#or rather terms discourse I suppose

[neil-gaiman]

hello! recently i've been thinking about stuff and thought it might be good to send those thoughts somewhere (even if the chance of you seeing this is slim to none) I've seen quite a few people say that they see your insistence that Crowley and zira aren't gay in human terms (b.c. they're not cis men or whatever) or because they're sexless is homophobic as it implies a certain level of disgust with straight up gayness (these characters can be queer but not gay, they're the "good" type of queer because they aren't sexual, etc.). as an example, asking "why did you think it was sexual?" as a response to a Sara McCullar on Twitter about the season 2 kiss was rather tasteless as it pretty boldly implied that sex would ruin or dirty the moment.

obviously gayness is no more inherently sexual than straightness, but I am rather uncomfortable with the idea that gay sexuality is somehow dirty or would ruin a&c if included. especially when there are scenes (the ox scene for example) that feel very much like they are meant to be sexual in nature. it definitely comes across as queerbaity to put in sexual themes and then attempt to retcon them away.

It is rather confusing as a viewer to see your position on this jump from "we put in the kiss because we wanted it to be unambiguous" to "what did you see that was sexual". I suppose the crux of the issue is that you seem to want to include queerness in your story while still holding topics like sexuality at arms length.

anyway. mostly wrote this to get the situation straight in my head, though I would be curious to know if you were aware of this discourse at all.

Not aware of it. Not interested in it. If anyone seriously thinks Good Omens is homophobic I'm not sure what they think they watched, but I know I'm not making a story for them.

But no, I don't think of that kiss as being "sexual". I think of it as a last-ditch desperate attempt to communicate, not as a prelude to or part of lovemaking. (I've written kisses I would classify as sexual and kisses I wouldn't. That's not a sexy times kiss nor was it meant to be one.)

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Stop misappropriating the abuse and trauma cults use through purity culture for your stupid fucking shipping discourse? Holy fuck no wonder everyone hates this whole discourse.

Since when is "priests getting shuffled around after raping kids and kids being told they're sinful because they had bodily reactions to being SAd" comparable to "Bobo the clown said my ship was cringe"

I'm not gonna answer this with The Aristocrats, as a I threatened, because I want to make a very serious point to this anon:

Purity culture isn't just religious abuse. It is most widely connected to religious abuse. Including actions in the Catholic Church and all fundamentalist Christianity. It's entire existence is about terrifying and indoctrinating people into being fearful of their own actions and bodies so that they feel certain that moving out from the "umbrella of safety" (to use a fundamentalist term) will result in them being harmed in ways they can't imagine. This is generally happening at the same time as they are being harmed by those who are supposed to be keeping them safe from all those terrible, worldly evils. Like speaking up when you're being abused. Believing you are not responsible for the actions of a rapist, and many, many other things that any person with an ounce of self-worth and good sense (two things not allowed in fundamentalist circles) knows are true in abuse situations.

But the point of the purity culture as identity in the above-mentioned circles is to teach people from birth that they aren't to have their own feelings, ideas, or instincts. They are only to follow the feelings, ideas, and instincts on the approved list in order to stay within the structures they know and feel safe in even as they feel very unsafe.

That being said:

Purity culture can also exist WITHOUT a religious structure while still being about controlling the thoughts, feelings, and actions of everyone within it. In terms of fandom, purity culture is groups of people stating that if you write something uncomfortable or gross or immoral, then YOU must be uncomfortable or gross or immoral and therefore, not worthy of the safety and moral superiority of the group.

Purity culture without religion teaches black and white thinking, encourages thought policing, and shames anyone who steps outside of a very narrow definition of good and bad by turning an entire group of people against them for being "bad".

Just like in religious circles.

Just like in the cult of fundamentalism.

Purity culture is a term taken by fundamentalists and turned into a whole way of life because the goal of fundamentalism is to make people too scared to leave. Purity culture in fandom does the same thing. It uses fear and threats of abandonment/harassment to control the way people act because a group of people decided they didn't like something, so they must try and wipe it out rather than simply ignore it.

I am not mis-using the term because "Bobo the clown said my ship was cringe." My use of the term is intentional and precise because what is happening in fandom spaces now is non-religious purity culture cult thinking. My use of the term does not invalidate or water down the use of it in conversations about religious abuse and trauma. With or without religion, purity culture is a dangerous cult of "us vs them" that is built to demoralize and eradicate those deemed unworthy.

[transmutationisms]

is there a reason why the go-to diagnosis for "problematic" patients is bpd, bipolar, schizophrenia, etc rather than things like asd?

i think you're thinking of it the wrong way round. these terms don't intrinsically stand in any relation to one another, they come to mean what they mean by historical circumstance and psychiatrists both participate in that process & make use of the resulting diagnostic concepts as handed to them. asd split from the schizophrenia dx because it was supposed to be the milder, less violent, apolitical non-racialised version. bpd lies within the conceptual lineage of hysteria. bipolar is distinct to mono depression specifically because of the problematisation of the 'mania' as a socially insalubrious behaviour ostensibly possible to neuter by pharmacological intervention. etc. there's no category of 'things like asd' or any other dx, in themselves—these are social discourses, they're articulated along existing lines of racialisation & misogyny & an overall aim to increase economic productivity. some of them come to be 'dumping ground' dx's that designate a patient unreliable and self-harming (cluster b labels, bipolar), others make accusations of violence and political danger (schizophrenia), others serve a more rehabilitative function in the sense they purport to transform a distressed person into a productive member of society thru correct medical treatment (anxiety, depression, adhd). asd crosses these categories more than the average dx i would say, because the 'spectrum' conception of it is much more pronounced than most psych labels, but it's not qualitatively unique in that way it just has more robust patient self-advocacy than most dx's (largely because it, again, is fundamentally defined around the idea of being the less severe version of a schizotypal presentation).

[a-minke-whales-tale]

The Zoanthrope "Exodus" and P-shifter discourse

There has been a fair amount of talk lately about a zoanthrope exodus, which is particularly ironic timing given Passover starts next week. I do not think there is actually a zoanthrope exodus, not because zoanthropes are not getting fed up with how we are treated and people deciding to not call themselves therian anymore or post in therian spaces, but because this is not new, this is not sudden, and it is not all at once.

Length: 1834 words TW: sanism

I have written a fair few times now about how the therian community has treated myself and others. I for years did not feel comfortable to call myself therian. I existed in therian spaces but I was an interloper. I stayed in therian spaces because I felt really I had no where else and because some places did tolerate me in time. However there was always a price for being tolerated, that being "the dance" - in which I would have to make clear my delusions, make clear that I was seeing a doctor, and minimise the validity of my own experiences and often reassure -real- therians their experiences were different from mine and real.

I have not met terribly many other zoanthropes through the past decade or so. I have met a few here and there but our interactions were always fleeting. Few would stick around in therian communities because of how we are treated. The endless demands to explain your delusion or censor yourself, people would always come and go. I have met a couple zoanthropes that just would not talk about their experiences so they could hide among therians and have the limited community they were allowed. I have also met zoanthropes that existed in P-shifter communities rather than therian communities because they simply were not allowed to exist in therian communities.

The therian community has long tried to "protect" itself and root out P-shifters to a point of zealotry. To be honest I do not care to reclaim the term P-shifter, but I can understand why many would want to. P-shifter or accusations of being a P-shifter have been used against zoanthropes for as long as I have been in the community. It becomes a demand to kowtow and reality check yourself and deny any of your experiences as real or genuine and that they are delusion. And then from there it would be decided if you were allowed to stay in the community or be removed anyway. Accusations of P-shifter have been used for a long time to downplay or deny the experiences of zoanthropes and remove us from spaces that we are ostensibly supposed to belong to. To very many therians, your experience being from "delusion" makes the experience much less valid, despite that under certain circumstances their own identity could easily be declared delusion.

People say and tell me that P-shifters are dangerous and are a cult and how P-shifters hurt and abuse others. I have to wonder though if that is "inherently all P-shifters" or just a perception because of who and what people talk about. There have been many times in many discourses that the opposing side becomes flanderised into this horrible abusive monster or are considered deeply problematic or inherently harmful - shipping discourse, syscourse, radqueers, MLs vs anarchists, etc. I have no doubt that there are P-shifters that have deeply hurt and damaged other people, but this is something that many I have talked to acknowledge and understand. Some people say that the term never was applicable to delusional people, but then I have heard the same thing about 'therian' from many therians, a statement I know does not represent -all- therians. And I should ask as well, what about those zoanthropes who would not or could not double bookkeep? How many of them may have found themselves in P-shifter communities and associated themselves with that? Of the dozen or so zoanthropes I know, it is two or three.

At least for myself, my relationship with therians has been more abusive and done more damage to me than my interaction with P-shifters. It does really become an abusive relationship where I am reinforced over and over how those people over there are dangerous, how they would hurt and abuse me and how here is the only place that I can be tolerated so long as I know that I am lesser than they are and not a -real- therian. I never interacted with those communities until around a year ago because of what I was told, and those that I have interacted with, do in many ways remind me of my own experiences, and many of them have been far more accepting than therians.

People often say that we should find a different word and that it is really about the word and nothing else. But it isn't; it was never about the word and it was never about the problematic individuals. Whenever the topic of P-shifters come up there is almost always this same question of "why are [CLCZs] accepted in the community but P-shifters are not?" The answer always comes down to that we (CLCZs) acknowledge our experience as delusion, while P-shifters do not or that we do not make claims about "Capital-R reality". If it was truly the problem being that it was the word P-shifter, the response would not be relating to or predicated on our ability to double bookkeep. It would be something like "that word has a lot of baggage, [X] have similar experiences but are not associated with that community".

The core of us being tolerable among therians was -always- the minimisation of our experiences. It has -always- been sanism. What happens to those who cannot double bookkeep? They are labled P-shifter, demonised and expelled. Even if we can double bookkeep we might still be expelled. I have had it happen to me, and it would not surprise me if many other zoanthropes have had similar experiences.

I personally do not wish to reclaim the term P-shifter for myself. For how I have been treated by others I do not feel attachment or desire towards the term and it still gives me a bit of discomfort in the way some other reclaimed slurs do. However, I can understand why some people would want to reclaim the term. For some it might be reclaiming a slur, for others being allowed to exist in both communities at once or allowing others like them to be acceptable in the community, for others it might be that making P-shifter acceptable means that they can express their experiences wholley without the demand for double bookkeeping. If you want to accept the full range of therian experiences, you cannot exclude a group of people simply because they cannot double-bookkeep or cannot realiy check themselves.

There is a particular irony over this whole discussion, in that people supporting the inclusion and destigmatisation of the term P-shifter and by and large CLCZs, Endels, and holotheres - groups either directly claiming their identity is associated with delusion or who others often associate with it. Many of the people opposing it almost always include how P-shifters harm delusional people and claim it an effort to protect others. Delusional people are not incapable to protect ourselves, we are not incapable to reason or make decisions for ourselves, and we are not incapable of seeing how others around us or what they think of us, nor are we incapable to see the harm others do to us under the promise of help, protection, and good intentions. So often in these discussions mad people are spoken over, silenced, or dismissed by "sane" people. The level of sanism that pervades every aspect of therianthropy is honestly extremely disheartening, and ironic for a group of "wierd animal people" that plenty of outside society thinks are lunatics.

In the past couple years there have been points when CLCZs were becoming more acceptable and more tolerable, there were even points a couple years ago I did feel finally I could call myself therian and that I could be genuinely part of the community. Even when I started posting on tumblr again there was really very little available and that was only around a year ago. Since then I have met and interacted with more zoanthropes than I had in the 8 years before. I have also been able to get to know some zoanthropes like Sonar/Dune and Ike particularly well. The feeling of not being alone is wonderful. But with our increased visibility and acceptance came ironically with more harassment and more negative posts about us. So many of the various discourses on therian tumblr wind up surrounding us in some way. I am pretty insulated from things in my bubble of mostly other zoanthropes, so I only really see something if a mutual reblogs it, and still it is so regular I read comments how we are dangerous or should not be included for various reasons. If you go to that therian confessions blog you will see so many comments about those like me. All these discourses do is again remind me of how much we are not wanted and not accepted by the broader community. Several months ago I took off my theta-delta necklace for the last time, and it has been hanging on my shelf since. I had gotten two, one for myself and one for my companion. They still wear theirs all the time but for me I simply do not feel represented by the symbol or welcome by it (even if I did replace the cord that was irritating my neck). My companion tries to reassure me that I do belong, and I am welcome in therian spaces and that my experiences with transformation -are- therian experiences or even more than normal therians. Others will try to reassure me that I am therian because I fall under their definition (and some even demanding I do), it is however to me not reassuring. Definitions and labels are much more about community than strict definition as there are plenty of labels people could claim me under. Still I have attachment to the therian community, and I want to see it grow to be what its ideals claim it is. It is honestly a lot of why I write these long emotional pieces, that others like me might not feel so alone, and that hopefully I can convince others and help the therian community to become what it promises it is. Although I feel continuously rejected by the therian community and as an outsider and interloper I do really hope someday we can -be- therians and not treated differently to others.

There is not an exodus, as none of this is new - nothing in how we are treated is new - and zoanthropes getting fed up and leaving communities is not new - the only thing that is new is for once we are visible enough you can actually see it. ~Kala

[shadowtriovibes]

fever (what a lovely way to burn)

Pairing: Sebastian Sallow x f!MC

Word Count: 4.8k

Rating: M

Warnings: 18+, aged-up characters, friends to lovers, character with fever/illness, mild sensual content

Summary: request: "since you saved Sebastian from Azkaban, he has met you in the common room every morning and you have gone to breakfast together. One morning he isn't there so you go to his room looking for him to find him in bed, poorly."

“I’m disgusting,” he groans. “I can’t stop coughing, I’m sweating everywhere, I feel like I’m going to be sick but there’s nothing to–” He cuts himself off with several dry, pathetic coughs. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” you tell him firmly. “Ominis is going to go to class and come back this afternoon with some Muggle medicinals. In the meantime, I’m going to help you eat a bit of food and have a bath.” “N-no, absolutely not,” he stammers. “You think I want you seeing me like this any more than you already have?”

Monday, October 5, 1891

Even a month after the start of term, it’s unseasonably warm in the Highlands. The heat from the dog days of summer persists well into the arrival of autumn, permeating the ancient stone walls of the castle and settling like a thin layer of fog across Hogwarts’ students.

Professor Sharp’s N.E.W.T.s-level Potions class meets promptly at nine o’clock every morning. Despite the early time slot, the dungeon-level classroom starts to become warm rather quickly thanks to the heat of two dozen bodies and six potion stations, each with their flickering flames preheating the students’ pewter cauldrons.

Your little trio is usually the last to arrive from breakfast. Sebastian sidles up to the doorway just as Professor Sharp is preparing to close it, gallantly offering to hold it open for you and Ominis as you take your time sauntering down the hall, arms linked together and chatting happily about the latest gossip to have surfaced in the Great Hall.

Then you settle in at the potions table squarely in the middle of the classroom, which you’d unabashedly claimed at the start of term. (Ominis can hear Professor Sharp most clearly here, and Sebastian, as always, gets to remain the center of attention.)

Finally, with Ominis’ dictation quill hovering over his parchment, Professor Sharp begins his daily discourse.

“Dittany, as you’ll recall, is one of the most useful herbs for creating a wide range of healing draughts,” he explains, showing off a tendril of the fiercely pink plant clipped from Professor Garlick’s greenhouse just that morning. “Can anyone give me an example of one?”

“Wiggenweld Potion, sir,” Amit chimes in.

“Very good, Mister Thakkar,” Sharp replies with an approving nod. “Another?”

Adelaide Oakes timidly raises her hand. “Essence of Dittany, sir?”

“Well done, Miss Oakes,” he murmurs. “Though not as effective as a properly-brewed bottle of Wiggenweld, dittany on its own can be used to craft a powerful restorative tonic – especially useful in preventing the occurrence of scars. Five points to Hufflepuff.”

Then Professor Sharp glances around the room expectantly. “One more, perhaps?”

“Moustache paste, sir?” Sebastian mumbles under his breath, and you quickly elbow him in the side.

“What was that, Mister Sallow?” Professor Sharp drawls.

Sebastian bites the inside of his cheek. “Er, the Antidote to Common Poisons, perhaps?”

Professor Sharp levels Sebastian with a dubious look. “I’m afraid not. While dittany is a broadly useful herb, its powers are generally limited to healing, not curing. When considering its uses, think ‘paper cut,’ not ‘influenza.’”

You raise your hand and ask, “Sir, are there any potions that do cure illnesses?”

“Yes, in fact,” Professor Sharp answers. “The Pepperup Potion will quickly resolve any common colds or cases of the flu, with the enigmatic side effect of generating steam that will pour from your ears for hours on end.”

You wince a bit. “I suppose that’s worth being over a cold in a day.”

“I should think so,” he replies with a slight grin. “So has the majority of the wizarding world since the twelfth century.”

As Professor Sharp segues into a lecture on the history of healing potions, you pull out a piece of parchment and start to take down some notes.

“Sebastian,” you hiss. “What does Pepperup Potion taste like?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he says. “I’ve only had it once, and it was a decade ago.”

You frown. “Why’s that?”

“I can’t drink it,” Sebastian says simply. “I’m allergic to bicorn horn.”

You blink, surprised. “You’re… allergic? How did you even discover that about yourself?”

“Oh, it was gruesome,” Ominis chimes in gleefully.

Sebastian rolls his eyes. “Well, I had my suspicions as a child when my parents gave me Pepperup Potion and steam poured out of my ears, nose, and mouth for a full week. Simply suffering through the cold would have been better.”

“And then?” you prompt.

“Well… in our third year, Anne and I made some Polyjuice Potion,” Sebastian admits, glancing around furtively. “We wanted to see if we could attend our classes all day as each other without anyone noticing the difference.”

“And Polyjuice Potion has bicorn horn,” you surmise.

Ominis looks delighted. “They were both in the Hospital Wing for three days, stuck as half-formed versions of each other.”

You gasp in disbelief. “That sounds awful!”

“It was the one and only time in their lives they were truly identical!” Ominis crows. “‘Sebastianne,’ we called them.”

You can’t help but giggle at Ominis’ delight while Sebastian sulks.

“In any case,” Sebastian grumbles, “I can’t take Pepperup Potion anymore, but luckily I never get sick.”

“Really?” you ask skeptically. “Everyone gets a common cold once in a while.”

“Not me,” he says proudly. “I haven’t been sick since I was a child. At the very least, if I have been sick, it must have been so mild that I wasn’t slowed down in the slightest – no need for Pepperup, thanks.”

“I’d be careful, Sebastian,” Ominis demurs. “Wouldn’t want to tempt fate, would we?”

With a lazy shrug, Sebastian turns to his potions station and begins to roughly chop some dittany leaves for a new healing potion Sharp intends to teach that afternoon. He glances up surreptitiously while you tie your hair back with one of those green ribbons you like to keep around your wrist for when the Potions classroom becomes especially humid with cauldron steam.

Though it’s unwise to lose focus while holding a knife, Sebastian has become quite skilled at multitasking while tending to his lovesick heart with stolen glances and half-formed daydreams.

He becomes so distracted staring at the column of your neck that when he suddenly feels a bit dizzy, he merely attributes it to the thick, heavy air in the room.

—

Tuesday, October 6, 1891

“You look dreadful,” you tell Sebastian cheerfully as you take a seat at breakfast.

Across from you, Sebastian looks a sight. His generally unruly hair is sticking up in every direction, and his face, which until this morning had still been sun-kissed and freckled from his time carrying out summer chores in Feldcroft, is ghostly pale.

“Cheers,” he grumbles, his head in his hands as he stares down at a plate full of untouched tattie scones.

You know for a fact they’re his favorite. In fact, you’ve stolen countless scones from the Great Hall on weekends when he treats himself to a bit of a lie-in just to make sure there are some left for when he finally emerges, hair rumpled and cheeks creased with pillow lines.

“Late night?” you ask him as you pour yourself some juice.

“The opposite, actually,” Ominis explains. “Sebastian was asleep before I even finished my Runes assignment last night, and I practically had to drag him out of bed this morning.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” you comment, frowning. “You’re usually up half the night reading. Are you sure you’re alright?”

Sebastian shrugs weakly. “I’m fine, I just… It’s dreadfully warm in the castle, and my head is aching.”

Without thinking, you reach across the table and press the back of your hand against his forehead.

“You’re quite hot,” you mumble.

“Wh-what?” Sebastian stammers, his eyes going wide. “What did you do that for?”

“You have a fever,” you explain to him. “Old Muggle trick. And your eyes are quite glassy. I think you might be coming down with something.”

Ominis unsubtly slides further down the bench.

“I’m not sick,” Sebastian protests. “It’s just the heat, it’s making me tired.”

You eye him warily, and as if to prove that he’s not ill, Sebastian lifts one of his hoarded scones to his mouth and takes a bite.

“See?” he asks with his mouth full. “M’fine.”

You grimace. “Lovely.”

Sebastian determinedly joins you and Ominis for Potions and manages to remain upright until the very end of class. He sways just a bit as he gathers up his belongings, and you offer him your shoulder while you make your way toward the stairs to Divination.

He balks when he sees the twisting spiral steps.

“On second thought,” he mumbles, “I think I’ll skive off today and get some rest.”

“Will you be alright?” you ask him concernedly. “I can come with you…”

“No, it’s fine,” he insists. “I’ll just lie down for a bit and then I’ll be grand, I promise. Save a seat for me at dinner, will you?”

Later that evening you linger in the Great Hall until the last of dinner melts through the tables down to the kitchens below, but Sebastian never shows up.

—

Wednesday, October 7, 1891

“You do not want to go in there,” Ominis tells you warningly. “Trust me, he’s a mess.”

You scoff. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Sebastian still hasn’t emerged from his dormitory in nearly eighteen hours, and you’re starting to worry for him. Ominis had brought him back some food from dinner the night before, but according to him, it had gone untouched.

When he’d failed to show his face at breakfast, you knew you had to step in.

“He wouldn’t want you to see him like this,” Ominis tries. “Sebastian is hardly a gentleman, but some things are sacred.”

“He’s our best friend,” you remind Ominis. “I really don’t care if he’s not entirely put together.”

Ominis opens his mouth as if to say more, and then seemingly changes his mind.

“Fine,” he sighs. “I’ll tell Professor Sharp you’re tending to Sebastian, and I’ll ask Amit if you can borrow his notes.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Ominis,” you breathe, quickly pulling him in for a hug. “What would we do without you?”

“Rot in Azkaban, most likely,” he grumbles, which… is fair.

Once Ominis leaves for class, you gently knock on the seventh-year boys’ dormitory door. “Sebastian? Can I come in?”

Through the door, you hear him whine, “Go ‘way.”

“Sebastian,” you call out patiently. “Ominis told me you’re sick, and you haven’t gotten out of bed in too long. I’m coming in.”

He protests weakly from his bed as you open the door and slip inside, carefully pressing it closed behind you. As you’d expected, his other roommates have all gone for the day. Only Sebastian remains – or at least, you think it’s Sebastian.

All you can see sticking out from underneath the pile of pilfered blankets on his bed is a mess of curly, brown hair.

“Oh, dear,” you sigh.

“Jus’ leave me alone,” he mumbles from beneath the covers. “...I think I’m sick.”

“Finally facing the music, are you?” you tease him, taking a seat at the foot of his bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Like death warmed over,” he groans. “I’ve never been this ill before.”

“Should I take you to see Nurse Blainey?” you ask him. “I know you can’t have Pepperup Potion, but perhaps she has something else that would help.”

“No,” he sighs. “Ominis already sent for her, she said I’m a dafty and I’ll be fine in a coupl’a days.”

You bite back a laugh at Sebastian’s deteriorating accent; for how posh he usually sounds, apparently that rougher Feldcroft vernacular tends to slip out when he’s feeling poorly.

“Poor lamb,” you croon. “Can I do anything for you? Have you eaten?”

“M’not hungry,” he sulks. “Ominis made me drink some water before he left.”

You hum softly as you start to slowly pull his piles of blankets down low enough that you can see his face. Quickly you realize that Ominis had been exaggerating – Sebastian doesn’t look entirely a mess.

His eyes are a bit wet and glassy, you observe, and his nose is bright red from persistent rubbing with a handkerchief abandoned on his bedside table. He looks a little swollen beneath his jaw, but otherwise, he looks like he’d merely stayed awake all night, and you’ve seen a sleepless Sebastian countless times throughout your friendship.

There’s a bit of stubble along his jaw that you’ve never noticed before; it’s the same rich brown color as his wild, unkempt hair.

(Honestly, how dare he still look handsome even when he’s ill.)

“Hello, you,” you tease him in a voice just above a whisper. “Was beginning to wonder if you were even there under all those blankets.”

“I’m cold,” he complains.

“That’s the fever talking,” you tell him. “You should probably–”

But before you can tell him that he’d be better off with less covers, the blankets shift lower and you realize he’s not wearing a pajama shirt.

(Your disobedient mind immediately raises the question of whether he’s wearing anything at all, and subsequently, if you could get away with having a look. Immediately you scold that particular thought away.)

“Er, you should… don’t overheat yourself,” you finish lamely.

He’s flushed down to his chest, fever-pale skin burning red where the blankets had been piled on top of him. You discover that he’s got a thin smattering of hair here, too; he’s grown into the body of a man much sooner than many of your classmates, you imagine.

Sebastian watches as you swallow, your own eyes raking down his body.

“You’re missing class,” he observes. “You never miss class.”

“It’ll be alright, just this once,” you say softly.

For a moment you aren’t sure if you’re talking about missing class or being in Sebastian’s bed.

Then Sebastian suddenly starts to cough and hastily reaches for his handkerchief. He sounds utterly pathetic as he coughs and groans in discomfort, rolling onto his side and looking for all the world like a kicked puppy.

“My chest hurts,” he whimpers. “I’ve been coughing all night.”

You reach across him and gently stroke the backs of your fingers down the middle of his chest. His skin is noticeably hot to the touch and damp with sweat.

“I can put some Muggle herbs in a warm compress for your chest,” you offer. “I know they’re not as effective as a potion would be, but it always helped me feel better when I was a child.”

“Alright, I suppose that’d be nice,” he mumbles.

But when you move to stand, he quickly snags your wrist.

“Wait,” he says. “Er… where would you go? For how long?”

“Well, I’ll have to go see if Nurse Blainey has any, and if not I can go look at the edge of the Forbidden Forest,” you explain. “It might take a bit of time, I’m afraid.”

“Then, just… stay,” he whines. “Keep me company? That’s better than some plain old herbs.”

You shift onto the bed, curling up on your side behind Sebastian. It’s a tight fit, and you’re dangerously close to falling off the edge, but you’re able to leave enough space between your bodies that you can make the argument that it’s friendly, and it’s fine.

“Can I rub your back?” you ask him softly. “It might help with the soreness.”

You have no idea if it will help his aching body, but you’re eager to try it nonetheless.

“Go on,” Sebastian rasps. “I… I might fall asleep.”

“You should,” you croon. “Your body’s telling you that you need to rest.”

“S’pathetic,” he grumbles. “I never get sick.”

“You had a good run,” you tease him. “But the common cold comes for us all eventually.”

He falls silent after that, his leanly muscled arms curled around a pillow while you stroke your hand up and down the length of his back. He’s so warm, and you’re a bit anxious about letting him ride out a fever as long as he has, but soon he drifts off to sleep.

You learn two things while he rests: he snores when he’s on his back, and he frowns whenever you take your hands off of him.

—

Thursday, October 8, 1891

Ominis had managed to talk you into returning to your own dormitory for the night, promising to look after Sebastian while you got some rest. When you return the following morning, you find him in even worse condition.

His sheets are bunched down to his hips, and he’s still bare from the waist up. His entire body is covered in a thin layer of sweat, and the bags underneath his eyes have worsened – despite how much rest he’s getting, he seems more fatigued than ever.

“What happened?!” you ask Ominis.

“He’s had a fever all night,” Ominis says grimly, looking just as worn out as Sebastian. “He hasn’t eaten a thing, and I’ve barely been able to get him to drink some water.”

“Oh, Seb,” you sigh, taking his clammy hand and resting it in your lap as you sit on the edge of the bed. “You poor thing.”

“I think I’m dying,” he rasps. “This is it, right?”

“Hush now, there’s no need to be so dramatic,” you gently scold him, pressing your hand to his forehead. “You’re quite warm, but I’m not worried about your imminent demise.”

“I’m disgusting,” he groans. “I can’t stop coughing, I’m sweating everywhere, I feel like I’m going to be sick but there’s nothing to–”

He cuts himself off with several dry, pathetic coughs.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” you tell him firmly. “Ominis is going to go to class and come back this afternoon with some Muggle medicinals. In the meantime, I’m going to help you eat a bit of food and have a bath.”

“N-no, absolutely not,” he stammers. “You think I want you seeing me like this any more than you already have?”

“You’ll feel better,” you promise him. “And I swear I won’t, er… look, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

You argue back and forth until Sebastian, utterly depleted of his typical stubbornness, loses energy and gives in. Ominis promises to stop by J. Pippin’s to see if the shopkeeper has any draughts suitable for Sebastian’s allergies before leaving to go to class, and you help Sebastian get out of bed with his arm around your shoulders and your own around his waist.

(He’s got pants on, thank Merlin, but you have to help him into a pair of pajamas to make the walk to the Slytherin baths.)

Sebastian balks when you enter the boys’ baths, but you both quickly learn there are no enchantments in place to keep you from joining him. You offer him an arm to lean on while he takes off his pajamas and coughs – this time pointedly – for you to turn around while he sinks into the lukewarm bath you’d drawn.

“This does feel nice,” he finally says once he’s settled in the opaque, murlap-scented water.

“Good,” you say, hoping he doesn’t notice how your voice has gone up a bit higher than usual. “I’ll be back in a few moments with some fresh pajamas for you.”

“I’ll try not to drown while you’re gone,” he drawls, and even though he still sounds exhausted, you smile to yourself knowing that the bath is already helping him feel more like his usual self.

Hogwarts’ house elves were exceptionally fast in tidying up the boys’ dormitory while the two of you were out, so when you finally lead a clean, dry Sebastian back to his room, you’re thrilled to find freshly laundered sheets and a new pair of pillows waiting for him.

“Gods, I love magic,” he groans as he collapses into bed.

You stay all afternoon and into the evening. Ominis returns shortly before dinner with a brew from Parry Pippin himself, similar to the Pepperup Potion but with cinnamon instead of powdered bicorn horn.

(Sebastian seems to emit thin tendrils of steam straight from the top of his head after he drinks it, but he perks up all the same.)

Feenky herself brings a tray of soup and some leftover scones from breakfast once Sebastian regains his appetite. While he eats, he tells you about how he used to sit with Anne during the summers when she was particularly ill from her curse.

“At the time, I wondered if my being there was more of a help or a hindrance,” he says ruefully. “She was… hard to read, then. I couldn’t tell if she was annoyed by me or appreciated me staying.”

You pause before shyly asking, “Am I helping? By being here?”

“Of course,” he says without thinking.

“Then I’m sure you were helping Anne, even when she was annoyed,” you tell him reassuringly. “That’s all we ever want to do really, isn’t it? Help the ones we love?”

Sebastian glances up at his tray with an inscrutable expression on his face. His eyes are still glassy and he’s a bit peaky, but the cinnamon-laced, not-quite-Pepperup Potion has restored some of the usual warmth in his gaze.

“Right,” he echoes. “Help the ones we love.”

You end up staying the night in the boys’ dormitory. Only Ominis knows you’re there, as he draws the curtains around the both of you before the boys’ other roommates return from the common room. Given that Sebastian seems to be feeling better already, it’s not strictly necessary.

But it feels nice all the same.

—

Friday, October 9, 1891

Sebastian’s fever finally broke during the night.

When you wake up he’s wrapped around you from behind, one of his legs jammed between yours with his arm curled possessively around your waist.

You’re sweltering, but he’s cool to the touch.

“Sebastian,” you whisper, but he doesn’t answer.

Judging by the way sunlight pours over the top of Sebastian’s bed curtains, it’s well past when you’d usually wake up during the school week. You can’t hear any other snoring boys around you, either.

“Sebastian,” you hiss. “Wake up.”

He groans tiredly into your hair as his arm tightens around your waist. “No.”

“N-no?!” you sputter. “It’s morning! We… we should, er.”

You trail off when you realize you aren’t quite sure what you should be doing. Evidently you’ve missed breakfast, and you’ve likely missed the start of Potions for the third day in a row. Professor Sharp will have no choice but to give you a detention; just as well, you suppose, as you can use the time to make up what you’ve missed.

But now that the damage is done…

“How are you feeling?” you ask him softly, your eyes still fixed on the green curtains in front of your face.

“Loads better,” he says, only this time his lips are pressed against the sensitive spot behind your ear.

You gasp as he rolls more of his weight toward you, pressing you more firmly into the mattress.

“Sebastian…” you sigh.

“I had a dream about you last night,” he confesses, his voice barely above a whisper beneath your ear. “I’ve heard Pepperup Potion can give one strange dreams.”

“St-strange?” you whisper back. “Why was it a strange dream?”

“I suppose it wasn’t really ‘strange,’” he acquiesces. “But it was nice. Really nice.”

“Tell me about it?” you ask breathlessly.

“Perhaps I’ll show you instead,” he asks, and when you nod, he slides his hand down to your hip and turns you onto your back.

Then quite suddenly he’s leaning over you, one knee still between your thighs. He rests on his elbows so his face is just centimeters from yours, and it’s the first time you’ve gotten a good look at him since the boys put out last night’s fire.

Sebastian looks so much better. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes are clear and bright, and the sickly sheen of sweat he’d worn for days is entirely gone. (His hair is still a bird’s nest, but that’s to be expected.)

“We were like this,” he tells you.

“Were we just talking?” you ask him, but you’re met with only silence.

After a beat, he asks you, “Why have you been so kind to me this week?”

“You’re my best friend,” you tell him softly. “I – I wanted to help you feel better.”

“Is that all I am?” he asks. “Am I simply your friend?”

You bite your lip hesitantly and his gaze dips down to your mouth, his brown eyes nearly black in the soft morning light.

“Do you want to kiss me, Sebastian?” you ask.

Rather than answering, he surprises you by leaning down and pressing a sweet kiss to the corner of your mouth. Then he lifts one of his hands to gently tip your face toward his, cradling your jaw while he deepens the kiss into one that’s hardly sweet at all.

It feels like it’s perhaps the first time in days that Sebastian has felt hunger.

You gasp his name into his mouth and then he’s the one biting your lip, just a quick graze of his teeth before he soothes your ensuing whine with another slow kiss. He shifts his weight onto his hip to rest on the mattress beside you, using that leg between yours to coax you into lying next to him. He rewards your body’s assent with a filthy kiss – the kind you’ve only read about in those Muggle romance novels you hide under your pillow, the kind where the hero kisses the girl with his tongue in her mouth and his hand in her blouse.

“Seb,” you moan.

“I didn’t know,” he confesses against your lips.

“Didn’t know what?” you whine.

“I didn’t know you loved me until last night,” he says, pressing his forehead against yours.

You’re so distracted by how red and swollen his lips look that you nearly miss him saying, “You stayed with me all week, you held me, practically healed me, and I still didn’t know.”

“Of course I love you,” you tell him.

“You love Ominis, you love Poppy,” he counters. “This – us – is different. Right?”

And the truth is, you would have done anything you’d done for Sebastian for any one of your friends. You would have helped Poppy into a warm bath and back into bed, and you would have sat at Ominis’ bedside all day and torn up pieces of scone to float on the surface of his soup.

But you would not have let them press you into their bedsheets and trace their lips along your neck, and right now Sebastian is eagerly doing both.

“Yes,” you whimper, both in answer to his question and as a plea for more.

“I love you, too,” he sighs against your jaw. “I have for ages, and I didn’t want you to see me all pathetic and poorly, but you still love me anyway.”

“I’ve loved you through worse,” you quietly remind him.

He nips at your throat for that remark; you’ve both agreed to speak of your fifth year as little as possible. Truly, the only reason you’d ever bring it up now is to remind Sebastian that you’ve long since made your choice – him, over duty and the law and perhaps even reason.

“Stay with me,” he pleads. “We have all morning, we have the dormitory to ourselves. Let me take care of you now.”

He pulls your thigh across his own and tangles his fingers in your sleep-mussed hair, holding you against his warm, bare chest.

“That’s tempting,” you breathe. “B-but perhaps we should check with Nurse Blainey, to see if you’re ready to return to–”

You cut yourself off with a gasp as he grinds his hips against yours. There’s no mistaking that he’s aroused, and that alone convinces you that he must be feeling well – you’re positive that he would’ve been too weak for this type of debauchery yesterday morning even if you’d gotten fully nude before him and begged.

“Trust me, I feel excellent,” he moans into your mouth. “Love, please.”

You don’t come up for air for a long while after that. By the time Ominis stops by during lunchtime to check on Sebastian, he nearly trips over your skirt, hastily tossed near the doorway.

“I take it you’re feeling better,” he deadpans.

“That potion of yours worked like a charm, Ominis,” Sebastian drawls. “Cinnamon, who would have thought?”

“I don’t suppose I mentioned that Muggles find cinnamon to be an organic aphrodisiac?” Ominis says innocently. “At least, that’s what Mister Pippin said. He told me you might have some rather amorous dreams while you recover.”

“No, I think you forgot to mention that,” Sebastian replies just as innocently.

Ominis simply hums and says, “Well, now that you’ve been made aware, I’ll be off to Herbology. I’d recommend locking the door if our dear friend is going to be keeping you company this afternoon, Sebastian.”

You’re too embarrassed to say a word, but Sebastian cheerfully thanks him as he pulls the door shut and reaches for his wand on his bedside table to magically lock it behind him.

“We’ve become menaces,” you whine as he rolls on top of you once more.

Sebastian grins wickedly down at you. “Not yet we haven’t, but thank Merlin we’ve got all afternoon.”

[burst-of-iridescent]

The Choice of Compassion: A Scene Analysis of Aang vs Zuko

should aang have killed ozai?

the age old question. the discourse secondary only to the infamous kat.aang vs zutara ship war. the argument that's been raging for sixteen long, long years and inspired dozens upon dozens of thinkpieces on either side.

so naturally, i'm here to add one more that no one asked for.

now, this debate keeps getting mischaracterized as The Side That Respects Pacifism vs The Side That Wants A Preteen To Commit Brutal Murder when, for the most part, i don't think anyone is really staking their life on the homicide hill. the real issue most people take with aang's arc in the finale isn't him sparing ozai, but rather the deus ex-machina mechanism through which he's able to do so. i agree with that, but i would also take it further to argue that the real problem is that aang's ending is not thematically and narratively consistent with the rest of his arc as set up in the show.

to illustrate this, let's take a look at another scene that plays with similar themes: zuko choosing to save zhao in the siege of the north.

the basics of both scenes are the same: both boys choose, against all logic and common sense, to spare someone who would never show them the same mercy. when it comes down to compassion versus violence, they choose compassion, even at risk to themselves.

but where the siege of the north differs from sozin's comet is that zuko choosing to save zhao is thematically consistent with his arc in season 1, and aligns with where it will go in seasons 2 and 3.

zuko's journey throughout the show is one of rediscovery. he has to find his way back to who he used to be, before his family and his nation warped his perception of right and wrong, and forced him into believing he had to become someone he didn't want to be. it's clear as early as the storm episode that zuko is fundamentally kind, and the person he is now is as a result of being indoctrinated in a culture that perverted violence and cruelty into honour and strength.

in trying to save zhao, the personification of the fire nation's worst qualities and most twisted teachings, zuko turns against the values he's been raised with most of his life and instead chooses to remain true to himself and what he believes is right. it's a triumphant moment because it's zuko returning to the heart of who he is, and who he's truly supposed to be.

and even though his decision may be logically unsound (why risk yourself trying to save someone who tried to kill you?) you don't see anyone complaining that zuko shouldn't have tried at all, because his choice here is a direct - even if brief - resolution to the internal conflict the show has previously established for his character. the narrative consistency of the set-up and payoff allows the audience to recognize the thematic cohesion of this moment in zuko's arc - which is what makes it so powerful and satisfying.

so, the question is: does the same apply to aang's choice not to kill ozai?

the argument supporting aang's decision is usually something as follows: "aang sparing ozai is his way of remaining true to his people and making sure they aren't forgotten. it's a powerful symbol of how he's keeping their culture and beliefs alive even though the fire nation tried to wipe them out."

now that's not a bad argument, in theory. the problem, though, is that if this is the resolution of aang's arc, it has to be a direct response to a conflict established in said arc... and remaining true to air nomad values is not a struggle the show ever set up for aang until the finale.

not once in any of the previous seasons does aang seem to be forgetting his people's ideals, or losing his identity through assimilation, or struggling to reconcile his air nomad beliefs with the ideas he's encountering in this new, changed world. there isn't a long-term, sustained arc about him being worried or concerned about air nomad culture dying out completely, or about taking on the burden of keeping it alive. in fact, the only episode that does reckon with this theme in any capacity - the northern air temple - seems to push the opposite message: that aang should move on and adapt to this changing world instead of remaining mired in the past, and protecting the culture of a people long gone.

(note: i don't like how the NAT episode handled this theme, but for the purposes of this post, we will take it as it was written.)

both zuko and aang are characters whose arcs revolve around change, but if zuko's arc is about moving back to who he truly is, then aang's arc is about moving forward. it's about going from the last airbender to the avatar - about drawing wisdom from different places, about immersing himself in the practices, beliefs and cultures of the other nations, and learning to value them as he values his own.

it's the classic want vs need: what aang wants is to be nothing more than a goofy, peaceful airbender but what he needs is to become a fully-realized avatar, the embodiment of four nations in one. and this conflict is established and re-established repeatedly over three seasons, most especially in his struggle to learn earthbending and firebending, both of which called for him to adopt new perspectives and beliefs contrary to his own.

this is why aang refusing to kill ozai feels so narratively unfulfilling, because it's the complete antithesis of what the show established for aang's narrative over three seasons. the plot point of his absolute pacifism not only comes out of left field (where was this problem when he was going to battle ozai during the eclipse?), it's also incongruous with the depiction of other air nomads in the series (both yangchen and gyatso don't seem to practice absolute pacifism) and with where aang's own arc appeared to be leading.

additionally, it also conflicts with the thematic clash that the aang vs ozai fight is supposed to represent: what was meant to be balance and harmony vs dominance and supremacy now turns into... air nomad beliefs vs fire nation beliefs, which runs contrary to the fundamental message of the entire show. not exactly what you want for the final battle between your protagonist and antagonist!

all of this is not to say that aang should have gone turbo avatar state on ozai and singlehandedly yeeted him into the spirit world. but there were a dozen other ways to handle ozai's end: give him a disney death, let aang learn energybending of his own accord and incapacitate him the way katara took down azula, or - my personal favourite - bring in the spirits in a neat parallel to the book 1 finale, and have ozai's death be a consequence of the imbalance he propagated in the world (i've always felt the avatar being the spirit bridge was a plotline that kinda got shafted in book three, and bringing back someone like koh, for instance, would've slapped).

the point is that for the resolution of aang's arc to be thematically consistent with the established narrative (the validity of this narrative, and whether it should have been different, is another point entirely, but it cannot be denied that this is what the show chose to go with), he needed to place the values and beliefs of the other nations on equal footing with his own, and win because of this willingness to draw from all nations instead of relying solely on his own.

ultimately, remaining true to his compassionate, peaceful nature is not a struggle in aang's narrative the way that it is in zuko's, which is why him choosing to spare ozai doesn't have anywhere near the emotional resonance or satisfaction of zuko reaching out to zhao. meanwhile, the conflict that does characterize aang's arc - being forced to become the avatar - never comes to a meaningful resolution the way that zuko's does. rather, it's thrown out the window in favour of a last minute plot point that robs aang of both agency and development, and destroys the thematic cohesion of his narrative for nothing.

[mikotos-nape-nibbler]

if i'm being honest i don't really give a shit about the discourse of whether 09 is good or bad DID rep nor do i give a shit about how his DID manifests. i find that what makes him interesting isn't a label for a set of symptoms but rather his expression of those symptoms cultivated by the world he was raised in and how he responds or continues those behaviours. it's honestly more interesting to analyze the overarching systems in society that assisted in developing Mikoto Kayano into a murderer.

how different would he be if Japanese society were more open about emotions and struggles? how different would he be if he were receiving mental health treatment? would he still become a murderer and, if so, what made those mental health treatments ineffective? if he had been hired at another japanese company that didn't follow black company practices, would he still have become a murderer? if so, why? what were the factors that made an average, young adult become a murderer? so on so forth.

honestly the fetish this fandom has on his dissociated self that gives the illusion of multiplicity — when, in reality, he's a singular whole that is fragmented; cracks lined with dissociative barriers, chiseled by continuous stress — detracts from the complexity of his character and writing, flanderizing him into a prop of DID that the fandom puppets into theatrics of stigmatization that same fans claim to "educate" against when, in truth, spout blasé hearsays encrypted with a DIDcore-lese that does nothing for communicating information about the disorder and, instead, excludes and dissuades the general population that that supposed "education" is directed towards.

"Mikoto's a system from the interactive music project MILGRAM. His alter, 'John', murdered a bunch of people on the train."

so there's a program called "Mikoto" and you named the SQL table "John" with the ALTER command that somehow murdered a bunch of people. did the train running the Mikoto program malfunction because of some zero day error with the John table?

"'He has Dissociative Identity Disorder. John's a protector and Mikoto's the host."

so is this Mikoto guy some vessel or something for some supernatural ouija board summon and the John guy is like the familiar or bodyguard summoned? is their character just that? a job and occupation? that sounds boring. and what do those jobs have to do with a disorder on dissociation? are you talking about something like "occupation disorder" or "stuck-in-their-work-self disorder"? or is this some DnD homebrew class type?

what purpose does inaccessible language have if you're trying to educate the average person who isn't familiar with those online community terms that aren't even universal terms in literature nor research? and how are these terms even relevant to discussing Mikoto's character when the concepts it supposedly encompasses aren't universal nor applicable to all possible subjective presentations that a human brain can develop? and yet the fandom, and much of the online mental disorder community, treats those sociolect terms as an axiom — a universal truth, universal terms — and the lack of adherence to that speech is seen as wrong or sin.

"[insert link to some website claiming to have info on DID] is a good website if you wanna read up on what DID is!!"

and then that supposed resource uses highly specialized, nonuniversal, sociolect terms that is jargon to those who are only familiar with layman terms which makes the "information" — if it even is faithfully derived from research — seem like further jargon rather than a comprehensible source for educating.

applying this to Mikoto's character, those who aren't already acquainted with how he's spoken about likely view discussions or comments on him as indecipherable jargon thus it must mean Mikoto's character is just jargon thus not well-written or boring because according to the bubble of jargon people describe this guy with: Mikoto Kayano = computer program system + dnd classes or some chuunibyou alter ego personality savior complex + party hoster or vessel for some supernatural thing + mechanical switch that states 0 or 1 + going through some mitosis split

how does any of that relate to dissociation? people have made DID symptoms so convoluted, yet structured that convolutedness through terms and expressions that sound like some Gary Sue Ebony Dementia Darkness Raven trope that completely detracts from the fact that it's a dissociation disorder rather than a roleplay character form.

have people even considered the fact that if Mikoto had never been imprisoned, he, nor anyone, would even know he has DID— if he even counts as having DID? if how his brain works regarding how he handles stress doesn't impact his life negatively- even if he has all the symptoms of DID if how his brain works regarding how he handles stress doesn't cause disorder for him, he wouldn't have dissociative identity disorder.

the less people view Mikoto as the "alters guy", the more complex understandings can be gathered and discussed within the fandom. the more people view Mikoto as the "average, normal guy who committed a murder, but why? what caused an average, hardworking guy to commit the most grievous sin of murder?", the better the range of insight and curiosity into what shapes a person and the factors in their world — a reflection of our present reality — at play which interact and weave with one another to shape and respond to its members; the opposite of cutting off the fluidity and interwovenness Mikoto has with people and environments outside of his self that people constrain him to, that prison cell of a single label characteristic: "DID".

conclusion: for the love of torch novelgram, let's talk about Mikoto Kayano like the multifaceted, complex, shaped-by-the-socioeconomic-stratae-of-the-world-he-is-part-of-and-interacts-with well-written character he is.

[a-griffin-in-the-sky]

Title: The Importance of Reality in Feminist Discourse

In recent years, discussions around gender identity have brought both clarity and confusion to the feminist movement. As someone who believes that feminism is rooted in material reality,specifically, the political and social implications of being born female, I believe it’s important to reaffirm the foundation on which women’s liberation stands.

The term trans woman itself acknowledges that this person was born male. That distinction matters not as a means to exclude, but because female socialization, reproductive capacity, and the risks women face from male violence are not interchangeable or symbolic. They are tangible, lifelong experiences tied to the body and how society perceives it.

This doesn’t mean denying anyone’s right to live freely, express themselves, or be treated with dignity. But when legal categories like “female” or “woman” are changed without regard to sex, it raises important questions: What does it mean to protect women-only spaces? How can we advocate for reproductive rights if the definition of “female” becomes blurred? These aren’t just abstract concerns; they affect policy, safety, and the integrity of female-focused advocacy.

Feminism, at its heart, is about challenging male dominance. To do that effectively, we have to remain clear about the difference between sex and gender identity. This isn’t about hate. It’s about truth, and the need to speak it even when it’s unpopular.

When we talk about gender identity, it’s easy to get caught up in complicated definitions and debates. But if you take a step back, it’s clear that what we call “gender” is really a bunch of weirdness society has forced on us, adjectives like “feminine” or “masculine” that don’t actually have a direct link to our biological sex.

Think about it: being female doesn’t automatically mean being feminine, just like being male doesn’t guarantee masculinity. These are labels assigned to us at birth, social expectations and roles that shape how we’re “supposed” to act, dress, and feel. But underneath all that, gender is not an innate part of who we are. It’s a framework built on culture, tradition, and sometimes pure, arbitrary rules.

That doesn’t mean gender has no impact. These labels influence everything from our childhood toys to our career choices, from how others treat us to how we see ourselves. But recognizing that gender is constructed rather than biologically determined opens up space to question, reject, or reshape those expectations.

So why hold on to these rigid categories at all? Maybe it’s time to embrace the weirdness, the fluidity, and the individuality that gets lost in the boxes we’re put in at birth. After all, no adjective, feminine, masculine, or anything in between, should define the full story of a person.

Honestly? Be who you want. Dress how you want. Call yourself whatever you like Ferret, they/them, or anything else. It’s your life have fun with it. Just don’t pull other people into your identity or expect everyone to get it. Some folks are just gonna be assholes, and that sucks. But no one deserves to be erased or treated like they’re less just for how they want to present themselves.

That said, it’s important to recognize that being born female does come with real and ongoing oppression in all parts of the world. No one should deny that. The struggles women face because of their sex are very real and must be taken seriously.

[boyfridged]

tumblr might’ve eaten my ask in the process of submitting it so i want to send it again just in case but i loved burning money! it was so so so good! something that was interesting to me was mai (and the others’) disgruntlement with the foundation—which makes sense, big corporation encroaching on small community—but it’s the first time i’ve really seen a stance like that in fics? so i was curious about your thoughts on it! mostly because the foundation is usually depicted as doing good and nothing else, which isn’t true, of course, there is more depth to it, and i really liked and thought your depiction was interesting (even if it was intended to be a one-off thing) so i wanted to ask you about it :) if you don’t mind!

it seems it did eat it, so i'm glad you sent it again!

i absolutely do not mind, and i am happy to elaborate on that -- not only in the context of the fanfic, but also in terms what i think of the canon and fanon depiction of the work of the wayne foundation, and bruce's philanthropy.

that scene in burning money is, after all, symptomatic of my own politics. but as i always say, there was also a time when dc attempted to take in-world politics seriously -- leslie is a sign of that! so i do not see why i should not, given batman is an inherently political text, more so than most superhero comics (where the power fantasy elements are not as pronounced in their relation to class and the category of crime). and batman is just impossible to read without a consideration for these elements of discourse.

the love that contemporary comics (and i do think it's much more emphasised nowadays; the editorial seems to feel a need to continuously justify bruce, and there is not an ounce of modesty in how charity is portrayed) and fanon have for the foundation is something i find perturbing; the excitement regarding it even in the more progressive fandom spaces, the willingness to indulge this narrative of saviourism is really hard to ignore. and that is a narrative i have little patience for -- i, personally, like bruce as a multi-dimensional character, his flaws included. and that does not exclude keeping in mind that he is in a position of power.

the wayne foundation is not a grassroots organisation; and as such it is bound to have it's problems at the very core of its mission. the main issue is that it has a huge potential to become an instrument of biopower; that is to say, that people in charge get to say what sort of help the area will 'benefit' from most; and that is often a calculated choice that has little to do with the existing structures and even simply the wishes of people in question. while not directly related to the foundation, this is also something that i wanted to come across in the paragraph about the plan to make the crime alley into the entertainment district (btw, my rundown of the history of east end is by no means a canon one; i took different elements and mentions from comics and even adaptations into it, since it all remains vague otherwise). even when providing the people with a new (albeit limited; there was another bit that i ended up cutting out, about crystal being a nurse and the foundation putting a lot of money into nurse training programmes, since it is productive) range of opportunities, what it often leads to is yanking the populace around according to their latest charitable ideas, rather than providing long-time support.

here is also another thing to consider, that being -- no matter bruce's best intentions, he also cannot control everything that goes on in the foundation (which again, he should not -- but that also means that his 'stellar morals' will not save it from corruption and even just administrative troubles -- like the 'queues' that arlo mentions in burning money).

and about the scene you bring up in particular -- i want to say that this principled (!) reluctance to engage with the foundation it is not supposed to reflect the attitude of the community as a whole, but some part of it. mai, especially, has a personal connection to willis (and jason); this is very much a matter of pride and resentment regarding jason's death.

i have another wip with a scene of a somewhat similar, if not more open, conversation -- that one starring benny harlowe, who mentions that after jason's death the foundation seems to have doubled down in their efforts to 'fix' the alley (a trope somewhat popular in fanon, along with catherine todd/jason todd foundations), and he says: "The whole time I was thinking, why now? What was it, our boy’s trust fund? They murder our kid and then come back with a check?"

while I do not (obv) think the whole crime alley knew Jason (neither as jason nor robin; canon does not give us much reason to think that bruce would approve of robin-era jay venturing into the alley), nor do I subscribe to modern-era exaggeration of bruce's celebrity status, I do think most people in east end would hear about a billionaire adopting a child off the streets and the child dying not that long after; and there is surely some bitterness and distrust to come with that knowledge. is this what they are -- disposable charity cases? this is, needless to say, not true to bruce's feelings -- but what does it matter? there is little dignity to be found in this whole situation (with the system) to begin with.

this got ridiculously long... sorry about that! and thank you for reading!

[bogkeep]

sighs. haiz VS therapy speak discourse, round 289893248920 or whatever. it has been weighing on my mind

online blogger i respect posted about how we should gatekeep the term "sensory issues" because people use it about mild discomfort and not "sensation so awful you're going to rip your skin off and commit violence" and i....... disagree............................. like i really do understand the frustration when you experience something Really Intensely and people use the term for a much milder instance of it, but as with all things there's like, a Spectrum, Isn't There. it would be like saying you only have PTSD if you experience panic attacks and vivid flashbacks, or that you only struggle with headaches only if it's cluster headaches. and i for one definitely spent several years thinking i can't POSSIBLY have ptsd from The Big Trauma I Am Still Routinely Experiencing Triggers For because i like, don't have panic attacks, and i'm doing so much better now :) (maybe if i had realized it was ptsd all along i would've gotten a bETTER THERAPIST TO HELP ME DEAL WITH IT)

it took me so so so long to understand that most other people don't find wearing clothes inherently uncomfortable and exhausting. i genuinely thought everyone was just a lot better at dealing with Discomfort than me and i'm just a wretched weakling!!!!!

WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO CALL THE ISSUES I HAVE WITH SENSORY EXPERIENCES THAT EXHAUST ME EVERY DAY TO THE POINT I FIND IT DISABLING. it is Issues. with Sensory Experiences. it's not even a clinical term like Sensory Processing Disorder (though i'd argue that's what i struggle with. some wires are definitely crossed in there. but i can manage!!!)

like yes i get it, it sucks when people water down a word so that others don't take *you* seriously when you talk about it, it sucks when people are annoying, it sucks when people use the language of mental illness and neurodivergence to excuse bigoted behaviour and shy away from self-examination, but i would much much rather people have access to Words and Terms and be annoying about it with the possibility of actually learning something about themselves and their needs, than removing language (and more widespread acceptance of mental health difficulties) altogether. and how DO you know people are only using it to mean "mild discomfort", anyway!! you're not in their body!!

[darcytaylor]

Luke Newton & social media/instagram

I've seen some people be pretty upset about Luke Newton's social media activity and his lack of posting/liking/commenting.

While I do think that he could be using his social media in a more productive way. I think that there are valid reasons as to why he is doing what he is doing.

Luke has mentioned that he wants to use his social media for work related things, rather than for his personal life. I think this is a good approach for any actor, they can showcase their work and passion, and I believe this would probably help with their mental health. Social media is not for the weak!

(there is a reason why so many influencers need to take time offline for their mental health, online environments can be toxic and just a downright scary place to be)

So when you have an actor, who is famous for their acting and not an influencer where you need to be online constantly for your job. I'd say making your online profile work related rather than personal makes complete sense.

(I think that when Luke decided to do it, it was a decision that was made a little too late. Making his profile more professional right before the promo tour didn't give the fans time to adapt to his new normal of posting)

Social media can be a stressful and an overwhelming place (even with my small amount of followers, I can be overwhelmed, I don't know how I would ever deal with millions of people).

This brings me to Luke consistently bringing up how overwhelming season 3 and him being the lead is.

It's actually somewhat sad to take a look at past interviews and see how many times he brings it up. He is already trying to cope with his rising fame, and it is obviously effecting him in a stressful way. Any normal person would try to take away any unnecessary areas in their life that would cause more stress. I think Luke is choosing social media.

Unlike Nicola, who I have commented on multiple occasions how good she is at her job, in all areas including social media. But not everybody has the ability to do that. Not everybody can fully take on millions of people, a career, a private life, a social life with the grace she does.

Nicola is not the standard of how most people can handle things. She is an anomaly. This is also why I think that comparing Luke and Nicola in regards to posting BTS and farewell posts is kind of cruel to Luke.

Luke is also credited as being empathetic, sensitive, introverted, and a people pleaser (all of which tie into his anxiety).

I think because of this it is normal that he would shield himself off from the world. Disconnect from the outside world to protect himself.

I also believe that this could make someone throw caution at every post and comment made on their socials. Anxiety makes you second guess every action, every thought. You want to make everybody happy, but you could be damned if you do and damned if you don't, so you just don't. It's not worth it.

Then there is the issue of Luke making those questionable PR moves a few weeks ago. I think Luke is trying to regroup and come to terms with the fact that he messed up in that regard. His career took a step back because of his actions that were brought forward through social media. I think he believes that the best way forward is to distance himself from it while he figures out his surroundings, especially since he had already mentioned that's what he was going to do.

(I know some people think he made zero mistakes, but this is an area I strongly believe some mistakes were made)

I also believe that because of the bad discourse going around about him online and through professionals, Luke must be scared to make the wrong move and/or the wrong choice.

Luke has wanted to be on stage/act at a very young age. I can see that he is very passionate about it. I think he saw that slipping away from him slightly. Especially since Bridgerton and being a lead was supposed to do the opposite. He's probably going to do most things with a bit more caution and social media is on that list.

Let's try not to hold much thought into how Luke's social media is presented.

Should he maybe hand his social media over to somebody else to manage? I think that could be a smart move.

Do I think that if he did post something completely endearing about Bridgerton and Nicola he would appease a lot of fans? Also yes, but like I stated above, I believe there are multiple things holding him back currently.

It's okay to be disappointed that Luke doesn't upload or comment regularly. You can also be disappointed in the content he is posting. But it's only social media. Most of the time social media is fake anyway.

[familyabolisher]

Would you elaborate on why you don't really believe in addictive personalities? I find that a useful descriptor for myself that reminds me how easy it is for me to get into unhealthy behavior patterns. I have to fully stay away from tiktok and gacha games(I will never go gambling) because I know I can't trust myself with them. I also have to be REALLY careful with alcohol, etc. I have adhd and bi-polar, and I like having a phrase that describes my experience without being too over-medicalized and relating everything to diagnoses. I'm curious why you don't like it as a construct/whatever your opinion is!

personal explanatory power is one thing and i wouldn’t begrudge you that but i don’t really see how it has any materialist usage; and ultimately, like, i’m a marxist, any way in which i evaluate a framework that’s supposed to explain something in the world has to come from the assumption that the world is best explained through historical materialism. ‘addictive personality’ with no further elaboration is an idealist claim which obfuscates crucial points of discourse around addiction and the conditions that give rise to it—and indeed the conditions which cause us to name one substance or action as ‘addictive’ over another in the first place. addiction is materially punished; through social stigma, but also through housing discrimination, workplace discrimination, policing & incarceration, psychiatry, the sorts of forces that add up to eventually facilitate the conditions of social murder. we only have to look as far as the war on drugs to understand how ‘addiction,’ the consumption and circulation of substances regarded as ‘addictive,’ is not a prediscursive state but one that can be leveraged to violently enforce conditions of hegemony and quell insurgence through carceralism and social murder. i also just heavily distrust psychology as a field and certainly don’t buy these appeals to an essential self as a self who ‘has’ xyz tendencies as though xyz tendencies (such as the traits given in the five-factor model which is applied to ‘explain’ a predisposition to addiction) are anything other than postdiscursive descriptors we’ve imbued with meaning relative to a postdiscursive normalcy. i think psychological theorising around personality tends to obfuscate materialist frameworks in favour of methodologies which presume and reify normativity (eg. the claim that those more vulnerable to ‘addictive personalities’ have a stronger tendency towards ‘social alienation’ and ‘nonconformity’ without defining what constitutes ‘alienation’ and ‘conformity’ in the first place—as though personality traits simply appear out of thin air).

as we’ve seen dozens of times, “addiction” is a slippery term easily wielded towards reactionary ends. “porn addiction” is a line taken by anti-sex work radfems; “food addiction” is infamously unscientific and preying on cultural predispositions towards fatphobia; “internet addiction” is similarly flimsy and frequently deployed in theories of cultural degeneration. this doesn’t mean that the clusters of behaviours we term “addiction” aren’t “real” in the sense that some people do develop dependencies on particular substances, but that the term can be used to draw connections between the reactionary attitude held towards addiction & its attendant connotations (of infantilisation, justified removal of autonomy, incarceration, psychiatric intervention, and so on) and whatever the wielder wants to malign (porn, food, using the internet). if we reify the idea of there being an ontological state within ourselves by which we are more or less prone to “addiction,” we by implication act against the necessity of interrogating what is meant by “addiction” and why it is being invoked in the first place; we also place all our explanatory eggs, so to speak, in the basket of the individual cast as “addicted,” rather than turning our attention towards the source of the “addictive” substance or object and its material origins + usage.

so it bears asking what we’re obscuring and what we’re facilitating when we give legitimacy to the idea of an ‘addictive personality’ in the public discourse, which is what i meant when i said that the term has no materialist explanatory power for me—casting someone in the role of an addict, even if only in the hypothetical, allows others to enforce the stigmas that such a role entails, through, for example, infantilisation, denial of autonomy, and reluctance to treat the individual’s behaviour as worthy of respect, compassion, and mature response. it creates a telos out of addiction under conditions wherein addiction means incarceration (literal or psychiatric), discrimination, ostracisation, everything i just laid out in the first paragraph. it makes addiction into a fundamentally individualist discourse which must therefore have individualist solutions, rather than a complex nexus of social conditions and discourses that we can describe and then fight against.

[utilitycaster]

Can I get your opinion, since you seem to be a pretty straight shooter ?

Do you think that Orym is lying to himself when he says he doesn’t want the sword for revenge or isn’t motivated by revenge? In the same way that Laudna was lying to herself and the others about why she wanted the sword?

I’ve seen a lot of ~discourse~ over whether or not orym is being truthful here and tbh I don’t know what to make of it.

My short answer: I suppose it's possible revenge might be among the many factors motivating him, but I don't believe it's his primary motivator.

My real answer? Who fucking cares.

There has been a pretty consistent pattern in which a lot of people who defend Laudna (and Imogen, for that matter) are so laser-focused on their motivations that they utterly ignore the actual consequences of their actions. Because that's the thing, right? You can make speculative claims about motivations; there is no true way to prove that Orym has absolutely no vengeful bones in his body since there's a myriad of reasons to go after the Vanguard and its leadership of which revenge absolutely is one. But you can't deny actions without someone inconveniently pointing out the truth that the action was, in fact, performed by a particular character. So it's a popular focus for people who don't actually have any evidence of their points.

Intent and motivation is, obviously, useful in understanding what a character might do. It's useful in understanding whether they could perhaps be swayed one way or another (eg: Liliana's intentions are in fact of vital importance for that reason, because if they understand what drives her, they might be able to change her path). But it's useless in judging harm done to other people. If someone kills a pedestrian in a crosswalk because they fell asleep driving because they'd stayed up all night for a charitable cause, or if they kill them because they were drunk driving, someone's still dead because of their actions. (For that matter, and I said this in an earlier post, the pedestrian is also equally dead if the driver were drunk driving because they are a well-intentioned alcoholic who fell off the wagon vs. an asshole who doesn't think the rules apply to them.) I don't blame the victim's family for hating the driver in any of the scenarios, even though I think that the some of the above drivers are far more likely to be people who will attempt to rehabilitate themselves and for whom I as a person more removed from the situation may have more pity.

Ultimately, how others see a character in-world is going to be a measure of their actions. So, for example, it does not actually matter if Imogen floats allying with the Vanguard because she wants to connect with her deadbeat mom; Orym is still justified in being hurt and offended because she said something insensitive in front of him. It's better that Imogen is doing this out of an idealized desire rather than malice; I think far better of her as a character and believe there is room for growth; but that doesn't change what she did and that it was, in fact, insensitive. It speaks well to her that Laudna's pressure point is "this sword could hurt your friend" and not "hey what if you could have a sick evil sword of your own", but she did still attack her friend in the middle of the night even with good intentions.

If Orym wants to kill Ludinus out of vengeance for the deaths of his family or if he wants to do so because Ludinus has done immeasurable harm already and very well might destroy the world (and I certainly do believe Orym is motivated by the latter, even if the former plays a role), Ludinus still ends up dead. Sure, if he's motivated only by revenge it might change how you interact with him, the way how Bells Hells treat Keyleth quite differently than they do Ira, but in terms of analyzing whether any specific action was helpful or harmful? Utterly fucking irrelevant.

Anyone making the argument that Orym might not have the purest motives either, as a means to defend Laudna, is either too dumb to even find the correct questions to ask or deliberately throwing up a smoke screen, and as this post indicates, doesn't fucking matter if they're stupid or malicious - they're a waste of your time. Don't even bother.

[ilikekidsshows]

That Lila ask reminded me about how LB's apology is rarely on point. I mean she did apologized to Lila after Volpina but the apology is about her being too harsh, she never apologized about the humiliation. Her apology in Hack-san is also about the identity when CN's concerned is more about how she just go and send replacement without telling him. Even her supposed apology in Kuro Neko is her thinking CN is heartbroken for being replaced by another cat, even then she blamed it for her being a bad guardian?? Idk what's with her being bad guardian has anything to do with him being hurt instead of y'know, her being a bad friend?

---

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: when Marinette apologises, it’s with caveats. “I was totally justified, actually” and “I didn’t mean to” and “I’m the worst person ever, coddle me if you disagree” are prominents aspects of her “apologies”, but, yeah, now that you mention it, downplaying what exactly she did wrong is also a big part of how this show discusses the things Marinette does. I already pointed this out when the London Special doesn’t even call Marinette’s gaslighting of Adrien “lying”, but “not telling the truth”, it’s a discourse tactic to lessen the impact of what’s been done wrong.

When “lying” gets called “not telling the truth”, “doing a bad thing” becomes “not doing a good thing”, the latter sounds far less severe. It’s implying negative consequences coming from inaction rather than purposeful actions, which will turn Marinette into a fellow victim to her victim, them both just being victims of circumstances rather than Marinette being the primary actor and therefore the cause of the negative consequences. Marinette didn’t lie, she just didn’t tell Adrien the truth. Ladybug didn’t ignore Cat Noir’s problems, she just didn’t know he had problems.

Now that you bring up Marinette herself explaining the things she’s done wrong in terms that aren’t exactly lies, but aren’t the full picture either, it really shows that this, too, is a consistent pattern in the show. By controlling the language with which Marinette’s flaws and bad behavior gets discussed, the writers control how her actions are seen by the audience, which makes everything she does seem like much less of a problem.

[olderthannetfic]

I hate to revive DNI discourse when it just ended on this blog but I often don’t think it’s as deep as people make it out to be and there’s a lot of, for lack of a better word, ~valid~ reasons someone may have a DNI. Like there’s absolutely contexts of “Kink Blogs DNI” disclaimers having an anti, swerf, etc undertone but sometimes I get it — for example I follow a couple of disability activists who post A LOT about incontinence, needing a caregiver, ETC who have stuff like “ABDL/DDLG/Devotee Blogs DNI.” Oftentimes that is not an indicator on their moral stance of those kinks, but rather them just being like “hey this is an activism-based journal where I post about incredibly personal things in regards to my own life, and while anyone has the right to read or reblog from me, if you’re clearly getting off to my medical needs or even if I get the vague impression you are, you WILL be blocked.”

Obviously that is an incredibly extreme and personal example, but I don’t think having a DNI boundary in your bio is ALWAYS a morality/discourse stance. On a much lighter note, I’m pretty active on Kpop Twitter, and there’s a lot of “RPF DNI” accounts there, and I think that’s more of a “I just want to post about my favorite band without shippers quote retweeting/replying to make it about their ship, and if you do so, I’ll block you. They’ve made public statements against these ships or about their real relationships and I am uncomfortable with people trying to dispute that.”

Oh yes there’s absolutely antis who hate RPF communities and all they stand for. But there’s also people who just straight up don’t want that on their account.

And like. As someone casually involved with RPF (i gossip about potential relationships with close friends and will reblog joke posts about it and will read it, but I’m not a writer for it and I’m definitely not someone who actually tries to speculate just how heavy the “fiction” part of an RPF ship might be), whether or not I choose to follow a person with such DNI depends on context. I keep my RPF ships/opinions off my main account, and even if I DO see a post that I would otherwise interpret as possibly shippy, I just won’t bring it up on said person’s posts, you know?

Damn this made me remember I have a DNI myself on one my accounts, 🤣 I have a minors DNI on one of my sideblogs. But I know I can’t prevent minors from seeing my posts or lying about their age or reblogging to a private sideblog or doing anything else that would go unnoticed. But once I do notice you interacting, if you’re clearly underage I’ll block you, just cuz I don’t feel comfortable with minors following my smutty fanart account even if I know minors look at smutty fanart, as someone who did look at smutty fanart as a minor. . .🎶Maybe I’m the problem it’s me. 🎶

--

No.

It's a stupid phrasing and no amount of validity in the criteria will make it less stupid.

No one here thinks they're always deep and meaningful. What we all say every time this comes up is that it's bad to conflate "I will block you if..." and "It is your job to research my boundaries ahead of time".

I'm not interested in people crying about how they like using an inaccurate term and everyone is supposed to understand what they mean. In practice, many people do mean that it's other people's job to enforce their boundaries for them. Validating this garbage terminology just encourages them.

It's a stupid, shitty term and we should move away from it.

[mochifiction]

Am I back with more Transformers Bloodborne designs? Yes! I would also like to say that, in terms of the structure of Cybertron in this continuity, I have made some adjustments that are different from the posts I’ve previously made. However, I think that they were done in the continuity’s best interests! So, please meet Elita One: The Prime Minister of Carcer! Elita is not of noble blood. Rather, she was an attendant for the previous Prime Minister’s conjunx endura. She learned early on that, if she was not part of the upper class, most importantly if they did not see her as worthy of their time, she and others like her were no better than cogs in a machine. So, she remained calculating, playing her part. However, she was quick to learn in her work that the Prime Minister had exported Carcer’s resources without any intent of advocating for aid on behalf of Carcer to the Cybertronian Senate. Elita understood that things could stand as they were no longer, instead working on unifying Carcer’s people in secret. She used her privilege and knowledge to provide aid, setting up hidden libraries of literature and energon. She taught what she learned in a world they deemed so impossible to engage with. The people loved her, stood by her, and had great faith in her. Elita was a vessel for the people, determined to bring justice and independence to Carcer as their own intergalactic state. Revolution didn’t come overnight. It took quite some time, but by the power of the people, Elita took the role of Prime Minister and made it very clear upon her first appearance to the Senate that she did not yield to any banner, flag, government, or man unless they were of Carcer. She surprised senators with how she saw through false promises. She even called out the abuse some senators inflicted on their own attendants. It was through this she developed friendships with Soundwave, the attendant of Senator Ratbat with supposed “magical” properties. Her open criticism of the Senate also earned her a deep kinship with Senator Shockwave, who invited her to his charity galas and discourse meetings with those under his reign. He was a genuine man, a GOOD man. Elita saw early on they had the same interests, and they corresponded frequently, even if she was not on Cybertron. It was through him she met the darling scholar Orion Pax, Iacon’s best student. It was the two of them that sparked the embers of reform and resistance when Shockwave was murdered. She refused to let the Senate forget it. Senator Shockwave was their last thought before the end.