#but this is a bit different from his... weird racism thing where like

[underground-secret]

The Hunter and the Witch~ Dean Winchester x F! reader

Description: When Dean gets a call from an "old friend" asking for help, old feelings resurface leaving for messy feelings and a complicated hunt.

Warnings: canon violence, feelings of unrequited love, angst, loving someone being difficult, corpses, crime scenes, cursing, mentions of racism, racist ghost truck?

Tag list: @jesllianaquilesrolonsworld , @okayiamkassandra , @fablesrose , @ada--44 , @bonkydarnes , @star-yawnznn , @crazyunsexycool

Word Count: 9,251

Route 666

(Master list, Prev Ch, Next Chapter)

I lean against the expanse of the Impala, letting the bright sun shine over me. It was one of those cold but not cold days, where as long as the sun was hitting you it was perfectly right. Sam is next to me looking over the large map he has laid out on the hood of the car, trying to look for a way around a closed-off road.

I’m glad he knew what he was doing ‘cause my map and geography skills only went so far before I was lost.

Meanwhile, Dean was off to the side, his phone pressed to his ear his brows furrowed whoever he was talking to was clearly telling him something important and maybe shocking.

“Ok. I think I found a way we can bypass that construction just East of here,” Sam informs gaining my attention, “We might even make Pennsylvania faster than we thought.” I nod, taking advantage of his hunched-over figure to ruffle his hair, “Nice work, map man.” He snorts, rolling his eyes as he pushes my arm away playfully.

“Yeah. ‘Problem is, we’re not going to Pennsylvania” Dean points out, closing his phone and looking at it thoughtfully. I look at him confused, “We aren’t…?” He nods, wetting his lips, “I just got a call from an, uh, old friend. Her father was killed last night, think it might be our kind of thing.”

“What?” Sam vocalizes. “Yeah. Believe me, she never woulda called, never, if she didn’t need us” Dean clarifies. Without giving us any more information or even a chance to contemplate or counter his statement he gets in the car, “Come on, are you coming or not?”

The Impala cruises down the expanse of the road, a long beautifully green field on one side and a lake on the other. “By old friend you mean…?” Sam asks the question we were both undeniably thinking. “A friend that’s not new” Dean grumbles.

“Oh! Thanks, genius” I remark, he was being weird and that alone was not helping his case. “‘Said her name’s Cassie huh?” Sam said, trying a different angle, “You never mentioned her…”

“Didn’t I?” Dean remarks. He wasn't very good at hiding this one, the car falling silent in the wake of his stupid answer. He finally huffs, “Yeah, we went out.”

“You mean you dated somebody?” Sam asks with a snort, “For more than one night?”

“Oh come on Sammy we're all adults here, we’ve all dated before” I chime in with a smirk. He turns around in his seat, facing me with an expectant look, “Are we talking about the same person here? Dean doesn't date.” Sam exclaims and I push down the ache of that implication, “And aren’t you the least bit curious.”

“Oh no, I am,” I nod enthusiastically, laughing lightly, “I want all the details. I was just tryna be nice.”

He snickers, turning back to his brother, “You heard her, we want all the details.”

I swear Dean’s eye practically twitches, “Am I speaking a language you’re not getting here? Dad and I were working a job in Ohio, she was finishing up college. We went out for a coupla weeks.” 

I want to ask how long ago this was, was it months before his dad disappeared or a year or more ago, but I hold back on my questioning. “And…?” Sam pushes. Dean shrugs slightly.

“Look, it’s terrible about her dad, but it kinda sounds like a standard car accident. I’m not seeing how it fits with what we do,” Sam reasons, “Which by the way, how does she know what we do?”

Dean doesn't answer again, silently shifting in his seat uncomfortably. The realization hits me like a brick, “Oh. My. God,” I lean forward in my seat almost getting choked out by my seatbelt, “You told her! You broke the number one hunting rule! You know, not telling anyone, ever!”

“More than that!” Sam adds, “It’s our big family rule. Number one. We do what we do and we shut up about it. For a year and a half, I did nothing but lie to Jessica, and you go out with this chick in Ohio a coupla times and you tell her everything?!” I try not to think about my own relationships both romantic and not that rarely ever made it past a couple of months before it ended, not only having to lie about being a hunter but a witch too. Dean stays silent, staring straight ahead, “Dean!” Sam yells.

“Yeah. Looks like,” he finally acknowledges. He continues to stare ahead, pressing his foot down harder on the gas pedal. Sam shakes his head, giving his brother his classic bitchface.

“Oh. He had it bad” I laugh leaning back in my seat, ignoring the sinking and stabbing feeling in my heart. I figured I’d have to keep doing so on this hunt.

The office was dark, the bright sunlight not able to stretch upon the large room not even with the help of glass doors. The place could really open a couple of blinds, let the light shine in.

An old white man with an interesting-looking tie, one of those Western ones with the jewel and black tether, talks to two people a man and a woman their backs towards us. And the way Dean pauses, staring at the woman it isn't hard to deduce she's Cassie. She and the older black gentlemen next to her seem to be having some sort of dispute with the old white guy.

Then suddenly both of the men walk away, clearly frustrated, leaving Cassie to stand there herself. She turns around swiftly, and almost like a perfectly curated romance movie she nearly hits Dean only inches separating the two. I didn't even realize he had moved forward in the time we've been standing here. 

Just looking at her I could tell why Dean fell for her, she's beautiful more than that. She could be a model with her beautiful long dark curls framing her face, full lips colored red, and big brown eyes. She must have stepped out of a magazine, everything about her screamed perfect down to her perfectly shaped eyebrows and perfect nose. “Dean,” she says, her voice smooth despite the look of slight apprehension.

He nods and grins, “Hey Cassie.” And they just stare at each other. He's looking at her in a way I’ve never seen him look at anyone before even despite the tension that hung in the air, unspoken words from however long ago.

His eyes seem to glimmer, you’d have to be a fool not to see he still has feelings for her, that they never went away in the first place. And that it’s more than just any feelings, he loves her and that is a hard pill to swallow.

He clears his throat, breaking the trance they were both in, “This is my brother Sam. And my friend Y/N.” She smiles at each of us before her gaze reverts to Dean, not that I could blame her in the slightest.

“Sorry ‘bout your dad,” he says.

“Yeah. Me too,” she answers.

Her family home was beautiful and extraordinarily large, it was a bit disturbing. Though maybe that was because it reminded me of my home before moving to Kansas, or at least what I remember of it. We sat in the sitting room on vintage settees, another reminder of that home–my mother would quite like the look of this cozy room. 

Cassie finally comes back adorning a tray of tea cups and a teapot along with the little bowl of sugar and a small pouring cup of milk, could she get any more perfect and wonderful? “My mothers in pretty bad shape. I’ve been staying with her. I wish she wouldn’t go off by herself. She’s been so nervous and frightened. She was worried about Dad,” she explains.

“Why?” Dean asks as she takes a seat across from us. He was watching her every move as if dedicating it to memory, I wonder if he’s thinking ‘She moves in the same manner she used to’ or maybe that it changed. Suddenly I was not so okay with sitting between the boys even though that's almost how we always sat when talking to someone on a hunt, as it made it harder for them to fight and made them slightly more comfortable with squishing into sofas with their large frames. But now, being in the middle I could easily watch how he looked at her, studied her.

She skillfully pours tea into each cup, “He was scared. He was seeing things.”

“Like what?” He asked.

“He swore he saw an awful-looking black truck following him,” she responds carefully.

“A truck, did he see a driver?” I ask, diligently accepting the beautiful teacup she handed me. I take a careful sip of the black tea, of course she would know and pick the perfect tea for guests. Does she have any flaws?

“He didn’t talk about a driver,” she answers, “Just the truck. He said it would appear and disappear. And, in the accident, Dad’s car was dented, like it had been slammed into by something big.”

Sam accepts his cup of tea, “Thanks. Now you’re sure this dent wasn’t there before?” And as predictable as Dean was he looked at his cup weirdly before depositing it back on the tray, that man was not a tea person he’d take a coffee or a beer any day. I think the only reason he drank the tea I gave him when he was sick was because he knew how desperate Sammy and I were. 

“He sold cars. Always drove a new one. There wasn’t a scratch on that thing,” she explains, “It had rained hard that night. There was mud everywhere. There was a distinct set of muddy tracks leading from Dad’s car…leading right to the edge, where he went over.” She swallows harshly, bowing her head, “One set of tracks. His.” 

Dean’s face softens, eyes filling with sympathy, “The first was a friend of your father's?” She nods, “Best friend. Clayton Soames. They owned the car dealership together. Same thing. Dent. No tracks. And the cops said exactly what they said about Dad. He ‘lost control of his car.’”

I force my brain to rid itself of any thoughts of Dean and Cassie's relationship. This was like any other hunt, something weird is going on and we are here to help, nothing more.

It was weird, cars don't just drive off the road like that and then have newly made dents that match another vehicle. “Is there any reason you can think of as to why your father and his partner might've been targets? Competition?” I ask. She shakes her head, radiating certainty, “No.”

“And you think this vanishing truck ran them off the road?” Sam points out.

“When you say it aloud like that…,” she sighs, “listen, I’m a little skeptical about this…ghost stuff…or whatever it is you guys are into.”

Dean huffs, “Skeptical. If I remember, I think you said I was nuts.” 

“That was then,” she bites back. Then they fall back into that thing where they just stare at each other, “I just know that I can’t explain what happened up there. So I called you,” she adds, directing her words only to him. I clear my throat, weary of the bubble they seem to have put around themselves, “You were right in calling” I reasoned softly, “It is very strange and on the off chance it isn’t anything supernatural then it was certainly a cover-up.”

Her perfect eyebrows furrow but before she can respond the sound of the front door opening catches all of our attention, a middle-aged white woman enters through and I assume it's her mother. She shared her mother's eye shape and her nose, but the rest of her she must have gotten from her father.

As if we had gotten caught we all rise from the sofa. Cassie goes over to her mother, taking her arm, “Mom. Where have you been I was so…” her mother cuts her off looking at us, “I had no idea you'd invited friends over.”

“Mom, this Dean, a…friend of mine from…college. ‘His brother Sam and friend Y/N.”

“Well, I won’t interrupt you” her mother smiles nervously.

“Mrs Robinson,” Dean says suddenly, “We’re sorry for your loss. We’d like to talk to you for a minute if you don’t mind.” And as if offended she recoils, “I’m really not up for that right now.”

The morning sun is dimmer today, perfect for the scene we were walking upon. The man Cassie was standing with yesterday, Jimmy, was the newest victim. He died in the same way as the others sometime late last night. Cassie was again arguing with the old white man from yesterday. As we approached I could hear his condescending voice, “Close the man road. The only road in and out of town? Accidents do happen Cassie, and that’s what they are. Accidents.” 

We stand beside her, Dean speaking up immediately, “Did the cops check for additional denting on Jimmy’s car, see if it was pushed?” 

Without missing a beat and without looking away from Cassie the man asks, “Who’s this?”

“Dean and Sam Winchester, Y/N L/N. Family friends. This is Mayor Harold Todd” She replies smoothly. This man went from just any old white guy to a powerful old white guy, even worse. And he had two first names, you never trust someone with two first names. Reluctantly Mayor Old Guy answers Dean’s initial question, “There’s one set of tire tracks. One. ‘Doesn’t point to foul play.”

Cassie scuffs, “Mayor, the police, and town officials take their cues from you. If you’re indifferent about…” 

He cuts her off, “Indifferent!”

“Would you close the road if the victims were white?” she counters.

Oh. Could she get any more iconic?!

“You suggesting I’m racist Cassie?” He spits, “I’m the last person you should talk to like that.” 

“And why is that?” She counters, stepping closer to him.

“Why don’t you ask your mother” he answers before walking away. My jaw drops, what the hell is going on in this town?

I huff, blowing a piece of hair out of my face. I really didn’t want to get dressed, for as much as I’ve been trying to ignore the whole Dean and Cassie situation I was feeling horrible.

I sit on the soft motel bed in nothing but my underwear and a nice white button-down, haven given up on dressing. I feel stupid. Incredibly stupid.

Maybe Sam’s words had gotten to me, maybe I had gotten my hopes up without even realizing it.

He loves someone else, and he’s had for a while. I always thought when you love someone those feelings don’t ever truly go away, there's always a part of you with them. They wind up crossing your mind and you wonder where things went wrong. But I guess I never considered this would also apply to Dean, which is cruel to believe within itself. Which is funny too, all these years I’ve spent loving him…But Sam was right he didn’t date so I guess I assumed he never fell for anyone during his countless one-night stands.

I know death is cruel but maybe love is tied with it. Because I feel like someone took my heart and ran with it, leaving me with this void in my chest and an ache so intense that it throbs in its place. It was stupid to think I had a chance to begin with. I knew not to believe I had one in the first place, but somewhere along the line I had completely forgotten about any of that. So much for listening to my past self, if I had maybe I wouldn't be feeling so damn bad.

But I couldn't be mad. Cassie was wonderful in every possible way and you don't need to know her for long to realize that. They seemed perfect for each other really. She was feisty and had no issue putting someone in their place, which I quite admired, and I know Dean could use that every now and then. If she was a jerk I’m sure I’d have no issue disliking her, but she wasn’t! She was impossible to dislike, and it would be horrible of me to hate her just because she harbors feelings for someone that I love or the fact that he loves her back. That wasn't her fault, it was neither of their faults.

Loving someone has to be the hardest thing one could do.

I get up from the bed and put on my skirt. I couldn't sit here forever, the boys would come knocking and I wouldn't have a good excuse as to why I’m in a mood. Quickly I check myself in the mirror, at least I didn’t cry which means I don't gotta redo my makeup, even if it was minimal to begin with.

How do you stop loving someone? I could use that answer.

I knew I loved him for a long time, too long. But I suppose I didn’t realize just how bad it had gotten, how much it had flourished and I had never expected that to be possible. I love him.

I love him and it hurts so much.

How many times did I have the opportunity to tell him? It had to be in the hundreds. Maybe it was better that I didn’t, he loves someone else and I should be happy for them. I am happy for him. He deserves to be loved and be able to love. Yes, I am happy.

I approach the two older men having lunch, focusing on the wet ground and the wholesomeness that is them eating on a pier. “Hi, sorry. Are you Ron Stubbins?” I ask, taking the lead. I needed to throw myself into the work, I needed the distraction. The older man nods looking at us confused, his black cap bobbing with his head. “You were friends with Jimmy Anderson?” Dean follows up.

“Who are you?” Ron responds with, sitting up straighter. He was sizing us up, skeptical of us, which he had every right to be. “We’re Mr. Anderson’s insurance company. We’re just here to dot ‘I’s’ and cross ‘T’s’,” Dean explains, flashing his badge.

“And they needed to send three of you?” He counters. I giggle, tilting my head slightly, “Would you prefer me leaving?” I ask sweetly. And as predictable as men can be he drags his eyes across my body before shaking his head, “No. No. That won’t be necessary.” I ignore the dirty feeling that washes over me and sticks to my bones like a new layer of skin, it was necessary to do that because now he won’t bother questioning us anymore on that topic. 

“We were just wondering, had the deceased mentioned any unusual recent experiences?” Sam questions, getting back on topic. Reluctantly Ron looks away from me to look at the man who questioned him, “What do you mean, unusual?”

“Well visions, hallucinations” He elaborates. 

“We’re working with local psychologists to broaden our questioning and research,” I explain, trying to clear the confusion from his face, “It’s all very standard.”

“What company did you say you were with?” Ron counters. Maybe he was more on guard than I thought. “All National Mutual” Dean answers smoothly, “Tell me, did he ever mention seeing a truck? A big black truck?”

“What the hell ‘you talking about?” Ron exclaims, “‘You even speaking English?”

Wow, what a lovely guy.

“Son this truck, a big scary monster-looking thing?” Ron's friend suddenly says.

“Yeah actually, I think so” Dean answers. The man hums to himself in thought, please let this interaction be useful. “You’ve heard of something like that?” I ask the man. “I have,” he nods, not bothering to elaborate.

“You have. Where?” Sam pushes.

“Not where,” he finally answers, “When. Back in the ‘60s, there was a string of deaths. Black men. Story goes, they disappeared in a big, nasty, black truck.”

“They ever catch the guy?” I ask. He shrugs, “Never found him. Hell, not even sure they really looked. See there was a time, ‘this town wasn’t too friendly to all its citizens.”

“Thank you” Sam nods.

We walk away, heading back to the Impala. “Well, it seems like history is repeating itself,” I began, “From the lack of investigation and racism down to the–”

“Truck,” Dean says, finishing my sentence. “Keeps coming up doesn’t it?” Sam adds.

“You know, I was thinking. You heard of the Flying Dutchman?” Dean asks.

“Yeah, a ghost ship, infused with the Captian’s evil spirit. It was basically part of him” Sam answers, explaining the lore. Dean nods, “So what if we’re dealing with the same thing? You know, a phantom truck, an extension of some bastard’s ghost, re-enacting past crimes.”

“The victims have been black men” Sam continues the theory. I half-shrug, “I don't know. The town has to have more than a handful of black people, but it only seems to be going after specific people. It’s practically targeting those connected to Cassie and her family. I’m sure there’s some deeper link there.”

“That’s why I think it’s more than that,” Dean says.

“All right. Well, you work that angle, go talk to her,” Sam tells his brother specifically, clearly playing matchmaker. “Yeah, I will,” Dean agrees.

“Oh, and you might also wanna mention that other thing” Sam noted, a playful smile on his lips. Always the meddler. “What other thing?” Dean asks, either genuinely lost or faking it. “The serious, unfinished business?” Sam elaborates. I huff a laugh, “Yeah, seriously Dean it's so painfully obvious. Just talk to the girl.” It pained me to even suggest that, to motivate him in such a way but I want him to be happy, and if that means being with her then so be it.

Dean stops just as we reach the car, going obstinately silent. Sam huffs a laugh this time, “Dean, what is going on between you two?”

“All right, so maybe we were a little more involved than I said,” he finally admits. I give him a pointed look, “Yeah…that was obvious.” 

He huffs, “A lot more. Maybe. And I told her our secret, about what we do. And I shouldn’t have.”

“Ah look man, everybody’s gotta open up to someone sometime,” Sam reasons, being a little too understanding compared to how we were only yesterday. “Yeah I don’t,” Dean argues, “It was stupid to get that close. I mean, look how it ended.”

I smile at him softly, hoping any sadness is concealed far behind my eyes, and I realize Sam is giving him the same look except he’s nearly beaming. “Would you both stop!” he shouts. But we don't because this is a side of Dean we’ve never seen before, and it is beautiful even if it's heartbreaking for me. “Someone blink or something!” he exclaims, throwing his hands up.

“You loved her,” I say softly, the gape in my chest deepening at the verbal declaration. Saying it aloud was so much worse. “Oh God,” he groans, turning to the Impala. “You still do!” I call after him.

“You were in love with her, but you dumped her,” Sam states, connecting the pieces. Dean goes silent, staring at the ground, then carefully glances at his brother before reverting his eyes. “Oh wow. She dumped you.”

I have to stop myself from taking in a sharp breath, there was a lot to this he wasn’t telling us. But why would she break up with him if she still has feelings?

“Get in the car” Dean demands, done being “emotional” and open, “Get in the car!”

Sam hands me my hot chocolate, but not even the sweet treat or the soft snow falling just outside can lift my mood. It makes me feel a little better but it does not fix my heart. Dean didn’t come back last night and I know it’s because he spent the night at Cassie’s. I’m happy they worked things out and hopefully had a wonderful night but again it does not fix my heart.

I held the cup tighter, welcoming the immense warmth it brought to my frozen hands as we stepped out of the small coffee shop. The air was crisp yet gentle as the light fluffy snowflakes descended onto us, the cold flakes collecting in my hair. A small smile graced my face, maybe it was making me feel better. I like the cold, preferred it even, I was cozy in my thick turtle neck and my favorite fleeced-lined jacket. 

Sam and I walk in comfortable silence side by side, sipping from our cups and basking in the scenery of the unexpected snow. It was early May in Missouri, it really shouldn’t be snowing but I suppose if it could snow here a little in April then early May couldn't be that weird. Plus it was a light snow that likely wouldn't even stick. But the calming scenery is cut in half by an ambulance that speeds past us, sirens blaring. We share a questioning look but ultimately ignore it until two cop cars rush past us heading the same way. That we can’t ignore. With another shared look, we follow after the sirens.

I look out at the macabre scene, the yellow caution tape not having stopped me from investigating thanks to the use of a fake ID. The body had been bagged after countless photos were taken, but the blood of Mayor Todd still stains the streets. It was a gruesome scene, arguably worse than the others in this case his organs squished out like roadkill and, truthfully, that’s what he had become. 

“L/N” Sam calls out from just a few feet behind me. I turned around swiftly, the snow whirling around me, Dean stood next to his brother. He came. 

I walk over to the two boys, watching Dean’s clear expression of shock masked by annoyance, “‘You gonna ask me a bunch of questions too?” he asks. I look at him confused, “...no” I drag out slowly. His face seems to relax slightly, something unrecognizable passing in his eyes, “Good,” he nods. 

“I already know you made up–made out” I add, his face drops, “Anyways, crime scene,” I point behind me.

“Every bone crushed. Internal organs turned to pudding,” Sam explains the case, catching his brother up, “The cops are all stumped, it’s like something ran him over.” The wind picks up again, swirling the snow in its own private storm, the cold will help with the case as it preserves the body longer. “Something like a truck?” Dean asks, gaining his footing in the case.

“Yeah, except of course there’s no tracks” I answer. He nods, rubbing a hand down his jaw and I have to force my eyes away from the movement, “What was the Mayor doing here anyway?”

“He owned the property. Bought it a few weeks ago” Sam says referring to the building site.

“But he’s white, doesn’t fit the pattern,” Dean points out. Sam nods, “Killings didn’t happen up on the road. That doesn’t fit either.”

I shove my hands into my pocket, taking a quick look back at the crime scene before turning back to the boys, “Then it seems like this case is one of revenge.”

I shuffle through the papers in front of me, glad that I was sent to do research at the town's main library rather than be at the newspaper office with the boys and Cassie. She was probably looking at him all sweetly and being a kind person, and I did not wish to see the loving way they looked at each other. And if avoiding that meant having my nose in dusty boxes of court records then that was okay.

I pull out my phone calling Sam directly instead of Dean, the phone rings a couple of times before he picks up, “Hi” I greet, “I got some info.”

The line goes quiet for a second before I hear his voice, “Alright you're on speaker.”

“Ok, so,” I start, balancing my phone between my ear and my shoulder as I look over the papers, “I have courthouse records here, and according to them Mr and Mrs Mayor bought an abandoned property. The previous owner was the Dorian family who owned it for, like, 150 years.”

“Dorian?” Dean repeats back. “Yes.”

His voice grows quieter but still in range enough for me to hear, “Didn’t you say the Dorian family used to own this paper?” he asks someone else in the room. “Along with everything else around here. Real pillars of the town,” Cassie answers. “Right, right” Dean responds followed by the clicking of keys.

“You got something there?” I ask, readjusting my phone. 

“Think so” Sam mumbles, seemingly focused on whatever was happening over at the office.

“This Cyrus Dorian. He vanished in April of ‘63. The case was investigated but never solved. It was right around the time the string of murders was going on back then,” Dean informs, adding more information to what that man yesterday had told us.

“Well to add to that information, the Dorian place seemed to be in really bad shape when the Mayber bought it,” I add, “He bulldozed the place.”

“Mayor Todd knocked down the Dorian place?” Dean asks, presumably, Cassie. “It was a big deal” she answers, “One of the oldest houses left. He made the front page.” I huff a breath, everything connecting yet leaving so many questions at the same time. “You got a date, Y/N?” Dean calls back.

“Um,” I hum shuffling the papers around and reading over the words quickly, “‘3rd of last month.” The line goes quiet again the only sound ringing back being the sharp noise of fingers on a keyboard, “Mayor Todd bulldozed the Dorian family home on the 3rd,” Dean finally responds, “The first killing was the next day.”

Pouring the boiled water into the mug I take a quick look back, Dean kneels in front of the shaken-up Cassie rubbing her knee softly and looking at her with pure determination and adoration. I swallow roughly looking back at the mugs in front of me, nearly overspilling and burning myself. 

This was not the time to grieve a love that never happened. Cassie called Dean afraid, having seen the black truck. We were here to help, I was making a soothing herbal tea for her and her mother to calm the nerves. 

Finishing with the mugs I carefully carry them into the sitting room. Sam takes one from me, gently handing it to her mother. I hand the mug to Cassie, her shaky hands accepting and rattling the cup, Dean immediately moves to sit at her side but it does not stop his protectiveness if anything it amplifies it; he practically radiates it. “Maybe you should throw a couple of shots in here,” she says, half joking.

I huff a laugh, “Well while the effects of alcohol do have the capabilities of easing the central nervous system, when the effects wear off your body will be jolted back from its depressive state which would really only make you feel worse, more anxious as well as stressed.”

She gives me a half, almost awkward, smile before taking a sip from her mug. Did I say too much? Why didn’t someone stop me? Someone should’ve just cut me off, especially if I wasn’t helping.

“You didn’t see who was driving the truck,” Sam says suddenly, pulling the awkwardness out of the air. “It seemed to be no one. Everything was moving so fast. And then it was just gone,” she explains, “Why didn’t it kill us?”

“Whoever was controlling the truck wants you afraid first,” Dean answers. This would explain why at least one of the victims had seen it and truthfully thought they were going mad. “Mrs Robinson,” Sam began, “Cassie said that your husband saw the truck before he died.” Mrs Robinson doesn't answer, seemingly lost in her mind as she shakes. “Mom?” Cassie says carefully, worry laced in her voice.

The older Robinson shakes her head nervously, “Oh. Martin was under a lot of stress. You can’t be sure about what he was seeing.”

“Well after tonight I think we can be reasonably sure he was seeing a truck. What happened tonight, you and Cassie are marked. Ok?” Dean snaps, “Your daughter could die. So if you know something now would be a really good time to tell us about it.”

“Dean…” Cassie warns. But her mother's face contorts in emotion, something in her breaking, “Yes. Yes, he said he saw a truck.”

“Did he know who it belonged to?” Sam asks, taking a seat across from the woman. “He thought he did,” she answers cryptically. “Who was that?” Dean pushes. Her eyes get watery and she sinks into herself, “Cyrus. A man named Cyrus.”

My gaze flickers to the boys, we are all thinking the same thing, I look back at her, “By any chance was it Cyrus Dorian?” I ask carefully. Dean pulls out a newspaper from inside his coat, handing it to the woman. She doesn't shake her head or nod only replying with, “Cyrus Dorian died more than 40 years ago.”

“How do you know he died, Mrs Robinson?” Dean asks softly, “The papers said he went missing. How do you know he died?” 

She hesitates, her mouth agape like a fish out of water or in reality that of a person who got caught, “We were all very young,” she says, “I dated Cyrus a while, I was also seeing Martin…in secret of course. Interracial couples didn’t go over too well back then. When I broke it off with Cyrus and when he found out about Martin, I don’t know, he, changed. His hatred. His hatred was frightening.”

“The murder,” Sam voices.

Her voice wobbles, “They were rumors. People of color disappearing into some kind of truck. Nothing ‘ever done,” she swallows shifting in her seat, “Martin and a…Martin and I, we were gonna be, uh, married in that little church near here, but last minute we decided to elope as we didn’t want the attention.” She pushes her short hair out of her face, stressed. “And what became of Cyrus?” I ask.

Endless tears fall down her cheeks, “The day we set for the wedding, was the day someone set fire to the church. There was a children’s choir practicing in there. They all died.” I suppress the gasp that wishes to leave my lips, the room seems to dim with the information. What was meant to be a beautiful day was soiled by the blood of innocents.

“Did the attacks stop after that?” Sam asks softly, careful of her fragile mindset.

A sob escapes from her chest, “No! There was one more. One night that truck came for Martin. Cyrus beat him terribly. But Martin, you see, Martin got loose. And he started hitting Cyrus and he just kept hitting him and hitting him.”

“Why didn’t you call the cops?” Dean pushes. She continues to cry, “This was forty years ago. He called on his friends, Clayton Soames and Jimmy Anderson, and they put Cyrus’ body into the truck and they rolled it into the swamp at the end of his land and all three of them kept that secret all of these years.” 

“And now all three are gone,” Sam acknowledges. This all confirms the theory of a vengeful spirit. “And so is Mayor Todd,” Dean adds, “Now he said that you of all people would know he is not a racist. Why would he say that?”

“He was a good man,” Mrs Robinson answers, “He was a young deputy back then investigating Cyrus’ disappearance. Once he figured out what Martin and the others had done he…he did nothing, because he also knew what Cyrus had done.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Cassie asks, her voice hard yet full of emotion. I couldn't imagine what was going on in her head, to find out something like this–“I thought I was protecting them. And now there’s no one left to protect,” her mother reasons.

“Yes, there is” Dean counters, fiercely. His green eyes harden with determination as he looks at Cassie.

I sit on the cold hood of the Impala, gently kicking my legs back and forth watching Dean pace in front of me. Sam leans against the car next to me, his arms crossed as he too watches his brother, “Ah, my life was so simple. Just school, exams, papers on polycentric cultural norms…”

I look at him with an amused smile, “I have no idea what that last part is but it sounds fun!” That stops Dean in his tracks for just a half of a second, he points at us, “No it doesn’t. I saved him from a boring existence.”

“Yeah, occasionally I miss boring” Sam reasons. I nod enthusiastically, “Honestly, we have not had a normal day in like months. Kinda miss it.”

Dean brushes our light complaining off, “So this killer truck–”

“I miss conversations that didn’t start with ‘this killer truck’” Sam quips with a dramatic sigh. I failed to hold back my laughter, Dean laughs lightly and for a brief moment, things feel how they used to, “Well this Cyrus guy. Evil on a level that infected even his truck. When he died, the swamp became his tomb, and his spirit was dormant for 40 years.”

“So what woke it up?” Sam asks.

“The construction on his house. Or the destruction,” Dean points out. 

“Right. Demolition or remodeling can awaken spirits, make them restless” Sam recalls. His brother hums a ‘yes’, nodding.

“Like that theater in Illinois, ya know?” Sam references, and I in fact had no idea what he was talking about. “And the guy that tore down the family homestead, Harold Todd, is the same guy that kept Cyrus’ murder quiet and unsolved,” Dean adds, bringing it back to the case at hand.

“So now his spirit is awakened and out for blood,” Sam acknowledges. 

“Yeah, I guess. Who knows what ghosts are thinking anyway” Dean shrugs. 

“Wait, does this mean we have to go swimming in that swamp?” I ask. I mean if we had to salt and burn the bones then we would need said bones which are in a swamp, how nice. Dean smiles at me, I know that look. “No” I warn, pointing at him like an animal that did something wrong. “You said it” he rationalizes. 

“Noooo” I whine a pout on my lips, “Do I have to do it alone?”

His wicked smile deepens, “‘Course not, Sammy’s gonna be with you.”

Sam’s shoulders drop, “Man,” he sighs. 

Suddenly a familiar figure approaches, her hands tucked into the back pocket of her jeans. Dean stands up straighter, “Hey.” She smiles sadly, “Hey. She’s asleep. Now what?”

“Well, you should stay put, look after her…and we’ll be back. Don’t leave the house,” Dean explains, looking at her in that way that hurts my heart. But she smiles, any worry melting off her face, “Don’t go getting all authoritative on me. I hate it.”

Dean glances back at us, Sam looks down grinning acting as if neither of us could hear the conversation. He turns back to Cassie mumbling something I can't quite make out but whatever it was must have been good because he slowly leans in to kiss her. I drop my head and gaze at the very interesting ground, trying my best to ignore the sound of their intensifying making out. A pang of jealousy, longing, and pain shoots through my chest. If the ground wanted to just open up and consume me now I wouldn’t complain, I’d even help it and just throw myself in it wouldn’t have to work very hard. Sam clears his throat, I look up but Dean just holds out a finger to wait as he brings Cassie even closer.

I drop my eyes again. 

Loving someone never hurt so bad. Loving him never hurt so bad. 

Was it wrong to love him? Was this always going to be my fate? To see him evermore with other girls, loving them more than he could ever love me. 

“You two comin’ or what?” Dean asks. I look up once more and this time his lips aren’t on Cassie.

I tug on the chain again, making sure it's secure, my hands getting wet in the process. I wipe my icky hands off on my jeans as I back away, “Alright he’s good,” I call out to Sam who stands feet away from me, closer to the butt of the pickup Dean was driving. He gives a thumbs up to his brother who begins to move the car forward, the pickup moving slowly in the weight of the heavy truck and water pressure.

We had already gotten it up a lot, but it had gotten stuck on the side of the swamp so we had to readjust its hold to get it the rest of the way up. 

The years in the water had diminished it. The old black truck was now more like a rust bucket, remains of the swamp water spilling out from the seams. “All right. A little more…little more,” Sam leads, “All right, stop.” 

The engine shuts off and Dean heads to the Impala, he pulls it open rummaging through the various weapons. “Now I know what she sees in you” Sam declares with a snap of his finger, meaning he finally understood what that look in her eyes meant. “What?” Dean asks.

“Come on man, you can admit it. You’re still in love with her” Sam clarifies. I nod even though the implications hurt, “Plus it’s not like no one else knows. So the only person you’re hiding from is yourself.”

Dean looks up from the trunk, “Uhh, can we focus please.”

I purse my lips, “Yeah…focusing has never really been our strong suit…” A container of salt is pressed into my chest, “Hold that” Dean says swiftly.

His expression hardens, all jokes put to rest as he dishes out items, “Gas” he says first, handing the large container to his brother, “Flashlights,” he lists out next filling my empty hand with one. 

“Ok, let’s get this done,” he quips, closing the trunk.

We trudge back over to the rusty truck, our flashlights leading our way across the grass. Dean places his hand on the handle and I must wonder how he isn’t grossed out by just the feeling of the flaked paint and rotting metal. He glances at us in a silent ‘you ready?’ We give a nod and he opens the door.

A decaying wet corpse falls out the door and onto the soft grass, a small gush of water following its lead. I leap back like a scared cat, clasping a hand to my mouth and nose the decomposition of the body as well as its marinating in swamp water left a putrid smell. One perhaps worse than anything I've ever smelt before which was saying something considering what I’ve hunted. 

“All right let’s get to it,” Dean says. Sam pours the gasoline all over the body, careful not to get it close to us and I jump in with the salt, opening the little latchet to sprinkle the small white crystals over the open-mouthed corpse. The satisfying scratch and flick of a match sounds softly beside me in the quiet night followed by the drop of the matchstick on the body. In mere seconds the remains go up in flames, the warm glow of the fire reflecting on the truck just beside it. I hoped no one would come looking over here with the whirl of smoke twirling above us, the heat powerful enough for me to take another step back. 

“Think that’ll do it?” Sam voices, staring down at the burning corpse. But his question is followed by the revving of an engine and two blinding lights pointed at us. Without looking in the direction I knew it was the ghost truck. “I guess not,” Dean quips.

 “So burning the body had no effect on that thing?” the younger Winchester asks. “Sure it did. Now it’s really pissed,” Dean responds. I glare at him, “I don't know if this is the time for cool jokes.”

“But Cyrus’ ghost is gone, right Dean?” Sam asks, a hint of panic in his voice as the tuck stares us down. But his brother doesn't answer right away, instead, he starts to walk away, “Apparently not the part that’s fused with the truck.”

 I go on my tip toes trying to peak into the truck, maybe we missed something like a severed piece of him that didn’t spill out but before I can vocalize this Sam is calling out to his brother, “Where are you going?” I turn around, catching up to the boys, “Goin’ for a little ride,” Dean answers as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “What?!” Sam and I exclaim in unison, “That’s a horrible idea!” I add. But he ignores our concern, “Gonna lead that thing away. That busted piece of crap, you gotta burn it.”

“How the hell are we supposed to burn a truck, Dean?” Sam asks, voice raising in volume. But being the determined man he is he shrugs, “I don’t know. Figure something out.” He rounds the car, opening the driver's door, “At least let one of us come with you, this is horribly dangerous,” I try to reason.

His eyes move up and down my face, before he settles on my eyes once more, “‘Exactly why you’re not comin’ with.” Before I can come up with a retort on how stubborn he is he settles himself into the car, closing the door behind him. I look to Sam for any support on this but he just stares at the car muttering, “Figure some–something–”

I rack my brain for ideas because Dean wasn’t going to listen and would rather be all hot and stubborn than be reasonable, “An explosion?” I suggest. Sam shakes his head, “No, that wouldn’t work. Parts would go everywhere and everything has to burn.”

I huff, frustrated, “I hate when you’re right.” 

Dean reverses the Impala and takes off, the engine revering. As predictable as possible the ghost truck roars after him. I try to rack my brain for more ideas, even if we could suddenly light a truck on fire it would take too long for it to burn completely, “Sam, please tell me you got some idea rolling around in there.” He doesn't answer, lost in concentration with his bottom lip between his teeth. 

My phone suddenly rings in my pocket, I pull it out swiftly seeing Dean’s name glowing. I flip it open bringing it to my ear, “You okay?” I say immediately. “Uh…yeah,” He says but I remain not convinced, “what are we doing?” 

I look at Sam, panicking slightly, “Um, Sam what are we doing?”

He pulls out his phone, “You gotta give me a minute.” He presses his phone to his ear, “He says to give him a minute, I think he’s callin’ someone.”

“I don’t have a minute!” He half yells. “Dude, I don't know!” I panic, “Just…just don’t die, okay?”

“Trying here sweetheart.” I look back at Sam who has stepped away, I give him a hand motion of ‘please hurry up.’ He nods, coming closer to feed me info, “Ask him where he is.” I pull my phone away from my ear putting him on speaker instead, “Okay, Dean where the hell are you?”

“In the middle of nowhere with a killer truck on my ass!” he exclaims, “It’s like it knows I put the torch to Cyrus.”

“Listen to me, this is important” Sam orders, calmly, “I have to know exactly where you are.” Seemingly taking his advice he goes quiet for a beat, “Decatur Road, about two miles off the highway.”

“Ok. Headed East?” Sam follows up.

“Yes!”

A rattle and a bang followed by skitting noise sounds from the phone followed by cursing, “You son of a bitch!” 

“Sam!” I yell, begging him to hurry up. “Ok, uhhh, turn right! Up ahead, turn right.” Again the line falls silent, “You make the turn?” Sam questions softly. My heart beats faster with each silent moment that passes. “Yeah, I made the turn!” Dean yells, “You need to move this thing along a little faster.”

“All right, you see a road up ahead?” Sam asks.

“No!... Wait. No, yes, I see it.”

“Ok turn left.”

“Wha..?” Dean half says before he goes quiet again the only sound coming from the line being more screeching and shuffled movement. “All right, now what? He finally responds. 

“You need to go seven-tenths of a mile and then stop,” Sam explains. I looked at him strangely, noticing he wasn’t on the phone anymore, but what the hell was he talking about? “Stop?” Dean voices.

“Exactly seven-tenths Dean” Sam repeats. 

“God, I hope you know what you’re talking about,” I tell the man beside me. “Me too” he mumbles over the sound of his brother repeating the words ‘seven-tenths.’ I look at him my mouth agape, “You wha–” 

“Dean, you still there?” He cuts me off, focusing on his brother again. “Yeah,” Dean responds.

“What’s happening over there?” I ask, not knowing was killing me. “It’s just staring at me,” he answers carefully, “what do I do?”

“Just what you’re doing, bringing it to you,” Sam replies.

“Wha–” Dean began before cutting himself off, the line going quiet for the umpteenth time, “Come on. Come on,” he mumbled quietly but just loud enough for the phone to pick it up. My heart thumps in my chest, anticipation and fear running through my veins as well as something else from those two stupid words–something had to be wrong with me to find that hot now of all times.

The line is silent, for one beat, then another, then another…I grip my phone tighter, “Dean? Dean, are you there? ‘You okay?”

“Where’d it go?” he responds with a mix of shock and confusion. “Dean, you’re where the church was,” Sam explains. “What church!” he freaks.

“The place Cyrus burned down. Murdered all those kids,” Sam clarifies. 

“There’s not a whole lot left,” Dean responds.

“Church ground is hallowed ground, whether the church is still there or not. Evil spirits cross over hallowed ground, and sometimes they’re destroyed, so I figured, maybe, that would get rid of it,” Sam explains. I hit his arm, “That was a hunch?!”

Dean adds in with the lecturing, “Maybe? Maybe!! What if you were wrong?!”

“Huh,” Sam hums, “Honestly, that thought hadn’t occurred to me.”

I glare at him sharply, hitting his arm again as I say, “You’re too sassy for your own good.” He laughs, a boyish grin on his face.

I wait in the back, Sam in the driver seat for Dean to say his goodbyes. I liked the back seat, more now than ever because being in the front would mean being able to see out the side mirror and watch Dean kiss the woman he loves and say a goodbye I was sure he didn’t want. 

Life was being really unfair and uncool.

I bury my nose in my new book, it would be better to just escape into this world than have to deal with my feelings here in the real world. My feelings in the real world were not fun, they were depressing and hurt…a lot. But no amount of ink on paper formed into beautifully crafted words could fill the gaping hole in my heart, still, I tried as there was nothing else to do.

What is worse is knowing there will never be a chance for me to be loved by him, at least not in the way I do, because there will always be a place in his heart for her. He’ll think of her all the time, dream about her, and perhaps see her in the breeze. His heart belongs to her, and possibly always has.

I needed to accept that. The sooner I did the quicker the pain would go away. I couldn't go on believing I had a chance I needed to huff the flame out now. 

No more hope. No more love. We’re friends, always have been, and always will be. That will have to be enough. I couldn’t love him anymore, not if it meant feeling this much pain. I wouldn’t accept his touches anymore for they gave me more hope than I’d like to admit.

No. I was wrong.

Worse of all is knowing that I can’t just stop loving him. Let it be the Gods' fault or the stars or whatever it is I’m meant to believe in but my heart has long been his and always will be. I could never love someone the way I love him, I wasn’t capable of that. Let it be that our love was written in the star's constellations that it was undecided by me or him for my love had to transcend the binds of that nonsense.

I loved him and he did not love me and maybe it was that which I had to accept because to stop loving him would mean to stop my heart from beating. Though even then I suspect not even the afterlife could keep me from my eternal love. And maybe that was pathetic or stupid, especially since he did not care for me in such a way, but it was the truth and no one has ever claimed truth to be a beautiful thing.

I’m brought back to reality with a bump. When did we leave and start driving? I look out the window, we had already made it to the highway…I look at the boys, but both seem fine. Ok then.

“I like her,” Sam says, and suddenly I wish to be lost back in the state I was in moments ago. I would love not to hear or be a part of this conversation. “Yeah,” Dean replies, seemingly just to get his brother to stop.

“You meet someone like her, doesn’t it make you wonder if it’s worth it? Putting everything else on hold, doing what we do?” Sam asks innocently perhaps trying to get him to understand what he had felt with his girlfriend. But something flickers in his face and suddenly he’s making eye contact with me in the rearview mirror, his eyes written in apology as if it just hit him now what all of this was doing to me. It was that puppy dog look. 

I smile sadly at him, giving him a curt nod in a silent ‘it’s okay.’ His gaze flickers back to the road.

Dean leans forward pulling sunglasses from the glove box, he puts them on carefully ignoring his brothers' initial question, “Why don’t you wake me up when it’s my turn to drive?” He slouches down in his seat with a sigh. I shake my head, roll my eyes, and go back to my book.

We were leaving Missouri and all would be well, or as well as they could be.

#supernatural #fanfiction #dean winchester #sam winchester #dean winchester x reader #john winchester #slow burn #the hunter and the witch update #dean winchester x witch reader #the hunter and the witch #witch reader #witchcraft #dean winchester x f!reader #unrequited love #angst #light angst #dean winchester x female!reader #he’s in love with someone else #supernatural x reader #winchester x reader #romance #supernatural season 1 #dean winchester x you #supernatural fanfiction #update #writing

[buckttommy]

I think the fundamental problem a lot of people in this fandom are facing is that both biphobia and homophobia are so deeply ingrained in social spaces (of which fandom is one) that identifying them becomes so, so dicey and complicated for some people to grasp. Ordinarily, I am not someone who gravitates toward labels, but in the case of identifying prejudices, it's important to use as specific a label as is available. One of the reasons white leftists, for example, think they cannot be racist is because many of them treat black people as equals. But when those same white leftists lobby racist jokes at Asians, for example, and are subsequently called out on it, they will swear that they most assuredly are not, and cannot, be racist. This is because AAPI racism is different from BIPOC racism, and thus manifests itself differently.

Similarly, homophobia (directed towards gay men) is different from lesbophobia (directed towards gay women), in the same way that aphobia (directed towards asexual people) is different from biphobia (directed towards bisexual people), and so on, even though there are places where all these phobias intersect, i.e. corrective rape, use of slurs, domestic abuse, etc. When people talk about homo/bi/a/lesbophobia in fandom, very rarely are they talking about blanket instances of homophobia that we can all relate to (things like being ostracized, abused, treated differently, etc). In most instances, people are talking about specific and targeted treatment and responses that people who do not fall under those categories might not pick up on.

So when I say that the response to Buck possibly being queer is both homophobic and biphobic, what I mean is that regarding his love for Eddie as something innocent and pure, while simultaneously regarding his sex / sex drive / any future gay fling he might have as something sleazy, uncomfortable, embarrassing, or gross, is wrong. When I say that making snide remarks about Tommy's age is both homophobic and biphobic (with a little bit of bodyshaming and ageism thrown in there too), what I mean is that that idea that he's "too old" or "weird" or "creepy" for potentially having a thing for Buck calls back to the age-old stereotype that gay men / sex between men is inherently predatory, dirty, shameful, and illegal. When I say that going to bisexual fans and shaming them for their sex / sex drives or implying that bisexual sex or sexual/romantic relationships are somehow inherently shameful, dirty, or promiscuous—well, this should hopefully speak for itself, but this too, is also biphoic and also very, very harmful and wrong.

Aside from the last point (which can only be interpreted one way), I'm almost certain that no one in this fandom intends for their words or actions to come across as harmful because, as I mentioned last night, at the end of the day, we are all still here because of the love between two men. But similar to the aforementioned hypothetical white leftist at the top of this post, being "okay" with one group of people, or, in this instance, one iteration of a group of people (i.e. happy, monogamous queer/gay men) does not automatically mean you are okay with all of them (i.e. salacious, promiscuous, non-monogamous gay men), nor does it mean you are immune to internalizing and subsequently regurgitating harmful ideals.

We are all living in an era now where queer stories are both more accessible, and more under fire than ever. So it's important, as queer people in a largely queer fandom, to be conscious about checking our biases at the door and being open to learning when someone rings you up about something. It's not comfortable. It's deeply unpleasant, and the instinctive response is to be defensive because none of us want to be faced with the fact that we still have work to do. None of us want to be "that guy," nor do we want to be "problematic." But we are problematic, we wouldn't be human if we weren't, and we all have work that needs to be done on ourselves so that we can be the best versions of ourselves, for our sakes and for the sakes of others.

Only once that's been taken care of can we discourse about ships and different character readings all day long. But we must first do the work and look within ourselves to make sure we are engaging with each other, and each other's sexualities, through a core of mutual understanding and respect for each other as human beings and how we identify. Otherwise we are, unironically and quite literally, doing society's work for them and letting prejudice invade a space it does not belong.

So. Yeah. That's all I have to say. Shutting up now.

#jack.txt #umm. is this something #i don't know #okay now i'm done

[siryouarebeingmocked]

Carter and Lovecraft, by Jonathan L. Howard (2015)

I really wanted to like this book.

I've read a few Lovecraft novels and stories, and I liked them. So when I saw this on my friend's bookshelf, I borrowed it, and read it.

Tried to.

The first real fly in the ointment? NYPD protag sees his partner take a 9mm retirement in front of him on a creepy case, and becomes a private detective. Mysterious lawyer shows up at his office one day and says there was a bookstore owner in Providence, Rhode Island, who has been missing and just declared dead.

The protag gets the bookshop. He's not sure why.

Protag goes to the bookshop. Owner's niece, Emily, is there. She's been running the shop alone since the owner vanished, and she co-ran it when he was alive. Also, she's biracial. Would be played by Zoe Kravitz in the movie, he thinks.

Her name is Lovecraft.

As in, she's a descendant of ol' Howard Philips.

She notes the irony; a black-ish "mulatto" descendant of an anti-black racist.

"Okay," I think, as I checked the publication date. "You've gotten that token bit out of the way. Now, can we move on?"

Apparently not.

As protag starts looking into the disappearance and other weird stuff, he decides he needs to get his eye in. So he goes to a gun range, where he needs to sign up for the NRA first

and ends the session by "re-engaging the safety" on his Glock.

Fun fact: stock Glocks don't have manual safeties, AFAIK.

In the next chapter, protag thinks about how he used the gun. He hates the NRA and the whole "gun fetish" thing, but he needs the iron, just in case.

Two strikes. Three if you count the safety thing.

Yes, I know an NYPD cop might be a bit bigoted about the issue, especially considering how his partner died. But it really feels like the writer's opinion.

In fact, let me just-

Yep. The writer is British. This sounds awfully familiar.

It was about this time that I realized something. The protagonist has no traits that aren't directly related to being a cop or detective. Absolutely none.

I don't think we know what he does in his off hours. No friends. Nothing but the job.

Heck, Miss Lovecraft has more personality than him, and she takes up a lot less screen time.

Protag decides to give Lovecraft half the business, so he can become a silent partner. People start dying in physically impossible ways - like the dude who drowned in his dry car in a parking lot - our hero looks into it.

He also ends up learning about a local family, the Waites. Rich, keep to themselves on their own land, been around since before the area was officially settled, apparently.

The local who tells him about all this says the younger ones are oddly attractive. The family has distinctive big eyes.

Anyone remotely familiar with HP Lovecraft just went "Oh, right, they're fishmen. Got it." I've seen this trope done better before, like in the comic Shadowgirls.

Hero looks into the archives, finds records of a racist Town Council rant by an early Waite, back when they were still into trading. Including slaves. Specifically, patriarch Newton Waite went to a council meeting and said black people should serve others, and shouldn't have self-determination.

The archivist intern says it's was "a different time", and that's just how people were back then.

Of course, he adds "People who talk like that now - no pass for them."

End scene.

Like this extremely mainstream, boring opinion is some kind of

In the next scene, protag chats about the fit he had near the Waite place. Learns about another mysterious death. When he chats about it with Emily, he suddenly realizes she's hot.

Then the narration tells us that he was a racist bigot in his teens, though he thought he was being sensible at the time. He now knows he was wrong, but he still feels sparks of it when he reads about some black kid doing some stereotypically black thing, which gives certain white people "a hard-on of righteousness".

And, of course, his time spent walking away from "instinctive racism" means his dating pool opened up. Like Emily Lovecraft, for example.

The most stereotypically black thing would probably be crime. Or being a single mom or deadbeat dad.

 Sadly, I know of plenty of black people - from my black majority home country - who fall into one of those categories. Or two. Three if you include "poverty", but we're Developing, so that barely even counts.

Also, this basically came out of nowhere. Not Emily being hot - I mean, look at Zoe Kravitz - but his unsolicited thoughts on racism.

All of these issues have also been issues for many concerned black people. For decades. The 'stereotypically black things' might be bad themselves, not because they make racist white people feel smug.

This is precisely where I closed the book for good. I would've put away the bookmarks, but I needed the page so I could write this rant.

Honestly, writing all this made me realize that I should've given up long before I made it halfway through the book. But I just kept hoping it would get better.

Doing the same well-worn cliches in a modern setting doesn't really make them interesting. Neither do the little 'racism is bad, mmmkay?' bits.

#books #personal #lovecraft #long

[purplekoop]

Random Overwatch take ramble time: Sigma.

Sigma is a weird character to get a grasp on, because it's not exactly clear how... aware he is. His origin story video seems to spell out that the incident caused him to completely lose it, and Sombra in Code of Violence says, quote: "A bad experiment fractured his mind. He's just trying to remember how the pieces fit together." In this story, he seems completely oblivious to anything around him, including a violent break-in on the facility he was held in and the fact he was dragged out on an airship. There's no details in the story as to how he reacted to this, so the implication would be... he didn't react to it. He just went along with it.

And yet in game he's... seemingly fine? A bit eccentric sure, he'll often spout a seemingly random question or thought, but he definitely seems aware of his surroundings, as he's able to notice and recognize people and hold natural conversations, aside from his signature unique ponderings. His most recent new interaction with Lifeweaver in particular is extremely coherent, and it's the one time so far we've really seen Sigma act concerned for anyone... even himself, frankly.

Worth noting that this disparity between how we see him pre and post Talon may be deliberate. It's quite possible (if not probable) that between his isolated containment and the "current day" of in-game, his initial gravitic brain scrambling may have recovered. To go off of Sombra's word, maybe in the time between the incident and his time with Talon, he's started to put the pieces of his mind back together.

The most striking part though is that he seems to flip between calm and aloof one moment, then deliberately and mercilessly violent the next. Now, granted, part of this is because he's a character in a PvP game, there's plenty of examples of that in Overwatch's cast alone (Mei being a somewhat infamous example of contrast between character and gameplay), but with Sigma it seems like a very deliberate part of his character. He goes from tender, inquisitive grandpa to violent terrifying supervillain at a moment's notice.

In fact, it's somewhat implied he's not even aware of the extent of his actions, but it's really hard to decipher, especially when the actual PvP gameplay (y'know, our most thorough source of reference) isn't even canon. Sometimes after a team kill he'll say something like "Huh? Where did everybody go?", which can be interpreted a number of ways, and again, comes from the dubious source that is PvP dialogue, but it does seem to imply him being not fully aware of what's going on is part of his character.

And... yeah okay, obligatory messy subject when talking about Sigma's characterization: his condition being analogous to mental illness.

I'm not well-researched enough to go into specifics, but it's very clear that Sigma is meant to be experiencing something akin to some kind of mental illness, obviously with the one main difference being the more fantastical nature of its source and effects. He doesn't seem aware of his surroundings or his actions, he flips moods from passivity to violence sporadically, and most "yikes!" of all, one of his debut skins had him in the classic serial killer insane asylum outfit. That one is... yeah that one's just icky, I'm sorry. Overwatch does that thing a lot where they get fantastical with real world issues (most notably having one of the more "whatever" robo-racism stories), and while most of the time it's done in a way that's pretty inoffensive and disconnected from reality... that skin is just disappointing. Legitimately the most embarrassing part of the game as far as I'm concerned.

But I think it'd be a disservice to the character to limit a reading of him to just that depressing note, so here's my take (and reason for making this post in the first place):

Sigma isn't insane. In fact, a lot of his "odd" behavior isn't even because of his unique condition.

He's... to be blunt (and predictable on Tumblr Dot Com), Neurodivergent.

I know, that's not a much more flattering reading than mental illness, but hear me out.

I think it's safe to assume that Siebren was always inquisitive and far-thinking. He's a scientist after all, he had to have some ambition to try and do his experiment. So his random hypotheticals he spouts out aren't madness... they're unfiltered. His seemingly bizarre views on reality and his wonky perception are just... what he considers to be important or unimportant.

In fact, he kind of spells it out himself.

The incident didn't change him: It freed him.

As a scientist, he probably had to maintain a veil of professionalism and seriousness that he just doesn't have to now that he has his powers. Shoot, based on how he casually brings up meeting The Iris (the literal deity of Zenyatta's beliefs), it's quite possible that the incident was more of an enlightenment than a transformation. He saw past the conventional limitations of reality... and society.

he acts the way he does because he's realized it doesn't matter, he can do what he wants because he's met a god and has gravity powers.

Now, I'm not saying he doesn't also have a fantastical mental illness, but instead that there's layers to him. He's "weird" on his own, and that's just been unfiltered.

Personally speaking (as someone who's not officially diagnosed autistic but very very heavily expects it based on... well reasons that might be self-evident, among others), I feel like this is a more interesting and potentially just more accurate way of reading the character than just "old man who went insane because of space magic". I find myself randomly thinking of out-of-nowhere ponderings about life and the universe and everything, but I've grown up learning that most people look at you funny if you say them out loud. Plus, I'm definitely prone to big swings of anger that feel out of nowhere over small things, and whatever funky part of my brain to contribute that to is very much undetermined as of now.

So for me, I realized Sigma is kind of just... the power fantasy of someone who recognizes the greater scope of things and has a passionate curiosity to learn, and doesn't have to worry about the rules of society or even physics. It makes more sense and feels more meaningful to read him not as mindless, but... free. Free to be curious and not care how other people view him.

So. Yeah, long, somewhat rambly post that touched some complicated subjects, in a way that's probably not as articulated as I would like, but oh well, rather would get it out imperfectly than not at all. Lately I've been thinking about Sigma's seemingly wonky characterization, and then figured out an answer to the question of how to interpret his behavior in a way that both made sense and was more compelling than an initial glance reading.

(can you tell I've recently realized I think kinda like the funny floaty gravity science man, I think I didn't clarify that enough earlier)

But hopefully I've made something vaguely resembling a convincing argument for how this character is compelling and relatable in a way that isn't problematic and icky, I didn't wanna dwell on that stuff but it felt important to bring up.

#overwatch #overwatch 2 #overwatch sigma #sigma #siebren de kuiper #I didn't bring up Symmetra like I kinda wanted to but she's a really good example of canon autism rep that I appreciate #it's apparent to her character but not exclusively defining in a really healthy way as far as I think #very sad she's always the most forgotten of the OG 21 heroes #long post #I'm not super researched on a lot of this stuff so please do politely inform me if you have any input #would genuinely like to hear it

[justasecretwriter]

Secrets (Jotun!Loki x Reader)

Title | Secrets

Summary | Loki has a secret, and it's his biggest, most well kept secret ever. And you've just found out.

Pairings | Loki Laufeyson x Female Reader (reads like an OC)

Genre | Angst to Smut to Angst to Fluff (happy ending)

Story Warnings/Kinks | Swearing, Internalized Racism, General Racism, Loki Needs Therapy, Lots of Feels, Yelling, Sex, Oral, Handjobs, Choking, Praise

Translations | None.

Author's Note | OMG TWO HUNDRED OF YOU PEOPLE ACTUALLY READ MY STUFF. THANKS.

This is not exactly canon because I made him half elf too, to explain his differences from other Frost Giants.

Words | 3,869

Saturdays were my favorite because on Saturdays, the entire team was gone. Tony said they went on some training. I honestly didn't care where they went. All I knew was that it was quiet, and I could do whatever I wanted.

I woke that morning with a smile already bubbling on my face. I had so many plans; I was going to try to bake cookies from scratch, rewatch all the Harry Potter movies, and finally finish a puzzle I'd been working on for weeks. But my heart stopped when I walked into the kitchen and saw a note lying on the counter.

Y/N, as you know Thor's brother is still under eval to be an Avenger, so we couldn't bring him on this training exercise, so if you could, keep an eye on him.

Tony

Great. Just great. Now I couldn't have the whole day alone because I had to babysit. With a groan, I made myself a cup of coffee and went to look for Loki.

If I remembered Thor's teasing right, he got up fairly early so he should have been around here somewhere. I wasn't going to hover but try my best to still get my stuff done, though I figured I should peek in on him occasionally.

When he wasn't in his room, or the library, I wandered down to the gym. Even gods had to work to keep up that kind of body, right? Apparently I was right because when I entered the gym I saw Loki. Or at least, what I think was Loki?

He had Loki’s face and hair but his skin was all a beautiful blue, neither light nor dark, and there were lighter blue lines all over his body, almost like tattoos. He wore workout shorts and did appear to be training; he was throwing daggers at a target and hitting a bullseye everytime before using magic to bring the dagger back.

I couldn’t help the gasp the left my mouth, making him spin around. It was indeed Loki in some form, but the biggest shoker was his eyes. Even the parts that were supposed to be white were a bright red, and his irises were an even darker red.

Horror shot across his face and he slowly started changing, shifting back to the Loki I recognized with pale white skin and green eyes. I realized as he shifted that in the blue form he was maybe half a foot taller as well—as if Loki needed to be any taller.

“Loki?” I knew it was stupid but it was the only thing that came to mind.

He approached me slowly, gulping and playing with his fingers. "I am… sorry." He murmured.

"What was that?"

"Something I did not intend for you to see. I figured everyone was on the training trip, I did not realize…"

"Can we talk about it?"

"No!" He said very quickly. "Let us pretend it never happened."

"Loki, I can't do that."

He huffed and bit the inside of his lip. "Well no one would believe you anyway."

"Who said I was going to tell?"

He seemed taken back by that, and tilted his head. Stepping closer so that we were barely a foot apart, Loki hesitated.

"I am adopted. Thor knows not, and I would prefer it if it stayed that way, hmm?" He arched his brow and instinctively, I nodded.

He left the gym and I realized I was still frozen. What the hell just happened. Loki wasn't Asgardian? Is that what he was saying? And how could Thor not know?

So, I did the only thing I knew to do when in a situation with Loki. I called Thor.

"Hey, so I had a question." I said when he answered. "Do you know of any humanoid species that's blue with red eyes?"

"With weird skin?"

"Yes. I found a picture in an old Norse book but I can't read any of it."

"Well that sounds like a Frost Giant. They are from Jotunheim. Loki killed Laufey, the King, years ago. To the best of my knowledge the nation has been in shambles since."

Why would Loki kill his own king? It was all becoming more confusing but at least now I had a name for it, so I could study more.

"Okay, thanks Thor."

"Anytime Little One. How is Loki, have you seen him?"

"Uhh… He was in the gym earlier but I haven't seen him since." I wasn't sure if that counted as a lie but my face heated up just as quickly as it usually did when I was lying.

"Well, just keep an eye on him. We will be back in the morning."

"See you then," I hung up and took a deep breath.

There was a Frost Giant, from a different realm, who I believed was an enemy of Asgard, just upstairs. How the hell was I supposed to process that information?

I raced to my bedroom and pulled out my computer to search up more about them. Were they dangerous? Did they have powers? Should I be scared of Loki?

Most would say yes by default since he was technically an alien like Thor but I'd never been all that scared of Loki. Maybe it was because he'd never been violent towards me, but he was never frightening in my eyes.

But the more I Googled, the more confused I got. I understand that often mythology got things wrong but there was so many different theories and mythologies on Frost Giants.

After an hour and forty-two groans, I gave up and went to Loki's room down the hall. Knocking vigorously, I only half expected him to answer. Low and behold, he did, and as soon as be saw me, he farted his eyes away.

"We need to talk."

"No, we don't." He replied.

"Yes, we do. Now let me in." I shoved past him and into his room.

Honestly, it looked a little like you'd expect. Lots of green and black, lots of books scattered about, but most of the room was very tidy. I nearly snorted; the bed was made even.

I sat on the bed gently and looked at him expectedly. He sighed heavily and sat a few feet from me.

"You have questions,"

"Obviously."

"Okay, then let's start from the beginning since I don't ever remember even having one conversation with you." He held out his hand. "Hello, my name is Loki Laufeyson, Prince of Jotunheim. I go by Loki Odinson, Prince of Asgard."

I shook his hand.

"Prince of Jotunheim? Laufey was your father?"

He nodded.

"You killed your father?"

He shrugged and nodded again.

"Thor doesn't know?"

"Only Odin and Frigga know. It is Asgard's best kept secret, one of their own is their greatest enemy."

"So, you normally look like this…" I waved a hand towards him and he offered a small grin.

"This is my Asgardian form, thanks to my magic. And what you saw earlier was my birth form."

"And why can't Thor know?"

"Thor hates Frost Giants."

I frowned. Surely he wouldn't hate his own brother. But then again, Thor and Loki didn't do a whole lot of getting along, maybe the news of Loki's true heritage would push them over the edge.

"Y/N, this must stay between us. Nobody can know."

I bit my lip.

"Okay," I agreed. "Under one condition,"

His eyes immediately narrowed and he leaned away from me.

"Can I see it again?"

He seemed to be thinking for a minute. "Fine, but you should also know that there are other spells I have to go under while I'm in that form."

"Why?"

"Well, one touch and I could kill you from frostbite. So I go under a spell to prevent accidental death. And in that form, anything I walk near or touch freezes in an instant. And well, I like my bed soft and not frozen."

"Okay."

He hesitated before I saw the transition slowly. First his skin bled blue and then the lines spread on his skin like vines. They looked beautiful, like tattoos almost. He opened his eyes, showing the nearly glowing red that beamed from them.

I looked at his face as I reached my hand towards him, making sure it was okay. He never stopped me. I touched his arm slowly, tracing the lines where they disappeared beneath his shirt.

I saw his hand twitch before he reached behind him and pulled the t-shirt off, throwing it in his pillow.

He was beautiful. Of course he'd always been handsome, I wasn't blind. But this blue, the designs, the abs…

There were two prominent lines that went down his chest and under his pants, and I traced one of those. He felt cool to the touch, but not frostbite cold.

There were more lines on his face that curved and dipped in certain places, but I wasn't sure how he would feel about me actually touching his face.

"I'm actually not a full Frost Giant, at least not according to my blood. I don't exactly look like other Frost Giants, but if you look at my ears…" He turned his head and I smiled, his ears were very pointed, which I knew wasn't natural to his Asgardian form, I would have noticed.

"So you're half Frost Giant and half…?"

"Light Elf, according to my DNA. My father is from Jotunheim and my mother is from Alfheim. It's why I have these ears and why I'm smaller than the other Frost Giants. I'm the result of an affair, which is why Laufey abandoned me, leading Odin to find and adopt me."

I traced the point of his ear lightly, smiling. I went to reach and trace his face too but stopped. Loki didn't seem like the kind who liked to be touched, so maybe I should've stopped.

But then he shocked me; he grabbed my hand and touched his face with it, giving me permission. I bit my lip and ran my thumb along the lines adorning his cheekbones.

"Beautiful," I whispered, blushing.

"Right," He laughed and I tilted my head. "I'm a monster, Y/N."

"No you're not. Look at you, you're beautiful."

I got up on my knees on the bed and crawled closer, putting both my hands on his face to feel more. His red eyes met mine.

"You are not scared?"

"No," I whispered.

He took a deep breath and I let my hands follow the lines down from his face to his neck and onto his chest. When he shifted, I looked up at his face. He looked uncomfortable.

"Too much?"

"No, it's alright." I kept going but he never really quit squirming.

"What's the matter?" I finally asked, sitting back and letting my hands fall.

He sighed, looking away. "I've never shown anyone this form, let alone let them touch it. And at the very least, I expected you to be disgusted and you're not."

"Sorry to disappoint."

He only rolled his eyes.

"Are there lines on your back too?"

"I don't know." He turned away from me and I got on my knees. "I only ever use this form for certain magic practices. It's useful in some situations."

"You do have lines on your back," I murmured, tracing them. "They're beautiful."

An overwhelming urge came over me to kiss one on his shoulder blade and I had to take deep, thought repressing breaths for a few minutes before I could touch him again.

"The really awful part about this? I'm the God of Lies and I always know when someone is lying. There's not even a hint of a lie in you when you say that."

"Well of course not," I replied, tracing one line that went from his shoulder blade and over to his chest. "I like this form of yours."

He shuttered suddenly and my brows shoved together. Frost Giants couldn't get cold, could they?

"Are you alright?"

"Yes." Oh something was definitely wrong; I'd never heard Loki's voice crack before like that.

I went back to the front and looked at his face. His red eyes were swelling with tears.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

He just shook his head, looking away and taking deep breaths.

I put my hand on his chest. "Loki you can trust me."

"I know."

"Then what's the matter?"

He looked back over at me and wavered on some decision I didn't know. But I didn't have time to ask anymore questions before he leaned over and pushed his lips into mine.

I gasped, letting him kiss me, even kissing him back. But I was confused, shouldn't he have been angry with me for not reacting as he'd planned? I wasn't going to stop him though, not when kissing him felt this good.

He pulled back, and I let out an embarrassing whine, chasing his cold lips for more.

"I'm sorry," He gasped out.

"I'm not," I grabbed his hair and tried to kiss him again but he kept backing away from me. I nearly wanted to stomp and pout.

"I-we… shouldn't." He was almost panting and I felt his eyes searching for mine but I couldn't look away from his blue lips. They, like his lines, were a light blue.

"Why not? I want to. I think you want to."

He hesitated, biting his lip, and sighed again. "It can be dangerous… Frost Giants and humans…"

"In what way?"

"Sometimes if a Frost Giant is with someone they actually know or actually care about, a sort of heat kicks in. They can't control themselves and they can't stop until they are satisfied. Humans aren't exactly indestructible."

I realized the hidden meaning in his words. It only happened with someone they cared about; he cared about me.

"I can take it." I insisted.

"Y/N…"

"Please," I realized I must have sounded pathetic but I couldn't help it. He was too irresistible and his natural form was just… I couldn't resist if I tried.

He hesitated and I climbed into his lap, cupping his cheeks and letting my fingers trace.

"If I can go back to my Asgardian—"

"No! I want you like this, please."

I kissed him and he groaned, grabbing my hips and kissing me harshly. I pressed against his cold body to try and ease some of the heat spreading throughout me, but it only made it worse.

"Loki," I moaned, grabbing his hair and kissing him harder. I rolled my hips against his crotch and he groaned loudly.

Rolling over me, he pushed me to the bed and kissed along my neck. "I won't be able to stop, I've wanted you too long." He reminded me.

"Good," I reached up, biting the pointy tip of his ear. He whined and snapped, making all our clothes disappear in an instant. I shivered at the sudden chill of being pressed against him.

I reached in between our bodies to grab his cock and gasped at how big it was.

"Loki that is not going to fit."

Laughing, he kissed my collarbones and further down on my chest, shimmying down my body.

"Sure it will, I just need to get you ready."

Winking, he grabbed my thighs as he came face to face with my heat. He spread my legs, exposing me to him completely and making me whimper.

"Now, now, no whining." He teased me. "You wanted this, remember?" I nodded and he suddenly licked a strong swipe through my folds.

I cried out his name, grabbing his hair and trying to force him closer.

"Loki!" I whined. "More!"

His cold tongue pressed against my clit, rubbing slow, teasing circles. I moaned, throwing my head back and bucking my hips. He pinned my hips down and glared at me in warning.

"You take what I give you." He growled. "Nothing more and nothing less, understood?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"Yes what?"

"Yes sir." I caved, laying back and panting as he kept his teasing for nearly twenty minutes before plunging two fingers inside me randomly.

"Oh god, Loki! That feels so good!"

He curled his fingers, hitting all my spots while watching my face. I screamed silently, trying not to buck my hips as my back arched.

"Loki I-fuck, I'm gonna cum."

And just like that, he stopped and sat up, making me whine out with tears in my eyes.

He lazily rubbed his cock while leaning over me and forcing his lips into mine. Tasting myself made me whimper against his lips, but what he did next really set me off.

He took my hand and wrapped it around his cock, making me jerk him off. He started kissing my chest and biting my nipples while I rubbed his cock hard and fast, trying my best to please him.

"Please sir, please fuck me. I'll be good, I promise."

"You think you can take it?" He growled, biting hard on my breast.

I moaned, touching him faster.

"Yes! Please, please, please!"

He sat up quickly, pushing my hand off and spreading my legs again. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

He shoved inside me quickly, harsh and unforgiving. I cried out, grabbing his sides to try and slow his pace some, to convince him I needed some adjusting, but he had been right, he couldn't stop.

Throwing my ankles into his shoulders, he moaned loud and fucked into me harder as the pain slowly eased, bleeding into pleasure.

"Fuck Y/N, so fucking tight, so good for me. You're gonna be good and let me cum in you? Let me breed you?"

I threw my head back, grabbing the headboard for some kind of brace as I screamed his name.

His cock shoved further inside me, hitting some pleasure point I'd never felt before as he kept moaning.

"Yes Loki, oh god."

"I am your god." He growled, suddenly grabbing my throat and squeezing.

I suddenly felt myself gushing even more. He smirked wickedly as he realized and felt it too.

"Oh you like that, don't you? You like being choked like a whore."

I whined too loud and thrusted my hips into him, trying to get his dick further inside me.

He squeezed my throat hard and started moaning as he fucked me faster, sloppier. His unoccupied hand went to rubbing harsh circles on my clit and then licking the juices off his fingers before returning.

"Oh fuck, oh Loki please! I'm gonna cum! Please let me cum!"

"You're mine." He growled. "Say it. Say you're mine and I'll let you cum."

He was actively panting now so I knew he must have been getting close too. I pulled him towards me, clawing his cold back and looked into his red eyes which were fighting to roll back.

"I'm yours." I cried out, trying desperately not to cum until he gave me permission. "I'm yours, fuck. Please let me cum!"

"Cum with me!" He growled as I felt his cock twitching before I felt his cool cum spilling into me.

My whole body relaxed and Loki collapsed on the bed next to me, gasping for breath. I reached down to feel his cum spilling from me and noticed one thing in particular before sleep took me. It has an almost slushy-like consistency.

—

I awoke to yelling and sat up groggily. It looked to be late at night and I was still in Loki's room.

I stood quickly, stumbling until I found the light switch. I could hear lots of incoherent shouting downstairs but I couldn't tell who it was. Searching, I remembered that Loki took off my clothes with magic and I had no idea where they were.

I opened his closet and quickly found skinny jeans and a T-shirt. They were a bit big on me and I had to roll up the bottoms of the jeans, but they were better than nothing.

When I left the elevator that led to the main living space I was shocked at the scene. The whole team was there and were trying to pull Thor—who was throwing punches—away from Loki, who was shouting back at his brother, in his Asgardian form.

"What the hell?" I yelled and Thor glared at me. "What's going on?"

"Frost Giants, huh?" He growled, and then stormed off into the kitchen.

I looked at Loki and then the rest of the team, before Loki stepped towards me, with his hands out in an almost defensive looking position.

"They decided not to spend the night there and leave you alone with a guy you hardly know, so they came back early. And when Thor went to check on me, he saw us. I had accidentally fallen asleep before shifting back."

I felt my whole face fall as I realized what he was saying. Not only did the whole team know we had sex, but the secret of Loki's heritage was out.

"Oh, Loki," I put my hand on his bicep, frowning. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean for—"

"Nonsense," He interrupted. "It's not your fault."

I peaked at the rest of the team who was watching us. "How bad is it?" I whispered.

"Tony is angry. Natasha is proud. Steve is grossed out and Dr. Banner is intrigued about the science of cross species intercourse."

I nodded.

"Are you angry with me?" I asked, not meeting his eyes.

He put his index finger under my chin and forced my eyes to his. I resisted the urge to sigh at the disappointment that they weren't red.

"No, and it is you who should be angry with me."

"Well, I'm not. I told you, it doesn't bother me."

He looked at the team and stood a little straighter. "Apologies for the drama." And with that, he took my hand and pulled me to the elevator.

Once inside, I turned to him.

"Do you regret it?" I whispered.

"What? No. Of course not."

"What did Thor say?"

"Nothing he meant." He whispered, making my heart break. "Thor will come around, it just might take him a while."

"Then why do you still seem upset?"

He sighed, turning towards me and cupping my cheeks.

"Did you mean what you said? That you're mine?"

I thought about it for a minute.

"If that's what you want, I'm not opposed."

He grinned a bit. "Neither am I."

I leaned up and kissed him with an edge of desperation. He pulled me closer and grabbed my hips.

"I'm yours," He whispered. "And you're mine."

"I'm yours and you're mine." I echoed before stretching on my toes to kiss him again.

Loki Taglist

@vbecker10 @lulubelle814

#loki #loki laufeyson #mcu loki #mcu #loki x female reader #loki x reader #loki fanfic #loki fic #loki friggason #jotunnheim #jotun #jotun loki #jotun loki smut #loki of jotunheim #frost giant #frost giant smut #frost giant loki #frost giant loki smut #just a secret writer #fucking wizards

[akiizayoi4869]

Why do you think so much of the ATLA fandom just violently hates Aang? It really confuses me how so many fans just seem to resent everything about him even to the point of making up reasons that don’t even exist to bash him and demonizing everything he does. I’ve never seen such an innocent and kind character get such a hateful reaction so it’s weird.

It's a lot of reasons honestly. One reason is because a lot of people in the fandom like Zutara, but since Bryke didn't want Zutara to happen and instead went for Kataang, that made a lot of fans angry. Another reason is because some things that Aang does in the show that should have gotten called out by the narrative never were. Also a lot of fans felt like he should have killed Ozai instead of taking his bending. But I think the main reason why a lot of the fandom just doesn't like him is because for most people he isn't relatable in the way that Zuko is. The show was made for a western audience, an audience who doesn't know what its like to lose your people to genocide, to have your entire culture stripped away just because another party thinks that their way is "better and civilized".

This may be controversial, but I also think race has a lot to do with it. I remember seeing a post on here a while back and the op was saying they noticed something very interesting when they spoke to poc about Aang and the air nomad genocide and when they spoke to white people about it. The poc seemed to sympathize with Aang a lot more because to a degree they know what that feels like, to have your culture ripped away from you and to have your people wiped out thanks to genocide. Because their ancestors were victims of it. When the op spoke to white people about it, however, they said that they could not connect with Aang at all because they don't know what that feels like, so to them he wasn't all that special. To them Zuko was much more relatable, so that's the character that they latched on to. Me personally I absolutely agree with this and think that there is truth to it. I'm African American, so in a way I can relate to what Aang went through. Thanks to racism and slavery in this country, many black people were killed for no reason, they were ripped from their homes(although this can also be blamed on black people too seeing as we sold our own people to the Europeans, who then took it to a whole other level) and were told that their culture was meaningless and that they would learn to live like white people. They were stripped of their names and given new ones, they were forced to speak a different language, practice a different religion that they had never heard of before. Now based on what little I know about my family history, at least on my dads side, we go all the way back to Kenya I think. But that's all I know. I don't know what tribe we come from, if we have any family there, or what my native tongue is. That's all gone now. So when I was rewatching the show last year and I got up to the part where Aang went into the avatar state upon finding Gyatso's body and from that being forced to realize that his people and culture were entirely wiped out by the fire nation? I felt that. I literally felt a chill go through me, and I actually cried a little bit.

The fandom I noticed also seems to give Aang shit because he would talk about what the monks taught him every now and then, and a lot of fans found it to be annoying after a while. But you know what? Aang had every right to do that. He was literally the only human being alive that represented what was once the air nomads. So him repeating his teachings whenever he got the chance to was his one way to hold on to his culture, to make sure that the air nomads would not be forgotten.

Wow this got pretty long, lol. But yeah, that's what I think as to why Aang gets a lot of hate in the fandom.

#atla #Aang #air nomad genocide #asks #Aki answers things #icegoddessrukia

[flightfoot]

I know I’m in the minority of people who like Hermes in the original PJO series so I’m staying on anon here because of it. To be honest, I always saw him as morally gray.

My take on the ‘gods can’t change’ statement; isn’t him justifying his mistakes and saying that he’s unwilling to change. If that were true, he wouldn’t give Percy a list of his children and ask him to bring them to camp or even admit he was wrong about how he treated Annabeth and Luke at the end of TLO. I think he feels perpetually trapped. Forced to go through the motions and then dealing with such a difficult situation. That regardless of the actions that he takes; others are bound to get hurt. His family especially. He doesn’t want to risk that. He doesn’t want them harmed and he knows that he’s a bit of a coward for not being able to stand up to Zeus. I think the idea that gods can’t change is more like I am beginning to think that my family will never change. That despite all my best efforts and my own changing; it still won’t make much of a difference. He’s basically nihilistic in this situation and has given up hope. As the god tasked with keeping the peace without Hestia’s help; he may feel helpless. I think he loved Luke but at the time he believed that no one could go against the Fates. Not even him. That by protecting him, it would make his relationship with Luke worse or doom everyone involved to a worse fate. He lost his lover Krokos to a tragic fate. His mother too. Same with May and others. I doubt he wants them to suffer like that. To grieve again. It’s always better for him to be the bad guy to those hurt by Olympus than for people to blame his family or themselves.

tw. racism and mental health

I guess I was the one weird kid who kind of understood where the god was coming from. My home life wasn’t great and I was forced to be my family’s peacekeeper. I had to be what everyone wanted me to be otherwise I lost opportunities. I wouldn’t get a job, have friends etc.. I had to be a model minority being Asian American. I protested and fought. Had quiet rebellions, but no one ever listened. I needed someone to listen. Not necessarily agree but hear me. I see that with Hermes.

I can understand people disagreeing. I respect differences in opinions. I am just tired of seeing Hermes as only pure evil and irredeemable content. He’s an important god and I feel like I’m the only one who likes this character. I think maybe it’s best that I stop engaging with the RR fandom for a bit. I am just too invested in something that should just be fun and easygoing.

...most people don't like Hermes in the original PJO series? I did, quite a bit. Like, he wasn't perfect, but he really DID care about what was going on with Luke, and he seemed self-aware about how shitty the situation was for demigods. His attitude in TLO reminded me of Apollo's in the later TOA books (there's a reason I made him and Artemis allies in my Gods' Eye View series. Well, that and because he and Apollo are besties in mythology).

And yeah I mean, Hermes isn't the only immortal to espouse the view that they can't change, Apollo and Bob claimed the same thing (which was especially laughable in Bob's case). It seems pretty ingrained in immortal thinking, even with how clearly wrong it is.

I ascribe to your view of Hermes' thinking and attitude. He seems bitter and helpless at the end of TLO, honestly believing that things won't change, and just... he seems like he's given up. He cares, but he doesn't expect to be able to change anything.

And yeah, stepping back from the RR fandom may be good for a bit, in this case, since sadly in my experience, fandoms tend to continue happily vilifying characters. I haven't seen a lot of people being all that serious about it with Hermes, but I haven't really seen much Hermes content for PJO more generally, since I'm mostly in the Trials of Apollo sphere and he only gets a cameo there.

#ask #hermes #pjo #percy jackon and the olympians

[justagalwhowrites]

I know it’s different for everyone, but I just don’t actually imagine myself in any reader inserts. I don’t have the imagination for that. I would love to know who you might picture your FMCs looking like?

Hi Bestie!

I totally get you! I kind of do a bit of a mix where I imagine myself but inside someone else? It's weird. But I get you! I leave the descriptions almost entirely out so people can insert themselves if they want. The only real exceptions - aside from reader being AFAB - is that reader has hair that's long enough to grab (something most people can control and I think people would likely have hair during the apocalypse because you can just tie it back instead of trying to regularly cut it) and that Joel is taller than reader. That's because, in my head, Joel is like... 6'5" lol

I KNOW THAT'S NOT CANON OK? I KNOW HE'S 5'11" but I picture Joel as just a big big man, big man, big man is big and makes primal brain go brrrr. But unless you're taller than 6'3" (which, if you are, go off, queen and then just imagine Joel as being like 6'7" I support it make the big man bigger) you'll need to look up a bit to look Joel in the eye.

My face claims are below the cut!

As a reminder, these are NOT CANON. All these characters look however brings you the most joy. This is just who stars in the movie in my head when I watch these fics unfold.

You can find all my face claims for all Lavender OCs right here!

For Beskar Doll, I picture Doll as Eiza González. She's gorgeous, ambiguous enough that she could pass as a native on Naboo or Tatooine or Alderaan and I feel like she could kick my ass. I just love her!

For Yearling, I started out picturing Kiera Knightly but that's shifted a bit to Anne Hathaway. Either one works! The key for Bambi is big, brown (not that she's described that way but that's how I picture her) eyes, and I think both Kiera and Anne fit the bill! I can also picture both of them on a horse kicking ass but also being a mother figure to those who need it.

For New in Town, I picture Christina Hendricks. For some reason, Beautiful just has thick girl energy and I feel like she oozes sensuality the same way Christina Hendricks does!

Finally, for Halcyon, I picture Amanda Seyfried. I love her energy and she's just so beautiful but can pull off being a bit socially awkward - see Jennifer's Body - which is how Goldie was, especially in high school.

I will say, when I write FMCs in things set on Earth, I'm going to picture them as white and that's going to apply to how they move through the world. That's because I don't know what it's like to exist as a person of color and I don't think I should be trying to tell stories like I do. But I do make a conscious effort to leave racial indicators out of my fics (this was spottier earlier on when I didn't think about it - that's white privilege for you!) and don't use words like "blushed" now, for example, and I hope readers of color feel at home in my fics. If I can improve things here and you have the emotional space to let me know, please do! I do have a future Din fic in the works where I picture the FMC as Black because racism isn't a thing there so much as speciesism, so I feel I can tell a genuine story that way.

Anywho, that's my FCs for my FMCs! I hope you enjoy them!

Thank you for asking! Love you!!

#fanfic #kit answers #send asks #yearling #lavender #halcyon #new in town #beskar doll

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hurling another enrichment pumpkin at you : any thoughts on how Secrets handles its sociopolitical themes? I haven't had the chance to check the podcast out personally so far but from what I've seen on tumblr it seems to take a much less vague approach to those themes than even Unburied did, and considering how multiple people mentioned that the podcast seems a bit rushed, do you think that affected the handling of this too?

one of the things I did really like was removing any ambiguity as to whether or not we're supposed to interpret this version of the Riddler as a Muslim Indian man, and I think it's fair to assume that by extension that this cements Bruce and Barbara as Black and Latina, respectively. I don't think any of those were really controversial opinions, especially per the fandom I see on our glorious hellsite, but the conformation is cool!

I think exploring the way that Eddie's status as a brown man would contribute to his sense of disenfranchisement and resentment for Society is interesting for sure. it's also used to enable some like... COMPELLING bastard behavior that's very specific to him as a man of color, namely misleading the GCPD to arrest some entirely unrelated Indian man that they can't tell apart from Eddie, and the bit where he's having his little tantrum re: his sister's social climbing and insinuates that she probably has a white husband/boyfriend, which is a thing Asian women are FREQUENTLY attacked for in Asian incel communities. interesting move, I applaud.

I was less impressed by how the series handled its humanization of criminals and incarcerated individuals, which I wrote about a lot on this post about the depiction of Azrael. idk, I like that the rogues look out for each other and we get to see the horrors of realizing that you're so dehumanized by society that your vicious murder becomes a meme, that's a perspective on Gotham's rogues that I feel we don't get a lot! but the series seemed to waffle pretty hard on its own stance on this, Batman seems to be operating a pretty different wavelength than he was at the end of Unburied (he's soooo much more of a cop), and I also genuinely don't know what to do with the reveal that this version of King Tut was running a sex cult, especially since literally the only person who criticized him for that was. you know. also responsible for several brutal murders.

at risk of harping on this too much it feels very strange that a series would be so invested in the humanity of villains and then also have an actual antagonist who's as one note as Azrael is made out to be and gets offed with so little fanfare. the series' other big issue seems to be coming down hard on the side of "we hate violent Christian fundamentalists, they're Bad" and like. yeah, I agree, and that obviously ties in very closely with exploring racism and Islamaphobia that the Riddler has grown up experiencing, but as I said in the other post it's also uuuuuh very weird to make Jean-Paul the narrative scapegoat for far right fundie Christians when, in the comics, that's not his bag at all. he's a dangerous and careless Batman, sure, but he's also very much a victim of the Order of St. Dumas, and it feels like both a sloppy use of the character and a WILDLY missed opportunity to explore the church as a corrupt system akin to Strange's medical abuses in Arkham and everything about the GCPD. idk, it feels like Secrets in the Dark just really jettisoned much more interesting potential stories building on Unburied's themes in favor of a much more black and white narrative.

tl;dr I cannot believe that Secrets in the Dark has forced me to point to David S. Goyer as a comparative paragon of nuance and taste!!! what!!!

#we genuinely don't talk about how insane it is that goyer wrote batman unburied #he's spent years shoveling out shit like batman begins and batman v superman and it turns out he had this in him the whole time #all we had to do was take away the visual component and his budget #ANYWAY #secrets in the dark

[fauslayer]

2 3 7 11 & 12?

‼ theres some suggestive to downright implicative shit going on in this one (due to the nature of the first question) watch out ‼

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

it deleted my entire thang i have to type it.again hold on

ok this is a tough one. because i have like. insane people thoughts on faust guilty gear and sexuality mostly revolving around his canonical masochism and how that intersects with his atonement complex and his profession.

I Do Not Think Faust Tops In The Ways People Think He Would, Usually. theres been an exception or two where i understand fully where OP is coming from and it feels like they understand both why hes desirable and how he would wish to be desired rather than just wanting a size difference “”monsterfucker qualifier“” character to jump after. but these are exceptions in an already rare enough situation.

I Think He COULD Top If He Wanted To Though. talking pre-strive i imagine he could be caring about it but i think sex with him in a more traditional sense would lack closeness. i think there are some things you can only strip bare from him if you get a little weird. i have conflicting thoughts on the common placement of him in a sort of medicalplay or “sex as treatment” scenario where i think the only way it would be Truly intimate and not just him using his body as an extension of his profession without much care to his own physicality and such would be like. I don't know bro you have to get a little weird with him! am i even allowed to talk about fausts canonical masochism on tumblr dotcom.

TLDR there should be more serious character exploration of pre-strive faust and how he expresses himself as a vessel for servicing others and how that interlocks with his self-proclaimed “shameful” masochistic desires and the freedom that only actual selfishness in this regard can give him. and there should also be more exploration of sexuality with post-strive faust because You motherfuckers cannot be that afraid of him. If you already want his kidney scraper so goddamn bad you can care for him a little bit more.

What happened I blacked out.

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you’ve seen on tumblr

if this was on twitter (so many people are weird about faust there) or ao3 (i dont want to ask triptych_triptych_triptych why they're so mad that guilty gear doesnt show faust and may experiencing anti-asian racism as a result of 9/11, which did not happen in the guilty gear universe, because id rather not read another word of their pseudointellectual nonsense parading their lack of media literacy and completely unnecessary self-flagellation as Real Transsexual Art) i would have perhaps worse things to send but here you go

this post was so long and disgustingly descriptive while saying pretty much nothing at all. when i sent this to my friends to complain about i blur-stretched everything past the first couple lines in mspaint because i think looking at it unfiltered in the future (like now) would make me literally fucking tremble with rage and i have forgotten OPs url. i hope i blocked them but i have the memory of an ant. you only really need the first few lines to know this post is insanely bad. and this isnt a dig on it for being a Sex Post. i just think if youre the kind of rinse and repeat nothingburger blog whose entire outwards appearance is that of a postironic "im not like the other channies" 4channer who thinks theyre hot shit because theyre over 20 and Not Afraid To Say Slurz you probably shouldnt touch guilty gear because without love it cannot be seen and you desperately need to find love for yourself before you touch ky kiske again. ok

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

i really dont want to say bidget. i love bidget. bidget is a reminder of self love and discovery, of living and growth and understanding and all that shit. i look at her in-game or i listen to the town inside me and i think about that time daisuke said smth in that interview that amounted to “i make a lot of guilty gear characters because i want underrepresented people to see a vision of happiness for themselves“.

but oh my god nobody that Posts Her seems to get it. all i see are the same tired memes and using her as just boring-ass iconography. claiming that she SHOULD be more popular than the Mean Brown Protagonist because shes a transgender white woman who has a side-part in the main plot. like holy shit im SO grateful shes here and that They Fixed Her but oh my god dude ive genuinely heard more than one person say that they were glad that she seemed like the protagonist more than sol.

11. number of fandom-related words you’ve filtered

my only filtered tags are Goncharov (just didnt find it funny but not in an offensive way and wanted to let everyone have their fun) and umineko spoilers but back when i was a moreso mentally unwell teenager i had like every variant of zato-1 muted that i could possible come up with. i would say i dont know what was wrong with me but i was like 17 and going through some things.

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

I THOUGHT YOU GUYS LOVED TWINKS WHERES THE ADORATION AND CARE FOR MY GOOD FRIEND ZAPPA GUILTY GEAR!! not only is he, on a surface and aesthetic level, sooooooo kyute but i think hes genuinely very gripping. he had to be stronger for himself than i think he shouldve ever had to be and i kinda wish we got a light novel chronicling him trying to dispel the ghosts before landing his government job or something like that.

#asks #guilty gear #suggestive #nsft

[knowlesian]

wanted to contrast e2 and the tribe with e3 and man for sale real quick *, because i think they make a really great framework to talk about the ways this show handles dealing with race in a lot of very subtle ways.

in e2, the tribe holds the power in their immediate sphere.

if stede were to, say, go and grab the navy and bring them into the mix that power could shift again, but the reason they grabbed pete and stede at all is ultimately for the same reason that dynamic exists.

when stede and pete go full YOU SAVAGES!!! the guy guarding them can be like …bro. fuckin racist, much? and he knows he will not face a single bit of immediate backlash for it. they can like it or not like it, agree or disagree; if either one of them was the kind of person who was going to bring down the navy on them all, they’re not gonna give them a chance to do it.

i really do love the depth they pack into comedy on this show; they never center trauma, just acknowledge it exists and impacts the world and the characters in it without making it the focus or the point. 

(a good concrete example: we know lucius felt the need to conceal his sexuality for a time, because this is not a world free of homophobia but rather a narrative that refuses to center it. ugh, i love subtlety, i love the unspoken, i love these writers & etc)

the reason pete and stede get locked up is because trauma exists in this world; i would argue in overall thematic terms, they get let go because this show is not about to center it. it’s not that the tribe feels like throwing white people in cages for shits and giggles, or that they’re assuming malicious intent; still, they’re gonna trust but verify. they can do that, because they’re on home turf and in a position to put stede on the spot.

in e3 it’s different.

stede is the captain of the revenge; he pays them all, and even though they’re in the republic of pirates and not stede’s original context, white supremacy exists on every rung of the class ladder. (which is too depressingly often why working class solidarity will crumble into ‘no war but class war’ bullshit in the face of open acknowledgement of racism.)

when stede starts hilariously trumpeting maaaaaan for saaaaaale, he is not coming at this from any other angle than: everyone around me is gonna know exactly what i know and intend, and they will then buy my hostage for Reasons, i have not thought that one through really.

that’s part of the source of the comedy when lucius has to clarify no, babe, he thinks you mean we’re selling a man in the sexy way.

it’s also part of the sting when he doesn’t realize: yelling that while standing next to three black men is just different, because there is every chance if they keep hanging around while he’s yelling that somebody Gets The Wrong Idea and things get really gross, really fast.

there is no way someone could reasonably think he wants to sell lucius or their hostage into the currently very active system of chattel slavery; there is every chance it might go the the other way for roach, frenchie, and oluwande. 

the very best case in that scenario is stede is righteously offended on their behalf, and then he apologizes for putting them in that situation and learns never to do something like that again— which is good, but would come at the cost of public humiliation, a reminder of where the world thinks they stand in just about the most horrifying manner possible, and very real potential danger if someone decides they don’t like a no. that’s the best case.

the worst case is much darker and i just... do not feel like detailing any of it, because why dwell on what we already know did happen in the real world when situations like this occurred.

suffice to say, when frenchie and roach start going uhhhh, captain???? and making ABORT! ABORT! THIS COULD GET WEIRD! gestures and faces, they are incredibly aware that in addition to the baseline ‘so this is just... not gonna end well, huh?’ even the best version of somebody taking stede up on that offer to buy a man while they're around is almost inevitably going to suck.

which brings me to the awareness of power dynamics. back in e2, the guard could say what he wanted without fear of consequence.

here? not so much. because stede very clearly has not factored this in at all or he wouldn't be doing it like this, so it’s on them to either clearly and directly say: my MAN a lot of people are gonna think you’re a literal enslaver even if it’s the white guy tied up, because the world just sucks like that and you doing this? even if you don’t know? it also sucks. and i am gonna be cool about it because i know you don’t realize the implications here and that tempers my actions, but holy fuck this is not something that makes me fonder of you, as you are PUTTING ME AT RISK IN MANY WAYS RIGHT NOW. 

or they can try to make sure stede gets the hint without having to have a potentially difficult conversation, which is what they understandably go for instead.

because there are a couple things that can happen, if they say that outright. broad categories:

1. stede says ‘oh shit, i’m sorry! i should have realized and i won’t do it again’ and that’s the end of the matter hurray 

2. stede gets stuck on how he didn’t mean to do anything racist don’t be mad at him you canNOT be mad at him, i’m still a good person right though please tell me i am a good person guys & etc

3. stede says something like ‘you’re overreacting, you’re clearly not the ones i’m selling and it’ll be fine’ and refuses to accept what they’re telling him about their reality, because it's not his reality

obviously that’s not all that could happen, but you get the general lanes. all these conversations require effort to initiate and guiding, even if everything ends well. and it would be very cool if option one was the most common reaction, but as pretty much any poc who even attempts these conversations can tell you: it’s not. two and three tend to cover the bulk of the responses to trying to explain to a white friend why a thing they did was unintentionally racist itself and/or so ignorant of the realities of racism it loops around to upholding the system or creating a bad situation.

these writers really understand the complexity of these kinds of interactions. because stede yelling man for sale, in and of itself? not actually racist. unmoored from their specific canon context there's no particular racial undertone to those exact words, how stede says them, or who he says them about (as he is saying them about a white guy! and like i said above: no matter what deeply sketchy purpose someone might want to buy him for, it’s not chattel slavery). 

the actual problem here is not the content of his speech so much as the context. stede is standing next to three black men while he yells man for saaaaaale, and he is clearly not taking the time to think ‘is the thing i’m saying going to hit different for them, specifically because they are black’. and one step beyond that, he's doing this in a situation where not taking that time out to consider the impact of his words on the people around him could get real ugly, real fast.

being reminded other people think you’re property to be bought and sold, not people like they are... there’s just no way to leave that interaction feeling okay. even if all that happens is somebody tries it and wanders off without giving any pushback— even if they apologize! which seems an unlikely reaction tbqh, but i’ll entertain the more positive hypothetical— that’s still some truly dehumanizing and depressing shit.

stede doesn’t mean any harm and if they weren’t standing right there it wouldn’t even be an issue, but his lack of awareness doesn’t mean it would be any less traumatizing to have that happen. so when stede doesn’t take the hint, they get the fuck out of there and leave him to it, removing themselves from the situation before it gets ugly because that is in their power to do right now. (unlike in e1, where they had to play at being The Help for nigel’s men whether they liked it or not.)

unfortunately stede isn’t their friend in e3; he’s firmly their boss and their captain. if they are honest with him there and he's offended or refuses to listen, it could be trouble for their jobs or lives on the ship; and even if stede wouldn’t take it out on them that way, it means once again needing to have a Measured Tone when all you want to do is yell KNOCK IT OFF, I AM PISSED OFF I EVEN HAVE TO SAY THIS and potentially getting back: nope. this is about me, now, and i’m not going to listen. either because you made me feel bad about myself, or because i just flat-out refuse to believe that you are a good judge of your own life experience.

one of the things i enjoy in ofmd is they don’t play into the binary of centering trauma or not having any at all; the obvious difference in context between yelling that about a white guy but near black men is blatant, even if for some viewers it might not instinctive. ‘would someone make the mistake’? who knows. but could someone? yeah. fucking very MUCH yeah. i think we would all agree that there are people in the world alive even now who are the kind of blatantly racist where they hear ‘man for sale’ and it wouldn’t matter at all a white guy was the only one being led around on a rope; we all know which members of the crew they’d assume were also on offer.

once you do that math, frenchie and roach’s particular need to gtfo takes on a new dimension. for some of us, that math was instinctive; for some of us, it wasn’t. but once pointed out it’s happening and significant, it’s not a complicated equation to solve.

i think a lot about the use of trauma and pain in media, how we use it and who it’s for; to have somebody actually offer to buy one of the crew would absolutely make those potential stakes clear to a white audience, but a poc audience (and in this specific case, a black one) doesn’t need that all to play out onscreen to know why it could.

the subtlety they bring to this really gets me, more and more the more i chew on it. because if you’re in that second category, even the shadow of what could happen in the real world is enough to bring up a lot of heavy history sight unseen. if you’re in the first, it’s an answer so obvious once the question is posed that nobody has to expend effort to explain it, and the consequences so gross we can all agree they would be bad and best to avoid.

you don’t find all that much acknowledgement in mass media of these subtler ways racism works in the world. stede didn’t even say or do anything explicitly racist or implicitly racist here; all the same, his lack of awareness and consideration could have led to something pretty racist happening anyway, and five seconds of thought would have been enough to know why it was probably a bad idea.

and we’re not supposed to hate stede for not knowing why that could have been a real problem, just know not asking himself those sorts of questions (and not being aware of the potential consequences of not doing so) is something he needs to change. 

this show is just... it’s real good. i like it a lot.

* narrator: keeping it quick was, of course, a doomed hope from the start

#lol. quick. me. hah. #okay now i will go eat dinner i always do this i get caught up and it's an hour later than i thought it was #anyway: this show is real cool #i like the way they handle heavy shit #i see utility and value in narratives that center trauma #we have so few like this that acknowledge but never center it #more of all of it is the actual answer #but the volume can go up with a ratio change imo #i like no trauma media too! this middle lane is just very intriguing #my ofmd meta

[daffydancer]

LET ME BREAK IT DOWN. no one in this musty choir room compares to my megawatt star power.

daffydancer is a senior citizen rp blog for brittany s pierce !!

written by kq, 28 y/o, est, she / her   —  discord available to mutuals!

rules under the cut 🦄🦄🦄

HOWDY hi there!! i’m kq! i’m 28, live in est, and use she / her pronouns! i've had this blog for 84 years and i'm mainly only over here to party with the besties but if u like what u see i can party with you too!

ACTIVITY i am not fast. i’ve taken a bit of a break from rp, but have a lot of different blogs. i tend to go where i have the most muse and can sometimes disappear for a bit. i try to pop in and reblog musings / silly things in the interim, though. my discord is always available for mutuals!! just ask!!

FORMATTING its all about the vibes ... ive got no icons ive got no cares im just a girl!! i use small text and sometimes i put links in when i underline because i think its funny thank u!

GENERAL this blog is multi-verse, multi-ship, multi-everything! unless we’ve discussed overlapping plot lines with a whole bunch of muses, it’s safe to assume that my interactions with your character and my interactions with another are happening in completely different timelines! also,  please don’t godmod!! little things that move along the thread are fine, but please try not to assume my character has done/will do anything in particular, in it!

TRIGGERS / SENSITIVE SUBJECTS as a general rule, i will always be trying to tag or avoid common triggers! my formats for tagging are ‘trigger cw //’ and ‘trigger tw//’. i will always try to do both and i always look for people’s triggers in their rules, but please don’t hesitate to let me know if i’ve forgotten a tag. as for myself, i have a weird teeth related trigger! it doesn’t need to be tagged, but if you could avoid talking to me directly about dental things it would be greatly appreciated! also, as a rule i don’t do smut! it’s just not my thing!

VERY IMPORTANT!! there are few things that i vibe with less than i vibe with people being mean. on a small scale, i don’t post hate, i don’t send hate, and i don’t like to see hate. on a larger scale, i don’t tolerate racism, homophobia, transphobia, or anti semitism. if i see people posting things with an obvious malicious intent, i steer clear, unfollow, or block.

[thewingedwolf]

i am rewatching shadow & bone bc, once again, i am a parody of myself, and i really am so fond of Mal in the show, i am deeply nervous about how he’ll be written in s2 lol. not as nervous about almost everyone else - i say ALMOST bc i was not impressed with the way Jesper & Nina weren’t shown to be bisexual, like, at all, & while i think it was just clumsy writing & not malice (the same as the clumsy way they wrote Alina’s race), that doesn’t mean it’ll get better lol. also pls understand i spend half my time shitting on the darklng, ben barnes does an excellent job reminding me why i hate that bitch okayyyy

Mal already knows that Alina’s tent with the other cartographers was moved, and knows where it moved. We first see him fighting but seems like he got there, immediately attempted to find Alina, figured out she had been moved and was wandering around, then said fuck it she’ll find me or i’ll find out she got thrown in lock up again, and decided to go beat someone up so he could show off his kruge in front of her lmao

Alina is interested in the grisha. she’s smiling and curious, clearly thinks Zoya looks cool af (she’s right, Zoya is cool af). Mal spends the entire time frowning at them lol. Could be bc a grisha just crashed his party, could be mal’s general dislike of grisha and the upper class. it’s very funny either way that he just Refuses to smile until Alina distracts him

Alina experiencing A Racism but still thinking quick enough so her team can eat makes me emo but also Mal immediately being like “time to commit some crimes” every single time someone is racist to Alina is so great, get u a real man like Mal

Racism is done very messily in the show and i’m hoping it improves bc like - Zoya is insulated from most racism due to her status, but we still get that comment about “YOU from Novokribirsk?” comment from another Grisha, which seemed like a pretty obvious slight at her being Suli. Alina experiences racism everywhere she goes from nearly everyone she meets - random cooks, cartographers, servants, Zoya, and the Darkling himself. Even Genya sort of brushes off the comment about her eyes as like, typical bullying and not something very different & much more insidious. Mal looks uncomfortable at the anti Shu Han propaganda & I think that’s it? Which feels weird bc he doesn’t have the class protection Zoya has, but maybe he doesn’t *look Suli* culturally the way Zoya and Inej clearly do. Or are Mal AND Alina both supposed to be Shu Han? We know from Inej and Nina (and maybe Zoya, idk, i never read king of scars bc i would have to acknowledge Matthias & David’s deaths and I refuse) that the Suli are still mistreated on a legal level in addition to social, but are maybe treated marginally better than the Shu that live in Ravka, bc Ravka is in an active war against Shu Han. Is that the difference in what Mal experienced vs what Alina does? lol or i’m overthinking something that clearly wasn’t thought out very well before they put it in the show. I just like. Do Not think Mal is meant to be a white Ravkan, firstly bc Archie isn’t a white brit, and secondly because - look at him aksjdjd that is not a man that can really pass for white. I hope they handle Alina’s background better, especially since she’ll be interacting with other Shu characters, in s2 but i also want an explanation for Mal’s background!!!

I do think it’s funny that the sickness grisha get if they don’t use their powers is very informed in the show. Mal makes a few comments about Alina being sick all the time but she doesn’t actually look or act sick at any point in the show aksksk

Mal is so strong, like the dude is fuckin ripped, a fucking volcra tries to rip Alina away and he’s just like “yeah i can take this bitch with one hand” aksjsj

I feel bad for that lil blond boy that clearly has a thing for Alina lmao he really tries to stick up for her and she does not even notice a little bit and then he dies bc West Ravka is like “anyways don’t get captured even tho we’re at war with half the world and you have no resources, crew, or family over here” ya, they’re way better than Old Ravka smh (Zlatan is just as big of a bitch as the king and darklng dammit)

Interesting that Zoya only gets shitty with Alina after both the Darklng & Mal clearly choose her over Zoya. Mal she probably doesn’t gaf about, but it definitely stung her pride that she can’t even pull an orphan from Keramzin but Alina can. Before that tho, even if she’s thrown by Alina, she clearly sees Alina as One Of Us. She even looks visibly annoyed when everyone starts laughing at Alina and her “i’m a mapmaker” response & seems to pick up on the implied racism of the “what are you” question. It’s an annoying response that after being rejected, Zoya uses that racism against Alina to put her in her place but like…I guess it’s not wildly ooc? bleh.

Ivan and Fedyor purposefully ignoring the Shu Of It All when talking about power and privilege is 100% why Alina takes so long to trust the grisha, and so easily turns against the Darklng imo. For all they understand the danger of being Grisha, for all Ivan wants to lecture Alina about her privilege at dinner, none of them even bother to understand what it’s like now, right now, for the poor of Ravka. You serve in the army & let the Darklng indoctrinate you with his nonsense, or you flee like the mother in the first episode does, taking your chances with the slavers & the volcra & the Fjerdans. There are no good choices for the grisha, no good choices for the non grisha peasantry, and Alina’s entire existence, from the never ending racism she experiences, to the death and starvation she’s surrounded by, is a constant reminder how few choices that exist no matter if you’re grisha or not.

So like, most of the bad guys have Weird Foreign Accents and I dislike it. All the Ravkans should have Russian accents but it’s only Fedyor & a few mean servants that do. The Fjerdans all have accents. Pekka has an accent. Everyone else is just a brit, including people in Kerch, even tho they don’t even speak the same language as the Ravkans do, they speak Kerch! Why does Kaz not have some country bumpkin accent dammit

“When our closest friend is in trouble, we do foolish things.” Smash cut to Kaz doing the Dumbest shit in an attempt to protect Inej from Heleen l m a o it’s not one whipped bitch in this show it’s two (it’s three actually, Matthias just hasn’t shown up yet lmao)

When Mal & Alina are both envisioning each other & reach out to hold the others’ hand, hundreds of miles away but desperate for comfort, THAT was the moment i fell for them. Archie & Jessie are just so Powerful okay aksjdjd

feels more obvious in retrospect that he’s not trying to train her to do anything but answer to him. he doesn’t even bother preparing her for the king bc he knows he can amplify her powers, so long as she’s not fighting him.

I do not buy Baghra’s insistence that Alina’s feelings for Mal hold her back. She’s able to summon her powers when she’s angry, and Baghra takes that short cut by continuously pissing Alina off. But Alina also uses her powers whenever she thinks of protecting Mal; she protects him on the skiff & when she remembers trying to run away with him for protection, she can summon a bit of her power. It’s Alina’s compassion that gives her abilities, but Baghra has spent so much time nurturing her own bitterness, watching her son nurture his anger, it just never occurs to her that Alina’s strength comes from her desire to protect the people she loves. Alina goes from wanting solely to protect Mal to channeling her power through her anger and rejection & Baghra treats it like a win but it’s just another shortcut that clearly makes her more susceptible to the Darklng whispering in her ear, not less, and if Baghra had any goddamn sense, she would have seen that she was making her son’s job easier. But like, the darklng didn’t just come out of nowhere lmao, and you can clearly see where he gets his defeatist, manipulative, and bleak ass outlook on life from.

As a certified Matthias stan still refusing to acknowledge the end of crooked kingdom, i think it is genuinely so funny that Mal gets chest wound after gut wound after chest wound in s1 and shrugs it off, but Matthias gets shot one (1) time and dies immediately & cannot be saved by the most powerful heartrender that ever lived. leigh PLS

“you are my true north and i can see my way to you now” IM JUST.

Genya has to hurt Alina’s feelings by lying about Mal, then immediately and smoothly changes the subject to something that will make Alina laugh. She knows she has to betray Alina and she tries her hardest to soften the blow, encourages Alina to return to the blue kefta instead of going too hard towards the Darkling so she has the protection of a color and a people, warns her as best as she can to be wary of the Darklng, even while she’s helping isolate Alina from anyone who could help her escape. i’m so depressed about Genya.

Enter David and Genya loses her damn mind ansjsjdjdjd Alina is doing miracle sun summoning and Genya just watches David the whole time, who probably cannot fucking believe his luck that his weird ass boss for ONCE is letting him hang out with the meanest, coolest, smartest person in the palace instead of Ivan & Fedyor, who spend all their time flirting with each other and bullying him

Fjerda is lichrally trying to commit genocide against the grisha & Shu Han does…some jacked up shit to their grisha lol, and i did a whole post about how the Darklng is just more of the same, but so is Baghra. All their talk of looking out for Grisha, but they both treat the peasantry of Ravka as disposable. Nikolai is theeeee only valid ruler specifically bc he does think of the cost to the peasantry & to the grisha before he makes decisions (something his father and his brother also don’t do lol). And both Baghra & Aleksander allow this “us vs them” bs to permeate through their own people - no grisha healers help the first army, and Ivan reads the dead but glosses over the Otkazat'sya deaths to focus on the grisha. but this is on purpose - if you make the grisha other the Otkazat'sya, you can easily turn them against one another. neither baghra nor aleksander ever work towards like, actual freedom for the grisha by building bridges and relationships between the grisha and the Otkazat'sya, they just turn the grisha into weird, insular child soldiers.

Alina realizing she can just swing on the racists now love that for her

Mal tends to deal with his feelings for Alina bubbling to the surface by purposefully breaking the tension; closing his eyes & going to sleep when they’re thrown in the brig, cracking a joke about going to Ketterdam when he steals her food. But their convo in the woods after they’re reunited is the first time he doesn’t try it - you can almost see he wants to, when she says she cheated on the grisha test bc she didn’t want to leave him, his whole brain short circuits at what it could mean, and it’s a moment where he might have purposefully broken the tension but instead he takes a minute to think before he tries to open up abiut his own feelings - only to get derailed & heartbroken by the realization that the stag drawing wasn’t Alina trying to communicate with him, but Aleksander manipulating & isolating her. But he still doesn’t break the tension - he lets Alina hold him, and he holds her in return, & stops running from his feelings for real this time.

I do find it so funny how Aleksander sees David raising his hand to speak, initially starts to tell him to knock it off, and then realizes David will not understand why Ivan and him find it annoying & just decides to choose his battles aksjjdjd.

Also, him going through the five stages of grief when he realizes Mal & Alina are together, and overdramtigcally monologuing about the orphans of Keramzin being reunited to this random dude who has no idea wtf he’s talking about. Perfect, no notes.

Episode 7 is just very well written. All the conversations are tense, all the action is painful, all the acting is amazing. From David half in tears as he helps enslave Alina, all the anger going out of Alina when she realizes the king was raping Genya, Genya’s guilt & shame over her own hand in betraying Alina stopping her from talking even though she’s usually so composed, Mal’s helpless snarl when he says Aleksander will wish he’d killed him, even Aleksander’s inability to look Alina in the eyes because he knows she’s right to hate him it’s just that he thinks she’s a justifiable sacrifice. Meanwhile the Crows are being the most chaotic idiots ALIVE akskdkdk just perfect, excellent writing.

What i think is interesting is that Alina makes the hypocrisy argument to Genya, and it works. Genya appeals to Alina’s compassion when she admits the king has been raping her, but Alina pieces together that Aleksander placed her in front of the king to begin with. Not a soldier, just a pawn. And Genya is so struck by this argument she has no counter; she just leaves in tears. Alina tries this with Aleksander as well, to get him to see the hypocrisy in his actions - of killing the king because the king is a monster, yet using the fold as a weapon. It has the complete opposite effect because whereas Genya is aware on some level that she’s being used, Aleksander is so far removed from his own experiences as a pawn, as a target, he can’t see her point.

“all countries will answer to us. for who would oppose us now?”

means Something to me that Immediately after that nasty comment from that heartrender, Zoya sees another Suli girl (who, if we remember, someone she is friends with just called Suli trash before getting got by said Suli girl) who is about to be killed, witnesses the destruction of her home and what she will find is the death of the only person who ever loved her as a child, and makes the decision to betray the only stability she’s ever known for the glimmer of hope that Alina can offer her.

It’s also exactly what I mean when I say I hope we get an explanation for Mal’s background. In Inej’s chapters we get the sense that the Suli are a people that draw close together, even outside Ravka. Her curse on Bajan clearly hits him hard; even clearly trying to assimilate into Kerch culture, the thought that his Suli ancestors may forsake him for harming a fellow Suli really gets under his skin. So in the show, what I love is we get a small exploration of this bond that exists between all Suli as outsiders in their home countries - Zoya and Inej instinctively working together, Recognizing that bond in each other, with Inej even attempting to stop Zoya from going back to the ruins of the city, of wanting Zoya to stay with them. And Zoya, despite her pained history with her own people, despite her comments about Alina being [redacted], clearly returns those feelings. She’s so much warmer with Inej, and vice verse, then say, Jesper is with Mal (he’s not cold to Mal, he’s just Typical Jesper). The thing is - maybe you could argue Zoya and Mal kind of take a small interest in each other because they recognize the other is Suli, but Inej and Mal don’t really have that connection in the time they know each other, and Zoya and Mal are much more cordial with each other than Zoya and Inej are. OBVIOUSLY there are other factors at play. But. Whereas we get a hint of Zoya’s own complicated past, and Inej is defined by her ties to her culture, Mal doesn’t really show any of this beyond one single uncomfortable look at a Shu Han propaganda poster, and that’s likely more to do with Alina than his own background. I JUST THINK ITS WEIRD AND CLUMSY OKAY.

idek what to say about Alina’s amazing speech besides HELL YEAH THATS MY WIFE. she’s so fucking cool.

Ivan’s lil bitch ass being like “know your place” RIGHT AFTER Alina gives her “you asked WHAT I am” speech and then Jesper being like “i think the fuck not” and tossing him overboard. absolutely perfect i love that man.

Zoya looks so uncomfortable during the whole conversation by the fire. For the first time, she’s the outsider - the lone splash of color against the browns and blacks of the crows and malina. But when Zoya says she has to go back, Inej shoots up to stop her, and even Kaz attempts to dissuade her from what he thinks is no better than a suicide run. Since her childhood, Zoya has seemed alone, but just as her aunt stepped in to save her then, and the crows attempt to console her now, Zoya is never as alone as she feels.

And neither is Alina! Knowing where their stories end up going, i think it is interesting that both Zoya and Alina are very adaptable and very adept at making very loyal friends. Despite all the odds against them, with them being Suli and Shu, with Zoya being a huge bitch (which I love) and Alina constantly struggling with her own self worth, other people see just how amazing the two of them are and are willing to fight for them, with them, to be near them. Sankta Alina and the Grisha Queen. Wonderful.

#shadow and bone #grishaverse #rani's liveblogging tag #anti darkling #ben barnes is a magnificent actor who imbues a lot of depth into a character that is a textbook abuser & i love him. aleksander can choke. #i’m in mobile so i can’t put it under a cut i’ll do that later probably #rani attempts meta #there’s a lil meta here so it’s going in that tag #if u want to comment u can. u can even disagree but if ur a bitch about it i will be a bitch back

[secretgamergirl]

Have I done any serious Lovecraft bashing in the last year or two? I feel like I’m overdue.

I’m almost positive I’ve sat down and written at least one big long post on the general subject of how there is nothing redeemable or interesting about H.P. Lovecraft, but I’ve also definitely seen another like hundred examples of people misrepresenting his influence and talent since, so, here’s another one.

See, there’s this popular myth that H.P. Lovecraft, despite being one of the all-time most virulent racists and quite open about it, was some kind of grand visionary who made all kinds of super important contributions to the horror genre, and... he just didn’t. Honestly I’d kinda want to burn down his legacy even if he did, because no for real, the racism was absolutely astounding. People’s jaws were on the floor about it even when he was alive. I feel pretty good about just completely throwing the whole output of right wing extremists in the dumpster like nazi game devs and such, so I don’t see why this should be different, but also for real, nothing of value is lost in doing so.

Like, first of all, he’s just a really bad writer. Really formulaic structure to all his stories, they all have basically the same protagonist and he sucks, tons of purple prose setting things up and then just kinda glossing over the main events, and dude really did just abuse the hell out of a thesaurus. And the subject matter’s not great either! In pretty much everything he ever wrote the big scary thing is kind of always just privileged white dude anxiety. “What if I’m not the center of the universe? What if I’m not actually a pure and noble white guy but I’m secretly the product of the dreaded race mixing? What if, like, a trans woman was kind of into me? What if I ad to deal with some other culture doing stuff I’m not comfortable with? There’s a couple that are more “starfish are just creepy” but it’s not a huge element in those and also I mean that’s just true.

There’s still the big influences though, right? Well, not really, no. Evil cults trying to bring back evil gods/monsters was totally ubiquitous way before Lovecraft. Super advanced space weirdos were too. Big freaky monsters doing sexual stuff with tentacles simply does not happen in any of his stuff. There’s no cool monsters really. Or people doing cool magic rituals. Just glancing at things and running away really. Like, guy wasn’t just unpopular in his day because he was a white supremacist scumbag, he also just couldn’t write well. I’m always pointing this out, but you realize Cthulu isn’t even actually much of anything in Lovecraft’s actual stories? The Call of Cthulu is mostly just this all build-up kind of story, with a couple people piecing a few random incidents into a vague semblance of an investigation, and at the end some big goofy sea monster starts to wake up from a coma and then... promptly has a ship plow into its head causing it to pass out again. That’s it. That’s the whole story. No big evil plans or minions or eating 1d6 investigators, no referencing in other stories. Basically everything in the pop culture “Lovecraftian” bubble is fan fiction, mostly tracing the route of “someone made a tabletop RPG vaguely inspired by other authors’ playing with this guy’s stuff which ended up being popular enough in Japan to be name dropped in some porn VNs, and people just kind of assume tracing that all the way back must lead to something good.”

This all made a lot more sense before/in the early days of the internet, where there was a sort of weird nerd elitism in knowing certain bits of obscure trivia and catching the right references. A lot of actually really talented horror people back in the day kind of got in the habit of referencing some memorably weird terms this one old racist tossed into stories that sometimes showed up in one of the oldest horror magazines one could find copies of if they really looked. In particular people found it really fun to keep referencing “the necronomicon” as like a pokedex for weird ancient monsters and occult stuff and made it enough of an in-joke to mislead people into thinking this was a real book. But the whole idea was you had to have access to this magazine from the 1920s to really be in on the joke. Stuff just kinda doesn’t work that way anymore. Wikis kinda killed being in the know on weird trivia connections.

The other thing though is people used to just do a little name drop of a book or a monster while doing their own stuff, and that’s fine, but now you have so damn many people doing “Lovecraftian” stuff where they more directly reference his better known stories, and there’s kinda this whole subgenre where people just run down that checklist. There’s dozens of “Lovecraftian horror” games where ooh, you’re some reedy nerd or detective and you go to this town called Innsmouth and people are suspicious and oh no they’re like fish people and they chase you around and you pass out or maybe find some weird idol and somehow or other you’re on this big mystery island and we’re directly quoting that “even death may die” line without context, and whispering voices tell you to poke at 7-pointed star symbols and oh no, you woke up Cthulu and he comes and eats you, credits. And like... it’s just running through the same checklist every time. It’s never informing a more original work, or putting interesting twists on things. It’s like how you used to have nerds just quoting whole scenes out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail or quoting catch phrases from Austin Powers or Borat. Just so incredibly tedious and pandering to people who don’t ask for anything more than having the references they know quoted back endlessly.

Anyway, point is, we really wouldn’t lose out on anything if we just freaking buried this one old racist hack. If you want to do some referencing and name dropping to weird spooky stuff that’s maybe from space or the ocean or whatever, there’s plenty of stuff you can shout out that’s actually good, and isn’t giving a certain kind of people to start grinning smugly and referencing what this guy named his cat. Like for real, any time you feel compelled to drop in some kind of Lovecraftian reference somewhere, just namedrop Junji Ito instead, or directly reference a short story of his. It’s all way more interesting and fleshed out and you’re just throwing a spotlight on someone who as far as I can tell is just a really nice talented artist who likes cats. Cats with names you can say out loud, even.

#lovecraft #cliche #horror

[opossumanon]

hey chat I've been having an identity crisis that's been reacquainting me with my old friends, my mental issues, and it's not fun and I'd like to go back to my path to recovery but I don't think that's gonna happen until I sort out said identity crisis so I'm gonna need some help if yall have the time

So historically I've always been a bit of a loner and a weirdo compared to my peers, mostly because of audhd (autism + adhd) but being transgender certainly hasn't helped me either. It started a few months ago when I first got a glimpse of punk culture and what it was like, and after I found a cool jacket at a thrift store I went "Hey what if I put patches and shit on it like punks do that seems neat I'm gonna borrow that idea" and then it progressed to me finding a bunch of music I like, most of it new wave (X-Ray Spex my beloved) and as weird as I am!!

So I've since been doing more research on punk culture and the different groups within punk and I feel like I've found something that I can relate to, but then I'll see stuff like "If punk music isn't the majority of what you listen to then you're not punk" which seems sus to me, and I also see things about drugs and mosh pits and LOUD LOUD concerts, which is a problem for me because

1. I don't do drugs (It's fine if you do idgaf just not my thing), and alcohol is off the table for me because of genetics and a medication I'm on 2. I properly read the definition of mosh pit to make sure I didn't have misconceptions about it and the definition is literally a cramped space right next to the stage where everyone dances erratically and is pressed up against each other. I hate touch, so the idea of being in a pit with dozens to hundreds of other people all pressed up against me sounds like hell 3. I can't do loud stuff for long periods, I get overstimulated which leads to anger which leads to not good.

All of these things mean that concerts and bars/clubs are off the table for me unless I can be accommodated, but I doubt that'll happen because usually the reaction to me being upset about loud noise at events is "Deal with it" and then ignoring me. But there aren't really any places other than bars and clubs and concerts that punk groups (And any other group really) meet up at as far as I'm aware, so I'm basically cut off from any real interactions with people.

I explained this to a friend of mine, and he informed me that I'm simply not punk because "punk is about chaos" and "you're all rigid and need your structures" and yeah, I do have a certain way I like things to be done, but that doesn't mean I'm totally unwilling to let go and do whatever sometimes. Also from everything I've read about punk the only group who sees chaos as the biggest qualification are the nazi punks? All the other punk groups I've looked into seem to agree that it's anger at the establishment for not taking care of the people and deciding to form a community that we can be a part of to take care of each other, which I 100% agree with.

At first I listened to my friend and accepted defeat, but I thought of it for a bit longer and realized that my friend, as much as I utterly adore him, as a tendency to act like his opinions on things are objective fact (Talking about music with him can be frustrating because of this), so I'm not inclined to take his advice on this particular issue.

So my question is based on everything I've shared so far, am I actually punk or am I just trying to shove myself into a group that I don't belong to?

(Btw in case anyone's wondering my beliefs are anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-antisemitism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, anti-ableism, anti-zionism, and anti-every-other-kind-of-bigotry. And so far from what I've read I have mixed feelings about anarchy but I will admit I could do more reading on it)

#punk #queer punks #genderpunk #queer punx #punk rock #punk style #new wave #queer punk #diy punk #yes i did make a blog just to post this ask without people i know seeing it

[matan4il]

Apparently the actor who plays Eddie was posting antisemitic stuff (comparing the US mask mandates to Nazi Germany). He never apologized I think. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that. I’m mad that an actor I like has such awful views on these things but i’m separating him from Eddie in my mind so he doesn’t ruin that

Hi Nonnie! As the Holocaust is a very serious subject, I’m putting my reply under a cut.

Let me start by pointing out that yes, it is VERY problematic to compare the Holocaust to... basically any other event in human history. At most you can compare it to other cases of genocide in order to better understand the different reasons why the Holocaust is considered by the overwhelming majority of reputable historians to be the most extreme genocide ever committed (and please make this comparison for that purpose and ONLY that purpose, not to minimize or dismiss ANY case of genocide. The only reason why we make this comparison is in order to learn from it, so we can PREVENT the repetition of the elements that made the Holocaust so extreme).

The problem is that when people have debates that they wanna make sure they win, basically by shutting down any room for argument, they compare something or label something / someone as the worst thing that these people can think of. If that’s racism, then these people will shout that the thing / person is racist, if it’s pedophilia then that would be the accusation (and this relates to fandom history, there used to be groups of “concerned parents” - and I’m sure some of those people were NOT parents - trying to have gay fan fic removed using pedophilia allegations), and in a lot of political debates, it strikes people like the worst thing that they can compare stuff to is the Nazis / Holocaust.

Which means that there is an ALARMINGLY growing number of things that are way too often compared to the Holocaust. And now I’ll try to explain why this is such an issue.

So imagine an alien arriving on Earth and coming across people discussing this unknown human word, “murder.” Unless the people are very specific about the details (which people don’t tend to be when discussing something as terrible as a murder), the alien is likely to get the impression that murder is a thing that is Very Bad, but not exactly what makes it so bad. As this alien continues to explore the planet, let’s say they come across an incident of theft. They know theft is Very Bad, but because they have no real understanding of whether it’s As Bad as murder, yet they know they wanna raise the alarm on this Very Bad thing they saw happening, they will try to get people riled up by telling them a “murder” has taken place. Notice, this isn’t even a case where the alien has bad intentions! And yet, what does this cause? It makes the theft seem much worse than it actually is, because people think that it’s murder. So when the thief is caught? They might be punished as severely as a murderer would be, not as a thief would. At the same time, it means that fellow aliens who might be there, and learning from their friend’s experience, who don’t have a proper idea of “murder” either, will believe it’s As Bad as theft.

Okay, weird metaphor, but I hope it works, because the point is most people ARE a bit like aliens when it comes to the Holocaust (or the subject of genocide in general). Most of us don’t spend our lives studying the extreme nature of what the Nazis and their collaborators did. We generally get that millions of people were murdered, that it was Very Bad, but we don’t FULLY understand all the ways in which the Holocaust was this abominable. And I say this as a tour guide at a Holocaust museum. I have seen with my own eyes the reactions of people who thought they understood the Holocaust and came to realize it was so much worse than their notion of it as I talked to them about the processes, the different stages of the Holocaust, and the details.

Now, when someone compares incorrectly to the Holocaust they do two things. They make the other thing, the one they’re comparing to the Holocaust, seem worse than it is, basically they get a theft to be treated as if it were murder. That’s why so many are willing to make these unworthy comparisons to the Holocaust, because they want THAT effect. At the same time, there are many people who are simply ignorant, like the alien in our metaphor. They don’t properly comprehend the Holocaust, they have no other point of proper comparison, so they use that one, believing they’re making a worthy comparison and not understanding in what ways it isn’t. And then there are the fellow aliens, the people exposed to this discourse, who don’t fully understand the nature of the Holocaust either, but when they hear such comparisons, their understanding of it is actually being actively harmed, because they start to understand “murder” a little closer to theft. Even if they reject the idea that it is exactly like theft, the issue is that we tend to understand differences between abstract notions in relative terms, so even if we get that there is a big gap between “murder” and “theft,” the very fact that we discuss these notions together makes our perception of the gap shrink a little, as the very fact we’re discussing them together forces us to bring them into the same frame, partly closing the distance between them. In other words, it causes a MINIMIZATION of the Holocaust. Which is something we refer as one of the ways the Holocaust can be distorted. And this is the part that, if done intentionally, is antisemitic.

The comparison in the post that Ryan saw and shared is a horrible one, with real and awful consequences. Posts like that NEED to be discouraged, without reservation! From anyone!

That said, I can’t tell you for sure that what he did was intentional. Sadly, making this comparisons is incredibly common, and has been repeated by countless people (including ignorant Jews), some of it done with malicious intent, some out of ignorance. So there is no possibility to look at a post like that and right away know if it was intended to distort the Holocaust and harm Jews. In fact, Holocaust comparisons are not the only form of antisemitic content that is not perceived as such, and therefore you’re very likely to see it being spread by people who don’t necessarily mean any harm to Jews. I can tell you Oliver has shared such a post as well on one of his social media accounts, too. I can tell you I’ve stopped looking at celebs’ social media in general, because I was far too often unpleasantly surprised. In other words, I haven’t looked at anything posted by others in the 911 cast, but I suspect I’d find content harmful to Jews there as well. This is just as true for other celebs, outside the 911 fandom as well. Your fave, in at least one fandom, has probably posted antisemitic content, maybe without even realizing that this is what they were sharing. In the 911 fandom too, I can’t tell you how many posts like that I’ve come across. People who are not necessarily antisemitic, but they don’t understand the content they come across, so they reblog without full comprehension posts that are harmful to Jews.

I think this is a failure of our education systems across the globe. So my issue is not with Ryan or Oliver, who IDEK if they fully understand the harm of their posts. My issue is on a much higher level. We can and absolutely should point it out whenever we come across antisemitic content! We should not, however, automatically assume antisemitic intent. And I wanna hope that if we do that, if we give people the benefit of the doubt, they might be more open to hearing us out, being educated and changing their ways. IDK if anyone has approached Ryan and had such a conversation with him. I know at the time, I was in a bad place personally and did not have the resources to even attempt that. I hope someone, at some point, did explain it to him, and I’m very grateful that we haven’t seen anything like it from him since. But if you ask me what needs to be done, it has to be something so much bigger, on a societal level.

Have a good day, Nonnie! As always, here’s my ask tag.

#holocaust #antisemitism #911 meta #ask #anon ask #idek how to tag this exactly #jumblr #judaism #frumblr #jewish #jewish stuff #holocaust distortion #holocaust minimization #antisemitic #holocaust comparison #comparison to the holocaust #holocaust comparisons #911 on abc #911 abc