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cas-50-28-2 · 23 days

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There Are 4 Genders

Note: like any good essay on gender, this post contains discussion of rape, transphobia, and racism.

What Is Gender

Gender is axis of power and oppression, like class. Unlike class, which is one's relation to production and labour, what gender fundamentally is is much less clear. Is it another form of division of labour? A feeling? An essential and fixed aspect of one's soul that is determined by God? I think gender is fundamentally about one's position within/relative to the household. This is what makes it different from class: you can easily talk about the class of a household [1] (e.g. rich family, low-income household) but talking about the gender of a household is nonsensical - the gender is contained inside of it.

When we view gender as arising from the conditions of the household, we can begin doing actual analysis. In this analysis, I will say things like "women are meek and obedient," which obviously sounds very bad, so let me clarify what I mean. I am not saying everyone who uses the label of "woman" is meek and obedient, or that they should be, or that they're not women if they're assertive and oppositional. I'm not really trying to talk about people at all - I'm talking about the cultural archetype of womanhood, about Woman and not actual women. I do, however, mean to imply that differing from that archetype does make one less of a woman. There's no single aspect of deviation from Woman that disqualifies one from womanhood, but it all adds up - if you're loud and assertive and tall and don't wear makeup and have stubble, you are not really going to be treated as a woman in public. As someone who's been a freshly-out transfem in that position, I think we do a disservice to people in that spot by insisting that womanhood is just about whether or not you identify with it - you know that you're being seen and treated as a man. Gender is something like a social role, a social position, a performance - and as such it cannot be done alone. Other people need to be willing to go along with your gender in order for you to be able to do it (and vice-versa can try to impose a gender onto you). If your friends don't treat you as you ask to be treated then they're shitty friends, but for strangers you will need to align yourself to these archetypes. Going off of this, I want to define a narrative-ish structure, with 4 roles, that I think gives a clearer understanding of gender in the US than the traditional 2-gender model. Also, like the 2-gender model, changing your role or escaping entirely is possible.

The Genders

I want to frame the genders through a storybook metaphor. The first three are familiar (and taken loosely from the Karpman drama triangle): the Prince, the Princess, and the Monster. Monsters are a threat to Princesses, who therefore need a brave and strong Prince to protect them. In return, the Princess tends to the Prince's wounds, and probably does his housework and stuff. In general, Princesses trade their autonomy for protection. You've seen this structure a million times: it's the damsel in distress; it's Link, Zelda, and Ganon; it's every Disney princess movie before 1995; it's The Birth of a Nation. My addition to this is the fourth gender, the Treasure (also sometimes referred to as Trash). The Prince gets the Treasure as his reward for slaying the Monster. Princesses are rescued, Treasure is merely taken. Treasure is to be defended only to the extent it's convient, the Prince has no moral duties to the Treasure like he does to the Princess. Treasure is something to be used (mostly by the Prince but sometimes also by the Princess) and then discarded when it has outlived its usefulness. The name is rather ironic, because Treasure is not in fact treasured.

So how does this fairytale relate to the household? In Hortense Spillers' absolutely excellent essay "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book," she presents an analysis of the gender that enslaved black women experienced. Although slave communities certainly developed kinship groups, i.e. households, these did not resemble the white households with the Mother and Father - and these black women certainly did not receive the "benefits of a patriarchilized female gender." Spillers describes this as a "degendering" of black women, but I wanted to interpret it differently, as the assignment and not the removal of a gender. So these four genders represent, roughly, the white man who owns the plantation, his white wife, the male slaves he fears an uprising from, and the female slaves he both works and rapes. In 2024 these relations have decreased in intensity, but are absolutely still there, and I hope this model captures the essence of that relation that has managed to survive until present day. However, I think this model is also applicable outside just white-black gender relations, and I'll give examples as I go over the genders in individual detail.

The Prince

The Prince is very close to the 2-gender notion of "man," and is usually a "he." The Prince is sort of the default, the "unmarked" category, the protagonist and therefore the least interesting. The expectations on Princes are just to slay Monsters and protect Princesses. However, the choice of Prince defines which household it is we're talking about. Since we're defining gender relative to households, different households in different cultures can assign the different genders to the same individual (more on this when we get to Monsters). The clearest examples of Princes in a given society are going to be the high-class men. The Prince is the Family Man, the Gentleman, etc.

The Princess

The Princess is, correspondingly, close to the 2-gender "woman," and is usually "she." However, if we view the autonomy-for-protection trade as the essence of Princesshood, then children are also Princesses in our culture. And like for Princes, the clearest examples of Princesses are high-class women - in the US in the 60s, for example, housewives are "more Princess" than working women. Princesses are proper victims - they are the people who have claim to "innocence", and any wrong against them must be punished. The Princess is the Proper Lady, the Good Wife and the Good Mother.

The Monster

The Monster is the dangerous Other. I like "Monster" as a term specifically because of its gender ambiguity - there's many male monsters in fiction, but also the notion of (and theory about) the "monstrous feminine," e.g. witches. Monsters can be aiming to kill, or kidnap, or rape, or more nebulously "corrupt" Princesses - they're Monsters all the same. Monsters can also pose a threat to the Prince or not, but it's not particularly relevant either way.

"Monstering" is classically done along race lines - Black "superpredators," Latin American immigrants "bringing crime," Yellow Peril, or the recent false accusation against Hamas of mass rape. However, it works with any type of foreign-ness/Other-ness/outside threat even without race, as in the anti-German WW1 poster above. Monstering is also used at home, e.g. against queerness - the constant accusations of pedophilia against queer people of all stripes, the "predatory lesbian," and the gay and trans panic legal defenses (which are some of the most revealing examples of what Monstering really is - an accusation in order to justify unlimited violence). The Monstrous feminine is understood in this framework as women who refuse to be Princesses or Treasure, and are therefore called witches, baby-killers, etc. Finally, I feel like I'm seeing an increase in placing mad people as Monsters - we know racism and homophobia are bad now, so tiktok instead embraces the dark triad and the view that there are certain types of people - narcissists, psychopaths, BPDemons, etc. - who are inherently dangerous and evil, who are Monsters. There are no longer any visual markers of Monstrosity - it could be anyone, so watch out, stay scared, and keep doing all that shit about marking your car so human traffickers don't target you.

The Treasure

The Treasure is the Other defanged and brought into the household to be used - a human with no rights, who others owe no duties to. The pronoun for Treasure is "it." I get the alternate name "Trash" from Porpentine Charity Heartscape's Hot Allostatic Load. She describes Trash as "the hyper-marginalized among the marginalized, the Omelas kids, the marked for death." Morphodyke on tumblr (screenshot for non-tumblrinas) describes the Trashing of transfems as "a systematic pattern of abuse applied to a small sacrificial portion of the population to create a class of women with no claim to community or personhood, who will never be defended or avenged, who can be safely sunk into the attrition of patriarchy's darker desires." Trash is the most materially straightforward gender - it is made up of people who are so marginalized - so close to social death or so unable to independently get the physical resources needed for survival - that they have no choice but to do whatever more-privileged people (i.e. Princes and Princesses) ask of them.

Unlike Monster, Treasure is an actual role people play, and generally with some level of awareness that that's what they are. The Treasure is part of the household - as a slave, a servant, a whore. Nobody is afraid of Treasure. A Treasure can never be considered a "victim" either - it was not innocent to begin with; when something bad happens to it, it had no right to expect better. The gendered expectation of Treasure is complete, unconditional meekness and obedience, and any deviation is harshly punished. This punishment includes both straightforward social & physical violence, but also, in the extreme, Monstering the Treasure, i.e. turning them into the type of Monster who is a Monster everywhere. This is the only place a Treasure "has left to fall," but it's quite a long fall, and so the Treasure endures its harsh role in order to avoid that fall.

Examples of Treasure are less straightforward than for other genders - survival sex workers and black women are the only groups that comes to mind as near-uniformly Treasure, and for the latter it's becoming less and less universal as the economic position of black people in the US improves. Many trans women are Treasure, and in general the more axes someone is marginalized along, the more likely they are to be Treasure - a poor disabled black trans lesbian is almost certainly going to be Treasure, even if none of those categories on their own are more than 50% Treasure. Another factor is the degree to which someone is the odd one out, the potential outcast, within their community - the only person of color or gay kid in a small town (or highschool). Also, as Monsters are associated with madness, so is Treasure with "mental illness" - the "broken" person who directs it all inward, who has no self-worth [2], who accepts whatever their partner does because they've been told nobody else could ever love them.

Pairs

I think terms in a system are best defined by their contrast with other terms, so here's a rundown through all the pairs and their differences and relations.

Prince-Princess

This relationship is the most well-tread ground. Most white feminist theory and praxis is focused on the dynamics between Princes and Princesses, and trying to improve the lot of Princesses. This has worked to the extent that the dramatic protector-protected dynamic I described above seems hyperbolic when compared to real relationships in 2024. Still, I focus on that specific aspect, protector-protected, because I think it is at the heart of the "contract" of heterosexual relationships. The idea of a strong woman who can protect herself is getting more and more popular, but even still I have yet to see a man in real life or fiction say he wants a wife who can protect him. This notion of victimhood and protection is what animates the entire narrative.

One aspect of this protection that I want to stress is that it is specifically protection from Monsters. While we now (hopefully) think of the wifebeater as a type of Monster disguised as a Prince, that is a very recent change brought about by feminist activism, and it still remains a fact that abusers are not social outcasts or psychopaths, but perfectly normal and well-adjusted Princes. The historical definition of rape provides the clearest example of this: the notion that a husband can rape his wife, i.e. that marital rape is rape, is very new. When your grandparents got married, your grandfather having sex with your grandmother against her will would not have been considered "rape" or any other type of legal or social crime[3]. Rape has been considered a crime historically not because it is nonconsensual sex - that is allowed for the Prince! - but because it is a Monster taking what should belong to the Prince. Rape is something exclusively done by Monsters to Princesses.

Prince-Monster

In the types of wars, the narrative that "the enemy is coming to take our gold and rape our Princesses" was often quite true, as wartime sexual violence was quite common historically (the word "rape" was originally a synonym for "pillage"). However, this narrative would be true on both sides of the war. In Greek society, the Greeks would be Princes and the Trojans were Monsters, and vice versa in Troy. And both sides would be using rape as a weapon of war, but from e.g. the Greek standpoint, the Trojan women were Treasure, and so nothing a Greek/Prince did to them would demean his Princely honor in any way. However, the same behavior from the Trojans/Monsters towards the Princesses of Greece was exactly what justified calling them Monsters. The difference between Princes and Monsters is not in what acts of violence they commit, but who they are violent towards[4].

Prince-Treasure

As we have established, Princes may do whatever they want to Treasure, and suffer no consequences for it. The only thing I have to add is how it can make a Treasure come to function as a sort of "laboratory." Treasure has a body like that of a Prince or Princess, but it doesn't have the rights they do, it isn't owed any dignity. Therefore, questions/experiments which would be too rude or violative for a Prince to ask/do to a Princess may be answered on Treasure. This applies to both adolescents learning about sexuality and to adults working in biology labs. For the latter, think of Josef Mengele or Henrietta Lacks.

Princess-Monster

The Monster aims to take or corrupt the Princess - Princesses are always victims, and Monsters are always perpetrators. This is the social fiction woven by gender, and has no relation to what people who are Monsters actually do to people who are Princesses. Rather, the justice systems built on the narrative of protecting Princesses from Monsters are social systems enabling Princesses to persecute Monsters. The archetypical example of this is the murder of Emmett Till - a single Princess's accusation of whistling "justified" the torture and murder of a 14-year-old boy. White women's tears - i.e. Princesses' tears - should be considered an offensive and not a defensive weapon (although not one that can be turned against Princes).

Princess-Treasure

The difference between Princesses and Treasure is rather similar to the classic Madonna-whore divide, the good wife vs the whore on the side. This can lead to the Madonna-whore complex when combined with the societal view of sex as "violation" or "dirtying" - Princes are only allowed to inflict violence upon Treasure, not on Princesses, and so if sex is a kind of violence then the Prince will only be able to get it up for Treasure and not for his lovely Princess wife. Even if not to the point of a "complex," the Prince will always have sides of himself that he only shows to Treasure, because he needs to charm the Princess, to be nice to her, to treat her right. Only with a Treasure can he vent his "darker desires," and act without pretense or restraint.

Transitioning from Treasure to Princess is possible, and I think it can be one thing what people can mean when they say they find femininity empowering. In the two-gender model, this makes no sense, as femininity = woman = disempowered gender. But with four genders, Princesses are genuinely more powerful than Treasure - they have rights and powers that Treasure does not. To transition from Treasure to Princess is to assert that you have worth and to demand rights, dignity, and respect. Therefore, if being feminine lets someone move from Treasure to Princess, then their femininity is empowering them. And I think femininity is a part of that Treasure-to-Princess transition, e.g. becoming a "proper lady" instead of a "tramp," or trans women being able to pass.

The relationship between a Princess and a Treasure in the same household is the most interesting and novel part of this entire model. In "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe," Spillers analyzes a section from the autobiographical slave narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs (writing under the pseudonym Linda Brent). During the section in question, Jacobs is regularly being raped by her "master," which arouses the jealousy of his wife. That wife then proceeds to rape Jacobs herself (probably, anything in this book about sex is highly subtextual because it was published in 1861). To quote Spillers' analysis at length (emphasis mine):

If the testimony of Linda Brent/Harriet Jacobs is to be believed, the official mistresses of slavery's "masters" constitute a privileged class of the tormented, if such contradiction can be entertained [Brent 29-35]. Linda Brent/Harriet Jacobs recounts in the course of her narrative scenes from a "psychodrama," opposing herself and "Mrs. Flint," in what we have come to consider the classic alignment between captive woman and free. Suspecting that her husband, Dr. Flint, has sexual designs on the young Linda (and the doctor is nearly humorously incompetent at it, according to the story line), Mrs. Flint assumes the role of a perambulatory nightmare who visits the captive woman in the spirit of a veiled seduction. ... Mrs. Flint enacts a male alibi and prosthetic motion that is mobilized at night, at the material place of the dream work. In both male and female instances, the subject attempts to inculcate his or her will into the vulnerable, supine body. Though this is barely hinted on the surface of the text, we might say that Brent, between the lines of her narrative, demarcates a sexuality that is neuter-bound, inasmuch as it represents an open vulnerability to a gigantic sexualized repertoire that may be alternately expressed as male/female. Since the gendered female exists for the male, we might suggest that the ungendered female—in an amazing stroke of pansexual potential—might be invaded/raided by another woman or man.

In the terminology of this essay, that final line would be "Since the Princess exists for the Prince, we might suggest that the Treasure—in an amazing stroke of pansexual potential—might be invaded/raided by a Princess or Prince." In short, Princesses can and do "use" Treasure like a Prince would: to vent frustrations, to use as a laboratory, to express "darker desires." A lot of things people ascribe to "the weak finding someone weaker to pick on" is Princess-on-Treasure violence. There is also a unique form of violence that only Princesses can do to Treasure - they can turn the Treasure into a Monster. Princess tears can be weaponized against both Monsters and Treasure, and Princesses can gain social capital by doing so: every time a Princess makes an accusation she emphasizes her own perpetual innocence and victimhood. By doing so she is conforming to the expectations of her gender, and is rewarded for that.

Monster-Treasure

As mentioned above, the boundary between Monsters and Treasure is the most fluid of the six pairs. The type of Trashing abuse described in Hot Allostatic Load (false accusations of rape) is a method of turning a Treasure into a Monster, and therefore justifying any possible violence as punishment (in the case of HAL, the specific punishment is exile). People who are "Monstered" in this manner are not like the Monsters of symmetric warfare, who are Princes in their own realms: they are Monsters everywhere, accepted nowhere, part of no household. This is just about the only position worse than Treasure, and so the threat of being sent there is the ultimate weapon for Princes and Princesses to discipline Treasure with.

As far as the actual relationship between Monsters and Treasure goes, it could be just about anything depending on the particular people or groups in question. It's not really of any concern to Princes or Princesses (except maybe to make some "look how these savages treat their women" anti-Monster propaganda), and so it's not constrained by this model. In the symmetric warfare example, the prisoners of war one side takes as Treasure from the Monsters they slay would be Princesses in the society where those Monsters are Princes. Or in a more "inter-imperialist" type of war, both the Princes and the Monsters could be fighting over who gets to own the same group of people as Treasure. Or there could be no relation at all - there aren't really any social forces determining what the relationship between a CPC member in Xi'an and a trans woman in Nebraska would be. This is not an exhaustive list, and there's even the possibility that both the Monster and Treasure in question belong to a society which doesn't fit the 4-gender model at all.

Conclusions

Unlike other models of gender, which aim to present something everyone can see themselves in, this is a model that everyone should be trying to get the hell out of. I'm a gender abolitionist - I think that doing something "because I'm a man/woman/Prince/etc." is silly and bad-faith; I think that we should raise all children the same way and that doing so will eliminate gender; I think we should end the practice of sex assignment at birth (or at any time). This model's pessimistic view of genders certainly reflects that, but I hope that you also find it helps explain your experiences a bit better. And of course, abolishing a system requires organizing within its categories (we do not end capitalism by just not identifying as proletarians).

Aiding that organizing was another main goal of this model - specifically, I think it explains the problem where feminism became dominated by rich white women and started catering towards their problems: "women" is not a single coherent gender, and the "women's liberation movement" was in fact a Treasure-Princess alliance. This alliance, like all alliances between distinct groups, fell apart once its parties had finished accomplishing their shared goals, and then the more powerful group turned on the weaker one. Alliances aren't inherently bad, and I think there's still a future for Treasure-Princess alliances, but Treasure organizers must make these alliances consciously, and be aware of the risks.

footnotes

This is not to say that class is homogenous within a household. For example, while a feudal lord's manor is certainly a lordly household, the majority of its inhabitants are going to be low-class servants.

Materialist Antipsychiatry Moment: rather than viewing this lack of self-worth as some internal illness/pathology/lack, we can see that for Treasure it is an accurate assessment of their social reality: they do in fact have no social worth. The Treasure-mental illness relation is cyclical: mental illness further marginalizes the Treasure, and being treated as Treasure makes them more "ill."

Unless they lived in the USSR, which criminalized marital rape within 5 years of its establishment - common communism W. You can play a ""fun"" game by checking on wikipedia to see when marital rape was criminalized where you live - it's probably shockingly recent

Of course Monsters are not actually violent in all cases, especially when they're an internal minority. In fact, symmetrical warfare is basically the only case where the accusations happen to be true. Still, the subject of the fabricated violence matters more than the content.

Special thanks to Jez and Nat for helping me think all of this through!

this post is also on the web at https://pi.alla.loan/gender/4genders.html for easy sharing with non-tumblrinas

#transmisogyny #feminism #misogynoir #cas-50-28-2 original #transfeminism

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tomochilife · 4 days

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Hello! Like I say in my intro post! I was planning on submitting some of... fan ocs of others fan ocs I have been obssesed almost a month... (I have getting interested again at least in Oct. 2023, but that's another story)

The first character I decided to present is Jeremy Fitzgerald! I hope yall' like this! <3

Btw, my main language is spanish and if you want to see MORE details about the story and... stuff like that... it's my carrd... and... yeah... it's all in spanish. Just saying.~

You can see here there are two differents Jeremys. One is from a "Police mystery" genre and the other is keeping the main idea of FNAF in general.

This one is from the second idea (the name of the story is "Hidden Joy of Freddy's Pizzeria") and you can see basic information like his tipology (mbti [ISFJ 9w1 so/sp Phle], enneagram, socionic, etc), gender, sexuality and age. His personality remains the same as the original idea was proposed (Rebornica), being a shy and "soft" guy with depression. The tiny only difference is that it's that he can stand up and defend himself a little bit, without depending too much on someone else. Apart from overcoming s3lfh4rM a bit and suffering from generalized anxiety. And his relationship with Mike is not a "Father - son" but only best friends almost likely to brothers (like Mordecai and Rigby from Regular Show).

He is from the first story I mention –the "Police mystery" genre one— again, you can see his tipology (mbti [ESTP 8w7 sp/so Chol/Phle], socionic, enneagram, etc...) gender, sexuality and age. He's the oldest one. The story is called: "That monster that hides in the forest". His personality is the OPPOSITIVE from the original. Being someone who is very aggressive in expressing his ideas, but when he is with his partner (or with someone he likes in general) he is softer and is more clumsy in personality around him, feeling ashamed of himself for showing that "silly" side. However, beneath that strong and aggressive personality, he protects a helpless, crying little boy who is afraid to trust the world. He just wants to protect himself. Apart from close people who understand it. They know he would never hurt them...right?

Talking a little bit of enneagram in a summarized way. But here I'm gonna explain more. :) (They are gonna be represented by different colors.)

As I mentioned before, that personality of someone aggressive and strong was a shield to protect himself, however, many times he doesn't protect himself enough due to certain patterns that others take advantage of to want something more from him (whether it be personal information about him, manipulating him, to the point of wanting to hurt him for pleasure). Instead of improving and learning, the only thing left was to simply "escape reality" so as not to feel the pain. Even going so far as to show that clumsy and submissive side of him, although you should not trust that side of him and you should help him escape from there.

When you get into a lot of stress and anxiety, this is where your thoughts give you a hard time and torture you too much with the smallest thing that doesn't even make it out of your room, sometimes even your own bed and sheets that "protect" you! Those thoughts may sound unreal, but to him they sound logical! And he is very afraid that it could happen and they will hurt him. At least he no longer plans to commit suicide to, according to him, be free.

Random doodles!

He doesn't get along with the other two. He thinks they are very irritable and embarrassed; curiously, their partner in their universe shares some of the same personality as them.

"I'm very curious to know what are your relationships with Mike (Schmidt) in your universe"

He's my best friend!

Mhpf! I'm just confessing that we have been together for 7 yea—

—He regrets the moment he reveals that information.— (In their universe, the two of them have a secret relationship due to fear of suffering from homophobia on the street)

—Spews nonsense in a way of trying to fix it.—

Extra drawing with these two bois doing cosplay of two anime characters from Blend S.

THANKS FOR READING THIS!♡

#artist #fan arts #art #digital artist #digital fanart #digital fan art #digital art #fnaf #fnaf rebornica #fnaf au #fnaf fanfic #fnaf fanart #jeremy fitzgerald

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vergess · 2 years

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Right so I'm like pretty high on account of the amount of pain I am in today, so bear with me but I'm going to talk about FFXIV in a very silly way okay rad

I miss when lifejournal let me put little titles for my cutaway link instead of 'just read more nerd~' and yeah dreamwidth still lets you but

oh my god I should crosspost this to the FFXIV dreamwidth (link)

Okay right okay so moral compulsion upheld let's chat

When I write my WOL characters (which it's a different wol per fic because I do NPCships) I find myself subconsciously emphasizing that the ones who are casters are are Openly Weird and the ones who are "physical" are Stoic (TM)

This is a fairly identifiable trend across major NPCs too, so that's likely what I am mimicking.

Casters are just very Openly Conspicuous (And Kind Of Weird). In comparison the melees are more reticent and try not to reveal their whole Deal.

Alphinaud and Alisaie are conspicuously rich, foreign twins. They sound like they learned English solely to imitate private school students on news casts. Or whatever, Eorzean.

I say this, and my estinaud heart compels me, to talk about why Estinien calls Alphinaud "little lord."

I know US audiences aren't great at picking up on this stuff, but Alphinaud specifically acts like he is a peer in standing with the highest house of Ishgard despite being a weird foreign child (16 is underage in Ishgard because of catholicism as confirmed in the AST job quests where this is pointed out as being kinda like weird according to Civilized Peoples [Eorzea, Sharlayan, Garlemald, the irony abounds] but anyway the point is Estinien would probably think under 21 is a child).

Little Lord Alphinaud is on that Yes, Master Wayne shit like 'okay little man I will do what you say but you are baby' okay I love it.

Back to other major casters: Y'shtola literally wears a Weird Scientist Outfit in ARR; like she goes around with those ridiculous goggles asking random people intense science questions (magic is a science).

Then she gets a costume change to something a little more iLVL 170, and in exchange she gets aether poisoning in her eyes that make them glow. She just walks around with glowing eyes okay. We as the player just see them as a weird white, but that's because we have different eyesight, that filter means they literally glow (see: dunesfolk lalafell eyes, wood and fibercraft 90 role quest).

So obviously her next step in being the most Visibly Magical Bitch On Hydaelyn is to fall into a coma and then start dressing like the Wicked Witch Of The First.

So yes that's a pretty conspicuous Vibe.

Though at least Black is arguably a reasonable camo colour in the deep woods.

Unlike Alisaie, who goes out in a bright red tailored coat on the battlefield and then stabs people with roses made of firelight this fucking Utena acting ass nonsense.

You see my point, I am sure. Conspicuous.

I didn't play a Gridanian starter I do not know how Papalymo fits into this because I never met him (I understand that you meet him in ARR, but he's not exactly a major character after Heavensward let alone after Stormblood).

Forchenault kind of almost makes a play for stoicism when you first meet him in his diplomatic robes and his sneering, but like actually he just dresses like that. Imagine if you just saw some guy in like full Judges Robes with Wig And Shit in regular daily life that's Forchenault he wears them everywhere he goes to fucking tromp around in the Garlean (Siberian) tundra wearing his judge outfit okay.

And then you've got Urianger (Urianger).

I was just going to leave it at that because like... how do you capture whatever the fuck Urianger has going on. The gender of this bitch is unfathomable. I am constantly callign him a he/him lesbian but since he marries Thancred there's some degree of bi at play there too but on the other hand how do you describe his decision to go become a tarot reading goth GF in the land of rainbows and fairies than "he learned what a they/them is and immediately became a he/him lesbian, like a pokemon evolving".

Anyway he has a tattoo of his university on his fucking face and speaks like he got kicked out of the Society for Creative Anachronism for not taking his period grammar seriously.

Conspicuous. Not just super visible, but super visibly themselves. A poison dart frog honesty.

Compare these Extremely Visible Acting Bitches to our Melee types.

Thancred is so fucking... IDEK man he's on that PTSD repression shit and has been since before we met him, with both his Stoic War Dad vibes in Shadowbringers and his Extreme Slut vibes preceding it being equally unhealthy coping mechanisms for his constant self worth issues. Like, someone resurrect Louisoix, I have my own phoenix summon I'm immune and I just want to talk about why your children are all so insane Louisoix because Thancred and Fourchenault show similar signs of juvenile abuse. It's fine Louisoix I just want to talk.

Lyse makes an argument just by virtue of her name not being Yda.

But also there's the fact that she convinced immigration that she was a white girl at 3 different naturalization systems for different countries and then the absolute MOMENT the fucking SECOND she heard the war was turning immediately became the most hardcore violent liberationist conceivable? (Fortunately, with a strong focus on rebuilding and stability).

Even ranged pDPS fall into this, tending to be very visibly and loudly Something Else to disguise their intentions. G'raha's bardic braggadocio did a far better job hiding his intentions (gap year) and nature (nerd) than the Exarch's ~I AM KEEPING A SECRET; PLEASE DO NOT LOOK FOR MY SECRET; THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMPLIANCE~ nonsense.

Anyway literally hiding who they are etc.

Aymeric is the pope's son and boy howdy did he throw himself into being a paladin (dark knight but that's a different fight for a different day) to make sure no one ever questioned his made up heritage with some non-Pope parents that For Sure Gave Birth To Him It's Fine Really.

Ryne also uses the Yda defense by not being named Minfilia, and takes her transformation one step further to have a completely different hair and eyes (and implicitly other features).

Hien much like Aymeric was also trying to hide his parentage hmmmmmmmmm lotta daddy issues in this game.

Wait... Gaius... Ranjit... Louisoix...

Actually wait.

Okay I'm updating my hypothesis.

Casters=demandant; Melee=avoidant is OUT

Melee=Daddy issues is IN.

Anyway I wanted to talk about the types of stereotypes people would have of casters vs melee in the setting because of this difference in personalities but actually instead I just reminded myself that the fundamental truth of FFXIV is that Dads Cause A Lot Of Trauma

In conclusion: I miss Homestuck.

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cumuluscrow · 5 months

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thoughts on the doctor who special i guess??

i don't think anyone who follows me really gives a toss about this but?? what is tumblr if not a place to garble nonsense about the things that you like

i thought it was good! not great, but definitely good, i enjoyed watching it - i mean, i was extremely fucking excited for this, my entire personality was doctor who when i was a kid during tennants (first) era (i probably would have been more excited for this but had something shitty happen recently which kind of put a damper on things)

i love david and catherine so much :') seeing them back together and as the doctor and donna is just so fantastic, the entire episode could have been complete horseshit and i'd still enjoy it because of them

love the meep, love how campy everything is, love all the practical effects and you can really tell the plot was based of the comics, it really has that vibe and it's just -chef's kiss-

i think rose has potential. i kind of want to watch all three of the specials before i really come to any solid conclusions about her character but i like her and i think she has potential

hhgh the main thing i love was just the energy, you can really tell that people care about this, despite it's flaws there's just such a feeling of everyone being there because they're enthusiastic about it and you can feel that in the episode itself, lovely lovely lovely

okay oh boy now the negatives! a lot of it... didn't really make sense, i mean, it made more sense than most of moffats time on the show (and i imagine chibnalls as well)

first thing i'll talk about is the metacrisis thing

so donna recieves her memories back, gets timelord stuff back, saves the day, dies. that all sort of makes sense. but then she comes back to life

donna had a child, and half of this metacrisis energy was transferred to her, meaning that the amount donna had in her wasn't deadly anymore! that sort of raises a few more questions, but it generally makes sense

then why... does donna appear to die at all in the first place? you know, aside from drama. when donna's timelord stuff was reawakened so was roses which meant they both became fully realised doctor-donna esque dna hybrids, but that energy already left donna when rose was born..? so why did she appear to die? that doesn't make sense to me

and the uh, binary non-binary stuff...? help? i have no fucking clue what that's supposed to mean - the stuff that rose was talking about at the end. maybe i'm thick, but i really couldn't tell what she was trying to say. i thought they were going with, you know, the literal meaning of binaries at first, but then gender was playing a role in it so it sort of came across as rose saying she was non-binary? but i thought she was meant to be a trans girl? not that you can't be both at the same time if you wish but it didn't really come across that way to me. and even if that is what they were doing what the hell has rose being a non-binary person got to do with the metacrisis and timelord stuff?? she stands there and says that she understands herself now and i'm like bitch i dont?? stuff about the doctor always presenting as male or female and she doesn't have to or something it just. it just didn't make sense to me. almost started to sound like they were saying that trans females are both male and female which is uh what?

and then the real kicker was when her and donna said we're going to do something that as a male-presenting person you'd never understand, let it go

and then they just fucking released the energy and all the timelord-ness from themselves

HUH?

(i wonder if the doctor was thinking to himself for fucks sake donna could you have done that this whole time??)

so there was no explanation as to why they could just do that, as far as i can tell?

and. the male-presenting bit oh god i guess i have to talk about this too

as far as i can gather that was some kind of weird sexist joke? which is a completely bizarre contrast when you then use a term like male-presenting person which i'm not sure anyone knows what that even means (has tumblr female-presenting nipples energy)

it's just so unnecessary. donna could have said 'something that YOU could never do doctor, let it go' and that would have a. made more sense b. not have been sexist and c. been far more in character

weird

i think what this episode started to lack was the 'audience eyes' character. that's a big part of doctor who. that's the entire purpose of the companion. but this episode didn't really have that in anyone at all and it started to feel really overwhelming and disjointed eventually

i could talk a bit more, especially about the slightly excessive performative virtue-signalling. i'm alright with a bit of it to scare away bigots but definitely started to make me wince sometimes

oh and some of the characters rose and i think lydia (the scientific advisor in the wheelchair) felt really wooden and bland and yeah no

i'm not going to though, rambled enough already and i dont want this entire post to become me criticising performative '''''''''wokeness''''''' because that's not what it should be about

okay well i really enjoyed it despite the flaws and i'm really excited for the rest! i think these problems will be ironed out in the rest of the specials and i'm also really looking forward to the new series with ncuti and millie, i LOVED millie in corrie and i've got a really good feeling about them both

cheers see ya later

#this is borderline incoherant

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hospitalterrorizer · 6 months

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diary51

11/1-2/2023

wednesday - thursday

today sucked but that's okayyy.

not really but whatever. it's not because errands themselves were stressful. but first i should list off positives of the day, i made a guitar sound just now, it's crazy feedback freakshit, really cool to me, kind of really gets the pv stuff down too, which is mental. i recorded vocals and re-wrote lyrics for that song, and i'm sure i'll need to go back in, but it's huge to have that idea down and stuff.

anyways, today sucked because my gf's mom decided, while she and my gf were out together separate from me, me in the laundromat, laying into her about basically random bullshit, from me not having a job (i try! no one wants to hire me, there's huge gaps in my employment history, i can't act right in interviews or something i guess, sometimes i accidentally put "would prefer not to answer" for questions of gender on the questionnaire things, and it's apparently not something you're meant to do) and then getting into how we behaved on the trip, she believes for some reason that i think there is no war in israel when what i said to her, days ago in arizona, was that world war 3 is not going to start and china is not looking to invade america or use a nuclear weapon on us because one why would they start mutually assured destruction, unless they destroy america totally and just america (and what would they get?? no land, no resources, they are extracting all the capital they could want because they have beaten us at manufacturing and basically everything (we still have to see if they will achieve communism tho (i hope they do))), and two like i just said, they have beaten us industrially, america wants to stoke hate for china to start something because one: america is racist and evil and two: humiliated about not being number 1 (and all boomers are too thus the china is evil fantasy). i was also pro palestine and said that israel is obviously to blame here in every way, because they hold their people hostage essentially feeding these deaths to justify greater and greater strides towards genocide. in the car, she was agreeing with me, but she just does that. she also kept talking about how she had family who were in the military, and a husband too, and like wow who cares, the first place they test all the propaganda, where all the red scare cold war bullshit hit first, panic over those paper tigers that are kept to just destroy the world if we wanna. stupid. she also brought up multiple times that i am uneducated because i didn't get my degree because i could not justify going to school during covid virtually because i would be so bad at it and stuff, so she thinks i am like a stupid uneducated hick, something she loves to use against all kinds of people!!!!! she's so classist it honestly makes me sick.

she also brought up bill maher, and how disrespectful we were, and how she was so upset hearing us make jokes, and my gf asked if she thought i liked hearing him make bathroom gender jokes, and her mom was like "well he's just a man. it's a choice. he isn't one of them right." and a bunch of other shit, so my gf came in to tell me all this, she sees her telling me, and then she just calls my gf to say that if she's going to have a conversation then at least include her, and then she literally abandons us in the fucking laundromat for a while until my gf calls her, and during the call she begins ranting about bill maher again, and how he's making jokes for a different generation and how we don't understand, and also how i need to "pick a side, he's either transgender or not." and more stupid nonsense, but she at least comes to get us again. the whole rest of the day she acts like nothing happened, and that she isn't an abusive/manipulative bitch. my gf cursed her out during the first go around, and she was so pathetic, she acted like she was being abused and had to get away from her evil daughter defending her partner and getting upset her mother is literally a stupid and bad person who can't get over gentle banter over fucking bill maher. i can't believe he's developed into this great a problem in my life. he is a demon that looms in my existence now until i die, or he dies. not that i am wishing for his death (sincere, it feels awful to wish for people to die unless they are intensely rich demons like bezos who have so much funding behind them they are literally impervious to wishing (i think my superstitious sectors of my brain are over active in unfun ways that can rule my life sometimes but whatever (just washing my hands of intent and telling everyone my intent is perfect and good and i would never hurt anybody i am just nice and happy and not evil)))

it's so whatever, literally too stupid for earth.

this isn't even all the news of the day though, my gf's brother had a party last night, and he had a friend over who was on acid, coke, weed, and booze, and he had an ego death moment, obsessed over his own death a while, shit himself, ripped his clothes off, screamed, slammed his head into their mirror and broke the thing into one million pieces or whatever, climbed on the countertop of their kitchen totally naked, screamed about dying more, and ran out of the house to beat a cop up and steal his car and drive it 5 miles out into a car with 2 people in it. there is a video.

needless to say he is traumatized, his friend is in the trauma unit, the people he crashed into are in the trauma unit, no one is going to come out of this even half okay.

hearing that, and the thing with her mom insulting me behind my back (not new but it sucks and this is the worst it's ever gotten), today is kind of a stupid nightmare. but i feel okay basically. i was more pissed earlier and my gf left a drink in the laundromat, she mentioned it in the car ride to the grocery store, and i said "another one of today's disappointments" and her mom said something and we just said it had nothing to do with her, the statement. maybe that sucked of me. whatever, kind of. i don't like being mean but how else is she supposed to take the hint that she is being not a good or even likeable person when she acts like this, and is only being delusional when she believes she's in the right.

and i totally am grateful she drives us around to help us run our errands, she doesn't have to but, like, she does it because she thinks she's going to get payment from it some day, and she also does this because literally, i hate to bring it to him again, but she has fantasies of her daughter going on bill maher or cnn, and hoping her daughter would agree with anything she says in her head, she'd get to finally have her genius thoughts spat out in the most meaningless information streams the general public are exposed to, hoping her daughter will be an 'expert' that can be used by the media to bludgeon people with basically because they are wrong and she would, being her daughter and hopefully (but in actuality she disagrees with her entirely) agree with her, and prove that she, ******a, is right about everything. she would like to reduce her daughter that she has beaten, manipulated, called an accident, into a mouth piece and robs her of herself totally in her daydreams. a miserable excuse for a parent. i am grateful though. i try to like her. sometimes she is a very kind woman, or she makes the effort which counts i guess, but my gf is beyond ever being convinced that she really is nice, rightfully so, i'm just on my way there, i am going to lay down in a sea on the other end of some mountains and let the sea take me away, the wash whispering oh well a million times over.

some people only have ressentiment. that's how her mother is. the wasted life. she hates that i don't work because hard work is all that matters, she doesn't see the ways i work hard but all her hard work has given her is arthritis and misanthropy.

i should put some images here about this vague malaise.

yanase masamu - a length of capitalist's drool.

combatwoundedveteran - this is not an erect all-red neon body

mark mccoy - wound

hans bellmer - la poupee

ilona jurgiel (idk if she called this anything, striking though)

jean cocteau (tragically i do not know where this is from, making me feel stupid, but it strikes me right now as meaningful).

i don't know if these images connect at all really for anyone else but they are pretty things to adorn myself with, little resonant chimes that harmonize with right now distantly, or maybe in detuned 5ths, some kind of gamelan tonal array.

i always feel like anything where someone has their guts out though, re: mark mccoy + the cwv album cover.

anwayssssssssss ughhhhhhhhhhhh uhhhhhhh:

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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stargazer-balladeer · 3 years

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Them reacting to walking in on their s/o self-harming [Genshin Impact]

Characters Included: Diluc Ragnvindr & Childe

Notes: i cried while making this- 😢 sorry if some makes no sense- hshsh- hope ya’ll like this.

Reader’s Gender: Neutral

Warning: trigger warning for self-harm and depressing stuff.

“... [Y/N]..?”

he honestly doesn’t know what he’ll do, whether or not to comfort you. Seeing you pressing a blade on your wrist, right where your vein is made Diluc freeze. His eyes were wide and blank, staring at the sight of blood pouring out of the freshly-made cuts on your arm and on the pristine white floor. How was he supposed to react to that?

When he finally caught up with his mind, his first instinct is to remove the blade in your hands. He won’t say anything as he gently tries to comfort you by placing his other hand on your cheeks and rubbing it with his thumb. When you stare at his ruby-red eyes, you can see all of the emotions inside them, afterall the eyes are the windows to the soul, right? You can see sadness, shock, disappointment, anger and confusion all jumbled together. It was a mess, he was a mess and so are you.

You couldn’t help but cry in front of him, spouting out apologies after apologies. You couldn’t even understand what you’re trying to say, all you know is that you’re talking nonsense. Diluc stares at you sadly as he shush you gently, he doesn’t need your apologies, he just needs to bandage your wounds.

As he starts to treat your wounds, he notices some old ones as well, scars from your previous attempts. The mere thought of you suffering way before he met you made him wished he met you sooner to prevent this, but alas, even now when both of you are dating, he couldn’t tell you were aching inside. A failure of a boyfriend, he thinks. He didn’t realize how broken you are, despite all of your smiles and laughs, he should’ve seen the hint of sadness behind your smiles. He didn’t realize how you wore thick and long clothing, even on hottest days. Mentally cursing himself as frustrated tears began building up in his eyes.

“Why...? Why didn’t you tell me about this..? Don’t... don’t you trust me..?” Diluc’s voice soft yet so broken, his voice breaking up a few times with how much emotions he’s feeling in the moment. He was lost again, what can he do to make you feel better? Why didn’t you tell him that you’re going through so much pain? Don’t you trust him at all? Tears began leaking out of his eyes at the thought, you also crying at his question, mouth spewing out more apologies. But Diluc doesn’t want your apologies, he’s just wondering why would you do that to yourself?

When you explain to him the reason, Diluc wouldn’t utter another word as he just hugs you after dressing your wounds and bandaging it. His face on the crook of your neck as he sniffles, tears long dried. His hold around you is tight yet not so much, as if afraid that he’ll break you if he holds you too tight. In his eyes, you were fragile like a glass wine. He takes a deep breath, pulling away, putting your foreheads together and staring straight into your eyes filled with love-

“First of, I’m sorry for not being able to see through your smiles and see the pain behind them. I’m sorry for not being there when you’re at your lowest. I’m really sorry that you went through all that. I-.. I can’t erase all your pain and worry. But I can try. Lean on me, trust me, I’ll take care of you, your heart, your soul and your trust. Let me feel your pain and worries, let me in your heart. I promise I’ll try my best to ease the voices of your mind. Because I love you, and I’ll prove it to you over and over again. Don’t ever question my love for you.”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

You can feel it, his eyes bore through your skull as you held the blade close to your chest, about to plunge it inside you. You can feel the heat his eyes are giving you, silently commanding you to put down the blade. Near the doorway, there he stood with crossed arms and narrowed eyes. The mirror reflecting his figure perfectly behind you, your hands started to shake, the blade slipping out of your grasp and onto the tiled floor.

Childe stares at the blade before turning his attention to you, his gaze sharp and his usual coy smile-smirk in a frown, almost a scowl. His bangs covering his eyes slightly, making his blue eyes glow and effectively making him look scary. You can tell that he’s angry, not at you but at what you did.

Mentally, he wished he didn’t witness what he just saw. He wished he could turn back time. But nothing can change what he saw. Why? When? How? Who? So many questions filled his head. Childe knew, a long time ago before he started dating you, that you have scars, scars from your previous self-harming. He thought you stopped. But it seems like his own judgement failed him, he now sees his mistake. He didn’t confront you about it. Now, he suffers the consequence on almost losing you.

He sighed as he starts to walk towards you, his hand reaching out to you. Instinctively, you flinched. His hand stopped before slowly wrapping around your neck, the other wrapping around your waist, hugging you from behind as he kisses your temples. If you look closely, his eyes are glassy. His heart thumping widely in his chest, you could almost hear and feel it, but this thumping isn’t what he wanted to feel. The pit of worry and fear deep in his guts made him anxious and even more scared. His hands began visibly shaking a little, as he chokes back a sob. Since when did he let his guard down? Doesn’t matter as he cries. His thumb rubbing your shoulder part and the other thumb rubbing your waist.

Hearing him struggle to contain his tears, you slowly started to cry as you spew out apologies after apologies. Your hands covering your eyes as you sob your eyes out. He could feel his heart break at the sound of your cries, his arms around you tightened as he squeezed his eyes shut. He shushes you gently as he lets out words that are incoherent and almost random. His mind jumbled so he couldn’t really think straight as he just spews out whatever comes out of his mouth- “hey, you’re okay, right?” “dont cry shhh” “zhongli would kill me if he sees you crying” “he might make me eat with chopsticks for the rest of my life” “I’m a fatui harbinger, the eleventh of the ranks, so why am I crying so pitifully here-“ (yeah,, even i couldn’t understand what he’s trying to say here-)

Childe would stay like that before letting you go and picking you up, bridal-style and bringing you to the bedroom. He lets you sit on edge of the bed before going back to the bathroom. After throwing the blade away (mentally taking note to hide all the knives from your sight-), he came back with a first-aid kit and started cleaning the wounds you inflict on the arms. Yes, you have wounds in your arms, which honestly scared him a little.

He doesn’t speak, neither did you. Silence surrounded you two as he continued to dress your wounds, eyes eyeing the previous scars. He can feel his heart dropping even more when he sees more scars in your thighs and such. He swallowed the lump in his throat as he bandages your arms. After he did all that, you were about to explain to him and apologize when he pulled you in a tight hug. His left hand behind your head and the other around your back, squeezing you slightly.

“I won’t ask why you did that, but I want to know who. Who did this to you? Was it your parents? Was it the people around you? Was it.. me? or... was it... yourself..?” Childe shakily lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry for not helping you through it when its my responsibility as your partner. I’m sorry for not talking you through it when I already knew it from the start and when I see the signs. I won’t promise that I’ll be able to take away all of your pain. But you can lean on me right? I might be a Fatui Harbinger, might’ve killed plenty of people and might’ve started a couple of fights, but I am your lover first and foremost. Above all else, your happiness and safety is what I cater the most. Well, you know, except for my family because well.. their my family. Anyways the point is, lean on me, believe me when I say that I’ll love and take care of you. Through the rest of our years, I’ll be your stone, I’ll be your shield, I’ll be your everything. Tell me all your worries and woes, I’ll listen to every thing. I do love and adore you, my [Y/N].”

[x] Main Page

#genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact diluc #genshin impact diluc x reader #diluc #diluc x reader #diluc ragvindr #diluc ragnvindr x reader #genshin impact childe #genshin impact childe x reader #childe #childe x reader #self req❣️

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therabine · 3 years

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In case you were wondering why wordbuilding for Ravka feels so random

After going down the rabbit hole in my search for answers I've stumbled across this conversation on goodreads dated back to the November of 2013, where Leigh Bardugo replied to some reasonable criticism about her 'cultural inspiration"- https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1533856-has-bardugo-talked-about-the-russian-inconsistencies This conversation is quite long and miss Leigh gave about three replies to various questions from people that were deeply bothered by the very surface level research she did on the Russian cilture. Here are the major highlights, plus the other things I've found while goodling: 1) As far as I've understood - neither she nor her publishers expected the first book to blow up like this. So even though there was obvoiusy a lack of proper research and some mistakes variying from minor to insulting, now that she's an esteemed author Leigh claims all of it to be deliberate choices adding that "deliberate choices aren't necessarily good ones". She also tries to lift the responsibility off her shoulders, mentioning that her work "was reviewed not just by my editor, but by copy editors, proofreaders, multiple foreign editors, and foreign copy editors". Not a single word about actual Russian-speaking person/expert reviweing the text or helping her out with creating the Ravkan language though. The only person she's ever credited as the one who helped her out with creating Ravkan is Erdene Ukhaasai from Mongolia that she's been friends on Facebook at the time (source on this one - https://ageofsteam.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/genre-friction-what-is-tsarpunk-by-leigh-bardugo/ ). The Facebook page under this name currently doesn't exist and the only results that Google shows on this person are the mentions that Leigh Bardugo gave in her interview, so unfortunately I couldn't reach out for clarification on this topic. Still, it's highly unlikey that someone with zero publications under their name would be a proffesional linguist and therefore qualified for such a task. 2) Within your secondary world, unless you are writing satire, things should make internal sense. That world could not arize independently of its context. The problem with the Bardugo's Ravka is that it's based on Russian Empire alone, yet she claims that "it's only Russian inspired" without acknowledging that most people that are not familiar with the culture will take it in as authentic. She takes the words and objects out of the context, misgenders names and last names and creates new 'russian-sounding" words without understanding how the grammar works. Which is a shame, given how flexible Russian language is - the possibility for the word-building is endless and with the right guidance she truly could make some unique and meaningful terms specifically for the Ravka. Also on the alcoholic kvas issue - Leigh proudly claims this as a solution to be a vodka "substitute", because vodka would be too on the nose and too common (more on the matter here -https://www.leighbardugo.com/grishaverse/the-archives/tongue-twister/). What didn't cross her mind is that instead of turning a non-alcoholic drink into strong booze for "wordbuilding" it would be much better to use less known drinks whic do contain alcohol - braga, samogon, nalivka - just to name a few.

3) To elaborate on some of the specific issues with names and last names: Leigh doesn't seem to understand how gendered surnames work in Russian. That's why we get stuff like Alina Starkov (when it's supposed to be Starkova, because she's a woman) and Alexander Morozova (Morozov would be a correct form) etc. This system is never consistent - Mal Oretsev gets to have a male surname, but so does Genya Safin and Zoya Nazyalensky has a weird non-gendered kind of in between last name (very much in fashion of Natasha Romanoff, who would be called Natalia Romanova in Russian). Also must mention Ana Kuya - poor woman's name literally sounds like "why the f*ck" in Russian, that's about just as bad as naming your Asian character Whata Phuck. Again - none of this nonsense would happen if someone bothered to find a Russian-speaking person to read the text. Other Russian words she tries to throw in seem to be the result of a bad Google Translate, rather than a conscious choice: for example the word otkazats'ya that she uses to describe non-grishas is actually a verb that translates as "to refuse". The noun with the meaning of "the refused one" would be otkaznik or otkazniki for a plural form. Same with sobachka ("small dog") - the context from the book suggests this nickname to be an insulting one, so the word we're really looking for would be shchenok ("puppy") or shavka ("mongrel", "cur"). The list of those examples, honestly, goes on and on.

4) Leigh does mention that she "can acknowledge that the choices I made in building the language and culture of Ravka came from a place of insularity and a type of privilege". However she's more keen to talk about how she has "certainly encountered critics, but I've also had Russian fans"...Which to me sounds about just as bad as stating "I do have *insert a minority racial group* friends and they say that me doing *insert a dubious act* is fine". The problem is that Russian culture has been demonized and overlooked for so long that most people (myself included) tend to praise content creators for including even the most sterytypical "insprations". Just because some people are willing to excuse her voluntary ignorance, doesn't mean that it's okay.

5) No books on Russian culture that she's mentioned as part of the resarch were written by Russian authors. And while reading the SaB it becomes crystal clear that that the major 'cultural inspiration' Leigh got was not from those books, but from the monstrosity that is her tsapunk pinterest board - https://www.pinterest.ru/lbardugo/tsarpunk-inspiration/ . About 80% of the stuff there doesn't even relate to Russian culture and the rest is a mash of modern knockoffs.

To summorize it: Leigh very much knew about the concerns surrounding her "Russian-inspired" Ravka which were respectfully brought to her consideration by her Russian speaking fans back in 2012-2013. She said "I've taken it to heart and it's something that I've tried to be conscious of as I move forward in the series and my other work", apologized and then she did nothing to do better. She marketed Shadow and Bone as "Tsarpunk", fetishisizing Russian culture and using it as a unique setting to uplift a generic "light vs. dark" fantasy plot supported by the bland narrative of the Chosen One. There was an effort and will to make a change for the better, not a single letter has been changed for us. When I think about, I can't really remember anything that would ring as a thoughtful and clever element adapted into the story from Russian culture. If everything is always altered or twisted, if there is nothing true or authentic then should you really call it Russian-inspired? Should you really make profit off it and call this aesthetic tsarpunk?

Leigh Bardugo could have fixed the most jarring problems with the material while doing the adaptation from book to screen, but she chose not to. There was no effort made to include more people of slavic descent as a major part of production team or as background actors. Almost nothing of the production design or clothing was inspired by Russian culture. To elaborate: I'm not even mad. I'm just deeply sad and hurt by the indifference.

Some might argue that this book series was not written for Russians, that it was written for the western audience. But don't they deserve respectfully researched and authentic stories too?

#leigh berdugo #shadow and bone #sab #six of crows #grishaverse #alina starkov #bookblr #tsarpunk #mal oretsev #genya safin #zoya nazyalensky

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oops-prow-did-it-again · 2 years

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lol Im sorry I know I’ve been kinda reblogging a lot of discourse-y stuff lately, but idk, there’s something on my mind lately, and I’d appreciate some other people getting to see my thoughts. Today, my mind settled on, “How can t*rfs, r*dfems, or other people aligning with them believe that me or my partner are abusive - or being abused - without ever hearing what either of us have to say?”

I’ve just had a lot of Thoughts on t*rf nonsense and rhetoric ever since realizing I was trans (and most likely gay), me realizing I’m actually pan and that I only felt discomfort with anything other than ‘gay’ bc of fear of being misgendered and dysphoria, then my girlfriend realizing she was trans...

I see a lot of t*rfs acting like trans people are gonna force cis people (women, ofc, bc they couldn’t give a shit less what happens to men) to have sex with them and like...

i just wanna talk about what happened with me and my partner. I realized I was trans, I told my partner (she went by he/him pronouns at the time). She was shocked and, as she was undergoing a lot of stress at the time and the relationship was long distance, she was uncertain. She took some time to process it and ultimately said she would accept me, though she seemed apprehensive of me undergoing medical transitioning in the future. This kind of hurt, but I assumed she needed time - only to realize later she fundamentally misunderstood how things worked. We fought. We fought, because she had seemed onboard until she learned that other things might happen, aside from me getting a bigger clit and a somewhat more masc appearance.

But you know what?

We talked about it....

Shocker, huh?

We talked. We had an objective conversation, after emotions had calmed, about whether we still wanted this relationship. We did. So we talked more. She came to understand that being trans didn’t make me suddenly a new person, I was still me, and just wanted to experiment with gender presentation. SHE decided that SHE WANTED to continue the relationship with me, after I asked her objectively, if she did not want it to continue.

And you know what?

She realized that maybe her appreciation for feminine features, her envy for many women, may not be simple attraction. As I talked more about my dysphoric experience, she realized it sounded painfully familiar.

And when she was having these thoughts, we talked.

It started with her testing occasional feminine pronouns (the bigender label), before fully realizing she was binary transfem.

It.... it honestly saddens me, do... do people not think they can talk to their partners? If you feel you can’t talk to your partner about stuff like this... Then I’m sorry, but you might need to try working at trusting one another more, at being open to harder discussions.

Me and my girlfriend may have fought, but we never, EVER resulted to physical blows, name-calling, or anything else. We had some heated discussion over the topic at hand - more like a passionate debate than anything - but nobody was ever directly insulted. These harsher discussions lasted two days, with discussions after - while occasionally tense - never rising to anger again.

We love one another. I love her. I love her for HER... I certainly appreciate her body, but god, that’s not why I started hanging out with her? I don’t ever get to know someone specifically because they’re ‘hot.’ I thought she was funny. I thought she was captivating. I thought she was introspective, engaging, and fun. I still think she’s all of those things and so much more. She’s beautiful, in the way her personality melds with the comfortable, soft familiarity of her body, but I’m not there for just her body.

Changing how she looks will not make me love her less, it never has, and it never will. We had candid discussions, and realized she felt the same about me.

It.. it hurts so much to think there are people that think I am abusing her, or worse, that she’s abusing me, when they don’t know either of us - or our story - from Adam. It also makes me so angry that people would rather project their own insecurities and faulty looks on relationships onto perfect strangers, with such patronizing ideology, since they believe they just know so much better...

How can you know what’s better for us when you won’t even listen to us?

#non pokemon #discourse #prow talks #transgender #transmasc #transfem #spilled thoughts #genitals #genitals tw #genitals m #genitals mention #queer

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fabricated-misslieness · 3 years

Text

♡〜Can you write an enemies to lovers one shot with Sam Wilson pls? 👉👈💖-anon〜♡

Sam Wilson x gender neutral reader

I don’t know much about Sam but I’ll try my best. I haven’t watched FATWS, and I have no idea what exactly the Sokovia Accords do.

Not very satisfied with this

Requested: Yes

Word Count: 1603

Warnings: swearing

Even before the Sokovia Accords, you and Sam had a bit of a rivalry.

He was too cocky, too brazen, took nothing seriously. One day, his joking nature would kill him. There’s nothing good about a wasted life. You know he’s skilled; even if his attitude got taken advantage of, he could handle the situation. That said, no prediction in life is 100% for sure. One moment, you’re having the time of your life; the next, you got nothing.

Though in reality, his humour only spiked up around you because he enjoyed seeing you annoyed. There was something about you becoming so easily pissed that made it so goddamn amusing. He liked having a leverage over you, especially when you were so damn serious about every single nitpicking thing. This didn’t mean you didn’t anger him, you were so called enemies for a reason. There’s certain things you do that are so infuriating. Things you do that everybody else does yet they’re so irritating when you do them.

He was always trying to show you up, and even if you knew that training wasn’t a competition or that you shouldn’t be arguing over senseless topics, you really wanted to wipe that shit eating grin off his face.

You couldn’t even stand in the same room together.

Signing the Sokovia Accords gave you a reason to beat the attitude out of him, and you’d gladly take it.

Although, that kid, Peter, apparently had it covered. The teenager fought against the two adults easily, to the point that you really didn’t need to interfere. Granted, that did mean you didn’t get to punch your rival in the face, but it was amusing enough to see him humiliated.

Besides, you had other things to do, something like deal with a ginormous ‘ant-man’.

After the fight and after Cap’s team became free fugitives, you’d received an anonymous call. Not one to be scared, you answered it.

“(y/n)!” The caller said with a familiar joking tone.

“Ugh,” You groan. “Sam.”

“Meet me at the cafe down the road from the tower. I’d like to catch up with you.”

“Who says I can’t arrest you?”

“I know you wouldn’t.” And with that, he hung up on you.

You thought you’d never have to deal with him again. Surely he would’ve kept his distance, surely he would’ve gone underground or something. But nooo, he just had to contact you, didn’t he?

“Sam.” You greet with an obviously annoyed tone.

“Well if it isn’t my favorite friend, (y/n)! This is your usual, right?” He gestures to the untouched plastic cup on the table. It is your favorite, how he knows that, you don’t know.

“Is this a date or something?” You ask, taking a seat.

“Who’s to say it isn’t?” His words shock you, though you don’t let it show. “Aww, come on, don’t look at me like that.”

Furrowed eyebrows and a deep frown decorate your face. You will yourself to ease, but you keep your guard up. “Spit it out, Wilson. What do you need me here for?”

“Now, why would you think I’m scheming something?” He stirs his drink with its straw absentmindedly, sending you a playful stare. He’s being oh so friendly, there has to be something he’s planning.

You scoff, and god does it infuriate him. He’d called you on impulse, he had no idea why and no idea why he even wanted to, but here you were. He had absolutely no plan. “Always pushing my buttons.” He mutters to himself. After clearing his throat, he speaks up again, “I only wanted to talk.”

You raise a brow, one that he really wants to punch off your face.

“You think I can’t do anything nice?”

“I think you’re extremely incapable of doing so.” You and your fancy vocabulary. He wanted you to whisper all your hatred towards him in words he couldn’t understand, just so he could make fun of them; or at least, he hoped. It certainly felt like he wanted it all for another reason.

“But, thanks for the drink.. I guess.” You weren’t raised just to have no manners.

“By the way you owe me-” You cut him off with a familiar glare. “Alright, alright, nothing.”

Suddenly you stand, taking your cup with you. “I have to get going.” For absolutely hating his guts, you look ashamed to leave. “Unlike you, I’m not a fugitive. I have a job to do.”

“Nice seeing you.” He says spontaneously.

“Yeah.”

For a supposed fugitive, you saw him around often. Each time he was nicer and kinder, even if he had even more of a reason to make you his enemy.

Even so, just like always, it was passive aggressive. But there was something new in it; as much as you didn’t want to admit it, the air would be filled with sexual tension.

Everytime you want to see him smirk, you want to both punch and kiss it off his face.

And, it’s only after that you stop seeing him on a regular basis that you realize that he brings out your playful attitude.

Out of all the people in the world, Sam Wilson was not who you wanted to be in a relationship with. Yet the world wanted to be cruel to you and tell you otherwise.

“How’ve the Sokovia Accords been treating you?” You had a ‘date’ at the cafe every week. Sometimes you dreaded it, other times you looked forward to it.

“Horrible,” You say, absentmindedly staring at the abandoned Stark Tower. “They don’t let us go on missions anymore. I’m glad Tony keeps me around, at least. Don’t know what I’d do without him.”

Sam chuckles, god, you hated his laugh. He seemed to laugh at times where he - no, nobody should be laughing. “You’d need to get a civilian job.”

He relishes in the way you scrunch your face in disgust, laughing heartily. You hated the fact that each time you heard his lively sounds of amusement your chest would warm up. It was as if you enjoyed it.

You scoff, turning to look at him with a glare. He doesn’t seem to hate it as much these days. “What do you even do?”

“Oh, various things.” He shoots you a playful look. “I obviously can’t tell you.”

“Are they harder than beating a teenager?” You refer to his battle at the airport versus Spider-Man.

“I told you to drop that.”

You roll your eyes, turning back to the tower. The conversation goes stale for a while. The silence between you is insufferable, especially because the people around you talk so enthusiastically.

Sam takes the last sip of his drink before looking at you. “Hey,” as he reaches to tap you on the shoulder, you turn to him again. He freezes for a second then quickly pulls back his hand. He sends you a smile, awkward and seemingly nervous, “I gotta go.”

You nod. He takes his leave, walking quicker than you’ve ever seen him go. As you stare at his retreating form, your hand subconsciously rubs the place his was going to be. Your shoulder burns at the touch, as if it was denying your hand and calling for his.

Fucking Falcon.

“Hey, would you want to join…” Sam gulps, looking at everything but you. He’s nervous, has been for the past week. He refused to tell you why. “Me, Cap’ and the crew?”

You raise an eyebrow. “Sam, this is what you call me for, at the middle of the night? What does that even mean?”

“Well, we do some vigilante stuff, make sure nobody knows it’s us. I was wondering if you wanted to join us.” Without giving it so much as a thought, you scoff. The sound disappoints him, of course you didn’t want to join him. What was he even thinking about?

“You think I would join you?”

But he saw how painful it was for you to sign the Sokovia Accords, your remorse as you fought them… you were a good person, he knew that.

“Then what are you going to do?” He groans, “The accords prohibit you from doing anything at all. The Avengers grouped together to save people. Even if they try to stop us, we have to keep going. We risk our lives for the people, not to appease the government!”

“But all of this happened because of our mistake! The Sokkovia Accords only-” You keep going on and on, to the point where you’re only spouting nonsense. Sam knows you, even if he’s been your rival the entire time you’ve known each other; as your former ally, he knows everything about your morals.

He knows you don’t mean this shit, he knows that you’re lying to yourself, and he knows that you regret signing. He can tell that much from the moments you’ve been spending together.

“(y/n), listen to me.” He puts his hands on your shoulders, stopping you from ranting any longer. “You’re lying to yourself.”

“You wouldn’t know that.” You scoff, despite the longing sensation he leaves on your shoulders. You try to push him away, but he doesn’t let you. “You-”

He interrupts you with a kiss and it’s everything you’ve been waiting for. It’s rough but it certainly wakes you up.

“You’re lying to yourself.” He repeats.

You take a deep breath, regaining your composure. “You’re right.”

“Come with me, please.” Sam pleads, trailing his hand up to your face and cupping your cheeks. “I miss having you on my side.”

You give in to his touch, moving into his arms for an embrace. “Alright.”

#sam wilson x reader #mcu x reader #enemies to lovers #🤬-swearshirt #marvel cinematic universe x reader #falcon x reader #anonymousrequest

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squadrablog · 4 years

Note

ok I've joined the Ghiaccio hype train, could I request a Ghiaccio fic with a reader who doesn't like sudden loud noises and will definitely cry if you yell at them? they're really intimidated by Ghiaccio but they're comfortable with the rest of La Squadra, so he's struggling to be a good team member to someone who's always nervous around him. feel free to make it romantic or platonic, your writing is amazing!! 💕💕

Here you are! With the stuff I ended up focusing on I thought that shoehorning a romance in would feel weird, so I focused more on exploring the beginnings of a platonic friendship with him. Lots of awkward Ghiaccio and miscommunication but it all ends up good. :^)

Ghiaccio & Reader (platonic, gender neutral)

Ao3 Mirror Here.

Word Count: 3921

Warnings: Reader has childhood trauma w/ loud noises, not gone into in depth. Assassination job implied but doesn’t happen in text.

Under cut for length!

The last thing you saw yourself doing with your life was becoming an assassin, but here you were. You were a tough kid, scrappy and resourceful when it came down to it, but only because you had to be to get by. You always thought you’d eventually leave that old life behind. The gunshots echoing into the night from rival mafias squaring off to claim the neighborhood you lived in as their territory. The shouts from the man who took you in when you had nowhere else to go, only to berate you when you failed to pick enough pockets to meet his quotas. The way the older and meaner children would torment you, taunt and deride you, whenever you let your vulnerability show.

And you had, more or less, left those parts of it behind at least. When you joined Passione as a last ditch effort to survive you were given a sense of stability that you had never had before, and after initiation when your stand manifested as something powerful and deadly, it didn’t take too long for you to get placed into La Squadra di Esecuzione, Passione’s team of elite assassins.

As a stand user working with other stand users you rarely relied on guns to get your work done. You were no longer struggling to get by, and although your new Capo held his team to high standards he made sure you had ample training and was patient with you while you were still getting your footing. All your teammates were surprisingly supportive; even if they were wary of outsiders, when it came to their own family they looked out for each other.

It was a dangerous life, not without its own anxieties, but it was a much quieter life. It was a life in the shadows, with a roof over your head, with work that allowed you to use stealth and silence. Even if you couldn’t exactly say you were thrilled about being an assassin you were at least surrounded by people who genuinely cared about you now, watched over by a man who never raised his voice at you for things outside your control, and most comforting of all: you never needed to use a gun.

Not all loud noises set you off, just the ones that reminded you of the violent instability of your childhood and the cruelty of your guardian and peers. Your new teammates could get pretty noisy and spirited, but the boisterous and jovial nature of their laughter, even from their more intense teasing, was a comforting change of pace. You didn’t doubt your value or the fact they respected you.

Well, mostly. There was one teammate who was a bit harder for you to let your guard down around.

His name was Ghiaccio, and to say he was loud would be an understatement. When you first met him he had been a bit standoffish, but so were Risotto and Prosciutto. You knew it would take some time for everyone to accept you as a real part of the squad, and you were ready to be patient. But as you quietly observed everyone for those first few weeks, getting a feel for their individual personalities and their dynamics with each other, you found yourself very intimidated by Ghiaccio. He was able to pal around with the rest of them, even if he was gruff as a default, but when something upset him it was like a switch had been flipped.

He was critical of his squadmates’ performance out in the field, and he never hesitated to offer his critiques regardless of how little anyone wanted to hear them. He was critical of the way people talked, constantly nitpicking everyone’s pronunciations and word choice. He was critical of the way that chores around the house got done, judging everyone’s efforts by timeliness and thoroughness.

Everyone was able to brush him off most of the time without problem. When they actually valued what he had to say they never seemed to take the mean way he said it personally. They’d had plenty of time to get used to him and sift through the bullshit. They knew when something actually mattered to him and when something was just him blowing off steam for the sake of it. They knew when it was fair to ask him to shut up and when it was best to let him get it out of his system.

You steeled yourself as best as you could in those first few weeks, just telling yourself you needed some time to understand his quirks like the rest of your squad did, but your opinion changed immediately after your first mission with him.

“Is Prosciutto teaching you anything?” he barked out at you after you two finally managed to take out your hit. You flinched and looked away from his intense gaze. You were a bit anxious about being alone with him for the first time, and you wanted to give him your best effort to impress him, but being on so on edge caused you to make some big mistakes.

“Well?” he demanded when you said nothing. You had assumed it was a rhetorical question.

“Y-yes?” you stuttered out.

“Then you’re the one accountable for fucking up today. What the hell was that?” he asked, his question ending in something similar to a snarl.

Something that was different about working with Ghiaccio as opposed to working with the others was that he argued out loud to no one in particular about random topics that pissed him off. At first you thought he was expecting you to talk to him about how nonsensical some phrase was that Formaggio used before the two of you left, and you listened attentively, but he never gave you any room to respond. Eventually you realized he wasn’t really conversing, just yelling to yell. It was very distracting and it only made you fidget and lose focus.

“I… well…” you choked out. “It’s usually quieter… on my missions, since my stand is- well, since my stand is made for stealth and-”

“Me talking prevented you from doing your job correctly?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. You just shrunk even deeper within yourself. The last thing you wanted to do was insinuate your mistake had been his fault. There was no way that wouldn’t provoke his ire.

“N-no! You didn’t do anything wrong! It was me, I’m really sorry! It won’t happen again!” you squeaked out.

“Better not,” he grumbled sarcastically with a huff before turning to walk down the street towards his car. You followed, keeping a good distance behind him, not looking forward to the ride back to the base.

---

That had been weeks ago. While you had been doing a decent job at tolerating Ghiaccio before that mission, afterwards was a different story. You actively avoided him, checking if he was in rooms before entering, excusing yourself when he came into a room you were already in, shutting yourself in your room upstairs when you heard him start up on a rant somewhere on the main floor.

Eventually it was shamelessly (or perhaps shamefully) obvious to just about everyone.

“Dude, what happened on your mission with them?” Formaggio asked in a hushed tone one time after your footsteps had disappeared up the stairs. “They’re terrified of you.”

“How the fuck should I know? They haven’t said anything to me about it,” Ghiaccio shot back.

“Uh, yeah, duh. That’s what I’m saying. They won’t even sit in the same room as you,” Formaggio muttered.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” he said, scrunching up his eyebrows. “But it’s not like they talk much to begin with.”

“Are you kidding?” Illuso interjected, inserting himself into his two teammates’ conversation, much to Ghiaccio’s annoyance. “I can get them to prattle on for hours about themself. They’re a real chatterbox once you get to know them.”

“Illuso, dude, have they told you the story about their mission with Pesci down at the wharf?” Formaggio asked with a big grin.

“Fuck, I almost forgot about that,” Illuso replied with a chuckle. “What about the time where-”

“Hey! Shut up for a second,” Ghiaccio snapped. “We’re all talking about the same person, right?”

Upon being interrupted Illuso narrowed his eyes at Ghiaccio before turning to Formaggio. “It’s obviously because of Ghiaccio’s poorly controlled rage. Have you ever seen the poor thing freeze up over a gunshot before?”

“No, but I can imagine. One time I tried scaring them from behind and it took them ten whole minutes to recover,” Formaggio responded.

“I haven’t done shit to them, what possible reason do they have to be scared of me?” Ghiaccio asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Well, what happened on that mission?” Formaggio asked again.

“It was pretty standard, I killed the bastard while they assisted. They did fuck up pretty bad, which is typical during training, so I pointed it out for their benefit. Then we left,” Ghiaccio recounted. “Nothing else happened.”

Formaggio raised an eyebrow. “What did you say?”

“I don’t know! I think I asked if Prosciutto was doing his job right since they didn’t seem too confident. I asked if there was anything that might have contributed to their lackluster performance, but after thinking it over they said that it was on them.”

“Sounds pretty level headed and analytical of you,” Illuso said, stroking his chin. “Are you sure that’s how you said it?”

“Probably not in so many words, I was probably more casual about it,” Ghiaccio grumbled. “Why does it matter how I said it? What’s important is what I said.”

“Ghiaccio, your brand of casual is a few decibels above what’s average,” Illuso said.

“Not to mention the casual expletives, or the casual sarcasm,” Formaggio added. “Are you sure you didn’t casually tell them to go fuck themself without realizing it?”

“No! I mean, if I was stern with them it was in the context of training!” Ghiaccio insisted.

“Are we being trained right now? Is that why you’re yelling at us?” Illuso asked with a smirk.

“This is just how I talk!” Ghiaccio said, bringing a hand up to his temple. “Ugh, I don’t fucking know! Maybe I yelled at them? I remember being very straightforward. They seemed kind of on edge, but I just assumed that’s how they always are!” He dropped his hand and turned to look at his two teammates. “Are they really not like that on missions with you?”

“Not anymore,” Illuso said with a shrug. “At first a bit, but they’re pretty reliable now.”

“You’ve got to go slow with them. They’re easily set off, but if they know they can count on you they’re able to push through it,” Formaggio said.

“My stand is invincible and I never even let the guy near them. There’s no one better suited for watching someone’s blind spot than me,” Ghiaccio said with his hand splayed out on his chest.

“I mean, like… emotionally,” Formaggio said, scratching the back of his head. “If I was to put myself in their headspace I’d say they probably think you hate them.”

“I don’t hate them,” Ghiaccio spat loudly.

“Good! Now step two is letting them know that,” Illuso said, clapping a hand on Ghiaccio’s back, causing his glasses to slide down his nose.

Ghiaccio grumbled and pushed his glasses back up. He knew that things were weird between the two of you ever since your mission, but it never even crossed his mind it was because of something he said. Is this what Prosciutto felt like training Pesci? But even Pesci had never been avoidant or scared of Prosciutto for all the tough love that he gave him. Pesci looked up to him like an older brother.

If he was really the only one in all of La Squadra that you were uncomfortable around, then he supposed it was on him now to figure out why.

---

The base was pretty quiet today, with a lot of missions landing on Risotto’s desk this week. While you were quite fond of your new teammates you liked having the common area all to yourself on a quiet evening, especially if you were curled up with a novel. When you first started living at the base it felt like a luxury, but even after you had gotten used to the quiet its novelty hadn’t worn off for you.

The sound of a key jingling at the front door had you peeking over your book. When Ghiaccio appeared framed by the living room entrance you held your breath. Hopefully he’d be going upstairs… no, it looked like he was coming into the common area. That’s okay, you could move, so you started standing up, except… he was looking right at you, heading in your direction.

“Sit down,” he said stiffly, and after a beat he added, “Please?”

“Uhh! Okay!” you said, sitting back down and bringing your book right back up to cover your face.

“Can you also, uh. Please. Put the book down?” Ghiaccio said, his voice strained to maintain a monotone and flatten out any inflection. You did as he asked, although you still couldn’t meet his eyes, and he just stared at you awkwardly.

“Uh-”

“Hello,” he said, and it left his mouth at the exact same time your muttered exclamation had. Another awkward pause.

“Hi?” you said, unsure. This wasn’t what you were expecting from your next conversation with the man, for as long as you had postponed it. You thought he’d be demanding to know why you were ignoring him, or getting on your case about being too sensitive to handle his criticism on your last mission. Maybe that was yet to come?

“You are afraid of me,” Ghiaccio stated flatly. Then perhaps he realized he wanted to ask it as a question. “Yes?”

“Oh, no, I’m…” you muttered.

“Of course you are,” he said quickly, cutting you off before you could mumble out an excuse. You got pretty embarrassed by that, but you swallowed and moved your eyes up to gauge his expression. He didn’t look angry, but he looked hyper focused to the point of distress. His lips were pressed together tightly as if he was trying to hold back from speaking again.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

“For being scared of me?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. He was being sarcastic again, wasn’t he?

“No, I… I mean… I’m sorry for,” you started, trying to think of something legitimate to actually be sorry about. “For fucking up on the mission.”

“Did fucking up on the mission really bother you that much?” he said. Not only were you stupid for fucking up the mission, but you were also stupid for letting it bother you for so long! What did he want you to say?

“No, I mean…”

But Ghiaccio cut you off with a long loud exhale. “Look, I’m not great at this kind of thing. I understand that I make you anxious, and I understand that for whatever reason it’s hard for you to talk to me, but I really can’t understand what people say unless they drop all the bullshit.” When you frowned and looked away he tried again. “Not bullshit, fuck, uh. No, not fuck... It’s just that. I need you to say exactly what you mean. I can’t tell what people are thinking unless they make it… easy for me.”

You looked back at him. Whatever he was here to talk about with you, he was trying very hard not to raise his voice. The way he was talking to you was too stilted to be anything but intentional. If he was doing this for your sake, then you would try to meet him halfway. You took a moment to think, to choose what you wanted to say carefully.

“I don’t do well with loud noises. I also… take things very personally. I’ve been worrying that you…” You took another second before committing. “...Hate me.”

He pressed his lips in a thin line again as some noise tried to escape his throat, perhaps an instinctive denial. “What about me makes you think that?”

“Well… you seemed pretty disappointed in me after the mission.”

“I was checking in with you. I wanted to make sure Prosciutto was properly training you.”

You raised an eyebrow. “But… but you sounded really angry and sarcastic.”

Ghiaccio closed his eyes and thought about that for a second. “I probably was angry, but not at you. You just fucked up on something so basic that I had to wonder if Prosciutto was actually teaching you anything useful.”

“That’s… not how you said it though,” you said, feeling defensive. “I… I know I did something dumb… but I’ve never messed up with my stand like that before. It was different on that mission.”

“Me talking to myself?” Ghiaccio asked. He had been fixating over what he said to you at the end of that mission for days now, trying to remember all the details. He recalled how you had started with one explanation, but you quickly retracted it.

“You were… so angry the entire mission,” you complained. “Everyone else is quiet on missions with me because my stand is better suited to it.”

“It wasn’t a stealth mission,” Ghiaccio countered. “We were using your stand for something different. I wasn’t even talking to you.”

“I know!” you groaned. “You weren’t trying to distract me, but when things get too loud I…”

“But you took it back. You said it wasn’t me,” Ghiaccio said, leaning forward. His voice had risen just a little, but when he noticed how you reacted to that he tensed up.

“I took it back because I was afraid of upsetting you!” you said, leaning back into the couch as far as you could. “Because when I brought it up… you were mean about it… so I took it back! I thought you were trying to tell me it was my fault, so I took the blame like I thought you wanted!”

“I was… I was asking for clarification! If I did something that caused you to fuck up then I want to know that I did so we can talk about it!” He was clenching his fists to keep his upward inflections from becoming full-blown yelling.

“None of that came across!” you complained. “Like… maybe you technically said those things, but the way you said made it come across completely different!”

“What about you? Now you’re telling me that you meant something completely different from the things you actually said to me!?”

“I-I… but I was obviously upset! I was obviously just trying to appease you!”

“How was it obvious? I thought you were upset because you fucked up! No one likes fucking up!”

“Yeah, no kidding!” You realized at this point that your own voice was starting to rise, which was making Ghiaccio raise his to match yours, and you took a deep breath before speaking calmly again. “I was upset because I was afraid.”

It was quiet again for a little while until Ghiaccio broke the silence.

“Being mean and angry comes really easy to me,” he said, running his fingers through his curls. “Even when I don’t realize it, I still am. Even if I think I’m being reasonable, people misunderstand. I’ve been so used to the others actually being able to take it that I forgot how bad it was.” He scratched at his head a bit. “I also have a hard time telling how loud I actually am until someone points it out.”

You sat there for a moment, soaking that in, before you gave a small amused huff with a half-smile on your face. “I’m not great with loud noises because of what they mean to me. Gunshots remind me of a time when I wasn’t safe… but I can protect myself now, and I have other people who will protect me too. But yelling reminds me of… how I was never good enough for anyone.” You tapped your fingers on the cover of the book on your lap and shrugged.

“I hear from the others that you’re really skilled and reliable on missions,” Ghiaccio said. “I didn’t see that from you when we worked together, but maybe that’s because I was the one who fucked up.”

“But you didn’t...” you started.

“I fucked up by not meeting you where you were at. You’re new. I don’t know you, I don’t know what you’re like. If we had talked beforehand, if I had worked with you, then you probably wouldn’t have made that mistake. I was taking the lead on that mission, it was my job to train you to use your stand in an unfamiliar circumstance. I use missions to get out all the shit that makes me angry, since I don’t need to stay quiet. You don’t work like that. You had no idea what I was yelling for. I never told you how I do things, I just expected you to brush it off like everyone else does.”

You blinked a few times. You had been pretty quick to blame yourself for your own shortcomings, but hearing him say that really recontextualized that entire mission experience. You might have fucked up, but it was now obvious that he did not hold it against you. “That’s surprisingly self-aware of you.”

He rolled his eyes and set his elbow on the couch’s armrest, plopping his head on his fist. “You don’t know me either. I’m more than a raving heartless bastard. Stuff like this… not understanding why other people think the way they do, or what I’m doing wrong… it really fucks me up. I don’t hate you. You’re a part of my family now and I genuinely want to help you get stronger. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

Ghiaccio was nothing like you thought. He was actually really sensitive and introspective. You could tell it was hard for him to confront you like this, almost as hard as it was for you to be confronted. You appreciated that he wanted to put in the effort to have a relationship with you.

“Thank you Ghiaccio. And I’m sorry I avoided you instead of trying to talk about it like this.” You reached over and placed your hand on his shoulder with a gentle smile. He seemed taken aback by the contact, but he relaxed after a moment.

“Are we… good?” he huffed out.

“I think so!”

He let out one long exhale that seemed to go on forever. “Thank fuck,” he muttered, before turning to look at you. “Goddamn it, sorry.”

“It’s not the swearing that bothers me,” you clarified. “It’s the intention behind it. You’re… uh… fucking good, my dude.”

He let out a snort at the awkward way you said that before bringing his hand up to cover his face, looking away in embarrassment.

“Aw, no, that was cute,” you assured him, which only made it worse.

“Well, if we’re done here then I’m heading to bed,” he said, and you glanced at the clock in the living room. It had gotten pretty late. He stood up and started walking towards the stairs.

“We have a mission together again this weekend, right?” you asked, and he looked at you over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

“I’m looking forward to it,” you said with as much enthusiasm as you could muster. And you meant it. “Goodnight!”

“...Night,” he said, before he disappeared around the corner.

#ghiaccio #ghiaccio x reader #jojo imagines #jjba scenarios #jjba x reader #jojo's bizarre adventure #jjba #my writing #anon

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th3atr3phant0m · 4 years

Text

Gender

Perhaps Zim was just missing out on something, but he really didn’t understand why some of their peers treated DIb in the way that they did.

Of course, part of that could have to do with the fact that Zim hadn’t transferred into their school district until a few years ago and hadn’t known everyone there as they knew one another, but that didn’t make things any clearer, in his eyes.

Zim was no stranger to the cruelty of his fellow humans. He had learned a great deal about how people worked and the terror that came with them when he lived in the orphanage, so seeing people treat Dib like garbage wasn’t inherently strange but the way in which they did it certainly was.

Their peers almost constantly belittled Dib for his intense passion for the paranormal and extraterrestrial. Ever since he was a child, he had been incredibly interested in both of them, and that interest had only grown as he did. He put forth seemingly endless amounts of his time and energy into studying his passions. Honestly, Zim found it admirable. Unfortunately, though, many of their peers didn’t feel the same way, claiming that he was obsessed and insane. Considering how frequently Dib ranted about the paranormal and the intensity with which he did it, Zim could understand that, though.

What didn’t make sense to him were the strange things that they said to Dib in regard to his gender.

On more than one occasion, Zim had heard their fellow students refer to Dib as a girl or tell him that he looked or sounded feminine in some way or another. Zim couldn’t understand why. It was very clear to him and anyone who attended school with them that Dib was a guy. It wasn’t just the fact that he wore masculine or androgynous clothes- any idiot knew that clothes didn’t really mean anything- but the fact that Dib exclusively responded to male pronouns. It was obvious that Dib wasn’t a girl and that he wasn’t comfortable with being addressed as such, so why did so many of their peers do so? Even people as ignorant as some of them were had to pick up on the fact that Dib was a man- or so Zim thought. Clearly, he was giving them far too much credit, though.

Sometimes, when Dib got irritated with others, they would make some idiotic comment about him being on his period or something along those lines. It always just worked to piss him off further, but it upset him in a completely different way than their comments about him being a freak did.

Despite the fact that Dib looked incredibly masculine, their peers would frequently tease him about how feminine he looked or acted, invalidating his masculinity almost as an easy insult to fall back on. It was clear that their words had more to do with getting a rise out of Dib than having any actual truth to it, but that didn’t make it any less nonsensical.

Zim had no clue why their peers made those comments towards Dib, nor why they upset him so much. The two of them were far from being friends- Zim would even say that they were enemies, in some ways- but he wasn’t cruel enough to stoop to that level. While he didn’t’ completely understand why that was a sore spot for him, he never harassed him about it like the others sometimes did. It felt wrong in several ways- not to mention the fact that it was a pathetic move.

Not understanding what it was that he was missing out on and wanting some answers, Zim decided to ask Dib about it.

~~~

Dib and Zim were not friends. They fought almost constantly, practically at war in several aspects. They always did everything in their power to beat the other at every turn, refusing to allow the other to have a single success without putting up a fight. They battled for the title of valedictorian, for the highest grade on each assignment, for the most clever and creative insults and comebacks to said insults, and for the best ideas. To the untrained eye, it seemed as though they hated one another with every fibre of their beings.

That didn’t mean that Dib didn’t pick up on things about the other, though. In fact, in many ways, it made him more attentive to changes in Zim than he was to changes in anyone else. Considering how much of his energy and attention Zim had, it only made sense for Dib to notice things.

They were small day-to-day changes, but, considering Dib’s own history, he couldn’t help but pick up on them.

Zim’s style, though very consistently inconsistent and a chaotic mix of anything and everything he liked- something that Dib couldn’t help but admire at least a little but- seemed to change near daily. One day, he would wear a button-down shirt with a clashing vest and the next day he would wear a dress with fishnet stockings underneath. Zim’s style seemed to vary between feminine, masculine, and androgynous regardless of whether he was wearing something formal or casual.

As someone who had gone through the festive experience of attempting to “subtly” switch between masculine and feminine while figuring out how to comfortably express his gender without getting harassed, Dib couldn’t help to liken it to his own experience. While Zim hadn’t gone to their school when Dib was first beginning to realize and attempt to express his gender, the practice of putting forth a lot of effort into presenting a certain gender for a few days before deciding that was too emotionally taxing and giving up for a few days was… familiar. While DIb couldn’t be certain that Zim was doing what Dib had been doing back then, it was incredibly similar, and he couldn’t help but liken the experiences to one another.

It wasn’t an incredibly strange thing- it wasn’t as though Zim acted or spoke any differently depending on the day- but it was something that had Dib curious. Was Zim transgender as well and struggling with coming out? Was he just experimenting with different styles? Was he just being the weird, chaotic person that he was by keeping his style and presentation up in the air?

Whatever it was, Dib wanted to know, but he didn’t exactly have the opportunity to ask.

That is, until Zim brought something up one day at lunch.

“Why is it that our peers sometimes refer to you as a girl?”

Dib nearly choked on the juice he was drinking, “What-?”

“Why is it that-”

“No, I heard you the first time,” Dib shook his head, clearing his throat. He really wasn’t expecting that question- especially so abruptly- and he didn’t really know how to answer it. “Because people are assholes?”

“Obviously,” Zim rolled his eyes disdainfully, though Dib had a feeling that was directed towards their peers rather than him, “Is there a specific reason, though?”

Zim hadn’t been going to school with them when Dib had still been presenting as female or even when he first came out as trans, but he still assumed that Zim just… knew . Considering everything that his peers did and said to him, he assumed that it was obvious that he wasn’t biologically male. According to them, he didn’t pass very well. Did Zim just not understand the concept of transphobia, or did he genuinely just… not know ? Neither seemed likely, all things considered.

Not completely trusting that Zim wasn’t just dicking with him, Dib narrowed his eyes slightly, “Because I’m trans.”

Zim blinked, seemingly taken aback, before some sort of realization began to dawn on him, “Oooh. So you are a trans woman? Then why does it bother you when-?”

“I- no,” Dib face-palmed, “I’m a transgender guy . I’m a man and they’re going out of their way to misgender me to piss me off.”

Zim’s expression changed completely, anger replacing the confusion, “What the fuck is wrong with people? That’s pathetic.”

Zim wasn’t naive- he knew just as well as Dib that people could be absolute assholes and that they didn’t always need to be provoked to do so. He wasn’t a stranger to harassment from their peers, either, and, considering the fact that they weren’t friends , Dib didn’t completely understand why Zim seemed to care. Regardless, it was nice that at least someone didn’t think what they were doing was okay.

Dib propped his chin up against the palm of his hand, “What about you?”

“Eh?”

“Do people ever go out of their way to do that shit to you when you wear dresses and stuff?”

“Misgender me, you mean?”

Dib nodded.

“Not the same way that they do with you.”

He raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean?”

“Well, when they call me “he” on my femme days, it’s not because they’re trying to be cruel. It’s usually when they actually call me the correct pronouns that they’re intentions are shit.”

“Femme days?” Dib echoed, thinking, “You’re gender-fluid?”

“Was that not obvious?”

“Was it not obvious that I was a trans dude?”

“No, actually.”

Dib blinked, “Really?”

“Yeah,” Zim tilted his head to the side, “You know that when people say those things to you, they’re just trying to upset you, right? None of it is true. You look like a normal guy- well, normal for you .”

Dib rolled his eyes at the insult, but he didn’t take it to heart- he never really did when Zim insulted him. At this point, they had lost their bite. He was more focused on the other things that Zim had said, “Thanks.”

Zim seemed to think for a moment before speaking again, “Do you think that I pass well?”

“Assuming I’m actually guessing which days are which for you? Yeah.” Dib leaned back in his seat, “You’re pretty androgynous already, so you can pull off any look, to be honest.” As much as Dib loathed the concept of complimenting his enemy, they were having a peaceful conversation for the first time in a while and Zim had shown him some kindness as well, so it didn’t feel too strange to say it.

Zim nodded but said nothing and they soon lapsed into a comfortable silence.

After everything that he heard from the others they went to school with, it was nice to hear from a few people that Dib looked like a guy. He couldn’t help but feel a little more comfortable now that he knew this about Zim- as though knowing made sharing his own truth with Zim slightly less vulnerable. Somehow, Zim understanding in his own way made it less awkward. It was nice to have someone in their school who understood- it was nice to have something in common with Zim.

~~~

A few weeks had passed since Dib and Zim had discussed their genders and nothing much had changed. One thing that Dib had noticed was that their peers began to mock and misgender Dib less than usual and it was obvious that this was no mere coincidence.

While it wasn’t obvious to Dib immediately, it soon became clear to him that Zim was actually defending him when people attempted to harass him about being trans.

Initially, Dib had no proof that this was actually happening. It was just a theory of his that Zim had been stepping in when the situations arose, but there were a few things that happened here and there and bits and pieces of conversations that he picked up that made him feel fairly confident that his suspicions were correct.

Dib’s hypothesis was finally confirmed weeks later in one of his classes.

Nothing too out of the ordinary happened. Jessica had gone out of her way to misgender Dib on more than one occasion in the past. Regardless of that, hearing her refer to him as a “she” in front of the entire class and being met with snickers from their peers made his stomach twist with anger and distaste. No matter how many times it had happened, it still hurt.

Dib had never been one to stay quiet about something important to him- hell, he had openly yelled about the paranormal in the middle of class several times when they were back in middle school- but before he could say anything, Zim cut in.

“It’s he , actually, and if you had more than half a brain cell, you would know that.”

Dib blinked, taken aback, and so did Jessica- though he was certain they had completely different reasons for doing so.

Jessica turned on Zim immediately, fixing him with a glare, “What did you just say?”

Zim leaned in and narrowed his eyes as well, not at all deterred by her attempted threat, “I said Dib is a he and, if you had-”

“I heard you the first time.”

“Oh, really? I couldn’t tell,” Zim tilted his head, “Your expression is so constantly vacant that it’s almost impossible to tell when anything actually gets through your thick skull.”

Just as Jessica’s boyfriend stood up from his seat to intervene- almost definitely violently- Ms. Bitters cut in, “That’s enough! Everyone sit down and be quiet.”

Both Jessica and her boyfriend shot Zim glares but did as told. Zim just smirked, satisfied with how things had turned out.

Dib couldn’t help but gape at the entire scene before him. Zim- his rival and archenemy- had just stood up for him publicly . While Dib had had a hunch that Zim had been trying to help somehow, he hadn’t expected to see such an open expression of it- especially not against one of the more popular and easily agitated people they went to school with. Dib was genuinely surprised.

When Zim caught his gaze, he gave Dib a pleased, somewhat smug grin- probably at least a little proud of himself for shocking Dib so genuinely. Dib could practically hear Zim teasing him about the “stupid look” on his face.

Dib rolled his eyes, trying to seem nonchalant. It was hard to pretend that what happened hadn’t been a big deal, though, when the warmth spreading through Dib’s chest was so pleasant and prominant.

~~~

Zim hadn’t expected Dib’s reaction to seeing him correct Jessica in front of their class, but he would be lying if he said that the look on Dib’s face didn’t make him happy. There was something about bringing Dib joy that made Zim feel good as well, regardless of their stance as foes… plus the stupid look on Dib’s face was perfect .

That wasn’t the only thing that Zim hadn’t anticipated coming out of the situation, though.

A few days after the incident with Jessica, Zim twisted in the correct combination for his locker to gather some of the books he would need for his next class. When he did so, though, he was met with something that hadn’t been there the previous day.

Sitting atop his other belongings was an envelope labelled with his name on the front. There was a small bulge in the package, showing that there was something more than just a note hidden within the crumpled paper.

Raising an eyebrow curiously, Zim picked up the envelope, books forgotten.

He peeled back the seal before shaking the contents out into his hands. The colourful beads that tumbled from the paper almost slipped through Zim’s fingers and clattered to the ground, but he managed to catch them to avoid that disaster. Alongside them was a small slip of paper.

Setting aside the note and the envelope, Zim unclenched his fist, revealing the beads so he could take a closer look at them.

They were not, in fact, loose beads. Instead, they were three different bracelets, each made of differently coloured glass and stone beads with a single silver bead on each of them. One bracelet was fuchsia and rose quartz with a silver space ship on it, another made of amethyst and violet stones with a single rocket bead, and the last a bright mix of chartreuse and emerald beads with an alien charm.

Zim blinked, holding them up to the light so he could get a better look at them. The glass beads shone pleasantly and the silver charms on each one shimmered happily. He couldn’t deny that they were beautifully crafted.

After a moment of examining and admiring them, Zim turned his attention back to the slip of paper that had accompanied the pieces of jewellery within the envelope.

Hey, Space Boy. I saw something online about some gender-fluid people wear different bracelets corresponding to what pronouns they want people to use for them on certain days and I thought these could be helpful for you. I wasn’t sure what colours to use, but you wear pink, purple, and green a lot, so I figured they would be a safe bet. If you want to use them, tell me which ones correspond to which pronouns or whatever so I get it right.

- D.M.

Zim couldn’t help but grin. He’d thought about doing something similar in the past, but hadn’t acted on it, not really anticipating anyone actually respecting it. This gift from Dib, though, proved that at least one person would and, as ridiculous as that seemed, it brightened Zim’s day.

Smile still playing across his lips, Zim slipped on the green bracelet before carefully tucking away the other two in the front pocket of his backpack, irritation briefly dissipating at the thought that someone did care.

The beautiful cover art for this story was draw by @sams-art-shit!

I originally posted the fic here on Archive of Our Own. If you liked this, it’s part of a small series, so please check it out, if you’re interested!

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pushpop · 3 years

Text

i was going to ignore this but the amount of messed up shit you said is outstanding.

the fact you accuse me of transphobia is truly baffling and so fucking far from the truth. its amazing how you come up with such awful blatant lies.you know i fucking supported you and didnt i even encourage you in the beginning you were trans. i cant even think of a point where i treated you differently, degraded you or whatever or even went close to saying transphobic shit. but yeah okay me talking about my gender struggles to you (which hey! you talked to me about yours too!) and calling it "my male trauma"is absolutely fine. like.youre an idiot. i dont even want to get into this shit because of how utterly disgusting it is of you to even lie about shit like that. fuck off.

also like who the fuck are you even talking about when talking of my friends?? you literally sound so childlike. what friends of mine are you talking about? when do my friends online bully people? i was friends with like what? 2 people in that dead server? are you seriously talking about a mutual on here who ive never even had a conversation with, that you had an argument with? also when do i fucking say shit, especially on the internet i keep to myself like 90% of the time. why do you lie so fucking much for??????

"you used the fact i was attractive to you to make me flirt with you" youre literally just an idiot not understanding why people flirt for that one which is humorous. "posted sexy images of yourself to get a rise out of me" or whatever nonsense you were spilling is soooo fucking funny to me too. that says more about you than me. like that was soooo wrong of me to post cute selfies. but like i really dont want to get into talking about the sex life we had ,on the internet . its just pointless. you say such off the wall bullshit too

btw your friends have tried to contact me and obviously scrolled through my private account to tell you stuff i post. bc? id privately post thoughts? on a private account? my friends havent once talked to you about stuff between us, they havent done shit to you. but let me guess, youll say "i dont control my friends" in response .then twist it like my friends and me and all one. i cant even think who you are even talking about where you get the impression my friends are awful people???

you seriously are such a liar and a guilt tripper. its insane

im probably going to ignore anything further if you say anything to me since it goes nowhere and doesnt help. i dont want to even post publicly but the thought of directly messaging you seems like a true waste

#you are so stubborn nothing will get through your tiny cerebral cortex #did you make all this up when i laughed at something you did? something that minor and that stupid set you off?#idc if you talk about me privately i have no way of knowing about it #your friends invaided my privacy to tell you things i said on a private account. its just ridiculously childish and stupid #i realize i do wrong i own up to it i am bitch sometimes .im not pure im not a perfect person im not always nice.#im not going to beg and plead sorry over blatant awful lies #you make no sense theres no consistency into the things you say at all

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fangirl-screaming · 3 years

Text

gündelik düşler fırtınası by canozan and damla eker radiates ASTRONOMICAL LEVELS of sullivatoro vibes

iN THIS POST I WILL...

...explain because why not? (i doubt that anyone who has a healthy amount of brain cells will actually read this but i want to try my chance)

here are the full lyrics if anyone wants to follow through the song as they listen because i'm only going to analyze bits and pieces of the song. recommend you listen to the song before reading this!!

also, before we begin, I have a few disclaimers:

i'm in no way, shape or form a professional translator.

translating song lyrics/poetry is harder than translating normal text. therefore, i may make grammatical mistakes and/or say stuff that doesn't really make sense in context of english. for that i'm sorry. but i'm trying my best so keep that in mind :)

like i said, translating poetry/song lyrics is HARD because there are idioms and expressions and words that don't have equivalents in both languages etc, so some of the "poignancy" may be lost/i may not be able to give The Feeling i want to give. i apologize for that as well :)

these are just my opinions, so of course you don't have to agree with them and i totally understand if you don't :)

pretty big spoilers for the whole series.

oKAY LETS GO!!!

☆

a) the song's melody!!

it's just so gentle yet bittersweet and whenever it comes up, my heart gets a little flutter because it's just. so. cute, yet so sad??? and there are no additional instruments; it's just a guitar and the voices of two people. i feel like those capture the tenderness and the strength of the "end of the world love" and the "young naive love" mix very well.

b) some of the lyrics!!!!

"sert konuş zaman geçmiyor başka türlü

içinden geçenleri korkma söyle"

those are the first two lines from the first verse, and they roughly translate to "talk harshly because time doesn't pass any other way/don't fear, say the things you keep inside"

uH HELLO???? this parallels june's habit of talking too harshly sometimes and the way jack still loves her despite that TOO WELL in my opinion.

"aynı rüyadayız biz, sen umursamasan da"

the first line from the chorus, roughly translates to "we're in the same dream, even if you don't care about it"

i'm pretty sure this is meant to be taken off more figuratively, but the finale of book 3 brings this A WHOLE NEW meaning. when rezzoch possessed jack and the rest of the gang went in his dream, THEY WERE IN THE SAME DREAM!

you can find the original/figurative message in this as well: you're not alone in this dream life. in the song, the two singers sing this together and i feel like this is a way of remarking the promises they give each other--that they will never leave the other one by themselves.

when jack went off to fight rezzoch, he left his friends behind. in the context of the song, i feel like this is june reassuring jack and saying that he's not alone in this dream/fight and she will always be by her side.

june really wants to find her parents, to the point that she's ready to leave her squad behind to go and look for them. throughout the whole show (and especially in book 3), jack promises june over and over again that they will eventually find her parents. he says that she's not alone in this dream/fight and he will always be by her side.

you see the parallels here?

"bırak gitsin, zaten saçmalar hepsi"

fourth line from the third verse, roughly translates to "let him/it go, they all talk nonsense anyway" (the reason i used multiple pronouns there is because Turkish doesn't have gendered pronouns and i couldn't figure out what to put lol)

this may be alluding to june comforting jack about thrull and his betrayal, telling him to "let go" of thrull/his rage at thrull and comforting him, saying that rezzoch and her followers "talk nonsense anyway".

"saçmalasam da ara sıra, iyiyimdir aslında

biraz kendini bana bırak"

the last 2 lyrics from the 4th verse, these roughly translate to "even though i babble sometimes, i'm good/let me take care of you for a while" (i'm not really sure about the last line because it's not the word-for-word translation, but the idiom used here is roughly the same meaning as this so i decided to use this one instead.)

even though the woman [damla eker] is singing this, i feel like this applies to jack more. he does babble a lot--which seems to annoy everyone at times--but he doesn't do it with bad intentions. in the song, [damla] sounds sounds like she's apologizing for it; which parallels jack again, since he has done throughout the series many times. and the "leave yourself to me" part can be because jack thinks june's pushing herself too much sometimes, and is offering to help her take care of herself.

"kader ağlarını ördü hiç sormadan"

first line from the fifth verse, roughly translates to "destiny spun its web without asking."

the apocalypse. neither of them asked for a monster apocalypse, yet here they are. though, they are together; they are ready to face the unforgiving new world, and none of them are going to leave each other's side.

☆

and wOW that was a VERY anticlimactic ending explanation.

anyway, if you've come this far and didn't lose any braincells along the way, thank you so so much for reading me ramble!!

also, if you liked this song, i really recommend checking canozan's other songs as well! honestly he's just super super underrated and even though you don't speak/understand, his songs are just as amazing.

and again, thank you so much for reading!! 💛

#did i seriously write a whole ass meta just for A SONG #stfu fang #the last kids on earth #tlkoe #netflix tlkoe #tlkoe spoilers #kinda???#june del toro #jack sullivan #sullivatoro #canozan #song analysis #tumblr please dont

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illnessfaker · 3 years

Text

[ cw: f-slur, rape mention ]

no reblogs pls. this is a long vent.

haha not to be a hysterical faggot crippled shut-in freak or anything but the way ppl talk abt the defensiveness around the f-slur that some gay/bi male users (and some transfem users) on here as if it's some kind superiority pissing contest thing and not primarily about...respecting the boundaries and experiences of those gay/bi male (and transfem) users. like...being on this site as a fag-adjacent person (i say that half-jokingly because it sounds silly on one hand but on the other that's the most accurate descriptor of my gender identity, lol) is becoming increasingly draining and upsetting with how "progressive" homophobia against gay/bi men is apparently becoming, like, a meme among lgbtq people and that's acceptable somehow bc lgbtq people aren't cishets or because it's "only online" and therefore doesn't matter.

like idgaf abt ppl who aren't gay/bi men (or transfem) using the f-slur in every single context possible. if they're affectionately referring to their gay/bi male (or transfem) friends with that word (so long as said friends are comfortable with it) that's one thing. who cares. i even rb'd something where a cis butch (iirc) lesbian was talking about a gay man she knew who she was affectionatly calling a faggot and the things she said warmed my heart. if they're throwing it around at every opportunity or using it as an edgy insult against random strangers on the internet, that's another. the users on here who do the latter also regularly display behavior that like...shows a pretty clear disdain for gay/bi men (or transfem ppl) not apart of their online or "irl" circlejerks and echo chambers, and that is in no way disconnected from their love of using the f-slur, lol.

the "it's only online and so it's unimportant uwu go outside" thing also really feels like such a spit in the face as someone who both lives in a rural area full of cishet white men with guns that might try to kill me if i walked out of the house in drag (not to mention i live with my bf and his family and his parents are homophobes themselves i'm sure), and is also someone with health issues that usually keep me at home and in bed when i'm not working. i didn't always live here but even in my hometown the only "lgbtq space" i had was the high school GSA which didn't do shit other than the day of silence and was attended by people i did not feel safe around (e.g. my ex-friend who was very emotionally manipulative and ended up raping someone.) i don't have any other lgbtq spaces to go to other than online ones. if i never joined tumblr i might still be a self-hating cishet girl, or i might be dead, who knows. like, i've accepted at this point that personhood isn't something i'm allowed in (outside of my whiteness) so fuck me i guess if we need to but the idea that other young, impressionable, and/or traumatized lgbtq people who only can meet other lgbtq people and learn about lgbtq things online for whatever reason don't deserve to have us make an effort on cultivating internet spaces that are as accessible and safe for them as possible, or that their experiences and feelings are somehow unimportant is just...vile. like ofc not everyone needs to "pander" to "logged on" disabled fags like myself maybe but if you have any kind of large following on social media maybe consider that the things you say and do on said social media have like...an actual effect on other people instead of pretending that it's "just online" and therefore consequences for your actions either don't matter enough (to you personally) or somehow don't exist.

but going back to the fag thing, most popular lgbtq tumblr users on my dash i see nowadays just...simply do not give a shit whatsoever about gay/bi men, to the point they're normalizing "progressive" and "acceptable" homphobia against us bc they've convinced themselves due to the bigotry some gay/bi men (often cis, white, and wealthy mind you) exhibit we are "the cishets of the lgbtq community," despite horrific violence still being committed against us every day and despite other lgbtq people being capable of engaging in that violence themselves. ppl make thinly veiled jokes and memes where the punchline is men having sex with each other or effeminacy as if those things aren't primary avenues for gay/bi men being abused, assaulted, and killed (including acts of abuse and assault of a sexually-driven nature), as if said jokes and memes don't serve to normalize the mentalities that drive homophobic hate crimes. it's not like...a coincidence that most lgbtq people who makes these jokes aren't gay/bi men (or transfem). this doesn't even get into how things like homophobia and anti-effeminacy can pretty much boot certain gay/bi men from manhood...or womanhood...or any place in gender altogether.

call me exlusionary if you want but i think it's fair to say that the chances of people who aren't gay/bi men (or transfem*) facing the repurcussions of those mentalities in any meaningful way, the chances of these people actually having lived as or going to live as "faggots" is any meaningful sense is slim to none, and that's why they're so comfortable participating in this shit, and that's why i'm triggered(tm) by them "reclaiming" faggot (which doesn't really involve reclamation bc calling random strangers on the internet or gay/bi men you hate a slur isn't reclamation you morons), because frankly if you're not apart of either of those groups, you're just not a fucking faggot. it's not your word just because some rando on overwatch called you it for picking hanzo in comp. period. end of story. it's also just extremely absurd to try and claim faggotry as something you experience while...readily and happily engaging in homophobia and fag-hate (which isn't synonymous with the former term but i'm talking abt ppl who probably seldom ever engage which discussions and theory surrounding how homophobia instrumentates itself in society - or at least that which doesn't conform to their worldview). within the gay/bi male community there's plentu of masc "straight-acting" gays who weaponize this shit against fem gays and they (should) get held accountable in the same way. you're not special.

and god, being told my gendered experiences as a fag-adjacent person where (white) cafab women are fully capable of engaging in social forms of "oppression" against me and other fags in undeniably gendered ways is somehow an outlier and therefore not reflective of broader social by (white) masc urbanite tbros with definitively more social standing than i'll ever have in my life, as if i somehow developed this understanding of gendered violence just based off my own life and not...the reported and sometimes even recorded experiences of countless other fags who get mocked and silenced because anything that deviates from a watered down, shoddy cis feminist take on gender is fake news(tm) or bordering on saying misandry exists (like no it doesn't exist but acting as if homophobic shit like anti-sodomy laws, for example, has zero to do with gay/bi men's manhood is just nonsensical). convos on here abt gender being mostly dominated by (white) cafab women or sometimes (white) masc trans guys is such a mistake lmao.

anyway i'm tired and stressed and pretty done with having "acceptable" homophobic shit shoved in my face on a daily basis both online and offline but nevertheless i must persist because i'm not lucky enough to have anywhere else to go, really. just...think critically abt ur actions regarding gay/bi male sexuality and gender-stuff pretty please. please.

( *disclaimer just in case that i definitely don't see transfems as some "type" of gay/bi men. there are transfems who identify with gay/bi manhood and/or faggotry. there are transfems who don't. that's entirely up to them. thank u. )

#op #🌙#homophobia #gender #site culture #no reblogs -

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