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saetoru · 2 years

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#TOP OF THE CLASS! — GETO SUGURU.

「 SYNOPSIS 」 ⋮ geto + virgin killing - your TA is nice, and more importantly, handsome. accidentally sending him nudes makes you realise he's also inexperienced

♱ kinktober ⋮ find the masterlist here !!

♱ pairing ⋮ college TA! geto suguru x student! reader

♱ length ⋮ 5.5k words (she tried okay. she did)

♱ contents ⋮ nsfw and 18+ content, fem! reader, college! au, TA! geto, student! reader, med! student shoko, forging of legal documents (shoko forges you a doctor’s note lol), mentions of drinking + being under the influence, unprofessional relationships, explicit photography (taking + accidentally sending nudes), virgin! + inexperienced! geto, semi-public sex (in a campus office), teasing, humiliation, mentions of male masturbation, handjobs, blowjobs, nipple play, fingering, riding, praise kink, unprotected sex, creampie, multiple orgasms, overstimulation

♱ notes ⋮ here is the first kinktober post i hope you all enjoy and HAPPY OCTOBER ITS MY FAV SEASON

the first rule of being a college student is having good time management. that should’ve been something you remembered before saving this paper for the last minute—because now you’re beginning to regret overestimating your ability to finish all the research and the required components and hit the word count. and then you have to cite your sources—which is a pain, and the clock isn’t slowing even a little as it ticks away closer and closer to the deadline.

you’re doomed, finished for the semester before you could’ve even fully begun. you’re counting your moments to failure for a class you absolutely need to graduate. this paper is thirty percent of your grade—how could you have been so careless as to leave it so last minute?

“it’s useless,” you moan woefully into your phone, making shoko snort as you hear her continue to type away on her keyboard. it hits you that if shoko of all people is further along her paper than you—the same shoko that cheats on everything—then you’ve really let yourself go. “i’m never going to finish this on time,” you mutter.

“i told you to get started earlier,” she says matter of factly, almost with enough i told you so energy in her voice that you’re two seconds from storming over to her apartment and smashing her laptop to bits. but shoko has a point—even if you refuse to acknowledge it since…well, it’s shoko, after all.

“i’m not on call with you to lecture me,” you grumble, “i’m on call with you to help me find a solution. you think if i offer the TA a blow job, he’ll give me an A?”

shoko snorts, pausing her typing as if she’s actually contemplating the idea. “maybe, honestly. you know he’s our age, and he’s like years ahead of us? probably too busy with school to get any bitches,” she laughs, making you roll your eyes as a smile tugs at your lips no matter how hard you try to fight it.

“you know what, you might be right,” you chuckle. you almost feel bad for joking at his expense—your TA is nice, he’s young and kind and understanding, he takes time to slowly go over things when people have questions, he answers emails politely and quickly no matter how stupid the reason, he and has sensible rules that aren’t too strict. and, if you’re being honest, he’s rather handsome. “i wouldn’t mind giving him a blow job though,” you hum, “he’s cute.”

“gross,” shoko gags, “geto suguru is not cute.”

“he is too,” you argue, furrowing your brows as you huff, “he’s probably one of the few men i’ve seen who make a man bun work. and i know he’s ripped under that sweater, he has to be. i saw him leave the gym the other day, and his arms were huge.”

“he’s probably just trying to get bitches,” shoko snorts, “i bet he’s a virgin.”

“shut up,” you laugh, and for a moment, your mind wanders to your stupidly handsome TA.

you shouldn’t be thinking about him this way—fantasizing about anyone who grades your papers is a line you shouldn't really cross, but you can’t help it. your thoughts turn into what hearing his smooth, deep voice would be like if he moaned into your ear, or what his bangs would look like stuck to his sweaty forehead, or what his abs would look like clenching as he cums, or how breathless he’d sound as he whispers your name—

“wait, i just had an idea,” shoko interrupts your thinking with a gasp, making you shake out of your (very dirty) thoughts as you blink.

you clear your throat, trying your best not to sound flustered as you speak. “i’m scared to ask what the idea is—you’re not really known for having good ones,” you say warily. you can practically see her eyes roll without her being there with you—you’ve been friends with shoko long enough to know her like the back of your hand. and if you know her like you think you do, her idea is about to cause you a lot of stress.

“well, looks like i’m never trying to help you again,” she scoffs, “i could’ve written you a doctor’s note with a few of the copies i managed to snatch—but since you don’t want my help—”

“no, wait! you’re a genius,” you gasp happily, grinning wide as shoko huffs through the phone and mutters something faintly similar to ungrateful under her breath, “i could kiss you on the lips right now.”

“no thank you. you suck,” she hisses. you only giggle, relief flooding through your bones that maybe your grade is saved—and all thanks to having a friend who works in a doctor’s office. you silently send the universe your gratitude for having your best friend pursue a career in the medical field—the perks prove to be quite beneficial, it seems.

“just send me a picture of it and make it seem like i’m too sick to work on the paper, and i’ll tell him i won’t finish in time. a one day extension should be enough.”

“where would you be without me,” she grumbles quietly, “i’ll send it to you in a second. now please let me finish my paper in peace.”

“okay. love you, you’re the best.”

“i hate you.” the line clicks and you giggle, happily celebrating that you most likely have a saved grade and a free night to yourself now that shoko has so kindly offered you a solution. and of course, you’ll take this as a learning curve and appropriately plan to give yourself enough time for the next paper.

it’s not long before your phone dings and shoko’s contact pops up on your screen with, sure enough, a doctor’s note with today’s date and reason for the visit. shoko has even taken the liberty to make you seem contagious—just so you can skip class tomorrow for good measure. beaming, you text a quick thanks bestie <3 in response—too happy to even care that she sends you an emoji flipping you off.

and it doesn’t take you long to craft the email either, making sure to properly address him with a greeting, adding apologies for the inconvenience—and as the icing on the cake, a promise that it won’t ever happen again in the future. you click the photo to upload the doctor’s note, and without even a second thought, you click send.

and then within the split second that the email sends, and you realize just which photo you’ve accidentally clicked, your life flashes before your eyes.

“no,” you mumble, “no no no,” you chant as you quickly open the email you’ve sent, eyes wide and throat dry.

the photo is not the picture of the doctor’s note shoko sent—instead, it’s the picture right under it in your camera roll. the picture that’s not very suitable for sending your TA. the picture of your tits, just barely covering your nipples with your arm. the picture you took through giggles while changing after getting a little tipsy the night before (you’d felt just a tad bit sexy in your makeup.)

you sit in silent shock as you register that you just sent your TA your nudes—and just to make matters worse, he responds almost instantly, making your heart drop as you stare at his emailed reply with a shaky hand holding up your phone.

please meet me in my office tomorrow before class so we can discuss the above email.

suddenly, your worries are a lot more complicated than simply failing a class.

———————————————

you barely slept the night before, if at all, to be completely honest with yourself. the worst-case scenario runs through your head the entire time you toss and turn in bed. geto is probably going to report this, and then you’ll get expelled, and then you’ll never make it with a successful career, and then you’ll never be able to show your face to anyone you know again.

your feet are as heavy as lead as they drag along the walk to his room, and you contemplate turning back and never showing up to his office, maybe simply even just refusing to ever return to campus at all. maybe you can move countries and start over somewhere else—maybe you can change your name and make a new life for yourself.

but instead, you take a deep breath and knock on the door, waiting until you hear a soft come in before you enter. geto is seated at the desk, typing away at his laptop before meeting your eyes as you walk in.

“uh…hi,” you start, standing awkwardly by the door.

“hello,” he says, eyeing you slightly before looking back at his screen. if he has any ill feelings about last night, he does a good job of hiding it—you can’t read a single emotion on his face. somehow, that makes things worse. “have a seat,” he gestures at the chair across from him on the other side of the desk, waiting for you to seat yourself nervously in front of him.

you sit down, watching as he opens his mouth to start—but you begin speaking before he can. “look, i know that email was really inappropriate, and i’m really sorry—it was an accident, i swear! i meant to click on the picture above it, and i didn’t realize—”

“i understand,” he cuts you off as he holds a hand up, offering you a kind smile that makes you tilt your head in confusion, “it’s fine.” fine. fine? he’s…just fine with it? he’s just willing to let you off the hook? “i’m not much older than you,” he chuckles, “i’m not foreign to these things. i’m sure you’re active in…that aspect of your life.”

oh god—why you? why of all people did this have to be you? why is the world so hellbent on making your life miserable in every aspect?

you eye the coiled wires of the phone on his desk, and you contemplate strangling yourself with them before he can say something anymore embarrassing. but, you have to admit—this is far better than being told you’ve been reported to the dean for misconduct.

“i’m really sorry if it made you uncomfortable,” you fiddle with your fingers as you avoid his gaze, “i really did mean to send you a doctor’s note. i just didn’t realize i hit the picture under it.”

“like i said, it’s okay,” he reassures. calm. he’s almost too calm about this. too okay with it. almost like…like he didn’t mind at all in the first place.“but i wanted to make sure you’re aware of how fragile photos like that are.”

“huh?” you raise a brow. now, this is not where you expected the conversation to steer. you expected a lecture on how sending an educator your explicit photos is highly unprofessional, that it’s unacceptable and suggests other things—things that are completely against the rules and completely out of question to even consider.

“i mean, photos like those getting into the wrong hands can lead to really bad predicaments,” geto continues, clearing his throat as he closes his laptop and meets your gaze. he looks you dead in the eye as he speaks his next words, “and i wouldn’t want sensitive content of you circulating around campus.”

“right,” you nod slowly, “it’s not like i send them around, or anything. i was just a bit drunk that night, and i was in my room bored, and my makeup was cute so i was feeling good about myself…and…and…yeah…” you trail off.

why are you even explaining this to him in such detail? you silently curse yourself in your head, beating yourself up for running your mouth so much.

“oh, that’s good to know,” he nods, “i’m glad to hear that. no one else has possession of these photos?”

you eye him slowly, “nope,” you confirm. “just you—by accident, of course.”

you’re not sure if you imagine it, or if the situation as a whole is making you overinterpret everything that’s happening—but you’re almost certain you hear his breath hitch a little. he’s no longer looking at you, no longer burning you under his gaze like he was just a minute ago.

“right, by accident,” he repeats. it’s slow, like he’s reminding himself, like he has to speak slowly to process the information. “well, i hope this serves as a lesson for being more careful next time. you don’t want young men to save such pictures of yourself for ulterior motives.”

geto suguru, your teacher’s assistant for intro to literature 1301, seems to be rather invested in your well-being—more than a TA really should be. if you didn’t know any better, you’d say he’s almost disappointed that you sent him a significantly revealing photo of yourself by accident instead of intentionally. and, if you squint just a little, it almost seems like he doesn’t want anyone else to have the pictures. not because he’s concerned for you—but rather, because he wants to be the only one who’s seen them.

your thoughts from last night come flooding back, how he’s probably well built under his shirt, how shoko thinks he’s still a virgin, and especially how he probably looks and sounds when he’s overwhelmed with pleasure. and geto suguru might think he has you cornered like a cat would a mouse, but what he doesn’t know is that you’ve been the serpent the whole time, fangs ready to sink into him and devour him whole.

“you know, you seem like you speak from experience,” you can’t help but grin slightly.

now, logically speaking, this is wrong—this is pushing the kindness he so graciously showed you. by now, you should be fighting back tears as you figure out a way to break the news to everyone you know that you’ve had to receive an expulsion for sending your TA nudes. by now, your life should’ve been at an all time low, so you really shouldn’t be testing your luck.

but geto has practically seen your tits, so you’re not really sure there’s any point in acting like an angel around him—and he’s so incredibly hot in that button up shirt of his, sleeves rolled halfway up his arm. plus, the thought of him being your inexperienced TA, one who lets you strip him of his innocence as you slowly taint his purity—it excites you a little more than it really should.

he clears his throat, not meeting your eyes. this time, yours bore into him through a searing gaze that almost makes him shift uncomfortably.

“well, like i said, i am around your age, so i know how men’s minds work when it comes to these things—”

“so then tell me,” you raise a brow, smirking slightly as his jaw clenches, “is it because your mind works the same way?”

“now—”

“did you save my tit pics to your phone?” you ask bluntly. he hides the choked cough through a clearing of his throat—bingo, you think. almost instantly, the room shifts to him being nervous under your gaze as you eye him smugly.

something about sweet, kind, successful geto suguru, young and ambitious with a perfect gpa and a flawless resume, being hot and bothered by your breasts makes you swell with pride—and you think maybe…maybe giving him a blow job might not be such an outlandish thought after all.

maybe he wants it to be a reality just as badly as you do.

“w-what are you implying—”

“did they turn you on?” you interrupt, watching as his cheeks heat up a slight flush of pink, “did you wish i’d moved my arm down so you could get the full view?” he clears his throat, opening his mouth to speak, but you don’t give him the chance. “was that the first nude you’ve ever been sent?”

“i think that’s enough,” he says sternly, but his voice is slightly higher in pitch—which tells you everything you need to know. and you’re enthused. “keep in mind, i could have every intention to notify the dean of these—”

“but suguru,” you pout, rolling his first name off your tongue so sweetly, he can’t help but be hungry for another taste of something so decadent, “if you tattle on me, you’ll never get a chance to actually see my nipples this time,” you giggle, “isn’t that what you want?”

“i—”

“i wonder,” you grin wickedly, “did you act like every other guy our age and jack off to a random girl’s tits?”

you must hit close to home because he lets out a shaky exhale, jaw tight and fists clenched as his knuckles turn pale. he swallows thickly before finally meeting your eyes, face a deep shade of crimson as you grin at him widely.

“i…i’m not…immune to things of that nature,” he finally admits, voice strained as your grin widens. almost instantly, you’re standing up, locking the door behind you and making your way over to his side of the desk without hesitation. the cards have been dealt in your hand, all that’s left is to play them—and you’re pleased to say that the game is heavily leaning in your favor.

“wanna show me?” you ask with a sultry voice, “wanna show me how you fucked your fist last night? i’ll even let you see my nipples this time around,” you murmur as you seat yourself on his lap.

geto scoots his chair back and makes room for you, breathing heavily as his pants strain with the tent already forming in them. his breath hitches when your hand rubs over his erection—and he curses himself for being so pathetic as to let a few words from you let him get riled up like this. but you’re so pretty—always have been.

you sit in class and chew on the top of your pen, making it hard to avert his attention from your mouth. you tilt your head and furrow your brows so cutely when you’re confused, making it hard for him to concentrate on what he’s teaching. you laugh so sweetly out of glee when you do something correctly, and your voice shoots right through his heart—and sometimes, as ashamed as he is to admit it, straight to his dick too.

and he’s well aware of how bad of an idea this is, but this is everything he’s ever dreamt about—right here under the palm of his hands. literally. so he grips your hips tightly, bringing you to rub over him through your own pants. the friction makes him throw his head back, moaning quietly as your clothed cunt drags along his length. you chuckle, palms gliding over his chest through his shirt and feeling the firm muscle under your hands.

“does that feel good?” you ask, making him stifle a whimper as you glide over his nipples through his shirt.

your hands move to unzip his pants—and the best part? he lets you. he sits back and lets you free his aching cock from its confinements, he lets you wrap your fingers around his thick girth and squeeze gently, and he lets you pull the soft, low moans you’ve fantasized of hearing from his lips as you smear his pre cum along his shaft and stroke him slowly.

“f-fuck,” he grunts, hips bucking into your hand, lips tugging between his teeth as he pants harshly with every squeeze at the base of his cock. and because you really can’t help it, you lean down to kiss along his jaw, making your way to his neck and nibbling at his skin. he groans, whispering your name—it makes your thighs squeeze together as a dull ache forms between your own legs. “feels…feels so good,” he mumbles breathlessly, “so different when you do it.”

you giggle, watching him carefully so as not to miss a single reaction. “oh yeah? you know, shoko said you were probably a virgin,” you purr against his ear, making his hands clutch onto your hips tighter, “you seem to be proving that theory right.”

“d-don’t stop,” he pleads when your hand slows, making his hips thrust sloppily into your fist and try to keep your earlier pace going. but you’re mean—just a tad bit cruel, and you wanna see him ooze with shame. so you squeeze on his cock, stilling the movement and making him rasp as he buries his head into your neck with a whine.

“are you a virgin, suguru?” you hum, stroking his hair soothingly—but it contradicts the teasing tone of your voice.

his face burns in your neck, “yes,” he mumbles quietly, like the admission stings.

“how cute,” you pout, “so no one’s ever sucked your dick before?” he shakes his head slowly into the crook of your neck—but it’s not nearly as satisfying when he’s hiding, so you pull his face away despite his initial protesting. “i want to hear it,” you say firmly.

“fuck—no,” he groans, his face an even deeper shade of red than you thought was possible, “no, no one has ever…you know…”

“sucked your dick?” you grin.

“stop,” he whines. you chuckle quietly before climbing off his lap and sinking down to your knees before him, looking up at his shocked face with a smirk.

“wanna know something?” you hum, “i’ve thought about sucking your dick.”

“thinking about you TA like that?” he huffs a chuckle—but whatever semblance of composure he had, he loses as soon as you press a gentle kiss to the tip of his flushed cock, reddened and swollen at the head as beads of pre cum leak from the slit.

“just like you jack off to your student,” you shoot back, “you want it, suguru? do you want me to make you feel good?”

“god—yes,” he hisses, “get on with it,” he says as he’s throwing you a glare when you snicker up at him from in between his legs. you run your tongue along the tip, humming as you take in the taste of him before wrapping your lips around him and taking him down your throat.

the reaction is instant—geto slumps back against his chair, gasping as you swallow around him, bobbing your head up and down his length. you loosen your jaw, fucking him with your mouth, letting your tongue drag along the thick vein running across the underside of his cock. his hand falls to the top of your head while the other grips the armrest of his chair, skin turning white over his knuckles as he tightens his hold with each time the warmth of your mouth swallows around him.

“oh—g-god, shit that’s it,” he grunts, hips bucking into your throat as you pick up your pace. “feels fuckin’ amazing—oh, fuck.”

your hand wraps around the base of his member, pumping what won’t fit in your mouth so no part of him is left neglected. and when your other hand reaches for his balls, rolling the sensitive sacs in your hand and squeezing gently, he rewards you with a whine, voice lilting off to a high pitched moan as his hips thrust up instinctively. your nose brushes against his pelvis, and with a few more swallows, you feel him twitch in your mouth.

“fuck, fuck, ‘m c-close,” he pants, chest falling and rising erratically. you look up, watching through teary eyes as spit and pre cum dribble down your chin, taking in the pretty sight of his face flushed and his skin damp, bangs clinging to his forehead just like you imagined them to. “don’t stop—’m gonna cum…gonna…gonna make me cum,” he rasps.

you moan around him, and the vibrations send him over the edge, hips raising as he groans loudly. hot, thick ropes of his cum paint your mouth, seeping past your lips and dripping down your chin as you try your best to swallow what you can. geto sounds better than you expected—voice deep and raspy, but still the same smoothness it always holds even through the cracks as he brokenly calls your name.

the sound of his voice as he moans your name makes your walls clench around nothing and your clit throb. you let him fuck himself into your mouth through his high, riding out the last waves of his orgasm as pleasure burns through every nerve and every inch of him. when he finally slumps back into his chair, breathing harshly, you pull off of his cock, wiping the mess from your chin on your sleeve. and before you can open your mouth to tease him some more, you’re pulled back onto his lap, his mouth on yours, kissing you deep.

“this’ll have to be a secret,” he mumbles, “for both of us.”

for someone who’s never done anything like this before, geto rids you of your clothes almost expertly, lifting your shirt over your arms and sliding your pants off in an instant. he groans when his fingers trace over your clit—which you’re happy to know he can find—and feels the wetness of your slick drooling over the fabric.

“c’mon, suguru,” you hum, voice edging on a little impatient, “go ahead and touch a pussy for the first time.”

he huffs, yanking the fabric to the side before sinking his ring and middle fingers into you, knuckle deep as this thumb runs circles along your clit. you whine, grinding your hips down on his hand, impatiently waiting for him to move.

“for someone who’s experienced,” he grins, “you’re awfully impatient.”

you open your mouth to respond, but as soon as you try to retort, his fingers thrust into you, hitting the sensitive spot of your walls with ease and making you cut yourself off with a moan. he scissors his fingers, stretching you open as your head falls to his shoulder with soft whimpers, feeling him curl his digits deep into you. you whine as your clit hits over his palm, feeling the slow build up of the coil in your belly reach the snapping point.

“keep going,” you encourage, “‘m close, k-keep going—fuck, suguru!”

“god, you’re so pretty,” he breathes, watching as your head tips back and your mouth parts with a silent sob, watching as you break—all because of him. your walls spasm around his fingers as they bully into you and ride you through your orgasm, and your lips are slightly swollen from biting on them, eyes crinkled as you screw them shut, skin damp and glistening as sweat coats your forehead.

perfect—you look perfect, and suguru has fantasized about this image in his head for so long, he can hardly believe it’s a reality before him.

your hands find his long hair, tugging and twisting at the strands that slip between your fingers as the last few waves of your high crash over you.

the rest is a blur—somewhere through rough and sloppy kisses, through rolled hips and soft groans as you grind against each other, geto has managed to unclasp your bra, letting your tits bounce freely. his hands immediately cup around them, squeezing gently before his lips pull away and his eyes fall to your chest.

“fuck, they look better in person,” he grunts, rolling his thumbs over your pebbled nipples before pinching them lightly and rolling them between his fingers. you squeal, and your cunt is dripping—smearing your slick along his bare thigh as he teases over the sensitive skin. “feels good?” he mumbles.

“so good—don’t stop,” you moan, making his breath hitch in his throat. grinning, you open your eyes, hazy with lust, meeting his own unfocused gaze, “doing so well, suguru. making me feel so good.”

geto likes praise. you can tell that much alone from his hefty list of accomplishments on his resume. he’s beaming with pride the first day your professor introduces him in class while explaining how capable he is at his young age. he does a good job of staying humble, but you never fail to notice the twinge of excitement in his eyes when he’s praised for his impressive work ethic.

there’s no exception now either—his eyes search yours for every hint he can find that he’s doing a good job, that he’s doing well and giving you exactly what you want. you swear his cock twitches when you say the word good—and he seems to notice it too because there’s a shaky breath against your neck as he groans.

“fuck,” he breathes, hands falling to your hips and gripping tightly, desperately, when your hand grabs his throbbing cock, still hard and leaking pre cum from the reddened tip. “want to feel you,” he groans, “please.”

it’s all it takes for you to sink down on him, forehead pressing to his as you both moan against each other’s mouths. he’s big—long and thick, curved at an angle that makes him sink against your sweet spot almost perfectly, almost like he was made for you. it’s a shame he’s your TA, a small part of you almost feels a twinge of disappointment he can’t fully be yours.

“fuck, suguru,” you gasp, “so big, feels so good.”

he whines, helping lift your hips up and guide you down on his cock, your hips rolling against his, the sound of your moans and the slapping of skin filling up the small office. you’re sure anyone passing by could hear and figure out what’s going on—but it only thrills you more, making you slam down on him faster.

“so tight,” he grunts, “g-god, so fucking tight, i can’t—”

his hands are everywhere, they dig into your hips, glide up to cup your tits, and find the back of your neck to pull you close and meet your lips. he’s panting, sweat making strands of hair cling to his forehead as his skin flushes a deep shade of crimson. his hips buck up into you, meeting you halfway with desperate thrusts, trying to feel you deeper.

your head is spinning—not just from the way his thick girth splits you open, or from the way his tip slams against your spot so perfectly, but from the way his touch seems to light your skin up with every drag of his fingertips. and then he brings one hand down between your bodies, rubbing his thumb against your clit in harsh circles.

“are you gonna cum, suguru? cause i am,” you moan, “wanna be good and cum with me? fill me up nice and full?”

“sh-shit,” he lets out a shaky breath. he does want to fill you up—wants to cum deep into you so you’re dripping as you walk out of his office. so that when you sit in class and stare at him as he teaches class, you can’t help but think of the way he was buried to the hilt inside you just hours ago. “yeah…yeah, ‘m gonna cum. gonna fill you up, baby,” he groans, “stuff you full of my cum. want it?”

“wan’ it so bad, suguru,” you whine, “look so pretty when you cum, wanna see it again.”

and with a few more rolls of your hips, the squelching sounds of his cock slipping in and out of you all but drowned out but your pants, you fall off the edge—geto not far behind. you can feel his cock twitch as he shoots rope after rope of his thick cum into you, angling his hips up to fuck it deep into your pussy. it’s a mess, your slick mixed with his seed dripping along your thighs and coating your skin, but you can’t find it in you to care. and you also can’t find it in you to care that you’ll have to leave after this and see him again as you sit through his class. and you certainly don’t have it in you to care that you could both get in serious trouble if anyone realized this was happening.

instead, you cup his cheeks with a gentleness that makes his breath hitch in his throat with a strangled whine, and you kiss him, hard and deep.

“f-fuck, fuck—ngh, shit,” he gasps, against your mouth in labored pants. it’s never felt like this—cumming into his fist is one thing, but cumming into your tight walls, feeling them squeeze around him in sync with his high is something he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget. he thinks you’ve ruined touching himself for him, thinks he’ll never be able to go back to being fine with just his hand to keep him company when he’s aching between his legs.

after this, geto isn’t sure how he’s supposed to just forget this happened—or about you. his hands don’t stop guiding you onto his cock, hips not ceasing to fuck up into you until you’re both whimpering from sensitivity.

it’s too much—but somehow, it’ll never be enough.

you slump over him when he finally slows down to a stop, bodies a sweaty heap against each other on his chair as his arms wrap around you and his lips find your damp forehead for a soft kiss. you turn your head, pressing a kiss to his jaw in return.

“so,” you wriggle your brows, “can this count as extra credit?” you ask cheekily, feeling his chest rumble with a low chuckle as he pulls you tighter against his chest.

“sure. i’ll even give you enough extra credit opportunities to be top of the class,” he grins.

#[ tee’s kinktober 22 👻 ]#teepods.writings #thirstee!#fics.#geto x reader #geto x you #geto smut #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jjk smut #geto suguru x reader #geto suguru x you #geto suguru smut #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen smut

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augustinewrites · 1 year

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“you look lovely.”

the moment alhaitham says it, he knows it’s a mistake.

“thank you,” you reply a little tersely, gaze flicking to the group of nosy onlookers at his side before you excuse yourself and join nilou at a table across the tavern.

“what was that?” kaveh immediately questions, because the man is incapable of leaving anything unsaid. especially not after three glasses of wine.

“it was a compliment,” he enunciates, as if he were talking to a particularly stupid animal. “i was simply being friendly.”

“you’re not friendly,” cyno scoffs, accusation filling the booth. “you hardly bother with being polite.”

cyno isn’t wrong, because it’s no secret that alhaitham finds most people exhausting. he doesn’t willingly participate in idle chit-chat or schmooze for academic or political gain, like most of his colleagues.

“it’s quite presumptuous of you to imply that i go out of my way to be unkind.”

he just won’t go out of his way to make others feel good about themselves either. not when it was unprompted. people who talked just to fill space were annoying, and doing so just to be social was not one of life’s necessities.

yet…he’s slipped up, and his friends are realizing that you’re the exception.

“it’s not presumptuous at all,” kaveh argues rather dramatically. “you never even compliment me!”

“maybe i’m saving your compliment for when you move out of my house.”

tighnari, ever the mediator, cuts in before kaveh can throw his glass of wine at his roommate. “okay, that’s enough. we all know where this is going.”

kaveh turns his head with a huff that carries too much attitude for someone who hasn’t paid his half of the rent yet. alhaitham, being the bigger person, chooses not to say that, though. “i don’t understand why you’re all making such a big fuss about this.”

“well, you weren’t just being unusually nice. you were also flirting,” tighnari said flatly.

now, this is where things got complicated. he could easily annoy or gaslight - for lack of a better term - kaveh into dropping it. he could also bore cyno into leaving with a deeply boring dissertation on his disinclination for social interaction.

but tighnari was a lot more perceptive and patient than people gave him credit for. “you did it last week too, when you called her elemental healing techniques extraordinary.”

alhaitham had done that, and he’d forgotten that tighnari had also been at the bimarstan to discuss antitoxins with you.

deflection seems to be the only correct way to settle this manner. “to assume that a man’s admiration of a woman’s skill can only stem from underlying romantic feelings is incredibly ignorant.”

“of course,” the forest watcher agrees. “but it’s clear to anyone with eyes that you do have underlying romantic feelings for—”

“are we going to sit around and speculate all night? or are we going to play cards?” the scribe interrupts.

cyno and kaveh exchange a glance, and the look on tighnari’s face can only be described as smug. it’s not everyday that a haravatat scholar is bested in a verbal debate.

_____

and if he ends up at your place later that night…well, that’s completely arbitrary.

“you’re so obvious,” you huff, your hands yanking the hem of his shirt from his pants. “your friends were right there!”

his lips curve against your skin as he kisses up your neck. “so?”

“we’re supposed to keep this a se—”

he’s much too fast for you, moving up to press his mouth to yours, lips parting to deepen the kiss.

yeah, yeah, he knows that you’re right and that fraternizing is frowned upon in the akademiya, but what can he say?

he just loves you a lot.

#alhaitham x reader #alhaitham x y/n #genshin x reader #genshin fluff #genshin drabbles

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amberlynnmurdock · 4 months

Text

My Escape

Matt Murdock x Reader

Summary: The one time Matt is her escape in a loud situation, and she's his when he has a rough night as Daredevil.

From this lovely anon's request!

I hope I did your request justice, anon friend!

Warnings: anxiety symptoms described, gunshot sound

Words: Just under 2k

*not my gif, credit to owner*

Matt Murdock could take a beating—he could threaten a criminal over the edge of a roof without remorse and he could speak threats like they were prayers. One thing he couldn’t take? If she was feeling uncomfortable in any situation, in any way.

Matt was sitting across from her at Josie’s—they hadn’t reached that point in their relationship where there was a label and for that matter, if one saved the other one a seat at the table at Josie’s—and he was waiting for a moment to ask her if everything was okay. Foggy and Karen were playfully arguing about who should play winner at the pool table. Marci was taking a work call. But her?

She was anxiously drawing circles on the condensation of her beer bottle. She was looking around the bar, for nothing in particular, but for a sense of safety. She doesn’t need to worry about that, Matt thinks to himself. I’m here. Her knee was tapping at an incredible speed against her seat. No one else could feel it, but Matt could feel the vibrations through the floor up to his chair. Her heart was beating so fast it sounded like a loud thumping to Matt’s ears. She looked around again, biting her lip, flinching when she heard a group of men shout over at the TV.

Having enough of the environment, she excused herself from the table.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, barely at a volume anyone could hear her. Foggy and Karen didn’t acknowledge her exit and Marci stayed on the phone. Matt cocked his head to listen to where she was going—the bathroom.

She’d have to walk past a large group of bikers, ignoring their ogling glances and pushing past their rough leather jackets. Excuse me, Matt heard her politely say. His grip on his beer bottle tightened as he heard what some of them said under their breath. Immediately, Matt got out of his seat to follow her to the bathroom to make sure she was safe.

She closed the door behind her and stood back against it, eyes closed.

“Breathe,” she whispered to herself. She took a few deep breaths and felt her heart palpitating in her chest. Suddenly, she felt hot in her clothes and for moment thought she was going to pass out. Did I hydrate enough today? She placed a hand over her heart to calm herself down. You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine. Your friends are right outside.

“I shouldn’t have come,” Matt heard her whisper to herself. He was standing a few feet from the door, holding his cane in his hands, waiting for her.

After a few minutes, she opened her eyes and fixed her hair—the only thing she felt in control of.

When she opened the door, she was surprised to see Matt waiting for her.

“Matt,” she was startled. Relief washed over her like cold water, and suddenly she felt like she had come back down to reality.

“Hey,” he greeted softly, offering a smile. “You want to step outside for a sec?”

“I’d love that,” she breathed out.

It was much cooler outside than the dingy inside of the bar. The loud noises that came from the biker gang and other drunkards were nothing but muffled sounds as the door closed. Only the sounds of the city at night filled the space between them. Matt let her take a moment to herself as she leaned against the brick wall of the building and closed her eyes. He stood right next to her so his left shoulder was touching her right. He played with his cane in his hands, wondering when the right moment to speak would come. The last time it was the two of them, his hands had gotten lost in the tangles of her hair as they shared their first kiss. She had been so relaxed and carefree. Now, she was anxious and quiet. He wanted to show her that he could be the one she stole kisses from and the one who would be there for her when she wasn’t feeling herself.

Instead, Matt didn’t say anything. Maybe that’s exactly what she needed. He moved his cane to rest against the wall and gently trailed his fingers around her wrist until his hand was completely holding hers. She accepted it with gratitude, melting into his touch.

“Thank you,” she whispered, resting her head on his shoulder. Matt wanted to hide the smile on his face, but he couldn’t. Her head fit perfectly on his shoulder.

“I had a feeling something was wrong,” he mumbled. “Thought you could use a break from inside.”

“I just get overwhelmed,” she sighed. “Too much noise for my brain to comprehend all at once. And then I feel unsafe and like I’m going to pass out. Do you ever feel overwhelmed?”

Matt chuckled in irony—did he ever. She didn’t know about his heightened senses, but he could relate to her in so many ways. He’s learned to turn off certain sounds but sometimes, and especially at night, he could never have a completely quiet night.

“Yes,” was all he said. “I do. All the time.”

“Well,” she picked up her head, the warmth immediately disappearing from Matt’s shoulder. “If you ever get overwhelmed, don’t be afraid to come to me to escape.”

Matt doesn’t reply with words—instead, he places a kiss on her forehead. As long as she was his escape, he’d gladly be hers.

****

Matt hated guns.

He really hated guns.

Once a shot rang, the sound bounced against the walls and reverberated in his ears, throwing his whole balance off. Normally, he could shake it off, but tonight, the sound stayed. It stayed longer than when he left the alley it went off in. It stayed longer than it took to apprehend the gang member and throw him on the steps of the 15th Precinct. Now, as Matt patrolled the streets of Hell’s Kitchen in his Daredevil gear, he couldn’t control how loud the noises were in his ears.

Everything sounded sharp—high pitched in his ears, the kind that happened after attending a loud concert, the kind that stayed around for hours. Unfortunately for his case, it was ten times worse than the normal sound. Because his hearing was tuned up, it confused him when he smelt the different scents of the city—and believe him when he says they are the worst. Pungent garbage filled his nose, slick bitter pavement, rusting metal he can taste in the air.

It was hard to find his way to her apartment. Now that she knew his secret, she told him her apartment was his for free reign if he ever needed her. He tried not to burden her with his problems as Daredevil—knowing his secret was enough of a burden—so he saved his tickets to go to her apartment when he was desperately in need of her touch. Like he was tonight.

It was past midnight. He landed on her fire escape and tried his best to hear what she was doing through the windows of her apartment—dammit, the noises of the city were still too loud. He could barely hear anything coming from her apartment. Was she sleeping? Was she awake? He didn’t know, couldn’t tell. Suddenly, his cowl and mask felt too tight around his head, like it was squeezing him until he burst. Matt grunted in frustration as he placed his hands on his helmet.

“Hey, hey,” the sound of a sliding window filled his ears. Matt flinched from the noise but immediately relaxed when he realized it was her, awake. “Come in.”

She reached for him to grab her hands, and when she saw him struggle to find her touch, she knew it had been a rough night for him as the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Her city’s protector. Her savior. She leaned out the window more and took hold of his strong hands, which now felt so delicate and weak in hers. She helped him step inside, careful not to knock her potted plants over.

Matt let her guide him to her soft velvet couch. He was too weak and distraught from the gunshot to be able to guide himself. She gently lowered him to sit down, still holding his hands. She placed them in her lap and caressed his calloused, bruised knuckles. She winced at the sight of how purple and red they were, but continued to caress them. She had to be the stronger one now.

“Rough night?” She whispered.

“Yeah,” he breathed weakly. “Someone—had a gun,” he uttered, still hearing things all too loudly. She knew how much he hated guns—his sensitive hearing would be affected for hours. She couldn’t imagine the pain he was dealing with now, much worse than the bruises she saw on his hands.

His face was still beneath the red mask, only his nose and mouth visible. It was probably even worse to be constricted in his suit like this.

“Let’s get you out of this,” she hushed, knowing even the sound of her voice could make his sense feel worse. She slowly lifted his mask with her thumbs and popped it gently off his face. He looked dazed, now that his senseless eyes were visible. His hair was disheveled from the mask. She brushed her fingers through his chocolate brown locks and he closed his eyes.

“Shh,” she whispered. “Listen to me. Listen to my voice. Listen to my heart.”

Matt closed his eyes, using all his might to focus his hearing on hers. His ears were still ringing, but soon, after much concentration on the sound of her voice and steady heartbeat, the ringing finally began to fade. His senses went from feeling like a circus to a calm, still river. It was so quiet, that he could even hear his own breathing. And the smells… the smells of the city faded as her scent of lilies and marshmallows filled his nose in the most pleasant way. Everything was now overwhelmingly her.

She placed her forehead against his, the tips of their noses touching. She kept her hand on the back of his head and caressed his neck.

“Breathe with me,” she whispered. “Breathe with me.”

“I am,” Matt was finally able to hear his own voice, the sound of the gunshot ringing completely gone.

“You’re here with me,” she murmured, her lips brushing over his as she spoke. Matt nodded, foreheads still touching. Now that he was touching her, her entire being was encapsulating his senses. His world became her. His reality became her. An escape he never wanted to come back from.

“What do you hear?” She asked gently, nudging her nose on his cheek.

“You,” he breathed. “Just you.”

“Feel better?” She asked when she noticed his breathing had slowed down. He nodded.

“Yes,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

She kissed him in response, letting her lips linger on his. They tasted salty from his sweat, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care what state he was in—she’d always kiss him. Soon, she asked if he wanted to spend the night with her in her apartment. Matt never agreed to anything faster. After a few moments on the couch, trading touches and chasing kisses, they went to her bedroom, where Matt truly understood what it meant she said they could be each other’s escape.

#matt murdock #matt murdock x reader #matt murdock x you #daredevil #daredevil x reader #request #anon request #my escape #charlie cox

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dyaz-stories · 4 months

Text

found an island in your arms || Eun Hyuk x Reader

word count: 1.4k

warnings & tags: angst, eun hyuk deserves a hug and he gets one, eun hyuk is a little controlling towards the reader

previous one-shot

A/N: my entry for day two of @neohumanmonster's Turning a New Leaft event! Prompt: Change in Nature. While this is in relation with yesterday's entry, there is no need to have read it to understand this one, it just provides a little more context.

Eun Hyuk is more tense lately, more irritable. Everyone can feel it, though most people chalk it up to the dwindling rations and the growing fear that the army simply isn’t coming to save you. You can tell that Eun Yu doesn’t believe in that, though, and neither do you.

Eun Yu doesn’t seem to have an actual explanation for her brother’s out of character behavior. She pokes and probes and throws out cutting remarks to see what sticks, but she doesn’t seem all that worried either.

“He does that sometimes,” she answers you bluntly when you ask if she thinks Eun Hyuk is doing alright. “There’s probably something he wants to fix. I’m sure he’ll get there. He just needs a little push.”

That doesn’t satisfy you. You don’t like to sit idle while people are in pain, don’t like to sit idle at all, actually, even if someone is hammering that you’re doing it ‘for the greater good”. But the thing is, you and Eun Hyuk… don’t get along that well. You clashed a bunch in the beginning, before you were outvoted by the people who thought Eun Hyuk would bring them safety, at least. It was a short-term solution, what he was offering, you’d argued — to which he had replied that yours was a death sentence.

You still admired him. The decisions he had to make on a daily basis couldn’t be easy ones to make, nor were the sacrifices. Of course, you still often believed he chose wrong, but you had to admit that he had kept most of the group alive until now, and considering the circumstances, that was truly impressive.

You just wish that he would let you do more. Instead, he’s constantly getting in your way, particularly when it comes to helping the infected. ‘Your abilities could help the whole group’, he’d say. ‘We can’t afford to lose them because you trusted someone you shouldn’t have.’ It drove you insane, how easily he’d interfere, always with these pseudo rational arguments that you never really bought were genuine ones.

It felt as if they were just for show, and as such you never felt all that guilty for going against his orders.

You weren’t dumb. You wouldn’t put others in danger unless they were willing to risk themselves for something. But you also refused to let others get hurt through your own inaction. So if you had to sneak around to see Hyun-Su’s in order to treat his wounds and bring him food, then you’d do as you damn pleased, and neither Eun Hyuk nor anyone else had any say in that. It was your life, and it was your decision.

Still, you can’t say you’re thrilled when you find Eun Hyuk waiting for you when you exit Hyun-Su’s so-called room. He’s leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets, and he gives you an annoyed look when you come out.

“What did I tell you?” he asks you coldly.

You grimace. The two of you are almost the same age, and you hate that patronizing tone he insists on taking with you.

“Hyun-Su needed help,” you say. “There is a limit to what even you can ask of me.”

He’s silent for a while. You notice him clenching his fists, and something unusually dark passes in his eyes. His jaw tenses, a vein bulges on his forehead. You think you’ve done it now, that you’re going to get an earful — even if you still don’t quite understand why. There’s simply no reason for him to care that much, and the lack of control is blatantly unlike him.

You’d run into him often, before this whole— thing— started. He was always quiet but sweet, would smile politely when you got in the elevator, maybe exchange niceties with you when you met in the lobby. He’d leave early and come home late, with the look of someone who hadn’t taken a breather all day, but it never appeared to have any effect on his temper.

That’s what’s throwing you off right now. How angry he seems to be.

After what feels like an eternity, he exhales, relaxes his hand.

“I guess you’re right,” he says, but his voice sounds too even now, like it’s forced. “I can’t force you to do anything. I just wish you’d consider that—” He cuts himself off the second his voice becomes strained again, looks away from you.

None of that is normal for him.

“Eun Hyuk,” you say, taking a step towards him. “Is there something wrong?”

He stares in your eyes for a second, and for that second, you think that maybe he’ll give you an honest answer.

“Everything is wrong,” he says in the end, and again, you know it’s nothing more than a half-truth. Then again, you can’t blame him for not telling you. “Can you even remember the last time thing went right for us?”

It’s not that he’s lying, it’s just that you know he’s not being genuine, and so you don’t bother continuing that line of discussion. It unnerves the other residents when you drop a conversation that is clearly going nowhere, makes them think you’re avoidant, but you think Eun Hyuk understands it. Close enough, anyway.

“You should still tell someone,” you tell him.

“I— What?”

“I get why you wouldn’t want to tell me,” you say with a shrug. “I still think you should tell your sister. Or Jae-Heon, I guess, if you’re more comfortable with that, but I get why it can’t be me.” You take a step towards him, put a hand on his shoulder. You do it slowly, as if you were trying not to spook a skittish cat. Eun Hyuk glances down at your hand, but makes no movement to get rid of it. “I’m here if you need me.”

He scoffs, looks away from you, pushes his glasses higher on his nose. But you don’t let go, and he doesn’t actually move away from you.

“I mean it,” you say softly. “If you want to talk, or if there’s any other way to help you. Just let me know.”

He closes his eyes. You wait for it to sink in, then take your hand off, hoping you haven’t pushed a boundary already. As you break contact with him, though, he grabs your wrist without warning, and pulls you into him. Your chest collides with him as he wraps both arms around and his chin comes rest on your shoulder.

You’re surprised by how strong his embrace is, how he clearly doesn’t want to let go.

“Eun Hyuk?” you squeak.

“Just— Just give me a second,” he says, voice so low you barely hear it. “Please. Just let me have that.”

You feel your heart almost breaking at the desperate plea. Slowly, you close your arms around him, start rubbing his back. You’re not sure what’s happening, not completely, but you know he’s warm against you, and you know you need that contact, too.

Seconds go by, until he takes a step back, clearing his throat. He refuses to meet your eyes, but you don’t miss that his cheekbones are dusted pink now.

“Sorry, I—” Then he lets out a long exhale, and appears to get himself back under control. “You offered.”

You’re not fooled in any way by that, but you still nod.

“And the offer still stands. If you need any help, you know where to find me.”

Another long exhale.

“You— Why— Why would you—”

“Because you need help,” you answer. “You’re the one who’s looking after everyone, and I want to make sure there’s someone looking after you, too.” Eun Yu does, sure, but Eun Yu’s a kid, and that’s a lot of responsibility to put on her shoulders.

“Thank you,” Eun Hyuk mumbles, still not looking at you. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Then he gives you a vague nod and leaves the hallway without once looking back.

Your eyes follow him, worried. You’re afraid he’s reaching his breaking point. This situation is revealing things about people, about yourself, too, even if you don’t like looking at it. Clearly, it’s changing you.

You can only hope that Eun Hyuk will withstand that change — and be by his side for as long as he needs you to.

hope you're enjoying this! tomorrow's entry will be for hyun-su ^-^ as always, reblogs and comments are strongly appreciated and keep me motivated and writing :)

more writing for sweet home

#sweet home #sweet home netflix #sweet home imagine #sweet home x reader #lee eunhyuk #lee eun hyuk #lee eunhyuk x reader #lee eun hyuk x reader #eunhyuk x reader #eun hyuk x reader #my writing

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rapz-rites · 1 year

Text

Family Time

Damian Wayne x Reader Headcanon

Meeting Damian’s family and getting close with them

A/N: This is my first time writing ANYTHING so plz be nice. I won't do any major writings, just small head canons and maybe rabbles. Saving the big stuff for all you professional writers.

Word Count: 1,704

Warnings: Jealous Damian, injured reader, threats, implied smut

Meeting the Waynes

You and Damian have been dating for about 5 months now.

Damian has already met your parents and they LOVED HIM.

He was polite, respectable and always said the right things at the right moment. DAMN HIM!

Now it was time to meet his family.

You’re pacing back and forth questioning your entire existence while Damian is sitting on the edge of your bed trying to calm you down.

“Do my clothes look good enough? Does my hair look good? What if they think I’m with you for your money? What if they think that I’m a gold digger? Do they know that my family is also very wealthy? What if they think I’m a stuck up spoiled brat? OMG WHAT IF THEY HATE ME?”

You’re digging yourself a deep hole of negativity until Damian grabs you by your shoulders forcing you to look at him.

“Beloved. You’re going to be fine. Everything about you is perfect and my family will love you”

He always knew what to say and when. DAMN HIM!

“Thank you. Ok. I think I’m ready, let's go!”

As damian pulls up to the manor, you start to rethink your decision

“Is it too late to cancel lunch? Would they believe I suddenly got ill?”

“Beloved, as I said before they’re going to love you”

As always he was right.

You and his family immediately hit it off and got along well.

A little too well for his liking.

He knew his family would like you but what he didn’t know was that you would spend more time with them instead of him. DAMN HIM!

Bruce

Bruce loved you for his youngest son

Damian as had a girlfriend before, Raven, but after they broke up, he thought Damian would never open himself up to anyone again

Even though you and Damian are a kind of opposites and balance each other out, you understand him and what he’s gone through

He was the one of the first people, after your parents and Alfred, to learn about your relationship

Though business isn’t your first option as a major, you still want to learn as a backup

Who better to learn from than the man who runs on of the top companies in the country

Bruce offers to teach you the basics and even a small internship at WE

You refuse the internship but gladly take the lessons

Dick

Dick is an acrobat

You did gymnastics for 4 year

What could go wrong?

A LOT

Dick tries to teach you a double full out

You already perfected a full out

You’ve always had trouble perfecting your landings

It didn’t come a surprise to you when you were able to perfectly do the flip but mess up the landing to bad you twist your ankle

Damian is furious with Grayson for teaching you suck a difficult move knowing there was a chance of you getting hurt

Damian is about to lunge at Dock ready to attack until you stop him

“Damian, stop. I’ve twisted my ankle plenty of times trying new gymnastic moves. I’ll be fine in like 2 weeks. You don’t need to hurt Dick, I knew the risks”

“Ok. But if Grayson teaches you another move and you get hurt, he will need to sleep with both eyes open”

Normally, Dick would be somewhat frightened by one of Damian’s threats but he’s in shock from how quickly you calmed him down

He’s going to call you from now on everytime Damian is angry

Jason

You and Jason connect over your interests in books

You two form your own book club

You two discuss the book you picked out for the month and talk about many other books you two have read in the past

Both of you love to read a book and watch the movie/show that goes along with it

You two argue over which aspects were better in the book or the movie/show

“Elena and Katherine are blonde in the books though”

“I know that Jason. I read the book too. But let’s be honest Katherine is better as a brunette than a blonde. It fits her personality in the show way more.”

“You’re right.”

“I think it’s Nina Dobrev.”

“It definitely is.”

“I would have liked to see angel Elena though.”

“ME TOO!”

Tim

Tim had a nack for tech

You were attached to your phone

Of course you two got along

Tim taught you tricks on the computer and showed you secret games companies hide

You had learned from Damian that Tim was a bit of a caffeine addict

Damian’s words were “Drake will be the caffeine addicted idiot in front of a screen or head deep in a case”

You take it upon yourself to find caffeine substitutes to try and help his addiction

He is reluctant at first but gives it a try

After a few months Tim is drinking less coffee than before

He still drinks coffee but limits himself to only 3 cups a day, much better than 2 an hour

He drinks more water and gets in more sleep than before

Damian who never openly admit it but he’s happy his older brother is being healthier and taking better care of himself

Duke

You and Duke bonded over your similar senses of humor

It also helps that he’s also on TikTok as much as you

The two of you jokingly talk in TikTok lingo

“Bombastic side eye”

“Criminal offense side eye”

“Duke this is probably the most important question I’m about to ask… Team Hailey or Team Selena”

“I’m offended that you even have to ask. Team Selena til the day I die. Alex Russo practically raised me”

Everyone else is looking at the two of you confused

Damian is used to this already

When you asked him the same question you went on a 3 hour tangent and it was evident who’s side you were on

Damian didn’t care about “silly celebrity drama” but since he knew it would make you happy, he chose Selena

Cass

Cass is a pretty quiet girl, almost mute

With family she barely ever talks, with strangers she uses sign language

Once you learned Cass communicated mostly with sign language you took it upon yourself to learn

When you we were first introduced to Cass you signed

“Hi! My name is Y/N, you must be Cass. My sign is rusty, I’m still learning. Nice to meet you”

Cass gave you a small smile and you were ecstatic

According to Damian Cass almost never smiles and even if she does its for a split second

You both enjoy each others quiet company, watching movies or painting nails and braiding hair with Stephanie

The more time you and spend with Cass the more she opens up to you

After a few months, she starts giving you short answers without signing

“If you could only wear one color nail polish for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?”

“Black…”

“Good answer”

Steph

You and Steph connect as feminists

“Anything a boy can do we can do better”

Steph often includes you in any competitions he has that are girls vs boys

Does she include you because you can be used against Damian?

Yes

Are you upset about it?

Absolutely not

Why?

You love beating Damian in any possible way

Other than competitions, you both love pranking the boys

You two prank damian the least because you know well enough that damian can hold grudge and you love to cuddle at night

Pranking Tim is best

Before he got better he would fall for anything because he was too sleep deprived

He would fall for the simplest broken screen video on youtube almost every time

Once he started getting better, you two had to up your game

Your favorite prank on Tim was the fake virus that played the SHrek opening over and over on blast

Alfred

You couldn’t forget about Alfred now can you

Whenever you enter the manor Alfred is always the first one to greet you

Whenever you are waiting for Damian at the manor you go straight to Alfred and talk with him

You often assist him with whatever he’s doing

Baking, cooking, cleaning

He finds it refreshing a young person would help him

The others would try and help but often with miss up and make some kind of mess

One year they tried to make Alfred’s favorite cake for his birthday… and failed… miserably

They didn't include Damian because eventually he would take over and the cake would basically be made by him and not all of them, although he would’ve made it perfectly. DAMN HIM!

After 3 failed attempts they opted to buy a cake they knew Alfred would like from his favorite bakery downtown

Though they ruined the kitchen, Alfred was touched at the effort they put to try and make his favorite cake

Even though, none of them, except Damian, are allowed to cook or bake in the kitchen without his supervision

Back to Damian

It soon becomes evident as you spend more time with his family that Damian is jealous

Damian loves that you get along with his family, but he misses the quality time between just the two of you

You felt bad because you thought you were neglecting your boyfriend

So you made the executive decision to make it up to him

“My parents are out of town for the next two weeks”

“Business trip?”

“Yup. Do you want to spend the week?”

“No siblings?”

“Nope just you”

You lean in placing a soft kiss on his lips and pull back

You giggle when you see him lean in for more and he gives you an unamused look on his face because you refused to kiss him back

“So do you want to spend the week? We’ll have the place all to ourselves”

“Let's go. I already have my bag packed”

That entire week is just you and Damian hanging out and enjoying each others company

You give him all the kisses and cuddles he wants

He even knows just want to say to get more 😉

DAMN HIM!

OMG OMG OMG!!! I did it. Took me a hot minute but I got it done. I wish it was this easy with my assignments and homework. But I hope you enjoyed this.

#damian wayne #damian wayne x reader #Damian Wayne headcanon #first time writer #i hope you like this #batfam x reader #dick grayson x reader #jason todd x reader #tim drake x reader #cassandra cain x reader #stephanie brown x reader #Duke Thomas x reader #bruce wayne x you #damian wayne x you #damian al ghul x reader #damian al ghul #damian wayne x female reader

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piratefishmama · 9 months

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Forgiven not Forgotten | Part 9

It was an interesting kind of chaos, what happened in the following moments. Joyce collared a passing nurse, Jonathan ran out to call the house, Hopper kept Lucas from leaping at the love of his young life because “watch out for the wires, kid” she was still hooked up to all kinds of life saving machines, and then most of them were shooed out so the professionals could do their work.

El couldn’t be moved, fully prepared to wreck anyone’s day who even dared try to move her, and Lucas had been there from dawn till dusk, ignoring established visiting hours and all kinds of flak from staff to just be there. They were the only two allowed inside while the professionals made sure Max would stay awake.

That she wouldn’t slip back under.

Then came the hoard.

They’d routinely ignored how many visitors were allowed to a single room. It was ridiculous, the hospital staff both hated them and felt endlessly endeared by them. They’d survived some kind of classified hell and clung to each other both through it, and after it. It didn’t matter that Max’s actual parent was still absent, that she, like others, hadn’t come back yet, or that El had shaken her head once when someone had asked her if she could find Susan.

It didn’t matter, Joyce had loudly declared “I’m her mother now so let me see my GODDAMN DAUGHTER… PLEASE!” When someone had tried to stop them on the first day.

Arguing with Joyce Byers? Not a fun thing to do. She was always so polite about it you couldn’t even be mad at her.

The whole house filled that hallway though, even though they couldn’t do anything, even though they couldn’t go in, even though they couldn’t help, just being there, knowing that behind that door, she was awake despite all odds, was enough to keep them all there. Obstructing hallways. Being general nuisances, and waiting.

Just waiting. Waiting long enough for Eddie to gather just enough courage to sit down beside Steve who’d taken a seat on the floor, not for lack of available seats, just that his seat was to the left of the door to Max’s room, the closest he could be without being inside that room.

“You know there’s chairs, right Munson?”

“Mmn I know, but… I was part of the whole… save Max plan, so I think I’ll stay right here, second to closest to the door.” Steve let out a single breath of a laugh through his nose. Just one little puff and a curl of his lip to show he found that amusing. “Are… are we okay, Steve?” Probably not the best time to bring it up but impulse control was never his strong suit. And people weren’t paying them as much attention as most would usually pay to him while he was around other people.

Attention focused elsewhere on pacing or on entertaining themselves while they waited.

“Why wouldn’t we be okay?”

“God isn’t that just a question and a half. I dunno, Steve, you tell me since you ditched me the first chance you got back at the house. I know we weren’t on the greatest of terms back in ‘86 but like… I’m pretty sure we bonded at least a little in the Upside Down so… I know there’s stuff I’m missing… your agent Stinson, whomever the fuck she was, she got those photos from somewhere… shit like that isn’t just easily doctored I know that an—an I know—I know I wasn’t dead, so… if I hurt you, or I hurt the kids, or I don’t know… if I did something that I can’t remember I just—look, Eleven, your superhero kid, is weirdly comfortable around me for being a total stranger alright? So I know I’m missing huge chunks of a story, but I’m sorry okay?”

“You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions, man. But you cant apologise for something you don’t remember doing. Those apologies don’t mean shit.” Steve wasn’t looking at him, he was looking down at the floor, his brow pinched tight as if trying to think of the safest way to go about his next words. “For the record though. You saved our asses. Or… he did.” He. He. Someone not Eddie, but definitely looked like Eddie. “Whatever he was. El was the only one who recognised him.”

“You’re gonna have to give me more than that Steve… who was he and why—”

“I cant.”

“You’re the only one who can.” The only one he knew he could trust with the knowledge that actually he wasn’t totally gone during those two years.

“Alright, I won’t. You’re safer this way.” At least Steve cared enough to keep him safe, didn’t make that answer any less annoying though. “And I know that’s annoying but… just put it behind you. Be grateful that you’re alive and you’re here. Like I said we are.”

“Are you? Because so far I’ve just been left on my own among total strangers and it’s stressing me the fuck out, you can’t just—you can’t just leave me on my own in the dark after all this, Steve, it’s not fair.” He had a disadvantage from the jump, they all seemed to know him.

He didn’t know most them.

He knew Mike, Erica, Lucas, and Dustin out of the kids, and Robin, Nancy, and Steve out of the older lot.

He sort of knew Hopper through run ins with the law, didn’t really know Joyce although she was easy to feel comfortable around. He didn’t really know Jonathan, or Will, or El, and he damn sure didn’t know any of the kids parents.

They had this comradery that he didn’t have, they had a mini apocalypse to bond through, he had a short experience of it during which he’d died. Didn’t even survive the opening act. The world had moved on, and he was just left with this knowledge that somehow… despite him not being there. His body had been.

And the only one he’d managed to sort of bond with during that whole man hunt back in ‘86, didn’t seem to want anything to do with him now. “…I know… I’m sorry about that” in Steve’s defence, it felt like a much more meaningful apology than his own had been. “We should have taken you with us, there’s no excuse, El just wanted to hang out with you again I guess”

“Again?” Gentle prods, gentle pokes, he’d learn more if he just… kept chiselling bit by bit.

“She doesn’t think like most people, to her you’re her friend. You helped her. You saved her life, man… and she knows—she knows it wasn’t actually you, but—”

“But it’s my face, isn’t it?”

“Mmhm.”

“Something was parading around in my body like some kind of puppet, wasn’t it, Steve?” Steve finally turned to look at him, a pained little frown on his face as he realised how much he’d just… let slip. How easily Eddie had drawn it from him. How weak he still was when it came to Eddie Goddamn Munson. He opened his mouth, but neither heard what he’d have said, because the door opened just before he spoke, two nurses leaving, the third remaining by the door, a smile on her face that promised great things.

Steve was up on his feet, their conversation shelved, the others clamoured forward too, having been politely ignoring whatever he and Steve had been discussing on the floor in favour of keeping themselves entertained.

“Miss Mayfield is stable, awake, and in good spirits, now I know you all want to see her, but please… maximum five to a room, there’s two in there already so three go in at a time, maximum, you hear me? Three more. Maximum.” A chorus of nods were their answers, although the nurse knew they wouldn’t actually listen. So far that seemed to be the running theme with this particular group of survivors. “Alright… go ahead.” She’d leave them to it anyway.

Wasn’t her job to enforce the rules.

Didn’t even need to look to see damn near all of them tried to get in the moment she rounded the corner out of sight.

#PirateWrites #ForgivenNotForgottenFiclet #Steddie #Post!S5 #Mentions of Kas Eddie #Hurt/Comfort #Miscommunication #Slowburn #Poor Eddie out here thinking his only transgressions were made during the apocalypse #he's so out of the loop #Adding slowburn to these tags cause lmao slowburn

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zialltops · 4 months

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honeysuckle’s & huckleberry’s

After four years away at collage, you’re finally home with the tools and knowledge to save your family ranch. That is, if their ranch hand would stay out of your way.

Or: Ranch hand Joel doesn’t know how to handle the return of his bosses prodigy daughter, her snarky little attitude, or her sinfully tight jeans.

a/n: this chapter gets me right in the feels every time. I love watching the way Joels character changes and his train of thought shifts. I hope you guys like this chapter because it was so fun for me to write 🥹❄️

Masterlink

Chapter 3: Blue

As it turns out, extreme levels of dopamine in his brain after a bone chilling orgasm is exactly what Joel needs to level himself out while you’re sitting beside him in the passenger seat. It doesn’t make him stop thinking about it, but it does keep the tiny little gremlin in his head that tells him to pop a stiffy at bay. The only thing he has to worry about is his eyes, keeping them off of you and on the icy driveway as he pulls away from the house. The snow has started to melt, leaving behind a sloppy mud that makes the truck slip and slide. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get your car out, even if I can I don’t think you’ll be able to drive it in this.”

You make an exaggerated groan and he doesn’t even need to look to know you’re rolling your eyes at him from your spot beside him on the bench seat. “You just love deciding what I can and can’t do, don’t you? You know I lived here my whole life right?” He dares a glance over and you’re staring at him with your eyebrows knitted together and your arms crossed. His eyes tick down and he wants to kick himself in the head for even looking because your shirt is leaving nothing to his imagination and little to wonder about how good they would look bare with his dick between—jesus christ, Joel, get yourself together Man. “I wasn’t doubting your ability, I’m suggesting that it would be dangerous for you to even try.”

The truck hits the pavement and most of the snow has melted, but the freezing temperatures leave a icy film across the top. He had to go easy on the breaks and hope to god the truck makes it up the inclines he has to take to get to your car. The last thing he needs is to be stuck out here in the cold with just your bodies to keep each other warm. He absolutely one hundred and ten percent wont survive that, not without absolutely humiliating himself. God, he fucking hates how much you affect him against his will.

“Since when do you care about what’s too dangerous for me, huh?” Why in the hell is he arguing with you like you’ve been married for twenty years? “You left me in the snow to freeze to death in my car four days ago, why am I going to listen to you about whats too dangerous for me?” You have a point, but so does he so he just shuts his fucking mouth and keeps on driving.

It takes twice as much time to get down the pass than it usually does, but the lower Joel gets, the more the ice melts into cold water and mud. By the time he gets to your car, the road is clear but the car is still sunk down to the rims in the embankment. Theres a uneasy sort of silence in the truck, something lingering around the cab of the old blue pickup that feels like shame and embarrassment.

“Texting, huh?” He breaks the silence with a crude joke that earns him a deep glare. “Fuck you, asshole. You know, I really don’t know what it is that my parents see in you. My mom always said how polite you were but I don’t believe that for a second after knowing you for a few days.” You prop open the door and climb out into the snow with your car keys in one hand and the other holding your unzipped jacket closed. Your stupid fucking shoes and that tight ass—fuck.

How is he supposed to be okay with the way you make his body react when you literally curse the ground he walks on, thinking he’s the worst thing that ever happened to this damn town? He gets out after you and slips on his gloves to keep the cold off his hands. The winter always leaves him cracked and brittle from cold work, sometimes his knuckles bleed and his bones ache for gentle hands instead of hard callouses and a cowboys scars. “You don’t know anything about me.” He reaches into the back for a chain while you open the door to your car. “I know enough. I know you’re bullheaded and selfish. I know you’re rude and you don’t care about anyone but yourself.”

Fucking bitch, like he’s not allowed to have some self preservation after the life he’s lived, always cleaning up Tommy's mess and abandoning his own life in the process. “Don’t act like you’re any better.” You lean out of your car and make a face at him while he hooks the chain to the front of the truck. “Me? You don’t know a damn thing about me.” Like you didn’t just spout off about all the things you think is wrong with him—he can do that too. He has a fucking list of reasons you piss him off. “I know that you’re entitled and expect people to be at your beck and call. I know you’re privileged with no regard for anyone around you.”

He follows the chain to your car and hooks it to the chassis underneath. “Well were just a match made in fucking heaven then, aren’t we?” Its dripping with distain and bitterness, so Joel ignores the comment no matter how much his brain runs and runs about all the way he could be made for you, the way’s he’d fuck that attitude right out of you until you’re quiet. But he can’t and he won’t, he’ll probably spend the rest of his life wondering what you’d feel like, the way you’d shake and scream and beg for more—but wondering is far as that fantasy will ever go.

Because at the end of the day, you’re still Hank's daughter and you’re still half his age and—you hate his guts, which is definitely a deal breaker when it comes to getting someone in your bed. So he keeps his mouth shut and heads back to his truck to tug your car out. “When you’re out, hit your brakes so you don't slam into me.” You sink down into your seat and glare at him. “I’m not stupid!” He never said you were, but he doesn’t expect you to know everything, so he does his best to be the helpful asshole he usually is.

He pulls the little car out, manages to keep the chain tight until it's back on the road and the brake lights come on in front of him. He puts the truck in park and hops out to unhook the chain, but you don’t open the door. When the car is unhooked, you’re already pulling away without a word of thanks. Joel knows he’s well past earning the way you treat him, but that doesn’t make him stop wishing he could just get you out of his head already, wish he could hate you with that same mind altering disgust that you have for him, maybe watching you drive away would be easier.

Two months pass much like the first week. Joel keeps to himself, you frown at him and avoid him where you can. When you do see one another, Joel feels like you’re always at each other's throats. Everyone in the house has started to notice the distaste in your strained relationship, if Joel is willing to let himself call it that. It’s more like a forced acquaintance. Either way, your parents even see the way the two of you bicker and fight, but rarely does anyone but Tommy make comments about it. Tommy likes to bring it up any chance he gets, usually when Joel is alone just to rile him up further. He says stupid shit, like “I bet the sex you guys would have would be crazy good” when it’s just him and his brother at the dinner table and it makes Joel stiffen and run off to the cabin without his plate or a goodbye.

He sneaks in later for his plate and catches you in the kitchen with red eyes and tear stained cheeks, but you cross your arms over your chest and try not to meet his eyes. You’re dressed in just a big tee shirt and he can see from your bare feet to the tops of your thighs. He’s the luckiest son of s bitch in the world that he just worked himself over twice because he would be tenting his sweatpants right there in the kitchen.

That was three days ago and he still can’t get the sight of tears in your eyes out of his mind. He wonders if he did that, if he’d said something that struck a nerve and there you sat at the kitchen table after everyone was tucked in bed, crying your pretty eyes out. He feels like the worst fucking person in the world because of it, so he stays away even more, makes himself sad little ramen noodle dinners in his sad little hunting cabin he shares with his brother and he stares at his ceiling wishing it was you he was looking up at—smiling instead of frowning for once—all he wants is to see you smile. Really smile, for him, at him. He wonders what your eyes look up when they light up, wonders what your skin feels like when its not shaking in rage.

But between all the avoiding and hiding, Joel didn’t even realize how quickly Christmas had snuck up on him. He checks his phone sometime after lunch, his day spent getting the herd ready for another brutal snow storm. He’d been to town that morning for hot feed to keep them warm and any supplies they might run out of while snowed in, while deep, dark clouds hung in the distance. He was leaving the feed store when the clerk waved at him with a polite “Merry Christmas!” When he made it into the truck, he pulled out his phone and realized the date, December 24th. It was Christmas eve and it was an absolute miracle that stores were open right now. It was only eleven thirty and the sign posted on the door says it closes at two.

He starts to put the truck in reverse, turning around to look behind him while he pulls out. When he does, something inside of him doesn’t let his foot off the brakes. He thinks about you—in Christmas pajamas on the floor opening dumb little gifts from your parents because it's the first Christmas they’ve had with you for years. He imagines what they’d get you, probably things a grown adult needs—products, socks, underwear, (don’t even go there Joel) and he thinks about how disheartening that must be to a woman like you, used to proper city living now, expensive gifts and pretty things. You deserve pretty things, Joel wants to give them to you.

He turns around, throws the truck in park and jumps out, heading back into the feed store. He makes a bee-line for the glass jewelry case sitting in the corner, partially scavenged through since it is the day before christmas and all—he should have thought about this weeks ago. He scans through everything, shiny horse shoe earrings, matching pendants, jeweled cowgirl boots on a chain and turquoise ring sets. None of them look good enough, none of them scream you, sweet you—fuck, he’s seen it, when you’re so damn sweet, when you think no one is looking—Joel is, always looking.

He kneels down, scanning the bottom shelf of the case when he spots a simple golden chain and a bumble bee dangling delicately from its tiny hoops. It doesn’t have any stones on it and Joel thinks he likes that more, that it’s simple and graceful, not too flashy or obviously shoutings “look at what you do to me, look at how much I wish I could have you.”

In the end, he has just enough bills in his wallet for the necklace, tells the clerk he doesn’t need a bag as he stuffs the box in his pocket and heads back to the truck.

He has a busy day when he gets back to ranch, Tommy is checking on the pregnant heifers while Joel fill’s multiple feeders with hot grains that will keep them warm through the impending storm. He has just enough time before it starts to snow to get the horse fed and the equipment properly covered in tarps. This storm is set to drop more snow than they have seen all winter and Joel doesn’t look forward to the animosity that comes with never being able to get out of each other's hair. “How’s the heifers?” He asks Tommy when he brushes grain off his hands. “They all seem pretty far out besides one, she was really soft, sort of worried me.” Heifers get soft around the tail when they are close to caving, but Joel doesn’t think she’ll be willing to have her calf in this storm, so he lets it go. Instead, he takes a spot beside Tommy at the stable door.

“Snow’s comin’ down thick now,” Tommy says from the protective covering of the stable, staring out across the yard at the powder covered ground. Snow blows through the big sliding door, filling the building with cold gusts. “We should get inside before it gets worse.”

Joel wants to—when he looks off at the two story house, the christmas tree shining through the window, he spots you on the other side of it, fixing and ornament hanging from the nettles. The stable is a stone's throw from the house, Joel can see every feature, the color of your eyes, your sweet, sweet smile—because he’s nowhere to be seen.

He’s so busy staring, he doesn’t catch it in time when your eyes meet his across the yard. That sweet smile falls, those soft eyes harden and he feels his gut lurch. “You go ahead, Tommy. Think I’m going to hit the hay.” Tommy knows this bit just about as well as Joel does, knows he’s been avoiding the house, your parents, you because nine times out of ten, it’s just Tommy at dinner these days. Joel spends his night with microwaved meals and old episodes of The Rifleman to keep him busy until he finally gives in and slips his hands in his pants.

Tommy doesn’t put up a fuss, instead, he claps Joel on the shoulder and gives him this sad sort of smile before heading off towards the house. Joel turns in the other direction, follows the fence line for a half mile until he reaches the cabin. His feet are cold, his lips feel cracked after a long day outside in the harsh weather. He microwaves a sad little dinner, pretends the mac and cheese on the side is half as good as warm food at the table when the people he looks at like family. He’s simply not welcome there anymore.

He gets through two episodes before he promptly passes out, his pants left intact tonight because it’s not his dick leading the way tonight, its that look in your eyes when you saw him across the driveway. The pang he felt in his chest when you frowned and turned away like it hurt you to look at him.

He sleeps through the night, propped up like that on the couch and when he wakes on Christmas morning, his neck has a crick in it and his back is killing him. He barely drags himself off the couch and into the shower before his day has to start. The hot water eases out some of his muscles, but it still hurts like a bitch to stand up straight or turn his head.

But the cattle aren’t going to let him take a day off, the horses won't care for themselves, so he gets to it only a few minutes late. When he heads out the door, the ground is covered in two feet of pure white snow and dark clouds still hang overhead.

His Christmas is spent in the field’s and the stables and the box in his pocket burns a hole through his thigh the entire morning, until he’s shoveling off the driveway and the front door comes open. Louise makes her way onto the porch with a plate in her hands, shuffling down the slippery steps when she gets Joel’s attention. He tosses down the shovel and hurries over when she starts to wobble on the second step and nearly slips. He catches her arm and helps her steady before letting out a cold gust of air that fogs through the chill around him. “Miss Lou, what are you doin’ out here? It’s freezing.” She has a light coat on and her cheeks are red from the cold.

“You’re the one out here in the cold, Joel. It’s Christmas and you’re the only one working. Have you had a decent meal this week? I haven’t seen you at dinner in…well, I don’t know how long.” She’s the one reason Joel feels guilty for avoiding the house, in the years he’s lived here, she's always enjoyed cooking for them, she’d always tell him he couldn’t keep her dream alive if he was malnourished. He feels like that now, running on half the calories a man his size should be taking in and his mind is in a constant state of despair these days.

“Just needed some space is all, Ma’am, nothin’ you did.” He assures her, taking the plate carefully and helping her back up the steps. “I know it's not just that. My daughter can be really difficult sometimes…I know you two bicker. It’s a shame, really—I thought the two of you would hit it off.” That's the whole problem and what a shame it is that Joel can’t look at this woman’s daughter without thinking about all the ways he could have her, make her his. “Would you come inside? Hank and I got you something, he thought you would be in this morning but you never came. I'm sorry if your food is cold.”

He didn’t care if it was cold, his stomach hurt because he was so hungry, he'd eat it if it was frozen. He doesn’t have the heart to tell her no, so he heads inside the house with snow covered boots and a nervousness he hasn’t felt here since the first day he stood in this living room. For so long it's felt like his home too—but now he can't help but feel like an intruder.

When he closes the door behind him, Hank and Tommy are watching the game, but you’re nowhere in sight. He tries to shake off his nerves, moves to the couch beside Tommy and sits down. At his brother's feet is a brand new pair of deer skin gloves, Tommy’s favorite—but hard to come by. He knows they weren’t cheap and his heart aches a little, knowing they’d worked hard to pull together the money.

“Glad to see you can pull yourself away for a few minutes. You know it ain’t goin’ anywhere, stay for a little while.” He knows that—the storm will be with them for four days and he knows there will be more snow to shovel tomorrow, but he can’t stay for long, not when your prying eyes finally detect him in your safe haven. “I’ll stay for a little while, still a lot to do out there.” He knows Hank is too old for that kind of work, Tommy’s too lazy and Joel wants nothing more than to escape. “Got you somethin’, been saving up for it for a while now.” He leans down towards the tree and picks up a rather large box—it’s not gloves thats for damn sure. “Sir, I…I didn’t get you nothin’.” He didn’t have the money, he spent every dollar he had to his name on a stupid necklace for his daughter that would rather see him outside in the freezing weather shoveling snow than on her couch in front of the fireplace.

Hank throws a hand, playing off Joel's concern with an amused huff. “You do so much for us around here without asking for anything in return. You had one when you got here but i know it got tore up taking the cattle to pasture.”

Joel rips the wrapping paper, revealing a simple white box with the word Stetson on the top. Joel doesn’t even want to open the damn thing, he knows what's inside and how much it cost, an arm and a leg, probably a month's saving in the off season. “Hank…”

The olde man shakes his head firmly. “You deserve to have the sun off your neck, son. Just say thank you, make sure it fits.”

He pulls open the box and inside lays a black felt hat with a matching band, beautiful leather work that loops into an ornate metal buckle to hold it in place. He pulls the cowboy hat from its box, puts it on his head and—it’s a perfect fit.

It's been a long time since he had a hat, a lot longer since he had a nice one and a lifetime ago since he had the money for a new one, especially one this nice. “I don’t know what to say—thank you, Hank…this really…means more than you know.” More than he knows how to convey with words. It’s been a long time since Joel had a hat that fit, one that wasn’t second hand or made for someone else’s head. But this—this was made for his head, the measurement must be damn near perfect. “How’d you know my size?” He wobbles his head around and the hat doesn’t budge, hangs on snuggly. He’ll even be able to ride with this on. “I measured your head while you were sleepin’.” Tommy tells him with a smug grin. “That's weird, Tommy. I would have kept that to myself.”

It draws a laugh out of Hank who has abandoned the game in favor of watching Joel's excitement. “Well, what are you waiting for—go check yourself out in the mirror, make sure you like it,” he stands and walks over to the mirror hanging on the wall above a decorative entryway shelf. When he spots himself in the reflection, he realizes just how long it’s been since he’s seen the man looking back at him. He’s graying in his beard a little, the age lines on his face have gotten deeper and more pronounced, but the black hat on his head makes that same man grin from ear to ear.

The stairs creek behind him and he turns half of his body to look up them. Stopped halfway down the stairs, you’re staring at him with a slightly slacked jaw. Joel knew it, Christmas jammies that leave your legs exposed to his greedy eyes. This time, he tries to keep them to himself. “Oh, uh…” he swallows down the lump in his throat and his pocket burns all over again. Should he give it to you now? Will everyone question him if he does? If he waits to get you alone, does that suggest that the necklace means everything he wants it to? A peace offering, an ice breaker, a “I’m sorry about the way I’ve treated you, but I want to try again.”

Instead, he leaves it in his pocket and tries to tamper down the way his cheeks heat. “Merry Christmas, Honey.” He tilts his hat up a tad so he can look up at you, but your slightly dumbfounded look morphs into irritation and discontent.

“What are you doing here?” You cross your arms and Joel’s good mood disappears. “Your mom asked me to come in and eat. Your dad wanted to give me this.” He points to the hat and your eyes roll as you make the descent down the rest of the stairs. “So if you’re in here, who’s taking care of the ranch?”

It isn’t often that someone sticks up for one of them in an argument, they tend to not get between the two of you, but to Joel’s surprise, Hank interrupts his daughter. “He’s allowed to come in the house, Honey—he works hard around here, he’s not a yard dog.” But that doesn’t stop you from sneering at him when you pass him on your way to the kitchen where your mother is. “Sure looks like one to me.” It’s under your breath so Hank doesn’t hear, but Joel does.

And he feels like a fool. A fool for spending the last of his money on this stupid fucking necklace, like a fool for being so plagued by thoughts of you in a different world, one where you don’t innately hate him, one where he doesn’t fuck up every chance he has to change the narrative.

“I should get back to it, I’ll see you guys…later.” He starts to head for the door when Louise pokes her head around the corner. “Please come in for Dinner!” Joel tells her that he will, he hates lying to miss Lou, but he does it because it’s Christmas and the last thing he wants to do is worry her today.

He wastes the day shoveling off the driveway, tries his best to rub out the crick in his neck and finally calls it a day when the sun is nearly set and the animals are bunkered down for the night. It’s started to snow again, so Joel makes his way back to the cabin with tired limbs and a new dusting of snow hanging onto the brim of his hat.

Dinner is just as lonely as the night before but this time he doesn’t pretend it's Lou’s cooking, he lets it be exactly what it is—a tasteless mush and his misery to sip on.

The Rifleman is just as predictable as it was the night before, as is Joel—who falls asleep before he has the heart to get his hands on his dick. But unlike last night, he doesn’t make it long propped up on the couch before a knock startles him awake. He drags himself to the door with sleep in his eyes and a chill in his bones. When he pulls it open, his pocket ignites again. On the other side of the door, you’re standing in front of him with a plate in your hands and a vicious storm letting down behind you. Did you walk here in that? “My mom said I chased you off, that’s why you didn’t come to dinner.” Well, you aren’t wrong. If you were still away at college, Joel would have no problem spending Christmas with Hank and Louise and Tommy who is apparently too good to walk you down here.

“You didn’t have to bring me anything.” He says. He glances to the side where his hat hangs on the rack. “Actually, my mom made me so no, I didn’t have a choice.” Ahh, of course—of course you wouldn’t do something that nice for him. “Well, thank her for me, then…” he reaches out for the plate and his fingers brush yours—bolts of electricity shooting up his arm and igniting his starved skin. It’s been so damn long since someone has touched him with kind hands and all he wants is yours—your soft, gentle hands he’s seen folding laundry and soothing horses. You don’t release the plate, but your eyes track up to his, meeting them across the threshold.

He could hold that gaze for the rest of his life if you’d let him—he’s always wanted a chance to get lost in your eyes and he’s getting it right now, his home pouring with cold in exchange for the heat in your cheeks and the sparkle in your irises. “Joel—“

There's a loud sound somewhere over the fence beside the cabin. It draws both of your attention to the blinding darkness. Joel knows that sound, a distressed heifer, probably the one who was too damn close to calving in a storm like this. There’s no way Joel can save that calf if it doesn’t make it and even if he wanted to, the snow is too thick to help.

“What is that?” You ask, finally dropping your hand away from his when you glance back up at him. “Heifer, think she’s calving—Tommy said she was really soft and her milk came in. Afraid that calf might not make it tonight.”

There's a look of disbelief in your eyes, shooting from Joel to the fence line and back. “You can’t help her?” Joel shakes his head and listens to the cow cry out again. “Nothin’ I can do for her. They aren’t supposed to be calving yet, we still have a few more weeks and it’s too cold out there. We might lose the heifer too.”

Joel observes the way sadness takes over your face, then determination. “I’m going out there to help her.” You tell him, already heading off the porch before Joel can even interject. “Don’t you hear me? She’s not going to make it, honey, just let it go.” But you don’t, you start to jog towards the fence line, so Joel huffs in annoyance and slips into his boots and jacket, finally pulling his hat on on his way out the door. He grabs a spotlight off the shelf by the door and follows your tracks through the snow to the fence line. It doesn’t take him long until he finds you, knelt behind a laboring cow, who’s already pushing in the freezing cold. “I can’t get this calf to safety and this storm is getting worse—it’s not safe to be out here.”

There's blood marring the white snow and your delicate hands. “I’m not letting her die in the snow on christmas because we made her have a baby, Joel—she didn’t ask for this.” Joel sets the light in the snow beside him and rolls his sleeves up, kneeling down beside you in the soaked snow. “She’s not going to make it.”

You make a face at him, one Joel is more than accustomed to. “I’m not letting her die alone, then.” And Joel isn’t going to leave you alone in the snow for a second time, so he stays there beside you, helping deliver the little black calf, who shivers wetly in the cold. It’s a little boy, floppy ears and a wobble to him when he tries to hold his head up. Joel can't help but smile, because this is always beautiful, even if he can't save this little calf. He looks up and you’re grinning right back at him, your cheeks bitten red by the cold and your hands shaking, but you look so fucking proud right now. Joel is too, after watching you pull that calf out of his momma like you were made for that.

“What if we get them inside, would they make it then?” Joel doesn’t see how, the snow is too thick and someone would have to carry him. “They wont fit in my cabin and the stable is a half a mile away. We’d have to drag momma through this snow.” He has a lead in the cabin, he could get her out of this snow, he thinks. Would she even want to go, after having a calf in the ridged cold. “We should try—we should at least try.”

Joel leans back and brushes the blood off on his pants. “Yeah—fine, we can try. Stay right here, keep rubbing him to keep him warm.” He stands and jogs back to the cabin, racing inside for the lead that he runs back to you with. You have the calf laid out along your legs while you rub his wet skin. “He’s slowing down. I can feel his heart slowing down.” He’s getting too cold out here—if Joel doesn’t act now, he won't make it, so he wraps the halter around the heifers head and hands you the lead. “Think you can pull her? She’s going to put up a fight.” You take the lead from him and nod, grabbing the light out of the snow while he picks the calf up under his belly. He makes a little sound at Joel while he starts to make his way through the deep snow.

It’s a long walk back to the stables, but you tug on that heifer and Joel carries the calf the entire way there, until he reaches the gate and manages to push it open just enough to get them through. He makes it to the stable doors in just enough time, throws it open and helps you inside. It’s not much warmer in here, but theres no snow and theres straw in the empty stable towards the back, so Joel makes his way over and lays the little calf down in the bedding. You’re right behind him with the heifer who takes straight to her baby once she has him in her sight again.

Joel plops down in the straw in the corner of the room once they are both situated, trying to catch his breath and warm himself up at the same time. He’s covered in blood, so are you, but you saved both of their lives and Joel has more respect for that than he knows what to do with. You risked your life out there for a baby cow and his momma.

“You did a good thing, out there. I’m sorry I didn’t want to listen to you.” You find a spot beside him in the hay and sink down, leaned against the wood wall with your shoulder pressed against his with how closely you sit. “You have every right to question me…you’re right, you know…I have no clue what I’m doing around here. Four years of school and the only thing I know how to do around here is the books, which is easy because were so broke.” Joel's heart aches for you, the sadness in your tone and the defeated look in your eyes. “I almost got us killed out there.”

Joel shakes his head and leans himself back against the wall too. “But you didn’t. You saved us a lot of money and saved his little life. I’d say that's a win.” He knows it doesn’t feel like one when everything else is coming down on your shoulders, but he can pretend it is for your sake. “Thanks, Joel.” You lean a little more, bumping his shoulder with a quiet yawn.

His pocket begins to burn again, but this time, it isn’t followed by the shame he’s felt all day. “I uhm…I hope it’s not weird, but I got you something…” he reaches into his pocket and starts to fish it out. “You didn’t have to do that,” you interject but he shakes his head. “I just saw it while I was at the feed store, thought of you.” He pulls out the blue box and holds it out to you. He tries not to read too much into the look on your face when you open the box, but he has to know. It looks like confusion, then shock and finally, sadness. “I was really rude to you this mornin’…and you had this in your pocket to give it to me?” You look over at him with big eyes, full of something Joel has never seen in them. “It’s alright—I deserved that.”

You shake your head and start to pull the necklace out of the box. “I called you a dog, Joel—you didn’t deserve that.”

He shrugs his shoulders, trying to rid both of you of the shame of that conversation. You hold the necklace up and admire it for a while, the little gold bee that’s going to lay against your chest, against your heart. You hold it out to him with a little quick of your lips. “Would you?” He takes it from you and you turn your back to him, using one hand to hold up your hair while he undoes the clasp and brings his hands around your neck, laying it around your delicate throat. It feels so intimate, sitting here in the hay beside a newborn baby calf in the middle of a snowstorm on christmas.

His knuckles brush against your neck gently when he does the clasp together, letting is hang from your neck, feels like a fucking brand on his skin. You turn back around, meet his eyes and smile carefully. There's a comfortable silence filling up the space between you, so Joel leans back against the wood and sighs to himself. “Let me walk you back to the house…it’s getting late.” His words are low and slow.

You nod at him and he stands, holding out a hand to pull you to your feet. He walks you out of the stables, through the blizzard and up to the porch of the big white house. “Where are you going?” You ask him when you get to the door. “Don’t know if I can make it back to the cabin in this. Might sleep out in the stable so I can keep an eye on the little guy.”

You don’t say anything, just stare at him for a long moment, then glance behind you at the warm house. “Come inside…Tommy took the guest bedroom but you can have the couch. It’s better than being out here in the cold.”

He wants to decline, but when will he get this opportunity again? To mend what's been broken between you? “Yeah—sure, that sounds better than straw poking me in the ass all night long.”

It makes you giggle and that makes Joel's stomach churn, his cheeks heat and his hands flex as he follows you inside. You get him a blanket, help him get situated in the low glow of the christmas tree in the corner.

When he kicks his boots off and settles down on the couch, you start to head for the stairs. He thinks you’re going to head up, but you pause at the bottom of the stairs before turning to look at him. “Thank you for helping me today.”

He hums, smiles and shakes his head. “It was my pleasure.”

There's another long silence, then you take the first step up the stairs. “Goodnight, Joel…Merry Christmas.”

He smiles back at you with tired eyes.

“Merry Christmas, Honey.”

#joel miller #joel miller fanfiction #pedro pascal #joel miller x reader #the last of us #joel the last of us #cowboy joel #pedro pascal fanfic

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negans-lucille-tblr · 11 months

Text

Go Easy | Sam Winchester Oneshot

Summary: Sam’s hiding a part of himself from his new, inexperienced girlfriend, but maybe he doesn’t have to.

Rating: 18+ (Smut)

Tags: teasing, flirting, mentions of virginity, mentions of liking younger women, angst, mentions of BDSM, Dom/sub vibes, mild BDSM, bondage, fingering, p in v

WC: ± 2.8K A/Ns: This was commissioned by someone who would like to remain anonymous! Hope you like it!

Sam Winchester Masterlist

“So, how did you two meet again?”

There’s a sparkle in Dean’s green eyes that Sam knows only too well means that Dean hasn’t forgotten at all, and he’s only asking the question for one reason; to tease the living fuck out of him.

“Urm, at the college library,” Y/N replies softly, clearing her throat and offering his brother a polite smile as she reaches for her glass of wine.

“Of course you did,” Dean chuckles, “so you’re one of these brainy young professors too?”

“Urr…” Y/N glances nervously at him, and Sam knows it’s his turn to step in and save her.

“No, actually, Y/N is a student,” Sam needlessly reminds his brother, unashamedly.

The smirk instantly curls over Dean’s lips as he chuckles, shaking his head. “A student, Sammy? You’ve been working there for two months and you’re already sleeping with the students, why am I not surprised?”

Sam’s brow instantly pulls into a frown as he shakes his head. “No, it’s not like that, De,” he protests, looking over to see Y/N is also confused by Dean’s comment.

“What does he mean?” she asks, blinking at him.

“Nothing,” Sam insists. “He’s just being an ass.”

Dean continues to chuckle, reaching for his beer and taking a long swig before swallowing hard and licking his lips. “Listen, we can just address the elephant in the room, okay?” he grins, looking between them.

“Dean, no,” Sam warns, hoping his brother will realise he is barking up the wrong tree completely right now and will back off.

“Oh c’mon, Sammy, we shared a bedroom wall long enough for me to know what you’re into. You’re hardly shy about it. And we’re all adults here… at least…” his eyes land back on Y/N, and Sam’s jaw clenches.

“Jesus, Dean, she’s more than legal,” Sam grunts, wishing his legs were just a few inches longer so he could kick his brother under the table.

“Relax, I’m teasing you both,” Dean laughs easily, lounging back in his chair with his beer in hand.

Sam glares over at his older brother for a moment, before looking across at Y/N to make sure she’s okay. She seems a little flustered, but before he can reach out to take her hand in hopes of relaxing her a little, she rises to her feet and softly excuses herself. Sam watches her leave, heading towards the bathroom, and then turns his attentions back to his brother.

“Seriously, dude?” he huffs. “Now she probably thinks I’m some pervert.”

“Well, from what I’ve heard–”

“Dean, I’m serious,” Sam interrupts.

“Oh, c’mon Sammy, you’re not exactly quiet about your… tastes,” Dean argues, smirking slightly. “I’m just saying that she’s exactly the kind of girl I thought you’d date.”

“It’s not like that, De,” Sam protests, “not with her.”

Dean cocks an eyebrow as if he doesn’t believe him. “So you’re telling me you’re not dating a younger woman who’s all quiet and reserved because she’s exactly the kind of girl who obeys your every command?” he mocks.

“She’s not like that,” Sam continues to argue, and he thinks maybe Dean is finally believing him, because a small frown pulls on his brow.

“Wait… really? This isn’t one of your… kinky things?”

“No, Dean,” Sam scoffs, still amused by Dean’s naivety even after all this time. Sam’s tried on more than one occasion to educate his brother on the lifestyle, but Dean couldn’t be further from Sam when it comes to things like this. “We’re actually dating, she’s actually my girlfriend,” he explains. “My very inexperienced girlfriend you’ve probably completely freaked out, so thanks for that.”

“Inexperienced?” Dean blinks, but then another cheeky smile lights up his face. “Sammy, you dirty dog!”

“Dean–”

“Well, in my defense, dude, you don’t date much.”

“You didn’t think it was weird I’d asked you to meet her?” Sam questions.

“I don’t know what happens between you and these girls,” Dean protests, shrugging. He’s quiet for a moment, but then he seems to get a little more serious, playing with his beer bottle. “So, is she open to what you like, or…”

Sam can tell that it’s a genuine question, so he doesn’t roll his eyes or complain, instead he takes a deep breath and decides to answer honestly. “I doubt it, we’ve never talked about it.”

“So you’d pack it all in for her?” he asks next. “Do you like her enough to do that?”

“Yeah, I think I would,” Sam nods honestly.

“Well then, I’m sorry dude, didn’t mean to freak her out.”

Sam looks towards the door leading down the hallway towards the bathroom and takes a deep breath. “I’m sure she’s fine,” he tells his brother, realising he’s only trying to convince himself more than Dean.

Y/N has been even more quiet than usual as they clean up after dinner. With Dean now gone, Sam was hoping she’d be a little more confident, like he’d noticed her becoming in the recent weeks, but she doesn’t say much as she clears away plates and carries them out into the kitchen, placing them alongside the sink. He watches her begin to run the hot tap, filling the sink up with warm, soapy water, and leans in the doorway just observing for a moment or two, wondering how he’s going to approach this.

“Hey, let me do that, it’s my place,” he protests, walking up behind her and wrapping his arms around her middle.

“It’s fine,” she insists softly. Sam places a soft kiss to the back of her head, and he watches as her movements slow and she clears her throat. “Sam, what did your brother mean when he said he’s not surprised that I’m a student?”

“Nothing,” Sam half lies. “He was just being an older brother and trying to embarrass me.”

“So you’ve not been with other students?” she checks, turning herself around and stepping out of his embrace to face him.

“No, not since I was a student myself,” he tells her honestly this time.

“Students your own age?” she asks next, almost challengingly.

“Pretty much,” he nods. “Y/N, I’m not into young girls or anything,” he laughs awkwardly. “There’s not even ten years between us, it’s not about that for me. Look… can we just forget the whole dinner, please?” he pleads, already exasperated.

She’s been spooked enough for one night, she doesn’t need to hear all about Sam’s twisted, kinky fetishes too. He’s kept those a secret for a reason. He didn’t know it when he first started dating her, but Y/N had been a virgin before they met, and he could still count on one hand how many times they’ve had sex. If he was ever going to show her that side of him, it wouldn’t be now.

“So you’re not into young virgin girls?” she asks bluntly, blinking at him.

“No, absolutely not,” Sam protests immediately, the very implication making his skin crawl. “Firstly, I didn’t even know you were a virgin when we met. Secondly, you’re twenty two, you’re not even a teenager anymore–”

“Okay,” Y/N interrupts. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to accuse you of being a perv or anything, I just… when Dean said he knows what you’re into…”

“He didn’t mean that,” Sam tries to explain.

“Then what did he mean?” she presses, blinking at him again.

Sam sighs heavily, not sure he can answer that honestly if he wants to keep her in the dark about his fantasies and desires.

“Is it bad? Is that why you won’t tell me?” she implores.

“No, it’s not bad,” he argues weakly, shaking his head. “I just don’t wanna freak you out, I know you’re new to all this.”

“Maybe physically, but one of the perks to being late in the game means I’ve done a lot of research,” Y/N admits coyly. “So I’m not as naive as you think.” Sam’s eyebrows rise at her implication. “Just tell me, Sam, please?” she begs softly, a lot more seriously than before.

Sam huffs a breath and licks his lips for a second, gathering his thoughts.

“Usually, I like a certain… dynamic in the bedroom,” he tries to explain briefly. “But, I would never expect that from you, so I’ve never brought it up. I’m fine with the way things are between us,” he rushes to add for reassurance.

“What kind of dynamic?” Y/N asks, seeming to ignore the second half of his comment.

“Urm… me in charge… in control… y’know, pain for pleasure kind of thing,” he admits, feeling his cheeks heating up at his admission. Normally he’s a lot more sure of himself, oozing confidence as he explains exactly how he expects it to go down between him and the girl he’s about to fuck. But Y/N is different, and he doesn’t want her running for the hills because of this.

“So BDSM stuff?” she clarifies, biting her bottom lip.

“Yeah, that stuff,” he nods. “So are you freaked out?” he asks, unable to stop himself.

Y/N doesn’t answer at first, she just stares at him and swallows hard, and Sam’s pretty sure she’s about to break up with him, leave and never come back. But what actually happens takes him off guard, as his eyes follow her as she drops to her knees at his feet and settles into a kneeling position, looking up at him through her lashes.

“What… What are you doing?” he stammers out, afraid that maybe she feels like she has to do this for him.

“Something like this?” she checks.

“You don’t have to–”

“You don’t think I don’t know exactly what you want… Sir?” she asks softly, a tiny smirk beginning to spread over her lips.

Instantly Sam’s cock begins to harden behind his jeans. It’s been a while since he’s seen a girl on her knees at his feet, and while he hears people call him Sir a lot thanks to his job, it feels so different hearing it come from her lips in that tone.

“A-are you sure?” Sam checks sincerely for a moment.

She doesn’t reply to begin with, she just reaches out, softly running her hand up his leg, over his thigh and towards the now obvious bulge in his pants.

“Like I said, I’ve done my research, I know what I like the look of,” she explains, her hand now cupping his cock through the denim, making Sam’s head a little foggier. “I wanna know if it’s as good as it looks, I want you to teach me,” she purrs, blinking at him seductively. “Just go easy on me?”

Sam reaches forward, cupping the side of her face. “I’ve got you, baby girl,” he confirms, feeling her lean into his touch. “I’ll guide you through it.”

Your POV

Holy fuck.

Sam’s teeth drag down your throat, his large hands finally releasing your wrists above your head, smoothing down your arms.

“Leave them there,” he growls against your skin, his hands now finding your breasts, fondling them for a moment or two before reaching around your waist, pulling you closer to him. You moan, arching your back into him, your hands finding his long hair so you can card your fingers through it. “I said, leave them there,” Sam growls, instantly pinning your hands above your head once more. “Don’t make me tie them up.”

Just the very thought of him tying you to the bed, making you completely at his mercy makes your insides flutter with even more arousal that pools between your bare legs.

“Please do,” you find yourself gasping, your brain foggy with arousal and desperation.

“You’d like that, hm?” he smirks, leaning back to look at you. “You’d like me tying you up, using you however I want?” You instantly nod, desperate for just that. “Use your words, baby girl… always use your words with me,” he commands.

“Y-yes I want that,” you confirm verbally.

“Sir,” he adds for you.

“Sir,” you also add, breathlessly. You’d always liked the idea of calling a guy Sir in the bedroom, but you never thought it would be this much of a turn on.

You watch him climb off of you, now standing at the foot of his bed as he reaches down for his jeans on the floor, and without taking his eyes off of you, he grabs the belt still in the loops and pulls it free. The sight is near enough orgasmic as you once again arch your back and moan, desperate for some attention between your legs.

Sam uses the tail of his belt to trail up your body, leaving goosebumps in its wake as you squirm underneath him.

“Maybe one day we can use this for something a little more entertaining,” he ponders, a wicked smirk curling over his lips. “But for now, we can make good use of it in other ways.”

You feel him wrap the leather around both your wrists, and with only a few tugs, you find yourself bound to the headboard, unable to move your hands very far; unable to touch him anymore. And suddenly, you want nothing more. His cock is hard and practically dripping with precum on your thigh, and you want to wrap your hand around it, to give him some relief. But he seems unfazed by the lack of attention it’s receiving, instead focused on your body, and the way it’s writhing underneath him.

His hazel eyes scan over what feels like every single inch, and he hums in appreciation, his hands beginning to ghost over your skin. When his touch begins to trail lower than your belly button, you find your legs widening as if to encourage him between them. He seems to oblige without any further teasing, which you’re grateful for, because you’re not sure how much longer you can take this. Your head feels like it’s going to explode. Being at someone’s mercy is so much better than it had been in your head all those times you’d gotten yourself off to the fantasy, or touched yourself to those videos you used to be so ashamed about liking.

“Someone’s wet,” he notes, a smug grin on his lips at the fact. “You’re enjoying this aren’t you?”

You nod desperately, bucking your hips against his fingers, feeling him rub your clit as you begin to moan.

“Yes, Sir,” you rush to confirm, just about mustering enough sanity to remember to use your words like he’d commanded.

“If you like this, wait until I train you to be the perfect little slut for me,” he growls, and you gasp for air as his fingers push inside you with his words, your head spinning with the mixture of the sensation and the very thought of his words. “This body is perfect, and it’s all mine, isn’t it?” he asks, his eyes landing on yours.

“All yours, Sir,” you confirm, breathlessly. “Please… please fuck me,” you find yourself begging, unable to take much more. You just want to feel him inside you; it’s a feeling you’ve grown to love, and you only wish you’d have met him sooner.

“That’s not how you beg,” Sam growls, curling his fingers and making you cry out in pleasure. “Ask nicely, or I won’t fuck you at all.”

“Please, Sir. Please will you fuck me? I need you to fuck me, please.”

“That’s better,” Sam hums, removing his fingers and stroking his cock, slicking it with your juices from his fingers. “Such a good girl, I can tell you’re going to do so well,” he praises.

He leans over you, teasing the tip of his cock through your arousal, softly pressing against your opening as he chuckles at your desperation. You buck your hips in hopes that he’ll slide deeper, but he holds back, smirking almost evilly down at you, clearly relishing in just what he’s driven you to.

“Please, Sir,” you beg one last time, barely audible through your gasps for breath.

Sam leans down, bringing his mouth close to your ear, his cock still only just inside you. “I love the way that sounds on your lips,” he breathes out, his cock throbbing as if to prove his point. “I can’t wait to show you exactly how I like it.” And just the thought of this getting even better, has you on the edge.

#go easy #commission #sam winchester #sam x reader #dom!sam x sub!reader #smut #lemon #oneshot #angst #spn fanfic #jared padalecki #negans-lucille-tblr

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niqhtlord01 · 1 year

Photo

Humans are weird: Not Having It, Death

Alien shape shifter appears: Fear me and tremble mortals, for I am your death.

Human: Bullshit; you’re not death.

Alien: Oh but I am.

Human: Death is covered in chocolate, and I doubt your dry ass is white chocolate.

Alien: What?

Human 2: Yeah I don’t get it either.

Human: What’s not to get?

Human: I am deathly allergic to chocolate, therefore death is chocolate.

Alien: I will not suffer this inso-

Human 2: Now that’s not the same thing.

Human 2: What you are describing is what will kill you, not death itself.

Human 3: At best that could be argued that chocolate is your personification of death.

Alien: I-

Human: Well even if chocolate is my personification of death, and it kills me; then clearly it still is death!

Human 3: *Turns to human 2* He does have a point there.

Human 2: By that logic anything that you are allergic to can be considered death.

Human 3: It’d be gerbils for me.

Human 1 & 2: *Look at human 3*

Human 3: What?

Human 3: I flare up when I touch their fur and my throat closes up.

Human 3: I’d be dead in minutes if I touched one of those furry fuckers.

Human: So death for you is tiny little gerbils?

Human 2: *Snickering*

Human 3: It’s not fucking funny!

Human 3: Those little bastards scamper all over the place and you can barely hear them.

Human 3: One could brush up against me and I wouldn’t know till my throat locked up.

Alien: Are you all implying your species version of death is what you are allergic to?

Human: Well yeah.

Human 2: What else would it be?

Alien: GUNS! KNIVES! MONSTERS WITH SHARP TEETH!

Human 3: Well we deal with those all the time so they’re not really as scary as you think.

Alien: Why does death need to be scary!?

Alien: Death is death!

Human 2: Exactly!

Human 2: Which is why death is really being eaten alive by those little fish at malls that nibble on your dead skin cells of your feet.

Human 1 & 3: *Groaning*

Human 3: Show me one instance of that actually happening and I will admit that those little fish are really death.

Human 2: That’s just it!

Human 2: There are no examples because they cover them up!

Human: I have seen our government fail to cover up sex scandals in the highest seats of political power, but you’re telling me that they are really just diverting all their efforts to cover up deaths by little mall fish?

Human 2: It’s a bigger business than you would think.

Human 1 & 3: *Groaning again*

Human 3: You sound more like a pyramid scheme now.

Alien: As fascinating as this philosophical debate is about what death is, I really just want to kill you all and harvest your life essence.

Human: Look at Mr. Fancy britches over here.

Human: *Mocking tone* I’m too important to wait on you, so just die already. Hurdy, hurdy, hur.

Human 2 & 3: *Laughing*

Human: Look, we’re going to let you kill us but we first have to decide on what form of death you take or you won’t get as much life essence.

Alien: *Stops itself from eating Human 3* Wait, really?

Human 3: *Still between the jaws of alien* Oh yeah; when we are killed by the real death we give out a shit loads of life essence.

Alien: Why are you telling me this then?

Alien: Why not save your selves by trying to distract me?

Human 2: Because in our way we feel the least amount of pain.

Human 2: So giving us less pain gives you more life essence; win win for everyone.

Alien: *Sets human 3 down and nods*

Alien: Why not let me kill you each one at a time, so I can be your own versions?

Human: Won’t work now since we all know we have different versions.

Human: We need to agree on all the same version or it won’t benefit any of us.

Human 2 & 3: *murmur in agreement*

Alien: Okay then, why don’t we start what you all think is death and we’ll narrow down from there?

*Six hours later*

Human: Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll get my fingers slit open when I open those little blue candy bars and I’ll bleed to death.

Alien: *Banging head against rock*

#HUMANS ARE WEIRD #humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space oddities #scifi #story #writing #original writing #niqhtlord01 #funny #ai generated art #deviantart dreamup

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sparkypantaloons · 1 month

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Call Waiting

That was the affect he had. Superman. He made you think that everything would be fine. Right up until the moment he was gone.

Jason struggles with expectation and reality; what Superman had been for Dick, what he could have been for Jason, and the nothing that he ultimately was.

Jason had seen him once, flying over Gotham. The red cape and boots and a suit bluer than sky; the golden skin and broad shoulders, smile warmer than any sun.

Jason had been seven, chin jutting forward and jaw set. Small hands clenched in angry fists. He was arguing with the old Park Row chemist, Mr. Bevan, who dealt in out-of-date meds for those who couldn’t afford the real thing. The old man had promised Jason 100 grams of lofexidine; had delivered less than fifty but still taken the full payment. Refused Jason’s every plea and curse and cry of unfairness.

All Jason had wanted was to get his mom off of the oxy; to get her all the way through the withdrawal this time and get her better. Get her back; to who she had been… Hunger clawed at his insides, he hadn’t eaten a proper meal in weeks, had saved up every penny he could find to try and help her and—

Superman had appeared in the sky. Impossibly huge and brilliantly bright, warmth radiating off him. He landed not two feet from where Jason was stood.

For one wild moment Jason felt like he’d won the lottery. Superman was here, Superman was here and surely it was for Jason. That’s what he did, wasn’t it? He saved people, people who really needed it. Surely he must have heard, surely he would have known; how desperate Jason and his mom were. How badly they needed help, needed the money and the medicine and somewhere warm and safe and—

The Kryptonian didn’t even see him. Didn’t just look over Jason’s head, but beyond it. Searching the layers of existence for whatever it was he saw in the walls, the very cells of Gotham’s crumbling Park Row district.

“Excuse me.” He’d said politely to old man Bevan, his voice warm with Metropolis sunshine. He’d dipped his head, as though doffing a hat, and then smashed right through the wall of the east end’s Gotham Bank and down into the old vaults.

It took Jason a moment to remember to breathe. He’d seen plenty of crazy things living on Gotham’s poverty line, but he’d never seen a man walk through a wall like it was rain. Superman appeared moments later, with Dick Grayson - that billionaire’s kid - clinging onto his shoulders, and distantly Jason had remembered something about the twelve year old having been kidnapped.

Dick’s arms were wrapped around Superman’s neck, fingers linking under the alien’s chin. There was a grin on his face a mile wide.

“Let’s get you somewhere safe.” Superman had said, rising into the sky as he spoke.

Jason watched them go, the world around him growing cooler by the moment, now that Superman wasn’t there to shine on them. It wasn’t until he got back to the apartment, dank and crumbling, that he realised the cold feeling in his gut wasn’t hunger, but devastation.

Robin met him in the Cave first. He was just as big as Jason remembered, just as overwhelming; his cape a deep, rich red.

“And as for you, Jason—” Superman’s hand had found Jason’s head, had ruffled his hair; his voice warm and booming. “Congratulations on getting that costume, I hear you’re wearing the suit well.”

Jason had only grinned, dizzy with wonder in Superman’s presence. At hearing his name come from the man himself.

“Wow—” He’d breathed, watching the Kryptonian fly from the Cave. Adrenaline had flooded his veins as the red cape slipped out of sight, “I can’t believe that was Superman!” He’d spun round to face Bruce, hopping from foot to foot with excitement. “He spoke to me! Double wow!”

Bruce had pulled down his cowl by now, slung an arm around Jason’s shoulders. “I’m wounded, Robin.” He feigned hurt, held a hand to his heart. “Batman speaks to you everyday.”

Jason had rolled his eyes, dug a playful elbow into Bruce’s ribs. “Batman can’t even fly, B. Come back to me when you’re faster than a speeding bullet.” Then he’d slipped from under Bruce’s arm, sprinting to the showers with a laugh as Bruce gave chase.

Jason had heard stories about Dick’s time with the world’s finest. The adventures the three of them had been on, how close Dick and Clark had become. Hell, Dick had even named himself after a Kryptonian legend, had been given Big Blue’s blessing to do so.

For the first time in Jason’s short life, things were going right. So for the first time he dared to imagine, to think that maybe that would be him too. He’d finally have the big family he always dreamed of, a dad and a brother and Superman. Who knows, maybe he’d even grow up and be Flamebird with Dick.

That was the affect he had. Superman. He made you think that everything would be fine. Right up until the moment he was gone.

He’d been polite, obviously, kind… but ultimately disinterested. There were no adventures together, no team, no family… And when Jason had called for him, cried his name under the relentless swing of metal against bone, it was a burning cold that filled his heart. Sorrowful and dark.

“I called for you, you know.” Red Hood stands above him. It’s hard to tell the cape from the blood now, where it lies in the snow. “When I was fifteen, and the Joker was— I called. I called right up until he cracked through my skull and I suddenly couldn’t remember how to speak anymore.”

Superman lifts his head weakly, eyes drifting from the shard of kryptonite lodged in his gut to where Jason is stood, the eponymous hood under his arm. “Jason— please…” The words tumble from of his mouth, limp and cold.

“Yeah, it was along those lines.” Jason says, dispassionately, breath rising in front of him. “I called for you before that too. When I was a kid and my mom was sick and…” He trails off. “You never came.”

Blood is pooling in Superman’s mouth now. It dribbles down his cheek, onto the dirt floor. Clark’s eyes roll in his head. “Was— off— world—” He chokes the words out. Blood flecks his skin, silver instead of gold now, as the life seeps out of him.

“Bruce said.” Jason replies, “Not when Joker needed saving though.” He adds. A pause. “Saving.” There’s no malice in it, he’s just stating facts.

“m’sorry.” Clark mumbles. His lips are turning blue now, beneath the blood.

Jason shrugs. “Is what it is.”

“Help me. Please.” Superman’s words slur together. “Hav’a, hav’a— son.”

Jason scowls at that, a jolt of hot rage in his cold bones. He had been someone’s son once, twice. It hadn’t made a difference then. Why should it now?

“J’son, hel—”

“You’ve never helped me.” Jason replies, he’s feeling petulant now. About all he can feel in these temperatures.

“S’rry.” Superman grimaces again. “Would h’ve. Would’ve come. If y’ called.”

In the distance a green glow is growing larger on the horizon. Lanterns, Jason expects. He puts his helmet back on, stares down at Superman, expressionless.

“I did,” he says. “Once.”

#batfam #jason todd #spbfic #batfam fic #batfic #batfamily #red hood #superman #clark kent

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local-lesboy · 14 days

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saving my energy from people on tik tok trying to argue about the validity of being a bi lesbian, going to invest my energy back into my community

they tried really hard to come up with arguments over things i didn’t even say like “so you think lesbians can like cis men” (which i have no stake in, i don’t like cis binary men but i’m not the end all be all of lesbians)

save it, identity police. i don’t care what you think of my labels, they’re not for you to decide. i don’t care if they make you confused, they make perfect sense to me. you can ask politely or get out the way.

shout out and lots of love to my other bi lesbians out there regardless of why that’s your identity. you’re beautiful, handsome, whichever you like better.

🧡🤍🩷💜💙

#bi lesbian #bi lesboy #lgbtq+#lgbt #lgbtq #mspec lesbian #i found out bee babbles was already taken and all i got was this replacement tag

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jk-scrolling · 10 months

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Kellie-Jay & the Neo-Nazis Listener Transcript

If you spot any issues or typos, as far as I’m concerned, you’re free to repost this with corrections wherever you want. I typed this up to make it easier to skim for people who don’t have two hours, or who can’t or don’t like listening to things, to pull quotes from more easily, to spread around to audiences that might not otherwise click on the original vid. Here is that original vid, by the way: https://youtu.be/JBy93QX7ysE

And here’s the transcript:

Shaun: Hello, everyone. Today I'd like to talk about something that happened a few months ago at the event titled Let Women Speak that was held in Melbourne on the 18th of March. If you've seen my video “JK Rowling's New Friends,” you'll know that Let Women Speak is an event organized by controversial UK campaigner Posie Parker, also known as Kellie-Jay Keen.

Shaun: Starting out in the UK, Let Women Speak has gone global, with Keen flying all over the world to attend events. Let Women Speak has a simple format: Keen will turn up somewhere with a microphone, give a speech, and then hand the mic off to anyone who wants it, with the only rule being that women speak first and men speak after.

Shaun: The events also have an open door policy with regards to attendees and speakers. Keen is a single issue campaigner and has gone to great lengths to communicate that she's willing to team up with anyone at all, so long as they agree with her on the single issue she's concerned with. As a result of this open doors policy, in addition to Keen's usual crowd of single-issue campaigners, Let Women Speak events attract lonely people who don't really get what's going on but just want someone to talk to, conspiracy theorist types who want to rant about vaccines or whatever, but also a particular group of people who will turn up anywhere at all that will give them a platform because they've been kicked off all the other platforms: fascists.

Shaun: Keen's Melbourne event was attended by the far right National Socialist Network, a fascist group who gave Nazi salutes and chanted “White power,” while carrying a banner that said “Destroy pedo freaks,” so I want to talk about that today, but I also want to talk about something that happened shortly after the rally.

Shaun: Julie Bindel, a UK journalist who I've talked about in the previous video, posted tweets defending the rally, saying that no Nazi on the planet supports women's rights or is sympathetic to feminism, and she also claimed in another tweet that misogynists were using the event to discredit feminists.

Shaun: Now this was confusing for a couple of reasons for me. Firstly, I was confused because Let Women Speak is not a feminist event and Kellie-Jay Keen is not a feminist. She has repeatedly stated she is not a feminist in countless videos and speeches going back years now. And not only is she not a feminist, she's often harshly critical of feminists and feminism and has even gone so far as to argue that in order to save women, feminism has to be abandoned.

Kellie-Jay Keen: I think in order to save women, we will have to abandon feminism. That's what I said: in order to save women, I think we're gonna have to abandon feminism. And I think I'm right.

Shaun: So why would Julie Bindel, professed feminist, be defending Kellie-Jay Keen by falsely giving the impression that she's a feminist?

Shaun: The second confusing thing here is that only a few years ago Julie Bindel was a harsh critic of Keen. She stated that she despises Keen's politics and tactics, that she's motivated by narcissism, bigotry, and ego, her allying with the Christian right is a disaster, and so on. So that's the second thing I want to talk about today: Julie Bindel was previously very critical of Keen's political tactics, but today she's defending her, and Julie Bindel isn't alone in this.

Shaun: Previously relegated to the outskirts of the movement because of her perceived bigotry and extremism, Kellie-Jay Keen has been increasingly welcomed into the mainstream of so-called gender critical feminism. Just recently, Helen Joyce wrote an article about Keen praising her quote “genius,” which was shared on Twitter by JK Rowling.

Shaun: Rowling also wrote in support of the Let Women Speak event in Melbourne, criticizing how the event and Keen were portrayed afterwards in the media. Also, at the suggestion that Keen could take legal action against the media, someone pointed out to Rowling the expense of taking legal action, to which Rowling replied that she's already offered to pay Kellie-Jay Keen's legal fees.

Shaun: So this is my second question: Anyway, why is the mainstream now welcoming Keen, when previously they had shunned her?

Shaun: And there's a third question I'm interested in today: Regardless of whether they'd be let in, why would a neo-Nazi group want to show up to a Let Women Speak event in the first place?As anyone who pays attention to Keen's events will know, the Australian National Socialist movement turning up at the Melbourne event is not a one-off. Members of far-right groups turning up and even getting to speak at Keen's events is a regular occurrence. So why are they coming? Are they just taking any opportunity for attention and the platform, or is there something about Kellie-Jay Keen and her movement that the far-right groups actually want to support?

Shaun: If you look at the history of Let Women Speak, you'll see a pattern emerge. Keen will organize an event, far-right groups or speakers will attend - see Hearts of Oak turning up to her events in the UK, her event in Miami had a speaker who's a member of The Proud Boys. This group of far-right activists turned up to her rally in New Zealand, so on and so forth. As a result of these sorts of associations, in addition to Keen's online associations with white nationalists, Keen will be asked often by women who agree with her otherwise to please distance herself and her movement from those far-right groups and please stop opening the door for fascists, because it's making us all look terrible. And then Keen will say in response:

Kellie-Jay Keen: Whoever's ostracizing everyone, they need to get a grip. I'm not remotely interested in the silly, frivolous, ridiculous, school girl, catty behavior of women. I don't care if you call me a feminist. I don't care if you call me a Nazi. I don't care if you call me right wing. I don't care if you call me a white supremacist. I don't care if you call me racist. I don't care if you're, uh, religious. I don't care if you're an atheist. I don't care if you worship Satan himself. I don't care. I would - I would absolutely literally take the hand of the Devil himself. I will align with whoever I damn well please. I will stand next to the Devil himself. I've said this before, I will stand beside the Devil himself.

Shaun: You can feel Keen's frustration as she repeatedly has to restate that she will absolutely team up with anyone, and every time she's met by skeptical women saying “Well surely by ‘anyone,’ you don't actually mean anyone,” and Keen has to, again, say “No, anyone. Anyone. The Devil himself.” And Kellie-Jay Keen has a message for those women who keep questioning her tactics.

Kellie-Jay Keen: And if women aren't doing it directly, if they're not doing it directly, they’re strangling us in other ways. They're trying to silence us: “Not quite the right message.” “Not working with the right people.” “Not talking to the right people.” Each and every one of you women who stand in my way - each and every one of you - let me just tell you you will be annihilated.

Kellie-Jay Keen: Because I genuinely don't lose.

Shaun: So what single issue could possibly be so important as to justify teaming up with the Devil himself and annihilating all who stand in your way? Well Posie Parker, Kellie-Jay Keen, is opposed to trans rights. She is a transphobe. Now let me hit pause here for a second. I called her a transphobe, because she herself says she is a transphobe and is happy to be labeled a transphobe.

Kellie-Jay Keen: Everything is transphobic nowadays, which is why I'm happy to be called a transphobe, and in the fullness of time I will be proven right, because I always am. There is precious little I'm not right about ever. Precious precious little that I am not right about, and there is absolutely nothing that I lose.

Shaun: I have to make this clear here, because if you call someone a transphobe, you can get bogged down in debates about what transphobia is, usually with people who would never admit anything was transphobic, even someone outright saying something like “I hope trans people die.” So just to cut that off right here, that was Kellie-Jay Keen herself saying she's happy to be labeled a transphobe, so me and her are in complete agreement there.

Shaun: So okay, Keen is a transphobe, but that obviously means something different for me than it does for her, right? For me it means that she hates trans people and opposes trans rights but what does it mean for her?

Kellie-Jay Keen: Really, it - look, I'm in this - this is - this is why we're all worried, I suspect, about the trans movement. I’m worried about women's rights and I'm worried about children's bodies. And all the other stuff that comes with that, I'm not quite so worried about. Um, but you know my my focus, my absolute focus, which is clearly transphobic, is - is pro-women.

Shaun: So Kellie-Jay Keen's whole campaign is based on these two ostensible motivations: protecting children's bodies and protecting women's rights. By protecting children, she means from the supposed dangers of transgender ideology. If trans people are socially accepted, that might lead to more young people wanting to transition, and that might lead to them going on puberty blockers or undergoing surgeries. Keen talks repeatedly about the possible side effects of medical transition as well as the minority of detransitioners; people who transition and then later detransition.

Shaun: Keen is particularly concerned about the possible effects of puberty blockers upon children's later fertility. That's just something to remember, there.

Shaun: Additionally, Keen uses some very tortured logic to try to make connections between trans people and pedophilia in a manner that's very reminiscent of homophobic claims about gay people. By protecting women's rights, she primarily means by excluding trans people from what she considers to be women's spaces. Spaces like women's restrooms, changing rooms, sports teams, and the like. Now I acknowledge that Keen wouldn't accept me saying “trans people” here. She would say she's motivated by keeping men out of women's spaces, but as we'll see, she doesn't really mean “men.” She does mean trans people.

Shaun: And something else to remember here is that by protecting women's rights, she actually means just her personal interpretation of this one singular right, because as we'll also see, she's perfectly willing to give up other women's rights in pursuit of her single issue. She is less of a women's rights campaigner and more of a women's right campaigner.

Shaun: This single issue approach to activism has divided the anti-trans crowd into two camps as Keen moves from the outskirts to the mainstream of the anti-trans world. Whether one is a supporter or critic of her style of activism has become the question to answer in the anti-trans community. The group opposed to Keen are the more liberal academic anti-trans campaigners. These are self-styled gender-critical radical feminists. They read theory, they author articles in broadsheet newspapers, they give talks at universities, publish books and all that stuff. When it comes to pushing back against trans rights, this group plays a subtler game than Keen. This is the crowd who talk about just having a few concerns. They present themselves as the adults in the room. They're aware of the need for good optics. They want to be seen to have won the argument legitimately. They work very hard to convey that they're not motivated by bigotry, they're not motivated by transphobia: They just have a few concerns. As a political strategy, they will be accepting of a minority of trans people. They will often name and gender trans people correctly, for instance, but they'll draw a distinction between what they see as true trans people and confused bandwagon jumpers getting swept up in a trend.

Shaun: As such, they will promote the voices of transgender people like Debbie Hayton, who opposes gender self-identification. They can point to Hayton and say “See, even some trans people have valid concerns about trans rights.” They use Hayton and people like her to attempt to divide trans people as a group between what they see as the true trans people and the fake trans people. They see having a few Debbie Haytons around as an acceptable trade-off for dividing their opposition and achieving their political goals.

Shaun: This group of campaigners cannot stand Kellie-Jay Keen. You see, Keen openly denies the existence of transness outright. There are no trans people in Keen's world. She doesn't believe in trans people or trans rights, which is probably why she's happy to be called transphobic. For Keen, all trans women are creepy men in dresses motivated by sick sexual perversions and all trans men are self-hating insane women who want to cut their breasts off because of internalized misogyny. That's it. Zero exceptions, including the likes of Debbie Hayton, who Keen has a particular animosity for. Keen repeatedly dead names and misgenders Hayton like she does for all trans people she refers to, and she harshly criticizes anyone in the gender critical crowd who's willing to tolerate being around someone who she endlessly and loudly proclaims to be a creepy pervert man occupying women-only spaces.

Shaun: Kellie-Jay “I’m happy to be called a transphobe” Keen is a nightmare for the anti-trans campaigners who are concerned about optics. The fundamental divide here is that Keen takes a no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity approach to activism. For her, the only problem is that not enough people have heard about all the evil trans people and all the terrible things they're doing. “If more people knew what I knew,” she thinks, “they'd be rioting in the streets!” The argument is already won, as far as Keen is concerned. It isn't even really an argument, so optics don't matter. All that matters is attention. “Everyone knows trans people aren't real,“ Keen thinks, “and the only reason you'd say different is if you're either insane, a lying pervert trying to sneak into a woman's locker room, or you're just too afraid to admit what you really think.”

Shaun: She talks frequently about the silent majority who agree with her, and low turnout at her events never conveys that few people agree with her, of course. Only that there's a fear of turning up. And in fact, the fewer people who turn up just goes to prove how frightened the silent majority must be of speaking up.

Shaun: However the problem for Keen, and for the other anti-trans campaigners whether they agree with her or not, is that she's wrong. optics do matter. Not everyone already agrees with her. There isn't a silent majority just waiting for the opportunity to speak up. Not all attention is good attention, here. Attention that comes at the expense of associating your movement with fascists and neo-Nazis is bad attention, because whatever concern might exist in the silent majority about things like puberty blockers or women's sports, they're also so concerned about neo-Nazis.

Shaun: Opposition to trans rights might be a single issue for Kellie-Jay Keen, but despite what she thinks, it isn't for the vast majority of society.

Shaun: Another optics problem for the gender critical feminist crowd is that Keen refuses to call herself a feminist. She takes a very personal and furious approach to responding to criticism coming from feminists, and herself is harshly critical of what she sees as feminism failing women. All those fancy academic feminists should have pushed back against trans rights harder and sooner, she says, and she carries an enormous grudge against them for being, as she sees it, asleep at their posts. So Kellie-Jay Keen can't play nice with the other transphobes and keeps trashing their political strategies. And let's take a look at an example of this in action. So in a video posted after the Melbourne rally, Keen attempts to sow doubt over the legitimacy of the neo-Nazi group who turned up to support her, suggesting it may have been a false flag operation.

Kellie-Jay Keen: And I just - something about all of this doesn't make any sense. It feels really off. I don't think it's beyond the wit of anyone to think that that either was, uh, TRAs (note: Trans Rights Activists) dressed up, or police, or just - something was just off there.

Shaun: Now, I find this a particularly audacious claim because a couple of months before the rally in January, Keen was actually told that far-right groups were going to turn up to her events and it was recorded.

Kellie-Jay Keen: I don’t, and I don't think, uh, I would be really shocked if we suddenly come to Australia and then a load of really vile nefarious racist people turn up and actually take the platform and the microphone, um, and if they do -

Interlocutor: But they do turn up. That's the problem. They do turn up. They have been turning up to events in Australia.

Kellie-Jay Keen: Oh, and what? They make speeches?

Interlocutor: No but, but they do turn up to the events. You know that, right? You are aware of that - that problem?

Kellie-Jay Keen: (sputters) People are free to turn up wherever they like. At Speaker's Corner -

Interlocutor: I'm just saying you're aware that they've been turning up to trans events in Australia, correct?

Kellie-Jay Keen: So they take the microphone - which is unlikely, because it's mostly women that speak - but even if they do, it's a free speech event. It’s free for you to turn your backs on them, and say “we disagree, “ and shout, because that’s the way -

Interlocutor: (overlapping) Would you disagree with them - so you would disavow that - that speech -

Kellie-Jay Keen: I don't disavow anybody. I would disavow - I will disavow words if I disagree with them, and I hear them, but I won't disavow someone for thoughts that they have in their head. No.

Interlocutor: Well. Well these are the things that are my concern, because, um, at the community in Florida, I think, when you were there, a - an ex-Proud Boy member that the locals knew - didn't say anything, he just said, “I don't like transing kids,” but the media there had a field day. Because they know him.

Kellie-Jay Keen: They didn't have a field day. It didn't make the news. It might have been in, like, lefty print media, but so! So what. So a man that that has potentially unpalatable views about something else spoke and said he doesn't like transing kids. So what?

Shaun: That's a group of Australian anti-trans radical feminist campaigners there trying to convey to Keen in a Twitter Spaces ahead of her Australia trip that far-right groups are going to turn up to her events. Their worry, which proved to be extremely prescient, is that if Keen lets a bunch of far-right fascists turn up to her events, people will afterwards associate gender critical feminism with fascism. Associating with fascists hands free ammunition to their political opponents, who can now say with evidence Keen provided to them, “Don't listen to that lot. They're friends with the neo-Nazis.”

Shaun: And Keen's answer on receiving this warning is to say, “So what if they turn up, it's a free speech event.” She also brought this warning up in some of her January live streams where she doubled down on her policy that anyone is encouraged to attend her events.

Kellie-Jay Keen: No. I just wanna - let's go over this again. Every single woman, whatever her views, is welcome at a Let Women Speak event. Every single man, no matter what his views are, are welcome at a Let Women Speak event. We are allowing anyone to speak, anyone to attend. We don't disavow, we don't police, we don't verify people at our events. We absolutely know that some people come to the events that have thoughts in their heads I don't agree with. It's amazing! And you know what? I'm such a big fat grown-up that I can put up with it. You may fear guilt by association. I don’t.

Shaun: This is why it's particularly cheeky of Keen to try and suggest the possibility of the fascist group being false flag actors in disguise. Because she was told they were going to turn up beforehand, and she said, “So what? Everyone's welcome to my events.”

Shaun: In the wake of this event and Keen's disastrous failed attempt to tour New Zealand, the group Feminist Left Australia put out an article analyzing the effects of her trip, coming to the conclusion that her visit had set their struggle back substantially, because gender critical feminism in Australia is now associated with Nazism. And I quote, “It is quite simple: if KJK did not take a single issue approach to her activism focusing solely on transgenderism, rather than on women's rights as a whole, and had not spent the past few years cozying up to the extreme right, the NSN would not have come to the rally. KJK thus bears much of the responsibility for the association of gender-critical feminism with Nazism in Australia due to her failure to distance herself from the NSN.” So good job to Kellie-Jay there, well done.

Shaun: Keen herself often takes a plausibly deniable approach to cozying up to the far right, a little bit like how Matt Walsh will openly call himself a fascist as a fake joke. You know, if you criticize me, well, I was just joking, you see. But if you happen to agree with me, well then I wasn't actually joking at all, I'm deadly serious. One of Keen's social media profile pictures is a Barbie in a Nazi uniform, for instance, and she's also fond of saying things like this:

Kellie-Jay Keen: Often I'm accused of being - buddying up to certain far-right groups. Where are you boys? I thought we were friends!

Kellie-Jay Keen: “Fascist” is the new word for legend.

Shaun: Every time she gets any pushback for flirting with fascism she'll say, “Oh, don't take everything so seriously. I’m only joking, of course.” But in addition to “only joking,” she does actually want very much for the other far-right groups to attend her events.

Shaun: One funny aspect to all this is that Keen is confused by the rejection of the more liberal academic radical feminists. She mistakenly believes that they don't like her because she is, as she claims, “working class” - which in her colloquial non-Marxist understanding of class is absolutely laughable, as an aside - but it's actually because she's letting Nazis paint swastikas all over their political project. They put a lot of effort into their attempts to not be seen as transphobic, and then Keen turns up with her fascist friends and says, “No, we are transphobic. We are opposed to trans rights. I'm going to dead name and misgender every trans person I talk about, even trans people who are currently helping us, like Debbie Hayton, and if you've got a problem with that, I'm going to annihilate you. And then after all that she's like, “Why don't they like me? It must be because I'm working class.” It's amazing. So Keen's single issue activism has something of a strategy problem for the more respectable transphobes, but there's another problem with her single issue activism, and it's that her stated justifications for it don't actually make any sense.

Shaun: So one issue with Keen's activism is that her single issue anti-trans approach to women's rights is causing her to ally herself and her cause with people who oppose abortion. She will support politicians based solely on their regressive stance on trans rights even if they also support efforts to outlaw abortion, and those two things often come hand in hand. Of course, for instance, if you've watched my previous videos, you'll know that she invited the anti-abortion politician baroness Emma Nicholson to speak at one of her events, and also that she's a member of Hands Across the Aisle, an organization founded by two anti-abortion activists. She sung the praises of conservative politicians who oppose abortion, and she even supported Donald Trump in the last presidential election. Her Australian trip was in part funded by CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, a group whose chairman, Matt Schlapp, once stated that an abortion ban would be an answer to the racist Great Replacement myth. And Keen also has other ties to U.S. anti-abortion activists, which we'll talk about in due time.

Shaun: Now Keen's willingness to give up abortion rights is not left to the reader's imagination, here. She is explicit about it, once stating outright that the right to a legal abortion would be quote “worth setting aside.” And on the day before the last U.S presidential election, Keen endorsed Donald Trump with the following justification.

Kellie-Jay Keen: If I'm gonna lay my cards on the table, I would like to wake up tomorrow without any change in the presidency. And I know I'm not supposed to say that, because that instantly makes me a white nationalist, and a racist, and a terrible person, but that's what I hope. For I think if it comes down to reproductive rights for women or the right to say who we are and what we are, I mean, the latter is far more important. I think you can win reproductive rights back. I don't even know if there's a general appetite in America to take them away.

Shaun: Now it should be noted here that Keen also personally supports a particular restriction on abortion. She wants to scrap Gillick competence.

Kellie-Jay Keen: I've often talked about consent, and how I'm very fearful about consent, and how I think Gillick is the key to that. How it gets misused and appropriated in other areas of law and, I think that we really need to look back at that. Like, why. Why are we enabling children to take, um, sometimes contraceptives that - that are quite harmful, or access to abortion? Um, I think that we really need to rethink all of this. I think parents need to take back control of their children.

Shaun: So okay, Wikipedia description for people who don't know: Gillick competence is a term originating in England and Wales, and it's used in medical law to decide whether a child - a person under sixteen years of age - is able to consent to their own medical treatment without the need for parental permission or knowledge. This particular case was about contraception, but of course it has effects in other areas of health. Imagine, say, a fifteen year old who wants to get vaccinated against a deadly disease, but their parents think George Soros is putting demonic microchips in vaccines. Now do we think that child should have the right to consent to their own health care without parental permission? I would say yes, definitely, but Kellie-Jay Keen says “No, parents need to take back control of their children.”

Shaun: This ends up being a restriction on particular abortions, because minors wouldn't be able to get abortions without parental consent or permission, This would, in cases where anti-abortion parents refuse to give consent, either force minors to carry pregnancies to term or cause them to seek out unsafe abortions. Keen often states that she is pro-choice and I think she probably legitimately believes that she is, but that's just inside her own head, of course. Outside of her own head, she is a single issue campaigner, so what she personally thinks of abortion doesn't really matter: She's more than willing to sacrifice that right at the altar of her anti-trans campaign.

Shaun: So there's a few things to say about this. The first is that the claim that Keen is a women's rights campaigner is not true. She is willing to trade away women's rights that they already have. And a lot of hay has been made about the fact that Keen claims to be fighting for women's rights, but is also willing to give up women's rights because that's an obvious hypocrisy, right? Worth noting here, though, is that Keen's willingness to team up with anti-abortion activists and support anti-abortion politicians also conflicts with her positions on child safety and her stated worries about the effects of medical transition on young people's health, because Keen is willing to work with anti-abortion extremists who oppose abortion even in cases of rape, or where there's a significant threat to the health of the pregnant person, or even in cases where the person seeking an abortion is a child.

Shaun: And these are not merely theoretical possibilities. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, the state of Ohio instituted a ban on all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and of course, many people don't even know that they're pregnant until after six weeks of pregnancy. One result of this ban was that a ten year old girl who'd been raped had to travel out of state in order to get an abortion. Now if she couldn't travel, or if such a limitation on abortions was instituted on a national level, that girl would have been legally required to go through pregnancy at ten years old, with all the associated health risks that brings, and give birth to her rapist’s child.

Shaun: And I should note here that Keen knows how dangerous pregnancy and childbirth can be. She's talked generally about the complications that can arise during pregnancy, but she also talks frequently about one of her own pregnancies which resulted in a difficult birth that saw her and her child having to be resuscitated afterwards. And that's for an adult woman! There are additional dangers that come with someone being pregnant as a minor. Abortion bans kill people. You may recall the death of Savita Halappanavar, an Indian woman living in Ireland who died from sepsis after her request for an abortion was denied even though miscarriage was unavoidable in that case. These are the sorts of things that happen if abortion is outlawed.

Shaun: And something else to keep in mind here are all the health risks that come with carrying out unsafe abortions, which of course many women and girls are forced to seek out in places where abortion is banned, but Kellie-Jay Keen thinks abortion rights are worth setting aside. Keen often hides behind her daughter in discussions about trans women accessing women's spaces. “Why should my daughter have to see a quote ‘man’ in her changing room?” she asks. Well, I have a question for Keen in a similar vein: Would you want girls like your daughter to have their abortion rights taken away? To go to prison for seeking illegal unsafe abortions? To be left to die without medical care because doctors are legally forbidden from terminating even an unviable pregnancy that's killing them? Because that's what your anti-abortion allies want to bring about. That's what you think is worth trading away.

Shaun: Keen’s strategy is to say “I think children are being hurt by this trans issue, so this is the most important thing, and we can forgo everything else in the meantime,” but this doesn't make sense, of course, because what she's willing to give up for this single issue will lead to children being hurt. In the instance of giving up abortion rights, children would be forced to carry dangerous pregnancies to term or seek unsafe abortions, so why does Keen not think those children are worthy of a single issue campaign? Why not put everything else on hold until those children are safe? You know, she's claiming to be trying to save children from danger but she's willing to shove other children into danger in pursuit of that goal.

Shaun: Keen misunderstands why people criticize her for teaming up with anti-abortion activists. Whenever she talks about this, she makes it seem as though the worry is that she personally will be persuaded by their arguments and become anti-abortion in her own mind. “Do not worry,” she reassures her audience, “My mind is made up. There's no way their arguments will sway me,” but this is a very self-centered view.

Shaun: Of course it doesn't really matter what Keen thinks about abortion personally. What matters is what she does. She has a platform and an audience and, regardless of her own opinions about abortion, what she does is let people working to restrict abortion rights onto that platform and hands them a microphone.

Shaun: Of course this is just one way in which Kellie-Jay Keen’s claimed motivations for her single issue activism don't make sense. There are many others that I could list here, and I'm going to. So another way all this doesn't make sense is Keen's focus on child sexual abuse. Now what Keen says she believes is that being trans is primarily an atypical sexual fetish and people who have one atypical sexual fetish are likely to have more. Thus trans people are more likely to be pedophiles in her view. This is, of course, the exact same false narrative homophobes used to attack gay rights and has long been employed to try to keep gay people out of certain spaces and jobs, and so on.

Shaun: These are dangerous narratives, not just for their effect upon LGBT people but because they work to obscure the much more common ways that abuse is often carried out. But also in terms of Kellie-Jay Keen's single issue activism, her support for any politician or political party who aligns with her in opposition to trans rights has caused her to support not just politicians who have had child abuse allegations made about them, but also the Republican party in general in the United States, which is the party that fights to keep child marriage legal. So I suppose we could ask why child brides aren't worthy of a Kellie-Jay Keen single issue campaign.

Shaun: But there's something else I want to highlight here. If you've seen my video “JK Rowling's New Friends,” you'll know that Kellie-Jay Keen has worked with the group Hands Across the Aisle, an organization trying to unite anti-trans radical feminists and conservative Christians in order to oppose trans rights. Hands Across the Aisle claims Keen as a member. They fundraised to support her activism, and Keen is friendly on Twitter with the founder of the group, Kaeley Triller. So Kaeley Triller used to work as a residential treatment counselor for juvenile delinquent males between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. While she was there, she entered into what she calls a “relationship” with one of the minors who was once part of the program. She calls this a “chemical attraction” that she didn't know how to break. Following this relationship. Child Protective Services got involved and issued a strike against Triller. She lost her job and she also became pregnant by the minor that she was once supposed to be a counselor for. Triller describes the resulting pregnancy as God’s answer to her prayers. And it should be noted here that these aren't mere allegations made against Triller: The reason I'm able to quote her words about this is that she's confessed to it openly.

Shaun: So the first point I want to make about this is that if Kaeley Triller was trans, Kellie-Jay Keen would be ranting and raving about this incident for weeks on stream. She would be outraged about the trans counselor who abused their position of authority to gain access to vulnerable minors, weaving the incident into her grand narrative of trans criminality, but since Kaeley Triller isn't trans and is a friend of hers, the incident gets ignored.

Shaun: I didn't bring all this up in the JK Rowling video because I didn't have anything to directly tie Triller to Rowling, so it seemed a bit tangential, but I do now. So in January of this year, Triller said she loved JK Rowling on Twitter, to which Rowling replies “Just followed you. Welcome to my club. Kiss.” “Quite possibly the highlight of my Twitter career. Thank you! Stay strong. Heart.” “And you, sister. Kiss.” These tweets are still online as of the posting of this video, by the way.

Shaun: And in relation to that, I’d like to answer a few responses I got to the Rowling video. In that video, I criticized Rowling for not going and deleting her old tweets where she praises people who turn out to be anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, openly threatening violence, or whatever else, and a few Rowling fans didn't like that. They said, “Oh come on, we can't really expect her to go back through her old social media posts when she learns things like that. We can't judge her opinions just for not deleting some old tweets.” Well something I should have mentioned at the time is that JK Rowling does go back and delete tweets where she's praised people, once they declare their support for trans rights. That, for instance, Rowling posted praise for fellow author Stephen King until King tweeted his support for trans rights, at which point Rowling's tweets praising King mysteriously disappeared.

Shaun: Ooh spooky! Maybe a ghost deleted them. No, JK Rowling just doesn't care if you're anti-abortion or anti-gay rights, or you post violent threats, or you do the kinds of things Kaeley Triller did, but if you support trans rights, that she will take as an insult.

Shaun: Anyway back to Kellie-Jay Keen. Keen talks about Kaeley Triller in her videos, referring to her as a friend, and she even cites her advice in a video that's supposed to be about child safety, if you can believe it.

Kellie-Jay Keen: Um a friend of mine on Facebook called Kaeley, um, Triller Harms (Note: “Harms” seems to be Triller’s married name.) What she talks about is parents in America sitting in - so not doing a sit out, but sitting in - in the classrooms and demanding that they see the materials.

Shaun: And I know what the response to this will be from Keen's fans. They'll say, “Oh well, maybe she just doesn't know about Triller's history,” but no, she does and I can prove that.

Shaun: So on September 27, 2017, the account transadvocate on Twitter shared Triller's confession alongside an additional allegation; that being that Triller had engaged in doxing. Kellie-Jay Keen jumps into the replies to defend her friend, but strangely chooses only to respond to the doxing allegation, saying that Triller never doxed anyone. Further down on the responses to this tweet, transadvocate says to Keen, “I’m not the one defending someone who has sex with vulnerable kids who are under her care. That's all you,” to which Keen responds, “Transing children is abuse,” etc.

Shaun: This exchange is interesting in a couple of ways. Firstly, it proves that Keen knows about what her friend Kaeley Triller was up to - she just doesn't care. Keen claims to be motivated by concerns about grooming, but when it's her friend in question, she is noticeably unconcerned. Secondly, it's a good example of Keen's never-play-defense style of argument. If she ever runs up against an argument she can't beat, she simply hops to another track and keeps on moving forward. Keen can't defend what Kaeley Triller did directly because it would expose her claim to be motivated by child safety as deeply hypocritical, so she doesn’t. She just steps around it and tries to change the subject: transing children is abuse.

Shaun: Another example of this concerns Keen giving an interview at her Melbourne event to the far right Rebel News correspondent, Avi Yemini, a man who campaigns in support of Tommy Robinson and has also been convicted of harassing and physically assaulting his ex-wife. Keen proudly shared the exclusive interview from the event on Twitter, and when she was challenged over giving an interview to a quote “admitted wife beater,” Keen again ignored the comment and said something irrelevant.

Shaun: Keen's main argumentative tactic is to simply dismiss or ignore what the other person is saying and say what she wants to say instead. I read through her entire Twitter feed and saw her do this hundreds of times at least. But there's no better example, I think than this exchange, where Keen ends up in a protracted argument with gendervalidator, which is a Twitter robot which auto responds to tweets mentioning it. And this really serves to show that arguing with people like Keen with the aim of changing their minds is a largely futile endeavor. Keen literally could not care less what the other person is saying. She doesn't notice that she's arguing with a robot even when it outright says it is a robot, so why would she ever care about whatever arguments or evidence you could present her with? Not that arguing with people like Keen is always pointless, but the game should always be to discredit her in the eyes of onlookers rather than talk her around personally, because that's clearly impossible.

Shaun: Anyway, the next problem I have with Keen's stated motivations for her activism is her claim to be protecting women's spaces. Keen says she's motivated to stop people she calls men from going into women's spaces like toilets and locker rooms, and she also claims to be concerned about women's shortlists for awards, women's sports, grants for women, and things like that. The first issue I have with this position is that Keen has repeatedly advocated for men to go into women's spaces. Most notably, here she's arguing for armed men who agree with her to go into women's toilets, including trying to enter school toilets.

Kellie-Jay Keen: I had a bit of an idea about some of the things that you can do, and men, for once I'm talking to you. I'm talking about you dads who maybe carry - I think that's what you say? I'm so down with the American lingo - maybe you carry, maybe you don’t. Maybe you consider yourself a protector of women, maybe you're that sort of man. Maybe you have a daughter or a mother or a wife, maybe you have a sister, maybe you just have some friends. Maybe you just think women are human and you don't need any absolute connection with them to feel compelled to protect us.

Kellie-Jay Keen: Um, I think you should start using women's toilets, men, because you have every right to self-identify. Clearly don't do it and upset women and girls that are already in there, but just make a point of doing it, and maybe make the women feel okay about you doing it if, you know, if you come out and you frighten someone. Uh, but it's about time that you started using women's toilets and saying that you identify as a woman if stopped, and I think that's how you're going to have - that's one of the many ways that you are going to have to combat the insanity of self ID. Even if it's not called self ID, that's pretty much what you have now in the United States, and that's how you men are going to help.

Kellie-Jay Keen: Uh, and there's going to be no excuses, and you either care about the women and girls in your life, or you don’t, but you are going to start inserting yourselves into spaces that are specifically for women and girls. Uh, maybe you're gonna do it, uh, when you go to your kids’ school, and they've had to inject this federal nonsense of accepting boys into girls’ spaces. Maybe you need to make a point of saying to the head teacher (Note: principal) that you're going to go and use the toilet, and ask where the girls’ toilets are.

Shaun: This is a tactic that Keen has advocated for for a long time. For instance, here's another clip of her arguing that white men should falsely claim to be black women in order to apply for some sort of women-only business grant that her stream chat were talking about.

Kellie-Jay Keen: (reading from screen) “- only for people of color and women owners.” If I were a white male, I would identify as one of these. That is so - oh please, somebody do that. It's systemic racism and sexism - oh please somebody do that. What a fantastic idea! What an absolutely staggeringly wonderful idea! Let's make that happen! Let's do that! Let’s, um - oh come on, let's make that a thing. Um, let's make that totally a thing, where somebody says that they are black and they are a woman to get, uh, to get those grants.

Shaun: Now this seems obvious to say, but all this proves that Keen is not really concerned about men in women's spaces, given that that is exactly where she is advising men to go, and she especially isn't concerned about women's comfort, given that she's advising men to go into those spaces armed. What she is concerned about solely is trans people. She doesn't want to keep men out of women's spaces: She's telling men to go into women's spaces. What she wants is to keep trans women out of women's spaces, because this isn't really about women's safety or comfort for Keen. It's about enforcing what she considers normal.

Shaun: Keen always sidesteps the question of how any sort of trans bathroom bill would be enforced by saying she can always tell who is trans. She always knows: Which firstly isn't true, because multiple times reading her Twitter feed, I saw her accuse people of being trans who are not trans, but also it doesn't really matter, does it? It doesn't matter if Kellie-Jay Keen has a perfect, accurate trans-radar: She isn't stationed outside every toilet in the world, is she? How good she is at spotting trans people doesn't matter. There are plenty of stories about cis people being accosted in the bathroom by some nosy jerk who thinks they look like they don't belong.

Shaun: And Keen can't even say that she's relying on some inherent cis woman intuition here, because she's also encouraging men to go patrolling for trans people in women's spaces. There was a story just recently from a children's track and field event in Canada where a grandfather of one of the students stopped the event to accuse a nine-year-old cis girl of being trans, just because she had short hair. He demanded certification to prove the girl wasn't trans, and his wife called one of the girls parents a genital mutilator, a groomer, and a pedophile.

Shaun: Kellie-Jay Keen doesn't mind these sorts of false accusations being thrown at cis women and girls, and this is not my assumption, here. She has stated that she thinks most women wouldn't mind being challenged like this, and that quote “false accusations are not as important as keeping men out.” Cis people who don't present in a traditionally masculine or feminine way being harassed in public is just one more thing Keen is willing to accept so long as it means trans people also get harassed, of course. So cis women with short hair who like wearing jeans and a shirt, it's genital inspections for you, I'm afraid, if Kellie-Jay Keen and her friends get their way.

Shaun: The last point I want to bring up here with regards to Keen's stated motivations for her activism is that of fertility, and what she claims are the potential effects of puberty blockers in particular.

Kellie-Jay Keen: There are children taking puberty blockers that will totally annihilate their sexual function and their fertility. Their parents are indoctrinated, their schools are indoctrinated their doctors are indoctrinated, the counselors are indoctrinated, and it needs somebody to speak up.

Shaun: So Keen claims to be motivated by a need to protect the fertility of trans youths. However, I'd like to have a think about this in relation to a quote of Keen’s that I've shown previously, where she claims that quote “women who call themselves men should be sterilized.”

Shaun: Now I showed this in a previous video as a throwaway look-how-horrible-this-person-is sort of thing, but there's more to be said about this statement, so let's consider it for a minute. Firstly, I'd like to note that Keen says they should be sterilized: It isn't get sterilized. This is something that is happening to them. Next, Keen, of course, got a lot of pushback for this tweet, some from people inside her own camp, who realized it looks very bad for one of theirs to be openly advocating for forced sterilizations. And she got pretty angry about this, bemoaning that apparently it's controversial to think that certain people she doesn't like should be sterilized.

Shaun: Apparently it's controversial - you can't say anything nowadays, can you? You can't even advocate for the forced sterilization of minorities without the woke snowflake brigade getting all upset: It's political correctness gone mad! Another thing to note here is that Keen didn't later apologize for this remark and retract it: In fact, she doubled down on it. And when she was later asked if she retracts it, she says no, she doesn't think they should have children. Her only attempted defense is to say that she did not propose a sterilization plan. So she said it should happen, but she didn't personally draw up a timetable for it, so that's okay.

Shaun: So let's try to work this whole thing out, here. Kellie-Jay Keen says she's very worried about people who she calls women medically transitioning, claiming that the process will render them sterile. However she also thinks that they should actually just be sterilized, as they're not fit to be parents, according to her. Now I have to admit I chased my tail on this one for a while. One minute, she refers to trans men as poor little victims who need to be protected from damaging their own bodies, and the next minute she refers to them as dangerous abusers who need to be sterilized to prevent them from reproducing. On the surface, it doesn't make sense, does it? I went back and forth on this, trying to understand how one person could believe what seem to be too directly contradictory things, but I finally understood it when my girlfriend pointed out that Keen is operating on zombie rules.

Shaun: From her perspective, everyone starts out as a potential victim, but the moment they are actually victimized - as she sees it - they become infected and cease to be human. The key to understanding this contradiction turned out to be dehumanization.

Shaun: In relation to that, I'd like to talk about this Twitter conversation from 2016 between Keen, Magdalen Berns, and Charlie Peters, who is a GB news presenter. The context is some fluff nothing tweet about how supposedly woke and politically correct universities are. Keen takes the opportunity to be transphobic, of course, to which someone replies that the situation seems like a Sci-Fi story. Magdalen Berns replies “Horror film,” to which Charlie Peters says he can't wait to bash some heads in. The like on this tweet is from Magdalen Berns, by the way. Keen then replies “That will really put an end to safe spaces, wink,” to which Berns says, “Don't hold your breath. It’s a long old fight, and we are dealing with a pack of sociopathic wolves.“

Shaun: This comment from Berns here is really something special, you know: “Our enemies, who we're currently describing as movie monsters and fantasizing about bashing their heads in, and who I even dehumanize in this very tweet; they sure are sociopaths, aren't they?”

Shaun: So to sum up everything about Keen's motivations for her single issue activism we've seen so far, she claims to want to keep men out of women's spaces but also encourages men to go into those spaces. She claims to want to protect women's rights but is willing to give up their abortion rights. She claims to be concerned about child grooming, but not when the accused is a personal friend or politician that she likes. She claims to be concerned about health and fertility, but also supports sterilizing people she doesn't like. All of Kellie-Jay Keen's claimed motivations for her anti-trans campaign turn out on investigation to be groundless. She doesn't really believe any of these things, or her actions would, by necessity, be different than they are.

Shaun: So what's the conclusion here? Well, if she isn't really motivated by protecting children and defending women's rights, what is actually motivating Kellie-Jay Keen? So Keen has been around on the internet for quite a long time. Her Twitter account goes back more than ten years. She was a regular poster on Mumsnet back in the day, until she was banned for refusing to stop misgendering people, which I was very surprised to hear was a rule Mumsnet enforces, by the way. And she had a previous YouTube channel where she would post political commentary videos she filmed while driving her children to and from school, which seems like an incredibly bad idea in terms of both internet safety and road safety.

Shaun: Now I'm going to give my impression of Keen based on her earlier internet presence here, before it became dominated by her single issue activism. Now I'll keep this bit short. I don't want to get too personal, but I do think it is important for understanding some things I'm going to say later. So okay: my impression of Keen, looking at her earlier internet presence is that she's someone who feels very strongly that it's important she be seen as standing up for her principles, but she also gives the impression that she hasn't spent any time at all actually thinking about why she holds the principles that she does.

Shaun: She gets her principles by way of what she’d call common sense gut instinct: things she reckons she just knows because they're so obvious. She attributes far too many things to evolutionary psychology and genetic memory, rationalizing her own thoughts as being naturally and automatically correct by virtue of being in her head. I mean, they must be in there for some reason, right? Keen doesn't read and is suspicious of anyone who comes across as two learned or academic, and she will dismiss studies out of hand unless they agree with her preconceived notions about the world. I’ve also watched her comment on a lot of debates and speeches, and she always takes an instant dislike to anyone who seems to be thinking about what they're saying, and conversely she praises people who speak authoritatively, even if what they're saying is absolute nonsense.

Shaun: She takes a very individualistic view of complex systemic issues. I’ve seen her holding individual Muslims to account for every wrong ever committed in the name of Islam, holding individual sex workers to account for all of sex trafficking, and so on. Of course recently this has become holding individual people to account for everything wrong any trans person has ever done, or that she imagines that they might have done.

Shaun: Keen also has something of a conspiracist streak: one that got a lot worse over the Covid lockdown. When reality doesn't line up with things Keen believes she knows are true, she usually explains this with references to something shady going on behind the scenes; unseen puppet masters pulling the strings of society, and the like, but we'll get more into that a little later.

Shaun: Overall, Keen favors authoritarian action and speech. She has a narrow view of how she thinks humans should behave, rooted in biased ideas about normality and naturality, and she has an incredible incuriosity about and lack of empathy for anyone who thinks differently from her. Now you might be thinking, “Okay Sean, you've taken a lot of words there just to say Kellie-Jay Keen is a conservative,” which yes, that is what she is, although she herself was reluctant to accept the title for a long time. Back in the day, Keen still considered herself a feminist and something interesting to note here is that she wasn't always actively transphobic. And in fact she actually used to show confusion and annoyance at transphobia, viewing it as an unnecessary division within feminism.

Shaun: In light of posts like this one, I’ve seen some people suggest that Keen's anti-trans campaign is a pure grift. You know, she wasn't actually transphobic herself but she recognized a market she could sell cheap tat to. And sell cheap tat she does: Having been banned from various fundraising websites, Keen spends a large portion of each of her livestreams advertising the various tacky products in her online shop, like she's hosting some sort of transphobe shopping network, but I think the pure grift narrative is a bit overly simplistic and can work to obscure the way that radicalization works.

Shaun: It's possible that Keen wasn't a transphobic bigot, but then was radicalized into being a very fervent one, and just along the way worked out how to earn a lot of money selling overpriced stickers and the likes to other bigots, and this is what I believe happened. The money is definitely a factor: For sure, the campaign is her day job by now, but it isn't the main motivation for Keen's anti-trans campaign. The main motivation there is simply hatred. Kellie-Jay Keen hates trans people.

Shaun: Now this next section of my video is going to be me providing evidence for the claim that Keen is motivated by hatred, and I know we've seen a fair bit of that already, but I'd ask that you pay particular attention to the content warnings in the description of this video, because some of this stuff is just really nasty. So I was first motivated to make this video when I saw this screenshot of a Facebook post. In it, someone sends a Daily Mail article to Keen, then going by her other name, Posie Parker. The article is about the possible adverse health effects of estrogen patches for menopausal women, and the poster includes the comment, “I wonder what the effect on men is?” to which the Posie Parker account replies “Hopefully death,” with a little shrugging emoji, there.

Shaun: Now I knew that Keen was a dreadful person before seeing this, but I had a hard time believing she'd openly been this dreadful. Thinking that this post could be fake, I went looking to see if I could confirm its validity, and in the process, I dug up another Facebook post where Keen comments on a different Daily Mail article about the possibility of womb transplants for transgender women where she says, “I hope the male body is fatally allergic to fertilized embryos and nothing less.” Now I didn't understand this at the time: I was pretty naive. It seemed far too extreme for someone who is rapidly becoming the face of the anti-trans rights movement; someone who is interviewed on TV about it, someone who's supported by JK Rowling and the likes, to have a history of outright saying that she hopes trans people die.

Shaun: Surely we all would have heard of that, right, if she was going around wishing death on people? So were these posts fake? Photoshops made up by internet trolls, or what? Well, as it turns out:

Kellie-Jay Keen: Um, I think one of the things I did recently is that I posted that I hope men who, uh, have uterus implants or try - try and have uterus implants - uh, had a fatal consequence. Now that's because I think it's deeply unethical and hateful to implant a uterus into a man.

Shaun: That's Keen talking about being banned from Facebook for one of these posts in a video titled “Banned from Social Media,” there, so that's that confirmed. Anyway, Kellie-Jay Keen wants trans people to die. She said it openly and never retracted it or apologized for it. And she actually makes a point of never apologizing for anything she ever says, so I imagine she'd repeat this today if she was asked to apologize for it. And I'd just like to point out that when Keen is talking about her Facebook ban she's sitting in front of her “Adult Human Female” flag. That's just something to remember for later. Anyway, let's watch another horrible clip.

Kellie-Jay Keen: Um, Eric Wade, fifty dollars, thank you very much indeed. Um, nail the perp’s John Thomas to a tree stump, pour gas in it, light it on fire, hand “her” a butter knife and tell her to cut - cut or burn. That’s - I mean, sinister but, but I like the imagery.

Shaun: What can I say? That was Keen reading a Super Chat donation message she got from a member of her stream chat talking about torturing a trans woman, there. Now it should be noted here that while the message calls the trans woman in question a “perp,” the reason they were talking about that particular trans woman was because she'd reported someone to the police for online harassment. That's all: The trans woman in question didn't do anything illegal or violent towards the person she reported to the police. She just reported them, and for that Keen and her chat have a big old laugh about the imagery of torturing and burning her.

Shaun: Next up, I want to talk about this tweet from late 2016. So a Twitter poster brought up the 2011 beating of trans woman Chrissy Lee Polis. Polis was attacked by two teenagers after saying she was going to use a McDonald's restroom, and was beaten until she had a seizure. The attack was filmed by one of the McDonald's employees. Don't go and watch it, it's horrible. This attack was classified as a hate crime according to a 2011 Baltimore Sun article. Assistant State’s Attorney Rachel Cogen provided details of the beating in court. The teenagers who carried out the attack were eating at McDonald's and saw Polis go to the women's bathroom. They complained to workers that a man was using the women's bathroom, she said. And it should be noted that the older teenager, who was nineteen at the time, was charged with and pled guilty to a hate crime. So Polis was misgendered by her attackers prior to the attack, and we should remember that this all happened years before Keen was tweeting about it, so there's no excuse for her not knowing this.

Shaun: Anyway, Keen says neither the girls nor the boyfriend knew the trans woman wasn't female. “Not transphobic, possibly blind.” So Keen straight up lies about the facts of the case there, and also takes the opportunity to insult the appearance of the woman who was beaten so violently that she had a seizure. Keen also liked this tweet responding to hers, which claims the attackers didn't misgender the person who they attacked. But they did, of course. This is just blatant lying, here.

Shaun: Next up, I’d like to talk about the case from last year concerning a trans NHS worker who was subjected to a campaign of bullying and abuse at work. She was called slurs, found offensive notes in her locker, asked inappropriate questions by superiors and the likes, and she won the discrimination case. I want to make clear courts agree that this was a case of discrimination. Anyway, here's Keen talking about the case on her stream.

Kellie-Jay Keen: He also found an offensive note in her locker and overheard colleagues probably going, “Oh my God, that pervert's in the changing room again.” (Reading) “Abuse came after staff were told he would be using the female changing rooms.” Yes, good! Of course it should. I wonder if women can claim discrimination now - those women in Sheffield.

Shaun: So Keen thinks discrimination against trans people is okay, and I'd just like to back up that claim with another clip.

Kellie-Jay Keen: I don't care what you think about this, but if you are in a public-facing role, um, trusted by the state. If you have any position of authority or trust, then I'm sorry but you can't be a man who calls himself a woman. You just - it's just a big fat no for me. Anybody with that sort of power, it's a big fat no. Apparently these people are vulnerable - I don't go along with that, but even if I did, that would be a good enough reason to keep them, uh, out of any position of authority. So I’m, you know, I'm happy - I’m happy to say that in some situations, um, being exclusive or discriminatory is absolutely one hundred percent fine by me.

Shaun: So that's Keen saying trans people shouldn't be able to work in positions of authority there. Anyway, next up I'd like to talk about Lucy Meadows, who was a transgender teacher who died by suicide in 2013 after being subjected to a campaign of harassment by the UK press. Here's Keen talking about that case.

Kellie-Jay Keen: Way back there was a teacher who pretended to be female, and they were outed in the Press. Pretty sure everyone who'd ever met them knew that they weren’t a female, and I think they took their own lives. I think people were really upset that a man pretended to be a woman and taught their primary school kids, and I'm just gonna say quite right, too.

Shaun: Now if that clip sounded shockingly callous to you, trust me it is par for the course for how Keen talks about suicide. She laughs on Twitter about people who attempt suicide, dismisses worries about the trans-suicide rate by saying it isn't so high, and mocks suicide attempts and people struggling with suicidal ideation by saying “How hard is suicide?”

Shaun: Keen calls suicide a cross between inability to deal with stuff and a tantrum.She has no sympathy at all for people who die by suicide. She thinks they're simply weak fools who can't deal with reality, and she especially doesn't care about trans people who die by suicide, but that's hardly surprising, as I'd ask you to remember that we're talking about someone who stated several times that she wants trans people to die.

Shaun: I also have to mention one particularly slimy argument that Keen uses to sidestep the suicide issue, and it's one that, reading her feed, I saw her say over and over again. So someone will say something like the oppression of trans people leads to an increased risk of suicide, or, indeed, that acceptance of trans people leads to a decreased risk of suicide, and then Keen will respond men 45-59 are the most likely group to commit suicide. Which is not a response, is it? Because the argument was never about discerning which group of people is the absolute most likely to die by suicide. It was about suicide rates, the likelihood of certain people dying by suicide, and what we can do to reduce that. Keen's standard response here is just a cowardly dodge, pretending that she's heard a different argument, and responding to that instead of what the person actually said.

Shaun: I'd like to talk for a minute about the sort of language Keen uses when she's arguing with people. How quick she is to use very personal insults and the sorts of things she feels it's appropriate to insult. For instance, Keen likes to attack men by speculating about them being short or having small penises, or she frequently uses low income as an insult. She has a real disdain for both poor people and overweight people. You can see why JK Rowling likes her. “Go fuck yourself poor white trash pig ugly fatty,” is a good example sample of the sorts of places she usually goes to when she feels she's losing an argument. And if she can't find anything to attack about a cis woman's appearance, that won't stop her insulting them: She'll simply dismiss them as being insecure, air-headed Barbies.

Shaun: Every woman who disagrees with Keen, cis or trans, is either mocked and dismissed for failing to achieve a certain standard of feminine beauty or mocked and dismissed for achieving it too much. Women who disagree with her are, to Keen, either jealous and ugly or shallow bimbos. Trans women who do not reach that standard of traditional feminine beauty are mocked relentlessly by Keen in all sorts of gendered ways; their hair is bad, their makeup is bad, their clothes are bad. You know, never mind the feelings of any of her cis women followers who also do not meet those standards. But the moment Keen encounters trans women who do meet her beauty standards, she immediately starts dismissing the importance of the standards that she was just using to judge people. She swaps back into her faux feminist mode. “Oh, so you're reducing womanhood to hair and makeup and pretty clothes,” she'll say, as though she herself wasn't just doing that very thing in order to mock people.

Shaun: Keen also spends a lot of time quizzing people on if they're trans, quizzing people on what genitals they have, quizzing people on what genitals they're attracted to. Like a creepy pervert would.

Shaun: I should point out I've never seen someone quite so obsessed with other people's genitals.

Shaun: Now I could go on listing the terrible things Kellie-Jay Keen says on social media, but if I covered all of it, this video would be a week long. So that was just a representative sample, there. I do have to mention one more especially pathetic thing Keen does on Twitter, though. If she's arguing with a trans person, she will sometimes click through to that person's media tab and scroll back - sometimes for a very long time - until she finds a selfie of them to insult. Here she is mocking a trans person who was a teenager at the time, I believe, and if you note the dates, you'll see that she had to scroll back weeks to find a picture to insult. It's very strange, depressing, bleak behavior from an adult approaching fifty.

Shaun: So moving on, I'd like to ask a question: What would Kellie-Jay Keen actually do to trans people were she just in charge of society? So let's do that horrible thought experiment, here. So Prime Minister Keen comes to power. Can we work out from the things she has said the sorts of things that she would do?

Shaun: So let's start off by asking who would actually be allowed to transition in Kellie-Jay Keen's world. Well, nobody she considers too young, of course, but how young is too young for Keen? Nobody under the age of sixteen, maybe? Nobody under the age of eighteen? Well actually:

Kellie-Jay Keen: We will not ever say that transition is a choice that anyone under twenty-five can make. I think they should never make it.

Shaun: So twenty-five is the age of majority for transition for Keen; a full seven years after most countries consider someone to be a legal adult. And it should be noted here that Keen also thinks any parent who transitions is committing child abuse, so you have to be over the age of twenty-five, but with no kids.

Shaun: Now she obviously does not support any public money being spent on trans healthcare, so any people who are too poor are therefore excluded from medical transition. So if you want to transition, you better have a pretty good job. Except, as we've already seen, Keen also supports discriminating against trans people in order to keep them out of certain jobs. Obviously she thinks trans people shouldn't be able to be teachers, but she'd also ban them more generally from any role that is quote “public facing” or any “position of authority.” Which a very nebulous classification, there. What counts as a position of authority?

Shaun: You can see that Keen always has some reason or other for why any particular trans person should not transition. But what about someone who meets all of her criteria? What if we imagine an independently wealthy, unmarried, unemployed trans person who never interacts with the public or has any authority? What about them?

Kellie-Jay Keen: So…will we go back? Like somebody said to me- so I was having a discussion today, and someone said “What did you - “ you know, “Will it - what - what will happen? How will it end? When will we know that we've won?” and I don't think it’s- Just when the government basically stopped - has stopped transitioning children - although that is no small victory, that is that's a massive thing- if we stop the transitioning of children. I think we would also have to stop the transitioning of adults. We give these people the most compassion. Um, you know, same as everybody else going through a mental health crisis, and we manage to give them enough talking therapies that it means that they no longer feel that they have to transition; that surgery is not an option, that hormones that mess up their, um, endocrine system is not an option.

Shaun: So the goal for Keen - when she'll know that she's won - will be when everyone, adults included, are prevented from transitioning. Keen's catchphrase is “I never lose,” something she says in a particularly obnoxious way at the end of every video and speech that she makes, and this is what she means by that. Winning, to Kellie-Jay Keen, means no more trans people.

Shaun: Now to be somewhat fair to Keen, she goes on to say that she wants to do this first by giving trans people therapy - you know, conversion therapy - rather than just arresting all trans people on the spot, or whatever. But this raises a question, doesn't it? What happens when her conversion therapy approach doesn't work? For Keen, all trans people are just mad: They just have some sort of mental disorder, so you send them off to therapy and they get cured, and no longer want to be trans. Simple.

Shaun: Keen assumes, or pretends to assume, that this conversion therapy will just always obviously work exactly as she expects it to, but of course it wouldn’t. So what happens when trans people go through her conversion therapy process and say, “No, I'm still trans. Nothing you can say will change my mind. I'm gonna keep on living my life as I see fit?” Would Prime Minister Keen say, “Oh sorry, it looks like I was wrong. All my beliefs about trans people were based on lies. I realize now the error of my ways?”

Shaun: Of course she wouldn’t. This would be when the throwing people in prison starts, you know, after the performative attempt at doing things the air quotes “nice way.” And I really don't think conversion therapy is nice. I want to make clear it's what I think Keen considers to be the nice way of erasing trans people, which is her ultimate political goal. Keen wants all trans people either in the closet or in prison or de-transitioned or dead, but really just vanished from society at large, being the main point. Keen is absolutely an eliminationist when it comes to trans people. Her victory condition is no more trans people.

Shaun: And I'd like to talk about a couple of effects this sort of obsessive hate can have. The first is how, over time, it comes to supersede all previously held beliefs and principles. For example, on the issue of abortion Keen claims to be pro-choice, and as I stated earlier I think she genuinely believes that she is. And she probably doesn't like abortion being outlawed. She doesn't like abused minors being forced to carry unsafe pregnancies. She doesn't like women dying needlessly on operating tables. She doesn't like it, but she doesn't hate it. She doesn't hate it like she hates trans people. Her hatred is simply a stronger, more animating of a force than all of her previously held principles.

Shaun: This is how someone who was once proudly pro-choice ends up allying with anti-abortion activists, how someone who was once eager to call out the church’s covering up of child abuse scandals ends up allying with the religious right, and so on. The moment they get in the way of the hate campaign, all those previously held principles get thrown out the window.

Shaun: The next effect of holding all this hatred in your head I want to talk about is both interesting and pretty worrying. Imagine for a second that you are Kellie-Jay Keen. You oppose trans rights. You think that the fight against trans rights is the most important issue facing women today. You actually think it's the most important women's rights issue in the past century. You think there's no such thing as trans people; that everyone who claims to be trans is either lying or insane, and what's more, you think that everyone else already agrees with you. There's a silent majority out there who all share your position: They're just staying silent for some reason.

Shaun: So what could possibly explain the silence of the silent majority? What force could be controlling them? How is it possible for such a small minority of people, who you assume everyone else also hates, to have manipulated society to such a degree? If we take everything Kellie-Jay Keen believes to be true, then there's really only one explanation for this state of affairs: Conspiracy.

Kellie-Jay Keen: And then you can start speaking up, and if you start speaking up, you encourage someone else to speak up, and they encourage someone else to speak up, and then eventually everyone is speaking up. And the nasty, pernicious minority of people who are managing to control our politicians, our judiciary, our education system, our NHS; those people will be silenced. And those that went along with them, we will not forget who you are.

Kellie-Jay Keen: Our enemy is vast - is vast, and it's long slimy, slithery tentacles have reached right into central government through every - through, through our media.

Kellie-Jay Keen: It’s such a small minority of people, it's not like they've captured every single institution, and education system, and our judiciary, and our social media platforms. Everywhere we want to talk, everywhere we might want to visit, everywhere we might want to have private space, or a little bit of woman something. It’s not that that's happened

Kellie-Jay Keen: But I do think there is an elite - a set of people on this Earth that are deeply sinister and far too powerful.

Kellie-Jay Keen: And our fight is to get rid of these parasites throughout women's organizations. And they are absolutely everywhere. They are difficult to avoid. Um, they are enmeshed in nearly everything. They are writing our policies.

Kellie-Jay Keen: It is in your children's classrooms, it is in your hospitals, it is in your police force, it will tell you to use the wrong words for a man in a court of law. It is everywhere. This is not playtime. This is end-of-bloody-game time! This really is end of civilization, end of days, like game over.

Kellie-Jay Keen: I really do feel like it's the end of days, I really do feel we are in a very, very scary place.

Kellie-Jay Keen: We are under the most immense global attack, and it's happening to us in textbook fashion all over the world. You have to bury your differences and divisions. You have to do that. I- if you're the sort of person that freely calls people, uh, right wing white supremacists, if that's your bag, then you're not on the side of women. You have to clearly forget everything else -

Kellie-Jay Keen: (Reading donor message) Badgerwise: “Kudos for your strength and courage despite attacks from the crazed vindictive activists. Trans is part of a broader agenda by the Luciferian elite to invert the natural order - to call good, uh, evil and evil good.“ Thank you very much for your 19.99. No, I used to think all this stuff was really mad, and - and now I'm just at a point where I think I don't - I don't think anything but absolute madness makes sense.

Shaun: I'd apologize about the long compilation of clips there, but remember that I had to watch hundreds of hours of this rubbish, so that's just a little representative sample of the sort of conspiracy theory bile Keen is spouting night after night on her YouTube channel. These are the sorts of absurd narratives that Keen has to believe to explain the fact that there have been advancements in trans rights, when she knows - she just knows - that nobody really believes in or wants trans rights.

Shaun: So to square this circle, there's apparently a secretive elite group of people manipulating society whose slimy tentacles are controlling our governments and media. They've parasitically invaded and captured our institutions. They're coming for your kids. It's the end of days. And to fight back to silence this vile minority of people - pay attention to the fact that Keen stated she wants to silence her enemies, there - we have to stop bickering over silly divisive issues like white supremacy.

Shaun: So I have a few things to say about all this. Firstly, one of the questions I asked at the start of the video was why would neo-Nazi groups want to turn up to support Kellie-Jay Keen. And, well, I imagine you probably already noticed by yourself and don't need me to point this out, but anyway the neo-Nazis also believe in a secretive elite group of people manipulating society by controlling our governments and media. They believe that group of people is Jewish people.

Shaun: Neo-Nazi groups and transphobic groups like Keen’s have a very similar belief structure: they're organized around hatred of a capital “O” other; a minority of people who are claimed to be pulling the strings of society from behind the scenes. This group is demonized, dehumanized, likened to parasites and vermin, and there's a repeated narrative of some future glorious day when we - the normal people, the actual humans - rise up against our enemies, the parasites, and do away with them once and for all.

Shaun: The capital “O” otherness of both Jewish and trans people is described in a similar way by their respective hate groups: Both groups are presented as pretend people; imposters living among us, trying to weaken us, and both hate groups use things like facial features, skull shapes body proportions, and so on in order to identify those who belong to the group that they hate.

Shaun: When presenting the capital “O” others as shadowy behind the scenes manipulators, the neo-Nazis will, of course, focus on Jewishness as the primary evil, with trans issues and LGBT+ issues in general being presented as one of the many Jewish plots intended to weaken society. Transphobic groups like Keens tend to see transness itself as the primary evil, keeping all the same narratives of societal control and decline caused by secretive elite manipulators, but they simply swap out the word “Jewish” for the word “trans.”

Shaun: Now obviously, being so similar, these are not two wholly distinct narratives, or even two wholly distinct groups of people. In fact, sometimes it can be hard to tell which group you're watching.

Speaker: And I know about language, and I know that this is based on something we call “the big lie.” Do you know the big lie? The big lie was first described by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. The big lie is such a big lie that ordinary people like us think, “Well, that can't be a lie, because I'd never tell any bigger - as big a lie as that.”

Shaun: That was a speaker at a Let Women Speak event in Newcastle, there, quoting Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Now it should be noted here that when Hitler wrote about the concept of the big lie, he didn't say “We, the Nazis, are going to do the big lie to attack Jewish people.” He claimed that Jewish people were telling a big lie; in particular, he was claiming that Jewish people were lying about the reasons that Germany lost the first world war.

Shaun: By citing Adolf Hitler's use of the big lie theory - instead of, say, anyone else who isn't actually Adolf Hitler's use of the big lie theory - the speaker is, therefore, casting trans people as the Jewish people in her metaphor, and her herself and her allies as the Nazis.

Shaun: Which, well…she said it, not me.

Shaun: I’d like now to give you an example of the exact sort of way that transphobic narratives are informed by and associated with antisemitic narratives. And this is kind of a weird, twisty story, so you're gonna have to stick with me here for a little while.

Shaun: So when I was watching through Kellie-Jay Keen's YouTube archive, I noticed that she would make occasional references to an American friend she had; someone she called a mentor several times who would give her advice behind the scenes, but she always seemed a little cagey about revealing who it was. So I was like, “Okay, there's an American mentor friend who gives Keen advice, noted.” So I keep watching, and then in one stream Kellie-Jay gets a Super Chat message from someone called Brandon Showalter, and she responds:

Kellie-Jay Keen: And then, aaaaaah, Brandon! Brandon Showalter with his ten dollars, “Keep that prophesizing. Uncompromised language matters.” Um, this is my good friend Brandon who is a very lovely, um, religious Christian man, um, who always tells me that I'm that (laughs) I’m doing more of God's work than some Christians. So I take that as a great compliment. Take that as a great compliment.

Shaun: Now this stuck out to me, because she called Brandon Showalter a good friend, and I'd heard Keen talk several times about not really having any friends. Now I don't bring that up to make fun of her, it's just what she says, and it's why her calling someone a “good friend who's always telling her things” seemed noteworthy to me. So I thought “Well, that Brandon Showalter guy seems like a good candidate for her American mentor that she talks about. “ So then I forgot about all that and kept watching, and I eventually got to this video released earlier this year, which details Keen’s Let Women Speak tour in the United States.

Shaun: Just over an hour in, Keen is being driven to an event and she's filming in the car. She's sitting up front and the driver keeps making comments about things Keen was talking about, so I was like, “I wonder who that is.” You know, she isn't in a cab, clearly. Anyway, they get where they're going, and the guy starts giving a speech and introduces himself as Brandon Showalter. So I'm like, “Oh, that's him. That's the guy; Mr. Secret American Super Chat Man. It makes sense she'd spend time with him on her American tour, I suppose.” Anyway, let's hear what he says.

Brandon Showalter: I'm really grateful that everybody could be here tonight. My name is Brandon Showalter. I’m a journalist with the Christian Post, and I've been so since the summer of 2016, but it was in late 2016 and early 2017 where I learned about the experimental gender medicalization and, um, particularly what puberty blockers were. Through digging around for sources and finding out information, I learned about this brave woman in the UK.

Shaun: So Showalter is a journalist with The Christian Post, and he has all the opinions you'd expect of someone in that position. He’s anti-abortion and anti-LGBT in general, of course, but going through the site's archives of his stories, he seems very much to have become a primarily trans issues reporter. Clearly trying to use trans issues as a wedge to push back against gay rights and abortion rights and other things the U.S religious right doesn't like.

Shaun: Showalter has been writing stories about Kellie-Jay Keen for years now. For instance, when she was questioned by the police in 2018, he wrote an article about it; an article which quotes Kaeley Triller in support of Keen, actually. Triller says she thinks the police should really have better things to do, which is a very bold opinion for her in particular to be sharing.

Shaun: All alongside Kellie-Jay Keen's activist career, Showalter has been there offering encouragement and writing supportive articles. When Keen was banned from Facebook for saying she wanted trans people to die, for instance, Showalter wrote an article complaining about it; one which smartly neglects to mention the sorts of things that Keen was saying in order to get herself banned, since they're obviously indefensible. From how Showalter talks on Twitter and in this documentary, he strikes me as an organizer; someone who makes connections between people in the anti-trans movement. And in fact, a while back a bunch of anti-trans lobbyist emails got leaked, and one of the emails that was leaked came from Brandon Showalter, and sees him connecting someone with his quote “friend” Kara Dansky, who is the co-founder of the anti-trans group Women's Liberation Front.

Shaun: So Showalter makes introductions, he keeps an eye out for anti-trans stories to push, and - this is just my opinion - he seems rather proud of recognizing Keen's promise early and choosing her as someone to back and to promote. Now you might be saying, “Sean, the fact that Kellie-Jay Keen is friends with a conservative Christian anti-abortion journalist is mildly interesting, but you said this point was supposed to be about antisemitism,” and you're right. I am getting to it, trust me.

Shaun: So reading Brandon Showalter's articles, one name kept appearing again and again; Jennifer Bilek, who Showalter says has extensively researched the billions of dollars fueling the transgender movement across the globe. He often quotes Bilek’s articles, such as “The Billionaires Behind the LGBT Movement,” and “Who are the Rich White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology?” In article after article about trans issues, Showalter finds a way to slip in a paragraph about the wealthy LGBT individuals supposedly funding the transgender movement, and he always cites Jennifer Bilek’s articles and blog posts as his source.

Shaun: The billionaires supposedly behind the LGBT movement are an integral part of how Showalter relays trans issues to his audience, and it's something he credits entirely to Jennifer Bilek’s research. And it's not just his articles: Showalter acts the same on Twitter, continuously promoting Bilek’s work. Asking people to interview her, he shares her research in TV interviews, he wrote a book called “Exposing the Gender Lie” which quotes Jennifer Bilek, she's a guest on his podcast, “Generation Indoctrination,” and from the way they interact with each other on Twitter, they seem like pretty close friends.

Shaun: Bilek returns Showalter's promotion of her work by often promoting and praising his, so this is very much a two-way street. Now the reason I'm going to lengths to make clear the connection between Showalter and Jennifer Bilek is because Jennifer Bilek doesn't just write about the billionaires behind the LGBT movement; she writes about the Jewish billionaires behind the LGBT movement.

Shaun: So let's go and read one of Jennifer Bilek's blog posts. Why not? So this one is titled “Transhumanism and Judaism,” and, I quote: “I’ve often wondered why so many of the men involved in the transgender transhumanist agenda are Jewish, and of course I've been accused more than once of promoting a Jewish conspiracy theory. I just report on who the men are. I don't single them out for being Jewish, and I've never really speculated about why so many are. Quite some time ago, I came across Keith Woods’ video on his theory of why this might be. I revisited this today because someone wrote and asked about the Jewish aspect of the men involved in this agenda, and I found it equally as fascinating as I did the first time. I wonder how others might feel about this.”

Shaun: Then Bilek links to a bitchute video titled “Transhuman Judaism” created by a man called Keith Woods. Now Keith Woods is an Irish antisemitic far-right nationalist. A random screenshot of his blog here shows him quoting from the writings of white supremacist Holocaust denier Eustace Mullins, which describes Jews as parasites. Posting anti-semitic memes, complaining about quote “Jew-run” media platforms banning people, so on and so forth.

Shaun: Now I'm gonna make an assumption, here. I’m gonna assume that everyone currently watching this video agrees with me on the basis of this evidence, calling Keith Woods a racist - anyone who doesn't agree with that characterization here can go away, as far as I'm concerned. If we can't agree that this guy is a racist, then we are never going to agree on anything. So farewell, go home, and rethink your life. So okay, everyone remaining agrees: Here we have some open, unashamed antisemitic hatred, and this is where Jennifer Bilek sent her audience who were looking to learn more about the Jewish people supposedly funding the LGBT movement.

Shaun: Her tactics are so transparent here that it's genuinely quite embarrassing. You know, she's saying “Boy, there sure are a lot of Jews behind all this transgender stuff. Now I don't think that's bad, necessarily, I just find it interesting. I’ve just often wondered about it. If you find it interesting too, you should go and learn more about the Jews from this fascinating video made by a neo-Nazi.”

Shaun: It's interesting seeing how the same narrative passes through different hands, here. We start with Keith Woods saying that Jewish people are funding and promoting transgenderism and that's bad, then Jennifer Bilek links to that and says Jewish people are funding and promoting transgenderism and that's interesting. Bilek acts like a money launderer for ideas, here: She takes the fascist narratives and smooths off the rougher edges. She swaps out the open hatred for faux neutral interest, and then passes it on to the likes of Showalter and Keen, who dutifully share what is only one step removed from actual antisemitic fascist propaganda. And I say Keen there, as well, because like Showalter, Keen also shares Bilek’s work in her videos and on Twitter.

Shaun: And now after everything we've seen, when Bilek defends Keen against accusations of being a Nazi by claiming that our media is controlled, well we know what she means by that, don't we?

Shaun: Back at the start of the video, I mentioned an article that praises Keen that was written by Helen Joyce, author of the book “Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality.” Joyce is the person who is now infamous for comments about reducing the number of trans people - even happily transitioned trans people - because she thinks they are, as she states, “a problem to a sane world.” Helen Joyce, like Kellie-Jay Keen, is an eliminationist: Their ultimate goal is not to protect women's rights or spaces or whatever; it's to get rid of trans people.

Shaun: Now I mention her here because her book repeats the same narrative of the billionaire backers of the LGBT movement. She talks about the billionaires who have quote “shaped the global agenda by funding briefing documents, campaign groups, research, and legal actions.” As an aside here, on the subject of funding legal actions, we have seen one billionaire offering to fund an activist's legal actions today, haven't we?

Shaun: Anyway, Joyce lists several billionaires who have donated to trans-inclusive human rights organizations, including naming George Soros as someone who has supposedly given millions of dollars to the Human Rights Campaign, an American LGBTQ advocacy group.

Shaun: He didn’t, though. This is just an error in the book, here. It's not true also, that multi-million dollar donation to the ACLU, there - that was for work towards ending mass incarceration, not for funding quote “trans activism.” Now if we want to find out where Helen Joyce got her bad information from, we could start by checking the citations in her book. We could do that if there were any, but there aren’t. But I think I know where all this may have come from.

Shaun: ”Your interview of me in 2020 for this book proved fruitful, I see. A citation was called for, for the work you lifted from me. My followers are messaging me about this. I think other American feminists got a raw deal as well, but I won't speak for them.” Hashtag #plagiarism. Jennifer Bilek there, accusing Helen Joyce on Twitter of stealing her work and using material provided by Bilek in a 2020 interview without citation.

Shaun: I don't know why she wants to be cited for such shoddy work, but whatever. Joyce, in response, claimed that she never got any new or useful information from talking to Bilek, and she also deleted all of her tweets mentioning Bilek, or where she'd promoted Bilek's work to her followers. Like this one where she promotes Bilek’s work, specifically in the context of talking about her book. Joyce didn't go back and remove her likes on Bilek’s tweeted links to her blog posts, though. Like this one, which contains this absurd graphic which lists some of the funders of the supposed “trans agenda,” and also make sure to point out which of the funders are gay, for some reason.

Shaun: I think it's pretty clear that Joyce did like and support Bilek’s work until Bilek went too openly bigoted about Jewish people, at which point Joyce was forced to cut ties and pretend none of the information in her book actually came from interviewing Bilek or reading her blog.

Shaun: Anyway, this is just one example of the ways in which anti-semitic narratives get into the gender critical mainstream, and I really hope this goes some way to explaining why fascist groups keep turning up to anti-trans events. Far-right groups recognize their own language and narratives. They know what someone means when they hear them talking about the “elite minority” controlling the government and media with their slimy tentacles. The far rights hear all of that and they identify with it. But there's another reason that the neo-Nazis would like transphobia and anti-LGBT language in general that goes beyond the rhetorical and structural similarities between the anti-trans movement and theirs, and that's the actual historical persecution of LGBT people by the Nazi party.

Shaun: If we're going to talk about that, though, we're first gonna have to tackle a particular bad argument that comes up time and again when making comparisons between hate groups that are around today and the Nazis. And we'll let Kellie-Jay Keen provide that bad argument for us. Why not? So someone calls her a Nazi, and she says -

Kellie-Jay Keen: Well. Well, that obviously makes you a Nazi, because that is definitely akin to the mass genocide of, uh, six million Jews and other minority groups in Germany in the - late 1930s - 40s. That's exactly the same. Standing up for women's rights is exactly the same as being a Nazi now.

Shaun: So that's how the argument goes: “How dare you make a comparison to the Nazis, when they started a world war and killed millions of people. I haven't done anything that bad, of course, so no comparison to the Nazis could possibly be valid.”

Shaun: Now the problem here is that Keen is describing the Nazis at the height of their power, but of course the Nazis weren't always at the height of their power, were they? They didn't pop into existence already in control of Germany and ready to start invading Europe. Before they could start a world war and kill millions of people, they had to get into power, and before they were in power, they had to establish themselves and reach a position where that was possible. And before they were there, the Nazis were a relatively small movement of hateful bigots. They had to start somewhere.

Shaun: Early Nazi meetings often had very few attendees, and even Adolf Hitler's first political speech was delivered in a beer hall to only around a hundred people. Lots of perfectly solid comparisons to the early Nazi party are dismissed because of the evils the Nazis committed later on when they were in power. World War II and the Holocaust are such immense crimes that they can obscure the path the early Nazis took to get themselves into a position where those crimes could be committed. Lots of small groups of bigots around today really are like the Nazis were, even if they're obviously much closer to the Nazis when they were starting out, rather than the Nazis when they invaded Poland.

Shaun: Also the Nazis, just like today's bigots, knew how to be veiled, how to lie, how to achieve their aims in indirect ways to avoid provoking a backlash. There were even times they toned down their antisemitism for political and economic gain, such as before the 1936 Olympics to prevent an international boycott. Even their laws targeting Jewish people could avoid mentioning Jewish people directly, such as their 1933 law designed to keep Jewish people out of German schools and universities. This was the law against overcrowding in German schools, which ordered limitations on the number of quote “non-Aryans” at German educational institutions, using the excuse of preventing overcrowding of schools. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this law was initially titled “Law against the Foreign Infiltration of German Universities” until quote “Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick had observed that the law might draw too much international attention to the intended exceptional treatment of Jews,” hence concerns about overcrowding being used as an excuse.

Shaun: The point I want to make here is that, regardless of how open or veiled they were being about their ultimate goals, regardless of how many of them they were at any one time, regardless of if they were just starting out or at the height of their power, the Nazis were always the Nazis. They didn't become the Nazis at some later time, they were the Nazis right from the start. The later Nazis couldn't have gotten to where they were and committed all of their terrible crimes without the work put in by the early Nazis, and a lot of modern comparisons to the early Nazis in particular are perfectly valid.

Shaun: If you're part of a movement organized around opposition to the rights of a particular minority group that you demonize and want to eradicate, then yes, you really are being like the Nazis even if you haven't personally started a World War.

Shaun: Anyway, with that said, I want to talk briefly about Magnus Hirschfeld. So Magnus Hirschfeld was a German physician and sexologist - which is a wonderful word - who was the head of the Institute for Sex Research, which operated in Berlin from 1919 to 1933. Hirschfeld was Jewish, gay, and an outspoken advocate for the rights of sexual minorities. In 1897, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which operated with the aim of repealing paragraph 175, the section of the German penal code that criminalized homosexuality. This has been called the first LGBT rights organization in history.

Shaun: Hirschfeld's Institute has an important place in transgender history for a few reasons. For one, it carried out early forms of what we now call gender affirming medical care; hair removal, facial feminization and masculinization surgeries, genital surgery, hormone therapy, supportive psychiatric therapy. If all this sounds surprisingly ahead of its time, that's only because in 1933, soon after the Nazis came to power, the Nazis destroyed the Institute and burned all of its research.

Shaun: Some of the most famous images of Nazi book burnings showed the Nazis burning the contents of the Institute for Sex Research. Magnus Hirschfeld himself was a frequent target of attacks from the Nazi press prior to them being in power. He was attacked on the front page of the Nazi party newspaper, “The Völkisch Observer.” Caricatures of him appeared on the front page of the newspaper, “Der Stürmer” - “The Stormer” - and also in “Der Angriff” - “The Attack,” a newspaper set up by Joseph Goebbels, who was the chief propagandist of the Nazi party.

Shaun: The Völkisch story uses the occasion of Magnus Hirschfeld delivering a presentation in a high school to complain about homosexuals lecturing in schools, calling it the destruction of the youth, and asks “German mothers, working women, do you want to surrender your children to homosexuals?” The article equates homosexuality with the sexual abuse of children, it uses homosexuality as an example of a supposed Jewish Marxist plot to undermine and weaken German society, and declares that the Nazi party are merely defending themselves against outside attempts to manipulate and poison the German populace. It uses Think Of The Children™ rhetoric in an attempt to appeal to women in particular, saying “Look, those weak intellectual Social Democrat types are letting the gays into your schools to preach to your children. Come and join the Nazi party. We know how to keep your children safe.”

Shaun: The piece in “Der Stürmer” is much the same, calling Hirschfeld “The Apostle of Sodomy” and claiming that he's carrying out a Jewish plot to promote immorality, to poison the youth, undermine society, and all that. This was, again, using the occasion of Hirschfeld giving a talk to students in a school. The Nazi press really liked pushing the “They’re coming for your kids” angle, apparently.

Shaun: Now after everything we've seen today, do I even really have to make explicit the comparison between how the early Nazi party talked about LGBT people and how today's bigots talk about LGBT people? It's all the exact same tactics and narratives, delivered in the same way, with the same aims: LGBT people are demonized and dehumanized, assumed to be criminals and dangerous to children, and their actions are presented as being orchestrated from behind the scenes by a secretive elite of evil manipulators. This was hateful conspiracy theory nonsense a hundred years ago, and its hateful conspiracy theory nonsense today, too.

Shaun: Both of these news articles end with a reference to some future time where the enemies of the Nazi party are going to get what's coming to them, where they'll be made to pay for what they've apparently done. The “Stürmer” article talks about a big cleaning out: The day when all their enemies will be cleared out of Germany, like one would clear out an animal stable, and with the benefit of hindsight, we know exactly what they meant by this, of course. And we should also know exactly what Kellie-Jay Keen means when she talks about silencing the parasitic minority who are controlling our society with their long slithery tentacles.

Shaun: Keen recently announced the launch of her own political party with the quote “After the rainbows, we are bringing a storm,” something she's quite fond of saying. She really likes that storm imagery.

Kellie-Jay Keen: But I just wanted to let you know that we are that close from a proper launch. As soon as we do, we are ready to go immediately. So our party is ready, our website is ready, we're just waiting for the, uh, yes. (Long dramatic pause, smile relishing the thought) And then - oh my God! - after Pride, we will bring the fucking storm.

Kellie-Jay Keen: Yeah, we’re not just taking back the public square. We’re going to take parliament, we’re gonna take councils (Note: English local government,) we’re gonna take police forces, we’re gonna take school governor boards.

Shaun: On the occasion of Kellie-Jay Keen announcing the launch of her political party, I'd like to confess to being rather irritated that a large part of the mainstream conversation in the press about the pushback against trans rights is now years out of date. As one example, JK Rowling previously claimed that she supported trans people; she just had a few concerns about how trans rights might clash with women's rights.

Shaun: But this is not at all where she is today. Today she's supporting someone who openly wants trans people removed from public life, someone who openly says that her goal is to prevent all transitions entirely, someone who gets banned from social media for saying she hopes trans people die. Kellie-Jay Keen is preaching genocide and JK Rowling is fully supporting her, but most mainstream coverage of this issue is still in the “just a few concerns” era. “Aren't those internet trolls horrible for criticizing poor JK Rowling, someone who just has a few concerns?” I tell them they need to catch up, but they're lagging behind on purpose, of course. They want the conversation to be out of date because it's much easier to defend the JK Rowling of a few years ago than to defend what she's doing today.

Shaun: As the mainstream conversation stands still, the anti-trans movement as a whole has become increasingly radical. JK Rowling's support for Kellie-Jay Keen is one of the reasons the other transphobes with a history of criticizing Keen are now accepting and defending her. Because standing against Keen now means standing against Rowling, and not many of them want to do that. And regardless of which strategies they might think would be more effective, I think it's important to remember that they all have the same aim in the long run, which is the restriction of trans rights. I’m sure a lot of the other prominent transphobes really don't like feeling like they have to stand alongside Kellie-Jay Keen and her fascist friends, but whether they like it or not is ultimately immaterial, isn't it? Because apparently they will do it. They might not like it, but they don't hate it.

Shaun: Clearly, their half-hearted attempt to keep Keen out of their movement completely failed, and, well if you can't beat them join them seems to be the philosophy over in the anti-trans camp. In a just world, their promotion of Kellie-Jay Keen and her eliminationist rhetoric would forever destroy the reputations of Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock, Helen Joyce, JK Rowling and everyone else who's enabled and aided her movement. They're using feminism as a shield to defend an avowed anti-feminist just because they happen to share a hatred of trans people.

Shaun: And they can back Keen largely without fear right now, because they operate in a media environment which is incredibly hostile to trans people, and will go to enormous lengths to not ask any awkward questions. Can you even imagine a journalist laying all this out to Rowling? You know, “Why do you support someone who writes that she wants trans people to to be sterilized, JK Rowling?”

Shaun: I can't imagine that. I'll very happily believe it when I see it, though.

Shaun: In wrapping up today, I’d like to first point you to a few relevant videos made by LGBT people that I enjoyed and learned from during the making of this video. So Contrapoints made a video titled “The Witch Trials of JK Rowling,” which made some excellent comparisons to previous civil rights fights. The channel JohntheDuncan's video “Transphobia: The Far Right and Liberalism” is a great explainer for, among other things, how transphobia is being used to unite different far-right groups. Mia Mulder's recent video “What Is The Deal With The ‘Trans Debate?’” ends with some very good - in my cis opinion, anyway - advice for trans people about what they can do about being the subject of the air quote “trans debate.”

Shaun: And I'll myself give some advice to cis people, here. One thing I noticed when researching those Nazi newspapers is that, while building a case against a minority group, the Nazis would refer to real events - actual crimes they say were committed by individual Jewish people or individual gay people, or whoever. Now whether these were actually real crimes committed in the way the Nazi press says they were is, obviously, not trustworthy here. I mean, I'm not going to take the Nazis at their word, clearly. But the important thing is that they were claiming to have reasons for their beliefs. Hate groups do not say “We hate this minority group for no reason. We're just irrationally hateful, I guess. Now do you agree with us, or not?” That sort of thing would be easy to spot and stand against, right?

Shaun: And it's easy now, looking back, to say you obviously would not have fallen for Nazi lies about Jewish people, but I think it's a worthwhile exercise to consider seriously if you actually might have. If a Nazi article rattled off crimes they say were committed by Jewish people and then used that to paint all Jewish people as inherently criminal, would you have understood why that was wrong, and not went along with it? And even if it didn't sway you to being openly hateful yourself, might that have made you take an ambivalent centrist stance? Say, something like “Maybe there's two sides to this issue. Maybe they do have a point, even if they go a bit far.”

Shaun: And it's not just one article, remember? It's a sustained propaganda campaign. Can you really be sure that you wouldn't be affected by that? People who assume propaganda will never work on them are always the most susceptible to being influenced by it, because they don't think there's a need to be vigilant against it.

Shaun: We live right now in a time of intense anti-trans propaganda, because there is no silent majority just waiting to speak up, like Kellie-Jay Keen thinks there is. That majority needs to be built over time with a sustained propaganda campaign. And if you're ambivalent on this issue, you would have been ambivalent about all those historical civil rights fights that you'd like to think you'd have been on the right side of.

Shaun: I’m not saying you would have been openly hateful, even, but if you fall for arguments about dangerous trans people in women spaces you would have fallen for arguments about dangerous black men coming into white spaces to abuse white women, or dangerous gay men in schools, or so on. Some bigot would have pointed to a minority of criminal black people or gay people or Jewish people and said, “See, they're all like that. We should judge them all by the actions of this criminal minority.”

Shaun: And if you understand why that's wrong to say about black people, or gay people, or Jewish people, or any other minority, you should know it's wrong to say about trans people, too. So I'll say to any cis people watching this video, be vigilant about attempts to turn you against trans people. The “reasonable concerns” era is long over by now. We've got JK Rowling offering to bankroll the legal actions of an eliminationist anti-trans activist who's launching a political party: we've gone way beyond the “reasonable concerns” phase.

Shaun: If you ever see JK Rowling called transphobic online, one of her supporters always chimes in, asking the almost always bad faith question “What has JK Rowling ever done that's transphobic?” Well among other things, she's offered to bankroll the legal actions of an eliminationist anti-trans activist, she shares articles calling her a genius, she wears her merchandise. JK Rowling is all in on Kellie-Jay Keen.

Shaun: And on the subject of Kellie-Jay Keen's merch, whenever you see someone saying “I’m just asking ‘what is a woman?’ or ‘I’m just saying a woman is an adult human female. I’m just quoting a dictionary. What could be transphobic about that?’” Well, I've seen the person who came up with those slogans sitting in front of those slogans, wearing shirts with those slogans on them, while talking about torturing trans people, saying she wants trans people to die, be sterilized, and whatever else.

Shaun: These slogans are dog whistles: They're designed to seem innocuous to people who don't know otherwise, but the aim of the campaign behind those slogans is the elimination of trans people.

Shaun: That's quite a down a note to end on, isn’t it? But seriously, cis people watching this, stand with trans people. Reject this sort of bigoted propaganda, and recognize that it's the exact same sort of bigoted propaganda that's been used to hurt different minority groups all through history.

Shaun: Anyway, thanks a lot for watching, everyone, and thank you especially to all of my backers over on patreon, some of whom should be on the screen right now. Videos like this one take a lot of time and effort to make, and it wouldn't be possible without all of their support, so thank you very much to everyone who helped me out. Backers get early access to all of my videos, as well as the opportunity to mock me mercilessly for any mistakes I make in the first draft, so if that sounds like something you'd like to check out, I’ll leave a link to my patreon page below. Right. Thanks a lot for watching, everyone. I’ll see you next time.

#Shaun #Kellie-Jay Keen #trans rights #transphobia #neo-Nazis #antisemitism #abortion rights #JK Rowling #transcript

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ghostinthelibrarywrites · 1 year

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How about 6 and Yennskier for the fake dating prompts? 💚

6. On Valentine’s Day everything seems to have a discount for couples, so why not pretend to be one to save some money and have fun?

Here's a Yennskier modern AU with mentions of background Geraskier and Yenralt. Can be read as pre-OT3.

When Yennefer’s phone rings and she sees Jaskier’s photo—the most unflattering picture of him she could find, mid-blink with his nose scrunched up like he’s about so sneeze—on her screen, she wishes she could just send it to voicemail. But the last time he called her, it was because Geralt had gotten his insides ripped out by a grave hag and needed immediate healing. With a groan, she answers. And today was going so well; she’s made two lobbyist assholes cry and it’s not even lunchtime.

“What?” she asks by way of greeting.

“Yennefer!” Jaskier sounds cheerful, so Geralt must not be bleeding out in a swamp somewhere. “How are you?”

“Besides my sudden headache, fine. What do you want?”

“What makes you think I want something? Perhaps I just want a chat.”

Yennefer doesn’t answer, just sips her coffee and waits for him to get tired of silence.

“Geralt has been in the mountains on a contract for a basilisk,” Jaskier says.

“I'm aware.”

“Well, they got hit with nearly two feet of snow up that way and so he’s stranded. He won’t be back in time for Valentine’s Day tomorrow.”

“How fortunate for Geralt.”

“No, it’s really not, because we were supposed to go to dinner at The Alchemist. They have a special five-course meal for Valentine’s Day.”

“It’s fortunate there was a snow storm, or Geralt probably would have let the basilisk gnaw off his leg to get out of that.”

Jaskier ignores her. “But he’s stuck on the other side of Redania and I need a date.”

“Well, you can always go with your favorite person. Yourself.”

“I can’t go alone, Yennefer. It’s a couple’s event.”

“I’m still not sure how this is my problem. I would never bespell someone to endure your company for an entire dinner. I’m not a monster.”

“Since when?”

“Goodbye, Jaskier.”

“Wait!” he says quickly. “You could come with me. And don’t tell me you have plans. You’re like Geralt. You wouldn’t willingly go out on Valentine’s Day unless you were bribed.”

She can’t argue there. “So what makes you think I’d celebrate it with you of all people?”

“Besides a free meal at the finest restaurant in Oxenfurt?”

“I work in politics. I eat at far finer places than The Alchemist every week.”

“There’s endless refills of Toussainti sparkling wine included.”

Now, that is tempting. “Don’t you have other people you can invite? You have plenty of paramours.”

“And they all already have plans.” Jaskier’s voice takes on a wheedling tone. “Did I mention I’m paying? You could get the most expensive thing on the menu.”

Yennefer has been to The Alchemist. Some of their dinners cost as much as a week’s worth of groceries.

“Also, I think it will make Geralt happy if he thinks the two of us are getting along,” Jaskier adds.

Their mutual lover, Geralt, is the only thing that Yennefer and Jaskier have in common and the only reason Yennefer didn’t curse Jaskier into something slimy years ago. She doesn’t know what Geralt, who she considers a man of reasonably good taste, sees in his idiot of a musician, but he adores Jaskier. And Jaskier is right; it would make Geralt happy if she and Jaskier made an effort to tolerate each other’s company. She blows out a breath. “What time should I meet you there?”

“Don’t be silly,” he says and she immediately regrets everything. “It’s Valentine’s Day. I’ll pick you up at six.”

***

Yennefer thinks about backing out of their arrangement as soon as Jaskier shows up at her door, wearing a peacock feather-patterned suit over a bright pink button-up with the top three buttons undone to show off a generous amount of chest hair, because Jaskier seems to not know how to button up his shirts properly. But closing the door in his face just feels like an admission of defeat at this point, so she squares her shoulders and follows him to his car. She doesn’t even insult his outfit, because it’s such low-hanging fruit that it seems beneath her to even bring it up.

She thinks about backing out again and they arrive at the restaurant to find it lit by soft candlelight, a pianist playing in the corner, and rose petals scattered across the table. She expected a Valentine’s Day dinner to be filled with the trappings of romance, but this is excessive.

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” she grumbles as she takes her seat across from Jaskier.

He grins at her unrepentantly. “I’m so sorry to drag you to dinner at one of Redania’s finest restaurants. You look lovely, by the way.”

Yennefer arches an eyebrow at him. “You look like a peacock exploded on you.” Alright, it might be low-hanging fruit, but she can't not comment on it.

“Happy Valentine’s Day to you too, darling.” He bats his eyelashes at her as the server comes to fill two flutes with sparkling wine.

They sit in silence for a while, nursing their flutes of wine. When the server comes to take their order, Yennefer orders the most expensive of the three entree options, because she likes the way it makes Jaskier’s eye twitch. Around them, the dining room is filled with couples. She and Jaskier may be the only ones not making eyes at each other across the table.

As if he knows what she’s thinking, Jaskier reaches for her hand.

Yennefer snatches it away. “What are you doing?”

“Playing the part,” he says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s Valentine’s Day. This is a dinner for couples.”

“What, do you think we’ll be kicked out if the servers don’t see us playing footsie under the table?”

“There’s an idea.” Something brushes her ankle.

“No,” she says flatly and Jaskier’s foot quickly retreats.

The server brings the first course, a charcuterie board that’s barely more than a few slivers of meat, a hunk of cheese, a handful of olives, and a dollop of apricot jam. Places like this always skimp on the food, Yennefer thinks as she picks at the cheese.

“What do you normally do on Valentine’s Day?” Jaskier asks.

“You know what I normally do on Valentine’s Day. I sit at home with a glass of wine like someone who doesn’t want to get overcharged for a couple of slices of ham and some old cheese.”

Jaskier snorts, but tries to cover it up with a cough. “Oh come on, I know you have a romantic side.”

“Do you, now?”

“Geralt talks.”

“Since when?”

His lips twitch. “What is it with you and unicorns? I’ve been dying to know ever since he told me about it.”

Yennefer puts down her glass of wine hard. “He told you about that?”

“In his defense, he’d taken way too many potions and he was out of his mind. I’m pretty sure he thought I was you.”

“Well, that’s not flattering,” Yennefer says.

“You’re right, it’s not. I had to start getting facials after that. Can’t go around being mistaken for a withered crone.”

She kicks him under the table.

“And here I thought you didn’t want to play footsie.” He waggles his eyebrows at her. “Do you really have unicorn underwear?”

“I don’t know. Do you really have a tramp stamp?”

His mouth drops open in offense. “Geralt told you about that?”

She lifts one shoulder in a shrug. “Geralt talks.”

“It’s not a tramp stamp. It’s a very tasteful lower back tattoo.”

“Lose a bet?”

“No, a game of cards. Never play Gwent against Valdo Marx. The man is a shark.”

The server brings the second course, which is apparently a deconstructed salad. Yennefer realizes that she barely tasted the charcuterie board; she was too busy talking to Jaskier. She also realizes that she’s leaning close to Jaskier; they probably look like one of those dewy-eyed couples at the other tables. Quickly, she straightens her back and focuses on her salad.

“This is a piece of lettuce,” she says. “What’s deconstructed about it?”

“It’s quite a large piece of lettuce.”

“It’s lettuce. It could be the size of the table, but it still is what it is. How much did you pay for this?”

“Let’s not talk about it.” Jaskier nibbles at the edge of his lettuce.

“What about you?” Yennefer asks. “What do you and Geralt usually do on Valentine’s Day?”

“Sit at home with a movie and some takeout.” Jaskier shrugs. “I thought it might be nice to try something different this year.”

“This is different.” Yennefer pokes at the lettuce.

Not long after, the server brings their soup, seafood bisque. Yennefer is taking her first bite when there’s a squeal from across the room. She looks around to see a young man down on one knee on the other side of the room, ring box in hand while his date has her hand clapped over her mouth in delight.

“Aww.” Jaskier smiles at the sight. “You think they’ll get free dessert for that?”

At the glint in his eye, Yennefer says, “No.”

“Come on.” Jaskier fiddles with one of his many rings. “I hear the tiramisu here is to die for.”

“And you may die if you get down on one knee right now.”

“You wouldn’t. Geralt would never forgive you.”

“I think he’d learn to live with the peace and quiet.”

Jaskier sighs. “You’re right. I can’t propose without a proper engagement ring. How tacky. When I fake propose to you, Yennefer, I promise I’ll do it with the finest ring I can find for under fifty crowns.”

Yennefer rolls her eyes. “You’re an idiot.”

“Yes, but I’m your idiot for another hour or so.” He winks.

“I’d rather chew on this wine glass. Which I may need to do anyway if these portions continue to be tiny.”

“They really are, aren’t they?” Mournfully, Jaskier looks down at his soup. “I suppose that’s why this dinner was almost affordable. There’s no food.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day, darling.” Yennefer bats her eyelashes in an imitation of Jaskier and is gratified when he snorts bisque up his nose.

When their entrees come out, she’s not surprised when her meal is the tiniest filet she’s ever seen, while Jaskier’s shrimp risotto is three pieces of shrimp on top of a tiny pile of rice.

Jaskier looks up at her, lips quirking into a smirk. “Can you imagine Geralt right now?”

Yennefer snorts, lowering her voice into a rasp. “What am I supposed to do with this, Jaskier? I’ve seen pixies bigger than this steak.”

“That sounded just like him.”

Yennefer is pleased, despite herself. “He wouldn’t have lasted past the piece of lettuce.”

“No, probably not.”

“I’m sorry he’s not here,” Yennefer says.

“I’m not. I would never hear the end of this. Besides, if he were here, you wouldn’t be.”

“I’m glad I’m an adequate consolation prize.”

“I’m actually having a lovely time.” Jaskier’s eyes twinkle in the candlelight. “Despite the lettuce.”

Perhaps Yennefer has had too much of the sparkling wine, because she feels a surge of something that might be fondness. She’s never quite gotten what Geralt saw in this flighty, ridiculous creature—despite the cute little ass, which even she can admit is quite nice—but now, she can almost see it. When he’s not peacocking about, he’s not terrible.

“There’s a good burger place around the corner,” she says without thinking. “If you want to go get a proper dinner after this.”

“I’ve been there.” Jaskier looks surprised. “I wouldn’t think a burger joint would be up to Yennefer of Vengerberg’s high standards.”

“Sorceresses need to eat just like anyone else.”

“Well, then.” He grins. “Are you asking me on a date?”

“Hardly. But Geralt says you get whiny when you’re hungry and given how irritating you are when you’re not hungry, I’d hate to see that.”

“Fair point.” Jaskier makes a show of considering it. “Fine, let’s go get burgers after this. Anything for my beautiful Valentine.”

She kicks him under the table again.

His grin takes on a wicked edge. “You know, they have great milkshakes there. We could get one with two straws and gaze soulfully into each other’s eyes.”

“No.”

“But it’s Valentine’s Day!”

“I’m not sharing spit with you.”

He gasps. “Yennefer, there are plenty of people who would be honored to share spit with me.”

“That’s what I’m worrying about. Splitting a milkshake with you is like splitting a milkshake with half the Continent.”

“And here I was starting to enjoy your company.” He looks at her with narrowed eyes, but he’s grinning and Yennefer is surprised by another surge of that almost-fondness.

She pushes her glass of wine away. Yes, she’s definitely had a little too much.

***

Fake dating prompts

Tag list: @kueble @mollymawkwrites @feral-jaskier @geraltrogerericduhautebellegarde @dawnofbards @thisislisa @tsukiwolf42 @mosaicscale @rockysstupidity @fontegagrilledcheese @kuripon @help-i-need-a-cool-username @julek @flowercrown-bard @eveljerome

#the witcher #yennskier #jaskier x yennefer #jaskier #yennefer of vengerberg #ghost's writing #prompt fills

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dark-audit · 3 months

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Deconstructing the Ticking Time Bomb

It goes a little something like this: You’re a member of an intelligence agency, and you’ve caught one of the bad guys. You know this guy has planted a bomb somewhere in a crowded civilian area, and the bomb is fitted with a timer that will eventually lead to its detonation. You don’t know where the bomb is, but the guy isn’t talking, and time is quickly running out. If torturing the would-be terrorist will reveal the location of the bomb, in turn giving your agency time to diffuse it, saving the lives of countless innocent civilians… well, should you do it?

This essay isn’t going to argue as to whether or not torture works as a method of obtaining reliable information from an unwilling subject (it doesn’t). Instead I’m going to criticize the rhetorical, ethical, and political underpinnings of the ticking time bomb thought experiment and its derivatives, and on that basis, spoiler alert, eventually conclude that it has a whole lot of flaws that might be relevant to the debate on torture.

On a Surface Level

The ticking time bomb scenario, as Alex Adams points out in their 2016 book How To Justify Torture, might be posed as an open-ended question, but the conclusion which respondents are expected to reach is never really up for debate. To boil it down to its roots: if you can stop something very bad from happening by doing something that is less bad, you should do it. This thought experiment is designed, through the use of various forms of appeal, to guide participants to a predetermined conclusion, being that while torture is normally reprehensible, it can in certain special emergencies be morally justified. In effect, this makes the ticking time bomb less of a genuine thought experiment in ethics, and more of a rhetorical argument.

Because the average person typically views torture as morally repugnant, proponents of the ticking time bomb scenario need to quickly establish torture as a rational and reliable option within this pre-supposed emergency. Analyzing the ticking time bomb at a superficial, pragmatic level will quickly reveal a set of presumptions which are made to solidify this rational framing of torture.

The investigation preceding the scenario has been reliable: We definitely do have the right guy, the bomb threat is real, not acting will lead to dire consequences, etc.

No other forms of interrogation or negotiation will be effective, and neither will other forms of non-physical coercion, such as blackmail, threats, or intimidation.

Torture will not only be effective at reliably extracting the right information, but it will also achieve this in a way that is swift. Torture will save the day here.

The act of torture is assumed to have negative consequences only for the person being tortured.

None of these presumptions are particularly realistic, and in real life, scenarios like this are pretty much unheard of. Contentions about realism would significantly muddy the water as to what rational utilitarian value you can derive from the use of torture, but because you’re not actually supposed to engage critically with the ethics here, realism can be ignored. The framer might also comment that you must be fun at parties, just to drive that point home.

Let’s talk appeal

You can glean quite a bit about where an argument comes from by dissecting what it’s trying to appeal to. This essay, for example, largely appeals to reason (logos) through the use of logical arguments. It also implicitly appeals tothe character and credibility (ethos) of me as the mediator of these arguments, through the use of tone, structure, the fact that I tell you about theory, etc. Later on, I will tell you loosely about certain real-life uses of torture, which, along with tone and word choice, are both an appeal to emotion and imagination (pathos). Using appeal isn’t inherently a sign of dishonesty – in fact, it’s impossible not to use any form of appeal – but analyzing it will give you a good idea of what a the author of a text wants you to take away from it.

Which types of appeal are present within the ticking time bomb scenario? Well, let’s break it down.

The appeal to common sense and intuition, made evident in that the answer to this thought experiment seems clear-cut and obvious to participants, is one of those appeals that doesn’t take long to disentangle. A feminist finds it intuitively obvious that men and women are equal. A homophobe finds it intuitively obvious that gay people are degenerates. That should show you the inherent meaninglessness of this type of appeal.

Appeal to rationality, in that torture itself is portrayed as the rational tool for purpose. The implicit premise behind this thought experiment is that when torture is used, the result is swift, predictable, and reliable. (It is none of those things.)

There’s an appeal to fear in that this particular thought experiment deals with the threat of terrorism. Furthermore, the fear of terrorism specifically is common in right-wing political thought. Although it is never explicitly mentioned, it’s not hard to imagine that your average conservative probably pictures the terrorist in this scenario as brown-skinned. For a good chunk of participants, therefore, this thought experiment will specifically be an implicit appeal to tribalism and out-group bias.

Appeal to consequences, as inaction in this scenario will lead to the loss of innocent lives.

Appeal to urgency though the use of the “time bomb” itself – it’s ticking, remember? You have to make a quick decision. The appeal to urgency is notably quite common within reactionary thinking.

Appeal to heroism, or a savior complex in that your ultimate goal is to save the day. Torturers are made tough through this thought experiment. It is argued implicitly that they are willing to make a difficult decision for the sake of the greater good. You can go so far as to imply an appeal to the hypermasculine ideal of protecting the weak from harm.

The appeal to authority, in the ticking time bomb’s use of police/military organizations. As mentioned, the investigation preceding the thought experiment is presumed to have led to the right suspect, something that realistically wouldn’t be as clear-cut.

There is an implicit appeal to righteousness in that the person you are torturing planted a bomb with the intent to kill civilians. You might even go as far as to call it justice. This can also be interpreted as an appeal to the hypermasculine ideal of establishing dominance over others, in this case, specifically a bad guy. This is a rabbit hole of its own within torture justifications.

In fictional derivatives of the ticking time bomb scenario, the emotional appeal is often made even more personal. Now, the terrorist has specifically planted the bomb in the school of your child, or in the shopping mall where your wife works. This is another powerful appeal to emotion and urgency; the question is no longer Is torture sometimes justified?, but instead, Do you love your family?

You might notice that these appeals seem to snugly align with certain spheres of political thought. And make no mistake – this is more often than not by design. The purpose here is not to get you to think seriously about the ethics of torture; it is to lead you to a specific conclusion about torture through reactionary aesthetics.

As a participant, you are being asked to accept the use of torture in certain cases. If you’ve done some research on the topic, you’ll notice that the CIA seems to be convinced that torture works for interrogation (it doesn’t). So, regardless of the reactionary aesthetic, what if the CIA is correct? Shouldn’t we at least take this thought experiment seriously?

Well…

Utilitarianism 101

As previously mentioned, we can boil the ticking time bomb argument down to its ethical root, which is: if you can stop something very bad from happening to lots of people, by doing something that is less bad to one person, you should do it.

This in and of itself appears straightforward, but as people much smarter than me have pointed out, ‘the lesser of two evils’-type arguments invariably lead to the acceptance of some capacity of evil, which is why they should be approached very carefully. The ticking time bomb specifically makes use of utilitarian ethics – torture is given utility – and for that reason, I think it’s important to consider some basics of utilitarian ethics that the scenario and its proponents are suspiciously quiet about.

Utilitarianism is an other-focused ethical framework that states that our behavior should be aligned with the facilitation of the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people.Here, the word good refers to predetermined axiomatic values, which are obviously highly subjective, and that’s a deep dive in and of itself. For the sake of brevity, I’m going to shorten the debate down to its most agreed-upon conclusion: it is bad when humans suffer: therefore, it is good to minimize human suffering.

Let’s have another classic thought experiment, the basic premise of which should sound familiar. You have a neighbor who kind of sucks. He sits around on his couch all day playing video games and drinking, he doesn’t produce anything of value to other people, he’s just kind of a bum. Coincidentally, down at the local hospital, five people are waiting for an organ transplant. If these five people don’t receive an organ transplant, they will die. Is it justifiable, in this scenario, for you to murder your neighbor so his organs can be harvested and used to save the life of the five transplant patients?

Act utilitarianism posits that any act is moral if the end result leads to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Here, it would conclude that murdering one person to save the lives of five others would be morally good, because one person dying is less badthan five people dying. Overall bad, it would argue, has been reduced in this scenario.

Rule utilitarianism is a direct response to act utilitarianism, and posits that you can justify most acts through edge-case exceptions, precisely like the organ murder thought experiment does (or indeed like the ticking bomb does). It posits that instead of judging each act independently, we ought to live by rules that overall lead to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This version of the theory is much more focused on long-term consequences of our rule of behavior, as opposed to the here-and-now short-term utility of any particular act itself. Rule utilitarianism, in this regard, is capable of acknowledging that while certain acts can have a positive outcome in the short-term, they might also have a negative outcomes in the long-term, and vice-versa. (There is an argument to be made here that rule utilitarianism eventually loops back around to just becoming act utilitarianism, but because I’m appealing to people who aren’t in the deep end, I won’t get into that in this essay.) In the case of killing your neighbor, rule utilitarianism would acknowledge that while it is true that the immediate consequence of one death for the sake of preventing five other deaths is good, the act of murder as a rule leads to much more bad than good, and should therefore not be something we accept or facilitate within our moral framework. Rule utilitarianism would argue that even if murder has utilitarian value in exceptional cases, facilitating a rule of behavior in which murder is “sometimes permissible” is in and of itself counter to our axiomatic values.

This might all sound abstract and inconsequential to you, but in praxis, it’s the difference between a government committing a war crime and not committing a war crime. It’s why I think it’s so important for people to be familiar with the basics of ethics.

According to rule utilitarianism, the ticking time bomb scenario deals with the short-term and implies that torture in this scenario is good, but it fails to consider the possible long-term consequences of permitting the use of torture into our prescriptive framework of ethics – the rules we ought to live by.

How might the use of torture on this terrorist be viewed by other like-minded people? Is it possible it might lead to further radicalization – potentially leading to even more terrorists planting even more ticking time bombs in the future?

Torture polarizes people. How will the use of torture be perceived within the state that allows it? Is it worth the further polarization of our internal political climate? This polarization has the potential in and of itself to lead to politically motivated violence, after all.

Straight tribalism appeal: if we use torture against them – wouldn’t it also be acceptable, then, for them to use torture against us? Are we willing to accept that?

Is it possible that allowing police or other government bodies to engage in torture might have a negative impact on these organizations’ interrogative efficacy down the line? Might knowledge of an organization’s use of torture discourage people from volunteering information, or make suspects less likely to cooperate in the first place? Joe Navarro, who is an expert within the FBI in regards to questioning techniques, has stated: “Only a psychopath can torture and be unaffected. You don't want people like that in your organization. They are untrustworthy, and tend to have grotesque other problems.” Following this line of reasoning, is the use of torture in exception cases worth the possible risks of employing torturers?

Allowing for a government-sanctioned use of torture in and of itself has massive connotations. Is the use of torture compatible with a society that strives to uphold human dignity? Is our willingness to disregard this human dignity in “edge cases” worth the utility we could get from torture?

Even presupposing that torture works as an interrogation method (which it doesn’t), proponents the ticking time bomb scenario need to actually demonstrate that the potential short-term positive outcome of using torture outweighs the long-term negative outcomes of accepting torture into our prescriptive ethical framework. This thought experiment and its derivatives within fiction, through the use of emotional, reactionary appeal, actively seeks to discourage participants from engaging with this aspect of the discourse. The rule that might reduce overall long-term suffering is disregarded in favor of the short-term good of the act.

If you take a look at ethical committees across the world, you’ll notice they don’t engage a whole lot with the ticking time bomb thought experiment. This is because at best, it’s incredibly vapid in terms of base-level ethics – and at worst, it’s a deliberate ethical fallacy.

Hang on… if it’s an ethical fallacy, then why are we still talking about it?

Running a pedo sex trafficking island in the Caribbean is usually considered morally wrong, yes. But let’s say aliens came to earth and told you they were gonna vaporize the whole planet, unless you ran a pedo sex trafficking island in the Caribbean and then invited all your buddies, allegedly including Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and Bill Clinton? In this hypothetical scenario, would it not be morally justifiable to do so? Well, maybe the best response to a thought experiment like this isn’t an immediate acceptance of the “lesser evil”, but instead posing a question back to the framer: why the fuck, exactly, are you asking me to accept a moral justification for pedo sex trafficking?

It's about politics. Duh.

And now that we’ve finally established that, we can criticize this “thought experiment” within its historical, material context. Because here’s the thing: governments and state leaders regularly frame the use of torture, following the ticking time bomb philosophy, as a necessary, justifiable evil in certain edge-case exceptions, which implicitly denies atrocity as a way to avoid accountability. Torture, you know – that thing that is internationally recognized as a war crime. In this way, the ticking time bomb scenario isn’t just a political argument – it is a legal argument.

Researchers will tell you that the public discourse around torture seemed to shift after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and that this shift was spearheaded by the Bush Administration’s “War on Terror.” The war on terror notably included actual on-the-ground military invasions throughout the middle east, like the invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan, the effectiveness of which are highly disputed by experts, to say the least. And a notable project to go along with these actual, literal wars, were the systematic propaganda campaigns that the United States government propagated alongside. You’ve probably already read about the US military’s funding of action movies, books, and video games, and probably (rightly) assume that these in part served to influence the public perception of the US’ participation in foreign invasions. And given what was brought into public awareness by the leak of a classified Red Cross inspection report from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in November 2004, it’s not so surprising that the US government would want its citizens to be more, ahem, openminded about the use of torture on enemy combatants. They did this by appealing to reactionary thinking. They turned torture into a terrible, but under certain exceptions, intuitively righteous act. And through the use of euphemisms – “enhanced interrogation methods” – the United States’ use of torture was even distinguished from the torture used by other (browner) nations, as a rational, even civilized act.

And this framing can still be seen in US politics to this day, most commonly along the republican party line. I don’t want to talk about Donald Trump for longer than I need to here. Let’s just say he’s been very outspoken about his support for the use of waterboarding – “or worse” – as an interrogation method, both before, during and after his presidency. This is one of the most powerful men in the world, who has a real chance of being re-elected this year, telling you explicitly that he intends to commit war crimes.

In reality though, justifications for the use of torture as morally permissible in edge-cases aren’t a new phenomenon, and it wasn’t invented by the United States. The reason the 9/11 shift comes up so often in research is that the US, as much as I hate to admit it, is the cultural epicenter of the world, and these ideas have gained global mainstream traction through Hollywood specifically. But you don’t need to look hard to find examples that predate the war on terror.

The ticking time bomb – not just the argument behind it, but that specific thought experiment – was actually popularized by French writer and former soldier Jean Lartéguy in his 1960 novel Les Centurions, which was set during the 1954-1962 French-Algerian war. Later on, General Marcel Bigeard claimed that the use of torture by the French military was a “necessary evil.” Another French general, Paul Aussaresses, wrote in 2001: “torture became necessary when emergency imposed itself.” The French army used a wide variety of torture against Algerians, including beatings, burning, electroshock, waterboarding, mutilation, and rape. Funny how bad ideas always trace back to colonialism.

Who else? The Nazis, the British in Kenya (at least they’ve finally officially admitted it was torture, I guess), South African Apartheid forces, Russian military in Ukraine… I feel like I’m missing someone relevant…

Oh.

The use of coercive interrogation, another euphemism for torture, was reviewed by the Israeli Supreme Court in 1999 and deemed “unlawful, though permissible in certain cases.” Sound familiar? Torture is practiced by Israeli forces both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the use isn’t always limited to adult detainees. Torture techniques include beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions, breaking limbs with clubs, and non-physical torture, such as endless lectures along the lines of, quote: “All Arabs are Bedouin, and Bedouin are Saudis, so Palestinians should go back to Saudi Arabia where they came from. You don’t belong here.” The fog of war sure make things foggy, but I’d imagine torture isn’t above the IDF’s paygrade in the current Israeli attempt at a Palestinian genocide. Considering that allegations of torture have been coming out steadily for months now, I feel like I’m not off base here.

Do you see how the “clear-cut” argument presented within this innocent hypothetical is used by governments to shrug off accountability? Torture is described as necessary in the case of emergency – the words necessary and emergency sure do shift quite a lot depending on who’s talking, but the basic arguments are all based on the same ethical fallacy, one that conflates useful with sometimes justified. I would argue, based on actual utilitarian ethics, that when you accept torture as sometimes justified into your ethical framework, bad shit tends to happen.

Ah, and then there’s Hollywood. Popular culture is a part of public discourse, and all art, as you might know, is inherently political. Fictional portrayals of torture in western movies and literature before 9/11 tend to come away with the conclusion that torture is unjustifiable under any circumstances, and torturers are almost always portrayed as being in the wrong. Since then, portrayals have shifted to favor various derivatives of the ticking time bomb scenario. One of the most famous examples of this is Jack Bauer from the TV-series 24, who frequently makes use of torture as an interrogation method – in fact, he uses the same techniques that the United States used during the war on terror – and the show, in turn, treats him as heroic for being willing to do this. Other examples of ticking time bomb derivatives can be found in The Dark Night trilogy, Supernatural, Stranger Things, Daredevil, Taken, Fast and the Furious, Dirty Harry… Zootopia? Yeah, um, sorry, mr. Pixar, was the torture apologia scene perhaps really necessary to include in this children’s movie?

Along with the discourse seen by lawmakers and political figures, fiction influences the opinions of regular people all the time – it all adds up, you know? And I haven’t been able to find more contemporary sources on this, but according to a poll from the Pew Research Institute from 2016, 48% of Americans believed that torture is acceptable “in some cases.” According to a 2019 poll from the nonprofit Freedom From Torture, 43% of Britons are “unsure” if torture is always wrong – 29% believe that there are “some circumstances” in which torture is acceptable. In a global survey from 2014 by Amnesty International, 74% of Chinese respondents said that torture is a “necessary and acceptable” way of gaining information. Conversely, Brazilian respondents, who scored highest in regards to the fear of being tortured, scored among the lowest favorability in the world, with only 19% saying that torture can be justified “in some cases.”

Globally, over a third (36%) of respondents said that torture can be justified “in some cases.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the debate around torture isn’t whether or not it’s good or bad - the vast majority of people will agree it’s bad, we’re all on the same page there. The really insidious idea is that torture is useful (which it isn’t), mixed with the fact that your average person doesn’t know the first thing about basic utilitarian ethics. Useful, to them, is tantamount to justifiable in some cases. As I hope to have shown you, this in and of itself is an ethical fallacy, and it is inherently reactionary.

Conclusion

I guess I wouldn’t mind if you were a bit concerned.

But my greater point, perhaps, is that you should take “thought experiments” like the ticking time bomb with a tub of salt, especially if you know your grasp of ethics isn’t particularly strong. If I want you to learn anything from this essay, it’s that reactionaries will sometimes make use of arguments that seem very convincing at first glance. They mostly do this purely on accident, to be sure, but appeals to intuition often require 4100 words at least to fully break down, and since nobody likes to read, a good chunk of people are going to take the ticking time bomb scenario at face value, and then go on to believe their opinions on torture stem from actual critical thought. Maybe don’t be like them, is my point.

And if you’re a writer, I guess I’d also like to ask you to be extremely careful of using ticking bomb derivatives in your stories. Ask yourself if your story might accidentally justify the use of torture, explicitly or implicitly. Ask yourself how the torturer and victim are portrayed – how the act itself is portrayed. Ask yourself what the scene is supposed to convey, and who you might be appealing to. Think about it, actually.

Because if you don’t, there’s a good chance that a third of your audience will walk away from your writing having learned precisely the wrong lesson from it.

#nonfiction #torture #torture apologia #ethics

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