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celestial-depths · 3 months

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Poor Things and Born Sexy Yesterday

(spoilers for Poor Things)

I stumbled on a discussion on whether Bella Baxter from the movie Poor Things (2023) is a representation of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope coined by video essayist Pop Culture Detective, who defines it as a mostly fantasy and sci-fi adjacent trope of a regular human man falling in love with a beautiful, otherworldly woman who, through some plot quirk or another, has no knowledge of social norms and no sexual or romantic past. Even though he is brutally average, he is able to win her love simply because he is the first (human) man she connects with and thus everything that's basic about him is impressive to her. Some examples of the trope given by Pop Culture Detective in his video essay are Leeloo from Fifth Element (the physically grown yet mentally child-like alien creature who falls in love with a taxi driver in a wifebeater) and Madison from Splash (a clothes-aversive mermaid who thinks that Tom Hanks is the most enchanting man in the world). I love Pop Culture Detective's work, and the Born Sexy Yesterday video essay was a cultural reset in my personal history. I saw the video when it premiered six years ago, but it has never fully left my mind, so of course I immediately thought of it when I saw Poor Things a couple of weeks ago. The movie certainly touches on the same themes that the Born Sexy Yesterday is made of. However, I think that the movie is an intentional subversion and a satire of the trope rather than a sincere execution of it.

The main character of the movie Bella Baxter starts out as a grotesquely literal version of the trope, as she is literally a newborn in the shape of a conventionally attractive woman who is being actively shielded from the influence of the outside world. She has the brain of a baby salvaged from the fresh corpse of a deceased pregnant woman, planted inside the skull of the reanimated body of the aforementioned woman as an experiment done by the unorthodox doctor Godwin Baxter. He keeps her locked inside his house and controls every aspect of her life, so when he invites the young doctor Max McCandles to join his research, McCandles is served what is essentially the perfect Born Sexy Yesterday experience: an exclusive access to a beautiful and naive young woman who is in a prime position of being groomed into whatever her keepers wish her to become.

Or so they would think.

A sincere Born Sexy Yesterday would be fully fascinated by this power dynamic and probably leave her here to be romanced by McCandles for the rest of the film. The audience would be expected to assume McCandles's perspective and indulge in the fantasy of falling in love with the untainted woman who has neither the life experience nor the critical thinking skills needed to question him.

But, fortunately, the movie doesn't remain here. After the first act, the movie switches its point of view from McCandles to Bella and starts putting her experiences to the forefront. She starts developing interests that absolutely do not align with the wants and needs of the men around her, and she begins to learn things that clash with the essence of the Born Sexy Yesterday trope. Soon, she has grown into a headstrong, independent, sexually experienced, intellectually curious woman who had zero interest in entertaining the whims of men and who intends to live fully for herself and herself alone: an absolute antithesis of the clueless and subservient blank slate the trope would require her to be. My reading of the film is that it's an intentional satire and an autopsy of the BSY trope and the gender politics that gave birth to it. It criticizes the men who entertain fantasies like it by making them look like absolute losers, urging us to ponder on what the hell is wrong with these creeps who see nothing wrong with drooling over a woman who is mentally a toddler instead of their intellectual equal.

The movie also reads as a critique of how women are socialized into a patriarchy. Godwin treats Bella just like a possession of his. Her body and her life are completely under his control from the moment she is "born" (another act in which neither Bella nor the woman she was born from had any say in), which isn't dissimilar to how a lot of fathers view their daughters. He wishes to keep her under constant supervision until the end of her life, until she protests and gets him to change his mind. When he asks McCandles to marry her, the two men treat the proposed marriage as a contract between the two of them rather than as a contract between McCandles and Bella herself. Again, this isn't too different to what marriage between men and women has meant throughout history.

McCandles is romantically interested in Bella even though he is fully aware of the fact that she is mentally a child. He seems to be looking forward to starting a sexual relationship with her after they are wed, as if the seal of marriage would make the intellectual disparity between them any less iffy. This bears resemblance to the way men in the real world prey on young girls with little to no sexual experience and whose brains are not fully developed because they're easier to control than grown women. I don't think that McCandles's hypocrisy is lost on the film. He agrees to marry Bella almost in the same breath as expressing his desire to keep her safe from other men, as if his desire to bed a person who is intellectually at the level of a five-year-old was any better than theirs.

When Bella chooses to leave Godwin's house to explore the world, the two men immediately replace her with a new experiment, showing that they were never truly interested in her as a person. They wanted the eternal baby, the thing that they can cage and control, and not the person who can think and learn and disagree with them. This exemplifies how disposable women are when they no longer serve their limited purpose in a patriarchy, and how replaceable people are when they are primarily viewed as bodies to be used. (Sidenote: I do think that Godwin and McCandles eventually learn to appreciate Bella for the person she is and that they both grow to be better people by the end of the film, but I still attest that these two are total creeps at least by this point of the movie.)

And then there's the supreme loser of the movie: the sleazy lawyer Wedderburn, who slithers into Bella's life and convinces her to run away with him. He is the darkest example of the kind of person who is drawn to inexperienced women like the ones represented in BSY movies - a predator who finds pleasure in the prospect of getting to corrupt and consume an innocent. He intends to take advantage of Bella and abandon her once he's gotten his fill only to find himself choking on his prey, who turns out not to be the malleable, naive creature he thought her to be.

This is the point where I think the movie goes from simply critiquing the BSY trope and everything it represents to successfully subverting it. The characters who embody the BSY trope don't really evolve. The movies they appear in are not really interested in their inner worlds and individual experiences beyond whatever serves the interests of the male protagonists. These characters are projections of male fantasies, so there really isn't a way for them to exist without centering men. This is not the case with Bella, who quickly grows into her own woman who is only tangentially interested in the men around her.

The bright side of Bella's condition is that she isn't just unaware of the ways of the world, but that she's also unaffected by the years of patriarchal conditioning that most normal women are burdened with. She literally has no shame, no internalized misogyny, no history of crushing blows to her sense of self-worth, and no looming knowledge of societal norms society. She has skipped the part in life where she is constantly bombarded with demands to make herself smaller and more palatable, to hate herself, to think of her body and the way it finds pleasure as something disgusting and abnormal, to treat other women as competition, and to think of herself as so much less important than men that she must pursue their validation beyond all else. Because of this blessed defect, she is free in a very rare way.

Wedderburn absolutely cannot handle that. When Bella first gets to know him, he paints a flattering picture of himself as a proud social deviant who gleefully eschews the rules of polite society. However, when faced with the actually deviant Bella, who flatly refuses to obey and center him, Wedderburn is revealed to be a phony. He is not a genuine libertine. He does not want to live in a truly free world with a free spirit like Bella, because he is a pathetic, insecure little man who only likes women in scenarios where the power balance is stacked against them. In my opinion, this is a direct shot fired at the BSY trope and its average enjoyers: if your ideal woman is someone who is many steps behind you in terms of mental capacity and experience, you are quite pitiful and would not stand a chance in an equal playing field.

It's hilarious how Wedderburn loses his mind when Bella starts exhibiting the kind of behavior he himself has proudly displayed earlier in the film: having multiple sexual partners, keeping sex and feelings separate, not falling in love with him or treating him like he's special, dropping him once she's had enough of him, and generally living life in an unconventional way. Again, the movie is pointing out the hypocrisy in men who fetishize inexperienced women while bragging about their own sexual conquests.

The part in the movie where Bella becomes a sex worker delivers the final blow to whatever is left of the BSY trope in her story, because the trope relies on sexual exclusivity and the fetishization of virginity. By having many partners and gaining lots of sexual experience out of her own free will, Bella stops fitting the ideal of the untouched woman who can be deflowered and exclusively possessed by the male protagonist. Also, through the conversations between Bella and the other sex workers, the movie finds another way to address the politics behind certain men's sexual fantasies of women - such as pointing out that some men enjoy sex with women more the less the women themselves enjoy it. It's a stray observation that the movie doesn't get deep into, but it has its place in the tapestry of the general theme of what desire reveals about people.

Finally, there's Alfie, who gives Bella (and us) an idea of the kind of life Bella's "mother" lived - as well as the kind of life Bella herself might be living had she grown up the normal way. It seems hellish. She'd be living under the tyranny of her awful husband, under a constant threat of violence, under absolute bodily control. Alfie wants to impregnate her against her will and to mutilate her genitals to deprive her of pleasure, and there's nothing that she could do about it because he is her husband and thus legally allowed to lord over her. She sees a terrifying glimpse of the role even privileged women like her have in this world: objects who exist solely for the pleasure of the men who own them. I would venture to say that the same description lies in the underbelly of the BSY trope.

I am happy that the movie doesn't take its sweet time to revel in the horror of this part of the story like so many other movies that address the oppression of women do. Instead, Bella stays with Alfie just enough time to say a hard and a well-informed no to his bullshit before getting on her merry way.

I think Poor Things is such a great example of taking a trope and exploring its implications in a way that goes beyond just pointing it out or parodying it by simply repeating it.

#poor things #yorgos lanthimos #bella baxter #emma stone #born sexy yesterday #pop culture #tropes #feminism #gender politics #movies #cinema #film #film studies

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books · 8 months

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Writer Spotlight: Elise Hu

We recently met with Elise Hu (@elisegoeseast) to discuss her illuminating title, Flawless—Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital. Elise is a journalist, podcaster, and media start-up founder. She’s the host of TED Talks Daily and host-at-large at NPR, where she spent nearly a decade as a reporter. As an international correspondent, she has reported stories from more than a dozen countries and opened NPR’s first-ever Seoul bureau in 2015. Previously, Elise helped found The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit digital start-up, after stops at many stations as a television news reporter. Her journalism work has won the national Edward R. Murrow and duPont Columbia awards, among others. An honors graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, she lives in Los Angeles.

Can you begin by telling us a little bit about how Flawless came to be and what made you want to write about K-beauty?

It’s my unfinished business from my time in Seoul. Especially in the last year I spent living in Korea, I was constantly chasing the latest geopolitical headlines (namely, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s big moves that year). It meant I didn’t get to delve into my nagging frustrations of feeling second-class as an Asian woman in Korea and the under-reported experiences of South Korean women at the time. They were staging record-setting women’s rights rallies during my time abroad in response to a stark gender divide in Korea. It is one of the world’s most influential countries (and the 10th largest economy) and ranks shockingly low on gender equality metrics. That imbalance really shows up in what’s expected of how women should look and behave. Flawless explores the intersection of gender politics and beauty standards.

Flawless punctuates reportage with life writing, anchoring the research within your subjective context as someone who lived in the middle of it but also had an outside eye on it. Was this a conscious decision before you began writing?

I planned to have fewer of my personal stories in the book, actually. Originally, I wanted to be embedded with South Korean women and girls who would illustrate the social issues I was investigating, but I wound up being the narrative thread because of the pandemic. The lockdowns and two years of long, mandatory quarantines in South Korea meant that traveling there and staying for a while to report and build on-the-ground relationships was nearly impossible. I also have three small children in LA, so the embedding plan was scuttled real fast.

One of the central questions the book asks of globalized society at large, corporations, and various communities is, “What is beauty for?” How has your response to this question changed while producing Flawless?

I think I’ve gotten simultaneously more optimistic and cynical about it. More cynical in that the more I researched beauty, the more I understood physical beauty as a class performance—humans have long used it to get into rooms—more power in relationships, social communities, economically, or all of the above at once. And, as a class performance, those with the most resources usually have the most access to doing the work it takes (spending the money) to look the part, which is marginalizing for everyone else and keeps lower classes in a cycle of wanting and reaching. On the flip side, I’m more optimistic about what beauty is for, in that I have learned to separate beauty from appearance: I think of beauty in the way I think about love or truth, these universal—and largely spiritual—ideas that we all seek, that feed our souls. And that’s a way to frame beauty that isn’t tied in with overt consumerism or having to modify ourselves at all.

This is your first book—has anything surprised you in the publishing or publicity process for Flawless?

I was most surprised by how much I enjoyed recording my own audiobook! I felt most in flow and joyful doing that more than anything else. Each sentence I read aloud was exactly the way I heard it in my head when I wrote it, which is such a privilege to have been able to do as an author.

Do you have a favorite reaction from a reader?

I don’t know if it’s the favorite, but recency bias is a factor—I just got a DM this week from a woman writing about how the book helped put into words so much of what she felt and experienced, despite the fact she is not ethnically Korean, or in Korea, which is the setting of most of the book. It means a lot to me that reporting or art can connect us and illuminate shared experiences…in this case, learning to be more embodied and okay with however we look.

As a writer, journalist, and mother—how did you practice self-care when juggling work commitments, social life, and the creative processes of writing and editing?

I juggled by relying on my loved ones. I don’t think self-care can exist without caring for one another, and that means asking people in our circles for help. A lot of boba dates, long walks, laughter-filled phone calls, and random weekend trips really got me through the arduous project of book writing (more painful than childbirth, emotionally speaking).

What is your writing routine like, and how did the process differ from your other reporting work? Did you pick up any habits that you’ve held on to?

My book writing routine was very meandering, whereas my broadcast reporting and writing are quite linear. I have tight deadlines for news, so it’s wham, bam, and the piece is out. With the book, I had two years to turn in a manuscript. I spent the year of lockdowns in “incubation mode,” where I consumed a lot of books, white papers, articles, and some films and podcasts, just taking in a lot of ideas to see where they might collide with each other and raise questions worth reporting on, letting them swim around in the swamp of my brain. When I was ready to write, I had a freelance editor, the indefatigable Carrie Frye, break my book outline into chunks so I could focus on smaller objectives and specific deadlines. Chunking the book so it didn’t seem like such a massive undertaking helped a lot. As for the writing, I never got to do a writer’s retreat or some idyllic cabin getaway to write. I wrote in the in-between moments—a one or two hour window when I had a break from the TED conference (which I attend every year as a TED host) or in those moments after the kids’ bedtime and before my own. One good habit I got into was getting away from my computer at midday. I’m really good about making lunch dates or going for a run to break up the monotony of staring at my screen all day long.

What’s good advice you’ve received about journalism that you would pass on to anyone just starting out?

All good reporting comes from great questions. Start with a clear question you seek to answer in your story, project, or book, and stay true to it and your quest to answer it. Once you are clear on what the thing is about, you won’t risk wandering too far from your focal point.

Thanks to Elise for answering our questions! You can follow her over at @elisegoeseast and check out her book Flawless here!

#writer spotlight #elise hu #flawless #k-beauty #beauty #beauty industry #feminism #gender politics #seoul #south korea #journalism #writing advice #reportage #flawlessthebook

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melissasdreams · 11 months

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I’m sick of reading stories in the media about ‘trans issues’ and stories about whether claims of gender dysphoria are genuine, or whether it’s some sort of fad exploiting vulnerable adolescents, etc. The truth is gender dysphoria is real, and no it’s not a made up “thing”. Some people are born with genitalia inconsistent with their internal identity of self, and it causes misery and anguish beyond belief.

Why the fuck do we as transpeople put up with this? And why should we have to justify our feelings and beliefs to anyone?? If we decide ourselves we were brought up in the wrong gender and we want to change it, what right does anyone else have to question that??? I’m sick of us being required to somehow justify our existence. We’re human beings. No different to anyone else. So if I want to grow breasts, wear a dress and fuck men that’s my business and no one else’s’!

Gay men decided long ago they weren’t going to be social pariahs. We need to do the same!

#live your truth #be valid #fuckwhatotherpeoplethink

Love, Melissa xox 💖❤️⭐️👗🌸

#boys will be girls #mtf #trans mtf #m2f transformation #mtf politics #gender #gender politics #trans politics #live your best life #love life #follow your dreams #live your truth #live your dreams #trans for trans

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heart-of-poetry · 8 months

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tbh the very concepts of “feminine” vs “masculine” are entirely man made constructs. just imagine…thousands and thousands of years ago when we were cavemen, do you really think they were like “look at this BLUE sky, it’s so manly and masculine!” or “look at the PINK flower, how feminine and girly!” of course not. because that’s stupid. and do you think they were like “you can’t play with this dirt! girls have to cook!” and “sorry bud you can’t sleep with your friend because he’s a guy and that is a SIN!” NOOOOOOOO.

like there’s nothing wrong with identifying as a woman or a man, and I myself identify as a woman, but I do wonder how much of that is due to the societal definition surrounding femininity. it will be interesting to see how my relationship to femininity and womanhood change as I reconstruct my definitions of those things.

anyways, I think that the increased exploration of gender identities is beneficial to EVERYONE. when we can accept that gender is a construct, we can more freely explore ourselves without worrying about fitting into the boxes of “feminine” and “masculine”

#wlw #wlw yearning #boygenius #julien baker #literature #lucy dacus #phoebe bridgers #webweaving #writing #yearning #queer politics #gender politics #gender #genderfluid #queer community

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sarahowritesostucky · 3 months

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📖"The Carter Academy for Omega Excellence" Pt5

Rated: Explicit

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Bucky Barnes

Tags: age gap, boarding school au, a/b/o, dub-con/non-con, spanking, feminization, dumbification, sexism, misogyny, prostate milking, discipline, D/s elements, hurt/comfort, mentions of past self-harm, predatory behavior, teacher/student, bathroom use control

Summary: Bucky's parents ship him off to Steve's reform school to help him get straightened out into a "proper young omega."

Part 5 - In Science-Based Practice, cont'd

(Wait! I haven't read a previous chapter! Masterlist)

Handing the Barnes kid off to Sharon is … more difficult than it should be. And it bothers Steve once he’s alone in his office again and can really think about it. How easily he’s crossed the line with this boy already.

It’s not the touching or the dominating. That alone is nothing out of the ordinary, practically par for the course when dealing with a troubled new student. But as soon as Bucky’s gone, his scent still lingering in the room, Steve is feeling guilty for how personal he’d made it. It’s not even his behavior so much as it is his thoughts. Steve is affectionate with many of his omega charges, especially the more high needs boys, but it’s what was going on in his head that was so inappropriate.

He’d been picturing Bucky in situations—namely situations with him. He can’t lie to himself that he hadn’t been imagining the heated aftermath of a well-deserved spanking: Bucky bare-assed and red faced, crying, crawling, mewling for permission to warm Steve’s cock. Or the boy in his bed: in the morning after a long night spent breeding him up, that sweet, soft body underneath Steve, sleepy and pliant, getting fucked lazily into the sheets …

He spends a moment at the door after he’s closed it behind Sharon and Bucky. That entire wall is dark woodwork, bookcases surrounding the elaborately carved doorway. He leans his weight through his arms and stares at the floor, taking in a few deep breaths and trying to convince himself that all of this has just been a reaction of circumstance. Surely, he thinks, it must have more to do with the divorce, with his heavy workload and his dealings with Peggy and the lawyers. It must have to do with all the stress; brought on by the restructuring of Carter Academy, by nights spent sleeping on his office couch, and by the uncertain future of a house that he’s currently persona non grata in. It’s all of that, plus his ever growing need to get laid that’s made him so sensitive to being around an omega, not anything particularly special about Bucky.

Steve pushes away from the door and turns around. His eyes fall on the discarded set of underwear on the floor in front of his desk. He tenses, belly swirling hard at the memory of that sweet little whimper Bucky had made when he’d lost control and wet himself. Fuck, it’d been amazing. Steve had almost popped a knot right then and there, watching the way the boy’s eyes had gotten all big and watery and confused, his cheeks pinked up so nicely, not fully understanding what his body had just done …

Nostrils flaring, Steve stalks over to where the underwear lie on the carpet and snatches them up, intending to chuck them straight into the bin. But … something stays his hand. He winds up walking around the desk with them, sitting down in his chair and holding them in his lap, staring at the tiny wet patch of release that Bucky left behind in the cup of the jock. It’s wet like urine but clear and sweet-smelling like slick, and Steve is struck by the urge to bury his face in it.

Even from this distance, the scent is noticeable; pungent and rich, an obscene perfume that Steve instinctively wants to rub on himself. It calls to all of his baser urges, making his skin feel hot and his dick feel heavy. Hesitatingly, because he knows that he shouldn’t, Steve lifts the underwear closer to his face. Halfway there and already the scent is enough to make his mouth water, his throat aching from a repressed growl. There’s something buried in that scent that Steve wants to tease out, something earthy and floral that’s uniquely Bucky, that promises so much more of what the omega has to offer. Steve groans quietly at the thought of tasting it. When was the last time a student released for him so easily? Bucky had responded to him so naturally …

He growls and shoves the soiled underwear away, pushing them halfway across the desk. It’s nothing, he thinks. He’s just pent up, stressed. He just needs to get laid. Maybe he’ll go into the city next weekend, rent a room and find some company. He’s never had much trouble chatting up the nearest person at a hotel bar, or attracting a willing partner to his bed. Omegas flock to him and have ever since he took control of his dominance in his late twenties.

Steve’s never been unfaithful to Peggy, and even now with the divorce, he’s been waiting until everything is finalized, not wanting to tarnish the vows that he’d meant so earnestly when he’d said them fourteen years ago. But an alpha his age has needs, and he’s been suppressing them for years. Maybe it’s time to cut himself some slack, call up a pairing agency and buy a companion for an hour or two. Get his mind off of this kid.

He’s dealt with thousands of students over the years, seen plenty of fresh-faced omegas pass through the school’s halls. And sure, sometimes there’ll be one or two that stick out in a given year; an especially defiant boy or a sweetly virginal girl, with beautiful faces, ripe young bodies, and a soul-deep yearning to be handled, but there’s never been one that especially stood out to him like this. Not like this.

Steve groans and cards his hands through his hair in frustration. He’d felt more in-tune with himself as an alpha during that short time with Bucky in his office than he has in a long time. He’d enjoyed himself with Bucky, had indulged himself in provoking the boy’s reactions, and even crossed a few lines of propriety if he was being honest with himself. It plagues his mind for a while, as he leans back in the desk chair and frowns, remembering all of the various ways he’d let himself be a little too intimate with the boy.

Bucky’s such a pretty young omega, and he’d smelled so good. Watching his defiance warring with his natural submissive urges had been delightful, every little twitch of insolence and natural, mewling submission going straight to Steve’s cock. There’s just something about him. He’s uncommonly beautiful, with his dark hair and soft chin and stormy blue eyes, but it’s his behavior that has Steve enthralled.

All that hurt and neediness he’s trying so hard to hide, not only from others but from himself as well. A hastily cobbled-together shield of promiscuity and callousness. It’s pathetically see-through, terribly desperate, and it gets Steve’s cock harder than anything he’s dealt with recently. Right from the very first, bratty word that emanated from Bucky’s mouth, up until that last, puny whimper. Steve hasn’t been completely flaccid since the boy started mulishly snarfing scones off the tea tray in front of his parents.

“Christ.” He pushes out from the desk when he feels his pants growing uncomfortably tight again. His office has a private bathroom, and he abruptly decides to make use of it. He won’t get any work done if he just stays sitting here, stewing in his own pheromones.

He stomps over there and shuts himself into the tiny water closet, leans against the door and jerks himself off ruthlessly, efficiently, coming into the toilet bowl with gritted teeth and a laboured grunt, his hand gripped viciously over the base of his shaft to prevent an inconvenient knotting. It’s unsatisfactory because he’s still denying his body what it really wants, but it’s enough to release most if not all of the tension for the moment.

Not having been given their fair due, his balls still do kind of throb and ache in complaint as he tucks himself back into his slacks. But on the positive side, he was already so worked up when he started jerking it that he’s able to honestly say that he didn’t really think of Bucky while he was at it. He didn’t really think of anything besides the feeling of his own hand on his dick.

Sighing, he washes his hands and goes back out, settling in at his desk to submit the form he’s filled out on Bucky’s heats and to compose a preliminary assessment. Already, he thinks he’s got a good handle on where a lot of the boy’s issues stem from. He opens a new file for student assessment and types in a few points that he’ll return to elaborate on later, once he’s had more interaction with the boy:

“Boyfriend” + brief, insufficient pairing aged 14 — unfulfilled?: Abandonment complex, betrayal complex, trust issues.

Parental situation: lacking authoritative father figure, preoccupied beta mother, dominant unrelated male beta in the household. No healthy A-o relationship modeling.

Values: liberal school system, beta peers, common social expectations (not being a burden, not displaying strong needs, etc.) Emotional repression, mock-dominant behavior, cutting.

Review: history of suppressant use, medical exam

It’s a shorthand that he’s typed out for many other students, reflecting a devolving behavioral pattern that Steve could recognize in his sleep at this point. Just another classic example of what you get when you try to ideologize a pubertal omega out of their biological needs, urges and instincts: catastrophe.

He hopes that Sharon will be a good fit for the boy. She’s one of the more laid back Handlers, and Steve is hoping she’ll be able to ease Bucky into his new lifestyle here at the school. If not, then more severe dominance will be needed, and Steve might have to take a more hands-on approach.

He closes out the documentation on Bucky and navigates to his email, shooting off a message to the school nurse informing her that he needs an exam scheduled for a new student. Bucky being on suppressants for two years shouldn’t make Steve as uncomfortable as it does. There are omegas out there who take that poison for decades or more, after all. As long as Bucky stays off it from here on out, there should be minimal chance of long-term harm. Irrational as it is, Steve still knows he’ll feel better once he’s seen the results of a full medical workup on the boy. He marks the appointment request as 📨*Stat: urgent priority.

There’s a message from Schuyler & Banks—Peggy’s divorce lawyers—and rather than ignoring it like he wants to, Steve forces himself to open it and deal with whatever drama they’re lobbing his way now. The email informs him that his soon-to-be ex-wife is requesting his signature to agree to listing the house. Steve growls at the screen and immediately starts typing out a response that uses a lot of big words and essentially amounts to another adamant No.

This may be the biggest thing he and Peggy have fought over since the separation started. They bought the Pendergast Street house nearly ten years ago, with full intentions of growing old and grey there together. It’s a two hundred year old cottage, practically picturesque with its wattle and stone exterior, thatched straw roof, and one of the village’s canals running directly behind the back garden. It’s small and cramped and thoroughly lived-in, and it’s the place where Steve thought he’d spend the rest of his life with the person he loved. It kills him that Peggy wants to sell it.

She doesn’t need the money, Steve thinks angrily. And he’s already offered her fair market value for it. Pegs is just being vindictive and trying to deny him the ability to keep the place and the memories it holds, bitter about Steve wanting to one day maybe have a family there with someone else. He emails his refusal on the matter and cc’s his own attourney, pissed off at Peggy all over again, and moves on to dealing with his actual work-related matters.

There’s an email from P. Potts, informing him that Stark will be flying in for the upcoming parents’ weekend, and requesting coordination on a suitable landing site for the man’s personal helicopter. Steve rolls his eyes and forwards the email to his secretary to sort out. If the Stark foundation didn’t give a hefty endowment to the academy each year, Steve wouldn’t put up with the man’s antics. But it does, so he does.

Peter Parker is an intelligent and precocious student who attends Carter Academy at Tony’s behest. The two are of no relation, as Steve had initially assumed. Rather, Parker is Stark’s ward and attends through a STEM scholarship program. The Stark foundation sponsors several such scholarship slots each year, of course; but Tony has maintained a keen eye on the boy’s education since he started there, and Steve has gradually become aware that the billionaire’s interest is … more than strictly philanthropic.

It’s not unheard of for an older alpha to care for an omega that way, even in this day and age. Steve himself has considered the prospect before. Taking on an omega youth as a dependent partner wouldn’t be frowned upon, and especially not in the circles he himself travels in. It’s more his role as headmaster that might act as an impediment to propriety, and Steve has always been careful to avoid worrying the parents, alumni, and other various benefactors of the school that he may have any conflicts of interest with respect to their sons.

Some of the most posh and exclusive families in Britain and Continental Europe send their children to Carter Academy, and they certainly aren’t dropping sixty grand a semester so that their children can be matched up with some stodgy academic. Steve may be educated and financially stable, but he still isn’t the sort of match that most of Carter Academy’s parents are looking to fix their sons up with. He has no vast fortune, no estate, no title, and—perhaps the biggest offense of all—he’s American.

With a student body made up of nothing but omegas in their prime breeding years, it’s fair to say that Steve is—and always has been—surrounded by prospects for temptation each and every day. He’d honestly thought himself rather numb to it at this point, able to separate work from pleasure, students from everyone else. All those years married to Peggy and he simply had to be that way, if he wanted his marriage to work.

But now he’s getting divorced. That changes things. With the Barnes boy, he’s finding the temptation to take on an omega mate newly rekindled. And Bucky would be so easy to mold and shape the way he wants. Steve could help him, he could care for him. Bucky’s young and healthy, he could give Steve pups, and his fiery temperament would only make the act of subduing him that much sweeter.

Steve’s eyes slide back over to the underwear on his desk, to the wet patch of release that Bucky’s body had given up so readily for him. Steve’s not sure when the last time was he came across an omega to whom he felt so naturally inclined. The draw of the boy’s scent alone is … considerable.

Unable to get it out of his mind, he opens a new email and begins to compose a short letter to Tony. Maybe it’s time the two of them have a bit of a sit down chat. They can have drinks, catch up, review next year's endowments from the Stark Foundation, and perhaps even veer into discussing more personal topics … such as the intricacies of responsibly grooming impressionable young omegas.

Bucky doesn’t see Steve again for the rest of that day, and he’s both relieved and disappointed.

Relieved, because he definitely needed a break from that high pressure situation. Naked or no, he certainly couldn’t have sustained much more interaction at that level of intensity. He’s not sure if he would’ve gone to his knees and face planted in Steve’s crotch first, or thrown a tantrum and tried to punch the guy square in the nuts, but he’s smart enough to know that either choice would’ve been a disaster.

Disappointed, because he’s left feeling utterly bereft once all of that rich, heady stimulation is removed.

It’s one of those times where he doesn’t realize that he likes something until he’s had it taken away. Instantly, he misses being in Steve’s presence, the realization peeling back as he’s led about by Sharon in a sort of informal orientation session. He wonders why Steve chose her to be his handler, because she’s not at all similar to the overbearing Headmaster.

Sharon seems really laid back and chill. Bucky doesn’t feel on edge or self-conscious around her, and she doesn’t seem to be overly concerned with his behavior in any outward way, either. Sure, she keeps her eye on him, she explains the rules, but the vibe Bucky gets from her is more like a slightly disinterested older sister who’s showing him the ropes, rather than someone who’s going to be exercising any kind of severe authority over him. It’s not that bad, or at least not like what Bucky was picturing it would be like. Sharon’s okay, he decides. Sharon he can live with.

But, if Steve truly thinks that Bucky needs so much structure and discipline or whatever, then Bucky can’t fathom why he’s been paired with Sharon. She’s certainly a poor substitute for the utterly dominating, older alpha male that Bucky encountered earlier, and he winds up distracted and reimagining the things Steve had said and done to him in the office, daydreaming about it while Sharon shows him the library, explains school rules, tells him she’s a low-protocol Handler, etc., etc.

Even the things that’d made him so mad and humiliated at the time; now they elicit different feelings. Bucky’s body thrums hot and sensitive when he remembers the low rumble of Steve’s Voice, the woodsy smell of his cologne over top of his natural scent, the firmness of his thigh muscle against Bucky’s face, how big and rough his hand had looked when he’d cupped Bucky in between his legs and purred threats at him like another kind of oral sex … how he’d called him things, called him a “good girl” …

… Ohh, he thinks, as he’s walking along with Sharon. Maybe padded underwear and loose dresses aren’t the worst thing he could be wearing. They definitely do a lot to hide … reactions that would otherwise be quite noticeable in slacks. People joke about alpha teenagers getting unfortunate stiffies, but the thing about having an omega-sized prick is that there’s really no pushing it down or tucking it this way or that. Nothing between Bucky’s legs is ever gonna make it up to the helpful elastic of a waistband when he’s inconveniently aroused. Nope, he just gets a stiff length that pokes straight out from his body and can’t be concealed with anything short of a book in his lap.

So the uniform winds up having a bit of a silver lining. And Bucky does start to feel less ridiculous the longer he goes around in the outfit. It’s not as though the thing is all frilly and girly or anything like that. In fact if it’s guilty of anything, it's the cardinal sin of frumpiness committed by all private school uniforms. Nobody bats an eye at him as he goes about the campus with Sharon, which helps.

And of course Bucky’s aware that omegas dressed like this in the past, he’s just not used to it. The only other place he’s ever seen omega boys in skirts is in history textbooks or period dramas. It does help to see all the other first year students going about wearing the same thing as him and acting like it’s no big deal, and with the school being such an old, castley-type setting, it almost seems appropriate.

Plus, the boner-concealment thing. That’s good.

When Sharon asks him how he liked meeting “Headmaster Rogers,” Bucky’s left to bumble out a flustered reply that mostly consists of ‘ums’, and ‘erms’, and ‘fines’. Sharon shoots him a smirk like she knows what the problem is, and when Bucky promptly points to something random to change the subject, she indulges him.

It’s a good thing he got out of Steve’s office when he did, Bucky thinks. He doesn’t think he could’ve taken much more of the alpha’s domineering presence without doing something he’d come to regret. And as much as he’d maybesortakinda liked the things that Steve made him feel, he still feels like he’s run an emotional half-marathon in the span of little more than the hour he actually spent with the man. It’s good to have breathing room, time to think, to process … whatever the hell that’d been.

He’s never felt like how he felt in Steve’s office, and it’s embarrassing because he’s pretty sure that Steve: A) knows this, and B) wasn’t nearly so affected himself. Steve had kept his cool perfectly, had seemed more amused by Bucky’s reactions than anything else. He probably knows exactly how muzzy-headed Bucky was feeling by the end of it all, how hot and tight his belly was, how much his hole was pulsing and leaking into his underwear. Hell, Steve had as good as told him that he could tell, just by sight and smell alone.

‘You don’t have to deny it, honey. I already know.’

Ugh. God. It’s so cringeworthy. Bucky’s body had betrayed him in about a half dozen ways, back in Steve’s office, and he feels frustrated that he didn’t act with more composure. He wants a redo of the whole, horrible encounter. One where he doesn’t act just like the desperate, mewling loser that Steve already thinks he is.

Sharon takes him to settle into his bedroom that evening, and it’s a typical dorm room setup: bed, bedside table, dresser, desk, chair. There’s a small wardrobe that’s stuffed to the brim with all sorts of extra blankets and pillows—for nesting, Sharon informs him. Bucky’s never been one to indulge in the habit, but maybe it could be nice to try it here. Maybe it might feel cozy. There are a lot of really nice things inside the wardrobe, to which he feels instinctively drawn when he drags his fingers over their soft and poofy textures. He actually starts to get mildly enthused: about the idea of nesting, and about the fact that he’s getting his own private room rather than having to share a communal dorm room with a dozen other boys like he’d been imagining …

Until he spots the cameras that are up high in two of the bedroom’s corners, their little red lights blinking ominously down at him. Bucky stares up at them, calculating. The way they’re positioned …

Shit.

They cover every square inch of the room. Bucky’s heart sinks with dismay as he realizes what this means.

“Oh, yeah,” Sharon says when she sees him looking. “We call those the nanny cams.”

Bucky fights back a cringe. He hears Steve’s “no masturbation allowed” speech playing on a horrible loop in his mind as Sharon delivers a practiced spiel about how “privacy is not something students are entitled to” at Carter Academy, and that he’ll be monitored “pretty much everywhere” he goes.

Shit-fuck-shit and goddammit.

If Sharon notices his internal freak out, she doesn’t say anything. She just supervises from the doorway while Bucky changes for bed, ensuring that he puts on a fresh pair of the ridiculous double-underwear and reminding him of the no masturbation rule. It’s humiliating, and Bucky almost snaps something nasty at her, but by that point he’s so fucking tired from the overwhelming day he’s had that he merely grunts out an unhappy, “Got it.”

He briefly considers asking her if she’ll “milk” him like Steve said he could, but his embarrassment gets the better of him and he just turns to lie facing the wall instead, pulling the blankets up to his chin and ignoring Sharon as she turns the lights off and bids him goodnight from the doorway. There is no door for her to close.

Bucky sleeps surprisingly well, though his dreams are intense and filled with a certain Alpha Headmaster. He wakes the next day to the unpleasant combination of a morning erection, and Sharon rapping her knuckles on his bedside table.

“Morning! Time to get up, get dressed. Breakfast in ten minutes!”

She escorts him around campus like the world’s most overpaid babysitter, first to the dining hall for breakfast and then to class after that. She seems to understand that Bucky isn’t at all happy to be there, so she doesn’t get overly bossy with him or try to force much conversation. Bucky begrudgingly appreciates her for it, and he starts to think that maybe it won’t be so bad here with her as his Handler. Maybe Steve knew what he was doing, assigning them together.

Sharon’s like having an older sister—one who feels free to nag you and boss you around. Bucky thinks he can deal with that. She’s kinda hot at least, and Bucky doesn’t think he’d mind being bent over and milked by her if push came to shove, so he tries to get along to go along, so to speak, doing his best to follow the rules she points out and to not piss her off too early in the game.

The Handlers are all grad students, it turns out. People in their twenties who are studying to become educators or therapists themselves. Some are women, some are men, but all of them are alpha. They go around in stuffy tweed suits that are almost as dorky as the outfit Bucky’s being forced to wear. Overall the look is pretty unremarkable … except for the leashes that they keep on hand. Those are worn at the hip, rolled up and attached to their belts as a constant threat to keep their charges in line.

Or at least that’s how Bucky reads it, because all of the students wear collars. First years like him wear the orangish-brown, with the gradient of the leather turning a shade lighter for every year up the wearer is. There are other first years who seem to be his age, but there are also some who seem younger and some who are obviously older. Bucky’s confused about it until Sharon explains to him that, as a reform school, Carter Academy sorts its students by years of attendance, not by age.

She points out the coloring system with the collars as they pass different students, and explains the symbolism. Turns out, the little metal placards aren’t engraved with their own names, but rather with the initials “S.G.R.”—Steve’s initials—to remind the students that while they’re under the custody of Carter Academy, Steve is their acting Alpha. Mortifyingly, Bucky pops a boner the first time he hears that, and the only verbal thing he’s able to squeak out at Sharon afterwards is a strangled little, “W-what does the ‘G’ stand for?”

Bucky knows super conservative people sometimes wear collars as a sort of political statement, but it’s rare to see in the area where he’s from. At first it doesn’t seem like the collars serve much purpose other than such a statement, but it isn’t long until Bucky starts noticing the way his shoulders untense and his insides relax, even within the first ten minutes or so of wearing it. Every time he swallows, he’s reminded of the band around his throat, and he instantly relaxes all over again in a sort of weird little feedback loop. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s the way the leather mimics the sensation of a Hold. Bucky can still remember how his legs had all but gone to jelly when Steve Held him in his office. The collar only provides a fraction of a fraction of that feeling, but it’s still nice.

Nice for now, anyways. He sees some of the other students being led around from place to place with their Handlers’ leashes clipped to their collars. Most of them act like it’s no big deal and walk around calmly like nothing’s amiss. When Bucky asks if they’re being punished for something, Sharon says no, blithely remarking that while it can be used as a ‘consequence’, it’s more often just a part of some students’ regular wellness regimens.

It’s pretty darn easy to spot the few students who are being led around on leashes for punishment purposes, though. Those boys get dragged around a little more sternly by their Handlers, all sullen expressions and watery eyes. Sometimes they’ve also been made to go around in just their underwear and sweaters, or even naked, their backsides visibly pinked or even bruised from recent spankings. Bucky is horrified by the realization that Steve wasn’t lying when he warned of clothing privileges being taken away. He wants to ask what on earth might warrant a punishment like that, just so that he knows precisely what not to do, but he’s too embarassed to ask.

Instead he trails after Sharon to breakfast in the dining hall, and then off to his morning classes. Given that his entire schedule has apparently been made without an iota of his own opinion or input, he’s surprised, bordering-on-startled, when his first subject of the day turns out to be English Lit. And he’s been put in an advanced placement class so that the material is sufficiently challenging.

This must be what his old Principal was making him take all that testing for, he thinks.

The classrooms all have wooden desks—the old fashioned, two seater types where the student’s seat faces the worktop and the tutor’s seat faces the opposite direction on the side. The Handlers sit in the tutor’s seats, their backs to the teacher at the front of the classroom and all of their attention on their assigned students. It’s a very intense experience, Bucky’s coming to realize, to always feel like he’s being watched so closely. He won’t be able to get away with much under these conditions, that’s for sure.

His mood isn’t too bad, however, as he makes it through that first class and realizes that he’s actually going to be receiving a real education at this place. Ever since he found out yesterday that Carter Academy was an omegas-only reform school, he hasn’t held high hopes that he’d be taught many real academic subjects, only silly homemaking lessons and child rearing classes and maybe, like, ballroom dancing or something.

So he’s quite happy to pay attention in English Lit, and then in his second period class of French 2, his spirits slowly and cautiously lifting because the teachers don’t seem to be dumbing down the material at all. Bucky may be someone who’s easily distracted, occasionally with alternative priorities, but he’s always been an A-B student. He starts to believe that he might actually receive a decent education at this place. It helps lift his mood from sullen and sour, to cautiously optimistic.

He goes about the morning in a suspended state of “maybe this won’t be so bad,” only for it to come crashing down in a series of brutal reality checks. And all before lunchtime, too.

First, he witnesses something that turns his face red and his cock rigid. It happens when he and Sharon are walking down the hallway towards his next class. There’s a boy bent over with his hands on a bench, and his Handler is right behind: spanking him. The boy’s a first year, with an orange-brown collar and skirted uniform like Bucky’s, the hemline of which is flipped up over his back and his briefs are pulled down under the curve of his bare ass.

Bucky realizes that the jockstraps can and do remain on for spanking activities, but he doesn’t stop walking to look. If anything, he walks even faster to get away from it. He’s suddenly very glad that he’s got his own padded jock on to hide his body’s reaction to the scene. “What the hell?” he mutters to Sharon once they’ve passed. Sharon just smirks and pats him on the shoulder, telling him not to worry: they’ve been having great luck with his behavior so far and he’s far off from earning anything like a spanking.

Well. That luck runs out when, halfway through the lesson of his next class, Bucky realizes he has to go to the bathroom. He glances over at Sharon and whispers, “Hey. I ah, I have to go to the bathroom.”

Sharon raises her eyebrow, which by now Bucky knows means: Ask me the right way.

He blushes and mumbles even more quietly, “Please, may I go use the restroom?”

Sharon nods and signals to the teacher that they’re leaving, then she guides Bucky out into the hallway and down to the bathrooms. Nothing goes awry until they get down there and Bucky discovers that: 1) there are no urinals, 2) there are no stall doors, 3) he’s expected to sit to pee, and 4) that Sharon is fully planning to watch him do it. Like, not even avert-her-eyes type watching like they do for drug tests. She plans to stand there and attentively watch him take a piss.

“You’re kidding,” Bucky says, looking back and forth between the toilet and Sharon, as if she’ll suddenly declare it a joke and move away to give him privacy. When she does no such thing and merely stands there with her arms crossed, Bucky scoffs and turns away from the toilet in refusal. “No way. I’m not just gonna go in front of you.” Sharon’s eyebrow rises, and Bucky’s eyes narrow into slits. “And I don’t sit to pee.”

“You do now,” she tells him plainly, looking very unimpressed. When Bucky moves to step out of the stall, she widens her stance and steps in closer, blocking his way out. “Are we going to have a problem here, James?”

Bucky glowers at her. “What possible reason could there be for you to stand there and watch me take a piss?!” he demands—quite loudly, too. He’s expecting Sharon to react by scolding him or grabbing him or something. What he doesn’t expect is for her to shrug as if she couldn’t give a crap, and pull out her cellphone. She taps the screen and then puts it to her ear, her eyes fixed smugly on Bucky as she calls someone.

Bucky scowls, but that expression slides right off his face when the call is answered and Sharon says, “Hello Headmaster,” into the phone. “You said to call if we ran into any misbehavior?”

Bucky blanches. “Seriously?” he hisses, and when Sharon simpers like a grade-A snot at him, he realizes that this is actually probably still what having an older sister is really like; he was just romanticizing the fuck out of it, earlier. Bucky’s always liked being an only child.

“Yes, Sir. I’ve got James Barnes refusing bathroom protocol up at the west second floor loo. Should I handle it, or are you able to swing by?” Bucky’s eyes widen and his stomach sinks even further as Sharon responds to something Steve has said over the line and says, “Okay, sure. See you soon.” She ends the call and puts her phone back in her pocket, giving Bucky a patronizing smile once she meets his—no doubt horrified—expression. “Just hang tight,” she says. “Headmaster Rogers will be here in a sec.”

Fuck.

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