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ellesliterarycorner · 3 years

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What My Followers Want To See More Of In Male Characters

I’m always looking for ways to improve my writing, especially writing male characters, and I’m happy to say that my WIP has quite a few of these. I think we can all agree that with the absolutely sickening influx of dark, broody, bad boys in YA fiction, having male characters with more nuance and hmmm I don’t know actual personalities is refreshing and something that all books need. Thank you guys so much for answering this poll(conducted through instagram), and let me know if there’s something else y’all want to be polled on that I can turn into a post! I didn’t change anything that you guys wrote, so there are some repeats on the list, but I think it makes a point to see how many people want to see the same (relatively simple) things in fiction!

Them being soft and kind

going to therapy/having mental health struggle

bisexuality!

non-toxic religious men

lgbt men(beyond being gay and fetishised)

feminine guys who aren’t gay

men of all sexualities being feminine

physically disabled men who are very masculine

straight male characters in close friendships with mlm characters

sensitive and weak moments

“feminine” men mb, guys who like flowers and stuff while also being very strong cause thats cool I think

confidence enough to compliment other men

feminine interests without being judged

discussing things they love doing

I think it’d be nice if people showed men’s insecurities more often. Also, men also get abused and stuff

emotions!!!

genuine friendships with someone who’s better than them

eating disorders, anxiety, insecurities, other common mental health concerns

guys not afraid to show their vulnerability and weaknesses to the people they care about

casually wearing makeup and not making a fuss or a statement out of it

being shy is ok. being nice to the mc and not being a complete douche bag, if the mc is being an idiot and playing with their feelings telling her straight up or leaving her, they don’t have to be attractive to be likable, their dark pasts isn’t an excuse for them to be shitty human beings

them being vulnerable

healthy platonic friendships

vulnerability and insecurity shown through non toxic traits

soft spoken, kind and gentle voice

I want to see them cook, sex, or such without invalidating their masculinity

male characters who express their emotions and aren’t ridiculed by others for it

I want more soft men tbh. It’s usually all badass and then breakdowns. I want someone who is fragile

affectionate with their friends and/or in tune with their emotions

less abs

males who aren’t afraid to cry and be affectionate with their friends

respect and genuine care for females and people of other genders, thank you

i would love to see more bisexual/pansexual male characters!!

the ability to take no for an answer

bisexual males that aren’t the main plot. they just get to be bi and it doesn’t affect the story

emotional softness

being vulnerable/crying without thinking that they’re weak for it

ones that are submissive and fine with it

Queer! Rep!

Ones that are fucking respectful of their female counterparts

talking about their feelings

kind to their lover without being called a simp

plus size

guys being allowed to be gentle and not seen as weak or inferior

openness rather than being closed off all of the time

I want to see witty and quirky characters + humor that is shown around EVERYONE

femininity and vulnerability, crying, breakdowns, etc.

varying sexualities

real emotion, crying, and for it be okay for them to do that

treats women like equals without having to be “taught” how to by a love interest

caring about others without being portrayed as awkward and/or flirtatious

emotions and kindness

showing emotions that isn’t anger

not being misogynistic

smart but not the typical ‘nerdy geek’ just there as an encyclopedia for the MC

Men who are comfortable with being emotionally open (and them being emotionally open DOESN’T automatically mean they’re gay

emotional maturity and having healthy relationships and behavior

showing affection to their platonic friends

respect toward others

male characters that are “motherly” Let them cook, clean, sew, and be good with kids

male characters who are perceptive and understanding

male characters with realistic, practical muscles

wanting hugs and getting giddy over little bits of affection

male characters who wear heels (even if the rest of their outfit is traditionally masculine)

black male protagonists

emotional strength instead of physical strength

males that let the non males take charge and our respectful

realistic bodies and insecurities

more males characters exploring their identity

males who have hobbies, they’re passionate about

physically and mentally strong and resilient. Protective, but respectful and supportive

not being overtly attractive and being okay with it

emotionally guarded without being cold or angry

more sympathy, less naïvety to the female protagonists feelings

stylish dudes who aren’t gay (not that lgbtq+ rep is bad it’s just a tiring stereotype)

guys friendships and protectiveness of non love interests

male characters being feminine without them being queer coded or comic relief

them finding a healthy way to cope with problems

healthy paternal figures that do not die in the saga please

big scary guys with hobbies like crochet, sewing and reading books for rescued animals

soft and loving and caring all the time who cry and are hurt and not badass all the time

be soft and kind to everyone, not just their bae

cool mysterious and stuff but not flipping depressed characters please stop that trope

them crying, having close female friends, being lgbt+(especially trans men), showing emotions

male characters that aren’t possessive/obsessive and know how to accept “no”

raising kids without a love interest involved

societies with men that aren’t stereotypical

male characters that aren’t naturally good leaders

a really straight guy having a really gay best friend

seeing more male characters be comfortable in expressing their feelings and emotions

#writers #writblr #writers on tumblr #writerslife #writing #writersofig #writersofinstagram #writers of instagram #writers of ig #creating characters #writing characters #male characters #writing advice #writing reference #writing resources #writing tip #writing tips #writingadvice

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gra-sonas · 3 years

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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes Characters: Alex Manes, Michael Guerin, Isobel Evans Additional Tags: Minor Isabel Evans/Gregory Manes, Canon Disabled Character, Soulmates, Handprint Summary:

"Listen, darlin’. I don’t think because I say darlin’ that’s gonna bring you your soulmate. But, maybe I’m wrong, maybe I don’t fully understand and they’re gonna find you, darlin’." - recorded by Cowboy for Airmanes

Michael used to work for an anonymous, queer-friendly sex hotline (going by the nickname Cowboy) while he was in college, and Alex commissioned him to record a message for him while he was deployed. One day, their paths cross.

Alriiiiight, happy Malex Monday! I meant to write a short ficlet, inspired by Vlamis recording a message for a fan, saying darlin’ three times. For reasons unknown, this turned into a 5.5K fic I wrote this afternoon/evening.

This is a soulmate AU, and there’s some handprint stuff going on. And while this is mostly fluff, the fic is rated Mature (I know, *gasp*). Uhm, enjoy?

~*~

When Alex listens to the message Cowboy has recorded for him, he has a hard time (pun intended) keeping quiet and not scream into his pillow. It's a close call. Even though the need to get off is overwhelming, he's careful to move his body into a more comfortable position without jostling the bunk bed too much. He hears Ogden in the bottom bed grumble in his sleep once, but he doesn't wake up. Small mercies.

Alex feels like an hour passes before he can finally wrap his hand around his hard cock and take care of his needs with the tiniest movements. He keeps listening to Cowboys recording over and over again, and he manages to time his orgasm with the final darlin' of the message.

Wow, Alex doesn't want to exaggerate, but he thinks he's never come harder in his life. Cowboy's voice's just doing it for Alex, always, has. But the darlin'? Surefire way to get him off in no time. It's the first night in a long time that Alex sleeps so deep, that not a single nightmare haunts his dreams.

The recording continues to bring Alex comfort and orgasms in the middle of an ongoing war, and he can't help but dream up scenarios where he meets Cowboy one day, and they realize that they are indeed soulmates. A soldier can dream, right?

Months go by and after one fateful and utterly horrible day, the war is over for Alex. He returns home to Roswell via a short stint in Landshut, Germany. Half of his right leg is missing, but they give him a purple heart as a consolation price and a thank you for his service. Not that anyone actually thanks him.

It takes Alex another couple of months until he can walk again without the help of a crutch. He celebrates this newfound mobility freedom at a local bar, the Wild Pony. He's sitting at one of the tables, nursing a beer, when two people occupy the table next to his. A tall blonde woman, and a handsome man with curly hair that spills out under the brim of a black cowboy hat. A cowboy hat. Alex tries not to be too obvious, but he keeps looking at the man every now and then.

He can't hear what they're talking about, their voices a soft murmur, but then someone feeds the jukebox with a dollar, and suddenly the couple has to raise their voices.

"Come on, Michael. Don't be such a sourpuss. I want to celebrate that you're back home. It's been a dull year without you. I've talked to Max, he's promised to be on his best behavior," the woman says.

Michael. "Nice name," Alex thinks. He's just reaching for his bottle to take another sip when Michael answers.

"Ugh, Iz, do I have to come? I'd love to spend an evening with just you, but you know Max, he won't stop nagging me."

Alex freezes. He knows that voice. Intimately (well, in a way). But the man can't be Cowboy, can he? In Roswell of all places? Alex tries to be subtle by moving his chair a fraction of an inch to get a better view at the neighboring table.

He keeps staring and almost jumps up when the woman (Iz)'s phone starts buzzing. She checks the display. "That's Greg, I have to take this call outside. Please don't leave, I'll be back in a minute."

Michael demonstratively takes his hat off and puts it on the chair next to him. He smiles at her. "No worries, I'll still be here. Say hi to your beau and tell him I hope to meet him soon." She grins. "Not sure I should introduce him to you. He's your type, brother dearest."

Alex can't see Michael's face properly, but his voice sounds annoyed. His voice, that Alex is fairly certain, is that of Cowboy, the man of his (sex) dreams. "As if I'd ever make a move at someone who's involved with someone else, let alone someone who's dating my sister, who also happens to be my best friend."

Iz laughs. "Good boy. Now give me a minute, I have to talk to my boyfriend." She leaves.

Alex's hands are sweaty because now would be a good moment to approach the man, but what would he even say. "Hi, you're that guy from the queer-friendly sex hotline, and months ago you recorded a message for me I like to get off to. Nice to finally meet you in person."

Not awkward at all. But he also needs to know what the man looks like. So far, he's only seen part of his face (there seems to be stubble, which Alex approves of) and lots and lots of unruly honey-golden curls. In an unplanned move, he accidentally knocks his beer bottle over and the remaining beer spills all over his table.

"Damn," he mumbles under his breath, patting down the pockets of his jacket in search of tissues to mop up the mess.

Suddenly, there's movement at the table next to him and Michael turns around, a squarely folded piece of cloth (a bandana?) in his hand. "Here, take this."

Alex feels dizzy looking at the man. Not in his wildest dreams did he imagine that Cowboy would look like that, but now? Even if this man turns out to be not Cowboy, Alex will forever have this visual when he plays the darlin' message.

Not the moment to think about that, though. He collects himself enough to say something. "Uhm, are you sure? That looks very nice and clean, I'm sure they have paper towels at the bar."

Michael's smile is almost blinding. "Don't worry about it, it's one of my oldest bandanas, it deserves to die in the most heroic way – drowning in alcohol."

Alex snorts. "Okay, thank you." He reaches for the bandana, and for a second, their fingertips touch. Alex's vision goes blurry and he tries his best to inhale, but there doesn't seem to be enough air to fill his lungs. He gasps.

When he feels a strong, warm hand clapping down on his shoulder, he can suddenly see clear again, his lungs expand without pain, and warmth is flooding his body.

He goes almost pliant under Michael's touch (because of course it's his hand).

"Wow," Michael says, and if that isn't the perfect word to describe the situation.

Alex tries to remember how words are formed. "Do you feel it, too?" Michael just nods. "In Roswell of all places," Alex says dryly.

Michael snorts. "You wouldn't believe how apt that actually is. All things considered."

"I don't know what that means, but I'm sure I'll find out eventually. I mean, I don't want to assume, but I will find out eventually, right?"

"Yes, beautiful stranger, you will. I never expected this to happen to me, but now that it did happen, I want to know everything about you. What's your name, handsome?"

Alex can't believe that this beautiful man is his soulmate, let alone that he found him in this godforsaken town he'd never expected to return to before he lost his leg.

"Well, handsome does have a name. It's Alex. And you are—."

Alex takes a calculated breath before he says "Cowboy," at the same time Michael says "Michael."

They stare at each other. Michael's eyes are wide. "How do you—?"

Alex blushes, and he considers not answering the question for a second, but this is his soulmate asking. "I'm—I'm not just Alex, I'm also darlin'."

Michael's eyes grow impossibly wider, then he bursts out laughing. "Oh my god, that was you? I couldn't stop listening to your message either. It's been very – how can I put this – inspiring?"

"Well, in true Pavlovian fashion, I can promise you that calling me darlin' will get me hard and off in no time," Alex says, keeping his voice low. He should be beet-read, but he's beyond feeling ashamed. In fact, he feels emboldened, and if the glint in Michael's eyes is anything to go by, he's certain there's one hell of an orgasm in his near future.

Before he can put more thought into that possible scenario, Iz returns to the table. She looks at both men and raises an eyebrow.

"Michael, why are you holding hands with this man?"

Michael looks down at their clasped hands, apparently, he doesn't know either when they started holding hands. For a moment, Alex considers letting go of Michael to greet Michael's sister properly, but he can't bear the thought of losing the physical contact right now.

Michael kisses the back of Alex's hand, then he looks up at Iz. "Isobel, this is my soulmate. His name's Alex."

"He's your—Michael! I leave the table for five minutes, and I come back to you having found your soulmate? I didn't even know that we could until recently." She seems exasperated, but then her smile goes soft.

She sits down across from them and looks at Alex. "I'm sorry, Alex, I didn't mean to be rude. This is just a lot to take in. Uhm, I've met with Michael tonight to convince him to come and visit me, and spend time with our brother Max tomorrow. And I haven't been quite honest with Michael."

She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a deep breath. "Michael, Max and I were going to tell you, that we met our soulmates this week. Max bumped into Liz who's in town to visit her dad, and I happened to meet Greg at an event I organized for his school."

Alex perks up. "Greg isn't Gregory Manes, though, right? Teacher at the elementary school up at the reservation?"

Isobel blinks. "How do you even know about him? Oh my god, you're his brother! You're Alex Manes!" Alex nods. Isobel looks at him more closely. "Now that I know, it's obvious, you look so much alike. This is wild. I think I need a drink. You in? Shots are on me."

Alex and Michael look at each other and nod. There are only so many earth- and life-shattering revelations one can handle without being at least a little bit drunk.

Isobel stands up and walks over to the bar to order. The bartender reaches for one of the top-shelf bottles. Well, they have something huge to celebrate, this definitely calls for the good tequila.

Michael nudges him. "So, I know this has already been a lot, but there's something else you need to know about me, but I'd rather tell you about it when it's just the two of us. It's nothing bad, don't worry, I'd just prefer to tell – and show – you in private."

Alex smiles. "Whatever it is, I can handle it. Just real quick before your sister comes back. Does she know about the hotline job?"

Michael shakes his head. "No, she doesn't, actually. I got my engineering degree at UNM, and I picked up the job to make a little extra money for all the things my scholarship didn't pay for, and those requested messages were paid really well. It's been a great job, I was actually quite good at it, too, but now that I have my degree, it's a thing of the past. I don't really mind anyone knowing, but I'd rather this stays our naughty little secret."

"Oh, believe me, I'm not overly eager to tell anyone that your voice has provided me with some of the best orgasms. No need to look so smug, Michael," Alex grouses, but he smiles.

Michael turns his head, his face is very close all of a sudden, and his lips look plush and moist and oh-so-kissable. They look at each other.

"Alex," Michael whispers.

Alex closes the distance between them and then they kiss. Stars align, the universe expands, and Alex knows he's finally home. Not in Roswell, they could be anywhere right now, on this planet, or in another galaxy. No, home is in Michael's arms, in the sweetness of his breath, the sound of his low moans, and the soft touch of his fingers caressing the hair at the nape of Alex's neck.

"Ah, first soulmate kiss. I remember. So intense," Isobel says, and places three shot glasses and a bottle of tequila on the table.

They don't want to stop kissing, but they do. It's the polite thing to do. But it's hard. Alex would rather be alone with Michael. As if he's been reading his mind, Michael leans closer and whispers "One shot, then we leave. She'll understand. But I need to be alone with you."

Alex closes his eyes and inhales deeply in an attempt to calm his nerves. Michael's scent is intoxicating, he smells like leather and rain. Alex wants to drown in the smell. When a cold shot glass is shoved into his hand, he blinks his eyes open again.

"Earth to Alex, are you back with us?" Isobel smirks, but her eyes are kind and understanding.

"Yeah, sorry, it's just a lot to take in, and Michael smells so good. I'm sorry, but can we get this over with? I really need to be alone with him."

Isobel nods. "You know what, why don't you take the bottle home with you, and some time this week, we all meet and celebrate."

Michael nods and picks his hat up from the chair. "Excellent idea. I knew you'd understand." He kisses Isobel on the cheek. "You told Greg though, right?"

Isobel nods. "Yes, he knows. Liz, too. And—," she whispers something into Michael's ear.

Alex thinks he hears Isobel mention a "handprint" (whatever that means) but he assumes they're referring to the thing Michael will tell him when they are alone, so he doesn't ask what they're talking about. It's comforting to know that his favorite brother knows, though. It'll be good to have someone to talk to he trusts implicitly.

They hug Isobel (who also smells like rain, Alex notices), then they head out to the parking lot. Since Michael's currently living at a motel, the decision's easy where to go. They leave Michael's old truck ("don't ask, we've been through a lot together, and I'd never give up on her") at the Pony, and take Alex's SUV instead.

He doesn't live too far from the bar, and they enter his house not ten minutes later.

There's just enough time for Alex to put down the tequila bottle on the dining table before Michael pulls him into his arms. They're still wearing their jackets, and Michael his hat. Before Michael gets close enough to kiss him, Alex nods in the direction of his bedroom.

"There's a very comfortable and very big bed behind that door. We both know where we're headed anyway, and I'd like to take the prothesis off," he says, holding his breath after the revelation. He knows that his soulmate won't reject him because of it, but it's still a very personal thing to disclose.

Michael doesn't even blink, he just smiles and leads Alex to the bedroom. He makes Alex sit on the edge of the bed and kneels down in front of him. Alex's breath catches. Michael takes off his hat and jacket and drops them on the floor to his left, then he turns back to Alex and unlaces Alex's boots.

Alex opens the button and zipper of his jeans, and cants his hips to wriggle them down without having to stand up. He doesn't quite succeed. "Damn, I'm stuck, sorry. I have to stand up again."

Michael shakes his head. "No, you don't. Do you trust me?"

Alex stops and thinks about it for a moment. Does he trust Michael? The simple answer is, yes. He just knows that he can trust Michael. He nods. "I do."

Michael looks at him and holds his gaze, when Alex's butt slowly lifts off the mattress. He gasps, but he keeps looking at Michael. Michael smiles softly. Then he reaches for Alex's jeans and pulls them down, while Alex is floating a few inches above his bed.

Alex's thoughts are racing. He should be scared, his soldier instincts should kick in, and maybe he should fight, but he does none of that. Because he doesn't feel threatened. He feels safe. Michael won't hurt him, that he knows with absolute certainty.

As if by magic, he slowly descends, until he sits on the edge of the bed again. Michael kisses Alex's left knee, then he turns his attention to the prosthetic on his right leg. Alex is about to tell him what to do, when he feels the prosthetic coming off. He groans in relief. He'll have to pace himself and not go entire days without the crutch too often for a couple more weeks.

Michael removes the leg and pulls the liner down to reveal Alex's stump. Alex scrunches his face. Not in disgust of how the stump looks, but he knows how it probably smells. But Michael is unfazed, though. He leans forward and kisses the tender skin of Alex's stump. Alex is close to bursting into tears because of the tenderness of the gesture.

His voice sounds a little wet when he speaks. "I need to take some meds. Would you mind getting them for me from the bathroom cabinet? They are labeled 'evening'."

Michael nods and gets up from the floor. Before he leaves, he presses a soft kiss to Alex's lips. "Thanks for trusting me."

Alex wants to reach for him and tumble backwards with Michael in his arms, but he knows he'll regret not taking his medication, so he doesn't. Thankfully, Michael's back with the pill bottles in a heartbeat, and Alex uncaps the bottle of water on his nightstand and takes his pills.

Meanwhile, Michael toes off his boots, pulls his shirt over his head, takes off his socks, and drops his pants in a heap on the floor. When he looks around the room wearing nothing more than his briefs, Alex pats the free space next to him. "Come here, sit down. I'm ready to listen to whatever you're going to tell me in a minute, I just need you close for a moment."

Michael almost trips over his jeans in his haste to sit down next to Alex. Alex immediately realizes how anxious he is, and somehow that soothes his own nerves. He reaches for Michael's hand and laces their fingers together. Michael's hand trembles, and Alex squeezes it.

"You don't have to worry, Michael. I know you're going to tell me something extraordinary, but I can handle it. I won't reject you. Relax."

Michael snickers. "Well, you could say extraordinary, extraterrestrial would be more accurate, though."

Alex swallows hard, but deep down he knows that Michael's not joking. He squeezes Michael's hand again. "The 1947 crash was real?" Michael can't do much more than nod.

"So, you're a descendent of a group of people not from this earth who crashed here some 70 odd years ago?"

Michael looks at him. "I guess you could say that, although I have to add that I was actually on board of the spaceship."

Alex can't believe what he just heard. "Uhm, okay. You don't look like someone who's well over 70 years old, though. Does your species age at a slower rate? I this a Superman thing? Are you from Krypton? How old are you really?"

Michael laughs. "You're taking this surprisingly well. Uhm, so, depending on how you look at it, I'm either 30 years old, or I'm about 80. I don't think we're aging slower than humans, though. We were actually in stasis in our pods for half a century, and only hatched in 1997."

"You did what now?"

"Oh, sorry, uhm, our stasis pods look like glowing eggs, and we always joked that we hatched. I don't think that's how our people actually procreate, though," Michael explains.

Alex is trying his best to take it all in, but it's a lot. He takes a deep breath. "So, by 'us', you're referring to yourself, Isobel, and your other brother, Max, right? Don't you have parents? What happened to them?"

Michael's face falls, and Alex feels awful for being responsible for it. "We don't know, actually. We don't even know whether we're actual siblings. We were found together after we hatched, mute, wandering the desert. Max and Iz got lucky, they were adopted by a local family. I wasn't quite so lucky. I grew up in the system. But I've always been a bright student, so I was able to get a good education. I had to postpone my plans to go to college after high school because of Isobel for a few years, that's why I only graduated recently. But I have a good job lined up, I'll start next month. So, I'm not a complete failure."

Alex wraps an arm around Michael's shoulder and pulls him into a hug. "You could never be a failure. I don't know much about you, but you're not a failure. You hear me?" He feels Michael nod against his chest.

"Good. Now that the big secret is revealed. What did Isobel mean when she talked about a handprint earlier?"

Michael pulls back and looks at Alex. "You heard that? Well, as I demonstrated earlier, my power is telekinesis. Isobel can influence people with her brain, and Max can heal. What the three of us have in common, is that we can share memories with someone else by putting our hands on them. Skin on skin. It opens some kind of mental connection, don't ask me how it works exactly, but it leaves an iridescent glowing handprint on the other person's skin. It fades after a few days, and the connection shared during the handprint also breaks."

Alex squeezes Michael's hand. "So, you can share memories and emotions, but you won't mind-whammy me?"

"God, no, I won't. I swear. I wouldn't even know how to," Michael says.

Alex turns to Michael and they look at each other. "Okay. I'll sit down on the bed against the headboard. I don't have any medical exams scheduled in the next couple of days. Does the handprint have to be placed somewhere specific?"

Michael looks at Alex with wonder in his eyes. "How are you so fucking calm and cool about this? My entire life – well, since we hatched – I've been worried sick about revealing this secret to anyone and sicking military special forces on us. You are the first person I've ever told, and you're taking it like I told you I have a mole on my left butt cheek."

Alex raises an eyebrow. "You have a mole on your left butt cheek?"

Michael giggles. "Oh my god, I know it's probably too soon to say it not even two hours after we've met, but I love you. You're ridiculous, and hilarious, and brilliant. And I love you." He wipes at his eyes. "And no, I don't have a mole on my left butt cheek. Wanna find out where I have one?" He waggles his eyebrows at Alex.

"You casually mention that you love me, and I'm supposed to play 'search the mole' with you? You are unbelievable. For the record, I love you, too. And I don't care that we only met two hours ago. You're about to put a spooky handprint on me that will tell me everything I need to know."

Alex lets go of Michael's hand and scrambles back on the bed until he sits comfortably, propped up by at least three cushions. He looks down at himself and pulls his shirt over his head and flings it in the general direction of the hamper. He winks at Michael. "Come here, alien boy, tell me your story."

Michael laughs and crawls across the bed until he's next to Alex. He likes what he sees. A smattering of dark chest hair, strong arms, a sculpted torso. Alex is gorgeous, head to toe.

"Is it okay when I put my hand on your chest? Low enough that the handprint won't be visible even if you open the top two buttons?"

Alex nods. "That sounds reasonable. Go ahead."

Michael places his right hand on Alex's chest. Michael takes a deep breath, and suddenly his hand starts glowing red. The palm of his hand is heating up against Alex's skin, but the heat doesn't hurt. They look at each other, and suddenly it's like a gate to another dimension opens.

Alex looks at everything Michael sends his way, he laughs, he sheds tears, he looks in horror at what some of the foster parents did to Michael. He sees Isobel, and another man, Max, most likely, he sees an old man with an eyepatch at a place that looks like a junkyard.

It's not just images Michael shares, though. There are also emotions. Alex can barely handle the loneliness radiating through the connection, the fear of someone finding out, Michael worrying about Isobel, and a million other things.

When they later look at the alarm clock on Alex's night stand, they realize the whole thing didn't take longer than maybe ten minutes, and yet Alex feels like he knows everything about Michael. Not every detail or secret, but he knows Michael now.

It's overwhelming, and terrifyingly wonderful. Alex doesn't know how else to describe it. They lie down next to each other, knees knocking, hands exploring, their mouths almost touching.

"Wow," Alex breathes out.

Michael kisses him. "Yeah," he whispers.

Alex does what he's been dying to do since he met Michael. He runs his fingers through Michael's hair and enjoys how soft the curls feel. Like the finest silk.

"You are incredible, Michael. Thank you for sharing this with me. I'll have a million questions for you in the coming days, and I'm sure you'll also want know more about me, but I need to not talk for a while. Can we do that?"

Michael nods. Alex barely blinks an eye, when they both float up, comforter and duvet getting pulled out from under them, and soon they sink back down into the soft mattress again. "This ability of yours sure comes in handy," Alex praises.

Michael pulls the duvet over them, and Alex is grateful for the heat inside of their little cocoon. "It does. You have no idea what it means to me to being able to use it in front of you."

Alex notices the emotion in Michael's voice and sees tears glistening in his eyes. He wraps his arms around Michael as good as he can and pulls him close. Michael hugs back, and then they just hold each other for a long time. Breathing each other in and trading lazy kisses.

Once their bodies and minds relax, their kisses get heated. They are both hard, their cocks brushing against each other through the thin fabric of their underwear. Alex wriggles his hand between them to wrap it around the tips of their cocks peeking out. There's no time (or room) for finesse. Heat and friction are doing the job for them. Their kisses get more and more wet and sloppy, they pant into each other's mouths, and just moments before Alex is ready to come, Michael looks at him, his pupils blown wide. He presses his hand on the glowing mark in the middle of Alex's chest.

"I love you," he says. A short break, then he adds, "Darlin'."

Alex lets out a guttural sound, something between a scream and a moan, and he comes in hot and almost painful pulses between them. Michael follows only moments later, adding to the mess. But they don't care.

The connection between them is blown wide open, and Michael gasps, when he's receiving memories and emotions from Alex suddenly. An abusive home, his mom leaving, loneliness, gruesome years in the military, the immeasurable pain of losing a limb, Michael feels like he's about to pass out from it, but he holds steady.

Alex took in everything he shared with him earlier, now he wants to take in everything Alex is sharing. It's a lot, though, and when the flood of impressions subsides to a mere trickle, he realizes he's panting and sweating like he just ran a marathon.

Their foreheads are touching, and they cling to each other like they're afraid to let go of the other.

Later, they won't recall exactly for how long they stay like that. At some point, Alex musters enough energy to tell Michael where he keeps a bottle of nail polish remover in his bathroom.

"How do you—,?" Michael starts, and Alex just places his hand on Michael's chest. Michael blinks. "Wow, I think this experience has fried some of my brain cells, of course you know."

Michael closes his eyes and concentrates, but he's not strong enough to make the bottle come to him with his telekinesis. Reluctantly, he lets go of Alex, who grumbles and makes grabby hands at Michael.

"Just a second, sweetheart, I'll be back in no time. Don't go anywhere."

"Har, har," Alex makes. He's slowly feeling like he's fully conscious again. He's about to call for Michael's attention, when the man in question returns from his quest in the bathroom. He's sipping from a plastic bottle he's holding with one hand, and there's a wet towel in his other hand. Bless him.

He hands the towel to Alex (who notices that Michael soaked it in warm water, bless him more!), and he quickly wipes himself down. When he's finished, Michael takes the towel and returns to the bathroom.

When he comes back, he smiles at Alex. "Pajamas, or shirts and sweatpants?" he asks, pointing at the walk-in closet.

"Door on the far left, there's both, pajamas and other comfy clothes. I'll take what you take." He only feels silly for saying something so sappy for a second, because Michael beams like the sun. "Partner look, I like it."

Michael vanishes for half a minute and returns with two pairs of blue sweat pants and plain white shirts. He dresses himself first, while Alex puts on the shirt, then Michael's there to help him put on the sweats. Without being prompted, Michael asks "Your crutches, where are they?"

Alex smiles at him softly. "In the living room, leaning against the wall next to the dining table."

Michael goes to fetch the crutches and leans them against the wall next to Alex's side of the bed when he returns. "Anything else I can get you before we sleep?"

Alex shakes his head. "Nothing I can think of right now. Come to bed, Michael."

Michael smiles, his grin almost devilish. "It'll be my pleasure, darlin'."

Alex is tempted to throw a pillow at Michael. "You're not playing fair, Michael. I'm exhausted, and you know what you saying it does to me. I don't think all the darlin's in the world will be able to make me hard again right now, though."

Michael crawls into bed and under the covers. He pulls Alex close and kisses the tip of his nose. "Don't be sad, sweetheart, there's more than enough time for that in the morning. Unless you have to be somewhere tomorrow?"

Alex shakes his head. "No, there's nothing on my schedule tomorrow. Plenty of time for us to get to know each other with more words. Don't get me wrong, what happened tonight has been the most incredible experience of my life, and I'm grateful that we already know so many things about each other, especially the bad things that are much harder to talk about. But I still want to talk to you."

Michael nods. "We'll do that. Tomorrow. But now, let's sleep. The acetone helped, but I still feel a bit like I was hit by a truck. Big spoon or little spoon?"

Alex thinks about it for a moment. "If you don't mind, little spoon. You're just so warm, and I'm freezing. I'm always up for big spoon duty, though. I want to hold you, too, you know."

Michael's smile is the sweetest, and Alex's heart almost bursts with how much he loves him. "I know," Michael says. "And now, turn around and get comfy."

Alex does, and as soon as Michael's inhuman warmth engulfs him, his eyes start to droop. A moment later the room goes dark, and Alex feels Michael's lips peppering the his neck with little kisses. He pulls Michael's arm closer around himself.

"I love you," he whispers into the dark.

"And I love you. So much, Alex. So, so much. Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Michael."

And then, they sleep.

#malex #alex manes #michael guerin #rnm fic #malex fic #my fic #michael vlamis

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turtlesandfrogs · 3 years

Text

That post got me on a roll, because, as I said before, those were the exact same sentences used in my extremely religious, patriarchal, men-are-better-and-always-will-be childhood. "Just don't even try because men are stronger than you and always will be and you will always lose." FUCK THAT. That doesn't empower or help anyone, that just (attempts) to keep women weak and afraid. If your "feminism" leads back around to the same talking points and "advice" as the patriarchy, you should examine why. We need to work on PREVENTING abusive relationships while at the same time helping people escape abusive relationships before it reaches the point that anyone is fighting for their life. If you are a feminist worried about domestic abuse rates, then start by learning the warning signs- AND what they look like from the outside. DO NOT allow people to become isolated! Reach out to friends, family, community members, and make sure they know you're there, that you're helpful & safe & nonjudgmental. People stay for a lot of reasons (usually including that they are being controlled and isolated), but also because they can't see another option- help them see that option!

Teach women, empower women. (Teach everyone, empower everyone.) A person who knows how to support themselves (how to make a living AND how to manage life's tasks (regardless of which gender role is supposed to do them) AND knows their value and their boundaries AND has a strong social network) is much less likely to wind up or stay in a bad situation. Teach people what love and kindness look like- AND what abusive and manipulative behavior looks like. Teach them what it looks like when someone is being "nice" but is actually using them. Teach people to be kind without getting taken advantage of. Teach people that they don't owe anyone at the expense of their own well being, AND vice versa- but also teach them that they are part of a community and support network. Teach people that partnerships, relationships, friendships are mutually supportive and helpful. Teach them basic financial literacy! Teach them math! Teach them that they have value outside of a romantic relationship & having children! Teach them to be independent and know how to cooperate and how to lead and know when someone is being controlling! Give them the confidence to tell manipulative, controlling people to fuck off (as politely as is needed in the situation), regardless of their gender. Give them the skills to not be dependent on another individual (but realize some people will be dependent on others, because disability and old age and childhood and injury and illness exist. That means we have to make sure that people who are dependent on others must not be isolated and we must do all we can to reduce the other factors that lead to abuse).

Learn what raises the rates of domestic abuse and actively work to reduce it! Increase rates of education FOR EVERYBODY! Teach everyone how to manage anger and other unpleasant emotions! Teach everyone how to build meaningful, not just romantic, relationships! Fix societal problems that lead to abuse of alcohol & other drugs(and practice lots of harm reduction)! Make a livable wage available for everyone (here's to a universal basic income)! Create networks of support for anyone in need of them! Teach people how to have a sense of self worth and destroy the industries that create low self worth in people. Break down gender roles that tell men to use women for emotional regulation and tell women that they exist to help/fix/take care of/obey men OR that their most important and valuable trait is to have and take care of children. Teach everybody to take care of their own mental help and to seek help not just when they absolutely need it, but when it would be helpful.

If you think women are weaker than men and thus at risk of physical violence THEN TEACH THEM SELF DEFENSE! It's not about matching physical power, it's about being aware, listening to your instincts, not feeling compelled to "be nice", and having skills and confidence and practicing enough that it becomes muscle memory so you don't freeze. (And if you do freeze, I am so sorry, it's not your fault, that's an evolutionary response and it will happen some times, and that fucking sucks.) The freeze response is apparently actually more common that fight for flight, but! Situational awareness so you see it coming, visualizing what you'll do if you get attacked ahead of time, and having self defense training can all help prevent the freeze response. Teach people that it's not ok to do things to other people without their active consent- and teach everyone that it's their job to communicate and be responsible and considerate of peoples' feelings, even if they can't articulate them verbally. Do not ignore communication just because it's body language and not words. Do not force people to do things they're not comfortable doing, whether it's giving Aunt Mildew a hug or wearing a dress or eating something they don't want to. Teach people bodily autonomy- their own and others. Don't demonize half(ish) of your species while pretending the other half(ish) are always good people. Because the truth of the matter is, there are bad people out there- men, women, intersex folks, gender queer folks, children, adults, teens, and elderly. Anyone can be an abuser, and any one can be abused. But there are far more good people out there than there are bad. Don't teach people to live their lives in fear. Reach out, build connections, help each other, heal from your trauma and help others heal from theirs.

And yeah, men have way lower reported rates of rape and domestic partner abuse (seems like around 1/2 to 1/3 as much as women statistically). BUT damn it, they're still people, they still have value, and NO ONE deserves abuse and assault. And similarly, women can be abusive, and women can kill. Pretending otherwise does no one any good, and indeed puts people (including women) in danger. Women can be just as pushy about sex, women can ignore and trample boundaries just as well as any man, and women can hit, harm, and kill just like men can.

We don't make people safe by teaching them to fear men. We make people safe by empowering them, building community and connection, and teaching them to pay attention to warning signs and their instincts, no matter who is setting off their spider sense.

#sexism #feminism #violence #domestic violence #abuse #rape #if your radical feminism has circled around to the same toxic talking points as a literal CULT you have a problem #tw #tw: rape #tw: domestic violence #patriarchy #male violence #female violence

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mattzerella-sticks · 3 years

Text

Thoughts on "Carry On" after I've mulled it over:

Now that I've had time to sit on it, I can be a little more precise on my thoughts of this finale:

- Dean's 'ending': Taken out by a rusty nail... I hate it. Then I heard some opinions - without Chuck there were no magic fixes, and this was bound to happen if they continued hunting because of that. It was a human, ordinary, accidental death meaning the Winchesters are just ordinary. Still, being taken out by a nail or rebarb or whatever wasn't a satisfying death for Dean Winchester. Added to the fact he most certainly wanted to live (Miracle, job application, etc.) And he didn't want to hunt anymore either! He wasn't looking for hunts (like Sam was). They stumbled onto that hunt by accident.

From a writer's point of view, I can say now it makes sense with the plot of the episode (only). Dean's death was a catalyst - to give Sam 'freedom' and to show us, the audience, what Heaven was like now that Jack is God. His own sort of 'freedom', I guess.

Unfortunately the plot of the episode still sucked. Just because it makes sense 'story wise' (and I say that very loosely because Dean didn't even get his loose ends tied up nicely). A death during a hunt was something Dean figured would happen in his youth, and he didn't care because he practically was a ghost without many physical attachments. Now he has so many they decide to take him away and for what purpose? It is the last episode. A series finale should only hurt in saying goodbye to the characters, but not like this.

And a goodbye like this, for a character who has had suicidal tendencies and from the looks of it was moving past that, who never really thought about his wants until this moment, and who was on the cusp of being textually confirmed queer (which would have been monumental just saying), it felt like we as fans were stabbed by the rebarb. Which goes to show how much we love the character, one thing. And I think that's why they knew it would hurt. However, they were so wrapped up in this 'shock' they didn't think about any of the consequences listed above as to why this would hurt not only us but their legacy. They figured it'd be a bookend, only for a book whose story ended a decade ago.

- Cas: A one-sentence reference sucks. That's just it.

Fanfiction was mostly built around Cas, too, and I had a feeling they wouldn't show his rescue because leaving that to us would be a good gift. "Here, Cas is alive and human but we won't tell you how - our last fanfiction gap". But Cas's absence wasn't a fanfiction gap, it's a canyon. So much of this episode doesn't make sense without Cas. And, honestly, a good chunk of outrage could have been avoided if Misha was allowed to film (or, if rumors were true, if they left his scenes in). Like it's been proven the majority of fans love Cas, and Jensen and Jared love Misha, so not having him in the finale gives credence to, that the cast and crew might love Misha, TPTB certainly didn't. And doesn't that tarnish your legacy, that you have a man dedicate 12 years of his life to your show and this is how you repaid him? Even if they decided to 'no homo' Cas's declaration (which i doubt they would have because those optics are much worse) at least show it.

Which leads to why he wasn't included in the finale. If he was there, they'd have to have him and Dean talk. About that night, when Cas told Dean he loves him. And if they did, and had there be a reciprocal confession, I bet things on Tumblr would have felt a little different. An equal exchange instead of plain highway robbery.. Yes we would all still want Dean and Cas to live long, human lives, but at least Dean and Cas's emotional arcs were resolved by the SHOW WRITERS, whose job it is to do so. Not ours! But they never understood how to give Castiel good things. Clearly, they know how to make Castiel give good things (like creating Dean's perfect Heaven for him) but not receive them in kind (reciprocated love from Dean). By not having this, it plays exactly into the bury your gays trope we were all afraid of, even if Cas is back. Because he, a queer character, is still living his life for a character he believes doesn't love him back - even if Cas 'doesn't need to know if that's true'. The audience does, and I'm sure Misha did as well.

The writers set up such an easy win but what this finale did was put every character back to season one, and given Misha didn't show up until season 4, makes sense why he wasn't in this episode.

- Sam's life after Dean: Sam liked being a hunter. We had how many countless episodes show that? He enjoyed saving people, research, being a leader - he was good at it. Hell, they even made it a point to have him find someone in the life who understood what it was like to hunt and wrote a beautiful relationship that also gave disability rep.

Only they never followed through.

Like, with Dean, so much of this lead up was then tossed out the window by Sam starting a family, which he never had any indication he wanted to do in these later seasons. Since season 8, really. What we got was that he liked to hunt, he was good at it. He could have restarted the Men of Letters, America chapter, and made the hunters even more connected than before!

Not saying he didn't do that, but knowing how Sam was raised I doubt he would let himself hunt with a kid. So, by showing him marry and have Dean Jr., it's a non-textual confirmation he retired. Which, like with Dean's ending, didn't make sense with what he wanted. It felt like a "might as well" since Dean wasn't there any longer. Like, whats the point of doing something I love now that I don't have my brother with me?

Instead of leaving the Bunker he should have transformed it into a bustling center of activity so he wasn't alone. Extend the Winchester family further and become the hunters' patriarch. Eileen being the matriarch.

Which, circling back, Eileen should have had textual confirmation, too. They showed a brunette woman standing far back, and I get if the actress couldn't be there to film why they would do that. But why not show pictures of him and Eileen if they did marry? I mean, there's a giant picture of Sam with Dean, Mary, and John I DON'T remember them ever having. Why he would blow that up after having two previous episodes talk about how much of a bad father he is...

Sam's ending falls in the same vein as Dean's in that it's unsatisfactory and doesn't fit the character anymore. Not saying Sam didn't want this in the past, but we all saw him change. Hunting was in his blood, and he was fantastic at it. It used to be a way for him to hang with Dean but it would have also been good to see him carry on the legacy in Dean's honor. A better way then by naming his son Dean.

Which strikes another nail on the head. We have Dean, a subtextually queer/textually ambiguous sexuality character, die, and because of this Sam can go on and live the 'apple pie life'? Cas's confession scene wasn't homophobic, but damned if Sam didn't spend the thirty years after Dean's death yelling 'Straight Pride'.

Textually, giving characters a family is a common trope in these sort of epilogues. Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc. A way to show they've moved on from trauma and are trying to be happy (albeit in a very antiquated way). But at least it fit with those characters and stories. This was Sam trying to be a person who he wasn't anymore, who clearly would rather be on the road hunting (given that ugly wig scene in the garage with Dean's Impala). Actually, worse, it felt like Sam was trying to live a life Dean always wanted. Which shows that even if he's alive Sam isn't happy with what his life was, he was content. He was waiting for death.

- Dean's time in Heaven: Like I said previously about Dean and his 'death', it makes sense to have Dean die early if the goal was to show how Heaven had been changed. Which hurts worse because that again reinforces how Dean's storyline truly is left unresolved for plot development.

And, honestly, they should have cut this entire sequence if they weren't gonna have the cameos. They should have changed the script so that Dean didn't die, because there was no emotional pay-off of Dean going to heaven. We're told it's freedom, however it's more like a waiting room. For Dean, driving endlessly until Sam dies. And for us, being told we can't start writing until Sam gets there and we finish his montage.

Like, is it beautiful that Jack and Cas remade heaven so Dean would be happy? Yes. Did I need to know this until like maybe the last few minutes? No. Dean could have lived a long life, with Cas/without Cas, and then die first and be taken to Heaven. And then after Bobby gives him the rundown, about how time works differently here, we get the Sam end of life and see him pop up too. And when Sam asks what happened to Heaven, Dean could have clapped him on the back and told him he'd explain in the car and they drive away knowing they lived a good life, and have eternity of peace.

Because having Heaven be an open sandbox, for us, to let characters roam free and see those they love without them being memories - beautiful and exactly how Heaven should be. It definitely is something we as writers would have enjoyed if we didn't get it how we did.

Because it hadn't felt like Dean nor Sam deserved the deaths they got. Making Heaven, ultimate freedom, seem such a dangerous idea. That the only true peace is in death (Dean) and life is spent waiting for death so you can be reunited (Sam). What about any of that makes it seem like any of what Sam and Dean did was worth it? Was good? At least on Earth. Sure, without them (and Cas and Jack) Heaven wouldn't be the way it was. But that doesn't seem like a good reward for them. Their reward should have been living long lives (both of them) and them buttoning it with those five to seven minutes of how Heaven changed (more if they decided to leave Cas as an angel despite that being, again, zero character growth and not aligning with how the story was unfolding)

And after a painful, undeserved death, we get Dean in Heaven but still not happy? It was clear Dean was still waiting to let himself enjoy seeing all his family, his friends, Cas, because Sam wasn't there. Which shows he hadn't broken the sacrificial cycle because he's not putting himself first! "Oh but he has eternity to do it!" Yes, but he shouldn't have had to wait still. His whole life has been spent waiting and he gets killed just before he gets his due, and we never see him particularly 'enjoy' his reward, which is too tragic for a series finale. "He could have done more than drive, we don't know!" Yes, but if they're not showing it then why should I read into it? This finale isn't deep. "But covid-" Yeah, I get that. They should have changed the script because without those cameos Dean's time in Heaven was more than pointless and this whole finale was just an exercise in how to hate your main characters.

What this boils down to is that we, as fans, were told that this was for us, except we already knew Heaven was ours because Heaven was supposed to be the implied. Heaven is whatever we make of it. We didn't need to be told this through the show. Having this be the goal of this episode, of the finale - which sums up the goal of the entire series, really - be totally focused on the life we get after death instead of doing the most to make life on Earth paradise for you, was rotten. And Sam's 'happily ever after' was cheapened because of Dean's death.

- Family Don't End in Blood?: Taking into account all of the above, the show has failed the core message of what we as a fandom loved. Family don't end in blood.

Again, I get that covid stole any chance of reunions in Heaven, but it also stole so many others. Like Sam wouldn't have called Garth, Jody, Donna, the girls and Eileen, to have them here for Dean's funeral? Sam wouldn't have burned Dean alone! We know there was some time that passed since the hunt and Dean's funeral by the dog being there, but it should have been more people. Which, again, they should have axed it from the story if they couldn't get them because, like these side characters have done from the beginning, they change the context of the show! Sam's loneliness would have hit harder if it was a room full of people all telling stories about Dean to then just him, alone, in the Bunker trying to move on.

The writers thought we didn't need all these cameos, but we did because - as we keep repeating - while the show, at its heart, is Sam and Dean, there were so many more people who gave their characters depth and allowed for this show to continue. It should have been a celebration of who the boys became and how it was through these bonds they were able to overcome so much.

Which, if redone in that context, Dean's speech to Sam could have been so much better. More poignant and hopeful instead of sad. I mean, I could barely focus on what was being said because I was in too much shock of what was being done to Dean. If they had a similar speech, given with Dean and Sam parting ways to start new lives. Dean reminding Sam he's done so much good, that he's proud of his brother and knows he can do so much even without him, the emotional beat would have still hit! Probably even better than with his death. Because my takeaway from Dean's death isn't "Dean is proud of Sam" it's "Dean died stupidly".

Going to show that this entire script was a series of choices that were all the worst possible outcome, stitched together and handed in. It didn't feel congruent to the story and, instead, a bunch of items checked off of a list the writers were given. It didn't feel like the culmination of the series like we were promised, instead a 'what if the show skipped fourteen years after season 2, John's dead, Mom's killer dead, and no demon deal'. It felt like (even if it wasn't intended) the writers telling us "don't expect people to change or that happy ending exist in life" which, given current climates and attitudes, is dangerous.

Overall:

They were trying to satisfy an audience built around fandom and fanworks, they wanted to leave so much "up to interpretation" so we can continue crafting our narratives through this open sandbox. What they failed to consider is that we don't care where the brothers, or any of the characters, physically are in this show, we care more about the characters themselves and their emotional goals. That's why we write fanfiction. That's why there's a lot of canon divergence. We thank them for the world and play around in it. So, by giving Sam and Dean these 'half-lives' on screen, letting loose threads hang so we, as an audience, can fill in the blanks (Dean and Cas's heaven reunion, who Sam married, what Dean did while driving for fifty years, etc.) was a poor and lazy decision because we are tired of having to do your job! Supernatural is a collaborative effort yes, but they misunderstood the assignment. We still need textual goalposts, like seeing Cas or Eileen. We needed them to finish what they were saying, so we could then take over and continue the story.

A series finale should feel poignant but the only really emotional moment was Dean's death (not for good reasons), and the rest was filler. Your series finale should not feel like filler. It felt rushed. It felt sloppy and - because of not including a certain character - plain rude. Just... it didn't work. The short of it is that the finale, as a whole, didn't work. It didn't wrap the show up in its entirety like we were promised it would. And if they do revive this show for a mini-series or movie, they best forget what happened in episode 20.

#supernatural #spn #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #destiel #spn15 #deancas #jack kline #eileen leahy #saileen #15x20 opinions

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echo-bleu · 3 years

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Hey Emma! I adore your writing and I was wondering if I could ask for your advice. When writing an autistic character, are there any characteristics / plots etc that you don't like seeing? Or anything stereotypical that is overused or often portrayed incorrectly in writing?

Hi! Thank you so much 😊 I’m always willing to talk about autistic rep! This is a very interesting question and I’m so glad you asked.

Obviously this is going to be my own opinion (and to some extent, things I’ve talked about with other autistic people) so it’s not representative of the whole community. There is no absolute do/don’t rules here, because autistic people are as different from each other as allistic (non autistic) people are, so the rep is and needs to be varied and complex.

There are many overused tropes when it comes to autistic characters. I think the most obvious one is that a very large portion of autistic characters, especially in general media, are white, male and mostly cishet. It is a misconception that autism is more present in men, and autistic POC deserve rep. I’m not sure how widely known this is, but there is also a much higher fraction of queer autistic people than among the general population. (I tried to find some more articles to link here but I don’t have any on hand and looking this up is a minefield I noped out of immediately. I’ll try to come back with clearer resources).

The usual autistic character is usually of one of two types: little white boy who doesn’t speak, where the story is invariably about his parents/siblings/teacher and never about him, or adult white man who has “Asperger’s” (or maybe isn’t even clearly identified as autistic) and is socially awkward and a genius, usually in math or computers. Those are very much overused stereotypes. Both are often portrayed incorrectly as well: the nonspeaking child is usually only portrayed through the eyes of allistic people and not given any kind of personality, and the adult man often has very little personality other than their genius and their bluntness, doesn’t seem to have any other autistic traits than the ones allistics are meant to admire or laugh at (think Sheldon of TBBT).

That is not to say that all those characters are bad rep, but it would be really nice to see more variety. I want to see autistic POC. I want to see autistic women and nonbinary people. I want to see autistic WOC & nonbinary POC. And I want to see more diversity in the autistic traits that they have, but also in their personalities. Autism isn’t a personality, even though it is part of a person’s identity and affects who they are directly. Autistic characters should have their own likes and dislikes, dreams and hurdles to overcome that aren’t linked to their autism, and their own agency. This last one is especially important in the case of any disabled characters (and doubly if it’s not a man) because this is something that isn’t often given to disabled characters.

Now into slightly more details:

- Autistic geniuses do exist, but that trope is way overused and usually portrayed badly. That doesn’t mean it should never be used again, but it should be done carefully. Characters like House (House, MD), Sherlock (BBC Sherlock) or Sheldon (TBBT) have imo done actually harm to our community, and definitely to me personally (because identifying with a character who self-identifies as a “high-functioning sociopath” is didn’t really help my mental health when I was 16 and depressed). They are either assholes to the people around them, or their awkwardness is played for laughs. You’ll notice that these are also characters who aren’t formally identified as autistic in the shows, even though they are clearly autistic-coded. I do have examples of autistic(-coded) genius characters I think are quite well done, like Sherlock in Elementary or Flynn, Cassie and Jake in The Librarians. Parker, in Leverage, could go into this category, but I’d say that her ‘genius’ is of a different sort, and it’s an interesting twist on the trope.

- Nonspeaking/semi-speaking autistics are underrepresented as full characters (ie outside of the trope mentioned above). That would be really nice to see, but please do proper research before trying to write it. I would love to see characters using AAC tablets or sign language, for example.

- A lot of autistic people also have other disabilities. That can range from other neurodivergences & mental illnesses (ADHD, bipolar, dyslexia, PTSD, etc), physical disabilities, chronic illnesses (some illnesses like EDS have a high co-occurrence with autism). A lot of autistic people are queer. Both of those are things I’d really like to see more of.

- Stimming. The stimming I’ve seen portrayed, when it’s even there (it tends to be mostly forgotten in the genius-type storylines), tends to be very stereotypical. We all have different ways of interacting with our environment and of communicating. There are a lot of ways to flap (clapping, hitting fists together, fluttering fingers, etc), to rock, to self-soothe. I’d like to see characters who use chew toys and stim toys, who stim-dance, who sing, who echolalize a lot.

- Meltdowns. [mention of self-harming stims] This one is a bit delicate. Writers who have an autistic character tend to want to show them in a meltdown at some point to sort of “drive home” that they’re autistic and what it means. I get that, but I also think that it’s something that is hard to portray respectfully if you’re not autistic yourself, and maybe you should really think about whether it’s necessary. If you do decide to do it: not all autistic people will hit their head or hurt themselves or get angry. I tend to just burst in tears and be unable to stop for hours. There are many ways to melt down.

- Specific interests. While math and computers are common specific interests, they are way overused. Specific interests can be anything. Mine is currently Shadowhunters, but also medieval swords and sailing ships and autism and linguistics. Specific interests can be lifelong, they can change overtime, they can last a month and be over. They can coexist simultaneously. Some autistic people don’t really have any.

- I would like to see more stories of late-diagnosed people, though maybe leave the stories about diagnosis and identification to autistic writers. I’d like to see older autistic people. Especially older autistic people who are more visibly autistic. I’d like to see autistic people who are thriving in life, who are in love and have a partner who loves them back, who are good at their job (but not geniuses), who don’t have a job but volunteer and create and do things, who have children or pets.

- Sensory stuff. Hypersensitive hearing tends to be the most common trope, though not necessarily overused, but there are so many other things you can do. We have a lot of senses (more than the usual 5), and autistic people can be hyper and hyposensitive to each of them, sometimes both at the same time. So you can have your character struggle to feel pain, but be bothered by lights. They can be hypersensitive to color, or inversely seek it. They can love listening to the same music over and over again (that’s also a stim).

- As far as plots go. Again, agency is paramount. Their autism shouldn’t be their personality and their motivation. They shouldn’t be striving (or be required) to “overcome” their autism, and even less be cured of it. Accessibility barriers are a reality that should be reflected in fiction, but the story needs to be about more than that.

Here’s a post with some advice and things we’d like to see more of. I hope this was what you’re looking for!

#Anonymous #asks #autism #autistic characters #writing resources

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 4 years

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Disability and James

@zarohk asked for my thoughts on a Disability Studies/Media Studies perspective on the disability depictions in Animorphs. [PLEASE NOTE: I am nondisabled, so if I err, please tell me so.]

I’ve mentioned before that James is one of my faves, and possibly my favorite minor character who isn’t a yeerk host. His introduction pulls off a seemingly impossible feat through not only creating a likable Sixth Ranger, but creating a likable Sixth Ranger who comes after David. James is also a complex, nuanced character whose disability is a feature but not a summation of his personality. Plus, he’s a masculine boy who is all about about nurturing others, which always makes me happy.

A few places where I commend the depiction of James:

He leads a social community of disabled kids who help each other. It’s a big part of third-wave progressivism to emphasize sub-communities and various identities helping each other out: women supporting women, queer pride, Latinx-American culture, etc. That’s what we see with the Auximorphs, especially James. James’s motivation is somewhere between 99% “help my roomies” and 100% “help my roomies.” His initial response to Jake and Cassie explaining the war is “so what, a bunch of ableds are gonna get taken by yeerks, not my problem.” It’s only when Cassie points out that the yeerks are eugenicists who murder disabled humans that he switches to “okay, I guess we’ll go fight in your stupid war.” He insists on even the kids who won’t be fighting (Pedro, Tuan) getting the power to morph, and tells Jake that he’ll take suggestions but not orders.

He emphasizes his own and Pedro’s bodily autonomy. James actually goes so far as to throw Jake onto the floor when Jake tries to grab his wheelchair — a move that emphasizes James has the right to move his own body around, and that that includes prostheses. Everyday ableism too often involves random strangers taking charge of the bodies of disabled people, attempting to guide blind pedestrians or push wheelchairs around without asking permission to move a person’s body like that. "My body, my business” is obviously a huge motif in Animorphs, and James pretty explicitly extends that to prostheses as well as fleshy limbs.

He’s nobody’s sidekick, and nobody’s fool. When the Animorphs first tell James that they’re alien-fighting shapeshifters, he assumes that they’re here to prank the disabled kids who they think must be desperate for attention. He barely gives them the time of day even when they prove themselves, and he doesn’t “play nice” even when they add him to the team. James defies the cliché of the disabled kid desperate for the approval of nondisabled peers, and specifically calls it out. He’s the leader of a semi-independent unit who has his own agenda, rather than being at the original Animorphs’ beck and call. Like Toby and her hork-bajir, he’s here to make sure that his group and his loved ones don’t get left behind when the war ends and intersectional identities threaten their rights once again.

He kicks ass. James is competent, tough, skillful, and self-confident with or without the Animorphs. There’s a fairly realistic period where he has to learn the basics of morphing along with the other Auximorphs, but once he learns he’s highly effective. He saves Jake’s life during the Air Force battle (#53), rescues the original Animorphs from Tom’s yeerk (#50), and helps Ax and Cassie escape a mob of morph-controllers who have them cornered in a subway tunnel (#52). He’s agentic and powerful, something we don’t see enough of in disabled child characters.

He emphasizes that the more-privileged communicator has to be the one to do the work of meeting in the middle. Cassie notes in #50 that James puts in a lot of work to communicate with Pedro (who is paralyzed) and Timmy (who has a speech disorder). James is the one who can hear/speak in a fairly normative fashion, so James often “translates” for Timmy — but he always does so by letting Timmy finish a sentence rather than cutting him off by trying to guess what he’ll say next. James is the one who can work the stereo in his and Pedro’s room, so he makes sure that he always lists genres and waits for a blink of confirmation before he changes the music. James also defers to Pedro’s request for country western in spite of being a punk rock fan himself, because James remains conscious of the fact that if he doesn’t like the music he can always leave the room, while Pedro doesn’t have that option.

He’s thoroughly individuated. James likes Blink 182 and dislikes reality TV. He uses his morphs for agility — peregrine falcon, lion — more than firepower. He spends a lot of time on his hair, and he treasures privacy as much as he values his friends. He repeatedly calls Cassie and Jake on their bullshit, in spite of being visibly scared to do so as the new kid on the team. One wouldn’t necessarily think that these are huge accomplishments (and to be clear, they’re not) but there are way way too many minor characters in wheelchairs, especially sci-fi stories, that don’t get characterized beyond their various emotions and thoughts that directly relate to their wheelchairs.

A few places where James falls into the common traps of implied ableism creeping into fiction, as written about in Narrative Prosthesis:

He gets “cured”. The fact that James’s body is, however implicitly, depicted as a “problem” that must be “fixed” suggests that the theoretical ideal point is the nondisabled body he would have had if not for the car accident. Like I said, it’s 100% fine if a disabled character gets written as preferring to be nondisabled, but if the series offers the unquestioned assumption that the “correct” body is the nondisabled version, then that’s... not great.

His disability is presented as a mystery that needs solving. Like Loren, James gets presented with an implicit frame of “why are you like this?” that assumes his body is “abnormal” and therefore begs a question. In James’s case, it comes in the form of Collette explaining why he’s disabled (a car crash) before we ever even hear from James himself. Again, it’d be fine if this was the only time this happened, but the fact that the series “explains” almost all of the disabled characters (Taylor, Loren, Mertil, Kelly, Pedro) suggests that disability is something that needs explaining because it’s aberrant.

Some of the physical descriptions of James are a bit eugenicist. After he first demorphs, Cassie says “standing over the group now, steady and strong, was James. He was taller than Jake, broader-shouldered... long and muscular” and describes how James helps to carry the other Auximorphs as they acquire battle morphs (#50). James gets presented as a contrast point to the Auximorphs who remain disabled, because his body is presented as “correct” while theirs are not. If it was just Cassie, that’d be one thing, but Ax says “unlike James, the others are physically helpless” (#50) and later Jake describes the contrast between James being strong and the other Auximorphs being “weak” and “faintly pathetic” (#53). In the process, the descriptions tie together the ideas of being masculine, being independent, being physically strong, and being worthy of respect. American rugged individualism, especially as it applies to white men and boys, has a dark side in that it often regards physical dependence on others as a sign of cowardice or weak will or moral failing. That assumption underwrites some of the way that James gets described by the other Animorphs.

He gets killed. By killing off James and his fellow Auximorphs, the series falls into the “kill or cure” narrative that Mitchel and Snyder trace throughout history for the overwhelming majority of disabled characters. Disability is too often presented as being necessary to “solve” through death or cure, to the point where the Fries Test (designed to be a minimum threshold for disability representation, like the Bechdel Test for women) requires that disabled character(s) make it to the end of the story without being eradicated through cure or kill as the bare minimum condition that a story be somewhat less ableist. Animorphs does not pass the Fries Test, because it eradicates its disabled characters through a combination of cures and kills.

Specifically, he gets killed to manipulate the emotions of a nondisabled character. When Visser Three kills James, the moment is presented through Jake’s point of view, and it leads up to Jake’s decision to flush the Pool ship. Maybe my biggest frustration is that that moment only serves to cause Jake pain and help push him off the rails. It doesn’t change the plot of the final battle the way Tom’s death does, it doesn’t stop to give James a conscious choice the way Rachel’s death does, it just makes Jake sad and mad and reckless. It’s the same dang dynamic as women in refrigerators: the less demographically privileged character becomes a prop for a more-privileged protagonist to have emotions about.

Anyway, to say it again: none of those individual elements of James’s story — death, cure, urgent backstory — would be necessarily problematic if there were equally-major disabled characters in Animorphs who didn’t demonstrate those elements. It’s the fact that James demonstrates all of those elements and so do most of the other disabled characters that makes me wish the series had done better.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #animorphs criticism #james #auximorphs #50 #53 #disability representation #representation #james animorphs #disability #social model of disability #long post #ableism #disability studies #media studies #q word

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seawitchkaraoke · 4 years

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I’m just angry about the time I lost. The time I lost, not having any idea who I was. Not knowing I was ace. Not knowing you could love women without wanting to fuck them. Not knowing I had ADHD. Not knowing you didn’t have to be a woman or a man, you could just be you.

Like. Obviously, no teenager knows who they are entirely at 14 or whatever. Humans grow and change and you can never know exactly who you are, bc who you are is always changing.

But. It would have been nice to know that the things I was were even options you know? I had heard of lesbians, but not that it didn’t have to be sexual. I had heard of ADHD, but it was just the “squirrel!” disease for me, so clearly I didn’t have it, I never even considered that I might have it. Never mind nonbinary or asexual, I had never even heard of those, so how could I possibly have known that that was me?

Like. This is personal to me, obviously, with specifically my queer identity and my ADHD but in general there just NEEDS to be more information about just..... all the things people can be! Whether that’s queer identities or neurodiversity or other things that I’m not thinking of right now, bc they don’t affect me, kids need to know about these things, they need to understand what these things really mean so they don’t just see gay as “men who love men or women who love women, those are the options, also gay is not an insult!!!” or adhd as “those kids who can’t sit still or concentrate on anything, everyone gets diagnosed as adhd these days, it’s stupid” or autism as “they’re really smart but don’t understand feelings, i think, i don’t get it” (which is respectively how I saw these things when I was a kid). Because when you don’t know that things exist, or don’t understand what exactly they actually are, there’s no way you can figure yourself out unless you eventually stumble across resources that teach you (and the internet is great for this and certainly helped me, but it’s also full of misinformation so maaaaybe we shouldn’t leave this vital education up to which tumblr blogs your kid stumbles across).

Just. We need to include queerness in our education system. We need to include neurodiversity. We should include mental illnesses and physical disabilities too, now that i think about it. And a bunch of other stuff probably.

#education #adhd #lgbtqia+#nonbinary #asexual #i could have been so much happier if i had figured this shit out earlier

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scriptlgbt · 5 years

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My story is about pirates. The MC is a trans guy and the captain is a lesbian who is some sort of big sister/mother figure to him. It's quite violent. I was wondering if it could be problematic? I know it's problematic to show trans woman being overly violent in fiction but what about cis lesbians and straight trans guys? Also, do you know about real any queer pirates i could read about? And what did pirates think about homosexuality/transness?) How was it being queer in the pirate world?

A conversation that I had, that is relevant:

ME: [PARTNER], do you know anything about queer pirates?

PARTNER: I know that there were many, and they’d sometimes be like -

ME: Sea husbands kind of thing?

PARTNER: Yeah, and one would inherit from the other’s booty, and when it was divided up, they’d share their share of the booty.

ME: [mischievous grinning face]

PARTNER: [nodding] And they might share each other’s booty.

Disclaimer: This whole thing is going to largely focus on what is known as the Golden Age Of Piracy. I’m also not a historian, I just hardcore, love pirates with my heart and soul. This is going to be a long post.

So, this is super generalized, but pirates, and even sea-faring folks in general (see: - or sea, hahahahaha - the LGBT+ history of Brighton in the UK), have tended to have a much higher rate of LGBT+ folks and minoritized people in general, throughout history. As far as most research I’ve done goes. Being in a travelling situation and having the anonymity of being able to move around with chosen family generally has great appeal to folks whose existences are filled with oppression and a sense of not belongingness. This has also applied for racialized people, women in general, impoverished folks in general, a lot of different people who wanted to reclaim a place in the world that ostracized them.

Another fun fact, the use of the term “Friend of Dorothy” as a euphemism for gay folks was investigated by the US Navy. They misunderstood it as meaning that there actually was a woman named Dorothy who could be routed down and coerced into outing her “friends” to the military. Cruise ships and others have also used this phrase to covertly advertise that there were meetings for these folks. (Source: Wikipedia | “Friend of Dorothy”)

But to get to the pirates, specifically.

Most pirate ships largely had their own code that everyone on their ship had to agree to. Some had things like, “you’ll be marooned with one knife, and no food if you are caught not reporting loot to be divvied up by the crew fairly” and things like that. But generally, whoever ran the ship, the Captain, would get to pick the rules. And with the partial-democracy that comes with the idea of mutiny, and the more notable reliance on the labour of it all, in general, things were able to be slightly more consensus-based than the on-land governments.

There are numerous women who became pirates to take ownership of their lives in ways that weren’t permitted on-land. Anne Bonny and Mary Read are historical figures that might be worth looking into. The two of them shared lovers, sailed together, had intense care for one and other and with their dressing up in masculine-coded attire and the like, there’s a lot to go off of in assuming they may have been romantically involved with each other. If not, at least they had some iteration of what a lot of contemporary folks might find comparable to a QPR.

The concept of “sea husbands” was also called matelotage (or bunkmate) depending on your crew. It was kind of the buddy system, but gayer. With little need to consistently explain it to outsiders, folks at sea were freer to explore the different ways a relationship with another person can be, without so much worrying about how it looks to others at a passing glance. And as pirates, there’s less concern that you’ll get shit from the law for gay stuff Of All Things.

Buccaneer Alexander Exquemelin wrote: ‘It is the general and solemn custom amongst them all to seek out… a comrade or companion, whom we may call partner… with whom they join the whole stock of what they possess.’ (Source)

It was just normal. They also had a version of health insurance where someone was compensated if they ended up disabled from battle. The compensation of death of your partner also works into this.

As for transness, these kinds of things have had fickle definitions and historically, it’s hard to be able to pinpoint specific people as fitting cleanly into contemporary cultural definitions of transness, because frankly, the past had different culture to now. When it comes to writing canonically trans characters in contexts where the language might have been different, it’s important to focus on making sure that a trans reader can identify the personal connection with that character’s experiences and feelings, just as much as it is to use language to name folks as trans.

Representation can go deeper than surface terminology and the like, and in cases where the terminology doesn’t necessarily match, it has to. Language like, “I never really felt like a [assigned gender] - I see myself more like [desciption of actual gender identity or name for it].” - is as good as just saying the character is trans in my opinion.

Depending on where the character is from, they also may have just outright had a word in their language for their identity.

Gender presentation was significantly freer with pirates than it was for folks on land. Things like earrings, frilled sleeves, varied hair length and similar, were not uncommon, although the gendered coding associated with these aspects of appearance had different implications than they do now. Gold earrings on seafarers were there to fund a proper burial if someone’s body washed ashore. Gendered clothing was also coded in more binary ways on land. Folks who wanted to be coded as men could do so by wearing pants and folks who wanted to be coded as women could do so with skirts and dresses. (Tangential but fun fact yet again: dressing in those big poofy skirts usually included massive pockets. They were generally not physically attached to the skirts, but if you wore it all properly you would easily be able to reach into them.)

Pirates and other seafarers also had clothing referred to as ‘slops’ for cleaning (if they were of the rank that cleaned anyway) which were pretty wide-legged pants that could almost pass for a skirt.

Material that pirates used for clothing was largely what they stole, but it was cut and sewn into the same shapes a lot of other seafarers wore. At the time, it was largely illegal (under English rules anyway) for people who weren’t the bourgeoisie to wear anything made with nice fabric. Rich people saw this as deceitful, and these laws enabled richer people to not mingle on an equal level with those of a lower socioeconomic status.

As pirates, if you’re already shunning the law, may as well wear full calico suits. (Like Calico Jack Rackham.)

There’s more info on pirate and privateer clothing here. (The link is to a free book in HTML format, complete with illustrations and talk of materials, and how the clothes worn at sea varied from clothes they wore when they came into shore and towns.)

I could write a book on this and still not have covered enough. But the gist is that pirates were a big counterculture of outsiders living their lives. LGBT+ people and racialized people got thrown into the mix (and jumped right in) and experienced much more liberated lives than they might otherwise. That isn’t to say they were flawlessly inclusive - there still definitely were a lot of things people thought of in congruence with colonial beliefs. There was racism and homophobia - but it looked a lot different, and was a lot lighter than you’d think. And there were some ships which banned women, but mainly I think that was because they typically didn’t have the background to hold their ground on the ships, and were considered more of a plus one to certain crew members (who brought them - the rules were specifically about bringing them onto the ship rather than them being there of their own accord) than part of the crew. Sometimes women were part of the crew.

Notably, Anne Bonny and Mary Read were in a polyamorous triad with Calico Jack Rackham. (I think a cis + het historian might argue about this but that would seem like denial to me tbh. There is much, MUCH more evidence pointing in this direction than against it, and it would be extraordinarily hard to argue otherwise.) I would definitely do some research on them!

I also recommend this book (link is the free text on WikiSource), A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates. It is perhaps the most famous contemporary record of the lives of a number of pirates from the time, including Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

As for the sensitivity aspect of this ask, I’d say that what you are describing is completely fine. As long as the violence isn’t used to dehumanize or completely demonize, I would even say that I don’t have any warnings for you about it, or precautions to advise on.

Thank you for this opportunity to infodump about LGBT+ pirates. I hope this is not overwhelming, but I’m also happy to parse out segments of this better upon request. (Our ask will be open eventually, I promise.)

- mod nat

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full-course-identity · 4 years

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Give me your thoughts on uuuh Jake

wew boy

okay. gonna word dump this, and probably other interpretation asks, so I can get the words out there.

from my POV, there’s 3 types of canon Jake + 1 fanon vers + my personal interpretation. lemme explain what they are;

Book Jake, who I don’t have enough experience with bc I STILL haven’t finished the book… >_>;

2River Jake, who is kinda oblivious and very in-the-moment impulsive (not so bad he’s jumping place to place ADHD like Rich, but like, not considering that maybe dropping everything to seduce Madeline or Christine is a bad idea when he clearly really likes Chloe). these are debatably survival mechanisms bc of his family (and wealth, if you want to go into the “being rich actually traumatizes you and locks you into dissociation” theory–but to be fair, this is partially reliant on thinking Jake is Genuinely Rich. … well, not Rich as in… yeah); ignoring any pain he feels in favor of getting dicked down and forgetting about everything for a while. very “I’m not sad, I’m busy!!!!!”

Bway (possibly the new canon general for all Jakes since it sounds like London’s is modeled after him but just… toned down), who is still oblivious, but towards other people’s emotions instead of himself; he’s manipulative, a little impulsive but a lot more malicious about it, and he knows exactly how hurt he is about his parents. this jake’s awareness of himself makes him act worse because he knows this is the only thing that seems to help and it’s basically the only thing he actually has control of. his wealthiness is undeniably present and Bad here because the reason taking what he wants and not caring that it hurts people is his main coping skill is pretty much only because he’s been allowed that privilege all his life. i tend to think this version of him should be done by a white cishet dude (despite jake’s actor on bway being genuinely FANTASTIC) bc being marginalized in a high school should’ve curved a lot of the “endless power and privilege” he gets for being rich (Not That One).

[i… think this jake has ‘better’/more nuanced writing in BWay… but i don’t think it fits the musical nor is it the overall direction i think it should’ve gone. BMC feels best to me when there’s a heavier element of Dark Humor that briefly nods to a Larger and more Fucked Up world behind the bit we see in the musical. making it largely a twisted comedy, maybe even ramping that up further with more whiplash lines like jake’s “which means the house is empty, so that’s fun”]

Fanon Jake is… like most of the fanon characters in BMC, a bit… “bipolar” (like, radically shifting depending on the situation). the BMC fandom has been born with heavy engagement from minors in the current fascist climate of fandom as a whole. as a result, you have three general uses of jake that as “approved of” by somehow the exact same people despite being conflicting in a lot of ways. THIS IS NOT ME SHITTING ON FANON, i actually think most of this fandom is just a casual romp for most people and that shouldn’t be snatched away from them nor mocked nor treated like you HAVE to be logically consistent when this is just a fun hobby for most… but there are still trends i notice:

1: Jake the sweet bi disaster who loves their significant other and is just a little bit hopeless in their silliness and Down For Whatever-esque personality. this is often used for shippy pictures and memes and cute little oneshots, plus, of course, fluff.

2: Jake the tragic abuse victim who is extremely sad and has to learn to love again and has always been selfless, plus or minus a permanent disability post-fire. this is of course used for hurt/comfort, plus in combination kinda with michael in the bathroom-esque posts and tragic art, often also used as an example of the squip being the worst for jeremy or rich guilt trauma. also: aesthetic and moodboard posts.

3: the one I have the least good will towards: Jake the “why does everybody woobify mlm? You can’t portray him without flaws! queer boys aren’t your fetish!!!” with an attached, clunkily written reasons why he was an asshole that is also simultaneously watered down so you don’t think he’s a Monster bc then you’d be vilifying queer men (well, more like they’d feel bad about their cutesy-er ‘emotional support’ art and writing which is Totally Different from all the other cutesy emotional support art and writing).

basically, Meta Trying To Make Jake Reasonably Flawed But Not Evil in this fandom is RARELY genuine–it’s more often than not moralistic hand-wringing made so that they can wash themselves of the guilt for actually enjoying something with a character they portray as mlm, or otherwise the guilt of enjoying anything romantic or sexual involving men or queer people period when we’re apparently not supposed to do that anymore, as decreed by the radfems infesting our spaces.

and, well, or you’re an mlm writing this post, you’re probably young and still feeling extremely sensitive and scared about your identity. i once saw a very wise post by a trans person who had been trans for a long time, who said that when you first come out as trans (or queer in general, but especially trans people who are beginning social or physical transition and coming to terms with themselves) you are obvs on High Fucking Alert and so you’re insecure and scared of anything, ranging from “obvious transphobia” to “just trans people enjoying themselves and exploring transphobia in fiction or else their own sexuality”. again, this can relate to a lot of identities tbh, and as such young mlm either cis or trans can get very Itchy about people enjoying mlm content.

anyway.

wrapping it back around to me: i edit jake on a case by case basis (sometimes i even make him eviler or meaner based on what’s set up during Bway, he’s just not my usual go-to villain), but i tend to think of him as a tragic Mr. Peanutbutter-y sweetheart who kinda knows he feels like shit yet also knows that if he stops to assess it, it would make his life a lot harder in a time where he can’t afford that. his relationship with chloe is extremely toxic (chloe abuses him horribly, specifically), and so he tries to claw his way out of it only to be continually back in by chloe and her bullshit.

this is why he doesn’t really get... well. he genuinely thought the thing with christine was going to be permanent; he wasn’t jerking her around, he thought he was over chloe and wanted a girl as cool and fun and genuinely nice as her. afterward he Gets It, and so feels Really Bad--at a time where he doesn’t have his house, his legs are broken (i don’t tend to put him in a perma-wheelchair), his parents have abandoned him, and he best friend is in the hospital. guilt crashes in on him from all sides, and he just has to... pretend it isn’t, even as he can no longer stop himself from thinking about it.

if i was to do a jake focused story, it’d probably be a dating sim where you play as him and watch his life change in conjunction with his attempts to find happiness again; you can either choose decisions that help him greatly or ruin his life so ver much... hmm. lets file that under hashtag “story ideas i’ll never use even though they could be great”

to wrap this up: i like jake. i don’t... really enjoy most of the written content (fanfic, meta, sometimes even the storylines on ask blogs) in this fandom about him or... really, most of the characters, which i feel bad about--i’d enjoy it more if it was every in conjunction with my usual Wants in a fic, which is, like. extreme angst.

BUT

i do still like jake, and i can super enjoy his portrayal in memes and visual art

he’s just not my total fave, but like, the reason he tends not to come up a lot in my content is more what i’m focusing on and why. i’d be happy to use him in stories if his presence fit.

as a bonus

here’s the ships i’m happy to use him for, generally: deere, michael/jake, brooke/jake, toxic chloe/jake, and of course, different ocs/jake

his identities/labels: cis, bisexual/romantic... tho sometimes i actually go for bisexual and aromantic! outside bway and eviler jakes, i’m good with him being any race, and even then it’s just a matter of suspending disbelief re: privilege theory. also, PTSD probably, and maybe generalized anxiety as a result. maaaaaybe autistic too? adhd would be a hard sell for me since he seems super put together in a way that’d be extremely difficult for every form of adhd, but i can see him being neurodivergent on the spectrum + like dyslexia maybe. oh, and i sorta-kinda think he may be color blind? but really i’d drop that at a moment’s notice if it’d be easier to write him without it lol.

his interests: one is more or less sports in general, tho i think that, unless he went straight for track or swimming or something Olympics (which he probably can’t do now...), that’s a high school or some college only focus for him. so, besides sports, i think he’d kinda like the satisfaction and steady growth of Collecting Rare Things That You Have To Look For, like cool rocks, bugs, etc.

as for careers... some form of doctor something, maybe a businessman of some sort but he’d likely try to curve his power in that field as much as possible; he inherits his parents' assets and company or whatever, but he probably takes a backseat to that and only really has it out of a sense of ‘it’s my job as my parent’s kid to keep the company going--without engaging in the same awful legal issues they did--for as long as i can’. one of my fave jake-is-there stories, vanceypant’s spicy bis-focused fic 1999, has him owning a restaurant, and that was cool as hell.

also jake loves dogs. especially golden retrievers. yes.

#be more chill #bmc #jake dillinger #kadabralin #bmc meta #meta #character interpretations #wow this... is long #holy shit sorry about that

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eveninglottie · 4 years

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write what you want regardless of the genders. it's better to spit the story out and then go back and revise then get hung up on whether or not every interaction or plot point could be part of an 800 word call-out tweet-longer that briefly trends on fanfic twitter. everyone comes at fiction from their own distinct background. you could write the most 'pure' romance ever, regardless of the genders, and it could still inadvertently trigger someone or raise concerns. comfort can be misleading.

so I don’t want you to think I’m disagreeing with you here, because you’re right. people spend way too much time thinking out the possible doomsday scenarios of what they might do instead of just doing it to see what happens. I am one of those people, for sure, it’s stopped me from doing pretty much everything I’ve ever wanted to do my whole life, so we’re on the same page here with both the concept of not worrying about what other people will think and also how no one holds the magic gatekeeping key which dictates what is problematic or not. every person is different and some things will upset people in a way that doesn’t upset you. that’s just a given.

but I think that’s not really helpful when you’re trying to figure out your own motivations for doing something.

like, yes, is a lot of this affected by how I think other people will react to things I create? of course. everything i do will be affected by how I think other people will react. that’s just how my brain works, and it’s my job to keep growing more confident in myself to counteract that (because the older you get you really do give less of a fuck and boy it’s so nice!!) what I was trying to bring up in that post was my own reasons for feeling more comfortable writing one thing than another.

because I just think it’s fascinating and complicated and I’ve mentioned more than once to friends that it really just surprised me how freeing writing m/m has been vs m/f. it’s like my descent into sk was this moment of enlightenment when I realized “hey this is a hell of a lot easier to talk about when there are two boys involved!” like I realize that the majority of my writing the past two years has been on my own, and even though I can tell you’ve I’ve written well over 500k words and only posted maybe a fifth of that I can’t prove what I’m about to say so you’re just going to have to take my word for it, BUT I’ve included so much more discussion about sexuality and how characters express it and grow with it and figure out for themselves what they are. like it was never a thing I thought about a lot when I was writing my m/f fics (even tho all the women were still bi but that’s a whole other barrel of monkeys). it was never me sitting down and interrogating my choice for writing that pairing the way I did. I just did it. (I didn’t stop to consider the gender is what I mean, I thought about literally all the other things but gender and sexuality were not included in that) but now there’s a whole other sphere of characterization that I keep finding myself drawn to, and even without realizing it, it becomes a big part of how I write certain characters. (like deciding to write keith as demi while still being sexually and physically attracted to shiro has been really eye opening for me as someone on the asexual spectrum.)

because like, for example, I wrote a fem!bilbo fic, right? so clearly I was thinking about gender a bit, but most of that had to do with me having always reimagined that story (and lotr) with female protagonists. that’s what I did with a lot of childhood faves, actually, eragon, harry potter being two of the most prominent, and thinking about fem!bilbo and how that would change the story especially if she was in a relationship with thorin and the shire was maybe a bit more stifling for a woman, etc. - BUT that was one of those pairings that I’d never been drawn to when it was m/m. I couldn’t really get into it, and I was not a fan of the hobbit movies at all, honestly, and I tried, and it was only when I switched things around did that fic click for me, but I wonder a lot if I were to have come to hobbit fic later, after I’d gotten over my aversion to m/m (not in general, just me writing it, because reasons), would I have written it with bilbo as a boy? would I have been less likely to imagine bilbo as a woman? or was it a number of factors that led me to write that fic which really couldn’t have existed in any other incarnation, and would it have been a different fic entirely?

(the hp thing in particular is SO WEIRD to think about now because a lot of what I’ve been grappling with in my drarry fic is very male-centric? not like in a bad way, just thinking about the rivalry and bonds between boys and how boys look up to their male mentors and authority figures in very different ways than they do their female counterparts and also what does being interested in other boys do to one’s internalized and very misogynistic/homophobic ideas of Legacy and Family and Proper Gender Expression specifically when it comes to sex with other men like it’s Very Gendered in my head and it’s hard to separate that from what I used to be interested in which has expressed itself in other ways, specifically roslyn as chosen one in ascendant which I’ve said before was the result of a decade of rewriting those boy heroes as girls because I felt so connected to them and wanted girls to be every bit as important as boys, like I could draw a straight line from me writing bits and bobs of girl!harry as a fourteen year old and me writing roslyn in ascendant and wow I kind of want to punch myself in the face for how long I’ve rambled on about my own stuff but you know what no this is my tumblr and I get to obsessively and exhaustively talk about my own fictional worlds if I want to)

so it’s been a bit of a mindfuck trying to reconcile this shift in my own interests with the fact that I am a woman who identifies as largely asexual. and I think it’s important to sit down with yourself every once in a while and really look at the things you produce and do some self-examination. because I do wonder a lot if my comfort writing m/m now is because of this lack of pressure I normally feel when writing female characters or if it’s because I don’t have to interact with Me As Author so much when I write about boys because I am not a boy or if it’s because I feel a lot more comfortable identifying as queer when for the majority of my life I’d forced myself to be straight even though it didn’t feel right.

then there’s the whole conversation about women writing m/m and how a lot of queer men feel they’re being fetishized or that their stories are being appropriated by women, in the same way that white people writing stories about people of color can be appropriative, men writing about women, straights writing about lgbtq+, cis people writing about trans or genderqueer people, et cetera with literally any minority being written by someone not from that minority, right?

and I think it’s a bit reductive to say that it doesn’t matter. because it does matter. you’re right in saying that it matters to someone and I think the job of anyone who creates any kind of content is to think about that and be mindful that you don’t create in a vacuum. your art has power even if you don’t think it does, if you don’t want it to, and that’s something no one should take for granted.

now, I am not saying that certain people do not have the right to write certain stories. no one has the right to write anything, just as no one is forbidden from writing anything. and no one writing anything should be harassed for writing something that people perceive is out of their wheelhouse (because a lot of marginalizations are not visible! abuse, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, whether you’re neurotypical or not! and there’s no requirement that you make public your trauma/identity to provide cred! in fact it’s kind of horrific that anyone thinks this!) it’s a complicated dynamic but the more we talk about these things the easier it is when a marginalized person says, “hey this thing you wrote is kind of bad,” the writer can go “oh man I’m sorry, let me think about it and see what I did wrong so I can do better in the future” OR “oh wow I see what you mean, but this is important to me” and the reader can go “I respect your right to write what you want and in the future I’ll do more to shield myself from this kind of content” instead of Cancelling someone because they didn’t effectively prostrate themselves before the ultimate judges of problematic content, a bunch of randos on the internet.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, yes, I agree with you that it’s not necessary to worry about this stuff, and that a lot of it is energy wasted especially when you’re worrying about theoretical responses from people who read your stuff, but that’s not helpful to me, because I think that’s disregarding the fact that we live in a society with weird power dynamics that are constantly shifting. I think it’s my job as someone who is mentally capable of dealing with this kind of self-examination to push back on some of these things when I can. because if I didn’t challenge myself every once in a while, I wouldn’t grow as a person or a writer and if there was one mantra I would live my life by besides the assertion that I would be blissfully happy if I downloaded my consciousness into a robot body, it would be that You Have To Be Okay With Critique and It’s Good When People Call You Out In A Safe Setting, like everyone is a dick and an asshole and a Bad Person and pretending you’re not is the most useless battle you could ever fight. we contain multitudes and some of those tudes are downright ugly.

quick sidebar: I would not have been able to have this kind of conversation with myself four years ago, and something I have not even talked about is how my shift toward more m/m content began at the same time as I was getting used to getting medical treatment for my grab bag of mental illnesses, like it’s pretty obvious that I got into sk right about the time I settled into my meds so what does That even mean?? so many THINGS to consider!!

idk. I know when I write stuff like this people think I’m beating myself up over it, but I’m really not. I just like talking about it sometimes and this tumblr is where all my neuroses go to live forever more in the annals of this blue hell until I chicken out and delete them the next day. I guess I know that when I read other people talking about things I’ve also been thinking about, it’s nice to hear. and as this is something that is still new to me, fandom in general is still bonkers to a part of my brain because I came into it as an adult, the whole conversation (if there even is a conversation because there might not be but there’s one going on in my brain) about women writing m/m is interesting complicated and something I think about a lot. clearly without any real focus or conclusions to be drawn, because I dropped out of college and never learned how to make my point in a concise and understandable manner.

anyway I hope you don’t read this as me arguing with you nonny, I just wanted to clarify what I mean in the original post

#oh boy this got very long #anonymous

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orangedodge · 6 years

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I thought most of the Gold annual was enjoyable enough. It felt like the story it aspired to be; that of a fourteen year old returning to her old life after having her adventures, and trying to see if she can still exist in both worlds. Which, clearly Kitty can't, since she hasn't, but having made the effort in the past makes sense and was nice to see. I wouldn't have necessarily given it an entire issue of its own, though.

A minor detail I liked was having Kitty's two friends, Sarah and Madison, not recognizing her new enjoyment of sports and exercise. When she was first introduced as a character, her way of trying to overcome the sense of isolation that came with being academically gifted was to seek out physical activities, that she didn't have any special advantage in, to give herself something to do with people her own age. She didn't take up ballet because she liked ballet, she took up ballet because she was bad at it. But then, as a consequence of training to be an X-Man, she discovers that she's actually athletically gifted as well, and that whole thing is shot, leaving her with no way left to connect with other kids. Her ballet scenes in the old comics even go from crowded and packed with kids her age, to being scenes of Kitty on her own in an empty studio, receiving private instruction.

You get an early preview of that here, with Kitty wondering if maybe she can just act normal around all of her summer camp friends, and then just not sleep anymore, so she can do the things she's come to enjoy at night (when there's no one around to think she's weird). So in the story of her first return to the outside world, questioning whether or not she can go back to living without being an X-Man if she wants to, the unequivocal answer is "yes, but only if she hides basic details of her life from every single person she knows." I liked that, it fits, and it makes sense for who Kitty was at the time and where she eventually ends up.

The uh, "first kiss" drama, however, managed to surpass my worst expectations going into this story. I thought it sounded pointless when it was first billed, and oh, it was. I'll throw it under a cut to be safe, since the issue was marketed around it, and I guess theoretically discussion of it could be seen as a spoiler.

It was, essentially, cynical click-bait in an undersized five dollar issue. The kiss is divorced from the issue overall, just kind of floating in there on its own and contributing nothing to the overall themes of the story, which were otherwise about how Kitty relates to her old life now that her differences have been highlighted. And given that we're never going to see this kid again, it'll never be followed up on and thus was completely pointless. Ultimately it just took pages away from Madison and Sarah, and the more worthwhile question of whether or not Kitty could reconcile with them—her oldest friends, and two people tethering her to her old life—and if it was even worth her time to do so.

And also, Asher was just a huge asshole? He's upset that she doesn't know his name—so in other worlds, they don't actually know each other, right? So he finds a girl he doesn't know, alone in the woods, blows off the fact that she’s clearly upset and probably doesn’t want to talk to anyone, and starts screaming at her. He yells at her about his problems, makes character accusations (and, again, they are essentially strangers), and calls her names. He just comes off as some awful nerd boy stereotype, constantly whining about how unfair his life is, while being unable to empathize with (or even recognize) the trials of the other people around him. So she kisses him, of course. Even after he finds out she's a mutant too, he doesn't do anything to apologize for how he treated her, or learn anything about the error of inventing fictitious narratives about strangers just so he can stew in his own misanthropy.

Instead of doing that, he just continues to be a jerk. The story forces Kitty to perform unrewarded emotional labor on his behalf, while he continues to complain about everything. In his view, at least she can pass, and doesn't have to suffer his great pain. This kid is just awful, and there's no reason to care about him. He seems to be a completely average suburban kid? He complains about the privileged summer camp elite, but he's there too. When she kisses him, he rejects her, because he doesn't want her to suffer through carrying his children. How noble of him. (...I mean, what the hell? Who thought this was a good idea to print?) The story tries to play up that he's somehow physically disadvantaged, in a way that's visible to everyone around him, but the art just makes him an average looking white boy with red hair. This issue features disabled kids being mercilessly tormented by the camp counselors, couldn't we have focused on one of them, instead of this nonsense?

Even if you want to have a discussion about the useful mutant powers versus the visible ones, he has the ability to make lights appear, far off in the distance, away from him. No one ever has to know he's a mutant, unless he has a public meltdown in the woods over it. Meanwhile, if Kitty even breathes wrong, she'll sink into the earth and die. The issue even highlights that she has to consciously choose not to become intangible when physically threatened, to avoid outing herself, meaning she's consciously choosing to experience physical pain to protect herself from exposure. But she's the lucky one...? I wouldn't say that it's bad characterization or an unreasonable direction to take though, because especially once you apply “the X-Men are a queer metaphor” to Asher and Kitty and how the story treats each of them, it does become a sadly familiar reflection of how these things usually go.

Also, he indirectly accuses her of being an anti-Semite, which left a bad taste in my mouth. Yes, he doesn't know that she's the camp's secret benefactor, but Seanan McGuire does. Why was framing their first introduction that way necessary? Especially since the story is already playing up the “she's not doing enough for other mutants!” angle. Having Kitty deal with discrimination for being a young Jewish woman is one thing, but here it's just used as a put-down, from the story itself, to put her on the defensive. And it's the second time in just one issue that Kitty being Jewish (or not Jewish enough, as the subtext may be) is used against her, and not by the other characters, but by the story itself. It's an unbelievably clumsy way of unbalancing Kitty, and making her uncomfortable enough to spend time with a boy that, we're led to believe, she would not want to spend time with unless she felt obligated to do so. I guess it's no wonder she kept kissing him a secret, if she was shamed into it during the culmination of one of the worst weeks of her life.

Overall, the scenes with Kitty and her friends were good, but not enough to justify the price of the issue, and the rest of it is fairly flawed. And given the way the promotional hype train rolled, I frankly think you could make a case that Marvel was knowingly queer-baiting people into buying this.

#kitty pryde #x-men #comics #marvel #wednesday spoilers

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jambud-universe · 7 years

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Hey, so I know I’m gonna be talking about a sensitive subject with this, and i know it might start some controversy stuff, but i’ve been holding this in for a year now or so and i just really had to get it out. I do not intend to offend anyone, i just would like to be heard out if thats okay.

I should start this out with my drawing, and steven and connie’s relationship. Steven and Connie’s relationship is heterosexual, or at least heteroromantic since they’re not at the age for intimacy yet (Connverse is basically canon so i think its safe to say they have a relationship). Now, I,myself am a straight girl, so i guess it’d be obvious i have a better interest in straight relationships over queer ones. But do i only like connverse because it’s a hetero ship? of course not! I like steven and connie for how they are together and alone. They’re both well written characters,and have a great connection with eachother. Pretty much in the beginning, it started out as steven having a crush on connie and didn’t know how to talk to her,but eventually they started a true and wonderful friendship together, as well as developing a cute romance once they got to know eachother better. They’re both just two young people who feel innocent and blissful when they’re singing or dancing or just hanging out together. I can go on with more examples,but if you’re a connverse shipper you should know what im talking about.

So, about the drawing. It’s in black in white,which are the colors of the straight flag (im not sure if its official or not). Which might be taken as a micro-aggression against the gay flag,but i dont see it that way. I see it as a symbol of the Yin-Yang sign (which i’ve always seemed to have an interest in). Since the (Yin) black side represents women,the moon,calmness, and submissiveness. And the (Yang) white side represents men,the sun,pride, and dominance. Together they stand for the power of two different forces, and how they complement eachother,yet are so different. Bringing a unique balance to the world (or relationship). I think steven and connie’s relationship is a really important example of heterosexual relationships, especially in this day and age since its really hard to see a relationship in the media that isn’t just based on attraction and not actual chemistry.

I think it’s important since the show has two different relationships that are pretty similar, steven and connie which are straight, and ruby and sapphire which are gay. I think i like it for displaying both relationships with a fair amount of ups and downs, with the love thats obviously there. I like the idea of portraying both gay and straight people equally because, they are. Who you are as a person shouldn’t be judged on your sexuality, but people should like you for who you are as an individual. The show displays both straight and gay relationship in a normal and healthy way, and i really like that.

So this is kinda where it gets personal about me, so i do not mean to hurt anyone if i say something wrong. I wasn’t always straight (believe it or not) when i was like 5 i remember equally considering the possibilities of being in a relationship with both boys and girls, hell i even remember having the mindset that if two guys get together,they have a son,and if two girls get together they have a daughter,and a guy and a girl could have either. When i was around middle school or so i never really felt attracted to anyone (my anxiety keeps me away from people anyways) so i was aromantic but i felt more comfortable considering myself straight and not queer, since i didnt feel like i needed to group myself, and it wasnt a big transition or anything, thats just how it was i guess. I’m just straight now since my now boyfriend (who i love with all my heart,and basically have a relationship like connverse with him) admitted he liked me and i just said “fuck it, you’re nice so i’d like to see where this goes”. All this stuff has been simple to me, and it never felt like a big transition to me really.

What motivated me to speak out now is that originally, i wanted to see if there was some straight appreciation, or gay-straight alliance day where i can post this, but all i got where tweets and posts just saying some really offensive stuff. I saw this one thing posted (as a joke) talking about a terrorist attack (or something similar) in a gay bar with the tag “happy heterosexual pride day”. Which, is just repulsive, basically calling everyone confident about being straight a terrorist, making a joke out of it, and taking a horrible tragedy of people dying as a joke to make instead of doing something positive for those in the community who were hurt. For years now, i’ve seen posts passively joking and stereotyping straight people,which for one is insulting an entire group of people for their sexuality, and thats just kinda ironic since im sure gay jokes are offensive, i find them offensive too. And then right after they make posts like this they say shit like “heterophobia doesn’t exist” which really ticks me off since that in itself is an example of people thinking “or you’re straight so you don’t face any hardships in the world and have a perfect relationship with your family and are healthy and not misunderstood in any other way” i’ve seen this shit a lot, and i’m mentally disabled,i’ve been abused by my family physically,mentally and sexually, i guess its just ironic to me,though its not noticed as much but straight people still get shit at them and blamed for things they didnt do. And hell,i waited a year,and i still feel bad just saying how i feel.Maybe its just a personal thing and all im doing is finding some shit to rant about because im an asshole,if you want, you can minimize my feelings to that. I know hardly anyone would hear me out,let alone understand.

I’m not saying there should be a straight pride day,since that’d be pointless, but i’d like a straight-gay appreciation thing, because both sides have people who are innocent and would like to seek equality. I just believe that would help seek past conflict, and maybe calm down some aggression in some way. I know the queer community has been through a lot and is still struggling, and while that is awful, that doesnt mean every straight person is homophobic or rude, though i know a lot of people these days are and i believe it will get better in the future and hope people of any sexuality will be equal.

Again, i didn’t mean any offense to anyone, and if you’re queer and made it this far, i hope your life gets better if you’re going through any struggles, same goes to anyone reading this who needs some cheering up. the last thing i want to do is hurt anyone. you’ve been really kind to have read this far in my nonsense,and for that, i respect you for listening to me.💜

#violet draws #violet speaks #personal #long rant #i was really sick writing this and i vomited and passed out halfway through. 2 hours later i just finished it! so go me for finishing this

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custer-mp3 · 4 years

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long-ass general life update for you nosy bitches // tw: men, my bad legs

so boring to say i’m settling in but i am, i just wish there was something better to call it

there was somebody camped out in the back of the park across from our house down by the railroad tracks, on what we think is technically railroad property, and the parks department came today and tried to haul their shit away without a police order cuz “it’s just trash” no dude it’s a tent that’s someone’s home you leave it the fuck alone so Agatha screamed at them until they went away but then the cops came by & tagged it so now they have 3 days to move or the parks department’s allowed to come back & take their shit away

when we were trying to figure out whose site it so so we could reach out to them thru the drop-in center we noticed the tent was locked but had been cut open and the rain fly was ripped off and Agatha says it’s probably fine but it looked like somebody rolled their shit hella bad & i’m just worried about whoever it is, it looked like multiple people (or at least a guy and a girl) and i hope they’re okay like. physically

thanksgiving weekend launched me into the flare of the century i’m still not recovered from. i dared unpack my boxes of books yesterday (which were all small!! 6 free USPS boxes!!) and my knees had just. Had It. from that 20 minutes of activity. my wrists and elbows are flaring rly bad rn too & i had to buy ankle braces cuz my Achilles was already super fucked up from moving & like. whole body hurts.

i was limping around super bad at work--like unable to actually walk, just kinda toddling around in slow-mo if they needed me to move somewhere--and my manager made fun of me to my face IMITATING MY LIMP ON BLACK FRIDAY when i requested a break then my ASM and tenured keyholder ALSO made fun of me on Hell Saturday and i’m going to burn the entire store down

marina says report them to HR but that’s not very anarchist of me and i just don’t care enough to ruin their lives cuz it’s a temp job anyway and i can make it thru the holiday surely but it’s also like. i am the most able-bodied disabled person i know. i get more shit done in a day with 2 nonfunctional legs and fucked up arms and guts that are trying to escape my body and The Brain Fog TM than most people in full health do. if you’re being this awful to ME to my fkn FACE, ON THE CLOCK, how awful are you to “““actually disabled”““ ppl like out in the world on your free time

i just hate that there are no buses on sundays, no buses after 7, and i keep getting put on these dumb fucking late closes that mean either paying $15 for an Uber or walking the 3 miles home in the dark and the cold and some days i just physically Cannot with my Body and have to pay for the Uber which sucks ass cuz i’m making barely above federal minimum wage again

but i’ve been walking dogs and stuff with Kara. she’s got a hot friend who saw the picture of my halloween costume she threw in the groupchat and apparently thinks i’m cute and has been inquiring about my existence ever since so she asked me if she could give him my number and like sure bro i’ve met this dude exactly once AND I DIDN’T HAVE EYEBROWS ON AND WAS STANDING THERE RUBBING MY EYEBROW STUBBLE IN MY OVERSIZED SLIPKNOT HOODIE AND PAJAMA PANTS but i would like him to throw me thru a brick wall so sure but then he tEXTED ME and we set up a hangout which was supposed to just be coffee but turned into a whole-ass actual lunch date which like. worm. and made out in my living room cuz why not.

yesterday we hung out again (the coffee i was promised) and walked dogs with Kara in the cemetery and went to Kinko’s and the sketchy Halloween store that’s still open in fkn December and also made out, and then he was like “we should have an Actual Date For Real People” and i was like mfkr what?!?????? is that not???? no??????????????

so that occurred t o d a y cuz you can’t call me anything but efficient and spoiler alert, it was NOT a Real People Date, it was a fkn punk shitbag date, we definitely smashed then cuddled and tried to get Parsnip to interact with the other cat in a peaceful fashion and listened to Ministry and helped Agatha with the camp/park service situation and dealt with the cops when they showed up and had the aUDAciTY to park in front of our house to pull that shit then ran errands and cuddled and went to a Food Not Bombs meeting like. mfkr. that aint a date. that’s hanging out. how. is the prior 2 things with designated start times and wearing Nice Shirts and Going In Public Together Solo and shit not dates but tODaY was a date. fkn. WHAT

anyway he’s simple and sweet and hilarious and pro-SW anarcho communist and insanely hot and self-deprecating and i want to climb him like a tree but he too is divorced once over and we’ve Talked about it & it’s made me feel Better about my own shit & like. i want him to throw me through a brick wall and buy me food and leave me alone, and he’s in a non-monogamous relationship with one of Kara’s friends and his partner’s like “bro u need to date other ppl so i don’t feel bad” and y’know, that’s fuckin stellar imo. for me.

like what this whole fkn Ordeal has made me realize is i actually hate being in capital-R-Relationships. i do NOT want the pressure of being somebody’s whole world, i do not want the EXPECTATION of being solely responsible for somebody’s emotional happiness and well-being, i just wanna be friends with people and hang out and make art and occasionally make out and otherwise be left alone to do my own thing so this is like. rad as fuck. that this just sorta fell into my lap fully-formed and i didn’t have to do a bunch of screening and dealing with fuckboys and everything i was dreading abt y’know. finding someone to make out with in the midwest

and it was all because of my dumbass pun-based nu-metal halloween costume, which is the best thing that’s happened to me in decades, so. thank u jonathan davis

but i’m making friends--mostly thru Kara, but the other fellow new KH at work is the oldest person in the store (older than me by a couple years) and ALSO super into all things manson-adjacent and ALSO super queer and everything and has given me a ride home a couple times and i love her so maybe we’ll end up being friends in the long run too--and like living with Kara’s been good cuz there are always people around and she doesn’t mind me inviting myself on stuff sometimes so

there’s some sort of Krampus parade thing this Saturday in which for $2 you can actually be beaten with sticks and the squad’s going to that and we’re all doing FNB on Sunday and i know aforementioned dude is gonna be there but also so is his partner so like. that’ll be Inch Resting. but. we’ll survive. ‘we’ meaning me.

idk if it’s some sort of fucked up coping mechanism from coming dead last in my own monogamous relationships for uhhhhhhhhhhhh my entire fucking life but y’know. i kinda just feel whatever abt it!! like cool!! there is the dude i am fast friends with and def have a mutual crush on and am also currently fucking! and there’s the person he’s been dating for 3.5 years and owns a house with, and they’re a Thing!! and idk where i fit and what the vibe’ll be idk if the partner’s other ppl are gonna be there too so it’ll be weird fr all of us or it’s just me and like honestly how do y’all NAVIGATE i just don’t wanna make fkn heart eyes at the wrong time or NOT make heart eyes at the wrong time U FEEL ME

but also y’know what, whatever, fine. i’m like the least possessive person in the universe. like. i like that it’s all out in the open and people aren’t running around on me or anybody else. can’t believe this is my life, honestly. idk if the squad was conspiring on this or what cuz kara has terminal Nice Person disease but. good job fam.

i was in a real dark place this time last week and it only got worse over Hell Weekend, like. feeling directionless / unmotivated / isolated / lonely / traumatized / failure. it’s really been hitting me hard that i’m [redacted] years old & getting d*vorced & back in a punk house in a city i’d never set foot in before & working the shittiest shit job in the history of shit jobs and i’m never gonna see this person that was my best friend for so long again (cuz, y’know, i know i don’t talk abt the Private Life on here very often/in very concrete terms ~~this post being the exception~~ but. we were Best Friends. for a very long time) & i’m officially losing this friendship that meant so much to me and does mean so much to me, because i do care about him as a friend. like. fuck him as a spouse, he’s terrible at that, but as a friend i don’t want to see him struggling. which is bullshit. cuz he was abusing me and my life was a living goddamn hell in VA. but it’s hard to let go of the basis of the whole goddamn Ordeal to start with, and it’s hard to reconcile My Friend Whomst I Adore with My Ex-Husband Who Triggers Me On Purpose & Reads My Instagram Messages & Has Been Blackout Drunk For Months & Won’t Let Me Have Space Even In My Own Office, and it’s hard cuz the only people i know who’ve gone through something like this are dead. and all of that’s hitting at once. and i can put up with a lot of shit but i cannot put up with feeling like a failure within myself. and shit was truly fucking bleak.

so the whole social life thing just came at a good time y’know & even if things otherwise aren’t going the way i want there’s at least one good spot in my life. i got friends, i’m getting out of the house, i figured out where the good cemetery is, people are buying me food & talking me through all of this & rubbing the shaved part of my head & i’m happy

kara’s got a dr’s appt tmrw AM & the dude is apparently our designated Responsible Adult With Car so he’s picking her up from that & will be in my house once again tmrw morning & i fully plan on hiding in my room and pretending to be asleep cuz fuck that lmao don’t make me socialize i was not emotionally prepared for that

hayden sent me a 1995 Marilyn Manson gig poster and an enamel pin of a jackalope wearing a cone of shame & honestly??? i do not deserve him, talk about great friends

we need to get a frame for the poster but then me & kara are starting a MM wall in one of our living rooms & it’s gonna be great. the dude’s gonna come over with a drill & help me hang shelves in my room some time soon so i can finish getting unpacked cuz i’m just down to the boxes of art and getting all my shelf crap squared away & then i can finally finish Unpacking For Good

me & kara cried on the kitchen floor together last night from laughter bc i still have not learned my lesson in How Much Soup A Bowl Can Hold and my lizard brain was convinced if i got the beans under the liquid it would all fit, which, spoiler--it did not, and all my makeup ran off my face. it was that good. i love her so much

anyway thanks for listening check out the distro so i can buy groceries until my food stamp paperwork clears which will probably not be for almost another goddamn month i’m so pissed

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moritzstiefelwiki · 7 years

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Yooo for the detailed headcanon meme would u mind doing like... all the ones ure able to for Hanschen? Like feel free to skip as many as u want but itd be cool to hear ur thoughts on my Best Boy

Um? Little Hansy Rilow? Jackass Extraordinaire? Love of my life? Ofc I’ll do as many as I can!! Thanks so much for sending these! I hope you like them and I’m sorry they took me so long! (Also I answered these out of order and towards the end I was running a bit low on steam so there are some answers that are Not So Good mixed in there, sorry)

Under the cut or on Ao3 here :)

1. What does their bedroom look like?

I think for the most part it would be tidy. Bed made, desk (mostly) clear, etc. He’s got some laundry on the floor, a couple of books lying about, and his jacket as well as his school things are never put away but everything else is in it’s place.

His desk is by the window so he can make good use of natural light and It’s usually got assignments for school on it as well as whatever books might go along with them when he’s not using it.

He keeps a small collection of books in his room- his favourites. Whatever he’s currently reading is kept on his bedside table and everything else is stacked by his desk but they should be on the shelf in the living room.

He’s a nerd.

2. Do they have any daily rituals?

I don’t think he would, not outside what he needs to do (school). Not unless you count him monologuing while he masturbates as a ritual, I have a feeling that’s a daily thing.

3. Do they exercise, and if so, what do they do? How often?

He does not, he would much rather lounge somewhere comfy with something he finds enjoyable. A book, a person, a puzzle, etc.

4. What would they do if they needed to make dinner but the kitchen was busy?

I can see him being like “Everybody, get out of my way” (This is meant to be read in John Mulaney’s voice from the thing where he followed this with something like “I’m just here to feed my birds”) but I can also see him just clearing enough space for himself and getting to work. I guess it depends on who’s in the kitchen making what and what he’s going to be making. He’s not going to be interrupting someone that’s making cake or pastries just so he can cut vegetables in peace.

5. Cleanliness habits (personal, workspace, etc.)

His parents/governess were somewhat strict about cleanliness when he was a child so he makes an effort to keep himself well groomed, especially when adults are present. No dirt under his fingernails, his clothes and hair are neat etc. He’s less concerned about it when he’s with the other boys and even less when he’s relaxing, either by himself or with Ernst, but he still somewhat pays attention to how much dirt he’s getting on himself or how much work it will take him to make himself look properly presentable before he finds himself around adults again.

I think I got into workspace okay with his bedroom? He’s mostly tidy because he has to be, any disorder in his room can easily be taken care of.

6. Eating habits and sample daily menu

I think he would love sweet things (candy, fruit, berries, etc) and he’s always a slut for baked goods. I have no idea what kind of things ppl usually ate in 1890′s Germany.

7. Favorite way to waste time and feelings surrounding wasting time

He only really considers time wasted if he’s not spending it on something he likes to do or needs to do. So he has no favourite way to waste time, he only feels as though he’s wasting time if he’s bored out of his mind for no good reason.

8. Favorite indulgence and feelings surrounding indulging

Ernst. It really isn’t safe for him to be smooshing booties in a vineyard with another boy but? He’s doing it. And being all poetic about it too ofc, he really likes Ernst.

If he can indulge he will, he loves it. Life’s too short to deny himself pleasure, so long as said pleasure doesn’t harm him and/or get in the way of him becoming a millionaire.

9. Makeup?

None. I can see him maybe trying, or at least wanting to try makeup at some point? Never with anyone around or if there was a chance of someone catching him though. (I’m a sucker for boys in makeup tho and I think modern Hanschen would enjoy makeup. If u want to hear a bit more abt that u know how 2 contact me)

10. Neuroses? Do they recognize them as such?

Neurotypical Hans™

11. Intellectual pursuits?

Literature and languages. He loves reading, loves diving into a book and analyzing characters, plot, symbolism, all of it. He loves talking about them as well, he could talk for hours about his favourites. He’s fascinated by other languages and speaks a handful rather fluently as an adult. He probably also enjoys reading the same book but translated into different languages because no translation is exact and it’s always interesting to see a slightly different take on things.

I can also see him having interest in biology? Because science is fascinating and it’s amazing how diverse and intricately designed living things can be.

12. Favorite book genre?

He talks about the books he likes when he’s jerking off so I don’t think I really need to get into that lmao

13. Sexual Orientation? And, regardless of own orientation, thoughts on sexual orientation in general?

Multisexual. Bi/pan/ply/whatever. A pretty person is a pretty person & all that.

I think he might see the idea of sexual orientation as a little silly or perhaps performative? He understands that he’s expected to only like women and knows that once he’s older he’ll be expected to marry one, to have children etc etc. So for the most part he keeps his attraction to men to himself (Ernst being a very obvious exception, likely not the only one but it’s not something he would ever reveal lightly) and he thinks that most people are doing the same in order to avoid being judged negatively by their community.

Something along the lines of “everyone is only acting like they’re exclusively attracted to the opposite sex because it’s what’s seen as normal. They don’t want everyone else to point fingers at them calling them sinners and sexual deviants and condemning them to hell so they deny themselves half the beauty the world has to offer. For this same reason, they’re quick to attack anyone around them who might be revealed as queer. They’re so focused on keeping their own secret safe that they never realize everyone around them is keeping exactly the same one.”

14. Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

15. Biggest and smallest short term goal?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

16. Biggest and smallest long term goal?

Biggest: “When I am amillionaire”Smallest: I don’t think he has any small goals tbh ?

17. Preferred mode of dress and rituals surrounding dress

I’m not rly sure what this one’s asking tbh?? He likes looking nice tho.

18. Favorite beverage?

Hot chocolate

19. What do they think about before falling asleep at night?

Have you prayed tonight, Desdemona?

(I think a recurring theme would be his future- what he wants, what he can get, how he can get it etc.)

20. Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

21. Turn-ons? Turn-offs?

I’m stickin 2 sex ones bc otherwise it’s Too Vague and stresses me tf out tbh

Turn-ons: hair pulling, necking (he loves hickies but he’s strict about not having any that might be visible), being straddled, nice thighs, a good ass, little gasps and moans, begging

Turn-offs: bad kissing, poor hygiene, not listening to/paying attention to his feedback, going too fast (Mr. “half-closed eyes, half-open mouths, and turkish draperies” would Def love foreplay and teasing,, trying to skip right over it is? A no.)

22. Given a blank piece of paper, a pencil, and nothing to do, what would happen?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

23. How organized are they? How does this organization/disorganization manifest in their everyday life?

See 1

24. Is there one subject of study that they excel at? Or do they even care about intellectual pursuits at all?

See 11 (he’s pretty good at everything tho)

25. How do they see themselves 5 years from today?

Long dead because it’s 2017, but 5 years from the show he probably sees himself in university.

26. Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?

I don’t know what his plans would be but I’m sure he’s got some cushy career in mind that he wants to work towards. He’s a Rilow, he doesn’t need a backup plan.

27. What is their biggest regret?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

28. Who do they see as their best friend? Their worst enemy?

Ernst. His worst enemy is probably whoever is second in the class rankings, if you go by the play. Melchior in the musical. Little Hans is In It To Win It.

29. Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)

His brain shuts down for a minute and then he realizes that yes, this is happening and oh dear god I need to get out of here. He tries (and fails) to give the impression that he is calm, cool, and collected but he’s doing pretty good for someone who is screaming internally as loudly as he is.

30. Reaction to sudden intrapersonal disaster (eg close family member suddenly dies)

He just keeps going. He tries to act like everything is fine, to show that he’s strong. The second he’s alone he deflates. He’s depressed af but does everything he can to hide it.

31. Most prized possession?

I’m not sure what exactly, but it’s something fancy and adult that makes him feel sophisticated. He won’t admit how much he loves it though.

32. Thoughts on material possessions in general?

👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀 good shit go౦ԁ sHit👌 thats ✔ some good👌👌shit right👌👌there👌👌👌 right✔there ✔✔if i do ƽaү so my self 💯 i say so 💯 thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ💯 👌👌 👌НO0ОଠOOOOOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ👌 👌👌 👌 💯 👌 👀 👀 👀 👌👌Good shit

33. Concept of home and family?

He thinks of it as faintly ridiculous.

“Why are these people somehow more important than others simply because you share blood? Shouldn’t the value of your relationship with someone have more to do with how well you get along and care for each other? What’s the point of marriage, you put on a show so you can have children as you’re expected to and this absurd cycle repeats with your children and so on.”

34. Thoughts on privacy? (Are they a private person, or are they prone to ‘TMI’?)

He greatly values his privacy, he usually only shares exactly as much information as is necessary. Unless he trusts you, in which case he doesn’t s hut the fu ck u p

35. What activities do they enjoy, but consider to be a waste of time?

See 7

36. What makes them feel guilty?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

37. Are they more analytical or more emotional in their decision-making?

Analytical for the most part. He knows what he wants out of life and what he needs to do to put him on the path to getting it. I feel like he operates with a mindset a bit like “people can leave you but things are forever” and so he’s pretty okay with making decisions that hurt people (himself included) if it will benefit him financially, academically, raise his social status etc.

38. Would they consider themselves a Type A or Type B personality?

A? I don’t know tbh, my knowledge about this is limited to the 30 seconds I spent skimming the wiki article

39. What recharges them when they’re feeling drained?

Peace and quiet, being alone. Bonus points if he’s somewhere pretty and/or rly comfortable.

40. Would you say that they have a superiority-complex? Inferiority-complex? Neither?

I don’t feel I know enough about either to say lmao

41. How misanthropic are they?

He thinks people are ridiculous, h

ryan sent me a post abt dragon dicks which got me rambling abt this one furry i follow and. lowkey shattered my train of thought, I don’t remember what i was planing 2 say here and I’m too tired to start the Thought Translation Process over again lmao

42. Hobbies?

Reading, puzzles, Ernst, calligraphy,

43. How far did they get in formal education? What are their views on formal education vs self-education?

He completed university. The only real difference between formal education and self-education is if you have a diploma people will believe you when you say you know what you’re talking about.

44. Religion?

He’s whatever everyone else is. I don’t what religion everyone is in the show,, I don’t know shit abt religion tbh. But he believes in god, though he’s not as devout as everyone else.

45. Superstitions or views on the occult?

Foolish. Ridiculous. Absurd. Childish. He believes in them.

46. Do they express their thoughts through words or deeds?

Words mostly. He’s excellent with them and loves to talk and talk and talk.

47. If they were to fall in love, who (or what) is their ideal?

Ernst, probably. I don’t doubt that Hans loves him dearly but I don’t think he’s in love.

48. How do they express love?

He talks about milk.

I can’t think of anything lmao

49. If this person were to get into a fist fight, what is their fighting style like?

Tbh I can’t imagine him fighting. He probably just says something that pisses someone off and then gets knocked flat on his ass.

50. Is this person afraid of dying? Why or why not?

I don’t think so, I think he feels almost like. I don’t think invincible would be the right word, but he sees no reason to fear it at his age. Yes, Wendla and Moritz died, but he has no plans to kill himself and he can’t get pregnant so a botched abortion isn’t a threat to him. He’s in good health and he’s got his wits about him. What is there for him to be afraid of? He can worry about dying later.

#anon #answered #hc #hanschen #my writing #also tell me if i left something blank or dropped off mid sentence somewhere i think i finished all of them but im rly tired #but i might have missed something

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