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charged-wanderlust · 4 years ago

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naturally, there was only one bed.

requested by @lovestruck-arin, naturally

As you knock on the door of their apartment, you figure you’d have a lot of explaining to do as soon as Arin oopens the door.

What you didn’t expect, is Arin in nothing but boxer briefs and a binder answering the door with a tired, yet genuine smile and a tiny “Oh, hey. Come in.”

Your entire explanation for why you were there at 3AM in the morning flies right out the window along with your last braincell and shred of sanity you had left, crashing through the glass and landing with a huge splash in the pool outside.

Arin was already preparing tea, humming a cute little tune in a sleepy voice by the time you’d collected yourself and actually walked through the damn door; you only just manage to remind yourself to stop staring. Their bedhair is even worse than when you help them fix it up before classes sometimes - were they... were they fixing up their hair a little before coming to see you, or before you woke up to see them? Surely they wouldn’t bother.

“Right, sorry for the intrusion - did I wake you? You look a little, uhh...”

Their eyes meet yours, that golden sunset gaze, and you're rendered completely speechless. Those same eyes look at you almost every day now, yet they continued to be just as memsmerising each time - or even more so. They raise an eyebrow, asking the silent question to finish what you were saying. Oh.

“You don’t look like, bad, or anything, you look really cute actually-” That was casual, right? “-just a little. Conked? Was it another late night?”

They keep blinking at you in confusion, not saying a word, only breaking eye contact to rub the sleep out of their eyes.

Almost as confused as them, you tilt your head and prod, “Arin, the lights aren’t even on. Are you like, good? Is this a bad time?”

Some sort of recognition finally flashes on their face, bolting upright with a surprised cry of your name, almost dropping both your cups of tea.

“Waitwait- you’re here? In my house? And I’m...” They look down at themself, face heating up at the realisation, “...not wearing any clothes. Oh god, I’m so sorry. I was completely on automatic and-”

You’re already wiping tears of laughter from your eyes by the time they cut themself off, clutching at your stomach and struggling to breathe. Arin watches, stunned, but soon softens into a gentle smile you’re losing your shit too hard to see - but they catch themself, and carefully set the mugs down on the table.

“Hahahaha- oh my god Arin, your autopilot mode welcomes me in and makes tea? At ungodly hours in the morning? Without asking questions?”

You hobble over to the lights and switch them on, finally catching your breath, and you only then notice just how red Arin’s gotten. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. I guess I’m just used to you always being around.” They gesture to your cup, taking a sip from theirs. “Tea?”

“Sure.” You take it, more for politeness than actually needing caffiene at three, and so Arin feels less awkward hiding their flaring cheeks with their mug of steaming leaf water. “Sorry for barging in so late with no warning - my phone died right after my brother told me not to come home tonight cause he and Lucas were alone and... yeah. You’re the only place I thought to go.”

Arin nods along, taking a long sip before replying. You have no idea how their tongue doesn’t burn, but they don’t even flinch. “Fair enough. But uh, I don’t have like, a spare mattress or anything, and the couch is practically a rock... well, you’d have to take my bed.”

“No way am I taking your bed,” you protest, setting your cup back down. “You rarely get enough sleep as it is, I can sleep on a rock hard couch, that’s fine. A rock bed beats having to listen to what my brother and his boyfriend are up to late at night.”

Arin laughs, stalking over to their bedroom before pausing in the doorway, back facing you, and murmurs, “Or... we could share?”

“We could share?”

They pause. “The bed, I mean. It’s big enough, and... well, I’d feel bad getting you to sleep on what’s basically a park bench.” They turned to glance at you over their shoulder, adding quietly, “Please?”

Hey heart? Maybe stop that.

How can you say no? You were already nodding before your brain caught up, and Arin waved you inside as they set down their tea on the nightstand and flopped face first into the mattress with a groan.

You giggle, shedding your jacket and shoes next to the bed and slipping in next to them. “Aw, come on, it wasn’t that bad. At least you didn’t like, sleep walk right into the door.”

That got a lazy grin out of them. They rolled over, setting an arm under their head, and mused in a low voice, husky from sleep, “You laughed so hard you cried.”

You shrugged, snuggling in close enough to feel their breath on your face. “You always make me laugh. That’s not new.”

“Hmm... I’m glad. I like making you smile. You...” they break off with a yawn before continuing, “...you deserve it. Laughing, I mean. Ahh, what am I saying...”

They slap their hands over their face in embarrassment, covering everything except the smallest glimpse of a disbelieving grin - god they are adorable. If they keep saying shit like that, you’re gonna kiss them on the mouth, you swear.

They remove their hands tentatively, their sheepish expression not at all helping your overwhelming desire to kiss them - and then it hits you. It hits you like a steam train on steroids, barrelling you over and getting your heart pumping.

What if I did?

It’s not like you haven’t thought about it before. On the contrary, you’ve thought about kissing Arin an embarrassing amount of times by now, to the point you worry whenever you’re near them if they can peer into your mind and see your secret stash of Arin daydreams. But what about them? Do they think similar thoughts? Is that why they turn the most satisfying shade of scarlet whenever you tease them? When they give those heartfelt compliments that almost sound like they belong in a love letter?

You decide to test the waters.

Rolling out of bed, you fake a yawn, stretching. “Man, it’s too hot under the blankets with clothes on. Considering you’re already- yeah- mind if I...?”

Arin slowly and not-so-subtly pulls the blanket up and over their face. “Yeah, uh, sure, I’ll just... turn around.”

“You don’t have to.”

You said it so fast they didn’t even have time to shift in their bed, and just like that, they're rooted to the spot, unable to do anything, unable to move. Only able to just lie there and take in the sight in front of them, not moving that infuriating blanket so you can’t read their expression at all.

Still, you persist, taking off each article of your clothing with an excrutiatingly gradual pace, wanting to really see them squirm. They hold it together up until you slide back into bed next to them; they breathe out in relief the minute you were covered by the blanket, and you withhold a snicker upon realising they were holding their breath the whole time.

“You good? Or just like what you see?”

Arin sighs. “Must you always tease me like this?”

“Only when it illicits such good reactions.”

They groan, rolling over and burying themself in their blanket even more. “Of course, just cause I’m easy to tease, huh. Why don’t you tease Omar as much? Or Nora?”

You pause. “I just...” Now or never. “...I just like you the most.”

“You like me?”

They turn around to face you, taking a deep breath to ground themself. To stop floating in the clouds for once - to meet you head-on. They open their mouth to speak-

“I like you.”

-but you beat them to it, laying yourself bare. Nothing to hide behind, anymore, because Arin deserves to know - even if they don’t like you back, they deserve that much. They deserve the entire goddamn world and you want them to know that if they do so much as say the word, you’ll give it to them.

Arin is breathless. They blink at you for a few moments, but unlike in the kitchen, it isn’t out of disassociation or confusion. They look at you like they can’t believe you’re right in front of them, you’re perfectly within reach - hell, any closer and you might as well be pressed together - and now? You’re all theirs.

Then, they kiss you. Their kiss is soft, tentative; it’s only the slightest brush of lips, but you’re too stunned to move. You really should’ve expected it - but you were expecting words, not... not the softest lips you’ve ever touched. When they pull away, you stare at each other for a moment; then you laugh. Both of you, sharing faint, breathy giggles under the cover of filtered moonlight that catches their eyes just right. Eyes that reflect so much love, so much affection. Care. You’d gotten so used to looking at them, but they hit so different now - now that you know what hides behind the mysterious windows to their soul.

You cradle their face in your hands, pulling them in for more, and they’re happy to ablige. They lift themself up and place themself on top of you, supporting the back of your head as they meet you in the middle, letting out a low hum that had your brain turning to radio static. You nip their lower lip, pulling them closer, closer - anything to hear that sweet noise again.

This time, it’s a ghost of a whimper swallowed by your lips; you grin against their mouth, rolling them over so you’re straddling them instead, and their eyes go wide, completely blown out.

“We... we should’ve done this ages ago, huh.”

You just keep smiling, stroking your their cheek with your thumb, “We’re both gay messes. But right now, I wanna hear you being the mess, whimpering for me like that again.”

“Well. I can hardly complain about that.”

#ever after academy #lovestruck voltage #arin eaa #eaa fmc #fmc x arin

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abanomath · 4 years ago

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DC’s Tone Deafness

So I don’t really like ranting or being negative, but DC Universe recently released an article to celebrate pride month about the Top 5 canon and non-canon LGBTQA+ relationships in Young Justice.

And the tone deafness is just off the charts. Like most of the world, I’m not American so I needed someone to screen-cap the actual article for me. I’m going to organize my thoughts and go down below.

General

For one, its pretty obvious the writer didn’t look at the source material. This article sounds like it was written by someone filled in on the basics and told to write a good PR article for DC.

There are a lot of little details in the story, such as when the writer claims that they “showcased even more LGBTQA+ protagonists in season 3″ implying they had previously, which they hadn’t. One character was implied to be bisexual in the comics, never on screen, but more on that below. Season 3 was the first LGBTQA+ rep for the show.

Also its always a bit tone deaf when in an article celebrating LGBTQA+ and diversity in your show, that you have a list of 5 “ships”, of which only ONE is actually a couple in canon. Not only did they need to resort to non-canon ones, they included people that can’t be called a “ship” or couple.

1. Kaldur/Wyynde

This is the only actual LGBTQA+ couple on the list that is canon in the show, and I liked them. But I can’t deny that Kaldur who was a main cast member for the past two season’s had a vastly reduced role (compared to straight cis white characters like Dick and Conner). He was basically written out of the first half of the season, and then his relationship was really present for 1.5 - 2 episodes max. This in a season that was marked with excessive attention given to heterosexual relationships (like seriously, basically every character was in some form of relationship on-screen). The one healthy LGBTQA relationship got less attention than Black Lightning and Dr. Jace’s romance, something that ultimately went nowhere, Dick/Barbara, even Megan/Conner when Megan was also essentially written out of the season.

2. Marie Logan and Rita Farr

They really dug deep for this “ship”. Ironically, they start this by talking about the scene in Young Justice #25, when Queen B’s powers work on Garfield’s mother. This was the first implication her being bisexual. And of course, she also dies in this scene, so starting off with a “Bury your gays” trope where Marie’s queerness literally got her killed and orphaned her son.

There isn’t much more to say about this ship, because it literally doesn’t exist. The shipping community for this is so small you have to go digging deep into tags to find even hints of it. The article even basically says this, posing the ship as a question. As being interesting. (Does it count as Bury Your Gays when both woman are dead before their relationship is even hinted at?)

In other words this article about celebrating LGBTQA ships literally had to try and CREATE A SHIP to reach 5 ships. Despite the fact there are plenty of LGBTQ fanon ships (Birdflash being the most prominent one left off the list). It really hits at the thing I said above, this is a “write us a good PR article with the barest amount of effort put into it” situation.

3. Harper Row and Halo

Oh boy don’t get me started on this. There are so many problems with how they did Halo this season, she is basically tone deaf personified. (For the purpose of this rant, I’ll be using the “she” pronouns for Halo, because I have no choice but to assume they are her preference, unless the show purposely spent the entire season mis-gendering her, but I don’t think her characterization really supports that she prefers “her/she”).

I’ve had a problem with Halo from the start, because she is basically an attempt for the writers to shallowly include representation without having to actually deal with it. She is Muslim representation, but not actually Muslim (as she confirms on the show). She wears the Hijab because she feels like it. She is genderqueer, but they never once talk about her pronouns. She refers to herself as “not feeling like a boy or a girl” and constantly refers to herself in the third person, but everyone uses “she/her” pronouns without asking her. They even have a scene where she informs them she is genderqueer, and its never brought up again without asking any actual follow up questions or awareness. They also infantalize and treat her as a little girl.

Additionally, she falls into one of my greatest pet peeves - she is genderqueer but for fantasy-scifi reasons. For those that follow genderqueer or transgender characters in media, this is a very common trope. Essentially, the trope is when someones gender identity is caused by/determined from otherworldly experiences.

This trope bugs me because it completely undermines the point of representation. Representation in media is supposed to show the audience that these are natural human experiences and that people like this exist and are normal. But the trope ensures that the experiences are not normal human experiences.

(and don’t even get me started on the fact that this show has made New Genesis tech gendered before, with Sphere. And even gender the bioship in the same season they pull this for Halo).

Lastly, she also falls within the “promiscuous bisexual” trope, with the very kiss this article praises as THE FIRST LGBT KISS ON SCREEN for the show. This is a problematic trope that DC seems to love. Basically, this scene has Halo cheating on her boyfriend with another young classmate, engaging in two kisses with her.

Now I’m not going to say that all LGBTQA+ relationships need to be wholesome one true loves. Problematic behaviour like Halo and Harper’s is a story telling tool. But the fact that the LGBTQA+ was told going into the season there would be LGBT rep so they should watch, and this was the first rep we got 18 episodes into the season? It felt a bit like a slap in the face. They could’ve had her break up with Brion beforehand, or any number of different ways that would even keep the scene in tact.

And the relationship doesn’t really go anywhere anyways. Harper doesn’t really remain part of the season going forward, Halo and her boyfriend continue their relationship after it was revealed until the end of the season.

This is ultimately my problem with Halo. There are a few tropes that basically are summed up as “writers put all their diversity into one character” which is basically what Halo is. Each of these qualities, from faith to gender identity to sexual orientation could’ve been a fleshed out character arc (oh! I forgot to mention she also falls into the “My gender identity isn’t cis, so my sexual orientation is also bi/pan/gay” trope). Instead all the diverse qualities of Halo are addressed shallowly as the show-runners pat themselves on the back.

4. Bluepulse

I’ve ranted a lot so I’m not going to go crazy on this point. You can probably find tons of posts about the drama between Bluepulse Shippers and the show, which again makes their inclusion kind of tone-deaf. Bluepulse shippers have been called disgusting by the fandom for the three year age gap, an age gap that was never confirmed on screen and you had to go digging in Greg’s personal message board to know (resulting in many people shipping them not knowing their ages at all).

In addition, the showrunners made it clear they did not like this ship over the several years the show has been off the air. And in Season 3 they give Jaime a girlfriend….who is a lesbian in the comics. Now Traci and Jaime did date in the comics before she came out, and this is another Earth. But when the sole purpose of their relationship being on screen was to tell the audience that bluepulse wasn’t happening, choosing a lesbian character to play the cis straight girlfriend is a bit of a slap in the face. again.

5. Bart Allen and Eduardo

Queerbaiting, nuff said.

For those not in the know, Ed is a character introduced as a runaway in Season 2, but he doesn’t really interact with Bart until mid-season 3. There is an episode where a group of heroes go to a carnival, and Ed and Bart appear to be on a date. They are in a group with all couples, except for Virgil. Virgil laments being the only person there without a significant other, implying that Bart and Ed are together. Additionally, Bart and Ed do everything that the other couples do together. It was pretty heavy-handed that the couples were there on dates.

And fans liked this! Even if Bluepulse wasn’t happening, Bart may still be bisexual or gay. This was made worse by Greg retweeting and liking Ed/Bart content, and not giving a straight answer on whether they were dating.

Which obviously, creates the expectation among LGBTQA+ fans that they will get together. They don’t. And later at a convention, one of the main writers (not Greg) said something like “its funny how the fans see relationships between characters differently from our intent” when asked a question about them. Essentially confirming that yeah, they didn’t have any actual content for them planned anyway. Though they did have an addendum that they may build on the fan reception/view of the relationship in the future (basically saying, maybe they’ll be canon).

As much as I’d like to be optimistic that they actually will get together and we’ll get a LGBTQ relationship that is in the spotlight for once, I’m not. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong on this point.

And that was my TEDtalk about how tone-deaf DC patting themselves on the back for LGBTQA+ content in Young Justice is. Especially when other animated shows do so much better with fewer episodes and screen time.

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daddiesdrarryy · 5 years ago

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Dinner for Two - Drarry

Summary: “I don’t believe in fate or destiny or whatever you said that’s going to happen to me today, Luna, and have you or Ginny seen Pansy?”

“We haven’t seen her since morning, but Draco, the Wrackspurts told me-…” Luna replied

“I’m at the restaurant now, I’ll call you later, don’t worry, I’ll call you, promise, bye Luna”

Draco doesn't believe in fate, but not until Pansy bailed on him and he met Potter again did he actually believe in it now.

Word count: 6821

Read here on ao3

A gift for @drarry-dreams uwu

____________________________

“I don’t believe in fate or destiny or whatever you said that’s going to happen to me today, Luna, and have you or Ginny seen Pansy?” Draco talked to his phone while running under the heavy rain, luckily he has got his charm on

“We haven’t seen her since morning, but Draco, the Wrackspurts told me-…” Luna replied

“I’m at the restaurant now, I’ll call you later, don’t worry, I’ll call you, promise, bye Luna” He reassured her, he would call her later, but not right now, because he was late

“Hi, is my table ready?” Draco rushed in the restaurant as soon as he arrived there, his long hair was disheveled even though it was braided carefully, Luna did it, but he didn’t rush here because of the rain, he ran here because he was late to dinner with Pansy, it was their annual dinner every month to gossip about their lives, he didn’t remember how or when it started but he only knew that they still do it until now, this month Draco had found a new restaurant nearby, it took them ages to book a spot here, it got popular so quickly, the restaurant was famous for its steak and wine, and of course Draco has to have a taste of that

“What’s your name, sir?” The small blonde girl asked him

“It’s under the name Draco, Draco Malfoy” He said and watched the receptionist look for his name

“Ah yes, it’s here, table for two”

“Yes, that’s me” Draco smiled brightly and was about to step in but the receptionist stopped him

“I’m sorry, we can’t let you sit down if your date isn’t here” The girl said and Draco gaped at her

“What do you mean? I mean she will be here soon, and she’s not my date”

“We’ll take you to your table once your date is here” The girl added “Our restaurant is very crowded so we can’t let you in if—…”

“Yeah, I know, if my stupid date hasn’t arrived yet” He rolled his eyes, fine, Pansy could be considered as his date anyway, he couldn’t care less, he turned around, looking for his stupid friend, Pansy always liked to make an entrance, but they agreed they would be here at 8, now it was half past 8 and Draco hasn’t seen her yet, the cow.

“So my friend has to be here or else I won’t get in the restaurant at all?” He approached the receptionist again after five minutes, Pansy still hasn’t arrived and he was getting hungry, he hasn’t eaten all day so he could try the steak here and hell he was hungry he could eat a dragon, not that he would, but he could

“Yes, sir, she has to be here”

“Oh, come on, what difference does it make if you get a seat for me now or when my date gets here?”

“Because we never have one person sitting at a table for two, sir, so when your date is here, I can find you a table” The girl explained and Draco groaned, walking away to the bar outside

“Okay so I only need one person” Draco pulled his phone out as soon as it buzzed, Pansy was calling him

“Pansy you cow” He snapped into his phone once he answered

“I am so so so sorry” Pansy said “But look, I met Granger at the library today”

“Granger? Wait, you were at the library?” He gasped “So you ditched me, your best friend, to go on a date with the one you had a crush on since Hogwarts?”

“I’m sorry, but we bumped into each other and we talked and she agreed to go on a date with me in a few minutes, she’s like this hot lesbian nerd, Draco. Do you know how rare that is?”

“Of course I know, I’m the hot gay nerd, Pansy” He snapped “So what now? I’ve been waiting months to eat in this restaurant”

“I’m sorry, can I take a rain check? We can do it next time! Please? I’m so sorry, you can call Blaise or Theo” Pansy pleaded through the phone

Draco groaned, walked through the crowd “You owe me, Pansy. And why the hell is this place so crowded?” He muttered and crashed into someone on his way through

“Sorry sorry” He said and looked at the person he hit “Potter”

“Potter? As in Harry Potter?” Pansy squeaked through the phone

“Malfoy” Potter’s face was as shocked as Draco’s, both of them stood there staring at each other “What are you doing here?”

“Pansy, I’ll have to call you back” He said and ended the call, he shoved the phone back in his pocket “What are you doing here?” Draco asked back and realised that the opportunity was representing itself in front of Draco’s eyes, his stomach growling at the thought of him finally getting to eat the steaks here “Potter, are you alone?”

“I guess, but it’s because I’m focusing on my job and—…”

“Shut up and hold my hand” Draco said and immediately intertwined their hands together without even thinking, he dragged Potter to the maitre d’s table and smiled

“Hi, my date is here, can I have my table now?”

“Yes, sir” The girl gaped a bit and led the both of them to their table

“Malfoy”

“Shush” He snapped and dragged Potter to their table, once they were seated there, Draco sighed out in relief

“Er, Malfoy—…”

“Oh, right, don’t worry, this is my treat” Draco offered “It’s for being my date”

“Date?” Potter’s eyes widened a bit

“Well, Pansy bailed on me to go with your friend, so it’s partly your fault too”

“What?” Potter asked “Wait, Parkinson went with Hermione?”

“Yeah, on a date, probably right now, and I’ve been waiting for ages to eat in this restaurant” He went on “And I will not let Pansy ruins my spot here, so, can you stay throughout the meal with me, Potter?” He pleaded with his puppy eyes

“Er…I guess”

“Oh god, thank you, and I know we haven’t been on the best term over the years but well, this could be a start, you know” Draco paused as soon as the waiter arrived

“Welcome to Éclairage, my name is Jacob and I’ll be your server tonight. Are you ready to order, sir?”

“Yes, thank you” He smiled gently and skimmed through the menu “For starter, I’d like some tomato soup, and for the main course, I’d like to try your restaurant’s famous steak, for dessert I think I’m going with the chocolate lava cake” He finally stopped and realised he just sounded like a hungry whale, ordering without considering the person in front of him, he chuckled a bit “Oh Potter, where are my manners? I’m so sorry, please, order something too”

“Just the usual, Jacob” Potter said gently to the waiter

“And can I get you two something to drink, sir?”

“A bottle of Chateau Margaux 1787, and that’ll be all, thank you Jacob” Potter said and Draco’s mouth went slack, that was one of the most expensive red wine ever, he only served that to his friends on special occasion, but Potter…the pretentious git

“Yes, Mr. Potter” The waiter nodded “I’ll be right back with your drinks” Then he walked away

“Right, I should have known”

“What?”

“Famous Harry Potter” Draco smirked “Anywhere you go, people recognise you”

“Well, it’s probably because—…”

“And you must have gone here a lot right? Seems so” Draco crossed his arms over his chest and smiled “I’m having dinner with the big, mighty Harry Potter, I bet there’ll be an article tomorrow”

“There will, but I don’t read the Daily Prophet anymore” Potter ran his hand through his messy hair and Draco’s breath caught, he coughed and continued

“So, how’s the Auror life treating you, Potter?”

“I actually quit being an Auror a year ago”

“What? Really?” Draco leaned forward as he was shocked, he was in total shocked, Potter would actually quit being an Auror?

“Yeah, being an Auror is quite…dangerous”

“That’s weird coming from your mouth” Draco snorted

“But how about you, what are you doing? I know Ron and Blaise are a couple now but Ron rarely tells me about anything except for how good of a kisser Blaise is” Potter laughed, showing his white teeth

“You cannot imagine how many time Pansy and I had to shut Blaise up from talking about Ron too much, we basically banned him from saying Ron’s name in our house now” Draco ranted “And oh, I’m…the owner of a bookshop, it’s open for two years now”

“That’s…amazing, you’ve always been a nerd” Potter replied

“Sod off Potter” He snorted “What can I say, after being a Healer and seeing you too much at St. Mungo, I had to quit” He shrugged and crossed his legs

“Oh my god I’m so full” Draco took the last few bites of his steak and took a sip from his wine glass, no wonder the restaurant was famous for it, the food and the wine were bloody divine, they have been talking about their Eighth year, after the war, and normal stuff about their friends, Draco felt like it was mostly him talking, Potter was rather quiet today and he just looked at Draco eating, which was weird

“You like it?”

“I love it, Potter, I love it so much I could marry it” Draco moaned while chewing on the last piece of steak “God it’s so good” He kept complimenting the food and Potter chuckled “What?”

“Nothing, you just look…quite adorable” Potter answered and Draco felt himself getting flustered by the git’s words

“What? Shut up”

“It’s true” Potter laughed again “You’ve always look adorable while eating, if I remember correctly”

“You watched me?” Draco gasped, how the hell did the prat knew how Draco looked while eating?

“Well, we did spend six years watching each other across the hall” Potter looked at him, his eyes seemed like they were hiding something…something Draco couldn’t figure out, he only knew that when those green eyes looked at him, it also stared into his soul, waking up the things he wanted to hide most…his long lost feelings for the bloody war hero

“I-I did not spend my years watching you eat, Potter” He tried to protest but it was just failing, he knew exactly how Potter eat his food, how he was protective of his food if anyone takes some from him, how he loves treacle tarts, and how he always eats food separately, never smashed together, it was weird, Draco has always wanted to ask him why, but no time for that

“Really? Because I remember clearly everyday when I was eating my favourite dessert, pumpkin pie, I always see you looking at me and then looked away”

“That’s not true, your favourite dessert is treacle tart” Draco protested and immediately realised what he did as soon as Potter smiled brightly again at him

“So it’s true”

“Whatever, Potter, at least I did not have a crush on you or whatsoever”

“I never mention anything about you crushing on me” Potter grinned again, and Draco felt his cheeks heating up “Did you?”

“I—…shut up” He took another sip of wine and looked away

“Want to play truth or dare?” Potter suddenly asked

“Why? We’re in a restaurant”

“For fun” Potter shrugged “Unless you’re too afraid to do it”

“Don’t underestimate me, Potter, try me”

“Alright, truth or dare?”

“Truth” Draco proudly replied

“What do you think of me?”

“Dare” Draco flushed and switched the option

“Okay, I dare you to say what you think of me” Potter gave him a big grin

“You git, you tricked me” Draco frowned

“Come on, it’s an easy one” Potter nagged him

“Fine, I guess…you’re okay, you’re an idiot most of the time, but other times, you’re okay” He pouted “Is it my turn now?”

“Sure, go ahead”

“Truth or dare?”

“Dare”

“Ah, should have expected that from a Gryffindor” Draco chuckled and looked at Potter up and down, he was wearing a dark blue suit, it was possibly tailored and he looked dashing in it as well, wait…Potter? And dashing? No way, Draco shook the thought off instantly “Hmm, I dare you to…kiss the hottest person here” He looked around “Do you need me to find one for you? Look, that waitress there is quite hot”

“I don’t think I swing that way anymore” Potter gave him a devilish smile and Draco’s lower part was awakened. Now? Seriously? He slapped himself mentally for getting excited by what Potter said that fast

“You’re…oh my god” Draco said and looked around the restaurant one more time, he shrugged when he couldn’t find anyone hot for Potter to make out with “Too bad, there’s no man here as hot as me, as far as I can tell”

“So you’re saying I should kiss you?”

“What? No! Nonsense” Draco blushed again and reached for the wine bottle to pour himself more wine, avoiding Potter’s eyes at the same time

“I’m a Gryffindor, you know, I won’t back out from a dare” Potter told him

“Wait, I could find someone hotter for you” Draco searched frantically for anyone, anyone that might look hotter than him, but unfortunately, it was just a lot of old men and men that were not as attractive as Draco, and the blonde wasn’t even exaggerating

“It’s no use, you’re the hottest here” Potter shrugged and the waiter arrived with their desserts, which Draco sighed out in relief, finally something for him to distract Potter from

“Ooh desserts, it looks so good” Draco said and started eating, he could feel Potter’s eyes on him, the firm gaze roaming over his body, but he wouldn’t look up at the git, he couldn’t even if he wanted to, the intense gaze was burning him

“Eat, Potter, stop staring at me” He cleared his throat and heard Potter chuckled, then he could see Potter started eating his chocolate mousse from the corner of his eyes.

“God this piece of cake is so good” He moaned softly as he ate the marvellous cake. How could anyone make food this good? He could stay in this restaurant forever

“You’ve always has a sweet tooth” Potter continued eating

“What? How—…”

“Your mother used to send you sweets all the time” This time Draco finally looked up at Potter once again, their eyes locked and the first thing Draco noticed was that Potter has chocolate on the corner of his mouth

“Potter” He called and pointed to his own lips “You have…”

“What? Do I have chocolate on my lips?” Potter said and stuck his tongue out to lick it but it just made the chocolate sauce went everywhere on the corner of his mouth

“No, it’s…” He tried to demonstrate for Potter again but the git still couldn’t take it, Draco huffed and extended his arm across the table “Are you playing dumb or are you actually dumb, Potter?” He used his thumb to wipe the chocolate off but his movement stopped as soon as he felt Potter’s eyes on him again, he stared at the prat and his mouth opened slightly, he couldn’t breath all of a sudden. When did Potter look so charming? But it wasn’t like he was never charming, Potter did have his charms. Pansy had forced the blonde to admit that in Eighth Year, when Potter took off his wet shirt when a few Second Year students hit him with a water balloon on a hot day, Draco had drooled so much Pansy had to Accio a mop to clean it, not literally of course but she always exaggerated the story every time she mentioned it again just to tease Draco. Draco shook off the memory as he realised what was going on, his thumb was on Potter’s lips now and he has never seen Potter this close ever since the day he was brought back to the Manor during the war, he remembered that day clearly, of course he knew that was Potter, he just didn’t…want the git to die.

“You look cute when you’re thinking” The voice brought him back to reality once again and he stuttered

“W-what? I wasn’t…it’s just…shut up” He was about to retreat his hand when Potter caught him by the wrist, he jolted at the touch, Potter’s skin felt so hot. Was the git having a fever or was Draco imagining it all? Probably the second he reckoned

“Is it over yet?”

“What? Oh…yeah, the chocolate is all clear now” He blushed and got back on his chair, he cleared his throat and sipped on his wine “Well, I guess this is it” He wiped his mouth with the napkin and called Jacob, the waiter to prepare to pay for the meal

“Can I have the check, please?” He asked nicely and the waiter nodded, giving him the bill

“Just put it on my tab, Jacob” Potter said and the waiter nodded

“Woah woah woah” He intervened and stared at Potter with wide eyes “Potter, I told you I’ll pay for this meal”

“Yeah, I know, but—…”

“And I will pay for this meal” He insisted “Don’t pity me, Potter, I still have money”

“It’s not about money, Draco” Potter chuckled and the blonde didn’t know how to react, the fact that Potter just called him by his first name, and not his last, which was surprising, because that has never happened before, and Draco was shocked, he was in utter shock

“Did you just…”

“Call you Draco?” Potter smiled at him “I think it’s time we put the past behind us, right? Let me pay for the bill, I’m—…”

“I don’t care that you’re the big and mighty Harry Potter, Potter” He snapped at the man in front of him “I made a promise and I will keep it, now Jacob, take my money” He looked at the confused waiter and nodded “I will pay”

“Jacob, I’ll pay, go back to the kitchen” Potter told the waiter and he nodded, walking away

“Potter!” He turned back and glared at the pretentious git in front of him “I can too pay for the meal”

“Draco, listen—…”

“No, I will not listen to you, Potter, you’ve been weird all night with the flirting and the looking and the staring and the chocolate and the stupid hair of yours” He babbled “You shut your sexy lips”

“My what lips?” Potter began chuckling

“Your…your silly lips, you and-and your silly lips” Draco tried to fix it but it was no use, Potter was hugging his stomach and laughing like ana idiot he was

“Potter, stop laughing at me” He ordered and Potter finally stopped

“Draco, are you sure I’m the only one flirting here?”

“What? Preposterous” He protested “How could you—I would never, I—…you shut up and let me pay the bloody bill”

“Draco—…”

“Mr. Potter, Mrs. Tampleton is here and she wants to meet you” One of the waitress approached their table and cut Potter’s words off

“Oh, alright, wait for me” Potter told Draco and stood up to walk to the table near the window, where a couple of old people were sitting at, Potter was laughing at an old woman in a fancy purple dress that Draco assumed was Mrs. Tampleton, next to her was an old man that was possibly her husband, Draco stared at how bright Potter’s smile was, he could light up the whole room, hell, even the whole street, Draco has always been swooned over by the bloody smile, he has to admit so. He couldn’t help thinking that this dinner with Potter could be a start of something new, probably a friendship, it was the only thing Draco wanted from Potter from the beginning, from the moment he saw him. From the boy who wore a baggy shirt that was too big for him, to a war hero at a young age, to a charming man in a suit now, and Draco’s heart was beating faster each second, because Potter was walking back to their table now, and he kept smiling at the blonde

“Mrs. Tampleton? I haven’t seen her since my father’s party when I was seven, she still looks the same” He asked once Potter sat down again

“Yeah, she wants to meet the owner of the restaurant” Potter shrugged and Draco nodded

Wait a minute, what?

“What?” He looked up at Potter, who was grinning at him “Wait…”

“I can’t believe you didn’t know that” Potter chuckled and sipped on his wine

“How the hell am I supposed to know that you are the owner of this restaurant?”

“Well, I kept trying to tell you, but you cut me off every time” The git shrugged and Draco gasped

“That’s why you pay for the bill, and that’s why the waiter and the receptionist know you”

“Yeah” Potter nodded

“Oh my god” Draco gasped again “Éclairage! It’s French for ‘lighting’, oh my god”

“Yeah, Luna thought of the name” Potter replied “When I quit being an Auror, I started cooking, and I got good at it, then one day Ron said I should open a restaurant while he was eating my steak” Potter smiled, and Draco saw Potter’s small dimple on his left cheek, he blushed “Then I did…open a restaurant, I just didn’t want to reveal my name to many people, Mrs. Tampleton was my first one to eat here, she loved it so much that she has been my special guest ever since” Potter added “I’m surprised you didn’t realise earlier, I thought Blaise would mention it”

“Yeah I also force him not to tell anything about you when he’s at my house” Draco sighed “I can’t believe you’re the bloody owner”

“But it’s a good thing” Potter suggested “You can eat here anytime now”

“Potter, we’re not even friends”

“We aren’t?”

“Well…I don’t know”

“What are we?” Potter’s eyes twinkled “Arch enemies? School rivals? Boyfriends? Acquaintances?”

“What’s that in the middle?” Draco almost choked on his own spit when he heard those words coming out of Potter’s mouth

“School rivals?” Potter smiled from ear to ear, Draco glared at him and stood up

“Well, it’s quite late, I have to go” He pushed the chair back and faked a cough, trying his best to get out of the embarrassing situation

“Wait, I’ll walk with you” Potter called and Draco stood frozen on his spot, mumbling a curse word

“Fine, but do try to keep up, Potter” He said and heard Potter snorted

“I’m now taller than you, you know” He walked side by side with Potter and realised the hard truth, Potter did get taller, he was probably five or six inches taller than Draco now, the bloody prat, Draco murmured in his head. When they reached the door, Potter graciously opened it for Draco and the blonde’s cheeks went pink

“What a gentleman, Potter” He said sarcastically to hide his sheepishness, as they walked outside, Draco noticed the rain had stopped, but the road was still wet “The Apparition point is just right down the corner, you don’t have to walk with me”

“You know what Ron told me when he became a couple with Blaise?”

“No, what?” He asked curiously, Potter didn’t even answer his question

“He told me to always seize the moment, or else it’ll disappear right away, he’s suddenly wiser than Hermione when he got together with Blaise, they’re truly a good couple” Potter walked along with him closely, his hands in his pocket, Draco walked on Potter’s left, because Draco’s good side of the face was the right side, it wasn’t like his left face was ugly, it just wasn’t better than the right. The street lights were shining above them, the sound of water dropping from the trees down to the grown, and the light from the Muggle vehicle on the road, Draco suddenly felt cozy next to Potter as they walked on the sidewalk

“Well, that’s really wise of him to say” Draco absentmindedly ran his hand through his long braided hair and accidentally picked out a flower, he chuckled “Damn, I told Luna she mustn’t put any flower in my hair”

“I think you look beautiful”

“I…I didn’t ask you to say it”

“I know, I just feel like saying it” Potter shrugged, smiling like a devil he was, Draco felt his cheeks warm again so he tried to walk farther than the prat and-

“Draco!” He heard Potter yelling and next he heard a loud beeping sound from a car horn, and the next thing he knew, he was spun around and pulled flushed against the firm chest of the particular Gryffindor prat, then he heard the sound of water splashing, and he closed his eyes, afraid that he would get wet, but surprisingly, he was dry.

Oh.

“Potter” He whispered and Potter loosened his embrace on Draco a bit, he looked up at the prat and couldn’t speak a thing, because they were being so close again. Did Potter actually use himself as a shield to protect Draco so he wouldn’t get wet? Why did he have to be such a bloody hero every time?

“I saw the puddle and the car, so…” Potter looked down at him and for the first time ever, he saw Potter blushed. And hell he was falling for the prat again. How many times have Draco became angry because Potter arrived at St. Mungo injured? How many times have Draco secretly wish he could get over the face that made him have wet dreams almost every day when they were in Eighth Year? How many times have Draco felt like crying because Potter went out to kill fight the Dark Lord over and over again? How many times have Draco’s heart skipped a beat when Potter smiled? It wasn’t time for him to feel shy, it wasn’t time for him to put his pride and ego at the front, it was rather time for him to do what he should have done many years ago but he just didn’t have the guts to.

“Potter, ask me truth or dare” He said, their bodies still flushed against each other, a few strands of hair fell down to Draco’s face

“Truth or dare?” Potter asked softly, green eyes stared into his

��Truth, ask me what I want to do now” He replied, determination in his words

“What do you want to do now?”

“I want you to finish the dare I gave you earlier” He finished and took a shaky breath

“Draco”

“Just shut up and kiss me” Draco pulled Potter’s collar and smashed their lips together, and fuck it felt divine, his body shivering from the sensation, from Potter’s tongue on his bottom lip, and when he opened his mouth, he could taste what Potter had eaten earlier, he could feel the light shining on both of them even though he closed his eyes, he could hear the sounds of cars driving by, but above all, he could felt Potter’s arms around his torso, hugging him, embracing him, his hands on Potter’s collar loosened and he wrapped his arms around Potter’s body, the git’s back was completely wet from the earlier accident, but he couldn’t care less. Draco let out a gasp when Potter grabbed his arse, fuck, those hands would feel amazing when Potter fingers him. The prat cupped Draco’s face and deepened the kiss, but just as they were about to take it to another level and fuck right on this street, Draco heard another car horn

“Merlin’s fuck” He yelped and jumped away, breaking the kiss off when another car had passed by and splashed water on both of them again, this time it got on Draco’s arms that were on Potter’s back. He locked eyes with the Gryffindor for the million times throughout the night and smirked, knowing that he had just felt Potter’s hard on from his trousers while they were kissing and knew that they were both just excited about this, and god he wanted to feel that inside him right away, he grabbed Potter’s wrists and led him to the Apparition point

“Pansy’s out tonight, probably shagging your best friend Granger right now, so she won’t be back until morning” He suggested “So…want to have another dessert at my flat?”

“Only if the dessert is you” Potter pulled the blonde flushed against his broad chest and Draco laughed

“You idiot, it was already emphasised” And with that, they Apparated away with a loud pop.

“Your house looks so nice” Potter said as he walked in Draco’s house with him

“The light is on…weird” Draco mumbled and yelled when he saw two figures on the couch

“Oh my god Pansy!” His voice went high and Pansy jolted, breaking off her kiss with Granger

“Draco! Why are you here?”

“Why are you here?” Draco snapped back at his friend

“Harry” Granger pushed her hair behind her ear and pushed her skirt down to where they belong since Pansy’s hand was under there just a few seconds ago, her face redder than Ron’s hair

“Mione” Harry said, his cheeks flushed, it must be weird for him to see his best friend like this, not Draco, Draco was used to it

“Well this is awkward” Pansy said and Hermione nudged her, Pansy stood up and pulled Draco to the kitchen counter

“I want the house for tonight” Pansy said

“No way! I want it” Draco snapped

“I got here first”

“Well you can do it at Granger’s house”

“And you can do it at Potter’s” Pansy argued with him and Draco sighed, fine, he could do it anywhere, as long as it was with Potter

“Fine! You owe me two times now” He glared at her and walked to Harry’s spot

“Harry”

“Yeah?”

“Can we go to your house...? Pansy and…she wants to…”

“Do it with my best mate here” Harry chuckled and nodded, extending his hand “Side Along?”

“Okay” He said and intertwined their hands together

“Bye” Pansy said along with Granger, Draco nodded and waved them goodbye before he Apparate away with Harry again

“So…er, do you want anything to drink?” Harry said as soon as they were in his living room, Draco nodded, suddenly it felt too awkward, he felt shy, why did he feel shy?

“Wine is good” He said and Harry turned around to open his kitchen cabinet, pulling out two wine glasses, but before he poured the wine out, he took off his jacket, and Draco felt butterflies in his stomach, how could a man just take off what he wears and looked so hot doing it? Draco turned around, looking around the house, he hasn’t been in the Grimmauld Place since he was a kid, being back here just brought him memories, and not good ones, Aunt Walburga was kind of a bitch, Draco shrugged off his long jacket and draped it over the couch

“Harry” He jolted when a pair of arms snaked around his torso and he was being pulled back

“You’re so beautiful” Harry mumbled into his ear and pressed a kiss on Draco’s cheek, the blonde leaned back to get more friction, but he was spun around, he grabbed Harry’s biceps as a reflex and couldn’t react when Harry kissed him, and oh he missed it, he felt like he could be kissed by Harry forever and ever and ever…and ever. The kiss became frantic as the both of them began unbuttoning each other’s clothes, Harry’s hands trailed down to grab Draco’s arse and the blonde gasp, breaking off the kiss because Harry was squeezing his bottom like a bouncy ball

“Harry” He moaned and heard a low growl that wasn’t his, Draco let out a loud yelp when he was pushed onto the couch “Ow! You brute”

“Oh god, I’m sorry, are you okay?” Harry suddenly became so caring and soft, he touched Draco’s head and kept rubbing it gently, it didn’t hurt that much but Harry was definitely making it all better anyway

“You’re a dork” He chuckled “I’m fine, I was just being dramatic”

“Are you really okay?” Harry asked again and Draco pulled him close

“Now listen to me very carefully, Harry James Potter, I have been waiting to be fucked by you for a decade now, I’m not getting any younger” Draco leaned up and mumbled into Harry’s ear “We’re not getting any younger”

“Fuck” was all Harry said, soon Draco was attacked by the git’s kiss again, this time it was hotter. Harry quickly pulled the last piece of Draco’s clothes off and stopped for a moment

“What are you waiting for?” Draco stared up at Harry but the git stayed still, his eyes roaming all over the blonde’s body

“I’m just…watching the masterpiece, fuck you’re beautiful” Harry smiled and bent down to kiss him again, their body flushed, but Draco pushed him back again

“Why do you still have your trousers on?” He arched an eyebrow and pointed to the bulge on Harry’s jeans “Come on, take it off” Draco felt like they were talking too much and the fucking part still hasn’t come yet, was this even foreplay?

“Holy—…Potter” Draco gaped when Harry took off his boxer, Harry Potter was hung, he smirked proudly “I knew it”

“You knew?”

“I have a talent for it” Draco shrugged and pulled Harry by the neck down, their kiss was less frantic and more chaste now, Harry broke the kiss off and began kissing Draco’s jawline, and the kisses were trailed down lower, to Draco’s neck, to his pulse point, to his collarbone and to his sensitive nipples, Draco moaned when Harry licked and sucked on it. Even though the Gryffindor was teasing Draco’s upper body, he could still feel Harry’s hand slithering down and was circling his now lubed entrance. When did that happen exactly? He couldn’t remember, because Draco couldn’t even think right now, not when Harry had pushed another finger in and scissoring Draco

“Wait woah hey” Draco frowned when Harry suddenly pulled his fingers out “Why are y—…”

“Get on your hands and knees” Harry ordered, his eyes filled with lust, and Draco found himself yearning for more, the domination, the power that Harry has, Draco wanted it, so he obeyed, the blonde turned and got on his knees, he put his elbows down on the arm of the couch, knowing perfectly what Harry was going to do next

“I know you’re going to say I’m beautiful again so just do what you want now, Potter” He rolled his eyes when he felt Harry was about to speak

“I was actually going to say your arse are beautiful” Harry chuckled and grabbed his globes, spreading them apart, Draco felt Harry ghosting his breath over his hole, then something wet breached through his entrance and Draco arched his back, he leaned forward and moaned loudly

“Holy fuck, Harry” He gripped on the arm of the couch for his life, because Harry’s tongue was doing something so sinful to Draco, so so so sinful. Harry kept rimming him, his hands pried Draco’s arse apart, going in deeper, the blonde whined, asking for more

“Oh god, Harry” Draco cried out when two fingers were pushed in, Harry kissed Draco’s back and trailed the kisses up to his neck, while his fingers were still inside Draco

“I’ll take good care of you” Harry kissed the spot behind Draco’s ears and pulled his fingers out. Draco almost forgot how big Harry was until he felt the head began pushing inside

“Oh wow, oh holy w-woah” Draco leaned forward as Harry pushed in, Merlin it was huge, he dropped his head and moaned, Harry wrapped an arm around his torso and pulled him flushed against his chest, also pulling him from falling off the couch, Draco felt warm at the action

“Faster god damn it Harry!” He urged the man and Harry obeyed, slamming in with forceful thrusts, earning loud moans from Draco’s mouth, he was pretty sure the couch was moving and shaking from it. Harry ran his hand through Draco’s long hair and pulled back a bit, causing Draco to whine and opened his mouth, Harry took the chance and kissed the blonde, plunging his tongue deep inside as he thrusted into Draco at the same time. Draco has never felt so aroused before, his skin was burning from the sensation, sweats were forming on his forehead. Draco moaned when Harry tweaked the blonde’s sensitive nipple, making him break the kiss off

“Harry oh god please please please” He wailed, his knees have gone weak, every thrust Harry made, he could feel it deep in him, he could feel everything, Harry’s cock hitting at his prostate constantly, then he felt another hand that wasn’t his, trailing down to his untouched prick, Harry started stroking him and that was all it took to get Draco to come like he has never before. The blonde cried out, shooting everywhere on the couch, Draco’s hole twitched and that made Harry came too, his body jerking above Draco, he shuddered and came inside the blonde. Draco’s elbow went down and he collapsed on the arm of the couch, Harry still above him.

“Fuck, that was…”

“Shut up, Potter” He replied

“What about Harry?”

“You caught me at my weakest moment” He lied and heard the git chuckled, bending down to kiss Draco on his cheek

“Want to move to the bedroom?”

“I’m tired, carry me” He said and gasped when Harry pulled out, he suddenly felt empty inside “Harry!”

“You told me to carry you” Harry rolled the blonde around, carrying him up in bridal style, Draco wrapped his arms around Harry’s neck to secure himself, feeling unable to hide his smile, he carried Draco up the stairs and they did it quietly, Draco spent the whole time staring at his face. Harry didn’t change much, he just got…more mature, his eyes were still as green as ever, his smile was still bright, his lips was still so…kissable, his jawline was so sharp that Draco’s fingers were touching it unconsciously, his finger trailed from Harry’s ear, down to his sharp jaw, and down to the veins on his neck, Harry turned his head and looked down at Draco

“If I’m not wrong, I’d say you’re smitten with me, Malfoy”

“You wish, Potter” Draco snorted, but his hand kept touching Harry’s face, he was just simply…godlike, beautiful, and touching it now made Draco feel like he was blessed, they locked eyes like that until…

“Ow! Potter!” He yelped loudly when his head hit the wall to Harry’s bedroom door

“Oh god I’m so sorry” Harry laughed “I was…distracted by your face” He added and put Draco down on the bed gently, the git sat down on the side of the bed and rubbed Draco’s head “Does it hurt?”

“Yes it bloody hurts, Potter” He frowned

“Do you want me to kiss the pain away?” Harry suggested while chuckling

“I’m not five, Potter” He pouted

“Are you sure?” Harry smiled and bent down, planting a soft kiss on the sore spot on Draco’s head, the blonde bit his lips to stop himself from smiling “One more?”

“Sod off, Potter” He said and Harry bent down to kiss the blonde’s head again

“One more?” Harry asked and Draco finally looked at him, the git was grinning like a real prat, but Draco kind of like it, made him felt like a kid all over again

“Five more and I’ll forgive you” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked away, Harry sniggered but still bent down to give Draco a kiss on his head, then a kiss on his forehead, then he lowered down to plant two kiss on either side of Draco’s cheeks, then he cupped the blonde’s face and gave him one last kiss on his lips

“You’re such a sap” He mumbled when they broke off the kiss

“You made me this way, don’t you want to pay for what you did?”

“What do you want?”

“How about…a trillion kisses from you?” Harry’s eyes gleamed and Draco let out a laugh

“Greedy, aren’t you?” Draco asked, pulling Harry down to connect their lips once again as an answer, because he’d want to give a trillion kisses to Harry too, the git was an excellent kisser anyway, it almost seemed that what Luna had said about fate was true, and for once he believed in it.

The End.

#drarry #my writing #my fic #draco malfoy #harry potter #pansmione #blairon #drarry squad #drarry gang #lemon #pansy parkinson #hermione granger #harry x draco

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migleefulmoments · 6 years ago

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Wow, the tinhats are on fire today. Bitching about it being disrespectful to have their sexuality defined for them (hypocrite, much?), actually saying Darren STATED ON RECORD that he was gay (wut, then why does he need a beard?), reading the minds of Darren's parents, apparently have direct access to Darren, Mia and Ben's bank statements to know how much money they have. These Emmys have really given them a fright and rattled their cages LMFAO.

I literally just wrote a post tagging them about that ridiculous post calling out someone for saying she is straight when she considers herself pan. Whatever dude. Getting angry over an anon calling you straight is f’ing pathetic when 1. you are nobody and there is no reason for anybody to give a shit about your sexuality and 2. you aren’t actually talking about your sexuality-pan or otherwise- on your blog. I mean if you had a blog that was about your sexuality then your sexuality should be respected but bitching because someone didn’t check your bio to see if you felt the need to proclaim your sexuality before posting about CC is pathetic. Franky, I don’t fucking care who anybody except my husband sleeps with. I certainly wouldn’t feel the need to check a Tumblr bio to ascertain the sexuality of the owner of a blog whose sole reason for existence is to discount everything Darren says about himself, his sexuality, his love and to criticize every move he makes while blaming it on an elusive and every-expanding contract, the evil players in Hollywood, his inept yet all-controlling manager and the evil beard he hates but who controls his life simply to torture him and “get promotion”. Oh, and she also exists to cyberbully Mia, a woman that she is so jealous of she spends her days creating and perpetuating lies to make herself feel better about her pea green envy of Mia.

Basically the Emmy’s showed the world that Darren is deeply in love with and ridiculously smitten with Mia Swier. It is really hard to defend your mantra that Chris is “captain of this ship” and supporting Darren with all his might because they have a LOVE for the ages and are in the fight of their lives against the evil of Hollywood when Darren wears his heart on his sleeve and declares his love so freely. So let’s dissect their lies:

1. Did Darren state on Record that he was gay? Well if he did it was in one poorly recorded livestream while telling a joke and he was off camera. He HAS actually stated with his mouth, while on camera, in clear language, and in written article after article, that he is straight. He has elaborated on what it is like to play gay while being straight and he has talked about representation over and over. He has also said- out of his mouth, while on camera- that he is engaged to and loves Mia. Back to the declaration “I’m gay”. Jordan Roth was Parascoping from an event viewing (Emmys?) and a bunch of guys were standing around. A pic of Taylor Swift in a bathtub had just broke the internet and he made a joke about it. Darren off camera makes a joke like “I see that everyday” and then something garbled is said amongst the laughing and over talking. CCers claim Darren says “but I’m gay” which seems odd that he would declare such a thing in that context, on a livestream. It isn’t a natural response to having just said you see “that sort of thing all the time” and WHY THE FUCK WOULD HE OUT HIMSELF LIKE THAT ON a LIVESTREAM? Also I have listened to that audio a hundred times and I don’t hear “I’m gay”. Oh, and Jordan doesn’t respond in the way one would if a closeted friend just screwed up and outed themselves. CCers hang on to that moment like it is a defining CC moment while disregarding and denying all of the times Darren has said he is straight and all the behavior that proves he is with in fact, the fiancee of a woman named Mia

2. Darren’s parents. I posted earlier that I believe the pics are “proof” that Charles doesn’t love or respect Cerina or Darren- he’s walking in front of them after all. He’s also reading his phone- another sign that means he doesn’t actually love or respect those he is with. NOBODY walks in front of someone they love and respect and NOBODY ever looks at their phone when they are with someone they care about and a picture isn’t a snapshot of 0.01 seconds of someone’s life...it is an entire story for strangers to dissect. The pics are are a “stunt” and not at all indicative that the group is annoyed that Paps are literally walking backwards in front of them snapping pictures. Nope they are statements about the disgust the person walking in front carries for the other members of the group. At least THAT is how Tinhatters have seen it every time pap pics of Darren and Mia are released and he’s in front of her or on his phone so it must apply here as well, right?

3. There was also an argument that Cerina and Charles are pulling stunts, pretending to be “one big happy family” because “they love their child so much they would do anything”. That isn’t how parental love works. Bad behavior, lies, and deception are not OK simply because you do it out of love. I love my children to death but I would never outright deceive the world by literally participating in “stunts” over and over where I was putting on a performance that was counter to everyone’s best interest. I wouldn’t consider it “supporting my child” by doing anything that kept them in the closet or forcing them to lie over and over or colluding with them to pretend they are engaged to someone they hated. Ethics and morals still matter and doing what is right matters and supporting the good things-not the bad things- in our kids’ lives matter. But the CCers pretend that love matters more than anything...as long as it is about love then nothing else matters. That is the Disney-princess version of life and love. It doesn’t hold up in reality.

4. Speaking of Makes No Sense... The idea that every time Mia is talked about, mentioned, in a photo or standing near Darren he is promoting her. WTF? “Promotion”. Mia doesn’t even have social media...she isn’t promoting herself. Darren isn’t promoting her. Stop being so f’ing jealous of her CCers. It doesn’t look good on you.

5. Ben...oh lord Ben. That whole trope is entirely made up. Ben might have stayed with them long ago but I follow him in IG and he is rarely in LA and never for more than a few nights. There is nothing to suggest he is even staying with them anymore. Mia and Ben are clearly friends and Mia and Darren both openly share their lives with her friends. Mia wearing Ben’s hat means absolutely nothing and Ben’s arm around Mia at an IHeartRadio event means they are friends and Ben supporting the bar means it is a fun place to hang out and he likes them. Nothing more. The whole story about them in bed and taking pictures on Valentine’s day 1854 is so pathetic and contrived... I just can't. Every time the CCers stomp their feet and yell “Ben Ben Ben HOW CAN YOU IGNORE BEN” I think of Trump and his pathetic attempts to prove that Mueller is a witch hunt...or Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham claiming they aren’t racist. It is just as desperate.

There are a lot of comments today- made by single woman- about what a healthy relationship should look like. There is nothing about Ben and Mia and Darren except desperate CCers trying discount Darren and Mia’s engagement. Hell, maybe both Darren and Mia are sleeping with Ben....a throuple if you will. It doesn’t matter if they are because IT ISN’T ANY OF OUR BUSINESS. Having been in a relationship for *cough *cough 24+ years with the same man, I can say that there is nothing about Mia and Darren- including Ben- that makes me think it isn't a healthy relationship. Long term relationships are hard work..not the stuff of Disney princess love and CC BS. If Ben stays with them when he is in town, who cares? He is in town so little. I can imagine staying in hotels gets old and staying with friends whose home is filled with music and singing has to be a joy.

I agree with you, the Emmys rattled the CC family... big time. It is hard to ignore the look Darren gave her as he declared her “my darling Mia” and said the most romantic thing I have heard a man use to proclaim to his love ...well, EVER. It is hard posting the same pics of Darren and Chris talking on stage over and over and over and over and pretend that means they are in love or that it wasn’t 10 years ago. They have sunk to arguing that when we watch Glee we aren’t seeing Klaine on screen but rather that is CrissColfer and they aren’t acting..they are in love in RL. Um, dude NO, those were characters. They were reading lines written for them by writers. They were following stage direction and hitting marks. After the Emmys, the CCers were left analyzing WHERE Darren and Mia’s noses touched because their kiss during the excitement of hearing his name announced wasn’t perfectly coordinated. Darren’s aim was a little off -apparently- they bumped noses and that proves they don’t kiss often. I MEAN THAT IS IRREFUTABLE PROOF THEY ARE FAKE. There was also a proclamation that clearly Mia practiced on objects and other people so she could grab Darren’s face and plant one on him after his name was announced. Making that kind of shit up is the epitome of desperation. They are running scared. Their entire fandom is based on lies, anger, hate and criticizing people who don’t care about them. So when it falls apart, there is no reason to be a CC Family. Their international friendships which are glued together by their hatred and envy of Mia, ceases to have a reason to exist. When it all falls apart, they have no reason to be so sanctimonious or self righteous and they cease to be internet “famous” as they have labeled themselves. If they aren’t fighting for Darren’s very soul, they don’t matter. That just sucks. Of course I watch them double down on “how will NEVER marry her” and I know they are setting themselves up for a big fall...it’s a train wreck happening in slow motion. Of course he will marry her. He has said so publicly several times. Their friends congratulated them and showered them with love-ya know, people who actually know them. I know the CC family will have a few days of anger and then they will regroup and talk about how getting married to one’s beard is the new “breaking up with one’s beard” and that Chris was supporting Darren with everything he had. They will hate the beautiful wedding song Darren and performs for Mia and then they will claim it was really a secret message for them-the people who are really listening- to proclaim his undying love for Chris. Chris will continue to ignore Darren and while most of Hollywood sends Darren and Mia love, the CCers will claim that the ONLY reason Chris wouldn’t send a social media post to Darren is because he contractually can’t. That alone is telling...there is NO other reason he would ignore Darren... I mean, that is the only thing that makes sense, right?

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noreachspeak · 7 years ago

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If you haven’t read emisonme’s blog concerning “camatthew” or whatever that PR rubber blow-up raft’s name it is, go check out that out first. I posted this “how to stage kiss” for people, just to understand “staging” in general. Thankfully, C and M didn’t serve us any lips, so most likely those lips never touched. Now, I’m an artist, writer, transpersonal psychologist (soon to graduate), and a filmmaker. This video is not mine, but it is one example of the many different ways to stage a kiss. I already talked about Camila’s pic with Michael Hussey, one beard for one beard, meaning they both need beards. I also noticed the angle of M’s sunglasses which do not match the position of his mouth on hers. Michael who is now 30 and is not with anybody...well, that’s just bad for business, right? I mean, you wouldn’t seek out financial help from someone who is broke. I actually wonder if there fees cancel each other out. Taylor paid for her first beard, until she got smart and got paid to be a beard for men who needed to appear straight or simply to not look single. In the Philippines, if you’re 30 and single, three things usually happen: 1) everyone just assumes you are gay. For a country that does not have equality in human rights, it’s the most gay friendly country in the far east. (I’ll post a piece I did on that later) 2) people speculate that perhaps something is wrong with you, and they may give you advice or send you to a great hairstylist they know...but this speculation usually ends up back to number one or goes to the next option: 3) everybody begins to suggest people for you to meet or invites another single person...basically, everybody plays cupid...and yes, they’ll do it even if you are gay! Now, while I think this PR move was a bit too soon, I think the people who are out there burning her album, are doing so, not so much out of hate, but out of frustration and disappointment. Plus, like I’ve said in previous places like on YT and here, the whole thing is laughable, but we also ought to understand that the society we live in, is perhaps not the same for other people in other places/countries. What I’m trying to say is that in some places in America even though we have marriage equality, we still have a lot of homophobia, so it is not easy even here...you may live in a blue state, but maybe you live in a very strict Catholic household, or another religion. emisonme says for us to, ‘get over [ourselves] and stop being selfish’---and yeah, I can stand by that, but I do think it is sad. Sad because she told us about the freedom of being in control...and that gave many people a lot of hope. When she used the pink triangle in the form of a “glass closet” and how she says she is very detail oriented, that the look of everything has to be just so, we know that with all of the restrictions put on her, she still manages to “come out” with her music, with her performances, with her merch, with her cover art, with her music video, with nearly every interview....plus every camren vid out there, we already know. In case you don’t know about the “glass closet” this article is great: https://www.out.com/entertainment/2008/09/22/glass-closet Not every gay person in this world can openly express their queerness. In some countries, it is criminal and punishable. This is where I think it gets complicated. Here’s the thing, many celebrities have lived in this “glass closet”. C hasn’t yet to act straight in the last 6 years...exceptions include when she lied about “the boy who took her to watch a scary movie” and when both C & L pretended to be straight and just ended up overacting with C exclaiming, “there were so many hot boys today!” to which Captain Dinah looks strangely up at her as if to say, “wtf...bruh” then Lauren chimes in with, “oh my gurd” in an exaggerated yet boredom filled way in agreement with Camila...so funny...I know you guys have seen it! But it is what it is and now we know she only has control of certain things like her music, her indirects. Please remember that not too long ago, on the anniversary of the day C and L met, everyone across the globe said Happy Anniversary, not to be confused with the day 5H were formed as a group, mind you--she posts a pic of herself, most likely in Jamaica with Lauren with the caption “the loving” and that speaks volumes. To put things in perspective, would Camila ever risk disrespecting the Pink Triangle? ....the one half of two triangles that form the Star of David? wherein the color designated their crime (pink=homosexual)? and those with that symbol remained in prison, even after the war was over? No. She would NEVER. Perhaps because despite every limitation, she was able to maneuver inside this “blender” aka the cutthroat music industry, living her “telenova” life while behind the scenes, most likely Camren is very real in private. Let’s respect that for now, let’s stay calm, let’s ONLY observe and enjoy the music. Let’s promote the music. Anyone sending death threats to M is a shipper who does not deserve C’s attention nor is welcome within the majority of the CSs who quietly observe and respect her and LAND, so if you are reading this, leave him alone. Please know that at least he was chosen to show the general public her “professional” persona while simultaneously saving his counseling business. Please hope for the best for CC and all of the members of Fifth Harmony. Peace and love to you all. Salamat!

#lgbtq #chely wright #camren #nermac #gaylor swift #PR #ot5

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arofili · 7 years ago

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Legolas: Green In More Than Just Name?

Let me preface this with some acknowledgements. This fic was inspired by a couple things.... one was that River @cirth-ithil-archive requested ‘leg son + N. The color green’ from this minific prompt list, and another was an annoying reply I got on this joke post I made. Then @divine-daedra said it sounded like an illuminati meme and I knew I had to write it. This definitely takes place in the same universe as Excuses and I really enjoyed writing it. The “New Shadow Cult” is a reference to the rebellions and cults Tolkien was planning in his scrapped LOTR sequel; I see it as basically Fantasy Illuminati. and lastly thanks to @vague-yet-menacing for the art in this fic!!!! You are amazing!!

READ THIS FIC ON AO3 + LEAVE A COMMENT!

"What the...?!"

Gimli looked up from his morning coffee to see Legolas staring at his phone in complete befuddlement. "What is it?"

Legolas blinked. He stared at Gimli, then back to the phone. "I don't even..." He shook his head. Then he handed his phone over to Gimli. "See for yourself."

On the screen was a news article.

Legolas: Green In More Than Just Name?

thinkpiece by Missi Wormtongue, Isengard Insider posted 4 hours ago

(Gimli repressed a snort, but read on.)

We all know and love the aptly-named Legolas Greenleaf, prince and celebrity actor. But could there be something more SINISTER about that color?

Recently, Legolas has shown a LOVE for the color green—it's in his name, after all, and as a prince of a forest nation it's probably part of the job description. In F.A. 11, he said in an interview that "green is probably my favorite color, though yellow is nice too."

He has also worn a LOT of green clothing in the past year! Just look at this outfit from his Mirkwood Vogue shoot this spring.

(Gimli raised an eyebrow upon seeing the picture, remembering the day of the shoot. He, as a fashion designer himself, had advised against this particular outfit—particularly the sunglasses—but his protests had been unheeded by the money-grabbing executives.)

Theories for this color choice abound, but no one is looking for the REAL answers. We at Isengard Insider went digging for the truth, and we've found it.

Everyone of course has heard of the New Shadow Cult. These evil fiends have long plotted against the peace of Middle-earth, and it is rumored that they are connected to hostile forces beyond those confined to our world. Sauron may be defeated, but what about ALIENS? They may be among us!

The New Shadow Cult has been hushed up by most of the media, but from our findings at Isengard Insider we've uncovered some of the key aspects of their evil beliefs. They attach themselves to public personas and undermine them, and can CONTROL MINDS. Elves are especially susceptible to this because of their susceptibility to magical power and its lure.

But the REAL catch here when it comes to Legolas: the symbolic color of the New Shadow Cult is GREEN!

It's all falling into place when it comes for Legolas Greenleaf. He's close to King Elessar, an elf, and wildly popular for his movies and good looks. Of COURSE the New Shadowers got to him! Who knew that sexy elf body could hide so much evil? This green thing is just Legolas's way of showing his TRUE COLORS...all while plotting behind the scenes!

But hey, at the end of the day...I'd still like to see his DEEPER self, if you know what I mean. ;) SIGH!

Gimli set down the phone, his lips quivering. "This is what they're calling journalism these days?"

Legolas held his face in his hands. "I just like the color... What is wrong with people..."

"It's okay, I know you're not an alien plotting to destroy the world," Gimli said.

"If there's a reason I like the color green it's literally just because I'm aro..." Legolas sounded like the world had broken him at last. Gimli chuckled; Legolas was more bothered by this than he was about the paparazzi or the press hounding him for details on new movies or the political scoop in Gondor. "And it's in my literal, actual name..."

Gimli then did what no one should ever do. He checked the comments section.

Ioreth: No one takes this kind of threat seriously enough! Government security is at an all time low, and we need [...]

LegolasLuvr111: he's soooo hot! that bow though! makes a girl want to [...] RockGiantFan: leave him alone! ugh...straight people are so annoying... ThatDwarfLife: Agreed, he's gay, let him live RockGiantFan: he's aroace actually? http://www.gondordaily.com/celebrity/legolas-greenleaf-comes-out-as-aromantic-asexual-47283374 ThatDwarfLife: News media is never reliable, he has a boyfriend anyway? RockGiantFan: I mean II isn't but GD is pretty good, besides that's not the only [...] ThatDwarfLife: stop erasing gay people RockGiantFan: he literally said he's aroace? ThatDwarfLife: this is why i hate inclusionists RockGiantFan: fuck you. blocked.

MemeQueen: he likes the color green...if you take the conosonants out of green there's only 2 letters...New Shadow is 2 words...Legolas is New Shadow CONFIRMED ThatDwarfLife: fucking conspiracy theorists this is BASELESS shit

Ranger17: has anyoen seen the newest ep of catching up with the feanorians? MerryBuck: that show has really gone to shit, watch something better like [...]

GoodOrc: we need REAL news. Report on that new menu in Mordor not shit like this

"Mahal," he said. "People are heated about this. Well, the worst one was arguing about whether you were gay or aroace and not about the article itself. They even mentioned me, though they don't seem to realize we don't really use the word 'boyfriend'."

"By the Valar, don't people have better things to do?" Legolas complained. "I'm both, anyway. What are they saying about me being...a cult member or something?"

"Oh, most people don't take it seriously," Gimli assured him, glancing back at the comments. "They're making jokes, except in the case of a few crackpot conspiracy theorists."

"Of course." Legolas sighed. "Well, it's only Isengard Insider. It's not like this article is going to ruin my reputation or anything."

"You should wear more green," Gimli suggested. "Drop some more hints."

"I feel like going camping for a week after reading that," Legolas admitted. "I don't know if I want to be part of a society this stupid..."

"You know, no one writes articles like this about me," Gimli complained.

"You embarrass yourself enough with your crazy tales and clothes," Legolas said, rolling his eyes affectionately. "Be grateful that all the gossip about you is your own fault."

Gimli laughed. "Be careful about the green, though," he warned with a smile. "Next time they'll start saying it was actually you who created the Rings of Power!"

#legolas #gimli #tolkiensquad #tefain nin #my writing #legolas: green in more than just name?#qp gigolas #cirth ithil archive #vague-yet-menacing #divine daedra #i cannot believe this all started with that annoying reply #im honestly glad that happened now #this was so fun #aro tolkien #modern middle earth #legolas green in more than just name

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weneverlearn · 7 years ago

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R.I.P. Grant Hart

When some kind of celebrity death occurs -- and that “celebrity” can be Prince or Paul Hamann -- there’s often a genuinely heartfelt and/or morbid need to reach out and tell someone. Add the internet into that instinct, and this human action takes on more strange, conflicted, even narcissistic layers.

I woke up yesterday to a text about Grant Hart having passed away. I told myself my girlfriend was awake, and gently tapped her on the shoulder to tell her. She has been working a lot lately, and it was probably best to let her sleep and talk about this later. Telling her, telling anyone wasn’t going to bring Grant Hart back. Basically I just confused her, though she sweetly said “Sorry,” and went back to sleep, somehow.

The emotions were flooding through me, and it was one of numerous deaths that have occurred in my sphere of late, so the usual sinking heart feeling sunk as low as it’s been in awhile (and that’s saying something in this Trump era). One song popped in my head, “Think It Over Now,” from Hart’s excellent 1999 solo album, Good News for Modern Man. In a sea of great Grant Hart songs, it’s Ronettes-meets-rainstorm ramble makes it one of my favorites of his, and it’s positive message helped instantly assuage some sadness. I posted it on Facebook for whatever fucking reason, and went to work, unable to think about much else the rest of the day, into today, and I don’t know, maybe from now on.

It feels awkward to make a celebrity death personal with some tossed-out Facebook post. But I am at that point now in my life where the passing of such monumental artistic figures starts to occur closer to you, more frequently, and it’s inevitable that it spurs you to seek comfort from just telling others why this death is monumental. I mean, in my early 20s, if I had heard the bassist in the Johnny Burnette Trio died, oh, that’s sad. But had that bassist been close to my age, had I seen that bassist play live, got to hang out with him a bit, cranked his records through headphones throughout my teens, well...

It was early summer, 1985, I was 17, about butt-deep into a growing pile of records, increasingly punk records, and my au currant desire was to “get into hardcore.” I mean it was all over college radio, Cleveland had a decent scene of it (although in that odd Ohio-y, weather-beaten way), and I just thought, well, that’s what a guy like me should be doing right now. So I went to my local rack jobber and asked him for a great new hardcore album, and he hands me New Day Rising.

I took it home and played it, but I was a bit nonplussed. This wasn’t the bald-head dude screaming in a circle pit shit I thought I was searching for. It was loud and fast for sure, but not the polka-beat, the government and your parents suck spiel. Instead, as I noticed while I self-surprisingly kept playing the record over and over for the next week, was an instantly recognizable melancholy, damp atmosphere, and intense energy I’d already loved from midwest acts. Husker Du just felt like me and lots of strangers I was starting to get to know at Cleveland punk shows -- already a bit beaten by long winters, mall jobs, and terrible sports teams we didn’t care about, but you live in Cleveland, so you’re going to hear about the fucking Browns whether you like it or not. My image was the three Huskers sitting in their dank basement, from about the first week of October until the first week of March, with a space heater sparking in the corner, complaining about fucking jocks, drinking the cheapest local beer, excited only about the tunes they were coming up with, grasping for hopes maybe winter will end early this year (the last week of February), but knowing for sure it’s just gonna come around again anyway, so whatever, let’s go through that new one again.

I already knew enough about the California-based SST Records to know a shlubby band from Minneapolis with cutoff shorts and an almost sobbing seriousness to their loud fast rules, featuring lyrics about folklore and summer ending, was not that label’s raison d’etre. No doubt most of their bands had shitty lives, crappy parents, drug problems, and whatever. But to me, nothing I’d heard on that label (save some Black Flag), had this depth of pathos and seething spirit. I mean come on, it’s California. You don’t spend your teens hanging out on beaches and seeing pretty girls all the time all year and think, “Damn, remember those good times we had? Fuck! Where’s my copy of Being and Nothingness?!” (Well, maybe the Minutemen did.)

Indeed, from what I understood through the grape, er, hops-vine of the time, many diehard SST fans didn’t dig Husker Du. (Someone did, because I think Husker Du was the best selling act on SST, but you record scholars can correct me on that.) To me they were a sudden, jarring connection between the jangle of ‘60s folk and garage rock -- meaning they were contemporaries more with R.E.M. than Saccharine Trust or what have you -- and a huge leap into some fuzzed-out new world of extreme emotional and sonic confessional. Even moreso than the, truth be told, kind of cute Replacements, Husker Du were the gnarled heart pumping to where punk could grasp towards, to survive not just the winters but encroaching adulthood abyss. Even their name, from an old board game (fun!) that translated to “Do You Remember?” (sad), was reflective. They were 20-year olds and already nostalgic, wistful. But their own apocalyptic Reagan-era shakes were vibrating them out of that basement. They toured like fucking crazy, rust belt work ethic and all; and with hooks that finally put a relevant nail in skinny tie power pop’s coffin.

New Day Rising has mostly remained my favorite Husker Du album since, the opening title tune being my favorite opener on any album (save maybe “I’m Stranded” by the Saints). But their whole catalog is worth churning through. And it wasn’t just Grant Hart’s massively manic drum pounds that hit you hard, but his and Bob Mould’s strained, splitting-at-the-edges voices. Like their Minneapolis contemporaries (Replacements, Soul Asylum, Magnolias), they sounded like they were incredibly pissed off and ready to fight, to the point of tears. Not to belabor the midwest/California dichotomy, but the Offspring never struck me as tearful guys.

Of course soon enough I gathered, via unexplainable gut impressions and gossipy fanzine articles, that there were gay men in Husker Du. And there’s no doubt that the usual animosity towards jocks for this punk band left larger scars.

The scar I personally got from their records was a band. When I first met New Bomb Turks’s guitarist Jim Weber at our college dorm, one of the earliest conversations centered on how Jim couldn’t get to the Warehouse tour stop in Cleveland, and hence never got to see Husker Du. I’d seen them twice, regaled Jim with some details, and made tapes of the Husker Du albums he didn’t have. You can ask him, but I think Bob Mould was his biggest early guitar inspiration. And further discussions involved the gender identity of the band, though being early-20s guys in the late ‘80s, we probably didn’t talk about “gender identity” as much as how/when we were called the ol’ “f”word in high school, and how the Huskers must have dealt with tons of awful shit from the more unseemly sides of the hardcore scene.

Husker Du was a favorite band, but also our introduction to really thinking about these issues that were still pretty swept under the turkey at the family Thanksgiving meal back then. We were both raised Catholic, so...

So, Grant Hart. After the Warehouse show at the Phantasy Theater in Cleveland in summer 1987 (they would break up soon after the end of that tour), I made my way to the adjacent upstairs bar, whose backroom was being used as a backstage. I saw Grant and said, “Great show!” He looked at me a little cockeyed, then turned around, asking, “Does anyone have any heroin around here?” So, that was that.

I loved his 2541 EP from 1988, the first post-Husker Du release. By then I was best friends with the first friend to ever come out to me; and that happening right around the release of that EP, well, one should always appreciate life’s teachable serendipity.

Then, the first time I ever went to New York City and first time I went to CBGB in 1989 with said out pal, the first band I saw there was Hart’s Nova Mob. (Well, technically Run Westy Run opened up.) They were pretty good, and I was glad to see Hart still going at it, but it seemed soon enough that he wasn’t. Didn’t hear much except sporadic solo stuff after Nova Mob split up, and given the usual rumors, figured he was done. But then my band was pretty busy those years, and I was soaking up tons of new bands, so who knows.

Then, in mid-summer 1999, I get a request from an editor at the Cleveland Free Times to write a preview for Grant Hart’s solo show in Cleveland, and found out he’d be playing Columbus a couple days before. So we hooked up a meeting, which is a whole other story for another post, or if I had the power, a movie. It was a strange couple of days, involving breaking into the trunk of the early ‘80s Cadillac he was touring in (”Got it from Rent-a-Wreck, seriously”), the club, Bernie’s, not paying him what they promised, Hart rightly taking a monitor as payment (probably not worth the $250 he was guaranteed), and me getting a call from him at 3 a.m. asking to be a character witness in court on Monday. Nice dinner with him in there too.

After relative (college) radio silence for a few years, I didn’t know what to expect of the show, and without going into details, let’s just say this seemed like a “rent tour.” Hart was fairly disheveled, but super nice. He’d recently become close with Patti Smith, and I guess she told him her parents last names were Grant and Hart, and that once she heard of him, she took that as a sign from the stars to work with him. Anyway, standing in Berne’s with like 10 other people watching him, I was utterly floored once again. His voice was just teeming with the weight of all those slushy winters. I just kept thinking, this is unbelievable how intense he is, and how good these songs are, and how no one even in my circle of music heps even knew this show was happening, in the middle of summer no less, when campus is pretty dead anyway. Unfortunately, a horrible flu had also floored me, a 102 temperature, and I could only stay about four songs of his set before heading home to sweat in bed. “Ah, I’ll see him again.” That was the last time I saw him play.

R.I.P. Grant Hart.

#grant hart #husker du #newbombturks #granthart

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cassandraclare · 8 years ago

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on the rights of women to own their own work. crummy crabapple speaks!

Yes, this stuff is still going on. I was hoping it would have ended after this, but it hasn’t, and being called a bitch whore murderer gets wearing fast when it’s based on nothing.

Look, frank talk about this stuff on Tumblr is often discouraged — when you have a small but pretty active group of “haters,” as happens nowadays to most successful creators, especially women, the general rule of thumb is not to talk to or about them. Blocking them on twitter excites them: it’s attention. Replying is pointless, explaining is deliberately misinterpreted, the truth is a lie, lies are truth, up is down, winning is losing. You can’t win in this situation, anyway: nobody can or does, everyone loses. The creators, the fandom, those caught in the middle (actors, etc.) Everyone.

This business about me killing Alec isn’t a rumor. It’s a lie. A purposeful lie told to make a point: that I am a bad person unworthy of my creations and that if I am a bad enough person, it’s okay to say they don’t belong to me, that I didn’t create them, that there is essentially no value in the act of creation, especially when it is done by a woman.

As we all know but mostly don’t talk about because If You Speak It They Will Come, there is a small group of anti-TMI-book fans who believe the books and the show are at war. (They are not the show’s fans. They are something else entirely. I talk to perfectly nice show fans all the time: these are less people who love Shadowhunters than people dedicated to the idea that if they scream about it long enough, the show will cease being based on this particular book series: an ultimately doomed goal that nevertheless leaves them plenty of opportunities to annoy the rest of us.) Instead of being able to accept that art is partly subjective, they are in a constant battle for an imaginary moral high ground in which they are the keepers of a version of the Mortal Instruments that has been objectively purified of all problematic elements.

The problem there being, of course, that there is no such thing as perfect, unproblematic media. Art comes from humans and humans are flawed. If you expect perfection you will be bitterly disappointed every single time: I’ve watched it happen over and over, as the this showrunner is a gift tag turns into the This showrunner is not a gift tag, and many of those who last year spoke glowingly of wrapping Ed Decter, their unproblematic hero (who once said to me in wonder, “You really worked a miracle with Malec, you know, people care about them as if they were a normal couple”), in cotton wool and fuzzy socks, now refer to Todd Slavkin as “Toad.”* Plenty of articles about the problematic elements of Shadowhunters have now been written and plenty of posts posted. (If Ed hadn’t been fired, he might have stuck around long enough to get called Ediot; these things are, after all, just a matter of time. (i get called “Casserole”, seriously, I am not kidding you, you cannot make this shit up.) )

To clarify: I am definitely NOT saying that a (potentially problematic) work should remain uncriticized to spare the feelings of the creators because they are flawed humans like everyone else. Criticism is valid; criticism is useful; criticism is important. What I am talking about in this post is not criticism. Telling a creator that her creations should be taken away from her because she “doesn’t deserve them”: not criticism. Making up funny names and mean hashtags for creators you don’t like: obviously hilarious for some, but definitely not criticism. And to some extent everyone knows this – so if it’s important to you that a creator be denied the right to claim ownership of, and pride in, her own work, it has to be because she is not just problematic but corrupt, evil, and cruel. She has to be morally bankrupt such that removing her from the narrative of her own creation is a moral good.

And so the lie that I’m planning to kill Alec (framed within the true narrative that killing off LGBT+ characters is a serious fucking problem in media) is a natural development: because wouldn’t that be awful and mean the books were morally very bad and wrong and shouldn’t creators who create bad wrong things have their creations taken away from them? Which would be just another Misogyny Tuesday on the internet except for the fact that it’s exploiting the fears of a vulnerable group of people (LGBT+ fans for whom Alec means a lot, in whatever format -- fans who have seen over and over LGBT characters die for nothing, for shitty reasons, for straight people, on TV and in movies and in comics and in books and are therefore in a place to be incredibly hurt by it happening again), to score a point in what is basically a ship war. And that is really shitty.

And yes, it’s a ship war.

There was really a “salty casserole” joke in there begging to be made. Missed opportunity!

So, why am I salty, you might ask? There is this belief that I must be Upset With The Show because people care about Malec on it more than Clace: my friends, the field where I grow my fucks is barren on this topic. I made up both couples. I don’t care which one you ship more, especially in a format where their story is not being told by me and for all I know, the showrunners don’t even want you shipping Clace at the moment. They seem into Climon and oh God, I have bored myself with this tangent.

I invented Clace and Malec. I’m writing a trilogy about Malec because I love Malec and have a story in my head about them, despite being offered three times the money to write one about Clace, as they’re “more marketable.” I do not have a favorite. Maybe writing works that way for some people but I doubt it. I’ve always said I don’t ship in my own books, and that is precisely what I meant.

Moving on: Are there things that have upset me about the show and the way it was developed? Yes — being told my mostly-female audience wasn’t a desirable one because they’re female; the fact that the female artist of color who created the runes has never been paid or credited for their use; being told Isabelle was “tits and ass”, being told Alec being gay was “a strike against his likeability”, contractual shit you will never know about because that stuff isn’t public — but for some reason I’m supposed to give a flying fuck about who ships what canon couple on the show? For viewers, as it should be, this is a TV show: for me this is part of my brand and has real-world consequences for my life. Unsurprisingly I care about those, not some imaginary ship war.

I was thrilled Shadowhunters won a GLAAD award for Magnus and Alec. (I was thrilled when the movie of Mortal Instruments got a GLAAD award nomination for Magnus and Alec though there was so little of them in the movie, it served to really underline the paucity of LGBT+ storylines in major film and tv.) I congratulated Matt and Harry on twitter; the comments below mine are something of a primer in why female creators are fleeing the internet in greater and greater numbers.

https://twitter.com/cassieclare/status/848497330999369729

The message is overwhelmingly: “Shut up, bitch, how dare you open your mouth and remind us that this show exists because your books do, even though you didn’t actually say that but you see, we like to pretend you’re dead and it’s inconvenient when you speak.” I’d imagine every one of those commenters would tell you they were a feminist, too. The idea that nothing is gained by shutting up women or denying that their intellectual property has worth or value is apparently one that seems good in the abstract, but falls at the first hurdle of but I don’t like her.

The abstract often does fail when it comes into conflict with the concrete. Being a feminist ally means being an ally even to women you don’t like, because being an ally only to people you like requires no effort and less thought. That doesn’t mean never criticizing women or their work. But it does require interrogating what’s going on in your own head. One of the most unpleasant haters I see on twitter, who viciously loathes me though we have never met, has read all my books; she has Malec in her username, and a quote from the books in her bio. She has Cassandra Jean’s art on her twitter page, and Valerie Freire’s rune designs in her text and background. That’s a lot of mental and artistic real estate devoted to the work of three women she refers to as  “garbage trash.” (Though I think Cassandra Jean and Val are mostly garbage trash because they associate with me and should instead have waited ten years for the TV show to come along so they could draw pictures of it or something. I don’t really understand it: the cognitive dissonance that allows to you dedicate your life to “Malec” while crapping on the person who created both characters and their relationship is so enormous that I can only follow it so far and no farther. I understand thinking that the show version is better, but not whatever warped fantasy tells you that if the books had never been written the show (now called “Evilchasers” perhaps) would have heroically found a way to invent the story of a gay demon-fighting warrior and his biracial warlock boyfriend anyway because that very specific story was floating around the ethereal planes waiting to be discovered by the psychic powers of Disney and it is only by great misfortune that I got to it first.) Point being: if your username is “Bubbles loves Malec” yet your twitter is dedicated to spewing venom at the person without whom the thing you love would not exist, it might be time to ask yourself some questions about cause and effect, and also, what that hate of yours is doing for you, psychologically speaking.

Look, I am going to get a lot of shit for this post, but whatever — the upside of being constantly screamed at for things you have not done (slut-shamed Isabelle, planned to murder Alec, thus contributing to the fucking awful homophobic trope of killing off gay characters, "stabbed the actors in the back”, promoted incest, poisoned the earth’s water supply) is that you no longer bother worrying about being screamed at for things you did do. I won’t do set visits or conventions since coming back from NY Comicon to stuff like this:

I’m not going to comment on the specifics, save to say they represent a massive and almost hilarious (though probably deliberate) misinterpretation of literally everything that happened on that panel. (If the network didn’t want book fans there, asking me questions, they wouldn’t have brought me there. I was there to do promotion for the show by talking about the show and the books — I am the author, and what the literal fuck else do you think they brought me there to talk about? The history of Belgian cabinet-making? They don’t think attention paid to the books takes away from the show: only a small group of asshats think that, and it’s weird that the OP never paused to think that if they didn’t want me there talking about the books, they could simply NOT HAVE INVITED ME. Also did it seriously never occur to them that panelists are asked to speak at certain junctures or in reference to certain questions, or gestured at to do so, we don’t just randomly interject? Lord.

I will admit it was extreme of Harry not to leave me lying there on the floor or maybe drop a chair on my head while no one was looking. He should reconsider his choices.)

But that’s the thing: posts like this one are the reason I haven’t gone back to set, or gone to another convention, or promoted the show. Would you go to a convention if you knew people like this were going to be feet away from you in the audience? I’m a grown-up, I can take being called Crummy Crabapple (did the whole kindergarten class vote on that one or was it a decision by fiat…?) but the sheer hate that underpins the silliness of the post makes the idea of being near people who think like that fairly shuddery.

I gathered a few such posts together to show to FF, and the network’s never blamed me for not wanting to go out and physically promote again. The sad part of all this is that mostly I pretend the show doesn’t exist because the downside of mentioning it is being screamed at for days by asshats (Let me be very specific what I mean by “asshats” = people who send threats, who use insulting gendered language, make anti-Semitic slurs, and repeatedly tell me I should not be allowed to own my own work — if this is not stuff you do, I’m not talking about you. Criticism of the books is fine and irrelevant.)

We all know these asshats exist — and we are all sad about it: me, the network, the actors, the showrunners, because the net result of them existing is that I don’t talk about or promote the show, and that’s a loss for a show that could really use that outreach. Losing me, my online audience, my worldwide publishers, as potential promotional partners is bad, not good, for a show that these people theoretically love. Losing the book fans the show depended on as viewers, but who can’t stand the toxic atmosphere, is bad, not good, for the actors and writers they claim to support. Screaming “INCEST FREAK!” at every twelve year old who comes online and timidly asks when they will see Chairman Meow is not going to raise the show’s ratings. If someone is more interested in driving away the show’s potential audience because they regard them as moral degenerates than they are in getting it renewed, that’s their bliss to follow, but the reason I’m mentioning these people at all is 1) I’m disturbed by the narrative women shouldn’t be allowed to own their own work and 2) many many posts have now been made about what an awful place the Shadowhunters/TMI fandom is, and that sucks for everyone. Sadly, it doesn’t take that many people to ruin an online space.

The idea that the books and the show are at war for kibbles is a fannish one (most people, including my publisher, regard TV shows based on books as advertising for those books because from a book perspective that’s what they are) seems to come out of the fact that fans argue about which they like better, something that has happened since the dawn of adaptations. I remember it from when I was in the Harry Potter fandom: Alan Rickman understood Snape better than JKR, the movies gave Draco more depth, etc and so on. Looking back now I can see the irony of people with usernames like Lupinfan talking about how Lupin was sidelined in the books but not the movies, but distance gives infinite perspective, I suppose. If you like Malec better on the show: awesome. They still exist on the show because they were invented in the books. That statement will be interpreted as the height of arrogance, but it’s just flat fact. They matter in both formats to a lot of people. There will never be a hand of God that reaches down from the sky and declares either one better. It will always be a matter of taste and opinion. The fact that art is subjective is something we all have to live with.

This is what I mean about the “killing Alec” lie: it has become part of the justification for my unworthiness to claim to have anything to do with my own characters. Killing Alec would be a bad thing to do to Alec (and Magnus); thus I would be terribly maltreating Alec (and Magnus); thus I don’t deserve to have anything to do with Alec (or Magnus). Thus it is okay to tell me to get the fuck out – how dare I even open my bitch mouth to congratulate the actors playing my characters if I would do something so terrible to them, after all? And who cares if it’s a lie and no one can source it? (Come on now, be real — no one tried.)

Whether I deserve Alec and Magnus is somewhat beside the point: I invented them regardless, and there was a large and profoundly intense Malec fandom before the show ever aired, whose existence is in fact directly responsible for the fact that Malec are a thing on the show at all. (Initially, neither of them appeared or were even referred to in the pilot.) Reality doesn’t really intrude into the fantasy that Magnus and Alec and Isabelle and Jace descended, pre-created, from a sky cloud, though: the fan/creator ownership dichotomy has existed since before Arthur Conan Doyle was bullied into bringing Sherlock back from the dead. Fans and creators don’t always agree and creators aren’t always right. What they are, however, always, is creators.

(In case I had forgotten that I am not, in fact, a hot dude actor. ASTONISHING INFORMATION.) It is mysterious to interpret congratulating actors as taking “credit for Matt and Harry’s hard work”; I neither need or want that anyway because I am not an actor; I am already credited on the show as the author of the source material, which is what I am. (I’ve won plenty of book awards but would be very puzzled to win, say, a Nobel prize for chemistry.) I congratulated the actors knowing I’d get a raft of shit for either doing so or not doing so: I chose to do so despite the inevitable annoyance factor because I like Matt and Harry; I wanted them hired; I like how much they love the characters, and I’ve always found them to be kind people who would loathe and despise the kind of tweets these folks are sending on their behalf.

Ironic, that.

But yeah, I also sent it because I’m proud of Malec. Deal with that. Women need to be allowed to be proud of their work sometimes without that being considered a deep evil. I don’t think the Magnus and Alec I created are perfect (by which I mean my writing of them, not their endearing flaws ;) but they represent years of work and love, and like any author would be, I’m thrilled to see the screen version of them acknowledged twice as something special. That’s very normal: for the GLAAD win, I got flowers from my publisher, congrats from the network and from my agents at CAA, because why wouldn’t you congratulate an author on something good happening to an adaptation of their books? The idea that when discussing an adaptation of their work, an author should reel back in terror screaming “I AM UNWORTHY TO BE MENTIONED IN THE SAME SENTENCES AS THE CHARACTERS I CREATED!” is so bizarre to most people that if you tried to explain to them that some women, not all women hahaha of course, but SOME WOMEN JUST DONT DESERVE TO BE ALLOWED TO TALK OR CLAIM THEY CAN “OWN” THINGS AMIRITE, they would back quietly away muttering that they had an important appointment to get their hedgehog dyed blue because they would literally think you were probably a serial killer.

This situation is not unique to these books, to me, or to this show: however, there is a special angle to this particular situation. Many commenters on all this have noted that the books are a female creation, the show a male one. Ed, Todd, Michael, Matt, McG, and Darren are all men, and in many ways, people find it much more comfortable, much easier, and much simpler to give uncritical admiration to men. They’re men, and therefore they have authority I don’t, and my continued existence as the author of the source material of Shadowhunters is seen as even more horrible because it makes it a girl thing, and “girl things” are less serious and less worthy. One of the things I often see the haters say is that the show is “older”; in fact the audience of the show is statistically younger than the book’s audience (I’ve seen the numbers) but I think it’s hard not to want to dismiss something so imbued with lady germs as being inherently inferior (and what’s more inferior than young women? It’s trendy to bash YA, which is seen as the province the young and the female – surely preferring men’s work makes you, you know, a more serious person? And surely if I had the sense God gave a weasel, I’d stop writing, give the book rights to some guy, and retire in shame? GO FORTH HARLOT AND WRITE YA NO MORE.)

Feminism does not mean you cannot criticize works by women. I’ve said that before, but I’m saying it again because it’s so easy to dismiss essays like this by saying “She’s hiding behind feminism and claiming we can’t criticize her because she’s a woman!” Nope. (Though it does mean you look for patterns. It’s kind of interesting there’s this small group of people who believe these characters/storylines really came alive when control of them was handed over to a series of ever-changing white middle-aged men. I mean, coincidence perhaps, but…?) I haven’t addressed criticism here really because it’s not the point: there is a huge gap between writing a bad review of a woman’s book and crusading for the idea that she shouldn’t be allowed to own her own intellectual property. Men taking away, literally taking away the money made from and authorship of women’s work is an ugly part of history (“Colette and [her husband] separated in 1906, although it was not until 1910 that the divorce became final. She had no access to the sizable earnings of the Claudine books [she had written]—the copyright belonged to him”) and it’s disturbing to see a group of primarily women argue that it should be repeated.

If the idea that a woman created Magnus and Alec, or any characters or world, is so horribly, terribly bothersome that you have to make up lies that, in your mind, render her unworthy of her own creation so that it’s all right to “take it from her” by discounting her role as a writer, her ownership of her own intellectual property, her right to exist as a person and to stand on the same stage at a convention as the “gem-like saint” male actors playing her characters — maybe think about why?* What does screaming that I’d better not think Alec and Magnus have anything to do with me get you, really? Except the knowledge that if, one day, you write or create or draw something people love, you’ve helped create an environment in which it’s a veritable certainty you’ll get treated like you’re a piece of shit for doing it?

*And “bitch” is “bitch”, friends. It doesn’t matter what letters you take out, it’s still misogynist and still shitty. You know what you’re saying, and so does everyone else. Try asshat, really. I recommend it.

#shadowhunters #malec #cassandra clare #feminism

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starryeyedkara · 7 years ago

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Weekend Relaxing || Danvers Sisters

While a lazy Sunday was apparently the norm it hadn’t ever been for Kara, but after her somewhat failed game night, where James unsurprisingly didn’t show up, but Winn still did and the pair played video games for most of the night, she knew that spending her Sunday, cooped up on her computer, headphones on, notebook ready to go, while the strangers on the screen went at each other like no tomorrow wasn’t truly the best way to spend her Sunday. But lucky for her, Rao was not a God that was recognized on Earth so she wasn’t too worried about being hit by a lightning bolt or something, even if truly there was worse things she could be hit for at this point.

The weirdest part about it was that she was truly just taking notes. She’d wanted to improve her skills when it came to pleasing Lena, and though porn was probably the most over acted thing, Kara knew they had the right ideas...sometimes. And considering the contract rule about no masturbation, well what else was she going to do!

She’d started in the lesbian section, obviously. But found they were trying too hard and she wasn’t learning anything helpful, except to make sure she always continued to keep her nails short because yikes. Then drifted to the gay section, until she realized her notes would be kind of pointless given the parts, but she did write down some hopefully helpful tips for oral, if Lena ever did make that more life like appendage and gave her another shot at it.

But now Kara found herself watching straight porn and while she skipped the nine plus minutes of a blowjob she found it had actually started to get interesting, she’d written notes and her thoughts had definitely started to wander. Of course before when she’d thought of Lena it was different, she was just imagining, but now that she knew what Lena’s touch felt like, what her weight felt like when she pinned her down, now it was easier to imagine these situations and Kara’s mind was definitely in a sinful place now. Her mind wandered to her first night with Lena, before she had a sensory overload, only this time Kara could picture (thanks to the actions on the screen) Lena completely pinning her against the bed, possibly restraining her hands again, it was only when for a split second Kara could almost feel Lena’s weight against her back did she quickly reach around for her phone to text her girlfriend.

Just as she had her fingers wrapped around the device did her hearing manage to pick up on her apartment door shutting and she was quick to tug her headphones off, quickly scrambling to mute the video, especially when she looked up from the couch and her gaze fell on Alex.

“H-Hey,” she squeaked, swallowing thickly before moving to exit the window, trying not to look too obvious, even though she could feel how warm her face was.

“Hey, sorry I knocked and you didn’t answer so I just used my key. You okay?”

“Me? Pff, yeah! I’m great. Why? Do I not look okay? Are you okay?” shutting her laptop off Kara set it aside, rubbing her hands over her thighs and setting her phone aside.

“Yeah I’m fine, you weirdo. What are you doing? Your not trying to hack things again are you? Because I think Dairy Queen is still mad at you over that,”

Huffing a little Kara moved her legs out of the way for Alex to join her on the couch. “No, I’m not hacking. I leave that to you and Winn, I was...doing research,” she blurted out, instantly wanting to facepalm.

“Research? Yeah I don’t want to know. So,” shifting a little Alex pulled out the rolled up printed article from the CatCo website from her back pocket. “I thought you might want to see this, since I’m sure the full story is going to print Monday, but I was surprised to see James wrote it, that had to be...awkward.”

Quickly setting her notebook aside Kara eagerly took the page. “Well, we look cute at least, I hope he isn’t too harsh...Lena did make sure to show him up when we were there,” she commented as she finally tore her gaze away from the picture of Lena and herself before reading over the snippet from James’ main article. Truly, it was amusing that this was the snippet, and not about the medical center, but Miss Grant had always said that people cared more about celebrity gossip and Kara figured her girlfriend basically was a celebrity. “Huh, he’s actually...nice. I mean if I had wrote this Snapper would have ripped it up, well I suppose I feel better about him not coming to my game night now,”

“He won’t be jealous forever, plus c’mon. I’m sure deep down you like having them fight over you,” Alex teased, nudging Kara’s leg. “You guys do look good together though, she looks really proud of you, as you do of her. It’s cute. I’m going to guess the diamonds were a gift?” she added in with a highly amused expression.

Smiling softly Kara glanced back at the picture, gently setting the paper on the coffee table before rolling her eyes. “Oh gosh, Alex. You don’t even want to know okay, I was so scared that sometime during the night I was going to trip and the chain would break and I’d have some movie moment where every little diamond would fall out”

“Kara, they are diamonds not pearls”

“Still!” huffing a little, Kara eventually just laughed with her sister before she shrugged a little, handing Alex part of her blanket. “It was good though, over all. Scary at first, the second person we ran into was James of course. And I didn’t know he was even invited, and then Miss Grant showed up...Yeah, Miss Grant was there. Apparently her and Lena are pals? I don’t know but I was very panicked for a moment, but it went well in the end. Plus it was nice having Miss Grant back, we talked for a bit while they were setting up for Lena’s medical center announcement. Oh! And Clark was there, honestly it was like I was just a panic attack ready to happen. I mean I haven’t seen Clark in months and suddenly he’s also where I’m telling the world I’m dating Lena? It was...overwhelming that was for sure. But, Lena was just...perfect as always, she’s so elegant and graceful, and I mean to most people it was probably nothing considering all she’s done, but being able to be the first time I got to see her at that kind of event, it was really cool. I was...and still am really proud of her,”

Fidgeting with her fingers a little Kara glanced over at Alex, catching her amused expression again, which just caused Kara’s cheeks to heat up again. “What?”

“Nothing, you are just smitten. It’s nice to see you happy, you know. Even if none of us could have guessed you’d ever be with Lena Luthor, but I just want you happy Kara, and you seem happy,”

“I am, I really am. It’s...different for both of us but she’s trying and I’m trying and that’s all I can really ask for. Speaking of happy though, how was your weekend with Maggie?”

Perking up Kara couldn’t help her instant smile as she noticed Alex’s slightly dorky smile, it was strange to think they both had girlfriends currently. It wasn’t really ever something Kara pictured when they were younger but she’d admit it was pretty exciting.

“Great, we’re trying this whole domestic approach. Given both of our busy schedules, but..”

“You set the oven on fire again?” Giggling at the playful shove she got Kara just giggled even more when Alex admitted that yes, that had happened and they’d ended up getting take out.

“Oh, I uh, I also may have asked her if she wanted to come on our camping trip...Which I hope is okay, I should have ran it by you first,”

“No, no Alex of course it’s okay! I mean it’ll be fun and I don’t see why you shouldn't invite her. I like spending time with her and I do want to get to know her better, so it is totally okay with me if she joins us.”

“Great...Awesome, I’ll be sure to tell her. Maybe you should invite Lena? Do you think she’d go for it”

Before Alex had even finished her suggestion Kara had snorted and was giggling once more. “I...I don’t know. I mean as amazing and as adorable as it would be to have a girlfriends weekend, I can’t really see Lena roughing it in the woods...I mean you should see her place, it’s like huge. And spotless. Like it looks like she just bought it, every time I go there. But...I mean it would be kind of nice. And I do want her to meet you, formally. Not bickering with each other outside the bar. She doesn’t really like...social things though, which is weird to say considering who she is. But she doesn’t like um...personal social things,”

Nodding in understanding Alex gently squeezed Kara’s calve, giving her a small smile. “Well don’t worry about it, I mean it’s up to you if you’d want to ask her, but I’m okay with her coming and Maggie is as well, she’s actually the one that brought it up. But if she doesn’t want to then no worries, we can find something else to do to meet, like dinner on a private jet or something,”

Chuckling Kara shook her head, being the one to give Alex a small shove this time. “Oh har har. But that does sound nice, I’ll ask her. Who knows she might be a camping Queen!” shifting to sit up Kara fidgeted a little once more before glancing up at Alex. “Thank you...for wanting to include her. I know you still might not be a hundred percent supportive but, it means a lot to me that you at least want to spend time with her,”

“You don’t have to thank me. You’re my sister, and I love you. So I’m going to give anyone you date a chance, Except for those internet match guys, because you were clearly not compatible, I mean what kind of algorithm were those sites even using”

“Thank Rao those didn’t work out. Where do you think we’d be now if they had? I mean I probably wouldn’t be Supergirl,”

“I probably wouldn’t have a girlfriend,”

“Oh yeah! I wouldn’t either,”

“You’re ridiculous,”

Grinning Kara happily hugged her sister, sighing softly in content. “I love you, Alex.”

“I love you too, dork.”

#para #p: WR #p: 017

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zucca101 · 7 years ago

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Response: The 2nd

I again ask of my viewers and followers NOT to attempt to seek this person out or cause them any inconvenience. This is my thing to tackle and had they not blocked me, I would be able to respond within the confines, but I felt it was neccesary to allow this debate to be in the public forum.

It's funny how you still try to worm your way out of having to accept that maybe, just maybe, you fucked up. Democrats aren't even fucking leftists, and never were; historically they were the more conservative party all around, over the course of the 1930s to the 1960s the parties' relative positions switched around, today they're liberals. Every other country in the world considers liberalism a right-wing ideology, at best a centrist one for a reason (hint: it has something to do with being vehemently pro-capitalist)

Incorrect. That is a pernicious and commonly held myth that does not hold up to scrutiny.

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Also, Sargon, left of center? Reads-the-headlines-and-nothing-else-of-the-articles-he-cites Sargon? Constantly complains about The Left™ like you do and constantly apes the same rhetoric coming from the far right Sargon? That Sargon? Yeah, no.

He is on the Left. He’s become disenfranchised with the Social Justice angle it’s adopted and the Islamophilia as well. And God only knows, there’s enough I disagree with him on to fill a book, but someone who actively challenged him and pored over his vids, found one thing Sargon got incorrect, and it was something he had already retracted.

I don’t agree with him on everything. But I trust him due to his intellectual integrity. Same with Teal Deer, same with the others I watch.

"And I CHALLENGE YOU to show me where I said that women should not have access to healthcare. Or even hinted at it." That's not even what I said, and you damn well know it. My implication was that you're in favor of restricting healthcare access to the poor, which guess what, if you're going to be in favor of repealing shit that makes healthcare more accessible to them, basic logic would dictate that's going to happen. You manage to go off on an entire tirade about abortion when what I was addressing was the supposed line of thought behind it.

Fair to say, but that’s not what I’m in favor of either. The Affordable Healthcare Act was like a shiny used car sold by a constantly smiling, charming salesman. It ran fine for the first stretch, but broke down after you got around the bend. Libertarian that I am, I believe such an act was foolish because it was nothing more than a scam by the insurance companies lining up to get all the business they could ever ask for because signing up for healthcare became COMPULSORY. Which is bullshit.

Also? I hate to be the one to give you the newsflash, but jobs aren't going to save society. We already work far more than we need to to keep things going, or even to afford a high living standard - most jobs that currently exist do because either it's marginally cheaper to severely underpay people for them rather than to automatize them, or otherwise only exist as an artifact of capitalism itself - many different corporations that require management, marketing that simply wouldn't exist under literally any other economic system.

I’d love to see citation for that which doesn’t reek of Socialist claptrap. Automation is progressing, to be sure, but progress is progress, right? That doesn’t mean there isn’t work to be had if you either look for it or try to find it outside of your comfort zones. I had to work at a Wal-Mart of all places, but I swallowed my pride and I did it. Didn’t enjoy it, but I did my job.

Between this and the ongoing trend towards atuomatization? Those jobs are going to disappear, and there aren't going to be new ones in sufficient numbers to avoid giant swathes of people in permanent unemployment. That's not me doomspeaking, that's a logical consequence of what's going on today.

It tickles me something fierce that you don’t actually address the automation. You think SOCIALISM would fix that? By making things so shitty that automation isn’t an option, perhaps. No, Socialism would cram everyone into a job and regardless of whether they want it or not, they MUST do that job.

By the way, speaking from years of first hand and second hand experience here: unemployed people don't actually sit on their asses all day, contrary to what you've been led to believe by people who have a vested interest in keeping everyone working for scraps.

Speaking from second hand experience myself, I’ve had friends and friends of friends who NEVER got real jobs and instead collected food stamps they bartered for room and board. I’ve known people who have chosen to panhandle and beg on the street rather than go to a job. (And to be fair, that’s non-taxable income…) So I’m afraid anecdotal evidence from either of us is not enough to conclusively prove this one.

Therefor…

http://www.epi.org/publication/missing-workers/

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/03/07/employment-vs-unemployment-different-stories-from-the-jobs-numbers/

Jobs aren't the only way to contribute to society, most artists do work that can't support itself under capitalism (and that logically the artist themselves wouldn't be able to keep themselves fed on without at the very least some sort of social safety net), and if we only kept going with that art that proves to be profitable enough to support someone, thereby only appealing to the lowest common denominator?

And…. And you think COMMUNISM or SOCIALISM will let you art the way you want to? At least in Capitalism, an artist can make money for their work! Hell, the internet and Patreon has made it easier than ever for someone to make a living with their art or at least supplement their living. I know HUNDREDS of artists who balance art for its own sake, art for income and a normal job. And they’re not unique in that sense. Art enriches a culture, absolutely, but when it’s dependent on the government… then why would one go BACK to a normal job if they can make a period blood painting, throw it on the wall and demand money from the government? Art should be independent of governmental meddling.

And if you ask Joe Average if he would rather be COMPELLED by the government to pay forty bucks every month to contribute to art or fill his car’s gas tank, buy a few bags of groceries for his family or get used shoes at the Thrift Store, what do you think he’d do?

Art flourishes when free of meddling.

You’re an artist, yes? Suppose you got a check from the government for creating art… but suppose your art did not hold up to some arbitrary definition? It’s taxpayer money after all. So you would have to create art… but only as the government sees fit. Which is no different than making art by commission… except for the fact that under capitalism, you can create art as work, you can create art after working hours, you can create art just to make someone smile. You aren’t beholden.

I can tell you right away this world would be an immensely darker place for it, and all that precious inflation art would vanish overnight.

Heh, the one I had in mind at the top of my list when mentioning those hundreds of artists is a very prominent one. He works a daily job, he makes money with his art, and he makes art for its own sake.

Take a look at this picture…

https://zucca-xerfantes.deviantart.com/art/Berlin-Wall-piece-from-Reagan-Library-612126840

Riddle me this…

The side you see if colorful and full of art and vibrant colors and the other side is matte gray, untouched.

Take a WILD guess which side was the Commies’…

In addition to that, it's beyond unethical to force people who can't work to beg for scraps from charities that both A) impose their will on them (like the Salvation Army), and B) even if all perfectly good natured, wouldn't collectively have the resources to support everyone anyway, especially not when it's entirely within the state's means to give those people a decent standard of living.

Uh, I think I already said that I’m not against government assistance for those who are literally unable to work.

As for your examples, the Salvation Army’s policy is NOT to deny service to trans or homosexual people. A same sex couple can be permitted, but as separate individuals. I don’t hold to that part, but hey, their house, their rules, and they’re not turning them away outright. Now while it’s true that SOME SA people refuse service, that is not the organization’s policy. And considering they saved the life of an IRL trans friend of mine, I am STRONGLY disinclined to believe smear stories.

As for the second, See first paragraph in this section.

"Constantly pretend to…. universally bad…? WHAT….?" You know damn well what I was talking about. The constant "oh, Muslims throw gay people off of buildings all the time! You should be thankful!" takes? The kind of bullshit that you spout to propagate hate against them in the name of "protecting us" when you subsequently turn around and support people like Mike Pence who wishes we'd all vanish, one way or another? I see you, and your cutesy "but I have black friends" argument doesn't fucking work here.

If you can prove me wrong about how Islam as a whole feels about homosexual people and transsexual people, then I will apologize right now. Imams view the murder of homosexuals as A MERCY for fuck’s sake. That is some kind of bona fide evil. Yet for some reason, your fluffy Social Justice Totem Pole places a Death Cult’s feelings above YOUR RIGHT TO *LIVE* SO JUST EXCUSE THE SHIT OUT OF ME FOR CALLING IT OUT.

And supporting Mike Pence….??? I couldn’t give less of a crap about him if I tried. The dude is an advocate of conversion therapy, which does not work. Case closed. Frankly I think Trump picked him for the same reason Obama picked Biden. Assassination prevention! ‘You might kill me, but SERIOUSLY, look at THIS guy… you want HIM instead?’

Jokes aside, I don’t agree with Pence. If, God forbid, he became president, I’d support the office but if he started making life harder for the gay people for no reason, then I’d be fundamentally opposed.

Again, you know this, but damned if you’ll permit that to get in the way of a good strawman whoopin’, eh?

And I find it ASTONISHING that you lie to yourself that Pence is the one to be feared when there is nothing he can legally do to hurt you, but the Death Cult wants you to actually die and are SANCTIONED in such acts.

Pulse Nightclub ring a bell? Fifty innocent people murdered by a guy whose religion told him that his only salvation for his sins was to become a martyr.

By the way, you also don't get to decide who's actually trans and who isn't. Trans people detransition or don't bother transitioning for any number of reasons. Doesn't mean the person underneath isn't transgender, most of the time it's just because society is so fucking harsh against us that they decide living in the wrong body and being seen the wrong way by others is less painful than the outright hostility we can expect on a daily basis.

I’m speaking real here… I cannot possibly understand what it’s like to be Trans. I cannot appreciate the struggles that a trans person is forced to go through. A friend of mine lost her wife and her children because she transitioned. And she’s one of the most gentle and decent souls I’ve ever known.

But she is a real Transsexual. Not some idiot child enamored by the idea of being Transsexual. Not some teen who wants to piss off their parents, or some snowflake who wants to be that much more special. What they do is an INSULT to the Trans people who struggle with it. Who, as you have pointed out, have a ton of shit they have to put up with without their struggles being trivialized..

I’m not of the notion that Trans people have it easy because PC culture has elevated them above others (Except for the fanatical Death Cult that wants to kill them) or anything like that.

I disagree with that notion which is held by a large number of YouTube personalities I watch regularly.

However… in the same way I have nothing but contempt for idiotic children and childish adults who pretend to have Multiple Personality Disorder because they think it’s some kind of fun game where The Doctor and Loki play around in their head, I can’t stand the same kind of idiot children who think they can switch their gender like a toggle and to be SUPER SPECIAL AWESOME have a fantasy word to describe their nonexistent gender.

But oh no, I’M the scientific illiterate. >_>

As for "you don't have the right not to fuck a trans person" (lol), literally nobody is actually saying that - those takes are about dismissing the idea of having sex with someone who's trans out of hand, not saying no if the opportunity were to actually come up.

…

Honest question, you haven’t heard of Riley Dennis, have you? Very prominent Trans YouTuber who has numerous videos now shaming straight people for not wanting to get into a sexual relationship with a trans person.

Riley is of the mind that straight people don’t have a right to refuse, lest they be bigots. >_>

And if you think that’s an absurd thing to say, then bless you. We’re in agreement.

And if it were just Riley, that’d be one thing, but here on Tumblr and on Twitter, there are posts saying much the same, but not in the weasely, round-about way Riley did.

Do I think that’s the majority opinion? No.

But it is not a case of ‘Literally no on believes that’.

And if Christians have to be lumped in with wretches like the KKK and Westboro, well then... what’s good for the goose ought to suffice for the gander, hm?

As for where you're anti-science? Ho boy, where do I begin. Those hot anti-climate change takes of yours are a good start, dismissing everything that happens in that regard as "just the weather" when sea level rise, melting ice in the polar areas as a result of it, and year after year of hottest yearly average temperatures have not only been happening for at least the past century, but have also been accelerating more recently. I'd know, I literally live in one of the places directly affected by this. Most of this country is below sea level, we keep having to build up our dams and dunes even higher to avoid flooding the damn place like what happened back in 1953. To dismiss all that as "the weather" is beyond foolish.

I never said Climate Change isn’t real.

Nor have those I’ve reblogged.

The notion of manmade Global Warming is what is contested.

See, there was a smart way to go about spreading the message and a stupid way to go about it.

The stupid way was to let hypocritical hacks like Al Gore dominate the stage.

The smart way would’ve been to appeal to everyone’s common need to save money and how many green tech save water, electricity and gas bills.

But nope…. Shaming was WAY more fun and satisfying. And now it’s become politicized.

I’m a wildlife conservationist of a sensible variety. Sharks, whales, rhinos and cheetahs are being driven over a cliff and it needs to stop.

And there are more than a few Conservatives on the same boat. Michael Savage, radio host, for instance.

But stereotyping and shaming is SO MUCH MORE SATISFYING TO THE BASE URGE OF APPEASING ONE’S INNER RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION.

ISN’T IT?

"Capitalism gives everyone the same shot at living" is an even more ridiculous take if I ever saw one. Yes, I'm sure my disabled, mixed and poor ass has the exact same chances as Reginald who can simply ask daddy for money to start up any business he likes, or hell - just live off of that, put it all in stocks, hire some people to make sure his investments don't go to waste and be set for life! He doesn't even need to work! At all! No rich person does!

Step away from the Marxist teacher, amigo. They are NOT your friend…

You’re full of shit.

I’ll out and say it right here.

You are so full of shit on this one that your eyes are turning brown.

You’re just barfing up the same politics of envy nonsense that every single frakking Socialist hack barfs up.

“I can’t work because there’s some rich guy out there who has more stuff than I do!!!! HARUMPH!!!!!!!!” Do you hear yourself...?

Does the nature of your disability preclude you from doing ANY work? If so, then that is a case wherein you should be lent aid.

But if you have your hands… you can work. If you have your legs, you can work. If you have your eyes, you can work. If you have your wits, you can work. If you can’t find work, look harder. Or make your own. That’s what I did. I was destitute only seven years ago. And I’ve built myself up. And that was all done with clinical depression weighing me down like lead.

Self-determination? Ah yes, being forced to slave away at a minimum wage job because you simply can't get hired elsewhere for the rest of your life, or starving. That's self-determination in the same sense that having the choice between following orders and maybe be allowed to live, or don't and be killed when someone holds a gun to your head is. Venezuela, or any other socialist country in the world is/has been hardly perfect, but you know what's not helping?

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WORK AT A MINIMUM WAGE JOB FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

Sorry, sorry… you’re like the fiftieth person whose thrown that at me and it gets cringier every time I hear it… I apologize.

But seriously, if you think that min wage is for life, you’ve not made very good decisions.

You start at the bottom and work your way up. Just because you spend a few years flipping burgers doesn’t mean you’re stuck there!

Fuck… you can apprentice with a plumber and be making SIX FIGURES in FIVE YEARS!

I kid thee not!

Fascist protestors literally burning supplies that are already hard to get by. Action taken by the US to undermine pretty much any socialist country that has ever existed. As for more internal problems? Guess what, those can be improved upon. It's an economic system, not a religion.

Can be? Doubt it, but maybe.

Will be? No.

And as for being an economic system and not a religion…

That’s a mighty tall claim, considering the fact that Socialism tends to butt out religion and replace it with itself. Take China for example. All their rich culture, their ancient heritage, their majestic architecture, their thousands of years of history and artifacts…. FUCKING RUINED BY A LITTLE SHIT WITH HIS LITTLE RED BOOK.

The very basic premise you utterly fail to process here is that this shit is subject to constant rethinking and revision, something made impossible when some strongman figure decides to take power, no matter what side of the political spectrum they're on - that said, the right loves those far, far more than anyone left of center will, as a matter of basic principles that define either side.

Which is one of the fundamental flaws in Socialism and Communism. You can’t build off of that when the foundation is garbage. And how many MOUNTAINS OF CORPSES do you wish to produce before we ‘Get Socialism right’?

Thanks, but Capitalism has existed LONG before Socialism.

Otem from the Mountain People went to Trajk of the Plains People because the Plains People make masterful spears. He traded a basket, which the Mountain People make better than anyone, including the Plains People, for a spear. Both people are wealthier as a result.

And that also leads us to why I consider right-wingers universally shitty people: plainly speaking, they simply are.

And you call ME the bigot…?

It's at best ignorant, at worst astonishingly hypocritical as can be to act like you care about the poor, only to deliberately make their lives harder using the political apparatus in place.

You know that is not the motivation of capitalists. And if that’s what you think, then you are simply incorrect.

You can't say you care about groups of people, then vote for those who are all too happy to take their rights away.

I DO care and I disagree with the ban. While I find it iffy to put people who deal with what Trans people do into severely high-stress situations, if they believe they can hack it, I believe they have a right to stand proudly beside the other defenders of the country.

Actions speak louder than words, and actions that affect an entire country weigh far more heavily than those taken on an individual basis - giving money to individual homeless people simply doesn't counterbalance supporting the people who make sure they can't sleep anywhere by putting spikes out in public places.

Spikes out? It’s the LABOR PARTY in the UK who want to fine homeless people a thousand pounds for sleeping in public.

See my above points for further rebuttal. I’m not repeating myself.

Don't bother acting like I'm saying all this out of ignorance either - I've been there myself. I've had a right-wing phase, I only need to look back at my own past actions to see the hypocrisy that lies underneath.

I’m not going to say that everyone one the Right are Saints. You know that’s not my position. I also don’t think everyone on the Left are foolish. Fuck, I don’t even think the majority of them are bad people at all! I think they’re people whose hearts are generally in the right place, but feel rather than think. But you are, inversely, able to forgive EVERY sin of the Left while, and I quote, labeling every right-winger as universally bad people.

That is some FRIGHTENING SHIT right there, amigo. That you can de-humanize EVERYONE on the opposite political spectrum because you’re so high on your own moral superiority that you’ve willfully blinded yourself.

And while ignorance itself is forgivable, you've repeatedly shown not to care in the slightest for anything that would lead you to reconsider your ideas, nor do you have any interest in actually putting your money where your mouth is on the grander scale with just about anything you mentioned in your post.

HAH… if you only knew…

So yeah. Come back to me when you've learned to genuinely care about other people beyond those in your direct personal sphere.

So you’re moving the goalposts, huh?

I contested that I’m not the evil strawman you have created and now you’re saying ‘Well, you may care about the people around you, BUT WHAT ABOUT EVERYBODY ELSE?!’

Friendo… I can’t care about everybody else. Everybody else are adults, or will be someday. Then everybody else can care about everybody else. They’re my neighbors and I genuinely wish them well. I’ll help a stranger’s reasonable request just for the asking. But I am not Atlas. I cannot take on all the problems of the world. I can voice my opinion on how they should be dealt with, to be sure. Because I have that freedom.

I care for my country and fellow citizens, and I will vote according to how I believe they can best be helped. But it is *not* my responsibility to solve all of their problems for them.

Even if I could, I would not. Because it’s our problems and our struggles that make us grow.

The butterfly cannot fly if it doesn’t struggle its way out of the cocoon. A well meaning person may peel the cocoon away, but that dooms the butterfly to a flightless life.

Buddha said that life is a struggle. And he wasn’t wrong there.

But while we can help our friends, our neighbors and even strangers, that does not mean that it’s relative across the board.

Poverty in the West is a child asking his father why he’s crying as he weeps over a stack of bills on the table. Poverty in the third world is emaciated children with rice-bloated bellies.

Both are heartbreaking, but both are unique to their places of origin and therefore are not comparable.

You can lie to yourself all day about who I am, what my motivations are and what my heart is like.

But if you found out who I am, what I’m like, how I behave, then you may be willing to face down your other prejudice against an entire group of people you have frighteningly labeled as universally evil.

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awed-frog · 8 years ago

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Hi! I've just read your meta masterlist written for someone who wanted to convince their friends that deancas is real. First of all - thank you, what a treat to have it all in one place. The best Matrix red pill of them all. Second of all - "the entire S8, which was basically a demented Jane Eyre AU" - could you elaborate on that? I'm mighty interested.

Hi! Thanks for that - uhm - it’s missing a lot of stuff, though. I’m sure there are better masterposts out there, and I actually looked for them, but all I could find was fanfiction stuff.

As for the Jane Eyre thing - I should say I’m a fan of the Brontë sisters, so it wasn’t supposed to be an insult or anything, but it’s hard to deny that those kind of novels (particularly Wuthering Heights) are over the top and überdramatic and there’s almost an unhealthy focus on love and falling in love and what happens if you lose that and how your life can never be complete without that one person who means everything, and if that person is your foaming-at-the-mouth insane half-brother, so be it. And the thing is, Supernatural seasons often hinge around powerful and borderline soap-operish themes (the whole ‘almost orphans desperately looking for their father while killing things’ was very Dickens, in a way - if Dickens had been high on opium and cocaine and stuff, that is), but S8 really went above and beyond. I mean, even without the big love story for the fucking ages supporting the entire narrative arc, it was full of OMG and oh no! moments -

Sam is all alone in the world and may have found love but oh no! his brother’s back from the dead and super pissed and oh no! the woman he probably loves is actually not a widow and OMG what next?

Hunter Dean found himself a new best friend but oh no! he’s a vampire drawn to human blood but OMG he’s promised to abstain forever and fight his own instincts every day for eternity but oh no! what happens if he can’t?

There is a way to banish all demons from the Earth but oh no! it’s a magic spell that requires a human sacrifice and oh no! Sam actually wants to do that and is it guilt or depression or martyrdom or OMG is he simply that heroic??!?

- so much Gothic extravaganza, the list could go on and on. But, as I said, at the heart of it all are Dean and Cas, and what’s going on with them is so sappy and romantic even Charlotte Brontê would have edited some stuff out.

Like, I don’t even know where to start.

At the beginning of the season, Dean is precipitated in a world of darkness and monsters. He fights his way out for an entire year, and during that time he prays to Cas every night - Dean, who normally doesn’t pray at all. We know he’s tortured and desperate, because part of him believes Cas is dead (because Cas always comes when Dean calls, right?) and all of him knows it’s his own fault, because he forced Cas to fight even if Cas wasn’t in his right mind and Jesus, ALL the regrets and ALL the guilt. Then he finally finds Cas, who first refuses his manly and chaste affection and then pushes Dean to safety and chooses to die in that hellhole. This is so incredibly traumatic that Dean erases that entire memory as he makes his way into the real world (and, remember, we’re talking about Dean ‘I remember what was done to me in Hell’ Winchester here - I guess losing Cas was more painful than that?), which is just as lonely and brutal and hostile as the one he left behind (cue all the drama about Sam and Benny and Crowley killing everyone he can get his hands on). As he fights on, Dean starts to see Cas’ ghost everywhere, which is, like, standard behaviour for a Romantic hero or heroine but also legit what happens to you when your brain suffers such a heavy loss it can’t cope (if you’re not reading this alone at night, I recommend you check out this article about Japanese cab drivers picking up ghost passengers after the tsunami, and this BBC radio program explaining why it happens). This is obviously distressing for Dean, but then, as he’s fast approaching his breaking point, Cas actually shows up in person - he cannot explain how he found Dean, since Dean still has the anti-angel tattoo on his ribs, but wait - we know Cas can sense longing, right? so that’s why and if that isn’t the most tragic, romantic thing you’ve ever heard, get out. But there’s worse to come. Before that, though, we’re treated to a brief comedic interlude featuring the sappiest love trope ever - ‘all grown up’ - as Cas retires to the bathroom (and why) to clean up and reappears all handsome and clean-shaven, causing Dean an erection and much embarrassment.

(I still can’t believe that is a thing that actually happened, by the way.)

Next, of course, there’s the whole ‘Cas has been trained and programmed to kill Dean against his will and beats him up in a darkened crypt and nothing can happen now everyone is doomed doomed doomed but wait I NEED YOU and BAM, suddenly the mind control is gone and even someone with the whole of Heaven’s power behind her can’t come between Cas and Dean and Cas will never hurt Dean and what the fuck is even happening?’ episode, which, again, how was that an actual thing? Sometimes I think we were all high during that season and we had a collective hallucination or something. And next there is all the ‘You didn’t trust me? You didn’t trust me, I almost died to get you out, I would have died, I did not leave you’ drama as Dean finally remembers what happened (he doesn’t, by the way: Cas heals his brain, and those memories come back), and meanwhile in the background there’s more over the top and dramatic stuff going down - Sam being weird and volunteering to die and Benny also volunteering to die and Dean can’t save anyone and can’t do anything and now BAM, turns out Cas is also dying, or leaving forever, anyway, and there was so much unsaid stuff between them I remember fainting and melting into my couch during various episodes and thank God for smelling salts. And after all this torture and torment and ALL the love and ALL the pain, the very last episode was the worst of the worst - Dean must basically say goodbye to the only people he cares about and would do anything to spare, because both of them are dying, and it’s a sort of Sophie’s choice too because Cas is gone and Dean doesn’t have time to focus on that because SAMMY and at the end we’re left with him half supporting his brother’s weight as they look up at a sky full of falling angels (and is Cas one of them or did they kill him already and aaaaargh).

So, look - I’m even leaving out stuff, and it’s still almost unbearably sugary and tragic - it’s not like they haven’t had other weird moments between them, but this season alone is more romantic than, say, the entirety of Jane the Virgin, who’s supposed to be about romance, or even Grey’s fucking Anatomy, where, sure, you get those random episodes where a train explodes and people are stuck all over the city and you can’t save all of them and surprise! you’re probably dying yourself BUT you also get some time to breathe in between and episodes where almost no one’s fighting and people are having sex and how come they never sleep, seriously? And what I just can’t believe is that we’re the only ones to have both sides here - Dean still doesn’t know about the thousand Deans Cas was forced to kill, or about those convoluted reasons Metatron had for cutting out Cas’ Grace, specifically, and Cas doesn’t understand how close Dean came to tell him those three stupid words which would have solved and changed everything, and he doesn’t get why Dean was hurt by his choice to remain in Purgatory, and how much, and he must ignore or disregard, by now, those random spikes in Dean’s arousals, because he assumes that’s what humans do or whatever and he probably never realized he should have hugged Dean back that time on the river bank, and what it meant to Dean that he didn’t. See? Tragedy and misunderstanding and Dean being an actual Gothic heroine and Cas being all Rochester-y about things (early Rochester, I mean, the one who was determined to be a martyr and could not believe someone as smart as Jane would ever find his old ass interesting in any way).

I know we always say it, but that’s honestly how I feel all the time - I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking here, because you cannot write a story like this, you cannot insert all these tropes and bend and twist and narrative so stuff will only work with the foundation of a Great Love, and not see it. You physically cannot, especially if you’re a trained screenwriter and this is literally your job. So they do see it, and what? I don’t mind the UST and the pain and the slow-burn (much), but I still wish they would make it clear that this is indeed where they’re going, because they can’t keep writing this shit and pretending they aren’t. It’s - if someone had written S8 as a Destiel - canon divergent after S7 fic on AO3, I’m not sure I would have read it. So gay that it’s almost OOC, I would have thought, and there’s not even the comfort of some smut - it’s all angst, all the way, and come on - even this show is not that gay.

Except it is, isn’t it?

Lucky us.

#ask #spn meta #destiel #deancas #spn season 8 #love tropes #love tropes everywhere #seriously #wtf

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abanomath · 4 years ago

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Rant time: DC’s Tone Deafness

So I don’t really like ranting or being negative, but DC Universe recently released an article to celebrate pride month about the Top 5 canon and non-canon LGBTQA+ relationships in Young Justice.

And the tone deafness is just off the charts. Like most of the world, I’m not American so I needed someone to screen-cap the actual article for me. I’m going to organize my thoughts and go down.

General

For one, its pretty obvious the writer didn’t look at the source material. This article sounds like it was written by someone filled in on the basics and told to write a good PR article for DC.

1. Kaldur/Wyynde

2. Marie Logan and Rita Farr

3. Harper Row and Halo

(and don’t even get me started on the fact that this show has made New Genesis tech gendered before, with Sphere. And even gender the bioship in the same season they pull this for Halo).

4. Bluepulse

In addition, the showrunners made it clear they did not like this ship over the several years the show has been off the air. And in Season 3 they give Jaime a girlfriend....who is a lesbian in the comics. Now Traci and Jaime did date in the comics before she came out, and this is another Earth. But when the sole purpose of their relationship being on screen was to tell the audience that bluepulse wasn’t happening, choosing a lesbian character to play the cis straight girlfriend is a bit of a slap in the face. again.

5. Bart Allen and Eduardo

Queerbaiting, nuff said.

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almaasi · 7 years ago

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reaction post typed while watching SPN 12x21 “There’s Something About Mary”

in which i lose my shit for a full hour, reach peak despair, trigger temporary depression, and then proceed to watch in lowkey sarcasm mode with emotions switched off!!!! what fun

08:46pm

...........buckleming episode

instead of watching this, did i put it off for three hours? did i pet our new dog at length (a rescue staffordshire bull terrier cross, who we have named seven!!! after seven of nine from star trek: voyager. yes, like the number 7.), watch half an episode of columbo with my family, have a shower, and then watch 35 minutes of dan and phil playing that horse prince game ?

quite possibly

(read: yes)

sidenote: i just googled “staffordshire bull terrier” and found a picture. seven looks almost exactly like this, including the lil white socks ~ SHE’S SO SWEET and she passed her Good Dog Test so she gets to stay with us now!~ (my sister found her abandoned on our road, vet said she’d been kept with pigs, her leg was broken and didn’t heal right. and she’s an adult but hadn’t been registered to anyone. FINDERS KEEPERS)

new doggo > a brad buckner + eugenie ross-leming episode EVERY TIME

post-episode addition: oh look how much life i had in me before this

08:58pm

why does wikipedia say the next two episodes are both airing on may 18th

i guess it’s a double-bill finale

08:59

URGH okay fiiiiine i’mma watch this now

the preview made the script seem okay but i’m guessing that the better writer wrote that bit

also! @cassammydean and i were talking about the last episode, and we realised that i’d misinterpreted that final scene.

it looked (to me) like, while mary was tied up, her phone rang, and ketch went over to it. then the camera panned up and ketch had turned into toni. and i legit thought ketch and toni were the SAME PERSON (shapeshifter maybe) and i got to expressing how cool that was, and how that brought back the ~gay subtext~ from 11x23 with the rainbow light on toni’s face, because if ketch=toni, and ketch bangs mary, then that’s kinda non-heterosexual since gender isn’t a defined thing for ketch=toni

EXCEPT

i realised i’d seen it all wrong. ketch starts to move over to mary’s phone, but then camera pans up, and toni comes in from the oTHER SIDE and answers it. she’s wearing the same grey suit as ketch was. I WAS TRICKED BY THE COSTUME CHOICES. they were both in the room, ketch in front of mary, toni behind her, wearing the same suit.

and i’m still kinda bummed because if ketch=toni that would’ve been really cool imo

09:09

oh no eileen is in this episode

I DON’T WANT HER TO DIE

WHO LET THE DEADLY DUO WRITE THIS

PLEASE DON’T DIE HORRIBLY EILEEN I LOVE YOU YOU’RE SO IMPORTANT

SHE AND SAM NEED TO BE TOGETHER

IF SHE DIES IN THIS EPISODE I WILL TEAR THROUGH MY LAPTOP SCREEN, SWIM ACROSS THE OCEAN INSIDE A CABLE, POP UP THROUGH THE DEADLY DUO’S COMPUTER SCREENS AND PULL OUT ALL THEIR HAIRS ONE BY ONE

INCLUDING THEIR EYELASHES

post-episode edit: is there a wikihow article for this i’d like to give it a go

09:13

NO NO NO NO NO

PLEASE GOD NO

please let her still be alive dear god no

i’m fucking shaking i can’t watch this

;A;

09:15

NO BAD PUPPY

MY DOG IS BETTER THAN YOUR DOG, KETCH

fuck you, up the nose with a cactus

09:16

are you ever just nauseous because the deadly duo not only exist in this world, but write for a show that deserves so much better

09:18

IT FUCKING HURTS MY FEELINGS THAT DEAN CHECKS BEHIND THE SHOWER CURTAIN FOR A BLOODY CORPSE OF THE PEOPLE HE LOVES

FROM ANY OTHER WRITER I’D BE LIKE “OH HE’S SCARRED BY HIS MEMORIES THIS IS AN INTERESTING AND HEARTBREAKING CHARACTER THING”

BUT FROM THESE TWO I’M LIKE “OH THANKS FOR RUBBING IT IN OUR FACES YOU MISOGYNISTIC ASSPRICKS”

///BREATHES INTENSELY

09:21

look

have i ever made it clear that these writers make me very angry

BECAUSE THEY MAKE ME SO FUCKING ANGRY

09:23

sam gets worried when he hears from jody

my heart just dropped

fuck

if any other favourite charatcters are dead

i swear to god i’m

i don’t even know i’m

please

i think i need to ragequit before this fucks me up because i can feel it coming

09:25

eileen

welp that’s it i’mma cry

if there is a fucking petition to get these writers fired and/or assassinated i want to know about it

...i’m not crying

i’m

a n g r y

//sits and stares at my screen

i hate them.

why

what the fuck do they think they’re doing

ugh i’m exhausted already

i’m so tired of these writers, and specifically these ones. the rest of the season is fine. it’s the fact these fuckheads have 5 episodes a season and they clearly take extreme pleasure in sucking the joy out of a show that fuels a community of people. they kill the characters we love IN THE MOST DISTRESSING WAY POSSIBLE with no sensitivity whatsoever

it fucking disgusts me, okay

they’re not just bad writers, they’re clearly horrible people

there’s no kindness or redemption on their stories, they’re literally just trying to torture us (NOT A COMPLIMENT), and i’m sure they feel gleeful when they see people crying (if they even look up fan responses, which i doubt, given the years of complaints and constructive criticism they’ve clearly ignored)

listen, i’m no stranger to feeling good when my work affects someone, all right. neither am i a stranger to killing beloved characters for emotional effect, but sweet jesus theRE’S ALWAYS A BETTER WAY TO DO IT THAN A COLD OPEN WHERE A BELOVED CHARACTER WHO REPRESENTS SO MUCH TO SO MANY PEOPLE HAS NO LINES AND IMMEDIATELY GETS TORN TO FUCKING SHREDS

the list of things they’ve ruined on this show is so long i need that gif of crowley unrolling his scroll across the floor

idk what to do now. do i want to watch this? no. fuck no.

am i gonna watch anyway just to get it out of the way so i can never watch this shit again? yeah fine why the fuck not my evening is already ruined

(ha, and my mother always asks why i don’t rewatch the show with the family. because of these writers.)

09:43

this has taken me an hour and i’m 4 minutes in

what a waste of my life

09:44

i dont have words

how dare they do this to sam

09:45

i feel sick

i’m so tired

..........i kinda wanna die

man i really wish i had a friend here who i could hug and talk shit about these writers with

09:47

sam: “i wannA PUNCH SOMETHING IN THE FACE”

you and me both dude

can we write “buckleming” on a dartboart and blow a round of bullets through it

09:53

jesus christ this is a clusterfuck of triggers

i wanna go home

09:54pm

well i’m 9 minutes in, this is so hard to watch and i’m goddamn tired

i wanna stop honestly

the only good thing i can say about this is that the director (p. j. pesce) is good, the shots are visually interesting, and the pacing of the editing is not something i’ve noticed on this show before

i dunno whether just to take a break or what

i don’t want to come back and have to watch this next week

i wish this didn’t exist

the problem is i’m invested in the overall story. over the years i keep compelling myself to quit this show because of these writers, but ultimately i keep coming back because i love the characters so much

i can’t just stop

but every time i pause this video file, my brain blanks out and the world is peaceful again

i wonder if it’s possible for just this episode to trigger depression? because i’m so empty right now

10:00pm

yup i’mma take a break and come back to this in a bit

10:04

just thinking, while looking over the list of spn episodes and their writers

if i wasn’t part of the spn fandom, and didn’t check which writer wrote what, i’d dislike this show just because of these writers, and i wouldn’t even realise it was the same writers over and over.

the kind of shit they write is exactly what puts me off a show. shows like ‘castle’ or ‘the x files’ or ‘psych’ are good overall, but occasionally they’ll have a problematic thing that i can ignore for one episode, recognising that it’s a one-off writer, and i’ll stick with the show. but spn has those kind of issues four or five times a season, when these two are writing - and not in a small way, either. if i was a casual watcher, i’d have ragequit already, thinking it was just how the show is.

and i’d probably vote this show 3/10 and never watch it again

just because of these two writers

10:19pm

i’m back

i shall eat some things with sugar in them

and tell myself It’s Okay!! They’re Just Fictional Characters!!

YEAH!!!

..........NOPE

they’re fictional charatcters and they mean a lot to me and other people and the writers are basically killing our friends so

YEAH LET’S DO THIS

c: C: C:

/sarcastic smile

me: haha fuck you

10:24

do we praise them for canonising john’s abuse

10:25

“repealed and replaced”

well that’s another way to set my blood boiling

10:27

current emotion: middle finger up

10:29

oh look a black guy

let’s see... bad guy, dead guy or doormat?

my money’s on all three

10:33

that line would’ve been cooler if crowley said “dagon dead and gone”

10:34

“the winchesters’ love slave, castiel”

*steeples fingers and peers over the rims of my glasses*

10:38

i see dean and i just wanna go up to him and rest my forehead on his chest

and just be for a while

we’ve all been through too much