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#now i’m like “if i get called racist it’s probably bc i’m doing something racist”
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ngl the "im white so i dont talk abt any characters' race ever bc im afraid of accidentally saying something racist" approach to fandom is like. very weak. imo.
like first of all: i get that "i dont incorporate race into my media analysis because i'm afraid of messing up" comes from a different place than "i don't incorporate race into my media analysis because I Don't See Race 😊 there is only The Human Race." but it has the same functional effect, right? that effect being that your analysis of [INSERT MEDIA HERE] ignores the very real way that race impacts people.
second of all: it feels kinda lazy! like ur saying "i dont know enough abt race to feel comfortable commenting on how race affects this show and i dont care enough to learn." the only way to become more comfortable discussing race is to actually practice discussing race. but when i see people saying this it feels like they're saying "i'm white, which means i don't know how to talk about race, and i don't have to know how to talk about race, and i don't ever have to know how to talk about race, so i'm choosing to never learn how to talk about race."
third of all: just because you don't openly talk about race doesn't mean you're any less likely to accidentally say or do something racist. implicit biases run deep, y'all. it's probably already there in your interpretation of the show. but the "i don't want to accidentally say something racist" implies that you are positive that your interpretation of the show isn't racist. and i'm not saying you're wrong. but i'm saying that if a person of color tells you that something you said about [INSERT MEDIA HERE] was racist, you better be prepared to actually listen and not just brush them off because "i can't be racist! i purposefully never talk about race just to make sure i'm not racist!"
which brings me to my final point: if you do accidentally say something racist... literally just apologize. if someone says you've been doing something racist, apologize and stop doing that thing. it's literally not that hard. i've done it. i've seen other people do it. "i'm scared of being called racist!" is such a weak excuse im tired of it. getting called racist is not the end of the fucking world. calm the fuck down and grow a spine. jesus.
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fakeuwus · 7 months
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RECKLESS | lee heeseung
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now playing ☾⋆⁺₊🎧✩°。 reckless by madison beer
"how could you be, so reckless with my heart?"
⁺ ⋆˚ genre: idol!hee x nonidol/university student!femreader, pure angst sorry lol, established relationship
⁺ ⋆˚ warnings: cursing, lowercase intended, barely proofread, mention of i-land LOL, lots of dialouge and idk if thats even a warning but had to put it out there, use of nicknames like babe/baby, infidelity
⁺ ⋆˚ word count: ~1k
⁺ ⋆˚ message from nic: wanted to put smth out while working on my jay fic!! got inspired by this show i was watching called "the game" (dont watch it its like highkey misogynistic and a bit racist and just overall so bad 😭) i wanted to rewatch it bc i used to watch it as a kid and now i realize how bad it was skdkd. but basically the bf is a pro football player while the gf is in med school and a certain plotline in the show inspired this 😁 also this is my first writing piece so pls be nice and feedback is appreciated!
heeseung slowly opened the front door to the apartment you and him shared, trying to be as quiet as possible since you were most likely sleeping. once he made it in he tip toe'd his way to your guys' bedroom. "did you have fun tonight hee?" you asked, while sitting on the couch with nothing but the lamp on. heeseung jumps, "holy shit you scared me! baby what are you doing up? come on let's get you to bed."
he walks over and tries to give you a kiss. you turned your head down only allowing him to press it to your forehead. you were pissed. actually, you were beyond that. words could not describe what you were even feeling at the moment.
you get up from the couch and stand before him, "you didn't answer my question. did you have fun tonight hee?" heeseung is perplexed by your tone. you sounded... hurt? angry? annoyed? all of the above? he tried to proceed with caution, racking his brain of all the possibilities of why you could be acting like this.
"uh... yeah babe, i had a lot of fun tonight. sorry i stayed out so late by the way. you really didn't have to wait up for me, you're probably tired." he was hopeful this was the right answer. it's gotta be, right? all you could do was stifle a cold laugh.
why the hell were you laughing? what was so funny? heeseung can feel his heartbeat in his ears and his skin was turning hot. you had never once acted this way in all of the years you guys had been together. it may not seem like a big deal to others, but you had always been so caring and sweet towards him.
even when you guys were arguing, your soft voice never changed. this was new. this was scary. you had a smile that didn't quite reach your eyes now and it seemed like you were staring into his soul.
"yeah heeseung. it's 2 am," you say sounding almost condescending, "but no i'm not mad that you stayed out so late. i mean i WAS, but after someone sent me a little something i realized there are worse things to be mad about." suddenly your phone is shoved into heeseung's hands. his jaw dropped. no. there's no way.
"who sent you this?! wait no it doesn't matter baby you can't believe this can you?" he reaches out for you but you pull away and start walking towards the front door to gather your jacket and bag, "so you're not even going to try to deny it? huh. i guess my friends were right." it makes him sick how you seem so calm on the outside, your words and actions treating this like one big joke while he's freaking out. he'd rather you be a crying, screaming mess than whatever behavior you're exhibiting at the moment.
you turn back around to him, "you think i don’t know who you’re giggling with on the phone while i’m sitting in the room studying for hours? that i’m stupid enough to believe that you’re not making out with her in that video? that i’m blind enough to not see the heart eyes you two make at each other while in the same room?” your words drip with venom and they shoot heeseung straight in the heart.
he feels like the room is spinning and he wants to faint. he wants to go up to you and hold you and tell you that she doesn’t matter, that you’re the only important thing in his life. but that’s not what happens. heeseung is too wrapped up in the moment to admit his wrongs.
frankly, he’s disgusted with himself and at a loss for words right now. he wants to convince not only you but more importantly to himself that he didn’t do anything wrong. and so he does. what comes out of his mouth next are words he’d soon regret. “WHAT DID YOU WANT ME TO DO YN?! i’ve been so lonely lately because you’re so wrapped up in school and she’s THERE FOR ME. she’s been there when you weren’t. i wouldn’t have made out with her if YOU were at the afterparty with ME like i asked you to! we won four fucking awards tonight and i just wanted my girlfriend there to celebrate with me.”
and just like that, you snap. the jacket and bag in your hands are now thrown to the ground and heeseung flinches. “YOU ARE SO FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE! do you hear the words that are coming out of your mouth right now?! i told you i have an exam tomorrow there was no way i was going to that damn party.”
tears are blurring your vision and your breath is becoming uneven. you don’t even recognize the man standing in front of you. “i have a life too heeseung. while you’re out chasing your dreams so am i. do you even acknowledge the sacrifices i have made for you over the past five years? tell me, was she there for you when you first became a trainee? was she crying for you every fucking episode of i-land? was she there every step of the way supporting your career?!"
heeseung doesn’t speak. he doesn’t move an inch yet his brain is moving a million miles per minute. he knows you’re right. he knows that you decline going out with your friends so you can wait for him to come home from practice. that your life only revolves around school and him. and he’s so eternally grateful for you. his heart yearns to express all the love he has for you and that he fucked up so badly. he just wants to fast forward to the part where you guys work through it and everything is okay again.
but that time is never going to come because you walk up to him with a heavy heart, placing the promise ring he gave you all those years ago in his hands.
he stares at the pretty diamond that shines in the moonlight, the only thing illuminating the darkness that’s consumed the space you both once filled with love. “i hope she was worth it,” you say as you open the door and walk out into the cold night. leaving heeseung and all of the memories of your relationship behind.
© fakeuwus 2023 do not repost, translate, or plagiarize
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taylortruther · 11 months
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sorry to vent but i honestly am just so damn tired atp of having to desperately cover everything in disclaimers and constantly perform outrage just to be allowed to exist in fandom spaces now as a black fan. like my original mindset was just that it’s disappointing but i don’t and can’t expect celebrities to perfectly mirror my values, and with all the actual problems in my life and the world - including racism that actually affects my real life AND things i have the ability to potentially do something about - i wasn’t going to spend my time and energy being furious that a pop star i’ll never meet is fucking an edgelord i’ll never meet either. like i’m sorry but i already compartmentalized all this YEARS ago and have zero expectations of celebrities so it’s just whatever to me. if taylor herself was spewing racist comments or if matty was actually some white supremacist nazi and not just an intentionally provocative edgy douchebag it would be different, but TO ME PERSONALLY the actual situation as it is is just not that serious and not worth my outrage.
but am i, one of those ‘poc fans’ everyone is constantly falling all over themselves to declare themselves supportive of and ‘safe’ for, allowed to feel that way as one of the people actually targeted by that idiot’s dumbass comments? NOPE! you best believe people were FURIOUS that i thought i could get away with not performing Angry Black Woman Rage for them every single time i want to simply engage in my hobby and discuss fun things, or analyze surprise songs, or express empathy for taylor in any circumstance, or just do anything that isn’t ranting 24/7 that she’s terrible and racist and irredeemable. so now every time i want to do any of those things i have to write 6000 disclaimers that yes taylor is awful and no i don’t like matty just so overwhelmingly white fans won’t yell at me that i’m not really black (an accusation i’ve now gotten three separate times), or that i’m hurting other poc by “condoning racism” (which i have not done), or that i’m so far up taylor’s ass i would still stan her even if she personally called me the n-word (the final straw that made me turn anon off probably for good) and idk it’s just…not fun being here anymore now that everyone is just going to treat me like a doll who’s only here for them to virtue signal with (and ‘virtue signaling’ is a terrible term but like that is truly, genuinely what a huge chunk of this fandom is doing rn), claiming to obsessively care about my feelings and fandom experience so they’ll look good but then berating and scolding me every single time i step a toe out of line and try to express my own opinion or commit the grave sin of Enjoying Taylor Swift On My Taylor Swift Blog. like sure taylor disappointed me but it’s other (again, overwhelmingly white) fans who have completely ruined being here and made it a miserable chore to be a black fan, not her. atp I just want her to drop him and everyone to forget not bc he sucks but bc i just want to be allowed to exist peacefully on my own blog again, without having to constantly walk on eggshells so the people who ~care about marginalized fans~ won’t come call me a stupid brainless bitch who lets taylor manipulate me because i’m a self-hating racist. i’m just so tired.
i am tired too and i am really grateful to you for writing all this out (i hope it felt a little cathartic) because i 100% AGREEEEEEEEEE. the way this fandom acts anytime they start talking about uplifting poc will never not be weird to me and i think you explained why perfectly.
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masonscig · 1 year
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can i ask why people in the fandom seem to really dislike mishka? (censoring her name and such) this is not meant in an offensive way to you or to anyone else, i’m just new here and kind of confused. like did she do something legitimately wrong or are people just irked by the writing of the new book? hope you have a great day <3
OH yeah sorry i can definitely see how that's confusing to new people LMAO
so, it's a bit of both imo – i've been here since 2020, shortly after book 2 dropped, so my perspective is a lot different than newer fans
so, one of the reasons i censor her name, is because tumblr changed the search functions – used to be, when you looked up something, it was only things that were in that exact word order in a tag – so if you spelled t/w/c wrong in some way, it'd only show up results that were misspelled, if that makes sense
but now, it's like if you look up any word, random posts that mention it anywhere in the post will show up too – and i would rather not open myself up to the m*shka bootlickers bc i just do not have time for that LMFAO
i rarely maintag things these days because i just don't want to be perceived by so much of this fandom, but that's just a me thing
also, in terms of what she did "wrong"... on top of problematic stuff in text, there's a few things i can think of off the top of my head:
encouraging white/washed art by reblogging on to her dev blog while knowingly having the official skintone palette locked behind a paywall (patreon)
when called out for the above, they did vet their pieces i guess – by only reblogging black and white pieces, and art of detectives. then they stopped reblogging art completely
posting a white hand for a morgan instagram edit – and taking hours to delete the harassment in the replies, some of which being actually racist comments with slurs pointed at black people
in a q&a video, referred to m as an "attack dog", which was super insensitive, considering the consistent comparison of m to an animal across all platforms (text, tumblr posts, patreon content)
her treatment of f over the years, both in text and outside of it. her asks were a huge reason that the fandom has an infantilized view of f and they don't even consider them to be a love interest (much less one that gets physically intimate). they see them as a child. this bullet point is a massive one that would take too long to explain. i could probably write an essay on how problematic it is to immediately "other" your singular black character by literally making them an otherworldly alien, but i do not have the time
how she writes nb/trans characters. from what my friends have said who code dive, they get the same dialogue and variants that women do. obviously if you don't code dive or play with nb characters you probably wouldn't notice, but there are a good chunk of people in the fandom who play with nb oc's so... this is something that should be better, but it's not
to add to the above, she said she was getting sensitivity readers but... did they do anything? look at book 3 and tell me if they actually did anything (i have a feeling maybe those sensitivity readers were white queer people)
overall, it's very hard to explain and condense the fuckery my mutuals and i have seen both m*shka do over the years, and what her fans have let slide/incidents they've coddled her up during.
sadly, she doesn't take hard stances on things. she just lets things happen and that just. doesn't bode well if your argument for all these mistakes is "ignorance". if she's getting 10k a month on patreon plus sales (not to mention the fact she's a grown ass woman), then... it's the bare minimum to ask for her to be mindful of her audience and to do better.
and also book 3 sucks xoxo
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solar-halos · 2 months
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i’m about to have a hater moment
basically i wanna write another umbrella academy fanfic. so obviously this got me thinking about the umbrella academy. and then this got me thinking about how they absolutely destroyed our girl allison. like they really said let’s have one of the very few poc characters we have on the show assault another character. and then they really had diego tell allison “i don’t think the rest of our (white) siblings really understood how hard it was for us in the 60s” without actually fucking showing us the hardships diego faced for being a man of color in the 60s. like what? they covered the civil rights movement which now that im thinking about it was probably just bc they had to like if they could get away w skipping it i 100% believe that they would. diego literally called grace Mom (bc that’s his Mom) and all grace did was smile at him funny and go “you have no fucking game.” like okay writers producers directors WHOEVER at the umbrella academy maybe if u wanted to show how hard it was for diego in the 60s u could have had grace go wayyy harder on him and had him kicked out of the party and then it’d be this whole thing as he and lila try to sneak back in but nooo apparently retconning everything was the way to go
this rant was also partly inspired by the stranger things controversy. like i had a whole long post about this that i deleted but i had literally never heard anyone talk about racism in this fandom (to this degree!) until argyle’s actor wasnt invited back onto s5. then all of a sudden posts that are like “lucas doesn’t have an actual developed storyline like the white characters” are getting SO many notes, and it’s good that they are bc more people are actually paying attention, but did it seriously take a comedic relief character that got randomly introduced in the latter half of the shows running to get yall to care about racism? and if anything the fact that argyle is the comedic relief best friend to the white main character who is high all the fucking time is racist in itself but whatever. that show had so much potential it’s such a shame s5 doesn’t exist
anyway i also made a reallyyy long post about the umbrella academy portion of the rant but now that the last season is so close (like months and months away) im lowkey hoping they actually do retcon that scene?? i mean allison and luther’s relationship in general is to showcase how these characters didn’t have a normal upbringing and the assault scene expanded on that but the aftermath was handled so poorly. “im sorry” “nah it’s ok don’t worry about it” guys i know we were in a time crunch but if ur gonna have something so heavy u can’t just fucking dismiss it like that. even ella enchanted had a scene where the prince was like “kiss me” “okay” “i’m not giving you an order… just a request” “i know.” like im fucking sorry but if ur gonna make allison go thru that sort of arc u need to do it right. but also i’m a very negative person (cringe) so take all my complaints with a grain of salt
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worldsbiggestnerd101 · 11 months
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alright my ten followers, i saw the live action remake of disney’s “the little mermaid” yesterday and here are my thoughts!
first thing, i have to get this out of the way on the off chance a racist comes across my blog - halle was AMAZING as ariel. i swear she sounded just like ariel at parts, and she 100% had the voice and skills for the part. not to mention she’s literally gorgeous??? i love her as ariel, 10/10
sebastian has a trini accent instead of a jamaican one and it’s fucking hilarious to me, ok? i’ve only seen a few people comment on this, so maybe some of y’all who aren’t caribbean may not have noticed, but his accent changed, he has a trini accent now and i LOVE IT. idk if it’s just bc i’m guyanese and know more trini people than jamaican people, but this was pure gold to me. i loved it, idc what people say, it’s too good, and even if you don’t actually like the change, you can AT LEAST say it’s funny
the cgi wasn’t too bad, honestly! “under the sea” was pretty gorgeous at times, but nothing amazing 100% absolutely divine
we got so much ursula lore in this and now i NEED a cruella/maleficent-style movie about ursula. calling triton ‘big brother’??? mentioning something that happened 15 years ago (when ariel was born/a baby)???? introducing herself to ariel as ‘aunty ursula’????? i NEED this movie. NOW. also idk if i’m biased bc i think melissa mccarthy is funny but i thought she was really good as ursula!!
i liked the depth they gave eric here!! he had a backstory, a song, and an actual character!!! he was cool, amazing job
as someone who was literally obsessed with the original “the little mermaid” when i was like 5, i may be biased here, but i loved this movie! i feel it was pretty good for a cash-grabby remake of an old movie, and in my opinion it’s probably the best of the live action remakes. (do not even MENTION live action “aladdin” that movie was AWFUL)
a little detail i just HAVE to mention that i didn’t really like - they changed the names of all of ariel’s sisters :/. i loved all the actresses and designs, they’re literally all gorgeous, but i wish they all had their ‘A’ names because it just added a lot more to ariel’s want to get out. with the whole ‘A’ name thing, it seemed more as if she was predestined to be part of a set and not her own person, which added to her desire to go to the surface. just a minor detail, didn’t really affect the movie too much, but i was a bit disappointed at that
overall, i enjoyed this movie a lot! it wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely very enjoyable for a movie that’s literally just a soulless tactic to get disney more money. i’d rate this a solid 8/10, only because of the name thing and the fact that, y’know, it’s a remake. it was an all-around good movie and i think i’ll be doing the same thing after i see the barbie movie! thanks for reading this long post, the one follower who actually sees this
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namjoohyuk · 1 year
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Omg I remember when chanyeol and I think Chen were on this show with a little girl actress and she was asked who do you like more and she was like, I like exo but I like bts more, or something to that effect, and fucking exo-ls were in the comments literally bullying this little girl bc she said she preferred bts more, went to her social medias and everything harassing this child, like imagine if armys did that shit currently(they probably would), it’s just funny how exo-ls suddenly have selective memory about how nasty they were just bc bts got bigger than them, VIPs too, I remember they literally accused bts of payola bc of how popular they we’re getting when they didn’t even have the funds to do that, it’s just so funny how stans of these older groups are suddenly acting like they were never nasty just bc armys are bigger and got nasty too
omg i know!!!!!!!! the selective memory fandoms have is actually sooo funny to me. i’m old enough to remember all that. the way people criticize armys for being passive and defending bts’ bad behaviour when i remember a time when big bang stans were defending g-dragon weekly for all the nasty racist shit he used to do and say, and exo-ls doing the same and now they come down on armys like !!!! that was you from 2008-2017
armys are in no way saints. my sister was telling me how some armys were attacking that girl who was on that pixid video with jimin who said she was an army but now she loves felix from stray kids.
i do think bad behaviour should be called out. but for kpop stans to act like it’s a thing that only armys take part in is just hilariouss
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nevermindirah · 3 years
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Do you have any thoughts on the use of AAVE for Nile (or lack thereof) in TOG fanfiction? I've been reading some Book of Nile fic and some writers seem to write her as a Millennial™ (using words like "fave" and "woke") but never acknowledge her Blackness in her patterns of speech. I know we don't see her use as much AAVE in the films, but I would argue she's in situations where code-switching would be valued (first in a "professional" environment in the army, then around a group of non-Black strangers).
Hi anon! I have many thoughts on this and I'm honored you asked me! But I should start by saying I'm white and any thoughts Black fans and especially Black American fans have on this that they want to share would be beyond lovely. (I'm not gonna tag anybody bc that feels rude but please add onto this post if any of y'all see this and want to!)
The main reason I personally avoid AAVE for Nile in my own fics is because I'm not Black. But Nile-centric fics by Black writers tend to avoid using much of it too, at least from what I've noticed/understood, and my guess is it's largely for the reason you mention, that she's in situations that encourage code-switching.
In movie canon Nile is highly competent at tailoring her language to each situation she finds herself in. This fantastic linguistics analysis meta shows how skillfully Nile chooses her vocabulary and grammar to meet her goals with different conversation partners in different contexts. In comics canon Nile had a bunch of different civilian jobs before joining the Marines, so she would've had experience code-switching in the ways that made sense for all those different contexts as well as the Marines and her family and high school and wherever else she spent her time before we met her. And now she's spending her time with a handful of immortals none of whom are native English speakers and a fellow Black American but one with a Queen's English UK accent whose professional experience is in the CIA where high-status code-switching is often an absolute must for success or even survival.
Fics featuring Nile are charged with extrapolating from that to how it might show up in her use of language that she's coping with a traumatic separation from her family and her career and pretty much everything she's ever known and now she needs to be able to make herself understood to people who seem to care about her and each other but are super duper in crisis, three (soon to be four) of whom predate Modern English entirely and the only one who's anywhere near her contemporary she's not supposed to talk to for a century. All of these people are telling her that pretty much any contact with any mortals poses an existential threat to her and the rest of the group. How the FUCK is she supposed to cope with that, like, generally? And would it be a more effective way for her to cope if she talked to Andy Joe and Nicky using the speech patterns that she used to use with her mom and brother, to at least retain that part of her identity even if it means having to do a lot of explaining, or would it meet her needs better to prioritize Andy Joe and Nicky understanding what she means with her words over using the particular words and grammar forms she used with her family?
I've seen several fics, both Nile-centric / BoN and otherwise, explore this a little bit in how/whether Nile uses Millennial™ speak. It's often a theme in Nile texting Booker despite the exile because of the popular headcanon that he as The Tech Guy is the only other immortal who understands memes. But Nile's much-younger-than-Booker mom probably uses Boomer and/or Gen X memes and Andy has been adapting to new communication styles for forever as evidenced by her canon high level of fluency with standard-American-accented English.
Which brings us back to people avoiding AAVE because they're not Black and they don't want to make mistakes (or they're not Black and they don't want to get yelled at for making mistakes, though I think many people overestimate how much they'll get yelled at while underestimating how much these mistakes can hurt). I can imagine some Black fans hold back from using much AAVE in fic because they don't want to share in-group stuff with white people who are likely to then adopt and ruin it, as white people so often do with Black cultural stuff. Some links about this including a great Khadija Mbowe video. I'm saying this gently, anon, because you might not know: woke, an example you cited as Millennial™ speak, is AAVE, and that's gotten erased by so many white people appropriating it and using it incorrectly online.
And also there's the part where fandom is a hobby and you never know when you're reading a fic that's the very first thing someone's ever written outside of a school assignment. This cultural considerations of language shit takes a level of effort and skill that not everybody puts into every fic, or even could if they wanted to because they haven't had time to build their skills yet. It's definitely easier for non-Black fans to project our millennial feels onto Nile than to do the layers of research and self-reflection it requires to depict what Blackness might mean to Nile, and it's not surprising that often people sharing their hobby creations on the internet have gone the easier route. There's not even necessarily shame in doing what's easier. It's just frustrating and often hurtful when structural white supremacy means that 3-dimensional Black characters are rare in media and thoughtful explorations of them in fandom are seen by the majority of fans as not-easy to make and therefore Nile Freeman, the main character in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood, has the least fic and meta and art made about her of our 5 main immortals.
I've been active in different fandoms off and on for twenty years and I barely managed to write 5,000 words about Sam Wilson across multiple different fics in the 7 years since I fell in love with him. There's an alchemy to which characters we connect with, and on top of that which characters we connect with in a way that causes us to create stuff about them. Something about Nile Freeman finally tipped me over the edge from a voracious reader to a voracious writer. It's not for me to judge which characters speak to other individuals to the level of creating content about them, but I do think it's important for us to notice, and then work to fight, the pattern where across this fandom as a whole Nile gets way less content, and way less depth in so much of the content that's in theory about her, than any of these other characters.
Anyway, back to language. My two long fics feature Nile with several Black friends — Copley and OCs and cameos from other media — but all of those characters except Alec Hardison from Leverage aren't American. It's very possible I'm guilty of stereotyping Black British speech patterns in I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore. I watched hours and hours of Black haircare YouTube videos in the research for that fic and I modeled my OCs' speech patterns on what I heard from some of those YouTubers as well as what I've heard people like John Boyega and Idris Elba saying in interviews, but the thing about doing your best is you still might fuck up.
I'm slowly making progress on my WIP where Nile and Sam Wilson are cousins, and what ways of talking with a family member might be authentic for Nile is a major question I need to figure out. For that, I'm largely modeling my writing choices on how I hear my Black friends and colleagues talking to each other. I haven't overheard colleagues talking in an office in a long-ass time, but back when that was a thing, I remember seeing a ton of nuance in the different ways many of my Black colleagues would talk to each other. Different people have different personalities! And backgrounds! And priorities! A few jobs ago my department was about 1/3 Black and we worked closely with Obama administration staff many of whom were Black and there was SO MUCH VARIETY in how Black people talked to each other, about work and workplace-appropriate personal stuff, where I and other white coworkers could hear. There are a few work friends in particular who I have in my head when I'm trying to imagine how Sam and Nile might talk to each other. From the outside looking in, God DAMN is shit complicated, intellectually and interpersonally and spiritually, for Black people who are devoting their professional lives to public service in the United States.
One more aspect of this that I have big thoughts on but I need to take extra care in talking about is the idea of acknowledging Nile's Blackness in her patterns of speech. There's no one right way to be Black, and Nile's a fictional character created by a white dude but there are plenty of real-life Black Americans who don't use much or even any AAVE, for reasons that are complicated because of white supremacy. (Highly highly recommend this video by Shanspeare on the harms of the Oreo stereotype.)
Something that's not the same but has enough similarity that I think it's worth talking about is my personal experience with authenticity and American Jewish speech patterns. My Jewish family members don't talk like they're in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and I've known lots of people who do talk that way (or the millennial version of it), some of whom have questioned my Jewishness because I don't talk that way. That hurts me. Sometimes when another Jew tells me some shit like "I've never heard a Jew say y'all'd've," I can respond with "well now you have asshole, bless your Yankee-ass heart," because the myth of Dixie is a racist lie but I will totally call white Northerners Yankees when they're being shitty to me for being Southern, and this particular Jew fucking revels in using "bless your heart" with maximum polite aggression, especially with said Yankees. But sometimes I don't have it in me to say anything and it just quietly hurts having an important part of me disbelieved by someone who shares that important part of me. The sting isn't quite the same when non-Jews disbelieve or discount my Jewishness, but that hurts too.
Who counts as authentically Jewish is a messy in-group conversation and it doesn't really make sense to explain it all here. Who counts as authentically Jewish is a matter of legal status for immigration, citizenship, and civil rights in Israel, and it's my number 2 reason after horrific treatment of Palestinians that I'm antizionist. But outside that extremely high-stakes legal situation, it can just feel really shitty to not be recognized as One Of Us, especially by your own people.
It can also feel really shitty to be The Only One of Your Kind in a group, even if that group is an immortal chosen family who all loves each other dearly. Sometimes especially in a situation like that where you know those people love you but there are certain things they don't get about you and will never quite be able to. I'm definitely projecting at least a little bit of my "lonely Jew who will be alone again for yet another Jewish holiday" stuff onto Nile when at the end of I See Your Eyes Seek a Distant Shore she's thinking about being the only Black immortal and moving away from the community she'd built with a mostly-Black group of mortals in that fic. Maybe that tracks, or maybe that's fucked up of me.
Basically, this got very long but it's complicated, writing about experiences that aren't your own takes skill which in turn takes time and practice to build, writing about experiences not your own that our society maligns can cause a lot of harm if done badly, it can also cause a lot of harm when a large enough portion of a fandom just decides to nope out of something that's difficult and risky because then there's just not much content about a character who deserves just a shit ton of loving and nuanced content, people are individuals and two people who come from the exact same cultural context might show that influence in all kinds of different ways, identity is complicated, language is complicated, writing is hard, and empathy and humility and doing our best aren't a guarantee of avoiding harm but they do go a long way in helping people create thoughtful content about a character as awesome and powerful and kind and messy and scared and curious and WORTHY as Nile Freeman.
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greensaplinggrace · 3 years
Note
honestly THANK YOU for saying all that abt baghra bc i thought i was going crazy from not liking her??? bc i haven't read the books and only summaries of them on wiki and like. i dunno why ppl like her actually even in the show bc this guy, her son, is like "i wanna make the world better for us grisha" and she's just like "no." even tho he sees that she's MAKING HERSELF SICK from suppressing her powers! she's literally like in bed coughing in the flashback yet seem much healthier at the little palace. also like after everything, after her disapproval, after the fold, after centuries of waiting for the sun summoner.. he never abandons her. he makes sure she's cares for. he doesn't harm her. and i have to wonder if baghra has ever thanks him for that, for just not leaving her alone. like i dunno how im suppose ro believe aleks is a heartless villain when he still cares for his abusive mom like this. like has baghra even told her she loved him (honestly she reminds me of a classic emotionally unavailable asian parent but maybe that's just me). also im wondering if baghra ever told aleks that he had an aunt.. bc like.. now that u bring up her isolating him it's like hmmmm...
not at me being like alina... why do u trust the bitter old woman who literally beats u with a stick and verbally abuses u every chance she gets.. just bc she showed a bad painting... like.. pls use two braincells to see that who u figured out as his mother... is also using his protection..
like baghra could've upped and left with alina. but no. she stayed bc she knew she was safe under aleks's protection.
alsoim just impressed that after his first friend tried to drown him and harvest his bones... he didn't go into hiding???? he still wanted to make a safe heaven for grisha!!! HE STILL WANTED TO PROTECT GRISHA EVEN AFTER HIS GRISHA FRIEND TRIED TO KILL HIM FOR HIS FUCKEN BONES. like... this is the guy im suppose to believe is the villain???
honestly i feel like part of the reason why LB's plotlines seem so bad and disconnected (and sometimes outright racist but that's another rant) and why darkles is disproportionately more violent and villainous in the later books is bc she didn't expect the darkling to be so popular and wanted to stick with her guns of making him the villain. but also wanted the money from aleks's popularity. but like you can't have ur cake and eat it too.
Well thank you for sending this ask! It's very sweet and very passionate. I'm glad you liked my post! I didn't put as much thought into it as some of my others lol. I kind of just talked. But it was nice to be able to finally talk about some of the problems I have with both her character and the fandom/author's perception of her.
HERE is the post this is referring to, in case anyone's wondering.
👀👀 You've hit the nail on the head for so many things, here!
Baghra is extremely emotionally unavailable, basically to the point of neglect. She's also verbally and physically abusive, traits which I doubt were only reserved for her students and not her son. Baghra claims she would do anything to protect him, but I've known a lot of parents who have that mindset and yet still harm their children because they think it's "good for them".
Aleksander stays at Baghra's side for years, and even when they're opposing each other she's never too far away from him. Idk if you've read the books but he does eventually hurt her. And as much as I don't like Baghra, I think his actions were horrid. But I'm also honestly kind of surprised it took him so long lmao.
Yeah I mean, in terms of isolation, let's not forget that she never wanted to introduce him to his father, either. Baghra's sense of eternity clouds a lot of her judgments on relationships, which means she views most people as dust and therefore teaches her son to as well. The problem with that is that he's a growing child, and he needs those social and emotional attachments for healthy development.
I would bet quite a bit of money that Baghra has either never told him she loves him or she has told him so few times it's practically forgettable.
And everything becomes more complicated because so many of Baghra's actions are understandable because of her life and her history, but the impacts they have on the people around her, especially Aleksander, are permanently damaging. And the fact that that's never gone over in critical depth in the books or how it's glossed over in fandom is just very disconcerting. Like, acknowledging Baghra's failings doesn't mean we're excusing Aleksander's actions, it just means we're holding Baghra liable for her own. Which the fandom should be doing, considering she's the epitome of an abusive parental figure.
And Alina trusting Baghra over Aleksander is even more confusing! Especially in the show!! This is the woman who beat her and abused her and tortured her friends when they tiny little children (and who probably still does so now that they're adults). This is the woman who mocks you and harasses you and insults you on a regular basis. Why does Baghra revealing she's Aleksander's mother make Alina change her mind?! Like fuck, I'd just feel bad for Aleksander. No wonder he kept it a secret, I would too! And that painting is enough evidence?! Really?! A random painting shown to you by this abusive mentor that's been making your life hell. That's what you're going to betray your new lover over?
The friends trying to harvest his bones thing is a good point, too. I think Aleksander, especially show Aleksander, is incredibly idealistic. I think he cares too much for others - those he's deemed worth his care (a sentiment given to him by Baghra). Despite everything she's tried to teach him about hiding and abandoning others and never caring and never doing anything to help or reach out or connect with people, Aleksander still continues to do so. It's likely because he never got it from Baghra growing up, and so is desperate for those emotional needs to be fulfilled elsewhere.
His turning point, when Baghra tells him it was understandable that those kids tried to kill him because the world is such a hard place for them - that's crucial. And the reason it's possible as a motivating factor is because of that idealism and that desire to help and that desire to be everything his mother isn't. Baghra tells him this trauma he just experienced was because of the oppression of his people, and instead of following her lead and accepting that, going into hiding and abandoning everybody to their misery, he goes I can do something about that. I can make it so this never happens again. Which is usually how trauma like that combines with one's core personality traits at a young age, especially when there's none of the essential support systems in place to aid in recovery (ie, the role Baghra should have been filling but wasn't, because she decided to exacerbate the problem instead).
And yeah, one of my biggest problems with the ham-fisted "beating you over the head with a sledgehammer of evil deeds" look-how-bad-this-character-is! portrayal of the Darkling in the later books comes from the impression I get that Bardugo doesn't trust her readers. She's so desperate to have us hate this character and think him an irredeemable villain, not trusting any of her readers to engage critically with a morally gray character, that it feels quite a bit like condescending fucking bullshit. Which ew, I know how to engage with literature, thanks.
She really does seem to look down on a large part of her fandom, and imo, the infantilization of the female characters in her books seems to carry over to her impression of most of her female readers as well. Which is why the Darkling's character arc gets fucking destroyed. But he's still a good cash grab, of course, so she'll shake his dead corpse in front of the fandom for money every time she wants something from it.
Also! Another reason I think her plotlines feel disconnected (I'm sorry Bardugo I respect you as a person, but shit-) is because the writing in SaB is just bad. I mean, nevermind the absolutely nauseating implications of the way she portrays the Grisha as a persecuted group who's situation is never actually fully addressed as it should be, considering Grisha rights is what her main villain is fighting for (imo for a series called the Grishaverse, LB seems to be pretty anti Grisha), but her characters and story alone are just wrong for each other. They don't fit together.
And the ending is one of the main pieces of evidence in that regard! You can’t say the ending where Alina isn’t Grisha anymore is her “going back to where she started” when she’s always been Grisha. She just didn’t know she was Grisha because she denied that part of herself that she was born with.
Alina is reluctant to move forward or change, she struggles with adapting, and she’s very set on the things she’s grown attached to throughout her life. She also has some latent prejudices against the Grisha, and so denies the possibility of being Grisha for those reasons as well.
Alina’s lack of powers in the beginning of her life because she willfully doesn’t learn about them to avoid change versus her lack of powers at the end of the book when she’s accepted them and then they’re stripped away from her by outer forces are two entirely separate circumstances. You can’t make a parallel about lost powers and lack of Grisha status bringing her back to the start when she was always Grisha and she always had powers and she simply refused to come to terms with it because of personal reasons.
The first situation is an internal conflict that indicates a story about growth and a journey of self acceptance. Denying herself the opportunity to learn about her heritage and to find acceptance with a group of people like her because she’s tied to the past and because of the way she was raised is the setup for a narrative that tackles unlearning prejudice and learning how to connect with a part of her identity that was denied her and learning how to grow independent and self assured. It’s the setup for a different story entirely. The second situation is an external conflict that centers around the ‘corrupting influence of power’... for some reason.
In a world where Grisha do not have social, political, or economic power and they are hunted, centering your heroine’s journey of self acceptance and growth around an external conflict about... the corrupting influence of power (in a group of people that don’t actually have any power?!) just doesn’t work. It is literally impossible to connect the two stories Bardugo is trying to push in Shadow and Bone without seriously damaging the main character’s developmental arc.
The only way a narrative like this would work, claiming that she has gone back to where she started, is either a) if the Grisha weren’t actually a persecuted group and instead were apart of the upper class, or b) if the one bad connection between the two instances is acknowledged - that Alina denied a part of herself crucial to self acceptance and growing up, and that losing her powers at the end has also denied her. It is a tragedy, not a happy ending.
Alina suffered because she didn’t use her powers. She grew sick. It was bad for her. This was not a resistance to 'the corruption of power and the burden of greed', it was her suffering because she couldn’t fully accept herself.
Framing the ending as a return to the beginning can’t be done if you don’t address how bad the beginning was for your main character. You brought her back to a bad point in her life. You regressed her. This should be a low point in her arc. It should be a problem that’s solved so she can finish developing organically or it should be something that is acknowledged as a tragedy in it’s own right, for the future the world (the writing) denied her.
This is a ramble and it makes no sense and I’m really sorry, but my point is that Bardugo put the wrong characters in the wrong story. The character arc required for organic development doesn’t match the story and intended message at all. The narrative doesn’t fit the cast. She's got two clashing stories attempting to work in tandem and she ends up with both conflicting messages that fans still can’t comprehend in her writing and an ending that doesn’t suit her main character to such an impossible degree that it’s almost laughable.
So yeah, there's a few reasons why I think the story and the plot feels so bad and disconnected. I hope you don't mind me making this answer so long! 😅 I was not expecting to write this much.
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dilfwaynes · 3 years
Note
hi!! can i request a hc of the batfam reaction of their eastasian!reader gf  experiencing racism? thank you <33
just a reminder if you took place in any involvement of asian hate block me rn bitch :)
a/n: i hope you enjoyed this anon, i tried to make it accurate without stepping over any boundaries since im not asian myself. if anyone finds any sort of this offensive pls dm me !!
warning ; racism, batfam beating hoes, mention of blood
parings : bruce wayne x asian!reader, jason tood x asian!reader, dick grayson x asian!reader, stephanie brown x asian!reader, tim drake x asian!reader, damian wayne x asian!reader
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BRUCE WAYNE:
it’ll honestly take a minute for bruce to realize what happened
when first entering the store he took notice of the man glaring but brushed it off thinking it was directed towards him as bruce wayne
you however didnt really pay attention to the dirty looks being thrown at you
with bruce excusing himself to the restroom and makes a promise of a quick return, you wander around the area by yourself
it was all fine until a man approaches you, giving a fast glance at him before turning away. there was definitely something up with him
“you don’t belong here”
your head shot up at his words, looking around you to make sure he was talking to you
“excuse me?” you lift an eyebrow at him, knowing what he was hinting at
“you fucking heard me, you don’t belong here. go back to your country.”
you inch away as he steps closer,”you better back the fuck away..”
he simply gives a smug face only coming closer,”or what?” you tighten your jaw when he loosely lets out a slur, your fists clenched.
“or i dislocate your arm.”bruce’s voice rings out, deep in anger as his eyes flicker to you and scanning to see if you were ok physically.
the ugly bitch’s face pales when he realizes who’s your boyfriend. without hesitation bruce yanks him away from you, slamming him to the wall
demanding for a first and last name,  squeezing his neck when the guy stays quiet
shaking he gives in and tells, flinching when bruce slams him against the wall one last time before dropping him
“i guaranteed whatever poor status you do contain i’ll tear it completely, say goodbye to your job.” he grabs for your hand and brings you into him as you both walk away.
“i’m sorry i shouldn’t have left you alone, my fault,”he presses a kiss to your temple.”and please don’t think any worth of that garbage’s words.”
you shake your head,”he was just some lowlife, not worth thinking about.” you reply leaning into him.
he looked at you and could tell no matter what those words still hurt somewhat and it angered him to no end
no one deserved to hear that disgusting shit, especially not his girlfriend.
his eyes hardens but doesn’t push further to make you anymore uncomfortable than you probably already are
giving another kiss to the side of your head he makes a quiet promise to himself not to leave you alone anymore in public with disgusting people like that around
jason todd:
as soon as the slur leaves the guy’s lips jason’s fist collides to his jaw, no doubt   shattering it
you and jason were grabbing lunch at some restaurant slash bar since it was the first time in a few days jason was free
everything was okay until you got up to go to the bathroom and some guy bumped into you
jason watched with hardening eyes as you apologize instead of the guy who slammed into you
“watch where the fuck you’re going at.”
you fall shock at the word, staying in place
while jason is on his feet in no time, swinging to the asshole’s face
screams were heard as well as the sound of bones breaking from his fist impact, the guy stumbling to the floor
“you racist fucking prick that’s my girlfriend you ugly fuck,”lifting him by his shirt he grabs his face and turns him to you.”apologize to her before i break your fucking face.”
he quickly rambles apologizes, crying in fear or pain. most likely a mix of both
jaaon lets him go and gives him another punch, this time to the nose. finding satisfaction at the pool of blood now seeping out
jason grabs your hand and starts to lead you outside,”let’s go eat somewhere else and forget about this shithole.”
you barely had time to give a reaction to anything as everything happened so fast
“hey look at me, don’t listen to that worthless fuck and his fucked up mindset. i dont know what to say to comfort you since i never experienced anything like this.” he stops at the car, placing his hands onto your shoulders
you nod sighing lightly, you only wanted a simple lunch with your boyfriend but instead got hate crime for simply  breathing.
“it’s nothing i haven’t gone through before,”he shakes his head blue eyes filling up with rage.
“no one’s gonna be doing that anymore, or at least getting away with it while i’m around
DICK GRAYSON:
he was completely taken by surmise at the slur being thrown at you, as well as the fault of you being the root of the covid 19
but before he had any time to react you were already on your feet glaring,”the fuck you just called me you piece shit.”
before he could reply you already kneed him and punched him between the eyes, dick laughing at the cries of pain
“you want me to take over or you wanna handle it babe?”
even how badly he wanted to beat the shit out of the pos the choice was yours
you denied and wanted to handle this on your own
but everytime the guy tried to get up dick would just shake his head and tell him to stay down, or simply push him back down
eventually if you start going too far richards would pull you away and tell you hes not worth it
he understands your anger but he doesn’t want you to past a line you won’t recover from bc of some worthless grime
“c’mon, he’s not worth anymore of our time. lets go eat pizza.”
DAMIAN WAYNE:
swing first talk later
he’ll just look at guy for a few seconds with a blank face
then he’s literally knocking them out
will probably kick him into the wall or ground
u dont know if you wanna pull him away because you already the tabloids, or if you wanna let him continue to beating the guy
damian probably wouldn’t realize how much he beat the guy to a pulp until you’re tugging him away
nudging his neck with to your nose to try and calm him down
he’ll end the fight with spitting on him tbh
your face reddens with anger when your eyes met the racist bitch, enjoying the view of his blood on the floor
“racist piece of shit,” he hisses before finally turning his back brow still frowning with anger
unlike the others (mentioned) he also knows and experienced racism and understands your point view way more
and know bow to comfort you better tbh
afterwards he’ll talk to you and comfort you, as well as opening up about his racist encounters, as well as his mothers.
if you’re still upset about what happened some hours later he 100% offers to beat up the guy again
you laugh it off cos hes serious about doing detective work, finding the guy and beating him to a pulp
you thank him but deny his offer and settle to confiding into him and just telling him how your feelings
STEPHANIE BROWN:
“are you fucking serious right now bitch?”
steph deadpans staring at the girl who called you the slur with ease, going on about how you were the cause of corona and to go back to your country
shocked at the words, hearing all of this before but it still doesn’t fail everytime you hear them
turning to you and seeing the hurt on your face from the word, she quickly turns to seeing red
without a second thought she grabs the collar of the woman’s shirt
“you’re gonna fucking apologize to my girlfriend right now or i’m gonna slam your face into the floor and break it
you stay still, pleased at watching the girl shake in fear under steph as she chokes out a mesh of a shit rushed apologizes
stephanie throws her down to the ground after her third apologize
“are you okay?” she knew you weren’t but asking the question would lead into the stage of comforting you
you nod but go on to tell her that this isn’t the first or last time this will happen, but it still never fails to shock you
she frowns at your experiences and doesn’t quite know what to do to help since she never went thru anything like that
she offers to take you to your favorite restaurant and end the day in wayne manor watching whatever you wanted
smiling when you accept, pulling you in her and pressing a kiss on-top of your head
“dont worry i’ll beat any jackass that pulls any racist shit.”
TIM DRAKE:
i think he’ll be the less  violent one out of everyone
he would honestly be so disgusted and gross out at humanity and how the woman thinks shes superior just because she’s white
if it was a guy saying what was said, then he would probably hit them ngl
but he takes the higher road with the woman, belittling and ending her with his vocabulary
and you’re pretty sure that his words hurt her more than an actual punch would 
you laugh when he compares her built to a buffalo
he then goes on to a more education lean, explaining how skin tone has nothing to do with a person, and she should adapt to modern times and stop being a racist cunt
after he ends it he goes on to find out who she is and email/call her workplace to inform what kind of employee they have
probably also goes on to make sure she wont be hired anywhere else
comforts you alot and and will get you anything you want
prob gets you both milkshakes as you vent to him about today and other racist things said to you
hates how you have to go thru any of this for simply existing
the  incident opens his eyes and he starts talking to bruce about opening a charity for ‘stop asian hate’
would shy away from the press and say you both came up with the fund
u’ll dismiss that rq and tell everyone it was all tim’s idea
all the money goes people got assaulted and paying for any hospital bills or anything needed
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shelobussy · 3 years
Note
I know you talk abou st*cky in the interracial ships stuff, but can we talk about st*ny? Iron husbands is literally right there, but I also always sees Rhodey as Tonys moral support only. And ik Tony is very shippable with most characters, but the fact his ship is Rhodey is one of the lowest ships in ao3 (ironstrange, winteriron and god forbid stark*r all had more fics in ao3).. It's pretty telling this side also has racism problems...
I'll go ahead and answer this here, but letting y'all know that I do have a marvel sideblog if you want to hit me up there (@themarvelarchives).
Hey, I'm going to ramble for a good minute.
So after I posted my very incoherent, controversial take on St*cky vs SamBucky, there were a ton of ppl who came onto anon saying that St*cky shippers were racist. I think I only answered a few, but y'all were pretty insistent on it. I personally have not observed that St*cky shippers are so I'm not calling anyone out on that side of the fandom for that.
I also did not call out anyone on this side of the fandom bc that's not what my meta was about. I think I mentioned maybe once or twice in the whole post that there was underlying racist in the fandom, but since you asked, we can talk about it here.
Covert Bigotry In Fandom Spaces.
To understand what's going on in the MCU, we have to first look at what I call "woke-queer" fandom.
So "Woke-Queer" Spaces is the phenomenon where certain fandom members like to call ppl out on their bigotry, while covertly harboring their own queerphobia/racism/etc. An example of this that we're all familiar with is TERFS and how they like to claim that they are progressive and woke, while also claiming that trans women are fake and trans men are sexist.
How this translates to fandom, however, is the hypocrisy that is cancellation and callout culture.
For example, Supernatural in particular is a fandom that likes to call out the writers on their homophobia and racism, and yet, somehow, the fandom is chalk full of homophobia and racism. If you want to read more about this, here is a truly excellent article from the perspective of a queer woman of color.
Moving on, I've also talked in a previous meta post, on the internalized acephobia that exploded in 2019 after Good Omens was released. Rather than reiterate everything I said in that post, I'll just leave it at this: the controversy in the Good Omens fandom can be summed up by the fact that queer audiences are claiming that Ineffable Husbands is the wrong kind of queer. The hypocrisy oozes off the screen, doesn't it?
A final way this viably translates to fandom, is in how the Doctor Who fandom evolved over time.
So Steven Moffat takes over as head writer and showrunner in 2010. It's a new series, a new Doctor, a new Tardis, and new branding. He steps up the action, changes the color grating, and raises the stakes. Women are sexier, the Doctor is smarter (and more of an asshole, but that's another meta post), and every companion comes with their own impossible mystery that makes them Special™.
Series 5-10 got tons of woke points for having lesbian characters, an episode where the Doctor is homoerotic with James Corden, and an underlying trans narrative with the Master's reincarnation. What a lot of people forget, however, is that his series was incredibly sexiest, incredibly lesbian/biphobic, and basically turned the Doctor into everyone's fantasy sex-object.
This, unfortunately, brought out the worst of the fandom. There was RTD Era vs Moffat Era wars exploding in certain corners, TenxRose shippers vs ElevenxRiver shippers.
What does this have to do with covert racism in fandom cultures though?
Hnnngng ok, so back in RTD era's we get Martha Jones, the Actual Best Companion On The Entire Show. Except for the fact, of course, that she is written to be in love with the doctor. She's a brilliant character--smart, sassy, flawed, funny, flirtatious--and her entire plotline is reduced down to a school-girl crush on a white man.
She doesn't do well with fans, they scrap her after one season.
We move on to Donna Noble (The Other Actual Best Companion On The Entire Show) and RTD's era ends with them scraping her too and regenerating David Tennant's Doctor.
It will be five more series (not seasons, SERIES) until Doctor Who will have another black companion--who gets extra points for being gay--only to fall victim to "bury your gays" at the end of the season (but not really bc no one stays dead on Doctor Who).
The fandom's reception of Martha Jones was historically bad. The comparisons to her predecessor, Rose Tyler, were rampant and everyone was finding a reason to hate her.
The fandom's reception to Bill Potts was also historically bad, as everyone was screaming that she was being written for more "woke points" and that they wanted Clara back.
Fandom has a historically bad reputation of being problematic and, I would argue, the majority of it has to do with these toxic undertones of bigotry that slip under the radar. "Woke-queer" spaces, as I call them, are these instances above where spaces that claim to be inclusive of gender/orientation/race are covertly bigoted.
Marvel and Cancelling
Now is an excellent time to talk about the MCU.
Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson) has recently come under a lot of criticism from fandom members for shutting down shipper speculation.
"The idea of two guys being friends and loving each other in 2021 is a problem because of the exploitation of homosexuality. [...] something as pure and beautiful as homosexuality has been exploited by people who are trying to rationalize themselves."
I can't find the rest of the quote, but Mackie goes on further to say that it was important to him to portray "a sensitive, masculine figure" without insinuating that there was romance involved.
Woke culture lost it's shit. Everyone was suddenly claiming that Mackie was calling them exploitative for shipping a gay ship as a queer audience, which could not have been further from the case.
Mackie actually makes some very excellent points in that sensitivity is not gay/queer. Woke culture loves to rag on Toxic Masculinity, but the minute someone plays a character who is loving and sensitive with no queer narrative in mind, they are immediately canceled.
What Am I On About
Okay, let's actually address what your ask was about, Nonnie. You pointed out--rather truthfully--that it is unfair to call-out racism on one side of the fandom, while ignoring it on the other side.
Well, I've gone back through my St*cky vs. SamBucky analysis (which is incoherent at best, I apologize for that) and I see maybe once instance where I called out fandom members for being racist. Here's what I had to say about racism:
"[...] Iron Husbands is a rarepair, probably because it’s an interracial ship."
"[there is] nothing wrong with shipping two white men, but it does become a problem when you ignore/bash POC/interracial ships to the determinant of your own white ship."
And then there was the post you brought up where I addressed interracial ships in the fandom. That one is probably more relevant to this topic, to be honest, as I actually addressed fandom racism there. I assume that your reason for bringing up Stony is because it's a ship that is more relevant to my side of the fandom, HOWEVER, the reason I highlighted Stucky instead was because I was comparing the fact that they've both been around the same amount of time and are relationships that feature the protagonist and their best friend.
You brought up St*ny in the ask, however, so I'm going to talk about St*ny for a minute.
As someone who never has nor will ship St*ny, it never even occurred to me that some of the problem behind the Iron Husbands tag being so small is because everyone ships the white, boring ship. You brought up a very valid point, but because I was never in that part of the fandom, I can't really speak to any possible underlying racism there, besides what I've already said above.
I would be interested in hearing a St*ony shipper or ex-St*ony shippers thought on this, but sadly I don't know any. If you have any more thoughts regarding this, Nonnie, pls drop back into my inbox.
You do make some excellent points in this ask though, and I would like to talk about racism on my side of the fandom.
So back to Mackie and his Twitter cancellation. Notice that Disney made him address the rumors and not his co-star, Sebastian Stan. Anthony Mackie is put on blast and made to answer fan demands and receives backlash, while Sebastian Stan gets to fly under the rader. This is not, by the way, a criticism of Stan, but instead of the blatant racism Disney has been displaying over the past few years.
How this ties in with the rest of my post has to do with my "woke-queer" spaces bit. The outcry across the MCU fandom over Mackie was swift and unforgiving. He was cancelled on charges of homophobia and bigotry--all the while these same fans turn a blind eye to any queer interpretation of other interracial ships and discourse in their own fandom.
The racism that I'm speaking about, of course, is an almost passive racism. Of course if you don't ship a specific ship for reasons other than their race, it's perfectly fine. It's okay not to ship Iron Husbands or SamBucky or any other interracial fandom ships. However, the distinct lack of shippers in the fandom IS telling because there are people who would ship that exact ship if not for the fact that one of men is black.
I don't have much more to say about this except to thank you for bringing it up and for listening to my long rambling post.
(Feel free to bug me about Tony Stark, MCU ships, MCU Meta and anything you want to talk me about on this blog and @themarvelarchives.)
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seancekitsch · 3 years
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Out of the Rain: a Marko x Reader fic
Warnings: bloodplay goes without saying bc vamp, rough sex, dirty talk, semi public sex, telepathy?? me projecting my music taste on this fic again. drug use, fast and loose use of vampire lore bc when i write i am god and u cannot stop me. also can u tell i have like…. v clear descriptions of the setting like i used to work at the place im describing but its not in california
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No one had come in for hours. What's the point of staying open? You dim some of the lights in the store, which is one of three head shops in Santa Carla, but the only one open late. You're not really sure why this is the only store that stays open, why everyone else if worried about the three am walk back to their car on a weekend night. You've never seen anything of suspicion, just sometimes that biker gang watches people shuffle out. That was almost comforting, though. People didn't like those guys, so no one would make you use your switchblade if they were around.
The bright while fluorescent lights of your typical daytime ambiance faded away, and now green light bathes you in the “mood” lighting your boss thought was a good idea. The green lighting reflects off of the glass counters, shining it back at the ceiling and making everything that much more green. It fits, you think with the overall vibe of the store. The stale scent of weed, gently and miserably covered up by some nag champa incense, always burning in at least four different spots within the store. You'd long since gotten used to the smoke in your eyes. The music does everything to add to the ambiance. You always have full control of the music in the shop, usually because no one else is willing to take the night shift in Santa Carla. In fact, most of the boardwalk shops had a revolving door of night shift workers. You never got why, something clearly spooks them that does not spook you. Whether that makes you brave or stupid, you dont know. Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow pumps through the speakers in the store. But I suppose no one knows, you're my plastic fantastic lover.
The rain batters the boardwalk outside, a roar much different than the typical hustle and bustle of drunk teens, of the cliques and crews that come in and out; the few that sit and snicker in the doorway, never entering. Some too afraid to be associated with the implication of being spotted in the shop. We sell jewelry and vinyl too, you always say, when they balk at the idea of being in the same room as a bong or incense.
But then there's the other group that stands and idles in the threshold, also not entering. It's that biker gang. Four guys, a girl, a kid. Maybe he’s the brat of the girl and the one who takes himself too seriously, but maybe not. She looks too young for that. They'd been hovering around quite a bit lately, always after dark. You’d spoken to them, at least the ones that are talkative. The hair metal wannabe and the cute short one. Paul and Marko. You knew the dark haired one was Dwayne, but all he ever offered you was a curt nod and a tight lipped smile, respectful but indifferent. They're nice, not worth the spooky reputation they have. Any time it's not just you at the shop, your boss tries to spook them away. Good thing your boss isn't here tonight, because one of them is prowling around the storefront in the rain. That is, if it's not your spliff induced haze playing tricks on you.
No, one of them is out there. Without his little pack. The cute one. Marko.
You walk over to the door, which you haven't had propped open since the rain trickled in as a drizzle at the beginning of your shift. At least he had enough sense to be huddling under the awning. Fuck, he’s handsome even when he looks like a drowned rat.
“What are you doing out here?” You scrunch up your nose as you ask.
“Y’know, waiting for you to show up.” Wanted a look at that cute ass.
You blink at him. Did he really just say that?
“Okay… well, you know it's raining out there, right?”
“I might,” he offers noncommittally, eyeing the spliff still in the hand that's not holding the door. If it were anyone but him, you'd probably get fired for it.
Why is he just hanging around out here? That's hella weird. His curls are getting matted to his forehead, slick with rain, his jacket starting to look a little sad.
“C’mon in, Marko. It’s too wet out here. You’ll fuck up your jacket.” You nod towards the interior of the shop holding the door open as he passes you.
Wrong move, sweet cheeks.
“What did you say?” What did he mean, wrong move?
“I didn't say anything,” he offers nonchalantly as he thumbs at one of the tapestries on the wall. A garish mess that’s supposed to be the worm from Alice in Wonderland, but it’s distorted by a botched tie dye job of dark muddy colors. Every time you look at it, you assume one of the day workers did it.
“No, you said something.”
“Do you want me to say something?” there's both a threat and an innuendo in his tone. Maybe you do, but you just laugh, a sharp exhale through your nose, and bring the spliff to your lips again as he follows you deeper into the store.
You jump up onto the counter next to the ash tray, easy reach for each time you need to ash.
“So why are you really here?” your eyes narrow at him, kicking your sandal off on the floor where it lands a few inches from his boots. He looks uneasy in the space, like for all the wild shit you assume he’s into, he might not actually belong in it. He sways a little to the music, perfectly in tune with the rhythm. You sway along too, and suddenly he fills the space like he belongs. He just needed someone along for the ride with him.
“Do you ever come around during the day, or just at night because I’m so fun?” You’re teasing him, but it’s a nice easy feeling between you.
“Not really a sun guy,” bullshit, he would look beautiful with a tan, “but I do drag everyone here just to see you.”
“Awww, all for me? Do you have a crush, Marko?”
It’s more than that. You hear the words clearly, but his smile doesn’t move. You kick the other sandal off.
“I can hear you, I don’t know how, but I can. I bet you can hear me too.”
I can. You’re wrong about the tan thing.
You straighten up, mind clearing as you blurt out your next question. Something absolutely stupid.
“So what are you, a vampire or something?” he laughs at you, but his big toothy smile doesn't reach his eyes. No, there's something predatory, extremely dark in his eyes. Otherworldly.
How could you guess?  
“Well, that for one big fucking clue.” You ash the spliff for the final time, leaving the roach in the tray. You would think you’d be more surprised, more upset that you just found out vampires were real, and that you were in the same room as one. You have to say, weirder things are probably afoot in Santa Carla. Murder capital of the world can’t all be from some rowdy teens and a ten year old.
“You do those surf nazis?” is all that leaves your mouth. You kind of hope it was. They were the fucking worst. Racist, misogynistic, destructive. You’d had to threaten them a few times to leave your store on your shift.
“The—? Oh! Surf nazis. Yeah that was us. Ate a few of them.”
“Good for you. I mean— murder. bad. But they were nazis, and now they’re dead. so…” you trail off. Not really sure what to say next, but then you keep going. Remember everything you know about Marko.
“No, no I mean, it makes sense. Right? You and the guys only hang around at night. Aren’t vampires solitary hunters though? I don’t remember Dracula being in a frat.”
“They’re my pack. We take care of each other.” He says it with such fondness and devotion.
You feel a pang of jealousy run through you. You work alone for the most part, live alone, you’ve got friends but they’re all over the place. He belongs to something.
“And you're down with this?” he’s legitimately asking. You nod. You don't really have a choice, you're down or you get eaten, but like genuinely you are down with it. If he was going to eat you, he probably would have by now. There's probably a reason they've been hanging around the store, and in your sightline while you close up. You're putting things together.
“Like really?”
“Well, you haven't made me a kebab yet.”
He shrugs, frowns.
“Could still skewer you on something.”
Laughter erupts from your lips while you roll your eyes, music to Marko’s ears. This is why he took a shine to you, it's easy to get along with you, and you're not one of his brothers.
Something heavy falls in the room, and it's not the haze of the incense. He steps towards you, big blue eyes raking over your body, but always coming back to meet your gaze. He closes the space between you, easily fitting between your thighs; the rough patches of his jacket brushing against your bare skin where your shorts ride up. He leans in, like he's about to kiss you, and against all better judgement, you're going to let him.
You're going to let him.
The record skips. He holds out his hand, more like a gentleman than a biker gang killer, and helps you off the counter.
“Hold on, let me pick out a new record,” you turn without waiting for his confirmation, not at all surprised when Marko follows hot on your heels to the back room. Your boss’ office, the record room. Whatever you wanted to call it. His hands ghost over your arms as you push past the wooden bead curtain to enter the room. You can feel his presence close enough to touch. That's it, right where I want you. There’s his voice again.
He lets you actually pick out a new record. You slide it out of the sleeve and walk it over to the player. The static buzzes and pops as the needle finds the groove.
“Ocean Rain, you heard it?” No. He shakes his head, and you can feel it as he leans into your back.
“Echo and the Bunnymen. They've got a new album coming out this year.”
You turn to face him and his fingerless leather glove clad hands cover your cheeks.
He kisses you gently, tenderly. Not at all the way you’d expect. He’s eager, kissing like there’s something to prove. He licks his way into your mouth, tongue pushing your lips apart and you let him. His arms tighten around you as you kiss, tongues now greeting each other playfully. Your tongue explores his mouth, running along each and every tooth in his mouth. Huh, no fangs, you realize, and maybe he isn't actually a vampire. As if he reads your mind (maybe he does), he pulls away.
“They're, uh, hiding,’ he nods, almost to himself more than you. You nod as well, slow and uneasy, not quite believing him, but he pulls you back into a harsh kiss, more of what you expected. His hands roam your body as yours bury themselves in his curls. Still damp, but long and beautiful just as well. He shrugs the jacket off his shoulders, and his hands only briefly leave you to throw it and his gloves somewhere else, leaving him just in a thin white tank top. His mouth leaves yours to trail lower, kissing your neck. Your pulse point. Fucking irresistable. No, that's definitely his voice. Is this the end? Could be.
“I can smell you, hot stuff,” he moans into your ear, sending shivers down your spine. You find yourself gripping onto his shoulders a little tighter, but he lets you sink. He guides you, again more gently than you thought he would; bare knees brushing the threadbare carpet floor before you plant yourself. You look up at him through your lashes and he all but bites back a groan.
“You gonna join me down here?” You lick your lips, waiting for something.
“Nah, I’m gonna let you have a head start,” there's a joke in his tone. You're learning that’s normal for him. He’s silent, or playing jester. It’ll be interesting when you let him fuck you. Shit, did he hear that?
“Quit thinkin’ so loud!” he runs an affectionate hand through your hair. “But yes, I heard you. Glad you're as eager as I am.”
That's encouraging. You take your time undoing his belt, connected to faded and soft leather chaps, not bothering to push them down his thighs before you move to the top of his jeans, teasing your fingers at the skin just above the waistline. He shudders under your touch, extremely reactive. Does he get touched like this often? Or is it just quick fucks? You don't want to think about who else he might be doing this with, focusing again on his body, and all of the offending clothing covering it. You unbutton them slowly, teasing. For a member of the undead, he seems to be out of breath under your movements. The zipper is pulled down just as slowly. You run your palms flat along the bottom of his stomach, to his hips before pushing his jeans down to around his ankles, hooking his boxers on your finger along with them. He’s beautiful, and you can help but stare. Hard, eager, and thick, greeting you with a small trimmed patch of golden blonde curls. You wrap your hand around the base.
You never expected a vampire to whimper, but that's exactly what happens when your tongue darts out of your mouth to lick the head of his cock. Quick, tentative little lick, testing the waters. Your tongue swipes across the slit at the tip of his thick member and his hands animate like you flipped a switch, rising up, going to your hair, rising up again, slamming down against the desk. Your boss’ desk. You lick a long stripe to the underside of his cock, paying close attention to the prominent vein there.
“So good, so good, oh you feel so-” he pants out, hands white knuckling the edge of the desk. Heat pools in your core, loving that he’s so vocal. Fuck, if he could just keep speaking. Your other hand moves to your shorts, sloppily and hastily undoing them and wiggling them down to your knees. You wrap your lips around the head of his cock and sink down on it, taking him as far as you can, until you couch when he hits the back of your throat.
“You look fucking beautiful like that. Please move, Please move, you’re so fucking good at this.”
You do, starting to bob your head up and down on the length of him, hollowing out your cheeks and flattening your tongue against him, cupping and massaging his balls in your hand. Your free finds itself between your legs, rubbing gently at your clit, stirred and encouraged by his praise.
“Does sucking me off get you hot and bothered?” Yesitdoes.
You keep bobbing your head, rubbing your clit, eyes trained on his until his eyes squeeze shut. His cock twitches in your mouth.
“Don't wanna- don't wanna finish in your mouth,” he’s urgent, grabbing you by the chin and pulling your mouth off of his cock. He pushes you back by your shoulders, letting you guide yourself back to lay on the rug. He pulls your loose shorts easily off your legs and settles himself between your legs, too eager to bother with removing his boots and everything.
“I’ve been wanting to do this for so long. Do you know how bad I wanted this?”
“Fuck me, Marko, dont say it. Just do it,” youre breathless under him, wanting nothing more than for him to be fucking you. He pauses.
“I dunno…” his thumb swipes up along your clit, drawing a whine from your throat, “For some reason I think you like it when I say things.”
You nod, knowing words will fail you. And he gives you what you want, lining himself up and sinking into you, groaning as he buries his head into the crook of your neck.
“Oh I knew your pussy would feel like fucking heaven,” he pants against your neck, pressing a harsh kiss to the underside of your jaw. He sets the pace quickly, unmerciful and fast, fucking hard and deep into you. His hands push up your thin tee shirt, and you can feel his sigh of relief when he gets a handful of bare breast. He doesn't have to deal with a bra tonight. You hike your knees up, opening yourself as much as you can to him, wanting him to fill you to the brim. He looks into your eyes while he fucks you, which comes as a surprise to you. Maybe it shouldn't. You wonder what it would be like to be a victim of his. Does he treat them well? Have fun with them like this? Or is he vicious? You don't know if you could picture him like that… vamped out.
“What does it feel like?”
“What?” he thrusts sharply, snapping his hips into you, making you yelp.
“To be fed on, but not to die.”
Are you serious? You hear him in your head.
YesIam. He thrusts like that again, earning an identical yelp, now coupled with your thighs squeezing him around the middle. You're close already, and he can tell.
He nods, a question; You nod, confirmation.
He pulls at the neckline of your shirt, already scooping so it doesn’t ruin, and exposes your shoulder. Somewhere non lethal. His other hand comes up to grip your jaw, covering your neck but being careful not to squeeze it. You hope he bruises your jaw, you realize. A physical way to feel him when dawn comes. He slows his pace to a rocking, grinding into you, staying deep.
Then he bites. Stars erupt behind your eyes, and it feels like your blood has turned to seltzer. Every nerve in your body is in overdrive as you moan and shake and come undone around his cock. You're the kind of girl that comes from the bite of a vampire, apparently. He doesn’t let up. You can faintly hear him moaning against the open wound in your shoulder, and you hope you taste good to him. He licks the wound a few times more, softly, carefully, like he’s trying to soothe you when he finally lets you come down from your high.
When he pulls back to let you see him, his features are gruesome, full vampire with sharp brows and cheekbones, pointed nose even that much more so almost birdlike. Fangs and bottom half of his face covered in blood.Your blood.  He’s panting like an animal after the kill. But he doesn't scare you. Maybe he should, but he doesn't.  It's just Marko, no matter what, and if he wanted to eat you he would have. Several times now. His hand finally releases your jaw, to wipe the blood from his face. He wipes his hand then on your face, covering you in your own blood, hot on his fingers and palm.
“Fuckin sexy,” he pants, voice deeper and distorted. His thrusts speed up, trying to find his own release as your nails dig into his back, maybe making him bleed as well. You feel the rug burn forming on your back, you feel tears in your eyes. It's never felt this good with other guys.
When he comes, he comes with a howl, buried deep inside you as he shouts and shivers then stills above you. Your chest is heaving, trying to regain yourself as his face slowly fades to normal, and he slumps down on top of you. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, near the wound he tore open, now no longer bleeding. He mouths at any bare skin he can find, lazy half kisses as he spreads more mess and blood on you. Your fingers find his curls again, winding them around your digits as you stare up at the sickly green mood lighting bathing the walls of the room.
An hour later, Marko is helping you lock up early.
He makes sure to dump out all of the ashes from spliffs and incense, makes sure the vinyl is all in its right place while you make sure the register and inventory is all in its rightful place and order.
“You’re dangerous, you know.”
“Me?” you scoff, “That rich, coming from you.”
I’d do a lot of things I’m not supposed to for you. You kinda don't want to ask him what he means by that. For some reason that feels like a conversation you shouldn't have tonight. 
He leaves the store before you, holding the door open for you and letting you lock the doors. He slings an easy arm over your shoulder, not bothering to shield either of you from the rain as he steers you towards your car. You can feel the rain cleaning your face, the blood flowing away and saving you the shower you were going to take before collapsing into bed tonight.
“Where’s your bike?”
“I flew here,” he says with that devilish smile, and you're really not sure if he's joking or not. Your arm sneaks its way into his jacket and wraps around his waist, holding him close as he makes sure you get home same. Marko makes you feel calm, in a way you didn't feel before you moved to Santa Carla. How long had he been waiting to make his move? And does this mean he and his brothers would be coming around more often? Maybe being more friendly towards you. Each step towards your car feels heavy; You don't want to go home alone without him, but somehow you know he won't come with you. 
“Will I see you again?”
He grabs your car keys from your hand, and sticks them in the door handle. Of course you will.
Right. You just have to be near the beach at night. You know, where you work.
He kisses you full on the mouth, holding you close and tight, like you could slip away at any second. When he finally lets you go you pull away to be met with his face, full on grinning, his eyes still closed from the kiss. He doesn't look like a killer.
Marko watches you as you pull open the door to your car and more or less throw your ass into the seat.  He holds the door as he gives you one last smile, and says:
“You know, you should never invite a vampire into your life. Renders you powerless.”
And he winks. 
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extravaguk · 3 years
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santa&prada
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part of my opposites attract! series. 
ksj / knj / myg / jhs / kth / jjk
pairing: rich!jimin x reader
summary: Yeah, Park Jimin most likely didn't even realize he was being a rude and disrespectful son of a bitch.
wordcount: 5k
genre: smut - angst(? - fluff (? idk u tell me
rated: m 
warnings: a christmas fic in late november, cursing, a huge misunderstanding lmao, i call jimin ‘park jimin’ too many times bc i felt like it, car sex, oral (f recieving), some good ole spanking, (kinda) rough and unprotected sex, a lil of dirty talk, spit kink. thats about it. just an excuse to write jimin fucking you in a car. jimin is not as bad as oc thinks srsly.
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The first time you meet Park Jimin is through mutual friends. On a firday night on December, with white, red and green lights decorating the streets of New York, filled with the typical hustle of the masses doing last minute Christmas shopping, the freezing weather impacting your body temperature, cursing yourself for choosing tights, a skirt and heeled boots that are too pretty but too uncomfortable to wear.
You had never considered yourself a particular enthusiast of Christmas festivities. You guess discovering Santa Claus was, actually, your parents before the rest of the kids in your class was one of the many reasons that made you grow up too soon and therefore, not allowing you to fully enjoy the month of December. Or maybe it had nothing to do with Santa, and more to do with your parents deciding to get a divorce a day before Christmas Eve. A traumatic event for seven year old you, but completely forgotten and overcome by twenty-four year old present you.
Growing up each Christmas suffering the consecuences of a shared custody would have probably had a disastrous effect on anybody else, but not you. Although the separation was a tough reality to accept at first, fortunately your parents were always capable of raising you in an environment full of love and affection, just like any other kid. And you prided yourself on having moved on from those circumstances a long time ago (even if your therapist disagreed and blamed many of your behaviors on it. Whatever.)
To put it simply, December was just not the month for you. It was just another month, like the remaining eleven of the year, except Mariah Carey's voice was heard every five minutes everywhere you'd go and people gave each other presents as if it was only during that time of the year when they remembered their loved ones. 
The only thing you could thank Christmas for were the well deserved two weeks of holidays our work allowed until the new year's arrival. Fifteen days of rest, peace and baking those gingerbread cookies that Seokjin died for and that you sincerely denoted as nauseating.
You truly had no idea what exactly you did wrong that night. You don't know if it was something you said, or something you did, but what you did know was that Park Jimin pursued a silent and personal vendetta against you that continued nowadays.
"Here are your disgusting cookies, you filthy animal." it might have been that very first sentence you said when you entered the bar and reunited with your friends that didn't cause a good impression. "Shit, it's cold as fuck. My nipples are harder than my life." or maybe it was your selection of words while you waved every familiar face hello until you stopped to look at the only (pretty. too pretty, as well) one you had never seen before.
"_____, it's Chrismtas! Santa Clause will only bring you a lump of coal if you keep cursing like that!" Lisa laughed while she kissed your cheek and made space for you to sit next to her. "Oh, by the way, this is Jimin. A friend of Namjoon. He's a newbie!"
Park Jimin was stunning, you had no trouble admitting that. You weren't blind, you weren't stupid, and you could go as far as theorize that his dark eyes, his light and always immaculate styled hair, his sharp jawline and those plump lips as red as cherries must have been sculpted by Satan himself.
Fuck, you were even sure you'd be on your knees in front of Park Jimin in an alternative universe begging for his dick inside your mouth. But in the universe where you and the real Park Jimin reside, he would never come near you unless somebody was aiming a gun into his skull.
You're not precisely sure what it was, but a brief exchange of glances and an evasive and sligh shake of hands with Park Jimin was enough to make you feel ashamed and withdrawn for the rest of the night.
If Jimin wasn't even able to drop a polite "Nice to meet you", he sure as hell wasn't able to pretend you even existed.
Even the small talk you had tried to engaged with him about his shiny pair of shoes went terribly wrong.
"Oh, are those Dolce and Gabbana?"
"Dolce and Gabbana are homphobic, racist and sexist, so no" the grimace on his face should've been enough to make you regret speaking to him in the first place , but the snarky voice of his made you want to run away and hide from him until next Christmas.
In reality, you swore you didn't care. Seriously. Other's opinions were never something that could easily bother you or keep you awake at night. You had always turned a deaf ear to the cruel children that made fun of you due to your parent's divorce, you had always ignored the amount of men that never considered you "ladylike" enough (what the fuck did that even mean, anyway? what exactly made a lady and what didn't?), and you had always disregarded any envous comment surrounding you.
So, fuck Park Jimin! You had said to yourself. He's just a well mannered rich boy. Somebody who didn't resemble you in any aspect. A stupid, pretentious, spoiled boy who's had everything he's ever wanted in the palm of his hand, unlike you. Who the fuck cares what Park Jimin thinks? 
But apparently, you did. 
You would have never placed such importance to whatever it was that roamed inside Jimin's head if his appearances in your group of friends hadn't been so recurrent.
Because each time you were forced to see Jimin's face, you were also forced to experience a strange knot of discomfort and humilliation growing in your stomach in his mere presence. It's not like Jimin did anything specific to make you feel that way. He might not even do it on purpose, or his intentions might not be entirely evil. Maybe he simply didn't realize how he always avoided being by your side like the plague, or how his body immediately tensed and he balled his hands into fists everytime you were less than two feet away from him, or how he would look at you from the corner of his eye everytime you decided you speak, almost as if he was waiting for you to shut up to finally let out the air he was containing inside his lungs in relief.
Yeah, Park Jimin most likely didn't even realize he was being a rude and disrespectful son of a bitch.
And with time, you couldn't help but attribute that disdain and hostility that Park Jimin always directed at you to the many undeniable differences that constituted each of you. Park Jimin, with his impeccable and always well ironed Prada shirts, his spotless trousers, jewelry that probably costed more than three of your annual salaries, and always emanating that Givenchy fragance that screamed "wealth!" every rare occasion you could experiment his presence next to you. Exactly two years after that first meeting with Park Jimin, you hadn't been able to avoid reciprocating that feeling of contempt towards him. Not when you were the only victim of his arrogance. Everybody loved Park Jimin, and Park Jimin loved everyone. 
Except you.
Clinging to your glass of Don Pérignon and finishing the rest of the liquid in one go, you try to snap out of your own thoughts, reminding yourself to return to the conversation you're currently having with Taehyung about a pretty waitress that he's met during one of his art exhibitions (or at least that's what you think you caught him say) and forcing yourself by all means to stop observing the friendly and kind smiles that Park Jimin was shooting to those present from across the room and that you will never be able to achieve. 
"_____? Are you even listening to me, darling?" Taehyung's voice is what makes you finally look away from the dumb blond standing on the opposite side of the room, blinking a few times before clearing your throat. 
"Sorry, Tae." letting out a sigh, you try to brush back and put in place the strand of hair that escaped the intricate hairdo you had tried and so miserably failed to do yourself to try to fit in and hopefully impress such environment of preppy and privilaged people (ahem, Park Jimin)  falling on your forehead as best as you can. "Just been really stressed this week and I'm on another planet. You know how I feel about Christmas. I think I need a new flute of . Or five."
Taehyung sends you a look full of empathy and places one of his hands in your shoulder, squeezing lightly in a comforting way. "I'll get you another one. I'll be right back." You quickly interrupt him though, to prevent him from standing up before you.
"No, really. I'll go. I need some fresh air anyways, if you don't mind." And of course Taehyung doesn't mind, so you get on your feet as graceously as your tipsy state allowed you to (who told you it was a good idea to drink three glasses in less than thirty minutes of the extremely expensive champagne Taehyung had brought to the Christmas party he had organized and why did it convince you it would appease your anxiey?) and make your way towards the table where the rest of the bottles are. A table dangerously close to the conversation Jimin and that friend of Lisa (whose name you don't remember) were having.
Both are with their backs turned and, honestly, you take a silent moment to thank God or whatever is up there because the last thing you need right now is yet another awkward interaction with Jimin, so you try as best as you can to refill your glass of champagne to get out of there as soon as possible, praying to make your exit going unnoticed.
But no. Because the stars and the universe loved to align to make you suffer! They love to play with your karma and they love making you damn that one day you didn't help that lady cross the street. They love making you regret buying those plastic straws. They love making you feel guilty for hacking your neighbour's Wifi when you run out of money to pay for yours. Because the moment you try to take a hold of the bottle in your hands, it slips out of your grasp, and you're watching in slow motion how the sparkling berverage ends up spilling all over the extremely expensive (or so you assume. Balenciaga maybe) suit pants Park Jimin decided to wear that night.
Everything is kind of blurry and you can't even hear anything. You can only watch as Park Jimin turns around, lips parted and eyebrows furrowed, until his eyes find you, the bane of his existance and immediately recognizing the culprit of his now drenched piece of clothing. And you can watch as, once again, his gaze turns almost black and narrow lightly as to reprimend you for what you've caused. But of course he doesn't say a word. He has nothing to say. He doesn't even look surprised. No. Because obviously, Park Jimin knew that if there was somebody in this room willing to ruin his night, it would be you, and only you.
"Shit!" you're the first one to break the strained silence, but that only makes Jimin flinch. "Shit, shit, shit. I'm so fucking dumb! J-Jimin, I'm so sorry, let me just go grab a paper tow-"
"Don't." his voice cuts through you. Literally cuts through you. Because it's not often that Park Jimin decides to aim his words at you, but everytime he does it holds the same frigid tone. Like knives trying to painfully stab your being. "Just, don't."
In reality, you don't know a lot of things and you don't know what causes what happens next. You don't know if it's the specific time of the year, you don't know if it's your internal stress, or if it's Park Jimin, his voice, or the fact that he will never like you. But it's instant. They way something compresses your chest, and suddenly your eyes are not glaced by the alcohol but by something wet that threatens to flow. You would never admit to anyone they're tears.
So, shutting your mouth and swallowing the uncomfortable feeling of anguish in your throat, leaving your flute forgotten on the table and grabbing the bottle instead. Without saying a word, your feet start moving up the stairs of the ridiculously enourmous house Taehyung owns towards the first free and empty balcony you can find. Free of people and free of Park Jimin.
Closing the large window behind you, you allow yourself to close your eyes and take a deep breath; the icy temperature outside immediately welcoming you. Although the hairs on your arm stand up and you know you're probably going to catch a cold (because the dress you've chosen for the dinner is not at all appropiate for such winter climate), at least the tension in your body seems to disappear while oxygen keeps that ugly feeling in your heart at bay from continuing to choke you.
With shaky hands, you take a big gulp straight from the champagne bottle. Fuck Park Jimin. No man will ever have the power to make you feel what you're feeling right now.  Fuck Park Jimin. And fuck his beautiful face and his ability to make you tremble and fear looking like an idiot. Fuck his fancy clothes and his perfect manicured hands and his marvelous but frigthening presence. 
Knock knock.
The sound makes you jump back from the window, hand grasping your chest while you turn around, coming face to face with the man in question.  Your first instinct is to ignore him. But that thought is already out of the way when it's him the one who struggles with the window lock before opening and taking a step towards you. You step back as he steps in, raising your head up high and puffing your chest. Because your second instinct is to tell Park Jimin to go fuck himself.
"_____, I would like to-"
"You would like to what?" Jimin looks taken aback at your harshness. Alcohol has always been a weapon of mass destruction in your system, provoking words to flow too easily and without filter out of your mouth, more than they already do when you're sober. Especially when it's mixed with the frustration you've been harboring inside of you for two years. That's why when the words start to come out, they won't stop. "To make me feel like shit one more time? To look at me with that fucking conceited face trying to make me feel like you're better than me? Or would you like to ignore me once again as you always do everytime we're in the same fucking room to make sure I know you hate my mere existance, even if it's just the two of us right now?"
The steam leaving your lips due to the accelerated beat of your heart blurs his face for an instant while he looks at you dumbfounded. The silence and his expression makes you scoff, an acidic smile adorning your face while you take another sip of your drink because even with such a stupid face, he still looks delectable with his white shirt and ruined pants. You turn around, removing a tear that you hadn't even realized had fallen during your speech and that, frankly, you were hoping he hadn't either. You would blame it on the cold, anyway.
This time, a gust of wind running through you from head to toe, making you forget of Park Jimin's presence looming behind you, reminding you it's still December and the fabric of your dress is doing nothing to conceal you from the cold.
But before you can do anything about it and blame yourself for being dumb and not taking your coat with you before deciding to step into balcony, Park Jimin surprises you once again, this time by placing his navy blue blazer over the naked skin of your arms.
Your back straightens when you feel his warm breath caressing the back of your neck, at the same time that a voice you have never heard Park Jimin use with you echoes in your ears.
"I really don't hate you, _____. I..." Jimin wets his lips. His body trembles, but it's not due to lacking his own coat, while his brain hurriedly searches for words eloquent and adequate enough to explain voice his thoughts. "I like you very much, _____."
Scoffing again while you shake your head, you push down with all your inner strenght the incipent fluttering of butterflies in your stomach that Jimin has managed to cause in just a matter of seconds. It's probably the longest sentence you've heard from him in two years, and you don't exactly understand why your body is reacting the way it is. But you're also not willing to give Park Jimin the satisfaction of knowing that. He doesn't deserve it anyway. So with all the courage you can muster, you turn around with your hands clenching.
And even though being at such short distance from Jimin is a bit overwhelming and unexpected for you, the irritation still making your blood bubble is enough to not let a man as handsome as him derail you from your current circumstances.
"Well, fuck you Park Jimin. You certainly have a funny fucking way to sh-" his hands cradling your jaw that pull you closer to him and his lips that silent you roughly, but with surprising care. Only for a moment. A moment in which your body betrays you and make you melt into hir warmth. But his voice, low and sinfully husky, murmurs against your lips. 
"God, that mouth of yours..." he goes back to attacking your own lips, this time more firm than before, snatching a sigh from you. The sound has his tongue asking for permission into your mouth, and with your body betraying you once again, you part your lips to allow him in. It's him who whimpers this time, while one of his hand moving until it reaches the bottle in your hand and letting it drop carelessly onto the floor, ignoring the sound of glass shattering and the future scolding you'll get from Taehyung. Instead, he sneaks that same hand on your waist, pulling your body flush against his, fingers digging onto your skin. "It's been driving me crazy for two years. Two years, _____."
He mumbles between kisses and swipes his tongue against yours, while he stars walking the both of you until your back meets the nearest concrete wall. 
"Two years of having to hear the incessant filthy words that leave your mouth..." his own stop their movements and you catch yourself before begging him to reattaching his lips to yours, enjoying instead the path of wet kisses and bruises his lips traile from your chin to the pulse of your neck "...and trying my best to hide the painful boners I get whenever you're nearby." 
With your eyes shut, your hands are back in motion, ignoring the voice in your head reminding you he's still an asshole and finding their way between Jimin's soft golden strands of hair. He hums in appreciation, sending goosebumps all over your body. "So, s-so why not do anything about it sooner?" you say, suddenly finding it difficult to breathe properly.
You feel Jimin's body tensing before you and he ceases the movement of his lips against your neck. Breaking away, your heart stops, afraid you might have ruined the moment. But Jimin's in search of your eyes, eyebrows very lighlty raised, the intensity of his gaze pinning you in place. You don't know for how long you stare at each other until Jimin comes out of the trance, eyes descending over your flushed cheeks, the very same color as your lips and the soft flesh of your neck until they reach your cleavage, the glimmering fabric encasing your breasts, taunting him the same way they had been doing all night long.
"You scare me so much..." and then, one of his hands repeats the same journey his eyes just did, until he touches your shoulder, right under his own blazer. "Everytime I look at you, all I can think of why the hell a girl as real as you like you would even glance my way." he slides the strap of your dress slowly tentatively, just enough for you to stop his advances if you chose so. You don't. "You're smart in ways I could never compare, so funny it makes me jealous, and so pretty it leaves me speechless. You're...You're everything I'm not."
His voice resonates in the atmosphere, and you would love to blame it on the cold again for how your body has reacted, but your body heat has increased so much since he started kissing you that it would be stupid not to admit that it's just the effect that Park Jimin has on you tonight. You're sure he would've had the same effect if it had happened before.
Your now uncovered breast doesn't even has to suffer the consequences of the icy wind, because one of Jimin's arms quickly comes around you to hold your body against his, lifting you ever so slighty until your erect nipple is at the same level as his mouth and his lips are enveloping it in their warmth. You gasp his name, and that encourages his teeth to tug softly before his tongue stars moving in circes. 
"My God, you're so perfect." Your head spins while you hold onto his shoulders as tight as you can, the undeniable heat roaming all over your form, hips involuntarily rutting his incipent erection poking your abdomen. "Been thinking about this since that night we first met." Looking for relief, Jimin mirrors your movements without ceasing the administrations on your chest, as one of his hands lifts one of your thighs to wrap around his waist, closing the short gap remaining between the both of you. 
"Ohmygod! F-fuck, Jimin," trying to form coherent phrases is almost impossible, not with Jimin finding a slow and tortuous rythm with his hips, his clothed cock rubbing against your core. Something shifts in the air, because Jimin stops abusing your nipple with a loud pop, and shuts you up by pressing his mouth onto yours in an urgent, dirty and desperate kiss. You could almost hear him swearing, while his hand keeps your jaw in place.
"S-stop talking like that, ______." his voice, inaudible, and his face now hiding in the crook of your neck, the thrusting of his hips speeding up, more and more frantic this time. The hand not holding your thigh against his hipbone reveals your other breast, hand covering it and giving it a light squeeze before tugging at your unattended nipple between his forefinger and his thumb while his tongue and teeth mark the skin on your neck. 
"Hell, I've been dying to stuff your mouth with my cock to prevent you from such foul language," the soft whimpers leacving your mouth coax him into taking the hem of your dress and bunching the fabric until his fingers easily find the place in your body calling to him the most through the lace.  It's immediate, how his fingers dampen at the first touch, surprising the both of you, and how your body jolts and an embarrassing sob escapes your throat. "How-how are you this wet? Holy hell, I could just slide right in..."
And as he says that, one of his fingers pull aside the fabric of your underwear and glide into you, so easy. You insides burning while he fingers you, another finger being added with his thumb rubbing circles on your nub. And fuck, you're not sure if you're just too horny and Park Jimin is a magician with his hands, or maybe it's the way he keeps mouthing at your chest and whispering how soaked you are, but you don't think you've ever been so close to cumming in such a short period of time.
"W-whats stopping you?" you manage with a voice that doesn't even resembles yours, but before your hands can even make work of the zipper of his trousers, he pulls his finger out from your center, causing you to whine in protest.
Jimin licks his lips, eyebrows framing the dark expression that his eyes ooze. Although the desire in his eyes is more than evident, it is also evident the faint hesitation in them. Because Park Jimin doesn't do things this way. Park Jimin was raised in a world of correct manners and conservationism. A world that has taught him when and how to act. And as badly as he is dying to fuck you against the wall of Taehyung's ridiculously inmense house, he also wants to do the right thing. 
"Let me take you on a date." 
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Park Jimin has been spoiled his whole life. Being born in a well-off family has always provided him of everything he had ever wanted and more. From the innecessary number of toys Santa Claus left under his Christmas tree every year since he was a baby, to his fisrt extravagant sports car at the age of eighteen. Park Jimin has never been a greedy or needy man. How could he, when he's had everything he's ever wished in the palm of his hands. He has never missed anything in his entire life. Hasn't missed a roof over his head, warm food on his plate or brand new designers clothes each week. 
It has taken him two years to control himself. He still remembers that night he first met you, just like he remembers every single time you both had coincided in the same place at the same time. He remembered your scent, had memorized your figure over your pieces of clothing and had tried as best as he could to keep a distance from you because he knew you would never give him the time of day. How could you? You probably despised everything he was because he was definitely nothing like you, and that thought intimidated the fuck out of him. He was a mess everytime you wear nearby. Never relied on his voice because he knew he would stutter if you ever spoke to him, could never trust his eyes because if he ever looked at you he was afraid he wouldn't be able to look away. 
And everytime you spoke, shit, that voice of yours always cursing here and there left him wondering how would you sound in a different setting and if you would still be that badmouthed. More specifically, between his sheets. So he did everything he could to minimize your interactions as much as possible. He just never thought he would come across as such a jerk. It was never his intention to hurt you, and seeing you cry that night (although you denied you did, over and over again) seriously made him realize he wanted to make things right. 
He was trying really, really hard to keep it in his pants, to be the same well composed and controled Park Jimin he had mastered himself to be. 
But that damn dress.
After seeing that little black dress hugging your figure when you started taking off your coat at the restaurant, the brief flash of thigh tights that you accidentaly (or not so accidentally) had blessed him with by crossing a leg over the other, that exposed collarbone calling his name and those heeled sandals with straps wrapping around your ankles, reminding him of the snake tempting Eve, Park Jimin was sure he needed to dig into that apple more than anything he has ever needed before.
That's why he surprises you right after you both finish the second course meal by telling the waitress you won't be having desert, at which you look at him somewhat indignant. But the look he shoots you is enough to make you understand if somebody was going to have desert tonight, it would be him. In his Mercedes. 
"I'm gonna-" you gasp, fingers tugging at the soft strands of his now ruined blond hair, his head between your thighs and your legs thrown over his shoulders. His hands have a grip of the meaty flesh of your ass, holding you firmly againt his mouth as it works wonders on your clit. You're sure it hasn't even been ten minutes since Jimin had opened your legs in the backseat of his car, not even bothering to take your underwear off, simply moving the fabric aside before diving in, and you already feel yourself on the edge of an orgasm.
"I know." voice vibrating right into your core, he slows down his administrations, tongue carefully and delicately lapping at your folds while he enjoys the feeling of your fingers loosening their grip and fondly brushing his hair back. You meet his eyes as he pushes a finger inside your core and your whole body twists in agony. 
"N-no!" 
Jimin stops immediately, lifting his head and focusing his concerned eyes on you. He's about to ask you if he's done anything wrong, but you're fast to roughly pull him up by his hair until his face is leveled with yours. You answer him by kissing him and he returns the kiss with the same eagerness, and now it's your hands that are looking for his cock, palming him through his pants.
"Your dick. Inside. Right Now." you punctuate each phrase with a kiss and he only stops kissing you to pout.
"But I wanted you to cum on my tongue." but still, he's putty in your hands when you undo the botton and the zipper. "Wouldn't you rather me fucking you in my bed, where we're more comfortable?" you notice the slight quivering of his voice when you slide his trousers and boxers down, just enough to pull him out. 
"You can eat me and fuck me as many times as you want tonight, tomorrow and whenever you'd like, but right now..." none of you contain the moan in unision that leaves each of your mouths when just the head of his lenght comes in contact with your entrance. "I really can't wait anymore." brushing your lips over his, you lower your voice. "Wanna get on my hands and knees for you."
Park Jimin has tried to do things the right and appropiate way throughout all his life. He's been a professional from a very young age on how to be in charge of his emotions, his desires and his impulses. Always well mannered and well composed. 
But it's in this moment that Jimin comes to the realization that the only thing that has ever made him lose his mind and self control, is you. Seeing you like this, ass up, grinding your drenched and still thong clad cunt all over his precum dripping lenght, he can't control the way his hand bunches the fabrick of that damn dress over your waist, then flies to your right cheek, a sharp sound of skin filling the air, tearing a gasp from your throat.
"God, I'm-I'm sorry. Couldn't help mys-"
"Do it again."
And he does, the palm of his hand now leaving a reddenning print on your flesh, making you jolt back involuntarily, aligning yourself to the head of his cock and like he had hoped, he slides right in. Not all the way, because Jimin is sure he would cream inside you too soon and he wouldn't be able to forgive himself if he did. He wets his lips, clenching his jaw and dropping his palm one more time, hand more steady and purposeful. 
"You like it rough?" voice hoarse and a hand beside your head holding himself, your back to his chest, twitching beneath him as he soothes the sting with his free one. 
"I like you rough." turning your head slowly to peer at him from the corner of your eye, your hips moving on their own accord trying to take him deeper. Your head is suddenly pulled back harshly, Jimin's fingers tangling in your hair as his own hips close the remaining gap between your bodys in an abrupt thurst. You squeal, Jimin's cock finally filling you up to the hilt just like you wanted him to be, the pleasure making your arms wobble and finding it harder to mantain your balance. 
Jimin's breath fawns over your ear, his tongue darting out to suck on your skin sending chills down your spine. "You're such a dream." he groans, torturously sliding out of your core that's gripping around his shaft for dear life. A whine of protest escapes your lips and he tightens the hold on your hair in response, diving right back in. You fall forward, your arms' strenght betraying you as his thrusts find a new rhythm. With your eyes closed shut, you try to muffle the sound of your voice with the back of your hand as Jimin's lips place soft kisses to your exposed shoulder.
"Don't be quiet." he stands straight, the pull on your hair arching your back in such a enticing way it was Jimin look away for a second, cock buried inside of you and his hips faltering. "Been dying to have you like this for so long."
Another clap of his hand against your right cheek, and a particular stroke of his dick that has you mewling as your climax approached again. "S-so good, Jimin. Oh my god."
"You're gonna cum for me?" his fingertips leave bruises on your skin and the windows of his Mercedes are foggy, just like your mind. You can't concentrate on anything that's not Jimin's cock sliding in and out and how much you wished this had happened way sooner. "Gonna cum for me like a good slut?"
Park Jimin always takes his time. Always does things nice and slow to assure the best outcome possible. 
But he can't contain the acceleration of his hips against yours as your walls clench impossibly tight around his cock, your orgasm finally taking over . Can't contain himself from falling forward again, hand twisting your head in his direction and his mouth searching for yours in a fiery and messy kiss. And he most definitely can't barely contain himself from cumming when your you ask him to spit in your mouth. 
"You're gonna kill me." he breathes, removing himself off you and quickly maneuvering you on your back, his dick finding its way back inside you. Picking up right where he left off, skin slapping against skin in an obscene melody, he collects a considerate amount of saliva in his mouth before dropping it into your welcoming tongue, watching you swallow with a smile he hopes he'll be the only one to see in the future. 
And that's what has the last bit of his self restraint slipping from his fingers. He somehow manages to rip the top of your dress down, fabric tearing until your tits are free and his mouth is attacking your nipples, white strings of his release panting your walls, some of it them oozing out that he fucks back right into you. 
It's between ragged breaths, kisses and tender carresses that Jimin promises you more dates in the future and new dresses that he can't promise not to savage apart again.
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... I’m interested in legitimately gay Reese (I assume one piece of evidence is “look at what they’re doing and tell me you’re not gay”)
okay this is like 2 days late but this is why reese malcolminthemiddle is legitimately gay:
(side note: did anyone need a queer media thesis paper or something... I am willing to share lmao)
so none of this is like... rock solid evidence or anything but I need to believe at least one main character of a show is gay and/or trans to maintain interest and reese is the most plausible gay character. also it’s early 2000′s so he just gets a lot of vaguely homophobic jokes lmao
first of all, yes, the biggest piece of evidence he’s gay is those lines from that episode I quoted the other day--thinking malcolm is gay, he tries to show his support by giving him a gay porno: “’Naught Pool Boys 3!’ I watched 10 or 12 of these, and this one seems to have the most stuff you guys like.” and when malcolm says he isn’t gay, reese responds “Malcolm. Check out what those guys are doing in that movie, and THEN tell me you’re not gay.”-- so, 1) reese sat down and watched like a dozen gay porn movies to ““find a good one for his gay brother”” and 2) he thinks malcolm would reconsider his heterosexuality if he watched what was in that movie, implying that HE reconsidered his sexuality after watching that movie, or at the very least found it hot
in the same episode, the character tricking malcolm into thinking reese is gay lists the following as evidence: he obsesses over his hair and his looks, loves his gourmet cooking, has a bunch of magazines covered in comically muscular men, and that he’s angry and acts like a jerk because he’s “dealing with something weird and confusing.” now obviously, the obsession with hair/looks can be chalked up to the fact that he’s a teenage boy, and there’s nothing inherently gay about enjoying cooking. the dozen magazines of muscle-bound men could certainly be taken as gay evidence, though, and it IS established in the show that his entire bully persona is his way of masking his inner feelings and insecurities. there’s literally a whole episode where he & malcolm realize they have no friends because they act like little shits to push people away because they’re afraid of rejection and/or abandonment from their peers. they ostracize themselves before they can be ostracized by the other students at school. I could probably write a whole other essay on reese’s psyche tbqh lmao there’s a shocking amount there!!
of the brothers who are actually old enough to be attracted to girls (reese, malcolm, and francis), he shows the least interest. now bear with me here. you might be thinking, “well, yeah, it’s malcolm’s show, we’re not gonna see things from other people’s perspective!” but that is actually surprisingly untrue, the show is very much equally shown from each family members’ perspectives. starting about s2, when malcolm is in early middle school, he starts getting crushes on girls and pursuing them. francis goes after a few women in the first couple seasons and then marries a woman we see a lot throughout the show. 
in the roughly... 130?? episodes I have watched so far, nearly all of reese’s “interest” in girls involve either: competition with malcolm, genuinely just liking her as a friend, or some completely ulterior motive. the only exception to this I can think of is in the early seasons where he has a crush on a cheerleader and tries to get on her good side by joining the cheerleading squad, which the writers clearly set up as a way to make gay jokes about reese. let me give you a few examples of his relationships with girls
the first relationship we see him in is with a “stupid girl” that malcolm tried (and failed) to date, and the main reason they get together is that they think on the same wavelength and genuinely seem to enjoy hanging out. they take breaks from their bro chats to make out every once in a while. eventually he gets her to break up with him because he doesn’t want to go to the school dance with her (he doesn’t want to go at all). years later, he’s dating some girl we meet for like 5 minutes, before he goes to confess to her that she’s the first girl he’s ever loved. she then breaks up with him. he’s sad, but taking it fairly well. he’s about to leave when he sees malcolm hiding under the bed, and learns that he stole his girlfriend. he then runs away to join the army. he was clearly MUCH more upset that his brother stole his girlfriend than he was that his girlfriend broke up with him. there are many more instances of him and malcolm competing for a girl’s affections, and he seems mostly motivated by the competition itself.
in addition to “stupid girl,” he also manufactures an “attraction” to his female army buddy in the last season. the premise of this episode is that his old army buddy (a girl he play-wrestles with and insults like he would his own brothers) comes to visit him, and malcolm convinces reese that she’s attracted to him, and that reese’s nervousness at learning that fact is proof he’s in love with her. there’s a misunderstanding where reese asks her if she has certain “feelings” and she says she does, but what she ACTUALLY means is that she has a crush on reese’s MOM. she’s a lesbian. reese later propositions her (saying he’s saved his virginity for this--he’s probably about 18 here), and when she says omg no im gay, he is HUGELY relieved they can go back to being friends. CLASSIC mlm/wlw friendship moment. 
there’s an episode where these cute girls pick up reese (& nerds) to kiss in front of their boyfriends to make them jealous. reese is all for it, and when malcolm argues that it’s not worth his dignity and the beating he’ll get from the girl’s boyfriend, reese counters that that’s WHY he wants to do this--he’s completely invisible at school, and thinks getting beaten up for kissing some guy’s girlfriend will at least make him known around school. at no point does he indicate he’s actually attracted to this girl, and when it comes time to kiss her, he finds the weakest excuse to run away at the last minute. 
im not gonna list all of these but there’s more lmao
the following is a random assortment of one-off gay jokes and out-of-context lines with gay reese implications, often homophobically bc its early 2000′s writing:
says “I’m gay” to a girl to give malcolm a better shot at her
(again in competition with malcolm) tries to flirt with a girl by spraying milk in her face as the punchline to a joke, which is. well. hm. self-sabotaging, to say the least!!
Reese: “Do you think it’s right to totally change who you are and turn your back on EVERYTHING you believe in, just to impress a hot guy??” [his dad gives a long, blank stare, before asking:] “...Burt Reynolds hot, or Sting hot?”
“YEAH I like clouds! I call them sky kittens :)” (I just think that one’s sweet!)
“Look, Christie, here’s the thing. When I first met you, I was just messing around. But we’ve gotten so close that, now... I really like you! I can’t keep this up anymore. I’m not the person you think I am. I’ve been pretending since the day I met you. It’s so hard having to constantly cover my tracks to keep my story straight... and I don’t WANT to anymore! I’m tired of living this lie! I’m done with it. I’m sorry.”
he catfishes some guy to blackmail him, but is implied to continue the flirtation even after the catfishing/blackmail is revealed
reese is, technically, married to a man. this particular plot point is played as a joke and manages to be both racist and homophobic, so I won’t go into it. but I believe he is still married to that man. technically.
reese takes care of a huge box full of caterpillars until they pupate and become beautiful butterflies. I feel like there’s some kind of gay coming out metaphor here somewhere.
I think there are a couple other times where he comments on a guy’s attractiveness but I couldn’t find specific instances.
In conclusion: Reese is a deeply repressed gay kid who was socialized SO thoroughly as an early 2000′s straight boy that, despite his attraction for men and his obvious compulsory heterosexuality, he still cannot admit to himself that he is gay even as he enters adulthood. Furthermore, his subconscious frustration about this fact is turned outward to form the “schoolyard bully” costume he uses to mask his insecurities and keep others from getting too close to him. 
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I could be convinced to come back for another talk about how Dewey is trans or about how each and every member of that family is neurodivergent in entirely different ways. Assuming anyone has read this far in the first place!!
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So I just want to talk about fascist imagery in metal esp black metal bc fuck it.
Metals weird like the Napalm records logo is literally a swastika imo but I could be seeing what I want to see bc I'm always on the lookout for fash imagery in metal to avoid and catalog it.
White Wizzard I used to think was just a band name and I would always make fun of it and say "wow they should have just called it grand draggon" or "haha 'we're gonna name our band White Wizzard... but with 2 Z's so noone gets us confused with those other guys'" until I looked in between the 2 z's and lol the font literally hides 2 sig runes and I might be tripping but I sincerely doubt that a band named white wizzard having 2 sig runes hidden in their band font was a coincidence but it may be.
Other bands will out right put SS in their name but I could never tell if they were just dicking about or if they are actual Nazis.
I've never been able to just trust a band isn't white supremacist bc why would I believe them even if they say they aren't? I just catalog a moment in their music and if I ask a band what they meant I take their explanation into consideration but i'm not gonna believe they're not white supremacists on their word. I sadly don't think I can ever trust a metal band to not be secretly racists, lgbtqiacab+ phobes, or actual Nazis or worse.
Unrelated but not really unrelated, there's this moment in Dorohedoro where Kaiman walks into a baseball stadium wearing a black and yellow jersey with an 88 on it and that's the kind of shit im talking about. I can't really unsee the imagery I've associated with white supremacy and it seems like it pops up everywhere.
Metals great and bands like Nocturnal Breed, using the track "Thrashiac" as an example, helped me realize how easy it is to be indoctrinated into fighting for something you stand for and believe in and how it could be taken to the extreme where you would die and fight for and with your "brothers and sisters" who identify similarly to you. I could never tell if that was them intentionally trying to convey that point or if by over glorifying war and side ism and tribalism they demonstrated how easy and petty it is to go to war for something you believe in bc youre surrounded by people who also believe in something heavily enough to fight and die for their beliefs and how heavily intoxicated with war and violence people can become even when they believe in nothing except metal.
So metals taught me a lot but I've recently become uncomfortably aware of the imagery and themes I've been supporting and glorifying and the imagery honestly just gets uncomfortable at times. I'll want to put a patch that I really like on my vest but I'll realize the imagery is way to similar with white supremacist themes. Example, the Ghoulunatics Asylum patch or the Shitfucker shitswasifa (a literal swastika but slightly modified). I've read interviews where Shitfucker explains where they pulled their imagery from old Japanese Punk bands who would use Nazi imagery in their music and album art and acts. I would honestly love a shitswasifa patch for that reason tbh but I don't want to have to explain it to people and I understand that people would get uncomfortable when they see it bc its way to similar to a swastika.
I want to read more interviews and listen to more bands esp the old J punk bands Shitfucker talked about (they gave a list in an interview of bands that inspired them but I can't find it😭) I've also read that despite the imagery they hang out with leftist and anarcho bands but still idk anymore tbh the Nazi imagery doesnt even seem to matter a whole lot. I feel that thin blue line flags at least in America have a lot more white supremacist meaning than Nazi imagery at this point.
Regardless wearing a shitswaifas gonna get me shot and I don't want to die for something stupid like that.
On top of that there's so much more and I'm probably going to do a more in depth exploration of everything I don't know about the metal and punk scene before I die just to fucking know more. I've been lazy as hell lately with thoughts of dying and I've been to bored to do anything bc of it but this has been p inspiring I guess.
People want to can the Confederate flag and I honestly get that. It's a call back to the KKK and racism lynchings and slavery and everything. I also understand that Nazi imagery is insulting and scary to Jewish people. I don't believe in censoring freedom of speech. I would love to see this imagery put away and into a museum and it would really only take people being mature and just taking down their flags in respect to Jewish people and POC which I feel it's never going to happen unfortunately unless we censor imagery and criminalize it's use which seems itself like a slippery slope into fascism so I'm real confused right now on this lol. Plus censoring Nazi imagery prevents its use in criticizing our government when it begins acting like literal Nazis but I also feel like MAGA hats and thin blue line flags more than do the trick as imagery similar to nazism without needing to use Nazi imagery to call them out. We can just go "MAGA hat is bad and is fascism" and its true.
This is a tough subject that I want to be informed about.
Btw if there are typos, I'll fix them later if I can. This is my first post and it's 3am and I'm not rereading anything right now!
Ty for reading!
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bondsmagii · 3 years
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man those people dont care about kids at all actually. they act willfully ignorant and do shit like compare real trauma of actual children to drawings/words. I've seen them attack CSA/r*pe/abuse survivors and tell them they probably liked what happened to them bc of what they write. Seen them share/distribute real life CSEM bc they treat it the same as anime drawings. Seen them share graphic porn/nsfw accounts to masses of minors. they dont give a shit about protecting kids, its about control.
yeah, that's... that's something I've heard as well and I just cannot wrap my head around it. the QAnon people do it too -- they literally share explicit material of minors to "let everyone know what they should be looking out for", and I'm just like. oh my god. the cognitive dissonance required to do that and think you're helping?
anyway, with people like what my post was talking about, I've split them into three rough groups:
Group A is the rarest. these are people who actually do require warnings and are asking people to tag sincerely because it's something they need. they often don't cause too many problems because their tags are broad and common and most of them seem to accept the fact that if they are sensitive to certain things, certain places might be best avoided. these people are essentially people with peanut allergies who accept they can't go on the field trip to the peanut butter factory, and they don't mind too much because the fallout wouldn't be worth it.
Group B is the most common. these people will tag everything. they'll tag for major triggers, they'll tag for mentions, they'll tag for anything under the sun. they'll have something in their about or their carrd that lets people know they can ask to tag anything. they'll tag every aspect of a post "just to be safe". these people are out there tagging my real life experiences as "unreality", just because it's something they think sounds like something that should be tagged that. they don't often need things tagged themselves, but they pride themselves on their progressive attitude and tag everything religiously. it's performative for them. they want to be seen as the kind of person who cares. they're not actively causing harm, but they are contributing to it because they normalise the actions of...
Group C. these people are still a minority, but boy are they loud. they're the people railing against dark content, against AO3, against fictional everything. they're the people demanding creators show their credentials before they write something fucked up, and they're the people spending a lot of time debating about shit that does not matter at all. they're terminally online, lack any kind of critical thinking skills, and probably do not read anything particularly challenging if they read actual books at all. everything they consume is either fluffy and safe, or they're engaging with it "critically". they're the people in the tags of the shit you like telling you why you should hate yourself for liking it. they'll call you a racist or a paedophile at the drop of a hat, probably because you like a villain or something. these people are not in it for the good of anybody. they're always acting in the interest of a Mysterious Someone, despite the fact that when people belonging to those groups tell them they're being inappropriate, they'll be the first to accuse these people of lying or contributing to their own oppression or, yes, liking whatever abuse they suffered. these people are in it for nothing but power, and thanks to people like Group B, they've been given it in spades. they're now completely out of control, and despite their small numbers they've fostered a fearful environment where people will rather obey or stay quiet than get accused of the very nasty shit these people will pull out at a drop of a hat.
people in Group C are pretty much run-of-the-mill abusers. they thrive on power, and they get away with it because their cause looks good.
having said that, a final observation: Group C's number declined dramatically on Tumblr and rose dramatically on Twitter... right about the time of the NSFW ban. as is the way with this kind of thing -- those who yell about purity the loudest are often the nastiest.
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