#it's like how bisexuality is only attacked as a result of the man-hating - it's not fundamental; it's just there and ugly

[constellyations]

Hunter x Hunter ships I personally don’t like

These are ships that are NOT supported on my page.

Please note a couple things before reading.

1, I do not hate any ships for being WLW, MLM or NL (hetero) unless it’s the result of representation erasure (An example of this is in the Owl House Community. People ship Lunter and say that it’s ok because Luz is a canon Bisexual but it’s still WLW relationship erasure!!! I do not support Lunter btw…)

2, I’m gonna mention stuff like proshipping and toxic relationships so please be warned if you’re triggered by those types of things do not read under the cut

3, I’m also gonna talk about ships I lovehate due to having extremely mixed opinions.

Alright that’s all!! Enjoy your reading and please remember to respect my opinions and interpretations of the characters. This will also include spoilers for the entire animated series.

Killunary (Killua x Canary)

There are a couple reasons why I don’t like this ship but it’s mostly because of the power imbalance. Certain employee x employer ships just don’t work due to extreme power imbalance. The main example of this is the Zoldyck family and their abusive nature towards all the butlers, including how Kikyo treats Canary when she got close to Killua.

The other reason is because I see Killua as a heavily MLM coded character. And I’m sorry if you don’t agree but based on both his canon and non-canon interactions with the various women of the story, I don’t think he’s straight. I personally think he might be gay/vincian but it’s up to interpretation!! I cannot see Killua dating a girl. (This includes ships like KilluRetz and Killumane)

Hisomachi (Hisoka x Machi)

Again, Hisoka is a heavily MLM coded character with Machi being the only woman in the series he’s shown possibly romantic interest in. Hisoka himself is an extremely harmful stereotype of a gay man being overly flamboyant but also predatory towards kids and women. That is a stereotype that is shown and pushed VERY often with Hisoka. (If you do view Machi as WLW, which I do, she’s also a harmful stereotype of the mean, man hating, lesbian./lh)

Also the fact that Machi straight up rejected his dinner offer in the Heaven’s Arena Arc should be enough to push the fact that she doesn’t like him…

Kuroneon (Chrollo/Kuroro x Neon)

Ok I only have like one reason but I feel like it’s validated tbh!!! He literally attacked her and stole her ability. And I don’t wanna go on a whole rant about Neon and her complexities rn but her nen ability, lovely ghostwriter, was essentially the only reason for her father to love her and care the way he did…

Also their age difference urks me ALOT cuz Neon is about the same age as Kurapika (17-19) and Chrollo is pushin 30… T-T

Kurokura (Chrollo/Kuroro x Kurapika)

A lot of people ship them because “lol omg enemies to lovers!!” But like. This isn’t that kind of enemies to lovers hun… :// Chrollo and the troupe literally massacred the Kurta Clan with zero mercy and left Kurapika alone and almost defenseless in an unfamiliar world. He destroyed everything Kurapika had. That’s not something Kurapika would or will forgive easily. Kurapika is literally destroying himself inside out because of what the troupe did to the Kurta Clan. This ship is just ugh it’s so toxic I hate >:(

Also again, even if Chrollo didn’t destroy the Kurta Clan, age difference. Kurapika’s the same age as Neon (17-19) and Chrollo is PUSHING 30!!!!! Icky!!!

Tbh this goes for any of the Troupe x Kurapika… gross age difference and disgusting enemies to lovers dynamic.

Pitokai (Neferpitou x Kite/Kaito)

One of my biggest icks ever is Victim x Killer because like how would YOU feel if you were violently murdered for seemingly no reason and then find out that there are people out there who think you and your killer would be cute if you dated O.O

Yeah it’s like… really toxic. I don’t have the energy to go into all the details of it but Killer x Victim has no reason to be as popular as it is…

Wisky (Wing x Bisky)

(I couldn’t find any GIFs of them from the movie so you get this still image)

Teacher x Student dynamics really ick me as well… in most but not all cases the teacher is somewhat of a parental figure and the student is very young, in most cases a minor!!! We don’t exactly know if Wing was a kid when Bisky taught him nen since she refers to most people younger then as kids but the idea that she was extremely influential in his earlier years and has that older adult figure role in his life makes the idea of shipping them just.. it makes my skin crawl tbh ^^|||

Also there’s a HUGE age difference with Bisky being 57 and Wing being in his early 20s.

Gingkite (Ging x Kite/Kaito)

Again w the teacher x student guys… the same reasons as with Wisky expect we know for a fact that Ging met and started training Kite when he was a teenager! Makes this extra icky.

Again with the age difference! Ging is in his 30s I think maybe 40s? And Kite is in his early 20s. Pretty big age gap!!!

Any incestous Zoldyck ships

The fact that I even have to state this… dude… c’mon…. Incest is NOT cool chat!!

Any ships between the siblings? DISGUSTING!!

Between the kids and the parents? GRODY!!

Between Zeno and his grandkids? OUTRAGEOUS!!

This isn’t even just limited to the Zoldyck family dude… Mito x Ging is a thing apparently…

Any Child x Adult

Again… why do I need to state this… shipping adults x children is WEIRD!!! And NOT OK!!!

Hisoka x Gon? GROSS!!

Killua x Illumi? DOUBLE GROSS!! INCEST IS ALSO NOT OK.

Killua x Machi? STILL GROSS!!!!

Please if you ship canon children with adults… please… just get off my page :^

Merupouf (Meruem x Shaiapouf)

Gonna be so fr w you guys… I used to ship this… i thought they were funny :’) I’VE RECOVERED DW!!! (/lh)

Uh yeah so the power dynamic is really erm!!! /neg I genuinely cannot go into detail about how toxic they are but I’ll try to summarize… Pouf has like a perfected version of Meruem in his head as the king but when Meruem starts to change for the better he rejects it and thinks he knows what’s best for the king and shit!!! Also Meruem treats his Royal guards like shit (at the beginning) their relationship gets only slightly better towards the end but it’s still abusive!!!

Also my friend Eren pointed out that the Royal guards exist solely for Meruem. Like they are Meruem and Meruem only. Everything is for him and that adds like a super fucked up dynamic to this ship…

—

Ok so that’s all I can think of rn… please try to understand that this is MY interpretation and perception of these characters. It is ok if this is not how you see these characters, but it is how I see them.

[mariacallous]

Apps like Grindr carry considerable risk for LGBT people, according to a BIRN analysis of cases of violence and abuse in Bosnia and Serbia.

It was a Monday night in October last year when Filip [not his real name] made contact with another man in Sarajevo via Grindr, one of the most popular dating apps among gay and bisexual men.

After chatting for a while, Filip invited the man to his home, but when he opened the door at around 1.30 in the morning he was met with a punch to the face and the words, “So you want to be a faggot?”

The assailant demanded money and punched Filip again, in the stomach; falling to the floor, Filip faked a seizure and the confused attacker ended up calling an ambulance from his own phone before fleeing the scene.

It was only later that Filip found out he was the first of five gay men attacked by Irfan Mulalic and his accomplice, Ishak Bilal, over a period of a month in autumn 2023 in the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Mulalic and Ishak were arrested in mid-November and are awaiting trial on charges of robbery, blackmail and violent behaviour. Masquerading as gay men on Grindr, the pair pocketed some 800 Bosnian marks, or 400 euros, from their robbing spree.

A BIRN analysis shows that they are not the only predators lurking on dating apps such as Grindr that are popular with LGBT communities in Bosnia and neighbouring Serbia. Users risk exposure to abuse, sexual harassment, physical violence and theft.

The attack on Filip “definitely undermined the sense of security that most of us had before,” said 28-year-old Alex, whose name, like all those of LGBT people quoted in this story, has been changed to protect his identity. “Somehow you are always aware of what might happen, but it wasn’t so real until now.”

A similar modus operandi was seen in Serbia in July 2022, when a gay man in a small town in central Serbia was lured to a ‘date’ via Grindr only to be beaten and robbed. Three men are standing trial.

Recognising ‘hate’ as aggravating factor 

Launched in 2009, Grindr is a location-based social networking and online dating app for gay, bisexual, and transgender people, allowing users to create a profile, find matches nearby, and chat, send pictures, video call, and share their location with others.

In order to create a profile, a user must submit an email address or phone number, which is not visible to those they make contact with. A user can also submit a description and photos and describe what they are looking for in a partner, but a majority of Grindr’s 12.2 million monthly active users choose to remain completely anonymous or give only limited information.

Concerning the kind of attacks seen in Bosnia and Serbia, Amil Brkovic, a legal adviser with LGBT organisation Sarajevo Open Centre, SOC, told BIRN: “All of these cases have hate as their starting point”.

The indictments in both cases, however, make no mention of hate or homophobia as motivating factors, contributing to the fact there is no precise data in either country on how widespread such crimes are.

“It is up to the judge to include aggravating circumstances when deciding a verdict,” said Brkovic.

The Belgrade-based NGO Da se zna! [Let it be known] has identified 262 incidents motivated by transphobia and homophobia in Serbia in the last three years, activist Bojan Lazic told BIRN, but they are rarely recognised as such by Serbian prosecutors. This often results in lighter sentences, such as occurred in the case of two gay men who were brutally beaten by two skinheads in Belgrade in 2023. 

Had hate been included as a motivation, “they would have received stricter sentences”, said Lazic.

When it comes to Bosnia, the country does not have official statistics on hate crimes committed against the LGBT community. But in its annual Pink Report, the SOC registered 13 such cases in 2022 and 14 in 2021. The report for 2023 has yet to be published.

Raising police awareness

Another issue, according to Lazic, is that LGBT people in Serbia rarely report violence against them given the climate of impunity that has existed for such crimes for years. “Two-thirds of all reported cases remain unprocessed,” he said.

Da se zna has also documented cases of police violence towards LGBT people in Serbia, none of which has been addressed. The most recent alleged case occurred in February.

Brkovic said that one of the Sarajevo victims had also had a negative experience when he reported his attack to police.

“The police officers who were taking the statement played down the case, which further traumatised the victim,” Brkovic said, though in general the police response was positive.

Sarajevo Open Centre works with police officers and prosecutors to raise awareness about LGBT rights and, after a femicide in Bosnia last year was live-streamed, the police academy in the Federation, one of two entities that make up Bosnia, has included teaching on minority groups and feminism in its regular training programme.

While Serbia’s University of Criminal Investigation and Police Studies does not include training specifically on LGBT rights, some subjects include “content related to equality, protection against discrimination, protection of vulnerable groups, hate crimes”, the university told BIRN.

Fear in the community

When Alisa, a transgender woman in Serbia, first began using dating apps, she quickly gave up chatting with men “after several vulgar and humiliating comments”. She decided it would be safer only to meet women.

Once, however, Alisa went to the apartment of a person she had been in touch with on a dating app, believing it to be a woman, but a man appeared, apparently the woman’s boyfriend. He had been hiding behind his girlfriend’s identity on the app. 

Alisa was afraid he might become violent. “The truth is that I was just pretending, in order not to provoke him; I was turning over in my mind every possible escape route and every means of resisting if the situation got out of hand,” she told BIRN. Alisa managed to get away.

Marijana Jovic, who works on the helpline at the Serbia-based NGO Consultation for Lesbians, said the most common risk facing queer women on dating apps is ‘catfishing’, when the person they are chatting with turns out to be a man.

“What happens is that after trying to end such communication, there is some form of stalking, they call, send photos,” Jovic said. “If a woman blocks a number or a profile, other profiles are created or phone cards changed.”

In the Bosnian city of Tuzla, Alex said he originally felt relaxed using Grindr. He would meet people in public places or sometimes invite them to his home or go to theirs. The attacks in Sarajevo, however, had changed everything. He found out about it from an alert sent by the SOC. Alex described feeling “a huge wave of fear”.

“For the first time, I wondered if I should change my profile, delete pictures where my face is visible,” he said. “I wondered how to protect myself.”

[icouldntfindthedoor]

My headcanons for König the Austrian behemoth

I’m putting this under a read more because I delve into topics of child abuse and self harm. This is your warning. 

König’s family was Roman Catholic but he himself is an Atheist. 

As a child he was sexually abused by a family member, who instead of being charged and brought to justice when König tried to tell his family what happened, was protected. This is why König was allowed leave for the military at age 17, his parents didn’t want him around “spreading lies” and “ruining their family’s reputation.” 

As a result, for most of his childhood and young teenage years, König felt alone and like he had no control over anything in his life, not even his own body. He developed severe depression and anxiety, being too afraid to form relationships with anyone or trust anyone because of what was done to him. The bullying in school didn’t help, and König developed a habit of self harming as a means to regain some control of his body back. 

He used to suffer from horrible anxiety attacks that would leave him shaking and feeling sick. He learned breathing techniques from therapy to help him through them, but for the most part he just has to endure. Nowadays they happen less frequently, medication and therapy helped a ton, but they can still happen. Especially if he’s reminded of something of his childhood abuse. 

He’s a nail biter, a nervous habit he developed as a child that never went away. 

He can get very twitchy and jumpy depending on his anxiety levels. Even if he’s with someone he loves and trusts, which is rare for him, he could still potentially get into that nervous headspace. 

He’s bisexual but struggled with his sexuality for so long because he wasn’t sure if it was genuinely how he felt or if he was turning into the same predator that hurt him as a child. So he tried to ignore his feelings towards other men and focused only on women. He’s had two girlfriends in the past, one cheated on him and the other dumped him due to him lashing out during anxiety attacks and for her own mental health’s sake, she needed to take a step back. 

For so long he was so afraid of becoming a victim again that he put himself through a strict fitness regime to bulk up so he could never be put in that position again. He likes that he’s taller and more intimidating with his hood, it makes him feel powerful, like he doesn’t need to worry about being hurt again. And then he worries anyway. 

He knits in his spare time. It helps keep his hands busy and his mind from wandering. He also likes listening to books on audio. He likes high fantasy books with a lot of focus on worldbuilding. He also likes listening to book reviews on YouTube. 

He used to smoke but gave them up before starting his fitness regime. Sometimes he still craves a cigarette. 

He hates tea but loves coffee and energy drinks. One time he poured his energy drink into his coffee, saluted his team, then downed the whole thing in one go. 

He can’t sleep in the dark and needs some form of light, even if it’s from his phone. He also suffers nightmares from time to time, and sleeps with a knife under his pillow.  

Weighted blankets terrify him, they don’t ground him. They make him feel like there’s someone on top of him, pinning him down, and he hates it. 

Like I mentioned before, he does eventually go to therapy and gets the help and medication he needs to live a happier life. And there was nothing more validating for him than to hear the therapist tell him; “The adults around you at the time failed to protect you. And it’s alright to feel angry and hurt by that.” 

He has a big sweet tooth but rarely indulges it. For special occasions, like his birthday or Christmas, he’ll have cake or chocolate. He also likes dark, bitter chocolate. 

He does have moments where he reflects on the people he’s killed and how he killed them and he thinks to himself that he’s become a bigger monster than the man who abused him. And I think that’s what leads him to finally getting therapy. 

That’s all I have today. Share your own headcanons about the big meow meow my ask box is always open :) 

[unholy-poets]

TF2 Headcanons because I'm hyperfixated

Scout;

—Bisexual [female preference]

—Transexual Male

—Autistic

—Struggles with AFRID as a result of being autistic

—Favourite colour is a very specific shade of purple, so close to being grey

—His favourite food is anything pastry based. Sausage rolls, cake, steak bakes, anything like that.

—He has insecurities regarding his teeth, he sometimes brushes them three or four times a day so they don't yellow

—His favourite music genre falls in between pop, soft rock and jazz.

—His brown hair starts greying pretty early on, at about age twenty three. He tries dying it with motor oil but that kills his hair so he shaves it and goes more or less bald, so covers his head with a hat until his hair starts to grow back

—He hates the taste of cigarettes but he loves the smell, so he sometimes sneaks around to Spy's smoking room, slumping against the wall with his knees pressed up to his chest so he can find some peace

—He loves salty food and fish food, specifically cod or salmon

—He wears his arm/palm bandages for sensory issues, to act as a pressure on his hands and to prevent his skin touching any unlikable material

—His name Jeremy comes from the fact his mother is a subtle Catholic; his name meaning God Will Uplift.

—He acts better than the other men on the team because he doesn't quite believe he's good enough, smart enough, strong enough to be on the team

—He has PTSD

Medic;

—He's also on the autism spectrum

—His special interest is medical/biological sciences

—He doesn't believe in labelling sexualities because he believes they're too naunced and fluid for such a small word to capture entirely complex ideas; he does, however, self identify as a gay man

—He likes jazz and classical music, and he has stolen vinyls from Spy before

—He prefers fruit flavoured beers to stronger spirits

—He has a dad bod, with a slight belly

—He loves his body, even going as far as to boast about how he'd be less likely than the other men to freeze to death if they ever got trapped in a cold country

—He gives Scout top surgery without any complications via his sadomasochistic tendencies because he knows how important this surgery is. He does, however, leave a small smily face carved into Jeremy's left on side, sort of like a signature

Heavy;

—He's neurodivergent, but not specifically ADHD/Autistic

—He likes guns because he likes carrying heavy things; it reminds him of being able to carry things for his mother if she couldn't lift them. It makes him feel useful

—He loves savoury food, but not so much salty food

—He wants to learn how to play guitar but he's tried to play Engineer's before, yet he ended up accidentally breaking it

—He's slightly colour blind, pink and blue

—His love language is acts of service

—His favourite music taste is cultural; both his own and others, because he can respect that others have pride in their heritage

—He actually has freckles on his arms but that's it

Engineer;

—Dell claims to be straight, but has thought about sleeping with Soldier, and has actively hit on him before

—He wanted to play the cello but could never get the hang of it, and that's why he plays guitar instead

—His favourite colour is yellow

—Whenever he's angry, he'll write a poem about why he's angry but then he'll burn it, as if he's burning his anger

—He always side hugs the team if they seem down, unless it's Demoman or Scout; he just pats Demoman's shoulder because the other doesn't like hugs but he always gives Scout a bear hug because the other's love language is physical touch

—He doesn't have a favourite music genre, he only hates opera

—Yeah, he's autistic.

Soldier;

—He has internalised homophobia; he is bisexual, and his fiancée helps him accept that, and he can finally be at peace with himself

—He has PTSD

—He avoids rock music, mainly heavy rock and metal, because loud noises start to send him into panic attacks

—His favourite food is tomato soup

—He is also colour blind, red and green

Demoman;

—His favourite music genre is rock

—He eats pickles dipped in chocolate when he's drunk because he loves the contrast of the sweet and salty

—He always tries to beat up Ludwig when the medic claims to have a better dad bod, he makes it a competition

—I just love him, you know? Silly man.

Sniper;

—Gay, transexual man

—Autistic and emotionally constipated

—Love language is someone killing someone else for him

—Favourite food is gerkins or cheese sandwiches

—His favourite music genre is western. Just everything western. It doesn't actually matter the specific genre

—He has hit on Spy, Scout and Medic, with little to no shame

Pyro;

—Non binary, intersexual aro/ace

—Obviously schizophrenic

—Favourite animal is a turtle

—Favourite colour is pale orange

—Favourite drink is sugar water

—Favourite food is carrot cake

—Eats rocks sometimes. Not related to their hallucinations, it just likes eating rocks

Spy;

—He has an extreme inferiority complex so he acts classier, far more sophisticated, more superior than the others to make up for it

—Bisexual, but he has never dated a man; he hates having the chance he could be tied down by anyone

—Reads up classical art forms so he can impress people

—He's got autism, baby

—Looks at Scout and his heart breaks when he sees his son's insecurity; he knows he could've been a better father, and knows he could've helped Jeremy grow into himself better and carries shame with himself

—His favourite colour is brown

—He loves mythology

—He has a fear of being forgotten

—He has a bit of an alcohol problem

—Transfem, uses both she/he prounouns

[—Logan]

[clockthing]

Culture and Information

A reflective essay on Donna Minkowitz’s essay “How I Broke, and Botched, the Brandon Teena Story”; specifically on its culture

Trigger Warning: Rape, Murder, Hate crimes

Donna Minkowitz was a writer known for many things. She was a writer who covered topics about gay and lesbian politics and culture, which were taboo in her time. However, what she was known for was her article on the murder of Brandon Teena. Brandon Teena was a trans man who was killed on December 31, 1993, due to hate crimes against his gender. He was born biologically female and throughout his short life, he has deemed himself as a man in heart and spirit. This has prompted two men to kill him and his murder is one of the hate crime cases that increased the lobbying of hate crimes laws in the United States. With such a case, it is only natural that someone, as involved in gender politics as Donna Minkowitz, would write an article about it. Yet, she ended up ‘’botching” the story, as she explained in her follow-up article a few years later. With the rise of movements that highlight the importance of gay and trans rights, we must evaluate the essay for what it says of our culture as a society that is transitioning from an age of gender and sexuality ignorance.

“At the time, I was extremely ignorant about trans people. Like many other cis queer people at the time, I didn’t know that there were gay trans men, trans lesbians, and bisexual trans folks, that being trans had nothing to do with whether you were straight or gay, and that trans activism was not, as some of us feared, an effort to stave off queerness and lead “easier,” more conventional heterosexual lives.”

The first time Donna Minkowitz wrote the article, she described it as “...the most insensitive and inaccurate piece of journalism I have ever written.” Once examined, her ignorance came through her writing. Not only did she neglect to acknowledge Brandon’s want to be a man and chalk it up to being a “lesbian who wants control”, but she and her editor also projected their own experiences onto this real victim. While some would chalk it up to her simply being emotionally driven, there is a certain cultural influence that can be explained here. It is the influence of the culture of homophobia, transphobia, the patriarchy, and the cultural practice of rejecting any of those who do not fit their standards. Even now, the debate over whether or not LGBTIQA+ should be accepted is still up in the air. This has led to an alienation of the minorities and this rage at being disregarded can reach a tipping point. Donna’s previous article is a manifestation of this frustration towards their mistreatment of them. Her projection on Brandon was a result of her frustration after being sexually abused as a child and being shamed for being a bisexual who favors lovers who are of the same sex. After all, back in her time, it was an extremely conservative and patriarchal culture. Men were more likely to get away with sexual harm due to the fact they were practicing their “masculinity”. Even now some remnants of this patriarchal view of rape are still present, this can be seen in victim blaming.

“Society has developed a certain attitude towards sexual assault. It has been embedded within a culture that women are lesser than men and viewed as subordinate. Sexual violence has been normalized by the media, desensitizing society to actual assault and hindering action against it. Women often bear the responsibility and blame for their assault rather than their attacker. This failure to protect victims of sexual assault and shifting of the blame to women for their assault is termed rape culture; it is when the traumatic assault of a woman is trivialized when men are given a pass and women are scolded for what they were wearing at the time of the attack, and when a woman would rather stay silent than seek the prosecution of her assailant. “

As for the conservative side of things, it is well documented that the LGBTIQA+ community (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, plus) were in a time where they were fighting for their rights. Some countries were banning same-sex marriages and others were imprisoning those who are gay. This has caused activism in the community and this is important because when the author was born, the activism was at an all-time high. The wheels were starting to turn for an LGBT rights movement. So you have this author, Donna Minkowitz, who has been looked down upon by society for simply being who she is: a lesbian-leaning bisexual. She is heavily involved in the story and very well sees herself in Brandon Teena. Of course, these emotions would show in her writing and thus she projects these false narratives onto Brandon. Even then, her interpretation of events cannot be entirely her fault as well. Since LGBTIQA+ was still a sensitive topic, it was bound to be seen as “taboo” by the masses or by their culture. The taboos then mean not much talk, and thus, no passing of information. This lack of information is what led Donna Mikowitz to make those writing decisions aside from her emotional attachment to the issue of gender politics. Lack of information leads to ignorance and this ignorance can taint any society’s notion of anything. Henceforth, this is not only a mistake on her and her editor’s part, but it is also a mistake on society’s part. It is evident that society’s culture of disregarding those who don’t “fit the mold” is what causes these stories to become muddled by mischaracterization and misconception. They do not talk about those who don’t fit the mold, and any information you can get is limited and requires gaps to be filled…..

“Twenty-five years later, we are in a time of enormous cruelty in the body politic, a time when rebuilding solidarity is the most precious task we have. I hope this article can be my way of making amends by revisiting Brandon’s life and murder — along with those of his companions Lisa Lambert and Phillip DeVine, who were slain in the same moments by Nissen and Lotter. Their deaths became a touchstone for the then-nascent trans movement, and, perhaps more than any other single event, have shaped how Americans view transgender people.”

However, in recent years, it is clear that our society and culture is changing. People have become more open to talking about once-taboo subjects and while it is frowned upon by some, the status of the LGBTIQA+ community has improved. This is interesting because it was right around this change when Donna Minkowitz wrote her follow-up article that explained her mistakes in the story. This implies that during the transition between the 1900s and the 2000s, there has been an increase in information and understanding of Transgender; which is the product of many movements that fought for their rights. The Transgender Movement shook up the culture society had and since culture is ever fluid, this means the culture has changed to reflect this acceptance of the LGBTIQA+. The change then brought about the representation of Transgenders and with the birth of the internet, countless stories and information about them have surfaced. Knowledge and “taboo topics” are no longer deemed unfit to be talked about because, on the internet, anything can be discussed. The openness for information of the current culture plus the years' Donna Minkowitz spent contemplating on her article gave way to this new article. That is because the conceptions and views we have of people grow with the amount of information we acquire, and we can only acquire information if our culture allows it to be acquired.

“Culture can affect how people communicate in different ways. For example, it may affect communication styles in aspects such as phrases, words, gestures, and languages used. Culture can also affect how people deliver information and their attitudes towards conflict.”

In summary, it can be concluded that culture had a big influence on the mistakes and triumphs that is the Brandon Teena Story. It is the thing that condemned it to misconceptions but it is also the new culture of identity acceptance that led to the reopening of this story. As for any reflections or lessons that can be taken out of this essay, for the sake of all those who were slain for their own identity, our society must continue to foster this open-mindedness we currently have. This will not only stop any misconceptions, but this will also prevent any more Brandon Teena stories from ever happening again.

References:

https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/06/20/how-i-broke-and-botched-the-brandon-teena-story/ 

https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/wac_prize/30/

https://study.com/learn/lesson/cultural-differences-communication-impact-importance-examples.html#:~:text=Culture%20can%20affect%20how%20people,and%20their%20attitudes%20towards%20conflict. 

[justamessedupdisneyprincess]

Alright so I’m just gonna explain more about myself and who I am. Just so people don’t judge me before even getting to know me.

I was gonna write more in the description but it wouldn’t let me so I’m continuing here.

I am a very socially awkward bisexual autistic Demi girl who hates the human race in general and loves animals. Humans hurt me, animals heal me. So unless if you’re an alien disguised as a human just like me don’t interact LOL

I tend to get cyber bullied or hated on tumblr, why I am even trying for a third fucking time is beyond me. Guess I wanna show off some of my art even though it’s gonna get shat on. Above in the description is where I listed the reasons I tend to get hate so if you didn’t read that already look at my description before having anything to do with me please. I don’t do “fake” friends. Never again. I’m gonna show off EXACTLY who I am so people don’t find out a simple trait I have and leave me for it.

Here’s some weird things about ME.

One thing I have been embarrassed about but want to announce is I have trichtillomania (a hair pulling disorder). Sorry if the topic may be kind of hard to some but that’s who I am and I’m screaming it loud. It’s a rare disorder but it’s very real and I haven’t found out it had a name until just recently just through reading people’s head canons over a character. After seeing it I looked it up and was relived to discover I wasn’t the only one. People used to call it a habit when I pull so knowing I’m not alone helps. Don’t mock me for it, it’s harder than you think. If you read about it most people would describe it as an itch that needs to be scratched which sums it up perfectly.

I am a farmer so if any of you are farm haters don’t attack me got it? I love animals, farming is a beautiful bond between man and animals. We make sure to give them all the best life possible, life on a farm is better than any wildness (as long as it’s all free ranged, I am against farmers who keep their animals caged up. It’s a disgrace to us real farmers) as they can get worms and die very very young, some animals even struggle to give birth. If not for us being there the babies would die inside their mother and then the mother dies. We feed them and give them water so they don’t have to starve or go thirsty. When there’s an orphan or rejected baby we care for them for without us the poor things would die as they have no mother and they all deserve a chance to live a good life. We are anything BUT animal abusers. We may eat them after a certain point but we are not monsters, we be sure they live their life to the fullest before then. Also don’t hate on me for not being a vegan or vegetarian. I love animals with all my heart and soul but I have to eat meat, as it’s how my body works. Meat contains things that other foods don’t have and as it turns out I have to have a lot of it for reasons I won’t get into. I will give you a hint. It’s a topic related to a scene in Turning Red that made overprotective parents freak out. I need iron. Lots of it. Don’t hate me for eating meat.

I am bisexual, I have a bit of a male lean though simply because I have found I seem to get along better with men rather than other genders. It could be because I’m a tomboy I’m not sure. I have some crushes on some fictional girls though as well but finding my type appear in a character with she/her pronouns is weirdly rare. I like girls like Abigail from Stardew Valley for example. Goth metal aesthetic but they are also kind of goofy, someone I can play video games with and laugh with. Also most girls tend to bully me, I haven’t been bullied by a boy, non binary or anyone else. It could be why I am also more nervous to speak with girls rather than others as a result as well.

I have a super bad anxiety disorder and have to take lots of medication for it to the point I struggle to do much during the day. This is why I can be a bit slow with talking to people or just drawing anything in general. I need to work at my own pace because the pills make me tired but help keep me calm to some degree. If I get super bad I lose control. The doctors described it to my mother as a raincoat, if it pours too much it can’t do anything but a sprinkle of rain is what it’s strong against. I also have been diagnosed with OCD and I think I may have RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria) as I panic whenever someone makes fun of me over almost anything or if someone ever gets angry at me. The smallest argument makes me crumble. Just seeing one troll makes me upset. So I have lots of bad mental problems so if I ever panic please forgive me. I am trying very hard to learn to control it. But this is why I am setting my boundaries right here and now.

Speaking of which, since I am slow and also busy I can’t talk every day all the time so please don’t spam me with messages because I can’t talk all the time. Sometimes I might be gone for months sorry so please don’t pester me into talking to you. It’s not that I’m avoiding you I am just busy but please keep that in mind. Also do NOT try to guilt trip me into talking to you more or drawing free art for you. I used to get taken advantage of all the time when I was younger and was so easy to fool, I’m just over it now. I don’t have time to draw free art, I only ever make art for someone if it’s someone special, like a best friend.

My pronouns are she/they. I’m still not super sure of my gender or pronouns even my sexuality. Don’t harass me for that as well, I am who I am and still learning even if I am 20.

As mentioned I do have some fetishes but this is not a kink blog as I mentioned I like to keep them separate. I have my kink account on deviantart then my regular account. I don’t wanna make anyone uncomfortable with my kinks but I also want to be free and have my rights to be myself. If any of you give me a hard time for this as well you will be blocked. I just find chubby people cute. I like to imagine having a teddy bear as a partner, a living pillow who can gently pet my head and tell me everything is ok as I rest my head on a warm soft belly. That’s just me ok? Don’t make fun of me or yell at me for it.

I also hate inc8st ships. Not only is it just gross in general and illegal but as someone who is close to my family seeing any inc*st creeps me out. While Ian never had a Dad but had Barley, I never had friends but had my sister. Also if you even THINK of shipping me and my uggghhh sister for just saying that I will cut you limb from limb you fucking creep.

Porn blogs please don’t follow me. I may have mentioned I had a fetish but belly kink stuff is very different from actual porn (unless the two are combined obviously but I prefer fluff when it comes to that stuff). But I don’t feel comfortable with porn blogs following me so please don’t. I also do not feel comfortable talking about anything sexual as well. Yeah I’m an adult but that doesn’t mean I am seeking out that sort of thing. Part of my sense of humour might be dirty but it’s subtle and dirty humour is different to actual dirty talk or conversations about it. Although the majority of my humour is mostly dark so any dirty humour would be pretty rare from me.

Also don’t hate on me for loving Onward. I literally had someone give me a hard time for liking the movie just this morning as I’m writing this. I understand everyone has different tastes but don’t hate me for loving this movie. You can hate the movie sure but don’t hate ME for loving the movie. Don’t harass me for having opinions.

I also have emetophobia, which is the fear of vomiting. The fear can vary from general vomit or the action of it. I am scared of vomiting myself. Vomit in general grosses me out and makes me cringe but if I feel even the tiniest bit nauseous I have a full on panic attack. I even have to wake up my parents still if I think something is wrong with my stomach at night. Yeah I know, a grown ass person who is so scared of vomiting they need help from others over it. Childish right? Well it’s a REAL phobia you can look it up if you want. But don’t make fun of me for that either, it’s not something I can control. I’m just scared of it. Some folks say it could be linked to the fear of losing control. I guess that could be it but I just can’t stand the feeling to the point I fear it. Like with pregnancy I am more scared of the morning sickness than the actual childbirth. Yeah, it’s that bad. I wish I can get over it so I could have kids without that type of fear but then again I don’t think I would make a good mother as much as I do want kids someday.

If you hate me for any of these things about me above then just fuck off ok? I want to just be myself.

[ceremorphilia]

ALL MY CHARACTERS: THERE ARE SEVERAL

this is mostly complete but i might add little tidbits. this post exists for my own personal organization and peace of mind

Marlowe

AGE: Mid-late 30s (unsure due to amnesia)

RACE: Zariel Tiefling

GENDER: Genderless (they/them)

SEXUALITY: Bisexual/unspecified

BACKGROUND: Outlander

CLASS: Barbarian

SUBCLASS: Berserker

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic neutral/chaotic good

LOVE INTEREST: Astarion

BEST FRIEND: Shadowheart and Karlach

BACKSTORY: One day in the not-so-distant past, a pair of adventurers tracking a band of raiders through the wilds of Faerûn came across a destroyed riverside village. Searching the wreckage for survivors, they found only one: a small, injured, mute tiefling child with no memory of what had happened to their home or family. The adventurers- a dwarf paladin and an elf ranger named Gregor and Sylvya- took them in and raised them as their own. From their adoptive parents, Marlowe learned the art of combat, and took to it like breathing. Their relative clumsiness and tendency to fly into a blind rage made them well-suited to a more barbaric fighting style, and they spent their childhood and teen years adventuring with their parents. When they were old enough to be on their own, they set off to Baldur’s Gate where they quickly fell into debt to a kingpin of the Guild and were forced to work as a bodyguard-slash-general-purpose-muscle. They hated the city and wanted nothing more to return to the wilds, so they decided one day to simply pack up and leave, Guild be damned. Their plans were immediately cut short by a certain mind flayer plot. Wrong place, wrong time, and here they are with a tadpole behind their eye.

ABOUT: They’ve never known a life without violence. It’s all they know how to do and they’re very, very good at it. They’re a protector and their worst nightmare is allowing harm to come to their friends and loved ones- they blame themself whenever a party member gets hurt and feel it’s their responsibility to ensure everyone is safe. This gets annoying when they start literally throwing themself in front of attacks and getting severely injured in almost every battle. They’re quiet, reserved, and deeply insecure. They’ve been taught that fighting is the only thing they’re good for and they believe it. They’re also a big silly idiot with a soft heart, a weakness for praise, and far too much love to give.

Tyrra

AGE: 29

RACE: Half-orc

GENDER: Woman but like, only incidentally (she/her)

SEXUALITY: Lesbian

BACKGROUND: Soldier

CLASS: Ranger

SUBCLASS: Beast master (might change if/when I play as her again)

ALIGNMENT: Neutral good

LOVE INTEREST: Karlach

BEST FRIEND: Lae’zel, Wyll and Gale (although she really gets along with everyone)

BACKSTORY: Tyrra grew up in a mixed human-orc settlement out in the wilds of Faerun. She joined their militia early in life, learning from her human father how to defend against raiders and survive in nature. She had a pretty simple life before the nautiloid, patrolling the settlement’s perimeters and skirmishing with raiders and bandits along its outskirts.

ABOUT: She’s like a camp counselor-slash-drill sergeant. Very passionate about nature, highly organized, even-tempered and intolerant of bullshit. She’s highly skilled in combat but her true passion is surviving in the wilds by foraging, hunting and navigating. She tends not to get along with most people as a result of her rather isolated and combat-centric upbringing but she is truly gentle and kindhearted. She has a soft spot for creepy and maligned animals and has a giant spider companion familiar that follows her around. Her trusty crossbow is named Florence and she treats it like a baby.

Lior

AGE: ??? (He could be anywhere from like 30 to 130. He has no idea and frankly neither do I).

RACE: High half-elf

GENDER: Man-adjacent, trans (he/they)

SEXUALITY: Bisexual

BACKGROUND: Haunted One

CLASS: Sorcerer

SUBCLASS: Draconic Bloodline

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic neutral

LOVE INTEREST: Gale (they are each other’s emotional support unstable mage)

BEST FRIEND: Mostly Gale but also Shadowheart

BACKSTORY: The Dark Urge

ABOUT: He’s very twitchy and unstable and afraid of himself. He hates feeling like he’s not in control of himself and wants very badly to get rid of the Urge. He composes poetry about murder and death to cope with his thoughts, his favorite spells are Fireball and Magic Missile, and he enjoys teasing Gale about his wizardry despite not actually having any beef with wizards.

Iulia

AGE: 25

RACE: Mephistopheles Tiefling

GENDER: Female (she/her)

SEXUALITY: Bisexual

BACKGROUND: Urchin

CLASS: Rogue

SUBCLASS: Arcane Trickster

ALIGNMENT: Chaotic neutral/chaotic good

LOVE INTEREST: Shadowheart

BEST FRIEND: Wyll and Karlach (honorable mention to Astarion who completely hates her in a dubiously friendly way. It’s reciprocal.)

BACKSTORY: Iulia grew up as an orphan on the streets of Elturel, picking pockets and stealing from market stands to survive. She and a couple other orphans ran a scam where she’d perform a magic show on a street corner to draw a crowd, and her comrades would pick as many pockets as they could. Later, in her teens and early adulthood, she was part of a loosely-organized thieves’ guild in the city, which she promptly abandoned when Elturel fell to Get The Fuck Out Of There. After a few months of hitchhiking on the road she ended up in Baldur’s Gate where she stayed for just a couple weeks before being picked up by the nautiloid. Bad luck all around.

ABOUT: She’s scrappy and cunning, she says what’s on her mind and isn’t afraid to take risks. She’s used to bailing on a situation the second it goes bad so having to make allies and get along with a bunch of weirdos is uncomfortable for her. She’s highly capable and skilled but also very overconfident in her own abilities and often ends up in stupid situations due to her own hubris. She has a natural gift for arcana which she uses for cheap parlor tricks and mischief.

Vivienne

AGE: 50s

RACE: Wood half-elf

GENDER: Woman (she/her)

SEXUALITY: Bisexual

BACKGROUND: Acolyte

CLASS: Paladin

SUBCLASS: Oath of the Ancients

ALIGNMENT: Lawful Good

LOVE INTEREST: Wyll

BEST FRIEND: Has minor beef with nearly everybody for one reason or another, is most chill with Karlach and becomes close with Shadowheart in act 3

BACKSTORY: When she came of age, Vivienne left her commune-dwelling Lathanderite wood elf family to join the Order of the Aster in Waterdeep, and dedicate herself to the protection of all those within the Morninglord’s embrace. She spent her early adulthood fighting monsters, defending temples, and being utterly miserable about herself with no idea why. When she gets picked up by the nautiloid and set on a crusade against the Absolute she comes to realize two things: 1) she is a woman and 2) she is utterly convinced she’s been chosen for this divine mission by Lathander Himself.

ABOUT: She’s a faithful and courageous warrior of the light, sworn to protect nature and act with mercy and kindness. Her faith is deeply important to her and her driving motivation. Her oath bids her to stand against wickedness in all forms so she often goes out of her way to help those in need. She butts heads with a lot of the party members rather frequently as a result of her faith, and has to be held back from instigating hand-to-hand combat on more than one occasion. She has a passion for history, culture, nature and religion and will infodump about the pantheon of Faerun to anyone who will listen.

[ra-chives]

How I Broke, and Botched, the Brandon Teena Story

Teena Brandon, also known as Brandon Teena, was a twenty-one-year-old woman who dressed "like a male" and was viciously attacked by John Lotter and Marvin Nissen on December 24, 1993. When Brandon rejected Lotter's advances at a gathering in Richardson County, Nebraska, Lotter grabbed Brandon's hands and Nissen dragged her panties and pants to the ground. Later, after the two men had confined Brandon in the restroom, Lotter held the door shut as Nissen kicked, stepped on, and beat Brandon in the head. After dragging Brandon outside, the men got in their car and headed to an isolated area where they individually sexually assaulted her. Nissen repeatedly assaulted Brandon after the rape and yelled at her to keep the incident a secret.

The next day, Brandon went to the police and was questioned by Deputy Olberding and Charles Laux, who was Richardson County's legitimately elected sheriff at the time. In a three-page written statement, Brandon described the rape and abuse. Laux grilled Brandon on the incident, telling him that it was important to do so in order to make his case to the county attorney. Laux questioned Brandon about why she mingled with women rather than men and why she dressed "like a man." Laux had two more follow-up visits with Brandon, but he canceled them because she was worried about his abuse.

Transgender violence is the result of a unique convergence of "truths" regarding the body, gender identity, and sexuality. Such violence is largely the result of dehumanization; people who cannot be classed as either male or female based on binary sexual differences are frequently seen as less than human. Gender issues, however, do not negate the existence of transgender violence. Brandon Teena was not killed only because of his transgender identity; it important that he was a biological woman. Violence against FTM transgendered people is influenced by specific assumptions around the boundaries of the feminine body, identity, and sexuality. The distinctive and particularly harsh patterns of abuse that women's bodies are subjected to through acts of sexual violence would therefore be denied if transgender issues were not included in broader feminist attempts to address sexual violence.

We need to combine feminist initiatives to expand legal options for sex crime victims with an understanding of the distinctive manifestations and repercussions of gender-based hate crimes in order to ensure the visibility of transgender violence within feminist politics. Under the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, the Justice Department reported 5,852 cases in 1994, ranging from verbal harassment to murder. 780 of these incidents had homophobic undertones. Hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and other communities continue to be a national epidemic, as Elizabeth Birch, Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign, testified before the Senate, and the widespread issue of underreporting sex-based crimes makes it difficult to gather reliable data. A crucial step would be for feminists to commit to making hate crimes more visible.

-roseiie���

[polyamorous-selfinserts]

how i think the batfam would be about my pronouns. given that slip ups in the field can result in serious consequences, most of them are gonna be pretty good but. u know. cissies

bruce:

he's a dad, he's gonna mess up obviously, and personally i don't think he'll ever use my it/it's pronouns. he also just, doesn't like me much? so in his mind i'm jason's g*rlfriend but he isn't an asshole about it. he does still lump me in sometimes with cass steph and barb but u know. small steps.

dick:

v supportive. bisexual icon trying his best. calls me many absurd masculine nicknames. corrects jason on my pronouns once and the look on his face is hilarious. also doesn't use my it/its pronouns but refers to me by my name more often then not.

jason <;3:

the only bitch on earth who can call me a girl <3 he loves me and supports me and will beat up anyone who misgenders me. he's a bit like my little brother at first, like he says 'charlie's a them' but his neuroticisms won't let him be grammatically incorrect <3

t*m:

look. he's the only canon gay but that man is not queer. for the difference: it's basically like. queer is political it's antithetical to assimilation. anyway personally i think he's the type of person to try and use people's pronouns only if he likes or respects them and he hates me so <3 he's a rich cis white bi male. probably the largest group of people i've faced discrimination from in the lgbt community.

damian:

honestly probably the best at them? supportive king <3 basically always uses it/its pronouns. it starts because he's a little shit and wants to make me feel bad but i'm like 'yes !!' and he continues out of sheer confusion. his nicknames for me are so gender <3 harlot vagabond brute <3 dami ily <3 ur so much like my little brother

steph:

queen <3 she messes up and definitely still thinks of me in feminine terms but she tries her best and will drop kick any bitch who's an asshole about it. personally i think she's also a little gender so i help her pick out a binder that she can wear. she's not trans but she just. has a different gender expression and yeah <3

barbara:

uahhh. hm i don't interact with her a lot but that's because i'm not technically a bat? so i'm not really on coms lmao. she's probably fine with it, but she doesn't really care about me enough to dedicate the time necessary to using the right pronouns

duke:

king <3 he's confused but he's got the spirit. tbh i think duke doesn't interact w/ me a lot but we're both semi-daylight and i think he's pretty good using he/him pronouns for me.

bonus rogues;

harley:

she/they queen. every interaction with her is gender euphoric. her manner of speech is so <3 nothing makes me happier than yiddish slang <3 makes me feel like im with my opa in germany <3

ivy:

weird solidarity because she's also an neopronoun girlie. she dislikes me because i'm human but. the vibes.

j*ker:

death kill kill kill death. he's homophobic and one of those people who puts nor/mal in his bio except he's weird so its like jo/ker. makes attack helicopter jokes and calls me a tranny.

harvey:

he's like "oh red hood who's ur girl" and jason's like "none of ur business. also they use it or they pronouns." and harvey flips a coin to see which ones he'll use today

[hilplusterrorss]

re ur comment on ifairy's recent post - in my experience the majority of anti mspec lesbian rhetoric has been either from radfems or has obviously been picked up from radfems. so I'd be interested to know what ur experiences have been and why you don't agree with the use of the term 'BLERF'

I actually don't think I've ever seen a TERF even reference the term - I've only ever seen it from exclusionists and the like. In fact, I've even seen people who are otherwise inclusionists, even being pro-neopronouns and microidentities, and still considering mspec lesbians "invalid." TERFs don't really start shit about microidentities like that, they're busy shitting on trans people, or, if they want to seem more palatable, sex work. It's exclus who have the time and motivation to attack people with more obscure identities than them. Basically, while radfems would call mspec lesbians ableist slurs and harass them as they would anyone else who isn't lesbian, gay, and maybe bisexual, radfem rhetoric doesn't have any particular effect on mspec lesbians and gays. This is why creating labels like AERF and BLERF aren't really helpful, because they're putting something that has a vague connection to radfems on them entirely, which in turn lifts blame from the exclusionists that do all the work. Having a funky sexuality label doesn't attack radfem ideology. Bodily sexual autonomy does. Gender does. That's why SWERF exists as a label alongside TERF, because it's fundamental that they attack trans people and sex work. Individual sexualities may, and probably will, be attacked as well, but it's not necessary.

Tl;dr: mspec lesbian exclusion is based in the policing of microidentities within the community, not in bioessentialism. TERFs think that mspec lesbians are stupid, but aren't fundamentally challenged by their existence. This is why terms that don't refer to the inherent victims of radfem rhetoric, trans people and sex workers, are not helpful. They can even cause harm by shifting the blame off of the exclusionists who perpetuate it.

[campog]

batfam headcanons!!

damian wayne:

-Ace/Aro and uses He/They/It pronouns (agender/amab.)

-He steals hoodies from drake and todd when mad at them, but they kind of turned into comfort items (not that he would every admit that.) 

-Has kinda chubby arms and calves from all the muscles and working out.

-They have chronic pain in his stomach and feet from the abuse and torture he endured in the league of assassins.

-He’s Muslim but almost no one knows because he tries to hide it, ashamed of it in a way. The only reason the batfam even found out was because they found him praying.

-Hates skirts with a burning passion but will wear dresses.

-Has scars literally all over his body from the league, villains, training gone wrong, and dumb mistakes on patrol. Scars are particularly worse on his face, lower stomach, and thighs.

-He sleeps with a dagger under his pillow.

-They constantly try to convince Alfred and Bruce to let him keep random stray animals he finds out on the streets during patrol.

-Throws forks at Tim constantly.

-Has very sensitive eyes, can’t handle bright colors well.

-Cannot sleep without Titus or Alfred The Cat with him so if they ever have to travel he normally gets drugged with sleeping pills by Bruce or Dick or just complains the whole time.

-He doesn’t know how to ask for help or for backup so he constantly tries to hide injuries.

tim drake:

-Pansexual and uses He/They pronouns (transmasc/afab.)

-He wears orange lipstick majority of the time to try and pass as more masculine (despite the fact he has a shit ton of muscles and has had top surgery he is still insecure of not passing as cis.)

-He used to not just drink coffee and also drink a shit ton of energy drinks, especially red bull and monster energy. However because Alfred is well Alfred and is very strict about physical health and diets he quickly shut that down and only allows Tim to have coffee. Of course if given the chance they will sneak a energy drink though.

-They like space and stars a lot.

-A ton of scars along his stomach, neck, and back.

-They have OCD

-Gets bloody noses when anxious or overwhelmed.

-He has worn a skirt before to spite homophobes, but does it extremely rarely because of dysphoria.

-They love the color yellow.

-He is a perfectionist and gets overwhelmed and anxious when anyone tries to rush him. Because of this any case he works on normally takes longer to solve cause, while they figure it out quickly, he needs all of the details.

-Brings a camera and laptop bag with him everywhere.

dick grayson:

-Bisexual and uses He/Him pronouns (cis/amab.)

-He has ADHD.

-He really likes disney movies and has tried getting the others to watch them, no one else ever seems interested enough though.

-Loves elephants.

-Has a huge trigger over falling/watching people fall, causes trauma memories of his parents death to resurface.

-Carries stim toys with him in case they come across a child victim on patrol (or if Damien or Todd need help calming down during a panic attack, but if he said that he’d get forks thrown at him.)

-Flirts with practically every man or woman he meets.

-He hates  beer, only alc he will drink is wine or vodka (or anything mixed in with a shit ton of juice.)

-He watches a lot of comedy and animated kids movies/shows.

jason todd:

-Bisexual and uses He/It pronouns (nonbinary/amab.)

-Big explosion scars along his face, arms, back, thighs, and neck.

-His terrible posture is caused by the barbwire torture Joker did (seen in the vr game), because of that trauma he literally cannot stand up straight because it is still paranoid barbwires might be hooked around their shoulders.

-He has night terrors and extreme PTSD, resulting in constant paranoia and hallucinations.

-His jaw gets overly tense which causes his entire face to get sore so he chews on his knuckles a lot, when he was a kid Alfred would give him necklaces with rubber at the ends for him to chew on.

-He is by far one of the strongest supporters of anyone in the LGBTQ+ community, he simply doesn’t care wtf you identify as or what pronouns you use- if you tell him he’ll respect it and treat you the as the same person. 

-He smokes weed constantly.

alfred:

-Straight (is actually ace/aro but doesn’t care enough about labels) and uses He/Him pronouns (cis/amab.)

-Does research for anything he feels he needs to be educated on. When Tim got diagnosed with OCD he spent hours looking up things that can help and what it is, did the same when they found out Damian was Muslim.

-Is very strict about unhealthy foods, most sugary things are rare treats or only given when someone is injured.

-He collects art and paintings and loves going to art museums, would frequently take Bruce when Bruce was young.

bruce wayne:

-Unlabeled and uses He/Him pronouns (cis/amab.)

-Concern and fear normally just turn into anger for him as he has a hard time expressing emotions.

-He has insomnia.

-He very rarely gets into arguments with his sons but when he does he is very stubborn about it.

-He stays up late in his office working cases, Alfred or Dick (if he’s staying at the manor) normally has to actually drag him to bed otherwise he won’t sleep.

-He litteraly cannot cry, like it is physically impossible and never happens.

[with-my-murder-flute]

Hi everybody, thanks for the asks letting me know I made the top of @yusuftiddies’ list of Homophobes in TOG Fandom, you can stop sending them now.

So.

I can make mistakes and fuck up and own that. I am serious about listening to marginalized people. But... in this case, while @yusufstiddies generally describes factual events that happened and factual posts that exist, I have to say that I can’t actually apologize for the things I’m called out for because I don’t think they’re homophobic. The things he criticizes me for are things that come from a lot of personal experience as a queer bisexual cis woman, as well as a lot of reflection, research, and study. I believe in them really strongly and stand by them.

I’m really sorry if this makes TOG fandom too hostile, because it is not my intention to make this place so unpleasant that anyone feels driven out. I understand if my stance means people no longer want to follow me/read my stuff/participate in projects I’m involved with (though I’d rather hand off the Research Hub to someone else than see it go down with me). I’m posting this so people can know where they stand before they decide whether to keep interacting with my blog, or “deplatform” me as @yusufstiddies recommends.

I would recommend, for anyone who doesn’t want to see my posts, using Tumblr’s new post content filtering feature. If you type a username (like star-anise or with-my-murder-flute) into it, Tumblr will hide all posts featuring that specific string of characters, and therefore any post or reblog of mine.

To address the accusations against me:

I am an anti-anti: Yes. I’ve reblogged posts of mine about this before. I care passionately about preventing child abuse, but I think there are better ways to prevent child abuse in fandom (like concrete harassment policies so predatory behaviour can be reported and stopped early, and education about digital consent and healthy relationships) than attacking people who write “bad ships,” not least because the first people it hurts are abuse survivors trying to work through their trauma, and because the research says you cannot actually tell who’s a sexual predator based on what they write about.  Fiction affects reality, but not on a 1:1 basis. My mainblog, @star-anise, has a really extensive archive of my writing on the subject.

I said cishet men aren’t more privileged than gay men: Kinda. What I actually did was question whether Every Single Cishet Man benefits from more privilege than Every Single Gay Man. If a man is cishet but gets beaten up because people perceive him as gay, he’s not exactly feeling the warm toasty glow of heterosexual privilege in that moment. Oppression is complicated and there are times when someone’s lack of privilege on one axis is way less important than someone else’s lack of privilege on another axis.

The post above also includes me reblogging someone else’s addition about how straight men can be included in the queer movement: I’m queer. @yusufstiddies has made it very clear that he isn’t comfortable with the word “queer” and doesn’t like it. Therefore I think it’s understandable that he might not understand that the queer community sees ourselves as a coalition of people dedicated to dismantling the structures of sex and gender that oppress us, not a demographic of people whose gender identities or sexual orientations can be neatly mapped. However, I would say that doesn’t make queer theory inherently homophobic.

There are also some related points @yusufstiddies didn’t level at me specifically, but I would like to address:

The constant focus on the unsafeness of cishet people:

I’m not cishet. I’m a bisexual woman who’s dated women. Sixth-light is a queer woman married to a woman. This is not an issue of non-LGBTQ+ people blundering their way into something they don’t experience the daily consequences of. This is an issue of people from WITHIN the LGBTQ+ community who sincerely disagree with @yusufstiddies about the pressures we experience and how best to deal with them. I think that even if @yusufstiddies were to filter his fiction input to only LGBT-written work about LGBT experiences, or even only trans-written work about trans people, he would still find a lot of things he finds upsetting or transphobic, because sexual and gender identities are really diverse and not everything will suit one person.

The contention that saying “’Queer is a slur’ is TERF propaganda” is transmisogyny because it dilutes the definition of “TERF”:

People who point out the phrase is TERF propaganda are not calling every person who says it a TERF, and we are not trying to argue that telling a queer person that queer is a slur is inherently equal to the kind of damage a TERF does when she attacks a trans woman out of transphobia. Queer people being able to use the word “queer” does not have the same importance as trans women being able to live, work, and survive in public. Rather, we are literally saying, “This is a thing TERFs say when they take a break from attacking trans women and try to recruit new members to their group, so it’s in our best interests to not give it too wide a currency.”

Some people have experienced the word “queer” used as a hateful word hurled against them and don’t want to hear it ever again. I get that. It happens. Where I grew up, “gay” was a synonym for “shitty” and it took me a lot of years out of high school before the word “gay” wouldn’t shoot my blood pressure through the roof.  I actually do understand that and think that’s valid (and again, support using post content filtering for that word).

One of the things I do at @star-anise is argue with young people who are headed into full-on transmisogynistic TERF territory, and work at reeling them back and deradicalizing them. I use a tag called “weedwhacking” so my followers can filter out the sometimes lengthy back-and-forths we get going.

Something I’ve learned, interacting with so many TERFs and proto-TERFs, is that one way they frequently get recruited into harassing trans people was through discourse around the word “queer”. For one, it encouraged them to want to distance themselves from any perception of LGBT people as “weird” or “not normal”, which led to seeing trans people as “weird” and “not normal” and therefore not good members of the “gay pride” community. For two, repeating “queer is a slur” predictably causes a lot of queer people to react in a defensive manner, so by teaching young or new people to say it, TERFs can set them up to feel alienated from the larger LGBTQ+ community and more open to TERF propaganda.

The next issue isn’t mentioned in the original callout post, but I think it’s key to this entire issue:

@yusufstiddies has made several posts about what cishet people should and shouldn’t write. For example, cishets shouldn’t write Nicky experiencing internalized homophobia.  Another is a detailed post of things cishets shouldn’t write about trans people, including which sexual positions only trans people are allowed to write. I would imagine that part of his frustration with fandom has been the lack of traction those posts have gotten. I know I very deliberately didn’t reblog them.

That isn’t because I don’t agree that the things he complains about are rarely handled well by cishet authors. I agree that there’s a lot of bad fic out there that contributes to negative stereotypes against LGBTQ+ people and is basically a microaggression to read.

I have two very deeply-seated reasons for my position:

LGBTQ+ identities are different from many other political identities because most people are not born identifiably LGBTQ+. It’s something we have to figure out about ourselves. And one really important way that we do that is using the safety of fiction to explore what an experience would be like, sometimes years before we ever admit that we fit the identity we’ve written about. So banning cishet authors from writing something is really likely to harm closeted and questioning LGBTQ+ people. It will lengthen the amount of time questioning people take before finding the identity that really fits them, and force closeted people to be even more closeted. 

There’s a lot of undeniably shitty stuff in fandom. However, I fundamentally believe that trying to target the people creating it and forcing them to stop doesn’t work very well, and has the serious byproduct of killing the creativity and enthusiasm of the rest of fandom and resulting in less of the actual thing you like being produced. I think that it is infinitely more productive to focus on improving the ratio of good stuff in fandom than trying to snuff out every bad thing.

Like I said: I understand if this means former followers, mutuals, or friends no longer want to interact with me. I’ll be saddened, but I’ve obviously chosen this path and can deal with the consequences. 

I wish this could have worked out differently.

[imagineaworlds]

I Love You (Part Thirty-Two) -- Aaron Hotchner

Written By: @desperately-bisexual​

Request: None.

Warnings: SMUT!! Cursing. Unprotected sex. Wrap it before you tap it, ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary sibs. Dom/sub relationship. Sir kink. Impregnation kink. Soft sex. Emotional sex. The reader does go by they/them pronouns, however, Hotch refers to them as female when saying “good girl”.

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x Greenaway!Reader

Word Count: 12194

Timeline: A month after part thirty-one.

I sighed as I pushed all of Hotch’s work to the side just so that I could get to my desk in our office. Since getting out of the hospital about two weeks ago, Hotch had turned our home office into a conspiracy theory pit. He had so many pictures of Foyet, his victims, the crime scenes, the news clippings about The Reaper, and so on hung on the walls that I couldn’t even remember what color the walls were. About a week into this whole project of his was when he pulled out the red string. From there, our office became a maze. It was like I was goddamn Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment the way I was weaving through all of it.

But I couldn’t tell him to take it down. Hotch spent two weeks in the hospital, and then he had to spend another two weeks at home as he recovered from Foyet’s attack, underwent physical and psychological evaluations, and I practically made him go on bed rest the rest of the time. Because he wasn’t allowed to go back to work, he had to spend his time working on finding Foyet. I hated that I had to go to work every day without him because of that. I knew that this was eating at him, and I couldn’t stay around long enough to console him or talk him down. It was irritating both of us.

It had only been a month since we said goodbye to Haley and Jack, yet it felt like an eternity. My little man… Every day we were forced apart, I felt a piece of me die. Was that odd? Was it weird to miss someone else’s son like he was your own? Was it weird that I took Red, mine and Jack’s favorite dinosaur, with me everywhere? To the office, on cases, at home. Everywhere. It probably wasn’t as weird as when I would come home to find Hotch napping on Jack’s bed. That mattress was way too small for him. I mean, he would curl up on it as much as possible, and yet his feet would somehow still be hanging off the edge. But it was how he was coping. It was how we were both coping. And the worst part was, we were doing it separately.

In our line of work, Hotch and I had worked dozens of cases with parents that lost a child in a kidnapping or murder. The BAU didn’t just specialize in profiling the Unsubs and victimology—that was a large part of it, obviously, but there was an unspoken part of the job that always struck me during those kinds of cases. Parents mourning the loss of a child were profiled to inevitably always split up. Like the case we worked in Vegas just before Dallas, a son had been kidnapped while walking to a friend’s house, and the parents were slowly drifting apart. They blamed each other. They couldn’t bear to even look at each other. Getting them to cooperate with the investigation so that we could find their son was nearly impossible. Yet we weren’t shocked by that behavior, because that was how mourning couples were always profiled. I just never thought that it would happen to me and Hotch.

No one ever expects that they’re going to lose everything. No one anticipates having to say goodbye to their son. A month ago, we had to say goodbye to Jack, and we honestly weren’t sure if we were ever going to see him again. Foyet was playing the long game with us now. Who knew when he was going to turn up again with another clue so that we could find him? There was a chance that by the time we either caught up to him or he died, Jack wouldn’t know who we were, so there’d be no point in bringing him back. There was a chance that his life would be better off without us. And that was damn near impossible to admit.

However, I thought that Hotch and I were going to come to terms with all of this together. I thought that because we loved each other, and because we knew what the profiles said, that we would somehow work together to prove the profile wrong and work through this side by side. That was what I thought. I spent every day with him when he was in the hospital and I wasn’t on a case. Every single goddamn day. Yet, when he came home, he locked himself in his office, and he practically stopped looking at me altogether.

I would cry every night. I would get home from work, and there were times when I couldn’t even make it to the couch. I would just collapse right there in the entryway, and I wouldn’t get up until the sun started rising for another day. And Hotch never came to hold me. There were other times when I’d come home to hear him sobbing in the office, and I thought about going to console him, but he had locked the door. When I initially tried playing with the doorknob, Hotch immediately stopped crying. He sniffled then told me to go away. So, I stopped trying to go in after that. He stopped trying with me, so I inevitably stopped trying with him. One night, I even thought about moving out. I mean, we weren’t acting like a couple. We had proved the profile correct, and I knew that once that happened—statistically speaking—we were never going to get back together. But I still held on hope. I prayed that he would finally take a moment to realize that he could break down in front of me. I would be there to hold him when he needed it. Until then, there was nothing I could do.

The minute he was cleared to go back to work, Hotch took it. I didn’t think he would go back so soon. One, because of his injuries; two, because going back to work meant that he wouldn’t have all day, every day to pointlessly look for Foyet. He hadn’t found a single goddamn lead in a month, but he was still hacking at it. That was why I was shocked when he gave it up just to go back to the BAU. We even had an argument about it. The day he finally came out of the office to tell me he passed all of his exams, I cracked. I was so fucking pissed at him. He spent a month refusing to look at me, talk to me, sleep in the same bed as me, eat the fucking dining table with me—and then he had the fucking audacity to smile at me and say, “I’m going back to work tomorrow.”

I lost my shit. Truly. I looked back at him and said, “I don’t care what the Bureau says, I don’t want you going back yet. They’re not the ones who have to worry about you, Aaron!”

Hotch’s smile fell. “Drop it.”

I shook my head. “I know you lied during your psych evals. I know that you pushed yourself too hard during your physicals— I saw all the bloody gauze in the trash. So, don’t you dare fucking lie to me again like you did in Cincinnati, Aaron Hotchner—”

“I told you to fucking drop it!” he bellowed. I took a frightened step back. His face immediately softened. “Y/N— I’m sorry—”

“I’m going to Morgan’s house.” I looked at the floor. “I guess I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

And that was how I ended up in the office upstairs, trying to get into my desk so that I could grab some old paperwork for reference on the case report I was currently working on. I was going to Morgan’s house, but that didn’t mean I was going to stop working. Once I had that stuff, I grabbed my spare go-bag from the closet, then made my way downstairs.

Hotch tried to step in my path at the bottom of the stairs, but I pushed past him. He was attempting to apologize profusely while following me around. I kept my head high and just moved to the front door as fast as I could. Since Foyet attacked him, Hotch had practically turned our house security system into something that rivaled the fucking security systems at the office. He had someone come in to put in a new alarm that was set at all times. If we weren’t home, all of the windows, doors, and motion sensors were set. If someone opened a door, broke a window, or moved within the house, about seven different alarms would start going off. When we were at home, only the doors and windows were set. But if we wanted to leave the house, we had to put a code into the alarm first; and when we were coming home, we had to put the code in as fast as possible before the alarms would be set off. So, while Hotch tried to make me stay, I reached around him to put my code in, then headed out.

“Y/N!” he shouted angrily at me again as he stormed into the yard. “Y/N, get back here!”

I flipped him off as I kept walking to my car. I wasn’t even going to take our car. We put my car, the one I had been using before I moved in with Hotch, in the garage sized shed at the back of the driveway, just against the fence to the backyard. It hadn’t been used in so long… I mean, if we needed to use separate cars, I’d dust mine off so that Hotch could have our car, but for the most part, we made it work with one car. This time, though, I was taking my car to make a point. He fucked up. This argument was bad, but it was more than that. This was the result of a month’s worth of fuck ups, and I was sick of it.

I didn’t want to leave him. I loved Hotch more than anything, and I was still convinced that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, even when things were bad like this. But I couldn’t stay. Not when I could see that he was ruining his own life for nothing. I told him in Cincinnati that I wouldn’t tolerate him fucking up his own health for selfish reasons. He promised me that he wouldn’t pull this shit again. And yet… There we were… He was fucking it all up again. And I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t watch him slowly deteriorate. I loved him too much to do that to either of us.

“Y/N—” he banged on my window as I slowly backed out of the driveway. “I’m sorry, please. Baby… Come on… I’m sorry. Stop this. I get it— I shouldn’t have yelled— Baby— I’m sorry—” He had to stop hitting his palms against my windows as the car turned onto the road. He slammed his hands as hard as he could onto the hood of the car. “Goddammit, Y/N! Get out of the fucking car!” I stared him down because he wasn’t moving out of the way. “Stop this, baby,” he pleaded calmly. “Just come home.” I shook my head. He frowned again, his eyes glinting a slight dark red as anger overtook him again. “Get out of the car,” he demanded once more, making his way over to my car door to try and pry it open, even though it was locked. The second he wasn’t in front of the car, though, I laid my foot down on the gas and raced off.

When I got to Morgan’s house, I explained everything, and he set me up in his guest room. This wasn’t the first time I had sought asylum in his house. Since Hotch wasn’t there to comfort me, I had to turn to the only other person who could, and that was Morgan. Granted, this was the first time I was sleeping over. But still. There were plenty of afternoons when I’d detour to his house after work just to cry on his couch as he held me. If I would wake up in the middle of the night with a nightmare of finding Hotch dead on our living room floor, I’d drive over to Morgan’s house and cry on his couch until I could calm down. It was unfair to Morgan. I recognized that. He was his own man with his own life and problems, and there I was, always barging in unannounced to unload my problems. But where else was I going to go? There were times when I thought about how much I missed Elle, and I wanted her to be there for me in moments like this, but she was gone. She abandoned me… and… she wasn’t coming back, apparently. Morgan was all I had.

As it got late, and we both needed to rest, he offered to stay and sleep with me, but I told him I’d be fine. He reluctantly obeyed (not for the reason most people would assume). It was no secret that Derek Morgan was a “playa”, to put it in his terms. He liked getting into the pants of any and every girl that would give him consent, and he liked teasing Garcia in a… less than platonic way, and sometimes we would do that, too, but not really. That being said, Derek Morgan would never, ever take advantage of someone, especially when they were as vulnerable as I was that night. He only offered to sleep in the same bed as me because that was how close we were, and he was willing to comfort me if I needed it. But I knew that I needed some space and time to think, and he needed some sleep in order to be ready for work the next day. So, when I turned him down, he gave in. He kissed my temple, squeezed my shoulders in a tight side embrace, then left the room quietly, carefully closing it behind him.

When he was gone, I opened my go-bag to pull out my pajamas. Yet, when I saw what I had packed away in there, I froze. I had packed this so long ago. I grabbed the first bag I saw. I didn’t even think to check what was in it. I was so fucking stupid. Unfortunately, however, there was nothing I could do about it now. I just had to suck it up and wear them, because it was either wearing what I packed or wearing what I left the house in. Either way, I was not going back just to pick up a different pair of pajamas.

I sighed. Unenthusiastically, I stripped myself of my clothes, then changed into one of Hotch’s old college sweatshirts and a pair of his blue and gold flannel pajama pants to match. I was planning on getting him another pair for his birthday in the next few weeks because I stole his, and I felt bad because of that. Also, because I had originally stolen these and put them in my go-bag recently after the stabbing, figuring that I needed something of his with me on cases while I was gone and he was at home. I had Jack’s red dinosaur toy with me at all times, I just needed Hotch’s clothing with me, too, considering that was the extent of the attention I got from him. But now… Things were just too confusing. I was upset that I didn’t just pack my own goddamn clothes.

That being said, I still cuddled under the blankets, and I pulled the collar of the sweatshirt over my nose to keep me warm while also taking in his scent. Within the past year or so, Hotch had given up his familiar Aqua Velva scent in exchange for a cinnamon and pine. He had gone into his closet one day, pulled out all of my favorite items of his to steal, took them outside, then practically drenched them in the cologne once he knew I liked it. I didn’t know until I came home from dinner with Emily one night to find that the entire fucking house reeked of cinnamon and pine. It took a while for the neighborhood to air out, but once it did, I was left with Hotch’s scent attached to each article of clothing, and I loved it. That night, while lying in a strange bed without the love of my life beside me, I found that my only comfort was that scent. I hugged my torso and inhaled.

I knew that he was sorry. I knew that he didn’t mean for any of this to happen. And, honestly, I knew that neither of us meant for things to blow up the way they did. But now that they had, I wasn’t sure where to go from there, how to navigate all of this. We couldn’t go back to normal. Could we? I’d be the first to admit that he scared me earlier. I knew that he would never hurt me, but deep down, in the pit of my stomach, I was terrified of him. After not having his love for so long, his outburst… It took me aback. There was a moment there, when he shouted at me the first time, I saw a glimpse of that night in high school, and I heard him yelling at me for not cooperating. That was why I had to leave. It wasn’t Hotch’s fault. My mind was playing tricks on me, but I couldn’t let it ruin the one good thing I had in my life: Aaron Hotchner. I just needed some time and space.

Time. And. Space.

That was what I asked for when I arrived at Quantico the next day. Morgan and I drove in at the same time, then he met me at the elevator after we both went through security, and he asked me if I wanted back up (or a mediator) while talking to Hotch. As we stepped into the elevator, I denied his offer quietly. Upstairs, in the BAU, Reid and Emily were trying to show me pictures of Henry, JJ’s son. She had him shortly after Hotch was stabbed. And by shortly, I meant that we hadn’t even left the fucking hospital yet when she went into labor. But now she was itching to get back to work, and I was shocked. It had only been a few weeks. I thought that the human body literally couldn’t handle getting back to work that fast, but maybe she wasn’t looking to work in the field quite yet. I understood if she just wanted to sit in the office to do paperwork around Anderson or hang out in Garcia’s office for a bit. I could understand that. I just thought that she would want to spend more time with Will and Henry, but who was I to judge her? I promised I would never do that after she judged me—and, yes, it was so that I could prove that I was the better person, I wasn’t afraid to admit that.

I headed straight into Hotch’s office. I found that he was sitting on his couch, his head in his hands, an old picture of him, Jack, and Haley in his lap. As I snuck closer, I saw that he had printed a picture of me and him out, and he had it taped to the bottom corner of that picture frame. Our family. Our story. Our everything.

I cleared my throat to let him know that I was there. “Sorry, I’ll come back later.”

Hotch looked up from his hands. When he realized that I was really standing there in front of him, he threw the photos to the side and jumped to his feet. “No, wait—” He hurried over to me. “Please.”

I stopped. “Okay.”

“Baby, I am so sorry.” He wasn’t getting close enough to put a hand on me, which I silently appreciated. “I didn’t mean to yell or get worked up. I’ve just been so worried—”

“Aaron, I really didn’t come to make up.”

His posture changed to something more shy and confused. “What?”

“I’m sorry… But, I, uh… I’m just here as an employee right now.”

Hotch searched my eyes for a moment while he tried to understand what was happening. I wasn’t looking him in the eye, I wasn’t trying to impress him with anything, and I wasn’t even trying to give us privacy by closing the door. In fact, I didn’t want privacy. I didn’t want to give him a chance to try to hug or kiss me. With the blinds and door still open, he had to obey the rules we created for ourselves at work, and I could tell that it was killing him, but I was there for a specific reason, and it wasn’t because I was ready to hear his apology yet. He might have felt he was ready for it, but I wasn’t.

“Okay,” Hotch said while he nodded. He moved to take a seat at his desk. “Sit.” He gestured to the empty seats across from him. “What’s this about?”

“I’m requesting a few personal days off.”

“Why?”

“You’re not supposed to ask me that, Agent Hotchner.”

His eyes narrowed at me. “It’s my job, Agent Greenaway, to ensure that my team is okay both physically and mentally.”

“Well, I’m fine, Agent Hotchner, thank you for checking on me.”

“Stop this, Y/N. Please.”

“I can formally request this time off through Chief Strauss, if need be.”

He hesitated as his brown eyes added a red tint of anger. “That’ll not be necessary.”

“So, you’ll give it to me?”

“Only if you tell me why.”

“You know why.”

“Why?” he asked with a hiss. The tension was growing in the room.

“I just need to clear my head.”

“That’s not good enough!” he exclaimed angrily. I could see that he was holding himself back from hitting the table or swiping his papers off the desk. “What’s this really about? Is it really about our argument, Y/N? Can we please, for a minute, just stop dancing around the truth and say what we feel—”

My blood boiled over. “You’re not the only one who lost a son, Aaron!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. There was a moment where we stared at each other as we both realized what I had said. I was shaking so bad. A thought passed by me that maybe I should have stopped there, left it alone, gone home to take another breather. But I wasn’t wrong. Jack was my son, too. I lost him, too. I was hurting, too. And I needed Hotch there to hold me, but he wasn’t. So, I continued, “I was right there with you when we saw him for the last time. You aren’t the only one suffering here, Hotch. I wake up every day and I wish that I could turn the corner in our home and see him sitting at the table, eating Cheerios for breakfast. I wish that we could still take him to soccer every Saturday. And I fucking wish that I could keep spoiling him even though you tell me not to. I love your son like he’s my own, Aaron. I know he’s not mine, and I know that he never will be… but, damn it, I love you and I love him. And the fact that we’re both mourning over losing him to this asshole, and I’m trying to be there for you, but you keep pushing me away when I need you, too… That’s cruel. It’s unfair. I have never felt more alone than I have over the past month. You need to get your shit together, and I need some time to come to terms with the fact that I may never see Jack again. So, I’ll ask you again, may I please have some time off?”

He paused while staring at me. I could see a sparkle in his eyes that came from the tears welling, the apologetic and deeply sorry tears. It broke my heart to see him like that. It absolutely tore me in half to see him cry because of something I said… but what else was I supposed to do? He wanted me to tell him the truth, so I did. It hurt to do it, but it was necessary, and now that he knew just how horrible he had been, I could tell that he didn’t want to be angry anymore. Now that he understood, I realized that he just wanted to hold me and apologize until he couldn’t breathe. But I still needed time. As much as I would’ve loved to be in his arms, kissing him, telling him that I’d always love him… I needed time away to clear my head. I needed time away from him to come to terms with the loss we had.

“Where are you going to go?” he croaked.

I lied and said that I was going to stay at a hotel for a few days before returning to work; but we both clearly knew that I was staying with Morgan. I wanted to be with someone I trusted. I wanted to be with someone I loved. I didn’t want to be alone. Morgan’s house was a safe haven for me whenever I needed it, and I usually didn’t take him up on the offer, but now I was in desperate need of it.

“Okay,” Hotch gave in. “Take all the time you need. But… Y/N… I need you to know that you will always have a place here, and you will always have a place back at home with me.”

I stared at him for another second before pushing myself out of my seat. “I’ll see you in a few days, Agent Hotchner.”

After leaving Hotch’s office, I saw that the entire office was staring at me. Maybe I should’ve closed the door, in hindsight. Nothing to do about it now, though. They all heard every single word, and now they couldn’t look away from the train wreck that was Y/N Greenaway and Aaron Hotchner. I was sure that somewhere out there, wherever he was, Jason Gideon was laughing and saying: “I told you so.” No one else in the office seemed to be thinking that, especially after the screaming match I just had with our boss, but I knew that Gideon was chuckling somewhere in the world.

I started my walk of shame down the ramp. Even Rossi had come out of his office to lean against his doorframe while watching me, probably waiting for a perfect opportunity to sneak into Hotch’s office to comfort him— or maybe even talk some sense into him. I hoped that it was the latter.

A few days later, I heard the front door of Morgan’s place open up. I turned on the couch to see an exhausted Morgan throw his used go-bag onto the floor, then crash onto the empty couch space next to me. He sighed and rested his head on my lap. He had been away on a case since the day I left Hotch’s office after we argued. We had been texting since he left because he wanted to make sure I was alright and that I was taking care of Clooney, his German Shepard. I loved that dog. I thought he was adorable—and he was so well behaved. He rested at my feet on the bed every night to keep me company. It was nice to have company, even though Morgan was away and I wasn’t talking to Hotch.

“You know, I’ll leave and go to a hotel, if you want me to. I don’t mean to just… intrude on your life,” I said after giving him a moment to relax.

Morgan looked up at me upside down. “Never.” He smirked, “Unless you’re going to be living here any longer than a month, in which case, you need to start paying rent.”

I matched his smirk, “No. I just need a couple more days, I think. If that.”

He nodded understandingly. “You wanna order take out for dinner?”

“Sure.”

He did a sit up before standing on his feet and hurrying over to the house phone so that he could order dinner for us. I sighed and relaxed in Hotch’s sweatshirt. It was starting to smell less and less like him, which only made me more desperate to get home. But I liked the freedom I had been experiencing over the past few days. With the time I got to spend on my own in silence, I got to think about how much I missed my little man, while coming to terms with the fact that this was the best choice—the only choice we could make. Sending them away in order to protect them was the right thing to do. Jack was safe with Haley. They were safe under Sam’s protection. Coming to terms about that much was hard while I was around Hotch, who was only moping around all day. Now that some time had passed, I was a bit calmer about the situation, and I was just ready to get our family back. But I still needed another day or two, just for good measure. After that, I’d race to apologize profusely to Hotch, begging for him to take me back after running away like that. I felt like a bitch, okay. Maybe it was a bit overdramatic to run away, but at the time, I didn’t know what else to do. But now that the tension had sizzled out and I was clear headed about the situation, I realized how sorry I was for leaving in the first place.

When the food arrived, Morgan and I sat crisscross on the couch while facing each other and talking about whatever came to mind. At some point, casual talk turned to work talk. As it always did. I asked him to tell me about the case the team just got back from, and he told me that they had dealt with an Unsub who was drowning his victims in methanol in order to get rid of their stench. When I asked how it ended, he hesitated.

“Morgan?”

He gulped and told me that Hotch took off his vest, handed his gun to Rossi, then went inside to negotiate a peaceful surrender with the Unsub. My eyes shot wide. Why the fuck did Hotch do that? Why would he— I didn’t understand. How could he be so stupid? How could he risk his life like that? How could he risk leaving me and Jack behind? How was I supposed to live with the fact that we ended on bad terms if something were to have happened to him?

“What happened?” I asked, frightened.

Morgan pushed his food around in order to give himself a reason to not look at me. “The Unsub shot the girl, ran away, got in his cab, and we started chasing after him. Half of the city was looking for him, Y/N, yet, somehow, Hotch was the one who found him. The guy tried speeding off again to get away from Hotch, but when Hotch shot at him, he crashed into a truck, immediately killing him.”

“Is Hotch okay?” I leaned forward to express my eagerness for a positive answer. He hesitated again. “Derek Morgan, you tell me right now—”

“He’s okay, Y/N.”

I relaxed and let out a breath. “Good.”

“But…”

My eyes shot up at him. “But?”

“Strauss temporarily promoted me to Unit Chief.”

“What? Why?”

“Because Hotch isn’t fit to be in a position of power right now, sunshine. We both know that. He isn’t fit to lead a team right now.” He set his food on the table next to us. “Strauss and Rossi made the decision when we got off the plane.” He grabbed my hands. “It’s just until Hotch is back to being Hotch, honey bunches, I promise.”

I scoffed. “And how long do you think that’ll be?”

“I’m not sure. But I think that if you went back to work, it might help some.” His eyes pouted at me. “He has nothing to live for right now, Y/N. You left, Jack and Haley are gone, Foyet’s taunting him, and his ability to do this job is… being questioned. Having you around, as you are, it might remind him that he still has everything to live for.”

I understood that he couldn’t read my mind. I knew that he couldn’t’ve possibly known that I had already decided that I was going to go back to work soon, so it made sense that he felt he needed to tell me that Hotch’s best chance was going back. So, I gave in just for the sake of making Morgan feel like he did something.

“I think I’m gonna head to bed early,” I said quietly.

“What? No—Y/N, I didn’t mean to upset you or—”

“Morgan, it’s not your fault.” I set my food to the side. “I, um… Tomorrow… It’s just going to be a long day, so I should get some extra sleep.”

“Sugar, I really didn’t mean to—”

“Tomorrow is Jack’s birthday.”

He immediately fell silent, his shoulders giving out his posture when he realized he had pried too far. He apologized quietly. I opened my mouth to tell him that I didn’t care about his prying, but it got caught in my throat when a sob bubbled up a little too far. I excused myself before running to “my” room.

I crashed onto the bed. As I pulled the covers up over my body, hiding my head from the world, I grabbed my phone and opened the Photos app. The sob I was holding back finally crashed through me when I saw a picture of Hotch and Jack cuddling in the hammock in our backyard. Hotch had been laying out there after work, watching Jack play soccer. By the time dinner was ready, I went outside to collect them, only to find that Jack had given up on kicking the ball around so that he could lay on his dad’s chest. Hotch’s arms were wrapped around Jack’s entire body. They were dead asleep, probably had been for at least an hour. I couldn’t bother them when they were like that. So, I took a picture, then let them be. Finally, when it got too cold, they came inside, Jack still half asleep in his dad’s arms as he was carried upstairs to his room.

That was such a perfect night. We had dozens of nights like that, where the small, random things were taken for granted. Now that we didn’t have Jack, I wished I could go back in time. I wished that I would’ve just sat outside on the patio while drinking my wine, feeling the way my heart swelled as they snored together, the hammock rocking under them.

I reached over for Red, mine and Jack’s favorite toy, and I pulled it close to my chest. Tomorrow was going to be horrible to bear alone.

The next morning, I woke up to the sound of Morgan knocking on my door. I groaned and rolled over to check my phone for the time. That was when I realized that I hadn’t charged it all night. I went to bed around three, my eyelids too heavy from crying for so long. Since I hadn’t plugged my phone in, it was obviously dead. I groaned again. The door opened once Morgan heard me shuffling around on the bed. I hid my puffy face under the comforter while simultaneously trying to trick him into thinking that I was asleep. I felt like Jack. Jack… It was officially his birthday. I mean, I had been awake when the clock struck midnight, but this was different. The sun was out, the birds were chirping, and Morgan was telling me that he was leaving for work. It truly was Jack’s birthday now. There was no escaping it.

The mattress sank slightly as Morgan sat next to me. He put a hand on my shoulder, then leaned down to kiss the top of my head. “I’ll see you when I get home—if we’re not called away on a case.” He made a move to stand.

I grabbed his hand, revealing my red and swollen eyes. “Take it easy on Hotch today. Don’t let anyone give him a hard time. Please.”

“I’ll try.”

He kissed my forehead gently again, then silently stood and left the room, making sure to reclose the door behind him on his way out. I huffed and slumped back onto the pillows, feeling the way I sunk into the comfort of the blankets, the mattress, and the feather pillows. My relaxation didn’t last long, though, because the next thing I knew, the sound of scratching on the door disturbed me. I rolled out of bed and opened the door so that Clooney could run in. He jumped onto my bed and nuzzled his nose under the blankets. I smiled. At least I had someone to keep me busy during the day.

I was reminded of my dead phone on the bed when Clooney kicked it by accident. I plugged it in without hesitating another second. While I waited for it to charge, I played with Clooney’s long hair. He got riled up after a few seconds, deciding to playfully attempt to bite me while I waved my hand in his face. When I heard my phone chime, I booped his nose, then turned to pick it up.

Two missed calls.

I scrolled the rest of my notifications to realize that it was Emily and Anderson who had attempted to contact me. I didn’t want to hear from them, though. Anderson was probably calling on behalf of Hotch, meanwhile Emily was only going t o try to convince me to return to work sooner. I wished that I was a telepath so I could just tell everyone what I was thinking, that way they would leave me alone. I was planning on going back to work soon. I had been over it a hundred times in my head. But if people kept bothering me about it, I was just going to be more reluctant about it.

An hour later, my phone started buzzing again. I pet Clooney as he shuffled onto my lap. My phone just kept buzzing, however, as another call came through. I cursed under my breath, then stretched to pick it up, recognizing the photo and the name flashing on the screen almost immediately. I waited a second. Morgan must have talked to him. After seeing me glued to the bed, left to nothing but a puddle of tears, Morgan probably went straight to Hotch, told him that I was suffering today, and Hotch decided to finally call me after all this time.

I answered.

Silence echoed throughout my room as I waited for something to happen. Even Clooney stilled. It had been so long, I wasn’t sure who should speak first, or if I should even speak at all. I was terrified of saying the wrong thing. After how things ended between us the last time we saw each other, I knew that what I said was wrong. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes. I didn’t want to push him away further than he already was.

And then it happened.

“Hey,” I heard his voice for the first time in about a week.

I nearly melted. “Hey,” I whispered back.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded, though he couldn’t see me. “I’m fine. Are you?”

He hesitated before changing the subject. “I know that I’m not supposed to be calling—”

“It’s okay.”

Hotch hesitated another second. “It’s, um,” he cleared his throat, “it’s Jack’s birthday today.”

“I didn’t forget.”

Of course, I didn’t. How could I when our dinosaur had been sitting on my bed all day, staring at me, and I broke down every time I glanced at it. Jack had been so excited to spend his birthday with us. He was going to have a party at Chuck-E-Cheese with his friends, as disgusting as it was. We were going to get Spider-Man and Superman balloons, superhero themed paper plates, cups, and silverware. I was going to buy a set of Spider-Man walkie talkies for him and his dad to use, or maybe one of those Bat Signal toys so that he could flash it up at the sky whenever he was thinking of us when we were at work. I had all of these ideas to make that day special for him, but George Foyet took that all away. There were going to be no pictures of Jack blowing out his birthday candles, or opening his gifts, or hugging his dad after we wished him a happy birthday. There were going to be no memories of him running around Chuck-E-Cheese with his friends, bragging about how many tickets he got, and Hotch telling him that he was proud. There were going to be no conversations of me trying to convince him to get one prize or another. And there wasn’t going to be a single argument between me and Hotch about me spoiling Jack too damn much. That happiness left when Foyet practically stole him away from us.

“When are you coming home, Y/N? I know I shouldn’t ask, but…”

“I thought about coming home tomorrow, actually.”

“Can I see you before then?”

“Aaron, I…”

“Sam called to tell me that he had to move Haley and Jack again. Apparently, she’s been calling her dad and Jessica.”

I sighed and hid my face in my left palm. This day was already hard enough, but to just keep digging at the hole in my heart wasn’t helping. I thought that, of all people, Haley would do anything to protect Jack. George Foyet was a psychopath with a mission. Why would she risk Jack’s safety just to call her Roy and sister when Sam had told her a thousand times that she couldn’t be in contact with anyone until we found Foyet.

“Are they okay?” I asked.

“They're fine. Sam sent me a video of Jack playing on the swings this morning. He looks… happy.”

“He—” I hesitated to think about it. We hadn’t heard Jack’s voice in so long… We hadn’t seen his bright face in what felt like forever. We hadn’t gotten to hear his laugh since the day Foyet took him from us. A tear slid down my cheek as I considered it. “Could you hear him? See him?”

“Yeah,” Hotch said quietly. “It’s fuzzy, and it’s at a distance, but he says your name. He says he misses you.” Another tear escaped me. “I’d like to show it to you… You don’t have to stay long, just come into the office for a bit. I… I really just…” He cleared his throat again, trying to hold back an obvious sob building in his throat. “I need to hold you. Just for a bit today. I need it really bad, Y/N.”

A tear slid down my cheek. I needed him, too. No matter how mad I was with him, no matter how upset he made me after our blow up, there was only one thing that could make this day somewhat bearable. It was the same thing that Hotch needed. Being in his arms was the only thing that could ever really comfort me nowadays, and I thought earlier about how I needed him to hold me to make the day easier. I thought that he wouldn’t want to see me. After how things ended the last time we saw each other, I thought he would never want to see me again. I had said some pretty hurtful things. Though I meant them, it didn’t erase that they probably stung him to hear.

“I need you, too,” I whispered.

I heard him let out a quiet cry. “Come home to me, baby. Please.”

“I’m coming.” I stood from the bed and raced to grab my purse. “I’m coming, baby.”

His voice perked up, “I love you so much.”

I changed before driving to the office. I had been stuck in Hotch’s pajamas for days, which wasn’t exactly… attractive, and I definitely didn’t smell good. Maybe that was why Clooney was so fond of me. Changing was also important because I was heading to my place of work. I wasn’t going to be a visitor there. I couldn’t exactly show up in a sweatshirt and pajama pants. So, I used what I had in my go-bag to look work-ready, then I headed off to the office.

The parking lot security didn’t recognize my vehicle since I was arriving in my old one. The fact that they didn’t recognize it only prolonged my wait to see Hotch again. They had to check my credentials, then give me a new parking pass for the car—and the whole thing was just a fucking mess. But the second they let me past the barricade, I sped towards the closest parking spot I could find to the building, parked, then ran inside. Security welcomed me with smiles and innocent questions, just like they always did. They were an awesome group of people that were absolutely underappreciated by the agents in our building. There were times when they told me that Garcia and I were two of the only people who ever even acknowledged them, let alone took time out of our days to get to know them. As always, I told them that it was my pleasure, but the second the niceties were over, I ran to the elevator down the hall.

As the elevator opened to reveal the sixth floor, I squeezed through the doors. Garcia was walking out of the BAU, a fresh cup of coffee in her hand. She froze when she saw me, a smile lighting up her face, and I tried smiling back as much as I could even though all of my energy was focused on getting to Hotch. She must have realized what was going on because she held the glass door open for me. I thanked her as I snaked by.

Everyone in the bullpen stopped and turned when Reid spotted me first. I smiled and waved as I kept my head down and maintained my clear path up the ramp, leading towards Hotch’s office. Emily tried calling out my name, but Morgan hushed her and I kept moving. It was nothing against her, but I was there for a singular purpose: Aaron Hotchner.

“Hi,” I said, stumbling into his office. I was so out of breath from running there. I was panting behind my forced smile.

Hotch looked up from the files on his desk. “Hi.”

“I want to see him. I want to see my little man.” My eyes were already watering up, a desperate plea for Hotch’s help to ease my breaking heart. “Please.”

“Close the blinds and lock the door.”

I nodded and turned to do so. Because Hotch and I technically weren’t supposed to have any kind of contact with Haley and Jack, no one else could see the video we were sent. If WITSEC changed their appearance and someone saw, it could put them in danger. If there was anything revealing in that video about where they had been before they were moved because Haley had been in contact with her dad, then it could put them in danger. Hotch and I couldn’t take that risk.

When I was done, I sat down in one of the empty seats across from Hotch. He turned his computer so that it was facing down the width of the desk, giving Hotch and I equal opportunity to see the screen and the video that was queued up. Even while the video was paused, I could see Jack on the swings, his legs kicked out since he had just gotten enough momentum to move forwards, and he was about to go flying back. I grabbed Hotch’s hand from the spacebar, tangling my fingers with his. Both of our breaths hitched.

“Are you sure—”

I nodded. “Do it.”

Hotch pressed the spacebar, then flipped his hand over so that he could hold my hand better. The video began. Jack started swinging back, his legs tucked under the seat. He was laughing. He was laughing, and kicking, and he looked like he was having so much fun. Haley pushed him forward again. He giggled and gave a “whoo” as he flew through the air again.

“It’s time!” Sam called from behind the camera.

Haley looked over with worry since Jack couldn’t see her. He was still having the time of his life, despite the fact that Sam and Haley were both telling him that it was time to get off the swings so that they could leave. Jack dragged his sneakers on the dirt beneath him to slow his momentum. After a few light, useless swings, Jack came to a stop, so he could safely jump off. Haley took his hand. He smiled up at her before he started skipping alongside her on their way to meet Sam at the car in the parking lot.

“Can we see Dad and Y/N now?” Jack asked.

I let out a sob, my face falling carefully against the desk. Hotch reached out to pet my hair back comfortingly, helping me through each of the tears that slid down my cheeks and every single whine that left my throat.

“No, baby, we’re not going home yet,” Haley said.

“But I want to see Y/N!” he complained. “I miss them.”

I tilted my head so that my cheek was pressed against the cold wood of the desk, but also so that I could glue my gaze back to the screen.

“I know, Jack,” she said while picking him up. “But we have to go somewhere else for our trip. Aren’t you excited?”

“Where are we going?”

The was when the video cut out.

“No, wait—” I gasped, sitting up straight. “There has to be more. That can’t be it.”

“That’s all of it, baby,” Hotch said apologetically.

“Play it again.”

Hotch did so. The video started replaying, Jack’s laugh echoing throughout the room. And then it was over faster than it was the first time, somehow. I sighed and let my head fall against the desk again.

“Come on, baby, don’t do that,” Hotch begged.

“I’m so sorry, Aaron. You have no idea how sorry I am.”

“No. I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”

“It’s not—”

“It all goes back to that night in the hotel, Y/N. If I would’ve just taken the deal, none of this would be happening to us.”

“Stop,” I insisted while sitting up and sniffling. “I don’t blame you.”

He handed me a tissue from the box next to his elbow. “I’m sorry for being an asshole. I was blinded by hatred for Foyet and the need for revenge that I didn’t see how much of a douchebag I was being while you were suffering, too. It was insensitive of me, baby, and I’m so sorry. I hope you can forgive me.”

I dodged his apology after a moment of silence. “Are you okay?” I asked. “You know… with missing Jack’s birthday for the first time?”

Hotch had never missed mine, Jack, or Haley’s birthdays before. There were times when we had to miss other holidays, but never a birthday. Ever. That was a day special to that person, and Hotch always wanted to celebrate it with them. When it came to Jack, that urge was even stronger. Jack was apart of this world because of Hotch. He stayed by Haley’s side for hours as she endured labor, and from that pain, they gained a little sunshine, a little miracle of their own. He wouldn’t have missed Jack’s birthday for the world. It was a memory of the good times, and a reminder that Hotch had a reason to live. He had a son. He wanted to celebrate that day every single year. But this time… There was no one to celebrate with, and it was noticeable.

He shook his head. “No. But that’s why I called you. I had to see you again and make things right.” We both took a deep breath, clearing away our tears and our overwhelming emotions. Hotch stood from his seat and slowly walked around his desk, taking a knee beside my chair. “I am sorry, Y/N. I don’t think I’ll ever stop apologizing for what I did. I shouldn’t have yelled at you, and I shouldn’t have chased after you like that. I know I scared you, and I’m sorry. You know that I would never lay a hand on you, right?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“I’m going to spend the rest of my life making this up to you, Y/N, I just know it.” He took my hand in his. “I could make excuses all day—like how I was just frustrated about how our family is falling apart, and I’m upset the Foyet took the time to specifically go through our house in order to search for the one thing he knew would hurt most to steal… the ring I was going to give you.”

When Hotch and I first met Foyet, we thought that he was just another victim of The Reaper—that he was one of the lucky ones that got away. We were convinced because he distracted us with the one thing that meant everything to us: love. He begged me to not let The Reaper put Amanda’s engagement ring on his next victim. He cried about how he didn’t want that good memory to be ruined by The Reaper. In the end, though, The Reaper put the ring on one of his next victims, and I felt horrible about having broken my promise to Foyet… Only to find out that it was all a lie. It was a facade in order to fuck with us. I didn’t appreciate it. None of us did. He made it personal, and we were all pissed. But what upset me the most was the fact that he knew that using the detail of the engagement ring against me and Hotch would work. That was also how and why he knew to go straight for ours the night he stabbed Hotch.

Now, all I could do was hope and pray that he wouldn’t get the chance to put that ring on anyone’s body. I wanted that ring to be mine. I wanted Hotch to be down on one knee, as he was just then while apologizing to me, and I wanted him to slide that ring onto my finger as I told him: “Yes, I’ll marry you, Aaron Hotchner!” It was my dream. I wanted to call Aaron Hotchner my husband. And I wanted it to be that very ring that he went out of his way to buy after I babied him all the way home from Cincinnati. I wanted to be his. It actually didn’t matter which ring I ended up wearing—or even if I would have one at all. I just wanted to be his, and only his. Getting the ring back was just an added bonus because it came with a free side of “Fuck you, George Foyet”, accompanied with a middle finger.

“I could make those excuses,” he continued, “and I want to… But I won’t. I take full responsibility for my actions. I recognize that what I did was wrong. I shouldn’t have shut you out. I shouldn’t have abandoned you. And I definitely shouldn’t have snapped at you when all you were doing was trying to help me and knock some sense into me.”

“I don’t want you to spend the rest of our lives apologizing, Aaron. I already forgive you. I just want you to spend every second of every day loving me unconditionally. Holding me like this…” I released his hands so that I could grab his face. He grabbed mine, too. “Kissing me like this…” I pressed my lips against his gingerly. “Telling me you love me…”

“I love you…” he whispered.

“It’s music to my ears,” I said, leaning my forehead against his.

Hotch hands snaked under my hips so that he could grab my ass, then lift me out of my seat. I flung my arms around his neck to make sure I wouldn’t fall out of his hold. When he had me out of my chair, I crossed my legs around his waist, feeling his erection pressing against me through both of our pants. We moaned simultaneously. Next thing I knew, to make sure he wouldn’t drop me, Hotch set me down on the edge of his desk.

“Are you—” he tried asking before I cut him off with another kiss. He pulled away. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“What about the rules?”

“Fuck the rules. Aaron, I need this,” I said desperately, rather than seductively.

Of course, I needed him, but I mainly needed the idea of fucking him—of finally sharing that connection with him again after so long of not being anywhere near him. I needed the physical reminder that we loved each other. I didn’t doubt our love or passion, but that didn’t erase the feeling I had growing in the pit of my stomach, and it certainly didn’t make me forget just how wet I was for him already.

“We don’t have to if you’re not ready yet, or if our emotions are too fried—”

“Are you not sure?”

He stared at me for a moment. “I’ve never been more sure in my life.”

I leaned up to kiss him again. “Then, fuck me, Sir.”

Hotch’s lips crashed passionately against mine, his tongue immediately sliding into my mouth, claiming the dominance I loved so much. I grinded my hips against his. He moaned in response, bucking his hips forward, too. My palms dragged down his neck, gliding over his purple button up dress shirt, making their way slowly down to his belt. As my fingers fiddled with the metal clasp, Hotch leaned against me so that he could clear the space on his desk behind me before pushing my back down. I got his buckle undone just in time. Hotch finished the rest of it. He eagerly unbuttoned his pants, then pushed down his zipper. As he stepped out of his pants, I fidgeted with the waistband of mine, waiting for the perfect opportunity to push them down to my ankles. Hotch caught the hint before I could get very far. He yanked my pants and panties down with one fowl swoop, leaving me completely exposed to him.

“Fuck—” I wiggled my hips around to gesture for more. Hotch ran his left pointer finger up my slit, starting at my dripping entrance, working his way up slowly to my throbbing clit. I jerked around when he circled it. “Sir…”

“I don’t want manners right now, Y/N. I just want you.” He cupped my cheeks with his palms so that he could hold me still before kissing me as roughly as he could. “You have to be quiet.”

“I know.”

He nodded. “Okay.” He reached between us in order to push his boxers down to his ankles. “Hold onto me. Please.”

I obeyed, bracing my hands on his shoulders. As he lined his tip up with my entrance, I bit my lip to bar myself from moaning his name as loud as I could. Instead, I opted to whimper, “I want you inside me—” I gasped and let my body fall limp against the desk as he pushed into me slowly. “Aaron…”

“You’re so tight, baby girl. Always so tight and wet for me.” He threw his head back while snapping his hips back, then forward as roughly as he had the strength for.

I saw his muscles tightened under his shirt, and that was when a thought struck me. “You have another shirt in your go-bag, right?”

Hotch thrusted into me again before he realized what it was that I had asked him. He paused. “Why?” I didn’t answer. “Yeah, I have another—” I grabbed onto the seam of buttons lining his chest, and then I yanked them apart. Hotch groaned, thrusting into me as I did so. I screwed my eyes shut and threw my head back in euphoria before I could even get a look at Hotch, like I wanted. “Fuck, baby girl…” He gripped my hips harder. I looked up at him with a smirk, excited to finally see him, but then I froze. Hotch noticed how my face well. “What is it?” he asked as he slowed then stopped.

“Aaron,” I hesitated, my fingers hovering only millimeters from his chest. He stopped to follow my gaze, quickly realizing that this was the first time that I was laying my eyes on his scars. Foyet did that to him… I wanted to cry. “I could have lost you…”

“Look at me,” he whispered as he grabbed my chin between his fingers. My eyes fluttered as I looked up at him through my lashes and foggy eyes. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Ever. I promise.”

I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him closer, feeling him move inside me as he leaned over me. For the first time, I finally felt my hands touch his scars, running over the bumps and cuts. The stitches had been gone for a while, but I could still feel the irritation. I never knew that it was this bad. How was I supposed to know when he had been working tirelessly towards making sure I never found out?

“I love you,” I croaked, letting him pull me in for a kiss.

He thrust his hips forward at a gentle, loving pace. “I love you, too.”

I grabbed onto his shoulders, my fingers digging into his back slightly. With that silent encouragement, Hotch’s hands took ahold of my hips and he started fucking me roughly. I moaned against his collarbone, my legs falling off of him so that he could increase his pace without being held back by me. I propped my feet on the edge of his desk, and my back fell against the wood entirely. Hotch’s hands moved upwards, stopping just on my breasts. He cupped, massaged, and squeezed them as he continued to fuck me as hard as he could. My hands fell from his shoulders, and I ran my fingers over his scars again. I used to be so obsessed with his chest and how he flexed when he’d fuck me like this, but now, I was so scared of looking or touching because I didn’t want to hurt him. I knew that he wasn’t fragile, especially with the strength of every pump he was giving me, but I was still hesitant. I felt like with one wrong move, he could fall apart, and maybe it would be all my fault.

“I can’t lose you,” I whispered, moving to press my palm against his face.

He leaned down and kissed me. I moaned into his mouth as he gave me another passionate thrust that said: “I’m here, my love, and I’m not going anywhere.” I scratched at his back. I couldn’t do anything but quietly moan and whimper. If we were any louder, the whole office would know, and we couldn’t have that. This first time since he was stabbed was imperative to calming our worries and helping us forget our pain… but the team didn’t need to know any of it. There would be another time soon when Hotch and I would be alone, and I’d finally get to moan his name as loud as I wanted while also gasping between saying “I love you” a thousand times. But this… This needed to be quiet. It was passionate, of course, but it had to be quiet, much to my despair.

“I’m close,” he warned. “I’m so fucking close.”

I pulled him towards me so that our chests were pressed together. He hid his face in the crook of my neck, finally letting out a muffled groan. His hips were doing all of the work now, so I started grinding up to help him. That only seemed to encourage his orgasm, because the next thing I knew, his hand snaked between our bodies so that he could press his thumb against my clit.

I hid my face in his shoulder so that my moan would be muffled, too. “Aaron…” I let out a shaky breath. “Aaron, please. Cum in me…” I needed him to fill me. I needed that instinctual reminder that I was his and he was mine. I needed a part of him to carry around for a bit to remember that he was alive and that he was there with me. “Fuck—” My body gave out. I was shaking and panting as my orgasm crashed through me like a wave. As my walls pulsed around him, Hotch groaned into my neck again. My tightness pushed him over the edge, milking out everything he had to offer me.

“Y/N…” he growled in my ear, thrusting into me once more with such a fierceness that I knew I was going to be sore in just a few minutes. “I love you.” I heard how the words got caught in his throat. I heard how he was holding something back. I knew what it sounded like when he was trying not to cry. So, I lifted his head off me. “I love you,” he repeated, moving to kiss me before I could register just how red his eyes were.

I melted into his kiss again, my body relaxing after my overwhelming climax. It was only when I felt one of his tears hit my cheek that I knew he wasn’t okay. I whimpered sadly. All I could do was hold him close, tangling my fingers through his hair, kissing his lips again and again, feeling him soften inside of me. It was like that time we drove back from Cincinnati, and we couldn’t do anything but be grateful for each other. I couldn’t bear to lose him. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could face seeing him like this. Broken, beaten, bruised, wincing in pain. If it happened again, I didn’t know how I was going to survive.

“Does it still hurt?” I asked, referencing his scars. Hotch groaned as he pulled out of me slowly. He reached into his go-bag under his desk, grabbing a dark blue towel to clean me up with. Silently, he wiped my thighs and everywhere between. “Aaron.” He didn’t look at me. My heart sank in my chest at the realization. “They still hurt, don’t they?” Silence still. “Answer me, baby.”

“I don’t…” He gulped back tears. “I don’t know what to say.”

I sat up on the desk to get a better look at him while he hid the towel away, then stood up straight in order to change shirts. I wanted to apologize for ripping the purple one open. But I found that I couldn’t move or speak. He was stretching to pull the sleeves off, wincing as he did so, then he grabbed the red shirt from his go-bag, and started to carefully put it on.

“Come here,” I said, beckoning him closer with one finger. He sighed and stepped towards me. I started buttoning his shirt up for him. “You should’ve told me sooner.”

“I know.”

“We promised to never lie to each other.”

“I know.”

“So, then, why?”

His lip quivered and his eyes reddened. “Because I didn’t want to lose you, too... Turns out closing myself off in order to protect you only ruined everything.”

I finished buttoning his shirt. “I thought you learned that lesson when you first asked me out.”

Back then, when I first joined the team, Hotch entirely ignored me in order to protect me from his feelings. He didn’t think it was appropriate to let me know that he was in love with me. He thought that pushing me away was the only way to save me from him. What he failed to realize was that his decisions only worried me. I became obsessed with his change in behavior. Finally, I broke after Elle’s hostage situation in Texas, so I confronted him. That evening, we admitted that we had feelings for each other, and he took me out to dinner. The rest was history. But that was exactly why we didn’t keep secrets from each other, and we didn’t push each other away. I needed him to comfort me ever since Foyet attacked me— Actually, I wanted to comfort him. Bur he never gave me the chance. He pushed me away again, and it tore me down to nothing.

“I told you I’m sorry.”

I got off the desk and collected my panties and pants at the same time he grabbed his boxers and pants. We finished getting dressed simultaneously. As I hopped and shimmied into my pants, I looked at Hotch. “Can we start over? Pretend like the past month never happened?”

“And do what?” he asked while fixing his tie.

“Be us.”

His gaze snapped to meet mine. “I’d love that.”

“You can’t hide up in your office all day, and you can’t shut me out… You can’t keep sleeping in Jack’s room… You have to talk to me.”

He shuffled on the balls of his feet.

“Fine, you don’t have to talk to me, but you have to start going to therapy again.”

“It’s a waste of time and money, Y/N.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I’m not going to sit on a couch and tell some stranger that I miss my son so much I can’t breathe! I’m not going to tell them that I think about how I snapped at you and it almost makes me wish Foyet killed me—”

“Don’t fucking say that,” I hissed. “Ever.”

“You wanted me to talk to you, right? Well, that’s how I feel.”

I inhaled and exhaled deeply, trying to diffuse the tension building in my chest and shoulders. We had just made up; I didn’t want to start arguing with him again. “Okay… Like I said, you don’t have to talk to me… But at least try one more session. You stopped going after we lost Jack and Haley, and I think that’s a big part of why things blew up the way they did. Just one. For me. If you don’t like it, then I won’t make you go again. I think you’ll find it’s helpful, though.”

Hotch sighed, too. “Just one.”

“Just one,” I agreed while nodding.

“Okay.”

I jumped onto my toes and kissed him. “I love you.”

Before he could say it back, there was a knock at the door. Hotch and I parted, fixing ourselves again as quickly as possible, and I returned to my seat at his desk while he went to go unlock the door. When I was settled, I gave Hotch a nod. It looked like nothing had happened between the two of us now, except for the fact that Hotch was wearing a different shirt, but hopefully no one would notice… right…

“Sorry to interrupt,” Rossi apologized from the other side of the door, “but we’ve got a new case.”

I stood from my seat and started walking towards the door to make my way to the boardroom. Hotch stopped me. He looked at Rossi, then asked if we could have another moment alone before closing the door on him. I rolled my eyes at Hotch.

“Don’t do that,” he begged, grabbing my hips in his hands. “Just sit out for one more case. That’s all. One more to collect your thoughts and get settled back in at the house.”

My hands slid around the back of his neck so that my fingers could pull at the ends of his hair gently. He moaned. I smiled and jumped up onto my toes so that I could kiss him. “I love you, Aaron Hotchner. I always have and I always will.”

He let out a breath, letting relief wash over him. “Say it again.”

“I love you. I love you so much. I’ll never stop loving you.”

He pulled me in for another desperate, passionate kiss that kept me pressed against him until I couldn’t breathe. When his lungs gave out, too, he parted from me. “I love you, too.” And then he raced off to be a superhero again.

---------------

criminal minds family: @peggy1999​ @gorgeousdarkangel​  @alex--awesome--22​ @oceaneblu​ @brithedemonspawn​ @absolutemarveltrash​ @bshelley322​

[thehollowprince]

Sterek, Thiam, & Queerbaiting, Oh My!

(Or how racism and homophobia suppressed the actual representation of gay men in the show that fandom so desperately claimed they wanted.)

So, I'm just going to come out and say it right off the bat: neither of these ships were actually queerbaiting. As a matter of fact, I'd say that those ships just by themselves (and the fandoms that rose around them) were low-key homophobic. The reason I say this isn't just because of the large number of women in this fandom that fetishize mlm sexuality, nor is it about those who attack anyone who has any critique of those ships, its just about the ships themselves.

Now, one could argue that those ships arose from the fandom, and that is true, forever linking canon and fanon in the worst possible way, but this is more to do with the fact that the production of this show cowtowed to the vocal fans on Twitter and put moments in there that, while not explicitly canon, was a not-so-subtle nod to those "fans" that harassed people over crack ships.

Of course, I've been over this before, the pedophilic nature of Sterek and the outright abusive elements to Thiam, but those very real complaints (from an actual gay man like myself) always fall on deaf ears or is usually met with the whole "fiction doesn't affect reality" spiel. And this is incredibly frustrating (or even downright infuriating) to those of us who have had to live with these stereotypes because of our sexuality. To this day there are people out there who equate gay men with pedophiles. That's one of the major talking points for these anti-LGBT religious groups and there's an entire group of people on the internet who are dedicated to promoting a predatory style relationship (Sterek).

What makes the popularity of Sterek so infuriating, is the fact that we had Danny right there. Danny was present in the second episode of the series. We were introduced to him before there was any kind of interaction between Stiles and Derek, and yet he is continually slept on by the fandom, and then by the production as a result of the fandom, which eventually led to Danny just disappearing from the show entirely. To add insult to injury, Danny was practically everything Fandom was crying for when it came to gay representation. He was handsome with a nice body, smart and funny, and everyone liked him, and yet there's usually cricket chirps whenever he's mentioned. Something similar happened to Scott - a character that who stuck fast to his morals and was just an all around good person, and yet so many people violently hated him. Now what could Danny and Scott have in common that made so many people look past them? Gee, I wonder?

Moving forward, once Sterek was no longer a possibility, rather than focus on, I don't know, Mason, a character that was tailor-made for the fandom, they once again make up a crack ship to flock around (Thiam) rather than focus on the actual, consensual relationship that was made up of actual gay characters.

But you may be saying to yourself, "at least these two (Theo and Liam) were around the same age", and you would be right in that regards. But what makes this ship bad, is that it's rooted entirely in first deceit and then later in physical violence. I remember very vividly seeing someone say that Liam and Theo punching each other was how they expressed their affection and I was horrified by that. How many times a day on this app do we see posts floating around that domestic violence is wrong? And then how many times do you see a ship (usually a crack ship) that a fandom loves rooted in physical violence? The disconnect is terrifying.

All of this while Mason and Corey were right there, being cute and in love and everything that fandom claims they want when it comes to representation, yet they're totally ignored in favor of the two straight characters beating the shit out of one another. This is why so many franchises revolving around these "macho men" are able to thrive, even though so many people (mostly women) in fandom claim they want softer men. And yet, whenever a softer man is presented, particularly if they're a man of color, they're brushed aside.

And that's just mlm representation! You hear almost nothing when it comes to wlw representation, unless its to get the women "out of the way".

This all comes down to the racism that permeates every level of fandom. I'm not saying this is intentional, because we've all done it. Hell, I did it. When I joined the Teen Wolf fandom, I followed pro-Sterek blogs and reblogged Sterek posts, because I wanted to be accepted in the fandom, and I bought into the propaganda that was fanon!Sterek. I read the metas and the fics and decided to believe in those instead of what I saw on the screen with my own two eyes. Thankfully, I snapped out of it, but that's why Sterek (and later Thiam) dominated fandom spaces, even making their way to polls for "Best Couple" on many websites.

And then, when these ships don't become canon, fandom screams QUEERBAITING!!! Even though those ships were something made up entirely by the fandom and never something that production considered being canon.

Another big part of how the situation gets as bad as it does is that fandom misunderstands (either accidentally or deliberately) what racism actually means. It's not just the throwing of slurs, it's the preference of the white character over the character of color, even though the latter has everything they said they wanted. Racism is reducing characters of color to stereotypes, such as a brown or brown person being violent (Tamora and Kali) or the sexually obsessed Latino (Scott) or the untrustworthy negro (Deaton and Morrell). Hell, even Boyd was thrust into the silent negro stereotype for some reason.

Now this part, this is as much the production's fault as it is the fandoms, because while the former introduced those concepts (or even if fandom thinks they introduced those concepts) fandom then takes them and blows them out of proportion. How many times have I gotten an ask from that one anon telling me that Scott was "obsessed" with Allison? How many times have I seen metas about how Deaton was "untrustworthy" because he didn't share his every waking thought? How many times did we see particular blogs slut-shame Braeden because she engaged in a consensual relationship with Derek?

And the thing about those is, yes, the original idea was introduced in the show, such as Scott's relationship with Allison or Deaton only offering advice when asked or Derek and Braeden flirting, but fandom took them and cranked them up to eleven in an effort to make these characters look horrible. This is something we don't see at all when it comes to their white counterparts. Stiles is never described as "obsessed" by the fandom despite his fixation on Lydia. Peter is almost never described as "untrustworthy" by the fans despite lying and decieving people all the time. Neither Lydia or Malia are called sluts for being sexually active despite not being in relationships.

When Derek repeatedly assaults Stiles (or Scott, not that fandom cared), it's seen as quirky or romantic (same with Thiam), but when Scott hits Isaac or Jackson, in scenes that were very specifically shown to be comedic, its seen as abusive and violent. Stiles asking Danny if he's "attractive to gay guys" or pausing after Caitlin asked him if he liked guys is deemed proof that he's bisexual, but Scott's interactions with Isaac and Danny (or even Stiles himself), where had they been a guy and a girl, it would have clearly been an intimate moment, is still considered absolutely straight by fandom.

So what's the difference?

It's the racism.

The real kicker at the end of the day here is that fans cry queerbaiting, all the while they're actively sleeping on the actual gay representation that's there. It doesn't fit their aesthetic, so they ignore it, and then wonder why mlm relationships are going down in television. I'm not saying we shouldn't want or demand more representation in media, but people can't be so ignorant as to outright ignore the representation they're given and then wonder why they're not getting more.

Well, this got way longer than I originally intended and I hope I'm not just screaming into the void, but this is an issue that's still relevant, all these years after Teen Wolf ended.

[decennia]

Ok I just gave up catching up on my dash full stop because Clementine and George and Wildest Dreams got my brain like this:

I feel I desperately need to make an OC for George but he is YOUR precious lol

So instead while I'm here, give me and I mean GIVE all your George and Clementine headcanon

SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG I WAS FINISHING UP SOME GIFS ✨

First things first, that image lives in my mind rent free.

Second things second, please create an OC for George holy shit please yes?! George has already been romantically (or at least sexually, because Sable is a hoe) linked to Ellis Grant from @chlobenet (nothing ever came of it, George developed an infatuation and was perpetually rebuffed by our Lord and Saviour Miss Grant), @perfectlystiles' Laurel Chase, and @randomestfandoms-ocs' Reese Masrani. It is my goal to accumulate enough George Cassidy romantic interests that I can make a Wives of Henry the Eighth edit, so literally go nuts. Everyone, Create An OC To Thirst Over George Cassidy Challenge!

The best thing about George and the other Corpsemen is that the only thing that makes them Jurassic World OCs is that they happen to be hired there. It is by no means their entire story, and although they've been around for literally three days (?!) I keep thinking of more and more things about them and I keep building their backstories to the point where dinosaurs are literally the least craziest thing they've experienced.

If I were to sum up Clem and George's relationship in a gif, though:

(This got hella out of hand so keep reading under the cut if you want to know more about George and Clementine.)

A brief history on George "Sable" Cassidy and Clementine "Calico" Roscoe:

He is known as "George" to his friends, and "Cassidy" to his enemies. "Sable" when he's on the job, and "hers" when they're alone.

But it wasn't always like that. I'm not going to bore you with the details about George's fatherless upbringing, or his reasons for joining the British military, or how he'd always been a bit of a troubled kid. Where his story really begins is when he directly disobeys orders and murders the military hostages who were responsible for the attack on his unit. He is dishonourably discharged, and is sent back to the U.K. to await trial for murder and treason.

He manages an escape and goes dark; during which time, Clementine Roscoe, an agent at Interpol, is assigned his case. Unfortunately, after a year of searching (one close call where he was literally within breathing distance of Roscoe ) and a thousand too many mistaken sightings after that, the case goes cold, and she is assigned another case, one which results in the death of her entire family.

Clementine resigns from her position after she is denied leave to pursue the murderers, and spends the next few years methodically hunting down and executing the list of people she knew to be responsible. It was enough to impress Malcolm Drake, who located and recruited her into the Corpse Corporals (aka Gucci Suicide Squad).

All this time, Cassidy had been residing in Southern Africa, making a hefty living as a poacher under ever-changing pseudonyms (I had to make y'all understand that Sable is a bad man but y'all be forgiving Tom for murder and incest so here we are but honestly did it even work because here I am, being fooled, alongside you 😭). He runs a pretty decent operation, also dabbling in the smuggling of weaponry, and he lives a comfortable life. That is, until he is betrayed by his business partners (a brother-sister duo, FCs Megan Fox and Aidan Turner? Idk, still debating) and pushed out of the business under threat of death.

He is rescued by Malcolm, who has managed to track him down, and in exchange for his life spared, he agrees to work for Malcolm. His reunion with Clem is incredibly tense, with both of them pulling their guns on each other and refusing to work together. Malcolm snaps some sense into them (that, and the sum of the payload which had so many 0's added to the end, you couldn't be sure what the number really was other than "a lot") and they swallow their pride and work together.

They would continue to work together as Calico and Sable for the years to come, and when I say it is a slow burn, I do mean THE SLOWEST OF THE SLOW. But there is definitely a fuck ton of sexual tension thrown in there for angst, and a couple of near brushes with death (hazard of the job, really).

George is a prolific man whore, and he's bisexual and proud. So Clem has gotten used to an endless slew of people of all genders cumming coming and going from his hotel room, especially during the long cons where the Corpsemen go deep undercover for months at a time (Hector doesn't come on those jobs, he's got a family to worry about. He taps out at a month, max, if he doesn't get to leave to see his family).

George Cassidy is not a man who is used to not getting what he wants, but Clementine Roscoe is the only exception to that rule. He has come to view her as "unobtainable," this irreverent forbidden thing that he must not ruin. By the time the heat of their mutual hate had dissipated, it had turned into a friendship, and although there was an undeniable electric tension between them, they have never done anything about it. But it has that "will definitely be the best sex of your life" kinda energy.

They fight quite a lot, and disagree on almost everything. Have they tried to kill each other? Oh, absolutely. But they're also professionals, and although Clementine and George may be going at it, it never bothers Malcolm, because he knows that Calico and Sable will put those differences aside and do the damn job.

Clem only involves herself in George's sex life when it comes to people who she considers friends. She has the warnings already mentally scripted, because the thing about George Cassidy is that he cares about no one but himself, and nothing but his holy trinity: blood, money, and sex. He's an emotionally devoid sociopath at the best of times, and at the worst, he's a well oiled and dangerous killing machine.

He is not a good man, Clementine knows, but sometimes, you don't want a good man.

I have a gifset in store involving the two of them, and I'm busy compiling a list of headcanons as we speak. If you want, I can tag you in it :)

But this is everything about their past and a bit of their present, so if you want to create an OC please do and tag me so I can write up a crossover and make some gifs 💕

(And before anyone comes for me, yes, I am aware of the fact that George "Sable" Cassidy is a very toxic and fucking despicable man, I created him, and I made him that way. I am not condoning his actions, nor would I want to be in a relationship with him in real life, but this is fiction. It is not meant to be taken seriously, if you don't like my hot mercenary boyfriend, then please unfollow me, because he is my current obsession, and I cannot promise that I will not be thirsting for him on my TL at any and all hours).

[valkyrisffvii]

60 Questions about Mithra

Some background information about Mithra Valkyris

1: What’s your OCs favorite color?

Mithra’s favorite color is most definitely red, specifically dark crimson, the same color as blood. Her 2nd Class SOLDIER uniform sports this color, as do several other outfits that she wears.

2: Where does your OC work?

Mithra used to plunder people’s homes for clients as a part of a thieving ring. She was rewarded for her skills with food, clothing, and a place to stay. Unfortunately, the job ran out of use for her when she reached her late teens. In order to avoid having to sell her body to ensure a stable life, Mithra ran away from that particular part of Midgar and joined SOLDIER, the elite military group. They were reluctant to accept her at first due to the fact that she was female, but her skills in stealth ended up proving quite valuable to Shinra.

3: What’s your OCs favorite food?

Mithra is fond of anything that’s spicy. She can tolerate spicy food better than most of her friends. Mithra also has a very strong sweet tooth, preferring her coffee sweet and having a fondness for anything with chocolate. 

4: Does your OC prefer paper or plastic?

Gil does not come in card form nor paper form, so Mithra carries her gil in a pouch that attaches to her belt, much like others who don’t carry bags.

5: How old is your OC?

Mithra is around 14 when she first finds herself in lower Midgar. She joins SOLDIER at the age of 17 and is promoted to 2nd class at age 19. She is 22 when she gets into her first relationship with Sephiroth.

6: Does your OC have any supernatural powers?

Like other members of SOLDIER, Mithra receives Mako injections which give her enhanced speed, jump height, strength, and other powers. She learns several ice and electric spells to use in combat as a contrast to Genesis’ skills with fire. 

7: Is your OC in a relationship?

Before she joins SOLDIER, Mithra does try to get the attention of several girls her age, with no luck. She believes that she only holds feelings for females until she meets and falls in love with Sephiroth, whom she is afraid to confess her feelings to. Luckily, a slip of Zack’s tongue allows the two of them to confess their feelings to each other. They maintain a loving relationship for many years, and their commitment to each other pushes them to fight against those who threaten them.

8: What are some of your OCs strengths?

Having faced great adversity at a young age, Mithra is no stranger to conflict, and she has no problem with standing up for herself. She’s also very crafty with her words and actions, and she can manipulate anyone into giving in to her wishes, though she’d rather not do this unless she’s dealing with an enemy. Mithra’s stealth skills have made her a valuable asset to SOLDIER; she is a skilled lockpicker and pickpocket, and she can move silently and hide easily due to her short stature and small frame. She’s a patient teacher as well, taking some time out of her days to help infantryman Cloud train so that he can become a SOLDIER.

9: What are some of your OCs weaknesses? 

Having little to no memory of her childhood, Mithra struggles with understanding her identity. During her teenage years, she feels that she’s different from other girls because she does not hold romantic feelings towards men. Luckily, she comes to accept herself fully once she finds her place as a member of SOLDIER, and she comes out as bisexual. Mithra is also somewhat of a hothead, albeit less than that of someone like Genesis. She can get overwhelmed easily and this can result in impulsive decisions, some of which don’t end that well.

10: What is your OCs favorite outfit?

Once she hits the age of 18 and comes out, Mithra feels much more confident in her clothing choices. Like many other young women in Midgar, she likes wearing crop tops, even going so far as to alter her SOLDIER uniforms to fit her style. She hates anything that is tight around the neck, so she removed the turtleneck on the uniform as well. When she’s not in uniform, Mithra normally wears cropped tanks, as she hates sleeves. She also prefers going barefoot over constantly wearing boots.

11: What animal does your OC relate to?

Mithra probably relates most to a fox. She’s sneaky, both in physical prowess and her speech. She’s also quite solitary before she befriends the other SOLDIERS. 

12: Is your OC sexually active?

Mithra has little to no interest in a sexual relationship at first due to some bad experiences with older men on the streets. Even after she gets into a relationship, sex is not high on her list of desires, as she prefers to go on adventures with her S/O rather than have intimate moments. That being said, she does make perverted jokes occasionally… 

13: What is your OCs earliest memory?

Mithra’s earliest memory is waking up on the ground in an alleyway in Midgar. She can recall faint snapshots of her supposed childhood, but there’s nothing solid enough for her to remember vividly. She did remember her age and birthday, as well as how to fight.

14: Does your OC have a cell phone? If so, what kind?

Mithra has a touch screen smartphone like everyone else who works for Shinra. She is in several group chats including one for the six main SOLDIER members as well as SOLDIER Director Lazard, one with herself, Zack, and Cloud Strife, and one with her female friends Tifa Lockhart and Aerith Gainsborough. She often sends her friends “memes”.

15.What makes your OC angry?

Anyone who says that women are weak immediately get disapproval from Mithra, as does anyone who hates members of the LGBTQ+ community. She is also angered by those who threaten or make fun of her friends, especially anyone who antagonizes Sephiroth. The thing that she absolutely cannot stand, however, is being told to “know her place”.

16: When is your OCs favorite time of year?

Mithra loves the summer because she and the others usually get longer vacations. They often go to Costa Del Sol or another exotic location and just enjoy their time together. She is also fond of the winter cold and snow that sometimes falls in Midgar, and she can spend hours sitting at the window watching the snowflakes fall.

17: How long can your OC hold their breath?

Mithra’s SOLDIER abilities include the ability to hold her breath longer than the average person. However, she does have her limits, as seen when she dives into a reservoir lake to search for a piece of materia and gets attacked by mutated Shinra creations, which results in Sephiroth having to save her.

18: What kind of underwear does your OC wear?

Cotton. She thinks lace and silk are stupid, not to mention the mess they’d become during one’s menstrual cycle.

19: Does your OC prefer plaid or polka dots?

Mithra isn’t particularly fond of either. 

20: What’s your OCs favorite kind of pizza?

Either Margherita or barbecue chicken. She will judge anyone who thinks pineapple on pizza is good.

21: Who is your OCs best friend?

When she first joined SOLDIER, Mithra felt out of place because she was the only woman. However, Zack Fair, who was on the brink of making 2nd Class at the time, was quick to introduce himself to her and make her feel welcome. She and Zack quickly became close friends, both of them having a sense of humor and outgoing personalities. Through Zack, Mithra met and befriended the elite 1st Class members Genesis Rhapsodos, Angeal Hewley, and Sephiroth. Mithra became close friends with Cloud Strife after she helped him make SOLDIER. Mithra also became close friends with Aerith after helping Zack get closer to her, and Cloud introduced her to his childhood friend Tifa. 

22: Has your OC ever killed someone?

Before joining SOLDIER, Mithra had actually never killed anyone. She had to knock a few people out using her rock sling in order to escape a few fights, but she never murdered anyone in cold blood. After she became a SOLDIER, she’d do regular jobs that sometimes involved killing people, but only because it was her job and not due to personal grudges.

23: What's your OCs biggest secret?

Mithra was groped several times in her teen years by older drunk men, which fueled her dislike of alcohol. She also has a prominent scar behind her right ear that spans vertically from the top of her ear to the upper part of her neck. This scar was given to her by a drunk man who smashed a beer bottle into her head after she refused to sleep with him when she was sixteen. Had she not jerked her head away, the broken bottle would have disfigured her face, maybe even rendered her blind in her right eye.

24: What does your OC smell like?

Mithra doesn’t like perfume, so unlike Sephiroth, she simply smells like powder-fresh deodorant. Her hair can smell badly if she doesn’t wash it daily.

25: What time of year does your OC prefer?

(Same as 16)

26: Is your OC a human or an animal?

Mithra is very much human, albeit somewhat of a superhuman due to Mako injections.

27: What languages does your OC speak?

Mithra only knows the common language spoken by most people on Gaia. She also doesn’t have an apparent accent. 

28: Does your OC like anime?

She’s not really into it itself, but she does like the art style and tries to replicate it in her spare time.

29: Can your OC swim?

Mithra is a surprisingly strong swimmer. Her small frame allows her to move in the water swiftly, and she has strong arms and legs thanks to SOLDIER training. She enjoys swimming whenever she gets the chance, especially during the hot summer months.

30: What does your OC choose to do about the, er, hair down there?

She shaves, but she would never let anyone wax her down there.

31: Does your OC believe in fairies? 

Mithra isn’t overly superstitious, but she believes in ghosts. 

32: Did your OC go to college? What did they major in?

Anything Mithra learned was either a result of an experience (bad or good) or from being in SOLDIER. She did know how to read and write when she woke up, though. Zack introduced Mithra to Angeal, who took her under his wing alongside Zack. Angeal taught her most of the skills she needed in SOLDIER, and Mithra caught on pretty quickly.

33: Are your OCs parents dead? 

Mithra does not know who her parents are or if they abandoned her in that alleyway. She has faint visions of people whom she thinks are her parents, but she isn’t sure if they’re still alive or not. Seeing as no one came looking for her, it’s most likely that she was left to die by her parents, or her parents had died and whoever was caring for her got rid of her. 

34: Is your OC religious?

Mithra does sometimes mention Shiva when she’s surprised, but for the most part she is agnostic.

35: How flexible is your OC?

Mithra is much more flexible than any of the other SOLDIERs. She is great at climbing and has great balance. One of her pastimes is doing parkour in the simulation room with the scene set to rooftops in Midgar. Her past life as a thief gave her the ability to jump fences and squeeze into tight spaces. She also has great grip strength and can hang on for long periods of time without letting go.

36: What turns your OC on?

Mithra loves people who are confident and assertive. She believes that the most “masculine” thing that a man could do is not care about what others think. She likes girls who also don’t care about outside opinions and stand up for themselves. The most attractive trait that a person could have, in her opinion, is undying loyalty. 

37: What was your OCs first word?

As for the first word she uttered as an infant, Mithra has no idea what it was. However, the first thing she said when she woke up was “Huh?”

38: Does your OC have any pets?

While she’s living in the Shinra building in Midgar, Mithra does not have any pets. However, she dreams of getting a dog someday, particularly a husky or a corgi.

39: Who is your OCs biggest enemy?

At first, Mithra’s enemies are the criminals she works with as they try to force her into submission. When she escapes the criminal underworld and joins SOLDIER, her greatest enemy is Professor Hojo. She harbors a strong dislike towards him from the very beginning due to his obsession with using live subjects, and the hatred only grows when she finds out the truth about Sephiroth’s origins. Hojo’s feelings towards her are mutual, and he even goes so far as to torture her for meddling in his work. 

40: What is the craziest thing your OC has done?

The craziest thing Mithra’s done is probably dating the famous, elite Silver General despite his hoards of fangirls, directly contributing to thousands of jealous women all over the Planet. She does not fear them one bit even though they are notorious for fanatically snooping and gossiping about Sephiroth. Then again, the Silver Elite are also terrified of her.

41: What is your OCs motto about life?

“I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and, at times, hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” - Marilyn Monroe

42: Does your OC drink coffee or tea?

Mithra is partial to both, but she prefers green tea and likes her coffee sweet with plenty of cream. She hates iced tea but she loves iced coffee with sweetened condensed milk.

43: Who is your OCs biggest hero?

Probably the three Firsts. Between Genesis’ dramatic personality, Angeal’s devotion to honor, and Sephiroth’s inner warmth, she deeply admires all three of them. However, unlike their fan clubs, who love them for their deeds, appearances, and heroics, she appreciates their personalities and her friendships with them. 

44: What color eyes does your OC have?

Unlike most other SOLDIERs, Mithra does not have the signature “Mako eyes” despite receiving Mako. This makes it easy for her to hide the fact that she’s in SOLDIER. Her eyes remain their natural warm brown, and they appear to have golden reflects in direct sunlight. 

45: Does your OC like reading?

Mithra absolutely hates reading. Part of it is from constantly listening to Genesis recite LOVELESS, and most of it is because she prefers actually doing things rather than reading about other people’s experiences. She has stolen LOVELESS from Genesis multiple times, much to his annoyance (don’t worry, they’re still best friends).

46: Is your OC loyal?

Having been betrayed before, Mithra vows to never betray her friends. She is an incredibly loyal friend and girlfriend. She would never cheat on Sephiroth with anyone, nor would she sell anyone out for her own gain. If she ever accidentally betrays someone, she will do anything to gain forgiveness. 

47: Does your OC tolerate violence?

Unfortunately, Mithra has to tolerate some violence as a member of Shinra’s elite military. She is not overly fond of violence in situations where it’s unnecessary. However, she is more than willing to kill people who have hurt her or her close friends. 

48: What social class is your OC from?

Mithra started out as a thief, a class that no average person would want any association with. She jumped dramatically in social hierarchy when she joined SOLDIER, becoming a high-ranking member of society. When she enlisted, Director Lazard was quick to remind the other members that she deserved respect as the only female. She was even given her own private suite with a full kitchen, bathroom, living room, and bedroom in order to ensure her privacy among all the men in SOLDIER.

49: What country was your OC born in?

Somewhere on the planet of Gaia. It’s not exactly known where Mithra was born, as she was already a teenager when she found herself in Midgar. Her family could have very well either been from Midgar originally or they may have moved from another town. 

50: Does your OC cry easily?

Mithra has taught herself to be strong and stoic in times of hardship and show little emotion. She does not cry easily, but she prefers to work off her anger and sadness by doing target practice. When she meets her friends and eventually gets into a relationship, however, Mithra becomes more open with her feelings and is willing to let her emotions out rather than bearing her burdens. She feels that her friends accept her fully and will be there for her even when she seems weak.

51: What is your OCs favorite genre of music?

Mithra loves instrumental music that she can play while doing things such as cleaning, cooking, or drawing. She also loves songs that she can sing or dance to. She would often sing to herself when she was alone in order to keep herself occupied. 

52: How does your OC feel about insects?

Despite her adventurous personality, Mithra is terrified of cockroaches, slugs, and moths. She likes flies and mosquitoes and the like as much as the next person, and she thinks that bees are cute at a distance. She is extra happy when Sephiroth moves in with her because it means that she doesn’t have to kill any roaches that wander into her apartment. 

53: What is your OCs sexual orientation?

At first, Mithra believes that she is a lesbian, as she only feels attraction to women during her time as a thief. However, everything changes when she joins SOLDIER and she’s exposed to charismatic men such as Zack, Genesis, Angeal, and Sephiroth. She comes out as bisexual at the age of 18, which makes her the only member of SOLDIER to be an open member of the LGBTQ+ community at the time. 

54: Does your OC smoke?

Similarly to her feelings towards alcohol, Mithra loathes tobacco. She was forced to smell it when wandering around the criminal underworld and never got used to it. She also knows that smoking can ruin one’s body and does not want to destroy herself at such a young age.

55: What gender is your OC?

Mithra identifies as a cisgender female. She is mostly feminine, but she enjoys crossdressing in men’s clothes. A particularly amusing instance of this is when she tries on Sephiroth’s coat, which drags behind her like a cape, and the sleeves are several inches too long. Sephiroth does get a good laugh out of this, though.

56: What kind of clothes does your OC wear?

Mithra’s wardrobe consists of crop tops and comfortable pants such as sweatpants or leggings. She hates long sleeves and therefore wears tanks most of the time. When she’s not wearing her SOLDIER combat boots, Mithra is normally either barefoot or sporting sandals. She’s also quite fond of two-pieced dresses, as seen with her choice of fashion for Shinra’s annual banquet. 

57: Would you call your OC adventurous? 

Mithra lives for adventure. During her time as a thief, she would wander around the slums of Midgar with constant interest in the different people living in the city. Her job as a SOLDIER only gave her new opportunities for adventures around Gaia. She has traveled to Costa Del Sol, Banora, and several other small towns. She also travels to several remote areas.

58: Is your OC introverted or extroverted?

Despite seeming more introverted at first due to her solidarity, Mithra is actually very extroverted and loves being around people. Befriending Zack and then the others turned out to be one of the best things that happened to her, as it allowed her to relate to other people and feel a sense of belonging. 

59: What is the first thing that someone would notice about your OC?

Mithra is very short, standing at 5’3”. She looks even shorter when she’s with her fellow SOLDIERs. The only one close to her height is Cloud Strife, and even he is four inches taller than her. She also does not sport blue eyes like other members of SOLDIER, but instead retains her natural brown eyes. 

60: Does your OC enjoy nature?

Even though she’s mostly a city girl, Mithra does enjoy the great outdoors. She goes camping with Zack and Cloud several times and fully enjoys it (partially because she can scare Zack). She does drag her boyfriend with her a few times, much to his displeasure.