Writing update and brain weasel related melt down/word vomit under the cut because it got long.
My drafts folder on here currently contains a half dozen non-fic posts, a dozen and a half of mixed old-fic-posts and fic-rec-posts and a dozen unfilled prompts. Approximately, anyway.
The fic rec posts mostly need me to queue them up and make sure they’re tagged properly. I might do that tomorrow.
The old-fic posts need me to go rummaging on my hard drive and copy-paste fic, and for me to queue them up, and then they’re ready to go. Another thing I might do tomorrow because it’s pretty simple.
I don’t know if I will ever fill those prompts. At least one of them I’m fairly certain I won’t fill, because not my AU, I just was happy to do some world building and let other people use it. It’s marked for art, but I have no idea what I’d even do for that.
The rest of them. Some of smut-prompts, and those aren’t getting filled any time soon (my ability to deal with sex in fic, writing or reading, fluctuates, and has been on a seriously nope for the last several months; if interest returns, I’ll get to those prompts).
The non-smut prompts… I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.
I mean, I’m fairly sure a lot of what’s made it hard to write is I’ve been so damned tired for months now, because I am constantly fighting my brain and body to just keep going, and there’s been extra fuel for the brain weasels since November, and it’s making it that much harder to get them out of my way. Just for things like eating and getting enough to drink on a regular basis.
Yeah, I get things done, but right now, it feels like so damned little, and I haven’t gotten more than a handful of words most days for the last two months, if any at all, and just. It feels like I’m going nowhere, no matter what I get done.
(Right now, the brain is being horrible enough that even the getting a doctor’s appointment feels like it’s a pointless achievement. I’m aware that it’s not, it just feels like it right now.)
And when my brain gets to a point like this, reminding myself that I have achieved things, and recently, doesn’t actually help. Might help tomorrow, might help in a week, but right now, tonight, no. Tonight is a night of holding on by my fingernails and refusing to let the brain weasels win, but fuck, it’s hard.
(I don’t even know if I’m trying to ask for help or just venting right now, though I am definitely venting. Get it out of my head before it runs in circles and blows itself even further out of proportion.)
I’ve been on this hellsite two and a half years now. I can look back, if I’ve tagged shit well enough, and see the ups and downs of my mental health and physical health and living situation. I can look at it, and put my finger on certain things that have helped, and things that definitely have not. I’ve gotten words for things I didn’t have words for before (agender, aromantic, autochorisexual), I’ve found people I am willing to call friend, and who reach back when I reach out. And you know, that does help. Putting that into words helps, as well as the people and the words and the documenting of shit.
(Heh. I can look at this post and see the meltdown and the hopefully-not-momentary recovery. It’s still hard, my headspace is still not good, but that wrenching, hungry pit of despair at the futility of everything isn’t trying to chew its way out from my rib cage at this point. It’s still there, nestled at the base of my sternum, gently gumming at my stomach and diaphragm, but it’s not gaping hungrily and trying to swallow me whole any longer.)
Two snippets, separated in time by several years. First is the Fuck Your Narrative part, and second is Why No This Isn’t Morgyn Being Cranky and Political, Why Do You Ask?
Boromir is uncertain if it is a good thing the arrows he had taken left him able to walk – to run, as he is prodded to do by the orcs – even as the wounds pain him and leave him feverish. He might have been left behind if he had been unable to be made to move at speed, but too, he might have been killed for the trouble. Even the fever and the pain are better than being dead.
When they stop for a rest, he leans against a rock, trying not to pant with the pain in his left shoulder. His arm tingles as if he had slept on it, where it doesn’t thrum with agony, and when he tries to close his hand into a fist, he cannot squeeze his fingers very tightly. If he lives through this, it will be a long road to being able to bear the weight of his shield again, if ever he can.
An orc dumps a body next to him, and Boromir grimaces when he recognizes Kíli under the grime of battle and a hard run. Or being carried, as the dwarf seems to be unconscious entirely. Knocked on the head to give the orcs a chance even to capture him, as the arrow wounds had allowed them to capture Boromir.
That, and a need to keep the orcs distracted, to allow Frodo a chance to escape, for the others to see him to Mordor and the destruction of the Ring. Boromir knows it is better that he is here, for all that he can feel the tug to the east, as the Ring travels ever further away. He had failed Frodo once. He will not do so again.
Boromir pauses as he hears a voice rise in indignation outside the window, one that overlooks the garden where Arwen often prefers to gather her ladies. Listening to the tirade about how a decent woman would have married the father of her child by now that sounds almost as if it comes directly out of one of his aunt’s books.
The lady doesn’t even have the chance to finish before newly familiar laughter rises, Alagosiell’s amusement bright and clear. As if the woman is telling the most marvelous joke.
“As if a woman must need a man to have more to do than help to create the child!” Her words sting, and Boromir frowns a moment, stepping closer to the window. “Do not mistake my affection, for the Steward is a dear friend, but I would not be so cruel as to take him from his duty simply because he is father to my heir. Nor would he be so foolish as to demand that I forsake my people and my throne because I carry a child of his seeding. It is so for any woman who has position and power, and finds a father in a man from beyond the borders of our lands, where a man’s responsibilities are not tied to the land he is born upon.”
“But then who rules, if your men uproot themselves so readily and do not have care for their home?”
“Gaearon Rhûnen has a queen.” Boromir recognizes the voice of Éowyn, and smiles a moment at the joy in her voice. His brother has married well, even beyond that the two are so visibly in love when he sees them together. “Her princes are all of them women. What need have any of them for a man?”
“Oh, we do need them, but not to rule over us. A man of the Mallenrim raises horses and builds roads and fights to defend our borders. They have their share in the house, too, in teaching the children and seeing to the upkeep of their home. It is duty enough to keep them busy. What need have we to lay a greater burden upon their shoulders?”
“And what do they think of being so diminished?” The first woman again, indignant and shrill.
Boromir grins at her question, wondering if Medlin is close enough to the garden to hear this, or if Alagosiell will share it with him later.
“You can ask my youngest brother, who is to be ambassador to Gondor in his own right when he is of age. Or perhaps my father, who had the order of the battle at the Black Gate. To Sinia, who walks straight and proud into the courts of foreign princes to tell them they have gravely mistaken the mercy of his Queen for weakness.”
There is steel in Alagosiell’s voice now, bright and cutting.
“Your men may feel diminished by such a thing because they are accustomed to having all the power of the world in their hands, but do not mistake the customs of your lands for the natural order of the world.”
Notes: Alagosiell is ultimately of mixed heritage, Numenorian and the people living along the eastern coast of Middle Earth when Palancirion and her ships came sailing around that far. With the assumption that neither of those peoples were white as a whole. (Maybe some were, because I am not letting go of Sean Bean as Boromir, and Boromir is of Numenorian descent, but not the same lines as would have gone on the long sailing trip that Alagosiell’s mother’s line did.)
Because fuck the idea that all the important and good people in Middle Earth have to be white, ‘cause no. Nope nope nope. I have been plotting to have the Mallenrim not be white for a long time, if not explicitly all not white from the beginning. This is going to mean some further revision of a story already posted, but fuck it, I’ve done it once, I’ll do it again.
Alagosiell’s youngest brother is Medlin, and he is still not quite done puberty at the time of the battle before the Black Gate, and has yet to come of age, so gets supervision. Alagosiell, in particular, because she is on her Seeking – a ritual usually of upper-class women that involves drug-induced visions directed toward ideal person to be the father of at least one child. In her case, ideally a husband, but it wouldn’t be the first time the Queen and King are siblings instead of spouses.
@planb-becomeapirate asked: I have a question! lesbianism was taboo in victorian times and I’m assuming so was cross dressing? What is the explanation of pictures that exist where a woman is dressed up as a man and posing with another woman (who is a woman and it is strongly indicated they are a couple). For that matter, what is the explanation of photographs of women canoodling women? Did these ladies just not give a damn what people said?
First of all, THANK YOU: this is a great question.
I’m taking the bulk of my answer from Sharon Marcus’s *stellar* critical text, Between Women (2007), and TBH, if you wanted to read a full-length answer to your question – complete with citations, specifics, use of previous historians’ work, and further reading – you honestly could not do better than to go read BW right now.
**Here, though, I’m cutting to the highlights of Marcus’s book. Admittedly, it’s still a long post.**
1:Those photographs – including the one below – show, in many cases, pairs of women dressed, respectively, as male and female halves of a heterosexual couple. As Marcus stresses, way more Victorian and Edwardian women entered into what many knew as “female marriages” (aka same-sex couples, unrecognized of course by the law, but often perfectly acceptable to close friends and family) than one might assume. Female marriages – and this is how weird the Victorians could be at combining progressive and retrogressive thinking! – basically were seen to pose no threat to the gender system, since the end-goal of that system was to reinforce in every possible way the monogamous, procreative, married couple form.
Basically, women (and men, for that matter) who weren’t out cruising or having casual and multiple partners, who didn’t get too kinky or proclaim their unrestricted lifestyle, stayed on the “good” side of what Gayle Rubin identifies as the domino spectrum of “sexual peril” (“Thinking Sex”); crossing into random hook-ups in clubs, paying sex workers, or even becoming a sex worker yourself, all started down the road toward social irredeemability. Photographs were often taken for personal use and, since the apparatuses of photography were ever more available for individuals nearing and after the turn of the century, it was anything but impossible to get or even make portrait-quality photographs of female couples. (And of course, certain studios were prepared to take any nature of photograph – for a price.)
Even famous women like Frances Power Cobbe – who, if you’ve never heard of her, you should look up IMMEDIATELY – were in such long marriages. Cobbe referred to her partner Marie Lloyd as (at one time or another) her “life-friend”, a ‘“truant husband” when Lloyd was traveling’, “my old woman”, and simply “my wife” (Marcus 52). Numerous other Victorians and Edwardians in same-sex relationships used similarly fluid and overlapping terms to refer to their partners and to themselves. It wasn’t as simple, then, as one partner being the ‘husband’ and the other the ‘wife’: the models for such things were available in the public consciousness, but in real people’s lives the terms were more useful in signaling the seriousness of the relationship for those in it, and to those who knew about it, than in setting their roles in stone.
2: HUGE for Marcus is pushing present-day readers to acknowledge that the category of “friends” – not just special friends *cough cough* but non-sexual and non-erotic, same-sex friends – was SO much more elastic than we tend to believe today. Codes of femininity stressed the essential difference between women and men, and thus stipulated (in all the ways social pressure can: parental advice, peer pressure from social circles, literary, visual, and commodity culture, etc.) that women be demure, innocent, passive, moral, and domestic in their dealings with men (who were, by contrast, encouraged to be bold, educated, enterprising, protective, and worldly… but not too worldly).
Relationships between women (as it were) gave the participants FAR more space to explore sides of themselves they were actively told to stifle in their lives beyond those friendship: women were assertive with their female friends, possessive, flirty, demanding, commanding (even domineering), callous, and loving, sometimes all with one friend over the course of one brief but volatile relationship, as well as in life-long beloved ones. Pairs and groups dressed up, went out together, met in clubs, vied for social favors, hugged, kissed, petted, admired, flattered, dressed, longed for, wrote long and passionate letters to, and relied on each other for support at the best and worst of times. Often, when a dear female friend visited her married one, the husband would relocate to a separate bedroom, leaving the women to sleep together and catch up. Whether many, or any, of these women engaged in sexual acts together is – Marcus emphasizes – not only unknowable, but missing the point. The intimacy of such friendships was seen to foster “feminine” feeling and (mad though this might seem to us in some instances) even help the married woman appreciate her husband and her role as wife, daughter, mother, sister, and ruler of the household.
3: Class. Class matters all the time, but for the Victorians class was ENORMOUSLY important, and was intertwined with gender and sexuality in ways both explicit and implicit. Marcus admits that most of the women, real and fictional, she covers in her book are middle-class, because that’s where so much Victorian/Edwardian energy went into establishing a pervasive code: women who desired upward social mobilityhad to enter and excel within the system, even as much as they were able to find elastic and plastic “play” within that system. Working-class women, however, didn’t have this luxury. In many cases, this was literally true: the luxury of free time, of spare objects to trade as gifts on beloved friends, of room to invite other women to stay, of the dress/costumes for showing off or cross-dressing (whether for fun or as a self-fashioning of their preferred gender identity) – all these and more were simply not available to women who often had to pawn their few possessions on a weekly basis just to keep food on the table. These women – as scholars like Judy Walkowitz, Olwen Hufton, and Ellen Ross all explain – did heavily rely on tight bonds of female sociability, whether this was in sharing what little they did have (washing tubs, pins and needles to repair clothes since new ones were beyond the budget, food, knowledge); pooling their labor so that they could collectively keep their eyes on more children than any one woman could mind alone; even passing on critical knowledge about sex, childbirth and child-rearing, abortions, money and household economy, and political agitation and action that would affect them as much as their husbands, fathers, brothers, and other male relations.
Lots of the examples in lesbian and other queer history (within the British context anyway) refer to upper-class women, because their blatant disregard for normative behavior was, obviously, tolerated because, yes, they didn’t have to care. Anne Lister, as early as the 1820s, used her large estate in Yorkshire as a home for herself and her two successive partners: first, Mariana Lawton, and later, Ann Walker (to whom she considered herself married from 1834 until her death). Lister often chose stereotypically “male” dress and referred to herself by a male pronoun and the name “gentleman Jack”. (So, for that matter, did author and artist Violet Paget at the the other end of the century, preferring her/his penname “Vernon Lee”.) But even that kind of story doesn’t end well once the legally-indisputable owner of the estate is gone: after Lister died, and despite that they shared their respective properties and that in her will Lister had left Walker a lifetime lease on Shibden Hall (where they’d lived together as married), Lister’s distant family took “less than two years to declare Ann [Walker] mentally unstable and incompetent to manage the two estates”, had her committed to an asylum, and left her there until her death in 1854. Even when big money had protected them, these and many more 19th-century women discovered how precarious their circumstances were, and how their gender and romantic/erotic lives could have major consequences for their financial ones.
4: Coda. It’s worth keeping in mind that, for the Victorians, one of the central tenets of succeeding in society – not just getting into the good parties, but in having anyone look at you in the street, having friends who would visit you, having vendors who would take your business, keeping either your servants or, if you were a worker yourself, your job – came down to what might be termed plausible deniability: or, perhaps another way of putting it, public,tacit knowledge. As long as you didn’t make a scene, didn’t rock the boat, didn’t flaunt your difference, things could and definitely go on in private pretty much as you chose. Even working-class women definitely dressed as men in order to get work that was, increasingly over the century, exclusive to male laborers, but the rule came down to, to borrow a proleptic phrase, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. But once you, like Oscar Wilde or Fanny and Stella (pictured above), crossed that line and started to rub people’s noses in it – started to enjoy the hypocrisy of an “open secret” a little too much, and made the powers that be feel like they were being mocked to their faces – in short, once you forced that private, tacit knowledge to become explicit, your life could go very wrong, very quickly.
* * *
There’s so much more to say, so I hope anyone interested checks out Marcus (Between Women), Walkowitz (Prostitution and Victorian Society), Olwen Hufton (on the economy of “makeshift”), Ellen Ross (Love & Toil), Gayle Rubin (“Thinking Sex”), Martha Vicinus (Intimate Friends), Judith Butler (Gender Trouble, especially the final chapter on drag), Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (Between Men and always The Epistemology of the Closet), and all the various historians and theorists those works refer to and rely on.
THANKS FOR THE ASK, @planb-becomeapirate! I welcome any and all questions on matters Victorian: submit your question here.
*UPDATE*: here’s my first follow-up post, addressing a few more questions about Victorian words and notions around female homosexuality.
Please read this. It’s crucial to know where we came from to know where we’re going.
AU: Burning Bridges Word Count: 941 (2399) Characters: Julian Bashir, Elim Garak, Aerit Milar (OC) Time Frame: a couple months after the events of “Doctor Bashir, I Presume?” (S05E16)
Aerit and Julian discuss what the future holds.
“Did you view the message you were supposed to bring me?” Aerit pours a small glass of kanar for Bashir, and an even smaller one for herself. The sooner she begins her work, the better, and she cannot afford to be intoxicated while doing so.
“It was for you.” Bashir takes a small sip of the kanar, a faint grimace gracing his face. “Garak knew I wouldn’t look at it.”
Aerit snorts. Perhaps he had trusted Bashir not to look at it, but she doubts he was that foolish. If he was, then there’s far more to this than merely shaping one remarkably intelligent human into something as close to a Cardassian as can be achieved. She isn’t inclined to believe that one of Tain’s precious proteges would succumb to something as simple as sentiment.
“That’s perhaps your first mistake. You might have had a better idea what he had in mind.” She watches Bashir for a long moment. “How much do you know about Cardassian physiology, Doctor Bashir?”
“Not as much as I would like.” Bashir doesn’t touch his kanar, though he keeps hold of the glass. Good. “I know that most are missing one of their adult molars, and rather more about balanced neurochemistry than I suspect most would appreciate, but unfortunately, Cardassian physiology wasn’t among the subjects in the curriculum for my medical degree.”
“We’ll have to correct that, than.” Aerit studies Bashir’s face for a long moment, mentally planning out how he would look when she’s done with him. The exact shape of his scales, the precise positioning of the ridges. How it will change the shape of his face, disguise who he was beneath a mask of Cardassian gray. “Among other deficits. I hope you learn quickly.”
A wry and slightly bitter smile curls the corners of Bashir’s lips. “One of my many flaws, I assure you.”
Aerit raises a brow ridge, but there really isn’t time to ask all the questions that invites, much less be able to get proper answers for them. Though she truly wonders how the Federation could survive if learning swiftly is considered a flaw, especially in one of their precious Starfleet officers. That they let him go when he’s clearly caught the interest of someone like Garak is strange enough even before she factors in the insanity of allowing someone who can learn with quite possibly Cardassian speed and skill to simply walk away.
If, of course, they really did just let him walk away, and this isn’t all some elaborate game. One they’d have had to convince Garak to play, if it is, and that is the greatest reason to doubt that it is. Garak is, for all his flaws, terrifyingly loyal to the Obsidian Order, if nothing else. Even with it gone, burned to ashes in the wake of Enabran Tain’s foolishness.
Letting none of that show, Aerit takes another small sip of kanar. “It will serve you well here, no matter what Starfleet or the Federation might have thought of that skill.” She pauses, running one finger along the rim of her glass. “Have you ever had memories implanted in your brain before?”
“Not that I’m aware of, why?” Bashir is watching her with a little more wariness in his expression. Good. He should have been more wary from the beginning.
“There are a myriad of little details about being part of Cardassian society which would be faster to incorporate into your memory directly than take the time to teach you.” Aerit watches the surprise bloom in Bashir’s face, allowing herself a small smile. “I never really was good at being a teacher, not even for those who had achieved a modicum of skill. It’s far easier to just implant the knowledge needed.”
Bashir looks puzzled, if only briefly. “You were part of the Obsidian Order, weren’t you? That’s why Garak sent me to you.”
“Oh, please, Doctor Bashir, what would be the point of that?” Aerit shakes her head, giving Bashir an indulgent smile that seems to elicit a reflexive one of his own. Interesting. “You’d still be a human among Cardassians, and no one is really interested in that happening.”
“Then why…?” Bashir trails off, as he works out the answer to his own question, though it is a little disappointing that he even began to ask. “Of course. Your expertise isn’t in spying or assassination, is it? You’re a doctor.”
“Not something so simple or banal, but it will suffice.” Aerit finishes her kanar, setting the glass aside. “It will take several days to ensure everything is complete, and there is nothing to contradict the truth I will create for you.”
“A new, Cardassian identity.” Bashir smiles, letting out a small huff of amusement. “I wondered what Garak intended, asking me to come here. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Would you have agreed to his plans if he had?”
Bashir is silent for a moment, his expression visibly thoughtful as he mulls over her question. “I don’t know.”
“Are you going to go back instead of forward?” If Bashir refuses to agree to this, there isn’t much she can do, and Aerit truly hopes he isn’t that foolish.
“Go back to what?” Bashir meets her gaze for a long moment, a deep well of bitterness in his gaze. “I can’t work as a doctor on Deep Space Nine, and none of my friends seems to know quite where I fit any more.”
“Then let me create you someone new, and we’ll find you a place to fit.”
Bashir, to his credit, only hesitates a moment before he nods in assent. Now the challenge truly begins.
That stew sounds like an excellent fall meal. What spices are you gonna toss in?
Garlic, coriander, ginger, and nutmeg.
… and the rest of the post got a bit long, so it’s under a cut. Including something resembling a very loose recipe.
Garlic goes into damn near everything I cook, whether I’m putting in whole cloves, minced from a jar, or granulated. Ginger is another goes in almost everything, either chunks of fresh cut root or powdered, depending on the flavor profile I want out of it. Coriander gives me a peppery sort of flavor that doesn’t cause pain or tingling in a bad way. And nutmeg helps me actually want to eat without being a major flavor component (my appetite has been lacking of late, and it has meant not enough calories, which has made the brain weasels louder).
(Dunno why nutmeg does that, but it works on me and mom both, so it’s become one of the staples of cooking around here, because both of us forget to eat when stressed, so anything that makes it easier to get calories in is good.)
And once things are mostly cooked, I add rice and bulgar wheat to it to soak up the liquid and bulk it up, and it actually comes out as a pretty solid mass that’s more pudding-like. A nice heavy meal that I cook a lot from October through May, with minor variations on the ingredients.
Actually, while I’m thinking about it, let me give you a recipe of sorts.
– Meat*, or your favored non-meat protein that does well in slow cooking. (I haven’t tried to do this with lentils or other legumes yet, but I’m fairly certain they’d work just fine. Dunno about tofu, but that’s an experiment I’ll leave to someone who doesn’t have tofu on their list of foods they can’t eat.)
– Rice, bulgar wheat, barley, oats, or other grain depending on your tastes and dietary restrictions
– a small amount of water, enough to just cover the bottom of your crock pot. Or beef/chicken/vegetable/other* stock would work too.
Any combination of: Winter squash (butternut is my usual go-to because I can get it already cut up) Mushrooms (I use shitake because I can use scissors to prepare them, but button/portabellas will also work) Turnips Apples Pears Onion/leek/shallot Fresh Ginger Carrots/Parsnips Potatoes Sweet Potatoes
Optional Additions: Herbs – thyme and rosemary are really good for this in sprigs Spices – nutmeg, coriander, cinnamon, garlic (granulated), ginger (powdered or crystalized) ¼ Lime (or less), a splash of lime or lemon juice, a small wedge of orange, two or three sections of tangerine (a little citrus goes a long way in a crockpot) Salt – a very small amount, maybe a pinch
Your vegetables/fruit should be cut up into medium-small pieces (½ in or so cubes at the largest), your meat either likewise, or if it’s in one chunk, you can cut it up when it’s cooked through and return it to the pot.
Everything goes in the pot, lid goes on, put it on low heat, go off to work or go through your daily routine, whatever. Nothing needs to be touched for the next six to eight hours.
By which point it will smell wonderful and so will your apartment/house. If your meat was not cut up before it went in, this is the time to cut it (or more likely, use two forks to tear it) into smaller pieces and return to the crockpot.
Add ¼-1/3 cup of grains to a small pot, up to 1 cup for a larger pot, or whatever seems good to soak up the liquid in the pot. Also, this is a good time to taste-test and see if you want to add more spices or salt.
Wait twenty minutes, check the grains. If they’re crunchy, and the liquid’s almost gone, add more water, or add some heavy cream/milk (if dairy is a thing that you like/can consume). Give it another ten minutes. Once the grains are no longer crunchy, and the liquid’s mostly gone, it’s ready to serve. Sometimes there’s a little browning on the sides or bottom, that’s ok. If you’re worried about that, add more liquid.
Once in your bowl you can add more cream, butter, other spices (especially if you’re making this for multiple people), cheese, other condiments. It’s pretty forgiving, and pretty flexible as a dish, which is why it’s my favorite thing to cook.
*only thing I don’t recommend for this is fish, either as the meat, or fish stock for the liquid. And that’s probably mostly my being picky about how my fish is cooked.
So if the Democrats take the Senate, Bernie Sanders becomes head of the Senate Budget Committee? Which would make him the fourth most powerful individual in the United States.
Imagine how much we could get done with a Sanders-led Senate Budget Committee under a Democratic president who has already been forced to adopt most of his domestic policy in exchange for his endorsement.
If you really want to see the change we got behind Bernie for, get Clinton into the White House, and get Democrats into the House and Senate.
(Also keep in mind that this next president gets to decide what’s constitutional and unconstitutional for the next 30-50 years, as they will most likely get to appoint at least four Supreme Court Justices.)
Start telling people this. People have to know the practicality of their votes.
HOLY CANNOLI I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT
Women’s right to abortion? Do you know which president created that? NO YOU DO NOT. Because it wasn’t a FUCKING president, it was Roe vs Wade. That is a Supreme Court Decision and has nothing to do with the standing president. Do you know what president was in charge during that term?
People of color’s right to equal educational access? Which president decided that should happen? DING DING DING, that wasn’t a president, it was Brown Vs Board of Education. That’s a Supreme Court Decision that changed the nation, in part because it overruled the previous Supreme Court Decision that denied black people equal access to rights. Do you know what president was in charge in that term? Does it even matter?
Same-sex marriage? Supreme Court.
Interracial marriage? Supreme Court.
Miranda rights? The thing that police officers have to say to you, and which protects some of the rights of the arrested person? That’s a Supreme Court ruling.
The decision that Bush won the 2000 election? That was the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore.
The Supreme Court is literally a time bomb that is ready to explode and change the country, and people are pissing around whining about whether Hillary is too bitchy and how maybe Uncle Bernie will descend on a fairy cloud and give them pancakes.
IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU HAVE TO SPEND THE NEXT FOUR YEARS OF YOUR TINY PISSANT LIFE UNDER THE MOST BASIC BITCH IN BITCHDOWN. THE NEXT FOUR YEARS OF YOUR PISSANT LIFE ARE HISTORICALLY MEANINGLESS.
HISTORY DOESN’T GIVE A SHIT IF YOU THROW YOUR TOYS OUT OF THE PRAM BECAUSE YOU’RE 24 AND ANGSTY. THAT CHANGES NOTHING BECAUSE CLEARLY YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE SUPREME COURT IS, AND ARE THUS NOT RESPONSIBLE ENOUGH TO MAKE POLITICAL DECISIONS, LET ALONE HOST A WELL-ATTENDED REVOLUTION.
RUTH BADER GINSBURG IS DROPPING IN HER FUCKING TRACES TO SAVE YOUR UNGRATEFUL FUCKING SKINS AND NOT ONE OF YOU UNGRATEFUL CHILDREN KNOWS HER FACE.
Want more reproductive rights? BERNIE CAN’T HELP YOU AND HE NEVER COULD. A REVOLUTION WON’T SAVE YOU. THAT’S A SUPREME COURT PROBLEM.
Want more of literally anything relating to social justice?PRESIDENTS CAN’T DO SHIT FOR YOU. GO AHEAD, TRY TO NAME THE MECHANISM BY WHICH THEY CAN DO SHIT FOR YOU. ARE THEY GOING TO ~*~WRITE A BILL~*~ ABOUT BEING NICE TO PEOPLE? NO, THAT’S THE SUPREME COURT.
Want different regulations on immigration? SUPREME COURT. IF THE SUPREME COURT DECIDES THAT OUR CURRENT SYSTEM OF IMMIGRATION IS “UNCONSTITUTIONAL,” IT WILL CHANGE. OTHERWISE, HEAVEN AND EARTH WON’T MOVE IT.
Want – SUPREME COURT. IT’S THE SUPREME COURT. THAT’S WHERE THESE DECISIONS GET MADE.
The President of the United States of American has no actual power to give everyone fairy pancakes and legal marijuana because they are the leader of a democracy, and the built-in nature of democracy says that on any given issue, half the people in the democracy are working against POTUS. We deliberately set POTUS up to be hamstrung by the Congress and the Senate, and they must ALWAYS abide by the Constitution as defined by the Supreme Court. We didn’t want a nation of 320 million people to be led to slaughter by the whims of a random monarch, so we did this on purpose.
Now, if you look at your shiny POTUS trading card, you can see that despite having no Attack or Movement points, they still have two very interesting powers:
they can press the Big Red Button (i.e. as Commander in Chief, they can dispatch military troops by themselves, without waiting for Congressional approval to declare war)
They appoint the Justices of the Supreme Court.
Everyone who lives in America abides by the Supreme Court’s decisions, and the great groundshaking social changes of America were decisions made by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is a panel of the most brilliant lawmakers in the land, appointed by the President alone, and answerable only to themselves. IT IS A POSITION FOR LIFE, YOU FOOLS, YOU RUBES. The United States is a nation ruled by a Constitution and that Constitution lives, breathes and governs the lives of Americans through the interpretation of the Supreme Court.
If you want to change the nation – well, three of the Supreme Court Justices are over the age of 77. It’s a position for life, and they’re all hanging on, but how many 77-year-olds do you know who are in perfect health and sharpness? Two of them are Clinton appointees, and one is a Reagan appointee. Ginsburg, the eldest, is 83 (appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993). In her 24 years on the SCOTUS, she’s shaped everything from LGBT+ rights, to environmental policy, to the role of women. She’s interpreted, enforced and defended the Constitution. And for years, all of the parties represented in the SCOTUS have been licking their lips over her, because they assume she’ll die in the next 4 years, allowing the next President to plant a political successor that will shape the nation for generations. She could bloody well last (and she intends to – does anyone else remember how she POWERED THROUGH COLON CANCER in 99? jesus FUCK) but instead of pinning your hopes for the future directions of the nation on an elderly woman fighting your corner out of sheer cussedness, YOU COULD ALSO VOTE FOR A PRESIDENT WHO COULD FIND HER A GOOD SUCCESSOR.
The careful balance of political parties embodied in the current SCOTUS can just about absorb one replacement without tipping the country into chaos… and there is a high likelihood of three replacements in the next 4-8 years. Three Trump-nominated SCOTUS Justices, to replace the sheer fighting ferocity of Ginsburg, who has kept this country reasonably on the left for the past 24 years? Three Justices who – if Trump picks reasonably perky 30-year-olds – will interpret the Constitution and inform the next 50 years of Supreme policy? That SCOTUS could overturn Roe vs Wade without a single peep of argument. dear god. let’s just get back into the sea.
It doesn’t matter if you dislike your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher if the Wizengamot is composed entirely out of Death Eaters, YOU FOOLS.
* I mean, if I had to pick anyone to fight for my rights, I would pick a tiny angry brilliant 83-year-old Jewish grandmother over pretty much anyone else, but I don’t know if it’s fair to make her do EVERYTHING for me, you know?
I see a lot of posts going around talking about the need to be critical of fanfic, and how we gotta watch out for the messages we’re sending
Well, here’s one thing I’m gonna need us to be critical about:
Every statistic I’ve ever seen says fanfic authors are heavily female (or nb)
And Tumblr, which is a fairly US-centric cross-section of fandom, is filled with this discourse about fanfic writers who create pornography
I need us to stop and think about why we’ve decided that fictional sex is the most damaging thing anyone could ever find on the internet
I need us to think about the culture we live in, which encourages us to be sexually available (to straight men) but punishes us if we (sluts) enjoy it
Because here’s the thing: fanfic is not coming from a position of power and prestige in our society
It is a niche genre primarily written by women, for women, for free
And it is a place where many of us do find power in exploring our own sexuality (or asexuality)
Even when that exploration takes us to gritty, horrifying (or cathartic) places
I’m going to need us to think long and hard about why we’re prioritizing fictional characters over the needs of real women
And I’m going to need it to stop
Fandom purity wank is absolutely about control over women and women’s sexuality. There’s nothing ambiguous about it.
Just think about the hot-button issues in the fannish community, the topics that consistently and reliably get people worked up into a lather, the themes that provoke the nastiest conflicts and inspire the most dedicated resistance movements. Think about the fights that are most likely to spill out over their cyber boundaries and start affecting people in the real world – in public harassment at cons, in doxxing and ‘outing’ to family and employers, in malicious legal allegations.
It’s about sex. It’s always about sex.
From the constant tantrums over ‘problematic’ shipping to the righteous doxxing of ‘pedophiles’ (which in current tumblr parlance means anyone who draws or writes canonically underage characters in romantic or erotic scenarios), fandom’s big efforts at moral reform always seem to revolve around restricting and controlling the sexual expression of the majority-women community. You won’t meet many people who stay up past their bedtime to scream at strangers on the internet about unethical portrayals of non-sexual violence – unless, of course, they suspect the women involved in its creation are getting off on it. You’ll struggle to find an anti blog dedicated to the insidious social ills of torture whump fic, or goopy hurt-comfort where all manner of human suffering is put on display for the viewer’s enjoyment. The purity crew dress up their agenda as a desire for collective self-improvement and raised moral standards, but they don’t seem too worried about aspects of public morality that don’t somehow tie back into sex. What they’re upset about is the same thing conservative minds have been upset about since basically the dawn of time – there are women out there in the world doing icky sex things without the permission of their communities.
And these people, these moral guardians, they’ve gotten really good at couching their fundamentalist views in progressive language. They don’t say ‘you’re to blame if you provoke men to rape’ – they say ‘your fic normalises sexual violence and contributes to rape culture’. They don’t say ‘women ought to be chaste’ – they say ‘your fantasies are socially harmful and you owe it to the world to be more self-critical’. The messages are the same and the desired outcomes are literally identical.
The core assumption underlying all of it – an assumption that I’m sure our puritan forebears would find deeply comforting – is that women’s sexual expression is a matter of public concern, and that women are directly responsible for upholding the moral standards of their communities by restricting themselves to a narrow repertoire of publicly controlled, socially condoned sexual outlets. Anything beyond that repertoire is a grave moral breach.
To anyone who’s reading this – and there’s always a few – thinking, “this is just deflection! [X hot-button topic] is really bad and harmful!’, I’d like to encourage you to sit back for just a moment and think about why it is, exactly, that you feel the best and most important place to wage your war against moral corruption is in one of the only pockets of popular media that women unequivocally control. Of all the spaces in the world where you could be fighting for your view of a better society, you’ve chosen a place where women come together to share the fantasies that mainstream culture refuses to let them indulge. Why?
It’s bible banging bullshit in a progressive mask.
i’ve been calling it ‘wrapping paper activism’. same old box of shit, but repackaged as a wonderful new gift.
I don’t disagree with any of this, but I have questions.
The fanfiction community is overwhelmingly comprised of women*, and the push to be critical of fanfic comes from within the community, so it is reasonable to infer that the people pushing self-censorship are women.
I have seen a lot of anger from people calling for censorship, and anger is often the result of fear. It is not unheard of for the calls for censorship to be accompanied by personal accounts of sexual violence, etc., which reinforces the conclusion that this anger is driven by fear.
These women calling for censorship are very much part of our community. While I vehemently disagree with them, I want to acknowledge their place in our community, and I want to respect their anger (which I see as pain and fear). I would ask, “How can we address the fear that writing/reading fictionalized sexual violence perpetuates actual sexual violence?”
We can explain the remarkable similarities between sex-negative feminism and paternalistic control of women’s sexuality, which the posters above have done admirably well. We could offer the conclusions of academic research that show there is no evidence that suggests that sexually violent material as seen in fanfiction contributes to the occurrence of actual sexual violence, if any such research exists. We can offer research and anecdotal data that show that fictionalized sexual violence is often very effective in helping victims of sexual violence process or cope with their experiences.
Ultimately, though, I don’t see any of those strategies being effective when dealing with someone who is currently experiencing a strong anxiety/panic response to something they perceive as dangerous. If we understand the underlying motivations for censorship in such a way that instead of seeing someone controlling and puritanical we see instead a person having a strongly phobic response, then the most effective way of dealing with calls for censorship has to be found in the answer to this question: “How do we compassionately respond to someone calling for censorship without acceding to the demand or escalating the situation?”
I don’t have an answer to that question; empathy isn’t really my area.
*”women” is a term of convenience for dfab and I do not mean to exclude anyone.
@thedepthsofmyshame: It is kind of you to ask this question. But whereas I am more than willing to accept some caretaking responsibility for my friends and family, and also for people who are in uncontrollable situations (war refugees come to mind) and who therefore have a claim on care from other people in general, I’m not so sure I have any special duty toward adults (or near-adults, like many of the pro-censorship brigades on Tumblr) who have choices that include not engaging with distressing material in the first place.
I have phobias and squicks and have experienced a trauma or two in my time, like pretty much everyone. I too find certain kinds of fiction and art greatly distressing, like pretty much everyone. It’s not a creator’s responsibility to change their creative practice to accommodate that distress. If a writer or artist given the standard warnings, or Chooses Not to Warn – well, I’m a grown-ass adult who knows there’s all kinds of Stuff Out There on the Interwebz. Navigation is on me.
So in my view, the answer to your question is that such demands must simply be met with polite, stonewalling refusal. (And with less-polite refusal when the demands mutate, as they inevitably seem to these days, into harassment and bullying.)
Those calling for censorship because they’re so phobic need psychological help, but I can’t imagine that they would take that suggestion on board if it comes from the people they’re attacking.
@thedepthsofmyshame you are so kind for asking this question. I have so much respect for you for that reason.
One of the reasons I have little patience for this is that fandom TAGS, fandom is at the absolute cutting edge of tag use. And untagged material is definitely a thing that exists, but its much, much easier to avoid distressing material in a fandom setting than nearly anywhere else because of tagging. And darkfic writers are at the bleeding edge of that. I don’t read darkfic, but I’ve sought it out specifically to grab tag-use from, for serious. And tagging has a less discussed second effect. It indicates authorial awareness. If I read a fic tagged with noncon then I can have very little doubt that the author is aware that the nonconc seens are in fact, nonconsensual, because they tagged it and told me so.
When I pick up an Anne McCaffery novel on the other hand there’s no warning that virtually every relationship is, at best, seriously unhealthy, and that women getting slapped and shaken is routinely portrayed as normal romantic passion. And there’s no indication, anywhere of if this was deliberate, which doesn’t prove anything but has always left me with the uneasy worry that she, on some level, did actually see that as normal.
Liked that someone asked this: “
“How do we compassionately respond to someone calling for censorship without acceding to the demand or escalating the situation?”
”
And the follow-up responses are equally sensible
As a darkfic writer who tags heavily, I just want to second here what dendritic-trees
says about authorial awareness. If I tag non-con it’s because there’s non-consensual sex. That doesn’t mean that non-con is being endorsed in the narrative.
With our focus on triggers in the community, we sometimes overlook the criticism that writers are somehow endorsing whatever issue the critic has a problem with – often non-con. Fanfic isn’t a commercial that sells a product. It’s fiction, a story peopled with fictional characters, not actual people. It gives voice to the unheard.
I don’t think of my readers as sponges just soaking up what they read without awareness, and the comments I get on my fic suggest they aren’t. They engage with the characters and critically with the narrative. They are well aware of power imbalances and abusive behavior. They don’t just accept it or romanticize it.
So I think we have two different issues here. There are those who are legitimately concerned about triggering and tags address that issue. Readers can actively take control by using tags and avoiding what triggers them.
The other issue is critics who police sexuality in fanfic on principle. As a (U.S.) American of a certain age, I oppose censorship on principle. Silencing minorities, dissenters, rebels of all stripes is a tool of oppression. It troubles me when those who seek social justice use censorship to silence the very groups they say they are protecting. The very idea of “protecting” is worrisome. It smacks of paternalism.
Okay but seriously folks – as often as I joke about this movie stirs my loins and as weirdly popular as this text post got a while back, I wanna rap with you all about why the George of the Jungle remake is a pretty important piece of cinema.
It’s literally the only movie I can think of that is based completely around the unheard of “FEMALE gaze.” Granted, while I’m a huge movie buff I’ve not seen every movie ever made. But even so, even if there’s another example of the “female gaze” in cinema that has escaped me it’s still damn impressive that a kids movie from 1997 based on a Jay Ward cartoon from the 60’s managed to turn gender representation in media on it’s fucking ass!
First things first, let’s look at our leading lady and love interest – Ursula, played by Leslie Mann.
Let me just say that while Leslie Mann is adorable and a talented actress, she does look a little less conventional and a little more plain compared to the bombshells that Hollywood likes to churn out. Leslie, in comparison, looks much more like a real women you’d meet on the street. She dresses pretty conservatively and plain throughout the film ; Wearing outfits that are more functional than fashionable for trekking through the jungle, pulling her hair back and so forth. Not that if she was dolled up and more scantily clad it would give her character any less integrity, but can we appreciate how RARE that is in the male dominated industry of film? Just think about all the roads a film about a woman in the jungle COULD have taken but didn’t – no scenes with her clothes strategically ripped or anything! You can say this is a kids movie, intended for children and that’s why the sensuality of the female lead is so downplayed but there are PLENTY of kids movies that handle women in a very objectifying and sexualized manner despite the target audience is pre-pubescent. Like, a disgusting amount. So I don’t think “it’s a kids movie” is why the film doesn’t take ANY, let alone EVERY, opportunity to showcase the main female character’s sex appeal…
…especially considering the sex appeal of the film rests squarely on the well defined shoulders of our male lead, George of the Jungle played by Brendan Fraser in the best god damn shape of his life!
*Homer Simpson Drooling Noises*
Whenever members of the reddit community try to compare the sexualization of women in fiction to the design of characters such as Batman and Superman, I always want to just sit them down and show them this movie. Because THIS is what the female sexual fantasy looks like, and Batman and Superman are male power-fantasies. Look at him – his big blue eyes, his soft hair, his lean, chiseled physique built for dexterity rather than power. He’s wild and free, but gentle. It’s like he fell right out of that steamy romance novel your mom tried to hide from you growing up.
Hell, the whole plot seems to be designed around how damn hot he is! First, for the majority of the film, he wears only a small strip of cloth to cover the dick balls and ass. Everything else is FAIR GAME to drool over for 40 minutes. Then, after he meets Ursula she takes him with her to San Francisco just so we can enjoy him in a well-tailored suit (as seen in the gif set), running around in an open and billowy shirt along side horses while Ursula and all of her friends literally crowd around and make sexual comments about him, and my personal favorite, ditch the loincloth entirely and have him walk around naked while covering his man-bits with various objects while one of Ursula’s very lucky friends oogles him and makes a joke along the lines of “So THAT’S why they call him the ‘KING of the Jungle’…”
And yes, it’s also a very cute and funny little movie. Out of all the movies based on Jay Ward cartoons, it was the most faithful to the fast-paced humor and wit of the original source material (yes even the new Peabody and Sherman movie which honestly I thought was too cutesy-poo.) But that’s not why this movie is popular with the gay community or why we all became women in 1997. It’s just really cool that there’s a film out there where the sensuality of the female form takes a back seat for the oiled up, chiseled, physique of Brendan Fraser (in his prime that is)
One thing to add: in the scene mentioned above where the ladies are watching him in the billowy shirt running with the horses, it pans back to about 50 feet away to two guys in suits at this party looking at the women and one of the guys says, “Man, what is it with women and horses?” So not only does this movie highlight the female gaze, but it blatantly points out that western male sensibilities don’t have a clue what actually appeals to women.
ALSO
he’s non threatening
as mentioned above, he looks built for dexterity rather than power, but he’s still a 6+ foot tall extremely muscular man, and not once are you worried for Ursula when he’s with her
ALSO
let’s take a look at his rival – Lyle is a cravat-wearing trust-fund kid (who, interestingly, is into Ursula’s fortune more than her, which kind of makes this a gender-swapped gold-digger thing too). He’s blonde and Ursula’s mom LOVES him. He’s more uncomfortable and less prepared to cope with the jungle than Ursula is, in his pastels and shiny shoes.
But he talks over Ursula, insists he knows what’s best for her, ignores her autonomy. In spite of the fact that Lyle Van de Groot is a rich, educated, social climber who cares deeply about his clothing and appearances he is a point-by-point checklist of unhealthy masculinity in a way that beefy, inarticulate, uneducated George could never be. Ursula is off on her own doing her own thing and Lyle hires two FUCKING POACHERS to track her down in the middle of the jungle while she’s working (or on vacation? It’s never made clear because he interrupts her before she can explain why she went on the expedition). Lyle ignores the local guides, claiming his experience with a bridge in Maui means the bridge they’re on is safe – which leads to a significant injury for one of the guides. He then tells Ursula the guides are conspiring against him, trying to make himself and his poachers seem safe and the Africans who make up the rest of their party seem dangerous.
Check that body language! A post above points out that we’re never worried about Ursula when she’s around George. That’s because Lyle talks to her like this. Look at his aggressive lean! Look at him literally looking down at her! She’s tilted away from him in the least threatening position possible and he’s so aggressive about whatever point he’s making. When he finds her after he pushed her toward a damned lion he kisses her and she pushes him away. Want a textbook example of gaslighting? Here you go: she says “don’t get all smoochy with me! I remember what happened with that lion” and he responds “What are you talking about? I was fighting that lion the whole time – you were just so terrified you don’t remember.” Then he shoots George! And then he kidnaps Ursula and attempts to force her into marriage!
Now look at how George and Ursula interact (slightly NSFW):
Even though he’s a big strong dude and he thinks he’s doing what’s okay he lets her set the tone for their interactions. He accepts that he’s out of his wheelhouse and even if he doesn’t understand it he does what she says is culturally appropriate. He learns from her! He listens to her! Compare Lyle leaning into Ursula above to this image of George and Ursula talking:
He’s listening to her, all of his attention is on on her, but he’s totally nonthreatening. His torso is turned toward her but he’s not invading her space, his hands are clasped, he’s smiling, and she’s the one leaning into him. Look at that smile she has, look how happy she is to be listened to. Her posture in both images is vulnerable but in this one with George she’s vulnerable because she has chosen to share with him instead of because she feels threatened.
When George rescues Ursula from Lyle at the end of the film it isn’t a typical damsel situation – George doesn’t have a knock-down-drag-out fight with Lyle, he swings into a tree and offers Ursula a hand so she can reach up and save herself (and before he does it he acknowledges how much it’s going to hurt and *whimpers* and looks human and scared). And you’ve gotta remember that George rescues everybody. It’s not just Ursula – he also rescues a parasailer and gets shot rescuing Shep and Ape. He just likes helping, dammit!
AND this movie offers a perfect counter to the “nice guy” thing – Ursula starts engaged to a jerk who her mom thinks is a “nice guy” the moves on to actual nice man George who isn’t *just* nice – he’s also patient, listens to her, has his own skills and talents, is okay with being goofy, has his own social circle and isn’t totally dependent on Ursula, and looks amazing. Ursula doesn’t go with George just because he’s a *nice* guy who rescued her from an asshole, Ursula goes with George because he’s an interesting, fun person who is supportive of her different way of being an interesting, fun person. AND he’s emotionally available. Google image search George of the jungle and see how many smiles you can find, see how many open looks of confusion there are, see how much sadness you can see in George’s face. Now look for images of Lyle. His two expressions are a smirk and cartoonish fear. I know this is a cartoonish kid’s movie, but it is SO powerful that the hero shares his emotions while the villain masks every emotion but fear. Lyle doesn’t want to open up, he doesn’t want to be vulnerable, he wants CONTROL. George wants to learn, to protect people he cares about, to explore new places, to laugh when he’s happy and to be sad when he’s sad, and that he does that while being a broad-shouldered, physically powerful dude who is NOT totally self-involved is just…
Like, look, I didn’t sign on to tumblr dot com for George of the Jungle discourse, but I’m just now realizing that this movie may have done the most for destroying my conception of stoic masculinity and gender roles as a child.
So I’ve mentioned this a few times recently, mostly in the context of somewhat odd, and slightly surreal stuff. Also in the context of dissociation, because I spent most of the month writing this not entirely certain the rest of the world was real.
But this was written in November 2012, so after the Avengers, and before any of the movies that come after it, so the canon for it ends with the Avengers.
Characters: Loki (MCU), The Morrígan (Irish Mythology), Anat (Canaanite Mythology), Phil Coulson, Nick Fury, Tony Stark, Mot (Canaanite Mythology), Thanos (MCU), Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, Hel (Norse Mythology), Fenrir (Norse Mythology), El (Canaanite Mythology), Natasha Romanov; (Background: Bruce Banner, Thor (MCU))
Those who know him would think he’d seek the company of others of like mind to himself. Tricksters, liars, those who have their own agenda. They have not met his allies, found when he slipped between realms and walked the ways he found there.
Loki is quiet for a long moment, before looking between them a moment. “He will not like that I have any sort of peace, anymore than he listened to me before.”
“Fathers do not listen to children they cannot admit have grown beyond what they wanted them to be.” Anat shrugs, her gaze fixed on the fire.
“You shouldn’t have been able to get in here.” That’s a voice he’s not expecting, and Loki turns slowly on his heel to meet the gaze of the man that he’d injured badly on their last meeting. Coulson is alone, dressed as he had been before, looking as if nothing had happened.
The first sign that he was going to have the mother of all headaches was when Coulson mentioned Loki had been at the keep-the-press-happy gala with the Avengers, in company of two women that Coulson wouldn’t identify.
“Is there a reason our friendly neighborhood psychotic Norse God is hanging out with a Middle Eastern goddess of beauty and war?” It’s a rhetorical question thrown out because Tony is bored in a meeting, and it makes Fury glare at him, Thor look thoughtful, and the rest of the Avengers mostly to look pained.
All of this, he allows. All of this, he wants. Let them grow stronger, let them adapt and change and prepare. He will have a small army to meet Thanos’, will bring the one who thought he could control Loki to his knees and scatter him to the wind. Even if that army does not fight for him, but for their world. Even if they wish him as dead as does Thanos.
He’s trying to pretend he didn’t hear those words, right as he’d thought he was about to fall out of the sky. He knew the voice, he just didn’t think she could talk to him right now, since she didn’t have a com, and he hadn’t heard anyone else over the chaos of battle.
He isn’t a hero, to go into battle the way the Avengers do, and he’s never – quite – wanted to be. His place, his domain, is as much the shadows as anything else. It’s watching and making sure that the right resources are brought to bear on a problem, that the right information makes it into the right hands. Fury thinks of himself as the man who pulls all the strings, and Coulson is content with that.
She stands motionless, her crows dancing restlessly in the still air, all watching each other. Trickster, Shaper, Thunder, Widow, Hawk, Protector, Rage, Winnower and Queen. The condemned circled and waiting for sentence. All waiting in the stillness for something.
When they’d first landed in the quinjet, Clint had thought the quiver of arrows on his back should be enough. After all, they only had to deal with Loki and two of his freaky friends – pretty, but seriously freaky, especially the one who’s still wet-dream material, despite the armor and the spear that he swears is taller than Steve. He had a couple extra quivers, just in case. He hadn’t forgotten Manhattan, and the Chitauri.
“Bind him over.” He looks away from Thanos, over to the heroes who are looking confused, except for Thor. He ignores his brother, and meets Barton’s eyes. A fitting symmetry. “Bind him over to Agent Barton, and let his life be forfeit to what justice he sees fit.”
The battle is over, they’ve won. Loki’s escaped again, vanishing with his friends, leaving them with a different alien war criminal, a freaked-out Clint, and a wreck of a battlefield to clean up. At least it’s not Manhattan, and he doesn’t have to repair his tower again.
A shift in the air announces the guests he’s been expecting for a while now, and he waves a hand at the empty spaces without turning to look at them. “I give you my word I will not harm you, Agent Barton. Nor Agent Coulson.”
“I mean, why team up with him? He’s not exactly the poster-boy for sanity, and the guy’s tried to take over the world once.”
“Did he?” Anat’s expression doesn’t change, but her voice has the sort of gentle patience Tony associates with someone talking to a small child, or someone who’s really not getting it. At least, when the person talking is someone a lot more patient than he is.
“Do you wish to ask some questions of me, Agent Barton?”
“Why not just ask for help?” It’s probably a question he’s not going to get an honest answer to, but it’s the one he’s most curious about the answer to. “You’ve got friends; hell, I bet even Thor would have helped you if you asked.”
Then again, he’s expecting a bird to talk to him, so maybe the whole thing is a bit crazy and getting to him. Not maybe. It is crazy, and really, he’s going to have a headache when this is over that requires something more than asprin and a few good explosions.
Chuckling again, Anat stands, going over to Tony to rest a hand against his cheek. “Yet, he is all of those things to me, at one point or another, and I have done such. As you are supplicant now, seeking answers that you do not yet have the questions to ask for. Perhaps when you do, I shall allow the offer and the acceptance.”
Not his memories, though, so he can’t let himself believe they are memories. Or he lets himself start to believe Loki has a greater hold on him than just whatever brain-washing happened with the Tesseract.
Here, she would be safe. Here, she would not worry for the distrust and the disdain of the Aesir court. Here, she would be loved, and called daughter, and above all, kept safe. Yet he cannot bring himself to step away, his fingers still stroking back hair as black as his own from a jotunn-blue face.
He has merely reported that Loki had taken the chance to provide his own version of events, and that Barton wasn’t comfortable with the mission, but did not cause any trouble. Does not tell them that Barton is dreaming, that he doubts anyone else could have navigated the maze without a map, that Loki’s daughter had spoken of a shift.
“The tales mortals have told of my brothers?” He can see her shrug her shoulders out of the corner of his eye. “Sleipnir, Jörmungandr, Fenrir, Nari and Vali? Something of it, yes.”
How to explain to one who is still more his enemy than anything else – and who he would not wish to have as more than an adversary, as the rest of those who live here ought to be – that he had found himself wanting to keep even one who could not best him in a fair fight, much less his favored sort of uneven battle, around?
For the world knows the gods are real, no better or worse than the rest of humanity, save they live beyond the span of mortal years. Their names are whispered in secret prayers, shouted to the skies, thought in silence between the moments.
reblog this post with a cool animal species lets make a wholesome thread
ok ill give a headstart:
i really like leopard seals
axolotls are p rad
I LOVE THOSE
potoos look like muppets and i ove tem
here’s a quokka it’s like someone decided to splice together a wallaby and a teddy bear they literally always look like a benevolent cartoon
i don’t think you can get more wholesome than that adorable lil seed-eating smiley face. they’re not even like dolphins, cute on the outside and evil on the inside. they’re herbivores about the size of a cat. there is nothing wrong with them.
The Springhaas, or “irl pikachu” as it is sometimes known, is basically a rat shaped like a bunny abruptly caught in the middle of trying to evolve into a kangaroo. This is why they tend to look startled.
This is a dik dik. They are tiny antelopes from southern and eastern Africa–seriously so smol. With teeny hooves and teeny horns and big soulful eyes. And the name is fun to say. It comes from the alarm call that the females make. They live together in monogamous pairs.
Long Eared Jerboa
The adorable mash-up of a hamster, bunny, and kangaroo. Whiskers with no end, ears that put a fennec to shame, and adorability beyond measure!
bringing this back on your dashes
a sichuan takin bull and his daughter
often the color of donald trump’s hair and looking like a cross between a bison and a guinea pig, the takin is actually a bloody big goat-antelope. they have splendid noses, a natural smile, and share their habitat with pandas. which should be good enough for anyone.
This is an okapi. They are related to giraffe, can lick their own eyeballs and kind of always look like you just asked them for a ride to the airport but look at those ears and the little striped legs ~(*^*)~
Chambered nautilus! A living fossil! I also love axolotl though.
A cinnamon bear! Actually a member of the black bear family, they’re one of the more calm species out there. We also have matching hair ❤ Enjoy this one with a heart on its chest!
Capybaras! They’re the largest cavy species,(cavies are animals like guinea pigs) They’re BASICALLY a giant golden retriever in the skin of guinea pig.
Tapir! They’re the horse’s weird cousin. The babies are all spotty like this, but the adults tend to be all one color. They’re just as snuffly, tho.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 