#and she spoke extensively with queer kids

[iibislintu]

today i celebrate the yohrzeit of my great aunt R (may her memory be for blessing) by eating fish fingers, sweet peas and mashed potatoes.

R was a two-time refugee, the child of two invasions. her home was first occupied by the Soviets in the Winter War, then taken back in the Continuation War, then lost again.

i don't know what her mother tongue was because after the war, Karelian speaking refugees were forbidden from (and persecuted for) talking in their language. R, as I knew her, always spoke in the lilting Finnish dialect of her postwar home town Imatra.

as a young adult, R moved to the only big city left in postwar Finland - Helsinki. the cities of her childhood Karelia had been lost to the USSR and she never mentioned them again.

for almost all of her adult life, R lived cost-free in a studio apartment owned by a close female friend. R dressed in jeans and quilted jackets, smoked a pipe and never married.

she read extensively, quoted poets, had more jazz albums than my dad who was always her favourite nephew. she owned strange objects from faraway lands and always had her window open to the street.

R had lost almost all of her sense of taste and smell to smoking, and as a result, she used more salt in her cooking than anyone i knew. when i visited her after school, she would make fish fingers and drench the sweet peas in butter.

R was an alcoholic who never spoke of the war or her childhood memories. when drunk, she had a whip of a tongue and could say the meanest things about people she disliked. that's why, when i started to explore my queer identity, i didn't dare to tell her about it. i was afraid she would be as mean to me as i knew she sometimes was to others.

i wish i had talked to her about my queerness. for the last eight years of her life, i didn't visit her. i was afraid.

a few years after retiring, R lost her walking and speech to alcohol, but kept on writing a diary like she always had. at her funeral, my dad read some passages out loud.

"i miss the kids", was one of her last entries. "i hope they are all okay."

i wish i knew how to say something here of the trauma that occupation and invasion causes, decades and generations into the future. i wish i could say something about the way strong, heavily armed countries use their power for evil while it's the small and the poor who suffer. but i can't. the trauma of a land lost is too strong in me, eighty years and three generations after the invasion. i can't even think of what it is for the palestinians of today.

i miss you, great aunt R. today, the fish fingers are in your honour.

yisgadal v'yiskadash sh'mei raba...

#queer elders #refugees #alcoholism #winter war #ww2 history #soviet union #kaddish

[tempestgnostic]

Thus Spoke the Half-Serpent

I can’t recall the first time I laid down next to the water’s edge and yearned for a home I’d never known. I must have been very young; it wasn’t until much later that I learned shame. In those halcyon days, in the peace between the trauma of birth and adolescence, I dreamed of swimming with nixies—the ones I’d read about in my copy of Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. It would be years before I gave up waiting for a soulmate to appear beneath the surface of our neighborhood lake.

I joined the swim team just before the curse of puberty began to take hold. (I didn’t transition until my early twenties.) It was the closest approximation I had—yet, kicking around a pair of human legs felt just as wrong as the way my chest began to jut out beneath my swimsuit. I went to competitions across the state and did quite well, until dysphoria caught up with me and strangled my ambition.

My daydreams shifted as part of my identity once again rose to the surface. I was nearly always human from the waist up, but at times had the body of a massive serpent below. Other times, it was replaced with the digitigrade legs of a wolf, or even the body of a giant spider or scorpion. The serpent’s tail was always the most euphoric, though—the rest felt like using active imagination to cope with the ostracization I felt, being misunderstood and bullied relentlessly by peers. (To be a queer, autistic kid in Kansas is a kind of torture that should be reserved for the lowest circles of Dante’s Hell.)

I could write for hours about how snakes and their habits continued to pop up in the most interesting places—how I was once a ‘proud Slytherin,’ back when I was still ignorant of JKR’s legacy of hate; how euphoric I felt when I realized that getting a forked tongue is not uncommon in the body mod community; how the gods and spirits I encountered on my pagan journey kept pointing me to the serpent in increasingly obvious ways; how even my personal philosophy began to reflect my ophidian nature. “I slough off truths like snakeskin. The world is always changing—why should I remain the same?”

This—and so much more—rapidly coalesced into an awakening that truly began right after I allowed myself to accept my werewolf identity. I had ‘broken the seal,’ so to speak, and the kaleidoscope of my personal mythology erupted from that pinprick of light. Suddenly, it made sense why I sometimes expect to feel scales instead of skin beneath my waist, or why I find myself to be clumsy and awkward when I try to dance, unless my movement is serpentine and centered in my hips. It explained why I sometimes feel the swift forward extension of a viper’s fangs from the roof of my mouth when I open it just so.

When I get in bed, I wait until my legs fall asleep first, overlaid in such a way that they seem to melt into each other under the blankets. When my knees aren’t acting up, I allow the rhythm in my hips to carry me across the room as I dance to the music in my head. I dream of sunning myself beside a calm river, enjoying the feeling of warm rocks beneath my scales before slipping back under the surface. In my mind, I see silvery moonlight reflecting off of the water after nightfall.

There’s a beautiful young femme sitting by the water’s edge, enjoying the cool breeze. Something keeps her there, even as she sees me skim the surface of the water, striped scales suggesting half of my species. Cottonmouth. She speaks to me like a soulmate, our love a foregone conclusion, and I offer my hand with a gentle smile. I’ll teach her how to swim, and I promise not to bite—hard. She laughs, and my butch heart swells.

#alterhuman essays #alterhuman community #alt/non essays #alt/non community #nagakin #nagaposting #idk if this could fall under therian #probably not but i’ll look into it more #otherkin #otherkin essays

[voidingintotheshout]

I posted 12,370 times in 2022

344 posts created (3%)

12,026 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@saydams

@naamahdarling

@vr-trakowski

@rattle-my-stars

@fractionofthewhole

I tagged 2,310 of my posts in 2022

#lgbtqia+ - 295 posts

#lgbt - 271 posts

#jumblr - 138 posts

#antisemitism - 79 posts

#queer - 67 posts

#youtube - 57 posts

#transgender - 56 posts

#adhd - 56 posts

#islam - 51 posts

#iran - 45 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#rat girlfriend is banned from the fancy restaurant because she keeps stealing plates of food off people's tables and hiding them under the t

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

39 notes - Posted March 18, 2022

#4

Just your daily reminder that David Mamet is a anti-gay, transphobic piece of shit. For example, [anti-gay trigger warning:] he said: “What we have is kids not only being indoctrinated but groomed, in a very real sense, by people who are, whether they know it or not, sexual predators,” Mamet claimed. “Are they abusing the kids physically? No, I don’t think so. But they are abusing them mentally and using sex to do so.”He added, “This has always been the problem with education. Teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia.”

43 notes - Posted April 17, 2022

#3

*Cackles in Arabic*

Just in case anybody doesn’t know, the new total ban on abortion laws that are being proposed in various US states mean that America will, in those places, be more restrictive about abortion than Saudi Arabia or Iran. And in fact, in every Islamic country women are allowed abortions if the life of the mother is at risk because, just like Judaism, the life of the mother is considered more important than the potential life of the child. Judaism is, unsurprisingly, more open minded about this than Christianity or Islam but I think it’s still fairly restricted in Israel. Not as restricted as it would be in the Palestinian territories, but you get my point. I just wanted to say this that it’s always the impression that however conservative American Christianity is, Islam must be far more conservative but in this case Christianity ends up being the more conservative one. That being said, I obviously would not want to be a woman in a Muslim country right now but I felt like I would link this article and remind everybody of that browser extension, what is it? 11 foot pole or something where you can get around a pay wall. Might be useful in this case.

44 notes - Posted May 30, 2022

#2

A great little talke about how a bigoted, homophobic Iowa town drove out nearly the entire staff of their only library becase the mostly LGBTQIA staff was including some Queer books against the wishes of the Christofascist townsfolks.

A Quote: “At the meeting in March, Brooke Kruckernberg’s mother [a bigoted resident] also spoke up, stating, “For each book promoting the LGBTQ lifestyle, there should be a book on display that discusses how God created and designed people as either male or female from birth, for life.”Greenlee later explained that, in reality, only 7 of the 5,800 children’s section materials involved queerness whatsoever. On the other hand, Christianity and Christian themes were featured in 173 Children’s books.Sadly, the reality and bare numbers of the situation weren’t enough to assuage the queerphobic community members’ protestations. Clearly, they wouldn’t be happy until queerness was erased from the library shelves — and staff — entirely.”

68 notes - Posted July 16, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

72 notes - Posted June 19, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

[punhetamaistriste]

Starfuckers (2022)

Today I watched Starfuckers and I think it might have changed my life. I spent the night with someone I think I can consider a friend at this point, and he showed me the power of queer cinema (well, I'm aware of queer cinema just like every artsy queer, but way less than most artsy queers. I was a theatre kid. I grew up with artsy queers just like this new friend of mine is) in those astonishing 15 minutes. I won't tell you what the film is about, but it's about a twink and his current daddy-type lover who's an asshole. And just as if I was watching Fleabag , I saw the asshole as an extension of myself (I got myself under a pretty bad light).

Recently, a month ago roughly, I ended an intense relationship that lasted 6 months. It was fun. We essentially lived together, and she was way younger and richer than I am. It bugged me. I hated her; her money, her parents, her lack of clue about how a poor person lives. I got myself under debt because of her, because of my love for her. At first, pure performance because she liked me and I couldn't say no to a new experience that could bring me momentary joy and a place to go on weekends, then real love. And she was a great lover. I just fucked it all up, as usual. But I'm glad I did. I needed this break-up, I needed my time alone and I needed the momentum to assimilate the fact that I was an asshole.

The asshole in Starfuckers definitely knew he was the asshole, but came too his senses too late. He got caught. I didn't. That's why the asshole life worked for me until not very long ago: I never got caught. I ran in time, all the times. With her, with him, with them (you three know who you are. You mattered to me. The rest was my crazy mind fantasizing about how I could get any of you back and why I shouldn't). It was good. But sometimes the peed and dumped water splashes right inside your dirty tired anus and you feel this nasty, weirdly clean wet cold on your ass and things get awkward with yourself. But that's only until you take a shower after that dump. Then everything feels light and clean, and better than before the dirty water touched you. I was suicidal recently, it was my splash, but I just got out of that shower.

I've been fucked like the Starfuckers twink, emotionally abused (mostly from myself) in relationships (and also the abuser) and in my carreers. I had a carreer in Environmental Science because of a daddy-type guy who gave me my internship in exchange for a blowjob. I never told anyone about it. We had a relationship for about a year, and i don't qualify him as one of the three lovers I had in life. He was just a thing I had to do. In that sense I got fucked differently, unlike the twink I didn't really care about my daddy-type lover. Maybe a little. Maybe the twink felt like that, too. In an egotistical way, caring about him was caring about my own future. I was young, foolish and full of potential. And will to do things. I don't know if I still got it; college is killing me. I understand the twink and his reasons. When you love someone because of your own future, it feels terrible not to be seen by that someone. You feel guilty for your own greed, then angry for the feeling. It's freeing to be an asshole sometimes, specially when feeling this type of anger.

The Enter The Twink bit gives us an amazing, touching performance and when he cries his heart out after the monologue, I almost cry too, but I'm a skinhead so I must remain tough. He spoke to me, but spoke like the younger me: a child, picking from the ground pieces of a destroyed child . A destroyed childhood, a shattered dream, whatever. A thing that shouldn't have ended the way it did, like many things. The only things from my life to ever happened the way they should and end when they should were my last two relationships. Because I said they were over. When I needed it. Besides my ridiculous review, Starfuckers is incredible and it's not a break up film. It's a gay film. It's a raw film. Go watch.

I hope this new friend of mine stays, because I really liked the film and I like queer artsy people. But I'm a wreck. I hope he stays until it's time to go, until the water splash. And after a shower we'll both feel better. I think that about everyone in my life, including my family. I hope they don't let go of me, but i have to act like they will. I keep my pieces together in a jar afraid of glueing it all together just to crash and fall again, and I'm comfortable in that mess. Sometimes I'm the asshole because of it, but it's not easy being a twink. Being the twink. God, I'm fucked. I wish I could elevate this state into artform like the Starfuckers director. I don't know if he comes from a real situation there in the film and something like that happened to him. Maybe. Not that unusual in the artistic circuit. What am I talking about? I think I lost my train of thought. Best way to end a text.

So I blink, I stare at you madly in love and say tenderly: God, you're so beautiful. It's true. Do you reckon? I mean, it's fate. We all dig our own graves before sleep.

#my writing #writers #art #Starfuckers #film

[makeup-cas]

if misha collins keep fucking around on twitter eventually he’s gonna have to pull a becky albertalli and release a letter like. I am now coming out as bi not because I want to but because I am being bullied.

#do I think misha is bi? it’s none of my fucking business! #but this is the path he’s heading down #in all seriousness I feel bad for Becky albertalli #not saying her writing is perfect but #the book was better than the movie #and upside of unrequited is so sweet and like #I don’t know #man I understand why people want queer stories by queer authors but you can’t demand people come out to prove their work! #and she spoke extensively with queer kids #and it just is a little sad #but that’s besides the point #Bc I think my original post is funny #misha Collins #mine #my text

[entity9silvergen]

Thought That Cupid Shot Me With Love But It Was Only An Aro (Naruto Fanfiction)

Summary: Soulmates were supposed to be the other half of your soul. Your one true love. Ino always dreamed of finding her soulmate. Sai never wanted one. Still, they cared for each other so they were going to make it work. Somehow.

Relationships: Sai & Ino, Sai/ Ino, Sai & Team Kakashi, Sai & Team Asuma, Sai & Shin, Referenced Naruto/ Hinata, Referenced Sasuke/ Sakura, Referenced Kakashi/ Guy, Referenced Shikamaru/ Temari, Referenced Choji/ Karui

Characters: Sai, Ino Yamanaka, Shikamaru Nara, Choji Akimichi, Shin, Kakashi

Warnings: Minor aphobia

Other: AroWriMo 2021, Soulmate AU, Aroace Sai, Aro/ Allo Relationship, Oneshot, Aromantic Writer, Queer Themes, QPRs

Word Count: 10K

Author’s Note: This story was written for Aromantic Writing Month 2021! I’ve been wanting to write an aromantic Soulmate AU for awhile and decided to finally write it when I realized Aro Writing Month was approaching. Prompt for week 1 was Romo/ Loveless & Future which kind of aligns with this fic. 

The title comes from the song Not In Love by Natalia Kills.

This is my first time writing a soulmate AU and also my first time writing an aromantic character. I’d just like to say I don’t really like the idea of aromantic/ alloromantic soulmates because it implies they both have to compromise in some way but I’ve always wanted to see how that kind of relationship would be navigated so here we are. 

Some characters are mildly aphobic but there’s nothing hateful or extreme. It’s mostly just people not understanding.

Also this fic skips around through time a bit and begins before Sai gets his name in canon but I am just going to call him Sai because it’s kind of awkward to avoid using it. A few minor deviations from canon are taken just for convenience. 

___________

As long as Ino could remember, she’d had a massive, stark white tiger with jet black stripes wrapped around her arm.

She didn’t really question it’s presence. Everyone had marks on their bodies as far as she knew. Once she was old enough to really recognize what it was, however, she did find it a bit odd. Compared to the bright red bush clover on her mother’s upper arm and the aquamarine instrument on her father’s leg, a black and white tiger seemed strange. She tried asking about it but no one seemed to understand her confusion. They just saw it was any other soulmark with nothing out of the ordinary.

It wasn’t until she was a couple years into her training at the Academy that she really understood what the tiger on her skin meant.

She’d been sitting on the grassy hill where her Kunoichi classes were held with her friend Sakura. It was early spring and tiny flowers were beginning to sprout out of the ground. Idly, Ino plucked them out of the earth and slowly began tying their stems into a chain. What for, she did not know. She just needed something to occupy herself until the teacher arrived. She was running a bit late and once she arrived, Ino understood why.

“Hello class!” the teacher called once she reached the top of the hill, dropping a bag of books at her feet. They hit the grass with a loud thump. The bag was a lot heavier than it looked, no wonder it had slowed her down. “Sorry for the delay!”

“What are those books for?” Sakura called out, voicing the rest of the girl’s thoughts.

“Oh these?” the teacher said, picking up one of the books. “We’re going to use these books to help with the lesson. Today we’re going to talk about soulmarks.”

Soulmark. The word struck a chord in Ino’s mind. It sounded familiar yet she didn’t have the slightest idea what it meant. She sensed it was important though. Intrigued, she rested her arms on her knees and leaned forward a bit. She didn’t say anything, positive Sakura and all her newly discovered chattiness would do it for her. “What’s a soulmark?”

The teacher’s eyes glowed in a way Ino had never seen before as she sat down and threw herself into her explanation. “You see those designs on your bodies?”

Ino looked down at the tiger on her arm and felt a flash of excitement. Was she finally going to learn the meaning behind it?

“Those are soulmarks. You see, the universe is very wise and knows who we are destined to fall in love with,” the teacher told them, smiling at the wondrous expressions appearing on the girls’ faces. Ino tried to wipe the look off her own features but she couldn’t help it. This was nothing like flower arranging at all. That was fun but this was important. “That’s why we’re born with these marks. They give us hints about what our soulmates are like and tell us how to find them.”

A few girls squealed and made soft noises expressing their delight but Ino remained quiet, eyes wide as she ran her fingertips over the tiger’s curved stripes. She’d done so countless times before but now it felt different. Almost humbling. This mark told her who she was meant to fall in love with? That was amazing. Almost unbelievable. 

“I read a story book about soulmates once,” declared a girl Ino couldn’t remember the name of. “It said soulmates are each other’s one true love and we’re all meant to find each other some day. Some people have to travel really far to find their soulmate!”

“That’s true,” the teacher said with a nod, “but usually our soulmates aren’t too far away. I knew my soulmate since we were kids but we didn’t realize until we were much older. Sometimes we need time to develop as people before our soulmarks make sense. We need time to grow into them.”

“I heard that Hyuga girl has a ramen bowl on her somewhere,” another girl spoke up. She made an over exaggerated face of disgust. “The only person who eats ramen enough for the universe is that dumb Uzumaki kid. I’d bet anything they’re soulmates.”

“Now, Yaka,” the teacher chided, “it’s not nice to make assumptions about other people’s soulmates, let alone talk about their soulmarks behind their backs. Soulmarks are a private thing.”

Ino noticed the teacher didn’t scold Yaka for the way she was talking about Naruto and Hinata. She didn’t know what that was about but she didn’t really like it. She didn’t have the faintest idea who her soulmate was but she hoped no one made fun of him for her soulmark, whatever it was. As troubling as her mark was, she loved it and knew she would one day love her soulmate as much as the tiger on her arm. And he was supposed to love her just as much, right? They were destined to be together after all. Each other’s true love.

“I hope mine is Sasuke,” Sakura sighed dreamily, clutching her hands together.

Ino snapped out of her romantic daydreams and blew air out through her mouth, making her blond bangs move out of her face, as she rolled her eyes. “We’re too young to really know, Sakura. Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Color is the best indicator to go off of,” the teacher told them, eyes drifting to the mark on Sakura’s hand. “Red isn’t an uncommon color in the soulmarks of the Uchiha.”

Ino’s mouth twisted in annoyance. Their teacher was indulging her? Really? At least Sakura seemed happy about it. And Ino would be lying if she said she didn’t think Sakura’s mark may one day fit their classmate. The scarlet feather of a hawk covered the back of her hand, the middle bleeding into a pale purple that stretched the shaft into a long snake trailing up her arm. It was a pretty cool soulmark, Ino had to admit. Two animals in one mark? And so colorful. Maybe that meant Sakura’s soulmate had a lot of character to him. Or that he really liked animals. Did Sasuke like animals? But like the others, it made her uneasy about her own.

“What if your soulmark doesn’t have any colors?” Ino asked, raising her hand. When the teacher’s eyes flickered to her arm, Ino put her arm down and covered her mark with her hand. She tried her best not to look down in shame to no avail then immediately hated herself for it. Then she decided she hated her teacher for the look she was giving her. How dare she make Ino feel ashamed of her soulmark and, by extension, her soulmate? 

The teacher’s judgemental look vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a cheery facade, and she handed Ino the book she was holding. “That’s a good question! Everyone, take a book and try to find any characteristics that might match your soulmark. You might be able to learn something about your soulmate!”

Ino wasn’t oblivious to the fact her question was ignored but Sakura was tugging at the book in her hands, excited to see what it’s contents could tell her. Ino shook her negativity away and laughed, scolding her friend into settling down and sharing the book.

They spent the whole afternoon flipping through the pages, gazing at the beautiful soulmarks within, and Ino found nothing about colorless soulmarks. Like many things regarding her soulmate, she didn’t know what to think of that.

___________

Sai thought he was markless until he was eight.

He knew what soulmarks were, of course. They were impossible to miss, especially since he lived in such close quarters with everyone he trained with. He’d just never seen one on his own body so he just figured he didn’t have one. And he was pretty okay with that. 

This batch of ROOT recruits were being trained in a Hidden Mist style so they spent a fair amount of time on the water. The instructor had begun teaching the Water Natured recruits how to use Water Style: Liquid Bullets recently so today that part of the group was polishing their jutsu while the rest of the recruits practiced dodging on a moving surface of water. It was a good exercise for everyone.

The only problem was all the Water Style users kept nailing Sai with their jutsu.

Normally Sai wouldn’t mind. He was a fast ninja and he was pretty good at dodging. The only problem was that there were so many and a few were bound to hit now and again. It was just that it was more than a few. And he seemed to be the only one getting hit. It was enough that the instructor asked him to get off the water and practice his Earth Style on his own until they were done.

“Maybe we can ask the instructor if you can wear a shirt next time,” Shin said casually once the session was over and the group was heading back to base. “I mean, it’ll get all wet if you fall in but it’s better than getting hit with Liquid Bullets the whole time.”

“What?” Sai peered at his brother, confused. “Why would wearing a shirt change anything?”

“Um, because of your soulmark?”

“I have a soulmark?”

Shin’s hands dropped from their place folded behind his head as he came to a stop to gape at his brother. “You didn’t know you have a soulmark?”

“No. Should I have?”

“Yes!” Shin exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “Soulmarks are important! They tell you who you’re going to fall in love with and- wait. If you didn’t know you had a soulmark, why did you think everyone kept shooting you with their jutsu?”

“I thought maybe it was some kind of strategy to pick off a weak link.”

“You’re not a weak link!” Shin exclaimed, louder this time. Sai didn’t really understand what he was getting upset over but he hoped he’d get over it soon. The instructors didn’t really like it when the students got worked up like this. “Your soulmark just makes a giant target on your back. It’s easy to aim for so everyone goes for it.”

“Oh.” That made sense, he supposed. “What is it? My soulmark, I mean.”

“It’s a flower. I don’t know what kind.”

“What does it mean to have a flower soulmark?”

Shin shrugged. “I have no idea. I think I heard flowers are kind of rare since all girls like flowers. Hey, maybe that means your soulmate is a boy. The universe might think boys liking flowers is weird enough to make it soulmark-worthy.”

“I don’t think it’s weird for boys to like flowers.”

“So you think your soulmate is a boy?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really care.”

“Come on,” Shin whined. “You’ve got to care a little bit!”

“Not really. I’ve never wanted a soulmate.”

“Really?” Shin sounded surprised, far more surprised than Sai thought he would. “Well, maybe that’s just because you didn’t think you had one. Maybe now it’ll change.”

Sai didn’t think so but he didn’t tell Shin. He didn’t think he’d understand.

________

Ino was nine when she felt a blinding pain shooting up from her soulmark.

It wasn’t sudden. In fact, it was very slow. A gentle static that turned into overwhelming agony. Ino had felt emotions through the soulbond before, however rare, but never to this degree. The initial surprise was faint, easily mistakable for her own feelings, but the adrenaline and fear that followed most certainly were not.

Iruka seemed to notice something was wrong because by the time the first wave of crippling despair hit, he’d already yelled for a student to take charge of the class and had ushered her out into the hallway. She was dimly aware of what was happening around her through it all. If she’d been more clear headed, she would’ve worried more about keeping it together in the presence of her classmates but right now she could only think about the hurt, fear, and grief rippling through her. 

Her soulmark burned, sending bolts of emotion up her body, welling her throat shut and tightening her chest with raw, unfiltered emotion. It was like water boiling up in a kettle that exploded into a scalding ocean instead of steam. Like someone had injected lightning into her body and let it fry her heart. Like being surrounded by a heavy cloud of darkness that sucked any light out of her. 

Never before had she felt such a thing and she didn’t know how to handle it. She didn’t understand where it was coming from or why this was happening to her. But then it just… stopped. Like nothing had happened.

She regained control of her breath as the sharp grip around her receded. She felt the sobs die in her throat and clean oxygen fill her lungs once again. She hadn’t even noticed she’d been crying until now. Tears stained her face and Iruka’s shoulder but there were fewer than before. It was now that she realized she had collapsed on the ground in the hallway, body pressed against the rough wood floor. The realization didn’t make her want to get up any more though. She could lie here for the rest of her life for all she cared. She kind of wanted to. Lying here in this sleepy, numb fog that clouded her mind sounded like a good idea.

“Are you alright?” Iruka asked, her sensei’s worried tone drawing her back to reality.

“What happened?” Ino groaned, sitting up to meet his gaze. The concern was evident on his face but he looked relieved to see that she was okay. She felt a prickle of guilt knowing she was responsible for his worry. What was that anyway? It just came out of nowhere then left just as fast. Absently, her hand drifted to her soulmark. Any echo of its earlier noise was long gone. It was as silent as the dead of night. “I feel…”

“I think something happened to your soulmate,” Iruka told her softly, helping her sit up against the wall. He shifted a bit so he sat across from her. For that, Ino was grateful. She didn’t think she could handle getting up right now.

“My soulmate?”

“You’ve felt things through your soulbond before, right?” Iruka asked. Ino nodded as she wiped her face free of any stray tears. “Well, sometimes when our soulmates are in a lot of pain or distress, we can feel it through the soulbond.”

“How come?” Ino asked, genuinely curious. The pain she felt was probably nothing compared to what he was feeling so she could stomach a bit of it for her soulmate’s sake but she didn’t understand why the universe would place that upon her or anyone else. That just seemed cruel.

“Well…” Iruka trailed off for a moment, hesitating, before the words came to him. “Soulmates are a big part of our lives. They’re the other half of our soul. Our bond doesn’t begin when we meet. We usually love our partners a long time before we meet them.”

Ino nodded, following along so far. Sure, she didn’t know a thing about her soulmate, save what her soulmark told her, but he had a special place in her heart that only grew with each spark she felt through the bond. He was one of the most important things to her in the whole world. It felt kind of strange to call it love but any other word felt short of capturing what she felt. He was essentially a stranger yet, at the same time, he was the furthest thing from it.

“Soulmates support each other throughout their whole lives,” Iruka explained. “When our soulmates feel pain, we can comfort them through our soulbonds.”

“How?” Ino asked, leaning forward a bit. She desperately wanted to. The hopelessness and agony that had rooted itself in her chest had faded but if her soulmate was still feeling anything close to it…

“Just think about how much you love them,” Iruka told her with a lopsided smile, “and how much you want to be there for him. Try to focus those feelings through your soulbond.”

Ino nodded and tried her hardest to do as her sensei instructed her. But how could she express feelings for someone she’d never met? She could imagine her soulmate and the future they’d have together but that wasn’t real. It was all in her head and all she had to go off of inspiration-wise were stories and dreams. She was still young enough to indulge in the occasional fantasy or day dream but she was also a ninja. Ninja were realists and realistically, she knew nothing about what he was like and she didn’t have a real reason to love him the way she did.

But that didn’t mean the love she had wasn’t real. It was ingrained deep into her being, as deep as the bond tying her to her partner. It was a love that made warmth hum in her chest and the corners of her mouth twitch into a smile at the mere thought of it. Love so powerful she couldn’t put it into words. She just didn’t have the vocabulary and she didn’t think the right words even existed.

It didn’t make sense but it was real. The universe, spirits, god, sages, whatever was up there- It had made a decision and it was a good one. There was no reason to believe it but Ino knew it like a universal truth. He was destined for her and she was more than happy to be destined for him. Ino loved her other half however little sense it made. She’d always wanted him to know that and maybe now she could tell him through the soulbond if she tried hard enough.

She didn’t know what he was feeling. She didn’t know what he could possibly be experiencing that would make him feel this way. She just hoped that maybe she could help, even if it was just a little bit.

“How will I know if he can feel it?” Ino asked after a while. She felt a lot better. Her breath had regulated, the dampness in her eyes had dried, and her body felt a lot less heavy than it had when she sat down.

“There’s not really any way to tell immediately,” Iruka told her, getting to his knees before standing up. He offered Ino a hand to pull her up. She accepted it and began following him back to the classroom. “Your soulmate is probably going through a lot right now and he might not know how to respond or feel ready to. But, I’ve heard that soulmates sometimes send their thanks a few weeks after something big happens and feelings start passing through the bond a bit more easily. I’m sure he’ll be sending you some happiness in no time.”

Iruka’s words were a comfort and Ino momentarily forgot her worries and skipped back to class. But weeks later when Iruka asked her if she and her soulmate were doing better, Ino couldn’t answer. There wasn’t a hint of emotion coming through the bond anymore.

_________

It was over seven years since Shin died before Sai was shirtless around anyone again.

It wasn’t really something he’d thought about. Who thought about that kind of thing? He had plenty of other things to think about. His missions, crossing faces out of his bingo books, his art… Being shirtless was such an insignificant thing in his life that he never spared it a second thought. His training had ended with his brother’s death and there wasn’t really a need for him to change clothes or go swimming with someone. And without Shin or anyone else looking at his back, he’d almost forgotten his soulmark. There were a few flashes of feeling through the bond now and again but Sai was usually too dull to notice and he usually dismissed them without question. The existence of his soulmark didn’t affect his life in the slightest.

Imagine his confusion when Naruto wouldn’t stop staring at him after Captain Yamato dumped the two of them in a hot spring together. 

“Why do you keep looking at me, dickless?” Sai asked, smiling at how Naruto’s face soured at the nickname. He’d done well choosing it. “I was under the impression you were tired of being around me.”

“I am!” Naruto snapped indignantly. He crossed his arms and was silent for a moment. When Sai didn’t say anything, he caved and explained himself. “I… I was looking for your soulmark. Do you have one?”

Sai paused for a moment before nodding. “I do.”

Naruto’s gaze softened a bit and the hostility drained off his face. “It’s on your back, isn’t it? I didn’t see anything before you got in the water.”

“Why do you care?”

“I didn’t really think about it until you came in here and I didn’t see anything on you so I thought you might be markless. It’s… I dunno, it’s harder to stay mad at you knowing you’ve got a soulmate.”

“Why?

Naruto shrugged casually. “Knowing you love someone just makes you feel more human.”

If Sai were an expressive man, he would’ve made a face. One of anger or horror, he didn’t know. Angry Sai would’ve splashed Naruto in the face with a handful of water. Horrified Sai would’ve come up with a bad excuse and hurried out of the hot spring. But Sai wasn’t an expressive man so instead, he shut his mouth and sank into the water, trying not to think about the implication of his new teammate’s words. ___________

Ino met Sai at The Barbeque Place.

The Barbeque Place wasn’t actually called The Barbeque Place. They just called it that enough that it deserved to be called The Barbeque Place with the capitalization of the title and everything. It was actually called Yakiniku Q but no one cared. Team Asuma would convince everyone it was called The Barbeque Place until the owner changed the sign or they’d die trying.

Going to The Barbeque Place was the only way to properly celebrate anything Team Asuma style. Ino, Choji, and Shikamaru had only seen Naruto a couple of times since he returned to the village so when they saw him coming back from a mission, they knew they had to grab him then or they’d never get the chance to drag him to the restaurant and welcome their friend home.

The fact they had a new teammate with them was an added bonus.

Sai seemed nice. Kind of strange though. Ino didn’t know if it was just odd having someone new on Team 7 after so long or if it was just Sai’s general personality. She supposed she liked him but if it was anyone less good looking, Ino would definitely be upset Sasuke was getting replaced.

“So you’re ANBU, right?” Shikamaru asked the newcomer when the uncooked food had arrived and the early stages of conversation were over.

“How could you tell?”

“The uniform was a bit of a giveaway.”

“Noted.”

“ANBU?” Choji echoed, looking intrigued. His brief pause was long enough for Ino to take the opportunity to swipe a couple pieces of meat off the grill and shovel them onto Sai’s plate. Apparently pausing did not mean he was distracted though. “Ino!”

“Be nice! You don’t want to scare him off with your gross manners this early, do you?”

“I guess not…” Choji mumbled sullenly. His demeanor changed again in a heartbeat when a piece of perfectly cooked meat caught his eye. He plucked it up with his chopsticks and plopped it into his mouth, chewing the slices of beef happily, anger forgotten. 

Shikamaru, always the sharp one, picked up where Choji left off before his distraction. “So what’s that like? ANBU, I mean.”

Sai smiled passively. “I don’t think it’s too different from what shinobi teams do, just more isolated and the training is more rigorous.” 

“Really?” Sakura said, half distracted by trying to nab a piece of meat before Choji got his chopsticks on it. “I don’t know a lot about ANBU, even working so close with Lady Tsunade, but I’ve heard some bad rumors over the years.”

“Eh? Really? But Kakashi-sensei always seems happy wherever he talks about it,” Naruto replied. He swiped a piece of meat off Sai’s plate and popped it into his mouth before anyone could say anything. Ino would’ve scolded him but Sai didn’t seem to care. In fact, he seemed amused. It was hard believing someone as soft-spoken and gentle as Sai was a member of ANBU.

“Kakashi-sensei is Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura responded, brushing him off. “He doesn’t tell us anything and you never know if he’s actually happy or if he just hit a juicy part of those pervy books he’s always reading.”

“Eh, good point,” Naruto conceded through a full mouth, “but now we have Sai here to tell us stuff! I bet he’s a lot easier to talk to than Kakashi-sensei.”

Sai’s face remained passive but Choji and even Shikamaru seemed interested. Noticing, Sai sighed and gave in. “What do you want to know?”

“So you said ANBU was really lonely, right?” Shikamaru said, casually taking a piece of meat. Unsurprisingly, Choji let him and didn’t protest. “What about soulmates?”

“What about them?”

“I’ve heard they don’t let people search for their soulmates,” Sakura spoke up as she put a few vegetables on the grill. “They just have to live knowing their soulmate is out there wondering where they are and why they haven’t found them yet.”

“Well I heard they don’t let ANBU have soulmates at all,” Choji said, trying to wave Sakura’s chopsticks away from the grill. “Like they burn them off or make them stay covered all the time and that kind of thing.”

“I can confirm that isn’t true,” Sai said with a smile, sounding humored. “A lot of people have soulmates. Some of the best two-man teams and small units are made of soulmates, actually. We’re just not allowed to search outside of ANBU. My instructors always said it compromises our security.”

“That’s too bad,” Naruto commented and poked Sakura’s hand with his chopsticks. She yelped and pulled her hand away, allowing Choji to successfully steer the vegetables away from the grill and put down another couple pieces of beef. “But now that you’re out of ANBU, you can look for your soulmate, right?”

Sai said nothing and shrugged half-heartedly. 

“You do want to find your soulmate, right?” Ino asked, putting down her chopsticks to look at him instead of swooping in to aid Sakura. Choji really had to eat his greens. Naruto too but it wasn’t every day her friends got a new teammate. Right now he was a bit more interesting than a poking war.

This time, Sai had a clear answer to the question. “Not particularly.” 

“How?!” Ino’s plate clattered on the table slightly. She put a hand on it to stop it from falling but she could feel herself getting even more worked up. She sensed her friends giving her confused looks at her outburst. She tried her best to ignore them. “Your soulmate- Your soulmate is the other half of your soul! Without them, you’re incomplete. How could you not want to find them?”

Again, Sai shrugged.

“I’ve just never been interested in having a romantic relationship. Or any kind of relationship,” Sai said neutrally. He smiled and this time it was kind of infuriating instead of cute. “If it happens, it happens but I don’t particularly want to seek it out.”

“Isn’t it your destiny though?” Ino pressed. “To find your true love?”

“I thought you’d given up on that stuff,” Choji commented idly as he placed some new pieces of meat on the grill, “since you haven’t felt anything through your soulbond in years.”

Something inside Ino snapped. “Well, you’re just as far behind as me, fatso!”

In hindsight, that probably wasn’t the best move but getting the restaurant destroyed by Choji’s Human Boulder was worth it to escape that conversation. _________

It was well after the war had ended by the time the village’s Intelligence Division summoned Sai to lock up the members of the Seven Swordsmen that he’d sealed. 

The village was recovering well but the months after the end of the war had been chaotic. There were far too many things more important to worry about than who’d sealed their enemies and where their bodies were so Fuguki Suikazan and Jinin Akebino’s scrolls just ended up sitting in Sai’s apartment. It was only when someone from the Third Division was retelling the war story that everyone remembered they hadn’t given the sealed bodies to the Intelligence Division. Sai hadn’t really thought it was important but apparently it was important enough for the Hokage to send Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji running to his apartment in the middle of the day to retrieve them.

“I can’t believe you had these things just lying around for a whole year. What a drag…” Shikamaru complained as the shinobi carried the two scrolls through the front doors of the Analysis Division’s building. Between the four of them, it was a bit awkward but they were managing. Sai was surprised he and Lee had been able to carry these things around on the battlefield. Right now, they seemed so heavy. “I wish I’d known Intel involved so much running around before I joined…”

“Aw, you like it,” Choji said cheerfully. It went unsaid that Ino and Shikamaru were working in the Intelligence Division because there was no one else to fill their fathers’ shoes but Sai heard it in his voice. “And all this running around gives us the chance to see our friends more often!”

“You don’t even work here. You can see our friends whenever you want!” Ino groaned as they began heading into the underground storage unit. “Slow down guys, I don’t really want to fall down the stairs in front of all these Jonin. But he’s right, Sai. It’s nice seeing you. It feels like it’s been forever.”

Sai hummed in agreement and tried his best to convey the joy he got from seeing his friends again. After seeing Shin again and mastering the Crouched Tiger Bullet, it came a lot easier to him but years of underusing his facial expressions made it less than natural. “Indeed. Where are we putting these?”

Everyone looked to Shikamaru. The boy didn’t seem fazed. “These guys are dead, right? We should transfer them to body scrolls. Easier for the Analysis Team to… analyze them or whatever whenever they decide to. You know how to use that kind of sealing, right Sai?”

Sai nodded as they reached the bottom of the stairwell. “I do.”

“Great,” Shikamaru grunted as the group reached the bottom of the stairs and dropped the heavy scrolls on the concrete floor. “Ugh, do they really need to be this big?”

“It’s a difficult sealing jutsu. It requires a lot of ink.”

“Yeah, yeah. Come on, let’s start unrolling this thing. Sai, there are some body scrolls over by the storage unit. Go grab whatever one you think will work best.”

Sai nodded and did as he was told, drifting off to the edges of the basement in search of the right tools. He wasn’t terribly experienced in any kind of sealing jutsu other than his own and he took his time finding a compatible scroll but after a couple minutes, he realized Team Asuma’s usual bickering had died down and the three had fallen into an unusual silence. Concerned, he stuck his head out of the storage area to check on them. “Are you alright?”

“Sai… Come here please,” Ino said in an unusual tone. Sai frowned. Her pale green eyes were fixed on something on the ground. Was something wrong with his seal? Had one of the Swordsmen somehow escaped? They were dead so it wouldn’t be the end of the world but it would be kind of a hassle to track down the body.

He stepped into the entry area and saw nothing out of the ordinary. One of the scrolls, Fuguki’s scroll, was unraveled, exposing the seal work and the swordsman's trapped form. Shikamaru, Ino, and Choji were just… staring at it? Sai couldn’t fathom why. Maybe they thought this method of sealing was immoral? It really wasn’t different from any other kind of sealing. Was the sight of the body on the page unsettling them?

“Sai, what is this?” Choji said in an uncharacteristically empty voice. 

Sai took a few steps to join them beside the scroll. He peered at it, trying to see anything that was out of place or didn’t belong. Fuguki was still there, held in by his sealing tiger’s sharp claws. Was his sword in there? No, no it wasn’t. They’d returned the Seven Swords to the Hidden Cloud a while ago. He remembered because that was when Choji had realized he and that girl Karui were soulmates. It’d been a whole thing. “I don’t see anything wrong.”

Ino held up her marked arm and Sai suddenly realized what was happening here.

“...Oh.”

“Oh? Oh?! That’s all you have to say?” Shikamaru practically shouted, taking an angry step toward him. “Ino- she- You saw her soulmark the day you met us. Why didn’t you say anything? Do you know how long she- Are you really that heartless?”

Sai flinched at his words. He didn’t mean to but he couldn’t help it. Regaining some level of emotion also meant losing some of his composure. He hoped the others hadn’t noticed but he wasn’t the hopeful type. “I…”

Choji put a hand on Shikamaru’s shoulder. He looked just as upset as his friend but Choji was too gentle and kind-hearted to take out his anger on anyone. And for that, Sai was eternally grateful. “Shikamaru, maybe we should go. Shouldn’t this kind of thing be between soulmates?”

Shikamaru looked like he wanted to argue but he shook himself and took a deep breath to calm down. Sai knew Shikamaru could get scary when he wanted to and hurting his friend definitely put Sai in danger of becoming a victim of his intellect. Thank the sages for Choji or Sai was fairly certain he’d have a Shadow Stitch aimed at his head right now.

“Just… Just talk to her, man,” Shikamaru sighed tiredly, sounding several times his age, and turned to head back up the stairs, Choji trailing behind him. Sai half expected him to turn around to give him some kind of warning or threat not to mess this up and hurt his teammate but he didn’t. He just kept walking until it was just him and Ino. Alone. In a basement. With a dead rogue-ninja and a tiger staring at them. Not really the best setting for a heart to heart.

The two didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just pale green eyes boring into inky black. What was there to say? What was someone supposed to say when they found their soulmate? What if it should have been obvious they were soulmates from the start and one hadn’t said anything? What was someone who never wanted a soulmate supposed to do when his soulmate so clearly longed for one? Sai had so many questions and the answers to none.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Ino asked, breaking the silence.

“I didn’t know.”

“Don’t give me that.”

It was true, in a sense. He really didn’t know. Sai had recognized the tiger when he saw it for the first time but only in the back of his mind. He was far from a master of emotions and farther from a master of his jutsu. Was the jutsu really even his then? It didn’t feel like it so maybe he didn’t recognize the mark on Ino’s arm as his own. 

Still, it was his art style. He’d recognized it immediately and always would. His art was such a big part of him and he didn’t dream of denying it so that couldn’t have been it. And it couldn’t be his lack of emotions because he wasn’t really lacking them, they were just suppressed. As guilty as it made him feel, it was very possible the truth was just that he didn’t want a soulmate. That he didn’t want to know what the universe had planned for him when it came to love.

“It just never occurred to me.”

Sai wasn’t lying but Ino didn’t seem to believe him. No one ever believed him. Not when it came to soulmates. But he wanted Ino to understand so he tried again.

“Remember when we met? When I said I didn’t want to look for my soulmate?”

Ino snorted and put her hands on her hips. “You didn’t need to look. She was right in front of you.”

Okay, he walked right into that one. “I wasn’t thinking about that. I would’ve said that to anyone.”

“Why?” Ino asked, her voice cracking. Sai noticed for the first time that her eyes were glossy. He felt… something. He couldn’t quite identify what it was yet but he knew it was a bad feeling. He couldn’t bring himself to feel sorry though. “I’ve always wanted to meet my soulmate, even before I really understood what my mark meant. I can’t imagine not wanting to find the one person who’s meant to love you unconditionally.”

That made Sai hesitate. He’d never heard it phrased that way particularly. It was making him doubt himself. Why had she said that? She didn’t know how much Sai struggled when it came to maintaining friendships or how lonely he’d been all those years after Shin died. She had no idea how rocky his relationship with love was or how much he craved it. She couldn’t fathom how much it pained him knowing it was always out of reach. Or maybe she could, with the soulbond and all. He cleared his throat. “I’m glad I met you and if I have to have a soulmate, I’m glad it’s you.”

“If you have to have one? What, do you wish you didn’t have one?”

“Sometimes.” Ino’s face dropped but Sai recovered quickly. “I think soulmates are wonderful but I’ve just felt like they’re for me, I suppose.”

“Are you one of those people who believe we should shape our own destiny?”

“No. Yes. Maybe? I don’t know.”

Ino laughed a bit and it sounded fond rather than angry. It gave Sai a spike of confidence. He smiled bashfully. 

“My apologies. I’m not very… articulate when it comes to how I feel. I’ve really only reconnected with my emotions since the war ended,” Sai admitted. Ino opened her mouth but Sai stopped her before she could say what he knew she was going to say. “And my emotional struggles have nothing to do with how I feel about having a soulmate. I think. I remember talking about it with my brother before…”

Something flashed in Ino’s eyes. “Your brother died when you were ten?”

Sai nodded. “You felt it through the soulbond?”

“And nothing after it,” Ino replied with a nod, “until the war. Probably when you saw him again.”

Sai looked down. “...I cried. I hadn’t cried since he died the first time.”

Ino made a sympathetic noise. Sai wasn’t really sure if it made him feel comforted or patronized. Ino seemed to sense he didn’t want to talk about it and that was probably for the better. “So you’ve talked about it with him? How you feel about soulmates?”

“Having a soulmate,” Sai corrected. How he felt about soulmates versus how he felt about having a soulmate were very different. “And yes. I didn’t know I had a soulmark until he told me. But… He never really understood. He was a romantic. I don’t think he really knew that some people just weren’t like that.”

“Like what?”

Sai’s face furrowed with frustration as he tried to find words. “I… I know love. I love my brother. I love Naruto. And Sakura. And maybe Sasuke. I love Kakashi-senpai and Captain Yamato. I love my art and my books. And I love… you. And I know what I feel is real. I think I’ve always felt it, even when I thought I didn’t have emotions and before I knew you were my soulmate. I like being with you but I don’t love you like Shikamaru loves Temari or like Sakura loves Sasuke. Is that okay?”

Sai hadn’t realized he was looking down until Ino took his hands, startling him into looking up at her. She looked a bit sad but not disappointed or angry. She offered him a gentle smile. “Yeah, it’s definitely okay, Sai. I mean, this isn’t really what I expected meeting my soulmate to be like but I’m glad it’s you. I don’t think I’ll mind missing out on some romantic fantasy if it means I get to be with you. If that’s what you want.”

Slowly, Sai nodded and curled his fingers around hers. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to give you a romantic fantasy but I hope I can still make you happy. I want to see where this goes.”

_______________

Two years passed and Ino knew she and Sai weren’t really in a relationship.

They did couples things sometimes. They went out together fairly regularly. They ate at nice restaurants and went on quiet walks through the village. Sai sometimes slept over at her house and she sometimes slept at his apartment. Sai went with her to Naruto and Hinata’s wedding. And Shikamaru and Temari’s wedding. And Sasuke and Sakura’s. And Choji and Karui’s... There was a shocking number of weddings recently.

It was never romantic though. Their “dates” often had a few tag-alongs or didn’t seem all that different from what friends normally did. Sleeping together was never anything more than sleeping. She could count the number of times they’d just shared the bed on one hand. And they never slow danced at the weddings. Their friends didn’t even acknowledge they were together. Maybe they didn’t know. Or maybe they did and just thought they were just having fun with each other until they met their real soulmates. That was a depressing thought.

Ino tried not to let it bother her. She really liked Sai, that never changed, and she enjoyed all the things they did together. It was fun. Maybe even more fun than it would be with someone else since there weren’t any expectations and there weren’t dozens of eyes watching everything they did. Still, part of her longed to have the future she’d always expected. She tried to ignore the part of her before it became too much to keep inside.

But as a clan head, she couldn’t ignore it forever.

She was in some Yamanaka-Nara-Akimichi Clan meeting when it came up. Normally these meetings were uneventful, just a bunch of clan elders hooting about babies and food or whatever, so Ino had been zoning out while they bickered and shuffled papers around the table. But with Shikamaru and Choji both married, she should have expected it.

“...so that brings us to the issue of heirs,” an elder said, snapping Ino’s attention back to the meeting.

All eyes in the room immediately fell on her. She sat up a bit straighter. “What?”

“The Nara Clan head and Akimichi Clan heir have already found their partners and are close to securing their clans’ futures,” the elder went on. Her name was… Ino wanted to say Chizo? Wait, no. That was an Akimichi name. Chizo was that one over there with her hand deep in a plate of cookies. This was a Yamanaka. What was her name? Ino couldn’t remember for the life of her. “The Yamanaka Clan on the other hand…”

“You think I can’t lead the clan on my own?”

Another elder made a noncomitmental noise. This one’s name was Ezume, Ino was pretty sure. Or maybe Ezuko? Either way, he was a Nara. She knew that much. By the sages, she really should know her own clan elders’ names. She’d known them all her life. How was she this bad with names? It was like she’d gotten worse over the years. “We know your capabilities, Ino, but every clan head must have a husband or wife to help shoulder the responsibilities of leading the clan and bring life to the next generation.”

Ino could practically feel Shikamaru and Choji making faces behind her. The elders were trying to be nice about it but they were basically telling them their wives only mattered to bear children for them and keep some stress off their shoulders. If the clans’ stability didn’t rely on the elders so much, Ino would’ve dragged Temari and Karui in here to speak their minds and slap some sense into them years ago.

The Yamanaka elder was speaking again. Ino wanted to say her name was Fumiko but she was pretty sure she was just thinking about her cousin Fū. They looked kind of similar. What ever happened to him? She hadn’t seen him in years. “You’ve had plenty of time to search for your soulmate. If you haven’t found him, we will choose-”

“Ino’s found her soulmate,” Shikamaru interrupted. His voice dull and bored but his eyes were sharp and telling. Ino wanted to punch him but he was out of reach and she didn’t think the elders would appreciate it much.

“Oh?” the elder, Chizo this time, said, looking interested.

“I’ve heard nothing of this,” another Yamanaka spoke up, sounding annoyed. This one was named Haneen, or at least Ino was pretty sure. Close enough. Ino would consider that a win if she wasn’t struggling to think of a response.

“Uh…”

The elders looked displeased. “Why have we heard nothing of this?”

“Um…. 

Ino looked to Shikamaru and Choji for help but they were already making a break for the door, the traitorous bastards. She turned back to the elders’ angry faces, swallowed away her uneasiness, and steeled herself for the inevitable discomfort that was coming her way. ___________________

Sai was coming back from a mission with Naruto, Sakura, Sasuke, Kakashi and Yamato when he saw Shikamaru and Choji barreling towards him with panic on their faces.

“We didn’t do it!” Naruto yelped immediately, practically springing away from them. “Tell Granny Tsunade it was just part of the mission!”

The two skidded to a stop and Naruto was met with confusion. “What?” 

“...Are you not coming from the Hokage’s office?”

“...No? We were just at a clan meeting. What were you doing?”

“Nothing!”

Sasuke shook his head and sighed while Sakura pinched her brow in exasperation. Sai and Yamato glanced at Kakashi then shared a deadpan look. Naruto really was an idiot sometimes. The Sixth Hokage was standing right next to them. Tsunade was finding out no matter what Shikamaru and Choji heard from them.

Sakura, always the most polite of the bunch, offered Shikamaru and Choji a smile. “Ignore them. Did you need us for something? Do I need to be at the hospital? Or did Kakashi-sensei lose some important paperwork again?”

“If it was really important they wouldn’t let me lose it,” Kakashi piped up lazily.

“We actually came here for Sai,” Choji spoke up. For once, he didn’t have his trusty bag of potato chips in hand. And Ino wasn’t there. That was concerning.

“Is something wrong?”

“Kind of,” Shikamaru said, looking a bit guilty as he scratched the back of his head. “So… I may or may not have told our clan elders that you and Ino are soulmates and they may or may not start harassing you about marrying her.”

Shikamaru spoke quickly and quietly and it took Sai a moment to realize what he was saying. Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, however, didn’t seem to have the same problem.

“You and Ino are soulmates?!” the three screeched in unison.

“I… Yes?” Sai’s head swiveled to look at them in surprise. “You didn’t know?”

“How would we know?” Sakura asked. “Neither of you ever told us!”

“You’ve seen both our soulmarks.”

“Soulmarks are confusing!” Naruto exclaimed and Sai realized he probably should’ve known better than to expect Naruto to connect the dots. He and Hinata practically had the same soulmark, just in different colors, and it’d still taken them years to figure it out.

“We went together to your weddings.”

“I thought you two were just going as friends,” Sasuke admitted and he wasn’t exactly wrong. 

That made Sai hesitate. Were they friends? Or were they dating? How was he supposed to remember where they’d been in the relationship all that time ago?

“I’ve spent so much time with just the two of you,” Sakura said. “Are you saying I was third-wheeling on your dates?”

“I mean… No?”

“Wait, Ino’s soulmark is on her arm. Did you know since you met her after our first mission? Have you been dating since then?”

“No.” That was a question Sai could answer confidently. Kind of. Oh by the sages, he really didn’t know what he and Ino were doing, was he?

Sasuke opened his mouth to continue pressing him but Kakashi put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him before he could begin. “You five run along. I’d like to talk to Sai alone. Yamato, make sure they don’t destroy anything. Any more than it’s already been destroyed, at least.”

“No promises,” Yamato said drily and began ushering the younger ninja away from the former ANBU. “Come on, let’s get something to eat.”

“I want ramen!”

“I want barbecue!”

“Ramen!”

“Barbecue!” 

“That’s literally all we eat! Can’t you two pick something else?”

Sai watched the group walk away, bickering until they were out of sight, before turning his attention back to Kakashi. The man was watching him with a peculiar look in his eye that Sai didn’t understand. He waited for him to say something but Kakashi remained silent and the seconds soon stretched into minutes.

“Let’s take a walk,” Kakashi said eventually and Body Flickered onto the rooftops. Sai followed him without missing a beat.

“Why did you want to talk to me, senpai?” Sai said once it became clear Kakashi wasn’t going to say something first.

“You looked stressed when Shikamaru said the clan might suggest you and Ino getting married. It takes a lot to get a reaction out of you,” Kakashi said nonchalantly. “I just want you to know you can talk to me if you need someone.”

“I don’t know if there’s really anything to say.” That wasn’t really true but after explaining himself to Shin, and his teammates, and Ino, and Ino’s teammates, Sai had accepted he didn’t really have the vocabulary to express how he felt. But it never stopped him from trying. “I’ve never wanted romance. I like what I have with Ino but it isn’t romance. Everyone expects us to… be like every other soulmate. Be in love, get married, have kids. I’m not really opposed to marrying her but I don’t really want to. The only reason we would is for clan politics. Marriage is supposed to be this ceremony of love and I just don’t… I don’t really feel what everyone else is feeling.”

“Because of your time in ROOT?”

That question was expected but Sai tried not to let it bother him. He was not successful. “I don’t know. Maybe but I don’t think so.”

“Is it a lack of attraction?”

“What?” 

That was such a strange question but Kakashi didn’t really seem to understand Sai’s confusion. “Is it a lack of attraction?”

“I don’t… I suppose she’s attractive.” Sai never really thought about her that way but he knew other people thought she was. He’d been hearing it for so long that he believed it. But were those his own feelings or just the influence of others? He remembered wanting to call her ugly when they met but he thought everyone was ugly so he’d called her gorgeous because he thought she’d like it. And he just kept doing it. He’d done it so much that it’d just stuck with him and he’d forgotten the origin of the nickname. By the sages, was every compliment he’d given her the offspring of a lie?

Surprisingly, a look of understanding spread across Kakashi’s masked features. “So you aren’t attracted to her?”

“I just said she’s attractive.”

“That isn’t the same as being attracted to her.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A few years ago, Master Jiraiya gave me this book he’d written that was rejected by his publishers,” Kakashi began and Sai didn’t really know where he was going with this. “You know he writes romances, right? Well, he got this piece of criticism that said if you’re going to write about love and relationships, you need to understand that it’s not all romantic. Or sexual. You can imagine how confused Jiraiya was.”

Sai was kind of lost but he nodded along anyway.

“So he did some research. And not the kind of research he normally does. He actually talked to anthropologists and professors from different nations, I think. He wrote a character that didn’t experience romantic or sexual attraction. She still knew love and could appreciate a pretty face but she knew she wasn’t quite experiencing what everyone else was feeling.” Kakashi paused. “The word for not experiencing romantic attraction is aromantic. The word for not experiencing sexual attraction is asexual. They’re not really common words, it took Jiraiya a long time to come across them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you hadn’t heard them…”

Kakashi trailed off and Sai’s brain tried to catch up. Sexual attraction? Romantic attraction? They were different? Romantic feelings were supposed to be connected by some kind of desire? Desire to do what? That just sounded really weird. Sai had never heard someone phrase it that way yet it made sense in the most confusing way. “So… wanting to have a romantic relationship has to do with attraction?”

Kakashi shrugged. “Beats me. I’ve never felt that way. I didn’t actually know I’m asexual or aromantic until I read the book and I saw myself in that character.”

“You’re like me?” Sai said in surprise. Almost instantly, his world felt a bit brighter. Like everything was grey and he was seeing color for the first time.

Kakashi nodded. “You know Guy’s my soulmate?”

“Really?” That was actually really shocking but both men covered themselves at pretty much all times, leaving no room for a soulmark to peak out, so there was no way Sai ever would’ve seen either of their soulmarks. Maybe there was a reason for that. Probably not. “I thought you two were just friends.”

“We are, in a way, but we’re also more than that,” Kakashi said, slowing down a bit to try to find the right words. “Guy and I tried to have a relationship when we realized we’re soulmates but it didn’t really work. Guy prefers women and I’m not even sure if he likes men like that. We haven’t talked about it in awhile. And I never really liked anyone that way. But once I heard the words aromantic and asexual, I felt whole. Like I could explain my feelings and I wasn’t missing anything. I didn’t feel broken anymore. After I told him, it was like everything started making sense.”

“Are you two still together?”

Kakashi nodded. “Things got a lot easier when we gave up… The word Jiraiya used in his notes was amatonormativity. That’s kind of like, um, the belief that romantic and sexual relationships are the peak of human experience and everyone should prioritize those kinds of relationships over everything else. You and Ino don’t have to do what our society expects you to do. You can just do whatever feels right.”

Sai nodded slowly. Ino had mentioned once that it felt freeing to not necessarily follow the traditional route of dating but they’d still always felt that pressure to act like a couple. It felt like a huge weight being lifted off his chest to hear that it was okay to do just be. And the fact someone he knew and respected thought it was normal and even encouraged it was priceless.

He opened his mouth to thank the other man but his throat suddenly swelled shut and all that came out was a choking noise. It surprised him, he’d never felt enough emotion for him to be rendered unable to speak. Kakashi looked surprised as well but his eyes soon crinkled with fondness. 

“Go to her, Sai.”

Sai was already moving.

____________________

Ino wasn’t expecting to find Sai waiting at her front door when she got home from getting drilled by her elders at the clan meeting.

It looked like he’d been there for awhile. He’d taken out a piece of charcoal and began doodling on her doorstep. It was rather beautiful but she knew she’d have to hose it off sooner or later unless she wanted dusty footprints tracked through her house. He seems pretty focused on his drawing but not enough that he didn’t jump up in surprise at the sound of his soulmate approaching.

“We don’t have to get married!” he blurted out upon her arrival. The piece of charcoal fell out of his hand and cracked on the cement.

“Um, okay,” Ino said slowly. “Really weird thing to say at the beginning of a conversation, Sai, but okay…”

Sai at least had the decency to look a bit embarrassed and hurried to explain himself. “Shikamaru and Choji told you about your meeting.”

“Oh.” Ino felt the muscles in her shoulders tense up. By the sages, that meeting really had been hell. “And…?”

“Apparently my teammates didn’t know we were soulmates. Sakura might be coming here to yell at you soon, by the way,” Sai told her and it took Ino a moment to fully process what he was saying. Had they really not known? Sakura was her best friend. Ino talked to her about Sai all the time. And Naruto had seemed pretty happy when they told him they were going to his wedding together. And Sasuke had a Sharingan for crying out loud! He really should’ve noticed. Sai didn’t really seem concerned about it though. “But that’s not important. I talked with Kakashi and…”

Sai cut himself off, his excitement fading as doubt overtook him. Ino took his hands, ignoring all the charcoal dust on them, and offered an encouraging smile. “And?”

“I think… I think I’m aromantic. And asexual,” Sai told her and he smiled. It wasn’t his usual awkward smile though. He looked genuinely relieved and maybe even a little bit happy. “Apparently some people don’t have romantic feelings at all. There’s a word for it. Aromantic. I think- I think that’s me. I still care about you and I like being with you but Kakashi told me being aromantic is normal and it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me or that the universe made a mistake making us soulmates. It just means we can- We can just be us. Sai and Ino. And Sai and Ino don’t have to listen to anything anyone tells us to do. And that means we don’t have to get married. Unless you want to…?”

Ino watched Sai’s face carefully as it flashed between excitement, awkwardness, nervousness, and joy. She’d never seen him express so many feelings, let alone all together in such a short period of time. It was cute. And endearing. Especially when he stumbled over his words like this. By the sages, she loved him. And now she knew he loved her, even if it wasn’t the way she loved him. She was okay with that though. She was definitely okay with that. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Screw tradition. Forget the clan,” Ino said, breaking into a smile as she put her arms around Sai’s shoulders so she could look up into his eyes. “I like what we have. I don’t care if it’s not what I thought I’d grow up to have or if it’s not what my family wants for me. I just want to be with you and it doesn’t matter if we’re friends, lovers, neither, or something between.”

Sai’s smile grew and he just looked so happy. “We’re soulmates.”

“Yeah. That’s what we are. We’re soulmates.”

More AroWriMo Fics By Me, Posted on Ao3, Posted on FFN

#Aro Writing Month 2021 #arowrimo #aromantic writing month 2021 #oneshot #fanfiction #naruto #naruto: shippuden #saino #sai #sai (naruto) #ino #ino yamanaka #yamanaka ino #soulmate au #soulmates #soulmarks #soulbonds #aromantic soulmate au #aro sai #ace sai #aromantic sai #asexual sai #aroace sai #aromantic character #asexual character #asexual #aromantic #aspec #asexuality #aromanticism

[hellzyeahwebwielingessays]

Lets debunk the BS from this. Up top a lot of this BS comes from Bob Chipman/MovieBob who is the guy who if you recall said:

-         Superheroes like Superman (and thus by extension Spider-Man who marry civilians were jerks for putting their spouses through the same stuff soldiers’ spouses go through

-         Spider-Man appeals best to teens (even though he provably doesn’t since most people get into him before their teens and he appealed to college students in his heyday)

-         The Spider-Marriage was nothing more than a forced publicity stunt

-         Sins Past is worse than OMD

-         Spider-Man is about passive aggressive power

-         And the best one, ever since OMD Peter and MJ had become ‘more interesting’

That all being said lets dive into this:

Someone asked the panel what a queer reading would add to the character of Miles…Jesus…that’s just the greatest sign of hope for this podcast isn’t it? Shoot me now…

Miles was not 3 dimensional when he was created. Even if you disagree it is nonsense to say that Peter wasn’t  three dimensional when he was first created. Just look at how much Stan explored Peter’s psychology in this singular panel from ASM #50

Look at that. Peter Parker pulled between the two sides of his life. Making a judgement of someone. But then calling out his own judgement of them and acknowledging maybe he’s in the wrong.

This was 1967!

That isn’t three dimensional?

Additionally other people would disagree that Peter wasn’t three dimensional early on.

And even if you disagree with that it’s nonsense to say he hasn’t SINCE become three dimensional or that retaining his origin story (which Miles broadly uses as the basis for his story in every version of his character) somehow holds him back from being three dimensional. If nothing else Peter was at least multifaceted for the time period.

Spider-Man wasn’t an example of stories about a 15 year old made for 7 year olds. Spider-Man was intended to be a senior in AF #15 and the stories were written by Stan for at worst an older audience but at best basically just for him.

Stan Lee confirmed that AF #15 was written not as a one off but as something that if successful COULD become an on-going series.

Its BS to say Peter makes no sense as a character because he makes sense about as much as any character within the confines of the superhero genre can. MILES doesn’t somehow make more sense whatsoever.

No. Spider-Man wasn’t merely a thrown together ‘hey here is a teenage superhero story with a downer ending’ it was a story about selfishness, responsibility and appealed via it’s relative normalcy and lack of idealization of the superhero protagonist.

The psychology and thematic idea of his exclusive powers (invisibility+venom blast) is the same…how? How is disappearing and repelling people the same thing? They keep saying that in the podcast as though it’s obvious and it’s really not

Great Power=Great responsibility isn’t Peter’s catch phrase it’s the philosophy underpinning everything he does

‘The young end millennials have been thrown under the bus by society so the optimism is reserved for the young end millenials like Miles and Gwen’ oh but also ‘you need 5-10 years added to each character to have this make sense and also Spide-Ham doesn’t quit fit’…So…the theory doesn’t  make sense then does it. Also, what optimism is there for teen millenials in the late 2010s? We are all shit scared Global warming needs to be fixed within the next 10-20 years. The young end millenials will not be in much of a position to do that. Maybe not the high-end millenials either. The power rests in older Gen Xers or even older generations. So this ‘generational’ theory is bullshit. Yeah, Miles as the next generation maybe makes sense but not when you apply real world concepts of who the different generations are. Especially considering that’s made up bullshit anyway.

‘Blah blah blah for most of my life I’ve been uninterested in Spider-Man because I’ve believed him to be WHITE MALE teenaged wish fulfilment.’…*internally groans*…oh boy…this woman is one of those  types huh. Frankly I, and I would advocate others too, take a salt shaker with them whenever they hear someone say something like this. But more importantly Spider-Man is seriously NOT what she describes. For starters Peter was a senior in high school when he began and shouldered adult responsibilities when his father died. That’s wish fulfilment? That’s a BURDEN. The reason that spoke to so many people was because he was just different and because his imperfections made him more relatable. The whiteness idea is also bullshit since he was intentionally or otherwise subtextually Jewish and has spoken to countless people of all colours across the generations. He very particularly has a HUGE following among African Americans which was partially what prompted the creation of Miles Morals in the first place!  Shit, the showrunner for the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon was black for God’s sake. Many of the head honcho creators for ITSV were people of colour who were clearly MASSIVE Spider-Man fans!

‘As a woman Spider-Man didn’t resonate with me’. Spider-Man is male. And he acts in ways a male would in the context of the situations. But the character as a whole, in his deepest themes and concepts, is a universal character. He does and has spoken to people across race, gender, sex, sexuality, class, culture and generations. Spider-Girl, Mayday Parker, was her father’s daughter and far more similar than different to him. She spoke to male and female readers. Peter Parker himself has had female fans since his inception. There is no end of female fans here on tumblr or in other online spaces that are the proof of this, to say nothing of old letters pages.

Miles feels more like a real kid and fits together better than most other versions of Peter Parker?...how? I don’t like USM the comic but hwo the fuck do you take that, Spec Spidey, the 1994 cartoon and the Raimi movies (that MovieBob adores btw) and say ‘it doesn’t fit together properly like Miles’. Dude, Comic Book Miles Morales is a teenager in New York who goes to a bordering school for scientifically gifted kids and yet is supposed to be an everyman. That fits together well? He risked his life before  being motivated to do so which is how most 13 year old woudn’t  have acted. Then he feels guilty about Peter dying but his BFF explains it’s not his fault and he accepts this but then goes on to become Spider-Man anyway. And somehow this equates to guilt+responsibility. THAT’s better put together? His character got web-shooters two different ways by the same writer and the guy he was a legacy to was resurrected within like 3 years of Miles’ debut. That’s well put together? This makes more sense and is more believable than a kid who’s Dad dies because he didn’t use his gifts altruistically, so he spends his whole life striving to use them altruistically?

Blah blah blah MovieBob spewing more shit about how Peter is a teenage wish fulfilment power fantasy even though he clearly isn’t from a modern POV and REALLY wasn’t in the early 1960s.

By extension arguing Peter is an adult male’s retroactive teenaged wish fulfilment fantasy of working stuff out is so plainly wrong. Peter Parker in the early 1960s didn’t have everything figured out. The whole world was against him totally unfairly. He needed Aunt May or the Human Torch at times to give him pep talks. His social life was barely existent! You wanna see a middle aged man’s retroactive young wish fulfilment fantasy? Go read Brand New Day, which MovieBob claims was superior to the pre-OMD era. What is the wish fulfilment here? That attractive young women like him? Is that it? That one thing vs. all the horrible shit beating Peter down?

Bob claims there was a lot more Steve Ditko in the early issues of his run compared to Stan Lee because Peter was very angry. First of all Ditko was such a private person claiming he was definitely angry and that the anger was all him is a MASSIVE speculation. Especially considering Stan wrote Spidey as angry plenty after Ditko left. More importantly, Peter wasn’t  angry in the early Ditko issues except for maybe issue #8. He had his moments sure, but it wasn’t at all consistent. He wasn’t raging out or smashing shit like he did later  in Ditko’s run. He was more anxious and neurotic in those early issues which is comparatively closer to how Stan and Romita handled Peter in their earliest issues together. Peter and the whole world of Spidey got angrier towards the end  of Ditko’s run. You know when Stan was letting Steve plot stuff more and more…It’s almost like Bob is full of shit or something

Bob tries to claim by the time ITSV was being written the kinks in Miles’ character had been worked out in the comics. Nah fam. If anything they’d been exacerbated. In reality it was the ITSV writers who took the wonky early Miles character and worked out those kinks themselves, creating an overall superior rendition of the character. A viewpoint I am not alone in.

‘The Prowler has never been a particularly noteworthy villain in the comics’ That’s because he’s not  a villain. He was kind of a villain in his debut but he very quickly became an ally to Spidey

The panel then get into a very pretentious discussion about how ITSV preaches you arne’t stapled to your origin, you are not your trauma. That claiming that is pretentious ala Zack Snyder. But like…isn’t that the POINT of super hero origins? That they contextualize everything about the heroes thereafter? Isn’t carrying his trauma with everything they do practically the point of Batman and Spider-Man’s origins; you know the 2 most popular heroes? Uncle Ben’s death IS stapled to Spider-Man because it underlines everything he ever does. Shit it doesn’t even make sense when applied to Miles in ITSV. He does what he does because his Spider-Man died and then so did his uncle. There is even a whole scene in his dorm room where each Spider-Hero relays the grief that shaped their own lives. I’m not saying you need death and tragedy to be Spider-Man. But that’s neither a bad thing nor something that ISN’T applicable to Peter nor ITSV Miles. Aren’t these idiots supposed to be film buffs? How do you screw up such a basic reading like that?

One of the pundits claimed the movie preaches acting heroically in spite of your tragedies not because of them. Again though…that’ not Spider-Man. Peter is a hero specifically because his uncle died. Miles endeavours to become Spider-Man because his Peter died. His Uncle Aaron’s death further fuels him and allows him to make to final leap of faith. Yes, Peter B. continues to be a hero in spite of his failings but it is only his experiences with Miles that make that possible.

‘They don’t need the tragedies to be heroic they are already heroic in their own right. Look, I don’t disagree with that more broadly. Mayday Parker didn’t need tragedy to be a hero. But in terms of the specific characters in this movie? That’s clearly not true:

This whole ‘in spite of tragedy’ shit is so pre-Marvel DC comics it hurts. Heroes who just innately do the right thing because it is the right thing to do is a dated and archaic invention Spidey and the other Marvel heroes were reacting against.

‘Spider-Man Noir detracted from the film’s message of diversity because he was a brooding WHITE MAN who prowled the night to enact fist based justice!!!!’ Do I even need to say anything to that? First of all literally every hero in the movie enacts fist based justice. Why does Noir operating at night make him worse than Peter B? Why does him being male make that worse than Peni or Gwen? Why does him being white make that worse than Miles or Peni? And as for detracting from the message of diversity, shockingly diversity can be found within the same ethnic or gender group. You know white/male people aren’t a monolith and all that. Plus creatively you want PERSONALITY diversity more than anything else. In this movie in particular you want shorthand conceptual differences too. ‘Spider-Man but an anime mech girl’ ‘Spider-Man but a noir character’. ‘Spider-Man but a cartoon pig’. This is how asinine this disgusting modern day mentality is.

Wow…MovieBob defending Noir from the asinine comment. I’m genuinely surprised. Too bad he doesn’t use the most obvious defence of ‘that is obviously a ridiculous statement to make you moron’

The next topic of discussion was related to Marvel moving away from Gwen as Spider-Man’s dead girlfriend. I spoke a lot about Bob’s ice cold take on that in this post.

He claims they introduced Spider-Gwen because the idea would be taboo and thus would get people talking. HA! Spider-Gwen was done as just a general idea not something to spark controversy. It wouldn’t even BE controversial. Marvel brought back a version of Gwen within 2 years of her death. They brought her back again 15 years after her death. They brought her back again 22 years after her death along with other versions who melted because it was the Clone Saga. During and after all those times they had AUs of Gwen in What If, Age of Apocalypse, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane and other such stuff. An explicitly AU of Gwen Stacy in 2014 was one of the most aggressively uncontroversial  things you could do.

Gwen’s ballet shoes differentiate her from every other Spider-Man ever. I mean yes in terms of being a dancer I suppose but in terms of being dedicated and studious, training hard and earning immense physical control? There have been plenty of versions of Spider-Man pre-2018 who are like that.

The only way you can make Spider-Gwen work going forward is by not tying it to her death in the canon? Boy…too God damn bad her debut and origin is entirely built upon that. Her origin in the comics and in the movies is built  upon a role reversal because it is Peter who dies to motivate her. Film audiences would’ve still grasped that role reversal because it was only 4 years ago Emma Stone’s highly popular rendition of the character died. And that was in the last pre-MCU Spider-Man movie to boot!

‘The only Iron Man story anyone cared about was Demon in a Bottle’ Actually they only cared about that story and Armor Wars. But yeah, the MCU version is lesser for neither having his alcoholism nor a crippling heart condition. The mere fact people became complacent about that doesn’t mean it wasn’t reductive.

‘These are fictional characters they need to grow and change with the times to remain popular’ Gwen Stacy sucked shit in the 1960s-1970s and was then killed off and defined by her death. Somehow she still  wound up becoming a fan favourite by the 90s and 21st century. Spider-Gwen sucks as a character but not in concept. I never had a problem with the concept. But the idea that she needed to exist to keep Gwen popular is bullshit because Gwen had somehow become immensely popular in spite of being a nothing character. And that even presumes anyone needed to perform maintenance on Gwen to keep her popular. No we didn’t. She was an irrelevant character beyond her death. It’s like saying we need to change Uncle Ben or Bruce’s parents to keep them popular.

Gwen’s affect on Peter Parker was important for awhile but we aren’t that society anymore. It’s not a fucking societal concern!  Putting aside how a 2014 movie did Gwen’s death just a few years before ITSV, Gwen’s death is about a universal human experience.  Death, grief, moving on. Oh, I see. This halfwit mistakenly believes Gwen is an example of women in the refrigerator.

Gwen died because Peter had this perfect lovely girlfriend and everything was too great for him and they didn’t know how to write beyond that. An oversimplification. Gwen died because they needed to shake things up for sales in general. Because Conway shipped Peter with MJ. And a 20 year old Spidey in 1973 really was too young to be killed off. Oh and you know she was written like shit. Yeah that’s the part no one ever talks about. Gwen is played up as this underserving victim of a character but she sucked shit.

It’s almost the 2020s! So fucking what? People still lose loved ones in the 2020s? I’m not even saying Spider-Gwen should have died in ITSV or revolved around her counterpart dying. I’m saying this dumbass is wrong for bringing it up as though killing Gwen off is dated on principle. But this is the same moron who unironically said ‘I never connected to Spider-Man because he is a teenaged white male wish fulfilment fantasy’. I’m sure she got top marks in her gender studies class

‘sOme PpL nEEd 2 gEt oVa iTTTTTTT’ I genuinely wish this person would wake up mute someday.

‘We could do a whole movie about Spider-Gwen’. I don’t respect where this opinion is coming from but I don’t necesarilly disag- ‘Get Seanen Maguire to write it’…nevermind. This gets even worse when you consider Maguire had only been writing Gwen for literally 3 issues at the time this podcast was released. Of the back of three issues  you are declaring this writer qualified to write an entire movie about the character? Not even Jason Latour who created her. I smell someone who just jumped on the bandwagon or worse is blinded by agenda and ideology.

‘Gwen could’ve done with 5 more minutes’ It’s not her movie!  It’s Miles’ movie and secondarily Peter B’s movie because he is Miles mentor. It is through their mutual relationship that Miles learns to be Spider-Man and Peter learns to be Spider-Man again.

It never made sense for an 80 year old woman to be raising a 16 year old boy! Aunt May in the 1960s wasn’t in her 80s. She just looked that way because, duh, standards of health were different back then. A 40 year old now looks much younger and in better health than someone who potentially might’ve been born in the 19th century circa 1962! A working class  woman no less…With chronic health problems! Even if she was in her mid-late 50s her looking like that was totally believable in context! And her raising Peter was also entirely believable depending upon how old Ben and May were when Richard and Mary were born. It’s not beyond possibility at all that there was 15-20 years separating Ben and his younger brother, meaning if Peter was born when Richard was 25, Ben and May would’ve been in their 40s. Thus by the time Peter was 15 they’d be in their 50s or 60s.

These idiots keep treating Peter from Miles’ universe as a bona fide version of 616 Peter when it’s blindingly obvious he’s supposed to be an idealized rendition of the character. A version intended to be a juxtaposition to the version we all know walking into the movie.

Peter B. Parker having a more traditional version of Aunt May as opposed to a more proactive and involved version has left him with a sense of giving up. Er…no. It’s pretty obvious Peter B. Parker is the Spider-Man we know and love who normally doesn’t give up but one string of failures after another has brought him to his lowest. But he rises back up again. Look Peter is supposed to be a representation of human beings. Human beings need people and need emotional support. When you lose those people and are alone you can go to a very dark place. That’s Peter B’s story. If Aunt May had been more involved but everything else went wrong (including her death) he’d have still wound up in the dark place he went to. Blonde Peter might’ve weathered May’s death better in theory but he had OTHER stuff in his life to keep him afloat. Peter B lost most everything. What horseshit it is to argue if Aunt May was different he’d have not given up.

There was no purpose for Aunt May being as old as she was or on the cusp of death in the original comics. Er…yeah there was. She was that old because it made her more vulnerable and thus accentuated the loss of her husband and the need for Peter to be her support network. It also internally justified why she was so frail and unwell. Old people usually have health problems. Duh! But then Bob admits there is a reason for those decisions. So he is contradicting himself.

Bob presumes Blonde Peter told Aunt May his secret even though there is no evidence in the movie to support that idea.

Kids today aren’t resentful of their grandparents like older generations were, that’s why Aunt May is played differently now. Um…Peter was never resentful of Aunt May in the first place. He sincerely loved her and felt he needed to pay her back for all she’d done for him.

‘Kids today have cool grandparents because 50% of them would have been hippies.’ Hippies aren’t cool. And never were. They were pretentious losers that hid behind causes as an excuse to do drugs and have lots of sex. Over half a century later the world they claimed to fight for and want to build has yet to materialise and in fact is in a lot of ways far worse off than it was before their generation rose to the seats of power. The hippy generation are part of the baby boomer generation that are so thoroughly mocked today. The people in power who’ve fucked up the job and housing market for consequent generations. These idiots literally spouted a dumbass theory earlier on about how first wave millenials have been thrown under the bus. Who do you think did that? The baby boomers, many of whom used  to be hippies! And NONE of this demands Aunt May has to be different. I have no problem with her being different in ITSV. But the idea of someone who used to be a hippy being doting? Being a worry wart? Why the Hell is that a dated concept?

These idiots clearly view the world aggressively through an identitarian and group weighted lens as opposed to how the world really is. I.e. 7 billion+ individuals

There was a weird amount of focus upon gangsters in the Spec Spidey cartoon considering it was for kids. Not really, the show was reverential of the original comics. The original comics (which were for children) had lots of gangsters

To the people who bitch and moan about getting another Spider-Man it doesn’t take away from the one you had before. No one was complaining about Miles as another Spider-Man in this movie. People weren’t claiming it ruins the Raimi movies or something. People resent it in the comics because it waters down the brand and makes Spider-Man himself less special when he is an ONGOING character. It’d be one thing maybe if the torch was passed from person to person. But nowadays it’s literally all of them co-existing.

Blah blah bah symbolism of a young black boy fighting a big WHITE business MAN. Blah blah blah this is the type of bad guy Miles would fight in real life blah blah blah…Jesus Christ… these people really just buy that type of Kool-aid in bulk don’t they? As if Miles, were he ‘real’ wouldn’t fight anyone who’s doing bad things. FFS they just got done talking about Tombstone from the Spec cartoon. Tombstone is an African American!  And he’s in this fucking movie. He’s not some weird fantastical guy, he’s a regular gangster who happens to be albino. That’s it. Miles fights him in this fucking movie! Miles first major adversary in the comics was the Prowler who was another African American. Miles wouldn’t JUST fight ‘evil white businessMEN’

‘As far as I know about Doc Ock from Superior Spider-Man, which is excellent’ Wow. So, as would be obvious with anyone with a working brain and some prior knowledge of Otto, Superior is garbage. And saying you are basing your assessments of Otto on Superior is like saying you have never known about the character

Doc Ock is in so many Spidey stories as a scientific assistant to other people because the Green Goblin is always either dead or completely untrustworthy. Bob really just said that huh? This is further proof Bob has read precious little Spider-Man material. Doc Ock is NOBODY’s assistant. Even in Secret Wars he had to be threatened into compliance by Doom himself when Ultron was his attack dog. Doc Ock isn’t recruited by other people for his genius, he is the mover and shaker. He recruits other people and is the man in charge. And who the fuck is looking to get the help of Norman Osborn because he’s a scientist? Not to mention Norman is untrustworthy, oh but Otto?????????? The guy who tried to nuke NYC???????? WTF is Bob talking about?

Since we are in the ‘age of heroes’ (whatever THAT means?) it is impossible for Spider-Man to not be mentored by some other hero. Er…yeah it is? This is obviously a defence of MCU Spider-Man and it holds no water. First of all DC and Marvel have had young heroes show up when there are a plethora of heroes around they’ve not had mentors. Second of all it’s entirely possible for Peter to not WANT a mentor and it’d be entirely believable that the other heroes might not see themselves as mentors or might mistrust him.

The Spider-Heroes take their grief and turn it into action. WHOA WHOA WHOA! Didn’t these guys say earlier that the movie preaches the heroes are more than their trauma? That they aren’t stapled to their origins? That they move on from it? What’s this change of tune all of a sudden?

Miles Dad was probably made into a cop to avoid having a difficult discussion about how the police would react to a black super hero or a black Spider-Man. Yeah, or it’s because you know…his Dad worked in law enforcement in the comics so you know…faithfulness. Also the police don’t discriminate against black heroes in the MCU except Luke Cage. Also, also not every fucking cop is racist. Also, also, also how would they know Miles is black his costume covers his whole body!

Miles Dad was super authoritarian. Dude. He didn’t like vigilantes and he followed basic rules like stopping not abusing police sirens. That’s hardly akin to being a jackbooted fascist.

Miles would’ve had a different relationship with authority and the police if his Dad hadn’t been a cop. Er…no not necessarily. First of all being the son of a cop doesn’t mean he’d have not experienced institutionalized racism from the police. Second of all even if he had experienced that he could still believe in justice and taking down obviously evil and dangerous people like Kingpin.

They never touched upon institutional racism from the police in Luke Cage which was for adults. Er, yes they did. The rapper in the later episodes of season 1 (the Bulletproof Love guy) stated he wasn’t going to call the police. The police were stopping and searching black men in their hunt for Cage. Black people wore shirts with holes in them in order to protect Cage and defy the cops. The rap mentioned how nobody was interested in protecting their neighbourhood.

Nobody wants the tell a superhero story about institutional racism within the authorities. Isn’t that literally Luke Cage’s origin? Didn’t Black Panther mention that earlier in the year ITSV was released.

I’m going to disagree that Miles fighting Kingpin was unnecessary because of the cultural connotations we talked about….God…You couldn’t just say ‘the main hero obviously has to defeat the main villain. Duh!’…

Dan Slott is a dang genius! As if you needed more proof these people are unqualified  to talk about Spider-Man…

Spider-Verse’s (the comic’s) fan service is what happens when you get Spider-Man fans to do the story vs. ITSV. Nah fam. ITSV is what happens when you get real fans who are talented  vs. Spider-Verse is what happens when you get a real fan who fundamentally misunderstands the characters and is a hack

There is no real Peter Parker. Who cares! The real Peter Parker is the original because he is the one everyone else is derivative of and therefore based upon. And fans AND creators and Marvel itself clearly care about that because they sure as fuck didn’t kill him  off so Miles could replace him. They killed off the secondary and surplus Ultimate Peter Parker. Treating the original version as the true  one doesn’t invalidate any other versions because they can still be great characters unto themselves. But given how disgustingly SJW this whole podcast has been I am unsurprised they go in for this participation trophy form of analysis where everything is equal all the time.

It also doesn’t invalidate the idea of Spider-Man being anyone. Spider-Man CAN be anyone. But not everyone can be Peter Parker. If we are going to say otherwise the praise these jackoffs lauded onto Miles for how his specific identity was explored is invalidated. Peter is Peter. Miles is Miles. They can both be Spider-Heroes worthy of the mantle.

Because Miles is a POC people who don’t look like Peter can believe they can be Spider-Man. I’m not arguing against Miles but seriously, that was the case before Miles existed. The showrunner of Spider-Man 1994 was an African American and he related to Peter Parker in the 1960s. Poc can relate to Spider-Man regardless of skin colour.

The original comic book version of Spider-Man isn’t the true one just because he is the original. Er….yeah. It seriously does precisely BECAUSE he is the version all the other ones are derivative of. Hence he’s from the PRIME universe. Shit the Spider-Verse comic book the movie takes mild inspiration from literally says that. Granted it then contradicts itself but the point still stands. Because he is the original one he IS the true one because without him the others would not exist. He is the canonical one!

The true 616 Spider-Man will never be in any adaptation because there is too much continuity…Yeah…so? How does that make him not  the original one in the broad context though when you compare every version?

Continuity is the killer of enjoyment when it comes to movies. No, this podcast is the killer of enjoyment. And btw, maybe ask all the people who went to see Infinity War earlier in the year ITSV was released and ask them if continuity ruined that movie for them. This is such a lazy, myopic attitude.

If continuity is used to exclude people it is bad. Good job nobody was ever saying ITSV shouldn’t exist because Miles isn’t Peter then

Infinity War is a fine movie even if you do not know who everybody is. No it isn’t. Infinity War is wholly inaccessible if you do not know who everyone is because it’s throwing dozens of characters at you with little-no context provided.

Black Panther is better than Infinity War, this proves continuity is bad. No. Black Panther not having to have it’s story wrapped up in everything else in the wider universe was what helped make it better. FFS, Winter Soldier is better than Avengers 2012 and that still relies upon plenty of continuity. Civil War is better than Thor the Dark World and the latter has way less continuity than the former. It’s not about having continuity it’s about how you use it. Black Panther was world building in it’s own corner. It wasn’t plugged in so directly to the wider universe the way Homecoming or FFH was. THAT’s what made it good but that’s not a continuity issue that’s a world building issue.

Continuity is toxic when you use it to claim a long running fantasy series didn’t satisfy you. Uh huh, hey do you wanna ask all the people who hated Game of Thrones’ final season that?

Oh, and one of the pundits, the one who bleeted on about Spidey as a ‘tEEnAgE WHITE mAle wish fUlLfiLmEnt fantasy!’ is a Hollywood actress. Now her views make waaaaaaaaaay too much sense

In conclusion…Sigh…For a podcast called School of Movies I think these guys need to go back to kindergarten.

#Spider-Man #Into the Spider-Verse #spider-man: into the spider-verse #Sony #sony animation #Miles Morales #Gwen Stacy #Peter Parker #Spider-Gwen #Ghost Spider #Spider-Ham #Spider-Man Noir #Peni Parker #SP//dr #Aunt May #May Parker #Kingpin #Wilson Fisk #Peter B. Parker #Tombstone #The Spectacular Spider-Man Animated Series #Spectacular Spider-Man Animated Series #Avengers 2012 #MCU #marvel cinematic universe #Spider-Man: Homecoming #Spider-Man: Far From Home #Black Panther #moviebo #Bob Chipman

[professorspork]

Frozen 2: first impressions

Hello friends! As you know, Frozen was a HUGE part of my fandom life ~back in the day.~ So of course I saw the sequel opening night and of course I have thoughts after ruminating on it for 24 hours. I’m sure there will be many things I forget or don’t cover--after all, I’ve only seen it the once. And I make no guarantees that my thoughts are coherent or consistent. (If I contradict myself, I contradict myself-- I am large, I contain multitudes.) I’m also sure my opinions will evolve upon rewatch. Lord knows they did last time.

Is that enough disclaimer yet? OKAY. Some of my thoughts are negative! Some are positive! It’s a grab bag! Here we go!

Spoilers under the cut, pals.

IN SHORT: As an expansion on the world and the characters I adore, I pretty much loved it! As an extension of uh Big Capitalism and what it means in terms of real world ramifications... I have questions/comments/concerns!

IN LONG: I think I’ll start with what didn’t work for me and work my way around to fangirling at the end.

the meh

I feel like... part of it is that Disney has just gotten worse and power-grabbier in way more blatant ways in the last few years, and part of it is that I’m ever-more cognizant of these things. And the fine line they want to walk of “We can tell stories about progressive concepts! Princesses are woke now, actually!” without taking a single financial risk when it comes to alienating foreign markets, homophobes abroad or Nazis domestically is just a fundamentally untenable position to be in. You don’t get to retcon Elsa and Anna as being somehow less white than they clearly are and then try to tell a story about reparations in which no one actually gets reparations. You don’t get to get points for that. It’s in some ways admirable to want to try, but all you do when you’re coming at it from the position of being Disney when you tell this story is show the cracks in it.

I can see how, on a purely storytelling level, having Papa King Arendelle Agnarr be of Arendelle and Iduna be of the Northuldra and having their daughters be the bridge between the two communities is a really tempting, tidy, tie-a-bow-on-it narrative. And I also see how creating the backstory of the war and the mist neatly explains the absence of indigenous faces in the first film. But like... come on. Introducing an indigenous group like the Northuldra and then declaring that Elsa and Anna are a part of it is insulting. There’s no other way to say it. It just feels gross. I’m glad that Disney consulted with the Sámi on the movie, and I acknowledge that both real-life Sámi folks and the onscreen Northuldra come in a broad variety of skin tones and phenotypes. But even with the most generous possible reading of the choice-- that it’s well-intentioned, albeit misguided-- falls flat for me. It feels like Disney trying to have their cake and eat it too. And I don’t really see any way around that. It just... gives me tremendous pause, and it’s so core to so many of the things the movie chooses to be that it’s really disquieting and disappointing.

But then again, Disney being racist isn’t exactly news, and there’s still plenty of flaws to tackle even when we put this (massive) issue aside.

This movie is... weirdly allergic to stakes? It’s not like I wanted Elsa to stay dead, or that I expected Olaf to (more on that in a minute). But Anna’s decision to go full Thor Ragnarok and, as @theseerasures​ jokingly put it to me last night, “throw the first brick at Stonewall” and destroy Arendelle felt right. It felt appropriate to the story they were telling, and it would have had the film put its money where its mouth is re: how atoning for the sins of our forebears requires massive systemic change. So having Elsa charge to the rescue on her water-type Rapidash extremely queer steed daemon Gay Horse and save the city felt cheap. (Also, side note: is Arendelle really just... that one seaside port town and nothing else? Are there only like fifty people in Arendelle?) The citizens had already been taken to safety. The society would live on; they’d all get to rebuild. What was the point of saving the castle, just for saving the castle’s sake? To what end? I don’t see how that’s more inspiring or reassuring or worth it than watching the sisters lead their people from the ground up and starting anew. I don’t understand what they thought was worth protecting, when, again, all of the people were safe. Stories need stakes in order to have meaning! HTTYD has impact because Hiccup loses his leg in his attempt to save his dragon and his people. You know? You don’t get to just... keep everything the way it is and call that restorative justice, and the film clearly wants us to. And I don’t understand why. The only reason that makes any sense at all to me is that they thought it would scare little kids, but like. THIS COMPANY HAS PORTRAYED WAY MORE TRAUMATIZING THINGS THAN THAT. MANY TIMES.

Point in fact: Olaf’s death! Genuinely disturbing! Sad! For the most part I really liked the way it was handled, but it also felt very. Y’know. “Mister Stark, I don’t feel so good.” This is perhaps my most uncharitable nitpick, so I’ll keep it brief, but having Olaf drift away Snap-style just felt like an extremely synergistic, Disney+ nod at Infinity War instead of an organic decision. Which maybe isn’t fair, because it makes more sense for Olaf to become a flurry than for the Snap to make people dust! But nevertheless, the weird wink-and-a-nudge feeling of it totally pulled me out of what should have been an extremely poignant moment. Elsa’s revelation during “Show Yourself” felt similar--like. Not to take away from your moment, Elsa, but the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me was already covered by this larger canon, and in a more elegant and eloquent manner.

Which--tbh, the music overall was a bit of a letdown (though “Into the Unknown” slaps and a boyband of five joshes “Lost in the Woods” was perhaps the best sequence in the whole movie). I respect that they clearly wanted to give everyone a solo this time around in a deliberate way, but the songs felt perfunctory for the most part--describing moments instead of advancing them. This film was such a departure from how Disney normally makes sequels (mostly in a good way, actually) and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have looked like to make a version of this movie where no one sang at all. It didn’t feel cohesive.

And, though it would kill me to get rid of “Lost in the Woods” because it’s perfect... I kinda wish Anna and Kristoff had gotten engaged at the end of act 1, as I think they pretty clearly did in the first draft of this script. Their relationship drama felt like a hat on top of a hat, and they could still have addressed their codependency/insecurities while being engaged. Leaving the proposal for the end just made it an anticlimax after everyone’s been brought back from the literal dead. And it maybe would have left them with more options than having Kristoff just vanish from the narrative for the entire back half of the second act.

Also Honeymaren should have had at least two more scenes. I can’t justify this on a narrative level; the movie didn’t actually need more of her. But like. If you’re going to go out of your way to keep Elsa carefully single, and even give KRISTOFF a new boyfriend, I feel like the least you can do is let us get to know the obvious throw-us-a-bone offering a little bit better. Like. Literally. the actual least you can do.

anyway. all of that said.

the yay!

I can’t tell you how gratifying it was to me, personally to open with a flashback of the girls that demonstrates as clear as day that Elsa is an ace lesbian and Anna is bi and polyamorous. Thank you, snow action figures.

And like. Overall the way the movie tackled the sisters and their relationship was pure *chef’s kiss.* (And I think for me, the strength in this particular bullet point probably outweighs all of my complaints and concerns from above, in the end. At least from an “I still derive enjoyment from this flawed thing” standpoint, though perhaps not from an “I’d recommend this to anyone without caveats” standpoint.) THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH. THEY WERE SO THEMSELVES. I do think part of the fear of any sequel where there’s been a significant amount of time since the last one and you were so emotionally invested in it the first go-around is like... what if everyone feels OOC? What if what I saw wasn’t what was really in them after all? What if they feel like strangers? What if they let me down? And there was none of that, even for a second, with this movie. Their parallel journeys were character-appropriate and impactful. Elsa finally gets the freedom she’s always been looking for. Anna finally gets the responsibility she’s always been ready for. Anna, the caretaker, is positioned to take care of everyone. Elsa, the lesbian, runs away to the forest to hang out with beautiful powerful women. Elsa, the force of nature, is finally allowed to commune with it. The scene at their parents’ ship truly anchors the whole movie in the best possible way. And also, like... this movie showed how fucking weird Elsa is, and I feel so vindicated. SHE’S SUCH A DORK. I can’t believe I never realized that Elsa would totally choose Charmander as her starter, and the way she talked to the fire salamander was literally the most charming thing I have ever seen. “They’re staring at us, aren’t they?” GOSH. [IMDb says the salamander’s name is Bruni, and I’m very sad they never spoke it aloud.] [Someone do a rotoscope of the Tangled short where Pascal and Max almost ruin Rapunzel and Eugene’s wedding by losing the rings but it’s Bruni and Sven at Kristoff and Anna’s wedding, thank]

Anyway. All of that goes double for Olaf, because I really wasn’t sure they could pull off the miracle of him not being annoying twice. And they did! Olaf’s grappling with his burgeoning maturity was adorable and profound in equal measure, and his plot reenactments were sublime. And when he realized to Anna for the first time that he was feeling angry, that he was capable of feeling angry... what a tremendous moment. (Actually, I’ll extend what I said about the boat scene to include the Earth Giants river sequence in total, because. Again. Wow.)

And I have to say... as much as I am given real pause by their execution of the concept, “you just do the next right thing” is such beautiful (*cough* Jewish *cough*) praxis. I love that. In the broader Disney Revival canon of Tiana’s work ethic and Rapunzel’s abuse narrative and how Wreck-It Ralph talked about PTSD and all of the myriad things the first Frozen did, I might love “the next right thing” most of all. What a simple, powerful, evocative message. It’s so lovely. A perfect gem.

Also worth acknowledging that the animation was straight-up stunning. Which I expected, generally, but the water droplets in the ship? The way Elsa just loses it sobbing when she sees her mother’s face in the ice? The tender, shattered way Anna pulls Olaf in closer to her as he fades? W.O.W. And, y’know, while I stand by what I said above about stakes, I will say that the moment we first see that Elsa is experiencing cold, that Elsa is freezing? Genuinely--and please forgive the pun--genuinely chilling.

I love Gail the Gale. I love Mattias and Yelana and Ryder and Honeymaren. But mostly I just... loved the dialogue and these characters and that I got to spend a little more time with them. And I’m sure I’ll do so at least two more times before it leaves theaters.

... apparently this is over 2k words now so that seems as good a place to leave it as any. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

#does #anyone #use #tracked #tags #anymore? #either way #let's stay out of them #that should do it #frozen 2 #frozen 2 spoilers #frozen #frozen spoilers #spoilers

[shyearthquakedaze]

At first it seemed like a bad joke. On April 14, 2010, reports started trickling in that Peter Thomas Ratajczk (aka Peter Steele), the hulkish frontman of Type O Negative, was dead. It was impossible to believe, and not just for the normal reasons. Steele had a legendary morbid streak and was no novice at defying death.

Since forming Type O Negative in 1989 out of the ashes of crossover metal band Carnivore, Steele had attempted suicide, overdosed, and even faked his own death in 2005 with a post on the band’s website. He seemed like a gothic metal Keith Richards, a guy who would tempt fate over and over and live to tell the tale. But on April 14, 2010, Steele, who had been sick in bed with the flu for a couple days, died from an aortic aneurysm at age 48.

There had been several occasions when Steele was battling with drugs and alcohol and was lying in the hospital, seemingly on the verge of expiration, but this wasn’t one of them. Just days before he died, he was proud about finally being clean and sober and excited about moving to a place near Staten Island to start working on the follow-up to the band’s seventh album, 2007’s Dead Again.

Type O Negative guitarist Kenny Hickey and drummer Johnny Kelly were getting ready to rehearse with their doom metal side project Seventh Void when Kelly received the bad news.

“I got a phone call from a number that I didn’t recognize, so I let it go to voicemail,” he says. “It was Peter’s sister. I called her up and said, ‘What’s up?’ and she was like, ‘We lost Peter.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and she said, ‘He’s gone.’ At the time, they didn’t know the cause of death.”

After he received the news, Kelly drove the rest of the short distance to rehearsal and told Hickey what had happened. “He started yelling at me: ‘How come you didn’t call me?!?’ recalls Kelly. “I was like, ‘I was going to see you in five minutes!’ I didn’t want to tell him over the phone. We were both in complete disbelief. It was like the end of an era, man. The end of an era.”

While Steele was clean and sober when he died, he abused alcohol and drugs — especially cocaine — for years even though he was on medication for a heart condition known at atrial fibrillation, basically an irregular heartbeat. “Who knows if he died from all the drugs over the years or something else,” says keyboardist Josh Silver. “He was diagnosed with the condition years and years ago, but if you take care of yourself and do the right stuff it’s something you can live with for quite a while. There are plenty of 90-year-olds running around with it.”

Hickey adds, “He always said that he felt the flutter in his heart, even when he was a kid, so he might have been born with it for all we know. He’s had four or five males in his family that have died from heart disease before 50, so it could have been congenital. Who knows? There is a price you pay for being so big, too.”

Steel was 6 feet, 7 inches; he wasn’t just large, he was larger than life. Though he claimed he was shy and suffered from stage fright, he eagerly embraced his role as spokesman for the band. As such, he had a deep voice and was surprisingly soft-spoken but had a razor-sharp wit and a hysterical, self-deprecating sense of humor. The singer-bassist claimed to be a misanthropist, wrote sarcastic lyrics that got him pegged by some as a racist and a misogynist. He repeatedly denied the accusations and those close to him insist the misunderstandings were all a part of Steele’s bizarre sense of humor. That said, he was arguably homophobic. He once told me in an interview that he wasn’t “anti-homosexual, just pro-heterosexual.” But lyrics to songs like “I Like Goils” suggest otherwise: “I know I’m strange but I ain’t no queer, so take your rage and disappear/… To make it clear that you can’t bone me my tattooed ass reads ‘exit only.’”

In 1995, during the height of the success of Type O Negative’s most popular album Bloody Kisses (which included the hit “Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)”), Steele posed full frontal nude for the centerfold of Playgirl. The move made a splash among the band’s female fans, and some of their male ones as well. “He got upset when gay guys came up and asked for his autograph with the picture,” recalls Hickey. “Some of them even came up to me. I was like, ‘I ain’t signing that. Get the f— out of here!’”

Despite Steele’s public reputation, he was undyingly loyal to those who knew him and friendly to fans. Still, those who knew him best remember his excessive behavior, whether writing music or engaging in day-to-day activities. “Peter always did things in extremes,” Kelly recalls. “If he was going to work out, he was going to be as big as he could be. When it came to eating, he wouldn’t just sit down and have a meal, he had to have two or three meals.”

“If Peter did something that he enjoyed, that was pleasurable for him, he went all the way with it,” Hickey says. It was just another extension of his obsessive behavior. Women, food, alcohol, he had to have mass quantities. He dreaded running out of anything. He’s the only guy I know who could do two eight balls and eat 60 dollars of Chinese food.”

Whether a result of his unhealthy behavior or a symptom of his heart ailment, Steele was hospitalized on several occasions both at home and mid-tour. Even so, he rarely took care of himself and often put his sense of humor above his health.

“There was one point he was in the hospital overseas,” recalls Hickey. “He had had eight different surgeons trying to figure out what was wrong with him, and none of them spoke English. They’re saying, ‘What kind of drugs do you do?’ Pete says, ‘Cocaine, alcohol and redheads.’ So he’s sitting there in a hospital, half-green. The doctors come back in three days later and say, ‘Excuse me, we need to know… what are redheads?’ They thought it was a pill or a drug.”

On another occasion, Steele was hospitalized near his home, but didn’t stay long enough to be treated. “He calls me up and I go, “What are you doing out? What are you doing home?!?, You’re supposed to be in the hospital,” Kelly recalls. “And he says, “I couldn’t take the food anymore.’ He was only a third yellow at that point. It was a miracle. He went from being green in a bed to two and a half weeks later, we were on tour, and he was performing. Stuff like that was always happening with Peter.”

Loudwire contributor Jon Wiederhorn is the primary author of Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, as well as the co-author of Scott Ian’s autobiography, I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy From Anthrax, and Al Jourgensen’s autobiography, Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen.

#peter steele

#type o negative

[raeynbowboi]

My Opinions of She-Ra Ships

So, I just finished watching season 1 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. It was definitely very very very queer, and overall I’d say I liked it. With that said, as with any new fanbase, a new slew of ships have popped up, and I figured I would give my personal opinion on the main ones I saw.

Catradora/Catadora

I really like the realtionship between these two characters. I really don’t mind if they date or remain frenemies, I think they work wonderfully off one another. I wouldn’t be opposed to them becoming a couple toward the end of the series when Catra and Adora make up. But, if they never get together, I wouldn’t feel cheated. Though you do have to admit, there is some heavy flirty undertones to their dynamic, but part of that does come from being best friends. Out of all of Adora’s possible ships, this one feels the most likely to me.

Glimmadora/Glimadora

I’m okay with this as a ship. A big problem I find when it comes to lesbian ships is that women are a lot more physically intimate and affectionate with their friends, so it can be a bit harder to tell flirtation and romance from just a really strong platonic bond. So far, while I’ve seen some romantic undertones, it hasn’t felt like there was anything direct enough to say that I fully ship it or that I see it as a likely outcome. However, since she’s Adora’s second closest female companion, she certainly has a lot of seasons to get out of the friend zone.

Perfumadora

So far, the only character to show direct, outright attraction, or at least admiration for She-Ra/Adora. It’s difficult to say at the moment if she’s attracted to Adora or only to She-Ra, but there was definitely some crush elements done when she saw She-Ra for the first time. Only time will tell whether this lesbian (or at least, girl loving) character will win the protagonist’s heart. Another potentially interesting element of this ship is that if Perfuma was actually more attracted to She-Ra than Adora, I could see this ship being used to explore lessons of finding someone who loves you for who you really are, not some idealized version of yourself, or some other lesson like that, which is always a good lesson to teach kids. Plus, out of all the Princesses of Power, she has the most Princess Classic archetypal aesthetic, so she creates the Knight and Damsel trope with Adora better than the other princesses. So, if Catradora was not the endgame ship, and if this relationship wasn’t toxic, I think this would be my second favorite shipping option for Adora.

Glimbow

Well, just so long as it’s as a BrOTP or a Friend!Ship, I don’t mind this pairing, but the instant I saw Bow I could tell he was coded gay. No doubt in my mind. So the idea of these two becoming a couple just feels wrong and off-putting. Besides, boys and girls should be allowed to be close best friends without any romantic tension needing to exist between them. But that’s also my reading of the character, so the fact that I read him as gay does color my opinion of him being shipped with female characters.

Seamista/Merhawk

To be honest, I’m just not much of a fan. While one could draw a parallel to Kiribaku with the happy dope pining after the grumpy aloof person, Mermista really lacks Bakugou’s depth and redeeming features, coming off as just a rather one-note sourball. Meanwhile, Seahawk lacks the endearing charm of Kirishima that makes Kiribaku work so well, making him come off more as annoying and intrusive, unlike Kirishima, whose invasion of Bakugou’s bubble feels more like a natural extension of his friendly nature. So it just feels like a clash of two tropes thrown together more as a comedic bit rather than a proper ship. There’s also the fact that since i read Bow as gay, and there’s only like... 6 male characters with names, and one is a horse and another is the main bad guy, any pairing that robs Bow of a potential male love interest is not going to catch my interest.

Bowhawk/Seabow

Speaking of, this is my primary OTP for the series on the grounds that... there’s not really any other option if I want a cute gay couple. Plus they do have chemistry, it’s not just me scrounging for whatever scraps I can manage to find. There is something there which points to flirtatious elements to their dynamic. Considering they’re the only two male characters who are both humanoid and not part of the Horde, it’s safe to bet that unless Bow is planned to end up with Kyle that this is the most likely gay pairing.

Byle/Boyle (Bow x Kyle)

Out of all the other Horde characters, Kyle screams turncoat character the most. Especially considering I don’t think any of the other cadets even had their names said, and he had his said multiple times, which sort of boosts his relevancy within the story. So, there was some romantic coding between these two toward the end of season 1, and I suppose if Kyle did betray the Horde, he might make for a decent match with Bow, but that’s really going to depend on their relationship and how it builds from here. Right now, I’m still more on the Bowhawk train, but I’m open to this ship so long as it’s well-written. And hey, if this ship becomes canon, I won’t care as much about Mermista and Seahawk being a thing. I just want some guy on guy romance. I also lean toward Byle for the ship name, simply because Boyle is an actual surname and will muddy search results.

Scorpcatra

The relationship between Catra and Scorpio is definitely interesting. I could see them becoming best friends, I could see her just being Catra’s funny sidekick, or I could see Catra forming an emotional attachment to her and wanting to protect her. This is another pairing where if it became canon, I wouldn’t complain, but I’d also react the same way if it didn’t happen. Granted, it’s only been one season, we’ll have to see where the romantic arcs take us.

Encatra

Honestly, you could tell me that Entrapa and Catra become a BrOTP, an OTP, an OT3 with Scorpia, or a BrOT3, and I’d believe any of those claims. She doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in relationships, but we haven’t seen much of her yet either. Only time will really tell if Entrapa even feels romantic or sexual attraction, but no matter how her relationship with Catra and Scorpia evolves, I’d be okay with any end result.

Spinetossa

So far, this is the only ship with any solid credibility thus far. I mean, they’re practically hanging off each other 24/7. If they aren’t wives already, they’re clearly at least dating. I’d be surprised if they ended up just being sisters, but they’re the only ship thusfar with canonical backing as far as I can see. Everything else is pretty much still speculative at this point.

Kygelio (Kyle x Rogelio)

If you were unaware of this ship, I don’t blame you. I only learned of its existence while making this post. The lizard guy’s name was never even given, that I know of. However, Rogelio is shown taking care of, carrying, and supporting Kyle a lot in the background. Considering Kyle’s weak will and seemingly low self-esteem and self-worth, it’s hard to tell if this is just a very close, supportive, and protective friendship or if there’s a romantic element. Considering I don’t even think Rogelio spoke at all this season, it’s hard to say. However, considering they’re 2 of the only 6 named male characters, I wouldn’t dream of ignoring the shipping potential in them.

#she-ra ships #shera ships #catradora #catadora #glimmadora #glimadora #perfumadora #bowhawk #seabow #glimbow #byle #boyle #merhawk #seamista #scorpcatra #encatra #spop ships #she ra ships #spop #she-ra #shera #she ra #she-ra and the princesses of power #netflix #kygelio #spinetossa #rogelio

[chiseler]

JOE DALLESANDRO: Body Worship

The faces and voices of movie stars past and present continue to be extensively written about and well covered, but what about the bodies on the screen? We saw most of Rudolph Valentino’s body, and enough of Clara Bow to want more. Jean Harlow iced her nipples to make them stand out and up at attention under her gowns, and Tyrone Power loved to wear the tightest possible pants to display his lower extremities. It was only in the 1950s, though, that Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando tested the limits of their clothes and wantonly imposed the fleshiest grabbable flesh. In the 1960s, the women in movies started getting rail-thin while one muscular and fleshy man took all of his clothes off on screen without any self-consciousness. In the area of exposing and idly flaunting on-screen flesh, this man is the all-time champion, and much more besides.

His name was and is Joe Dallesandro, a kid from the mean streets of New York who stole cars and went to reform school and acquired a scar on his knee after a gun battle with police. As a teenager, he began posing for nude photographs out in California, and he learned how to hit up gay guys for bread. “I’d come from New York where I’d seen people do the hustle,” Dallesandro said, “and I knew people could get away with anything if they just knew what to say. My hustle was about getting anything I could for nothing.” Back in New York at age eighteen in 1967, Dallesandro wandered into a Greenwich Village apartment where a movie was being shot, an underground movie made under the auspices of Andy Warhol and his Factory but controlled by Paul Morrissey, a mysterious, conservative figure who looked at Dallesandro and immediately liked what he saw.

Dallesandro went out to Arizona with the Warhol crew to make Lonesome Cowboys (1968), a queer anti-western where he does a hilariously open and polymorphously perverse little dance with sprightly Taylor Mead and is coached to do ballet pliés by another cowboy in order to build up his legs and butt (which certainly needed no building). At one point in San Diego Surf (1968), Warhol superstar Viva accidentally drops a baby and Dallesandro moves with a lightning fast reflex to catch it. At this point, it was clear that Dallesandro had a beautifully balanced and open face, with a sunburst smile that made him look innocent and childlike, and a body to make Michelangelo all hot and bothered. But he also had the pinched voice of a New York wise guy and skin that made it look like he probably ate mainly pizza. This contrast moved Morrissey, and maybe he was also moved by the knightly, responsible way that Dallesandro caught that baby before it fell to the ground.

In 1968, for very little money, Morrissey created a whole vehicle just for Dallesandro called Flesh, a film that nods to earlier Warhol experiments by opening with a two-and-a-half minute shot of Dallesandro’s sleeping face. After being rudely awakened by his demanding wife (Geraldine Smith), Dallesandro passively complains that she never does his laundry; he says a man’s job is protecting his family. He is wearing nothing but a cross around his neck.

Put-upon and beguilingly passive, standing in the street waiting for guys who might give him some money for nothing or for something a little more, Dallesandro in Flesh is as un-self-conscious as Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box (1928), but his energy is more inward-directed. He doesn’t “act” so much as enter fully into any scenario Morrissey has given him like a little kid playing “let’s pretend” in their backyard. Every kid plays “let’s pretend,” but some kids are just more fun to play with than others, and the camera picks up on that, just as the person directing behind the camera can become entranced.

There are close-ups of Dallesandro in Flesh that stop the movie dead in its tracks. Like Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, Dallesandro knew exactly what to offer to a still camera, assuming all the attitudes from Back Off to Come Hither to Take Care Of Me. And always, essentially, he is distant and removed, which is his real trick, the thing that keeps people coming back for more. Often fully naked on screen, Dallesandro offers all of that bounty to the camera, but he keeps himself to himself.

In Lou Reed’s hit song “Walk on the Wild Side,” one section claims, “Little Joe never once gave it away/everybody had to pay and pay.” But Morrissey in Flesh is saying, even howling, yes, you can all have or stare at his body, but look at who he is! Look at all the beauty there in his face, in the way he moves, and particularly in his innate sense of masculine responsibility. He’s very funny in Flesh when he looks frankly bored and forlorn with some of his chattier clients, like a kid made to stay after school in detention who would much rather be outside, but his face is usually such a patient face, a stoic face, and always rivetingly photogenic. Maybe his screen presence is a bit of a hustle, too, but if it is, I’ll gladly pay and pay.

Morrissey’s conservatism might not come through as strongly as he thinks in his early films because he often ceded them to charismatic speakers for hedonism like Holly Woodlawn, who made a comic and tragic thing of her love for Dallesandro in Trash (1970). In that movie, Dallesandro plays an impotent drug addict who seems more dead than alive as women and men paw him and clutch at him. When Woodlawn is forced to use a beer bottle to get off sexually, Morrissey makes sure to cut to a close-up of Dallesandro holding her hand, one of the most moving images of tender disconnection in all of cinema.

Morrissey played Svengali with Dallesandro, who worked at Warhol’s Factory, trying to mold him into an ambiguous and unchanging star like John Wayne or Marlene Dietrich (at this time, Morrissey often spoke of wanting to remake The Blue Angel {1930} with Dallesandro playing Dietrich’s role of the inactive femme fatale Lola-Lola). In Morrissey’s Heat (1972), Dallesandro is cast as a washed-up child star angling for a comeback amid the hothouse improvisations of Sylvia Miles and Pat Ast. He has moved even further into a kind of waiting catatonia, but even at his most sedentary and unresponsive, Dallesandro signals that he is always on the make, occasionally throwing out a zinger when you least expect it just to prove that he can pay close attention to what’s going on around him when he wants to (but he usually doesn’t want to). Morrissey took his star to Europe to make back-to-back horror films, Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula (both 1974), where Dallesandro has his funny, incongruous moments but mainly takes a backseat to the campy authority of Udo Kier.

Dallesandro decided to strike out on his own in the mid-1970s, and the results were rich and varied. “How’s it goin’?” he nonchalantly asks a moaning woman he is humping in Donna e Bello (1974), checking on her pleasure before sneaking a look at his wristwatch, like Jane Fonda does in Klute (1971). He made a lot of films in Italy where he was cast as psychos on crime sprees, yet those movies still captured moments of film-stopping purity in his face.

This quality he had was picked up on by Louis Malle, who made Dallesandro look princely and storybook-like in his experimental feature Black Moon (1975). Best of all in this period, Dallesandro appeared in Je t’aime moi non plus (1975), a vibrantly strange road picture directed by bad boy French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. In that movie, Dallesandro plays Krassky, a gay truck driver who falls for Johnny (Jane Birkin), a roadside waitress. Maybe it’s because he’s dubbed in French, but in this movie something very romantic and almost Byronic emerges in Dallesandro, with elements of the goofiness that he had shown when he danced with Taylor Mead in Lonesome Cowboys.

While working in Europe, Dallesandro collaborated with a remarkable array of intriguing directors. In Walerian Borowczyk’s The Streetwalker (1976), Dallesandro himself pays for lady-of-the-night Sylvia Kristel. For the young Catherine Breillat, he was a sex object to a female director in Tapage nocturne (1979). During the making of Jacques Rivette’s Merry-Go-Round (1978, but only released in 1981), Dallesandro, his co-star Maria Schneider and Rivette himself were all in despair and trouble of some kind in their personal lives, so that the film has a very unsettling air of real desperation underneath Rivette’s suggestive, paranoid mise-en-scène. This is Dallesandro’s most touching work on screen. Even though he seems at the end of his tether in Merry-Go-Round, he still tries his very best to make sense of it all, like a kid trying to play a game when the rules of that game keep changing. Again, what comes across here is Dallesandro’s helpless sense of responsibility, the fact that he cares and wants to tidy up messes other people might make.

After beating a drinking problem, Dallesandro returned to the US and drove a limo for a while before being tapped by Francis Ford Coppola to play Lucky Luciano in The Cotton Club (1984), a film that he steals with his suave self-assurance in spite of limited screen time. In the movies he made after that, for Blake Edwards and John Waters and for many lesser talents, Dallesandro is never less than fully present and usually very inventively foul-mouthed. In Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey (1999), Dallesandro has a colorful small part as a slow henchman who manages to sink a shot on a pool table to his own much-evident and childlike delight. Let’s pretend!

In recent years, Dallesandro has managed a building in LA and he often single-handedly makes Facebook worthwhile with friendly quips, clips and all-around survivor humor. He’s cool with being a Sex God, skeptical of mythmaking, and quietly proud of his movies and his image. His Morrissey films secure him a place in film history, and his European work awaits further and more detailed investigation. He is an icon of a period and milieu when sex did not have boundaries, when pleasure was a vocation and a principle, and when a man taking off his clothes in front of a camera could not divert us from trying to find the part of himself that he would not give away.

by Dan Callahan

#Dan Callahan #Joe Dallesandro #The Chiseler

[obsidianarchives]

Black Woman Creator: Britteney Black Rose Kapri

Britteney Black Rose Kapri is a poet, teaching artist, petty enthusiast, and Slytherin from Chicago. Currently, she is an alumna turned Teaching Artist Fellow at Young Chicago Authors. She is a staff member for Black Nerd Problems and Pink Door Women’s Writing Retreat. Her first chapbook titled “Winona and Winthrop” was published in June of 2014 through New School Poetics. She has also been published in the Breakbeat Poets volume One & Two, Poetry Magazine, Vinyl, Day One, Seven Scribes, The Offing, Kinfolks Quarterly and her number on many dive bar bathroom walls. She is a 2015 Rona Jaffe Writers Award Recipient. You can probably find her on twitter talking shit about all the things you love, in a classroom talking shit about your kids, or at a barstool just talking shit. Her forthcoming book Black Queer Hoe is set to be released September 4th, 2018. We spoke to Britteney about her book and being an artist.

Black Girls Create: What do you create?

My biggest export is poetry. But I’m a playwright, essayist, a writer in general. I’m also dabbling in songwriting.

BGC: What made you start writing?

The short version of the story is that in 2nd grade I stopped speaking, basically because I was bored. Even though I had perfectly fine test scores, they put me in a special needs class where the instructors there never asked me to talk. They just had me write and write and write and I bonded with them. I ended up joining an after-school program they created called Kuumba Lynx, which is now a grassroots organization. I haven't stopped writing since I was eight years old.

What was the impetus for writing Black Queer Hoe?

I spent the past six years really focusing on myself as an educator, I’m a teaching artist at Young Chicago Authors, and I didn’t really spend enough time working on myself as an artist. I would write for shows or for something specific but not for myself or to better my craft. I read a lot and all of my friends are putting out books that I think are great, but I just really wasn’t on my shit. [YCA Artistic Director] Kevin Coval asked me what do I want out of my artist career? I always saw myself with a book and I put my chapbook out in 2014.

But a lot of people who engage with me on social media kept asking for a coffee table book of my tweets, and so that was the catalyst for this book. I looked at what tweets or social media posts people are often engaging with and how to get that to a larger platform. So most of the poems in the book started off as tweets or Facebook posts. But really, it’s that I don’t think you can be a quality educator if you’re not actually engaging in what you’re educating. So how am I teaching students to be artists and writers if I’m only writing for a gig or a slam? This was really just to get my shit back on track.

BGC: What are some of the themes that come up in Black Queer Hoe?

"I’m a Black woman, I’m a sexually liberated woman, I am a queer woman, and if you can’t rock with all of that, then you’re not rocking with me."

Intersectionality and sexuality. As a Black woman, you’re often asked to put aside parts of you for someone else’s liberation. White women want this from you, Black men from this from you. No one wants anything from queer folks except for silence. The theme in the book is that all three of these things are me. I’m a Black woman, I’m a sexually liberated woman, I am a queer woman, and if you can’t rock with all of that, then you’re not rocking with me. The book was really to talk about those things in what I consider a humorous and vulgar way because I think women are hilarious and vulgar. And I’m not a lady. Lady shit is boring. I consider myself to be a funny bitch and I wanted to write a funny bitch book and that’s what I did.

BGC: Why do you create?

Because everything around me is so chaotic. Even though I’m very well spoken and articulate and a scholarly person, sometimes I can’t get out what I want to get out unless I’m creating, whether that’s writing or painting or drawing. Sometimes something can only be expressed in a strange or abstract or different way than what is expected.

I think everyone is a creative. Some of us just embrace it more. If you’re an accountant and you just run numbers that’s cool, but if you’re trying to get a new client you have to have some showmanship, you have to sell yourself. Anytime you sell yourself in whatever business, you’re doing it as a creative. When you dress yourself, when you style yourself, when you present yourself, the way you talk, it’s all done through this creative lens, though not everybody embraces it the way poets or playwrights or muralists do.

BGC: Who is your audience?

My audience is hoodrats who went to college but don’t necessarily know why they went to college, outside of their mama saying “you either going to college or getting a job.” I’ve always been a scholarly person, I’ve always done well in school, and I love school but I also grew up in the hood. The hood is exactly who I am, it’s where I came from. Whether people can see that or not when they talk to me doesn’t matter. My roots are here and my poems are for scholars that still know what it’s like to play basketball with a milk carton or have to be in before the street lights go on. Or really even though you had an AC in our house you put a fan in the window because you couldn’t afford to turn on the AC in your house. My poems are for people like that.

BGC: Who inspires you?

Samantha Irby, who is probably my number one inspiration right now. She’s an essayist. In real life I’m vulgar and I put a lot of stock in humor but my writing up until this point really wasn’t that way. It was always straightforward but I leaned on ideas of what poetry was, and Samantha Irby was like you can be a badass writer and talk about gross shit, raw shit, exactly how you talk to your homies in a bar. And when I read Meaty I was like wow, I don’t have to sound like these other people, I can sound like me and it is a poem. If I write it and say it’s a poem, it’s a poem. Whether you see a poem in it or not, that’s up to you I don’t care, especially if you already bought the book.

I’m also inspired by Patricia Smith, Gwendolyn Brooks, Jamila Woods, Joseph Chilliams. I’m currently being inspired by two of my students right now, who are inspired by me but they’re just so much better than I was at their age. Ari Appleberry and Kennedy Harris, both from Brooks College Prep. It’s been crazy to watch their growth, but as young Black writers they’re just so dope to only be seventeen and eighteen and it makes me feel so good to see their writing and to see them embracing all of these things that it took me until I was in my late 20s to embrace.

"Because everyone is always creating our image for us."

BGC: Why is it important as a Black person to create?

Because everyone is always creating our image for us. If you leave the states people have this idea of what Black is, and particularly what Chicago Black is, and if we are not telling our stories, our stories will be told without us. It’s the same reason boxer braids exist. Extensions instead of tracks. All these ways people double talk and double speak. Erase our faces but keep our shit. If we’re not creating, then what’s being created around us is just garbage. So you have to.

BGC: How do you balance creating with the rest of your life?

I don’t. I either go super into work mode or super into writing mode. I also have the inability to turn down projects so I take on a bunch of shit and am up at like 3am finishing a book because I know I have 17 meetings the next day and somebody else wants me to mentor them so I’m doing that. I get everything done all at the expense of my health. Balance is not my forte, I’m working on it. But I also have a really strong circle of folks around me who tell me when I need to chill out — and that’s really where my balance comes from, the folks in my life telling me “you’re burning yourself out and you’re not being the best that you can be at any of these things because your spread yourself thin between all of these things.“

BGC: Any advice for young creators/ones just starting?

There is no one path in which this happens. You can go through slam, publishing, journals, open mics, TV, YouTube. Whatever it is, there is no one path to success and if one person takes a path and it works for them and not for you that’s okay. If a door closes, you climb through the window. You dig under and go over and whatever it takes to get there, you get there. At the same time you can’t be creating if you’re not consuming what’s around you. If you’re only ever listening to yourself you’re not going to get any place. You have to be engaging in the art around you so you know where the movement’s going, what people are listening to, what people are looking for. Are you writing the exact same poem that this person is writing, and if so, is yours better? You have to engage in other folks’ art or you’re not going to get any place.

BGC: Any future projects coming up?

Black Queer Hoe comes out September 4th. I am in the very budding stages of an anthology, probably with Haymarket, but can’t give too many details about that. I’ve been sort of joking that I might want to try to get involved with stand up of some sort, but I don’t really know how outside of just roasting folks. I don’t know how to craft a joke that has a punchline unless the punchline is somebody. So if people want to sit in a room where I just talk shit about them, that I can do. But I don’t know if I can create a storyline the way comedians do, that shit’s hard, it’s a really dope skill. But I want to get involved with that as well as songwriting. I want to branch out what I’m known for as a writer.

#Poetry #Book #Black Woman #Black Woman Creator

[all-my-friends-were-glorious]

VALENTINO DORIAN JOHNSON

The Vainglorious Vampire

"All is vanity, nothing is fair." -William Makepeace Thackeray

GENERAL INFORMATION

Name: Valentino Dorian Johnson

Nicknames: Val, Tino, Sharp-And-Pointy (Marishka and Velika exclusive), Hot Shot

Faceclaim: Jagurox

Age: 15

Gender: Genderflux Male

Sexuality: Queer

Height: 5′9″

Weight: 166lbs

Birthday: September 3rd

Sign: Virgo

Occupation: Unemployed, Student

PERDITA

A false coral snake, Perdita is very close with Valentino and almost always on his body. She likes to hide out underneath his clothes, commonly wrapped around his left wrist like jewelry. She is quick to pad his ego and is just as vain as he is. The pair of them like to show off their power for any reason.

QUICK FACTS

Valentino is the youngest boy and second youngest of Ravencrowe and AJ’s quintuplets. In order of birth, the quints are: Lucien, Gossamer, Umbra, Valentino, and Olivia.

He is insanely self-absorbed and seems to think that being immortal and being impervious are the same thing. He has seen his father’s scars and just thinks they look cool. Much as he’d seen how they limit his mobility, he doesn’t think much about them other than they give him a unique look.

This does not mean he wants scars. He’s too proud of his flawless skin to ever even consider tattoos, and he only uses false piercings for aesthetics. He greatly dislikes toying with the perfection he already is.

Michael’s children specifically get bullied by him (and by extension his friends, but usually only in his presence). Valentino’s favorite targets are Aster, Greer, and Alaric. Asher and Ague are favorites, as well, except they are typically better at fighting back.

Salix is his own half-sibling that shares Michael as a father, and he refuses to acknowledge their existence at any and all points in his life.

When around his family, he plays innocent, sweet and stupid, mostly in that order. He will pin the blame for things he gets in trouble for on anyone but himself, unless he is proud of how well he did something. Gossamer knows about her brother’s bullshit but isn’t quite sure how to go about doing something about it.

He considers Ollie and Gunnar to be his grandparents more than either of his parents’ actual families. Due to “mysterious circumstances”, AJ’s mother passed and he stole the ring off of her finger. He keeps it and wears it, and is under the impression nobody knows where he got it.

Valentino is intensely ashamed of the crush he has on Greer, and hopes that if he channels any positive feelings into negative ones that he will get rid of it. He still enjoys hurting Ric despite this, and thinks Greer is prettiest when he’s suffering.

He is best friends with Velika and Marishka, and is an awful influence on them. If Aster and Asher weren’t Michael’s kids, he would probably get along with them, too.

He has a lot of romantic desires and ideations, and is intensely possessive if he thinks something/someone is his. He does not like to share and would rather you die by his hand than leave him.

Headcanon Masterlist

TAGS LIST

With Teeth Like Murder And A Mouth Like Trash (Valentino Johnson)

Honey Whatcha Waiting For? Welcome To My Candy Store (Valentino Musings)

All I Said Was I Don't Mean To Offend But You're The Dumbest Motherfucker I've Seen Tonight (Valentino Aesthetic)

Fastidious And Precise (Valentino Closet)

Razorblade Kisses Leave You Bleeding Baby (Valentino Headcanons)

Normally I’d Slap Your Face Off And Everyone Here Could Watch (Valentino Journal Entries)

In Conversation She Spoke Just Like A Baroness (Perdita)

VERSES

TBD

MAINS AND SHIPS

MAINS

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Michael - The Manwhore The Myth The Legend (Valentino and Michael - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Henrietta - A Mother Always Knows (Valentino and Henrietta - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Mike - Too Kind For His Own Good (Valentino and Mike - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Mia - Grow Into Your Baby Fangs (Valentino and Mia - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Vic -  These Lovely Cadavers Will Block Out The Light (Valentino and Vic - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Annie - Watch The World Disappear Right In Front Of Your Eyes (Valentino and Annie - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Ague - I Explained That I Just Valued Sincerity You Should Go Fuck Yourself And Then Try To Die (Valentino and Ague - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Alaric - I Like Killer Clothes Kickin' Nerds In The Nose (Valentino and Alaric - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Asher - You Are Not Whole By Yourself (Valentino and Asher - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Gunnar - I Know You Like My Moustache (Valentino and Gunnar - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Ollie - His Hands Are Never Cold (Valentino and Ollie - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Cassie - You Know I’m All Out Of Time And Going Nowhere (Valentino and Cassie - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

@throughxthexmist​ - Ella  - That Guy You Know Thinks He’s So Slick (Valentino and Ella - ThroughxThexMist)

@throughxthexmist​ -  Ryan - Count Your Bones One By One (Valentino and Ryan - ThroughxThexMist)

@throughxthexmist​ - Count Ravyncrowe - Got A Few Good Friends That Want Me Dead (Valentino and Ravencrowe - ThroughxThexMist)

@throughxthexmist​ - Vladimir - I’ve Got A Mess Of A Place To Lie In My Head (Valentino and Vladimir - ThroughxThexMist)

@throughxthexmist​ - Olivia - I’ll Break Another Fall With Fragile Arms  (Valentino and Olivia - ThroughxThexMist)

@throughxthexmist​ - Lucien - So Now You’ve Done A Little Wrong And You Swear You Didn’t Do It (Valentino and Lucien - ThroughxThexMist)

Here - Greer - You Got To Fight Just To Make It Through 'Cause I Will Be The Death Of You (Valentino and Greer)

Here - Umbra - Hello Darkness My Old Friend (Valentino and Umbra)

Here - Gossamer - If It Doesn’t Kill You It’s Sure To Leave A Horrible Scar (Valentino and Gossamer)

Here - Velika - Swinging For The Fence But We’re Swinging From A Short Rope (Valentino and Velika)

Here - Marishka - All The Cool Girls Are Dead (Valentino and Marishka)

SHIPS

@southxparkxafterxdark​ - Ague - There Are No Lovers Only Destroyers My One Desire Is Watching Your Failure (Ague x Valentino - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

Here - Greer - Eat Me Up Like Apple Pie Make Me Not Wanna Die (Greer x Valentino)

#With Heaven's Help You Cast Out Your Demons (Valentino Johnson) #Honey Whatcha Waiting For? Welcome To My Candy Store (Valentino Musings) #All I Said Was I Don't Mean To Offend But You're The Dumbest Motherfucker I've Seen Tonight (Valentino Aesthetic) #Fastidious And Precise (Valentino Closet) #Razorblade Kisses Leave You Bleeding Baby (Valentino Headcanons #Normally I’d Slap Your Face Off And Everyone Here Could Watch (Valentino Journal Entries) #In Conversation She Spoke Just Like A Baroness (Perdita) #The Manwhore The Myth The Legend (Valentino and Michael - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #A Mother Always Knows (Valentino and Henrietta - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #Too Kind For His Own Good (Valentino and Mike - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #Grow Into Your Baby Fangs (Valentino and Mia - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #Annie - Watch The World Disappear Right In Front Of Your Eyes (Valentino and Annie - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #I Explained That I Just Valued Sincerity You Should Go Fuck Yourself And Then Try To Die (Valentino and Ague - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #I Like Killer Clothes Kickin' Nerds In The Nose (Valentino and Alaric - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #You Are Not Whole By Yourself (Valentino and Asher - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #I Know You Like My Moustache (Valentino and Gunnar - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #His Hands Are Never Cold (Valentino and Ollie - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #You Know I’m All Out Of Time And Going Nowhere (Valentino and Cassie - SouthxParkxAfterxDark) #That Guy You Know Thinks He’s So Slick (Valentino and Ella - ThroughxThexMist) #Count Your Bones One By One (Valentino and Ryan - ThroughxThexMist) #Got A Few Good Friends That Want Me Dead (Valentino and Ravencrowe - ThroughxThexMist) #I’ve Got A Mess Of A Place To Lie In My Head (Valentino and Vladimir - ThroughxThexMist) #I’ll Break Another Fall With Fragile Arms (Valentino and Olivia - ThroughxThexMist) #So Now You’ve Done A Little Wrong And You Swear You Didn’t Do It (Valentino and Lucien - ThroughxThexMist) #You Got To Fight Just To Make It Through 'Cause I Will Be The Death Of You (Valentino and Greer) #Hello Darkness My Old Friend (Valentino and Umbra) #If It Doesn’t Kill You It’s Sure To Leave A Horrible Scar (Valentino and Gossamer) #Swinging For The Fence But We’re Swinging From A Short Rope (Valentino and Velika) #All The Cool Girls Are Dead (Valentino and Marishka) #There Are No Lovers Only Destroyers My One Desire Is Watching Your Failure (Ague x Valentino - SouthxParkxAfterxDark)

[losvers-clubb]

20’s Lovers

🌸Reddie🌸

Summary: in the 20’s Eddie Kaspbrak searches the streets for lovers and booze, he finds himself someone with a dashing voice, but he’s got a thing for ruining conversations.

Heyooo I’m back delivering a second part to this story. I’m not tech savvy so I’m just going to link part I

Pt I: https://losvers-clubb.tumblr.com/post/167473091215/20s-lovers-reddie-summary-in-the-20s-eddie

Pt III: https://losvers-clubb.tumblr.com/post/167752703585/20s-lovers-summary-in-the-20s-eddie-kaspbrak

——

PT II

The phone rang loudly throughout the small apartment, disturbing everyone’s slumber. The loud ringing paused for a minute and began up again taunting the drunk figured on the couch. Eddie rose from his bed and stared lazily at Beverly who slept peacefully on Bens chest.

“Hello?” He answered, only to be surprised by the loud angry voice on the other side.

“Edward! Is Beverly with you? She hasn’t come home yet and I’m very concerned” Bev’s fiancé spoke, almost trying to hide his tone by the words he said.

“N-no, she’s not, sorry about that” he stuttered slightly, why has he always been such a bad liar?

“You sure? She didn’t come over last night to bribe you to go out?” He spoke suspiciously, eddie tried to shake his head then realized he couldn’t see him.

“No no, not at all. In fact I have to work this morning, so we’ll speak later? Let me know if you find her, goodbye” he didn’t wait for a response and quickly hung up the phone. He turned to look at the couple briefly before remembering the night before, the speakeasy, the drinks, the incredible performance, the incredibly attractive performers, and the incredibly attractive asshole who he threw alcohol at. Maybe him lusting over him was obvious, but the guys bluntness threw Eddie so off guard he knew nothing but to walk away. “Dammit” he muttered, realizing he had work and he dashed towards his bathroom to clean up.

“What are you doing darling?” Eddie heard from behind, Bevs soft morning voice spoke.

“I have work Bevvy”

“It’s Friday!” She said enthusiastically, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind and resting her head on his shoulder, watching his face from the mirror. “How about you skip out on work today, call in sick, let’s go have lunch somewhere with a view.” She smiled, blinking slowly. Eddie felt sad for Beverly, Jack was hunting her down and at that moment he felt protective of her and wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the day with his best friend.

“Yeah, that sounds nice” He smiled back at her. She kissed his cheek quickly and unwrapped herself from him. With a sudden gust of energy she excitedly walked into the living room. From the bathroom Eddie could hear Beverly waking Ben from his slumber and hauling him off the couch with minor protests.

———

Once they had briefly stopped by Beverly’s apartment, Ben drove them in his shiny red car around until they settled on a rooftop cafe. Bev’s makeup was redone and she changed her dress, and she sat there looking confident as ever, her vibrant smile made the young waiter stutter and smile every time her silky voice spoke. Ben make sure to keep his arm around her protectively just in case. And then they began to speak of the night before which made Ben stifle a laugh.

“I didn’t even know what he said to you, but by the look on your face I automatically knew honey, I know you so well I just KNEW” Bev said exaggeratedly, taking a bite of a cracker and sipping her cup of coffee.

“Oh gosh he was so handsome” Eddie began “but he was so blunt, a-and rude! I couldn’t believe what came out of his mouth, he had such a- he had such a fucking foul mouth” he somewhat whispered his curse word, hoping no one near him would hear.

“That why his nickname is Trashmouth Tozier” Ben finally interjected, setting his tea down. A quick ‘oh’ came out from Eddie. “I’ve been friends with him since we were kids, never knew how to stop his mouth from running, and it’s so much worse when he drinks” he chuckled as he watched Eddie sink into his seat, suddenly embarrassed about gushing over Richies looks. “He likes you Kaspbrak” he spoke up again, watching him sink a little further “he’s a queer” Bev chocked a bit on her drink and Eddie coughed, nearly falling out of his chair. He quickly recovered and stood up, excusing himself from the table and quickly making it to a bathroom to clear his mind.

That feeling of wanting to be with someone like that made him feel dirty, dirty dirty dirty. The meeting was so brief, but the thoughts of watching him sing, and watching him watch Eddie dance all night long, felt dirty.

“I won’t be clean till I stop wanting him” his mind repeated to him, to the point where he was mumbling to himself the words as if a prayer.

I won’t be clean I won’t be clean I won’t be clean-

The door to the bathroom opened and long behold, it was Tozier himself walking in next to Ben. The two laughing about sudden coincidence of the two being there. Eddie didn’t realize there were tears streaming down his face until both men turned to him and their expressions turned from relaxed to concerned.

“Edward are you alright-“

“Ed’s, what’s wrong?” They spoke simultaneously, and Eddie felt beyond embarrassed to be standing in the bathroom looking such a wreck. His hands were raw from the extensive scrubbing he was doing and stung when he went to wipe his tears away. They men neared him and he felt cornered, trying to push himself into the wall behind him. He trusted Ben, sort of, but Richie? Barely into a conversation and the guy talked about bedding him? No way in hell. “Hey, you okay?” Richie got a bit closer than Ben did, lifting his arm to stroke Eddie, but without thinking the loud words came from Eddies lips.

“Do not fucking touch me” making Rich flinch a bit, the moment suddenly gave Eddie a chance to run for the door and didn’t bother looking back as he got to Bev. “We’re going home now, don’t even ask please I want to go home” he tugged at her arm as she stood.

“Eddie bear what’s wrong?” Her motherly concerned was written all over her face and she smoothed down his collars and ran her hands through his hair, calming him just slightly. She threw a few bills onto the table and quickly stepped away from the table, guiding Eddie to the elevator quickly. When they got downstairs a taxi was quickly summoned and Bev gave the guy directions to her place and they zoomed off.

——

Tag: @rememberingtozier @trash4skarsgard

I ❤️ u guys

#reddie #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #richie x eddie #beep beep richie #writing #mine #it #it by stephen king #it movie #it 1990 #it 2017 #1920’s