#AND controversially... if i may add. from my childhood...

[crow-talks-hockey]

i love it when my hyperfixations have some fruity-ass little ginger guy as their main character. i cannot and will not stop eating that shit up

[hyperlexichypatia]

So you want to support your local public library

You’ve been following the news about book bans, funding cuts, Moms for Liberty, censorship, and you’re outraged! You want to Do Something! What should you do? 

Here are some tips from a small-town public library worker. Some of this is stuff I’ve seen a lot of other people saying, but some isn’t. 

DISCLAIMER: Every library has different needs, policies, funding situations, etc. What I’m saying may not apply to your local branch. Ask your local library staff. 

THINGS THAT HELP A LOT: 

Use your library. Really, just using it helps a lot. Check out books. Download ebooks on Libby. Listen to audiobooks. Come to programs. Stream movies on Kanopy. Join the book club. Bring your kids to storytime. Help spread the word about library services and events (we don’t have an advertising budget). Not only do we rely on usage statistics to justify our funding, but also, robust attendance makes the library feel more like part of the community. 

Check out controversial/challenged books. Popularity affects whether it stays on the shelves. Ask the staff to order certain titles. Show demand for these books!

Give us some money. Just fork over some cash. Go to the online donation portal. Write a check if you’re feeling fancy. We rely on donation money for everything from cleaning supplies to prizes. Participate in library fundraisers. If there’s a friends of the library group, join that. If your library posts a wishlist, go shopping. 

Contact your local elected people and tell them you want libraries uncensored and well-funded. Invoke your identities that politicians care about. “As a constituent,” “as a voter,” “as a taxpayer.” Be specific about what you want the remedy to be. If the issue is censorship, say you want libraries to have free and uncensored material for all. If the issue is resources, say you want to increase library funding. If you say “The library should be open longer hours,” you and I might interpret that to mean that the solution is to fund the library to be open more hours. But politicians and their staff do not think like you and I do. To them, “The library should be open longer hours” may mean “The library is unpopular and not meeting people’s needs, so let’s defund it.” 

EXTRA CREDIT IF YOU WANT TO GO ABOVE AND BEYOND: Apply to serve on your local library board.

THINGS THAT MIGHT HELP, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS PEOPLE THINK. Again, this is going to vary wildly based on your particular public library branch. At some libraries, these things might help a whole lot! At other libraries, not so much. 

Donating books. Some libraries don’t even take donated books. Most libraries put donated books in their book sale, or put them out for swaps. Very few donated books end up catalogued for circulation. Donating banned books really does nothing – if a library is ordered to remove a book from their shelves, they won’t be allowed to re-add a donated copy, either. Our library sometimes catalogues donated books if they are new (published within the past ~5 years) and in like-new condition. Your childhood favorites are not “in good condition,” I’m sorry. 

Volunteering. Again, this is going to vary widely from library to library. Some libraries rely heavily on volunteers. Some libraries don’t let anyone volunteer at all. My library requires volunteers to go through a criminal background check first (I loathe this policy with the fire of a thousand suns, but have been unable to persuade my boss to change it). Even if you are allowed to volunteer, don’t be surprised if the tasks you’re assigned look more like “clean the bathrooms” than like “read aloud to a roomful of rapt children” or “comb through archives.” Most libraries don’t let volunteers do circulation tasks, and there are very good reasons for that. And for Pete’s sake, don’t offer to “volunteer” to do someone’s actual paid job. 

I’m not saying “Don’t donate used books and don’t volunteer”; I’m saying “The well-meaning viral posts about how you can save your local library by donating used books and volunteering are missing a lot.”

BONUS EXERCISE: Kill the Mom for Liberty inside your head. The right-wing anti-library movement feeds on the same censorship, bigotry, and “think of the children” moral panic that runs rampant in progressive spaces. If you want to support public libraries, you’ve got to snap out of the idea that books, media, and truly public space are “dangerous.” Here, imagine this scenario: At a public library, a 10-year-old girl, who’s walked to the library by herself after school, is sitting at the table with her books. She’s been reading Warrior Cats, but today she’s branched into the adult section and grabbed the newest T.M. Frazier book. Across the table, a 31-year-old man is working on his laptop, but he looks up to mention that he also loves Warrior Cats, and they have a brief conversation about Bramblestar’s character development. In the lounge chair across the room, a 62-year-old woman with a huge backpack who looks like she might be unhoused is dozing and slightly snoring. At the lego table, a couple of kids are collaborating on a tower, while a 47-year-old man is twitching and talking to someone other people can’t see. A 15-year-old is checking out [most offensive book by most hateful author – I’m not even going to give an example, it’s whatever is the worst option in YOUR mind]. At a public computer, a 9-year-old with headphones is watching a video of Pokemon farting. A 25 year old woman with Down Syndrome is checking out The Joy of Sex and Because of Winn Dixie. If you want to regulate or ban anything in this scenario, fix your mindset. If you think the library “shouldn’t have to deal with homeless people because that’s mission creep,” or that there needs to be some kind of protection against the “danger” of “adults interacting with minors,” or that people should only read “age-appropriate” or “reading-level-appropriate” books, or that someone should “get help” for voice hearers in public, you are part of the problem. If you don’t support the ideal of public libraries as places where any-yes-any member of the public can hang out and read whatever they want, you don’t actually support the anyone-can-hang-out-and-read-whatever-they-want place.

[cupofwyn]

⌕ — may i have this dance? ( teaser ) *now out!*

lee jeno!prince x f!reader. it was all self-inflicted pressure when the spotlight finally turned to you as the final member of the family to experience a love story—the miracle that has been passed down from your parents down to your siblings and the privilege of love in marriage that has been jealoused upon the ton of high society. though the world might have run out of love stories available for you when your family took it all to their delight, or so you thought.

genre/s. fluff. a tinge of comedy. bridgerton period. rofan.

warning/s. profanity. little to inaccurate representations of the regency era (as im not literate about it). would add more in the actual fic.

wc/s. 0.5k (oneshot - 4k or more)

a/n. hello there! this is my first fic for nct dream. the thought process on how i decided to make this fic was "doesn't jeno really suit the fanciness of the regency era?" and THEN i remembered the after-party jeno on his milan fashion week (he looked heavenly) then tada 🎉 this happened. ty and enjoy reading :>>>

Love. The most privileged thing a person could ever obtain in one's life in this vicious society.

Romance and union are never the norm when it comes to marital circles, but rather, this was quite the opposite for your family.

Your father and mother, the most known influential couple in their respective social circles and political surges, may have been arranged for a political marriage but soon grew fond of each other throughout the years being husband and wife.

A solace love that caverns in one's security and vulnerability. Sometimes truly vomiting when you'd see their very affectionate and loving gestures they shared.

Then the firstborn, your oldest sister, has come to truly be entranced to the magic of love, which I'd say, she was a wizard of turning a stern duke's son into a doting husband.

Her's was a love at first sight in her first debutante ball with the known cold-hearted son of a duke—a dashing and intense man on the outside, and yet your sister surprisingly speaks of him in a different light when she would gush of him, with cheeks the pinkest of pinks.

Next, your first older brother. A man with no virtues and is uncommitting suddenly introduces his fiancée once in our family bondings in the private drawing room, his facial expressions changed and body language softened up in the presence of the woman next to him—the baron's illegitimate daughter from the outskirts of the kingdom, who he had been secretly sending letters from each day.

No wonder he became much more behaved the past few months to save mother's swooning to this event.

Even your most aggravating second older brother has a potential love story written just for him. A childhood friend who lives across the street to which they are clearly in love with each other but remains to be oblivious to their obvious arrow-shooting gazes every time they see the other. Their push and pull plays are only but a headache to the outsiders and annoyingly intensifies their yearning for each other.

And lastly comes you, a shut-in daughter of marquis, who just debuted tonight and has yet to unfold their own love story—or not.

There is no arranged marriage prepared for you by the marquess and the marchioness, nor a love at first sight in this debutante ball with a callous man who is in fact the opposite when it came to you, a controversial love story with an illegitimate child of a noble, neither a foundation of friendship with a man to which turns into a realization of their attachment to them.

None! It seemed like the world ran out of love stories to write when it came to you since your family has snatched them all.

Until tonight.

"Why don't you say we plan to forge an alliance? I will offer you a dance on the next song—you'll be the subject of curiosity, and the next morning, you'll be flooded with marriage proposals from different suitors, possibly earning you a love match in return."

"How does an offer from you really make that situation possibly happen? Unless you're someone distinguishable, which possibly you're not since I don't recognize you, being the most handsome and attractive man I've seen at most could not possibly mean a thing. Or..." You trailed off.

"Or what?" he gulped.

"You're one of the princes."

"Pfft, what? No—but! This face is enough to attract attention. I promise. And I can't hasten more. My chaperone is possibly on the hunt for blood right now, and I've been hiding from him too long. Are you in this or not?"

"Fine... deal. This better work, Lord...?"

He grins, eyes turning into the most charming shape of crescent moon, and lips upturned in a reassuring feat.

"Lord Lee. Jeno Lee, milady." he answered.

i hope you liked this teaser! if you're interested to be updated on this fic once it's published, don't hesitate to reblog/comment to be added to the taglist. see you soon ^^

© written by CUPOFWYN . 2024

[thescifiwitch]

This is the world-building of my potential show/series called Future Renegades, requested by @elronthemage. It's about teen superheroes navigating family expectations, identity and a plethora of other problems while battling monsters and villains in a world divided into Superhumans, Magicians, Vigilantes and Spies.

So Superhumans are pretty self explanatory---they are those with genetically enhanced abilities aka superpowers. They are divided into a lot of things which will be listed below.

Allegiance

There are two social classes of Superhumans, the Sentinels and the Renegades. Sentinels are superhumans who work with law enforcement. They are law-abiding and institution-aligned. Renegades are those who don't work with law enforcement. They are instinct-driven and are anti-establishment. There is this huge rivalry between Sentinels and Renegades because most Renegades grew up in Sentinel-based homes and many had strict, suffocating childhoods.

Power Type

There are four types of superhumans.

Shifters - those who can change their physical bodies

Emitters - those who can control an external force outside their bodies e.g elemental powers

Psionics - those with mental powers e.g telepathy.

Enhancers - those with enhanced physical abilities e.g super speed, super strength.

Evolution Stage

Superhumans can go through three phases:

Baseline - where their powers are balanced with their humanity (i.e emotions, organs, etc)

Mutant - where their powers dominate more over their humanity and may alter them physically or emotionally.

Inhuman - where their powers dominate completely over their humanity but those not alter them further.

Most Superhumans do not pass the Mutant phrase...mostly.

Magicians

Magicians are also pretty self explanatory; there are those with magic-based powers. They are divided into two: Supernaturals and Paranormals. Supernaturals are witches, wizards and mages. They live in the parallel world of Wonderland which is sustained by Chaos Magik, a powerful substance capable of warping reality itself. Very small ounces of chaos magik leak into the mainland (Earth) which turns into rampaging, unpredictable monsters tha both Superhumans and Magicians fight.

Paranormals are entirely different. They live on the mainland, mainly in urban places. They fight ghosts, demons and other creatures. They mainly keep to themselves as they can attract these monsters but can mingle secretly with civilians, like how superheroes have a secret identity.

Vigilantes

Vigilantes don't have powers but are highly skilled in weaponry and defense. They are loyal to Superhumans but the Sentinels often treat them as servants or below them while Renegades teach them as equals. It is said that there is no greater bond between a Renegade and a Vigilante.

Spies

Spies are the most controversial of the hierarchy. They hardly interact with the others and almost everything they do is for their benefit. They are also skilled in weaponry and gadgetry and include roles like assassins and hackers. They see Superhumans as too overpowered; Magicians as weak and Vigilantes as betrayers. They are too often public enemies and believe they are not part of the hierarchy even though they are. They mainly stay in underground bases and bunkers, away from the public.

TL;DR

I'm not sure if I want to add Cyberpunks to the list as a subdivision of Superhumans. They are a group of hackers and technomancers that live both in the real world and digital world (like the movie Ready Player One) but I digress.

There is a team of Sentinels for each city. My OCs are mainly based in the city of Onyx Heights, a cross between New York and Gotham. Superhuman kids are trained in special academies. There are a few special occasions where Superhumans from different cities meet.

Magicians can travel to the mainland with the use of portal stones, portable artefacts made by chaos magik. For a non-magician to go to Wonderland, they will have to go through the many gateways created by leaked chaos magik, mostly found in abandoned places of the city.

Paranormals fight a plethora of different monsters such as Necrobeasts, dead animals mutated by spectral essence.

That's all! Thanks for reading!

[angrybubbles]

Death and Symbolism in Interview with the Vampire - Claudia

Disclaimer: I have only interacted with the AMC adaption of the story. While I am aware of a bit of the books, and may use that in support of my points, it is by no means substantial. Please feel free to add/disagree if you have read them.

In my previous installments of this analysis, I have established that Vampires are symbolic of death on multiple levels. We can examine the role of death in how it is delivered, how it manifests, what it means to be loved by it.

Now Claudia is complicated for a symbol for many reasons, but primarily because she's dead-twice-over. She haunts the narrative, daring to challenge Louis, and putting uncomfortable facts and ideas in her diaries that aren't meant to be interacted with by anyone but her. She never is given an ability to justify her actions, because she's always been dead, so we don't get to really see her moralize it as much as the other founding characters of the narrative.

The symbolism in Claudia is especially heavy. As I'm sure we're all aware, Claudia herself is a symbol of Anne's daughter, and that is just as influential in the context of how and why she is written as death as it is in Louis'. She isn't just the deliverer of death, she has death looming over her, just as a human does.

The Vampire Claudia

Claudia as a child is such an important part of her character that it's almost controversial that Claudia was aged up for the AMC adaption. Let me explain why I think that it still works, even if the direct symbolism has changed a bit. Fourteen is an odd age for a teen, because it's the age you are definitely feeling the chemical imbalance that comes with maturity. It's a fairly ugly age, as the transition between childhood and responsibility is confusing and frustrating, especially to the low-income racial reality that Claudia lived in. It also is socially an age of uncertainty. You are old enough to make decisions which you can (and should) be held responsible for, but you are young enough not to be treated in any degree of seriousness or respect. Claudia as a black woman just compounds this (black women both being seen as mature too early, but also infantilized in their own decisions). What future would she have had? It's unsure, especially in the tumultuous riots that caused her to be found by Regret in the first place. It's the age I believe many of us really begin to grasp the Death of Innocence.

Claudia is turned as a symbol of regret for Louis. She is not known as a person to Lestat or Louis, she was chosen because she was a little girl that Louis wanted to feel redeemed through. "She called me an angel." This lack of purpose haunts her death. She is always seeking ways to fill this hole, something that is reflected in the intensity for her thirst for blood. She doesn't know what her role is life is other than "daughter" and she hates how that infantilizes her. I'm going to give this complicated trait of hers symbolic of the Resentment of Death.

Claudia's lust for life is such an interesting aspect of her character. She seeks out these new experiences in her victims, as she tries to make peace with her Resentment. Her romance with Charlie, feeling so new and fresh, dying just like everyone else. Paying deep attention to the last words of her victims. I think about the one that we directly saw on screen "What date is it? ...I thought it would be summer." Because Claudia is confronting each of her victims with their death in the moment, they respond in confusing or confrontational ways, creating a resentful death. Even her first kill, she rejects the easy drunk man and goes for a cop (good for her), who tells her "You're not a girl, you're a devil." There is no seduction, there is no production, there is only meeting death and the resentment that comes from it. The more that Claudia can't find peace from it, the more resentful of those around her she becomes.

Now once we get through her Madness state in New Orleans, we don't get much on the character of her victims, and more on the other uses for them. She keeps pieces of them, like her drawer of breasts, for this search in what she is missing. The farmers for their language and looting soldiers for their goods in Eastern Europe, and those she kills to pick-pocket in Paris. These bodies are just for uses, and once she's done with their use then back to ashes it is for them. She seems resentful they they get to live at all, and she's much further along than Louis in seeing herself as "other."

Claudia is the one who makes the plan to kill Lestat. She is intent on killing what she perceives as the source of her ignorance and her Death. She resents Louis for holding on to the type of love that she associates with this innocence and ignorance. As soon as something begins to go wrong, she's quick to resent him for it as well. I think it's reasonable that when Claudia decided to take on the role of Louis' sister, she aligned her thinking with something along the lines of believing Louis himself is childish, especially when he exhibits the traits she associates with her own childishness/helplessness. Claudia's Death of Childhood Innocence reflects back at her when she associates it with weakness.

This is also pretty closely connected with why she finds the Theatre so compelling. Resentment often finds a degree of comfort in Cruelty, and of course the Theatre displays campy, random, cruel death as its feature. "You are all complicit, repugnant, and appaling! And... I love you for it." Something that Resentment would find peace in, especially as Claudia has been exhibiting these traits anyway, but they have the addition of luring their victims into a "loving" embrace. "Do you know what it means to be loved by Death? Do you know what it means to have Death know your name? ...no pain." And Claudia so desperately wants to be loved.

But Cruelty is all about causing pain, and Armand and the Coven cut deep. The minstrel show highlighting her childishness that she associates with weakness, the deep connotations of racism, the use of the trapped bird that can never be free metaphor... There is sickening cruelty in the Theatre's seduction into death. Even letting the victims come screaming onto stage just to taunt them with human selfishness tells us this. It's a False Love that they promise. The Justification tells Resentment that this is just how it is, and you need to suck it up or perish. And Claudia has never endured cruelty well (as she should, this shit sucks).

Now Claudia is haunted by a particular Death symbol. Fire and Sunlight. Fire in IwtV is primarily a symbol for destruction, as one of the ways to both kill a vampire and cleanse evidence of their victims. Death is the polar opposite to light, and thus, to the vampires it is something that they cannot exist in. Fire/Light are both symbolic of life, and since vampires are dead, they cannot stand in the sunlight (don't ask me about old vampires walking in the sunlight, I don't have an answer for that yet). It is used as both a threat and a choice. Each of the people who have harmed her directly have had control of fire (Lestat, Armand, and Louis).

Fire is why she meets her death via Louis, his justice setting off a passionate destruction of his community. "Auntie told me to stay put and stay away from the door." Her aunt kneeling on the wrong side of the door, dead as she tried to get to that little girl. Playing with sunlight to burn her own skin, watching Charlie melt into a puddle. Tossing the book "etiquette for girls" into the fire. The old vampire matron who tasted her blood then threw herself into the hearth. Lit up by sunlight to be burn to death. Claudia is haunted by destruction, at the very hands of the people she overwhelmingly needs to trust.

But light is also a symbol for hope, which is why Claudia burns herself. She's looking for hope, even as it hurts her. She is burned by a misused hope for a future, and the Dramatic, Cruel, and Justified hands of death. And why Madeline, who dresses her in sunshine yellow, is Claudia's hope.

We see a lot of why Claudia is attracted to Madeline through the Death of Innocence, and Resentful Death. Madeline's family died when she was very young, and she has done quite a lot of things that other people resent her for (sleeping with the Nazi captain.) Within Madeline, Claudia sees a bit of herself, but in the desired body of an older sarcastic woman who treats her with that exchange of respect Claudia craves, and is willing to look past the monster to see and understand her.

So what is it to be loved by Resentment and Innocence? It's not friendly. It'll blame you for things out of your control, as well as the things in your control. It'll be possessive and often unforgiving. But it'll be the kind of thing you can't ever get over, that has buried its claws in your chest with ever moment of connection. You're never the same after being loved by it, or by loving it.

[brilyahntpeacenotes-blog]

Notes on Autobiography of Pauli Murray

The name of this text is Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet formerly title Song in a Weary Throat: An American Pilgrimage. This is the 3rd paperback edition printed in 1997

The following notes are mainly quotes from the book related to specific subjects. Pauli Murray was a Black, queer, likely trans person who left an indelible mark on this world and greatly influenced the Civil Rights and Human Rights movements in the USA and beyond. She or they (there is controversy about what pronouns Pauli may have used in this day and age) were a courageous trailblazer. I would say, Pauli Murray is one of my heroes. I cry reading their words and hearing about their story.

I am currently on chapter 13 of 35 and will add quotes and notes as I continue.

The quotes are separated by subject as I have determined.

On gender and queerness

"My talents never included handicraft...the divisions of labor in our household was such that I did not cook. I would have enjoyed working with a hammer and tools, but cooking and sewing seemed beyond me..." (p 22)

"At home...[my] duties were to split and stack endless loads of wood and kindling, keep all the rooms supplied with scuttles of coal...feed the chickens...clean wicks and chimneys...scrub the outhouse, white wash the trees and fences...hoe the garden, cut down weeds..." (p 22)

For pay PM would clean her aunts house for 25¢. Pm also had a newspaper rout earning up to $1.30

On disability

"Grandfather's blindness did not prevent him from contributing to the family enterprises...In the springtime he would prune the grapevines so that each new crop of grapes would be large and juice." (p 21)

"My initial assignment was a teacher on the WPA Remedial Reading Project...Remedial reading was then a new concept...I had only 2 or 3 children in my classroom at any one time. Each child was tested for his or her particular reading disabilities, and then I constructed a set of reading materials for that child's individual use...the children did not have to compete with each other, only with their own records." (p 100 - 101)

This sounds like an early version of Special Education programs and individualized education plans

PM noted many educator did not fund value in the program or used it as a way to get rid of "discipline" problems....The latter is something echoed today especially with students labeled under EBD

PM mentioned feeling isolated from professional collegues in part because of the program goals (helping students with reading disabilities) and in part because it was a WPA project...likely similar to "professional educators" today response to Teach For America or similar programs.

On protest/resistance/rebellion

"My aunts were "Race women" of their time. They took pride in every acheivment of "the race" and agonized over every lynching..." (p 30)

"I carried on my own private protest. I walked almost everywhere to stay off the Jim Crow streetcars and I would not go downtrown to the theaters because that meant climbing the back stairs to the colored "peanut gallery". (p 32)

Pauli Murray reflects on their childhood in Durham, NC and the ways they avoided subjecting themselves to the humiliations of segregation and Jim Crow laws and policies.

"I had cast my first vote in the election of 1932, and it was a vote of protest. Since I would not vote Republican and, having lived under the apartheid of Democratic rule in the "solid South, could not bring myself to vote for a Democrat, I had voted for the Socialist candidate, Norman Thomas." (p 93)

"For all my bravado, deeply engrained notions of respectability filled me with distress. It was one thing to ride freights anonymously or sleep in jails in strange towns where I was unknown. It was quite another to carry a picket sign in the heart of Harlem, where many people knew me. I felt as if I had been asked to parade in public undressed..." (p 99)

This quote is a reflection of PM's first picket line. Joined in support of friend, Ted Poston, who was picketing a Black weekly paper, New York Amsterdam News. Ted and others had organized a local unit of the American Newspaper Guild. He had been arrested previously for picketing. PM was arrested at this picket line but the judge dismissed their case.

Labor protest at this time are in line with history I have studied in Minneapolis about Black labor movements during this era.

"Pee Wee had an amazing sense of her own worth, and she feared no one. Her strong convictions about civic responsibilities lef her to write long letters to public officials [over social concerns]...I owe Pee Wee's example my later habit of writing to newspapers and public figures on social issues, letters I came to call "confrontation by typewriter." (p 96

On the nearness of Slavery

"Racial lines, which had been blurred to some extent during Reconstruction, were now being drawn ighter by the wave of segregation laws enacted by southern states in the wake of the 1896 Plessy decision, which validated the doctrine of "separate but equal." (p. 14)

"On the all [in Pauli's childhood home in Durham, North Carolina] above the cross hung Miss Mary Ruffin Smith's painting of a mother of pearl fountain cascading from a silver basic. Grandmother Cornelia gave this painting an honored place in our household as a testimony to the strong bond of affection that had existed between her and the antebellum who had been both her blood relative and legal owner." (p. 19)

"...but Grandfather's tiny pension from his Civil War service was little more than enough to keep up the taxes." (p. 21)

Pauli's childhood home included her grandparents and Aunt Pauline and was owned by her Grandparents

"The preservation of the Negro cultural heritage was another important aspect of WPA activity. Interviews conducted with many former slaves preserved their firsthand stories before they passed from the scene." (p. 100)

Pauli is discussing her recollection of Works Progress Administration program that was focused on collecting and recording the history of living formerly enslaved people.

When Pauli Murray (PM) was 5 years old they participated in a play called "Fifty Years of Freedom" put on by an organization her aunts, who were race women, participated in. Later, they (PM) found an earlier version of the play titled "Thirty Years of Freedom" likely put on in 1890.

"In our segregated world, we had a sense of identity and a sense of racial pride, fragile though they might be. We were close to the roots of our immediate past because many elderly people still alive who had been born in slavery." (p 31)

[Pauli Murray's Grandmother Cornelia]

On passing

"...Pauline Fitzgerald [Aunt Pauline] married young, blond, blue eyed Charles Morton Dame, fresh from Howard University Law School but they had not reckoned with the formidable barriers to the success practice of law by a colored man...The best young Dame could do was to earn a few dollars...writing wills and deeds for white attorneys, income supplemented by his wife's meager earnings as a teacher...

Some of the white men for whom he worked told him flatly that he would never get anywhere as a colored lawyer..."You're as white as any white man...and you'll have a better chance if you cross the line..."

...the temptation to end a grubbing existence finally overpowered Charles Dame. He told his wife what he had decided to do and tried to persuade her to join him. She, too, looked indistinguishable from a Caucasian, and the two of them would have had little difficulty fading into the white background. Aunt Pauline's refusal brought an end to their marriage." (p 14 - 15)

Aunt Pauline was married around 1899

"During the first half century after Emancipation, thousands of near whites exercised this option to escape racial oppression..." (p 15)

"Once when a fair skinned form the North came to visit and took me to town one day for company, she made me stand outside while she went into the stores on Main Street. She said they would give her better service if they did not know she was colored. (p 32)

Pauli, like many Black Americans*, is of a mixed, multiracial, multiethnic background. This included African, European and Native American heritage. Their relatives, like many Black Americans, had relatives who ranged in skin color from deep, dark skin to fair, pale skin.

Pauli's Aunt Pauline, who is also her namesake and legal guardian, was greatly offended by this relative's actions and did not allow Pauli to interact with them privately moving forward.

*Black Americans on this blog refers to people of African descent who survived USA chattel slavery, the maafa and have lived in the USA for the last several hundred years.

"It was no secret that my fairer-skinned relatives indulged in casual "passing"...in their pragmatic view it was not disloyalty to "the race"...Curiously enough, my relatives from the South did not bother to pass where segregation was most oppressive, but sometimes did in the North, where they were unknown and jobs were at stake. (p 34)

PM mentions a story where her Aunt Marie/Maria passed in the North for higher wages, but did not pass in the South and lived as a negro while working in the colored county schools (p 34)

"Some girls married Italian men and disappeared completely from the colored race. Others "passed" sporadically, working white collared jobs..." (p 35)

PM talks of a cousin who would bleach his hair blonde and another who wore wigs to cover his "kinky coils" (and was eventually found out by a white woman caller)

PM also tells the story of Amos Burton, who they name as the first Negro professional baseball player, was known to be colored in his hometown but known nationally (p 35)

On segregation

"College graduates were hit hard as other groups...the New York Times reported an estimated 10,000 unemployed college graduates in New York City...One could spot several women on any floor at Macy's wearing the Hunter College ring -- that is, if they were white. Negroes were limited to elevator and cleaning jobs whether they had a degree or not." (p 92)

When Pauli intially visited NYC as a child/teen they commented on how free it felt compared to Durham, NC. Their experiences after moving there quickly highlight that the colorline was still in place if more liberal...This highlights that segregation, though not always enshrined in law in Northern states and cities, was still a firm practice

"[Great Uncle Richard] had defied custom and bought the property in the face of fierce opposition from white people. It was said in the family that a white businessman named Tom Walker had fallen out with some of his asociates and settled his grudge by selling his home to a colored man." (p 29)

"In our segregated world, we had a sense of identity and a sense of racial pride, fragile though they might be. We were close to the roots of our immediate past because many elderly people still alive who had been born in slavery." (p 31)

"It was confusing to me because I was both related to white people and alienated from them." (p 31)

"While this discriminating assessment of he whie population prevented me from developing a blanket hatred of all white people, there was a threshold reserve which applied to the white world generally." (p. 31)

"white aristocrats" were cool to PM's family, they were "nice white people"

"mean, prejudiced white republicans" which Pm compares to the contemporary (at the time the book was written) "whitey" and "honkie"

PM did not/was not allowed to greet white people on their porch even their neighbors

"My meager contact with white people was paradoxical, since the two races lived close together, and, within the limits of the strict racial code...My family prederred never to cross the gulf that separated us from white people unless we could do so without lsing our dignity and pride." (p 34)

"It was a straitjacket existence, which became more oppressive as I grew older." (p 34)

"The only hope for me to go to college, it seemed, was to matriculate at the North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham. Since I was determined not to attend a segregated college, this prospect prompted my first overt stand against racial segregation. " (p 65)

"...the overriding purpose of segregation was to humiliate and degrade colored people." (p 109)

"During [FDR's] 6 years he had been in the White House, I had become increasingly dismayed over his apparent coziness with white supremacy in the South, his silence on civil rights and his refusal to speak out for a federal antilynching bill, which the NAACP had modestly proposed." (p 111)

[number1villainstan]

How do you feel about Shigg/Overhaul? I'm going over your Overhaul stuff cause I find him interesting and I see your takes but i can never understand why ppl like Kuruno/Chisaki aren't they like raised together as brothers? I know they arent blood but wasnt that his bro? I'm not like trying to make controversy I'm trying to understand and asking two different questions sorry if I come off like mean or something I'm really asking a genuine question I haven't seen season 4 in a while I'm gonna rewatch it soon

Okay so, the questions you're asking are "Why do people like Chronohaul so much, aren't they like brothers?" and "What do you think of Shigahaul?", is that right? I'm gonna tackle the Chronohaul one first, which is a two parter: first I'll tackle aren't they bros and second I'll tackle what do you see in it. Then I'll talk about Shigahaul, because I do have thoughts on that ship. And I'm also gonna put it all under a read-more cuz I can already tell this is going to get LONG.

Okay, so, first: Aren't Kurono and Chisaki like brothers? We know that canon has never stated that they're blood-related, and if they were canonically blood-related it would be stated in canon. However, the yakuza (as I understand it, which may be way off) tends to structure itself in a mimicry of a blood family, with the oyaji as the "father" and patriarch and the men under him as the "sons"/underlings, which would lend itself to a familial interpretation of Kurono and Chisaki's relationship.

However, the yakuza isn't actually a family, as much as it likes to use familial connotations, and I at least very much do not see Kurono and Chisaki as like siblings in any way. I believe the only look that we got in canon at Kurono's childhood was Kurono saying that Chisaki has been very driven since he was a child, implying that he knew Chisaki as a child; however, from Chisaki's flashback, we can infer that he was in his late childhood when he arrived at the Hassaikai, and while the implication of what Kurono says is likely supposed to be that Kurono was in the Hassaikai as a child, it doesn't say that outright, which is something I will liberally abuse if it gets me my angsty gay t4t Chronohaul. Kurono could very well have simply been in a nearby orphanage until well into his teen years, rather than be in the Hassaikai.

My other point to this question is a little bit more controversial, and it is: even if Chronohaul did have weird incest vibes, so what? I'm not into incest ships myself, they tend to squick me out, but I know people who are, and they usually hold the incest and toxicity as a feature, not a bug. These aren't real people, they're fictional characters. None of their pain or drama is real, as much as we like to pretend it is. And shipping is, at its core, creating new stories; maybe someone who ships Chronohaul does it specifically because they want to explore the pseudo-incest dimensions. (Not me--like I said, earlier, I very much do not see these two as 'like siblings'--but different strokes for different folks.) Different people are going to interpret a story differently, and different people are going to find value and enjoyment in different kinds of stories. That's how people work.

But on to the second part of your first question: what do I see in Chronohaul? The answer is a lot of things, so strap down and let me see if I can create a semi-coherent list:

It adds depth to both Chisaki's and Kurono's character, or at least it can if used well. It adds an extra layer of motivation and tragedy onto Kurono's canonical dogged loyalty, and/or it provides a motivation for Chisaki to hold specifically Kurono close. Assuming this motivation rather than other motivations also changes their actions in AU scenarios, especially in interesting ways. And of course, you can also ask the question of what is their relationship like: are there romantic elements? Sexual? What kind of commitment do they have, if any? How do they approach this relationship? What kinds of communication issues do they have, and how do they work (or not work) around them? Could they have a happy ending or is this a relationship--or one-sided crush--that's inevitably going to end up in flames?

It provokes questions to flesh out their environment and characters around them. We get relatively little information about the Hassaikai in canon--what its people think about it, what its internal politics are, names for people outside the 8PoDs, where are all the women (well. I can answer that one: the yakuza is notoriously a boys only club, and women were usually only part of any yakuza clan through being the wife of a member, and they were also usually treated as servants. <-all of this has some SERIOUS implications for what eri's mother is/was like but that's a post for another time). Assuming that there is a romantic, sexual, or otherwise queer relationship between the wakagashira and his lieutenant provokes the questions: are they open about it? If not, why not? If so, how do the people around them react? Is this a 'normal' relationship for the Hassaikai, or are they seen as weird? Are they under the threat of violence? IIRC, yakuza clans tend to be highly conservative, but their homophobia takes the form of "bottoming is emasculating" rather than "all gays should die"--is there an imbalance in which one of them gets targeted? Who attacks them, who defends them?

Canon has enough information to make them interesting characters, but there's still lots of blank space to play around in (and canon doesn't necessarily do a good job with what it does give us). This one is the biggest reason why I get attached to rarepairs and underdeveloped villains in general, if you can't tell from my ramblings on the first two points. Funny story, but I actually got into BnHA because I knew some friends who shipped Dabihaul, so I ended up watching through the Hassaikai arc *specifically* for Overhaul. (Dabi ended up not grabbing me the same way.) (I also ended up dropping it after the Hassaikai arc was finished because I just did not care enough now that I'd seen Overhaul.) So you can imagine my disappointment when I finished the Hassaikai arc and all I'd gotten was an underdeveloped hate sink character who was apparently supposed to be a stereotypical psychopath. Still, I was already attached, and I ended up making a lot of headcanons to flesh out his character through spite, and because I was fleshing out his character it followed naturally that I had to flesh out his environment and his relationships with the people around him. Chronohaul grabbed me in the process, and it became part of the newly-fleshed-out core of the character I had created with the scraps I'd gotten from canon.

It's hot. Being aegosexual, I don't process 'hot' in the same way that most other people do--I don't experience sexual attraction, and don't think that individual people are hot, but sex as a concept (sex as part of a story) still appeals to and titillates me. And there's a lot about Chronohaul that has a lot of potential to be very, very horny. I won't go into much more detail here, since this is a mostly sfw blog, but just know that Le Horny does play a part in it.

And finally: Pure fucking inertia. I've been shipping these two since I got into BnHA several years ago, and I have layers upon layers of headcanons and ideas baked into my head that were created specifically to appeal to myself, and that I can dive into at any time. Potential symbols and themes, AUs and AUs of those AUs, a hundred variations on each of a hundred different story ideas. A well-known but ever-shifting area that I'm free to explore and change at will. You know how it is.

Anyways, those are my reasons, although I'm afraid I didn't express them super clearly. I know other people have other reasons, like a mutual who likes/liked the 'childhood friends' aspect of it, so you could also shoot an ask to other Chronohaul shippers asking them what they like about Chronohaul. I hope this gives you some of the answers you're looking for!

Anyways, on to the final part of this, which is what do you think of Shigahaul? My feelings on Shigahaul are approximately indifference, but approaching it from the positive-feelings side. It doesn't grab me like some other ships do (Chronohaul, Kaizawa, Kai/Fuyumi) but I don't dislike it. I'll read Shigahaul fics if the premise seems interesting, but I generally won't go searching for them unless I'm desperate. Hell, I have at least one AU (which I'm not sure I've ever written down before) where Shigahaul just...happened. I didn't put it there on purpose--it was just a logical conclusion of the way I'd set things up. Funnily enough, the storyline of that AU was mostly Chronohaul, but there was definitely Shigahaul in the AU.

And now I'm going to explain the AU because I have to. And I want to. It's a God AU, in which many of the characters are gods, but they're not gods in the way you're thinking--I'm not borrowing an existing pantheon for this. Instead, here, 'gods' are more like emergent properties, the consciousnesses of universal processes, and more importantly they exist independent of human concepts and perception. There's no god of love--that's a social phenomenon, and a vaguely defined one at best--but there is a god of stellar nucleosynthesis, a god of gravity, a god of the electromagnetic force--you get it. There are also, to get more to the point, gods of Life and Death/Decay, as in the biochemical processes that make things alive and the physical/biochemical processes that occur once something that was once alive stops being alive but still exists. Chisaki is the god of Life here (known for being volatile yet tenacious, much like Life itself), and Shigaraki is the younger god of Death (younger because multicellular life had to evolve first--what is a unicellular corpse supposed to be? It's just a lump of molecules), and when I realized how this was set up, and what their history would be--how they'd be fundamentally inseparable--the Shigahaul was a natural conclusion.

Thanks for the ask, anon! Very long/rambly answer, but really did you expect anything else from me. I hope you enjoyed it anyways (or at least it was illuminating).

[marwyn]

Maybe George didn’t plan every detail around Rhaenys’s name from the beginning; it could have been a conventional Targaryen name choice then. But with the lore in f&b, the name now carries new weight. Given the associations with conquest, naming his daughter Rhaenys doesn’t feel neutral anymore; it feels almost deliberate. It's also interesting that Elia's brothers never seem to mention her children by name.

I’m not a long-term fan who’s familiar with all of the lore outside of the officially published books so I’m definitely starting to feel out of my depth in speculating along these lines lolol. As I said I’m not sure when exactly GRRM first established the conqueror trio’s full biographies, but since their specific roles in the Conquest are not mentioned in the main series nor in this extra-canonical info from 2005 (note that some details from the latter also seem to have been tweaked: it states that both sisters “are warriors and dragonriders in their own rights,” while according to F&B, Rhaenys was “no true warrior” and it was just Visenya who “trained beside [their] brother since childhood”), my best guess would be that GRRM retroactively intended a contrast between Queen Rhaenys, with her fire and blood campaign against Dorne, and Princess Rhaenys, who was born to a Martell mother during the era of peace between the two houses, and whose death (among others) has led the ruling prince of Dorne himself to invoke fire and blood in the service of vengeance. Same-ish goes for Visenya I guess; given Jon’s traits this part of the lore from 2005 isn’t surprising

I might also add that Visenya is the most likely of the two to garb herself as a warrior, and when so garbed, she would wield the Valyrian longsword Dark Sister, whose slender blade is designed for a woman’s hand.

but the more controversial details like her decision to help put her own son on the throne over her nephew may have been written later on for the sake of F&B, as far as I know. The fact that the current Targs descend not from her but from Rhaenys was established early on though (“‘Visenya and Rhaenys….I am descended from Aegon and Rhaenys through their son Aenys and their grandson Jaehaerys’” (ACOK, Daenerys V)), so I agree that this could have some bearing when it comes to namesakes!

Edited in light of the discussion of Mini Maegor: “Aerion Brightfire’s son was born in 232 AC, and given the ominous name of Maegor by his sire” (The World of Ice & Fire). There are no comparable suggestions that Rhaenys was in any way a controversial choice of name for Rhaegar and Elia’s daughter in-universe which strikes me as significant

[nkatr84]

My Adventures with Superman : Season 1 thoughts

So if you’ve been following me, you’ve might have noticed that I have chimed in now and again with a few jokey observations about the show My Adventures with Superman. But now that the show has wrapped season 1, I wanted to give my overall thoughts on the show.

Now I haven’t watched any DCAU movies or shows since the 90s Batman the Animated Series and Superman the Animated Series. From what I’ve gathered it’s mainly been offshoots of those original shows anyway. This show however has its own take on Superman’s origins. And what I’m about to state may be a controversial stance in the DC fandom.

I think this is probably the best adaptation of Superman since Christopher Reeves and Richard Donner brought the character to life. And the way they have written this Superman is possibly better than the Reeves/Donner version.

Let me explain. The way they wrote and the way Reeves played Superman is almost flawless. But this show has made me realize that most adaptations of Superman fall into the trap of treating Superman and Clark Kent as two different characters. Usually where Superman is his real personality but Clark is an act. Like Reeves plays Clark so goofy and comical (he was best friends with Robin Williams, no surprise) so that Superman seems like a different person to make it make sense why no one especially Lois would figure out the truth.

What makes this show stand out is that Superman is the hero he is because he’s Clark Kent. This show analyzes Clark as a person who just has to help. He has to be kind. He feels guilty if he doesn’t because he’s been given these powers and clearly the Kents have raised him to be kind and helpful to others because that’s what farming communities do when times are tough. They help each other.

He even exhausts himself when he develops super hearing because he can’t ignore a plea for help. (I had to save the cat!) He’s so honest that he’s actually bad at keeping secrets. Jimmy figured it out when they met but because he got to know who Clark was as a good person he waited until Clark was ready to tell him. (Jimmy rocks BTW. He deserves that $5 million and I hope he invests wisely.) This Lois figured out his secret faster than any of the League of Lois did. But the truth only frees Clark to be even more himself and allow Lois and Jimmy to get close after a childhood where he was afraid of getting close to anyone for fear of hurting them.

Speaking of the way his powers developed over time and how the writers have kept his origin a mystery to Clark himself is perfection. Jor-El’s consciousness in the hologram not speaking the same language only adds to the mystery. Like a DC fan is screaming at Clark in the finale going, “no! He’s your Dad! He sent you to Earth to save you!” (Me. I’m that fan.) But the language barrier has made Clark think he was born to be a weapon. A thought that terrifies him. But like the Kryptonite, Clark is going to take what should weaken him and turn it into a strength by resolving to use his powers to protect the Earth. He’s choosing to be Earth’s champion not because the ghost of his birth Father is telling him he should, but because it’s who he is.

My only criticism of the show is the pace. Like everything is fast forward in the show because I’m sure the creators were like, “okay we know we might get two seasons but we’re only getting ten episodes a season. So if we want to tell the story we need to tell, we have to skip the usual story beats.” Because current studio executives (especially Warner Brothers) hate animated shows for some reason.

But the fact that this show not only understands Superman perfectly but the main trio is adorable and the show is funny and charming and beautifully animated. To a point where my main criticism boils down to I want more means that they are doing something right.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/30/2023: TALK TO ME (2022)

When I was 9 or 10 years old, I went to a slumber party with a lot of other girls who started a game of choking each other for the rush. I didn't participate, but watched in fascination as they took turns making each other pass out for several hours. Early on, it devolved into a lot of girls faking it so they could then pretend to say outrageous things "in their sleep", so this wasn't as extreme a scenario as it may sound. However, there's something deeply perverse about it, at least relative to the (bullshit, often harmful) "innocence" society projects onto children, and I wasn't sure if I should even write this all down. I had a feeling that probably lots of little kids have done this, but I couldn't be sure. I tried looking it up on the internet, and found a pretty upsetting article about it from just a few years ago. So, I suppose it's probably pretty common, and has been so, though it's not always the casual thing I remember from childhood. I thought about this for the first time in decades when I recently saw TALK TO ME, a strange and original Australian horror movie that I'm really sorry I missed in theaters.

Mia (Sophie Wilde), an alienated teenager struggling with her mother's suicide and her father's subsequent withdrawal from her, finds a bizarre form of comfort in a disturbing game she learns at a house party. Local delinquents have somehow procured an embalmed, severed hand that causes anyone who holds it to become possessed by ghosts. This is safe when done for short periods of time, beyond which there lie untold perils. Inevitably, Mia breaks the rules in order to reunite with her late mother--a foolish mistake that sets off a gruesome chain of events, threatening to destroy her along with all of her loved ones.

For a movie with such a fun and stylish veneer, TALK TO ME is surprisingly sad and grim, and also unpredictable. Things about it didn't quite add up for me: Where does this object come from? Why do the kids accept its extraordinary supernatural effects so readily and fearlessly? What effect does it exactly have on them, that cause them to behave like addicts, endlessly going back for more even when many of them are humiliated by the behavior of the possessing spirits? At that, why do kids play games like Bloody Mary, where the expectation is that a demoness will spring out of your mirror and murder you? Why are Ouija Boards all the more attractive because of the rumored dangers? These questions dredged up my ancient memories of the choking game, something that may not have made sense to most adults, because it was a little scary, and because it broke the rules around what society assumes about innocent young children. At that, there may be something to the fact that TALK TO ME was made by first-time filmmakers Michael and Danny Philippou, whose relative inexperience may have given them the freedom to ignore the usual expectations. This produces a rather uncertain viewing experience that sometimes results in a breech of contract with the audience, who may not expect something as intense as this movie becomes.

Obviously this is a commercial graphic related to where to stream TALK TO ME, but it so represents my feelings about being a film lover in the modern world that I'm including it anyway.

Of course, I had to look up who the filmmakers were, which was sort of an unpredictable journey in and of itself. First it was like...oh no, they're YouTubers. I really don't want anything to do with that whole entire culture. Then further down their Wikipedia page there's the Controversies section, and I was like, Oh no, half the time I am forced to hear about a YouTuber, it's because someone has been outed as a gross predator, I don't know if I even wanna look... And then I read what was in there. Twice. And I was OK with it:

The End.

[archtroop]

Listen listen

Ppl rly need to know this.

There is a STRAIGHT pipeline from Supernatural to DC, via JA voicing The Bat and Red Hood (and cospyaing them both and making a whole cognitive mess for many fans over this), yes, true, but ALSO, there's a FUNDAMENTALLY EVEN MORE EXPRESS PIPELINE between wincest and all the various batcest ships, and now I'll try and explain WHY.

See, personally, for the moat part, timing was good apparently, for when SPN was ending, Titans (2018) was making its debut. Now, yes, it was controversial, but apparently, I was not the only one who was looking around to see what's up THE DAY AFTER SPN, and this was my gateway.

Well lo and behold, there was a whole fandom awaiting, with lore amass, and so much content going back to the late 30's. What a day to be a alive.

So when I took my first steps back into my BTAS childhood memories, rewatching it, and catching up on comics essentials, I began drawing the parallels.

The Winchester family is a close-knit, secretive, paramilitary, outcast, hunted and a haunted unit. They are socially isolated by their secrets, are extremely dangerous and play on a chessboard all of their own.

The (patriarch-lead) cult like behavior, the generational use and abuse, the possessiveness, obsessiveness, protectiveness, and the overall unhinged behavior, the violence, all come together crashing down on the loneliness of the call.

And atop of all that, they fling around the word family, as if anyone other then themselves have any idea what it means (....to them. News flash, no, their understanding of what is "Family" is by far sideways than any of them would like to even try and unpack. It's just not.) Add to this the unbalanced familial/societal roles they play for each other, rotating the burdens like rotisserie chickens in a hellish stove, the emotional minefield with a side dish of extreme physical proximity, and voila, there you have it, enjoy your Gothic Family and Gothic House tropes. Literally.

All of those, are just right there, same as any disease, in the Batfam.

A paramilitary unit, extremely dangerous, with a Patriarch thy shall not question, with an encompassing reach, sources and resources, who are all playing on a playground out of the societal norm, with the prescribed Lonelines Of The Call, the hurt, the comfort, the myriad of rotating societal and familial roles between them all up to a state of blurriness, undefined boundaries of any at all, be the emotional, physical or otherwise...

The Githic house is LITERAL. The Gothic Family tropes are in abundance, and oh, OH the ultimately TEANSGRESSIVE nature of the relationships of all that are involved.

See where it all goes?

Those both narratives thrive on similar grounds.

And with them all the classics. From parentification to unhealthy coping mechanisms and so on.

How can you not read incestuous undertones in subtext or otherwise, when:

The Head Patriarch took under his wing a child, in whom he saw himself, a child who wasn't exactly a son or a brother or a friend or all of the above or none of the above but mainly was more emotionally mature than the Patriarch at some point and their roles regarding emotional comfort would switch time and time again. Later, he adopts him as a consenting adult.

The second son, who was taken in pretty much on a whim, or worse, to replace the first one who flew the nest (re: first son, to later be proven that him being alone is bad idea and a literal suicide but like that's a whole other deal), THAT SECOND SON dies horribly, later to serve as the Guilt (tm), that second son, after resurrection and other horrors, literally has intimate relationship with THE PATRIARCH'S MYTHOLOGICAL EX, with whom she has a child (and the timing would suggest that child may as well have been in the next room at the time ymmv).

The third son RECRUITED HIMSELF into the cult. The fourth son was traded from one cult to the other.

Son 3.2 is a "daughter" and the only sane person who managed to step out of the cult as far as I can see, not before being sacrificed on the Altart Of The Call and left for dead (narratively speaking).

(And I'm using son and daughter deliberately, because they all fly under the same banner as a "Family", you see where this is all going?)

The second daughter - left one cult and signed up for another, her life and death given to the Patriarch with extreme loyalty.

The 5th "son"? Amassed A FOLLOWING OFFSHOOT CULT before joining the main branch.

None of them is free of this. Each of them hero worships their respective predecessor, and if not the precious directly, then the above him up the chain.

Just look at all of this:

The first son was given and raised by the 4th son. When The Patriarch returned, the first son gave The Child to him gift and bow wrapped. At least he hadn't kneeled and said "My Master".

There are plots like "Mother".

There are visuals like The Batman who Laughs and his feral robins on chains.

There is so, so much ground for any transgression to take place, one only needs to choose.

And, in the end, and I really digressed HARD, I'm here to say, that, whatever grounds sprouted wincest, exist in Batfam comics in abundance and then some, to the point of pipelining the shippers from one to the other and hold.

...and bonus points? The damn variety.

So, hey! Feast upon it, you freaks. Feast!

[creepypasta-darling]

your upcoming mental illness hc post im really looking forwards to reading🖤 mental illness hcs in the fandom from what I read usually aren't in depth with the thought and care you seem to be putting in to yours. Thank you for deciding to make the upcoming HCs where you are taking mental illness so seriously and caring 🖤

you inspire me lots with your blog, you have my favorite hcs. I'm motivated to start my own crp HC blog now!🖤

make sure to take care of yourself & drink water, take meds if you have them, eat, and that you are valid 🖤

Thank you so much anon! I know it has been wayy longer than anticipated for this post, but it is extremely lengthy and I want to make sure that I have all information correct and proofread before posting. You absolutely should start your own headcanon blog! Honestly this blog is soo fun and I love talking to you guys and just letting my mind run free. This post gave me so much positivity, and I thank you so much for your kind words 💕💕

I try really hard to be 100% honest and respectful, especially towards mental health. Obviously everyone deals with it differently, and even though they are fictional characters, I want to treat everything with the respect and dignity they deserve. If you happen to see a mental illness you are unsure of in my post, I definitely suggest to look into it, because there is so much to discover about the brain and how it deals with trauma. It might even help someone close to you, or just give you insight. I know when I started researching mental health for people around me, I found things I was later diagnosed with by a doctor.

About the post/some fun facts about the post:

There is multiple characters in the post, with 3-4 bullet points each. Each bullet point is a little bit more than a paragraph.

I did include things such as childhood/early developmental disorders, which I only talk about in the bullet points.

Sally was originally going to be in the post, but I decided to remove her due to controversy. What I would have said may not have been suitable for some, and would most likely have been triggering. This was due to projecting. I didn't feel safe enough to continue her in the post. And decided to remove her. But for anyone wondering, I do headcanon her as autistic, ADHD, and pulling her hair/fidgeting with her body due to SA.

Papa Grande was supposed to be in the post, but I had too many illnesses to write for him, and he could be his own post in all honesty. I would like to explore this later, maybe in an ask or on my own time, and really flush out how I see his character.

Some of the things I headcanon are projecting, due to my own mental health issues. You'll probably tell who towards in the post, but I wanted to write characters as true as possible in a present day mansion type post. I do headcanon the mansion exists and that Slender does punishments/rewards, which just means he physically tortures people vs giving them better conditions. You'll notice this likely when I talk about the Proxies.

I would like to eventually make another post like this with more characters. Some of the characters that were not in this post but I would like to add later include Laughing Jill, Papa Grande, Sally, Sonic.EXE, Glitchy Red, Widemouth, and B.O.B.!

The post is veryyyy long, so finding the character you might want to read will be tricky. I do apologize for that. :(

I hope this might answer some questions on the weird timeline of the post. I planned on finishing it on 10/17 but there was so much to write I ran out of time, haha. I hope you feel this post is worth the wait, however!

Stay safe as well, and please make sure to take care of yourself, mind and body. If no one has said it today, I love you, I care for you, you are worthy, you are enough. I'm proud of you for doing the best you can today, even if it's just getting up to use the restroom. If you are not feeling well, it will all make sense again one day, every down has an up, and every dawn comes after the night. 💕💕💕

[catgirlforeskin]

I am the Essentialism anon.

Sorry, I am kind of afraid of making statements with anon off because I don't want to deal with controversy.

Firstly, yes, it was inspired by a post like "You say that I am a transphobe for saying that femboys and trans women are basically the same, but you are wrong! Transphobes say that your biological sex is what matters, not their gender identity. I say that neither sex nor gender are real, none of it matters, so being femboy or trans woman is not different! I am not a TERF, I am very progressive!"

Now to stupid philosophical talk.

Part of my inspiration came from the addition, but yeah, it was like this.

It's an absolutely cruel idea, at least from my perspective and experience. Aside from its inability to describe emergence of gender dysphoria, it basically excludes closeted trans people from "really" being their gender on the basis of not being socially treated as one. They do say that it doesn't matter because none of it is real, but like, there are other people who are recognized as being their gender. You can't solipsism away from it, and this framework offers nothing else. If you live as your CASAB then you participate in society as your CASAB, by their ideas. I hope that they are not stupid enough to openly say it, but if the only way to make your conception of "gender is what societal dynamics you are placed in" is to not apply it to trans people then your conception is just transphobic.

Moving on to gender essentialism. In its practical usage gender essentialism means attributing certain qualities to certain gender. Qualities that are attributed are usually based on existing conceptions of femininity and masculinity, that are based on current iteration of patriarchal system. You can pick different set of qualities, obviously, but it will not make more sense. In this regard, I think that its correct to say that gender as defined as set of qualities is socially constructed, and usually with obvious purposes.

Now, that's the reason that I am on anon, but in any other way it doesn't add up with my experience.

I don't attribute any innate qualities to gender, but I do consider gender an innate quality itself, with no additional conditions or qualities. An eidos, if you will.

A good comparison is electric charge. Its polarity and ammount influence the movement of the charged object, but it doesn't define it. The movement is defined by interaction between the particle, the electric field, and other particles. Particles with same charge can still behave absolutely differently.

The innate gender of person influences their actions through lifetime, but it doesn't define them - the set of material conditions, culture, and gendered social dynamics do. Still, it says nothing about their personality, and people with same gender can otherwise have nothing in common, and their life stories may be absolutely opposite.

Continuing the electric analogy (I literally invented it for this ask so it's raw and has a lot of unfortunate implications, but that's the only comprehensible comparison I have), the constructed gender roles and gendered societal dynamics are like magnets that move people into their socially constructed roles, and patriarchy is the set of those magnets and wires, created to power whatever machine it is currently manifested as.

While laws and material conditions are definitely what patriarchy is based on today, I think that it's daemonic effectiveness and persistence and some other qualities can't be described without analysing the ways culture and society can influence human behaviour far beyound what should be called rationality.

It is probably becoming too complicated, unfortunately.

It probably sounds weird and nonsensical, but I think that it's the only way I can properly explain my experience. My desire to be a woman was born out of pure being, it certainly wasn't born out of being treated as one in my childhood, or out of desire to be treated as one by society. Nobody realistically would think that being treated as a woman by society is desirable, especially considering that I am a lesbian and low-key gnc (which dispels the other explanation of transness). And yet it certainly is desirable for me. Not because I like it better, but because manifesting myself and actualising my gender is that important, I don't think that anybody here needs to hear it.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that the only not inherently essentialist (wow what a combination of words) conception of what makes someone belong to any gender that I was presented with was the thing about "that's how you fit in society and your experience of it". And it sucked hard and overall messed me up a lot. I said that realistically nobody would like to be treated the way women are treated, and yet that's exactly what I wanted. The experience of the most cruelest kinds of misogyny is oftentimes presented as "what makes women women", which is a no nuance radfem take, you are right, but it was more or less accepted as being the "treated" in question by my surroundings, so obviously the fact that I was (almost) never catcalled or told to do traditionally feminine labour at school or whatever in fact gave me a lot of dysphoria (and low-key guilt, to be honest), because if this experience is what defines being a woman, then what am I? And it all started long before I cracked, so it did involve things beyound just societal conditioning or whatever.

You may say that I took it to extremes, and you are right, healthy psyche is not something I possess, but the same goes to seemingly less traumatic parts of what socially constructed female gender entails. Trying to make yourself into acceptable image of a woman is certainly the experience any girl has, and even more so if she is trans. But treating this image as what does it mean to socially function as a woman definitely did a damage to me. It's one thing to get into popular media that you hate but consume to fit in or being docile the way "proper" women are and the whole other one is developing the fucking comphet.

At least now I do have the cis woman ammount of gendered trauma, you stupid girl.

I don't, like, accuse anyone who says that gender is just socially constructed of my suffering, it's just that after dealing with this bulshit and patriarchy I feel everything bad about everything even remotely like this.

(I am better now but what happened over years can't be forgotten)

None of it matters because I am what I am and so is everyone else. I am not "a man becoming a woman", I am just innately a woman placed in circumstances that are antithetical to my being, and even the proper societal definition of a woman is unfitting and traumatic, it is and it always was the experience of a woman, however weird and rare.

Just a charged particle that has to go against the current, and even then she doesn't have the designated place, even though the magnets forced her to go there.

None of it would make sense otherwise.

Sorry for incomprehensibly venting about my stupid life and strange ideas in your inbox. Feel free to call me a mysticist and a charlatan and anything you like.

A lot of that makes sense to me, yeah

To your initial point about the people who say trans women are just femboys because gender/sex aren’t real, I think most of these people do still believe in and enforce a sex binary, whether they realize it or not. The posts usually boil down to grouping trans women with femboys/traps/whatever and against cis women/tme lesbians, and the only reason to do this is if you believe in sex essentialism.

It reminds me a lot of the people who say “sexuality isn’t real, we’re all just bi to some degree heehee XP” but for gender. It’s never meaningful abolitionism, it’s just trying to deconstruct someone else’s identity and say “umm actually mine is the only real, natural one”

A lot of people also just outright don’t understand what something being a social construct means, which is why we get these stupid takes about gender. How gender is constructed in our society is political, it’s the main means of enforcing patriarchy, but like, taking that to say that gender isn’t real at all is a bit silly. It would define trans people out of existence

Also saying gender isn’t a thing to enforce a sex binary is the basis for a certain hate group everyone here loves to talk about, I’m sure that isn’t a coincidence

[pinkbowsandprettyprose]

Hey sorry if this is too personal but u said a few times about gender envy when it comes to Kisshu, can you explain what it means and how does it relate to Kisshu because it's really interesting to me haha

No worries, happy to share :) I’ll preface by saying that this is my personal view and may differ greatly from others. Kisshu/Quiche is very commonly said to induce gender envy in this fandom and others may have a very different perspective from me, since gender is very personal and can’t be always be generalized or given perfect labels.

Also big TW on the below for gender dysphoria.

I currently identify as a cis, queer woman but I haven’t always. I’ve explored a lot of different labels in my life including whether being called a woman as an AFAB person was right for me. Early on in my childhood, Quiche (and to a lesser degree, Tart and Deep Blue) was a character that really threw my perspective on gender into question because he presents as somewhat effeminate / feminine, but had some of the mannerisms and confidence I often saw in male characters (plus, he is labeled as a boy in the anime/manga). This wasn’t something I saw in western media I grew up with. I was also raised in a very conservative household and gender norms were always taught to me as a binary.

Seeing a character who was 1) presenting quite feminine, with longer hair, a slim build and wearing more traditionally feminine clothing and 2) behaving in a way that was cleverly flirtatious made my younger self’s brain spin. I wasn’t sure — am I attracted to this character, or do I want to be this character? I felt the same way about — for example — Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist. I didn’t know that being a boy with long hair and feminine features was even an option for me until I started seeing characters like them.

It didn’t help that I had a massive crush on Zakuro as a kid, and was super into Zakuro/Mint as a ship, since it was my first wlw pairing I ever encountered in my childhood. Gender and sexuality exist on a wonderfully diverse spectrum, and TMM was one of the first pieces of media that made me really think critically about how I wanted to be seen by the world.

Eventually I settled into how I am today, where I feel very comfortable with being labeled as a queer woman. But I still love and adore writing in Quiche’s voice in my fanfic, because I was so fascinated with him in my younger years. Obviously he is a super messed-up character in a LOT of ways and I’m not out here trying to idolize the parts of his personality that make him controversial as a villain. But I still heavily relate to the way Mia Ikumi left his character at the end of Re-Turn — confident, flirtatious, a bit of a bastard, and always down for a cute café uniform.

I hope that helps, anon. :)

By the way, if any of my followers want to add anything for anon in the replies about your own experiences, please do. Like I said, I have a different experience with how I perceive gender in TMM than many others, so I’d love to hear from more people if anyone read this and would also love to share. 💖

[oh-hush-its-perfect]

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

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

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

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

GREEN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PINK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roses

Dragonfruit

Grapefruit

Cherry blossom trees

[yunho0o0o0o]

my fic recs: a masterlist

note: most of these have been reblogged on my account, but here’s a list for convenience, author’s summary is copy and pasted here if there is one, if it’s the first in a series I recommend the whole series, I’ll probably add to this as I read more, yes i know some people are missing i just somehow didn’t have any fics in my stache that included them

A- angst, S- smut, F- fluff

Includes BTS and Ateez

BTS:

OT7:

Lost & Found (F, 1.7k) - @namjoontunes - In a world where mythical creatures like dryads and vampires are commonplace, how will a household of supernatural humanoids react to their new kitten being a shapeshifting girl?

Lilies of the Valley (A) - @girlmeetsliv3 - includes ABO, yandere themes

Sunlight (F, A, 16,5k) - @floralsuga - A soulmate. That was all you had wished for. Someone to come home to, someone to be there for you, to build a life together with. And yet you were cursed with having seven. Seven soulmates that you could not allow yourself to have.

Fading Legacies (A, 3k) - @mindays - BTS achieved everything they’d ever dreamed of, becoming world wide idols. But then the zombie apocalypse hits and it’s all they can do to survive. And they’re going to need Y/N to do it.

The Gentlemen (M, A, F, 5.2k) - @honeymoonjin - Sick of unsatisfying hookups, boring relationships or the company of your own hand? Apply today for the chance to be on bangasm.com’s very first reality show! Seven attractive young gentlemen will be vying for your choice of who is best in bed. All from different backgrounds, these men claim they’ll be able to rock your world, so don’t hesitate! Apply now! 

Ethereal Orbit (A, F, S, 1.1k) - @miamorjoon - somehow you’ve landed on this strange planet named Utepnia and you have to save their race from extinction.

Taehyung:

Chism (S, A, F, 19.9k) - @kpopfanfictrash - The entirety of your life, you have never fit in. A woman soldier. A passive power, wielded in the land of the bold. Despite this, you have followed your father’s advice and striven to blend into the crowd. You feel you have succeeded, until your Queen calls you before her with an arduous task. Guard the darkest cell in the lowest dungeon. Do not listen to what the prisoner has to say and above all else, keep your head. The old gods may be dead, but the humans are living.

Beastly Gods (M, A?, F, 8k) - @lemonjoonah - ‘Don’t leave the forest,’ a rule that you've been forced to follow since birth, but you are tired of living in this wooden cage. Out of desperation you cut a deal with Taehyung, who claims to be the only one who can get you out safely, even though he might be just as dangerous as the god you’re trying to escape.

Teach Me Dirty (S, 2.9k) - @forgottenpasta - Taehyung has a lot to teach his English teacher. Fortunately for him, you’re an eager and willing pupil.

Hoseok:

World of Pride (A, F?, 5.2k) - @an-ambivalent - artificial intelligence hoseok, includes yandere themes, your father created an AI to protect you when he’s gone

Yoongi:

Make Me (S, F, 4.4k) - @ppersonna - an ordinary sleepover with your best friend turns into anything but ordinary, thanks to your ridiculously loud neighbors above you.

Lineage (M, S, 6.7k) - @kosmosguk - When an engagement locks you, the 8th and forgotten princess, to the duke infamous for his cruelty, you find yourself counting the days until your inevitable death. It’s terrifying to think of your end, but when you arrive at his territory, you realize there’s a more morbid reason behind your marriage, and that the duke is much worse than the rumors have painted him out to be.

Switching Places (F, 1.7k) - @ijungkooki - soulmate au where you switch places with your soulmate at random times

Jin:

Scopophilic Affection (M, F, 7.8k) - @bibbykins - Scopophilia is a more dignified way to define voyeurism, something Seokjin had no intention of partaking in until he came across your live stream. Seokjin is a dignified man, but never in his life had he felt so depraved watching you smile and work like it was his profession, unable to reach through the screen and make you his. Unable to tell you how much he loves to watch you because you have no idea you’re live stream even exists. He can’t tell you how hypnotizing you are without the glaring controversy of him watching your hacked-into webcam, both as a human and director in the computer science division of the company he is a board member of. Nevertheless, you were his very guilty utmost pleasure. 

Jungkook:

Shadow (2.2k) - @yoonologue - Shadow has been on the run her whole life. Her survival depended on her keeping her mouth shut and staying hidden. If she didn't then she would be captured and used as a pawn to do their bidding. But it seemed that her heart did not seem to understand that. She had never been able to ignore a person in need. She never had a problem before, but it seems that her luck had run out. Now she was left with scraped hands and unconscious boy that was too nosy for his own good.

Asterismos (A, F, S, 7.1k) - @hobiance - As far as you’re concerned, things like magic, prophecies, and fate are nothing more than fairytales. But when you accidentally bind your soul to a mysterious amulet you found at an antique shop, a group of seven warriors from a magical world inform you that you now hold the key to saving them all. The fate of the realm Elodia now rests in your hands, and you realize that you couldn’t have been more wrong.

Sweets (F, 4.2k) - @worldwidemochiguy - in which jungkook steals your lip balm and perfume instead of talking to you, you leave a post-it note with your number on it for the strange thief who only seems to take the most inexplicable items and has a strange sense of responsibility for your wellbeing, and the cute boy in your photography class with the fluffy hair and the oversized sweater keeps getting more and more endearing… , includes yandere themes

Pen Pal (A, 5.3k) - @chinkbihh - As a lonely person, the idea of exchanging letters with someone apart from society was actually quite appealing to you.  In a random act of charity and desperation, you sign up for a pen pal and get paired up with an inmate named Jungkook.  The letters were meant to help him cope with prison life, but little did anyone know it was actually driving him more mad., includes yandere themes

Quarter Quell (11.2k) - @chinkbihh - includes yandere themes, you are selected as a tribute for the next quarter quell (hunger games au), the volunteer from district two seems to have an unhealthy obsession with you

Haunted (A, S, 14.1k) - @mint-yooxgi - you move into a new house without knowing it’s already occupied, includes yandere themes, ghost! jungkook

ATEEZ:

OT8:

All Eyes On Me (S, A, F, 3.5k) - @atiny-piratequeen - member x member, not an x reader, yeosang focused, Yeosang is a very shy man. Everyone knows this.But he’s fed up of his shyness and insecurities being the reason he’s left out of sexual activities from the others. He wants them to look at him like they look at each other

Mingi:

Two is Better Than One (ft. Yunho) (S, F, 4.2k) - @mingishoe - a threesome with your boyfriend sub! Yunho and dom! Mingi

Yunho:

Two is Better Than One (ft. Mingi) (S, F, 4.2k) - @mingishoe - a threesome with your boyfriend sub! Yunho and dom! Mingi

Bassists Do It Deeper (S, 6.3k) - @luvteez - while using what you thought was your brother’s laptop you find a search history full of exhibitionism, only to find out you’ve been using one belonging to Yunho, the newest bandmate and your childhood enemy

Shower Sex (ft. Seonghwa) (S) - @atothetiny - after a long day at work you decide to join your boyfriend in the shower

San:

First Time With San (S, F, 3.5k) - @call-me-bha -  Choi San, recognized as sex on legs among fans, was exactly-if not more- truthful to his reputation, and you quickly discovered that from the beginning of your relationship with him. In fact, you were about to find out about how much that name was made for him.

Seonghwa:

Truth or Dare (ft. Jaehyun and Johnny from NCT) (S, 6.2k) - @domjaehyun - playing truth or dare with your boyfriend and two guys you’ve hooked up with in the past when they propose a different kind of game

Focus (S) - @yeosangs-horizon - you and seonghwa try cockwarming in the study room, includes a little size kink

Shower Sex (ft. Yunho) (S) - @atothetiny - after a long day at work, you decide to join. your boyfriend in the shower

Yeosang:

Listen (F, 3k) - @mingishoe - You can hear every song your soulmate does, yours just happens to listen to the same song on repeat… for days.

Wooyoung:

Talkative (S) - @needyateez - when your car dies you’re forced to accept help from your enemy, Wooyoung, however things turn a different way than either of you were expecting

Hongjoong:

Miss (S) - @mingi-baby - sub hongjoong calling you miss