#about their relationship while nazis

[autumnrory]

i rmr when all the initial meta around endgame was coming out people were talking about steve being depressed and whatnot and it's like well yeah but he's BEEN depressed, like he woke up alone in this century and he kept going, now i can understand it being worse this time after finding a family and getting bucky back and losing them all except of course that's not why endgame steve was on about so like......the people writing meta were trying to connect these things that of course weren't really there on screen because that simply wasn't our steve

but i think it really could've been SO interesting to see this is the thing that finally makes steve stay down like he's lost so much and he just CAN'T keep fighting like i get some people think that's what they were going for but considering the ending......it's really not. and so i'm just thinking about a version after iw, maybe he gets some of the thor treatment except not turning his depression into a dumb fatphobic joke lol and maybe nat and others are trying to get through to him and it just doesn't work and then we get some flashbacks (which you could have done for all the original avengers actually which would be particularly important for bruce and nat and clint who did not have their own trilogies) including his mom telling him "you always stand up" and THAT being the thing to finally get him moving like it would've been such a perfect way to finally show sarah rogers some respect and ACTUALLY show steve really struggling instead of whatever they tried to do with him in that movie

[autistichalsin]

In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

[chongoblog]

you people who refuse to see both sides ultimately do more harm than good. For example, if two of your kids are constantly getting into fights with each other do you immediately demonize one & victimize & idolize the other one? No. You honestly communicate with them both & work out their issues through empathy to understand both of their situations & work out an understanding to help their sibling relationship, that's what centerism is about. So if that logic applies to this why can't it apply to Israel & Palestine?

enormous balls to send this while israel is literally rolling tanks into Rafah, the place where they told Palestinians to go as a safe zone while they bombed their homes (or I guess not, since you’re asking anonymously, you coward). But you’re right, man, they should communicate, like how Hamas agreed to a ceasefire agreement yesterday, only to be met with, like I said, invading Rafah (aka NOT working through the issues with empathy). All of this on top of the fact that Israel has held Palestine under an apartheid regime for over 75 years. You can’t “both-sides” this.

I don’t even care if this is a troll. I don’t even care if this is bait. I don’t even care if you genuinely hold this position or if you’re sealioning me right now. This is a genocide. You’ll be looked upon by history in the same light as those who sympathized with Nazis.

Pray for Palestine’s freedom.

[obislittleone]

Too Sweet

Dbf!Joel Miller x College!Reader

A/n: hey guys so i may or may not take a writing break (i know i said i was gonna write more but like) the stress of all the nazi shits that keep plaguing my comment sections on every post i make, regardless if it’s political or not is making me wanna tear my head off… so I might just go away a while.

Warnings: fluff, awkward mentions of past relationships, dbf!joel, smut, piv (unprotected), so much teasing. It’s actually pretty cute guys.

Is anyone at all surprised by the song choice? Hozier has us all in a headlock rn… also this is dedicated to my favorite joel writer @macfrog bc she’s just amazing and you should read her work.

MASTERLIST

“Babygirl,” he breathed, pulling back but not away, his face still inches from your own. You could clearly see his blown pupils and focused expression. “Get upstairs.” Though you wanted to tease him, wanted to quip back a quiet ‘or what?’, you needed him just as much, and you weren’t going to be told twice. 

“Dates are a bad idea,” you reminded him, handing over another nail from the box in your hands.

A last minute kitchen Island was added to the kitchen’s floor plan on the current house the team had been working on, so now it was up to yourself and Joel to make that happen. Well, it was up to Joel to make that happen, and it was up to you to stand by and watch him. 

“I know, s’just,” he shook his head, hammering the nail down and holding his hand up for another. “I don’t get the whole thing these days where relationships are built on hookups.”

Your lips turned up in a smile. He was an old fashioned guy, with old fashioned ideals about love and dating and relationships. It was sweet, albeit a little obnoxious. You rather liked hooking up with him, however little it may be.

“Where would we even go?” you saw how on the first hit, the nail went crooked, so you handed him another before he even reached. 

“I don’t know, hadn’t thought that far.”

You had to laugh at that. 

“You wanna take me on a date but you don’t know where we would go?” 

“Well,” he finished the last nail then stood up next to you, scratching the back of his neck. “This ain’t exactly an easy situation, we got your old man to avoid.”

Very reasonable, but sort of an obvious point by now. This entire thing started based on the fact that: you know each other because of your father, as in, they are each other’s closest friend. Pair that with one man hooking up with the other’s daughter, it becomes a disaster waiting to happen… except for he doesn’t see it that way, and neither do you. 

You sighed, looking around to make sure everyone was still outside with the boss. Joel had just wiped his forehead on his arm to rid himself of the sweat, and you could see the tension in his muscles from the work he just finished. You stepped up to him and wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him close enough to peck his lips once. 

“If you can find a place where we won't get caught, then I’d love to go on a date with you.” 

He smiled, kissing you again. He had wanted to tell you he was too sweaty for hugs right now, but as soon as you wrapped yourself around him, those thoughts suddenly left his mind. You just fit so well against him, he wonders how he never realized. 

-

He was even older than you thought. Not actually, but this man had decided on a date location, and as you were pulling in, the things packed into the backseat started to make sense. 

“Drive In movies?” You shouldn’t be surprised, the guy is practically a fossil, he even texts like he's still got a flip phone.

“Your dad’s never taken you here?” He chuckled, pulling into the line at the front. 

“No,” you laughed, leaning back in your seat as the cars ahead moved up. 

“Good, then we won’t run into him.” 

You reached and grabbed his hand over the center console. He always gave two little squeezes before readjusting his grip, rubbing his thumb on the center of your palm. It was sweet, comforting. 

He rolled down his window and paid the attendant in the booth, just a kid, probably still in high-school… but he certainly had an attitude on him, given the nasty glare he served Joel after making eye-contact with you. Joel had never let go of your hand, the kid knew he wasn’t your dad. 

“What’d you tell him, anyway?” He asked, driving off towards the lot on the opposite side of the land. The big screen was not even rolling the trailers yet. 

“Hm?” 

“Your dad,” he seemed almost shy about mentioning your dad in front of you, in this context. How did you lie to him this time? But he knew what he was doing, what he’d been doing and still plans on doing. 

“Told ‘im I was gonna go shopping with a friend, that I may or may not sleep over.”

He raised an eyebrow and smirked, never taking his eyes off the road. He pulled into a spot in the very back corner, where it was likely to remain empty the entire duration of the movie. 

“Oh did you, now?” 

You turned a light shade of pink at admitting to him you wanted to sleep over… not like it was a new occurrence, but you hadn’t really asked him yet. 

“I didn’t tell him for sure, I know Sarah-”

“Sarah’s with Tommy at a concert in Dallas,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt and turning off the engine. “Text your dad, let him know that friend of yours is keepin’ you till tomorrow.”

He got out of the truck, walking around the front to open your door, holding his hand out to help you down. Ever the gentleman. 

“Thank you, kind sir,” you teased, walking around the backseat door and helping him unload the piles of blankets he’d managed to stuff in. The man practically emptied the top shelf of his linen closet for this. 

“Anything for you, M’lady.” 

He ended up taking almost everything into his arms, letting you carry one pillow and a single blanket towards the back of the truck. Normally it was all dusty and gross, proof of the work it helped him do. You wouldn’t even have noticed, because you don’t often pay attention to the state of other people’s truck beds, but he had cleaned the whole thing out, making it look as if he’d just brought it home from the dealership… minus the odds and ends of dents from his toolbox and timber. 

“What’s playin’?” You nodded up to the screen as he took the pillows and blankets, tossing them across the truck bed to make a cozy little area for the two of you. 

“It’s uh…” he reached into his pocket, checking the nightly double stubs. “Jaws and E.T., it’s a Spielberg double feature.”

You don’t remember telling him that Spielberg was your favorite director, but maybe he was just already at that place where he could read your mind… or maybe it was just a coincidence and he thought that the throwback double feature at the drive in would be fun. Either way, he hit the nail right on the head. 

“Sounds good to me.” 

When everything was settled just the way he wanted, he turned to you, his hand out towards the blankets. “After you, darlin.”

You tried to step up on the tailgate, but your foot slipped for how high it was. 

“Want me to give you a toss?” He joked, but you rolled your eyes at him. You would not be acquiring his help after that joke. 

“I’ll be just fine, thank you.” 

It may have been embarrassing, but like hell you were gonna give into him, his chuckles of amusement under his breath as you slowly and steadily climbed up by yourself. It was much harder to grab onto the dip in the bed when there were so many blankets spread out. Eventually you made it up, collapsing onto your back into the mound of bedding. 

“First try,” you raised a fist in the air, looking back to him to see his amusement had not ended and he was smiling wide where he stood, arms crossed and brows raised when your eyes met. “You comin’?”

And as easily as he could walk, he used the ridge along the underside of the tailgate to climb up over on the side, sitting down next to you and giving you a light hearted side eye. “See how easy that was?” 

“Oh yeah, sure. You must be so proud, you’re a pro at climbing into your own truck.”

He laughed, laying back beside you. “Baby, I think anyone looks like a pro compared to you.”

“Maybe I’m just more athletically inclined, wanted to take the long way,” you chided, sitting up onto your elbows and looking over at him. The trailers had started running, and the light was hitting his features so nicely. He looked so nice. You could argue that he always did. At work when he was a sweaty mess, he looked real good then, too.

“I’m sure that’s it.” 

He settled against the pillows, nodding his head upwards for you to join him. He brought you near with open arms, one that settled under your shoulder and the other that settled on your waist. You’d tucked your head under his chin, feeling him rest his head on top of yours. 

You both had fucked around, sure… but this was a little slice of heaven right here. No amount of sneaking around or giving each other temporary pleasure beat the simplicity of laying next to one another, breathing in each other’s air, and being on a date. A real one. It wasn't a hasty exchange built upon needing to get off, but a choice to spend genuine time together, in which you receive nothing but the pleasure of one's company.

You couldn’t remember the last time you went on a date. Joel was right, hookup culture had become too strong in this day and age. It stands to reason that you haven’t actually slept with anyone in a while. You like being asked out, but guys your age don’t exactly want to give you that satisfaction. Joel asked you out. Sure, he fucked you silly on the stretch of his fingers only a week ago… but he still asked you out.

Jaws ended sooner than you thought it would. Back when you were a kid, and afraid of sharks, it seemed much longer of a movie. There was a lull between it and E.T., assuming the kid working in the projection tower had to change out the film roll himself. It made for a sweet and quiet conversation that sparked up as soon as the credits rolled. 

“You bring a lot of girls here?” 

He rolled his eyes and shook his head, even though it was meant as a teasing question. 

“Nah,” he said anyway, turning a bit more to face you. “Usually, I don’t have to hide from my girlfriend’s dads. Not since highschool, anyway.”

You almost didn’t catch it. His use of the word girlfriend, which subtly implied that’s what you were… but you weren’t one to assume, or at least, not with Joel and the risky business of your relationship. You laced your hand with his between your bodies, looking down at his fingers while you did your best to recover the conversation without acting awkward. 

“The more I think about it, I’m not so sure my dad would be angry.”

Joel wished he had the mindset to think that way. 

“You kiddin’ me? If your dad found out I’d been messin with his only daughter, I’d get his shotgun to my head.” 

A laugh escaped your lips, but you shook your head. 

“You’re not just messin with me, though…” 

At least, you hoped he wasn’t. Of all things that could be said about you and Joel, it was that you had already gotten attached. Already been to a place where you miss seeing him at work every day when you go home. Miss talking to him and learning more about his life, and having him listen about yours. There have been so many people in your life who told you that you talk too much, or that you never shut up. But Joel never has. He listens, and he’s happy to. You’d hate to lose that one day and never get it back.

“No,” he lifted your chin so you’d meet his eyes again. “I’m not just messin with ya.”

You held his stare for a moment, neither of you leaned in. It was just a nice moment, to look at one another, and to appreciate what you saw. A moment to see that hey, Joel has little flecks of gold in the brown of his eyes. A little moment for when you get sad that he isn’t around, that way you can remember how he looks at you when he is around. It’s something mixed with longing and contentment. Two opposites that somehow come together on his features and tell you more than his words could ever say. 

“Good,” you finally replied. “In any case, my dad won’t shoot ya. I think he loves you too much.”

He laughed, the low rumble vibrated through his chest, and you felt it against your joined hands.

“You don’t suppose I could woo him over too, huh?” 

“I don’t think your charm would sway him as easily.”

“Oh I got charm, now?”

“No, not really… nice ass, though,” you giggled, and he playfully shoved your arm back, causing you to fall into a fit of laughter on your back. “Just bein’ honest, mister.”

“I see how it is,” he pulled you back in with a swift move of his arm. “Only want me for my body.”

“What can I say? I’m a modern woman in a modern world.”

“S’all the same to me, whatever gets you to agree to a date with me. Still can’t believe you did…” 

He says it half jokingly. You know he doesn’t see himself as desirable. Even though he’s in the prime of his life and is quite literally one of the finest men this town has to offer, he looks at the obstacles. He works too often, has a teenage daughter, he doesn’t look the way he used to, some people find him incredibly boring… but only the worst people. 

“Joel, I'm lucky to be on a date with you.” 

“Yeah, sure… s’not like you ain’t got a hundred guys your age lining up behind me to-”

You kissed him. He was not going to be permitted to speak if he was not going to say nice things about himself, a new rule you were establishing. He didn’t seem to care much for the rest of his sentence after you pulled away, the words slipping from his mind the second your lips touched his. 

“I like you,” you told him, making your intentions very clear to him. You weren’t just messing around, either. “You treat me better than all those shitheads, anyway.”

-

You’d been passing in and out of consciousness on the drive home. You’d been up since the crack of dawn this morning, the neighbor’s dog barking incessantly. You’re sure Joel heard it too, unless of course he’d been laying on his good ear, the bad one would have canceled out all the noise. 

The streetlights go by in waves over your eyes, lids closed lightly after each time they flutter. You were curled so sweetly into the passenger seat of Joel’s truck, finding such comfort in the place. You’d have thought it was where you spent most of your time. His hand was on the edge of your knee the whole drive, rubbing small circles over the area. 

By the time you both had gotten home, you had to scan the yard for signs that your dad may be in the near vicinity. He was usually never home on a Friday night, unless there was a Rangers game or if he had company. It made sense that his car was gone when you both pulled up. 

“You text him, yet?” 

You shook your head, pulling your phone out of your back pocket and completing the task meant for three hours ago. 

“It’s only ten, he might be at the bar, still.”

You didn’t over explain anything in your message, no need to make him question your thoroughness. Just something simple and quick. 

Staying over at Amy’s, I’ll be back before lunch. Drive safe.

But then you immediately deleted the last part. Because how would you know he’s still out? 

Joel had cut the engine, getting out and walking around to meet you at your door, except you’d already opened it and stepped out yourself.

He gave you an unserious look that feigned offense. 

“Hey now,” he settled his hands on his hips, the sass evident in his voice. “We’re still on a date, miss. I’m supposed to get the door.” 

You knew he wasn’t really upset, but you found it funny pretending as if he was.

“Modern woman in a modern world, remember?” 

“Yeah,” he waved you off, shutting your door and taking your hand as you both walked up to the front door. “What all does that entail, anyhow? Bein’ a modern woman?”

You smiled, watching him take his damn time with the keys. He knew exactly what he was doing.

“Well, since achieving the vote, we’ve made quite a bit of ground. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re allowed to work with you guys, now.”

“Ah… how did I miss that?” 

“Weren’t looking hard enough. We also get to wear pants now, so I can see why you’re confused.” 

And once the door was open, he lazily slung an arm around you to let you inside. Ladies first and all that. He didn’t actually respond to your last comment until you were both in the entry hall, door closed. 

“Shame, I kinda like you without pants,” he hovered in close, partially teasing but otherwise just to get his body nearer to yours. The heat between you blossomed, and it could easily be sensed on both sides since leaving the truck. 

“Mister Joel Miller, don't you know the best part of a modern woman?” 

He raised his eyebrows, his head shaking once and eyes rolling over. Just say it already.

“We can ask any man we want to take our pants off.”

There was barely a second between your words and the speed of his lips meeting yours. It was different from the kisses at the drive in, now it was harsh and hungry. A stark contrast to the softness and the serenity. This was clouded by lust, by the human need to devour.

Joel was not gentle by nature. He was often brutish in his work and day to day. There were few people who genuinely saw him gentle. Sarah, Tommy, your dad, and you, his other side neighbors, and Carol, the lady who takes Sarah to school when he can’t. Maybe not in that exact order, but that was the list nonetheless.

You’d always seen him gentle, so the moment he backs you into the door, your back slamming on the painted wood, something stirs. You liked Joel how you knew him… but maybe there was other unexplored territory to delve into. 

“Joel,” you whined out on the end of a breath. His name falling from your mouth was always how he preferred to hear it, but under this context had to be his favorite.

“Baby,” he trailed his kisses to your cheek, then jaw, then neck, resting in the crook of your shoulder and seemingly finding a home there. Your hands dove through his hair, tugging ever so gently and feeling the vibrations on your skin as a repercussion. His hands never found a resting place, running up and down your sides, every few seconds reaching down for a feel of your ass. He seemed to like yours, too. 

When the arousal became too much, you tried your luck at rolling against him. The sound he made alone would have been enough for you to know how badly he wanted you, but the feel of him through his jeans was a physical show of it. He gets hard so fast for you. 

“Babygirl,” he breathed, pulling back but not away, his face still inches from your own. You could clearly see his blown pupils and focused expression. “Get upstairs.”

Though you wanted to tease him, wanted to quip back a quiet ‘or what?’, you needed him just as much, and you weren’t going to be told twice. 

He watched you from behind, taking the stairs two at a time until you reached the top. You nearly tripped over the last stair, but before you could go toppling over, his arm around your waist stopped you dead in your place. 

“So damn clumsy,” he shook his head, the edge of a smirk forming. He tapped your hip with his free hand, getting you to move forward again until you got to his door. “Can’t get in a truck, can’t climb stairs…”

Now that he’d teased you first, you felt you had a small bit of free reign to mess with him. He was still gonna have you, but why make things so boring? You stared at the handle, gripping it, but making no move to twist it and open the door. 

“Doorknob too much for you, too?”

You narrowed your eyes over your shoulder, where he was lingering closely. You could feel him pressed against your backside, the arousal evident in every breath he took, but he was still having fun with his little pokes of annoyance at you.

“I think I remember a rule about your room being off limits…” You trailed, cheekily smiling at him before he reached around you and opened the door himself. He held out his hand with a cocky raised brow, and waited for you to step in. 

“Ladies don’t always have to go first, y’know. S’all part of-”

“Bein’ a modern woman, I know.”

But still you went in first, taking a few steps backward until your knees hit the edge of the bed and caused you to sit. You tilted your head at him, still leaning in the doorway, his hand on the frame above his head and his other hand still steadily on his hip. What’s he waiting for?” 

“I ain’t gonna wait all night, cowboy…” 

He chuckled, shaking his head and slowly coming forward. For someone so eager, he was taking his sweet time. 

“You’re cute,” he gently pushed you back into the mattress, crawling one arm at a time over your form. “But something tells me that you would wait all night.”

He leaned down and met your lips with his, feeling your hands climb from the bed, to his shoulders, then to the sides of his face. He loved the feeling of your hands on him. Loved the way that with each pass of your skin against his, you began to learn the feeling of him as well. With one hand still supporting himself, his other raked down your side, then up over your middle, hugging the curves of your stomach, the stretch of your ribcage, and the gentle peaks of your breasts. He stopped there, paying mindful attention according to every sound you made, every groan of approval, or whimper of satisfaction. It was all he could hear, and became his instruction on how to touch you. 

You wrapped your legs around his hips, pulling him closer between them, trying to spur on the friction that would give you relief. Joel knew the signs of your arousal clearly by now, but there was still ground for him to cover. 

“Gettin’ so needy already, baby.”

His murmur against your mouth was interrupted. You whined at the loss of his lips, but were quieted in a moment when his hands trails downwards. He knelt one knee between your legs, the other still on the ground. He lifted behind your knees and gave a quick shove to drive you further up his mattress. His next move was to go for your shorts, given the fact they’d been causing him to mentally strain himself all evening. 

“Gotta get these damn things off,” he said.

They went flying to the floor, and then he had to stop a minute. With your knees raised, either side of his hips, he had the most ethereal view of your soaked underwear, a dark and increasingly wet stain against the soft blue cotton. When you noticed how long he’d stopped to enjoy the scenery, you grabbed his hand on your knee. 

“Joel, please-”

“I know, babygirl.”

And he didn’t make you beg for it. Not like the silly college boys would, and have in the past. He sunk down on the ground by his bed, leaning over on his elbows, hooking them under your legs again before pulling himself inward. He kissed over the wet fabric, hooking his fingers underneath it at your sides and slowly sliding them off. 

Your hands found his hair and your mouth parted in a shaking breath. The slow contact he made was like sweet torture. Your skin arose goosebumps under his touch, agonizingly slow and increasingly annoying, given your absolute need for him. 

“Need you… Joel I can’t- fuck.”

He kept it slow, but he licked upward, meeting your clit in devastating motions. You needed more, and as if he read your mind, his first finger was brought down and inserted to your seeping entrance. Your cries of approval met her ears like a happy melody, pushing him to go faster. 

You’d already been pushing the edge, just from him touching you… but now that the contact was area specific, you weren’t sure if you could take much more. The hard feeling of him pressed against your earlier had seeded a thought that you would not be satisfied until he was inside you, heavy and full. 

“Want more,” you tried to tell him, but he would not allow his feasting to be cut short. He’d made up his mind about the first time he would actually have sex with you. It wasn’t going to be rushed.

He shook his head, the sensation from the motion even more impacting. You took one hand away from his hair, fisting his sheets as tightly as you could. 

“Gotta work you a little,” he pulled back to say, adding another finger to the mix, feeling you tightly around him. He climbed back up your body, hand never leaving its place between your legs. “Relax for me, yeah?”

You did your best, taking a breath and keeping your eyes trained on his, but they soon fell to his mouth, lips licked clean and the very corners covered with you. It somehow flipped a switch in you that you weren’t sure was good or not. Joel was the first man to go down on you. Joel was the first man to kiss you without immediately putting his tongue in your mouth. Joel was the first man to be so invested in your relationship, that he asked you out on a date… after you messed around. It stands to reason that Joel may be the first man you genuinely fall in love with. Not puppy love like in high school. Not conditional love based on what he can get out of it. Actual love. 

You dawn on this realization quickly, still in the moment and feeling his every move, every grip of his hand or every curl of his fingers. It’s all so instant, and in your present state of mind. Like, every time he moves an inch, it somehow contributes to your relative thought. 

“Joel?” you look up at him with glassed over eyes. 

He pauses his movements below on account of how sincere you sound. 

“Yeah?”

It’s not I love you… not yet. It’s I know you, it’s going to be you.

You reach down between your bodies, his fingers still sheathed in yours, and palm him generously. Without losing eye contact, you undo his jeans, doing your best with one hand to maneuver the waistband of his boxers and pull him from his confinement. You aren’t looking yet… but you know from the feel of his sheer size alone, you’re in for the pain of your life. It bothered you last time, the thought that he may break you on his girth, that you may feel differently or resent him from how he feels… except you don’t feel that way anymore. Because of your aforementioned realization, you now feel that though this may hurt, it would not change your desire for him. He’s not a boy who’s hurting you to get off. He cares about you. 

Not just messin’ around…

“You’ve made me wait long enough,” you told him, the awestruck glaze in your eyes slowly fading as your smirk crawled over your face. You grabbed the hem of his shirt, allowing him to help you get it off. Seeing more of his skin, and feeling it against you when he settled back down was elating. It felt like the doorway to something, the hallway leading to reward. 

“Baby, you’re still tight, I don’t wan-”

“I’ll be okay, I promise.”

He sighed, trying to look anywhere but your eyes because dammit they were convincing. 

“I hurt you, you tell me. Promise that,” he looked at you sternly, and you can’t say you’ve ever seen him so serious like this alone with you. He almost seemed, for lack of a better word, scared. Like you were a flower petal he was afraid to touch for the fear it would fall from the blossom. 

“Promise.”

He nodded, smiling weakly, still unsure but willing to let you lead him blindly. 

He picked you up and put you down on the proper region of the bed, your head meeting the pillows behind you. You giggled at his rapid motions to strip you of your shirt and bra next, his pent up anticipation now getting the better of him. He’d kicked off the last of his remaining clothing, looking back to you, sprawled out on his bed, waiting patiently for him. 

“If we’re gonna do this, we’re doin’ it right,” he joked, crawling back over you. 

He nuzzled his nose against yours, then leaned down to collect a kiss. The kiss met your lips but then parted and moved to your neck, then shoulders, licking the sweet spot in the crook between them. He traveled down your chest, his kisses never stopping, although his hands paid special attention to each peak of raised flesh. 

Your noises fell on grateful ears, the appreciation for them showing in every eager kiss, every soft grope of your skin. When he reached your lower region, he kissed both thighs apart, lifting one at a time and making sure they were set aside his hips comfortably. Once done, he kissed his way back up. Tentative, and slow. Joel is often strong and silent, and in this instance, it showed immensely. The way he can easily move parts of you around without hassle, and do so without uttering a word. It was dangerously addicting, how he already knew your body so intimately after only a few experiences. 

Once his lips again found yours it lasted, and lasted. The feeling of him right against you was breathtaking. No barriers, no clothing, no promises of ‘another time’ between you.

“You let me know, alright?” 

You nodded, his voice had become gentler from his first worrisome words minutes ago. 

He kept his eyes on you, trying to gauge your reaction moment by moment. You wrapped an arm over his shoulder, holding the hairs at the back of his neck to ground yourself. He lined himself up to you and ever so slowly began to push in, holding himself after the first sharp intake of breath through your nose. 

“M’okay,” you said assuringly, the sensation dulling slightly when you focused solely on him and not his actions. 

He went further, and deeper, slower than sludge but making sure you could feel every inch comfortably before moving again. You twirled his hair between your fingers, the other hand digging nails into his side. His face, eyes still focused on your expression, was becoming the product of bliss. This entire exchange, the build up, the stretching pain, and the way your lungs couldn’t seem to exhale, was all worth it… just to see this look on his face. The way he was having to fight himself to stay in the moment and not get lost in the euphoria, it was the most beautiful you’d ever seen him. When he was dazed and confused just by feeling you around him. 

“You gotta breathe, baby,” he let out, trying to keep your comfort in the forefront of his mind. He took a deep inhale of his own, and when he felt you following his steady pattern he was able to relax a little more, just like you did. “Atta girl, just like that… keep doin’ that.”

He started to move, a single thrust once he could be sure that there wasn’t any stiff pain. The only sting left over was fading, the slow and measured pace he set was becoming like a lifeline. Comparable to a heartbeat. In and out, in and out, the feeling becomes more pleasurable and addictive. You need a heartbeat to live, and in this moment, you need Joel to live, his easy and gentle pace. 

“S’good,” you murmured, your eyes fluttering closed and his head dropping to your neck again. “Feels so deep.”

Joel bit down on your skin, tethering himself. The praise was something he wasn’t quite used to. He’s self deprecating to a fault, but hearing the opposite from your lips, which he adores, makes him feel stronger somehow. Keeping a tether is all he can do to keep from rutting against you. He wants so badly for you to be different, to not end up just a one night stand or a friend with benefits. He wants you to feel how much he cares about you, wants to take care of you. 

“Doin’ so good, baby,” he whispered, your neck absorbing most of the sound. “Taking me, so tight.”

Your muscles started contracting the moment he sped up his rhythm, only one thrust that was different from the rest. It hit you so fast, the coil in your stomach, building up and aching for relief. 

“Joel… shit,” You could barely even get your words out, interrupted by a whimper of white hot euphoria. “I’m gonna…”

“I know,” he growled, his desire to rut into you slowly fading as he increased his pace to meet that carnal need. “I feel you, baby. Give it to me.”

It built only a little more, but then you couldn’t take it. It was too much, too full. The tightness in your stomach burst, letting go of every tense muscle in your body. It was so intense you practically screamed for him, his name a repetitive mantra on your tongue. Joel. Your hips jolted and writhed around, the feeling increasing with every hit against your cervix. Joel. Your walls tightened even more around him, the sting only slightly returning but in a way that made you crave it. Joel. He came right after you, unable to even try pulling out, just for how tightly you held him in. Joel…

He dropped half his weight, pulling away from your neck to kiss your lips. He needed to. It didn’t feel right to stay hidden in your neck when he had such gratification for you right now. The way you made him feel was no simple thing, and he felt you needed to be thanked for that. If a kiss was all he could give you in the moment, then so be it.

Joel…

“I’m sorry,” he let out, leaving his forehead against yours. 

“For what?” 

“I came in you… I didn’t ask,” he furrowed his brows, hoping you wouldn’t begrudge him too badly. He’d say he got lucky when you pulled him back down for another kiss. 

“It’s okay… wanted you to,” you were still coming down from your high, possibly the most intense feeling you’ve ever experienced. He smiled and kissed you again, and again. He shifted the way you both laid, on his side, and brought you close to his chest. 

When your breathing went back to normal, you spoke again. 

“I was scared, y’know.”

He looked closely at you, unsure of what you meant and why. 

“I thought you might hurt me. I didn’t care if you did, but I still thought you might,” you told him, running your fingers in circles over his skin. Though you seemed in bliss, perfectly happy, he couldn’t help but be frightened that maybe you weren’t telling him.

“Did I? Hurt you?” 

“No.” you shook your head, holding a smile and making sure he saw it was genuine. “You didn’t hurt me, it was good. Really good. No other guy has ever…” 

He again was confused by the trail of your voice… no guy has ever…? Oh, shit.

“No other guy’s made you come before?” 

The embarrassed blush on your cheeks told him all he needed to know. You weren’t sure why it was so awkward to let him find that out, but you suddenly felt like you were more of a child, having not experienced things that he has for years before. 

“No one before you… and you’ve already got four on the board,” you laughed, trying to make it feel like it wasn’t as big a deal. Like it was funny. 

He narrowed his eyes, raising his head up to look at you closer. 

“Ranger’s night, last week, tonight… that’s three,” he corrected, counting out on three fingers and holding them up. 

“You technically weren’t there the other time,” you smirked, giggling once he looked at you with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. 

“Should’ve called me,” he kissed the tip of your nose, your smile still prominent and growing. “I love hearing you.” 

Over his shoulder you heard his phone buzzing, once, twice, then three times. He huffed, hoping it wasn’t from someone at the work site that wasn’t able to lock up the property after reviewing. 

“Hold on,” he rolled his eyes, turning just far enough to reach his jeans on the ground, pulling his phone from the pocket. He squinted against the harsh light, swiping through the message notifications that appeared when he unlocked the screen. He laughed, turning to you. “S’ your dad.”

“It’s late, I would have thought he was either drunk or asleep by now.”

“Apparently neither,” he slid his phone back on the nightstand, regaining you in his arms. “Wants to know if I’m still awake for a drink.”

You laughed, “Oh, really?” 

“Yeah. Not sure if you’ve heard but, you’re actually at a friend’s house till tomorrow.” 

“How fun for me… so that means a guy’s night for you and my dad?” You played along with him, the sweet tone in your voice turning teasing.

“It would… too bad I’m already asleep.” He reasoned, which is probably what he would repeat to your dad tomorrow if asked. 

“Damn, you old men go to bed early.”

“Hey now… let’s not go crazy.”

-

tags: @justanothersadperson93@moonchild-warrior@hopplessilse @brittmd115 @michilandcof@untamedheart81@just-someone-broken@joelalorian@xybil @yvonneeeee @anoverwhelmingdin@theatrelove3000

[moonstruckme]

I absolutely love your writing!! Could I request some hurt/comfort poly!marauders? Like maybe people are judging/really rude to reader about their relationship and the boys defend her and their relationship and make her feel better 🥹

Absolutely you can! Hope this is what you were looking for babe <3

cw: bullying, sexual shaming

poly!marauders x fem!reader ♡ 1.3k words

“Whore,” Lucius hisses as he brushes past you in the hall. 

You hear James’ inhale beside you a second before you whirl. “What was that, Malfoy?”

“Too fucked out to hear me?” he sneers, coming to a stop and turning to face you. Your heart stutters at his words, but you’re careful not to let anything show on your face. “Don’t suppose you’re good for much except sucking dick, but I have to say, I’m impressed those Gryffindors caught onto it before the rest of us. I mean, why else would they bring you in on their precious trio?” His lip curls, and while there’s amusement there, there’s also genuine disgust that makes some small, pathetic part of you shrivel up in shame. “Slut.” 

“Sweetheart?” James asks, and you wonder if the restraint in his voice is as obvious to everyone else as it is to you. Want me to step in here?

You shake your head at him, but your stare is zeroed in on Lucius. You pout at him sympathetically. “I know it must be hard for you to understand. How’d I get three hot people interested in me, when you can't even get one to look your way?” You shoot him your best impression of Sirius’ wolfish grin. “Don’t worry, Malfoy, someone will come along who’s into all your inbred, Nazi bullshit one day. Maybe even a cousin, if you’re lucky!”

You continue back on your way, pretending you don’t need the steadying hand James rests at the small of your back as you stride down the hall. You make it through the common room, up the stairs, and into the boys’ dorm room before you lose momentum, releasing a shell-shocked, tremulous breath. 

James’ arms are around you in an instant, though it takes you a second longer to melt into his embrace. 

“Are you okay? You seemed like you wanted to handle it yourself, but I wasn’t sure.” 

You take a deep breath. “No, you were right. Thanks, Jamie. It just would have made it worse if it looked like I couldn’t defend myself.” 

There’s a shuffling of sheets, and you turn your head to find you’d been so distracted you hadn’t noticed Remus on his bed, studying. He sits up to look at the pair of you with concerned amber eyes, a question evident in his face. 

James saves you from responding, clutching you tighter and pressing a kiss to your head. “Had a run-in with Malfoy.” 

Remus sighs, the sound knowing. “That’s never good, is it?” His gaze falls squarely on you. “You alright, lovely?” 

You nod automatically, though your hands are trembling slightly. You’ve never been good at conflict, but pricks like Malfoy sometimes require you to rise to the occasion. It bothers you that someone like him, whom you don’t respect and whose opinion you couldn’t value less, can still rattle you like this. You know your relationship is unconventional, but it’s good. You haven’t been dating for very long, but you feel the rightness of it every day. Your boyfriends treat you better than anyone can reasonably deserve. You love them. Still…

“Do you think that’s what everyone thinks?” You extricate yourself from James, trying not to sound as pathetic as you feel. At Remus’ bemused expression, you add, “That you guys are only dating me because I put out, I mean.” 

James looks horrified. “Do you think that?”

“No,” you say, apparently too quickly, because neither boy looks like they believe you. “I don’t. I just…I don’t know, it’s stupid to care what people think, right?”

James bites his lip, and Remus looks at you consideringly. “I wouldn’t call it stupid,” he says after a moment. “It may not be the best guiding principle to always do what people want you to, but they’re not usually easy to ignore either.”

You heave a sigh, collapsing onto Sirius’ empty bed. “Exactly. I don’t want everyone calling me a slut all the time now.” 

Remus’ eyebrows shoot up. “What exactly did Malfoy say to you?”

You hesitate, looking to James in the hopes he’ll answer for you again, but before either of you can say anything, Sirius whooshes in the door. 

He completely fails to read the room, all bright eyes and good spirits as he struts over to his bed and leans down over you, his forearms on either side of your head. 

“I just heard about your Malfoy kerfuffle from Marlene,” he says, kissing you with a smack. “That’s my girl.” 

You can’t help but smile a little, his energy infectious. James gets in on the action too, patting your cheek as he sits down beside the two of you. “She was pretty amazing,” he says. “I thought Malfoy was going to shit the stick right out of his ass.” 

“Alright,” Remus says, the tiniest hint of impatience in his tone, “apparently I need to be caught up. What happened?”

“Our sweet angel said that Malfoy gets no bitches,” Sirius proclaimed proudly. “And then she told him to fuck one of his cousins.” 

“Well,” you say sheepishly, sitting up, “that’s not exactly word-for-word.” 

Remus quirks an eyebrow, but he’s smiling. “No? Give me the summary, then.”

“Basically, Malfoy said you guys only brought me in on your relationship because I put out, and uh, something about me only being good for sucking dick,” you say hesitantly, as if every word he uttered isn’t going to be seared into your memory forever. “So then I said he was jealous that I got three people to like me while he has no one, but…um, I did say something like maybe if he was lucky, he’d find a cousin that was into him.” 

All three of the boys are grinning at you, and Sirius plants another smacker on your cheek. 

“Attagirl,” Remus says, nodding approvingly. 

“Thanks.” You hope your face isn’t as red as it feels. “I guess now, I’m just a little worried that Lucius was just the only one who would say something? Like, what if everyone else is thinking the same thing?”

“Sweetheart,” James says, reaching around you to rub your upper arm comfortingly, “anyone who’s spoken to you for, like, point five seconds is gonna know that’s not true.” 

“Wait.” Sirius shakes his head, working to catch up to the conversation that started when he wasn’t in the room. “Are you really worried about what that prick said?”

You shrug, sheepish and a bit ashamed. “It’s not him, it’s more like…my classmates, and my professors. I wonder who agrees with him.” 

“Baby, anyone who agrees with Lucius Malfoy is just placing themselves in the same camp of idiots he’s in,” Sirius insists. His tone is light, but his eyes lock in on yours, feeling out how serious you are about this. “Our relationship isn’t anybody’s business, but our friends already know how you are, and they’ll defend you to anyone who asks.”

Remus nods. “Agreed. If anyone wants to believe that sort of baseless, cruel gossip, they’re probably not the lot you want to be around anyways. Just like Malfoy, yeah? If you cared what he thought,” Remus pauses to raise a playful eyebrow at you, “you probably wouldn’t be suggesting he fuck his cousins.” 

You grin. “Please, like he needed my encouragement on that one. You’re right, though, thanks.” 

James squeezes your shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t let him get in your head, sweetheart. Everyone who matters already knows he’s full of shit.” 

“Yeah, and you should’ve heard Marl boasting about you in the common room,” Sirius adds. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she buys your butterbeers next time we’re in Hogsmeade.” 

You laugh, but stop when Remus levels you with a serious look. “Anyone talks like that to you again, you come straight to us, understand?”

You nod, and Sirius drags you into his side, eager to lighten the mood again. “Yeah,” he declares, “if anyone’s calling you a slut, it needs to be consensual, and it ought to be me.”

[l0stglitch]

Platonic yandere lost boys headcannons

Notes- This was supposed to be general headcannons but then I started leaning into the darker side of the dynamics more, so now it’s more focused on the relationships between reader and the boys.

Warnings- Emotional manipulation, Psychosis, Non consensual drug use, Yandere behaviour, Murder

Dwayne

• You mean the absolute world to Dwayne.

• Seriously- every waking thought is spent on you. You’re like a drug that he can’t function without.

• Sometimes the others joke that he has separation anxiety (he 100% does).

• He loves listening to you speak. Often you’ll both lie down on your bed and stare up at the ceiling. You’ll tell him about your day through the rose-tinted lenses of childhood, and he’ll listen. He listens with an interest that you have never been regarded with before. It makes you feel special.

• The two of you go down to the skatepark together every now and again and your dad teaches you how to skate.

• You’d never tell the others, but those are your favourite nights. When it’s just you and Dwayne out at night practicing tricks under the solitary streetlight.

• It’s usually empty, but when there is anyone else there Dwayne warns you of how dangerous they could be.

• He doesn’t mean to scare you, but sometimes the only way you’ll follow the rules is by telling you every other man out there is out to get you.

• His warnings made you paranoid and untrusting of everyone for a while.

• It eventually got so bad that you had a psychotic episode- locking yourself in your room for days because you believed that your fathers wanted to harm you.

• Eventually they broke down your door to find you starving and severely dehydrated, having spent days completely devoid of food and water.

• You were too weak to even fight back when they scooped you up and carried you out your room.

• Dwayne was in hysterics.

• He didn’t leave your side for the rest of the week, and made sure to hand feed you all your meals.

• You protested, but he was relentless.

• He almost made you feel like it was your fault. Acting so hurt that you would take such little care for yourself. Do you really hate them that much? Why don’t you trust them after everything they’ve done for you?

• Days later, you found yourself crying in his arms, begging for forgiveness. Through desperate sobs you sputtered out apology after apology, clinging to his leather jacket.

• Seeing you so needy for him- so desperate for his love almost made it all worth it.

• He just ran his fingers through your hair like you were a scared animal, trying to get you to calm down.

• That’s how disputes between you and your father almost always end. With you begging for his forgiveness for something you know deep down wasn’t your fault.

• After your breakdowns, you often sit alone in your room wondering how you let the same thing happen every time. You’ve always had a soft spot for Dwayne, but sometimes you wonder if his powers have more uses than you thought.

• All those times you’ve awoken from a horrifyingly realistic nightmare, or felt a piercing sense of dread at the thought of sneaking out, a tiny fear itches in the back of your brain.

• Are your thoughts actually yours?

Marko

• Marko 100% plays with you the most.

• He’s just naturally more energetic than the others (which often leads him to getting into fights).

• But when he’s not scrapping with surf nazis, he spends the rest of his time practically worshipping you.

• Sometimes when it’s just the two of you, you’ll stop by a playground to play for a bit.

• He’d never admit it to anyone, but sometimes he gets jealous seeing you play with the kids there.

• I feel like Marko is a very creative person (I mean cmon look at his jacket). One of my personal hcs is that he painted the leopard on Dwayne’s jacket.

• He’d definitely buy (or steal) a jacket for you just so he can customise it. He also sees it as a way of showing that you belong to them.

• You’d sit next to him on the couch, sketching out every little detail you want whilst he listens, hanging onto your every word.

• Despite his need to show everyone you are theirs, he also genuinely loves making things for you.

• He made a bracelet for you to match the one Dwayne stole when you first met.

• Out of everyone he’s the most possessive.

• Sometimes, depending on his mood, he’ll ban you from speaking to anyone other than them (even Max). Other times he’ll outright stop you from going to the boardwalk with them. He’d stay with you in the cave whilst the other three go out to hunt.

• It worked when you were younger and more obedient, however during your teen years you grew to be a lot more rebellious.

• Marko absolutely HATES the thought of you growing up. He doesn’t know what kind of a person you’ll be in the future, and that scares him.

• That and the fact that he knows you’ll inevitably want to start dating.

• He’s kind of in denial about the whole growing up thing.

• Unfortunately when you do become a teenager he literally can’t cope. He refuses to believe you are able to take care of yourself and will baby you.

• On multiple occasions you have lashed out at him for the way he treats you, sick of how he refuses to accept the fact that you have a functional brain and can think for yourself.

• Unfortunately Marko has a particularly short temper. He has, on multiple occasions, accidentally shoved you into a cabinet in the heat of an argument, and left you with dark, angry bruises.

• And then comes the guilt tripping. Sometimes you’d wonder if he secretly likes it when you get hurt because of how happy he always looks when he gets to take care of you.

• You’re father’s mood can switch up in a matter of seconds. Sometimes it feels like you’re walking on eggshells around him, afraid that the slightest mistake will set him off.

• Usually Dwayne or Paul are around to tell him to chill out, but when you’re alone you just have to play along with his delusions of you still being his little girl to avoid conflict.

• It’s hard though, especially when he suddenly brings up a new rule to ‘keep you safe’. It’s practically impossible to keep Marko happy, and with every new rule, you know it’s only a matter of time until you break it (intentionally or not).

• He would never admit it, even to himself, but part of him secretly enjoys it when you break the rules. He likes hearing your heart pounding loudly from your chest, betraying the unbothered scowl on your face.

• It reminds him that no matter how grown up you look on the outside, you’ll always just be that timid little girl they found by the carousel. Helpless and in need of her fathers.

Paul

• He doesn’t mean to be, but Paul is definitely the dad that lets you get away with anything.

• Poor guy doesn’t really know how to act around kids, so he ends up either being a bit awkward around you or just treating you like a mini adult.

• As a result, you don’t really fear him as much as you do the others, but you also don’t see him as reliable as they are.

• You know Dwayne will always be there for you. Paul though? Half the time he’s too high to even tell you what day of the week it is.

• He feels guilty about it. Really guilty. He loves you just as much as the others do, but he just doesn’t know how to show it, so he lets you get away with things.

• Oh- you want a chocolate bar for breakfast? Sure, so long as you don’t tell Dwayne.

• You wanna try his cigarette? Ok, but make sure David doesn’t find out.

• At first it’s great. You love getting to hang out with Paul because of the little secrets you share. He gets high and you get to do what you want.

• It isn’t until you start to grow up, and he begins to enjoy your company more that his behaviour starts changing.

• Out of everyone, Paul (ironically) knows the most of your secrets.

• He’s just so much easier to talk to than the others- and whilst he doesn’t always give you particularly good advice on how to deal with certain situations, you can appreciate him for listening.

• Your trust in him backfires though, as he realises he can use your secrets against you.

• He literally blackmails you into spending more time with him. You don’t wanna hang out? That’s fine- but be prepared to have a stern telling off from David after Paul found a bag of weed under your bed.

• You picked up most of your bad habits from your father. Getting black out drunk and stealing cigarettes with your small group of friends, for example.

• Compared to the others, he isn’t very controlling in terms of rules. He knows that telling you what to do directly will only make you rebel, so instead he takes a slightly different approach.

• He drugs you.

• It took years for you to finally realise why you would sometimes sleep for such long amounts of time, despite not feeling tired beforehand.

• Eventually you connected the dots, and came to the sickening realisation that he would put crushed sleeping pills in your food every time you mentioned wanting to go out with your friends.

• After confronting your fathers about it, you refused to eat any food they had prepared for you. This lasted a while, until you ran out of money and were no longer able to afford cheap takeaways.

• It becomes a lot harder for Paul to drug you after that, however every now and again he manages to slip you a sedative.

• You absolutely hate it.

• You hate feeling completely helpless. Mind dull and emotions muffled by the effects of the drug. Even your body feels heavy, and you find that you only have enough energy to lay in Paul’s embrace, waiting to fall asleep.

David

• Ok let’s be real David is definitely the most distant father out everyone.

• After all, he has a reputation to uphold (and he’s scared of completely fucking up as a dad).

• He prefers spending time with you inside the cave rather than going out to the boardwalk.

• He uses excuses similar to Dwayne- telling you how dangerous it is, but unlike Dwayne he doesn’t actually believe what he’s telling you.

• David knows that it’s very unlikely that anything will happen to you. You’re hardly ever by yourself, so the chances of someone actually managing to hurt you are slim- especially with four overprotective vampire fathers lurking nearby.

• The real reason is that it makes him feel less in control. He can’t decide who you’re friends with, or who talks to you when you do occasionally manage to sneak away from them.

• Your biological family is gone. But who’s to say there isn’t someone out there looking for you still? David can’t help the everlasting paranoia from seeping into his every thought.

• So for peace of mind, he sets rules and curfews. Anything that will ease his worries.

• Practically every minute of your life is dictated by David. He thrives off of controlling you.

• Each and every rule and punishment goes through him first. He’s essentially the backbone of the pack.

• You resent him for it. You hate the way he encourages the others, and how he speaks down at you so condescendingly.

• Your relationship wasn’t always so strained though.

• As a kid you completely idolised David. His hair, his bike, his music. You were like his shadow. Constantly trailing behind him, grasping onto his signature trench coat.

• He loved every minute of it. Your father would spoil you. He’d steal little gifts at every opportunity, and buy you posters and t shirts of all the bands he had gotten you into.

• Unfortunately, as you got older you made friends outside the pack. You developed new interests, and David felt threatened.

• After all, you’re supposed to their little girl. You were supposed to grow up and stay with your fathers- your pack. Not branch out and meet new people.

• So in response, David killed one of your friends.

• One of the boys in your group who he thought you were becoming dangerously close to.

• Of course, you didn’t know David was the reason he had gone missing, so when you broke down in tears, feeling terrified for your friend, David was there to hold you.

• The way he gently rubbed your back and soothingly whispered into your ear almost made you forget about the disappearance of one of your closest friends.

• That brief moment of bliss bringing you back to your childhood as you sought comfort in your father’s tender embrace.

• David could only pray that you would remain ignorant to the truth about your dearly departed friend.

Tag list- @bella-goths-wife (lmk if anyone else wants to be added)

[bananonbinary]

Tumblr's debt is a problem of their own creation. The app is buggy, the userbase is flooded with porn bots, nazis roam free, hate speech roams free, trans women have sfw content marked mature, art and posts are stolen for promotion, features are forced down our throats, ads are malicious and often gross or triggering and giving them money will not stop this.

If we give tumblr money they're not going to get rid of Tumblr live or restore the nsfw or remove ads or whatever you think they're going to do, they're going to KEEP DOING THE SAME THING except with more money to blow. Tumblr is a CORPORATION, they can get a government bailout like any other corporate entity can, and while people are throwing money at a dumbass corporation there are people begging to get bills paid and for food and other necessities.

Please open your eyes to the reality of the situation, its not just some guy anymore, David Karp is long gone its a soulless conglomerate now and they do not need our pity

a lot of yall seem to think that i want to like, bake sale save the baseball team. that's not what this is about. i don't think we need to "fix tumblr's debt," i think we need to make the website profitable (and the debt shows it isnt, altho from what i can gather a better word is "deficit" rather than "debt," ie, they are losing that much more money than they take in annually), because as it stands tumblr has no reason whatsoever to want to keep the current user base around. it's trying to attract a different userbase, because yall are PROUD of the fact that tumblr is a failing website and you dont want to pay them. you're loitering inside a store and acting surprised when the store wants you gone. of COURSE they're constantly introducing new features and not listening to what the users want, they don't want you here.

it's not a protest, it's not an attempt to buy good will, it's a simple business transaction: i spend a lot of time here, and i would like to keep spending a lot of time here. so i will buy my shitty internet crab, and tell my fellow loiterers that they can as well if they want. if you dont want to do that, you literally don't have to, but you can't tell me not to.

you people are all like "ohh tumblr isnt your friend dont give it money" but like. yeah. its not my friend. i would like to pay it for a service it provides, instead of expecting it to continue to provide that service out of the goodness of its non-existant heart. i dont think im the one with the parasocial relationship here.

also:

dont tell me to help a poor people. i am a poor people. i am allowed to spend THREE DOLLARS on something i like for myself, and not give literally every single dollar i have to charity and mutual aid. you have NO IDEA how much or if i do for other people, and you won't, because you aren't owed every detail of my life like that. people are allowed to have things they want for no other reason than they want them sometimes.

[littledemon55]

A while ago I saw a post of someone saying that Vivziepop's Nazi Oc was a joke and... Even IF it was a joke, it's hella offensive! You can't even call it a joke, because no one was laughing. Except for Vivzie... And Neo-Nazis...

The Helluvaverse Fandom is not a safe space for Jewish people.

The fact that crazy fans went out of their way to defend a cosplayer doing blackface... The character they cosplayed isn't even black! The fans still harassed people for calling them out! Even people of colour who were rightfully offended!

The Helluvaverse Fandom is not a safe space for people of colour.

Vivziepop has been transphobic towards trans man and non-binary people since day one. There are multiple screenshots of her misgendering people on purpose. She thinks we're confused and doing it for a trend.

The Helluvaverse Fandom is not a safe space for trans* and non-binary people.

Vivziepop has liked multiple posts about a ship between a r@pist and his victim. Made one of her shows about an abusive relationship and victimises the abuser. She actively fetishises one of her characters and doesn't take his abusive serious. She has also made multiple jokes about it. Medrano also abused her workers, who called her out for it.

The Helluvaverse Fandom is not a safe space for S//A and abuse survivors in general.

Spindlehorse aka Vivienne Medrano doesn't pay most of her employees more than the minimum wage, if not less. She barely credits her artists and threatens them not to work for other animation studios. The merch Spindlehorse sells is overpriced and always limited edition, so they can get as much money out of their fans as possible.

The Helluvaverse Fandom is not a safe space for supporters of small businesses and people who are anti capitalism.

[determinate-negation]

Like many Americans I’ve spent my life immersed in these distorted stories about both world wars. I’m aware enough that my perception has been manipulated to want to address it but I don’t know where to start. Are there any readings or other media you recommend to this end?

heres a post i made a while ago with sources on american support for fascism and complicity in the holocaust

also recommend ken burns documentary the us and the holocaust, made a post about it here

for general history on relationship between fascism and capitalism- blackshirts and reds by michael parenti

the main things i see in pop culture american ww2 historiography is 1. downplaying the decisive role the ussr played in defeating fascism and the extent of nazi war crimes and genocidal actions against soviet citizens 2. revising us motivations for entering the war and attitudes towards fascism and towards jews before/during ww2 3. erasing how much the anticommunism of western leaders was a factor in "appeasement" 4. just complete lack of understanding of what nazism was both ideologically and in practice. i have some more links to stuff about fascism specifically here.

also recommend the documentary the sorrow and the pity about french collaboration and attitudes towards fascism. and the book nazi europe and the final solution is a collection of academic essays on the holocaust. george mosse who i mention in one of the linked posts has written a lot of cultural history of germany and nazism. and detlev peukert also

[wee-chlo]

I'm rereading Harry Potter and it's baffling how people just... pretend Snape was a completely different person than who he actually was?

Granted, Alan Rickman's Snape and Book Snape are two genuinely different people, to the point that I think Movie Snape would be mildly disgusted by Book Snape. Movie Snape came off more as someone who was angry and spiteful to a select few for reasons that ranged from Understandable to Irrationally Petty, but generally very grim and stern, with a good heart beneath it all. Book Snape is a piece of shit.

Movie Snape doesn't have the same cruelty as Book Snape: his targeting of anyone other than Harry is framed in a more slapstick way and his teaching isn't neary as abusive. Neville being terrified of him doesn't have the same implicit showcasing of Snape being abusive but rather Snape being stern and unforgiving while Neville is meek and needs positive reinforcement to flourish.

Movie Snape is stoic, deadpan. I saw a clip of Rickman on YouTube and either he, a commenter, or both noted that a touchstone of Rickman's performance for Snape was that he didn't raise his voice. Not so in the books, where Snape's described several times loosing his temper and screaming, even shrieking. Snape is terrifyingly volatile in the books, in contrast to the movies where even at his most furious, most emotional, he remains in control of himself.

Book Snape is, unambiguously, just a bad person. Not just a bad teacher, a bad PERSON. He is a small, bitter, petty bully who shouldn't be anywhere near children, and honestly Dumbledore letting him near children is probably more of an indictment of Dumbledore's character than the fact that he used to be a wizard supremacist.

And to be clear, while teenage Snape isn't AS bad as adult Snape by virtue of being a teenager... he was also just Not Good. He ran around with Wizard Nazis. Lily called him out on that, on the fact that he was clearly ready and rearing to join Voldemort, that he used Dark Magic on other students alongside his death eater buddies, etc.

James and Co were little shits who teased and picked on students. But Remus and Sirius made a point that Snape and James had a uniquely, mutually hostile relationship. Remus and Sirius state directly that ultimately, one of the primary reasons James targeted Snape was because Snape was "up to his eyeballs in the Dark Arts and James hated the Dark Arts".

I've seen people use the fact that James never apologized to Snape as an indictment of James' character but like... when and why would he have apologized?

Genuinely, I think if Snape had made a good faith effort to be a better person BEFORE the death of the Potters, James may have apologized. But Snape at the time of James' death was a literal wizard nazi and honestly? I can't see him feeling terribly bad about bullying him, or at least not feeling obliged to apologize. And even if he had, how would he have done so? Send an owl to wizard nazi HQ?

But I think the thing that made me bristle the most about the books was the gaslighting that happened in book 6.

Remus is... going through it in that book, fair enough, but when Harry is talking to him about his suspicious, he gently accuses Harry of "inheriting James' and Sirius' prejudice" and being "determined to hate [Snape]". Like.... I'm sorry, but did Remus get hit in the head? Are we supposed to just casually forget EVERYTHING SNAPE HAS SAID AND DONE TO HARRY IN THE LAST FIVE BOOKS?!

If anyone came into it with an inherited prejudice and a determination to hate, it was Snape.

Justice for Book 6 Harry, everyone's treating him like he's bonkers but he's right.

[dalekofchaos]

Not interested in LIS:Double Exposure

Okay I saw the Double Exposure trailer and I am not playing it.

Multiple reasons.

The Deck Nine IGN article. I will not support a developer that knowingly protected a bigoted groomer and allowed a Nazi to sneak in White Supremacist signs in the game.

Max learned nothing about the first game. Nevermind there is no Chloe, Warren or anyone from Arcadia insight(we'll get to that) Max apparently formed another codependent relationship that she couldn't let go to the point where she's fucking up reality by creating yet another parallel world. Either Deck Nine is entirely unoriginal or Max didn't learn a damned thing

That is not Max. If your defense is "she grew up" I got news for you. I've looked the same for nearly a decade. I've had friends while changing their aesthetic, they look the same. you don’t look like an entirely new person when you age, the new model looks nothing like max there’s barely even resemblance. Also I know, we all change our style as we get older, but Max's style was unique and it made Max Caulfield who she is. It didn't need to change. Deck Nine just Stephified Max. Was it really that hard to give Max bangs? Not just that. No freckles, eyes and eyebrows look completely different. This is not Max Caulfield.

4. No one from Arcadia Bay returned. It's pretty obvious Deck Nine is either keeping Chloe's fate a secret, but it's also clear they are trying to skirt around the issue of the endings without pissing everyone off. Feels like a copout to whatever ending you chose to give a new cast of characters. For the fans who wanted more time to play as Max and Chloe, I feel bad for you, I especially wanted to see Chloe again. So what the fuck was this supposed to be for then?

Though another point; why the hell are we supposed to be okay with the fact that Max is using her power again to save this brand new character we have zero previous connection to? Especially if the game’s gonna try to straddle both endings to LiS 1; seems very insulting to have Max be okay with doing it for a character we have no previous attachment to, but she’s left her girlfriend to die alone, thinking nobody loved her?

Also you had the perfect chance to make a fucking game that has Max save Rachel. I know I just did a tangent about Max not learning anything, but if you were just going to have Max use her powers again, why the fuck didn't you do it to save Rachel from a fate she never deserved? Godfucking forbid you give attention to Warren, Kate or Victoria. I just wanted to see these characters get some screen time, make cameos or give us SOME hint to what they are up to after the events of the first game. But no, we can't have that. We can't be given anything of substance for Warren, Kate or Victoria. Can't learn anything about their fates in the LIS 2 Save Arcadia Bay ending, can't find out Warren or Kate survived the storm in Wavelengths via talking to Steph during the storm anniversary and we can't see them again in DE. I know it's just a teaser, but seriously why even do a new Max game if we don't even get cameos from these characters? Knowing how Deck Nine is, they are just gonna find a way to demonize Warren to paint him like Eliot, regress Victoria's character and not even give Kate the time of day to mention. Jesus fucking christ, I just wanted to see Max and Warren Go Ape, fun Max and Victoria photodates and to see Max and Kate have one fucking Tea date. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR???

5. Deck Nine are literally just swiping DontNod’s characters for the purposes of chasing that brand recognition. It's just copy pasting lighting in a bottle and milking a cow out of this franchise. BTS was remotely successful because of Chloe and Rachel's relationship. True Colors is fun at first, but realize it's just a hollow imitation of the first game. DONTNOD's story was original, fun and unique. I had problems with it but it was still THEIR story on their terms and not developed from a place of corporate cynicism asking for preorders ASAP that come bundled with a box of tissues and bobbleheads of dead teenagers. Read recent interviews from DONTNOD and you can TELL they got burned by SquareEnix over this. I hope they can channel that into something with Bloom and Rage because I’d love to see them recapture that magic again.

I had fears of what would happen if Deck Nine ever got their hands on Max. And looks like I was right to be worried.

To be clear, I think making stories with someone else’s character is great and cool and it’s literally what fanfiction is and technically, MUCH of mass media now IS “fanfiction”. The difference here is DONTNOD deliberately wanted LIS 1 canon left alone, near as I can tell. But no, Square Enix wanted a franchise and Deck Nine was more than happy to milk the cow for all it was worth and Deck Nine has shown they don't understand DONTNOD's characters

The game looks like it's repeating everything about the first game, but none of the charm that made it great. It's beat for beat the same fucking game. Dead friend, murder mystery, but without the ambiance, charm or magic that made the first game good. Deck Nine is completely unoriginal, DE is a soulless cashgrab and their hyperrealism killed the entire essence of the game and its characters.

It's quite literally a copy and paste of True Colors, but with Max.

And when we just look at this. Double Exposure is just soulless. It's style over substance and I knew. I just KNEW that if Deck Nine got their hands on Max it would be half-assed and soulless shit like this. They dared to slap Max's name on a Steph lookalike and then just do True Colors again, but more hollow.

There's something just so disappointing about the change in art style over the years. The art direction in the first game was charming and now it just feels kinda soulless. The awkward chunkyness of the models really made it stand out but now it feels way too smooth

life is strange going from one studios passion project to another’s cashgrab is one of the biggest modern tragedies in the world deck nine they could never make me like you. All the charm of the franchise from the cartoonish artstyle to the episodical releases has been completely stripped away it’s just very disappointing to see.

This meme is literally Double Exposure.

[renthony]

🏳️‍🌈

My beloved wife @natalieironside wrote a book titled The Last Girl Scout, which features a kickass cast of queer characters and stars a pair of trans lesbians who fight both zombies and nazis. Natalie's own promo post is here!

You can buy a copy via Amazon, and this is the official plot summary:

The past lies like a nightmare over the world. Two hundred years after the War when atomic fire rained from the skies and burned the world to cinders, human civilization has had time to rebuild within the burned-out husk of Old America.  But the old terrors of the past still persist, and while some work to build a better world, others still dream of reclaiming the glory of the Old World. In southern Appalachia, political commissar Magnolia Blackadder is sent on a mission into the irradiated Exclusion Zone of Old DC, where an evil that humanity thought it had vanquished centuries ago is waking up and rebuilding its strength.  Along the way, she meets a strange woman with terrible secrets and an unspeakable past, and as they forge a bond and brave the terrors of the wasteland together, she learns that some demons are not so easily exorcised, and that some stones are better left unturned. In this her debut novel, award-winning author Natalie Ironside delivers a new vision of the post-apocalypse, a tale of adventure, terror, love, and that most basic and most powerful of all human desires:  Freedom. 

Obviously I love it because my wife made it, but outside of that, this book is genuinely one of my favorites. I'm so glad she shared it with the world, because it makes me feel better when I start feeling overwhelmed about all the bad shit out there.

In The Last Girl Scout, there are still queer people meeting, building relationships both romantic and platonic, and supporting each other even when the world is on fire. People make fucked up bad decisions but receive support after they choose to do better and commit to healing the harm they've done. Parents support their trans kids. The power of gay love brings renewal and hope. I think we need more stories like that in the world.

Also, there's a gay vampire DILF.

Drop a 🏳️‍🌈 in my inbox and I'll respond with a queer media recommendation!

[inamindfarfaraway]

I know the Spies are Forever fandom is insane about Curtwen, and I include myself in that, but I really appreciate how Tatiana is a narrative and thematic foil to both of them, especially in her dynamic with Curt. Curt meets her at the same time as he meets the new Owen, and is outclassed by both. She saves him at the same time as Owen tries to kill him. She even sings to the melody of Curt and Owen's partnership when choosing to do so. She destroys CHIMERA's facility while Curt destroys his lover nemesis, both freeing themselves from the shackles of their traumatic pasts. She comforts him after he buries Owen and he gives her what he's just experienced thanks to her: closure about her lost loved one(s). She leaves an evil organisation and rejects the identity of a merciless living weapon to become Curt's best friend and partner; reconnect with those she was separated from and form new bonds; and embrace the heroic potential of professional espionage - the exact inverse of Owen's arc. Like Owen, she betrayed her homeland and abandoned everyone she cared about. Like Curt, she is haunted by guilt and grief and has her personal history used against her. Like Owen, she is an employee of Baron von Nazi with her own agenda who manipulates and hurts Curt. Like Curt, she is the human spirit Owen is unable to break. Her and Curt's relationship quite literally progresses from the coldest hello to the warmest goodbye.

[theygender]

TLT fans: did you guys know about the real Wake? I hadn't heard about her until we covered World War II in my world civ class this semester

Nancy Grace Augusta Wake (1912-2011) was a covert operative who was at the top of the Nazi's most wanted list in WW2, nicknamed "The White Mouse" for her ability to repeatedly evade capture. She was born in New Zealand with Māori heritage, grew up in Australia, and joined the Resistance after traveling to Europe and witnessing the harsh treatment of Jews in Vienna by the Nazis

Wake worked in the Pat O'Leary Line escape network until her Resistance organization was compromised by the Germans in 1942. After that she fled on foot across the Pyrenees—with several close calls that she escaped by flirting with German soldiers—and made her way to England to join the Special Operations Executive. She was part of a three person team codenamed "Freelance" which parachuted into occupied France. During this operation she got stuck in a tree after her parachute became tangled in its branches. The local Resistance leader who found her reportedly said “I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year" to which she replied "Cut out that French bullshit and get me out of this tree"

While working in the Freelance operation Wake once biked 500 km (310 mi) without stopping in the span of 72 hours across Nazi territory to retrieve a new radio and codes after her team's were destroyed in a Gestapo raid. Without this feat, Freelance would not have been able to communicate with London and there would have been no more supply drops to support their Resistance organization. During the war she was also part of a raid which destroyed the Gestapo headquarters in Montluçon, in which she reportedly killed a Nazi sentry with her bare hands to prevent him from raising an alarm

Wake's fellow operatives described her as "a real Australian bombshell. Tremendous vitality, flashing eyes. Everything she did, she did well. She was an excellent shot, excelled at fieldcraft and put the men to shame by her cheerful spirit and strength of character." "She is the most feminine woman I know until the fighting starts. Then she is like five men." "We both came to the conclusion that she was 10 times the man I would ever be"

By the time of her death in 2011, Wake had been awarded the George Medal by Britain; the Medal of Freedom by the United States; the Médaille de la Résistance, the Croix de Guerre (x3), and the Légion d’Honneur by France; and the Badge in Gold by New Zealand. Due to a complicated relationship with Australia, she originally refused to accept any awards from the Australian government, saying that they could "stick their medals where the monkey stuck his nuts." In 2004, however, she accepted the honor of Companion of the Order of Australia as well

[thrashkink-coven]

Hi! I saw your post about the appropriation of religious imagery by extremest hate groups (a good post, I share your feelings of frustration) at the end you made a vague statement about the satanic temple and was wondering if you could elaborate on what happened there? They are a group I admittedly only have passing knowledge of, but what I have seen has usually been pro LGBTQ advocacy or similar things. Not that I don't believe you- I don't really interact with large institutions because they tend to become inevitably corrupt and have inherent gatekeeping, but I was wondering if you wouldn't mind explaining what exactly or which extremist propaganda they have been aligning with recently? Or is it just because they are generally anti-theistic?

(I have, in fact, been almost literally living under a rock the past few years so I apologize if the answer is something obvious, but I couldn't seem to find anything with cursory searches so thought asking someone in the community would be a better source)

I couldn’t even begin to outline all of the terrible shit the leaders and founders of The Satanic Temple have done over the years. They are a group of alt white scammers using progressive ideology and leftist sympathy to fill their pockets. They use their image to pray on young women at sex parties and employ real cult tactics to isolate and abuse them. They are a company comprised of sexual abusers, manipulators, and fascists parading the name of Satan to manipulate actual Satanists and Luciferians into giving them money, despite never showing any real respect to those philosophies or religions. We all already know they’re not theistic satanists and they don’t really worship Satan, but they also have absolutely no relationship with Satanism or Luciferian gnosis. You cannot be a Luciferian or a Satanist and be friends with Nazis. Idgaf call me a gatekeeper. They just like to use the image of Satan for publicity stunts to ruffle the feathers of a few Christians. They do not embody the Luciferian spirit or the values of Satanism.

I have a deep hatred in my soul for Douglas Mesner and how much damage he has done to the image of Luciferianism and Satanism, not to mention the real world damage they have done to abortion advocacy groups. The strategic moves of opposing institutions that oppose LGBT rights has actually given a bad name to good faith organizations who already have enough negative stigma around them. Abortion advocacy groups don’t need the narrative that they’re sacrificing babies to Satan by being supported by the Temple of Satan on top of all the backlash they already receive by Christo-fascists.

They DO NOT use the money donated for abortion advocacy to help young mothers or to fight real cases of human rights abuse, they have never actually helped a real woman obtain healthcare. The leader himself openly admitted to taking money donated to the Satanic Temple to pay his personal bills.

Asides from the plethora of real accusations of sexual assault and violence against female members of the church itself, the leader Douglas Mesner has actively supported abusers and suppressed victims from WITHIN THE CHURCH!! (kicking them out, harassing them, threatening them lawsuits etc) from obtaining justice. They have never made any actual strides in the fight towards liberation and have actively supported real fascists for years now. Douglas Mesner has advocated for eugenics and made horrible anti semitic and racist comments in the past and continues to support alt right nationalists who actively spread hateful rhetoric. The lie they promote of wanting to protect women’s and LGBT rights is a well crafted marketing scheme to give them a good image while they abuse and manipulate their own members behind the scenes.

This is a fantastic video essay that dives deep into the history of the members and their controversies:

Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart,

FUCK THE SATANIC TEMPLE

There are of course members who are great people who truly take the philosophy to heart, who have seriously fought for liberation and have sadly had their empathy hijacked. But I don’t like cops and I don’t like people who support Douglas Mesner and his band of freaks. They cannot be trusted and they have done far more harm than good. Actions speak louder than words.

[hotvintagepoll]

Propaganda

Myrna Loy (The Thin Man, Manhattan Melodrama, Mr Blandings Builds his Dream House)—Started out a slinky silent screen vamp. Became a screwball lead who had a blast drinking, being married to William Powell, solving mysteries, and taking her dog everywhere in the Thin Man Movies. Broke our hearts in The Best Years of Our Lives and played a string of dream wives. Remained hot the entire time. Decades of hotness.

Gracie Allen (A Damsel in Distress, Honolulu)— The funniest woman who ever lived, she was the brains behind an absolutely brilliant radio show that she did with her husband George Burns. The radio show was later turned into a television show (which you can find on Youtube) but during the radio days, it was announced that Gracie would be running for President of the United States for the year of 1940. She was running for the Surprise Party, and refused a Vice President as, according to her, there would be no room for vice in her white house. Her slogan was "Down with common sense -Vote for Gracie Allen." [more about this beneath the cut]

This is round 1 of the tournament. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. Please reblog with further support of your beloved hot sexy vintage woman.

[additional propaganda submitted under the cut.]

Myrna Loy:

Myrna Loy excelled at playing coy women, so common in screwball comedies in the 40s. She batted her lashes, and shrugged with grace, and made her costars look like foolish heels next to her. She charmed with sneaky elegance, well-placed pouting, and repartee. Besides, she was sultry AF.

While Myrna certainly looked hot in some her earlier vampy exotic bad girl roles, I think shes hottest when her comedic chops got to be displayed. Her dry wit, comedic timing, and subtle facial expressions make her the queen of deadpan snark.

She's just very Mother

So beautiful and popular she was crowned Queen of the Movies in 1936, Myrna Loy was also an amazing actress. She's best remembered for The Thin Man and sequels, where she gets to show off her comedy skills, adding irresistible impish charm to her classic beauty and dancer's figure.

THE SASS

One of the few actresses who managed to successfully transition from silent to talkies, never won an Oscar but was at one time the highest paid woman in Hollywood. Advocated for better roles and pay for Black actors in the 1930s, so passionately anti-Nazi in the 40s she made Hitler's blacklist, spoke out against Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare, and advocated for fair housing in the 1950s and 1960s, all while being hot as fuck opposite William Powell, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy and a whole galaxy of the Hot Vintage Men Poll all-stars.

Cute as a button with so much RIZZ! She and whatsisname in The Thin Man are relationship goals.

She was literally called the Queen of Hollywood! She is so sassy and funny in the whole Thin Man series. Absolutely hot in those, and who doesn’t love a woman who can laugh? She had the sultriest gaze and that style! Also before she was a star she sat as the model for an iconic statue for a school (representing “Fountain of Education”).

the glamour!! the banter!! the comedy!!

She's got this cute kinda scrunched up face AND shes funny AND shes got a bangin body.

Gracie Allen:

Continued from previous propaganda: "We don't want to get rid of men entirely," Allen said, according to a story in the April 22, 1940, Indianapolis Star. "All we want to do is make them unconstitutional and keep them out of circulation, but have them handy when there's no place else to go."

On the Neutrality Bill pending in Congress: "If we owe it, let's pay it." On recognizing Russia: "I don't know. I meet so many people." On which political party she was affiliated with: "I may take a drink now and then, but I never get affiliated.""

She did have to drop out eventually, with World War 2 being on and all, but thousands of people still wrote her in anyway, even if the FDR won the popular vote in the end.  (https://www.jsonline.com/story/life/green-sheet/2016/03/31/that-time-a-comedian-won-the-wisconsin-presidential-primary/84944806/)