#not touching upon non biological relations

[witchofinterest]

thinking abt connie’s familial relationships and it’s making me ill

[farfromstrange]

Chaos Theory | Michael Kinsella x Reader

Chapter 3: I'll Show You Every Version Of Myself Tonight

Masterlist ° Chapter List

Pairing: Michael Kinsella x Reader

Summary: Michael recalls what happened during the day, and he tells you the truth (kind of).

Warnings: Angst, mention of death, non-sexual intimacy, Michael just hates himself, description of a seizure, slight hint at a panic attack (?), Everyone telling Mikey what to do (and they're being assholes about it)

Word Count: 7.7k

A/n: As promised, this is the day from Michael's POV, and explaining why he was so desperate that night (and wanted to get away for a few days). I struggled a lot with so many characters and writing their accents, so I apologize for any mistakes! Also, we have some plot in here and some of the other Kinsella family members, but nothing too major. Also, I do not accept any Birdy slander!

His hand strokes leisurely over your bare thigh. You’re lying with your head toward the headboard while he’s lying the other way around; He’s propped himself up on a pillow at your feet and draws absentminded shapes on your skin. 

Silence has settled over you. Your eyes are closed, your breathing steady, but you’re not asleep. He can tell by how you react to his touch. 

Your skin feels like silk under his fingers. You offer a little bit of calm, the end he had been begging for after this awful day, and being with you now, still close but not holding each other, he revels in the intimacy of it all. You share time without talking, and maybe that’s a bad idea with how many secrets are between you, but that is not what bothers him. 

“What are you thinking about?” your gentle whisper breaks through the silence, but it doesn’t burst the bubble you have formed around yourselves. 

Michael sits up, He’s wearing boxers and nothing else, and the closer he gets, the more the temptation rises to run your hand through his hair – all of his hair. You reach out to touch his torso. His chest hair feels soft under your fingers. 

He sighs wearily. One of his arms hooks around your bent knee and he places his head upon it. You look at him from your comfortable place on the pillows. There is something about your eyes that puts him into a state of awe. Your hand is still stroking his chest, but it’s not sexual, it’s caring, it’s a silent testament. 

“Today was…” he’s not sure how to describe it. Every single one of his days feels weird somehow. 

You pulled him somewhat back into the present, but deep inside, he still lives in the past. In his mind, he finds himself back in prison sometimes, and that’s terrifying. He has adapted behaviorisms that he would have never thought possible like keeping the untouched food out instead of throwing it away, not shaving, only showering at certain times and most of all, he still struggles to sleep in a bed. He tried. After meeting you, it became easier, but he feels himself slipping back into the same patterns from before. 

“What?” you ask. 

He shrugs. 

“Talk to me, please.”

With you, nothing can hurt him, he thinks. 

“I went to see Anna this mornin’,” Michael says, and if you hadn’t focused on him, you wouldn’t have been able to hear his voice. That’s how quietly he admits it to you. 

You frown. He can tell the thoughts are connecting in your mind. 

You know a little about family law in the UK, but you have never thought about what it would look like in Ireland. 

You know from experience that if you’re single, unemployed, fresh out of university, and merely twenty-one years old, a court probably won’t grant you custody of a one-year-old. Even if you’re related. Even if you tell the court that the biological parents – or one of them, at least, even though ignoring abuse can also be counted as such – are abusive and controlling toward their other children. Without proof, they won’t believe you, and if they don’t believe you, you won’t get custody. 

And if you were in prison for eight years after being convicted for the wrongful death of your own wife… well, chances are that getting custody or even visitation rights as the biological parent is going to be a hard task unless the child isn’t safe where it is now – but Anna is safe, from what you heard from Michael. And the court isn’t sure if he bettered himself enough to be a father to her. After all, he connects to very serious trauma that a child her age shouldn’t even have to carry, and even though the courts are sometimes unjust when it comes to custody battles, they are very vigilant in this case.

You get it, but you also see a side of Michael the authorities don’t seem to get. He’s a good man. He deserves the chance to at least reconnect with his little girl after being deprived of her for so long. 

You know how much it hurts not being close to someone you love, although in your case, it was your own choice to leave. Still, the pain is grand and anyone who has to carry it might tend to make stupid decisions along the way. Like seeing the very same daughter he is not supposed to even be near. 

“Are you allowed to?” you ask because maybe he is and you read it all wrong. 

But then he shakes his head and he says, “No.” 

“Michael!” 

“I’m sorry, I just can’t– I needed t’see her. I didn’t talk ta her, I just sat there t’see if she’s okay. I had ta–“ he breaks off. “I do it to convince myself she’s real and that‘m not dreamin’. I just want her back. Is that so wrong?”

“It’s not wrong, but you could risk everything just by watching her from a distance. If someone finds out–“

Your eyes soften amid the initial frustration when he moves his head to press his forehead against your knee. You can no longer see his eyes, but the tears pearling off of your skin tell you he’s crying. 

You touch his head. “Michael, darling,” you say, “please, talk to me so I can understand.”

He sniffles. Slowly, he lifts his head and crawls over to you. He reminds you of a cat like this. His head finds support on your chest as he curls into a ball, and you wrap your arms around him. 

“It’s okay…” You run your hand through his hair. “I’ve got you.”

It surprises him how comfortable he is in being vulnerable around you. You unveiled his guarded heart and started slowly breaking down his defenses. He let you in enough for you to see parts of him he had long kept hidden, and you are on your best way to pull it all out of him. 

He shudders under your gentle touch. You are so soft. Not just your skin; your touch and your soul are soft. You cradle him like he is everything to you, but he can’t believe that he would be or should be everything to you. He’s not deserving. He tried today but failed again. 

The foundation that kept his face stern before and added a supposed strength to his demeanor burns under your touch, and soon he is standing in the ashes of pretense and he feels it all.

He denied himself to feel the pain all day and now you’re here and you are so fucking soft– He starts sobbing into your chest, allowing him to fall further and further and further without a ground to land on. But there you are, catching him as often, and you don’t let go until you’re sure he’s safe. 

Your arms have become his forever sanctuary. Feeling comfortable with you has been a hard task from the start and he still struggles, but he can’t help but let himself go in your embrace. You know exactly what he needs. You know who he is and you still stick around, and you know what he needs. It’s not just sex, it’s comfort, something he tried to hide by taking you against the wall, and it was good and he needed it, but he needs this so much more.

And he realizes that he needs to talk to you, too. He can’t just rely on you to touch and comfort him, something he has been lacking for eight years and perhaps even sometime before that while he was burning his life to the ground with a bad decision after bad decision and lost what was dear to him – he has to talk to you to earn that comfort because if he doesn’t, it feels like he’s using you and he once again starts hating all aspects of himself with a passion unmatched. 

You’re doing this because you feel like you have to, he figures; because he’s broken and he looks like it most of the time, and you like to fix when something is broken to earn yourself a little love back, but you deserve more than you think you do and he doesn’t want you to please him just for the sake of pleasing him. He wants you to feel comfortable around him, too, and he wants to give back what you are giving him, and not just through countless orgasms. You’re worth more than that. 

He contemplates, then makes a decision that is hard to swallow, but you deserve it. And so he tells you exactly what happened.

— Earlier that day —

Hearing the lack of trust in your voice when he admitted that he didn’t want to go home moved something in him. Of course, you’ve only just started to get to know each other, but there was something else in your voice that made his heart sink. 

Darkness attracts light. The sun gives way to the moon at night, but the sun always finds a way to shine the brightest. Too much darkness can kill the light, and without light, darkness would take over and then there would be no happiness. 

You’re kind, you put love into every little thing you do and you care about people. That’s the kind of person that people who are much darker than you feel like they can use, and knowing you, you probably let them. But even you reach your limits. 

He could see in your eyes though that you meant it when you said you would help him get a proper job and fight for Anna, and considering you barely know him, that’s a big display of trust – you trust in his ability to be better, at least, and that is something he holds very dear to his damaged heart. 

It’s been a while since someone was so endlessly willing to forgive him and to actually put in the effort to try and be with him; he knows how exhausting it can be, that sometimes being with him can become draining, and that it runs the people around him dry. At least it used to be this way. He hurt you, but you seem to have faith in him. You believe in him, you don’t think he will run you dry and you’re not exhausted. You may be a little weary, but he would never blame you for that. Even more now, Michael wants to stay true to his promise. 

He feels alive with you. Safe. Loved. Cared for. And whenever he is close to you, he feels the desperate need to protect you, not just from him and this stupid life he has been born into but from any other possibility of harm that might come your way. He wants to make sure you’re okay, and that you have someone you can rely on, too. But there is something you’re hiding, he could tell. He’s not an idiot, he can tell when someone isn’t being entirely open with him, it comes with the Kinsella name; he has to know people, be able to read them, and judge quickly but with precision. 

He tried not to let the nagging feeling of you hiding something more serious from him get to him because it is your life and he still feels like he needs to prove himself to you more than anything, though the inkling he has won’t leave him. 

The way you froze when he finished the sentence for you, “We haven’t reached tha’ level of trust yet?” This small moment of hesitation told him that there must be more to it. But he can’t think about that, not now. 

Anna is wearing her usual school uniform as she strolls past the restaurant with two of her friends. He suspects they are her friends because she’s laughing. A sad smile finds its way to his lips. She looks happy. 

He remembers the day she was born. Every parent is somewhat afraid to screw up, especially with their first child. Some are more nervous, others less. Michael was the kind of first-time Dad that found himself thinking too much about what could happen. He was scared of not being enough, of subjecting his daughter to the dangers of his family, and he questioned if he even had what it takes to be a good father. He read books, asked Jimmy and Amanda, and he annoyed Birdy almost every day until the day Anna was born. 

He remembers repeating one sentence in his head, “I can’t do this.” 

But then he heard her first cry, and it took him only a second to realize that he was a Dad now. He remembers the moment he first saw her face, and he forgot everything around him. 

The most pivotal moment was though when he got to hold her in his arms for the first time, so small and fragile, she fit snugly into the crook of his arm. Was he afraid of breaking her? Yes. More than anything. But all she had to do was open her eyes and look at him, and his previous fear of ‘I can’t do this’ evaporated. Left behind was only endless love and a sense of needing to protect the new life in his arms. He swore he would do anything to assure she would have a good life, no matter what. 

And then, almost as if the first-time-parent jitters were an omen, he failed. He failed to be a husband and a father. Jimmy has always managed to coordinate his children, his wife, and the Kinsella life just perfectly, and Michael believed he could do it just like him, just like his brother – but he failed. He always wanted to be just like his brother. 

At first, things went great and he gave everything he had to give, but then real life settled in, and he fucked up all the good things in his life. He fucked up his marriage and he fucked up as the Dad he promised his daughter he would be. In the end, he lost both of them. He lost Allison permanently because he was too caught up with himself and his family, and he lost his daughter, too, because he just wouldn’t listen to his gut, and his fuck-ups turned into a complex construction of dominos that were set out to tear his life and his soul lower than the ground. 

If he could turn back time, he would. But he can’t. He can only try to turn what little of the steering wheel he has left around to get back what he has left of what he lost, and that is Anna. His love for her has not changed since the first day he held her in his arms, only his attitude toward himself and his life changed, and he feels even more miserable now than he ever did before. 

Before he can register it, Anna has disappeared behind the trees. Once again, she didn’t see him. Part of him hopes that one day, if he keeps this going, she will catch sight of him and that maybe she will be happy to see him – does she even know what he looks like? Does she remember? Does she remember the times he told her he loved her? 

He’s not sure how a child’s brain works, or what the trauma did to her, but he would like to know. He would love to understand what makes his little girl tick, even though she is less of a little girl now and starting to grow into a young woman. He missed so much, and that makes him so fucking angry. 

He missed her, but he’s not sure if she missed him. Allison’s mother has never been a fan of him, but after she found out he was responsible for her daughter’s death, her dislike turned into pure hatred. She would have killed him if she had gotten the chance, he’s sure, and she would if she ever saw him again, he is even more sure of that. But he wouldn’t blame her; he deserves it. 

All of this pain, he deserves it. He convinced himself a long time ago that he is suffering for a reason, and that led to a strict belief that every bad thing coming his way will be because pain is the only thing he deserves, and happiness was not made for a man like him. 

Michael empties his double espresso that tastes cheaper than the brew you can get at a grocery store. You make much better coffee, even if it's just a boring double espresso. 

But you are a good thing, and good things wither in his presence. He tries to shut the voices out, but after seeing Anna pass by happier than he has ever seen her before, they just grow louder.

He makes his way to Amanda and Jimmy’s house then. His hands are buried in the pockets of his jacket that still smells like you the day he lent it to you. His brown eyes are sunken as he crosses the corner to the street his family lives on – most of them, anyway. 

He rings the doorbell and the gate opens to let him in. When he steps toward the front door, Jamie greets him. 

“Hey,” Michael smiles softly. 

“Hey,” Jamie acknowledges him. “Mam’s in the kitchen, Da’s downstairs with Eric, Uncle Frank an’ Birdy.”

The boy doesn’t even question his appearance, so he probably doesn’t know about the fight that drove Michael and Jimmy apart only a few days ago, and neither does he seem to know about the call he made to Amanda before deciding to drive his life against the wall – if it weren’t for your desperate need to fix people, he would still be stuck there. 

He nods. “Thanks, Jamie.”

It is weird to see him so grown up after all these years. He’s almost his height now. The feeling of looking at Amanda or Jamie or the life his brother has built for himself is something he can’t describe, but it runs deep and it finds its way into his bloodstream to poison him. It makes his limbs heavy with the weight of lies and the unknown on his shoulders, and his heart turns into the cloudy Dublin sky. 

Michael steps inside. 

“Which one are ya here to see?” Jamie asks. 

“Your Dad,” he says. 

“Okay, cool.” He leaves just like that, with no questions, not even a glimpse of suspicion. 

Ignoring Amanda in the kitchen, he makes his way through the house and into the basement. The stairs creak slightly under his weight. The closer he gets, the more can he make out Frank’s voice. The wood of a cue stick hitting the object balls on the pool table fills his ears. Some of them seem to fall into the pockets, and he hears Jimmy clap proudly to himself. Frank’s tone of voice is concerned though, and Michael stops to listen. 

He’s come at just the right time because the next thing he hears is his name. “And what about Michael?” Frank asks. 

The sound of one of the balls flying off the table echoes through the room. Jimmy sets his stick down and sighs. “What about him?” he retorts.

“I’m askin’ you.”

“I’m not the boss of him, he made tha’ very clear.”

Their argument wasn’t even about that. Whatever Jimmy had been on that day, he chose his words to hurt him. Talking about Allison and Anna the way he did, and then talking about you as if there would be no good in being together with you cut Michael deeper than he showed at that moment, and he almost lost you because of that. Maybe he didn’t mean it, but he deserved that broken nose nonetheless. 

“Jimmy.”

“Wha’?”

“Whatever fight ya two had–” Frank begins. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Jimmy cuts him off. “I haven’t heard from Mikey in days. I dunno where he is. He’s not answerin’ my calls either.”

It’s Birdy’s voice next that tries to diffuse the obvious tension. “Maybe he just needed t’get away,” she says. “Away from all this, I mean. He just got out of prison. Cut the poor boy some slack.”

From the start, Birdy has always been the woman with maternal instincts, and Michael often found comfort in her kindness. She took care of him with a love he lacked during his childhood, and when he got out, she made sure the house didn’t look like an empty, haunted space anymore but that he could actually live in it again. She cares, and it shows in the way she speaks about him. He’s grateful, but he knows it won’t warm Frank’s heart the same way. He doubts the man is possible of positive emotions; he’s always been a rock, and he doesn’t care. Even the topic of family is just a job for him. 

As expected, Birdy gets ignored. 

“Is he still workin’ fer Amanda,” Frank asks, “washin’ cars like I told her?” 

“He was,” says Jimmy. “Until a few days ago, he took it very seriously. And then he left.”

“Good. Maybe he’s finally thinkin’ ‘bout what’s best for him, and that’s not washin’ cars. He belongs here, with us.”

Michael can only imagine Birdy’s disapproving glance. “He wants to get Anna back,” she argues. 

“He can do tha’ while he’s workin’ with Jimmy.”

“No, he can’t.”

“Birdy’s right,” Jimmy says. “Amanda tried tellin’ him she’d put him on the books but he didn’t have ta work, but he wants to. He’s takin’ this very seriously and I can’t say I blame him.”

“This is bullshit!” Frank stops to take a sip from his beer. “Ya’ve grown soft. Let’s jus’ hope Michael will come to his senses. We have bigger fish ta fry.”

He hears Jimmy scoff. “Wha’, like Eamon?” he asks. 

“No, Birdy’s new washing machine–”

By now, her eyes must be bulging out of her head with how hard she’s glaring. 

“Of fuckin’ course, I mean Eamon!” The glass of Frank’s beer bottle hits the counter of the small bar before he says, “And fuckin’ Moor, that bastard.”

“We’ve had this conversation before, right after Michael got out, remember?”

“We all remember tha’,” Birdy cuts in. “And I was seemingly the only one who cared enough about his well-being to check on him.”

“Yeah, Birdy, we know yer a saint,” Jimmy sounds almost bitter. 

“Don’t get smart on me now, Jimmy,” she says. “He’s your brother.”

“I know.”

“Eamon,” Frank says, acting as if the topics of conversation aren’t all over the place, “has us by the balls. We have ta do somethin’. Remember that dealer down on Parnell Street, hm?”

Silence follows. 

“Yeah,” he says, “he’s dead. He got shot this mornin’ around eight. While he was buying a fuckin’ drink at the gas station.”

Parnell Street. Michael knows a lot of streets by heart, that comes with the territory, but that name strikes a chord. The gas station on Parnell Street is about a fifteen-minute walk from Merrion. He knew before that Frank has people there, but Merrion isn’t just a street anymore. 

House number 13, that’s where you live. You drove past it before you parked a good length away from the café and he walked you there. That was at seven-thirty. 

He connects the dots and the second he does, his heart stops. 

Are you in danger?

Michael is convinced now more than ever that he needs to get out. He can’t protect you if he does the very same thing that he is trying to protect you from. He needs that job and he needs to try to distance himself. What if you get caught in the crossfire? Or Anna? He can’t relive the same hell again. It’s bad enough he dreams of that cruel night eight years ago every time he closes his eyes; he doesn’t need to add you to that list, too. He can’t bear to lose one more person he loves. 

“What do ya want me to do?” Jimmy asks, exasperated. “Want me t’start a seance and bring him back?”

“I need Michael,” Frank states. “We need manpower. He’s good at what he does. Not only does he throw a mean punch but he actually takes this shit serious when he needs ta. And he’s a damn good shot. He needs t’come back, otherwise–”

“Dead meat?” Birdy finishes.

“Yeah, dead fuckin’ meat.”

He steps out behind the shelf that has kept him hidden from their prying eyes. He doesn’t let him finish his sentence. 

Birdy is the first to catch a glimpse of him, her grim expression lighting up almost instantly. “Michael,” she says softly. 

He nods curtly, trying to smile, but he fails miserably. 

All eyes are on him now. He feels like an animal in the zoo, judged for existing, judged for being himself, and the only person excited by his sight is Birdy. She’s the one visitor at the zoo that seemingly enjoys every caged animal she sees. The sight of Michael’s dark features is not pretty, he knows that, but the looks he receives leave a bitter taste in his mouth. They pity him. He hates that just as much as silent judgment. 

“Hey,” he says. 

“How have ya been, pet?” Birdy asks. “Or more like where? We were worried ‘bout ya.”

She steps up to him and cradles his face. She traces the butterfly bandage on his forehead, chuckling a little, then moving on to the cut on his nose. She clicks her tongue. “How’s the other guy?”

It’s meant as a joke, but Michael takes it seriously. He looks at Jimmy, then back at her. “I’m grand,” he says. “And the other one’s good, too. ‘t was just a brawl.”

“Hm,” she disagrees, but she leaves it at a gentle hum. 

Frank’s smile is fake when he looks at him. “We were just talkin’ about you,” he says. 

He wants to tell him he heard, but he keeps his mouth shut. If he pretends he isn’t angry, maybe he can get out of this without any trouble. 

“Oh, yeah?” Michael asks. 

“Yeah. How’s the job?”

“Grand.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” You asshole, he thinks. 

“You enjoy washin’ cars?” Frank is really pushing it this time. 

He feels so small under everyone’s eyes. Jimmy looks almost regretful and Eric is someplace else, his eyes focused on the snakes in the terrarium, but everyone else makes him feel so damn small. He feels his shoulder slouch, but then he thinks about Merrion Street, Parnell, the gas station, and then you. 

You. 

Anna. 

Himself. 

“It’s not bad,” Michael lies, “but I’ve decided t’work someplace else.”

Everyone looks shocked now, even though Birdy’s eyes scream more surprise than the sense of betrayal he sees in Frank’s eyes, and even Jimmy looks like he didn’t see this coming. Considering Michael was once willing to do everything they told him to, he doesn’t blame them. It’s a big chance for all of them, but especially for him. 

Change is good, change is what he needs. He turns it into a mantra or else he won’t believe it, cave, and then return to the same man he was before. The thoughts of, “They’re your family. Would it really be that bad?” 

But you would never approve. Or would you?

No, he can’t think like that. He wants to be just Michael for a while if not forever. 

“I came to tell ya that. I quit,” he repeats. “The job with Amanda, I mean. I quit that.”

“Come again?” Frank asks. 

“Yeah.”

Jimmy curses under his breath, “The hell, Michael?!”

Michael caught them off guard. Good. The almost defeated expression Frank carries along with his anger and exasperation almost makes him gloat. Maybe he is already gloating a little inside because he found something more important than blood, in more ways than one, and he is fighting for it now. 

He hasn’t fought for something in so long. 

“Where?” Jimmy collects himself first. “Where are ya gonna work?” he asks. 

“I’ve got somethin’,” says Michael, “that’s all ya need to know. That’s why I came here. I didn’t want t’ leave ya in the dark.”

“You came here to tell us ya quit the job with Amanda?”

“Yeah.”

“Pet,” Birdy prompts. 

Michael shakes his head. “I need to get Anna back. For tha’, I need a more stable job. Appease the courts an’ all that. I can’t let anything, not even the smallest mishap get in the way of that. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Would you be proud of him if you heard him stand his ground? He likes to think you would be. It makes the heavy heart he gets from the look on his brother’s face a little easier to just accept. He needs to burn bridges, not appease others. And this is one of the bridges that need to be incinerated. 

“Are you sure about this?” Birdy asks. 

“Yeah, I am,” he says. 

“Fuck,” Frank curses to himself. “Can we talk about this, Michael? Just for a minute?” It sounds like a question but it’s actually a perfectly concealed demand. 

Michael sees through his charade. He shakes his head again. “I made my decision, Frank.”

“When we put ya to washin’ cars, this is not what we meant to happen–”

“Oh, I am well aware of tha’,” he sounds bitter now, and he can taste the copper of blood from where he bit his cheek in an attempt not to yell or throw another punch. “Things change,” he says. “People change.”

Birdy tries to pour some water on the fire that is starting to consume everyone in the room, but it has been fueled by oil and gasoline and water only makes it worse. 

“Anna belongs with Michael,” she says. “I’ve said it before, but she’s a Kinsella. Mikey deserves a chance to prove himself to get her back, don’t ya think?”

Jimmy nods at the same time that Frank starts to shake his head. “Eric!” he calls out and his son flinches. He’s still standing close to the snakes. “Don’t ya have anythin’ constructive to say?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Michael says. 

Eric closes his mouth again. He doesn’t look like he wants to be there, anyway. His skin is sickly pale and he appears almost… guilty. 

“That’s all I came here for. I quit. I’m sorry.”

He’s not sorry. He feels sorry, but not for this.

“Maybe if we take a calm minute to think about this–” Birdy tries again. 

He shakes his head. “No.”

“Pet…”

“I’m sorry, Birdy,” and with her, he means what he says. “I can’t,” he says. 

On his way out, the weight that is lifted from his shoulders only lasts a few seconds before his brother’s voice puts twice as many bricks back onto his shoulders, dragging him further down. 

“Michael, wait!” Jimmy calls out. 

Michael clenches his jaw and halts. “What?” He turns around. 

“I’m sorry for wha’ I said the other day, about Allison and Anna and that girl Amanda saw you kissin’,” he says. “I was on edge and it wasn’t fair, especially not blamin’ ya fer Allison’s death. I know yer strugglin’ and I’m sorry, but ya can’t just leave because of tha’. It was just a fight.”

“I’m not leavin’,” he clarifies, “I just quit my job with Amanda. There’s a difference. I’m still here. Fer family.”

“Is there a difference? Ya’ve been gone for days. I was worried. We all were.”

“Were ya, really?”

They stare each other down. The rope of tension is so visible, it could be cut with a knife. 

Jimmy takes a step closer, his voice softer now. "Look, I didn't mean half of the things I said. I was angry, and I lashed out. I want you back in our lives. I want ya back where you belong, workin' with me. We're family, Michael."

“This isn’t about you, it never was,” Michael snaps. “This is about me and Anna and… and–” He knows he shouldn’t have said your name, but it slips before he can think, and his voice echoes through the house. 

“So yer still on about her?” his brother asks. 

He screwed up. You were just a stranger seconds before, and as a stranger, you were safe. Now Jimmy knows your name and probably everyone else, too, and being a Kinsella is already dangerous enough, he doesn’t need you involved with every single member of his family, but now that Jimmy knows you are one of the reasons he wants out… his brother might not become the problem, but Frank might, and Michael could shoot himself for being such a fool. 

He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “Point is, I’m gettin’ another job and ya can’t stop me. I want t’be better.”

“We’re family,” Jimmy repeats. 

Michael scoffs. "Family, huh? Is that what ya call it when you drag my personal life into our fights? When you use my dead wife, daughter, and her against me?"

“Ya heard what Frank said about Eamon–”

“I’ll cross that bridge if it ever comes to it, but I’m not playin’ that game. I can’t get involved, and I won’t. Why can’t you just accept tha’?”

“Because Anna, I get, but this woman, Michael,” Jimmy says. 

His eyes darken. “Careful,” he growls.

“I stand by wha’ I said. This relationship is doomed. People have died already. What if someone starts a war? They’re not gonna give a fuck about whether or not yer goin’ straight now. You know how it is; they always find a way t’ destroy us and what we love. You’ve experienced it yerself.”

His words cut deeper than a knife. Michael's heart aches as he realizes the truth in his words — love and happiness within the Kinsella family come at a devastating cost. He stabbed a dagger straight through his heart and pulled it back out. As if the demons in his head weren’t saying the same thing, Jimmy had to go ahead and drill the hurt even deeper, the fear and the uncertainty. 

He thinks about Allison, her blood heavy on his hands. He went down too many wrong roads and ended at a point of no return. Now that he has found a way out, that way seems to be the same one-way street heading in another direction, but the end is still a huge wall he will run into, and then he will lose everything dear to him. 

But these thoughts are poison. They’re toxic. He can’t let them get to him, even though he has never taken his brother’s words more seriously. He’s always valued Jimmy, even when he’s angry. What he loathes is the truth of his words. It would be kinder if he was lying; it would make the decision so much easier. It wouldn’t make him rethink what he said, what he chose and is going to choose – he wouldn’t question what he feels for you, which is the part that tears ripples through his soul and the home you’ve made there, shaking his world and inevitably, yours. 

He understands the risks. But he yearns; he yearns so desperately for a chance at redemption. The threat of violence used to be his life, but now it hurts even him to think about the chance of the monsters jumping out of the shadows and cutting him and his loved ones apart piece by piece. He saw the worst of humanity and he knows it can get worse. 

The pits are sheer endless. There is no going back no matter where you are, no matter how hard you try to pull out - It's a door that reads "pull" but you push, and even when you pull, the door won't open. It isn't locked, you're simply trapped, and it's the same with his emotions. 

Michael knows he has a hell lot to lose, and he needs to acknowledge that instead of listening to the voice in his head that continues screaming, “Run!” 

But it isn’t him who should run. 

“I deserve a second chance,” he says. 

“Of course, ya do,” Jimmy says, “but–”

“No, that’s all. I deserve a second chance. Period. So does Anna, and so does she.”

“Michael–”

The sound of heels clicking against the floor follows the sound of a closing door. Amand rounds the corner, her brown curls swaying with each of her movements, and she stares at the men before her in bewilderment. 

Michael feels his throat tighten when he sees her. 

“What is goin’ on here?” she asks. “I can hear ya shoutin’ through the whole house.”

“Michael quits,” Jimmy tells her. 

It’s as if he had been waiting for a moment to snitch. Two against one, and if he adds everyone in the basement, he’s standing alone against five Kinsellas. Just because he made a decision. He chose something for himself. It’s almost as if they can’t live with that. 

“Quit wha’?” Amanda asks.

“His job.”

“What?” She crosses her arms and looks at him. “Michael–”

“Don’t,” he cuts her off. His expression hardens. "Don't act like you care, both of ya. Don't. You may mean it, but no matter what I do, yer just gonna continue sabotagin' every attempt I make at bein’ happy. I can't keep lettin' ya dictate my relationships. I won't let you ruin what I have right now. Don’t tear her away from me.”

Why he sounds like he’s begging, he’s not sure. But standing alone against the force of his family feels humiliating enough to shatter his confidence. 

“Is it about the girl?” Amanda asks. Her body is turned to Jimmy, asking for his approval, and he nods. 

Michael rolls his shoulders. He doesn’t want to get angry, he doesn’t want to hit him again, he just wants to go home – he wants to go to a home that isn’t a place but a person, and he needs it now. He’s not sure how he survived up until this point, but it’s getting harder to breathe as the current drags him down. 

“It’s about more than tha’,” Jimmy adds to his initial agreement. 

At least he got that right. 

“It’s about family and the choices you’re makin’, Michael.”

Michael's voice rises, finally, his pent-up frustration spilling over. "No, Jimmy!” his voice bounces off the high walls that turn into a microphone with the force with which he delivers his words. “I'm choosing myself, fer once,” he says. “I've spent my whole life doin’ everythin’ fer this family, but I failed the people I care about, I lost everythin’ and now I just want to fuckin’ fix things! I won't let ya tear me down just ‘cause you can't handle the choices I make."

"Michael, we all care about you," Amanda says. Her voice is gentle, but he often likes to compare her to a venomous snake. Her words can sound nice, but the meaning behind them can be deadly as soon as it reaches your bloodstream. "We want what's best for ya."

"What's best for me is to be with her, with Anna- I want to be just Michael. I wanna be free from this toxic cycle. I won't let you or- or anyone else dictate what makes me happy. I've had enough. This is my life, for fuck's sake, let me just have tha'!"

"But yer a Kinsella," says Jimmy, "You can't change that." His anger transitions to silent anger. "No matter how badly you wanna escape, you can't."

Michael turns on his heels. "Maybe not, but I can sure as hell try," he says, ready to leave the house behind. 

He feels trapped, not just in there but on this street. He feels trapped everywhere, the walls caving in around him. He's breaking, as is the world, the universe, and reality; everything seems to be falling apart, and he is reaching for the only lifeline he has. As he walks away, he can feel their stares burning into his back, but he no longer cares.

He thought he could at least breathe once he was away from the house, but then his walls are caving in, too. He’s started tearing what little clothes he has into a bad – just enough for a few days – when he feels the room… shift.

The air grows thick with his mounting anxiety, his heart pounding in his chest like a trapped bird desperately flapping its wings against a cage. His vision blurs. A sharp pain shoots through his skull, but it’s only momentary. 

Somehow, he manages to make his way into the bathroom. Maybe cold water will help, he thinks, but then the room shifts again and again and again, and his now wet fingers slip from the tap. The water is still running into the sink, but he can’t move. As the room shifts, so does his brain. He can’t think, his eyes only able to scan silhouettes, and his knees give out. His body betrays him. 

The world around him warps and distorts. The sound of running water turns into a shrill melody as if someone is blowing a flute directly into his ear. The tiles beneath his feet become unsteady, their patterns dancing and morphing before his eyes. His fingers twitch as he tries to somehow lean against the toilet, but he has no power over what he’s doing. The spiral keeps going further down, dragging him with it. 

Time seems to both stretch and contract, the seconds drawn out agonizingly, yet passing in the blink of an eye as his body convulses. He doesn't exactly register what's happening. Sometimes, it feels like he's watching himself seize uncontrollably from the outside, other times it feels like a very vivid dream and then there are times, like now, when he's conscious but also feels detached and not conscious at all. 

Fragments of pictures flash before his eyes like a movie. He feels the fear deep in his bones, and it turns into personified matter dancing through his daydream - but it feels more like a nightmare that doesn't belong to him like Freddy Kruger messing with his head and threatening to cut him up. The body he's in can't possibly be his own. He fears losing control; he fears being consumed by the darkness that lurks within his bloodline, and it grips him tightly. He fights against it, struggling to retain a sense of self amidst the overwhelming chaos, but he's tired. 

He's not sure how long he's lying on the floor, but eventually, his muscles ease up and he slumps. The world returns to his senses, but he still feels disoriented and takes a moment to realize where he is.  As he lies there on the cold bathroom floor, the tears mingle with the sweat on his face. He wipes it off his brow, but he is still sweating. 

It isn’t the first time this has happened, but he hates it more and more every time. If only he could understand what’s happening, but asking for help isn’t his strong suit and he has other things to worry about. His ‘episodes’, as he dubbed them, are the last points on the list. 

He’s not at home here anymore, Michael reminds himself because he doesn’t feel like it. He feels trapped in his own house. The bullet holes are so close, he feels he can touch him through the walls. 

And then he decides, he really can’t stay here anymore. Not tonight, at least, and not tomorrow either. His head is all over the place. In every corner, there is an invisible trigger and he is haunted by the ghosts of his past. They follow him everywhere. 

The past follows him everywhere but into your arms, and so he fights against the ache in his muscles to rise back to his feet and packs his bag. 

By the time Birdy comes around to check on him, the light in the kitchen is dark, the blinds are drawn close and when she knocks, no one answers. Michael is gone again, and she wearily leaves it be just like that – who is she to keep the poor boy from happiness? If he doesn’t want to stay, he shouldn’t have to stay. 

But that’s just what she thinks. She knows as soon as Frank or Jimmy finds out he has disappeared again, kindness is the last thing that will follow Michael wherever he goes now. 

When he tells you about it that night, he leaves out the part about Eamon and whatever else is threatening the existence of the family business right now because you don’t need to know that. He tells you about the fight and Jimmy and his decision to quit his job with Amanda and move on to be with Anna, and you listen without a word. 

You listen and when he reaches the point of talking about packing his bag, he stops. You think that’s it, that’s what you believe, and he wants to keep it that way. He doesn’t tell you about the seizure or the taunting memories. 

Michael ends the story at a point he knows will suffice but still keep you safe, and you don’t seem to notice that he’s holding back because damn it, he’s crying, sobbing even, and all you want to do is comfort him.

He feels guilty for lying again, but it is for your own good. If you knew what was going on right under your nose, close to your own home and close to your heart with him here, you wouldn’t be able to deal.

But there are things Michael doesn’t know about you, and he can’t even begin to fathom how wrong he is about you not being able to deal with the violent lifestyle of his family. No matter how scared you might appear, it is not always because of the reasons he thinks it is. 

You’re a good liar, excellent even, but there is a gut feeling inside of him that won’t go away, and he holds onto the hope that one day, he will learn who you truly are, as much as you wish to know who he truly is. 

Only then can you both be unconditionally happy with each other – honesty is key, and it is still lacking in every one of your conversations.

Michael just hopes you will be able to survive whatever rocks life might throw your way because losing you is not an option he wants to concern himself with – in more than one sense. 

Tagging: @bellaxgiornata @shouldbestudying41 @your-not-invisible-to-me @glowstick-lesbian @ms-murdockswift @acharliecoxedfan @loveroftoomanyfandoms @mattmurdocksscars @roseallisonparker @1988-fiend @norestfortheshelbywicked

[ageofpiracyrp]

To commemorate our one year anniversary, a new playable species is being introduced, the “Romoquele”, who are intended to be rather batlike. Our first Romoquele will be a new NPC posted today!

ROMOQUELE

Species Name: Romoquele

Species Classification: Non-Humanoid

Species Lifespan: Average life expectancy is 325

Species Age of Maturity: 48

Species Planet(s): The home planet is Lloor like that of the Vanniree, but the planet has since become inhabitable. Most Romoquele reside on the planets Uvlu and Beverle, but there are significant populations on Kurrk and several outpost planets.

Species Appearance: The Romoquele vary significantly in height. The average range of heights for adults are 4’8” to 7’. All members of the species have two pairs of featherless wings. The larger pair of wings originates on the wearer’s back and is largely retractable. The second pair of wings is attached to vaguely humanoid arms ending in six claws (four fingers and two thumbs). The second pair of wings is more like a sugar glider’s wings than anything- it’s more for gliding and picking up a touch of extra wind so as not to exert too much energy. Romoquele have two to six eyes which are usually green, red, silver, or black with no separate color of the sclera. The species typically has large pointed ears, with skin any solid color that can be imagined.

Species Characteristics: Romoquele are typically considered scavengers; their resourceful culture has been perceived as ‘savage’ to other species, especially in comparison to the more refined vanniree. They are not well-represented in governments of any scale, and never have been. When the umbra were more prevalent, romoquele played a part in the poor perception of that species to make themselves look better. This fell through when umbra went into hiding, and they are looked down upon most of the time. While the species is related to the Vanniree, the two species diverged many thousands of years ago. By virtue of this, they are also related to the Carreki, but distantly. The technology that allows Carreki and Vanniree to have biological children could hypothetically allow Romoquele to as well, but the technology hasn’t been applied yet. Romoquele can fly further and longer than vanniree, and are commonly very good mimics. Most of them have perfect pitch, and some level of elevated perception of their surroundings by sensing the reverberation of sound haves. Romoquele can slightly manipulate the direction and frequency of sound, but it takes some effort.

[loliwrites]

So, you wrote about the first time they finally did the deed after the première of their film. How does the morning after go? It must be so tooth-rottingly sweet!

For a refresher, here's the first time they "do the deed". As the lovely Non puts it. Non, you hit the nail on the head. It's got to be sooooo sweet, right? Dripping with pure saccharin.

Alex is no fool. He knows that was a big deal for her. A trial in openness and vulnerability on the heels of her biggest career accomplishment to date. He will always tread on careful ground with her as it relates to her experiences and emotions, but lord almighty, if last night was not completely earth-shatteringly amazing.

She's still tucked into his body as he begins the plight of consciousness. His biological alarm clock making it progressively harder to remain in a sleepy lull. With his minuscule movements and adjustments of his body, she hummed delicately and grabbed onto his hand (conveniently slung over her hips), and pulled it up her chest until she could kiss his fingers. He smiled to himself, pleased she couldn't see his reaction and thus grow embarrassed by her display of softness. He lowered his head until he could press his lips to her shoulder, relishing in the way her body lit up for him with goosebumps and anticipation.

"Good morning," she whispered, and with eyes still shut wiggled her ass back against his waist, feeling the tell-tale signs of an overactive mind. "Good morning to you, too," she reached back and slid her hand over his backside, forcing his body into hers as much as she could.

He smiled into her touch and allowed her to take control of his body, placing him however she pleased. Content didn't even begin to cover how he felt at the moment. But surprise did as she parted her legs and nudged his hand down between them. He followed that up with a nibble to her neck. It was like he could operate on autopilot here, adjusting and altering based upon the reaction of her body to his touch. One that became a little more clear of intention as he pressed two fingers against her sensitive button and circled it with languid strokes.

"Feeling good, kid?"

She nodded with her eyes still closed, allowing herself to be completely consumed by the pleasure administered by his skillful fingers. "So good," she moaned.

Alex wasn't quite sure if that was an answer to his question or a statement due in part to the ministrations provided by his fingers, but either way, he was going to take it as a win. He kept his rhythm steady, not inclined to push her too much too soon.

"I feel like I can still feel you inside me," she arched her hips back into his with force.

He buried his face into her neck and gave her a playful bite that turned into a slow, wet kiss. Feeling her body relax into him, he slid his fingers through her folds and pressed against her entrance. A giggle floated past her lips; one he knew bubbled from nervousness. He stilled his fingers and kissed her shoulder as he leaned up on his forearm to get a better view of her face. At the moment of eye contact, she blushed and turned onto her back.

"Can I make you feel good?" His words came out a deep, gentle whisper. It only made her blush harder and exhale another nervous giggle. He lowered his lips to her ear, "I want to pleasure you so badly, kid." He nibbled her earlobe in between breaths. "I want to make your body shake and tremble for me,"

She exhaled a needy, conflicted whine and Alex lifted his head again to look into her eyes. He moved his middle finger just slightly, adding a little more pressure to her entrance, ready and very willing to give it to her the moment she gave him the go-ahead.

But she paused and he bent down to kiss her softly, "can I?"

The moment between her nodding and him slowly sinking his middle finger inside her was indistinguishable. Except for the quick second he brought his hand to his mouth and licked his fingers, the entire motion was immediate and seamless. He maintained eye contact until he reached the last knuckle, at which point he leaned in again for another kiss. This one a little more searing. "That's a good girl," he grinned, feeling her body flare open for him; her legs spreading a little wider, her core stretching to accommodate his thrusting finger. He lowered his forehead to hers while his eyes drifted shut, wholly concentrated on his new favorite task.

With the slowing of his finger, he eased it out of her and circled her clit before reopening his eyes to keep a careful watch on her. Feeling the addition of a second finger at her entrance, she bit into her bottom lip and nodded softly, giving him the go-ahead to do as he pleased -- which he wasted no time in beginning. As he sunk two fingers back into her, he readjusted to slide his free hand beneath her neck, cradling her in such a way that made her feel like she was going to be completely taken care of. What she found was that wasn't too far off base. At the moment her face twisted into a grimace due in part to the stretch, Alex slowed his hand.

"Good?"

Addi yearned for the time when her body would be used to this new interaction. She pouted and shook her head.

His hand paused immediately, fingers half deep in her. "Stop?"

She shook her head again, trying and being mostly successful in getting the grimace off her face. "Keep going,"

"Sweetheart, if it's not good..."

"It will get good. Please, I don't want you to stop," she clawed at his side, doing her best to spur him back on.

But he was cautious now and even though his fingers continued their journey deeper, they moved slower. "Stop me if it's not getting good," he whispered when the facade of her expression began to crack again. She only nodded and he wanted -- needed -- to make sure they were on the same page. "Capeesh?"

She nodded, lifting her hips off the bed to help him along. She thought if she could adjust to the feeling of his fingers fully sheathed, she could get on with the pleasure. "Capeesh, I will," she lifted her head and pecked his lips, pleased that when she lowered her head back to the pillow, he went with her to elongate their kiss.

His fingers continued their act, skillfully moving with growing ease. She relaxed into him, flexing her hips down onto his hand, burying him deep inside her. A high pitched shriek when he curled both fingers and he smiled as he repositioned himself on top of her. He could get her over the edge in no time if she'd let him. And just when he was really beginning to think that she would, her phone dinged on the nightstand. Startled, they both glanced over at it, albeit Alex's attention to it was fleeting. He thrust his fingers into her, trying to get another reaction, but she was still drawn to her phone screen, squinting to read the alert that had come up.

"Wait! Wait!" She yelled. Alex held his hand still, fearing he'd hurt her, and was slightly put at ease when she just went reaching for her phone. "It's The Hollywood Reporter,"

"Slugger, I literally have my fingers inside you,"

She unlocked her phone and looked up at him, "I know, and it feels good. But it's The Hollywood Reporter," she flashed a smile, very nearly exposing every single one of her teeth.

He sighed and gently eased his fingers out of her before turning onto his back and sidling up next to her. Her thumb was swiping down the screen as she read the article, exposing a little more of whatever this journalist had to say. Given how the start of the Variety article had gone, Alex hoped this one would be kinder to the feat they had accomplished. Although he was next to her, able to read along if he was so inclined, he preferred to keep his eyes on her; watching as her eyes flitted along the sentences -- micro-adjustments in her expression. Finally, a tell-tale smile flooded her face.

"Alexander Skarsgård's portrayal is nothing short of spectacular. His attention to detail and ability to create intriguing charm in a villainous character continues to set him apart from counterparts in films across the board. We'll be seeing his name regularly come award season," she set her phone down and glanced over at him. "You are a special, special man,"

He felt the blood rush to his cheeks and knew he was blushing. In order to deflect the focus, he rolled back over on top of her and reached over into the nightstand drawer for a condom, "I just read the words you wrote, kid."

He'd be lying if he said he wasn't completely thrilled that while he tore the foil packet open and rolled the condom down his length, she was spreading her legs and touching herself, getting ready to receive him.

[uncloseted]

saying "people who identify as girls are girls" is not simple. at all. i mean ok i am a girl. why? because i identify as one. but why? there's nothing that unites all girls. which doesn't mean that all girls have to be exactly the same but they at least need to have ONE thing in common. i mean if people say yeah i like women, when i'm in the street i look at women not men. how do you know? how do you know who's a man and who's a woman and who's anything else? and even woke people look at someone

1and think "girl" then think, or maybe they're non binary! but they never say or maybe they're a man. never. a person who looks like me has two options: girl or one of the hundreds of non binary identities. but to be a man, I'd have to try harder. it's not enough to IDENTIFY AS. ffs I can't be the only one who sees this. and just to clarify, i sent the joke about Emily being transphobic and i sent the first two of the three asks that you answered together i forgot this. you seriously thinl that if you raise a baby completely gender neutral, like one of those "theybies" and you tell them a girl is someone who identifies as a girl a boy is anyone who identifies as a boy nb is someone who identifies as neither, that they will deep down, without taking into account any stereotypes or biological essentialism, know what gender they are? even if they end up saying I'm a girl/boy, it will be because they will be exposed to girls and boys and "choose" the one they relate most to, or even because they like how the word "girl" or "boy" sounds.

I think you're asking some really good questions here. You're raising a lot of very philosophically interesting questions about the metaphysics of gender (what does it mean to have a gender, what does it mean to be transgender, is gender a social construct or is it innate to humans, etc) and how gender, as a social construct, impacts our lives on a day to day basis. Better philosophers than I have struggled with these questions for decades, but I'll do my best not to get too into the weeds on their different theories in this post. Instead, I'll offer my thoughts on what gender is and then investigate how we interact with it on a practical level. This is likely to be a long post, so apologies in advance, but it's a complicated issue that touches everyone's lives and I want to be mindful of that while writing this. Also apologies that this is going to be a pretty binary post. I don't mean to exclude nonbinary identities from this conversation, but to illustrate the points I'm trying to make, I think it's easier to talk about binary identities first. Just know that I do think nonbinary identities are real, valid and worthy of recognition and respect. Lastly, I'm not attached to any of the views expressed in this post. They reflect my thinking at this moment in time, but that might change as I learn more about these topics. I apologize if any of the views presented here are inadvertently hurtful. That's not my intention at all, but I recognize that regardless of intention, some things can cause harm. My goal in this post is to explore some ideas, and I would love to hear other people's opinions on this topic or criticism of these ideas. The Metaphysics of Gender So, to start out with, what is gender? Why are you a girl? Why do you identify as a girl? Why does anyone, and what links those people who identify as "girls" together? Is identifying as a girl enough to be one? These are complicated questions, both philosophically and culturally, and they've become more visible as we've become more culturally aware of gender variances (recently in the West. Third genders have always existed, and do continue to exist, in many cultures around the world). In biology and philosophy, there's a concept called "homeostatic property clusters" (stay with me here, I promise I'm going somewhere with this). "Homeostatic property clusters" is basically just a fancy phrase for the idea that if a creature has enough of a certain set of characteristics, they can be defined as part of a larger category, even if they don't have all of the traits that creatures in that category might have. In the PhilosophyTube video "Social Constructs", Abigail offers the category "mammals" as an example of a "homeostatic property cluster". Mammals are creatures that have warm blood, produce milk, and birth live offspring. Humans are mammals based on these characteristics, and so are seals and giraffes. But platypuses are also mammals, even though they lay eggs instead of birthing live offspring. These three properties, having warm blood, producing milk, and birthing live offspring, tend to "cluster" together, but they don't have to all be present in order for the creature to be "a mammal"- in this case, two out of three is fine. I think gender is similar. It's a homeostatic property cluster that includes biological, psychological, and social traits. Not all of those traits must be present for a person to "be a girl" or "be a boy", but enough of them have to be present in order for the person to be considered as part of that category ("girl" or "boy"). That cluster of traits is what all "girls" have in common, even if those traits aren't exactly the same for each individual. So, then, in the context of gender, what are those traits? "Biopsychosocial traits" is all very good as an academic term, but what does it actually mean? Let's start with the biological traits, since I think they're what most people default to when talking about gender. Biological Sex and Gender One trait we might consider when talking about whether someone "is a

girl" is sex characteristics. Sex and gender are fundamentally separate concepts, but for many people, they're linked. Many cis people consider themselves cis because they were "born in the right body" or lack the desire to medically transition. They have a "subconscious sex" that matches their physical body. So I think this is a good place to start. We might ask the question, "does this person have primary or secondary sex characteristics associated with being "a girl"?" It feels like the answer should be obvious- do they have tits and fanny, or don't they? But in reality, "biological sex" itself is kind of a homeostatic property cluster. Female sex characteristics include XX chromosomes, ovaries, estrogen and gestagen, a vagina, uterus, and fallopain tubes, breasts, and a menstrual cycle. But there are people without some of these traits that are still "girls". For example, some girls don't have a menstrual cycle (due to menopause, hormonal birth control, low body weight, PCOS, etc), but they're still girls. Some girls don't have a uterus (for example, if they've had a hysterectomy), but they're still girls. Some girls never develop breasts, but they're still girls. Some girls are born with Swyer syndrome, where they have a uterus, fallopian tubes, a cervix and a vagina, but have XY sex chromosomes. They're still girls. Any one of those traits by themselves can't be enough to decide if a person "is a biological girl" or "isn't a biological girl", but if a person has enough traits in that cluster, then they can be considered part of the larger category "biological girl". That by itself is kind of a TERFy take, so I would offer that the biological trait in the cluster "girl" is "has a cluster of female sex characteristics, either naturally or artificially, or gender dysphoria resulting in a desire to acquire those sex characteristics." But that alone can't be enough to determine if someone is or isn't "a girl". If it was, it would exclude pre-medical transition trans boys, even pre-medical transition trans boys who are living their lives as boys. It's also a transmedicalist take- it would also exclude trans people who never medically transition. To me, that doesn't feel right. People shouldn't be considered "a girl" or "a boy" based on biological essentialism, the pain of gender dysphoria, or their access to medical transition. So there have to be other factors at play- other traits in the cluster. Gender as Identity On the other side of the spectrum, some people say that gender is identity. You are "a girl" or "a boy" because that's how you identify- it's how you see yourself. In this viewpoint, gender is something innate to a person, that they instinctively know about themselves. It's perhaps a "female soul" in a "male body". In your ask, you express some scepticism about this view, and I'm inclined to agree. If humans have souls, I'm inclined to think they're not gendered, since what constitutes gender varies so widely across cultures and time periods. But I do also think that "identifying as" is an important element of "being a girl". Identifying as a girl is a basic criteria for being a girl. No person who doesn't identify as a girl can be a girl. It's an innate property of "girlness", the same way that an innate property of triangles is that they have three sides. But I do agree with you that I'm not convinced it's enough to only "identify as". Other traits in the cluster have to be present, because without a physical or social transition (or at least, the desire for a physical or social transition, particularly in cases of people for whom it's not safe or possible for them to transition), a person's identification doesn't have much practical value. Gender as a Social Role If "identifying as" isn't enough, then perhaps an important part of the gender conversation is the social role that gender plays in our lives. A gender is put upon us when we're born, and people continue to expect us to fill our assigned gender role throughout our lives. Maybe what's important isn't our body

parts or our internal identity, but instead, the gender role society lets us adopt. Perhaps society has to let you adopt the gender role you identify as. Either you're perceived as a woman or you aren't, either you "pass" or you don't. Perhaps those expectations that others have of you are what defines your gender. Intuitively, this seems to be tapping into something that feels true, at least to me. "Identifying as" isn't enough because society has to acknowledge that we are who we say we are. As you say, perhaps we have to "try harder" to "be a girl" or "be a boy" than just "identifying as". But this, too, has its problems. What about trans people who can't or don't pass? Does their transness get revoked for not appearing like they're trying hard enough? And what constitutes "hard enough"? Is trying at all "hard enough", or is there a point at which you "become" your gender? How many people need to reach a consensus on your gender before that's who you "are"? Does it get revoked by one person who misgenders you? And what about people who are cis, but occasionally put into an opposite gender role because of the way they present themselves? It seems to me that relying on other people to confer gender onto us is at once too limiting and not limiting enough. Gender as Gender Expression Going off of the idea of gender as a social role, then maybe gender is how you physically express yourself to the world- how you look to others. Maybe if you choose to express yourself as a given gender (through hair, clothes, makeup, voice, etc.), that's the gender that you are (or a reflection of the gender that you are), because that's how society will gender you. But that seems insufficient as well, for a lot of the same reasons that gender as a social role does. There are people who express themselves in stereotypically "masculine" ways but who identify as girls and who are understood to be girls by those around them. Their "girlness" is not culturally taken away from them based on their gender expression (unless there's another trait within the cluster of "being a girl" that they appear to not have). A girl can wear a full face of makeup, a dress and high heels, or have a pixie cut, no makeup, and wear a flannel and Doc Martens, but that alone isn't enough to say that she's not "a girl". This is especially true now, where very few ways of presenting are viewed as inherently gendered. Dresses and skirts are no longer exclusively "a girl thing" and pants have long been gender neutral. And what constitutes "presenting as a girl" and "presenting as a boy" changes across culture, time, and based on other characteristics an individual has (like class, race, size, or level of ability). So gender expression doesn't seem sufficient by itself to determine gender identity. Gender as Behaviors and Actions (aka Gender Performativity) Okay, so gender isn't just gender expression. But what about gender as a set of behaviors, something that you do? Gender performativity is a theory presented by Judith Butler in 1990 (sorry, I know I promised I wouldn't namedrop philosophical theories, but this is important to the conversation). Butler says that gender is constructed through a set of "acts" that are in line with societal ideas of what it means to "be a girl" or "be a boy". This performance of gendered acts is ongoing, even when we're alone, and is out of our control. Butler believes that there's no such thing as a "non-stylized" act- that is to say, everything we do is an act, and there's no such thing as an act that is not perceived as being somewhere on the spectrum of masculinity and femininity (at least, not in the current world we live in). The way we stylize these acts have the possibility to change over time. So Judith Butler believes that we "do" gender rather than "being" gender- that a girl "does girlness" over time. Put another way, a girl does behaviors, actions, and expressions that are stylized as "girly", which is what makes her gender identity "girl". And this gender, "girl", is constantly being

produced as the girl produces more of those "girly" acts. Instead of having an innate gender or expressing our internal gender through the way that we present, Butler thinks our outward gendered acts create our inner gender identity. Those acts and the way we perform them are shaped from the minute that we're born, when we're thrown into a pre-existing gender category and taught that "people like us" do things "in this way". This theory offers an answer to the question we asked in the previous section about gender as presentation; someone who is dressed "masculine" can still be "a girl" because they're performing "girlness"- they're doing acts that are in line with what we think of as "a girl". Because Butler doesn't believe that you're born with an internal gender, her work is controversial in trans spaces and are sometimes thought of as being trans-exclusionary (although Butler herself is a trans advocate). But I think disagree. Presumably, a person could change the stylization of the acts they perform. A person who was performing "boy" can begin to instead perform "girl", although they did not grow up performing "girl". It may be difficult, as they haven't had the performance of "girl" thrust upon them their entire lives, and have not experienced the "oppression experiences of girlhood" that can shape the performance of "girl". But gender performance and gender socialization are a lifelong process, and so the more a person "does girlness", the more they will be perceived as "doing girlness", and the more they will be expected to "perform girlness." I think it becomes something of a feedback loop where performance feeds socialization and socialization feeds performance. What about the "theybies"? What would happen if you raise a baby completely gender neutral? What would happen if a baby wasn't thrown into a pre-existing gender category upon birth? Would they identify as a gender without taking stereotypes or biological essentialism into account? This is essentially a question about social constructs. If we raised a baby with the understanding that some people have male sex characteristics, some have female sex characteristics, and some people have a combination of both, but removed the social constructs we have around gender, would gender still exist to this child? What you've created here is a "Twin Earth" thought experiment- a hypothetical where there are two Earths that are identical in every way except for one. Our Earth has the social construct of Gender, but Twin Earth does not. Would our Theyby still have a gender if they lived on Twin Earth? I think no. They wouldn't have a context to understand the social systems that we've created around sex characteristics, and so they wouldn't be able to place themselves within those systems. They wouldn't understand why we've based our whole society around sex characteristics as opposed to something else. They would be able to identify that they have the sex characteristics associated with "boys" or "girls", but not what it means to "be a girl" or "be a boy". (If you want to dig further into this idea of Social Constructs, that PhilosophyTube video I linked above is a good place to start). They could learn, but it wouldn't be innate to them. We, however, don't live on Twin Earth. We live on Earth. And on Earth, we do have the social construct of gender. So even if you raise a child completely gender neutral, they still have a concept of what it is to "be a girl" or "be a boy". They might learn that "girls" have long hair, or wear dresses, or are nice and caring, or are emotional, or walk and talk a certain way, or wear pink, or whatever other social constructs we ascribe to the gender "girl". They might learn that "boys" have short hair, wear pants, are mischievous, are aggressive, or walk a different way, or wear blue, or whatever other social constructs we ascribe to the gender "boy". Kids who are raised gender neutral look at the physical characteristics of other kids, the gender expression of other kids, the performance of "girlness" or

"boyness" that other kids do, and compare them to the physical characteristics they have, the gender expression they like, the gender expression that's expected of them from others, the performance of gender that they gravitate towards, and the performance of gender expected of them from others, and they tend to pick the one that feels more like their category. Most kids start conceptualizing their gender identity around age 3 or 4, and that's true for kids who are raised gender-neutral as well. When they start spending more time out in the world, they notice that they're different from some kids and similar to others, and they learn the language to describe those differences. But all of this is kind of beside the point, because raising a child as a "theyby" doesn't ultimately have the goal of the child not having a gender or growing up to be agender or genderqueer. It has the goal of allowing children to develop their likes, dislikes, and views of themselves without the contribution of harmful gender stereotypes. And I think that's actually a really great goal- how many of us that were raised female were discouraged from pursuing certain interests (especially science and technology related interests) because those "aren't girl things"? Kids will be exposed to those harmful stereotypes eventually, but if a kid is raised until age 3 without them, they might be more resilient to them when those ideas are presented. And for kids who do end up being transgender, being raised without gender lets them know that they'll be accepted by their family no matter their identity. Okay, but give us some answers... what is gender? So, we've gone over a lot of things that gender isn't, or at least, a lot of things that can't exclusively constitute a gender. But where does that leave us? What does that make gender? I propose it's something like the following: There are lots of ways to have or experience a gender. In order to have a gender, a person must:

1. Identify as that gender and: 2. have a cluster of sex characteristics matching the biological sex associated with that gender, either naturally or artificially, or gender dysphoria resulting in a desire to acquire those sex characteristics AND/OR 3. socially inhabit that gender, through gender expression or gender performance, or have a desire to socially inhabit that gender

I think that covers pretty much every case I can think of. People who identify as a gender and have the sex characteristics matching that gender are cis people, regardless of their social presentation. People who identify as a gender and have gender dysphoria or who have medically transitioned are the gender they identify as. People who identify as a gender and socially inhabit that gender are also the gender they identify as, and so are people who identify as a gender and would like to socially inhabit that gender but can't due to financial constraints or safety concerns. They're just experiencing trans identity in a different way to medically transitioned people. Gender as a Social Construct Okay, so that's the metaphysics of gender, or at least, an approach to the metaphysics of gender. I want to make it clear that I'm not attached to this theory, and I don't necessarily think I'm right. This is just where I've landed in my thinking right now, and I'm open to hearing other people's opinions and criticisms. In any case, it's very abstract, very philosophical, but maybe not super practical for the other questions you're asking here, and definitely not simple. So why, in my original answer, was I making the claim that "people who identify as girls are girls" is simple, then? I was making that claim because the way we interact with other people isn't metaphysical. It's practical. And practically speaking, all you need to do is acknowledge a person the way they ask to be acknowledged. Does someone say they're a boy named Jack who uses he/him pronouns? Great, call him Jack and use he/him pronouns. Does someone say their name is Sarah and use she/her pronouns? Great, call her Sarah and use she/her pronouns. Does someone say their name is Alex and they use they/them pronouns? Great, call them Alex and use they/them pronouns. Does someone say their name is Cloud and they use ze/zir pronouns? Great, call them Cloud and use ze/zir pronouns. You don't have to understand their relationship with their gender or what their gender means at all. You can even think their gender is "cringe". But you do have to respect the way they view themselves, and acknowledge them how they want to be seen. Think about it this way- if you were at an event and someone had a nametag that said, "Hi! My name is Taylor", but when they introduced themselves, they said, "I know my nametag says Taylor, but actually I go by Riley," what would you do? You'd just... call them Riley, right? You don't need to know why they have the wrong nametag to respect that their nametag is wrong. You probably wouldn't insist on calling them Taylor because that's what the nametag says. You probably wouldn't even ask how they ended up with a nametag that was wrong. Trans people are people, and they deserve respect just like anyone else. That's why this is simple- all you have to do is listen and be respectful, even if you don't understand. Wrapping up, here's my question to you. What is it about trans people that makes you uncomfortable? Think about it honestly, and try not to default to, "it's political correctness run amok! People are offended if you breathe too loudly!" Does it feel like a challenge to your own identity, either your gender identity or your sexuality? Is it a discomfort with society changing? Is it a fear of getting something wrong and offending someone? The vast majority of trans people I've met just want to be acknowledged for who they are. They'll politely correct people who misgender them or accidentally say something transphobic. And the ones who are the most aggressive or militant are the ones who have been hurt the most by a system that won't acknowledge them for who they are. It's a plea to be seen in a world that denies them that visibility. Maybe it isn't trans people that need to become less sensitive, but us who need to become more accepting. Some resources that you might be interested in if you liked this post: The Aesthetic | ContraPoints Social Constructs | Philosophy Tube "Transtrenders" |

ContraPoints Gender Critical | ContraPoints Judith Butler's Theory of Gender Performativity, Explained

[an-ambivalent]

Biased [Yandere! Tobirama]

Warnings: sexist undertones, non-con touching, forced omorashi / piss kink. Read at your own risk. I do not condone these behaviours irl. 

Between his students, he picked on you the most.

With his elder brother in charge of the village relations, Tobirama took it upon himself to oversee the development of the ninja academy, and the first generation of shinobi who would be contributing to it.

He argued that as a war veteran, he knew what he was doing; in most instances, men were biologically favoured with more strength compared to women, and on the battlefield, it was a harsher reality for women than it was for men. So as  his only female student, he needed to pay more attention to you and give you ‘special’ training’ to help you build up your stamina.

You weren’t sure how forcing yourself to drink excessive amounts of water until your stomach bulged, and then not being allowed to relieve yourself in the bathroom was supposed to help. If anything, this felt downright humiliating -- especially when Tobirama watched you with those ruby eyes narrowed into a calculating stare.

You felt a few drops leak out and drop down your legs. You winced in disgust and clenched your muscles tighter to prevent anymore leaking.

“S-Sensei, can I ple--”

“What are the rules?” He asked coldly, stepping closer to you. His taller frame loomed over you threateningly, and you flinched in fear.

“N-No speaking unless I’m spoken to-”

“Exactly. So keep your mouth shut.” He commanded, and you nodded as you glanced down to the floor in shame.

“You’re too uptight. As a kunoichi, you need more practice to appear more relaxed and calm,” Tobirama stated, as he cupped your crotch with one hand and started to rub it, and with the other, he gripped area of skin above your trapezius muscle to prevent you from fidgeting. The stimulation added to desperate sensation to pee increased your discomfort, and instinctively, you clenched your legs together. Tobirama’s hand pressed harder against your heat, and all at once, your body tensed up, before relief came all together; a spurt of liquid suddenly gushed out to wet your clothes and Tobirama’s hand.

For a moment, your mind became empty,  you felt at ease and a sigh of satisfaction left your lips. However, as soon as Tobirama clicked his tongue in disappointment and wiped his hand clean on his pants, your shoulders tensed up in nervousness because you knew what he was going to say next.

“You need to do better. Let’s try it again.” Tobirama held out the first drink bottle out to you that would be the beginning to repeat the cycle. “Drink.”

[aquadestinyswriting]

Magical Diseases: Burnout

So, I’ve been doing some more thinking on how Burnout works in the Titan universe and have come up with a plausible “scientific” explanation for it (well, as scientific as one can get with a disease that is both magical in nature and was artificially created by the collaboration of a dark wizard and a demon) that should work in remaining internally consistent for future plots (No… I’m not planning more angst involving this disease… whyever would you ask such a thing? *quietly shuffles plot bunnies into a box under the bed* >_>). I'm placing the rest under a read more because, holy heck this is long.

First things first, we need to go over some basic biology relating to casters:

'Arcane channels'/Aetherial Layer

Everyone has the ability to channel magic (aside from nulls. I'll be making a separate post about them at some point) thanks to a biological quirk. An extra layer over the myelin sheath around their nerve cells, which allows for the transfer of magical energy through the body. Casters have a thicker one than non-casters, which allows them to more easily channel magical energy in order to manipulate it.

This layer is often referred to, in common parlance, as an 'arcane channel', though it should be more properly referred to as an aetherial sheath (from the draconic word for magic, aether).

Magic can be neutral or positively or negatively polarised. Arcane magic is typically neutral while divine magic is typically positively charged and 'evil' (or demonic) magic is typically negatively charged.

It is unknown why Divine casters are typically unaffected by negatively charged magic, but demons and undead creatures are so severely affected by positively charged magic. Research into this phenomenon is ongoing.

As Arcane magic is neutral and arcane casters are typically neutrally aligned as a result, they can be affected by both positively and negatively charged magic.

Using too much magical energy at once can damage the aetherial layer, leading to extreme pain, fatigue and, potentially, loss of consciousness. This is referred to as over-channel.

Those who have experienced over-channel describe the pain as being like fire tearing through their bodies. Experienced casters are less likely to experience this and, when they do, are more easily able to mitigate the damage done. Inexperienced casters often require full medical assistance to ensure that no permanent damage is done to the aetherial layer.

OK, now that's out of the way, let's get onto the disease itself.

Burnout

Burnout is an artificial, magical disease created by Jaxartes, with the help of the Demon Prince Ishtra to eliminate or permanently incapacitate the former's many, many enemies and rivals.

The disease is caused by a variation of a varicella virus which has been saturated with negatively polarised magic to allow it to infect the aetherial layer of the nerve cells.

The virus irritates the aetherial layer of the caster's nervous system, creating an effect similar to a continuous, low-level over-channel.

Due to its extreme negative polarisation, the virus cancels out all but the most potent healing magic, and actually creates a backlash within the individual being healed, increasing the damage done.

The virus is most commonly found on demonic artefacts, or on any items that have been incidentally charged with large amounts of negatively polarised magic. Handling such items must, therefore, be done with extreme care and caution.

If possible, it is advised that arcane casters do not even touch demonic artefacts and must use Mage Hand to carry such items so they can be placed into storage (or taken to a specialist to be destroyed).

Vigilant arcane casters can be cured if they notice that a handled item (accidentally or otherwise) has been infected. The most common way is if the caster feels a sensation similar to 'pins and needles' in their fingers upon handling the item. The item will also often feel warm to the touch.

If Burnout is suspected, the infected caster must seek immediate medical assistance from a cleric capable of casting Heal at the ninth level at the earliest opportunity. Failure to do so can lead to permanent damage to the aetherial layer and the nerves themselves. Such damage, sadly, usually leads to death as, by this point, the virus has spread throughout the rest of the body, impacting major bodily functions.

Divine casters are typically unaffected by this virus. However, they may still become infected if their immune system has been previously weakened, or following an extreme case of over-channel.

Duration

As Burnout is an artificially created disease, the time between initial infection, symptoms and potential death can be as swift as 24-48 hours if appropriate medical assistance is not rendered within 3-4 hours of initial infection. Those infected individuals who do receive immediate medical assistance may experience milder symptoms lasting up to two weeks.

Symptoms

The virus, initially, presents itself as a cold or flu (the disease was designed such that it would be mistaken for more common and milder diseases). Initial symptoms include, coughing and sneezing as well as a general feeling of malaise and fatigue. Casters may also experience a tingling sensation at their fingertips or flashes of heat running up their arms.

Infected individuals will often find themselves miscasting as the aetherial sheath becomes irritated (miscasting is also a common symptom of Weaver's Fever, which is a comparatively mild upper respiratory virus endemic to the material plane)

Following the initial onset of symptoms, the infected individual will rapidly develop a fever. This begins as a relatively mild case, but can quickly increase in severity if it is not dealt with. Attempts at casting at this stage cause the caster to lose consciousness as the already irritated aetherial sheath is over-channeled further.

As the virus spreads throughout the rest of the body, the infected individual will begin to experience respiratory distress and arrhythmia in the heart due to the nerve cells themselves becoming irritated. At this point, 'spidering' may be visible on the infected individual's skin, a clear and visible indication of the death of the aetherial sheath. Typically, this begins at the fingertips and works its way up the arms and throughout the rest of the body.

The "spidering" effect is initially visible as a blue-purple web following the pattern of the nervous system. This colour can very quickly turn to black as the aetherial sheath cells are killed off.

Attempts to dispel the disease by the time any spidering is visible are typically rendered void, as the build-up of negatively polarised magic is such, that introducing positively charged magic will simply induce a backlash effect. Clerics who have attempted to dispel the disease at this point, describe the sensation as trying to push through an impenetrable barrier, which simply bounces their spells back upon them.

Aftermath

In individuals who were cured early enough, and those who were simply Resurrected following their death, the virus remains within the body, lying dormant in the aetherial sheath (True Resurrection negates this effect entirely). It is currently believed that, since this is an innate property of varicella viruses, this is why such a virus was selected to induce the disease in the first place.

In cases where the cured individual had experienced severe irritation of the aetherial sheath, they may lose some, or all, of their ability to cast. Depending on how severely damaged the aetherial sheath has become, they may, or may not, regain the ability to manipulate magic in the future.

As the disease can remain dormant in the aetherial layer in cured and resurrected individuals, the virus can be reactivated years, or even decades later.

Partial reactivation of the virus may occur during periods of extreme physical and/or emotional stress. In such cases, the aetherial sheath is irritated and a relatively mild illness is induced in the infected individual. The caster may still lose some or all of their ability to cast following illness, however. The point of the disease, after all, is to permanently incapacitate arcane casters be it through death or other means.

Should a previously infected caster, who is still capable of manipulating magic severely over-channel, however, the virus is fully reactivated within their system, leading to the disease occurring once more despite the lack of an outside source of infection. In these ‘relapse’ cases, the disease may well spread more rapidly than before, necessitating the need for those close to the caster in question remaining vigilant for onset of any symptoms reminiscent of the disease.

[5typesoftrash]

warning: this is going to be a long post. transphobia and bigotry under the cut

I am posting this rebuttal of a person who got (hilariously) angry at someone who Does Not Care (me) and wrote an entire-ass essay on this post because apparently this is how I spend my time. Defending my identity which does not need to be defended because it is immutable from transphobic trolls who won’t even see it cause they’re blocked from this account.

Anyway. Be careful looking under the cut.

TERFs, gender-crits, radical feminists, transmeds, nb-exclus, anti-mogai, and anyone else whose ideology promotes transphobia and/or trans erasure, please kindly do not fucking touch this post. I am not kidding when I say that I will report you all to tumblr for hate speech if it takes me all fucking night.

Image Description

Two screenshots of a reblog from tumblr user homosexual-means-gay. The post reads:

please tell me how literally every single gay man being repulsed by ppl with vaginas hurts you! tell us why it’s a problem gay ppl aren’t attracted to the opposite sex like straight and bi ppl are!

homosexuality isn’t a political movement it’s a regular natural innate sexuality. gay men aren’t attracted to biological females and it hurts gay ppl when you side with conversion therapists and it hurts bisexual ppl who actually are attracted to both sexes when you erase them for your homophobic agenda. you’re not a victim. you’re happy to eliminate homosexuality from existence as long as you’re able to reinforce heteronormative gender roles the gay community has always opposed. your bigotry harms trans homosexuals too, not that you transhets care about the gay trans ppl either.

erased from history? you want gay ppl correctively raped out of existence bc you love socially constructed gender roles more than human rights. you deserve all the hate you put out into the world. im sorry our innate orientation and culture prove how flimsy and useless the gender roles you define yourself by are, but homophobia will not improve your self esteem. you’re driving away ppl who would be happy to support your made up identity by attacking how we were born same sex attracted. sorry you can’t relate bc you’re straight. sorry you think you can use your privilege against us. but it’s not something we’re doing to you. it’s not something we can change and it’s not something we want to change. there’s never been a gay man in existence who likes pussy, not even the gay trans women like marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera. you’re a sad little straight girl alienating all potential allies.

hurting us doesn’t validate you. it doesn’t hurt you that no gay man will ever like pussy.

End ID

(If someone wants to do a better ID that’s fine, I just wanted to put everyone on an equal playing field when it comes to understanding the content of this post.)

I’m going to go line-by-line and refute every single bullshit thing this person said.

> please tell me how literally every single gay man being repulsed by ppl with vaginas hurts you!

factoid actually just statistical error. TERF Tommy, who has committed multiple transphobic hate crimes, is an outlier and should not have been counted. I know many cis gay men who are attracted to trans men because they are MEN, not because of the genitalia they have. And I know you want to say ‘that makes them bi’, but no, it doesn’t. You want to accuse me of homophobia? Telling another gay person that their identity is invalid just because they express it in a different way than you do is literal homophobia.

>  tell us why it’s a problem gay ppl aren’t attracted to the opposite sex like straight and bi ppl are!

because... some are? And you don’t speak for the entire gay community? Especially not the other side of it, for the opposite binary gender than yours.

>  homosexuality isn’t a political movement it’s a regular natural innate sexuality.

and transness isn’t a political movement either, it is a regular natural and innate gender identity. You know that gender identity is inherent, right? When people say ‘gender is a social construct’ all that means is that it is not a natural thing. Humans created the concept of gender and assigned value to it based on what we could perceive as a means of giving order to the world around us. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t important and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t parts of it that are inherent to individuals.

>  gay men aren’t attracted to biological females and it hurts gay ppl when you side with conversion therapists and it hurts bisexual ppl who actually are attracted to both sexes when you erase them for your homophobic agenda.

I’m sorry this is literally incoherent. To reiterate: some gay men ARE attracted to assigned females. Yes, siding with conversion therapists hurts gay people. No, I am not siding with conversion therapists. I have never once stated -- in fact, the entire point of my post was the opposite of this -- that anyone should EVER have sexual interactions with a person they don’t want to. Even if the reason for that is because they have a genital preference, which is NOT the same thing as a sexuality.

(I know I’ve been over this before but here it is again. A sexuality is a measure of what GENDER/S you want to have sex with. A genital preference is a measure of what genitalia you are willing to get all up close and personal with. Both are innate, one can be manipulated. They are not the same thing.)

Hurting bisexual people... hey, fellow bis, am I hurting you by *checks notes* existing in time and space?

>  you’re not a victim. you’re happy to eliminate homosexuality from existence as long as you’re able to reinforce heteronormative gender roles the gay community has always opposed.

I am literally A GAY PERSON. Even by YOUR MEASURE I am a victim. And I do NOT want to eliminate homosexuality, I just want people to acknowledge that language evolves and definitions can change as our society does. Also, have you ever met a trans person in real life? Because like 80% of all the trans people I’ve ever known have been gender non-conforming, so like. That invalidates that point. The trans community opposes gender roles as well.

>  your bigotry harms trans homosexuals too, not that you transhets care about the gay trans ppl either.

Please point to where it says I’m straight. Please. I want to see it.

>  erased from history? you want gay ppl correctively raped out of existence bc you love socially constructed gender roles more than human rights.

At this point I’m just repeating myself. Please see the above points for rebuttal.

>  you deserve all the hate you put out into the world. im sorry our innate orientation and culture prove how flimsy and useless the gender roles you define yourself by are, but homophobia will not improve your self esteem.

Says the person berating a minor for *flips notecard over* agreeing with them that people shouldn’t be forced into sex. I’m sorry that you’re so hurt and angry that you have to push your pain onto other people just to feel better. I genuinely am. It makes me so sad to see how much some people are hurting. But I won’t just sit and take this kind of verbal abuse. I don’t deserve it, quite frankly.

>  you’re driving away ppl who would be happy to support your made up identity by attacking how we were born same sex attracted.

I doubt anyone calling it a made-up identity wants to actually support me. Next.

>  sorry you can’t relate bc you’re straight. sorry you think you can use your privilege against us. but it’s not something we’re doing to you. it’s not something we can change and it’s not something we want to change.

Again. I am not straight. I do not have any straight privilege to use against anyone. Even if I was cis I still wouldn’t be straight because I’m aroace and attracted to anyone and everyone. My gender identity isn’t something that I can change, either. And even if I couldn’t, I wouldn’t want to. I love being a man, and I love being a trans man. 

>  there’s never been a gay man in existence who likes pussy, not even the gay trans women like marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera.

I’m sorry, WHAT. Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera can’t be both gay men and trans lesbians. Which one are they? You gotta pick, babe.

> you’re a sad little straight girl alienating all potential allies. hurting us doesn’t validate you. it doesn’t hurt you that no gay man will ever like pussy.

So am I a transhet or am I a straight girl? Also I’m not sad, I’m quite happy with where I’m at in my life. I do not feel validated by hurting anyone, because I don’t enjoy pain. I’m not masochistic or emotionless, I am in fact hyperempathetic due to my autism, and I don’t like it when anyone is hurt. This can be evidenced by this post here where I wish well upon a group of people who have directly hatecrimed me in the past. 

I will repeat that. I have literal trauma from physical violence as a result of the actions of this group of people, and I am still wishing them good things. 

Nor does it hurt me that ‘no gay man will ever like [AFAB genitalia]’ because this isn’t even a true statement. As I have mentioned previously, I know personally multiple gay men who are attracted to trans men. And reader, please note the fact that this person uses a slang term, a deliberately vulgar one, where in my original post I used the medical term ‘vagina’.

Hope this clears some things up.

TERFs, gender-crits, radical feminists, transmeds, nb-exclus, anti-mogai, and anyone else whose ideology promotes transphobia and/or trans erasure, please kindly STILL do not clown on this post. I am once again not kidding when I say that I will report you all to tumblr for hate speech if it takes me all fucking night.

[gayregis]

vampire headcanons 2020, pt. 1

part one: (non)physical form

the purpose of and reasoning behind writing all of this out: mainly to ward off against human-centric ideas of biology, and the preoccupation with gore that i have seen floating around when it comes to the vampires of the witcher

the nature of this: structured around the descriptions of vampires in the books. of course a lot of this is conjecture but it is intended to be based upon what is canon.

references: i am using the UK translations (2nd edition). (usually i think citing which translation you are using is a little unnecessary, but these headcanons are based upon the most minute details of how the vampires are described, where a change in the translation of words can make all the difference, in addition i have influced page numbers for ease of reference). i have transcribed these quotes from the paperback editions by typing, so hopefully there are no spelling errors.

disclaimer: i understand that there are meta reasons for certain parts of the lore (such as in the tower of the swallow, vampires not being able to be detected by long-distance magic was likely only written into canon because it was a necessity for there to be an error in the report of information for geralt to accuse cahir of betrayal). in addition, topics like magic in the witcher are not defined by extremely specific lore, the amount of specificity varies according to the necessity of it in relation to the narrative. this post is for fun and i only write things in a serious tone because i like treating things i care about with formality.

the theory as it stands:

> vampires do not have a physical form

technically, vampires do not physically exist. their physical forms are variations on something similar to illusion magic. 

within their range of powers alloted to vampired in canon are a large amount of mastery relating to controlling others’ minds, influencing their thoughts. they can put others to sleep, send them nightmares, and control their movements.

instead of having a physical form born of biological means of development, my theory is that their physical forms literally exist only as something similar to illusion magic, a trick on the minds of those around them to percieve someone as being there. of course, it is much stronger than an illusion, as they can physically interact with the rest of the world in their physical forms.

this would explain much, including how they do not have reflections or shadows because they do not technically exist within this dimension of existence. in addition, this would explain how they are not able to be detected using long-distance magic:

“Geralt may be right,” Regis said slowly. “Like every vampire, I’m invisible to magical visual probing and scanning; that is, to a detecting spell. A vampire may be tracked using an analytical spell, from close up, but it is not possible to detect a vampire with a remote, scanning spell. The detection will report that there’s no one there.”

The Tower of the Swallow, pg. 190.

from close up, they are able to identify that someone is there, because that is the extent of the vampire’s power to maintain their physical form. but their physical form is not able to be detected from far away, because they are not projecting their form into the minds of everyone on the continent - that would take an incredible amount of power. instead, they create this physical form only so that they can interact with their immediate surroundings and be visible to everyone who can see them physically. for all intents and purposes, their forms exist physically, as in one can interact with them: see them, hear them, touch them, but they can activate and deactivate this form at will when they have enough power to do so.

why do i think they exist metaphysically and not physically?

vampires demonstrate a number of abilities which would be difficult to explain if they existed with the type of “real” forms that humans and other alike creatures do. they are able to fly, shifting form into bats and disappear completely, not only turning invisible, but purely dematerializing. they are able to continue being alive following decapitation and other fates which would absolutely kill any other type of creature.

their physical being is the result of a variation of polymorphism. multiple characters in the series utilize this magic; the main ones being borch three jackdaws (aka villentretenmerth) and philippa eilhart. (dopplers are excused from this because their process of shifting form is not illusion, but perfect manipulation of their physical forms into the replication of others’). polymorphism is a magic that combines the physical and the illusory.

we see vampires dematerializing/rematerializing and changing from/into bats multiple times during the series.

Emiel Regis (...) shook his cape, wrapped himself up in it with a flourish and vanished. He simply vanished.

Baptism of Fire, pg. 220.

“Geralt,” the barber-surgeon said, his vague, wavering shadow materializing at the Witcher’s side, and immediately began to cut his bonds.”

Baptism of Fire, pg. 205

“Witcher,” said Regis. “This running is senseless. I’ll go off... I’ll fly off and do some reconnaissance.”

“Fly.”

The vampire took off as though blown by the wind. Geralt had no time to be surprised.

Lady of the Lake, pg. 352

“The bat beat its wings, soared up and glided towards the fountain. As the crooked claws scraped against the stone casing the monstrous, slobbering snout was already blurring, morphing, disappearing, although the pale little lips which were taking its place couldn’t quite hide the murderous fangs.”

The Last Wish, pg. 64.

“He (...) shot a blinding white flame at the attacking vampire (...). Regis nimbly avoided the flame and materialized in his normal shape alongside Geralt.”

Lady of the Lake, pg. 378

but unlike the others in the series who utilize polymorphism, such as villentretenmerth and philippa eilhart, vampires are able to undo their entire physical being and recreate it at will (during a full moon, when they are at their most powerful). i do not doubt that philippa eilhart and other sorcerer/esses could turn themselves invisible or undetectable, but to absolutely remove their bodily form from existence is another practice altogether.

they are able to create these physical forms and dematerialize and rematerialize them at will, during the time when they have the power to. 

> vampires conciously mimic humans, mimicing humans is not something that comes naturally to them

their “true forms” in physical terms, as in what their default form is when they initially create one, are likely the giant bats that we see them transform into, and not the human-like form that we see vereena take and the form closer to a human one that we see regis take.

“He’s already surprised me a few times, so he might still have something up his sleeve. I suspect he’s quite remarkable even among vampires. He imitates humans perfectly, and has done so for years. (...) Though my medallion doesn’t react to him either, and it ought to.”

Baptism of Fire, pg. 291.

from this statement, we can glean that vampires usually do not imitate humans perfectly, and this is congruent with the characters we have been presented with. regis, unlike vereena, is able to speak aloud without telepathy and interact with a broad array of humans and non-humans, living in a human city and convincingly posing as one.

even though vereena’s normal form is more similar to a human than a bat, we receive this other statement from geralt:

“You’re so like a rusalka,” the witcher continued calmly, “that you could deceive anyone. All the more as you’re a rare bird, black-haired one. But horses are never mistaken. They recognize creatures like you instinctively and perfectly. What are you? I think you’re a moola, or an alpor. An ordinary vampire couldn’t come out in the sun.”

The Last Wish, pg. 62.

this quote focuses on the part about deception. she is posing as something she is not, she is hiding her nature as a vampire. i call this mimicry, because it’s also what regis calls it:

“One could call it that,” Regis agreed. “Although I would argue that when mutation is spread over a sufficiently long period it ceases to be mutation and becomes evolution. But what you said about physical structure is apt. Adapting to sunlight was an unpleasant necessity for us. In order to survive, we had to become like humans in that respect. Mimicry, I’d call it.”

Baptism of Fire, pg. 300.

vampires mimic humans by adopting human-like forms, but the vast majority of them are not quite that good at it. they usually can only speak in telepathy and not aloud like humans do, and so usually, they are not able to interact with humans on a large scale.

(next post)

[dabistits]

To talk about Twice and villainy is to talk about class and criminality (II)

(Masterlist)

Poverty and crime in Japan

Despite Japan’s perception as a country with relatively low inequality, that reputation has somewhat suffered as capitalism advanced and the country faced economic downturns in the 1990s and 2000s. Japan still claims a high life expectancy, universal healthcare, and low infant mortality, but conversations about wealth have been ongoing: academic Sugimoto Yoshio records the changing discursive landscape that transformed Japan “from a uniquely homogeneous and uniform society to one of domestic diversity, class differentiation and other multidimensional forms.” Sugimoto describes the increasing discussion of a kakusa shakai, a disparity society, and the emergence of a karyu shakai—the underclass. Since Sugimoto’s article was published in 2010, [source] many issues of this kakusa shakai identified by him and academics from ten-plus years ago have persisted, such as the proliferation of non-regular workers (now comprising 15% of the labor force), [source] the growing wealth inequality being reflected in Japan’s aging population, and the increasing numbers of elderly poor. More recently, increasing attention has been devoted to the issue of child poverty, usually connected to the low incomes of single, working-class mothers. [source] In 2017, Japan’s relative rate of poverty rose to 16.3% (for comparison, the relative rate of poverty in the U.S. declined to 17.3%), and many non-regular workers expressed fears of getting sick and losing their jobs, remarking on their total lack of stability. [source] [source]

Reflecting working-class desperations worldwide, the most common crime in Japan throughout the Heisei era (1989-2019) was theft. Theft, particularly of material goods, should be thought of as a crime of need, arising out of a lack of a particular good and the money to pay for it. It’s a crime that points to a society with unmet needs, and an effort to criminalize those who try to have their needs met through their own power when social institutions refuse to help. It has long been asserted that the “concepts of "crime" are not eternal,” and that “the very nature of crime is social, and is defined by time and by place and by those who have the power to make the definitions.” The contested legality of abortion is a simple illustration of how definitions of “crime” are constantly in flux, constantly debated, and not at all intuitive or self-explanatory. Being able to label an action, a behavior, or a group of people “criminal” or “illegal” is an act of power, and people doing the labeling have a vested interest in determining what “crime” is. Activist Sabina Virgo, source of the previous quotes, elaborates: “The power to define is [...] the power of propaganda. [...] Most of us accept the images and definitions that we have been taught as true, neutral, self-evident, and for always; so the power [...] to define what is right and wrong, what is lawful and what is criminal, is really the power to win the battle for our minds. And to win it without ever having to fight it.” [source]

The choice to inscribe theft as a crime, as an act to be punished, is part of that propaganda. It’s the decision to criminalize poverty and to protect profit over people, rather than rightfully interpreting theft as a symptom of a dysfunctional system. In Japan, this looks like a large percentage of crimes getting committed by the elderly, particularly theft (90% of shoplifting offenders were elderly women), and a large percentage of incarcerated seniors, who by 2018 made up 12% of the prison population; on the other hand, the law is just beginning to address unethical workplace practices like overwork and power harassment, while facing a rising number of reports on domestic and sexual violence—the raw numbers of which are likely even higher than reported. [source] The difference between which acts are ruled criminal, and who gets criminalized for acting, lays stark the difference between the unethical actions undertaken by the powerful, and the criminalized actions undertaken by the powerless; the more an unethical act abides by and benefits entrenched systems of power, the more we are compelled to see it as normal and acceptable, whereas actions, however minuscule, that resist the hegemony of the capitalist class and reject its propaganda end overwhelmingly with more debt and prison time.

Family and class.

The socioeconomic forces that shift our societies are no less felt within the family structure, and family may be one of the first social units to see destabilization. In a world of increasing economic strife, it isn’t uncommon for parents to spend more hours working than at home, or even to travel abroad to provide for their family in their native country, to see traditional norms rewritten as children either move away or continue to live with their parents, as marriage and birth rates rise or fall, and as the elderly are either embraced back into the family structure or left to fend for themselves. Due to generational wealth, family is also often the determining factor for whether or not someone succeeds, to what degree, and with how much effort. Needless to say, when it comes to “class,” the topic of family receives much scrutiny as academics, journalists, and creators delve into the ways our notions of “family” shift according to time, class, and economics.

Consider that in Japan, and de facto in most countries in the world, the first and most important safety net in modern society is the family. “Public social protection schemes are based on the assumption that everyone is supported by family first,” [source] and this includes the assumption of financial assistance, and duties like procuring care for the family’s elderly. The Japanese family registry—the koseki—is a family tree that records births, deaths, and marriages, and is in many ways a codification of the centrality of family, bloodline, and inheritance. [source] When a character like Jin says that he’s “someone without roots,” perhaps our first impulse is to imagine it as a description of emotional relationships, a difficulty he experiences because others can’t relate to him, but it’s not purely an intangible feeling; there are very tangible repercussions to being “unrooted.” Without a stable family, “unrooted” people miss the safety net that family is supposed to be—they miss its protection. Under a system that expects the worst scourges of modernity to be alleviated by the family, this leaves the “unrooted” out in the cold.

These failures on the part of the traditional family structure to account for prosperity, whether it be through generational poverty, through abuse, or through instability and absence, often leads to a restructuring of these bonds. In Japan, “when the economic bubble burst and the recession exposed the illusion of permanent and stable employment for the diligent workforce, the children found that attaining a better living than their parents through hard work and better education was no longer guaranteed,” and once economic success was no longer guaranteed through traditional paths, children’s bonds “shifted to more individualized, voluntary ties.” [source] Of course, shifting economic conditions aren’t the only reason for non-blood-related individuals to come together—many also come from backgrounds of loss or rejection. As a columnist wrote: “Tragedy and suffering have pushed people together in a way that goes deeper than just a convenient living arrangement. They become, as the anthropologists say, “fictive kin.””

BNHA poignantly embodies these dynamics as Jin tearfully declares that the LOV gave him a “place to belong.” In Japanese, the term used is 居場所 (ibasho), a phrasing which contains the 居 kanji for “residing” or “residence,” as well as “to exist” (it reprises in “I was happy to be (居られて) here” in Jin’s final thoughts). A literal reading could render ibasho as a “place to reside,” or a “place to exist”—something offered only by the friends Jin made, who are a sanctuary from the public that overlooked his alienation, rendering him invisible and denying him existence. For their parts, the other villains are also marked by an ambiguous relationship to their biological family, if not an absence altogether. Himiko and Tomura, whose backstories were touched upon in the same arc, led contentious family lives: Himiko’s parents appeared to regularly condemn their child, and the repeated rebukes that Tomura (Tenko) endured from his father—including an incident of physical assault—resulted in the awakening of Decay and the deaths of his family.

These three were remnants of broken traditional families, scattered and largely isolated across the country. Originally united as a villain group bound loosely by similar goals, they eventually came to rely on each other for survival once the stability of All For One’s hideout and resources were stripped away, leaving them to face a hostile world saturated by incessant policing and villain power struggles. Mutual protection became not only necessary for survival, but necessary for triumph—the League of Villains are consistently shown to be at their best when working as a team, operating on a mixture of communication and even blind trust. Ironically, it’s only when they try to bring outsiders into the fold that the situation goes awry, suggesting that their strength isn’t in numbers or recruitment, but in the relationships they’ve built between one another, relationships that ultimately coalesced under the unpopular worldview that maybe there is nothing wrong with them, but something very wrong with the world. What the readers come to understand is that the LOV are no longer only convenient allies: they can best be understood as a residence for a group of outcasted people with similar experiences and outlooks, who finally found in each other the shelter that traditional family had failed to provide.

[cwmoonglum]

Excession & Annihilation

The titular event/object of Iain M Banks Excession is what the author terms an 'Outside Context Problem,' something that Banks characterises as a normally once in a civilisational lifespan occurrence. His go to example via his experience playing Sid Meier's Civilization game series is that of steamships intruding into territories where the dominant civilisation relies on wind power. Both our own histories and those of the myriad doomed aristocracies that I created in Meier's games attest to the fact that such Outside Context Problems often presage societal collapse. Whether this results in colonisation or in renewal, integration of the OCP is a civilisationally generative force that renders preceding political/social structures unsustainable. The power of the Tokugawa Shogunate is invariably weakened by the intrusion of Commodore Perry; Satsuma and Chōshū samurai can assert themselves as part of a world system and appeal to Western powers for aid in reshaping Japan.

'Excession' itself means 'a going out or forth,' and it's easy to read transitional moments in this manner. Equally, we can render it a pun as an expression of ratcheting up civilisational tiers; rather than succeeding feudally the transition exceeds the containing system. Yoshinobu Tokugawa's abdication is a radical disjuncture that precedes not another Age of Warring States where daimyo fillet one another to become the next Shogun, but a moment where the exceeding power of Western technoscience results in a total shift towards new political and social forms.

Such moments are the bread and butter of science fiction. Whether this is in 'first contact' stories where the inhabitants of Earth are invaded/subjected to quasi-religious revelation or the Sense of Wonder school's obsession with confronting the vicissitudes of Deep Time. Banks' Excession is in the end a transitory event/object; a consciousness that transits between universes and cannot be perceived even by the hyperintelligent machines that run the advanced civilisation of the Culture. Definitionally, this cannot be integrated without a shift in what the Culture is for (ostensibly, self perpetuation).

The technowarriors of Alex Garland's adaptation of Annihilation face a similar problem to the Culture's Minds, but react in ways several civilisational stages below. On Earth, in the present day, an alien event/object has crashlanded. Like the Zone of the Strugatsky's/Tarkovsky or M. John Harrison's Kefahuchi Tract, the Shimmer is an area completely resistant the contemporary technoscience. It exceeds our understanding despite years of research and multiple intrusions by (importantly) military forces. Garland presents the Shimmer event/object as a source of mystery, both occluding its meaning and occluded from the civilisation by the military-industrial Tokugawa analogues, 'the Southern Reach' who only see in it their own death. The protagonist, a biologist named Lena, has lost her husband to the Shimmer and resolves to enter it herself. In this, she is a typical science hero who is joined by a cadre of others (an EMT, a psychologist, a physicist, a geologist). Notably, this is the first nonmilitary group to enter the Shimmer; yet Lena is exmilitary, the psychologist is a government employee and all enter armed and armoured in the livery of patriarchal technoscience.

The film follows the logic of a horror video game; the supposed science heroes stagger from one set piece to the next picking up notes left by previous incursions into the Shimmer. They kill a mutated alligator, they watch a recording of Lena's husband slicing open his teammate to reveal a digestive tract that moves like a snake. Being inside the Shimmer is acting upon the very biology of those within it. Lena and the technowarriors accompanying her react largely with horror; the Shimmer represents a boundary violating queerness on multiple levels. The Shimmer is growing. Momentarily occluded from civilisation by explanation of a oil spill, the Southern Reach has internalised its own lie and can only view the Shimmer as an unintelligent polluting event.

Yet, the boundaries it violates are more than geographical or even biological. The Shimmer reawakens the scientists fear of an active Nature outside the control of patriarchal technoscience and modern consumption. Consider that this Outside Context Problem crashlanded in a national park, where Nature is safely contained. The growth of the Shimmer represents a civilisational danger because it will eventually encompass cities, people. Rather than the obedient Nature understood/constrained by technoscience, this mutant strain both acts with and upon the bodies and minds of those dispatched to study it. In fact, like the superconsciousness of Banks' novel it is in actuality an event/subject, violating the normative scientific dispassionate observer by looking back. This provides a neat mirroring of the central thread of Lena's psychology, where she is riven by guilt because of her violation of the boundaries of her heterosexual marriage. Her husband, she thinks, accepted an apparent suicide mission because he observed that she had cheated on him.

It transpires (or is indeed obvious from the title) that Lena's mission is not a mission of integration or understanding of the OCP, but a fascistic attempt to reseal Pandora's box. The technowarriors are dispatched to foreclose on the liberatory mutation offered by the Shimmer (for isn't all evolution driven by mutation?) and reassert the primacy of patriarchy, heterosexuality and military technoscience. Only the physicist on the team accedes to a dialogue with the Shimmer, accepting its action upon her DNA and mutating into a swirl of leaves that is carried away on the wind. For Lena, a filial warrior, the Shimmer's repurposing of human DNA to grow trees in human shapes or give a human voice to a mutant bear is grotesque because it ruptures a technological hierarchy and suggests forms of being-with Nature rather than being-over, using it. Nature, in the Shimmer, is a libidinal force that requires strict control lest it cause hurt like her own libido. Yet, it is notable that the protagonists of Garland's film can only conceive of this new generative model as essentially inferior. It is queerness understood as mimicry and grotesque pastiche.

Nowhere is this understanding clearer than in the climax of the film, where Lena finds the source of the Shimmer. Walking past the high camp decoration of a beach littered with sparkling glass trees, she enters into a lighthouse where an alien object crashed. She finds a video of her husband's suicide, concluding her suspicion that the returnee who looks like him is a Shimmer-generated clone. More importantly, she finds a genital-like hole (replete with pubic hair-like extrusions of plant matter) and descends therein to an alien womb, which generates a mirrored, non-humangendered creature. This creature mimics Lena's movements directly, and is accompanied by musical noises similar to the work of queer artist Arca (indeed the design of the creature recalls the work of her collaborator Jesse Kanda). Lena interprets the touch of this queer alien subject as aggression, even as it lies alongside her and engages in dance-like communication. Pushing her to the floor to rise again in sync, the alien feels more like a child than an invader. If this subject is acting upon Lena biologically, it can only be understood as a laudible attempt at xenocommunication. This xenogenerative biological sharing (think here of the Oankali in Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood) is too queer, can only be understood as penetrative invasion of the patriarchal human subject. For Lena to accept it would be to reenact her infidelity on a civilisational scale. So, she kills it.

Disturbingly, once she returns she claims to the Southern Reach that the alien made no attempt to communicate. She tells a lie to reestablish the boundaries of civilisation, and is rewarded by a parallel chance to reestablish her heterosexual couple form with the clone of her husband. That the film closes with their eyes glimmering in an alien fashion doesn't trouble the patriarchal technoscience of their civilisation; they have integrated the queerness of the Shimmer into heterosexuality and human boundaries.

The OCP is defeated and subsumed by the forces of reaction in a way that is only possible in fiction, foreclosing on the new ways of being with Nature that are vital to reforming and revolutionising civilisation in the same way that queerness opens vital paths to reforming our social and cultural relations. Per Donna Haraway, we are living through 'ongoing multi-species stories and practices of becoming-with in times that remain at stake, in precarious times, in which the world is not finished and the sky has not fallen—yet.' Annihilation presupposes that the only way out is to reassert the primacy of the human, and demand that history = man + tool. Being-with is determined to be perverse, frightening and dangerous; in this the film isn't wrong. But such perversity and terror inevitably overflows any container humanity can build. Nature is on the march, and only the perverse and the queer will survive Her terror. We need to exceed current forms; the alternative is Annihilation.

[rainbowwing251]

Umm... If you don’t mind, headcanons of both Corrins...? You can say no if you want...

I bet people are getting tired of me saying things like this, but I haven’t played Fire Emblem Fates. However, I think I have obtained enough knowledge of the games to create headcanons for both of the Corrins.

But before I begin, I want to warn everyone that this answer may contain spoilers for Fire Emblem Fates. I don’t know how big these spoilers are, but please proceed with caution.

With that, onto the headcanons.

Before I get started with the tickle-related headcanons, I want to give a few non-tickle-related headcanons:

I tend to refer to male Corrin as Corrin and female Corrin as Kamui (the Japanese name for both of the Corrins). This is meant to clear up any potential confusion that may occur if I have to write anything that involves putting the two of them together. I believe I have mentioned this in my St. Patrick’s Day post, but this is just a reminder.

In my headcanons, Corrin has sided with Hoshido, and Kamui has sided with Nohr. For anyone that doesn’t know much about Fire Emblem Fates, this means that Corrin has chosen the Birthright route, and Kamui has chosen the Conquest route.

So with those headcanons out of the way, onto the tickle-related headcanons.

To begin these headcanons, I would like to state that both Corrin and Kamui are lees in my headcanons. The two of them are also the second most ticklish out of all of the Fire Emblem reps. First place goes to Marth, and third place goes to Roy.

Now, onto the individual headcanons, starting with Corrin.

As I mentioned a few sentences ago, Corrin is a lee, but he wasn’t like that at first.

He wasn’t given that much affection when he was younger, but Mikoto would occasionally tickle him when she had the time to be with him. Of course, that was before her death. Sumeragi, his “father”, would also tickle from time to time prior to his death (there’s a reason why I put father in quotations, but that is a major spoiler for the Revelations route in Fates).

Long story shot, he is very touch-starved, but he doesn’t realize this until his return to Hoshido after 15 years.

Upon learning that their adopted brother is ticklish, the majority of the Hoshiden siblings will target Corrin whenever they get the desire to tickle someone. Sakura, Ryoma, and Hinoka are Corrin’s main lers. Azura will also go after him from time to time.

Takumi is not a part of this list because he could care less about tickling, especially if it involves Corrin.

Of course, Sakura, Ryoma, and Hinoka are not the only lers that he has. In Smash, his main lers are Kamui, Chrom, Robin, and on rare occasions, Ike.

Corrin’s worst spots are his feet, sides, and ears. If he is about to transform into a dragon, he will expose another weak spot, which is the base of his tail.

He doesn’t fight back all that much when he’s being tickled. He doesn’t see a reason to do so, since tickling fulfills his desire for physical affection.

Be careful when you tickle him, though, because he might try to tickle you back. This guy is a sucker for tickle fights, and his love for them came from the constant tickle fights that he used to get into with his siblings.

Considering how naive Corrin is, he believed that tickling was harmless. No one ever told him that tickle torture was a thing, and he had to learn about it the hard way when he was nearly tickled into unconsciousness by his Nohr siblings. After that incident, he was not comfortable with tickling for a long while. Luckily, his Hoshiden siblings were able to get him to warm up to tickling again.

As a ler, Corrin is incredibly playful. He is a big fan of nibbling on people’s skin to tickle them, but if his lee is uncomfortable with that, he’ll use light tickles instead.

If nibbling is allowed, then he will gently nibble on people’s earlobes. If he doesn’t get a reaction, then his next target will be the neck. If he still doesn’t get a reaction after that, then he’ll go for their stomach.

Overtime, he learns that nibbling on someone’s stomach will almost always cause a reaction, so he ends up targeting that spot first.

He will also use his tail to tickle other people if he’s about to turn into a dragon. He loves to poke other people with his tail, finding joy in the way they flinch.

In Hoshido, Corrin’s main lees are Sakura and Ryoma. In Smash, his main lees are Kamui, Marth, Roy, Chrom, and on some occasions, Lucina.

He’ll also go after Shulk and Pit if he’s in the mood for tickling someone by nibbling on their skin. These two are VERY weak to nibbling, and this makes the two of them a perfect target in Corrin’s eyes.

Moving on to Kamui, she is also a lee, as I mentioned towards the beginning of these headcanons. However, her experiences with tickling are different from Corrin’s.

Kamui is also quite touch-starved, and she didn’t even notice it at first. Or at least, that was the case for a small portion of her life, until she was kidnapped by Garon and brought to Nohr.

As she grew up in Nohr, she learned about tickle torture from her siblings. The good news is that they would never use this against Kamui, and they would tickle her as if she was their biological sister.

Unfortunately, Camilla, Leo, Xander, and Elise made a bit of a mistake by teaching Kamui about tickle torture before they ever started tickling her. The whole concept had somewhat tainted the concept of tickling for her. She still loved it when she got tickled by her “siblings”, but in the back of her mind, she was fearful of a possible tickle torture session. As a result of this fear, she will do her best to escape from her siblings whenever they got the desire to tickle someone.

It took a long time for the Nohrian family to convince Kamui that they wouldn’t subject her to tickle torture. After a ton of tickle sessions from them, Kamui finally realized that she was safe from a tickle torture session, and she began to experience lee moods for the first time in her life.

Kamui’s worst spots include her feet (the only worst spot she shares with her male counterpart), her stomach, and her hips. When she’s about to transform into a dragon, she’ll end up exposing another worst spot: the base of her wings.

She is a bit more fighty than Corrin is, mainly because of her fear of tickle torture. If you tickle her enough times, she’ll eventually realize that you are not a threat to her, and she will try her best to restrain herself while you tickle her.

If you are tickling the base of her wings, watch out. Her wings will flap a lot while you’re tickling her there, and she might hit you in the face on accident. If that does happen, then she’ll apologize for it.

Unlike her male counterpart, she doesn’t like to tickle her ler back, unless she knows them very well. She’s afraid that this move will turn an ordinary tickle attack into a tickle torture session.

In Nohr, her main lers are Xander, Camilla, Leo, and Elise. Just like Corrin, Azura might tickle her on rare occasions.

In Smash, her main lers are Corrin, Chrom, Robin, Ike, and on some occasions, Lucina.

She isn’t as playful as Corrin is when she is the ler, but she still finds enjoyment out of making others laugh.

She doesn’t nibble people like her male counterpart does. Instead, she uses the claws that she gets when she’s about to turn into a dragon. She’ll be sure to keep the tickling light and gentle, which works wonders on those who are weak to that type of tickling.

She also enjoys poking people with her tail, just like Corrin.

In Nohr, her main lees are Elise and Leo. In Smash, she will target Corrin, Marth, Roy, Chrom, and Robin.

[alexsfictionaddiction]

10 Non-Binary Books Everyone Should Read This Pride Month

There is a lot of debate around gender issues right now and what it means to not conform to the gender assigned to your biological sex. Non-binary people feel that their gender falls outside of the male/female model. This is not to be confused with the term genderqueer, which is ever so slightly different. Genderqueer means non-normative gender expression and many people who identify as genderqueer also hold some kind of binary identity i.e. ‘genderqueer woman’ or ‘genderqueer man’. This is not the case for many non-binary people who predominantly use they/them pronouns and are not bound by any pre-conceived notions of gender. As a cisgender woman, I don’t pretend to know too much about the nuances between the two identities but I do know that they have different histories and connotations and that some non-binary people don’t wish to reclaim the slur ‘queer’. Gender is a topic that continues to fascinate me and therefore something I’m always looking for reading material on. Let me know if you have any recommendations! -Love, Alex x

1. I Wish You All The Best by Mason Deaver.

When they come out as non-binary, Ben is thrown out of the family home, moves in with their sister and starts a new school. It gets tricky to slip under the radar when the brilliant Nathan befriends Ben and feelings begin to grow. It’s a beautiful YA story with excellent depictions of anxiety as well as being a celebration of love and hope.

2. Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu.

Nova Huang helps out at her grandmothers’ bookshop and in the investigations of supernatural happenings. When her childhood crush, non-binary werewolf Tam Lang returns to town, an evil force is hot on their heels. I know I’ve recommended Mooncakes before but this cutesy graphic novel is full of whimsy, inclusivity and stunning artwork.

3. They/Them/Their: A Guide to Nonbinary & Genderqueer Identities by Eris Young.

Reflecting on their own experiences as a non-binary person, Eris Young’s manual is the perfect read for anyone wanting to learn more about non-normative genders. It talks about the history of non-binary genders, healthcare issues, neutral language and smashes misconceptions as well as touching on how gender is perceived in non-white cultures, which is vital to the discussions of today.

4. An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon.

Aster is eccentric and queer, living a life of oppression below the decks of a spaceship bound for the Promised Land, while trying to figure out what really happened to her mother. Although female pronouns are used for Aster, she explicitly states that she feels neither male nor female, much like many other characters in the lower decks of the ship. It’s an action-packed sci-fi that also manages to explore trauma, poverty, identity and so much more.

5. Sphinx by Anne Garréta.

Essentially this is a simple love story following a theology student and DJ who falls for a nightclub dancer within a heady, queer, party world. No first names or gender pronouns are used at all. Originally published in 1986, Sphinx is a literary experimentation by Garréta, who decided to take on the heavily-gendered French language and throw the rulebook out of the window.

6. A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab.

Kell works as a smuggler who can travel between the four Londons but on one mission, he is robbed by the brilliantly ambitious thief Lila Bard, who forces him to take her on a magical adventure. The Shades of Magic trilogy is a fantastically diverse, pulse-racing series. The reason it’s on this list is because of Lila’s unmistakeable blurred gender. Schwab has previously said that should she have lived in our time, Lila would almost certainly identify as non-binary.

7. The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson.

Part memoir, part essay, part love letter, The Argonauts tells the story of the author’s relationship with non-binary Harry Dodge and their journey to raising a queer family. It’s unflinchingly honest, sensitive and touches upon several legal issues that non-conforming genders come up against as well as celebrating love without boundaries.

8. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi.

Ada is a young Nigerian girl, housing multiple selves which grow and blossom as she grows into a woman. While it isn’t explicitly about being non-binary, Emezi is non-binary themself and they have described Freshwater as semi-autobiographical. It’s beautifully written, incredibly strange and illustrates a life that contains multitudes, so I can see how non-binary readers could easily relate.

9. Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

The mind inside the woman called Breq used to be known as Justice of Toren, a powerful AI system that controlled a battleship but now Breq is reduced to a single body and is out for revenge. This immersive sci-fi trilogy doesn’t have language for gender and there is no real importance in pigeonholing anyone, which makes for a wonderfully refreshing reading experience.

10. The Brilliant Death by Amy Rose Capetta.

When Teo’s mafia boss father is poisoned, they enlist the help of Cielo who can effortlessly switch genders to help unlock the truth of their own magic and save their dad. Both Teo and Cielo are non-binary as well as Teo’s true coming-of-age and acceptance of themself all wrapped up in a thrilling fantasy adventure.

[scionofchaos]

Defining Spirit and Energy

Spirit. The nonphysical part of a person which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul. A few things to unpack here. First of all, this common definition purports a spirit to be "nonphysical" or "not relating to the body contrasted from the mind" or "not relating to things perceived, tangible, or concrete." This says the spirit cannot be detected with the senses, not touched or physically interacted with, and does not have a material form. It purports the spirit is the seat of emotions and character, when neuroscience would instead hold that emotions are hormonal and neurochemical, and character is a construct of social biases and conditions. For this and other reasons, I don't like this definition of spirit. When referring to the aspect of a person, I like to identify the body and "spirit" as expressions of the conscious mind. The real "you" in your head is the electric and chemical "sparks" in your nerves, and how those sparks interact with your experiences. It is possible that other electrochemical interactions in our universe may also hold some form of consciousness, however alien and fleeting they may be.

Your body is a shell constructed by your biological parents, initially, and then later reconstructed by its own biological functions. It is the incidental habitat for the human form of consciousness. Call it a "meat robot" if you like. As for the spirit, referring to the body of conscious energy, body of psychic energy, body of vital energy, and body of causality as a gestalt, that can be described as a "non-meat robot;" the way that your consciousness interacts with reality on levels other than physical. That's why I referred to its aspects as bodies. They are interactive expressions built from the "matter" of that level of existence.

Energy. In physics, energy is the property that must be transferred to an object in order to perform work on, or to heat, the object. Energy can be converted in form, but not created or destroyed. Common forms include kinetic, potential, elastic, chemical, radiant, and thermal. Due to mass-energy equivalence, any object that has mass when stationary also has an equivalent amount of rest energy. You may see now why I don't like using the word "energy" to describe topics that do not correspond to physics. Though I may fail, I will try to use the words Basis (formative, foundational), Venue (use of, movement of), or Interact/Interaction where they work better. This is not an attempt to confuse or create new terminology, but to clarify what is meant. If I call myself an "Energy Worker," I am not saying that I can impart physical work upon physical objects with my mind.

In conclusion, what I would call a "spirit being" or "spiritual creature" (spirit for short), is one that does not appear to have a primary physical existence. Instead, it exists on a purely conscious, psychic, vital, and/or causal level. Concepts I will delve into in my future posts.

[rwmhunt]

Leviticus, Chapter 20

1. Are likely bullet holes; When his foot slipped, he sank, Said “but, it is easier To be sublimely unintelle- than It is to be compreha- atleast, Through this runcible ordure”. The which, in real time, Being commuted to scripture, Was the while in no wise elucidated, Except for the retort with which he rejoinded- “Explain yourself!”

2. Stiffed, moreover, by a soft Drink in the impact Lounge, eye shuddered sojourns So that the ball might flop into the sinus Of the brooding ground As stone stones fall at my back; Don’t break, weak fools.

3. For reasons personal As unto myself, I shall set my face against he Who grunts his seed to Molok, And shall cut him right off Dare he offer up excuses, As they pertain unto my holy name Along inabilities to reliably distinguish True memories from the digital Thence, rejigger their theories By a biometric magneto-debathification.

4. Here, the perceived Level of personal threat Needst be of increase Against a complacence, And by use of a hard-hitting Form of emotional messaging; So let clemency be a no-no. Kill; kill and provide not Comfort nor aide To the enemy thereunto.

5. Face set cut a hole off All who followed my pillow and me. Some, turning to the camera, Pulled masks over; Most didn’t bother. Me, me, my sunglasses Who made for a false invisibility cloak- An allowance for the human Of burning flesh To set beneath the sun; The house will be in order.

6. By Molok, by dybbuk,   Turneth to ghosts,   Tearing through familiar spirits- I am the way an element will jump up, Unread, from the line below, like Tungsten, parallax, the zeitgeist. These shall be your familiars, And you be stuck with them.

7. Keep me thy sanctity; This is uncertain on a really intense scale. Where staple news hath held the civil veneer, And it’s a long way to Trimorphic Protennoia, Yet god loves his cowboys So betimes, doth make employ of them   As to other things unto himself; See sedition and insurrection, which are Tossed insults across the upper midwest, Turning further, Unthinkably left; The house will come to order.

8.There are many gods unto themselves But you can’t sustain; I was once this other thing, And I’m doubting that is going to happen, Yet keep ye my statutes, And to the west be the property of Marduk.

9. Then afflict my people Through specific vulnerabilities   Of their own creation As they would have unto their elders By means of relations And with the environment, With foreign species,   And with each other. Curses, curses, Skyrocket downward, Defeated victoriously- If we are not prepared to fight, Then a fear-epidemic can.

10. Strick, tryst, Everyone dies Entropy-loss, From effort to heat, Heat-chaos, Chaos-destruction, Destruction-peace.

11. Uncover eyes of thy father as if You uncover my wife- By persuasion, see I A perceived threat, where A substantial number Feel quite sufficiently reassured By levels of concern, Having a good heave-ho about them And an understanding of risque; Death swipe the both of you.

12. Take not the wife You left your son to; O, Wait, what’ve you done? Behold; an exerted control- To do what you cannot, Seek elements of a naiveté Or credulity; but Your blood is upon you.

13. Abomination, so death, Lover of mankind, The blood is always mine. The impact is experienced Throughout the body, says she, because   When my people perceive a threat,   Abstract or actual, They activate cortisol, So let be the biological stress response Whence glucose is mobilized And the immune system triggered; Levels of inflammation are increasing Which is affecting the function of the brain,   Mark; - you are more sensitive to threats, Less receptive to reward.

14. Bring along your mother Go up through fire- Wickedness Whence comes from the Latin For “with” and “touch”;   While the street was burning i chanted An Argument from Silence

15. Of a beast lain on the alter   You shall not Know- Hearsay doth serve you as a first hand   For evidence of a belief,   But shall not attest proof   Unto that which Such beliefs portaineth to.

16. Nor her- The replaced reporter   With a mental instability who hallucinates; The apple of the eyewitness testimony Rests in the unreliability of human memory So make sacrifice of high standards; Lo, but hang;   For I neglect that I am not that interested in truth-telling.

17. Keep not your familiar spirits   In naked perpetuity, O You, incorrigible witness.   Let the train gaineth traction   O'er such a horrid body of evidence; The old “social dances”;   See, Terpsichore Maras-Lindeman,   It’s not good and you know it-  

18. If you go menstrual   Then there hath opened forth to you   A fountain of shame,   And the blood shall be cut from the people,   Lo, but hearsay, here goes Gambling against pornography’s outcomes-   So, humans are expressions,   But woman is form. Hm.  

19. Your aunts are agony, And recounteth   How old Miriam hath called, saying Her nephews had unto her a-visiting come, Usurping her of all such meats and monies As belongeth unto her personage, So that she had not had since Monday, Whence we delivered unto her a parcel And from her eyes there felleth tears, But you, incredible witness, How in the world can facts be obtained   From such non-clusive evidence? You needst bear an earthen iniquity.

20. Concubines are porcupines For others- be barren with you, Kenosha- Who was unready; For the worst hearsayer of all Is of a kind which comes corroborating   Out from delusion, And should you be accused of that which you have not done, Then just laugh at it and inculcate yourself further. For the world is a dowery toward your least resistance.

21. Go filial it’s all too much; Anything companied to the bowels In support of an assertion counts as evidence, As such, tender mercies, Your line is ceased.

22. Whence the land shall vomit you forth, Cannon fodder, And shouldst thou cross my rubicons; Your blood be cheaper than the water Which slips below it, And sacrifices for justice and accountability   Prove merely a nuisance.

23. And give a fuck For your colonialist appropriation- Once implanted, imagination Can become inflated, Creating false arbitrage. Those displaced were up to all kinds, I hate them.

24. And milk and honey Shall flow from their land As you shall see no good in them, For as with a supremacy have I blinded you.

25. And the ground which ye shall own, As teameth with unclean things Of a higher level of certainty   (i.e., as probables),   Shouldst remain, if credulous (only possibles, or),   On the bases of an otherwise Convincing argument   Against such teaming origins, Be downgraded (to impossible) As a lesser degree of certainty (than improbable), And in falsity, all shall be unclean.

26. And you shall be mine; Cede to me,  shouldst you be logically Compelled to withhold belief From nine-tenths of so-called Historetical facts about which You have really no doubt at all, But on the contrarie, cede, and,

27. Did I tell you the one about the wizard? Hearsay, you, the more unreliable spy Than my eyewitness’s can account for, Because you at least doubleth The reassurance of testimony, So to see yourself at the centre of it; A huge ego, Loving to create stories; You think you yourself very unique. False allegations have you committed, Casting the fallacy of the excluded middle fallacy By taking a psychologist hostage. Mutually, you aid selfish   And de rigueur people As are those which often take power,   Because I have created   Systems of reward that Exemplify how, sometimes,   A culture might falter, fail; Pick out the wrong hero.   If you can see yourself as very unique,   Then you are.

[cagestark]

Can i request something i dont see enough of, which is AlphaPeter/OmegaTony ? :D Lots of fluffy happy stuff, i love angst too a slong as theres a happy ending - { holographic-starker }

this was a tough one to write, but I enjoyed myself and feel like I learned a lot about myself as a writer, even. Thanks for the request, let me know if you’re displeased

Read here on AO3.

Warnings: ABO, consent issues because Tony is in heat. Alpha!Peter, Omega!Tony. Peter is 18+ though. Explicit. 

-

The thing is, the kid is too polite.

Peter is freshly eighteen when he moves into the tower and begins interning for Tony, spending every last moment Avenging and patrolling and attending online classes. Being thirty years older than the kid, a part of him assumes that he should take on the role of a cantankerous old man complaining about the boorish youth. His knees have certainly taken it upon themselves to method act, protesting hours spent cross-legged on the floor. His hair has obviously been visiting wardrobe and makeup without his notice, because there are more gray hairs there than he remembers there being last year, last season, last month.

All this to say that Tony is getting older, and it is no secret that the younger generations are fucking irritating. Disrespectful, he’d say, channeling Howard or Jarvis through that internal Ouija board that keeps coming back no matter how many times he throws it out. And alright, it’s part of their rite of passage. Find him a generation who doesn’t annoy their elders and he’d eat Cap’s shield.

The one exception: Peter.

The kid has sweetness in his DNA. Authenticity clings to his red blood cells which explains why every bone in his body is genuine and kind. The respect he shows the Avengers is nearly comical—would be, if it didn’t drive Tony up the walls for other reasons. He is firm and gentle, thoughtful and conscientious. There are no valid complaints to be had about him.

The kid, if anything, is too polite.

Which means that he can’t possibly be doing this on purpose.

Peter presenting as an alpha shocked Tony to the core, and he wasn’t alone. “I’ve had him pegged as an omega since he was in diapers, Tony,” May had whispered to him while they watched Peter having his blood drawn by Bruce inside the Hulk-proof enclosure beneath the ground at Stark Tower. Judging by how Peter’s face flushes red, he can hear through the glass.

“A lot people had me pegged as an alpha,” Tony responds, maybe a little too coldly. But maybe it hits a little too close to home—children having their designations determined for them at such a young age. How much of Peter’s upbringing had influenced his disposition? Had he been groomed to be an omega even despite his biology? The thought makes Tony sick. He knows how that feels. He knows. “This doesn’t change anything about him. He’s still Peter.”

But it did change things.

Because now they are playing this game together, and either Peter is a better bluffer than Tony ever anticipated, or the kid genuinely doesn’t know what he’s doing to the older man.

It starts the first day Peter returns to his work in the lab after his rut. They have been putting in hours together working on a new AI, one Peter has affectionately dubbed Saturday, no matter how many times Tony tells him that the key to a good name is all in the acronym). Since it is Peter’s first effort to make an artificial intelligence, Tony is letting him lead. He is bent over the lab table examining a microchip the size of his thumbnail, miniature soldering iron clutched between in his fingers when the door to the lab opens.

He whirls around on the stool, beaming. Peter is dressed in his old Midtown High sweatshirt, the collar of his dress shirt blooming around his neck. His hair is dark from a shower, wet curls clinging to his forehead. He looks—good. Healthy. Strong. Fertile.

They smell each other for the first time.

It’s not Tony’s right to tell anyone to wear scent blockers, though he ingests his own via pill form twice a day, showers with them, has them mixed into the sterilization stations at lab’s exits so he can clean his hands and neutralize any happy-angsty scents that were brought about during the day’s tinkering. Because it’s a polite thing to do. Alphas and omegas are very sensitive to smells. Polite alphas will wear blockers to avoid overwhelming omegas or antagonizing other alphas in public—and when it comes to omegas, scent blockers are like protection, like the nano-tech suit he goes nowhere without. If no one can smell Tony, they can’t look at him like a piece of meat, lust over him, come on to him when all he’s trying to do is walk down the fucking street.

The kid is not wearing blockers. Before he presented, Peter had the blandly neutral scent of a beta, and he would have been incapable of scenting Tony. Peter smells of something fond. It takes Tony only a moment to place it: the mahogany of the bookshelves in his childhood home, the lemon-basil scent that would cling to Jarvis after days spent in the kitchen.

He sees Peter’s nostrils flair, surely trying to take in a scent that for all intents and purposes, he shouldn’t be able to smell. But by the way his eyes go hooded, throat bobbing, he can. The boy’s mouth opens, literally mouths the word wow. Tony feels remarkably like a rabbit caught in a dog’s gaze.

Tony burns himself. “Fucking—fuck!” He drops the soldering iron and it barely misses the microchip.

“Mr. Stark, are you okay?”

Peter comes over to examine the burn, a dark, flushed pink, the skin already raw and shiny. The smell comes with him, each of the boy’s emotions playing out like a symphony for his nose: concern, comfort, anxiety. And yeah, arousal.

Tony pulls away before their skin can touch, jamming his hands into the gloves that he should have been wearing from the start. “Fine,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”  

Peter becomes—distracting. At best. Arousing at worst. Days spent in the lab under Tony’s tutelage are filled with emotions for the young, enthusiastic boy: joy when he solves a problem, frustration when he can’t, the soft melancholic scent of rotting wood on days when his smile is muted and his eyes seem far away. Tony is too receptive to him. More than once, he’s found himself opening his mouth, desperate to ask for the love of God, Pete, will you take a shower? Will you wear something, anything, to come between your scent and my nose? But the kid doesn’t deserve that, and Tony isn’t sure he could stand the embarrassed, insecure scent he’d give off after being confronted. The need to comfort might be too strong to overpower.

Tony does his very best to maintain a professional relationship, but Peter seems determined to cross every boundary.

Next comes the scenting. To be fair: maybe he doesn’t know how incredibly personal it is. Tony knows that it’s common in schools to separate kids by designation and teach them only the information absolutely pertinent to them. Maybe growing up small and thin and soft hearted, pegged O’ from birth, they didn’t teach him what it means when an alpha scents someone who they aren’t related to.

Tony himself doesn’t know what it means when Peter does it. Maybe Peter doesn’t even know, maybe it’s just an itch that needs scratched, and he knows that scenting Tony can scratch it. Some things are just that innocent. But on his dark days when Tony is hunched over at the lab table, back and eyes aching from working through the night, all it takes is Peter brushing by. His steps will stutter just beyond Tony’s shoulders. He inhales—now Tony is trained like one of Pavlov’s dogs, and the relief, the arousal, it often comes right then, even on just the inhale—and then Peter’s forehead will loll forward, soft hair and skin nuzzling at the scent gland on Tony’s neck until their scents are mixed. Until Tony’s body is soft and pliant (except for his cock, which is hard and throbbing).

Then Peter moves on like nothing happened.

What the fuck, Tony sometimes mouths, keeping his eyes on the tablet in front of him, terrified to turn and acknowledge what the boy just did.

It might not be so bad if they weren’t so fucking compatible. Yeah, he can admit it. Tony had spent weeks agonizing about that after the kid first brought his scent down into the lab, he’s come to terms, thanks. It’s a biological fact, one he remembers any time he takes in a whiff of mahogany and lemon-basil. God, he didn’t think a smell could be so comforting and arousing all at once. It makes him ache, someplace in his chest where the arc reactor used to sit, and somewhere lower, deep in his pelvis where he should have grown children, if he’d been a decent omega. If he hadn’t spent so long trying to pretend to be an alpha, frying his biology, cooking his ovaries right to medium-well-done, AKA infertility.

What use would Peter have for him? Tony is old, past safe childbearing years even if he wasn’t barren. Alphas want legacies, they want homemakers, they want everything Howard worked so hard to empty Tony of. Far too often he finds himself maudlin and thinking such thoughts before the futility of them strikes him. His attractiveness is a non-issue; he is determined that he and Peter will never come together that way.

As it is, the scent blockers Tony takes, while being ultra-effective, aren’t as effective for a pair—not a pair. No, they’re not a pair. Just two friendly friends, mentor and mentee, platonic hi there Mr. Stark how are you doing goodness, no knots involved. God. He should not be thinking about the kid’s knot—anyway, the blockers aren’t as effective for people who are as compatible as Peter and Tony are. They are his last defense, and he often burns through them before the afternoon hits, body working overtime to make his scent potent again so that he might have a chance to attract the virile alpha across the room. It’s embarrassing, smelling so badly of pining omega that he can smell himself in the enclosed space of the elevator.

Like he is right now.

Although, it isn’t the elevator. It’s the bathroom.

Tony grabs the hand towels off of the rack and stuffs them at the bottom of the door where the crack is, desperate to keep his own smell in and Peter’s smell out. Then he crawls into the bathtub there and draws the curtain shut. As if that’s going to help.

He looks to the ceiling, wondering why a deity he doesn’t even believe in seems to be punishing him like this. Inside his pants, his cock is aching, and he can’t help but to press the heel of his hand against it, exhaling in the brief relief it gives. Lifting his wrist to his nose he breaths deep and can’t stop the groan that passes his lips. He smells like Peter, their scents combining, lemon and sugar to make lemonade, so sweet his mouth waters and his teeth ache.

When Peter arrived in the lab just moments before, he’d brought with him the scent of fury: scorched earth, and something sadder. His eyes were red from tears, lips pressed thin together. Tony watched him, paralyzed, as he tried three different times to enter his access code to the lab before FRIDAY showed mercy and let him in. Then as soon as there was nothing between them, it was like two oppositely charged magnets coming together.

They collided. Tony’s arms wrapped around him and Peter’s nose buried in that spot between his neck and shoulder, inhaling and exhaling fire on Tony’s exposed skin. Peter babbles away, lips brushing his skin, something about an argument with Ned and MJ, both sides feeling neglected and wronged, long overdue issues just now bubbling to the surface, he’d imagine. He can barely focus on what the boy is saying. It feels like there’s an invisible hand on the back of his neck, tilting him into the perfect position for his alpha to scent and find comfort in him. Tony holds him until all the anger and hurt and helplessness have seeped out of him.

What the fuck, Tony mouths to the ceiling. One of these days, he’s going to ask FRIDAY to create a montage of his WTF moments so that he might literally have concrete footage of how weird his life is.

Then one of Peter’s hands drifts up like he is going to cup Tony’s shoulder, but instead he firmly presses his thumb into the gland there and it’s like Thor has sent a bolt of lightning down. Tony’s entire body jerks and melts, every bone in his body relaxing for his alpha except for the one in his pants, and speaking of, Peter whimpers and shifts and there is no mistaking an alpha’s cock. There just isn’t. It’s veritably huge and hard and how many years has it been since he’s had an alpha inside him, since he’s been knotted—

The scents around them change, thick with arousal. It takes him that long to realize that Peter’s heightened emotional sensitivity might have a biological cause.

He is going into a rut.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter slurs, hips shifting. “You smell sooo good.”

It takes herculean effort to separate their bodies. The sheer heat and pheromones that Peter is throwing off are tangible even when he’s resolutely breathing through his mouth. He must be a sight: eyes wild and terrified, cock stiff, sprinting bow-legged to the bathroom so that he could get just a moment—just a moment to calm himself down and use his brain.

It’s going…about as well as can be expected, Tony thinks, desperately fisting his cock in the bathtub. If he could just rub one out, maybe it will bleed some of the fire from his veins. There is a gentle knocking at the door and Peter’s muffled voice, but Tony can barely hear it. He’s so close, building up to an orgasm so quickly that it should be shameful, but at least there is no one here to see. Wrist pressed to his nose, he inhales Peter’s scent like a man coming up from water, desperate for air. His balls are drawn up tight, stomach twisted into knots—and still he doesn’t cum.

“Mr. Stark, are you alright? Are you hurt?” Peter’s voice is raised, worried. Tony realizes that he has been whimpering, surely loud enough for the genetically enhanced boy to hear.

The pain inside him rises up but never crests, just rests there, aching in his gut. Cramping. Curiously, he reaches down past the petite testicles, down—

He’s wet. Soaked. The touch of his finger nearly brings him to ecstasy. This is what he needs, something inside of him, filling that emptiness that is so acute it aches. One finger isn’t enough. His hole is already loose, taking two easily.

The door breaks down. I’m in heat, Tony thinks numbly listening to wood splinter and hinges break. Maybe there was a slow build up that he missed, but it burned away in an instant in the face of this alpha. That is why Peter went into rut. Because of me. He barely has time to shove his cock back into his pants. For a moment, after Peter wrenches back the shower curtain Tony feels like a woman out of the old bodice rippers his mother used to keep in her bedside drawer. The ones with helpless omegas ravished by alphas who were driven mad by their scents, alphas who couldn’t have stopped their urges even if they wanted to.

The look Peter gives him is certainly aroused enough. He is hard in his jeans, a bulge that looks impossibly huge compared to Tony’s own. Peter’s chest rises and falls so rapidly that the older man is worried for his health. Those dark eyes scan Tony from head to toe and then the boy collapses, knees striking the tiled floor, groaning. He crawls to the bathtub and rests his feverish cheeks against the lip of the tub, mouth open and panting.

“Mr. Stark.” The voice is absolutely wrecked.

It is pure restraint as a result of his years of experience that keeps him from rolling onto his hands and knees to present for this boy, this wet-behind-the-ears alpha who has barely started his second rut and probably never popped a knot in his life.

“Mr. Stark I don’t feel so good,” groans Peter.

Even burning up, cramping, shaking, Tony reaches out to pet at Peter’s head. He hopes to offer comfort, but the boy snatches his hand out of the air in a bruising grip. Then he draws it to his mouth and presses in the fingers that were just inside Tony’s sopping hole. The boy’s tongue slips between the fingers, searching every crevice for more slick, groaning even as he licks the palm tasting only heart-love-life lines. “Mr. Stark,” Peter pants, trying again for words. “Can I have you? Please. Let me have you.”

“Yes,” Tony gasps.

They come together clumsily. It takes a moment for them to realize that Tony is trying to crawl out of the tub while Peter is trying to crawl in. They end up outside of it on the tiled floor, Tony spread out underneath the young alpha. Peter sheds his shirt and there should be violins, there should be mood lighting and a spotlight because the kid is fucking built. He almost has as many abs as fingers, so lithe and strong. He reminds Tony of spider silk, thin and so strong.

“Undress,” Peter says lowly, helping Tony to sit up so that he might pull off his shirt. Yeah, Tony isn’t 18 years old with genetically enhanced muscles but he likes to think he does okay. Peter’s eyes roll, palms flat on Tony’s pecs to drag down and down, over the scarring where the arc reactor used to be, scraping at the chest hairs. It melts the omega’s brain, primal parts of him purring. His body is satisfying to his mate, even if he is older and grayer and harder than any omega has a right to be. “God, you’re so—Jesus you’re hot Mr. Stark.”

“Knot me,” Tony groans. His hips are thrusting up into the hard cradle of Peter’s pelvis. His cock is throbbing, leaking, but it is nothing compared to the emptiness inside of him. The room is small and filled with so many potent scents that he can barely keep his eyes open. All of his senses are consumed by Peter, by what he’s doing with Peter. “Come on, kid. It hurts.”

Peter goes feral at the thought. He tears at their clothes, ribbons of jean and cotton, tennis shoes nudged off of feet. When he is naked as the day he was born, the fever in Tony seems to reach its boiling point. The kid is sculpted; it’s indecent. If there was any doubt he was meant to be an alpha, his cock disputes it. Tony, who has had plenty of fulfilling sexual experiences with people of all genders and designations, is still intimidated. Aroused. Anxious. He knows that his biology has prepared him for this. His body is made to take cocks of that size, but what if it doesn’t? What if he displeases this alpha, displeases Peter?

A hand comes to rest on his shoulder, thumb pressing into that tender part of his neck that has his legs jolting. “Easy,” Peter says, and Tony’s entire body relaxes. That voice drains all the fear and anxiety out of him, Novocain for the soul. Why was he worrying? His head is pleasantly fuzzy like with the buzz of a few strong drinks. Underneath it all is the ache in his cock, the emptiness inside him, but he does not beg. Does not squirm. Because unbearably tender, Peter assures: “I’ll take care of you.”

The tiles under his palms and knees are cold on his feverish skin when he turns over. He lets his back bow to appease the ache inside him until he is presenting fully, cheek pressed against the floor. The sounds Peter makes behind him are wrecked as he folds himself over the omega beneath him, mouth hotly over the skin at the nape of his neck. It makes all the hairs on his body stand on edge—god the only thing better than mating with alpha is bonding with this alpha, bite, bite, please—

“Can’t,” Peter groans. “Can’t bite you. You don’t mean that.”

Tony bucks the boy off until Peter is sitting back on his haunches, cock obscene between his legs, looking more like a confused pup than an assertive alpha. Tony bares his teeth even in the face of his instincts which recoil just at the idea. “I thought you knew what I needed,” he goads.

Peter’s eyes harden. Maybe this polite young man defers to him on most things, but not this thing. He fists a hand in Tony’s hair and wrenches him up until their naked bodies are plastered together from knee to neck. Teeth brush his neck again and it’s like touching a live wire. If he’d jerked any harder, he might have broken skin. As it is, Peter just holds him there, bite firm and bordering on painful until all the fight goes out of him. The boy guides him back down, body lax like all the bones are gone. One hand drifts up and back to run over where the alpha’s teeth were, desperate to feel the indentations.

“Didn’t break skin,” Peter promises, like Tony doesn’t already know. No broken skin, but close. Close enough to have him pliant and purring, the fever in his skin giving him the briefest respite. Then Peter’s fingers dance downward to where the omega is wet and hot and so empty it hurts. Just the brush of fingertips, the promise of pleasure, has Tony groaning into the tiled floor.

Gently, Peter presses in. Attuned to the alpha’s senses, he hears the younger man’s breath catch, turn high and breathy. A second finger joins the first and yes, that’s better, so much better than the gaping emptiness. By the third finger, Tony feels like he could cum from this alone, even if Peter has done nothing but skim his fingers over that spot inside him that’s so good it aches.

Peter hushes him, a hand planted over that fading mark on the back of Tony’s neck. His other hand grips his cock, notching the head where Tony needs it most. The omega takes the first half before he feels full, sated even, but then there is more. Peter makes the rawest noises, and Tony laments not facing him, not being able to see his expression. He can imagine it: the eyes squeezed shut, mouth open, head back. But then there is more cock inside him than he thought was possible, and it burns everything else from his mind. The only thing that exists is that cock, anchoring him to this reality. He can feel the flared base of the alpha’s cock already puffing, desperate to knot.

Content that his cock isn’t going to split Tony in half—though it certainly feels like it from the other side of things—Peter sets a brutal pace. The finesse his fingers might have lacked is overshadowed by his cock which probably couldn’t miss Tony’s prostate if it tried. All he can do is take it, fingers scrabbling to find purchase on the slick floor, body singing, prepared to burn out at any moment.

“To-ny,” whines Peter, drawing the word out obscenely. The next word is softer, said through teeth: “Omega.”

“Alpha,” Tony gasps. “Harder—more. Come on. Need it, need your knot—”

“Then take it,” Peter cries. “Take it! God, you feel so good, you’re perfect, perfect—”

Tony cums, cock spurting onto the tiled floor. Every muscles clenches, cramping, spasming as his orgasm goes on and on, spurred on by Peter’s cock. Tony can’t even take it enough breath to scream, just gapes, cheek pressed to the cool floor. He can feel Peter’s own end coming, the knot growing, the sounds he makes becoming louder and less inhibited.

When Peter finally cums, he howls, crying out the way a man might if he’d just been stabbed only he’s the one stabbing Tony, stabbing him with his cock, forcing the knot past the rim and Tony doesn’t know if he can take it, there is brief pain cresting and then—it’s like it all goes white. His first orgasm was nothing compared to this. This would be painful, if it weren’t so good, if it weren’t exactly what he needed. It’s so much deeper than when he cums from his cock; in a way that feels so external. But this is inside him, deep in his womb, his entire body and being rejoicing at the alpha inside him loading him with sperm. Every spasm of his body is matched a heartbeat later by the cock inside him.

The come-down is slow. Having lost his strength ages ago, Tony is prostrate on the floor, knees and back aching. Above him is a firm, warm weight. The breaths are too ragged for Peter to be sleeping. Still, there is no speaking. Not until the knot inside him deflates and Peter draws back, cum and slick slipping out from inside of Tony.

When he manages to get up on his hands an knees, reaching out to use the sink to brace himself to stand (trying hard not to slip in all the bodily fluids), he sees that Peter is sitting back on his haunches, face buried in his hands, shaking with tears.

Tony nearly flinches at the sight. His heart pounds—alpha, hurting.

“Peter? Pete? God, what is it? Are you—”

“I’m so sorry,” Peter wails.

“Wh—what the hell are you sorry for?”

Peter can’t even answer, he’s so distraught. Tony isn’t good at this. It’s safe to say that most emotional situations have him withdrawing, and hastily. But this is Peter: the young man he’s had a soft spot for even years before the attraction arrived. So instead he lowers himself back down and sits next to the boy, drawing him in. Peter buries his face in Tony’s neck, scenting and scenting. It isn’t hard to exude comfort and warmth, not when he has the young alpha in his arms. Peter’s tears slow and then stop.

Heart in his throat, Tony asks: “What that—not good for you, kid?”

When Peter pulls away, his face is twisted with confusion. “What are you talking about? That—it was—God, Mr. Stark. I’m going to be thinking about that for the rest of my life, probably.”

The omega inside him purrs. “Thanks for the ego boost.”

Peter sighs, wiping at his face. “That’s just so not how I wanted it to happen. When you’re, when you’re in heat you can’t technically consent. You ran from me and I literally—oh shoot, Mr. Stark, I broke down your door.”

“About that—it’s coming out of your paycheck.”

“I’m not being paid, I’m an intern—"

“You—what? You’re not being paid? That doesn’t sound—”

“Can we, like, talk about my pay later?”

Tony’s mouth clicks shut. He nods.

“I just,” Peter sighs, relaxed with his head in the crook of Tony’s neck. They’re both naked, sweat cooling rapidly, but their bodies pressed together are more than enough to keep them warm. “All that effort I put in trying to attract you, trying to treat you right, like an alpha is supposed to treat an omega—then I went and broke your door.”

“Jesus,” Tony mutters. “I should have known you’re too smart not to know what you’ve been doing. Scenting me like I’m going out of style.”

“You’ll never go out of style Mr. Stark,” Peter assures. “I thought I was being subtle. It never seemed to work. Then I got worried that maybe you just weren’t interested. But I can smell you.”

“I’m interested,” Tony says into the younger man’s hair. “Trust me. Interested is putting it lightly. Not to mention, I’m a pretty creative guy. I could have probably stopped you if I wasn’t interested.”

“Even if you could, it’s not right for me to, to just—consent is important!”

“You’re goddamn right it is,” Tony says. He draws Peter’s chin up so they can meet eyes, and even bloodshot and wet, Peter’s are still warm and sincere and painfully adorable. “So, while I’m of sane mind and in between waves, let’s just go ahead and say I’m giving you consent. Enthusiastically. Deal?”

It’s Peter’s turn to melt and then purr, a low growling in his chest, looking like the spider who caught the fly, only more charming and with far less legs thank god. He mouths at Tony’s neck, kissing the gland there to make him shiver, and when he speaks Tony can feel the brush of his lips moving against his skin: “Deal.”