#economy control tw

[affectionatemud]

TW: food insecurity

its crazy being broke and experiencing grocery day because usually these days i have half a meal or a whole meal a day and im good. but today is grocery day so i decided to treat myself and had both breakfast and dinner and i feel like ive eaten an entire buffet

tw for tags: diet culture? kinda. more food insecurity. slight discussion of past (and maybe a little current) ed

[jymwahuwu]

Sunday being head of the Oak Family. What if reader is the head of other Family who is trying to act as political opposition? Acting all tough, even hostile, trying to be a strong woman and a leader.

Sunday knows solution and she can be easily fixed!

Reader simply lacks a husband and couple of kids to care for so our benevolent angel Sunday will generously provide it for her, everyone deserves to have family, even bitchy arrogant women like reader.

Thank you thank you!! The content that humiliates arrogant reader is my favorite ><!! I think Sunday will not discipline you immediately, but try to give you a chance…

TW: yandere, non-con, brainwashing, mind control, housewife kink, inappropriate traditional concepts (language about serving husband and family)

Which family are you the leader of? Alfalfa who controls economy, Bloodhound who maintains security, Iris who develops culture and entertainment, or Nightingale who is responsible for construction?

Depending on which family you belong to, your experience may be a little different… If you are the leader of Alfalfa, then it is expected that you will use finances as your leverage against Sunday's leadership, such as refusing to pass some reimbursements. Of course, those are non-essential expenses… but they are quite troublesome, because those are the activities Mr. Sunday wants to organize. If you're a Bloodhound, you can expect to show him your fangs, taunt him, and quietly frame him. If you were Iris, you might make some promotional videos of your own and use some subtle ways to disparage Sunday, knowing that all negative press is banned in Penacony. If you are Nightingale, then you will find some excuse to pause the construct, especially those designs that Mr. Sunday likes.

But no matter which family you are the leader of, you do not hide your hostility and provocation towards Sunday. You were tired of the mask of hypocrisy on his face. He hindered you from becoming the leader and representative of The Family! You repeatedly framed him with conspiracy, sneered in his face, and pushed the atmosphere in the conference room to be tense. Some members have reminded you that there should never be conflicts or disputes among family members. Well, of course you don't want to argue with Mr. Sunday, so you reply perfunctorily. The teachings of Lord Xipe are in our hearts and we just communicate.

Sunday. You feel like he's actually the one adding fuel to the fire. He always stares at you with a kind of pity, condescension, and a perfect smile, as if you are making trouble unreasonably. "Praying for you," he said. "The anger and arrogance in your heart will only serve as thorns to stab you. It is important to learn to bow your head reverently and humbly."

You want to roll your eyes. Of course you believe in Xipe, but you don't want to be in the same family as Sunday. Feeling that there is some strange and terrifying grand truth behind that flawless mask, but you don't want to understand it at all. To live in harmony with such a guy? Maybe it could happen in a few hundred years.

Again. You used some conspiracy to destroy Sunday's reputation. This time… it almost worked, just a little bit. You are not discouraged. You tilt your head in mock innocence and prepare to leave his office. But this time…it seems different. He did not say those admonishing and decent words to you. The sunlight slanted onto the colored glass, and the halo behind it almost made his whole person soft and decent.

"You know, I never like to use strong tactics. Now I know where the problem lies." There was even a faint smile on Sunday's face. "You need to show some proper respect and deference, and you're just one family away from that."

"What are you talking about again?" You frowned, but you couldn't move when you wanted to say the next word. Panic grips your heart. A burst of cheerful and moving tones enter your mind, like a sequenced program. "Come to me." This sentence seems to be singing. You don't know if it's an auditory hallucination or what.

Your body obeyed uncontrollably, and slowly walked to him and knelt down. Get away from him!! Get down on your knees. You met his gaze pitifully and weakly, putting on an expression you didn't normally have. "I'm sorry," you heard yourself apologize. "I-I'm sorry, Mr. Sunday. I've been so mean to you."

What are you doing?

"I will serve you with love... my husband." Your hands rested obediently on his knees, like a puppy. You already want to slap yourself. What nonsense are you talking about? "I realize that I am too bossy all the time. Please give me a chance to make it up to you..."

You carefully unzipped his pants and stroked and rubbed his warm cock with your hands. That- what is that- so awful- why is it so hard and long, the head of the cock is standing in front of your face, standing menacingly... A thin mist surrounds your tears. Then you lowered your head submissively and tried your best to take it all in, but it was already pressed against your throat before it was even halfway through. A feeling of nausea, but you still try to do the best you can for your husband.

(The muffled gurgling sounds, the saliva and tears.)

After your wet mouth felt sore, you finally had him gently pull your hair. You wanted to scream, curse him. This thought is like roaring in the wind, but you say. "Isn't this good enough? Please…" Before you could finish, those white thick creams covered your face. "Ah…"

"No. You're doing great. " Sunday caressed your face dotingly, even though your face was now shrouded in humiliation. "We're going to have two beautiful babies. I look forward to seeing you do this every day."

[thebad-lydrawn-sanses]

May... may we get info on the super au? 👉👈

"Monsters", in local dialect, can refer to any being that wields magic and/or is made of magic

SOULs are a culmination of magic, not self

tw/cw (trigger warnings/content warnings)

long post

medical system neglect/trauma

eating disorder (kind of)

food difficulties

knives

violence/murder/death (all implied/mentioned)

body horror, sort of

Killer

first to join the gang

hand arthritis because you're not allowed to enjoy your remaining arm (but you get an arthritis glove so)

mask

transhumeral (above elbow)

knee disarticulation

only character who gets a prosthetic

weird soul shape is the power

very stable

very unstable

Cross

second to join the gang

hood

mask

hasn't lost any limbs (yet)

knife summoning

"scarf"

saw Dream ACCIDENTALLY crush a metal beam with one hand and now screams at the top of his lungs anytime Dream gets close to grabbing him

Dust

third to join the gang

motorcycle-esc helmet

and they were roommates

literally

the economy is in shambles

Doctor: well actually we can't give you prosthetics unless we do a procedure to ensure you're actually missing your arms

Dust: ...but i was born without arms

Doctor: the procedure costs over a thousand dollars and i don't have the authority to diagnose you if you don't do the procedure

Dust: what

Doctor: im sorry

when the medical system is useless you have to improvise

bad for teeth probably

adjustable length grabber tool

whoopee cushion probably

villain outfit

scarf

ankle length

got blue to cut off the arms of a morphsuit and sew the holes up

GASTER BLASTER

Random Civilian: WTF

glowy eye

has a lot of magic to burn

Horror

fourth to join the gang

villain outfit fits him when he grows to a specific height

hasn't lost any limbs

motorcycle-esc helmet

least scared of Dream (because he can run away fast enough)

sharp teefers

Dream

was originally meant to be a manipulative government-working hero who's fake personality reflected canon Dream's while the real personality reflected canon Nightmare's

psychologically broken from spending 500 years in a statue

the constant hunger pains don't help

huge lidless eyes and permasmile tend to disconcert people (uncanny valley)

head is always slightly tilted to alleviate neck pain (making it worse in the long run)

little-no fine motor control

anything in his hands will be held with every ounce of strength he has (which is a lot)

Swap

was sweet and relatively innocent when he started working as a hero (and was a bit squeamish about even hitting villains a bit too hard)

naturally black hair, dyes it constantly to match outfit

prone to trembling violently when angry

blurred for violence

Karen: <- interrupting Blue while he's trying to do his job

originally tried to replace screams with laughter to trick his brain into not panicking during high-stress moments and now ends up laughing hysterically when startled/scared

Villain 42: boo

Past Blue: hahaa! you missed!

Villain 42: boo

Current Blue: AHAHAHA

Villain 42: hey man wtf

Current Blue: i don't know why i did that

Villain 42: it's ok

sledgehammer

mental stability is stretched thin from constantly supervising a murderous human-eating being with the psychological state of a severely traumatised child and a paint-eating psychopath with severe memory issues

Ink

travels the aus where he's human and technically doesn't actually belong to the super au

dislikes water (makes him start dissolving)

likes this au because he doesn't have to hide his supernatural abilities

Ink: wh.. where are my vials

keeps mixing up the definitions of hero and vigilante because it's different from au to au

supposed to have a tragic backstory but he's always forgetting it

legally diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and ASPD despite never taking the tests

[makinggifsolson]

angsty/tense plot ideas for familial and platonic connections

in this economy, angsty and dramatic familial and platonic plots are hard to find. i've composed a list of plots — based off things that have happened in my real life (to me or my friends) and pop culture — that I exaggerated to make what I think would be interesting plots. I left them open ended so that resolution could be what you make it!

Note: I tried to make most of them friendly to most town rps, in the sense that they can filled by average characters in an average setting and not violate most rp rules.

FAMILIAL

we're half siblings and while we grew up with the same parents for the majority of our lives, one of us has their biological family reaching out and making contact. this is creating a rift because suddenly you think one of our parents isn't as great as the bio one, and some secrets are being revealed.

tw pregnancy / infertility: your family member and their partner have been trying to have a child. they've had a hard time conceiving and/or carrying. as it turns out, you're someone who can carry a child so you're offering up your help... except it's your first time so you're a little worried and this is a huge under taking.

we're cousins — but our parents got into a fight over our aging grandparents' care and one of us decided to not invite the other's set of parents to a major event (like a wedding). instead of owning up to it, the cousin who didn't invite the aunts/uncles decided to make the other cousin speak to their parents.

we're cousins — but you slept with my significant other's sibling. The sibling just wanted to have a casual hookup, like you were told by everyone, but you're hooked on them and now gatherings are kinda weird and the behavior is out of control.

one character's family member has a kid or kid(s). The two have fostered a good relationship with them and even encouraged it. Except now the kid keeps asking the character who is not their parent about advice for various situations that are a little above what should be happening in their age range.

both character's parent is a total milf/dilf/pilf. it wasn't really understood or recognized when they were young because they always had a partner. now that they're grown, they keep noticing that their partners tend to flirt with their mom, and their mom flirts back.

one character's family member was posted on one of the facebook groups that people use to post about red flags about dating. now the one character can't help but treat the family member different based on the tons of comments that were received. (alternatively, this could be about a friend and they screenshot and showed the friend)

one character spotted their family member's spouse cheating on them, and told the family member. this happened in the past, and now comments are being made by the other character about how the character ruined their trust in significant others at family gatherings.

the two characters are siblings. one character was dating someone who then went on to date their parent. now that ex is married to their parent and since, as close siblings, you shared a lot of details back when you were dating, it's really, really weird.

PLATONIC

two characters have been close friends for a long time, one person is the one that gets all the partners and the other has been single for a while. the perpetually single one has seen the other go through straight hell with partners... and then one day they get a partner who the other doesn't like and doesn't think is as great as one dating them.

two characters have been bar buddies for a long time. not close, but they like each other enough and they're all intermingled with the same people and have been for years. until they both slept with someone else in the group. now that person is calling only one of them back.

the two characters were always friendly. until one's partner and them started going through a rough patch. the other character were out one night and met that partner while they were also out and just hung out as friends. however, the partner has been commenting on single's character's social media and now the tenuous friendship is tense.

one character has welcomed a new friend into their lives. this new friend seems to have a very flexible sense of boundaries (according to the one muse) as it pertains to other people's partners. the one character has heard it in stories they've told about their dating past, and most of their other friends have partners they're protective of.

One of the characters slept with someone that is a friend to the partner of the other. It was horrible and all the gory details were shared between them. Now they have to keep a straight face around the partner's friend, who keeps asking them how it was and why the one won't call.

two characters became friends because they were dating sibling that liked to hang out a lot. now, because one character has split from a sibling while other either has retained dating the sibling or they split but retained being friends with their partner, they're around for the messy breakup from both sides that ensues.

two characters used to be coworkers for the same shitty and toxic company that became friends. As one character got unjustly fired from the company, the other stayed. The character that left started to work through various ways of getting even with the company, with help of course from their pal that was still working there.

two characters met online. they became fast friends and even started to meet up in the real life. they called each other best friends. one night, one friend slept with a someone close of the other's. The someone close told one side of the story, and one of the characters never checked with the other on what their side of the story was, but started to treat the other differently.

two characters were close friends. After a fight over something silly, the other character unfollowed them on social media and started ghosting the other. the only issue? they're in the same friend group and see each other all the time.

[doeshrine]

Any general headcanons for doe; romantic or just regular guy stuff :]

You guys really wanna know MORE!? AHH I have had no one to talk about my beloved Doe with AH! Sorry sorry! I'm done gushing! Genuinely just happy to talk about them.

TW: YANDERE RELATED TOPICS

----------------------------------------

John Doe absolutely goes by he/they pronouns. No ya'll can't take this from me.

Even in their female form which is often referred to as "Jane Doe", I feel like that would just piss them off. I think just bc he changes his presentation doesn't mean you get to misgender them. I think despite presentation changes he'd still be himself and still go by John Doe.

So Regular Guys are pretty much pests in the Uncanny Valley. John Doe's eyes are kinda of explained in House Hunted 2 that he has to physically split his eye in half so he blends in. Personally, I think that's got to be uncomfortable all the time, so at home he does go from two eyes to one eye since he feels comfortable about it.

Many would think he's controlling which I think he can be occasionally, but not on purpose. Due to some of the things he has been through all alone, I think he views himself being controlling as protecting you, and while yeah he's a whole yandere I think he's more than willing to hear you out on making him comfortable while also accommodating your- freewill lol.

He hisses at people.

He stares at you when you sleep. There is no way ya'll convince me otherwise.

He doesn't require sleep but understands that you prefer to snuggle in bed with him at night.

He hates any of your plushies. He thinks if you hug them, you like them more than him- but he won't throw them away. He likes how soft they are.

He stutters a lot when trying to explain his feelings to you. He isn't used to people viewing him as a person over a pest.

Despite being a yandere, he is oddly good at communication if you teach him what it is and how to understand boundaries. He's going to slip up and you gotta understand that when going into the relationship.

He just orders takeout a lot. I have a weird headcanon that Regular Guys can make things from thin air so when he orders food he hands them money he just conjures. ((This man accidentally inflates the economy one eldritch magic dollar at a time.))

When he gets all hyper-realistic, he doesn't acknowledge it as "scary" to him he's sort of blind to it happening. While yes he is physically doing it, he doesn't see it so he just- kinda thinks you're being mean to him if you freak out. I think he's a visual learner so cues such as covering your eyes help him understand you're just uncomfortable, but don't love him any less.

He lets you pet his hair and despite the curls it never knots or tangles. Like it never knots up.

He isn't good with animals. Except crows love him. He likes crows.

He does try to clutter your home- and uh that's gonna require you explaining to him that humans need clean spaces to live.

Did I mention he's jealous? However, he can be really subtle about it. He just glares or waits till you turn to go hyper-realistic on someone.

He has an existential crisis in one breath, but in the next will ask you to pass the popcorn. (he is unwell)

For my FNAF bitches, he would listen to your info dump about the FNAF lore any day of the week. Any kind of hyperfixation or special interest of yours he will listen to you talk about it. He can keep up with however you talk and will never ask you to speed up slow down or stop talking. He just likes you.

He can help with chores, water CANNOT be involved.

In his Lil' Doe form (I HAVE DIBS ON THE NICKNAME >XP), he takes dust baths, but because he isn't human he doesn't have to take traditional showers. He can't too or his form does break down so please take care of him.

Despite him hating you taking showers, he learns to accept it due to the fact you explain it is a health thing. He realizes a human being is much more complex than a Regular Guy physically and requires more care than a dust bath.

He makes sure you eat. If you don't eat he becomes paranoid you will die.

Has he killed people for you? Yep.

Kinda running out of thoughts!

[sspextkr]

💫stardust - coriolanus/sejanus

the boy was rotten, a recipe for trouble. he knew that. he stained everything he touched, darkened it, corrupted it beyond repair. he stained everything he touched with sin. and yet, sejanus never let go.

💫 trigger warnings/tags: no tw's, just some intimacy :] this is my snowjanus president husband's au where the jabberjay that would've condemned sej died on its way back to the capitol so the two were able to return home and be happy together lolol,,

💫a/n: i don't know what this is. found it in my ao3 drafts, polished it, and here we are!!

Pylades: I’ll take care of you. Orestes: It’s rotten work. Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you. -Anne Carson, Euripides

coriolanus snow may have looked like an angel, golden curls framing his face similar to that of a halo, pale plush lips mimicking the heavens clouds, and eyes so deep it's impossible not to get lost in them, but he certainly wasn't one by any means. at least, that's what he thought himself. lucifer was the fairest of them all before he fell.

the boy was rotten, a recipe for trouble. he knew that. he stained everything he touched, darkened it, corrupted it beyond repair. he stained everything he touched with sin.

and yet, sejanus never let go.

it baffled him. why would sejanus want to touch him? after all he had done? after all he planned to do? coriolanus had stolen, lied, killed, and so much more. all for the sake of himself and himself only. he knew he was a bad person, never pitying himself for it though.

yet, sejanus still married him. still kissed him and made love to him. even after having been on the forefront of it all. he would be dead if it weren't for the damn bird dying on it's way back to the capitol. he probably wouldn't have if he knew about that.

sometimes he'd let himself forget. he'd let go each worry in his mind with each kiss that landed against his sternum, blond locks splayed across the pillow beneath him.

"you're so pretty.. i can't believe you're all mine.." coriolanus' breath hitched when sejanus moved back up over him, kissing him again deeply. the way he licked his way into his mouth so effortlessly was enough to make his heart stop right then and there. 

"i don't deserve it." coriolanus said when they parted for breath, running his hands down his lovers tanned back. "i–"

"don't be silly.. of course you do. you deserve every damn thing you get, coryo." sejanus wouldn't let him finish, already pressing another kiss to his lips. it's not like he could complain.

maybe he didn't deserve it, but he sure needed it. in bed with this man, he got his purity back.. how ironic is that?

sejanus was everything good in the world, everything he wanted to be. it took him some time to wake up, but eventually, he was able to open his eyes and see how much control he did have. how much good he could do. and being married to the president of panem definitely helped with that. the games were abolished, economy stabilized, and famine wasn't as big of an issue as it used to be. panem was finally as great as it used to boast about being.

and sejanus was to thank for all of that.

".. what would i do without you?" the president asked, moving his hands down to sejanus' hips.

".. you don't need me as much as you say you do."

"yes.. i do. i do, sejanus. you're the only thing keeping me from going insane–" he kissed him again, sitting up. "you're the only thing good about this broken world."

"this world isn't broken anymore, coryo.. i wish you'd see that." sejanus kissed the tip of his nose. "we fixed it. you fixed it. we made it a better place.."

"you're the only reason it's not a mess, though.. without you, i don't know what would've happened.."

".. i think we can say that about a lot of things." sejanus took his hand and kissed his fingertips one by one.

"i'm serious, sej. you–" he swallowed thickly. "you saved me."

sejanus tilted his head to the side. ".. what do you mean by that?"

"i mean.. oh, what's the point? i can't put it into words.." the guilt was creeping up his throat like nausea. a happy accident had saved his country from so much heartache.

"well.. i won't force you to say anything you don't want to. or can't, for that matter." sejanus kissed his cheek, then the corner of his mouth. "but for now.. why don't you lay back down for me? i'm not done with you quite yet."

i don't deserve it, coriolanus wanted to say. he let himself fall back anyways. ".. i love you."

".. i love you too. always and forever."

[icedmetaltea]

Welp I just found out I have $700 I have to pay before May 11 for school bc apparently I withdrew after the refund date. I've done that before and never had a fee so idk wtf happened but I made some calls and they said since it wasn't the end of the semester it wasn't even the full amount so it'd probably be higher...

I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do. This is already after I got denied for ebt twice since I can't work so not only do I have to worry about feeding myself but now I have to worry about going into debt

I can't even begin trying to get on ssi til I can get set up with a doctor and even then I don't know if I'll be eligible bc mental illnesses from what I hear aren't usually "disabled" enough and even if I am it could take months for it to process- if it's even accepted

(tw for suicidal thought stuff)

Suicide is reaaaaaaally starting to feel like a viable option. I've been telling myself it's a permanent solution for a temporary problem but like... my problems aren't temporary. They just keep coming and they just keep getting bigger. Even if they pass, what do I have to live for? All my dreams have fallen through the cracks.

I would never be able to finish college (I'm never signing up for another college class so they can fuck me over again, that's for sure) and even if I did I have no real passions

I'm not strong or smart or attractive or talented. I'm just a burden, a waste of space, someone that will always rely on others... and my parents will die one day, they won't be able to pay for the apartment anymore, I'll go homeless (like maybe my sister could take me in but even she's on ebt these days, the economy is so fucked)

It's not like the world is going to get better anytime soon anyway... it's this or wait for climate change and/or capitalism to kill me off. My dad died of a heart attack mainly due to the stress of work, even if I somehow got my anxiety under control enough to work I'd probably die the same way. What's the point? To be a minimum wage slave the rest of my life? When half the population of my country hates me for being poor? Do you even know how many people don't even think anxiety is real???

Well the feeling of slowly being strangled almost every fucking is very fucking real to me, feeling my ribs clamp down on me, a glass pane in front of my eyes whenever I dissociate, it's gotten to the point where half the time these past few weeks I don't even feel like my body is my own. I talk and it feels distant and foreign.

So yea... rn I'm just trying to hold onto small things. Reading a couple nice books while I can. Listening to nice music while I can. Hanging out with my friends while I can. Because I think soon I may have to leave for good

[gavalaa]

My doc ock designs for my little spidersona universe (takes place in the same universe as my Batman and dr strange universes, for fun Ofc)

A little more info about him under the cut!! (TW for mentions of experimentation, abuse, intrusive thoughts/mental health and duress)

Ok so, Dr. Simon Octavius. I based his outfit design off of Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock the most, but I also took inspiration from a few other designs in comics, and from my own universes’ Spider-Man and such.

Here’s his deal: he isn’t a doctor. Not like, a scientist doctor or a medical doctor, but he does have a doctorate. He’s got a doctorate in business and a masters in finance & accounting.

How did he end up being doc ock then?? What?

He was the tax preparer and accountant for a large share in the Osborn-Wilkins Industry. Works for a very expensive and very lucrative accounting firm and is employed through them to represent a very particular branch of the OWI; the Biomedical // Biological Engineering department. He handled all of their paperwork and fundings through their accounts and investments, and was very good at his job.

That is, until he noticed money going missing. Now, usually a sleazy white collar accountant might be willing to overlook certain things, especially in an economy and society with superheroes and villains, but he didn’t. He asked questions, and ended up finding out exactly where the rabbit hole led when he trailed the money that was missing to a large-scale embezzlement operation that a lead developer and researcher had been involved in, the same secret program that was developing the radioactive spider that bit Dorian— was also dabbling in telepathic user-controlled bio-weaponry. When he found this out he attempted to report them for this— only for the program to find out and silence him before he could.

Doc Ock is the result of a seriously flawed “study” they did on their newest “voluntary” test subject: and one and only Simon D. Octavius was implanted with a neural device which used his brainwaves to pilot 4 mechanical arms. The shock his body underwent caused a great deal of issue which lead to the use of radioactive material to further along the process and mutate his genetics to better fit the machinery, causing him to become a mutant much like Dorian (Spider-Man).

At first he had full control, however the mental and physical stress from the abuse and torment he went through under duress from the project and scientists he once worked for caused the system to collapse in on itself a number of times. Before long, it began acting out on the intrusive thoughts Octavius had begun developing, coupled with the AI learning cycle it had been programmed with, leading it to develop its own mind; one that was highly violent, dangerous and volatile. He could not stop them now, and was often at their beck and call, trapped in a cycle of violence.

The arms end up breaking him out quite violently, and the mutations of his body cause him to secrete a venom with similar potency to many octopus venoms, designed to paralyse and trap their victims. He is at the will and mercy of these arms, often half-sedated himself as the arms work.

In many ways, he is a direct parallel to Spider-Man. Since they both have mutations from the same lab-grown psychos, some of their abilities are similar, including the venom which they both utilise (albeit Dorian’s is different in function) The difference being Dorian was able to maintain and control the mutations within himself whereas Simon is battling a machine which reads his mind and acts in a sporadic and unpredictable way.

Eventually, a long-standing rivalry between Spider-Man and doc ock ends when Spider-Man discovers his anti-venom ability is highly effective against the mutations provided by the scientists to Simon, causing a shift and disruption in the compatibility of the arms and his body. While it cannot cure him completely, Dorian was able to flush out his systems entirely with an anti-venom concoction made from simons venom (a skill which he had honed while making his own anti venom to combat his own venom) and by pumping it through his system effectively shut down and paused the arms system entirely, allowing Dorian, a scientist with experience in systems and programming, to dismantle the AI and relinquish control back to Simon completely. With a little work, they were able to take the arms off entirely, leaving only minimal damage and permanent fixtures to his body, while still allowing him to don the arms and become doc ock willingly now; something he utilises for good, as Spider-Man’s right hand and man in the chair.

Spider-Man and doc ock have a very uncle/nephew or father/son style relationship and they’re very dear to me anyways yeah

[dylanshetaplanesandhcs]

TW WARNING: SWEARING, MENTION OF RAPE, SELF-HARM AND TRAUMA NOT ASSOCIATED WITH MY HEADCANON

America goes to the doctor (Since I seen so much stuff of the trauma he goes through, I decided to create a short story of Fanon America's trauma within my HC, meaning he jumped universes to my HC's universe)

[America was sitting in a chair, in front of a female doctor]

Doctor: So this is a typical human skeleton. Now, a couple of months ago, Alfred, Matthew, Arthur, Francis, and the rest of the other nations allowed me to x-ray them for research purposes. Their charts look like this.

[She goes through the Nation's x-rays one by one, their bones look rather normal]

Doctor: And they told me that they had horrific injuries involved with them, however, their anatomy is perfectly intact.

[She then goes over to America's skeleton]

Doctor: [Clears throat] And this is your chart. Definitely incorporating both nation and human. There's a clear history of numerous fractures like here on the skull. Everything is perfectly aligned. It almost looks like as if the bones, muscles and organs realigned and rebuilt themselves the instant these horrific, if not fatal injuries occurred.

America: That's good, right?

Doctor: Well, you seem to have made a series of miraculous, if not impossible recoveries, but that doesn't change the fact that you experienced trauma. You've recovered physically, but have you recovered mentally?

America: You think there's something wrong with my f#cking brain?!

Doctor: Not wrong! It's that adverse childhood experiences, or childhood trauma, can have a lasting impact on how your body responds to stress. This can affect your social, emotional, and physical development. When humans are in crisis, the brain releases the hormone cortisol. Your heart races, your muscles tense. I wonder if your body is reacting to a nation equivalent of cortisol. America, do you remember anything bad in your childhood that particularly stuck with you?

America: I-I guess, I kinda freaked out when Iggy put taxes on me after I threw his tea into the harbor, and then I got my White House burned down by Canada, and I split into two versions of myself in the Civil War, my economy collapsed during the Great Depression, Japan then attacked my Pearl Harbor, England almost died, Japan did die, Canada was tortured by Germany during the last battle against the Nazis, I was captured then killed in Vietnam, I saw England get decapitated right in front of me, I was captured by Russia and used as his sex slave, I woke up with a black eye imprisoned in his dungeon—

Doctor: America, this is serious!

America: But— that was just the early stuff!

Doctor: I think all these experiences in American history have been subjecting your body to a harmful amount of stress, and that's effecting your ability to respond to new forms of stress in a healthy way. You've been dealing with genuine stress from such a young age, and are still being faced with those threats to this very day, your body is now responding to minor threats, such as an election where your hated candidate wins, as if your life were in danger!

America: But- Why am I freaking out now?

Doctor: Stress is less harmful when we have people we trust to help us through it. Maybe if— if you're losing your supportive relationship, or if you had a recent experience that was practically off—

[America screams as he remembers an event, he gets up and starts smashing the room and punching the wall, Alfred and Matthew got in]

Alfred: What's going on?!

[America struggles to stay in control and the brothers go over to the doctor]

Alfred: Ma'am, what did you do?!

Doctor: I don't know, I just asked if he had any stressful experiences lately.

Matthew: Alfie, you don't think..?

America: [Tries to stay in control] It's not you, Matthew, it's everything that happened before!

Alfred: Mattie, what is he talking about?

America: You didn't tell your brother?!

Alfred: TOLD ME WHAT?!

America: It's not your fault, I think I just need you to leave!

Alfred: No, this is an emergency, I am not leaving!

Matthew: Alfie, us being here is making it worse!

America: AHHHH! [Smashes his head into a wall, causing it to bleed] Oh, no! Please— j-just GO!

Matthew: America!

America: I…! can't…! BE AROUND YOU RIGHT NOW!!!!!

[America's scream reaches a fever pitch, and then, a massive shockwave destroys the room with a massive explosion, when the dust settles, everyone was in shock, Matthew was hyperventilating out of fear, America breathes heavily, and then a familiar voices bursts through the doors]

???: America!

America: England…?

Arthur: No, it's me, Arthur, I'm here! [He runs up to him]

Alfred: C'mon, Matthew, let's give them some space. [He helps Matthew up]

America: H-How'd you know I was here?

Arthur: Alfred called me about an hour ago.

[Alfred helps Matthew out of the room]

America: Alfred…

[Alfred pauses]

America: Thank you…

Alfred: Yeah… I'll be here when you're ready.

[Alfred and Matthew leave the room, along with the rest of the doctors]

Arthur: America, I'm sorry! If I'd have known I—

America: It's fine, Arthur. You were busy, and I didn't know what was going on.

Arthur: Come on, America. Talk to me.

America: I- Well- I um- I proposed to England! [Tears up]

Arthur: You what?!

America: He said no…

Arthur: Oh, America…

America: My body, it's reacting like it's the end of the world! I think I seen the world almost end so many times now that- everything that goes to sh!t feels that- that extreme! I should be feeling so good these days, the Earth is better, Biden's my new boss. But I'm f#cking over these old era problems! What do I do? How do I move on from all the sh!t I've been through? How do I feel happy when I know the entire world hates me and treats me like sh!t? How do I live life if it always feels like I'm about to f#cking die?!

Arthur: [He hugs him] It's gonna be alright, America. I'm here for you.

[America cries into his shoulder, after a while, he slows down, yet tears fall from his eyes]

America: I just— I wanna go home.

[Note: this is not apart my HC, it is a story I came up with and I do not support USUK in any shape or form]

[myloveforhergoeson]

ash's april 2024 reading round up

find all the books and fics i read this month under the cut with a link to the synopsis and my reviews/ratings attached :)

this is just for fun! i'm not a professional, i just like to read <3

booklist!

The Fake Out by Stephanie Archer (18+!)

review: ALKGNALGBLGSLBVLSHGWL i don't even know where to begin!!!!!!!!! so good! so good! i don't know what this woman puts in her books that make them so good! not only were the main characters rory (pro hockey team captain) and hazel (team physiologist) so interesting, but the way they help each other accomplish their goals AND grow into the people they want to be was beautifully done. rory, stepping into his first year as team captain wants to make sure his less than steller reputation stays in the past and agrees to fake date the team physiologist to maintain good image... all the while she needs to fake date him in order to get back at her shitbag ex who was drafted onto the team this year. one problem though, hazel hates hockey players (see: shitbag ex) and rory's been in love with her since she tutored him in high school... oh my god... their struggles, while sensationalized, still felt realistic for their situation, and i specifically loved rory's arc of becoming the hockey player he wanted to be instead of the player his father wanted to be. and hazel's dream of opening her own inclusive fitness studio to help her mother work through her body image issues... sobbing... a whole wealth of untapped love and affection all coming from this fake relationship and i lapped every little bit of it up. the dragon imagery (and rory's dunk dragon tattoo) was adorable! the multiple perspectives really solidified their story for me - archer just kills the he falls first storyline and i loved the way hazel fell even harder even after swearing she wouldn't!!!!! i can't decide if this book was better than the first one... i think i liked the story of this one better, but the characters in the first more? why am i pitting two bad bitches against each other??

tw: mentions of a secondary character (hazel's mom) struggling with body image issues

rating: 4.5 times i was kicking my feet and giggling and shit throughout the story!!!!!

2. Secretly Yours by Tessa Bailey (18+!)

review: if you're a regular here you know tessa bailey is my favorite author <3 she's literally incapable of writing a bad book i'm pretty sure. anyway! what happens when you mix an out of control, free spirit gardener (hallie) and an uptight, schedule oriented history professor and vineyard heir (julien)? one of the best opposites attract romances i've ever read! while i know nothing about wine, the napa valley setting felt so cozy and homey; i felt like i was right there with hallie and julien! despite being so wrong for each other, of course their romance was so right!!!! hallie's secret admirer letters to julien were so so cute, and julien's struggle of wanting to be with hallie so bad while writing back to his mystery admierer was so captivating. little did he know (though he'd been dreaming) it was hallie all along! also... god... the way he spoke to and about her... i don't think a man has ever been more in love in the history of ever. also he literally couldn't stand to see her sad so he literally revitalized the local economy????? hello?????? i <3 fictional rich men <3!! and lucky for me this book is part of a duology, with the next novel focusing on julien's sister which i just started yay!

rating: 4.5/5 times i was embarrassed reading this book in public because i was worried someone would look over my shoulder...

fic list!

Gotta Dream Big Time by WeAreBTR (641)

fandom: big time rush (tv)

pairing: logan mitchell & kelly wainwright (note the & and not /!)

SOOO CUTE! i've never seen a fic written about these two and the dynamic the author formed between them was so sweet :)

We're Much Better Together by WeAreBTR (1,790)

fandom: big time rush (tv)

pairing: lucy stone/jo taylor

yeah. this is how it should have gone down in the show. sooo much characterization packed into such a short fic. really incredible to read... and lucy and jo are so adorable! <3

3. You Just Can't Walk Away by WeAreBTR (537)

fandom: big time rush (tv)

pairing: carlos garcia & katie knight (& not /)

the emotion in this one literally had me worried for katie... such power in so few words!

[onewhoturns]

A-Z Challenge GAME 2

It was close, but looks like Afterparty won the vote for the A game, so I'll be returning to hell for the first time since 2020. 😈 That may take a few sessions this week, but while I'm working on that: let's figure out B time! I'll actually have a week long poll this time instead of rushing it into 24 hours.

This round features a few games I haven't tried yet, one I'm about halfway through that will take several hours to go, and one I beat on gog but haven't gone achievement hunting on steam. Descriptions of the options (ft trailers and tags) below the cut. (you may notice I love aesthetically interesting games lmao) (I also love detective games, and it's amazing I only put one that's kinda-like-that in this poll; there's three so far in the C picks)

1. BAD END THEATER (2021)

"welcome to BAD END THEATER! select your protagonist and explore a variety of terrible fates! the decisions you make in one story will affect the others. you can toggle these behaviors to open up new paths! unfortunately, every path leads to a bad ending… can you find a way to save this unlucky cast?" Steam tags: multiple endings, visual novel, story rich, LGBTQ+, choices matter, choose your own adventure, cute

2. Beckett (2018) (tw insects in trailer)

"A dark and unsettling narrative adventure that will shake you to your core. Take control of a reluctant investigator, trapped in a depraved and despondent world. BAFTA-winning and selected by the V&A for its pioneering narrative design, this disturbingly powerful story is unlike anything you've played." Steam tags: indie, adventure, nudity, gore, point & click, atmospheric, story rich, surreal, visual novel

3. Before Your Eyes (2021)

"Embark on an emotional first-person narrative adventure where you control the story—and affect its outcomes—with your real-life blinks. With this innovative technique you will fully immerse yourself in a world of memories, both joyous and heartbreaking, as your whole life flashes before your eyes." Steam tags: emotional, narrative, story rich, indie, first-person, walking simulator, interactive fiction, adventure

4. Bear and Breakfast (2022) (I have 24/43 achievements after 16hrs of play, hltb estimates an average 35hrs completionist)

"Bear and Breakfast is a laid-back management adventure game where you play as a well-meaning bear trying to run a B+B in the woods. Hank and his friends find an abandoned shack and, equipped with their teenage ingenuity, turn it into a money-making bed and breakfast scheme for unsuspecting tourists." Steam tags: economy, life sim, relaxing, rpg, casual, story rich, cute, simulation

5. Broken Age (2014) (I completed it on gog but only have 3/45 achievements from 45min of play on steam, hltb estimates an average 14hrs completionist)

"A family friendly, hand-animated, puzzle-filled adventure game with an all-star cast, Broken Age is a timeless coming-of-age story. Vella Tartine and Shay Volta are two teenagers in strangely similar situations, but radically different worlds. The player can freely switch between their stories, helping them take control of their own lives, and dealing with the unexpected adventures that follow." Steam tags: point & click, adventure, story rich, comedy, indie, funny, casual

[drbased]

Slavery - From Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape by Susan Brownmiller

[tw for rape, violent dehumanisation, anti-black racism, misogynoir]

The American experience of the slave South, which spanned two centuries, is a perfect study of rape in all its complexities, for the black woman's sexual integrity was deliberately crushed in order that slavery might profitably endure.

In contrast to rape during the Indian wars, which was largely casual and retaliatory—men getting even with men through the convenient vehicle of a woman's body—rape under the Patriarchal Institution, as it was named by the patriarchs, was built into the system. The white man wanted the Indian's land, but the coin he extracted from blacks was forced labor. This difference in purpose affected the white man's relations with, and use of, the black woman. Rape in slavery was more than a chance tool of violence. It was an institutional crime, part and parcel of the white man's subjugation of a people for economic and psychological gain.

The Patriarchal Institution took the form of white over black but it also took the form of male over female, or more specifically, of white male over black female. Unlike the Indian woman who was peripheral to the conquest of land, the black woman was critical to slavery. She was forced into dual exploitation as both laborer and reproducer. Her body, in all of its parts, belonged outright to her white master. She had no legal right of refusal, and if the mere recognition of her physical bondage was not enough, the knife, the whip and the gun were always there to be used against her. Forced sexual exploitation of the black woman under slavery was no offhand enterprise. Total control over her reproductive system meant a steady supply of slave babies, and slave children, when they reached the age of six or eight, were put to work; it did not matter whether they were full-blooded or mulatto.

An important psychologic advantage, which should not be underestimated, went hand in glove with the economic. Easy access to numerous, submissive female bodies—and individual resistance was doomed—afforded swaggering proof of masculinity to slaveholding males, while it conversely reduced and twisted the black man's concept of his role.

"Sexually as well as in every other way, Negroes were utterly subordinated," writes historian Winthrop D. Jordan of the slave South. "White men extended their dominion over the Negroes to the bed, where the sex act itself served as a ritualistic re-enactment of the daily pattern of social dominance." Jordan's words are too temperate. "Bed" is as much a euphemism as not, and "ritualistic re-enactment" implies a stately minuet of manners—a vastly in-adequate description of the brutal white takeover and occupation of the black woman's body.

"Lawdy, lawdy, them was tribbolashuns!" an eighty-seven-year- old ex-slave by the name of Martha Jackson told a recorder for the Federal Works Project in Alabama (who wrote down her words in an approximation of her dialect). "Wunner dese here womans was my Antie en she say dad she skacely call to min' he e'r whoppin' her, 'case she was er breeder woman en' brought in chillum ev'y twelve mont's jes lak a cow bringin' in a calf."

Martha Jackson's choice of imagery was grounded in the realities of slavery. Female slaves were expected to "breed"; some were retained expressly for that purpose. In the lexicon of slavery, "breeder woman," "childbearing woman," "too old to breed" and "not a breeding woman" were common descriptive terms. In-country breeding was crucial to the planter economy after the African slave trade was banned in 1807, and the slave woman's value increased in accordance with her ability to produce healthy offspring. Domestic production of slave babies for sale to other slave states became a small industry in the fertile upper South. In

fact, it was observed to be the only reliably profitable slave-related enterprise. Quite an opposite state of affairs had existed in the North before abolition, where slavery had never been profitable. In colonial Massachusetts, one observer has written, slave babies when weaned "were given away like puppies." But the state of Virginia annually exported between six thousand and twenty-thousand homegrown slaves to the deeper South, where the land, the climate and a harsher work load took precedence over fecundity. The Virginia-reared slave, like Virginia leaf tobacco, was always in great demand.

A member of the Virginia legislature used revealing language when he addressed that patrician body in 1831:

It has always (perhaps erroneously) been considered by steady and old-fashioned people, that the owner of land had a reasonable right to its annual profits; the owner of orchards, to their annual fruits; the owner of brood-mares, to their product; and the owner of female slaves to their increase . . . and I do not hesitate to say, that in its increase consists much of our wealth.

The fellow from Virginia, Mr. Gholson, was attempting to make the point that a slaveholder would not mistreat a female slave as he would not mistreat his broodmare, since the "increase" of each needed a period of nurture in order to show a profit. In return for the production of slave babies, the female knowingly bartered for more food and a reduced work load in the weeks before and after birth. But despite Mr. Gholson's protestations, a lightened work load was not an automatic quid pro quo.

Nehemiah Caulkins, a white carpenter who worked for a time on a North Carolina rice plantation, presented this picture of breeder women in an antislavery pamphlet of 1839:

One day the owner ordered the women into the barn, he then went in among them, whip in hand, and told them he meant to flog them all to death; they immediately began to cry out, "What have I done Massa? What have I done Massa?" He replied, "D—n you, I will let you know what you have done, you don't breed, I haven't had a young one from one of you for several months." They told him they could not breed while they had to work in the rice ditches. (The rice grounds are low and marshy, and have to be drained, and while digging or clearing the ditches, the women had to work in mud and water from one to two feet in depth; they were obliged to draw up and secure their frocks about their waist, to keep them out of water, in this manner they frequently had to work from daylight in the morning till it was so dark they could see no longer.) After swearing and threatening for some time, he told them to tell the overseer's wife, when they got in that way, and he would put them upon the land to work.

The Georgia journal of Fanny Kemble, whose husband owned a pair of cotton and rice plantations, records this entry:

The women who visited me yesterday evening were all in the family way, and came to entreat of me to have the sentence (what else can I call it?) modified which condemns them to assume their labor of hoeing in the field three weeks after their confinement. They knew, of course, that I cannot interfere with their appointed labor, and therefore their sole entreaty was that I would use my influence with Mr. [Butler, her husband] to obtain for them a month's respite from labor in the field after childbearing.

Fanny Kemble was unsuccessful in her intercessionary mission. Breeder women were sometimes blatantly advertised as such, for if they were "proven," they could command a higher price. The following advertisement from the Charleston, South Carolina,

Mercury became an abolitionist classic:

NEGROES FOR SALE—A Girl about twenty years of age (raised in Virginia) and her two female children, one four and the other two years old—is remarkably strong and healthy—never having had a day's sickness, with the exception of the small pox, in her life. The children are fine and healthy. She is very prolific in her generating qualities, and affords a rare opportunity to any person who wishes to raise a family of strong and healthy servants for their own use. Any person wishing to purchase will please leave their address at the Mercury office.

It mattered little to the slaveholder who did the actual impregnating, since the "increase" belonged to him by law. Paternity was seldom entered in the slaveholder's record book, and when it did appear, it was strictly for purposes of identification. The female was often arbitrarily assigned a sexual partner or "husband" and ordered to mate. Her own preferences in this most intimate of matters may or may not have been taken into account, depending on the paternalistic inclinations of her master. "I wish the three girls you purchest had been all grown," an overseer wrote to an absent master. "They wold then bin a wife a pese for Harise & King & Nathan. Harris has Jane for a wife and Nathan has Edy. But King & Nathan had sum difuculty hoo wold have Edy. I promist King that I wold in dever to git you to bey a nother woman sow he might have a wife at home."

Sexual activity for the male slave after the day's work was done was considered by the slave and master to be in the nature of a reward, but it is difficult to make such a generalization for the female. The accepted modern authority on slavery, Kenneth M. Stampp, writes, "Having to submit to the superior power of their masters, many slaves were extremely aggressive toward each other." It is consistent with the nature of oppression that within an oppressed group, men abuse women. "We don't care what they do when their tasks are over—we lose sight of them till next day," one planter wrote. "Their morals and manners are in their own keeping. The men may have, for instance, as many wives as they please, so long as they do not quarrel about such matters."

Another slave owner kept marital law and order in the following fashion, as recorded in his diary: "Flogged Joe Goodwyn and ordered him to go back to his wife. Dito Gabriel and Molly and ordered them to come together again. Separate Moses and Anny finally. And flogged Tom Kollock [for] interfering with Maggy Cambell, Sullivan's wife." The narrative of Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains, tells of a slave woman who was forced to live with a fellow slave whom she thoroughly detested and feared—and who never stopped reminding her that in Africa he had ten wives! That warm, sustained relationships did develop between male and female slaves in bondage is a most profound testament to what can only be called humanity, which everything in slave life conspired to destroy.

Field laborer, house servant and breeder woman were the principal economic roles of the female slave, but she was also used by her white owner for his own sexual-recreational pleasure, a hierarchical privilege that spilled over to his neighbors ("I believe it is the custom among the Patriarchs to make an interchange of civilities of this kind," wrote a correspondent in Missouri to a New York newspaper in 1859), and to his young sons eager for initiation into the mysteries of sex. The privilege, apparently, was also expected by visitors. "Will you believe it, I have not humped a single mulatto since I am here," an aide of Steuben's wrote to a friend in condemnation of the lack of hospitality at George Washington's Mount Vernon.

The sexual privilege also filtered down to lower-class white males in the planter's employ (overseers with the power of the whip and craft workers with access to the plantation) and to certain black male slaves ("drivers") who were also handed the whip and directed to play an enforcer role within the system. At the top of the hierarchy, setting the style, was the white master.

Nehemiah Caulkins testified:

This same planter had a female slave who was a member of the Methodist Church; for a slave she was intelligent and conscientious. He proposed a criminal intercourse with her. She would not comply. He left her and sent for the overseer, and told him to have her flogged. It was done. Not long after, he renewed his proposal. She again refused. She was again whipped. He then told her why she had been twice flogged, and told her he intended to whip her till she should yield. The girl, seeing that her case was hopeless, her back smarting with the scourging she had received and dreading a repetition, gave herself up to be the victim of his brutal lusts.

Solomon Northup, a shanghaied New York freedman who was forced to spend twelve years on a Louisiana plantation and later published his narrative of bondage, wrote a sympathetic description of a field slave, Patsey, who had to endure her master's "attentions."

Patsey was slim and straight. She stood erect as the human form is capable of standing. There was an air of loftiness in her movement that neither labor, nor weariness, nor punishment could destroy. Truly, Patsey was a splendid animal, and were it not that bondage had enshrouded her intellect in utter and everlasting darkness, would have been chief among ten thousand of her people. She could leap the highest fences, and a fleet hound it was indeed that could outstrip her in a race. No horse could fling her from his back. She was a skillful teamster. She turned as true a furrow as the best, and at splitting rails there was none who could excel her. . . . Such lightning-like motion was in her fingers as no other fingers ever possessed, and therefore it was that in cotton picking time, Patsey was queen of the field.

Yet Patsey wept oftener, and suffered more, than any of her companions. She had literally been excoriated. Her back bore the scars of a thousand stripes; not because she was of an unmindful and rebellious spirit, but because it had fallen to her lot to be the slave of a licentious master and a jealous mistress. She shrank before the lustful eye of one, and was in danger even of her life at the hands of the other, and between the two, she was indeed accursed. . . . but not like Joseph, dared she escape from Master Epps, leaving her garment in his hand. Patsey walked under a cloud. If she uttered a word in opposition to her master's will, the lash was resorted to at once, to bring her to subjection; if she was not watchful when about her cabin, or when walking in the yard, a billet of wood, or a broken bottle perhaps, hurled from her mistress's hand, would smite her unexpectedly in the face. The enslaved victim of lust and hate, Patsey had no comfort of her life.

Northup described one incident in the field when he and Patsey were hoeing side by side. Patsey suddenly exclaimed in a low voice, "D'ye see old Hog Jaw beckoning me to come to him?"

Glancing sideways, I discovered him in the edge of the field, motioning and grimacing, as was his habit when half-intoxicated. Aware of his lewd intentions, Patsey began to cry. I whispered her not to look up, and to continue her work as if she had not observed him. Suspecting the truth of the matter, however, he soon staggered up to me in a great rage.

"What did you say to Pats?" he demanded with an oath. I made him some evasive answer which only had the effect of increasing his violence.

"How long have you owned this plantation, say, you d—d n****r?"

Master Epps chased Northup across the field and then re- turned to Patsey. "He remained about the field an hour or more. . . . Finally Epps came toward the house, by this time nearly sober, walking demurely with his hands behind his back, and attempting to look as innocent as a child."

Patsey's story had a terrible ending. The jealous Epps became convinced that his slave had had relations with a white neighbor. He ordered her stripped, staked and beaten into listlessness. "In- deed, from that time forward she was not what she had been. . . . She no longer moved with that buoyant and elastic step—there was not that mirthful sparkle in her eyes that formerly distinguished her. The bounding vigor—the sprightly, laughter-loving spirit of her youth, was gone."

Narratives such as Northup's, published by the Northern abolitionist press in the nineteenth century, and oral histories of former slaves that the Federal Works Projects Administration collected in the nineteen thirties cast cold light on the life-style of slavery. W h e n the female ex-slave was asked to tell of her experiences, not surprisingly she did not dwell on sex. "Them was tribbolashuns," and a combination of propriety, modesty and acute shame on the part of narrator and recorder must have conspired to close the door on any specific revelations. (Male ex-slaves, because of a freer convention among men, were permitted to discuss the sexual abuse of females.)

But horror at the sexual abuse of enslaved black women was a recurring theme among white female abolitionists. The Grimké sisters of South Carolina and Margaret Douglass and Lydia Maria Child, among others, did not let it rest. They spoke and pamphleteered relentlessly (but alas, delicately—so dictated the times) out of a strong sense of identification with their black sisters in bondage. Margaret Douglass, a Southern white woman who was convicted and jailed in Virginia for teaching black children to read, wrote from prison in 1853:

The female slave, however fair she may have become by various comminglings of her progenitors, or whatever her mental and moral acquirements may be, knows that she is a slave, and, as such, powerless beneath the whims and fancies of her master. If he casts upon her a desiring eye, she knows that she must submit; and her only thought is, that the more gracefully she yields, the stronger and longer hold she may perchance retain upon the brutal appetite of her master. Still, she feels her degradation, and so do others with whom she is connected. She has parents, brothers, sisters, a lover, perhaps, who all suffer through her and with her.

The politically keen Mrs. Douglass, writing to a white audience, then added these lines:

White mothers and daughters of the South have suffered under this custom for years; they have seen their dearest affections trampled upon, their hopes of domestic happiness destroyed. I cannot use too strong language on this subject, for I know it will meet a heartfelt response from every Southern woman. They know the facts, and their hearts bleed under its knowledge, however they may have attempted to conceal their discoveries.*

(*Kenneth Stampp unfairly uses this portion of Mrs. Douglass' letter to buttress his contention that "Southern white women apparently believed that they suffered most from the effects of miscegenation.")

Mrs. Douglass' analysis went further:

Will not the natural impulses rebel against what becomes with them a matter of force? For the female slave knows that she must submit to the caprices of her master; that there is no way of escape. And when a man, black though he may be, knows that he may be compelled, at any moment, to hand over his wife, his sister, or his daughter, to the loathed embraces of the man whose chains he wears, how can it be expected he will submit without feelings of hatred and revenge taking possession of his heart?

The slave's revenge took many forms—although white retribution was swift and certain. A traveler through the South wrote in 1856:

A Negress was hung this year in Alabama, for the murder of her child. At her trial, she confessed her guilt. She said her owner was the father of the child, and that her mistress knew it, and treated her so cruelly in consequence, that she had killed it to save it from further suffering, and also to remove a provocation to her own ill-treatment.

A visitor to Mississippi in 1836 sent a letter to a Northern friend:

The day I arrived at this place there was a man by the name of G----- murdered by a Negro man that belonged to him. [The black man was publicly lynched.] G------ owned the Negro's wife and was in the habit of sleeping with her! The Negro said he had killed him and he believed he should be rewarded in heaven for it.

The narrative of Charles Ball tells of a mulatto slave woman, Lucy, who rebelled against her forced sexual servitude to her white owner and successfully plotted with her slave lover, Frank, to kill him. Charles Ball himself played a role in their apprehension and confession. Lucy and Frank "were tried before some gentlemen of the neighborhood, who held a court for that purpose," and were hanged at a public gallows. "It was estimated by my master," Ball records, "that there were at least fifteen thousand people present at this scene, more than half of whom were blacks; all the masters, for a great distance round the country, having permitted, or compelled their people to come to this hanging."

The case of Peggy and Patrick received considerable notoriety in New Kent County, Virginia, in 1830. This pair of slaves, who were lovers, were condemned to be hanged for murdering their master. Extenuating circumstances caused the local white citizens of New Kent to submit a petition to the governor asking that punishment for the pair be reduced to "transportation."

One black witness whose testimony was solicited declared that

the deceased to whom Peggy belonged had had a disagreement with Peggy, and generally kept her confined by keeping her chained to a block and locked up in his meat house; that he [the witness] believed the reason why the deceased had treated Peggy in this way was because Peggy would not consent to intercourse with him, and that he had heard the deceased say that if Peggy did not agree to his request in that way, he would beat her almost to death, that he would barely leave the life in her, and would send her to New Orleans. The witness said that Peggy said the reason she would not yield to his request was because the deceased was her father, and she could not do a thing of that sort with her father. The witness heard the deceased say to Peggy that if she did not consent, he would make him, the witness, and Patrick hold her, to enable him to effect his object.

Since it was the slaveholdirig class that created the language and wrote the laws pertaining to slavery, it is not surprising that legally the concept of raping a slave simply did not exist. One cannot rape one's own property. The rape of one man's slave by another white man was considered a mere "trespass" in the eyes of plantation law. The rape of one man's slave by another slave had no official recognition in law at all.*

(* Some evidence exists that masters attempted to police, in their own fashion, the more blatant abuses that male slaves committed against females. An 1828 advertisement in the Elkton, Maryland, Press for runaway "Negro George Anderson, about 21 or 22 years of age," declared informatively, "A few days before he absconded he attempted to commit a rape upon a young female of his own color, the punishment for which has caused his running off.")

Moral objections to the "liberties" that the slaveholder and his overseer took as a matter of course were voiced within the oddly angled framework of miscegenation, amalgamation, mixture of the races, licentiousness, degradation and lust. Typically for the power class, the slave's coerced participation in the act was turned on her. Her passive submission—the rule of survival in slavery—was styled as concubinage, prostitution or promiscuity when it was alluded to at all. Even the Northern abolitionists shied away from defining coercive sexual abuse under slavery as criminal rape, preferring to speak emotionally, but guardedly, of illicit passion and lust. Modern historians tend to operate under the same set of blinders.

The patriarchal institution of marriage dovetailed with the patriarchal institution of slavery to prevent perception, by even the most enlightened observers, of a concept of sexual rights and bodily integrity for the female slave. In the nineteenth century, a married woman was considered by law to be the property of her husband, and any abuse to her person was considered, by law, to be an abuse to his property. If the woman was not married, the abuse was to her father's property. But slaves were not permitted to marry legally, and criminal sexual abuse of a female slave (a rape) could not be considered by law an affront to her slave "husband" or slave father, who had no rights of their own. The examples we find in abolitionist literature that express concern over the sexual abuse of female slaves are frequently couched in terms of sympathy for the abused women's husbands! As a Maryland lawyer observed at the time, "Slaves are bound by our criminal laws generally, yet we do not consider them as the objects of such laws as relate to the commerce between the sexes. A slave has never maintained an action against the violator of his bed." Of his bed.

Statutory prohibitions against interracial sex, or more accurately, against the act of sex between slaveholder and slave, were on the books of all the slave states from the time they were colonies of the king. Even in South Carolina, where the slave-trading city of Charleston earned a dubious reputation as the libertine capital of North America (a reputation later claimed by New Orleans), and where "interracial liaisons were less carefully concealed than else- where on the continent/' a grand jury in 1743 took notice of "the too common practice of criminal conversation with Negro and other slave wenches in this province," and scored this conversation—or intercourse—as "an Enormity and Evil of general Ill-Consequence."

But it was "pollution of the white race" and not concern for the rights of slaves that lay behind such pronunciamentos. The laws against "admixture" that white men wrote were not applied to white men. They were applied by white men against white women —as several divorce suits and bastardy charges of the time showed—and they were applied with a special vengeance against those black men who entered into liaisons with white women. (The implications and consequences of this sex-race quadruple standard are still with us. See Chapter 7, "A Question of Race.")

A Louisiana Supreme Court decision of 1851 after some backing and filling proceeded to define concubinage as a "mutual" liaison, although one participant was a slaveholder and the other a female slave bound to him by law and force.

The slave is undoubtedly subject to the power of his master; but that means a lawful power, such as is consistent with good morals. The laws do not subject the female slave to an involuntary and illicit connexion with her master, but would protect her against that misfortune. It is true, that the female slave is peculiarly exposed . . . to the seductions of an unprincipled master. That is a misfortune; but it is so rare in the case of concubinage that the seduction and temptation are not mutual, that exceptions to the general rule cannot be founded upon it.

It is difficult to gain a clear understanding of concubinage as it was practiced in the slave South. I do not mean to argue the point that all sexual liaisons between white masters and black slaves fall within my extended definition of rape, although such an argument is tempting. For many black women, concubinage was the best bargain that could be struck, a more or less graceful accommodation given the hopeless condition of bondage; certainly for some it was as close to emancipation as possible, short of a run for freedom with Harriet Tubman. But first, last and always, concubinage was a male-imposed condition: a bargain struck on male values exclusively, resting on a foundation of total ownership and control. Accommodation in lieu of forcible seizure could bring a variety of amenities into one's life: relative status, pretty dresses, gold earrings, and the hope—always the hope—of manumission for one's self and children. This last must have been held out to the black concubine like a carrot on a stick. Several slaveholder wills survive in which freedom for a favored slave and her children is provided, along with bequests of money and real property. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the terms of these wills were often successfully challenged in the courts by the slaveholder's lawful heirs.

Sexual exploitation of black women by white men was understood as one of the evils of slavery by the abolitionist movement, even though abolitionists were unable to bring themselves to call it rape. Specific cases of concubinage and "amalgamation" reported by travelers through the South were incorporated, with appropriate moral outrage, into American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, compiled and collated by the Grimké sisters and Theodore Weld, Angelina Grimké's husband, in 1839. The Grimké testimony, and that of Margaret Douglass, formed the backbone of an i860 antislavery pamphlet edited by Lydia Maria Child. The abolitionist women, in dealing with the sexual behavior of men, were treading on dangerous ground, bound by conventions that decreed that a man's private life was beyond the pale of political scrutiny. "We forbear to lift the veil of private life any higher," wrote Angelina Grimké, whose brother had sired mulatto slave children. "Let these few hints suffice to give you some idea of what is daily passing behind that curtain which has been so carefully drawn before the scenes of domestic life in slaveholding America."

The "few hints" of which Angelina Grimké wrote and spoke were scandalous enough for the times. "The character of the white ladies of the South, as well as the ladies of color, seems to have been discussed, and the editor of the Courier was of the opinion that the reputation of his paper, and the morals of its readers, might be injuriously affected by publishing the debate," a Northern newspaper reported after a Grimké speech—neatly turning the crime of men into a matter of the "character" of women, in the age-old tradition.

In the winter of 1838-1839, while Weld and the Grimkés were compiling their documentary record of slavery in New York, the English actress Fanny Kemble was in residence on a Georgia island plantation, recording her shocked observations in a journal that remained suppressed for twenty-five years. The celebrated and strong-minded Miss Kemble had inadvisedly married a young Philadelphian, Pierce Butler, who inherited a pair of cotton and rice plantations employing more than one thousand slaves. The marriage went badly, but it proved invaluable to history, for Fanny Kemble traveled with her husband to Georgia and wrote down what she saw in the form of letters to a friend.

As Fanny Kemble made the acquaintance of slaves on her husband's plantation, it dawned on her that the complexion of some of them was decidedly light, and for a very specific reason— the plantation's overseer, John King. She described the slave woman Betty:

Of this woman's life on the plantation I subsequently learned the following circumstances. She was the wife of head man Frank . . . the head driver—second in command to the overseer. His wife [Betty]—a tidy, trim intelligent woman with a pretty figure . . . was taken from him by the overseer . . . and she had a son by him whose straight features and diluted color . . . bear witness to his Yankee descent. I do not know how long Mr. King's occupation of Frank's wife continued, or how the latter endured the wrong done to him [italics mine]. This outrage upon this man's rights [italics mine] was perfectly notorious among all the slaves; and his hopeful offspring, Renty, alludfed] to his superior birth on one occasion.

Betty was not the only slave on the Butler plantation whom the white overseer, King, forced into sexual service, Fanny Kemble discovered.

Before reaching the house I was stopped by one of our multitudinous Jennies with a request for some meat, and that I would help her with some clothes for Ben and Daphne, of whom she had the sole charge; these are two extremely pretty and interesting looking mulatto children, whose resemblance to Mr. King had induced me to ask Mr. Butler, when I first saw them, if he did not think they must be his children. He said they were certainly like him, but Mr. King did not acknowledge the relationship. I asked Jenny who their mother was. "Minda." "Who their father?" "Mr. King." . . . "Who told you so?" "Minda, who ought to know." "Mr. King denies it." "That's because he never has looked upon them, nor done a thing for them." "Well, but he acknowledged Renty as his son, why should he deny these?" "Because old master was here then when Renty was born, and he made Betty tell all about it, and Mr. King had to own it; but nobody knows anything about this, and so he denies it."

The Butler plantation operated under absentee ownership for most of the year and the white overseer, King, was left in charge as a virtual dictator. The power of his station, and its sexual privi- leges, extended to those directly below him in the chain of command, the black drivers, who themselves were slaves. Owners, overseers, drivers, neighboring white men—all could force the black woman against her will, and she was held morally responsible for the injury done to her. Fanny Kemble herself started from this premise, but rejected it in time.

Quizzing more of her husband's slaves about the paternity of their offspring and hearing the names King and Walker (a white mill hand) and Morris (a black driver) repeated by many of them, she recorded:

Almost beyond my patience with this string of detestable details, I exclaimed—foolishly enough, heaven knows— "Ah! but don't you know—did nobody ever tell or teach any of you that it is a sin to live with men who are not your husbands?" Alas, Elizabeth, what could the poor creature answer but what she did, seizing me at the same time vehemently by the wrist: "Oh yes, missis, we know—we know all about dat well enough; but we do anything to get our poor flesh some rest from de whip; when he made me follow him into de bush, what use me tell him no? He have strength to make me." I have written down the woman's words; I wish I could write down the voice and look of abject misery with which they were spoken. Now you will observe that the story was not told to me as a complaint; it was a thing long past and over, of which she only spoke in the natural course of accounting for her children to me. I makeno comment; what need, or can I add, to such stories? But how is such a state of things to endure? and again, how is it to end?

Kemble privately circulated a handwritten copy of her journal among her friends and it quickly gained an underground reputation as the most explosive insider's antislavery testament. Lydia Maria Child urged her to publish portions of it, at least, as ammunition for the abolitionist cause but Pierce Butler flatly refused permission. As a slaveholder he thought the journal was unseemly, which it was. As a husband he could withhold consent, by law, to any publication of his wife's, which he did. The journal, Kemble's antislavery views, and her equally daring belief in equality in marriage, figured prominently in Butler's eventual suit for divorce. Butler won custody of their two children and the visitation-rights agreement stipulated that Kemble must do nothing to embarrass him. In 1863, earning her own living again on the English stage,

Fanny Kemble finally published her Georgia journal. By that time the War Between the States was well under way and Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, based in part on the Weld-Grimke pamphlet, had stolen much of her thunder.

The appointed roles of concubine and breeder woman forcibly progressed to outright prostitution in the last decades of slavery. Traders dispensed with pretense and openly sold their prettiest and "near-white" female chattel for sexual use on the New Orleans market. The cavalier term was "fancy girl." The place was the French Exchange in the grand rotunda of the St. Louis Hotel, and the favored hour was noon. This gaudy fillip to the slave trade was no more than a logical extension of institutional rape, the final indignity.

"Every slaveholder is the legalized keeper of a house of ill-fame," the ex-slave and orator Frederick Douglass thundered to an abolitionist meeting in Rochester, New York, in 1850. Douglass' understanding of the dynamics of slavery far surpassed that of any other single person. That night in Rochester he instructed his audience in the dynamics of sexual oppression.

I hold myself ready to prove that more than a million of women, in the Southern States of this Union, are, by laws of the land, and through no fault of their own, consigned to a life of revolting prostitution; that, by those laws, in many of the States, if a woman, in defence of her own innocence, shall lift her hand against the brutal aggressor, she may be lawfully put to death. I hold myself ready to prove, by the laws of slave states, that three million of the people of those States are utterly incapacitated to form marriage contracts. I am also prepared to prove that slave breeding is relied upon by Virginia as one of her chief sources of wealth. It has long been known that the best blood of Virginia may now be found in the slave markets of New Orleans. It is also known that slave women, who are nearly white, are sold in those markets, at prices which proclaim, trumpet-tongued, the accursed purposes to which they are to be devoted. Youth and elegance, beauty and innocence, are exposed for sale upon the auction block; while villainous monsters stand around, with pockets lined with gold, gazing with lustful eyes upon their prospective victims.

New Orleans was "fully tenfold the largest market for 'fancy girls,'" Frederic Bancroft wrote in his unmatched study, Slave Trading in the Old South. " The prospect of great profit induced their conspicuous display." Beautiful New Orleans! Ambitious slavers chained their prettiest catches to the coffle and headed for the balmy Gulf port. Racing season and Mardi Gras were especially remunerative times. The Hotel St. Louis on Chartres Street was a beehive of activity. Bilingual auctioneers tickled the libido of the sporting men in simultaneous French and English, for a 2 percent

commission. The slave women stood near the auctioneer's hammer and smiled, bedecked in bonnets and ribbons. Sales of two thousand dollars and up were not unusual. Private rooms off the main rotunda of the Exchange were always available for the gentleman who wished to inspect his prospective purchase. Inspection at the French Exchange was a serious matter. "To gamblers, traders, saloonkeepers, turfmen and debauchees, owning a 'fancy girl' was a luxurious ideal."

The master-slave relationship is the most popular fantasy perversion in the literature of pornography. The image of a scantily clothed slave girl, always nubile, always beautiful, always docile, who sinks to her knees gracefully and dutifully before her master, who stands with or without boots, with or without whip, is commonly accepted as a scene of titillating sexuality. From the slave harems of the Oriental potentate, celebrated in poetry and dance, to the breathless descriptions of light-skinned fancy women, de rigueur in a particular genre of pulp historical fiction, the glorification of forced sex under slavery, institutional rape, has been a part of our cultural heritage, feeding the egos of men while subverting the egos of women—and doing irreparable damage to healthy sexuality in the process. The very words "slave girl" impart to many a vision of voluptuous sensuality redolent of perfumed gardens and soft music strummed on a lyre. Such is the legacy of male-controlled sexuality, under which we struggle.

ADDENDUM: THE CLIOMETRICIANS

By running two sets of statistics into a computer and by making a few unsupported, outlandish statements, "cliometricians" Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman argue in Time on the Cross, their statistical view of slave history, that the sexual abuse of black women by white men was not a common occurrence. Dismissing all known reports collected by the abolitionists, they write:

Even if all these reports were true, they constituted at most a few hundred cases. By themselves, such a small number of observations out of a population of millions could just as easily be used as proof of the infrequency of the sexual exploitation of black women as of its frequency. The real question is whether such cases were common events that were rarely reported, or whether they were rare events that were frequently reported.

This is a "real question" only for someone who does not want to accept how infrequently cases of sexual assault are reported even in this day and age, let alone in the time when Angelina Grimke wrote, "We forbear to lift the veil of private life any higher."

Fogel and Engerman heap scorn on Fanny Kemble for having a distorted vision of slavery based on her "upper-class English" bias. In fact, Kemble's origins were not upper class. She was the daughter of a family of celebrated but impecunious actors who relied on her income—hence her gamble on a marriage to Pierce Butler. Ignoring the reasons why her Journal remained suppressed for twenty-five years, they try to slough it off as "a polemic aimed at rallying British support to the northern cause." It is not a polemic, as the dictionary defines the word, nor was it aimed at the British at the time of its inception. These errors of fact and interpretation could have been cleared up if Fogel and Engerman had read the Journal in its entirety, had read the Butler divorce papers, or had read one of the several biographies of Kemble.

Claiming they deal in facts, not conjecture, the authors, by presenting the results of two tangential computer runs, argue that white men did not as a rule molest black women, coyly adding that in their opinion interracial exploitation "would undermine the air of mystery and distinction on which so much of the authority of large planters rested." The first standard they employ is an analysis of the number of mulattoes reported in the i860 census. Thirty-nine percent of the freedmen in Southern cities were reported as mulatto that year. Among urban slaves the proportion was 20 percent and among rural slaves, who constituted 95 percent of the slave population, the percentage of reported mulattoes was 9.9. Since the overwhelming majority of slaves lived in rural areas, the authors required no sleight of hand to arrive at a figure of 10.4 percent for the census proportion of mulattoes in the entire Southern slave population. From this they conclude, "Far from proving that the exploitation of black women was ubiquitous, the available data on mulattoes strongly militates against that contention."

Several things are wrong here. The progeny of an interracial union can "come up dark" or "come up light," so in itself the color of the offspring is no sure-fire test. Secondly, how were these i860 census reports obtained? In their supplemental methodology volume Fogel and Engerman tell us that the census was taken by "thousands of enumerators" who were "drawn from the category of literate middle- and upper-class whites," and who used the criterion of skin color. We may assume that the freedmen reported their heritage to the enumerators in person, but do the authors suggest that the slaves did the same, or that the industrious enumerators entered the grounds of each and every plantation and counted heads and judged color from shack to shack?

It is reasonable to assume that the owners did all the reporting for their slaves, particularly in the rural areas, and it is reasonable to assume that plantation owners would be most reluctant to admit to the government that they were siring mulatto children, especially since miscegenation was technically against the law. Plantation owners, I am certain, saw what they wanted to see, and reported what they wanted to report to their class allies, those middle- and upper-class white enumerators. Any census statistic on the proportion of mulattoes on a plantation would be a most unreliable figure. In addition, why do Fogel and Engerman assume that a rape, even in a "non-contraceptive society," as they put it, is necessarily going to result in pregnancy and birth? Periods of fertility being what they are, a rapist plays Russian roulette with more than twenty chambers, yet the authors would have us believe he impregnates every time.

This fallacy in thinking also affects the import of their second set of computed facts. From a limited number of plantation records, the authors of Time on the Cross draw up a distribution chart indicating the age of slave mothers at the time they gave birth to their first child. (Unfortunately the cliometricians do not tell us how large a sample was available to them.) Thirty-six percent of all first births took place between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, and an additional 4 percent took place among girls below the age of fifteen. "Some readers might be inclined to stress that 40 percent of all first births took place before the mothers were 20," the authors generously admit—in the fine print of their methodology volume. In their major volume they write only that "the average age at first birth was 22.5, the median age was 20.8."

The median age is the more significant of these two figures, since it shows that there were as many first births below the age of 20.8 as there were above. The average age in the Fogel-Engerman computation is beefed up by each first birth that planter records claim occurred at age thirty-five and over; it does not mean that "most" slave women gave birth to their first child at twenty-two.

From this limited presentation Fogel and Engerman extrapolate, "Only abstinence would explain the relative shortage of births in the late-teen ages," and "the high fertility rate of slave women was not the consequence of the wanton impregnation of very young unmarried women by either white or black men." They hopefully conclude, "The high average age of mothers at first birth also suggests that slave parents closely guarded their daughters from sexual contact with men."

Leaving aside the entire question of the accuracy of slave ages, which does not seem to bother the authors, or the incidence of spontaneous miscarriage and folk-remedy abortions for the very young (information certainly not available), what is most troubling about these first-birth statistics is that nowhere are they matched up against the average age of menarche, the time of the first menstrual period. As it happens, the age at which menstruation begins has been perceptibly declining. In 1960 it fell between twelve and thirteen; however, in 1860 first menstruation usually occurred between the ages of sixteen and seventeen. Not only that, there is evidence in modern medicine and anthropology that fertility in the first few years after the onset of menstruation is comparatively low.

Fogel and Engerman's statistics tell us nothing about the sexual exploitation of black women in slavery. Statistical analysis is a valuable tool when it deals with reported crime. Unreported crime, however, remains beyond the magic of computers.

[realizations]

TW sa mention

It's crazy how bad the reversal of sexual and physical labors' importance messed up women's respect for their bodies.

In the most simplest context, being the egg producer/child carrying sex makes you the most essential part of an economy and species overall. You bring forward the next generation, the primary building block of society. Societies are made up of people, and so a result mothers.

Physical labor is obviously secondary. The people are born, then they build. They build and create and amass power, wealth, and control.

The male pours its resources into strength in order to control the female. That's the reason rape exists. It's why men say women are useless even though men are only assigned value when they work. And they internalize and believe it-so they go to work.

They build and use their natural strength. They look at women and say:

"What have you done?"

As if he has not been born from his mother.

What have we done? We build the builders. And we can just as easily cut off the supply. Because we are the bodies carrying most of the reproductive load, our sex has essentialized itself at the most basic level. We sacrifice our uterine lining every 28 days because we were born with bodies of reproductive power and importance. Build all the cities you want, but they can never compare to human beings.

In moments of true terror, most people want their mother.

Incel: "Well we will have artificial wombs soon!"

Okay, do it. I don't care. It only confirms how jealous and insecure you are, how incomplete you find your sex to be, which is honestly really strange. The artificial womb will free us up from having to do the reproductive labor! So get on with it then.

When you morph yourself into a bisexed organism to attempt to cure the insecurity, I will be at peace with myself at every stage and age, regardless of my physical or reproductive ability. Because I don't care what society, or God, or even what my peers think is valuable. I accept what I am and love myself. I will not define myself by my labor.

So to all the women who are reading this: you are not an incubator or a man's rib. You are whoever you choose to be. This society that overvalues physical labor and underserves women is wrong, not you. Don't ever hate your body for its sacrifice.

[mercoglianotrueblog]

From Stalin to Fink: war on farmers

#starvation-like #Mao,#Stalin did-in #US?Turning off the #electricity

#WallStreet owns #farmland

#solar farms means land can no longer used for #crops, #livestock

#Biden 1st green #POTUS,#Kamala wants renewable energy asap never mind effects on economy

https://salvatoremercogliano.blogspot.com/2024/07/from-stalin-to-fink-war-on-farmers.html?spref=tw

[noctiferious]

Rant: [tws: mentions of low points, lack of motivation, slight profanity, just a literal rant] (I’m not to good at tws so let me know if there’s anything I need to add or fix)

I’m quite terrible at being consistent but honestly, that’s just life. But art is my love, just sometimes art don’t wanna love me ;;

I’ve been highly unmotivated to draw, much less post them. That and I keep waiting for the “right circumstances”.

“If I have this, I’ll be able to do this better.” , “if I wait until after my practicing and getting better at my art I’ll…” etc, etc, etc

Basically. I’ve been procrastinating doing what I really love and placing a negative connotation on it since it felt like so much pressure to get at a “certain point”.

Truly though, as frustrating as the middle section of it is, there’s just something so satisfying about the finish product when I draw. And while I was stressed out because I could put more time in it, I also miss being able to be a silly goober on twitch. These are two separate things but both are something I truly love and which I could put my 100% on.

I just struggle with balancing everything with social life, work life (gotta make that dinero in this stupid economy after all) But I want to try. Because I do miss it.

Am I hesitant? Yes. I have a habit of disappearing and getting overwhelmed easily. And I don’t want to drop my passions or worse. See them in a different light. I’m scared I’ll self-sabotage.

But I can’t let that anxiety win over me. I’ve spent too much of my life letting my mental health and circumstances have control over me.

So back at it again. It’ll be a little inconsistent at first but, I’ll just keep on trucking through, it won’t get any easier but eventually I’ll find my rhythm.

On that note, I leave you with a quick blerp I heard on the clock app. This small mantra has helped me a lot in those times I’d become guilty from being so unmotivated. I hope perhaps this helps you out too.

“I may be struggling but I ain’t fucking failing.”

Well, that’s all from me.

Thanks for listening to me void 💜

[I’ll be posting a few blobs I made in my absence. And later on see I can figure out how to get back to making things AND posting them for my enjoyment like I used to.]

[mobillalifestyle]

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