my writing shenanigans. links default to ao3 for most of them, with some tumblr posts sprinkled in.
supergirl:
not for nothing, 4/4 complete. kara/lena. lena finds out kara is supergirl, they have a fall out, and then kara loses her powers indefinitely.
one way or another, oneshot, complete. kara/lena; kara and lena meet on the subway
evergreen, oneshot, complete. kara/lena; lena meets kara later in life
snapshots of superreigncorp, ongoing. kara/lena/sam; in collaboration with chaoticsuper; all three women go on a date
sam's supercorptober 2023 entries, 7/7 complete. kara/lena; for supercorptober 2023
tumblr post roundup
crepe AU: part 1 | part 2 | part 3
day 19: hazy, day 22: art, day 24: enchanted, day 30: magic
collateral; ongoing. kara/lena, kara/andrea, lena/jack; kara is in love with lena, lena got married to jack, and andrea somehow clocks kara's feelings from the jump. then, you know, life happens.
samfic: collateral (main tag); part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6
samficlet: in pursuit of calm. oneshot. lena/kelly; kelly is in town and back from her deployment. lena processes. (tumblr post)
you've got mail; oneshot, complete. kara/lena; lena and kara are neighbors and someone's mail gets delivered to the wrong apartment NSFW
come what may. 3/3 complete. kara/lena; post-rift healing times or something like that. there's dancing. part 1 | part 2 (tumblr post)
let there be another day: oneshot, complete. kara/lena; 6 months after lena breaks up with kara to keep her safe. (tumblr post)
there's a human in the storeroom; ongoing. kara/lena and lena's friendgroup shenanigans; in collaboration with sideguitars. fae!au, basically. post 1 | post 2 (tumblr post)
samficlet: soak up the warmth. oneshot. kara/lena. lena luthor and her sad yet hopeful introspective vibes while kara is in the phantom zone (tumblr post)
samficlet: the romance of an alternate universe. oneshot?. kara/lena. kara fights a rogue alien (tumblr post)
when the world arrives at your feet. 4/4 complete. andrea/sam. andrea and sam fall into a 'no strings attached' situation. and then, you know, strings happened. (tumblr link)
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bumbleby:
homecoming; 3/3 complete. blake/yang. blake and yang reunite after ten years.
swan queen:
it ends or it doesn't; 3/3 complete. emma/regina. emma and regina drive to new york to retrieve henry's passport. and then truths are revealed.
rituals; ongoing. emma/regina. emma stays at regina's house for a time and a breakfast routine is established ch 1 | ch 2 | ch 3
a change of scenery; oneshot. complete. emma/regina. emma gets a haircut
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feel free to send me prompts, but i make no promises only so that i don't let you down lol but if it strikes my fancy, i usually try to fill it! thanks in advance for those.
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link to my other fics (of which there are plenty and span many years and random fandoms, if you so wished to explore.)
you have to be careful reading too many things that are good/smart/well-written bc then you encounter something that isnt and you get confused like ? why didnt they just make this good ? were they stupid
it's exhausting to see constant TMA/TME discourse that fundamentally does not understand intersectionality. Transmisogyny affected, TMA, describes someone who cannot leverage your assigned gender to mitigate the oppressive force of transmisogyny. Transmisogyny exempt, TME, describes someone who is able to leverage their assigned gender in some way to mitigate the oppressive force of transmisogyny. They are not identity labels; they describe a person's relationship to transmisogyny.
these labels also do not categorize people as ontologically "victims" or "oppressors". everyone, including TMA people, can wield transmisogyny and everyone can wield it most effectively against TMA people. just as cis women can perpetrate and enforce misogyny against other cis women, so too can trans women leverage transmisogyny against one another. however, given the relative lower social status of TMA people, we are less able to advance their own social standing by leveraging transmisogyny. Caitlin Jenner is both TMA and openly transmisogynistic, but she is less successful in advancing herself compared to TME people like Marjorie Taylor Green. this is similar to how cis women can wield misogyny against men (like suggesting that an fashionable man is inherently less masculine), but a similar criticism from another man will generally be a more potent attack.
oppressions can look similar: racialized women, particularly black women, are often degendered in ways which superficially resemble transmisogyny. for example, Michelle Obama was mocked for having supposedly "mannish" features. to the extent that transmisogyny might have impacted her, she was able to mitigate it by leveraging the fact that she was assigned and conformed to expectations of women. she was unable to leverage her race to deny the full extent of this public abuse because degendering is a tactic empowered by both racism and transmisogyny. a black trans woman who is similarly degendered cannot leverage TME privilege because of her gender assignment at birth. both people are targeted and harmed in some way by degendering, but one is more able to mitigate that harm due to being able to exempt herself from transmisogyny.
in a similar example, Imane Khelif was subject to simultaneous pressure from transmisogyny, racism, and intersexism. because she is TME, she could leverage her gender assignment and was not barred automatically from competing in women's events at the summer Olympics (an option unavailable to TMA athletes facing similar scrutiny). she also enjoyed an outpouring of public support in favor of her continued participation, whereas TMA athletes received little sympathy or support in the press (in fact, the event that prohibited them was hailed as especially inclusive for lgbtq+ athletes). however, she was still pressured sufficiently by racist and intersexist policies to undergo invasive medical procedures and to publicly reveal medical details that she might have preferred to keep private. the fact that Imane Khelif was subject to other systems of oppression in no way disproves the validity of transmisogyny because she was able to do the thing that defines being TME: she leveraged her assigned gender to exempt herself from transmisogyny.
in Kimberlé Crenshaw's formulation of intersectionality, she describes the unique marginalization of black women. unlike white women, black women cannot leverage their race to mitigate the impacts of racism. unlike black men, black women cannot leverage their gender to mitigate the effects of misogyny. thus, black women are demonstrably subject to a unique synergy of white supremacy and misogyny (misogynoir) from which others are able to exempt themselves to varying degrees and by various means. the same formulation can be applied to TMA people, who are unable to leverage either their gender assignment or social identity, to mitigate oppositional and traditional sexism, thereby rendering us uniquely vulnerable to the synergistic oppression of those forces. (and of course, we cannot forget that TMA people can also be subject to other discrimination from which they cannot exempt themselves; TMA people can also be variously racialized, disabled, poor, intersex, and so on.)
I'm glad the tone i struck was accessible to you. I'm going to continue to be very generous right now: this response is transmisogyny. one of the kinds of privilege that TME people experience is getting to be judged as individuals whereas TMA people are always judged collectively. TMA people should not have to be as precise, nonjudgmental, and even in tone as i was in this thread. i chose to put in the effort to explain things in these terms, but i did so because when TMA people like me aren't, we get taken with the worst possible faith.
if a cis woman wrote a post like mine about the ways in which men leverage misogyny against her, it would be obviously misogynistic for someone to reply "oh thank goodness. i never really got feminism because they're always just so bitchy about men". this would be the case regardless of who said it or what their proximity to misogyny is. the same is true here: i made a long post with very precisely chosen language, and this reply contrasts me against all those other, apparently uncouth trans women who don't haven't decency to be nice about our oppression. (if you know trans women like that, please send them my way. they sound based.).
TMA people do not owe any deference to TME people's feelings when talking about our oppression. y'all can get away with shit on the regular, usually against us, that is far crueler than incivility. TMA people shouldn't have to make posts that are hundreds of carefully chosen words long with step-by-step logical constructions from first principles and real-world illustrations whose relevance is spelled out on exacting detail. this was a high effort post and WE DON'T OWE THAT TO ANYONE. we shouldn't have to do that every time we want to talk about the fucked up things that happen to and around us, especially not to TME people who benefit from doing those fucked up things to us.
(and if you think my reply here is veering into incivility, let me invite you to examine why it is that you're feeling so defensive. let's internalize and practice those analytical skills which i described apparently so well in those first canonically non-bitchy posts.)
a common (and exhausting) misconception seems to happen around the word "exempt". let's be clear: transmisogyny isn't just "misogyny that happens to trans women". transmisogyny is a social force which influences *all* people which posits that differently gendered people are intrinsically different in some meaningful way and that one gender is in some way socially superior to another. the ways that we construct, define, inscribe, navigate, and relate to gender are all influenced by transmisogyny. if getting to wield misogyny without consequence is the carrot of patriarchy, then the threat of faggotization for being too great a failure to one's assigned boyhood is the stick. I've seen transmisogyny described as the psychological lynchpin that holds patriarchy together. some people can leverage their gender in some way to mitigate the impact of this force, but it is a fundamental part very sea that we all must swim in.
the same can be said for other marginalizing forces. temporarily nondisabled people can experience negative consequences of ableism, but feeling burnt out from an excessive workload is a fundamentally different experience when not fully exposed to ableism. for instance, you might have your exhaustion taken more seriously by your doctor if you are not yet disabled and consequently receive better medical care. a straight man might be mistreated if others believe him to be gay, but he's dealing with one moment of interpersonal bigotry rather than an entire lifetime of being under threat (for example, his right to the social and financial benefits of marriage are far more guaranteed than they might be if he was gay). and so on.
TME people experience transmisogyny but they are not its primary targets and can exempt themselves from scrutiny and mistreatment by leveraging their gender in some way that TMA people cannot. one pernicious way that this happens is through a kind of affected incompetence, positioning themselves to always be seeking education from TMA people about transmisogyny and offering shallow rebuttals and critiques such as the images attached (which they may not even consciously recognize as such). this positions TMA people as bearing the expectation of answering and clarifying on demand and being held to account for all the other TMA people who have come before her.
like i just spent nearly a thousand words giving the piss easiest "intersectionality 101" and you're complaining that the language is unclear or flawed in some way that precludes your understanding or prevents you from internalizing what you've just read, complaints which would be irrelevant if you just read the first paragraph again in which the terms were defined in clear, simple language. if this is your response, you are exactly who i was complaining about from the beginning.
today I was wearing my “yes homo” shirt and some lady told me “you’re going to hell” and I said “with you around it’s like we’re already there” and I swear she made this exact fkn face
I cannot believe this post I made in 2015 is still going around…. anyway plot twist this same lady got famous on my town’s facebook gossip group for divorcing her husband for a woman 💅🏻✨ I like to believe my yes homo shirt pointed her in the right direction
say what you will about thai GLs but these shows have sorted out their lighting they really said im gonna turn all the lamps on so you can see these women cry and pine every single episode
Something I've been thinking about since I've been rewatching OUAT, is that Henry is never afraid of Regina... even in season 1, when he fully believes that she is the Evil Queen, and he's read all about what she did in the Enchanted Forest, he's not afraid of her, to the point where he talks back to her and actively defies her on a regular basis
I would credit the showrunners with creating a show-not-tell narrative here, where you can assume from Henry's behaviour that Regina is a good mom, but that would be giving them WAY too much credit (especially because that wasn't the original direction they planned to take the show in)... i think they wrote Henry that way to show that he's a hero, going up against the Evil Queen, and he's not afraid because Emma is the savior and he knows she will break the curse and he'll be safe
But in reality, the story that I believe they told, unintentionally, is that Regina was always a good and loving mother to Henry, and he grew up feeling safe and knowing that she loved him and would never hurt him. The fact that he is willing to openly defy her and doesn't fear any repercussions is very telling
(putting the rest under a break, because this ended up being much longer than I originally had planned lol)
In season 2, Henry full on witnesses her trying to kill David, and threatening everyone at the town hall meeting when she gets her magic back, and he's not only still not afraid of her, he already knows that he's the only thing she actually wants, and that she won't hurt anyone if she has him. She never had to explicitly say what she wanted, or agree that she wouldn't hurt anyone else if he went with her, he just KNEW because he knows her
But I think the really, really telling thing is Henry's face when Regina uses magic to restrain him, versus Regina's face when Cora does it to her:
Henry doesn't look afraid... the wheels in his head are already turning, planning his next move. Rightfully, he should be terrified, because magic has only been in Storybrooke for like a day, and he's already witnesses Regina try to kill David with it (with tree branches, even!), and also use it against several people at town hall, but he's not afraid, because that's his mom and she won't hurt him and he knows it
Regina has grown up around magic her whole life, and the second her mother uses it on her, she gets scared, and when she tries to argue, Cora doubles down on the magic restraints and Regina immediately capitulates. She is terrified of her mother, and she has no reason to believe her mother won't actually hurt her.
Also, not only is Henry not afraid of Regina, she also can't manipulate him the way that Cora manipulated her, because he already knows he's the most important thing in her life and the only person that she loves or even remotely cares about. He's all she has and he knows it, and he doesn't have to do anything to appease her to try to earn her love, because he already has it, and he knows there's really nothing he can do to make her stop loving him.
Regina grew up with a mother who didn't love her, and it made her desperate for Cora's approval, which made it so easy for Cora to lie to Regina and manipulate her. She had to act a certain way and hide her true self from her mother, because she was trying to earn her mother's love, which was an impossible task (but she didn't know that at the time, obviously).
Like, imagine a teenage Henry in Regina's position, in love with someone his mother didn't approve of, engaged to be married into royalty and power, and Regina had caught him about to run away and adamantly opposed it, but then suddenly appeared to have a change of heart... Henry would have seen through that act in a second, but Regina couldn't see through her mother's lies because she didn't want to... it's like how Henry says "she wants to believe it, so she does", when explaining why Regina believes him when he lies to her... she wants to believe that her mother was capable of loving her, so she did, and having that faith in Cora always ended up costing her in the end
(And, I mean, obviously Henry would never be in the same situation as Regina because even if she didn't approve of who he wanted to be with, she would accept it because she loves Henry and truly does want him to be happy, which is something Cora never wanted for Regina)
(also, for the record, this is why Henry is good at manipulating Regina as well, because she will believe anything he tells her when it's what she wants to hear)
It's actually amazing that Regina did become a good mother, since she had no examples of good parenting herself... yes, her father loved her, but he never protected her. He couldn't have stopped Cora, but he never even tried... he let his daughter suffer while he stood by and watched.
David couldn't have stopped Regina if she'd used magic on him when he went to get Henry, but that didn't stop him from kicking her door open and running in there with his sword... she could have roasted him on the spot and he knew it, but he risked it anyway to protect Henry.
... anyway, just another example of how A&E accidentally wrote a better story than they'd originally planned, because they accidentally set believable ground work for Regal Believer and Regina's path to redemption, which I don't believe was their original plan. I know Lana asked for a better relationship between Regina and Henry in season 2, because she was worried it would come across as anti-adoption to have the adoptive mother be evil, and the birthmother to be the hero that rescues the child, but I'm not sure they ever intended to redeem Regina at all, tbh.
Either way, the one thing that doesn't fit is when Emma asks "do you love him?" and Regina says "of course I love him" with no emotion on her face, and slams the door, and then you see this look of realization on Emma's face, and she decides to stay in Storybrooke... they can try to say that Regina always loved Henry, but that scene clearly was meant to be interpreted as Regina lied, and Emma knew it and that's why she stayed. There is no other plausible explanation for why she decided to stay after that.
And that's why I say they accidentally laid the ground work, because the story they were trying to write, clearly, was that Regina was just evil and didn't actually love Henry, but they accidentally wrote Henry in a way that he could have only been, if he had grown up with a mother that loved him.
I finally managed to complete my SQWS 5 reading. And I have to say it ended up with 2 fics that were just what I needed to lift my spirits. I know we all love our good dose of angst, but I think at least with AU we can let our ladies have it a bit easier.
They were "Where love goes to die" by @sssammich and teaching (about love) by DelicatePoem.
I thought they were both so well done and both done with such a light touch and were a real joy to read.
If you are in need of a bit of a lift for the soul and you haven't read them, take a look at them :)
non-writers will never understand the mental illness of writing an entire conversation in your head while doing dishes and then forgetting every word the second you open a blank doc