#because this is a normal army that knows how to use contraceptives

[carica-ficus]

“Fourth Wing”

26/12/2023

Reading progress: 498/498 (100%) Read through since last update: 152

It was a little harder for me to read through the rest of this book today. I think I was a little fed up by it. (And reading started feeling somewhat like a chore, since I could get out of bed now and had the energy to find different entertainment - ToTK my beloved.)

Final thoughts:

She asks Xaden about his scars, acknowledges he's private about them, and then she's surprised he doesn't want to tell her? That's such a personal question. Very invasive. If he wanted to talk about it with her, it's on him to start the subject. Ugh, I hate this trope in fiction when the person that doesn't talk about their trauma is painted as paranoid or mistrustful. Just leave the poor guy alone.

"Shit, am I flirting?" Girl, you've literally hooked up twice till now. For all I care, he's your boyfriend now.

"When did I ever give you the impression that I give a fuck what people think about me?" Literally a page ago, when you said that you don't want a saddle because others would think of you as weak.

They're seriously teasing about kissing again as if they both don't want it, as if they aren't flirting on every page, as if they haven't almost fucked.

It's kinda disappointing that Violet has lightning powers. Naolin had the power to heal. Hell, he almost resurrected Brennan, which is incredible. Impossible even. I feel like lightning should fall under elemental wielding, in the same category as water or fire, which Violet mentions are fairly common. I don't know... I expected something cooler. (Future me: At least it turned out to be pretty cool to use. So ok, I'm going back to half of what I said, but I'm gonna stand by the fact that this power seems barely insignificant compared to some of the others.)

OH MY GOD YARROS REMOVED LIAM SO HE DOESN'T HAVE TO HEAR THEM FUCK

Ingenious. Ok. Slay. She saved that boy.

I KNEW THEY WERE GONNA MENTION SOME MAGICAL CONTRACEPTIVE WHILE THEY WERE DOING IT.

Kudos to the sex scene! It was pretty good. A little too much needless dirty talk, but I've read much, much worse. It's in line with all the tension that's been built up between them, it's hot enough and of a decent length (6ish pages? That's a lot). So yeah. Thumbs up. 👍

But why does Violet have to end it with talk of his scars? 😩 Now they're talking about war crimes after fucking.

(I really don't like when characters are pushy about somebody's scars and trauma. Not even your partner owes you an explanation of their past. It is up to them to share it if they want.)

Being horny makes her strike lightning? 😭😭😭 I need this book to STOP.

The first time a specific year gets mentioned is at page 431. Four hundred thirty fucking one. And its introduced as AU (after unification). What unification? Why should I care about this unit of measurement now? Especially considering it's not gonna be mentioned again??? (Future me: I was right. It was, in fact, not mentioned again.)

Yeah. I was just waiting for the whole gryphon army to finally approach Xaden and the other separatists. It would have been a good plot point if there was any build up on the politics behind the war, but there was none, so I feel very indifferent to this revelation.

CANNOT believe Yarros decided to INFO-DUMP such a stupid little detail like the name of gryphon fliers while Violet was literally ready to murder Xaden.

Violet knows, she KNOWS Dain can read minds. How could she forget a power like that? How could she forget that her best friend is able to read her mind every time he touches her face??? That's a really big invasion of privacy. And she caught it once and slipped away from him. Every normal person would have never trusted him again. And now she's surprised he's been doing it the whole time???

Not Liam! 😭😭

That last battle was pretty exhilarating, but I got lost in the number of venin and wyvern more than once. Still, Violets final attack was really cool.

So Violet almost does, miraculously wakes up, sees Xaden by her bed and kisses him, and the only thing Xaden thinks about how lucky he is that he'll get to fuck her again. And they say romance is dead.

No, fuck. I can't stop thinking about this. Fuck the ending. I knew Brennan was alive. I spoiled half the book to myself before I read it. It's fine. But the fact that Xaden is so thirsty for Violet that he only thinks about sex when she wakes up, after she has been unconscious from a life threatening injury, just left me so shocked that I can't get pass it. I can't ignore it. It's just so sickening. I don't know how else to describe it. Almost predatory. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

And I'm done. 2am. I'm shocked with the ending, but not with the part most people were. I can't get over Xaden's reaction to Violet. I simply can't. This book is very horny. I don't particularly care. I don't mind erotic content or erotica in general. They're not always my genre of choice, but I won't stray away from them if I'm interested. And even though I don't read it very often, I do love romance. And I do love fantasy. And I love dragons. This book has been a general disappointment on all these account. And I'm just frustrated because I truly, wholeheartedly did want it to be good and to be interesting. I really believed that it couldn't be that bad. But it is. It really truly is. And it's so sad. And I'm so disappointed...

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Returning to Birthright after having played the rest of the routes and I have two things to say:

1. Leo should absolutely have gotten to murder Zola in every single route. It’s a crime that he doesn’t get to complete the trifecta.

2. Leo has never done a single thing wrong this entire time. Never, not once. While I am aware that he’s a dick to his son in that paralogue, the Deeprealms and child units were a mistake that actively makes this game worse no matter how much fun Heirs of Fate was and no matter how cute my son and daughter and my nephews are, so that’s not actually a real thing that happened that Leo did wrong. Because that would be the only thing Leo’s done wrong, if he did that, which he didn’t. Because that paralogue is not real. Because Forrest, tragically, because he’s my sweet darling nephew whom I love very much, is not real.

[thorinthehottotty]

Here's another ask sorry 😘 How would Thorin react when you start menstruating. Maybe you had a supply of the contraceptive pill that lasted until shortly after the battle of the five armies. So now all of a sudden you are bleeding and in so much pain and Thorin doesn't know this is normal because it never happened during the quest.

Please don't apologize! I love asks!

I think the cramps that double you over would be the start. One moment you both would be walking, conversing about something his nephews had done, and the next you would be throwing a hand to the wall and hissing through your teeth at the pain ripping through you. Thorin is there, hovering as you try to take slow deep breaths.

After they pass, you stand back up and take a moment to breathe. He's concerned and confused as you wince. What could possibly cause this? And when you discreetly tell him you should probably go back to your room and you're just coming down with something, he's more concerned.

When he hasn't seen you for an entire day he asks the others. Kíli tried to check on you, but you had locked the door and told him you were fine. Fíli tried to get you to open up but you screamed at him!

He was very worried. So he decided to try. And he could hear you sniffling and whimpering behind the door... But what is a king that cannot enter rooms in his kingdom? He's got keys.

So he unlocks the door and enters and sees you. You are not happy when he enters. But there is blood. So much blood. He'd be at your side, cupping your face. He'd assure you not to be embarrassed and softly ask why you were in so much pain.

You'd tell him with frustration that in our world you'd taken birth control to regulate your cycles and hadn't had much of them for a long time. Since you didn't have access to the medication you use, your periods had stopped all together and hadn't been an issue on the journey. But now it was back with a vengeance. He's glad that you're okay... Mostly and gently scoops you up, much to your displeasure to carry you to your bathroom.

He'd run you a hot bath and help wash your hair for the comfort. Rules be damned. You were in pain, bleeding heavily. Any little comfort he could give would be it. His sister had plenty of her own cycles he had dealt with. Dwarves aren't squeamish about them in the least.

Expect lots of sweets, spoils and snugs. His hands and arms make amazing heating pads. He'd even have Oín make you something for the pain.

[eldunea]

THE LONG-AWAITED REASON WHY THE NAME “ELDUNEA” MEANS SO MUCH TO LOTOR.

you’ve seen it used once before on @ofalsehoods​ and now i’ve made “eldunea” my blog url. tbh tho? this post has been overdue since @ofalsehoods-archive​ so now here i go.

i definitely have mentioned before that thousands of years ago, the alteans had a war. a huge, ugly war known as the war of the stones. tl;dr of it: everybody was fighting each other to gain the entrance to oriande and to claim any territory with a white hole in it, billions of alteans died over a bloodbath period of 10,000 years. however. it only took one person’s efforts to bring the entire war to a close.

that person’s name was ELDUNEA UNVELAM.

eldunea was a moon elf who was born toward the end of the war of the stones, but he didn’t know that it was going to end soon due to him because the war continued on like there was no end in sight. people were killing each other everywhere and it was generally a really bad time.  eldunea wanted so badly to become a scholar and to escape reality by diving into academia, but given that 1) planets everywhere were turned into warzones and 2) he was drafted into the moon elvish army, that wasn’t going to happen. so, after a few hundred years of fighting needless battles, he deserted and set out to end the war of the stones--simply because he was so sick of his dreams being stalled by his circumstances.

yep. really. eldunea wasn’t doing this shit because he actually cared about everybody dying. he pulled out all the stops to make the war end because god damnit, he just wanted to sit at home and read in peace. literally when people asked him what motivated him to do what he did, he said “with the war all around me, how can i study?” normally, this sort of selfishness screws people over. but in eldunea’s case, it paid off.

his method for ending the war was just as controversial as his motivation. since everybody was fighting over the keys to oriande, he decided that he would find and destroy all the keys to oriande that had been scattered across the known universe. he saw the locations of the keys in visions that he was certain the white lion had granted him, which made him feel as though he was chosen for this task. he did this also literally to flip off every living altean--he felt that none of these bitches were worthy of the knowledge that oriande contained, so by barring them all from the alteans’ most holy site, he was spiting all of them for being such corrupt violent assholes (and for causing him to lose his dream). but just as importantly, by doing this he was preventing a war like this from happening again.

he finally found all the keys except for one, which was the one that lotor and allura later used to get into oriande (but he thought he’d found them all, which is why that one remained). he then destroyed the keys to oriande in the ballsiest way possible: he sent letters to every altean ruler and every altean news outlet telling them that he had found a key to oriande and that they were to teleconference with him on a certain date. then, on that date, with all of them tuned in, he took out all the keys to oriande, put them on a table one at a time while monologuing about how shitty the war was. and then, in front of every single altean in the universe, he casually took a hammer to the keys one by one--all while telling them he was literally doing this as “payment” for the hundreds of lost years that he couldn’t be a fucking scholar.

think he was done there? think again. all this time, he had secretly kept one of the keys--a key that he had planned on keeping for himself and himself alone. with this key, he entered oriande and gained the alchemic secret to eternal life. it was no great sense of selflessness that allowed him to pass the trial of the white lion; he actually failed the first time because he was thinking only of himself and self-defense. instead, he used logic and the alchemic principle of equivalent exchange--if the white lion held the secret of life, he would of course have to give his up. and there he stays, perfectly happy and content in his little scholarly bubble, finally able to live out his childhood dreams away from the asshole alteans that he blamed for not being able to fulfill them.

his legacy was to live on. while he was looking for the keys, he also fucked his way across the universe, much like a certain purple bastard we all know and love who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants (coughLOTORcoughcoughcough). he never intended for any of these one-night stands to result in kids, and so he used contraception spells to ensure that pregnancies would never occur. but he forgot to use the contraception spell just once--just once--and impregnated a moon elvish woman. that woman went on to have his kid. then that kid went on to have another kid. then that kid went on to have another kid. and so on and so forth until, in the long chain of kids, a little girl was born who, much like her ancestor, would change the universe forever--for better and for worse. 

that little girl’s name was honerva sincline.

yes, you read that right--lotor is eldunea’s direct descendant. he used to hate eldunea for what he did and when he found out that eldunea was his ancestor, he was devastated. but the more he lived and existed in the universe, the more he began to identify with eldunea’s selfishness, and the more he realized that he and eldunea have a lot in common. like eldunea, lotor puts himself first. like eldunea, lotor hates politics and just wants to be a scholar. like eldunea, lotor sleeps around. like eldunea, lotor failed his first attempt at the trial of the white lion. and like eldunea, lotor is bitter about the faults of the alteans (though unlike eldunea, lotor’s bitterness is highly repressed). in fact, he wishes he could be more like eldunea. he thinks that wanting to stop a war purely because it interrupts one’s studying is the biggest fucking mood, and he wishes that he could just give into his selfish impulses and still be able to help billions of people.

it is for these reasons that eldunea unvelam is lotor’s favorite historical figure. usually when he has to fake his identity he gives his ancestor’s name; the vast majority of the universe doesn’t know his ancestry, so they are none the wiser. 

[hope-for-olicity]

Like many other "Game of Thrones" fans, including my colleague Rachel Leah, my initial reaction to last Sunday's sex scene involving Arya Stark was initially one of shock that the show was, you know, going there. Oh sure, I expected some flirting and some light making out between Arya and her long-time crush Gendry. But I did not, like many viewers, expect young Arya to get after it like she did, aggressively seducing Gendry and stripping down naked in front of the camera, albeit in a shot that was surprisingly tasteful for a show that has been infamous in the past for sexploitation.

My mind sprung through all the rationalizations to justify my discomfort: I don't know if she's old enough! Even if she is, she started off on the show as a child, making this weird! We're not used to thinking of Arya that way! Couldn't they have been more coy about the whole thing?

But pretty quickly, I recognized those thoughts for the excuses that they were. The actress, Maisie Williams,  is a grown adult of 22 and her character is plenty old enough to know her own mind when it comes to sex. (After all, Arya is older than Bran, a character that was literally just described as having grown into a man in the last episode.) And in a show where everyone, including her brother Jon Snow, gets naked for the camera, it would be paternalistic to turn away from Arya's moment in the sheets.

And as for an unwillingness to accept that a girl I once knew as a child is an adult woman now, that was the worst hypocrisy of all. As a feminist writer, I've spent more than a decade railing against the "purity" double standard that congratulates men for having sex while treating women's sexual behavior as dirty. And one of the most common ways that standard is enforced is treating an "innocent" girl's maturation into an adult woman as a tragedy, as if merely growing into sexual maturity degrades her personhood.

This double standard is everywhere in our society. Sex education and reproductive health care for younger people still falls short all over the country, because so many adults assume such things violate the "innocence" of young girls. Condoms are relatively easy to get, but when feminists tried to remove age restrictions on female-controlled contraception such as Plan B, they met widespread political resistance. And 37 states require parental notification or consent for a girl under 18 to get an abortion, even though the average age for first sexual intercourse is 17.

Refusing to accept that girls grow up is often treated not as the oppressive force that it is, but as something cute or comical. Take former Vice President Joe Biden, for instance, suggesting a young man had a duty to "to keep the guys away from your sister." Or the multitude of T-shirts with jokes about fathers murdering their daughters' boyfriends. Built into this joke is the assumption young men wanting sex is normal and expected, but if a young woman does it, she's ruined.

We all swim in these cultural messages — my own dad made jokes about carrying a gun around when boys came calling — so it's no surprise that my own lizard brain recoiled at the image of Arya expressing her sexuality so assertively onscreen.

But that is an unfair impulse, and so I'm calling myself and everyone else out for our discomfort and calling on us all to do better about supporting young women, even fictional young women, who take charge of their own sexuality.

Contrast the discomfort many felt at seeing Arya's sex scene with the way that another young character, Podrick Payne, has been celebrated for a season 3 episode in which he lost his virginity in a literal brothel orgy. I have no quarrel with the scene, which was mostly set up for a joke about how the bumbling teenager is a secret sexual savant. But it's worth pointing out that his was a far more raunchy premise than Arya's touching love scene with one boy she's had a crush on for years.

The actor who plays Podrick, Daniel Portman, was 21 when the brothel scene aired, a full year younger than Williams now. And his character was coded as much younger — likely 15 or 16, and a squire who at the time was still mostly naive to the ways of the world. Arya, on the other hand, has traveled by herself for years and is a trained assassin. But she's female and so somehow it's more troubling for audiences to see her get it on with a boy she likes than to see the childish and sheltered Podrick jump straight into an orgy.

It's hard not to suspect that a great deal of audience discomfort with Arya's scene came not from the actor's naked body, but from the character's naked desire. Arya initiates the sex talk, and when Gendry accedes, she claws at his clothes like a woman who has been dreaming of this day for years — which is what she is. There was none of the coyness that women are expected to display. Instead, as with most things, Arya is a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it with abandon.

The scene should be celebrated for its feminism. For one thing, it's a model of enthusiastic consent, and completely stomps the ridiculous but still widespread idea that it somehow kills the mood for people to use the spoken word to ask for sex. And Arya doesn't have to be something she's not — more feminine, more demure, more ladylike — to get the male affection she wants. Arya has no time for fancy boys, but likes to get down with a sweaty weapons smith, and there is nothing wrong with that.

This feminism is why I'm not particularly worried that this scene might read as permission to the men in the audience who want to leer at teen girls like creeps, which is always a concern. Men who like the "Lolita" fantasy — and who all too often harass teen girls in the real world — like the idea of violating a girl's "innocence." But Arya isn't innocent. Nor should we demand that she should be.

"Game of Thrones" has always been smarter about gender and sexism than many fans have understood. (See the way that Sansa Stark, long dismissed as a bimbo because she's more feminine than her sister, turns out to be one of the smartest characters on the show.) And Sunday night's episode showed this yet again, by confronting one of the most entrenched sexist taboos,  against letting girls — especially tomboyish girls — grow into women.

Yes, it was startling. But hopefully Arya's scene with Gendry, and our reactions to it, will kickstart a conversation about how screwed up it is that we expect girls to stay children for far longer than we expect it of boys. Arya has traveled the world, killed dozens of men, and now will be fighting a zombie army. She's not a child anymore, and expecting her to be is unfair to her and to all young women who have a right to leave childhood behind.

[devil666lovesblog]

The faithful night of me and Rabbit(4)

To me, to cross that bridge is not so hard since it is arranged by Rabbit's mother, she is very eager to get her married to me ASAP. Probably because she thinks Rabbit has a weak body and would not last very long, thus she wants her favored daughter to be safe and sound in hands of someone who could be completely trusted. And time and time I have proven myself to be a trust-able and reliable boyfriend who shown no interest to fuck or even look at other girls. She thinks it is very unlikely that I kept a secret lover or I cheated and slept with someone else. I don't share her concern for her daughter to be married ASAP(since I don't want to get married in my teens.) Also in her mind is that I have forsaken my life for her daughter and that should be rewarded with a chance of shooting cum all over Rabbit's young body. The idea is to get me hooked in making love with Rabbit('s tight holes in front and the back) and the whole world's army would not drive me away from rabbit. I would then never get enough of her, and thinking of fucking her every second, and would do whatever they want to let me have Rabbit in the bed.

There is a disadvantage they never realize in this strategy: Rabbit could be real painful in her fortification with me since I am a very strong man, I may not know how to foreplay with her and just stick my dick in whatever place her body allow me disregarding her pain and complain; she may lost a considerable amount of bleed when I broke her hymen, and I may even put my thing inside her anal till my dick reach her rectum. And she could get pregnant when we are having sex five or six times in rolls and all cum is shot to her womb. She may not know to use contraceptive pills after we have sex.

In her mother's theory of (my) mind, a man would not invest his life and everything without taking anything back from her daughter. Since her daughter is going to give her virginity to some guy in the future, why not be the guy she really trusts and knows everything about? Thus with a suitable reward as her daughter's delicious body helps me arouse and relieve all my sexual tension, I realize my manhood in Rabbit's tightly cunt. I would love her daughter even more with all my heart(and my sperms). Once a man invests sperm into a girls' womb there is no turning back since a part of him lives inside her. All middle class want to preserve their gentleman image in the eyes of others, otherwise the girls from prestigious schools would not dare to date the guy without the consent of her parents. That is normally the case but with some exceptions. I am very unlikely to make up excuse to dump her after sex because I sincerely want her everyday and night. She is in my dreams and sexual fantasies. In my dreams she is a submissive sexual slave that would do every bidding of my wish and I shoot a minute's load into her hungry womb each time, I regret that I never share that fantasy with her. As she is also in love with me she would be happy that I am only thinking of submitting her in the bed, I am such a loyal boyfriend she doesn't entertain any possibilities of me betraying her. (To seduce Russian girls to my bed is the purpose of I writing this. )

Thereby her mother paved the way to get me laid with her daughter. I do wish I would be a little more accompanying to her plan. I mean, after all, what do I have to lose when I make love with the most beloved person in the whole universe? I really do want to marry her as my wife and love her till my body is completely exhausted. She was a virgin and had no sexual contact with anyone, both of her holes are really tight and clean. She is a hygienic girl and she is very afraid of germs. Little do I thought is sexual competition with her father, I meant although Rabbit's father can't officially demand sex with his daughter, but seeing her daughter leaving her father to build a new house is painful to any father. Only do I realize that her mother's plan has something to do with the unhealthy attraction between her daughter and her husband. As Rabbit is maturing sexually in a rapid place, their home is of a small space that she hardly has any privacy when she wants to explore herself sexually. And Rabbit's mother is no longer attractive or sexually active with her husband, there are some chances when her daughter's increased sexual sensitivity met with an open arm and strong dick from her husband. Now an untold secret in many lower class in HongKong families is that some fathers took sexual adventure with their daughters. It is coming from my sperms and I have nourish her for long, and now my wife is gone or she no longer want sex, wouldn't it be nice if this daughter who is learning to be a woman take a lesson from my firm and hard dick? One won't be certain about the other's changing attitude toward their daughter, but one would be certain that as her father he wouldn't be able to betray her daughter since they aren't married. She has an itchy hole and I have an itchy dick. How nice would that be if my dick filled the emptiness of her heart and the soul? Hey, she also felt sexual pleasure and reached climax when I shot cum in her cum. I could use condom and she could take contraceptive then there is not any bad consequence of having sex with my daughter. I meant, I am under a lot of stress in the workplace, but after I relieve all my tension and sperm inside the daughter made by my sperm in the first place I am a happy man to face the challenge tomorrow. And there is no chance for me and her to get STDs.

[nebris]

We’re Not Done Here

How the MeToo movement became a feminist sexual revolution.

Laurie Penny | Longreads | January 2018 | 19 minutes (4,764 words)

The problem of sexual violation can not be treated as distinct from the problematic of sexuality itself. The ubiquity of sexual violations is obviously related to what is taken to be routine, everyday sex, the ‘facts’ of pleasure and desire. — Linda MartAn Alcoff, Rape and Resistance

This kind of mania will always at some point exhaust itself. — Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine

***

Oh, girls, look what we’ve done now. We’ve gone too far. The growing backlash against the MeToo movement has finally settled on a form that can face itself in the mirror. The charge is hysteria, moral panic, hatred of sex, hatred of men. More specifically, as Andrew Sullivan complained in New York magazine this week, “the righteous exposure of hideous abuse of power had morphed into a more generalized revolution against the patriarchy.” Well, yes. That’s rather the point.

Sullivan is far from the only one to accuse the MeToo movement of becoming a moral panic about sexuality itself, and he joins a chorus of hand-wringers warning that if this continues — well, men will lose their jobs unjustly, and what could be worse than that, really? The story being put about is that women, girls, and a few presumably hoodwinked men are now so carried away by their “anger” and “temporary power” that, according to one piece in the Atlantic, they have become “dangerous.” Of course — what could be more terrifying than an angry, powerful woman, especially if you secretly care a little bit more about being comfortable than you do about justice? This was always how the counter-narrative was going to unfold: It was always going to become a meltdown about castrating feminist hellcats whipping up their followers into a Cybelian frenzy, interpreting any clumsy come-on as an attempted rape and murder. We know what happens when women get out of control, don’t we?

Charges like this are serious. Too serious to dismiss out of hand. I don’t mean to do so, not least because I am a queer person, and I do not take the notion of sex panic lightly. Why, then, are so many people so anxious to believe that this is one? There is at least one simple answer. It is easier — much, much easier — to manufacture an attack on sexuality than it is to imagine an attack on patriarchy.

Sex is not the problem. Sexism is the problem, along with the upsetting multitudes of men and women who seem unable or unwilling to make the distinction. An attack on sexuality, however, will always find recruits from across the political spectrum as well as from armies of amoral keyboard droppers who just want to read about what celebrities get up to in hotel rooms. An attack on patriarchy, male supremacy, and sexual oppression — that is far harder to accept. It is far harder to allow. Easier to transpose it into a key of prurience and wait for the whole thing to stroke itself into exhaustion. But — forgive me — if you think this movement has blown its load already, you’ve no idea how women work, and you’ve no clue what’s coming.

***

Alright, ladies, you’ve had your fun, and you’ve given us all a fright — but that’s enough now. If we relegate this all-out revolt against male sexual entitlement to the kitchen shelf where it belongs, everyone would be a lot more comfortable — at least, the men in the room would be, and we all know that’s what really matters.

Just look at what happened to poor old Aziz Ansari. They warned us that this sort of thing was coming, and we didn’t listen. A famous and successful man in his 30s goes on a date with an unfamous woman in her 20s, they go home together, he pesters her for a shag, she isn’t strong enough to say no or slap him away like a real woman ought to, like women used to do back in the day, so like the snowflake she is, she gets upset and goes home — and we all know how this one goes. He wins an award, and she decides to take revenge. She goes to the press, the press report the encounter in cringeworthy suck-by-blow detail, the feminazi #MeToo hive-vagina takes over, the hysteria mill rattles into overdrive, and boom — just like that, his career is over. Now everyone’s calling the poor guy a monster and a rapist. He’s blacklisted from every network. He’ll never work again. Another fallen soldier in the sex wars. Predictable. Tragic. Just goes to show how weak modern women really are, how much they hate men and sex, how they always take things too far, how they never miss a chance to play the victim.

At least, that’s what it might’ve gone to show if any of that had actually happened. What actually happened was quite different.

What actually happened was this: A man was rude and sexually entitled, fucked up and hurt somebody, and she told him so. He apologized and took it to heart. An unscrupulous trash publication chased this woman down and got her to tell her story, which it reported in the lurid language of celebrity sex scandal. Babe magazine framed it in a way designed to garner maximum attention, derail important activist work, and humiliate everybody involved. The original piece at Babe magazine is an object lesson in how scummy gutter journalism can be when literally all it cares about is keeping readers salivating. The piece pruriently portrays both parties in the worst possible light: Ansari comes out of it looking like an entitled dick on training-wheels, and “Grace” comes out of it looking not like an honest young person who had an upsetting experience, but like a spiteful child who wanted to hurt a man who hurt her, who wanted to ruin him just like the papers warned us all women do. The reporter makes her look hysterical, which is something she definitely isn’t, because nobody is, because hysteria is a fake disease made up by a sexist medical establishment a hundred and fifty years ago to pathologize women who were traumatized and frustrated and wanted their lives to be different.

Unfortunately for those who were hoping for a crowbar to shove in the wheels of this barrelling machine of social and sexual change, what this moment illustrates is a remorseless and prurient witch hunt failing to happen. Ansari still has his career. He’ll be fine — not because the hand-wringers called time on a movement that went too far, but because this movement is honest. This movement is more than just a ballroom full of fainting maidens who collapse at the sight of their own ankles. It turns out that most women can, in fact, distinguish between sexual assault and a bad date. It turns out that sex is just one more thing we really do not need mansplained to us.

***

You want to talk about sexual repression? About wanting women to act like fainting Victorian ladies? The idea that it’s women who are the enemies of freedom in a world where, for centuries, the very worst thing you can call a woman has been “loose” or a “slut,” where for a female or queer person to be openly sexual is to incite violence or excuse it after the fact — that would be laughable anywhere, but in America? In a nation where legal abortion is all but impossible to access in all but the most liberal states, where conservative lawmakers in every district are going after not just safe pregnancy termination, but contraception? We have not even begun to have a real conversation about creating the conditions for meaningful sexual liberty that works for most human beings. If you want sexual liberation, make contraception, reproductive health care, and pregnancy termination easy to access and free at the point of use. Then, Mr. Sullivan, we can talk about “defending sex.”

If anyone is confused about the difference between sex and violence, if anyone is operating under the assumption that men are always and only animals who cannot be expected to control their erotic compulsions, it’s not women. It’s men, because they’ve been socialized to understand sex and violence as synonymous, and it’s the mainstream press, because stars, sex, and violence have always sold copy.

Part of the confusion has arisen from the obvious glee with which the press has sunk its indiscriminate fangs into individual offenders, luridly repeating details of alleged transgressions and sidelining the experiences of victims and survivors, as if sexual activity itself were the so-called scandal rather than whether or not the sucking and fucking and flowerpot-wanking was consensual. There’s always been a ripe news economy of sexual hypocrisy. The same tabloids that sell millions of issues printing pictures of topless teenage girls will gladly jump on any slut-shaming bandwagon that trundles by on its way to the frigid past.

It turns out that women, largely, are not the ones who are confused between sex and violence — not when the stakes are this high. Which is incredible, really, because most of our lives have been spent, especially if we are straight, being gaslit and bullied into believing that sexual violence is normal and fine. We have been socialized to think we need to be reticent and shy about our own desires — that our bodies are for men to desire and own — and yet we are also the ones responsible for setting the boundaries. We have been told that the absolute maximum we can expect, if we are good and quiet and not too provocative or angry, is not to be violently raped.

We are also supposed to put other people’s comfort before our own in every remotely sexual situation. We must not be rude. We must not upset or threaten the man. We must say no when we mean it, but we must take care not to offend him or threaten his masculinity, because heaven knows what will happen then. That’s where this backlash has backfired. Instead of exposing a movement that has overreached itself, instead of proving that MeToo is simply, as a well-reported letter in the French press put it, an attack on men, the Aziz-and-Grace story has opened up a whole new conversation about what we expect from sex, even when it is technically consensual. It turns out that we’re not done here.

We are far from done.

***

There will always be cowardly and conservative elements in society just desperate to take even one irresponsibly reported story and use it to damn an entire movement, and we must not let them, because this matters too damn much. There’s a reeking double standard in the room. Right now, if a man makes a mistake and hurts someone, it might, just for once, ruin his career — but it seems that if a woman makes a mistake and hurts someone right back, or allows her pain to be twisted to serve someone else’s agenda, she damns not just herself, but all other women by association.

This is what happens when patriarchy is on the run. It gets nasty. The mind games ramp up. Women are always the first to lose. But I have a word of advice for those who tried and failed to use this flashpoint to condemn the entire movement:
 Gentlemen, do not test us. Women who love their own freedom are all too used to hearing that we have gone too far — in fact, we’ve been hearing that for centuries, whenever we’ve tried to take a single step. The truth is that we have not gone nearly far enough, and we have very little to lose. Attacking our reputations, calling us liars, trying to humiliate us and drive us apart — we’ve seen all that before. Try it and see. This is not going to go the way you want it to go.

No, really. I have crept across the lines of this messy culture war to give you this advice, so please take it seriously, because it is for everyone’s good.

The terms of this war of sex and power have changed, and so have the weapons. Physical violence and threat won’t work for you here. You are trying to fight against whispers and rumors and inference, against righteous rage, against charges of hypocrisy, exploitation, and crass dehumanization that hit home with career-ending accuracy. And you’re trying to fight this war with an arsenal you don’t know how to use, against an army that has been training with these weapons for generations, because these tools of emotional warfare are the only ones they have ever been allowed, because they are women.

You are going to lose.

I don’t care that you’re fighting on your home terrain, that you’ve always been told that sex and power belonged to you and you could set the terms. You want to fight women over who has been more wronged in the field of sex and power. A lot of people also tried to invade Russia in the winter.

I’m sorry to break it to you, but women are not out of control here. They are very, very angry. There’s a difference. Turns out that this is not a runaway train, that women are still driving this sexual revolution — for that is what it is — and the pain and rage fueling the engines are far more profound than we wanted to imagine. It turns out that women want more. More than the right simply to go about our working lives without being constantly sexually harassed. More from men than just being able to keep their fool hands to themselves in the office. It turns out that this is also about the bedroom. It always has been. It’s terrifying, I know, but yes — women want more, women expect better, and it’s time we got it.

***

Back, if you can bear it, to the Aziz Ansari case. If we believe what Ansari himself has confirmed about that night, three things are true about this story:

Ansari acted in a shitty, entitled way towards a young woman. The way that he behaved was not okay or fine.

He does not deserve to go to jail or be blacklisted for it, but that doesn’t make it okay and fine.

Almost every woman I know has had a similar sexual experience — and no, that still doesn’t make it okay and fine.

That last point inflects the first two. The fact that this sort of experience is so goddamn common is precisely why it deserves attention, and should not simply be filed away in a closet marked “women who make too much of a fuss.” Women don’t make enough fuss about how much sex can suck for us even when it is, technically, consensual, even when no crime has been committed. We’re socialized out of making a fuss, just as men are socialized into thinking about sex as something they have to bully and pester out of women. Shitty, dehumanizing sex is not normal, and it is not okay — it’s just very, very common. And because it is so common, because it is a chapter in so many of our stories, it is easier to write this sort of thing off as a “bad date.” The story of the bad date, the bad fuck, and the bad marriage is easy and comforting to tell — almost as easy and comfortable as the story of the young woman who goes hysterical and ruins a man’s life over a bad date. What a pity it isn’t quite so simple.

Sex is many things, but it is rarely simple. Contrary to the popular narrative that opponents of the MeToo movement have propagated, most women don’t like to think of themselves as victims. Most of us would prefer the version of the story where we were in control the whole time, where the hurt and disappointment were our fault, because that way it’s easier to own the horrible things that have happened to us and make sense of the way they make us feel about our own bodies, and about sex in general. It’s easier to smile and repeat the lines that are required of us every time we stand up and demand that women be treated with a bare minimum of human decency: We don’t hate men. No, we don’t hate sex. We’re not like those angry, prudish feminists of the frightening fictional past with their burning bras and man-skull necklaces, ready to castrate any passing politician who accidentally brushes the wrong knee. We are not fainting Victorian maidens. We don’t hate sex. We love sex, and we love men, ok? All of us love sex and all of us love men, all men, no matter how badly they behave, because that’s what it means to be a good woman — it means loving what you’re told to love no matter how much it hurts you.

Love is such a huge, strange word, a word that stretches to contain all the silence, pain, and longing that crowd around the corners of your bed. To speak personally, yes, I love sex, but sometimes I also get angry at it — and sometimes wish it did not have to hurt so much. That’s something I’ve heard from a lot of women and girls I am close to, in this rare time where we have been able to talk about this with a little less censure. Maybe you love sex, but you wish it did not come at the cost of your dignity, your livelihood, your self-esteem. You wish you were able to have it on terms that you could bear. You wish you could ask for what you wanted and be heard. You wish you could talk about all those times you didn’t really want it but went along with it anyway to keep him happy, or to keep yourself from harm. Maybe you wish you could remember how to be hungry. Maybe you wish you could still feel the pleasure you used to anticipate before abuse and trauma left their fingerprints all over your body. And maybe people have simply used sex as a weapon against you so many times that you don’t love it anymore, not right now, and you know what, that’s fine too. Asking women if they love sex (implied: with men) is like asking the front-of-house staff how they feel about their work when the boss is listening.

Repurposing an attack on sexual injustice into an attack on sex itself is convenient and easy and wildly, wildly wrong. It also works like a dream. Nobody wants to be called frigid, which is the word for women who aren’t sluts. The actress Catherine Deneuve, along with a hundred other co-signatories to an open letter in Le Monde, condemned the women speaking out about assault as enemies of “sexual freedom.” The problem is that sexual freedom is not something that can be enjoyed in isolation when more than half the human race still fights for the basic freedom to choose when and how and who we fuck.

I resent being ordered to declare my love for sex by milquetoast liberal commentators who think that women routinely lie about rape and by slimeball anti-feminist shock jocks who spend the other half of their time trying to ban contraception because Jesus said so. The entire world hates sex. Yes, we do. If we didn’t hate sex, we wouldn’t talk about it the way we do behind its back.

Those fragile Victorian ladies, with their corsets and their smelling salts, they seem to come up in every banal and predictable condemnation of the MeToo movement — it’s worth asking who they were and what part they play in the long, weird story of human sensuality. Why were those women so apparently frightened of sex? They were frightened because not so long ago, sex was legitimately terrifying if you were a woman — as it still is for many women and girls around the world. Sex was dangerous. It could kill you, or ruin you, and the fact that you probably wanted it made it that much worse — when you crave something that could mean disaster, that doesn’t make the desire go away, it just makes it that much more horrifying.

A lot of men don’t quite understand why women policed sexual morality in the first place: not because they did not have desires, but because they were made to pay such a heavy cost for men’s desires before they even thought about having their own. Because sex was dangerous. Within living memory sex was extremely goddamn treacherous for women — and in many places it still is.

In fact, we do not have to choose between fighting against sexual violence and being sexual. Today still, as it has been for centuries, we are told: one or the other. We could not demand the right to have our bodily autonomy respected and still expect to get to be sexual, to dress like that, to walk like that, to suggest that we might want something good girls don’t. Men could be asked nicely not to attack when provoked, but if we actually showed any scrap of sexual desire ourselves, all bets were off.

The fight against sexual violence and the fight against sexual repression are two sides of the same struggle: to divide one from the other is to collapse the whole enterprise. So-called sexual liberationists of our parents’ and grandparents’ generation failed, and failed badly, by thinking they could have sexual freedom without tackling male supremacy and sexist violence, by clinging blindly to the cozy delusion that women aren’t actually sensual beings in the way that men are, that women’s sexual freedom can remain an afterthought, and any woman who acts as if it isn’t can and should be punished.

This is why in so many places where abortion and contraception are strictly controlled, exceptions are made in cases where the person seeking to end a pregnancy has been raped: because the real issue is and always has been sexual control, and the problem is not unborn babies but adult women with the temerity to think they can fuck who they want and get away with it. Only men are allowed to get away with that.

In the real world, nobody has so far been sent into career exile for asking someone out. There’s a difference between a polite invitation and repeated, aggressive pestering or a boss who refuses to keep his hands to himself because he thinks that power and seniority gives him a right to your body. Flirting is still allowed, but judging by the panicked responses to any MeToo narrative that isn’t clear-cut rape, it is not women who are confused about the difference between flirting and aggression, but men. This is, sadly, a predictable consequence of an erotic consensus that constantly associates male sexuality with violence, that tells straight men and boys that their sexuality is dangerous and uncontrollable and that if they fail to persuade women to “take” it, they are not men at all.

Understand that until women’s sexuality is not closed on all sides by a big, ugly wall of violence and intimidation, until we are allowed to actually access our erotic impulses honestly and think about what we want, until our bodies are no longer bargaining chips for the crumbs of power men sweep off the table for us to fight over, women will not be sexually free — which means that nobody will be sexually free. Understand that rape is a tool of sexual repression as well as of sexual oppression, and that a fight against rape culture is a fight for sexual liberation — the foundation without which true sexual liberation is going to fall flat on its face in a pool of its own juices.

***

The MeToo movement has not gone “too far.” We have not gone far enough. We won’t have gone anywhere near far enough, not until we achieve something like actual sexual liberation — for everyone. I believe that the next stage is going to involve a process of truth and reconciliation. Rape culture and misogynist entitlement are the key in which our current chorus of dissatisfaction is sung. What that means is that a lot of sex that is technically consensual is nonetheless dire and disappointing, especially for the women involved. This is why the demand for better sex — for fewer Cat People and coercive hookups and woke boys taking too long to understand when you’re just not into it — is also revolutionary.

As Ellen Willis notes in her seminal essay, “Towards a sexual revolution,” sexual coercion is “a tool of sexual repression.” We aren’t calling out men and condemning them to career assassination for being shitty, inconsiderate lovers, and a couple dozen humans in the Northern Hemisphere will be glad to hear me say that — but it’s worth asking why they so often are. Turns out that unless you pay attention to the needs and desires of the person opposite you — or however you happen to be angled — you’re going to be a bad lay. She might not say so, because she’s worried that if she upsets you or hurts your pride you’ll hurt her in far more measurable ways, and she might not be wrong. But trust me: Treating women as people, people who have wants and desires and messy, meaty insides, people who have to live in patriarchy just like you, people who can change their minds and get shy and sometimes take all their past traumas to bed with them just like you do — that’s the one position that’s guaranteed to win with almost everyone. The trick is that there’s no trick to it.

It’s possible that the best sex of our lives, as my friend Meredith Yayanos told me the other day, does not exist yet. When it does, it will be in a world beyond rape culture. In 10 years of trying to fuck like I lived in the early days of a better nation, I’ve found spaces where it seemed that, for a time, something like real sexual liberation was possible. Usually they were queer spaces, or at least spaces with their own reasons to mistrust received ideas about gender and pleasure. But they were mere cracks in the carapace of violence, little chunks in the brittle social exoskeleton of bitter sexism and shame sealing us off in units of terrified longing, even when the clothes came off. I found myself running up against rape culture over and over again. The retinue of bad and selfish and shitty behavior of grown men in bed. The violent fragility of masculinity that could have been so much more. I wanted more. I still want more. And women who want more are a problem.

I’m not promising that the great consensual anti-sexist revolution to come will mean an end to broken hearts and hurt feelings. I would never lie to you about a thing like that. I would anticipate that it might make the breakage cleaner and the scarring easier, but I have only my own experience to go on there. I have been let down and messed around in my time by a few rare and special snowflakes who managed to find entirely new ways to hurt me — ways that did not involve being sexually violent or at any point treating me as less than human, even though I was female and they were not. You can be anti-sexist in theory and in practice and still be a goddamned brat and a soul-sucking mindfucker, it just takes a lot more work and creative chops. I take my hat off to these rare young men, and I will probably end up taking off other things in the future, because people are fascinating and the flesh is weak.

Only when we consider the possibility that male sexuality might not be inherently violent and exploitative can we ask why so much of it is. Why does the joyless, coercive sex that we so often have to settle for under patriarchy have to be the norm? Can’t we do better?

We can, and we must, for reasons that go way beyond the bedroom. If the main problem with rape culture and sexual repression were the fact that they make sex less satisfying, well, there are simple ways around that, and they plug in at the wall. But the rolling crisis of toxic masculinity does not just kill the mood, it kills human beings. It ruins lives. It is a species-level disaster that causes trauma on a scale most of our tiny minds cannot stretch to comprehend. And it can’t go on like this. There is a bigger and scarier social and sexual revolution on its way, and the fact that it will make fucking a lot more fun in the future is just a bonus.

Buckle up.

Note: The original version of this essay has been slightly amended to provide additional context on the Babe magazine story about “Grace” and Aziz Ansari.

* * *

Laurie Penny is an award-winning journalist, essayist, public speaker, writer, activist, internet nanocelebrity and author of six books. Her most recent book, Bitch Doctrine, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017.

[psychopathicwriting]

an original is born

One: Darkiplier

Dark didn’t know how it would have happened. But it finally was happening. He was in Canada just minutes before. The summer sun blowing away the hair of some gullible transvestite in the Montreal theatre. That was the last person he had decided to use. But now, all the work from the ten people he was carefully balancing on one finger was useless. There was something much more important happening.

A baby was being born.

Normally Dark always stayed away from these events. There was nothing good about them. Women were angry at men for putting them in this situation, men were shy and embarrassed that doctors would be getting to look at their wife’s private regions. Not too long ago, mothers and children would die easily during childbirth. Dark had to admit that science had come rather far in the area of keeping people alive. It almost made things more difficult for him, but at the same time easier.

Dark had felt a pull in his gut that morning. It was getting increasingly more noticeable as time went on. Until the pull in his gut knocked him back wards till he found himself right at the bedside of one Asian woman. Someone in the room, a nurse, was calling this a miracle baby. Not because this was a virgin birth, no. But because from what Dark gathered during the birth, the mother was on two different forms of contraception.

Dark would be so lucky as to get a miracle human as his original.

The woman’s screams filled the air as slowly but surely, the baby was born. Dark watched for the child with keen interest. Who was this original that he would have to be in the head of for so long?

When Dark heard the cries of a newborn, he felt himself slowly being pushed into the child’s mind. So this was the little runt that would be influenced by Dark. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to act independently for the longest time. Soon, there’d be a small human he could control.

Dark took a look at the pudgy baby, covered in blood that the doctors were cutting the cord for. Small scrunched up face. Small hands. Wet all over. The mistake baby. The miracle baby. When the kid opened his eyes and looked at Dark, he’d be swallowed whole completely. Already, he felt drawn to stay next to the boy. Dark waited a couple of hours. Waited until the baby was alone in a plastic bin to go to his side. His parents had named him Mark.

“He’s a strange little fella isn’t he?” Dark heard a voice next to him. He looked to see an alternate that looked almost exactly like him, if not for the more… eclectic taste in colors and pink mustache under his nose. He spoke with an exaggerated annunciation. “Wilford Warfstache, here. This kid’s my original.”

“Interesting,” Dark said. “It would appear that he is also my original.” Wilford blinked at the news. Suddenly it occurred to dark that there may be more about this child than he could see. Perhaps having more than one alternate was a good thing. It gave dark a chance to have an army of alternates.

Mark started to cry.

“Oh good GOD,” Wilford cried out. “What do we do?” Dark looked at the fussy baby.

“Shh,” he soothed. “It’s okay, Mark. We are here to help you. To make you into everything you will be.” Dark had been waiting for this for a long time. And when Mark calmed down enough to finally open his newborn eyes and looked right at Dark and at Wilford, the two welcomed the entrance to the baby’s head.

At least… for a little while.

[charity-angel]

On Buns and Ovens (2/?)

[Part 1]

[Read on AO3]   which I always recommend, especially on mobile, because formatting and cuts. Also, Mando'a translations.

There was a lot that Kix suddenly felt the need to learn: there were entire branches of medicine devoted to the care of pregnant women and their babies, and for the care of children once they were born. And, there was an entire army of people (mostly women) who tended to women during the birthing process itself, which was something that normal doctors, healers, and medics tended to stay well away from. He should probably learn that too, just in case (because they were them, and things rarely went to any kind of rational plan).

He had just started downloading some files on basic obstetrics and midwifery when his peace was invaded by Jesse (typically), carrying Ryll (somewhat less typical).

“Hey, cyar’ika,” Jesse greeted him cheerfully. “Your hibir’ika tried to take on Orar.”

Kix sighed. Ryll always tried to push himself a touch too far because of his little issue, but Orar – a touch more heavily built than most brothers – should have more common sense. He and Jesse were the oldest two members of the 501st and really should know better than to let the younger ones get injured on the ship.

“What’s the damage?”

“It’s a sprain,” Ryll grumbled, gesturing to his right knee. “I could have walked.”

“And I said you shouldn’t,” Jesse said with a smug smile. “Right, Kixy?”

Kix shrugged. “Well, there’s not much sense in causing any further damage that might take longer to heal,” he admitted grudgingly. He hated having to agree with Jesse when he was in one of his obnoxious moods. “We don’t know when we might get diverted to a battle. Set him down on the bed, Jesse.”

“I keep telling him that I just need to rest it,” Ryll grumbled as Jesse set him down.

Kix rolled his eyes and got up. “Probably, but let’s make sure you haven’t done anything more serious.”

  .oOo.

  Somewhat predictably, Ryll’s diagnosis turned out to be correct. He tried to persuade them both that he was okay; that he would rest in his bunk, but even Jesse kept glancing at the kid’s hands.

Ryll’s unfortunate name came courtesy of an equally unfortunate accident during his first mission on active duty: an accident that had involved him being doused with spice from head to toe, and had left him with permanent side-effects. They weren’t enough to keep him from duty (in Kix’s opinion, and his was the one that mattered), but he did tend to be a little jumpy, and it was obvious when he was tired because his hands started shaking. That in itself was a precursor to sporadic twitching, and Kix generally jabbed him with a sedative before things had a chance to progress from there.

Currently, Ryll’s hands had picked up a tremor that was a pretty good indicator that he needed rest. To anyone except Ryll, who saw it as an affront to his usefulness as a soldier, and a sign that he could be shipped back to Kamino as ‘defective’ at any second.

That would happen over Kix’s dead body, and even if Kix’s dead body happened to be around, General Skywalker and Commander Tano would put up a damn good fight. It was just a shame that Ryll couldn’t ever quite believe it. He pushed himself too hard because of it, in an effort to prove that he was just as good as his brothers.

“You’ll rest right here,” Kix said sternly, “where I can keep an eye on you. You can have a chapter on battlefield drug regimens and why over-stimulation is bad for the body to read up on.”

Given Ryll’s tendency to pull extra med-bay shifts, Kix had cautiously allowed him to study medicine so that he could be helpful in a different way. It was absolutely against the regs, and no-one in the 501st cared.

Jesse sniggered unhelpfully at Kix’s (somewhat pointed) choice of reading material, though.

As Kix was downloading the chapter to a data pad, Rex entered. He was alone, all four limbs intact, and no injuries apparent. He took in the scene without comment, and only the tiniest of expressions to give away that he was less than impressed, but unsurprised.

He jerked his head towards Kix’s office, and stepped inside. Jesse took the hint and left, ruffling Ryll’s fine, straight hair as he went. Kix sighed, handed Ryll the pad, and followed Rex, ensuring that the door was sealed behind him before turning to his friend, who had propped himself against the desk.

“I shouldn’t say,” Kix said in answer to the questioning quirk of Rex’s eyebrows. “Medic/patient confidentiality.”

That earned him an unimpressed look. “She’s not currently your patient, and you don’t actually have a firm diagnosis because you’re half the galaxy away. You’d be speculating, at best.”

Yeah, he had known that excuse wasn’t going to fly with Rex. He also knew that he could trust Rex absolutely.

“I think she’s pregnant.”

There was a moment where Rex looked confused, trying to place the definition of the word. Kix couldn’t blame him: it wasn’t something they had any experience of. The majority of the Kaminoans were clones, as genetically tweaked and perfected as the vod’e themselves. Natural hatchings were rare but permissible since they permitted genetic diversity.

“Yaihadla,” he repeated in Mando’a, which was probably more useful, in context. It was more descriptive, at least.

And it did help: Rex’s eyes widened, just fractionally, before he groaned and rubbed his hand over his blond fuzz.

“And we think Skywalker’s over-protective of Senator Amidala already. Think what he’s going to be like about an ik’aad.”

Kix tried very hard not to think about that again – once had been bad enough. “I’ve got some reading to do – turns out growing a kid is kind of rough on the body. That’s why she’s sick right now. I need to find out how it all works for next time she’s with us. And birth sounds a lot more complicated than decanting: I need to look at that too, because, well…”

“Because we’re us,” Rex finished, wearily. “And, let’s face it, this barely even registers on the ‘weird shit’ scale.”

“Very true.”

There was a moment of silence as they both contemplated how things were going to change, and what they would need to do in order to maintain the happy equilibrium the legion enjoyed. It was broken with:

“Who’s going to get rich from this?”

  .oOo.

  As it turned out, not many members of the 501st would come into money when word eventually got out: while they all knew about their jetii and his senator, the vast majority had a healthy respect for the senator’s common sense. A baby was something that they wouldn’t have planned on, and Senator Amidala did, Kix knew from her records, have a contraceptive implant. Babies were needy things, and Kix didn’t think that normal people raised their children in huge batches like clones were. Even the jetiise younglings were kept in very small batches, and they weren’t considered to have a ‘normal’ upbringing either. Kix was pretty sure that normal babies were normally raised by their parents: something that neither General Skywalker nor Senator Amidala had time for, given how involved in the war they both were.

It had been painful, glancing through Jesse’s meticulous book, to see Hardcase down as having bet on it (just the thought of it would have amused him, and that made it worth a bet), as well as Waxer (romantic sap). Wolffe and Bly were both going to be very smug. It was odd, seeing brothers from other units on a 501st book: such things were generally kept in-house. The 212th and 501st shared regularly, and battalion commanders kept their own (kept by Cody, because he didn’t otherwise participate), but to have another company’s commander in their book (let alone two) was unusual.

(In fact, there was a notation for ‘GB’, which Kix didn’t recognise at all, and Jesse smugly refused to tell him who it was. It led him neatly to the conclusion that it was General Koon, which was definitely shocking.)

Jesse had found out the secret in short order. Kix really, really needed to learn to sleep at appropriate times and not get so caught up in reading that he fell asleep at his desk. He was lucky that it was only Jesse who found him, and happened to glance at the screen before marking the section and shutting it off.

And he was lucky that despite the fact that Jesse was loud and occasionally irritating and obnoxious, he also knew how to keep his mouth shut when it was important, and he only lost his shit about it when they were alone. (Although he complained loudly in public that Kix wasn’t as light as he had been before he had caught up to the rest of his brothers in size, and maybe he could fall asleep more considerate places, like in his arms, in their bunk? But there was nothing particularly unusual about that.)

Kix supposed that it was sweet that his vod was excited about the little one. It wasn’t something they were never going to be able to have for themselves, and he did love the kids they met throughout the galaxy. They had talked about maybe adopting an orphan or three once everything was over, and they would both love their kids, Kix knew, but it wasn’t the same as the idea having one of their own blood. He had considered that maybe, one day, if they had a compatible female friend who was willing, maybe Jesse could father one, but that was long-distant.

But a little girl, with their eyes and Jesse's brown hair? Kix could dream.

[biglipsandthinhips]

meet the blogger

SW: 247 (disgusting i know)

CW: 207

height: 5’9.5”-5’10” (depends)

weight story: i am honestly a large framed person. i weighed 9.5 pounds when i was born i was a big baby, i have big bones and i’m tall. i do have an athletic body type though, when i start working out/eating right you can tell right away and i’ll lose weight rather quickly. the reason i am also so heavy is because of my depression, in the 8th grade i was a healthy 140 pounds at 5’5” but after some trauma i began binge eating to make myself feel better and i quit volleyball. i slowly crept up to 200 pounds but since i have so much muscle mass and my height i can pass for a smooth 170-160 being this heavy, truly at 170 i will most likely look 140 so i don’t have a UGW yet because i need to see what is going to look best on me. i gained even more after high school when i went to college, i was on the Skyla IUD and i was also eating like the normal freshman do and binge drinking every weekend. when my IUD had expelled in november 2016 i had to wait until january to get a new contraceptive, but i realized how fat i had gotten. when i went to my gynecologist appointment on january 4th 2017, my highest weight was recorded, i was 247 pounds even. i chose Mirena IUD and the next day i had my wisdom teeth taken out (double whammy for pain lol). from then on began exercising 4 days a week i lost 30 pounds from january to may with zumba. my zumba class has ended so i had to do other exercises but i found out i had scoliosis when i fainted and threw my back out so my weight loss has been slowed because i’m in too much pain to workout during the holidays and went from 217 to 225, i tried going keto and that was a bust i maintained 225 for like 4 months until i switched the herbalife (yes i gained because of the holidays and not being able to workout). now i can honestly do pretty much anything now so this semester i’m hoping to lose another 30. but here i am 40 pounds gone and i look in the mirror and still don’t see any difference, all i see is how much fat i still have, how big my waist is, how ugly the number looks on the scale. i wish i hadn’t let depression eat myself from the inside out but this is my battle. but i will be thin again and i won’t be this fat depressed slob everyone remembers from high school. i cope with my depression drug free and have already had copious amounts of therapy, i am fine and well just pre occupied with my weight and how i perceive myself. i am my own worst enemy.

fun facts about me: I am Mexican/French/Japanese. I am from New Mexico, United States (ugliest place ever can’t wait to be done with college so i can move far away from here). coke zero over diet coke. my boyfriend is in the Army :). i am a nursing major.

that’s about it! if anyone wants to message me i could use as many friends as i could get. 💘

[yesbigcandycollector-blog]

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