#in the absence of men

[roughentumble]

( dexter: new blood // ginger snaps 2: unleashed // in the absence of men by philippe besson )

[lazzarella]

"And so, we find ourselves in a vicious circle, ever failing just when we believe we have triumphed, routed in the end because it was impossible that we should win. Love engenders its own destruction."

In the Absence of Men by Philippe Besson

[ena-darling]

getting high, being tied down by the wrists and ankles and eaten out until im crying sounds like a dream rn

[bbarnesbby]

i have to make a presentation on love presented in literature through out books ive read, but those books consist of boy parts by eliza clark, all the way to in the absence of men by phillipe besson…

[monabee-draws]

Dorian confessing his intention to return to Tevinter for good is so heartbreaking in the Tresspasser DLC. Because of course he does! It doesn't come out of nowhere, he tells the inquisitor as much before they even defeat Corypheus - he loves his home country and knows that he personally needs to be the one to fix it. Not any foreign power (including you and the Inquisition) but through internal change. And he's so blasé about it when he tells you, keeping his tone light, excited for his future work with Maevaris and the Lucerni! Of course, he didn't want you to find out like that but this is a good thing. He's happy! He's practically jovial!

And then you think about how familiar that tone of voice is. And remember his romance scene, and the nonchalant way he asks you if this whole relationship is just a one-time thing. And how he jokes and jibes with you in the bad-end future during In Hushed Whispers, to the point where Leliana calls him out on the obvious attempt at levity. Barring your brushes with his family, who elicit a kind of knee-jerk anger that cracks his usual mask, Dorian is very good at maintaining that emotional wall. So you listen as your heart breaks, as you consider how to respond to the lightness of him in this devastating moment, and you realise-

Dorian is terrified. The kind of scared where you can't really voice it, not in public, not even in private spaces when you aren't 100% in control. It's scary losing a parent, even one you're not quite reconciled with. To have to take his place and fill a role you've never fit, and somehow finally actually push forward with all the ideals you've been imagining to be so far away for many years. And to do all that on the opposite side of the world from the people who all made you finally believe it could be possible in the first place?

Dorian is so very used to being the brave one, the optimistically realistic one, that he can't possibly burden you - whose heart is breaking, whose Inquisition is failing, whose body is slowly killing them - with all of his own ugly fear. That wouldn't be very charming and dependable and Dorian of him, would it? More to the point, leaning on you would be both more burdensome to you and chafe against his own stubborn pride - not accepting favours is well-established during his romance-specific quest to retrieve his birthright. So instead of taking you aside somewhere quiet, consulting you about his final decision on the matter, and giving both of you the space to grieve, he...

Well he tells Varric. And Sera, and Bull, and Cole. Part of it is practice - how might they react? Part of it is in hope for advice on how to break the news. Varric and Bull are adept speakers. Cole's whole job is compassion. Even Sera's bluntness might help when you're chronically incapable of not sugarcoating things. But all it really does it make things worse, because its a distancing tactic. Nothing can truly prepare him for the crack in your voice, the sharp sting of your flinch and the perceived betrayal.

It's almost ironic, that his romantic lock-in asks you to decide if you're in for the long haul, when Dorian's entire arc is one that will inevitably draw him back to Tevinter. And specifically in such a way as to leave you. Because he does not want you tagging along (at least not now, not as the Inquisitor.) Dorian's fear in this moment is not fully centered on you, the man he loves, but there is certainly a part of him that is back in the Inquisitor's chambers on the opposite side of that question of 'do you want me to stay.'

Dorian Pavus' greatest fear is temptation, emblazoned on his tombstone in the Fade for all to see. And there you are, with your political power, ready to jump in and save the day once again on his behalf. And he's tempted. There you are with your familiarity and a space for him in the South that accepts him for who he is. And he's tempted.

There you are. Loving him. And well...

So he doesn't lower his voice to whisper to you, or hold you too close. He confesses in public where the crowds prohibit hysterics, he sips on precious wine, and he gifts you his sending stone. It is both distance and closeness all tied with a bow. A temptation that he can just about handle. Fear under wraps. Because if he lets you, you will - without even knowing - stop his entire life in its tracks. You represent everything he can never afford to lose to. And it is wretched how desperately he doesn't want to lose you.

[justaz]

merlin being forced to confront the fact that he’s failing his people bc he’s sitting idly by while uther slaughters them all and coming to the decision that he has to act to save them but that’ll make him camelot enemy no. 1 but technically he already was they just didn’t know it. merlin spending a week all morose but unwilling to talk about it and spending as much time with his friends as possible. on his last night in camelot, he goes to arthur’s chambers and the prince is confused on why he’s there. merlin drops a sealed letter on his desk before pulling arthur into a gentle and emotional kiss. they barely separate, their lips hardly a breath apart, and merlin asks for forgiveness. arthur, thinking he’s apologizing for the kiss, tells him there’s nothing to forgive and goes in for a second kiss but merlin pulls away, knowing that that one brief kiss was all he could handle. if he lets arthur kiss him the way he’s dreamt of being kissed, he won’t be able to do what he needs to do, he won’t be able to leave. merlin tells him good night and leaves before arthur can react. he’s gone by dawn.

[whirlybirbs]

it’s 5:20am i cannot sleep i am consumed with thoughts and yearning for keigo takami i need to be euthanized

[archerofunspeakablelove]

SpaceDogs was allegedly started because someone was trying to ship adam TOWERS with nigel and everyone played a game of telephone and got confused. don't get me wrong i love spacedogs but ADAM TOWERS AND NIGEL. GUYS!!! THE POTENTIAL

[simpleapparition]

while im seeing some metal bands come under fire for their association with and support of transphobic bands, i wanted to shoutout a couple bands with outspoken trans allies!! please feel free to add on with your own recommendations

Silent Planet's vocalist garrett russell is someone ive called "the kindest man on earth" many times. i knew him as someone who would come to the defense of marginalized people and chew out bigots for months before i found out he was a musician. ive seen several other trans people say that the safest they have ever felt at a show is at a silent planet show

Holding Absence i dont really go here ngl, ive really only listened to their split ep with alpha wolf, but ive followed lucas on twitter since he replied to my sleep token fanart last year and he seems so unbelievably kind and sincere. its no surprise that him and garrett are friends. multiple times ive gone to read replies to a transphobes tweet and found lucas in their replies calling them out

[twilightakiishi]

apparently if you draw these guys once you can never stop. it’s like a curse

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

BARTENDER GETO AAAAUUGHHHH 💕💕 he probably has to deal with drunkards fighting all the time and hes overworked 💔 its ok tho bc i love men who hate their life and job

BARTENDER GETOOOOO <3333 i have an old ask abt him that i’ll get to answering shortly hehe (ollie i am looking at you)……….. BUT YES ANON HE IS SOOOOO. everything. i would fold so fast. and so real we DO love our men cynical and tired <3333

[lazzarella]

"But there can be no secrets between true friends, precisely because one does not wish to hide from true friends; with them one longs to confess this thing which burns inside because we know that they will understand."

In the Absence of Men by Philippe Besson

[80sdragonbreath]

This bugged me this morning

I had a "discussion" (lol, can anything on Tumblr be called a discussion?) with two feminists. Not particularly hardcore feminists.

We got to the topic of divorce and how men can't complain about unfair court outcomes because, basically, men don't ask for custody. One of the two feminists even offered a feminist source to back their claims up with.

...

I told them my story.

I was a stay-at-home dad for the first 7 years of my kids lives. I did everything including all the housework. But when the marriage deteriorated, my (now ex-) wife made false allegations against me, had me removed from my own home and from my kids' lives, didn't adhere to a single court order, destroyed my (very good) relationship with my children, and made it obvious to everyone that if I continued to seek to be a part of my kids lives, she would destroy everyone around her.

It was the most painful decision I have ever had the misfortune to face.

Do I fight for what's rightfully my kids' and my futures - a demonstrated loving and caring father in their lives?

Or do I spare them from the glaringly obvious destructive witch who sees them as pawns in her game and WILL NOT STOP until she has destroyed everyone?

I chose to spare them. I intentionally signed myself out of my own children's lives, to spare them from a fate worse than I could imagine. It was the least-bad of the (only) bad outcomes that we faced. There wasn't an opportunity to choose a good outcome, or even a balanced or fair outcome. That wasn't on the table.

It broke my heart.

So MY stats will record that I voluntarily gave up all access to my own children. I am one of the feminists "stats" that shows that dads simply DO NOT CARE about their children.

"Ehrmergerd! If men akshually cared about their kids, and ASKED for custody, they would get it! My feminist source tells me so! LMAO LOSER"

That breaks my heart a second time.

90% of the men that I came across in that time told me the same story. They didn't want to fight, but their ex was making life impossible, and their ex had told them outright that she would destroy them and their relationships if they didn't comply with her demands.

That's not included in the "stats" of fathers giving up access to their own children.

Nope, and no feminists want to think that a) women are capable of that, or b) that if she's doing it, she's acting alone. Of course, it must be something HE'S done!

Even my sister said to me "Well you must have done SOMETHING for her to act that way?"

Or maybe, dear sister, maybe she has a mental illness?? It's NEVER the woman's fault, apparently.

This conversation brought up too much for me to handle, so I blocked them, where normally I wouldn't.

Men are telling you their lived experience, and you're telling them they are wrong.

Didn't that happen to women once upon a time.....?

[strixhaven]

gripping your shoulders and shaking you as violently as possible. where are the trans men. have you bothered to think about trans men at all. how does transmasculinity slot into the worldview you’re espousing here. what ideas of queerness and gender are you ignoring and leaving out of the conversation. who else are you making invisible and perpetuating the erasure of. do you even understand the violence that comes with erasure and silence. if you do not take into account the varied lives and experiences of trans men, transmasculine people, and the actual wide spectrum of non-binary people outside of those you can forcibly assign the identity of woman-lite, to your idea of gender, oppression, queerness, and the world itself is fundamentally incomplete and Wrong. literally just entirely Wrong and you need to address that. where are the fucking trans men.

[bibiana112]

On one hand I wanna be lenient since I agree that Mira's whole Thing is portrayed unfairly from a mental health standpoint so she should get to not be a boiled down to being a monster in the end, suddenly being "fixed" like canon treats it isn't a great look either but can be done better in a way that she's trying to make up for her wrongs and genuinely choosing to turn herself in while still being the same neurotype....... but then another part of me wants to know why if Ace and Dio and fuck even Saito 'not a zero escape character' Sejima get to be completely unrepentant assholes why should the Woman serial killer be any nicer and come around at all she didn't even go through all the horrors in ztd to get character growth from that q-team only remembers the timeline with no executions to begin with

[cinnamonest]

Alright let's make one thing clear;

Riddle (from TWST) would 100000% do things that are on the verge of momcon. I doubt he'd do actual momcon (I mean have you SEEN their relationship??) but he'd project it on his darling.

I can see him forcing his darling to dress more like his mom, put her hair up like his mom, do her makeup like his mom, but not act like his mom. HE wants the power in THIS relationship.

10000% would call you either "mom", "mommy", or his mother's name while he noncons you.

Yes omg omg AHHHH he WOULD he is such a Mama's boy, a kind of the same vibes as [this post] from forever ago? He would subconsciously single out a darling that bears some physical resemblance and make you his replacement Mommy :))))

Although he doesn't realize it, it's also where he gets his preferences. It's subconscious; if you asked him if he sought out facial features or traits that resembled his mother, he would scowl, say no, that that is a frankly reprehensible notion.

But anyone who has seen both you and her, well, they can't help but raise their eyebrows a bit at the facial structure similarity. No one says anything to him about it, though, out of fear of invoking his ire. The last thing anyone needs is him getting embarrassed over the realization and going into a pseudo-tantrum over what an absurd suggestion it is that he would ever select for someone based on a facial similarity to his own blood. What kind of pervert would even come up with such an idea? He's just too oblivious to his own self to recognize it.

He sort of tries to make you this... ideal figure, what a perfect mommy to him should have been. Obviously he's a controlling little bastard from the get-go, always, always correcting every little thing you do. But the way he moulds you into a maternal figure is not entirely a conscious decision. He enforces things upon you that just sort of seem right -- that you have to wear this and this in this specific way, that you should hold your posture this way, walk like this, speak more formally in public and more casually with him, and with this sort of tone to each setting respectively... no, it's not in the rules or anything, but there's a sort of well-known propriety to such things, you know? Just because it's not a rule doesn't mean there isn't a very specific and proper way for people to behave and carry themselves and so on, especially for someone in your position, seeing as your behaviors and mannerisms reflect on him.

He doesn't realize to what degree his idea of normalcy and propriety has been shaped by example. That is, his own mom. It's where he gets all of his ideas of proper behavior for anything not explicitly in the rules.

It's not just a matter of forcing you to behave a certain way, either, but also discouraging what he doesn't like. Sometimes you do certain things that don't seem out of the ordinary, that you don't even think would upset him, yet he still seems to scowl. What exactly is his problem with the thing you're wearing? It's not inappropriate, nor does it defy any of the countless regulations you know are imposed upon you... but it just doesn't feel right to him. It's not something she... that you would wear.

And why does he not like this or that part of your speech patterns, the hairstyle or length you have, so on and so on? He couldn't say. He just knows he wants to change it to this specific idea he has in mind. All the while unaware he's subconsciously basically just redesigning you into Mommy 2.0, more or less.

But yes, there's a few things that he does not want you replicating: a sense of authority over him, and that constant, merciless criticism. On the occasion you have been upset with or reprimanded something he does, it makes him unusually, exceptionally uncomfortable and upset, the way he stiffens and scowls. Usually, he's fairly receptive to and humble about criticism (as long as its valid), but you're just not supposed to do that. You're the one person that can't, even if he made a genuine mistake. You're supposed to be the embodiment of tenderness and affection.

If he recreates the setup himself, with you, he can give himself a sort of power he never had with his real mother. It's a very comforting sort of feeling, all the warmth and familiarity, but with none of the fear of failure, none of the anxiety around a single misstep. So when you give him that anxiety anyway, it feels like a transgression, like you've done something wrong, and he can treat it accordingly.

And with you, he's a lot more sensitive to criticism too. Even if you say just the slightest thing, even if its worded very nicely and given to him very gently, it upsets him. He's uncharacteristically petulant about it. He'll cross his arms and scowl, mutter something under his breath, and more or less give you a cold shoulder and silent treatment for the rest of the day. Unless, of course, you make it up to him somehow, namely by apologizing and admitting you were wrong and he was right and he did nothing wrong. If not, the bitterness and hurt can last for quite a while.

As for what he calls you, well. He unfortunately isn't the type of guy who can say something and not realize what he's said, so he does catch himself, face buried against your neck and balls deep inside you.

Mommy...

And he freezes up, stops completely. Stiffens. There's a few moments of silence as he has to come to terms with and process his own words.

That -- I don't --

A slip of the tongue, perhaps. So he tries to pass it off as. However, it's only at that moment that it seems to click, all the dots connect and he realizes what he's done with you, how he's moulded you. The poor thing gets extremely self-conscious, hurries to the library to desperately seek out psychology texts in some desire to find out if there's something wrong with him.

However, he does find said material, which claims that, at least to some extent, this sort of thing is normal... maybe not to the extent he's done it, but, it says something about how men often pursue partners that bear some resemblance to their mothers... so he takes that piece of information and runs with it. Rather, he stretches the concept beyond the point of what anyone else would consider reasonable, and extrapolates it to mean that what he's doing is normal, too.

So now, he can let the anxiety go and not have to feel paranoid that he has some kind of problem, because it's normal, so he doesn't have a problem at all, no. In fact, even if you object in some way, he uses the information to justify and argue the matter from that point forward... so he'll keep calling you what he feels like, thank you very much. Just hope it doesn't accidentally slip when you're around others... that would be the end of him, they'd never let him live that down.

And in truth, somehow the whole thing makes him less anxious around his actual mother, he feels less of an urge to live up to her expectations and is less afraid of upsetting her, now that he's redirected his need for approval and validation to you instead. Although with that gone, he does get a bit more openly resentful, which impacts their relationship negatively a bit... and although he'll have trouble both explaining to you where he got all the clothes from that he comes back with over break, he'll have even more trouble convincing her he doesn't know why hers went missing...