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nightfoot · 3 years

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So I’m not a historian, but I just finished posting my medieval AU fanfic that included a medieval trans character, so I thought I’d ramble a bit about some of the research I did prior to writing it. There’s this idea that Western society believed in an absolute binary of men and women until Stonewall happened and introduced Western cis people to the concept of gender not being rigidly set in stone, but that’s just not the case. So here’s a brief overview of some specific cases I found along the lines of “Medieval and early modern people were thinking about gender too.”

The first is the one I think about most often. This is actually a little bit after the medieval period, in the 16th century, but still interesting. There was a person in the little town of Vitry-le-Fran ois who lived as a man. He was married to a woman and worked as a weaver. Tragically, his marriage lasted only 5 months before someone recognized him as “[birth name]” and he was tried and condemned (for the crime of using a dildo). But, he was given the option to go back to wearing skirts and live as a respectable woman. He rejected the offer, and chose to be hanged rather than live as a woman.

I just think about him a lot, and how much I wish he could come to the 21st century and see how the world has changed. He is also the person I always think about when I see the claim that all trans men in history were just “women trying to live with more freedom.” Because if it was only about trying to live a better life, then choosing any life at all would be better than death.

The second story involves another person from France in 1601. Thankfully, his chosen name was recorded - Marin began sleeping with a woman while they were both working as chambermaids in Rouen, but after a few weeks, he told her he was in fact a man, and proposed marriage. Before their marriage, though, Marin was accused of sodomy for being a “woman” trying to marry another women. However, he plead his case and asked for a medical examination, and after a genital exam, the doctor declared Marin had “a hidden but functional penis.” I read this as him being intersex. The court demanded he dress as a woman for 4 years in hope that the situation would clear up, but after those 4 years passed, he was allowed to go back to presenting as male, married his wife, and lived the rest of his life as a man.

This story is interesting because it demonstrated that people in 1601 were ready to accept “huh! sex and gender are complicated! I guess it is possible for someone to change from one thing to another!”

And the reason they accepted this is because of the “one sex model,” the idea that male and female are just two ends of a spectrum and all humans fall somewhere on that spectrum with the potential to shift position. This model is not exactly correct, because they also believed that it had to do with body temperature and that if a woman’s body temperature raised too much she would spontaneously grow a penis, but it is very interesting that 400 years ago, academics realized that sex is much more complicated than “you’re either A or B” but in our enlightened 21st century, we have to argue about that again.

Cross-dressing saints are also common in hagiography. One example is Joseph von Schönau, a celebrated monk who joined the abbey of Schönau in 1187 after a life of travel in Europe and the Middle East. What’s interesting is that during his deathbed confession, when he came clean to the priest about all his other secrets and sins in life, he said nothing about his sex.

There is another story I recall that, for the life of me, I can’t find the source for now. In that one, a saint lives his entire life in an abbey as a man. During his life, a local woman accused him of fathering her child. He could have easily disproved the accusation by explaining that he didn’t have a penis, but instead accepted the child as his and accepted the shame and disdain from his fellow monks. They only realized he couldn’t have been the father after his death.

My next two stories are fictional:

The first is the 13th century French story Roman de Silence. This is the story of a woman whose father needed a son to inherit, so when she was born, he decided to raise her as a boy. Throughout the story, personifications of “Nature” and “Nurture” argue over which of them determines who a person is. Throughout the story, Silence becomes a knight, captures Merlin in a prophecy twist (of the “no man can defeat Merlin” sort), reveals her sex in the end and marries a king. I actually think it’s more interesting to read Silence as a trans woman, despite being what we today would “assign female.” She was assigned male by her father, and grows up feeling conflicted about this.

Silence isn’t an example of a real life trans masc knight, but the story overall is exploring the question, “What exactly is it that makes someone a man vs a woman?” This says to me that Medieval People Were Thinking About This Too, and the idea that man and woman could be more complicated than looking at a baby’s genitals has been around for a long, long time.

My favourite fictional story is Yde et Olive, another 13th century French romance. This one tells the story of Yde, a princess being forced into a marriage she hates. Rather than go through with it, they dress as a man and run away. Over the course of Yde’s adventures, they learn how to fight with a sword, take down bandits, and end up as a knight in a foreign king’s court. The king is so impressed with Yde that he arranges for them to marry his daughter, Olive. Yde confesses to Olive that the marriage will never work because of his sex, but Olive says she doesn’t mind and will keep their secret, which, y’know, #Bi Princess. But someone overheard the conversation! And now the king will have them put to death for same-sex relations! (even though... he’s the one who insisted they marry). Yde prays to God for a miracle, and God responds by magically transforming Yde into a cis man. The day is saved and Yde lives happily ever after as a man with his wife. They have a son named Croissant.

My research mostly focused on transmasc stories, but I have to at least add the suggestion to read up on Choisy, an 18th century French transfem person. She wrote a novel (Histoire) about a child who was raised as a girl with no idea that having a penis meant people would think she was a boy. When her mother eventually tells her that she is “male,” she simply does not believe it. She goes on to marry a Marquis, and realizes she must tell him that she is allegedly male, only for the Marquis to tell her that he is, in fact, "female.” They go on to live happily ever after as a t4t couple.

Anyway, as I said, I am not a historian and this is not academically rigorous, but some interesting stories I came across while researching. I wouldn’t say any of these suggest that trans people were common and accepted by broader society throughout history, but they do show that people over the centuries have been thinking about gender, what it means to be a man or woman, and how the line between those can be blurry. This is far from being a 21st century exclusive discussion.

Unfortunately, hand-wringing hysteria about trans people is also nothing new, because I also came across several instances of medieval writers fretting about the idea of “men disguising themselves as women to sneak into convents and have sex with nuns.” Truly, the world never changes.

Sources:

Ferguson, Gary. "Early Modern Transitions: From Montaigne to Choisy." L'Esprit Créateur 53, no. 1 (2013): 145-57.

Hotchkiss, Valerie. “Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe.” Garland Publishing, 1996.

#trans history

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blu-joons · 3 years

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When He Thinks You’re Cheating On Him ~ Super Junior Reaction

Leeteuk:

“Who was that?” Jeongsu questioned as soon as you walked away from your colleague and over to him as he waited to pick you up from work.

“He’s the new guy, I’m showing him the ropes a bit,” you smiled, however as Jeongsu didn’t move with you, you knew he was expecting a little bit more from you.

Your hand reached out to push gently against his shoulder, “sorry,” he murmured, unable to clear the thoughts that he feared the most from the forefront of his mind.

“Do I really have to explain our professional relationship to you?” You sighed, noticing how his eyes still couldn’t quite look away from your colleague who walked away.

Jeongsu finally turned to look at you properly, “how come you were chosen to show him around? Did he pick you out of everyone or something like that?”

“No, because I’m the most experienced,” you informed him with a roll of your eyes.

“So, your looks had absolutely nothing to do with it?”

You continued to stare coldly across at him, “if you’ve got something to say Jeongsu, then just come out and say it, because I’m not prepared to play these stupid games with you.”

“I’ve not got anything to say,” he whispered, looking down to the ground. “I thought the worst, and I’m sorry about that.”

“I thought you’d have a bit more trust in me by now.”

“I do trust you, it’s just everyone else instead.”

Heechul:

“About time,” a voice sarcastically called out as you walked into Heechul’s apartment, kneeling down to greet Gibok who quickly made his way over to you.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be home,” you smiled as you noticed Heechul laid out across the sofa. “I thought you were shooting tonight, or is that tomorrow?”

He nodded back at you with a blank expression. “We were finished early, so I thought I’d come back and spend some quality time with you, only to find you weren’t here.”

“Sorry about that,” you mused, walking over to join him on the sofa. “I met up with Y/F/N, and we had a few drinks. I thought you were working so I didn’t say.”

His eyes rolled, slightly suspicious of you. “You usually still tell me the things you get up to even though I’m working, what made you so conscientious of my schedule this time?”

“It was a last-minute thing, I guess I just forgot to say to you,” you replied back to him.

“You were having too much fun with him, right?”

Instantly, you could tell by the way he spoke to you what thoughts ran through his mind. “It wasn’t just me with him, there was several of us, so nothing could have gone on anyway.”

“I n-never said that,” he stuttered, shuffling a little closer to you, resting against your shoulder. “I know you’d never.”

“Then maybe you should have told that to your face, which seemed convinced.”

“I’m sorry, I guess I just panicked and thought the worst.”

Yesung:

“He was weird,” Junghoon remarked as you waved goodbye to one of the fellow dog walkers you often met as you walked through the park each morning.

“He’s nice,” you argued, “you’d know if you ever took the dogs for a walk rather than constantly making me do it,” you quickly pointed out to him too.

Junghoon looked at you quizzically, “why are you getting so defensive about him? Surely you can’t actually think that even the smallest part of him isn’t weird.”

“I’m not defensive,” you retorted back to him, slipping your hand out of his. “But he’s done nothing wrong to you, there’s no need to be so mean.”

His eyes flickered to look at the distance between your hands, “I bet he’s done plenty to you,” he muttered under his breath, surprised when your eyes looked back at him.

“If you want to ask me if I’m cheating on you, then don’t be so subtle,” you remarked.

“And are you? Is that why you’re so fond of him?”

You stopped walking, turning around so you were face to face with Junghoon. “I’m not fond of him, not sleeping with him, or anything. His dog gets on with Melo a lot, so I tolerate him.”

“Y/N!” He called out as you began walking again, “I’m sorry for being so accusatory, I know you would never do something like that.”

“Really? Because you sounded so convinced just a few moments ago.”

“I made a mistake, just please don’t walk off like that.”

Shindong:

“Do you reckon you could pay attention to me tonight?” Donghee asked from across the table as the buzz of your phone caught your attention once again.

“Sorry,” you smiled, quickly replying to the message you had received before dropping your phone, offering a smile back to him. “It’s just work, that’s all.”

His head shook gently, “you mean to tell me that it’s him, don’t you?” He harshly questioned, taking you by surprise at the sudden change of tone in his voice.

“Perhaps,” you sighed, “but he’s only messaging me because he’s nervous about the meeting tomorrow, I’m the only one who he’ll listen to.”

His head continued to shake, dropping his chopsticks to his plate. “I wonder why he listens to you; don’t you think that it’s a little bit suspicious how he always listens to you.”

“He’s just nervous Dong, why are you making such a big deal?” You queried.

“I just think it’s a little bit weird, of him.”

You stared across at him, matching the anger in his expression. “For someone that’s low in confidence yourself, I thought you’d understand him a bit better, and not jump to conclusions.”

“Y/N, I would never think you were cheating on me,” he sighed, instantly calming, offering his hand out for you to take a hold of.

“Some people can just be nice guys without having to think the worst.”

“I know, I should’ve just been more understanding.”

Eunhyuk:

“Donghae, if you don’t keep quiet then Hyukjae is going to find out,” he overheard you scolding as he approached the dressing room, stopping just before he entered.

“If he finds out now, he’ll go crazy,” Donghae spoke up in agreement with you, letting go of a sigh which instantly rubbed Hyukjae up the wrong way.

As the two of you fell silent, Hyukjae opened up the door, noticing the panicked expressions that both of you wore. “Why are you guys looking at me like that?”

“No reason,” you mused, glancing across at Donghae in the hope that he hadn’t overheard the two of you. “Where did you get to anyway?”

Hyukjae’s head shook at how innocently you acted, “don’t pretend like you care where I was. I bet the two of you were pleased to get some alone time with each other.”

“Why would we want alone time with each other?” You asked, completely confused.

“Are you going to try and convince me that you’re not sleeping together?”

Donghae stood up, refusing to let him speak to you like that. “Do you really have such a lack of trust in us both that you think that’s possibly what we could have been up to?”

“Why else would you be talking about how I can’t find out?” Hyukjae forcefully challenged, letting you both know that he heard it all.

“Maybe because your birthday is coming up, have you thought about that?”

“Oh, shoot. Guys, I’m so sorry, please forgive me.”

Siwon:

“That’s new,” Siwon frowned, noticing the brand-new shirt that you wore as you came down the stairs, ready for your date night. “Is that one you’ve bought recently?”

“It’s one that Y/F/N bought,” you informed him, noticing how his smile dropped the moment you mentioned Y/F/N’s name. “He gets plenty of discounts at the store.”

Siwon studied the outfit that you now wore closely, “what about that shirt I bought you in Japan? That would look nice with those jeans, don’t you think?”

“Are you really getting funny about a shirt?” You challenged, folding your arms across your chest. “Usually you’re fine about these things, what’s changed now?”

“Is it just a shirt, because it feels like more?” He openly asked of you.

“You think I’m cheating on you?”

As he spoke, Siwon quickly realised how ridiculous he sounded. “No, not at all. I’m sorry, I just got protective for a moment when really I should’ve just taken a step back.”

“You know I love you,” you sighed, walking across to him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Let’s not ruin date night before it’s begun.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. And the shirt really does look nice on you.”

“It’s not as nice as the one you bought though.”

Donghae:

“Is that him?” Donghae questioned, sitting in his car as he dropped you off at work. Your head shook, bringing his gaze away from the man that walked into the building.

“Are you seriously going to confront him?” You frowned, sinking further back in your seat as Donghae began to scour the area once again for him.

His head nodded back at you, “if some guy in your office thinks he can flirt with you and get away with it, then he’s got another think coming Y/N.”

“He didn’t know I was in a relationship,” you sighed, noticing how quickly the expression on Donghae’s face. “In fact, none of them know that I’m in a relationship.”

His head snapped to look across at you, “why are you saying this now? Are you scared if I confront this guy then I’m going to find out what’s really going on between you?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. I told you last night,” you reminded him.

“Then why the big fuss about it?”

Your eyes rolled, hitting gently against his arm. “Do you know how many ELFs I work with? Do you know the hysteria it would cause if people knew I was dating you?”

“Is that really the reason?” He questioned, still not convinced. When your head shook, he finally decided to let things go.

“If he knew I was dating you, his attention would definitely turn to you.”

“Who can blame him? I’m a handsome guy.”

Ryeowook:

“Y/N!” A male voice yelled, instantly causing Ryeowook to freeze, just outside of the apartment door. He took a step closer, resting his ear against it.

“You told me to do it!” He heard you yell back, being able to recognise your voice easily, only adding to the confusion that he felt as he opened the door.

As he walked in, his expression dropped when he noticed you and a guy sat around the dining table. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt the two of you.”

“Wookie,” you smiled, beckoning him over to join the two of you, “this is Y/F/N, an old friend from school. I hope you don’t mind that I invited him over.”

Ryeowook’s head shook, still slightly suspicious of the guy before him. “Have we met before? It’s just that I’ve not heard too much about you before, are you good friends?”

“Y/F/N was my best friend in school, and he’s in town,” you smiled.

“Oh, as in Y/F/N, the gay one?”

Your head nodded as he took a seat beside him, “did you really think I was cheating on you or something? You’ve got to be more careful around Y/F/N then I do.”

“No,” he frowned, smiling weakly, “it’s just I’ve seen pictures, and honestly you look nothing like I expected you to.”

“It’s the wonders of surgery, no one recognises me these days.”

“Still, I’m sorry for jumping to such conclusions.”

Kyuhyun:

“There’s some food in the oven if you want it,” Kyuhyun called through as you finally appeared at the dorm, long into the late hours of the evening.

“Really? I’ve not eaten yet,” you hummed, walking past the kitchen for now, heading straight for the living room where you could hear him gaming.

His eyes failed to look across at you as you walked into the room, taking a seat beside him. “I spent all afternoon cooking, and then you cancelled last minute, why?”

“I had work,” you sighed, feeling the guilt inside of you reignite as it had done earlier in the day. “I wish that I could have eaten with you tonight, I love your cooking.”

You watched on as he paused his game before looking across at you, “you’ve supposedly been working all this week, are you being honest that that’s what’s going on?”

“Are you suggesting what I think you are?” You quickly challenged him.

“Well, it just seems a bit suspicious, that’s all.”

Your head shook back at him, “I’m busy with work because I’m in line for a promotion Kyu, I’m trying to make sure that my presentation is perfect because I’m desperate for the job.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that was the reason for all your late hours?” He frowned, resting his hand against your leg, “I’m sorry.”

“Because I wanted it to be a surprise, if I got it.”

“And now I’ve ruined that because I’m a fool.”

---

Masterlist

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spencesglasses · 4 years

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sweet creature (spencer reid x f! reader) pt 3

a/n: no spence in this part, sorry to disappoint you simps. but uhh, y/n and jj rights! but as besties <3

tw! there are mentions of sexual assault and a minor character death! please be aware before reading!!

part one | part four

“St. Augustine, Florida,” Penelope starts, showcasing the most recent case. “Two bodies were found early this evening in a remote wooded area just west of the city. Neither have been identified yet.”

“This woman’s complexion…” Tara said, looking at the pictures of a woman with various injuries on her face.

Y/N looked at the board beside Penelope. “… she was exsanguinated.” she hissed.

“Correct, my dearest, which is a really fun word to say, but I didn’t know its terrible meaning until I started working here.”

“Odd that the only female had her blood removed,” Rossi said across the round table.

“Well, the male victim might have been collateral damage or a witness that needed to be silenced.” JJ added.

“I mean, it is the kind of message that would be sent to each other. The Curiel Syndicate recently set up shop in Florida,”

“Except it looks like these two were meant without anyone the wiser. How is that a message?” Asked Rossi.

“Well, cartels have also been known to use murder as a form of voodoo.” Derek pointed out. “In 1989, a University of Texas student was murdered by a satanic gang while on spring break.”

Y/N leaned further into the table, reviewing the photos they were given. “My guess is that this has nothing to do with drugs. Maybe someone with a blood fetish-”

“Vampirism?” JJ asked.

Y/N hums in response, glancing at her for a brief moment.

“It’s late and we need to hit the ground running. Wheels up in 30.” Hotch said as he closed the file he held, gathering any necessary belongings for the case.

Without another word, the team mirrored his actions and followed him out. This was one of the first few cases she has worked on with the team without Spencer. She didn’t mind it, of course. The team welcomed her with open arms and treated her as if she had always been there, which she appreciated. She had gotten used to everything that came with the job, and grew closer to the team, but she wouldn’t be lying if she said that some things she sees still make her skin crawl.

Y/N looked out the window of the jet, admiring the contrast of the dark, star filled sky beneath the white clouds. She was seated with JJ, Hotch, and Morgan at the small table, the rest of the team claiming their spot to the seats to their right.

“The coroner attributed the lacerations on the bodies to animal bites.” Morgan said. “Apparently there are a lot of raccoons in that area.”

Y/N felt JJ nudge her slightly and brought her attention back to the file on her lap, flipping through the photos. “The media’s going on about satanic mutilation.”

“It’s happened before. The West Memphis three case showed how animal activity on a corpse can be mistaken for a ritualized torture.” Hotch noted.

“After the first bite, the insect infestation expands and distorts the open wounds,” Said Rossi.

Y/N heard Garcia groan over the laptop speaker, seeing her face scrunch up in disgust on the screen. “Ok, here’s my finger, here’s the mute button. Are you guys done talking about the critter damage?”

JJ and Y/N shared a look, and she smiled. “You can put your finger down, Pen, we’re done,”

“Thank you, and Y/N’s right; local news and radio outlets are going wild with this being a blood-worshipping cult murder.” she continues typing. “Hey, new information. Both of those bodies have just been identified, Cheyenne Pravato, 23 and George Henning, 71.”

The team leaned forward to inspect the photos of the recent victims popping up on the screen.

“Any connection?” asked Hotch.

“My level-one search says no, my level 2 through 20 await. Cheyenne was a waitress that is currently unemployed. Henning was a retired steelworker from Pennsylvania, lived in Florida a few years. They both went missing 3 days ago.”

“3 days?” Tara questioned. “Coroner estimated the time of death as less than 24 hours from the time of discovery?”

“Preliminary indicators show no sign of torture or sexual assault,” JJ said.

Y/N’s eyebrows knit together in thought, trying to piece together the information. “What was he doing with them?”

The team brought their attention to Hotch, and he said, “Dave, you find out what you can about Cheyenne from friends and family. Morgan, you do the same thing for Henning. JJ, I need you to rein in the media. And, Lewis, Y/L, you two go to the M.E.. Hysteria’s growing and we need to contain it.”

“Still waiting on the full tox screen for the male victim,” said the medical examiner.

“We think they may have been held for up to two days.” Tara said. “Were they fed?”

“Stomach contents were empty, but nutrition and hydration levels were normal. My guess is they were both fed through an I.V.” he said, lifting the fabric that covered the body. “I did find one curiosity,”

He uncovered the victim's calf, showing a mark on the skin with red rings around it. Y/N furrowed her brows, her eyes scanning the injured spot. “It looks like an animal bite?”

“Not under magnification. It’s actually a surgically precise triangle,”

She saw Tara’s face harden in the corner of her eye; she turned to her and they shared a questioning look. They heard the telephone ring from across the room, and the medical examiner was quick to answer it. Tara lifted the fabric once more, bending down to look closer at the injury.

“You’re positive of that?” Y/N heard him ask over the phone. The medical examiner hung up the phone, turning on his heel to face the two women. “The tox screen and DNA tests on George Henning just came back. You ready for this? Most of the blood in his body isn’t his…”

Y/N tilted her head. “Then whose…”

“It’s Cheyenne’s…”

Her whole body tensed at his words, and Tara’s jaw dropped in shock.

Y/N tapped her pencil against the table as she read over the tox screening. “The blood drained from Cheyenne was put into George Henning?” Morgan questioned, gesturing to the document in her hand.

She slid the paper across the table for him to read. “It is strange, a triangle was cut into his calf muscle too,”

“And there’s still something in the toxicology screen that the M.E. can’t identify.” Hotch said.

“Yeah, we’re hoping to find something more in the next few hours,”

Morgan slid back the report to her. She heard footsteps coming closer to the room they occupied and turned to see JJ walking in. She greeted her with a small wave and smile, to which she returned. JJ leaned against Y/N’s chair, resting her hand on the back of it. “So, it took a little arm-wrestling,” she starts. “But the media finally saw the wisdom in toning down the whole demon worship angle,”

“Don’t take a victory lap just yet,” Rossi said, Y/N handing her the tox report.

“You’re kidding,” JJ huffed.

Tara picked up the photos from the M.E., flipping them over for JJ to see. “Y/L and I are just trying to work out this whole calf muscle business,”

“Triangles are big in illuminati symbolism.” Rossi recounted.

Morgan let out a sharp exhale. “This is just bending back toward cult behavior.”

“What did you find out about George Henning?” Hotch asked him.

“According to the neighbors, the guy was a shut-in. No friends, a lot of health problems — hypertension, parkinson’s,”

“Cheyenne was the opposite,” Rossi interjected. “Vegan, into new age lifestyles. Never met a harmonic convergence she didn't want to converge on.”

“Well, I mean, I get it with him; he was a recluse, but how did nobody notice her missing for 3 days?”

“Her friends said that Cheyenne was flighty. It was not unusual for her to take off without notice for a week or two.”

“Transfusions and sustained I.V. feeding takes skill, planning and access to materials, and as crude as it was, the replacing of old blood with new is dialysis.” Hotch said. “ What if the triangle isn’t a symbol, but a tissue sample? Could this be medical experimentation?”

“Yeah, I mean, you’ve got a youthful, healthy host in Cheyenne and a sick test subject in Henning,”

“If the new missing girl’s his next victim, the unsub could be getting ready to try again,” JJ said, clutching the back of Y/N’s chair.

Y/N gave her a look of confusion. “New missing girl?”

“A missing persons report came in earlier today, Andrea Gambrell,” JJ explained. “Her car was found abandoned at a cemetery near Jacksonville. Cheyenne and Andrea waitressed at the same restaurant.”

“If Andrea mirrors Cheyenne, then who mirrors George?” Y/N asked.

“I guess that’s what we have to figure out.”

Y/N stood with JJ and Hotch looking over photos they’ve gathered throughout the case, trying to come up with a conclusion. She tapped her foot anxiously against the tile beneath her feet, her brows furrowing as she looked closely at the photos. The sound of Hotch’s phone ringing startled her, making her jump. She let out a deep breath and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. JJ took notice of a very flustered looking Y/N and placed a hand on her shoulder gently. “You okay there?”

She gave her a half-hearted smile, moving past her to stand next to Hotch. “‘m fine.”

“What do you have, Garcia?” he asked.

He asked her to search for doctors or any medical professionals in the area, anyone that could pop up as a red flag, and of course, Garcia was quick to find just what they needed. “Nothing on my crimson flag doctor search, but I did learn about something with a super cool name,” she said through the speaker. “The mad scientist club,”

JJ took a step, now standing beside Y/N. “And what is that?’ she asked.

“They’re a student group from the Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville. Before the disbanded, they used to get together and talk about experimental ways to cure disease.”

“Do you have any names of the people in the club?” Y/N questioned.

“Uh, kinda, sorta, not really. They were totally informal. Here’s the part that made me sit up straight. They used to meet at a local cemetery,”

JJ scoffed. “Let me guess, the same cemetery where Andrea Gambrell disappeared.”

“Yeah! The very one!”

“Alright,” Hotch started. “Keep working on the names and see if you can find out what the club disbanded.”

“Okay,” Garcia said before hanging up.

Before the three of them could say another word, Y/N's own phone started ringing. She reached into her back pocket and held the phone up to her ear. “Agent Y/L,”

“Yes, agent, I’ve got the full tox screen of George Henning,” he said, Y/N bringing her phone from her ear so she could put it on speaker. “There were massive levels of massive levodopa in his system.”

“The parkinson's drug?”

“Correct,”

Y/N bit the inside of her cheek. “But the blood was replaced with Cheyenne’s. Does that mean the levodopa was introduced into his system after the transfusion?”

“Yes, ma’am. We got the results of the other DNA samples and the surprises keep coming. Found traces of mesoglea and testudinata keratin,”

“That is…” she urges him to continue.

“Jellyfish and turtle. George Henning had animal DNA in his system.” He said.

Y/N scrunched her nose, looking up to see JJ with her mouth slightly agape and Hotch with a deep frown. Y/N quickly says ‘thank you’ before hanging up. But before she could turn her phone off, a quiet ding! went off notifying her about a new message.

“Guys,” she alerted. “Another body was found.”

“You two check that out, see what you can find. I’ll brief the team on the tox screening.”

Y/N and JJ walked in silence, their shoulders bumping as they made their way to the site where the latest victim was found. “Okay so, a homeless man found him,” Y/N breaks the silence, lifting the police tape for her and JJ to go under. The officer close by handed them both gloves to search the area and a bag of belongings found on the victim. “We I.D.’d him as Harold McDermott, longtime local resident.”

“He didn’t even bother hiding the body this time.” JJ said. “The unsub might be unraveling,”

“He must’ve been the new George Henning.” Y/N muttered, crouching down and her eyes scanning the injuries the man ensued. “I don’t even want to think about what might be swimming around in his bloodstream.”

JJ crouched down to her level. “No obvious tissue removal, bruising on his face and chest.” she looked at Y/N, then to the bag in her hand. “What’s in there?”

Y/N eyebrows rose, following JJ’s gaze to the items in the clear bag. She stood up, opened the bag and it was a wallet. With a medical card. Ah, of course we’d find something like this in here, she thought. “It’s a medical I.D. card” she said, pulling it out for JJ to see. “Our victim suffered from epilepsy and cortico-basal degeneration…”

They tore their eyes away from the card, glancing up to each other. “We better deliver the profile.”

It’s been a few hours since they’ve delivered the profile to local authorities, and since then, they’ve gotten more information to help them solve the case. The M.E. had found more animal DNA in George Hennings body: sea urchin and some other type of tropical parrot neither of them could identify.

Penelope was able to locate one of the former members of the Mad Scientist Club, Diane Haller, and she was able to go in to talk to Tara; finding out that there was a man that could be a potential lead. Robert, or Richard, Diane couldn’t remember his name, but the club called him the magic man. He only went to the gathering a few times, according to Diane, and while he was there he would go on about how they were in a ‘magical place’. He attended the Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville while the club was still active, his interest being in neuroscience.

A local doctor went missing, Laura Braga. She was a neurologist, which they believed was a connection to the unsub. Dr. Braga was heading back to her office to get files she’d forgotten when she discovered that the unsub broke into her office trying to get extra levodopa.

“Garcia compiled a list of every medical student in the North Florida area with the first name of Richard or Robert, and I got to tell you guys, it’s a long list.” Tara said as she stood to the side of a board filled with photo evidence and a map of the area.

“So which one is our magic man?” JJ asked.

Y/N sat in the chair next to her, facing the board. She spun her chair around to face the other way and noticed a peculiar look on Rossi’s face. “What is it, Rossi?”

“They identified the bird DNA in Henning as coming from a scarlet macaw,”

“Mmhm. And?”

“That got me thinking about Turritopsis Dohrni,”

“Turri… what?’ Tara questioned him.

“It’s called the immortal jellyfish,” he explains. “Endlessly recycles its own cells through a process called transdifferentiation, a kind of lineage reprogramming.”

“Oh, my goodness. Dr. Spencer Reid, master of disguise.” JJ joked.

Y/N quirked an eyebrow, the corners of her mouth rising slightly. “If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve assumed that you were the resident genius, Rossi,”

He let out a soft chuckle. “No disguise. I called the kid last night.”

“Ahh,” Y/N and JJ said in unison.

“But think about it, jellyfish, turtle, sea urchin, and now a scarlet macaw. What do they all have in common?”

“A long lifespan.” Tara answered.

“Exactly, longer than a human’s.”

“So that means the unsub may not be focused on a specific disease but longevity,” Said JJ.

“Oh, God. Guys,” Tara gasped. “I think I know why the magic man thought this place was so magical,” She uses the file in her hand to point at the map. “We are right around the corner from the legendary Fountain of Youth.”

A local zoo reported a macaw stolen, the owner suspecting it to be a former employee, Robert Boles, who they’d believed to be the unsub. He went to medical school and flunked out in the middle of his first year. They found key information linking him to the case when Penelope found that he currently worked at the same hospital as Dr. Braga. The team rushed to the location where Boles did his experiments on his victims.

“All right, so, in high school Robert Boles got a summer job at a gift shop near the Fountain of Youth archaeological park.” JJ explained. “He got fired for breaking in after hours.”

Y/N and JJ sat in the back seat of the car, leaving Morgan and Hotch in the front. “That’s probably where his obsession with eternal youth started.”

They trudged through the hallways of the abandoned building with their guns pointed forward, ready to shoot if needed. “And I won’t let you get in the way!” they heard a man shout from one of the rooms.

The team followed the sound of the voice and turns the corner to see two men standing over a young woman. The younger man they’d identified as Robert Boles, and the young woman being Andrea Gambrell, Y/N assumed.

“Robert Boles, drop the weapon.” Hotch said sternly.

He whipped his head around to them.

“It’s over, man. You’re not getting out.” Morgan steps closer to him.

“Put the knife down, slowly.” JJ said.

Y/N watches as Boles lifts his arms in surrender, opening his hand to drop the knife. Morgan hurried to cuff him, while JJ rushed to untie Andrea strapped to the hospital bed.

“My wife needs help!” The other man, Ben Kebler, tells Hotch urgently.

“Where is she?”

“In the next room!” Mr. Kebler rushed out.

“Show me.” Hotch said, following him, and Y/N followed along. “Call an ambulance,” he tells her.

“Medics are on their way,” Y/N said softly, entering the room Hotch and JJ were in and she stood between them.

She looked down to see Eileen Kebler in the hospital bed, her husband leaning over her her. And her heart breaks. Eileen was dying.

“How is she?” Ben Kebler asked, eyes brimming with tears.

The three of them stayed silent, Y/N unable to comprehend what's happening, let alone come up with words to say in that moment. Hotch peers down at him, and Ben knows. He frantically shakes his head, hand shaking as he grabs his wife's hand. “What have I done?!”

“I’m cold,” Eileen mutters.

His face scrunched up. “Eileen, stay with me!” he pleads.

“I am always with you…” she whispers. “Always…”

And she was gone. Sobs echoed throughout the empty building, and Y/N could feel her heart bursting out of her chest. Her eyes watered with tears, then suddenly she felt a hand interlock with hers. It was JJ’s. She squeezes her hand gently, JJ rubbing soothing circles along her knuckles. She let out a soft exhale and used her free hand to wipe away any tears, trying to regain her composure. This part of the job was something she could never get used to. Something the rest of the team couldn’t get used to, no matter how long they’ve worked there.

It was safe to say that Y/N was not a night owl. The team were on their way home and she laid on the couch in the jet with a small pillow and blanket that could barely cover her. She smiled to herself as the memory of her finding Spencer snuggled with a far too small blanket the morning after their first movie night. She still cringes at the fact that she accidentally fell asleep barely into the first few movies, but smiles when she remembers what she woke up to. Y/N thought it was sweet that he stayed there with her, and finding Spencer curled up in a messy bundle of blankets made her heart grow twice its size. She took a mental note to call Spencer when they land, and she finally lets her eyes flutter shut, finally being able to rest.

tag list: @eevee0722 @ceeellewrites

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid #criminal minds #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fanfic #criminal minds imagines #matthew gray gubler #matthew gray gubler x reader

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ladyhallen · 4 years

Text

A Conversation in the midst of Conflict

Read on AO3 | FFN

Sansa was born from a clutch of five eggs.

Her dam, a red fire dragon from the south, was probably the reason why the eggs hatched slowly and not all at once, as it usually happened in the North. Her sire, a regal ice drake of the North, viewed this as a sort of terrible thing and regularly nosed worriedly at the rest of her slowly hatching siblings.

Robb, first, with the ice scales of their sire and fire breath of their dam. Sansa, who had felt her sire nosing at her worriedly, went next just to reassure him. She had the coloring of their dam and her fire claws, but the ice breath of their sire.

The rest of the clutch hatched more slowly and it took Sansa a lot of effort to distract their worried sire.

Not that Sansa was that overly concerned. As a young dragon, technically a hatchling until she passed her third decade, Sansa was more concerned about food, play hunting with Robb and finding treasure.

Dragons loved treasure, though it varied on what that treasure was.

Sansa’s dam treasured beauty, thus she surrounded herself with beautiful things. That was one of the reasons why she mated with Sansa’s sire who, as an ice drake, was naturally very beautiful.

Sansa’s sire treasured sharp things, hence his need to hunt down some animals for their claws.

Robb and Sansa discussed their possible treasures under the wide, comforting wings of their dam. With just the two of them, it was quite cozy and she sometimes didn’t understand why her sire was so worried about the rest of the clutch that were taking their time hatching.

Robb, who already shared their dams tendency to fixate on something, wondered if his treasure would be a mix of both. Sansa, who was more whimsical, wondered if hers would be difficult to find.

All that went away in the events of the following years.

A decade under her belt, the rest of her clutch hatched and the western dragons arrived and talked of interlopers. Small, bipedal and without wings or claws. They were also killing dragons.

Sansa curled up under her dams wings and listened with fascination and no small amount of horror.

Without wings, claws or scales, they were killing dragons and stealing their eggs and their treasures.

Her sire, being the strongest dragon, banded all of them and they stood under his banner. He trooped them all to the west and negotiated.

Sansa, of course, was left with a handful of the younger hatchlings, as well as the older dragons. They watched over the mountains and Robb watched with ever increasing vigilance over them. This made Arya and Bran chafe something fierce, when Robb had previously been a fun playmate.

Torn between rowdy, rambunctious clutch-siblings and a fiercely overprotective clutch-brother, Sansa took to wandering down the mountain and finding something else to do.

Hunting was a communal activity and everyone contributed. At most, that took a few hours. Sansa had the rest of the day to think about what to do.

And then she encountered a shiny pink bipedal.

It took Sansa a while to understand what she was looking at, because she had never seen a bipedal of her own.

She crawled forward, trying not to make noise, like she was hunting the skittish hairy buffalo’s. She crawled until she was nose to nose with the strange creature and could smell him.

And it was a him, she realized. There was a distinct scent of maleness and steel. Oil, steel and salt. And something sour.

With another whuff of breath, Sansa realized that the bipedal was awake.

It’s eyes were wide and it was saying something with its maw. Nonsensical noises that no dragon could hope to understand, because it was so loud.

“Hello?” she said, hoping he could understand her.

The bipedal went still and the sour scent increased. He gripped something iron firmly and Sansa touched it curiously with her nose. She sneezed when the scent of old blood overwhelmed her.

To her horror, that old blood scent was of dragons.

Sansa back-pedaled in a hurry, staring at the steel. What a horrible thing. Did he wash his iron in dragon blood?

Sansa wanted to fly away, but if she did, this bipedal might hunt her down. She knew some dragons who liked the hunt. If this bipedal wanted to hunt her, she would not oblige him.

With a low growl, Sansa crouched and prepared to pepper the interloper with a blast of ice breath. It might not be as impressive as her sires, but it would hopefully blind the interloper on what direction she would fly to.

The bipedal dropped his iron and Sansa was confused enough to stop. What was he doing?

He knelt and…he showed his neck.

Different species though they were, surrender was something universal, as was submission.

She got closer, because he smelled better without the iron thing muddling his smell. Just to be sure, she blasted it with a bit of ice breath, coating it in ice and snow and burying it under the earth. The air smelled clearer and she approached him with an energetic swish of her tail.

“Better,” she decided loudly. She sniffed him again and added a lick for good measure. There, he smelled like her.

His eyes were wide and he smelled overwhelmingly sour again.

“Are you afraid?” Sansa asked, realizing why he smelled sour. “Do not be. I will not harm you.”

Sansa curled around him, letting him rest on her fire scales so he would be warm and purring, a low rumbling sound that was designed to put hatchlings to sleep.

When she next looked, the bipedal was asleep.

Sansa purred deeper and rested her snout on her paws.

Sansa blinked and realized that she’d fallen into a light doze. A muffled groan made her realize what woke her up.

Her bipedal was awake! And he was no longer smelling sour.

Sansa hurriedly stood up, stretching her wings wide and investigating the scent of meat on fire.

“Why is your meat on fire?” she asked. “And why are you eating it like that?”

The bipedal went still and then continued moving, offering her a bit of the burned meat.

It was an insult to offer burned meat to an ice drake, but Sansa realized that this bipedal probably didn’t know that.

With a huff, she froze the meat before eating it delicately between her fangs. It was difficult, because the bipedal had drained it of blood too, making it incredibly dry to eat. Her nose wrinkled the entire time and the bipedal made a chittering noise.

Sansa blinked at his maw full of fangs.

He didn’t smell aggressive. Instead, he smelled….happy?

With a hesitant twitch, Sansa imitated him and he chittered louder. He smelled happier. Sansa purred.

Sansa bundled up her bipedal in a warm cave and hunted him a buffalo for good measure. She dropped the struggling creature in the cave, to the bipedal’s loud shouts. He killed it, which made Sansa huff irritably. Well, maybe he liked his prey to be dead? Sansa preferred to hunt hers.

Sansa nosed a couple more leaves on top of the entrance and a few more piles of snow, before leaving. She could not stay a couple more hours, or Robb would ring the alarm and the search would begin.

Something made her want to stay. This bipedal, this pink, hairless creature…he was so helpless. He shivered constantly unless she was touching him. He was also helpless at catching prey. He was…important.

The bipedal touched her snout and Sansa shivered.

With a sigh, she licked him head to toe again and left.

Robb looked at her suspiciously the entire time, but Sansa had rolled in the lake before entering the cave, so he couldn’t possibly smell the bipedal on her.

“Where were you? I needed help with our clutch-siblings,” he exclaimed, his tail thrashing back and forth irritably.

Sansa herself was still. “You were being annoying. Dam and sire are not here, but that does not make you in charge,” she said sourly.

“But I am,” a larger, elderly dragon posited, bulk unnoticed with his dark color in the cave. “And where were you, Sansa ice-eater?”

Sansa sniffed. “By the lake. Because you were all smelly.”

They let go of that and Sansa huddled with her clutch. She found herself idly wishing that she was curled around her bipedal.

Cor struggled with sleep, because he was so tired.

Tired, cold and exhausted, but not hungry. Because there was a freaking water buffalo hanging in a spit in front of him.

He was also, he thought with some hysteria, some sort of friend to a dragon.

He hadn’t actually wanted to kill any of the majestic creatures, and after his first kill, he deserted, leaving the army and hoping to die in the colder climate of the mountains.

He just hadn’t realized that the mountains were the home to the stronger, more deadly dragons and he’d realized he was fucked the moment he woke up from his exhausted nap face to face with a fucking ice and fire drake hybrid.

He saw the fire scales, and the ice fangs and knew he was a dead man.

Except.

Except the hybrid hadn’t eaten him, and other than sniffing his sword and threatening to kill him, hadn’t even looked like it wanted to hurt him.

He’d discarded the sword quickly and the hybrid had buried it in ice and dirt. A dragon who breathed ice. It was insane.

The hybrid then curled around him and Cor was exhausted enough to fall back asleep because the hybrid was a furnace of heat.

He woke up, caught a bird and roasted it, which seemed to wake up the hybrid. He offered it some and he damn near cackled at its face when it ate cooked meat. It had to ice it over. Note to self, no cooked meat for the hybrid.

He didn’t regret throwing away his sword because the dragon was cautiously friendly.

He regretted only having a knife though when the hybrid dropped a living water buffalo near him and he didn’t have his sword to kill it with. A lucky strike and the buffalo was dead. The dragon looked confused but not offended.

It also left, but not before piling the entrance of the cave with more ice and dirt. More a blockade or a door than anything.

Also licking. Let’s not forget the licking.

Cor was confused, but alive. He was also very much done of smelling like dragon drool and had to wiggle out of the pile of ice and dirt just to have a bath. He knows there’s a lake near, because water buffalo’s lived near water.

It took a while to find it, and he was almost in tears at the sight of all the water.

The first splash of water on him was heaven sent and also ice-cold freezing.

He was in and out in five minutes, the fastest he’d ever bathed in his life. There was a lack of soap and his clothes were still dirty, but it was warm and he’d rather have dirty clothes than hypothermia.

A huff of air behind him, and Cor knew it was the hybrid dragon before he could turn around.

“Good morning!” he greeted, more cheerful after the bath.

The dragon huffed at him, looking confused, before opening its mouth.

Cor, somehow, knew it was going to lick him again.

“No!” he exclaimed, dodging the tongue.

The dragon looked even more annoyed.

“No licking!” he cried out.

The dragon rumbled a sour growly note, but stopped trying to lick him. It nosed at Cor’s hair and sneezed.

“I know, I smell,” he confided. He felt a little bit mad at talking to a dragon. “But there’s no soap here, or soapwort.”

Soapwort, which you could crush and simulate the effects of soap. Extremely handy during long campaigns and the army ran out of soap. Except, it seemed to thrive only in hot and temperate climates. Not in the extremely cold mountains.

The dragon made its own rumbling noises. Noises that had so alarmed Cor the night before seemed to be more conversational than anything in the light of day.

It was more of a comfort to Cor than the dragon probably knew. He had been alone for so long that even random noises that seemed to answer and talk back at him was more conversation than he had in weeks. At some point, Cor gestured and dragged his hand across it’s scales.

The dragon then went still.

Cor also went still, because shit, he’d forgotten he was talking to a dragon.

Then.

Then wonders of fucking wonders, the dragon pushed up at Cor’s hand.

Cor had acquainted himself with enough animals to know what that meant.

Cor petted the dragon. The dragon fucking fell asleep on him!

Sansa had fallen asleep on top of her bipedal and he had looked uncomfortable and smelled hungry.

She hurried him along to his cave, where she knew his food was.

Some of the hairy buffalo was still there, he must not have been so hungry then if he left some. Sansa watched him eat and wanted to purr again. There was something incredibly soothing watching her bipedal take care of himself.

She could just watch him move around and do whatever it was that bipedals do and be content.

An alarm rang in her hindbrain and Sansa raised her head up.

Her bipedal..??? Had she…had she….made this creature her treasure???

With a squawk of alarm, Sansa licked her bipedal goodbye – ignored his shout of disgust - and flew back to her elders.

“How did you realize you’d found your treasure,” she asked the Eldest of twelve clutch. Her name was a long one and Sansa only bothered to call her Eldest like all the other hatchlings.

The Eldest peered down at her through old, milky eyes and smelled amused.

“I looked at my treasure of shiny rocks and wanted to no one else to touch them,” she crooned in her old, soothing voice.

Which. Was exactly what she felt, staring at her bipedal.

“Ah, thank you, Eldest,” she said.

Sansa wandered over to her clutch-siblings and curled around Rickon tightly. He was still a few months old and struggled to coordinate wings, tail and limbs without tangling himself up.

Robb stared at her suspiciously, because he was just like that, and Sansa rolled her eyes.

She was just in time for storytelling and listened with interest about the dragon who went mad talking to birds. The lesson being to eat your prey quickly and not to play with it, or it’s blood.

Sansa had heard the same stories told over and over since she was hatched. Some of them were boring, but something about the story made her hackles rise up and listen.

What about old Aicorn who played with his bird before eating it. The bird had gotten a bite at Aicorn’s tongue, drawing blood. Aicorn, who drank at the bird’s blood too…and both of them apparently went mad.

Blood. Sharing blood?

Sansa felt her tail move in excitement. To be able to understand her treasure. What a gift.

Sansa curled tighter around Rickon, who grumbled irritably, and went to sleep.

Cor was alarmed to find the dragon sniffing him over with intent the next day.

The dragon hadn’t done that since that disastrous first meeting and Cor wanted to cry. Why? Why was the dragon suspicious? Had he done something wrong?

He did notice that the dragon had left really fast yesterday, seemingly alarmed over something.

Then the dragon opened its mouth and revealed those incredibly sharp fangs. Cor went still, especially when the dragon aimed those fangs at his…at his fingers? Did the dragon want his finger?

Cor obliged, cutting a finger at one fang and the dragon licked at the blood, wrinkling its nose.

It hurt, but not so much, because the dragons fangs were ice cold too.

Then, to his horror, the dragon bit at its own forepaw and offered the welled up blood to Cor. Difference in species or not, the gesture for that was the same.

“Are you insane?” he asked loudly.

The dragon huffed, a tail pushed him forward and he tripped. The dragon, in a crazy show of coordination, pushed that bleeding forepaw at him and Cor involuntarily licked and swallowed.

He wanted to wretch immediately.

“Eurgh!” he gagged. “Oh my god, it tastes like day old buffalo blood.”

To his alarm, there was a hum in his mind, a feminine voice going, “How do you know what day old buffalo blood tastes like?”

Cor wasn’t educated, but he was smart. He immediately understood what that blood sharing was for.

“Did you…just exchange blood with me so we could talk?” Cor asked. He wasn’t sure what to be surprised about anymore.

“Did you not want to communicate?” the dragon asked, sounding distressed. “I thought you did, you chittered about so loudly.”

Cor was loud. The dragon, who made a thud every time she landed. The dragon who purred like an extra large cat. And sure, Cor was the loud one.

“Communication is fine,” Cor said dryly. “What’s your name, anyway? If you have one. My name is Cor.”

“I am Sansa of the Stark line, First Clutch of the Fire Drake Catelyn and Ice Drake Eddard, Lord of the Northern Mountains and Protector of the Seven Dragon Clans of the North,” the dragon announced proudly.

Cor was pretty sure his mouth was hanging open. What the fuck.

He was hanging out with a fucking Drake Lord’s daughter.

Practically a princess.

And she kept licking him.

Cor blinked out of his thoughts and looked at the dragon in front of him.

“Nice to meet you, Sansa,” he said. “Why do you keep licking me?”

Sansa laughed, which sounded rumbled terrifyingly out-loud, but sounded nicely in his mind. “Because you smell wrong. Like oil and salt and steel.”

“What are you called, Cor?” she asked. “I keep calling you fleshy bipedal.”

Cor choked on a laugh. “You’re not wrong. I’m a human.”

“A human! What a nice word. Yes, I will say it often. Human,” Sansa sang. “Much better than bipedal.”

“Have you been calling us that?” Cor asked with a smile. Yes, he could see the humor. King Mors thought that the dragons were savage, beastly creatures. But instead, they had clans. They had hierarchy. They had Lords. They were nobler than the humans that Cor knew.

“Yes, it was what we saw, so we called you that. Cor, why are your people here?” Sansa asked. She sounded curious.

“Because King Mors is a crazy, bloodthirsty monster that wants your peoples gold,” Cor answered bitterly before he could think about it.

“Gold?” Sansa asked, looking curious.

If what he remembered about theories about telepathy was true….

He thought long and hard about gold and tried to project the thought to her.

“Oh! You mean the shiny, yellow stuff!” she exclaimed. “It’s useless. It’s too soft to be used as a structure and too easily mixed with other metals for anything else. It’s mostly just good for decoration.”

Cor really did laugh then. Dragons found gold useless. What else?

“You don’t use gold as treasure?” he had to ask. “Then what do you treasure?”

Sansa sat on her haunches and tucked her tail around her limbs neatly. “Different things. It depends on the dragon? My dam treasures beautiful things. My sire treasures sharp things.”

That was fascinating. Different dragons and different treasures. He knew that lore book on dragons was trash.

“And you?” he had to ask. “What do you treasure?”

Sansa peered at him, blue eyes slitted and intelligent. “I treasure you, my fleshy bipedal human Cor.”

After that declaration, which Sansa found immensely embarrassing and simultaneously pleasing to say so bluntly, her human, her Cor, turned red. It was a fascinating look on him and she wondered why she turned that color.

He spluttered and made flailing motions with his limbs and Sansa just watched him. She could really just watch him move around and be pleased. He was such a helpless thing and she treasured him so.

After he calmed down from his upset, Sansa and Cor talked long and hard into the afternoon about serious things. Mostly about the war and what they could do to avoid it and possibly stop it.

“My dam and sire are trying to open negotiations,” Sansa offered. “Though no one knows how that is going. They have been gone for three moons and the hatchlings are lonely.”

Cor snorted, that strange affectation that conveyed so much with so little. “If King Mors is who they’re negotiating with, then no, things won’t go well. But. If they talk to Prince Regis, then things…might be resolved.”

Sansa pondered this. “How do we make your Prince Regis be the Lord of the humans then?”

Cor answered hesitantly, “When King Mors dies.”

Sansa smiled, a mouth full of ice fangs. “Then he will die. And then we will talk to your Regis.”

Their conversation, which had veered into the treasonous territory (for Cor that is), was derailed when a large hybrid ice drake dropped down and landed on Sansa’s back, screeching.

Since Cor had no connection to that ice drake, he didn’t attack immediately. It might be friendly. Or not. Cor could understand Sansa and she sounded annoyed, not angry.

“Clutch-brother, what are you doing?” she demanded.

The ice drake hybrid, her freaking brother, growled. Low, deep and threatening.

Staring at the two dragons and cataloguing differences, Cor immediately realized that the other dragon was male. It was smaller, and it’s wings wider. It was also covered in more spines than Sansa and it’s claws were ice instead of hot-bone. But it was also older, the feet more proportional to the rest of him and none of the awkward coltishness in Sansa’s limbs.

“I have found my treasure and I am talking to him,” Sansa suddenly said and Cor wanted to die all over again. Declarations of affection so boldly said were awful. Cor had absolutely no defence against it.

The embarrassment almost made him miss the other dragon’s squawk of offense.

“Treasure is treasure, especially if you’ve found it. Stop being dramatic. My treasure hasn’t hurt me at all and he is a helpless thing, always easily cold and I have to hunt for him. He’s not a monster,” Sansa said reasonably.

Embarrassment faded to outrage. He was not helpless, thank you very much. Just very unused to the weather. Eos was much more temperate and he knew what he was hunting there. Also, he couldn’t use his sword. Sansa had very much buried it under dirt and ice.

The other dragon stopped sounding so angry.

“Of course I can talk to him,” Sansa said, making Cor huff. “And yes, he can talk back and we understand each other. We shared blood. Like Aicorn the mad and his birds.”

Like Aicorn the who??? Mad? Does drinking dragon blood make one crazy?

Cor had concerns.

Both dragons suddenly turned to him and Cor wanted to be nervous but he was just. Tired. It was almost five hours since he last ate.

“My clutch-brother wants to talk to you as well,” Sansa said. “Shall I use my fangs? His teeth are uncomfortable. It is always hot.”

No, thank you. Cor had a knife.

The other dragon licked at his wound and offered Cor his own bleeding paw. Cor braced himself for the taste for the second time and gagged again.

By the Astrals, the taste was not improved with knowledge. Day old buffalo blood, somehow, more spicy this time.

“I swear, it really tastes awful,” Cor groaned. “I need to wash my mouth out.”

A distinctly male voice sounded in his head, very offended, “You don’t taste like venison either, fleshy bipedal. You taste like over-fermented lion.”

“Call me Cor,” he told the dragon. Fleshy bipedal sounded distinctly condescending said in that voice and Cor hated it.

The dragon sniffed like a crotchety old grandma. “Robb of the Stark line, eldest child of the First Clutch of the Fire Drake Catelyn and Ice Drake Eddard, Lord of the Northern Mountains and Protector of the Seven Dragon Clans of the North,”

By Bahamut’s wings, did these dragons have to announce themselves like that all the time? It must be tiring.

For the second time, though with another, older and wiser dragon, plans continued. Still treasonous. Though Cor was getting very fond of the dragons and angrier with the humans for killing dragons.

Plans solidified, and Robb, while a very stuck up and paranoid dragon, was obviously a genius strategist.

“While it pains me to suggest this, clutch-sister,” Robb eventually said slowly. “Your treasure might have to part ways with you to seek out this Regis. He has to be informed of what his sire is doing before things go beyond terrible. I will have to go with him, because how else will he convince the humans of our bloodsharing?”

“And why can’t I go?” Sansa demanded. “Do not forget that we are born only a few days apart, clutch-brother.”

“I can leave without garnering suspicion,” Robb explained. “Since sire and dam need reports and might need help. I can convince the Eldest to send me. You, however, are the only one that can control our clutch-siblings. Which you have been leaving to me while you cavort with your treasure.”

The last was said with such a dirty look that it made Cor laugh despite his exhaustion. So. Sansa was supposed to be babysitting but was instead with Cor.

“Do not laugh,” Robb said sternly, which made Cor laugh harder. “Our clutch-siblings are hatchlings. And they all three breathe fire. It is a miracle that there hasn’t been an avalanche yet.”

Okay, point.

“Don’t be sad, Sansa,” Cor said, because he did agree with Robb. “I’ll finish this as fast as we can.”

Sansa, there was no other way to say it, pouted.

“I will miss you, my treasure,” she whispered to him.

Cor blushed again.

The human encampment was exactly where Cor left it. The only difference was the multitude of dragons surrounding it.

Robb eyed it and exchanged glances with Cor.

“We might need to change our plans,” Robb said.

They couldn’t sneak in, there were too many sensitive senses watching.

“What’s happening? Can you tell?” Cor asked.

Robb sniffed long and hard, eyes on the encampment and on the very large ice drake by the very middle.

“There is no war,” Robb said. “But negotiations are not going well. Neither side understands each other. I have no idea what magic your people are using to talk, but it is not translating well.”

Cor immediately smacked his head. Of course, the king and his blood had magic. He had forgotten.

“I don’t think magic does well with dragons,” Cor said, remembering the king’s face when he tried a fire spell at one dragon. “I think you’re all immune to it.”

Robb tossed his head. “And what do we do now?”

Cor, because he was regaining his old confidence, laughed. “We drop in the middle and I’ll talk. You make sure no one kills me.”

Robb eyed him. “If you die, my sister will kill me. I am not jesting. She will rip me limb from limb.” The dragon sounded nervous.

Cor smiled toothily. “I don’t die that easily.”

The good news was that King Mors was dead.

The bad news was that the very large ice dragon in the middle of the encampment had killed him with one ice spear and it was making negotiations…icy.

Fortunately, Cor had a reputation before he left as a prissy asshole prodigiously good with a sword. That meant the newly crowned Regis remembered him well.

Clarus pointed a sword at him, but Cor just ducked aside impatiently.

“Hey, King Regis,” Cor shouted. “Let me talk to you. You’re going about this wrong.”

A lot of the imperial soldiers tried to skewer him right then and Cor sort of forgot that he only had a knife. And no sword. Fuck.

But he had a dragon behind him.

Robb roared and when that made everyone else scrabble for weapons, the even larger ice dragon roared louder.

“No, really,” he shouted in the sudden, suspenseful silence. “I have to talk to you. I know how to talk to the dragons.”

King Regis looked more tired than anything. “Sure. We need all the help we can get. The translation spells aren’t going well since they keep slipping off.”

Cor shook his head. “Of course it won’t, the dragons are nulls. You have to bloodshare to be able to talk to one another. Though it really tastes terrible.”

Regis stared. “What?”

“Yeah, what he said,” Clarus said, sounding stunned.

Sighing, Cor explained.

Sansa sat at the ledge and stared at the horizon irritably.

It had been five days and Sansa missed her treasure. Terribly. Incredibly. It made her very being ache.

“Sansa, you’re so boring nowadays,” Arya complained.

Sansa slid down and curled around Arya, who protested. “My treasure is away. I miss him.”

Arya nudged her and nudged her until, annoyed, Sansa lunged and chased after her. Bran and Rickon, who were watching, the little rascals, joined in and climbed up her wings.

The rest of the elders watched them indulgently.

They rolled around, biting, scratching and play hunting until the hatchlings fell asleep, exhausted. Sansa returned to her ledge, sighing.

Except.

There, on the horizon, were several dragons.

And on one dragon was her treasure. Her very being just knew. That one was hers.

With a cry of happiness, Sansa launched herself off the ledge and flew towards him.

Her lovely, her precious treasure.

He launched himself at her in mid air to Robb’s alarm. But Sansa caught him. She would always catch him.

And she felt it as she held him in the cradle of her fire claws. That she was whole.

#fanfiction #SanCor #sansa stark #cor leonis #ffxv #asoiaf #crossover #dragons #honestly #why do i even bother posting in tumblr anymore #it's just not worth it sometimes #hardly any feedback #no reblogs #dragon au #ffxvxasoiaf

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theliterateape · 3 years

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Bringing a Smartphone to a Gunfight

By Don Hall

As demonstrated by Dave Chappelle and J.K. Rowling, if you don't give a shit about the Tweetstorms and cultural hit pieces when you dare refute the orthodoxy of the shrieking micro-minority and their performative allies, you are effectively uncancellable.

The difficulty faced by those within that in-group of the Rage Profiteers is if there aren't enough of you to seriously foment change, change ain't happening. If everyone offended by Chappelle's statement that “gender is fact” and his admonition that a transgender woman is not a woman simply cancelled their Netflix subscription en masse, it still wouldn't be enough to move the dial much. That's ultimately why Netflix has deflected the complaints.

As businesses are waking up to the fact that the numbers do not match the noise, the corporate flagellation in the face of moral indignation is diminishing. One can only cry wolf so many times before the game is exposed. Too many cries of outrage and the online campaigns become easily ignored.

A lot of us centrist-types are not, as so many on the lunatic fringe want to charge, against the sorts of changes they so fervently advocate for.

Oxford Languages defines the adjective “liberal” as:

willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas.

relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.

Arguments for reformed policing, protections for transgender individuals, reversing the course of man-made climate change, adjusting the system that allows for such extraordinary income inequality are right there in our wheelhouse. It's the hysteria over things that only matter to the fewest like shrill (and deeply unpopular) calls for white atonement, language changes that eradicate the male/female biology, censorship of art and political speech, and the belief in looting and property destruction as legitimate forms of protest that don't jibe.

This is not good for the things that actually matter. There are far more pernicious people out there who have proven themselves impervious to the relentless propaganda of the Twitter Warriors.

The most prolific of the Twitter Warriors comprise less than 3 percent of the population who, in turn, drive the most noise about issues.

As the Democrats are flailing in approval and the base of voters on the Left become more despondent at the lack of immediate progress under Biden, the so far uncancellable Donald J. Trump and his treasonous bunch of cohorts are preparing for another coup attempt. This time it will likely succeed.

Now, while a second Trump presidency might be a phenomenal boost to the finances of anti-right groups (because the money flows big time when there is a monster in charge), his next time will potentially be the last honest presidential election in our lifetimes. The stakes are pretty high, kids, and your amazing facility with your smartphones is no match.

When the GOP takes the House and Senate in 2022, the dinner table is set. Trump gets in legitimately (as in actually wins the election) and we're all toast. And the loudest micro-minority is only really good at protesting in the streets during a time of pandemic lockdown and taking selfies to prove they were there. Most of the time, they are charging in to cancel professors who show Othello and comedians who once tweeted something vaguely homophobic a decade ago.

There's plenty to say about the other micro-minority of raging dickweeds on the right side of things but you have to hand it to them—while the Woke trashed Portland, their mouthbreathing dopes did a smash-and-grab on the United States Capitol. They brought guns with them, too.

The first big test of whether or not Democrats can show even a modicum of initiative and spine is in the handling of Trump crony Steve Bannon, who could soon be held in contempt of Congress for his refusal to answer a subpoena pertaining to Trump's coup and the January 6 insurrection. In theory, this is a jailable offense and Bannon should be in danger of a dramatic perp walk. Bannon clearly believes Democrats don't have the guts to do it. Democrats, however, are insisting otherwise.

"He will be prosecuted, that's our expectation," Rep. Adam Schiff of California told MSNBC. "He apparently feels he's above the law. But he's about to find out otherwise."

Big talk, but can they make good on it?

The process of actually doing so — described by CNN as "a series of steps needed to move forward," including holding meetings, writing a report, and referring it to the House for a vote, then referring it to the Justice Department — doesn't inspire confidence. Every step allows the notorious cowards in the party to get cold feet and telling themselves an idiotic story about how inaction somehow plays better with the voters than action. No wonder Bannon is so sure he'll get away with this.

SOURCE

While our most ardent revolutionaries are busy digitally obsessing over Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan, a fuckface like Steve Bannon is likely to skate past Congress.

What the Twitter Warriors do not comprehend is that most Americans don't see their outrage over micro-aggressions as righteous but as petulant. Only 22 percent of the 330 million Americans use Twitter; 80 percent of all tweets from American adults come from the top 10 percent. I don't call it a micro-minority out of pique but out of fact. The most prolific of the Twitter Warriors comprise less than 3 percent of the population who, in turn, drive the most noise about issues.

The fragility of that crowd, unable to have deep conversations with the rest of us about the changes they'd like to see, is crippling any persuasive potential. Get off your phones and start listening to those people you've decided you can't abide because they vote. That vote will only matter for a few more years if Trump lives past 2025 because if you think he’s going quietly, you aren’t paying attention.

#Dave Chappelle #JK Rowling #Twitter Rage #liberal definition #Trump 2024

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rametarin · 3 years

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And further thoughts about the yaoi paddles.

If you’re under 20, and just now learning that fandom seniors in their late 20s, 30s, 40s, even low 50s, used to run around slapping eachother on the ass with yaoi paddles in anime and comic conventions after anime became a household media staple, you probably have.. questions.

You’re probably thinking, “Wow!! It was really lawless and anarchistic back then, wasn’t it! They never heard about personal space or sexual harassment laws! SOCIETY must have been SO different, back then!”

NO. I cannot stress enough, the Yaoi Paddle phenomenon was borne PURELY because the demographic MOST LIKELY to protest and be wet blankets about everything fun and sexual and admittedly VERY SKETCHY sometimes in fiction, and ALWAYS bad in reality.. turned off and said virtually nothing. Wokesters that’d protest about the environment and sexual assault against women would take off their Problem Glasses by night and act like paddling was harmless, contextually acceptable behavior.

Yaoi Paddle shit appeared because something absolutely magical happened in scifi and fantasy fandoms. It survived purely because boys didn’t complain, or their complaints were not taken seriously. I promise you, I assure you, if you grew up in the late 80s, your night time TV was INUNDATED with heavy handed messages about how sexual harassment (always male-on-woman flavored) was wrong, even proxy or indirect violence to women (tossing rubber gloves in their lap) was wrong, and to never, ever, ever do that thing or they’d rub your nose in it and consider you mentally diseased until the day you died.

Fandom was always niche, with sci-fi and fantasy stuff being off in its own little corner. Conventions, before the internet was king, was one of few places where more rural, disparate suburban and city-definition isolated geeks, nerds and dreamers could get together and just cut loose. Comic books, novels, video games. All that GOOD shit. But if you knew a girl in the 80s and 90s, you knew a girl that knew a girl that was getting them to be less tolerant and “more conscious and aware” (80s and 90s parlance for Woke) and when that happened, a new persona was created. A new bunch of dialogue options, created.

Suddenly they didn’t say stuff like, “Ew. Why is this character dressed like a SLUT? Typical male writers. Like we’d ever draw ourselves in this or put ourselves in this.” Because that’d be a personal, subjective opinion. Instead, the option to say, “It’s endemic in our western culture that male chauvinist authors and writers in a patriarchal system exploit femininity in media and reproduce misogynistic culture.”

And so assured this was true by mob mentality AND the idea that learned, educated, acredited and tenured academics had this opinion, they were scientists, and so they were right, permeated. Suddenly girl-fans had outlets to have justified apprehension for everything they saw and didn’t like or, if they actually liked it, STILL interpreted it through their lenses to be on, “the right side of history.”

It made fandom miserable and a sausage fest for a while, if only out of fear of driving away female friends. You couldn’t share that shit unless you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that your female peers and friends wouldn’t disregard you like a “typical misogynistic western male” for enjoying that stuff.

Sentiments and peer pressure thoughts emerged. Like, “The comic industry is hostile and cruel to women that try and enter it, and they exploit the image of women for cheap dollars.” So they simply weren’t interested in comics- mostly- unless the comics were written by women and sold with that virtue in mind. In which case, you had boys glowingly mentioning just how much they liked this authentically written adventure by this female comic author. Isn’t that just so special? Not like those horrid anti-woman cigar smoking old man stories, right?

There was always something to nag and get vitriolic about with the media. That’s part of why the Whedon brand of feminist writing got so popular in the 90s. it was low hanging fruit of peppy “sassy” girl characters doing girly things. They weren’t like “other” girls written in comics and cartoons. They were actually girly. Not idealized infantalized children, like those horrible white men write, you know.

Well. Things were looking really bleak for the forseeable future. Lots of boys just felt like comics and cartoons were lost to girls that weren’t specifically into them, and that meant more sausage fest conventions or hobbies, and signing off hope on those things being respected and accepted on the merits of what they are and were. The girls had embraced serials-filed-off radfem rhetoric and lenses, sometimes without even knowing the origins of where those truisms like the Male Gaze even came from, just assuming it was true and indisputable. And it complimented their insecurities, so they’d embrace that shit until they couldn’t anymore.

And then.. something absolutely miraculous and amazing happened that blindsided this whole vitriolic culture.

Anime.

And amazingly, every complaint that a lot of nerdy girls had about the very much sanitized, policed and made PG writing and characterization of characters in western comics and cartoons, just... fucking up and vanished. Seemingly within a fucking YEAR, the entire social culture of Problem Finders, finding everything wrong about these stories, the characters, the writer and the company that produced them being misogynistic male chauvinism, dried up. Those voices quieted, or were shut out of the groups.

Media from Japan was some of the most infantilizing, sexist, tittelating shit compared to mainstream American comics and cartoons and video games, and girls fluttered to it like flies to shit. We had Buffy basically subverting boogymen that a bunch of girls had been taught were still relevant after the 1950s by fighting crime in melee combat with men, and winning, while wearing jogging pants and cracking sassy, like Lola Bunny being a “tough girl.”

Japan had doe eyed, waif bodied ballet dancers that basically farted iridescent glitter, hearts and all the symbols and shapes of the Lucky Charms, riding unicorns and fighting evil in cute outfits. Being childish and not at all mature or professional to show how womanly and competent they were, basically being overgrown 11 year old girls fresh off the playground swing set.

And the fangirls loved it. Those nagging voices that would speak up and remind them about misogynistic, male chauvinistic “societies” and culture? Just.. they fucking VANISHED from the mind for AN ENTIRE GENERATION. I’m not exaggerating. Tolerance and fun and innocence was back again. The problem-glasses felt too ostracized and alienated, or didn’t even want to wear them anymore for personal reasons, and the Radfem Baby Wokes just seemed to grow out of that collective hysteria and pretend it never happened and never existed.

That’s why the very EXISTENCE of Yaoi Paddles at conventions was just so fucking bizarre to those of us that lived up to that point. After, “Stay in your own personal space, boy. DON’T even TOUCH a GIRL unless she VERBALLY AND PUBLICLY CONSENTS or it’s proof you’re just living up to this misogynistic, objectifying society’s evil history!” was drilled into us, day on the playground by day on the playground, by women with axes to grind and good-boy sycophants performing sharing those sentiments for brownie points, it was so fucking surreal to IMAGINE girls just running around sexually assaulting and physically assaulting random strangers because they thought they looked like cute, gay men.

It wasn’t that they didn’t know any better beforehand, it’s that they COMPLETELY put those sentiments away and up and decided, as girls, it was okay to violate male autonomy because they weren’t women, and “it’s okay to paddle a yaoi boy ^.^!” With NO self-awareness whatsoever.

The very fact it existed is testament to how attention starved boys were for girls approving gaze and playful interaction, that they’d tolerate some pocky fingered little cow stranger smacking them on the ass with a plank of wood because it was a socially acceptable way to just interact with girls in their lonely assed fandom and interest. It was an acceptable way to meet girls and positively interact. That’s the degrading bullshit boys said virtually nothing about at the hayday of yaoi paddles, purely to be welcoming to girls in anime and hentai approving spaces.

WE GREW UP hearing and watching horror stories and boogymen stories about true crime and sitcoms and crime shows about evil evil men violating the personal space of women for lewd and lecherous reasons. We had it drilled into our heads that the tolerance for boys and men doing that was negatives, and the general sentiment was men caught doing that (to women, or children of any sex) were effectively free game for any violence you personally felt like unloading on them, confident that in such outraged rape and sexual assault hating times, juries would excuse that passion as a defense.

So if you look back on the era of Yaoi Paddles and think. “WOW. That must be like driving cars before they invented seat belts and cough medicine before they invented the drug safety and scheduling legal system!”.. NO.

It was not like the 50s-70s, where many of the rules hadn’t been written yet so it was anarchy and chaos. Yaoi Paddles existed almost PURELY because girls HAD no rules if they didn’t want to respect them. The Yaoi Paddle phenomenon flew in direct opposition to how interactions were supposed to go, and ABSOLUTELY NO ONE would tolerate the reverse; no cis straight man could walk around randomly smacking women on the ass with a plank of even foam in pantomime, or ‘floating hand’ pretending to be a perverted character. The double standard was GLARING. The Double Standard was a fucking bugbear that had grown from a tiny screaming goblin and was now hanging upside down from the ceiling, roaring.

But because it was GIRLS inflicting it on BOYS, absolutely no party cared enough to raise a stink about it. The Radfems kept their mouths shut, because boys were the recipients. The Radfem Sympathizers really wanted to spank boys, so suddenly they couldn’t find their problem glasses and instead put on their neko ears. The boys were either stoic and amused by it or really wanted to be seen as cool and not buzzkills, so they tolerated to reveled in it.

Many times when you hear about things that happened either when you were a child just too young to really personally experience a thing, or before you were born, we’re quick to assume it’s a medieval place and the people were so uncultured as to have never pondered the social problems of spanking one another on the ass unprovoked. Violation of personal space, personal sovereignty- all that. That was NOT okay at the time. It happened because fujoshi decided it was okay and nobody argued with them to not do hat, or they were told to stop and did it anyway.

And as I’ve laid it out, that is the most bizarre and surreal element to the whole thing. They DID know better, but felt it didn’t apply to THEM because they were girls, and a girl slapping a boy on the ass “as a joke” didn’t mean anything- because it wasn’t happening TO them, FROM a man.

And irony of ironies, it was NEVER okay, EVER, throughout that entire era, for the reverse to be a thing. It was very specifically and exclusively not. As a man if you ran around slapping cute looking girls with the Yuri Paddle, you goin’ to either juvy hall, or prison, boi. Both sexes knew it. And yet, yaoi paddles STILL became a thing.

#history #yaoi paddles #90s fandom #early 00s fandom

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the-everqueen · 4 years

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why i disliked “the traitor baru cormorant”

so...recently i read Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant. i bought it thinking, Cool, an insightful fantasy series for me to get into while i wait to hear whether i passed my qualifying exams! i have some time before the semester starts!

and then i absolutely hated it and spent every minute cataloguing what i thought Dickinson got wrong.

...uh, if you want to get the tl;dr of the liveblog i gave the gf, here’s the top three reasons i disliked this book:

1) not a fan of the “strong female character” trope

yes, Baru doesn’t sling around a sword or shoot arrows better than Anyone In The Whole World. but Dickinson IMMEDIATELY tells us (not shows, tells) that she’s good at math, she’s clever at picking apart strategic scenarios, she’s a savant. (tbh, i don’t love how he shows this, either, with the standard child-prodigy-who-catches-the-attention-of-a-powerful-adult trope.) in Dickinson’s crafted world, her math skills aren’t entirely unusual: women (for...some reason?) are stereotyped as being good at calculations, despite also being aligned with hysteria and too many emotions. this bothers me more than it’s probably supposed to, because the sexism in this novel doesn’t really seem to follow an internal logic. i guess it’s so we can have a woman as the protagonist? also...hoo boy...her “savant” characterization bothers me because...she’s heavily coded as South East Asian (...maaaybe Philippines or Native Hawaii, but as i’ll get to later, Dickinson doesn’t make a huge distinction). uh...model minority stereotypes anyone? yes, within the text, plenty of people associated with the Empire comment that it’s impressive someone of her background got into a position of power so young. at the same time, i’m sure that sounds familiar to so many Asian-identified people! the constant tightrope of being expected to perform to a certain (white, Western) standard while also being Othered. mostly this bothers me because Baru is also characterized as...a sellout for the Empire. sure, her stated goal is to undo the Empire from within, but [MAJOR SPOILERS] in the end it appears that her actual goal was to attain enough power that the Empire would let her be a benevolent dictator over her home island? and it’s only after a major PERSONAL betrayal that she revises this plan? [END SPOILERS] Baru also assimilates without much pain or sacrifice. she hardly ever thinks about her parents or her childhood home. she willingly strips herself of cultural signifiers and adapts to Empire norms (apart from being a closeted lesbian, which...yeah, i’ll get to that, too). and it’s not that Dickinson doesn’t TRY to make her a nuanced character, but...to me, it feels so painfully obvious that this is not his experience. it feels almost...voyeuristic.

...much like his descriptions of wlw desire!

2) we get it, you read Foucault

the categories of sexual deviance are based entirely on a Western Victorian-era medical discourse around non-heterosexual forms of desire, but Dickinson ignores the network of sociocultural, religious, and historical contexts that contributed to that specific kind of discourse. he uses the terms “tribadism” and “sodomy” but those ideas CANNOT EXIST outside a Euro-American Christian context. yes, a huge part of the 19th century involved the pathologization of sexual and romantic desire (or lack thereof). but that in turn goes back to a history of medicine that relied on the “scientific method” as a means of studying and dissecting the human body--and that method in itself is a product of Enlightenment thinking. Theorist Sylvia Wynter (whomst everyone should read, imho) discusses how the Enlightenment attempted to make the Human (represented by a cisgender, heteronormative, white man) an agent of the State economy. every categorization of so-called deviance goes back to white supremacist attempts to define themselves as ‘human’ against a nonwhite, non-Christian Other. and IN TURN that was ultimately founded on anti-Black, anti-Indigenous racism. at this point it’s a meme in academic circles to mention Foucault, because so many scholars don’t go any further in engaging with his ideas or acknowledge their limits. but SERIOUSLY. Dickinson crafts the Masquerade as this psuedo-scientific empire that’s furthering erasure of native cultures, but...where did these ideas come from? who created them? what was the justification that gave them power? [MINOR SPOILER] blaming the Empire’s ideology on a handful of people behind the Mask who crafted this entire system makes me...uncomfortable, to say the least. part of what gives imperialism its power is that a lot of ordinary people buy in to its ideas, because it aligns with dominant belief systems or gives them some sense of advantage.

also speaking of cultural erasure...

3) culture is more than set dressing

again, to reiterate: Baru does NOT think back to her childhood home for longer than a couple passing sentences at various points in the narrative. but even though the early chapters literally take place on her home island, i don’t get a sense of...lived experience. this is true of ALL of the fantasy analogues Dickinson has created in his Empire. i felt uncomfortably aware of the real world counterparts that Dickinson was drawing inspiration from. at the same time...there are basically no details to really breathe life into these various fantasy cultures. i HATE the trope of “fantasy Asia” or “fantasy Africa” or “fantasy Middle East” that’s rampant among white male sff writers. Dickinson does not get points from me for basically just expanding that to “fantasy South East Asia,” “fantasy Mongolia,” “fantasy South America,” and... “fantasy Africa,” plus some European cultures crammed in there. he’s VERY OBVIOUSLY drawing on those languages for names, but otherwise there’s no real sense of their religious practices, the nuances of their cultures, the differences between those cultures (besides physiological, which...oh god). part of that is probably supposed to be justified by “well, the Empire just erased it!!!” but that’s not an excuse imho.

also...in making the Empire the ultimate signifier of the evils of imperialism...Dickinson kind of leans into the “noble savage” stereotype. Baru’s home island is portrayed as this idyllic environment where no one is shamed for who they love and gender doesn’t determine destiny and there are no major conflicts. (there is a minor nod to some infighting, but this is mostly a “weakness” that the Masquerade uses as an excuse to obliterate a whole tribe.) Dickinson justifies young Baru’s immediate assimilation as her attempt to figure out the Masquerade’s power from within, but given that the Masquerade presumably killed one of her dads and her mom maybe advocates a guerilla resistance...it’s weird that Baru basically abandons her family without a second thought. yeah, i get that she’s a kid when the Masquerade takes over the island, but...that’s still a hugely traumatic experience! the layers of trauma and conditioning and violence that go into this level of colonization are almost entirely externalized.

(later it’s implied that Baru might qualify as a psychopath, and tbh that feels like an excuse for why we haven’t gotten any sense of her inner world, not to mention kind of offensive.)

this isn’t exhaustive but...

it’s not that i don’t think white people shouldn’t ever address POC experiences in their books. just...if your entire trilogy is going to revolve around IMPERIALISM IS BAD, ACTUALLY, maybe you should contribute to the discourse that Black, Brown, and Indigenous authors have already done. reading this book made me so, so angry. i did not feel represented! i felt like i was being talked down to, both on a critical theory level AND on a craft level. there are SO MANY books by actual BIPOC and minority authors that have done this better. N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy and her current Cities series. Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti trilogy. Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House remains one of the more powerful novels i’ve read on how The System Is Out To Destroy You, That Is The Point. (Bardugo is non-practicing Spanish and Moroccan Jewish on one side of her family, and her character Alex is mixed and comes from a Jewish background!)

...

there’s not really a point to this. i get a lot of people have raved about this book. good for them. if that’s you, no judgment. i’m not trying to argue IF YOU LIKED THIS YOU ARE PROBLEMATIC. i’m just kind of enraged that a white dude wrote about a Brown lesbian under a colonial empire and that THIS Brown lesbian under a colonial empire couldn’t even get behind the representation. also kind of annoyed that it’s the Empire of Masks and Dickinson either hasn’t read Fanon or didn’t see fit to slip in a Fanon reference, which like. missed opportunity.

#meta #book review #maybe y'all can get enjoyment from my rage #also i don't want to publish this on like. goodreads.#i'm not out to destroy Seth Dickinson personally #i know this was a highly reviewed book #i just...hated it #and i figured putting the rage on my blog is less harmful #than leaving a one star review #while also maybe giving someone the insight #for why they might not want to read this #the traitor baru cormorant #the masked empire

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gin-and-luce · 4 years

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You killed our dog! Adriana of The Sopranos gave me strength to navigate life after a breakup during a global pandemic lockdown

I’m going through a breakup. It’s come at the worst time but also the best time. He ended things with me (more on that later) after three years in the most Beta-Male way...but this is what happens when your type can be boiled down to softboi. I can’t see my friends in the conventional way, so I made some new ones on screen to help me navigate the end during quarantine.

Over ten weeks ago I started watching The Sopranos. It doesn’t need justifying, everyone knows it’s the best television series of all time, but I’d never seen it, and I knew a global pandemic induced lockdown would provide optimum viewing circumstances. My favourite thing to do is completely throw myself into the female narrative and experience I’m watching on screen. I prefer a long deep drama over a film. I like being able to see my girls every night.

People have said to me before “you should start a blog”, but I could never escape the feeling that doing so is massively narcissistic because it *is*, unless you have something actually relevant to write about. Alternatively, the image of Gretchen Weiners leaning in and going “you let it out honey, put it in the book” floats across my conscience, and everything embarrassing that I’ve ever done, plays in a montage in my mind.

Who gives a fuck what I have to say about anything…….. especially about a cultural phenomena that is quite literally regarded as the best TV show of all time?

I’d been wanting to write this after I watched Long Term Parking. I lay in the dark for 45 minutes after the episode ended. I’d never felt like that watching a television show or film before. My throat had seized up but I didn’t cry, even though I felt like it. I knew it was coming from the moment Adriana met the agent. I wasn’t surprised, but I was heartbroken and absolutely fuming. I still am.

I’m not angry with Christopher, Tony, or Silvio, but just the general unbalance I’ve felt when I’m in a relationship. The loss of self, relationships being a series of compromises. From what I have found from my own experiences and my girlfriends’, women are just much more willing to compromise, but don’t consider it to be a compromise. Men can only take into consideration their own reality, an evolutionary selfishness that just doesn’t translate.

Just as lockdown began I texted my boyfriend to say I loved him and I missed him. He responded with “Can’t say I feel the same”. Nearly 3 years were over just like that. We had the obligatory phone call, where I was hysterical and he was smarmy and smug. Yet when it was over, I felt nothing. It’s allllll a big nothing.

My personal Gospel is Sex and The City (shout out to HBO!). This was my Berger moment. He essentially scribbled “I’m sorry, I can’t. Don’t hate me” on a post-it. The irony of the whole thing is that when we watched it together, he himself said he was most like Berger. Thinking about it makes me wince.

My life opened up in front of me, I was exposed to his weakness regarding the situation in full when his sister-in-law messaged me on Instagram a few days ago. He hadn’t told his family, nor had he told his flatmates (another shout out to my sleuths at the back, you know who you are!).

The Sopranos is a show about life. The Mafia structure provides a vehicle for us to question morality and mortality. You take what you get from it. When I watch it again at a different stage of my life, I will get something else out of it.

For me now, while I stew in my own emotion during quarantine, Adriana represents emotional labour and the expectation for women to behave in a certain way in relationships.

At first when my ex’s family members were messaging me, I was confused. It is frankly humiliating to smile as if everything is normal, so as to protect someone that in the end would not do the same for me. I know he wouldn’t do the same because there was just no courtesy in what happened weeks ago. I am trying to move on but things like this stunt your personal growth.

The struggle with emotional labour hones a guilt that someday I’ll regret giving my early 20s to something that didn’t work out. I felt like I was on borrowed time.

These are obviously my own insecurities spurred on by the fact that I’ve read enough “10 things I wish I knew in my 20s” blogs to know that these are my selfish years. Still, it is ultimately devastating to see the last 3 years of your life conclude via a text that displays a failure to realise that there is no real clean cut for a long-term relationship.

I respect him for the blunt statement because it means I get to reference the Berger SATC breakup and say “casually cruel in the name of being honest” (Taylor Swift, 2012) a LOT, which softens the pity in the social scenarios that I invent in my head in the shower.

When Tony calls Adriana to tell her Christopher has tried to kill himself, that was like my final phone call too. This is the end. Her youthfulness was why I related to her most in the show, but at the same time having nothing to lose made her easily expendable. Youth makes you put 100% into something knowing it is a gamble.

I’m not comparing my ‘borrowed time’ to Adriana because she ends up dead, but there was a disregard for her life that was so harrowing because she did nothing but try and do the right thing. I watched Adriana put Christopher first willingly for 5 series. He supported her music management dreams but ultimately ended up making it all about him. He gave her the Crazy Horse but this ultimately was just another mob hangout. He sat on her dog, he continued to use heroin, shag other people, and so on.

“You could start writing again,” she tells him in her last episode, to which he responds “I could do my memoirs, finally,”. Here is Adriana still!! STILL!! catering to Christopher’s ego to give herself some confidence. Very me.

All the way through she was just too good for him. Her ties to the Famiglia aren’t as tight as Carmela and Co. No children, still young, there’s chance for Adriana to get out if she wanted to. Of course this makes her prime FBl bait, but shows she sticks by Christopher through everything purely out of love. In the end she dies on her knees, subservient, with Heart’s Barracuda the last song she hears. I know Adriana had to go. That’s the way it is in the Famiglia because Christopher took an oath. But in a way she also had the carpet ripped from underneath her, just like me.

There are lots of men writing on the internet about how Adriana is greedy and hypocritical. I just don’t understand where this reading is coming from other than obvious misogyny. I’ve read others that say if she was really that strong she would have simply left the relationship years ago. I believe that she believed things would improve for both of them, and that most people are just slut shaming her for her past.

Still, Drea DeMatteo won a Best Supporting Actress Emmy for the episode. Fuckin’ A.

I rooted for the woman. Before I was made redundant while working from home, I would spend half my life at my desk willing it to be 5:30pm, so I could slither back to the settee and spend the other half of my life in New Jersey. I’d phone my mum to discuss the episodes. She loves the show too, it’s always been a favourite in my household. We’d talk about the women like they were our friends and how we relate to them. The Sopranos is like a big mirror urging you to question everything. The answer to life is simply what are ya gonna do?

Men love making things black and white so it is easier for them, when really women are in the background sorting out the shades of grey.

Don’t get me wrong, Adriana’s significance is massive, albeit more so because of her death. You watch Christopher and Tony’s relationship start to crumble afterwards. It's shattering to see the disregard for Christopher’s sobriety and how despite his loyalty, he still sees him as a liability and weak.

On the other hand, for Adriana’s sake, I am still enraged that he couldn’t see the bigger picture at the time. She is collateral damage in his path to finding his precious arc - “Wives, girlfriends, they can complicate life in a major way” Tony expresses to Jennifer as he runs from his own guilt.

Christopher is desperate for Tony’s approval but is more than happy to use his blood connection as a protective leeway whenever he steps out of line. Again the irony is that he comes to tell Tony about Adriana first, just as the old Famiglia values say he should, but there is no real personal reward for doing so despite the personal sacrifice.

I think Christopher regretted it in the end, and rightly so. When he is faced with his potential alternate life at the gas station, we assume that this was what made him go to Tony. It’s a family with loads of kids. Adriana probably can’t even have kids??? What kind of male logic?! #justiceforadriana

I can’t help but feel for him when JT screams “Chris, you’re in the MAFIA!”. It’s the same kind of reality check that Chief Cubitoso gives Adriana, it’s an ultimatum and it’s the realisation that they are trapped in this life. Just ask Gene.

Carmela knew. I read her dreams as a testament to a woman’s intuition. She knows her friend isn’t what everyone is describing, she knows Adriana wouldn’t just disappear. She is all too aware of the emotional labour Mob women carry. When she sees Adriana with Cosette on the banks of the Seine, it is as sad as it is when we dream about people who have died.

There is a scene in an early episode where Carmela says “Don’t we all?” in response to Meadow squealing “She’s MARRYING a BABY?” at a painting of The Marriage of Saint Catherine. I thought about this again when Christopher dies. Carmela passes her instinct off as hysteria, she isn’t to know. “So quick to blame, what is the attraction in that?” she cries during the aftermath of the car crash. There is a critique in her own femininity here that just makes you want to shout “NO CARM!!!!!!!”. As she believes she mothers Tony, there is the double-edged sword whereby he protects her through keeping her in the dark. “Heaven only ever sees my love making a fool of me” sings Emmylou Harris at the start of season 5. Carm’s power is taken away but she doesn’t even know.

Carmela dedicates her life to being a mother but it’s not enough to save Meadow from her surname. We get some sense that AJ ‘Break Stuff by Limp Bizkit’ Soprano might be on a new path when he feels like the burning of his car among the autumn leaves of death was cathartic. As a man, he just has more freedom anyway.

Miss Meadow gained her independence by getting her driving license, but in the end we see that she is still held back in the final scene by her inability to parallel park. She slots right in, eventually. As she does, she slots into the Soprano cycle after years of doing the most to get out and pave her own way. After every breakup with someone without links to the Famiglia, no scrubs, she returns and dates someone closer to home. Her career path is left tenuous to us, it would be all too easy for her to become a kept woman, which feels like it is the only real option should she settle down into the lifestyle with Patrick Parisi. It isn’t what she envisioned for herself, so part of me wants to hope that her story ends up a little bit more like Elle Woods. Legally Italian.

I probably wouldn’t even have remembered her saying anything about parallel parking if I wasn’t terrible at parallel parking myself. It’s the pepperings of these subtle callbacks that make the show so beautiful. As the guitar solo plays on during the frustration, you’re invited to reminisce over Meadow’s journey. I fully wept watching her struggle to get the damn car parked because I’m trying to get my car parked too. Don’t stop believing, Meadow.

I admire all the women in The Sopranos. The show is feminist, and that is a hill I am prepared to die on. It’s definitely up for debate as it is obviously littered with gratuitous nudity and women are commoditised. We have to allow this for cultural context for the show, but real life is basically exactly the same too?

I read a post on Reddit where a dude is asking whether he should watch the show with his girlfriend. He types ‘“It’s a masterpiece of film but she probably wouldn’t get into it as I am”, and you don’t have to look much further to find more comments about how women and their puny minds just won’t get it. It’s an odd perspective to take given that Tony’s psychiatrist is a woman, but of course women could never grasp something so complex. It’s bullshit if you ask me, the female narrative prevails throughout all scenarios.

The Pine Barrens seems to be everyone’s favourite episode. It’s not my favourite but there are two major elements that resonated with me. The first is Meadow looking down at the three letter words Jackie Aprile Jr had placed on the Scrabble board, and the second is when Gloria says to Tony:

“What you said was that you didn’t wanna piss me off..which implies that you’d have to deal with me, which is more about sparing YOU than my fucking feelings”. Don’t need to elaborate on that. Rest in power, Gloria. Legend.

Of course I could write pages and pages of hot feminist takes on all of the women - Jennifer, Janice, Livia, Angie, Svetlana, Charmaine. Lord knows I could probably write a book on Tracee.“ 20 years old, this girl”, I bashed Living on a Thin Line by The Kinks for about a week after that episode. It is the male gaze of the show made me love the women more. Carmela is my mother and I’ll probably name my first born Meadow.

Carmela is the powerhouse and backbone of The Soprano household even though Tony provides. She represents stability, emotional labour, and putting on a brave face regardless. In some ways, it is as if Carmela represents the human emotion side and the fragility of organised crime. She is secure, but not enough, and her lack of ability to stand on her own two feet plagues her conscience through time. She is totally complicit, but must be to ensure her future with Tony as he pays anything to roll the dice just one more time. At the end of Long Term Parking, she and Tony stand looking at where she will build her spec-house. The forest looks the same as where we lost Ade, it’s a grim reflection that Carmela wouldn’t have this life if it wasn’t for the quick disposal of those like Adriana.

Yeah okay, what the hell is a show with a feminist underpinning trying to say about wider society about a woman who exercises her beauty, loyalty and ambition?? Is it that she is not to be trusted?? Adriana’s a rat, but before this she is already deemed “damaged goods” anyway. She dresses provocatively, but that’s because she just looks MINT always. You would dress like THAT if you looked like THAT. When you Google her, ‘Adriana Sopranos Tennis’ comes up. I roll my eyes. Fucking men, eh? To take it down to a basic Sixth-Form-Poet reading, Adriana is Curley’s Wife and Daisy Buchanan all in one. She loves a red manicure too, and it might have worked out better for her if she had played the complicit beautiful little fool.

This isn’t ‘Why The Sopranos is good!’, but a love letter to Adriana and her strength, because there is basically little or no content written on the women of the show when I have Googled. I needed there to be more things written about her that isn’t just “bitch had it coming” when in fact she is a martyr.

When Adriana was on screen, there was my mate. I knew her, she wanted what I wanted, but she sacrificed so much of herself for others and it was heartbreaking to watch. She barely gets a look-in in early episodes, but when she does she is usually wearing something animal print, which automatically made her the number one character on my radar. I am choosing to believe the theory that she is the cat in the final episode too.

Still, I have been struggling and questioning why an episode that aired 16 years ago, with no plot that links to my own circumstances, has had such a monumental impact on me.

I saw a tweet that said “have we ever sat down and thought about why relationships only work if the guy is more invested than the girl or is that just something we accept” (@anugov1). Adriana invested more in Christopher, even in the end, than she ever did herself.

As I navigate this transitional period in my life, I am Adriana driving in the vision we see when we think she is going to start her new chapter. We can’t leave the flat, I have no job. The Sopranos has provided the most cathartic escapism for me. As I enter into whatever new world follows this nightmare, I wanted my mate Adriana to find her new world too, turning the classic rock up to 11.

#the sopranos #adriana la cerva #christopher moltisanti #carmela soprano #feminism #cosette #breakup #woe is me #hbo #david chase #drea de matteo

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onisiondrama · 4 years

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(Note: I’m not repeating stories he’s told before and just putting them in parenthesis. I have a lot more videos to go until I’m caught up so that would save me a lot of time. If he gives details I never heard from him before, I will type those.)

[Sorry if this one isn’t coherent. I could not focus on this video for the life of me. It took me three days to get through lol.]

“Don't Trust Anyone” September 23, 2020 - Speaks

Says he wants to make a quick video on why no one should ever trust anyone. [The video is over 40 minutes long 😭]

He wanted to play hero and white knight by giving people he wanted to help things to make their lives better. He’s given thousands of dollars worth of stuff: flat screen TVs, thousand dollar airfares. Males, females, people in their 20′s, 30′s 40′s, etc. People who have met him in person say he’s a generous guy.

Says he gave his mother a quarter of a million dollar house and it destroyed their relationship. He says it showed him the house is more important to her long term. He told her she got the house for free and she said it cost her her relationship with him. He asks why she was letting a house that was given to her for free cost their relationship. He says he offered to buy the house back and she didn’t want to sell it even though it was free. He says he needs a place to film. He says Onision videos aren’t coming back because of his mom.

He doesn’t value his life and he doesn’t have a lot of will to live, that’s why he doesn’t have a filter and tells you how he really is. People play a game to get more respect and money, but he just doesn’t want to exist.

He says there’s at least 10 people he’s given $10,000 of stuff to.

He lived in a laundry room and was on food stamps because his mom was a single mom. He says when people says “it’s only money”, he thinks your a privileged pampered jerk. He says it means a lot to him when someone donates $5 on twitch. He says twitch takes half so he only gets $2.50. [This is really funny when you compare it to the shit he used to say to his fans when he was making over a million a year and the shit he said to them when they wouldn’t pay for the Onision channel when he made it pay to view only.]

He says he gave Cyr food and camera equipment. (Cyr and his gf story.)

Says it’s hard to trust Youtubers because the platform rewards drama. He asks if someone is going to take a DM out of context or lie about wanting to be in a sketch or not. Are you going to pretend to be against something because your afraid of being canceled? He doesn’t want to exist in a world like that.

You invest a lot of time and love in something and it turns around and bites your hand off. People do that because you hurt their feelings.

If you’re not an adult and you’re not blood related to him, he’s a jerk to you so everyone knows he wants nothing to do with you. Besides that he’s nice to pretty much everyone except his mom and an independent voter cousin he has. She stormed off with a red face when he laughed in her face at how stupid she is.

Says his director friend who is very professional and worked with a lot of youtubers said to him, “if only people know you for who you are.” He says he presents himself differently online, using a comedic or acting flair. He did this because he wanted to get the message he’s trying to convey and make an impact. He wants people to feel things when they watch him. The idea of Onision is so big and powerful, it’s impossible to get past the illusion.

He doesn’t feel poly right now. He doesn’t want a relationship outside his husband. It’s too socially complicated to keep two people happy and not jealous. (Chris Rock women try to steal your man quote.) People try to rip apart his 8 year long, successful marriage. He implies Kai stays with him and loves him even when they are at odds, that’s a genuine human being and relationship. Other people pretend to like him. (Moderator said she hated him for a year.)

Says he made a video about cuddlegate and another break up they had with Billie. Says she always visited them, flew out for a week or two weeks. He says it was expensive. He says he asked her if those videos were accurate. She said yes. He says those videos weighed in her favor.

When you sever ties with someone because the person was dangerous to your family, the online community doesn’t care. Certain crimes are acceptable to people online like drug abuse, dealing, lie, fraud.

Describes himself as a goody-two-shoes because he’s a former air force cop. Says people don’t like him because he represents authority, the people who dumped you, your dad, the less hip crowd.

Says Billie admitted she lied on video.

He tries to live in the real world, but he deals with people don’t care about justice or objectivity. They only care about feelings. When all you care about is feelings, then anyone that doesn’t want to be your friend is a monster and a criminal.

When someone blocks him on twitter, he thinks they have the wrong idea about him. He doesn’t hate them and think they’re a terrible person. He’s sure if a person has a coherent, civilized conversation with him, they wouldn’t conclude a lot that’s negative.

Says there’s a lot of cancel culture and #metoo hysteria where people focus on people that hurt their feelings. Says there are a lot of valid #metoo too.

He says talking about women’s rights is compensating and being manipulative. He says someone told him he should do that and he saw it on Amazon’s The Boys. There’s no real consequence. Just social consequence like Johnny Depp’s ex.

People lie and are malicious because he rejected him.

People only care about news about accusations about famous people when people are murdered ever day. You say you’re caring and you just want justice, he can’t help but question your priorities.

Says he was recommended an old update video about himself from Mike who worked with Chris Hansen. He didn’t watch it, he pressed uninterested. Says Mike went to actual court for allegedly groping people.

If Batman was truly against bad people, he would lock up the whole city because bad people are everywhere. They vote, lie, and do things to others constantly based on personal gift. Says he was given an amazing gift to tell the truth. Says it might be the suicidal feelings. He wouldn’t do it, but he would press a button to not exist anymore. He says he doesn’t want to hurt people who care about him. Says it’s contagious sometimes.

Says he’s the giving tree, like the book. Says the tree kept giving and it wasn’t appreciated by the person using it.

Says it’s rare for people to kick him out of their life. (Hannah Minx rejected him story) He says he didn’t blame her and that’s how you handle rejection. You say ok and move on. [lol yeah ok buddy] People don’t give him the same decency.

Says he had a Patreon who donated thousands to him. She had a mental breakdown in front of himself and a few other Patreons during a gathering near Boston. [this is about Dev] She didn't feel like they appreciated her for driving them around, but she was the one that invited them. She’s the reason he doesn’t have meet ups anymore. She was a 30-something woman who lost her mind in front of a bunch of 20-somethings and himself. She burned out the clutch of her car out of rage. She told him she just wanted a clean break after, but he says he didn’t care. He thinks she said that because she didn’t want him to talk about what happened. He says that’s a situation where he’s not negative and appreciates the good things she did, donated thousands to him. He was petrified of her. His two Patreon friends witnessed it and they just wanted water bottles.

He doesn’t think he could have a meaningful relationship now after what he’s been through. Most people he kicked out lost their mind after. Says the ex Patreon didn’t lose their mind after. He says she accused him of sleeping with a 24 / 25-year-old while they were there. They were 40 minutes away from having to leave at the airport. It was 4 am and they were up all night. He was exhausted so he went to lay down in the dark. The two patreons were in the other room. But that women still blindly said they slept together. He doesn’t know who would want to have sex with someone you’re not in a relationship with at 4 am before you leave for the airport.

Someone asked him on Only Fans when he’ll sleep with other people for his pictures. He says he doesn’t know because he has to love someone and be in a relationship with them. He doesn’t want to have a relationship with anyone outside Kai because he’s terrified. Any time he gets close to you people you’re a danger to his family or dishonest.

The cops took Shiloh away when he called them on her and people think she’s some kind of hero. Siren on the rocks. They cry victim and they’re really trying to drown you.

(Skye prenup story)

It’s great he has no friends now. He can deal with loneliness and he has a family. He was giving stuff away and getting little back. He’s finally protecting himself.

Says to make people prove themselves before you let them hurt you. Like getting a tattoo, a spray tan, or dying their hair green. Says don’t actually do that to prove yourself to him. He says that will make you look crazy, he wasn’t being literal.

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