#and that also includes me being kind to those I’m trying to educate

[andhumanslovedstories]

I’ve been struggling lately with the feeling that my job is pointless. Intellectually I know it is not—nursing is one of those professions where you get to be real smug about knowing the value of your work. But it’s still felt very pointless. Like I’ll start a shift thinking, “what am I even doing here,” and end it thinking, “what have I actually even done.” It’s been a ROUGH couple months.

But I had a really good shift last time I worked, which was good for the soul and also a very useful data point. I got to do pain management advocacy and symptom management, met a bunch of cool patients, did education for new nurses, and had several long heart to hearts, which the kind of midnight heart to hearts that I think are the most important part of night shift, all of that while being well staffed with very pleasant and appreciative patients and coworkers, and I was still like. Pretty depressed. I had a sense of satisfaction and moments of joy and meaning, but it turns out that one good shift did not cure the depression that has been latched on to me for the last few months like some kind of fucked up mental health leech. As I realized I was still depressed and that it was still interfering with my life even when everything was going well, the sense of peace washed over me was the best I’d felt in a while. Because I was like, okay! None of my usual stuff as worked! I have no excuse not to try something new to get my brain out of the shit ditch it’s slipped into.

So I’m applying for short-term disability. I’m worried I won’t get it, and I’m not sure what the next step is if I get rejected, but I feel so much better having decided to pursue it. It’s so much fuckin paperwork for sure, to a degree that’s overwhelming except that that the form could be a checkbox that says, “you want money?” and I’d be like “THIS IS TOO MUCH.” I’m totally not writing this post instead of finishing an email to my manager. I’m definitely not writing this post to avoid dealing with coordinating all my various care providers. I’m certainly not at every moment worried that I’m secretly faking all this so I can get three to nine weeks of a cool summer vacation.

I was thinking about how I almost flunked nursing school in my final semester because I turned in assignments late for a class with a “no late homework” policy. The professor said that this was reflective of real life, where if you miss deadlines you’re just fucked. I ended up appealing my grade and passing, because frankly it was a weak reason for making me repeat a final semester when there was no issues with my actual work or knowledge. During my appeal, I was like “I also think this policy is ableist. Harsh penalties for late work hurt students with health problems, especially chronic health problems when you aren’t asking for one week off due to the flu but instead for a general and never ending flexibility. I’m not trying to make an excuse but explain why this policy is a bad one. Disabled healthcare workers are an asset to healthcare.” I’m trying to remember my own argument as I pursue help. My depression and ADHD and eating disorder do help me be a better nurse, not because like depression gives you superpowers, but because I manage my chronic illnesses every day, in ways that range from hardly noticeable to life or death. Being kind to patients means being kind to myself, and vice versa.

I’m rambling. I really do not want to do this paperwork or send these emails. And I’m not sure if I deserve the leave I’m trying to take. But I miss being love with my job. I miss enjoying it. I wouldn’t judge someone else for going on medical leave, and my job doesn’t want me to burn out or quit. It almost feels like I have to be skeptical of applying for leave because no one else is. Everyone I’ve spoken to has been very supportive, including my manager. And considering how many unpaid days off I’ve had to take lately, disability leave would be an improvement over some of my recent paychecks. All in all, short-term disability makes sense and seems like a reasonable response to circumstances. But FUCK. I wish it required like 90 percent less documentation.

[genderkoolaid]

Is there anywhere I can read more about nonbinary medical transitions? I’ve never heard about it before, but as a cis woman, I am trying to educate myself about the issues others face and make sure that I don’t perpetuate myths / falsehoods.

Anything else that you think could help me understand about being non binary too would be appreciated. Again, I’m learning as I go.

Thank you.

Phallo.net and metoidioplasty.net both have sections on nonbinary bottom surgery; I don't know if they have sister sites for vulval/vaginal-making surgeries. transfemscience.org has an article on nonbinary estrogen HRT options.

Some basics on nonbinary* medical transitions:

Nonbinary people can want any or all of the same things a binary trans person can want out of medical transition. We should be allowed to get any or all of the same treatments a binary person can get without having to lie about who we are.

(Also its just generally important to remember that abinary people (those who do not identify as men or women) are only part of "nonbinary" which can include a wide variety of men, women, menwomen, womenmen, others and etc.)

Hormones: Some people will go on HRT for a certain period of time to get some effects, and then go off it (or switch to a different kind, if they've had a gonadectomy) to get other effects. Some people will go on a lower dose of hormones to get effects slower or to a lesser extent. Some people will use certain hormones to counteract certain effects (for example, DHT blockers inhibit androgenic hair loss & growth, SERMS inhibit breast growth)

Surgery: Some people will transition by getting sterilized a way cis people typically do (hysterectomy, vasectomy, gonadectomies). Some people will get breast reduction but not removal. Some people will get breast implants. Some trans people will only get "part" of bottom surgery (vaginectomy, orchiectomy). Some people will get both a penis and a vagina (through phallo/meta or peritoneal pull through vaginoplasty). Some people will get a large clitoris or a small penis. Some people will get "nulloplasty" and remove external genitals entirely.

*nonbinary here not so much referring to gender identity as much as medical processes that are used to actively creating an outside-the-binary body.

[outivv]

Hi hi!!

This is gonna be a whole guide on how to and how not to boycott hoyoverse!! Also to answer some questions and educate people as best as I can!!

Firstly: why are we boycotting hoyoverse?

Mainly because Hoyoverse has (and is continuing to) ignored the complaints people have about the lack of representation and diversity in the entirety of their all their games, including Zenless Zone Zero, Tears of Themis, Honkai: Star Rail, Honkai impact 3rd, and mainly Genshin Impact. They also have a history of being racist in all of those games, and flat out refusing to give playable characters diverse skin tones.

Why is this bad?

Taking cultures for aesthetics in a video game is just… blatantly racist, and there’s no excuse for Hoyoverse to do this, because there are other Chinese companies that have made dark skinned characters. To name a few, Riot games, Lilith games, and Bluepoch. Hoyoverse is known to take cultures for their games but not give proper representation, make slavery jokes, be passively racist and stereotype cultures, and just overall be… not greatttt.

Can I still play Hoyoverse games?

Yes! Play Hoyoverse games, interact with fan content, just do not give any money to Hoyoverse! That’s completely like… counterproductive to what we’re trying to do here which is make Hoyoverse lose money, so they fix their issues!

How to boycott!! (I got a lot of these from @ nyaamari on Twitter, whose post inspired me to make this thread!)

Dos!:

Do spread awareness as much as you can!

Listen, and educate yourself based on the people whose cultures have been outright stolen by Hoyoverse.

Submit complaints through the in game surveys or feedback.

Email Hoyoverse! Specifically genshin, at genshin_cs@hoyoverse.com

Encourage others to speak up, and inform others who play Hoyoverse games!

Repost anything informative!

Review Hoyoverse games on the App Store! Don’t go review bombing other games, just Hoyoverse owned ones!

Don’ts:

Argue with racists and colorists! Keep yourself safe, and block if they are refusing to let you inform them, it takes a want to learn on their end to actually take in any info!

Speak over other people of the cultures Hoyoverse has stolen from!

Spend any kind of money on any Hoyoverse games. No welkin, no top ups, no battle pass, or nameless whatever- nothing! Show them that we will spend money on their game if they give us characters that have some actual color and representation to them!!

Buy any official merch from Hoyoverse collabs!! Also use this as an excuse to support a small business that isn’t partnered with Hoyoverse or anything and get some sick ass merch from them instead!!

Harass Va’s and assume they haven’t spoken up! A lot of Va’s have spoken up already, and are completely on our side with this one!! Just please don’t harass them, the Genshin fandom specifically has a notorious issue with harassing Va’s.

Follow @ HYVboycott on Twitter!! They have a petition on their page that already has 25,000+ signatures as I’m making this!

Also please don’t let the Hoyoverse boycott deter you from any of the boycotts going on for Palestine, or just what’s happening in Palestine in general. Remember what is happening, stay informed, don’t stop talking about it just because we’re talking about Hoyoverse. I’m gonna start spreading more info about Palestine on this account cause it’s my most followed social media, and I wanna spread more awareness.

[softberrybi]

A quick note...

Hello from your local AuDHD switch verse bisexual. I'm on this corner of the internet to have fun and spiral into whatever current hyperfixation has me by the throat.

Minors, please don't interact. My blog is for people 18+. I'm a big advocate for sex education and curiosity, and my particular Tumblr page just isn't the space for that. If you're looking for an age appropriate resource, I highly recommend checking out Scarleteen. It's a wonderful site dedicated to providing medically accurate and queer inclusive information about relationships, sex, identity, and so on.

My asks and messages are open. Wanna be friends??? Feel free to message me any timmmmme. If you’re looking to be flirty, please be respectful. Opening with nudes or demanding nudes or sexting is just not the move, okay? I've been involved in the kink community for many years and have met so many wonderful people, so my tolerance is very low for people who hide behind kink as an excuse to be shitty. Also, I have a queue going, so posts appearing doesn’t mean I’m actually online.

Please note I’m wary of porn blogs with no other content, and I hear the Jaws theme song in my head whenever I get one word messages in my inbox because those “hey” or “hi” openers tends to escalate quickly without my consent. Again, be chill. If I get a weird vibe at all, the block button and I are besties.

Be a kind person, okay? Transphobes, terfs, swerfs, antifeminists, racists, ableists, fatphobes, bigoted jerks DNI. Honestly, get well soon and cut that shit out.

If I ever accidentally interact with something I shouldn’t or tag something in a way that doesn’t feel good, please let me know so I can edit or delete immediately. I respect you.

🌶️ spicy info under the cut 🌶️

Being a verse switch is so fun, okay? I'm attracted to people regardless of gender, and it's just so fun to make people feel good.

I use the traffic light system (💚💛🛑) for consent check-ins. Here is my Yes/No list for both giving and receiving unless otherwise specified:

Yes - praise/worship, puppy play, edging/denial, overstimulation, biting/marking, puppy play, teratophilia rp, impact play (just not face slapping/hitting), gfd, daddy/mommy kink (just no age play or incest rp), strap play / pegging, breeding kink

I think it’s also worth mentioning that there are types of play that I’m happy to engage in even if I’m not personally turned on by them. Examples include foot fetish / nylon fetish play and tickling (as long as I’m not the one getting tickled; that’s a hard no for me)

Sometimes - I don’t really post about any of these on this blog, and if I do, I will be sure to tag those posts. I sometimes enjoy objectification, degradation, humiliation, light CNC, helping a partner enjoy some light CBT, e-stim, watersports (especially during primal/possessive play)

No thanks - Heavy CNC that involves genuine fear play, scat, age play, race play, pro-ED anything, misgendering/detrans, vore, gore (some blood is okay, but gore makes me feel faint), intox/chem, permanent harm/scarring, incest rp

Obvious no (and instant report and block) to actual assault or endangering anyone who can’t consent (e.g. anything to do with minors, bestiality, and so on)

This should go without saying, but if you have a partner / partners who will be hurt by you playing with someone else, please don’t flirt or try to play with me. I’m only down to play with folks engaging in ENM or single folks, okay? Be nice to your partner(s).

Also, since this has been coming up in my asks and dms quite a bit, I’m not looking for a sugar situation. I will just delete the ask/message 🤷‍♀️ Thanks!

[saltwaterandstars]

I while ago I saw @doctornerdington recommend the book Body Work by Melissa Febos. I recently bought it and I'm about halfway through reading it. So far I think it's excellent and I'm finding it helpful, but it's stirring up lots of thoughts and feelings and so I've decided to write some notes about that to keep a record of how I'm responding to it. So, under the cut it a personal essay of sorts. It's not a statement about what I think anyone else is experiencing or should do, it's just a record of my own experiences, thoughts and feelings about which are being evoked as I read this book. If you do read what I've written and want to comment, I'd welcome that, but it is quite long and I'm imagining not many people will read it. If you are going to have a read though, please note the content warning tags. I wasn't sure really what it needed tagging for, so if you do read it, let me know if you think it should be tagged differently.

Body Work is a series of essays by Melissa Febos. On one level it’s a book about writing memoirs—writing about personal experience. But the book is about much more than that. She talks a lot about the scripts we have taken in from society, from the patriarchy, scripts that we unconsciously write from, but also the same scripts that we shape our selves and our lives around. I’ve just finished the essay Mind Fuck, which is ostensibly about writing sex scenes. But in exploring what goes on when go to write about sex, especially when that we includes people disenfranchised and brutalised by the patriarchy, she’s really exploring what it is to be an embodied person; what it is to understand our physical and sexual realities, to live them, to make conscious choices in relation to them, and to write about them. She talks about the importance of identifying and getting beyond the narrative threads that were previously sewn into me by sources of varying nefariousness or innocuity.

I’m finding reading the book personally very helpful but, of course, it’s only helpful to the extent that it’s disturbing me, that it’s leading me to bump into and acknowledge the scripts—body-related, sexual, and otherwise—that I’m still living in accordance with. It’s interesting that this process feels to me so desperately uncomfortable, terrifyingly unsettling, actually, and yet, at the same time, it also feels like such a compassionate thing to be doing for myself.

I’m a white woman in my late 50s. I come from a poor, working class background, but through education and profession I am clearly middle-class now (and class is still a big deal in the UK, even if it’s not as explicit as it used to be). I look and sound middle-class and have the privileges that come with that. I’m bisexual but have been in a monogamous relationship with a man for 25 years, so pretty much everyone who knows me or interacts with me sees me as straight. To a very large extent, for the first four decades of my life, I tried very hard to live within the straitjacket placed on me by the patriarchy, especially in relation to my body. I spent many years trying not to gain weight, trying to be conventionally, heteronormatively attractive and so on. And like many women, I was fully aware of where those scripts, those rules, were coming from and the harm they were doing me, but I was just too scared to even attempt to let go of them in any kind of meaningful way.

There were ways in which I did live beyond the patriarchy’s imposed limitations. For example, I had a successful career in a male-dominated profession. But in my 20s and 30s especially, I attempted to do that while still trying to be seen as attractive and well-behaved and unthreatening (which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so heart-breaking—I was threatening just by existing in those spaces—I couldn’t be there and be successful and not be a threat.)

I also had a sex life where, at least some of the time, I experienced myself as having agency and freedom. But I lived that part of my life pretty much secretly. I wasn’t ashamed of my sexual behaviour; I just didn’t trust that society—including many of the people in my day-to-day life—would value and respect me if I allowed myself as a sexual being to be more fully seen. So I hid myself from view—not an uncommon coping strategy for me.

In my 20s to 40s, I was frequently fearful and anxious. Whenever I did something that challenged the scripts, the rules, I was very scared. I am not a feisty, up-for-a-fight kind of person. I find breaking rules difficult, and being a ‘difficult person,’ challenging other people, even just disagreeing with other people, feels disturbing to me (this can’t possibly have its roots in my childhood—surely not?!) So when I did do political things, feminist things, when I stood up for colleagues, said no to unreasonable demands, just disagreed with people, even, I felt real, like I had acted authentically and in accordance with my values, but I also frequently felt like the world was about to end. At the very least, I was often just waiting to be punished and expelled from the pack. It’s a hard way to live.

My 50s have brought me—through the menopause and the development of a life-changing chronic illness, and the death of people I love—some dreadful challenges, but also, through the exact same experiences, a real increase in freedom. For one thing, I am no longer attractive in a stereotypical heteronormative way. I’m just not. My body just can’t be that anymore. And while I’ve had grief and fear around that, I do also have an ever-increasing sense of freedom because of these changes, too. And because I’ve been so ill and my poor body has had (and continues to have) such a difficult time, my whole way of relating to myself as an embodied person has had to change. I’ve had to cultivate great oceans of kindness and patience to be in this struggling body, and it turns out, kindness and patience with my body are also antidotes to the poison of the patriarchal rules I swallowed in when I was young. Who knew?!

And I have to say, the less invested I am in being seen as attractive and pleasant and reasonable, the more my fears around the imagined consequences of being authentically myself subside. In the last couple of years in work before I retired, for example, I was pretty much immune to the attempts by my (mostly younger male) colleagues to pressure or bulldoze or embarrass or emotionally blackmail me into doing what they wanted. I wouldn’t say I became fearless because I didn’t, but alongside the fear was a kind of gleeful, arms folded across my chest sense of oh this is going to be interesting.

The death of loved ones has been an immensely painful experience, but it has also functioned as rocket fuel to help launch me out of my state of fear-based inertia. I’m not going to go into details, but basically everyone else in my immediate family died young, so I’m a chronically ill woman approaching old age with a truly awful genetic inheritance in terms of family longevity. I hope I live till I’m 90, but maybe I won’t. Maybe if there are changes I need to make to be more alive and present and free in my life, I might want to get on with that. So the questions I’ve asked myself again and again in different forms over the last few years are: How many more years am I going to spend living by these shitty rules? How many more years am I going to waste not allowing myself to explore who I actually am? To be who I am? Oh, and when I die, do I want them to put something like She was always so well-behaved—on my headstone? Is that how I want to live the rest of my life? Et cetera, et cetera.

Over the last few years, in ways small and large, I’ve managed to shrug off bits of the straitjacket. The biggest change is that I’ve completely stepped away from a pretty successful but personally damaging career. I’ve also allowed myself to finally get to know my pagan self and to be that self more publicly. And regularly in day-to-day situations I’m managing to catch myself about to act in accordance with Febos’ narrative threads that were previously sewn into me. Sometimes I manage to step out of automatic pilot and to make a conscious choice to do something different, to be more authentically myself in that moment, even when that feels scary and exposing.

Which all sounds great—and it is! But if that was the end of the story, then reading Body Work would not be proving so unsettling for me. Turns out, the really difficult explorations and changes I’ve already made were actually the easier stuff. Could it be that I’ve managed to avoid the extremely difficult work by focussing on the really difficult work?! As I’m reading the book, it’s becoming clear that what still remains to be examined and unpicked is the tough stuff. So here I am again today, asking myself the questions:

Who is it serving to keep myself, my needs, my wants, my interests, my values, hidden from view and not enacted in the world?

And how is doing all that serving me, too?

And how many more of my precious remaining years do I intend to spend in this understandable but deeply unsatisfying holding pattern?

[drdemonprince]

Regarding your “informed consent for all drugs” essay, I have a burning question I haven’t seen you address (if you have and I missed it, sorry!) What about things like antibiotics? IMO if you’re taking drugs that only affect you that’s one thing. I’m willing to give it consideration. But I honestly do think there should be some gatekeeping of community resources like abx, where use where it’s not warranted decreases the efficacy for the entire community. And I’ve heard way too many stories of people demanding abx for viral illnesses to expect that the general public will be informed enough to steward those resources wisely—a small number of people can genuinely ruin it for everybody, including very vulnerable people.

True

Informed

Consent !!!

Guided

Decision-Making

With the Help of a Doctor!

The leading cause of antibiotic overprescription is sloppy, overly 'efficient' work on the part of prescribers. I once went to an urgicare clinic with a months-long bout of laryngitis that I knew for a fact was caused by teaching 8 hours per day, not by a bacterial infection, yet the nurse practicioner prescribed me antibiotics anyway.

Because the clinic was trying to maximize profits and it was understaffed and each provider only had about fifteen minutes with each patient, if that. The provider didn't listen to me when I told him there was no way I had a bacterial infection, and he took absolutely no time to inform me about the effects of antibiotics and the massive risks of taking them when you don't need them.

Today, the average patient seeking healthcare is sorely ill informed about just about everything. Doctors disdain them for being self diagnosed on web MD and for seeking out information about their desired medications online, but what other options do they have? It takes weeks if not months to see a doctor sometimes, and they barely stop moving and interrogating you for one second to answer your questions or explain complex concepts to you once you get in their office.

Within this environment, is it any surprise that patients don't stick to their course of antibiotic treatments all the way through, hoard pills, take them for the wrong conditions, and request antibiotics when they don't need them? And considering that antibiotics are among the cheapest medications available, and most patients can't afford alternate treatments for other conditions on their own, is it any surprise they keep requesting these meds?

In order to move forward, we need a true informed consent model of accessing all drugs. Exactly like a dispensary for weed or Mexican-model pharmacy. You report to the pharmacist, explain your condition and what kind of help you are seeking, and an educated, patient, compassionate provider explains to you exactly the effects you can anticipate from the substances you are seeking -- as well as the risks and use cases.

If it were possible for people to access not only antibiotics in this fashion, but also weed, painkillers, tamiflu, and paxlovid, we would not have the scale of antibiotic overprescription and misuse that we see today.

People tend to glance over the "informed" part of the "informed consent" model that I am advancing, and that's really unfortunate. But I think it's understandable, because many of us have never experience actual informed consent basically any time in our lives. Imagine what it would be like to actually have the authority to make good decisions about what goes into your body, with a doctor seeing themselves as a support person for you, rather than an authority over you.

Imagine what it would be like to have a doctor who listens to you, who has time for you, who sits down with you and breaks down complicated topics and trusts you to make your own decisions once you've been educated and given their support.

[rainstormcolors]

First of all I’d like to say that I absolutely love your analysis posts, even when your perspective differs from mine, and your art, as someone relatively new to the fandom I check your blog anytime I can

For the character ask thing, 8, 17, 37, 48 for Seto if you don’t mind <3

This was sweet to read. I feel examining media is a bit like examining a cut diamond, where our own unique point of view will alight different facets of that gem and it’s bright and special for each of us. And seeing others discuss their feelings in good faith has been good for me for sure.

Thank you for the ask! I hope you have a kind day today.

8. Unpopular opinion about them

I feel like fandom opinions and readings of canon are more in the category of polarizing or not-polarizing a lot of the time. I do think other views are fair.

I think it’s on the relatively unpopular side among Kaiba fans that I feel Seto never trusted Pegasus. I don’t even mean from the point of watching Pegasus making a show of humiliating Keith – I think from the time when Seto first Pegasus, Seto was already rigidly mistrustful of adults and people and he had his walls up. It was a matter of business from the get-go to me.

This is maybe less unpopular but still debated it seems, but I do not believe Seto ever felt Gozaburo was going to be a loving parent towards him. Seto went into it like it was a kind of business deal and educational mentor/student deal, and even that it was a kind of Faustian deal. In general, I don’t like the idea that Seto was being selflessly perfect and a perfect little victim when he approached Gozaburo. That does not make Gozaburo’s treatment of the two brothers acceptable at all, and it does not make Gozaburo exploiting Seto acceptable at all. Hurt people can make bad choices and that does not make the harm that comes to them any less real or bad.

This last bit is more personal and less related to actual canon but I want to try clearing the air. I do know I need to let my guard down again with people having fair critique of the early manga. I have some ongoing lingering fear over things in the past and fandom shunning of the past. A certain post that had been aimed at me actually outright triggered a flashback for me some time ago, and also realizing I threw important things away without thinking when all of that was happening... I feel weak that it affected me that badly. I know the manga has its issues -- it really does -- and those issues can be discussed. Good faith discussions are valuable. And it’s not black-and-white. A storybeat can have merits and issues at the same time. Messy complicated stories can even reflect messy complicated life, and no one will have opinions that always align because we’re all unique. I just at times fall into remembering those “people who get pretentious about the early manga deserve to get made fun of,” “maybe if i was a 12 year old boy i'd like manga kaiba isn't it funny how he has no redeeming qualities,” “it’s fucked up and disgusting how people excuse the mindcrush coma,” etc comments, people spreading made-up rumors that I used ableist language I never used, etc, and I need to get over it. (I was more vulnerable to this sort of shunning for outside reasons to begin with, and even here it’s not black and white.) But I do feel I should give explanations for my defensiveness, because it’s not fair to people who do want to discuss the story’s flaws in good faith.

In general, I’m including that previous paragraph because unpopular opinions about a piece of media shouldn’t lead to a person being shunned from a fandom space, and I want to invite good faith discussions and make it clear it’s okay to agree to disagree. We have different lives and are different people.

17. Quotes, songs, poems, etc. that I associate with them

The song The Last Day by Moby is a go-to for both Seto Kaiba and Noa Kaiba. The song Dark Star by Moby also feels Seto-ish to me.

For a poem, The Committee Weighs In by Andrea Cohen.

Some quotes:

“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.” Euripides, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides, tr. Anne Carson

“No greater desire exists than a wounded person’s desire for another wound.” Georges Battaille, Ecstasy, from Guilty, tr. Bruce Boone

“I burn, I freeze; I am never warm. I am rigid; I forgot softness because it did not serve me.” Catherynne M Valente, from Deathless

“I wasted so many years being miserable because I assumed that was the only way to be.” Bojack Horseman, from Bojack Horseman

37. What they really think about themselves

Seto’s mind and heart are cloudy and tangled places in canon. I think he wants to see himself as strong and powerful and capable and that he does not feel lonely and that he does not need friends or warmth or love. He’s very defensive to cling to those ideas about himself. He holds himself to a standard he cannot reach. I think he has very complicated feelings about Gozaburo he can’t examine closely – it was easiest to ignore those feelings after Gozaburo’s death at first and then to realize how much he hated Gozaburo and to focus on that. The complications of these feelings leached out regardless. That Seto is lonely and feels his weakness leaches out regardless. If Seto himself answered this question, I think he’d write down lies he tells himself are true. I also think he does know on some level that something is wrong here and that he needs to change. He is trying to save himself but he's very clumsy at it. He does reach out to others at times but he does so in self-sabotaging ways.

48. Scariest moment of their life

I think Seto separates himself from his emotions quite a lot and he has forms of alexithymia. As such, a lot of the times I don’t know that he can properly register that he’s scared. His brain often transforms that emotion into other emotions or denies it and goes blank. Two examples where he wasn’t able to fight back that emotion of fear are at Duelist Kingdom when he realizes he’s going to lose the duel to Atem and that no one will save Mokuba and then in DSoD after Yugi completes the empty husk of the Millennium Puzzle and Atem does not return. His brain can’t fight the emotion of fear in those moments and they shatter his heart and he becomes desperate. Self-loathing and loneliness and love and failure and weakness colliding inside him. Both of those instances are about Seto trying to reach out to someone from a sincere place and perhaps that’s also part of why he couldn’t be anything other than achingly frightened in those moments.

[ingek73]

You can’t truly understand the royal race row unless you’ve felt the sting of skin tone bigotry

Georgina Lawton

The row over Omid Scobie’s new book has reignited a depressing debate about mixed-race identity, with our voices barely heard

Wed 6 Dec 2023 10.00 GMT

Meghan in a white coat and hat and Harry in a black suit and tie with military badges.

There are a few words and phrases I’ve muted on X (formerly Twitter) for a while, including: mixed-race, biracial, interracial relationship, and royal race row. But I would have had to have thrown my phone in the sea to avoid part two of the latter, involving Archie’s skin tone, Meghan and Harry’s unofficial biographer, Omid Scobie, and his new book, Endgame – in which the two royals who apparently commented on Archie’s skin colour before he was born were named in the Dutch-language version of the book (which was promptly pulped by the publisher).

I do sympathise – with Archie first and foremost, that is. Before he is even able to talk, his heritage has been loaded with meaning, his very existence described as progressive, transgressive, a step forwards or a step backwards, depending on whom you speak to. Being born into a story over which you have little control is a heavy load to bear. Many people of colour in white spaces and “mixed-race” people will relate.

To me, the most tedious part of this race row is the “is it racist, is it not racist” dance. While Meghan and Harry have yet to break their silence, Boris Johnson has declared that it is “not remotely racist” to query how dark a baby may be. Timeline trolls and rightwing thinkers repeat the same refrain. But rather than getting into this pointless back and forth, we need to think about why these kind of comments about skin tone are still being made in the 21st century; and those directly affected by these words need to express why, and if, it makes them feel uncomfortable.

Personally I’d quite like it if no one passed comment on my particular “mix” ever again – and I don’t think that’s too much to ask. Quite recently I was sharing a late-night taxi with someone who commented on the low “timbre” of my voice. He confidently put this down to the Nigerian side of my heritage and compared the voices of his mixed-Jamaican friends to his mixed-Nigerian friends, concluding that west Africans had voices like mine, and that I couldn’t “pass” for Jamaican. I shut this down quite quickly, but found myself tiptoeing around my language, lest he would feel that I was calling him racist – which would inflame the whole thing. I also had no backup.

I can definitely relate to having white people analysing one’s appearance or “phenotype” as a mixed-race person, trying to work out which aspect comes from the white side versus the black side. The comments are rooted in eugenicist-style thinking: they are ultimately a hallmark of darker days gone by when the justification of the subjugation of black people was rooted in proving their non-humanity. Whether or not there is ill-intent behind these kind of comments doesn’t really matter. The onus is on the person making them to educate themselves and make a pledge to do better.

Trying to empathise here is key. Many people will never really know what it’s like to be in a room full of people to whom you are related, or you know quite intimately, and overhear a remark that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and makes you wonder: do they think those things about me?

In my book Raceless, I wrote about experiences like this: the reality of being raised in all-white spaces when you are not white. Many people have written to me over the years, some of them multiracial, some of them not, to say they recognise the fatigue and mental anguish that comes from standing out in homogeneous settings. When Meghan spoke about her troubled time within the royal family and the racial minefields she walked through, I didn’t find it hard to relate – as I’m sure was the case with many others. But she was shut down, brandished a liar and a drama queen, and effectively forced out of the country by our mainstream press.

Many people of colour in white spaces and those of mixed backgrounds battle every day with the idea that their very existence represents a crossing of boundaries, a disruption of long-held beliefs around kinship and belonging. Your experiences and your skin shade can also be called into question by those with whom you share loving and intimate experiences.

Instead of pretending these instances don’t happen in modern Britain and in our families, we need to let those affected speak up when they do – to avoid repeating the same old mistakes.

Georgina Lawton is the author of Raceless: In Search of Family, Identity, and the Truth About Where I Belong

[daydadahlias]

What is the difference to you between Wattpad fic and non Wattpad fic? Genuinely asking. Isn't fic just fic and quality is going to vary regardless of where it gets posted? Also i think to me at least, x reader fic is kind of synonymous with Wattpad so how can you "condemn" one but not the other? Interested to hear your thoughts :)

ok so it is 1 am and I just finished writing a vEry bad paper so my brain is not firing on all cylinders rn. thus, pls forgive me for not being the most articulate.

I would like to first say that all of this is just my Jess Opinion so I’m not trying to make you disagree or agree w/ me and I’m not stating any of this as fact. These are just my personal thoughts that I state with authority and passion bc that’s how I talk :) ok!!

Obviously I don’t actually “condemn” any authors lmfao I was just being dramatic for comedic affect. Im not asking to burn any wattpad authors at the stake or anything. However, there is definitely a distinct difference between wattpad fic and ao3 fic, so much so that I can literally read a fic on ao3 and tell when it has been cross posted from wattpad.

Fic quality actually does not vary as much as you think dependent on platform. Usually people write amongst groups of likeminded people and similar writing styles so your writing style can be influenced a Lot by the platform you post on. Sure there’s an outlier here and there but pretty much all wattpad fic is simply Not written well for a variety of reasons.

My most personal beef from wattpad stems from their crack ass horrible garbage stupid bitch fuck ratchet tagging system.

On wattpad, there is NO way to trigger warn or appropriately tag for content or, as a reader, filter out content you don’t want to see. Unless an author specifically includes something in an author note about content warnings (which they Don’t do for the most part because no one else on the platform does so why would they break fhe mold??)

This means that when you read Most wattpad fics, you don’t know what kind of content you’re going to encounter. Often times, this content ends up being blatant internalized misogyny, domestic abuse, and/or dub-con handled with no tact or understanding for the problematicism of the subject matter :)

I don’t personally read x reader (bc I’m an aroace person so I’m just not the audience for it lol) but I certainly don’t knock people that write it. It’s a very valid form of writing/expression and there are plenty of very talented x reader writers on tumblr that I respect a lot. So that’s why I made the differentiation.

A lot of the x reader writers on tumblr are adults whereas wattpad is primarily comprised of children (when I say children I mean as broad a range as 9-16).

Because ao3 is regarded as “confusing” to a lot of young people just now getting into fanfic (ie. me when I was 12), they post on wattpad (or quotev, which is where I posted lol) because it is a platform made to be accessible for primarily adolescents.

This means that the bulk of fics you’re finding on wattpad are written by teenagers; often, straight female teenagers who have not had comprehensive sex education, do not understand the full spectrum of consent, have only consumed media that pushes damaging heteronormative expectations when it comes to romance, and are reading stories written by other adolescents who don’t understand these topics either!!! It’s usually a case of the blind leading the blind.

I don’t inherently think of wattpad being synonymous with x reader considering there is slash on there too. I instead consider it synonymous with adolescent writing. And, as we’ve established a few times now, I’m an adult who does not feel comfortable reading about children or reading the writing of children.

While there’s nothing wrong with kids learning how to write and becoming comfortable with their craft (and while I think it is important for them to have those outlets as it was for me), wattpad writers never really tend to grow out of that because that’s what basically All the content on wattpad is. They continuously feed into a loop of misinformation that they perpetuate the cycle of by not understanding the content they’re consuming is inappropriate and incorrect (I’m talking about romantic portrayals of abuse/assault and the glamorization of abusive men).

Young teens using wattpad makes sense to me. It really does. I used quotev so I don’t have room to talk. I can say, however, that I don’t like it, considering how permeated wattpad is with untagged rape and domestic violence that teaches young consumers really damaging perspectives about romance but�� I know kids genuinely don’t know any better and have not been given an outlet to know better when our sex education system fails to teach us even the slightest bit of porn literacy… but that’s neither here nor there. And I often times make fanfic a deeper conversation than it needs to be :)

[palms-upturned]

Same anon from before. No, I still truly don’t feel like any of this is enough. I don’t trust myself or my own judgement to make the right decisions on these things and rely on whoever I believe falls into the category of “more right than not” (you would fall into that!) because I just want to not get yelled at. I want other people to be liberated too so I recognize that it’s not about my feelings but to that end I also believe I shouldn’t matter here and as a privileged person just be told (1/2

(2/2) What to do by people who know better than me. I know I’ll never be perfect or do enough so why shouldn’t the better among us just force us into a revolution right now? I’m too trapped by my job to be able to do local organizing. All the protests happen either while I’m at work or are already happening when I didn’t know it. People say to either take time for you or spend all your time on educating yourself and organizing but where does that leave my life? Worthless, I think. I wish someone Would just tell me so. Tell me yes or no; am I living correctly or not? Am I properly dedicating myself to what truly matters or not? I don’t want a revolution that happens after you and I are gone. I want one yesterday. I want one where we actually, ACTUALLY LEGIT force people to change their ways. Like, “sacrificing all your excess clothes and frivolus toys to the efforts” kind of force. I fucking hate living in this grey area where we could be trying our best but be unknowingly commiting evil At any time. I’m sorry, that was a lot. Just…I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what that says about me if I wish we just had hard and fast, unflinching RULES about how we should be acting right now and people to enforce it instead of being left to wade through our own flaws and imperfections and internal biases. I wish I could have them surgically removed and make myself a perfect fighter for justice

Well… I don’t really know what to say other than I’m sorry. I know it’s not enough and will never feel like enough. I know that uncertainty is painful and so is living under structures that we didn’t ask to be built. I don’t think that wanting to escape those things says anything particularly bad about you. I think all of us do. But the revolution didn’t come yesterday, and things just are what they are… At some point, you have to be able to make peace with that. Not to the extent of accepting the way things are, but to the extent that you can still see value in your life and in putting in the work to change things. Whatever work you can do.

Knowing whether or not you’re doing the “right thing” can only come from your own convictions. Those will solidify the more you learn and act on them and see the results. That, I think, is how you cope with the uncertainty. You do what is within your power, and you believe in what is within the reasonable scope of your observations. Even if there really was someone who you could rely on to tell you how to live correctly and what truly matters, you would still have to have a reason to personally believe that they were “more right than not.” I know it sucks, I really do. But you have to let go of the fantasy of being able to just give the reins to someone else. You have to see yourself as someone capable of conviction.

And believe me, I know how frustrating it is to deal with the limits. I am also annoyed at protests always happening on weekends when blue collar workers don’t get to have the day off to attend, including me. I’m annoyed at how many events I don’t get to go to because nobody requires masks indoors. I’m endlessly angry about how much time and strength I waste on my full time retail job just to be allowed to live in some degree of dignity when I could be putting that energy toward organizing. I hate how many layers there are to this beast that makes organizing inaccessible to the people who need it most. And I hate the limits of my body sometimes, too. But it is what it is and it won’t get better if we don’t accept it for what it is and work out what to do about it.

Regardless of any “value” that someone could assign your life, you have a right to be here like anyone else. And you are not as powerless as people would like you to think, nor as powerless as you would probably be relieved to think. We have an obligation to do what we can to improve things, and for most of us, there’s a lot more that we can do than we know. But there’s still a lot that we can’t do. And it’s so despair inducing at times like this, but we can’t let that stop us from doing something.

I know you’re probably just venting and I don’t really know what I can say to make any of this easier. I also don’t necessarily think it’s true to say that I’m “more right than not.” But I’ve hit suicidal rock bottom before and I don’t wish that for you. I know it hurts to work toward an ideal world knowing that we likely won’t live to see it if it even comes to exist at all. I know it hurts to know that our lives are dependent on the exploitation of others in ways that we can’t currently entirely avoid. But in the same way, our lives support other lives. And we can strengthen that support so long as we live and try. That’s what gets me through.

[radfemsiren]

I am from France and we've been living in quite an odd time regarding Islam. Muslims are an oppressed minority, our police forces are prejudiced against them, but I feel scared about the rise of Islam in my country as a woman.

I am tired of people slandering our laws about religious free areas that represent the state. Separation from religion is a good thing and leftists have forgotten it here, and foreign news twist it to make it seem like we only ban Muslim attires everywhere when it's any religious signs only in places that represent the state (like public schools and public hospitals).

Leftists in general have become... honestly more American in their discourse. "If it's an oppressed minority then they can do no wrong" kind of thinking. But the thing is I can very much see that muslim men come from places that are incredibly more misogynistic than here, and that they've been raised to consider this their religion, to never question it and to use it to their advantage. Like, muslim people are present enough for me to form an opinion like that, I have spent my childhood with at least half of them as the people I saw, and it is really bad and going unquestioned. This whole thing would get me killed in leftist spaces, the most common defenses are "but catholic men and atheist men are bad too!" except that catholics have been shrinking as a group here and atheist men are awful but don't have misogyny as a religious dogma they can spread.

Overall I'm worried. Some people say we're gonna be majority muslim next century and I worry about how this will affect women and the laws that get passed. Leftists approve of anything muslims do because they're oppressed here, and this includes turning any criticism of religion into some choice feminism bullshit. They constantly say women want and choose to be exploited that way and it is gut wrenching to hear. I'm worried about the increasing population of muslim men who are taught to see me as an object so vividly and I'm worried about my rights being threatened by them. I'm worried about my safety as I've had multiple bad encounters with those misogynistic men irl and on online French spheres. Those spheres are now filled with those same men who simply justify sexism by saying they're muslim and its in their culture, or muslim women who talk about marrying as soon as they turn 18 or even arranged marriages gleefully.

Hm I’m Arab-American so I’m not super educated on issues happening in Europe considering Muslim immigration. I’ll have to research more into it to form a well informed opinion on the situation.

What I can tell you is there are many Muslim and ex-Muslim women who are critical of male supremacy in our cultures and religion, and I recommend reading about and interacting with irl, radical feminists from our cultures to help your fears. Finding allies and understanding there are many like-minded women that share your goals makes the heart at peace. I love Nawal Elsaadawi, she is the Simone de Beauvoir of Arabia and close to my heart because she is Egyptian like me lol. The fall of the Imam is good if you want written work expressedly against Islam.

I think cultural relativism is dangerous and all women must be protected. We shouldn’t shy away from calling out misogyny everywhere it rears its ugly head. As long as we are educated and well informed with our criticism, I see no issue with calling out patriarchal oppression from other cultures. I got an ask calling out why I don’t also speak about misogyny against black women, and I thought about it. I think many of us, including myself, try to stick to our own community and what we are familiar with in our feminism, and we should move away from that. Let’s all educate ourselves on the different forms of patriarchy around the world and work hard to end it in all the forms it comes in!

[bumblebeerror]

jesse what the fuck are you talking about...

i know you said you won't respond, but i don't care. you don't have to. i'm replying because i feel the need to reply. i'm not looking for a response anymore.

"i'm aggressively kind, and not nice" what. i want to study your brain under a microscope. the entire paragraph about what you do with your friends is alien to me. it just does not compute. i don't understand. what the fuck even was that? i've never done that or seen anyone do any of that. what the fuck?

kidness isn't a human right.

education, food, water, shelter, family, medicine... those are human rights. you are not entitled to kindness simply because you were born into this world. you have to earn it.

the fact that you believe bad people like the ones i mentioned deserve kindness tells me you have clearly had a very good, safe life and have never been truly hurt or come face-to-face with evil. if you did, you'd quickly change your philosophy. let me guess, you also oppose the death penalty? figures.

i am not about to fotce myself to disobey my instinct/intuition. when my gut tells me something, it's for a reason. when i get the creeps around a registered sex offender, i can't just ignore that. not just for moral reasons, but because it's a self-preservation instinct too.

"kindness isn't empathy, kindness is compassion" EMPATHY AND COMPASSION ARE SYNONYMS?????????????????????? they mean the same thing. literally what's the difference???????? what.

i've been bullied extensively, please don't fucking lecture me on what bullying does. i can honestly say bullying had a positive effect on me. it helped me build thicker skin and now i'm no longer so hypersensitive. it builds character for many people.

"there's a reason you have trouble making friends" it's not my fault i was born this way. i've tried making and maintaining friends since i was a little child. but fuck it is impossible. making and maintaining enemies is very easy for me, however.

i'm sorry, but i don't think i can remember 20 people, let alone make 20 friends??? that sounds exhausting. i don't even truly know 20 people. i only truly know my mom, dad, sister, grandfather and (dead) grandmother. i think of the people i used to go to school with a lot, but i only knew them superficially. we never truly knew each other.

there are many reasons i have no friends. i think i know myself a little better than you know me. my problems are much deeper than just "not willing to be kind". i've always been distant and uncomfortable with intimacy. and i have a disneyland of problems and difficulties, so even if i did learn to be "kind", i would still have no friends.

it's better to be friendless and tough, than friendless and a pushover.

Yeah, alright. Since we’re off the idea that bullying teens as adults is remotely acceptable, I’ll play ball. You can take this answer or leave it - I don’t care.

1) I explained the difference between kindness and niceness already.

2) kindness is realizing the inherent value of another human and taking actions to that end, whether directly or in politics/raising awareness.

3) I am fat, disabled, poor, mentally ill, have lost several very close family members including my father, and I’m queer; if you think my life has been easy, I want whatever you’re smoking.

It is because my life has not been easy that I know that people deserve to be treated as people, even if they suck.

I don’t put myself in danger either. But it’s not hard to realize that prisons are new slavery or that sexual assault and torture via other inmates and guards isn’t a morally correct way to deal with anyone who breaks a law. I’d hope you’d also realize that being a bigot doesn’t exactly warrant the death penalty.

4) Empathy is the ability to put yourself in one’s shoes and understand where they’re coming from.

Compassion is actually helping someone in need.

Which is why autistic folks have been trying to make it clear for years that being low empathy doesn’t make you evil.

5) I’m sorry you’ve been bullied. Personally, the only thing bullying taught me was to hate who I was and mask extensively.

Have you considered that you struggle to make friends because you don’t reach out to people for fear of them bullying you? Have you thought of the possibility that being bullied in fact changed you for the worse and made you less able to be yourself and be open with friends?

There are loads of studies on what bullying does to developing minds. I’m sure you do feel as if it’s helped you. Check back in on that in 2 years eh?

6) You were not “born this way”. Humans are, whether you like it or not, social creatures. You have unfortunately been taught by your bullies that people are unpleasant and out to get you. This isn’t true, and it’s fairly easy to root out those who are when you’re an adult in control of who you talk to or see.

Because imma be straight up with you king. I’ve got ADHD and autism, and even with those difficulties making friends those disorders represent, I still make friends exclusively because I treat others how I want to be treated and try to be the friend I’d want to have. I have such a wide circle of friends because I treat them well without the expectation that they’ll always be able to match that. I’ve not had a problem since I started doing so.

You have trouble making friends because you are an unpleasant person who does not think of others, and because you have convinced yourself that you were not made to have friends. Have you ever planned an event for your friends? Do you ever reach out to talk to them? Have you ever tried being the friend you want to have?

Because until *I* started doing that, I was a lot like you. I even believed it was other people’s fault nobody wanted to be friends with me. And if that wasn’t the case, I just wasn’t suited to having friends. Sound familiar?

I am also viscerally uncomfortable with intimacy. I also have trouble expressing emotions. I have a flat affect. I have multiple health issues and neurological issues related to them. I do not understand how to comfort others. I still have friends and I still get on well. Don’t put up your own barriers, mate. There are plenty of folks who have similar issues. Unfortunately this is a case where you aren’t special, and that’s a good thing.

7) I’m sure being tough will get you far when you have nobody to rely on for help.

I’m not a pushover for recognizing that other people have needs and inherent value.

[viksalos]

ok anyway i’m gonna draft this cus this might just be me getting mad about a thing that is very specific to me idk

basically i saw a post (and it really doesn’t matter who wrote it cus it’s more than a year old now and it didn’t even break 300 notes) which was making fun of people for claiming to have religious trauma when OP assumed they hadn’t been to X amount of catholic services. this by itself is a bit silly bc catholics gatekeeping religious trauma as being exclusive to them is obviously myopic, but one of the tags was like “you don’t have religious trauma you have ptsd from familial abuse that used religion against you” and im like. i fail to see how that’s not religious trauma?

like i’ve said before on this blog, my religious education was primarily reform jewish via my mom with smatterings of various christian denominations mostly via my dad; you could not measure any amount of “christian religious trauma” i have by continuous service attendance but like yeah my experience of christianity is still primarily one of punishment, alienation, antisemitism, supersessionism. and like sure, my dad is a dipshit who never stuck with anything for very long including going to any one church, so no that trauma does not include X hours of christian education or whatever. but boy oh boy did he still like weaponizing our “christian heritage” when i exhibited any proximity to judaism!

and i also feel like *part of* my difficulty with christianity is specifically not knowing what the fuck christians are talking about when they talk about concepts that are seemingly basic to them and having to piece it together after the fact from the random smattering of things i *do* know. and these concepts are just woven in the fabric of US society; everyone seems to understand them instinctively but me! or like i’ll be talking with my (ex-)christian friends about our various bad run-ins with christianity and then it’ll be my turn to talk and they’ll look at me like i have three heads because they can’t conceive of religious trauma that’s specifically centered around christian antisemitism. or i’ll be talking with my jewish friends and because *they* had a more rigorous or conservative jewish education, i won’t fit in with them either--and this too can be partially due to religious trauma on their part!

i guess the other thing too is, this post was kind of in keeping with a different post i saw about protestants appropriating catholic iconography when trying to make art about *their* religious trauma. and on the one hand it’s funny to me that we’re supposed to care about the trappings of a colonial institution being appropriated, on the other hand it’s funny as an outside observer cus i do think the iconography they listed as examples are more alike between catholicism and protestantism than they are different. like i remember some of the examples were stained glass and gothic churches (protestants also have those; i live in a city with many protestant gothic churches) and multi-eyed and winged angels (those are described in the tanakh; they are not exclusive to either of you).

and like maybe it’s corny but i do think they have become kind of signaling things for people with religious trauma to find each other and talk about their experiences. are these particular symbols necessarily 100% authentic to everyone’s experience? probably not, but 1.) they make cool art, and 2.) the looming and foreboding nature of some of these symbols (i’m thinking of the exteriors of gothic churches especially) can be evocative of the sense of alienation one feels when you’ve definitively decided you no longer want anything to do with the church, but it’s still ever present. imo these types are mad because they want exclusive use of the cool art symbolism more than they want to facilitate community. if you wanted to say that art symbolism is not a solid basis for a community, THAT would be an argument i’d respect, but that’s not what y’all said.

[perfectlyvalid49]

Entering your asks because I have seen your post about Jewish trauma and replies all over my dash (and only doing it on anon because of how stilted and awkward I always am with strangers that I admire). Your patience and earnest attempts to educate and inform those too stubborn, arrogant, and convinced of their absolute moral correctness is astonishing, and I am sorry the world's once more in such a state of hate that you had to make that post in the first place, let alone deal with a mess of antisemitic BS in the notes. (I am sorry we goyim on the left are failing the Jewish community as badly as we are. We never seem to learn, no matter how patiently you hold our hands through the explanations.)

You seem to be all kinds of awesome.

First, thank you!

Second, I’m sorry for being all over your dash. It was a long post to begin with and it only got longer as everybody yelled at the anti-Semite. It was all over my dash too, and *I* was beginning to find it annoying.

It feels weird to be admired, as I think my most notable qualities are “good at remembering rules to TTRPGs,” “incredibly stubborn,” and “does not know when to shut up.” If you feel more comfortable on anon, that’s fine, but if you ever want to put your name on things, know that most of my friends (myself included) are in the “neurospicy and have less than awesome social skills” group, so awkward isn’t going to bother me any.

The patience comes from having two elementary aged kids. If I can deal with a toddler, I can deal with an adult acting like a toddler. Also, I used to be a receptionist at a pediatrics office – so I actually have a lot of experience customer servicing adults acting like toddlers, to be honest.

As for a willingness to educate, I genuinely believe that hatred in all its forms comes from ignorance. It’s much easier to hate a faceless entity than a real person, and it’s easier to hate a group that you have no experience with than to hate a member of that group that you’re having a conversation with, especially when they’re being reasonable. I’ve been a LOT of people’s first Jew, and I don’t mind being the person to show that Jews are just normal people. Even if the person I’m in conversation with isn’t getting it, my hope is that someone on the sidelines – either their followers or mine, will.

There are two Jewish concepts at play here. The first is “tikkun olam,” or “repairing the world.” The idea is that the world is not perfect, and it is our duty to make it better. I feel like educating people, and hopefully reducing hate is a way of doing that. The other is a quote from the Talmud - “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” I don’t have to teach everyone, but when presented with the opportunity to teach someone, I have to at least try. The way I see it, doing this is part of how I practice Judaism.

As for the goyim on the left, a lot of them have let me down. But every once in a while I get an ask or a message like this from someone who seems to understand. Or I’ll point out someone’s antisemitism, and they’ll actually listen to the criticism and try to do better. It gives me hope. Since I made that post, I’ve received kind messages from a handful of people privately, plus there’s been some love in the tags on reblogs. Between that and getting all that off my chest in the first place, I honestly feel better now than I did a week ago. Thanks to everyone who helped with that, including you, Anon.

[maylorscardigan]

I noticed you’ve spoken very loudly about Joe and his treatment of Taylor. You’ve discussed controversy with Matty. But I’ve never seen you mention the GG issue. Can’t defend him on that one can you? He’s a disgusting human being for that.

I knew this was bound to come up. I was hoping to save it for my blog I’m building on topics like this. But okay. I’ll address it.

Why am I not outraged by Matty and GG 🌽? Well…

My ex that I have mentioned before was a 🌽 addict. We aren’t talking normal levels of consumption here. We are talking hours spent a day looking for the right material. Self pleasuring 6-8 times a day on a good day. Being abusive towards me because of the addiction. Doing and saying things I would never, ever repeat to anyone. Even when he knew my history… it never stopped it. It just made the things he did to me worse.

I also have spent a lot of time working with victims of sex trafficking. I myself was a victim of it - for a few decades at that.

I know the harsh realities of the 🌽 industry. I know that most of what you see on 🌽 hub or any of the millions of sites - including NSFW Reddit or OnlyFans are trafficking. The fact that someone is verified and seemingly willing to do said things - doesn’t mean they are. It’s amazing what you will be forced to make people believe. All the controllers need is some weakness. Need it be a child to threaten to harm or worse, family, loved ones etc or a slew of other things. Or the fact that deep fake technology is used on even the most basic of materials in order to keep things like their bodies completely unrealistic as well as hide the victims identity better.

And I know what you’re thinking - this should make me even more enraged at him and to hate his guts for it. Is it something I necessarily like about him? No. Not at all.

However - Matty is the type of guy that if he knew the deep underbelly of the industry and what it was really like… he would step away from it as a hole or try to be more conscious about what he consumes.

Remember - we also don’t know what his sex life is actually like. There are people all over the world who engage in that sort of degrading and physically brutal sexual acts by choice - and I am not referring to what he may have been consuming. I am referring to the private of one’s home. He has been in a long term relationship with a woman of colour to which he said he was going to marry one day and again - we have no idea what they did behind closed doors. It could have even been curiosity and someone happened to walk in.

The point is - attacking one man and shaming them is not going to fix the problem. It’s a witch hunt. If we go after Matty for this then we have to go to the men and women around you each and every day of your life. Including family members or friends. Most of the world’s populations have watched and used 🌽 to get off. (I’m talking teenagers and adults) and some of those you interact with day to day have seen things that make GG look innocent and it’s far more popular.

The issue isn’t with one man - because there’s 40,000 other people subscribed to that channel in the hub. The views of these videos are multimillion. But we live in a society where we are told it’s normal and you’re a prude or a liar if you don’t watch it.

Me raging and going after Matty about this is not only going to do nothing to solve the problem but shaming someone is going to make them more likely to do so it. Shame is a driving factor in addictions and 🌽 is no different.

I chose too, instead, educate people on the realities of the industry and how real trafficking is when it comes to that kind world. I fight for change and awareness and I do whatever I can for victims getting out and trying to heal and be out in the world again. I also work with victims of trafficking directly as well as partners of those who have sex / 🌽 addiction.

All any of this is - is a witch hunt. And the people who watch these things casually are not bad or horrible people. They believe whatever you see on sites like 🌽 hub or many others is consensual.

If the people ripping him apart took even a 1/10000 of that rage for one man and put it towards awareness… it might be a very different reality.

[cipherwrites]

Sugar & Spice, Chapter 1: Luck & Misfortune

Next Chapter ->

Marinette Dupain-Cheng is a normal girl with a normal life! She’s clumsy, a romantic at heart, and she has a true passion for fashion design. The 16-year-old is moving into her second year of Lycee, but as this new school year begins, so too does chaos from an ancient magic unveiled, a responsibility to protect her city, and quite literally falling head-over-heels in love with the boy just one year elder that’s been kind to her…

That’s right. Both of them.

A few things you should know about this fic before we get into it:

-A personal pet peeve of mine is putting kids in dangerous situations! Even when it comes to magic, I would much prefer that adults held that kinda power. However, since a good deal of the series revolves around school drama, I’ve decided to put our main cast in Lycee and make them all young adults.

-According to my research (which could be wrong or outdated so please don’t judge me I am not from france), age of adulthood is 18 and full legal capacity comes at 16. I also found reference that the age of consent is 15, but that won’t really come into play in this fic.

-I will try to refer to French things as well as I can, such as “Lycee” instead of “High School.” For those that don’t know, Lycee is the three-year education system that comes after College (which isn’t University).

-Our main cast is in their second year of Lycee! Lycees are typically ages 15-18, so our main cast is ages 16-17 when the series begins. Specifically, Marinette and Adrien are 16, and Adrien will of course turn 17 during ‘Bubbler’

-I will be making new Miraculous lore! I will be both ignoring old lore and building off existing lore at intervals I deem appropriate.

-I’ll be changing a few Miraculous abilities, including giving them all a significant nerf/upgrade that comes from another fic series I wrote.

-I will also be changing character designs slightly, including costumes, but I have no talent in art so when I describe them simply use your imagination.

-I’ll be writing this like it’s a proper reboot, so I’ll be alluding to things that we all already know and pretend Hawkmoth’s identity is a secret until “Season 2”

-Felix and Adrien are sentimonsters. They are the only “human” sentimonsters that will be in this fic series. I have nothing against Sentimonster Kagami, but it’s just not for me in this story.

-On that note, this series will have Lukadrigaminette (gosh that’s hard to type)! Again, nothing against Feligami, but the story I’m building needs him to be a lonely boy for now.

With all of that said, please enjoy!

===

In the millennia before humans could even fathom recording their history, a powerful Mage made contact with an ephemeral being. The being was lonely, for it was everything that ever was and would ever be. It was all, yet it was nothing. A cosmic confusion that it could never understand. Its attempts to help humanity only brought fear and terror, and the being grew to loathe humans. However, the Mage pleaded with the eternal being that humanity just needed a new perspective. The cosmic nothing came to see reason, and split itself into two halves: Creation and Destruction. The embodiments of these concepts came to be bound by jewels the Mage forged, and he went onward to bind the aspects of humanity, the very concepts of the universe themselves, into these many jewels. In due time, these nineteen pieces of jewelry would be known as the Miraculous.

The first two Miraculous remained more powerful than the others: the Ladybug of Creation and the Black Cat of Destruction. The Ladybug could create anything and restore order and balance. The Black Cat could destroy anything and bring disorder to the world around it. The legend says that uniting these two will allow them to reconverge into the original Cosmic Nothing, and they will do as they always have: consider the wish of their wielder, and grant it in the only way they know how: destroy the very universe, and recreate it in a way where the wish is granted. The Cosmic Nothing cannot comprehend the horrors of its own actions, and so it was declared that these Miraculous could never be united…

---

“I want that wish, Nooroo.” a malicious man says in the shadows, three long months after a woman’s disappearance. The boy is kept calm and complacent by means he could never understand, but the man has no such freedom of ignorance. “I must have those Miraculous!”

“But Master, I was separated long ago!” the tiny purple kwami exclaims, “I don’t know where the Miraculous are anymore. No one does!”

“I found you though, my little Nooroo.” the man grins. “Your Miraculous…remind me of its powers again.”

“The Miraculous of the Butterfly allows you to swath someone in need in comforting shadow and give them the power to achieve victory with their inner potential.” Nooroo recites.

“Throughout history, the Miraculous have been used by those that have gone down in history as heroes. When it comes to luring in heroes, what could be better than creating villains?” the man suggests with glee.

“But…but you can’t! Master, the Miraculous cannot be used for evil purposes!” Nooroo warns in fear.

“I must have that cosmic wish!” the man orders, pointing at the helpless kwami. “Your Miraculous is in my control! I am your master, and you must obey me.”

“Yes…master.” Nooroo obeys sadly.

“Nooroo,” the man affixes the brooch to his attire, “Dark Wings Rise!” He orders, transforming through the power of the Miraculous. “From now on, I shall be known as…Hawkmoth.” he laughs maliciously.

---

“Marinette!” a voice calls, and Marinette Dupain-Cheng gasps awake to the sound of her alarm going off. “Your alarm’s been going off for fifteen minutes! You’re going to be late!”

“Oh, no, no, no!” the sixteen-year-old Marinette Dupain-Cheng panics. “Coming, Maman!” she calls down, swiftly changing clothes and getting everything together.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng is a petite girl with black hair that she dyes into a light shade of blue. She wears her hair in a pair of pigtails and a nice mix of colors in her homemade clothes, primarily her favorite color pink. However, the main thing people notice about Marinette is the bandages. Marinette is immensely clumsy, so she often wears a large number of bandages to cover the bruises and cuts she gets from merely existing day after day. Rushing to get her school bag together, she packs a box of bandaids with cute designs, because chances are she’s gonna have a new mark on her face by the end of the day.

As Marinette rushes out of her room, she takes one last look to make sure she isn’t forgetting anything, scanning her room in half a second. Marinette’s room is chaotic in some portions but also ridiculously organized in others. Marinette has several crafts projects beyond her personal clothing designs, plenty of empty binders and books for when she inevitably takes an extracurricular, and walls that have been bare of photos for four long years…well, that ends today! She’s gonna make friends, take pictures, and fill this room with life again!

Marinette barrels into her Family’s kitchen, practically running into the table to try and hurriedly stuff her face.

“Remember to chew, dear,” Sabine says calmly to her daughter. “And please sit down.”

Marinette mumbles a bit between her bites as she sits at the table, swallowing a handful of food at once. “Sorry, Maman.” she sighs. “I’m a little nervous, I gotta admit…Chloe’s probably gonna be in most of my classes again.”

“Four years in a row of this, is that even possible?” Sabine asks.

“You know me, the picture of luck!” Marinette chuckles nervously.

“Oh, don’t say that!” Sabine scolds, frowning at her daughter’s self-deprecation. “It’s the start of a new school year! Everything will be fine.”

As Marinette considers her Mother’s words, it’s as though on cue she drops the spoon in her hand, hitting another object and hitting many others like a Rube Goldberg machine of chaos and misfortune. Marinette just groans, tempted to just fall to the ground and let the earth take her. Before Marinette can spiral any further into her doubts, her Dad walks in, humming to himself as he places a Boulangerie Patisserie box full of macarons down in front of his beloved daughter. Marinette sees the treats in the box she has requested her Dad make for her new class, and her eyes light up in renewed triumph.

“Papa, these are so awesome!” Marinette hugs her Dad.

“Glad you like them,” Tom smiles warmly.

“My class will love them, Papa. You’re the best!” Marinette hugs him, and after Tom catches the dropped box and hands it to her, she kisses her parents on the cheek before rushing out. “See you tonight!” she calls back, aiming to get to school quickly.

Marinette rushes out of her home clutching the box of sweets as she slings her backpack onto her back. She manages to avoid tripping over herself as she reaches the intersection, but as she breathes a sigh of relief, her eyes widen as she sees a little old man crossing the street slowly, struggling with his cane…as a car is fast approaching! Everyone around her is on their phones- only she can see him! Gasping in fear, she rushes forward, using every ounce of strength in her tiny body to tackle the old man on the other side of the street! The two of them groan, and Marinette feels her heart fall as she sees her box dropped in front of her, the macarons spilling out and in pieces. Marinette just hangs her head as the old man gets up.

“Oh, my! Young lady, thank you…young lady?” he seems concerned, but she pulls herself together.

“Oh! No, it’s fine, it’s…” She watches helplessly as someone on their phone walks by, stepping on one of the dropped macarons. She just hangs her head, her gaze blurring with frustrated tears before she wipes them away. “It’s fine!” she wipes the tears away. “I’m no stranger to disaster. There are even a few left! I might be able to dust some dirt off of these ones…”

The old man picks up one of the broken pieces from the ground, dusting it off and trying it.

“Well, they still taste delicious to me.” the old man smiles kindly, and Marinette smiles.

“Thank you, sir.” Marinette shuts the box and suddenly, she hears the school bell in the distance! “Oh, no, I’m gonna be late! Ah, have a nice day sir! Be careful of traffic!” she shouts as she rushes off.

---

As the old man walks into an alleyway, he takes a deep breath and slumps against a wall.

“Reality,” he mutters, dispelling the illusion of the speeding car that has since pulled into an alleyway and the illusion around himself. “Trixx, Orikko, divide.” He says, the two kwamis emerging from the Miraculous.

“Master, this was incredibly dangerous!” the fox kwami warns.

“I have to agree! You shouldn’t be wielding a Miraculous at your age, much less unifying them!” the rooster agrees.

“It’s just for today.” the old man explains as he feeds the kwamis some macaron crumbs he picked up. “I need to be sure the people are worthy. I need the Fox to set up the situations, and the Rooster to give me the power of empathic reading. That way, I’ll be able to tell if those I choose are right.”

“Was she right, Master?” the Fox asks.

“I believe so, Trixx.” the old man smiles and slips on some glasses. “Now, for the final part before moving forward. Kaalki, Full Gallop!”

---

Barreling through the doors of Mme. Bustier’s classroom at top speed is Marinette Dupain-Cheng, barely able to catch herself as she stumbles into the room with what many classmates would refer to as “three left feet” with how fast and bumbling she is. Marinette can see many familiar faces and a few new ones. 

Mme. Bustier was the primary teacher this year…again. Caline Bustier is a decent teacher, and through her own skills and the positive enforcement of her students and their families, she went from a Junior Secondary teacher to a Senior Secondary teacher in just a few years!

Maybe she advanced a bit too quickly, that quiet, rude corner of Marinette’s mind said.

I just need some faith. She wouldn’t have gotten the position if she didn’t deserve it! The rest of Marinette reasoned.

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng.” a shrill voice says her name like it’s an accusation, interrupting her train of thought. Marinette takes a deep breath, having only just sat down.

Here we go again…

“That’s my seat.” Chloe Bourgeois herself, self-appointed Queen Bee of the school, almost universally despised, and daughter of Mayor Andre Bourgeois.

“Chloe, it’s the first day of school! Seats are being assigned right now, and you came in after me for once!” Marinette complains.

“Not anymore!” Sabrina proclaims. “New year, new seats!”

“You refuse to know your place, so I have to put you in your place.” Chloe grins, looming over the sitting and diminutive form of Marinette. “Why don’t you go sit by the new girl?” she gestures to the Creole girl a row away reading a comic book, whose attention has been caught by the situation. “Adrien’s arriving today, and since he’s going to sit there, I’m going to sit here.”

“Adrien…Agreste?” Marinette blinks. “But- the Agrestes are shut-ins!”

“Not anymore!” Chloe smirks. “Oh, does the little fashion wannabe actually wanna meet an Agreste?”

“I- you- but-” Marinette stammers as Chloe grins cruelly over her.

“Maybe if you finally put yourself in your proper place, I’ll consider letting you meet him. The only place you belong is-” Chloe begins, but suddenly, they’re interrupted.

“Hey! Who elected you Queen of Seats?” the Creole girl accuses, having stood up and coming up with her comic book rolled up.

“Oh, look, Sabrina! We’ve got a little do-gooder in our class this year.” Chloe chortles. “What, another superhero nerd? What are you gonna do, shoot beams at me with your glasses?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Alya scowls and leads Marinette by the hand, “Come on, you can sit with me and away from those two.”

As she leads Marinette, the shorter girl gasps as she trips, once more spilling her macarons until only one remains in the box.

“Sorry! Sorry. I’m sorry…” Marinette whimpers.

“Hey, it’s okay, girl!” Marinette’s new seat neighbor gathers the dropped sweets and tosses them into the trash. “No biggie.”

“I wish I could handle Chloe the way you do…” Marinette mutters.

“You mean the way Majestia does it,” the girl explains, rolling out the comic again. “She says that ‘all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing’.” She then points at Chloe. “Well, that girl over there is evil, and we are the good people. We can’t let her get away with it,” she explains like it’s a simple fact.

Chloe isn’t evil…she’s not perfect, but she’s not EVIL. I hope.

“Well, that’s easier said than done,” Marinette says instead. “She likes to make my life miserable…”

“That’s cause you let her, girl! Get some confidence!” the girl grins, and Marinette can’t help but smile at the sentiment.

“I’m Marinette,” Marinette says, handing Alya the last macaron.

“Alya.” the girl smiles, taking and eating it with a smile on her face.

“Alright, class, let’s get started!” Mme. Bustier smiles.

“Where is he…?” Marinette can barely hear Chloe mutter.

---

Adrien has just helped an old man from tripping and falling into the street, turning back with a sight to see the two people he knew would drag him away from the steps of Francoise Dupont Lycee. Nathalie Sanceour, archaeologist-turned-assistant, and Placide I.T., a gorilla-like American bodyguard that hardly understands a word of French, much less speak it.

“I just want to go to school like anyone else. What’s so wrong with that?” Adrien protests.

“Let’s go home, Adrien,” Nathalie says, and the Bodyguard opens the door of the car.

“... please don’t tell my Father about this,” Adrien mutters as he steps into the car.

---

The Butterfly Miraculous allows one to tap into truly empathic abilities, allowing one to read emotions and surface thoughts for many miles while in a meditative state. There is negativity all across the so-called “City of Love,” but it is one emotion picked up on. Anger, Sadness, Resentment, and Regret all together at once! A shy boy hiding his anger, pent up with rage with a want to express his love, but how could he ever?

“This is perfect.” Hawkmoth grins. He holds his cane up, and the head opens. A butterfly lands on it, and the head closes. Dark energy pulses through the head of the cane, corrupting the harmless butterfly into something more potent. “Burn a hole into his heart, my horrible akuma!” the head of the cane opens, and the cracking purple-black butterfly emerges, fluttering out of the window with a target in mind. “Fly now, and akumatize him!”

When the akuma closes in, he can feel the anger spike. Scorned by the Principal, who should be protecting these youths. The akuma finds its way into the object with the most emotional attachment: a crumpled-up piece of paper, a failed confession.

“Stoneheart, I am Hawkmoth.” Hawkmoth declares, his influence driven into the boy’s mind like a knife. Proclaiming his new name, so that he has no chance to deny that Stoneheart is his identity. “The world hurts, doesn’t it? I can give you the power to shut out all pain. However, in return, there is something you need to do for me…”

“Whatever it is, you’ve got a deal, Hawkmoth.” the weak-willed young man agrees, and the horrible shadow covers him, mutating him into something so much more.

“Make some noise, Stoneheart.” Hawkmoth orders. “Grab Paris’ attention.”

---

Marinette and Alya were in the library, when the ground suddenly shook. Marinette fell to the ground- not actually her fault, this time!- and plastered across every news screen was that of a monstrous golem-like creature tearing through the school.

“KIM!” the monster roars in anger, and Marinette can see the monster’s fist tighten around something in his hand.

Something…breaks.

“Ivan?” Marinette mutters, blinking in surprise.

“Hello? This is the police?” Damocles exclaims, talking on his phone as he rushes through the library, trying to hide. “Get me the army!”

“Whoa, a real-life supervillain!” Alya rushes to her bag, swiping through her phone. “GPS, synced. Battery, charged. I am so ready for this!” she starts to rush out the door…towards the danger?!

“Hey! Where are you going?!” Marinette exclaims.

“Supervillains mean Superheroes, and Paris hasn’t had either in years!” Alya grins. “There’s no way I’m missing this!”

Marinette sees the news on another student’s phone and just how…destructive this monster Ivan has become is. She winces, and she thinks hard.

My new friend has a death wish! I have to help her!

What can I even do? I’d just get in the way…or worse, my clumsiness could get her hurt!

I can’t just do NOTHING, can I?

There’s another boom from outside.

I should…leave this to the Police.

---

Adrien, ever-bored, waits patiently as he answers each of Nathalie’s questions easily. Suddenly, the door to Adrien’s room opens.

“Give us a moment, would you, Nathalie?” Gabriel Agreste himself requests, and Nathalie steps out. He then turns to Adrien, holding his hands behind his back. “You are not going to school. I already told you.”

“But, Father-” Adrien protests.

“Quiet.” Gabriel orders, and Adrien promptly shuts up. “Everything you need is right here where I can keep an eye on you. I will not have you outside in that dangerous world.”

It’s not dangerous, Adrien thinks to himself. Why can’t I just go to school like everyone else…?

Gabriel walks to the door, opening it for Nathalie. “Continue,” he orders, and Adrien walks to the door as he walks away, and Nathalie looks into the room.

“We can leave it there for today if you-” Nathalie begins, and Adrien promptly shuts the door in her face.

Adrien groans, laying on his bed. He hears thumping and…explosions? He rushes to the TV and turns it on, seeing a monster literally absorbing gunfire into its body, growing bigger!

---

“As incredible as it seems,” Nadja Chamack reports, “it’s been confirmed that Paris is indeed being attacked by a supervillain! The Police have been struggling to keep the situation under control.”

“First day back at school…and a supervillain attacks.” Marinette faceplants into her chaise. “This is a new low.”

Marinette looks up at the monitor, her eyes squinting as she sees a small box she doesn’t recognize next to it. “Huh…?”

---

Adrien stares at the screen in disbelief, then notices something on one of his darker shelves he hasn’t noticed until now…something that definitely wasn’t there before.

“What’s this doing here?” Adrien picks up the box with the intricate design and opens it up, and a bright glow emanates from within!

---

“AAGH!” Marinette falls back, seeing the creature that emerged from the box. “Help! Giant bug- mouse- bug-mouse!”

“Everything’s okay, don’t be scared!” the creature tries to comfort her.

“AAGH IT TALKS!” Marinette panics.

---

“I’m Plagg, nice to meetchya.” the creature grins in front of Adrien before promptly starting to destroy his room, looking at anything shiny and possibly edible.

“Hey, hold on-!” Adrien protests.

---

Marinette slams a jar over the creature.

“Okay, if that makes you feel safer, Marinette…” the creature says.

“What are you and how do you know my name?!” Marinette exclaims.

“I am a kwami, and my name is Tikki. Now, just let me explain-” she begins.

---

“-I grant powers,” Plagg explains simply from the grip of Adrien’s hands. “Yours is the power of destruction, got it?”

“Not even a little,” Adrien says honestly, prompting Plagg to roll his eyes.

“Good enough for me!” he phases out from the hands, causing Adrien to shudder as both his hands feel like they’ve fallen asleep. “You got anything to eat? I’m starving.”

“This can’t be real,” Adrien says, shaking his hands. “I’d assume someone was pranking me, but I’m the only one in this house with a sense of humor…”

“No one must know I exist!” Plagg suddenly gets in Adrien’s face.

---

“I’m your friend, please trust me! You’re the only one who can stop Stoneheart!” Tikki pleads, having phased out of the jar to stop Marinette from getting her parents.

“This has to be a mistake! The only superpower I could have is how abysmal I am at literally everything I do…I know!” Marinette looks up at the kwami. “Alya would know! That’s my friend! Well, I think she is…and I think she would…she loves superheroes, and knows way more than me about being a hero! You should totally go see her, instead!”

“Marinette, you were chosen!” Tikki insists.

---

“I’m a pretty crummy choice,” Adrien admits. “I’m stuck here! I’m not even allowed to go to school! What good is a superhero stuck in his own house?”

“No good at all.” Plagg grins mischievously. “That’s why that’s all going to change soon. If you’re willing to use my power to break the chains that keep you here.” Plagg lounges on the open box, gesturing to the black ring tantalizingly. 

---

“Okay, break the object, capture the thing! What’s the…charm thing again?” Marinette asks.

“I can’t say it, but part of the transformation involves knowledge. You’ll know it when you transform!” Tikki explains. “It will create an object that will help you deal with one threat! Once the threat is neutralized, you can release the energy of the object back into the universe, restoring the balance and fixing any damage the threat has done!”

“This is going…very fast, Tikki, I…I can’t do this!” Marinette whimpers.

“Trust yourself, Marinette! You have the potential inside of you!” Tikki smiles. “The transformation phrase is ‘Spots On’.”

“Spots on?” Marinette questions, and her eyes widen as Tikki is drawn into the earrings, and the transformation curls across her body!

Her eyes become a deeper blue and segmented like compound eyes, her hair becomes longer, the ribbons curling off her back. A shoulder-length cape with a Ladybug pattern around her neck is worn, and beautiful reds and blacks make up the Ladybug pattern of her attire, including a yoyo at her waist! There is a pitch-black pattern on her suit that makes a pair of gloves, with the black going along the underside of her forearms, and her boots have a similar pattern.

---

“Plagg, Claws Out!” Adrien declares, more ready for this than anything else in his life.

“No, wait! I haven't finished explaining-!” Plagg shrieks as he’s pulled into the ring, and Adrien transforms.

Adrien’s heroic form is fashionable leather, catlike eyes, and his hair has become wild and longer. A tail-like belt and a golden bell completes the look, and his clawed gloves are a wonderful touch, and he grins with a toothy, somewhat fanged grin. At his waist sports a collapsible staff that can become as compact as a palm-sized disc.

“This is gonna be so cool!” Adrien laughs excitedly.

---

Marinette looks down at her hands, gazing at her transformed visage.

I feel…weird. Out of my element.

“Tikki, can I get my old clothes back? Tikki…? You there…?” Marinette mutters to herself, and she feels the earth shake again, and she looks at the monitor worriedly.

“The monster, which calls itself ‘Stoneheart’, is heading toward the Montparnasse tower! The monster seems to be unstoppable!” Nadja reports.

Marinette sees Alya rushing toward the scene from the news feed, and her eyes widen in fear for the safety of her only friend.

I have to help her, no matter how weird this magic stuff feels!

“Marinette!” Sabine calls from downstairs, and Marinette’s eyes widen in fear. Tikki was very clear about keeping her identity a secret. “Marinette, sweetie, are you home? Are you okay?!”

Marinette knows that if she responds, she’d have to confront her Mere, and they’d want her to hide with her and Papa. Climbing up to her balcony quickly and silently, she feels guilt spike into her as she hears her Mere worried about the lack of her daughter in the house.

Okay, I have powers or something! And a magic yoyo.

Marinette feels the magic of the suit gives her the instincts to use the yoyo to swing. Her reflexes have been improved, but her hand-eye coordination is still pretty bad. The powers seem to enhance her existing abilities, not replace them.

The wind in my face, this new strength, I feel better than ever!

I still feel a bit weird.

…no, not weird. I feel powerful.

---

Adrien can’t help but laugh and whoop as he launches himself throughout the city he’s never had a chance to see! Every building, a new opportunity at vaulting himself onward! Adrien was already pretty skilled and physically fit, but the Miraculous has increased all of that tenfold (well, maybe not tenfold, but it still feels great!)!

He’s walking across a gap between two buildings using his staff at a tightrope- his model poise and the Black Cat’s instincts making it practically impossible for him to fall- when he hears a shriek from above. Looking up, he sees a blur of red slam into him, yoyo strings tying them together as they hang upside-down.

“Well, hey there.” Adrien smiles, happy that he was able to find his apparent partner so easily. “Nice of you to drop in!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” the blue-eyed bug girl proclaims nervously. “I didn’t mean to- this wasn’t on purpose!” she stammers slightly, and in a few moments, the two of them are able to free themselves and reclaim their weapons.

“So, you’re the partner my kwami told me about?” Adrien asks, and the girl nervously nods. “Well, you can call me…” Adrien taps his chin, grinning. He’d been thinking about this all the while he was vaulting across Paris. Something short and sweet, rolls off the tongue, but makes sense and tells people everything they need to know about him. “Chat Noir. Yeah, Chat Noir!” the new hero grins. “And you?”

“I’m Ma- er, uh-” the girl scrambles with her yoyo wildly, and winds up tossing it up and it hits her on the head before she catches it. “...Madly clumsy. I am so clumsy.”

“No sweat, Clumsybug!” Chat Noir sidles up to her, putting his arm around his maybe-sidekick’s shoulder. “I’m still learning the ropes, too!”

The ground shakes again- another indicator of the Stoneheart fight! Chat Noir grins and starts sprinting towards the fight, seeing where the dust is kicked up!

“H-hey! Where are you going?!” Clumsybug exclaims.

“To save Paris!” Chat laughs heartily as he takes his staff, vaulting upward once more!

---

The students of Lycee Francoise Dupont have the unique privilege of using the Parc des Princes as their school’s P.E. grounds. The students are packing up early, unaware the mysterious quakes are anything more than just that…until the monstrous and massive form of Stoneheart bursts through the entrance and walls!

“KIM!” Stoneheart roars, looming over the student. “Who’s the wuss now?” he is about to slam his fist down upon Kim, who’s tripped over, but suddenly a black blur gets Kim out of the way before brandishing his staff as though it were a blade, pointing it at Stoneheart!

“Hey, maybe you should pick on someone your own size!” the wielder of the Black Cat proclaims.

“Just as expected,” Hawkmoth smirks, looking through his Akuma’s eyes. “The Miraculous of the Ladybug and the Black Cat have been activated! Here they come to save the day, only to be destroyed by my machinations.”

---

“Where are you, partner?” Chat mutters as he is thrown back by an even bigger Stoneheart- every hit of his staff makes the villain grow! Chat tries to throw one of the football nets at Stoneheart, hoping to tangle him and render him immobile, but instead, Stoneheart just throws it away- and is about to hit a girl recording everything! Chat Noir is able to save her, but she pays no mind to him, looking up at Clumsybug, who seems to be frozen with fear from atop the stadium’s bowl.

“What are you waiting for, Super Redbug? The world is watching you!” the recorder eggs on.

---

I can’t do this. I’m not a superhero! Look at the size of that thing! How can I fight that?

Marinette can hear Alya, and she sees Chat Noir fighting alone, against all odds.

He’s fighting. I could try and be like him.

What if I get in his way? What if I tie us together again? What if I-

What if nothing, I can’t just stand by and do nothing!

Marinette resolves herself, leaping down and brandishing her yoyo.

Never again.

She throws her yoyo forward, doing the best thing she can- let it go wild! It ties around Stoneheart’s torso, and she yanks, pulling herself towards him! She lands on his head and kicks off, snapping her fingers to make the yoyo’s strings loosen, allowing her to pull it back to her side, pulling the string together like a mechanical tape measure’s retraction.

“Animal cruelty, Stoneheart? How shameful.” Marinette quips, trying to emulate Chat Noir’s boldness. “Sorry it took so long, Chat Noir.”

“It’s cool, Wonderbug.” Chat Noir says, coming to her side. “Let’s kick his rocky rear!”

“We can’t just rush in brazenly when our attacks will only make him bigger and stronger!” Marinette reasons. “We have to do something different…”

“Alright, I’ll bite. Different how?” Chat Noir asks.

“I…don’t know.” Marinette hangs her head.

“Well, I do. What do you say we test out our powers?” Chat Noir smiles, and Marinette nods a little bit.

“Cataclysm!” Chat Noir holds his hand forward, but…nothing happens. “Huh, what the heck?”

“Tikki said they use our weapons. Like, mine is the Lucky Charm-” Marinette says, holding her yoyo in her hand, and the yoyo glows and thrums with power! She shrieks a little as the light pours out of it, conjuring a spandex suit that resembles her own. “Ugh…” she falls back from the disorientation. “I should probably throw that away from me whenever I do that from now on…”

“Oh! So it’d be like this…?” Chat Noir compacts his staff into a palm-sized disc, palming it into his ring hand. “Cataclysm!” he declares again, and this time, the dark power thrums through his hand and the disc! “Alright! Apparently, I destroy whatever I though. What’s yours do?”

“It’s supposed to help us win, somehow. We only have 5 minutes now until we turn back…” Marinette mumbles.

“Ah…probably should have listened to my kwami.” Chat Noir chuckles. “Any other tips?” he asks, leaning against a goal that starts to disintegrate.

“...our powers are only single use,” Marinette says softly, and Chat Noir looks back at the destroyed goal.

“...oops.” Chat Noir says, embarrassed.

They hear a roar from Stoneheart, who is starting to charge towards them!

“His right hand is always closed…it must be where that whatchamacallit is hiding, the…the akuma!” Marinette reasons.

“So, uh, what’s the plan?” Chat Noir asks nervously, seeing the monstrous villain charging.

“The plan, it’s…it’s…” Marinette looks around wildly, soon locating precisely what she needs. “I’ve got it!” she swiftly ties a nearby hose to the suit, then ties Chat Noir with her yoyo. “Okay, uh, don’t resist, I need you to trust me.”

“Oh god, she’s crazy.” Chat Noir says as she picks him up! “How are you so strong?!” he exclaims,

“Why are you so light?!” Marinette exclaims, genuinely thinking she was gonna have a harder time with his plan (and honestly a little concerned with how little he weighs). Regardless, she throws him like a shotput.

The plan goes pretty well. Chat Noir is captured, then so is Ladybug, then the Lucky Charm’s use goes well and they’re able to destroy the object!

“Wow…that was awesome.” Chat Noir declares, laughing as he lies in the grass, looking at the sky. “She’s awesome.”

“What’s going on? Why am I here?” Ivan exclaims, worried, and Marinette’s heart bleeds. He doesn’t even remember what happened to him.

“Well, you did it Super…Clumsy…Bug Lady.” Chat Noir laughs, still clearly unsure of what to call her. “You were great!”

“We got there in the end, didn’t we?” Marinette smiles and holds up her fist. “Partner.”

The look of elation on Chat Noir’s face was perhaps the purest joy Marinette had ever seen.

“Pound it!” Chat Noir says as they fist bump, and Marinette laughs.

“What was that?” she smiles.

“What? It’s fun!” he grins goofily, and notices his beeping ring. “Ah, we should probably get going.”

“Right! Identities gotta be secret.” Marinette nods.

“Farewell, M’lady bug!” Chat Noir winks with one last nickname and vaults away on his staff. “Let’s do this again soon, okay?”

Not too soon, I hope… Marinette thinks to herself as the adrenaline starts to wear off. She walks over to look at the paper the object was in, and she reads it, and she frowns as she realizes what Kim has done.

What he always does, with those twisted attempts at jokes.

“There’s no shame in telling someone you love them,” Marinette says to Ivan, and he looks away, ashamed as the paramedics come in to try and get the scope of the situation.

“Uncanny, amazing, spectacular!” Alya suddenly interrupts. “Are you gonna be protecting Paris from now on? How did you get your powers? Did you get stung by a radioactive Ladybug? Oh, I've got a ton of questions to ask you, uh, miss... uhh…” She trails off, as though trying to decide which of Chat Noir’s many names could be her moniker.

And honestly, while it was a bit plain and simple, Marinette liked his last one the most.

“Ladybug. You can call me Ladybug.” She smiles wide.

“Ladybug! Super awesome!” Alya exclaims, recording the scene as ‘Ladybug’ swings away.