#i suffer from lack of pop culture knowledge
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have you ever talked about the 'spoiler' in fiction and your thoughts about it? i remember you wrote something in connection to nabokov's 'you can only reread a novel' but I fear i may be mistaken (if so, please ignore. have a great day!)
I know the post you mean but I can't find it :( Tumblr's search function stays winning, I guess. To do a brief rundown on my position on 'spoilers' and specifically their relationship to critical work:
I don't have an especially strong position on like, avoiding vs not avoiding spoilers and how conscientious we should be about it in the sorts of environments where avoidance is possible. I try to tag for spoilers when I think it's appropriate; I'm personally not that bothered by spoilers, but like, I'm not mad at people who are. Whilst I think that knowing the 'twists' in a narrative ahead of time can be a fun way of noticing how they're set up (I love to google the plots of things I'm reading/watching so I can pay more attention to narrative construction and less to actually following the plot lmfao), I don't think you can just dismiss out of pocket the value of the emotional reaction that first meeting with a 'twist' can bring + how a reliance on that response can sometimes carry a narrative in ways that aren't necessarily weak or floundering. Some genres rely more on a lack of 'spoilers' than others; a narrative which relies heavily on hermeneutic codes, such as the murder mystery narrative, locates success in a particular balance of concealing and revealing information to the end of audience satisfaction that 'spoilers' can tamper with, sometimes unfairly. That said, when I'm writing critical essays on an external platform (ie. like, writing a Substack essay rather than doing a longform post on here) where a reader's access to it is wholly at their own discretion, I'm not going to be playing the 'writing about this work without giving away a spoiler' game, and I think doing so (even in reviews…..tbh……) is critically lazy; or, more charitably, at least inefficient.
What I mean to express is my frustration with how this excoriation of the "spoiler" (and specifically the placing of an onus on the audience to not "spoil" a work for others) places severe limitations on the scope and capability of the pop critical sphere. A lot of pieces on popular culture will try to posit a critical reading of a work without delving into "spoiler" territory; as such, they'll severely limit the terrain they can actually work on. (A Substack essay I wrote on Severance a while back responded to a Severance piece that suffered from this issue; the piece was bad for lots of reasons lol but one of them was that it couldn't actually delve into its topic with any depth or nuance because the writer couldn't write about any major plot beats not established in the premise or like, the first episode.)
Like, a text isn’t a linear body where any point that you might choose to talk about is solely accountable to the narrative events that have come before it and bears no relation to those that will come after; a text is more like a set of moving parts which all work in relation to one another to construct a cohesive whole. The very process of constructing a narrative relies on 1. the existence of an audience who only hold knowledge of the events that have happened so far up to and including whatever point they’re at in the text, and 2. the notion of all parts of the narrative exerting a force on all other parts of the narrative, of the ‘early’ sections of a narrative being, in a sense, ‘aware’ of their later sections; of the later events shaping the earlier just as much as the earlier shape the later. Obviously it’s possible and valuable to talk in-depth about an unfinished text; cf. for example, ongoing book series, TV series, similar such serialisations where the critic does not have a closed, completed narrative in front of them; but a) often those serialised works will be broken down into smaller units with internal narrative cohesion (one series of a TV show, one book in a series) wherein the criticism emerges from balancing out the tension between negotiating that internal cohesion and speculating on where the open-ended questions posed by the unit might lead, and b) this is fundamentally a different process to just … pointing to the vague opening ‘themes’ of a piece and failing to elaborate in any way because to do so would be ‘spoilers.’
The issue I’m articulating is mostly one wherein this particular form of pop criticism begins to perform the function of advertising before it engages its readership enough to start an actual process of interrogation and evaluation around the work in question. The attempt to talk about something whilst only making reference to the bare bones of its plot + avoiding the major narrative 'twists' severely constricts what you can talk about; it's just not good criticism, and I think this overfocus on never 'spoiling' something for others rather than expecting people to develop some discretion about what secondary material they read creates this impetus to essentially sell something to your audience rather than just … talk about it as a holistic piece. It does a disservice to the work in question and it does a disservice to your own critical faculties, lol?
I don't know how much this matters in the grand scheme of things, when critical practice is becoming a little more dispersed; like, I'm thinking of a phenomenon specific to The Thinkpiece hosted by The (Relatively) Prestigious Platform, but criticism is happening on like, Substack and Goodreads and Tumblr and everywhere else, such that it's easily possible to seek out this actually penetrative analysis should you want to. I am mostly just like, having an old man yells at cloud moment about it.
Also to be clear I'm not like positing a Radical New Position on critical practice here or claiming that other forms of critical practice (such as like, a lit paper) are free of their own problematic aspects; it's really just explaining a personal irritation lmao
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MR14.2024 - How I revived the way I see English and Why I suck at life.
That one's a pretty long read, go ahead and pop in a tune while you're at it, yeah? - 1997 by Småland.
Despite considering myself a sloppy son of a bitch, soon to suffer the wrath of capitalism induced hunger, for the longest time I had this skill of mine that spiked among the others and kept me sane - my English.
Here, down in Central Asia it is saddeningly common for people not to know basic English. That is what I think made me stand out in school and is what even now helps me out in uni.
And I’m not saying that I ever was a boy genius. God forbid.
In my book, lil’ me just so happened to take interest in the World Wide Web, in which English spoken content was like a treasure trove, levels more appealing in contrast with the grey Russian media of the time. I can thank my iCarly obsessed sisters for introducing me to the concept of filming something and sharing it to strangers online.
It always seemed logical that content made in English is, by rule, superior in quality than the local counterparts. And for some reason, it just seemed like the niche that was there for me to explore. An ever-spreading ocean of sparkling online knowledge, unavailable to the ones around me, for the lack of interest in breaking and overcoming the language barrier, which in reality, is far simpler than it seems.
That is what I consider to be the icky, tricky side of committing yourself to a language most people around you don’t know - you may often make yourself way too alien for many to relate to.
I like to think that English is what shaped me and made my social circle full of interesting people. There was a neat period of my life, when it was lovely to spread the good word of the western media by sharing memes, films, and videos with classmates of mine who listened and liked the stuff I showed.
But, that is also what trapped me in the aforementioned circle.
In order to max out my English, I had to sacrifice my Kazakh, which sort of ruined my social life and has been actively affecting my grades since elementary school. I suppose I simply never noticed how I gradually have made myself more and more distant, enough for my peers to seemingly have a culture different to mine.
I struggled with connecting with new people, and having casual conversations with both close and new friends began growing more challenging, for the simple fact that they were not as terminally online as I am, therefore having their sense of humor not as influenced by brainrot content as mine is. I frequently stumbled over a convoluted idiom, which understandingly made no sense to their ears, referenced memes they never even heard of. The general incompatibility of interests did not make things better for sure.
So, I unconsciously made it my mission to localise my speech, which I believe only made things worse for me. Trying to understand English in order to dumb it down has only killed my passion for it. By speaking “clearly” I lost contact with a funny little British voice in my head that filled my routine with time for silly voice-acting and… kept me alive. As a guy who’s self-image heavily relies on his tool he uses to connect with his world, It felt crushing to seemingly realize my English skills were dull and deteriorating.
It stopped me from further practicing, because I repel stress like a bitch, opting for escapism and ignorance instead. The same escapism that made me the pathetic man I am today.
I am ending this post with a cliffhanger by letting you know that my “mother tongue” is kindly coming to bite me in the ass if I won’t put in the effort to learn it and will probably negatively hit my grades, risking my summer scholarship alongside my chances for a good future.
It’s all no fun. Sucks to be me. My heart aches. My chest sinks and I feel like eating rocks.
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Time to end commercial surrogacy
HYDERABAD: With more and more people in pop culture opting for and celebrating surrogacy, people have been growing more accepting of the practice. But very few know of all the things that go behind and into the process — right from conception to the paperwork involved — the lack of knowledge about this, leading to the rights of several people being violated, says Dr Sheela Suryanarayana, who spoke about her book A Transnational Feminist View of Surrogacy Biomarkets in India at Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad.
Surrogacy has been a curious case among many, with little to no understanding of the rules and pain that surrogates put themselves through once they agree to be a couple’s surrogate. Surrogacy is permitted in India only for altruistic purposes or for couples who suffer proven infertility or disease, while commercial surrogacy, which includes sale, prostitution or any other forms of exploitation, is banned in the country.Speaking about her research on commercial surrogacy, Dr Sheela says, “I have worked on this topic since 2009 and have spoken about it at the United Nations and Rajya Sabha and have now compiled my work into a book.
The book is about transnational surrogacy biomarket and how it functions in the global scenario. It talks about how the entire surrogacy biomarket reflects on the overall micro-level global inequality. It is largely the richer people making surrogate mothers of those from poorer countries as well as within their country. When commercial surrogacy was banned in India, Mexico and Nepal, the practice moved to other low-income countries like South Africa and other nations in South America and South East Asia.
There is a clear global pattern of how these surrogate markets are moving, looking for countries where poorer women are willing to do it for a lower price and lesser rights on their bodies and children. The vulnerability of surrogate mothers because they belong to the poorer section, less educated women, lesser employment opportunities and lesser nutrition makes them more liable to maternal morbidity and mortality. The profits share goes to the medical professionals instead of the surrogate mothers.”
She adds that when commercial surrogacy was allowed in India, women were put in surrogate hostels where they had to remain for a complete year. “Some breastfeeding mothers came in too, so they were given injections to dry the milk up or alter the hormones that could allow them to carry a baby,” she laments.
Talking about her book, Dr Sheela shares that her study dates back to 2009 when she intensely followed 11 surrogate mothers throughout the process. “The book is a case study of these mothers and five intended parents I met. The concept I focus on is the reproductive right of individuals being violated. I have known surrogate mothers who had their uterus removed because by they ended up bearing the brunt of big consequences like brain haemorrhage!”
She says that more and more women who belong to economically weaker communities, need to be aware of their rights: “The media, especially ones in vernacular languages can change this. They can spread awareness about the dangers and risks associated with surrogacy, while also speaking about their rights.”
#Anti surrogacy#Anti exploiting women#Anti turning babies into commodities#No one is entitled to biological children#It’s another way to traffic people
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I'm doing some research on textiles for hyperfixation art reasons and it reminded me of a conversation I hear pop up every so often; that the United States don't have culture. I would argue that we have more of a bleached culture (which is an inside joke in my family) but, more seriously, it's more of a corporate culture? It's expected for people to work, in most cases just needless busywork to sate someone else's pride, so when would anyone ever have time to be people rather than being employees? Part of that is from how the U.S. was settled by puritanical extremists who believed that hard work and suffering in life purified the spirit and it’s weird that no one really thinks about how, even to this day, that mentality pervades Everyone thinks that this mentality hasn’t effected them, especially if they're atheists, no matter how outwardly obvious it is that they've inherited these beliefs.
I've been looking into embroidery, needlework, whitework, blackwork, etcetera for over four hours now and none of it came from the U.S., all either coming from indigenous people or through immigration. Anecdotally, even when textiles are practiced in the states, it's by wealthy people who aren’t beholden to long work hours, retirees, or homeless/disabled people.
It would be amazing for these practical arts to be more commonplace bit that brings up several issues. Lack of time, obviously, but also issues such as attention span, lack of materials, lack of knowledge, and impermanence of property. As most adults only have about four hours a day for themselves, they'll habitually only do short-term projects, thus reducing one's willingness/motivation/ability to do anything that won't deliver a swift reward (which causes a whole host of issues on its own but I'm not here to talk about why we're the mental illness capital of the world). All of our manufacturers have doubled down on offering only trash that will last a few scant years maybe and which is intentionally designed for rapid degradation (cotton gets softer as it ages; polyester grows rough and thin). Even those who can cough up the money can't find actual quality materials (as my seamstress friend has attested. Multiple times).
But fundamentally, and most striking to me personally, is the fact that we don’t teach our young how to sew. It's one of the things that was shrugged off when our education system shifted to constant tests and standardization; teaching students to sew isn’t profitable so we take away teachers' funds for teaching it but we also don’t teach our own. How can we? What time do we have, what resources? I only know how to do it because my grandmother is a teacher and wanted us to know how at an early age.
Alright, I got it out of my system— for now.
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despite having been on tumblr for over a decade, i suffer from a Severe Lack of Pop Culture Knowledge. my exposure to pop culture prior to joining tumblr in 2013, and my exposure to pop culture outside my particular niches since then, is extremely limited. i have never watched a single ep of spongebob, i have never watched a disney channel show, i have never seen the majority of what most people consider staple shows and movies of their childhoods. so many of the jokes and references people make here and irl just fly straight over my head. im clueless, truly. idk what anyone is talking about
#i grew up only watching like the same 3 movies over and over#we didn't have cable and for a while no tv service at all#i was very sheltered from the internet and social media until i was in my teens#and i went to a tiny alternative school through 8th grade where i knew a total of like 17 people my age#i got to high school and felt like i had grown up on a different planet#benji talks#personal#inspired by: the jokes and references multiple friends have made in the past few days that just flew over me
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im still going but this is a separate point and also again to clarify this is not a phenomenological observation this is more an analysis of my own emotions and reactions when it comes to what i recognize as the american pop culture zombie. like a self psychoanalysis on the composite american/western (since im including ITF) pop culture idea of a zombie, not its cultural origins or throughline
OKAY! SO!
i think zombies are (to me) the most human out of all the classic monsters, esp compared to the big 2. werewolves are literally animals half the time and often have like animal instincts and features, vampires have the whole thing of their uncanny valley appearing-among-humanity-but-never-part-of-it thingy, but zombies dont really get powers and the transformation is not an intimate affair.
it's like most human states of tragedy (death, disease, homelessness, imprisonment, abandonment) where it can happen honestly at any time anywhere other people can put you there and you don't really gain any sickass powers from it. youre essentially a human but grotesque to the point of being shunned, leper-style, and you're suffering in a way that is so unbeautiful and unclean and you have needs that can't be made pretty and it's harder for you to live but it's unclear if it's because of your state or because of what that means for your state as someone seen as a person. like you can be in the sun and touch silver and see crosses, in fact it is harder if not impossible for you to die, but it is harder for you to LIVE. you are gross and terrifying and hated and diseased and dangerous, you are CONTAGIOUS, and you are not mutated either. you're just what we will all become, but the problem is that you're not where you should be, in the ground. the problem is that everyone can see you.
one can obviously see why i identify with this phenomenon. i hate zombie apocalypse stuff though because it's never centered actually on the zombie's perspective. OH there's also the lack of cognition or more often the loss of the ability to communicate, like with the WWDITS or Monster High zombies. if you're not being eliminated you're kind of just put away because you make people uncomfortable and they cannot understand you. and of course there's the rot, the motifs of zombiism are human debris and detritus, not really any symbols or aesthetics but like bouquets of eyes and stuff. you guys know about the slogan of zombie love?
to my knowledge it's not related to any like source movement, it's just kind of a phrase thrown around when it comes to zombies. but like look at the key recognizable things, human hearts, brains, decay, nothing that doesn't already exist in real life. and the theme is love, i'm kind of losing my train of thought here but isn't that interesting? how physical and real it is? how romantic and unglamorous? rotten and raw and heartbreaking i love it
#his ass has two essays to write for SCHOOL. but she is doing diatribes on zombies#not even educated ones just my feelings#aries.doc#horror#zombies
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Baby, we were bored to death : 2000 : FM radio station market, Toronto
Why does Toronto have such insipid and boring radio? Our city is vibrant, artistic, culturally diverse and entertaining, so why is none of that reflected in our uninspired radio stations? Travelling in Europe and North America as a radio consultant, I listen to a lot of radio and it is tragic to concede that my own city has some of the most boring radio stations known to mankind.
Opportunities to change this sad state of radio in our city are everywhere, but have too often been ignored. When Shaw Communications purchased 'Energy 108' a couple of years ago, it could have reinvented the station as a cultural focus for Toronto's young people. Instead, Shaw fired 'Energy's most knowledgeable DJ's, introduced Sarah McLachlan songs once an hour (in a dance music format?) and changed the name to … 'Energy 107.9'. Wow! How many minutes did it take the marketing department to devise a strategy that unambitious?
Rogers Media's purchase of 'KISS 92' last year was a complete no-brainer. Can you name any other city of similar size in North America that has had no Top Forty radio station for a period of even a few months? And yet Toronto suffered this malaise for several years. Even if Rogers had hired a helium-voiced bimbo DJ to front a Top Forty format, it still could have captured a huge audience hungry for what used to be called 'pop music'. And that is exactly what they did. 'KISS's ratings are noteworthy, not just for the hordes of spotty grade nine students who naturally gravitate towards Backstreet Boys soundalikes and terrible Canadian techno. But the station's substantial audience over the age of twenty is a sad reflection of the lack of any other remotely exciting music station in Toronto. For those of us past our teen years, 'KISS 92' at least makes you feel good to be alive, compared with other FM music stations that treat listeners like senile geriatrics with one foot already in the grave.
One would hope that 'KISS 92's runaway success might encourage its competitors to try and become a little more imaginative in their programs. The signs so far are not particularly encouraging. 'EZ Rock 97' revamped its daytime line-up last week to introduce even more soporific DJ's and has changed its slogan from 'My Music At Work' to 'Soft Rock Favourites'. Station owner Telemedia appointed a new Program Director drafted from its Calgary operation to oversee these changes. Yes, Calgary – that hotbed of radical, imaginative radio formats! 'EZ Rock' looks certain to retain its nickname of 'Radio Slumberland' in our household.
Milestone Radio, scheduled to launch next year, has an incredible opportunity to turn its black music format into an exciting, inclusive station that could electrify the city. After all, black culture has never been so predominant, nor so imitated, in mainstream music and arts. With imagination, Milestone could be a very successful radio version of 'City TV'. Whether its owners can grasp that challenge, let alone succeed with it, depends upon the station's ability to overcome three obstacles. Milestone's programming plans are the obvious product of committee debate, with too many worthy (but commercially disastrous) ideas generated by individuals who have particular axes to grind. Its recent effort to recruit a Program Director in the US rings alarm bells that Milestone is creating a cookie-cutter US-style urban music station that would reflect nothing of Toronto (listen to 'WBLK' for days on end and you will learn absolutely nothing about Buffalo, but everything about 'strong songs'). And lastly, the spectre of minority shareholder Standard Broadcasting might be waiting quietly in the shadows for Milestone's ambitious plans to fail in the first year, so that it can take control and resurrect the station as a smooth-jazz format, fitting perfectly alongside its mind-numbing 'MIX 99'.
As for 'Edge 102' and 'Q-107', their owners should have been bold enough to extinguish these dinosaur formats years ago. There is so much exciting new music in the world, but you will certainly never hear any of it played on these two stations. The malaise is so bad that Toronto radio critic Marc Weisblott felt obliged to apologise in a recent column (radiodigest.com) for spending so much time listening to New York City radio via the internet. No need to apologise, Marc. Our only ray of hope is that one fine morning, some bold senior executive in Shaw/Corus, Standard, CHUM or Rogers might suddenly understand that radio which is stimulating and challenging can also be a commercial success. I would prescribe that executive a quick radio listening visit to any major city in the world to understand the potential. Otherwise, Toronto radio is condemned to be a mere revenue-generating asset designed to send us all to permanent sleep with yet another Celine Dion or Bryan Adams song.
[Submitted to Toronto weekly what’s on paper, unpublished]
#Canada#commercial radio#Grant Goddard#local radio#music#radio#radio broadcasting#radio industry#radio sector#radio station
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Three Strange People
Knowledge will set you free. Or to be more exact: understanding will set you free. It’s something I’ve learned firsthand. If you can understand what’s going on around you, if you can see the currents that push people around this way or that, you feel less like a leaf on the tide. Allow me to explain.
When I was younger I could never understand why people were so mean. Teachers cut down my writing. Other boys tried to embarrass me playing sports. Girls refused to talk to me. As you can guess I was never exactly popular. My parents were unsympathetic. My self esteem suffered. I stumbled along from one painful experience to the next and the most important lesson was that life is cruel and suffering is inevitable.
I could never understand why things had to be that way. Why did bosses consistently refuse to give me another chance? Why did friends drift in and out of my life? WHY? I started thinking maybe I lacked some essential human quality, like the world was communicating around me through some secret coded language and I had been deliberately left out for the sake of people’s amusement. Why does every joke need to have a butt, and why was it always me?
I’ve since learned I am not alone in these feelings. They are all too common, but not commonly celebrated. And that was the turning of the page. It took me a while but I started to see that kids are mean because they don’t want other people to be mean to them. Friends couldn’t be my friend because I lowered their social ranking. Teachers needed to teach me to follow the prompts and not to write whatever I felt like writing. Everyone is just doing what they think they have to do to get by, and if I could remember that it made things a lot easier to bear. It’s something that’s made my life a whole lot easier, and so I’d like to share it with you for free.
Most of the time these days I feel I can understand people, at least a bit. And I try to be sympathetic and see the best in everyone. And look on the bright side. It’s not possible all of the time, but I still try. Which is why it really strikes me as unusual when I encounter people I can barely understand at all.
Hear me out. I just met the weirdest group of absolute freaks I’ll probably ever run into. I know it’s not nice to talk about them that way but there’s no other way to say it. I should probably tell you about them while they’re still fresh in my mind. Just as a way to process.
My name’s Marvin by the way. Marvin Marsh. I live in Florida near St. Petersburg. One time as I was walking home a guy on the sidewalk offered to sell me crack. That led to a whole slew of life experiences. Not to crack addiction if that’s what you’re thinking, just a long lasting interest in street culture and talking to homeless people. And the symbolism of police officers, what feelings they provoke in people. Basically what it means if people are always assuming you’re a cop. That’s another story. Also I couldn’t eat oranges for a long time, but that’s gone away.
So anyways a few nights ago I was walking home by the same patch of sidewalk where characters always seem to pop up. And there’s bugs buzzing around the streetlights and some plastic cups rolling down the street. The sprinklers on the church lawn have just gone off and the grass is making that smell as it dries out. One of my favorite authors said the wind blows through city streets like a giant lung and the metaphor stuck with me I guess. This giant lung is raking in dead leaves and plastic soda cups and the scent of freshly watered grass. A nice blend of green growth and trash I guess.
And I see this girl. She has red hair and she’s listening to her ipod. She’s swaying back and forth across the grass like she’s dizzy or maybe dancing to her headphones. And something about her seems kind of feral, like if I tried to talk to her she’d yell at me or something. So I give her a wide berth.
But as I’m walking by and being careful to avoid eye contact she realizes I’m there. In a split second she points her fingernail at me. “Look at him!” She says to no one. “He UNDERSTANDS people!! Right!?”
So maybe she’s on drugs. That’s not uncommon in this neighborhood. I have a pretty high tolerance for crazy by now, and it’s kept my rent lower than it would be in other places.
“He’s an alien! With a Spartan hat and a kilt!! From the MOOON!!!” She says moon like she’s imitating a cow. “What are you doing here? You’re not doing anything. All you do is walk back and forth hoping you’ll meet someone like Kemal who can make you sick again and give you more of an idea who you really are. It’s never going to happen.”
“Who’s Kemal?” I asked.
“How should I know? He’s a florist now. He still thinks you were planning a sting against him but he’s just glad he got away. You helped him turn his life around.”
So I’m not sure what to think but I keep staring at her waiting if she says anything else. “Who are YOU?” She finally asks. “And why are you catching flies like that, don’t you have somewhere you need to be?”
I shook my head and walked away.
But I hadn’t gone half a block when I see what looks like an old man and his son. Sitting on a concrete wall and watching me approach. The father is big and wide and takes up a lot of space. He has a grey beard and ponytail and a scowl.
“Hey there bud.” He also looks like he might yell at me. He looks like an angry drunk. “Why don’tcha sit down for a while.”
Alongside this large man is a curly headed youth staring into the distance. They weren’t talking to each other or even looking at each other as far as I could see, just keeping a vigil on their concrete wall. So now I have to see what they want.
“What’s up?” I ask and my voice shrinks for some reason.
“Give me the marble.” Says the father and the boy hands him something. He cradles it in his hand like a pair of dice.
“How bout the weather?” says the father. So he doesn’t tell me what’s up, he just wants to bullshit about the weather. Maybe next he’ll say something about sports. He probably doesn’t really care what I think about the weather so I just stand there. He asked me to sit but him and his son are taking up all the space on the wall and I don’t feel like sitting on the grass. So far this guy seems impossible-
“The clouds overhead. Think it might rain?”
“I don’t see any clouds.” I remember saying. “It just looks dark to me. You can’t even see the stars.”
“And why can’t you see the stars? Have they gone somewhere?” I was about to say stars don’t move like that when there was a faint sound of thunder in the background. Cars are passing by. Headlights.
“What’s your name?” asks the father. “Marvin.” I say “Marvin Marsh.”
“Marvin it’s nice to meet you.” he says in one big tired breath. “My name’s Ben, and the kid there next to me is called Will.” Will nods his head a bit and stares past me.
“Where’s your boys at Marvin? Night like this you should be out cruisin’ or somethin’.”
“My boys? They’re doing... whatever it is they do after they get home, I don’t know.”
“Yeah sure. What about your girlfriend, you got a girlfriend?”
“Not right now no... I don’t have a girlfriend right now.”
“Young guy like you outta have a girlfriend. What about a job, you at least got a job?”
“...Not right now, no.”
“You got a car? Graduate from high school? Speak English?”
“Yes, yes, I mean I graduated from high school and obviously I speak English.”
Will has been slouching there with his arms crossed, but now he looks me right in the eyes and gives me a knowing smile. “He might not have the usual portfolio, but then again he might have some things not many people do.” Which seems like a strange thing for a kid like him to say.
But Ben’s face has been darkening and twisting into a not. He’s clutching the marble in a fist and Will seems to have set him off.
“You’re kind of an IDIOT aren’t you, IDIOT!?! The sooner you learn to accept that the more sense your life is gonna make.” I don’t know what to say. Will starts giggling.
“Well it’s OBVIOUS just by looking at you that you were born with a silver spoon up your ass, and have already PISSED AWAY more opportunities than most people get in a lifetime.” Will gives me a wink.
And it occurs to me this is very strange. Here I am looking at two people sitting right next to each other who seem oblivious to each others’ state. Why is Ben so angry at me? How can Will be so amused next to a big angry man like that? How do they coexist? It’s like my eyes are pointing in two different directions and just when I feel like my head should start hurting, up walks the redheaded girl and sits down right between them. And of course neither one acknowledges her at all.
“Well what’s your name?” I ask her. But she has her headphones in and seems not to hear me.
Ben answers for her. “Her name’s Sam, and she’ll forget about you the moment we leave so don’t try too hard.”
“Oh that reminds me,” says Will picking up a backpack and unzipping one of the pockets. Inside is a tangled mess of thread. “We’re yarn salesmen. Would you care to buy some?”
“No thanks,” I say “I don’t really have anything to do with yarn.” But he pulls out a big armload and hands it to me with a grin and my hands grab onto it on their own and it feels as soft and light as rabbit fur.
Sam takes a knife that looks like it’s made out of bone and nonchalantly cuts the yarn where it’s trailing out of the backpack. Then she hands the knife to Will. Will looks at the cut and nods in approval. Ben hands Sam the big marble and I notice there’s some kind of liquid swirling inside. Sam tosses the marble from hand to hand. All this and none of them are looking at each other. They must know each other that well.
“We’re leaving!” says Sam, and as if they were waiting for her cue they all get up, but they all walk in different directions. “Make sure you untangle that when you get a chance,” says Will over his shoulder “Or it will only get worse.”
Ben turns around after a few steps, and without asking or saying anything walks up and gives me a bearhug, which make me flinch. But I stay there for a minute, enveloped in his big sweaty arms, and the way he smells reminds me vividly of many things at once. The mats in gym class, drinking cheap beer with disreputable friends, tossing a frisbee with my dad, pages of the old books my mom used to read me. Definitely musty but not entirely a bad smell, or smells. Then he lets me go. “Take it easy on yourself.” He growls, and lumbers off.
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Tahani: I sleep with a knife under my pillow.
Jason: Weak. I sleep with an alligator.
Eleanor: You're both pathetic.
Tahani: Oh really? What do you sleep with?
Eleanor: Chidi.
#oh dip tgp#source: unknown#can anyone tell me if you know the source of this#i suffer from lack of pop culture knowledge#cheleanor#incorrect tgp quotes#incorrect good place quotes#tgp#good place#the good place#tahani al jamil#ahahaha i have a lot of janason quotes in mind but i saw this on an incorrect quote post for another show and i was like#not me rambling in the tags again#jason mendoza#jason x janet#janet x jason#janet tgp#janason#chidi x eleanor#chidi anagonye#eleanor shellstrop#michael tgp
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Stoner Witchcraft Blog Post #1
Amarok, Trickster Wolf Spirit:
and why FN Stories are often similiar but rarely the same
Warning: This post contains information about Chaotic and therefore; unpredictable Deities and Spirits. Do not approach these spirits without reason or they approach you as they did me.
Everything comes at a price - Anne Bishop
Dark Witchcraft is the path rarely followed
I found this on Pinterest randomly. I'm a Plains Cree living in Northern Canada, so some of these I'm familiar with different names and/or origin. Many stories do cross from tribe to tribe, so variations make it hard to find where they came from.
Most of these legends come from above the Arctic Circle. There are some that have travelled south and southwest - Orca and Wolf spirit have often been said to be both at once. What's interesting though, no one taught me that beforehand. I just figured it out based on the spirits being so similiar. Intelligent, loyal, family taught and orientated, pack hunters, harmless until they aren't. I actually (stoner me) missed that first time I looked at until now.
No... The spirit that grabbed my full attention was Amarok.
A lone giant Dire Wolf that'll either kill you or make you stronger. Chances are not in your favour if you cross one by accident. They're chaotic neutral, as most tricksters. They're gender neutral like most spirits, unless you're brave enough to check. They can speak, but rarely.
Amaroks fit right at home with my mixture of chaotic or neutral (usually both) Patrons.
Anubis
Lucifer
Loki
Amarok
Orca
Anubis is really the only voice of reason, Loki and Lucifer try to help... The Orca has been with me since a child in its wolf state, but living in a river town, I often dream of Orcas in fresh water.
Now, before anyone goes "name your source" first is wiki, second is my own experience, third is I'm one of the last generation raised as a traditional FN. My first language is Cree, and I grew up with many stories about different spirits, including several similiar but different creation stories.
I do talk to these Deities and spirits often. No, they are not beginner material and I don't encourage anyone to approach any of these Patrons. They will kick your ass if you fuck up badly enough, but they repay handsomely for loyalty, for a price.
These Deities came to me for my unusual compassion and empathy for those most forget about. I'll take extra suffering to prevent another. I'll sacrifice what means most to if it helps me regain myself and offers hope. This meant that despite wanting to hold on, I had to let go of the fact that, right now, I can't have a dog.
This year I had to give up two. My SDiT for snapping at a child, and a rescue that wasn't suited for my small place with no yard. My break up with my long term partner and Sir broke more than my heart. My big girl passed last year at 15.5 years. That when Anubis first came to me. Lucifer shortly after, and Loki the beginning of the year.
Amaroks ... Wolves in general don't scare me. I was the toddler who sat with the feral Rez dogs and got bit in the face, only to go back and leave that one alone.
It's not lack of fear; it's blending into whatever energy is needed. It's chaotic energy in raw form.
I just wanted to share this because I have a lot of stored witchcraft knowledge packed in my minds sacred space.
From tarot, mythology, cryptids, channeling, pop culture and witchcraft, music channeling, TV channeling, meditations, pet and animal magik, dark (not shadow) witchcraft, what is and isn't a familiar (yes, they can be physical form but their spirit will never leave you. Not all pets or even spirits make such an impression on the soul. I've been blessed with three in my life, my Hybrid directly connected me to Anubis and still holds place at his side.)
#witchcraft#grimoire#witchblr#amarok#inuit mythology#native american mythology#plains cree#chaotic gods#choatic neutral#chaotic witch#stoner witch#witch blog
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starfire & born sexy yesterday
So what is born sexy yesterday? This trope was introduced to the internet by essayist Pop Culture Detective as a lens through which to analyze adult women in science fiction media who are typically extremely attractive but are oblivious to both their sex appeal and to the ways of the world. This naivete is either intrinsic to their personality or a result of these characters literally being born yesterday (an example of this would be the Fifth Element's Leeloo). To keep it short, born sexy yesterday means a character with specialized intelligence but with the experience, mind, and personality of a child in the body of (most often) a grown woman who is usually highly sexualized and objectified. It's a trope that crops up in science fiction with an alarming frequency. Almost always, there is a man (typically ordinary in every way except for the fact that our Born Sexy Yesterday character falls for him) that guides the Born Sexy Yesterday through the ways of a world that are completely new to her. Seeming to possess an abundance of knowledge and intelligence, the Born Sexy Yesterday finds him irresistable and falls in love with him.
At a glance, Starfire's character seems to fulfil some of the basic characteristics of this trope. As a literal alien to Earth, Koriand'r meets a handful of these requirements:
Innocent of the ways of our world?
yes.
A scene where she's innocently naked in front of others and requires an explanation of why western culture finds nudity wrong and/or inappropriate?
That's there, too.
However, for all this innocence surrounding Earth culture, Koriand'r is rarely seen acting like with the innocence of a child and displays deep knowledge of a variety of subjects that are both intellectual and physical. Her innocence and naivete in social situations on Earth comes not from having the mind of a child but from a cultural dissonance. Despite suffering for years in enslavement and having no formal education (or what we as an audience would define as a formal education) she intuitively understands how to operate a starship and makes a flawless escape from her captors in a ship we as an audience may assume she has never flown before as she was a mere child when she was enslaved:
This is a skill that seems to come naturally to her and belies a greater understanding of technology than her Earth counterparts could boast of.
It's not just her technical knowledge that interests me, however, but her analytical skills as well. In New Teen Titans #33, during her search for answers about Dick's current whereabouts, she solves the team's problem regarding their villain of the week:
She listens to the team's descriptions of their individual conflicts with the villain Trident (previously thought to have been dead) and comes to the correct conclusion that there are multiple people masquerading as him. The scene is cut short by Tara insulting Kory's intelligence as she has interpreted Kory's beauty as being her only defining trait. Much like many comics fans, Tara has mistaken Kory's general kindness and cultural naivete for a lack of intelligence that Kory herself has never displayed. In the following scene, Kory's emotional competence is used to smooth over the situation and make clear that she won't tolerate being insulted:
While Kory is not formally educated, she is analytically minded, extremely emotionally competent, and maintains a set of skills that the other Titans had to cultivate later in life as her culture and the other cultures she grew up exposed to are more technologically advanced than Earth.
While she did fall in love with the first man she met on Earth, she didn't idolize him or love him because she thought he was the most intelligent man she had met. Kory repeatedly stands up to Dick both for herself and for what she believes he himself needs. When he lashes out at her, she tempers both his and her emotions to ensure the outcome best for both of them and when he talks down to her she refuses to let it go unnoticed:
There are countless examples of the ways in which her character has been proved to be someone who doesn't require hand holding and is equally as smart and capable (if not more) than her teammates. Her character is one that is established to have a strong sense of her own needs, wants, and personal character regardless of the situation.
In addition to her subversion of the emotional and intellectual facets of this trope, Kory also has a variety of relationships outside of her romantic relationship. Unlike the traditional Born Sexy Yesterday, Kory isn't limited to having only one relationship and her scope of the world isn't limited to just Dick Grayson and their romantic relationship - her friendships with Garfield Logan, Victor Stone, and Joey Wilson are as deep and meaningful as her relationship with Dick (this is referring to how Born Sexies are often only allowed to have a relationship/friendship with the male hero of their story and no other men, this is not discounting her deep friendships with both Donna Troy, Raven, and Lilith):
While Kory isn't a perfect subversion of this trope, she is the subversion of it that stands the test of time as a character who is both deep feeling and deeply intelligent which offsets any naivete she may have in regards to Earth and the wide and varied cultures that exist on our planet. I believe that her character represents how this trope can be subverted and how it can be eliminated from the science fiction media landscape as creators work toward creating media that is inclusive of women with actual wants, desires, and personalities.
this post is an updated and heavily edited version of a post originally uploaded here.
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If life gives you melons...
Ship: Loki x F!alt! reader
Rating: Explicit / word count 5,5k
Summary: You've heard about meet-cute, how about meet-ugly? Reader has tattoos and a tongue split. There's this joke that "bisexual alt girls go looking for a girlfriend and end up with sad, tall and skinny white bois" and boy did that hit home. Inspired by this cringy video of Hiddles [youtube link].
During a panel at a comic con, Loki notices reader and they go on a date, reader gets railed: top!Loki, choking, rough sex, unprotected sex, all the good stuff. Open ending, with a bonus of reader and Loki pranking Clint.
x. I usually fancy they/them pronouns for Loki but seeing as it's a smut-shot, I decided to go along with he/him for the sake of simplicity. Loki's at least 6'4 tall and you can fight me on that. Also, I write like a Tony stan - I feel the need to apologize to Loki stans for that. I love you guys! 🥺👉🏻👈🏻
The long line of people appeared to be neverending. Loki was an enhanced, as the government recently had adopted a politically correct term for Earth's non-human inhabitants, but even his enhanced endurance had begun waning due to sheer amount of people wanting a piece of memorabilia signed by The God of Mischief. Loki had gained a considerable amount of fans after doing his part in killing the mad titan Thanos and by extension, saving the world. It turned out, humankind was a sucker for a good redemption arc.
Loki's hands ached where they wrapped around the pen that he'd been using for nearly 4 hours to neatly place his name, written in neat runescript, on various pieces of merchandise that his fans (and wasn't that a strange thing!) presented to him. He used to think that he would have actually succeeded conquering the earth if he had a grasp on how to use social media and his charm; now, he just wanted the torture to end. An involuntary sigh left his mouth when he saw another print of himself in full battle gear being placed in front of him by a reasonably attractive young woman.
"Um, thank you," She stammered, giggling softly, and Loki spared her a painstaking smile, scribbling his name once again. The woman briefly caught his eyes. "Um, you're the reason- the inspiration for me. I became a stripper."
Loki blanked, feeling his eyes widen and blink on their own accord a few times. He wasn't sure if he heard the woman correctly, as the unusual statement made his brain freeze.
Loud snickering from behind the blushing woman interrupted the system error that he was experiencing in his head. It wasn't often that somebody managed to render him speechless. It looked like whoever was in line behind the stripper woman had taken advantage of that. Loki's eyes snapped to the short-haired person, who looked torn between cringing and breaking into embarrassed laughter.
The stripper left without a word, and as Loki picked up the cursed writing instrument once again, the short-haired person smiled at him kindly. "That was a little weird," They snorted, "And thanks, have a nice day Mr. Loki."
"When life gives you melons, you might be dyslexic," Another woman, that appeared to be the short haired person's friend, deadpanned and gave a cynical side-eye to the departing stripper. Loki heard snickering coming from the short-haired person and quietly joined himself. The woman noticed it, winking at him as she collected the newly signed t-shirt. "Bye," She smiled kindly.
It was a split second decision, really. Something about the cheeky way she addressed the situation sparked Loki's interest. "Wait, you forgot something, darling," His baritone called out to the departing woman. She turned around, confused, and hastily grabbed the standard issue photo that he was holding out to her. With a final grateful nod, she smiled and left.
If Loki's smile had returned for the time being, none of his teammates made any remarks on it. Only his brother, Thor, gave a couple of knowing looks to the Asgardian sorcerer.
The woman in question didn't think twice about the photo that she stashed in her backpack along with the signed t-shirt. The Comic-Con had been full of people and the lines were unfairly long. The sheer exhaustion after attending a 3-day long convention had set in and she was eager to simply come home back to her apartment and crash on the nearest soft flat surface. Upon arrival, she did exactly that, flopping down gracelessly on the couch, her backpack landing next to her with a careless thud.
Unloading her trophies was a short time affair: a single white tee with a dozen signatures on it, written in what she hoped was waterproof Sharpie; one mug, shaped like an Iron Man helmet; one poster, showing Spider-Man on a picturesque NYC horizon and a signed photo of one Loki. Strangely enough, she did not remember requesting it - not that she was complaining. Free merch was free merch.
The front side wasn't signed whatsoever. Overcome by curiousity, she turned it around. A phone number was written on the back of it, the handwriting neat and the letters obviously being inked out by a thinner, more sophisticated pen than the one Loki had used for scribbling on the tee. The woman gaped silently, not believing her eyes. Did Loki himself had given her his phone number?
One margarita and a hefty helping of Chinese takeout later, the numbers persisted staring back at her mutely, the neat cursive being almost mocking in its quiet. The woman's smartphone had found a comfortable place right next to the photo, equally mum regarding the unusual situation.
An additional margarita was needed to gather the courage required to actually type out the number in the receiver box. Fruity alcoholic concoction in one hand and phone clutched in the other, the woman's eyes squeezed shut tightly as soon as the dreaded "Hey, got your number today! :)" read delivered. She'd typed and erased the message several times, groaning in embarrassment. How the hell does one approach an alien god?
"Hello! May I ask your name?" The response came after a brief moment - a moment the woman had suffered through by taking too haste sips of her drink, her common since screaming her to not overdo it and wait at least a full minute before replying. Everything felt awkward and misplaced.
In no time, she was sending the screenshots of the conversation to her girl-advice group chat that consisted of her closest friends. Chatting with Loki turned out to be surprisingly easy and he was great at upholding conversation, something that couldn't be said about all those Tinder matches she had had back in the day.
Even if using proper grammar during a text message conversation was something she had to reacquaint herself with, she was glad he wasn't just another boring, shalllow, condescending-ass white boy. Despite the cultural differences and his lack of knowledge of things like pop culture and music - something he said he was working on since New Asgard became a sovereign state on Earth - they bonded over music and tattoos and generally being rebellious against society's standarts.
The invitation to dinner didn't come as a surprise for the woman. She agreed happily, looking forward to continue their conversation outside of the internet - if Loki's part of the chat was anything to go by, not only was he charming, but also quite intelligent. And easy on the the eyes, too. They had traded selfies at some point and the Asgardian didn't look any worse in a hoodie and sweatpants than he did in his battle leathers. Loki had appeared to truly have had integrated into Earth's society.
The night of the date, the continuous text exchange did very little to calm her nerves. Loki texted as much as an overeager teenage boy: every now and then he would double-text and grossly overreact to her sending a simple meme. In fact, he smugly conveyed the fact he'd single-handedly started a meme war between the Avengers and even Steve was forced to participate; something that was, allegedly, out of character for the blonde man.
She didn't mind. Not like she had many friends to have so much fun with. Even if it took her twice the time to do her favourite eyeliner style, it was worth it. She hoped Loki would appreciate the bold, but classy make-up and the dress and shoes combo that accentuated her assets. Her date expressed curiousity about her tattoos and the difference between her preferred style and the humans he spent most time with. She guessed secret agents were not particularly fond of anything that made them memorable so she held out quite the hope for... Showing off some of her tattoos in a more private setting.
In other, simpler words, the woman came in prepared for both a friendly, leisurely stroll and a quality night. Either way, it would be a time well spent.
Loki's shiny, raven hair was impossible to miss as he towered over the rest of the people waiting by the restaurant's entrance. He wore tailored black trousers and a simple cashmere sweater, perfect for the evening's damp, cool air. Tall and lithe, Loki was mouthwateringly handsome.
"Come here often?" She wormed her way through the crowd, causing the man to smirk down at her. Her cheeks flared from the tiny gesture alone.
"Just waiting for a friend," Loki uttered lowly, extending an arm towards the woman, which she gracefully accepted as they made way towards the entrance. "Reservation for Loki," The Asgardian stated to the hostess, who, after a rapid doube-take, led them to a private, secluded area in the back of the restaurant.
Loki shouldered the slightly awkward interaction with grace, paying no mind to the girl. His focus was solely on his date and he was nothing but gallant as he took the woman's purse and held out the chair for her to comfortably sit down. As a prince, he was taught well, she mused.
"Usually I would ask 'what brings you to our little ball of water and dirt?' but I think we can skip that part," The woman stated with a sheepish grin, idly flicking through the menu and curiously eyeing the items that were unfamiliar. The desire to try something new fought with the possibility of accidentally ordering something too far out - like snails or other things that rich people fancied, for some reason.
Loki's greens briefly appeared over the top of his menu, grateful and sparkling. "I think it's best if we do just that," For a second, he looked away, before returning to the menu. "I can think of better things to discuss. I recall you didn't finish telling me about that college friend of yours, who was an anarchist... I'm dying to know..."
The waiter came and went, barely noticed by the pair, as they both poked at something that sounded the most familiar for both of them. Stoically, Loki admitted that Tony Stark did the booking for him and the woman reluctantly acquitted she wasn't very familiar with upscale establishments, being of middle-class background and working a middle-class job.
Interrupting the story she began telling hours ago, the woman took the time to point out the things she was familiar with on the menu and advised Loki to stay away from - like the aforementioned snails, and other things, slimy and salty things that she considered to be 'disgusting but rich people liked it for some reason'. The conversation slowly progressed into Loki telling her the mischief he got up to at the feasts Odin threw. The Asgardian shared the woman's disregard for influential people doing gross things to show off.
The food was good - it was really hard to miss with a traditional Italian lasagna - and seeing Loki shovel an obscene amount of food was an experience, but she didn't comment on it, tactful enough to consider his alien biology might have different dietary requirements that her human one. It was great, really, that she could order dessert and not feel guilty about it.
The gelato melted in her mouth like sweet ecstasy and she moaned with her next bite, only partly aware of how obscene really was the noise.
Loki's hand stuttered on it's way to his mouth. Wide-eyed, he stared at her lips, at her mouth, where her tongue lapped up the small drops of dessert from the spoon. "Why the split tongue?" The Asgardian finally gathered his wits, having had a good look of what he was sure was a trick of the eye at first.
She grinned, acutely aware of the effect that particular body modification had on men. "I like being different. I embrace the weird." She giggled, not at all ashamed, sticking out her tongue and wiggling both parts of it teasingly.
Loki's Adam's apple bobbed; "Weird?" He raised his eyebrow, fighting to maintain his previous cool composure.
She nodded. "Weird," She retorted coyly. "I usually don't divulge the details at least until the third date. Wouldn't want to scare my potential suitors off," The playful wink was the proverbial cherry on top. He was hooked, his eyes darkened, following the plump arch of her lips as she took another spoonful of the treat and savoured it, closing her eyes for a brief moment.
It was pornographic.
"Obviously, Midgardians don't know what's good for them," Loki scoffed in his usual bored monotone, fully aware of how fitful his attempt to conceal his excitement was. He sounded needy even to his own ears.
"And you do?" She pushed away the empty plate, chastely patting her mouth with a napkin. The raised eyebrow and the little smirk spoke volumes.
The grin he wore was hardly anything but feral; he asked for the waiter's assistance by flicking his wrist in an impatient fashion. Once the bill was paid and the woman's cardigan found its rightful place on her shoulders, Loki once again took hold of her arm, this time holding her smaller body against his larger one, taking care to slow down and keep his strides shorter.
She found the coolness of his presence refreshing in the moist, heavy air of the New York city.
"Where to, milady?" Loki asked her, looking down at the woman fondly.
"My place is a block away. Walk me, good sir?" She gave a delightfully easy smile in return.
He nodded, letting her lead the way, allowing himself to get a little bit lost in their shared presence, a little bubble of them in the middle of a busy city. It was as if someone had quickly turned down the volume of the honking cars and noisy pedestrians around them, leaving the soft breeze and the sun slowly descending below the skyscrapers. It felt far too short, partaking in the comfortable silence together, skin tingling under the thin layers of cloth where they were touching.
The sun was trapped in the strands of her hair as she smiled at him from her doorway, worrying her lip between her teeth. It was a bittersweet moment.
"A kiss good night for the good sir?" She asked hopefully, eyes darting between his face and his mouth.
Loki obliged, resting his palm flat on the door frame, towering over the woman as he gently slotted his thin, cool lips against her warm ones. The woman stood on her tippy toes, eager, placing a hand on his chest. The pair melted into the kiss - it had no business being this mind-blowing, brain-freezing for two people that have not met until that very day. The woman didn't refuse when Loki probed with his tongue, requesting entrance to her mouth; she licked into his own with fervor, fisting her hands in the soft fabric of his sweater.
With the hand that was free, Loki pulled the woman flush with himself, feeling the heat of her start a fire of its own inside of him. Her breathing rapid, the gesture only served to tighten her hold on his sweater, until a soft, barely audible moan slipped into his mouth, causing his brain to quickly reassess the situation.
Regretfully, Loki pulled away, clearing his throat. "Perhaps we should take this elsewhere," He meaningfully looked at the array of doors around them.
"I thought you'd never ask," She retorted with a fond eyeroll, tightening the grip on his sweater once more, to pull him inside her apartment and shut the door behind her. The awkward moments were few and in between; neither knew who reached for the other first, mashing their mouths with less grace than before, clutching at the other's arms and hips with hunger.
This time, Loki didn't hold back his own muted groans of satisfaction, shivering when the woman's hands snuck under his sweater and the simple tank top he wore underneath. Blunt nails scraped along his abs.
Step by step, she pushed him further inside her apartment, determined in her small quick strides. There was no mistake of their destination; no mistake in her desire: she was as hungry and as impatient as him. The crease between his eyebrows deepened, long arms extending to unzip the top of her dress to reveal a simple but tasteful black lacy bra covering her breasts. The woman barely noticed the action, stepping out of her dress as soon as it hit the floor.
He admired her. Inches of soft skin covered by intricate ink, some patterns bizarre and complicated, some beautiful in their simplicity. Loki couldn't wait to find out about the meaning behind every one of them, to trace the lines with his tongue and sink his teeth into the heated flesh.
The hands that were holding onto him for dear life tugged on his sweater and he chose to simply vanish it, too preoccupied with looking at the view in front of him. She gasped and her eyes met his: uncanny, magnetic emeralds shone with magic and power and desire.
"Fuck," She more mouthed than said, walking backwards in a trance until her shins hit the bed.
Loki grinned, advancing on the panting woman with the grace of a predator. "Darling?" His tone was innocent; his expression was anything but. His large hand encompassesed the side of her face, thumb running over her bottom lip in a possessive gesture that had her squirming in her place. He loved the way she just melted into his touch.
Their lips met again, slower this time. The kiss was once again graceful and unrushed, allowing them to explore the softness of each other's skin, mapping the arches and valleys with gentle strokes of their palms. The broad expanse of Loki's back was uneven, riddled with scars and blemishes, and she mapped every single one, blunt nails raking down it as she pressed into him, arching into his hands where he held her.
The soft flesh of her ass, barely covered by a scrap of black lace, was shamelessly grabbed - the woman didn't doubt there would be marks left - letting her feel his arousal pressed against her belly, hard and twitching. She didn't resist her desire to ge handsy and palmed it, taking note of the gasp and the twitch coming from the man occupied with the clasp of her bra. In no time, it flew away, forgotten somwhere the very moment Loki's palms took over her breasts, running a careful thumb over each nipple.
"Fuck," She parroted her previous statement, equally breathy and considerably more aroused.
"That's the plan," Loki's chuckle was hoarse.
She huffed, biting her bottom lip before reaching out to swiftly pop the button of his trousers, smirking at the hiss the friction of her palm produced against his cock. It shouldn't have surprised her that Loki was a commando kind of guy, but still, she gasped, partially from the ministrations of his clever fingers, partially from the mouthwatering sight in front of her. The thick, flushed length made saliva gather in the corners of her mouth.
He must've heard the audible swallow. "Not so haste, darling," He tutted, giving her relaxed body a gentle push, causing her to land on her back, heated skin against the soft duvet of her bed. "Let me taste you," A thud; Loki had dropped to his knees, using his large palms to spread her legs, opening her up to his eyes.
If his previous work hadn't made her so pliant, so aroused, she'd have been rendered speechless; instead, the woman arched her back, presenting herself and the desire that had pooled down below. The Asgardian chuckled, fingertips soft against the scratchy lace.
"Tease," The woman moaned, outstretching her arm to guide him but quite unable to reach him. She had to settle for squirming in her place, receiving a fraction of the desired traction against her swollen lips.
"Am I, love?" Loki asked her sweetly, caving enough to dip a single finger to run along the outside of her slit. It glided easily thanks to all the moisture gathered there, lips parting easily before his touch. The panties were vanished away promptly, another finger joining in immediately to rub slow, precise circles around her clit.
She keened low and long, fisting the fabric in her hand until her knuckles turned white. Loki knew what he was doing. It didn't take him very long to slide his long digits to the welcoming heat of her opening, dipping them inside until she began to make the noises he so craved. His mouth followed after that, long agile tongue drawing senseless shapes on the inside of her labia and dipping deeper, where her clit stood out engorged and slick.
He could smell the bittersweet of her arousal, mouthwatering and hot.
"Loki, fuck," She moaned, only half-coherent and partially aware of her own hips following his every stroke, every flick. He only advanced, hitting that sweet spot inside her with every stroke; the sparks traveling up her spine quickened with each time she changed his name like a prayer. "Loki, Loki, Loki..."
He growled, attaching his mouth firmly to her clit, and she arched for the final time, coming undone, squeezing around his fingers and gushing in his mouth, the obscene sounds covered by her own scream of delight and his impatient growling. The growling that sent shivers of aftershocks throughout her body.
"Darling, you taste so sweet," Loki groaned, still panting.
She took the time to open her eyes: Loki looked comically out of place in her bedroom, he dwarfed her bed and made her feel small, but it didn't matter at all at that very moment. His erection stood out hard and proud; despite the leg-shaking orgasm just moments ago, she wanted more, she wanted to taste him, she wanted to feel him inside-
With unsurprising agility, one swift motion was all it took for her to rest comfortably against the pillows, his throbbing member resting against the juncture of her thigh. She tasted her own release on his lips, however brief, whispering a weak, "Please," aching to feel the emptiness.
"As my lady wishes," Loki's cool breath ghosted over her cheek. She waited with baited breath until the tip of his manhood breached her, exhaling a moan into his neck and immediately wrapping her lips around a patch of skin as he stretched her so sweet.
Loki's arms shook slightly as he waited for her to adjust. He kissed her, soft and sweet; there was something vulnerable in him, something as sweet as the ache he'd taken away. Once he began to move, slow and fluid, all there was left was an all-consuming need to feel. As graceful as dancer and with a deadly precision, Loki pounded gasps, moans and screams out of the woman's slack mouth, kisses turning hungrier and sloppier by the second.
"So sweet," He cooed, relishing in the snug grip of her cunt around him.
She only keened in approval, too far gone and unused to the intensity of the feelings from a man with centuries of practice and the power of a god.
His thrusts slowed gradually until he was rutting into her, grinding his pelvic bone into her clit. The gasps and screams turned into drawn-out, longing moans; her hips followed his, meeting in a slow, sensual motion.
Loki was not a patient man. He withdrew - she gasped in protest - flipping the woman over on her fours with ease, taking but a split second to admire the curve of her body presented on display for him. Just for him.
With that thought burning in his mind, Loki sheathed his cock deeply inside her spasming cunt. It was nearly unbearably stimulating and only his own desire to prolong the bliss held back his own impending orgasm. That, and his own ego; he was naught if not a generous lover.
She slurred something, quiet and incorrigible, fucking back onto his cock as eagerly as he was plunging into her heat. The hand he'd placed on her shoulder promptly wrapped around her throat in hopes of lifting her close enough for him to hear the words but instead, it sent a full-bodied shiver throughout her. Loki grinned, tugging her that much closer.
The arch in her back looked quite uncomfortable yet she didn't mind; it was the exact opposite, in fact, her cunt tightened around him, drenching his shaft down to his balls. Her fingernails dug into the flesh of his thigh, the sting of pain going straight to his cock-
"Loki, I'm gonna, I'm gonna-" She slurred, gasping for air.
He weakened his hold on her throat enough to let her gulp the so-needed oxygen. It was her undoing: was it the rapid pace of oxygenated blood traveling to her brain or was it his cock, mercilessly pounding against her g-spot - she was violently spasming around his cock, much like she did around his fingers not too long ago.
It felt like ages, her crescendo coming in waves with no signs of stopping any time soon. Loki's continuous thrusts, his hips slamming into hers, her skin feeling like molten lava.
"Gonna fill your sweet cunt with my seed," Loki moaned lowly, holding her up by the throat, the other hand leaving fingertip-shaped bruises on the outside of her hips. "Mark you from the inside out," His voice had gone into primal territory, growling filling up the room.
"Please..." The woman rasped, oversensitive.
And he pleased, with a series of sharp thrusts, he buried himself to the hilt in her, the force of his release making her shudder and moan once against, going limp in his arms. Loki kept her in her place until every drop was inside of her cunt. Nothing was sweeter than that.
The Asgardian didn't bother with getting under the covers to hold her, conjuring a soft, comfortable throw in modest green, to cover their nudity. He didn't need the extra warmth but his companion was by far more fragile and sensitive to these things- Loki's fingertips traced the array of bruises he'd left in the wake of their passion, expression surprised as he found the woman smiling.
"Feels nice," She supplied meekly, eyes half-lidded, face trusting and open towards him.
He gave a small grin in return, placing a chaste kiss atop her head. "Yes, it does, darling."
Time after time, she didn't expect much out if their date. The sex was nice, nice enough for both of them to want seconds and thirds after their rushed first time - but it wasn't like she expected him to hand around. It was a pleasant change from the usual mutual ghosting she'd done with her previous partners, but Loki had texted again and they had resumed their conversation via text like nothing had happened.
No, that would be incorrect. Now, she had a wonderful friend who was a great conversationalist and an even better lover. There was no pressure to put a label on their relationship so the woman didn't bother with it; it didn't seem like Loki cared about the label, either, so she left the topic alone and enjoyed things the way they were. It wasn't like she had a line of suitors anyway.
She couldn't help the smile that creeped onto her face when she unlocked her phone and saw a video call request from other than Loki himself. She still had thirty minutes worth of lunch break to waste and this was a wonderful time to chat with a friend.
"Stark, hand it back or I swear to Norns-" Loki's voice sounded agitated and far away, accompanied by sounds of a struggle; the bearded, smug face on the screen was not who she expected at all. Only years of customer service and low bullshit tolerance combined stopped her from freaking out seeing none other than Tony Stark smirking at her from the screen of her phone.
"Yes?" She arched an eyebrow, taking note of the anger of Loki's tone.
"Hi, I don't think I need to introduce myself," Stark babbled, eyeing her - disheveled and with a wall full of sticky notes and miscellaneous items acting as the background to her video. "Reindeer games refused to show you to us so we decided to persuade him," Tony's grin grew wider, muted whispers being rapidly exchanged in the background all the while Loki screeched "BROTHER!" and various expletives at the top of his lungs.
"You could've, I dunno," She paused, unimpressed. "Asked me to dinner, like a normal person. Instead of stealing, you know, like a thief," The eyeroll that she performed had the team worried her eyes would fall out of their sockets.
"I merely borrowed his phone, don't be dramatic," Stark huffed, and for a moment, she could see various other people trying to look at the screen and by extension, at her. "So, what is it that you do? Because Smurf over there wouldn't..."
"Oops, bad signal. Sorry, can't hear you properly," Her side of the call suddenly shook and in a moment, she ended the call, not at all willing to deal with people that lacked boundaries. Sure, it might have been Iron Man, but if he was planning on being a snooping asshole, she wasn't gonna go down with that easily.
Exactly five minutes after she had clocked out, an incoming call from Loki had her equal parts excited and mortified. What if..? But he was apologetic. And very angry, swearing in his native language - something that he'd promised to teach her at some point.
"So, Clint did it?" She sipped her beverage, strolling home with the phone pressed snugly against her ear.
"Most of it was his fault, yes," Loki grouched on the other end of the call.
"I vote we get back at him. Invite me over, if he's so inclined to see me, and watch him get humiliated in front of everybody," It wasn't a secret she had her own mischievous tendencies.
"As much as I appreciate your vigour, darling, I doubt the Widow will appreciate you verbally castrating the Hawk in public," He replied sourly, his voice still betraying the faint notes of interest.
"I have a backup plan!" She stated without a hitch. "He'll embarrass himself and I'll be your alibi."
"I'm listening," Loki perked up immediately.
They decided to not to stall and schedule the 'family dinner', as Thor himself dubbed it, for the next available weekend. Loki had made sure Tony's AI had been made aware the trickster would be gone all day, and it took him very little magic and effort to pop in and out of the tower for the five minutes that were needed to execute their prank.
His friend barely managed to keep the snickering at bay as they ascended the elevator to the common floor where the dinner was being held. Not only that, but the woman spouted an area of dark purple love marks, barely obscured by the low turtleneck of her blouse.
She made her introductions and they made theirs. "This affair could use some background noise," She remarked off-handedly, casting a meaningful glance at the TV.
Tony Stark was known for being a great host so he entertained her wishes, flicking on the huge flat screen with a flick of his wrist.
The team froze.
"I... -" The woman stared at the screen, mouth hanging wide open at the scenes that played out. "... am not going to kinkshame, but please turn it off," She stated in a small voice, seemingly unable to tear her eyes away from the mass of tentacles commencing erotic assault on a woman's body.
Wordlessly, the TV shut down, immersing the room in stunned silence. Loki face-palmed, the slap of his palm against his face echoing in the eerily quiet room.
"Loki!" Captain America, red as a tomato, instantly accused the most obvious person.
Except, he had forgotten one thing. "Loki was with me all day," The woman replied, unkindly. "Do you need more proof?" She tugged on the hem of her turtleneck, exposing an inch of skin marked blue.
The good Captain's face changed the shade once again, venturing very well into beetroot territory. "Who was the last one to use the TV?" Rogers asked, now with a hint of anger, as he stared at a guffawing Bucky.
"I believe it was Mr. Barton," The AI piped up, mechanical voice sounding almost insinuating. Or, perhaps, it just appeared that way.
#loki x reader#Loki smut#loki x you#loki x y/n#loki fanfiction#loki fanfic#tom hiddleston#it's 4am y'all#we be THIRSTY
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How many languages and which of them would the cast speak if we’re going to be completely historically accurate ?
This a great question that I can’t quite answer, but I spent six hours researching to give it a shot. I think that there’s a broad range of plausible languages and you’ve got leeway to choose how many. The first part is that different people have different affinities for languages. Some people can speak ten different languages fluently (or near-fluency), while others will struggle juggling three different ones in their brains. The range in the languages can affect this, too: it’s easy to mess up between similar languages. I personally have trouble speaking Spanish because in the middle of the sentence, I’ll drop a French word without even realizing it. The same thing doesn’t happen to me in other languages like German, though. By the same token as I’ve discussed before, similar languages are easier to learn. Going from English to Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet? More difficult than English to French, which makes up about a third of modern English. These are languages that are still in the same family (Proto-Indo-European, PIE), though, so it holds nothing to the difficulty of going from English to a language like Mandarin.
I’m breaking this answer into two parts: 1) how many?; 2) which ones? and I’m going to get carried away because I’m me so it’s below the break to spare you if this comes across your dash and you’re not a nerd...
PART 1: What’s a realistic number for them to speak?
I think that each member of the old guard probably has a certain number of languages which they’re comfortable with, a few more that they can understand/get by in, and a few that they may only know phrases from. The number of each isn’t the same for everyone. The average human being is able to speak ~1.5 languages. The most talented polyglots can speak upwards of 50 languages, maybe one guy even spoke 65 (mostly I want to mention he loved translating the phrase “kiss my ass”). This hyperpolyglot, Kreb aka “Kiss My Ass” Stan, had his brain dissected after his death and it showed a lot of “abnormalities”. That leads neuroscientists and me to believe that being able to study and learn 65 languages is either 1) a major skill that rewired his brain because he was flexing it so much; or 2) very abnormal and facilitated by his brain differences. Since their powers don’t make them stop being limited by the human brain (they can forget), I would say that it is unlikely that one of them is fluent/near fluent/comfortable in more than ~65 languages.
Getting past twelve languages is considered a feat, so I think only Andy, Quynh, Nicky, and Joe could be anywhere near the upper-bounds of languages. Remember, these hyperpolyglots spend their entire lives studying languages and often need refreshers. The members of the Old Guard don’t have the luxury of reading grammar books all day, and they also have to remember a bunch of combat training. You can argue that a lot of fighting is “muscle memory” aka located in the cerebellum and nowhere near language processing areas, but there’s still things like math, navigation, etc. that they need to remember. I doubt they have a list of their safe houses just lying around. The older members can speak more languages by virtue of being around longer and having that time to learn, but if we’re being realistic they should probably speak no more than ~45-55 languages comfortably. This doesn’t mean that they only *know* that many, but the other languages would be more like bad high school Spanish in America than able to wax poetic. Aside: that Joe is able to be poetic in what is AT LEAST his fourth or so language is very impressive and we should talk about that more.
How Many Each Member is Maximally Proficient In/Knowledgeable Of at the end of the film/Opening Fire comics run:
Lykon (comics): proficient in ~15, knowledgeable of ~30*
Lykon (movies): proficient in ~45, knowledgeable of ~80*
Andy: proficient in ~50, knowledgeable of ~100**
Quynh | Noriko: proficient in ~51, knowledgeable of ~90**
Joe: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80
Nicky: proficient in ~30, knowledgeable of ~80
Booker: proficient in ~10, knowledgeable of ~30
Nile: proficient in ~2 (maybe 3), knowledgeable of ~5
*In the comics, he is younger than Andy and Quynh and I assume he dies young. In the movie, it is strongly implied that he was the oldest. The reason why his numbers are not larger, however, is because at some point there were fewer languages as humanity had not dispersed as much as it eventually did. He’s also long before written language which facilitates learning for most people. RIP Lykon.
**I’m not saying that Quynh is smarter than Andy, just that she comes after written language and it should be slightly easier for her to pick things up. I’m giving Andy access to more languages, however, because PIE alone covers Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. More on this later.
PART 2: Which languages would each of them speak?
I’ve covered this question a little in a previous post that was broadly about proto-indo-european/Andy-centric (check it out if you want), but I’ll give a broader survey of each character here.
A Quick Aside on Lykon: We don’t know enough about this character, and the fact that the comics and movie diverge so sharply does not help at all. I’m going to headcannon that he was from Eastern Africa, where most archaeologists agree that modern humans first appeared in the Horn of Africa aka modern Ethiopia and Somolia and neighbors, and predates Andy by ~3,000 years. For future purposes below and assuming a birth date for Andy in the range ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE, this puts his birth at around ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE. This is wild speculation, however. Maybe the early immortals should be spaced by warfare types (Stone Age, Bronze, Iron, Steel?) or maybe they pop up once a cultural region reaches a certain historic point or maybe they just sorta pop up and then live for six or seven thousands years. I’m working off the last assumption because it’s the simplest. The only thing I’m certain of is that Greg Rucka probably didn’t sit down and think this pattern through. If I’m wrong, oh well. I’m mad at him for all his historical inaccuracies. With dating from ~8,000BCE - 7,000BCE, I’m having trouble finding a name for the cultures that scientists/historians know were living there at the time. It’s probably because the region has been continually occupied since the first humans, which one can safely assume makes abandoned and undisturbed sites hard to fine.
A Quick Aside on Quynh | Noriko: I like the film better, so I’ll be working with Quynh. If there’s enough interest, I can add on Japanese for Noriko. I’m going to date Quynh to be ~1,500 years after Andy (maybe this should be the new date system, before Andy “BA” and after Andy “AA”). This puts her in the time range of ~3,500BCE - 2,500BCE which could place her in either the Đa Bút neolithic culture of modern-day Vietnam or the Phùng Nguyên bronze age culture of modern-day Vietnam. Those names are archaeological in nature, based on the location where sites have been found and dated to those ranges.
Other Origins: Because we have diverging cannons, I’m going to just state the backgrounds that I’ve assigned. Joe is from 1066CE with a background in the Arab-controlled Maghreb (more specifically, modern-day Tunisia and Northern Algeria). Nicky is from 1069CE with a background from the Italian maritime republic and city-state of Genoa. Booker is from 1770 southern France. Nile is from 1994 Chicago in the United States. Andy is from ~5,000BCE - 4,000BCE in the Caucasus (modern-day Georgia and Azerbaijan) or the South Western Eurasian Steppes, probably the Shulaveri-Shomu culture assuming that location.
The first language everyone learned, their “mother tongue” or “native language” is one that they definitely speak. It’s the language that they think in and would be hard-pressed to lose. This even includes now-dead languages, because, again, it’s the one that they learned to think with. Of course, it is possible to lose a language when you have no one to speak it with if you wanted to do something tragic, but I think that these things are too deeply ingrained for it it to happen by accident.
What Each One’s First Language Would Be:
Nile: American English, possibly African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) at home
Booker: Provençal/Occitan, possibly “standard French” (school and other places outside the home)
Nicky: Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize
Joe: Tunisian Derja/Tunisian Arabic/Tunisian, and possibly one of the dialects of the native Zenati language group based on where more precisely you place him
Quynh: Proto-Viet–Muong (which isn’t well documented because it’s so old)
Andy: Proto-Indo-European (PIE), but if you’re curious the Classical Scythian Language for which she is probably named is only off by a factor of 10 (4000 vs 400 BCE) *cue distressed sighing*
Lykon: Proto-Cushitic (also suffering a lack of documentation from being old as heck)
Other than their first languages, what else they learn depends on where they go. People learned languages back then for the same reasons that they do today: to communicate (and to read, after the invention of writing).
Additional Confirmed or Likely Cannon Languages:
Nile: Spanish because of the American school system for sure. French is listed on the IG account, but she probably speaks only Spanish or French to a degree of fluency, definitely one better than the other. Very Basic Pashto, which we see her use some obviously-memorized phrases with in the film.
Booker: The IG promo things asserts that he knows (modern, standard) Italian and Greek. Why not? He also probably knows Spanish depending on where more specifically in southern France he is from. He’s probably also picked up on at least Very Basic Arabic from Joe and Nicky, but actually learning the language would take commitment from him. He also clearly speaks English.
Nicky: Other Italian dialects, and it would be fairly easy for him to have picked up modern Italian. He definitely reads Latin. If he was from a wealthy family, he probably also speaks Greek. If he was from a trading family, he probably speaks the trading pidgin of Sabir. The IG account confirms Arabic (vague, but okay I’ll be generous and say modern standard Arabic) and Romanche (they meant to write Romansh). I think Romansh is poorly chosen to characterize him in Northern Italy, but I’m feeling generous. He also clearly speaks English.
Joe: He definitely speaks standard Arabic to have been able to communicate with other Arabic-speakers in Jerusalem. Genoese Ligurian/Zeneize because of the love of his life, which also means he probably picked up modern Italian at some point. The IG account confirms Farsi (they call it “Persian” *cue screaming*), which works if he was a merchant who traveled far to eastward on the Silk Road...and if you go with the comic cannon makes more sense. I’m going to say that he speaks the Mediterranean trading pidgin Sabir because of his location in Tunisia. If he was from a wealthy merchant family and could afford schooling, he probably learned Greek and maybe also Latin. There’s a good chance that he knows conversational-levels of other native Zenati languages thanks to colonialism discouraging their usage. He also clearly speaks English.
Quynh: We don’t actually know if she speaks English, but it’s safe to assume she does speak at least some of it. She’s probably learned Vietnamese and Mường because of her mastery of their proto-language. Because I see her returning to modern-day Vietnam to fight the Chinese colonization, I think that she might know Cantonese or Mandarin. Based on her travels with Andy, I’d like to propose Greek, Latin, and Mongolian. I’m sure that Andy and her share a language, but who knows which one they were each speaking when they met!
Andy: The IG account says “all,” but I’ve discussed this elsewhere (*major eye rolling*). She almost certainly picked up Scythian and Greek based on her chosen name. Latin isn’t as likely as you’d think, but is possible. I’d like to think that she’s also partial to learning Russian (or some earlier form of the language), Mongolian, and Armenian. Based on her travels with Quynh, I imagine that she speaks Cantonese or Mandarin and Vietnamese or Mu’o’ng. There is some mystery language shared with Quynh, too. She also clearly speaks English.
Lykon: I really don’t know enough about him to hazard any guesses. He should share at least one language in common with Andy and Quynh. If his date of death is ~2,000- 1,000 BCE like I’m supposing, there’s a good chance that he only speaks one or two currently-named languages. Sorry, OP.
#asks#lovely anon#linguistics#neuroscience#the old guard#andromache the scythian#andy#quynh#noriko#lykon#yusuf al kaysani#joe#nicolo di genova#nicky#sebastien le livre#booker#nile freeman#nile
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It’s Not That Easy (a Lena Luthor x Reader Fanfic
Request: 50 ( “we’d make such a cute couple”) and 46 (“can I kiss you right now?”) with Lena and Reader who have been dancing around their feelings since the beginning of time. Their friends keep telling them to go for it, but for some reason they always hold back. Falling in love is so dangerous in so many ways, but also so SO very good.
Fandom: Supergirl
Warnings: /
Wordcount: 1343
There’s always been something there. An elephant in the room both you and Lena try your best to never acknowledge. There’s been gazes held for just a few moments to long, the frenzied staccato of your heartbeat whenever your eyes meet and so, so many excuses fabricated just to keep touching each other. But you don’t acknowledge it. You can never acknowledge it, because that would turn it from a safe daydream into something real, something with consequences, and you’re not sure you’re ready to deal with that. You don’t want to add to Lena’s troubles, to be just one more thing to worry obsessively about – because Lena cares, she cares so much, all the time, it’s one of the things you love the most about her. So you’ve created this elaborate dance, both of you toeing the line of what you both know is there and must never be spoken about.
All of your friends know, too. You’ve always been an open book to them, and Lena isn’t as icy and unknowable as she’d like to be once you get to know her better. And your friends also refused to listen to reason.
“I don’t get it”, Nia says between two sips of her wine. It’s Lena’s turn to host game night, and you’re all openly capitalizing on having one friend who is rich enough to afford alcohol that is expensive enough to be described as “luxurious” by sommeliers. Lena herself just left to order a second round of food after Kara arrived ten minutes early, which spelled disaster for the snacks she had already prepared, and your friends had seized the opportunity to pounce on you and heckle you for your ill-fated crush.
“Nia, I’ve told you before –“
“I know you have, but it doesn’t make more sense if you just repeat it often enough. You like her. She likes you. I don’t see why you can’t just go for it!”
You take a large gulp of your drink. “It’s not that easy”, you begin, only to have the rest of the group butt in and sing-song along with you. It’s a point you’ve brought up far, far too often.
“I think you’d be happy together”, Kara throws in. You don’t answer. In a world where Cadmus and doesn’t exist and where the name Luthor doesn’t carry a stigma with it, where you’d just be two more strangers among billions, Kara might be right. You can imagine yourself being happy with Lena. If you’re completely honest, you do it more often than you should. Giving yourself false hope probably wasn’t wise, but still, whenever you let your thoughts go you find them straying towards Lena again and again.
In the end, Lena ends up saving you from having to come up with a reply, returning with the happy news that food will be arriving shortly, before sitting down next to you. You try not to make the way you’re savouring her perfume too noticeable, but by the way you can feel the others’ eyes on you you know you haven’t succeeded. Still, as much as they like to give you grief for your ill-fated infatuation, they’d never make fun of you in front of Lena.
The rest of game night passes in a haze, with Lena and you absolutely dominating trivial pursuit, with you making up for what Lena lacks in pop culture knowledge, and Lena having an encyclopaedic knowledge of just about anything else. Alex and Kara however beat you into the ground during activity. You’re not too fussed about it, really, because watching Lena frantically trying to pantomime the word “garden gnome” is its own reward. The night slowly comes to an end when Nia falls asleep on Brainy’s shoulder, who in turn doesn’t want to move an inch in fear of disturbing her. You take some incriminating photos of the adorable pair, but one after the other your friends gather their stuff and say goodbye, until there’s only you and Lena left. You’ve effortlessly fallen into this routine, where you two are always the last to close up shop, clearing the table and doing the dishes. In the beginning, there was always a pretence of oh-you-don’t-have-tos and don’t-worry-I-can-handle-its, but you’ve come to just wordlessly accept each other’s help. Because honestly, you’re grateful for every single second you have with Lena, even if that second is spent elbow deep in the sofa crease, trying to clear out the last peanuts.
“I really hope Nia has a chance to put down the can before she falls asleep next time”, Lena says, procuring the last nut from the crevice.
“At least she didn’t spill her drink like that time at James’ place.” You supress a yawn. It’s almost 2 a.m. and you are starting to feel it. You lean back on the couch, closing your eyes for just a moment.
“But I can’t blame her, not long and I’d have suffered the same fate.”
Lena stands still, just for a second, as if mulling something over in her head, before she turns towards you, one eyebrow raised. “You would have fallen asleep on my shoulders?”
It’s an innocent question, really, but your throat still feels dry somehow. The sentence feels like more than its casual nature betrays. It feels like an invitation. The thought makes your stomach flip with anxiety.
“I-I doubt I’d look as cute as Nia”, you settle on. There, that’s easy. Neutral. Risk-free. You take a deep breath, proud of yourself for extracting yourself from this dangerous situation, but Lena doesn’t let you off the hook quite yet.
“I disagree”, she purrs, her smile widening. She’s having entirely too much fun. “We’d make such a cute couple.”
Immediately, all the oxygen seems to leave your lungs, leaving you breathless. She’s joking, right? She must be. You never acknowledge that…something…between you, that’s how it’s always been. As you frantically search for the words to say, you can see her bravado start to slip, her grin lose intensity, worry creasing her brow.
“But it’s not-“
“-that easy? That’s what you keep telling the others.” She takes a couple of steps towards you, until she’s standing right in front of you, then she drops to her knees in front of you. The sight alone makes your tongue dart out and wet your lip subconsciously. To your mortification, this detail doesn’t escape Lena.
“Or is it just what you tell yourself?”
“You were eavesdropping?”, you croak.
“I’m sorry, darling, I was. But it made me realize how long we’ve been tiptoeing around this, around us, and how flimsy our excuses for it are. I agree with Kara, you know. I think we could be very happy.”
“You make me very happy.”
The words escape your mouth before you can stop them, and when you hear Lena’s incredulous, relieved, joyful laughter, you don’t want to. It’s the truth, anyway.
“Then isn’t that all that matters?” She’s rising to her feet now, still moving closer, just inches away from downright sitting on your lap. Your eyes flicker down to her lips, you can’t help it.
“Can I kiss you right now?”, she asks, her voice barely above a whisper. Words don’t come, but words don’t even matter, as you pull Lena down into your lap as your answer, sealing your lips together in an explosive kiss that speaks of all the months you could have been doing this, could have held her in your arms, could have kissed her until you’d both be breathless and panting. When your hands find their way beneath the waistband of her shirt, just resting there, she gently breaks the kiss.
“It’s late”, she murmurs, mischief in her voice. “It would be very irresponsible of me to send you on your way in the middle of the night.”
“I guess I have no choice but to stay”, you reply, managing to keep a straight face for a second before your composure breaks. It doesn’t matter anyway, because a mere heartbeat later, Lena kisses the grin off your face.
#lena luthor x reader#supergirl imagine#lena luthor#supergirl reader insert#wlw imagine#supergirl fanfiction#oh yeah (Y/N) totally got peanut butter grease and salt in Lena's hair
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It was the mid-1980s, and African American rock ‘n’ roll, R&B and blues musician and activist Daryl Davis had just finished performing a set with his band in a bar in Frederick, Maryland.
As he left the stage, a White man—who would later reveal himself to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan—went up to Davis, put his hand around his shoulder and expressed his approval and admiration for his performance. “This is the first time I heard a Black man play piano like Jerry Lee Lewis,” he told Davis after they exchanged pleasantries. Surprised with the statement, Davis quickly replied, “Well, where do you think Jerry Lee Lewis learned how to play that kind of style? . . . He learned it from the same place I did: Black blues and boogie-woogie piano players.” The White man was in disbelief and refused to accept Davis’ proposal.
Hearing about this incident on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast made me realise that I had been just as ignorant and oblivious as this man about the extent of the artistic contributions of Black people to American music. The moment also sparked within me many questions about my state of ignorance. Why did I not know about these artists? How much more did I not know? How much of the music I listened to was indeed Black?
As an Indian girl growing up in Kuwait in the 2000s, my exposure to American popular music came primarily through television channels like MTV Arabia (the Middle Eastern iteration of MTV) and MBC (Middle East Broadcasting Center) as well as the radio station Radio Kuwait FM 99.7. Hit singles from a range of American artists, including Black artists, were in heavy rotation along with other shows. My favourite was an MTV show called ‘Rewind’ which played classic pop, R&B and hip hop hits from the previous decades. Songs were played in cars and at parties and hummed in classrooms by local as well as expatriate teens of various nationalities who, like myself, were unaware of the cultural and historical backstories of the music.
For example, I heard of Elvis Presley, dubbed the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” on television shows and news media due to his iconic status, but until recently, I had no idea that Presley was profoundly influenced by and “borrowed” from Black blues, gospel and rhythm ‘n’ blues artists of and before his time. He was influenced by radio performances of then local Black disc jockeys like B. B. King (who later came to be known as the “King of the Blues”) and Rufus Thomas (who also became a successful recording artist) and by performers at the Black nightclubs he visited during his teenage and young adult years.
Furthermore, I only recently learnt that many of Presley’s early recordings were covers of original songs by Black artists and that some of his biggest-selling songs like ‘Don't Be Cruel’ and ‘All Shook Up’ were penned by a Black musician by the name of Otis Blackwell. In fact, the first time I heard about it was last year in a YouTube video of a speech that Michael Jackson gave in 2002. While facts like this have now become somewhat common knowledge for most people in the West, my lack of awareness of Blackwell and others like him may be the residual effect of a time in the United States’ past when racial segregation permeated every aspect of life, including music and entertainment.
Dr Portia K. Maultsby is a renowned ethnomusicologist and professor emerita at the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University and the founder of the university’s Archives of African American Music and Culture. Maultsby took up the study of African American popular music traditions in the 1970s when there was no one looking into it as a valid area of research. She explains that segregation ensured that White Americans remained ignorant of Black musical traditions.
“Due to the segregated structure of the country for years and years, White Americans were kept away from the sounds of Black music,” Maultsby says. During this time, many Black jazz, gospel, R&B and soul artists enjoyed popularity in and even toured different parts of Europe. However, within the United States, Black artists were relegated to the so-called category of ‘race music’, an umbrella term—later replaced by ‘rhythm ‘n’ blues’ in the 1940s—used to denote essentially all types of African American music made by Black people, for Black people. The songs were distributed by mostly White-owned record labels catering exclusively to Black audiences, which meant that the White population remained largely ignorant of the large volumes of work that was recorded by countless Black artists. Black artists also did not get paid as much as White artists or have as many resources, and segregation ensured that their performances were limited to smaller venues.
By the early 1950s, however, a number of independent radio stations (again, mostly White-owned) began popping up, including rhythm ‘n’ blues or “Negro” radio stations. Since it was not possible to segregate radio waves, Black music became accessible to everyone and White teenagers began taking an interest in it. Seeing this, the music industry recognised the potential of appropriating Black music and record companies started making sanitised covers of the music with White artists to distribute to White listeners. But as Maultsby explains, they did so while “keeping the original artists in the background, unexposed” and rhythm ‘n’ blues music, covered and performed by White artists, was now marketed to the mainstream White listener as ‘rock ‘n’ roll,’ a term coined by radio disc jockey Alan Freed.
Record companies and White artists wanted the Black sounds and styles that appealed to the White audience but they did not want the Black artist. American record producer and founder of Sun Records Sam Phillips had been looking for “a White man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel” when he found Elvis Presley. The Beatles got their start by covering various blues artists like Arthur Alexander and rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Chuck Berry. Janis Joplin, who was dubbed the “Queen of Rock”, wanted to sound like a Black blues musician and was influenced by Lead Belly, Bessie Smith and Big Mama Thornton. Pat Boone covered ‘Tutti Frutti’, an original song by musician, singer and songwriter Little Richard, and reached 12th place in the national charts of 1956—several places ahead of the original.
Covers like these were made by record companies much to the disapproval and discontentment of the artists. Little Richard, nicknamed “The Innovator, The Originator, and The Architect of Rock ‘n’ Roll” and whose style influenced big names like the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Michael Jackson and Prince, told the Washington Post in 1984 that he felt as though he was “pushed into a rhythm ‘n’ blues corner” to keep him away from the White audience. He said that “they”—who he does not name—would try to replace him with White rockstars like Elvis Presley who performed his songs on television as soon as they were released. He believed that this was because “they” didn’t want him to become a hero to White kids.
Little Richard’s statement reveals the racism and the lack of agency that Black artists suffered while under exploitative record labels. Exploitation happened to almost all artists in the music industry, but Black artists were particularly targetted as they would receive very little or nothing in royalties. Forbes reports that Specialty Records purchased ‘Tutti Frutti’ for a meagre 50 USD and gave him just 0.05 USD per record sold in royalties, while White artists received much higher rates—a discriminatory practice that was quite common in the industry. Richard, after he left the label in 1959, sued Specialty records for failing to pay him royalties.
Dr Birgitta Johnson is an associate professor of ethnomusicology in the School of Music at the University of South Carolina and teaches courses on African American sacred music, African music, hip hop, blues and world music. She explains that Black artists were not protected by copyright laws and would often have their music recorded and sold by record companies without proper contracts—in other words, their music would get stolen.
“Back in the day, there was no expectation that the Black artist could fight someone in court even though some of them did,” Johnson says. “If they didn’t have the copyright stolen from them, the record companies would own the music [instead of] the artists, and [the artists] wouldn’t know it because a lot of the time, they wouldn’t have the legal know-how to recognise what was happening in contracts. They wouldn’t get paid royalties . . . even though they were due royalties.”
While this exploitation of Black artists continued, in the late 1950s, after the development of smaller and more portable transistor radios, a wider audience of White teenagers began listening to Black radio stations. This new generation no longer had to depend on the family’s devices and gained more autonomy over what and who they listened to. “Young White people, who would become the hippies of the ‘60s, are the generation of people who started to press for their freedom . . . to [listen to] what they wanted to hear,” Johnson explains.
Listeners who heard the originals would call up the radio or go down to their local record store and ask for the originals, and record companies had to start supplying to demands to stay relevant in the market. “The covers made money but didn’t last long,” Johnson says, “because young White people no longer wanted the covers, the fake versions, the copies.”
The problem was that cover bands and artists tended to simply do whatever the producers asked them to do, which was usually to copy the original artist’s sound, style and moves, and more often than not, it made for bland and inauthentic renditions of the originals. The covers lacked the authenticity that Black artists conveyed in their performance and the young audience who had heard the authentic versions could see this. “They knew what the good music sounded like—it was almost like they understood... they may not have understood the racial dynamics of it, but they knew [the real thing from the fake],” Johnson says.
Moreover, artists who did covers were performing in styles that were foreign to them. “It was outside of their tradition; it was outside of their aesthetics; [and] they couldn’t bring the same excitement to it sometimes,” she explains. The music, performance and singing style had characteristic elements such as polyrhythms (layering of multiple rhythms), call-and-response, dance and improvisation—elements rooted in traditions that were brought to the United States by enslaved West and Central Africans between the 18th and 19th centuries. More importantly, the lyrics of songs by Black artists reflected the unique social customs, trends and living conditions of Black people, and these were not fully understood by people covering the songs. As a result, “[the covers] couldn’t compete with the real thing,” Johnson says.
Maultsby explains that due to the increasing popularity of the originals, record labels soon began recording more Black artists. However, she says, they watered down or “temper[ed] [their] heavy gospel-oriented sound” to make it more palatable for the White audience, and “one way they did [that] in the ‘50s and into the early ‘60s was to use pop production techniques” which meant a “background of strings and backup singers that sounded more White—concert-type singers—to soften the more raspier, emotional sound of the Black singer.”
By the 1980s, Black music gained exposure to an even wider international audience through television channels like MTV as well as broadcasts of live performances. Throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, collaborations between interracial duos were used as a mass-marketing strategy to increase the reach of Black artists and pop production continued to be used to “soften the Black sound.” Record companies also paired up White artists with Black producers to achieve that ever-popular Black sound.
“Thus, more White artists embodying or imitating aspects of the Black style made it acceptable and soon . . . that Black sound began to define the American sound,” Maultsby explains. However, this imitation and dilution meant that people could never experience authentic Black music.
According to Maultsby, who helped pioneer the academic study of African American popular music, the way non-African Americans experience African American music, even in the United States, is from the perspective of an outsider, and this applies to the international audience as well.
“By and large, within African American communities, music is created as a part of everyday life . . . music is a part of our lived experience,” Maultsby explains. “When that music is then taken out of that context and placed in the music industry, it becomes a commodity for mass dissemination, and it takes on a different meaning and a different function.”
She explains that the live performances of legendary artists like Aretha Franklin or James Brown were very different from the studio-recorded performances because the records were “mediated so that [they] fit a certain format that [could] appeal to a broader audience.”
“Record labels didn’t like recording performances live because they felt the audience interaction would interfere with the performance,” she says. “But that audience interaction [was] very much a part of the way Black music is created and experienced.
The writing and coverage of Black music both in and outside of the United States also did a poor job of representing its true essence. As Maultsby explains, White journalists who covered Black music would write about it from a White perspective rather than a Black one.
“A lot of misconceptions early on had to do with the music being reported by White journalists who reported through the lens of White audiences,” Maultsby says. “When journalists wrote about Black music . . . in the US—and this carried on to Europe and the rest of the world [including] Asia [and the] Middle East—they wrote about it through their observation of performances in venues with predominantly White or all-White audience, or in general, non-Black audiences . . . they did not go into the Black community to see how the music was performed and experienced.”
Writing about Black music and culture from a Eurocentric or White point of view has resulted in early Black contributions to popular music being misrepresented as well as erased from the general consciousness. Black culture was appropriated, exploited and diluted and in the process, consumers were left with watered down, commodified versions of the art that did not represent the people that were at the heart of creating it, and its after-effects have carried over to the present-day, among non-Western consumers.
Black contributions to music are also rarely discussed in mainstream media, which is largely controlled by White executives.
“The influence of Black music in a lot of American music are things that only get discussed in classes or documentaries—sometimes award shows—but mostly in formal environments, unless you’re from that tradition,” says Johnson. “[Artists like] Steven Tyler . . . [have] said, ‘I grew up listening to the blues; I love the blues’ . . . but the people who promote him don’t really have any interest in [promoting that] narrative because it’s really about selling a personality when you think about how the music industry works.”
She explains that though most people are analytically aware that the United States is a diverse country, images that are promoted by American companies are very White-centric. What is sold to the rest of the world as “American” is usually centred around Whiteness, whether that’s through music, movies, television or other forms of entertainment.
“The outside world sees a very limited package and predominantly a White or Eurocentric image . . . people look at America and assume this is basically a White space even though we have all this diversity—we’ve always had this kind of diversity of culture,” remarks Johnson, who often does not get recognised as Black American when she travels internationally. “When I go to China, they don’t assume I’m American. When I go to Thailand, they don’t assume I’m American."
Even though a lot has changed for Black musicians and artists in the United States since its “race music” days, the impact of racism and Eurocentrism lingers on and affects the way Gen Z as well as millennials outside of the United States, like myself, understand pop music in the 21st century. Many tributes have been paid to pioneering and legendary Black artists in award shows, documentaries and biopics and their contributions have been studied academically by scholars like Maultsby and Johnson, but my awareness of Black music and culture as a non-American is not only limited by what’s been given to me in the media, but also by what’s been left out of the conversations around popular music. How do we change this?
As Maultsby expresses, it starts simply with acknowledgement—just like a symphony orchestra’s roots are acknowledged to be European no matter who performs it or how it is reinterpreted in different cultures, or how a sitar is recognised as an Indian musical instrument whether it’s played in a jazz performance or a symphony orchestra, we need to continue to learn and acknowledge the Black roots of the music even when it has a local interpretation or variation.
“We all know [the symphony orchestra] comes from Europe; there’s no question there; we don’t try to claim it as our own conception, but we do participate in that culture. That’s how we have to think about Black American culture,” she says.
We need to recognise African American music for its role in shaping Western popular music, and understand what constitutes Black musical traditions and what differentiates it from the rest of the world, rather than generalise it as merely American music. And while music may have transcended cultural and racial boundaries, transcendence should not come at the price of obscuring and erasing the source.
“It’s fine as long as we keep in mind the source of that music,” Maultsby says. “We can say it transcends race—it just shows how influential Black has been internationally—but at the same time, we don’t need to erase the group that created the music and make Black people invisible in terms of their contributions. And that happens a lot.
“If we are not reminded that Black people are the ones that created the music you love, we question their contributions to society and to the world. We shouldn’t need to be reminded every day. It belongs in our consciousness.”
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you're the only blog i follow that seems to know about the EU/Legends stuff, so what was Luke's Jedi school like? asking for Fic Purposes
ahahahahaha ‘twas The Hottest of Messes™
(and I have plenty more peeps who are Legends EU hoes who would be even more knowledgable than me because these old-ass books are getting fuzzy in my cobweb-laden brain and these heroes masochistically still review these dumpster fires on a regular basis for Fic Purposes™ so shout-out to @atamascolily @jedimordsith @klcthebookworm @celinamarniss @myevilmouse @jadelotusflower @jadedjo )
but the TL;DR is that Luke was flying by the seat of his very tight pants - there’s a reason my tag for it is #JEDI JUNGLE FRIENDSHIP CAMP because it was...pretty hippy-dippy. XD There wasn’t any rigid curriculum and no therapy because that would make things easier haha. It was mostly “hey let’s meditate a lot sometimes naked in the not-so-safe hot springs under the temple and wave some glowsticks around and listen to Jedi folk songs, kumbayahhhhh.”
Ok, more seriously, there was a shitload of missed opportunity (WHERE WASN’T THERE A SHITLOAD OF MISSED OPPORTUNITY IN LEGENDS EU???) because while the Jedi Academy Trilogy was too busy writing about Mara squeezing herself into a sexy holographic-silver flightsuit and Lando being a fuckboy and SO MANY WEIRD RELATIONSHIPS like Winter and Ackbar maybe having a thing?? and Wedge with a blue bird-lady scientist???? and Mon Mothma almost dying from nanotech that got thrown in her face from a drink and a literal toddler being possessed by Luke’s disembodied spirit to fight flying two-headed hydra monsters I CAN’T MAKE THIS SHIT UP AAAAAAAAAAA -
- it had potential. It had interesting characters. Luke’s Island of Misfit Jedi first group of Jedi students came from vastly different backgrounds and were all adults, except for Kyp (pretty sure he was still like a teen or quite young), many of which had deeply rooted issues. That doesn’t make for a great bunch to start with at all, especially with a guy who barely knew what he was doing, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Honestly, we really didn’t need so much of this external conflict with more over-the-top Imperial shenanigans AND a Sith Lord spirit conveniently hanging around the ruins of the ancient temple the Rebels had used as their base in ANH. That’s a lot on top of the already complex nature of Luke and his students’ relationships with him and each other. It would have been great to slow down and spend more time focusing on the pressure that Luke was under (especially since in the Legends timeline this came right on the heels of him having “turned” to the Dark Side to serve clone Sheev-O 2.0 in Dark Empire, and he’d still be reeling from that), him grappling with self-doubt, second-guessing himself, etc. This did factor into the books a little, but I would have loved to see even more exploration of Luke Skywalker, savior of Anakin Skywalker, missing those warning signs in his students who were tempted by the Dark Side because that wonderful attitude of his, that hope and faith in everyone, isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.
And not everything had to be doom & gloom either, there were plenty of things about the new bunch we could have spent more time with too. GIVE TIONNE A LAST NAME, FOR STARTERS. See more about her culture and how she composes music. How Streen has to slowly learn to integrate back into existing around others. More about how Kirana Ti feels as a Dathomir witch learning from a male Jai. Down-to-earth stuff like that. I would have liked to see more of that awkward family bonding between Luke and these people, because we know Luke would have formed that kind of intense closeness with them as his inaugural class. And SPEAKING OF INTENSE CLOSENESS, I would have LOVED to see the early days of Luke and Kam Solusar’s relationship as Jedi bros, not to mention the first tentative sparks between Kam and Tionne (because they went on to get married later). Shit, Kam would have been a fantastic mentor for Kyp as someone who had been saved from the Dark Side and could relate to the kid somewhat as a person who had also suffered slavery and abuse under the Reborn Emperor. One of Luke’s biggest problems in running the academy at first was the lack of delegation, and Kam, as a mature Force user, could’ve stepped up immediately to help him out. We could’ve also dwelled more on Mara’s disgruntled feelings about being sidelined when she showed up, instead of her popping in and out briefly and us having to catch up on her sentiments in later books.
BUT I FUCKING DIGRESS, I know this wasn’t really what you asked about...lol, mention the JAT and I just start foaming at the mouth about everything it didn’t do. I guess if you gave me some more specific questions about certain aspects I might be more helpful and less “bitchy fangirl mouthing off again.” XD
TL;DR again, Luke’s early Jedi Jungle Friendship Camp wasn’t the best but it wasn’t the worst either, it just had a rough start, to say the least.
#Anonymous#i'm back on my bullshit again#my meta#star wars#luke skywalker#JEDI JUNGLE FRIENDSHIP CAMP
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