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#can be difficult goes against my coding but I do what I can to make it work
dan-crimes · 1 year
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Saw a post abt liars in media and it makes me wonder what people will think of my characters
All of my characters are very flawed and one of those flaws is the fact that most of them are fuckin liars !! And I love it! I love keeping up with my character's lies and watch as the characters within the story are deceived and the people viewing my characters are in the same boat tho with the knowledge of my characters being liars it makes it harder for viewers to trust anything my characters are saying which also plays right into my hands bcuz a character of mine could be telling the complete truth and no one would fuckin believe it LMAO
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toji-girl · 2 months
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t. fushiguro
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tags: fem reader + repost + you bite him a lot lmaoo + he calls you kiddo and a bunch of pet names + fluff + suggestive + finger sucking + oral fixation go brr + very much self-ship coded + I yearn for this man in a way that really is concerning :(
“Ouch! Did you just fuckin’ bite me like a damn dog?” Toji growled in surprise when he felt your teeth sink into the tender flesh of his arm, it wasn’t enough to hurt him but enough to get his attention.
He looked down at you tucked in his side, your leg thrown over his as you stared back up at him with a shy smile. “Did it hurt? I made sure it didn’t.” You murmured making him chuckle as he patted your head.
With the sleepiness that threatened to take him over a few minutes before the action surprised him more than anything. He chuckled and pulled you against him more, his fingertips running up and down your bare spine trying to lull you to sleep.
That was the first time you did that, and he wasn’t sure why you’d do such a thing, but at that time he was too tired to ask. However, the second time it happened when you both were out grocery shopping for the week and your favorite snack was finally in stock.
Sometimes Toji would notice you’d nibble on the tips of his fingers whenever you both were home for the evening, you tucked in his lap as you sucked and drooled on his digits like it was his cock or a popsicle giving him a raging erection feeling your warm tongue.
Over the last three months he kept a small notebook hidden in his pants pocket that were lined with nothing but the times you bit him, sometimes he wouldn’t have his notebook with him, so his phone also collected the number of times he was left looking like bait.
It didn’t take him long to figure out when the next attack would come, and attack is probably the wrong word to use. It wasn’t like you stood on the back of the couch and tackled him to bite him like some mad woman, but it was rather when you got excited or wanted to say I love you without actually saying it.
Saturdays were probably one of your favorite days, same goes for your boyfriend because it means that you both get to lay in bed for as long as you want and do whatever you want. More times than not, you’d be sucking on his fingers again doing it absentmindedly now.
He watched you feeling like a pervert getting hard, but it was difficult when your tongue swirled around the tips, your sleepy eyes barely open as you clung to him, your anchor in a raging storm.
No one has ever made you feel this way, he made every man in your life dim in comparison too. “Time to get out of bed kiddo,” He grumbled once he finally pulled himself free from the covers and you. He patted your ass earning a grunt and a pillow to his head.
“Seriously? A pillow? If you don’t get up, I will have to force you, now come on princess.” He warned and slipped his cold hands from washing his hands earlier and grabbed both ass cheeks in a firm hold.
You yelped and tried to kick him, but it only proved fruitless when Toji grabbed your ankles and flipped you to your back with no problem. “So strong for such an old man,” You teased and watched him tug his shirt back over his head, his lips curled into a small pout of irritation.
“I might be old, but I can keep you screaming and creaming on my dick sweetheart, do you need another reminder of last weekend?” He asked as he tossed your clothes off the top of the dresser to the bed.
Your face flushed and heated at the thought of what he was talking about, a night neither you nor him would forget. “No, but it’s Saturday. Why are we getting up out of bed? We live in a time where food can be delivered to us.” You whined and sat up with a groan.
Toji looked down at you once he came close enough to hold the back of your head watching you look at up him, your lips left a trail of kisses along his calloused palm before you sucked on his middle finger, it was cute the way your lips wrapped around him so perfectly.
It was like you were made for him, and that sounded cheesy as hell for him to think that, but it was the truth. Granted the action never failed him to get brick hard and it never mattered where you two were either which left you and Toji with multiple bathroom quickies under your belt.
He slid his finger over your wet tongue as he watched you take comfort in this for a while before you nibbled on the tip and pulled away to stand up and get dressed for the day. “You need to get out of bed, I think you’ve been spending too much rotting away in it.”
You rolled your eyes feeling his open palm connect with your ass gently. “I’m out of it, aren’t I?” You asked with a glare as you continued to breeze around the room to finish getting ready.
“Yeah, because I got you out of the damn thing, hurry it up sweetheart so I can feed you before you start hanging off my arm like a feral dog with a bone.” He told you hearing you giggle, a sound he could listen to forever on a loop never tiring of the sound.
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neptnszn · 1 month
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ok first off love the geto fic!!!!! but i was thinking geto checking readers attitude. shes been on one all day and he just is finally over it. (maybe pussy slapping if comfortable with)
hii ‼️ thank you so much, appreciate the love from everyone 🙈☺️ MWAH
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cw : pussy slapping & brat taming. that's it tbh.
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but yeah anon I hear ya. though since suguru's generally on the more chill side, I don't feel like he'd brat tame you in a way that's more hands on..at first.
in fact I think his way of brat taming you is simply doing nothing in your favor until you cave.
I doubt he'd mind at first, simply taking the unnecessary arguments, eyerolls, and snide comments all day. maybe even return your energy back a little.
but as time goes on his patience would thin, and your bad attitude would gradually start to piss him off. love takes patience, he knows that much; but when you bug him about this, or that in an argumentative manner with no valid reason, he finds you difficult to put up with.
especially after that little stunt you pulled last night.
“hey.” suguru interrupts your meaningless rant about him buying almond milk instead of regular milk and blah blah blah. if you really gave a fuck, you would've joined him on the grocery shopping.
“is this what we're doin’ right now?”
the ambiguity of his question makes you falter, meeting his gaze which..seems to be unusually intense.
“what?” your face scrunches up in confusion, “what are you even talkin’ about?”
oh, okay. he tongues the inside of his cheek slightly, it's milk for christ's sake.
“don't be like that. you know damn well that you need to fix that attitude and calm down.”
you scoff, not believing that your attitude is the most irksome.
“yeah, ‘cause my attitude is the biggest problem right now. don't piss me off suguru—you can't avoid and evade with your nonchalance out of this one.”
oh.
okay.
“it's like I gotta discipline you like a little girl, d'you even think about that?”
suguru asks, voice breathless as he watches you from above. arm slung over the back of the couch and you—kneeling between his spread knees and gagging with his cock stretching your mouth. “but I bet you didn't even do that. can't think with dick down your throat, can you?”
he sees the dip in your brow and grins, taking pleasure in the current power imbalance between you both. he could get used to this.
but as you raise your head to argue again, he simply keeps a firm hand atop your head, forcing you to take him down deeper. “..it'd be in your best interest not to argue with me, sweetheart.”
fine, you sharply inhale through your nostrils. if you ignore the sodden panties sticking to your skin—pussy calling for his name in morse code, you think you can soften him up a bit.
you suck him, slowly but surely while your hands stroke where your lips can't reach, your challenging gaze meeting suguru's own.
he keeps his hand firm on your head, lips parted and head tilted back against the sofa, making sure he keeps your mouth fully occupied. his toes curl inwards under his socks when you begin to bob your head, pleasure liquifying his legs.
you make a gargled noise when his bulbous tip nudges the back of your throat, reaching another hand further down—right down to give his balls a gentle squeeze.
“fuuckk—mhmm..you know what I like,” he moans in appreciation before closing his fist around your hair in a makeshift ponytail and yanks you off of him. “alright, enough. get up here.”
that didn't take very long, you think.
wiping your mouth from the spit and his pre, you rise with wobbly knees and plop next to him on the couch. he spreads your thighs in no time at all, kneeling between them. you sigh, sinking into the couch while your lids slip shut. waiting for his touch.
but nothing comes.
when you reopen your eyes, a smug suguru stares back at you and even lets a little chuckle slip. “funny how you just assumed that i’d give you what you want after your poor attitude.” suguru's eyes twinkle with amusement, tracing light touches against the gentle curve of your abdomen. gentle, soft, nowhere near enough.
“god, suguru, please! i said i was sorry.” frustration creeps into your tone, and you toss your head back onto the armrest.
“did you?” that simple question and the look he gives you makes you question yourself, the realisation that you in fact did not hit you like a truck.
shamefully, you avert your gaze. “..sorry.”
yet all you get is a head shake from suguru, lips pursed in a thin line, trace, trace, trace.
“the nerve. all that rudeness ‘n for what? i’m nothing but good to you..”
he trails off, observing the way your skin rises when his feather-like touch grazes your belly button, dipping his fingers lower to tug your underwear all the way down, flicking it off your ankle. “i still don't know where you get the audacity.” he smirks.
your pulse quickens, watching the way his knuckles brush against your inner thigh, going up, up.
you feel it before you hear it—a swift ‘smack!’ against your bare cunt has you whimpering and seizing up. the pain knocks you off your guard, before it bleeds into pleasure, the new feeling making you completely disoriented.
once suguru sees your shocked, wide-eyed gaze, his ego swells and he folds his arms, staring you down as if he were daring you to say anything—to backtalk him again.
beats of silence pass and the weight of what suguru just did barely has time to sink in before he does it again. it's wetter this time and has more momentum. the collision you makes your hips jolt violently, and your legs hike up to your chest as you flinch and cry out his name. hot tears slip from their confines and roll down your cheeks.
suguru, however, is having a time. he brings his hand up to the dim lighting of the room, watching your glistening slick coat his fingertips and palm before he speaks, his tone almost scrutinising.
“of course, you'd get wet from me rightfully putting you in your place. nasty girl,” he purrs before popping two fingers into his mouth, the familiar taste of you flooding his senses.
“sugu—” you choke on a little sob, wiping your tears with the back of your hand. you can still feel the sting right on your clit.
“i'm sorry, i'm so so sorry. won't happen again.”
“yeah, it will. you're not foolin’ anybody here.” suguru rolls his eyes, swiping his forefinger against your swollen nub and your legs jitter at the contact. “y'know this is what happens to brats who can't check themselves, right?” he asks rhetorically.
he meets your gaze. “and I like to think that I have a good girl, who can behave in a way that doesn't have to make me do things like this.”
you nod weakly.
“thats what I know.” he nods once and pulls away. “i'll think about accepting your apology, but that depends on how well you can make me cum.” you hate to hear it. it takes everything in you not to groan or roll your eyes..but your heart jumps at the chance of redemption.
“c'mon then, on your knees pretty.”
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© NEPTNSZN 2024 ★ please do NOT copy, repost or modify my pieces, apply credit when necessary.
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cy-cyborg · 3 months
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Disability 101: The language of Disability
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Trigger Warning: this post contains discussions of disability slurs (specifically the C and R slurs), and the history of disabled people's use in medical experimentation, including specific (but brief) examples.
Most of the content on my blog is aimed specifically at authors, artists and other creatives, but I've been noticing for a while now, that many of the people who come here to learn about writing and designing better and more compassionate disabled representation are often missing what I would consider to be pretty fundamental knowledge of the disabled community, or have gotten said information from a questionable source, for example, through corporate sensitivity training, who's given them just straight-up incorrect information. This isn't surprising, nor is it really the fault of the people seeking to learn more, rather, it's because of the way society at large talks about (or I suppose, doesn't talk about) disability. However this lack of foundational understanding often leads to creators accidentally including harmful tropes, using damaging or unnecessarily coded language or just including misinformation about our community into their works, often in ways that are quite hard to change by the time they realise there's an issue.
But before we continue:
The disability community is massive and we have a lot of history most people are totally unaware of which influences a lot of these fundamentals. It doesn't help that there are a lot of "allies" to our community who completely ignore and speak over us, many of whom have bigger platforms that actual disabled people, so their advice is seen and shared by more people, muddying the waters even further and making it difficult to discern what is and isn't "good information". Because of that, I understand that it can be hard to know where to start, so while most of my content is dedicated to specifically talking about disability representation in media, and how creators can include better representation in their own works, I also want to take some time to talk about some of the fundamental information about the disabled community I feel everyone (creator or not) should know.
Today I'm going to start on what I think trips people up the most when they're first trying to learn: The language surrounding disability. What terms we (generally) prefer, what terms to avoid, all that. I don't think this is necessarily the most important thing to know right off the bat, but it is probably one of the topics non-disabled people are the most confidently incorrect about, and where general misinformation is the most rampant.
Disclaimer: Before we go ahead, it's important to remember that the disabled community is not a monolith, especially so when we are talking about something like language and preferred terms. This post is designed to be a starting off point, not a rigid set of rules or all-encompassing guide. Different individuals may prefer different terms, possibly even ones listed in this article as words to avoid. Articles like this should always be taken as a general guideline but you should always be respectful of an individual's preference and refer to them how they have asked you to refer to them, even if it goes against general advice you've been given. However, it's important to bear in mind that just because that individual has a preference for a less popular term or even a term others find offensive, doesn't mean every disabled person is ok with it. It's also important to consider that different communities, cultures and countries, as well as people who speak different languages or even dialects of the same language, will have different general preferences, and so it is crucial to do further research on your own.
Disability and disabled are not dirty Words, it's ok to say it
If you grew up in the 1990's or later, like I did, you very likely heard words like "special needs," "differently-abled," "Special education" (often shortened to SPED). There's a very good chance that if you worked in education, healthcare (especially for children), with some disability charities or even if you were the parent of a disabled kid during this time, you were likely told to use these terms as a replacement for words like disabled, because "disability" and specific terms like "autism," "amputee," "downs syndrome," "paraplegic," etc put the focus on the things the person doesn't have or can't do. Calling them "disabled" implies there is something wrong with them, whereas these alternatives put a focus on the idea that folks with these conditions are "different, not less". At least, that's what a lot of people are told.
This is what we call coded language, and it's an issue because a lot of disabled people despise it. There are exceptions, of course, I know a few people who are indifferent, but I honestly can't recall anyone who was disabled themselves who preferred it outside of very young children who's parents insisted it was better (though most chose to move away from it as they got older).
But why? well, because of something that I'm sure you'll notice is going to be a pattern throughout this post: we didn't create these terms, and they weren't made for us, not really.
Most disabled people don't really see using the term "disabled" or any of the modern diagnostic terms (for the most part) as an issue. Yes, many do, by definition, focus on things we don't have, can't do or might struggle with; the definition of an amputee is someone who is missing a limb, the definition of paraplegia is someone who has paralysis in their lower body and legs, meaning they might not be able to or might struggle to move them. The definition of a disability is a little more complex and varies from country to country, but the American CDC defines it as "Any condition of the body or mind that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities and interact with the world around them."
These definitions sound negative, but it's not a bad thing to acknowledge someone doesn't have something most other people possess, or struggles with things others don't. It doesn't make someone "less" to acknowledge they have a barrier others don't. It's just acknowledging a part of our lived experience and acknowledging that our lives, because of these barriers, can sometimes look different, in both big and small ways.
However, a lot of people who are not used to being around disabled people get deeply uncomfortable with this, and this refusal to use straight-forward words like disabled is a symptom of that. This discomfort comes, in my experience, from a lack of understanding of disability as a whole, and potentially misplaced sympathy. They don't know how we do things they see as important, how we could do without the things they have, or what technology or services is available to help us bridge those gaps. This unknown makes a lot of non-disabled people scared, uncomfortable or makes them sad for us, even when it's not necessary. They see that we can't do something they can, like move our legs for example, and make a series of assumptions based on incomplete information. They imagine a life like ours and don't know how it could possibly be fulfilling, because they are missing so many vitally important pieces of information, making our lives look empty, bland and sad.
They don't have the full picture, but ironically, this discomfort stops them from learning more. If you go into a topic like this, assuming it will be depressing and bleak, why would you want to double check? For many, the fact that it doesn't take much for them to become disabled too adds to that feeling of discomfort and fear, so they turn away and try to pretend we're just "different" and insist on replacing the "scary" words that acknowledge the challenges and barriers they too will have to face if they become like us with things that comfort themselves, not us.
All of this is especially important to remember in the cases of disabled people who are severely limited by their disabilities (whether it be due to the disability itself, or the lack of accommodations for it) and who's disabilities do have negative impacts on their lives. It's important to acknowledge that for some of us, the negative stigma around our disabilities is mostly misinformation and an incomplete picture, like I mentioned before, that altering how something is done or approaching things differently can completely remove those barriers for some of us (e.g. like building ramps instead of stairs), but it won't for everyone. terms like "differently abled" completely ignore and dismiss the experiences of this part of the community, all they do is remind the person that you are uncomfortable acknowledging what they are dealing with. "disabled" on the other hand is inclusive of us both.
Person-first vs Identity-first language
Another aspect of the language surrounding disability that causes confusion in a lot of non-disabled people is whether or not you should be using person-first or identity-first language.
Person-first is where you put the person before the name of the disability, for example "Person with a disability," "Person with autism," "person with amputations," etc. Identity-first language, on the other hand, is where you put the person's disabled identity first, so "disabled person," or in the case of some disabilities, you might drop the need to say person at all, so it would be "autistic" and "amputee".
Unlike the last section, the answer to which one you should be using varies a lot on who you ask, and both types of language have their own benefits.
Person-First
Chances are, if you've done any kind of work that would have put you into contact with disabled people in the last few decades or so, you were instructed to use person-first language. weather you are a journalist, a doctor, an educator, a government employee, or were part of many, many other industries, chances are that you were taught to use it.
The reason for this is that, before the introduction and widespread use of person-first language to describe disability, non-disabled people were much less kind in how they spoke about us. Many people openly used slurs, even in formal settings, or referred to us (individually) as "the disabled," "the wheelchair," "the blind," "the downs syndrome," etc. e.g. "the wheelchair over there asked for assistance," or "I'm seeing the downs syndrome at 3pm."
This was especially prevalent in the medical field, with healthcare professionals often exclusively referring to their patients in this (or similar) ways, refusing to acknowledge their personhood, the value of their lives or their lived experiences beyond their disabilities. The medical field often mistreated and abused disabled patients, and before the introduction of laws protecting the rights of disabled people, this was not only completely legal to do, but was sometimes encouraged. On top of general mistreatment, disabled people, specifically, those being kept in mental institutions, asylums, and other places dedicated to their "care" (or containment) were often used as human test subjects.
There are countless examples throughout history, such as when Dr Henry Heiman infected two boys with gonorrhoea without their consent or the consent of their parents in New York in 1895, one of whom was only four years old with epilepsy and the other was 16 years old with unspecified intellectual disabilities. Dr Thomas Francis infected multiple disabled individuals with influenza in 1941, and George L. Fitch who infected six children under 12 living in the "Hawaiian Leper Colony" with what he thought was Syphilis in 1833. The personhood of the victims of these studies were often ignored or downplayed, so it's not too surprising then, that when the disabled community was finally able to start pushing back against their mistreatment in the late 1900's (The specific decade varies depending on which country you're talking about), they advocated for language that put their humanity and personhood first and foremost, making it much harder for people to forget that they were, in fact, still people and deserved to be treated as such.
Today, person-first is still preferred by parts of the community who still face more dehumanisation than most in the disabled community. for example, it's still very popular among people with downs syndrome. Of course, generalisations are just that: generalisations. There are many people with disabilities who experience very extreme dehumanisations, and still prefer not to use person-first, and vice versa.
There are also a number of disabilities that simply don't have names that work using identity-first language for grammatical reasons, such as people with ADHD (though some online communities use "ADHDers" in more informal settings) or people with BPD. Most often these are the disabilities who's names are acronyms, and so person-first is still used, but more out of necessity than genuine preference.
Identity-First
Identity first isn't technically newer than person-first language, but it's use, and it's name, has changed connotations recently as it has begun to become popular in parts of the community.
You see, for some people, their disabilities are an important part of their sense of self, or at the very least, their disabilities are so impactful on their lives, for better or worse, that they feel like they would be a completely different person without them. This is what we mean when we talk about disability as an identity, and what we mean when we say identity-first.
For some folks who prefer identity-first language, they feel like person-first is trying to distance them from their disability, often for the comfort of non-disabled people. It makes a disability sound like something you carry with you and that you could simply leave at the door if you could, not an important part of yourself. It sounds as strange as saying "A person with creativity" as opposed to "a creative person" or, to compare it to another identity of my own, "a person with gayness" instead of "a gay person".
This particular reason is popular among communities such as some parts of the autistic community, as autism impacts their brain, their personality, their interests, the way they communicate with others and more. If they were suddenly "cured" of their autism, they would be totally different people, and so they feel "autistic" is a better descriptor, as they simply can't be separated from their disability. It's a part of what makes them who they are. This is also popular among people born with their disabilities who have only ever known life that way, or those who have had their disabilities for a long time. Their disability, weather directly (such as autism) or indirectly (due to how people treat them, what opportunities or lack there of were available to them, the people they interacted with, etc) has impacted them so much that, once again, if they weren't disabled, they would have become a wholly different person.
Some prefer identity-first because they feel that they should not have to remind others that they are people. They feel it is unnecessary, and that if you need to be constantly reminded that any group of people you don't belong to are still people just because they are different to you, that's honestly just concerning. And then there are some in the community, who just prefer it because it's usually shorter and easier to say.
There's also a lot of people who don't really care either way. Personally, I fall into this category for the most part, as do most people I know. while I do lean more towards identity-first because it's easier to write and say, and because I agree, I think we as a society shouldn't need to be reminded of anyone's personhood so frequently in 2024, I also recognise that unfortunately, some people do still need that reminder.
It's important to note, that calling someone "the wheelchair," "the disabled," "The autistic," etc is not identity-first language, it's typically under the categorisation of objectifying language and you'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who likes or prefers that. Using identity-first language for these disabilities might look like, "Wheelchair user," "autistic/disabled person" or "that person is disabled/autistic". A good rule-of-thumb is to just avoid using "the" when referring to individuals or even groups of people (e.g. the disabled, the elderly, the gays etc).
Slurs
I also want to talk about slurs briefly. A slur, in this context, is defined by Merriam Webster as "an insulting or disparaging remark or innuendo," though it is often used specifically when referring to words of particularly strong impact, often with a lot of history behind why they have that impact.
For the disability community, many (though not all) of our slurs are somewhat unique, in that they were once considered medical diagnoses. While a lot of people do make this argument disingenuously, I do believe there are some people who are genuinely confused about this, which is why I quickly want to bring it up.
Words like "cripple," "retard," and many, many more I am not comfortable saying for a variety of reasons, all started as actual diagnoses. In fact, several of the sources I used even use them in this way, such as the sites and books I found talking about the two boys Henry Heinman infected almost always referring to them as being "mentally retarded" or "experiencing mental retardation".
I've talked about "cripple" specifically in detail before, but in all of these cases, the word went from a neutral descriptor (at least, in theory) to something that was used in increasingly negative ways, both by the medical professionals diagnosing people with these terms, and the general public. In medical settings, these words were often used to justify the horrible treatment directed at people with disabilities (Like we discussed before), and even after protections were put into place, the language kept its associations. In the general public, these words started being used as insults directly, both directed at disabled people and in general. If you went to school in the 2000's, you probably heard "retard" being used as an insult on the playground as a replacement for stupid or ridiculous. You can see how, when a whole generation starts associating a diagnosis with "ridiculous" it starts to become an issue. This would then feed back into how the terms were used medically. As much as we'd like to think of doctors and healthcare professionals as being unaffected by cultural norms, history has proven time and time again that this was not the case. If you'd grown up hearing a real diagnosis as a synonym for an insult, it's not going to make your opinion of the patients you're giving that title to particularly positive unless you're going to spend a lot of time deconstructing those implications, which, in my experience, many do not.
So yes, even though these might have been acceptable terms once, their use in overwhelmingly negative ways has caused a lot of disabled people to become deeply uncomfortable with them, and they have since been deemed slurs.
Of course, not every slur related to disability came from outdated diagnostic terms. The M-slur used against little people, for example, originated during the times where little people's only option for employment was in freak-shows and other demeaning rolls, such as being kept as pets by nobility. The M-slur was used to compare them to a type of small, annoying fly, a midge, as a way to further humiliate and dehumanise them.
There have been movements that attempted or are currently in the process of reclaiming some of these slurs, with notable examples like the "cripplepunk" community for physically disabled people (They do, however, ask that able-bodied people call the movement "c-punk" instead). Though other words like "retard" are more debated, and many people with intellectual and cognitive disabilities (who the slur was usually directed at) feel it is too early to start that process, or feel it should not be reclaimed at all. At the end of the day, it is the people with the disabilities impacted by these terms who get to decide if, how and when a slur is reclaimed, not outside forces and wider society.
Focusing back in on authors and creatives for a moment, if you're writing a disabled character, but you yourself are not disabled, I'd highly recommend against using slurs in your work, even if your character is part of the community that could reclaim it. Even if you are disabled in that same way, I'd recommend caution. I often call myself a cripple in a joking light, but I probably will never feel comfortable including it in any of my work (outside articles like this where we're discussing it, of course). If you really, really must include these slurs, make sure to get input from others in the community.
Outgroup Terms
Finally, one last thing I want to bring up is in reference to the "outgroup terms" disabled people use for people without a disability.
A very common misconception is that if you aren't disabled, you're able-bodied, but this isn't true! Able-bodied (sometimes shortened to A.B.) refers to people without physical disabilities specifically, so you can be able-bodied but still have an intellectual disability or some kind of neurodivergence like autism, dyslexia, or schizophrenia. Likewise, you can be neurotypical - the word for people who aren't neurodivergent - and physically disabled.
If you want to refer to people without any disabilities at all, the most common way to do that, and the term I've been using throughout this post, is just non-disabled. Some people also use the term "abled" but this isn't as widely agreed upon, as many people assume it's just a shortened version of able-bodied.
Conclusion
As I said in the beginning, this post is meant to just be a general guide, not hard and fast rules. The disabled community isn't a monolith, and we don't agree on everything and that's ok. Different people and groups will have different preferences and that's ok too. If you're an outsider to the community and you aren't sure what words or terms to use, just ask (so long as you're polite about it and/or it's relevant to the conversation at hand, it's fine) but always respect an individual's preference over a generic piece of advice like this post. Under no circumstances should you ever correct a disabled person on how they refer to themselves and their own community. If they refer to themselves as disabled, that's great. If they call themselves, a person with a disability, also great! I can not tell you how many non-disabled people who have told me I am "disrespecting myself" for calling myself an amputee, autistic or disabled.
At the end of the day, how any individual wishes to refer to themselves is their choice, but for creatives, especially those of you writing disabled characters as a non-disabled person, it's important to be aware of the reception and implications different words may have with your audience.
[Thumbnail ID: An image of overlapping speech bubbles on a blue background containing several terms, ranging from commonly accepted to offensive, used to refer to disabled people. Some of the more easily visible bubbles say things like "differently abled," "Disabled," "Special Needs," "Person With a Disability," "Special," "Slow" and many more. In the centre, the biggest bubble says "Disability 101: The Language of Disability." /End ID]
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astarionmademewriteit · 4 months
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Ch. 2: My Forbidden Lover
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MDNI. 18+ ONLY. Blank bios will be blocked.
Enver Gortash x f!Durge (pre-tadpole)
Rating: Explicit
Wordcount: 3.4k
Tags: Pure smut; Oral (female receiving); Face fucking; Dom/sub dynamic; Bondage; PIV rough sex; Blood kink; Cum Play; Praise and degradation kink; Bodily harm (in a sexual context); Orgasm denial (kinda? But not exactly); Choking; Biting; Durgetash is switch-coded; Subby Gortash; Minor jealousy; Brief mention of Astarion's background with non-consentual sex; Really graphic depictions of sex.
Summary: After having come to an agreement with Astarion and plotting to kill Cazador, the dark urge goes home with her lover Gortash where they engage in filthy sex.
A/N: Please refer to the first chapter to set the scene. This is pre-tadpole days where the Dark Urge has an established relationship with Gortash and befriends Astarion while he is still in the clutches of Cazador. The story will follow her eventual amnesia and Illithid kidnapping where she will fall for Astarion, who doesn't reveal the fact that he knew her from before the Nautiloid crash.
I meant for this chapter to spill over into the next day when Durge meets up with Astarion, but I'm a simp for Durgetash and it just got away from me. Please enjoy!
Ch. 1 | AO3
‿︵‿︵୨˚̣̣̣͙୧ - - ୨˚̣̣̣͙୧‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵୨˚̣̣̣͙୧ - - ୨˚̣̣̣͙୧‿︵
We walk through the brisk night air, the stars spatter the sky–holding their ancient secrets close. I hook my arm through Gortash’s as we stroll through the streets. We are sporadically approached by admirers of Enver, offering their gratitude for all he has done for the city.
“I assume our new friend was receptive to your requests?” Enver murmurs once we catch a moment alone.
“He’ll warm to the idea. He is understandably terrified of Cazador,” I stroke his broad arms, contemplating my conversation with Astarion, “I sweetened the deal. In return for information, I promised to provide him with blood and a victim for Cazador. I assume that won’t be a difficult request to fulfill.”
Enver nods, “We can supply him with a thrall. They should comply willingly,” He stops and moves to face me, “As for the blood, dear assassin?” His question does little to hide the concern underpinning his tone.
“Enver, you wound me,” I close the little distance between us, pressing my body flush against his, “I have access to plenty of blood. Why are you concerned?” I cock an eyebrow, waiting for him to confess.
He chuckles darkly, recognizing my playful banter, “I do not relish the idea of sharing you. Especially your delectable blood,” he lines the column of my throat with gentle nips at my flesh, “I would hope that was just reserved for me,” he growls.
I run my fingers through his dark hair, pulling away to look into his eyes, “You have the exclusive privilege of spilling my blood, Enver,” I place a small kiss on the corner of his mouth, “In any case, Astarion and I are kindred spirits. I recognize myself in him,” I contemplated the thinly-veiled terror that he had tried hard to mask, but I recognized it for what it was immediately. His volatile environment wrangled him into submission, and he was forced to do things that I believe he was unwilling to do–completely severed from his own autonomy.
It was similar to my condition, although I still had the freedom to make choices–choices that Astarion was completely robbed of. It was my hope that our new agreement would help him regain some of his autonomy, no matter how little–even if it was to my advantage, at least for now. I felt a small pang of guilt, wondering if he felt used in other ways instead. I would have to ask him tomorrow.
“Indeed,” Enver agrees after a moment, “But, do not lose sight of the grand design, my love. We are no heroes”
A smile plays on my lips, “If I didn’t know better Enver, I would think you were jealous,” I hook my arm through his once again and we begin our tread back to his waiting palace.
Once we are safely inside the confines of his home I rest on the edge of Enver’s desk while he writes correspondence and runs through the list of powerful targets that threaten our plans. Next on our list was the beloved Duke Ravenguard–he could be a powerful asset should we enthrall him with an Illithid tadpole. I offer to send Orin, my bloodkin, to complete the task so that we may focus on other things.
“That’s enough work for tonight, my dear,” I caress his cheek with the back of my knuckles and he watches me with a darkened expression. I lift myself from his ornate mahogany desk and move towards Enver who still sits in his chair. I turn and sit on his lap, peering over my shoulder and watching him expectantly.
He sweeps my hair to one shoulder and slowly begins to pull the zipper down the back of the evening gown I wore to Cazador’s ball–taking great care to ensure the delicate fabric does not catch in the zipper.
I stand and let the soft fabric slip from my shoulders until the garment pools at my feet. His eyes rake over my exposed body, drinking in my frame with hungry eyes. I drive the heel of one of my shoes into his chest, waiting patiently as he nimbly unbuckles the straps around my ankle. He places small kisses up the calf of my leg, nipping at my flesh–hungry to taste me.
I kick off my heel and repeat the same gesture with my other foot. He glides his hand up my calf to my inner thigh, digging the claws of his gold filigree gloves into my flesh. His hard grasp dimples my flesh until he draws blood and a sigh escapes my lips. He places small kisses along my inner thigh as he works to unbuckle my shoe.
Once I have discarded my shoe, I watch him with eager eyes as he works his way towards my upper thigh, savoring the way his lips feel as they bite and suck at my flesh–tasting my blood. I intertwine my fingers through his dark hair, willing him to focus his attention at the apex of my thighs.
His agonizing slow pace up my inner thigh has me growing impatient, “Enver,” I growl in warning, tightening my grip on his hair until a satisfied groan falls from his lips.
“Far be it from me to keep my favorite assassin waiting,” he murmurs before swiping his tongue up the seam of my dripping cunt. I instinctively pull at his hair more aggressively as he tongues and sucks at my sensitive clit. My legs immediately begin to shake as pleasure undulates through my body.
Enver repositions my leg until it is resting on his shoulder, providing him with a new devastating angle that practically sends me into a frenzy. I hold his head against my aching cunt and throw my head back as I hear his stifled breathing. “Be a good boy for me, Enver,” I growl, “You may only draw breath once I’ve been satisfied, or you can suffocate. Whichever comes first.”
He moans as he slips his tongue into my slick entrance, nosing my clit in the process. His warm tongue fucking me expertly until I’m panting uncontrollably. He hums into my pussy, sending tantalizing vibrations straight to my core.
He hooks his arm around my thigh, pulling me closer as he hungrily services me–his golden filigree claws drawing more blood as they dig deliciously into my flesh. The pain brings me such pleasure that I can feel myself building to a dizzying crescendo.
Enver continues to drag his tongue in slow concentric circles around my clit, sucking and nipping at it until I’m losing myself–spiraling into an intense climax that has me writhing underneath his tongue. I grind myself against his face–his stubble adding another layer of overwhelming sensations that has me coming undone just for him. He growls against me as I drag my sensitive cunt against his face, relishing the way I use him for my pleasure.
Once I’ve come down from my orgasm, Enver pulls away–his face gleaming with my slick. I pull him up by the collar of his robe, and we collide into a feral kiss. The taste of my arousal and the coppery aftertaste of blood fills my mouth as our tongues slide against one another.
I finger at his robes, clumsily unlacing the clothes that separate me from his flesh. He assists me in removing his clothes, our lips crashing back together with a ferocity that could buckle my knees. I push him hard until he is falling on the bed behind him, my eyes scanning his exposed flesh, devouring him completely. I circle the bed before grabbing his wrist and binding them to the bedpost with barbed wire that cuts deeply into the exposed flesh beneath his golden lattice gloves. I repeat the gesture with his other wrist, and watch as blood flows freely from his wrists–dripping down his arms in crimson rivulets. I drag my tongue up his arm, drinking in the taste of his life-essence, and ecstasy thrums through my body at his flavor.
“You taste so good, my love,” I murmur before making my way to the foot of the bed and crawling up his body until I’m straddling his waist.
“It’s all for you, my assassin,” he croaks, his voice gravelly and thick with lust.
I drag my nose up his throat, sucking and kissing at his salty skin. I sink my teeth into the soft flesh where his neck meets his broad shoulders, and Enver cries out in pleasure as blood rushes to the surface. I can practically hear his heart beating against his ribcage as blood fills my mouth–his wrists pulled taut against his restraints, causing more blood to flow freely from his veins.
“I love when you bleed for me, Enver,” I growl into his ear. His heavy panting rings like music through the bedroom, and I savor the way his body writhes impatiently beneath me, “You’re doing so well,” I praise, which only spurs his need to be inside me.
“Please,” he whispers, begging to feel my cunt wrapped around his leaking cock.
“Oh, Enver,” I whisper seductively, cupping his face with my hand, “How I love to watch you squirm.” I line myself up with his throbbing cock, already leaking with pre-cum.
His swollen head immediately stretches me wide open, and I cannot stop the moan that falls from my lips as he fills me completely. Enver whimpers beneath me as my pussy slides down his length at an agonizingly slow pace until I am sitting flush against him. I clench around him instinctively, forcing another moan to escape his lips.
I lean over and crush my lips to his as I begin to rock my hips seductively against him. I bite hard into his lip, drawing more of his sensational blood–relishing the coppery taste as it fills my senses completely. My nails dig into his hairy chest and welts immediately begin to form, marking him as mine.
I lift myself up and begin riding him slowly, savoring the way his cock spears into me–threatening to split me in two. I clench my pussy around his length every time his cock withdraws from me, effectively massaging his swollen head.
“Gods below,” he moans underneath me, “You’re so perfect, my dear assassin.” He instinctively bucks his hips, brushing against my cervix and causing me to cry out in shock. He drags his cock slowly out of me before forcefully thrusting back inside, hitting my sweet spot with agonizing precision. The barbed wire confining his wrists continues to pull blood from his flesh, painting him like a beautiful masterpiece.
I lean back, propping myself on his thighs as I continue to ride him relentlessly–allowing him to watch as he pierces me with his throbbing member. My arousal rings like a symphony throughout the room, only spurring me to ride him harder. My nails dig into his thighs, bringing more blood to the surface. I watch as his body slowly trickles with blood and images of our own demise flit through my mind.
I knew I wanted to keep him until fate intervened and I was forced to kill him and myself in Bhaal’s name. It would be incredibly beautiful, slicing his flesh open until he had been drained of blood completely. I would die a beautiful death next to my lover–and I would be free of the carnage I was meant to exact on this world. And it would all be by his side.
As the images flit through my mind, my desperation becomes more prominent. I can feel myself nearing the edge of no return. My body begins to quiver as he continues to meet me thrust for thrust until I am exploding into a tantalizing climax–falling over the edge into a depth of pleasure that I could only ever experience with Enver.
His name falls from my lips and echoes throughout the room like a haunted hymn as he coaxes the pleasure from my body. Enver’s breathing becomes ragged and I can tell he is chasing his own release. I cannot help the sadistic tendencies that wash through my body in moments like these.
I wrap a shaky hand around his throat as I continue to ride him with newfound ferocity born from my own ecstasy. He watches me with a dark expression as he nears his own climax, biting at his bruised bottom lip as I apply pressure to his throat, cutting off his blood flow momentarily.
His eyes roll into the back of his head and a dangerous smirk plays on my lips when I think about how desperate he sounds. Just when he is on the verge of climax, I pull myself off him completely and watch as thick ropes of cum spill from him and onto his stomach. He bucks his hips desperately searching for any kind of friction that will ride him through his climax–to no avail.
I release my grip from his neck and he eyes me with unfiltered frustration when he realizes the game I’m playing. His wrists are pulled taut against the barbed wire–the metal digging into his flesh as he struggles against them, desperate for some satisfaction as his hollow orgasm washes through him.
He lets out an animalistic growl as I remove myself from the bed, a dark grin gracing my features as I watch him struggle. “Oh, Enver,” I chuckle sadistically, “You never learn, do you?” I inch towards a bar cart and pick up an expensive decanter, leisurely pouring myself a glass of rich dark liquor. I seat myself in his chair, and watch as he grows more desperate by the minute.
“Please, my love,” he eyes me with wild anguish, pulling against his restraints harder than before–ignoring the stinging pain that travels through his arms. I cross my legs and lean back, taking another sip of the strong liquor. It burns my throat as it goes down, and the satisfaction I feel as I watch him squirm is delectable. My body welcomes the warmth of a roaring fire nearby and I sit and watch as he fights against his restraints–admiring the way his crimson blood paints his flesh.
“Gods, you look so pathetic, Enver,” I chuckle, “It’s utterly adorable.” I throw back the rest of the liquor–it’s rich burn soothing my throat and it’s warmth washing through my body completely.
Enver has settled down slightly, but I can tell he has found no satisfaction in his climax–just as I had hoped. “My beloved assassin, this hardly seems fair,” he grumbles–his voice perfectly diplomatic.
“When have you known me to play fair, my love,” I shoot back playfully, gripping the arms of the chair, “Besides, I’ve decided that you haven’t begged nearly enough for my liking.”
He glares at me from the bed, and a satisfied smile pulls at my lips as I wait patiently for him to convince me that he deserves his own fulfillment. Plea after plea begins to spill from his lips, his body continuing to fight against his restraints as he grows more and more desperate. I tap my foot impatiently as he continues to beg.
It isn’t until a tear of frustration falls from his eye do I stand, effectively quieting his supplications as he watches me closely. I move to the foot of the bed and crawl over him once again, and I can hear as his breath catches in the back of his throat. I drag my tongue across his stomach, licking up his spent–savoring its unique taste. I smack my lips when I’m done and note that Enver is hard once again as he watches me clean up the mess he made.
I pull away from the bed and move to release him from his restraints–kissing his wrists and sucking the blood that paints his skin in a rich crimson. I repeat the gesture once again with his other wrist. As soon as he is free from his constraints, he charges forward, pouncing on me like a wild, untamed animal.
“My turn,” Enver growls in my ear as he tangles his rough fingers into my hair and pulls back hard until I’m looking up at his looming form. He forces me across the room and throws me into the edge of his desk, the hard wood digging into my hips deliciously.
I whimper under his hardened touch as he bends me over his desk and presses my face into the desk with aggressive strength. He forces himself inside me without a moment to lose, desperate to feel my wet cunt wrap around his cock once again.
He begins a punishing pace, rutting his hips into me with unrelenting force that causes uncontrolled moans to fall from my lips. He places a large, rough hand on my waist and forces me down, causing me to arch my back until he is hitting my sensitive spot over and over again.
The force with which he fucks me into his desk causes papers to fall from the table top–teetering to the floor. Ink splatters across his desk as it tips over with every thrust. My cries rip through the air as he spears himself into me, allowing his frustrations to spill over into his movements.
“You’re such a fucking tease,” he growls as he slams into me–the desk digging painfully into my flesh with every cant of his hips. I dig my nails into the desk, trying to steady myself, but it is useless as he continues to abuse my dripping pussy.
The force of his hips slamming into me sends me over the edge once again and I cry out with unfiltered ecstasy as I fall from grace–my orgasm rocking through my body causing my cunt to spasm wildly around his length.
“There you go, my dear assassin,” He growls, “Just like that, baby.” He talks me through my climax, and the rush of adrenaline courses through my body as his claws dig into my flesh, bringing blood to the surface.
I whine underneath him as he uses me for his own pleasure–our roles effectively reversed in a matter of minutes. His breath grows ragged as he watches his arousal spear into me over and over again with such force that I fear the desk will tip over.
Once I’ve recovered from my orgasm, I feel his thrusts becoming sloppier as he chases his own, deserved release. “Cum for me, Enver,” I beg as his breath grows heavy with ecstasy. He thrusts into me violently a few more times before he is spilling into me–his cock spasming wildly inside me as he cries out my name. He whimpers out a string of expletives as he is awarded with his own pleasure.
He leans over me, his body flush against mine as he continues to fuck through his orgasm–savoring the feeling he was so cruelly denied just minutes earlier. I moan loudly, his name falling from my lips like a prayer of devotion until he finally stills inside me.
We catch our breath, neither of us daring to move until we have regained our strength. Enver chuckles darkly above me before pulling out of me completely. I whine at his sudden absence but gather myself as much as possible. I will my shaky legs to move back to the bar cart and pour us both a drink while Enver rests in his chair, sweat dripping down his dark features.
I offer him a glass before curling into his lap and nuzzling into his shoulder, noting the dried blood streaks that mar his body. I bite back a satisfied smile as I replay the events of tonight in my mind.
After a moment, Enver sighs, “We have made a mess of things, my dear,” he ruffles my hair with a rough hand before chuckling under his breath. “I think a warm bath is in order.” I nod my head in agreement, suddenly too tired to speak. “We have a great many things to accomplish tomorrow, my lovely assassin.” He throws back his drink and polishes off his glass in a few large gulps.
I wrap an arm around his waist as I continue to nurse my drink–memorizing the way his body feels against mine. I laugh to myself, realizing that I could never forget how his body feels against mine. I turn my thoughts to what lies ahead, already calculating more plans for the grand design.
I couldn't imagine doing this without him–My forbidden lover.
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Okay I've been thinking about this pretty much all day since I saw the hbomberguy and then todd in the shadows video i just have so many thoughts. While I wouldn't necessarily call myself a Video Essayist™ (I've only made a few over the years) as a youtuber and someone who has made video essays i definitely have more experience than the average person. There are so many things that stand out to me about this whole debacle i dont even know where to start.
First I want to just give a little insight into the process for making video essays from people who've never given it a shot and just how absurd it is to do the type of plagiarizing James has done. Video essays take a fuckton of research, even for pretty simple topics, but on top that you also have to make them with the medium of video in mind. it's really not enough to just take an essay you would write for a class and read it out loud. the flow is different, you have to have accompanying visuals, often background music, etc. They're a beast to make. My Twisted video for which i used literally two sources for my research (Sondheim's books and the musical Twisted) still took days of thorough reading, note taking, watching the musical, watching the musical again, watching the musical and taking notes, cross-referencing my notes, etc. For videos that synthesize multiple sources or are covering multiple pieces of media, that time goes up exponentially. Then there's writing, recording, gathering clips (often one of the most difficult parts depending on how obscure what you're talking about is), and editing. Even for a silly video like my Glee video, I still had to do a ton of research to make sure I was getting things correct, and that was a funny tier list about freaking Glee! There is just no way you could come up with a thorough analysis by just copying and pasting. Which brings me to my next point.
I think James may have thought (or more likely rationalized) what he was doing as analysis based on like the vaguest definition. When you do any kind of analysis, what you're doing is taking research from multiple different places (news articles, primary sources, existing analysis, etc.) and coming to your own conclusions, whether that's a synthesis of those different sources, or applying it to a specific thing like a movie. Really simple example is my Twisted video where I take Sondheim's writing and apply it to a specific piece of media (in this case Twisted). I'm using existing work but coming to my own conclusion. In the Spies Are Forever video, I took existing research about the Lavender Scare and the Hays Code, including primary sources from the time period, and applied it to the musical Spies are Forever. What James seem to do is take a bunch of existing scholarship, copy and paste it all together and then come to a "conclusion" that was not actually his own original thoughts but either "facts" he completely made up or something that didn't do anything to actually link his other "sources" together. I can see why it has the veneer of analysis, but making up a random "fact" you think might be true is not the same as a drawing a conclusion based on research.
I also think Todd made a really good point in the part about England's propaganda campaign against Italy around 9:30 that it's just really bad video making to not include examples of images from this so called propaganda campaign. I have a ton of examples of news clips, government reports, etc. in my SaF video about the Lavender Scare because...it was a real historic thing that happened! If something was supposedly so widespread and not even that long ago, you can probably find evidence of it somewhere. Kaz Rowe (who is also linked in the queer creators playlist on hbomberguy's vid) talked about this a lot in their video about tiktok misinfo where people often make these outrageous claims but the thing is if something so outrageous happened (like people constantly shitting on the floors of versailles), other people at the time would probably be talking about it somewhere. It's a big red flag when someone makes such bold claims and has no evidence to back it up.
Putting this last section under the cut because I go talk about WWII, Nazis, and HIV/AIDS a bit (watch Todd's video for some more context) so if you don't want to see that post is over here.
Lastly I wanted to talk about something else Kaz brings up in a lot of their videos when talking about historical topics and that is the tendency to dehumanize people of the past, often as unwashed, unintelligent masses who would just do any ridiculous disgusting thing because they were so stupid and disgusting. There are a lot of things to criticize about the people of the past and their actions obviously, but we cannot forgot that they were in fact, people. Real individual people with their own lives and dreams and ambitions and individual opinions and they have never been and never will be a monolith. Claiming anything is broadly true of "the victorians" or "the ancient egyptians" or whatever other vague historical group you want to talk about is usually a lot more nuanced than "they all thought or acted in this one particular way". I'm certainly not a historian and i've only done one history focused video but James Somerton seemed to make a lot of broad historical claims in his videos that I think fall into this trap.
The one that stood out most to me in Todd's video was the claim about Nazi body standards which is a whole mess in general that Todd goes into for a while, but the way he talks about WWII soldiers was just like...weird. Besides the fact that a lot of his claims about Nazis seem to be bordering on glorifying them and their aesthetics (gross), I think we should remember that WWII was less than a century ago. There are still over 100,000 surviving WWII vets in the US. My grandfather who was in the Army during WWII (he didn't serve overseas but he was an enlisted soldier I can literally look up his enlistment records in the national archives online) was a real person who I obviously knew personally and who died fairly recently. To think he enlisted because he was jealous of German fitness or whatever and wanted to prove how tough Americans are is an absolutely hilarious thing to think if you knew him. I'm sure there are as many reasons for enlisting as there were enlisted soldiers. When James talks about even as relatively narrow of a group as "WWII American soldiers," he's still talking about a very large group of real and diverse people and to make such broad claims that "most" or even "a lot" of them were just so taken in by strong german physiques or whatever is frankly insulting. I haven't watched the entirety of James video so maybe he does address this at some point, but from the clips I've seen it seems very generalized and implies some level of racism when WWII soldiers in fact included a lot of racially diverse people. IDK, i think if you're a supposed historical researcher and you're making a video about WWII and you don't know about groups like the Tuskegee Airmen or the Navajo Code Talkers, that's on you. I don't want to discount some of the really horrible shit that American (and obviously other countries) soldier's did in the war and how many of them held disgusting views (even my grandpa who I love dearly was not the most politically correct person to put it lightly) but Jame's claims are not criticizing any real ideology or the consequences of them, they're oversimplifying complex and harmful historical ideas and attributing them to something he pretty much made up. I'll also give you a little hint about something. When people fall into Nazi ideology, it's because they ultimately agree with the ideology, not for some surface level aesthetic reason of "fitness" or whatever. They are antisemitic, they are racist, they are eugenicists, plain and simple. They don't just think the Nazis are cool except for all their beliefs. I also think (and again I could be missing a part of the video here) the hyper focus on the Germans and the Soviets and not mentioning Italy is at the very least an oversight too. Mussolini, like Hitler and Stalin, had a pretty big campaign of promoting an ideal strong race which he tied to ancient Romans. Like this was also a country controlled by a fascist dictator that American soldiers fought in idk it just seems weird to me to leave it out. (okay edit i looked up the transcript and he does talk about Italian fascism a little bit but only about how Mussolini rose to power, nothing about his ideologies or anything really related to the main topic of body image).
And one more thing on that note that bothered me a lot. I think his claims about HIV/AIDS is probably the most well-known here on tumblr and has been pretty thoroughly destroyed by this point, but I do just want to say one more thing about it which is that AIDS isn't gone! I feel like they way he talks about it from what I've seen of this video makes HIV/AIDS sound like a problem of the past now that we have drugs for it, but that is just not the truth. There are still tens of thousands of new infections in the US each year and way more globally and yes, people do still die from it. I just don't like when people talk about AIDS as if it's this problem of the distant past, a separate era that people went through in the 80s rather than an ongoing epidemic that still does not have a cure. Safer sex, clean needle usage, and getting tested are just as important now as they were in the 80s and 90s and don't forget that.
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njordr · 4 months
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no because anakin was never dealt with a winning anything, my dude spent years as a slave’s kid working in the junk shop building droids as a form of fun.
i always enjoy the whole “Anakin just expected Obi-wan and Padmé to trust and listen to him?? Asshole” discourse because like… yeah??
not trying to self insert here but as a mentally I’ll individual 🫡 who in a fit of mania sometimes believes they are absolutely, 100% right and has the irrational thinking of; “im right, and you love me, you’re the person I love most, you should get it” & is totally irrationally emotional when they DONT, yeah… I GET THAT SIR!!
Even if it’s completely understandable, deep down I know they’re not at fault for not getting my own emotions, I’m in control of those — not others. I know this. Still, when my partner says something that goes against me it’s like nails against chalkboards sometimes
Again, when looking at Anakin he had nothing. He was a slave all his life, just to a different master each time. on Tatooine, to the Jedi/code, Palpatine and even to the Darth vader suit, he is never of his own free will. It was Qui-gon’s choice to win Anakin, to take him from his mother and home to what he thought would be a better life. granted it is, but he also finds himself isolated from what is imo what is supposed to be his “placeholder family”
MORE IMPORTANTLY Padmé is the love of his life, telling him that what he thinks they need, what he’s done for her and their family etc to be at peace/alive was actually WRONG!! BAD!! All meanwhile he doesn’t have any of his support at his side; Rex is off with ahsoka, obi-wan is fighting grievous on utpau meanwhile Palpatine has puppy Anakin at his every whim and call ((lets not forget that Palpatine had to have been grooming Anakin from a relatively young age)) They don’t get it, they didn’t see Padmé die before their very eyes, they don’t know what’s waiting them. Anakin is trying to save his family. Obi-Wan going against him is salt in the wound, even if Anakin himself knows it’s wrong and against the code and just completely evil.
I mean, Padmé FORGAVE him for the whole tusken massacre smh is it such a stretch to believe she would stand by his side as he waged war against the galaxy? i mean… isn’t that what love is…..? selfish, passionate, narcissistic, messy? she herself is a politician who often prioritized Anakin over her own duties I bet my man expected some “if you have a body in your trunk I’ll bring the shovel” type beat which also, i reiterate, WHY WOULDN’T HE when his wife forgave him for mass genocide, children included?,
he is emotionally/mentally fragile, he just recently slew younglings and killed Mace — you think this mf is thinking logically? Stop giving him the benefit of the doubt; he was a mess throughout the series, not once did he ever have his feet on the ground. He isn’t suddenly going to make the “right” decision, especially if it means sacrificing his loved ones. He’s an extremely flawed character, stop expecting him to make the right call.
The blocks of Anakin’s character have been set up to fall, Obi-Wan and Padmé are two of his most beloved relationships aside from his MOTHER that are completely dogging on his only hope of SAVING THEM. Anakin was never simply, “you have to do what I say or else I’ll get upset!” that’s a disrespect to his character — he can think logically. He isn’t a child. He is strategic, effective, in tcw he is the most efficient victorious warrior making Palpatine’s efforts look even better as leader of the republic. He builds droids from the time he is a young child all throughout his formative - adult years to the extent where knows how to understand their bleep bloops.
Anakin is flawed deeply, he was doomed from the get-go, never had a chance. His feelings are complex and deep and he questions the faith he swore to follow/protect. His character is so interesting to me and I have such a difficult time depicting the raw duality of man he wears on his shoulders everyday. Our desire to do good, yet to be evil; our desire to be unselfish, yet we are selfish.
This beautiful, scarred, monstrous mosaic of a man who from the very beginning, had a huge amount of pressure on him was meant to be so horribly dismantled. What other choice did he have? He is the chosen one, how could he be wrong? How could his idea of saving his family be any less honourable than the Jedi of the Galaxy?
He isn’t simply angry at them for not agreeing with him/falling with him, he feels betrayed. Personally. Obi-Wan and Padmé are pieces of Anakin, people that he loved so fiercely he labeled them as his enemies once they hurt him, he is too far gone to give them any semblance of second chances
anyways yep happy Thursday guys
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rubydevilcat-blog · 3 months
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I have a theory for The Sun and Moon show, related to who brought back Eclipse. What if it was Evil Sun?
Ever since Eclipse came back from the dead, so much has happened from the end of December, to the beginning of February. Eclipse has been shown to be much different than what he was before he died; He expressed how he doesn’t remember much after he died, he called out that he revealed himself too early, and he does not know why he is doing any of the actions he is doing. It’s as if he has forgotten so much about his own motive, something the eclipse we know would never do.
The only thing he knows is that he has knowledge about his magic, he remembers the star doing dead, he remembers what killed him, he remembers his victims, and he knows about Solar. The one thing he doesn’t know is who created him, that becomes the main conflict at the moment in TSAMS channel, along with LAES.
During this conflict, Ruin is seen as a suspect, a possible reasoning for Eclipse’s return. The only evidence Moon or Eclipse have against Ruin is that he was known for creating Bloodmoon’s physical body (when he was evil), and being able to fix his own body with blueprints. Ruin is seen as a smart animatronic who can create anything as long as he has a blueprint, it explains why fixing arcades is difficult, he doesn’t have the instructions on how to fix it properly.
Maybe with Ruin being accused, maybe that’s part of Evil Sun’s plan? Evil Sun has no eyes on him, no one suspects he could do anything, but ruin? He has done evil things before, and has been an enemy to Sun and Moon before. How does Evil Sun know about Ruin? With one key evidence to support my theory, he has New Moon’s information. He knows about Solar, about Ruin, about Sun, about everyone in the information given to him, but I feel with Eclipse it was complicated. Moon doesn’t know Eclipse’s true motive, his reasoning of doing evil, and he only knows what Eclipse has done, not behind the scenes.
Evil Sun could have made Eclipse to continue to mess with Moon, have you seen what he has done so far? Most of the time while Evil Sun was out of radar, it was Moon who made most of the bad decisions. Moon lied to Lunar to try to protect him, only causing a conflict in the relationship. Moon made a deal with Eclipse to keep him alive to find the person who made Eclipse, making Lunar more furious and feeling betrayed. Making Solar create Jack to protect Lunar, making him lie to Lunar so Jack could stay hidden for weeks. Every decision made has been caused by Moon, and what if Evil Sun knew this could happen.
Far as I know, Evil Sun could have a plan completely different than what I’m thinking of, but here is the plan I believe Evil Sun has made:
Evil Sun collects information from Moon, so he can learn more about the universe Moon lives in, and the strengths and weakness he has.
He goes to Solar’s Universe to collect what he needs, possibly something from the computers, his information that Moon did not have, or supplies:
Evil Sun creates Eclipse, applying magic into him, setting up a code that cannot be removed, or Eclipse would die.
Evil Sun sends Eclipse to Moon’s dimension, with a directive in his hardware so even if he doesn’t remember much, he would know what to do (Somewhat)
He plays the waiting game as he watches him his computer of what Eclipse has been doing, like collecting data like ‘Bloodmoon’s blueprints’ from Ruin.
With what information Eclipse knows about Ruin, he goes after him first, going after him enough times for him to be accused of creating Eclipse, causing Moon to suspect and interrogate Ruin.
With Ruin being watched, Evil Sun stands by and watches as he sees Moon make even more bad decisions, like creating Jack without telling lunar for weeks about Eclipse.
So far thats how I think the plan is going, moon making rash decisions, causing problems for himself as Evil Sun keeps watch. I believe that there are multiple outcomes of what he is doing right now, with how much of a genius he is, there could be something he is doing behind the scenes that we don’t know.
Either 1, he received a notification about Eclipse’s new chip, and at the moment he is coding a loophole so his Eclipse doesn’t get killed too soon.
Or 2, he waits as he watches Moon, waiting for him to make one more bad decision that caused a drift between him and Sun, leaving him alone
But whatever Evil Sun is doing, it’s not good. With the recent hints going on about Sun, if Evil Sun is the main problem, I fear that Evil Sun may at one point try to switch places with OG Sun, so he can do something worse. If not, then that’s is something we will have to find out.
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tvckerwash · 5 months
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thoughts on ct's fighting style and her position in pfl because I can (utc bc it's long lol):
okay so I like to jokingly refer to myself as THE wash meta/analysis guy, but I also absolutely love ct if anyone wasn't aware (she's my 2nd fav character behind wash if you couldn't tell lol), but as much as I love her it's honestly pretty difficult to write any sort of 'objective' meta or analysis posts about her because we don't know shit about her. so while this is meant to be a companion piece of sorts to this wash post, I just wanted to make it clear that a lot of this post is going to be based around my personal interpretation of ct (though I will try and be as objective as possible where I can be).
so much like wash, I think ct is also fairly unique among the freelancers for a few different reasons. one of them is that she's one of the few freelancers to wear a unique set of armor instead of the usual mark iv, and I think that ct's armor can actually tell us quite a bit about her skill set and what kind of role she possibly held. ct wears the eod helmet and chest which is primarily designed for protection from explosives, but when it comes to ct the more important information is that the eod armor was designed with less available grabbing surface than other armor variants. she also wears the scout shoulders, which is a variant that is focused on stealth capabilities.
from this information, we can easily deduce that ct's skill set primarily revolves around be slippery and sneaky, and when paired with what we see in the show it's pretty clear that ct is an intelligence operative. I think that ct is specifically a cyber operations specialist, and that prior to being recruited for freelancer she worked in ONI's section one (the actual intelligence gathering sector of ONI that is used by other UNSC branches).
another unique aspect about ct is that she is the only freelancer to consistently arm herself very lightly, with her primary weapon(s) of choice being two M6G magnums, and her other weapon(s) being two combat knives. this goes inline with what I've said above, and due to how lightly she arms herself I believe that ct generally isn't involved in any heavy combat scenarios. this point is supported by team b's failure to retrieve the briefcase with the access code during the heist in s9 (seriously, who tf thought it was a good idea to put 2 snipers and an intelligence operative all together as one team for a smash and grab retrieval mission??).
now to actually break down the whole 1.5 fights ct has in s10, I think that she probably somewhat shares wash's more grounded and pragmatic approach to combat as a whole, with the exception of her preference for duel wielding (which I personally headcanon is a thing she chooses to do because it makes her feel like an action/spy movie protagonist).
in both of her fight scenes ct seems to rely very heavily on her ability to plan ahead and get the jump on her opponents to take them by surprise (dropping from the ceiling to take out the two marines when she met up with the innie leader in the scrap yard, and using her armor enhancement to conceal her real position which allowed her to pin tex's arm behind her back), and I think it's safe to say that she probably isn't the kind of cqc fighter than can mow people down left and right like carolina can.
as mentioned above, I think ct's main goal is to take her opponents out in the quickest, quietest, and most efficient ways possible, much like a spy or an assassin, and while her loadout is great when she is in ideal circumstances where she's able to sneak around and avoid unnecessary combat, I don't think it's very good when it comes to drawn out encounters. we see this in her fight against tex and carolina, as while she handled herself pretty well it seemed like the longer the fight lasted the sloppier ct ended up getting, and eventually she made enough minor mistakes that carolina was able to knock her off her feet and disarm her in a single move, and tex, who was now aware of ct's armor enhancement, was able to cut her down.
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alexbkrieger13 · 3 months
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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/feb/22/how-to-stop-spain-and-aitana-bonmati-moving-the-goalposts-nations-league
How to stop Spain and Aitana Bonmatí. Well, how to try at least
for my first column for Moving the Goalposts I was asked: how do you beat Spain? Well, it is easier said than done. When my Sweden team faced them in Gothenburg in September I had a moment which felt like an out-of-body experience: I could see clearly which kinds of balls they wanted to play and the patterns of their passes. They like to play diagonal passes from the No 6 up to the No 8s and, from there, switch the play. The problem, though, was reacting to it as they are just so quick.
I’ve seen them close up probably more than I’d have liked in the past year – three times, in fact, as we lost a World Cup semi-final to them and then suffered late defeats in both our Nations League group games against them.
Now it is time for the Nations League semi-finals. France face Germany and the Netherlands have the unenviable task of taking on Spain. When I think about what makes them so formidable, I’d start with two things: the amount of quality players and that winning culture, which begins with their youth national teams. They’ve won four of the last five Under-19 Euros and been to the final in seven of the last eight Under-17 Euros. In other words, just reaching a tournament is not enough – their attitude is “we’re going to be there until the end”. The same goes at club level with Barcelona.
In fairness, with Sweden we were close in both Nations League group games: we interrupted their rhythm and were close to getting a draw. We like to press high and force mistakes and, at home, I scored the opening goal and we managed to disrupt them quite well. However, we didn’t have energy to do it for the whole game and lost 3-2.
In Málaga we played a new 3-5-2 formation as we wanted to get a higher press on their centre-backs and also – with our three centre-backs – to cover the inner corridors that they are so good at exploiting. We won the ball high and led 3-1 at half-time. But after an hour a little player called Aitana Bonmatí came on and changed the game, and we ended up losing 5-3.
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View image in fullscreenThis is an example with Alexia Putellas this time positioning herself in the same area, making it really difficult for us to decide who should mark her. Photograph: SvFF
Another player I’d like to mention is Salma Paralluelo, who has added a new dimension to Spain’s game. She is so quick that you can’t just have a high line against them as you might get caught out behind instead. Previously, Spain had forwards coming short so you could keep the team really compact but with Paralluelo it makes that really difficult.
Spain’s opponents in Seville on Friday, the Netherlands, have resilience and some good attacking players but the challenge will be to play the perfect game for 90 minutes. When you have the energy, you can press Spain and get the ball in good areas but they’re so good at tiring teams out, as they showed in the World Cup final against England. You retreat into a mid or low block and then you are just chasing and looking at what they are doing. And that means that when you do win the ball, it is hard to have ideas and keep hold of it – they are so quick at trying to regain it, while you are still tired.
If there is one weakness in Spain, it is the fact they do concede goals – nine in six Nations League group games. At Chelsea we always had the mantra that goals win you games but defence wins you championships and, as a defender, I like to believe that is true. That said, Spain scored 23 at the other end so maybe they have cracked the code – as long as you score an extreme amount of goals then it is OK not to be so solid. However, that could be where other teams have a chance.
As for the other semi-final between France and Germany, the French had a strong group stage, dropping just two points and conceding only one goal. They are a team with a core of experience as well as individual flair and they have Marie-Antoinette Katoto looking dangerous again after her long-term injury. However, as a Bayern Munich player I hope my German friends will go through and I do think they have grown as a team. Since moving to Bayern I have noticed that German football has a similarity with Swedish culture in that everyone is expected to work for the team. An example is Klara Bühl, my Bayern colleague, who is one of their key attacking players but still works really hard for the team. With that attitude, I fancy them to reach the final.
Credit to Spain campaigners
It is not just on the pitch that I admire Spain. As a member of FifPro’s global players’ council, I have followed their story off the pitch too and before the game in September, I managed to say, very briefly, how much I respected them for the way they have stood up and demanded changes from their FA – and got them. The week leading up to that match they had had late-night meetings, little sleep and plenty of stress yet still managed to come to Gothenburg and play a really good game. I am impressed with how, between their struggles, they have managed to stay focused on their football and win a World Cup.
Nations League format should follow men’s example
On a broader note about this first Women’s Nations League, it has been a welcome addition even if, timing-wise, it was tough from a player’s perspective to regroup and go again so soon after the World Cup. However, when I look at the fact Spain and France each play their semi-final at home, I do believe it would have been better to follow the men’s example and have a ‘final four’ event in just one place. It would have been a better spectacle and would make more sense from a commercial perspective – not to mention a sporting one as it is a huge advantage for Spain and France to each have a home semi-final.
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Being Neon J's daughter :
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He and his wife always wanted to start a family, but his obligations in the army make it difficult.
When he was called for the border war, he asked the hospital to conserve some samples of his genetic material, so their dream can become true if something happened to him.
The war was unforgivable and murderous, but the thought of finally coming home to his dear wife, settle down and having children kept his spirit up.
After his warship was bombarded, he lost his crew and most of his body. He miraculously survived, but the majority of his body must have been replaced by robotic parts.
When he came back, his wife was crying of relief and pain. Seeing her husband in this state, but alive, put her emotions into a roller-coaster.
After his comeback, they decided to have a child.
The pregnancy goes well, they learnt that they'll be the parents of an adorable daughter. Everything was so perfect. If only it would last forever.
But fate had other plans.
His wife didn't survive the birth, leaving you and your father.
Neon J was devastated, why life must be so cruel. Giving him great joy then pulling him into misery.
But he must be strong. It only you two now, he must be strong for you, to protect you, to make sure his dear wife rest in peace, knowing both of you live in happiness.
It's a this moment he created the first models of 1010.
His passion always was music and dance. So, now that his military carrier is behind him, he'll become the next star of Vinyl City.
You were there when he taught the first models how to dance and sing. It wasn't very good. But your 3 years old self found it funny and loved to clap her hand in rhythm.
The second version of the 1010 was more human like and a little less army lookalike. They were better, but still not very popular because of their looks. And the five of them look perfectly the same, so people didn't really see the point of a band make of only one people multiplied.
The idea of making them in different colors went from you. You sticked stickers on them, with an unique color for each of them. It helped you to remember who was who. You father found the idea brilliant.
And so were made the third generation of 1010. You big brothers.
You loved them, and they loved you. Neon J was so proud of his little family. He hoped his dear wife could see that from where she is.
You takes part of 1010 training routine. You love dancing and your father is an excellent teacher.
You go to Vinyl City Elementary School, but your dream is to go to the military school. The only problem is that your father is formally against it. He refuses that you get enrolled in the army.
It really upset you, but you will prove to your father that you are strong enough to become at great general, like him.
If only you know he refuse because he's scared of what could happen to you. He doesn't want you to go though what he did.
He's kind of protective, sometimes too much.
Your brothers have a protocol named "Y/n's protection" coded deep inside them.
When Neon J isn't here to give them orders, you are the one who gives them orders.
They are not obligated to listen to them, but you're so cute when you act like that. And you never disrespect them, you they play along.
Since your brothers have a sailor uniform, you asked your dad one too.
How can he resist those puppy eyes when you asked him so sweetly "Can I have my own uniform too dad, please."
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Now, you look like your brothers!
But you refused to wear the hat. You find it ridiculous.
Your dad works a lot, to the point of exhaustion. So when you saw him sleeping against his desk, you stole his coat and his captain hat and decided to supervised the concert for him.
You are 9 years old. You can do that. And your brothers agree with you. Your dad really need to rest.
You're not afraid of those rock revolutionaries. Let them come, they will see what 1010 is made of.
They will pay for what they have done to your friends' family. And for making Lady Tatiana angry.
They better have come with their tactical thermals goggles, because-
YOU'RE GONNA BRING THE HEAT!
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The Flip Side Part 3
Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x reader
Word count: ~8.4k
Summary: Your motivation to continue working as a mobster in Chicago is dwindling after the birth of your daughter.
A/N: For the anon who asked, there should be 14 or 15 parts to this series if all goes according to plan! There will likely be an interruption to the update schedule soon, but I’ll get into that more when we’re closer to the date. Ignore any typos, I’ve had a headache for days and can’t be bothered to proof read. Enjoy! 
Warnings: Death, blood, angst, reference to alcoholism, teasing, suggestive content
You look to your friend, your big sister with a sigh before admitting how you’ve felt recently. She knows about how things are changing for you at work, but you’ve kept your cards close to your chest recently as you tried to work everything out. You realize how unhealthy this is, and clearly your friends have picked up on it as well. You need to share what’s bothering you, so hopefully you can get some advice, or just share the stress so it’s not all on you.
“I’m going to need a drink before I talk about this.”
Nat frowns at you and shakes her head without missing a beat. She doesn’t like where this is going, but she is at least glad that you’re not brushing her off.
“That’s not funny, yet. You need to be at least ten years out to say that shit.”
You groan under your breath but just nod in agreement. You suppose it is a little too soon, especially considering how many times you’ve imagined drinking this month, and it’s only the first week. You kick the dirt at your feet with a scowl as it gets on your shoes before getting to the point.
“I’ve just been stressed trying to decrease my work load.”
Nat watches you fidget as you consider saying more. She hopes you do because she’s a little confused by this. She assumed that you’d be less stressed by getting all of this off your plate. It’s not until you mention what’s stressing you out that she realized she should have known better.
“Putting all of this out of my hands is making me feel out of control. Like I don’t have a handle on anything anymore.”
You feel Nat shift so she’s standing hip to hip with you and then an arm is wrapping around your shoulders. Nat takes a deep breath beside you and you wait for her to gather her thoughts as you try to relax against her.
Nat’s known that you’ve always been a bit of a control freak and that’s what made you so good at your job. You were on top of every little deal and anything that was scheduled was always on your radar. It was exhausting sure, but it had allowed you to be successful and bring in billions of dollars in revenue over the years. Your attempt to take a step back was proving to be more detrimental than expected.
“I didn’t realize how difficult it would be for you. Maybe we can work something out with Saunders.”
You frown at the mention of the brunette’s name. She was someone that you’d hired to oversee operations, and with her team of maybe a dozen people, she kept record of everything that happened within your territory. It was all in code so if anyone found it, they wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of it, but you honestly didn’t work much with her. She was there to keep things organized, but maybe Nat was on to something. Maybe talking to her about keeping you more in the loop would help. That said, you didn’t want to tip anyone off that you might be trying to leave.
You’re not sure how to say this to Nat without tipping her off, but for the second time today, you underestimate her. She’d put two and two together rather easily and she pulls away slightly so she can shoot you a curious look. She’s a little surprised that you’ve already started preparations to break free from the mob. It’s not something you’d ever mentioned doing, but given that you had a daughter to worry about now, it made sense. She just wasn’t sure how practical it was at this point.
“That could help short term, but you’re more interested in finding someone to take over, aren’t you?”
Sometimes you hate being surrounded by people who are smarter than you. It can be embarrassing when you’re the last one to figure out what the answer is, but in this case you just feel depressed. You know what you want to do, but you’re not sure you’re smart enough to figure it out. Who would want to take over this shit show for you? Better yet, how likely are you to be able to break away from it without consequence. It’s hard to have the answers to these questions, and even with your friend’s help it’s not something you expect to find out until you’ve already done it.
“I do, but that’s a ways off, isn’t it? I think the first thing I need to focus on is dealing with this extra stress.”
You feel your eye twitch at the mere thought of the immense amount of stress you’ve put yourself under. You need to make sure that everything you’ve worked on over the years is enough to keep you on the right track with this new and inconvenient change. You pause at the thought of this, and when you scowl Nat sees it and frowns herself.
The change in your life was your daughter’s birth. That’s not something you want to resent because it’s only made your life better in numerous ways. You feel closer with your wife, your brother-in-law that you’re sure doesn’t like you, and you feel like you’ve accomplished something for the first time since marrying Wanda. You were very successful with your work, every day you made money and progress, but it was starting to feel like empty victories. You didn’t want to feel like this anymore and you needed out. You wanted out for your family, and you wanted out for yourself.
You just needed to figure out how to do this.
She pulls you in for a hug and you sigh in relief as she squeezes you tightly. You take a moment to breathe in Nat’s scent and bask in her presence. You’re not alone in this. There are people who are willing to help you figure this out. You’d realized this years ago when you were at your worst, but sometimes you forgot that it wasn’t a bad thing to ask for help. You know they’d be there for you.
“I’m here for whatever you need, Y/n. Okay? Just let me know how I can help.”
You nod in answer before you turn so you’re hugging the redhead properly. You just spend a few seconds in her arms before you sigh in defeat. You’ll figure this out, but for now you just needed to remember that Nat had your back.
“Thank you, Nat.”
She merely hums before she pulls away to smile at you. You laugh when she grabs you by the shoulders and pretends to give you a stern look.
“You’re welcome. As a thank you, I expect to be invited over soon. I need to see my goddaughter.”
You’re on your way to see Yelena when you get a text from Bucky telling you that Logan will be free to meet you in an hour. You respond at a red light and you breathe a sigh of relief that this is settled. You aren’t looking forward to talking to him about what happened last night, but you want to see if you can get a little more information from him.
As you pull into the parking lot behind the warehouse that Yelena and Kate had completely redone to serve as their home base and literal home, you wonder where Bucky is. He’s always around, but you rarely see him unless you need him by your side. You’d reduced your security detail to just him and one other guy who truly tailed you everywhere in the last year and so far it hasn’t bitten you in the ass. You let Bucky track your phone and Carter tracks your car to keep an eye on you. Knowing this is mostly just a friendly visit, you figure they’ll keep their distance until you go see Logan.
You walk up to the side of the building and immediately hear menacing barking. You swear that if anyone was faced with this and didn’t know these dogs personally, they’d high tail it out of here. You smiled at the cameras that Yelena had set up all around the area before waiting patiently for the door to open.
“Yo.”
You’re greeted by your friend and her three rottweilers. You smile at them widely before you step inside and drop to your knees to greet them all individually.
“Hey there girls, how are you doing today.”
You scratch all three of the adorable block heads in front of you before you wipe their fur off of you and greet your friend. She’s shooting you an annoyed look even though you know she’s really amused by your ability to always have a smile ready for any animal you meet. Except snakes. Those freaked you out.
“And you, how are you?”
Yelena rolls her eyes before leading your further into the building with a sigh. She’d been busy figuring out the numbers for the loans she was collecting later today, so she’s happy to have the reprieve. She hates dealing with money, but honestly getting to be the one to collect it all gave her a thrill like nothing else. She sees that her cat is trying to chew on some of the papers crowding the table and she reaches out to grab her.
“Cyka, get off.”
“Don’t be mean to Blanche!”
Yelena rolls her eyes again before she heads to the kitchen to clean up a little. She’d just finished lunch and she knew if she didn’t clean it up now her dogs would come find it and break some dishes again.
“I wasn’t and I’m fine. Getting you money as usual.”
You smile at this and briefly forget about greeting your friend’s cat as you sit down at her table. You groan as you stretch out your back while glancing at the confusing diagrams and numbers Yelena’s written down. You ignore her as she tidies up as you try to make sense of what you’re looking at. You don’t succeed and you’re too tired to bother, so you just turn your attention back to the trio that have followed you with a smile.
“Hi girls. You’re just so sweet, huh? Have you been good doggos?”
You continue to pet Yelena’s dogs as she sneaks a bottle of vodka into the cabinet before coming over to see what you’re up to. She brings you a bottle of your favorite soda and watches as you continue to fawn over her truly useless dogs. They are all named after the Golden Girls, and they are all rescues from various animal shelters that you and Kate work with. Despite looking scary and having intimidating barks, they don’t serve any purpose other than as companions for the couple. They’d been rescued from abusive owners and they were more timid than any dogs you’d met, but they were so loveable that you couldn’t help but want to steal them.
“Thanks.”
Yelena nods as she sits across from you and moves a good deal of her work to one side of the table. You don’t remember what you wanted to ask her initially as you take a sip of your drink. You hadn’t realized how thirsty you were, and you have to force yourself not to down it all immediately.
“Nat said you’d be stopping by. Is this dog-related? Should I get Kate?”
You shake your head as you briefly glance to the stairs where Kate might be working. She usually listens to music, but you don’t hear any drift down making you think she’s not here. Yelena reads your mind as she tells you that the brunette is sleeping. She’d also had a late night, but she was lucky enough to get to work with dogs. A few years after getting established with the mob, you’d figured out how to do something you really enjoyed. It was all anonymous as far as the government was concerned, but you and Kate had contacted animal shelters and figured out a way to keep dogs alive long enough for them to get adopted. You provided funds to the shelter for their care, and you’ve actually fostered close to 2 dozen dogs yourself. Milo and Rudy, your jack russells were foster fails that you’ve had for a couple of years now.
Kate had a golden for a while, but after he died, she and Yelena rescued the rotties who were more than enough for the time being. Being so young, they had a lot of energy and they went with Kate almost wherever she went just so they got exercise and better socialization.
“It’s okay. This is actually about your next collection. I have a feeling I know what you’re going to say, but I needed to give it a shot.”
You tell Yelena that last night had put you in a difficult position. You needed to get rid of the senator, but you didn’t have the funds to reorganize a hit right now. Even if you just asked another one of your employees, you didn’t have enough to pay them at the moment. Your money was in so many different places, and unfortunately not very accessible at the moment.
“I’m just wondering if it would be beneficial to move it up any.”
Yelena frowns as she considers this. Her sister had warned her that you’d probably ask this, and despite the fact that she wanted to help she’s not sure she could this time. She’s had a set schedule for so long that she wasn’t quite ready to go out and collect debts. Not only that, but the business owners that paid them likely wouldn’t have everything they owed you so it would be a waste of time and an unexpected stressor if she tried to go early. You understood this and despite not liking it, you accepted it because you knew Yelena was the expert. She was the one who dealt with this every day, and you were just going to have to let this go.
“If it makes you feel any better, we’re expecting a little more than usual this cycle.”
She shows you’re her calculations and you have to admit that an extra 1.2 million makes waiting seem worth it. That was basically Nat’s fee for doing the job for you. You sigh as you lean back in your chair and think about your options. Yelena is basically telling you no, and you don’t feel the need to override her on this. She knows better than you anyway, so you suppose this hit will have to wait a little longer.
“What happened with the hit last night anyway?”
Of course, Nat had told her a little about it, but she mostly wanted to hear your opinion on it. It’s no secret that you’ve been on edge recently, and you were really looking forward to checking Jacobs off your list. She watches silently as you finish your drink before rolling the bottle between your hands. You’d had more time to think about it on the drive here, and you’d concluded that you were missing something very important; namely who tipped off the senator. You’ve been stuck on the reporter that he’d supposedly been talking to, and after scouring the web you hadn’t been able to find any recent publications about him that didn’t involve his horrible new policies. You didn’t know what to think, and you were eager to figure out as much as possible.
“Unsure at this time but someone tipped him off, and I want to find out who.”
You reminded her of who you’d asked to carry out the hit and you watch as she frowns at the mention of his name. Yelena, along with Steve, were the ones who did the most recruiting for your mob, and despite hiring him quickly Yelena had her reservations about the blonde. She knew he was smart and he did what he was supposed to, but he’d always been a little squirrely which to her translated to easily manipulated.
“I don’t trust him to tell you the truth, but hopefully he proves me wrong.”
You hadn’t expected your friend to say this and you place the bottle down on the table before shaking your head. You weren’t the only one who was paranoid in your friend group, and you had a feeling you knew what this was about. She’d questioned your decision to give this job to the blonde, but he’d been an employee for years, and he’d yet to disappoint. This was his opportunity to impress you, and although it didn’t work out you hoped that it was for reasons beyond his control.
“I know how you feel about him, but he doesn’t strike me as the mastermind type, Yelena.”
Yelena frowns at the subtle hint at the last person who tried to steal from you. That had been a mess and you’d had to kill him rather publicly to make sure that no one else followed in his footsteps. You scowl at the thought of the dead blonde before you shake your head again and cross your arms over your chest.
“He’s not going to turn into another Vision, and with any luck I’ll figure out what happened soon.”
It’s only an hour or so later that you end up cursing yourself for saying these words. You left Yelena’s after confirming that she’ll come over when Nat does for dinner at the end of the week. You’d let Bucky know where you were going and he told you he was right behind you. You take the almost 20-minute drive to recall your conversation with Yelena. Although you were leaving without a promise of money sooner rather than later, you were more relaxed than you thought you’d be. You credited this to the time you got to spend with Yelena’s dogs. You always felt comforted by a dog’s presence, and you almost think getting another younger one you can travel with would improve your mood.
As you arrive at Logan’s apartment building, you consider what Yelena said about him earlier. You don’t think that he would betray you. He didn’t seem brave enough. Then again, you had thought the same thing about Vision only to find out that he had been plotting against you for nearly a year.
He’d been brought in to help you manage money. That had been your first mistake. You still stand by your belief that your second mistake was not firing him the first time he hit on your wife. He’d been an awkward, yet overconfident man who had visited you one day at Wanda’s restaurant. He’d spent most of your conversation staring at her, and you’d immediately started trying to figure out how to fire him. Wanda had convinced you to let it go and she promised to just be scarce whenever he was around. Except Vision made a point of showing up at her work at random times, or rather when she was there, but you were busy with something else. He flirted relentlessly despite Wanda telling him off, and she’d only told you this after you had him killed for trying to steal from you.
You forget all about Vision as you step out of your car and head for the main entrance. It’s just starting to get dark, so you’re still cautious as you follow Logan’s instructions and head for the side stairwell immediately. You count the number of flights and wonder if you’d be in better shape if you actually had time to work out. Your legs are sore by the time you get to the sixth floor. You remind yourself to work out later tonight as you open the door to the hallway and look the nearest apartment to see the number.
“635”
You’re looking for 602, so you probably should have gone to the other stairwell. You arrive to his apartment and you knock three times before stepping back a little as you wait for him to answer. You’re tapping your foot impatiently as you look around the hallway. You can hear music coming from a nearby apartment but you can’t tell where. You knock again, and when he doesn’t answer a second time you frown before raising your hand a third time.
“Logan, are you there? Hello?”
You wait for a few seconds before deciding to try calling him. You wait as the call connects and you hear his phone ringing on the other side of the door. You frown and can’t help but become suspicious as you reach for the door. You remember last minute to wrap your shirt around the doorknob so you don’t leave prints as you slowly turn it only to find it’s open. You slowly push the door open and the ringing phone becomes louder as you enter the apartment.
“Logan? I know you’re here. No millennial leaves their phone at home.”
You leave the door cracked behind you as you venture into the dark and dingy apartment. You follow the sound of his phone through the living room and it leads you to a room down the hall. You have a hand on your gun by the time you push the door to the last room open slowly. When you see Logan lying in bed half dressed with his throat slit, you’re pulling it from your hip.
“Fuck.”
You don’t bother to see if he’s alive. There’s so much blood that you’re certain he’s not, and you hang up before dialing Bucky’s number. You glance around the room and then check the others to make sure that there’s no one else here. You nearly jump out of your skin as you walk back into the living room and see a cat sitting on the coffee table. It’s a fat black cat and you just stare at them angrily as you try to calm your breathing.
“Y/n, what’s up?”
Bucky’s voice reminds you that you’d called him and you check the kitchen and the dining room before you answer him. Your chest is tight and your voice hoarse as you speak up.
“Bucky, there’s been a development.”
Wanda is pleasantly surprised when you’re home by 7. She’d finished dinner and Natalya was fed and off to bed, but you were still home earlier than she thought you’d be. When she hears the elevator, she smiles as it’s quickly followed by pattering of dog feet as they run to greet you. Milo leads the way followed by Sully and Boone. When they disappear down the hall, she doesn’t think anything of it, but when she hears Milo bark she frowns in confusion.
“Y/n?”
Wanda leaves the kitchen and heads down the hall to find that you’re already halfway to the kitchen. You’re looking down at your dogs as you hold something in your arms. Wanda thinks it’s a jacket or your purse, but as you walk closer to her and under the living room lights, she realizes that it’s an animal.
“Is that—is that a cat?”
You offer a sheepish smile as you struggle to hold the squirmy cat that you’d decided to take on a whim. After calling Bucky upstairs and showing him what you’d stumbled upon the two of you made yourself scarce. You’d decided to send an anonymous tip to the police so they’d find Logan, but you did nothing else as you tried to figure out how this had happened between the time you talked to him this afternoon and stumbled upon him this evening.
You nod before walking toward your wife who looked more shocked than angry. There was plenty of time for this to change though, especially given what you were about to tell her. You frown slightly when you realize that Natalya must already be in bed, but you’ll worry about that after you catch Wanda up.
“Yes, I rescued him from an employee’s place. She was abandoned.”
Wanda had several follow up questions, but the most important ones were disregarded momentarily as she watched you put the rotund cat on the ground. She watches as she wobbles around and sniffs the ground before coming to sniff her.
“She?”
You look up with a shrug before mentioning that you’re just guessing. You hadn’t exactly looked and there was no collar on them so you just picked a sex and went with it. You didn’t think you’d be able to see anything through all her fat anyway.
“Yeah, I figured there’s enough testosterone in this house.”
Wanda would usually laugh but as she watches the cat hiss at Rudy and then run off to hide in the living room, she wonders how this is going to work out. You must see her worrying because you reach out for her and pull her into a hug. You hadn’t greeted her properly and you’d like to make up for this now. You kiss your distracted wife before offering an apology for the unannounced guest.
“I’m sorry for not calling, but it happened rather quickly. It will only be for a couple of days then I can take her to the shelter if you’d like.”
Wanda doesn’t respond immediately as she’s too preoccupied watching the fat cat try to jump on the couch. She doesn’t let any animal on furniture, and if she truly felt that the poor cat could make it up there, she’d run over to stop her. Instead, she just flops back on the ground with a quiet thud, and Wanda turns to you with a sigh.
“What’s her name?”
You’d spent too much time considering this on the way home, but you don’t want to give yourself away as you shrug again before heading toward the kitchen to see what your wife cooked.
“I was thinking Fat Louise, unless there’s something else you liked better.”
Wanda looks at you in astonishment before she turns to see that Fat Louise has curled up into a ball, and she honestly looks like a giant furry blob.
“That’s-that’s not very nice.”
You’re lifting the lid of the pot on the stove as Wanda says this and you offer her a smile before looking around for a spoon.
“You have to admit she’s fat, but like I said you can change her name. I’m not particularly attached to it.”
Wanda thinks about her options as you get dinner reheated for both of you. You take Wanda’s to the table while she gets your drinks. After the soda you had a Yelena’s and then the excitement earlier this evening, you feel a little hyper. Your leg is bouncing by the time that Wanda comes to sit across from you, and when you look up, she’s frowning slightly.
“Long day, detka?”
You’ve started to eat already and you’re chewing as you nod in response. The day wasn’t super long compared to others, but you did a lot of talking, and airing out your concerns always stressed you out. Finding Logan dead and realizing that someone was trying really hard to cover up what happened last night also exhausted you. You would worry about this tomorrow because maybe you’d have the official police report and if you’re lucky it will tell you something you don’t know.
“A lot of catching up with people, but not too bad. How was yours?”
Wanda smiles at the thought of her day, and she tells you how she cooked for a lot of it, but also spent time outside with the dogs.
“It was such a nice day out, and Natalya got to spend some time with her brothers.”
You smile at your wife’s word because although you were the first one to refer to the dogs as Nat’s siblings, Wanda had continued to do so. You’d initially meant it as a joke, but you were glad to see that she also wanted to see them all get along. It was easiest with the older boys for sure because they were more patient and tolerant. The last time you’d tried to have one of the terriers sit with Nat, they’d gotten a little too rowdy.
“That’s wonderful. I wish I could have been here for that, but I did get to spend a little time outside.”
As you say this you take a long sip of the water that Wanda had brought you. You hadn’t realized how dehydrated you were from sitting out in the sun and then running around trying to deal with Logan. You’re thinking about getting some more when Wanda speaks up. She’d been glancing between you and your pets periodically to make sure they were all getting along. Fat Louise was just lying on the rug while the dogs mostly ignored her. Wanda wondered if she was actually larger than their terriers.
“Did you sunbathe as well?”
Wanda’s mostly kidding but when she sees your smile, she realizes there is at least some truth in her words. She wonders if it was with Nat or Yelena that you’d done this, but she doesn’t have to wonder long as you nod in answer.
“A little. I laid out on my car while talking to Nat.”
Wanda chuckles under her breath at the image because she has no doubt that you did this. You could sleep almost anywhere if you put your mind to it, but your car was actually one of your least favorites. She stops short of asking a follow up question when she sees that you’re frowning slightly as you think back on your conversation with Nat.
“She and Yelena are coming over for dinner this weekend, if that’s okay? They wanted to spoil their goddaughter/niece.”
Wanda merely nods as she smiles at the idea of you inviting your friends over. You both wanted them to spend time with Natalya, any maybe if Kate tagged along, you’d get your way about interrogating her. This thought leaves Wanda’s mind as soon as you clear your throat and shoot your nearly empty plate a nervous look.
“We also talked about work in general and how it’s been stressing me out a lot.“
Wanda waits for you to elaborate, but your focus has shifted to your food in an attempt to distract yourself or avoid this conversation all together. Wanda takes comfort in the fact that you’d brought it up at all, so she’s careful not to push too much as she asks for a little more detail.
“In what way?”
Wanda knows that there are a lot of ways that you could answer this question. Your work has always been stressful and ironically the illegal aspect of it wasn’t the main factor. You always found having so many people in your employ stressful because you were responsible for all of their decisions, their actions and unfortunately, they didn’t always do what you asked. Not being able to have a hand in every important decision was definitely something that you were struggling to get used to. It’s only recently that you’ve decided that as long as you’re not caught and sent to jail, or murdered before you can find someone to take your place, it will be fine.
You just wanted to do this on your own terms, and that is where things became a little tricky.
You don’t want to tell Wanda all of this because she would just worry with you. You’d talked to Nat and then Yelena a bit so you were already feeling better now that you had a solid plan. That said, figuring out what happened to Logan and dealing with a possible sabotage was throwing a wrench in your not-so-best-laid plans.
“I’m trying to take a step back as you know, but it’s just a little harder than I thought.”
Wanda doesn’t respond immediately because she’s trying to figure out exactly what you mean. You’ve never told her much because she honestly didn’t want to know, but as long as she knew that you were being as safe as possible and not drawing too much attention to yourself, she wouldn’t complain. The rare visits from the police were always disturbing but luckily, they never turned into anything more than visits. She briefly wonders if you’ve chosen someone to take over for you, but she nearly shakes her head at the thought. That was too much to ask for, and since you’ve given her no indication that you were on your way out, she wouldn’t get her hopes up.
“I know letting go of control is difficult for you, Y/n.”
Your wife frowns when you only nod silently, and she wonders if she’s missed the mark. It’s hard for her to figure out what the real issue is, and short of you sharing it with her she’s not sure she’ll ever know. You know that what Wanda’s saying is right, but it’s only part of the issue. You’re considering opening up more to her when you both hear the soft cries coming through the baby monitor.
“I’ll go check on her.”
You feel a little guilty about how quickly you try to flee this conversation, but this fades as Wanda stands up as well. She’s obviously not done talking about this and you are reminded once again of why you love this strong, stubborn woman.
“I’ll come with you.”
You smile as you reach out for her hand to lead her down the hall toward the nursery. You cast a cursory glance over your shoulder to make sure that the trio in the living room are still behaving. You turn around again missing how Rogue gets up to join you two. Wanda merely smiles before waving him along with them encouragingly. It’s rare that he wants to interact with Natalya, but more often than not he likes to follow Wanda around.
“What story did you read tonight?”
You’re mostly asking out of interest, not because you believe that Wanda’s choice wasn’t a good one. A couple nights a week, Natalya will go to sleep easily, but then wake up later because she’s hungry or lonely. You’re not sure which it is tonight, but you won’t pass up on the opportunity to spend some time with your daughter.
Wanda shakes her head as you both enter the room and leave the door open so Rogue can follow behind you. She hadn’t read one of Nat’s books tonight. She’d decided to tell her a story about her childhood, but since she wanted to eventually teach Natalya her native language, she’d told it in Sokovian. You smile widely as you reach into the crib to pick up your fussy daughter. You kiss her on the cheek before turning toward Wanda.
“That sounds like fun, did you learn anything, Little Nat?”
As expected, she doesn’t do more than just coo for you as she reaches out for Wanda. You smile before squeezing Nat gently as you hand her over to her mother.
“Such a mama’s girl.”
You smirk as Natalya makes grabby hands at her brunette mom’s hair. You smile as she accepts her daughter with a smile of her own that quickly turns into an exasperated sigh as her hair is immediately tugged on. You take pity on her and quickly help untangle Nat’s fingers from her hair. You put it behind her shoulders for her, and watch the duo greet each other. In Wanda’s case, she leaves a kiss on her baby’s nose, but Nat just starts to whimper as she practically smacks Wanda in the face.
“Nat, honey, that’s not nice.”
Wanda leans away slightly but it doesn’t do much good as Nat continues to whimper threateningly. You see a tantrum coming on and you would like to prevent it as much as possible, so you’re already running toward the kitchen for a bottle.
Your wife is on the same page and she follows you out of the room just at a much slower pace. Rogue whines but follows Wanda out as she heads back to the kitchen with a smile.
“Are you hungry, milaya?”
Natalya’s only response is to grab at her shirt and tug furiously. She has frustrated tears in her eyes and Wanda hates to see her so upset. She’s glad that by the time she arrives you’re warming up a bottle for Natalya and waiting impatiently for it to finish.
“Just a few minutes, baby.”
Wanda’s bouncing her baby and luckily, she’s distracted enough to just hold Wanda’s shirt in her tiny fist instead of trying to rip it. You recognize the signs of Natalya being hungry, and you can’t help but smile as your lean against the counter.
“She’s insatiable, isn’t she?”
Wanda can’t fight the smirk that tugs at her lips as she walks over to you. She kisses your cheek before checking on the bottle. 3 minutes left. She leans against the counter with you briefly checking on the pets before falling into you slightly.
“She certainly is. I wonder who she learned that from.”
You grin widely as you reach down to pet Rouge who comes to stand at your feet. He’s sniffing around for second dinner, but everything is out of his reach and he just huffs before heading for the living room. You don’t miss how he stops at the dinner table, but you and Wanda had mostly finished at this point, and Rogue wasn’t a huge fan of Sokovian food. He had stolen a steak from your plate once and you’d been so shocked and angered you’d chased him around the living room trying to get it back. Needless to say, you were unsuccessful and you ended up just watching him eat your steak with a scowl and a wife who was laughing at you from the kitchen.
“I’ll take the blame for this one, Wands.”
Her response is just to laugh as you turn toward her and Little Nat to see the former sucking her thumb. She still has a few tears in her eyes and you frown as you reach out carefully to wipe them away. You just stare at your beautiful daughter until you hear the warmer beep behind you. Wanda turns to grab the bottle, but you shake your head before walking toward the oven to grab a towel.
“Let me.”
You take the bottle out and wrap it in the towel so it’s not too hot before holding it up to Natalya.
“Little one, are you hungry?”
You spend the next five minutes feeding and burping your daughter, you start to clean up dinner while Wanda heads back to the nursery. You hum under your breath as you wash dishes and put up the leftovers from dinner. You’re thinking about what to do with the rest of your time before going to bed when Wanda returns. She’s watching you with a smile as you move around the kitchen in that quick, practiced way of yours. You’re almost finished before you spot her spying on you, and you shoot her a smile.
“She asleep again?”
Wanda nods as she gestures to the baby monitor, she’d left on the counter and you both listen to how quiet it is on the other end.
“She is. Hopefully it’ll stick this time.”
You dry your hands off before coming around the counter and reaching out for your wife. You’re tired, but not sleepy, and you want to get your mind off of work. You consider watching a movie, but your mind wanders easily if you don’t have to focus on what you’re doing. As if reading your mind, Wanda asks you what you’d like to do now. You decide that tonight is a perfect opportunity to spend some time with your wife.
“I was thinking about working out a little.”
You don’t have to look at your wife to see her eyes darken as they look you up and down. She will admit that she isn’t really in the mood for that type of exercise, but if doing so allows her to watch you get all hot and sweaty, while half-dressed, well she’ll just suck it up. She looks up at you with her bottom lip between her teeth, and you have to stop yourself from kissing her right then and there.
“Mind if I join you?”
You would never complain about your wife’s company. After a long day away from her and the amount of stress you’ve been under recently, you would love nothing more than to unwind with her. You nod, not that your expression isn’t answer enough for Wanda before leading her to the bedroom to change.
“You don’t have to ask, Wands, and yes I would love if you joined me.”
Ten minutes later, you and Wanda have changed into workout clothes and you’re struggling to leave the bedroom. You’d been fine and hadn’t noticed Wanda’s appreciative glances, until Wanda started changing into leggings and a sports bra. You’d chosen to wear a t-shirt for comfort, but the sight of your wife’s exposed skin made you regret your decision to work out tonight. Still, you steal a few kisses and touches before Wanda practically drags you from the bedroom.
“If we don’t go now, we’ll never get started.”
You can’t argue with this and after making sure that your new cat is separated from the dogs, you and Wanda head to your in-home gym.
It hasn’t gotten as much use lately because you both have been short on time, but sometimes, depending on her tolerance level, Wanda will walk on the treadmill or even use one of the bikes with Natalya sleeping on her back. It’s been a while since Wanda was in here to do more than that, and she almost forgot how many options there were. You were already figuring out where you wanted to start when Wanda sits down on a rowing machine.
“Do you want to turn on the television, detka?”
You’d stopped to stare at her as she stretched a little before sitting properly on the seat. You don’t realize that you’d been caught looking until Wanda’s voice registers and you’re flushing in embarrassment as you walk over to the side of the room for the remote. There’s a large television on one of the walls that sometimes you’ll turn on just for background noise. You usually just listen to music, but since you need an ear open for the monitor, you decide that this is better.
“Sure thing, Wands. Any requests?”
After choosing something to watch, you and Wanda start working out mostly in silence. The only communication between the two of you is the occasional smile or glance in the other’s direction. You are already sweating as you continue to work on your upper body. Your arms are pleasantly sore as you continue to push yourself while you focus on your breathing. You found working out, as long as it wasn’t in public, relaxing most times. It was both productive and cathartic, and getting to watch your wife do the same nearby was just an added benefit.
You find yourself watching Wanda more than focusing on what rep you’re on. It’s not your fault she’s so distracting. She’s moved onto to a machine that lets her work on her legs and abs, and the way she’s grunts in effort with every other rep—it should be illegal. It’s obscene.
“Y/n, you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing.”
It’s not a question and it only takes you a second to realize that she’s right. You’d stopped in the middle of a rep to watch Wanda, and you quickly release the weights before standing up. You try to get the sight of your flushed and sweaty wife out of your mind as you switch over to a new machine.
“Right, right. Sorry. “
Wanda just smiles at you watching as you glance at the television and stop in your tracks to watch the show for a minute. She decides to focus on herself for now and she nearly groans at the thought. She knew it would be difficult getting back into exercising after taking so much time off. It’s been months since she’d done anything strenuous and at least a couple of weeks since she’d been able to work out without Natalya nearby. She realizes the further she gets into this how important it is to make sure she has time for herself throughout the day. She’s a paranoid, first-time mom, but maybe she can carve out a little time each day to do something solely for her benefit.
“Ah fuck.”
You’re doing pull ups a little bit later when you hear your phone beep from where you’d left it on the table near the television. You are about to use this as an excuse to drop down to the ground and take a break, but Wanda’s voice catches you off guard.
“I’ve got it, detka. Keep going, please. I’m enjoying the show.”
You roll your eyes and meet Wanda’s gaze through the wall of mirrors in front of you with a playful glare. She sends one back as she climbs to her feet and heads towards your phone. The fact that you don’t even seem to mind that she’s grabbing it for you makes her think it’s not work-related, or at least that you don’t expect it to be. It’s hard to know sometimes, but you don’t even turn to ask as you do another couple of pull ups.
“Is it anything important?”
Wanda hadn’t intended on checking for you, but she doesn’t hesitate to unlock it and check your most recent text. She frowns slightly before looking back up at you.
“It’s Bucky apologizing for ratting you out to Nat.”
You consider ignoring the message for now because you are a little ticked a Bucky, but you eventually just shake your head and drop to the ground with a huff. Wanda holds your phone out to you, and you smile wickedly as you take it and start to reply.
“I’ll tell him not to sweat it because I’m currently here sweating with you.”
Wanda shoots you an incredulous look as she reaches out to grab your phone back. You pull it out of reach and laugh as she just glares at you before crossing her arms petulantly.
“Y/n, don’t tell him that!” “Why not? It’s true. “
You keep pretending to type as you wait for Wanda to protest again. She doesn’t let you down and it only takes a few seconds for her to huff in annoyance. You smile cheekily as you look up from your phone, and somehow Wanda manages to look even more ticked.
“You’re teasing me.”
You don’t even try to deny it and you nod before stepping away as Wanda reaches out to slap you. You thought so at least, but she just holds out her hand and you quickly realize what she wants. You hand her your phone with a smile until she sets it aside before pointing back to where you’d been doing pull ups.
“Just for that, you’re going to give me 10 more.”
You raise an eyebrow in question, but your wife just walks over so she’s standing beneath the bar before she beckons you towards her.
“I’m serious.”
You’re unfortunately not one to refuse a challenge, so you walk over to where she is to stand toe to toe with her. She doesn’t back down as you look up at the bar and then back to her with a sigh. You didn’t expect her to budge, and after a few seconds of contemplation you decide to just do it.
“Alright, Wands. Whatever you want.”
You reach up and grab the bar and pull yourself up with barely a groan of effort. You feel the strain on your arms by the fifth one, and you reach the 7th before Wanda is reaching out for you. You look down at the hand on your stomach and jump down when Wanda speaks up with a smile.
“Come down here, please.”
You are about to argue and say that you’re not at 10 yet, but Wanda’s tugging on your shirt so you give in quickly. You drop down to the ground and open your mouth to ask Wanda why she made you stop, but she doesn’t give you a chance. She pulls you forward by your shirt until you’re close enough to kiss her. You hadn’t expected this so you’re pleasantly surprised. You reach out to hold her too, but she breaks away before you get the chance.
“Since those were so easy, how about you try something different?”
You wonder what she could be thinking of as she pulls you into another hug before jumping up and wrapping her legs around your waist.
“Uh…” “Only three more.”
Wanda’s clinging to you like a koala and despite her not being that heavy, you aren’t sure if you can lift both of you. You feel her legs hold you tighter and you just sigh in defeat before giving it a try. As you complete your first pull up you realize it’s a lot harder than you thought. You barely do it a second time before you drop back to the ground and breathe raggedly as you shake your head.
“I don’t think I can do another one, Wands.”
Wanda considers this for a second before shaking her head with a smile. She kisses you quickly before giving you the incentive you need to get this over with.
“One more and then we can shower and go to bed.”
You groan under your breath, but you nod a couple of times before grabbing the bar one last time.
“Alright, but I’m getting cuddles for this.”
Wanda rolls her eyes and holds back her remark about how you always get cuddles as you lift her up along with you one more time. You nearly stumble as you drop to the ground when you’re done, and Wanda’s quick to release you so you can balance. She smiles proudly as she grabs your numb hand and drags you out of the room.
“Good job, detka.”
Any snarky remark you’d had in mind leaves it as soon as Wanda kisses your cheek. You sigh in frustration at the fact that you can’t hide how your cheeks flush at her words. You can’t even pretend to be annoyed as you squeeze your wife’s hand with a smile. You know you’d do anything for her if she asks, and in the grand scheme of things, pull ups are likely the least difficult thing you’ll ever have to do.
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daughterofthequeen · 8 months
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Big Baby
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Pairings: Poe Dameron x reader
Request: can you maybe do poe dameron with a reader who just had to get incredibly painful shots and he goes to the appointment with them and just comforts and takes care of them during and after? im goin thru it rn LOL. totally okay if not tho!! <3 /gen
Requested by: @slide-the-ferret
Warnings: Needles(a personal fear of mine as well), it’s just a fluffy little one-shot nothing major, crying?, use of (y/n) a few times.
A/N: Yesss anon I 100% get what you mean. Now excuse me I gotta go water my grass with my tears because I don’t have a Poe Dameron to comfort me, in my times of pain and need😭 and the scenario of why they had to take shots I just pulled that out my tushy, meaning quarantine shots are not canon. I hope you enjoy.
Quarantine physicals are the worst! Why do I keep putting myself in these positions. It’s an easy mission, they said. You’re only scouting, they said. We’re relying on you, they said. The resistance has been looking for a new base and it’s proving pretty difficult. Every available fighter is constantly on the go, checking out any leads, back to back. I try to stay away from those types of missions though, all because of one thing. The quarantine physicals. After coming back from an exploration of an unknown planet, said pilots are required to be quarantined until they are cleared of their physical. It’s to make sure no undiscovered illnesses or anything of that nature came back with the pilot. And I’m pretty sure you can guess what happens if a unknown illness does come back, the planet is marked off the list of “maybe” planets and put on the “stay clear” list. And hopefully one of the known cures the doctors have work on said illness, but people coming back sick is rare, basically nonexistent. Recently, a well hidden planet actually came up on our scopes and guess who had to check it out? That’s right. Me!
All other pilots were out on their own missions, when I had just landed from a previous one with the rest of black squadron. Lucky me. I mean don’t get me wrong I would give my life for the resistance, but if medical shots are involved, it’s a hard “no” for me. It’s bad enough we have to get them every time we have an regular annual physical so, why would I add more to the list willingly.
Anyway, I’m currently sitting in the waiting area of the doctors office, waiting for my name to be called for my own quarantine physical. Normally, Poe would be in here with me. Yes it is against the rules but Poe and I are a special case, he helps the doctors by keeping me calm enough to take the injections. Wait a minute. Where is Poe?! He should be here by now! I quickly turned on my wrist comm preparing to tell him to get his butt down here but just as I was about to, he comes running through the door out of breath.
“Right on time.”
“Sorry I’m late.” He said as he takes a seat next to me.
“You forgot didn’t you?
“No. No, I didn’t forget. I just-“
“You forgot.”
“Yeah. Yeah I forgot.” He said lowly and we began laughing. It doesn’t take much for Poe to make my worries go away. It’s part of the reason why he’s my best friend. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“It’s ok, you made it, you have nothing to be sorry for.” Just as I said that my name was called, and my anxiety went through the roof. Walking into the medical room, me sitting on the bed and Poe sitting in one of the guest chairs.
“Let’s see, (Y/n) (L/n), born on (P/n), occupation-pilot, what’s the last 4 digits of your chain code?”
“7980”
“I see that you’re here for your vaccine shots?” The nurse asked sitting down my medical folder.
“Yes.”
“Ok just sit back and relax, I’ll be back soon.”
I sat back, but I could not relax. How could I relax, I’m about to get stuck with painful needles. How do people find this easy? I didn’t even notice my leg bouncing until I felt Poe lay his hand on my knee.
“Relax.”
“Why do people keep telling me that?” And for some reason he found that funny.
“Because your stressing yourself out, and because the more tense you are the more it’s going to hurt. So you might wanna take the doctors advice on this one.”
“I don’t understand how people are able to relax during these things. The size of the needle doesn’t matter, they all feel the same. Painful.”
“Because of how quick the process is, the only reason it takes so long for you is because you fight the nurses. I’m pretty sure they know you by name, and the only reason they ask is because of protocol.” He laughs.
“Oh shut up, Poe.” I said while folding my arms as the nurse walks back into the room. Poe took this as his queue to stand and grab ahold of my hand, to comfort me and just in case he had to pin me down I suspect.
“Okay. I seen that you have a physical coming up. Would you like to get the shots for that out of the way now or wait?”
“I’ll wait” I said nervously
“Well in that case you only have two injections today.”
“Only?” I mumbled.
“You ready?”
“I guess.”
“Here is number one” I always feel bad for Poe, with how tight I squeeze his hands through these appointments, I’m pretty sure they become sore after. But he never complains so I don’t know for sure. Then I feel the needle piercing each layer of my skin agonizingly slow, and the pressure of the liquid being push into my arm.
“And number two.” This time I pressed my face into Poe’s torso, which he welcomed. And the same painful sensations went through my arm again. And soon the aching will begin throughout my arm, keeping me from being able to use it.
“All done, let me type up your papers then you are free to go.” The nurse said while walking back out to her computer.
“See? It wasn’t so bad.”
“We go through this every time Dameron. Yes, it was that bad. I just held my breath this time.”
“Did it work?”
“Barely.”
“Well I say that’s a win either way.”
“Alright you’re free to go.”
“Thank you.” Poe helped me down of the medical table and we walked to my room. I knew the pain was on its way, my arm was already starting to ache.
We made it inside my room and I sat down on my bed as Poe started the same routine that always follows after any appointment that includes me getting stuck with metal sticks. It’s the same every time, he starts my shower, while I’m in the shower he goes to the dining hall to get us both a meal, by the time he makes it back I’m already under my blankets, he joins me, we eat, and I end up falling asleep. It’s a very relaxing process and very sweet. I hear the shower start and I immediately stand and grab some clean pajamas and head to the bathroom seeing Poe checking the temperature.
“Remember to the warm water run in your arm to help ease the pain.”
“Yeah I know.”
“Okay, I will be right back and don’t wait til’ you get sleepy to get out the shower. You got lucky last time.”
“I was fine.”
“If you call falling asleep and almost falling in the shower fine. You’re lucky I forgot to ask what kind of juice you wanted. Speaking of which, what’s your choice for today?”
“Surprise me. And I had it under control.”
“You keep telling yourself that. Hurry and get in before the effects start kicking in, I’ll be right back.” I listened and got in the shower, making sure to let the warm water hit my arm. The steam from the shower, being freshly clean, and the side effects of the medicine was all starting to kick in. My arm was now aching and I was get sleepy. I got out the shower put my pajamas on and made my way to my bed. All of a sudden I felt my bed dip which woke me up from a slumber I didn’t know I was in.
“Wake up sweetheart it’s time to eat.”
I grumbled as Poe helped me sit up and once he made sure I was awake enough to eat he sat down my plate on my lap. He then got situated beside me and we started eating. Out of nowhere a sharp pain went through my arm causing me to let out a groan.
“Medicine starting to kick in?” To which I replied with a nod. I handed him my plate and he sat both to the side. He stripped off his tops layer of clothing so he was comfortable and got the both of us under the blankets. I made my place on top of his chest as sleep was calling me, and he was not helping as his hand was gently scratching my scalp.
“Thank you for always being there for me Poe.”
“Always. You mean more to me than all the stars in the galaxy. And whatever you need no matter how big or small, I’ll be there to help as much as I can.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“We’ll in that case there is one thing you can do.”
“And what’s that sweetheart?”
“Find a way to keep those evil people away from me.”
“What evil people sweetheart?”
“The doctors and nurses. They’re always trying to stick me with something, I’m starting to think they’re enjoying it.”
“Baby it’s their jobs and it’s only to keep you and everyone else safe. I mean you gotta admit needles aren’t that bad, the only thing painful about it are the side effects.”
“Excuse me, I have you know that needles are not as painless as you think, I swear I can feel every single layer of skin that the needle goes through.”
“I have to get shots too you know and they’re not bad.”
“To you.”
“You’re just a big baby.”
“Whatever.”
“But you’re my big baby.”
“Go to sleep Poe.”
And we did, enjoying the peace that being in each other’s arms brought, until the next morning when we are woken up by the alarm that lets everyone know, it’s time to get the day started.
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jitterbugjive · 5 months
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So, some people may have noticed this but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to bring attention to it and I wanted people to just assume it was someone theorizing. But it appears someone from my ex friend circle whom I had trusted with certain details of how Discord Whooves would end decided to stoop to a lower than low level and ruin the ending for anyone who stumbled on their posts that had been made on a blog made specifically to post spoilers and tag them with common tags Discord Whooves uses. I’m sure it was out of sheer spite towards me and the people who dared to support my work.
Saying bad things about me and things I’ve done and said, okay that’s justifiable. But going out of their way to take something I once trusted them with because I thought we were close friends, and then throwing it out for the world to see out of revenge against me and anyone following me? That’s just petty, immature, and a really low blow to make. Even if I really hated someone, I would never reveal their harmless secrets to the world just to get back at them. There’s a chance to be the better person, and at least have some code of ethics to know when it’s going too far. I deserved to be called out. I didn’t deserve to have my 12 years of work undermined by a vindictive person who can’t move forward, and my fans didn’t deserve it either because they are not even involved in this drama.
There is a point where revenge goes too far and one crosses over into just being villainously cruel.
It’s sad, and really pathetic that someone thinks they have to do everything in their power to screw me over in some way instead of trying to actually recover and get past the point of obsession over wanting to get back at me all the time.
I’m sorry the whole world isn’t against me like you want it to be. I’m sorry a lot of people believe in recovery and the fact that I feel terrible enough already about my shitty actions in the past and am doing everything in my power to avoid anything like that happening ever again. I’m sorry I’m not being bombarded by hoards of angry people calling me names and telling me to kill myself. I’m sorry my feeling horrible isn’t enough to satiate you and all you want is to see me suffer.
It’s been years now. YEARS. For the sake of your own mental well being, just cut me out of your life completely and stop obsessing over me. You already won. I am constantly in a state of panic thinking of this shit and how else it’s going to come and bite me in the ass. I lost the comic website I depended on, I’ve lost a huge chunk of my readership and no longer really have my ‘popular’ status. (very rarely get fan art, not being bombarded by asks constantly, no longer receive fan mail, original projects aren’t catching on very well) Selling commissions has gotten increasingly more difficult. My insomnia is worse than ever and I have to take heavy duty sedatives just to sleep because my mind won’t stop spiraling about this stuff. I cannot go a single day without feeling guilt, regret, self hatred, and doubt and wishing hopelessly that I just never did those things. I have severe trust issues and have almost no one I can feel comfortable enough sharing anything personal or story related with which was just made even WORSE by these recent actions, and I haven’t been able to form new bonds with anyone in years either.
I know I hurt you badly, I know what I did was incredibly wrong and irresponsible, and I don’t know how it’s affected you over the years but this rage and anger is not good for anyone. I don’t hate you. I just want you to be able to move on and learn to be healthy and happy and no longer stuck thinking about me and how much you hate me and want me to fall. I don’t want to be hurting you by just existing and trying to move on with my own life, and I wish there was something- ANYTHING I could do to bring you peace.
But the only one who can ultimately bring you peace is yourself. So you can keep on trying to claw and bite and drag me down with you, or you could be the better person and try to just move forward and put the past in the past where it belongs.
I’m not mad. I’m just incredibly disappointed. I would have thought you were better than this, but I was wrong. I was wrong to ever even trust you as a friend, and I wish we were never friends to begin with, or even ever met, and I’m sure you feel the same way.
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hindahoney · 1 year
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I think what the other asker is failing to account for is that safety is a massive factor in how the current typical conversion is carried out. On one hand yes goyim will have to convert if they want to become Jewish because it's a closed practice, but on the other hand, welcoming new Jews means opening our synagogues and teachings and exposing our community to people who have at one point been outsiders. If we adopt a new process of becoming Jewish that doesn't involve conversion, new Jews will not necessarily be required to be involved in their community or to adopt Jewish culture with spiritual guidance from a sponsoring rabbi. And imo that goes against a huuuugely important part of what makes Judaism, Judaism, and it's dangerous because G-d knows ignorance has been deadly for Jews. Our culture isn't just about religion, it's also about its people and their continued survival through exile after exile. It's even said by many prominent modern rabbis that exile has become an integral part of Jewish identity. So, how can you possibly sincerely want to be Jewish if you have no desire to study hard and learn our culture and history and to mourn the lives that have been taken from us? You can believe in G-d without being Jewish, you can hold yourself to certain standards (like self imposed dietary rules that look similar to kashrut) without being Jewish, you can treat other people and the universe in the same way that Jews do. Yes there are plenty of closed traditions and practices I wouldnt be comfortable with goyim participating in, but for the most part they can live a pretty much identical life to the one they think they want, without becoming Jewish. If you feel strongly enough that you have a Jewish soul and that you must become Jewish, the conversion process exists to accommodate your learning and studies, and to introduce you to the community and culture. If you want to 'become Jewish' without doing any of that then...politely, wtf are you trying to become Jewish for? Theres nothing wrong with being a gentile and following your own personal code of ethics even if that code looks a lot like what you think Judaism is. Plenty of gentiles share the same beliefs as me and dont feel the need to justify it by becoming Jewish.
Sorry Im running on 1 hour of sleep so I probably make no sense but Im so confused by this whole ordeal. If you are sincere enough about wanting to become Jewish then you wouldn't have a problem with the fact that there exists a conversion process that requires supervision. There is no measurable benefit to being Jewish, other than really personal things like self fulfilment and the relationship you might develop with your congregation. I converted bc I saw value in the Jewish ways of life and realised that I don't want to die a gentile, I want to have a community and be buried in a Jewish cemetery, among other things including my faith obbiously. becoming Jewish mattered to me, enough for me to put in the years of study, and to learn from my rabbi and the other people in my congregation. I would not feel even remotely comfortable calling myself Jewish if I did not have the knowledge and experiewnce I gained from my studies, since Im not a born Jew. Conversion is difficult for a reason, because sincerity is a big deal. If you are not sincere enough in wanting to become Jewish that youre not willing to put in the effort to convert, that;'s just a clear sign that you are not meant to become a Jew imo. If goyim can simply 'adopt' Judaism then the Jewish people are no longer a family. You cannot join a family just bc you want to, you have to be welcomed in, and our welcoming process just happens to require a bit of elbow grease. if youre not cut out for it then thats fine! Some people have Jewish souls, most people do not. There is nothing wrong with just being a gentile lol. If you want to come to synagogue then you are welcome to come as a gentile, just don't pretend to be Jewish and we will get along fine.
(for clarification 'you' here is referring to the hypothetical goy who wants to self-declare as jewish without converting)
I'm publishing this ask because I think it's worth the read and I'd wager most, if not all, jews would agree with you. Thank you anon
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cosmics-beings · 8 months
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I kinda talked about it, but starscream has a lot of dislike toward his body. he is cold constructed, and he honestly has no choice but to be like that, and it's just not something he likes. my personal au is that starscream was really obsessed but jealous of the cybertronian model/entertainment/dancing class. like models and dancers were beautiful, they had the perfect slender and agile body types that were desired for beauty and not military/working. they had make up, the perfect clothes. Starscream wanted to be that, he wanted to at a point be a model or even a dancer. but because he was cold constructed (really bulky, boxy, heavy, etc.) he just didn't get that. and his coding dictated otherwise. but Starscream himself still tried to do things to make himself feel pretty, because that is what he wanted, to feel pretty. so one day, after not thinking it would make a difference, he is able to snag a cheap eye shadow palette from the store or something. it's clear when he goes into the botique he doesn't belong there, but he gets it. and he goes home and puts on eyeshadow and lipstick for the first time and realizes that, he actually does look pretty. he actually does have something that he likes in himself. the contrast of light makeup against his dark metalic face plates; and starscream starts to see beauty in himself. of course, there are still things he hates about his body, but he gets more comfortable embracing things he thought he couldn't have like makeup/drapes/dress, etc. whenever he can afford them he gets them.
when he becomes chancellor and has the money to change his body sometimes he does. hence the really slender-ish red idw get up, because that is what he wanted. due to his code, he has to revert every so often, but it's just something he is finally able to do. Starscream is actually a really good dancer too tho it's not something he does professionally.
he has a complicated relationship with his body. and he hasn't really had anyone tell him that he's beautiful so for him, even if he tells hismelf it's still really difficult to always believe.
and then in my tfp aus he just completely gets his body re-done to model the dancer/model class of cybertronians.
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