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natsaffection · 1 year

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Cure. | N. Romanoff

Natasha Romanoff x Younger!Reader

MINORS DNI!!! (18+!)

Summary: You got infected with the sex pollen and a red haired ..acquaintance offers to help you.

warnings: Age gap (N=32 | r= 20), Masturbation, fingering (r receiving), oral (r receiving), strap on (r receiving)

Word count: 2,1k

A/N: Here's part from my ongoing fic ( I hate you! ) that I'm continuing and wanted to share!! :v Please have in mind that English is not my first language <33

As usual, you were lost in thoughts and again didn't notice where your head was taking you. Until you stood in front of Bruce's lab. You were about to go on, when something grabbed you. So you look around and finally go inside.

It was large and very plain. Also, of course white..what does that color always have to do with it? "Hey, Y/N, can I help you with something?" Bruce's voice startled you "No..Just curious." Bruce smiled and continued to play with a device in his hand. As he went back to his work, you continue to look around. You have to admit Bruce is pretty darn organizational and everything has a label, its own container and so on. Except...this one certain piece. It had a sort of orange glow to it and yes that only attracted curious people like you, "Hey Bruce what's this?" You touch it and when you see Bruce face, "O-Oh, don't!" a pulling stench came from the jar, and you drop it and with your luck you stand right in the cloud of the smell. You cough a few times and step aside, "What the hell is that!" Bruce slowly walked up to you, "Oh god..Uhm..How are you..feeling?"

How should you be feeling? You stink to no end now, "Other than the smell, fine. Why?" Bruce holds his hand over his mouth, and you see him thinking. "Bruce, what's going on? What is that thing I inhaled!" Are you going to die? Is that how you're going to die?! He kept coming at you, "I'm so sorry. I-"

"Now tell me what's going on, Bruce, or I'll..."

"You've been infected with sex pollen!" he interrupted you, looking deep into your eyes. However, you only understood the word sex and infected, "W-WHAT?! What does that mean, infected? With what, a-and how long is this going to last now?" You should have stayed in bed...

And you were now. Just with a bit of a shocked face. Bruce explained to you exactly what it means to be infected with it and your head stopped. You asked how you could get rid of it, and Bruce had to stifle a laugh. And now here you are...sweaty, hot and...horny. You had been trying for several minutes, but you couldn't get it off. Is it hormones, or why could you start crying at any time? You're so damn needy, you couldn't think straight,

"My door is always open for that... to talk, I mean, for other things, too."

Your eyes widened. Hell no. No, no, no..She's the last person you would ask for something like that! Bruce must have made a mistake, this will go away on its own..So you lay down on your side and try to sleep. But after many hours, from turning over, to throwing the pillow away, you couldn't. You look at your air conditioner and whimper as you see it set to max. Eventually you give up on it and get up to go to the kitchen. You need ice cubes, liters of water, and Natasha.

Wait what?

When you get to the kitchen, you see how she also just made herself something to eat. You curse inside and go to the fridge anyway, "Hey..." Fuck, now your body is going into high gear again. "H-Hi..." What the fuck was that!!! Why do you sound so- "Are you okay?"

Just getting the water, just getting the water!

"You're really bad at lying, that needs to be mentioned." She calmly continues eating her food, "So what's the deal." Why does her voice have so much inpact on your body? You're thinking desperately, and you just couldn't take it anymore, "Bruce has some sex pollen in his fucking lab for fuck's sake and I inhaled that shit, okay?!" Don't be embarrassed. She's a woman, and you're a woman, so what could go wrong?

"I can help you with that if you want..." If you had drunk your water, it would be on the floor now, "What?" You misheard. Natasha set her bowl aside and leaned forward further, "Believe me when I tell you that it will only go away if a second person helps you with it. I speak from experience..." She tries to smile slightly, but knew how that must sound, "W-Who helped you?"

"It doesn't matter, so?"

You blink several times, "N-No..No! That- We can't do that! I'll do it-"

"I don't want to force you Y/n, but you're just getting started. You don't want to get to the end of the line, really." You keep looking at her. She really means it..No!

You grab your stuff and walk past her. Once in the room, you walked a bit, but the more you thought about it, the worse it got. Your tingling in your stomach is killing you and the heat even further down..Your fingers moved back down, started rubbing your clit. Your other hand reached for your breast, and you start stimulating your nipple as well. "F-Fuck..." You rub your knuckles more against your clit, circular motions sending you into spasms. Your legs start twitching, and you keep trying to concentrate until all the sensation disappeared. You start whimpering and trying to fight it, but it was no use. You were back to zero.

You had tried two more times, but instead of it getting better, it got so much worse that you couldn't take it anymore. So you get up and go over to the one who gave you the offer. You knock and a little later she opened up and grinned at you, "told you."

"Shut up and now help me, please..." She opens the door further and you go inside. You look around and then turn to her, "So..How do-"

Natasha was on you like a gazelle. She attacked your neck immediately, and you had to laugh. She can definitely save the foreplay, "Please fuck me now!" She continued a few more kisses on your neck until she looked at you, "Wow, where do you get words like that, huh, little girl? But before. I need you to answer one thing for me,“ The look she had and how she looked down at you gave your confirmation again that it wasn't a mistake to come here, fuck you could already feel it... "Is this your first time?" You were already expecting that, "No." She looks deeply at you to check for a lie, but when she found nothing, "Don't worry about your problem," She put a hand on your chest and pushes you backwards to her bed. As you lay on it, she climbs over you, "Besides..the best part are not finished in a hurry." She goes back to your neck and helps you take off your shirt. When that was finally on the floor, she wandered down,

Your shoulder, your chest, your belly, everything she touched with her mouth and the heat you already had got worse and worse, "P-Please, do something..." You had waited enough today..She kept looking at you until finally She squatted in front of where you needed Her the most. Between your legs.

She didn't hesitate long and directly started making circular movements with her tongue. The sensation made you spasm right away, and you comply with her movements, "You're doing great..." Fuck, who is doing the best here?! Sex with dirty talk? 10/10! That Natasha was strong, you already knew, but when she turned you completely around in one movement was new. Or your head was already so fucked that you could no longer think. Now that you were lying on your stomach, Natasha had a much better angle and didn't take long to fill you with her fingers.

You couldn't help but moan into the pillow beneath you. This must have triggered something in Natasha as she suddenly climbed onto the bed, reached under your belly and leaned into you, "Don't hide those beautiful noises from me... "A-Ah! F-fuck!" It was too much at once, and you try to hold on somewhere, but you found nothing but her arm. Natasha grunt as she felt your nails in her wrist and that propelled her forward. She went in deeper and managed to put her thumb on your clit as well.

The only thing that held you now was Natasha. That was also the only thing you could think about, "I feel it getting tighter..." The way she whispered that in your ear made you finish and let out everything you had. She helped you ride out the orgasm and then gently laid you down on the pillows. You were trying to catch your breath when you noticed Natasha getting up and leaving. You were already getting ready to leave, but a little later she came back with a strap in her hand, "Is that okay if I take you with this?" You look at her blurry, "Fuck..hell yes.."

She clicked her tongue and pulled out to put the strap on. When She was done, She came over you again. To your surprise, She took your face and turned it towards Her to give you a kiss. She probably took that as a distraction, since she was filling you with her cock at the same time. You moaned into her, and she swallowed most of your sounds, but when she hit a certain spot, you throw your head back. "Found it, hmm?" You were afraid she would stop, so you started nodding vigorously, "Yes, Yes! Right there, please!" Natasha leaned up and turned you around again, holding your hips to get a better grip. She then rammed into you like an animal and the bed started pounding against the wall,

"Th-This..Feels, Ahh!" All that could be heard in the room was your moans and the thud of your skin, and Natasha couldn't get enough. She turned you again and bent your whole body towards her, making you see stars, "So deep~“

"Yeah? Am I making you feel good, huh?" She grabbed one of your breasts and started massaging your nipples, making you twitch, "W-Wait, that's too-" you were cut off as Natasha gave you a certain thrust and ramming into you faster. She was about to finish and so were you, "I-I will!!!"

"Come on..Fuck, go ahead.." Natasha's thrusts became more uncontrolled, and she just rammed into you out of desperation until it clicked, and you moaned her name. This also brought Natasha into her orgasm and she collapsed all over you. She held herself up on her shoulders to look at you and shit, does she love that look you have on your face. "Wow, you really needed that..“Her tone was soft, and you close your eyes to keep that serene feeling, "You have..yeah..no idea..thanks..."

"Wait here." She rolled to the side to get up from the bed. You just thought to yourself 'I have nowhere to go right now anyway' but you let it stick. She was gone for a while until she came back with a fresh towel and a glass of water. She sat down at the edge and gave you the water. You thanked her and took it,

"So..." Natasha was the first to say anything again after a few minutes of silence, "Are you feeling better?" You knew she was asking it to get the mood back up. You couldn't hide the grin anymore, "Yeah..thanks again..I'll owe you."

"No you don't." Even Natasha noticed that this statement came way too fast. She continues to look at you and stands up again. You thought that was it and that it was the sign to go, but as you were about to get up as well, she came back with bedding, "Where are you going?" You were confused, "Um..I thought I was supposed to go?" Natasha rolled her eyes and put the bed stuff on her bed, "Ever heard of aftercare? And I hardly think you can walk two feet in this condition..." She's right...again.

#natasha x reader #natasha romanoff #natasha smut #natasha romanov x reader #nat x reader #natasha romanov smut #dom!natasha x reader #natasha romonova #the avengers #natasha

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fillinforlater · 8 months

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i kinda agrer w the anon like ig the older members r fine but if u plan on writing for new jeans rhe maknae is 14/15…

A measured Response

While I think the other anon who send the initially accusation is still the one sending asks to my inbox, I also think that you are another person. I will strengthen and steel-man your concerns/argument, though it will always baffle me that y'all have these ridiculous spelling errors. Seriously, guys, at least try to type coherent messages/a literal paragraph with no mistakes.

(To those of you who do, thank you <3)

For some fucking reason I feel like I have to make this a thing. I should not, really. These accusations are baseless, I'm not the thing he wants to frame me as, so on and so on, but because I think you are genuinely kinda worried what I meant, I'll explain it to you.

(I'm not sorry if I sound condescending or anything, because I am)

It started with this ask, which basically asked me:

"Do you plan on writing NewJeans in the future?"

Now, being human and (probably) understanding English as well as context, this is what I (and probably 99% of other people with the right context) assumed this person meant:

"Do you plan on writing a fic about any of the 18+ NewJeans members in the future?"

bUt tHaT iSnT wHaT tHeY aSkEd!?

You cannot possibly reach that conclusion. Seriously, go look at literally every fic I ever wrote. Age of the idols? Ranging from 30 something down to 18, the absolute hard legal and (I guess) moral minimum, the line I don't cross.

If you go to my page or just open this weird ass tab from Tumblr (fuck Tumblr), you see stuff like "18+ Girl Group fic writer" or "No minors" or (from my Biaslists & Writelist & Requests tab) "Remember that I said most and 18+. This automatically excluded all 18- idols... I won't write those." This is easily understandable, obvious context to the message from above.

Or did you think I would just write about literal new jeans, like an review or something? No, of course not.

Oh, you can also look at my response, like... I specifically mention Hanni and Danielle, two 18+ idols, very popular, probably the two (including I guess Minji) the asker probably meant.

Now the point where I might look like an idiot if I take you seriously:

I responded to the baseless accusation with a GIF of Hanni, the focus on an easily identifiable part (her ass). The response of the accuser (still in my inbox):

"You just admitted you're a pedo"

Wrong and cringe.

Granted, you did not know this message (if you are a different person), yet you still, after seeing the Hanni GIF decided to say this. Either you are fucking stupid or this is maliciously framing me. Pick your poison.

(BTW: You are stupid because Hanni is 18. International age. Whatever the fuck Koreans use/used to use does not count, but she is also "19"/an adult there)

If you now need it black on white (or white on black), here it goes:

I'm not a pedo. I'm even against idols debuting under the age of 18.

(Why did I even bother? I dunno man, now it's out of the system)

With that said, I got some ideas for a Hanni fic (still very basic, but god, she is gorgeous and hot) and for a Danielle fic (funnily, it's not even a smut).

Everyone, have a nice day and some pretty Minji <3

#kpop smut #female idol smut #newjeans smut #newjeans fanfic #why am I responding to idiots

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6gumi · 9 months

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੭ ˚ ROYAL SECRETS WITHIN THE HOUSE OF OMERTA.

⊹ --- BEFORE ENTERING THE HOUSE OF OMERTA.

𖤐 like i’ve stated multiple times, my blog is an nsfw + dark content blog. (also sfw) meaning minors + ageless blogs get the hell out !! <3 + you must have your age somewhere on ur acc to indicate that you aren’t a minor !!

𖤐 i talk A LOT. whether it’s about school, random interests, just plain stupid and boring shit, etc! please keep this in mind when following n interacting w me, as i am very talkative at times

𖤐 i often use petnames for both anons n my precious lil mutuals <3 so if you are one of my mutuals n uncomfy w it . . please do lmk ! other than that, keep that fact in mind !

𖤐 please do not spam like my posts otherwise you’ll get blocked. sorry not sorry. (5x in a row without reblogging or commenting), do not bring discourse here, most importantly do not bother sending hate asks. it will be deleted.

𖤐 you can most definitely send an ask to be mutuals and i’ll check your page just in case! but please do not be forceful w me when asking.

𖤐 i’m a little slow n stupid, if you want to break the mutual or i make you uncomfortable please feel free to hard-block me. i’m slow n i can’t tell if i’ve been soft blocked, so please feel free 2 hard-block me so we don’t make things awkward between the both of us

𖤐 i age up some of the characters i write for. if that doesn’t satisfy you, then don’t interact with my blog completely and just block me

𖤐 like i said, there are times where i post leaks, spoilers, blah blah n all that other crap, so be cautious about that

𖤐 i can guarantee that i have a very broken posting schedule, so requests may not be done immediately as sometimes i get overwhelmed. so, please don’t take it the wrong way when you see that i haven’t fulfilled your request yet. i just have a very unstable posting schedule ! keep that in mind but i will try my very best to do your requests + thirsts !

𖤐 english is not my first language so sometimes my grammar can be messed up at times, don’t pay too much attention on my terrible grammar guys i’m working on it !!

𖤐 i openly interact with dark content and nsfw content, i will tag them if needed.

⊹ --- DO NOT ENTER THE HOUSE OF OMERTA.

𖤐 absolutely do not interact with me if you’re a ZIONIST, a minor (obvi), homophobic, transphobic, racist, ableist, misogynistic, fit the rest of the basic dni criteria, send hate asks / spread hate for literally no reason, or you’re just a rude person in general. in this blog, my blog = my rules. i’m willing to block anyone who oversteps my boundaries or make me feel uncomfortable or sends me unnecessary hate. i kindly ask for you guys to respect me as a whole, that’s all i’m asking for.

𖤐 absolutely don’t interact if you support isr𝟒𝐞𝐥

⊹ --- ROYAL ETIQUETTE. ( rules for requests )

𖤐 once again i am a multifandom blog, i write for multiple fandoms (honkai star rail, jujutsu kaisen, blue lock mostly + maybe chainsaw man genshin impact + bungo stray dogs also) my requests are open at the moment, thirsts are always opened so i prefer if you send more thirsts than requests.

𖤐 WHAT I ABSOLUTELY WON’T WRITE — gore, scat, necrophilia, noncon (everything i write is strictly consensual.) foot fetish, armpit fetish, vomit, and vore as well.

𖤐 some dark content things i may write is stepcest, consensual somno, “yandere”/ obsessive themes etc etc. i’ll be sure to tag a few things as well to let you guys know.

𖤐 and that’s about it. go crazy with your requests + thirsts as long as they aren’t detailed or they don’t go against what i’ve written above. it is encouraged that you ask first if you’re unsure about something!thank you for reading this far ! a hug 4 u !!

thank you for reading bbies ! here is my masterlist

#✩ navigation !#rules byf & dni !!

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beomglocks · 3 years

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test me ; c.yj

pairing: teacher!yeonjun x (of age) student!y/n (fem)

plot: no plot im pretty sure its just smut, part 2 of teacher’s pet

w/c: 1.7K

warnings & other: smut, jealousy, teacher!yeonjun, of age student!y/n, implied cheating, yeonjun possessive, does this count as public sex?, kinda public sex?, revising this at 4am so if there’s still mistakes iM SORRY

⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢⌢

after what happened the other day with beomgyu and yeonjun you thought you had won. getting yeonjun jealous was one of your many hobbies. although he'd encourage you to find a new or better one. what you didn't know was that yeonjun was not gonna let himself get played that easily.

see, yeonjun is possessive. if he's fooling around with you, you're his now. messing around with him the way you did, did not slide with him. he had thought about what you did all weekend long. even though it was something minor like flirting with another teacher, he couldn't wait for monday to arrive. he felt bad not giving attention to his actual girlfriend but messing around with you was much more exciting.

he was glad you were already legal or else he'd be in real trouble. even though having sexual encounters with one of his own students would cost his job at least he wouldn't be sent to jail. the thought of getting caught was exhilarating. he could only imagine fucking into you on his desk roughly when all of a sudden someone walks in.

he liked the idea of humiliating you like that but realized that he was the only that was allowed to see you in that much of a vulnerable state.

with that, monday arrived. you had forgotten about the way you riled up yeonjun a few days back. you figured he wouldn't be too mad about it so you decided to erase it from your mind. clearly you were wrong.

you weren't dressed too crazy today either, just a cozy sweater and some jeans. the hallways were busy as always but this time there seemed to be a common topic of murmur.

"did you see mr. choi today?" "oh my god he looks so hot." "i can't believe the teachers are allowed to come to school like that as if they aren't already good looking enough." "i want him to fuck me so badly."

you tried to keep your face and mind neutral as you walked through the halls. it's not a secret that the teachers at your school were good looking and were a casual topic among the students but why the hell was yeonjun suddenly trending?

you bit the inside of your cheek thinking about how suddenly everyone had his name in their mouths. you shook your head to get rid of these jealous thoughts bubbling in your brain and started trying to get to class.

you were barely past the threshold of the door when you hear yeonjun's stern voice, "you're late." you have to physically stop yourself from gaping at his appearance. his pink hair was pushed back to showcase the glory of his forehead but the killing part in your opinion was the leather pants.

you're not really sure how he was allowed to dress up to school like that but you thanking the heavens that no one told him off about it. your eyes not so subtly wandered to his crotch area and you almost got on your knees right then and there. the leather clung to him for dear life and showcased his toned thighs and not to mention his dick. god, his dick was literally on full display. the cocky bastard probably wanted the whole world to know he had the biggest cock ever. if he was gonna dress up like that might as well wear nothing at all.

you shiver, thinking about the ways in which he would take you right on the desk beside him-

"y/n," yeonjun's voice rips you out of your thoughts. "if you could take your seat?" you blink at him dumbly but regain yourself, two can play at this game.

"yes sir," you purr. he watches you closely as you stride to your seat. yeonjun liked to act like a closed book but you knew him, he was trying to get back at you. you weren't exactly sure if you'd be able to handle it but you're willing to show him you can try.

he starts the lesson like normal but the whispers beside you are more interesting. "i think i can see his dick print," whispers someone near you. you look to the front of the class and grin.

it's was really a good thing the leather pants were tight, it truly didn't leave any room for the imagination. you licked your lips, lost in your own thoughts when yeonjun calls you for the second time today. he was really starting to get on your nerves since he never ever calls on you. "y/n when your done daydreaming can you answer this question?"

you feel heat rise up your neck and cheeks. why the fuck did he call you out like that? surely you weren't the only one not focused on the lesson. you bite back a snarky remark that would've helped your pride and instead just answer his question.

after that, he thankfully leaves you alone for the rest of the hour. you're sure he knows you're not actually paying attention to what he's saying. screw english, at this point you want yeonjun to teach you a different kind of language.

the bell rings and strangely the girls in class take their time getting out of the room. you watch them eye yeonjun up and down and give him flirty goodbyes before finally leaving. the thing that irks you is that yeonjun is entertaining them. you scoff as he winks to a group of girls and tells them to have a nice day.

you look around and notice you're the last person in class so you decide to get up and leave. yeonjun catches you before you can get out. "where do you think you're going?" he remarks. you roll your eyes and remove his hand from your arm. "i'm leaving?"

"after that little stunt you pulled friday? i dont think so," he growls backing you up onto the door, shutting it closed. "oh? wouldn't you rather go at it with one of those other girls?" you look at him bored and he raises a brow at you. "someone's jealousy is showing," he quips.

"i'm not jealous," you defend. yeonjun leans closer to your ear, taking your lobe into his mouth. he licks a stripe along the side of your ear and kisses it making you shiver from his heavy breaths. "you sure?" he whispers. you sigh shakily and he moves to walk back to his desk. he settles himself in his chair, looking over at you expectantly.

you slowly walk over to his figure. he chuckles, eyeing your actions. you drop your bag on the floor by his desk and situate yourself on his lap so that you're straddling him. he places his hand on your thighs as you lean down to kiss him. you whimper when you feel his hands travel to the front of your jeans while he sucks your bottom lip into his mouth. you open your mouth and he wastes no time letting his tongue explore it.

you sigh and find yourself grinding on his crotch. you really can't help it since you can practically feel his cock on you as he gets hard. he moves his hands from your zipper back to your thighs, gripping them roughly. "mm baby," he grunts out in a warning tone.

you don't listen and keep grinding on him, gradually getting quicker in your movements. you're pretty sure you're getting your panties and jeans wet with your cum but you don't care because damn this feels good. at this point you just wanna reach your high, you don't care if yeonjun scolds you afterwards.

yeonjun pulls away from you, scanning over your face. there's a string of saliva from him to you and your eyes are hooded looking down at him. "you're so needy today hm?" he pokes your lip in thought. "i guess i shouldn't have treated you that way today."

"yeonjun please," you whine. you try to grind on him more but he stops you. "take off your pants," he orders. you do as told and get back on his lap. the leather pants feel cold on your thighs making you shiver. "well go on baby," he's smiling up at you evilly. "junnie," you whine again.

he ignores you, watching you make a mess of yourself in front of him. the friction of your panties rubbing against his pants gets you feeling hot instantly. "ah- im s-so close," you mumble. your vision is kind of hazy but you can see yeonjun staring at you hungrily. "don't cum yet."

you smack his chest weakly and he chuckles lowly. "alright." he lifts you up and set you down on his desk. you watch him lower the leather pants and he sighs from relief. "the things i do for you," he smirks. he slides off your panties, licking his lips at how wet you are.

"can you hurry u-," he shuts you up by pushing his dick into you quickly. just by that alone you feel yourself about to cum. "faster," you moan. he complies, thrusting into you at a quicker speed than before.

the sound of skin slapping against skin rings throughout the his classroom and it makes your head spin. it's been a minute since yeonjun fucked you lik ethis but you're glad he's doing it now. you really did feel yeonjun deprived.

"do you feel me?" he teases, placing his cold hand on your lower stomach. you nod, frantically not really caring about whatever he was talking about. "jjun-"

"yeah," he breathes in reply. you let otu a silent scream as you reach your orgasm. the way you clench around his dick makes him moan loudly.

"fuck im gonna cum too," he moans. he pulls his dick out of you and pumps it quickly, making himself cum all over your thighs and lower stomach. after a moment of trying to come to your senses, you flinch as try to get up but he stops you. "leaving so soon," he grunts while pulling his pants back up.

"im just surprised mr. c hasnt shown up," you dont think much of it when you say it but yeonjun frowns. "i told him we were gonna be busy," he mumbles walking back to his chair. you can hear the shift in his voice, "whats wrong now."

"y/n dont test me, you're mine."

#yeonjun imagines #smut #yeonjun reactions #yeonjun drabbles #yeonjun drabble #yeonjun smut #txt imagines #Drabble #tomorrow x together imagines #txt headcannons #yeonjun headcannons #txt reactions #txt scenarios #yeonjun timestamps #yeonjun fic #yeonjun x reader

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dreamii-yume · 3 years

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Hi Yume! I wanted to tell you that I love all your writings and that you are a truly fantastic writer! Sorry if I seem indiscreet, but I'm curious to know what pushed you and / or pushes you to write your sinfics. Don't feel pressured to answer at all, everyone has their own reasons and everyone has the right to write what he/she/they wants. Sorry for the inconvenience and be safe and remember to drink enough water!💕 (In addition English is not my first language so I apologize in advance for any mistakes) Hope you have a good day! 😘✨

Hello~! ♥︎

Don’t worry, Darling (〃ω〃) I don’t feel pressured at all, I’m actually pleasantly surprised that you asked this question! You’re going right into Yume’s origin story now lol (๑･̑◡･̑๑)

I started writing fanfics myself when my taste was getting a little too…specific.

I think I mentioned once here that I get easily bored this is such a mean word, I’m sorry of anything I was once interested in if they’re not constantly doing things to keep me entertained lol So, I used to read A LOT of fluffy fanfictions, once that makes you rot and squeal— no smut, just very ｐｕｒｅ vibes (U w U) You know, like the typical teenager that I was lol I couldn’t even read any smut at that point because I view them like the ✨spawn of the devil✨ and it ✨ｃｏｒｒｕｐｔｓ✨ the characters I loved or something 👁👄👁 and also probably because I was a minor But oh how things have changed…Yes, I was that pure kid in school who didn’t know JACKSHIT about anything sexual \(//∇//)\ Bruh I remember covering my eyes every time I see a pp in my science textbook lol ☠️

…To tell you the truth, Yume once wrote a now completed fluffy fanfiction of a certain show and posted it on Wattpad _:(´ཀ`」 ∠): Yeaahh, I’m not gonna elaborate more on that but the fic is still there with a million views holy shit and it’s still haunting me every night that it still exists.

But then, I started getting bored of fluff because— it’s just the same trope over and over again and yeah, yeah… (c" ತ,_ತ) So, I decided to expand my taste a bit more and boom, look what I found— The ✨ｙａｎｄｅｒｅ✨ trope 👁👄👁 Ever since then, I became OBSESSED with these kinds of fic because with these kinds of fics— It doesn’t really…give a shit about what is wrong or what is right so, you can literally write anything you want with it (((o(*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)o)))♡ It’s the kind of love that ｐｅｒｓｉｓｔｓand I love it because you don’t know where a yandere fic can go most of the time, you know? That keeps me hooked and wanting for more! ♥︎

And finally, when I turned legal— HAHAHA, We all know where this went lol ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) I started reading ｓｍｕｔbut not just any kinds of smut, no no…ｙａｎｄｅｒｅ　ｓｍｕｔ(O w O) And that was a start of a beautiful friendship— ♥︎

So, I started wanting more, yeah? I discovered new kinks and realized I…liked the most fucked up ones?? Lol Even I don’t know exactly why I like Non-con so much— When I see a fic that doesn’t have any non-con in it, or anything fucked in general because im hornii I get less motivated to read it lol Maybe because I was so sick and tired of seeing two characters falling in love that seeing only ONE character fall into an unrequited love is so fucking spicy and a lot more interesting to me— like, where is it gonna go (O w O) I’m interested!

Bonus points if their love never gets returned through out the story and they become even more obsessed with their Darling until they decide to just…snap and neglect fuck everything else— HAVING DARLING IS A MUST （╹◡╹）

So, yeah— I basically read almost all Yandere Non-Con fics in existance at this point (°▽°) But it just wasn’t enough to quench the ｔｈｉｒｓｔ in me and I was honestly disappointed because there was always this one fic idea in the back of my head with very specific ｙｉｋｅｙ tags that I wanted someone to execute but never found one in my time of reading fanfictions （；＿；）So I just kinda…started writing them on my own lol the ultimate fine ill do it myself moment lmao At first, it was just for self-indulgence and never to be revealed in public because the content is so yikes, yknow? I have that fear of getting judged like— Why would anyone like these kinds of fics…lol

And then, the pandemic came and I was bored as hell— I discovered tumblr and decided to just fuck it, what’s the worse that can happen lol Thus, Yume was born and I was soo happy to see Darlings saying that they like my fics! (๑>◡<๑) And I finally felt liberated like, holy hell— I wasn’t alone with these kinds of kinks lol I started to not give a damn anymore and write whatever the hell I want, pushing my dark fantasies into each coming fics that I actually started calling them…Sinfics lol im a sinner and im proud

And I think that’s what pushes me to write more lol I absolutely LOVE talking with other Darlings who shares common interests with me!

Sorry for the long post, by the way~! But at least, you now know just a little bit more about Yume, yeah~? ٩( ᐛ )و Love you all, as always ♥︎

#Talk with Yume

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im-just-a-random-fandom-girl · 3 years

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trying to articulate my frustrations with Marvel’s treatment of female characters and characters of color

Hi, hello, hola, bonjour. I've been having a lot of thoughts about Marvel’s lack of diversity and of how they treat minority characters, so I'm taking a page out of Luisa’s (@its-tortle) book and just making a long, rambley post to get it all out.

Please bear with me while I try to encapsulate all of my frustration within the limitations of English language.

(ALSO, I'm white. I’m Spanish-American, but I do not have the ability to speak for fans of color and the other grievances they have. This post is just a combination of my own thoughts and what I've heard other people say on Tumblr, in YouTube videos, in articles etc.)

Now that we've had over week to collect ourselves after the WandaVision finale, because it was such a tearjerker and the end of a true masterpiece of a show, we really need to talk about how Marvel treats their their characters of color and female characters. I'll specifically be looking at Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, and Monica Rambeau.

Let's start with Sam.

Until Monica Rambeau became Photon just a few weeks ago in WandaVision, Sam was THE ONLY Black superhero in the MCU.

He first appeared in Captain America: The Winter Soldier 7 years ago in 2014, and he's been in 4 movies since then (not counting the post-credits of Ant-Man).

Let's see what we know about Sam in the MCU:

He was a pararescue airman in the U.S. Airforce

His wing-man, Riley, died in combat, prompting him to leave active duty

He works at the VA to help other veterans adjust to civilian life

That's it. This is all we know about his backstory, separate from Captain America. However, the MCU decided to include these parts of his backstory, (and exclude others) because they make him a better supporting character to Steve.

Sam's a vet - so is Steve. They have the same, early-morning run routine that alludes to strict military training. Steve is still new to the future and hardly knows or approaches anyone, but Sam is wearing his VA sweatshirt, so there's some sense of connection, one that is furthered when they talk about their beds being too soft. Sam is someone who can understand him, aside from being a super soldier.

Riley, Sam's wingman, died in combat - Hmm, haven't heard that one befo - oh, wait. *Bucky waves from the abyss of the Alps*. Yeah.

I'm not saying that these connections are bad, in fact, I think the opposite. In terms of storyline, these connections are incredibly important for their friendship. Steve is lost and alone in the future. No one he knows cares about him for any reason other than the fact that he's a super soldier, nor can he relate to any of those people on any level. Sam just fits. He's funny and kind and although they are 60 years apart in age, he can, to some extent, understand what Steve is going through in a way they no one else can.

But for the last 7 years in the MCU, all he's been is Steve's supportive friend.

Almost immediately after meeting Steve, Sam is dragged into an end-of-the-world battle. He readily agrees to put his life on the line to fight by Captain America's side. After SHIELD falls, Sam gives up his life for 2 years to help Steve find Bucky. When they find him, Sam, without a second thought, becomes an international fugitive to protect Bucky and Steve.

I mean, he practically says that he lives in Steve's shadow himself:

"Don't look at me. I do what he does, just slower."

Who does all this? Seriously? Sam is also a recovering vet. He, in theory, has a life, a family, a job, his own mental well-being to consider, but he immediately gives it all up to help Captain America, to follow in his shadow, to be his back-up and support in every battle. Marvel wrote him as a 2D character that lacks his own identity and agency.

Sam deserves his own storyline; he deserves to exist outside the orbit of Steve Rogers.

What Mackie has been able to do with the character is astounding. He took Sam off the page and truly brought him to life, turning him into a beloved character. I'm ecstatic that both Mackie and Sam finally (hopefully) get their time to shine in TFATWS, but it should have happened WAY sooner. Marvel has continuously overlooked Mackie, despite how much he brings to the movies and despite the significance of Sam as the only Black superhero. It's just so clear that they do not care about representation.

(And let's not start with the whole "Bucky should be Captain America" thing, thanks)

Next, let's talk about Natasha.

Nat has been in the MCU for 11 years, starting with Iron Man 2 in 2010. She was heavily featured in an additional 6 MCU movies (not including small cameos/post-credit sequences). She's one of the few female superheroes in the MCU, and the only one that's been there since the beginning. Nat was the only female superhero for 4 years until Gamora appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Let's see what we know about Natasha's history:

She's a former KGB operative and assassin, trained in the Red Room project

When she was a part of the Red Room, she was sterilized

Clint Barton got her out of the Red Room and converted her to a SHIELD agent

THAT'S IT. The second point is actually nauseating because this is what she says to Banner when we learn about her infertility in Age of Ultron:

"They sterilize you. It’s efficient. One less thing to worry about, the one thing that might matter more than a mission. It makes everything easier — even killing. You still think you’re the only monster on the team?"

Like, actually, what the fuck? I remember watching this scene and having to rewind because I thought I mis-heard what she said. In truth, Natasha is probably referring to the terrible things she was forced to do as a KGB operative are what make her a "monster," but why in the world would they include this anecdote here?? It's just so distasteful and disgusting! It makes it seem like her infertility is what makes her a monster, perpetuating the misogynistic belief that the center of a woman's identity and purpose is to have children.

As Vox says in this article, the subject of Nat's infertility

"rears its head sub-textually when Black Widow sacrifices herself for the Soul Stone. [...] It’s reasonable for Natasha to make the calculation that Clint’s kids deserve to have a dad when they come back to life after the Avengers complete their “time heist.” But because of that Ultron plot, there’s also an insidious implication that Natasha’s infertility renders Black Widow just a little bit more disposable than the rest of her teammates."

Furthermore, Nat's death in Endgame serves for nothing more than motivation for the other characters working in the time heist, WHICH ARE ALL MALE. Even then, the other characters talk about her death briefly (in a mostly unaffected manner), and by the end of the movie, she's been pretty much forgotten about, completely overshadowed by Tony Stark.

I don't want to say that Nat shouldn't have died in Endgame. It caused me so much heartache and emotional pain, but I truly believe it was a great way to end her arc. CinemaWins on YouTube put it best:

"She needed to save her family, Clint included, finally wiping the red from her ledger. So much of her jouney in the MCU was trying to find her purpose, figure out which side she was on, and she finally feels like she's found it, just in time to die for it.

"It's not wrong to feel cheated by her death, [but I think] she deserved this moment because of it's importance."

She says it in the movie:

"I used to have nothing, and then I got this. This family. And I was better because of it."

Nat shouldn't have to die, but it's on her terms, and she is absolutely ready for it. Saving her chosen family... that is her purpose.

But altogether, over the course of the MCU, Natasha was cheated out of getting the storyline she deserved. Like Sam, she was relegated to the position of the supportive friend of Steve, but also of Bruce and Clint. For the audience, her identity is tied to this role that she plays. The identity and motivations she has independent from these other characters, her history, is skimmed over, and treated with immense disrespect.

It took 11 years, but it is thrilling that Scarlett Johansson finally gets to be the start of her own Marvel movie. There is no way that Black Widow will be able to completely make up for her and Natasha's mistreatment by the MCU, but I hope it will at least bring us some closure and allow us to have a better understanding of Nat's history and who she is away from the other Avengers.

Last, but certainly not least (despite what WandaVision may have you believe) is Monica Rambeau.

I spoke about this last week after posting about this review of the show, but it bears repeating.

Monica is a new character. You'd hope that, after 11 years of extremely limited diversity in the MCU, much to the dismay of fans worldwide, and after recognizing this and creating a movie with a cast like The Eternals, Marvel would try to get their shit together across the board.

Nope!

Monica was seriously the token diversity character of the show. It seemed like they would give her more depth after the episode during which they flashed back to the her during and after the snap, losing her mother, and seeing a little bit of what she's done as an adult since Captain Marvel, but that ended up being the most we got.

But why? Monica literally became a SUPERHERO. She became Photon! She deserved a much greater role in the show, especially in the finale, where she instead had maybe 5 lines and just stopped some bullets for about 30 seconds.

As the review I linked says,

“There are so many black writers, fans, and critics noting how Monica got relegated to a complete lack relegated to meaningless best friend protector lacking in their own self agency and story except for making a shoehorned comparison of grief.”

Marvel made the same, bull-headed mistake that they made with Sam with Monica!

Let's do this again. Monica was snapped away for 5 years, and when she was snapped back, she learned that her mother had died. Losing someone you love and having the whole process of mourning and pain be complicated by the snap? What an interesti- oh wait. *Vision phases his head through the wall with a smile*

The only reason we got this backstory was because it made her a more sympathetic character towards Wanda. Her understanding of what Wanda is going through allows her to be the catalyst in the creation of the ideological fork in the road between herself, Darcy and Woo, who see Wanda as a victim of grief and loss, and Hayward and the rest of SHIELD, who see her as a dangerous threat.

How do you make the same, major mistake that you've been making for the past 7 years again? Guess what? You don't! Maybe it's not intentional, but Marvel, again, clearly doesn’t care enough about their characters of color to consider the roles they relegate them to in the MCU, realize what they've been doing is harmful, and then change it.

Hopefully, they will not continue to treat Monica this way and will remedy this in the next Captain Marvel.

In conclusion: MARVEL GAVE A FUCKING ROBOT AN ACTUAL ORIGIN STORY, A RELATIONSHIP AND MORE INDEPENDENCE THAN ALL OF THESE CHARACTERS.

But in all seriousness, Marvel needs to be help accountable for how they treat women and their characters of color in the MCU. I just looked at 3, but you could also make a similar argument about Rhodey, Hope van Dyne and Valkyrie, as well as Jane Foster, MJ, and Ned, although they are supporting characters and not superheroes. And I'm sure there are many others. Marvel (and Disney!!) has had an awful track-record, and change is long overdue.

#fuck marvel #fuck disney #sexism and racism in marvel #minorities in minor roles #thank you for coming to my TED talk #discussion #fatws #wandavision #sam wilson #natasha romanoff #black widow #monica rambeau

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rudolphsboyfriend · 3 years

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ndbdbdhd i saw ur 4 picrews and u said u made headcanons for them and i’m curious so if u wouldn’t mind pls info dump ur headcanons for them on me <3

Sjdhd YES I'd be glad to!! There weren't alot at first but I'll def be adding to them as i make this post so here goes

Ok so fr ref these r the four from this adorable picrew, credits go to them

I haven't named em so for now their names r Stars, Skull, Heart, Dots after their lil speech blurbs

They're all Japanese just cuz I associate this kinda manga-ey art style w Japan

They're chilhood besties and hang out regularly, despite their personalities being completely different.

Heart and Skull r twins but not the identical kind

Stars

He's half English

He was actually inspired by a character from Mo Dao Zu Shi named Nie Huaisang.

If u just met him on the street u'd think he was kinda harmless and unassuming but really he's very smart and calculating. He's not evil but he is,,, morally ambiguous.

He's v calm and chill unless u offend him/his friends. He'll take revenge in some unfathomably roundabout, clever way so you don't even realise he's doing it, and he'll be totes normal looking and like nothing is wrong.

His family owns a big hotel in uptown Tokyo so he's the sugar daddy of the group.

His parents r the really competitive-and-projects-on-their-child kind, so he went to a bunch of extra curriculars and is like, creepily good at everything. Sometimes he's even good at things he's never learnt.

He's the top of his class at college, where he's majoring in History with a minor in Japanese lit

The other three are pretty sure he sold his soul to be good at everything (they're right), but he's their bestie and pays for everything so they don't care

He's Pansexual and is single atm

Heart

Heart didn't go to college and is a waiter at a restaurant, but he has some other, very irregular source of income and no-one knows what it is except Skull.

It doesn't happen often, but he sometimes disappears for hours at the weirdest times.

He's actually a hired assassin, but he only kills like, rich assholes who r exploiting others, and only accepts payment if whoever's paying can actually afford to pay. If they can't, he works for free. Think Robin Hood but murder.

His family was poor so he always hated people who exploited others for money. Star's fam is a very honest and kind rich family that helped his fam out often, and he doesn't attack those kind.

He had secretly dreamed to be an assassin since he was a kid. At first it was just a kid's fantasy but as he grew he started taking it seriously. He began at 19.

He's a really fun, outgoing and bubbly guy. He's v popular, everyone likes him. And he's not the assholey kind of popular. He's just really friendly and warm to be around. Which is why noone even thinks of "assassin" being his other job

Despite his popularity, his two friends, his twin and his parents are the only people he really cares about. He's a crazy loyal, ride or die kinda guy for these five.

He's an amazing painter, but he never learnt professionally cuz he would much rather do whatever he wants on a canvas for fun. His art style is very impressionistic and Monet. Draws a lot of nature

He's trans and ace+aro

Skull

He's a Fine Arts major in college, the absolute top student. The red stuff on his face is paint i promise :) He mostly paints in classical styles like baroque.

He's bi and has a boyfriend whom he loves very much. He's planning on proposing soon!!

He's very intimidating and has "stay away from me" energy. People find it hard to believe he and Heart are related, but they're actually extremely close.

There's a rumours that Skull is a mafia gang leader, that he once killed someone, etc. None of these are true, of course.

He does help his brother plan his murders tho. He's really good with planning and organising, Heart is not. He shares the same hatred as Heart. They're a duo, always working together, Skull planning and Heart carrying it out.

His boyfriend knows all this and just reminds them to be careful.

The only people who can get him to laugh regularly are his boyfriend and Heart. The besties can too but less often.

He doesn't even genuienely smile around other people. If anyone else asks him to smile his does this rlly intimidating smile like in the picrew.

He loves his boyfriend, brother, and the two besties alot. He's not very obviously affectionate, but the others know his little subtle displays of love. He's just really bad at showing emotions.

Similarly, he's not very romantic. Not in the aromantic sense, he's just awkward. Luckily his boyfriend is very cheesy and it's helping him come out of his shell.

However, he's a sentimental drunk

He and Heart often talk about their parents like they r dead, or really far away. They all live within cycling distance of each other, but they find this funny.

He cries at happy endings, and if anyone other than these three sees they will be killed

Dots

Dots is non binary :)

They have a girlfriend. They just started dating but they're v happy!

They're like, the most normal of the four, considering one friend sold his soul, one is an assassin, and the other a criminal mastermind. Dots is just a tired college student.

They're a computer animation major with a graphic design minor. They're doing well academically, not the top but still high

Their dream is to start their own animation company.

They're not very talkative but everything they say is hilarious and they're a sassy sarcastic lil shit. Easily the funniest of the four.

Theyre actually really kind and nice, they're a lil withdrawn but polite and friendly.

They cry at sad+happy endings. They cry at bittersweet endings. They are a crier. They do not try to hide it.

Their taste in music is just. Everything. From bubblegum pop to screamo metal to alt to 70s country.

Knows every single band/artist out there.

Is a surprisingly good singer. Their parents were music teachers so knows how to play all kinds of instruments

Either stays up for 3 days straight or is passed out like a dead body. No in between

Estranged from their fam and is now roommates w Stars

Wow this got. Real long. It's also literally just me projecting intensely onto fictional ppl so yeah.i hope u liked that!!! Odkdnsk does this mean i have OCs now wow.

Thanks fr the ask this was actually really fun!!!

#blue answers #my ocs #projecting on main

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mismashedsocks · 4 years

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so riordan made a half assed lame excuse on his lazy/racist writing on piper yesterday and on top of that he made another one on samirah and i’m muslim so i am going to talk about it

damn i’m so sorry these people have been pushing you past your comfort zone about your wildly popular racist caricatures of minorities that have great impact on your young, impressionable target audience. while its fine that if he takes a break for his mental health he still needs to deal with these problems you can’t just take a break and hope they go away.

why does he think everyone is bullying him. if they talked in all caps, cussed at you, or didn’t stop bothering you, i’m sorry they’re just trying to get you to realize how racist your books are, which you keep refusing to believe. i can believe that a few of them were doing it for attention, but it couldn’t be the majority. and my god, god forbid people want you to write your books the way you preferred, without racist stereotypes. 🙈

you can set your boundaries but you keep ignoring the people, you don’t listen. like you put yourself out there as a writer you are open to criticism

why does he keep doing this to seem like the good guy. you give excuses and don’t do anything and just say that its up to you, you can think whatever you want 🥰🥰. like its such an obvious excuse not to take any action.

i’m sorry but no matter how many muslims you’ve interacted with you haven’t gotten the full experience and last time i checked teachers aren’t the kids best friends soo uhm. anyways the rest of it is just him telling his experience with muslimah students so its just there.

so uhm you just said your students ‘unwillingly’ become an ambassador to everyone she knew’. and then you went to talk to them about islam to make sure you were TEACHING THEM YOUR SOURCE MATERIAL CORRECTLY. i’m sorry imagine. these are kids not some scholars you go to consult. there are so many muslims all over the internet and youtube sharing their experiences for you to access on how to ‘represent their experience’ correctly. you’re the teacher here. picture this:as a muslilm, i teach at a public school and while teaching about Christianity in class, no i would double check or some dumb shit with the students. like educate yourself i’m sorry. anyways apparently he blames his mistakes on himself then goes on to deny he ever made any mistakes i can’t.

so this is a blatant lie. 99% of muslims i’ve met have never read all of sahih bukhari and sahih muslim. usually only scholars do that when they are studying islam for YEARS. and FIVE different interpretations of the quran on top of that. ok so sahih bukhari is 9 books that are over 300 pages each and sahih musilm is 7 volumes with also about 300+ pages each. and then the english versions of the quran are 600 pages. and he claims he read five of them. i’m so sorry but no he didn’t. he writes books so fast and he released mcga around the time toa was being released almost one book per year so he did not have a lot of spare time. the rest ig i can let slide. also and if he did do all of that why does he make so many mistakes in writing samirah. and even IF you accept his excuses reading ALL of this source material is great for teaching your class or whatever but not for writing a modern day muslim. you don’t need to lie to us rick ❤️

most of this is just describing what she’s like but his writing did also add in the model minority, smart kid trope. like no they don’t have to be a terrorist or a A+ student who is the best at everything. there is a middle ground to their personality.

i actually used to love his rep in sam. that’s how i got into the series. i saw a hijabi girl on his website. i got excited and read all of his books. i loved piper, leo, hazel, percy, annabeth, sadie, carter, nico, everyone. now that i look back i was younger and didn’t see anything wrong with it back then. its great that he tried to portray minorities but he did it so badly and now is just denying the faults that his now older readers are trying to tell him.

hey, uhm didn’t you read all of sahih bukhari and muslim? hmm i didn’t think so. anyways the way he dealt with it honestly wasn’t that bad. but the whole ‘whoops’. like why does he keep portraying himself as the innocent old white man just trying his best.

honestly how he wrote samirah as a hijabi was the dumbest thing i’ve ever read. its is totally fine if she wasn’t hijabi, many muslim girls aren’t, and that is their choice. but he decided to make her like a weird middle ground. it was so lazy and inconsistent. in the first book she says she wears it when she needs to, like in situations like going to the masjid. this was fine, since many muslim girls do that. then in the next books she wears it all the time except when she’s in valhalla for some reason. hijabi girls take of their scarves when they’re at home or with family, but making her claim the entirety of vallhalla as her family. that was just demeaning and stupid to me. it takes away its value. and i fucking hated that last sentence. for hijabis, their hijab is important and not a toy or weapon or a MAGIC ITEM. and then on top of that she would have to take it of to hide. he could’ve made it anything else. her hijab isn’t some token item istg.

i love how he admits that they are a big problem and abusive and usually engage with child marriages. i’m relatively he doesn’t understand what the people even meant by it. the practice is a problem that isn’t supposed to be seen in a nice light. the only possible way it could be slightly ok is that if ADULTS agree they 100% do not want to choose who they want to get married to and let their parents choose, and both sides agree. samirah was a child and he decided to make her wedding life decided since the age of 12. and it was ok because amir was conventionally attractive and she loved him. WHAT IF SHE DIDNT. this literally is a dangerous arranged marriage. and arranged marriages are not ok, and mostly perpetuated by victims of it who will end up passing it down their family lines. my parents got an arranged marriage and I HAVE NEVER SEEN THEM DISPLAY ANY SIGNS OF AFFECTION. arranged marriages are not a trope that your can turn around to be a quirky personality trait for your characters.

i’m sorry that’s not how arranged marriages work. most likely if she said something her grandparents would have shut her done and continued with the marriage, as that is what you usually happens. do not portray the small amount of consented, ‘happy’ arranged marriages as the majority. it is a huge problem that many desi/middle eastern cultures are trying to erase. even on top of that he writes situations where she’s going to be in trouble for acting up and ‘jeopardizing the marriage agreement’ and that her grandparents think she’s ‘lucky that she could get the fadlan family to agree to marry their son to her’. these statements are often used in forced and dangerous marriages, so don’t try and justify your actions. if you wanted to show traditional customs in a positive light, there are so many richer parts of samirah’s culture you could’ve focused on and you chose arranged marriage. 😻 all you’ve done is given parents and authority figures a westernized resource to justify arranged and forced marriages, especially with the minimal explanation on how the marriage isn’t forced in the actual books. and yes, your books do condone child marriage samirah is clearly deemed into this marriage ever since the young age of 12. she lived her life knowing she would marry amir. no one has only one crush throughout their life. imagine how she would’ve grown up. sorry you only consider opinions that align with those in you mind.

i’m going to be honest i did like that one scene it was written nicely and accurately but the explanation he gives just ruins the entire thing. the way he just if this strikes you as islamophobic, or samirah as a hurtful, uhm no explanation i just disagree 😽. the way you wrote her is a hurtful stereotype sorry you can’t see it.

oops, you did. too bad you don’t want to do anything about it.

why do you think people are painting you in a negative light, so many of your characters are written on hurtful and negative stereotypes. people aren’t painting it that way, you need to calm down w your ego and listen. dang i’m sorry your best is giving half-assed excuses and not actually doing anything. i’m even more sorry people are mad that a highly privileged author that has a lot of influence is done talking about his racist depictions of minorities in his books.

dang must be lucky to take a break from the social media, imagine what all the minorities you wrote about have to go with everyday weather they are on social media or not. people aren’t bullying you this is valid criticism you refuse to listen to.

fuck you

obviously these are my opinions do not judge every muslim based on what i’ve said come to me if you have a problem with it

anyways support jewish, muslim, black, brown, asian, hispanic, indigenous, lgbtq+, disabled, and other minority authors and creators.

#anti rr #fuck him at this point #samirah al abbas #she deserved so much better #i probably made so many spelling mistakes smh #long post #mcga #rr crit

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lovenona · 3 years

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LONG ask ahead, sorry T^T

*arrives in a hurry after 2-3 days* *slow, appreciative clap at the ted talk* sweetie, have you got any idea how much i adore hearing you ramble about the creation process??? seeing the whole love and dedication you hold for the odyssey makes my day! (and nooo, i'm totally not reading it again bc i want to have all of it in mind for tomorrow and bc it inspires me to no end hahaha what do you mean :) )

here comes yet another question: what kind of powers do you possess to write so beautifully. your writing literally punches me in the gut every single time, even the simplest of things!! it's hauntingly beautiful and i'm living for it!

(and another one) how did you find out how the odyssey was going to end?

also, it's rambling time because i've been thinking. (i do that sometimes.) each chapter title is a reference to a greek myth, and, in particular, odysseus' myth (no clue if i've written his name right, i've always knew him as "ulysse" in my mother tongue ^^;). and so my brain went: oooh nice, greek lore ^^ and then: yo wait. hold up. which brings me here: analysing the chapter titles. (bear with me please, and feel free to ignore my enthusiastic rambling/correct me if i'm wrong which i probs will)

so first, we have the prelude. david and calypso. while i'm sure david has his importance it's almost 1 am as i'm typing this so i'm going to focus on calypso. poor nymph is stuck in an island because of the will of gods for a reason i've forgotten. but here's the catch: while she cannot leave, others can come to her (good ol' odysseus for instance) until they leave her all alone again. and the cycle unfolds again and again. which brings us to a nice parallel with reader's situation at the beginnig. she, after all, is stuck on an island with no way out but stories. comes the dilf supreme toji aka an odysseus of sorts, until he leaves her. so she's alone again. calypso there illustrates a passive state of sorts. she cannot leave, or so she thinks: while she wants to, we don't see her try per se until sukuna comes in.

ah yes. sukuna’s arrival. chapter title: neptune’s hands. Neptune, god of the seas, all powerful, also known as Poseidon absolutely terrifying if provoked — which is something Odysseus did! well, man is smart enough not to do it to his face. but he did stab a cyclope, which happened to be neptune’s son. son who swore to a haughty Odysseus that he’d pay for it. in consequence: instead of going back to Ithaca without that much of trouble, Neptune goes: nope mate, and promptly sabotage his return (with a storm who leads his ship astray if my memory is correct). Neptune serves as a catalyst in here, to properly start the action. and it so happens to be sukuna’s role! he is, as well, the one who starts reader’s journey — well, odyssey in this case ;) — by making her this offer. plus, if we consider reader as being calypso, a nymph, and sukuna as being Neptune, a god, it shows their difference in power. sukuna is a fearsome curse, captain whose name is enough to strike fear in the cruellest pirate, who can and will kill reader should he get bored of her. reader is but a printer’s apprentice, so weak compared to him it hurts.

ah, yes. the narcissus pool aka siren gojo, aka me simping so hard for this man I might squirt with the mere mention of him. yes, siren gojo is that powerful, feel free to lure me in with them baby blues sweetie *blows him a kiss* hem. anyway. long story short, an oracle said: if narcissus sees his reflection, he’ll die. people prevent him from seeing himself. ofc man is so handsome it hurts and has women and men alike running after him, including a nymph named echo. he rejects her. hera is somehow involved in the mess and makes it so that he stumbles upon a river and sees himself. entranced by his beauty, he desperately tries to reach himself and stays near the river until he dies. this one is a bit trickier (especially considering I’m writing this as I go with no coherent preparation whatsoever but damn if I’m not having fun). but. *proceeds to read it again* *sighs in ‘why the hell ain’t siren!gojo real pls sir take me’* anyway. it’s never mentioned in narcissus’ myth, but I’m pretty sure he was tempted to look at himself. at least once, considering he could wonder why on earth all those people kept falling for his looks. (or he could be pretty dumb. let’s say he isn’t) so he’s tempted by his own reflection. just like reader’s tempted to follow segsy siren gojo. he doesn’t up until hera is involved and ends up seeing his reflection. he falls. not literally, but in love — with his own self. here it’s different (and the reason why i’m strugglingTM to gather coherent thoughts). gojo is the very embodiment of this temptation — so he acts as narcissus’ reflection here. he’s the one seducing reader, the one luring her until she falls in the waters, just like narcissus did. she didn’t die though, unlike him. (thank you sukuna. I guess. yes I would’ve given my life for gojo to consume me in both ways and??) now, this is very simp-tainted (sorry bout that ^^;) and the thing I’ve noticed is this: narcissus isn’t a character in the og odyssey. could it be bc to my absolute despair, gojo’s not as much of an important character as sukuna and toji? only you know!

(the hades, psyche analysis comes in tomorrow *looks @ time* *sees it's 1 AM* well, later on! have a lovely night/day!)

- the LRE (who's very happy tumblr allowed her to do paragraph breaks/to have a pirate history book recommandation! thanks about that one btw, it'll come in handy for a ff of mine (yeah it involves pirate gojo))

wait this is so precious n thoughtful oh my gosh 😭 thoughts n vibes under the cut :’)

first of all THANK U!!!??? ur making me blush out here omg my hEART 😭

as for ur first question, ur SO SWEET n IM LOSING IT bye i genuinely don’t know i just scream and throw a bunch of commas and metaphors everywhere and somehow things happen 💀 i read a lot (english major vibes) and it’s very helpful because i tend to imitate writers/phrases/books that inspire me while i'm figuring out how i want to write !!

secondly: how did i figure out the ending of the odyssey??

answer: i think i just stumbled across this one 😭 i was brainstorming w my bestie (@/suedebunn) n she originally suggested a different version of the ending that i was like “oh wait” and then i played with it for awhile until i arrived at the version i have now ! i want to tell u more about how i arrived from point A to point B and what the process was but i will withhold because i am not giving anything away >:)

onto ur TITLE ANALYSIS!! this is SPECTACULAR! ur pretty much on the nose for all of them god damn i don’t have much to add :’) i’ll give u some of my takes tho!!

david and calypso �� ur absolutely on the nose for the calypso aspect; david’s just a passing nod to the pirates of the caribbean portrayal of davy jones and the doomed relationship between him and calypso (mirroring the doomed relationship between toji and reader since he leaves them)

neptune’s hands – yes! yeah! sexy! pirate sukuna is being compared to a sea god!! also a minor teaser but sukuna’s hands are important symbolically ;-)

narcissus pool – ur brain is so big here god damn 🤲 narcissus is more of a loose reference to the idea of pride/ temptation and also hollowness/mirages (the emptiness of a reflection versus the tangibility of the real thing) so it’s not immediately a reference to the odyssey itself or even the myth (i'm taking creative liberties bye homer) but probably the best entity to use when describing gojo – the dichotomy between pride/emptiness is a lot more apparent in part 5

gosh thank u sm for this!! excited to see what u have next!!!!!!

#THIS IS SO SWEET #THANK U??!?!!!?!>!#THANKS FOR NOTICING TITLE IMPORTANCE #UR A REAL ONE #OMG!!!#letters to adele #the odyssey!#LRE anon

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apparitionism · 4 years

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Decalogue 2

This is a belated continuation of my Bering-and-Wells tenth-anniversary piece: a listing of “commandments,” one issued by each year of their association. I did the first five years in part 1. The ensuing years are of course both easier (I get to make up what happened!) and harder (oh lord, I have to make up what happened...). So this second five years’ worth of commandments—this second pentalogue?—will probably be both worse and better than the first. As always, I’m in it for the talking, but also for the idea that Myka and Helena would get things right, and wrong, and right again. I testify regularly that it’s hard work to sustain a long-term relationship. You have to want to do that work, and it isn’t always pleasant. But I’m absolutely certain that B&W would power through. Anyway I meant to do the ensuing five years as a single part, but I decided instead to fake myself into thinking I’m accomplishing things if I do them one or two at a time. I’m taking wins where I can find them right now.

Decalogue 2

Year six: Thou shalt not damage.

This commandment, which Myka would have been overjoyed to be able to keep in its absolute form, worked out in practice to something more like “You’re going to do some damage. Fix it as best you can.”

Distinguishing between where it was and was not safe to step was one of Myka’s most confounding challenges. So many years ago, at the start, the literal gunpointings had made the hazards very clear, but now, instead, Myka encountered metaphorical landmines, buried in places stranger than she had expected: she knew to step around guns and guilt; she knew not to mention Christina, unless Helena was in a mood to think about her. But how was Myka supposed to have anticipated that on any given day, a particular word would be a sensitive plate?

She had been complaining, expressing general resentment on the topic of her parents and Tracy and the grandchild. She concluded with, “And that’s my family for you.”

“They are your family,” Helena said, a flat statement that Myka could not parse. Then she stopped talking to Myka. Entirely.

Myka tried to ask, tried to find out what was the matter; then she tried just talking to Helena, pretending nothing was wrong, hoping it was some sort of circuit-breaker problem and that acting normal would throw the switch; then she offered a general apology for everything she might ever have done wrong; but in the end she had to give up. Helena with an idea in her head—whatever the idea was—couldn’t be reasoned with.

They slept in the same bed. No words. No contact either, but that was because Myka avoided it. She could deal, for a while, with being verbally ignored, but she didn’t think she could handle even one instance of Helena coldly refusing to escalate touch into intimacy.

Claudia couldn’t save them this time. Not that she didn’t try: “Talk to Myka!” she bellowed at Helena, but no talking ensued. “I guess you gotta keep trying,” she told Myka with a shrug. “Send her flowers?”

Well, flowers never hurt anything, did they? So Myka had an arrangement of peonies delivered to the B&B, because Helena had once been very “these belong in an English garden” about peonies, softer than Myka would ever have expected her to be.

Helena read the card—and Myka had to admit that the “I love you” message wasn’t very creatively written, even in terms of penmanship, but she was running on desperate fumes at that point—then very pointedly placed it and the peonies into the kitchen trash can.

So Myka’s best version of tenderness was in the garbage... clearly tenderness was not sufficient to fix anything. It was necessary, she was fairly sure, but not sufficient.

After much additional analytical thought, she developed a hypothesis. “I think I get it. Your family’s gone,” she offered to Helena, who barely twitched in response. But she did twitch, so maybe Myka had got it right? She continued, “And I’m being insufficiently grateful that mine isn’t.”

No response other than a very loud absence of anything resembling a twitch.

Back to the analytical drawing board... at which Myka now drew nothing but a blank.

It took an entire week for Helena to budge at all, but: prompted perhaps by Myka rescuing one of the peonies from the trash and putting it in a vase on the nightstand on Helena’s side of the bed, or maybe by Pete endlessly complaining “I hate when Mom and Mom fight,” or alternatively by Steve handing her cup after cup of tea and noting (just as endlessly) that it was “to soothe your laryngitis,” or possibly by the phase of the moon or a conspicuous mote of dust or something else that even Helena herself probably couldn’t or wouldn’t ever articulate, she interrupted Myka’s weeklong insomniac ceiling-staring session at two in the morning by pushing at her shoulder, hard, and saying, “I thought you might be moved to describe me as your family. But I see I have not been promoted to that exalted level.”

Helena was vocally doing “stoic” and “offhand,” insofar as anyone could really pull off either of those after a week of administering the silent treatment. Which meant that she wasn’t pulling them off at all, which in turn meant that Myka could hear the wound: a fault line sending a bleak rumble through the substrate of that voice in the dark.

“Exalted,” Myka said, herself trying to pull off “no, I never really thought you’d refuse to speak to me for the rest of our lives.” She was also trying to hide her embarrassment at being so analytically obtuse, as well as her shame at having inflicted pain in the first place. “Do you want me to not get along with you, too? Complain about you all the time?”

“You do complain about me all the time,” Helena pointed out, and Myka had to concede, at least internally, that that was probably more than a little bit true. She had to concede, too, that she had not in any way put Helena in her mental dictionary to illustrate the word “family.” The pictures of an endlessly troubling group of people from whom she could not really escape, about whom she complained all the time, had seemed to be a permanently closed set. Any additions, she had thought, would be similes: Pete was like a brother (and thank god that was once again true), Claudia like a sister (though a different sort than the one Myka actually had).

She should have known that Helena’s role in her life was literal, not figurative. And she should have known that Helena, in all her literal intensity, would have expected words to be applied.

Family. She complained about Helena all the time; Helena was endlessly troubling; and Myka certainly could not escape from her, as five-years-unto-six had shown. But the difference was that she didn’t want to escape Helena... apparently she’d mistaken that for a disqualifying factor, family-wise.

“You have sequestered me from those who are so exalted,” Helena said then. “Ideationally, but physically as well.”

“In my defense,” Myka began, but she faltered. “I know it isn’t much of one. But you haven’t been here for very long. I mean... you were, but then you weren’t. Physically. Since you brought that up. And we’ve been together for real for less than a year.”

Silence again, but this time it was an audible challenge.

“So I guess I’m taking you to Colorado Springs pretty soon to show you off.”

Myka realized, while she was searching for reasonably priced plane tickets for the trip, that this was the first time she’d hurt Helena in a way in which she might have been similarly likely to hurt anyone. She’d been so busy working on not making Helena-centric mistakes, those to do with guns and guilt and grief, that she hadn’t thought much at all about this relationship in a broader sense. It was singular, yes (obviously yes), but it was also two people in love with each other, trying to live with each other. Buying “meet the parents” plane tickets forced her to confront how pedestrian they were, as people in love with each other. It was both a minor disappointment and an enormous relief.

Arriving at her childhood home with Helena in tow was even more surreal than she’d imagined... despite the fact that she’d imagined it out, scenario after scenario.

It was also even more awkward than she’d imagined. “Mom, Dad,” she began, as her parents and Helena did nothing but look at each other, wary, as if a hostage exchange were about to occur, “I told you about Helena.” No one said anything. Yes, awkward. She had indeed told them, but that been... what it had been. Myka still wasn’t sure how to think about what it had been.

She’d called them, determined to tell it all—well, not all—but before she’d finished clearing her throat in preparation for launching into her prepared remarks, she was subjected to the usual enthusiastic recounting of grandchild activities. That was fine, though, for she did take a little schadenfreudic satisfaction in how quickly grandchild-centric material had replaced Tracy-centric information in these bulletins.

“I have a little news,” she said as the child-related hosannas began at last to run out of steam.

She took a breath. “I’minaseriousrelationship.”

One more breath. “WithsomeonefromworkhernameisHelena.”

After a pause, but not much of one, her father said, “How do you want us to respond?”

Myka had braced herself for questions, certainly, but not that one. “By being happy for me?” she offered, and she wished she had sounded decisive.

“Then we’re happy for you,” her mother said, and when had her mother ever sounded that decisive?

Myka could easily imagine them at the kitchen table, both leaning toward the phone that her father would have propped against the lazy Susan, for he’d always seemed to believe that placing a phone flat on its back rendered it helpless, like a turtle. That picture was very clear, very familiar. But she could not envision how those two people, addressing that upright phone, would look if they were happy for her. “Just like that?” she asked, because her inability to see it suggested that she shouldn’t believe it.

“If that’s what you want,” said her father.

Had he come up with that on his own? Had her mother kicked him under the table? Who were these people? Myka groped for words to address this strange moment in which she wanted to believe what her parents were saying. All she could come up with was a slow, “It... is.”

You were promised endless wonder, she reminded herself, and you do seem to be in the bonus lately. She’d heard Pete say “in the bonus” about something sports-related, and even though she hadn’t bothered to find out what the phrase really meant, it felt solidly descriptive of the way the past couple of years had been resolving.

Speaking of wonder, though, she did wonder, in the moment, whether what she had really wanted was to have to argue passionately for her reasons and right to be with Helena... to have to make that case. She probably wouldn’t have done it, not out loud to her parents; they were her parents, so she would have just resented them, adolescently, for not respecting her choices.

But now there was nothing big to resent. Was this adulthood?

Ignore it, she told herself, and she managed, mostly, to do what she was told. Her parents acted like she’d told the same thing to them; they didn’t bring up someonefromworkhernameisHelena when they spoke with Myka. Myka didn’t either.

But now here they all were, face to face in the doorway of her childhood home, her parents and Helena and her own instantly re-teenaged self, refracted by the bizarre temporal displacements that had worked together to stand them here, scaled strangely, like dolls from different playsets.

A few very formal words, such as “how do you do” and “pleased to meet you,” ensued, and Myka had genuinely never been so happy to see her sister when Tracy finally showed up. She did so sans grandchild, which Myka had requested; she tried to tell herself she’d asked for that because inflicting a child on Helena would be cruel, but in all honesty, she selfishly wanted her parents to focus not on that child, for once, but on Helena—no matter how contradictory it was of her to have tried for so long to avoid directing their attention to Helena at all.

“Myka talked about you like you weren’t even real,” Tracy greeted Helena.

“For some time I was not,” Helena greeted back.

As if Helena’s response had been the epitome of etiquette, Tracy nodded and said, “I’m going to pretend out loud that I understand that.”

Helena said, as a stage whisper to Myka, “I like your sister. She functions.”

“That may be the nicest thing anybody’s ever said about me,” said Tracy.

Myka said, “Helena can be very nice when she feels like it.”

Tracy made a face that reminded Myka she wasn’t the only one who reteenaged around their parents. “You probably can too, Myka, but I’ve never seen you feel like it.”

“I, on the other hand, have seen her feel like it,” Helena informed Tracy. “So you may have hope.”

Tracy said, as a stage whisper to Myka, “I like your girlfriend. She functions too.”

And Myka didn’t in the end care if it was Tracy’s imprimatur that made the difference: the fog of overpropriety lifted, leaving Myka free to sit back and witness Helena returning her father’s interrogative serves with H.G. Wells–related volleys—more of them than Myka had imagined could be worked into conversation. “Oh, I think my friend Edward Prendick expressed it best,” Helena began one anecdote, and she ended another, “...which brought home to me that we all feel invisible now and again.”

“You made a game of it,” Myka accused her later that night, when they had escaped to their hotel room.

Helena smiled an indulgent smile at her across the snowy-white acre of king-sized hotel bed that separated them. “Of course I did. How many points would you say I accrued?”

“I stopped keeping score,” Myka said, and she wasn’t sure if she herself was being indulgent or just grumpy.

“Quitter...” Helena began, a drag of amused accusation. But then she paused, got on hands and knees, and initiated a trek to Myka’s side of the bed. She could have done it catlike, teasing, but this was a common human crawl. “No, that’s wrong,” Helena said as she moved. She was taking her time, but it really was a very large bed. “You’re no quitter,” she announced, answering Myka’s unvoiced “huh?” with, “You feared that initial interaction.”

“That’s unfortunately true.”

“But you did in the end ensure that it occurred.”

“Because you wanted me to.”

“And here we are,” Helena said, reaching her destination. She leaned to kiss Myka, a slow melt in which Myka felt gratitude, and also softness, the sort that was always a surprise (see: peonies). Just as there were unexpected sensitive plates, there were surprisingly graceful bays of yield and give. This kiss was one of them. Gratitude, grace; and Myka felt too the future: this kiss was happening here, now, but this kind of kiss could (should) happen tomorrow, next week, years from now. Here, somewhere else, anywhere.

This is why we came here, Myka thought. Because we kiss like this. Someone you kissed like this was who you were supposed to bring home to meet your parents—and again Myka felt the sad slight press of disappointment at, but also the knee-buckling relief of, being exactly like everyone else. “Here we are,” Myka agreed. “In a hotel room in Colorado Springs. I have never in my life spent the night in a hotel room in this town.”

“Interesting.” Helena gave her a look that included a little aggressive chin-jut. “And how do you feel about that?”

“Don’t Abigail me,” Myka warned.

The chin retracted, minimally. “All right, I’ll rephrase: And what do you intend to do about that?”

But Myka felt not quite ready for what she intended to do about that. “Look, you aren’t them,” she said.

“Correct.”

“So you see my category error.”

“I do.” Helena said it soft, and Myka chose to hear it as an apology for, or at least an expression of some regret about, that wordless week. “You see my...” Helena stopped. She sighed. “My emotional error.”

A straightforward statement from Helena about having got something wrong.... Myka really was in the “endless wonder” bonus. “I do see,” Myka said. “We’re both pretty bad at this.”

“Also correct. How do you feel about that?”

Myka rolled her eyes, but other than that she didn’t bother.

Helena pursed her lips, which sometimes signaled frustration, but this time she coupled it with playful eyebrow movement. “What do you intend to do about that?”

They were bad at this so much of the time, but here they were in Colorado Springs, being better at it... good at it, even. “Ignore it for now and get back to kissing somebody. Something else that I have never done in a hotel room in this town.”

“I would think not, given that—”

“Listen, don’t make me explain what other kids did on prom night.”

Helena smiled a beautifully familiar smile. Lascivious, but only to the degree that Myka liked. So: respectful. Her tone was further along on the lascivious scale (and Myka was fine with that) as she said, “I don’t know what ‘prom night’ is, but perhaps you should explain. In detail. If I understand your implication correctly.” The word “implication” was accompanied by a placing of her body atop Myka’s that she also knew Myka liked. “Correctly” was accompanied by an application of pressure, one that she further knew Myka loved.

And that was how Myka came to enjoy what she would forever after remember as her very own personal—personalized—prom night.

During which she may have accidentally caused some bruising... but no damage.

Per the commandment. Which was difficult, but not impossible, to keep.

TBC

My non-tag essay on this one is very simple, and it is basically a version of the next “commandment,” which I had already formulated, but which the past few weeks have really made clear to me: “Thou shalt take nothing for granted.” In fact my original first ideated line of that seventh-commandment bit was going to be “Because if you take any given thing for granted, it will explode in your face. Guaranteed.” I am here to tell you that is true. Prize each and every minute of the life you consider “normal,” if that normal feels good to you. My wife was in a serious accident very recently. She’s going to be okay eventually, with luck and hard work, but change to your everyday, which you may undervalue as I did mine, comes as a whip-crack.

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Decalogue #part 2 #(although it deals with the sixth commandment)#(apologies for how weird the numbering of all of this will end up looking)

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reddiemorelikeredyee · 4 years

Text

Stoner Losers Thicc Post

Bev, Bill, and Richie grew up in Derry together. If ya want a back story on that, there's my post about fwb BigTrashMarsh (a cursed name ik) under the special tag.

Bill is an english major, Beverly is a fashion design major with a cosmetology minor, Richie is a theatre/film double major, Ben is an architecture major, Eddie is a communications major and is also on the college track team, Mike is a criminal justice major, and Stan is an accounting major with a religious studies minor.

Bill, Bev, and Richie live in a dorm together and smoke weed every day. They each have their own bean bag in the living room to smoke in. Bill's is blue and has a Beatles yellow submarine pattern, Bev's is space themed. She has a reversible sequin pillow that is pink on one side and has a pic of Nicholas Cage on the other. Richie's is a Spongebob chair that says "Soak It" (yes, it's real). There are two Hannah Montana ones for guests (the other Losers will get their own eventually)

Their dorm is incredibly messy but any of the three could find anything you want within a minute. This has become a game. Bev once found a game boy that none of them knew they had within 13 seconds.

Their door has a whiteboard with stupid drawings on it and a caution sign that reads "Stone Zone".

The trio looked up on YouTube how to make lava lamps and designed their own, including a lava lamp bong that sits on the coffee table. His name is Dr. Phil.

Eddie and Stan are in the dorm next store (they both grew up in Bangor, something they all think is crazy, cuz the five of them were so close to each other but didn't meet.) Eddie only very recently came out as gay, literally the day he left home as a big fuck you to his mom, and has vowed to broaden his horizons during college.

Eddie is carefully hanging up the gay pride flag he just bought in the exact center of the wall, when "California Love" starts blasting and makes him fall over. Eddie does not want to this to set the tone for his semester more than he wants to give a good first impression to his new neighbors, so he goes to complain about the noise coming from the stone zone dorm, but then is greeted by a shirtless Richie (who has the liger from Napoleon Dynamite smoking a joint tattoo on his abs plus a Nipple Piercing) and it's no thots head empty.

Eddie ends up forgetting what he's there for when Richie invites him in to get high. Richie shotguns him and Eddie nearly ascends into the next dimension. But then Richie starts making out with Bev and Eddie has to make an excuse to leave so he doesn't start crying, so he says he has to take a shit (bad move, Kaspbrak). He leaves the dorm's occupants baffled and goes back to cry to Stan.

Stan takes Eddie to 7 eleven to get ice cream cuz this bitch is a mess. Stan kinda wants to meet a guy who could be so hot that Eddie is utterly heartbroken after only knowing him a few hours.

Stan sees some greasy dude literally chugging Coke flavored Slurpee right from the machine and goes to tell Eddie that he's disgusting, but Eddie has run out to the car, crying again. It clicks and Stan runs to the car to ask Eddie what the fuck is wrong with him because that man is ugly and he can do better than a ratty man child who, according to Eddie, has a girlfriend. Eddie hugs him and they go back to the dorm.

Richie gets back from 7 eleven with Slurpees. Bill and Bev are sitting in their bean bags and they've got serious looks on their faces. They ask him what happened with the cute guy he brought in here and why he drove him out of the dorm. Richie just goes "omg he was real??!! I thought I hallucinated him he was so hot wtf."

I'll continue this some day, but it's gonna have it's own tag now: StonerLosersAu

Ben and Mike will show up later, since this is a mix of details and a sort of there plot. Eh.

Some ideas from the anon I sent to @eddiekissbrak and some of her responses. Yea, it was me and I'm gonna expand on this A LOT lol. I'm kinda obsessed w/ this au ngl. If ya don't want me using any of your ideas from the post, lemme know. ❤️

#StonerLosersAu #bill denbrough #eddie kaspbrak #beverly marsh #richie tozier #stan uris #It #Dumbass gay idiots #Reddie #BigTrashMarsh #It chapter two #Drug mention #Drug use #Long post #Headcanons #Queuetequeuetequeuete

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echotovalley · 4 years

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so because I’m taking a writing break but still super needy

I figured I would post this outline for a pokemon au that I’m never going to write. it’s basically notes from a conversation I had back in early 2018? Imagine my surprise going back now and realizing this might read much like Detective Pikachu - cubone is just my favorite pokemon

***before we get into anything please know that while I play pgo and I’ve learned LOTS of new pokemon, I’m still the most familiar and attached to the og 150 + 1. I also probably get a lot of canon pokemon rules and history wrong but my heart is in the right place

reblogs appreciated! | come talk at me about your thoughts or literally anything

premise: keith might not be a pokemon person

but pokemon are definitely a keith person

- for unknown reasons keith docks in cuba, he's kind of just been getting work and moving moving always moving because one place never works out for long. pokemon are everywhere but it's not his thing.

it never happened for him besides why would he make an animal be saddled with him? there's no stability there. and again, he's always moving. through so many different regions.

he doesn't have the heart to yank a sandshrew onto a barge across the atlantic or a charmander up the northeast coast of the US. he can barely take care of himself. and it's weird by now. to not have a pokemon by now. they were everywhere and so normalized.

they were part of everyday school curriculum and even in hospitals and rescue stations. which is another reason why he never stayed in one place very long because not having a pokemon didn't incite people to trust you.

bc even team rocket (team rocket still sounds so much better than team galra but team rocket is the galra) had pokemon that bonded and trusted them.

he gets a room and some horrible job on the coast and basically just gets by. tries not to cause trouble or get caught or encourage rattatas or a caterpie to follow him home because they could still smell half the lunch he didn't eat tucked in his bag

- i'm plotting by the seat of my pants but what really kick-started all of this was the thought of Keith finding a wounded cubone in the middle of the night.

it's too dark and raining to tell what animal or pokemon attacked it or if it was a person that fractured the skull he wore enough for a piece to break off along the jaw

the cubone sustained a mean looking scrape to its face and this is not what keith needs right now but he can tell the cubone's crying and kind of just accepted what's happened and it keeps pawing at the missing piece in the skull and keith may not actively interact with pokemon but he doesn't hate them and he still has a heart.

he's docked in cuba and his spanish just gets him by to get food and money and not anger anyone

he didn't think the barge's docking region through all of the way so he's got a cubone to help with rudimentary spanish that sucks on the best day but he's going to try and get the cubone help

he starts rushing through streets and people's yards because he could have swore the town had a gym he passed but in the dark and rain it takes him a full hour to find the gym.

- duh it's closed but he's at least going to bang on the doors and hopefully it's going to set off an alarm or something

the police will show up or someone will be able to take the cubone where it needs to go. his hand is numb from knocking as hard as he could before the door is whooshed open and someone is spitting rapid fire spanish like venom and he thinks he manages to get out that he can really only speak english and shoves the cunbone into their hands.

before he knows it, he's being yanked by his collar into the gym and down hallways and finally into the blinding lights of the pokemon center on sight.

there's more spanish and faces that look so similar that its clear it's a family that runs the gym.

- beep beep guess who's family owns and runs the gym

the pokecenter is actually a rehabilitation center founded and run by the McClain family for several generations

he gets questioned after the cubone is taken back behind the doors and it takes someone repeatedly snapping their fingers in front of his face to get him to come back to the conversation.

his name's keith, he's from the US, he just found the cubone - no he doesn't know if it has an owner, doesn't even know if it’s wild or if it has a nearby pack or how it got hurt or how long it’s been hurt.

but keith,

keith is his name and he can at least answer that.

he stays there over night and finds out that Marco is the one that answered the door. Veronica is the one to actually examine him because he looks like he's about to pass out.

their mother is the one to assure him the cubone would be fine - her daughter Rachel attends to injured pokemon and gets another son Luis to show Keith to a room in their house and keith passes out the second he stumbles to a bed.

- in the morning, when he goes to the bathroom and is in the middle of washing his hands, another son is banging on the door for Marco to get out of the bathroom and that's the first time he meets lance

when Keith yanks the door open he tells him to freaking stop because he's clearly not marco.

an older man, probably come to break up a fight, stops and blinks at keith before shouting over his shoulder about not remembering having or getting another kid (arthur "and who are you???" weasley style)

(our boy Lance has a minor panic about the cute random guy is his bathroom at 8 a.m.)

Keith gets shoved down at a table covered in food for breakfast and can't keep up he definitely has a headache and is ready to throw himself through a window when he's asked about his pokemon and if they need help too

he doesn't have pokeman and never has had one and isn't really interested and this family has centered their entire lives around it

- he sees the cubone again, in recovery and it paws a little at his hands in thanks

over the next few days, he stays with them and somehow gets roped into doing chores around the facility and given an assigned seat at their table for meals and he's just T H R O W N

they literally have an arbok taking a nap in a hammock in their backyard and a pod of seadras in an olympic pool in the gym just hanging out (doing little races between each other or chasing each other)

a vulpix he learns belongs to one of the McClain siblings (Rachel) sunbathes and sniffs at his feet while he’s working in the yard

and there's a persian destroying blinds in the living room window and a charizard in the kitchen

and some random small children he learns are marco's are throwing or shooting across the floor fridge magnets as a game with a magnemite

- begrudgingly on McClain’s part, keith’s assigned to Lance for being shown around the rehab center

lance takes him to the beach and out into the middle of the ocean on a boat

Keith: "this is where you feed me to a gryados"

Lance: "close"

and a freaking L A P RA S pops up out of the water and clicks at lance and makes little waves in his direction and they do a damn forehead touch he's crazy this is crazy

Keith: "YOU HAVE A LAPRAS???!!!!" - because even keith who doesn’t do pokemon knows what the heck a lapras is

Lance "I don't have a lapras. Nobody owns her. We just give her her room and protect or heal her when she needs it"

- the next few weeks see lance having to admit keith isn’t so bad and that just because he doesn’t have a pokemon, it doesn’t mean he actively dislikes them

the cubone is attached to keith - despite his bad attitude, lance says

this is the initial thought that kicked this off: keith asks if they have a 3D printer and once the cubone's injury is fully healed, he makes a mold for the missing piece and fits it in place

lance denies crying

"you've done one (1) good thing, kogane"

- then the real plot kicks in when the lapras is captured and taken from the beach by team rocket

lance blames keith because of the timing, because of keith's vague answers on where he's from, why he has no friends or family, no pokemon

insert painful, raw, yelled, "I TRUSTED YOU"

keith convinces him he's not part of team rocket and the main story starts where lance and keith leave to go after the lapras and return her to cuba.

- before they leave, rachel throws a pokeball at keith "i think your cubone might like this one"

and lance's eyes get huge because he knows what it is and then a pokemon is coming out of the pokeball

and it's a marowak

the cubone very carefully and slowly approaches her and the marowak just watches and waits. the cubone brushes its bone across the marowak's foot and then approaches and okay keith's eyes definitely water as he watches this marowak kind of take in the cubone.

(THE CRITICAL HIT COMES WHEN THE CUBONE EVENTUALLY EVOLVES. I like to think maybe through poke-magic the skull fixes itself when he evolves and the cubone hands the 3d mold back to keith and gets keith to put it on a chain safe for his skin to wear the 3d mold piece still)

- obv they get the lapras back,

they find out keith's mom was a double agent ofc for the team rocket faction that took the lapras

they meet hunk and pidge and allura and coran and romelle and others along the way to take down team rocket because what’s a pokemon au without the power of friendship

- keith and lance wait at the airport in cuba

it's for shiro, he had let keith travel because he saw that keith needed to find room to grow and find who he was

obviously keith is not 10. he and lance are 17.

anyways he rushes keith and pulls him into a big hug and tells keith how proud of him he is

the first thing lance tells shiro is about the time keith almost stepped on an exeggcute and how they chased him

or the time he almost sustained a skull fracture from a taurus and the time a seel thought keith was its mom

there was also that time with a magby-

keith: “OKAY LANCE WE GET IT THANK YOU”

BONUS:

keith being mildly terrified of the pokemon hanging around the McClain properties

Lance: "if you want to lay in the hammock just move him"

Keith: "just move him?! it's an arbok not a lap dog"

a nest of torchicks gets laid in the backyard and follows keith for two days after they hatch and lance laughs so hard he cries because keith can't shake them and he winds up tripping and they all jump on top of him

keith might not have been a pokemon person

but pokemon are definitely a keith person

#klance #Keith Kogane #Lance McClain #Voltron #VLD #writing tag

8 notes · View notes

princess-of-france · 4 years

Note

I’m interested in your take on Angelo & Isabella w/ personality parallels (also just your opinion on Angelo especially tbh because I feel like I under-analyzed him when I read the play bc I was just. Well, found him scary :P) because obviously w/ your production you’re pretty deep in and I don’t see a lot of MFM content

Oof, this is a loaded question.

I’m happy to answer it, but I think I should make a disclaimer that—as you point out—my opinions of Angelo are skewed by my experiences as an actor inside a specific production. I’m also not an English scholar; I’m a theater artist. My lit crit skills are dodgy at best (as @lizbennett2013 knows all too well), and I don’t believe there is a single way to interpret any character in drama, especially when you’re dealing with heightened text. All I can do is give my honest appraisal of Angelo as I have encountered him dramaturgically through cutting our script, rehearsing Isabella, and seeing his iterations in other productions.

So! Angelo and Isabella. Two sides of the same coin. I really think they are.

Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way first: Angelo is scary. He just is. His sexually motivated exploitation of authority continues to be one of the most transcendent aspects of this ever-timely play. However you stage it, however you trim the text, whatever charismatic actor you slot into the role, Angelo is a capital-T-Terror and there’s no getting around it. Coercive, manipulative, hypocritical, ruthless, misogynistic, fraudulent, and cruel, he basically spends the entirety of MEASURE FOR MEASURE committing crimes and then soliloquizing about how painful it all is for his bargain-price conscience. You’ll never hear me say he doesn’t deserve his reputation as one of the most reprehensible tyrants in all of Shakespeare.

But.

Of the three defining qualities I see in Angelo—ideological dogmatism, rhetorical prowess, and professional pride—there’s not one of them that is not blisteringly prominent in his antagonist, Isabella. Despite the fact that she’s a Catholic republican (“Butt out of people’s lives, Big Government; God will judge us when we die!”) and he’s a Puritan[ical] bureaucrat (“My job is to regulate people’s lives because purgatory is a myth!”), they have far more in common, cognitively, than not. Understand: I’m not saying that Angelo is not a piece of shit for how he behaves throughout course of the play. Nor am I implying that Isabella is somehow culpable for his masturbatory exercise of power over her. My girl has flaws, but she’s unquestionably the hero of M4M. What I’m trying to articulate is that Angelo and Isabella were born with the same psychological toolkit, which they elect to apply towards radically different purposes. (Think Parseltongue and “It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities…”) This shared intellectual arsenal is what makes their pair of scenes in Act Two so iconic. We basically get to watch them play out Newton’s Third Law in real time: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction… As far as rhetoric goes, neither Isabella nor Angelo can overwhelm the other. For every argument she makes in favor of mercy, he punctures it with legalism. For every judicial explication he provides, she dissolves it with morality. One minute, we’re nodding our heads along with Angelo as he explains why Christian values should have no place in a court of law; the next, we’re on our feet cheering for Isabella to convince him to factor human integrity into his role as a public servant. I can’t read 2.2 as anything other than the blueprint for every screenplay Aaron Sorkin ever wrote. It is the ultimate courtroom drama.

Just look at the play’s opening act. Angelo’s hasty promotion aside, both he and Isabella begin the story at the lowest rung of their respective vocational ladders: he’s a would-be Chief Justice, she’s a would-be Prioress. Deputy/nun. Politics/religion. Different spheres/same ambition. And, in like true zealots, both Angelo and Isabella express their commitment to their new duties in terms of self-flagellation:

“You may not so extenuate his offenseFor I have had such faults, but rather tell me,When I that censure him do so offend,Let mine own judgment pattern out my deathAnd nothing come in partial.” (Angelo, II.i.29-33)

“And have you nuns no farther privileges?[…] I speak not as desiring more,But rather wishing a more strict restraintUpon the sisterhood, the votarists of Saint Clare.” (Isabella, I.iv.1, 3-5)

It’s also worth mentioning that our first introduction to these characters features them scurrying along in the wake of an authority figure they respect.

Act 1, Scene 1: Angelo wants to know the extent to which he can wield his law degree at the pleasure of the Duke of Vienna (the Duke himself!).

Act 1, Scene 4: Isabella wants to know the extent to which she can practice self-denial for the glory of God and the approval of Mother Superior.

They are both drawn to gravitas, to figures who represent order and authority. They are also drawn to discipline. He’s a non-drinking, non-smoking Precision. She’s a gluttony-abhorring Bride of Christ. Let the rest of the world eat cake. They will be eating their sins and purifying their souls, thank you very much.

At the risk of descending into the flaming pits of cliché, I’ll also touch on those three qualities I mentioned earlier, because who says the TPE (Three Paragraph Essay) is dead?

First up: ideological dogmatism.

[Side note: I may be a crappy historian, but I do recognize there’s a historical paradigm at play in this text. Vienna needs to be a Catholic city and Angelo’s Protestantism needs to be allusive because Shakespeare presumably valued all his limbs and didn’t relish the idea of rotting in a Cheapside prison. If he’d lived in a “free press” kind of sociocultural context, he might have endowed his religious figures with a bit more Opinion. I digress.]

In the M4M-centered episode of Isaac Butler’s phenomenal podcast, “Lend Me Your Ears,” he interviews JohnPaul Spiro (Assistant Director of the School of Liberal Arts, Villanova University), who does a wonderfully unfussy job of summing up the Angelo/Isabella ideology parallel:

“In much the same way as our era is filled with political zealots—as well as, to a certain degree, religious zealots—what you’ll find when you look closer is there’s a small number of very loud people who are dominating the discourse. And a lot of people are in the middle and would rather not have to take sides. Claudio, he seems to be monogamous, he seems to want to just live a very simple life, he’s not really concerned with theological things. And when pressed on theological things, his point is: ‘I don’t really know. No one really knows what happen when you die, so I’m scared.’”

Because religious extremism lies at the heart of the rhetorical warfare between Angelo and Isabella, I think there’s a misconception that M4M is a Play About Religion. But the ONLY characters who canonically go to the mat about the finer points of theology are…wait for it…Angelo and Isabella. This is an early modern text brimming with religious figures (Sister Francisca, Friar Thomas, Friar Peter, even the phony Friar Lodowick), but not a single one of them gets on the pulpit about ANYTHING in the course of the entire play. Sister Francisca’s role consists of bemusedly listening to her youthful novitiate describe her desire for stricter prohibitions at the cloister. Friar Thomas, a sycophantic priest whose parish coffers are probably lined with Vincentio’s gold, spends his one onstage scene nodding his head sympathetically as the Duke over-explains why he is disguising himself as a monk. Friar Peter, the poor Jesuit roped into delivering the Duke’s messages, forgoes moralizing and instead uses his limited dialogue to try to help two disenfranchised women receive justice for their abuse. And Friar Lodowick, of course, is nothing but an alias for a cowardly sociopath who wants to run the world without being held accountable for his mistakes. Nothing evangelical about any of that.

But Angelo and Isabella? They can’t shut up about religion.

Isabella wants Angelo to temper his punitive Weltanschauung with morality, ideology, Platonic ideals, metaphysics…in short, all of the intangibles that can’t be used as evidence in a court of law.

“Why, all the souls that were were forfeit onceAnd He that might the vantage best have tookFound out the remedy. How would you be,If He, which is the top of judgment, shouldBut judge you as you are? O, think on thatAnd mercy then will breathe within your lips,Like man new made.” (Isabella, II.ii.97-103)

Angelo, in turn, wants Isabella to recognize the futility of Catholicism as a proper tool for creating heaven on earth because Catholicism permits withdrawal from the world and the abdication of earthly responsibility (cf: nunnery). Instead, he argues, what God actually needs is for people to actively toil in their communities to criminalize, punish, and eradicate sin.

“I show [pity] most of all when I show justice,For then I pity those I do not know,Which a dismissed offense would after gall,And do him right that—answering one foul wrong—Lives not to act another.” (Angelo, II.ii.128-132)

They take up the two sides of a theological debate that predates Christianity: ethics vs. justice. And that conflict is itself inextricably tied to the timeless political debate of non-intervention vs. regulation. And the thing is: even when Angelo and Isabella realize the irreconcilability of their respective schools of thought, they KEEP ARGUING ABOUT IT because extremism is just that: extreme. Angelo and Isabella may be major players in M4M, but they represent the radical minority of their world. They are the “small group of very loud people” and literally everyone is a moderate next to them. Ideology, not desire, is the bedrock of their personhood. When confronted with a person of an uncompromisingly polar viewpoint, they behave as if it might be possible to change the viewpoint of that person because the alternative is to admit defeat. To tragic effect, they hold their ideals more sacred than human life. For Angelo, that ideal is the law (i.e. integrity of action). For Isabella, it’s chastity (i.e. integrity of the soul). They are dogmatic in their beliefs, inflexible in their opinions, and inalienably convinced of their own “rightness.” They are austere, incisive, independent, articulate, and sharp. They are disgusted by the depravity of the world around them and determined to transcend it. What differentiates them is the content of their convictions, but they rate the value of that conviction equally.

So, yes, M4M is a play acutely interested in how religion shapes the law and human behavior. But I would argue that it is really only about one thing: power.

Which brings me to rhetoric.

Angelo and Isabella are lawyers. Both of them. High-powered, quick-thinking, weakness-sniffing, self-righteous litigators. Sure, Isabella may not have the paperwork to prove it; she was conceived by an Englishman in the early 17th century. But much in the same way that it’s obvious to everyone with eyes that would-be nun Maria [von Trapp] is a born music teacher from the first scene of The Sound of Music, so is it evident from Isabella’s first moments onstage that she is a born lawyer. She was, quite simply, born to argue.

Consider her first scene onstage: in the nunnery, with Lucio and Francisca. Unlike the audience, Isabella doesn’t have empirical evidence of Lucio’s amorality and notorious womanizing. She doesn’t need it. She can smell it on him. And in six short lines, she wipes the mosaic-laced marble floor of the cathedral with his ass:

LUCIOCan you so stead meAs bring me to the sight of Isabella,A novice of this place and the fair sisterTo her unhappy brother, Claudio?

ISABELLAWhy her “unhappy brother”? Let me ask,The rather for I now must make you knowI am that Isabella, and his sister.

LUCIOGentle and fair, your brother kindly greets you.Not to be weary with you, he’s in prison.

ISABELLAWoe me, for what?

LUCIOFor that which, if myself might be his judge,He should receive his punishment in thanks:He hath got his friend with child.

ISABELLASir, make me not your story.

LUCIO‘Tis true.I would not, though ‘tis my familiar sinWith maids to seem the lapwing and to jest,Tongue far from heart, play with all virgins so.I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted,By your renouncement an immortal spiritAnd to be talked with in sincerityAs with a saint.

ISABELLAYou do blaspheme the good in mocking me.

(I.iv.18-40)

I’m not going to venture down the English professor’s rabbit hole of rhetorical devices and syntactical analysis—partly because there are thousands of scholars who have already done it better than I ever could (check out Claire McEachern and Julie Felise Dubiner!) and partly because I’ve been blathering for too long in general. But sufficed to say that three hallmarks of a good lawyer are as follows:

The ability to seize and repurpose the language of one’s opponent (“Why her ‘unhappy brother?’”)

The ability to spot and sidestep landmines (“Sir, make me not your story.”)

The ability to redirect conversation (“You do blaspheme.”)

By that metric alone, Isabella’s performance here is worthy of the Harvard Law Review.

And then, of course, two scenes later, she meets her match.

A dear friend of mine, who is a first-year at Georgetown Law and basically the smartest person I’ve ever met, once told me: “The best and worst thing that can happen to a good lawyer is to meet another good lawyer with different ideas.” I do apologize for invoking Sorkin twice in one essay, but honestly: “The President likes smart people who disagree with him” (Leo, The West Wing, 2x05). It is a truth universally acknowledged that however infuriating it is for a highly intelligent person to debate with an equally intelligent person who disagrees with everything they stand for, it can also be unbelievably stimulating and monumentally entertaining to watch. (Hello, 50 million seasons of Law & Order.)

I’m now two weeks deep into rehearsals for M4M and I still get gobsmacked, daily, by the sheer majesty of Angelo’s and Isabella’s rhetoric. Theirs goes so far beyond the mental agility of anyone else in this play, or even—dare I say it—in Shakespeare’s canon. They are beyond intelligent. They are freaky genius kids with the kind of sanctimonious stubbornness that would be obnoxious if it weren’t so damn compelling. Between the two of them, between their two infamous scenes, they pull out every rhetorical trick in the book and play approximately seventeen unique rounds of intellectual checkers. (I say checkers because chess is too slow for them. If you want chilly brinksmanship, check out the Roman plays. Angelo and Isabella have agendas and professional pride on the line. Time is of the essence.)

ISABELLAI do think that you might pardon him,And neither heaven nor man grieve at the mercy.

ANGELOI will not do it.

ISABELLABut can you, if you would?

ANGELOLook, what I cannot, that I will not do.

ISABELLABut might you do it, and do the world no wrongIf so your heart were touched with that remorseAs mine is to him?

ANGELOHe’s sentenced. ‘Tis too late.

ISABELLA“Too late”? Why, no. I, that do speak a word,Might call it back again.

(II.ii.67-78 [italics are mine])

Things get even more complicated when they start moving into those same theoretical marshes I described earlier:

“If he had been as you, and you as he,You would have slipped like him, but he like youWould not have been so stern.” (Isabella, II.ii.84-86)

“The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.Those many had not dared to do that evilIf the first that did th’ edict infringeHad answered for his deed. Now ‘tis awake…” (Angelo, II.ii.117-120)

ENOUGH WITH THE METAPHORS ALREADY. CLAUDIO IS ON DEATH ROW.

And even when they finally, finally get to the point, they remain at an impasse:

ISABELLAYet show some pity.

ANGELOI show it most when I show justice.

(II.ii.127-128)

Which causes Isabella essentially to lose all sense of self-awareness and control because goddam it, never once in her entire life has she met a person she couldn’t out-argue, who the fuck does this deputy think he is, this was supposed to be a simple mission and she’s been standing in this room for ten minutes and he’s still siTTING THERE SMILING AT HER WHAT THE F—

“So you must be the first that gives this sentence,And he that suffers. O, it is excellentTo have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannousTo use it like a giant[…]Could great men thunderAs Jove himself does, Jove would never be quiet,For every pelting, petty officerWould use his heaven for thunder,Nothing but thunder. Merciful heaven,Thou rather with thy sharp and sulfurous boltSplits the un-wedgeable and gnarlèd oakThan the soft myrtle. But man, proud man,Dressed in a little brief authority,Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,His glassy essence like an angry apePlays such fantastic tricks before high heavenAs makes the angels weep, who with our spleensWould all themselves laugh mortal.” (Isabella, II.ii.134-152)

Which causes ANGELO to lose all self-awareness and control because goddam it, never once in his entire life has he met a person he couldn’t out-argue, who the fuck does this nun think she is, this was supposed to be a simple smackdown and she’s been standing in this room for ten minutes and he’s still waiting for her to admit defeat and oh God oh no oh no oh no why can’t he look away from her face, what the fuck is happening what the F—

ANGELOWHY DO YOU PUT THESE SAYINGS UPON ME?

ISABELLABecause authority, though it err like others,Hath yet a kind of medicine in itselfThat skins the vice o’ th’ top. Go to your bosom,Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth knowThat’s like my brother’s fault. If it confessA natural guiltiness such as is his,Let it not sound a thought upon your tongueAgainst my brother’s life.

ANGELO, asideShe speaks and ‘tis such senseThat my sense breeds with it.

(II.ii.163-173)

Finally, Angelo gets her to leave and faces the music. My tremendous co-actor, Jude Van der Voorde, always slays this soliloquy.

“What’s this, what’s this? Is this her fault or mine?The tempter or the tempted, who sins most, ha?Not she; nor doth she tempt, but it is IThat, lying by the violet in the sun,Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,Corrupt with virtuous season.” (Angelo, II.iv.199-204)

[Non sequitur: Jude is the kind of actor actors dream of acting with. He’s always got at least one trick up his sleeve, so my Isabella is constantly second-guessing herself around him. And he does the “sleazy wunderkind act” with a panache rivaling BJ Novak’s in Season 4 of The Office. He’s also one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. Kids, don’t be Method. Make friends with your fellow actors. Leave the emotions onstage and go get a midnight pizza. You will be so much happier.]

With regards to the M4M narrative, we all know what happens next, although it takes an agonizing 175 lines of text in 2.4 before Shakespeare levels off and gives us the canonical threat:

“Redeem thy brotherBy yielding up thy body to my will,Or else he must not only die the death,But thy unkindness shall his death draw outTo lingering sufferance. Answer me tomorrowOr by the affection that now guides me mostI’ll prove a tyrant to him. As for you:Say what you can, my false o’erweighs your true.” (Angelo, II.iv.177-184)

What precedes this is the kind of tension-groaning, hair-splitting, goosebump-raising rhetorical tarantella that television writers today spend their entire careers trying to emulate. Isabella plays the fool for as long as she possibly can…

ANGELONay, but hear me.Your sense pursues not mine. Either you are ignorantOr seem so, crafty, and that’s not good.

ISABELLALet me be ignorant, and in nothing goodBut graciously to know I am no better.

(II.iv.79-83)

…but eventually Angelo forces her hand and she has to deflect his onslaught with the sleek diplomacy of a kidnapping victim.

ISABELLABetter it were a brother died at onceThan that a sister, by redeeming him,Should die forever.

ANGELOWere not you then as cruel as the sentenceThat you have slandered so?

ISABELLAIgnomy in ransom and free pardonAre of two houses. Lawful mercyIs nothing kin to foul redemption.

ANGELOYou seemed of late to make the law a tyrant,And rather proved the sliding of your brotherA merriment than a vice.

ISABELLAO, pardon me, my lord. It oft falls out,To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.I something do excuse the thing I hateFor his advantage that I dearly love.

(II.iv.114-128)

Remember when I said that Angelo and Isabella are alike in that they are inalienably convinced of their own “rightness”? That still holds true. But now Angelo, without warning, has moved beyond the conceits of debate and is taking Isabella’s rhetorical arguments from 2.2 at literal face value in order to trip her up. He’s brought ideology crashing down to earth and introduced their physical relationship into the conversation…again, without warning and very much without her consent. And she has to figure out a way to back-peddle on her words without yielding defeat of the argument. It is nigh impossible. And I bring it up because guess who gets trapped in the exact same situation three short acts later?

LUCIOCome, sir; come, sir; come, sir; foh, sir! Why, you bald-pated, lying rascal, you must be hooded, must you? Show your knave’s visage, with a pox to you! Show your sheep-biting face, and be hanged an hour! Will ‘t not off?

(LUCIO pulls off the friar’s hood and reveals the DUKE.)

DUKEThou art the first knave that e’er made’st a duke.—First, Provost, let me bail these gentle three.—Sneak not away, sir, for the friar and youMust have a word anon.—Lay hold on him.

LUCIOThis may prove worse than hanging.

DUKEWhat you have spoke I pardon. Sit you down.We’ll borrow place of him. (to Angelo)Sir, by your leave.Hast thou or word, or wit, or impudenceThat yet can do thee office? If thou hast,Rely upon it till my tale be heardAnd hold no longer out.

ANGELOO my dread lord,I should be guiltier than my guiltinessTo think I can be undiscernible,When I perceive your Grace, like power divine,Hath looked upon my passes. (V.i.395-421)

Game, set, match.

As for ego… Do I really need to talk about professional pride? I don’t think so. It’s Angelo and Isabella. Pride leaks out of every virtually every line they speak in this play. Pride in their conviction, pride in their moral righteousness, pride in their intellect, pride in their ability to judge the world with clarity (or whatever). Angelo actually admits it out loud to us in perhaps his most famous soliloquy, because the little fucker has a lot more Catholic guilt about lusting after a novitiate nun than his Protestant heart would like to admit:

“The state whereon I studiedIs, like a good thing being often read,Grown sere and tedious. Yea, my gravity,Wherein—let no man hear me—I take pride,Could I with boot change for an idle plumeWhich the air beats for vain.” (Angelo, II.iv.7-15)

And even though Isabella could easily be the poster child for Christian piety, she’s so damn proud of her own humility that she occasionally threatens to void it altogether.

ANGELOWhat would you do?

ISABELLAAs much for my poor brother as myself.That is, were I under the terms of death,Th’ impression of keen whips I’d wear as rubiesAnd strip myself to death as to a bedThat longing have been sick for, ere I’d yieldMy body up to shame.

(II.iv.107-111)

Look at me, Angelo. Look at this body. It’s mine. Mine and God’s. I see what you’re doing, I know where you’re trying to go. And it is never. going. to happen.

Two weeks into rehearsal and I’m still not sure I’m convincing in my delivery of these lines. I’ve watched every filmed production of M4M I can get my hands on, and it’s no help. I just don’t know what to make of this. Scholars disagree virulently about these lines, but also…scholars aren’t actors, you know? I find myself questioning everything every time I get to this passage. Is Isabella actually a virgin? I’m not sure. Chastity and virginity aren’t actually the same thing and Isabella, for all her idealism, is more worldly than many of her ingenue brethren. One thing is for sure: she’s flushed with self-righteousness when she speaks these words. Angelo may be a haughty son of a bitch, but so is she, so is she, so is she.

Ugh, these characters. I love them so much. I hate Angelo, I do. I also love him. And God help me I love Isabella. They’re dumpster fires of human conviction and I’m so grateful to Shakespeare for giving us their story and for understanding four hundred fucking years ago, that this, THIS is the pinnacle of hell in the female experience: “Who would believe thee, Isabel?”

#MeToo

Thank you, Will. Thank you.

I feel like I should apologize for the length of this reply, but I’ve had so much freaking fun that I also don’t feel apologetic. Thank you for this amazing question! Hope you’re doing well! xx Claire

Tagging @malvoliowithin @measureformeasure @harry-leroy @suits-of-woe

#measure for measure #m4m 2019

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normal-thoughts-official · 5 years

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HEY SO u didn’t wanna go on a trans!magnus tangent in ur sexuality post but *I* want you to go on a trans!magnus tangent! Tell me more about him coming to terms w/ his identity & how it’s influenced his life and all that. Essentially just give me all the trans!magnus content in ur brain. Love u ❤️❤️❤️ ~cursedlightwood

here’s my hot take: magnus’ gender is Tired. and yes, i will elaborate, because Ive spent the last 2-3 weeks doing research for this ask, so this is probably the most well-informed theory you’ll see on this subject. yeah, we’re doomed

EDIT: i was gonna say this from the get-go but i forgot, so: english is not my first language and i’m unsure about the usage of some terms that i found during research, particularly those referring to traditional javanese religions and customs; so, if you spot anything that is problematic, racist or colonialist please let me know and i’ll change it.

ok, so i want to start this off by saying that, although javanese society had a binary gender system, they had pretty egalitarian views on gender, and from what i’ve seen the division of labor wasn’t really set in stone - although they were less common than male ones, there were female warriors, for instance. both men and women could be the sovereign and were equally respected, both could ask for a divorce, etc. the most important part of their gender views, to me, seems to be that they believed women were better for diplomatic roles and trading, because they believed men were too emotional and not as good as debating and making compromises as women were (same source)

so i’m just gonna say this, here and now: AFAB!Magnus makes a lot of sense because Magnus is the most diplomatic person you’ll ever fucking see, and in this context, if he were AFAB, he would have been socialized to be for a very young age. and i dont mean hes diplomatic just on the sense that he’s literally keeping most of the characters together and preventing fights (remember when he had to stop a Raphael VS Simon catfight? ugh), but also in the sense that out of everyone hes the one who best handles the seelie queen, for example. he’s good at Wit Battles, negotiating, building bridges and dealing with power relations when its needed.

and i mean, this would also be a pretty good start on why he’d be like “no thanks” when it comes to this whole Womanhood thing, because yeah, Magnus is good at that, he has to be, but does he like it? to me it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t, that he’s absolutely uninterested in anything involving power and negotiations and this whole ridiculous dance it involves. also he’s constantly giving himself the short end of the stick so y’know. honestly, at heart, magnus is an inventor, an explorer; he likes to create things, he likes to learn, he likes to explore the world around him, meet people, help them, build relationships - but on equal grounds, not this whole give-some-take-some thing diplomacy entails. and as a Woman™ in pre-colonial java society, it’s pretty much that, be a farmer, or a concubine - we’re gonna get to that a little bit later on.

so i think in this context little magnus would be like “no thanks” and wanting to go around and, i don’t know, look at plants and learn their properties and figure out why apples fall, or something. it’s not exactly a Man’s Role™ either, although to be fair i found it a little hard to figure out what exactly were men’s roles in javanese society because gender studies usually just focus on women and treat men as the standard and don’t really explore how manhood is construed. but anyway. i know that they were warriors more frequently than women (same source), but women could be warriors as well. like i said, gender roles in javanese society weren’t really set in stone. [alec voice] they’re not rules, they’re suggestions.

add to that the fact that magnus lived in a port city - he had to, since in the early 1600s the dutch were only settling in important ports and trading centers - and the ports in java were very important trading centers that had been attracting people from all over Asia and Europe for centuries, and had a quite good share of migrants and immigrants living there, including quite a good share of Buginese, aka the people who had a 5-gender division. jakarta, which is in java, has like the 10th biggest buginese population in the world, not to mention the countless other societies that had their own views on gender relations; and you have a pretty good and accepting environment when it comes to differences. the javanese were flexible, they were well aware that culture isn’t set in stone, and they were very prone to syncretism. the kingdom allowed people to have any religion they wanted, even if its “official” religion at the time was buddhism. so really: the javanese were actually not very into the whole “imposing cultural constructs” thing, especially the coastal javanese. so magnus would have likely had the freedom to explore and to not really want to conform to any gender stereotypes without that being a HUGE deal, in my opinion.

and then there’s the fact that the concept of womanhood was a pretty disputed one at the time; yes, the javanese had their own views, but it’s important to note that by the 1600s most of the coastal javanese population had converted to Islam, which led to a few differences as well; when compared to other southeast asian communities, for example, the rate of women in trade was a little different - while it was a steady 50% in almost all countries and cultures, in indonesia it was around 30%, because muslim communities had more of a “women stay at home” view. however, when compared to other asian societies such as the chinese society, where the rate was of 1-5%, you can see that the javanese’s egalitarian views on gender stood a fair amount of ground. also, in indonesia, precisely due to their more open views, Islam mostly syncretised with local religions and customs, including the gender views; in Bugis, for instance, the 5-gender system was kept, as were traditional customs such as “ritual transvestism” and homosexuality. so, yes, it was disputed, and people had many views on what people could or couldn’t do, but that mostly ended up becoming a kind of “live and let live” thing. which is the perfect environment for 1- AFAB!Magnus be Very Tired of this whole womanhood thing that no one can even decide what it is anyway; 2- Magnus to say “fuck this” and live as a masc-leaning genderless entity that just wanted to make some goddamn potions.

but then there’s the colonial relations, right? how do the dutch come into this already very complicated and delicately balanced equation? that was honestly the main point of my research, trying to figure out just how much influence the dutch had at such an early stage of colonisation, and also what it would be like to live in a mixed-culture household such as magnus’. here’s what i have:

during the first century of dutch colonisation (aka the part we’re talking about) the dutch and the europeans didn’t really have a big influence in javanese cultural and political relations. the javanese were pretty well organised and had a powerful and strong society so the europeans didn’t really manage to invade them successfully - even the portuguese, the most powerful european nation at the time, tried and failed to invade them for the whole 16th century (get rekt lmao). so what the dutch did was, they simply established themselves as one of the many companies that settled in jakarta to trade, and slowly built their power and influence from there. don’t get me wrong, the dutch were very violent colonisers and in other parts of indonesia they were doing the european thing of mass genocide as much as any other country. they weren’t a “softer” version of colonisers, they just didn’t have the power to subjugate the javanese, so they had to try a slower approach. during the early 1600s, the only dutch people in java were the VOC workers (VOC is the dutch east india company - the acronym is in dutch. basically the company that was there to get some nice spices to sell to the rest of europe so they could shove it all up their assholes or smth since up to this day their food is bland as shit), and they weren’t permanent settlers; they could only stay in java for the duration of their contract with the VOC and they couldn’t bring their wives and children with them, and they couldn’t bring any wives or mixed children they had while in java back to europe, either (same source).

this weird relationship meant that magnus’ “stepfather” and his mother probably had a relationship of concubinage (told you we’d get back to that), which was not uncommon in java neither before nor after the arrival of the dutch. in short, his mother was supposed to take care of his house, make him food and all that jazz, and also have a sexual relationship with him, in exchange for money (same source). it was not prostitution and it worked pretty much as a marriage, except it was temporary and contractual. BUT it meant that magnus’ mother would have to have converted to christianism (same source) and due to the fact that she was in a temporary contract, she couldn’t divorce him, and in their home he would treat her as, well, europeans treated their wives - with the particular western brand of sexism that they so kindly forced unto the rest of us. so that makes the whole thing even more disputed and complicated.

but as a VOC worker, magnus’ stepfather wouldn’t even be home for most of the day, and he couldn’t really keep magnus or his mom from, like, leaving the house and doing their things. i think he wouldn’t even try because that would prolly be very looked down upon in java; spousal abuse in southeast asia as a whole was pretty rare, since anyone could divorce whenever they wanted and women were politically and financially independent, so i think if he tried to pull something like that he would be in trouble - again, the dutch were the minority, and for the most part, they lived as the javanese did, in their villages, in their homes, eating their food and mostly adapting to their customs (same source). they even mostly spoke indonesian in their homes, since most indonesians didn’t speak dutch, and indonesia was kind of the universal language at the time, since there were many languages spoken both in and outside of java (this also explains why magnus speaks indonesian instead of javanese; that would have been the language spoken at his home. you have no idea how relieved having an explanation for this makes me). also there’s the pressing question of, would he even give a shit what magnus does or doesn’t do? magnus wasn’t his biological son, and most of these guys didn’t care about any biological children they might have had with these women, since they were women of color and they would leave them eventually anyway. honestly this is all the more reason for him to treat magnus like shit - he was javanese, he was brown, and he wasn’t even related to him by blood. this was also probably grounds for him to treat magnus’ mom even worse, since in his christian eyes the fact that she had a child outside of marriage made her even lesser than other indonesians.

so honestly, what i’m picturing is something like - most of the time it was pretty okay, there were certain expectations and a certain kind of female socialization but it was okay that he didn’t really fit in there, and then with his stepfather the whole thing was just shit.

also, the fact that his mom was probably a concubine means there was a fair chance that his stepfather would have other concubines, and listen, yes i may be flexing, but you can’t stop me from imagining that maybe magnus was raised in a multicultural home with lots of other southeast asian women and children and maybe even buginese because again you can’t fucking STOP ME.

but either way, even if his home wasn’t like that, his city was - we don’t know which city he lived in, but it doesn’t matter, really; all cities with dutch settlers were port cities and therefore followed pretty much the same pattern of being a cultural tapestry with all sorts of influences coexisting in peace.

so really, little magnus lived in a pretty rich environment when it came to exploring his identity. he and his mom lived in a pretty egalitarian society gender-wise, he had the space and the opportunity to explore the world and figure out what he liked and didn’t like. am i going crazy imagining a tiny magnus with his mom, running around in other farms and listening, enraptured, stories of people from all over the world, about their cultures and lives, and learning there is so much to see and wanting to just go wherever he could, getting himself a passion for travelling that would later fuel his want to invent a quick way to go anywhere he wanted to, going to the port and seeing all the stuff they had available, from plants with healing properties to spices, and just loving to figure out their properties and how they could be mixed together to create new things, loving this world full of wonder and possibilities? maybe. god.

but anyway, what i’m trying to get at here is that it’s really impossible to think of a cis magnus in this context, no matter if you think AMAB or AFAB trans magnus - i know ive been focused on AFAB magnus here but really that’s mostly because 1- Projection; 2- thinking about AFAB magnus brings in new layers of complexity that need further exploration in my opinion; but really this applies to any magnus. what would being “cis” even mean, in a context where the very concepts of manhood and womanhood were so disputed and complex? and that’s not even going into the fact that after so many centuries, complying to gender roles of that time looked nothing like complying to our modern gender roles. really, it’s a lost cause. magnus kind of has a culturally-specific gender that…. no one but other warlocks born in similar situations could, really? there’s no word for it. there’s no explaining it with words. it is [REDACTED GOOD OMENS REFERENCE]

the closest we have is masc-leaning enby, since somewhere along the way he seems to have decided to use male pronouns and have a mostly masc-presenting body, even if paired with a more fem-presenting appearance fashion and mannerisms-wise. but again it’s too unique, there are way too many influences here.

and honestly that’s kind of beautiful! i love imagining small magnus having contact with people with all kinds of views on gender and society throughout his childhood, exploring, trying on their clothes, learning about their religions and customs, having elderly friends from different backgrounds and also young friends who were raised in very different ways, and sharing all of that, and learning about who he is amidst all of that, and being able to explore that and talk about that to his mom and friends and close people because they are used to these differences. even if when at home he was probably met with some kind of transphobic rhetoric and violence because of his stepfather and the imposed christianity that came with it - and that unlike other religions, didn’t syncretize at all.

which brings us to a second, very important point on the whole trans magnus ordeal, which is how deeply tied to racism the transphobia he’s suffered and the general understanding of his gender was. of course, this applies to every single of-color and non-western born person, but magnus has lived that through history. from a very young age, the blunt of the violence he was met with came from a racist standpoint that believed his very identity and existence made him lesser and in need to be corrected - because that’s what, after all, the colonizers were doing. their whole rhetoric was that the colonized were barbaric and needed them to learn the right ways through violence. it is worth noticing that the javanese have been referred to as “the most inhuman of all people” by dutch colonizers, and amongst the reasons for that was the fact that their views on gender were so different from the european’s (same source).

so really we’re mixing in the fact that he was a “bastard” child in his stepfather’s eyes, a warlock, and trans… and yeah, oof. there’s no way he was treated with anything other than violence from way before his mom’s suicide and the subsequent drowning attempt. in his stepfather’s eyes, everything about magnus’ existence was demonic, impure, and all the more reason why he and his mom were dirty and needed to be corrected.

it’s also worth noting that sorcery was a very big part of javanese culture that was also syncretized with pretty much every religion. the javanese believed in sorcery, believed everyone could do magic, and the dutch, of course, despised that. the source above is a pretty interesting article that argues that the european’s so-called “skepticism” on magic and “rational-based” culture was actually part of a construction of whiteness that hoped precisely to differentiate them from the “savage” others. i mean, the guys were burning women at the stake because they were “witches”, but every other culture’s religions, rituals and magic were just bullshit and couldn’t be trusted because the europeans were too rational and knew better? okay buddy. it also features an amazing story about a dutch colonizer who got hexxed because of his racism that is, quite frankly, heartwarming. but i digress.

so yeah listen i know i already talked about this on the other ask but there’s really no way the reason his mother killed herself was because she found out magnus was a warlock or a demon’s son or whatever. magic was part of their culture. it was what they believed in. it was a part of nature to them. it’s way more likely that the reason she killed herself was the constant violence she was met with in daily life that she couldn’t get away from, and his stepfather simply blamed magnus because, to him, he represented everything that was wrong with their culture - and that makes even more sense if we think about trans!magnus, because that makes him an even deeper abomination. it’s very likely that most of the violence and belittling his mother had to face was related to magnus as well - look what you created, what you do, your culture is an abomination, this is unacceptable. but magnus was way too small at that time, and he believed what his stepfather told him, because i mean, what else would he believe in?

i also think that asmodeus kind of messed with his perception of how the whole thing went down, telling him that he “murdered” him when really it was clearly self defense, erasing the violence his stepfather directed towards magnus and focusing on the end to convince magnus that he was evil, unredeemable, that no one would accept him but asmodeus, that he had no other choice. so that’s super fun! but yeah i do believe that asmodeus spent enough time gaslighting magnus and rewriting this whole story for this to be considered magnus’ worst memory, seen by him as a reminder of his “ugly side” that doesn’t really even exist. asmodeus weaponized this, which served the double purpose of convincing magnus he had no choice but to follow asmodeus, and teaching him that violence is normal and there’s nothing wrong with it, and that retaliating makes him bad.

this is all i have to say about the asmodeus years, really, because like i said before i don’t think he gives a shit about gender, he’s way older than it and who cares. but the trauma that the whole thing put magnus through is easily weaponizable. @thesorrowoflizards also wrote this amazing fic that features the headcanon that asmodeus used magnus’ transness to manipulate him as well, using spells that made him more masculine and stuff but only if magnus obeyed him. fun! especially considering that he was with asmodeus through his puberty (or at least that’s likely) when his body would have begun to change, so for him to have such a masc-presenting body…. yeah. this is very plausible. i love pain.

and then we get to england, where again, everyone is an asshole, about everything, all the time. like holy shit, he thought the europeans cared too much when he was in java, but that is nothing compared to the brits and their casual sentencing people to death for being gender non conforming. also, to the europeans, asian men were seen as emasculate and their gender relations as a whole was unnatural, and listen, i know that in 18th-19th century england men also wore makeup and stuff, but i mean, magnus was probably seen as exotic in his “effeminate” mannerisms and non-compliance to gender roles, even if people didn’t know he was AFAB or just trans in general. he was probably objectified in that sense, kinda like a human-zoo sorta thing. fascinating, these emasculated asians with weird bodies and customs. ugh.

so yeah gender got particularly exhausting at that time, too. thankfully there were the warlocks, who were old enough to know all of this was bullshit and who had people from all kinds of cultural backgrounds, thousands of people with culturally-specific genders, as well as other people who were raised in similar environments as him. so in there he finds a home of sorts, a place where this doesn’t matter and where he can be himself and nobody cares, and also has access to different cultures and views and knowledge, and really it’s like the good parts of his childhood again. he learns more about magic and potion-making, about other cultures and places, travels the world, learns about science and the workings behind his magic. creates new potions, new spells, continues his education, learns and remembers how much he loves this, the cultural effervency, the chances to learn and explore and create. really the warlock community is so amazing and it’s like, golden era.

but he’s also living amongst mundanes and to some extent he likes them - not to mention, he likes travelling and learning about different places and cultures. and they seem to care more and more about differentiating genders as time goes by, and to be getting more and more violent in their never-ending quest to force people to fit into these roles, and it’s. tiring. exhausting. who cares. it makes less and less sense to him, and this alienation from the whole thing only solidifies his non-conformance and general inability to fit. sometimes he feels old, and alone, even if he has other people who are Like Him now - the shadow world can get tiring, sometimes, and there’s also the shadowhunters racism thing going on that’s also inevitably trying to subjugate their spaces and looks down on their culture - so it also has the downsides of his childhood. sometimes it’s like there’s no word for who he is, no one that can understand it, no place where he can be fully himself and loved for it. and this only intensifies by the middle of the 19th century, when suddenly makeup and colorful clothing is not for men anymore, and he’s even less conforming than before - he was a pretty respectable Man™ to their standarts up to that point, but from then on that is lost. it doesn’t matter too much, because even if he is masc-leaning, he still doesn’t really see himself as a man in the sense that he seems to be expected to. but that furthers the alienation, and the feeling of loneliness and of being old and unfit for this world.

that is also when he meets camille! and that’s canon because there was that one picture of him with camille and ragnor and the clothes they are wearing are very much from the 1840s (i talked about this here), which is precisely when the whole men’s fashion differentiating from women’s fashion thing was starting. so in the context of his gender this makes it even easier for camille to manipulate him into thinking that she’s the only one who will ever understand and accept him, and that he’s naive, and that he doesn’t fit into the world and doesn’t understand what’s best for him, and really he should trust her judgement better because he is a man out of his time, but she can help him, and- yeah. that good olde cis-girl-abuses-trans-person routine, with even more elements than usual. ggghhhghh

and it’s not until the 1960s and 70s that these notions start to actually be challenged. of course, trans people have always existed and were building their own communities and helping each other as well as they could, and magnus certainly was a part of that, because, well, that’s who he is. he doesn’t leave people in need and he knows how painful it is to go through all of this alone, so he does his best to help and adopts pretty much everyone he can. but for the most part, they are a diaspora, and the cissexist society that alienates and tries to kill them goes on unchallenged.

that gives him all the more reason to get so involved with stonewall and the subsequent building of the queer neighborhoods and communities, that feeling that maybe he can belong after all, that things might change and his life doesn’t have to be an infinite cycle of violence, isolation, abuse, and repeat. seeing these events unfold, helping keep people safe, meeting Sylvia Rivera and all the other trans people of color who were part of this, who had stories so similar to his, who were also bisexual (!!), who knew what it was like. that was healing, and that was important to him, and gjfdkafaskfa yeah.

and of course not everything is a sea of roses, because then the community starts to divide and trans and bi ppl, particularly of color, particularly those who are like him, start to be looked down on. Sylvia is arrested and even booed at Pride, suddenly he’s drawing the short end of the stick again. and then there’s the AIDS crisis, and he sees so many people die, and for a while, it feels like there’s no way out after all. and he even loses a lot of his warlock friends, the people who really understand him in his entirety, because sometime around that there’s the Circle massacre, as well. it’s a dark time for him, and honestly it’s a good thing he’s sworn off romance after the whole camille ordeal to clear his head, because after losing so many people he’s never felt this alienated, this alone, and to fall into the arms of another camille or asmodeus would have been just too easy.

but god, he heals. it’s crazy, but he has raphael, he has cat, ragnor, dot, elias, and he somehow builds himself up and relearns to trust and starts to believe that he has the love he’s always believed himself unworthy of having, that he believed impossible to him. and he starts to open up, and to feel more confident in his own skin, right in time to meet alec.

and look, trans!Magnus just makes malec all the more powerful. not only is this shadowhunter showing up and fully trusting a downworlder, giving him his strength, caring about him, cleaning his home (!) and taking care of him, something he hasn’t allowed himself to have for so long, something he didn’t believe he could have and that alec does so easily even when they’ve barely met. he shows magnus so much care and respect from day one and magnus doesn’t get that from anyone, let alone a shadowhunter, let alone a shadowhunter that’s there with jocelyn’s entitled daughter who treats him as a tool - and look, i know he loves clary, but she is entitled and magnus unfortunately enables her and other entitled shadowhunters to treat him as such, because even he treats himself as such most of the time, and it’s something he needs to work on, and probably has been at least since he broke up with camille.

but he’s also a white, gay man, and magnus has seen firsthand that these people can be nasty to people like him. yes he tried to help alec come to terms with his sexuality, and yes he’s surprised him before, but it’s also not like alec didn’t fuck up and wasn’t entirely… well, shadowhunter-y and had a lot of trouble believing that things didn’t have to be the shadowhunter, bigoted way for a while. but alec doesn’t give a shit if magnus is trans, it doesn’t lessen his attraction or love to him in any way, and it’s just. ugh. beautiful.

and yeah this has gotten too long and it already took me like 3 weeks to answer it because of the amount of research ive done and general tiredness so im gonna end this here, and on a positive note for a change! magnus is happy and learning to take care of himself and accepts himself and trans rights. hell yeah.

#it's FINALLY here god damn it i have answered this ask!!!!!!!! holy fuck #ask #cursedlightwood #necromimetics #i know who u are skyler pls #sh #shadowhunters #magnus bane #trans magnus bane #meta #magnus meta #sh meta #malec #overflowing trashcan

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ser-pea-nt · 5 years

Photo

☆ﾟ*・ﾟ┊Jordan Connor, He/Him + age (21), cis-male┊❝ isn’t « Sweet pea » totally tubular looking? they seriously remind me of a character from « riverdale ». i started seeing them at « Palace Arcade » a few « days » ago, humming to the tune of « Nocturnal Me + Echo and the Bunnymen » when they think no one’s looking. also, they’re like totally known as the « hothead » of town, so i’d keep my eye on them. seriously. ❞

tw: victim of war death, alcohol and drug abuse

GENERAL

Name: Sweet pea

Age: 17

Place of birth: Riverdale, USA

Spoken languages: English, very little Chinese (spoken by his grandmother who lives in China and used to be close with Sweet pea)

Sexual orientation: heterosexual

Occupation: Part time as a mechanic at a Southside garage, Serpent ‘run boy’

APPEARANCE

Eye color: Dark brown

Hair color: Black

Height: 6′4″

Scars: minor scars from fights or working on his motorcycle or truck, fell off a roof once as a dare and had a scar along his back from the fall

Tattoos: Serpent tattoo on left side of neck, pointed thumb rings on both hands, wolf head tattoo on calf (about the size of his serpent tattoo)

FAVOURITE

Color: sky blue or burnt orange

Entertainment: Reading, going to the bar, playing pools and darts (hes very competitive), going to the drive-in, hanging around the Serpents

Pastime: reading, listening to music, drawing

Drink: water, rum and coke, black coffee

INFORMATION-

Tw: drug and alcohol abuse, toxic parental relationships

➤ So, here is the tall glass of Serpent water! Sweet pea is the fighter of the younger Serpents and pretty much does anything he can to revolve his life around them proving he is completely loyal to them and his closest friends. ➤ We don’t know anything about the Serpents in season one besides maybe someone bringing up they are thugs who do crime on the other side of the tracks. But obviously that is not the case the more they are introduced. But I am going to work on what little we have with Sweet pea and add in a few things of my own that I think make him more interesting.

➤Sweet pea was born a Southsider and shows that is his legacy, he hates the Northside (more so in the beginning before Jughead joined in season 2) because they resent the Serpents and consider all of them thugs and miscreants, sure, it’s a bit of a contradiction and he doesn’t give some of the more understanding Northsiders a chance but they haven’t shown him any reason too… not yet at least.

-From what we are given, he lives in a small trailer alone and has no parents around. I would guess from abuse or just mistreatment. His father was heavy on the bottle but when he was a kid he went off to war with FP Jones so get better chances on money, the only thing is he died at war leaving Sweet pea and his mother alone and due to this his mother slipped into drug abuse leaving Sweet pea 100% dependent on himself; at least until FP took him under his wing and introduced him to the Serpents a few years back and this is where he found his true family and he became devoted to them and willing to do any job or task they need of the boy while he also gets himself in dumb situations with his friends.

➤Sweet pea has been shown being both a total brute; fighting ghoulies and Northsiders whenever he can, standing up for the Southsiders when they were being pulled under the bus, or just destroying property when he gets angry; he solves justice physically and irrationally which is not always smart but he feels he’s only good for his strength. Sweets has a lot of problems seeing good in himself even though there is more love in him than anyone will ever know he just shows it differently. Instead of being emotional and letting his feelings out the boy is extremely protective and quick to react to violence if the people he loves are threatened.

- Sweet pea has always had it hard when making friends. Of course, the younger Serpents hang out with him but his intimidating personality and hard to scratch surface doesn’t let many people in. H O W E V E R, there are two Serpents that literally means more than the world to him. Toni Topaz: Sweets met her first, in kindergarten and the two have barely been seen apart. This girl has been through every dark corner sweet pea has ever been in and when he says he can’t live without her he means it. They consider each other their soul mates. She is his calm, when he’s about to explode all it takes is one word from Toni and he instantly steps back. She really is the love of sweet pea’s life. Then there is Fangs Fogarty: he is the second person in sweet pea’s life that sweet pea let in and will never let go of. Sweets knows Fangs can always protect himself but that doesn’t stop pea from doing it too. Fangs is the softest one in the trio and pea treats him like a brother often doing wild and reckless things as long as toni isn’t there to knock some sense into them or patch up their wounds when they hurt themselves. If there ever was a poor fool to mess with fangs or Toni they saw hell in sweets’ eyes and would pay for it.

-We’ve recently seen the softer side of Sweet pea though, when he has shown he wants to be in a real relationship, his love for Fangs and Toni, and the fact he wants to see the Serpents strong. I have the idea that due to experiencing abuse and thinking he was alone he stands up for anyone who is in a bad position and will give the clothes on his back to anyone who needs his help.

➤It’s not canon but from the way he is shown to always be in the front line of the younger Serpents I always imagined he wants to be able to climb the Serpent ladder and be a big leader of the gang at some point which is going to really be his main focus in life until more plots come, while he will always remain loyal to the people who have never done him wrong. There is nothing that can make him stray from the serpents.

➤For extra money to pay the bills for his parent’s trailer Sweet pea runs product for the Serpents. He is young so he is usually seen at parties and any thing that is directed toward teenagers who need a fix. This is the only reason he goes to these events because he really doesn’t do the whole big group scene. Over the summer he has picked up some hours at the local garage as a mechanic. He knows a lot about cars and is always finding scrap pieces to keep his old truck running. He has a motorcycle as well but his truck serves him better unless he is trying to show off.

➤He despises the Northside; not only because more than half the town only believe the lies they have been told but because every Northsider is better off than anyone from the Southside and even the people who claim they don’t mind the Southside not one of them has ever tried to help out to make the place Sweets calls home a better place.

AFTER THE SWITCH:

➤After finding himself in Hawkins he’s only confused. He has only been around for a few days so he is really just trying to wrap his head around this whole thing. Yah boy has never really left the Riverdale/Greendale area so imagine how he feels in a place that doesn’t even exist in his world or time even.

➤ So, his background with his parents is the same but now he’s just been abandoned by his mother but instead of being stuck on the Southside in Sunny side trailer park he is in the Hawkins parallel version of the southside which is the outskirts in the trailer park by the Junkyard. He is still in the Serpents and not much has changed with him disliking most of the people who live in Hawkins and are more privileged than him.

➤ He was lucky and had a good amount of cash to get him through the week at the Hawkins junkyard trailer park but hes running low on funds and might need a place to crash and a job. So far he’s really interested in the Arcade, he loved the nostalgic (lol not so nostalgic) games and figures it will pay enough to scrape by. He is more than used to doing it at Sunny Side trailer park.

➤ Find Pea scarfing down a burger at Benny’s but something in him feel like something is missing. He sometimes thinks that he needs a milkshake to take it down with... but nothing ever suits his tastes. Is this the parallel pull he feels making him crave the all famous Pop’s burgers and shakes? probably. This is where pea goes when he feels homesick. Benny’s never fully helps but for some reason it’s the only place he feels a bit closer to what his body has been screaming for Riverdale food.

[[ I’m open for all plots and connections so please, if you want to do something fun with my baby DM me (here or discord) and we can figure something out! Or just chat! I promise I don’t bite lol ]]

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