim to feminism, it’s easy to forget just how much Buffy stood out among its against its contemporaries. Action movies—with exceptions like Alien’s Ripley and Terminator 2's Sarah Conner—were ruled by hulking tough guys with macho swagger. When women appeared on screen opposite vampires, their primary job was to expose long, lovely, vulnerable necks. Stories and characters that bucked these larger currents inspired intense devotion, from Angela Chase of My So-Called Life to Dana Scully of The X-Files.

The broader landscape, too, was dismal. It was the conflicted era of girl power, a concept that sprang up in the wake of the successes of the second-wave feminist movement and the backlash that followed. Young women were constantly exposed to you-can-do-it messaging that juxtaposed uneasily with the reality of the world around them. This was the era of shitty, sexist jokes about every woman who came into Bill Clinton’s orbit and the leering response to the arrival of Britney Spears; Rush Limbaugh was a fairly mainstream figure.

At one point, Buffy competed against Ally McBeal, a show that dedicated an entire episode to a dancing computer-generated baby following around its lawyer main character, her biological clock made zanily literal. Consider this line from a New York Times review of the Buffy’s 1997 premiere: “Given to hot pants and boots that should guarantee the close attention of Humbert Humberts all over America, Buffy is just your average teen-ager, poutily obsessed with clothes and boys.”

Against that background, Buffy was a landmark. Besides the simple fact of its woman protagonist, there were unique plots, like the coming-out story for her friend Willow. An ambivalent 1999 piece in Bitch magazine, even as it explored the show’s tank-top heavy marketing, ultimately concluded, “In the end, it’s precisely this contextual conflict that sets Buffy apart from the rest and makes her an appealing icon. Frustrating as her contradictions may be, annoying as her babe quotient may be, Buffy still offers up a prime-time heroine like no other.”

A 2016 Atlantic piece, adapted from a book excerpt, makes the case that Buffy is perhaps best understood as an icon of third-wave feminism: “In its examination of individual and collective empowerment, its ambiguous politics of racial representation and its willing embrace of contradiction, Buffy is a quintessentially third-wave cultural production.” The show was vested with all the era’s longing for something better than what was available, something different, a champion for a conflicted “post-feminist” era—even if she was an imperfect or somewhat incongruous vessel. It wasn’t just Sunnydale that needed a chosen Slayer, it was an entire generation of women. That fact became intricately intertwined with Whedon himself.

Seemingly every interview involved a discussion of his fondness for stories about strong women. “I’ve always found strong women interesting, because they are not overly represented in the cinema,” he told New York for a 1997 piece that notes he studied both film and “gender and feminist issues” at Wesleyan; “I seem to be the guy for strong action women,’’ he told the New York Times in 1997 with an aw-shucks sort of shrug. ‘’A lot of writers are just terrible when it comes to writing female characters. They forget that they are people.’’ He often cited the influence of his strong, “hardcore feminist” mother, and even suggested that his protagonists served feminist ends in and of themselves: “If I can make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing that’s what’s happening, it’s better than sitting down and selling them on feminism,” he told Time in 1997.

When he was honored by the organization Equality Now in 2006 for his “outstanding contribution to equality in film and television,” Whedon made his speech an extended riff on the fact that people just kept asking him about it, concluding with the ultimate answer: “Because you’re still asking me that question.” He presented strong women as a simple no-brainer, and he was seemingly always happy to say so, at a time when the entertainment business still seemed ruled by unapologetic misogynists. The internet of the mid-2010s only intensified Whedon’s anointment as a prototypical Hollywood ally, with reporters asking him things like how men could best support the feminist movement. 

Whedon’s response: “A guy who goes around saying ‘I’m a feminist’ usually has an agenda that is not feminist. A guy who behaves like one, who actually becomes involved in the movement, generally speaking, you can trust that. And it doesn’t just apply to the action that is activist. It applies to the way they treat the women they work with and they live with and they see on the street.” This remark takes on a great deal of irony in light of Carpenter’s statement.

In recent years, Whedon’s reputation as an ally began to wane. Partly, it was because of the work itself, which revealed more and more cracks as Buffy receded in the rearview mirror. Maybe it all started to sour with Dollhouse, a TV show that imagined Eliza Dushku as a young woman rented out to the rich and powerful, her mind wiped after every assignment, a concept that sat poorly with fans. (Though Whedon, while he was publicly unhappy with how the show had turned out after much push-and-pull with the corporate bosses at Fox, still argued the conceit was “the most pure feminist and empowering statement I’d ever made—somebody building themselves from nothing,” in a 2012 interview with Wired.)

After years of loud disappointment with the TV bosses at Fox on Firefly and Dollhouse, Whedon moved into big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. He helped birth the Marvel-dominated era of movies with his work as director of The Avengers. But his second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, was heavily criticized for a moment in which Black Widow laid out her personal reproductive history for the Hulk, suggesting her sterilization somehow made her a “monster.” In June 2017, his un-filmed script for a Wonder Woman adaptation leaked, to widespread mockery. The script’s introduction of Diana was almost leering: “To say she is beautiful is almost to miss the point. She is elemental, as natural and wild as the luminous flora surrounding. Her dark hair waterfalls to her shoulders in soft arcs and curls. Her body is curvaceous, but taut as a drawn bow.”

But Whedon’s real fall from grace began in 2017, right before MeToo spurred a cultural reckoning. His ex-wife, Kai Cole, published a piece in The Wrap accusing him of cheating off and on throughout their relationship and calling him a hypocrite:

“Despite understanding, on some level, that what he was doing was wrong, he never conceded the hypocrisy of being out in the world preaching feminist ideals, while at the same time, taking away my right to make choices for my life and my body based on the truth. He deceived me for 15 years, so he could have everything he wanted. I believed, everyone believed, that he was one of the good guys, committed to fighting for women’s rights, committed to our marriage, and to the women he worked with. But I now see how he used his relationship with me as a shield, both during and after our marriage, so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.”

But his reputation was just too strong; the accusation that he didn’t practice what he preached didn’t quite stick. A spokesperson for Whedon told the Wrap: “While this account includes inaccuracies and misrepresentations which can be harmful to their family, Joss is not commenting, out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife. Many minimized the essay on the basis that adultery doesn’t necessarily make you a bad feminist or erase a legacy. Whedon similarly seemed to shrug off Ray Fisher’s accusations of creating a toxic workplace; instead, Warner Media fired Fisher.

But Carpenter’s statement—which struck right at the heart of his Buffy-based legacy for progressivism—may finally change things. Even at the time, the plotline in which Charisma Carpenter was written off Angel—carrying a demon child that turned her into “Evil Cordelia,” ending the season in a coma, and quite simply never reappearing—was unpopular. Asked about what had happened in a 2009 panel at DragonCon, she said that “my relationship with Joss became strained,” continuing: “We all go through our stuff in general [behind the scenes], and I was going through my stuff, and then I became pregnant. And I guess in his mind, he had a different way of seeing the season go… in the fourth season.”

“I think Joss was, honestly, mad. I think he was mad at me and I say that in a loving way, which is—it’s a very complicated dynamic working for somebody for so many years, and expectations, and also being on a show for eight years, you gotta live your life. And sometimes living your life gets in the way of maybe the creator’s vision for the future. And that becomes conflict, and that was my experience.”

In her statement on Twitter, Carpenter alleged that after Whedon was informed of her pregnancy, he called her into a closed-door meeting and “asked me if I was ‘going to keep it,’ and manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and faith against me.” She added that “he proceeded to attack my character, mock my religious beliefs, accuse me of sabotaging the show, and then unceremoniously fired me following the season once I gave birth.” Carpenter said that he called her fat while she was four months pregnant and scheduled her to work at 1 a.m. while six months pregnant after her doctor had recommended shortening her hours, a move she describes as retaliatory. What Carpenter describes, in other words, is an absolutely textbook case of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, the type of bullshit the feminist movement exists to fight—at the hands of the man who was for years lauded as a Hollywood feminist for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Many of Carpenter’s colleagues from Buffy and Angel spoke out in support, including Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar. “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” she said in a statement. Just shy of a decade after that 2013 speech, many of the cast members on the show that put him on that stage are cutting ties.

Whedon garnered a reputation as pop culture’s ultimate feminist man because Buffy did stand out so much, an oasis in a wasteland. But in 2021, the idea of a lone man being responsible for creating women’s stories—one who told the New York Times, “I seem to be the guy for strong action women”—seems like a relic. It’s depressing to consider how many years Hollywood’s first instinct for “strong action women” wasn’t a woman, and to think about what other people could have done with those resources. When Wonder Woman finally reached the screen, to great acclaim, it was with a woman as director.

Besides, Whedon didn’t make Buffy all by himself—many, many women contributed, from the actresses to the writers to the stunt workers, and his reputation grew so large it eclipsed their part in the show’s creation. Even as he preached feminism, Whedon benefitted from one of the oldest, most sexist stereotypes: the man who’s a benevolent, creative genius. And Buffy, too, overshadowed all the other contributors who redefined who could be a hero on television and in speculative fiction, from individual actors like Gillian Anderson to the determined, creative women who wrote science fiction and fantasy over the last several decades to—perhaps most of all—the fans who craved different, better stories. Buffy helped change what you could put on TV, but it didn’t create the desire to see a character like her. It was that desire, as much as Whedon himself, that gave Buffy the Vampire Slayer her power.

[nevermindirah]

I've been drafting and redrafting this meta post for weeks now. It's about to be 5781 and my country that was founded on settler colonial genocide and slavery and a deeply flawed but fierce attachment to democracy might go full dictatorship in about 6 weeks and it's time for me to post this thing.

All our immortals are warriors, all have been traumatized by war. But only three of them died their first deaths as soldiers in imperial armies. This fandom has already produced gallons of meta on Nicky dealing with his shit, because Joe would not fuck with an unapologetic Crusader. But there's very rich stuff in Booker and Nile's experiences and the parallels and distinctions between them.

Nile was 11 when her dad was killed in action - that was 2005, meaning she and her dad both died in the same war that George W Bush started in very tenuous response to 9/11. Sure, Nile's dad could have died in either Iraq or Afghanistan, or in a training accident or in an off-the-books mission we won't know about for a hundred more years, but he died in the War on Terror all the same. I had to look it up to be sure because Obama "drew down" the Afghanistan war in his second term, but nope, we're still in this fucking thing that never should've happened in the first place. The US war in Afghanistan just turned 19 years old. A lot of real-life Americans have experiences like the Freemans, parents and children both dying in the same war we shouldn't be in.

I know a lot of people like Nile who join the US military not just because it's the only realistic way for them to pay for college or afford decent healthcare, but also because they have a family history of military service that's a genuine source of pride. Military service has been a way for Americans of color to be accepted by white Americans as "true Americans" - from today's Dreamers who Obama promised would earn protection from deportation by enlisting, to Filipino veterans of WW2 earning US citizenship that Congress then denied them for several decades, to slaves "earning" their freedom through service in the Union Army and in the Continental Army before it. As if freedom is a thing one should have to earn. Lots of Black Americans have the last name Freeman for lots of different escaping-slavery reasons, but it's possible that this specific reason is how Nile got her last name.

Dying in a war you know your country chose to instigate unnecessarily and that maybe you believe it shouldn't be waging is a very particular kind of trauma. It is a much deeper trauma when your military service, and your father's, and maybe generations of your ancestors', is a source of pride and access to resources for you but your sacrifice is nearly meaningless to the white supremacist system that deploys you. That kind of cognitive dissonance encourages a person to ignore their own feelings just so they can function. How do you wake up in the morning, how do you risk your life every day, how do you *kill other people* in a war that shouldn't be happening and that you shouldn't have to serve in just so that your country sees you as human?

We see Nile do her best to be a kind and well-mannered invader. Depending on your experience with US imperialism, Nile giving candy to kids and reminding her squad to be respectful is either heartwarming or very disturbing propaganda. We also see Nile clutching her cross necklace and praying. From the second Christianity arrived on this land it's been a tool of white supremacist assimilation and control, but like military service, it's a fucked-up but genuine source of pride and access to resources for many Americans whose pre-Columbian ancestors were not Christian, and it's a powerful source of comfort and resilience. This Jew who's had a lot of Spanish Inquisition nightmares would like to say for the record that it's not Jesus's fault that his big name fans are such shitty people.

Nile is a good person trying to do her best in a fucked-up world. "Her best" just radically changed. Her access to information on just how fucked up the world is has also just radically changed, because everything's so fucked up a person needs a lot of time to learn about it all and not only does she have centuries but she won't have to spend that time worrying about rent and healthcare and taxes, and because she now has Joe and Nicky and Andy's stories, and because she now has Copley's inside scoop on just what the fuck the CIA has been up to. Like, I want a fic where Copley tells Nile what was really behind the brass's decisions that led to her experiences on the ground in Afghanistan, that led to her father's death, but also I Do Not Want That.

Nile was 19 when Alicia Garza posted on Facebook that Black Lives Matter. She grew up in Chicago well before white people on Twitter were saying maybe police violence against Black people is a problem. She knows this is a deeply fucked up country, and she put on her Marine uniform and deployed with her team of mostly fellow women of color, and maybe she and Dizzy and Jay marched in the streets between deployments, maybe they texted each other when a white manarchist at a protest sneered at one of them for being a Marine. Nile's been busy surviving, and she knows some shit and she's seen some shit but she hasn't had much time to think about what it all means. Now she's got time. And Joe, Nicky, and Andy are willing to listen. (Is Copley willing to listen? I could see that going either way.)

Booker might also be willing to listen. The brilliant idea of cleaning up the rat Frenchman so that Nile can have millennia of emotional support and orgasms sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and holy shit do Booker and Nile have a lot of shared life experience as pawns of imperial wars. Obviously Booker is white and a man and that makes a very big difference. (Though G-d help me, Booker could be Jewish and France was knocking its Jews around like ping-pong balls in the 18th-19th centuries. Jewish Booker wouldn't make him any less white but it does add a shit ton of depth of common experience: military service as a way for your country to see you as a full member of society who matters, because who you are means that's not guaranteed.)

Booker was hanged for desertion from the army Napoleon sent to invade Russia as part of his quest to control all of Europe. We learn in the comics / this YouTube video that Booker was on his way to prison for forgery when he was offered military service instead of jail time. While we don't know how he felt about the choice beyond that he did choose soldier over inmate, it's unlikely he thought invading Russia was a great idea, given he tried to desert because Napoleon like a true imperialist dumbass didn't plan for how he was going to feed his army or keep them from freezing to death in fucking Russian winter.

I find it very interesting that the French Empire was at its largest right before invading Russia and fell apart completely within a few years. My country has been falling the fuck apart for a while now - see aforementioned War on Terror, growing extremes of economic stratification in the richest country in the world, abject refusal to meaningfully deal with climate change that US-based corporations hold the lion's share of blame for - but between Trump's abject refusal to meaningfully deal with the coronavirus and strong likelihood that he'll refuse to leave office even if a certain pathetic moderate I will hold my nose and vote for does manage to earn a majority of votes, ~y~i~k~e~s.

Our only immortals who have never known a world before modernity and nationalism happen to have been born of wars that were the beginning of the end for the imperialist democracies that raised them, and I think in the centuries to come that's going to give them some very interesting shit to talk about.

Nile's a Young Millennial, a digital native born in the United States after the collapse of the USSR left her country as the world's only superpower. She's used to a pace of technological change that human brains are not evolved to handle.

Napoleon trying to make all of Europe into the French Empire was a leading cause of the growth of European nationalism and the establishment of liberal democracies both in Europe and in many places that Europeans had colonized. Booker's first war produced the only geopolitical world order Nile has ever known and I just have so many feelings ok. Nile the art history nerd is probably not aware of this, and why would she be? This humble meta author is, like Nile, a product of US public schools, and all they taught me about world history was Ancient Greece/Rome/Egypt/Mesopotamia and then World War 2. Being raised in The World's Only Superpower is WEIRD.

Nile the Young Millennial is used to the devastating volume of bad news the internet makes possible. But she has absolutely no concept of a world where the United States of America is not The World's Only Superpower. In order to get up in the morning and put on her gear and point guns at civilians in Afghanistan, she can only let herself think so much about whether that American exceptionalism thing is a good idea.

She's about to spend many, many years where the only people who she can truly trust are people who are older than not only her country but the IDEA of countries.

She's got time, and she's got a lot of new information at her disposal. But there comes a point where my obsession with her friendship and eventual very hot sex life with Booker just isn't about sex at all. Nile needs someone to talk to about the United States who Gets It. Booker the rat Frenchman coerced into Napoleon's army, and Copley the Black dual citizen of the US and UK who's retired from a CIA career that he half understands as deeply problematic but half still believes in hence his mind-bogglingly stupid partnership with Merrick, are the only people on the planet Nile can talk to honestly about, and really be understood in, all the thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes of her experience as a US Marine.

And one more thing before I go get ready for Rosh Hashanah: Orientalism was a defining element of the Crusades and that legacy is painfully clear in current US-led Western military activity in Afghanistan, Syria, Israel/Palestine, you name it. Turns out memoirs by French veterans of the Napoleonic Wars are full of Orientalist language about Russia as well. I am maybe/definitely writing a fic where Booker spends his exile reading critical race theory and decolonial feminism and trauma studies monographs because he can't be honest with a therapist but maybe he can heal this way and become the team therapist his own damn self. I just really need him to read Edward Said and Gloria Anzaldúa and then go down on Nile, ok?

[trashcatsnark]

Ooooh, gimmie those juicy, juicy Johnny backstory headcanons 👀👀👀

Okay, so I always feel kind of bad? I guess, talking about my ideas of his backstory because A) I feel like they’re very cliche, 

B) I know I don’t know every drop of TTRPG Lore, despite that not truly being canon to the game a lot of the time and also the cyberpunk universe timeline is kinda a mess, so i just do whatever i want (like samurai’s starting when he was 15 and also when the war he served in started, like the amount of overlap between the war and samurai’s active years is insane and the game can’t decide when Johnny was a soldier and when he was a grungy rocker)  

C) given CDPR still plans to expand on the game with DLC and stuff, I know it’s fully possible that my ideas will be debunked in the coming months. 

So, take all of these ideas with a grain of salt and as always if your headcanons conflict with mine; that’s cool that’s why they’re headcanons

I feel like Johnny had a rough childhood firstly, cause in the immortal words of Linda Belcher;  “Look at how you stand. People who had good childhoods don't stand like that.” Like everything about him screams shitty childhood. My brain for some reasons specifically imagines, alcoholic abusive father and enabling compliant mother. Which, again, I know is the cliche of shitty childhood backstories, but it is cliche largely because its an unfortunately common reality. I imagine his first guitar is probably one of the only nice gifts he ever got and music was largely an escape. I came up with the idea too of his father having been a blue collar worker who was injured on the job; unable to work afterwards, given barely anything for workers comp and ongoing unemployment. Leaving the family struggling financially. Fucked over by his employers, turning to abusing pills and alcohol to cope with pain and raging at Johnny and Johnny’s mother. Teaching and instilling habits that would follow Johnny too. 

I like the idea of Johnny and Kerry meeting first as kids, junior high to high school. And between the years of at least 13-15, the earliest conception stages of samurai started. And I do mean the earliest, messiest, barebones stages of Samurai; it was basically two teenage boys playing and scream singing their unrefined lyrics in a garage. Cause they were kids and just wanted something to do, something to get their mind off the shitstorm of life. Maybe, i debate internally, they do manage to meet Nancy, Denny, and Henry maybe they all grew up in Texas and with someone more competent even at their young ages, Nancy manages to get them actually going a bit as a young band. A few little underground grungy gigs playing at bars they weren’t old enough to drink in. 

Now again, formation of Samurai and Johnny serving in the war, lead to like the biggest question marks in his backstory because nothing lines up very well. The war he served in started when he was fifteen, albeit that’s not for sure when he enlisted. Given we’ve been told children can in universe be scouted by corps to be their soliders; its not out of the realm of possibility that he served before he was 18 and was drafted as a child. But. Johnny specifically states he enlisted, that he made that choice. I’ve stated before that given how long the war lasted, its fully possible he enlisted at 18, served so much of the last four years of the war then ditched following his friend dying for him. 

However, I have also considered and really do personally like the idea, that Johnny did enlist himself and did so prior to being 18, though not as young as 15. Because, he forged his documents to enlist. There’s incidents and documentation of people as young as 15 faking their birth certificates and high school diplomas in order to enlist. I could absolutely see a 16-17 year old Johnny, frustrated with life and thinking he could have a bigger impact in the world in the military, forging his documents and enlisting. This leads to of course Samurai breaking up for that time. 

He serves around 4-5 years, deserting and leaving around 2009. Spends his month spinning his wheels and staring at the Pistis Sofia. He comes out of his funk and is ready to send his message about the dangers of corps to the world and he knows just how to do it. Fully adopts the name Johnny Silverhand and goes to track down his old friend Kerry. Samurai is freshly reformed. 

Right around that same time, he meets Rogue. (which even this is fucky in canon????? Rogue says lets pretend its 2015 and idk what a bastard you are, Alt died in 2013, he’d already cheated on Rogue by then???? ANYWAY) They meet about the 2009-2010 mark as Samurai is coming back together. Personally, I like to imagine they met while she was on the job. She had to eliminate a target who happened to be at the venue Samurai was doing a gig and Johnny managed to stumble upon her snapping the guy’s neck or something. And she thinks her covers blown, but hahaha Johnny’s into that and is like “hey, you want a drink?” and is then like determined to get with her and they fall into a relationships. Then around 2011-2012 he fucks it all up, cheats, there in my opinion is definite overlap in his relationship with Rogue and his relationship with Alt. 

I also feel like he met Alt at a samurai gig? I can’t remember the TTRPG lore of it, but I feel like in general Johnny met most of the women he had relationships with at Samurai gigs, partially cause he’s a just...a liitle egotistical. Alt however was there as someone who was genuinely into the music, (Rogue at one point in canon condescendingly calls her a groupie and I can’t but feel there’s a bit of truth in thats how it started). But Johnny started to legitimately feel things for her, but being Johnny, he never properly articulated that and always had to keep fucking it up. They fall into a pretty whiplashy toxic relationship over the course of a year or two where they do genuinely feel for each other, but Johnny can’t ever let his walls down enough to tell her that in earnest and is constantly doing things to fuck up the relationship, cause he’s a dick. Until in 2013, well, we know what happens. 

Johnny has to spend some time with nomads, (probably after releasing Never Fade Away, because I do see this man as the kind of guy to postpone going in hiding just to release his song for Alt before doing so) as do Rogue and Santiago after the attack on Arasaka. Because Johnny’s busy trying not to be spotted. They wait for the heat to die down before Johnny comes back to Night City. Him and Rogue rekindle things for a time, but it ultimately is on and on and dies out again, because Johnny is stinky bastard man. Kerry had already been talking about going solo and by the time Johnny’s back in the city he had and Johnny does his solo thing for a while too. But ultimately Samurai reforms for a bit, in 2020, neither Kerry or Johnny quite ready to let it go yet. Somewhere also during this, Spider Murphy helps deliver a message from Alt about her status and asking him to let it go. He does not and joins the Morgan Blackhand mission to attack Arasaka Tower in hopes of saving Alt’s construct in the process. 

Thats the barebones of some of my thoughts and headcanons; Im sure some are not lore compliant, I’m sure my timeline is messy and clashes horrifcally with CDPR’s also messy timeline. But, these are some of my thoughts, headcanons and ideas that will probably be defunct and pointless in a week. 

[theladyofdeath]

Rags & Riches {4}

Summary: An A Court of Thorns and Roses Fanfiction. 19th century AU. Based on the prompt sent in by @cat5313 All characters belong to SJM, I am just a fan with a plot.

Warning: Mature content strung throughout.

A/N: If you don’t like smut, don’t read this.

Leave a comment to be tagged & tell me what you think! :)

Feyre was pissed the fuck off.

She hurried through the manor, completely over the ball. Once she found her room, she locked herself inside and plopped herself down on her bed.

Who the hell did Rhysand, Lord of Velaris, think he was?

He was so cocky, so entitled, so ridiculously suave that Feyre wanted to break something. Anything would do.

His wife?

Did he truly think she would want to be his wife?

Then again, what choice did she have?

She was the youngest daughter of Isaac Archeron. Very few of such a status paid attention to her. And even though she would rather spend her life as an adventurous nomad, she did not have such a luxury.

Rhysand’s proposal, if it could even be called that, was the only one that she had ever received and the only one that she would probably ever receive.Yes, she was lovely, but men wanted a woman with status. Being the youngest daughter, there was only so much that Feyre had to offer.  And yet, it was not his arrogance that made her so infuriated.

He was right.

She was drawn to him, and she wasn’t sure why.

He was handsome, of course, but was she so shallow that she only thought about his appearance? I mean, it was nearly all she knew about him.

He was handsome, and a total prick. And completely convinced that Feyre would become his wife.

Feyre didn’t believe that she would become his wife, and yet, there was a tingling in the pit of her stomach every time she thought about it. Their offspring would surely be beautiful. But that was beside the point. Feyre wondered if her father knew, if Rhysand had approached him before he had approached her. She doubted it, although the thought was rather charming. With a deep sigh, she took off her boots and slipped off her gown. It had been a long night, and she could no longer deal with the suffocating apparel she was forced to wear. As she dressed herself in her nightgown and pulled the pins from her hair, all she could think about was him. And it was shit, because she knew that was exactly what he wanted.

As she closed her eyes, she infuriatingly knew that one thing was certain.

Violet eyes would haunt her dreams. 

~~~~~~

“I think you’ve had enough,” Cassian muttered, but Nesta wasn’t listening.

She hadn’t been listening from the moment they stepped into the tavern. Except for the fact that Cassian had told her to remove the pins in her hair, which she had, and brought her hair back into a tight braid, instead, that could be better hidden beneath her hood - which she was to keep up at all times. Although they gained some suspicious glances, no one seemed to notice the eldest daughter of Lord Archeron. Cassian was certain they looked like common travelers, as long as no one studied the bottom of Nesta’s skirts poking out of the long, simple cloak. 

“One more,” she begged, words slurring as she took the full tin cup of ale to her lips. “Have you ever tasted anything so glorious?”

Cassian couldn’t help but chuckle. “Most think it tastes like piss.”

“And what do you think?” she asked, brows wiggling beneath her hood as she chugged.

“Definitely piss,” he said, nodding, agreeing with his earlier statement. 

“Well, I’ll let it slide that you keep saying piss in front of a woman of my stat-status because I feel so lovely.” 

She broke into a fit of laughter as Cassin took the cup from her and set it on the bartop in front of them.

“Should I pour her another?” the barmaid asked, leaning across the table to Cassian to the point in which her top slid down and gave him a glimpse of what laid beneath. 

Cassian’s eyes drifted from her breasts to her eyes, where he found she was glad he had noticed what he had. “No, thank you, she’s had enough.” 

The barmaid ran her fingers gently over the back of Cassian’s palm. “You know, if you would leave her be for a few moments, there is an empty room up above we could-”

“Although a very generous offer, Miss, I’m spoken for,” he said. 

“Miss?” she repeated, cheeks growing pink. “You speak very nice.”

Nesta stopped laughing, as just noticing what was taking place beside her. 

“EXCUSE me,” she said, hopping off the stool to her feet. “I would ask you to kindly take your hands off my escort.” Without waiting for the barmaid to do so, Nesta took it upon herself to take the maid’s hand off Cassian’s. “And cover your breasts! Do you have no shame?”

The barmaid leaned further over the bartop as if to say no. Nesta scoffed. “How appalling. Cassian, we are leaving.”

“Sorry,” Cassian apologized, sympathetic eyes finding the barmaid. “She gets...entitled when she’s drunk.”

“I see,” the barmaid said, eyes grazing over Nesta, who was now clapping along to the fiddles playing in the corner and the elderly man doing a step dance in the middle of the tavern. “A sloppy drunk, she is.”

Cassian snorted, agreeing as he pushed himself off his stool. He fished his hands into his pockets and cursed, realizing he had no coins. He leaned to Nesta and whispered into her ear. “Do you have the means to pay for your ale?”

Nesta snorted. “Oh, no, ladies do not carry coins.”

Cassian’s eyes landed on the slim silver bracelet that dangled from her wrist as she clapped. “Do this have any significance to you?”

Nesta looked at the bracelet, then to him, before ignoring both entirely and continuing to watch the show.

Cassian took her wrist, slipped off her bracelet, and continued to make a fool of herself as Cassian turned back to the maid. “Here, hope this covers it.”

Her blue eyes grew wide as she took the bracelet. “Thank you.”

Cassian gave her a nod, realizing the bracelet was worth enough shitty binge drinking for a month and took Nesta’s arm to drag her out of the tavern. She was still dancing as they entered into the dark night, the music growing muffled as the door closed behind them.

“How marvelous,” Nesta said, spinning around, holding her cloak out as if it was the world’s grandest skirt. “Wasn’t tonight just lovely?”

Cassian raised a brow as she stuck her arm through his. “I believe you are quite drunk, my Lady.”

“I love those words coming from your mouth,” Nesta slurred, as they walked back in the direction of Marigold. “My Lady. You have a very beautiful voice, stableboy.” 

“It is kind of you to think so.”

“You are very handsome, too. Much more handsome than all the men my father wishes to court me.”

Cassian looked down at her, her arm still looped through his. “Don’t you wish to be courted?”

“And become married?” Nesta laughed. “No. Absolutely not.”

She said the words so harshly that Cassian believed they weren’t true. 

“What of the man I saw with you the other night?”

Nesta’s eyes cut to him. “Tomas.” She spat the name. “Yes, I thought he would offer marriage. How foolish I was.”

“Why is that?” Cassian asked, seeing how much the ale would allow her to spill. 

“I have given myself to that bastard continuously for years,” she said, rolling her eyes. “And, of course, he was not all that bad at it, the love making. Great? Certainly not, but adequate. Not that I have any other man to compare him to. Anyway, after all that I had given him, I suspected he would offer marriage. Until tonight. At the ball.”

“I’m not following, my Lady,” Cassian said, attempting to show no surprise at what she had confessed in her drunken state. 

“He is now engaged,” Nesta slurred. “He is now engaged to a young, beautiful, proper woman, and I was just a toy he used. Although, I cannot say he was not a toy I used, as well.”

“Ah,” Cassian said, finally realizing what Nesta had been needing to get away from tonight. The only man she thought would offer her marriage was now engaged to another. In the eyes of her peers, if anyone were to find out she had already been with a man, she would be ruined. 

“Surely another man will offer marriage soon,” Cassian said.

Nesta cackled. “I am not actively seeking a husband, stableboy. However, my father would protest. He wishes to see his three daughters married to rich men. He is a man. We are women. Our word means shit next to his.” 

“A Lady should not curse.”

“I am not a Lady at the moment,” Nesta said, using the arm that was not looped through Cassian’s to gesture to the ghost town around them, as everyone was either in their home or at the tavern behind them. “I am but a low born woman without a care in the world.”

Cassian did not bother to correct her. Surely, the lower class had many problems, most of them financial. But, there was a certain freedom to it, especially for women. Many of the girls Cassian had grown up with were allowed to marry for love, his sister included when she became of age. He could easily see how a woman, such as Nesta, in the higher class would feel trapped. 

“Well, let us get you back home,” Cassian said as they reached Marigold. The mare huffed as Cassian pressed his forehead against the side of hers. “Yes, Mari, I missed you too. Take us home?”

The horse huffed once more as Cassian helped Nesta onto the saddle. She scooted forward, and Cassian mounted himself behind her. His broad arms wrapped around her and grabbed the reins. Nesta fell back against his chest, utterly exhausted, as Marigold began her trot back to the manor.

 ~~~~~

Elain had never been with a man before, but she had dreamt of this moment for so long, late at night, when the taste of his lips from their goodnight kiss still lingered on her tongue. Elain knew of Azriel’s past, of how he had been raised, and knew that the scars that covered his hands beneath those gloves, that covered his arms beneath his shirt sleeves, had come from the horrid man that had raised him throughout his young childhood. Elain’s delicate fingers trembled as they brushed those scars, first on his palms, then up his arms, across his chest, his back.

Azriel’s eyes fluttered shut at the gentle touch, as her fingertips explored the beauty of his pain and how he had overcome it. Elain’s heavy gown had long ago been dismissed, and she felt vulnerable in her thin underskirts and corset. Elain hated corsets. She only had to wear them for the grandest of occasions, but she was thankful for it now, as it was yet another piece of armor that shielded her body. She had dreamt of Azriel exploring her body, but had never dreamt it would truly happen. Now that the moment had arrived, knowing that he would see her in her truest nature had her heart nearly beating out of her chest.

She sat on the edge of her bed as Azriel knelt before her. He took her hand in his and kissed her palm, gently, before untying the silk ribbon that had been snuggly fit around her wrist. Once it fell loose, Azriel took her other hand and repeated the process. Then he took her foot and sat it upon his lap before reaching under her skirt and slowly slipping off her stocking, then the other. His eyes connected with hers with a question, and with a nervous nibble of her bottom lip, she nodded.

“If you want me to stop at any time,” Azriel whispered, “say the word, and I will.” 

Elain nodded, feeling more love for him than she ever had, which she truly hadn’t thought was possible. Azriel was a great man, a gentle man with a good heart, who had lived a life that none should have to live. He rose to his feet and held out his hand, which Elain accepted without hesitation. They stood together in front of the crackling fire, so close they could feel the heat of one another’s breath as Azriel’s scarred fingers reached for the lace bow, tied together perfectly at the top of her corset. He did not rush, but for the entirety of it, Elain could not breathe. Those fingers took their time as they pulled the laces out of the hooks, and with each one being freed, Elain’s heart beat faster. With her corset removed, Azriel stepped back to admire her in her thin, white shift. Elain took no movement to hide, and all fear faded as she gingerly reached up to pull her shift down from her shoulders. Azriel watched, perfectly still, save for his chest rising and falling, as the shift fell to the floor and she stepped out of it, that step taking her another step toward her beloved. Azriel reached out to admire her clear, ivory skin. The back of his fingers brushed down her cheek before pushing a stray strand of chestnut hair behind her ear. Elain watched him as his eyes hovered over her, his breathing heavy as his fingers trailed down to her shoulders, her collarbone, between her breasts.

Elain shuddered as Azriel stepped closer, his thumb brushing over her nipple, his warm, rough skin making contact with a part of her body in which no one had touched before sending a jolt to her very core. Elain didn’t dare speak, didn’t dare move, didn’t dare do anything to break his concentration. She watched him, quietly, as his eyes, soft and full of adoration, followed his fingers as they trailed to her waist, and back up her side.

Hazel eyes met brown, and Azriel took a step closer to her, but Elain quickly took a step back.

Azriel froze, eyes growing worried, as if he had done something to offend her.

Elain couldn’t help but smile, the reaction so like him that Elain couldn’t help it. She had no idea how a man such as he, whom she loved so adamantly, could possibly think that he could do wrong in a moment such as this. 

“I believe we should be equal,” she said, voice quietly above the cackling flames. When Azriel raised a brow, she glanced at his trousers, still hanging loosely from his hips. A small smile appeared on his thick lips as he nodded, meekly, before undoing the rest of the buttons and allowing his trousers to fall to the wooden floorboards. Elain knew her eyes widened but tried not to gawk at the hardened length of him. She had seen many paintings, of course, and even they had made her blush throughout the years. But here, a real man, a beautiful man, stood before her, completely bare, ready for her. And Elain had never seen anything so pure, so lovely, as he.

He took a step forward, tentatively, as if he was not quite sure how she would react. But she did not move, did not falter. 

“If at any time you wish for me to stop-” Azriel began, once more, but Elain shook her head.

“I do not wish for you to stop,” Elain said, taking a step forward of her own, meeting him halfway and taking his face between her palms.

She looked up at him and held his gaze. His eyes were so soft, so full of joy and love and bewitchment, that she had no doubt that he was the other half of her soul, given to her by the gods themselves. 

“If this shall be our only time, then let it be one to remember.”

Azriel let out a long, loose breath before a rare, genuine smile escaped him and those lips that she so lovingly admired pressed against her own. And as if they had been caged, parted for too long, that gentle kiss pressed into something more, as his broad arms wrapped around her slim waist and brought her closer. Her body pressed against his, and she could barely contain her hands from shaking as her arms wrapped around his neck, her fingers burying themselves into the dark, messy mop atop his head.

Azriel grinned against her mouth as he lifted her up, and Elain couldn’t help but throw her head back and giggle as her legs wrapped around his waist.

“Shhh,” Azriel reminded her, laughing quietly himself, as he laid her down atop the rug in front of the fireplace in her bedchamber. Without putting on her his full weight, Azriel hovered above her, his elbows resting on each side of her head. They watched each other for a moment, their smiles fading as the silence resumed. Azriel shook his head, only slightly, as he brushed her wild hair back from her face.

“What?” she whispered.

Azriel’s lips pressed against her forehead before he leaned back up and said, “I love you.”

“And I love you,” she replied, her voice shaking - not because she did not believe that statement in her heart and soul, but because she knew what was coming next. Azriel pressed his forehead against hers. “If at any time-”

“If you tell me one more time that you will stop, I will throttle you,” she said, and he laughed, breathlessly, as she said, “I want you, right here, right now, and only you forevermore.” 

They did not allow themselves to think such a thing was impossible, for the future did not matter. All that mattered was the here and now, was the moment they were about to share. A moment that could never be taken from them, no matter the future. Her mouth found his, urgently, because waiting any longer was something she simply could not bear. Elain’s hands shakily trailed from his shoulders, down his back, to his firm backside where she tugged beckoning him forward. His breath became heavy against her mouth, his teeth grazing along her lower lip, struggling to contain himself.

Don’t, she thought, reaching between their bodies to stroke him, softly, teasingly.

A low growl tumbled from his mouth into hers, and Elain thrived on it. The only instruction she had ever had in this area came from a book that Nesta hid deep within her most personal belongings - a romance novel which she had purchased in town and kept out of the library, in case it had ever been discovered by their father. The girls had huddled into Nesta’s room one night, a rare night that they had spent together, reading the book and giggled and blushed at the pages’ descriptive scenes.

Now, she was not giggling at all. Blushing, perhaps, but there were many reasons for that. Her fingers wrapped around his cock and that growl returned as his tongue slipped between her lips, no longer gentle but longing, wanting, needing. Elain let the sounds flooding out of him guide her as the hand that held him moved, slowly but confidently. His hand soon found hers, and he guided her, moving faster, until his mouth pressed too firmly against her own, his tongue dancing so quickly alongside her own, that Elain was not certain where her mouth ended and his began. Azriel suddenly took himself off her, beckoning her hand to stop. She opened her eyes, and his own were wild, his cheeks flushed, as she was sure were her own. Azriel guided her hand up above her head, and did the same to her other, until she was lying flat on the floor, sprawled out like a masterpiece for him to worship. He leaned down to press his lips softly to her neck, just below her jaw, and down to her collarbone, where his tongue trailed to her shoulder, and back, until his trail of kisses fell lower, between her breasts, then his mouth found her nipple, his tongue circling the tender skin until he felt the other was left out, and happily and equally obliged. Elain’s fingers twisted into his hair as he trailed lower, the throbbing between her legs growing nearly unbearable as he spread them further apart, pressing his lips softly to the inside of one thigh, then the other. There was a pause in which he pulled away, though not very far, Elain still felt cold from the absence of his lips. But then his fingers softly felt her. He would be gentle, of course, knowing full well it was her first time. Yet, a part of her didn’t want him to be gentle at all. He stroked her with those beautiful, scarred fingers, once, then once more, before slipping one inside of her.

Elain gasped, but he went slow, was gentle. He pumped his finger inside of her, then added another finger alongside the first, and Elain’s breathing quickened, deepened, her arms falling back behind her head as he pleased her. But then his fingers fell away, and she nearly protested, until his mouth replaced them. This was not in the book, but Elain had no idea why, because the feeling nearly had her floating on air. A long, deep moan tumbled from her lips that she could not control as his tongue swept between her folds in a slow, repetitive movement. Her back arched, and her knees began to shake as that tongue circled her clit. The moment he began sucking was the moment Elain Archeron became completely undone. She had not realized she could feel so free, had not realized such pleasure existed. When his mouth left her sex, she nearly whimpered, but he crawled back up her body, only stopping once his cock was perfectly in place, the tip pressed against her opening.

“Please,” she begged, hiking her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, to pull him closer. 

Azriel pushed himself into her slowly. 

Elain gasped, eyes flying open as he continued to push, until he couldn’t fall into her any farther. He stayed like that a moment before slowly pulling himself out, then pushing himself back in with just a little more force. His eyes remained on hers, but Elain couldn’t help from closing her eyes, from dwelling in the pleasure of her love inside of her, from whispering his name, over and over again.

Azriel. Azriel. Azriel. 

He thrived on it, unable to stop his own sounds from breaking the quiet. They were meant to be keeping silent, but it was impossible. Azriel bit down on his lip as Elain pressed her hand against her own mouth, muffling the moans that she could not keep within. Elain had imagined many times what sex would feel like, what it would be like. She had dreamt of sharing this moment with Azriel, but none of those dreams had her thinking it would feel so good, would be so beautiful. They had become one. There was no Elain and Azriel, but a new being in which they had shedded their old selves and created a new one together. The future did not matter when they were in that new self, the future did not exist. All that existed in all the world, in all the realms, was the two of them, bodies intertwined, hearts and souls connected. 

And when it was over, that bond did not break.

They laid together, beneath a quilt, next to the fireplace as the early hours of the morning approached and went by. He stroked her hair as she grew tired, smiling faintly, unable to do anything else. 

“I love you,” she whispered, barely audible above the flames.

“I love you,” he repeated, in equal quietness. 

She knew he would have to leave soon, and that thought lingered in the back of her mind, but she tried her best to push it away. 

And yet, when she awoke the next morning as the sun was rising on the horizon, completely unaware when she had fallen asleep in Azriel’s arms, woke up alone. Her body still bare, the fire had died down long ago, the absence of him was agonizing.

But a small glimmer of hope sparked when she noticed her name written sloppily atop a note, sitting where his body had been lying only hours before.

She gathered the quilt against her body as she opened it up and read what was inside.

I love you, now and always. If that would be our only time, I shall never forget a moment of it. 

A

Elain neatly folded the note and ran it to her bedside table, where she hid it inside of her journal. 

Now and always.

If only always were as easy as it had been the night before. 

~~~~~

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[atozfic]

Love when people reveal themselves as being so obviously online and insulated in leftist/progressive circles that they seem to forget that the rest of the world is not nearly as accepting or supportive of not conforming of gender roles as these spaces are. Like when did you say the reason anyone likes femsub or the reason it's popular at all is because they're young or don't know anything about sex? To me it's pretty clear you were talking about it as a larger trend and why it's so much popular than everything else overall. And to be completely frank, what is the reason femsub is so much popular than anything else OVERALL (not why any individual person likes it or it has any kind of appeal), if not gender roles? Are women just naturally more submissive than men (not saying you think this)? Because I have seen people say this, yes even so-called "feminist" men and women, that my preferences are unnatural because men evolved to be sexually dominant and women evolved to be sexually submissive, and that I'll never be in a happy or satisfying relationship unless I make myself more submissive and change my preferences because men just naturally don't like dominant women. I'm pretty sure you would not like if I took those hurtful and negative experiences and said any woman is submissive is that way is because they're misogynists who just think it's all women's nature to be submissive. And I'm pretty sure of this cause of the way that you freaked out when you even THOUGHT somebody might be implying that when they weren't. So why the fuck is it okay for you to say dom women are the way that we are because we think we're "enlightened" or more strong or better than everyone else and only like what we like because we want to be ~not like other girls~ for attention because of your negative experiences? And I like how they only talk about submissive or vanilla women getting shamed, so true bestie, dom type women, sexually or otherwise, never get shamed for their preferences. Nope, never ever. It's not like people always joke about women "wearing the pants" in the relationship and how it means she doesn't respect her partner. It's not like assertive or aggressive women are called a "bitch" but when men act that way it's sexy. It's not like religion teaches women they have to submit to men or no man will ever love them or they'll never be happy. It's not like people say that women that want to be dominant are "acting like men" or "want to be men" and therefore are unattractive, as if dominance is inherently masculine thing. It's not like a lot of men genuinely believe that all/most women want to be dominated in bed and so they don't even have to ask, they just do things to you and try to dominate you without your permission or consent or without ever having talked about that kind of thing before. Nope, we must have it sooo easy because we've got grrrrllll powerrr on our side, all women love us cause they think we're such cool independent and empowered women, and all men love us cause they think we're just so cool and not like the other girls. Like honestly, I don't assume to know what they experience of submissive women is like or that they must have it so easy because they're preferences are in line with gender roles, because I'm not one and i know they don't always have it easy because I've heard of women in the irl bdsm community being treated badly by shitty men who think it's okay to abuse them or do whatever they want to them because they're sub identified (or sometimes just because they're women). So why is it okay for you to assume what are experience is like?

I'm not involved in any real life bdsm community because corona and I'm anti-social bitch but I do like to lurk on online communities for fun (something I should probably stop doing cause it's not good for my mento health luv lmao). This whole thing reminds me of these weird ass screeds I sometimes come across by straight male doms on reddit where they go on and on trying to reconcile their desires with feminist politics either because a) they're genuinely a misogynistic piece of shit and people call them out on it or b) they're genuinely progressive/humanist men who have some difficulty reconciling their desire to be dominant with feminism for whatever reason. And so they do this weird thing where they project these worries and insecurities outwards, and manufacture a situation where anyone who criticises gender roles at all is against them personally, and it would be so much easier if they were just a female dom instead, everyone would apparently have no problem at all with them then, cause grrrrllll powerrr.

I don't like to engage in armchair psychology but the follow-up ask from that anon made it pretty clear to me that they have some insecurities around reconciling their preference for submission with feminism because of some negative and hurtful experiences, and so they deal with it by projecting it onto anyone that suggests that gender roles might be why SOME people gravitate more towards it and why it's so much more popular than everything else. I'm sorry that those people said those things to you anon, they're wrong, but a) most of those people tend to be against all bdsm in general, not just femsub and b) you need to work out those insecurities by yourself. You can't lash out at anyone who tries to talk about the relationship between societal norms and preferences at all, it's not helpful or productive.

Also how do they know those people unfollowed you for that reason? Is that an assumption or a verifiable fact? I'm not necessarily saying they didn't either, I'm not a mind reader, but like, some people are just sexist and think women are naturally submissive, sexually or otherwise. I've met them before.

to quote my therapist: that was alot to unpack.

i'm gonna give a longer reply under the cut but i just want to state here i'm not posting this ask to offend or hurt, or even "one-up", the original anon who sent that ask regarding sub!females. i have no issue with them and, again, think they're in every right to send their original ask. i'm posting it because i do think this anon made some very interesting points and brought up alot of worthy of being discussed topics.

let me also put a disclaimer here that i am not a genius nor someone very well-versed in gender politics, i'm simply a twat on the internet with a negative mindset.

"Love when people reveal themselves as being so obviously online and insulated in leftist/progressive circles that they seem to forget that the rest of the world is not nearly as accepting or supportive of not conforming of gender roles as these spaces are."

this. omfg, t h i s. i see this so much, especially in my younger cousins/relatives who are just now beginning to develop their own political opinions. let's take the conversation away from dom/sub for one second and just focus on gender in society. one of the clearest examples of gender affecting the way someone is treated/viewed is something i've experienced first-hand: i was misdiagnosed four times before i was correctly given my diagnosis for ASD, because most of the studies regarding it center around boys and, therefore, most women go undiagnosed. in fact, for years it was believed only men could have it which is why there has been such a surgence in the past few years of adult women being diagnosed with autism. i remember hitting high school, experiencing academic burn-out (thanks to everything moving too fast + my classmates catching up to me intellectually) and having my teachers treat me like i was an imbecile, or i was lazy, rather than just someone with neurodivergence. (this isn't me implying tjat men with ASD have it easy or that society accepts them anymore than women, it's only easier for them to get diagnosed.)

"it's not like people always joke about women wearing the pants."

this applies to both the shaming of dom women and sub men. the amount of men who get treated like they're "losing their manhood" for letting a women(or anyone else) dom them is ridiculous.

honestly, I think at the end of the day (and to close up this whole issue-that's-not-really-an-issue), we're unfortunately always going to live in a world where people have opinions against either side of the dom/sub spectrum, or the whole bdsm community in general. the best thing we can do is try lessen the internal conflict, especially between dom and sub women. we gotta stop treating each other like the enemy when all we really are is people with a differing preference. at the end of the day, what someone chooses to do in their bedroom is no one else's business (unless it harms anyone) and we need to take away the importance we seem to put on it. we're on a floating rock in space, who cares if becky likes to peg her boyfriend on a sunday morning or if stacy likes to be tied up on a thursday evening?

also, anon, i like the way you worded this whole ask. despite it being long, it was easy to read and you made some great points. sorry my reply isn't more exciting, i just in general agree with most of what you've said.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: Your blog isn’t what I expected for someone who champions conservative values because it is very rich in celebrating culture and strikes a very humane pose. I learn a great deal from your clever and playful posts. Now and again your feminism reveals itself and so I wonder what kind of feminist are you, if at all? It’s a little confusing for a self professing conservative blog.  

I must thank you for your kind words about my blog and your praise is undeserved but I do appreciate that you enjoy aspects of high culture that you may not have come across.

My conservatism is not political or ideological per se and - I get this a lot - not taken from the rather inflammatory American discourse of left and right that is currently playing itself out in America. For example my distaste for the likes of Trump is well known and I have not been shy in poking fun at him here on my blog. Partly because he’s not a real conservative in my eyes but a .... < insert as many expletives as you want here > ....but mainly he has no character. My point is my conservatism isn’t defined by what goes on across from the pond.

Rather my conservatism is rooted in deeply British intellectual traditions and draw in inspiration from Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton, and other British thinkers as well as cultural writers like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Waugh. So it’s a state of mind or a state of being rather than a rigid ideological set of beliefs.

Of course there is a lot of overlap of shared values and perspectives between the conservatism found elsewhere and what it is has historically been in English history. But my conservative beliefs are not tied to a political party for example. I wash my hands of politicians of all stripes if you must know. I won’t get into that right now but I hope to come back and and address it in a later post.

As for my feminism that is indeed an interesting question. It’s a very loaded and combustible word especially in these volatile times where vitriol and victimhood demonisation rather than civility and honest discussion so often flavour our social discourse on present day culture and politics.

I would be fine to describe myself as an old school feminist if I am allowing myself to be labelled that is. And in that case there is no incompatibility between being that sort of small ‘f’ feminist and someone who holds a conservative temperament. They are mutually compatible.

To understand what I mean let me give you a potted history of feminism. It’s very broad brush and I know I am over simplifying the rich history of each wave of feminism so I’m making this caveat here.

Broadly speaking the feminist movement is usually broken up into three “waves.” The first wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries pushed for political equality. The second wave, in the 1960s and 1970s, pushed for legal and professional equality. And the third wave, in the past couple decades but especially now, has pushed for social equality as well as social and racial justice. It is the first wave and bits of the second wave that I broadly identify my feminism with.

Why is that?

Again broadly speaking, in the first wave and overlapping with the second wave legal and political equality are clearly defined and measurable, but in the third wave (the current wave) social equality and social justice is murky and complicated.

Indeed the current feminist movement - which now also includes race and trans issues in a big way - is not a protest against unjust laws or sexist institutions as much as it is the protest against people’s unconscious beliefs as well as centuries-worth of cultural norms and heritage that have been biased in some ways against women but also crucially have served women reasonably well in unwritten ways.

Of course women still get screwed over in myriad ways. It’s just that whereas before it was an open and accepted part of society, today nearly all - as they see it - is non-obvious and even unconscious. So we have moved from policing legalised equality opporttunities to policing thought.

I understand the resentment - some of it sincere - against the perceived unjustness of women’s lot in life. But this third wave of feminism is fuelled in raw emotion, dollops of self-victimhood, and selfish avoidance of personal responsibility. Indeed it bloats itself by latching onto every social and racial outrage of the moment.

It becomes incredibly difficult to actually define ‘equality’ not in terms of the goals of the first wave of feminists or even the second because we can objectively measure legal, civil and political goals e.g. It’s easy to measure whether boys and girls are receiving the same funding in schools. It’s easy to see whether a man and woman are being paid appropriately for the same work. But how does one measure equality in terms of social justice? If people have a visceral dislike of Ms X over Mr Y is it because she’s a woman or only because she’s a shitty human being in person?

The problem is that feminism is more than a philosophy or a group of beliefs. It is, now, also a political movement, a social identity, as well as a set of institutions. In other words, it’s become tribal identity politics thanks to the abstract ideological currents of cultural Marxism.

Once a philosophy goes tribal, its beliefs no longer exist to serve some moral principle, but rather they exist to serve the promotion of the group - with all their unconscious biases and preferences for people who pass our ‘purity test’ of what true believers should be i.e. like us, built in.

So we end up in this crazy situation where tribal feminism laid out a specific set of paranoid beliefs  - that everywhere you look there is constant oppression from the patriarchy, that masculinity is inherently violent, and that the only differences between men and women are figments of our cultural imagination, not based on biology or science.

Anyone who contradicted or questioned these beliefs soon found themselves kicked out of the tribe. They became one of the oppressors. And the people who pushed these beliefs to their furthest conclusions — that penises were a cultural construction of oppression, that school mascots encourage rape and sexual violence, and that marriage is state sanctioned rape or as is now the current fad that biological sex is not a scientific fact or not recognising preferred pronouns is a form of hate speech etc— were rewarded with greater status within the tribe.

Often those shouting the loudest have been white middle class educated liberals who try to outcompete each other within the tribe with such virtue signalling. Since the expansion of higher education in the 1980s in Britain (and the US too I think), a lot of these misguided young people have been doing useless university degrees - gender studies, performing arts, communication studies, ethnic studies etc - that have no application in the real world of work. I listen to CEOs and other hiring executives and they are shocked at how uneducated graduate students are and how such graduates lack even the basic skills in logic and critical problem solving. And they seem so fragile to criticism.

In a rapidly changing global economy, a society if it wants to progress and prosper is in need of  valuing skills, languages, technical knowledge, and general competence (i.e critical thinking) but all too often what our current society has instead are middle class young men and women with a useless piece of toilet paper that passes for a university degree, a mountain of monetary debt, and no job prospects. No wonder they feel it’s someone else’s fault they can’t get on to that first rung of the ladder of life and decide instead that pulling down statues is more cathartic and vague calls to end ‘institutional systemic racism’. Oh I digress....sorry.

My real issue with the current wave of feminists is that they have an attitude problem.

Previous generations of feminists sacrificed a great deal in getting women the right to vote, to go to university, to have an equal education, for protection from domestic violence, and workplace discrimination, and equal pay, and fair divorce laws. All these are good things and none actually undermine the natural order of things such as marriage or family. It is these women I truly admire and I am inspired by in my own life because of their grit and relentless drive and not curl up into a ball of self pity and victimhood.

More importantly they did so NOT at the expense of men. Indeed they sought not to replace men but to seek parity in legal ways to ensure equality of opportunity (not outcomes). This is often forgotten but is important to stress.

Certainly for the first wave of feminists they did not hate men but rather celebrated them. Pioneers such as Amelia Earhart - to give a personal example close to my heart as a former military aviator myself - admired men a great deal. Othern women like another heroine of mine, Gettrude Bell, the first woman to get a First Class honours History degree at Oxford and renowned archaeologist and Middle East trraveller and power breaker never lost her admiration for her male peers.

I love men too as a general observation. I admire many that I am blessed to know in my life. I admire them not because they are necessarily men but primarily because of their character. It’s their character makes me want to emulate them by making me determined and disciplined to achieve my own life goals through grit and effort.

Character for me is how I judge anyone. It matters not to me your colour, creed or sexual orientation. But what matters is your actions.

I find it surreal that we have gone from a world where Christian driven Martin Luther King envisaged a world where a person would be judged from the content of their character and not the colour of their skin (or gender) to one where it’s been reversed 360 degrees. Now we are expected to judge people by the colour of their skin, their gender and sexual orientation. So what one appears on the outside is more important than what’s on the inside. It’s errant nonsense and a betrayal of the sacrifices of those who fought for equality for all by past generations.

Moreover as a Christian, such notions are unbiblical. The bible doesn’t recognise race - despite what slave owners down the ages have believed - nor gender - despite what the narrow minded men in pulpits have spewed out down the centuries - but it does recognise the fact of original sin in the human condition. We are all fallen, we are all broken, and we are all in need of grace.

Even if one isn’t religious inclined there is something else to consider.

For past generations the stakes were so big. By contrast this present generation’s stakes seem petty and small. Indeed the current generation’s struggle comes down to fighting for safe spaces, trigger warnings and micro aggressions. In other words, it’s just about the protection of feelings. No wonder our generation is seen as the snowflake generation.

A lot of this nonsense can be put down to the intellectually fraudulent teachings of critical theory and post colonial studies in the liberal arts departments on university campuses and how such ideas have and continue to seep into the mainstream conversation with such concepts as ‘white privilege’, ‘white fragility’, ‘whites lives don’t matter’, ‘abolish whiteness’ ‘rape culture’ etc which feels satisfying as intellectual masturbation but has no resonance in the real world where people get on with the daily struggle of making something of their lives.

But yet its critical mass is unsustainable because the ideas inherent within it are intellectually unstable and will eventually implode in on itself - witness the current war between feminists (dismissed uncharitably as terfs) who define women by their biological sex and want to protect their sexual identity from those who for example are championing trans rights as sexuality defined primarily as a social construct. So you have third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same issues. For instance there’s the sex positive feminists and there’s also anti-porn, sex negative feminists. How can the same thing either be empowering or demeaning? There are so many third wave feminists taking completely different stances on the same exact topics that it’s difficult to even place what they want anymore.The rallying cries of third wave feminism have largely been issues that show only one side of the story and leave out a lot of pertinent details.

But the totality of the damage done to the cultural fabric of society is already there to see. Already now we are in this Orwellian scenario where one has to police feelings so that these feminists don’t feel marginalised or oppressed in some undefinable way. This is what current Western culture has been reduced to. I find it ironic in this current politically charged times, that conservatives have become the defenders of liberalism, or at least the defence of the principle of free speech.

To me the Third Wave feminism battle cry seems to be: Once more but with feelings.

With all due respect, fuck feelings. Grow up.

I always ask the same question to friends who are caught up in this current madness be they BLM activists or third wave feminists (yes, I do have friends in these circles because I don’t define my friends by their beliefs but by their character): compared to what?

We live in a systemic racist society! Compared to what?

We live in a patriarchal society where women are subjugated daily! Compared to what?

We live in an authoritarian state! Compared to what?

We live in a corrupt society of privileged elites! Compared to what?

Third-wave? Not so much. By vast majorities, women today are spurning the label of “feminist” - it’s become an antagonising, miserable, culturally Marxian code word for a far-left movement that seeks to confine women into boxes of ‘wokeness’.

For sure, Western societies and culture have its faults - and we should always be aware of that and make meaningful reforms towards that end. Western societies are not perfect but compared to other societies - China? Russia? Saudi Arabia? - in the world today are we really that bad?

Where is this utopian society that you speak of? Has there ever been one in recorded history? As H.L. Mencken memorably put it, “An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.“

I prefer to live in a broken world that is rather than one imagined. When we are rooted in reality and empirical experience can we actually stop wasting time on ‘hurt feelings’ and grievances construed through abstract ideological constructs and get on with making our society better bit by bit so that we can then hand over for our children and grandchildren to inherit a better world, not a perfect one.

Thanks for your question.