#it was a black queer man and I thought he was going to just discuss about the rise of rampant hate against white people in america | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

scientia-rex · 1 month

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I feel like disappointment in Biden is baffling to me because he was always a disappointment. He was the asshole who got to ride to power on the coattails of a better man. He told bizarre and repeated lies (despite getting caught at it and his team telling him not to) about having a Welsh coal miner dad when he did not and he stole that story from actual Welsh people. I read a profile of him years back that pointed this out and told the story of the time he straight up ignored good advice from an expert not to plant a certain kind of tree too close together and flew a bunch of them out to plant, at night because he was just too fucking excited about it, and they all died. He’s not a smart man! He’s charismatic ish and lacks principles and as far as I can tell doesn’t really care about abortion rights or a lot of things we’d consider pretty critical to preserving freedom. I sincerely thought he couldn’t become President because there were so many obviously better candidates in the pool. I underestimated the sexism and antisemitism in American politics, and when he became the candidate in 2020 I gritted my teeth and voted for him because the alternative was a man who is not only an idiot but also profoundly dangerous. Trump is not ha-ha crazy, he’s Mussolini crazy. He is not dangerous because he’s stupid, although that doesn’t help; he’s dangerous because he does not care about anyone except himself under any circumstances and if that means he lets the far right push us straight into forced birth for white women and sterilization for women of color he’s going to do that. If that means conversion therapy for queers and death penalty for homosexual acts he’s going to do that. He has literally no limits. If he gets back into power, a whole lot of people are going to die, again. It’s not a hypothetical because it happened the first time and he’s only going to get worse.

I am not, never have been, and never will be a fan of Biden. To pretend that he and Trump are in any way equivalent is wrong at best and another goddamn Russian psy-op at worst. To pretend that a third party candidacy is viable in the US is to completely ignore every election of your lifetime and your parents’ lifetimes, and to further ignore the lesson of Ross Perot.

You cannot save Palestinians by not voting for Biden in November; the best you can do is chip away at his margin, and the worst you can do is see Trump elected so he can decide to do the worst possible thing in ever circumstance. Biden has Palestinian blood on his hands and watching this when we could have had Bernie or Elizabeth Warren instead is maddening. (I would have preferred Hillary to Trump, but I don’t think she’d be any different than Biden here. They’re both old-school politicians.)

I hate everything about this, and I hate that saying “maybe don’t put the man who literally said he would kill his political enemies in power” is seen as supporting genocide. It’s acknowledging reality. Joe Biden as a person can eat rocks for all I care. I was kind of hoping he’d die sooner in his term so we’d have time to get used to and then vote for President Harris. (Remember when the line was “she’s a cop, don’t vote for her”? Funny how there’s always a reason not to vote for a woman or a person of color or someone you just “don’t like” and can’t put a finger on why except she “seems angry.” Oh does she. How would she not? When Michelle fucking Obama, the picture of grace , STILL got called angry for having the nerve to be a Black woman with an opinion? When Hillary Clinton lost to a man with no political experience to her decades and who openly discussed sexually assaulting women? Would you have voted for President Harris? Or would you let Trump win again because you don’t LIKE her personally and she’s made decisions and statements you disagree with?)

Biden has both less power than his critics give him credit for and more power than his fans give him credit for. He needs to do more to pressure Israel and although it’s a delicate diplomatic situation I’d rather see us fuck up our diplomatic relationship with Israel than watch more Palestinians get murdered for things like “wanting to eat” and “existing.” The line has been crossed, and he doesn’t see it. Because he wasn’t the best person for the job. Because they didn’t get elected, because of sexism/antisemitism/racism. Hell, I have no idea what bootlicker Pete Buttegieg would have done here, but I’d have given him a try. But no. We got Biden and we’re stuck with this reality where you can be as leftist as you want and still have to look at the situation and decide whether you’re comfortable contributing to a Trump victory through inaction. I want socialism—I want every single person on Earth to have clean drinking water, enough safe food, shelter, medical care, and education—and I’m going to vote for Biden, pissy as it makes me, because the only actual alternative is so, so much worse, for me personally as both a woman and a queer, and for everyone in America and the rest of the world who Trump would find reasons to hurt. What do you think the man who openly and repeatedly praises dictators is going to do when those dictators massacre their own people? Yes, we need to care about this genocide now. We also need to care about all of the other people who are at real risk, both at home and abroad. Would a Trump government agree to fund military intervention in Haiti without insisting on it being a colonial exercise in power? Would a Trump government roll back the restrictions on discriminating against transgender patients in healthcare? How would Trump respond if Orban started dragging people into the streets and shooting them en masse? How would Trump respond if China finally went for it and invaded Taiwan? There are more lives at stake here than mine or yours or even those of the Palestinians, who have deserved better for literally decades and are being mass killed in ways that should result in immediate sanctions, a war crimes trial, and the execution of Netanyahu.

The world deserves better from you than complicity in a Trump victory.

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hp-hcs · 6 months

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There’s like no genderneutral/male reader fics for Mattheo but then I found ur account and I’m like heart eyes. Can I plEASE have a Mattheo x ftm Reader (if you aren’t comfortable with ftm then just male reader is fine) I just want a happy ending pls

oHOHOHOH YOU ARE IN LUCK BABES CAUSE I’M FTM AND A HOE FOR FLUFF/HAPPY ENDINGS

based off of Queer as in Fuck You by the Dog Park Dissidents which if you haven’t heard it before, GO LISTEN TO IT NOW

the way this man could avada kedavra me and i’d thank him

queer as in fuck you — gay! mattheo riddle x ftm! pureblood! reader

tws: use of reader’s deadname; use of ‘miss’, she/her pronouns, and fem-specific language towards or about reader; discussion of an arranged marriage

Warning: the reader is referred to with she/her pronouns for pretty much all of the story (it makes sense in context i promise)

D/N = reader’s dead/given name

i used too many lyrics in this one ngl so anything in pink is from Queer as in Fuck You, alr? alr.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

‘I don't want to get married/ I don't want to be just like you/ Nobody bothered to ask me/ They said I ought to be just like you’

“Father, I don’t want to get married!” Mattheo seethed, storming after the Dark Lord through the halls of Malfoy Manor.

“Nonsense,” Lord Voldemort clicked his tongue. “It’s expected of you. You’ll marry a nice pureblood girl and start a family, just like I did.”

Mattheo smacked a hand against his forehead, groaning and muttering under his breath about this stupid fucking house.

“I don’t even like women!” Mattheo tried as a last ditch effort.

“Anyone with eyes could see that, my dear son.”

“And you still want me to go through with this anyway? Why didn’t anyone bother to ask me?!”

“Mattheo,” the Dark Lord interrupted his son’s tirade. “It’s happening whether you like it or not.”

‘I don't want to be equal/ 'Cause I know I'm fuckin' better than you/ Your moderation is lethal/ Get out of my way, let me do what I need to’

“Oh, and this is D/N,” your mother tittered anxiously as she rested a jittery hand on your shoulder. “Of course you know the L/Ns have always been quite faithful to you, my Lord.”

You grimaced at your mother’s ridiculous fawning over the Dark Lord. You sat at the Dark Lord’s long, imposing table, between your mother and father and across from Mattheo Riddle himself. Lord Voldemort had taken his usual seat at the head of the table, tapping his fingers in a rhythmic pattern as he listened to your parents’ offer with a pleased smirk.

You had a disgusted expression on your face as you sat there, laced up in a way-too-tight dress that your mother had forced you to wear, with itchy makeup that was clumping up in the corners of your eyes, and a sour grimace. You gave Mattheo a quick glance-over, rather unimpressed.

You knew girls at your school threw themselves at him; that he could get anyone he wanted with a wink and a smile. But all you could think about as you looked at him was how would I look if my hair was like that?

“We will accept your generous offer,” the Dark Lord said smoothly, startling you out of your thoughts. “I do believe that Miss D/N will make a perfect addition to the Riddle family, when she and my son come of age.”

In unison, you and Mattheo scoffed, leaned back in your respective chairs, and crossed your arms over your chests. Startled, you glanced at each other with wide eyes, both surprised by the similarity.

“You are excused, children,” the Dark Lord purred.

Glowering at the insinuation, you stomped off after Mattheo.

‘There's no protection that this nation-state can offer to me/ Just olive branches to the cis white gay bourgeoisie/ So fuck off with your rainbow-striped American flags/ The only colors that I need are the pink and the black’

“Hey, can I come in?”

Mattheo looked up. “Huh? Oh hey, D/N. You need something?”

You leaned against the doorway of his dorm room, you both now back at Hogwarts after the end of winter break.

“Not really. Just came to say hi.”

“Well, you’ve said it now, so…”

You pressed a hand to your chest in a mock-offended manner. “And here I was, trying to become friends with the guy I’m being forced to marry! Apologies, Mr. Riddle, I’d hate to take up any more of your precious time.”

He snickered. “Come in, dipshit.”

“That’s more like it. Here, look what I brought,” you plopped down on his bed, him scooting over to make more room for you. With a devilish grin, you pulled an entire bottle of Firewhiskey out of your schoolbag.

“How’d you get your hands on that, Miss L/N?”

“Well if you must know, I stole it, Mr. Riddle.”

You dumped out the rest of the shoplifted borrowed contents of your bag: a wide assortment of sweets from Honeydukes.

“Dibs on the Fizzing Whizzbees!” Mattheo said, immediately snatching them up.

“Poor taste, you’ve got. Chocolate Frogs all the way.”

You opened the pentagonal box dramatically, catching the Frog before it could escape.

“No way,” Mattheo argued around a mouthful of Whizzbees. “They’re just unsettling to eat.”

You laughed, turning the card around to show him that it was Albus Dumbledore.

He responded by throwing a handful of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans at you while you laughed hysterically.

‘Not gay as in happy/ But queer as in fuck you/ Not gay as in happy/ But queer as in fuck you!’

“I need to talk to you,” Mattheo rushed out as he slammed open your dorm room door.

“Nice to see you too,” you said sarcastically.

“This is serious, L/N!” His voice cracked as he spoke your last name, clueing you into the fact that he really was being serious.

“Shit, alright. What’s up? Cause, I like, kinda need to talk to you too.”

Mattheo closed your door and started pacing back and forth, rambling.

“Okay, fuck, I dunno how to say this but… I mean, not that you’re not like, pretty and all, you know, in a conventionally attractive way- and you’re super cool and all that, but-”

“Mattheo, I’m transgender,” you interrupted bluntly at the same time he blurted, “I’m gay.”

You both blinked.

“You’re into guys?”

“You are a guy?”

You were both silent for a moment before bursting into laughter.

“Well uh, that works out well, huh?”

‘Fuck you too!’

#harry potter #hp #fuck jkr #hp x male reader #x male reader #gay #x reader #trans reader #trans #transgender #male reader #mattheoxreader #mattheo riddle x reader #mattheo riddle #mattheo riddle x male reader

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spacelazarwolf · 1 year

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thoughts on passing privilege? ive seen it tossed around a lot

honestly, i think most discussions about passing privilege (in terms of queerness and transness, as i’m assuming that’s what you’re referencing) are fucking annoying and lack so much nuance. so many of them focus on hypotheticals rather than reality. a bi woman could date a man. but she also could date a woman or she could be very butch or very open about being bisexual. a trans man could pass as cis. but he could also not go on t or he could go on t and wear a dress or he could be very open about being trans. “could” means absolutely nothing when someone’s actual lived reality doesn’t reflect that “could.” some bi women and trans men do feel like they have passing privilege, and that’s fine. but their experiences aren’t representative of all bi women and trans men.

also i have a huge problem with the way people present street harassment as like The Truest Form Of Queerphobia bc y’all i promise you are more likely to experience life altering homophobia or transphobia from a doctor or employer or teacher or family member than you will from a stranger on the street, especially if you’re white. this framing also really fucking sucks for groups like bisexual women and trans men who both experience extremely high rates of abuse and sexual assault, but those statistics are constantly being dismissed bc “well ur not literally being murdered in the street so!!!!!!!!!” (as if the people they’re talking about who are actually being murdered in the street aren’t black and brown people, but i guess that ruins the White Woman Victim Fantasy that fuels the true crime industry…)

also as per usual it’s just a bunch of white queer people playing oppression olympics and expecting people to be able to chop their identities into pieces for tumblr analysis. you’ll just sit there and watch white woman after white woman tell a black man he’s privileged because a stranger on the street won’t call him a dyke for holding hands with his girlfriend, meanwhile he’s just trying not to make eye contact with cops because they might shoot him in front of his kids for looking at them wrong.

so yeah i think the vast majority of the time it’s just a bunch of white queer people arguing about who gets the Most Oppressed gold star while ignoring any and all nuance and intersectionality like the plague. we should be able to have conversations about how some people are in more danger in public because of features they can’t or choose not to change, but the internet is the internet.

#ask avishai #wanted to talk more abt how this plays into White Woman Victim Syndrome #but i have already flown too close to the sun with this

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paganminiskirt · 8 months

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I love reading your analyzing of Coyle. I wondered if you had any thoughts on his sexuality? (I mean I have a damn spread sheet myself, but you're so much better at words and really great at psychoanalyzing lol). I've described him as being "the straightest gay man I've ever seen" to a few people now and eventually the "get" it.

(CW: discussions of canon typical sexual and racial violence, slavery, internalized homophobia, domestic violence and femicide. One of the linked videos also discusses fascism using disturbing transphobic rhetoric as an example.)

Thank you for your kind words, it’s really nice to know my ramblings are resonating with someone! Discussion should be allowed to emerge naturally, but I think much of the debate that arose from the revelation of Coyle’s character was removed from the context of the oppressed groups being commented on by the text. I say that mainly in reference to people of color, since the KKK represents a cultural trauma which is inextricably attached to blackness, but the statement applies to queer people as well. That very Klan was almost extinguished in the 1870s until it was revitalized half a century later by a film, of all things: media is obviously important. There’s much more that can be, and to an extent needs to be, said about this story beyond rehashing “it is/is not okay to hornypost about this” ad nauseam.

So let’s get this out of the way: I think Coyle was deliberately being written as queer. The ethics of incorporating LGBT characters in a setting so obsessed with the grotesque are questionable (you can read more perspectives on that here and here,) but I think there was intention behind the decision to depict him this way, whether it's "good representation" or not.

One of his defining traits is that he habitually deploys lewd, effeminate language to intimidate and dehumanize his victims: “alluring piglet,” “honey,” “beautiful/sexy b*tch,” “darling,” “sweet, ripe young things" and the like. You could argue that is solely a degradation tactic rather than a direct indicator of his sexual preference, and he does seem to do it primarily to scare you. But a big part of the horror in Kill the Snitch is that Coyle is very unembarrassed about how much pleasure he gets out of subjecting you to that degradation. (“You lick my boot, maybe I let you up.”) The innuendo he taunts the Reagents with is unaffected by their gender presentation, and The Snitch is a fixed character presented as a cis man who Coyle treats with just as much aggressive leeriness. From there, it's difficult to interpret him as straight.

And since Coyle is one of the main villains of the game, I think I would be remiss if I argued that his bi/pansexuality is a thematically insignificant byproduct of his broader characterization as a sadist. That conclusion certainly presents itself: even if his queerness is loudly implied, it isn’t commented on directly by the text the way other aspects of his character are, like racism and uxoricide. The closest we get to a clear, unmistakable identification of his sexuality comes in the form of his aforementioned attitude towards The Snitch.

While the Reagents are interchangeable grunts, The Oogie Boogie Man Snitch is Coyle's own prisoner, and as such we witness him compound the usual routine of sexualized cruelty with repeated assertions of possession, calling him things like “toy” “mine” and “property” to emphasize a sense of ownership. He comes completely undone when the Reagents electrocute him to death, exploding into thwarted, miserable rage like a kid watching their sandcastle get kicked to shit (“No! FUCKING NO! He was mine!”) and throwing out all of his beliefs at once as this jumbled, fascistic mess; “anarchist pinko fucks” this and “country’s going to shit” that.

Perhaps the most telling line about their dynamic is this one: “Jesus Christ you look like my second wife, you know that? Spittin' image. Woman got me 'bout as hot as Missouri asphalt.” The only time we see how Coyle interacts with people on an even playing field is in the files, when it’s mentioned that he killed two of his fellow soldiers when serving in the army & brutalized a murkoff agent interviewing him. The social dominance he has over people like The Snitch and his wives seems to be the only way he’s capable of conducting interpersonal relationships on a vaguely emotional level. Otherization, fuckability, and the need for corrective shame/subordination are all intertwined in Coyle's head, muddling together to form his notion of natural hierarchy: one which is incoherent, self-serving, and more about appearances than anything else. (“I know what you did. I just need to hear you say it.”)

And the importance placed on appearances isn’t just something that Leland happens to believe. In the era when this game takes place, the electric chair was at peak popularity as a form of “humane” capital punishment: in reality, it was a callous technological repackaging of the methods of execution which came before it, namely the (distinctly racialized) hanging/lynching. These methods were designed to reinforce social hierarchy by staging voyeuristic displays of dehumanization, and were levied with particular barbarism against people of color. There’s a catalog of horror stories I could insert here about white supremacy and the electric chair, but that’s another post entirely. What I want to establish is that:

A. It's easy to interpret The Snitch’s execution (and the Reagent’s forced participation in it) as a symbolic enforcement of Murkoff’s construction of social dominance, akin to capital punishment or lynching/state sponsored terrorism. B. Men like Coyle were categorically responsible for orchestrating executions like the one in the game, and the fact that he gets so angry and addled about it even though he’s ostensibly a follower of their doctrine speaks to the nature of his ideology.

Though a lot of real world topics get touched on by Coyle's dialogue, it certainly isn’t 100% down-to-earth social critique. Many of his lines invite you to laugh at him (“It's hurtful when you disrespect the badge. I have feelings, too”/”Ain't you slicker'n a can of mashed assholes”) and his crimes themselves are, at times, overblown and ridiculous. He's a caricature of institutional violence and injustice, not a straight faced example of it. No, the realistic part of Coyle’s storyline is how the power structures of 1950s America both protected him from consequences and deliberately encouraged him to degenerate. I’ve alluded to this before: it’s one of my favorite things about Trials.

He was sent to military school because of his violent tendencies and joined the marines to avoid investigation after killing his first wife, but once he had the Police Department to shield him his behavior escalated in severity so much so that it attracted the attention of an even worse organization. The process was Military School → Ku Klux Klan → Marines → Police Department → Murkoff. This facet of the story was always there, but the newly released comic really hammers in the point, that Coyle - infantile, nonsensical, vulgarly abusive and utterly unworthy of authority - was never a barely tolerated outlier or a well kept secret within the systems he budded up from. The files directly attach his klan involvement to police work even as he's described as a “good cop:” because there were no good cops in Blackwell, because good cops aren’t real. US Law Enforcement can be traced back to early southern slave patrols, they've had a handshake agreement with the Klan for decades, and you need look no further than the recent Minneapolis Police Department exposé to see how they operate in the modern world - and this game is set sixty years before 2023. Horrifying, yeah?

Understanding cops themselves to be fundamentally immoral and unjust, by the time we meet him in the game, Coyle isn’t even a competent cop in terms of his willingness to enact unjust aims. Yes he is brutal, yes he is racist, yes he clings to the childish, cowardly belief in immutable superiority found in actual modern fascists - but the ouroboros of psychosexual issues driving him to behave the way he does take precedence over his purported devotion to any belief system, to such a degree that he isn’t even acting in explicit defense of an institution anymore. That job, to defend the current institution, is what the Reagents are being trained for: the same ones he deems subhuman and, most tellingly, “perverted.”

One thing that makes Coyle’s whole presence in Kill The Snitch so surreal and disorienting is how manufactured and aimless his job as The Snitch’s defender really is. The man play acts an interrogation of someone who will never see trial, referencing vice squads, courts and elections that are nowhere to be found in the Sinyala facility - even though a different line of his mentions how they “don’t favor courts in these parts.” So, he’s directly contradicting himself. When the Snitch dies, he goes “NO! NO! I'll never... God DAMNIT,” not even finishing his own sentence about what it is he apparently needed The Snitch for.

The man obviously thinks otherwise, but he’s a make-believe cop, a test dummy for trainees to be pitted against ala shencomix’s professional hater. Though nowhere near as disenfranchised, Coyle is a puppet in Murkoff’s trials as much as the Reagents are, all his nasty, grandiose rhetoric ultimately amounting to hot air: and unlike the Reagents, this does not end with him being reborn. He lacks the overarching purpose of eventual service to a greater cause that they have.

And therein lies the self-destroying prophecy inherent to his understanding of reality. You can argue that Coyle is aware (subconsciously or otherwise) that there exists the potential for him to be otherized, and by extension subordinated, for an immutable part of himself which is directly attached to his sexuality and masculinity. I’d be surprised if he wasn't, considering how loudly the prejudices of the culture he arose from are relayed to the audience. The fear that comes from that knowledge gives birth to an obsession with categorism, shame, and “justice:” which he rationalizes as an immutable aspect of reality by connecting it with the natural phenomenon of lightning. (“I used to stand in a storm and watch the lightning strike the plains and I would think, "well there you go." That's justice. Sometimes the finger of God reaches down and touches you. But you never know which finger it is you're gonna get.”)

This leads to violence which he is constantly rewarded for: and because it’s the only viable outlet he has for exercising those very issues which he was trying to avoid confronting in the first place… he overindulges. Loses all interest in presenting the rhetoric coherently, in favor of chasing the immediate release that cruelty provides with ever-increasing vigor. (Funny how he calls the Reagents “dope addicted” too. Mr. Sony VPL strikes again!)

But in the end, Coyle is worthless. He’s a tool, designed to be overcome. It's a similarly symbolic, utilitarian role to that of The Snitch, which potentially feeds into his perverse sense of protectiveness over him, but the people who are coming out the other end of this with a job to do in the real world are the Reagents. People he looks down on, people he terrorizes, people he’s so desperate to bend to his will. He’s like... white chauvinism revealed as senseless, small and disgusting, condemned to chase its own tail & buckle under its own weight no matter how hard it shakes it's fist at the sky.

And in a series so fixated on delusion and the disintegration of the self, the nugget of reality within that was thrilling to see on screen. 10/10, would cringe at again.

#theartof-p #leland coyle #officer coyle #outlast trials #murkoff corporation #I’m feeling a need to include a “the north is awful too” caveat #but I recently found out some relatives had a cross burned on their lawn.#in the urban North. in the 80s.#so it’s probably just my own biases speaking lmao #i’m p sure it doesn’t sound like I’m singling out the rural south here but lmk if you think otherwise #lmk whatever you have to say #anyways. Long live Leland Coyle’s hideous deplorable ass!!!

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affiesque · 4 months

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So, after surviving a crappy year, I decided my reward would be yet another rewatch of Desire Catcher. I know this fandom is kinda tiny, but I always enjoy reading other people’s random thoughts and observations so I thought I’d throw mine out there too.

There are, of course, a bunch of different crime-related plot lines in the show, but this is basically going to just be me yelling about Luo Fei and Lu Fengping, seeing as I remain obsessed with them. I’m always up for discussing these two nerds in love, so feel free to tag me or message me (*waves to @thinkonce-acttwice!*). I’m at about the halfway point now, so I’ll post again once I finish the rest of the episodes.

Overall, I really like Desire Catcher - the various bits of plot don’t quite come together in the end, but for me it’s more about the relationships and themes of revenge, regret, and forgiveness. So, lots of angst, which I’m always a big fan of, and which I suppose says something about me…

Luo Fei! Light of my life, the silent, broody, lone wolf cop - ACAB, of course, but he’s firmly in sad (not-so-little) man territory, which is catnip to me. Plus he has a collection of black leather jackets - need I say more?

Lu Fengping! Other light of my life - Luo Fei’s future boyfriend, I mean consulting hypnotist, the more outgoing, “quirky” one. He’s always in light colors, dashing around with a lollipop in his mouth (I know there's a cute connection with his mom about them, but that aside, “oral fixation vibes” anyone?), teasing everyone around him - contrasted with Luo Fei’s dark colors, grim expressions, and workaholic nature. Though it’s interesting that as the show goes on it becomes clear that some of Lu Fengping’s affectations are really a mask he puts on to hide his pain (yay, angst!).

Their first real meeting happens over a meal; it’s dark, it’s raining, there’s thunder in the distance - foreboding and romantic all at once. There’s definitely a teasing/flirty vibe there, though Luo Fei seems wary of Lu Fengping - in fairness, Lu Fengping is sort of using him for info on his mom’s murder case, though it gets a lot more complicated than that as time goes on.

While there’s a lot of emphasis on their differences (e.g., dark vs. light), it’s interesting to note how similar Luo Fei and Lu Fengping actually are, even if they don’t see it yet. For example, Luo Fei has trance-like visions as he imagines what happened at a crime scene, much like how Lu Fengping sort of walks around in someone’s mind/memories when he’s hypnotizing them.

So I know this is mainly about the boyfriends, but I want to say that I love all the other members of the investigation team too, especially Liang Yin - definitely not a fan of the “woman suffers for man pain” thing, but they do give her a couple of moments of reclaiming her agency, which I liked.

Luo Fei and Lu Fengping kind of dance around the whole I-know-you-know-more-about-my-mom’s-death thing for most of the first half of the show, at least until it all comes out when Lu Fengping hypnotizes Luo Fei (and WTF suggesting that Zhang Yu - you were supposed to be the show’s moral compass!). Like I get that by this point they’re becoming closer, feeling more open to each other, but still - you’re just rooting around in his brain without permission, my guy. Yikes.

I’m a big fan of parallels and I think we get a pretty significant one here between Luo Fei/Lu Fengping and the story of the relationship between Xiao Xifeng and Tu Liansheng. While you could certainly read it as just two longtime friends, the flashback scenes of them raising the abandoned kid together certainly give off a “couple-y” vibe. Given that the show can’t come right out and say anyone is actually gay/queer, to me it’s a way of floating the idea out there and letting people draw their own conclusions.

Speaking of reading into things, I had to go there and look up the various books shown strewn around Lu Fengping’s apartment. There were two romance novels (“Crimes of the Heart” by Allie Harrison and “Yesterday’s Bride” by Charlotte Walker), another female-centric novel (“Things to Make and Mend” by Ruth Thomas), a financial memoir (“The Age of Turbulence” by Alan Greenspan), and, my personal fav, some gay French shit (“Remembrance of Things Past” by Marcel Proust). Kind of an odd combo of things, but there are some bits that do seem to fit with the themes of the show - lots of misunderstandings, mistakes, not wanting to lose the people close to you. The Greenspan book is more of an outlier, but it does have the theme of “the invisible hand” - it’s mainly an economic term, but you could extrapolate it more generally to people acting on instinct, rather than in a calculated way, sort of like how Lu Fengping’s mom acts to save Liang Yin, setting off a chain of events (kind of a stretch, though). And I guess I don’t have to say much about the Proust - feels like the kind of book you’d use as shorthand for “some gay stuff is happening here, folks.” Plus, the book deals with memory and how people can perceive the same thing in totally different ways, which seems relevant to the mom’s death story line.

Getting back to the gay stuff, there were definitely a few things that made me 👀. First, when Lu Fengping says “no problem” a little too forcefully when Luo Fei tells him to wait outside while he changes - like, “don’t worry, bro, I totally don’t want to see you naked, nope, not at all, hahaha” (combine that with his comment “You don’t like men? Haha, neither do I!” in a later episode to Liang Yin - feels like he’s protesting a bit much). Second, they’re always kind of flirty with each other, even if it’s subtle. There just seems to be a bit of subtext in a line like “You’re in a pretty unique situation” when Luo Fei sees Lu Fengping facedown on the floor at one point, not to mention the looks they give each other when Lu Fengping ends up stumbling to his knees in front of Luo Fei (and you can’t tell me that that was a totally accidental push on the part of Lu Fengping’s mentor - he totally ships them too, IMHO). Third, you can’t overlook the jealousy that rears its head when Luo Fei sees Lu Fengping getting flirty with the (eventually evil) nurse, or when he thinks Lu Fengping brought a girl home to his apartment. Fourth, there are several bits of convo that play around with subtext and seem aimed at the audience with a wink and a nudge. For example, there’s the bit in the car where Lu Fengping brings up marriage (sure, it’s in reference to a different character, but Luo Fei has a justifiable WTF reaction), asks if Luo Fei has a girlfriend, and basically tries to set him up with a female client of his (who, it should be noted, sounds suspiciously like Lu Fengping himself - “very outgoing; your personalities complement each other very well”) in the span of about 10 seconds. Luo Fei gives him his best “bitch, please” look and ditches him - I’m with you on this one, boo. Then there’s a weird bit of dialogue when they’re searching a suspect’s very neat and orderly apartment - Lu Fengping says “A man living by himself can keep a place like this clean. He wouldn’t be that thing…” - long pause, pointed look at Luo Fei - “OCD or something like that?” The audience knows at this point that Luo Fei’s apartment is just as well-kept, and there seems to be an implication that Lu Fengping is actually referring to the stereotype of gay men being very neat. And how could I not mention the fight scene in the gym - beyond the groping, grunting, and full-body contact of their grappling session, the looks they give each other afterward, the small smiles when the other isn’t looking, Lu Fengping thanking Luo Fei for bringing flowers to his mom’s grave - it’s a lot.

DATE NIGHT! (Sorry, I just get really excited about this part.) So here we have Mr. Uptight, known-to-not-drink-with-his co-workers-ever Luo Fei agreeing to go out with Lu Fengping after work and proceeding to get shitfaced (or does he…? He seems suspiciously sober after Lu Fengping puts him to bed and leaves the room). It’s tropey (drunken piggyback ride), it’s sweet (Lu Fengping tearing up when he sees he’s been added to the work group chat), it’s typical man shit (drinking instead of talking about feelings). They’re both just so tender and raw right under the surface and it makes me slightly feral, ngl. Also, the bit with Luo Fei’s parents there in the morning - I love how Lu Fengping immediately charms them and how they rush off like, “oops, sorry son, didn’t realize you brought a 'friend' home - we didn’t mean to interrupt!” And, of course, Liang Yin’s knowing smile when she sees them show up to work together the next morning; at this point in the show I’m not sure there’s any character who doesn’t ship it…

On a sad note, poor Xiao Liu - all he wanted was for his boss Luo Fei to be proud of him. Sure, he fucked up a couple of times, but he still didn’t deserve to get stabbed to death like that, nor just become another brick in the wall of Luo Fei’s “man pain.” (Also, WTF Luo Fei - do not throw papers at your subordinates - not cool, bro.) I’m probably reading too much into things, but there was kind of an undercurrent of Xiao Liu having a little bit of a crush on Luo Fei - he seemed so sad that Luo Fei had drinks with Lu Fengping almost immediately after meeting him, while Xiao Liu had been waiting to do that with Luo Fei for years. Interesting to note too that Xiao Liu also favored lighter-colored clothing, much like Lu Fengping (more of the light vs. dark trope).

Alright, well, this got away from me a bit… Looking forward to the second half of DC and all that delicious angst. 🖤

#desire catcher #lu fengping x luo fei #lu fengping #luo fei #my recap

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hael987 · 2 years

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The more I think about Kit Connor’s forced coming out, the angrier and sadder I get. It never should have happened.

These people are so chronically online they've forgotten the dangers of the real world (as well as things like common decency, compassion and respect for privacy). They've forgotten what boundaries are, completely lost in a parasocial relationship. You’re not entitled to any aspect of him or his life. People treat him as a commodity, not a person. The disconnect from reality is astounding.

He was harassed to such an extent, he’s just a kid, barely 18! Not to mention a real person’s sexual identity can’t be “queerbait” and how the harassers co-opted that important word just to use it incorrectly to carry out harassment. Further, he repeatedly expressed his desire to not reveal or discuss his sexual identity and that - his wishes and autonomy - was just completely ignored and trampled on.

The cruelty of taking away something deeply personal to someone. A person coming out should hopefully be a moment of self acceptance, self revealing, and self celebration happening if a person chooses to, on their terms. And all of that got taken away from Kit, it deeply saddens me. They took away his control, his power, his feelings of safety (due to the harassment) and also the potential future happiness that he could have experienced if he came out on his own terms. Also the fact that he’s so young and it was forced out of him due to harassment, it truly makes me worry about the impact this will have on him emotionally and developmentally, as well as how he’ll now view and feel about the queer community that should have been a safe-haven for him (members of whom forced this situation upon him).

I know it wasn’t just queer people that harassed him, but I feel that so many people seem to have forgotten their roots and the true nature of our queer community: it’s supposed a celebration, a space of security and togetherness, not some ideology based on gatekeeping. A focus of celebrating and supporting those that are in it, instead of a focus on keeping people from/out of it. That the queer community is supposed to be exactly that - a community. It’s supposed to be safe for queer people, both out and closeted alike. Yet more and more people seem to go out of their way to make it unwelcoming - and worse, unsafe - for the latter (i.e the closeted or the questioning).

Not only is someone’s sexuality none of our business but the whole “only queer people can act queer roles/ write queer characters/sing queer songs/be involved in queer media” movement is so unsafe. Media forms have been and always will be for expression and exploration, both of the world and self. While I appreciate the sentiment probably initially stemmed from good intentions (like providing more opportunities for queer actors/voices/creators, the want for authenticity and accuracy for queer stories, etc.), it doesn’t negate the fact that these extreme totalities, this black-and-white all-or-nothing, are not only reductive* but also harmful**. These mindsets lead to this exact situation Kit found himself in: forcing someone to out themselves just to stop harassment or justify themselves. It’s truly disgusting.

[* and ** under the cut at the bottom.]

What happened to Kit Connor should never have happened. It’s sickening and disheartening that it did. It shouldn’t have mattered how he identified, it wasn’t anyones business but his own. I feel like we should all be ashamed that people thought it was okay to do so. The fact that it happened shows a very real failing in society.

Not to mention the biphobia of the whole thing. It seems it stemmed from that he, a man (actually an 18 y/o boy), supposedly had a girlfriend/is attracted to women. How incredibly biphobic that is. People saw/assumed “girlfriend” and somehow their first instinct was to automatically assume “straight”, get pressed over their own unfounded assumptions, and then demand he prove otherwise. Like why wasn’t the assumption he’s someone attracted to multiple genders and then just drop it? It’s the rampant monosexism/ bi/pan-phobia as well as erasure and invalidation. But if I get started on that point I’ll never stop so I’ll just end this little piece here.

People saying he wasn’t outed because he revealed it himself so it’s ~fine~ are really missing the point. He’s just a kid, how could he withstand that pressure and vitriol being spewed at him online all day, every day. He was left with no other option if he wanted to stop the harassment, his hand was forced. If his options were a) stay silent and suffer horrendous harassment indefinitely or b) out himself to stop the harassment, was it really even a choice? If you cut off all other avenues and leave but one option you can’t then frame that as a “choice”. I guarantee he experienced the same feelings of violation, fear, and loss of power/control that come with an outing.

All in all, I’m so upset by the situation, and my heart really goes out for Kit. I hope he takes time for himself and is surrounded by supportive loved ones. I wish nothing but the best for him going forward.

*reductive:

To enforce such a mindset is oversimplifying things immensely. A person may relate to the role/story/song in some other significant way. It might be an opportunity for someone to understand and explore queer mindsets, struggles and lives. A medium for empathy.

For lack of a better example, as I can’t come up with one spontaneously rn: suppose instead that Kit was Questioning (instead of bisexual). He could have then found acting as Nick - who also goes through the experience of questioning his identity - relatable, or that the experience of studying the character, understanding and acting out the role and mindset incredibly helpful to his own personal journey. Even if he then ultimately discovered he was straight, it was still worthwhile for the role to have been played by such a person. (That was all just an example, not intended to offend or discount his real bisexual identity)

Someone could relate to the struggle of finding, discovering and/or expressing their true self despite not being queer.

Someone could be using it as a form/means to better understand and empathise with a queer person in their life.

Reality/lived experience is never so easily separated, distinct and insulated like some people seem to believe.

**harmful:

It puts someone in a dangerous situation and opens them up to homophobia/transphobia and hate crimes. It jeopardises their future career opportunities (because sadly we are still in a homophobic society and this is a very real risk). It plants the idea that a person’s sexuality is any of our business in the first place thus feeding into a harmful parasocial mentality.

These are but just a few examples and points but there are so many, many more.

#I’m incredibly ill rn so I won’t be engaging with any argumentative interactions I just don’t have the energy #but I’m also so angered and upset by the situation that I had to vent #kit connor #heartstopper #heartstopper cast #long post

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bluedalahorse · 9 months

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So I wrote a little something about the RWRB movie, particularly the erasure or diminishing of some other queer characters’ (not Alex or Henry’s) identities. I’m cutting it so you don’t have to read it, but of course you can if you would like to. Not going to tag it for now, just for peace of mind.

So overall, there were parts of the movie I found charming and enjoyable, and I think things really picked up in the second half. I did find the whole thing kind of uneven on a writing level. I know changes have to be made and things have to be cut when you go from a novel to a two-hour movie, and I sort of like looking at how the adaptation process works. After a second watch I can probably pin down some of the writing issues and appreciate what did work. I don’t know if I will or won’t post about it.

Really, right now, the thing on my heart that I want to discuss, is the representation issue.

I actually think they did a good job representing Alex and Henry’s relationship mlm onscreen, once it got going. The tender moments were tender, the spicy moments were spicy. You didn’t get actors looking at one another like “oh god I have to be in love with a man now” and we didn’t cut away from the intimacy scenes like we were ashamed of them.

But—sigh. The way they cut or diminished every other queer character in the story. Obviously I knew Luna and Liam had been cut out, so I was ready to adjust my expectations there. I’m glad Amy was played by a trans actress, although I also wish we like… knew Amy was trans and sapphic? Maybe there was a line about Amy’s wife that I missed, but I don’t remember one.

My biggest feelings of frustration, though, is how they handled Nora, who is very much bisexual and Jewish and a statistical analysis nerd. I get combining Nora and June to streamline things for the movie, but I do not understand why you wouldn’t make Nora bi? You can keep roughly the same number of scenes with her and Alex, and just rewrite their interactions to sound like two queer friends talking instead of a protagonist and his Black Best Friend archetype the protagonist says things to because he needs to say his internal monologue externally. Rachel Hilson did bring great energy to the role, so I liked seeing her onscreen. I just wish the script gave her more to work with and didn’t erase her bisexuality. Like there’s a certain audacity to the script saying that the B in LGBTQ isn’t silent (an important line to have!) when the film is either very much silent about a key character’s bisexuality or has written it out completely.

(Although, the part where Nora was obviously playing a drinking game over political debates? Loved that, excellent example of DC behavior right there, I did cheer at that scene. I am 100% serious.)

Also. There’s just… something. About implying that the gay Mexican journalist character was the one who leaked the emails, instead of the Republican Party. There’s something about writing that storyline in an America where gay people, Mexicans, and ~the media~ are regularly demonized. At a time when the actual Republican Party IRL is literally out here trying to do a genocide on trans people, and Florida’s Don’t Say Gay ban is on the books, and everything. I get that Prime was probably trying not to piss off the actual GOP and draw their ire, but like, conservatives are not going to watch this or like this anyway? I get changing the antagonists, maybe, but maybe we need to go in another direction with that. Hm.

One more thought, as far as overall vibe. Washington DC is statistically the city in America with the highest LGBTQIA+ population. Queer rights are visible in our city’s culture—maybe in a nerdier way than some of the more “hip” US cities but it’s still there if you know where to look. The West Wing/federal government are a bit removed from DC’s broader culture, depending on the administration, but Ellen Claremont is a liberal Democrat with a diverse staff, so she’s more likely to have an open relationship to DC’s queer culture than say, a conservative Republican president. So… idk. Let Alex move through scenes that reflect this culture, is what I’m saying.

Tl;dr I think the RWRB movie worked as a gay romcom in the Netflix Christmas movie sense. It reflected an mlm relationship and did it well enough. At the same time, Casey McQuiston writes books about queer community, which has always been one of the reasons I gravitate toward their work and come back to it. I feel like this movie chose queer individualism over queer community, and that makes me sad. It especially makes me sad in a time where we’re getting tons of mlm-themed things released but every other aspect of LGBTQIA+ identity has been ignored or diminished.

For comparison, RWRB is about the length of half a season of Heartstopper, and even half a season of Heartstopper depicts a range of LGBTQIA+ identities and knows how to write queer community, even when centering the story on a main mlm relationship. And yes, Heartstopper is different, different things need to be considered and so on. I do think the People Who Make Heartstopper looked at what the comic said, went “oh, one of the things this comic is about is about is queer community” and created a show that reflected that, even if they couldn’t adapt everything from the comic. I wish the People Who Make RWRB had looked at Casey’s book and done the same.

I hope we can simultaneously hold the competing truths that like, 1. it’s okay if the RWRB movie isn’t groundbreaking art, because some LGBTQIA+ movies are just allowed to be mid romcoms, but also 2. it didn’t do right by the queer community themes in the book, and it erased the queer women especially, and this feels like part of a larger pattern when so many mlm releases are happening all at once.

Anyway I’m done, for now. More thoughts later? I mean who knows.

Who’s looking forward to Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe?

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fruity-phrog · 1 year

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ok hi i read ur anon post i agree w everything n now i NEEED 2 know allll of ur thoughts abt colinmichael + colin's arc and also if u have any colinjamie/ bi jamie or roy hcs. love love love ur blog!!!!!😌💓💓💓🫂

First off, the serotonin you two anons are giving me is insane, this is such a nice ask and I am very happy rn. Thank you for actively inviting me to discuss my hyperfixation.

So most of my thoughts are compiled in the aforementioned anon post, but I have more so here you go:

Since you mentioned Colin's arc, there's something I've noticed. Ever since Colin has been canonicalized as queer, and even before when people simply headcanoned him as queer, his entire arc and history has been pretty much erased. He's not just this closeted guy on the team. He was a dick to Nate for the most of s1 and maybe even some of s2, but then had an uno reverse card pulled on him and got bullied. His character was developed throughout the seasons, especially when Jamie left. He began to change and stopped being Isaac's cocky right hand man. This is something most people forget as he progresses, something I think we need to remember simply because it's a part of his character.

I think that when Isaac and Jamie find out Colin and Michael are dating they will not let Colin forget Michael's height. Isaac definitely makes fun of Colin's height even though he's the same height as Jamie, so for him to be dating a man smaller than him? Instant comedy.

As for bisexual Jamie... firstly, just look at that man. Singular dangly earring. Ridiculous sitting positions. Eyebrow slits. Istg if he turns up one day with black nail polish I'm gonna throw something at my computer. But also, I think he doesn't really understand attraction to men. Obviously, with a dad like that, he has his fair share of toxic masculinity hurting his chances of coming to terms with any kind of sexuality. But I feel like sometimes, maybe as a kid or maybe as an adult, he'll look at a man and feel something and immediately go "Nope this is jealousy I am jealous nope nope nope". Also he definitely had a crush on Roy as a kid. But I'm not to sure about Jamie x Roy in the present. They strike me as more big brother/little brother vibes, but I can definitely see where the shippers are coming from.

And since we're talking about gay Ted Lasso - Barbara 100% has a crush on Rebecca. It's just a fact. She has a crush on her. Maybe that will segway into bisexual Keely being brought back because even though it's already canon no one talks about it.

Actually, I'm going to touch on that as well. Keely is canonically bisexual. Colin wasn't the first queer character - Keely was. "If I'm going to dip my toes back into the lady pool, I can't think of a better body of water to do it with than you." I know it was played off as a joke but it's still canon. I'll actually be quite disappointed if they don't revisit that because the GA has completely ignored it. Keely. Jones. Is. Bisexual. This is a fact.

Okay I've once again diverged from the plot of the ask so I'll steer it back with a theory (kinda). I mentioned this briefly in a post but I really want Colin to stand up against Isaac and the team's comments. Nothing much, just "That's rude". And when Isaac jokes about if Colin's gay, he just says "Yeah. I am. And I want you to stop it". He needs to address the things he said to stay in the closet and I'd love it to be like that.

I actually wrote a random fluff oneshot for Colin coming out. I still think he'll be outed, but I'd love for him to have some control before that happens.

Okie that is my rant. Thank you for asking, and thank you for the compliment about my blog! Have a nice and gay day <3

#cedar crap #colin hughes #michael ted lasso #keely jones #jamie tartt #bisexual jamie tartt #ask

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mettlemight · 8 months

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𝕗𝕠𝕣 𝕂𝕀ℕ𝔾 𝕒𝕟𝕕 ℂ𝕆𝕌ℕ𝕋ℝ𝕐

An independent roleplaying blog for Garen Crownguard of League of Legends. Written by Julien. ( they/them ) 18+ only / Mature themes ahead. ( a study in overcoming bias, putting family above duty, walking in other's shoes, learning you are wrong, overconfidence, blown egos, journeys of self discovery, a one track mind, fear of failure, self sacrifice ) Rules can be found under the cut!

I have to start this off that Garen is not that great of a person. He's man with inherited bigotry who learns that he is wrong through the love of his sister for she is the thing he is supposed to hate. Garen represents the journey that many people go through, as a queer writer I saw this journey in both my parents and a few friends and I think it's an important story to tell. I love the Demacian mage storyline, I related to Lux and her struggle and I also understand and emphasize with Garen. He's altruistic and heroic ( in his own eyes ), but he's bullheaded, and he's set in his ways with his bigotry and bias and yet he has the ability to realize he is wrong and while he's done horrible things that opens the doorway for him to change and redeem himself. All of these facets will be explored here. I will not shy away from Garen being a bit of a tool, but I also will not shy away from his ability to change. The joys of writing a character!

I say the above as my warning that if you're a puritan when it comes to writing characters then this blog isn't for you. Characters do not need to be perfectly good and non-shitty at all times. People are multi faceted and can have many sides to them and that should always translate to the fictional characters we write.

With that out of the way, I must also preface by saying I will block any and all minors. I am over the age of twenty-five and I'm frankly not interested in writing with minors. This will be a mature blog, it's just not for you.

I'm not interested in out of character drama, I do not care what petty shit has happened between writers. I will not reblog call outs and I will not participate in the witch hunt of blogs. The exception to this rule is if a mun is a literal threat to another person. If the drama is about fictional writing then I simply will ignore/block and move on.

I write Garen as a closeted bisexual, Demacia isn't a homophobic society, but the expectations of him one day continuing his family name stops him from exploring that side of him more often than not. Because of this, he's a little affection starved and I find him quite shippable. He longs for romantic affection. Consider this as me offering Garen for ships! If you'd like to discuss a ship just shoot a message and we can plot something out.

To go along with above, I will write smutty threads, sexual themes can and possibly will appear on this blog. If you prefer fade to black that's fine too, I have no preference, but writing smut isn't an issue with me and I find exploring the thoughts and desires of a character can be fun!

Prompts are an easy way to break the ice, they are always open, but please reblog from the source if you don't send one in.

#league of legends rp #indie league rp #lol rp #video game rp #final fantasy rp #what tags do people even use

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munsontm · 1 year

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'my most significant influence is just real life.' A candid discussion with Corroded Coffin frontman Eddie Munson. Gerri Miller.

Metal Edge, 8th March 1991.

On the fifth of February, 1991, Corroded Coffin, a four-piece heavy metal band from Hawkin's Indiana, a rural town rife with tragedy and mystery, made Grammy and music history by being not only the first of the genre to win album of the year but said album also happened to be their debut. The album in question, entitled Stranger Things, is being hailed all over the country as a truly original and thought-provoking journey with a multitude of themes contained in a fantastical and, frequently, dark world narrative. I caught up with the band's frontman, Eddie Munson, in hopes of learning more about the mysterious and polarising figure who shot for the stars on his first try and made it all the way to the moon.

It was a rare rainy morning in downtown LA when I met Eddie at The Beverly Hills Hotel. He told me he'd have preferred to meet at Starbucks or something, but management insisted on somewhere 'fancy' in his words. There's not a shred of his theatrical stage wear or make-up to be seen except for chipped black polish on his nails. He's dressed down in stonewash jeans, a black vest, and a red plaid shirt complete with Nike sneakers that he tells me aren't his. Eddie offered me a cigarette once we got comfortable in the hotel bar, and I felt struck by the disarming power of his smile. I couldn't say no to him, and apparently, neither can America.

How's it going, Eddie?

Eddie: Yeah, you know. Pretty good. This hotel is weird, though, right?

You don't like it?

Eddie: Ehh...it's just kinda snobby for my tastes. It's not very me, I guess. And it's not what I'd like Corroded Coffin to be associated with. None of us come from money, and neither do our fans. We're a band for the 99%, and we're determined to stay true to that. I think I'd straight up quit music if someone told me that Bush liked our tunes.

You're not a fan of the president, then?

Eddie: Dude, what do you think? I grew up with Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan, each more useless than the last, and determined to keep up the status quo of anti-queer, pro-guns, and the nuclear family. That's all they do, like glorified caretakers, I guess. People bitch about change, but they still keep voting for the same two dumb fucks every single time. Where's the progression? It ain't there, man.

Anti-queer, anti-guns and the nuclear family are pretty polarising subjects. How do you feel when people in the industry label you as a polarising figure?

Eddie: I fucking love it. I knew years ago that if we ever made it big, people were gonna hate us. I've always been loud and weird and annoying, never knowing when to shut my mouth. But I'm at peace with it, proud even. Yeah, I'm queer. Freddie (Mercury) doesn't hide it. Why should I? Yeah, I'm pro-feminism, anti-government, anti-society, an atheist, anti-guns, pro-abortion, and pro-drugs. Whatever has been said about me in pro and anti-contexts is probably all true. I'm the antichrist to the normie Americans, and that makes me giggle at night. Let them be mad about it and live in fear of the other for once.

People back in my very conservative hometown hated me, too, because I was different and poor. It's no different from that, and I'm not scared about it anymore, like when I was that kid in Hawkins. The difference now is that there are people out there who like my big mouth. There are freaks all over the country who are just like me. It's pretty fucking cool.

Those are some pretty brave statements to make.

Eddie: Nah. Lots of them are already there on the album. I've never been shy about any of 'em, even when meatheads at our gigs decide to throw bottles at us and act like little bitches. Go watch Axel Rose if you want some fresh bigotry with your metal. Although, is it even really a metal concert if someone doesn't throw something at you? The answer is no. The point is that the stage and the studio are my space to say what I want and then reach other people with the same thinking. I'm not going to stop doing that ever.

What's your private life currently like?

Eddie: Private. Next.

You're very secretive about that part of your life, aren't you?

Eddie: Yeah. Cus, like I said, bigots exist. I might like to suck both dick and eat pussy, and be okay with admitting that to the world. But I'm not stupid enough to give away my private life details where any creep can read them. Can we move on now? [This next part was originally redacted by Eddie, but then he changed his mind.] Still, my partner could be the shit outta any phobe. They fought a bear once and won...more than once.

Sure, Eddie. What first got you into music?

Eddie: I think the first time music really crawled inside my brain was when I heard All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix on the radio one summer. Mmm, I can't remember if I was four or five, but it was around then. It wasn't even about the lyrics. I didn't learn what they were until later. It was the guitar work that blew my tiny baby mind to somewhere else, maybe another plane of existence, albeit temporarily, so unfortunate. But I couldn't get that raw sound out of my mind, and I became instantly addicted, looking for similar sounds everywhere. I'd heard guitars playing before, but never like that. Never that level of genius. It kinda made me wanna cry with the emotions it brought out of me because I grew up in an environment where emotions weren't allowed if you were a boy. Jimi gave me my first outlet, and I'll be eternally grateful for that. Rest in peace, dude.

Is that what music is for you, an expression of yourself?

Eddie: Well, yeah. Music is part of who I am. Even when it's not a personal expression of myself, it's still an expression of my beliefs and ideals. Music is art; music is political and radical. But I also can't deny there's plenty of very personal shit in my lyrics. The day I write a fluff song is the day I'll have officially lost my marbles.

Who inspired you to make music?

Eddie: Haha, I'm pretty sure this is the most well-known fact about me, which is my boner for Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne. In 1972, Children Of The Grave was released, and I was lucky enough to see it performed live on TV. If Christ were real, that moment would have been my coming of Christ. I was like eight then, so the lyrics mattered more. But Ozzy himself was like a fantastic madman, and no one was doing it like him. He just didn't and still doesn't give a shit about what anyone thinks of him. I admire that so much, and I strived to be like that, too, for as long as I can remember. Not giving a shit was my shield in high school. People were afraid of that, that I didn't follow the rules or pretend to be good as gold. Yeah, it invited trouble, too, being loud and annoying. But it felt great at the same time.

How would you describe the music that you typically create? What are your influences?

Eddie: Uhh, if you wanna talk genres, then I guess I'd describe it as horror or fantasy metal. I wouldn't want to be described as your average metal band. That'd be the freaking worst. Many of my influences come from Dungeons & Dragons, Heavy Metal (the science-fiction and fantasy magazine/comic), and Lord of The Rings. But then you got literary influence from Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King, Mary Shelley, and H.P. Lovecraft.

But I guess my most significant influence is just real life. Take real life and smash it together with all the aforementioned shit. Things get crazy pretty quickly. I've been able to channel a lot of the bad things that happened in my life through those things, and apparently, I'm not the only one that likes it. Although, my dad probably hates that I'm getting rich from what a cunt he is. But I love it.

Who would you most like to collaborate with?

Eddie: Ozzy Osbourne, of course. But there's also DIO too. Slayer would be sweet too—ugh, and Judas Priest. Basically, there are too many potentials to pick from, and I'm indecisive, so I don't think I should be allowed to pick in any realistic context. Gare and Jeff can deal.

What is one message you would give to your fans.

Eddie: First of all, I love them very much. Each and every single one of them made Corroded Coffin possible. Artists are nothing without their fans. Right from the three drunks back in Hawkin's to the dude who flashed his pink nipple tassels at me during every indie gig, he's awesome. We wouldn't be here without them. I hope they continue supporting our madness and being just as mad themselves. The world always needs more freaks in it.

What is the most useless talent you have?

Eddie: I can tuck my dick and balls back and do Gonzo impersonations with em'. Just draw some eyes on my guys, and wiggle it all about. It's a great party trick. But I'm not allowed to show it to anyone because that's embarrassing, according to my partner. And I can quote Lord of The Rings by page number, depending on the edition. Though people in my circle consider that to be pretty cool, just saying.

Do you sing in the shower? What songs?

Eddie: Man, all I do is sing around the house. It drives the neighbours fucking nuts. Fortunately, my partner is fully endeared by it. But I usually sing what comes to mind or whatever trash is on the radio. There's a WHAM song stuck in my head right now, and I hate it. Fully hate it. I want to make it stop.

What would you be doing right now, if it wasn’t for your music career?

Eddie: Honestly, I don't even wanna think about it. Music is all I ever wanted to do. Considering something else was never an option for me.

What's a typical day like for you?

Eddie: I have to be dragged out of bed wherever I'm sleeping. Whether it's at home, the studio, or in a hotel. I'm not a morning person, and it's a lucky day if I manage to hit the toilet rim without a cup of coffee in me. After that, I'm usually writing for most of the day, right now, until my partner makes me eat and take a chill pill. There are also lots of scheduled interviews and shoots going on, what with the Grammy win and all. I'm not used to such hectic schedules, so it's been completely nuts as of late. I only get around four hours of sleep, and that sucks. But it's just part of the job.

What is your favourite song to perform?

Eddie: Fuck. I hate this question because I can never answer it the straightforward way. There isn't one song to beat all, but it's usually a tie between Red and Sword and Shield. They're my magnum opus, at least for now. Because as a musician, I always strive to outdo my last song.

Why those two songs, what do they mean to you?

Eddie: Red is just a sick tune, ya know? I took inspiration from a person in my life, a kid who used to live in the same trailer park as me. She's probably one of the bravest people I've ever met, and my batshit brain couldn't let go of the idea of making a song about her bravery. If it wasn't for them, myself and many others wouldn't have made it out of the Hawkin's earthquake alive. That's why Red is so bassy and riffy, and Gareth even broke a fair couple of sticks while we were recording—the musical energy needed to match her intensity and what she went through to help people. Women's heroics ain't recognised enough in any media, so it was a no-brainer to me to include her story as part of Stranger Thing's overall journey.

As for Sword and Shield, that's way more personal. The context behind that changed my life. It's about two people casting aside preconceptions of one another and fighting their inner demons together cus I found out around the time of writing it that you can't do that alone; fight your inner demons and get past your past. And yeah, there's a splash of homoerotica; sue me. It's one of the...no. It's the only balladesque song on the album cus it's the only balladesque song I've ever written. Most of the music for Sword and Shield was me and a guitar; everyone else is a more subtle background, I guess. It needed to be like that. I needed it to be a private experience for me and my sword.

Your sword?

Eddie: Yup. Next question.

What is the most trouble you’ve ever gotten into

Eddie: Aw, c'mon. Do ya'll really gotta bring it up in every interview? Every goddamn tabloid in the country went off about it. Murder accusations and Satanic worship, which were all overwhelmingly disproven. The state even apologised to me. I'm done talking about that part of my life.

Apologies, Eddie. You're right. What is the best advice you’ve been given?

Eddie: Smooth recovery, buddy. Alright. I've had plenty of decent advice from people like Ozzy, Doro, Dio, and Dave Mustaine. Lots of D's, for some reason. But, I think my Uncle Wayne probably gave me the best life advice, which was always to be myself. Never pretend to be someone you're not, even when it's hard. He told me that when I was thirteen, and I've always stuck by it. What you see is what you get. I don't have a stage persona like a lot of people do. It's all just me. I don't think I'd be able to handle this kinda life if I had to pretend to be someone else, ya know? Being true to myself and my vision is what has gotten me here, that and my boys, my fellow losers and freaks.

If you could change anything about the metal industry, what would it be?

Eddie: Well, shit. That's a loaded question, and it's gonna get one of those so-called controversial replies that I always apparently have. There are not enough women in this industry, at least not in the American mainstream, aside from Doro, and she takes a lot of shit. Bands like Girlschool, Black Knight, Messiah Force, and Rock Goddess, they're all absolutely badasses, who are just as good, if not better, than many of their male contemporaries. Man Metal, let's call it that for a moment, has way too many tunes about sexualising cars and having sex with women and boohooing about our drug problems. It's all repetitive, gets boring, is boring.

I think heavy metal should be more of an open genre. Manufactured pop music always has centre stage in the music industry, sadly. But rock 'n roll is about rebellion and doing what society doesn't deem normal. Why is the heavy-metal movement just entrenched in working-class dudes? Bearing in mind I am one of those dudes. We've got more in common with the many marginalised groups in this country, mainly that the government hates us, instead of the upper classes who use pop culture, music included, to promote the fake American Dream. If we could all come together under the power of rock 'n roll. I think beautiful things could happen. We could have a revolution.

What do you think are the chances of such a grand scale thing happening?

Eddie: Uhh, pretty much zero.

What’s next for you?

I'll be writing Corroded Coffin's next album while on a national tour that I think is being announced next week. I can't remember. Maybe I wasn't supposed to talk about that. Oh, well. Surprise! I've also been asked to pose for Playgirl, which is fucking wild. I didn't see that coming in a million years.

What? Like full frontal?

Eddie: God, I fucking hope so. The pearl clutching will be spectacular.

Corroded Coffins album, Stranger Things, is out now via Mercury Records.

#v. volume 6 / arc: los angeles feat. harringtontm #𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚗 : 𝚖𝚢 𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚍? 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚗𝚊 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎. 🎸#𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 : 𝚐𝚘𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚘𝚏𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚕𝚜 𝚘𝚗 𝚊 𝚌𝚛𝚊𝚣𝚢 𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚒𝚗. 🎸#idk what to tag this as

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cl0ckworkqueerness · 5 months

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pinned post 📌

hi my name is jordan or robin, i don't really have a preference but i typically go by jordan offline and robin online

my pronouns are he/him ONLY, and please only use typically masculine-based terms (i.e. "man", "guy", etc) for me. you do not need to know the details of my transition or my body.

i am a transgender man, and although i do have a condition that some view as under the intersex umbrella (PCOS), i don't consider myself intersex personally-- although if you have it and you do, that's totally fine with me, as your experience is probably different from mine

I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL THEORIST OBVIOUSLY i'm just some guy in his early 20's who's throwing his hat into the ring so please don't blindly accept my opinions as fact. or anyone's opinions, for that matter. but especially that of a guy who's just now learning things and sitting solidly upon Mount Stupid of the Dunning-Kruger graph

i'm here to learn more about and give my thoughts on gender studies, as well as develop my own hypotheses, theories, and opinions. i would love people's input on their experiences, especially if they don't match mine. i want to learn as many sides as i possibly can to get a big-picture grasp on the concepts of gender, sex, and everything else that may be discussed here

this blog will be entirely focused on subjects relating to sex, gender, gender discrimination, trans people and issues, intersex people and issues, queerness, and occasionally sexual and romantic orientation. any other subject matter will be addressed as it relates to any of these topics (for example, how black trans people face intersectionality of transphobia and racism, or how neurodivergent people often do not have their gender taken seriously)

i am not going to critically engage with bad-faith arguments. if i am going to engage with them at all, then it is going to be public mockery or using a bad-faith argument as an opportunity to learn or speak about something related to it. if you step into my ask box, especially if you're going anon, you agree to whatever i may say in response to it being posted publicly even if that means making fun of you. if you do not want this, do not send an ask

i will NOT tolerate, under any circumstance, any kind of prejudice, e.g. transphobia (including, but not limited to, transmisogyny AND transandrophobia), interphobia/intersexism, or any other kind of prejudice, even if it is not relating to gender. yes, this includes androphobia, which very often comes with gender essentialism. i am NOT an anti-feminist MRA, so fuck off if you want to strawman me and say that i am

i will primarily be talking about my own firsthand experiences, which may include more mentions of transandrophobia than transmisogyny. i will do my best, though, to emphasize the equality of these struggles, because neither are worse than the other and they are both severe problems that must be addressed with serious attention, especially if either are coming from inside the trans community itself

under the cut are a few of my general beliefs. if you don't want to read through the rest, that's totally fine and i understand, this post is long enough already lmao

- * - * -

first of all, any of these beliefs may shift or alter over time. if that is the case i will regularly check this and make sure no edits need to be made, and if something conflicts with a post i made, please refer to the original post rather than this list

and also, all of these are opinions that i hold. if you disagree with anything, we can talk about it

with that in mind, let's begin!

to me, gender has no categories or boxes to fit everyone into. rather, gender is sort of an internal perspective of the self, which may or may not change over time, and is different for everyone, much like an internal fingerprint. you cannot tell someone's exact gender by their self-expression, nor simple descriptive words like "non-binary" or "man" or "woman". there is nothing prescriptive or inherent about any of these labels, and these labels are not and can never be "categories", and thus by nature are difficult to define. the closest i've gotten is describing a sort of "core" of a person which these words can describe, but everything connected to it can be of any nature so long as it supports and upholds the core. but this idea is very underdeveloped as of right now and i'll need to think about it

the presence or lack of gender dysphoria in someone has no bearing on someone's transness. that is to say, you don't need it to be trans, and you don't need to be trans if you have it. gender euphoria is an experience most powerfully felt by trans people, so if i were to explain what makes someone trans in very simple terms, it would be "experiencing intense gender euphoria with certain words, phrases, aspects of presentation, activities, or other stimuli". i believe there's more to it than this-- the idea that cis people may experience some form of gender euphoria is on my list of ideas to flesh out-- but generally speaking this is the belief i hold. this also means transmeds get fucked lmfao

bioessentialism (assigning inherent attributes based on sex) and gender essentialism (assigning inherent attributes based on gender) are always bad no matter for what purpose(s) they're used. no exceptions. this means i will not be seeing eye-to-eye with most radfems-- yes, even trans-inclusive ones-- unless they can actively challenge the notion of anyone having any inherent traits because of their manhood, womanhood, femininity, masculinity, or anything of the sort

sex, much like gender, is not binary. there are multiple different characteristics that don't just come down to chromosomes, and to define sex as purely chromosomal is beyond stupid because human bodies are more complex than that

gender as most see it in western society today is a social construct, however to me, gender is tied to one's sense of self that is built upon social interactions and culturally-constructed ideas, concepts, etc. that is to say, gender is who "you" are, constructed by how you interact with society

gender as most see it in western society today should be deconstructed and replaced with the idea that, basically, you can be whoever you want forever. anyone should be able to incorporate anything into their gender that makes sense for them, yes, even "weird" or unconventional things, including any and all pronouns that you use

everyone regardless of gender is hurt by discrimination based on sex, gender, etc. which means yes, men are hurt by misogyny too and the only way to eliminate systemic and social misogyny is to eliminate all systemic and social sex and gender discrimination

cant believe i have to say this. transandrophobia is a real thing. androphobia is a real thing. men can suffer in ways different than women but those ways are still very real. discrimination, prejudice, even bigotry are not exclusive to one, "most oppressed" group. it is not the fucking oppression olympics, get your head all the way out of your ass. baeddelists can fuck right off

all ideas that borrow from gender critical theory, gender essentialism, bioessentialism, or any other ideology that is exclusionary towards one or more types of trans people should NOT be portrayed as "progressive", nor should they be adopted by anyone who actually gives a damn about making a change for a better and more inclusive future. basically, do not sit at the TERF table if you don't wanna get called a TERF

people should be believed for the labels they define themselves with, because even if they're liars, what good does it bring to risk gatekeeping a real person with real experiences. this goes for sex, gender, sexual orientation, romantic orientation, so on and so forth. this also applies to everything else in my mind but for here i'll mainly be talking about it in relation to these things

some people's definitions of themselves might not make sense to you, and that's okay. there are some things that don't even make sense to me yet. but i choose to live and let live, and i think pretty much everyone would benefit from others doing the same. sometimes, what people say about themselves isn't really supposed to make sense to anyone but themselves. the human experience is a complicated mess in every other regard, so why is this any different

i'll probably end up adding more as i continue to think and process my own ideas. until then, that's basically everything i can think of right now

good-faith debates and challenges are welcome, although i might not respond to everything. i will try my best to keep on top of education and information, but i promise i will get some things wrong. in those cases, i wish to be better informed so that i don't perpetuate misinformation or poorly-supported ideas

and finally, in case you haven't seen my banner:

i believe that's everything! thanks for reading all this way, and i look forward to this experience

#pinned #pinned post #intro post #introduction #gender #gender theory #gender studies

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thedreamsmith · 1 year

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Forged in Dragonfire (Part 6)

Apologies for the time between updates! Between starting a new job and the upcoming HEMA tournament season I’ve been flat out.

As always, feedback and comments are greatly appreaciated and let me know if you’d like to be tagged in future chapters!

@deadbranch @mswintersoldier

~~~~

Edeline had given serious thought to not attending her next session with Aemond, fearful that the prince would somehow know she had acted upon her most base desires. That his sapphire gaze would spear her very soul; lustful thoughts and actions laid bare for his perusal and judgement.

As the Father would have it, she need not have worried. Upon entering the training yard two days later, there was no sign of Prince Aemond - only a lone steward, wearing the black and scarlet livery of House Targaryen.

The steward handed her a folded note as she approached before dipping into a sharp bow.

‘His Highness, Prince Aemond, sends his sincere apologies.’

She nodded in acknowledgement, sliding a gloved finger beneath the crimson wax to break the seal. The cardstock felt heavy and expensive – something her father might use to correspond with his bannermen rather than for a scrawled note.

I have been summoned to Dragonstone by my lady mother and will not return in time for this morn’s lesson. Meet me in the library at twelve bells - I find discussing theory and strategy much more comfortable with wine and warmth.

My deepest apologies,

Aemond

The handwriting was sharp and precise, with none of the extra flourishes that had become popular among the younger gentry in recent years. Her traitorous heart gave a queer little flutter as she came to the end of the note, where the prince had signed his name. And only his name.

A quick glance told her that the steward had not taken his leave, his face an impassive mask that she hoped meant he had not read the note himself. Had not noted the familiarity that was evident even when one party was absent.

With what she hoped was suitable nonchalance, she dismissed the steward and tucked the note into a pocket in her breeches, where it seemed to burn a hole through the fabric, impossible to ignore. Faced with a sudden expanse of free time, Edeline glanced around at the soldiers already training. It was easy to tell those who had spent the evening deep in their cups - that is if they had bothered to arrive so early at all.

Choosing an unused section of the courtyard, she began her usual drills, concentrating on keeping her cold-numbed feet from tripping over the uneven ground. A chorus of laughter went up from a nearby knot of soldiers and a muscle in her jaw jumped, acutely, painfully aware that she was the only woman in the immediate vicinity.

Despite her assurances to the prince, despite that she had never experienced a man’s cruelty - only her father’s reprimanding strikes - it was impossible for a women to exist within King’s Landing, within Westeros, without developing that vital sixth sense needed to avoid the particular danger that men posed.

So when she head the shuffle of footsteps behind her, she flinched away, drawing her sword close, a barrier between her and the rest of the training yard. However when she whipped around, her gaze landed on the startled face of a young soldier, cheeks still round with youth and flushed from the cold.

‘Easy, m’lady.’ The soldier kept his voice low, as if soothing a spooked animal, Flea Bottom accent roughening the ends of his words like a blacksmith’s lave. ‘We jus’ thought you might wanna train with us today, seein’ as the prince isn’t here an’ all.’

He jerked his chin, the gesture drawing her attention to a pair of soldiers near the arming rack, neither of them a summer older than her, if the wispy facial hair and abundance of spots were anything to go by.

‘The name’s Kevan. Ethon and Crann were just about to ‘ave a go wi’ sword and buckler but you can join in wi’ your longsword after.’

‘Just Edeline, no need for formalities.’ Stranger take her – she was acutely aware of the way her own aristocratic pronunciation sounded in comparison, enforced by her mother and her threats of a mouthful of lye.

Kevan must have noticed as well, for his brows rose into his hairline, a smirk ghosting across his boyish features.

‘As yeh wish, yer ladyship.’ Edeline scowled. ‘Everyone saw the way y’ knocked Warrik on his arse – haughty as a Targaryen you were.’

‘Not that it’s a bad thing, mind you. Warrik is a right cocksucker – pardon my language, m’lady.’

‘Edeline.’ She could sense that this would become a theme.

‘Truthfully, the bastard – pardon – needed a good thumpin’.’ Kevan continued, seemingly having not heard her interjection, as he led her over to where his companions were bickering over possession of a truly mediocre broadsword.

Eventually Crann – the taller of the two, also from Flea Bottom, Kevan informed her – won by virtue of his height, after he snatched the weapon and held it above Ethon’s head. With a sour expression she suspected was partly due to his loss, and partly due to his Northern heritage, the pasty soldier snatched up a sabre that had also seen better days and trudged into the makeshift ring.

Prince Aemond had not taught her any sword and buckler, so she had to rely on Kevan’s enthusiastic commentary on the friendly match.

‘Keep your weapons together, yeh useless oaf!’ The soldier beside her sucked in a pained breath as Ethon cut between Crann’s hilt and buckler yet again, snapping upright and out of range before the taller man could recover.

Despite his earlier loss, Ethon proved victorious in his bout; leaving his companion with arms striped with welts and a truly impressive bruise on his right cheek, courtesy of his steel buckler. However, the injured face and ego was swiftly smoothed over by promises of the night’s ale to be paid for by the victor.

And then it was her turn. Apprehension coursed through her as she stepped into the ring opposite Kevan. Her flaxen-haired opponent bounced on the balls of his feet, worn leather boots sending frozen pebbles clattering across the ground. Friendly bout or no, she was at a significant disadvantage; he had watched her train and fight, whereas his style was a mystery to her.

When Ethon called to begin, Kevan exploded into motion – a soldier’s brutal efficiency, lacking any of the elaborate feints or flourishes she was used to seeing employed by knights at tourneys.

The match was over embarrassingly quickly, her scant months of tuition with the prince paling in comparison to the gruelling training demanded of even the lowest-ranking among the King’s army.

Instead of gloating, Kevan offered her a half-serious bow, before launching into an enthusiastic explanation of her faults, with the occasional input from the others. His insight was leagues away from that of Aemond’s; a soldier’s perspective compared to that of a prince, although invaluable nonetheless.

To sweeten the prospect of a rematch, he graciously promised to stop calling her ‘m’lady’ if she could land a clean hit on any of them before eleven bells. Edeline did not believe him for a second, but readied her weapon nevertheless.

By the time Edeline had managed to extract herself from her new acquaintances’ raucous company, there was barely enough time for her to wash and change into an outfit more suited to being in the company of a prince.

Prince Aemond was already in the library when she arrived, a heavy book in his lap, dancing firelight gilding his features, a goblet of wine so dark it was almost purple held steadily in one hand.

He did not seem to notice her approach as she drew level with his chair, too deeply engrossed in a world of ink and parchment. The lines of script she could see over his shoulder were decidedly not those belonging to a treatise on martial strategy. A smile ghosted over her lips as she announced her presence with a shallow curtsey, before sinking into the upholstered armchair adjacent to his.

With a motion much like a startled cat, the prince snapped the book shut, a blush colouring the high ridges of his usually-pale cheeks. So, the youngest prince liked to read romance novels? How very interesting.

Aemond recovered quickly, hastily shoving the book out of sight and hefting a significantly larger volume from the table between them.

‘I must apologise again for my absence this morn, my lady.’ Blueish shadows darkened the space under his eye. Exactly what sort of errands did the queen consort have him undertaking? Tensions had been running high among the Great Houses for moons, everyone knew that. With the matter of succession to the Iron Throne at stake, she supposed it was only natural that Queen Allicent would use every tool at her disposal to ensure that her eldest son ascended to the throne, despite the rumours that the king had named Rhaenyra his heir.

The prince did not pry into how she had spent her morning, although she had no doubt that there were already fresh gossip of her unchaperoned antics in the training yard flying around the Keep. Without preamble, he launched into a detailed lecture on the very basics of martial strategy and the principles of how an army was comprised.

The wine was rich and warm in her belly, and the timbre of the prince’s voice alluringly soothing as she followed along with the occasional nod or interjected question. If only her tutors had been this lovely, she thought idly, rather than dusty old relics. She might have been more inclined to spend her time studying rather than covered in soot and iron filings.

Despite his obvious interest in the subject, and her desire to prove a diligent student, their conversation gradually strayed to other subjects. She found herself divulging details of her girlhood, seemingly innocuous stories that she had forgotten until precisely that moment; playing in the Godswood of her family’s country estate with her brother and sisters, the sweet buns that their cook made, the handsome duke’s son who had taken her maidenhead in the dusty sunlight of the stables when she was sixteen summers.

The latter was not met with distain, but with a murmured comment that he was glad that her first time had been her own decision. He did not offer up information about his own first tumble, and so she did not pry. Better to let him divulge the meaning behind his bittersweet smile and the thinly veiled pain beneath in his own time.

The prince’s tone grew sombre as he recounted the torment he had endured through into adulthood from his younger nephews, protected as they were from retribution by their mother’s status and power.

‘I can imagine that it must be…vexing to have to tolerate your nephews’ blatant disrespect in silence.’

‘Vexing?’ Despite the subject at hand, there was a note of amusement in the prince’s voice. ‘Come now, my lady, surely the Street of Steel has taught you more colourful phrases than that?’

‘Be as it may, may I remind you, your highness, that it is also imperative that I keep the two halves of my life separate.’

‘But you are not two people, are you?’ Aemond shifted forward in his seat, the pose and intensity of his gaze uncannily reminiscent of his uncle. ‘You are much yourself working in the forge as you are-‘ He waved his hand for a moment as his jaw worked. ‘Dancing with a sweaty lordling.’

She shot him an unamused glance.

‘And yet there are precious few who would take me as both.’ She turned towards the crackling hearth. ‘A highborn Lord would not tolerate his lady wife spending her days covered in soot and stinking of the forges. Just as a butcher’s son would not be able to understand the intricacies that come with navigating court life.’

‘I am well aware that I am rapidly approaching the time where I must choose which part of my life I am to keep, and which I must discard.’

‘Hmm.’ The soft noise was her only warning as Aemond suddenly rose from his seat, one pale hand extended towards her. ‘Come with me.’

The young prince did not elaborate further as he led her through the sun-soaked halls of the Red Keep then belowground into a web of tunnels that she had never entered. The minutes passed in silence and darkness, the gentle pressure of his hand in hers the only thing she could focus on as they travelled under what seemed like half of King’s Landing. It wasn’t until the air began to warm that she realised where they were headed.

The walls of the Dragonpit radiated heat as the tunnels deposited them into the great circular hall, topped by the enormous dome that was visible from almost every vantage point in the city.

The Dragonpit was the greatest building in the city, but even so, the enormous bulk of the largest living dragon barely fit within its sandstone walls. Vhagar opened one amber eye as her rider approached, the only sign that she was aware of their presence.

How Aemond had claimed this beast, had gained her loyalty at only thirteen summers…

Panic blossomed in her throat, setting her whole body shaking as she watched the great beast press her enormous muzzle into the prince’s chest. The scent that Aemond always carried with him was tenfold stronger here, a heavy mix of brimstone and smoke, a scent that she had not explicitly linked to his dragon until this very moment.

‘Do you trust me?’ His gaze was piercing, yet there was a vulnerability beneath that stole her breath. With a painful twist of her heart, she realised just how thoroughly this man was baring his soul to her. His very essence, a heart-bond like no other.

Even as her hands shook, she nodded, unable to speak for the unnameable emotion in her throat, in her lungs. She was made of kindling; a single spark would set her ablaze.

His hand covered hers, pressing her trembling fingers against the she-dragon’s warm scales. The great beast gave a low rumble that reverberated through her feet, settling deep within her and stoking the fire that Aemond’s unwavering gaze had lit.

‘I want you to see all of me, as I see all of you. There is nothing about you that I do not accept.’

Afterwards, she would not be able to recall which of them had moved first, only that his hands were in her hair, pulling her to him as their lips met. He held her like she was precious, like she was unbreakable. His mouth was hot against hers, like she had always imagined it would be, fire licking in her veins as his tongue traced her jaw, her throat.

The rumble this time was not Vhagar’s, but Aemond’s, building in his chest and into her own as she pulled him closer. Silver tangled in her fingers, night-dark leather under her hands as she sought purchase, a vessel adrift in a storm. She bit down on the soft skin beneath his ear, his answering groan its own reward as she soothed the sting with her tongue.

Aemond responded in kind, gripping her waist tight enough to bruise as he ground his hips into her stomach. She could feel his desire, the hard length of his cock a maddening presence with their clothes between them, only serving to fuel the desire that was building low in her belly.

Their breath came in heaving gasps, the need to draw air secondary to the need to explore, to press mouths to every plane and curve of the other’s burning skin. The dragon blood in his veins was infectious, filling her with his desire, his need to claim her in every sense of the word.

Edeline watched with fierce satisfaction the prince’s reaction to the undulations of her hips; rocking relentlessly against the straining line of his cock, and as she sucked another mark onto the pale column of his throat, she thought that the Targaryens were not the only ones to have claimed a dragon.

By the time they stumbled back to the Red Keep, both thoroughly debauched, the afternoon had grown late, and thin winter sunlight gilded the city sprawling beneath Aegon’s High Hill.

Aemond, ever the gentleman, had insisted that he would not take her for the first time in the dusty warmth of the Dragonpit. Although the suggestions that he had whispered into her ear as they made their way back through the tunnels, of how he did plan to take her, were anything but virtuous.

Edeline, thoroughly sick of propriety, had endeavoured to break his vow, sneaking her hand down the front of his breeches until he had been forced to crowd her against the chalky tunnel wall, wrists pinned above her head in a deliciously strong grip.

Unsurprisingly, the walk back from the Pit had taken a good deal longer than it had taken to get there.

It wasn’t until they were back within the quiet of his chambers that the heat between them cooled slightly, crystalising into something far more precious. With a shuddering breath, Aemond slowly closed his eye, dipping his head. Wordlessly, she understood what he was asking of her.

Her fingers were steady as she eased them gently, so gently, beneath his ever-present eyepatch, tracing the shallow divot of the scar upwards until it bisected his silver brow. The leather thong fell away, forgotten on the floor as she cupped his face with both hands.

The faceted sapphire was without flaw, glimmering dully where an eye should have been. The flutter of his lashes beneath her fingers, the almost imperceptible tremor of his mouth as she breathed the word that had lived in her mind since she had first laid eyes upon the second son; least loved, forgotten by almost all.

‘Beautiful.’

Edeline stretched as far as she could, pressed her mouth to the corner of his gemstone eye. A beauty kept hidden from the world, a frightened boy’s heart laid bare for only her to see.

A single tear traced a path down his face, dampening her lips as she kissed him, far more gently than the ones they had shared in the heat of the dragon’s lair.

‘Marry me.’ It was not a question. He still had not opened his eye.

‘Yes.’ The single word rode a sigh, barely audible, but it was enough. His answering kiss was a silent roar, a challenge issued to no one but her. She kissed him back like a victory.

Like the shattering of a dream, a knock came at the door, and the wrath in the prince’s eye could have ignited the whole of King’s Landing.

‘Do not disturb me again, unless you wish to feel my dragon’s fire.’ His arms were braced around her, a dragon defending his mate. The thought aroused her far more than she expected.

The voice that answered was timorous, an adolescent squeak in comparison to her lover’s ire. ‘Your mother, the queen, has requested your presence in the throne room at once.’

‘Then tell her I shall be delayed.’ Aemond turned back to her, burying his face in the crook of her neck as he lapped at the tender skin.

‘She insisted rather forcefully, your highness.’ The squire was clearly pissing his breeches at the thought of angering the young prince. But she did feel a flicker of respect that he had not yet turned tail and fled.

‘We will continue this afterwards, I swear it.’ She gently pushed him away, a flash of satisfaction in her breast that she had been the undoing of this beautiful, dangerous man. Sensing that he was still leaning towards locking them in his rooms and not emerging for many long, long hours, she pressed again. ‘I will join you, my love.’

The gentle endearment seemed to finally sway him - with a wordless grunt, he swept his eyepatch from the floor, affixing it in place as he strode to the door, flinging it open to reveal the indeed terrified face of a young palace squire. Confronted with a glowering Targaryen prince, the squire wisely chose to flee, his pounding footsteps receding down the corridor, presumably to alert the queen that her errant son was on his way.

‘We are not finished here.’ Aemond pressed a tender kiss to her forehead as they began their way to the heart of the Keep. Warmth bloomed in her chest as her took her arm in his. She believed him without doubt.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 7

Part 8

#aemond targaryen #prince aemond #aemond one eye #aemond smut #aemond fanfic #aemond fanfiction #hotd #house of the dragon #aemond targaryen imagine #aemond x oc #aemond x ofc #oc #ofc #smut #slowburn #slow burn

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ccthewriter · 10 months

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CC's New Watch Ranking - June 2023

Every month on Letterboxd, I make a list of the 10 best films I’ve seen for the first time. It’s a fun way to compare movies separated in time, genre, and country of origin, and helps me keep track of what I’m watching! This is a breakdown of those films.

June! An exhausting month. We wrapped on the movie after a number of 12+ hour days. That, on top of two new jobs that picked up this month, turned June into a stressed mess for me. I spent a lot of time in bed and in the garden, trying to quiet an overstrained brain. For the first time in three years, I have seen only the 10 films on this list this month! That’s why Zaslav felt safe firing all the TCM folks, he knew I was away. But this gives me a chance to discuss some movies I wasn’t crazy about and explore why. There’s something to be learned from every film, even those that don’t please. (I am going to yadda-yadda through some entries, though.)

Click below to read the breakdown! Click HERE to view the list on Letterboxd!

10. Night Moves

1975- Arthur Penn

Was kind of disappointed that this didn’t move for me as it does for others! It reminded me too much of this schlocky film I watched earlier this year Stick. Stick had Burt Reynolds going to Miami to be a double-agent chauffeur for the mob. Or something. Night Moves had the exact same thing happen? Or something? Maybe that’s on me for not paying better attention.

I promised myself I would explore why this didn’t capture me. The best I got is that it’s a slow moving mystery centered on a rather boring figure. Next!

9. Bringing Up Baby

1938 - Howard Hawks

See, I heard about this movie a long time ago. Never in my life did I think the ‘Baby’ in the title was a leopard! This is a fun slapstick comedy about a man who fumbles his hot paleontologist wife for a pathologically lying Katherine Hepburn. I get it, who wouldn’t do the same in that situation, but I was surprised there wasn’t more back and forth between Hepburn and Grant’s fiance. Not quite as charming as another slapstick comedy on this list, but still immensely satisfying.

Cary Grant in a fluffy nightie? 👀 Reeks of gender.

8. Bend of the River

1952 - Anthony Mann

The river! It bends! I find myself watching a lot of pre-1955 movies while I’m doing other tasks. Cowboy flicks and noirs make great background noise. Their rhythms and plots can be so predictable that you can fall right back in if you lose attention for a few minutes. This one gripped me, though. My cinematic nemesis James Stewart plays a black hatted cowboy trying to reinvent himself, escorting a group of settlers to their new home in Oregon. The supplies they ordered don’t arrive in time, so before winter sets in he rides to find what happened to them, visiting the den of villainy and sin known as… Portland. It’s very funny to see the city depicted as a town full of drunken gold miners and thieves, when in a century it will be home to queer witches and their burlesques. (Hi Caity <3) Fun plot, a few interesting reversals, and more colonial assumptions than I can typically stand. It’s no McCabe and Mrs. Miller, but if you’re in the mood for a PNW Western, look no further.

7. Step Brothers

2008 - Adam McKay

A movie so culturally dominant that I knew a huge amount of lines without ever having to see it. It was fun! Will Ferrell and John C. Riley have perfect comedic chemistry, and embody this strange energy of 15 year olds trapped in 40 year old bodies perfectly. The entire film works off of their performance. Just like last month’s Face/Off, two actors giving singular, unique performances is all you need to make a memorable picture.

6. Battling Butler

1926 - Buster Keaton

It’s Buster Keaton! It was fine. I don’t have any more interesting thoughts on him in this movie than I would have in the next one.

5. The Cameraman

1928 - Buster Keaton, Edward Sedgwick

Extremely fun. Buster doing a bit of metacommentary on how artists are valued, and the systems they have to engage with in order to find work. Extra satisfying to view amidst the writer’s strike. These studio heads would have nothing without the footage that the people on the ground capture. The Tong War battle at the end is particularly engaging. It’s the sort of Looney Tunes/Roger Rabbit comic energy that I adore, able to float through a conflict without any worry or care. Satisfying, destiny-bound ending.

4. Once Upon a Time in America

1984 - Sergio Leone

Now we get to the good stuff. Sergio Leone is synonymous with the Wild West - why is it so surprising that he would take on another classic tale of Americana? A gangster drama, an immigrant story, a distinctly East Coast experience of the twentieth century and the superpower that defined it. Where his cowboy movies focus on the mythic qualities of its protagonists - framed among giant landscapes, attention drawn to their weapons and horses - the protagonists of this film are framed within a series of relationships. It is their association with the people around them, the space between their bodies, that Leone captures so well. It is a promise of genius from a filmmaker whose career ended too early. This is a freewheeling biopic of a Lower East Side urchin who rises up towards the top, intersecting with high levels of power and upheavals in his closest bonds. Framed by an opium dream, not afraid to break free from logic, this is a masterful exploration of a cinematic space from one of our best directors.

3. Asteroid City

2023 - Wes Anderson

I feel so lucky to be alive at a time when I can see Wes Anderson movies in theaters. The sheer thrill of this opening sequence…. A black and white TV format exploding into a wide frame, desert-chic phantasmagoria, a MINIATURE TRAIN MODEL title sequence… god. Irreplaceable cinematic moments. It needs a gigantic screen to be really understood.

I think a lot of the theatre-going experience, of the crowd itself, as I remember this film. It was a great sample audience. A group of teen boys who must have just started their summer break. Several pairs of old women enjoying long-scheduled friend dates. A nuclear family. Me, alone, having made use of the Value Tuesday discounts. ($1 off hot dogs!) The whole crowd laughed throughout the thing - has Anderson ever been this funny? It made me feel a lot of hope, that an audience would take such pleasure in little background beats and quiet humor. Much of movie rhetoric paints The Audience writ-large as a bunch of mindless Marvel fans who need jokes telegraphed from a mile away. How hard the subtle humor hit really made me happy.

The story itself is something I’m going to have to meditate on. Anderson is working some meta-commentary that can be hard to grasp with only one viewing. I get the sense he’s looking at his own work and his style of directing. He’s famous for his ensembles - it’s a movie about a cast making a play. He’s famous for his invented worlds - we walk backstage and meet a writer-director who literally lives in a set after the performances are done. He’s a director beset by nostalgia for times he never lived - Jeffrey Wright says to a bunch of young geniuses, “Should have picked a better time to be born.” This is why I feel such a thrill, such satisfaction, in being alive while his movies are airing. I get to witness the years, hopefully decades, of discussion that this movie inspires. I think this is already ripe for a “Underappreciated in its time despite being his masterpiece” sort of thing.

2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

2023 - Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, Kemp Powers

God, what a lovely film to watch. My gushing excitement for this is cut by the recent revelations about its production. I spit on the names of Lord and the names of Miller, I wish them to suffer as they have made others suffer. I think of how beautiful this film is - how every frame is a gorgeous vortex, how you could hit pause at any moment and drink in one billion details that all add up to an incredible whole. I think of the well-crafted story, the nail-biting cliff hanger, the desire I had walking out of the theatre for simply MORE. And I think of how much better this could be if the artists making it were paid more fairly and given more breaks. Look at how beautiful this movie is - IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE BEAUTIFUL IF THE WORKPLACE WAS LESS TOXIC. I reject any narrative about this film that says that, somehow, all the blood sweat and tears made it what it is. No. Absolutely not. This move is what it is because of hundreds of people toiling *despite* the invented hardships. It is so symptomatic of what is wrong in Hollywood, why so many people are striking now. They are being hampered from making their work excel because of these greedy people at the top who project their insecurity and petty rage all the way down.

Anyway. I love Miles. I love Gwen. I love all my Spiderfriends. Hope to see them again some day under less toxic circumstances.

1. What’s Up, Doc?

1972 - Peter Bogdanovich

I’ve been studying the screwball comedy this year. It’s an oft-used term without a great definition. It’s got romance and laugh, it has some odd personalities… but what else? Does it need an aggressive woman? A reluctant man? Do they need to be thrust together by fate? Do you *have* to have an outstanding ensemble, or does that just happen by coincidence? As I try to pick apart these elements I watch this on a whim one day and see that Peter Bogdanovich has already done all that research and found his answer. Screwball comedy? It looks like this. It’s What’s Up, Doc?

From the old-Hollywood opening credits that’s a hand turning a book, to the delightful absurdity that is its central premise - what if a spy, a jewel thief, and some dude all had the same luggage? - everything about this is finely tuned to make you laugh. Barbara Streisand is more or less literally playing Bugs Bunny. How amazing is that? There are so many things that will make you well up laughter that I hesitate to try and explain them more. Just watch this incredibly funny, charming movie. I have a private litmus test for how good a movie is. Often I’ll watch stuff with my wife sitting next to me as she plays video games. If a movie drags her attention away from the game and keeps her locked in the whole time, that is a great film. It was that way with this. Highly recommended.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading! If you liked any of these thoughts feel free to follow me on Letterboxd, where I post reviews and keep meticulous track of every movie I watch. Look forward to more posts like these next month!

#movies #film #cc oc #letterboxd #movie ranking #What's Up Doc?#across the spider verse #Asteroid City #Once Upon A Time In America #The Cameraman #Battling Butler #Step Brothers #Bend of the River #Bringing Up Baby #Night Moves

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saintarmand · 10 months

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This probably shows my ignorance of ongoing discourse (does this mean I am following the right people?), but am I correct in understanding that there has been some issue with people in the fandom insisting that Louis is the Man (with all the racialisied connotations of that) in his and Lestat's relationship?

The majority of Lestat is Mother comments I've seen I took as jokes, similar to how he is often semi-affectionately called a cunt, cunty, etc., only with more queer irony and more of a Mommie Dearest vibe. I have seen a few more serious comments regarding Lestat and Claudia's relationship, which I did think involved a bit of projecting.

I believe it is essential to understand Lestat as the increasingly tyrannical and openly abusive Patriarch he is, but, to me at least, that doesn't mean discussing Lestat in regards to femininity and motherhood is completely off the table. Vampires reproduce asexually so in some ways Lestat is both father and mother, and also neither. There are parallels to be made between Florence and Lestat; only with the latter Louis gets to play Grace's role of favoured child. I think a case can be made that Louis' early narration does, at points, try to frame Lestat in a more powerless, more feminine role than likely was true. By his own awful admittance, Lestat takes after his father, but that is not necessarily gender exclusive; look who Claudia resembles the most.

Maybe I'm also inclined to be open towards this train of thought because I think the Lestat Only as Father and Louis Only as Mother approach sometimes steamrollers over the very real ways that Louis acts as a patriarchal figure (albeit not as bad as Lestat, but) to Claudia.

sorry it took me so long to respond anon!

this is discourse that seems to keep resurfacing at least every few weeks so people are getting increasingly aggravated by it, hence the tone in a lot of posts about it. most of these discussions are about lestat but seeing louis as "the man" was very much a thing especially early on. you don't see it as much anymore, perhaps just views shifting as the show went on, perhaps because people pointed out the racial stereotyping.

but the lestat is a mother/woman thing has stuck and it's not just jokes, some people get outright offended when lestat is referred to as masculine or patriarchal at all. it's also been pointed out that most of the cunt/mother jokes seem to focus on scenes where's at his most abusive and patriarchal, such as the scene right before the dv in 1x05, the 1x06 train scene, and the 1x06 chess tantrum. so i think there's a (subconscious) attempt to 'soften' the abuse by likening him to a woman.

here's some examples of the kind of stuff being said:

lestat yelling being called hysterical woman moments

him screaming and hitting the table after the chess match being called classic mom behavior

lestat called a trophy wife (before ep4 aired) cause he doesnt work

"lestat is a mother/woman bc he reminds me of my own abusive mother / [insert fictional white woman]"

louis looking away when claudia asks "are you going to let him do this to me" being called classic dad behavior bc (paraphrasing) "dads will often try to be the nice parent so the mom has to discipline and be the bad guy"

"lestat gave claudia mommy issues" (not sure what this means cause my understanding of what that usually means doesnt apply as far as i can see)

"lestat is not a dilf he's a milf"

i havent read this myself but apparently early on most show fics tended to have louis in a very dominant sexual role, though this changed over time and now the opposite is more popular

fanart also depicting louis in a stereotyped hypermasculine black man way

apparently in the book fandom before the show aired, lestat was generally understood to be "the patriarch" so this is all a new development with the show, i.e. with black louis... despite the fact that the show actually went out of their way to make it MORE obvious and consistent

i've also seen, instead of saying lestat is a mother, people just saying he isn't a father bc they dont see him as claudia's parent at all???? but this i think was mostly very casual viewers

so like. while yeah i also don't think discussing the feminine in lestat or the masculine in louis should be completely off the table, the situation in the fandom is that sooooo many people are just not at all acknowledging the fact that the show is very intentionally framing lestat as masculine and patriarchal, and especially not that he's specifically a white patriarch exerting control over his black family.

but of course louis and lestat are in reality both men which means they both are patriarchal figures to claudia, and they're both as queer men in some ways exiled from traditional masculinity as well.

#s #anon #asks

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