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steddieas-shegoes · 4 months

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fairy porn crisis

for @steddieholidaydrabbles prompt 'bookstore au' wc: 964 rated m cw: dirty talk, implied sexual content tags: bookshop owner eddie, steve is having a sexuality crisis but subtly, flirting, getting together, modern au

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"Thanks for covering for me, Wayne," Eddie said as he set his bag down behind the front desk, slightly out of breath from running from the bus. "Won't happen again."

"'S alright, son. Everything go okay with the counselor?" Wayne sipped from his mug, probably his fourth or fifth cup of coffee since he opened the shop that morning.

"Yep. Still on track to graduate in May."

Wayne's stipulation when he "sold" the bookshop to Eddie was that he still get his degree as backup. "Bookselling is a dangerous game and I won't have ya strugglin' if somethin' fails."

"Thatta boy," Wayne clapped him on the shoulder. "Been a slow morning. But your favorite customer is in the back."

Eddie felt his face heat up.

"He's not my favorite."

"Sure he isn't." Wayne rolled his eyes. "I'm off to get a beer with Dave. Call if you need me."

Eddie gave him a thumbs up as he checked over his emails, the one thing Wayne was terrible about doing when he was covering the store. There weren't many, never really were on Tuesdays.

He waited for Wayne to leave, the door chiming with his exit.

He jumped up and made his way around the counter, walking towards the back room hastily.

He found Steve sitting on the beanbag placed in the corner, book in his lap, face bright red.

Eddie squinted until he could see what book he was reading and nearly passed out.

His Ring was the first book in a series focused entirely on a group of queer mythical creatures. It was the only book of the series Eddie had read, and he'd only admit it under risk of death.

It wasn't that it wasn't good. It's just that it was basically porn.

And this one in particular focused on two male fairies, one who was gay and one who spent the entire first half of the book having a bisexuality crisis.

Steve was reading it with the prettiest blush on his face.

Steve, who up until this moment, passed as the straightest human being Eddie had ever met.

"Have you gotten to the part where Ereldi has to sit on Brelend's lap for an entire dinner?" Eddie asked.

Steve jumped and slammed the book closed, pushing it under his legs as if Eddie hadn't already called him out. "What are you talking about?"

"Stevie, I'm the last person to judge your reading habits. But I do have to ask why the sudden interest in queer fairy porn? You're usually reading sports memoirs and doing word searches."

In other words, 'are you interested in testing out your sexuality with me? I can pretend to be a mythical being if needed.'

"Just needed a change of scenery?"

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

Steve's blush deepened, and fuck, Eddie was about to be so unprofessional. Hopefully he wouldn't lose a customer over it, but it was a risk he had to take.

It's just that sometimes Eddie could swear Steve was watching him while he shelved books or swept the front room floors. And sometimes he caught him staring at him during his weekly storytime for kids where he gave out free books and cookies.

And Eddie always wanted to have Steve in his lap.

So.

"I." Steve refused to make eye contact, a sure sign that something was going on. "I just got curious. Heard someone talking about it and wanted to see if they were telling the truth."

"And were they?"

Steve didn't answer, so Eddie decided it was now or never.

"You know," he took a few steps closer to Steve. "I'm not usually one for those books. But there's something about the way they paint a very clear picture of how Ereldi rides Brelend in the forest that just draws me in." Another few steps. "Actually, Ereldi reminds me a bit of you."

Steve visibly gulped.

"But you wouldn't be interested in riding someone would you, Stevie? Prefer women to hop onto your lap and go for a ride?" Eddie's heart was racing.

And then it stopped completely when Steve gave the most unexpected answer he could have possibly given.

"I'd be interested in riding you."

Steve's wide eyes stared back at Eddie, daring him to make a joke, daring him to laugh.

Eddie wouldn't joke or laugh about this. He wasn't wasting this chance.

"Is the forest a requirement or could I go lock the front door and take you upstairs?"

Okay, so he couldn't not make a little joke.

"Forest sounds messy. Upstairs."

"Oh, I plan to make a mess of you regardless of location, sweetheart," Eddie leaned over Steve, foreheads touching, smirk growing as Steve's eyes closed. "Won't even have to get you hard, huh? The book did all the work for me."

Steve tilted his head back, lips puckering, searching for contact from Eddie's.

Eddie pulled away. "I close up in ten. You know the way upstairs?"

Steve's eyes blinked open as he nodded.

God, he was gonna be fun.

"You wanna be a good boy and wait for me up there?" Steve nodded and stood from the chair, wobbling slightly as he tried to gain his balance. "I want you naked in bed when I get up there, got it?"

"Um, I've never-" Steve started.

"Oh, sweetheart. I know. It's written all over you. I'm gonna take real good care of you, though. Better than anything you would read in that book."

"Eddie?"

"Yeah, sugar?"

"I really like you."

Eddie heard what he wasn't saying, knew without a doubt that he had to do this right or risk scaring him away from more than just the store.

"I really like you, too, Stevie." Eddie kissed his cheek. "You're in good hands."

"I know."

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #steddieholidaydrabbles #bookshop au

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affixjoy · 2 months

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Just another exhausted covid rant since shouting into this void helps (?) for some reason.

I’m fairly confident in my analysis of the situation: covid is dangerous long term to brain and heart health. There’s so many studies saying this. It’s bad for adults, it’s bad for kids. My personal experience of having had it once backs this up—it could be unrelated but I’ve had memory issues and blood pressure/heart stuff going on since I had it in April. Covid is more than the initial symptoms and it’s bad.

But everyone I know is living in their happy little 2019 realities and asking me why I won’t send the kid to daycare, why I won’t take him to indoor storytimes, why do I still bother masking at the grocery store. Meanwhile they’ve had 3+ known covid infections and a slew of new medical issues they don’t even think to connect to that. Meanwhile their kids have been sick nonstop since November.

There’s a lot of times lately where I feel my resolve slipping. It’s hard and lonely being the only one who cares. And I don’t even mind so much for ME. I’ve been a chronically ill fat queer lady for most of my life, visibly not fitting in is nothing new to me. I can mask and set my boundaries without a lot of stress. But the pressure for the kid to have a “normal” childhood is enormous. As we get closer to school age it’s going to get harder and harder to restrict him to mostly outdoor activities, and I feel strongly that he should go to public school. I keep hoping there will be a tipping point before then and things will improve, but it’s looking pretty bleak.

By the miracles of vaccines and masks and air filtration he’s had zero known covid infections (even when I had it!) and I keep telling myself that the older he is when it inevitably happens the better. If I can reduce his number of infections by even one there’s a greater chance of him avoiding long covid damage.

All of this is worth it, but damn it’s hard, and I’m not sure how long I can keep it up.

#covid isn't over #covid 19 #covid #toddlers #raising a kid in an ongoing airborne pandemic is hard #and now I have to worry about measles???#wear a mask and clean the air

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bylertruther · 1 year

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not to be dark by acknowledging the material, but it really is so crazy how involved and all-encompassing the henry-will rape plots are. not only did he give him unimaginable trauma by hunting him in the upside down, but he also violated him in, like... every possible way? and violently so?

physically at the library (tentacle slug thing down his throat), via forced impregnation (throwing up baby demoslugs from the aforementioned), again on the field (possession via particles), and via the goosebumps that result from their psychic connection. will says that it came for him and that he tried to make it go away, but it got him. when asked what that means, he breaks down in sobs and says only that he felt it everywhere--everywhere--and that he still feels it, and he just wants it to be over. he can't explain the experience that completely and utterly terrifies him. he tries, but he just breaks down again until they urge him to express himself through his art.

his body is different after, too: colder, covered in sweat. he fears the bath, can't tolerate any warmth. when he sleeps, his body is elsewhere, eyes moving this way and that beneath his lids. he isn't in control of himself while being used, forced to do things he doesn't want to do, like choking his own mother who wants only to save him. even after they get it out of him, even after he's clean, he still feels it: that phantom touch, the scars, both visible and not. he describes it like a roller coaster drop, like your body is being plunged in freezing water. he breaks out in goosebumps on the back of his neck whenever he's near. even now, even when he should be safe and free, he isn't. even now, he's still there with him in his body.

psychically via their connection and his possession. dr. owens mistakes will's true sight experiences as being a ptsd symptom due to the anniversary effect. will is reaching out, trying to warn them, trying to get help before it's too late. he tells them that there's something watching him, something dangerous and evil that's been repeatedly trying to lure him out and get him alone, and they just... don't do anything, because they don't believe him. they tell him it's a figment of his imagination, a result of his trauma. it's not real, they say. it's not true, you're fine, nothing can hurt you now. he feels crazy for it, like no one understands or gets it, which obviously means that they must be right. he's too different now, like phineas gage. too much of a freak all because of what happened to him, and this is the proof. this, and the way that everyone treats him like a baby now, like he can't possibly handle himself anymore, because clearly he's proven himself too broken and helpless.

except... he's not crazy. he was right the entire time, but no one listened until it was too late and it got him. it wasn't enough to have him physically there inside of him before, now he's in his mind, too. they share thoughts and now-memories, feelings and experiences and sensations. rage, fear, pain, and more. him and henry, henry and him--as confirmed by season four. this was no monster above such pedestrian and foreign human concepts like morality, but a grown man that knew precisely what he was doing and was acting according to plan.

it was likely henry that followed him home that night and kidnapped him. it was henry that looked through his eyes, that wrapped his hand around joyce's throat, that robbed him of any agency and control over his own mind and body. it was henry that kept him from his memories and that stood between him and all of the people he loves. it was henry that flooded the laboratory with demodogs and sent them after him every time in effort to bring him back. it was henry that tried to kill eleven for daring to stop him. everything, that great evil that he felt in and around him, it was... a man. "some other queer," like troy and everyone else suspected, if you believe in the queer-coding. not a monster that doesn't understand the rules of their world, something abstract and inconceivable, but a human being just like him that does understand and simply doesn't care. because he thinks himself above the rules. because his plans are more important and they justify the means. because will's agency, his consent, and his entire life is nothing compared to this man's want.

and then... years later... when will is older, making steps to move forward, trying to get on with his life... there it is again: henry's presence in will's mind and at the back of his neck. the bitter realization that it was a man behind his torment. that it somehow still isn't over. that he's still there with him, in his body. that it always comes back to what happened, where it happened, and who happened.

it's, like... it's just so involved. a real and unending violation of each and every part of will: mind and body. is there anything, any part of will at all, that is truly his and only his? that has not been taken, touched, or given up for someone else? eleven was given closure with regard to her abuser, dr. brenner. when will it be his turn to be free? when will he be allowed to take his mind and body back and be just will again? when?

#rape tw #it's just ... so insane. genuinely insane and ongoing and in your face.#like... jesus fuck. you know?#making it a man behind the mind flayer is the biggest gut punch ever when you think about EVERYTHING that's happened.#mine #will #will analysis #csa tw #will & henry

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bunchacrunchcake · 4 months

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Dave Chapelle wrote the best trans joke I've ever heard. I say this as a trans author. He says for a trans woman (which I am,) no matter how much I augment my genitalia, it will never be a real vagina, even though it might look and feel just like the real thing. Then he says "Impossible pussy!" and slaps his knees. The camera cuts to a woman in the front row visibly upset and crying.

It's the perfect joke, its long, detailed, has cliff hangers, an edgy set up, and a really creative punch line that delivers social commentary both on trans vaginas and fake meat. It's masterful.

Chapelle says his one trans fan likes his jokes, so it's okay.

He says all oppression is not the same. He says he had to chew out a white women for letting her oppression take precedent over his as a black man in America.

The Black Panthers created the rainbow coalition specifically to guard against these divide and conquer tactics. The rainbow coalition spread to many countries, many races, creeds, religions, and genders. They aremed themselves because they knew the fight would be real, and dangerous. Black power, the Black Panther movement was about global unity and a drastic change in global power structures. Through COINTEL PRO and other efforts, the US Government played a large part in the assassination of leaders, downfall, and ultimate evisceration of the Black Panther Party which are now known as the Crips and Bloods.

They say you stop maturing the year you get famous. Chapelle I'm assuming stopped in his 20s because he seems, as a black person, to have missed the core message of BLM which is that our struggles are united and that if we don't shout BLACK TRANS LIVES MATTER from the rooftops and FREE PALESTINE during religious services, we are complicit in the racist system that Chappelle himself spent an entire hour on Inside the Actors Studio complaining about.

Black trans women are murdered at a higher rate than almost any part of the US population. Trans and queer people all across the globe are systematically murdered. Being trans and queer is illegal and punishable by death or prison in many countries. Women, white and non-white, are often preyed upon and trafficked for sex globally as well.

BLM is a critical part of global history as it allows us to unentangle the deep roots of the prison industrial complex as well as things like redlining, and white capitalism so that we can start the very, very long and arduous process of in some way equalizing the playing field for a group of people that had horrific things done to them for centuries at the hands of powerful leaders.

It is built into BLM that liberation for black people is liberation for all. Not that it comes at the cost of everyone's freedom. It is a revitalization of the Black Panther Party.

Dave did 3 specials about trans people. James Acaster says "Edgy comedians, no one tells them what they can and can't say. They walk on stage, do 10 solid minutes, slagging off transgender people. Straight out the gate, making fun of transgender people. If people get upset about it, they say "Bad luck! That's my job! I'm a stand up comedian! I like to challenge people! If you don't like being challenged! Don't come to my shows! What's the matter guys? Too challenging for ya?!" He rants and repeats that for a little while. And then he says "Oh yeah, you know who's been long overdue a challenge? The trans community. They've had their guard down for too long if you ask me. They'll be checking their privileged on the way home now thanks to you, you brave little cis boy. I used to say the name of that comedian and it made things really awkward. 2019, people still happy to laugh at trans people, not as comfortable laughing at, I've learned, Ricky Gervais."

Dave Chappelle, found his one trans fan (not even friend), and wasn't given, but TOOK our equivalent of the n-word pass from her.

N-word passes are not real. It's a joke you play on dumb white people. Basically you give a white kid "the pass" to see if they're dumb enough to say the n-word in front of other black people. Then you get to sit back and laugh as the entire room goes ballistic on them. "OH MY GOD REBECCA WALKED INTO CHEMISTRY AND SAID WHATS UP MY N****S TO THE WHOLE CLASS!"

One random person does not speak for the whole planet.

I have also heard many well crafted racist black, asian, and latino jokes. I do not tell them. Not because they're not funny. But because they are based off of stereotypes that don't actually represent the vastly diverse group of people in those communities. They also are usually an oppressive person's opinion of someone who is opressed. It is the literal definition of bullying.

Retelling prejudiced jokes actively causes harm to those people. It supports the propaganda surrounding those communities that let police justify extrajudicial murder, and it keeps the people thinking that when a cop shoots a black man for going for his wallet, it was because he was scary, not because the cop was racist.

That's why I don't tell racist jokes, even if they are "really good."

Also, stand up comedy can literally be about ANYTHING. Pete Davidson did a whole bit about deciding whether to fuck his mom. It wasn't funny. But here's the thing, it could have been.

He could have said "Well... I already stuck my head through it."

For every one lifetime trans fan Dave keeps, he loses thousands. We are shouting at you from the rooftops that you are harmful to our community and you are furthering racism, because you are assigning hierarchy to oppression and deciding who is and isn't allowed to be oppressed. Rich, white men are at the top of that power structure.

I laughed out loud when I heard that joke. And then I slowly realized that I couldn't ethically stomach watching Chapelle any more. I didn't even know I was trans then, but just as a human being I couldn't do it. People that lean into hate I just don't let into my circle anymore. Yes even masters of their craft.

#dave chappelle #196 #trans rights #trans man #trans woman #trans pride

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wild-at-mind · 3 months

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As of time of writing, Rishi Sunak is still refusing to apologise for the jibe at trans women in PMQ. (Apologise specifically to Brianna Ghey's parents, her mother at least being definetly present at the time.) What will the fallout for this be? This is only days after normally transphobic tabloids splashed the mugshots of Brianna's killers all over their front page with headlines like 'PURE EVIL'. It seemed the spectacle of 16 year old murderers overrode the fact that they normally don't care about trans people. Rishi's remark streamrolled one of the most important optics rules on most parts of the political spectrum- don't say things that upset the grieving family. On the other hand, Sunak was making a jibe that revealed the fact that most people currently in UK politics seem convinced that if they say 'trans women are women' it will not only prove catastrophic for their chance of being elected, it will also cause mobs of people to thrust stats at them supposedly proving that cis women will be in mortal danger. And that may happen! The statistical evidence isn't there at all, though, so I believe it would come to nothing if he rode it out. Anyway, it's the right thing to do. I believe that after a certain point, continually insisting trans women are not women makes you look deranged. I have a trans woman friend who told me she once asked a transphobic/gender critical aquaintance of ours during calm conversation 'how do you see me? What am I, if not a woman?' The aquaintance said 'you're a man dressed up.' Now, these gender critical people claim to be super duper pro GNC cis men (they aren't, because they are worried the GNC cis men might start IDing as trans, and they hate men anyway especially weird queer ones, so it's a non-starter.) But this person was essentially telling my friend 'you aren't what you have clearly demonstrated yourself to be'. It's often said that 'trans women are women' is an opinion, but in my eyes saying that trans women are not women is an opinion. This aquaintance was saying what she had been indocterinated to believe by her TERF online circles, and I don't think she's reachable (my friend is no longer trying, it was a one off conversation as far as I can tell). I've said this before but I maintain that politicians should stop dignifying the question of 'what is a woman? Define what a woman is!' because it's a question that is never asked in good faith. It's a gotcha, and you don't need to answer it and fall into whatever trap they are setting. You just need to put forth policies that support both cis women and trans women- showing support with your deeds and words. And Starmer should have a fucking backbone- Sunak isn't wrong there. If anything what Sunak did was very revealing because it shows he's used to being surrounded only by people who guffaw at the very idea that 'trans women are women' is something true in both theory and practice. Meanwhile trans people are becoming more visible and I truly believe within 20 years, both Sunak and Starmer will look like dinosaurs in much the same way as the homophobic politicians of yore were following a public zeitgeist that was quickly becoming outdated. It's a shame we never seem to learn from the past.

#uk politics #rishi sunak #keir starmer #transmisogyny #btw i don't know the stats on how many trans women there are in the country but 0.1 % seems on the low side #although technically it doesn't count the ones who have had bottom surgery i guess..???#they don't like those trans women obvs but they know the scary power of the penis as a rhetorical device #btw i swear to god if someone assumes i'm saying homophobia no longer exists- no!#i'm saying the way it is publically acceptable in the political sphere (and all social spheres) to talk about gay people has changed a lot #it is no longer acceptable to express from a position of power that it is not good (or at least neutral) to be gay.#that is why homophobic evangelicals feel themselves super oppressed and marginilised- one of the many reasons #also note that cis gay people are being used as a chess piece in the trans kids argument- these poor kids are just gay!#gay is ok now as long as the foundations of gender can stay the same #they are still homophobic but it's just different. That's all i mean.

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fairythingflies · 7 months

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this was long overdue. plain text below

Hello. If you’re reading this, I am coming out to discuss a part of my life that I’ve hidden for a very long time–mostly out of fear and shame. I’m still afraid–but I will not be ashamed any longer. It’s so typical to say, “I didn’t want to make this statement,” but it’s gotten to the point where my loved ones are telling me that I have to do something. That silence will only cause further harm.

Over the past four and a half years, I’ve endured an endless nightmare of abuse, stalking, and the resulting psychological trauma from a previous romantic partner. To many of you, this is probably a blindside–but the people close to me have witnessed the effects the whole time.

I’m not going to name the person who abused me today, because the last thing they need is harassment–no matter how vile you find their actions. I didn’t want to do this, but it’s gotten to a point where it feels necessary, for several reasons:

The very real emotional harm of repressing my story for several years

The harm that the stalking and harassment have caused me and others

To, hopefully, show other survivors of sexual abuse, gaslighting, and stalking that they are not alone, they are not monsters, they are not crazy.

This is my story. TW emotional and sexual abuse, gaslighting, stalking.

In 2019, when I was 18 years old, I entered my first serious romantic relationship–and it was an extremely traumatic and abusive one. I’m not going to pretend I was a saint–I said and did a lot of stupid, hurtful things, on account of being a very inexperienced teenager, but I can also acknowledge now that I was abused.

This person isolated me by trying to convince me my family was abusive and dangerous; additionally, whenever I tried to bring over my friends, they’d make me feel guilty, talking about how being around people I cared about was physically painful for them.

And they assaulted me. Multiple times. They’d force themself on me when I was visibly distressed, and I once had to go to a doctor because of injuries they’d caused me. I don’t want to provide further details here, and I hope you don’t expect them. I have spent years replaying some of the most painful memories of my life in my head, and that already hurts enough.

While dating this person, my mind suffered: I fell into psychosis, I had severe OCD attacks, I developed disordered eating… I was overall severely unwell. This caused me to lash out in ways I acknowledge were unfair and harmful, but this person continued to exacerbate my symptoms regardless, much of it through ableist acts that targeted these symptoms.

As mentioned, I struggle with OCD, and this person would say things that triggered it, even after I told them they were triggers–for example, I’d be worried about bad things happening to them, such as illness, and they’d repeatedly say they’d be “lucky” to reach age 65 without dying. They’d hear about my religious obsessions (which during the abuse became full-on delusions due to mental duress), and play music they wrote about their own religious delusions. They claimed to be “worried” for me after the worst of the episode ended, so there’s no way they didn’t know what I was going through. They also scrutinized my very real fear responses, accusing me of being “happy” when strange men harassed us for being a visibly queer couple.

In 2020, at age 19, I recognized that this relationship was doing more harm than good. I was out of town for a family event and able to talk to my family without them around, which helped me come to that revelation. I told my partner I wanted to talk about our relationship when I came home. They immediately publicly accused me of abusing them. This is where it all began: I tried to leave, and they retaliated.

They’d gaslit me into thinking I was a terrible person for months, and this public explosion made me completely break down. I became hysterical–I replayed traumatic memories over and over, looking for any sign I misbehaved, and even when I came up with none, I remained dominated by fear–that it was somehow true, that I was abusive, that everyone would believe it, true or not.

Worse, I believe people took screenshots of me venting to others in this incredibly vulnerable state and somehow sent them to my ex. At this time, I was in a strange city, spiralling out of control–I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, and I was completely detached from reality. I simultaneously believed everything and knew it was wrong. Until you’ve been in this kind of situation, I feel like it’s impossible to understand.

I’ll own that I broke down and said some terrible things, ranging from spiteful to nonsensical. I am deeply sorry for it. I have spent years bettering myself on so many fronts to ensure I never have that kind of harmful episode again, but this outburst happened because of months of gaslighting and abuse, because the second I implied to this person that I wanted to end our relationship, they retaliated by dealing a massive blow to my already fragile mental state and trying to ruin my life.

And they haven’t stopped.

I am 23 years old now. There is nothing I want more than to leave this trauma behind, but recovery hasn’t been easy because the person who inflicted this pain has not left me alone. Since 2020 and as recently as this year, they’ve followed me and come after my career and relationships, usually by spreading misinformation about me in the form of “warnings” that I am “dangerous”–albeit with minimal success. I can think of exactly two times they lost me gigs–though the fact it’s happened at all is part of what moved me to come forward.

This is in no small part because of the simple fact that their allegations range from exaggerations to outright lies. I’d say about 80% of it is false, 15% is technically true but out of context or a product of serious mental duress, and 5% is actually true.

Some of the lies are comical, with how easily disproven they are. There’s one where my ex randomly declared I live in a gated community… but I don’t. My house has a gate because we used to own dogs. There’s also the implication I was stalking them–it seems more like the other way around, with the way that they hunt down people who associate with me. I also remember once hearing I’d harmed an ex-girlfriend of mine with osteoarthritis… despite never dating anyone with osteoarthritis. Still, people who don’t know me might believe these things, as ridiculous as they are.

Some of the lies may be based on genuine misunderstandings. For example, against my wishes, a relative called the police on my behalf when someone harassed me with a burner account that referenced my legal name. I will apologize for not trying harder to de-escalate the situation–I knew police were more than capable of making the situation worse–but I was not the instigator (as well as barely coherent at that point due to the stress).

Some of the lies, though, are downright disgusting. I resent, for example, the implication that I have lied about my ethnicity. I identify as white, but my grandmother is mixed Metis and I inherited her status long before I knew what that meant–though again, I identify and move through the world as a white person. It came up a few times in our relationship because I figured my grandmother would be able to help my ex-partner with accessing their own Indigenous status, if memory serves. But I digress.

Additionally, the idea that I ever did anything without the explicit consent of this person is reprehensible–every single time we were intimate, I received either a verbal affirmative or some nonverbal gesture of consent such as leaning in for a kiss. Every. Single. Time.

I won’t pretend it’s impossible I hurt them, but not in the way they are claiming. I apologize for any pain caused, and I mean that, but the scenes they describe simply did not happen. They tried to convince me they did, that I did terrible things, but I’ve forced myself to relive my time with them enough that I know I’m not the person they say I am.

And for that 20% of things that are even a little bit true, I’ve been working on accountability and educating myself on everything I can–my emotional regulation issues and the thoughtless, harmful statements they brought about, for example, and handling my OCD better so my intrusive thoughts don’t hurt others as much as they hurt me.

And yes, I read about consent. That’s how I realized that what my ex did to me was assault. It’s another part of why I’m coming forward–it’s a special kind of pain, coming to terms with the fact you were raped while a bunch of strangers think your rapist is the victim.

I’ve written out several versions of this statement, some almost forty pages long. They contain the paper trail of sexual abuse counsellors I’ve seen, medical records from when my ex’s actions sent me to the clinic, and even years-old journal entries and conversations with friends where I discuss being assaulted in terrible, triggering detail. I still keep these things as reminders that what I experienced was real, because my worst fear is not being believed.

I can’t reiterate this enough: I physically cannot get rid of graphic records of my assault because I’m scared of not being believed. I have spent years retraumatizing myself because of what my rapist has put me through.

I’ve also spoken to other people who escaped abuse and were villainized by ex-partners, and I’m harrowed by how much of my own story I see in theirs. You really begin to question your reality, and you keep going back to these dark places and painful memories–and you analyze them, and recount them over and over, always recounting and documenting, so you remember them and believe yourself.

I know “gaslighting” has become a meaningless buzzword to many, but it’s gaslighting that caused me to obsessively document and remember my abuse. No survivor should have to endure this. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

People watched me fall apart in real time. They might not have known the details, but they knew something very, very bad happened to me. I apologize to everyone who saw me in this state–I imagine it was upsetting. I’ve spent the last few years working very hard to recover and become a positive presence in the lives of others, and I really hope I’ve accomplished that.

Allegedly my ex is receiving therapy for what I “did” to them. That’s great. I wasn’t perfect–and even though I didn’t actually do a vast majority of what they accuse me of, I see no reason why my ex shouldn’t get help if they’re hurting.

Again, they consented to everything we did, either verbally or by initiating physical intimacy (i.e. kissing). I can’t say it’s impossible they were hurt, though, because people can be harmed by consensual interactions. I would know–I’ve been that person who was seriously hurt even though nobody actually did anything wrong. Trauma’s complicated like that, and sometimes there’s no perpetrator in the traditional sense.

My abuser is a person with a lot of pain–and was long before they met me. If therapy keeps them from hurting another person how they hurt me, then that’s an inherently good thing. I used to hope they’d never touch anyone again, but maybe therapy means they won’t hurt the next person they pursue.

That said–they still assaulted me, and they are still, to my knowledge, stalking me and spreading false information.

Honestly, I’m tired of them having such a major role in my life–and the idea of taking that power from them is part of what’s given me the courage to do this.

On the off-chance they read these words, I’m going to be succinct: I know what you put me through. Don’t waste your time objecting or trying to tell me it was my fault. This is my story, not yours, and you’re the one person whose belief I don’t need. You raped me. You are a rapist. People saw what your abuse did to me. A body of evidence like this doesn’t come out of nowhere. I didn’t spontaneously develop PTSD. You did this.

And even now, I’m sparing you–I could say who you are, contact people you work with. I could do what you tried to do to me, but it’d actually be true: I could share my medical records, diary entries, and testimonials from those who saw what this did to me.

But I’m not. I’m giving you the chance to just leave me alone and be left alone.

So, where does this leave us? I suppose it leaves me out in the open as a survivor of sexual assault, stalking, gaslighting, and so on.

That is unbelievably terrifying. I keep telling myself that it’s worth it to be open, that maybe it’ll make other survivors feel less alone, but I’m afraid.

I’m afraid people will make assumptions, victim-blame me, or somehow side with my rapist. I’m afraid this will change how friends, family, and acquaintances see me. I’m afraid of how my abuser could retaliate. I’m afraid that my community, the art scene that was so invaluable to my recovery, might not want anything to do with me anymore.

Also, I’ve already gotten serious backlash as a survivor.

So-called leftist/inclusive spaces have sided with my rapist. They’ve said they can’t work with me because of what they’ve “heard,” and when I tell them about the abuse/stalking and offer to show them evidence, including that paper trail of therapists and medical documents, they respond that they “lack the resources” to look at them and shut me down.

I tell people I’m a rape victim, and they say they don’t have the “resources” to listen. They side with the person I’m telling them is a rapist.

What happened to “believe victims?” Is that only on a first-come, first-serve basis?

I’ve also had to end personal relationships because of the victim-blaming I’ve endured. Former friends have said I “did this to myself.” People who I’d confided in, people who’d believed me, who’d seen evidence of my assault, said this.

So, no, I really don’t want to come out as a survivor.

This has been an unending nightmare for, more or less, my entire adult life. I am hoping that opening up will allow me to start recovery in earnest.

My therapists over the years all agree I have PTSD–my doctor says it might even be C-PTSD. Regardless, I’m affected by this disorder every day: the nightmares, the emotional dysregulation, the constant sense I’m being watched, the lasting intrusive thoughts from my headspace in 2019, and so much more–it hurts beyond words. I’ll never know the person I would’ve been if I hadn’t been assaulted, and I mourn that every day. This trauma has cost me so much, especially in my personal life–not because anyone involved ever believed my ex, nobody who knows me ever has, but because my trauma has given me lasting trust issues, paranoia, and all these other symptoms that hinder relationships.

I quite literally owe my life to those who have stayed with me and loved me throughout the years, and the treatment I have received. Especially those who have endured harassment from my abuser, because yes, that’s happened.

I hope that by publicly addressing this, I can be supported by all of you, too. It’s been physically painful sharing this story–it literally took me months to write this–so I really hope it wasn’t for nothing. I hope the community I’ve found solace in can have my back when it really matters.

I don’t like asking for much from people, but I can’t make myself feel safe and believed alone. If you could share this story, that’d truly mean the world–and if you see my ex’s so-called “warning,” please report it. If you hear people sharing my abuser’s allegations, chime in with the truth. Quash rumours. I don’t know how many people my abuser’s reached, or how loud they’ve been shouting these past few years, but I hope we can be louder.

If you have questions, I can try to answer them–whether you have concerns that I can debunk, or have experienced something similar and want to hear from someone who understands.

It’s frightening to share this now, but I hope that in the future, this can be a story of a survivor being supported by their community, and escaping the spectres of their abuse.

I hope I can make and share my art without being afraid again. I hope I can be known as a survivor. I hope I can be believed.

All I ever wanted was to be believed. Thank you.

#Fairything #itsfairything #fairythingflies

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illnessfaker · 11 months

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"go ahead and use that mobility aid if you think it'll help you" as encouragement towards ambulatory physically disabled people who would benefit from it being a pervasive mentality among physically disabled communities on social media is a very good thing, don't get me wrong, but the experience of being an ambulatory physically disabled person whose quality of life would improve greatly from the use of a cane, crutches, rollater, wheelchair, etc. but doesn't use them (or use them as much as we should) due to the fact that doing so very obviously marks us as a potential target for discrimination or even violence (whether physical or social) when we're out in public and so we choose to suffer the consequences, especially for those of us who are already marked in other ways for discrimination, violence, and stigma (e.g. black people, other poc, being visibly trans, queer, or gnc, and visible physical disabilities or bodily differences that don't affect mobility in any sense.)

like personally i might get marked as physically disabled by others regardless, depending on how visible some of my symptoms are in the moment, and some of me not using mobility aids very much at all anymore comes from an internal sense of shame and internalized ableism, but a more significant factor i would say is acute awareness of the stigma associated with it. which makes the fact that other people will in fact notice i'm using a cane, crutch, etc. when in public feel pretty scary! especially on top of the fact i already get noticed and singled out in public spaces for other reasons (i've been called slurs + microaggressions that otherwise signal i'm not doing gender correctly since elementary school, loud speech due to lack of appropriate volume modulation associated with autism/adhd, my speech otherwise being "weird" due to coordination/motor impairments, etc.) as a result, people recognizing that i'm using a mobility aid in public even if it's an entirely positive or neutral observation makes me want to shrink into a ball and disappear. this is despite the fact that one of my most impairing symptoms is orthostatic intolerance + my muscles don't support me properly so being as mobile as able-bodied people in my age range inevitably causes me a lot of pain and can make me very sick/a faint risk or put me at risk for head injury if things get bad enough (though that only happens sometimes.)

this is very anecdotal but i don't want to be noticed, i just want to be left alone. while i can't always hide the fact that i have stuff physically wrong with me because some things like my coordination/motor skill issues can sometimes become obvious to strangers, using a mobility aid sure kicks physical disability right up to being a master status in terms of things i suffer marginalization for in my particular situation (the same may not apply to other groups because, for example, i'm white.) and these circumstances are obviously very different from physically disabled people who aren't ambulatory or who otherwise may not have a choice in the matter when it comes to using mobility aids (some physically disabled people who are ambulatory still might not have any real choice because walking without aid, while they're technically capable of the action, is still unsafe if done for extended period of time, or maybe they can only walk for a few minutes at most before it becomes dangerous, etc.)

#ableism #physical disability #cpunk #cripple punk #chronic illness #op

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readingrobin · 6 months

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Ooof this was probably my roughest month when it came to reading, Didn't really get a lot read since my schedule was jam packed and I didn't get as much reading in as I thought I would during vacation. To top it all off, the things I did manage to read mostly fell on the meh side of things, so I can't even say it was worth it for a few good reads. Oh well. I think I'll have better luck in November.

Total Books Read: 5

Total Pages Read: 1,713

Books Read:

Nightshade by Andrea Cremer (2.5/5) -

This book has been collecting dust on my bookshelves since the great vampire/werewolf YA fiction boom of the early 2010s. Really the only thing that's been keeping me from reading it has been circumstance and a deluge of other things I'd rather be reading. Big note to self, if the synopsis describes one of the teenage lead characters as "sexy," there's a good chance that I, an almost thirty year old adult, will get one of those ick feelings along my spine. It's one thing if it's coming through the perspective of a teenaged character, and another when you know it's more than likely coming from some middle-aged editor in a publishing office cubicle.

Now if I had read this over a decade ago, odds are I would have loved it. Awesome werewolf mythology that seemed very unique, a badass lead character that's not here for your girly dresses or makeup, sarcasm galore, oh yeah teen me would've eaten it up. While I can still appreciate the lore aspect, there are some qualities of the book that just tire me out.

Love triangles are always going to be some dodgy ground, particularly when you don't care for them or either of the love interests. Shay seemed so irresponsible and okay with constantly putting Calla in danger, even if it had the intention of trying to get her to see the truth behind the Keepers. Rey, though slightly better, made some comments here and there that set my teeth grinding, but at least it felt like he actually respected Calla at times. Pretty sure with how the story is going that Shay is ultimately going to win out in the end, which doesn't really encourage me to read any of the sequels.

At least pour one out for the gay werewolf representation in a time where queer characters, even queer side characters, were in short supply.

While I really liked the werewolf lore, the book also reinforces my least favorite werewolf trope, which is reinforcing incorrect "facts" about actual wolf pack dynamics to explain the weird sexism of the werewolf packs. I know it's all to make the term "alpha wolf" look cool and intimidating, but they literally do not exist. Wolf packs are made up of a mated pair and their kids/extended family. There's very little dominance involved. I know bringing actual reality to this werewolf book means absolutely nothing, but they did it first.

There's also an absurd amount of sexism, misogyny, and slut-shaming going on here and yes, I know it's all for us to realize that werewolf society is corrupt and has this weird propaganda thing going on to keeps the wolves in line, but god it's overbearing at times. It's really just a me thing, but I had to visibly cringe when one of the adults told Calla to "keep her legs shut." I don't know, maybe it was too much just because all the characters are like 15-17 years old and I'm entering my "old person yells at YA for being YA" era. God help me.

So yeah, lots of emotions with this one and I'm not sure if I want to continue the series just to get closure or not.

Don't Turn Out the Lights: A Tribute to Alan Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark edited by Jonathan Maberry (3/5) -

Seeing as I was a giant scaredy cat as a kid, I didn't really grow up with Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I tried once, but Stephen Gammell's haunting illustrations proved to be too much for little me who already had an overactive imagination. Now that I have a little more stamina when it comes to horror and spooky pictures, I figured to give this collection a try to find some worthwhile middle grade horror. There are definitely strong contenders in this collection, some that'll even unnerve some adults. Others, well, they're there to give a little variety when it comes to the type and tone of the stories.

My favorites would have to be:

"The Carved Bear" "The Golden Peacock" "The Neighbor" "The Bottle Tree" "The Tall Ones"

I don't know if the collection decently balanced between the light spooky stories that were more humorous and the more traumatizing tales. There are two that sort of stick out like sore thumbs, those being R.L. Stine's and Sherrilyn Kenyon's contributions. Stine is known for his off the wall twists, but this one being a little bit more silly, yet typical for his kind of work, doesn't really make it mesh well with the majority of other stories that want to leave you with a shiver down your spine. Kenyon's poem has the same effect, having more of an innocent, playful tone that sets it apart from the other stories, but not in a memorable way. I think if the collection offered a few more stories like these it wouldn't be so noticeable. Each are completely fine on their own, but not when integrated into a collection that aims to leave lasting scares.

Also, it's REALLY noticeable that some of the writers are writing stories centered around certain cultures that aren't their own or that they have done very little research on. I may be as white as winter snow, but even I know that the Devil has nothing to do with Dia de los Muertos.

The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London by Christopher Skaife (3/5) -

I have such a great fondness for corvids, be they crows, ravens, magpies, or even blue jays, so I figured this book would be right up my alley. Skaife delves into the history behind the ravens' presence at the Towers, which I was surprised but maybe not too much that it holds a legend that may not be as old and revered as once thought.

I've been to the Tower of London, which helped me visualize some of his stories. The ravens there are definitely a quirky bunch. I remember one that graciously allowed a seagull to peck a bit at their raw chicken lunch, only to shoo them off a few seconds after. This cycle would actually repeat itself a bit, a little nibble and then a shoo, it almost seemed like a sort of game. Anyway, they are very amusing birds and Skaife really does make their personalities shine in this book.

There were moments where the book lost a little steam or included something that seemed a bit superfluous. The chapter on ghosts around the grounds seemed a little out of place in a book about the Tower ravens and the stories get a little repetitive once you edge closer to the end. But if you have an interest in the Tower and its inhabitants, I recommend picking it up.

The Oddmire: Changeling by William Ritter (2.5/5) -

I'm not sure if this is a case of me reading this book at the wrong time or I'm just getting more picky with my middle grade fantasy, but I never really felt very invested in this one. It's a great setup for a story, two brothers venture into a dark magical forest to learn which one of them is human and which is a changeling left by a goblin one long ago night. They meet various friends and threats across the way, culminating in a wonderful depiction of family bonds and loyalty. I appreciated how involved their mother was in the story, who had absolutely no qualms about going into the dangerous forest to save her kids. I love seeing more competent parents in fiction, if only just to show kids that some grownups are capable of being helpful at times.

But, other than that, I didn't really get much out of the story. The brothers seemed very interchangeable, not really having distinguishable personalities so that ultimately it doesn't really matter who is human and who is the changeling. They both have the same worries and fears, the same goals, so there's nothing really to set them apart.

The writing style didn't really pull me in either, to the point where by the last couple of chapters I was doing more skimming than actual reading.

I will say that it is a decent fantasy for younger readers looking for a bit of adventure and magic. It twists some fairy tale conventions just enough to feel fresh while holding onto a few just for good measure. I've probably just read too many at this point to really appreciate it.

Watership Down: The Graphic Novel by Richard Adams, adapated by James Sturm, illustrated by Joe Sutphin (5/5) -

I stumbled upon Watership Down a little later in life, knowing full well of its status as one of those "Top 10 Films that Scarred You As A Child." At some point, I had seen the glorious intro to the film, where Frith bestows various gifts to the animals and El-Ahrairah displays his tricks and cunning, and that immediately sent me to the novel. It's a beautiful story, with lush descriptions of the downs and adventure that, while coming from so humble a place, keeps you interested from beginning to end. By some magic, James Sturm and Joe Sutphin managed to capture everything about this story that has delighted readers for decades.

Sutphin goes for a more naturalistic style, keeping the rabbits and other various animals expressive, but not too cartoony. It mostly keeps to a certain realm of reality, with colors that are more muted, but never do any sort of disservice to the setting. While I am a fan of styles that bush boundaries, this style is perfect for Watership Down that, while seemingly fantastical at times, is a very down to earth tale. There's a certain charm to it that comes from the simplicity of its setup, that is a group of animals just trying to survive.

Of course, not every plot point and character makes it through the process of adaptation. I am thankful that Sturm was able to include some of the folk tales of the rabbits, which was one of my favorite elements of the story. Naturally, to keep this story to a single volume and maintain a sense of flow, things would have to be reworked and shifted.

In my opinion, this graphic novel is an exemplary transfiguration on the original story that will please fans and hopefully entice new readers to the book.

Rating Average 3.2

#robin's book log #reading wrap up #monthly wrap up #nightshade #don't turn off the lights #the ravenmaster #the oddmire #watership down #books #reading

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havinghorns · 11 months

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Hi, happy Friday!

Serious transition related Q. As always, up to your discretion to answer.

You've talked a bit about passing/not passing and how people react to/assume your gender.

I just started T and I feel like its not unlikely I'll end up in a similar zone of trans masc. I dress flamboyantly and my presentation is fluid. I know what my medical transition goals are, but I've been mulling over the social parts for the past few weeks.

I'm also neurodivergant and trying to figure out, what social norms might change depending on how im perceived and will those changes be awkward uncomfy like when I do neurodivergant things in public, or will they put me in danger as more visibly trans, has been puzzling. I'm curious how differently assumed identities affect how people treat you? I feel like voice drop should help a lot with interactions with strangers, but I also have long hair and am not very tall etc. I'm used to being perceived as a 'wrong type' of woman and socialized that way. I want that to change but I honestly don't know what direction that'll go in.

If you have any thoughts or resources on the topic I'd really appreciate it.

Hmm I mean, it's a little hard to answer because obviously it'll be really individual and really dependant on your own environment.

Like my job is almost entirely queer in terms of staff so there's really no difference in how any gender or expression is interacted with socially. With patients I do sometimes struggle with being seen as younger than j am and not being taken seriously, which I honestly get madder about than any gender perception lol. My current friends/partners have always known I'm trans so there's been no change there either.

Out and about, I mostly still get seen as a weird, unattractive woman, which essentially makes you invisible--something I personally don't mind. At worst (so far) I'll get a doubletake or stink eye in the bathroom, or moved over to the "female" pat down line for a concert, and I'm non confrontational enough to shrug and take it bc what difference does it make. But I also live in a pretty LGBTQ frienfly city. I do stress out about how to dress when I travel, and try to go for a more distinctly "gay man" style which feels like the lesser possibility of getting the shit best out of me but not offending my own vanity (I'm an idiot)

IDK I dont really have advice, some days are easier than others and I'm figuring it out day by day too. Pick your battles, my usual mantra is "If I'm never going to see this person again, it's not worth correcting them on my name/pronouns" but I'm also a weenie IRL lol.

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nerdygaymormon · 1 year

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For queer people, our “normal” is relatively recent

I know it’s scary with all the legislation & accompanying rhetoric being made against the queer community. Trans people are having their medical care taken away, and basic parts of their life, such as the ability to participate in athletics or go to the restroom, regulated and restricted. Gay people are being called "groomers." People are told queer people are a danger to children, and recognition of our existence is being removed from some schools and libraries.

Please remember, there are a lot of people on our side. We will work to remove these abominable laws. We will work for increased tolerance and acceptance. Things will get better.

I thought we could use a reminder of how recent it is that we gained the rights and visibility and acceptance that we have become accustomed to. Our ‘normal’ is fairly recent and it’s good to remember that there have been people fighting against us all the way, and yet we made progress and culture became more accepting. Sadly, there are groups of people trying to undo all of that.

Less than 3 years ago in the summer of 2020, it became illegal to discriminate against gay and transgender employees at work if they're doing something which is allowed for others. If a woman is allowed to wear a skirt to work, and a trans woman comes to work wearing a skirt, the employer can't fire her for that. Likewise, an employee who joins a gay softball league can't be fired for that if other workers are allowed to join softball leagues.

In the last 5 years Pete Buttigieg, an openly gay man, was confirmed by the Senate to serve in a Presidential Cabinet position. Colorado's governor Jared Polis is the first openly gay person to be elected as a state governor. Virginia's Danica Roem is the first openly trans person to be elected to a state legislature. Sharice Davids from Kansas is the first openly lesbian woman elected to the US Congress.

In the last 10 years openly trans individuals were finally allowed to join the US military. Oregon's Kate Brown became the first openly bisexual person elected governor. Marriage equality became legal across the nation, same-sex couples can now marry in all US states. The American Psychiatric Association retired the concept of a "gender identity disorder" because being trans isn’t a ‘disorder.’

15 years ago, Barack Obama was running for president and said he didn't support gay marriage. If he'd been in support of it, he'd lose many votes from Democrats. 15 years ago people didn't come out in high school, maybe they told some close friends, but generally they weren't OUT out. 15 years ago Hillary Duff made a PSA to inform people it's not nice to call things "gay" as a way of saying they didn’t like something.

20 years ago, most people didn't know anything about trans people, hadn't even heard of the concept. 20 years ago the Supreme Court forced 14 states to decriminalize homosexuality. 20 years ago celebrities still lost jobs in television and movies if they came out.

The way things were 15 and 20 years ago feels so alien to us now, but it wasn’t that long ago. There were major setbacks along the way, and we’re experiencing some major setbacks now, but I trust that science, medicine, reasonableness, and civility will eventually win out. Truth is on our side. Meanwhile, it sucks that people today are having to deal with this mess.

#queer history

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deadlifts-and-derrida · 1 year

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The Shadow, or Melancholia Muscularis

How do I write about this? To speak of it feels like whispering Bloody Mary into a darkened mirror. But can I even name it? Can I sum up in one short phrase the nature of this spectre that is haunting me, hunting me?

Pull the camera back and start there. The gay male bodybuilder, or wannabe bodybuilder, whose desire to be a bodybuilder was repressed through youth. Many lessons are absorbed over the course of a queer childhood, one being: the only safe way to be gay is to be fully desexualized. If you’re lucky, if fate planted you with the ‘good’ straights, you’ll be allowed to be gay without too much hassle – as long as your gayness resembles heterosexuality. In the straight world, sex and sexuality are contained and hidden within long-term monogamy. The psychological mechanics of desire and the physical mechanics of sex aren’t openly spoken of, are kept secret. They’re assumed to be the same for everyone, because they are never seen and never spoken of. Gay is just straight with a palette swap, you’re the same except you have a husband instead of a wife. Visible queer sexuality is always threatening, always obscene, because it breaks the taboo upon which heterosexual hegemony rests simply by its existence. Even in the most accepting of places, you learn quickly to repress.

You, and by that I mean I, the young would-be gay bodybuilder, absorb this lesson very early, before you (I) have the words to express it. Muscle IS desire for you (me); muscle IS sex; thus, you must never speak of it, because the weird things that turn you on have to remain unspoken, to keep you safe.

The silence, the anxious cloaking of who you are and what you want, manifests as instinct, not reasoned choice. You know to hide what you are before you even know for sure exactly what it is you are. You can see the paths ahead of you – no safe paths, but some less dangerous than others. And, if you’re like me, you take one of the safe less obviously dangerous paths. You suppress what you really want, who you really are, and give the world what you think it wants from you.

You come out in your late teens, but in the years that follow you perform a version of a gay man that will be acceptable and accepted. You vigorously suppress the parts of you that don’t fit into that model. For me, that very much included my bone-deep desire for muscle, on myself and others. The panic I would feel at the faintest threat of this desire being discovered! How my heart would flip and flop and spasm in terror if someone innocently asked to use my computer – what if they saw something they shouldn’t…! Some photoshopped picture of a steroid freak flexing? That would be death. I’d glance through bodybuilding magazines at the bookstore with eyes in the back of my head, ready to shove it back onto the rack and grab a nearby NME or National Geographic if anyone approached – no one must ever see me looking at muscle.

I was out of the gay closet, but I was still locked, and suffocating, in the muscle closet – and friends? That closet was much worse. It made it feel like my first coming out was a sham, like it didn’t count for anything, because I still felt like if anyone ever learned what got my dick hard, what thoughts went through my head while I pleasured myself, what sort of sex life I wanted, what sort of body I wanted to inhabit, my life would be over. I still lived with daily dread that I’d be discovered, even though I was ‘out.’

And then you – I – wake up some day – for me it was around my 30th birthday – and realize I’ve been sacrificing my single precious life for no good reason. So what if who I am makes some people uncomfortable? The good ones won’t care, or will get over it. Better their discomfort than my slow death by suffocation, or dying in my 80s never having been the person I want to be. So what if people know that muscles make me horny, and I want to devote my life to becoming an obscene “gross” roided-up beast? Fuck anyone who’d think less of me for feeling that way! I’ve got one precious life and it’s slipping away from me – if I’m ever going to be a bodybuilder, I need to act. NOW.

Shame is a poison that kills joy, and the gym will be its purging!!

So, if you’re like me, after this revelation you pour yourself into bodybuilding and attempt to transform your body into a shape that better reflects who you are, what you want, who you desperately want to be.

Dreams have edges, and edges can cut you open. Yes, I want that to sound ominous.

At first it’s liberatory. The embarrassment and fear don’t vanish overnight, but once you have the upper hand it’s thrilling to wrestle them into submission. To say out loud “I want to get as big as I possibly can” – the first time those words passed my lips, when hiring my first-ever personal trainer, I felt my heart flutter and my cock give a little jump in my sweatpants right there on the gym floor. It was quite possibly the first time in my life I abandoned passivity and took an active role in my own psycho-sexual-physical identity. It was my first discursive act of self-fashioning. It was the first time I’d ever been myself out loud. Damn, was it intoxicating.

And the more you win those small battles against yourself, the easier it gets to fight the next one. The more normal it all becomes. You’re doing it. You’re rebuilding your identity, in your own mind and in the eyes of others. It’s great!

And the newbie gains! My first couple of years in the gym, I lost 20 lbs of fat and gained 30 lbs of muscle. It radically reshaped my body and everyone could see it. The comments from friends and family who hadn’t seen me in a while were intoxicating. I felt a euphoria that I imagine might be like the gender euphoria a trans person might feel when they pass (if passing is their goal).

I’m starting to pass as a bodybuilder!! I don’t look like the guys I really want to look like, but people can tell I lift now, and nothing can stop this momentum! it’s not possible to be more dedicated than I am! I want this more than anything! I’m willing to do anything, cut any Faustian bargain! It’s gonna happen for me!

But then that dream’s edge comes slicing. Slowly. The cuts are easy to ignore – at first. But the more time goes by, the deeper the wounds, the slower they are to heal.

You’re not growing anymore, despite doing everything right.

You look the same as you did three years ago, despite all your efforts.

You express frustration at your lack of progress and someone tells you you might consider starting a steroid cycle. You have been on steroids for the past five years. You’ve taken fucking years off your life and you still look natty.

Your 40th birthday is rocketing toward you like your brakes have failed and it’s a brick wall.

Others around you, similar men with similar desires, with bodies better suited for bodybuilding, gays who might even say you inspired them to begin their own journey, are soaring past you while you remain stubbornly earthbound. When you’re down, their laudable progress pics, before and afters, are like slivers of glass in your fingertip as you double-tap to like.

And you say nothing about that pain. Because you can’t take it out on them. Their good fortune. It’s not their fault that it’s working for them, that the arc of their trajectory is going to carry them over the chasm to the other side while you’re falling short, while you feel gravity grasping at you, pulling you into the abyss you foolishly tried to leap across. It’s not their fault. You’d be sailing ahead too, if you could. But you can’t.

The shadow that’s been growing as the years pass, as all your efforts amount to an inch of progress when your desired goal is still miles away. That shadow gets stronger, deeper, darker, takes on a form, gains a voice.

The shadow says: You’re not gonna make it, bro.

You rail against the unfairness of it all. You work just as hard. You destroy yourself in the gym. You adhere to the diet. You take all the drugs. But it’s not working the way it should, because your genes just won’t allow it.

This is a secret: when people talk about genetic potential in bodybuilding, they don’t mean bone structure and muscle insertions. They don’t mean being disposed to being skinny when you’re a teenager. They mean the genetically determined density of androgen receptors, fibres, and myonuclei in your muscle tissue – and you simply cannot tell whether those variables are favourable or unfavourable when glancing at a skinny teenager – or at an out-of-shape 30-year-old gay man who has finally committed to the bodybuilding lifestyle. There is no visual clue to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ genetics. You just have to flip the card life dealt you and see if it’s low or high.

And fuck, does it suck when you discover that your card is low.

The hard fact of science: a ten week course of 500 mg of testosterone enanthate may have a wildly different effect on two different people. It fucking sucks, but lots of things in life are like that. You don’t have the genes to get huge? Well, chin up, guy, at least you don’t have the genes to die of cancer at 21, either, hey?

This is not as comforting as you might think.

And even as this slow-motion turmoil plays out! As you try to make peace with the fact your dream isn’t going to come true! All that while, to the normal people around you, you’re still The Muscle Guy. You’re Big Man. They fawn over you, and part of your soul, hungry for comfort, sucks it up, gobbles down those empty spiritual calories. All the while there’s another part of you that knows they praise you in ignorance, like someone who knows nothing of piano gushing over someone plonking out Imagine but who would stumble over a moderately challenging Bach piece.

Here is where this essay should turn, emotionally, rhetorically.

Here is where this essay should begin building to some optimistic or comforting outcome, to lay the groundwork for a solution to the problem.

I have no solution. My comforts are few. I have only learned to cope.

Give up? Unthinkable. If this is a White Queen scenario – if I have to run as fast as I can just to stay in the same place – then I’m fucking running. I’m running for my life, baby. Aimed for the moon, didn’t even land among the stars, stuck in low-earth orbit – I will do everything I can to not crash back down. If I only gained ⅓ of the muscle I hoped I’d gain, after nine years, then you will have to claw every single gram of it from my desperate fingers. I’m frustrated and dismayed but that means the small successes I have matter all the more. Going to the gym, following my diet, injecting my hormones, those are my shelters against the cold, not a hair shirt I stubbornly continue to wear. I’m not a roidfreak mass monster and I never will be, but I am a hunk, and I’d rather be a hunk than what I was before I started this ambitious journey

So what then? What solution? I know all the tricks. Cultivate narratives of pride in the self. Leave the door open a crack to the possibility that you actually do seem bigger in the eyes of others than you feel to yourself. Try to believe that dysmorphia really does distort what the eye sees in mirrors and pictures. Keep a little flame of hope alive that maybe this is the year, the year when you finally break the plateau. You just had to keep slamming the gate with a battering ram until it finally gave way. Maybe you’ll gain a whole 5 lbs!

There’s that bitterness again.

There are two things I do know, and they will have to suffice as my meagre attempt to steer this ship away from the reefs ahead. Because we must not hit those reefs, my brothers.

One: if this dogged melancholy is my shadow, cast by my own shape, then my shadow isn’t an entity external to me. The call is coming from inside the house. But also: the call is made with good intent but bad methods.

The shadow that pours poison in my ear wants me to succeed, funny enough. It sees I’m not succeeding. So it makes me feel bad. Why? I assume some part of my brain thinks that will make the difference, will make me work harder and thus break me out of this never-changing purgatory. Because the shadow is me. If I feel bad I’ll work harder and if I work harder my situation will change.

This is not true. Shame and despair are not good motivators. They are demotivators. And perhaps the challenge of continuing to grow can someday be overcome, but perhaps it simply cannot. It’s already the case that I will do everything I can to overcome it, without the shadow heaping all this pain and misery on me. So if the challenge can be overcome it’s gonna happen anyway, without this maladaptive “help.” And if the challenge cannot be overcome, then all the shadow achieves is spoiling my happiness and my enjoyment of the muscular, athletic body I have crafted for myself, which isn’t enough to satisfy me but is still a lovely consolation prize, worth celebrating and enjoying in its own right.

And that’s the second thing I know. The same lesson I learned at 30 that sent me into the gym in the first place. This is my one precious life, and it is very short. It is far too short to spend it being miserable. It is far too short to spend it letting something rob my happiness for no good purpose.

The shadow that makes me focus obsessively on my shortcomings is the same shadow that made me hide my desire to become a bodybuilder in the first place. It’s a part of me that wants what’s best for me, but it’s an idiot. It lost the first battle so it regrouped and opened a new front in the war. It thought hiding who I was to stay safe was the best strategy, it turned my shame up to 11 to make sure no one ever discovered what I liked, what I wanted. Then, when it was defeated, it shrank back for a few years, until my bodybuilding progress ground to a halt depressingly early in my journey. That was its cue to come back and ‘help.’ It thinks I can berate myself out of my shitty genetics, the same way it thought I could shame myself into safety and security.

The shadow can’t be defeated. That’s the nature of shadows. It’s not an entity external to me – it’s a maladaptive part of me. Poor fool, it thinks it’s helping. And I have to live with its ‘help.’

And the key to living with that, for me, is twofold. One, to try and identify when it’s the shadow’s voice I hear in my ear, and to tell it “thank you for your concern, but even if what you say is true I am already doing everything I can, and there is nothing to be gained by making myself miserable.”

The other thing is to pursue happiness, pride, fellowship, love as hard as I pursue gaining muscle tissue.

I must. It’s the only way I can survive this, and I intend to survive it. I intend to find some way to thrive, with as much muscle as my poor little body will allow me to have. With love in my heart and a smile on my lips and friends who understand around me. And a shadow who will never leave me, whose poison voice I can never mute, because he is me.

And really, the lesson of all this, the psychodrama of being a closeted muscle fetishist, the misery of being a thoroughly mediocre wannabe bodybuilder, the angst of aging, all of it – deep down, that’s the same lesson over and over. The lesson is learning to live with myself, isn’t it?

#thinking #writing #me #self

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c-is-for-circinate · 2 years

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On Names (EXU Calamity)

One of the many very cool things that's gone into the making of a miniseries full of very, very cool things is all the thought and intent visible in the way these characters are named. The cast went in hard on names that evoked ancient Greece and Rome, which I love, and several of them referenced actual or mythological people! I don't know how much of this is intentional and how much coincidental, but at least some of these references are for sure real, so a list of things I've noted so far:

Zerxus Ilirez -- Many people have noted the similarity to 'Xerxes'! As a refresher, Xerxes I was a king of Persia circa 480 BC. He did a lot of impressive king things and conquered several places, but is best known for the time he tried to invade ancient Greece and got his ass handed to him. In particular, he's best known in modern times as the bad guy in the movie The 300. (Interestingly, in that movie he's an extremely and overtly queer-coded villain, set up against almost comedically hypermasculine heroes, and much was made about that when the movie came out.) I don't know about Illirez, but it sound like, if it's Latin-derived, it's something filtered down through Spanish. Anyone have thoughts?

Loquatius Seelie -- Easily the most obvious, this man's name is literally 'talkative fae creature'. What I really love is how clear it is that Loquatius named himself upon coming to this plane, picking words to describe himself that are so incredibly on point. I also appreciate how Loquatius in particular is spelled in such a way as to evoke Roman naming conventions.

Laerryn Coramar-Seelie -- Okay so this one baffled me for the longest time, but I had a brainwave writing this post, and I'm going all in on 'Laerryn' being a reference to the Lares -- Roman household gods whose job was, to quote Wikipedia, "to observe, protect, and influence all that happened within the boundaries of their location or function." (Ouch!) They were probably ancestor spirits, meaning that they were the spirits of actual, once-alive-now-dead humans who were worshiped by their descendants as gods, which also hits real hard in the "I will be remembered forever", "what's so unreachable about the gods?" place. (Still no idea about Coramar, though. Again, I crowdsource this unto all of you.)

Nydas Okiro -- I love 'Nydas' because I think there might be two separate references buried in there. One, we've got the Nydas = Midas connection, the king who turns everything he touches to gold, guild leader of the Golden Scythe, which is up front and great and I love it. But thinking about Zerxus, it seems like there also might be a reference to King Leonidas I -- you know, the Spartan king who defeated Xerxes I and was the main character/hero of that aforementioned movie. Given that Zerxus and Nydas have apparently been BFF for years, that is a very interesting little tidbit (especially in light of how the party's been fracturing). Also, as per above re: Okiro -- this crew has a lot of very evocative first names and very unfamiliar last names.

Cerrit Agrupnin -- I'm really not 100% on this one, but 'Agrupnin' immediately brought to mind Agrippina, a Roman Empress circa 50 AD. She was by all accounts a pretty forceful, unpleasant woman, involved in all sorts of political maneuvering, assassination, etc, but as a connection to Roman nobility it's not bad. (Bonus, I'm like 90% sure she got mentioned on a chocolate frog card in Harry Potter, which would mean Travis has definitely heard her name before, albeit randomly and very much in passing.) Beyond that, 'Agrupnin' sounds very much like 'gruff' and 'abrupt', while 'Cerrit' invokes 'serrated' -- a dangerous, no-nonsense name for a dangerous man who's had it up to here with this shit.

Patia Por'co -- Patia's name is a masterpiece of references, and I love it very much. There's the 'Portia' similarities, which I don't discount -- Portia the wife of Brutus who killed Julius Caesar, Shakespeare character, tragic figure, killed herself after her husband's whole deal half-collapsed the empire, hopefully not foreshadowing -- but I am also absolutely sure that she's named after Hypatia of Alexandria, philosopher and mathematician of the Eastern Roman Empire. Brilliant lady, torn to pieces by a mob, and remembered in recent years as dying a martyr in the fall of the Library of Alexandria (which absolutely did not happen, she was not even there, but it's the story and an excellent reference for our Keeper of Scrolls). Bonus, Por'co both reflects portico, a column-delineated stone porch typical of fancy rich houses in ancient Greece, and politico. INCREDIBLY fitting for our political climber, throwing her magnificent parties in her magnificent mansion.

AND AS A BONUS:

Evandrin -- (Or possibly Evandran? I can't seem to find a consistent spelling.) All startling similarities to Fjord's old mentor aside, best guess here is a reference to Evander, a Romanized Greek name that literally translates to "good man". (So maybe it's Evandren.) There was a folk hero named Evander who was credited with first bringing Greek culture to pre-Rome, but again, that probably even wasn't his name, just what they called him, because he was a classic folk hero whose name was literally Good Man.

I open this up to the community from here! What did I miss? Who's got thoughts about those many surnames I couldn't figure out? How much does Laerryn as a lare make you go OUCH?

#cr spoilers #exu calamity #which I keep trying to type as 'exu exandria'#why brain #why

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faejilly · 10 months

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a while ago i watched someone react to 1.03 and were praising izzy for being an ally and like i love izzy but almost every time she brought up alec’s sexuality it made me super uncomfortable bc who would really want to be constantly in fear that your sibling is going to out you in a very homophobic society while trying to be supportive? and like there’s no way that izzy doesn’t know that the clave is homophobic and she still brings up it up all the time, it just seems weird that she can understand that the clave is racist but can’t comprehend that it is also homophobic, and she never really dropped the topic despite alec being uncomfortable with it

#mood

HOWEVER

The question arises... was Alec uncomfortable, or were pretty much all the queer viewers uncomfortable?

There's a thing with most media, but TV shows & movies especially, which have so many people involved in making them, and so many constraints behind the scenes that we the viewers may or may not know anything about, that sometimes the way a scene appears to the viewer is NOT the way it was intended/the way the characters take it.

Shadowhunters is a particularly egregious example of this, being a (relatively) cheap YA melodrama on a third-rate network whose entire production staff got swapped out between seasons 1 and 2, so 'lol what is consistency or planning?!?' is visible everywhere.

SO.

Is Izzy in-universe actually clueless/dangerous Straight People™️or were the writers/showrunners clueless Straight/White People™️who had no idea that half of their 'rule of cool' / 'quick banter' / etc. came across as micro-aggressions to the audience?

You can go either way, it's all a question of which you think is more fun/interesting/necessary for your own peace of mind/enjoyment of canon. (Fandom is supposed to be fun after all.)

A lot of people settle on 'they are that bad in canon' and write a lot of fix-it fic or 'nephilim have to deal with CONSEQUENCES!' fanworks, and those are great! A lot of other people go with "clearly everyone else in canon acts like they have positive relationships, so this is a failure of execution and I'm going to write fic/make art assuming that these people are who they SAY they are, and figure out what that looks like to me" and those are also great!

Just decide which one you're doing when you start, because combining both in one fic gets... a little weird? Hard to follow, at least. 🤣

SO: Is Alec uncomfortable? How does he deal with that, what does that say about his relationship with Izzy, with other nephilim, with the Clave & Council & Alicante? How does that contrast with how he feels interacting with the downworld, which is canonically a lot more self-aware and accepting of queer people and minorities?

If Alec isn't uncomfortable with Izzy's behavior, if no one else seems to pick up on it, why? Do we go with other people's reactions in canon and assume that she is in fact very careful with what she says where and it seems overt to us the viewers because we're allowed to see it? (Much like inter-party banter over comms in heist movies or tv shows; no one else ever hears it or sees it, so we can see and hear it for storytelling purposes, not for 'reality' purposes.)

If that's the case, what does their relationship look like to people in public? How different are public-facing Alec & Jace & Isabelle from what we the viewers see of their private relationships to each other?

Do you want to assume some mish-mash of both? It's more subtle in the setting than it seems so we can see it, and also Alec knows she means well even if we don't? OR SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY?

IDK, I have no conclusions here. I mostly assume that the show is a disaster, and these people all seem to like each other, so how can I write them that fits the results rather than all the dumb-ass details? (I like a lot of authors/artists who go the other way though.) This is encouraged by the fact that the technical/magical worldbuilding is nonsense so I'm making up shit all the time anyway, might as well add characterization to that too! 🤣🤣🤣

#jilly answers #Anonymous #sh critical #my sh rambling #isabelle lightwood #alec lightwood #lightwood family feels #shadowhunters #tangential tuesday #sort of #sh meta

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demadogs · 1 year

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hey there! i love your analysis on why you think mike is already aware of his feelings. but my question is, wouldn't it also make sense for him to be behaving weirdly and doing all of that even if he's already gathered that there's something off about his relationship with el and his feelings towards will even if he doesn't know that his feelings for will are romantic? what makes you 100% sure that he's fully aware of how he feels?

yes it does make sense that he’d act weird just because he knows something is off and i think a perfect example of that is “its not my fault you dont like girls”. i dont think he was questioning his sexuality or wills sexuality at this point but he does have the idea ingrained in his head that he SHOULD have a girlfriend and not showing interest in girls at their age is bad.

there are other odd behavioral things he does in s3 but theyre different than s4. i think of s3 as the anti-mlvn season and s4 as the pro-byler season. in s3 we see some actions that can tell us that he may not be romantically interested in el but we see almost nothing in that season (behavioral wise) that tells us he is interested in will. that changes dramatically in s4. almost all of his questionable behavior in s4 is towards will and the odd behavior towards el is just a continuation of how he acted in s3 but with a much more serious tone. (im not including 1 or 2 bc i dont think any part of him was questioning his sexuality or feeling like something was off then).

in s3 most his odd behaviors are towards el. and theyre little things.

in the very beginning he doesnt let el touch him while shes kissing him.

when hes biking back el looks so happy talking to him on the walkie and mike just has this weird concentrated look on his face.

when she breaks up with him he looks like this is just an inconvenience to him, not like hes genuinely hurt.

theres also a big difference in how these odd behaviors are shown in s3 than s4. s3 usually shows it in a light, comedic way. like the first time he struggles to say he loves el to her face when hes cleaning her wound. this scene is portrayed as comedic and lighthearted. just your normal awkward teenager nervous to tell his first girlfriend that he loves her, makes sense. but then they continued that narrative in s4 and showed that it was actually a real issue in their relationship. i think that means that mike is in a much darker place because he knows how he really feels but isnt telling her the truth.

they do this again with the last kiss scene in s3. he doesnt kiss her back at all and looks completely baffled after she says he loves him. again, could easily just be an awkward teenager moment, but they made the tone much more serious in s4.

and then theres all the new questionable behavior towards will specifically that we’ve never seen before. not calling will but writing to el all the time, looking visibly nervous talking to him (airport scene, ‘cool cool’ scene), insisting that el is his girlfriend and theyre just friends. theyre not vague oddities anymore, they revolve around will.

we have seen mike stand up to homophobic bullies badmouthing will, stay with him 24/7 when he was in danger, hold his hand when he was shaking, tell him that asking to be his friend was the best thing hes ever done, and now hes scared to just hug him. he knows how he feels about him.

all that being said, i do think hes suppressed this knowledge a lot and is still in denial and trying so hard to hold onto his precious heterosexual relationship but he knows his true feelings. and i think he feels terrible for staying with el knowing this but if he did break up with el it would be like admitting/accepting that he really is queer which he does not want to do. (which is why hes the perfect victim for vecna)

#byler #eden answers

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edoro · 2 years

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Ship bingo: Lumiter

i really like Lumiter! i like Huntlow a lot too but honestly Lunter/Lumiter was my first love and i still have a huge soft spot for it.

let's break this down a bit by the dynamics here...

Lumity of course needs no introduction. absolutely classic. i love the way it was built up and how well they work together, how they try so hard to communicate and work through problems, how they've both had conflict and issues and are slowly learning to grow and be better people together, and just how much they like each other.

Amity's gradual crush on Luz is really cute, and tbh i can understand people who say they feel like Luz's side of it was a bit rushed, but i also think that Luz's like, just long-standing determination to Be Friends With Amity even after their first introduction was so horrible can easily be interpreted as her having a huge crush on this cool cute witch girl and just not even realizing her feelings were romantic for the longest time.

Lunter is a classic. oddly controversial for a protag/main antag ship, and while i'm sympathetic to people who feel threatened because they value Lumity so much, i must say that pretty much every vocal Lunter-disliker i've ever seen has been moderately to extremely biphobic about it, and uh i think we can definitely dislike a ship without implying or outright stating that lesbians are More Queer than bi people.

i really love their dynamic though! especially considering all the development we got of it in the back half of s2, but i mean, s2e1 and s2e6 were fucking classic. beautiful sequence of meetuglies. he threatened to boil her alive, she slapped him and called him a bad person, he licked her hand, she embarrassed him in front of the scouts, ten minutes later he's telling her his tragic backstory and visibly barely restraining himself from infodumping about wild magic to her because this is literally the first time in his life anyone has acted even vaguely interested in anything he has to say. What's Better Than This.

they have so much in common - being bisexual, being transgender in every possible direction at once, being incredibly neurodivergent (bi4bi t4t autistic4adhd) - they also both tend to minimize and repress their own feelings and devote themselves to others, seeing themselves as leaders of a sort who are responsible for everyone else.

plus they're also both absolute nerds but like, extremely chaotic about it. there definitely needs to be a strong element of rivalry or competition to their relationship. they're Best Frenemies. they're kismeses. they annoy the absolute shit out of each other but they also understand each other and have been through some serious stuff together and both really value and care about each other.

Luz has seen Hunter at his worst in a variety of ways and has still been there for him and offered him companionship and kept reaching out to him, and i think that's really good for him - he's spent so much of his life being told that he only has a limited number of chances, and like, nobody's patience is inexhaustible, everyone has limits, but for someone to just keep holding out that hand for him no matter how much he screws up? someone who believes so strongly in giving people the benefit of the doubt? just really good and meaningful, even if i think he also isn't sure how to engage with her because of the low points she's seen him at.

and for Luz, like, i think Hunter is someone who can act as both a restraining influence on her more out-there ideas and also logistical support - he can both tell her when she's being ridiculous AND help her turn her ideas into actual plans. he respects her abilities but wouldn't let her blindly rush off into or lead him into something dangerous.

one thing i also really like about Luz and Hunter is the potential for like, exposing her to his trauma. Luz has trauma of her own (another way she and Hunter can relate is their tendency to totally downplay the bad things that have happened to them), but i just don't see her as someone who's dealt with or is very familiar with the kind of intense, chronic familial abuse that Hunter grew up with.

she's a really optimistic person, and naive in some ways. she's surprisingly socially astute for her character archetype, good at figuring out how people feel and responding to that, really nuanced in her approach to even really shitty people who've hurt her personally - not in a way where she ignores the bad, but where she assumes people have good qualities too and just need the opportunity to display them. but that can also turn into not realizing when someone doesn't want to change, or won't change, or it's not worth it for her to try to change them or give them that opportunity.

and i think like, seeing Hunter and how he's been treated and what he's been through can sort of demonstrate that to her. just in general he's sort of her foil - he's living the fantasy chosen one life she wanted, and he's miserable, because it sucks actually. in some ways he functions as a reality check for her, or just like, shows her the downside of a lot of things that she thought she wanted. knowing him introduces another type of nuance, about the worst sides of people.

also, they are hilarious and extremely chaotic together. like they just manage to get into the weirdest situations. throw them into 1000 bizarre circumstances, i want to see it all.

and now for Hunter and Amity... i really love the two of them interacting. their relationship is very fascinating to me. they have so much in common, specifically wrt their trauma and the abuse they've gone through.

i think that it would be so valuable for the two of them to be able to talk to each other about that. it's something they've both been through that no one else can really 'get' the way each of them can, and especially when it comes to like, having complicated or positive feelings about their abusers, or even having complicated feelings about the abuse and the effects that it's had on them - those are just really difficult aspects of having been abused and they're things it's really hard to discuss with people who haven't been through abuse themselves, no matter how open-minded or non-judgmental or understanding they are.

they're also both just really serious, self-sacrificing, overachieving, perfectionist types - also perfect rivals in a way. i think that they'd make a great matched set of intimidating bodyguards for Luz. they know she can take care of herself, but they want to make it so she doesn't have to take care of herself!

i also think that they could be a really powerful source of support for each other about their issues and trauma, but there's also a lot of fascinating possibility for them to like, kind of encourage each other's worse traits - to reinforce each other's beliefs in existing as a tool for someone else, to egg each other on in driving themselves too hard, that sort of thing. Luz offers a very stabilizing influence here.

personally, i don't mind considering the two of them being sexually or maybe even romantically involved in a poly situation. i don't see the two of them ever being involved on their own*, but with Luz in the middle bringing them together, i can see it in a variety of ways.

i'm not an identity purist and i think that sexuality is fluid and complex and i'm more interested in exploring that than i am interested in writing about Amity Blight, Gold Star Lesbian.

maybe she's not attracted to him at all and refuses to even be in the same room while he and Luz mess around. maybe she has certain strict limits on how physically intimate she's willing to get with him in a threesome situation. maybe she's willing to do sexual stuff to/with him during a threesome situation, but pretty much only for Luz's entertainment. maybe having sex with him + Luz means that she feels horny for him under that precise specific circumstance, because he's there and she's there and she's horny and she doesn't mind directing it towards him when he's there along with Luz. maybe she's curious but ultimately not into him. maybe she doesn't like boys but she's attracted to his body. maybe he is just literally her One Exception. maybe she's a lesbian because her attraction to men is vague and theoretical and mostly based on fictional characters + her attraction to women is very real, visceral, immediate, and intense, but as she gets to know him she gets more attached and finds herself more and more attracted to him, but it's a very specific circumstance that isn't reflective of the broader trends and so she still considers herself a lesbian.

maybe she's not attracted to him but they've messed around for whatever reasons - curiosity, boredom, Luz wanted them to, they were both horny but Luz wasn't there, wanting comfort/intimacy, whatever.

maybe Hunter is transfem or fem-leaning nb and therefore is either a girl or girl-adjacent in a way that Amity is attracted to.

the point being, there's a lot of ways they could engage with each other sexually while also having a meaningful emotional relationship with each other, and i don't necessarily think that any of those 'erase' Amity's lesbian-ness at all - if someone wants to imagine her as like, a Kinsey scale 6 who would never even look at a nude man if she could help it, then that's certainly their prerogative and i don't think they're wrong to do so at all, but i think there's tons of room to investigate them being involved in a sexual + emotional capacity and for Amity to still be a lesbian, and just personally i find 'exploring the fluidity and complexities of sexuality and gender' way more interesting than setting up rigid boundaries.

(plus those boundaries inevitably like, declassify Real Actual Living People Some Of Whom Are My Personal Friends from their own sexualities, and i think that's pretty shitty.)

#lunter #lumiter #hunter toh #amity blight #luz noceda #the owl house #asks

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