okay if you're really cool about things, i can be honest with you. before you read further, decide if you're a girl's girl. if you're cool and actually cool or like not cool.
men don't talk in my book because i was fuckken tired of the way they're the center of every fucking story. i was tired of how every story takes a moment to let them talk. men can shut up for literally one fucking book.
unfortunately not everyone is cool. professionally what i usually say is i didn't want to add violence to the world. the only men in my book are abusers, so they don't get to talk. they don't get to take up space. they ruined my life, they don't get to have their words echo anymore.
because like, yeah! you find practically any story about a person surviving trauma and... there's a man at the center. men are often rescuing us from these things. a "good man" is always standing around, being a good man, proving to the victim that good men are the real men. that her experience was unique rather than universal.
the redacted text has not been taken well by all of my early readers. there is this weird, crouching growl that keeps occurring with men-of-a-certain-age. why don't we hear his side of the story?
when i sat down to write everything that happened to me, i couldn't look at the frank brutality of my abuser's words on a page and think to myself: i actually let him speak like that. i had to redact his words from the manuscript. i then left it redacted. no victim is going to read this book and hear the person who hurt them. it is a book for the victims to speak. abusers shut up challenge, forever. for eternity.
my father once told me, chuckling, i should just have a page of redaction where i let the man just finally talk. it is funny to joke about how we should make a whole page in my book about a man that hurt me. this was not the only time someone commented - it feels like you're hiding things. how do i know you're actually a victim if he doesn't get to speak?
there are books where women aren't even present. i even genuinely like some of those books. like, who doesn't like the hobbit?
i keep running into people defending this imaginary man. the default narrative is so true to some people that they will defend any man, just by virtue of the assumption - "if he's acting like that, you had to push him." certain people need definitive proof that you didn't accidentally make your partner into an abuser. they need to decide if you deserved it, because they want to be able to judge you.
which makes sense, i guess, from a hind brain perspective. if you can figure out "why" someone was cruel, you can protect yourself against it. if you defend the bully, the bully might side with you. i don't really know their explanation for feeling this about a character in a book. trust me, i wrote the guy. he is not going to protect you.
i guess i just - there was a time in my life where i desperately wanted anyone to defend me. where i could have really used someone saying holy shit are you okay instead of what did you say to make him act like that to you.
instead, over dinner, a friend-of-a-friend i just met is pouring herself wine. i heard you wrote a book, she says. she gives me the kind of chilly smile i associate with knives. i heard it's unfair to men.
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ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS A KNIGHT...
the visual inspiration for this was a combination of Frederic William Burton's Meeting on the Turret Stairs and also Bernardo Cavallino's The vision of St. Dominic receiving the Rosary from the Virgin
this was supposed to be just a one off illustration to get the thoughts out of my system, but then I started thinking about medieval politics and warfare and plagues and a castle and home as both a place of refuge, a prison, and a tomb, so perhaps they will end up as ex voto characters as well.
you may say, hey! that rosary looks like it has too many beads! it's a fifteen decade rosary, probably. dominicans are really into marian devotions. it works out.
also. spiral style stair cases. oh boy. it was that unexpectedly more difficult than I originally thought it would be to draw. the more I think about it, the less I understand them, even though I had a million photos of the stairs in front of me while I was drawing it.
⭐ I have a tip jar (ko-fi)!
⭐ and other places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app
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Alright new Jason Todd headcanons in a dpxdc setting:
Danny is a "liminal" ghost, rather than a "half" ghost. He's alive and dead at the same time. (He's like Jesus Christ (in the church denomination I grew up in), fully ghost and fully human.) Danny, in human form, can go through a ghost shield, because he IS a living human.
Jason, however, is a reanimated corpse. He isn't a ghost, wouldn't have a ghost core, etc, he has a normal human system that runs ON ectoplasm. Jason CANNOT go through a ghost shield, because he is always an ectoplasmic entity. Danny can go through the Fenton Ghost Catcher and be split into a ghost and a human; if Jason went through the ghost catcher, he would straight up die.
(For my purposes I'm gonna say that Jason became an ectoplasmic entity upon his resurrection, but wasn't very stable. Dunking in the Lazarus pit stabilized his system but also poisoned his ectoplasm.)
I do think that Jason could learn certain ghost abilities if he learned to harness his ectoplasm, especially if they detoxed him off the Lazarus waters. He's probably already enhancing his stealth and strength in ways he hasn't really noticed. I think he's held back by the amount of physical matter he's lugging around, so maybe he couldn't fly, but I'm imagining temporary invisibility, or intagibility of like, a limb at a time. Maybe he can't walk through walls, but in a fight he can dodge by instinctively making the targeted part of his body intangible.
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No one talked about it, or at least i didn't saw it.
"Yup, I can take that."
(For all the monster fuckers in this app, and for me.)
There is something about humans that makes us quite simple, we really have a strange addiction to anything that could kill us.
That is a definition of how we can describe in *very* summary how we interact with aliens.
Especially Dan, he is one of the space idiots that humans would describe as a monster fucker.
Indeed, Dan could go after anyone who could break him in half.
...
Jia is a small and furry looking alien, he had sat next to the human Dan today and was talking to him for a while, today was his first interaction with the human and despite all the myths and legends around humans, Dan is very nice!
Jia was going to continue talking, but Dan made him stay quiet for a second.
Dan stared in perplexity at one of the new recruits, a kuaghan, a type of large alien, a terrifying-looking but gentle and large-sized predator. Jia thought that perhaps the human was scared, but he never thought that the human Dan had actually thought otherwise.
Dan: Oh my god... how tall is he? No, do they have a specific genre? Jia, tell me, do you know him, can you introduce him to me?...Wow, is huge, I can take it, barely... mhn, I'm sure..." He heard Dan murmur at the end.
Jia was dumbfounded, the little alien didn't knew the new recruit, but before he even managed to say a thing, Dan had already dragged him to meet this new recruit.
The little alien was scared! Did Dan take his new recruit as a threat?! It just can't be! He want to take him in a fight?! He has to prevent the new recruit and the human from getting hurt!
...
Dan: You're new, right? Hello, my name is Dan, I'm thirty-one this year, I'm single, I got a house in my planet and I have a job here, I got a lot of savings...
The alien hesitated but nodded in response and Dan stuck to him like a tick. Jia watched without words as that predator feared by the aliens acted just as surprised as he was at the human's approach.
Jia witnessed how the kuaghan was not only treated quite well by the human, but was also able to specifically smell the hormones released by the human when it approached the kuaghan.
The Kuaghan have a reproductive method similar to that of penguins according to the human Dan, the more beautiful the stones, the more impressed their partners will be.
Dan gave every gemstone he could find to the new recruit, earning surprised looks from everyone.
No one dares get too close to the Kuaghan, only Dan seems eager to talk to him, but this recruit knew specifically why he was giving him stones.
Jia only found out when human Dan told him.
The kuaghan even... started to get shy every time the human approached?!
Jia felt like his jaw might drop to the ground.
...Human Dan... Is Human Dan trying to court a predator twice his size?! and is it working?!
Jia's surprise could not grow any more when he found the Kuaghan leaving the human Dan's room. When the new recruit saw him, he ran away embarrassed.
Dan greeted him from inside his room, shaking and smiling with weak legs, only a fool wouldn't know what had happened in there, the aroma of the two was permeated in the room.
The little furry alien was finally able to understand the meaning of the human's murmurs.
Of course you said you could take him, but not in a fight!
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persona misogyny is so fucking wild. ignoring literally everything else about the entire rest of the games, every single s.link with a female character is like “entirely for having been born a woman i have had to work twice as hard for a fraction of the benefit. even now, i am stripped of my agency in a position i never wanted in the first place” and/or “i’m put on a pedestal by the people in my life because of my looks. men see me as an object to be conquered, women hate me for ‘stealing’ ‘their’ men. if i’m withdrawn i’m a bitch, if i’m friendly i’m easy. because of this, i’m alone” and/or “because of my personality or hobby or lack of cooking skills, i feel like i’m failing at femininity. if being a woman is something i can fail at, then where does that leave me? i’m scared at the loss of my identity and place in society”
like very consistently they present female characters with complex thoughts towards their place in society as women, femininity as a whole, and facing issues stemming from misogyny, and then the payoff is always “my problems were entirely my own fault. i wasn’t strong enough, i was a coward. but now, i’m gonna work hard to be exactly what society expects me to be (which is what i want to be)! i’m gonna do better at femininity (which is still something tangible i can fail at)! i’m going to try hard at making friends (which was my fault for not doing)! all my problems are solved through personal responsibility (that im totally culpable for), effort (which i previously was not putting in), or you, a man! i am Happy and Satisfied with this outcome, can i be Your woman?”
and like hello? why are we here. what the fuck are we doing. why do we keep doing this every single time. can we not do the constant lukewarm attempts at criticizing misogyny so you can jerk off to your own thoughtfulness, while ultimately reinforcing patriarchal systems and brushing off any deeper misogyny-bred issues as a lack of deference to one’s rightful place in society? like maybe don’t do that? for fucking once? just an idea
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