finally read Ursula le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, a book people have been recommending me for years. one of the reviews on goodreads said the book had changed the reviewer forever. at my age, very much in the autumn of my life, I have to get used to being proper old now, I didn't think a book could change me. but reading about a genderless society, about people who are not one nor the other but both, left me yearning for a person to love who is like estraven. both caring and strong. and completely lacking fragile male ago and female drama.

and, perhaps unsurprisingly, but it was a painful realization nonetheless, it also left me wishing I could be like estraven: outside the way I really feel inside. with age, pregnancy, and weight gain, my body has become so utterly feminine that it's hard to make it "work" for me in any other way than with femme aesthetics. and since I quite like those aesthetics at times - I appreciate feminine looking men as well as plain hot lipstick lesbians in all forms and sizes) - I just went with it. In the mirror, I wanted to see someone I'd date.

but by reading, and falling in book love with estraven, I realized how much of myself I have also left unexpressed for so long. I remember how last time I had the house to myself I wore the fabric belt from my trousers instead as a tie - because as long as I don't look in the mirror, I can imagine it looks like it did when I was didn't carry all the extra weight on my boobs and hips.

and I remember, during my teens, on occasion wearing my father's blazers and my grandad's hat, and at uni, carrying an old pocket watch I got from my dad and emulating my boyfriend's style, who wore makeup and sweater vests over 70s style shirts. At 20, I was androgynous and queer and beautiful. Over 25 years later, I feel beautiful only when wearing 50s style dresses that accentuate my bossom and have inherited my grandmother's pearls, while my brother got the pocket watch.

and it's not that I don't like myself like as femme, it's just I very much feel the void of where my more masculine part used to be. it being so invisible lately, I am left to wonder is it still there.

of course I know it's there. I use deodorant for men and have never worn anything but unisex perfume - have avoided handbags and high heels for most of my days on this planet except those where it's an absolute necessity for the dress or the occasion. I am a woman in a man's job, in a women's sector, where I've managed to turn the 100% female staff into a better balanced gender ratio pure and simply because I missed the way I can be around men. and I am a strict powerboss when I need to, but mostly I very much care. I read and watch LGBTQ material where I often identify more with the male queer characters than with the female ones (which never get enough attention Netflix!), yet when I watch my boy with other teenage boys, it completely passes me by, yeah, like that I have never been and never will be - yet when we curl up on the couch in the evening and I read him my favorite book from when I was a young girl, we both revel in the same things and feel so much alike, and so unlike his father.

I really yearn for a society that is completely free of gender divides and norms. Yet it is so hard to imagine. And I find it so hard to express how I feel about that other than in words. My extremely feminine body gives me so few options. My features are too thin, my boobs too big, my forms too round, my hips too broad, my face too soft.

what changed is that this book has placed the finger on a very painful spot, and I don't know now, if I'm every going to stop feeling sore.

A Decade Through Time: The Alderberg Legacy: Year 1595

Abel is remarrying and Ursula is rolling for teen. 

From the Beginning I Currently 

It has been 2 years since Clarice and baby Edwards deaths , alongside the beloved Mrs. Eleanor Horthall. 

Many in Outland felt great sympathy and concern for young Abel , but now , many just felt pity towards his poor father having to deal with him

Arthur had shown his son patience but it was running thin. It had been 2 years , of course the pain would still be there but not to this length! Yet Abel kept drinking and wallowing in what Arthur started to believe was self pity.

Abel was not happy when his father told him that he had arranged a marriage for him to a miss Barbara Britton. He reminded his father that he was 22 and didn’t need to do anything his father wanted.

But Arthur knew otherwise- if Abel didn’t marry Barbara , Arthur would disinherit him and marry her himself ,if he didn’t have a son by her , the fortune he built up by himself would go to Avigail’s husband.  - lending him penny less! 

Abel might be pompous , arrogant even , but he was a coward first and foremost. He feared being alone without his family or wealth , and with the treat of disinheritance , be begrudgingly agreed. 

Barbara and him were married by proxy before her arrival to Outland. Like his first bride , Barbara and him were not too happy about the arrangement.

Although she was first attracted to her husband , once she found out about his ungodly drinking habits , she felt disgust , there were also rumors among the peasantry that Abel was a woohoomonger because his frequent trips away , which made her plasma boil with rage. 

She wished that she could write to her parents and annual the marriage , but alas , she could not. Not with her foolishly fulfilling her duty as a bride and wife , expecting that in 6 months time she would be a mother. 

While a storm was brewing at the Horthalls , life still continued to be calm at the Alderberg household. 

The ward and cousin of the Alderbergs , the lovely Ursula had just celebrated her 13th birthday.  On calm days the village folk would see the young girl by the dock , watching the sea , hoping to spot the merchant ships that came to Outland with goodies. She would love to be on a big might ship one day , sailing on the ocean waves!   

Griffyn had turned 18 years old. It been only 3 years since William’s passing , but young boy was truly his father successor, clearly inheriting his father skill as a woodcarver.

Old Gran Joan would watch her eldest grandchild from afar. He looked so much like her husband Gerard, whom her daughter Rebecca resemble the most. 

Though Griffyn was almost a adult , Joan still felt a protectiveness over him. Hence why she actively looked and corresponded with her son and other male relatives and friends to find a suitable lady for him. 

She had let Rebecca marry out of love and she didn't regret that decision , but she regret not pushing her other children to marry and wouldn’t do the same mistake with her grandchildren. 

9 months after their wedding , Barbara Horthall went into labor. Unlike poor Clarice , Barbara had survived the birth and delivered a healthy son.

Arthur held his grandson close to him like he was made of fragile glass , happy to have a such a healthy grandson that would hopefully continue his family name. 

Abel , however , stood faraway from Jasper and Barbara without leaving the room. Every fiber of his body told him to run but he couldn’t move his feet out of fear.

When everyone were fast asleep and Jasper tucked in the nursery , Abel snicked in to hold his son close to him. The 22 year old father felt guilty , as he never got to hold Edward before he past, but he vowed on his son’s grave that he would make sure Jasper had everything... 

I did something different regarding Ursula’s baby roll , since she is technically not a true Alderberg.  I just rolled a d4 and she is gonna have only 1 child since she did roll a marriage roll. I’m just waiting for anyone to roll a no marriage roll since no one have rolled on yet. 

With Barbara thinking Abel is a woohoomonger , I honestly don’t know why. When i decided to check on her during her pregnancy I saw that she had the betrayal moodlet which would be caused by cheating. I checked Abel’s relationships and he has no other “romantic” interest then Barbara. 

Little Big Waves - Disney Villain Recruiter Fic

The ocean waves shifted in a swaying motion as two big ocean blue eyes stare above. Small thin pale hands reached out and moved against the sun light with a small giggle from soft lips.

Slowly, the body belonging to the hands slowly swim out the small cafe, a tiny tiny boy with big blues as eyes and whisking light lavender rose hair and purple octopus tentacles for his lower half.

The small boy carefully emerged out the cave and floated still as he stared up at the ocean's surface in awe. He reaches both hands up above his head and looked as the sun above seeps through his fingers.

"Alfred!"

The boy gasped and pushed his hands down the moment he heard the voice, feeling a gentle wrap grab of a bigger tentacle grab him and gently pull him backwards.

After a few meek seconds he turned his head and stared up at the grimace yet handsome face of a male with messy up turn white hair with lavender streaks in it like a sea shell curling around and up. The man soon smiles and hugs the boy close. "Don't scare me like that Alfred. I thought the undertow got you..." He whispered, such a soft voice for a scary appearance not fitting him.

Alfred soon hugged back after guilt hit him, "I'm sorry papa.."

Joe smiled softly before he swam back to their cave of a home. This was a much better place to stay in than Ursula's grotto, thanks to Triton and everything, covered with small potions and cute knick-knacks they call treasure as well as one portrait painting of a beautiful royal family with a queen of red hair, a king with raven hair, and a little baby princess in their arms.

Alfred stared at the picture for a second before allowing himself to be placed in his special bed and watched his father drift and sat beside him. "So, what led you to swim up out the grotto?" He asked. The boy looked down before looking to the entrance again as his lip moved inward. Joe followed the gaze and his eyes softened more. "The surface is beautiful..." "But will I ever see it papa?"

The man hugged the boy close and nuzzle his chin on the crown of his head as he answered, "Of course Alfred. And when you do it'll be to see your mother again..." His eyes drifted to the portrait and his heart sank just a tiny bit. . .

He was right there, he could've stopped it. But now he and his son are isolated from the world his wife and her husband stay with only a few things of the surface gifted to them to make sure they're okay.

With a sad feeling, Joe rubbed the small head of hair and sang, "You are my world, my darling... What a wonderful world I see..." He quickly felt the drifted sleep of his son in his arms with a smile, his eyes still on the painting as he laid down beside the sleeping boy.

I made Joe and Ariel a kid alright?

His name is Albert and he's a twin of Melody but got more features of Joe and Ariel while Melody got Ariel and Eric's looks

Don't ask how genetics works

Full fic in the works!

@crazyyanderefangirlfan

A lover’s curse (Yandere thin male Ursula x female reader x Yandere male Morgana) Part 9

Tears fell down your face as Ursul kept rubbing your back. You couldn’t recall how many times he had raped you, proclaiming his love for you as he did so. 

Morgan was nowhere to be seen, you feared for the worse. Ursul must have done somethig to him, otherwise he would have been back by now.

“What are you thinking angel fish?” He asked in a low, seductive tone. Clearly he was getting aroused by seeing you cry, this sadistic freak wanted to destroy you, use the word ”love” as an excuse to rape and dominate you. And he had achieved part of this. 

“None of your buisness,leave me alone.”

Ursul hummed and his hands went straight to your abused center, dipping two fingers and as he toyed with your walls. His lips went to your neck as he began leaving gentle kisses over the hickeys he had created. You yelped and turned to hit him but one of his tentacles took hold of both of your arms.

“Now, now, my little angel fish. This isn’t how you ask someone to do something. I was willing to let you rest before taking you home... but maybe I shouldn’t be so lenient. Hmm?”

 You glared at him, wanting to tell him exactly where he could take his act as well as his whole existence and what to do with it. But then there was a loud splash as you turned to look at the water, smilling widely as you saw Morgan enter.

“Get away from her, Ursul!”

“Too little, too late. Her body has already become mine, her mind is soon to follow.”

Morgan glared at his brother, the two having a stare down as you layed there, suddenly an idea crossed your mind. You tried to squirm and as expected the grip of Ursul’s tentacle on your arms became stronger, causing you to yelp in pain, making the monster above you turn and look at you for a brief moment. It was enough for Morgan to jump out of the water and on his brother, pushing him away from you. 

Immediately after that, you stood up and ran over to the water, looking behind you for one brief second, seeing the two males fighting before swimming away, meeting Morgan’s rays, explaining the situation as quickly as possible what had happened and informing them that you were going back to the palace where Ursul wouldn’t be able to reach you and then you left.

You kept going, not looking back and without any breaks until you saw the city from afar. You continued until eventually, you made it to the castle. The guards let you pass, recognizing you in an instance and you went straight to your room.

Upon entering you left a sigh of relief, sitting on the bed and trying desperately to calm down. You convinced yourself that Morgan would survive, he was strong and he could fight his brother now. 

“Please Morgan... please be okay.”

A knock on the door, made you look over surprised. However as soon as you heard the voice of the prince, you relaxed immediately.

“(Name), it’s me.” 

“Come in, Ariel.”

The red head, entered the room, looking at you with a small smile, his cheerfull attitude slowly affecting you too.

“It’s been a while, where have you been?”

“Oh! I was with a friend, he had some confidence issues and I wanted to help him.”

“I see, I hope everything went well... also, thank you for helping me with... you know... that.”

You chuckled at Ariel’s blushing expression, it seemed like that human princess had completely taken over his mind and his heart. Well, not that you didn’t expect this to happen.

“Don’t mention it, I’m glad I could help.”

The two of you kept talking and at some point you completely forgot about Ursul and Morgan, enjoying the peace and warmth of Ariel’s kind nature and fiery spirit.

Meanwhile the two males had finally stopped fighting, with no clear winner but in their minds, they could totally beat each other if they got serious.

“I hope you’re ready to apologize for entering my home like that and raping (Name)!!!”

“She’s mine. I can do whatever I want to my angel fish... and seeing as you are still so weak and pathetic, I am curious as to why she seems to favor you so much.”

“Well, for starters, I didn’t force myself on anyone! I am letting her make her own deciscions and support her. You just want to break her and make her a slave!”

At that Ursul burst out laughing, it was clear that his brother didn’t have the guts to proclaim his love for you and as such he was stuck with the title of “good friend”. Not that it mattered anymore, now that Ursul had completely claimed your body, all that was left to do, was taking over your mind.

The idea of training you to be a sweet, obedient but strong little darling, made him hard. But he loved your fiery temper, your defiance and your spirit... both images had his blood boil with desire. 

Morgan on the other hand was simply thinking of how to get his arrogant, sadistic, brother leave his lair and never return. He needed a new lair, still here, in the cold waters but perhaps with more difficulty in detection.

“It seems I must go get my little angel fish from her hiding spot.” Ursul said, no longer caring that his brother was there, Morgan smirked, he knew where you must have gone but he also knew that only he, could get you to leave and return to him. But first, he needed to change locations.

Ursul left, already aware of where you probably went to hide, not that he could blame for this one. Two adult males fighting like that, you must have been scared to death. He decided to use your little friend, Ariel, seeing as that ridiculous romance the prince wanted to experience could become the key for him taking the throne from Triton.

Both males began prepairing for their own seperate schemes while you remained unaware of what was to follow. 

And that might have been for the best.

I’ve recently seen some questions about wlw in Romance Club, so I though I’d make a (somehow extremely long) post about the best wlw romances (in my opinion) in RC

Now, there are definitely some books that are better than others, and there aren’t a ton of female LIs, but (with the newer books especially) the female LIs they do have are pretty spectacular.

So, for wlw I’d recommend:

Love from Outerspace - Ursula the alien knight and Miranda the bubbly old friend (not current best friend, but MC’s friend from childhood)

Heart of Trespia - Delias the sweet soft maid and Giselle the very flirty badass bandit with scars (Giselle owns my ass right now it must be said)

Path of the Valkyrie - Liod the buff sexy and terrifying Valkyrie and Vanadis the beautiful soft witch who will cut you (Vanadis’s route starts in season 2)

Sophie’s Ten Wishes - Daisy your boss’s extremely flirty and fun daughter (who you sleep with automatically as a plot point), and Blake (the biker chick you can be in a poly relationship with)

—>(Sophie’s 10w is the only book where you’re at the very least bi by default since MC always sleeps with Daisy. It’s also the only book where you can be in a poly relationship - MC/Blake/Logan)

Good wlw plots with caveats:

Rage of the Titans - Aphrodite is gone for most of season 2, but she’s awesome in season 1 (her sex scene is incredible) and I think she’s finally coming back in the next update, however every LI in this book is more or less sidelined except for Adrian and Murphy

Legend of the Willow - Shino-Odori doesn’t become romancable until season 3, but I love her so much - and then u can diamond mine seasons 1&2 if you’re not interested in the boys

Chasing You - Rachel is mtf trans and awesome (you just have to ignore Alexander being a forced LI for season 1), and then there’s Eve the (definitely a sub) mafia girl starting in season 2

On Thin Ice - Liz your incredibly beautiful friend who doesn’t take your shit (she’s a little sidelined, but she’s also much more of a main character than the fully sidelined LIs)

Heaven’s Secret - Mimi the incredibly sexy and very forward demon (she can die if you’re not careful, and she is sometimes sidelined by the boys, though less often than the characters in the section below)

Good wlw characters who have been sidelined so far but who I still love:

Sins of London - Leslie the flirty barkeep (who I have to say is a personal favorite of mine), Abbie the medium (who has an important/interesting plot but admittedly takes a backseat to the boys)

Arcanum - Mary the widow (who may or may not have offed her hubby it’s up for debate but I’m sus), she’s awesome but there’s some dubious stuff in her romance path (sort of maybe drugs MC with some candles, but most of the characters in that book are of dubious morality)

Dracula a Love Story - Sandra is absolutely gorgeous but she takes a serious backseat to Vlad and Leo, though she is in the entire series from start to finish

Bonus:

Gladiator Chronicles - lots of female LIs but MC is male

Christian x Fem Reader- "In My Blood"

There was one member of the wrestling group the Brood that you were really in lust with, and that member just so happened to be Christian.

In May of 1999, on a "Monday Night Raw" episode that was filmed and broadcast on television, you strolled down a hallway wearing a short black leather dress that reached near the top of your thighs with fishnet stockings that had thin little garter belts attached under your dress.

The outfit you wore was a replica of the outfit Phoebe Buffay's sister Ursula wore in a porn film called "Buffay the Vampire Layer".

Christian had his long golden locks hanging down, not tied back in a ponytail, and he was dressed in his signature loose fitting long sleeved white shirt with purple tights.

Christian's head turned to you as you approached him in the hallway with a naughty little smirk on your mouth.

As you sauntered to him, some male fans in the audience watching this got out of their seats and cheered when they saw you approaching him, a few men whistling at you.

The black leather open toed stiletto heels clicked on the hard floor as you approached Christian.

Much like "Buffay the Vampire Layer", this moment is like something straight out of a porn.

You stopped walking once you stood so close to him, close enough to touch him.

"Hi" you greeted him with a grin on your lips, your eyes looking into his eyes, raising your hand behind his head and your fingers stroking bits of his silky blond hair.

Your torso and body leaned forward and nudged his torso.

Christian didn't budge away from you, he couldn't help but be transfixed by you.

"Are you feelin' a little blood thirsty?" you asked while you placed your other hand on his chest, keeping your eyes still staring into his eyes, your voice sounding sexy while asking that question.

Even though the Brood didn't declare they were vampires, it was obvious they were.

Edge and Gangrel had fangs and they'd douse their opponents in blood.

Christian didn't answer your question, considering for some reason, he never spoke during his time in the Brood or the Ministry of Darkness.

Speaking of vampires...

"Since you're clearly a vampire" you brought up with a smirk on your mouth, your voice still sounding sexy. "Maybe you can take a bite out of me and I'll give you a blood transfusion"

Your hand on his chest slid down to his groin, where your hand squeezed his crotch, his groin in between your thumb and fingers.

When you mentioned you'll give him a blood transfusion, your eyes stared down at his groin.

What you said was an erection joke, because blood flows and rushes to the penis and makes it stand up, that's why you're grabbing his crotch.

He was growing an erection underneath his tights, and you can feel his erection bulging through his tights and in your hand.

Your hand was trying to hide his erection considering he plays a vampire, and vampires crave blood.

Although wrestling is fake and he obviously does have an erection (as well isn't really a vampire).

"Hmmmmm?" you asked, your eyes still staring into his eyes. "What do you say?"

Hook, Line, & Sinker

Request: Harry hook x the son of the ice queen we’re he is not really used to emotions❤️❤️Love your writing

A/N: So the irony is that I've already written a full-length fic of this, which can be found here. I wanted to get to work on as many requests as possible, since I'm really behind, so I decided to use one of the chapters from H,L,&S here as a sneak peek. Hope that's okay!

__________________________________________________________

The day after his arrival, (M/N) persuaded Gil to give him a tour of the Isle. They began with the outlying areas of the Isle, such as the wooded area where the children of the Big Bad Wolf roamed, before moving to observe Maleficent’s home as it towered ominously over the town. Gil pointed out villains and their children that he should remain wary of and those that he could (almost) trust. He led (M/N) through the backstreets where most villains and their families had taken up residence, even pointing out his own home ((M/N) didn’t think that it was very difficult to spot; it was the only one decorated thoroughly with antlers).

Then Gil paused, brightening, “Oh! I should show you the wharf and the Chip Shop!” he exclaimed grasping onto (M/N)’s wrist and pulling him hurriedly toward the edge of the Isle.

 -----------

The pair ended up on the docks at the edge of town, (M/N) looking around himself warily, distrusting of the new area, while Gil forged excitedly ahead. “C’mon (M/N)! We’re almost there! You’re going to love Uma and Harry!” (M/N) wasn’t so sure about that, but if they were anything like Gil, (M/N) was sure that they’d grow on him.

Gil, still dragging (M/N) by the wrist, burst through the aqua saloon-styled doors of ‘Ursula’s Fish and Chips.’ He swiftly led (M/N) to an empty table before disappearing, claiming that he’d “be back in a second.”

(M/N) remained siting at his dilapidated table and examined his surroundings. Just in front of him was a large stage, accented by a plank-like catwalk. Over his head hung several sea-themed chandeliers, and occupying the tables around him were about a dozen young pirates, eyeing him like he was their next meal. (M/N) straightened up, broad shoulders squaring as he glared back at the rag-tag pirates around him, several of whom flinching as they met his icy gaze.

His head turned however, as he heard a young girl begin speaking from behind the counter. She was yelling angrily at the old television that was displaying a rerun of an interview the Mal and Ben had done a few weeks prior. “Traitors!” the young girl accused, throwing a bit of food at the screen. She paused waiting, before turning to the shop’s customers “Hello?” she asked sarcastically, rousing a round of angered shouts and thrown food.

(M/N) observed the girl as she began to sing, “This is all hands on deck, calling out to the lost boys and girls.” he took in her light aqua hair in its dozens of thin braids. Her dark gaze hardened as she looked over the customers, “Gettin’ tired of the disrespect.”

(M/N)’s eyes roved over the other patrons, each getting progressively more upset as the girl (Uma, apparently, if the song was to be taken seriously) continued her song. (M/N)’s eyes shot upwards as Uma’s tan boots thudded against the table in front of him. His eyes trailed up her figure, taking in her glimmering teal dress, “All eyes on me, let me see ’em,” she commanded, brown eyes locking with (M/N)’s (e/c). “I’m the queen of this town; I call the shots, you know who I am.”

(M/N) huffed out a short laugh, aware of the eyes on the two of them, before he opened his mouth to retort, singing “I don’t need to wear no fake crown. Stand up to me, you don’t stand a chance,” as he stood from his chair. Uma smiled down at him wickedly from her perch on the table.

“My crew’s as real as it gets, the worst is now the best” Uma sang, grinning down cruelly at (M/N) as cold metal encircled his neck. “And leaving us here will be their last regret,” a deep, thickly accented voice growled into his ear.

(M/N) tensed slightly, his hand twitching as he struggled to suppress the urge to use his powers on the punk who dared to threaten him.

The hook left his neck swiftly, as its owner also burst into song. (M/N) watched as the young man who possessed the hook strutted his way onto the stage, throwing off his long scarlet coat and tossing away his hat, revealing dark brunet locks, as he exclaimed “You know what they say: bad girls have all the fun.” He looked straight at (M/N) as he sauntered down the catwalk, proclaiming “Enemies seasick, can’t see straight. Call ’em fish bait, throw ’em on a hook.” He made it clear that (M/N) was the ‘enemy’ he’d referred to as he glared harshly at him, making it clear that he wasn’t pleased that (M/N) was still standing so close to his beloved captain as he yelled out, “Uma’s so hot they get burned if they look,” before looking up to Uma adoringly.

With a few more choruses of her name, Uma had to swiftly dodge the swing of a massive tentacle as it swiped through the room. (M/N) dropped back into his chair, still waiting for Gil to return. Uma cocked her head, mentally appraising the newcomer as Harry, now wearing his coat and hat once more, made his way over to her. She sauntered past Harry, completely ignoring him as he tried to get her attention, and snagging a tray of food from the counter before dropping into the chair across from the disguised prince.

She slid the food across the table to him, before beginning to try to make conversation. “So, what brings you to my little slice of Hell?” she asked jokingly.

(M/N) rolled his eyes, sliding the food back to her, “A friend. He told me to wait here and then vanished; said he wanted me to meet someone.”

Uma smiled, pretending to be interested, “Oh? But surely a guy like you must have been meeting up with a pretty girl or something?” she asked slyly, twirling one of her braids around her finger.

(M/N) sighed, used to the typical method of flirting from his Auradon days. Back then he was known as quite the heartbreaker, though it wasn’t ever really his fault; he never actually went out with any of the girls who asked him. He tended to swing the other way, after all. “Look, Uma-” (M/N) was cut off by the cold metal of a hook pressing tightly against his throat.

(M/N) pushed the brunet’s arm away from his neck easily, before turning back to the table. The boy carrying the hook snarled down at the ice prince. Before he turned and grabbed a chair from the table behind him, noisily dragging it across the floor and placing it between (M/N) and Uma at the table, before dropping into it. “You’d better stay away from the Captain, mate,” the dark-haired young man growled.

“You’d better watch what conversations you but into, mate,” (M/N) sneered back, “Someday you’ll be eavesdropping on someone who isn’t nearly as kind as I am.”

“Why I ought to-” Harry was cut off by Gil making his way over.

“Oh, hey guys!” Gil exclaimed, looking over at Harry and Uma. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I wanted you guys to meet my new friend (M/N),” his eyes met (M/N)’s on the other side of the table, “but it seems as though you’ve all already met!” he exclaimed happily.

(M/N) glanced at the other teens sitting at the table, “Not formally, we haven’t.”

Gil smiled happily, “Well, this,” he gestured to the aqua-tressed girl, “is Uma. She’s the captain!” Uma gave (M/N) a flirty wave and he leaned back slightly. Gil indicated the dark-haired male who’d taken the seat to (M/N)’s right, “Is Harry Hook. He’s Uma’s first mate and the son of Captain Hook.” Harry straightened, clearly proud of his position and heritage. “Guys,” Gil continued, “this is (M/N). He’s new to the Isle.”

Wednesday 5th, Research proposal: First Draft

Title

Evil Kweens: A Queer Look At The History Of Villains And Monsters In Animation And Film

 Report type

Extended essay

 Proposed table of contents

 The Hays Code

 -       Guidelines are technically voluntary, in practice the major Hollywood audios used the Hays Code guidelines as convince the means of staving off pressure groups

 -       Directly influenced the content of almost every American film made between 1930 and 1966

 Queer-coding and Queer-baiting with focus on Disney and modern media

 -       both are issues for the LGBTQIA+ community as they seek to capitalize on these marginalized groups

 -       Queer-baiting: portraying an obviously queer relationships with the use of cues and subtext without acknowledging it or perhaps even gas lighting it.

 -       Queer-coding: writing a character with queer stereotypes as a form of representation without explicitly acknowledging that the character is queer.

Queer-coding isn’t always bad. It’s all about the creators’ intentions.

Queer-baiting however is pretty much always harmful.

-       Disney villains

 Lycanthropy and other monstrous subtext/ parallels. Allegory or myth?

-       talk about werewolf’s (Teen Wolf, Harry Potter, Buffy)

-       Frankenstein (Mary Shelly, Rocky Horror Picture Show,

 Question

 Is representation of LGBT individuals in animation and other forms of entertaining media good for the community or just a way for corporate big wigs to swindle money from hopeful queer people who would pay to see at least one shred of a character who is like them?

 Limitations

-       it may be hard for me to stay objective given that I’m in the LGBT community myself

 -       risk of outdated sources and temporal context problems. A project of its time will certainly play a part but more importantly the LGBT community is quite fickle it changes a lot as new identities and constructs get introduced so it may be hard to find a viable source.

 Background

The Hays code was published in 1930 and was based on three general principles:

 -       no picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.

 -       correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama entertainment, shall be presented.

 -       Law, natural or human, shall not be included, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

 These were developed in a series of rules grouped under the self-explanatory headings Crimes Against The Law, Sex, Vulgarity, Obscenity, Profanity, Costume Dances (I.e. suggestive movements), Religion, Locations (I.e. the bedroom) National Feelings, Titles and Repellent Subjects''  (extremely graphic violence)

 Typical features of queer- coded characters

 -       high cheekbones

 -       thin bodies

 -       feminine beauty

 -       dramatic of voice and actions

 -       male characters may talk or sing in falsetto or have camp ness to their voice and a female character will most likely have a deeper voice (Maleficent, Evil Queen, Ursula- who is actually based on a drag queen)

 -       these characters may also drag out their words and walk about at though slinking (Scar, the Lion King)

 Examples or queer-baiting

-       Myka Bearing and H.G. Wells (Warehouse13, SYFY)

Warehouse13 took a hit in ratings after its fourth season, meaning its fifth only had 6 episodes. It seemed to queer fans in particular that Myka and HG had a blossoming romance. It was even confirmed in the last episode that HG is indeed Bisexual but also in the last episode, Myka ends up with series long partner who at many points has been akin to the brother she never had. Their relationship was definitely flirtatious and I'm not saying that closing out the electric romantic arc between them would have saved the show, it was cancelled anyway, but It would have been nice since the interactions that HG and Myka had were actually what pushed fans to secure the final season. However you can’t be too mad as the show does have probably one of the best portrayals of a gay character on tv.

 -       Sherlock and John Watson ( Sherlock, BBC)

 -       Captain America and Bucky Barnes (MCU)

 -       Spock and Kirk ( Star Trek, NBC)

 -       Emma and Regina (Ounce Upon A Time, ABC)

 -       Stiles and Derek ‘Sterek’ (Teen Wolf, MTV)

 -       Merlin and Arthur ‘Merthur’ (Merlin, BBC)

 -       Dean and Castiel (Supernatural, ABC)

 Lycanthropy

-       seems to be synonymous with the homosexuality- parallels between teen Wolf and Buffy the vampire slayer’s respective coming out scenes

 -       the Queer-ness of Professor Lupin from the Harry Potter Franchise- J.K Rowling has admitted that Lupin’s Lycanthropy is a metaphor for AIDS/ HIV but has further dismissed fans’ theories that Lupin is Queer.

 -       Homophobia and HIV- homophobia acts as a major barrier to ending the AIDS crisis and at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, gay men were so my led out to receive abuse as many believed they were responsible for transmitting the disease.

 Overall aims

 -       explore the impact of queer-baiting on queer communities

 -       investigate true intentions behind the Hays Code

 -       Make people aware of what’s good representation and what’s bad representation.

 Research methods

 I plan to use relevant books and articles. I will also be looking to Disney films from the Disney renaissance era and looking into monster stories such as the Wolfman and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein's Monster, paying close attention to subtext and possible parallels as well as comparing them with more modern sources such as Harry Potter and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 These are appropriate methods of research because they will allow me to get others’ perspectives on the topic and allow me to analyze the villains and monsters in detail and give me visual material to talk about deeply.

 Potential outcomes

 -       The research will be helpful for me because it will allow me to increase my awareness on a subject that I am already passionate about and interested in.

 -       in a wider context this may help more people to understand the meaning and history behind the characteristics of their favorite villain and any possible subtext that may be lurking beneath them.

 -       educate those that are unaware or the issues queer-baiting and queer-coding pose.

 Timeline

Bibliography

Brooke, M. The Hays Code the moral code that governed mid-20th  century American filmmaking. Available at http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/592022/ (Accessed: 16 March 2021)

 Cheng, Z. (2020) Queer-Baiting: What Is It and Why Is It Harmful to The LGBT Community?

Available at:https://hypebae.com/2020/6/queer-baiting-what-is-it-why-harmful-lgbtq-community-tv-shows (Accessed: 16 March 2021)

 Elliott, J. (2016) Becoming the Monster: Queer Monstrosity and the Reclemation of the Warewolf in Slash Fandom. Dissertation. University of Florida. Available at: file:///C:/Users/me202/Downloads/Becoming_The_Monster_Queer_Monstrosity_a.pdf (Accessed 16 March 2021)

 Ennis, T. (2020) The Strange, Difficult History of Queer Coding.Available at: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-strange-difficult-history-of-queer-coding (Accessed: 16 March 2021)

  Hays, H, W. (1931) Online. United States: Production Code Administration, Appendix 1

  Hutton, Z. (2018) Queering The Clown Prince of Crime: A Look at Queer Stereyotypes as Signifiers In DC Comics’ “The Joker” FIU Electonic Theses and Dissertations. 3702. Availale at https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3702/ (Accessed: 16 March 2021)

 McLeod, Dion, S. (2016) Unmaksing the Quillan: Queerness and Villiany in Animated Disney Films. Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of the Arts, English and Media, University of Wollongong. Available at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/4802/ (Accessed 16 March 2021)

 Smith, M. (2015) Making Things Perfectly Queer: Art’s Use Of Craft To Signify LGBT Identities.The University of Brighton. Available at: https://cris.brighton.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/4754843/Complete+E+Dissertation+Jan+2016.pdf  (Accessed: 16 March 2021)

my favorite spoken poetry.....!!!!! updated occasionally... usually never but occasionally sometimes

down below is a link to the YouTube playlist I made where all these poems are in one place !!

General trigger warning bc there are some heavy topics in there ...!

Not a single poem on here doesn’t give me chills :D Oh and even if you can’t personally relate to a topic of a poem, it’s still worth listening to !!! It’s worth a try to start breaking that habit of only consuming media that you can tie back to yourself, and start listening to the stories others have to tell !!

well I’ll stop rambling now also if you have any personal favorites pls lmk so I can try them out :)

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER:

SIERRA DEMULDER - Paper Dolls

favorite lines:

“the person who did this to you is broken. Not you.

The person who did this to you is out there, choking on the glass of their chest.

It is a windshield, and their heartbeat is a baseball bat: regret this, regret this.”

MELISSA MAY - Dear Ursula

favorite lines:

“You, big lady

were the only Disney character who ever looked like me.”

“I wish I could have watched you suck the voices from their tiny breakable throats... but I know you wept.”

LOYCE GAYO - How We Forget

favorite lines:

“We forgot that some kid’s uptopias is a roof that won’t whisper the night to the sleeping bodies below

We forgot bodies sleep below

We forgot bodies float, bodies hang”

“We forgot that some kids walk past their utopias every morning

Suburban bricks standing tall in proclamation of what statistics say

they will never truly attain”

MICHAEL LEE - The Addict, a Magician

favorite lines:

“The pipe is a beacon. The pipe is a lighthouse.”

“I have spent whole nights lying awake

asking why I made it and you didn’t [...]

neither one of us was any more deserving of this life.”

PHIL KAYE - Repetition

favorite lines:

“There is no escape in stutter, you can feel the meaning of every word

Drag itself up your throat

s-s-s-s-s-separation.”

RUDY FRANCISCO - Scars / To the New Boyfriend

favorite lines:

“If I could, I would nail these hands to the edges of stars

I would sacrifice this body to the sky,

hoping to ressurect as someone spiteful enough to not care about you anymore.”

DANIEL - A Letter to My Eating Disorder

favorite lines:

“This is your orchestra. You cannot sing with your fingers down your throat.”

(I cherish this one because it’s an ED poem written and performed by a male!)

BLYTHE BAIRD - When the Fat Girl Gets Skinny

favorite lines:

“If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin to begin with, you get sent to the hospital-

If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin to begin with, you are a success story.”

DOC LUBEN - 14 Lines from Love Letters or Suicide Notes

favorite lines:

“I keep imagining what my furniture will look like in your apartment.”

“I’ve been staying awake at nights

wondering if I should tell you.”

“How can something be there, and then just not be there? How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?”

TATYANA BROWN - Gaslit

favorite lines:

“and you wonder how it is that he still lives here

How every creak and rumble in your new apartment belongs to him somehow

How you keep waking up feeling guilty for being lazy and such a mess, even at 7 AM

Your books still in their boxes, you realize, it isn’t him you’re hearing,

but the muscle memory of what he made you feel.”

PAUL TRAN, ROYA MARSH, CRYSTAL VALENTINE, ANDCHRIS LILLEY - 2017 Brooklyn Slam

favorite lines:

I literally cannot pick because this whole performance fucks me up and makes me cry like a bitch all of it is astounding please watch it

(It’s abt the corruption of the church n how it has failed poc n the queer community) (it kills me pls)

LILY MYERS - Shrinking Women

favorite lines:

“I have learned to absorb.

I took lessons from my Mother in creating space around myself.

I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters

And I never meant to replicate her, but

spend enough time sitting across from someone at the table and you pick up on their habits.”

MELANIA LUISA - Mad

favorite lines:

“White intersectional feminist [...] mad she can’t tell my story better than me.

Mad her struggles don’t bleed like mine

Mad she don’t bleed like me.”

“She ain’t used to feeling invisible.”

Link 2 these vids below !

————-

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqAeCGEuxvtfy2VLz5HTarCKQpE-KK6p6

Don't normally post stuff like this, but I was inspired by some positivity posts going around.

When I was younger and didn't know a lot, I watched AtLA. During the two-part episode in Season 3, The Boiling Rock, Mai's uncle is the warden of the prison. Now, I either didn't realize they were using male pronouns or decided I didn't really love that idea, because the character design made me immediately think the warden was a really buff, gruff female. So I always headcanoned the warden as female despite male pronouns.

Well now like 12-13 years have passed and I know about trans folk so yeah now I've decided my preferred headcanon: the warden is a trans man. This pleases me, though I still like the idea of a buff, gruff female warden. So either or is cool.

Maybe this is a good time to publicaly state that until like, 2016 or something, I legit thought that one fat merperson in Ursula's smoke vision whom she transformed into a beautiful thin mermaid was a man who wanted to become a girl to get with the skinny male merman. So yeah I was all into that in my entire youth and most of my life and still 100% am.

A lover’s curse (Yandere thin male Ursula x female reader x Yandere male Morgana) Part 8

(WARNING: THERE WILL BE RAPE IN THIS CHAPTER, READ WITH CAUTION.)

When you woke up, you had one nasty headache. You weren’t sure why, perhaps due to your crying or because you had been in a state of panic until the moment you fell asleep. You sighed and looked around, Morgan was not here, probably because he had to go get something, either for a project or for you.

“I depend on him too much...” You mumbled and got out of the shell you used as a resting spot, you soon noticed that there was a new, huge clam across the shell you had used to rest, upon a quick inspection of the area you saw that this place was a mess. Morgan probably got angry for not getting something right, you went to the edge of the frozen surface and near the watter, splashing some on your face before you decided to clean this place a bit.

Suddenly, a tentacle appeared, it wrapped itself around your leg and dragged you underwater, you cried out in fear before you saw Morgan.

“M-Morgan? W-Why did you do that?”

“We have to leave, Ursul’s coming... I am not strong enough to fight him right now...dammit!”

You paled at the news... but, maybe if you worked together you could defeat Ursul.

“No, we might be able to stop him if we work together. I can’t let you bear the burden of protecting me forever! I want to help you in any way I can!” You said, then Morgan smirked... but that smirk, you knew it all too well and you knew that it didn’t belong to your friend.

“Is that what you’ve been telling him all along? I must admit I’m jealous.”

“Ursul...” You whispered in fear. The illusion he had placed on himself dissapeared as he ran a hand across his hair, his other hand pulling you closer by your waist.

“In the flesh, angel fish. I must admit, I was a bit angry to wake up and not see you next to me. It made me feel SO lonely.” He purred as he pressed his lips on your neck, kissing, licking and nipping at the soft flesh. 

“Where’s Morgan?!”

“You should worry more about yourself, dear.” He said, pressing you closer and wrapping both hands around your waist as his tentacles seperated your legs, rubbing at the soft flesh as they moved closer to your private areas.

“Let go of me!!!”

“Sorry, darling. But I am in terrible need of... assistance. And only you can help me with that. You and that delicious body of yours.” He said, suddenly he reaced for the surface, dragging you along and moving towards the large clam, you weren’t sure how, but you had failed to notice the large pair of shackles that had been attached to it.

“No! No!!! I don’t want you! Let me go!” You screamed, Ursul ignored you and forced his mouth on yours swallowing your cries and screams as his tongue battled yours until you both needed to breath, 

“Don’t worry angelfish, soon enough you’ll be begging me to make you mine.” He said as he pulled out a small bottle, you weren’t sure what he was about to do but you closed your mouth, refusing to drink that thing. 

Ursul smirked at your defiance... but you didn’t really need to drink this little aphrodisiac of his, he placed on your nose as his tentacles chained your arms, you were about to shout when you took notice of the peculiar smell... and then, he made you drink it. The smell would make your mind foggy... but drinking it would make you hot and wet.

“W-What was-”

“I think you can understand dear... you should be feeling it by now.” He said, his left hand going down to rub your entrance that was already wet and ready for him. He grabbed the fabric and tore it away from your form as you cried out, you closed your eyes and looked away, hoping, begging that Morgan would rescue you again.

Ursul took notice of your rejection to his actions and he didn’t appreciate your ungratefull behaviour. Grabbing the piece of fabric that was covering your chest, he ripped out and before you could react, he was sucking at your breasts as his hand kept teasing your wet cunt.

“Stop it! Please stop it! I don’t want you!” You cried out and Ursul hummed, he let go of your breast, only to attack it’s twin until it was also covered in his saliva.

“I love how much you try to deny me... but sweetie, your body craves me.” He said, he decided to just get straight to the point. After all, he had been kept away from you for far too long. He had every right to enjoy you and your body, for as long as he wanted.

Before you could talk back to him, you felt something rub your entrance... you paled but decided that asking for mercy wouldn’t work, nothing would work against this monster. So... you decided to sum up your feeling in three words.

“I hate you.”

And then, he plunged himself inside of you, making you scream in pain, tears rolling down your cheeks as Ursul didn’t wait for you to adjust. 

“You’ll learn to love me, angel fish. After all, I plan on making you my queen and the mother of my children... and with such a tight little cunt... you can be sure. We’ll have a lot of kids, more than Triton!” He said as he kept pounding, growling and moaning as he felt you get tighter around him.

“I will not have your children! I will kill myself before that happens!” You shouted, unfortunately for you, the moans that were escaping you, gave Ursul a different message.

“Aww, you’re angry at me? Don’t worry, we have all the time in the world to mend our little relationship. Besides, you want my brother to return to you alive, correct?” Ursul asked and you paled, he had done something to Morgan... your friend was suffering because of you!

“How dare you threaten me with the life of my friend!” You hissed, Ursul ignored you and thrusted even faster, to the point where the two of you were moaning and grunting together, no matter how much you hated Ursul, your body was enjoying the attention.

He kept going until your mind went blank, eyes wide and your mouth open in a loud moan as you climaxed around him. 

“You climaxed for me? Don’t worry, angel fish, I’m going to cum for you too.” He said and kept going until he himself climaxed, thick ropes of his seed filling you up. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse... Ursul began moving again.   

Between Sea Foam || Part 2

Disclaimer: Welcome to something I like to call “Bangtan Tales”. Between Sea Foam is based on “The Little Mermaid” by Hans Christian Andersen and the Disney version with the same name.

Pairing: Park Jimin x Mermaid!Reader

Genre: angst, fluff, smut

Word Count: 2219

Warnings: none

Synopsis: You escape your prison and are now in a world you barely know, getting chased by people that will hurt you. You are happy for the storm that brought you to him.

(Big thanks to my girl @supersailorrapmon for being my beta for this chapter and my favorite girl @kpopcinnamonswirlroll for always being my beta and supporting me through this mess <3 Also a big thanks to @btssavedmylifeblr for saving me from the procrastination demon with her advice and kind words. Means a lot <3)

Prologue - Pt1 - Pt2 - 

The rushing of a pair of shoes can be heard passing through the white and sterile hallways of the underground laboratory. The young man is slightly sweating, his thick-rimmed glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. He stops in front of a large door, puts his glasses in place and cleans his sweaty palms on his dark jeans. He lightly brushes his knuckles on the wood, a voice firmly responding on the other side. He goes in. "I'm sorry for the long wait, Dr. Young I-" "Did you find them?"

A tall woman in her mid-thirties stands by the thick glass windows that show the bottom of the aquarium outside. Big and small water specimens swim carelessly in the big manmade habitat, all living in harmony. She's dressed impeccably in a black pencil skirt and purple blouse, her dark skin covered in shades of blue and green due to the water on the other side of the glass. Her manicured hand is against the window, almost as if petting the big octopus that is glued to it on the other side. The woman turns with a frown at the lack of an answer. "So, did the Flotts find them or not?" "Ursula, the situation is..." he sighs. "...complicated." She turns away from the glass windows and walks in his direction. "Keep the names for the bedroom, Namjoon. You know better than this." she stops mere centimeters away, one of her hands lightly touching his chest. "Now, tell me - Where are they?"

Namjoon gulps, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down at the motion. Her brown eyes are piercing his own, and he knows it's better to just tell her than try to get around the matter. "They tried to stop Mark Tuan and the subject, but the van they escaped in crashed into the ocean." Her eyes wide and he continues. "Mark's dead and they couldn't find the girl's body." Dr. Young turns her back to the man, taking a deep breath. A headache was starting to form and she rubbed her temples, trying to collect her thoughts. "Well, that's a shame. That boy was a wonderful professional. Such a pity that he couldn't split his work from his feelings." she walks to her desk and takes a seat, crossing her legs. "Tell the Flott's to track that mermaid down. Preferably alive." "Ursula, plea-" "Dr. Kim, I think we're done here." her stern look makes him impossible to talk back. "You can go back to your work." Namjoon looks at the face of the woman he loves but doesn't comprehend. He knows better than to stress her more than she already is. "Yes, Dr. Young." And he leaves. -------------- The first thing you notice is the smells. They hit you in a wave that makes you take a deep breath. You recognize the strong scents of human male and another one that belongs to an unknown animal. You're lying on something soft and comfortable. You freeze. Whispered voices make their way to your sensitive ears and you don't dare to move a muscle. Maybe they will go away if you just stay still. "Hey hey, I think she moved!" exclaims a deep voice. The whispers stop and you hold your breath, fearing the worst. "Are you sure?" sounds another male voice. "She seems pretty dead to me." A smacking sound and a protest make you flinch. Are they fighting each other now? "Shut up, brat." "Fine." he hesitated. "Are we leaving her just sit here like this, though? All wet, tits out, fishtail on our couch? Shouldn't we - I don't know - cover her up or something?" You now know that three men surround you. A pain in your shoulder makes you shudder, and you hiss only to stiffen when you notice what you've done. The silence now would be deafening, if it wasn't for the loud breathing of what you suppose is the animal you can't identify yet. You slowly open one of your eyes, quickly closing it when you see four shadows right in front of you. "Hey." his voice is soft, calm. "We're not going to hurt you, I promise. You're safe here.” You keep your eyes closed, but relax a bit. You stay there in silence for a few minutes, thinking of what decisions to make. You don't know these men, and your experience with humans, in general, is not something you want to go through again. They might hurt you, or worse. But you also don't have many choices. You'll have to face them either way. So you open your eyes. Three men and something big and furry are looking at you. You don't move, and neither do they. One of the men, the shorter one, gets closer to you, hands up to show you he means no harm. He's quite attractive, with his black hair and full lips. You wait for his next move, your tail flexing in case you need to use it. He doesn't get any closer though. "Hey, how are you feeling?" he waits for an answer that never comes. "We found you passed out in the middle of the storm, so I brought you to our boat. You're safe here." You keep looking. "Jimin...I don't think she wants to talk." said the brunette, tall one. He is beautiful, and you lose yourself in his fine features. You look at the other man or, should you say, boy. He doesn't look older than you. This one is pretty too, with shaggy raven hair, big eyes and thin lips. You notice the tired look on his face and signs of stress. You wonder if he's sick. "Maybe she doesn't speak human." murmurs the younger boy. "Do fish - mermaids or whatever - know human talk?" You huff and glare at him, offended. You're no fish! They notice your reaction and the one who spoke to you first, Jimin, giggles a light laugh. "She may not speak, but she definitely understands us." he looks at you. “Excuse him, Jungkook doesn’t know how to talk to a lady.” You relax a bit more, almost certain they weren't a threat. The tall one gets close to you, hand stretched out, offering you a blanket. "To cover yourself." he says, a faint blush on his cheeks. “I’m Taehyung, by the way.” You accept it, holding it against your naked chest. Suddenly, the big ball of fur next to them comes to life and approaches you, sniffing. You stare at it, not quite sure what to do. Jimin quickly grabs the animal, afraid it might do something to scare you. "This is Max, the one to see you first. He's a good dog." You smile at the animal you now know is a dog. You had seen dogs in videos that Mark showed you, but they looked nothing like this one. You extend your hand to pet him as you've seen people do, and Max happily accepts your hand, rushing forward to lick your face. You giggle and continue to pet him. The men are still looking at you, curiosity in their eyes. "I noticed you got a bruise there." says Jimin. "Can I see it?" You look at your shoulder, where a big scratch opened your skin enough to draw blood. The area surrounding it is red and hot to the touch. You give him a nod in affirmation and he gets a little closer to you, eyes focused on your wound. “It doesn't look that bad, and I don't think you'll need stitches.” his fingers lightly graze the skin around it. “But it definitely needs to be cleaned.” You shiver at the skin contact, looking at his face. People don't usually treat you kindly, besides some exceptions, but these men were taking care of you. A part of you was still fearing for their intentions, but there was nothing in them that made you alert. Jimin is concentrated on his current task, cleaning and disinfecting the cut. Taehyung and Jungkook watch from the side, not quite sure what to do. “Ok, it's all fixed.” says Jimin. “You should be ok now.” and stands, giving you space. You notice how the younger has his gaze focused on your tail, a slightly freaked out expression on his face. His gaze caught your eyes and he quickly looks at the ground, ears turning red. The other one looks at you in a mix of fascination and curiosity. “How is this possible…” you hear him whisper. “What happened to you?” he asks, this time aloud and directly at you. You close your eyes and sigh, memories coming back to you in full force, now that you try to remember what happened. Your memories are still foggy, but you can clearly remember that Mark was shot, lost control of the van and crashed. You remember the feeling of falling and the sensation of the freezing waters when you fell into the ocean. After that, it was only darkness. And now you are here, in a stranger's boat. You sigh and look at Taehyung, your eyes starting to tear. “Oh, right… you don't speak.” he looks around and grabs something from a near table. “Do you know how to write?” and shows you a notebook. You nod fervently, stretching your hands in his direction. They had taught you how to write at the lab. The man gives you the notebook and a pen and you open it on a blank page. You immediately start writing everything down. Your name, where you were locked up before and how you got there. Your final words: Help me. You hand him the book, and the three of them get together to read what you wrote, eyes widen at your words. “Oh man, holy shit, this is for real!” “Are you sure they'll be looking for you?” asks Jimin. “Maybe they'll think you died in the crash.” You shake your head no. You know she will never stop looking. -------------- Jimin is back on deck, looking at the after storm sky. They, fortunately, got to the marina not long after rescuing Y/N. The storm wasn't as bad as it looked and he was glad for that. Stars shine in the clean dark blue sky, the marina quiet at that hour of the night. He couldn't stop thinking about what happened. "It feels unreal, right?" says a voice from behind. Jimin turns around to give a faint smile at Taehyung that stops next to him. He had given his room to the mermaid, preferring to sleep on the couch, and the exhausted girl fell asleep not long after hitting the pillow. Jungkook had run to his room as soon as the excitement of the newcomer died off, leaving Taehyung and Jimin alone to reflect on the recent events. "It feels like a dream." Jimin laughs, fingers brushing his hair. "I have a fucking mermaid sleeping in my bed!" "We gotta watch our backs." laughs Taehyung. "Now is mermaids, next thing we know we have the Kraken trying to sink us." Jimin looks at the brunette with wide eyes, proceeding to punch his arm. "Yah, don't say that!" he laughs. "My grandpa would haunt us for the rest of our lives." "What are we going to do about all this though?" "Well, we have to protect her, of course." says Jimin. "I know a guy that can help us." "You know a guy?" Taehyung laughs. "A mermaid specialist or something?" "Well... you know Min Yoongi?" "Crazy Min! Are you serious?" he scoffs. "The guy is batshit crazy!" "Yeah, but I think he can help us. I'm going to ask around for him tomorrow." "Well, good luck on that." Both men spend the next minutes sitting on the boat limits, just looking at the night sky and enjoying the silence and the smell of sea water. Jimin decides to break the quiet. "I didn't forget our talk, so don't get too comfortable." Taehyung lowers his head and stands up. "I think I'm going to bed." "Hey hey hey, not so fast!" Jimin grabs him by the elbow, making the other man stop and gaze at him with an annoyed look on his face. "C'mon Taehyung, just cut the shit." "Jimin, I said it before, it's none of your business." he tries to pull his arm from Jimin's grasp, but he doesn't let go. "I swear to God I will punch you, let me go!" "So tell me." he lets go. "Please, Tae." Taehyung closes his eyes and grunts in frustration. "Look, I don't know either ok?! One time we were good and the next time I see him he hates my guts." They lock eyes. "Happy?" "Not really." Jimin shrugs his shoulders. "There's something you're not telling me." "You're insufferable, you know that?" he's serious, with a shadow of a smile on his lips. "One of my best qualities, if I say so myself." says Jimin with a smirk. Taehyung turns his back and walks inside the sailboat. "Goodnight, asshole." "Yeah, you know you love me." his expression turns serious. "But Tae, for real, I'm not letting this go until you either tell me what's going on, or you fixed it. I want my friends back." Taehyung stops but doesn't turn. "Curiosity killed the cat." he sighs. "Goodnight, Jimin."

Chapters: 3/? Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron) Characters: Lance (Voltron), Keith (Voltron), Coran (Voltron), Allura (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron), Haggar (Voltron), Pidge | Katie Holt, Hunk (Voltron) Additional Tags: mermaid au, Reverse Little Mermaid AU, merman Keith, Prince Lance - Freeform, Slow Burn, Except it’s under the sea so there is no fire, Why Did I Write This?, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, klance, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Merman Shiro, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, mermaid Pidge, merman hunk, Haggar is Ursula, Laugh with me Summary:

“You were what,” Coran asked skeptically, crossing his arms over his chest. It was hard to tell with his giant orange mustache blocking most of it, but Lance was pretty sure his lips were pressing themselves into a thin line.

“Saved by a merperson,” he repeated coolly, glancing at the older man from over the top of the physician’s head. Stinging salves were rubbed all over his half-naked body, making him grimace from time to time as they covered and cleaned his many scratches and cuts. “Merman? He was male.”

“But they’re…”

“Legends? Myths,” Lance finished for the other, quirking his lips slightly despite the pain. “Yes, I am well aware of the stories told by sailors and fishermen.”

“Brutes, more like,” Coran corrected with a frown, moving his arms instead behind his back. “And you’re positive it wasn’t just a hallucination brought on by nearly dying out at sea? You’ve yet to be thoroughly cleared from having a concussion.”

MAY DAY POETRY PICKS

From the confines of a cramped rented room along the rhythms of machines growling. As statistics, as slaves, as ants, as lazy sloths. Our May Day Poetry Picks: poetry by and about the working class.

1. Ruminating life and death from a cramped rented room

Walking along the thin line separating life from death is Xu Lizhi’s poem titled “Rented Room”. Xu worked for Foxconn, a technology company based in Shezhen, China, one of the major producers of Apple’s iPhone. In 2014, the migrant worker took his life jumping out of his dorm window, one of the numerous suicide attempts by Chinese factory workers struggling with harsh workplace conditions while barely making ends meet. 

The poem below was among those collected by his friends and published in the Shenzhen Evening News posthumously. It was translated through the Nào project.

出租屋 Rented Room

by Xu Lizhi

十平米左右的空间 A space of ten square meters

局促，潮湿，终年不见天日 Cramped and damp, no sunlight all year

我在这里吃饭，睡觉，拉屎，思考 Here I eat, sleep, shit, and think

咳嗽，偏头痛，生老，病不死 Cough, get headaches, grow old, get sick but still fail to die

昏黄的灯光下我一再发呆，傻笑 Under the dull yellow light again I stare blankly, chuckling like an idiot

来回踱步，低声唱歌，阅读，写诗 I pace back and forth, singing softly, reading, writing poems

每当我打开窗户或者柴门 Every time I open the window or the wicker gate

我都像一位死者 I seem like a dead man

把棺材盖，缓缓推开 Slowly pushing open the lid of a coffin.

2. Cutting the bullshit 

Capturing the essential bullshit of all tedious, repetitive work, Jim Waters’ nihilistic take on the mundanity of work contains more numbness than anger. Statistics was originally published in Poems for Workers, an anthology showcasing poems for working class readers.

Statistics

by Jim Waters

I'm tired of listening to sun-shine talk, This pie-in-the-sky stuff, This travesty on patient toil;

Let the Jesus-screamers, The open-shop artists, And their ilk. . . Hook their fat necks over a flying emery wheel For. . . . eight. . . . long. . . . hours; And to the beat and whir of machinery,

                            Chant this:

"I work to get money to buy food to get strong, So I can work to get money to buy food and get strong.". . . Then, maybe, they will understand Why the church pews are empty,  And men die for unionism.

3. Commuting from work in the rough hours

Ratri Ninditya’s poem “Ursula” is a raw, candid sensory journal of a coming-home-from-work trip any "poor, unfortunate soul” from and around Jakarta would deem familiar. We can almost feel the sweat dripping.

Read more from Ninin in her 2019 poetry book, Rusunothing.

Ursula

by Ratri Ninditya

di pinggir sudirman kau punguti kecoa-kecoa setengah matang. koyo berlubang sudah menempel di lehermu 1 minggu, dan kamu selalu tertidur di 76 dengan kepala tertempel di dada.

mau pergi ke mana, bu?

jalan raya beraroma minyak goreng, hujan asam, keringat sales unicef pantang menyerah. pernahkah tusuk gigi bekas siomay nyangkut di rambutmu karena dilempar orang dari atas jembatan? aku pernah. selokan itu tak pernah melaju lebih cepat. semacet malam jumat. mengalir di dalamnya wajah-wajah yang terlupakan, belum sempat diterimakasihkan.

mereka yang reyot sebelum kehidupannya sendiri dimulai. those poor unfortunate souls. this poor unfortunate soul. kita jadi tikus-tikus yang malu dengan jembrewi sendiri. makan, olah raga, makan lagi, lalu mati.

tubuhmu terbungkus botol plastik. transparan dan statik.

4. Marking inequalities and stark contrasts—with dignity

Contrasting one worker-related experience to another with prowess, Ernest Jones points at how workers are considered fitting for growing food and undeserving to eat them, how it is acceptable for them to make clothes and to not afford wearing them. This work is powerful as it captures Jones standing on his dignity through a declaration of his principles—”too low to vote the tax, too low to touch the spoil, but not to pay and kill the foe.” “The Song of the Classes” sings like a chant, emphasising on the burdens and expectations put upon workers with so much taken away from them to the point that they appear to deserve nothing. 

Jones was a working-class male suffrage leader who was imprisoned in 1848 for his seditious speeches. This poem is also available in the Poems for Workers anthology. 

The Song of the Classes

by Ernest Jones

We plough and sow—we're so very, very low        That we delve in the dirty clay, Till we bless the plain—with the golden grain,        And the vale with the fragrant hay. Our place we know—we're so very low.         'Tis down at the landlord's feet: We're not too low—the bread to grow,         But too low the bread to eat.

Down, down we go—we're so very, very low,         To the hell of the deep sunk mines, But we gather the proudest gems that glow         Where the crown of a despot shines. And whenever he lacks,—upon our backs         Fresh loads he deigns to lay: We're far too low to vote the tax,         But not too low to pay.

We're low—we're low—mere rabble, we know,       But at our plastic power The mould at the lordlings’ feet will grow       Into palace and church and tower Then prostrate fall—in the rich man's hall,        And cringe at the rich man's door: We're not too low to build the wall,         But too low to tread the floor.

We're low—we're low—we're very, very low,      Yet from our fingers glide The silken flow—and the robes that glow       Round the limbs of the sons of pride. And what we get—and what we give—      We know, and we know our share: We're not too low the cloth to weave,        But too low the cloth to wear.

We're low—we're low—we're very, very low,     And yet when the trumpets ring, The thrust of a poor man's arm will go      Through the heart of the proudest king. We're low—we're low—our place we know     We're only the rank and file, We're not too low to kill the foe,        But too low to touch the spoil.

5. Confronting the pains of physical work in the intimate exchange between humans and machines

The ramifications of capitalist exploitation are real and most of the time physical. Through this poem, Xu Lizhi creates a narrative on work using the body—both workers’ and machines’—as a starting point. 

On each line, as machines go to sleep, emotions disappear into dust, stomachs turn hard as iron, ore separating machines peel the skin, we witness a total, brutal, industrialist catastrophe involving the human body and machines, where it becomes hard to tell which from which.

最后的墓地 The Last Graveyard

by Xu Lizhi

机台的鸣叫也打着瞌睡 Even the machine is nodding off

密封的车间贮藏疾病的铁 Sealed workshops store diseased iron

薪资隐藏在窗帘后面 Wages concealed behind curtains

仿似年轻打工者深埋于心底的爱情 Like the love that young workers bury at the bottom of their hearts

没有时间开口，情感徒留灰尘 With no time for expression, emotion crumbles into dust

他们有着铁打的胃 They have stomachs forged of iron

盛满浓稠的硫酸，硝酸 Full of thick acid, sulfuric and nitric

工业向他们收缴来不及流出的泪 Industry captures their tears before they have the chance to fall

时辰走过，他们清醒全无 Time flows by, their heads lost in fog

产量压低了年龄，疼痛在日夜加班 Output weighs down their age, pain works overtime day and night

还未老去的头晕潜伏生命 In their lives, dizziness before their time is latent

皮肤被治具强迫褪去 The jig forces the skin to peel

顺手镀上一层铝合金 And while it's at it, plates on a layer of aluminum alloy

有人还在坚持着，有人含病离去 Some still endure, while others are taken by illness

我在他们中间打盹，留守青春的 I am dozing between them, guarding

最后一块墓地 The last graveyard of our youth.

6. Exploring surrealist cities (and selves)

Originally appeared in Subbed In, Bullen’s "City Exchange” set in Birraranga (Melbourne, Australia) is a surreal encounter with the city, without the self. 

City Exchange

by Brianna Bullen

I order my eyes off Amazon, my spine off eBay and a cochlear implant straight from Coles. Falling apart in reverse has never been so seamless. We talk about moving to the city (permanently, in parenthesis: city as a homogenous w/hole because we can’t see the specific suburbs yet) but it’s crumbling in its own catharsis, a release from structure and history. I’m nostalgic, neurotic and in the process of learning semiotics, signifying nothing and searching for home and meaning in a postcard, the latest neurochemical upgrade and failed relationship. The advertisement on the high-rise for GMHBA glitches to a teaser trailer flickers to Coca-Cola: the duality of (hu)man. I take The Frankston line between Southern Cross and Flinders train rides my liminal stage where I can watch people yawn in the latest fashion and flick through a book page or two on the commute which won’t be remembered. I turn twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five Body machine the old biological clock running in analogue and cellular death. Not a teenager, or a young adult: am I a human yet? I now feel the cynicism I only used to perform now too apathetic to bother expressing the dissatisfaction in vogue. I flicker in industrial space, vague.

7.  Condemning dreadful nine-to-five jobs

Disclaimer: It is never 9 to 5.

Letter to John Martin (1986)

by Charles Bukowski

August 12, 1986

Hello John:

Thanks for the good letter. I don’t think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don’t get it right. They call it “9 to 5.” It’s never 9 to 5, there’s no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don’t take lunch. Then there’sovertime and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there’s another sucker to take your place.

You know my old saying, “Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors.”

And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don’t want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.

As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can’t believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: “Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don’t you realize that?”

They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn’t want to enter their minds.

Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:

“I put in 35 years…”

“It ain’t right…”

“I don’t know what to do…”

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn’t they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?

I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I’m here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I’ve found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.

I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: “I’ll never be free!”

One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.

So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

yr boy,

Hank

An audio version is available here.

8. Asking difficult working class questions

From one of our favorite poets Gratiagusti Chananya Rompas is this poem asking difficult, working class questions. Set at a metropolitan mall, Anya describes the whole consumerist brouhaha as she verbalises the personal terror of discomfort lurking in the everyday.

Berada di Sebuah Mall Pada Suatu Akhir Pekan

by Gratiagusti Chananya Rompas

kadang aku perlu beberapa detik untuk memutuskan eskalator berjalan atau berhenti aku tak mengerti orang orang di depan dan di belakangku ingin pergi ke mana mereka berbaris berseliweran mendorong bayi bayi mereka di dalam stroller atau mengejar anak anak mereka yang sudah pandai berlari aku menggandeng anakku tangannya kecil dan lembut menuntunku membelah lautan orang orang yang tak kukenal itu

kadang orang orang diam tetapi suara mereka tumpang tindih dengan suaraku sendiri kadang orang orang begitu banyak bicara tapi aku tak mengerti apa yang mereka katakan beli selusin donat dapat potongan setengah harga kalau beli selusin donat? siapa yang akan makan begitu banyak donat di rumah? beli satu set alat masak dapat diskon 25% kalau punya kartu kredit dari sebuah bank tapi aku hanya perlu centong? beli semangkuk nasi daging lengkap dengan minum bisa beli boneka seharga 75 ribu? apa hubungan antara makan siang dan boneka? beli frozen yogurt small dapat 1 topping, medium dapat 3 topping, tapi large dapat 3 topping juga? beli makanan dengan kartu anggota bisa dapat satu makanan gratis tapi harus top up dulu tidak bisa pisah bill? yang gratis bisa yang paling mahal mbak?

anakku sayang, tolong antar mama keluar dari sini

dan di dalam mobil dalam perjalanan pulang mobil ini bergabung dengan mobil mobil lain seperti gorong gorong yang mampat

aku harus berkedip dua kali karena aku merasa permukaan jalan di jalur sebelah yang masih kosong terlihat mengalir seperti sungai yang airnya hitam.

9. At last—embracing rage

What’s a May Day poetry list without the angry verses? In “Canned”, Jim Waters exclaims in great fury a slogan we can all relate with—to hell with you!

Canned

by Jim Waters

          To hell with you!

          You ain't the whole earth, 

          Not by a damn sight!

You sneak around shaking your fat paunch shouting: "I'm losing money . . . hurry-up . . . pull-out. . . "Step-on-it!" . . , and you "can" anybody that talks back. I've seen your kind before—always losing money—Riding in limousines, showing off on the golf links, And talking open shop at the Union Club.

On Sunday you go to church and tell everybody What a nice employer you are. . . On Monday you go blue in the face cursing your men.

          You can't bull-doze me!

          To hell with youl

          You ain't the whole earth, Not by a damn sight!

Bonus poems

We’ve added four poems to this post that were not included on our Instagram version of May Day Poetry Picks. “Self Inquiry before the Job Interview” by Gary Soto, “Coal Deliveryman” by Ramón Cote Baraibar, and ultimately another work from Xu Lizhi, “I Swallowed An Iron Moon”, just because.

10. Self-Inquiry before the Job Interview

by Gary Soto

Did you sneeze? Yes, I rid myself of the imposter inside me. Did you iron your shirt? Yes, I used the steam of mother's hate. Did you wash your hands? Yes, I learned my hygiene from a raccoon. I prayed on my knees, and my knees answered with pain. I gargled. I polished my shoes until I saw who I was. I inflated my résumé by employing my middle name. I walked to my interview, early, The sun like a ring on an electric stove. I patted my hair when I entered the wind of a revolving door. The guard said, For a guy like you, it's the 19th floor. The economy was up. Flags whipped in every city plaza In America. This I saw for myself as I rode the elevator, Empty because everyone had a job but me. Did you clean your ears? Yes, I heard my fate in the drinking fountain's idiotic drivel. Did you slice a banana into your daily mush? I added a pinch of salt, two raisins to sweeten my breath. Did you remember your pen? I remembered my fingers when the elevator opened. I shook hands that dripped like a dirty sea. I found a chair and desk. My name tag said my name. Through the glass ceiling, I saw the heavy rumps of CEOs. Outside my window, the sun was a burning stove, All of us pushing papers To keep it going.

11. Coal Deliveryman

by Ramón Cote Baraibar

translated by Craig Arnold

Like finding a bar of aluminum wedged in a bull’s jaw. Like discovering in a sea chest a short obsidian head. Like looking through a padlock   and seeing an undeserved dawn. As impossible as all these, as melancholy and lonely, was it to see the green truck that with the punctuality   of a sacrament delivered the coal each month. On the slope its strained   heart would announce itself vociferously, at the brink of death, and it   would stop in front of the house as if to deliver the agonizing news of   the fall of Troy. And then a man, wrapped in sacking, would pitch   his cargo, resonant and angular, into an orange-painted crate.

Like opening a Bible and finding three leaves of laurel. Like lifting   a stone and remembering someone’s name. Like finding the same   snail again a hundred miles away. As impossible as all these, as melancholy and lonely, would it be to find, fifteen years later, the same coal    deliveryman carrying on his trade, bent from the strain, determined   to show the heavens that a man might do that job his entire life, that   he scraped in the mines, that he stole thread from his wife to sew his   sacking, that he dreamed of infinite excavations, of tunnels, and that   they might forgive him for not having done more than that.

12. I Swallowed An Iron Moon

by Xu Lizhi

I swallowed an iron moon

they called it a screw

I swallowed industrial wastewater and unemployment forms

bent over machines, our youth died young

I swallowed labour, I swallowed poverty

swallowed pedestrian bridges, swallowed this rusted-out life

I can’t swallow any more

everything I’ve swallowed roils up in my throat

I spread across my country

a poem of shame

Research Proposal Final Draft

Title

Evil Kweens: A Queer Look at the History of Villains and Monsters in Animation and Film.

Report Type

Extended essay.

Proposed Table of Contents

Historical context and background

the Hays Code and its influence on the content of almost every American film made between 1930 and 1966

How were things back then?

Queer-coding and Queer-baiting with Focus on Modern Media

both are issues for the LGBTQIA+ community as they seek to capitalize on these marginalized groups.

Queer-baiting: portraying an obviously queer relationships with the use of cues and subtext without acknowledging it or perhaps even gas lighting it.

Queer-coding: writing a character with queer stereotypes as a form of representation without explicitly acknowledging that the character is queer.

Intent matters but a piece of queer media made with bad intentions could actullay end up having a good effect or be good for the community whilst the reverse could also happen.

Disney villains

Lycanthropy and Other Monstrous Subtext/ Parallels. Allegory or Myth?

talk about werewolves (Teen Wolf, Harry Potter, Buffy)

Frankenstein (Mary Shelly, Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Question

Is representation of LGBT individuals in animation and other forms of entertaining media good for the community or just a way for corporate big wigs to swindle money from hopeful queer people who would pay to see at least one shred of a character who is like them?

Limitations

it may be hard for me to stay objective given that I’m in the LGBT community myself.

Risk of outdated sources and temporal context problems. A project of its time will certainly play a part but more importantly the LGBT community is quite fickle it changes a lot as new identities and constructs get introduced so it may be hard to find a viable source.

I could possibly run the risk of getting distracted or going off on tangents which lack focus but I think this is partly because there is a lot about this subject so there is a lot to go on.

Background

The Hays code was published in 1930 and was based on three general principles:

No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.

Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama entertainment, shall be presented.

Law, natural or human, shall not be included, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

These were developed in a series of rules grouped under the self-explanatory headings Crimes Against The Law, Sex, Vulgarity, Obscenity, Profanity, Costume Dances (I.e. suggestive movements), Religion, Locations (I.e. the bedroom) National Feelings, Titles and Repellent Subjects''  (extremely graphic violence).

Typical Features of Queer- Coded Characters

high cheekbones

thin bodies

feminine beauty

dramatic of voice and actions

male characters may talk or sing in falsetto or have a camp voice and a female character will most likely have a deeper voice (Maleficent, Evil Queen, Ursula- who is actually based on the drag queen Divine)

these characters may also drag out their words and walk about as though slinking (Scar, the Lion King)

Examples or queer-baiting

Myka Bering and H.G. Wells (Warehouse13, SYFY)

Sherlock and John Watson ( Sherlock, BBC)

Captain America and Bucky Barnes (MCU)

Spock and Kirk ( Star Trek, NBC)

Stiles and Derek ‘Sterek’ (Teen Wolf, MTV)

Merlin and Arthur ‘Merthur’ (Merlin, BBC)

Dean and Castiel (Supernatural, ABC)

Lycanthropy

seems to be synonymous with the homosexuality- parallels between teen Wolf and Buffy the vampire slayer’s respective coming out scenes

The Queer-ness of Professor Lupin from the Harry Potter Franchise- J.K Rowling has admitted that Lupins Lycanthropy is a metaphor for AIDS/ HIV but has further dismissed fans’ theories that Lupin is Queer.

Homophobia and HIV- homophobia acts as a major barrier to ending the AIDS crisis and at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, gay men were so my led out to receive abuse as many believed they were responsible for transmitting the disease.

Overall aims

explore the impact of queer-baiting on queer communities

investigate true intentions behind the Hays Code

Make people aware of what good representation is and what bad representation is.

  -          Stereotypes, coding, characters that are gay and it’s not  their whole character

Research methods

Relevant books and articles. I will also be looking at films from the Disney renaissance era and looking into monster stories such as the Wolf man and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein's Monster, paying close attention to subtext and possible parallels as well as comparing them with more modern sources such as Harry Potter and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I’ll be looking at a couple of other peoples extended essays who have talked about and around this subject as well.

These are appropriate methods of research because they will allow me to get others’ perspectives on the topic and allow me to analyze the villains and monsters in detail and give me visual material to talk about deeply. It wil also give me the opportunity to find sources that I may have missed in my primary research.

Potential Outcomes

The research will be helpful for me because it will allow me to increase my awareness on a subject that I am already passionate about and interested in.

In a wider context this may help more people to understand the meaning and history behind the characteristics of their favourite villain and any possible subtext that may be lurking beneath them.

Educate those that are unaware or the issues queer-baiting and queer-coding pose.

Timetable

Bibliography

Brooke, M. The Hays Code the moral code that governed mid-20th  century American filmmaking. Available at http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/592022/ (Accessed: 16 March 2021)

Cheng, Z. (2020) Queer-Baiting: What Is It and Why Is It Harmful to The LGBT Community?

Available at:https://hypebae.com/2020/6/queer-baiting-what-is-it-why-harmful-lgbtq-community-tv-shows (Accessed: 16 March 2021)

Elliott, J. (2016) Becoming the Monster: Queer Monstrosity and the Reclemation of the Warewolf in Slash Fandom. Dissertation. University of Florida. Available at: file:///C:/Users/me202/Downloads/Becoming_The_Monster_Queer_Monstrosity_a.pdf (Accessed 16 March 2021)

Ennis, T. (2020) The Strange, Difficult History of Queer Coding.Available at: https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/the-strange-difficult-history-of-queer-coding (Accessed: 16 March 2021)

Hays, H, W. (1931) Online. United States: Production Code Administration, Appendix 1

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Birgitta Hosea researcher uca

I don’t want to be the strong female lead

By Brit Marling

Ms. Marling is a filmmaker.

Feb. 7, 2020

I moved to Los Angeles to become an actress at 24. These are character descriptions of roles I have read for: “thin, attractive, Dave’s wife”; “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering”; “her breasts are large and she’s wearing a red sweater.”

I stuffed my bra for that last one. I still did not get the part.

After a while it was hard to tell what was the greater source of my depression: that I could not book a part in a horror film where I had three lines and died on Page 4, or that I was even auditioning to play these roles at all. After dozens of auditions and zero callbacks, my mom suggested I get breast implants. From her perspective, I had walked away from a coveted job at Goldman Sachs and chosen a profession of self-commodification. She wanted to help me sell better.

But I wasn’t drawn to acting because I wanted to be desired. I was drawn to acting because I felt it would allow me to become the whole, embodied person I remembered being in childhood — one that could imagine freely, listen deeply and feel wholeheartedly.

I continued to audition and continued to fail. My depression deepened. My self-esteem plummeted. My boyfriend would get drunk and punch holes in the wall next to my head. I let him. He spat in my face. I let him. He dissolved into tears in my arms. I let him. And then I sifted through the ashes of his anger and his father���s anger before him to help him uncover the forgiveness he needed to move on. I was auditioning to be “Dave’s wife.” I was “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering.”

After a day of running from men with chain saws in audition rooms and a night of running from the man I shared a bed with, I decided I was done auditioning. I felt I had to write my way out of these roles or I wouldn’t find my way in the real world, either. I could not be what I could not see onscreen.

So I went to the library in downtown Los Angeles and started reading books and watching films about how to write dramas for the screen. I clung to Jodie Foster in Jonathan Demme’s “Silence of the Lambs,” to Holly Hunter in Jane Campion’s “The Piano.”

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But aside from a handful of exceptions, I was overwhelmed by the number of dramatic narratives that murdered their female characters.

In “The Big Heat” she has a pot of boiling coffee thrown in her face and is then shot in the back. In “Chinatown” the bullet tears through her brain and out her eye. And in case this seems like a trend of the past, consider the more recent noir “Blade Runner 2049,” where the holographic femme fatale is deleted and the remaining women are stabbed, drowned and gutted like a fish.

Even the spirited Antigone, the brave Joan of Arc and the unfettered Thelma and Louise meet tragic ends in large part because they are spirited, brave and unfettered. They can defy kings, refuse beauty and defend themselves against violence. But it’s challenging for a writer to imagine a world in which such free women can exist without brutal consequences.

We live in a world that is a direct reflection of these stories we’ve been telling. Close to four women a day are murdered in America at the hands of their partners or former partners. One out of every four women in America has been the victim of a rape.

I am one of those one out of four. Our narratives tell us that women are objects and objects are disposable, so we are always objectified and often disposed of.

There are centuries of trial and error inside the “hero’s journey,” in which a young man is called to adventure, challenged by trials, faces a climactic battle and emerges victorious, changed and a hero. And while there are narrative patterns for the adventures of girls — “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Wizard of Oz” — those are few and far between, and for adult women, even less so.

Even when I found myself writing stories about women rebelling against the patriarchy, it still felt like what I largely ended up describing was the confines of patriarchy. The more fettered I felt inside the real world, the more I turned toward science fiction, speculative fiction and lo-fi fantasy.

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I eventually co-wrote, produced and starred in two microbudget films, “Another Earth” and “Sound of My Voice.” Both stories left reality just far enough behind to give me the mental freedom to imagine female characters behaving in ways not often seen onscreen.

I emerged from the Sundance Film Festival with offers to act in projects I would never have been allowed to read for a week prior. Most of those roles were still girlfriend, mistress, mother. But there was a new character on offer to me as well, one that survived the story.

Enter, stage right: the Strong Female Lead.

She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.

Acting the part of the Strong Female Lead changed both who I was and what I thought I was capable of. Training to do my own stunt work made me feel formidable and respected on set. Playing scenes where I was the boss firing men tasted like empowerment. And it will always feel better to be holding the gun in the scene than to be pleading for your life at the other end of the barrel.

It would be hard to deny that there is nutrition to be drawn from any narrative that gives women agency and voice in a world where they are most often without both. But the more I acted the Strong Female Lead, the more I became aware of the narrow specificity of the characters’ strengths — physical prowess, linear ambition, focused rationality. Masculine modalities of power.

I thought back to the films I watched and stories I read burrowed deep in the stacks of the library. I began to see something deeper and more insidious behind all those images of dead and dying women.

When we kill women in our stories, we aren’t just annihilating female gendered bodies. We are annihilating the feminine as a force wherever it resides — in women, in men, of the natural world. Because what we really mean when we say we want strong female leads is: “Give me a man but in the body of a woman I still want to see naked.”

It’s difficult for us to imagine femininity itself — empathy, vulnerability, listening — as strong. When I look at the world our stories have helped us envision and then erect, these are the very qualities that have been vanquished in favor of an overwrought masculinity.

I’ve played the Strong Female Lead in real life, too — as an analyst at an investment bank before coming to Hollywood. I wore suits, drank Scotch neat and talked about the women and the men I was sleeping with like commodities on an open market. I buried my feminine intelligence alive in order to survive. I excelled at my linear task of making more money from a lot of money regardless of the long-term consequences for others and the environment.

The lone female V.P. on my floor and my mentor at the time gave me the following advice when she left to partner at a hedge fund: Once a week, open the door to your office when they finally give you one, and place a phone call where you shout a string of expletives in a threatening voice.

She added that there doesn’t actually need to be someone on the other end of the line.

I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are valuable, essential, powerful. But we have maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen into exaggerated performances of both that cause harm to all. How do we restore balance? Or how do we evolve beyond the limitations that binaries like feminine/masculine present in the first place?

In 2014 I went back to the library and encountered Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” a sci-fi novel written in 1993 imagining a 2020 where society has largely collapsed from climate change and growing wealth inequality. Butler’s heroine, the 17 year-old Lauren, has “hyperempathy” — she feels, quite literally, other people’s pain. This feminine gift and curse uniquely prepares her to survive the violent attack on her community in Los Angeles and successfully encourage a small tribe north to begin again from seeds she has saved from her family’s garden.

Butler felt to me like a lighthouse blinking from an island of understanding way out at sea. I had no idea how to get there, but I knew she had found something life saving. She had found a form of resistance.

Butler and other writers like Ursula Le Guin, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood did not employ speculative fiction to colonize other planets, enslave new life-forms, or extract alien minerals for capital gains only to have them taken at gunpoint by A.I. robots. These women used the tenets of genre to reveal the injustices of the present and imagine our evolution.

With these ideas in mind, Zal Batmanglij and I wrote and created “The OA,” a Netflix series about Prairie, a blind girl who is kidnapped and returns seven years later to the community she grew up in with her sight restored. She opens up to a group of lost teenage boys in her neighborhood, telling them about her captivity and the inter-dimensional travel she discovered to survive it. It turns out these boys need to hear Prairie’s story as much as she needs to tell it. For the boys face their own kind of captivity: growing up inside the increasingly toxic obligations of American manhood.

As time has passed, I’ve come to understand what deep influence shaping a narrative has. Stories inspire our actions. They frame for us existences that are and are not possible, delineate tracks we can or cannot travel. They choose who we can find empathy for and who we cannot. What we have fellow feeling for, we protect. What we objectify and commodify, we eventually destroy.

I don’t want to be the dead girl, or Dave’s wife. But I don’t want to be a strong female lead either, if my power is defined largely by violence and domination, conquest and colonization.

Sometimes I get a feeling of what she could be like. A truly free woman. But when I try to fit her into the hero’s journey she recedes from the picture like a mirage. She says to me: Brit, the hero’s journey is centuries of narrative precedent written by men to mythologize men. Its pattern is inciting incident, rising tension, explosive climax and denouement. What does that remind you of?

And I say, a male orgasm.

And she says: Correct. I love the arc of male pleasure. But how could you bring me into being if I must satisfy the choreography of his desire only?

And I say: Good on you. But then how do I bring you into being?

Then I hear only silence.

But even in the silence I dream of answers. I imagine new structures and mythologies born from the choreography of female bodies, non-gendered bodies, bodies of color, disabled bodies. I imagine excavating my own desires, wants and needs, which I have buried so deeply to meet the desires, wants and needs of men around me that I’m not yet sure how my own desire would power the protagonist of a narrative.

These are not yet solutions. But they are places to dig.

Excavating, teaching and celebrating the feminine through stories is, inside our climate emergency, a matter of human survival. The moment we start imagining a new world and sharing it with one another through story is the moment that new world may actually come.

Brit Marling (@britmarling) is the co-creator and star of “The OA.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opinion/sunday/brit-marling-women-movies.html?fbclid=IwAR3DSJ3Q6shZQwE8jGHxNhuU5skF62SAcfJzXap0j_XPFdZHK4JKYa5n02E