#although that only 'fixes' one aspect. and only even about 25% of a fix

[blastlight]

The announcement | The blog message

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[houseofchirontx]

February 2023 Intuitive Astrology Forecast

OVERVIEW:

The month begins with all planets in a forward trend. Until the end of April, we have momentum and progression at our fingertips. The choice is yours to walk through the open doors! Our retrograde season was intense, whereas the remaining part of winter and the start of spring will bring ease. 

February's lunar cycle involves a Leo Full Moon that activates the fixed energy again. The Lunar nodes are still navigating through Taurus and Scorpio, so things could get pretty intense at the start of the month. Much of what is destined has to do with releasing and receiving; the lunar nodes remind us of that. This month's new moon is occurring in poetic Pisces, helping us to create a life we could only dream of. 

MONTHLY TRANSITS

Full Moon at 16º Leo

February 5th, 2023

12:28 pm CST

Leo is the bold and expressive sign of the zodiac. Full moons are the biggest and brightest time of our lunar cycle. As the Moon reaches its greatest illumination in the courageous sign of Leo, it will form a tense aspect known as a T-Square in the fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Aquarius). T-Squares are made of one opposition and two squares between 3 astrological bodies. In this case, we have the Sun in Aquarius opposing the Moon in Leo while both square Uranus in Taurus. Current situations may seem chaotic, tense, petty, and even entertaining. Still, we are being pushed to release what isn't working, ignore the drama, let go by choosing which battles to fight and make the necessary changes to live our lives courageously. The Moon in Leo will form a loose sextile to Mars in Gemini, while Uranus sextiles Venus in Pisces. Although it's a relatively quiet time in the Universe, the inner world of an individual determines how one will manage this intense energy. It's all about having the internal tools to solve the problems that are present to get to the other side.

Mercury conjunct Pluto at 28º Capricorn

February 10th, 2023

11:15 am CST

Mercury is our communicator, and Pluto rules our psyche and secrets. Secrets and revelations could surface with this mighty conjunction. It’s an ideal time to study, research and dive into the abyss of the unknown to uncover mysteries or perplexing topics. This energy is also favorable for psychological analysis, so self-awareness, shadow work, therapy, or simply speaking with someone with great skill and knowledge will be beneficial today.

Mercury enters Aquarius

February 11th, 2023 - March 2nd, 2023

5:23 am CST

Mercury in Aquarius helps us tap into the genius energy we all possess. We can think outside the box, build a community to expand our network, and create plans to achieve our goals. Mercury is a busybody this month! Mercury sextiles Jupiter and Chiron in Aries to broaden the views of our self-image and increase our confidence and enthusiasm. There is also a lovely trine to Mars in Gemini to give us the drive to go after our goals with the plans we’ve created under the Aquarius new moon. Although Mercury in Aquarius feels electrifying, the Mercury square to Uranus in Taurus will intensify the restrictive and chaotic vibes we’ve experienced with the fixed signs. 

Venus conjunct Neptune at 4º Pisces

February 15th, 2023

6:25 am CST

Conjunctions indicate new beginnings; Neptune and Venus rule creativity, artistry, love, and spirituality. During this time, new connections in love can form, or we could be embarking on a deeper level of harmony in our existing relationships. With these two planets connecting, we can dream, which could increase our creativity. Alternatively, we may feel less enthusiastic about getting things done or seeing our situations clearly.

Sun conjunct Saturn at 27º Aquarius

February 16th, 2023

10:48 am CST

Sun conjunct Saturn gives us the focus, determination, and discipline to get the job done! With structure and patience, we can forge through our responsibilities with a sense of accomplishment. We could receive recognition from someone in a position of authority or even take on the role of a knowledgeable advisor for someone else. Saturn can restrict our creative self-expression when it connects with the Sun, so we may have difficulty showing up boldly. Additionally, the Sun will shine a light on anything that needs structure or organization.

Sun enters Pisces

February 18th, 2023 - March 20th, 2023

4:35 pm CST

Happy Solar Return Pisces!

As the sun shifts into Pisces, we will feel a sense of romance and peace. We are embarking on the zodiac's final sign and the astrological year's end. It's ideal for reflecting on the experiences from the start of Spring Equinox 2022 to the present. What is coming full circle for you at this time? Pisces is represented by the two fish, yin and yang, swimming in opposite directions but ultimately flowing in the same trajectory. The Pisces New Moon helps us to set goals that will assist us in flourishing and flowing with the tide. Get creative about your desires this season.

New Moon at 1º Pisces

February 20th, 2023

1:05 am CST

It's the time to dream of our desired realities externally, but first, it begins with our internal realities. Pisces is about the spirit, the soul, the ending, and the beginning, and sometimes we have to go back to the start to understand the path's trajectory. Using our imaginations and spiritual gifts to set our intentions today is essential. Visualization, meditation, and any form of art are great tools for mapping out the futures we desire. Pisces isn't about attachment to a particular outcome; it's more about flowing to the destination and remaining open to the natural flow of things.

Venus enters Aries

February 20th, 2023 - March 16th, 2023

1:56 am CST

Less than an hour after our Pisces New Moon, Venus leaves the sign of its exaltation and enters passionate Aries. During Venus’ transit in Aries, she will conjunct Jupiter and Chiron, square Pluto in Capricorn, and sextile Mars in Gemini. The connection to Jupiter and Chiron will bring ease and understanding to our path to embrace truth and sovereignty. A new beginning toward healing the wounds of our identities will help build confidence. Jupiter and Venus bring new beginnings within our finances and love lives. As the square to Pluto may surface our tendencies to hold onto things well beyond their expiration date due to obsessions and attachment issues, the sextile to Mars in Gemini will give us the confidence to accept ourselves and release. Aries Venus is naturally bold, vibrant, and confident; we get to harness that energy wholeheartedly this season.

[ms-m-astrologer]

Transiting Mercury stations direct!

Timeline (current events in bold)

Friday, January 15, 07:56 UT - Mercury enters pre-Rx shadow, 11:01 Aquarius

Wednesday, January 27 - Mercury enters “Storm” (moving less than one degree per day; this is like the actual retrograde getting an early start, sigh)

Saturday, January 30, 15:52 UT - Mercury stations retrograde, 26:29 Aquarius

Monday, February 8, 13:48 UT - Sun-Mercury inferior conjunction, 20:01 Aquarius

Sunday, February 21, 00:52 UT  - Mercury stations direct, 11:01 Aquarius

Saturday, February 27 - Mercury exits “Storm” (this is when the retrograde will “feel” like it’s over)

Friday, March 12, 05:09 UT - Mercury exits post-Rx shadow, 26:29 Aquarius

Mercury’s function in our charts is to serve as our inner computer program, which we can boil down to: 

Input -> Process -> Output

That means we can equate Mercury’s retrograde periods to “debugging,” or to upgrading the software. Something about the ways we learn, think, and communicate needs work. If you think about Merc Rx this way, it’s much easier to deal with!

So - I don’t think this was a particularly awful Mercury retrograde, do you? There were the usual computer snafus, but nothing really horrible. Nothing that made anybody’s life difficult for longer than thirty minutes, tops. Maybe it was because both the benefics (Venus and Jupiter) are in Aquarius, too? Although Saturn is there as well - but perhaps Venus and Jupiter together means that Saturn was overruled.

Anyway, most of the aspects happening while Mercury is in its post-retrograde shadow, happen with Lady Asteroids, Chiron, Neptune, Pluto, Eris, and the Nodes. We can’t see any of them with our naked eye, and I’m wondering if their effects will be more subconscious. The one and only “visible” planet involved is Jupiter: there’s a third and final conjunction between the two. What do you all think?

Tuesday, March 2, 05:58 UT - Vesta Rx/Virgo inconjunct Mercury/Aquarius, 15:02 (15 degrees 2 minutes)

Third of three. By this time, Mercury is not only direct, it has left its “Storm” phase, where it moves less than 40 minutes a day. We’re probably all thinking, “Why isn’t anything straightened out yet?” There could be some situation we still need to “adjust” a bit.

Placements affected lie between 14:02 and 16:02 of all signs; Aries and Cancer may feel it especially keenly.

Tuesday, March 2, 23:33 UT - North Node/Gemini trine Mercury/Aquarius; South Node/Sagittarius sextile Mercury/Aquarius, 15:38

Third of three. We can get some crucial piece of information now, and/or something is clarified, so that we can move on with whatever Mercury-type things we have going on. As with all the flowing aspects, we really need to be paying attention - they can flow right past us, and we’re none the wiser.

Placements affected lie between 14:38 and 16:38 of the yang signs Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius, and Aquarius.

Friday, March 5, 03:27 UT - Jupiter/Aquarius conjunct Mercury/Aquarius, 17:32

Third of three. These were first conjunct on January 11, and next on February 14. These third and final aspects always bring closure of some kind. Whatever that amazing, mind-blowing idea was, we’re now finally in a position to nurture and grow the seed. The Moon in Sagittarius (Jupiter’s sign) will sextile this conjunction over the 5th/6th; we may acquire some remarkably wonderful long-term intellectual goal.

Placements affected lie between 16:32 and 18:32 of all signs, and between 1:32 and 3:32 of the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn.

Monday, March 8, 02:11 UT - Mercury/Aquarius semi-sextile Neptune/Pisces, 20:31

Third of three. This is another one that we may not really “feel,” although it’s more because of Neptune’s fog. It is also a waning, 12th-House semi-sextile, which kind of doubles down on the fog and confusion. Again, the Moon (in Capricorn by now) will act as a kind of trigger for anything that happens. Make sure both sides of your brain are tuned in, if you want to take advantage of this one.

Placements affected lie between 19:31 and 21:31 of all signs.

Monday, March 8, 09:58 UT - Ceres/5:52 Aries semi-square Mercury/20:52 Aquarius

While Ceres was in Pisces and Mercury was in pre-retrograde shadow and then retrograde, the two planets made a semi-sextile. Therefore this semi-square may come as something of an unpleasant jolt. Did we forget something important? Keep in mind that Ceres is also approaching Chiron - which did make three semi-squares to Mercury. There may be some apologizing to do.

Placements affected lie between 19:52 and 21:52 of the fixed signs Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius; and between 4:52 and 6:52 of the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn.

Monday, March 8, 13:28 UT - Juno/Sagittarius sextile Mercury/Aquarius, 21:01

Third of three. Given the “nasty surprise!” nature of the previous aspect, we may well be in need of some skills at negotiation. We have (I hope) learned to communicate with our partners, or at least to trust our partners a little bit.

Placements affected lie between 20:01 and 22:01 of the yang signs Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius, and Aquarius.

Wednesday, March 10, 02:10 UT - Chiron/7:44 Aries semi-square Mercury/22:44 Aquarius

Third of three. In order to be able to move on to the bigger and better future, we’ll have to let some things go - and this semi-square seems to be all about that bittersweet realization. I’m not sure what’s harder to accept: something that helped you, and that you cherish, isn’t going to help someone else; or your wounded ego refusing to acknowledge that not everyone has to like the same things you like.

Placements lie between 21:44 and 23:44 of the fixed signs Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius; and between 6:44 and 8:44 of the cardinal signs Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn.

Wednesday, March 10, 23:01 UT - Eris/Aries sextile Mercury/Aquarius, 23:45

Third of three. Whatever was ticking us off, as we went into this retrograde, we can now express clearly (if not always politely). If we’re tired of putting up with bullshit, I think this can be the day when we stop putting up with it. Aries is hot, and Aquarius is cold - if we’ve been working on doing both at once, if there is something we are that angry about - we may finally be able to pull it off today.

Placements lie between 22:45 and 24:45 of the yang signs Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius, and Aquarius.

Saturday, March 13, 01:41 UT - Pluto/Capricorn semi-sextile Mercury/Aquarius, 26:18

Third of three. Again, this is pretty subtle, and we’d have to be making a conscious effort to tap in to the energy. But, after all the trials and tribulations of the past two months, do you feel smarter? Is your mind a little deeper, a little more powerful? If so, and even if not, what are you going to do about it?

Placements affected lie between 25:18 and 27:18 of all signs.

__________________

For planning ahead purposes, the next Mercury retrograde will be between May 14 and July 7, between 16:08 and 24:43 Gemini.

[therapy101]

(1/2) With a rise in young children expressing gender nonconformity being sent to gender clinics, being taught about gender dysphoria and being ‘born in the wrong body’ in schools, being guided towards pubertal blockers and medical transition, I was wondering if I could ask for your more knowledgeable input please. When treating such children and adolescents, why is the underlying assumption that the dysphoric feelings are valid and the body is what needs fixing? Why is APA/psychologists

(”2/2) allowing medical decisions to be made based on outdated mind-body dualism? We don’t affirm anorexia and offer liposuction, or the delusions of schizophrenia for instance, so why is this the only mind-body incongruence that’s treated this way? Does GD in a developing child really warrant medicalizing them for the rest of their lives? Since we’ve scientifically concluded gender is a spectrum, shouldn’t we instead be promoting gender diversity no matter what sexed body we’re born in?”

There are a lot of things to unpack and understand here. 

1. The underlying assumption is not that “the body needs fixing.” Medical transition is not the first step for children, adolescents, or adults with gender dysphoria. From 2004-2016, only 92 total children and adolescents out of six million total patients younger than 19 seen in the sample received a hormone blocker for a transgender-related diagnosis. Even among adults, current estimates for the United States are that between 25-35% of trans and non-binary adults complete any kind of gender affirming surgery (this means, even enough those who have surgery, it may only be one type of surgery and may not impact all relevant body parts). Getting access to trans-affirming medical care is very difficult, and structural inequalities like racism impact access to care, leading some trans people, especially Black trans women, to have to buy hormones from non-medical sources. That’s one of the reasons why the APA has come out to support trans folks and gender affirming care: because otherwise, these folks don’t get any care, or they get mistreated. The point here is to ensure that everyone gets equitable access to high quality medical and mental health care. That includes hormones, hormone blockers, and/or surgery for some people, but not everyone. 

2. All feelings are valid- dysphoric or otherwise. Sometimes feelings don’t fit the facts, or acting upon them doesn’t make sense, but that doesn’t take away from their validity. The question is not whether the feelings are valid for kids with gender dysphoria, the question is how to understand that dysphoria better and how to identify what to do about it, both in terms of gender identity and in terms of coping, support and improving overall mental health. This is a great place for a therapist with expertise to step in and help the child and their family figure it out. 

Sometimes the child or adolescent has known literally or essentially their whole life, and that may mean no dysphoria (which is great!). From Katz-Wise et al., 2017: 

For some youth, primarily but not exclusively those ages 7–12 years, indication of transgender identification occurred early and was described as “immediate.” One father of an 18-year-old trans boy from the Northeast noted, “It was so immediate that it was just, you know, it wasn’t like he was seven and he said, ‘Oh my god he thinks of himself as a boy.’ It was just kinda always like that with him.”

For other youth, it is a more gradual process, and may take some time to sort out. Some youth also don’t have dysphoria while they are doing that so there may not be a reason to seek out therapy unless there is some other mental health issue they are facing. But if they do have dysphoria, or are otherwise experiencing mental health symptoms related to their gender identity, then seeing a therapist can help. 

3. Supporting a child to identify as trans or nonbinary or some other non-cis gender is not “medicalizing them for the rest of their lives.” Hormone blockers can be removed, and hormones can be stopped- but I disagree that these are “medicalizing” in any case. A person cannot be reduced down to the medications they take or the treatments they receive. Is a woman with cancer “medicalized” because she undergoes a hysterectomy? Are the children on puberty blockers for medical reasons “medicalized” (>2000 of them in the study I cited above, but no one seems concerned about them)? What about those people with delusions who are put on antipsychotics, which are known to have severe side effects including higher risk of diabetes and heart disease, seizures, tardive dyskinesia, overwhelming sleepiness impacting ability to work or drive, weight gain (I’ve seen clients gain >70 lbs in 3 months), and more? 

I would encourage you to read either of these great studies by Katz-Wise et al: 1 or 2 to understand this better. When you ask trans youth about themselves, the medical aspect is such a small part- they are talking about their whole selves, their hopes for the future, their families and friends, and their wishes to be able to be loved and accepted for who they really are. Some of it is about their bodies, sure, and that can mean that some decide to use hormones and/or hormone blockers or undergo surgery (although we’ve seen that those rates aren’t super higher ). But they’re also just talking about being called the right name and pronoun, getting to wear the clothes that make them feel authentic, getting to date and marry and have sex, and: getting to live. Not being ostracized and assaulted and killed. Like this 8 year old who identifies as a girlish boy worrying he’ll never be able to get married AND be his true self (from the second Katz-Wise et al):

An 8-year-old youth participant who identified as a “girlish boy” similarly worried about other people's reactions related to gender norms in the long-term future, as told by his mother,

He said [to me], ‘But I'm not going to get married, because if I married a boy I'd want to be the bride...I would want to wear a dress and people would laugh at me because I'm marrying a boy and I'd be wearing a dress.

He is 8 years old and these are his worries. As a mental health professional, my immediate thought is that he deserves any and all support that makes sense to him and his family so that he doesn’t have to worry like this. So that he can be 8. 

4. Finally, and probably most importantly: gender dysphoria is different because treating it with hormone blockers, hormones, and surgery is literally life saving. 

As high as 42% of trans people have attempted suicide at least once. For comparison, the lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts in the general population is 3%.  

Study after study has shown that there are three primary factors that reduce suicide risk: 1. Timely medical and legal transition for those who want it; 2. Family acceptance and general support from friends and loved ones; 3. Reduced transphobia and internalized transphobia. (1 2 3 4 5). 

Psychologists want to help people live, and live well. Living well means having a life you enjoy and find meaningful. If medical transition means someone’s suicide risk decreases and their mental health improves, then they can pursue the life they want. Being affirmed in their gender means they can have that part of the life they want. It might also help them get to other things they want (like having the marriage and wedding they envision, like that example). These are things we as psychologists prioritize. Period. 

It’s not the same as anorexia because providing a liposuction for two reasons. One: It would not resolve the dysphoria. People with anorexia who lose weight do not feel better about themselves and their bodies. That’s the dysphoria: people with anorexia (and other eating disorders, sometimes) often cannot see their bodies as they really are. Changing the body won’t help. Unlike in gender dysphoria, where changing the body- either in presentation or actually medically -actually does help. Two: Liposuction for an underweight person with anorexia could kill them. As we’ve discussed, gender affirming surgeries for trans people can save their lives. These are not comparable. 

The comparison to delusions doesn’t work very well because there isn’t really a “medical” intervention you would do to affirm someone’s delusion. But, since you may not know this: we sometimes do affirm people’s delusions, and it’s not necessarily psychologically helpful to try to change someone’s mind about a delusion. Delusions are not bad all on their own, and: sometimes things we think are delusional, actually aren’t, so it’s super important not to assume we know someone’s life and experiences better than they do. (Just recently a nurse assumed a patient was delusional, but actually they were quite rich and owned several expensive cars. People can be rich and have a significant mental illness.) So anyway- I don’t know how that applies. 

Overall: we as a field are still understanding the full spectrum of gender identities and how to do good treatment and good science in relationship with that. But what’s clear is that medical transition is sometimes a part of a good treatment plan for both youth and adults, and that it can save people’s lives. It can make their lives better. I am 100% about saving people’s lives, so I am 100% about a medical transition when appropriate and gender affirming care in general. 

References: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(email me at academic.consultant101 gmail.com if you need full texts)

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[grubbyduck]

No Man’s Land - an essay on feminism and forgiveness

I have always proudly named myself a feminist, since I was a little girl and heard my mum proudly announcing herself as a feminist to anyone who would listen.

But I believe the word 'feminist' takes on a false identity in our collective imagination - it is seen as hard, as baked, severe, steadfast, stubborn and rooted. From a male perspective, it possibly means abrasive, or too loud, or intimidatingly intolerant of men. From a female perspective, though, these traits become revered by young feminists; the power of knowing what you think and never rolling over! My experience of being a feminist throughout my life has been anything but - it has been a strange and nebulous aspect of my identity; it has sparked the familiar fires of bravery, ambition, rage, sadness and choking inarticulacy at times, sure, but at other times it has inspired apathy, reactionary attitudes, bravado and dismissivness. And at other, transitive times, it caused me to rethink my entire outlook on the world. And then again. And then again.

In primary school, I read and re-read Sandi Toksvig’s book GIRLS ARE BEST, which takes the reader through the forgotten women of history. I didn’t feel angry - I felt awed that there were female pirates, women on the front line in the world wars, women at the forefront of invention, science and literature. I still remember one line, where it is revealed that NASA’s excuse for only hiring six women astronauts compared to hundreds of men was that they didn’t stock suits small enough. 

When I was 13, I tried to start a girl's rugby team at my school. I got together 15 girls who also wanted to form a team. We asked the coaches if they would coach us - their responses varied from 'maybes' to straight up 'no's. The boys in our year laughed at us publicly. We would find an old ball, look up the rules online, and practise ourselves in free periods - but the boys would always come over, make fun of us and take over the game until we all felt too insecure to carry on. I shouted at a lot of boys during that time, and got a reputation among them as someone who was habitually angry and a bit of a buzzkill. Couldn't take a joke - that kind of thing.

When I was around 16, I got my first boyfriend. He was two years older (in his last year of sixth form) and seemed ever so clever to me. He laughed about angry feminists, and I laughed too. He knew I classified myself as a feminist, but, you know, a cool one - who doesn't get annoyed, and doesn't correct their boyfriends' bulging intellects. And in any case, whenever I did argue with him about anything political or philosophical, he would just chant books at me, list off articles he'd read, mention Kant and say 'they teach that wrong at GCSE level'. So I put more effort into researching my opinions (My opinions being things like - Trump is a terrible person who should not be elected as President - oh yeah, it was 2016), but every time I cited an article, he would tell me why that article was wrong or unreliable. I couldn't win. He was a Trump supporter (semi-ironically, but that made it even worse somehow) and he voted Leave in the Brexit referendum. He also wouldn't let me get an IUD even though I had terrible anxiety about getting pregnant, because of his parents' Catholicism. He sulked if he ever got aroused and then I didn’t feel like having sex, because apparently it ‘hurts’ men physically. One time I refused sex and he sulked the whole way through the night, refusing to sleep. I was incensed, and felt sure that my moral and political instincts were right, but I had been slowly worn down into doubting the validity of my own opinions, and into cushioning his ego at every turn - especially when he wasn't accepted into Oxford.

When I was 17/18, I broke up with him, and got on with my A Levels. One of them was English Literature. I remember having essay questions drilled into us, all of which were fairly standard and uninspired, but there was one that I habitually avoided:

'Discuss the presentation of women in this extract'

It irritated me beyond belief to hear the way that our class were parroting phrases like 'commodification and dehumanisation of women' in order to get a good grade. It felt so phony, so oversimplified, and frankly quite insulting. I couldn't bear reading classic books with the intent of finding every instance that the author compares a woman to an animal. It made me so sad! I couldn't understand how the others could happily write about such things and be pleased with their A*. As a keen contributor to lessons, my teacher would often call on me to comment in class - and to her surprise, I think, my responses about 'women's issues' were always sullen and could be characterised by a shrug. I wanted to talk about macro psychology, about Machievellian villains, about Shakespreare's subversion of comic convention in the English Renaissance. I absolutely did not want to talk about womb imagery, about men’s fixation and sexualisation of their mothers or about docile wives. In my application for Cambridge, I wrote about landscape and the psyche in pastoral literature, and got an offer to study English there. I applied to a mixed college - me and my friends agreed that we’d rather not go if we got put into an all female college. 

When I was 19, I got a job as an actor in a touring show in my year out before starting at Cambridge. I was the youngest by a few years. One company member - a tall, handsome and very talented man in his mid-twenties - had the exact same job title as me, only he was being paid £100 more than me PER WEEK. I was the only company member who didn’t have an agent, so I called the producers myself to complain. They told me they sympathised, that there just wasn’t enough money in the budget to pay me more - and in the end, I managed to negotiate myself an extra £75 per week by taking on the job of sewing up/fixing any broken costumes and puppets. So I had more work, and was still being paid 25% less. The man in question was a feminist, and complained to his agent (although he fell through on his promise to demand that he lose £50 a week and divide it evenly between us). He was a feminist - and yet he commented on how me and the other woman in the company dressed, and told us what to wear. He was a feminist, only he slept with both of us on tour, and lied to us both about it. He was a feminist, only he pitted me against and isolated me from the only other woman in the company, the only person who may have been a mentor or a confidante. He was a feminist, only he put me down daily about my skills as a performer and made me doubt my intelligence, my talent and my worth. 

When I was 20, I started at Cambridge University, studying English Literature. Over the summer, I read Lundy Bancroft’s book ‘Why Does He Do That’ which is a study of abusers and ‘angry and controlling men’. It made me realise that I had not been given the tools to recognise coercive and controlling behaviour - I finally stopped blaming myself for attracting controlling men into my life. I also read ‘Equal’ by Carrie Gracie, about her fight to secure equal pay for equal work at the BBC in 2017-2019. It was reading that book that I fully appreciated that I had already experienced illegal pay discrimination in the workplace. Both made me cry in places, and it felt as though something had thawed in me. I realised that I was not the exception. That ‘women’s issues’ do apply to me. In my first term at Cambridge, I wrote some unorthodox essays. I wrote one on Virginia Woolf named ‘The Dogs Are Dancing’ which began with a page long ‘disclaimer for my womanly emotions’ that attempted to explain to my male supervisor how difficult it is for women to write dispassionately and objectively, as they start to see themselves as unfairly separate, excluded and outlined from the male literary consciousness. He didn’t really understand it, though he enjoyed the passion behind my prose. 

The ‘woman questions’ at undergraduate level suddenly didn’t seem as easy, as boring or as depressing as those I had encountered at A Level. I had to reconcile with the fact that I had only been exposed to a whitewashed version of feminism throughout my life. At University, I learned the word Intersectionality - and it made immediate and ferocious sense to me. I wrote an essay on Aphra Behn’s novella ‘Oroonoko’, which is about a Black prince and his pursuit of Imoinda, a Black princess. I had to get to grips with how a feminist author from the Renaissance period tackled issues of race. I had to examine how she dehumanised and sexualised Imionda in the same way that white women were used to being treated by men. I had to really question to what extent Aphra Behn was on Imionda’s side - examine the violent punishment of Oroonoko for mistreating her. I found myself really wanting to believe that Behn had done this purposefully as social commentary. I mentioned in my essay that I was aware of my own white female critical ingenuity. For the first time, I was writing about something I didn’t have any personal authority over in my life - I had to educate myself meticulously in order to speak boldly about race.

As I found myself surrounded by more women who were actively and unashamedly feminist, I realised just how many opinions exist within that bracket. I realised that I didn’t agree with a lot of other feminists about aspects of the movement. I started to only turn up to lectures by women. I started to only read literary criticism written by women - not even consciously; I just realised that I trusted their voices more intrinsically. I started to wish I had applied to an all female college. I realised that all female spaces weren’t uncool - that is an image that I had learned from men, and from trying to impress men. The idea that Black people, trans people, that non binary people could be excluded from feminism seemed completely absurd to me. I ended up in a mindset that was constructed to instinctively mistrust men. Not hate - just mistrust. I started to get fatigued by explaining basic feminist principles to sceptical men.

I watched the TV show Mrs America. It made my heart speed up with longing, with awe, with nerves, sorrow, anger - again, it showed me how diverse the word Feminism is. The longing I felt was for a time where feminist issues seemed by comparison clear-cut, and unifying. A time where it was good to be angry, where anger got stuff done. I am definitely angry. The problem is, the times that feminism has benefitted me and others the most in my life is when I use it forgivingly and patiently. When I sit in my anger, meditate on it, control it, and talk to those I don’t agree with on subjects relating to feminism with the active intent to understand their point of view. Listening to opinions that seemed so clearly wrong to me was the most difficult thing in the world - but it changed my life, and once again, it changed my definition of feminism. 

Feminism is listening to Black women berating white feminists, and rather than feeling defensive or exempt, asking questions about how I have contributed to a movement that excludes women of colour. Feminism is listening to my mother’s anxieties about trans women being included in all-female spaces, and asking her where those anxieties stem from. Feminism is understanding that listening to others who disagree with you doesn’t endanger your principles - you can walk away from that conversation and know what you know. Feminism is checking yourself when you undermine or universalise male emotion surrounding the subject. Feminism is allowing your mind to change, to evolve, to include those that you once didn’t consider - it is celebrating quotas, remembering important women, giving thanks for the fact that feminism is so complex, so diverse, so fraught and fought over. 

Feminism is common ground. It is no man’s land. It is the space between a Christian housewife and a liberated single trans woman. It is understanding women of other races, other cultures, other religions. It is disabled women, it is autistic women, it is trans men who have biologically female medical needs that are being ignored. It is forgiveness for our selfishness. It feels impossible.

The road to feminism is the road to enlightenment. It is the road to Intersectional equity. It is hard. It is a journey. No one does it perfectly. It is like the female orgasm - culturally ignored, not seen as necessary, a mystery even to a lot of women, many-layered, multitudinous, taboo, comes in waves. It is pleasure, and it is disappointment. 

All I know is that the hard-faced, warrior version of feminism that was my understanding only a few years ago reduced my allies and comrades in arms to a small group of people who were almost exaclty like me and so agreed with me on almost everything. Flexible, forgiving and inquisitive feminism has resulted in me loving all women, and fighting for all women consciously. And by fighting for all women, I also must fight for Black civil rights, for disabled rights, for Trans rights, for immigrant rights, for homeless rights, for gay rights, and for all human rights because women intersect every one of these minorities. My scoffing, know-it-all self doing my A Levels could never have felt this kind of love. My ironic jokes about feminists with my first boyfriend could never have made any woman feel loved. My frustration that my SPECIFIC experience of misogyny as a white, middle-class bisexual woman didn’t feel related to the other million female experiences could never have facilitated unity, common ground, or learning to understand women that existed completely out of my experience as a woman.

My feminism has lead me to becoming friends with some of those boys who mocked me for wanting to play rugby, and with the woman that was vying with me over that man in the acting company for 8 months. It is slowly melting my resentment towards all men - it is even allowing me to feel sorry for the men who have mistreated me in the past. 

I guess I want to express in this mammoth essay post that so far my feminist journey has lead me to the realisation that if your feminism isn’t growing you, you aren’t doing it right. Perhaps it will morph again in the future. But for now, Feminism is a love of humanity, rather than a hatred of it. That is all. 

[lizziethebookworm]

When You Reach Me

by Rebecca Stead

Genre

Sci-fi, middle-grade, children fiction

Synopsis

Goodreads Book Description

Miranda is an ordinary sixth grader until she starts receiving mysterious messages from somebody who knows all about her, including things that have not even happened yet. Each message brings her closer to believing that only she can prevent a tragic death. Until the final note makes her think she’s too late.

My Thoughts

This was a very short read but I read it for over a month. I started on July 2 and finished on July 25. I'm not saying it was bad -because it wasn't- I'm just saying it took a long time for me to get into it. But when I grasped a bit of what's going on, it intrigued me and kept me reading. This was such a fun read and I would recommend it to anyone who's in the mood for a middle-grade, a bit confusing, and an intriguing story. I'm sure once you've read the start of this, it will catch your attention and you would never want to stop reading.

Time Travel

It's official, I have a headache. The time travel aspect of this was so confusing for me, I could relate to the main character. When they were talking about time and the process of time traveling, they completely lost me, but it still piqued my interest, I wanted to know more, I wanted them to explain time and what's happening in a way I could understand.

Mild Spoilers Ahead

Characters

Miranda

Miranda is a 12-year old girl who only reads one book and is so brave and mature that she can stay at home alone. I mean, I couldn't do that when I was twelve. Miranda's an 'okay' character. I don't necessarily love her but I don't dislike her either. But I do relate to her, when someone would explain time travel, she'd not understand and just get confused, like me.

Mom

I love the mom, she's my favorite character. Aside from trusting and leaving her daughter alone in the house, she works hard and really wants to become a lawyer. I admire her. She's also really cute. At first, I didn't know what to feel about her, I thought she was just leaving her daughter alone and hanging out with her boyfriend, but she wasn't like that at all. She loves Miranda and works hard to get the things that she wants.

Marcus

I didn't like Marcus at first. I mean, who would? Just randomly punching a person and calmly walking away, who does that? Even though he explained himself after a while, it still wasn't right and it didn't permit him to do that. Other than that, he's a really cool guy and is also super smart. I couldn't understand him whenever he tried to explain time and the possibility of time traveling.

Sal

I was honestly just confused about Sal. I felt bad for him when he got punched for no reason at all, (I'm looking at you Marcus) but that feeling quickly disappeared after he ghosted and left Miranda hanging. Although I'm okay with it now.

Julia

Julia is so cute and not the kindest. She's a dear friend to Annemarie and loves space. Like Marcus, she also tried to explain time travel to Miranda and she still couldn't grasp it, like me. I love her.

Annemarie

I was so happy that Miranda befriended Annemarie. She's so sweet and cute and I honestly have nothing else to say for her.

Relationships

I love that Miranda's making new friends. When Sal was ignoring her, she got to make new relationships and fix old ones.

I also love the mother-daughter relationship, they trust each other and love each other dearly.

Star Rating

⭐⭐⭐

~Lizzie♡

[aion-rsa]

Why Chronicles of Narnia’s Santa Claus Celebrates Christmas with Weapons of War

https://ift.tt/3n3CscT

Anyone who adapts the works of C.S. Lewis for the screen will find they have a few odd things to contend with. We have never seen a screen version of Prince Caspian, for example, in which young children Susan and Lucy go around cavorting with Bacchus, the god of wine, and his wild Bacchants, for the very good reason that it comes across as seriously strange and more than a little disturbing.

But the oddest moment in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis’ first written The Chronicles of Narnia novel and the most often adapted, cannot be so easily lifted out. In that fantasy epic, the first major sign that the White Witch’s eternal winter is fading is the appearance of Father Christmas (aka Santa Claus), who has been kept out of Narnia ever since the Witch arrived.

Father Christmas gives three of the four child protagonists magical gifts that are both far more impressive and far more dangerous than most children expect to find waiting for them on Christmas morning, and these gifts play important roles in the story, not only in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but in its sequel Prince Caspian as well.

How Father Christmas Signals Springtime

Lewis’ friend J.R.R. Tolkien famously disliked the Narnia Chronicles, as he told David Kolb in a letter. Lewis’ biographer George Sayer and Tolkien’s biographer Humphrey Carpenter both suggest that one of the reasons for this was the mixing of mythologies in the Chronicles. Carpenter particularly singles out the combination of Father Christmas—a mythologized Christian saint—with Greco-Roman fauns and nymphs, and talking animals, as one of Tolkien’s main issues with the stories. Too many different things all jumbled up together.

Other scholars have doubted whether this in particular was the cause of Tolkien’s dislike, but it’s easy to see why it seems a likely factor. Tolkien was a firm believer in the importance of believable, consistent secondary world creation, and the appearance of a Christian saint in a world dominated by characters from Greco-Roman and Norse pagan mythologies seems rather strange. Tolkien is far from the only reader to find the big bearded man’s sudden appearance odd—and his disappearance, never to be heard from again, for poor Edmund never even gets a single present from him despite living in Narnia and reigning as King for 15 years.

Lewis, however, was determined to keep Father Christmas in the story and not everyone finds his presence a problem. When Lucy Pevensie is first told that the White Witch has made it “always winter, but never Christmas,” she responds the same way any child would, crying “how awful!” The primary target audience of the Narnia stories is children, and the story is told in a way that’s meant to appeal to children.

Lewis clearly realized that a child’s response to an eternal winter would quite likely be “goody, it must be Christmas every day!” and that the lack of Christmas needs to be specified to show how awful the Witch’s winter is. Andrew Adamson’s film version from 2005 shows the same understanding. When young Lucy lays eyes on Father Christmas, she yells “Presents!” That’s what Christmas and Santa Claus means to young children, after all.

How have Narnians, living in a world where Jesus’ role is fulfilled by a talking lion, come to have an understanding of the Christian festival of Christmas? P.H. Brazier points out that, as Lewis later established in The Magician’s Nephew, (British) humans have been living in and ruling Narnia since it was created. So in story, it is not actually that strange that Narnia’s British-descended kings and queens introduced Christmas and the name of Father Christmas for the red-coated man who brings presents at that time of year into Narnia, even without bringing the story of Jesus along with it.

Additionally, the British name “Father Christmas,” like the French title of “Pere Noël,” (and unlike Americans’ use of “Santa Claus”), avoids any clear connection with the Christian “Saint Nicholas.” It also opens up the possibility of this being a mythological figure connected to the more secular side of Christmas.

Let’s face it, if we’re going to start getting really picky about these things, then what exactly are we going to do with the “holiday” lands in The Nightmare Before Christmas and other fantasy versions of Santa that are far removed from their Christian original story?

And Father Christmas has an important role to play in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. His appearance is the very first sign that the Witch’s hold is weakening and the long winter is ending. Although the British Father Christmas has more or less become the American Santa Claus these days, his origins aren’t just in the story of Saint Nicholas. He is also a character in medieval Mummers’ Plays, which celebrated the annual death of vegetation, crops, and so on in autumn and winter, and their resurrection and re-birth in spring.

Father Christmas was a personification of Christmas, and so represents when the darkest time of year also brings light and joy before the turning of the seasons towards brighter days. The usefulness of this symbolic figure for the story of Narnia and how its endless winter becomes spring, alongside the death and resurrection of the Christ-figure Aslan, thus becomes inescapable.

Father Christmas/Santa Claus is also, of course, a Christian figure, and Disney and Walden Media’s marketing for their 2005 adaptation leaned heavily on its Christian themes, especially in certain parts of America. The previous year’s The Passion of the Christ had broken box office records and was for some time the biggest earning R-rated movie ever made (until Deadpool de-throned it in 2016). The Christian market was suddenly on movie studios’ radar, and an adaptation of Lewis’ famously Christian-themed books seemed perfect to cash in on this new discovery. It’s no wonder, then that there was no strong desire to edit out this most obviously Christian element of the story.

Why Christmas Means War in Narnia

There’s another important aspect of Father Christmas’ appearance in the story though, and one brought out especially effectively in Adamson’s film. That aspect is the wartime setting of the story, and the surprisingly violent nature of the gifts Father Christmas gives the three children he meets. (The third Pevensie sibling, Edmund, isn’t with the others when they meet him, because he has temporarily defected to join the White Witch—a choice he comes to regret pretty quickly!)

All three children are given weapons along with some advice about how to use them. Oldest sibling Peter is given a sword and shield and told that they are “tools, not toys”—Peter will soon be required to use these weapons in war and to become High King of Narnia afterward. The need for him to grow up almost immediately is clear. Susan is given a magical horn that will summon help, and a bow and arrow, which in Lewis’ original book, she is told to use “only at great need.”

Lucy, the youngest, is given magical healing cordial, and a small dagger, also to be used “to defend yourself at great need.” In the book, both Susan and Lucy are firmly told that they are not to fight “in the battle.” The girls are therefore put into traditional wartime roles for women as helpers and healers, and Peter is left to lead the fighting.

The violence of the story reflects the background violence of its setting. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was written in the late 1940s, a few years after after the end of World War II, and is set during that cataclysmic war. The year isn’t specified, but the children are evacuated from London, which suggests 1940 during the Blitz bombing of London and the Battle of Britain as a likely setting.

This date was later confirmed by Lewis himself when he put together a timeline of Narnian history some time after finishing the whole series. This is one reason why Edmund is so excited at the prospect of eating Turkish Delight—he is living in a country in which sugar is rationed and sweets are a rare treat. Which doesn’t excuse him for betraying his brother and sisters “for sweeties,” as the White Witch puts it in the film, but it does provide some context for how important Turkish Delight seems to be to him!

Read more

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By Gavin Jasper

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By Natalie Zutter

Adamson’s film emphasizes the wartime setting of the story far more than earlier adaptations, opening on an air raid over London and showing the children racing to escape the falling bombs. The children talk about the war and about their father being away fighting in it, and directly compare their Narnian experiences to their earthly ones far more often than in other versions or in the original novel, where their evacuation is largely an excuse to get them staying in Professor Kirk’s house, and is based on Lewis’ own memories of having evacuees stay with him.

A wartime Father Christmas giving weapons of war to wartime children also requires a serious-looking figure, someone who makes the children feel “solemn,” as Lewis describes it in the book. The appearance of Father Christmas/Santa Claus in modern pop culture became fixed when Coca-Cola started using him in their advertising campaigns, dressing him in their company colors of red and white. Before that, he was just as likely to wear brown, or green, like Charles Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Present (who is very similar to him).

Actor James Cosmo’s Father Christmas (who is not named on screen, to avoid confusing British audiences expecting “Father Christmas” and American audiences expecting “Santa Claus”) is not the Coke-drinking Santa. His robes are red, but they are a dark, maroon-red, fitting in better with the earthy tones of a snow-covered Narnia. Cosmo’s performance is carefully balanced to match. He laughs and is reasonably jolly, but he is also serious, bringing enough gravitas to the role to go with the very serious presents he’s giving.

Father Christmas’ gifts and advice are put to use at the climax of the story when Peter is required to lead an army into war without even Aslan’s presence to help him, Aslan having been inconveniently sacrificed at the altar of the Stone Table the night before. Of course the death of the Hero’s Mentor is a common trope in stories following Joseph Campbell’s template of the Hero’s Journey, allowing the Hero to prove their own worth independently before the end of the story. But expecting an untrained child to lead an army is a fairly extreme example.

Perhaps this was also part of Lewis’ ability to tap into young children’s games and fantasies, since plenty of children have played with toy swords in mock battles, but putting it on screen does have the potential to look rather strange.

In Adamson’s film, this problem is solved by changing the ages of the two older children. Whereas the four children in the BBC’s earlier adaptation all appeared to be very close in age to each other, Adamson’s Pevensies split neatly into two groups—a considerably older Peter and Susan (William Moseley was 18 by the time the film came out) and a much younger Edmund and Lucy. At the very beginning of the film, Peter glances uncomfortably at a solider barely older than himself, and during World War II many young men of Moseley’s age would have been fighting already (or serving in the Home Guard).

So Peter and Susan become characters who might more reasonably be expected to start taking on adult roles. The younger Edmund is initially kept further back from the battle with Mr. Beaver and the archers, while the older Peter actually leads the charge.

The sheer sexism of Father Christmas’ original advice in the book also presented a potential problem for a movie released in 2005, a time when women were still not allowed to fight on the front lines in the U.S. or UK armies (this changed in 2016 in both cases), but were serving in many other roles in armed forces around the world. When Lucy says that she is brave enough to fight in the battle too, she is told that “battles are ugly when women fight.” The implication seems to be that they are not ugly otherwise, which is very strange—and what is it that is so unnatural and ugly about women fighting, anyway?

Adamson’s film cleverly sidesteps this issue with a tweak to the dialogue. As we’ve seen, Peter and Susan are both far older in this version than they are implied to be in the books. Edmund is absent from the Father Christmas scene, so we see the much older teenagers given weapons to use, but he gives the much smaller child just a dagger for self-defence. When Lucy objects and says she thinks she could be brave enough to fight, Father Christmas says nothing about women, but just tells her that “battles are ugly affairs”—implying that it is her young age that he’s thinking of, not her gender.

When the much older Susan asks him “what happened to ‘battles are ugly affairs?’” on receiving her bow and arrow, he just laughs a little—in this version, there is no instruction for Susan to avoid the battle, and a brief moment is added in the eventual climax when she saves Edmund with a well-timed arrow before Lucy fulfils her job as a wartime nurse by healing him.

As Father Christmas drives away in the film, Lucy smugly tells her older sister, “I told you he was real.” It’s very funny and also fits rather nicely into some of the film’s overall themes, as Susan is always the sceptic, the Doubting Thomas; in Prince Caspian, she steadfastly refuses to believe Lucy has seen Aslan to the point it nearly gets them killed.

This is another aspect from the books played up in Adamson’s films, as Susan constantly doubts whether they can achieve anything in Narnia. When Peter first tries to use his new Christmas present, ‘sensible’ Susan screams at him, “just because some man in a red coat gives you a sword it doesn’t make you a hero!” as he tries to hold off a wolf attack on a frozen river, cheerfully ignoring the fact they still have a missing brother to find.

But just as young men and women had to become “heroes” in World War II, all four Pevensies eventually find their inner hero over the course of the story—in three cases, helped by the immensely practical, if violent, Christmas presents they’ve been given.

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The post Why Chronicles of Narnia’s Santa Claus Celebrates Christmas with Weapons of War appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3lXdr1O

[afoulkingdomprincess]

“To celebrate reaching 150 days of #PandemicPoems, here's Benedict Cumberbatch with a beautiful new reading of John Donne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning...”

After reading the poem and analysing the lines, I have realised that this  an interesting choice of poem to read...A little information on the poem: John Donne, a 17th-century writer, politician, lawyer, and priest, wrote "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" on the occasion of parting from his wife, Anne More Donne, in 1611. Donne was going on a diplomatic mission to France, leaving his wife behind in England. A "valediction" is a farewell speech. 

This poem cautions against grief about separation, and affirms the special, particular love the speaker and his lover share. poem tenderly comforts the speaker's lover (his wife) at their temporary parting, asking that they separate calmly and quietly, without tears or protests.

Here is the detailed analysis of the lines:

Lines 1-4: The beginning of the poem causes some readers difficulty because the first two stanzas consist of a metaphysical conceit, but we do not know that until the second stanza. We should not read the word "as," which begins the poem, to mean "while," although that might be our instinct. Instead, "as" here means "in the way that"; it introduces an extended simile comparing the death of virtuous men to the separation of the two lovers. This first stanza describes how virtuous men die. Because they have led good lives, death does not terrify them, and so they die "mildly," even encouraging their souls to depart their bodies. In fact their death is so quiet that their friends gathered around the deathbed disagree on whether they are still alive and breathing.

Lines 5-6: The speaker now reveals that he is addressing his love, from whom he must separate. The poem itself will prove to be the "Valediction"—the farewell—of the title. He also reveals that he has been using a simile, and that the lovers' separation should resemble the quiet way virtuous men die. This example of metaphysical conceit might seem a bizarre comparison to make—dying men with the separation of lovers—but the key comparison is the quietness of the two events. He might also be suggesting that their separation, though only temporary, will be like a small death to him. Still, he asks his love that they part quietly and "melt" instead of split: the image of melting together suggests they might still be connected in liquified form, an idea the poem returns to later. He also asks her not to indulge in the overdramatic and clichéd anguish of conventional separating lovers.

Lines 7-8: These lines suggest why he wants a quiet separation: the joys the two of them share, both spiritual and sexual, are holy to him. To complain loudly with tears or sighs would be to broadcast their love to those he calls the "laity." Through this metaphor, he suggests that ordinary people resemble "laypeople" who do not understand the holiness and mystery of their love. The speaker thus implies that the two of them are like priests in a "religion of love." Therefore, for her to make loud protests about his departure would be to "profane" the joy of their holy union by revealing it to the uninitiated and unworthy. The wish to be let alone, to be able to love privately, is especially characteristic of Donne. Several other of his poems similarly covet privacy, such as "The Canonization" and "The Sun Rising." This celebration of the private world of two lovers contrasts strongly with the conventions of Renaissance love poetry, in which the lover wishes to broadcast his love to the world.

Lines 9-12: This stanza contrasts dramatic upheavals on earth with those in heaven. Earthquakes cause great destruction and create great wonder and confusion among human beings. In contrast, "trepidation of the spheres," a trembling or vibration of the whole universe, is far more significant in its scope, but also "innocent"—we cannot see or feel it because it is a heavenly event. Donne here uses the old-fashioned Ptolemaic model of the cosmos, in which each planet, the sun, the fixed stars, and a primum mobile, or "prime mover," occupied a crystalline sphere surrounding the earth, at the center. The contrast between heavenly and earthly vibrations anticipates a contrast to be developed in lines 13-20, between earthly lovers directed by sex and lovers who, like them, depend on their spiritual union.

Line 11: In ancient and medieval astronomy, trepidation of the spheres referred to the vibration of the outermost sphere of the Ptolemaic universe, causing each sphere within to move accordingly.

Lines 13-16: The speaker moves from his contrast of earthly with heavenly events to a contrast of earthly love with the experience he and his lover share. In this stanza he develops why earthly lovers cannot endure separation from each other. The "soul" or essence of such ordinary, "sublunary" lovers is "sense": that is, their love is based on the five senses and so consists of sexual attraction. Therefore, when such lovers separate, they remove from each other the very basis of their love, which changes and fades like the moon.

Lines 17-20: The speaker continues to reassure his love by developing the qualities that make the love they share capable of enduring a separation. In contrast with sublunary lovers, their love is not based solely on sensual gratification. In fact, it is a love so pure that even they themselves cannot define it. But because they feel confident in each's feelings for the other, their physical separation—the absence of eyes, lips, and hands—causes them less anxiety.

Lines 21-24: The speaker begins drawing conclusions about the relationship between his soul and his love's. The "therefore" sounds like the conclusion of a logical argument, and he has in fact been attempting to persuade his love not to mourn during his absence. Because they are "inter-assured of the mind," he suggests their closeness by saying their two souls actually have combined to form one soul. When he leaves on his journey, that one soul will not tear in two; instead, it is flexible enough that it will actually expand. He uses gold as a simile to clarify this expansion. Although the preciousness of gold suggests the preciousness of their love, the key property of gold here is its malleability. Gold can be made to expand greatly because it can be hammered into an extraordinarily thin, "airy" sheet. Donne therefore uses a simile that works emotionally, since gold is valuable, but also scientifically, since the malleability of gold corresponds to the flexibility and expansiveness of their love. Their love will not snap but expand, keeping them bound together during their separation.

Lines 25-28: The speaker now admits that he and his love may have two separate souls rather than one. He then develops the connectedness of their two souls in one of Donne's most famous and most ingenious metaphysical conceits, an extended simile in which the speaker compares the lovers' two souls to the feet of a drafting compass. He compares her soul to the compass' "fixed foot" and his to the other foot. Like the compass, their two souls are joined at the top, reminding us that their love is a spiritual union "interassured of the mind."

Lines 29-32: The speaker now develops the compass conceit. Although his love's soul is the fixed foot and his soul will roam in his travels, her soul will continually incline faithfully towards him, since their two souls are joined, and will return to its proper, upright position when his foot of the compass returns home to her. At this point in the poem, Donne engages in a number of puns that suggest the completeness of the love of these two people. Although the speaker has been emphasizing the spiritual purity of their love, his assertion that the compass "grows erect" reminds us that their union is important and satisfying to them sexually as well as spiritually. Line 26, with its earlier description of the "stiff twin compasses," may also hint at the man's erection. The speaker may be indulging in further punning by describing how the compass, when closing, "comes home," a common expression for "reaching the target," which might suggest sexual intercourse.

Lines 33-36: The speaker concludes the conceit—and the poem—by reasserting that his love's fidelity and spiritual firmness will allow him to carry out his journey and return home happily. His running "obliquely" literally describes the angle of the open compass and also suggests the indirect, circuitous route of his journeys. In this final stanza, Donne may have included additional sexual puns to underscore the happy future reunion of the lovers. In the spiritual terms of the compass conceit her firmness enables him to complete his circle, or journey; in sexual terms, his firmness would make her circle just. And in making the speaker "end where I begun," Donne may be suggesting that the speaker will finish his journey by returning to her womb as her lover, just as he originally began his life by leaving his mother's womb. The possibility of Donne's having included these sexual puns shows the richness of his language and the muliplicity of meanings available to readers of his work. It also suggests a vision of human love as healthily integrating both the spiritual and sexual aspects of our nature.

[gayregis]

I've listened to the part where Geralt talks with a very ill Cahir about Ciri and vengeance... it was one of the most emotional parts of the book by itself but also thanks to your take about the lost innocence of Ciri ! I felt it thrice hard in the feelings! Also, do you have thoughts on the declared love of Cahir for Ciri? Personally I see it as disturbingly romantic, let's say. Thank you for your commitment to the books and sorry to bother you

omg thank you for the ask. first of all i have to say you’re not bothering me!! tbh i have been loving getting asks because it gives me an opportunity to like bring more discussion to the witcher community... 

i feel like although reblogging pretty gifs of characters/landscapes from tw3 and any good fanart i can find is nice, my FAVORITE thing to do is write or read a really long textpost about the witcher books, i really like the discussion aspect of fandoms where people post their reactions and opinions to the content they like, because you get a bunch of shared reactions and differing opinions.

so no this is NOT a bother at all, and its nice especially to get asks about topics that i have strong feelings about but have not made posts about yet, like this one

ok, as for the actual topic: i hate forced heterosexuality, so you KNOW i hate that canon cahiri! it was out of line from sapkowski and imo, it came out of absolutely nowhere in tower of the swallow, it wasn’t something built up to or foreshadowed at all, so it felt not only weird in context but weird for sapkowski as an author.

my main problem with canon cahiri: i think it’s super creepy!

first of all, let’s discuss the age difference. cahir in baptism of fire is estimated to be “not over 25,” which i see as putting him around 20 to 25 years old, and i usually take the median of this which is around 23. while this “not over 25″ comment is said in the context of the hansa to remark upon how young cahir is (i believe it’s thought of by either geralt or dandelion, and geralt is around 60 years old and as a witcher he looks 45, and dandelion is 38 in tower of the swallow), and how cahir is described as a young man in time of contempt to illustrate that he has a sense of innocence to him as ciri cuts him down, his age gap with ciri is super innappropriate for anything to occur between them, since she is 10 or 11 during the massacre of cintra (as stated by geralt in something more), so she would be around 14 at thanedd, and 15-16 during baptism of fire to lady of the lake. so sapkowski deemed it fit to pair a 23 year old man with a 16 year old girl. this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this, what with essi being “not over 18″ and shani also bein around 18 / college age, and yennefer canonically looking around 20. listen, the man has some messed up values when it comes to women’s ages. we have to take it upon ourselves as people who like the not-weird parts of canon to understand how worldviews and personal biases affect one’s writing, and change it for ourselves to make it right so we can continue interacting with it, if we so choose (tldr: retcon some shit when it’s fucked up in canon).

now, before someone argues that “it’s fantasy medieval world, medieval relationships between men and women were just like that,” believe me, i am aware. i study ancient greece/rome and men who were in their 30s were most often paired with women in their teens as part of their arranged marriages. that is how their ancient societies functioned more than 2000 years ago. the issue is that this is a fantasy world, in which societal norms and laws do not have to conform to real-life earth history, and this is the work of a modern writer writing in the 1990s. it’s not “just how the times were,” it’s deliberately choosing to include an age gap like that to be something canonically acceptable by their society/ies.

also, one could argue that the age gap would be fine once they are older, like, when ciri becomes an adult she is already medievally-style betrothed to cahir so they start dating when she’s like 20 and he’s like 27. eh... that’s still an uncomfortable age gap, at least for when they’re in their 20s. people in their older 20s have more life experience than people in their younger 20s. but at least it wouldn’t land cahir in modern-day jail.

it’s still just an uncomfortably large age gap, and if you think about it, it’s even creepier considering that cahir met ciri when she was a helpless child around 10 - 11 and it just makes the bathing scene excruciatingly creepy too if you put it in the context that he eventually would fall in love with her. it even begins to not be about strictly age, but about life experience, development, and power imbalance within the relationship. i mean, he did literally kidnap her.

cahir in tos calls ciri a “woman” when she is like, 15 or 16 (with the rose tattoo) (to anyone reading, please don’t come at me with that “the age of consent is 15 in poland, just because it’s 18 in the US doesn’t mean your laws and culture apply to everyone” ... please do not try and justify this with laws, legality is not morality. only saying this because i’ve seen it in other posts). like.... hm! don’t like that! she is a teenager... he is in his 20s... this should not be occuring.

sorry for the loooong explanation, but every time someone brings up the subject of age gaps on tumblr it turns into crazy discourse with everyone trying to justify it.

but yeah, CANONICALLY cahir would have been 16-21 (median 18) when he met ciri at 10-11, and 20-25 (median 23) when he declares his love for her at 15-16. that’s ... not good ... to put it more into perspective, these are their ages on a traditional school system path: a 18 year old is a high school senior, an 11 year old is a 6th grader. a 23 year old has been out of college for 2 years, a 16 year old is a high school sophomore. ITS NOT GOOD

my other problem with canon cahiri: it’s boring and contradicts sapkowski at his own game.

all of the witcher is about taking fantasy tropes and inverting them, like you can’t have some random peasant kill a dragon, you’d need a professional, and also guess what, the dragon isn’t evil but a dad trying to protect his wife and child.

all of the characters in the hansa (as well as the four main characters of geralt, yennefer, ciri, and dandelion) are inversions of the tropes they represent. for some examples, milva’s trope is something like the hot action girl who only exists to be the only girl in the company and to be sexy eye candy. instead of falling into this, she is actually an action girl, not bothering with sexiness and appeal to the gaze of a male audience but a “get shit done” type, who also dresses and acts “like a man.” regis’ trope is all vampire tropes ever. he/vampires in the witcher doesn’t/don’t fall into any of the traditional european vampire myths like burning in sunlight, needing to drink blood to stay alive, being disdainful of humanity, having aversions to garlic, belonging to a super-secret orderful society that lurks in the shadows and controls everything like puppetmasters, etc... instead, he is the epitome of redemption arcs and overall “goody-goodiness,” understands humanity perfectly and does things out of his good nature. i already talk about regis too much, so i’ll quit it. 

cahir is an inversion of every knight trope ever, particularly the evil knight. he scars ciri’s memory as a night terror, but actually is not ... a bad person. he’s just some guy, pressured by his family and his society to do what he saw as an assignment like a college kid might see their final essay assignment posted on canvas. except you know. the final exam was to kidnap a girl. and he got an F on that and failed the course (ie got thrown in prison). ANYWAYS, cahir is meant to be this inversion of the knight tropes, so WHY, WHY, WHY make him become the knight trope of being the one to romance and to save a hapless princess? if we’ve learned anything about ciri, it’s that she’s the inversion of the princess trope! she KILLS PEOPLE. she ALMOST KILLED CAHIR. she can defend herself and kill for herself, she doesn’t need the knight trope going to protect her! 

heterosexual romance as the Big Reason and Motivation behind all of a character’s actions is tiring, annoying, boring, and not well-thought out. it’s so base and not unique, it doesn’t fit in with everything else about the witcher.

how i would fix it: not make them fall in love.

cahir already HAS a motivation to find ciri and to help her. he needs to APOLOGIZE. he needs to say, hey, i’m sorry i kidnapped you and ruined your life, i made peace with your dad, he doesn’t wanna kill me anymore, i can only hope that you can forgive me too after i SET THINGS RIGHT. 

as opposed to regis’s arc (i swear i am not playing favorites with regis, i just tend to compare and contrast regis and cahir’s redemptions because they are quite different yet they join the hansa side by side so they’re bound to be compared), cahir actually can find the one (not many) people he wronged, and set things right on his own accord, not go forth with a larger mission to assist all humanity, or whatever.

i think cahir also had this WONDERFULLY UNDERUTILIZED anti-imperialist message as part of his character that pains me to see being swept under the rug for some cheap lame romance story. sapkowski already created some anti-war sentiments with the battle of the bridge in baptism of fire, and he tried to create anti-racism sentiments throughout the book/at the end of lady of the lake. anti-imperialism fits with the rest of the saga as a message.

the fact that cahir was instructed by his family to hate the northern kingdoms, despite the fact that they were related to northerners, is really profound as something to happen to a character, and holds a lot of meaning in today’s society. the fact that he broke, finally, after he lost ciri, just completely lost his mind and had to be restrained because he was wailing so hard, because of the pressure that this society put him under to succeed and achieve pride for his family, is such a great example of the tragedies of society. then he speaks out against his leader and is jailed... and yet, after this, he gets to learn from his mistakes and redeem himself as a good person, and his character has developed SO much. he is not doing what his country wants him to do, he is not doing what his family wants him to do. he is doing what he wants to do because it is the RIGHT thing to do. that already is such a powerful message, he doesn’t need anymore character motivation!

so yep that’s my thoughts on why cahir is a good character asides from all that forced romance biz

[narastories]

14, 24 and 25 😏 for the 40 fic questions

That was quick! :D

14. What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever come across?

So, this one is a bit of my pet-peeve. Maybe not the worst advice ever, but what I have the strongest feelings about I guess? It is the “write what you know about” business *insert eye-roll*

The thing is, I think at one point this was meant as positive and encouraging advice. Do write about what you know because your experience is valuable and worth writing about. And that is beautiful and validating.

However, I feel like it morphed into this constricting thing that you shouldn’t write about anything that you don’t have a 100% water-tight provable empirical experience of and where is your certificate?! Which not only gets super intrusive because the writers shouldn’t have to declare every private aspect of their life, but is also simply stupid. The way two people experience the same thing can be totally different. Just because we objectively went through the same experience doesn’t mean that we can relate to each other in how we feel about it. Maybe we went on a roller-coaster ride and you found it exhilarating and I hated it. On the other hand, if I wrote something and it resonated with you and afterwards you found out I didn’t experience that first-hand and now you somehow feel betrayed, why?

Yes, you should do your research as a writer, but I don’t believe the inspiration has to come from something super tangible that happened to you. Also, I do feel like I learn through writing and through putting myself in the shoes of the characters and kind of feeling my way into it and emphasizing with them.

So, I say write about whatever you want. What inspires you and stirs you up and what you want to spend time thinking about.

That was a bit of a rant lol

24. Have you ever deleted one of your published fics?

I don’t think so? Maybe in the past, I had some flaring ups of teenage anxiety and deleted some, but I don’t remember. Maybe I’ve put them back because I’m pretty sure there are some extremely old ones on certain sites... Although, I might have deleted the really old HP ones from like 2012. Yes, now that I think of it, that probably happened. I don’t even know if I have a copy of those myself.

You also have to add to this that I only started intensively writing in English this year, so my track record on AO3 is not a lot. It’s one of the perks of being a non-native speaker I guess that my older stuff is in a language most of you don’t understand :P

25. What do you look for in a beta?

You? <3

I appreciate someone who can honestly tell me what doesn’t sit right, kick my ass a bit and make me look at the things I ignored because they seemed too hard :P But without fixing it for me, or trying to “iron out” my quirks that might make the writing “mine”. It can make such a huge difference but there is also so much trust involved so it’s hard. I’ve been lucky to have both you and @mistresspandorawritesthings beta some of my writing and I can’t be thankful enough for you guys <3

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 245

CRYPTOGRAPHY AND CODES IN EXISTENCE

The confidentiality of information is vital for people, companies and countries. Cryptography develops methods of encoding and decoding information in order to protect it.

Cryptography mainly aims to save information and to transfer messages to recipients safely. Cryptography can change a message into a complicated form by applying several different methods. Encoded information can be resolved only when the receiver applies specific methods to it. Not only does computer cryptography render communication secure but it also gives users secure access to servers.

Nowadays, cryptography is becoming more and more significant, especially now people transfer their personal, commercial, military or political information to each other on internet. It is easy for someone to get personal information through online shopping sites which are very common today. Therefore, credit card information entered into the website is converted into unintelligible characters through an encryption method so that the credit card number can be transmitted to the server securely. Then, the server can easily retrieve the original form of the credit card number using decryption.

The encryption algorithm includes essential elements known as the "key." Protection of the key is always vital for information security.

HISTORY OF CRYPTOGRAPHY

To find the first examples of cryptography one needs to go back more than 4,000 years in history. For instance, in 2000 BCE the ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphs on the gravestones of their kings to describe their achievements when they were alive. Eventually, the system of hieroglyphs grew too complex to understand. Then people began to use it for encoding. Similarly, Chinese people used ideography, which conveys ideas through symbols, to hide the meaning of words.

There are also encoding examples from ancient Mesopotamia that have similar aspects to those used in Egypt. The Roman emperor Julius Caesar used a type of encryption technique called the "Caesar cipher" in which each letter in the plain text is replaced by a letter some fixed number of positions down the alphabet. In the Middle Ages cryptography received a lot of attention from many nations, especially in Europe. In recent years, many different methods have been developed in this field. Therefore, the classical methods are not as useful as they were in the past, especially since the 1970s. Today, more complex mathematical methods have replaced the classical methods of cryptography.

The Arabs were the first to make successful studies of how to decode encrypted messages. Ahmad al-Qalqashandi of Egypt (1355–1418) developed an encryption method which is still used today. This technique is based on a theory of language stability which explores the distribution and frequency of the words in a text. With this method, the frequency of the characters within the encrypted text is compared to the frequency standards in the language; in this way, it is determined what an encoded letter really stands for.

This method is used successfully in decoding messages encrypted by the mono-alphabetic method, which is based on sliding or replacement of a letter by another one.

In 1931, the French obtained documents from a German spy which showed the functions of a code named "Enigma" that was going to be used in World War II by the Germans. British mathematicians were then able to decipher the code during the war. Thus, the commands of Hitler could be learned immediately by the Allied Powers. The Allied countries won the war because of their access to the decryption technique. Likewise, the American army gained victory over the Japanese in the Pacific War in the 1940s because American decryption experts, along with their British and Dutch colleagues, were able to decode the system called JN-25 which was being used by the Japanese army.

Technological developments in computer science have enabled us to decode even previously unbreakable ciphers. For instance, an encrypted message which was created in 1977 and which, it was thought could be decoded only 40 quadrillion years later with the help of an algorithm that analyses the known large numbers into their factors, was actually decoded seventeen years later in 1994.

CLASSICAL AND MODERN CRYPTOGRAPHY

Cryptographic methods are divided into two categories: classical and modern. In the classical method, encoding can be done by consistent replacement of a letter by another letter in the same alphabet. For example, if we replace each letter in the word FOUNTAIN by the third following letter it changes into IRXQWDLQ. It can also be done by replacement of a word with another one or replacement of a character by another character. Of course, the recipient of the message must be the only person who knows the decryption method. In that way, for example, the unintelligible word above can easily be changed back to its original form by replacing each word by the letter three places before it in the alphabet. Such encrypted messages can only be decoded by linguistic analyses or after numerous trials. The classical method was invented hundred of years ago, and it has been used since then. Although this method is so simple that it can even be used manually, computers are the only devices which can have maximum security as well as very long keys and complex algorithms for the modern technique.

The "Spartan cylinder" is another device used in the classical method. A message is written on a piece of paper rolled around a cylinder with a known diameter. The encrypted message is then detached from the cylinder and sent. The only way to decipher the message is to have a cylinder of the same diameter. If the unrolled paper is re-rolled around a decoding cylinder properly, then the original message is obtained. This method is known to have been used by the Spartans around 600 BCE.

One modern method is called Public-Key Cryptography. In this form of cryptography, the key used to encrypt a message differs from the key used to decrypt it. The public key may be widely distributed while the private key is kept secret. Thus, incoming messages are encrypted with the recipient's public key; yet, they cannot be decrypted except with the recipient's private key. Hence, the possessor of the private key is the only one who can decrypt the message and read it.

Conversely, in secret-key cryptography, a single secret key is used for both encryption and decryption. One disadvantage of secret-key cryptography is the distribution of the private key since it is always at risk of being acquired by third parties.

If we look at the universe, we can observe similar cryptographic methods in every creation process. For instance, living cells produce protein by deciphering nucleic acids (DNA, RNA), which include encoded genetic information in ribosomes.

THE STRUCTURE OF ENCODED DNA AND ENCRYPTION IN PROTEIN SYNTHESIS

There is divine wisdom in the encoding of DNA and the transference of these codes to ribosomes in the protein-making process. If we compare DNA molecules, which contain the genetic instructions inside living organisms, to a book, the letters in this book can be symbolized by A, T, and G and C. These symbols represent four molecules which are used in the encoding of the genetic program that shapes the basic form of all living organisms. Each human genome is identified with different sums of those letters. For instance, while the sum of genomic letters is approximately 3 billion in mice and human organisms; it is about 4–5 million in a bacteria. Furthermore, when the genome sequences of two humans are compared, the combination difference between the two appears to be only one percent; nevertheless, no human being is exactly like another in appearance.

There are some interesting distinctions between humans and animals in terms of their genome numbers. The various encoding techniques used in DNA are a basic biological mechanism which can also be considered the mystery behind the genetic diversity in the creation of living organisms. If we compare the genome to a program booklet, we can consider the booklet to be a tiny model of the "Manifest Record" (Imam al-Mubin) mentioned in the Qur'an, in which the future lives of all things and beings, including all the principles governing those lives, and all their deeds and the reasons or causes are kept pre-recorded in this world. The instructions and mechanism used in this encoding program are identical in most living beings. This uniformity shows that they are all created by one Almighty being.

Scientists also observe another kind of encoding which helps transmission of the right message to ribosomes during the protein-making process. The main idea is that unlike the base-pairing of DNA, in messenger RNA (mRNA) the complementary base to adenine is not thymine, as it is in DNA, but rather Uracil, and also that every three nucleotides (a codon) carry information of one amino acid. For example, while codons in DNA appear as "AAT, GCC, GAT, GTA," they appear as "UUA, CGG, CUA, CAU" in mRNA. Here the main goal is not to keep the information safe against the third parties as in normal encryption, but rather to transmit the message properly and preserve the diversity of living beings.

Developments in the area of cryptography do not only provide confidentiality of information, but they also shed light on our understanding of God's wonderful creation in the world of living creatures. All these extensive and essential practices, including the encoding of the information by the four letters of DNA, proper transmission of this encoded information to the cells, and the necessary synthesis in the cell, prove that the All-Knowing and Omnipotent God has great wisdom in all His actions in the Universe.

[jbbuckybarnes]

Drabbles for Friends - Samantha

Pairing: Bucky x Reader Warnings: Smut, 18+ A/N: This one is for @sassy-pelican​ and I wrote it in my notes app a while back after we talked about a situation like this. I had so much fun writing it and I’m glad I have someone that’s equally as gaga as me to share it with. And with that...here’s the MASTERLIST and a server OG:

Corrupted

You heard a knock at your door, not unusual in the evenings. Instead of the usual post-dinner ice cream heist you had Bucky with his Macbook on him in front of you. "Yeah?" "Can I come in?" "Sure." You closed the door behind him. "So, I have some questions about...sex nowadays." he mumbled a little shy. "Oh, yeah, sure." "Well, I don't know if you're aware but in the 40s you usually waited till you were married." he looked up. "Yeah, nothing wrong with being 100 and a virgin." you shrugged and sat down next to him. "So I've been online and..." "... watched porn?" He nodded. "Half of it is not realistic, just to take the shock away." you put your hands on his shoulder and he opened the laptop. "Do people really do this?" On the screen you saw BDSM porn, "Some people do. Definitely not from the beginning and most of them not this intense. Some people just like pain I guess. But it's not common to do it this intense." He scrolled down, "That's unrealistic." Another scroll & autoplay, "That's not how the average woman orgasms." End of the page, "Those aren't average dicks." He went silent, questioning internally if he should ask how many you've seen in your life. You took a sip from your goodnight tea before he mumbled, "Um, mine's...bigger." Resulting in you spiting out the tea you just drank, looking at him wide eyed. "Ho boy, you have to learn a lot about female anatomy and sex if you don't wanna hurt a woman then." You said, still a little surprised. "It's not as weird as I thought to talk about this with you." He sent another shy smile.

"If you need any advice or literally anything, just come to me. I won't make it weird, promise." You smiled, "The awkward facts are out of the way." "I mean, you could teach me if it's not that weird for you." He scratched his neck. "Like...friends with benefits or like a-" "-relationship. Yeah, if you don't mind, I mean this is a weird q-" He was interrupted by your sudden move onto his lap. "You've kissed before though." "Yeah." He grinned up at you before you craddled his face and kissed him. It turned a little bit more passionate than he expected, "This is usually the point where you-" Your hips were grabbed and pushed towards his center. "Lesson number one. Other than consent obviously. You can kiss me anywhere unless I tell you not to. You can undress me if I don't stop you. You're allowed to adventure my body and reactions, alright?" His left hand wandered under your shirt on your back, making you shiver. Teeth carefully biting your bottom lip. The hand wandered to the front, no bra since you were in your sleepwear, slowly massaging your boobs. Another shiver. "Good. Lesson two, you might need 10-20 minutes of this and similar things to get a woman wet enough for you. Although, I'd have to judge based on how big you are, you might have to do more." You bit your lip seductively and saw his jaw tick. "You like the talking aspect or should I shut up?" "Go on." he grumbled deep. "Hmm, your instincts kicking in, huh?" You smirked before your head was grabbed closer for a hungry kiss. "Damn." You reoriented yourself for a second, "Do you mind if I?" You tugged on his shirt, "No, darling." You uncovered a body that has been through a lot but still looked so untouched. "You don't necessarily want sex today, right? I could just tell you a bit more, show you what I can do." "You're taking the lead. Whatever you want, doll." Your hands wandered down on him, his eyes constantly looking at your amazed expression. "Give me your hand." He held out his right hand and you guided it between your legs. You pushed your shorts aside and let him brush over your damp underwear. "Darlin'!" he went wideeyed and heard you giggle. "You're doing this to me, you know? You make me wet." You said softspoken and saw him swallow. "Do I make you hard?" You whispered and watched him close his eyes in pleasure, trying to not moan. "Show me how hard I make you." You murmured, pulling on his sweatpants and hearing him groan softly. "Relax, I gotchu, honey." you whispered again as you got rid of the last layer, uncovering the true extend of 'Mine is bigger'. "Wow." You couldn't hold that comment back. "What?" he blushed a bit shy again. "I hoped you were joking but, wow. You'd need to eat a woman out before having fun with her." You thought out loud. "Eating out?" He dipped his head. "You know, put your head between her thighs and..." "I assume that's a lesson soon." He smirked with a dark undertone, oh, that man was willing to drive a woman crazy. "You bet it will be." you grinned as you reached down to put your hand around his length. "Fuck!" His head fell back. "Relax and enjoy, okay? This will feel good. I promise." you whispered as you started pumping him under hums and groans. "Lay back." You softly pushed him back before going onto your knees on the floor in front of the bed. "What are you- Fuuuck." Your mouth found its way around his cock. "Holy shit, darling." His hands grabbed onto your fitted sheets, slowly undoing them from the mattress. "Don't stop doing that." he murmured. The hand not around his base went to cup his balls and with the sound of your fitted sheet ripping you felt him shoot spurts of white into your mouth with a deep growl. "Fuck," he whispered out of breath. "Did that feel good?" you grinned climbing back on top of him. "That was...amazing. Damn, darling." He grabbed you down for a kiss. "You wanna feel how wet that made me?" You whispered and saw him shiver. "Put your hand into my panties and be very gentle, alright?" You watched him slowly do as he was told and look up at you to gauge a reaction, "You're doing good." His finger went over your clit and you hummed, "Oh, I learned that women like this a lot." "Most women can only come from this." His eyes went wide, "Only 25% of women orgasm because of a dick inside of them. Which is why porn is so misleading." "But you still want me to explore, right." He smirked and went further, closer to your wet channel. "Put two fingers inside of me." He looked up at you with a reluctant expression before doing it. "Is it supposed to be so..." "Tight?" "Yeah." "That's normal. That's why women need to be incredibly wet for men like you to...you know." "Okay, okay..." "Now curl the fingers towards you- Fuck." You closed your eyes. "Woah, women DO have an on-button." He murmured. "Well, some women won't feel shit when you do that. Others will. All women react differently. It's so important to ask them what they like." You opened your eyes again. "And what do you like?" He smirked. "A mouth on my clit and two fingers inside of me." You whispered and watched him bite his lip. "Sounds like something I should learn." "You want to watch me get off?" You asked softly as his fingers left you. "Do you have...um." "Yes, I have sex toys. Should I show you and use them?" "Oh, so that's common?" "Mostly, yeah." You opened the bedside drawer and got out a little bag. "What does this do?" "You put it over or around your clit. Feels amazing." "And this?" "Oh, that goes inside." "Do these feel better than...men?" "Mostly. But I like sex cause I'm close to someone. You know?" "Yeah." "Which one?" "That one." "Uh, that'll make me come fast. You wanna watch up close or get off too? I don't mind either." "You're not an object, darling." "I know. Answer the question, baby." "Umm." "Pull off my pants." Another jaw tick and he carefully removed what you were wearing. "Push my legs apart." You murmured and he did with a bite of his lip. "Woah, that's all from what we just did?" "What can I say, you turn me on quite a bit." A cheeky smile was interchanged. You placed the vibrator with the two ends around your clit, having it push open his view even more. "Touch yourself, for me, okay?" You bit your lip, got a distracted nod back and pushed the button. When you started to moan you saw him move his hand around his dick, when you started whimpering you saw him look you up and down before fixing his eyes onto your center. When you started to tense and shake with groans and moans he encouraged you, stroked your legs. When your chest quickly rose up and you put your free hand over your mouth he watched white cream leave your body. His too, but he didn't pay attention to that. You were still panting and shaking when he crawled over you, "That looked like it felt awesome." A dumb smirk was on his face, "God, you can't just lay over me like that." "Yes, I can. Didn't you say it might be easier to fuck you if you you already came?" He grinned and you felt his cock growing hard again. "We can try." you whispered a little surprised by his eagerness. "Guide me." "Let your instinct guide you...and maybe your softne- fuck yes." He slowly pushed into you. "God, so tight." He groaned. "So big." You whimpered back. "Gosh, darling. You feel so-" he growled into your ear. "Fuck, you hit that spot so good." The moment he bottomed out he groaned and looked down at you with a smile, "I understand the whole deal now." "You can just manhandle me however you need me. Want you to have a good time." "I'll take you up on that offer." He murmured before drawing back and pushing back into you, making you moan out. "Faster, Bucky, please!" You panted. "Alright, doll." He drove into you faster and faster, getting moan after moan after moan out of you. "Darling, want you to come with me." he whispered into your ear, your face grabbed by his other hand, driving into your body so deep. "Yesyesyes. Bucky, I'm gonna-" He felt you squeeze around his dick and felt a new level of bliss. "Fuck, darling, that feels amazing." "You like how nice I squeeze around your cock?" You bit your lip. "I like how you just say what you want and get so fucking dirty. Holy shit." he panted on top of you before falling down onto the bed next to you. "I corrupted you, huh?" You chuckled cuddling up to him. "I want you to keep corrupting me if that's what corruption feels like." he grumbled before pressing a kiss into your hair.

(You get a cookie if you understand the two pics in this post)