#i was tempted to put a twilight sex scene

[mermaidsirennikita]

I just finished A Wicked Bargain for the Duke by Megan Frampton and I was wondering if you had any recs for others book where the couple start off having middling sex but end up having great sex (I was unsure about the sex scenes in the book given how they started out but they ended up being really hot)

Oh, sure!

For My Lady's Heart by Laura Kinsale has a pretty mid first encounter for Melanthe and Ruck, largely because a) the focus is really less pleasure and more consummation and b) he hasn't had sex in 13 years so it lasts for like... half a second. A lot of their relationship is about her becoming vulnerable and LETTING him take care of her needs, which includes sex. In the second book, Shadowheart, Allegreto and Elayne's first encounter is.... straight up noncon, though I don't think either of them would necessarily see it that way, because 1300s.

Her Husband's Harlot by Grace Callaway has a variation of this--I don't even know if he finishes, but their first encounter is really awkward. Then she ends up pretending to be a sex worker and seducing him that way, sorta kinda accidentally? I haven't read Regarding the Duke yet, but I know the couple in that has been married like... eight years, and has good sex, but sex that's very structured and withholding. He gets amnesia and it turns around.

Run Posy Run by Cate C. Wells is a mafia romance I enjoy a lot wherein the hero and heroine have been in a relationship for around a year, and have very mid, him-focused sex because she doesn't feel comfortable with asking for more. He thinks she's cheated after a video is doctored and she has to go on the run--but he quickly realizes she's wrong and chases her. He's like... a sociopath, and the book is him realizing his feelings for her and learning what pleases her. It's gooood.

Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas has a variation of this. I think the wedding night is good? But the hero and heroine separate for ten years the day after, and when they first reunite the focus is all on having a baby, and she wants to divorce him. So it's a bit awkward.

Lord of Darkness by Elizabeth Hoyt has another "it's awkward because it's all for the baby" thing. The hero and heroine got married because she was pregnant by another (dead) man and her brother blackmailed the hero into marrying her. She miscarried right after, and they've been living separately, but she arrives in town wanting a baby. He agrees, but the sex is intentionally very stiff and weird at first, though it gets more passionate as the story goes on.

Kiss of a Demon King by Kresley Cole, obviously paranormal. Rydstrom and Sabine are fated mates, but she's evil and just wants his baby for scheme purposes, and he withholds until he can't anymore and it's... intense, but not fun for her, lol. She's all "NEVER AGAIN" and they have to work up to good sex.

The Chief by Monica McCarty. Tor and Christina's first sex scene is awkward because he literally doesn't know it's her, and she didn't realize he was going to put it in, and then also her dad barges in and Tor has to like, leap naked out of the bed. They get better.

The Truth About Cads and Dukes by Elisa Braden is a marriage of convenience book where the hero tries to be cool and withholding, which leads to awkward sex until he basically admits he's obsessed with her.

Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath. They obviously aren't married, but the sex is clinical and awkward (and over quickly) until she allows herself to feel something for him.

Tempt Me at Twilight by Lisa Kleypas. They have a hORRIBLE wedding night full of miscommunication, but after some angst over that, they work towards a good sex life.

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang. Contemporary, hero is on the spectrum and the heroine doesn't realize it and doesn't get how little he knows about female pleasure, so it kind of sucks at first and they have to lear to communicate.

I know A Wicked Kind of Husband by Mia Vincy has this with the hero and heroine marrying, having an awkward wedding night, and separating right after. It didn't super work for me the first go around, but I think it was partly a mood thing, so I want to try it again.

[whiteroseisendgame]

RWBY the Vampire Slayer

I’m really bored at home for Christmas goings-on, so I made this abomination a reality. I watched this classic music video and things spiralled from there. Here’s a smattering of other edgy songs I threw together to listen to while I finished it off.

“Seriously, don’t.” Yang cowered in the corner of the room, hands outstretched, begging her teammates to stop approaching. Her eyes were a deep red, but she was in no state to have her semblance active. The urges were clawing at her even now. Just a bite, it’s all you need! Almost like another voice was arguing with her sanity. “Yang, are you…?” Ruby asked, hesitantly. “Check. My. Aura.” Yang wrestled the words out, watching their shocked expressions.

“Y-you’re dead! H-how-?” Weiss shivered, her nerves surfacing. “I’m… A vampire.” The blonde reached towards her scarf, pulling it loose and revealing two pin-like marks on her neck. It’d been a week since she was turned, and the need to eat was slowly overpowering any rationality. Hissing and baring fangs, the three of them agreed they needed to get her some blood before trying to work anything else out.

Alone in the dark room, Yang sat across from the mirror hung over the fireplace, a constant reminder of her current state. Skin much paler than even Ruby’s, and cold to the touch. And an acquired taste for human blood. Without anyone nearby, her mind cleared almost instantly, able to hide her fangs and relax into the chair. “Vampire, huh?” Blake shouted across the room, throwing a plastic bag of crimson fluid onto Yang’s lap. Without hesitation, she tore into it, almost dissociating as her body drank. “I’m s-sorry, guys. One of them got to me on our last mission. Told me this was punishment for us hunting so many. I did my best to control it, to ignore the hunger. But it’s impossible to think properly after a few days.” Their friend was back in almost full control, it seemed. After hearing her out, the team filed back into the room, sitting a fair distance away, save for Blake, who took the other half of the sofa the vampire was curled up on. “We’re supposed to be vampire hunters, Yang. How are we going to do that with one of our own being turned?” Weiss accused, seemingly the most annoyed at the development. “Weiss, that’s not fair. I’ve asked Uncle Qrow to come, he says he might have a solution.” Ruby explained, doing her best to reduce the tension in the room. “So, heheh, did you… Get all those cool vampire powers? Do people find you irresistibly attractive? Can you turn into a bat? Are you even stronger than you already were?” “Really!? I get turned and you ask if I get cool powers. No ‘we’ll have to kill you’ or anything?” Even as a vampire, her voice still cracked as she mentioned the possibility. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Weiss interrupted, dismissing the notion entirely. “We’re not getting rid of you. And you have started looking kinda hot recently, right Blake?” “Uhhh, yeah, sure. Recently.” Her ears lowered a little as she mumbled her response, only to perk up again thanks to a knock at the door.

Qrow shook his cloak off his shoulders where it had acted as meagre protection from the rain. Carrying a leather briefcase with him, he placed it onto table in the middle of the room before crouching to examine Yang. She winced as he edged closer, his eyes widening when it dawned on him that the silver cross was still dangling from his neck. Deliberately hanging it as far away as possible, he turned back to address his nieces and their friends. “Well, even without the eyes, that reaction is enough proof. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Yang. I’ve been working on a concoction that should keep her as-is. I can bring you more blood and holy water when you run out, but mix the stuff in the case together and it should work.” Despite his mostly deadpan tone, his concern for Yang was still audible. Watching her friends grow old while she remained like that. He could tell when Ruby asked him to come over that they didn’t care she was turned. They just hated seeing her suffer. And this was the best he could do to prevent it happening. Once he left, the team practically spent an eternity in silence before someone finally spoke up. “I… Want you to turn me, as well.” Blake requested, sounding almost selfish. “Blake…?” Yang responded, her voice tinged with anger and confusion. “Turn me. I-if you don’t, you’ll lose all of us. I can’t let that happen!” The faunus pulled the neck of her top down, exposing bare flesh and flinching. Even as the tears fell, no one moved to stop her. She was right. “I can’t.” “You can. I need you to.” Her teammate tensed up as she closed the remaining distance on the sofa, grabbing the scared girl’s hands. “I’m not watching this. Come on, Ruby.” Qrow piped up again, a mixture of resignation and understanding to his words. Ruby was already following him out of the door when Weiss stopped them leaving. “How can you both just let this happen? You’re letting another of your best friends turn into a monster!?” Tears welled in the snow queen’s eyes as she tried desperately to convince the others. “Weiss, she’s made her choice. And she has a point. Uncle Qrow, is there anything we can do to help them?” Ruby asked, still wanting to help. “Be there for them once she’s changed completely. Hell, maybe you’ll be even better at hunting them now.” He flashed an awkward smile, trying to make the best of a bad situation as he ushered the pair out.

“You know this will hurt.” Yang explained, solemnly. “If I thought it was easy, I’d have told the others to stay.” Blake’s dark sarcasm still extracted a chuckle from her partner. “I love you.” The blonde, taken aback by the confession, briefly relented before realising. That was exactly why Blake wanted to join her. She thought she’d be able to come to terms with it, eventually. Her love could be twisted into a fierce desire to protect in her mind, given time. Like it wouldn’t kill her every day when she was finally gone. In some weird, crazy, fucked up way, she wanted to do this too. Was it the right choice? Did that question even matter? The answer, of course, was no, to both. When you’re staring at eternity, the best shot you get at staying sane is to have someone right there with you. Blake’s top joined her jacket on the floor, grabbing Yang’s icy shoulder and turning her attention away from the window, back onto the faunus. It didn’t hurt. Not really. Even as the taller girl’s fingers scraped and clawed into her back. Then the numbness started stretching from her hands and feet. Her arms wrapped tightly around the blonde’s frame, pulling her in, ignorant to the shakes and twitches. Then nothing. It felt like she wasn’t going to turn. Yang backed away, tearful, placing the arm of the record player down before extending her own towards Blake. And oh boy did they dance. Yang took the lead, gracefully spinning and throwing her partner as the song built to its first crescendo. The excitement dulled the burning sensation that crept from her neck, something Yang never had the luxury of doing, their eyes locked at all times. In one blink, her eyes changed colour to match her partner’s. Feeling drained, the pair were reduced to slow dancing as the transition raced through her body. Yang could feel the heat disappearing from her hands, but save for her eyes, you couldn’t have convinced anyone she was different. Smiling, laughing, even. A pair of crazy girls, deciding to spend forever together. Inseparable. “See you on the other side, Belladonna.” To Blake, the voice was faint, but distinctly affectionate.

She gasped, bolt upright, a few hours later. The rest of her team had returned, and she was most definitely dead, if her pulse was anything to go by. Yang pressed a mug of Qrow’s tincture into her hands before sitting behind her torso with her own, letting the new vampire lean backwards onto her as she drank. The holy water gave it a burn, almost like vodka, but the blood was tasteless. “It’s animal blood, Qrow said it won’t taste like the human stuff does to you guys.” Ruby chimed in, picking up on Blake’s reaction. Were it not for the couple drinking something so strange, you’d be forgiven for thinking nothing had changed. Reaching behind her, the faunus grabbed Yang’s free hand and lay back down onto her lap, still not used to the eerie motionlessness of her own body. “Are we still-?” Blake started, slightly dreading the answer. “We’re still a hunting team. We just have two extra-super-powered members now.” Weiss joked, in a better mood than earlier. Before they could settle in for the night, a distressed knock drew their attention to the door, an exasperated voice calling from outside. “W-w-w-we f-found a c-c-camp of them!” The stranger yelled, with the girls leaping to action. Ruby pulled a large sniper rifle off the wall and loaded a magazine of silver bullets, the rifle itself modified with a large scythe blade by the barrel. Weiss drew a silver sabre from a scabbard on her belt, with Blake producing a silver katana, the base of the blade wrapped with cloth to prevent her touching it. Yang strapped a set of elaborate, miniature trebuchets onto her wrists, loading them with wooden stakes that jutted out past her fists. “Let’s go, Team RWBY!”

Insert cheesy 90s Buffy-style intro here

[babylon-crashing]

onibaba [i,i]

ACT I. SCENE I.

A semi-dark room scantily furnished. A sliding door opens and the distant chaos of a battle can be heard as two ghosts enter. The first, the soul of the legendary Hangaku Gozen, is dressed in her full samurai armor. The second, Lady Seishin, wears a kimono that might have been stylish 100 years ago and a kabuki fox mask that she never takes off. At the back of the stage is a small fire pit and a small window. Seishin stirs the embers and then stands by the window, peering anxiously out.

SEISHIN.

It is a wild night outside.

HANGAKU.

Help me off with this helmet. Is the rain still coming down?

SEISHIN.

In torrents. I cannot see the other side of the road.

HANGAKU.

That's good.

SEISHIN.

If not being able to see someone ten feet away is good, then hai. Luck is with us. Should I put the oil wick in the window?

HANGAKU.

[Sitting down next to fire with her helmet in her hands.] Why? No. Only when we hear her order a retreat. That's what she said.

SEISHIN.

But on a night like this she may have pulled the troop all the way back to Kyoto and we'll never know.

HANGAKU.

Do not be so querulous, you cranky fox.

SEISHIN.

This isn't me being cranky. Something is about to happen. Listen to the wind sobbing around the house … a lost soul that we're refusing to let enter.

HANGAKU.

Why would we do that? The wind loves us.

SEISHIN.

The wind puts up with us. Ever since--- What was that?

HANGAKU.

[Listens.] It is our message, I think. [Listens harder.] Something is coming. Douse the fire.

[The room is reduced once more to semi-darkness.]

SEISHIN.

Shouldn't we---?

[This time the sound is heard by both women. Someone or something in groaning in the dark. They stand as the door slides open and Jiutian Xuannu enters.]

XUANNU.

Cousins, why are we wasting time here? I was going to call retreat but those stupid Takahashi samurai are milling about right over there and look so smite-able.

HANGAKU.

But who is going to do the smiting? You?

XUANNU.

You look sad, cousin. We're shadows, azure-

eyed, made from lust and stardust and despise

blood and afterbirth. Fools fear our power

to peel off our pelts. Fools fear change, disguise,

the way floods deform and do not deform

dry earth. But, cousin, what use are nightmares

if you can wake up? Why try to transform

when we can slaughter? We don't need more snares

fools keep slipping free from. Call Onibaba.

She's a friend. She has farseeing vision

and short cruel knives. Fools call her, “Hag with Tusks

and Fangs Chitter-Chatting in her Vulva.”

Fools fear her carnage; her love of carrion;

how she sucks both down to their very husks.

HANGAKU.

Fetch her.  

[Jiutian Xuannu exits.]

HANGAKU [cont.]

But first, let's test her skills. Seishin, you pretend to be me.

SEISHIN.

I'm not a ghost. I think she'll notice.

[Jiutian Xuannu, Onibaba and Kijo all enter.]

SEISHIN.

Ah, Lady Onibaba. Chrysanthemum in the Legion of Flowers. Mire in the Order of Tenacity. Chalice of Malice. Fury of the Divine Crest. It is I, your Lady Hangaku!

ONIBABA.

Xuannu, I find it odd that the, “Terror of Genpei,” would be both Jiuzhou and alive.

XUANNU.

[Aside.] That was the worst Hangaku impersonation I've ever seen.

HANGAKU.

Lady Onibaba, please forgive me for being cautious. Who is this?

ONIBABA.

[Indicating Kijo.] My daughter, Lady Kijo.

HANGAKU.

[Incredulous.] You had sex?

ONIBABA.

Hai.

HANGAKU.

[Skeptical.] With a mortal?

ONIBABA.

Hai.

HANGAKU.

[Scandalized.] O my, you nanty narking chuckabog.

ONIBABA.

I don't think you brought me all this way to make snide comments about my lovers.

[A loud moaning begins from outside and the wind rattles against the hut's walls.]

ONIBABA [cont.]

The dusk wails and you pray for Onibaba

to smite souls. It's fitting that twilight

moans for us, glimpsing our hitodama,

our blue-green flames, as we pass in the night,

searching for the spot where we died; where our

blood touched the earth and our hubris melted

when we found out all our sweet truths were sour,

our faiths false. Who claims to know what's sacred?

How I don't know. But they'll kill for it.

You want me to go out and lay the Eight

Ring Curse on those men? Men who love carnage

and their samurai bushido bullshit?

I'll do it. Saints say hate cannot kill hate.

I say all we are is gristle and rage.

SEISHIN.

[Aside.] These mountain demons can be very tempting with their tongues.

ONIBABA.

Don't frown, Lady Hangaku. That was you once, too: a butcher. Now you're just dead and vague.

[The door opens and a little battlefield spirit acting as a messenger enters.]

SENJO BOZU.

[Bowing.] My sovereign. Ladies of the court. I come from the walls of Osaka. Takahashi's soldiers have stormed our outer defenses. We are now fighting in the streets.

XUANNU.

What sort of necromancers do they have that can breach our spells?

HANGAKU.

I heard that Emagami The Blight was selling herself again, but her skills are pitiful.

XUANNU.

[To Onibaba.] My lady, do you think that we should give up on Osaka, or not?

ONIBABA.

Of course not. Only cowards and monks run away.

HANGAKU.

Yattaaaa! I agree with what she says: we'll fight it out.

ONIBABA.

Glory is like the ripples on the water. You have given me the task of whipping the Takahashi then I will beat those waters until they froth.

HANGAKU.

Lady Onibaba, drive the living daylights out of Osaka. They says the root of suffering is attachment. I say we beat that koan home on the skulls of Takahashi and his men.

[All exit.]

][][

Notes:

Onibaba is, as her name states, is a red-skinned, white-haired Japanese ogre. She carries a kanabo (Iron war stick) slung over her shoulder.

Hangaku Gozen was an actual warrior and fought in the Genpei War (1180-1185 AD).

Jiutian Xuannu (Dark Lady of the Nine Heavens) is a Chinese goddess of war, lust and longevity. With long Mandarin robes and her Dadao (“Big sword”) she justifies showing up in this play by saying that she is on holiday.

Seishin kitsune is one of the names used for a fox spirit.

Senjo bozu. A spirit from the battlefield.

Jiuzhou is an ancient name for China.

Hitodama are a pair of blue flames (similar to will o' the wisps) that accompany a ghost when it manifests.

[bluewatsons]

Anna E. Clark, Twilight of the Mentors: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love my gatekeeper, The New Inquiry (May 19, 2020)

Mentors have a dubious lineage. Since the 1980s, when the corporate world co-opted the concept, mentoring — long a synonym for teaching — has come to stand for almost any kind of professional guidance, and especially that which rank-and-file employees provide to one another. As mentoring has become increasingly linked to workplace diversity initiatives, a mentor is more likely to be the person sitting next to you than a CEO, a shift that echoes the economic devaluation of historically male-dominated jobs now occupied by women. As Helen Colley, a professor at Manchester Metropolitan University’s Education and Social Research Institute has argued, mentoring is no longer a system in which powerful people support other structurally powerful people but a burden passed on to the masses. Though presented as an unalloyed good, mentoring is an additional encumbrance, a way of shifting what should be the responsibility of the institution to the individual.

It might be tempting to view this now ubiquitous corporate mentoring model as further evidence of capitalism’s capacity to extort our emotional labor, but it’s more accurate to say that corporate culture’s embrace of mentorship surfaces the extractive, obfuscating qualities that have always been integral to the concept. Mentors enable and thrive in systems of obstruction and privilege. By embracing them now as vehicles of ostensible inclusivity, companies, nonprofits, and schools gesture to diversity while shoring up the opaque gatekeeping structures that keep power consolidated. Meanwhile, as mentorship becomes increasingly inseparable from its corporate repurposing, the term itself has come to subsume other forms of teaching and caregiving, blurring the lines between labor coerced and labor freely given. Now, we are all the conscripts of mentorship.

Mentorship has become so pervasive, such a taken-for-granted value, that the shallow history of its contemporary meaning has gone strikingly unremarked. Though articles about mentors like to say that they started with Homer’s Odyssey, where Athena disguises herself as someone named Mentor in order to tell Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, to kick Penelope’s deadbeat suitors out of the house, the mentor as it exists today is a uniquely late-capitalist construction. Mentors start popping up with frequency in 18th century literature, where the term means something like “stern but well-intentioned teacher.” In The Task, William Cowper’s charmingly meandering 1785 epic on, among other things, nature, sofas, and God, the speaker describes a thin board frequently strapped to aged backs in the service of posture as “a Mentor worthy of his charge.” By the 19th century, a mentor is as likely to be a piece of instructional literature as a person. The Bible is a “mentor.” So too are didactic texts on everything from fashion to marriage to living a moral life. In the early 20th century, the Mentor is the title of a popular American magazine charged with giving its readers “knowledge that they all want and ought to have.” Here, “mentor” suggests a kind of anonymous trustworthiness and authority, like a particularly salutary encyclopedia.

Something changes, however, in the 1970s. A search for “mentor” in the Google Books Ngram Viewer — a convenient tool for charting broad shifts in printed English — shows a modestly steady increase in the word’s usage from 1800 to the earliest years of the Reagan era, when the graph starts to mimic a textbook illustration of exponential growth. “Mentoring” is almost nonexistent until the mid-eighties or so, when it too sees a similar spike. For comparison, a search for “adviser” (a common synonym) in the same period yields a graph that looks like a mountain range.

What shifts in these years? One clue exists in a 1980 installment of William Safire’s On Language column in the New York Times, where Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter, practiced his layman lexicography for nearly three decades. In a characteristically tongue-in-cheek piece titled “Perils of the Fast Track,” Safire codifies the new meaning of “mentor” by close reading a recent exposé of what was arguably the first corporate sex scandal: A 29-year-old VP, Mary Cunningham, was accused of a “romantic liaison” with her mentor, William Agee, who also happened to be her CEO. She was forced to resign; Agee stayed on.

“Today,” Safire begins, a mentor is “a senior management figure who takes a younger person under his wing, risking rumor and innuendo if the protégée, or mentee, is an attractive woman.” Safire goes on to explain that though the word comes from Homer, it’s been “adopted” by the corporate world to signify “‘career guide and executive nurturer.’” Safire’s point is that, despite mentor’s new status as business-world lingo, its fundamental meaning hasn’t changed. “Here’s the beauty part,” he writes in the column’s kicker. In the Odyssey, Athena uses Mentor’s identity as a disguise. Thus, Safire concludes, “It was all a trick. . . . As Mary Cunningham learned, at the start of her own odyssey to CEO, mentors can be trouble; even Homer shook his head.”

Safire sounds authoritative — his prose tends to have the air of someone with a comment rather than a question. But his closing “gotcha” nod to Homer is an empty rhetorical flourish. While it’s true that Athena disguises herself as Mentor, the aim isn’t mischief. Taking on his appearance allows her to overlap her identity (all-powerful goddess of wisdom and strategy) with his (a nobleman and guest), which is capable of setting the young Telemachus at ease. When Athena/Mentor takes leave of Telemachus, now buoyed on praise for his bravery and manhood, he has himself become “godlike.” Mentorship here looks not like a “trick” but like a subtle, enlivening transfer of power.

Why does Safire mention the Odyssey at all? Because aligning the fundamentally new meaning of corporate mentorship with Homer is an ideological move, part of the larger linguistic project of Safire and other conservative commentators such as William F. Buckley and George Will, who seek to revive the conservatism that had fallen out of favor since the 1960s by linking it to free market economics, reframing American identity as a matter of Christian faith, “Western Civilization,” and capitalism. In this context, classical learning serves as a form of arbitrary clout, a way of invoking time-honored authority for extant power structures. Things have always been so, says the reference. Who are you to think they could be otherwise? It’s certainly true that men in positions of power have long cultivated the careers of their successors, entrenching their own control by choosing their likenesses to carry it on. But calling this practice mentorship is, in 1980, a new evolution, a way to elide the less savory aspects of business-world patronage by associating it with the term’s blandly benevolent connotations, articulating a vision of corporate life that is not profit hungry but humane, generous, and invested in individual success. At the same time, portraying mentorship as part of a timeless tradition makes it easier for Safire to blame Mary Cunningham for her own termination. The fault lies not with her boss, or the board of trustees who forced her out, but in her own naive assumption that mentorship at work might mean anything other than the same old patriarchy.

It’s tempting to read Safire’s casual endorsement of mentorship’s worst impulses as quaint anachronism, but the Janus-faced definition he helps to shape continues to inform the concept today, overwriting things we used to call teaching, counseling, advising, and friendship. We talk easily of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jesus as mentors and the solidarity practiced by people of color, women, and LGBTQ communities as mentorship; at the same time, official mentorship programs syphon up the language and labor of these informal networks, turning their aims not to structural change but to objectives such as employee retention and professional success. Or, as a 2019 Forbes article puts it, “Employees are happy, engaged, and productive when their individual needs and the needs of the organization are in sync.” Like company softball leagues and team-building retreats, mentoring has become another cheap substitute for the structural transformations needed to upend entrenched injustices, superseding tangible forms of support such as money, time, health care, and job security. Even in government and philanthropy, mentoring’s primary aim is economic advancement. In 2002, George W. Bush endorsed January as “National Mentoring Month” in an effort to bolster the professional prospects of youth from underprivileged backgrounds, a cause later taken up by Barack Obama. Granted, when we talk of community and social-justice leaders as mentors, we don’t usually mean “executive nurturers.” We use the term to capture a sense of an affective heritage, in which the meaningful work of social change gets carried forward. And yet, that we turn to “mentor” at all is largely thanks to the term’s Reagan-era reclamation. However much we might want to claim “mentor” for other uses, its every application to the labor of solidarity, caregiving, and comradeship refracts back on its corporate context. Like so much of what was formerly grassroots organizing and activism, it too has become professionalized.

There is one additional feature of the Odyssey’s mentor scene that Safire leaves unremarked. There, as Athena guides Telemachus, preparing him to fight alongside his father, the mentee looks less like an apprentice or a novice than like someone ready to assume the mantle of responsibility, a sharp difference from contemporary corporate mentorship. This is the torch-passing version of the mentor-mentee relationship still common in Hollywood blockbusters and video games, where it’s so frequent that it gets its own mention on the pop-culture wiki TVTropes.com — think of the Jedi masters of Star Wars, or Morpheus tutoring Neo in The Matrix. It’s an archetype that still informs how we often think of the relationships between teachers and students, raising up the young to take over from the old. But it’s an anachronistic fantasy in an era when the structural forces that enabled older generations’ well-being no longer exist — when, in fact, the material comforts of past generations bear responsibility for a climate crisis that will be borne largely by generations to come. In these circumstances, a meaningful transfer of power between mentor and mentee might look less like a torch passing — a replication and renewal of extant practices and beliefs — than like a wholesale rethinking of what power meant and entailed.

Academia, a system with its own long mentorship history, is especially useful for thinking about how conditions of scarcity and upheaval have changed the concept’s meaning. Here too, “mentor” has typically bled into other offices — those of teacher and advisor, which recall the mentor archetype. It’s common for academics to refer to their “mentors” with reverence, as if the term connoted a specific kind of guidance and personal instruction. The term speaks to the idea of intellectual legacy, the way that advanced graduate study was, in a less precarious era, an induction into a genealogy of thought that one would eventually pass on to one’s own mentees.

But academic mentorship has never been perfect, often replicating the same inequalities present outside its walls, and its contemporary application has only heightened its propensity for exploitation. In an era in which the gulf between well- and underresourced institutions has become increasingly stark, mentorship is often uncompensated labor, a trait that compounds the arbitrary ways it has long been dispersed. Mentorship is something many professors can fail at or excel in, disperse with equity or bias, wield as a cudgel or dole out as a gift, often with little penalty or risk to themselves. Students and colleagues rely on such support for their advancement, yet they are often without recourse if they don’t receive it. While some schools and programs might assign mentors, others leave it up to the student to find their own support, whether by networking, charm, or nepotism. The fuzziness of mentorship as a category of academic labor perpetuates this inequality. How do you measure it? What does it involve? What kind of training does it require? What does it even mean? Though the academy has become increasingly willing to use the same productivity quotas honed in the business world, it has remained stubbornly resistant to quantifying the work of mentorship in meaningful ways.

At the same time, mentors bear the weight of institutional efforts to increase diversity. Here, perhaps even more than in the corporate world, it’s often treated as a form of charity, a service obligation one can assume or disregard, reserved mostly for those who see inclusion as an ethical and political obligation as much as a professional one. While universities may pay lip service to its virtue and form committees to facilitate its practice, it usually counts for little in the tenure process. The labor and value of mentoring is a dominant theme in Written/Unwritten: Diversity and the Hidden Truths of Tenure, English professor Patricia A. Matthew’s indispensable collection of interviews and essays on the experiences of the “diverse” faculty academia claims to celebrate. Here, as sociologist Andreana Clay suggests, being a mentor is often “inextricably linked to the position of the educator,” encompassing mutuality, allyship, friendship, activism, and role modeling. But ambivalence and frustration are equally part of the job, the consequence of institutional unwillingness to give time or recognition to work disproportionately performed by faculty of identities historically marginalized in academic life. Meanwhile, academia largely excludes the ever growing number of contingent instructors — the majority of teaching faculty at colleges today — from formal and informal support. This doesn’t prevent their students, who see no difference between them and tenure-track professors, from seeking their time and care. If, at some point, for some people, academic mentorship offered an archetype of the concept, as close as anyone outside a Homeric epic might get to godlike guidance, that day is long past.

And yet. The ideal of the good mentor persists. We reify the term even as it grows increasingly imprecise. Much like the 20th century ideal of the perfect spouse, the mentor in 2020 houses a seemingly endless and incompatible cluster of desires, everything from understanding to support, friendship, motivation, protection, advocacy, leadership, deference, generosity, power, nurturing, care, and collaboration. The mentor stands for the best version of who we want to be, while promising to see us as the best version of ourselves. As in the Odyssey passage Safire references, we might as well ask for a divine protector. Even in its originating appearance, the mentor is an impossible hybrid, as much a fantasy as a source of guidance.

Such desire speaks to another aspect of the mentor ideal: the potential for mutual fascination, as mentor and mentee find in one another both a reflection and an exemplar, sharing the charged pleasure of mutual recognition. Affect theorist Eve Sedgwick gets at this kind of exchange best in her description of the teacher-student relationship in Western appropriations of Tibetan Buddhism. Reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, a popularization of The Tibetan Book of the Dead written largely for American readers by Sogyal Rinpoche, a charismatic Buddhist teacher, Sedgwick considers the distinctive phenomenology of reincarnation in descriptions of the teacher-student bond. As a young child, Rinpoche was identified as the reincarnation of a renowned Buddhist teacher by the man who would become his own “master,” Jamyang Khyentse. He was raised and taught by Khyentse, in the same way Khyentse had been raised and taught by him, in his prior life. In Rinpoche’s description, it’s a kind of teaching that, as Sedgwick suggests, “thrives on personality and intimate emotional relation,” even as it also “functions as a mysteriously powerful solvent of individual identity.” Here, temporal and interpersonal boundaries blur: One is always both teacher and student to an intimately connected other, who is also always one’s own teacher and student. A version of this interchange exists in the transactional language of mentoring today. Mentoring, we are often told, is a two-way street: The mentor stands to gain as much as the mentee, who should in turn consider themselves a mentor in training. Sedgwick reminds us of the emotional intimacy of such work. The will to mentor and to be mentored often comes from a sense of identification: This is who I was; this is who I want to be. It’s a relationship engaged with obligation and care, even as it’s not so much selfless as deeply, disorientingly self-entranced.

There is a coda to Sogyal Rinpoche’s story. In 2017, a quarter century after The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying became an international phenomenon, and nearly 15 years after Sedgwick wrote about it, decades of abuse suffered under Rinpoche came to light in Rigpa, the international Buddhist network he founded, along with evidence of a longstanding cover-up. In a public letter written by his former students, they describe physical, psychological, and sexual manipulation explained away as instruction, concealed by Rinpoche’s “public face” of “wisdom, kindness, humor, warmth and compassion.”

It’s a conclusion that today feels almost expected. Post #MeToo, the ability of powerful men who claimed to be mentors to exploit the trust that came with that role appears unnervingly commonplace. Looking back to Safire’s deeply sexist telling of Mary Cunningham’s experience, or to the many similar stories found in academia, there’s another account of mentorship to be told, one in which the role’s queasy combination of benevolence and power excuses manipulation and abuse. In this version of mentorship’s history, we might see its current association with inclusion and diversity as a kind of sea change, a way of shifting power away from those who have wielded it for too long. Here, the identificatory ideal of mentorship becomes relevant again, promising a way of retelling history, making wisdom from suffering, celebrating those who broke the paths we tread.

Or we could imagine different kinds of solidarity. As much as we might want to, it’s impossible to unwind contemporary mentorship from a worldview that blames individuals for their own subjugation and absolves the company and the state of the burdens of meaningful social change. Before the mentor’s rise, we had language for this. Maybe it’s time to reclaim it.

[acupofmatt-blog1]

You hear Harper & Reggie having sex

40days in the desert → MATT (SELF-PARA)

Tagging→ @rocketpowerreg @notthatharperlee

Location→Mattand Reggie’s apartment

Date→September20, 2018

Summary→Basedoff the Meme Monday prompt: “You hear Harper & Reggie having sex.”

It had been an entire week since Matt took the vow ofcelibacy for herself and Matt was avoiding all things sex as much as possible.Matt hid away anything that could possibly tempt her and ignored her booty callmessages and focused on just playing with Reggie’s (and technically hers) NintendoSwitch, taking care of her plants, and ranting to Coco about her feelings. Matteven stopped buying GRAPEFRUIT to prevent getting even the slightest bit ofhorny.

Was this in any way easy? Hell fucking no.

During one of her shifts at ACup, Matt brushed handswith a girl she handed a drink to, and, in that moment, Matt thanked Godseverely for not making her a guy with a dick because she could’ve sworn shegot a boner from the touch alone. That’s howdeprived of sex she was.

But it was all for a good reason. She wasn’t havingsex for the right reasons and she wanted to prove a point to Lara that she wascommitted to having a relationship. She was trying to be a better Matt.

Matt let out a sigh as she finished feeding Coco herthawed out mouse and pouted to Coco. “I wish I was eating something right now—NOPE.Go water a plant, Matt. Not fucking today.” Matt immediately reprimandedherself, walking over to her plants that needed watering and started todistract herself.

Now, Matt was a sex-pert. She could recognize a sexualmoan from miles away she was like those fucking hound dogs and followed the trailtowards a hot girl with open legs. So when Matt heard a faint moan comingfrom the direction of Reggie’s room? Matt raised an eyebrow.

Nah, she must’ve heard wrong. Reggie’s robot knee didn’thave enough oil, so if they were fucking she would hear that little fuckercreaking louder than the bed.

Matt rolled her eyes and distracted herself with herplants. “Come on you little fuckers, get greener. Do it for mama— “Matt stoppedmid-sentence when she heard another moan.

Matt put her watering can down and tilted her head. “Isthat—“ Moan. “Okay, yup. They’refucking.” Matt laughed pathetically. “It’s fine. It’s whatever. I don’t care. Idon’t. It’s not like I’m taking a vow of CELIBACY or something.” Matt said,loud enough for Reggie and Harper to hear, but they either didn’t hear or didnot care because she continued to hear moans coming from Reggie’s bedroom.

“Are you fucking kidding me? YOU’RE GONNA SHOCK HARPER’SVAGINA WITH YOUR ROBOT KNEE, REGINA.” Matt yelled. “Y’all couldn’t have told meyou were gonna fuck so my celibate ass can go somewhere? I’M TRYING TO BE AGOOD PERSON AND WATER MY PLANTS BUT NOOOO, y’all gotta be here making fuckingdinosaur noises, huh?”

Nothing. Just moans.

Matt whined. “Now I want to answer a bootycall andfuck a girl SOME SUPPORT SYSTEM, JERKS.”

Matt could’ve swore she heard laughing coming fromReggie’s bedroom.

Matt scoffed as she walked to Reggie’s door andpounded on it. "ASSHOLES. YOU GUYS ARE ASSHOLES. WARN A GIRL I'M ABOUT TOHAVE A SEX BREAKDOWN I'M GOING THROUGH WITHDRAWALS. MY PHONE IS BUZZING WITHBOOTY CALLS AND I DON’T KNOW WHETHER TO JUST USE MY PHONE AS A VIBRATOR ORANSWER THE CALL. WHY ARE YOU TWO DOING THIS?” Matt yelled, running a handthrough her hair as laughter erupted from the bedroom.

“You know what? This is my 40 days in the desert. Justlike Jesus. This is the fucking devil trying to get me to cave. And I won’t.” Matt said aloud, suddenlypouting. “But my desert is so DRY and I'm parched and I need something wet Ican just…” Matt bit her lip at the thought before shaking her head. “I can't— “Mattgroaned as she smacked Reggie’s door. “I hope Harper breaks your fucking jawfrom all that face sitting she’s doing!”

Matt let out a deep breath. “Ooh just fucking WAITuntil I finish this vow of celibacy. You fuckers are going to enter the sceneof Twilight where Edward fucked Bella so hard he tore up the whole ass housethey were staying at. STARTING WITH YOUR BED, REGINA.” Matt exclaimed, flickingoff the door. “I’ll go! That’s fine! But I’m taking the Nintendo Switch, bitch!Have fun not having post-sex Mario Kart fun.” Matt smirked as she grabbed herbag and then the Nintendo Switch and left the apartment absolutely fuming. The last thing Matt wanted to bewas heated, but here she was, like a cat in heat.

[mthaytr]

Alphonse give Roy the shovel talk when he finds out Roy and Edward are dating

I’m gonna go ahead and cheat on this one :’D because I’m really proud of a shovel talk I’ve already written, for a fic that actually only ever got published as original fiction, by a publisher, for like, money and shit XD

The morning after was far and away one of the worst things about getting older.  He supposed it must have been his fault, though: when he had been younger, he had used to brag about how he never got hangovers, no matter how much he had imbibed.  In retrospect, he decided that this had probably been tempting fate something awful, because sometime around his 25th birthday he had gotten his first hangover, and it had hit him like an arrow to the head.  For the next several years, they were mostly mild – a couple of hours at worst, although sometimes they were truly sumptuous.  But as the years went by, the punishments for his indulgences just kept getting worse, and longer, until sometimes the headache and dizziness and nausea would haunt him for two days after he made some spectacularly bad choices.  

God, if you’re out there, please let this be more like one of my mid-twenties hangovers than my late-twenties ones, he thought, although he had little hope of that.  He allowed himself a single groan of self-pity as he forced his eyes open

The clock on the wall failed to materialize out of the early-morning fuzz on his eyes when he first turned to it: he had to stare at it for at least thirty seconds before making any sense of it.  Once he had managed to process the time, he gave himself a great heave and stumbled up out of bed.  He threw an irritated glance at over-bright world through the crack between his curtains, indescribably glad that it was a Sunday and he didn’t have to show up anywhere in particular.

It wasn’t until he was standing in his bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth, confronted by the evidence in the mirror, that the memory of exactly why he was so hung-over hit him.  He groaned and slapped a hand to his neck, as if by covering up the little dark mark that had been staring him in the face, he could actually make it disappear.

Shit.  Shit shit shit shit.

He spat out the toothpaste and hunched over the sink, hands spread to support his weight.

Or maybe he deserved a late-twenties hangover.  Maybe he deserved the worst and longest hangover of his life, because he had just made a series of decisions – if you could even call them “decisions” – that could make a strong play for the title of stupidest goddamn thing you’ve ever done.

You spend years fighting this off, and then all it takes is a couple of drinks and some pretty smiling to break you down?  You’re pretty pathetic.

“But he was flirting with me,” he moaned, leaning forward until the top of his head was pressing into the mirror.  “What was I supposed to do?”

Have some self-control, the bitter part of him shot back.  What part of “off-limits” don’t you understand?

– but what if he really wanted it?  It seemed to me like he did, at the time.

Don’t be stupid.  He was drunk, and he’s eighteen and probably horny as hell.  What’s more likely – that he’s actually attracted to a man eleven years his senior, a man who is also nominally his commanding officer, or that he had had too much alcohol and didn’t know how to say no?

He groaned again, and turned the tap on before bending over to take a long drink from the running water and standing up again.  He looked himself in the eye, taking in the stubble and the dark circles under his eyes and the messiness of his hair, and decided that he didn’t have enough energy to fix any of that just yet, so he turned back out into the hallway, shuffling along the flimsy faux-wood floor until he came to the top of the staircase.

What he saw at the bottom paralyzed him: he froze with one hand on the banister, a deep chill running down his spine.

There – sitting at his kitchen table, calm as anything – was Alphonse Elric, with a pocketknife in one hand and a small whetstone in the other, sharpening the blade with slow, deliberate motions.

“Good, you’re finally awake,” Alphonse said, casually, as if they were roommates and this scene wasn’t straight out of a Hitchcock film.  “I was wondering when that was going to happen.”  He had his brother’s eyes, set in a round, earnest face, upon which the cold look he wore was utterly out of place.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” Al responded, as if Roy were slow for not having caught it yet.

“Yeah, but you’re in my house.  Breaking and entering is a crime,” Roy replied, automatically, feeling stupid the moment he said it.

“I’m aware.  Technically, it’s also a crime for a soldier to have sex with another man, and in this specific situation, the power differential between you and the man you decided to do it with isn’t going to help your case.  So sit down,” Alphonse said, giving a wave that indicated the empty chair across from him, “and we’ll talk, and nobody will press charges – no matter how much they want to,” he added, icily.

This is really some Twilight Zone-style mindfuckery, he thought as he walked down the stairs to join his unexpected guest at the table.  Alphonse being this angry was like something out of an urban legend.  Normally, the younger man was a paragon of Buddha-like calm – he had to be, in order to deal with Ed’s mood swings and occasional aggressiveness and manic bouts and general lack of common sense.  Seeing Al with that cutting expression on his face – not to mention that knife in his hand – genuinely made Roy worry for his own future well-being.

He folded his hands together on the table, and let his elbows support most of his weight.

“If you’ve come to kill me, I’d really rather you do it before the hangover wears off rather than waiting until afterwards,” he said, still squinting some to keep the bright kitchen light from piercing his eyes.  “Do me that one small mercy.”

Alphonse laughed and set both knife and sharpening stone to the side, then laced his own fingers together.

“Oh, I haven’t come to kill you,” he said, in a tone that was cheerful but did nothing whatsoever to reassure the older man.  “I’ve just come to talk.”

“Alright, then, talk away,” Roy said, wishing very much that he could postpone this conversation long enough to get a cup of coffee.  

“I will.  I take it you know why I’m here,” the younger man said, back straight as steel.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea, yeah,” Mustang replied.  “At least, I know what I did.”

“Explain it to me in your own words,” Alphonse said, almost like he was talking to a child.

“Abuse of authority, poor decision-making, drinking with someone under 21.  Having sex with your brother.  Putting his career in danger.”

The look that Al returned to him was surprised, almost even confused.

“Well – hm,” he started, examining the other man carefully, expression turning thoughtful.  “Not exactly.  I suppose that generally, yes, it has to do with you having sex with my brother – you certainly made some poor decisions,” he said, tone turning cutting again; Mustang winced.  “But I guess my brother was telling the truth – you really are missing some more general information that would allow you to connect all of these dots.  Let me tell you a story,” he started, picking up the knife and beginning to clean his fingernails with the point.

“Let’s start with four years ago, when all of us met.  You find us at that technology show and talk to us, find out our – history,” he said, delicately.  “You then buy us a hotel room and go all out to get West Point to accept us as students, even though he’s fourteen and I’m thirteen.  He’s three years younger than the admissions age, but you manage it anyway, and they tell me I can join when I turn fourteen, too.  So you get us a place to live in a dorm on campus.  My brother decides to do a little research on you, finds out about your purple hearts and your contributions to mechanical engineering and hero-worships you very briefly.  Then he decides that you’re a huge pain, and then, a bit later, you two sort of settle it out.  You became friends,” he said, casually.

“Yes, I suppose we did,” he agreed, so he didn’t have to sit there in silence like an idiot.

“Well, here’s the part of the story that might be new to you.  Remember when he turned sixteen and got that boyfriend?”  Roy nodded: how could he forget?  That had been a turbulent time, to say the least.  “Well, you know how he figured out he was gay?  Because he realized one day that he’d been in love with you since he met you, or something like it.  He just hadn’t noticed up until that point.”

Those words hit him like a lance to the gut: pain clutched at throat, and confusion churned in its wake.

“I’m – he what?” he said, unsure whether the sudden swell of nausea had more to do with the hangover or the conversation.  

“I meant it,” he said, entirely serious.  “The reason he didn’t do or say anything about it at the time was because he knew he was underage and that anything that happened between you could potentially get you in a lot of trouble, not to mention ruin your relationship entirely, which was the very last thing that he wanted.  But regardless of anything he did or didn’t do, he is absolutely in love with you.  Are we clear on this point?”

Mustang barely even managed to sputter another “What?” before Alphonse continued on.

“Good.  Now, there’s a second thing you’re going to need to understand.  That boyfriend Ed got caught holding hands with?”  A pause: Roy nodded.  “Yeah, the guy disappeared after that first beating.  Ed never saw him again after that, and he hasn’t been with another guy since.”

That sinking feeling must have been his heart, or the weight of guilt laying heavy in his stomach.  

“So that means…”

“Yes.  Last night – before you got to him, anyway – he was a virgin.  He’d been kissed, but I’m pretty sure that was more or less the extent of it.”

A flash of memory: the look of exultation on Ed’s face as Roy’s fingers had worked inside of him, the noises he made when he was riding the older man’s cock – that was why he had looked so amazed by the whole thing.  That was why his attempts to reciprocate had been sparse and uncertain.  

The fact that they had gone at it drunk in a bathroom had been bad enough before he had known.  Now –

“Oh my god,” he said, his head sagging forward.  “I’m so sorry.  I had no idea.”

Al nodded slowly, appraising.

“I know.  That’s high up on the list of reasons why I haven’t killed you yet.”  He paused, and looked the colonel straight in the eye.  “You hurt my brother.  I think you hurt him a lot, last night, by treating him like some throwaway one-night-stand and telling him you regretted it.”

“I didn’t tell him I regretted it,” the colonel said, trying anything at all to make the guilt hurt less.  “I said I thought he might.”

Al raised his eyebrows, an irritated twitch to his lips.

“Which is basically code for ‘This was a bad idea and I hope you’ll come to your senses about it tomorrow.’  So you were invalidating his choices and telling him you weren’t interested, all in one sentence.  Nicely done.”

Mustang could have explained further, but it would all just have sounded like excuses.  Nothing he could say was going to make this any better.

“I’m so sorry.  I really wouldn’t have done it, if I had known.”

“He knew that, which is why he didn’t tell you.  He had been hoping to – I don’t know.  The plan had been to confess to you last night, or something.  Probably something a lot less mushy than that.  But in any case, he had intended to make his move.  And he did, I guess, though without communicating very well.  But then you go and make it clear that only your dick is interested in him, and so he comes stumbling back up to the dorm room, drunk and depressed and alone, when he should have been at your place, in your bed, all night.  Even if you didn’t actually want a relationship with him, I would have thought that you would have had the courtesy to do that.”

I would have, too.  Idiot – I thought you were better than that.  I never thought you’d let your body get the better of your common sense so badly.

Good job.  What a thing to prove yourself wrong about.

“What can I do?”

“Well, you’re going to apologize to him, for starters,” the younger man snapped.  “Get down on your hands and knees and beg for his forgiveness.  Second of all,” he continued, a dangerous glint in his eye, “You’re going to make it up to him.  I don’t suppose I can force you to get into a relationship with him – it would be meaningless to you both.  Though don’t think I haven’t considered it,” he added.  There was a pause.  “But you had better make this up to him somehow.  If three days go by and he still feels like a steak you sent back to the chef, then I’m going to seriously reconsider my decision not to press charges against you.  How does that sound?” he asked, whittling dirt out from under his left thumbnail.

Roy thought about it for a moment.

“…fair enough,” he replied, sighing.  “Any ideas?”

The look Al gave him as he stood was just dripping with condescension.

“You’re a smart man.  I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he said, and Roy didn’t dare say another word to him as he left.

[soniclozdplove]

I've just finished a binge read of Fallout: Equestria, finishing the e-book for the very first time in the process and I just have this to say: Holy. SHIT!!! Guys, this book isn't appropriate in the least for nonmature audiences (it features graphic depictions of gore, drugs, slavery, and implications of sex. Plus the main character has a habit of making a sailor blush with how she swears) but I'll be DAMNED if it wasn't possibly one of, if not THE, best book I have ever read! It is such an emotional ride it guarantees that even the coldest and most hardened hearts will she'd at least one tear, why? Because dammit the entire thing is so relatable to everyone!!! While it's true that it is based in a crossover of two fictional worlds with two fictional rules and laws, it is so realistic, about as realistic as the characters in these settings as a member of those races could be! True, there are bland and even gruesome moments (I do not need to have several of the mental images the descriptions would give and more than once I was tempted to skipped to some more action or dialogue oriented scenes) but this story has a way to catch your attention and KEEP it!

Fallout:Equestria is a blend of the video game series Fallout and the fourth generation of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (blending elements of all the games, barring Fallout 4 and with heavy influence from Fallout 3 and before Alicorn Twilight was ever a thing) telling the story of Littlepip (you'll notice that at least once on this site I have mentioned her, in my attempt to draw her long ago) a young Unicorn mare who grew up in Stable 2 after the My Little Pony versions of a nuclear holocaust ended life as those of us who watch the show know it.

While the Mane Six (the name for the six lead characters in MLP) do take a major role in this story... they're story will be told mostly in flashbacks (or memory orbs as they're called...) where we as Littlepup learn exactly how the happy pastel world of ponies turned into the cruel and dangerous Equestrian Wasteland it is at the start of the book. I suggest you hold onto your tissues for this, the fates of our favorite mares are not pretty in the least. It is a safe thing to assume that the majority of characters you know in the series are dead, have been for several centuries, and likely died in a horrible, painful, torturous, and downright stomache curling way, some of them being either described up to their final moments... or heavily implied as to what their final moments were. (Like I said, Graphic. Descriptions)

Now the story may be heavily influence by the end ponies we know now, it is at its core a biography. An autobiography describing Littlepip's adventures as she steps out of her Stable for the first time and her journey as she learns the fate of the Mane Six,the truth behind her own 'destiny,' and trying to make the Wasteland a better and safer place with her mismatched group of friends including an exhiled Pegasus sharpshooter, a medic aspiring singer, an undead soldier trapped in his own armor and his own demons, a zebra slave capable of killing abominations that would normally require heavy weaponry just to scratch the skin with her bare hooves, and a toxic radioactive pheonix. Oh, and her tease of a girlfriend.

Littlepip herself is a snarky, sarcastic little unicorn that describes herself as a "one-trick pony" on multiple times, and that is true as, aside from memory orbs, we rarely see her use any magic outside of levitation. (however you will note that she has the ability to be very versatile with said spell) She is habitually reckless with an insatiable curiousity, constantly throwing herself headlong into danger. She is also a walking arsenal with her favorite weapons being a revolver nicknames Little Macintosh and a magic rifle. She is also the resident lockpick and has noted on several accounts that the skill is oddly rare within the Wasteland, and de'facto leader of the group (which everyone, even Littlepip herself, has questioned on multiple occasions) and has a habit of letting her recklessness pull her friends with her into "hell itself." She makes it clear that while she would be sad to see any of them go, almost desperate without them really, she would understand and even encourage her companions to leave their party on multiple occasions.

The first chapter of the book is... well, it's mostly just exposition. Explaining to newcomers the what, who, and why of the story and introducing us to Littlepip. It isn't until the end second and third chapters that we truly begin, however I still recommend reading the first chapter so as to understand why we appear where we do in the other chapters. As the story progresses you'll notice that Littlepip's narrative tends to jump about more and more, but try no to be put off by it as it is fairly gradual. You'll notice she gets less sarcastic and more philosophical as time goes by as well. Remember that the POV is definitely from a traumatized main character and it becomes more evident as times pass. Also a warning to those of you, just like with Littlepip, the introduction to how depraved the Wasteland is will be harsh! And it will be fast, happening as soon as the second chapter, only getting more depraved as time goes.

I might continue this however it is now 3:21 am and I work in the morning (and I need to SLEEP)