#probably because getting dehumanized is not a new thing for me so when they do it to my newest blorbo I'm gonna throw hands

[trashmammal-7]

I just watched The Measure of a Man and I genuinely got so sad both watching Data's friends argue so hard for his right to not be disassembled against his will, but also the people on the other side who kept insisting that he's just an unconscious tool to be used for the benefit of Starfleet. Data my best friend Data I'll never let them hurt you.

[lassieposting]

Been thinking a lot lately about romanced Astarion post-spawn ending.

Because like. The Funnest™ thing about cptsd is how much of it gets delayed. When you're trapped in a lengthy, ongoing traumatic situation, you do not have the ability to process and start healing your mental wounds. Your brain and body go into survival mode, and all that matters in the moment is that you somehow cope with the horrors. He wouldn't have been able to even begin dealing with the physical, mental and emotional toll of two hundred years of torture, brutalization and dehumanization while he was under Cazador's control; he is in constant danger, surrounded by sharks in the water, and survival means not letting them smell blood. He can't afford to fall apart, to show weakness. He is shockingly functional and competent in-game, partly because he has to be to work as a game character, but also partly because...it do be like that, to some degree. When death, for whatever reason, is not an option, you just have to shut down and keep going. People adapt in order to survive, and when we learn that showing an "injury" (physical or psychological) only gets us punished, we learn to hide it.

Early-game Astarion is terrified - of Cazador, of Godey, of being hunted down by his siblings, of being staked or sold off at the first opportunity by Tav and the other companions, of turning into a mindflayer, of another painful transformation, of losing himself when he's only just regained his autonomy after two centuries, of what Cazador will do to him if he ever finds him - the man is overwhelmed by fear. He's on thin ice as a vampire, and he's not going to give them any more reason to want him gone. Survival instinct is still in control, and in this new situation, crafting some fragile safety for himself means not only selling his body for protection, but also being useful. Clear-headed. Good in a fight.

Endgame Astarion finds himself in a completely different situation. The time-sensitive overarching threats - Cazador and impending ceremorphosis - have been dealt with. He has a loving, supportive partner he's really starting to feel safe with - Tav/Durge has proved that they're on his side, that their affection is genuine, that they don't just want him for the one thing he's been told he's good for. They've told him they're going to help him find a workaround for his sun allergy. He's getting fed regularly. He has time to stop, and breathe, and just. Recuperate.

For the first time in 200 years, he is safe.

And it will probably take a while to catch up, during which time he will seem to be coping really well, but at some point, his brain is going to realise that he's safe, and it's going to finally start processing the sheer fucking horror he's been through. Since I haven't seen anyone talking about this particular fun aspect of cptsd, allow me to offer u some thoughts on issues Astarion and Tav might end up dealing with in the months/years postgame, during the

✨ Delayed Trauma Response ✨

Memory Gaps: Astarion realising, as he opens up to Tav, that there are entire years or decades of his life from which he has only a handful of memories. Great big blank stretches where he has no idea where he was, who he was with, what was happening to him. Some of the gaps cover years at a time where he was so dissociated and shut down that he just didn't retain any memories of what was going on around him. Some are shorter periods of particularly horrific torture that his brain has deliberately blocked out to protect him.

Recovered Memories: At some point, years into the future when he's done A Lot of healing, he might find that every now and then, a fragment of those lost memories will unexpectedly come back to him. He'll catch a particular scent on the breeze, or overhear a specific phrase in the street, or cross paths with someone whose face is oddly familiar, and he'll get a glimpse of an acute horror he'd filed neatly away where it couldn't hurt him anymore. He very rarely remembers all the context to those flashes of his past. He might recall that he was punished, but not what he was punished for, or he might remember words spoken by a greedy conquest, but be unable to recall the man's face.

Dissociation: Tav knows going into this relationship that Astarion has basically made an art out of dissociating during sex. They also know, from their shared encounter with the drow twins, that he's not great at enforcing his own boundaries - he'll always say he'll speak up and back out if he stops having fun, but in practice he rarely does; he's not used to having the option of saying no to his partner, and being punished if he tries. So they know there's going to be some practice and experimentation and negotiation necessary there, to figure out the rough limits of his comfort zone. But once he starts really processing, there may be days where he just checks out completely. Tav will touch his shoulder, and he'll startle and apologise - "Terribly sorry, darling, I was miles away for a moment there." And Tav will gently point out that he's been sat in the same spot vacantly staring into the middle distance for hours. They've been checking in on him occasionally and this is the first time he's responded. It's unsettling, to say the least.

Lost Time: Astarion was very young when he was turned, physically mature but emotionally juvenile. He was basically an overgrown teenager, in the phase of life where elves are just starting to learn who they are and what they want, and figure out their place in the world. But he never got to do that, because he spent his formative young adult years in a world where everyone became an abuser, where his only means of surviving was to smile and charm and obey while even his basic human dignity was stripped away. He learned that communication is based on manipulation. He learned that the powerful can do whatever they like to the weak. He learned an incredibly toxic, abusive way of life, and that was his family dynamic, his everyday life, for as long as he can remember. Now that he's free and safe, he's realising that the world doesn't actually work that way and that he's now far behind even shorter-lived races in social/emotional development. He's grieving for the person he could've been. He's grieving for the life he could've lived. He's grieving for all the years he already lost, and the ones he'll lose in the future as he flounders to catch up. A decent chunk of his life was stolen from him, and that's time he will never get back.

Flashbacks & Night Terrors: Specifically the kind where your brain convinces you that an injury you had a long time ago is actually an injury you have (or are receiving) right now. There are nights where he'll wake Tav in a panic, because his back feels like it's on fire, he can feel every freshly-carved wound dripping blood and he's in so much pain he doesn't know what else to do. If Tav looks, they see nothing out of the ordinary - old, long-healed scars, same as always. But the pain and the fear and the distress are all very real to him, and all they can do is try to comfort him, cover his back with cool damp cloths or healing salves, remind him he's safe now and they're not leaving him.

Boundary Shifting: Sometimes, Tav can come up and hug him from behind, and he'll melt into them a little bit and go all soft and happy. Other times, he might flinch away or go rigid at the same gesture. A lot of the time, it really depends on how he's feeling on the day, but at least a little bit of it is deliberate - he's pushing to find the limit of just how much autonomy Tav is willing to give him. He wants to know at what point they'll stop respecting his "no". Will they accept it if he doesn't want a hug? If he wants to sleep in his own room tonight? At what point will understanding turn to anger at being rejected? From the drow twins four/fivesome, we also know he's got a tendency to push his own boundaries, and jump into things he's actually not ready for, and Tav would be the one holding his hand through the fallout as he tries to figure out what his own boundaries even are.

Frustration! So, so much frustration. He wants to be Over It already. He wants to move past everything that ever happened to him and never think about it again. He hates that Cazador still has a grip on him, even in death - he doesn't want to give the bastard the satisfaction of dwelling on all his punishments, his cruelties. Sometimes, that frustration is going to explode outwards at Tav - he'll get angry at them for coddling him, or find something small to start a fight over, or he'll set an unreasonable boundary and try to defend it because he's still learning what healthy boundaries look like. Sometimes, it will implode inwards, and that won't be about Tav at all, but they'll get the brunt of it all the same - it might come out as self-loathing or self-punishment, and he'll react by doing something stupid, like trying to drive them away, because having a secure, relatively healthy relationship is terrifying and the instinct is to destroy it before Tav can. There will be yelling and angry tears and deeply unhealthy coping mechanisms, and they'd have to work through that. Trauma is ugly, and Astarion is right at the beginning of a very long journey towards healing.

Abandonment Issues: Astarion wants the relationship to be one between equals, but he's kind of got Tav on a pedestal all the same. They saved him. They helped him get rid of Cazador for good. They chose him and love him despite a wealth of better (in his eyes) options, and all his baggage. They stayed with him even when he has very little to offer them. We know his vanity and obnoxious self-absorption is a fragile attempt to obscure the fact that his self-esteem is in the dirt and he has virtually no self-worth, and there are a couple of occasions in-game where it becomes clear that he's afraid of losing the one person who somehow considers him lovable. After seeing Sebastian and all the other conquests, he begs Tav not to hate him, saying that he did what he had to. If he has a rival for Tav's affections, and Tav informs him that they broke up with the rival to be with Astarion, he's shocked and the first thing out of his mouth is, "You ended things with them for me? Why?" And if Durge tries to break up with him for his own safety, his facade drops and he immediately asks if he did something wrong. So while he's not afraid to argue with Tav, if something happens - like an angry outburst - that upsets or angers them, and he thinks he's at risk of losing that one steady, stable person in his life, he might well cling and overcompensate to try and repair what he thinks is a fracture in their relationship. He'll fawn or beg or crawl into Tav's bed to "apologise" and "make it up to them" because, well, very occasionally it worked on Cazador. With patience and good communication and lots of repeatedly driving the lesson home to overcome 200 years of education to the contrary, he will eventually start to believe that "I'm really pissed off at you right now," does not equate to, "You are the worst mistake I've ever made and I am leaving you."

Panic Attacks: I feel like honestly he'd get some symptoms of these on a fairly regular basis, but he's never been given any option other than just trying to power through them. He's used to realising he's shaking, he's used to feeling like he's watching himself from outside his body, or like he can't breathe even though he doesn't need to. He's very familiar with the sickening fear in his gut, so intense it makes his head spin. He's not used to being comforted or reassured about them - he thinks they're normal. Tav disagrees.

Anyway, cptsd is messy and complicated and often looks very different from person to person so these will not represent everyone's but these are just some ideas for what the ongoing recovery process might make them work through, based on the aspects I'm most familiar with.

Projecting? Who's projecting? I'm not projecting. Shut up.

[faeriekit]

Health and Hybrids (XVIII)👽👻💚

[I can't remember the original prompt posters  for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]

PART ONE is here PART TWOis here PART THREE is here PART FOUR is here and PART FIVE is here PART SIX is here and PART SEVEN is here PART EIGHT is here PART NINE is here PART TEN is here PART ELEVEN is here PART TWELVE is here PART THIRTEEN is here PART FOURTEEN is here PART FIFTEEN is here PART SIXTEEN is here PART SEVENTEEN is here..welcome to eighteen..

💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts (now featuring mediocre mouseover translations, only available on a computer)

Where we last left off... Uh... *checks notes* UH... *flips frantically*...listen my laptop exploded and I lost the original version of this chapter gimme a break. I think it was the oatmeal ch. last off.

Trigger warnings for this story:  body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) |  my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.

💚👻👽👻💚

So. Danny is halfway through his squeeze this, please exercises where he has a grippy thing the doctors give him where he tries to squeeze this until they make calm noises again when something bursts through the door.

He’s so distracted that he drops his squeezing machine. 

Everyone immediately gets terse and guarded— the lady who looks out for him the most actually pulls up in front of him? Like, protecting him? With her body?? It’s so far out of left field Danny has to wonder if they’re, like, keeping him for something important down the line instead of just treating him. 

The doctors take shelter behind medical equipment where they can, but whatever the assailant is, it’s too fast for them to put up their defenses. For a second, Danny is instinctually scared— the doctor in the periwinkle scrubs sees him almost every day, changing out his bag and fussing with his lower half under his blankets. The doctor in green makes him do the hand stretches he doesn’t want to do and sit up so that he can do it more often again. 

He’s used to them. He doesn't want that to change, or— Or for them to get hurt. 

The blur darts through the doors and past the doctors and is definitely aimed at Danny, so when the lady catches it (with one hand??) and hauls it up out of reach of Danny’s cot, Danny’s relieved wheeze is genuine and emphatic. Ohgodthatwasscary. 

On the other end of her arm is a teenager. A teenager in a…red…outfit, probably, unless he really likes gray and Danny’s eyes are actually working normally for once. Gray hair. Some kind of face, presumably. 

The teen’s legs keep spinning until he realizes how caught he is. Then he goes completely limp in defeat. 

“Cild Lihting se þridda,” the lady scolds, not unlike how Danny’s heard Vlad scold his cat for throwing paperwork off his desk. “Hwæt eart eow dydest?”

“...Naþing ,” the teenager lies, badly, and it sounds so much like Nothing, mom, wasn’t me, that Danny can’t help but choke out a laugh. 

It makes his chest muscles spasm and his throat sore, sure, but that’s not the point. The lady keeps scolding the teen she’s holding up midair, but the teen lights up at Danny’s choked out wheeze like the sun. Almost literally, actually— the green starts accumulating in Danny’s field of view as his body tries to compensate for whatever’s going on in the atmosphere around him. 

The doctors slowly let down their improvised shields, fetching Danny’s lost grippy tool (ugh) and putting it back in his hand (UGH). Danny gives one, pathetic squeeze of the tool, and then decides to visibly languish, because this sucks, obviously. The fact that no one can sympathize with his struggle isn’t new. Just watch him go limp about it. 

The next time the lady and the teen stop making scolding and scolded noises, Danny looks over; the teenager has been, apparently, wrangled into a hair net and face mask. Okay. So it’s not that Danny is off limits then— or maybe he is, but either way, it’s more about getting people into the right gear than about keeping them away from him. Once the teen’s been sprayed down with something that smells absolutely gross, forcibly gloved, and dropped unceremoniously onto the ground, the teen is back on his feet and hollering as he leaves the lady behind. “Þancie eow!!” 

“Slaw, lytel Lihting!” 

Slow, Danny understands, parsing out the weird words as they reach him. Lytel might as well mean little. This sucks. He can never tell if he’s right when he guesses, and he just gets lucky when people understand him back, or whether people are pretending to understand him more than they actually do. Lighting is a weird nickname for a kid though. 

—And then the teen is a foot away from his face and babbling at top speed, entirely at ease with their proximity and hands moving a mile a minute, and Danny has not been losing enough time for that to be anything other than either magic or a superpower. 

Oh, his brain corrects. The word clicks into place. Lightning. 

It’s probably some kind of magic, Danny’s guessing, because as he’s absolutely flabbergasted that someone is leaning into his face and trying to engage him that talk that isn’t happening, his ghost sense flares with a backwash of OMGHIHELLO!!MIS/SEDYOUMISSED//YOUPLAYING?? that. Uh. Is very…a lot? Very intense??

Very…welcoming?

The lady who minds him but isn’t a doctor sighs, picks the teenager up by the waist (??) and sets him a whole foot back. The teen doesn’t even stop chattering, his aura flaring alongside a story Danny is definitely missing, but not unappreciative of. 

He throws something onto Danny’s bed. Danny drops the grippy tool in order to grab it, to the doctor’s verbal dismay. 

But. 

Like Danny’s model shuttle, which never leaves his side, the thing on his bed is Danny’s. This is Danny’s weird, flimsy, squishy toy.

The teen practically vibrates with pride.

…Okay, then. He’s kind of confused, but like. You know. He’s not against this.

Danny picks the squishy, blue thing in his trembling fingers and shakes it around without any sense of fine motor control, and the thing leaps out of his fingers and lands on the floor pretty much instantaneously.

It makes a weird suction noise. Danny peeks over the bed to find it sitting upright, stuck to the floor.

The teen responds by throwing even more colorful, oddly-shaped toys on the bed.

Danny knows enough about doctors to know that there were probably structured plans on how Danny was supposed to spend his time on specific exercises to target specific muscles and stretch specific parts of his hands, but the teen sits at his bedside and plays with toys Danny doesn’t remember with him, and no one stops them at all.

It’s nice.

For about an hour, until Danny truly tires, it's almost…normal.

[caparrucia]

Here's one of those uncomfortable tidbits that no one wants to think about and which people in cozy internet bubbles hate being reminded of:

The way you speak about people you dislike/hate is a red flag to people you do like/love.

The way you express anger and frustration and rage about people who wronged you, even people who wronged you badly, in a wider context, is very often a red flag for others around you. Do you let your anger be a justification to use dehumanizing language? Slurs? Are your personal feelings the measure you use to determine who is allowed personhood and who isn't?

This doesn't mean you're not allowed to be angry. This doesn't mean that you're not allowed to express said anger. It doesn't even mean your anger is not justified.

But if you find yourself sitting alone in your corner of rage, wondering why your personal connections tend to wither and fizz out, it probably is because you're constantly talking about people who make you angry and all the things you'd like to do to them. And like, people who first encounter that, might be sympathetic, might be wary, but the more visceral your anger is, the more readily you express it, the more people start wondering what's the threshold to trigger that behavior. Will you be talking about them in that tone too, if they piss you off? Will they be the subject of one of your tirades, if they make a mistake? Are you going to go on a rampage, calling them slurs, if it turns out they don't agree with you?

Anger is, for better or for worse, the kind of emotion you share with close friends, not with strangers trying to become friends, or new friends who don't know you yet. Anger is the kind of thing a good friend will know how to parse. But if it's a new person and all they know about you is how angry you are about something or someone, they will lack the context to understand that your anger is justified and that it's not the entirety of your personality... because you have made it so that's the only part of your personality they've seen.

Discord culture being what it is, it's fascinating how prevalent "vent" channels are, and how people just go in there and scream their rage in search of sympathy. But it tends to back fire, because to get sympathy from strangers, your venting needs to be edited to sound like you're in the right. Your anger needs to be righteous, to evoke support in those vent spaces. And it becomes a cycle.

Cause the thing is, anger isn't always justified or righteous. Sometimes you're BEC about someone! (Bitch Eating Crackers, a shorthand for "this person annoys me to an irrational amount, anything they do is parsed as a negative", "LOOK AT THE BITCH, EATING CRACKERS" etc.) And that's anger that needs to be expressed and processed! But that's the kind of anger that only close friends can handle. If you put that anger out, performing in the hopes of getting support, you're going to need to either lie egregiously about why you're angry, or you're going to alienate a ton of people because it turns out "is capable of irrational anger about things/people" is a pretty common red flag when that's all you know about someone.

Just.

I keep seeing post after post of people bemoaning being lonely and abandoned and failing to establish long-lasting connections and it's just.

It's the anger. You keep greeting people with anger and anger is a great emotion to fuel a lot of things, like change and protection and closing ranks, but it's kinda shit at building long lasting connections. Try curiosity or good will! It doesn't mean you have to stop being angry, either. If you're angry, you're angry! But when you're trying to build relationships, using anger as an all-purpose tool is like trying to hammer a nail with a saw.

[stillarandom-radfem]

This post is going to cause controversy here on radblr. I already know that, and I'm ready for it. But there is something that I've just got to get off my chest, here. It's been bugging me for a long time now, but for the longest time, I couldn't quite find the words to describe my feelings.

Here's the thing. It's not that female separatists are wrong, necessarily, with regard to their arguments about male violence. OSA women like myself are at a greater risk of interpersonal violence from men, intimate partner violence does make up the majority of domestic violence statistics, men are the most likely people to rape or murder us, and yes, living without men therefore probably would improve straight and bisexual women's lifespan/overall quality of life in most cases. BUT. The way many female separatists (who are most often lesbians) go about presenting their arguments is not only unnecessarily rude to women who have done nothing to deliberately harm them (and, when it includes such colorful monikers as "dick worshipper" and "cock rider" in it, reasonably comes off as an attack), but it includes many of the same tactics that homophobes use against LGB people to make their point. I'm sure that homophobes doing that stuff to you is hurtful, but I'm also at least 99% sure that heterosexual women who are radfems (or rad-adjacent, if you prefer) aren't the ones leveling those attacks, and don't therefore deserve to be responded to with such ferocity. Two wrongs do not, in this case, make a right. And it needs to stop.

For example, you ask?

Acting like heterosexual relationships must be purely sexual, with no actual love involved whatsoever.

I see LGB people complaining about homophobes doing this to them all the time. "You think our relationships inherently obscene or kinky because you can't picture us actually being in love; all you can think of is the sexual part! You think a sizable chunk of the population is incapable of love or human connection, and that is dehumanizing!" Yes, I have no doubt in my mind that it is. But then look at what you do when you try to call out heterosexual/bisexual women for being with men, and you are doing exactly the same thing to us. You talk about OSA relationships, and the first and, often, only thing you ever bring up is the sexual aspect of them. The word "love" almost never comes up. It's like it doesn't even occur to you that OSA women might actually fall in love with or have very deep romantic feelings for their male partners, not unlike you, as a lesbian, may have or have had towards any girlfriends you have ever dated, any women you have ever crushed on, or, if you're lucky, your wife. Now, do OSA women have sex with our boyfriends or husbands, if we have them? Of course we do! Have you ever had sex with your wife or girlfriend? Or, if you're single, would you, if you had one? Of course you would, and you know it! Does that negate your feelings for her, somehow? No? Your relationships are not purely sexual just because there is sex involved? Then why would you assume that sex being involved would make heterosexual relationships suddenly be only sexual? Also, news flash: vibrators exist. So do dildos. Or women (including het women) could just use their fingers or a pillow. There are many ways for a woman of any orientation to get off without a man if getting off is all that she's after. If she is choosing to be in an actual serious relationship with a man, it's most likely because she's in love with him. You are trying to convince her that there is something more important for her to consider, in spite of her feelings. So, perhaps instead of insinuating that she is some kind of sex-obsessed slut who is screwing over her entire sex deliberately for the sake of a few orgasms, you can start start there, instead.

Acting like other people's sexual orientations can be changed (not yours, of course, just, you know, everyone else's).

I see homophobes acting this way towards LGB people all the time, claiming that the sex(es) you are attracted to is a choice somehow, shaming you for preferring the "wrong" one (or the "wrong" one at the moment, if you're bi). Which, personally, has always struck me as kinda weird, because they never seem to apply the same logic to themselves. They never stop to suggest whether their own orientation is a choice or not. I guess it's pretty obvious why they won't, because then it comes down to two possibilities: if they are with strictly the opposite sex by choice, then it's very probable that they are actually bisexual, and behave as they do towards gay people due to internalized homophobia, whereas, if their strict opposite sex attraction is not a choice, then they have just admitted that their own orientation is innate, so why would they assume everyone else's not to be? It makes no sense. And incels will take it a step further, yelling slurs at lesbians for only wanting to have sex with other women instead of them. It's all pretty fucked up and illogical, and just for the record, I think you all deserve much better. Of course your sexuality isn't a choice. And yet... I mean, I can't even begin to count how many lesbian separatist blog posts I have read full of women acting as if heterosexuality is a choice. "Ew, moids are ugly, dicks are gross, what's wrong with you, why would you choose that?!" Newsflash, gyns: we didn't. That's just our sexual orientation, and we didn't choose it any more than you chose yours. We may still choose to be celibate in spite of our orientation, or, if we're bi, we might still decide to only date other women. But we will still always have the capacity to be physically attracted to/fall in love with men, and for those of us who are straight, we can only experience that with men exclusively. That's just the way it is. We can't control that; it's innate. Some of you, upon grappling with this fact, immediately jump straight to the incel way of doing things and begin slinging the aforementioned colorful monikers (ahem, sexualized anti-woman slurs aforementioned in this blog post) for only being attracted to men instead of you. It actually smacks of sexual harassment, and then you wonder why so many straight women stop following/won't follow you. Or, leap right into calling us lesbophobes because we don't want to take sexual harassment like that from anybody, man or woman alike. Call me crazy, but the last time I checked, a "lesbophobic woman" was a woman who hates lesbians for only being attracted to other woman, not a woman who simply refuses to date/sleep with you. What, you have a right to bodily autonomy, but straight/bisexual women don't?! And yeah, I know, I know. "Stop comparing us to incels! Lesbians aren't predatory!" Well, true, most of you are not. The vast, overwhelming majority of you are completely fine and normal. But I always give the side eye to any notion of an entire group of people (any people) being all perfect, pristine angels carte blanche (a scant few people in every large enough group are going to be creeps), and if a scant few of you don't want to be compared to incels... Well, then maybe you should stop behaving like them. Because, when you explicitly resort to their same tactics, even I get the ick off of a few of you, and I'm probably the least homophobic straight person I know. 🤨🤨🤨

They call you "c*rpet m*ncher", "qu**r", "f*g", "d*ke", etc., over your orientation. You then call women (who probably didn't even call you that!) "dick worshipper", "cock rider", etc., over ours.

Enough said. Do I even need to point out (again) that these are almost all just a bunch of sexualized, anti-woman slurs? Do you really think that this is going to bring women over to your side, as opposed to just driving them away? And do you actually think that your female separatist movement is going to have any kind of major societal effect if you would rather drive women away from it, rather than bringing them in? It won't have any impact that way; it will only die out. And, look, I don't think that homophobes should be treating you like that, either. They most definitely should not. I have no doubt that them slinging those slurs at you constantly over your sexual orientation (which you can't control) is extremely hurtful and probably even scary for you. You deserve so much better than that. But, again, last time I checked "lesbophobe" means someone who hates you for only being attracted to other women, not a woman who refuses to date/sleep with you, and, from what I can tell, radfems appear to be, by and large, very pro-gay. Even when we, ourselves, are not. So, it seems very unlikely to me that we're the ones calling you names like that (unless you can show me receipts or something, in which case, go ahead). Until that happens, it occurs to me that people of all sexual orientations are pointing fingers, accusing each other of being sex-obsessed perverts, and calling each other names because, idk, maybe the drama is more interesting to some people than minding their own business? Or they literally can't wrap their minds around being attracted to that sex, so they attack anyone who is? Idk, it all seems very juvenile, and I should think there would be better ways to tell someone that some aspect of their lifestyle is unhelpful to the movement and/or mentally unhealthy to them than merely resorting to often sexualized mudslinging attacks. Honestly, no matter what your views on female separatism or sexual orientation are, can we all just agree to a ceasefire on the relentless mudslinging on all sides?? Please??? This is middle school shit, and it's really getting annoying. Everyone. On both sides. You're like a pack of schoolyard bullies. Stop it.

Again, I'm not saying that female separatists' arguments against dating/sleeping with/marrying and/or having kids with men are entirely wrong. Male violence is a problem for a lot of women, and refusing to be in relationships with them probably would reduce it greatly. But acknowledging heterosexual and bisexual women as being capable of romantic love towards whichever sex(es) we are capable of experiencing attraction to, acknowledging all sexual orientations as something innate that can not be changed and not a choice, and refusing to resort to juvenile mudslinging attacks will not take away from those facts in any way. So, I guess I just don't see what the reasoning is for so many female separatists to refuse to even consider them?

[gildeddlily]

I need more content about Chuuya. like, Soukoku is the bsd couple with more works on Ao3, the most loved of the whole fandom, there are over 20 thousand fanfictions. there are tons of edits and AMV about him on tiktok and youtube, tons of x reader and fanarts. but it's (almost) always the sweet and a little dumb Chuuya.

Chuuya who's in love with Dazai and is begging him not to leave, who's mad at him for leaving the fricking mafia and "abandoning him", who's crying about being the second choice for everyone (fuck that, especially the "kouyou chose kyouka over chuuya"- you're telling me she chose to protect a 14ys girl over a 22ys man who's a mafia executive? oh sorry she should have left the child alone my bad), who is constantly manipulated by Dazai and betrayed (and content like this is made by people who love Dazai but don't understand him one bit- like yeah he manipulated the Sheep into betraying Chuuya but the Sheep were fucking assholes who didn't deserve Chuuya, and Dazai treated him fucking better than them- don't let me get started ab them or I'll never stop), feminized Chuuya, short and skinny Chuuya who likes to be the little spoon cause Dazai is the big strong man, lonely Chuuya who doesn't have anyone and basically dumb Chuuya who doesn't understand Dazai and cries to his sleep ab him.

fuck no, and I've been reposting every post that talks ab this. we want more Stormbringer Chuuya, and we don't have him 'cause not everyone has access to the novel or wants to read it. but Stormbringer is my Bible and should be everyone's.

We want more 15 years old Chuuya who carried on his shoulder a whole organization, the same organization that treated him like a damned dog, who got betrayed by the people he was sacrificing himself for the moment he tried to do something for himself, who was tricked into joining the Port Mafia (an organization he hated), who's easily read and manipulated and is aware of it, who never gave up on his humanity and worked hard and became important and strong for his new organization in a year as a teenager, who was able to made Dazai survive, giving him some sort of will to live, after like days of knowing him.

We want constantly dehumanized 16 Chuuya that got tortured for hours, that found out about his terrible origins and past, who sacrificed fondamental information about himself to save Yokohama, that almost got himself killed protecting the same person who betrayed him and fought his "brother" in order to do so, that lose the friends he called family and the only chance he had to have a life outside the mafia. Desperate because of his family's death Chuuya, in his painful corrupted form Chuuya, putting his life in Dazai's hands Chuuya, the one who beated the King of Assassins Chuuya, the one who was able to destroy an entire organization with his partner Chuuya. Port Mafia Executive Chuuya, who became who he was because of himself and with Dazai's help, who was able to become stronger even without him. Chuuya who suffered because of Dazai's deflection but understood it.

22 Chuuya who met his ex-partner after four years, stronger than how Dazai remembered him and still able to surprise (Dazai's "how fast!" when Chuuya punched him was hilarious and empowering, especially after his "I know all your moves" talk- and no, we "heard" his thoughts, so it wasn't an act stop saying that he had predicted that too when chuuya's like one of the only ppl able to surprise him) one of the smartest people in their country, who made sure things didn't change between them and made said smart and manipulative man cry from laughing over his damned rich girl impression. Chuuya who is the best martial artist and probably strongest ability user (Q is a child, and his "fight" with Steinbeck said a lot about his strength- crazy yes, but Chuuya could still beat almost everyone even without his ability) in the mafia, who could probably smash a wall with and without For The Tainted Sorrow. The Chuuya who's able to survive in a world surrounded by geniuses who constantly try to manipulate him (Dazai's manipulation is different than Fyodor's shut up), and able to be one of the most influential man in Yokohama without being a freaking genius.

Chuuya who has one of the best character developments I've ever read. Chuuya who has about him a lot of information (more than anyone else, we know you love him Asagiri) (please don't love him the way you loved Odasaku) and still gets mischaracterized again and again. this is an infodump ab what Chuuya means to me.

send ao3 links ty

[elkian]

Oh yeah since it’s Homestuck Day here’s a post I’ve been sitting on for a bit.

Davesprite’s tragedy is even deeper than is immediately obvious.

The scale, time-wise, of the base game - the Alpha Timeline - is something of a joke. It pokes fun, I think, at the concept of Webcomic Time - that an event taking place over dozens of pages over the course of months is, in-canon, only taking place across a day or two.

But Davesprite. Oh, Davesprite.

Dave-the-sprite came from a timeline 4 months (chrono) past Day 1. He’d been hopping enough for it to come out to maybe 1 year for him. He’s very lanky in the animation, and when Rose’s dreamself merges with her Alpha self, the sprites are very slightly different sizes. Future Mutie is visibly older.

But then The Alpha Timeline? The Course Of The Game?

One. Day.

What an absolute whiplash, you guys. He’s been grinding and prepping and mentally readying himself and fucking grieving for his pretty much only friends for nearly a year. Remember how Dragon Ball Z had the Hyper time chamber and it was mentioned that it’s hard to use alone? Because being in there on your lonesome, that’s tough. That’s Dave. He had Rose, who was also grieving and having her own crises that he may or may not have been equipped to help her through at all, and he’s doing all this.

And in like, maybe 12 hours, it’s suddenly all over.

And then he finds out it’s gonna be another three years, but hey, this time he has Jade and John, the people he missed so desperately that he was willing to give up being The Real Dave, a real human, for.

And to them? He’s an extra.

He’s Bonus Dave. He’s Davesprite. He’s Basically Dave, (almost) As Good As The Real Thing!

Like, it’s very hard for me to articulate, but the way that both of them refer to him during the course of their cruise is... dehumanizing, in differing ways.

John calls him Dave, because He’s Basically Dave. (This is after John asked him to let The Real Dave in on their convo, recall). He doesn’t need to be treated any different, because he’s indistinguishable from The Real Dave, Pretty Much!

Jade isn’t as bad - possibly her stint as+fusion with Jadesprite helped - but the way Grimbark Jade loses her temper with Dave post-jump is... telling. She blames a boy she hasn’t spoken with in 3 years for something that a person who is not actually him did.

And he just! Fucking gets forgotten! I know Davepeta feels like an asspull to many readers, but honestly, it’s probably the best thing to happen to Davesprite since his John bit it. Like, was he the one from John’s timeline, or did he not die when the rebooted planet blew up or what? I’ve never understood that.

At least as Davepeta they have multiple people who are genuinely glad to be around them. At least Equius cares about one half and AR doesn’t not-care about the other and they’ve basically got a bestie in Arquiusprite! Getting fused with a reanimated alien catgirl in an alternate timeline(????) was probably the best thing to happen to Dave for a long, long time.

And I’m not even done!

Let’s talk Terezi.

Once we get through Act 5 and the trolls connect with the humans, we get a whole Fairy Godtroll situation that’s kinda cute. John gets Karkat and Vriska in his ear, Jade gets Tavros and Feferi and Kanaya and Karkat (Jade gets a lot of new people, doesn’t she?), Rose still has her Kanaya convos.

And Dave.

Gets.

Terezi.

They’re a great duo, very fun to watch - even with Vriska and Terezi’s weird rivalry shenanigans getting tangled up in it from time to time. As far as he knows, she’s just a bit of an internet weirdo who’s fun enough to hang out with.

As far as Alpha Dave knows, that is.

Davesprite came back, remember, to fix the timeline after Terezi got his John killed. Dave comes back, and argues with his John - that’s the first thing he gets to say to his best friend, one of his only friends, after a year of grieving in a dead, lonely session with only Rose for company. If he loses the fight, John dies.

After some effort, he gets his dumbass (beloved) pal to stop doing the stupid thing, then gives up his humanity (his existence as a core player, his role, his autonomy) and jumps into the sprite. Calsprite was a void of dead-eyed laughter and horror, so he wants to give the kids the best shot they can get, and having a non-cagey sprite on their side is a huge boost.

And Dave, Alpha Dave?

He ignores this.

He takes Terezi’s advice, over and over. Davesprite gives him the medallion, and we never see it used (we never see any sprite medallion used, as far as I can recall). Davesprite has to actively contact his player (his luckier, prime, Alpha self) and make him accept help, like guarding his body in his sleep. Meanwhile, Alpha Dave is getting codec support from the person who killed John, precipitating Davesprite’s entire existence in the narrative.

With the way the comic is structured, it’s really easy to blip over this, but this is what’s happening. Davesprite’s POV must be a goddamn horror movie, complete with futile shouting at the protagonists to stop going into the scary tunnels and following the advice of people who are blatantly out to hurt them. No fucking wonder he eventually fucked off the find Bro, who despite being an abusive piece of shit (did Davesprite ever get the chance to work that one out for himself?), is at least a constant. He’s the sole tie to the life this Dave left behind. Damn. And Dave doesn’t even come looking for him after he “dies”! If Davesprite didn’t vandalize that poster, would Alpha Dave have even known he was alive?

....fuck, is that why he keeps pasting orange text onto things? And provoking John into anger? Is he just doing his damnedest to keep from being trivialized and forgotten?

In the story, in the grand scheme of things, Davesprite is key to keep John from getting killed, and past that?

He has no purpose.

There’s no point to his existence.

His player seeks neither his advice nor his protection. His friends consider him part of the game they’re playing, rather than (an iteration of) their friend. The trolls mock him by doing nothing he can stop or really argue against. His rage has nowhere to go, so he has no rage.

No wonder he chases after Bro. No wonder he chills with Jadesprite. No wonder, no wonder. What a mess. What a disaster. He spends three years on the damn ship and as soon as the groups meet up, Jade begins projecting the time he spent with her on a guy she hasn’t seen since she was 13! And Alpha Dave just says “well, he’s bird me” and accepts this, except when he might get blamed for something he didn’t actually do!

God.

[purplebass]

A comment under something I wrote about Kell's childhood got me thinking about antari and how they are objectified. I also briefly touch on their boundaries and dynamics and parallels.

I want to believe that Kell's parents cared about his well being and that the only reason they surrendered him to the Maresh family was to protect him. Imagine if Kell had continued living with his biological parents. They were likely thieves on the run without a home and they probably lived on scraps. Once it would be known that Kell was antari, someone could've taken advantage of him, or worse. Someone could've attempted to kill him. Offering Kell to the king and queen would grant him protection, an education in magic. He wouldn't have to worry about eating and where to sleep. I don't think it was an easy choice for his parents, but they did it because they believed it would be for their son's good. They couldn't know that Kell would end up being dehumanized by his new "parents" and like a bird in a golden cage.

The main og antari and how their storylines reflect each other in different ways.

Holland is the representation of the life Kell would've probably had if his family wouldn't have surrendered him to the royals, and if he wasn't born in Red London. His brother and the woman he loved tried to end him and he had to murder them to survive. Then the Danes and then Osaron made him their pet by literally erasing his humanity by controlling him.

Lila's father sold her to pay a debt and he didn't care about her. But she didn't know she was antari, so her magic couldn't be exploited and this somehow was her luck. Lila could run away from her oppressors, and in theory, is what Kell and Holland both longed for. Freedom. (Side note: that's why Kell likes Lila so much but she also gets on his nerves - affectionately -. The things that come easily to her, are harder for him. And he gets a little irritated by this but I think she also inspires him to improve and believe more in himself.)

Lila is the only antari who wasn't objectified up to this point. She didn't let the black stone or others take control of her, unlike Kell and Holland. It isn't a question of power. This is more of a question of mindset/personality. Lila shares personality traits with Kell and Holland and so do they (and they're a trio of introverts). While the other two are still trusting and kind despite it all, Lila is selectively trusting and kind. She built strong walls around her to protect herself and this is probably why she could resist possession. Perhaps this is her strength. She is also vary and hardly lets people in. She has strong boundaries but she's is selective about them.

Having been treated as servants and not human beings, Kell and Holland do have boundaries but they waver. Kell tries hard to put boundaries but he sometimes loses the fight. Holland has his boundaries destroyed after he was possessed, so it's no wonder he doesn't know what boundaries are anymore. They knew that they needed to get away and could try to leave (they were powerful magicians, after all!) but at the same time, they didn't know how. Oftentimes, the person who lives in a toxic environment knows it's toxic but is unable to leave. Holland was teetered by an enchantment to the Danes and then to Osaron. Kell was bound by duty and by loyalty to Rhy, whom he didn't want to leave because he loved his brother. Rhy was the only reason for him to endure this treatment.

This is why, once again, when Lila appears in Kell's life, she is the catalyst for his growth and for his possibility to get away from the toxic environment he was in. And at the same time, Lila appearing in the story influences Holland's story too. And they also influence her personal growth, because Lila learns to trust people a little more. At the end of the series, their power come together to destroy the enemy, which is cool.

After seven years, things have changed a bit. Kell is free from his royal duties at the end of acol, but his magic is broken and he finds himself without purpose. I think of him as a broken vase that was fixed with a thread of silver just like Japanese do (but with gold) to embrace the philosophy that humans have flaws and they're not perfect.

Lila is more trusting and letting people in (albeit still selectively), and I think that these seven years weren't easy for her either. She was the last antari left (I don't think she counted Kosika because she was still a child and uhm, what did I say about Lila trusting strangers? Read that again lol). I think she felt a huge responsibility on her shoulders, especially because she didn't want to involve Kell in any of the things regarding antari and such (see, reason why she didn't tell him about Kosika either). She was also emotionally tested because of Kell. She was desperately looking for a way to help him but also tried not to show him how desperate she was because she didn't want to show her feelings so openly (vulnerability again).

Holland is haunting the narrative. If the ghost Kosika sees is the real Holland, because I have few doubts that he is the same Holland we know. He's doing to Kosika what was done to him, but in a softer way, because he quietly speaks to her and helps her, and only later she realizes that was the reason she knew how to use her powers. He is using Kosika to act as his vessel so she can finish what he started years before. There's an interesting parallel with Kosika and Tes and the antari but I need to reread Threads to analyze it better.

If you read until the end thank you! lmao and if you have questions please send because I like to talk about adsom

[virusinfected-memes]

TUMBLR TEXT POST SENTENCE STARTERS, PT. 2 ;

75 starters. CW: blood mention, cussing, death. Starters come from various text posts floating around Tumblr. The only thing changed for this post was adding capitalization and punctuation. Feel free to change words and pronouns as needed! [PART 1]

“Academia is cool and sexy until I’m expected to work.”

“An anime with more than a hundred episodes is a bigger commitment than marriage.”

“Anyone who believes all water tastes the same is no acquaintance of mine.”

“Anyway, that’s every reported eyewitness account of Mothman through ‘68, and that’s just in West Virginia! Haha, but enough about me. Let’s hear about your top five cryptids!”

“Aside from being the worst person alive, I am literally perfect.”

“At the end of the day, I’m just a girl who loves her bed.”

“Being equally obsessed with each other sounds hot to me.”

“Being good doesn’t get you anything.”

“Be the worst you can be.”

“But do aliens believe in me?”

“Don’t let anyone dehumanize you. Dehumanize yourself. Be the creeping eldritch horror you’ve always longed to be. Rain furious vengeance down upon those who would unmake you.”

“Do something today that would’ve gotten you burnt at the stake four hundred years ago.”

“Do you ever just want someone to come over and sit on the floor with you for a few hours?”

“Do you ever wanna listen to music, but every song is just not the right song?

“Feeling safe around someone’s energy is a different kind of intimacy.”

“Flirting is childish. We’re grown. Just tell the person you like that you see God in their eyes.”

“Friendly reminder that the age of technology is coming to an end and a new age of blood magic and dark rituals will take its place.”

“Friendship is temporary. Blood pacts are forever.”

“Girls don’t want boys. Girls want to live in a Victorian estate and be the most feared widow in the village.”

“Half of me is a hopeless romantic and the other half of me is, well, an asshole.”

“Having a body causes me so much agony. I wish I was just a floating entity with no physical form.”

“How do I overthink so much and still make the wrong decision?”

““I can fix him!” You can’t even fix your sleep schedule, bestie.”

“I don’t care if your body is a temple. Call me when it’s been closed down and taken over by Spirit Halloween.”

“I don’t know about soulmates, but those people who eat parts of the food or candy that you don’t like and you do the same for them... We’ve lived a hundred lifetimes together, probably.”

“I don’t think we can romanticize our way out of this one, boys.”

“If you see me in the streets, just know that my mind is in the void. I’m physically alive, but mentally checked out.”

“I guess we all learned a valuable lesson. Except for me. I wasn’t paying attention and was asleep for most of the time.”

“I hate when people ask what I would do in their situation because nine times out of ten, I would literally never be in that situation in the first place.”

“I hope manners is the next cool trend.”

“I just love sleep so much. Like, you just close your eyes and you’re gone, bitch. Brain logged the fuck off. Powerful.”

“I just realized there’s, like, a hundred new Pokémon coming this year, give or take, and I have to decide what personal memories and details about friends to forget in order to make room for them all.”

“I like my women like I like my woods. Haunted and could kill me at any moment.”

“I like to fuck around and waste time at least six to ten hours a day, and let me tell you, that puts some pressure on your schedule. You have no idea how busy I am.”

“I love to learn. Unfortunately, my brain doesn’t like to remember.”

“I love when I ‘make a mental note’ of something. It’s gone within twenty seconds.”

“I’m not a religious person, but I do sometimes think God made you for me.”

“I’m not playing hard to get. I genuinely don’t know how to talk.”

“I’m wearing dark glasses today because I’m seeing the future, and the future is looking very bright.”

“I think it’s so neat that everyone develops their own unique handwriting even though we’re all taught to write our letters the same way. Really, it’s so cute.”

“I think making sense is optional. Sometimes I just be talking.”

“I think the meaning of life is eating good food in the company of people you love.”

“It’s because I’m pretty, that’s why I have problems.”

“It’s crazy how I’m just some person.”

"It seems you are in love with your computer.”

“It’s not rude to interrupt someone to point out a dog. It’s actually more polite because then they don’t miss out on the dog.”

“I will never elaborate because I have no idea what I just said.”

“Live, laugh, love? Nah. Languish, lament, lay down.”

“Michael Myers taught me a valuable life lesson. Don’t worry about how fast everyone around you is moving. If you’re determined, just move at your own pace and you’ll kill shit every time. Thanks, Mike.”

“Moving to the forest to eat leaves and lie in the dirt. Insurance companies can’t deny me this.”

“Okay, bored of being alone now. Ready to get married.”

“Okay, hear me out... What if—now bear with me—we held hands? Maybe even kiss a little? Hugs would be nice—”

“People keep posting ‘what’s REALLY in your food’ articles like I’m gonna stop eating whatever it’s about. Listen, death is coming. Death is coming. Pass me a hot dog.”

“People who fall asleep right away freak me out. Don’t you bitches have thoughts?”

“Really starting to understand old people these days. I love letters. Love packages. Terrified of my email inbox.”

“Someone take me out. Either in the assassination way or in the date way.”

“Sorry for being so sexy and having the best taste in literature. As if I asked for it.”

“Sorry I called you a fucking idiot. I was trying to flirt.”

“So what if I love you? Shut up.”

“The fact that I have to be in the ‘right headspace’ to do even the simplest tasks is absolutely humiliating.”

“The only difference between me and a medieval peasant is that I can make a Spotify playlist to express my feelings.”

“The only reason I haven’t gone insane is because I romanticize everything.”

“There should be a dating app where you talk to people who borrowed the same books from the library.”

“There’s something inherently holy about kitchens.”

“Tired of being a person. Would much rather be an unidentifiable and nebulous entity that lives in the woods and may or may not be an omen of misfortune to come.”

“Wanna haunt the neighborhood with me tonight?”

“Well, I used to be attracted to people, but now I’m exclusively attracted to abstract art and the concept of death.”

“What is the logic behind naps leaving you with a weird taste in your mouth? I wasn’t eating, I was sleeping. It’s the spiders, isn’t it?”

“Winnie the Pooh didn’t rock crop tops our whole childhood to watch us become unconfident about our bodies.”

“Yes, I’m dramatic! What did you expect? I read classic literature for fun.”

“You’d look prettier under six feet of dirt.”

“You don’t always need to talk. Like, it’s good to shut the fuck up sometimes. I love not talking.”

“You gotta walk into rooms like God sent you.”

“You’re beautiful, but you’re empty. No one could die for you.”

“You wanna know what’s annoying me right now? It’s me. I am annoying the goddamn shit out of myself.”

[reborrowing]

that alien thing I was thinking about. I don't usually do epistolary writing, but this gets the point across without spilling all the alien details so I can come back tell the rest from a more normal human POV if I want to come back to it.

~550 words

cw: dehumanization, alien abduction, corporate fuckery

Trash > Observational Lab NS02 Notes!

Timestamped 683800:1101

Looks like the lab will be seeing some use sooner than we thought. Pamza had their crew charting an unoccupied system near the Eysina jump and found an active biosphere in the middle of it. A probe didn’t detect any sort of faelar or other artificial networks or anything that would suggest any kind of civilization, so they’re sending the field team to touch down and see about getting us some wildlife samples.

In the meantime, I get to recalibrate allllll our containment tanks because somehow no one anticipated the exact conditions required to house some random xeno-bugs.

Timestamped 683810:1352

So the new alien things are fuzzy and actually kind of cute! I figured the field guys would just find a couple of 'pod things, those awkward things that evolve early in a planet’s life cycle.

But I overheard someone saying the sponsor’s pleased, some of these things might even be marketable? Not my concern I guess, but the labs are full and I am busy!

Timestamped 683809:1112

Some of these species should not have been housed together. Zoc is pissed at the field guys. Me too, after spending all afternoon cleaning out that tank. These things are um, tightly packed under all that fur.

I watched Zoc do an exploratory xenonecropsy which was…not something I was expecting to get out of this apprenticeship. I don’t know how I feel about it. It’s good experience, probably? But I think I prefer to work with living things.

Timestamped 683811:1089

Some of these things are smart for their size! I guess they’re probably not small relatively and life on their planet found some way to cope with the size limitations, but it’s still weird to see. They're pretty social too. I think some of them have started recognizing different lab members. 

There’s this one that I think even likes me. It’s kind of a stabby little thing, hand-sized, fluffy. It trots right up to my hand when open the tank and climbs up to my crest to sleep while I sit down to prep instruments for later. It’s adorable. If the Sponsor does send a team back to that planet, I’ll probably buy one of my own once they’re available

Timestamped 683822:4011 [recovered file]

Something happened in the lab today. I don’t think anyone else saw. I was cycling some water for the twoleggers, one of them almost got out and—I don’t know. I don’t think basic animal intelligence would have thought to do that. But we don’t have any kind of ambassadors on board, never mind the specialists needed for first contact and translating and…oh.

I probably just misinterpreted what I saw. Maybe I just need to review my xenocognition theory. I’m wrong. I'm sure of it. I’m just an apprentice. I don't know things.

Timestamped 683822:4043 [recovered file]

I can’t remember if they monitor search queries. I bet they can do that. It’s their ship. Their tech. I tried to figure out what I'm supposed to do if I think we accidentally found alien life that's...Can they see these files? fuck.

Timestamped 683827:4121 [recovered file]

It knows. The little twolegger knows I know, it knows and I don’t know how to tell it that I can’t do anything for it without sentencing it to death. It's going to hurt itself. Or someone else is going to notice if it keeps trying to prove itself and then they'll sentence it to death.

I have to make it stop.

[showrunnerihardlyknowher]

Any advice on how to write overprotective giants or other large monstrosities? How do I make them strongly morally gray, know when to limit the dehumanization and adoration of tiny person of interest, and how the giant seems to believe they are in the right with detaining a tiny person? Asking for a friend! Definitely not me, a lurker questioning if I should start writing on tumblr or any other writing websites....

Ooooh, fun!!

It definitely all boils down to what your giant views their brand new tiny as and whether or not they can understand each other. You can take Edix and Jacob, for example, where Edix solely sees Jacob as a pet which is heightened by the fact Jacob cannot verbally stand up for himself to disprove that. Of course Edix loves him and would never intentionally hurt him, but that love is only as strong as that for a puppy at best. It's pure adoration at the cost of being a plaything and because Edix assumes that Jacob is so weak and helpless, he fully believes he's in the right to do whatever he feels is necessary to protect him.

Comparatively, you have Ben and Milo, who can perfectly understand each other and have a tentative parent-child relationship. The problem is that Ben doesn't know how to be a legit parent, especially to something so small and foreign to him, so he has to rely on what he knows as an exterminator to keep Milo safe (trapping and caging). He's not trying to be cruel on purpose or upset him, but he can only use what limited knowledge he has at his disposal until Elysie can put him on the right track. In that case, the dehumanization can't really be helped, but Ben still recognizes it for what it is and feels guilty all the while.

Then you have someone like Taiyo who is more morally grey. His mission is to destroy all the parasites festering on Earth, which will in turn save humanity, but if humans also happen to get caught in the crossfire of a fight, well...oh well. He doesn't go out of his way to hurt them, but he's not too pressed if they are, and the only human he actively protects is Kumiko for his own personal reasons. He respects her boundaries for the most part, but that doesn't stop him from grabbing her, moving her, or shielding her when she's in immediate danger, despite what she might protest. That's an example of balanced adoration and dehumanizing, in which he'll give her some of the space she asks for to keep her content, but he'll be damned if he ever lets her try to hold her ground even though she's more than capable of doing so.

All in all, it really depends on how the tiny is first viewed by the giant. A pet, a toy, a friend in need, a crush at first sight? What kind of love are they blinded by that would make their morally grey views shift in favor of keeping this tiny from harm, and is there any real harm to begin with? Do they think the tiny needs defending simply because they small and weak in comparison to the giant, or is it because they're young, or injured, or recently defenseless?

Can the tiny ever sway their opinions that they don't need to be coddled either by telling them or showing with their actions, or will there always be some reason that the giant won't budge on despite conceding on other points? Does the giant feel guilty for their behavior, are they able to imagine themself in the tiny's shoes and knowing they'd also detest the same kind of treatment, or is it still a necessary evil in the grand scheme of things? Are they worried for the tiny's safety, or are they just possessive and want them all to themself?

If the tiny is deemed a pet or a toy, the giant probably isn't going to care much, maybe even joke about how much tiny puts up a fight despite living a new life of snuggled, babied luxury. If the tiny is something of a platonic or romantic interest, the giant might be more willing to meet them halfway on some treatments, even if they can never fully give in on leaving them totally alone in fear or something happening.

[faeriekit]

Health and Hybrids (XVI)👽👻💚

[I can't remember the original prompt posters  for the life of me but here's a mashup between a cryptid!Danny, presumed-alien!Danny, dp x dc, and the prompt made the one body horror meat grinder fic.]

PART ONE is here PART TWOis here PART THREE is here PART FOUR is here and PART FIVE is here PART SIX is here and PART SEVEN is here PART EIGHT is here PART NINE is here PART TEN is here PART ELEVEN is here PART TWELVE is here PART THIRTEEN is here PART FOURTEEN is here PART FIFTEEN is here and this is sixteen *SixTeen theme plays*

💚 Ao3 Is here for all parts

Where we last left off... Martian Manhunter finds out that,yeah, dude, when your brain is missing chunks, you can't write or access data without the hardware to store it. My dude remembers nothing.

Trigger warnings for this story:  body horror | gore | post-dissection fic | dehumanization (probably) |  my nonexistent attempts at following DC canon. On with the show.

💚👻👽👻💚

Days pass. Nights pass.

(He thinks.)

He gets a new room. This one has a window. He can’t stare at it all the time, but when he does, he can feel himself growing stronger. Steadier. The change in his body is borderline tangible.

If only it was physical. He’s still too weak to lift anything but his arms, and not even all the way. Moving his head is tiring. Lifting his head is impossible.

But he tries.

A lot.

The doctors and the lady have to make upset noises with him when he does, but he wants to be able to see everything they’re doing to him. So far it’s a lot of tubes and needles, but what if they become scalpels and clamps?

…Danny tries to assure himself that they probably won’t be.

But they might. Things could change.

And that eats at him constantly.

Someone puts a big circle on the wall in his room. It’s large. It’s a little fuzzy at its distance on the far wall, but it’s got little arms on it, and little dots in equal degrees around the circumference. It takes him almost two napping periods to realize that it’s a clock.  

Danny squints. He can...almost read analog. (Probably.) It sure doesn’t help that he has no idea when night is and when day is, though. He sleeps at one hour and wakes up at another, and the room will look entirely the same. Was it a few hours’ sleep, or a day’s? Was it longer? The world spins outside his window, big and blue, and he spins against it in a station on a lonely moon. There’s no way to tell.

Someone eventually notices that he’s bored, though, because he gets a television and a remote.

It’s a super thin television. At first, Danny spends time wondering why they put a screen with no system in his room, and then hour later the lady starts pressing buttons on the remote, and the screen lights up with a news program.

…The TV is too far away to see all that clearly. He can see some of it when he squints, but then all the colors turn lime green.

The banner on the bottom of the screen scrolls with headlines, and cool, it looks like they invented new letters while Danny was asleep. Fantastic. His head hurts from trying to squint to read, but it kind of looks like a kindergartener scribbled all over an otherwise serious news report.

Great. Now he’s getting a headache.

But the noise is…nice. It’s distracting. The news anchors chatter seriously as Danny gets yet another IV swapped out in his arm, and the heavily geared-up doctors have started telling Danny things he doesn’t like to listen to too much because if it is threats, great, he should ignore that; if it’s not threats, then, well, Danny’s bored of it all anyway.

“—Wel?”

Danny blinks. Well. That sounds like ‘Well’.

He shifts just enough to make eye contact. A doctor looks down at him from their place at his bedside. Their scrubs are kind of blue-green, with little flowers on the trim.

They have human eyes. The sight of soft, brown eyes probably ought to be reassuring, but they just make Danny more nervous.

“Eow eart wel?” They ask again, soft and slow. That middle bit sounds kind of like ‘art’. Ha. Old timey Shakespeare. ‘Art well,’ like ‘you art well—‘

Wait. Danny takes a deep breath. Blinks. His chest arcs up, just a little—just enough for the doctor to realize that Danny’s more than just looking, he’s paying attention. Are they asking him if he’s well?

Danny reflexively opens his mouth and flexes his throat, tries to answer—

Nope. Ow. The noise he makes sounds like the garbage disposal is backed up with angry blob ghosts. It hurts just to make. But the sound makes the doctor look at him; they see him.

“Inne cwic tima!” Danny hears, and then they’re jogging out of the room, and Danny is left alone. His throat hurts.

His head thumps back onto his pillow. The news program plays on. There’s a damaged city he’s never seen before on the news.

…And then the doctor comes back. Danny’s head is swimming, so he almost doesn’t notice their return, but they’re holding something, and that something has a sippy straw.

Danny is perfectly happy with a sippy straw.

The straw is put into his mouth. Danny goes sippy sippy.

…The water sloshes a little weirdly through his throat. Some of his tubes might not be where they ought to be, which is weird. Isn’t he supposed to be human right now? Or. Uh. Kind of human? Human equivalent? …Close enough…?

Danny drinks. When the pain in his throat goes to normal pain levels instead of new and angry pain levels, he lets go of the straw, and the doctor lets him.

Their fingers carefully brush Danny’s hair. Not very hard. A little too slowly. Just at the hairline. But it reminds Danny so much of sitting at home with Dad on the couch, home from school with a fever as Muppets tapes play in the background, that tears leak out of his busted eyes. The tears are probably just as green.

“Eow eart wel?” the doctor asks again. So gently. So careful.

“I’m tired,” Danny rasps.

The effort of speaking crashes into him in seconds. If things are happening around him, he doesn’t understand any of it. Nothing reaches him. He’s so tired.

He’s out before he knows it.

[fangymutt]

have you made a post or anything talking about being a therian and like, how you came to realize it and stuff? im questioning myself and was hoping maybe, as a longtime follower of yours, your experience (any amount of it really) could help me out. no need to push urself to explain or anything of course!! i appreciate you being open about it in general ❤️

I never made a generalized post about it really since I'm very much a private introspective person (usually bounce things off my wife and my closest friends) and of course sought out input from Therian pals to help unpack my feelings but! with the disclosure that I'm still relatively new to this whole thing, and am by no means an expert I can offer a little insight to some of the stuff but I'll be brief. (Other Therian folks who are following me feel free to reblog and add your own insight for anon I wont mind at all!)

My realization definitely stemmed a lot in part I believe from not only my own journey and struggle with my Trans identity which had its own ups and downs, how even after feeling comfortable in a certain gender expression and identity there was still some itching piece that was not falling into place. Because while I felt very happy with being a "woman of my own making" (pat on my back because that was my rawest line from my own gender journey while i was working my ass off in a warehouse talking to my wife on the sly on my earbuds) I knew something else was there nagging at me beyond being a Non Binary Trans Woman.

With having Autism there is already that feeling of out of place that you get with being separate from society and its standards as a whole and at first a lot of my feelings on non-humanism I chalked up to the dehumanizing that autistic folks face as part of society expecting us to mold to the standards they practice and demand so it went left unexplored for some time because I just figured "yeah I'm autistic of course I feel out of place in 'normal' society" (again the language here not implying its wrong to be me or autistic obviously) But once around friends and people I trusted who didn't other me for my transness or my autism that itch still persisted.

My being a furry helped me explore more animal mannerisms and behaviors just out of the fact that its furry community we get sillay. But the more I acted on certain things (barking, meowing, various other noises) as well as more referential to myself not as a human but as a Dragon, Bear, Dog etc just a change of language as part of the fun I started noticing those same warm feelings as I did when I started new pronouns or names, the social feelings of being referred to with things that otherwise I wouldn't normally experience. My fascination with nature, my love of the outdoors beyond just the joy of fresh air the actual genuine peace that I'd feel in the woods away from society as a large, listening to all the other animals in the trees feeling the sun and wind on my face how it deeply went into me in some spot inside me that I never really knew was there at least never knew how to acknowledge how it felt like each breath filled my body with this new life I hadn't known.

My wife knew she was Therian first, and through her I explored myself and began to realize that I probably was too. With insight from other pals who also were Therian and just a general fact that I am not afraid to just sit down and look myself in the mirror in a sense and unpack shit when I need to I really just had this sudden explosion of "oh wow this is what it was, this is that itchy piece" I am beyond happy with where the journey has already taken me and I do not feel shame to be that which I am. My wife, my friends, plenty of people around me encouraged, nurtured, and embraced who I was.

So now yeah, my wife and I spend a lot of time speaking with body language and make little barks and reh's and howls and noises at each other instead of words because its freeing to be able to talk with your body and eyes and be understood, especially with autism, being able to be non verbal but still communicate brought such peace and joy. Being able to escape life in society and build a bedroom den and hang vines up in our bathroom and build our own burrow with moss and leaves and just curl up and feel cozy and safe is so comforting and warm.

I know its not a thing everyone gets, and I know its a stigma because "you are bound by your flesh" but much like being trans the flesh is only a small part of what makes us, Us and our soul is much brighter and deeper than anything that our exterior can show. So I may be constrained by limited avenues of external physical expression but that shouldn't stop me from letting my soul soar and be as bright and passionate as it can be.

[livelaughwhump]

Worthless - Part 19

Masterlist | Previous

Content: panic attack, very brief mention of noncon, dehumanization, self-deprecation, self-hatred, former pet whumpee

If I missed any content warnings, please let me know!

-

Colleen solemnly watched Lyra lead Elliot away. There was an unfamiliar feeling in the pit of her stomach that she couldn't identify. It was cold and unfriendly and Colleen did not care for it.

"That poor boy," She whispered.

Landon nodded. "I told you it was bad."

Colleen ignored him. "He's so small and thin. If I had known how bad it was, I never would've come."

"I told you not to," Landon reminded her. "I tried to warn you."

"I thought you were just making excuses to keep me away. I thought you were embarrassed to introduce me to your friends or something."

"Coll—"

Colleen held up a hand to show that she was no longer listening to him. Landon rolled his eyes as Colleen set her gaze on Karine. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Karine sighed. "Look, you seem like a really nice person, and we certainly could use the help, but I just don't think it's a good idea to introduce Elliot to someone new so soon after he was rescued. Especially because he's barely comfortable around us. I'm sorry."

"I understand," Colleen said. "But there's gotta be something I can do. I can't just leave knowing what that poor boy has gone through."

"Colleen," Landon cut in. "Karine is right. Elliot's just not ready."

"You don't know that. Why don't I just talk to him for a bit, one on one? Then, if he wants me to leave, I'll go. I think it should be up to him."

Yvonne shook her head. "Forcing him to make decisions is a big mistake, Colleen. If you spent any amount of time with him, you'd realize that very quickly."

"Then let me spend some time with him. Let him get to know me, and if I find some way to help him, I'll run it by you. If anything goes wrong, or if Elliot gets uncomfortable, I'll leave, I promise."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Landon questioned. "What if you just end up making things worse?"

"I don't think it's a horrible idea, as long as maybe Lyra supervises," Broderick added.

"Why would they need to supervise?" Colleen asked.

"Because Lyra and Elliot grew up together," Yvonne explained. "She practically raised him. He trusts her the most, so he'd probably be more willing to open up with her around."

Colleen nodded in understanding. "That's reasonable."

"He would have to be willing to talk in the first place though," Yvonne continued. "He's very timid, and ambushing him will only make things worse."

Landon threw his hands up in exasperation. "Am I the only one that thinks this is a bad idea?"

Colleen glared at her older brother and rested her hands on her hips. "Why are you so against it, Landon? I just want to get to know him a little bit."

"Because I know you, Coll. I know how stubborn you are and when you have your mind set on something, you're not exactly kind about getting what you want."

Colleen rolled her eyes. "Landon, I am a grown woman with two kids. Despite what you may believe, I am not fifteen anymore. I'm mature enough to speak to another adult without your input."

"A severely traumatized adult whom you know absolutely nothing about," Landon corrected. "You've barely spoken five words to him."

"Which is why I want to get to know him." Colleen turned away from her brother and toward the team leader instead. "Karine, you're the leader, right? What do you think?"

All eyes turned to Karine for the final verdict. Karine sighed and rubbed a hand over their sweat-soaked forehead. "Look, I get that you want to help, and I don't have a problem with you trying to talk to Elliot, but I need you to understand that if anything happens to him, I can't promise that you'll ever be welcome back here again. I know you're Landon's sister, and like I said, you seem like a really nice person, but we are all very protective over Elliot and we all want what's best for him. So, if you hurt him in any way, you may not be welcome back here. Understood?"

The silence between the five individuals was palpable. Landon, Yvonne, and Broderick were shocked to hear such harsh words come out of Karine's mouth, but they weren't as surprised as they probably should've been.

Colleen, on the other hand, wasn't as shocked as she was impressed. It was refreshing to hear how protective Karine was over Elliot. Colleen nodded, a faint smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Understood."

Karine nodded sternly. "Great. I'll go talk to Lyra and Elliot, and then I'll be right back."

Colleen couldn't help the smile growing across her face as Karine disappeared down the hall to run the idea by Elliot and Lyra. She couldn't figure out why she was so excited. Perhaps it was the idea of easing her brother's burden, just as he had done for her many times. Or perhaps it was something else. Colleen didn't know, but she couldn't shake the anticipation she felt.

When Karine returned, her expression was unreadable. Her hands were shoved into her pockets and she released a heavy sigh once she rejoined the group. "So, Elliot is okay with it." Colleen's eyes lit up. "But," Karine continued. "You only have fifteen minutes and Lyra is going to be in there the whole time, unless Elliot explicitly asks them to leave. Understand?"

Colleen nodded. "I understand. Thank you all for being so understanding."

"Why are you so excited about this, Coll?" Landon asked.

Colleen turned her gaze onto her brother. "Because this team is an important part of your life, Landon. If it's possible for me to help ease your burden, then I want to try."

"Elliot is not a burden," Landon assured her.

"I didn't mean to imply that he was. I just mean that all of you are going through something intense, and I want to support you, all of you."

"That's very kind of you, Colleen," Karine said. She shifted her weight nervously from side to side. "But I don't think you realize how serious this is. Elliot was held captive for a year and he's only been back for a few weeks."

Colleen nodded. "I understand."

"Do you? I know Landon explained what happened to him, but I guarantee it's worse than he described."

"Karine, I'll be gentle, I promise. Lyra will be there and she can kick me out at any point if something happens."

Karine sighed, her shoulders heaving beneath the stress of the situation. "Fine. I'm choosing to trust you. Please don't make that a mistake."

"I won't, I promise."

Karine pursed her lips and clenched her jaw. "Okay. Follow me."

Colleen did as Karine asked until they reached Elliot's door. At which point, Karine gently pushed the door open, revealing Elliot sitting cross-legged atop his bed and Lyra sitting beside him, gently combing his hair with their fingers. He was shaking like a leaf and his eyes were glued to the floor. Colleen could've sworn she heard a tiny squeak when the door opened. She really hoped this wasn't a bad idea.

Karine closed the door behind her and Colleen awkwardly stood beside it, unsure of how to start the conversation.

. . .

Elliot leaned into Lyra's touch and tried to quell his trembling.

"It's okay," Lyra whispered, only to him. "I'm here for you."

Tears pricked at the edge of Elliot's vision, but he forced himself to hold them back.

Colleen cleared her throat and Elliot flinched at the sudden noise. "Oh, I'm sorry, hun. I didn't mean to startle you."

Elliot curled up into a tighter ball and said nothing as Lyra continued to play with his greasy hair.

Look at you, dumb, useless dog. Weren't you supposed to be getting better? Is this how a human being reacts to meeting a stranger? Pathetic.

Elliot's lower lip started wobbling, but he wouldn't let himself cry. "H-Hello, M-Miss Colleen," he forced himself to say. It took all his strength to push out those three words and a sensation of physical exhaustion swept over him once he finished.

Colleen smiled so wide her cheeks turned pink. "Hello, honey. I'm so glad to finally meet you. It's been a long time coming, eh?"

Elliot nodded, his shoulders tensing despite Colleen's relaxed demeanor. "Y-Yes, ma'am."

Awkward silence filled the room again. Elliot focused on the feeling of Lyra's fingers moving along his scalp in order to ground himself. He loved the feeling; it made him feel so safe and loved to be touched so gently.

Colleen was the next to break the silence. "Do you mind if I sit with you? I promise not to get too close or touch you without permission."

Elliot didn't know what to say. She was asking him so many questions! What if he said something wrong? What if she ended up hating him? What if she told Landon about what a bad dog he was and then made Landon hate him too?

"Sunshine?" Lyra's gentle voice said, breaking through the unending list of worries continuing to build in Elliot's mind. Elliot turned his tired eyes over to his best friend. "Are you okay? You spaced out there for a second."

Elliot stared blankly at them until his mind caught up to the situation. Colleen had asked him a question and he had yet to answer her. Instead, he'd just sat there and zoned out like an idiot.

Stupid mutt

"O-Oh," he said, his cheeks turning bright pink with embarrassment. "I'm s-sorry."

"It's okay," Lyra assured him. "Colleen just asked if she could sit with you. Is that okay?"

Anxiety flooded Elliot's system; the color drained from his face and his trembling quickened. "U-Um...s-s-sure."

Colleen smiled sadly. "If you're not comfortable with it, that's okay. I don't want you to push yourself. I'm fine standing if that'll make you more comfortable."

Elliot nodded, struggling to regain control of his breathing. "It's-It's n-not my place to-to tell you what to-to do, M-Miss. I kn-know my place."

Colleen glanced between Elliot and Lyra, her pitiful expression growing even more so. "I'll just stand for now, then. No big deal."

Elliot couldn't help but feel the smallest bit relieved. As nice as Colleen seemed on the surface, he still didn't know her, nor did he know what she was capable of.

"So," Colleen began. "Landon told me what happened to you."

Elliot gasped, his face turning red-hot. Of all the things he expected her to say, that wasn't one of them. Why was she here, then? To taunt him about it? To make fun of him? To rent him out? He'd never been used by a woman before. He wondered what that would entail.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Colleen gently assured him. Her voice was warm and comforting, like a cup of hot tea on a rainy day. She was knelt in front of him, her warm, soft hands gently gripping his. "There's nothing to be scared of. I'm not here to hurt you, I promise. I'm just here to find out what I can do to help."

"That's very sweet of you, Colleen," Lyra put in. "But I'm not sure there is anything you can do. Unless you're a therapist."

Colleen's face fell slightly. "I'm afraid I'm not a therapist, but I am a mom." That caught Elliot's attention. She gently squeezed one of his hands. "And I heard you could probably use one of those."

Before Elliot had the chance to even process what she'd said, Lyra stepped in, "I think that's overstepping a bit, Colleen." Their voice was suddenly much more stern and serious than it had been previously. Elliot turned his gaze over to them and found a protective demeanor had fallen over them.

Colleen suddenly released her gentle grip on Elliot's hands. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply anything negative. I just meant that I have two kids of my own, so I know how to—"

"Elliot's not a kid," Lyra reminded her.

"Of course not," Colleen said. "I just—"

"I think you should go."

Colleen's eyes widened and her countenance gave away how hurt she was. "But—" As she glanced over at Elliot, the way his shoulders shook and his short, uneven breaths became even more apparent. "Honey, are you crying?"

Elliot held his breath. He wasn't crying. In fact, he was trying as hard as he could not to, but with every passing second, his tears threatened to overwhelm him.

Lyra put a hand on his back. "Sunshine?"

Elliot didn't know what to do. He couldn't speak without bursting into tears, but he didn't know how much longer he could hold them back anyway.

As if on cue, tears burst from Elliot's eyes and he buried his face in his hands. "I'm s-sorry," he squeaked out from between his fingers.

Lyra rubbed his back soothingly, coaxing out the pent up emotions he'd been trying to hide. "Sunshine, you have nothing to be sorry for. You didn't do anything wrong."

Elliot was all but sobbing now, his small body shaking beneath the weight of his emotions. "P-Please, don't f-fight b-because of me. I'm s-sorry."

Understanding bloomed on both of their faces, eyes going wide. Lyra gently squeezed Elliot's hand. "Sunshine—"

"Lyra?" Colleen interrupted. Lyra tore their gaze away from Elliot and fixed it on their guest. "Can I try something?"

Lyra hesitated. Elliot's breath caught in his throat when he processed Colleen's request. What did 'something' mean? What was she going to do to him?

Elliot didn't hear Lyra grant Colleen's request, but he assumed they had when Colleen slowly kneeled in front of where Elliot sat. Her face was a mixture of emotions, from sympathy to apprehension to regret. She didn't try to hide any of it, and for some reason, Elliot found a small semblance of comfort in that.

Colleen gave Elliot a gentle smile, but it didn't look fake or forced. Just like everything else about her, it seemed entirely genuine. "Elliot?" She began. "I need you to look into my eyes." Elliot did just that; the ocean blue of his eyes slowly rose to meet the sparkling jade of hers. Her smile widened. "Good. May I touch you?" Elliot gasped and shrank back a little, until she said, "Just your hands, I promise. I should've worded that better. May I hold your hands?" Elliot hesitated and then nodded slowly.

Colleen took gentle hold of both of Elliot's shaking hands as she continued to stare into his cerulean eyes. Elliot expected her to speak, to offer some words of comfort, just as everyone else did. So, when she remained completely silent and perfectly still, Elliot grew confused. Still, he continued to so as he was told, never taking his eyes off of hers. Her hands were warm and her eyes were kind and gentle. The longer he stared into them, the more his body seemed to relax. Perhaps it was the confusion that calmed his racing heart, or perhaps it was something else. Nevertheless, it didn't take long for the panic plaguing Elliot's system to completely disperse.

Colleen smiled. "Feel better?"

He did feel better, and that's what was so confusing. "Wh-What did you d-do to me?" He mumbled, his voice still shaky and broken.

Colleen giggled. "Nothing. I just helped ground you."

Lyra raised a skeptical brow. "That was...interesting. Are you sure you're not a therapist?"

Colleen smirked. "I promise I'm not, but I've been going to therapy for at least ten years at this point, and I've had my fair share of panic attacks. This is something my therapist used to do with me when I was younger."

"Th-Thank you, M-Miss Colleen," Elliot sniffled.

"No problem, hun. You can just call me Colleen if you want."

Elliot shook his head. "Th-That's okay, Miss. I-I kn-know my place. I know how to-to address my s-superiors."

Elliot was proud of himself. Surely, he had pleased her with his response. After all, she'd wasted so much energy on him already. He had to show her that he still knew his place.

But based on the look on Colleen's face, he hadn't pleased her. In fact, he seemed to have done the opposite. She looked horrified by what he'd said. What had he said wrong? He was trying to be polite and respectful. He was trying to be good.

Bad dog

Elliot bowed his head. "I'm s-sorry, Miss. I-I didn't mean to-to offend you."

"Oh, honey, you didn't. I was just a little shocked, that's all. Don't apologize."

Even after she said it, Elliot had to resist the urge to apologize. What could he say if not that he was sorry?

"Sunshine?" Lyra said. "I'm going to talk to Miss Colleen outside for a second. Do you need anything?"

Talk? Talk about what? Were they going to plan a punishment for him? Were they going to laugh at how clearly broken he was? Were they going to complain to each other about his insolence and complete inability to do as he was told?

Despite the anxious throughts coursing through his brain, Elliot merely nodded with his head turned downwards.

Lyra nodded and gently ruffled his hair. "Okay. Just come find us if you need anything, 'kay?" He nodded again. With that, Elliot was left to his thoughts, listening to the muffled voices on the other side of his door.

Stupid mutt. They hate you! They're probably planning to send you back to your master to be properly trained. Maybe they've finally realized that you're more trouble than you're worth. They want nothing to do with you

Elliot wanted to argue with the voice in his head. The team had been so nice to him. Surely they weren't planning to throw him out. Right?

Despite his better judgement, Elliot found himself sat on his floor with his ear pressed to the door. He hated to eavesdrop, but he couldn't help himself. He needed to know what his friends were saying about him.

Bad dog

Elliot flinched.

Landon's was the first voice to come through clearly. "I told you it was bad, Colleen. I told you not to come."

"I'm sorry, Landon!" Colleen shouted. "You didn't tell me how bad it was. In fact, you didn't tell me anything! How was I meant to know?"

"Quiet! He'll hear you."

The voices grew more muffled after that, so Elliot was forced to open the door in order to hear them. Elliot flinched each time the door creaked, but his friends were too enthralled in their conversation to notice.

"You were amazing, Colleen," Lyra said. "I'm still not quite sure what you did, but it certainly worked."

"It was nothing. I'm just glad I could help. It pains me to see that poor boy suffering so much. I don't understand how anyone could want to hurt him."

"Neither do we," Yvonne's voice added. "Elliot is the sweetest, most gentle soul I've ever met. Seeing him go through all of this is harder than anything we've ever experienced."

Tears flooded Elliot's eyes and his lower lip started wobbling. He was hurting his friends. He was making their lives miserable just by existing. He should've known.

"It's only been a few weeks," Broderick said. "But I don't know what we're going to do when we have to go on missions again. I mean, we're not hard off for money yet, but there are six of us. Eventually, we'll have to start taking jobs again and I'm not sure he'll be ready for that."

"It's not like we can leave him here either, though," Landon pointed out. "I mean, what if Whitlock is keeping an eye on him and just waiting for the perfect moment to take him back?"

Elliot stifled a gasp. Master was coming back for him? No, that wasn't possible. Elliot Pet was a useless dog. Why would Master want anything to do with it? Especially after it let itself get stolen.

"I mean, you didn't see the pictures he sent us, Colleen," Landon continued. "You didn't read his message. Whatever you're imagining happened to Elliot isn't nearly as bad as the truth, trust me. We've seen it."

Pictures?

What pictures? What message? Did Master send something to the team? No, that couldn't be true. Surely they would've told Elliot if Master had tried to contact them. So then what was Landon talking about?

"He sent you pictures?" Colleen exclaimed. "Of what?"

"Of Elliot," Karine answered. "He basically sent us pictures of everything he did to Elliot."

Elliot's eyes widened. Master had sent them pictures? That means that they had seen everything that happened to him. Why wouldn't they tell him? This couldn't be true. Surely he had misheard them, right?

Elliot couldn't bear to listen a second longer. All the air was stolen from his lungs and his hands were shaking uncontrollably. He stumbled backwards, away from the door, and quickly scrambled over to his window. He needed fresh air. He felt like he was suffocating.

This can't be true. It can't be.

As Elliot opened his window, he couldn't help the feeling of betrayal that overcame him. Why wouldn't his friends tell him that Master had tried to contact them? What did his message say and what kind of pictures had he sent? What had they seen?

Before Elliot could realize what he was doing, he was standing in a pile of snow on the other side of his window. He hadn't been out of the safe house since his rescue, but he couldn't bear to stay in that room a second longer.

They hate you. They're better off without you. All you do is cause problems. It would be so much better for everyone if you just disappeared!

Disappear. Maybe the voice was right. Maybe everyone would be happier if he disappeared. The team would be safe from Master. They wouldn't be woken up in the middle of the night by his incessant nightmares. They could start going to missions again without having to worry about leaving him behind. Yeah...it would be better for everyone.

So with that thought lingering at the forefront of his mind, Elliot started walking, with the team's safe house disappearing into the distance behind him.

-

I really hope you enjoyed this chapter!! Sorry it took a million years, but life has been really busy for me lately. Still, I'm very much looking forward to chapter 20 😈

Taglist:

@l-antre-des-merveilles @pigeonwhumps @nicolepascaline @burningkittypoet @whumpinggrounds @suffering-and-misery @make-them-scream-blog @honeycollectswhump @rabass @whumpdreamz @clairelsonao3 @rosewriteswhump @cepheusgalaxy @pinkraindropsfell @mj-or-say10 @considerablecolors @whatamidoingherehelpme @whumped4whumplover @ladybizarre13 @theaustralianfrog

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[bestworstcase]

It’s fascinating to me to read the anon you got (and your extremely well-thought-out response) about Penny’s transformation being distasteful, because I’ve always had an instinctually viscerally negative response to that particular critique of the scene. My issue isn’t with your analysis, which I think stands up, but specifically the complaint that “Penny’s transformation is bad writing/symbolically hurtful, because it takes away the thing that makes her unique/means she no longer has to struggle to be perceived as real.”

I don’t think the text supports the idea that Penny disliked her transformation, or was more comfortable in her robotic body than in her new human one. Her finally getting to feel hugs is probably the single purest moment of joy in all of RWBY. I agree with you that it may have been disconcerting for her to have to re-learn how to fight as a human, but I think it’s entirely possible that Penny herself would say it was worth it—in those moments, she’s as happy as we’ve ever seen her.

Through that lens, the critique of her transformation is pretty distasteful, at least to me—Penny has always longed to be a “real girl.” Is the argument that she (or you or I, if we were given the choice) should have rejected the opportunity to get something she’d always wanted, because then she would no longer be unique? Is it morally better for her to remain a robot even if being a real girl is what she wants? This is probably just me pitting my own projection against someone else’s, so feel free to ignore it if you don’t feel like it adds any value to the discussion. But this has been one of my biggest RWBY pet peeves going back 2+ years, so I felt like I had to write this out.

tbh i think where a lot of folks get tripped up is with expecting rwby to handle the 'sapient robot' character in the typical way of that character's foremost concern being do i count as a Real Person?

but, like. penny raises that question once in a context where she a) clearly expects ruby to freak out, and b) is clearly trying to preempt the freak out by explaining what she is in the simplest, most straightforward terms. "you're my friend, right? you promise you're my friend?" / "you wouldn't understand" / "i'm not real" — but look at how she responds when ruby goes what? of course you're real, you've got a soul! "you're taking this extraordinarily well." and then "you're the best friend anyone could ever have!!"

<- to me that does not read like penny genuinely thinks she isn't a 'real person' so much as that is what she is primed to expect ruby to think, and she's terrified her new (only!) friend is going to reject her, so she tries to sort of... soften the blow by saying it first.

only ruby does not think that. at all. and that's the last time penny describes herself as "not real" and she generally seems to be quite comfortable in her skin as a robot. after that point the only time it's ever a pain point is when she reacts to other people treating her like a Thing instead of a Person. and like i said, that's very wrapped up in the broader narrative of dehumanization and authoritarianism going on with atlas, hence why this arc for penny is so intertwined with winter's.

all that to say, i don't really buy into the interpretation that penny ever had a problem with Being A Robot so much as she had a problem with the way people Treat Her As A Robot (and i think cinder is used narratively to make the point that obviously penny receiving this new flesh body does not make the people who saw her as a Thing before suddenly realize that she's a Person instead).

& that's why personally i see her loss of the robotic body as loosely equivalent to yang losing her original arm. it's acutely traumatic not so much because the new flesh body is weaker but because that's her body and she loses it in a pretty horrible way, and in an ideal scenario where the evacuation went off without a hitch and penny made it to vacuo in one piece, i imagine there would have been a major period of adjustment, both physically and emotionally, as she processed that loss.

her new flesh body is more akin to yang's prosthetic arm—it's not bad, per se, and certainly there are things she can find to love about it, but i would expect for her to have complicated feelings about simply because the way she got it is rooted in this traumatic event. and then just in terms of the before/after on her physical capabilities, objectively surviving the virus in this way is disabling, and that's a big thing to adjust to.

is that better than dying? yeah absolutely. and penny isn't the type who would resent her own survival simply because it came with some unpleasant consequences and big changes to adjust to—absolutely, she would think this was worth it to have a chance to live her life freely. same as yang chose not to regrow her arm in V9.

and there's no moral value to put on robot body over flesh body or vice versa; i think applying the 'robot vs real girl' lens to a story that so emphatically rejected that dichotomy right out of the gate and then went 'the real problem is this exploitative, dehumanizing military state that treats everybody like an expendable tool' is a bit disingenuous overall. what makes a person a real person in rwby is whether they have a soul, and it's stated upfront in no uncertain terms that penny has a soul. she's never not been a real girl. my read on her is that what she always wanted was to have her personhood respected moreso than she wanted to be 'real'.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hello sex witch

this might be long and ramble a bit but i’ll try to keep it succinct. 

so i’ve always thought that the concept of polyamory and having multiple partners sounded nice in the abstract, i don’t really date a lot so it hasn’t come up but i figured it was sort of a thing that most people would be open to or like the idea of (like me). this was until today when i saw someone objecting to the notion of being in a throuple or polyamorous relationship. i didn’t know that was a thing people did. i just thought we all wanted to date lots of people if given the opportunity. the fact that the other people in the couple were a man and a woman didn’t deter me. i’m now considering the fact that i might not be quite as heterosexual as previously assumed. 

when i considered sexuality before it was always a clear cut “yeah girls because i know i like girls” and also maybe that sex with dick seemed sort of weird, but upon further consideration it might just be that i think all sex is sort of weird. 

and now i’m not sure what to do about this, i don’t think that experimenting with people is right because i would feel so shit about it because they’re people and also the fact that i have some strong anxiety about sex in general. someone seeing my naked body makes me feel a little sick. and also i’ve never had sex so don’t really know how sexual attraction is supposed to feel or what i would do with myself if the occasion (sex) was to arise. i feel sort of similar / the same when thinking about sex with both men and women. 

i’m unsure if it’s all a desire for close male friendship or if i might be a little gay. 

tldr i might be polyamorous and attracted to men after a good 19 years of staunchly Not Thinking About It. would appreciate advice or help. 

i guess this isn’t as much a question as more of a asking for advice. this might not even be in your wheelhouse considering the sort of tangential connection to sex. sorry if not

hey anon,

boy, this one is a real buffet. it's legitimately very hard to decide where to start with this, but I'm going to do my best.

let's get this one out of the way first and foremost: if you're into guys that's totally fine. love that for you. if sex with men is something you ever want to explore I would encourage thinking bigger than the stigma that's currently associated with "experimenting." it has a very dehumanizing connotation, but there's no reason that trying out a new kind of sex has to be a cold or impersonal experience! it's fine to approach someone, either via the apps or in real life (honestly! the latter is better!) and be up-front about what your interests and intent are. people have sex without intending to form long-term partnerships all the time; it's literally fine and a thing that many people enjoy doing. so, like, this is my endorsement for respectful, mutually-informed experimentation lmao.

but hey, listen: I don't think that having sex with men is actually, like, a pressing issue for you, based on everything else you've told me here. it doesn't sound like sex is really a huge part of your life, and honestly that's great! it doesn't seem like sex would be great for you right now! can I point to some reasons why?

i think all sex is sort of weird

i have some strong anxiety about sex in general

someone seeing my naked body makes me feel a little sick

[I] don’t really know how sexual attraction is supposed to feel or what i would do with myself if the occasion (sex) was to arise

all of these are, like, perfectly fine things to feel, and also they are pretty good indicators that it's probably for the best that you're not having sex right now. genuinely I do Not do this lightly, because I have a whole thing in my FAQ about not wanting to tell other people their orientations, but has the possibility occurred to you that you might not experience sexual attraction at all? you can like people of all kinds of genders but not want to have sex with them.

let's maybe just take sex off the table altogether while we explore this "maybe you're a little gay" thing, alright? because it seems like that's just going to stress you out a needless amount. what if instead of thinking about having sex with guys, you give some thought to dating guys, forming romantic connections, doing things together that aren't having sex. would you date a guy? I mean, hell, would you date a girl? would you date anyone? does that sound good to you? it's nice to actually interrogate these things; the worst thing that can happen is that you get to know yourself a little more clearly.

you can date and love people without ever having sex with them. does that sound fun for you?

this is the most important thing: you're not under, like, any obligation to figure this out immediately or even soon. take your time, you know? there's no correct timeline for this and self-discovery is perpetual.

also hey listen this one isn't, like, bad and I'm certainly not addressing it as a problem but PLEASE I have to know where you grew up that you didn't realize that most people are actually not polyamorous. are you perhaps the spawn of the greater Seattle area polycule?