#like. misogyny is real and poisonous.

[aeide-thea]

not to be like 'if your mental picture of Men is a dismissively vitriolic generalization based on (a) some bullshit you dredged up on twitter and (b) the men you personally know, all of whom are apparently blinkered cishet white conservatives and may or may not be your father, you may want to expand that picture and also your social circle,' but.

[laurelwinchester]

spn stans are so terrified of women existing within the world of the show that they will literally rewrite canon to say "dean never truly loved any woman" or they will say absolutely absurd shit like "jensen ackles just doesn't have chemistry with women." and yet they still insist that they're not at all misogynistic or biphobic.

[woolydemon]

they put the mvk lead poisoning guy trying to complain about aa fanon flanderization when theyre literally the mvk lead poisoning guy on my dash

[machinavocis]

.

[sidsinning]

Apothecary Diaries is pog as fuck bc serious political issues and dynamics from a woman's POV are rarely depicted in ANY form of media

It's always a man's world where women's issues surround him. Even if we get a female perspective once in awhile- it all comes back to how it facilitates his game in the end. She's a footnote in the overarching scheme of things. Misogyny exists. Back to the real plot.

Apothecary Diaries is strictly from a female perspective and how each class of woman has to act, what limits they have, what rights they have and don't have between each class, etc. These women have to behave a certain way under a patriarchy, which you would think makes it a man's story, but it never is. The women are THE focus of this show, their struggles are THE plot. The focus is about how the patriarch effects them.

Take the concubines for example. The show dives into how bearing a child affects their rank, how traumatizing it is to lose that child, the consequences of that, etc. We have barely seen the emperor who sired all these kids because this is not about him.

Jinshi's personal plot is secondary to Mao Mao's journey- he is mostly there to provide new cases for Mao Mao to solve and to learn more about the shortcomings of his class when taking care of citizens like Mao Mao.

Jinshi is not a bad person, but by virtue of his position in the higher classes, he cannot understand how harsh life as a poor WOMAN is specifically- he can only catch glimpses of it from what Mao Mao tells him and feel outrage but powerless in his wealth and luxury

Mao Mao is a fortunate commoner woman for what privileges someone in her class should and shouldn't have. She happened to be adopted by a knowledgeable man. She is allowed to read, write, learn, and has enough skill to be a poison tester and have a job EXTREMELY out of her class limit as an apothecary, also a job not traditionally meant for women

Mao Mao is not a "noT lIkE oThER gIrLs" protagonist, she is FOR THE GIRLIES. She only wants to help the women around her, and women are whom she has the closest relationships to. She sees a woman being harassed and can't let it stand. She sees a frail, traumatized woman dying from the recklessness of those who should be caring for her and spends day and night nursing her back to health, while also punishing the people who were so careless with her needs.

My girl has STUDIED UP on THE BODY to TEACH these upper class ladies on how to really HEAT things up in the BEDROOM

Sex depicted in Apothecary Diaries is both something women are not shamed to be enjoying, while at the same time being acknowledged as an unfortunately huge economic necessity to market themselves.

Like shit is just so real in this series???

Listen, I can go on and on about how GOATED the series and especially Mao Mao is but you get the picture

[marzipanandminutiae]

The Snark Is Real This Morning

Oh no! Some patriarchal shill just had an Illegal Corset Thought on the Internet!

Maybe they said "corsets weren't invented by the patriarchy" or "comfort was actually often a prime concern for most women's day-to-day corset-wearing, as evidenced by mid-late 19th century advertising" or "women didn't go around fainting constantly because most of them didn't tightlace most of the time."

Maybe they brought up "survivorship bias in extant clothing" or "rampant photo doctoring in the 19th/early 20th century" or "treating satirical cartoons and fashion plates as gospel" or "museums displaying corsets laced entirely closed when wear patterns and primary sources indicate that lacing gaps were more common in many times and places" These concepts are actually conspiracies invented by Big Misogyny to sell more booze to depressed history workers!

Maybe one of them said that she'd worn corsets, or even that she and/or her friends actually found them more comfortable than bras! Clearly she believes this is representative of all women throughout history and in the present day. Besides, she is suffering from Femininity Poisoning and nothing coming out of her silly, weak little brain can be taken seriously. Remember, it is Peak Feminism to dismiss what a woman says because of her gender presentation!

Don't be fooled! All of these statements mean one thing: they are saying that corsets were and are, always and forever, universally feminist and empowering. That no woman in the past ever found them uncomfortable, and that GNC women didn't exist before 1960 and also are icky. Did they actually say that? Doesn't matter! You know what she Really Meant- you've seen P*rates of the Caribbean and Br*dgerton! Corsets were always torture devices meant to oppress women, and any statement contradicting that clearly means the extreme opposite.

So what's a right-thinking and concerned Internet Citizen to do? You have a few options:

See point above re: femininity. Feminine-presenting women are basically brainless, so if a woman talking about dress history Wears An Skirt, you can just write off whatever she says. Easy peasy! Be sure to say something derogatory about her appearance, so others know why they shouldn't take her seriously.

Accuse them of not knowing their history. Any degrees, professional experience, publications, academic accolades, etc. they may have are irrelevant. Their primary sources are...idk photoshopped or something? Best to ignore them altogether. You have Feelings on your side, and that's far more valuable than any research!

Accuse them of accusing you of being a t*rf. Works especially well if they've said anything about the preponderance of t*rfs expressing your True and Correct views- that just means they're calling everyone who thinks like you a transphobe, duh!

Tell them they're not believing women. If they have cited so-called "realities of historical women's lives," well, that's clearly just the rich elite of any given era (who were also brainrotted by Femininity, natch). If you're a woman, and you say corsets were the spawn of Beelzebub, that should be enough ~evidence~ for anyone!

Appeal to common knowledge. Everyone KNOWS corsets were evil; can they really be DEFENDING a KNOWN HATEFUL OPPRESSIVE HELL-GARMENT?! What is the world coming to! If they ask how exactly everyone knows that and where that collective belief comes from, reply with a snarky GIF and block them. There's just no reasoning with some people.

Call them a tradwife. Are they a tradwife? Irrelevant.

With all these tools in your arsenal, you are now well-equipped to fight the horde of vile corset apologists online. Remember: It's Only Real Oppression If The Oppressed Group Is Miserable 24/7!

[dolldefiler]

[I really tried with this but incels make me laugh so I struggled to make it sound serious HELP. I was so close to adding a line about joining that one Andrew Tate course. I'll come back to this when I develop my writing more (and hopefully let him fuck someone)!! Hope you enjoy it, @figmentedbitch, @rottenmami-bae]

C/W: Misogyny

Those rich fucking assholes just have to smile to get her attention. If I had that money, I’d look hot as well. If I had that money, I’d be burying my dick in pussy every night. Those stupid sluts can’t appreciate a good, kind man when they see one. 

It’s not my fault I was born this height or that I smell this way. If I had money, I could change myself but I don’t so society thinks I’m a loser. If some cuntish meathead were to open the door for them, they’d be on their knees, thanking him by sucking on his micro-cock. But not me. No, they’ll look at me with disgust. Whores. Why do the hottest girls have to be so bitchy? I want someone that understands traditional values. Someone that’ll cook and clean for me. Someone that’ll serve me drinks and blow me while I play video games. I’m owed it.

Let me just have a fucking woman for once. I deserve one, don’t I? I’m a fucking man after all, aren’t I? Let me spank her fucking tits and drown my dick in her worthless fucking cunt. Just like my ancestors would have done. Just like I should be doing. Feminism’s corrupted women today. It’s a poison that makes them think they deserve freedom and independence. Women were made to be under the control of men. Real men. Men like me. Their cunts are used to give birth to my children. Their tits are used to nurse my kids. Why can’t they just accept their fucking place in the world and ACCEPT A NICE GUY?

I’m so tired of this shit. I just want someone to love. Won’t somebody just love me for once?

[autolenaphilia]

The average tumblr queer hates fascism and terfs, and they should, but because they have zero understanding of what those ideologies actually is, they end up repeating such ideology anyway.

They have zero understanding that it is the transmisogynist bioessentialism that makes radfemism so poisonous. So they call trans women mentioning the words "misogyny" and "patriarchy" a terf, while their use of "afab/amab" reveal that they haven't unlearned any bioessentialism and transmisogyny. I've written about this at length before.

And this intellectually lazy acceptance of reactionary thinking goes far beyond that.

Criticize the institutions of religion and the family on this supposed queer communist site, and you'll get massive cries of protest from these queer leftists. And in content if not form they are basically indistinguishable from fascist rhetoric about how "queer leftists who read too many jewish writers (like Marx and Hirschfeld) are trying to eradicate the vital institutions of tradition, religion, family and community with their soulless materialist globohomo." (Note that the link is to a critical glossary of the alt-right on rationalwiki, so there are slurs galore)

And yes, that is what i'm doing, and I'm very proud of it. Abolishing religion and the family, and all of their sanctified traditions is a very important part of the communist project. The main Jewish writer who convinced me of this is Marx, read him.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness." Literally read The Communist Manifesto, which openly calls for the abolition of the family. A lot of suppose leftists repeat what the manifesto calls "The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child"

It's especially ironic to hear such things from self-described queers, as if family, religion and tradition aren't the most common tools used to oppress queer people.

A lot of reactionary garbage with a superficial anti-capitalist veneer has gotten into the left, which is not new. The just mentioned manifesto spends a whole chapter criticizing reactionary forms of socialism. I have myself used Marx's still valid analysis as my basis to criticize reactionary anti-capitalism.

There has been so much nationalist garbage absorbed by the left at this point that fascist thinking crop up all the time in the left. This is because planting the roots of 19th century romantic nationalism tends to bear the same fruit. And tumblr leftism is the most intellectually lazy kind of leftism.

Like your average pseudo-leftist position on nations is basically ethnopluralism, a neofascist ideology originating in the European "New right" that is trying to sell the old wine of blood-and-soil nationalism in new bottles for a postcolonial world. It's creator Henning Eichberg spent decades trying to sell his Völkisch ideology to the left. With some success, it seems like. Like the neofascist in ethnopluralist clothing position that "every culture has the right to preserve their own culture and tradition from the onslaught of global capitalist culture" is something that you'll see all the time regurgitated by supposed leftists. The one 19th century european/western concept that is seen as universally applicable is nationalism. It's bleak.

I can't even say the far-left cliché of "read theory", because a lot of theory is garbage. Not all of it though. This list comes from my libertarian marxist/"councilist" biases but Nationalism and Socialism by Paul Mattick is good, as is "Third-worldism and Socialism" an excerpt from an early 70s pamphlet by the British organization Solidarity, and the 1989 essay The Universality of Marx by Loren Goldner.

[grison-in-space]

Reading Men Who Hate Women (Laura Bates, 2020) at the moment. She's talking about the manosphere: the massive online communities of men who congregate to talk misogyny, ranging from PUAs to MRAs, incels and MGTOW. These aren't new topics to me—I've been following this off and on since watching Gamergate kick off—but Bates handles them well and I think this book could serve as an introduction if this is a movement with which you're not familar. By the way, it's been a decade since Gamergate this year. Isn't that a kicker?

(Incidentally, I first ran into the concept of incels way before I think many people did: when I was still on AVEN, c. 2006-2007ish, I remember a few occasions where users ran into incel communities and brought them to our forums to ask: is this like what we're doing? Is this like us? Consensus quickly solidified on the direction of "no," each time, not least because asexuality dialog at the time was extremely clear about divorcing desire from action, and it was very clear that the desires centered in that community were very different than the ones people in asexuality spaces were untangling.)

Bates handles the topic with grace, compassion, and a deep understanding that I really wish more writing on radicalization or terroristic networks used: people in real pain, who are struggling in pitiable circumstances to do their best and clearly need more support, can also in their pain be truly dangerous to others. Hurt people hurt people. Compassion for pain suffered is important—you can't understand recruitment without understanding that—but you also have to understand that pain, fermented in darkness, can create deadly poisons. Pain isn't essentially holy or cleansing or cauterizing. It doesn't accomplish anything good by existing. If we can relieve it, we should—but we should follow harm reduction principles as we do so, lest pain be allowed to multiply and fester.

What gets me is that in 2017, in the wake of the Google bro "manifesto," I spent a feverish week writing what wound up being a 20,000 word rebuttal studded with what eventually totaled 100+ peer reviewed citations. It got quite a bit of reach and covered ground ranging from effects of testosterone on behavior, the concept of effect size in sex differences, basic statistics, the ways that humans treat people differently based on their perception of gender, intersex trauma, and whether feminists care about men's problems (yeah, actually, and they should).

I released that piece, changed up my name and fannish presence—my long time pseud was tangled all over the piece's genesis—and hunkered down for the reprisals. I expected harassment and vitriol. It never really came: I ignored the comments on the post, after a bit, and I held boundaries on what I was willing to pay attention to. But by and large, I had no direct consequences from the Manosphere.

Perhaps the piece was too long (although I got many comments from people who read it and found it useful, and I included an index). Perhaps it was simply that I included a headshot of myself, with uncharacteristic red lipstick and characteristically buzzed hair, and cheerfully discussed throughout that I was butch and queer: sometimes I confuse people who are very focused on bioessentialist sex differences, because I don't fit their paradigms in the slightest.

About six months later, James Damore attempted to frame his incredibly poor decisions in light of his Asperger's, and I did get a couple dudes on social media presenting me with this information apparently in the hope that it would shock or embarrass me. I immediately pointed out, acerbically, that I'm equally autistic and that he was making us look bad, and they melted away again into the background. It wasn't really the well of terrifying anger and obliterative fury I was expecting.

I find myself reading these stories in Bates' book and thinking about the internet I grew up on: AVEN by 2005, WrongPlanet the same year, listening to people on the margins talk about their fears and hopes and dreams and theories about themselves. I find myself thinking about narratives and meaning, the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and why.

I'm certainly not the first person to worry about radicalization of young autistic people, especially autistic men. Not even close. Paradoxically, it's a group of people for whom an understanding of intersectionality is crucial: young disabled men often alienated deliberately from conceptualizing themselves as disabled, without the tools to understand why life is hard and painful and never seems to reflect their experiences, trying to construct understanding beyond one's singular, isolated defective wrongness—which is what's left, if you take community off the table.

(Have I mentioned how grateful I am that so many autistics are trans spectrum? Imagine if we weren't, and if I didn't have so many transfeminine sisters funneled along those same currents and drifting closely enough alongside to understand. My sisters, so many of whom are out there living and modeling better ways to understand and participate in gender as a social activity: by figuring out what is most comfortable for you, understanding that comfort for one might be agony for another, and taking steps to shape your own life into a fashion that wells forth the most peace and joy. It's a message we all need to hear, but that is a group of people I hear singing so loudly from my place in a different wing of the choir, and I love them for it.)

I don't have answers. As is, so often, the case these days, I have only grief and love, and the determination to build better structures where my own hands reach. I had intended to direct my career, once, to undermining the entire concept of "good genes" models of evolution and explaining how their convoluted connections to natural phenomena are better explained by other, more direct motives. Since 2020, I've been moving in a new direction—but what precisely it is, I'm not sure.

Sex differences is certainly a piece of it, though. Even if I find myself often enough writing that it's not enough to know a sex difference in one species to assume that another will reflect a similar relationship: we should study sex differences in animals, but we really shouldn't assume that humans will have the same ones or work the same way. I suspect this won't be the first time I tangle with that community. I suppose it depends how much authority I can accrue as protection first.

[tirfpikachu]

so... let's talk about how to talk with trans people. i've noticed that when i say afab rights instead of female rights, trans people and trans activists think harder on it, and we have genuine conversations. transandrophobia as a term was mocked to hell and back from people who think transfems are wayyy more oppressed than afab folks, transmascs and bio women, will ever be. but it's still growing in popularity! that's transmasc ppl wanting recognition for their afab oppression! that's afab people (aka what you'd call female ppl) finally putting their foot down when faced with transfems' afabmisogyny! i think transmasc folks are getting closer to being open-minded about cis/bio women not being more privileged than transfems, and radfeminism as a whole (many transmascs are joining radblr!). but when we say female or male instead of afab/amab they immediately shut down. it's an instant trigger. it closes the conversation right down, you are labelled not just ignorant but a violence-inducing bigot. you aren't even worth a conversation, like someone calling someone else the r slur or using rightwing rhetoric. you're given up on. and that's NOT how we want radfem activism to go!!

we want to have serious, complex discussions with other afab people. we want to build afab solidarity. it would help SOOOO many people. and it already is making amab folks, transfems included, desperately panicked, and often angry. which is hilarious lmao. they know it would ruin their spot at the top of the oppression pyramid that they got so comfy in, it would hold them accountable too. we need to eradicate the belief in leftist spaces that bio women are less oppressed than trans women. we need to actively connect with transmasc ppl who need their voices heard and boost their stories with misogyny and misogynistic encounters with transfems. and if we are to actually make that happen we NEED to do this with terms that feel respectful to them, even if it makes you cringe, even if you don't believe in gender stuff and think pronouns that aren't sex-based are stupid bullshit and that all trans people are delusional etc etc. activism-wise that means nothing. you're just making them upset, you're not helping anybody. to be a real activist you need to not just make some noise, but also build bridges with the other side in a neutral language so that the war between bio women and trans ppl finally fucking ends so we can confront misogyny in trans spaces and then FINALLY focus on fighting rightwing bio men, the men who hold the most patriarchal power, not gnc folks or "terfy" bio women. THAT is how we will truly change things. it'll be annoying as hell for sure. but buckle up buttercup or go back to venting about ugly TIMs. i'm a live laugh love kinda girl and peace is my poison of choice <3

[peasantexchangeprogram]

as a whodunit/detective fiction lover i just dont get true crime fans. moral issues and harm to the victims aside, murder is not nearly as interesting in real life as it is on tv. like on tv u get this guy whose involved w this crime syndicate funded by the government that got poisoned by a plant that was previously unknown to man. but irl 99.9999% of the time the answer is misogyny, racism, or organized crime. wheres the thrill.

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

AGENT TEXAS (RED VS BLUE)

1.) okay so tex is an ai based on the memories this one dickhead dude has of his dead wife, allison. there's also an ai based on the dickhead dude himself, his name's church. all the stuff with the ai's and the different versions of her is kind of confusing to explain but she sort of dies twice- first sacrificing herself for something that has very little narrative weight, and being absorbed into a kind of . monstrous mesh of other ai's (including the original church ai) that then is erased, with basically no mention of tex, it's all about church's death.

then, there's another version of both church and tex born from the original church ai's memories (epsilon-tex and epsilon-church). epsilon-church's arc is basically about learning to move on from his past and let go of tex, because he's kind of obsessed with her and it's preventing him from progressing. so, epsilon-church 'forgets' tex, deleting her for good. tl;dr she dies, again, basically entirely for church's development.

when i was a kid super into rvb i was always really disinterested in tex and looking back it's because er story just.. isn't resolved satisfyingly at all. basically all of her story is hitched so tightly to church's story and development that tex barely gets room to be more than a memory of the director's dead wife- she never gets to move past the circumstances that created her and become her own person entirely divorced from the director or from church- allison died and we never knew anything about her besides that the director god sad about it. beta-tex died unceremoniously and without mention. epsilon-tex died for church's character growth.

quoting church's own words from the show: ""She died in her real life, and that's all the Director ever remembered of her. So now, no matter how tough she is, no matter how hard she fights, she's always going to fail, because that's what she's based on. No matter what she's doing, or what she's trying to accomplish, just when her goal is within her reach, it gets yanked away. Every. Single. Time." and she just never… actually overcomes this. she just dies.

and quoting now-inactive tumblr user epsilontucker from 2015 who put it better than i could: "Tex’s whole life was spent fighting for agency. Freedom from what Omega wanted her to be (O’Malley), what the Director wanted her to be (Allison), what Church wanted her to be (his). Epsilon-Tex wanted to know who she was and why she was and she wanted to dismantle everything Church ever built. Especially because he built it for her.

And this character arc about freedom and agency, about a chance to define herself on her own terms, is resolved by… Church deciding to delete her.

Because everybody always seems to know what’s best for Tex."

this is also to say nothing of the treatment of her character on just, like, an episode-to-episode basis. rvb has a big problem with basically treating "bitch" as a personality trait for female characters, and tex gets some of the worst of it. if you made a drinking game of how often tex gets called a bitch, or a huge bitch, you'd die of alcohol poisoning. also at one point andy the bomb makes a bunch of transmisogynistic jokes at her because she's suppsoedly mannish (she's not masculine or feminine really everybody in this show is a multicolor master chief. she's just good at fighting) and then calls her a dyke. the end

2.) Some background (spoilers): Tex is introduced as a badass mercenary from Project Freelancer, and the ex girlfriend of Church, the main character of the show. It is eventually revealed she and Church are both Aritifical Intelligence programs; Church is an AI copy of the Director of Project Freelancer, and Tex is a copy of the Director's late wife.

Firstly she is straightforwardly the victim of misogynistic "jokes" for the first several seasons. She is called misogynistic slurs, shamed for sleeping with other men besides Church, she cannot work the entertainment stand at the base bc she's female, called lesbophobic and transmysogonistic slurs bc she is a competent soldier, and blackmails another female character out of jealousy bc she is the only other girl in the group.

Even when these jokes go away, and the show transitions from comedy to drama, her writing revolves around the male characters around her. Because she is the personification of the memory of the Director's dead wife, and his perceieved failure to save her, she explicitly, in the text, will always fail at what she sets out to accomplish no matter how strong she is. She wishes to be free of the cycle of being resurrected bc Church can't live without her only to fail and die again, but lacks the agency to end it without Church. Church's arc about learning to let her go ends not with her being free to exist as her own person without him, but with him forgetting her. Since she IS his memory, this ERASES HER FROM EXISTENCE. She literally cannot exist without this guy.

This would all be easier to swallow if she wasn't the ONLY prominent female main character for 8 whole seasons. It's a beautiful story about how grief can fester into anger and a need for control, and how that pushes away the people you love, but it's a story entirely centered around Church's development, in which she is a prop that stops existing when the story is over. I love her but she deserved so much better than she got.

3.) girlboss

KAMALA KHAN (MARVEL COMICS) (CW: Racism)

1.) One of the most prominent brown women in all of comics, beloved by the fan base. Recently killed in a PETER PARKER SPIDERMAN COMIC (despite being much closer with Miles Morales and having basically no relationship with Peter) in what's probably the name of MCU synergy, which nobody wanted (she'll probably be resurrected as a mutant, erasing her unique and interesting history as an Inhuman). She was using her shapeshifting powers again despite having stopped in her solo as she got more confident in her own skin and identity as a Pakistani American girl, died disguised as the very white Mary Jane as a fake out/last minute replacement for killing off MJ. I fucking hate it here. A cheap trick to drive sales. L + Misogyny + racism + are you fucking kidding me

[sister-lucifer]

what’s wrong with you based on your favorite batman villain

(don’t take these too seriously)

(sequel to this post)

The Riddler: Holy shit shut the fuck up for two seconds PLEASE. i know you have a touch of the tism and crave to derail every conversation to talk about your special interest but no one else is having fun. this is why you don’t have any friends. You also have a very niche and the second most expensive taste in clothing so you only have like 3 outfits to mix and match. You either dress like you’re going to the Met Gala or like a dad on vacation, no in between

The Penguin: STOP FUCKING IMPULSE BUYING!!! YOU HAVE TOO MANY TRINKETS!!! YOU DONT NEED IT JUST BECAUSE ITS PRETTY!!!! You have the most expensive taste in clothing, especially victorian undergarments, and spend an embarrassing amount of money to dress like a vampire. And stop being so hard on your body. It might not always be the perfect image of what you want, but it’s doing its best, even if you have to help it out a bit.

Harley Quinn: Sweetheart, I promise you are more than just your sex appeal. I know you grew up around misogyny and were raised to be a housewife but you’re free now!! Well…you would be if you stopped picking the shittiest men. A relationship does not define you, stop settling for assholes because you feel ashamed for being single. Have you tried dating a woman? No, seriously, try it. You deserve it

The Joker: Stop using your humor to deflect from your trauma, i bet your back hurts from carrying the weight of being the funniest person in your friend group. You’re a big time maximalist who spends an hour picking out a hundred accessories to wear and wind up being late because you couldn’t choose which kandi bracelets were best for the occasion. You’re still holding on to the last shreds of your teenage edgelord phase. Also clean your damn room and throw away those old drink cans, nasty ass

Catwoman: How does it feel to be the sexiest person in the room at any given time? Not good, I bet, since you struggle to make friends because of how often they wind up to only be after your body. Sorry you can’t catch a break. You’re probably still carrying money saving habits you got from your parents when you were a kid even though you don’t need to now. Also please try wearing a color besides black, it’s almost summer, you’re gonna die of heatstroke. Nice eyeliner though

Poison Ivy: Dude, so many people are crushing on you rn, how do you not see this?! You’re so hot but soooo emotionally unavailable, christ. A boy in middle school said something uncomfortable to you once which was then reinforced by the misogynistic micro aggressions you were subject to as a teenager and it’s kinda tainted your entire view of the male gender, which is fair but also kinda sucks.

The Scarecrow: Daddy issues, daddy issues everywhere. He was scary as fuck, wasn’t he? Your fear was valid. You really love to analyze people which wouldn’t be an issue if you could actually be subtle about it. Stop staring, you creep. Also, that flannel doesn’t look as good as you think it does, you look like a depressed lumberjack. Like please just buy a cardigan. Halloween is your favorite holiday and you get really annoying about it around mid august. And remember to brush your fuckin hair for gods sake

The Mad Hatter: You get like…reeeeaaaally weird about your crushes, man. Like whatever you’re doing it’s not normal. You can just talk to them, you know. You have the weirdest sexual interests but they’re more so hyper specific and niche than gross or unsettling. That’s better, I guess? You gotta leave your headspace and live in reality for a bit, man. I know it kinda sucks, but there are real people here! Also you’re short. Gross

[shinynewboots]

Staring at the Sun / Adam x Lute Chapter 5

Summary: After the battle, Lute attempts to flee with Adam. They find themselves unable to return to Heaven and must adjust to life in Hell.

AN: Welcome to chapter 5! Hope y'all enjoy! I've loved and appreciated each and every comment/reblog/like! Thank you all so much!

Warnings: Violence, gore, 18+ eventually, Adam-typical misogyny eventually

Chapter 4

Chapter 6

Lute awoke the next morning with a strong desire to move her body. She felt stiff and unpracticed. In Heaven, most of her days were spent with training. She loved to move her body and be active. She loved the ache her muscles would feel after a long training session. Heaven, while a place of peace and joy and whatever else, had a way of dulling the senses. Highs were high (but not too high, lest one be tempted into overindulgence, or some bullshit like that) and lows were virtually non-existent. 

Lute craved the tired muscles that came from a long day of training. She loved the feeling of sweating dripping down her body and stinging her eyes. She relished in every bruise and cut she found on herself after training. They all healed quickly, as most heaven-born imperfections did, but those fleeting moments of imperfection and ache were some that Lute craved. 

She had also been feeling restless, cooped up in their hotel room or lobby. She had yet to explore other areas of the hotel lest she run into more of the unsavory occupants. She had heard Hell Princess mention a garden yesterday and so Lute decided to strap on a pair of sneakers and sneak down before the sun had fully risen. She glanced at Adam and took in his sleeping form before heading downstairs. 

The Garden was interesting. It was filled with various Earth-found plants known for their carnivorous nature, poison, or other dangerous aspects. Lute made a mental note to avoid the plants at all costs. 

Beginning at the entrance of the garden, Lute followed the path. She began to jog slowly to allow her legs a chance to stretch. She hadn’t accounted for the change in her center of gravity as a result of the loss of her arm. She felt unbalanced and found herself swaying unsteadily with every stride. She would just have to try harder.

She began to run faster, her calves burning and her quadriceps aching. She almost gasped for breath, unprepared for how unconditioned her body was. It had only been what, a few days in Hell? A few weeks? Time felt different here than it did in Heaven. 

Sweat coated her forehead. She could feel pieces of her short hair stick to the back of her neck in clumps as the sweat covered her body. Harder. She just had to try harder. 

She ran. Her heart was beating fast. Too fast? Not fast enough? Lute didn’t know. The dangerous plants around her became a blur as she followed the garden path. 

And then she was falling. 

Falling!

Not again! 

For a brief moment, Lute was taken back to the day of the extermination and the sensation of falling through the clouds with Adam’s limp body falling with her. She couldn’t be back there.

She held out her hands to try and catch herself. 

Her hands. 

Her hands?

Only her right hand found itself in the outstretched position though she could have sworn she held both out. Wait.

Lute found herself only half breaking her fall with her right hand, while her unguarded left side made her unbalanced. She fell face-first into the cool earth of the garden, the ground still damp with morning dew. She looked behind her at her feet and found she had tripped over a root that had cut across the path when she wasn’t paying attention.

She looked over at her left arm and found only the remains of her amputated appendage. But she had felt her left arm outstretch and try to catch her. It had felt so real. 

She breathed in deeply and pulled herself up into a seated position. She wiped the dirt from her face and assessed the damage. Her knees were scuffed, though thankfully not bleeding. Her shirt was stained with dirt (though it didn’t matter, it was Vaggie’s anyway). 

“Here,” A voice said above her, offering a hand. Lute looked up to see Vaggie. How had she missed hearing someone approach? Vaggie was dressed in similar workout gear and had her hair tied back in a ponytail. “You gonna take it or not?”

Lute grabbed Vaggie’s hand and let herself be pulled up by the fallen angel. She wiped the dirt from herself and tried to look anywhere but at Vaggie.

 “I, um, guess I’ll have to tell Niffty we’ve got to work on clearing up the path out here,” Vaggie said awkwardly. 

“Hm,” Lute replied, turning to continue her run. She began to jog, the scuffs on her knees burning as she did so. Vaggie quickly jogged beside her, keeping pace.  

“I’m going to run with you.” It wasn’t a request. 

The pair ran in silence for a while, Vaggie running a little ahead when she knew there were roots or other debris in the path, but otherwise keeping pace with Lute well. 

Lute was confused but she didn’t feel like disturbing the tentative peace that had taken root between the two of them. At least, not right now. Not while her muscles burned and legs ached and her body glistened with sweat. No, she would not let anyone take this temporary joy she held. Especially not Vaggie. 

They made multiple laps around the garden until Lute finally knew every branch, root, and other questionable obstacles on the path. Her balance was still off, and she still felt unsteady in gait but she could begrudgingly admit, internally at least, that having Vaggie run with her helped her keep herself steady. 

Lute chose to stop when the sun had risen relatively high in the hellish sky. By her estimates, they had likely run about 10 kilometers. Rookie numbers for her typically, but a good starting point for now. Vaggie ran a little ahead until she realized Lute had stopped. She turned back and walked up to Lute, who had begun to stretch. She held her knee to her chest and pulled tightly. 

Vaggie began to stretch as well, mirroring Lute’s poses. Lute was eerily taken back to their training in Heaven. She could picture herself and Vaggie surrounded by the other Exocists, laughing and giggling as they always did after training. 

Angélique would always take the lead on stretches, having been obsessed with a new earth technique (Yoga, maybe?). Lyre would always make some lewd joke that left the rest of the exorcists giggling through the poses. Pandore would always have the stitches and gauze ready for injuries. And Lute would just sit back and watch, always stoic but enjoying the way all the girls enjoyed themselves and thinking up a new training regimen for their next session. 

Lute hadn’t even realized she had finished stretching and was staring blankly until she found Vaggie’s hand waving in front of her face. 

“What,” She snapped, her mouth in a thin line. 

“I wanted to talk.”

“Go on.”

Vaggie took in a deep breath. “Look, Charlie is trying and putting so much effort into making you and Adam feel welcome. She is doing so much more than she has to. All I'm asking is for you and Adam to put in a little effort.”

Lute scoffed. “Effort? It's not like we asked to be here.”

“And you're fucking here now, so suck it up and at least put in minimum effort,” Vaggie replied, her voice rising.

“What an easy thing to ask of prisoners.”

“Prisoners? Lute what the fuck, you’re not prisoners, you’re guests. Even though you should be prisoners after Adam killed Sir Pentious.”

“Who?”Lute asked in a somewhat bored tone, eyebrows raised

“Sir Pentious? One of our guests? Adam quite literally blew him out of the sky.”

Lute shrugged, pursing her lips. “War is war.”

Vaggie eyed her coldly. “You say that like killing doesn’t matter. Like all it is is a job to you.”

“Oh that’s fucking rich coming from you, Vaggie. It is a job. We are Exorcists. Our only purpose is extermination and killing every fucking sinner that crosses our path. That’s literally what we were created for.  At least, yours was until you went and fucked that up too. And now you’re playing house with little Hell Princess.” Lute said, enunciating every word so that Vaggie would get the message. She had gotten closer to the fallen angel without even realizing it. 

Vaggie laughed. “You are such a goddamn hypocrite. Accusing me of playing house when all you do is hole yourself up in your room with Adam?”

Lute’s mouth went dry and she could feel her rage reaching boiling point. She wanted to hit Vaggie; pull her by her hair and cut it until she only had the bob-style hair that all exorcists wore (sloppy sloppy Vaggie, longer hair is easier to grab in battle). She wanted to make Vaggie look at herself in horror and face her past as an exorcist before Lute cut out her other eye. She wanted to—

“I have been nothing but accommodating to you and Adam. Even when I didn’t have to. But I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Charlie because somehow some piece of her still thinks there’s something in you worth salvaging. I don’t fucking see it, but I trust her.” Vaggie said, releasing a deep breath as she stared at Lute with disdain. 

Lute was silent, processing all the information. She was immediately taken back to the conversation she had with Adam yesterday. They had to try and do everything they could to even have a shot at making it back to the Embassy. Play Nice.

“Fine. We’ll behave and be the oh-so-perfect guests for your little girlfriend.” Vaggie looked puzzled, as though not expecting Lute to concede so easily. Oh, and Lute wished she hadn’t. She was itching for a fight. Adam’s words were the only things keeping her grounded. 

Lute turned to head back inside. 

“If you do anything to hurt anyone here, I won’t hesitate to kill you this time,” Vaggie said as Lute began to walk. Lute stopped and looked back over her shoulder. 

“I would expect nothing less.”

Lute returned to her hotel room just in time to see Adam beginning to stir. He sat up slowly when he heard her enter the room. His hair was tousled and sticking up in odd pieces. His face had some color to it though, and he was looking better each day. 

Adam yawned and rubbed his eyes. His eyes slowly looked her up and down, taking in her crop top, which showed peaks of her abdomen, and shorts. “Where have you been?”

“Out for a run.” She said, grabbing a towel and a pair of clothes. “I’m going to take a quick shower and then we should head down and join everyone for breakfast.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “You want to get breakfast? With people?”

“We’re playing nice, right?” 

Adam laughed, running a hand through his hair.. “Yeah, I guess we are. Good call.” 

Breakfast was an odd affair, to say the least. All of the sinner occupants were on edge (apart from Alastor who was not in attendance) once they saw Adam and Lute enter the dining room. Adam chose to sit beside Angel Dust, who scooted his chair closer to Husk. Lute sat beside Vaggie and gave her a slight nod. 

“Oh my goodness, we are so glad you guys joined us for breakfast!” Charlie exclaimed, adding pancakes to her plate. She seemed to be in a much better mood than Lute had last seen her yesterday. She was just so…cheery. 

“I fucking love pancakes,” Adam said, grabbing six and throwing them on his plate. Lute followed suit and grabbed two, pouring only a dollop of syrup. Adam scarfed them down quickly and looked over at Charlie. 

“Listen, uh, Charlie. Can I call you Charlie?

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out!” Charlie grinned. Adam plastered on a smile that Lute could tell was subtly tightening in an attempt not to say anything offensive. A big feat for Adam. 

“I want to apologize for not taking your activity seriously yesterday.” Adam continued. “ Lute and I are still adjusting to this little “vacation” and we are ready to do whatever badass thing you have planned for today.”

Chatter at the table ceased. Someone dropped their fork. Jaws dropped.

A surprised smile made its way onto Charlie’s features as she looked at the pair of angels with shining eyes. “Adam, uh oh my gosh, thank you so much. That really means a lot.”

“Charlie, are you crying?” Angel asked a skeptical expression on his features. 

“No,” Charlie sniffed, wiping her eyes quickly. Angel made the ‘im watching you’ gesture at Adam and Lute, to which Adam simply grinned and inhaled another pancake. 

Once breakfast was done, Charlie corralled the group into the foyer for their activity of the day. Charlie stood while the rest of the occupants sat. In her hand she held a bowl, pens, and blank sheets of paper. 

“So I know yesterday was a bit of a rocky start but I wanted to thank everyone for being so enthusiastic about today’s activity!” She handed paper and pens to everyone. “I was thinking maybe for the next few sessions we could do someone’s favorite activity or hobby! So that we can all get to know each other a little better.”

“Everyone write down a favorite hobby and then place it in the bowl. I’ll pick on out each day until we get through them all!”

“I fucking got this,” Adam exclaimed, immediately writing down multiple things on the sheet. 

Lute stared at the sheet of paper, blanking on anything she even remotely enjoyed doing. Most of her days in Heaven were spent training or following Adam around on errands or tasks as needed. Did she have anything else she enjoyed doing?

One by one people began to stand and drop their folded pieces of paper into the bowl, causing Lute to panic and write down the first thing that came to mind: Combat Training

Once everyone had dropped in their paper, Charlie fished around in the bowl until she grabbed a piece of paper. “Drum roll please!”

Adam immediately began to tap down on the sides of the couch to imitate a drum roll. Charlie looked at him with thanks. “Thank you, Adam; No one ever does a drumroll except Vaggie! Okay, so the activity today will be…combat…training.”

“YES!” Niffty screamed, running around the foyer (this time careful to avoid Adam, who huddled a little closer to Lute when the demon ran past). “PAIN!” 

“Who in the fuck put combat training?” Angel whispered non-discretely to Husk.

“Beats me, I put BlackJack,” Husk replied just as loud, taking a sip of liquor before handing the bottle over to Angel.  

Charlie chuckled awkwardly. “Combat training! Woo! Fun!” 

“Ha Ha Ha,” A radio voice laughed from the top of the stairs. “This will be fun!” 

With a snap of his fingers, Alastor had made a giant cushioned mat appear in the middle of the foyer. The chairs and couches the occupants had been sitting on disappeared, making them all fall to the ground with a thump. 

“Alastor this is perfect! Will you be participating?” Charlie asked. 

“Absolutely not!” Alastor exclaimed enthusiastically, his grin growing even wider. “I will, however, enjoy the show.”

“A show?” An egg exclaimed, walking up behind the Radio Demon.

“Oh a show will be so fun!” Another egg said. And soon 2 other eggs joined and cheered beside Alastor, whose eye twitched in annoyance. 

“What in the fuck are those things?” Adam asked. 

“Oh, those are the Egg Bois. They were Sir Pentious’ minions before you,” Charlie coughed her voice becoming a low whisper. “Killed him.”

“Fucking weird.”

“Who wants to go first?” Charlie exclaimed, clapping her hands together. 

“Nope, I’m too old for this,” Husk said, standing and heading toward the bar. “Losers get free drinks.”

Angel also stood. “Alright, I’ll go. Niffty, you wanna fight?”

Niffty stopped her running and looked at the tall demon who had walked over to the mat. She nodded her head quickly and stood to face him. Angel braced himself, four fists at the ready. Niffty simply stood there, smiling at him in an almost feral manner. 

“And in this corner we have Niffty!” Alastor announced, his radio filter effect more prominent than it had been. Stage lights appeared and circled Niffty. “Our three-foot-tall hell on heels herself! Folks you better watch out if you're a roach or the First Man himself because she will squash you like a bug!”

Adam’s eyes narrowed and his lips were in a thin line. Lute could tell he was biting his cheek to keep from saying anything cruel. She reached over and subtly squeezed his hand, releasing it just as quickly as she had grabbed it. Play Nice. 

“Speaking of bugs in this corner we have our resident flaming youth himself, Angel Dust! Don’t be fooled by the pink and pastels, this Spider is always packing heat!” Alastor announced. 

“You guys ready?” Charlie asked. They both nodded. Alastor made a bell appear which chimed, indicating the start of the fight. 

The fight was over before it began. Nifty was small and squirrelly. She pounced onto Angel and immediately began to crawl around his body like a beetle. Even with 4 arms, he was unable to catch the little demon. A third pair of arms grew from his torso and yet even those were powerless against her. 

“Niffty, what the hell, this isn’t combat!” Angel exclaimed. In response, Nifty laughed manically as she crawled around his body, avoiding a tangle of limbs. 

Speaking of a tangle of limbs, that must have been Niffty’s strategy all along because Angel found himself with his arms wrapped in knots around his body. Nifty continued to laugh and crawled to the top of Angel’s head and nestled into his hair. She used her body weight and Angel’s predicament to push Angel down into the mat. 

“1, 2, 3! There we have it ladies and gentlemen! Nffty is our winner for this round!” Alastor announced, laughing into his microphone. He walked over to the mat and grabbed Niffty from Angel’s hair. 

“Fucking hell,” Angel moaned into the mat. Vaggie sighed and moved to help Angel untangle his limbs. “Fucking combat training my ass.”

“Niffty! Angel! That was great! Maybe not exactly what I would call combat training but I loved the energy,” Charlie exclaimed. “How did it feel?”

“Like I just got my ass kicked by a preschooler,” Angel grumbled as Vaggie continued to untangle his arms. Husk laughed at the bar as he began making Angel a drink. 

“I told you that thing’s a fucking monster,” Adam whispered to Lute, who nodded in agreement. 

Limbs finally back where they were meant to be, Angel thanked Vaggie and took a seat at the bar. Husk handed him his drink, which he gulped down instantly. Husk smirked and shook his head, putting down a second drink in front of Angel. Angel looked down at the drink and smirked, “Awe Husk, you do know me.”

Husk rolled his eyes and wiped the bar as Angel slowly sipped on his second drink (this one stronger than the first, just as Angel liked it).

“Who wants to go next?” Charlie asked, looking around the room. The pickings were slim as Husk and Alastor refused, Adam was still in danger of having his guts spill at moment’s notice from a popped stitch, the Egg Bois (who Charlie could not bear to watch get scrambled), and Angel and Niffty just went. It left only her, Vaggie, and Lute. 

“I’ll go,” Lute offered, moving towards the mat. Adam grabbed her shoulder, his eyebrows scrunched in a worried expression. “Are you sure?” He asked, his eyes darting between her face and what remained of her left arm. Lute felt her cheeks flush as shame began to fill the pit of her stomach. Weak. She was so fucking weak. And Adam knew she was weak, too. 

“I’ve got this,” She said, shrugging his hand from her shoulder. Her tone was a bit colder than she had intended but she needed Adam to know she was still strong. Still capable of having his back. Who was she if not his strongest soldier?

She moved the take her place on the mat. Charlie looked around hesitantly before stepping up to the mat. “I guess I’ll—”

“I’ll go,” Vaggie said, standing in front Charlie and stepping forward onto the mat. Charlie sent her a concerned look. Vaggie smiled in response. “Everything will be okay, I promise.”

Alastor looked between he the two competitors and cackled, his smile wide as he spoke into the microphone. “Ever heard the one about bad blood? 

“A clean match!” Charlie corrected from the sidelines. Alastor’s eye twitched. 

“A nice clean match! Meaning no further destruction of remaining appendages. Though I’m sure an ear or a tooth would be fine! 

“Alastor!”

“Alrighty ladies and gentlemen, in this corner we have the fallen angel herself, Vaggie! Watch out folks, she might only have 1 eye but shes not afraid to use it!” Vaggie scowled at Alastor’s introduction but got into position, hands braced in front of her.

“And in this corner, we have the First Man’s lapdog herself, Lute! She might be down an arm but she is back and ready for blood!” Lute bristled at Alastor’s words. She also prepared herself, throwing her right hand out in front of her to brace.

“Okay a nice clean match!” Charlie emphasized again. “No biting, scratching, stabbing, or tearing each other limb from limb.”

Alastor rolled his eyes but the smile never left his features. “Alright ladies! Let’s get started!”

Alastor rang the bell to signify the start of the fight. Lute and Vaggie began to circle each other around the edges of the mat. They looked almost like mirror images to a stranger, their movements just as cautious and their legs crossing over in the same way. Standing so close to the other, it was easy to see that they had the same training. 

 Lute scanned Vaggie’s form, looking for any weak spot. She knew they were both disadvantaged on their left sides due to their respective disabilities and so she began to think about the best method of attack.

“Kick her in the fucking ass, Lute!’ Adam yelled, whistling. Lute forced herself not to look at him. She couldn’t. Charlie must have shot Adam a glare because he quietly added, “You know, kick her in the ass nicely.”

“You got this Vagina!” Angel yelled, sipping on his drink at the bar. 

Lute knew she was at a disadvantage. Vaggie had years to adjust to the loss of vision on her left side. Lute’s loss of limb was still a fresh wound that she was still trying to navigate and accommodate. And Vaggie knew this; she knew Vaggie had to. Spotting weaknesses had been one of the most basic lessons of exorcist training. Sinners would do anything and stoop to any level to save their skin when confronted in battle. Exorcists had to know how to spot their Achilles Heel. 

Vaggie seemed to have formed a plan because she lunged at Lute, throwing a punch on her left side. Lute dodged, turning her body sideways and using her right arm to elbow Vaggie square in the nose. Vaggie cried out in pain, red blood gushing from her now crooked nose. Charlie made a sound of distress and attempted to run out onto the mat, but was held back by Alastor’s shadow. 

“Vaggie!” Charlie yelled. Vaggie chose to ignore her, her focus solely on Lute. Lute had found herself braced once more in anticipation of attack. However, instead of a punch (as Lute had been expecting), Vaggie charged at Lute and grabbed her by the shoulders. 

Lute struggled against Vaggie, attempting to claw away from Vaggie with her right hand. Vaggie pushed harder against Lute, who struggled. Lute began to try and kick Vaggie, her left knee flexing forward to knee her in the abdomen. Vaggie caught the movement quickly and grabbed Lute’s knee, which caused Lute to lose balance. She fell to the mat and let out a gasp. It felt as though all of the breath had been knocked from her chest. 

She heard the loud “whoosh” of wings flapping but couldn’t see the cause. She knew it had to be Adam. 

“Stand down, First Man, this fight isn’t over yet,” Alastor warned, the radio filter on his voice overtaking his actual tone. 

Lute tried to sit up but was immediately pinned back down by Vaggie, who straddled her waist. Blood poured from Vaggie’s nose and mouth, dripping onto Lute’s clothes. Lute was taken back from their battle only a few weeks ago. Vaggie held her hands braced, as if about to throw a punch aimed at Lute’s head. 

“Fucking do it this time,” Lute gasped out. “A match isnt over until we’ve both drawn blood.” 

Vaggie stared down at Lute, her eyes unreadable. And Lute knew why. The blood. During Exorcist matches, drawing blood from your opponent was a requirment. Lute had implemented it centuries ago. Some of the newer Exorcists who would join would be skittish. Timid. Unwilling to do what it took to finish off a Sinner. Unwilling to push their fellow sister to the point of greatness. 

The rule of blood draw implemented after a particularly resistant Exorcist refused to hit another sister during a match at training. Lute had pulled the scared Exorcist from the mat and provoked her into attacking her.  The details were fuzzy due to the passage of time but there were some Lute could remember clearly.

 The Exorcist punched Lute square in the face causing blood to drip her nose. Lute could clearly remember grinning as she wiped the blood from her face and throwing her arm over the shoulder of the once timid Exorcist. 

“Great job, Vaggie,” Lute had said, grinning at the Exorcist, both with blood dripping from their faces. 

That same scared Exorcist now stared down at her, an angel fallen and her eyes full of rage.  

“Do it.” Lute said once more, this time her voice more steady. She nodded and looked towards Vaggie’s fist. 

Lute gasped in pain as Vaggie’s fist connected with her jaw. Her head hit the back of the mat, and she could feel her brain rattle around inside. Blood pooled in her mouth, the coppery taste feeling like a familiar friend. Lute coughed, blood splattering her mouth.

 Vaggie stood from Lute and wiped the blood from her nose. Charlie looked at Vaggie with concerned eyes, her hands over her mouth to keep herself from screaming out. The room was quiet except for the low breathing of all the occupants. 

Lute laughed, wiping her own mouth. She sat up slowly, her body still jittery from the fight. A hand reached out in front of her face and she looked up to see Vaggie. Lute grabbed Vaggie’s hand and stood. “Good to see you haven’t gone completely soft.”

Vaggie rolled her eyes and let go of Lute’s hand. She walked over to Charlie who held out a towel to wipe her face. 

“Is it over?” Angel whispered to Husk, who shrugged. “Angels are so fucking weird.”

Alastor disappeared back intot he shadows without ringing the bell, likely unsatisfied with the anticlimatic ending of the match. 

“Okay, today’s activity is over!” Charlie exclaimed, fluttering around Vaggie like a mother hen. Charlie softly patted around Vaggie’s face to clean all the blood. A sickly bruise had already started to form around Vaggie’s nose, the bridge a bit crooked now. Vaggie looked at Charlie with soft eyes, a somewhat peaceful smile on her face. “Seriously I think I need to vet the next activity.” 

Lute walked over to Adam, who still had his wings puffed out in a defensive manner. “You are so fucking insane, bitch.”

Lute shrugged and smirked at Adam. He shook his head and patted her on the back, and began leading her back to their bedroom. She knew she must look like a sight, a blood thirsty creature with blood streaming from her mouth. But she felt so much closer to herself today than she had since before the Extermination. She had spent her entire life fighting and standing at Adam’s side. Fighting was in her blood, in her purpose, her creation. Who was she if not a warrior? 

Lute looked at her self in the mirror once she made it back to their room. She looked utterly mad with blood staining her lips and a renewed gleam in her eye. Adam had been strangely silent the walk back to their room.

She began to clean at her face in the mirror, the area around her left jaw already beginning to swell. Adam walked up behind her and grabbed the rag from her hand. He gripped her good shoulder with his large hand and stared down at her. She stared back, golden sunsets meeting the other.

Adam didn’t speak but instead cupped her right jaw with his hand, using more softness than Lute thought possible. His thumb softly rubbed across her bottom lip, smearing the blood and leaving phantom touches in its wake. Lute closed her eyes, his touch offering her more comfort than she could ever recall in her life. 

His thumb stopped touching her lips but his hand stayed on her cheek. She felt him pat the rag softly along her jaw and mouth, cleaning the blood and sweat from her face. And then the moment was over and Adam removed his touch from her. She opened her eyes to see him simply staring at her, the blood-soaked rag in his hand. 

“I know you can take of yourself Lute, and fuck you can take care of me too, but I’m just gonna ask for a little bit more caution. I don’t want to see you get hurt.” 

Lute tried to frown but found herself unable to due to the swelling her jaw. “You think I’m weak.”

A statement, not a question. 

Adam shook his head. “No, I think you’re the strongest fucking person I know.”

“Then why are you—?”

Adam let out a deep breath and looked at the floor. Anywhere but her.  “Because I can’t fucking lose you. You are last person I have left that gives even half a shit about me. I can’t fucking lose you Lute.” 

Lute’s eyes widened, unsure how to take in the revelation. Adam had rarely been this vulnerable in the centuries she knew him. And she felt the same. She couldn’t lose him. She couldn’t. “It uh, it wasn’t real. I just wanted to be involved and get on their good side.”

Adam shook his head, “No, you did it because you’re a hothead who can’t stay away from a fight. And that’s one of the things I lo—like about you. But this isn’t our turf and I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Adam laughed, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “Beside I don’t think you want me trying to nurse you back to health or some shit like that. I’d probably kill you on accident.”

And there was Adam, his old mask of bravado back on his face. Making jokes to relieve tension and get himself out of a situation that made him uncomfortable. Lute read the situation and knew he didn’t want her to linger on his words. So she nodded and said, “I’ll be more careful.”

Adam seemed satisfied with her response and put down the dirty rag. “Fuck, I think I’m actually going to go grab a drink from the bar if you want to join. Gotta give my condolences to Charlie about her girlfriend’s nose or some shit.”

Lute smirked and shook her head. “I think I’m good. You have fun though.”

Adam nodded and left Lute alone with her thoughts and swollen jaw. She could still feel the ghost of his palm on her face, cupping her cheek. She sighed and began to get ready for her second shower of the day. 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

All the books I reviewed in 2023 (Graphic Novels)

Next Tuesday (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."

It's that time of year again, when I round up all the books I reviewed for my newsletter in the previous year. I posted 21 reviews last year, covering 31 books (there are two series in there!). I also published three books of my own last year (two novels and one nonfiction). A busy year in books!

Every year, these roundups remind me that I did actually manager to get a lot of reading done, even if the list of extremely good books that I didn't read is much longer than the list of books I did read. I read many of these books while doing physiotherapy for my chronic pain, specifically as audiobooks I listened to on my underwater MP3 player while doing my daily laps at the public pool across the street from my house.

After many years of using generic Chinese waterproof MP3s players – whose quality steadily declined over a decade – I gave up and bought a brand-name player, a Shokz Openswim. So far, I have no complaints. Thanks to reader Abbas Halai for recommending this!

https://shokz.com/products/openswim

I load up this gadget with audiobook MP3s bought from Libro.fm, a fantastic, DRM-free alternative to Audible, which is both a monopolist and a prolific wage-thief with a documented history of stealing from writers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

All right, enough with the process notes, on to the reviews!

GRAPHIC NOVELS

I. Shubiek Lubiek by Deena Mohamed

An intricate alternate history in which wishes are real, and must be refined from a kind of raw wish-stuff that has to be dug out of the earth. Naturally, this has been an important element of geopolitics and colonization, especially since the wish-stuff is concentrated in the global south, particularly Egypt, the setting for our tale. The framing device for the trilogy is the tale of three "first class" wishes: these are the most powerful wishes that civilians are allowed to use, the kind of thing you might use to cure cancer or reverse a crop-failure.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/11/your-wish/#is-my-command

II. Ducks by Kate Beaton

In 2005, Beaton was a newly minted art-school grad facing a crushing load of student debt, a debt she would never be able to manage in the crumbling, post-boom economy of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Like so many Maritimers, she left the home that meant everything for her to travel to Alberta, where the tar sands oil boom promised unmatched riches for anyone willing to take them. Beaton's memoir describes the following four years, as she works her way into a series of oil industry jobs in isolated company towns where men outnumber women 50:1 and where whole communities marinate in a literally toxic brew of carcinogens, misogyny, economic desperation and environmental degradation. The story that follows is – naturally – wrenching, but it is also subtle and ambivalent. Beaton finds camaraderie with – and empathy for – the people she works alongside, even amidst unimaginable, grinding workplace harassment that manifests in both obvious and glancing ways.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/14/hark-an-oilpatch/#kate-beaton

III. Justice Warriors by Matt Bors

Justice Warriors is what you'd get if you put Judge Dredd in a blender with Transmetropolitan and set it to chunky. The setup: the elites of a wasted, tormented world have retreated into Bubble City, beneath a hermetically sealed zone. Within Bubble City, everything is run according to the priorities of the descendants of the most internet-poisoned freaks of the modern internet, click- and clout-chasing mushminds full of corporate-washed platitudes about self-care, diversity and equity, wrapped around come-ons for sugary drinks and dubious dropshipper crapola. It's a cop buddy-story dreamed up by Very Online, very angry creators who live in a present-day world where reality is consistently stupider than satire.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/22/libras-assemble/#the-uz

IV. Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki

The story of three young Canadian women meeting up for a getaway to New York City. Zoe and Dani are high-school best friends who haven't seen each other since they graduated and decamped for universities in different cities. Fiona is Dani's art-school classmate, a glamorous and cantankerous artist with an affected air of sophistication. It's a dizzying, beautifully wrought three-body problem as the three protagonists struggle with resentments and love, sex and insecurity. The relationships between Zoe, Dani and Fiona careen wildly from scene to scene and even panel to panel, propelled by sly graphic cues and fantastically understated dialog.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/11/as-canadian-as/#possible-under-the-circumstances

Like I said, this has been a good year in books for me, and it included three books of my own:

I. Red Team Blues (novel, Tor Books US, Head of Zeus UK)

Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough. Martin is a—contain your excitement—self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before—and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

II. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (nonfiction, Verso)

We can – we must – dismantle the tech platforms. We must to seize the means of computation by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users to leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission. Interoperability is the only route to the rapid and enduring annihilation of the platforms. The Internet Con is the disassembly manual we need to take back our internet.

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

III. The Lost Cause (novel, Tor Books US, Head of Zeus UK)

For young Americans a generation from now, climate change isn't controversial. It's just an overwhelming fact of life. And so are the great efforts to contain and mitigate it. Entire cities are being moved inland from the rising seas. Vast clean-energy projects are springing up everywhere. Disaster relief, the mitigation of floods and superstorms, has become a skill for which tens of millions of people are trained every year. The effort is global. It employs everyone who wants to work. Even when national politics oscillates back to right-wing leaders, the momentum is too great; these vast programs cannot be stopped in their tracks.

But there are still those Americans, mostly elderly, who cling to their red baseball caps, their grievances, their huge vehicles, their anger. To their "alternative" news sources that reassure them that their resentment is right and pure and that "climate change" is just a giant scam. And they're your grandfather, your uncle, your great-aunt. And they're not going anywhere. And they’re armed to the teeth. The Lost Cause asks: What do we do about people who cling to the belief that their own children are the enemy? When, in fact, they're often the elders that we love?

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

I wrote nine books during lockdown, and there's plenty more to come. The next one is The Bezzle, a followup to Red Team Blues, which comes out in February:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

While you're waiting for that one, I hope the reviews above will help you connect with some excellent books. If you want more of my reviews, here's my annual roundup from 2022:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/01/bookishness/#2022-in-review

Here's my book reviews from 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/08/required-ish-reading/#bibliography

And here's my book reviews from 2020:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/08/required-reading/#recommended-reading

It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/01/bookmaker/#2023-in-review

[animentality]

i have some opinion about f/f fics... i watched few episode of house of dragons and Alicent / Rhaenyra shown as friends in the same age and both of their mother died so their kinda close and at first it was quite popular but later on ofc story changed their relationship and ship kinda become infamous... the amount of hate this ship gets is so unreal... i dont even know what it is... even when u make a silly joke about them having sexual tension or whatever the fandom takes it so seriously like i never seen that with mlm ships

it's internalized misogyny and just straight up bullying within female dominated spaces anon, and I really do roll my eyes at all the self proclaimed sapphics who insist that f/f ships just don't have the same fandoms as m/m.

first off, depending on the show, if more straight women are watching it than men or wlw, then yes.

straight women will gravitate towards straight or gay ships. they're attracted to men, and they make up the majority of the population. I'm sorry, but the truth is not always what we'd like to hear.

but also there are plenty of goddamn wlw ships that do real well here.

I think of Farcille.

and why?

because if it's well written or at least has a great capacity for juicy interpretations, then the fandom will only grow.

and the toxicity over f/f ships... well that doesn't help at all.

you say where are all the content creators for sapphic ships...

I don't fucking know, they're probably draw gay porn bc straight women are much nicer to them about their tired emo twinks than you are about them drawing their fav female character with a little extra fat.

they're drawing hot gay sex despite not even being into dudes bc you were harassing them for their head canons or their art style or their favorite dynamic.

there's like this pedestal too, that female characters have to rest on, and if they are genuinely bad people, they get shit on by everyone, not just misogynistic men or straight women, but by sapphics too.

I honestly think that the main problem with a lot of f/f spaces is just a spillover symptom from misogyny in fandom in general.

women are not immune to this, sapphic or straight or bi.

you have impossibly high standards for female characters and you have impossibly high standards for lesbian/bisexual ships.

also some fem slash fandoms have a huge fucking problem with terfs.

and they poison everything they come in contact with, so.

doesn't help either.