#no man the entire concept of virginity is bullshit

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

would you like to tell us about your research on virginity?

but also...wdym STIs aren't as scary as we think??? I was told most of them are incurable? I know you can make aids untrasmittable and that they've even succeded in curing it a couple times but that's about it. I would love to be educated about this

yeah, the basic idea with the virginity project was that the whole concept of virginity is pretty bullshit in the context in which it was initially significant, namely cisgender women being penetrated by cisgender men, so as soon as you take it outside of that context by introducing gay and trans sexuality it totally falls apart. I mean, hell, it stops working if you even look at two cishet people doing literally anything OTHER than penis-in-vagina sex. I tripped up so many people initially when I started asking questions like "okay, so you don't think a woman loses her virginity from a man going down on her. so what if it's two women? what's the difference?" and just really getting people to face down their very penis-centered view of the sex, to the result of several people telling me that it kind of made them reevaluate what they actually think of as the first time they had sex. it's also fascinating to either read other people's accounts or discuss firsthand how queer people have either tried to make themselves fit into the binary of virginity - queer man disagreeing over whether or not you have to have penetrative anal sex to lose your virginity or oral sex is sufficient, a fascinating case of a lesbian who felt that have sex with other cis women didn't "count" and asked a cis male friend to have sex with her just so she could feel satisfied that she'd lost her virginity - or abandon it entirely. Hanne Blank's book Virgin was a formative starting point, and it really exploded for me from there.

as for the STIs - hey, bad news! you fell victim to the scare tactics used to make people afraid of sex! almost all sexually transmitted infections are very easy to treat and cure with the right medicine, which is why it's important to get tested regularly and check in with your healthcare provider at the first sign of something amiss. pubic lice, scabies, trichomoniasis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis - all of those are pretty easy to get rid of with some help from your doctor and a run to the pharmacy!

the major exceptions are the 4 H's: herpes, HIV, HPV, and hepatitis B.

herpes is with you forever but is an incredibly mild companion to share your body with, considering most people never experience any notable symptoms and those who do can curb the severity with medicine.

it's also worth noting that herpes is so common as to be virtually ubiquitous; the World Health Organization consistently estimates that somewhere around 80% of the world's adult population is carrying herpes simplex virus 1 or herpes simplex virus 2. a great deal of those people don't even get it from having sex, but rather by catching HSV-1 from a parent or other people they come is close contact with as a child.

you're actually thinking of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) when you mention AIDS becoming untransmittable, but that's still a very good thing! the care available for people with HIV has come incredibly far since AIDS first became known and claimed so many lives, and today it's more than possible for people infected with HIV to live long, healthy lives by taking the proper medication to manage their viral load.

with management, people with HIV will not develop AIDS (which happens when the immune system is sufficiently depleted by HIV) and by consistently taking their medication people with HIV can become undetectable (the viral load in their body is too small to be detected or measured in tests), at which point they are unable to transmit the virus to other people.

HPV (human paillomavirus) comes in many different strains, most of which are absolutely harmless and go away on their own after a couple of months or years of freeloading in your body. I cannot emphasize this enough: HPV is so common that virtually everyone who has sex has, will have, or has had it in their lives, and the vast, VAST majority of those people will never be troubled by it literally at all.

the trouble comes from a few strains of HPV that can cause genital warts, and a few others that can cause cancers in the throat, anus, cervix, vulva, vagina, and penis. while HPV can't be treated, you can reduce your risk of developing cancer by getting the HPV vaccine if you haven't already and, if you have a cervix, getting regular Pap smears to catch early warning signs of cancerous developments.

hepatitis B is a viral infection that targets the liver. in rare cases it can cause chronic health problems that can be very dangerous, but I have to emphasize that's not common. in most adults who get hep B, there will be no symptoms and it will resolve itself in a matter of weeks. the infection is riskiest in children, but at least in America most people have received vaccines against hepatitis B as babies since the 90s.

in conclusion: get your shots, take your medicine, use protection, get tested, and talk to your doctor, but know that if there's one thing humans are good at it's figuring out how to manage STIs. we've been doing it for a long time - most sexually transmitted infections and parasites have been with us since before we we became modern humans - so we're really good at it!

[brave-and-gentle]

tried replying on the ask you sent, but had too many thoughts, Tumblr wouldn't let me type it all out, so im here in your inbox to share:

But — SAME!!! he's too good-looking that I couldn't wrap my brain around him NOT getting action. He also must have been a somewhat spoiled child with no siblings, so his confidence is very bloated lol (even a humble version of jean, I like to write him as being admired by so many people lol)

I do think he flexes in front of Connie esp after the fact, maybe also as a coping mechanism before he's back at war, about to leave the island for the first time. it's the very few "normal" experiences he clings to.

AND YES!!! I think Pieck would somehow be the experienced one if Jean was a virgin, and if she didnt jump his bones during those three years, I'd be so disappointed, same with Reiner I have too many things to say about this man!!! that poll just unearthed the myriad of head canons I have for him, thank you for indulging me and sharing your thoughts !! 💞

For real though thinking about the different head canons of how Jean "lost his virginity" (which is a stupid concept but it's the phrase I'm using for now) completely derailed my entire day - I cannot stop thinking about it!!

He is *such* a spoiled mama's boy, and tbh if I looked like him I'd also be incredibly vain.

Once again you are reading my mind, flexing so much in front of Connie and Connie is not having his bullshit <3 and poor Armin is in the corner like - I do not want to hear this pls!! Meanwhile Sasha manages to say something that embarrasses Jean and the whole thing backfires. The thought of Jean holding onto a sex life as one of the few normal things in his life has me sobbing, agh!!

I mean if Pieck didn't jump on both of those men when she had the chance, I sure as hell would. Although I don't think she'd mind sharing LOL, sister wives!!

In a modern au I like the idea of Jean being a late bloomer - big talk but is a bit too awkward around women and it happens later for him than he'd like. And only Marco knows the truth!! And and and Jean tried to do the one night stand life to one up Eren's sexcapades but the poor guy gets too attached and can't handle it <3

Thinking about this is actually helpful for my Jean x oc fic because it mostly follows canon, and well, of course these two have to fuck at some point, hehehe.

[emilykaldwen]

I think you created an incredibly vanilla OC who is the embodiment of the maiden and saviour of Aegon. She is like virginal, Madonna like. She is the bunny girl. Then you just whack edgy concepts on her like the whole blowjob thing. Like fr blowing is something you need to gain by experience or being told logistics of. I hardly think someone like Abby would know what to do technically wise. You made it seem like she was an expert. Which is so unrealistic man. And it gets messy too but your interpretations is weirdly sanitary

Like we can have character development and nuance but you don't know the meaning of the word. We have a pure maiden never been carnally touched but somehow she can naturally give pornstar level bjs. Get real Nat

Hey anon! Thank you for showing that you're either one of my [few] followers or have my blog open in a tab or something because I was just thinking about you when I reblogged that Tom Hardy Picture 11 minutes before you sent me this. Hello! How are you?

I'm putting this behind a cut to both save the dash and spoilers for the fic in general I guess? Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about my character and the themes I'm exploring in my story!

Do not come in here and tell me I don't know the meaning of character development and nuance (and don't fucking call me Nat, which only my friends call me, you do not have the right to it), when it's abundantly clear you don't have an ioata of reading comprehension given that in the chapter you're throwing a fit about, you failed to read Aegon specifically thinking how Abby's not great but she's at least enthusiastic, and he is giving her some guidance, but do you really need a word-for-word break down of it? I mean I'll keep it in mind but Aegon's not thinking 'wow my fiancee is super bad at this', like my dude thinks about how Cassandra Baratheon is better at this.

But it also is abundantly clear that this is the only chapter you've read because we have because they're physically intimate in both Chapters 8 and 15, which build up Abby's confidence in being an active participant.

We see in their first encounter together that Aegon's absolutely taking the lead, but Abby does reach for him. She does want to touch him. He comes upon her touching herself and thinking about him. Because this isn't regency or victorian England. They do know about sex, there are dozens of horny Valyrian frescoes around the red keep, and while the Seven frowns down upon it, people are still getting down out of wedlock, they are exploring themselves, and I'm not sorry about touching upon that. When Aegon gets her off in Chapter Eight, Abby also touches him in return. She's curious! She wants to touch him! She's full of horny good hormones! And seeing him taste her off his fingers, she hesitantly gives him a taste as well. And frankly, by the time we've gotten to this most recent chapter, Aegon's been teaching her how to give a good handjob for like, a month.

Yes, you are right in that Abby is meant to represent those things. That's why the story is called The MAIDEN and the Drowning Boy. Because this is an ideal being forced upon her in so many different directions. So, AGAIN, it's abundantly clear to me that you have not read any of the other chapters because we have in IN CHAPTER ELEVEN AND THIRTEEN TALKS ABOUT THIS:

The entire point of this first arc and Aegon and Abby going through what they do (also referenced in their fight in Chapter Eleven.

Also, again, I'm coming back to keep your purity culture bullshit out of my inbox. Stop thinking that a virgin means uwu innocent doesn't know anything baby. This story is actively going against that assumption and ideal because it's a shitty one. Engaging in sexual activity should never, ever mean that someone is no long 'pure'. It's a disgusting view point that goes down an even more reprehensible rabbit hole (no pun intended but we're going with it anyway).

The virginal Madonna motif you talk about is an impossible ideal, and one that is actively addressed in the story... but you'd actually have to read the story instead of just reading my recent chapter and coming in my inbox trying to belittle my character.

And for the fucking record: Abrogail Strong does not have a magical vagina and she sure as hell isn't here to save Aegon. If he wants to be saved, he has to make that decision himself (and he is).

Also??? is this a new thing? Since when the fuck are blowjobs edgy? Blowjobs are so fucking basic. Like? We even get implied blowjobs in a fucking kids movie (You know that scene in The Road to El Dorado I'm talking about). NOT TO MENTION I'm not sorry, if you're looking for descriptions straight from The Hub, my work is not for you. Graphic play by plays are not what I write, I prefer to focus on the emotional and internal side of things because that is what interests me.

[strawbeb]

the entire catholic church has a weird obsession with virgin women and i’m kinkshaming because what the fuck.

[starions]

*blows the dust off this one* a butch x lw oneshot i wrote when i was fifteen, starring my lone wanderer gigi halloway. enjoy

Gigi wrinkled her nose as she stepped over the dead raider. His blood pooled under her boots and she dragged them along the old, shag carpet to clean them off. One hundred caps to clean this abandoned townhouse of raiders and they got to keep the spoils? Good enough for her. Butch, though, would not stop complaining about it.

“I still think we shoulda asked for more caps,” Butch mumbled, putting his gun back in his holster.

Gigi sighed, and knelt down to loot the raider. She couldn’t help but to notice how young the dead man was; her and Butch’s age tops. She frowned, and brought out a cap stash hidden in his pocket. “See? This job basically pays for itself. And if we sell some weapons and armor, then it will be worthwhile. I’m not sure why you’re complaining. Go loot that girl over there.”

Butch glared at the redhead, but did as he was told. “Can’t we just, I don’t know, find caps anotha way?”

Gigi wiped blood off on her jeans, standing up. “Like what Butch? Cutting hair?”

Scoffing, Butch finished looting the raider, producing nothing but a few bobby pins and some shotgun shells. He never liked that he got hairdresser on the G.O.A.T, just like Gigi didn’t like getting Pip-Boy repair girl. Jesus, Pip-Boy repair. Why would she ever want to do that? She was lucky Mr. Brotch changed it for her, she was much happier working with her dad in his clinic.

Just the thought of her dad made Gigi’s brow furrow and heart twist.

“You okay?” Butch asked, stuffing the bobby pins in his pocket.

Nodding, Gigi turned her heal, facing away from Butch. This was not the time to cry about her dad. Shaking it off, Gigi continued looking for supplies.

The two found nothing more in the living room, except maybe a few good food items and a spare bottle cap hidden under a rug. This townhouse had two more bedrooms, though, and Gigi and Butch couldn’t risk leaving anything valuable out of their hands. They entered the first bedroom, which was obviously used for more than sleep, judging by the smell and the old condom wrappers on the floor. Worn down posters of nearly nude girls plastered the walls, and chems were everywhere. It was fucking disgusting in there.

“Jesus!” Butch muttered, pulling his white undershirt up to cover his nose. Gigi coughed into her elbow, stepping over stains on the carpet. “You ain’t going in there,” Butch said, pulling on her arm.

“I’m not going to touch anything Butch, lighten up. It is just… so gross.” Gigi couldn’t help but to gag, and she stepped back. Butch still held her by the elbow, and the two were touching back-to-back now.

“Remember what Mr. Brotch taught us in sex-ed? About… fluids?” Butch said the last word with disgust, and Gigi snorted.

“I can’t believe you remember anything about that class, Butch, I thought you were too busy thinking about dicks and tits.” She shook loose of his grip and tiptoed in the room. Making sure to avoid touching anything nasty, she pulled open a dresser. Gigi raised her eyebrows. “There are a lot of condoms in here. Jesus Christ what the fuck was this place?”

“Raiders, man,” Butch said, hesitantly following Gigi’s lead. “They’re fucking disgusting.”

Gigi opened a few more dressers, not finding anything worthwhile. She considered stashing some chems to sell, but decided against it. Once people around here catch word you’re dealing, they won’t leave you alone.

She did, however, stash some condoms. Not to use herself, but, you know in case. With who? She didn’t know. Definitely not Butch. That thought almost made her laugh aloud. Though, he was nicer to her now out of the vault. Both of them were the only thing left of the vault. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad… they were already stuck with each other.

Gigi shook the thought out of her head, glaring at the poster of a topless girl in front of her. What in God’s name was she thinking just now? Fuck. She stood there, drumming her fingers on the dresser, admiring the crudely drawn penis pointing to the mouth of the girl on the poster, when Butch piped up.

“Hey Gee?” Her head snapped behind her, and she noticed how red in the face Butch was all of the sudden. “You a virgin?”

The sound that came out of Gigi’s mouth was a mixture of a laugh and a gasp. Why would he ask that in the middle of a dirty sex pit? “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Right,” Butch muttered. “Forget I said anything.”

Gigi turned around, facing the poster again. Truth be told, she wasn’t. Two weeks after the G.O.A.T she had fucked Freddie Gomez because he got trash burner as his job. It didn’t mean anything; he was sad, and Gigi had just come to the revelation that she’d have to lose her virginity to someone in the vault. She’d rather it be Freddie than that asshole Wally Mack, or Butch for that matter.

Gigi faced Butch again, who was fiddling with his Pip-Boy. “Are you?” Gigi asked, suddenly curious.

Butch head jolted up, and he glared at her. “You can’t ask me that when you ignored it when I asked!”

She grinned, amused by his answer. “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

“You go first.”

“Fine,” Gigi said, stepping over a particularly large stain to inspect the night table. “I’m not a virgin.”

“You’re full of shit,” Butch said, crossing his arms. Gigi looked at him from across the bed and shrugged. “For real? You really fucked some rando out in the wastes?”

“I never said I lost my virginity in the wasteland.”

Butch’s mouth fell open, his eyes wide. “No way you slept with someone from the vault. He would have told me.”

Gigi grinned, pulling a box of stimpacks out of the nightstand. What was the use for them in this setting? Shrugging, she put them in her bag. “I told him not to tell anyone, especially you,” she paused, “considering the fact he was a Tunnel Snake.” Or, trying to join Butch’s gang, for that matter.

“You ain’t gonna tell me, is that it?” Butch narrowed his eyes, wanting more information.

“I’ll tell you once you tell me if you’re a virgin or not.”

Butch pressed his lips together, and avoided eye contact. Finally, he spoke up. “I’m no virgin; what I look like? Some loser?”

Gigi crossed her arms and leaned against the nightstand. “Oh really? Who is the lucky lady who was Butchie-boy’s first?”

Butch paused for a second, and then said: “Susie Mack.”

“No way,” Gigi said, giggling. “Wally wouldn’t let Susie touch you with a ten foot pole.”

“You don’t believe me? Me and Susie did it. Lotsa times.” Gigi saw through his facade, but she gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“Whatever you say, stud.”

“Oh yeah? And who was your first, Goody?” Butch said, using the only nickname Gigi didn’t mind. It originally was Goody-goody, but it managed to get to just Goody. Sadly, it’s lost its meaning out in the Wastes.

Gigi swung her bag over her shoulder, hearing the rough leather collide with the barbed baseball bat strapped to her back. She walked out of the room as Butch followed. “Freddie Gomez.”

Butch stopped in his tracks. “Bullshit! Freddie would have totally told me. He would have done anything to get with the Snakes.”

“And I told Freddie that if he told anyone I’d break his nose. You weren’t the only one he was scared of,” Gigi said, going into the next bedroom. It was much cleaner, and much nicer than the one before.

Butch furrowed his brow. Noticing the semi-clean mattress, he plopped down on it. “Freddie? What was so good about Freddie?” He almost whispered.

Gigi cocked her head to the side. “Well, he was nice to me for one. And it wasn’t like I was in love with him or anything. He was upset after the G.O.A.T so I decided to cheer him up.”

Butch propped his head on his hand, looking at Gigi with an emotion in his eyes Gigi couldn’t place. “So you just gave away your virginity, like that?”

“Back then I decided that I’d rather lose my virginity quickly than wait until I was assigned a husband. Like I said, Freddie was nice to me. Now I know that virginity is just a concept and it doesn’t matter,” Gigi said as she opened the two door closet.

Butch muttered something under his breath, and began fiddling with his Pip-Boy again.

Finding nothing in the closet, Gigi turned around, walking to the dresser. Gigi knew something was wrong when Butch didn’t even talk for a straight two minutes. Looking at him, Gigi noted that he looked a bit sad. A million thoughts ran through Gigi’s mind at once. Why in the wastes was he sad? He was sad that she slept was Freddie Gomez? She had told him it was nothing, for God’s sake. Gigi crossed her arms, letting her wait fall onto her left leg.

“Are you upset with me or something?”

Butch grumbled, turning his head to look out the dirty window.

“Because I fucked Freddie Gomez?”

Butch’s frown deepened. “No,” he said quietly. “You didn’t want me to be your assigned husband?”

Gigi couldn’t help but laugh. Her smile son faltered when she realized Butch wasn’t joking. “Are you serious?” She asked. “Did you block out our entire vault life? You treated me like shit.” Gigi paused, her eyes bouncing around the room, anything to avoid eye contact with him. “We treated each other like shit.” A sigh slipped out of her mouth as she remembered all the things she said about Butch and his alcoholic mother.

Butch grinned, his previous sad exterior melting away. “Yeah, you did treat me like shit Goody; almost like you were in love with me or something.”

A glare appeared on her face, but she still couldn’t help the growing on her face. “Gross, asshole. Let’s get out of here, this place smells like ass.”

Butch pushed himself off the bed, a cloud of dust filling the air as he does so. “Lead the way.”

[lihikainanea]

I'm a goddess who's all hurt because she's allergic to pads and she can't use tampons because her mom thinks that virgin girls can't wear tampons and i had to suffer every month like a baby when they got their little asses burned because of diapers and stuff (guess what, i'm the same anon who got a condition and her mother is a bitch, and you already know who i am in the dms)

uuuuuugggggggGGGGGGH that is some straight up bullshit, boo. God don’t even get me started on the misogynistic, ENTIRELY MALE-FABRICATED concept of virginity. Just don’t.

But also, oh man, I really feel for those who can’t do tampons, for any reason. I think I wore pads for like, my first year of The Curse and was so incredibly grossed out by it--god it felt like a diaper. It was awful.

I’m sorry, bubs. I could also go on a very long rant about how period equipment (because let’s face it, it’s not even supplies. You need motherfucking equipment) should be free for everyone who requires it. Like, how the fuck are we charging for these things? Is it my fault my body purges the devil from its soul once a fucking month? No. No it is NOT, you bastard, so why am I shelling out money for this?

[houseplant-central]

Padme Amidala part one; why did the madonna/whore complex give this woman sharpshooting skills?

This is going to be part one of a two part post about the star wars prequel films (sorry in advance about that), specifically Padme and her role as the only important female character in the 90s triliogy. This post will talk about the first two films, and the next post will talk about the third and final film. Keep in mind that I did not see the prequel films until I was an adult (which is kind of weird, since the prequels have a lot more kid oriented jokes (from C3PO getting assembled wrong on the assembly line in film two and making a series of bad puns to everything about jar jar binks (which, as a side note, YIKES we dont stan racist comedy here, but the "humor" with him was clearly directed at kids)). That being said I think the three films over all are a hilarious product of the 90s and I'm not trying to start discourse about wether they're objectively good or bad-- they are both, and that's okay. What I'm interested in is Padme. The "Madonna"/"Whore" dicotemy is a freudian idea. I don't neccisarily believe that it happens with all men in real life, and I certainly don't think we should excuse it in real life, but I DO think it is previlant in writing, and the way female characters are written (both presently and in the past). The madonna/whore dicotemy basically boils down to the idea that men view women either as "good" virtuous people (the madonna, a maternal figure and an eternal virgin) whom they love but could never sexualize, OR as sexually interesting companions (the whore), whome they desire but could never love. This of course, in the real world is a bullshit excuse for putting women into patriarical boxes based on their outwards apperance and if any man ever gives you "well now I genuinely care about you so I feel like I can't sexualize you" it's time to go because that sexualization inherently included violence if he's now worried about thinking like that around you. There is plenty of feminist literature written about this concept and I highly reccomend a look into it because it's fascinating (try starting with even just the abstract for this paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-04940-001). However! What I'm here to talk about today is how writers unconciously use this dicotemy with their female characters, and why, specifically, when Padme gets graduated from Madonna to Whore in Attack of the Clones, she suddenly knows how to fight when she couldn't before. My aim is not to conclusively say why, because I've been analyzing these films for the past couple days and I still have no idea why, but rather just to bring the question up, and provide evidence, as it is a fascinating phenonmeon of the 90s that I feel many female characters got treated to (with Padme as a prime example). Lets talk about Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones and the Madonna/ Whore. In Phantom Menace we're introduced to Padme (Natalie Portman) as an intellegent diplomat. When she's not done up in her planet's traditional leader's dress, she's in long sleeved simple dresses, tights and braids. She wears natural make up in her "maid disguise" for which she is in ninty percent of the film, and in the famously creepy "tucking in anakin" scene she is for some reason in the whole royal maid getup which includes gloves and covering her hair. Cultural modesty for the royal maids was written in to the worldbuilding, but it seems to have been done larely so that they could get away with having Natalie Portman play young Padme in this film and not be "sexy" until film two in which she is teenage Padme. Padme plays an extremely maternal role for Anakin in Phantom Menace, from physically protecting him to the aformentioned tuck in scene at 1:19:30 where she quite literally tucks him in for bed. This of course has been analyzed all to hell already as exceedingly WEIRD because the two eventually marry and have children together (so the freud analysis here is valid). We'll take a quick break for a digression here on Padme's age. I've refered to her in Phantom Menace as "young Padme", but realistically she is just Portman minus the makeup she's allowed to wear in later films. We know that she's the "child-ruler" of her nation, but she also realistically feels like she's in her early teens in Phantom Menace, and is certainly treated like an adult by her peers; we see her throughout the film making decisions on foriegn policy, wartime politics and wartime sacrifices. Anakin was most definietly a child in the first film, and was replaced by an adult actor in the subsequent films as his character aged, and this difference makes it feel like there's a very large and very weird age gap between the two characters. But fully back to the matter at hand, Padme is a very maternal, modest character in Phantom Menace both in apperance and in dialouge, and she clearly establishes that she views Anakin as a child. In Attack of the Clones, when the romance plotline starts, suddenly Padme is allowed to be sexy (by 90s standards anyways). She gets jewlery, she gets makeup, and she gets a whole lot more ARMS and shoulders showing that she was previously allowed (specifically see 44:30 when they travel back to Naboo). Of course this is to coincide with her growing up, but the fact of the matter is that Padme gets to be attractive when the script calls for Anakin to be attracted to her. There are still some traditional queenly outfits, but by the time they're ready to go rescue Obi Wan, she's in a skin tight white jumpsuit (which eventually, at 1:47:06, becomes a crop top when a monster somehow slices her back and makes her entire shirt cut in half). For the next 15 minutes we then see Natalie portman running around in a white crop top while fighting). We get such lines from Anakin as "I am in agony... if you are suffering as much as I am, please, tell me" and "we could keep it a secret" at 55:10 in a darkly lit room with Padme's weird black leather dress and gloves combo. (Yes, I know Padme tells Anakin she doesn't want a relationship with him in this scene, but the scene's whole function is to establish why society says they shouldn't be together, but why Anakin is attracted to her anyways, and for this Padme is presented to the viewer as an inherently sexual object which Anakin can't have which A) gross but B) fits into the whore achetype of characterization). In both physical presentation and characterization Padme flips to the other end of the dicotemy and Attack of the Clones now gives us Whore Padme. The other huge character change that happens at the same time for Padme is her ability to fight. In Phantom Menace she's primarily a diplomat; she has a few moments of sprinting around and brandishing a weapon, but she almost never uses it. In Attack of the Clones we get a direct quote from her at 1:36:00 that she's "not interested in getting into a war" and that she'll find a "diplomatic solution out of this mess". However she then proceeds to pick the lock to her shackles, pick up a gun she's never used before, and fight off not just monsters, but also hold her own with the literal jedi against the enroaching droids. The movie leads up to this scene in terms of their relationship, and when Padme admits to Anakin that she loves him too she is somehow also graced with the ability to fight. Again, I'm not really sure why; my best guess is that the other female love interests of the 90s were extremely capable women (ie. good at things like fighting and even fighting in crop tops), and that the capable women who was still romantically submissive was so dominant of an archtype it just bled into her charactization without any writer stopping to consider that she's never cannonically been trained to fight like the jedi characters and therefor should be way out of her depth in this battle. I'm all for female character who are physically strong and capable (obviously), but having her develop fighting skills as a side effect of wearing sexier outfits is very weird writing. Padme of course goes back to falling off things and needing saving during the climax of the film and indeed she'll do it again in film three, but for this moment of romantic tension finally resolved and Padme fulling moving from motherly figure to sexy love interest, she can suddenly fight. Food for thought and I'd love to hear any suggestions as to why you think it might be.

[borisbubbles]

25. PORTUGAL

Elisa - “Medo de sentir”

We’ve finally crossed over into the “I like this” territory :-) Let’s celebrate by booting another ballad ^_^

Song Analysis

This will be short and sweet though, since there isn’t much to say. “Medo de sentir” basically the Marie Myriam of its national final: It is a cromulent ballad that did nothing wrong and is solidly good, but not great in all the relevant areas (vocals, composition, staging). 

I mean,

Even so, Elisa gave me a few small nuggets that warmed me to her, serving DRAMAFACE in the FdC Semi

and LOOKS in the Finale: 

Peach puffy sleeves that rival Leonor Andrade’s legendary shoulder pads as a fashion statement <3 (honestly, this is pretty subdued for FdC fashion even? Hold on until I get talk about Felipe in the NF Corner) 

Honestly, you may wonder why I like this more than “Répondez-moi”, but I don’t really have a reason  - unless you’re willing to accept “Medo de sentir is underrated, is performed by a Weird Indie Girl and is from a criminally overlooked Eurovision country” as valid argumentations. Oh and while I only *very* mildly like Elisa, it is a decision I made myself, completely free of the social pressure I feel whenever Gjon, or heaven forbid, Roxen or Diodato, pop up. 

Furthermore, the fact that I still like Elisa even after she won her NF also speaks greatly in her favour. I’m not sure if you were aware of how good FdC was this year? Well, sit down because you are about to witness it!

NF Corner

Remember how old Eesti Laul’s neck was snapped and its corpse was urinated on by the shit Estonians? Remember how the quirky indie weirdo entries had to find a safe haven elsewhere in Europe? The Portugese hallmark traits of “Not Giving A Fuck”, “Doing Our Own Thing No Matter What” and “What Do You Mean This Isn’t A Vimeo Showreel?” allowed for Festival da Canção to absorb Eesti Laul’s broken spirit and channel it from every (Ley-La-)Ley-Line.

and since this is the first *GREAT* 2020 NF I am covering, I will do HONORABLE MENTIONS before I actually review my four choices :o

Dubio - “Ceguiera”: Hamburglar-looking goddess <3333

MEERA - “Copo de gin”: Pure EL-style EDM *and* it’s about drinking gin, needless to say this song is basically *my anthem*.  Jimmy P - “Abensonhado”: Rap rarely is my thing, let alone three minutes of it non-stop. Having said that, this is genuine and dramatic and Jimmy is flanked by a GOSPEL CHOIR (dressed in chasubles!!!) who support him in ENGLISH... I am not made of stone.  JJaZZ - “Agora”: Totally slept on this weird indie anthem, but then they showed up looking like this:

and yes, it was even funnier in motion (sadly gif’ing rights are reserved to the Elite 4 soz) Elisa Rodrigues - “Não voltes mais”: a jolly tropical ballad in a genre I recognize but cannot name (some sort of pimba fado jazz? Does this work?) and was incomprehensibly hated by the Portuguese? Will I ever understand how this country operates? Probably never. Kady - “Diz so”: another pimba fado jazz sort of thing? My friend André (who is from Brazil) tells me it’s actively parodying Brazillian counterculture and leftist stereotypes which is such a random quirk to put in a Portuguese music comp <3

And before we move on, I’ll chuck in a very speclal DISHONORABLE mention for our good friends Blasted Mechanism.😈 I actually forgot to do my jury duties for ESCUnited here, so I’ll just let James (the person with the best taste on our team, including yours truly) do it for me: 

Fucking *TRUTH*. “Rebellion’”s problem  has always been a lack of motherfucking balls. Sure, these middle-aged steampunkers attempt to implement a genre shift between indie rock and fucking ORCHESTRAL METAL/HIP HOP and make it so underwhelming and pathetic? People blame the live, and yes it was *bad* (forever cackling at “REBELGIUM” tho), but it was the studio that failed to deliver on the promises it made.  It always surprises me when people (Sean and Roy I AM coming for you) slam "Verona” for being a “fanwank” and then fall for a Rebellion which is basically a fanwank for heterosexual snobs. #ShotsFired. 

Now, as for the actual Boris faves, LET US START WITH A LIBERAL DOSE OF ASKEW CUBISM

Judas - “Cubismo Enviesado” 

VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?   

VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  

VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?   

VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  

 WHAT A FUCKING SPANDEX CATASTROPHE. “Cubismo enviesado” is a horrible song, the choreography looks like it had been conjured up during a particularly drunk night of bedroom karaoke and Judas can’t hold a tune for the life of him. The lyrics don’t even make sense in Portuguese <33333 It is an art school project gone disastrously wrong. NEEDLESS TO SAY, I AM OBSESSED.😍

Filipe Sambado - “Gerbera Amarelo do Sul”

That look

The regal panache

Those... leather shorts?

IT IS SO QUEER I LOVES IT. As with Cubismo, I am fucking OBSESSED. However, unlike Cubismo, “Gerbera amarela do sul” is *legitimately* great, lol. In addition to having a KICK-ASS fado rhythm and the off-the-charts visual components (the jewellery! the hats! the throne! the hand choreography!), the lyrics are highly intelligent poetry geared at dismantling upper class snobism.😍 Rare to find an entry that kicks ass on SO MANY levels. Even harder to see it lose to Elisa Myriam - but I’m not sad it lost because, you know, it would have befallen the same fate as a “Telemóveis”. At least his existence makes the memory-holing of Achille Lauro’s ICONIC Virgin Queen Cosplay so much easier to stomach. 

Throes & The Shine - “Movimiento”

I mean, entries that open like THIS: 

are instantly iconic, ngl. The best FdC entries offer a great triple of great looks, unplugged stubborn artistry and fun quirky rhythmes. Throes + The Shine pass this with flying colours and I mean, THOSE sunglasses alone yank up the laugh-out-laugh factor to astronomical levels. add in a hilarious choreography, sound effects that seemingly imitate duck mating noises and three very attractive men (in 2020! the concept!) and it’s an instant fave right there. 

AND THEN MADE THEIR ENTRY EVEN BETTER BY ADDING MIDNIGHT GOLD/JOWST EFFECTS TO THEIR STAGING. 😍😍😍😍

MANCHAS DE LAMA NA SUA PELE  

HEROES. 😍😍😍

and of course, this wouldn’t be a 2020 NF without an obvious runaway fave losing at the last minute: 

Bárbara Tinoco - “Passe-partout”

SHE IS TINY <3333:

She’s like a human bonsai... or a personal attack chincilla.

Okay, so Portugal were *THIS close* to out-France’ing the French with this sassy Zazballad, served with a generous dollop of parisian accordion and stank reaction shots.

Yet another entry that shamelessly uses an attractive man as a boytoy prop <333 For a brief moment, Bàrbara and Tiago establish themselves as a pair of lovestruck La La Land idiots, gearing themselves towards the EPIC moment where she will dump him... and then this happens before the first chorus:

Barbara opens up a can of dancer carbs and it completely fucks up her no-bullshit keto diet. 

Those dancers man. They aren’t a *bad* addition in itself, but if your thing is “romance ballad but *plot twist* it’s actually an end of romance ballad get lost loser” do not burn the clou within the first minute of the performance to a group of dancers who don’t even dance *along with the beat of your song*. UGH.

(and also, more devastatingly, the reduce tiaGOD’s airtime how dare they grrr)

Fortunately though, I have learned to appreciate the wrecktitude of it all because it caused one of the funniest downfall narratives in recent ESC history. The Portuguese were, of course, foaming at the mouth with all the decisions Bárbara had made (not even for the points I raised, necessarily?) and Bárbara was having none of it. It went kinda like this

Juries: EWWW DANCERS AND CHOREOGRAPHY YOU ARE RAPING YOUR OWN SONG YOU PHILISTINE WHORE. Bárbara: 

Juries: WOW WHAT *ARROGANCE*!! YOU THINK YOU CAN WIN BUT BOY DO WE HAVE NEWS FOR YOU :-) 

and lo hand behold, the finale rolls on and Tinoco’s dancers are still there, and are even *MORE* present than they were in the semi (but also in sync with the beat) and Bárbara gets promptly jurydunked into third place. 😍 Even though she has the *ONLY* song in FdC that could have qualified in its semifinal. 😍  A woman who stands three apples tall trolling an entire nation and juries because she knew she had gold in her hands and then getting rigged out of the easiest nf victory out of pure SPITE 😍  WHAT AN ARC. 😍

Portugal 2020 vs Portugal 2021

Elisa probably would not have qualified. I’m not sure how popular of an opinion this is, but I prefer the semifinal performance of “Medo de sentir” and that wasn’t the staging they were going for. Not many people seemed to care either way, and that’s usually the death sentence for Portugal. 

Elisa won’t be back for 2021 or whenever Eurovision is rebooted. :sigh: Fuck you, Coronavirus. 

Freaky! Friday! Factor!

See: NF Corner:

Score: 4 Senhits out of 5. 

[h-e-l-l-b-r-o-k-e]

Holding Back The Fool Again [B. Hargrove x you]

Series: part 2 of Galapogos

Summary: This is Billy’s definition of extending an olive branch. Screwed and without shrewdness, kind of like him.

Inspiration: Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins (1995) in its entirety.

Word Count: 3073  Warnings: profanity, angst, and mentions of abuse.

Written Date: 07/24-31/2019  Posted Date: 8/1/2019

[PART 1]< >[PART 2]

“Hey.”

He’s not sure if the breathy sigh actually left his lips or if the rustling leaves toyed with his ears. What he does know for sure is that there’s a cool moisture on his upper lip, the impressive one-fifty he lifts is still no challenge to the old tree outside your window, and that even with sleep-mussed hair you’ve never looked better.

The rays of the sun kiss his skin, warming him up to the bone as if home is trying to plunge some needed coaxing through his thick skull. The sun knows he ran once; any discouragement will send him running again. It’s the way God carved Billy’s mechanics—inside the tough exterior is just a lost boy, a coward who’s on the verge of finally having enough of what’s been granted to him before he could even form a coherent sentence.

A reflection bounces off his Virgin Mary pendant, flashing threateningly close to your pupils. It’s the universe giving him a clue that if there’s ever the right time to make eye contact with the one you love, it’s now. Now, in what could be the final moment he has to prove to himself that he isn’t the man his father said he is and prove to you that he’s not just another copy-cat of David.

Is Billy another David? When he first came to your little town, you would have said yes. When you started riding in his Camaro and showing up to social events with his arm around your waist, David hardly crossed your mind. Now? You aren’t so sure, about anything. You don’t even know why you haven’t slammed the window on his gorgeous face. Your best friend Judilyn would have, so what’s stopping you?

Billy Hargrove has never been a perfect suitor. For heavens sake, the heroism he displayed when he saved your camera was soon followed by insulting you on your first date. And, Billy Hargrove’s relationship skills sometimes make you wonder why he’s even with you, or you with him. He has terrible mood swings, sometimes pushing you away so that he can have some time to himself to lift weights and not have a “woman nag at him all the time.” As if he’s not the one who clings onto you about seventy-percent out of a hundred.

He smokes so much that it has created a force-field around him, made up of cancerous fumes. You swear you’ve never inhaled as much second-hand smoke before getting to know him. The smell penetrates into your hair, your wardrobe, and soon your parents water bills were raising through the roof. After your parents started lecturing you and the scent of nicotine made a surprise appearance in your sheets, you had to lay down some strict rules: Billy can no longer smoke with the windows rolled up, Billy can no longer smoke half-an-hour before entering your house, and Billy had to promise to cut back. Not just for your sake, but his as well.

You’re not an unrealistic idiot though. You’ve seen this addiction before with your own grandfather. You’ve seen the continuous cycle of grandpa crushing the cigarette box in his hands and throwing it out only for you to find fresh cigarettes littered in your grandma’s rose bushes the next week. So, it’s not hard to imagine Billy sparking up an extra cancer stick before he’s supposed to meet with you. Especially when he comes over with an extra spritz of cologne and Binaca spearmint masking his breath.

But, as the breeze tickles your nose and wraps loosely around his dirty-blond curls in gentle tugs, you cannot detect the toxic bubble that embraces him. Nor the hours old musk of his favorite Pour Homme, but just the basic nature of the body detoxifying.

He’s here, without the calming of his disgusting addiction nor the courage of a strong drink on his breath.

And his voice. 

You’ve never heard it so…without its punch of beef-packed testosterone, without the fresh singe of tobacco on his vocal cords. So helpless. So vulnerable. So unlike Billy. But, it’s been inside him all along, waiting to be pulled apart by willing hands. Hands willing to tear apart his skeleton, push past the muck of sticky blood and pulsing intestines, and cradle the most important organ of all.  

And he thinks he’s felt—still feels—that pleasant pain of guts being twisted and torn apart whenever you’re around to mindlessly play with his fingers while you two watch a rented movie. To call out on his bullshit when anger either makes him too quiet or too loud. To wrap your arms around him when his father’s had swung the hour before just because Billy had forgotten to pick up one fucking gallon of milk.

Earlier that day when everyone was beginning to gather around in the school’s parking lot to see who’d win the fight between Billy and David, love’s affliction was still harshly pulling at his heart strings. And only when you’d hit the ground was it slowly being replaced by something else—a cold numbing from a lidocaine needle.

He wants to shake off this empty, suffocating, cushionless envelop made by the devil, and repent under your plum-like palms. Repent until you stop looking at him like he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

He’s Billy, and he’ll always be your Billy. But, maybe that only makes it scarier.

The telephone downstairs begins to ring again—you’ve since disconnected yours after just minutes of continuous phone call after the other. You turn to face your bedroom door in temptation, looking past polaroids and the photographs that Jonathan had taught you to develop in the dark room. Memories of you with Judilyn and your group of friends. Moments in time of you and Billy’s blossoming relationship, featuring his douchy friends. All taped along the smooth surface.

Your fingertips get ready to push off the lower sash of the window.

“Please.”

You turn your head back to Billy.

He licks his pink lips and parts them again. “Don’t leave.”

“Why?” You immediately flinch at the croak in your voice. This isn’t how you imagined the confrontation with Billy to go. Actually, you somehow just thought you’d live in your bed forever with your teddy bear and Billy would fall off the face of the earth.

Instead, he’s just outside your window with bits of bark under his fingernails and the setting sun casting a halo around his crown. The whole view is a magnificent renaissance painting; every detail crafted with expertise and purpose, such as the way pink creeps up on the clouds and how you can count every freckle on Billy’s face.

Yet, you cannot find any of this to mean something. Not when classmates you barely talk to are keeping your line busy just to check up on you while he can’t even form the words that are caught in his throat.

His eyes study the inflamed skin of your palms then cut to the smudges that trail along the side of your right thigh. Through clenched teeth, he sucks in a breath of air. “Can I come in?”

You pause for a moment, even though you hadn’t expected anything else after he decided to claw his way up your window with far less grace than Judilyn’s ladder method (or your ex-boyfriend’s favorite: pounding his fists on your front door at two in the morning and waking up the entire house). Your finger tips weigh the odds by tapping on the painted wood, and only when you take a couple steps away from the window does Billy’s glistening pecks gently deflate.

The poodle designs on your sock-clad feet are more interesting than Billy as he extends a long leg through the opening, or so you convince yourself. But you don’t have to watch him to know that Billy’s glancing around your neat bedroom, checking for ripped up photographs or thrown mixed tapes—any sign that tells him that you’ve terminated things on your end of the hemisphere.

The only thing out of place, as he’s come to conclude, are the messed up sheets. The flannel is crinkled in a way that he’s familiar with; he’d never tell anyone that he’s had his fair share of finding comfort between blankets without a girl writhing in pleasure beneath him. Billy can almost picture you on your side with your knees tucked into your chest and your chin to your neck—he’d rather not focus on that.

You’re still standing by your mirror with eyelashes hiding the prettiest pair of irises he’d come across in Hawkins.

Billy’s never understood your damn patience. There was this time when Billy had walked the couple extra yards from your locker to yearbook class to pick you up for lunch, and he’d walked in on Pam Dubinsky giving you backhanded compliments on your poster designs for the new yearbook while you had stood there without saying a word. He knew about the countless hours you’d spent on your bedroom floor sketching up clever concepts while he would drift off and on on your plush mattress, and he knew all that hard work wasn’t just for some jealous bitch to tell you that her’s was better.

He had taken some loud steps forward and his tongue had been ready to snap away at her when you calmly raised your hand at him, prompting him from getting any closer and intervening, and kindly told the girl who had slept with your ex-boyfriend that no one would appreciate an amateur design on their yearbooks, especially not after such a long school year and that Pam should think about David—mediocre head and a mediocre yearbook? Talk about heartbreak.

It took so much of Billy to keep from laughing and humiliating that bitch any further, but above that he was proud of you for sticking up for yourself without sinking to her level. Malice disguised as a sugar cane had become his new favorite flavor.

Except, he quickly learned that your patience combined with his drastic mood swings brought him an unfamiliar peace that frustrates him just as much. He knows how to spurt out insults and give and receive bruises—that’s easy; that’s second-nature. But, keeping his ears from turning red and his breath under control is a whole other field. How does anyone do that?

But then you sniffle, and he realizes your shoulders are trembling as your hands struggle to clasp together. You’re not just waiting for him to make the first move, but you’re cowering. Over the fact that Billy’s so fucking reckless. Over the fact that Judilyn and your other friends were right, that Billy isn’t capable of anything but serving you pain as dessert on a silver platter. Over the fact that Billy’s anger can blind him of your presence, and has caused him to put his hands on you. Over the fact that just his puppy eyes alone can throw out your free will, and allow him into your bedroom. Over the fact that you’re still willing to hear him out.

“Prove to her that everyone in this shithole is wrong about you.”

Max’s voice still rings clearly in his head, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget it. At least not while you shrink into yourself in front of your mirror, but he’s trying to look on the bright side for once: you’re blocking his crumbling tower.

His mouth is so parched that swallowing proves worthless, but he knows he has to keep pushing. The photographs on your door call back to him, and his head rolls on his shoulders towards them.

“Do you remember when your dad almost caught me hiding in your closet?”

Your gaze on the carpet shifts a little closer to him.

A smile almost touches his lips. “You would’ve gotten in trouble if you didn’t have that Mount Everest of stuffed animals piled in there to hide me.”

The stuffed animals from your childhood had been the last thing you wanted Billy to discover about you. You had decided to donate most of them at the local Goodwill on your thirteen birthday, but your sentimental attachment to them kept you from tossing them every time. So you kept them hidden in your closet like a dirty secret, and had meant to never let the tough Billy find them. You were mortified that he’d think you were just some innocent little girl and that he wouldn’t want to be with you anymore, but he didn’t care. Sure it was a little funny, but he revealed he still had a little brown bear of his own that his mother gave him when he was six in his underwear drawer.

“Or that time when my boxers somehow got inside your hamper and your mom washed them, thinking they were your brother’s?” Billy holds in a chuckle. “And your brother was too dumb to realize they weren’t his and wore them for like a week straight.”

A sound leaves your throat. Half-giggle. Half-sob. It’s hard to differentiate whether that’s good or bad. The back of your wrist meets your nose, rubbing softly.

“There was also that one time when no one but Max and Judy knew we had skipped town for a couple days to go see Quiet Riot in Indianapolis,” he scans a particular Polaroid snap shot that was taken at the motel pool, “All we could afford was one night in some sleazy motel room, eating greasy fast food.” He looks at you again, “It was worth it. Never thought you could make a shitty mattress comfortable.”

The corner of your chapped lips tugs up. “Your chest does makes a great pillow, Hargrove.”

The shy smile is gone sooner than it appeared.

His torso appears in front of you as his warm palms find their way to your hair. Thumbs wipe away the sticky streaks on your rosy cheeks, and then gently caresses them.

He wants you to really look at him, but he finds it a small victory when you don’t duck beneath his arms as he envelops you in a desperate hold. When you don’t pull away after he buries his face in your neck. And when you don’t push him away after you hear him suck back the gunk that’s formed in his stuffed nose nor when something wet drips onto your bare collar bones.

“I’m sorry.” His voice is muffled into your shoulder.

Billy knows that your parents have been away, and he guesses by the missing Mustang in your driveway that your older brother must be down at the run-down waterhole with a couple of pig-headed buddies, so he’d been expecting your house to be devoid of its usual mumbling and lively noises that is such an integral part of it. He’d been relieved at first because that meant he wouldn’t have to deal with your angry parents or a careless-yet-overprotective brother, but now that you are keeping quiet Billy has nothing to grasp onto except this energy that’s barely hanging onto life support between you two.

Billy squeezes you a little tighter, praying that you somehow absorb his thoughts, his guilt, his regret, his love, and his fear. “Okay? I’m sorry for…being a piece of shit. I never meant for that to happen—never dreamt of it.”

The saltiness settles on his taste buds. “I promise I’m not David—I’m not my fucking father.”

Your finger nails run up his spine until they’re digging into the curls on the back of his neck. “I know.”

After just moments of softly scratching his scalp, you pull away and bring your arms into your ribs. The apology is left in the stale air around the two of you, but Billy doesn’t blame you. Lord knows that he’d never forgive his father even if he crawled through hell and back and begged him.

Billy untangles your arms from beneath your chest and leads you into the bathroom down the hall with every intention on washing away every negative emotion down the drain, “Come on, I’m gonna take care of you.”

This reluctance that stops you from letting go of the events that transpired in the parking lot is a million time better than being left to choke on the dust of drifting tires. If anything, Billy accepts this as a start in restoring what once was. Your patience taught him that much.

As the cascading water heats up and clothes hit the tiles one by one, Billy swears to himself that the fool inside him will not be in charge of steering the outcome that involves you. And as he takes a washcloth and some Dove soap to your palms, he promises to you he’ll never give you another reason to silence the ugly snort he fell in love with.

Fin.

To everyone who requested a part 2: @whatthefuckkrichard @basic-fragment @toobsessedsstuff @nightshade7117 @banannie25

A/N: This series has quickly turned into a sort of love note to the album Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins (1995). Give it a listen; it’s so rich and poetic and fit for everyone’s tastes. And, it’s only 28 songs! Anywho, feedback is strongly appreciated. I tried to keep a similar style of narrative as the previous one but struggled to come up with something both realistic and satisfying. Hope I did it justice.

[naesoonghonors]

Persepolis, remember where -we- women used to be

Persepolis

“Since then, this old and great civilization has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth. This is why writing Persepolis was so important to me. I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists. I also don’t want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten. One can forgive but one should never forget. “ - Marjane Satrapi

This movie admittedly made me cry. What can I say besides I’m a sap for the concept of change and being unable to return to the way it was before. There is a lot that can be sad about this film. There is biting commentary on class and race throughout. Just due to time constraints I really will not be able to discuss it all. So please watch the movie and read the book. It will be worth it. Regardless, In this autobiographical flick we follow Marjane Satrapi through her childhood and early adult years in Iran during and after the Islamic Revolution.

For now skipping straight to post Islamic revolution, Marjane is forced into a much more restrictive societal role. This is obvious visually with the forcing of the hijab on all women. Even those not Islamic or not believing in the tradition is not spared. This is done for the sake of the good men of the country. So they are not distracted by the women’s bodies. This completely ignoring the fact that the men’s fashion of the time was pants so tight you could see their underwear. While fighting with a professor about this same topic Marjane has a bit of a shocking wake up moments where she finally confronts how much bullshit she has been put through. She is proud to be Iranian. It is the country her family has fought and died for. But the country has turned to a bit of a dictatorship. In her class they take the time to have all of the students sit around and cut the Shahs face and name out of their history books. Hoping to erase the past, perhaps have their country forget about it and more easily submit to their wills. As a woman Marjane is now expected to dress ‘virtuous’. This boils down to nothing being visible in public sans hands and face. And Marjane complies. So one would think that she would be a good woman and would be safe from evil sinful eyes. Wrong, of course. For the audacity she has to be seen in public men seen to throw terrible threats at her with no regard. So even playing by the rule’s women cannot win this game. That is because it is not actually about the attire. It is a symbol of an ideology being forced on the women of a country. Women are depicted as taking them off as soon as they get into their apartments. This is also where they are able to speak freely, mostly of revolution.

Marjane does however learn some rules of the society she has been thrusted into and how to play to win. When women threaten her for dressing like a slut, she breaks down in tears in order to avoid their wrath. This is very out of character for Marjane from my perspective. Never before has she been scared to say what she thinks or wants. So she must fall back on these more womanly tactics. Even so. most of the enforcement of this comes from other women in her community. It begins in schools, the female teacher stating something like ‘To cover is virtuous. Veil is freedom. Those who reveal indulge in sin. Veil honors soldiers.’Perhaps using the older women’s internalized sexism or maybe just looking like more trouble than its worth the women move along. As clever as it was problems of gender, race, or sexuality are society and systematic problems not the product of individual interaction. When she appears in a public place to meet with her boyfriend she is generally hassled/ harassed by man also in the park. Cops appear in the vicinity and Marjane knows if she does not act quickly, she will be in trouble for her, well I guess her existence in general. So she quickly whips up some tears and cry sot the cops about how that man made inappropriate and lewd comments about her. So the man is quickly punished and beaten. This public shaming is simply a product of cops general feeling of superiority and need to protect a weak woman. Because otherwise they are weak sinful women. That is not to imply that women somehow have an easier life. It is more that they are just denied certain rights and gain more restrictions. As frantically explained by Grandma Marjane needs to be more careful with cops. If she gets in trouble, she could also wind up worse than just dead. That is because it is illegal to kill a virgin. In order to get around this it is normal for cops to rape women and then execute them. So women are not even protected. It is no wonder her parents wanted her to leave for Paris for a few years. One wrong move could get her locked up like her uncle.

The hypocrisy can also be highlighted later in the film when Marjane is pulled over by cops for running because it makes her butt jiggle. To which she tells then to stop looking at her ass. She is covered head to tow in black cloth. Truly what else is she supposed to do. Government issued orders to suppress female sexuality and freedom is not a trend that has halted even in the modern day. Even in America the land of the free there is a need to claw rights out of the hands of lawmakers holding then back for selfish gain. Humans have this very gross ability to allow things to happen when they view someone or something as lesser than them. Women being lower class citizens makes it okay to talk to them like children or publicly punish them for not wearing their scarf correctly. Because dehumanizing is exactly what that is. They would rather her butt no shake as opposed to her arrive at school in time for her education. Some cops, professors, and men of power refuse to look her in the eye specifically because she is a woman. How can women get anything done if they cannot even enter and equal conversation with a cop. A cop is meant to be a protector but Marjane is in much more danger being anywhere by them.

What is really important abut this movie is Grandma. She is genuinely the coolest. She is quick on her feet, and ready to play the game, or game the system while also being aware of the larger nature of the situation. Grandma can work to help keep her family safe and instill hope in those around her. And the most touching thing is as Marjane grows she gets her grandmothers beauty mark. Grandma passing down her resilience and spirit is possibly what kept Marjane alive in Paris when she was homeless. People are simply a web of interconnected identities and ideologies wearing a skin suit. If all the young men and women can come together in secret speak easies then clearly the government is not representing the true will of its people. Like grandma all one can do to survive is to keep moving forward and keeping hope. She is a demonstration of how a divorcing of concepts like age and religiosity/ fanaticism can help mentor a better next generation. Women need to be free to divorce their husbands, make their own way in the world, and feel able to contribute to the government and community around them. For a girl to grow up is scary, but we do not have to face the revolution in our times alone.

I feel as though i have not done this movie justice. If you have the time please watch through it yourself. All of these issues are beautifully intertwined and are much better enjoyed in their complete context. So please find a copy of this and check it out.

[jamaisjoons]

Hey so I just wanted to give my own little insight on the whole virginity thing. So sorry if this sounds weird. But to me loosing your virginity means being penetrated down there for the first time, which is why I like to say I lost my virginity to myself the first time I masturbated, cause at this point in this society I don’t think I’ll find a man that’s worth me “loosing my virginity” to. And to be honest it’s just a concept made by society, if you lose it you loose it if not oh well🤷🏽‍♀️

It doesn’t sound weird at all!! Honestly ‘virginity’ is a stupid concept because like,,,, not everyone can have penetrative sex anyway??? So like what happens to them?? And if you consider that your first time, then fuck it, that’s your first time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is gonna sound wild but the first time I had penetrative sex it was anal (WE DIDNT HAVE A CONDOM AND I WAS HORNY AND ALSO I LIKE ANAL PLAY SO I THOUGHT WHY NOT) like,,, if we go by traditional sense that means I didn’t lose my ‘virginity’ then because it wasn’t vaginal penetration - but that’s bullshit because I did have sex yaknow?

So yeah, the entire concept behind it is fucking stupid and should be burned to the ground. I say as I have two wips based on ‘virgin’ sex but it’s okay, its not like the traditional way it’s based more on first times and learning how to have sex and explore your sexual interests 🥴🥴

[crystalelemental]

First off to be clear, I don't think Kaga is close to perfect when it comes to writing female characters. That being said, there were plenty of strong women in his games such as Brigid who is Kaga's favorite character in Jugdral. Many of the worst moments in SOV like Alm's lack of flaws, the sacrificed witches, the infamous Celica trusting Jedah scene, & such came from modern IS & were NOT in Gaiden.

I’m not surprised to hear that, because Brigid is really good, hilariously she’s especially good in Thracia.  Thracia actually has done the best of the two games of his I’ve played.  But Genealogy...really didn’t do that well overall.  Most of them barely got shit.  The main female leads, Deirdre and Julia, are somehow the least important members of the cast, despite having so much of the plot centered on them.  They barely speak.  Sure, he did pretty alright with some of the female side characters who don’t get a lot of focus, but is that doing well with female characters when the prominent ones are treated as plot devices more than people?

SoV is far from perfect, but without knowing what Gaiden’s like, I can’t necessarily make the comparison effectively.  What I can say is:

I don’t think Alm lacks for flaws, but I do think the game heavily favors his type of approach, and tend to paint him as the one who’s in the right between him and Celica.  Which is bullshit.  Also, male MU was a big thing at the time.  Awakening worked well and Tharja was super popular, so I’d bet they believed male lead had to be right all the time and super good, and also there must be a female character who is super devoted to them above all else.  Hence, Faye.

The witches as a concept are only a problem because of the all female thing.  It’s basically a type of “virgin sacrifice” type deal, and sets up the flag for Rinea’s fate.  It really doesn’t do great, but it’s as simple as “any sacrifice counts” to fix.  They didn’t though, so it’s still not great, especially when you changed it to that.

Celica trusting Jedah...man, I actually agree with Celica on that.  It’s in the same vein as Eirika trusting Lyon; what are you going to do, defy them outright and risk ruining everything?  Jedah didn’t exactly present a lie to her.  The dragons are deteriorating, and everything he said about the land falling to ruin is the entire motivation behind her setting out in the first place.  The land was dying, she set out to find Mila to see what the hell was happening, and found out that Mila wasn’t there.  Now Jedah shows up, tells her that the gods’ absence and deterioration results in this, and that if they don’t do something to sustain the last living god, the continent will wither and die. Not to mention, Jedah is basically the pope of the other half of your religion.  As a devotee to Mila, are you really going to be that severely skeptical of Duma’s pope?  Probably not.  Dude probably knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the gods, and what he’s saying is reflected in what’s happening to Valentia, and matches up with the entire reason she started her quest.  We, the audience, know he’s not trustworthy.  Initially, Celica has no reason to believe that he’s not also trying to find a way to save the gods.  If self-sacrifice would do it, of course she would.  That’s the entire reason she left.

My point being, neither is going to be perfect, but I prefer what the more recent games are doing to what the really old games are doing.  Characters like Eirika and Celica get a lot of shit, but honestly I find them perfectly believable and good characters, with serious flaws.  I think a lot of times, they get sandbagged because their male counterpart is always considered the best thing ever, and is never, ever wrong about anything, so them being more believably human stands out as a flaw compared to their god-tier male counterparts.  Which...is that a flaw of the character, the writing, or player perceptions saying they’re not being done well?  What counts as meeting the expectation?  We need an older female character, who’s also a villain, who has to be self-motivated, but her motivations have to be not about her beauty or romance or anything, but the villains can’t be just evil for evil’s sake, etc etc etc.  I’m not immune to this either.  There are things I’d like to see that don’t exist in the series, and think would improve it if they did it.  But I also think female characters are way more likely to be put under this type of scrutiny as “badly written” than are their male counterparts.  Look no further than how fans perceive Ephraim and Micaiah if you want proof of how differently characters get analyzed based on gender alone.

[seyaryminamoto]

Good day talented writer! Another anon dropping by. You mainly write Azula as virgin while Sokka has experiences, good&bad, my question is if it would hold any importance for him if Azula would've been no virgin? In The Reason or in Gladiator. For example if she would engage and get involved with someone to get over him? As a girl this this girl/boy chastity thing annoys me0-o. And while we're at it: Did Ozai get involved with anyone after Ursa's disappereance? Thank you and have a nice day!

Alright, that’s a complicated question to answer, to a fault, for an array of reasons. The answer got WAY too long so… under the cut:

First off, I’ll say Azula is generally a virgin in my stories because canon outright established her as what I like to call a social inept :’D the only romantic interaction she has with anyone, genuinely romantic, is with Chan. And while she successfully manages to sway him briefly, she scares him away moments afterwards. Her conversation with Ty Lee establishes that that’s the general way boys react to her, therefore, she has very little experience in the field of romance.

Meanwhile, Sokka is the entire opposite of that. He’s had at least two relationships in canon, he tries to get into another one with a really unpleasant girl in the Lost Adventures, girls have crushes on him everywhere he goes… therefore, he’s established by canon as someone who is a thousand times more successful in terms of relationships than Azula.

This, then, is part of the characters and, if you ask me, these traits should be preserved in any depictions of them in any canon-based settings. As much as I understand the feeling of unfairness elicited by this unbalanced situation between them, it’s not something I established myself, but something established by core concepts of their characters.

Now then, on to the actual question. Due to Azula’s circumstances in Gladiator, she wasn’t very likely not to be a virgin when she and Sokka meet. If she hadn’t been one, at best it would have meant she had carried out a secret relationship with someone else before Sokka… at worst, she might have been a victim to sexual assault of some sort, an idea that really makes me sick to my stomach and so, for my peace of mind, let’s stick to the first thing. At any rate, Sokka wouldn’t have been likely to resent her for having previous relationships, though he would have probably felt insecure if she truly had held another secret relationship with someone else… not because he would have been angry that she wasn’t “pure and untainted” or any such bullshit, but because he already has a million reasons to fear he’s not good enough for her, and he might have thought any past relationship she’s had might have been with someone better, or at least less inconvenient for her, than him. So he wouldn’t hold it against her, he’d hold it against himself instead because of his frequent insecurities.

Now, of course, Sokka has shown some jealousy in some really silly ways, such as being outraged that Azula had a crush on Zhao when she was a little girl xD but that was always meant to be a humorous thing, since he has no idea what she’d see in him, and he feels the same way about her claim that Jet was handsome. Now, Chan is her only actual romantic experience (just like in canon) before Sokka in Gladiator, and Sokka’s reaction to discovering this is NOT along the lines of “OMG HOW COULD YOU HAVE HAD YOUR FIRST KISS WITH SOMEONE ELSE!” Instead it’s, and I quote directly from chapter 115:

“I can’t think of anything I’ve not told you, honestly. You even know about my first kiss now, so I’d say you know all that needs to be known…” said Azula, shrugging.

“Uh, well, I know what happened but I still don’t know who it was, now I think of it” said Sokka, tapping his chin and eyeing Azula with curiosity “Anyone I knew, by any chance?”

“Eh… no” said Azula, with a grimace “But you know of him. It was… the same jerk I was supposed to marry ages ago”

“Wait, what?!” Sokka asked, his eyes widening as Azula sighed.

“Okay, so now you do know all there was to know about that” she said, with a smirk, as she approached the dresser and closet where Sokka kept his armor and weapons “It’s time to get ready for training, Sokka”

“B-but then… that’s why you didn’t want to marry him, isn’t it?” Sokka asked, blinking blankly “The prick wouldn’t dominate the world with you, so…”

“Yes, yes, well, that’s neither here nor there” said Azula, approaching him with one of his blue shirts in her hand “Come on. Get dressed”

“I’m very sorry you kissed that guy” said Sokka, as she threw the shirt over his shoulders “You certainly deserved better”

As you can see, his reaction isn’t that of a jealous madman, but instead he’s very surprised that the guy she was engaged to when she first hired him was her first kiss. And then he’s sorry she gave her first kiss to him, since he knows all too well that she wanted nothing to do with that guy. He believes she deserved better.

While none of this really may seem to hold a torch to the stuff Azula has to wrap her mind about regarding Sokka’s past “partners” (if they can really be called that, most of them being forced one-night-stands…), I’d like to think that this reaction of Sokka’s would apply just as well in a world where Azula, theoretically, had other romantic partners before him.

Now, though, the second thing you bring up… IF Azula had gotten involved with other people to get over Sokka? In either Gladiator or The Reason?

I’m not sure if you mean Azula finding another love interest halfway through Gladiator Part 1, back when she was sure things between her and Sokka would never work, or if you’re asking about a hypothetical breakup at some point in the future. Likewise, if Azula had found someone else halfway through the Reason because Sokka still had Suki? Or past a future, potential breakup too?

Well, I’ll try to address it all, in any case… Gladiator Azula wouldn’t be likely to find someone else just to get over Sokka, I’d hope the way I’ve depicted Fire Nation society by now should show that engaging in sex out of wedlock is a very risky thing for women to do (Ty Lee’s situation serves as the better example of the consequences of that). Azula only went for it with Sokka because their partnership started to take an unexpected turn and, as they grew to understand each other better, they fell in love. She didn’t love him from the get-go, that’s true, but once she stopped being so impulsive in the earlier chapters of the story, she realized he was “right” to put a stop to their relationship before it really begun because of the potential nefarious consequences she could have faced if they were caught together. So they even struck the deal about not trying to be anything other than a gladiator and a sponsor, and why? Because she wasn’t ready to make a decision that could put her entire future in jeopardy. And if she wasn’t ready to make it with Sokka, she wouldn’t have been likely to make it with anyone else.

Therefore, if in the wider “will-they-won’t-they” part of the story, Azula wouldn’t have risked losing her virginity to the man she was developing feelings for, I don’t think she would have done it for someone casually, just for a fling to “get over Sokka”. She wouldn’t have risked reaching a future marriage without being a virgin because of the repressive way her society treats women.

But alas, in the off-case that somehow she had wanted to do this… Sokka wouldn’t have been pleased for it, but he wouldn’t have been outraged or angry either, since, like I said before, he has more than enough doubts about being good enough for Azula as he is. A glimpse at Azula’s birthday arc should probably help further with showing he wouldn’t have acted like some irrational jealous idiot when he thought he had no right to be one, if she had chosen to be with someone other than him. This time, chapter 69:

“I mean… I kind of had taken for granted that it was going to be the two of us, always. I had forgotten that… that you’ve got a lot of responsibilities and pressures and expectations to uphold. And… I don’t mean to get in the way of that by being a selfish prick. I’ve been selfish when it comes to you enough times by now, I think, so… so I won’t be anymore. I'm… I’m not going to tell you not to marry someone. But… I’m also not going to tell you to get married.”

“Then what are you trying to tell me?” asked Azula, looking at him with mild despair, her hand gripping his leg a little tighter than intended.

“I… I guess I’m saying…” said Sokka, sighing. “That I’ll accept whatever choice you make… I’ll accept whatever man you choose, so long as I know you’ll be happy with him. If you can guarantee you will choose whatever makes you happiest, then I’ll be… I’ll be happy too. That's… that’s all I dare ask of you.”

See? If he had thought there was someone better for her, if he had seen her with someone else, he would have absolutely backed off. Would his heart have broken? Sure! But he wouldn’t have played the territorial dumbass pretending he was entitled to her or anything as gross as that if she had started another relationship, whether a serious one or not.

The same applies to The Reason. Frankly, if she had found someone else halfway through the story, Sokka would have likely stayed with Suki and probably done his best to remain cordial with Azula and her new love interest if possible. He probably would have even tried to encourage Azula in her new relationship, because as you may recall, things between them in the Reason were more than a bit problematic, as he was still with Suki :’D he might have hoped this new love interest of Azula’s would be good for her. And of course, if the relationship was shortlived he would have worried she might be hurt for it, but if it had lasted he would have done his best to be supportive of her, even if on the back of his mind he would have likely always wondered what might have happened if he had tried to be with Azula for real.

And now, in the scenario of “if they break up after their relationship begun”, which is honestly something I scarcely want to even ponder… I’m not sure, frankly, that Azula’s reaction to losing a relationship as valuable and extraordinary as the one she’s had with Sokka in either of these stories would be “I gotta get it on with someone else to get over him”. I know that’s the popular trend in general in fanfiction these days, especially popular with multishippers who like to sprinkle their other interests in fics that are meant to be about one specific couple… but it’s not the road I generally take with stories. It’s not the one I took in my original story when I did break up the main couple (to clarify, there was a love triangle there, and the guy who had been pining after the girl makes a move after she breaks up with the one she loved. She rejects him right away because she’s in no place to have relationships as she is), and I really don’t think I’d want to take it with Sokka and Azula either.

Again, that being said, I don’t think Sokka would hold it against Azula if she ever decided to move on and try her luck in love with new people. If things between them don’t work out, the above quote applies again: he would want her to be happy. If he couldn’t be the one to make her happy, even if he wanted to be, then he’ll be content if she finds that happiness with someone else, in whatever form it might be.

Oof, so that was a lot of explanations, huh? :’D aaanyways, I do want to clarify, I understand the discomfort caused by stories and situations where men are “experienced” and women are meant to be pure and virginal and innocent, because yeah, it’s not fair. It’s stupid that men are heroes for having sex with anyone who’ll have them but women are disgusting if they engage in the same behavior. I agree 100% on that account. Nevertheless, I tend to write both Azula and Sokka as characters who are seeking a deeper emotional connection than just a quick release. If Sokka had no canon relationships, he would have been every bit as much of a virgin in The Reason as Azula was. Now, in Gladiator I had the possibility of keeping him a virgin: I didn’t because on one hand, his situation as a gladiator in Hui Yi enabled me to portray how dark and dreadful things can be for slaves in the lowest levels of the Fire Nation… and on the other hand, what happened between him and June was meant to prove exactly why he can’t have random flings: it doesn’t work for him. It doesn’t cut it. It’s pointless because the one person he wants to be with is Azula. He ended up feeling WORSE after it, not better, despite he was doing it to get over her, exactly as you described it. Therefore, he never even tried again. He has no other flings or one-night-stands after June because it’s useless and he feels worse for it.

At any rate, if you’re bothered by the numerical imbalance of romantic or sexual partners Sokka and Azula have had in those two stories… then I suggest you check out my Modern AU story, It Had To Be You. While I kept Azula as a virgin anyways, because it fit her personal backstory in that AU, she is part of the “popular kids” in school, while Sokka is one of the “nerds”. Azula has had a few love interests in the past, she even recounts the story of her first kiss to Sokka, even if it went even worse than it did in canon… but she was popular, sociable and had a lot more experience in the fields of dating and romance than Sokka did. Sokka’s only kiss before the story begins is also recounted in the story: it was no kiss, it was Aang giving him CPR after he drowned at the beach :’) Therefore, while Azula was still a virgin, she’s the experienced one in terms of romance in that particular story, and Sokka instead is clueless while she teaches him the ropes, once things get started between them.

Another story of mine where I flipped things around (and this might even suit your interests better?) is The White Lotus International Games, where Sokka breaks up with Suki but doesn’t have any rebound romances. He’s Azula’s partner in the White Lotus, they’re both agents for the Order there. And while this is only referenced rather than shown outright, Azula has had many casual flings through their travels while Sokka remains completely chaste and hasn’t had any relationships at all after Suki, especially because he starts developing feelings for his partner that he doesn’t act on (it’s literally Azula who makes the first move). He doesn’t judge her in the least for her flings, she even teases him sometimes and tells him he should have had one-night stands of his own at one point:

“You should have done what I did, though. You didn’t have to stay dry for so long.”

“I didn’t really feel like doing anything else,” said Sokka, shrugging. “And while there might be something fun to having one-night-stands, they’re really not my thing as they were yours, you know.”

“Your loss,” said Azula, smirking.

So, there we go :’) in this particular story, Azula has definitely slept with more people than Sokka xD and Sokka doesn’t hold it against her AT ALL, it doesn’t even occur to him to do so. So, if that’s what you were hoping for in terms of balancing their personal dating histories better, then I suggest you check it out.

Now, as for your last question… did Ozai look for other lovers after Ursa was gone? I’ve answered it before, and Gladiator’s official stance on the matter is an absolute, resolute, undoubtable NOPE. Ozai has very few redeeming qualities as things stand, making him pine for his wife hopelessly for the rest of his life seemed just right to me. Turning him into a womanizer, giving him a harem…? Some people like doing that: I, personally, don’t see the appeal. Ozai is a thousand times more interesting a character with a handful of weaknesses, and his doomed romance with his wife certainly gives the character an interesting dimension that warrants being explored (and I shall certainly explore it further in the story’s future).

Now, as a final addendum, I’d like to say… that original story I mentioned up there? The one with the love triangle? It actually turned into a bit of a love square. Another girl fell in love with the guy who gets rejected, but he’s still hung up on the girl he likes even if it’s unrequited and always will be. He doesn’t move on for AGES and dates absolutely no one for years. Meanwhile, the girl who likes him assumes he’ll never really see her that way, for obvious reasons… and she has about a thousand flings and short-lived relationships while trying to move on from her crush on the guy, who has become her best friend at that point. She often tells him about her experiences and the problems in her dating life, and he always listens, even admires her for it, never judges her for what she does and is 100% supportive of her living her life however she pleases. They’re well into their twenties when they start a relationship of their own: by that point, this guy has only kissed one girl in his entire life and got rejected. Meanwhile, the girl has had tons of relationships. Total different proportions from the stereotypical way relationships are often presented in media, I’d hope… and yet the guy is not turned off by it in the least. He doesn’t find it disgusting, doesn’t think she’s amoral, doesn’t think she’s any lesser for having lived her life in a completely different way than he did.

And while this has nothing to do with how I write stories set in the Avatarverse, it does have something to do with how I write relationships. Like I said above, I hate the tendency of showing men as experienced and women as sluts. I’m tired of it just as much as you are, which results in certain “trope inversions”, you could say, as the one I pulled in what I just explained of my original story. I don’t usually pull it with Sokka and Azula for the reasons I mentioned at the very start of the post (nevertheless, It Had To Be You and The White Lotus International Games INTENTIONALLY switch things around for balance and variety), but it doesn’t mean that I’m on the bandwagon vouching for female purity and male experience. Absolutely not. Part of Gladiator’s eventual purpose is to have Azula stand up against all those expectations and prove her worth goes far and beyond the ridiculous trappings society imposed on her just for being a woman, even if she’s had to abide by those trappings for a very long time (and even then she has defied them subtly, despite it’s not easy and it’s very dangerous, even for someone as powerful as she is).

Aaaand that was really long. I think I’ll shut up now unless you have any follow-up questions :’D Have a nice day too!

[itsdaggerandsheath]

A Discussion of Purity Culture (Part 1)

               TW: Mild mentions of sexual abuse/rape

This is gonna be a long one so buckle up.

So, for those of you who don’t know (which is most of you), I am a Christian. Now, this doesn’t just mean that I grew up in a Christian family that brought me to church every week as a child; I am now an adult, and I still very much worship the Lord and believe in (most of) the Gospel. Yet, as you can tell by my blogs and my Instagram page, I also heavily believe in comprehensive sex education. Now, I’m sure some of you have met plenty of Christians who are sexually active and who believe in instilling good sex education as well, and I hope you have met people like this because the Christians that don’t believe in good sex education (among various other things) make the rest of us look like idiots. Which is why the rest of you are probably shocked that someone who self-identifies as a Christian woman wants to pursue a career in sex education. The two of them definitely seem to contradict.

               While I don’t necessarily feel the need to defend myself to any of you as I am happy with being both a believer in Christ and in comprehensive sex education, I do realize that to those of you who are shocked at me revealing this about myself, an explanation would be…intriguing to you. So, I will explain how I maintain a certain level of homeostasis between my Christian beliefs and my beliefs on sexuality…in Part 2. For now, though, I simply want to tell you all the story of my experience with purity culture thus far so I can catch you all up to speed. Then, in Part 2, I’ll tell you all what I’m doing to try and overcome it.

               I suppose that I should probably explain what exactly “purity culture” is for those of you who may not know. Purity culture stems from the group of people (primarily Christians in America, but many other religions share in this culture as well) that believe that sex should only be for a heterosexual married couple. They believe that if you have sex before marriage you are, well, “impure” in some way. You’re tarnished. Your worth as a human being goes down. No one will want to be with you if you’ve already been sexual with someone else. “No one wants to chew gum that’s already been chewed,” is a popular one that I’ve heard. They worship the concept of virginity, and believe that your virginity is a physical state of being that should only be taken away from you by your spouse, and your spouse is then the only person you should have sex with for the rest of your life.

               Now, here’s the thing: if you legitimately want to wait until you’re married or in love to have sex, and it’s a choice that you are making for yourself that no one else is making for you, that’s fine! That’s totally valid. Abstinence is always an option, but it shouldn’t be forced upon anyone. I for one always knew that I wanted to wait until I was in love to have sex for the first time, which I did, but I knew from a very young age that I was not going to wait until marriage – and I didn’t.

               Let me explain to you the kind of church environment I grew up in. For the most part, it really wasn’t that conservative. You didn’t have to dress up or be “proper” in any way; every church I’ve ever been to mostly consisted of people wearing T-shirts and jeans, maybe some of the women wearing a casual sundress or something like that, but everyone usually wore their typical, casual, everyday wear. And there was a lot of diversity too! Lots of different skin colors, single people, people in relationships, married people with children and married people with no children; people of all ages and careers and positions in life. Hell, I even was allowed to be on my current church’s worship team as a singer, and I had bright blue hair at the time. I have tattoos and piercings and am still a little bit emo, but my pastor said, “Come as you are!” which is something that I still to this day think is really beautiful and really important.

               But it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine. Some things just didn’t quite make sense. For example, my church has stated that, while people in the LGBTQ+ community are welcome inside our church at any time, they don’t “agree with or promote the lifestyle”. If you’ve had an abortion, you won’t be shunned or kicked out or anything like that – you’ll still be welcomed with open arms, but the church won’t “agree with the choice you made”. I could give several more examples, but I think you get the picture. Another thing that my church emphasizes is remaining abstinent until marriage, which is what I’ll be focusing on here. And man, my pastor is one of the kindest, most genuinely good-hearted people I’ve ever met in my entire life. But that almost makes the things that he and I disagree on suck that much more.

               Let’s talk about my childhood first. In Part 1 of my “An Introduction to Sex” series, I mentioned that my mom openly answered any questions that I had about sex as a child, but marriage was always emphasized. There was a time where I thought it was illegal to live together before marriage, and the idea of having children outside of marriage seemed biologically impossible. Then, when one of my cousins was born out of wedlock, I remember being wildly confused as to how it possibly could have happened. A couple years later, my dad and my would-be-stepmom moved in together years before they ended up getting married; and then, my own mother became pregnant out of wedlock by a man who is no longer in our lives. I love my little brother more than I love life itself; this now eight-year-old boy is the most important and precious thing in my life, but boy did he make a hypocrite out of my mother for a little while.

               As I got older, even after my brother had been born, my mother continued to urge me to wait until marriage to have sex, in hopes that I would avoid “making the same mistakes she did”. When I first started dating my current partner, I remember being in the car with my mom when she told me this. She also told me that the first time you have sex it hurts, and she told me that males get “blue balls” when they’re horny, and “once you start you can’t stop because it hurts them”. To this day I still wonder, was she just trying to manipulate me into staying abstinent, or did she really believe that? If she did really believe it, what did it say about the men she’d been with in the past? Was she ever forced to do something sexually that she wasn’t comfortable with because some loser guy had told her she’d given him blue balls? Did my own father ever do that to her?

               Let’s not think about that right now.

               As I said before, while I was never planning on waiting for marriage, I did want to wait for love. Which I did. I fell in love with my current partner hard and fast almost three years ago. Part of me wishes that I could go back; if I’d known that “losing your virginity” is not the huge, life-changing event that I’d been raised to believe it was, I wouldn’t have been nearly as nervous. I remember looking at myself in the mirror, balancing myself against the sink in my partner’s bathroom as he told his mom we were going out for ice cream, which is not what we were going out to do, if you catch my drift. I stood against the sink shaking with nervous excitement. It’s not that I wasn’t ready, I was – and if I wasn’t, I would have had no problem telling my partner that. But I thought that I would wake up the next morning different. I thought that this was going to change my life. I thought I was going to be a new person when this was all said and done. So, I stood against the sink and tried to memorize every line and freckle on my face, as if I wouldn’t be looking at the same face in the mirror the next morning.

               I woke up the next morning to find that nothing had changed.

               I remember wondering if we had had sex wrong, because I was convinced that I was supposed to be different in some way because of everything that I’d been told about “losing your virginity” all my life. I wasn’t sore. I really didn’t feel any different. I certainly didn’t look different. I didn’t have a “glow” to me. I thought my mom would be able to tell just by looking at me, or that my fellow churchgoers would know. I walked into the church early that morning for practice as I was still on the worship team at the time and was almost stunned that none of them had figured it out.

               This was one of the first big realizations I had in realizing that most of what I’d been told about sex growing up was bullshit.

               My partner and I really hadn’t been dating for that long, and we were still getting to know each other. My partner didn’t grow up going to church, but he saw that my faith was important to me and wanted to understand better, so he asked if he could come to a service just to see what it was like. I of course said yes, and we planned a Sunday for him to come with me and my family.

               The first time he ever came to church with me, the sermon was about abstinence.

               My pastor had never delivered a sermon on abstinence before. It of course just so happened to be when I brought my first serious relationship to church for the first time. I never wanted to crawl in a hole and die as much as I did that day.

               Now, my pastor actually made a lot of good points, as the sermon wasn’t just on abstinence, but rather sex in general. He said a lot about how we need to end sexual abuse and how men in the church need to stop treating women like objects and how big of a problem human trafficking is about the world – I totally agree with all of that, as I’m sure you all do too. But the underlying message was abstinence. If everyone remained abstinent until marriage, all of those problems would disappear! Fair point (kind of) but very unrealistic. And what about marital rape? What about people who don’t want to get married?

               My pastor has never claimed to be right all the time, nor has he ever claimed to have all the answers, which I appreciate about him. And while I don’t think he was entirely correct in delivering this sermon, I can’t say it didn’t have an impact on me. All I wanted was to get out of there and profusely apologize to my partner that I’d dragged into this. When we finally did get out, I remember feeling sick to my stomach with guilt – but not guilt over the fact that I’d become sexually active when it was supposedly “unholy” to do so, quite the contrary: I felt guilty for not feeling guilty about having sex. Does that make sense? I loved my new sex life! My mom always said that she felt ashamed that she’d had sex before marriage; I didn’t feel ashamed. But I felt like there was something wrong with me, that I should have felt guilty, but didn’t. I felt guilty for not feeling guilty, which was one of the most fucked up emotions you can have about something I know now I’m supposed to enjoy.

               Did you know that only 3% of Americans wait until marriage to have sex? That is, assuming everyone in that 3% is telling the truth. This means that, statistically, out of the 200 people in the church that day, only 6 of them had waited until marriage to have sex. That’s only three couples.

               My pastor never delivered a sermon on sex again. It was not received well by those in the congregation who had had children out of wedlock or thought that the intention of the sermon was to make people feel guilty – which my pastor claims it wasn’t and hey, maybe that really wasn’t his intention, but I’m not surprised that it made a lot of people feel guilty. Then a teenage couple in the congregation got pregnant a few months later, and I’m not judging them (and neither did anyone in my church as most of the people who attend are very nice), but it did sort of drive the nail that much further into the coffin.

               My partner and I managed to brush off the embarrassment of the abstinence sermon…eventually. It did take him several months to every come to church with me again, and can you blame him? I’m surprised he ever came again at all. Anyway, as I continued to be sexually active, I decided that it would be a good idea to get on birth control to help with pregnancy prevention. My mother was so engulfed with purity culture though, I was afraid that she’d say no or even prevent me from seeing my partner (I was still a minor at the time) if she were to find out that I was having sex.

               So, I decided to ask my atheist dad and stepmom for help.

               They were lovely, and a great help! They talked to me, talked to my mom, and with their help, I was able to muster up the courage to ask my mom if I could get on birth control, which, to my great surprise, she said yes.

               After getting the prescription, my mom sat down with me and had a long talk with me about how, even if she and I don’t necessarily agree on everything, she just wanted me to talk to her and be open and honest with her. She told me that if I’d asked her about birth control even without the help of my dad and stepmom, she’d have said yes. She revealed to me that she’d taken birth control when she was my age too (gee, that would’ve been nice to know) and said if I had any questions about it, I could always ask he

               Wow! What a great reaction! I remember at the time thinking that this was such a cool thing for my mom to say to me. Surely, everything from then on out was fine and I was able to kind of get out of the purity culture world, right?

               Nope.

               See, I forgot to mention – even though my mom didn’t wait for marriage with my dad or her dumbass ex that became the father of my half-brother…she and my stepdad did wait until marriage. Which doesn’t make sense because neither of them were “virgins” because they’d already been married before. They claimed that they were simply “doing things in the right order” by not having sex until the wedding night and not moving in together until after the honeymoon. So now my mom tries her absolute hardest to bring up the fact that by doing so, she was being a good influence on her children and hopes that we would follow in her footsteps and wait for marriage.

               So, the fact that I didn’t do this was seen as an act of rebellion. Despite my mom telling me she just wanted me to talk to her, she takes every opportunity to rub it in my face that I’m “not a virgin” anymore.

               Examples? Well, a couple years ago, a few months after I’d first started taking a new birth control pill, I’d started bleeding long before I was supposed to get my period. I knew that it was probably my body just having a reaction from being on a new pill, but I went to the immediate care just in case. I’d called my mom because she was at work and couldn’t come with me – but by this time I was eighteen and could go by myself, I just figured I’d call her and tell her what was up because she said I could talk to her, remember? At first, she was very reassuring because she knew I was nervous, saying, “You’ll be okay, don’t worry. Just go to the front desk and tell them what’s going on – they have our insurance on file, there shouldn’t be a copay. I’m sure you have nothing to worry about, thank you for calling to let me know.”

               That was a decent thing of her to say, right? Then she said more.

               “They might have to do a pelvic exam, but I’m sure you’ll be fine. It might be a little uncomfortable, but it shouldn’t hurt because you’re not a virgin.”

               Thanks, Mom.

               But the most recent fiasco was icing on the cake. It went a little something like this: quarantine has been very hard on me and my family. My little brother doesn’t understand his E-learning and throws temper tantrums when he’s upset, and sometimes my mom will throw a temper tantrum right back. I had my own school work to do as I’m a university student and my school sent us all home, so I had to move back in with my parents and do my classes online at the dining room table. But it’s a little hard to get work done when I can hear my mom and brother screaming at each other downstairs, and it’s even worse when my stepdad joins in. And to top it all off, an old friend of mine was unexpectedly killed in a car accident, and due to the Covid-19 guidelines, I couldn’t go to her funeral.

               My partner has an apartment a state over near his university that is not the school’s property, so he didn’t have to move out of it, but he came back to our hometown to stay with his parents. He did this to be with his family during this weird and difficult time, but also to be near to me in the event of an emergency and also so we could have social distancing dates. However, as time went on, he came to realize that he left some things in that apartment that he needed or would have been useful to have (like food, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, etc.) and he pondered crossing the state boarder to go and get everything.

               Unfortunately for him, no one in his family was willing to help him with this endeavor, so once it was safe and legal to cross state boarders in our area, I offered to go with him (we were very careful, we wore masks and washed our hands frequently, and once we were in the apartment, we didn’t’ leave).

               Now, I’d been to this apartment in the past. Whenever my partner and I felt the need to get away from school, our families, whatever it may be, this tiny apartment in the city was a haven for us to get away from it all. However, my mom hates it when I go to the apartment with him and stay the night because, in her eyes, sleeping with someone (even if it doesn’t involve sex, just sleeping next to your unmarried partner in general) is immoral. So, I don’t stay the night with my partner very often just so I don’t have to hear my mom bitch about it. But this time, I really needed to get away from everything going on in my house and my life, and my partner and I knew that moving the things out of his apartment would take time, so it just made sense to stay the night anyway.

               The thing is, I did tell my mom that he and I were going to stay in the apartment overnight. I believe my exact words were, “We’re gonna go stay in the apartment tonight”.

               This was a Friday, so we went to the apartment, packed up what we wanted to pack up, then came home on Saturday. Rather than going home, I went with my boyfriend to his family home in our hometown and helped him unpack, then spent the rest of the day with him.

               At ten o’clock Saturday night, I received the following text from my mom (apart from eliminating mine, my sister and my partner’s names for privacy reasons, this is verbatim what she said):

               “Hi babe. Since I didn’t see you all day I’ll assume you’re safe with (partner’s name here). You said you guys were going to his apartment last night but nothing about spending the night. Thank you for just assuming that was ok, not asking permission, and giving me the lovely experience of answering questions this morning from both of your siblings. I love you more than anything (my name here)…I hope you’ve had a good day and I hope I get to see you tomorrow.”

               Atrocious, right?

               Now, I did tell my mom that I was going to be spending the night the previous night, so I figured that there must have just been some miscommunication, which I then apologized for:

               “Mom, I did tell you that we were going to spend the night, I’m sorry if there was some kind of miscommunication but I did make sure to mention we were staying over.”

               Now, any rational mom would think to herself, “Oh, man, maybe there was a miscommunication after all! Maybe I’m not right all the time and should take my child’s words into account!”

               Nope. She said:

               “Not sure when…considering we were in the front room with (my sister’s name here) when you said you guys were going to his apartment in Chicago, but ok. I’d still like you to think about what you’d like to say to your brother when he asks. Night baby.”

               P A T H E T I C

               Let’s analyze this a bit further, shall we?

               Let’s say you have a child (who actually isn’t a child and is an adult, but whatever) who you thought would be returning home in the morning and didn’t. What’s the first thing you’d do if you were legitimately worried about their location and their wellbeing? I don’t know, maybe CALL THEM? But did my mom do this? No. Which means she didn’t actually care about where I was or what I was doing or why I hadn’t come home; she cared about our image and explaining by supposed bad behavior to my siblings – an eight year old boy and an autistic woman, neither of whom asked me anything about this event in the following days.

               Next, I communicated the idea of a miscommunication. Maybe I misspoke! Maybe I made a mistake! You’d think that she’d reciprocate this. Maybe she misheard. Maybe she misunderstood. Maybe don’t throw your other kid with autism (my sister) into the mix. Maybe entertain the idea that you could have been wrong and that maybe I did tell you I was staying the night with my partner and you just blocked out what you didn’t want to hear.

               Next, she acted like I did this scandalous and awful thing that my siblings would have all kinds of questions about when literally neither of them gave a single shit.

               But the best part? This text conversation was the night before Mother’s Day, and she sent it to me right before she went to bed so that I wouldn’t be able to argue with her about it, and what kind of daughter would I be to start a fight with my mom on Mother’s Day? She strategized this conversation so that she could have the last word.

               Bruh.

               She made herself out to be such a victim. How dare I go spend the night with my boyfriend! What will the children say?! Nothing. Literally nothing. Because I did nothing wrong.

               So, let’s get into my concluding thoughts.

               I know, finally, right? This has definitely been my longest blog to date.

               I love my family, I do. I love my church and the people in it. Do I agree with every message that’s being spread? No, absolutely not. But it is possible to see the good in people even if you don’t actually agree with everything that they say. And I love my mom, but the way that she behaves when it comes to me being sexually active is bullshit. I know it could be worse – there are places where having sex before marriage is punishable by death. Arranged child marriages are still a thing. So my mom getting on my nerves is certainly a first world problem, but it’s still not something that I should have to deal with, right?

               Having realized that the culture that I’ve been raised in is bullshit, I’m trying to move forward with my life and keep my head held high, but how? Especially during a time where I’ve been forced to move home with my parents? How can I continue to maintain my relationship with the Lord while trying to escape this toxic purity culture? Luckily, I received some great advice from my last therapist on how to do just that, which I will be happy to tell you all about…in Part 2.

               In the meantime, I love you all, and please stay safe.

-          Dagger and Sheath

[mojoflower]

Teen Wolf mpreg fic recs (99% Sterek, 1% Steter)

I know that you love me, even when I lose my head by LunaCanisLupus 22 E, 136k, Complete.  “We’re not mates, Cora,” he insists. “I mean look at him-“  //  “Ouch,” the kid says, no longer pushing that shit eating grin.  //  “He’s- he’s,” Derek tries, at a loss of how to explain why this can’t be possible. Why it shouldn’t be possible.  //  Or the one where Derek gets attacked by hunters, ends up with amnesia and forgets Stiles is his mate.

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Stiles, Alpha Derek, but Stiles is a BAMF, BAMF Stiles, presumably Actual Derek is also a bamf, but College Derek is pretty useless, Heh heh

Wow, this story just grabbed me and didn't let me go and now it's the end of a full day and I have no excuse for abandoning everything except that I was really involved and enjoying the plot.  //  Stiles is such a fucking badass, I love this, he's super-smart and strategizes and handles everything that comes up like a pro and it's totally easy to see why they have such a large and powerful pack. 'College Derek', meanwhile, is a complete sexist asshole (with the whole Alpha/omega thing) who says some super hurtful things in the first half out of sheer ignorance mostly -- although occasionally it's spite. Stiles handles it as well as he can, trying to hide that it hurts and striking back because he has backbone for god's sake... but his bondmark is slowly fading and that's terrifying and tragic.  //  Meanwhile, the Silva pack is due to arrive with some manifest bad intentions, and Peter is lurking around stirring up trouble, and it's a really fucking bad time for Derek to not remember who he is, because it makes their pack vulnerable.  //  Great story.

The Lighthouse Keeper by tugela54 E, 75k, Complete.  On a rural island just off Alaska’s northern Inside Passage, stands a centuries old lighthouse - the perfect sanctuary for its keeper to hide when the moon is full, to burn and rage through its cycle with the townsfolk being none the wiser.  //  But then a new resident comes to Beacon Harbour – a bright-eyed young student chasing an elusive whale species – and all of a sudden those thick stone walls seem paper thin…

Bottom Stiles, Like Whoa,  

 Whoa, that was an intense climax, I'm kinda breathless. Great story. Stiles is earnest and funny (and sooo hot for the giant, hairy, handsome man -- when author says size difference they are not messing around and it's mentioned frequently) and Derek is monosyllabic and awkward. They figure it out eventually, and there is hot sex (did I say size difference and hirsuteness?). Laura's a great werewolf-sister (Derek is the only werewolf) and her son Seth is a cutie. The cast of characters (Chris, Jordon, Finstock, Angus, Gladys and the two First People Miriam and Jonah) are interesting and fleshed-out. Love the plot, and the take on Derek's werewolf (not Teen Wolf style), love the First People lore and rituals, love the setting waaay up in Alaska on this tiny island.  //  (Don't let Major Character Death tag scare you, you're gonna be just fine.)

Hey Lover, I Got a Sugarcane by pibroch (littleblackdog) Steter, E, 17k, Complete.  [References to Mpreg rather than straight-up #mpreg]  “Put Peter on the phone,” Stiles says, too sharp to be polite.  //  “What?” Derek sounds completely thrown. “Stiles, I don’t think— Okay, you’re obviously not understanding what’s happening here. Peter isn’t talking. He’s basically just growling at this point, and he’s rounding on anyone that gets too close. He actually bit me when I tried to take back my pillow. I nearly lost a thumb.”  //  “Derek.” The reality of this shitshow of a situation is finally kicking in, undeniably, and Stiles needs to hear Peter’s voice. “Just trust the omega, okay? Tell him it’s me, and give him the damn phone.”  //  ---"Wrangling Rut-Drunk Alpha Boyfriends 101" by Stiles Stilinski, omega and responsible adult person.

I've loved other things I've read by this author

Delicious. And also funny.

I've Got A Sure Thing by skoosiepants  T, 11k, Complete.  Stiles's water breaks ten miles outside of Beacon Hills.

Fox Stiles, Werefox Stiles, Daddy Stiles

Precious: I love the style, it tumbles and tumbles over itself. Stiles is himself. Derek keeps hanging around, and he loves little Princess Leia. Cora keeps laughing at them. Stiles might be a little confused.

******

He calls Derek and says, “I think your entire family is here, dude,” and Derek roars, “What?” and, “Don't call me dude, “ and, “Fuck, I'll be right over.”

Derek shows up in his EMT uniform and with his partner Boyd, stoic and amused, and the wild look in Derek's eyes is probably as close to a panic as Stiles will ever see him in.

Derek says, “Oh my god, Laura,” and grabs for Prin just as Prin launches herself out of Laura's arms toward him. He swings her up in a practiced movement and settles her on his hip and Laura grins so wide her fangs are showing.

“The pack wanted to meet her, even Mom's here,” she says, gesturing toward a big black wolf that looks almost exactly like Derek in wolf form – the wolf lifts her head and sneezes at them, then goes back to nosing through Stiles's DVD collection.

“Mom,” Derek says, and holds Prin up so she hides his face. Prin tugs at his hair and knees him in the eye and giggles when he shoves her up so her tummy is balanced on the top of his head, it's so cute Stiles can hardly stand it, his life is insane.

“Okay,” Stiles says, clapping his hands together, “I'll make tea.”

I don't think that means what you think it means by ThroughTheTulips  M, 21k, 7 works, Complete.  Ever notice how aliens have mostly similar customs to humans in Stargate? There never seem to be words or concepts that just don't translate. For the most part that makes sense given how they were spread deliberately across the universe, but there should be more weird stuff.  //  So I made some. This is very fluffy and ridiculous. Enjoy.

I simply can't with this. What an unanticipated, hysterical delight.

 I Know Where Babies Come From, Derek by DiscontentedWinter  E, 52k, Complete (series is 132k of deliciousness)  [Implied Mpreg, rather than actual #mpreg].  Stiles finds a baby on the porch.  //  It looks exactly like him.  //  Well, this is awkward.

Favorite, read again, still a favorite

Funny and unique and gripping (and there's one part that's simply fucking heartbreaking, god every.time. I bawl like a baby). I love this so much. It's totally one of my return-again-and-again-comfort-fics (even though there's very little that's slow-paced and domestic about it).

 monday i can fall apart but by friday i'm in love by tryslora  M, 6k, Complete.  It's just past five in the morning and Stiles is barely awake, wearing only sleep pants that hang low below his pregnant belly, and he can't get the damned brand new jar of decaf coffee open. But he has a neighbor, and he's too tired to think that waking someone else up at this hour might not be the best (or politest) of ideas.

Alpha Derek, Omega Stiles, Caretaking,  

lol.  short and funny and sweet and Alpha!Derek is a caretaker (and pregnant omega!Stiles is a sass-spewing dork)

 finger on the trigger and all fired up by tryslora  E, 6k, Complete  [Implied Potential Mpreg rather than #mpreg].  Derek goes undercover to expose a drug trafficking ring running inside of a porn studio. What he finds is Stiles.

Hot and funny.

 I'm Not Immune by moodwriter  E, 24k, Complete.  “Did they inject anything into you? You can hold me back. You can stop me. I can’t stop you.” Stiles is in full blown panic mode now.  //  The one where Stiles and Derek get kidnapped, and sex needs to happen for reasons.

Great story, grows as it's written. Follows a lot of emotional development, tangled in the godawfulfucking situation they're trapped in.

Fire, Fury, and Flame by IAmAVeronica  E, 125k, Complete.  Stiles Stilinski was never going to be the omega who got knocked up right after high school, and then he's accidentally artificially inseminated with a stranger's sperm.  //  Awesome.  //  And the father of Stiles's baby just so happens to be Derek Hale. Half-feral, quite possibly a murderer, and pursued by a gleefully sadistic band of hunters who are only too eager to use Stiles and his baby to hit Derek right where it hurts.  //  Joy.

Omega Stiles, Alpha Derek, Mpreg, Kidnapping, Stalking, cultural ramifications of a/b/o

So, Stiles, the omega-rights activist who never wants anything to do with an Alpha and wants to avoid any of that biological imperative bullshit, winds up pregnant a la Jane the Virgin. BUT. Derek is unwilling to commit, or even to have Stiles tell anyone who the baby-Daddy is. This could be because a complete psychopath has him in her targets.

Kate is one fuck-scary villain, just, crazy as a bag of cats and vicious with it, and the filth that comes out of her mouth is truly chilling.

Stiles gets kidnapped pretty early on, which is frightening enough, and then she's back for another try. At that point, he's kidnapped again, this time by Derek, who whisks him across the country to the Preserve, a werewolf compound in Maine. Here, Stiles is the only human, pregnant and vulnerable and trying to make a temporary life until the baby is born. But will it only be temporary?

There's love, sociopolitical musings, lots of angst, lots of danger. The baby is born about 3/4 of the way through the story, and then Kate comes around to terrorize everyone again. Even though Derek and Stiles are living in a house that's reinforced with bars and a panic room, she still manages to nearly burn Stiles and the baby…

 Rescue Me (& Take Me In Your Arms) by tumtatumtum  E, 34k, Complete (series is 37k so far).  Just when Stiles is starting to reach panic-attack levels of stress, a leather jacket and firm thigh are pressed right up next to him, and an arm is casually thrown over his shoulder. Stiles looks up to thank this kind person who is saving his life, and suddenly forgets what air is.  //  Because HOT. DAMN. Call the police and the fire-man, this guy is smoking.  //  Or the AU where Derek helps save Stiles from an ex, and a steamy BDSM relationship ensues- with feelings all over the place.

Fake/Pretend Relationship, Sub Stiles, Dom Derek

Whoooaa, Nellie. Strap in for a ride, folks. Hot and also hilarious, which is a difficult combo to achieve. Loads of D/s sexy times. Stiles is precious. Derek is possessive and a wee bit insecure. They're awful fun to watch together.  ***The one where Stiles is Alpha Mate which magically means he starts leaking slick outta his ass, even tho he's human.

*******

[Kept trying to find this fic using key words bar and boyfriend and ex-boyfriend... which finally got me there. It's SO worth a re-read or ten.] I also tagged it with fake/pretend relationships, since it's fake for about the first 5 minutes, until Derek puts his hand on the back of Stiles' neck and Stiles moans and MELTS and lo, romantic and sexual interest is born.)

 It's a mad, mad world by ElisAttack  E, 74k, Complete [No #mpreg]  "They call him the Feral Wolf." The man laughs hysterically as Stiles backs away from him, fear coursing through his veins. "Feral Hale. Do you know why? Huh?" The man creeps closer, testing the restraint of his chains, white talcum falling from his skin, swirling in the air like the dust devils plaguing the wasteland. "Because he's fucking mad."  //  Or the one where Stiles is a prisoner looking to return home, but to do so, he may have to rely on a questionable drifter.

Really enjoyed this. Very interesting take on alpha/omega, haven't seen it before. And yay for apocalyptic mad max-type world. Scary as fuck.

a little advice for aspiring fires by The Byger (Byacolate)  E, 42k, Complete.  Regardless of his sadly lacking social circle, Stiles was going to have to get some physical contact or he was going to explode. Seriously. It’d be messy and Derek would probably become even more emotionally constipated having to clean up little bits of Stiles from his pristine walls and furniture.

Touch-Starved, Skin Hunger, Omega Stiles, Sassy Stiles, stiles talks CONSTANTLY, Mpreg, Kidfic

But We're Still Sleeping Like We're Lovers by CharWright5  E, 110k, Complete  [No #mpreg].  There are several things Stiles Stilinski knows to be facts: he's a werecoyote like his parents; his twin sister Malia could use a filter more than him; he's an Omega and terrified of his upcoming heat; and Derek Hale-McCall will never see him as anything more than his kid brother's best friend. Doesn't stop Stiles from asking the Alpha to help him during his heat. Or from developing some serious feelings that go beyond the bedroom. Basically, he's totally screwed, in more ways than one.

Fox Stiles, Creature Stiles, he's not a fox, but when I'm cruising that tag, I'll like to read this story

Idiot boys. Hot sex. More idiot boys. Angst. Fluff.

Jurisdiction by elisera  M, 7k, Complete (series complete at 20k).  John is a pretty level-headed guy. He wasn’t always, back during his own Sturm und Drang period, but he married a firecracker of a woman and got a kid with an affinity for trouble like he got payed for ending up in it, so someone had to level out or they would’ve ended up living in a treehouse or Lapland doing god knows what. Anyway, getting a hold of his temper is one of John’s better life achievements. It makes him a good sheriff and it kept him from blowing his lid too badly those last two years when Stiles started acting out in a way that John had never seen before.  //  But the temper is still there.  //  He’s reminded of it when he comes home on a random Saturday in March after spilling his milkshake all over his uniform shirt only to notice he didn’t have a spare in the station and finds Stiles bend over the kitchen sink with hunched shoulders.

Papa Stilinski is a total badass and mmm mmmm mmmm, so is Derek. Stiles has got some awesome muscle looking out for his best interests.

Into Something New by marguerite_26  E, 9k, Complete.  [Implied Mpreg rather than #mpreg].  Something is happening to Stiles. He’s losing time. Something is messing with his head, with his body. Maybe if he felt better he’d think to be worried.

 Nowhere Man by 1lostone  E, 76k, Complete.  [Mpreg (off screen)]  When Stiles leaves Beacon Hills, he does it without a backwards glance. For two years he is happy on the other side of the country- until someone targets not only him, but his daughter.  //  Unfortunately, the asshole bodyguard his dad hired to make sure he gets back home is none other than Derek Hale. And that's really not very good for either of them.

1lostone is, as always, the goddess of the lengthy, painful, disturbing, angsty, violent, sexy story. God, I love it.

The Second Coming (of Werewolf Jesus) by lupinus, uraneia  E, 40k, Complete.  Stiles was enjoying his senior year until his crazy English teacher decided he made the best candidate to gestate Derek's kid. Now Stiles is a seventeen-year-old pregnant dude and he and Derek have to figure their shit out, because in nine months they are going to be tied together for the rest of their lives.

Sweet: very fluffy and domestic.

Pride and Place by DarkAthena (seraphim_grace)  E, 63k, Complete.  (Part of series A/B/O bodice rippers) [Mpreg, Discussion of mpreg, no men were pregnant in the making of this fic].  Derek Hale, Earl of Osterbrook, has inherited, following the death of Lord Montfort, a run down house in Yorkshire he neither needs nor wants, convinced his staff are robbing him, and with the mystery of a missing ward, he manages to get himself talked into a ridiculous bet, that he cannot pass as a steward until Midwinter, nearly two months away. So can he maintain the charade? Find the missing child? and manage to turn the shambles of a house around, or will he give up and let Peter take the thousand pounds he bet.  //  now with explicit epilogue - the rest of the story is teen rated though, so if you don't like the idea of explicit sex in your bodice rippers - just don't read that bit.

Great story.

The Well of Living Waters by kalpurna  E, 30k, Complete.  King Derek takes a consort.

 Within His Power by NoBezel  E, 69k, Complete.  [Discussion of mpreg]  Derek is a wolfish cyborg, brother of the Governor of California, heir to the Hale fortune. Stiles is a un-sequenced human in a world of designer DNA. When Derek is forced to choose a mate, no one expects him to choose Stiles. To be fair, Derek doesn't expect him to say no.

Pretty fucking phenomenal. Lots of world-building and political intrigue. If you're in it for the tropes, you'll be disappointed, but otherwise it's intense and dense and lovely.

The Threat of Human Sacrifice by vampireisthenewblack  E, 45k, Complete.  The sheriff bought a crib and made Derek help him put it together. Stiles thought of Hemingway and the shortest, most heartbreaking story ever told, and dismantled it on his own while Derek was out.  //  [The one where Stiles getting knocked up is the least of his worries.]

So excellent and intense.

The Honey and the Sting by the_ragnarok  M, 19k, Complete (series still wip)  Derek didn't remember what happened when he went into heat. He could only assume the worst. The truth may be stranger than that.

Beautiful.

Tiny Houses by ohmyjetsabel  E, 77k, Complete.  "So this is what Stiles does. He lies in Scott’s bed and waits for Melissa to say she’s found someone to get it out of him, to cure him of the wrongness and the bad, and he dreams.  //  God, he dreams.  //  He dreams of fire and swollen bellies and that scene in Alien, of giving birth to jackals through his urethra, the whole horrific nine yards. His head is a terrible place to be, he can’t imagine his stomach is much better, why anyone would want to put a thing inside of it."

Fuck.

 Shifts by gryvon  E, 15k, Complete.  Stiles has what he's always secretly wanted - he's in a relationship with Derek and he's one of Derek's betas - but all that gets turned upside down when Gerard kidnaps him and his unexpected baby.

Who doesn't want Stiles having emotionally confusing sex with Derek, getting knocked up unbeknownst to either of them, and then kidnapped for the future baby? I mean, really. It's classic.

A Mating Moon by unpossible  E, 37k, Complete.  (Series 55k so far.) [this is not mpreg, just to be clear]  “Hey, Scott, so, I uh, there’s this amazingly hot guy and I’m uh, gonna spend the weekend with him but, you know, just to be careful, I’m sending you his picture, so if by some terrible chance my bloated corpse shows up sometime Monday, just, y’know pass this along to the authorities.” He pauses. “Uh. Kidding?” and then hangs up with a rush of air.  //  “That is the worst voicemail in the history of voicemails,” Derek says.

fucking fantastic

 (Once in a) Blue Moon by clarkoholic, skywardsmiles  E, 60k, Complete.  (Series 63k so far.)  Stiles and Derek are getting along, but they’re not a family, and they’re sure as hell not mates. Christ, they’re basically just two stupid guys who happened to get pregnant because of a full moon and sheer dumb luck.

Oh, the angst, the pining, the guilt, the blame, the anger. Total pain-fest while we watch Stiles nearly die from the burden of the pregnancy. Lovely sweet ending, of course.

Tried and Tested Series by dancinbutterfly  E, 53k, 12 works, Complete.  In which Derek has a sex emergency with unplanned results, Stiles could be the baby daddy on one of those horrible MTV pregnancy shows, Sheriff Stilinski takes in strays and life in Beacon Hills never has a dull moment, not even when things are calm.

Really wonderful series. Stopped at Part 11, so am waiting for updates. A good investment of time, even incomplete. ;D  //  [Huh, evidently I missed an update somewhere along the line!]

In the Solstice of our Hearts by ravingrevolution  E, 73k, Complete.  "You're not putting that up your butt," Scott told him flatly and Stiles couldn't stop the pissed off whine he made, but his friend continued. "Stiles, you can't put that up your butt, you know that. Your butt won't be ready for anything to go in it until-"  //  "Okay, okay!" he said, flailing his hands to stop his friend's lecture. "Message received, no butt stuff until I'm pounced on by some freaking animal in the forest and ravished to within an inch of my life. Got it. Thanks, Scotty, I mean heaven forbid I actually try to take control of my life and give myself a fighting chance or anything."  //  "Not all alphas are animals," Scott said quietly.  //  Maybe he was right, but Stiles wasn't holding his breath.

Omega Stiles, Berserk Stiles, omega beast, everyone's a virgin, Hurt/Comfort, care taking

The one where there's a Mate Run in the woods, and Derek with his pack manage to frighten Stiles up a tree from whence he falls and is impaled on a branch (ouch!) and then they spend a week in a cave while Stiles heals. Meanwhile, Kate and her cronies are sneaking into the month-long Mate Run with the intent to a)finally kill Derek and b) sneakily bond with some omegas. So Stiles goes berserk, which is the omega form of a hulking violence monster, to protect Derek. (Story could have stopped there, but carries on for another 1/3.)

[elcorhamletlive]

fandom: MCU (Post-Avengers) ship: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark tags: Fluff and Smut/Handjob/Laughing during sex

It’s very simple.

Tony may not be the tactical mastermind of their team, but, hell, he is a genius, so he knows some strategical thinking, thank you very much. And contrary to popular opinion, Tony knows what he wants, and, mostly – at least on an intellectual level – he has at least an idea on how to get it.

Tony wanted Steve Rogers from the first time he saw him.

Well, technically, not really, he supposes – the first time he saw Steve Rogers, he had been maybe five years old, and he had no idea what the concept of wanting someone even was. He saw Captain America, thought he was awesome, and wanted to be his friend. Then, as he grew older, he hated Captain America, thought he was the worst thing that ever happened to his life, and wanted to beg his father to stop searching for him.

Then, as an adult, he laid his eyes on Steve Rogers on a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier and wanted him.

It would have been easy to blame it all on some weird Freudian-esque way to get back at his father, but Tony knows that’d be bullshit. He was always aware that Captain America was hot – who wasn’t – but, personally, the clichéd, Ken-doll look didn’t appeal much to him. It just wasn’t his thing.

So it was kind of a surprise when, while Tony’s brain was deciding that he hated Steve Rogers’ guts, Little Tony was happily informing him how much he liked Steve Rogers’ everything, from his pink lips to his steel gaze to the way his hands rested on his belt.

So while Tony’s mind was going, “fuck this guy”, Tony’s dick was going, “fuck this guy”, and, well. It was a lost battle from the start.

Which leads him to where he is now, opening the door to his bedroom, pushing Steve inside without stopping kissing him for a second. Tony wishes he cared a little more about how this is going to affect the team and their fragile tentative truce-turned-pseudo-friendship, but right now, feeling Steve’s hot, soft mouth against his, he doesn’t give a single fuck.

Like he said: Very, very simple.

“We should-“ Steve starts saying, but Tony shuts him up with his mouth. He guesses he should let Steve speak, probably, but it’s hard when Steve’s lips are already swollen and flushed, begging to be tasted.

Steve is a fucking good kisser, too, which is just unfair, when you consider how little experience he must have had until now. Granted, he’s not a technique master, but he’s so damn enthusiastic, laying strong hands on the back of Tony’s neck as he ducks his head to explore his mouth fully. His warm tongue traces the seam of Tony’s lips as if he’s memorizing it, and that really shouldn’t be enough to get Tony as eager and wanting as he is now, but it is. Tony retaliates by pushing him against the wall, kisses growing hungrier as he makes good on his promise to bruise those ridiculously shapely lips.

Tony drags his mouth over Steve’s jaw now, enjoying the feel and taste of that silky skin. His hands are at Steve’s sides, holding him firmly. Of course, Steve could push him off easily if he wanted to - and isn’t that a huge turn on, when you think about it. He doesn’t, though, and Tony can feel Steve’s erection against him, and he’s about to drop to his knees to find out what freedom tastes like when Steve whispers again, a little more urgent, “Tony.”

Tony backs away a little. Steve’s face is all flushed. His hair is messy, floppy bangs falling over his forehead and reaching his eyes. He’s so goddamn pretty, it’s not even fair. Someone should have intervened, at Eskrine’s office, all those years ago: Sorry, sir, you’re way too beautiful to take part on this experiment. Your face combined with superserum-enhanced muscles would go above and beyond what the human brain can handle. In the name of the sanity of geniuses who will be born a couple decades from now, we have to turn down your request.

Steve brushes his hair off his forehead. That floppy hair of his is the most ridiculous thing Tony’s ever seen. It’d be great to pull it, to angle Steve’s head and fuck his mouth. Steve would suck the way he kisses, clumsy but so eager, those soft lips wrapped around Tony’s-

“We should, hm. We should get to bed,” Steve says, and something in his voice rings alarm bells in Tony’s head.

“What?” he asks, still panting, brushing past his overwhelming arousal to take in Steve’s body language. Steve’s posture seems unusually stiff, and though he glances at the bed, it doesn’t seem like he’s actually looking at it, and more that he’s using it as an excuse to not look at Tony.

“I mean,” Steve says, turning back to Tony sharply. “It seems more comfortable?” He makes it sound more like a question than a suggestion, and after a second of silence, he turns towards Tony, hands at his waist. “But if you prefer here, that’s – that’s also fine.”

Tony, honestly, has no strong preference. He definitely wouldn’t say no to the idea of turning Steve on his back and fucking him against the wall, or being fucked by him, or any other possible combination involving his dick and Steve’s dick and one or possibly both of their assholes. But he doesn’t mind going to bed either, and he guesses that’s what Steve might want, from his sudden awkwardness.

“It is more comfortable,” Tony says, running his hands over Steve’s arms. He nods towards the bed, watching as Steve blinks at him with those baby blues, and, in a moment of awkward impulsiveness, holds Steve’s hand, intending on pulling him gently and loosen it immediately afterwards.

To his surprise, though, Steve’s hand clutches his, and the alarm bells on Tony’s head are now too loud for him to ignore.

“Everything okay, Cap?” he asks, trying to keep his voice as casual as possible.

“Yes,” Steve replies, quickly – too quickly. He sits on the bed and pulls Tony closer, hand finding the back of his head, pulling him down. “Come on,” he says, bringing their mouths together. And man, is that a good distraction, that scorching hot mouth against Tony’s and those strong hands pulling him towards the bed – but not enough to make Tony forget that rigidness on Steve’s shoulders and that nervous look on his face.

Tony breaks apart the kiss – which, fine, takes a little longer than it should, but honestly, stopping kissing Steve Rogers to do the right thing should be a character test. It should earn him a prize or something.

He keeps his hands on Steve’s shoulders – he wants to keep them in a neutral position, but honestly, no part of Steve’s body is neutral to touch, he finds. He swallows. “You want this, Cap?”

Steve’s eyes widen and his mouth opens, again, entirely too fast. “I do,” he says, as if he’s defending himself from an accusation, and this is so not how Tony wants this go. “I just-“

“Hey, hey,” Tony says, raising both his hands. His body protests the whole not touching Steve thing, but it’s easier to think that way. “It’s not a problem, ok? I mean, if you want, that’s fine – more than fine, honestly, but, anyway, point is: nobody signed a contract in blood here, right? I’m not gonna fill a report to Fury if you change your mind.”

To his surprise, Steve’s mouth curls in a shade of a smile. Something in Tony’s brain notes that as important data, for some reason (he’s given up trying to understand how his thought process works years ago), like a lightbulb goes off in his head.

“Not changing my mind,” Steve says. His smile grows a little self-depreciating, and he rubs the back of his neck. “Just… Not very used to this, I guess.“

That’s a half-truth if Tony ever heard one. “Have you ever done this before?” he asks, trying to keep his voice clear of any judgement and possible arousal that the thought of a virgin Captain America in his bed gives him.

Steve’s jaw clenches. “Yes.”

“With a man?”

It’s almost funny, because Tony can tell every single part of Steve wants to lie to him, but, apparently, he can’t find it in himself to do so. “No,” he admits, bashful.

Tony’s dick throbs enthusiastically at Steve’s honesty, and Tony’s brain sends a message for him to calm the fuck down as the actual implications of what is happening dawn on him. Steve just stares at him with those unbelievably blue eyes, and maybe he doesn’t – ok, scratch that, he definitely doesn’t want to look vulnerable, but that’s how he looks now, young and nervous, very unlike the stoic leader Tony has been getting used to work with, the past few months.

“Okay,” Tony says. He wants to ask again if Steve wants this – if he’s sure that he wants his first time with a man to be with Tony, precisely, when Tony’s pretty sure Steve would have to beat guys off him with a stick at any gay bar in the world. But Tony’s had some experience trying to talk Steve out of things by now and – well. He’s had better luck coming up with new elements, to put it bluntly.

So, basically, if Steve wants to do this, he’s gonna do it, and he’s gonna do it even if it means gritting his teeth and powering through perfectly normal feelings of nervousness or awkwardness. Which is… really not the attitude that Tony looks for in people he takes to his bed. Like, ever.

“Let’s take this slow then, all right?” Tony says, and he doesn’t wait for Steve to answer, sitting down next to him on the bed and taking his jaw on his hand.

He presses a soft kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth, taking in his sharp inhale of breath, his flushed face, his dilated pupils. Steve’s body is into this, for sure, but Tony needs him to be all here, all for what’s happening. There are lines of tension all over his jaw and neck, and he actually shakes a little when Tony moves closer.

This is supposed to be fun, you know, Tony wants to say, but he has a feeling trying to address this directly is just gonna make Steve shut himself off more.

Then again, Tony is a genius, so he might have a better idea. Maybe.

He presses a kiss to Steve’s jaw, descending his way to his neck. Steve’s skin smells like soap, subtle and sweet, and though a part of Tony wants nothing more than to leave a collar of bites and marks all over his neck, he knows that’s not the goal right now, so he just nuzzles Steve’s neck a little, rubbing his goatee on his skin.

Steve squirms a little, huffing out a surprised laugh.

“Hmm, ticklish, are we?” Tony says, pleased, going back to the task of giving Captain America a nice amount of beard burn.

“Knock it off,” Steve says, but he’s laughing, apparently despise himself. His posture loosens a little, too, which, hey, point for Tony. He raises his head and runs his hands over Steve’s shoulders, still too tense for his liking.

He pulls Steve into a kiss. That’s far from a hardship – Steve’s mouth feels wonderful against his, soft and warm. Steve is eager, ready to part his lips, to let his tongue find Tony’s, and it takes Tony a moment to coax the kiss and set a lighter, exploring pace. He takes the time to trace Steve’s lips with his tongue, suck his bottom lip lightly, listen to the delicious humming noise Steve makes into the kiss.

“Slow down, Cap,” Tony says, when Steve grows more frantic again, pushing Tony to lay on the bed. It’s a bit hard to keep himself from just pressing Steve into the mattress and devouring his mouth, but Tony keeps it cool, pulling away, pressing deep, slower kisses onto his lips instead. “This isn’t a mission, nobody dies if you don’t disarm the bomb on time – okay, terrible metaphor, but you get my gist,” He babbles. Steve lets out a weak chuckle, but there’s a glimpse of nervousness on his face.

“I know what I’m doing, Tony,” he says, but there’s a note of unmistakable doubt on his voice, that Tony makes sure to shut down really fast.

“Oh, you definitely, definitely do,” Tony mumbles against his mouth, before capturing it again in a deep kiss to illustrate his point. “You are way too good at this, it’s not even fair,” he whispers when they pull apart, enjoying the flush that spreads over Steve’s cheeks at the praise. He nips at his lower lip before continuing: “Can’t blame me for wanting to take my time.”

Steve doesn’t seem fully convinced, but Tony pulls him closer, runs his hands over his sides and kisses him again. They spend a while doing just that, kissing and curling around each other on the bed. It’s delicious, and Tony can feel Steve’s body relaxing a little against his, can feel his touches growing more daring, grip growing stronger on Tony’s waist, lifting his shirt, hands travelling over Tony’s lower back.

When Tony pulls away to take a breath, Steve’s eyes are wonderfully darkened. He is panting, that silly floppy hair falling over his forehead, and Tony brushes it back with his fingers, without thinking.

“Didn’t peg you as someone who liked to take things slow,” Steve says. His voice is a little weird, like he’s trying too hard to sound dry, but it comes off too honest for it work. Suddenly, Tony wonders if he has thought of this before – if he has spent much time wondering how Tony likes to take things in bed, wondering about what Tony would like.

“Well, I am,” Tony whispers against Steve’s cheek. It’s a blatant lie, really – Tony enjoys a healthy amount of foreplay, but the last time he spent this much time laying in bed fully clothed just kissing someone was…

Huh. He doesn’t think it ever happened before.

This line of thought makes strange things happen at Tony’s chest. He decides to scrap it.

“I sense you’re getting a little impatient, though, Cap,” Tony says, rolling his hips forward and pressing himself against Steve’s blatant erection, earning himself a groan that makes his own dick twitch on his pants. He kisses Steve’s ear, sucking on his earlobe, and Steve’s hands fly to his ass, pressing him closer. “Gotta say, you’re definitely the most energetic ninety-year old I’ve ever taken to bed.”

Steve’s laugh is loud this time. Tony watches the way his eyes crinkle, mentally categorizes the way his body shakes with laughter. Steve laughs like he’s forgotten how to do it, like it surprises him he still can.

It’s a good laugh, Tony thinks. A bit rusty, but still. It’s pretty great.

He opens the first few buttons of Steve’s shirt, letting it fall open on his sides, taking the moment to rub his face on his skin again. Steve’s chuckling, and Tony runs his hands under the fabric, skimming those pecs, alternating between kisses and just plain ticklish beard burn.

“Tony-“ Steve huffs, voice a hilarious mix of breathless and exasperated, cutting himself off with a gasp when Tony’s hand finds one of his nipples, brushing his fingers over it, teasing it.

“Now, come on, Cap, I know you didn’t expect me to be all serious in bed,” Tony whispers, mouth trailing over Steve’s collarbone – Steve’s flush goes all the way down, spreading over his chest in a gorgeous pink hue, delicate color over all that firm muscle, how is he even real. “I’m feeling super magnanimous today, so I’m not even going to say there’s only one way to shut me up,” Tony keeps going, paying attention to the way Steve’s body melts at his touches. He wonders if Steve’s ever been this relaxed before, and the thought makes him want to keep talking: “You can think about that next time you want to yell at me in a meeting.”

Steve’s hands grip his ass firmly, pushing Tony closer, pressing his body against his. “I have,” he whispers, dazedly, and he has no right to make two simple words sound so damn hot.

“You mean you don’t only have wet dreams about the Constitution? The History books lied to me,” Tony says, hand trailing over Steve’s stomach, stopping right above his belt. Steve’s laugh is rough and breathless, exactly the way Tony wants it. “Now, let’s see how can I best serve my country, hm?” He unbuttons Steve’s pants, lowering the bandh of his underwear. “Oh, wow, land of the brave indeed.”

Steve lets out a surprised laugh, burying his face on Tony’s shoulder. His cock bobs against his stomach, flushed and beautiful. Tony’s mouth waters at the sight, but he thinks sucking him off right now might make Steve come too fast, and while that’s just fine in Tony’s book (might be a little too fine for his ego, to be honest), he doesn’t want Steve to feel self-conscious. He’s never seen Steve laugh that much before, and it’s one hell of a good look on him.

“Oh, say, can you see,” Tony starts humming, trailing his fingers over Steve’s stomach lightly, just barely brushing his cock. Steve actually swears amidst a bunch of giggling, which is the best possible reaction Tony could have imagined. “By the dawn’s early light, what so proudly we-“

Steve pinches him.

“Hey!” Tony complains, but he’s grinning against Steve’s neck now, and he can’t help but press a few sucking kisses there. There’s none of that tension of the beginning, and Tony wonders if he can get away with giving him a hickey. “Excuse me, sir, but it’s my God-given right to express my patriotism whenever I feel like.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Steve says, but his voice is incredibly fond, filled with wonder in a way that makes Tony’s heart perform some funny acrobatics on his chest, which, okay, means they need to get the show going and not focus on that. “You’re so- Fuck,” Steve blurts when Tony takes a hold of his cock, letting out a bunch of incredible little noises as Tony runs his thumb over the tip gently, smearing pre-come over his hand.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tony says in a sing-song voice, though it’s hard to keep himself unaffected. Steve feels heavy and hot on his hand, and as Tony slicks him up, his own cock twitches on his pants. “I’m just a proud citizen, happy to be part of the greatest nation in the wor- Ouch!” he protests, when Steve pinches him on his side, but it’s impossible to not smile when Steve grins at him.

In a way, it’s almost a blessing Steve doesn’t smile like that more often. Keeps the Sun from being outshined and all.

“Will you just…” Steve says, hips jerking forward, trying to thrust into Tony’s hand. Tony grins, and Steve clumsily pulls him up by his shirt, pressing a kiss on his mouth. He’s so fucking sweet, mouth hot and wet against Tony’s, cock throbbing with want in Tony’s hand, needy and demanding.

Tony kisses him back deeply, hand stroking along his length, setting up a pace. He pulls back, nipping at Steve’s bottom lip, then buries his face on the curve of his neck and probably gives him a bunch of hickeys, biting and sucking shamelessly. Tony feels a little like a teenager, dizzy with arousal over a fully clothed hand job, but Steve’s expression is more erotic than a hardcore porno now, with his half-lidded eyes finding Tony’s, red lips parted in an oh as he trusts his hips forward, body jerking at every motion of Tony’s hand.

When Steve comes, his hands sink deeply onto Tony’s shoulders, probably bruising him, and Tony thinks: God, he’s beautiful. It’s a strangely stupid thought that might caused by the lack of blood flow on his brain right now, because Steve is always beautiful, but right now he’s beautiful in an almost dangerous way. Steve’s body sinks onto the mattress as if he’s limbless, and he’s got those stupid bangs falling over his forehead again and a lazy smile on his lips. Right now he’s beautiful in a way that’s scary, laying on Tony’s bed, wrecked and happy. Like he belongs there.

Tony swallows tickly, letting go of his cock, and Steve pulls him closer, kisses him all open-mouthed and sloppy.

Tony kisses him back, because he’s only human. His own dick is painfully hard against his pants, but right now, that can wait.

“Thank you,” Steve breathes against his lips, and Tony needs, needs to give a snarky reply, because there’s absolutely no other way he can handle the look Steve is giving him right now.

“Don’t thank me for performing my civic duty.” His hand reaches forward of its volition, brushing Steve’s hair off his forehead (the bangs are fucking adorable, okay, sue him). “Besides – I’m not nearly done with you yet,” he whispers, but it comes out less suggestive than he means to, more like a promise than anything else.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Steve says, grabbing his waist. He rolls him over (easily, as if Tony weighs nothing, Jesus Christ) and presses a kiss on Tony’s jaw. “Still.“ His blue gaze is incredibly bright against Tony’s. “You’re… I don’t know.” He shakes his head, smile big and full of wonder, and Tony physically has to pull him closer, he just has to. “Just – thank you.”

The part of Tony’s brain that still has survival instincts is going Fuck fuck fuck in the back of his head. The rest of his brain is busy marveling at that smile, and thinking Steve just… Steve should keep doing that. Keep laughing. Keep smiling. Because of Tony. He. He should always do that.

“Anytime, Cap,” Tony says, softly, when Steve starts pressing kisses at his neck and unbuttoning his shirt. It comes out too real, too sincere, his head spinning. “Anytime.”