How to jack off to a bra

Made this as a throwaway account because people in my personal life follow my Reddit.
By way of background, I (F21) am currently travelling around Europe with my boyfriend, Jack (22), and three of our friends: Adam (M21), Lacey (F20) and Charlie (M21). Adam and Lacey are also a couple, while Charlie is single.
We've been travelling for around two weeks now and it's been an amazing trip; there's been no arguments and we're making some memories I'll have forever.
We're currently in Croatia and were at a secluded little beach/cove, when Adam mentioned going skinny dipping. We'd have a few drinks at this stage and it honestly sounded like a lot of fun/one of the bucket list things. Adam, Lacey, and Charlie started to get undressed and I was about to start until I noticed that Jack wasn't really engaged. I asked him what was up, and he said he wasn't comfortable with going skinny dipping, and I shouldn't join in either. I told him I didn't want to miss out on the fun and there was nothing weird about it, so started to take off my top and skirt. Before I went to unclasp my bra, he mentioned how it was beyond disrespectful; I said that Adam wasn't acting like this, nor was Lacey, and there was nothing sexual about it. I took my bra off but keep my thong on to try and appease him/as a compromise, before running into the sea.
We had a great time, and it was about 15 minutes of splashing and fun memories. When we got out and were drying, Jack was still distant and wasn't engaging. Everyone could sense the mood was a bit off, but I figured it was tiredness.
When we got back to the hostel later on, I tried to see if Jack was fine, but he got annoyed and said how I'd disrespected him by skinny dipping and "getting my tits out" in front of two guys. I was taken aback because Adam is with Lacey and Charlie wasn't staring; besides, we were mostly covered by water so barely anything was visible. I told him he was being insecure and paranoid, and I had done nothing wrong.
He maintained that I was disrespectful and nudity is sexual regardless of my intentions. He said he had respected me, but I just think he's massively overblowing this; I shouldn't have to compromise on my fun because of his insecurities.
AITA for joining in?

I was raised deeply religious. I’ve deconstructed a bit, and went through the normal rebellious phase that, for girls, includes dressing provocatively (by that, I mean, crop tops or leggings, gasp). But now I know I just dressed catered fully to man-centric view of “hot”.
Lately, as a fully formed woman, I struggle with how to dress myself. It feels a little silly to admit but it’s sometimes incredibly disruptive. I am aware my body is potentially being objectified every minute I’m in public. I am aware of my performative gestures, like sucking in my stomach or fluffing my hair, all for the male gaze. And yet I don’t know how to live in a world like this, wanting to be pretty for some reason and wanting to avoid the consequences of being perceived as pretty.
I went to the beach and my thought process went like this:
What swimsuit should I wear? I feel pretty in a bikini, but do I feel pretty because I know I look sexy? Why do I want to look sexy, I’m going to the beach. I don’t want old men to look at me like that. But I don’t want to wear a one piece because I don’t feel as pretty, it’s less cute and my boobs don’t look as good—yet it would feel nice to not be objectified. Who am I kidding, I’ll be objectified if I wear a trash bag. So should I wear jeans? Avoid the whole thing?? Stay home???
Like I said, I feel sort of dumb or silly, but truly I was never taught how to do this. My whole adolescence, all I knew was that men were constantly suffering from sexually perverted thoughts, so a glimpse of my slipping bra strap could send them into a frenzy, and it was my job to keep them from that sin. Then I pendulum-swung into a misguided progressive feminism perspective, that men are capable of policing their own thoughts and I could wear whatever the hell I wanted, be as sexy as I liked, getting off on their attention while condemning them for being so vacuous and simple minded. And now I know both truths coexist—men are depraved and sickened by their pornography consumption, and they are responsible for those thoughts, and their lack of concern for their habit of jacking off to misogyny and sadism directly causes violence and betrayal in all forms to every single woman on earth.
So yeah wtf do I wear to the beach?

During the course of my career as an alpha Sasquatch hunting, Dogman destroying, pussy crushing, luxury watch loving dude, I have run into this particular woman a few times. She is one part uber sensuality, and the other part deadly. Yes, I am speaking about the lovely, Anna Conda. I bring her up because I had another run-in with her last year.

Anna and I first joined forces, so to speak, when she acted as a go-between in my business deal with the Chinese to sell them bigfoot parts. See, I would hunt and kill the critters, cut them up, deliver the parts to Anna, who in turn gave me a suitcase containing unmarked American hundred-dollar bills, then she would transport the bigfoot parts to the Chinese. I was never really sure of what the sneaky-ass Chinese were doing with the body parts. All I knew for sure is that they are extracting certain materials from them, then synthesizing them with some other shit, creating some sort of drug. Whether it then becomes a bio-weapon or a dick stimulant, I do not know. Neither do I care. As long as they kept the hundies coming, I was good.

Now, while Anna is of Russian descent, she is a freelancer. She will work for any sick, skeevy motherfucker out there. She does not care. She has no conscience, at least not in the traditional sense as we understand it in western civilization. Today she is working for the Chinese, and tomorrow she may be working for Hamas. She is a slippery motherfucker.

So here is how it went down. At 11:32 p.m. on a Friday in September of last year I get a call on my cell phone. When the call came in I was balls deep into this hot little lass I picked up at the bus station a little earlier in the evening from an old swarthy chap named “Colorado Joe”. He wanted to sell me the girl. I was assured she was over 20 years old. I told him I needed to take her out for a test ride, which he agreed to.

So, there I was, balls deep in “Bing Bang Yun”, and my phone rings. Of course, I silence all incoming calls not in my contacts list. Thus, I knew that I must know the caller. In mid stroke I reached over to the nightstand to retrieve my cell and looked at it. It was a call from “Sergio”. I thought, “Oh shit…. I am going to have to cut the Oriental bang circus short.” When Sergio calls, I have to respond…immediately. He has the best blow on the east coast!!

“Hey, Serge! What’s up?”, I asked. All he said was, “Hooters. 2:00 a.m.”, then hung up. This was obviously the rendezvous for the transaction. Now, understand that Serge was not talking about the chicken wing restaurant. Hooters was code, in case the feds were listening in on the line. “Hooters” meant the titty bar out on Highway 69 called “The Plump Rump”. We had a communications code we used.

It was a long haul to the titty bar, so I needed to get moving. I had no time to return the girl to Colorado Joe, so I took her with me. I had her blow me on the way to the meeting with Sergio, telling her that her performance would make the difference on whether I save her from Joe or not. Of course, after she was done I tossed her out of my speeding truck and down, over the bridge, and into the Wendigo River below. I did not need any complications in my life right now.

I arrived at The Plump Rump at 2:00 a.m. on the dot. I saw the manager, Lou Skunt, sitting at the bar when I walked inside. I nodded. He walked over and said to me, “Use my office for the meeting The parties are already in there waiting for you.” I nodded and then headed to Lou’s office. Then it hit me: Lou said the “PARTIES” are already here. That is, parties, meaning more than one person. It was not just Sergio. It was 2 or more people! Lou was probably in for a cut of whatever was about to go down.

Something was bad fucked up!! I know for a fact that Sergio never brings anyone with him on a deal, at least not with me. He is too distrustful of people to do that, and too fucking mean to need protection. Something was wrong. I was just as likely to get whacked when I enter Lou’s office as anything else. I needed a moment to think things through.

I took a spot in front of one of the performance poles to watch a young, swarthy Mexican lass perform. My mind quickly strayed from the problem at hand to this brown chick’s ass and tits. She was not a great looking chick, but her body was smoking!! I quickly became aroused. I thought to myself, “Goddamn Asian bitches!! They are just like Chinese food – after 2 hours you are ready for some more!!”

When the little Mexican chick went on break I motioned her over to my table. “Hola Senior!!”, she said. I pulled out a clear plastic baggie of blow and dropped it on the table. Her eyes grew wide and slobber starting falling from her mouth. Blow is like catnip for strippers. Thus, she fell under my spell immediately.

The next thing I know, this brown girl was on my lap, dry humping me like a feral bitch dog in heat. I had to bang her. I NEEDED to see my wang penetrating her. Just then, someone taps my shoulder hard. I look up to see Lou standing over me. He bent down and said, “Did you forget about my office, asshole?!?!?!” I replied, “Damn, Lou!! You read my mind!!!” I arose, with the little Mexican bolted onto my mid-section, and hastily retreated to Lou’s office. I figured Lou would prefer me to stain this chick in private rather than out in the open.

The door to the office opened easily. The lights were on inside. In a lustful haze, I set the little Mexican chick on her back across Lou’s desk and started pumping the shit out of her, completely unaware of the others in the room with us. In a moment I heard someone call my name. I twist my neck around to see Sergio sitting on Lou’s jizz crusted couch. I think to myself, “Oh shit! I forgot about that shit!”

I figured I would just move forward with the deal as it was proposed to me. “Hey Serge! What ya got for me, dude?”, I asked. He replied, “I have a very special deal for you. I need, uh … yeah, ……Hey, Rod, you want to stop for a moment so we can talk?” I picked up the little tamale and laid her down onto Sergio’s lap as I continued to plow her. She stayed on my cock the whole time. I told Sergio, “No, man. I’m good! Lay it on me!” Slowly, Sergio lowered his face into his palm.

Then it happened. The voice cam from behind me, in the dark corner of Lou’s office. It was velvety yet hard as steel. “Rod. Went need to talk”, it said. Even though I did not stop pumping the little brown chick, a chill went down my spine when I heard those words. It was the thick timbre of the voice, I think, that alerted me.

I turned to look across the room. There, sitting in a red leather captains chair against the wall was the source of the sultry voice: Anna Conda.

I picked up the little taco yet again and turned her around so I could face Anna as I continued pumping her. At this point the Mexican girl was merely a masturbation toy I was using. I increased my pump so I could dump my load and get this over with. Then BAMM!!!, it was over. I removed the lass from my huge rod, after which her body crumpled to the floor. I did not know if she was dead or injured, or what had happened to her. But I did not care either, so I did not dwell on it.

I tried to compose myself the best I could, then walked over to stand before Anna so I could get to the bottom of all this business. “Well, well, well. Anna Conda. We meet again. Tell me, what brings you here, to my little neck of the woods?”

Anna replied, “Rod, put your dick away.” I looked down and, indeed, I had forgotten to stow my cock. Out of pure curtesy, I packed it away. Then I returned my attention to Anna. “Alright, Anna, what’s going on here?”

Anna launched into a startling tale about what brought her to me. As she spoke I became lost in her wanton beauty. She got up from her chair and walked about the room as she relayed her story, presumably to make it more dramatic and demonstrative. I got a full-on view of her body, and it was fantastic!!

She stands 5’10’’ and weighs 105 lbs. She is lithe. She was showing it off too, wearing a black, silk dress that landed just about her ankles. The top was low-cut, betraying just a bit of cleavage from her C-cup wineglass titties. She was not wearing a bra. Anna never wears a bra. Her nips were perfectly outlined through the silk. In fact, I think her nips were hard. It was probably something she did on purpose in an attempt to influence me. It was working.

Anna’s ass was perfect. It was not at all fat, but round enough not to be skinny. It was a fit figure skater’s ass. As she walked, I could see a tiny bit of jiggle emanating from her ass flesh, and then reverberated in the silky black dress she wore. My cock began growing hard again.

Her face was beautiful. Think Scarlett Johanson and Phoebe Cates rolled into one. But any sweetness this may evoke is quickly dispelled by Anna’s throaty voice with its thick Russian accent. I have known Anna for 20 years. Yet, she still does not look a day over 25. Jesus Christ!!! If ever there was a chick to die for ….. If I was one to delve into the belief of the paranormal, then I may conclude that Anna made a deal with the devil. But, I am not such a person.
And literally, Anna Conda is a chick to die for. She is deadly as fuck. She will kill you in a split second without a thought just because she does not like the shirt you are wearing. She can do it too. She is always armed and she knows how to use her weapons. Moreover, she is a total psychopath. This makes her doubly dangerous.

Anna and I have always gotten along for the most part. Like Anna, the dollar is my primary motivating factor. Such a mindset allows for understanding and predictability among people, which are elements that are sorely missing in many business dealings today that go on in the color of darkness.

Suddenly, Anna snapped me out of my thoughts. “Here’s your gun, Rod. Now let’s get started”, said Anna. She and Sergio were halfway through the door exiting Lou’s office when I said, “Hey, wait a damned minute!!! What are you talking about?!?”

They both stopped, and Anna walked back in and looked me in the eyes, saying “The plan, Rod. Let’s get on with the plan.” A little embarrassed, I sheepishly asked, “What plan?” Anna folded her arms and looked cross at me. After a moment to allow me to simmer in my shame, she asked, “You were not paying attention, were you, Rod?” I shook my head and looked down.

I heard a hammer cock. I jerked my head back up to find myself staring down the barrel of a pistol pointed at my head that Anna was holding. I protested, “Look, it is not my fucking fault!! Put that fucking gun down!!!” I continued, “You were distracting me with …. Well.. you know, how you are dressed, and that hot, sultry voice…. You know?”

“So, instead of paying attention to the plan, you chose to eye-rape me. Is that what I am to understand your position is, Rod?”, she asked. Knowing that my life was on the line, I said, “Anna, look, you know I am horny to a fault. Then you come in here, swinging them tits around, wearing that silk dress showing off the crack of your ass…. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU EXPECT TO HAPPENED?”

Anna lowered her gun. She knew that my explanation of being a total cocksman was truth. “Let’s go”, Anna curtly said. I obeyed.

Anna explained the plan to me again on the drive from The Plump Rump. She made me wear a blindfold so that I would not get horny during her explanation. Here is how it went:

Anna Conda was now working for the Russians. It seems that Putin caught wind of the Sasquatch project that the Chinese were working on. He also knew that the American government have been fucking with sasquatch for decades. Thus, he was very concerned about the existence of a bigfoot gap. He ordered the acquisition of a Sasquatch specimen immediately.

Moreover, said specimen must be prime. It needed to be the biggest, baddest sasquatch of them all – a true alpha – so as to speed things along. Putin did not want some weird shit-creature, is-it-a-sasquatch-or-is-it-a-dogman, kind of monstrosity. He wanted purebred, badass sasquatchery, and preferably from the American Pacific northwest.

Anna got in on it because she sold the intel to Putin about China’s Sasquatch operation. She then told Putin she could produce sasquatch corpses for him. She told him she had a contact (i.e., me). Thus, with Putin’s blessing and promises of riches to come, Anna set out to America to find me.

Now, here is where things got a bit squirrely. See, I agreed to procure some more dead sasquatch. I have no problem with killing sasquatch because, in my opinion, they are an abomination on this Earth. I kind of feel like I am doing God’s work by wiping out as many of them as I can. And given all the not-so-Godly stuff I have done, I feel like killing Sasquatch kind of offsets that to some degree.

But Anna, she was stuck on Putin’s instruction that she must supply him with apex Sasquatch. So she did not want to take my advice of heading to the Pacific Northwest or Alaska. Instead, Anna claimed to have pinpointed the whereabouts of a particularly gruesome sasquatch beast that she KNEW would win her a fortune from Putin if she brought it to him.

“So, where is this beast?”, I asked. Anna replied “Martha’s Vineyard”. I paused. Then I asked her to repeat herself. It turns out that I was not mistaken about what Anna had said. I continued, “Uh, Anna, there are no sasquatch on Martha’s Vineyard, just a lot of wealth New Englander schmucks.”

Anna looked at me and told me I was wrong. Then she decided to attempt to taunt me. “Oh, Rod, mighty slayer of Bigfoot! Yet, you fail to take notice of where the biggest, most foul and rotten beast of them all makes its home. Jesus, Rod!! What kind of bigfoot hunter are you, anyway?” Anna then spit at my feet and wondered aloud whether she even needs me for this job.

I decided that I needed to straighten out the hierarchy here in order for this here deal to move forward. I said, “Well, Anna, feel free to truck on over to Old Whitey Beach and battle that beast. But, if there is a big old mangy sasquatch lurking around over there, then it is probably a fucking Nazi-Squatch. You know, those fuckers out there hate the Jews.”

The work “Nazi” visibly shook Anna. Her great grandfather died defending Leningrad. Her entire family there died of either starvation or cannibalism during Hitler’s siege during Operation Barbarossa. Anna despised Nazis. But she feared them too. After landing that punch, I decided to push my luck.

“Now, I am still willing to help you catch this here Nazi-Squatch, but you have to do something for me”, I said. Now Anna’s eyes were on me, and they were narrowing. I continued, “I want you to get bare assed naked and pleasure yourself while I stand over you and jack it.” Anna stared at me silently for a long moment. Then she replied.

“After the job is done, and you can get none of your … fluids… on me”, she said. I shook my head and countered, “Now, and I will ‘try’ to not get my spunk on you.”

However, Anna then turned the tables on me. In fact, she picked up the table and bashed my head in with it. She looked me in my eyes, then matter-of-factly said, “You get the beast, and your prize shall be a night with me, anything goes, darling.” Well, since this caused all of the blood to immediately drain from my brain, I had a lapse in judgment. “DEAL!!”, I said. Then we shook on it.

“OK, tell me more about this supposed monster sasquatch on Martha’s Vineyard”, I said. I still was not ready to believe there was a monster out there. “I show you photo”, said Anna. She took out her phone, scrolled to find the photo, then handed the phone to me. “There. Sasquatch”, she said.

I stared at the photo and remained silent. After a long moment, I turned the phone so that Anna could see the photo and asked, “Uh, Anna, is THIS what you intended to show me?” She replied. “Yes! There…Sasquatch! The biggest, grossest monster around.”

Now, I could not argue with Anna that the image on her phone is a big, gross monster. Hell, it could actually be a sasquatch, and THE UBER sasquatch. It is most certainly the grossest thing on Martha’s Vinyard. But I somehow do not think this is what Putin is expecting.

I turned to Anna and said, “Anna, this is a photo of Michelle Obama. I know it looks vile, and has a huge, hulking body with large appendages where a woman should not have them. But, sweatheart, that ain’t no sasquatch. That’s a big, hairy Chicago street negro.”

Anna did not believe me at first. She was hard in her conviction that Obama was a sasquatch. “I have seen the Sasquatch beast you deliver to me for China. This … Michelle Obama …. It is big, and hairy, and ugly like the sasquatch beast, but worse.”

When the truth finally set it, I could see that it had kind of broken down poor Anna, if only just a bit. I put my arm around Anna and told her, “Look, Michelle O fooled you. Hell, she and her Hamas Hubby fooled millions of Americans, twice! At least you saw Michelle for what she is, to wit: a big, gross sasquatch, and NOT some kind a retarded leftist messiah.”

After that, things took a rather dark turn. “What if we still take her to Putin? We can make deal; sell her to Putin!!” At this point I held up my hands and said, “I’m out”, then turned and walked away. Anna followed, trying to get me to stay. At this point, I could tell that Anna was coming undone a little.

See, she had to produce for Putin. There is no telling what kind of secret deal she actually had with him. She had to deliver a big old mangy Obama …. Er, uh, I mean … Sasquatch, to Putin.

“Ok, Rod, we do your plan. We go out west to kill bigfoot. Huge, monster bigfoot. she said. I turned and looked Anna in her eyes and said the following: First, we bang for 48 hours straight, right now, so I can get my fill of you. Second, you pay me $10,000.00 cash upfront. Third, upon delivery of the dead bigfoot, you pay me $1 million immediately.”

Anna agreed to everything, but noted that at the present time it was her “time of the month”. I grimaced, as I will absolutely not go there (and she knows that). “Fine, next week we bang”, I said. She pointed out that I would be in the woods next week hunting sasquatch. “Fine, once I come out of the woods, then we bang – 48 hours straight”, I said. “Of course, darling!”, she agreed.

Well, it took several days to set up the hunt, but it finally happened. I was in Washington state at high elevation based on intel I has acquired that indicated that there was a monstrous 15’ tall sasquatch on the mountain range that had been murdering and eating hunters and hikers. After 3 months in these mountains without a trace of the creature I began to lose hope, thinking that I probably got some bad intel, or bad coordinates.

I got my satellite phone out to call for an extraction. Winter was setting in fast, and if I did not get off this mountain soon, then I would freeze and/or starve to death. Unfortunately, my contact did not answer. I tried for 2 days. No answer. I had been fucked. I wondered what had happened back in civilization that caused me to be abandoned like this. I resolved that I would get off that mountain and get to the bottom of this shit. There would be hell to pay for this betrayal!!’

I was able to get in touch with contacts from back home. I got old Billy Ray from Ellijay and Rattler on the phone and got them to come out here to Washington State to extract me. Rattler use to fly helicopters in the Army. He has an old Huey sitting in his front yard, to the chagrin of his HOA. He fired that sucker up, and him and old Billy Ray flew out here to my coordinates and extracted me.

After landing at a convenience store to buy some beer for the flight home, we headed east. Through the skies a way, Billy Ray said, “Well, Rod, I guess you is bout ready to git back home to Georgia, eh?” In fact, I was ready to go home. But I had to take care of some business first. I told them both to take me to New York City. They were both perplexed. All I said to them was “I have an old friend there I have to see before I can go home.”

I have intel on where Anna Conda stays when she is in the United States. She stays at certain hotels depending on what month she is here, and whether her check-in date is an odd or even number. This is for undercover work. I came across the code for her stays while doing the sasquatch work for China. She an I were caught in a snowstorm one night in Buffalo, NY, and had to share a room at the Holiday Inn near the airport. We had like 10 big Igloo ice chests with iced down sasquatch body parts with us in the room.

Anna was like, “No hanky panky, Rod. I am tired and I want to go to bed. Tomorrow we finish business.”

Frankly, I did not blame her for withholding her magnificent muff from me. I was tired as hell. But, I could not settle for nothing. So, when Anna was in the bathroom taking a shower, I started going through her suit case. I wanted to find some of her panties to jack off into. Instead, I found a little black notebook. Inside it contained her lodging codes, and some other interesting things. I photographed the contents with my phone and then put it back.

When Anna got out of the shower she was already dressed in her night clothes. She saw me lying on my back, nude on the bed, and jacking it. “Rod!! GROSS!!!! Go to the restroom to do that shit!!!”, she commanded. I just did it to get a rise out of her. LOL!!

So, if Anna is still inside the U.S., then using the codes I stole from her I can locate precisely where she will be that night. I studied it for a few moments then had my answer. Tonight she would be staying at the Dogman Inn on Hwy 95 South, Room 355. I told Rattler to get me there stat!

We had to stop several times for fuel and beer. Those Hueys go just a bit over a hundred MPH, you know. But eventually, we got there. I gave the boys some money and told them to go to the Waffle House for some coffee to sober up. Then they would fly me home.

I should mention that I also had Rattler’s fully auto Russian AK-74 with spare mags. During the long flight with 2 drunks from Washington State to New York City, I had worked myself up into a towering rage over how Anna fucked me on this Putin deal. She had clearly thrown me aside. But for what, exactly? I figured I would storm the hotel room, get some answers, then shower the room with gun fire.

I busted through the door of Room 355 at exactly 3:35 a.m. There she was. My entry roused her from slumber. I was pointing my rifle at her, center mass. She was shocked at the appearance of a gunman in her room at this time of night. However, she was not as shocked as one would think (this was not the first time something like this has happened to her).

I raised my face from the receiver just enough so she could see it was me. “Rod!!!”, she exclaimed. “What happened to you?!?!? I thought you had died up in those mountains when we never hear from you!” I replied, “Shove it up that cute little ass of yours, Anna. You fucked me. And not in the good way. What the fuck was all that shit about needing a sasquatch for Putin?!?”

Anna played dumb. But it struck me that I had been deliberately put out of the loop for 3 months. Why? Who wanted me away for that long, and why? What went on in my absence?!? I was just dying to know!!! I set my rifle down and pulled out my fixed blade knife, ready to get down to some real nasty work on Anna so I could get some truth. The pure evil of what I was about to do to her caused a wide death grin to grow on my face. Anna saw it. She knew what it meant. She swallowed hard and her eyes betrayed the shear terror she felt inside. I was engorged with blood lust. She knew she had fucked up one time too many this time!!

Suddenly came the sound of the toilet in the bathroom flushing. I was momentarily shocked. I did not expect anyone else to be there with Anna. Anna saw it in my face. I glanced at her and saw that the terror in her face was replaced with pleasure, a slight smile creeping over her face.

I was going to have to face off against this person in the bathroom, who would be out in a split moment. When I do that, I will have to turn 180 degrees from Anna, thereby making me vulnerable to her. I had only once choice: Shoot Anna first.

Just as this came to me, but just before I could act on it, the bathroom door opened. I had to deal with that person before Anna now. I spun around to see that it was a completely nude, and fat, white man. He was a real oafish blob. He looked surprised to see me. He also looked sort of familiar.

I next heard the crack of something hitting my skull hard. I remember the immediate hateful pain that shot through my body and the sound of blood rushing through my ears. I remember the dizziness, then falling to the floor. Clearly, as I fixed on the man from the bathroom, Anna had cracked me over the head with a blunt object.

I came to the next morning, Billy Ray and Rattler had manage to track me down based upon coordinates I left in the chopper that said “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY”. Billy Ray filled up the hotel room ice bucket with cold water and doused my head with it to bring me conscious. I was disoriented at first. But after a bit, what happened in this room the night before came back to me.

Honestly, I am surprised that Anna did not just kill me. I presume that she thinks she can leverage her drop-dead hotness to get me to do more shit for her in the future. She is absolutely right about that too. Rattler then said, “Hey, Rod, that snake bitch left a letter fer ya.”

He handed me the letter. This is what it said:
____________________________________________

“Dear Rod:

Sorry about the boo boo on your head. Hope it heals soon. Also sorry about leaving you in the mountains. I was not running a scam on you Rod. Rather, an opportunity arose for me to acquire a sasquatch body from another person. You may know him since you are a sasquatch hunter. His name is Matt Moneymaker. Anyway, until next time…..

Yours truly,
Anna Conda”
_____________________________________________
I could not fucking believe it. That was fatfuck Moneymaker in the hotel room earlier. Anna fucked Matt Fatfuck Moneymaker for a Sasquatch! That fat son of bitch!!

Billy Ray asked, “You ready to go Rod?” I stood up and said, “Yeah, let’s go.” Then Rattler said, “Hey, ya wanna stop and git some beer fer the ride home?” I replied “Hell yeah.”

I felt like I wanted to die. Thank God for beer and buddies. I don’t blame Anna. She is a fucking snake, and I knew that before this started. Also, I cannot really blame fatfuck Moneymaker for wanting to get some of that hot poon pie Anna serves up. I guess I have to blame fate for fucking me over this time. I even started thinking that next time I will just avoid Anna. But I know I won’t, thus making me subject to this sort of shit again. I had Rattler set us down in Charlottesville so I could buy some hard liquor.

THIS STORY BEGAN AS A BDSM-INCESTY STORY AND TURNED IT FORCED-TRANS! Dale hated his stepmom Helen and caught her cheating. He blackmailed her into becoming his sex slave. But soon he fell in love with her and maybe got her pregnant. Then Dad caught them, there was a struggle with a gun then ended with Dad dead. Dale and Helen fled to Mexico with Dad's millions to where Helen's stepmom lives in a mansion, which is where Helen force-transitioned Dale.
Sound complicated? That's because it takes place over three parts. This is the final part of the story: Dale's new life as Mom's trans sex slave, Dalia. Here's part 3, where the story turns forced-trans:
https://www.reddit.com/transgenderfantasy/comments/1cggg3a/my_loving_mother_forced_transbdsmincest/
My stepmom’s fist pistoned deeply up my asshole, grazing my prostate and making it ache harder with every thrust. Distractedly I felt my precum dripping down my erect cock, but I was too busy swallowing to pay close attention. My mom’s Mexican stepmom kept emptying her bladder into my mouth.
I’d been tricked and kidnapped by my stepmom, Helen, enslaved and force-transitioned from a twenty-year-old dude into a hot-looking, big-titted shemale. We were deep in Mexico, living in a compound that would have cost ten-million-dollars back in Los Angeles. Worst of all, she had framed me for my own father’s murder after she’d stolen all his money, so even if I escaped I couldn’t go back to the USA.
And worst of all? I didn’t know why, but I loved the way it felt, both Mom fisting my ass and her mom peeing down my throat. I guess that since I was trapped in my slavery, my only option was to surrender to it and learn to love it. Second worst was that, despite what Mom had done to me, I was still in love with her.
I wanted her to be proud of her son: the slutty shemale slave.
“That’s it, baby,” Dolores cooed. “Drink the rest of your *abuelita’*s piss like a good girl. Mmmmm. Now lick my pussy nice and clean!”
I buried my tongue in the hot GMILF’s cuntal folds, excited to service the smoldering Latina beauty. And I wanted Mom to be pleased with what a good slave I was. I desperately wanted to have regular sex with her again. Or any kind of sex. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her.
“That’s such a good girl, Dalia. Look back at Mommy.”
I turned my head as best I could in the stocks and regarded her with shining eyes. “Yes, Mistress!”
“So you love the nasty things your mommies are doing to you? You would gladly do whatever we said?”
“Yes, Mistress!”
She paused fisting me and bent forward to kiss me. “Please call me Mom or Mommy. I like that better.”
“Yes, Mom!”
The relief of her slowly withdrawing fist from my ass triggered a P-gasm and made me spurt a huge glut. My Latina step-grandmother caught my load in her hand and fed it to me while Mom wiped the lube and anal juices from her hand and forearm.
“Let’s take a shower, baby, and I will tell you your future.”
Mom and I embraced and kissed deeply as the hot spray played on out tingling bodies. I loved how my new breasts crushed against hers. The day before, the idea of being a girl and having tits would have been foreign to me but now I loved this. Perhaps all the while I’d jacked off to shemale porn some part of me fantasized of being a chick with a dick!
Mom soaped me while she spoke. “My plans for you have changed, baby.”
“What do you mean, Mom?”
“Dolores and I have done what we did to you before. Many times to various young men. Ten were sons of men we ‘married.’ I had real affection for all those boys, but you’re the first I ever fell in love with.” She kissed me. “When you released me from slavery so soon, it showed character none of the others have.”
“I just loved you too much to keep you as my slave.”
She curled her hand around my cock. “As you will soon see, my new daughter, the love between dominant and slave can be very intense. Usually we sell off the sissies and shemales we’ve transitioned. Rich men and women who enjoy your kind.” She gripped it hard, making me wince. “But I am keeping you for myself.”
Still locked onto my dick, she kissed me hard and raped my mouth with her tongue. When she was done, she forced me to my knees and told me to lick her asshole until she was satisfied. I was in heaven!
The next day began my intensive training in Femininity, cooking, maid service and Spanish. I also had the joy of being a dress-up doll for my stepmother, who seemed to relish just how girly she could make me look: sweet, sophisticated or slutty. I got massive boners as she showed me how sexy a girl I could be. At night I slept in a doggy bed at the foot of their bed. I jacked off, hearing them fuck every night.
After two weeks I could walk gracefully in four-inch heels all day while I cleaned their huge home, served them dinner, massaged them, and orally serviced them, which they both seemed to love. I could also now hold basic conversations in my new language.
“It will come in very handy when you start your new job tomorrow afternoon, mija,” Mom said using the endearing term for daughter.
The look in her eyes made me shiver. “What job, Mami?”
It turned out on the adjacent property, my stepmom and her mom owned a high-end brothel for the wealthy residents in the region and any horny guy who could scrape together the equivalent of $500 USD for an hour. That was the minimum price to be with one of their whores, of which I’d be one.
Dolores and Mom escorted me to a second-floor hallway when ten of the doors were painted lavender-purple. They explained these were the sissies and shemales, all of which they had transitioned.
“And in here is your room when you’re not serving us at home.”
It was big with a large bed and a closet filled with lingerie and fetishwear. The dresser held a variety of sex toys. Two easy chairs sat on the wall right next to the bed. Mom and her mom sat in them and told me to strip. Soon I stood naked in front of the bed.
“Put on a good show for your Mamis,” Dolores said.
I wondered what she meant until the door opened a minute later. Eleven youngish, well-built Latinos sauntered into the room, all of them wearing shorts, jerseys and sports shoes. Most of them were very handsome. They all looked at me like a banquet.
“This is our regional soccer team,” Helen said. “We’ve arranged this in appreciation of their efforts.”
“She’s all yours, boys,” Dolores said.
They picked me up like a gym bag and deposited me in the middle of the mattress, doggy-style. Save for my frequent pegging by Helen and Dolores, my shemale ass was virgin when it came to man-cock. I’d anticipated them getting a real dick for me at some point; just not eleven all at once! I was intensely glad. I spread my knees wide to provide total access to my asshole and wiggled my ass, whimpering for cock.
By now I knew enough Spanish so when the youngest and cutest of them said, “look how the hot slut wants it,” I nodded my head and panted.
“Anyone can see that, Ernesto,” said his teammate. “You’re the star player so you go first.”
“There is lube on both nightstands,” Mom said.
“My spit will be good enough,” Ernesto said. “Your bitch is so sexy I must taste her sexy pussy!”
I moaned at his hot tongue pressing into my asshole, but my sound of pleasure was cut off by an eight-inch dick pressing into my open mouth. I sucked on it eagerly, thrilled that not one man but eleven of them would take my cherry today.
I groaned in ecstasy as Ernesto’s dick slid deeply into my tranny cunt. I shoved my butt back against his thrusts, driving his dick even deeper into my hungry hole. Another of them crowded in by my face, so I alternated between sucking one, then another.
I lost track of time but eventually one of the guys fucking my mouth announced we was going to cum. Helen and Dolores came up to the bed so they could watch their tranny daughter take her first taste of semen.
“Open wide, mija,” Mom said. “Make your Mamis proud.”
Thick, stringy jizz splattered onto my lips and tongue, jetted into the back of my mouth. The taste made me dizzy with lust as I swallowed it all and sucked the left of it out of his dick. The smell of cum filled the air, and that’s when Ernesto seized my hips and shot his load up my ass.
“Clean his cock, slave,” Mom announced and he pulled out of me.
Without hesitation I followed my mistress-mom’s orders, eagerly sucking lube, cum and my own ass juices of his still-hard brown cock. The guy fucking my mouth moved around to take my ass and a new man poked his tool into my mouth.
It felt like for hours I sucked and fucked those rugged, hunky men while my stepmom and sexy step grandmother watched. The last guy to fuck me peed up my ass, then he smacked my butt with a big grin and got dressed with the rest of them. I lay on the bed, filled and covered with their hot, sticky seed.
Helen took a knee next to me on the bed. “I am so proud of you, my sweet Dalia. You were so sexy, so powerful taking on all those men. Do you know how perfect a girl you make?”
I looked up at her in adoration. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too, baby. Tell me the truth. Do you like being Dalia? You don’t have to be her. “We could stop giving you hormones and get a doctor to remove your breasts. You’d still have a girl’s waist, but—”
“I love being Dalia. And I love being your slave. When we left America, I could never have imagined I’d love all this, but now that I have, I want to stay a girl. And a sex slave.”
Dolores smiled down at me. “Didn’t I tell you she would, baby? Our girl was born for this. I’m glad you saw it.”
Mom stood and extended her hand. “Come with me, baby. Let’s get you cleaned up. Tonight you sleep in the bed with Mom and me.”
That night was like heaven. They took me into their bed where they lay together, fully nude. Mom and her stepmom were so gorgeous as a lesbian couple, like a pair of angels. They sat me up against the padded headboard and began to make love in front of me.
“Mamis, you are so beautiful!” I gasped in perfect Spanish.
The sight of them deep-kissing, sucking each other’s nipples, fingering their pussies and assholes, going down on each other got me so hard my dick did pushups. Finally when they included me in their lesbo tryst, I was mindless with lust.
“Just lie there and let us love you, mija,” Dolores said.
For ten minutes they just kisses and caressed every inch of me except my cock. Mom breathed on the blood-swollen head of my cock a few times, making my boner rage even harder. It kept throbbing, lifting off my girlish tummy in time with my racing heart.
“I think she will cum too soon,” Helen said.
“Yes, but I think she will stay hard if she does.”
“You should do it, Mom,” Helen giggled. “Feed it to her.”
That was when my Mexican step-grandmother’s full, bow-shaped lips encircled my cockhead and slurped it into her mouth. Dolores was actually fifty-two but looked ten years younger, her body firm and tight and shapely. Her smoldering brown eyes linked with mine as she sucked my tranny cock while the ache in my balls reached orgasm.
“Oh, Mami!” I groaned as I felt my balls drain into her mouth.
Mom’s sexy mother straddled me, her large tits hanging as she bent to kiss me. I whimpered as my load flooded through my lips. She and I caressed each other tongues, sticky with my jizz, and slowly drank it. Then she knelt over my face and lowered her moist pussy to my mouth.
“Eat your grandma’s pussy, little hermana,” she cooed.
While I licked her mom’s cunt, Helen stroked my cock into a new erection. I moaned into Dolores’ pussy until Mom had got me fully hard again. Then Mom mounted me cowgirl-style and fed me into her hot, clinging vagina. I thought I might die from pleasure.
“Time for a new taste, Dalia,” the older woman said.
She turned around and positioned her asshole onto my mouth. Hungrily I lapped away at the brown-pink hole, while she leaned forward to French kiss her daughter riding my cock. For hours we made love and fucked and cuddled in the bed. They spit-roasted me twice with dildos they had ready for me. We all slept naked, cuddled together.
The next morning began as usual, except I rose from their bed for a change. I donned my household serving lingerie—panties, bra, self-gartered, lacy hose and 3-inch pumps—and served them fresh-ground coffee in bed. They both seemed a bit sad but I knew better than to ask questions of them first thing in the morning.
Unusually, after I’d made breakfast for the three of us, I was allowed to sit at the table with them and eat. Usually I ate standing at the kitchen counter or, if they felt playful, from a dog-food bowl by the dining room table. Suddenly, I couldn’t stand the suspense.
“May your girl ask a question?”
“You want to know why we are being so nice to you,” Mom said.
“Yes, Mommy.”
“We are very sorry, Dalia,” Dolores said, “but the man who owns the soccer team has become interested in you. He offered us a quarter-million dollars American for you.”
“Of course we said no until he said he would make trouble for us. Then he said we’d better take the money or he would take you for free and still make trouble for us with the Federales.”
My eyes filled with tears. “What does he want me for, Mom?”
“A personal slave, baby,” Helen said. “For serving and sex and whatever he wants.”
“He will tire of you eventually and we will buy you back.”
I looked at Dolores, sick with grief and fear. “Really?”
“That is what we hope, mija.”
“Look on the bright side, baby,” Mom soothed. “Nobody can better help you become a woman than a man, especially one such as he. Being his slave will make the lessons that much deeper.”
Mom’s phone beeped. She looked at the display. “He’s on his way here. Let’s get you ready to go, baby.”
They arrayed me in classic, three-piece lingerie: push-up bra, bikini panties, and garterbelt holding up seamed stockings, all white lace. The dress looked like a wedding gown but it was sheer, showing off my large breasts and my tranny cock. Despite my sadness and anxiety, I couldn’t help being a bit excited to be owned by a man!
“Do not fear, my beautiful girl,” Mom said. “Don Ricardo lives very nearby and he believes in family, so we will see you all the time.”
“We will more than see you, Dalia,” Dolores grinned. “He is also a voyeur and wants to see us have sex with you. If we put on a good show for him, he might want to see it every week. Maybe more.”
“I hope so,” I begged. “I love the both of you so much!”
They led me into a room with “Bridal Suite” on the door—the most expensive of their brothel rooms, just for high-rollers.
Mom crushed me to her body, our breasts pushing together, and kissed me deeply. “I love you so much, baby. I really do.”
My grandmom kissed me next just as deeply, and she rubbed my cock through my see-thru dress enough to provoke a boner. “You must go to him alone, mija. And do all you can to please him.”
I entered and closed the door behind me. I heard a sudden inrush of breath, followed by a low, hungry chuckled. He sat totally naked on the bed and looked hungrily at me, grinning and shaking his head.
I got to my knees and lowered my head, hands on thighs. “Your new slave is called Dalia, Master, if it should please him. Command her.”
“Look at me, palomita,” he smiled, calling me “little dove.”
I craned my head as he stood. My new Papi stood at least six-six with strong arms and legs, a broad chest and a hard, muscled stomach. His hair was short and he was very handsome with a trim mustache. His dark eyes gleamed with lust.
“Oh my!” I gasped as I looked at his cock. It was as long as my forearm and tapered, thankfully. I could deep-throat at least part of it. Then I realized my error and lowered my head. “Your girl begs forgiveness for speaking without permission.”
He picked me up as easily as a baby and swept me into his arms. “There will be time for master-slave later,” he said kindly and lowered his lips to mine.
I tingled with the thrill of being so helpless, completely in his power, as his thick tongue probed my mouth and made love to mine. It was a dizzying sensation to feel owned by him, and my cock strained at my lace panties and leaked precum. I wanted to suck him off and take his massive tool deep up my shemale pussy.
“I love you, Daddy,” I whimpered as he broke the kiss. “I give great head! Please let me suck your dick!”
“After I fuck you, baby,” he sexily growled. “Are you ready?”
Helen had opened me up with a medium-large plug and shot an ounce of sex lube deep into me, knowing he might want to fuck right away. “Oh, I’m ready! I’m so ready for you, Papi!”
He dumped me on the bed and tore my panties off as easily as tissue paper. He stroked his mighty dick to its full, pulsating eleven inches and reached down to pick me up, cupping his hands under my thighs.
“Wrap your arms around my neck, baby.”
My arms securely around him, he lifted me up into the air. It was as thrilling as the feel of his hands holding me up, his broad, hairy chest against my breasts and his cock sliding between my asscheeks. I was so ready for him to put it deep up inside me!
“Put it in me, Papi! Fuck my tranny coño good!”
“Guide me into your hole, puta!”
I held onto the back of his neck with one hand and reached down to grab his thick, pulsing meat. The head was slick with precum. I moved it until I felt it touch my twitching asshole and I nodded. I cried out in hot ecstasy as this big dick slid all of the way into me.
I was so filled by his cock the sensations made me giddy, my anal meat clenched onto his hot, thick manhood. Slowly at first, he thrust in and out, his dick plowing through the walls of my ass, sending electric bolts of pleasure into my prostate.
“Oh, baby, you’re so tight!”
“Fuck me hard, Papi! Fuck your horny slut!”
I was shocked how deeply his dick reached up into me, how much it owned me. I was his now—his girl, his slut! I wrapped legs around his and clung to him, thrusting my hips down as he pounded into me. Both of us panted in desire, French-kissing until we needed to breathe and then kissing again. He was as horny for me as I was for him.
Ever since Mom had force-transitioned me, I’d grown into being a girl and slowly, truly, loving being a girl. As this macho man deep-fucked me, as I gasped and moaned and whined with each thrust, I was now fully a girl. I only wish my moms were in here to see this!
“Papi, you slut-girl loves you so much,” I whimpered. I kissed him and he kissed me back, full of passion.
“Would you like your mamis to join us, palomita?” he grinned. “Now that I have made you mine, I want to share you! Go get them, mija.”
“Thank you, Papi! Thank you!”
Papi directed us so we could get the most out of it. Mom lay on her back with her legs spread, while her mom knelt over her face so Mom could lick her asshole. Papi put me between Mom’s legs and sliding my tranny cock into her, which positioned my mouth directly over Dolores’ juicing cunt. I eagerly lapped at her sweet-wild pussy lips.
For a few minutes he watched the three of us having sex until he couldn’t wait any longer. Don Ricardo knelt behind me and slipped his throbbing tool deeply into me. It felt crazy-good: fucking my mom while I ate her mom’s pussy and Papi railed my slutty ass.
We fucked for a long time until we came together in a big, sweaty, sticky pile of lusty flesh. As mom drained her creampie into my greedy mouth, Don Ricardo announced that he was buying out their mansion and brothel, and that Helen and her mom would be living with us.
“As slaves,” he chuckled. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Mom, my grandmom and I all looked at each other with delight. “We don’t mind,” we said.
He stood before us, stroking his monster to a new erection. “Which one of you ladies is first?” Then he grinned and dialed his cellphone. “The three of you like soccer players, don’t you?”
The End

In no particular order (and I'm too lazy to alphabatize) a list of characters associated with Bam Margera since ~2019.
Nikki/Nicole Boyd - Bam's ex wife and mother of his child, currently embattled in legal proceedings over custody and child support. Bam has called Nikki a "hotdog struttin' floozy" leading to this 🌭💃 in the sub.
David Glass - Nikki's lawyer in the custody/child support court case. Bam's sworn mortal enemy who he fully holds responsible for him not being able to see Phoenix (son of Bam and Nikki).
Danni/Danni Marie/Stretch Queen/SQ - Bam's current girlfriend/fiancee (depending on how generous he's feeling that day). She self describes in her IG bio as a "certified stretch queen" so the nickname Stretch Queen was born. Was suspected to have four toes based on an IG picture, but she cleared that up for everyone by counting her toes in an IG story. Holds a lot of the same beliefs as TSW (see next entry) and admits to meeting Bam because she was celebrity hunting at Hollywood parties. Was one of several women invited to staff a party where Bam was in attendance. Also admits to blocking and changing numbers in Bam's phone so he can no longer contact people she deems to be "bad" for him which is mostly family and old friends. You can listen to Danni saying way too much, here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bam-margera-turns-a-page/id1465273008?i=1000651293238
That Surprise Witness/TSW/Shitness/BJ Courville - You Tuber who graduated law school (but gave up her license to practice law) who believes Bam's family had nefarious intentions by placing him in rehab. Believes Bam should be free to do whatever he wants, even if that means drinking himself to death. Also "interviewed" Bam while he was out of his mind and validated some of his most unhealthy beliefs. Bam would go on to attack Jess (his brother) after this interview. Claims to be besties with Danni.
Lima Jevremovic/Lima/Lie-ma - Bam's former medical guardian who took responsibility for getting him placed in rehabs after he was court ordered to treatment. Had a VR technology she was developing to assist with addiction treatment. The guardianship had no financial aspect despite insinuations from TSW that it did. The guardianship ended in 2021/2022 and Lima has had no contact with Bam since. Bam claims Lima gave him tea that caused seizures, a claim that he didn't bring up until 2023, and he seems to still believe (despite no contact for years) that Lima is out there trying to get him "5150"ed. Sued That Surprise Witness for defamation, among other things. Lawsuit is currently pending.
The Shaman/Navid the Shaman - Runs a life coach type business where people can pay to participate in a "magic toad venom" ceremony. Bam appeared to do the Shaman's intensive program, staying with him for about a month. Bam said the Shaman didn't allow drinking (although a White Claw could be seen in a video Bam posted with the Shaman) and Bam would sneak away when the Shaman was doing his weekly ceremony to get loaded. It's unclear how much Bam paid for the privilege of working with the Shaman but Bam bought him several pieces of equipment for his business, like an ice bath. The Shaman also taught Bam "ooga booga." Whenever anyone says "ooga booga" Bam sits perfectly still, not talking until someone says "un ooga booga."
Vinny Beedle/Scumbag Vinny/Vinny - Bam's former booking agent (apparently Vinny was just a random who weaseled his way into Bam's circle) who wanted to take Bam on a stand up comedy tour. Vinny simped for Bam for about a year, being Bam's punching bag and trying to prop a very unruly Bam up in random venues. Allegedly Vinny came out of pocket a significant amount to fund his "tour" and lost money when Bam ultimately cancelled because he couldn't be bothered to follow a schedule. Bam would show up late to the shows and demand to go on. The fued over money lead to Bam cutting Vinny off. Vinny later admitting to buying a Cameo in the hopes Bam would talk to him. Bam ignored it. Bam still holds a grudge against Vinny, insisting that Vinny scammed him, took his money, and went to Disney World. An example of something Vinny put together can be seen here, at a failed party where none of the equipment worked and Vinny tried to entertain the small crowd with his stand up: https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=IGjVDLvtbRh6afRk&v=Cn7HJ3XSaOM&feature=youtu.be
Jack/Jack Tillery - Bam's current (?) manager. Known to be a giant asshole and also suspected of being Bam's drug dealer. Here's Jack cowering in a corner while Bam screams at him: https://www.tmz.com/2019/03/07/bam-margera-fights-manager-comedy-show-cancelled-new-york/
Jessica/Methica - Bam's most recent ex-girlfriend, known for wearing zip up hoodies with no bra. She has a daughter, Ysabel who is about 8. Jessica and her daughter travelled around with Bam and eventually Bam started to call Ysabel HIS daughter. When they broke up, Bam forgot all about his daughter. Ysabel was school aged yet did not seem to be in school.
Mia Walmart - A foot model who Bam briefly dated before meeting Danni.
Princess Purple Rain - Absolute bit part character but responsible for the greatest “laughing “at”, not “with” Bam video ever. She’s the equivalent of a rookie coming off the bench in a game 7 of the NBA finals, dropping 5 3s consecutively, blocking Lebron on the game winning drive and then never being heard from again. For the uninitiated, here’s the greatest thing you’ll see today: https://youtube.com/shorts/kiuOj05ju8o?feature=shared
Mike Quinn - Bam and Danni's current booking agent, possibly manager. According to Danni, Mike was arranging for a Lionsgate biopic to be made about Bam's life. No, this is not the same Mike Quinn that manages the Tik Tok'er.
Cult Shotta - Australian rappers who Bam met up with in LA shortly after his break up with Jessica. Bam hung out with them for several weeks, ultimately releasing the song "Feel Like Bam"....I'm not even going to link it, but suffice to say not only is it terrible, it's an earworm. "I can't heart a bitch but I can heart a gram."
Bear, The Lion - Bam is constantly obtaining gifts for Phoenix and then complaining he can't give them to Phoenix. One such gift was a stuffed lion that Bam carried around the Atlantic City Boardwalk (I'm sure it smelled lovely). Bam made an IG post to complain he couldn't give the lion to Phoenix, except he called it a bear.
Yelawolf - A long time friend of Bam's and rapper. He's also now an avid golfer repping the Malbon golf brand which markets itself to young, non-conforming golfers. Yelawolf lives in the Nashville area and Bam stops by his place 1-2 times a year.
Rob Swaverly - Long time acquaintance of Bam from Pennsylvania. Gives off big crackhead energy and keeps referring to something called "Golden Squad" that no one seems to know what it means. Also swears Bam is a "best friend" of his even though it appears they only may have known each other as young kids and then in passing as adults.
Fuck tent - Bam wrote an entire "business plan" for a sort of rehab that he would enjoy. It included Jess running some sort of music program, the Shaman doing rituals and meditation, and a fuck tent where the people living there would presumably go to fuck.
Ya mon - Bam says this as a sign off in a lot of his Cameos and rants, but when the Yemen flag started to appear in his IG captions, it became more of a joke because it appears he was using voice-to-text and it was interpreting "Yah mon" as "Yemen" and posting the Yemen flag emoji.
Kyle - Bam's roommate in rehab that told the same stories over and over. Bam said to him, "Great story, Kyle! Can you tell it again!" as a joke.
Navarone - Son of Priscilla Presley and also has a band. Bam and Navarone frequently talk via IG and take their conversations live sometimes Danni will be seen in the background nude or wrapped in a towel. Navarone supposedly gave Bam some of Elvis Presley's items (see next entry).
Elvis Presley Robe - Navarone supposedly gave Bam a robe and ring owned by Elvis Presley. This turned out to be false with Priscilla coming out to say she would never do such a thing and found Bam disturbing. Bam meanwhile made up an impromptu rap that went "Elvis Presley robe, let's go, let's go, let's go!" Here's the rap: https://www.reddit.com/LetsTalkBam/s/xwFNlaLHbj
Steven Donnelly - Possibly the booking agent for Bam's recent UK tour. Bam claims Steven refused to give him money and was trying to scam him, which is why the tour was cancelled. People called Bam out in the comments saying they had worked with Steven and found him to be fantastic. A venue even came forward to say no money was ever given to Steven and that Bam's figures ($150k in profits) were inflated and impossible given the size of the tour and the fees being paid.
Amore ad Lunam - HIM tribute band located in Puerto Rico. Bam went to PR fresh off his failed UK tour to "record an album" with them and apparently a music video.

Frank Miller's Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism (Comics Culture) eBook : Young, Paul
This was the first honest-to-god analysis of a work of fiction I ever bought. Sure we all think about the stories we read but I had never sought out a professional look at it before. The interviews with Miller and others are really an invaluable look into his creative process, IMO.
I really recommend this book for insights not just into Daredevil, but Batman and Punisher, too.
For anyone curious, here are a lot of the parts which really stood out to me - although of course I have my own interests and you might have parts of the book you love which I just passed over. The first comic I ever remember reading and being deeply impressed by was JMS' Supreme Power. To me, the best superhero stories ask "what does it even mean to be a (super)hero?" I think Miller has some invaluable insights on this topic.

Miller's problem with Spider-Man was all the angst. "All my reservations about the character are in how he talks 'cause his visual is still very confident, and very strong - it's just that he never stops whining." Spidey's self-pity, his penchant for martyrdom, and his borderline masochistic self-neglect attracted fans' identification but also made his life more or less a continual nightmare. Even worse, it made his success as a superhero hard for Miller to swallow. Spider-Man's trademark heckling of villains during fights only made his effectiveness less believable:
"I don't believe that Spider-Man would last two weeks [as a crime fighter] the way he's conceived. In order to have power over the criminals, you would have to be that rotten; [criminals] would have to accept him as almost one of them... Daredevil has to reach the point where when he walks into a room. they're terrified of him. because he has to be accepted as a force they'll respect. That isn't done much in comic books; it's around in other kinds of fiction. I'm more comfortable with that; I don't see him as being happy go lucky when he's up against a bunch of guys with guns."
[...]
Miller would probably have incited comparisons to Batman in the fan press simply by transforming Daredevil into a grittier, more deterministic series, but Miller openly stressed the parallel in his Daredevil-era interviews. In 1981, Miller draws an explicit contrast between Daredevil and Batman: "Daredevil . . . operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice. . . . [Batman] is punishing those who killed his parents. Batman's focus is on the criminal, Daredevil's is on the victim."27 Critics picked up on Miller's concern with Daredevil's motives, as well as the productive task of measuring them against those of the Batman. Reviewing Miller's work thus far in the Comics Journal in 1982, Ed Via wrote that Miller had made Daredevil "first and foremost a moralist, a person with a strong sense of fairness and . . . compassion, someone whose actions were as directly in line with his convictions as humanly possible."28 Even Daredevil's scuffles with criminals differed from Batman's in that they were performances rather than acts of vengeance:
"I see Matt Murdock as being a grown man and Daredevil as almost being a boy. . . . He believes in everything he's doing and he works very hard at it, but part of him just gets off on jumping around buildings."29 "I'm also trying to develop him as a guy with a terrific sense of humor, who scares criminals and has a great time doing it. Like [Steve Ditko's DC character] the Creeper, he laughs and laughs and laughs, and thinks [to himself], 'Jeez, they're buying it!'"30
Miller's favorite means of exposing his hero's antic side was to send Daredevil to Josie's Bar, a fictional dive where New York's entire population of petty thieves seems to turn up every night. Digging for clues to various cases, DD inevitably sparks fights that trash the place, hurling thugs through the front window while Josie protests (for the umpteenth time) that she just had it repaired. Sometimes he even orders a drink first, but as Miller points out, it's always a glass of milk. The milk (and the milk moustache it leaves behind) comically telegraphs Matt's wholesomeness compared to the hardened types guzzling whiskey and beer all around him, but it also underscores Miller's description of DD as Matt's boyish side, the inner child that "comes alive" while playing superhero.31
Ultimately, however, the contrast Miller once drew between the borderline psychotic Batman and the psychologically healthy Daredevil sounds like an overstatement of the argument, fronted by the Village Voice in 1965 (and echoed in Esquire the following year), that "Marvel Comics are the first comic books to evoke, even metaphorically, the Real World."32 By those lights, "real world" referentiality meant that Marvel heroes dealt openly with persecution, neuroses, and family squabbles and turned out to be their own worst enemies nearly as often as protagonists did in postwar literary fiction.
By contrast, DC didn't raise any schlemiels, with the possible exception of Clark Kent, whose inferiority complex is all an act to keep people from noticing that, but for the eyeglasses and the hunched shoulders, he looks exactly like Superman. DC stories followed the logic of such classical storytelling modes as the epic or the chronicle, where decision making is an exponent of action instead of a process inflected by character subtleties and every action thus taken is world-historical in importance. Its editors exiled strong emotion, anxiety, mortality, and other everyday complexities to the infamous imaginary stories of the fifties and early sixties.
This means of distinguishing Silver Age Marvel heroes from those of DC hits a snag, however, when we stack Batman's origin up against that of Spider-Man or Daredevil. The emotional crux of all three is the Spidey triumvirate of all-too-human gut reactions: guilt, shame, and a desire for revenge. Indeed, the most obvious precedent for Daredevil's origin is the first version of Batman's origin story in DC's Detective Comics #33 (December 1939), in which an anonymous street thug robs and shoots Bruce Wayne's parents before young Bruce's eyes. Batman's origin sets underexamined precedents for many origin stories from Marvel's Silver Age: dead parent, angry child, costume chosen to strike fear into what the Batman of 1939 touts as a "superstitious, cowardly lot" of evildoers, an initial state of helplessness igniting the desire to bulk up and do right. Not unlike the death of Jack Murdock in Daredevil's case, Bruce Wayne's extraordinary childhood loss forges Batman's determination to avenge that loss on all criminals everywhere forever after and to transform himself into a steroidal, bat-eared Sherlock Holmes.
Miller brought the Punisher, then Marvel's most homicidal lead character, into the comparison to develop a pet point about Daredevil's singularity: his duty to the legal system, for better or worse. In 1981, when Richard Howell asked Miller point blank, "Is Daredevil Marvel's Batman?" Miller answered that, no, "the Punisher is Marvel's Batman."33 Miller argued that, unlike the Batman, whose parents' murder catalyzed every major life decision he made from then on, the death of Battlin' Jack did not have as "big an effect on [Matt] as his father's life, and he is his father's son, being a natural born fighter."34 The Punisher, by contrast, shares not only Batman's desire to murdered loved ones but also his will to stop killers and drug dealers in their tracks. He exceeds Batman's mission only in that he executes the bad guys on the spot.
The Punisher, Miller tells Howell, is "Batman without the impurities. The side of Batman that makes him spare the criminals is something that's added on. It's not part of the basic concept of his character. . . . Daredevil's basic concept is very dissimilar. I see Daredevil as someone who operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice."35
This was not to say, however, that the Punisher's use of deadly force made him less heroic to Miller than Daredevil or Batman were. The Punisher is a hero, Miller says, but "I don't consider him a role model. The main difference between him and Daredevil is Daredevil's sense of responsibility to the law. The Punisher is an avenger; he's Batman without the lies built in."36
The "lies" Miller mentions refer in part to Batman's vow never to kill; he wields a gun only two or three times in his entire first forty-five years in print, due in each case to editorial inattention. While the no-kill rule probably helped keep Batman out of trouble with parents worried over comics' influence on young children, it exacerbated the tension between his desire for justice and his sense that the legal system is inadequate to the task of collaring mass murderers and rooting out corruption. If Batman's prime motive is to champion justice in the legal sense, to quash anarchy and restore social order, then why does he have such contempt for the police and the legal system except insofar as they can help him achieve his goals?
[...]
The ambivalence about due process expressed here stems in part from Miller's decision to make Daredevil a character whose convictions don't necessarily match his own: "I don't necessarily believe that Daredevil's right about everything he says. The character is built on very strong basic principles, and it would have been a terrible violation of those principles . . . to let Bullseye die. Daredevil has to believe that the law will work in every instance, but I'm allowed to believe differently."17 Miller had much tougher critiques of Daredevil-style liberalism waiting up his sleeve, including the bleeding-heart psychiatrists in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns who claim that Two-Face and the Joker (the Joker, for crying out loud) can be rehabilitated and an unforgettable throwaway joke about liberal hypocrisy in the same book, in which a Central Casting suburbanite tells a reporter that he doesn't believe in Batman's brand of vigilante justice but then snorts that he himself would "never live in the city." But to paint Miller as a legal or social conservative would not be accurate, at least not at this point in his career. Satirically, in fact, Miller plays the entire political field, broiling John Ashcroft and George W. Bush in The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2001–2) for exploiting the Twin Towers' destruction to further their own political agenda (and while these men were doing exactly that in the aftermath of 9/11, no less).
The Daredevil run, though, is less a satire of Matt's position, or anyone else's, than it is a Brechtian experiment in which Miller draws sympathy to Murdock's point of view while examining it with a microscope at the same time, pushing harder and harder on the question of whether justice is served if lives are left at risk, while putting just as much pressure on the opposing question of whether preventive justice deserves to be called justice at all.
[...]
Matt's reaction to the death of Elektra is to bully Heather into the submissive role that Elektra couldn't play. Miller attributes to Matt not a single thought balloon to suggest that he is aware of the toll his bullying takes on her, while Miller continually draws the reader's attention to that toll via Matt's glib condescension and Heather's devastated reactions to it. The soundness of Daredevil's judgment is now more questionable than ever. Does his heroism stem from a neurotic urge to control everything around him, and is that neurosis reaching a tipping point? After all, we see him suffer a nearly dissociative breakdown when he convinces himself in #182 that Elektra somehow survived her own murder. The splash page of that issue still chills me with its full-face close-up of Matt in a cold sweat, staring into our eyes, as if pleading with us to believe something we know to be utterly false just because he believes it: "SHE'S ALIVE." By #189, only seven issues later, his demeaning paternalism has driven his new fiancée straight to the bottle.
In spite of the ugliness of Matt's abuse, and the emphasis Miller places on that ugliness, it's difficult for me to decide whether terrorizing Heather this way makes Daredevil less heroic or more heroic in Miller's definition. Miller has often spoken about the archetypical hero as something other than human, as dismissive of what others think they need as Matt is of Heather's feelings. When Miller discusses The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, which he and interviewer Gary Groth agree is nearly a parody of superhero comics, he emphasizes Batman's abstract quality, born of the kind of social isolation that Stick enforces on Matt: If Batman's "motto is striking terror" into the hearts of criminals, then "Batman can only be defined as a terrorist. . . . I don't want you to like this guy." "My feeling about Batman is that he's similar [to James Bond] in that you'd want him to be there when you're being mugged, but you wouldn't want to have dinner with him. The way he cheers Hawkman on as he crushes Luthor's skull . . . For me, [such scenes demonstrate] the idea [of Batman] coming into its own without the bullshit on top of it being a socially acceptable role model and all of that."23
Matt's disregard for Heather's emotional state during the Glenn Enterprises affair further clarifies Miller's sense of the heroic impulse: it is prosociety but deeply antisocial, convinced that Right and Wrong are real and unchanging standards but dangerously solipsistic in its interpretation of how to achieve Right at the expense of Wrong. The true hero, according to Miller, is, compared to "normal" human beings at least, a pathological narcissist. Daredevil, with unwavering faith in his own judgment, performs "necessary" services for a culture whether it asks for them or not, while those who are under his protection see him as unfathomable at best and terrifying at worst. But even if Miller thrills to his own extrication of the "lies" and "bullshit" from the Batman persona a few years later, in Daredevil he employs dramatic irony to relate the high cost, to both individuals and their community, of the uncompromising, take-no-prisoners heroism that Americans think they want. "Dirty Harry . . . is a profoundly, consistently moral force," Miller tells Kim Thompson, but that wouldn't keep him out of jail for "administering the 'Wrath of God' on murderers who society treats as victims.
An authoritative study of Jack Kirby, Charles Hatfield has suggested that Marvel Comics distinguished itself in the 1960s in part by placing new stress on the tension intrinsic to superhero comics between the hero's desire for justice and the extralegal means by which she or he pursues it.25 I would add that Marvel's Silver Age stories place the stress primarily on the plotting opportunities provided by this tension, as in the case of Spider-Man, whose good deeds only draw the ire of a public (understandably) suspicious of ununiformed law enforcement.
Miller further develops the "upstanding vigilante" paradox from a cliché of the genre into a philosophical dialectic that, though sometimes decried as fascistic, cannot be reduced to an unironic plea for authoritarian rule. The superheroic fantasies on display in 300, the Sin City graphic novels, The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, and even the controversial Holy Terror cast a clear eye on the paradox of the specifically American fascination with the superheroic ideal. All pose to the reader the implicit question, Is this really what you want? Considering the consistency of this theme dating back to Daredevil,
I think of the pre-9/11 Frank Miller as less conservative than libertarian, a posthippie refugee of the 1960s who disdains the everyone-is-special relativism of grade-school participation trophies and liberal humanism but shares with the conscientious objector and the bra burner a fervency for personal liberty: "I'm no middle-of-the-roader, but I find that people who tend to follow any party line, of the left or right, tend to all end up saying the same thing, which is 'Do what I tell you.' Quit those habits I don't like, don't use the words I don't like, don't draw the pictures I don't want my children to see. . . . So yeah, I have a very jaundiced view toward most authority."26 In any event, Miller's focus on Daredevil's unflagging moral code, and his attention to how a relentless diet of violence might change that code into an ideological prison, allows him to explore the upstanding vigilante figure from multiple angles—the broadly liberal defense of constitutional protection for criminals and victims alike; the broadly conservative ideal of defending one's own body, family, and property without impediment from the state—without readily disclosing his personal politics.
[...]
Slowly and steadily, Miller was maneuvering out of Code territory into the world of frankly adult themes and pressing harder and harder on the contradictions on which a traditional concept of heroism depends. Miller's The Dark Knight Returns steps even further into that world even as it sets up new "walls" to push against, namely, the postsixties culture of liberal humanism and so-called moral relativism. Miller's Batman has all of Daredevil's desire for justice but lacks any of DD's concern for the civil rights of the alleged perpetrators; indeed, if Daredevil's primary concern is with the victims, as Jim Shooter taught Miller, then Batman's primary concern is with crushing the perps. And he gets called on it throughout The Dark Knight Returns by loads of liberal-sounding talking heads who claim that Two-Face and the Joker were actually turned into supervillains by Batman's example, that even convicted homicidal maniacs deserve a second chance, and so forth.
What Miller has done is to take Daredevil's line of legal thinking regarding the rights of criminal defendants, the same line that made him save Bullseye from being mashed on the subway tracks, and put it in the mouths of comic-relief characters such as the brain surgeons and psychologists who try to make Two-Face a productive member of society again. Miller's Batman, by contrast, is an epic hero who refuses to mistake good for evil or vice versa, and he gets to define on his own what each term means. Miller's Matt Murdock refuses such a metaphysical view of good and evil as all-or-nothing opposites on idealist grounds of a different sort. Matt believes that obscured innocence and hidden guilt have to be brought to light intellectually by finding proof and testing it, while Batman, who was at one time represented as a detective at heart, relies entirely on instinct when Miller has the reins.
To be fair, Miller presents the crudeness of Batman's worldview as a serious problem and has even done so in the midst of a conflict that seemed to many Americans to draw the brightest possible line between the national Us and a foreign Them. DC had already published the first issue of Miller and the colorist Lynn Varley's Dark Knight sequel, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, when al-Qaeda operatives commandeered the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, an event that, Miller told Groth, made it impossible to leave Batman's catchphrase about "striking terror into the hearts" of evildoers unannotated. As I've mentioned, Batman's dialogue in The Dark Knight Strikes Again!—even the dialogue written before 9/11—makes the ugliness of his philosophy unmistakable: "Striking terror. Best part of the job."
Groth even points out to Miller that one Batman speech, in which he refers to American capitalists and the federal government as "tyrants" and promises that he and his team will "strike like lightning and . . . melt into the night like ghosts," sounds uncannily like "the point of view of radical Islamists" toward the United States.13 Miller doesn't take such a crack at the obvious bad guys, however. Rather, he immediately pounces on the political reaction to the bad guys and how the George Bushes, Dick Cheneys, and John Ashcrofts of the world use crises like 9/11 for their own purposes. They stand in for the heroes we think we need in tumultuous times but slip the bounds of law at every turn—and Miller attempts to reduce our sympathy for them. This Miller, chastened by the 9/11 attacks but ever the shrewd critic of the media that deliver such disasters to us, digs into the fascistic politics of superhero comics, the news media's role in sensationalizing global politics and inciting fanatical nationalism, and the real-world politics of vigilante justice all at once. He claims comics as a space to explore what "heroism" means—and not necessarily to him but rather to contemporary US culture. If the one who "saves" us from tyranny, even the tyranny of our own leaders, claims he has to act like a terrorist to do it, do we even want to be saved?
At the same time, both Miller's comics and his interviews have long scrutinized the insolubility of the paradox—heroism is necessary to restore order, but it's also authoritarian in its purest form, even fascistic—as a necessary evil. Batman seems the purer Miller "hero" in that Batman's sense of justice is unencumbered by any complicating factors. He metes it out as he sees fit, on the basis of an Old Testament version of righteousness: you take my eye, I'll take yours, score settled. This hero is no model for quotidian life, but as in such classical Hollywood Westerns as John Ford's The Searchers (1956), the frontier will remain forever a chaotic wilderness without him. Only Ford's half-wild hero Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) can save his niece from hostile Comanche in post–Civil War Texas, but his intense race hatred makes him a relic, unfit to cross the threshold into the orderly world of law, family, and home that his very wildness has helped bring to the western frontier.
The civic-minded Daredevil would be welcome in any such home, but for the later Miller especially, that taste for civilization and its rules reads as an "impurity," a liberal-humanist streak within traditional superheroism that Miller once talked about strictly in terms of character type (it's the difference between Batman and his "purer" doppelgänger, the Punisher) but that lately he describes as a moral fault, without any of the irony he mustered up a decade ago. There are signs dating back to 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns that this irony was ambivalent anyway, considering the extent to which Batman adopts the Western hero's ruthless stance when taming the "frontier" of racialized criminals, right down to trading in the Batmobile for a horse.
The progressive reverence with which Miller's comics after Daredevil treat that definition of heroism has everything to do with 9/11 and the scale of twenty-first-century global terrorism as Miller has processed it since The Dark Knight Strikes Again!. Back in 2003, he told Groth, "For at least the foreseeable future, [9/11 is] the whole point of my work. I'm going to play around with doing some propagandizing,"15 but this sentiment did not prevent him from making the US government's reaction to the disaster a target for satire in his second Dark Knight story or lambasting the Bush administration for branding disagreement with its policies as providing solace to terrorists. By contrast, the Fixer, the costumed hero of Miller's frankly propagandistic graphic novel Holy Terror (Legendary Comics, 2011), doesn't care whether he gets thrown out of the house or not; his lot is to make the world safe for civilization, American style, not to inhabit it, and he likes it that way. The Fixer, a behemoth who shares a name with a character that Miller created for his high school newspaper's comics page, kills terrorists like a sledgehammer breaks pavement. There's no second-guessing motives or anything else; as far as the Fixer is concerned, if you're Muslim, you've got a bomb strapped to your midsection, so there's no danger that he will smash the wrong face.
Unsurprisingly, the character originally at the center of Holy Terror was Batman. Finally, Miller had freed the character of its impurities. To do that, he also had to burn off the "impurities" of the fundamentalist foe by painting al-Qaeda as representatives of all Islam and all Muslims and playing on every Arab stereotype he could scratch onto his Bristol board, from big noses to using Evil English to express delight in the torture and murder of "infidels." He has matched such images with political commentaries on National Public Radio, his personal blog, and elsewhere that show none of the critical distance that once made his work as jarring and energizing intellectually as the best Dashiell Hammett novel you've ever read. Our terrorist enemy, Miller has said, is "pernicious, deceptive and merciless and wants nothing less than [our] total destruction." Never mind that the majority of victims of al-Qaida and now ISIS are, in fact, Muslims.16
The hardline right position that Miller takes in Holy Terror differs so dramatically from that expressed in interviews dating back to the early 1980s that one has to wonder if he's been replaced by a Life Model Decoy from Nick Fury's supply closet. But Holy Terror was a critical disaster, prompting fans and critics alike to swear off any future Miller work and even to claim that his comics have rallied around a "sexist, fascist" flagpole since as far back as The Dark Knight Returns and possibly even before. Spencer Ackerman echoes the most scathing reviews when he writes in Wired, "Frank Miller doesn't do things halfway. One of the true comic-book greats, he's created several of the most extraordinary stories ever to grace the art form. So perhaps it's fitting that now he's produced one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time.
[...]
I can't subscribe to such uses of Miller's Batman to evaluate Miller's own character. Critics have been mistaking the positions Miller examines in his comics for his own convictions for decades. Indeed, Miller would agree with every one of Kevin's criticisms of Batman and even offer an aesthetic justification for this portrayal that depends on a dramatic irony that is difficult to locate, precisely because superhero comics have always traded in absolutes; criticism of those absolutes would understandably be less obvious to a dedicated reader of superhero comics, not to mention a nonreader convinced of superheroes' intrinsic lack of sophistication, than to someone interested in exploring or exploding the limits of the Batman mythos. Now, however, it not only looks like Miller has given away his critical distance; he also wants everyone to know it and to decide for themselves whether what he's done is worthless as a result, as comics or as political activism.
Back in 1998, discussing 300 with Christopher Brayshaw in the Comics Journal, Miller acknowledges the historical irony of Greece, the epitome of civil organization and intellectualism in the ancient West, needing a nation-state of cold-blooded warriors to fight its battles. In another context, he tells Brayshaw, he might have invited readers to ponder that irony and consider its paradoxical relationship to the development of democratic ideals.19 He does not do so in this context, however. For Miller, 300 is all about the necessity of saving civilization—Western civilization—from barbarism. The three hundred Spartans did what was necessary; they lost the battle, badly, but without their sacrifice, discipline, and utterly unambiguous worldview, we would apparently still be living in mud huts today.
Even with 300, though, Miller argues that he's playing around just a tiny bit with our tendency to collapse heroes with role models. Miller makes Leonidas admirable but not likable and renders most of the other 299 Spartans as less admirable and even less likable. But maybe, Miller has said not only about the Spartans but about the Punisher, Batman, and Superman, cultures need guys like that, and I do mean guys—the reckless male narcissists who can't or won't make subtle distinctions between good and evil—to do the dirty work of "preserving civilization as we know it." Usually, as in The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again! and to a certain extent the noir riff on Dante's Inferno that is Sin City, Miller lets us sit with that ugly possibility, lets us squirm at our own enjoyment and/or disgust. He forces us to wonder if peace and forward movement are ever possible without the bright lines between good and evil and at the same time makes us ponder whether by drawing those lines, we put our humanity at risk. The generous way to interpret what Miller says here is that, like Hitchcock, he's casting doubt on the very notion of heroism that rules superhero comics, that is, the fantasy that superheroes could do what they do and yet remain "ordinary" people. Miller turned Batman into a living symbol of the fear that criminals should feel when threatened by "good," at least in a Platonist universe, but don't. However, when it's no longer comics, the First Amendment, or aesthetic complexity at stake but national security, take-no-prisoners tactics—in art as well as war—look to Miller like the only way to go.
[...]
In what I want to believe is a triumph of Miller the listener over the absolutist Miller who sneers at the same First Amendment he once sacrificed his industry goodwill to defend, Miller now refuses to comment further on his anti-Occupy rant. Perhaps he thinks it all speaks for itself, or perhaps he has accepted certain tenets of his critics just as he graciously (and legitimately, it seems) accepted the differing opinions of Groth and other interviewers as recently as a decade ago. Either way, he has stopped talking much about politics of any stripe. His blog is now abandoned due to "computer problems," Miller says, glowering during an interview for a Wired profile when Sean Howe suggests he find "a better technician" to fix it. "I will," Miller says, after a long silence.22
Look back on Daredevil's nemeses from the '79–'82 run with Miller's current anti-Islamicism in mind, though, and watch the ambiguities and nuances of his first major achievement get harder to pinpoint. Bullseye is a psychopath, complete with brain damage caused by cancer to guarantee it. Elektra is irredeemable despite her ostensibly clean bill of mental health: "The feeling I've been trying to get across is that she's betrayed something. She was meant to be something better than she is."23 But once you've fallen from grace, that's it. Some people are evil, through and through—think of the "reformed" Harvey Dent/Two-Face in The Dark Knight Returns, whose ruined mind no amount of reconstructive surgery can repair—and they must be punished, locked away for good, dismissed, disposed of. There's no other way to get the cancer out of society. Miller dates the rising scale of violent crime in Daredevil back to his getting mugged and robbed in New York: "The experience filled me with anger, and that translated right into my comics."24 As he got angrier, however, the struggle over right and wrong that plagued Daredevil seemed to get a lot less interesting to him than staking an unwavering claim to right.
Howe shrewdly characterizes Miller's use of secondary characters as a kind of misdirection: "Daredevil's dastardly supporting cast allowed Miller to have it both ways by making Daredevil's barrage of kicks and punches look reasonable in comparison."25 The bleak view on Miller's career would paint it as a slow but momentous roll past such apologies for superheroic vigilantism and into the stark light of the Fixer's gleeful, openly sadistic rampages, a development that Howe connects to Miller's personal victimization by crime prior to plotting Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:
"As Miller's career was taking off, the everyday violence in Manhattan at the time was taking its toll. "New York is no longer fit for human habitation," Miller told one friend. After enduring three robberies in the course of a month, he and [the colorist and his then-girlfriend Lynn] Varley decided to escape to LA. While she went out west to search for a home, he stayed behind to set up more work to get them out of debt. He had a check in his pocket when, once again, someone tried to rob him. "Frank just went berserk on the guy," Varley says. "He didn't hit him or anything, he just went so berserk the guy backed off and ran away. We were on edge."26
Such anger floats to the surface of his work with a bang in 1986, the year I graduated from high school, with not one but two smash-hit stories about characters that didn't belong to him: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Miller's most lauded Daredevil story, Daredevil: Born Again, his 1986 return to the Daredevil series, penciled by David Mazzucchelli.
[...]
It's a hell of a second coming for a character whose series stubbornly still bore a Comics Code seal. I won't fault Miller for the anger of that story today any more than I did when I read Born Again at seventeen; on the contrary, I still believe there's not much point in going through adolescence in the United States without some rebel-themed mass culture to embrace for the sole reason that your parents would hate it. Still, I marvel at how much Miller's perspective on his audience had changed between 1983's "Roulette" and the Born Again story line in 1985–86.
According to Howe's account of Marvel in the eighties, Miller's inspiration for Born Again was losing everything himself. Ramped up on the success of Ronin and eager to get away from the city that fostered at least one person's transformation into a real-life vigilante ("one Bernard Goetz is enough"), Miller moved to Los Angeles, found himself dead broke, and decided to pitch a new Daredevil story that started with Matt Murdock in similar straits.28 No doubt it was satisfying to create a world in which a bloated mob boss—somebody, anybody—could actually be held accountable for downturns of fortune, instead of such mundane external forces as random robberies or astronomically high rent. But Born Again also recommends interpretations of Miller's work as reflective of his worldview, making it more difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt when he says he is investigating the justification of defensive violence rather than sponsoring it.

THIS STORY TAKES A BDSM-INCESTY STORY AND TURNS IT TRANS! Dale hated his stepmom and caught her cheating. He blackmailed her into becoming his sex slave. The problem is—she grew to love it and now he's fallen in love with her. What will happen when Dad returns and learns what's happened between his son and his new wife??????
It was a perfect Friday morning as Mom and I lay together on the master bed. I had planned continue her overt slavery until Dad returned from his extended business trip tomorrow, but I had essentially released her from it only a few days after my old school chums and I had taken turns degrading her all night long.
The thing was, she seemed to love whatever nasty things we made her do, so it was no longer as hot as it had been. That night climaxed with the three of us pissing on her in the bathtub while she dildoed herself for us, and she had a massive orgasm.
More than that, I had fallen in love with my stepmother as much as she seemed to have fallen in love with me. Ever since then, she had gladly fucked whenever I wanted, did whatever I wanted, dressed as sexy as I wanted, and in general treated me like a Master or a king.
She’d become addicted to presenting herself as sexy as possible, both to turn me on but also because it turned her on. Every night she climbed into bed wearing a scandalous three-piece lingerie set: a garter belt with seamed stockings, a shelf bra that nestled but fully exposed most of her tits and her usually-hard nipples, and crotchless panties so I had instant access to her pussy and asshole.
My dick and my mouth spent much time down there.
Mom had just finished sucking off my morning erection and eating my jizz, which she shared with me. Ever since I freed her, she often made it part of the blowjob. I had to admit my own cum tasted sexy.
“You know, I had this whole list of degrading things I was going to do you before I changed my mind,” I said offhandedly after a kiss.
Her interest perked up. “Like what? We could still try them!”
“Well, that first night with Jake and Ted, when we peed all over you and then we made you suck the last drops of piss out of our dicks? I had been thinking of making you drink the whole thing. Use you like…”
“Like a urinal, Master?”
“You don’t have to call me that. I told you. Anyway, yeah.”
“And I told you, I like the way it sounds. You are the master of my heart, my darling Dale.” She bent down and kissed my cock before she looked me in the eyes. “Anyway… I’d like to try that with you.”
“You’re the most exciting woman in the world to me.” I heaved a sigh. “I only wish Dad would never come home.”
“At least we got an extra month!”
Dad had called a few days after that first orgy to say he was very sorry but his job demanded an extra month out of the country. Helen and I had celebrated with a long fuck in the backyard hot tub.
I bit my lip. “Maybe we should tell him we’re in love and it’s all my fault. And… I don’t know. Help me make up a story.”
She looked at me sadly, warily. “The story is going to be worse than you think. I missed my period last week. I bought a test kit last night and I used it just before you woke. I was going to tell you after we got up, but maybe now is the time. I'm pregnant with your baby, Dale. I hope you’re not angry.”
The emotions hit me like a football pile-up, everything from I’m too young to how deeply I loved my stepmom and how close it would bring us together. In the end that was what won out. I’d do anything—
“What the hell is this!” My father’s voice thundered in the room.
What happened next was a blur, but I remember Mom crying out in terror, Dad yelling, him pulling a gun out from the closet, a struggle, a loud bang, and a sharp pain on the side of my head just before I blacked out. My last thought was fear for my beloved Helen.
I came to sometime later. Helen was in fevered activity, stuffing three big suitcases on the bed. One was loaded with jewelry, cash from the floor safe, Dad’s guns, the others with designer dresses, shoes and handbags worth hundreds of thousands.
“He-Helen,” I gasped.
She stopped packing and came over to hug me fiercely. “Thank God you’re okay, my love,” she wept.
We clung together for long minutes until I asked what happened.
“I will tell you in a minute, baby. But right now I need to know something.” She went over a laptop PC on the dresser that I recognized as Dad’s. “I need your social security number.”
“What? Why, Mom?”
“Please! Just tell me!”
As she typed it in, she explained that I’d fought to take away his gun during the struggle and it had gone off. It killed him. She was transferring as much money as she could into a Mexican bank account near a city where she had relatives. It was the only way we could be free, she said. Or we could risk a murder trial here.
“But it was an accident!”
She hammered in some final keyboard strokes and exhaled in relief. She turned to me with dismay. “We’ve been fucking behind his back for almost two months. I’m carrying your child! If we wipe your prints off the gun it only looks worse. And when your friends tell in open court what you made me do, no jury will believe a thing you say.”
I suddenly felt like I might puke. “Oh… fuck!”
“Get anything you must have. Don’t worry about clothes, I’ll take care of that later. We have all the money we need for a new life.”
In a daze, I grabbed a few keepsakes, some cool boots I liked and a dozen books I wanted to have. We stashed it all in her Jaguar’s trunk and hit the I-5 for the Mexican border. She said not to worry: she’d help me learn all the Spanish I’d need and she’d make sure I’d have everything I wanted after we got there.
We were about an hour out of Tijuana and it was dark when she pulled over to a store for snacks and something to drink. She handed me an open bottle of icy, Mexican-brand Coke. Ten minutes after I drank it, I could no longer keep my eyes open. I passed out.
The nightmare seemed to go on forever—the worst kind where you feel like you’re almost awake but you can’t wake up—bizarre dreams mixed flashes of reality. It was accompanied by pains all over my body, especially my face and a tightness across my chest. At times I sensed that someone was feeding me with a spoon.
I woke with a start in a bright, cheery bedroom with strange bird songs out the window and the smell of Mexican cooking nearby. I tried to sit up and found I was handcuffed to the frame of a hospital bed.
“What the fuck!” I spouted.
Helen appeared a minute later, grinning over me. “Welcome to your new life, Dalia. This will be so much fun!”
“Where am I? Why do I feel so strange and achy? And what the fuck is this this?” I tugged the handcuff.
“It’s so much easier to show you.” She called toward the door. “Mom, I need a hand in here.”
A beautiful Mexican woman, a total MILF somewhere north of forty-years-old, glided into the room. It was then that I noticed they both wore white silk tunics that barely reached past their shapely asses and through which bra-less tits poked hard nipples.
As Helen reached down to my chest, I saw a wide elastic bandage cinched down where I felt a tight, heavy sensation. A hiss of Velcro exposed two very large, round breasts. As I looked at them and gasped, the two women held up and tilted a full length mirror.
I’m a girl with a dick!
Save my pubes and from my eyebrows on up, all the hair had been removed from my body. I had stripper-sized breasts and a slender waistline. My face was utterly smooth, as though no beard was below the skin. It was shaped differently that it was before—it was a girl’s face!
I screamed and passed out. When I came to, Helen explained I’d been kept sedated for the past three weeks while various doctors and specialists had visited here and I’d been taken to a nearby private clinic with an operating room.
“You’ve been getting electrolysis every day to remove your beard and body hair, waxing for your legs and arms. Obviously, you’ve had breast implants. The same surgeon did sort of a tummy tuck and removed the bottom floating ribs to give you an hourglass figure. A cosmetic surgeon made your nose and forehead much more womanly. Plus a filler to give you those fuckable lips! And of course the hair extensions until yours grows out.”
“Why would you do this to me?”
“You’re wanted for murder back in Los Angeles, darling. Not to mention you transferred ten million of your father’s money to a bank in the Cayman Islands. They’ll never find you now that you look like this!”
“You said you were transferring the money to Mexico!”
“I lied. I lied about being pregnant too.”
I gasped again. “You fucking—witch! Why?”
Her smirk was replaced by icy calm. “I can’t slap you until your face heals, but I have a long memory and other punishments.” Then she turned cheery again. “I did it to make you easier to manipulate. I also lied about when your father was coming home. I wanted him to catch us because I knew he’d go for the gun.”
“You planned his murder!”
“And I transferred your fingerprints to that gun that we left behind. If you even try to go to the authorities then will see only a tranny slut who’s the prime suspect in a highly sexual patricide case.”
“Why did you go through all of this? And turn me into this?”
“Tradition. My mama and I have a long history of selecting weak males, beguiling and making them love us. Then we force-transition to give us pliable sex slaves we can use to make more money.” She indicated the Latina MILF. “Dalia, meet Dolores Reina. Dalia’s your new name, by the way.”
She gave Dolores a deep, tongue-heavy kiss as she caressed her ass through the white silk. Helen caught me gaping and broke the kiss. She winked at me. “She’s my stepmom. A real hottie, isn’t she? She did to my dad what I did to yours.”
She cinched my new breasts back down with the binder, explaining it had to stay on until they fully healed. Now that I was conscious I could take over the exercise to keep them from turning painfully hard.
"Your face and tits are too sensitive to play with right now, but I can appropriately break you into slavery, anyway.”
“If you think I’m going to do a fucking thing you—OW!”
I cried out as she seized my balls and squeezed them. As I recovered from the pain she strapped a collar around my neck. It looked much like a dog collar and it had a rectangular plastic box that lay on the back of my neck underneath my hair extensions.
She held up a remote control and pushed the button briefly, making me scream from the electric shock on my neck. It was then a simple matter for them to guide me to their basement dungeon and lock my head and wrists into old-fashioned stocks that bent me over. Ankle cuffs on the floor spread my legs wide apart.
Helen held up a dildo ten inches long and two inches wide. “Here’s where I turn you into a real girl, Dalia.” She stripped off her tunic, exposing her stunning body. Her stepmom handed her a dildo harness.
“Please don’t, Mom!” I cried. The tears stung my lip-filler injection sites. “You don’t need to do this!”
Her smile turned wicked. “Of course I do, baby. It’s payback for what you did to me. Besides, I know that very soon you will come to beg for it, and not just for this toy. Real cock!”
I stared straight ahead in despair, waiting for them to take my anal cherry. That’s when I saw the wall in front of me and the one to my side was mirrored. I was shocked to see just how much mine was now the body of a sexy girl. I’d already been slender with shapely legs, but the big breasts and my new waistline—and my face—made me a sexpot.
I can’t believe my cock is tingling from this!
Dolores was now also naked and so intensely beautiful, looking like an even hotter version of 1960s sex symbol Raquel Welch, with bigger tits and ass. She smiled kindly she stepped up holding a bottle of sex lubricant and coating her finger.
“I specialize in mariconas. What you gringos call ‘sissies.’ I just love turning boys into slutty girls, Dalia.” She softly kissed my lips. “If you relax and give into this, it won’t hurt at all, baby.”
I couldn’t help moaning as she massaged my asshole with a slick digit, especially as she eased her forefinger all the way inside my now-horny butt. My cock got instantly hard. Within a few minutes she’d worked three fingers up into my rectal muscle. It gave me a boner as hard as I ever got and made me whimper like a sex-starved slut.
“Make your voice higher, sexy Dalia,” the Mexican MILF coaxed. “You are now a beautiful, sexy girl. You should sound like one!”
She purposefully grazed and jabbed my prostate, building a deep ache in my groin. My voice got higher as my P-gasm built, and I felt the precum flow down my straining cock shaft. Then it hit like a huge wave. I cried out like a girl in ecstasy.
“Your daughter is ready for you, mija,” the MILF said.
I actually wiggled my butt in anticipation as I felt Mom’s hands cup my ass. I couldn’t help doing it and I wondered why in hell this turned me on so much. Did I have this buried in me? Sure, I sometimes jacked off to shemale porn but always to a fantasy of fucking them. Never—
“Mami will make you a full girl now, Dalia. Try to push it out and it will go right in,” she said and then kissed me.
She was right: the huge dildo slipped right into me. It stung at first and I wanted to beg her to pull it out. Instead, I tried to relax and I breathed into it. Helen fucked me slowly and gently at first, letting me get used to it. I could tell she wanted me to like it, to like being a slut with a dick. She wanted me to like erasing every trace of normal American boy in me.
“Oh, I love that, Mom!” I whined in my new girl voice.
“Call me Mami,” she husked, picking up the speed of her thrusts. “You will learn Spanish quickly for your new life here, mija. That means ‘daughter’ in the informal.”
“Es hora de freír su cerebro,” Dolores chuckled.
Mom laughed. “She said it’s time to fry your brain.”
I wondered what she meant until the exquisite MILF’s lips closed around my leaking cock. Mom battered into me while her mom took me in her throat, sucking me into an explosive orgasm that made me briefly sag in the stocks from erotic exhaustion.
There was a sudden, heavy scent of ass as Mom pulled out of me and put the slippery, fouled dildo in my face. She looked down into my eyes, wondering if she’d have to order me. She didn’t need to. I was her slave now. I gladly opened wide and took it into my mouth.
“Muy bien, mija. Te amo.”
“Very good, daughter,” I purred between licks. “I love you.”
“Muy bien, my sexy girl.”
She pulled the cock away and gave me a deep, penetrating kiss. Her love for me was no act. It both heartened and worried me. I truly had no idea who she was or what she was capable of.
You know damn well what she’s capable of. She’s a Black Widow who killed your father, framed you for it, stole all of his money, and turned you into her own shemale sex slave. She could decide to kill you and nobody would ever know.
Yet still my cock stayed rock hard.
“Now we shall see how much you love me, Dalia. Hold her waist, Mami. It’s time to own her fully.”
I could barely breathe from the excitement when she pulled out the huge jar of Vaseline and began coating her right forearm. I had no idea what my ultimate fate was, but I hoped that as long as I went along with whatever perversion she came up with that she’d keep loving me.
What surprised me was how much I looked forward to pleasing her and surrendering to her every whim. It reminded me of those few times I’d gone skydiving and turned my fate over to the universe.
I cried out with joy as her fist slid deep into my rectal meat. My cock throbbed with pleasure and my heart filled with giddiness from the feeling to total abandon, especially as she fondly caressed my girlish ass with her free hand. I heard them whisper and giggle in Spanish, and I hoped they were planning something nasty.
My wish came true a moment later when Dolores dragged over a low table and climbed atop it. She spread her legs and shoved her spread labia in my face. She ordered me to drink.
As her hot piss filled my mouth and I gulped it down in heady exhalation, I reveled in a freedom I would never have known otherwise. I was now a shemale sex slave, a chick with a dick, owned by two sexy, evil women in a rich villa somewhere deep in Mexico, and I had no idea what would happen to me next.
And I didn’t care!
The above story is one I posted in a BDSM erotica sub and it had no sissy/trans elements until this chapter. Here's the next part:
https://www.reddit.com/transgenderfantasy/comments/1clxtmq/my_loving_mother_climax_forced_transbdsmincest/
If you'd like to read parts 1 and 2 of this story, here is part 1:
https://www.reddit.com/BDSMerotica/comments/1cbt0xmy_loving_mother_dubconm20f32incestanaldegradation/

I've seen quite a few posts regarding getting caught in the act and thought I'd throw in my two cents worth. Dad, Daughter, and Dog The back screen door slammed shut as Kellie returned home from her evening jog. Her father Al sat in his easy chair behind his newspaper. That you, honey? Kellie snorted, It better be or there'll be trouble! Rex, her shepherd dog, made klik-klik noises on the linoleum with his nails. The two had been inseparable since he arrived in the house a tiny puppy. Can you come in the living room for a minute? Sure. She walked in lean and lithe, barely five feet tall, tiny breasts held in a sports bra and tank top, tight bottom in running shorts, her chestnut hair tied back in a pony tail. She had been an active child from the moment she could walk with ballet and gymnastic classes from her preschool years. Kellie had been only seven when her mother had died. That's when she took up running, although running to or running from, she was never quite sure. What is it, Dad? Al closed his newspaper, folded it, folded it again, and dropped it into his lap. He stared at it as he began. I wasn't sure how to say this until just now. He looked up into his daughter's eyes. I saw you go into the garage. Kellie froze unbreathing. She gripped the back of her father's chair to steady a light-headed swaying. What? Through the kitchen window. I saw you go into the garage a little while ago. While you were supposed to be out running. B-b-but I was out running! Her grip on the chair tightened. Maybe for twenty minutes. Then I saw you go into the garage. You didn't come out right away and I didn't know if something might be wrong, so I went out and looked in the window. You didn't even look up. You were too busy helping Rex gettin--. Kellie's knees gave out. She crumpled to the floor. Silent tears ran down her cheeks. Rex trotted over and licked her face. Honey, please don't cry. You're far too old to spank even if you were doing something wrong. He laid his hand atop her head. She slumped over to rest her cheek on the arm of the chair. Remember what I told you when your mother died? She nodded slightly. You said, 'you and me, pal.' I remember. That's right. And we have to be honest with each other, and trust each other, and love each other, no matter what. S-s-so you're not m-mad at me? She sniffled. Rex licked her nose. She gently pushed him away. No honey. I am *concerned*, which is a different thing. Why are you having sex with your dog out in the garage? She looked up smiling and weeping at the same time. Da-a-a-ad! she said as if he were telling the United States Congress that she still enjoyed playing with dolls and coloring books. Her cheeks reddened. Honesty and trust, remember? So, how long have you and Rex been... uh, fucking? He wasn't sure he should drop the F-Bomb into the conversation. He trusted that it felt right. Just a few months, ever since Barry and me broke up. Barry and I, he corrected without thinking. But why out in the garage? It's dirty and dank and I can't imagine it being much fun. She looked up at him wide-eyed. Honesty. And trust. She nodded. I thought I had to hide it because, you know, sex, um, fucking with animals, is so wrong. Having released her own F-Bomb in return seemed to remove tension from the air. It was all well and good to talk about open honest trust, but reluctance to use so-called bad words tended to dampen things. Wrong? I don't think so. You love Rex, and he loves you. If he didn't want to screw you I'm sure he would let you know, wouldn't he? He caressed her head, neck, and shoulder. If you don't mind my asking, who made the first move? Kellie giggled. He did. You know how horny he's always been. That night after Barry and me, and I, broke up, Rex came into my room and laid his head in my lap. He looked up at me with big eyes, like he knew how sad I was. He jumped up and started licking my face. I hugged him. I remember feeling his, um, his cock against me while I rubbed his back. He got down and I petted his head against my thigh for a minute when he suddenly started sniffing between my, around my pussy. I wasn't wearing any panties. When his tongue started licking me it all felt so good I couldn't shoo him away. I just sat there with my legs spread wide apart and let him do whatever he wanted. He licked me until I came. She sighed happily and laid a hand atop her father's on her shoulder. I think it was the best night's sleep I've ever had. The next night I thought I ought to return the favor so I tried to suck him. I really tried but Rex wouldn't cooperate. I tried to get his front paws propped on the bed while I sat on the floor under him. I tried coming at him from the side on all fours. Whenever he sat or laid down his cock seemed to shrink away. It was when I was on my hands and knees that Rex finally ran around behind me and licked me, then he hopped up onto my back, and I thought, 'Oh my God, he wants to fuck me!' and I knew I wanted to let him do it. He wrapped his front legs around me and I reached back to help him get his cock into my pussy. He thrust and humped and danced on his hind legs until I felt his hot cock slide into me. Mmm, it was so good! I don't know how long we kept at it. I came twice before Rex hopped off me. We didn't tie together that first time, though. I'd seen dogs in the street stuck together and I thought maybe I was bigger than a girl dog and he couldn't tie with me. She squeezed her father's hand in delight. Wrong! The second time we did it we tied and I thought I was in heaven. I just kept coming and coming! She looked up into her father's eyes and smiled. Oh Daddy, it's so good to be able to talk to somebody about this! Al bent down and kissed his daughter's forehead. Honesty, and trust, and somebody to talk to. That's why I'm here. That night Kellie came into the living room in her terrycloth bath robe, Rex as ever by her side. Getting ready for bed, honey? Sort of. Um, Dad, she began. He looked up. Her eyes sparkled and she had a saucy grin on her face. I was wondering, um, if you might want to watch me again. Watch you...OH! he said. He sucked in a quick breath and answered without hesitation, Yes, honey, I would. She grinned. She kept her eyes locked on her father's as she untied her robe, shrugged it off, and tossed it onto the couch. Well? She was naked, gloriously naked. Her tight little breasts were topped with small hard pink nipples placed unusually high. Her belly was flat. Her hips gently rounded. She kept her dark brown pubic bush cropped short, not shaved like so many girls. Al appreciated this. He didn't much care for shavers always thinking, who wanted to see a pussy that looked like it should have a diaper on it? Well? she repeated. He looked up from between her legs to her smiling face. You're beautiful, honey. Absolutely beautiful! Without conscious thought his right hand fell into his crotch and he began squeezing his hard cock through his pants. Kellie noticed what her father was doing. Her smile grew. You're not just saying that because you're my daddy? His eyes roamed up and down her body. He swallowed. I mean it. Honest. She glanced down at her father's busy hand. She bit her lower lip in delight before squatting down next to her dog. C'mon Rex, she whispered. She pushed her nose against his. She laid a hand on his neck. Rex licked her face twice before she opened her mouth to allow his long red tongue inside. Human and dog both whined softly in pleasure as they kissed. Kellie squatted with her thighs open, her pussy on display for her father as much as her own balance. After some eternal minutes she slid a hand down between her legs. She slid her fingertips up and down her pussy lips, teasing herself, teasing her father, wetting her fingers with her juices. She closed her mouth, turning her head away she touched his muzzle with her pussy-slick fingertips. Smell it, boy. Taste it. You want some more? Rex's tongue cleaned her fingers before he dropped his head down to nuzzle and lick her open pussy. Yes! That's it. Lick me, baby, lick me! Her father's eyes were glued to the activity between his daughter's thighs. His hand continued squeezing his hard cock through his pants. She studied his face. His lips were parted. His eyes were glazed. I've never seen a man masturbate before, Daddy. Take off your clothes for me. He stood quickly disrobing as if in a trance. Ooo! Your cock is beautiful! she cried when it popped into view. He seemed to come to. He looked into his daughter's eyes and smiled happily before he sat down again openly stroking his erection. Kellie reached between Rex's hind legs to grip his cock. He did a quick two-step dance. He stopped licking her pussy and tried to run around behind her. Are you ready to fuck me, Rex? she asked almost as much for her father's benefit as the dog's training. You want to fuck, yeah, fuck me now? She fell forward onto her knees and elbows with her ass raised high. She slapped her ass cheeks a couple of times. Get on. Get up! Time to fuck, Rex! Fuck! He understood those words, the insistent tone of desire in her voice, the heady smell of her sex, and the ache in his own. He lept onto her with his front legs wrapped around her waist as he humped his wet pink cock against her skin. His eager movements scored a hit after four tries, sending his bevel-tipped cock into the warm wet depths of her pussy as his thrusts began. That's it Max! Fuck me good! Yessss! Kellie wasn't accustomed to being quite so vocal with Rex. The fear of discovery was gone now. She found she enjoyed talking through her pleasure. God, baby, you're so...! Al croaked softly. His hand still stroked up and down his cock slowly and steadily. The head was becoming shiny. Slippery. His hand made little noises as he worked on himself. He looked at her face. She was staring at his hand on his cock. He knew she was watching him masturbate, something so intimate and personal he couldn't imagine anyone ever watching. Not even his wife, Kellie's mother, had ever seen him jack off. Of course he had never seen anyone fuck a dog, either. Daddy. Come here. Please. she gasped. I want. Your cock. Give me. Your cock! Suck! It! He stood of trembling legs to walk four steps before falling to his knees before her. He sat back on his heels. He scooted forward until the tip of his cock brushed her soft cheek. Kellie balanced on her elbows before gripping the base of his cock in one hand. She licked the head clean before engulfing it with her wet mouth. Al nearly screamed in delight. It had been a long time since anyone had blown him. His daughter was very good at it. He leaned back onto his hands. He gently began moving his hips to fuck her mouth. Kellie wrapped her arms around his waist, her little tits flattened against his thighs, her nipples like hot pebbles on his flesh. Al looked Rex in the eyes and winked at the dog as they shared the human bitch between them. It didn't take long before Al could feel the hot push growing in his belly. I'm gonna come, baby! Gonna come soon! She began sucking even harder, her head bobbing faster. She wanted him to come in her mouth. He could feel it building, building. Gonna! Come! Gonna...gonna! He fell back onto his elbows and thrust his hips up savagely to press his pubic hair against his daughter's lips as the first spurt of his orgasm exploded. She took it without a whimper before pulling her head back until only the tip of his cock was between her sucking lips then slamming her face down again, and again, and again, milking his cock with her mouth until he finally stopped. His body went slack for several minutes as he recovered. He watched her raise her head until his penis fell from her lips. She smiled with her eyes half closed She laid her head down on Al's lap for a minute moaning softly until the dog turned, standing quite still butt-to-butt, his cock now swollen tight inside her pussy. She breathed heavily through her open mouth. Oh! Com-ing! Touch! Me! Dad-dy! He caressed the back of her head, her neck, her shoulders. He reached down her spine as far as he could. He slid his hands beneath her to pull her hard nipples. Everywhere he touched her, she moaned and sighed happily, whispering, So good. So good. Coming. She remained tied to Rex for at least ten minutes before he pulled out and trotted off to lick himself. As soon as she was free, Kellie blindly crawled up her father's body. He worked his slightly stiff legs into a more natural position and together, father and daughter, they snuggled sweaty and satisfied with their life together. ...And They Lived Happily Ever After! Read more

Frank Miller's Daredevil and the Ends of Heroism (Comics Culture) eBook : Young, Paul
This was the first honest-to-god analysis of a work of fiction I ever bought. Sure we all think about the stories we read but I had never sought out a professional look at it before. The interviews with Miller and others are really an invaluable look into his creative process, IMO.
I really recommend this book for insights not just into Daredevil, but Batman and Punisher, too.
For anyone curious, here are a lot of the parts which really stood out to me - although of course I have my own interests and you might have parts of the book you love which I just passed over. The first comic I ever remember reading and being deeply impressed by was JMS' Supreme Power. To me, the best superhero stories ask "what does it even mean to be a (super)hero?" I think Miller has some invaluable insights on this topic.

Miller's problem with Spider-Man was all the angst. "All my reservations about the character are in how he talks 'cause his visual is still very confident, and very strong - it's just that he never stops whining." Spidey's self-pity, his penchant for martyrdom, and his borderline masochistic self-neglect attracted fans' identification but also made his life more or less a continual nightmare. Even worse, it made his success as a superhero hard for Miller to swallow. Spider-Man's trademark heckling of villains during fights only made his effectiveness less believable:
"I don't believe that Spider-Man would last two weeks [as a crime fighter] the way he's conceived. In order to have power over the criminals, you would have to be that rotten; [criminals] would have to accept him as almost one of them... Daredevil has to reach the point where when he walks into a room. they're terrified of him. because he has to be accepted as a force they'll respect. That isn't done much in comic books; it's around in other kinds of fiction. I'm more comfortable with that; I don't see him as being happy go lucky when he's up against a bunch of guys with guns."
[...]
Miller would probably have incited comparisons to Batman in the fan press simply by transforming Daredevil into a grittier, more deterministic series, but Miller openly stressed the parallel in his Daredevil-era interviews. In 1981, Miller draws an explicit contrast between Daredevil and Batman: "Daredevil . . . operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice. . . . [Batman] is punishing those who killed his parents. Batman's focus is on the criminal, Daredevil's is on the victim."27 Critics picked up on Miller's concern with Daredevil's motives, as well as the productive task of measuring them against those of the Batman. Reviewing Miller's work thus far in the Comics Journal in 1982, Ed Via wrote that Miller had made Daredevil "first and foremost a moralist, a person with a strong sense of fairness and . . . compassion, someone whose actions were as directly in line with his convictions as humanly possible."28 Even Daredevil's scuffles with criminals differed from Batman's in that they were performances rather than acts of vengeance:
"I see Matt Murdock as being a grown man and Daredevil as almost being a boy. . . . He believes in everything he's doing and he works very hard at it, but part of him just gets off on jumping around buildings."29 "I'm also trying to develop him as a guy with a terrific sense of humor, who scares criminals and has a great time doing it. Like [Steve Ditko's DC character] the Creeper, he laughs and laughs and laughs, and thinks [to himself], 'Jeez, they're buying it!'"30
Miller's favorite means of exposing his hero's antic side was to send Daredevil to Josie's Bar, a fictional dive where New York's entire population of petty thieves seems to turn up every night. Digging for clues to various cases, DD inevitably sparks fights that trash the place, hurling thugs through the front window while Josie protests (for the umpteenth time) that she just had it repaired. Sometimes he even orders a drink first, but as Miller points out, it's always a glass of milk. The milk (and the milk moustache it leaves behind) comically telegraphs Matt's wholesomeness compared to the hardened types guzzling whiskey and beer all around him, but it also underscores Miller's description of DD as Matt's boyish side, the inner child that "comes alive" while playing superhero.31
Ultimately, however, the contrast Miller once drew between the borderline psychotic Batman and the psychologically healthy Daredevil sounds like an overstatement of the argument, fronted by the Village Voice in 1965 (and echoed in Esquire the following year), that "Marvel Comics are the first comic books to evoke, even metaphorically, the Real World."32 By those lights, "real world" referentiality meant that Marvel heroes dealt openly with persecution, neuroses, and family squabbles and turned out to be their own worst enemies nearly as often as protagonists did in postwar literary fiction.
By contrast, DC didn't raise any schlemiels, with the possible exception of Clark Kent, whose inferiority complex is all an act to keep people from noticing that, but for the eyeglasses and the hunched shoulders, he looks exactly like Superman. DC stories followed the logic of such classical storytelling modes as the epic or the chronicle, where decision making is an exponent of action instead of a process inflected by character subtleties and every action thus taken is world-historical in importance. Its editors exiled strong emotion, anxiety, mortality, and other everyday complexities to the infamous imaginary stories of the fifties and early sixties.
This means of distinguishing Silver Age Marvel heroes from those of DC hits a snag, however, when we stack Batman's origin up against that of Spider-Man or Daredevil. The emotional crux of all three is the Spidey triumvirate of all-too-human gut reactions: guilt, shame, and a desire for revenge. Indeed, the most obvious precedent for Daredevil's origin is the first version of Batman's origin story in DC's Detective Comics #33 (December 1939), in which an anonymous street thug robs and shoots Bruce Wayne's parents before young Bruce's eyes. Batman's origin sets underexamined precedents for many origin stories from Marvel's Silver Age: dead parent, angry child, costume chosen to strike fear into what the Batman of 1939 touts as a "superstitious, cowardly lot" of evildoers, an initial state of helplessness igniting the desire to bulk up and do right. Not unlike the death of Jack Murdock in Daredevil's case, Bruce Wayne's extraordinary childhood loss forges Batman's determination to avenge that loss on all criminals everywhere forever after and to transform himself into a steroidal, bat-eared Sherlock Holmes.
Miller brought the Punisher, then Marvel's most homicidal lead character, into the comparison to develop a pet point about Daredevil's singularity: his duty to the legal system, for better or worse. In 1981, when Richard Howell asked Miller point blank, "Is Daredevil Marvel's Batman?" Miller answered that, no, "the Punisher is Marvel's Batman."33 Miller argued that, unlike the Batman, whose parents' murder catalyzed every major life decision he made from then on, the death of Battlin' Jack did not have as "big an effect on [Matt] as his father's life, and he is his father's son, being a natural born fighter."34 The Punisher, by contrast, shares not only Batman's desire to murdered loved ones but also his will to stop killers and drug dealers in their tracks. He exceeds Batman's mission only in that he executes the bad guys on the spot.
The Punisher, Miller tells Howell, is "Batman without the impurities. The side of Batman that makes him spare the criminals is something that's added on. It's not part of the basic concept of his character. . . . Daredevil's basic concept is very dissimilar. I see Daredevil as someone who operates on a basic motive of love for seeking out justice."35
This was not to say, however, that the Punisher's use of deadly force made him less heroic to Miller than Daredevil or Batman were. The Punisher is a hero, Miller says, but "I don't consider him a role model. The main difference between him and Daredevil is Daredevil's sense of responsibility to the law. The Punisher is an avenger; he's Batman without the lies built in."36
The "lies" Miller mentions refer in part to Batman's vow never to kill; he wields a gun only two or three times in his entire first forty-five years in print, due in each case to editorial inattention. While the no-kill rule probably helped keep Batman out of trouble with parents worried over comics' influence on young children, it exacerbated the tension between his desire for justice and his sense that the legal system is inadequate to the task of collaring mass murderers and rooting out corruption. If Batman's prime motive is to champion justice in the legal sense, to quash anarchy and restore social order, then why does he have such contempt for the police and the legal system except insofar as they can help him achieve his goals?
[...]
The ambivalence about due process expressed here stems in part from Miller's decision to make Daredevil a character whose convictions don't necessarily match his own: "I don't necessarily believe that Daredevil's right about everything he says. The character is built on very strong basic principles, and it would have been a terrible violation of those principles . . . to let Bullseye die. Daredevil has to believe that the law will work in every instance, but I'm allowed to believe differently."17 Miller had much tougher critiques of Daredevil-style liberalism waiting up his sleeve, including the bleeding-heart psychiatrists in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns who claim that Two-Face and the Joker (the Joker, for crying out loud) can be rehabilitated and an unforgettable throwaway joke about liberal hypocrisy in the same book, in which a Central Casting suburbanite tells a reporter that he doesn't believe in Batman's brand of vigilante justice but then snorts that he himself would "never live in the city." But to paint Miller as a legal or social conservative would not be accurate, at least not at this point in his career. Satirically, in fact, Miller plays the entire political field, broiling John Ashcroft and George W. Bush in The Dark Knight Strikes Again (2001–2) for exploiting the Twin Towers' destruction to further their own political agenda (and while these men were doing exactly that in the aftermath of 9/11, no less).
The Daredevil run, though, is less a satire of Matt's position, or anyone else's, than it is a Brechtian experiment in which Miller draws sympathy to Murdock's point of view while examining it with a microscope at the same time, pushing harder and harder on the question of whether justice is served if lives are left at risk, while putting just as much pressure on the opposing question of whether preventive justice deserves to be called justice at all.
[...]
Matt's reaction to the death of Elektra is to bully Heather into the submissive role that Elektra couldn't play. Miller attributes to Matt not a single thought balloon to suggest that he is aware of the toll his bullying takes on her, while Miller continually draws the reader's attention to that toll via Matt's glib condescension and Heather's devastated reactions to it. The soundness of Daredevil's judgment is now more questionable than ever. Does his heroism stem from a neurotic urge to control everything around him, and is that neurosis reaching a tipping point? After all, we see him suffer a nearly dissociative breakdown when he convinces himself in #182 that Elektra somehow survived her own murder. The splash page of that issue still chills me with its full-face close-up of Matt in a cold sweat, staring into our eyes, as if pleading with us to believe something we know to be utterly false just because he believes it: "SHE'S ALIVE." By #189, only seven issues later, his demeaning paternalism has driven his new fiancée straight to the bottle.
In spite of the ugliness of Matt's abuse, and the emphasis Miller places on that ugliness, it's difficult for me to decide whether terrorizing Heather this way makes Daredevil less heroic or more heroic in Miller's definition. Miller has often spoken about the archetypical hero as something other than human, as dismissive of what others think they need as Matt is of Heather's feelings. When Miller discusses The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, which he and interviewer Gary Groth agree is nearly a parody of superhero comics, he emphasizes Batman's abstract quality, born of the kind of social isolation that Stick enforces on Matt: If Batman's "motto is striking terror" into the hearts of criminals, then "Batman can only be defined as a terrorist. . . . I don't want you to like this guy." "My feeling about Batman is that he's similar [to James Bond] in that you'd want him to be there when you're being mugged, but you wouldn't want to have dinner with him. The way he cheers Hawkman on as he crushes Luthor's skull . . . For me, [such scenes demonstrate] the idea [of Batman] coming into its own without the bullshit on top of it being a socially acceptable role model and all of that."23
Matt's disregard for Heather's emotional state during the Glenn Enterprises affair further clarifies Miller's sense of the heroic impulse: it is prosociety but deeply antisocial, convinced that Right and Wrong are real and unchanging standards but dangerously solipsistic in its interpretation of how to achieve Right at the expense of Wrong. The true hero, according to Miller, is, compared to "normal" human beings at least, a pathological narcissist. Daredevil, with unwavering faith in his own judgment, performs "necessary" services for a culture whether it asks for them or not, while those who are under his protection see him as unfathomable at best and terrifying at worst. But even if Miller thrills to his own extrication of the "lies" and "bullshit" from the Batman persona a few years later, in Daredevil he employs dramatic irony to relate the high cost, to both individuals and their community, of the uncompromising, take-no-prisoners heroism that Americans think they want. "Dirty Harry . . . is a profoundly, consistently moral force," Miller tells Kim Thompson, but that wouldn't keep him out of jail for "administering the 'Wrath of God' on murderers who society treats as victims.
An authoritative study of Jack Kirby, Charles Hatfield has suggested that Marvel Comics distinguished itself in the 1960s in part by placing new stress on the tension intrinsic to superhero comics between the hero's desire for justice and the extralegal means by which she or he pursues it.25 I would add that Marvel's Silver Age stories place the stress primarily on the plotting opportunities provided by this tension, as in the case of Spider-Man, whose good deeds only draw the ire of a public (understandably) suspicious of ununiformed law enforcement.
Miller further develops the "upstanding vigilante" paradox from a cliché of the genre into a philosophical dialectic that, though sometimes decried as fascistic, cannot be reduced to an unironic plea for authoritarian rule. The superheroic fantasies on display in 300, the Sin City graphic novels, The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, and even the controversial Holy Terror cast a clear eye on the paradox of the specifically American fascination with the superheroic ideal. All pose to the reader the implicit question, Is this really what you want? Considering the consistency of this theme dating back to Daredevil,
I think of the pre-9/11 Frank Miller as less conservative than libertarian, a posthippie refugee of the 1960s who disdains the everyone-is-special relativism of grade-school participation trophies and liberal humanism but shares with the conscientious objector and the bra burner a fervency for personal liberty: "I'm no middle-of-the-roader, but I find that people who tend to follow any party line, of the left or right, tend to all end up saying the same thing, which is 'Do what I tell you.' Quit those habits I don't like, don't use the words I don't like, don't draw the pictures I don't want my children to see. . . . So yeah, I have a very jaundiced view toward most authority."26 In any event, Miller's focus on Daredevil's unflagging moral code, and his attention to how a relentless diet of violence might change that code into an ideological prison, allows him to explore the upstanding vigilante figure from multiple angles—the broadly liberal defense of constitutional protection for criminals and victims alike; the broadly conservative ideal of defending one's own body, family, and property without impediment from the state—without readily disclosing his personal politics.
[...]
Slowly and steadily, Miller was maneuvering out of Code territory into the world of frankly adult themes and pressing harder and harder on the contradictions on which a traditional concept of heroism depends. Miller's The Dark Knight Returns steps even further into that world even as it sets up new "walls" to push against, namely, the postsixties culture of liberal humanism and so-called moral relativism. Miller's Batman has all of Daredevil's desire for justice but lacks any of DD's concern for the civil rights of the alleged perpetrators; indeed, if Daredevil's primary concern is with the victims, as Jim Shooter taught Miller, then Batman's primary concern is with crushing the perps. And he gets called on it throughout The Dark Knight Returns by loads of liberal-sounding talking heads who claim that Two-Face and the Joker were actually turned into supervillains by Batman's example, that even convicted homicidal maniacs deserve a second chance, and so forth.
What Miller has done is to take Daredevil's line of legal thinking regarding the rights of criminal defendants, the same line that made him save Bullseye from being mashed on the subway tracks, and put it in the mouths of comic-relief characters such as the brain surgeons and psychologists who try to make Two-Face a productive member of society again. Miller's Batman, by contrast, is an epic hero who refuses to mistake good for evil or vice versa, and he gets to define on his own what each term means. Miller's Matt Murdock refuses such a metaphysical view of good and evil as all-or-nothing opposites on idealist grounds of a different sort. Matt believes that obscured innocence and hidden guilt have to be brought to light intellectually by finding proof and testing it, while Batman, who was at one time represented as a detective at heart, relies entirely on instinct when Miller has the reins.
To be fair, Miller presents the crudeness of Batman's worldview as a serious problem and has even done so in the midst of a conflict that seemed to many Americans to draw the brightest possible line between the national Us and a foreign Them. DC had already published the first issue of Miller and the colorist Lynn Varley's Dark Knight sequel, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again!, when al-Qaeda operatives commandeered the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, an event that, Miller told Groth, made it impossible to leave Batman's catchphrase about "striking terror into the hearts" of evildoers unannotated. As I've mentioned, Batman's dialogue in The Dark Knight Strikes Again!—even the dialogue written before 9/11—makes the ugliness of his philosophy unmistakable: "Striking terror. Best part of the job."
Groth even points out to Miller that one Batman speech, in which he refers to American capitalists and the federal government as "tyrants" and promises that he and his team will "strike like lightning and . . . melt into the night like ghosts," sounds uncannily like "the point of view of radical Islamists" toward the United States.13 Miller doesn't take such a crack at the obvious bad guys, however. Rather, he immediately pounces on the political reaction to the bad guys and how the George Bushes, Dick Cheneys, and John Ashcrofts of the world use crises like 9/11 for their own purposes. They stand in for the heroes we think we need in tumultuous times but slip the bounds of law at every turn—and Miller attempts to reduce our sympathy for them. This Miller, chastened by the 9/11 attacks but ever the shrewd critic of the media that deliver such disasters to us, digs into the fascistic politics of superhero comics, the news media's role in sensationalizing global politics and inciting fanatical nationalism, and the real-world politics of vigilante justice all at once. He claims comics as a space to explore what "heroism" means—and not necessarily to him but rather to contemporary US culture. If the one who "saves" us from tyranny, even the tyranny of our own leaders, claims he has to act like a terrorist to do it, do we even want to be saved?
At the same time, both Miller's comics and his interviews have long scrutinized the insolubility of the paradox—heroism is necessary to restore order, but it's also authoritarian in its purest form, even fascistic—as a necessary evil. Batman seems the purer Miller "hero" in that Batman's sense of justice is unencumbered by any complicating factors. He metes it out as he sees fit, on the basis of an Old Testament version of righteousness: you take my eye, I'll take yours, score settled. This hero is no model for quotidian life, but as in such classical Hollywood Westerns as John Ford's The Searchers (1956), the frontier will remain forever a chaotic wilderness without him. Only Ford's half-wild hero Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) can save his niece from hostile Comanche in post–Civil War Texas, but his intense race hatred makes him a relic, unfit to cross the threshold into the orderly world of law, family, and home that his very wildness has helped bring to the western frontier.
The civic-minded Daredevil would be welcome in any such home, but for the later Miller especially, that taste for civilization and its rules reads as an "impurity," a liberal-humanist streak within traditional superheroism that Miller once talked about strictly in terms of character type (it's the difference between Batman and his "purer" doppelgänger, the Punisher) but that lately he describes as a moral fault, without any of the irony he mustered up a decade ago. There are signs dating back to 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns that this irony was ambivalent anyway, considering the extent to which Batman adopts the Western hero's ruthless stance when taming the "frontier" of racialized criminals, right down to trading in the Batmobile for a horse.
The progressive reverence with which Miller's comics after Daredevil treat that definition of heroism has everything to do with 9/11 and the scale of twenty-first-century global terrorism as Miller has processed it since The Dark Knight Strikes Again!. Back in 2003, he told Groth, "For at least the foreseeable future, [9/11 is] the whole point of my work. I'm going to play around with doing some propagandizing,"15 but this sentiment did not prevent him from making the US government's reaction to the disaster a target for satire in his second Dark Knight story or lambasting the Bush administration for branding disagreement with its policies as providing solace to terrorists. By contrast, the Fixer, the costumed hero of Miller's frankly propagandistic graphic novel Holy Terror (Legendary Comics, 2011), doesn't care whether he gets thrown out of the house or not; his lot is to make the world safe for civilization, American style, not to inhabit it, and he likes it that way. The Fixer, a behemoth who shares a name with a character that Miller created for his high school newspaper's comics page, kills terrorists like a sledgehammer breaks pavement. There's no second-guessing motives or anything else; as far as the Fixer is concerned, if you're Muslim, you've got a bomb strapped to your midsection, so there's no danger that he will smash the wrong face.
Unsurprisingly, the character originally at the center of Holy Terror was Batman. Finally, Miller had freed the character of its impurities. To do that, he also had to burn off the "impurities" of the fundamentalist foe by painting al-Qaeda as representatives of all Islam and all Muslims and playing on every Arab stereotype he could scratch onto his Bristol board, from big noses to using Evil English to express delight in the torture and murder of "infidels." He has matched such images with political commentaries on National Public Radio, his personal blog, and elsewhere that show none of the critical distance that once made his work as jarring and energizing intellectually as the best Dashiell Hammett novel you've ever read. Our terrorist enemy, Miller has said, is "pernicious, deceptive and merciless and wants nothing less than [our] total destruction." Never mind that the majority of victims of al-Qaida and now ISIS are, in fact, Muslims.16
The hardline right position that Miller takes in Holy Terror differs so dramatically from that expressed in interviews dating back to the early 1980s that one has to wonder if he's been replaced by a Life Model Decoy from Nick Fury's supply closet. But Holy Terror was a critical disaster, prompting fans and critics alike to swear off any future Miller work and even to claim that his comics have rallied around a "sexist, fascist" flagpole since as far back as The Dark Knight Returns and possibly even before. Spencer Ackerman echoes the most scathing reviews when he writes in Wired, "Frank Miller doesn't do things halfway. One of the true comic-book greats, he's created several of the most extraordinary stories ever to grace the art form. So perhaps it's fitting that now he's produced one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time.
[...]
I can't subscribe to such uses of Miller's Batman to evaluate Miller's own character. Critics have been mistaking the positions Miller examines in his comics for his own convictions for decades. Indeed, Miller would agree with every one of Kevin's criticisms of Batman and even offer an aesthetic justification for this portrayal that depends on a dramatic irony that is difficult to locate, precisely because superhero comics have always traded in absolutes; criticism of those absolutes would understandably be less obvious to a dedicated reader of superhero comics, not to mention a nonreader convinced of superheroes' intrinsic lack of sophistication, than to someone interested in exploring or exploding the limits of the Batman mythos. Now, however, it not only looks like Miller has given away his critical distance; he also wants everyone to know it and to decide for themselves whether what he's done is worthless as a result, as comics or as political activism.
Back in 1998, discussing 300 with Christopher Brayshaw in the Comics Journal, Miller acknowledges the historical irony of Greece, the epitome of civil organization and intellectualism in the ancient West, needing a nation-state of cold-blooded warriors to fight its battles. In another context, he tells Brayshaw, he might have invited readers to ponder that irony and consider its paradoxical relationship to the development of democratic ideals.19 He does not do so in this context, however. For Miller, 300 is all about the necessity of saving civilization—Western civilization—from barbarism. The three hundred Spartans did what was necessary; they lost the battle, badly, but without their sacrifice, discipline, and utterly unambiguous worldview, we would apparently still be living in mud huts today.
Even with 300, though, Miller argues that he's playing around just a tiny bit with our tendency to collapse heroes with role models. Miller makes Leonidas admirable but not likable and renders most of the other 299 Spartans as less admirable and even less likable. But maybe, Miller has said not only about the Spartans but about the Punisher, Batman, and Superman, cultures need guys like that, and I do mean guys—the reckless male narcissists who can't or won't make subtle distinctions between good and evil—to do the dirty work of "preserving civilization as we know it." Usually, as in The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again! and to a certain extent the noir riff on Dante's Inferno that is Sin City, Miller lets us sit with that ugly possibility, lets us squirm at our own enjoyment and/or disgust. He forces us to wonder if peace and forward movement are ever possible without the bright lines between good and evil and at the same time makes us ponder whether by drawing those lines, we put our humanity at risk. The generous way to interpret what Miller says here is that, like Hitchcock, he's casting doubt on the very notion of heroism that rules superhero comics, that is, the fantasy that superheroes could do what they do and yet remain "ordinary" people. Miller turned Batman into a living symbol of the fear that criminals should feel when threatened by "good," at least in a Platonist universe, but don't. However, when it's no longer comics, the First Amendment, or aesthetic complexity at stake but national security, take-no-prisoners tactics—in art as well as war—look to Miller like the only way to go.
[...]
In what I want to believe is a triumph of Miller the listener over the absolutist Miller who sneers at the same First Amendment he once sacrificed his industry goodwill to defend, Miller now refuses to comment further on his anti-Occupy rant. Perhaps he thinks it all speaks for itself, or perhaps he has accepted certain tenets of his critics just as he graciously (and legitimately, it seems) accepted the differing opinions of Groth and other interviewers as recently as a decade ago. Either way, he has stopped talking much about politics of any stripe. His blog is now abandoned due to "computer problems," Miller says, glowering during an interview for a Wired profile when Sean Howe suggests he find "a better technician" to fix it. "I will," Miller says, after a long silence.22
Look back on Daredevil's nemeses from the '79–'82 run with Miller's current anti-Islamicism in mind, though, and watch the ambiguities and nuances of his first major achievement get harder to pinpoint. Bullseye is a psychopath, complete with brain damage caused by cancer to guarantee it. Elektra is irredeemable despite her ostensibly clean bill of mental health: "The feeling I've been trying to get across is that she's betrayed something. She was meant to be something better than she is."23 But once you've fallen from grace, that's it. Some people are evil, through and through—think of the "reformed" Harvey Dent/Two-Face in The Dark Knight Returns, whose ruined mind no amount of reconstructive surgery can repair—and they must be punished, locked away for good, dismissed, disposed of. There's no other way to get the cancer out of society. Miller dates the rising scale of violent crime in Daredevil back to his getting mugged and robbed in New York: "The experience filled me with anger, and that translated right into my comics."24 As he got angrier, however, the struggle over right and wrong that plagued Daredevil seemed to get a lot less interesting to him than staking an unwavering claim to right.
Howe shrewdly characterizes Miller's use of secondary characters as a kind of misdirection: "Daredevil's dastardly supporting cast allowed Miller to have it both ways by making Daredevil's barrage of kicks and punches look reasonable in comparison."25 The bleak view on Miller's career would paint it as a slow but momentous roll past such apologies for superheroic vigilantism and into the stark light of the Fixer's gleeful, openly sadistic rampages, a development that Howe connects to Miller's personal victimization by crime prior to plotting Batman: The Dark Knight Returns:
"As Miller's career was taking off, the everyday violence in Manhattan at the time was taking its toll. "New York is no longer fit for human habitation," Miller told one friend. After enduring three robberies in the course of a month, he and [the colorist and his then-girlfriend Lynn] Varley decided to escape to LA. While she went out west to search for a home, he stayed behind to set up more work to get them out of debt. He had a check in his pocket when, once again, someone tried to rob him. "Frank just went berserk on the guy," Varley says. "He didn't hit him or anything, he just went so berserk the guy backed off and ran away. We were on edge."26
Such anger floats to the surface of his work with a bang in 1986, the year I graduated from high school, with not one but two smash-hit stories about characters that didn't belong to him: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Miller's most lauded Daredevil story, Daredevil: Born Again, his 1986 return to the Daredevil series, penciled by David Mazzucchelli.
[...]
It's a hell of a second coming for a character whose series stubbornly still bore a Comics Code seal. I won't fault Miller for the anger of that story today any more than I did when I read Born Again at seventeen; on the contrary, I still believe there's not much point in going through adolescence in the United States without some rebel-themed mass culture to embrace for the sole reason that your parents would hate it. Still, I marvel at how much Miller's perspective on his audience had changed between 1983's "Roulette" and the Born Again story line in 1985–86.
According to Howe's account of Marvel in the eighties, Miller's inspiration for Born Again was losing everything himself. Ramped up on the success of Ronin and eager to get away from the city that fostered at least one person's transformation into a real-life vigilante ("one Bernard Goetz is enough"), Miller moved to Los Angeles, found himself dead broke, and decided to pitch a new Daredevil story that started with Matt Murdock in similar straits.28 No doubt it was satisfying to create a world in which a bloated mob boss—somebody, anybody—could actually be held accountable for downturns of fortune, instead of such mundane external forces as random robberies or astronomically high rent. But Born Again also recommends interpretations of Miller's work as reflective of his worldview, making it more difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt when he says he is investigating the justification of defensive violence rather than sponsoring it.

[...]

Mortos:
The early morning chaos of the town setting up had me gasping in wonder, Ali calling me in for some reason. Opening the door to the hangar, she had her legs sticking out from underneath a ship. Her pension for inventing and level of intelligence garnered my respect, never mind the fact of becoming a captain at sixteen. Like most boys my age, my teenage years had been spent screwing around. Pushing herself from underneath the ship, a comical amount of grease covered her cheeks. Stopping the trajectory with her boot, her smooth ease into the sitting position matched her personality to a tee.
“How do you feel about going on a rescue mission with just me today?” She queried with a tired smile, my mind wondering how long she had been up. “It is a couple of planets away. My friend that runs the market is having a gang problem. It should be a quick fix. Before you ask, I have permission from Jack to head over there. In fact he gave me a list of supplies to pick up.” Noting the paper fluttering in her bra, that didn’t seem like Jack at all.
“If you wish me to go.” I answered with a smile rotted with concern, her smile brightening to her natural one. No wonder my brother admired her, my heart aching to hear him call me from the jail’s radio. Popping to her feet, her worn boots crashed into her ship. Coming out with a new uniform with my name and title, she presented it to me with pride in her eyes.
“I made you a better one.” She bragged with glee, her excitement stealing my depression away. “It even reads Captain Mortos!” Accepting it with a gracious smile, the fact that she would go this far for us proved her eligibility to be president. Jack came downstairs in his boxers and a white t-shirt, Ali leaping into his arms. Spinning her around with a groggy yawn, he pressed his lips against hers hungrily as he lowered her down. Sensing the love between them, the way they chatted with the biggest smiles had me wishing for my own love. Cupping her cheeks, another kiss had her blushing a deep scarlet. So the future president was human after all, I chuckled to myself. Pecking his lips one last time, the elated look on her face had my fraying nerves relaxing enough for me to keep my composure. Patting my shoulder on her way into the medium sized ship, her confidence had been restored. Humming as she plopped into the captain’s chair, her slender hands clicking the harness on. Wiping the grease off with her sleeve, her kind gaze watched me take the seat next to her. Strapping myself in, a push of a button had the door groaning open. Flipping the myriad of switches, this model seemed more complicated than the normal ship. The engine roared to life, the ship backing into the street. Straightening out, the sheer force of how fast we shot into the sky impressed me. Freedom glittered in her eyes, the ship stabilizing. Her snakes slithered to her side, her palm rubbing their scales. Her name as the snake president fit her to a tee, the darn pets never leaving her side.
“This is my newest model. She runs off of the rocks from the battery mines. Those rocks are fantastic unsung heroes.” She bragged with an adventurous grin, tucking her waves behind her ear. “The technology is beyond anything I have ever managed. I will have to teach you the schematic of the engine.” Excitement had my heart skipping a beat, most people in the force wishing to have heard her offer. Little did she know that every officer begged on to be on her ship, her leadership skills stunning us all. Leaving me to stew in my own thoughts, the short four hour flight had us landing into the sole free spot on the docks. A chain shot out on its own, the links tying perfectly around the hook. Pushing several buttons had the engine dying down, she excused herself to get changed. Unhooking myself, my fingers drummed on my olive green cargo pants, the long brown leather jacket making me feel a little epic. Coming back out in an onyx leather suit, badass was the only way to describe her. Tugging on a pair of leather gloves, golden energy buzzed in her palm. Opening the door, the sounds of a bustling city roared to life. Spinning on her heel, her hand reached for mine. Checking for my guns, relief washed over me in their presence. Saluting her as I jumped to my feet, my fingers curled around hers. Guiding me out, a metal shell locked it down. Metal groaned with every step, her hand dropping to her hips.
“We are looking for a coyote gang. Kind of like a dog but scruffier.” She explained with another one of her trademark smiles, her lips blowing off a bit of dust. “The point is to execute them. Treasure says that they have kidnapped several kids. People like that don’t change.” Following her into the bustling crowd, her sharp eyes scanned the crowd. Whistling sharply, a devious grin danced across her lips. Rattling had her kissing each snake, her fingers tickling a spot underneath their ears. Thankful for their presence, the feeling they oozed had the newest people in town shrinking back.
“I need you to tell me where to find your little problem Coyote is and none of you will get hurt!” She shouted while I panicked behind her, respectful gazes admiring her. “You want your kids back, right?” One by one they raised their hands, the information planting itself in her mind. Thanking them with a natural smile, a couple of aliens bounced up to her. Passing them the list, they bowed as they scurried off. Patting them again, my mind wondered how she managed to tame the most volatile aliens in the universe
“How did you garner so much respect?” I asked incredulously, her shoulders shrugging. “How do they have so much light?” Scratching the back of her head, her head nodded to similar looking generators. Piecing it together, her genius had helped these guys as well.
“I gave them some generators so they didn’t have to depend on the main power lines. The connection honestly had a bit of a lag.” She answered simply, her hand bouncing her staff against her leg. “I simply did what most people would do.” Rolling my eyes, a weak sure flooded from my lips. Not everyone can provide power to an entire city, I thought to myself. Her hand raised in the air, gaudy suits catching my eyes, a sea of scraggly fur catching my eyes. Bootleg guns glistened in their hands, Ali counting them all. Turning back towards me, a tracking pin glittered in between her fingers. Flicking it into one of their necks, a long breath drew from her lips. Shifting around her pocket, a sleek black tracking device hummed to life. Following her to an alcohol stand, the two spoke discreetly as he slid a case of alcohol in her direction. Popping off all the corks, curiosity peaked in my eyes. Placing a couple of bottles underneath their fangs, deadly venom dropped into the dark ale. Glowing for a second, the color returned to normal. Repeating the process until the bottles had been tainted, a flick of her wrist had the venom melting the dirt by my feat.
“You can reseal these, right?” She questioned with another one of her natural smiles, a deep yes coming from the elderly man. Popping the corks back in, the kind man sealed the corks in new wax. Plucking it off the counter, her eyes flitted between the street and her device. Coming upon an abandoned warehouse, she motioned for me to cover her back as her slender hands switched out the top case of ale with hers. Shrinking into the shadows with her, Ratalia and Ratonia lifting us up to the window. Sitting patiently for them to bring in the alcohol, her hands rested on her lap. Glancing at the box every now and then, the grimace on her face spoke of a wearing patience.
“Is this the normal procedure?” I whispered discreetly, her brows lifting. “This won’t eat at you if they die from poisoning.” Shaking her head, a story lingered on the tip of her tongue. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks, her fingers scrunched up the hem of her jacket.
“No. Revenge is a bit of my logic for this job.” She admitted dejectedly, tucking a loose piece of hair behind her ear. “One of my first missions was taking him down before he killed the children he kidnapped. I failed. Every single child died and he got away. So yeah, poisoning him is what I want to fucking do.” Refusing to look at me, tears splashed onto her pants. Forgetting that she was in charge of that mission, the rumors flew about her lack of skills in that department. The next mission she led proved them wrong, the drug bust shutting down the biggest organization. Not to mention the biggest kilos of drugs had been confiscated in that mission alone, her breaths growing shorter.
“Do you remember when I said that you could talk about it with me? We are here to help you if you find yourself in the middle of a panic attack.” I pleaded quietly enough for her ears and her ears alone. “None of that was your fault, right? If I remember correctly, they had thousands of aliens on your twenty officers. Take a deep breath and remember Jack's smile or something like that.” Wiping away her tears, one of her snakes hissed to see if she was okay. Parting her lips to speak several times, horror rounded her eyes. Scratching at her cheeks, her eyes darted all around me. Shit! She was going to give us away. Yanking her onto my lap, my hand covered her mouth. Screaming into my palm, something had her riled up. Glancing over, the box of ale was gone. Turning her head in the direction of the missing box, her breathing slowed back down to the normal rate. Apologizing glumly, her ears pinned back. A thin layer of sweat glistened on her skin, her puffy eyes quivering. Lowering us down, her legs shook like jelly. Leaning onto her staff, lines of blood covered her cheeks. A snake tongue snapped her back to reality, her back straightening.
“Let’s go! The venom takes effect immediately.” She ordered briskly, scratching at her face. “I want to get this over with.” Kicking in the door, twitching coyote aliens foamed at the mouth. Dropping around her, rattles announced her scaly bodyguards. Spinning her staff in her palm, golden energy glowed to life. Wonder brightened my eyes, a ribbon of venom dancing around the core.
“Find the children and get them home safely!” She barked hotly, Coyote rising from his golden throne. “That is a fucking order!” Golden energy devoured her body, my boots clicking emptily out of the warehouse. Pausing to listen for children, dozens of children’s screams echoed a couple of warehouses down. Seven voices ordered them to shut up, my fingers curling around my guns. Golden lights flashed in the rusting steel warehouse, the walls groaned. Plucking my guns from my belt, the safety clicked off on its own. Humming to life, the lighter guns were light years over the ones that Solomon had. Kicking the door down, lasers shot from the muzzle. The quiet whistles had the aliens hitting the worn floor, children of all ages running over to me. A groaning had me placing the kids behind me. An alien with a coyote head crashed through the roof, the steel gray fur fluttering in the wind. His golden eyes widened with pure terror, a quick blast of my gun had golden blood pooling around his head. A busted Ali limped in behind us, a bag of cookies swinging in her blood covered hand, the kids shivering behind me. Wiping the blood off of her face with her sleeve, the fear melted away. Bruises covered her skin, her left arm dangling precariously. Smiling bigger through the raw agony of a dislocated shoulder, tears diluted the blood oozing from the scratch marks on her cheeks.
“Why don’t you all have a cookie?” She chirped cheerfully, her hand cupping her side. “Please know that you are safe! Have a snack before you get h-” Smashing into her legs, violent sobs wracked her body. Crouching down to their level, she continued to laugh through the pain. Passing the bag around, the children’s face lit up brighter with every passing second. Lanterns glowed in the distance, children ran to their eager parents. Wails echoed in the warm evening air, parents squeezing their kids like their life depended on it. Nudging my shoulder, her slender finger pointed to her shoulder.
“Mind knocking her back in for me?” She choked out through a wall of tears, shame dimming her eyes. “Don’t tell Jack about what you saw.” A hearty voice called her name, a cat alien in a pirate style outfit bounced into view. Tipping his hat in her direction, his onyx cat ears pinned back. Tucking his tail in between his legs, his fluffy black hair floated up with his huff. Concern darkened his cat eyes, his hand knocking her shoulder back into place. Her scream died down, his arms burying her into a desperate embrace. Resting her chin on his shoulder, the few times that they met led to the clear admiration between them. Jamming a needle into her neck, she collapsed into his arms. Tossing her over his shoulder, his tail twitched with anxiety. Following him up to a sprawling home, a couple of staff offered me a drink. Tucking my guns into my belt, a broken fear hid underneath my nervous half-smile.
“Jack told me to heal her if she got gravely injured. Where are her snakes?” He inquired seriously, the behavior making since. Excusing myself, my boots pounded through the streets to the warehouse. Creeping into the warehouse, every ounce of food burned its way up my throat. The carcasses of her snakes lay in their own pool of blood, a couple of hisses giving me hope. Sinking to my knees, a faint pulse was there. Fishing around my boot, my shaking fingers yanked out the medical kit we were all given. Opening up the kit, several vials had me confused. What would help them out?
“Use the yellow and light blue.” A gentle female voice spoke cautiously, my breath hitching at the gorgeous alien next to me. Her fluffy ivory cat ears pinned back, her snow white tail wagging as she proceeded to mix the right ones. Her petite body looked so delicate in her frilly sage dress, her sage eyes twinkling with excitement. Going on about how she wished to be a vet someday, her fangs hung over the right side of her smile. Assuming that was her natural smile, several drops of her concoction had the poor snakes slithering back to life. Hissing the moment they rose over us, angry snake eyes darted around. Settling on the lady who helped me out, neither could bring themselves to bite her. The floors squeaked in protest as she popped to her feet, her five foot one frame causing my heart to flutter. Snuggling into her palms, animals seemed to be her talent. Spinning on her heels, a tender blush rose to her cheeks.
“I am Catz, a local cat alien looking to get out of here. You must be Mortos.” She sang while wagging her hips, her fingers dancing up my chest. “How long has it been since you had a bit of evening fun?” Swallowing the lump in my throat, this was becoming too much. Stepping back, her dainty hands tugged on her ears.
“Curse this heat. Why did it have to come now?” She hissed under her breath, her hands covering her face. “Can you help me bring her scaly friends to her?” Walking back in a pensive silence, every cell in me wanted her in the most primal way. Entering the front doors, a manic Ali was pacing back and forth. Ratalia and Ratonia snaking around her body, mixed emotions bringing her to her knees. Covering her up with their massive bodies, her arms refused to let them go. Pointing their heads towards Catz, a sad smile dawned on her lips. Stumbling to her feet, that drug must have worn off faster than normal. Snatching her into a bear hug, profuse thank yous burst from her lips. Swaying back and forth with her, confusion lived in my mind for a second. Releasing her, Catz and Ali introduced themselves politely. Hoping that she would find a friend in her, my mind zoned out completely. A loud yes had me snapping back to reality, Catz bouncing up and down while clapping her hands. Staring numbly ahead, Ali traced the fresh scars on her cheeks. Treasure stole her away to sign some sort of contract, Catz tugging on my sleeve. Glancing up at me with big eyes, her finger tapped her cheek.
“Can you help me out with my problem? I think that you are my mate.” She pleaded adorably, wiggling back and forth. “Please, I need you.” Checking the nape of my neck in the reflection, a cat tattoo appeared. Yanking her close to me by my waist, the consequences would be immediate. Hesitation burned in my eyes, the staff scoffed in disapproval.
“Hold on until we get home with some pr-” I began to protest, her lips pressing against mine hungrily. Time stopped, our heartbeats echoing in my ear. Releasing me from her spell, scarlet burned on our cheeks. Donning a goofy grin, her hand pinned me to the wall. Wagging her tail, her spell had devoured my apprehension. Stealing me away to my bedroom for the night, our desires took over. Crashing down next to her, a knock had me flying off the bed. Tugging on my outfit on the way to the door, Catz snored behind me. Cracking open the door, Ali laughed to herself with her hand over her mouth.
“Has the summer died down?” She teased with a wink, her bare feet thudding back as I let myself out of my room. Fixing my button up shirt for me, her hand rested on her hip.
“Have your friend and your ass ready by dawn. I have a family to get back to.” She whispered as to not disturb my mate, the word sounding weird in my mouth. “Have a nice evening.” Spinning on my heel to leave, my fingers curled around her wrist. Forcing her to look at me, the blaring scars would be obvious to Jack. Her smile fell, silent tears staining her cheeks.
“The dead children were screaming at me.” She admitted brokenly, her palms rubbing her arms. “They were yelling at me. Sorry for losing it on you. I promise it won’t happen ag-” Passing out, my arms caught her. Carrying her back to her room, the stress had become too much. Tucking her in, her snakes slithered onto the bed. Curling around her body, something told me that she would be okay. The flames of hope burned with her, my footfalls feeling hollow as I made my way back to the room. Pausing in front of the door, my own future awaited me.

How many remember reading this entire poster while waiting on your parents at KMart?
January 1 - New Year's Day (as if you needed an excuse to party.)
January 2 - Maui International Surf Championships begin.
January 3 - Super Soakers appear on the market, 1991.
January 4 - The blender is invented, 1910.
January 5 - Tony Ferko sets a world record by juggling 7 ping pong balls with his mouth, 1987.
January 6 - The dorm room refrigerator is invented, 1956.
January 7 - The first ant farm is sold in America, 1958.
January 8 - Elvis Presley's birthday.
January 9 - Richard Nixon's birthday, 1913.
January 10 - In 1984, Wendy's spokesperson Clara Peller first asks, "Where's the beef?"
January 11 - Annual Snow Shovel Riding Contest, Ambridge, PA.
January 12 - The first Super Bowl occurs, 1967.
January 13 - Benedict Arnold's birthday,
January 14 - The Simpsons premiers, 1990.
January 15 - Chuck Berry's birthday, 1926.
January 16 - National Nothing Day, a day where you can celebrate not having to celebrate anything.
January 17 - The final episode of Bonanza airs, 1973.
January 18 - The original Morris The Cat dies, 1975.
January 19 - The front-hook bra is invented, 1951.
January 20 - George Burns' birthday, 1896.
January 21 - The microwave oven is invented, 1967.
January 22 - The first nude beach opens in the U,S.,1952.
January 23 - Tupperware is invented, 1942.
January 24 - John Belushi's birthday, 1949.
January 25 - Grand Rapids, MI becomes the first city to add fluoride to its water supply, 1945.
January 26 - Eddie Van Halen's birthday, 1957.
January 27 - Laverne and Shirley premiers, 1976.
January 28 - We Are The World raises hundreds of millions of dollars for starving Africans, 1985.
January 29 - Sweden becomes the first nation to curb the use of aerosol cans, 1978.
January 30 - The first fist fight in the U.S. House of Representatives occurs, 1798.
January 31 - The twist-off bottle top is invented, 1956.
​
February 1 - Fred Flintstone's birthday, 2 million B.C.
February 2 - Ground Hog Day.
February 3 - Thomas Crapper invents the first flush toilet,1837.
February 4 - Dan Quayle's birthday, 1947.
February 5 - New York becomes the first city to adopt 3-color traffic lights, 1952,
February 6 - Ronald Reagan's birthday, 1911.
February 7 - National Hangover Awareness Day.
February 8 - James Dean's birthday, 1931.
February 9 - The G.I. Joe doll is introduced, 1964,( Ken doll was invented, 1974) " F- G.I.Joe "
February 10 - The styrofoam cooler is invented, 1957.
February 11 - The "La-Z-Boy" chair is invented, 1948.
February 12 - Abraham Lincoln's birthday,1809.
February 13 - VJ Martha Quinn of MTV appears on the TV show The Bradys as Bobby Brady's fiancee,1990.
February 14 - Valentine's Day. (Go find someone to party with.)
February 15 - Valentine's candy goes on sale.
February 16 - Zsa Zsa Gabor's birthday (or National "Slap A Cop" day.)
February 17 - Michael Jordan's birthday, 1963.
February 18 - Vanna White's birthday,1957.
February 19 - The very first prize is inserted into a Cracker Jack box, 1913.
February 20 - Northern Hemisphere Hoodie-Hoo Day, when citizens are asked to go outside at noon local time and yell "Hoodie-Hoo" to chase winter away.
February 21 - Alka Seltzer is introduced, 1931.
February 22 - Julius Irving's birthday, 1950,
February 23 - The Tootsie Roll is introduced,1896.
February 24 - Wayne's World opens in American theatres,1992.
February 25 - Milli Vanilli wins a Grammy for "Best New Artist." (Oops.)1990.
February 26 - The first cartoon is shown in a movie theatre,1909.
February 27 - Elizabeth Taylor's birthday,1932.
February 28 - The last episode of M*A*S*H airs, with over 121 million viewers,1983.
February 29 - Leap Day.
​
March 1 - Roger Daltrey's birthday, 1944.
March 2 - In 1962, Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points in one basketball game.
March 3 - Harvard freshman, Lothrop Withington, Jr,, becomes the country's first goldfish swallower, 1959.
March 4 - Toothbrush bristles are changed from badger hair to nylon, 1938.
March 5 - The first breeding of a Great Dane and a Dachshund is performed, creating a "Great Dachshund", 1972.
March 6 - Ed McMahon's birthday, 1923.(I don't know how that is!)
March 7 - The Fourth Of July, Warsaw, Poland.(I wonder what part of "Fourth Of July" they didn't understand?)
March 8 - National Girl Scout Week begins.
March 9 - The Department of Agriculture declares ketchup a vegetable, 1981.
March 10 - The first confirmed octuplets are bornin Mexico, 1967.
March 11 - Lawrence Welk's birthday, 1903.
March 12 - The "Hell's Angels" are created, 1948,
March 13 - U2's Adam Clayton's birthday, 1960.
March 14 - The baseball cap is invented, 1860.
March 15 - The first baseball cap is worn backwards, 1860.
March 16 - Jerry Lewis' birthday, 1925.
March 17 - St. Patrick's Day.
March 18 - Leona Helmsley is sentenced to 4 years in prison for tax evasion, 1992.
March 19 - Chewing gum is invented,1871.
March 20 - The first official sighting of Elvis occurs, Butte, Montana, 1980.
March 21 - The first day of spring.
March 22 - New Kids On The Block and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles doll - sales exceed $1,8 billion, 1990.(Do you beleave that these caught on!)
March 23 - The Dixie Cup is invented, 1912.
March 24 - The first pine tree air freshener is introduced, 1971.
March 25 - Elton John's birthday, 1947.
March 26 - Martin Short's birthday, 1950.
March 27 - Liz Taylor's wedding anniversary.
March 28 - Liz Taylor's wedding anniversary.
March 29 - Liz Taylor's wedding anniversary.
March 30 - Eric Clapton's birthday, 1945,
March 31 - An easy listening radio station in Annandale, VA, is blown up, 1978.
​
April 1 - April Fool's Day.
April 2 - Velcro is introduced, 1978.
April 3 - Eddie Murphy's birthday, 1961.
April 4 - Tater Day (a day that celebrates the potato), Benton, Kentucky.
April 5 - The first issue of TV Guide goes on the market,1953.
April 6 - Bob Marley's birthday, 1945.
April 7 - The final episode of Star Trek airs, 1969,
April 8 - Hank Aaron hits his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth's record, 1974.
April 9 - Dennis Quaid's birthday, 1954.
April 10 - World Crits Festival, St. Ceorge, South Carolina, 1992.
April 11 - The Equal Opportunity Commission regulates that sexual harassment of women is illegal in the work place, 1980.
April 12 - David Letterman's birthday, 1947.
April 13 - World Cow Chip Throwing Championship, Beaver, Oklahoma.
April 14 - Dungeons and Dragons is invented, 1974.
April 15 - The bottle opener is invented, 1738.
April 16 - The first test-tube baby is born, 1986.
April 17 - The Ford Mustang makes its debut, 1964.
April 18 - The first "Walk/Don't Walk" signs are installed in a city, 1955.
April 19 - Reading Is Fun week begins.
April 20 - National Lingerie week begins.
April 21 - Iggy Pop's birthday, 1947.
April 22 - Jack Nicholson's birthday, 1937.
April 23 - Summer begins in Ireland.
April 24 - Rattlesnake Derby (a snake racing contest), begins in Mangum, Oklahoma.
April 25 - Elvis Presley hits number one with Heartbreak Hotel, 1956.
April 26 - The largest bank robbery in the U.S.-$3.3 million-occurs in Tucson, Arizona, 1981.
April 27 - Wide World Of Sports premiers on TV, 1961.
April 28 - Jay Leno's birthday, 1950.
April 29 - Michelle Pfeiffer's birthday, 1962.
April 30 - National Honesty Day.
​
May 1 - May Day.
May 2 - Engelbert Humperdinck's birthday, 1936.
May 3 - James Brown's birthday, 1934.
May 4 - The final episode of Laverne and Shirley airs, 1983.
May 5 - 1,904 pound "Big Boy," the world's largest pig, is born, 1939.
May 6 - Babe Ruth hits his first major league home run,1915.
May 7 - Hard Rock Cafe's World Cup of Windsurfing Championships, Maui.
May 8 - Jim Morrison's birthday, 1943.
May 9 - The FDA approves the first public sale of contraceptive pills, 1960.
May 10 - U2's Bono's birthday (b.Paul Hewson), 1960.
May 11 - The chair is invented, 2181 B.C.
May 12 - George Carlin's birthday,1937.
May 13 - The U.S. Postal Service introduces postcards,1873.
May 14 - David Byrne's birthday,1952.
May 15 - DuPont announces "Nylon Day" where nylons replace silk stockings, 1940.
May 16 - Janet Jackson's birthday, 1966.
May 17 - The rubberband is invented,1845.
May 18 - National Visit Your Relatives Day.
May 19 - The first department store opens,1848.
May 20 - Cher's birthday,1946.
May 21 - Mr. T's birthday, 1952.
May 22 - The lucky rabbit's foot is first used, 600 B.C.
May 23 - The first Cliff Notes appear in schools,1953.
May 24 - Mary Had A Little Lamb is written,1830.
May 25 - The movie Star Wars is released,1977.
May 26 - John Wayne's birthday,1907.
May 27 - The first black light is sold in a novelty shop, 1961.
May 28 - The first Batman comic book is introduced, 1939.
May 29 - The first people reach the top of Mt. Everest, the world's highest mountain, 1953.
May 30 - The compact disc is introduced, 1981.
May 31 - Clint Eastwood's birthday, 1930.
​
June 1 - The first Superman comic book is published, 1938.
June 2 - Jerry Mathers'(Beaver Cleaver) birthday, 1948.
June 3 - The world's first tattoo is performed, 208 B.C.
June 4 - The world record for Hackey-Sacking is set: 48,825 consecutive times, 1988.
June 5 - The first drive-in theatre opens, 1933.
June 6 - Dana Carvey's birthday,1955.
June 7 - (the artist formaly known as) Prince's birthday,1958.
June 8 - The first stolen car is reported,1896.
June 9 - The NFL and the AFL merge,1966.
June 10 - The first drive-thru restaurant opens in America, 1952.
June 11 - The first teenager drives backward through a drive-thru restaurant, 1952.
June 12 - Jim Nabors' birthday.
June 13 - The Ford Foundation launches a study to raise the cultural level of TV shows, 1951.
June 14 - Mr. Ed premiers, 1951.
June 15 - Jim Belushi's birthday, 1954.
June 16 - The first baseball game is played,1846.
June 17 - The Broadway musical "Oh! Calcutta!" opens, using the naked human body for the first time as a stage costume, 1969.
June 18 - Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space, 1983.
June 19 - Batman Returns opens in U.S, theatres,1992.
June 20 - Noxema is named, because it "knocks eczema" out, 1914.
June 21 - CBS introduces the first long-playing record, 1948.
June 22 - The day disco officially died, 1979.
June 23 - The day disco should have died, 1974.
June 24 - A new world record is set for spitting a watermelon seed 68 feet,9 1/8 inches, 1989.
June 25 - The tennis shoe is invented,1947.
June 26 - The first movie theatre in the U.S. opens, with 10 cent movies, 1896.
June 27 - The first sighting of flying saucers is reported in the U.S., 1947.
June 28 - The first dog show is held, Newcastle, England, 1859.
June 29 - The first remote control is sold with a TV, 1964.
June 30 - Mike Tyson's (#316394) birthday, 1966.(also my mom's)
​
July 1 - Dan Aykroyd's birthday, 1952.
July 2 - A new record is set for throwing a Frisbee 623.6 feet, 1988.
July 3 - The last episode of Bewitched airs, 1972.
July 4 - The Fourth Of July.
July 5 - The bikini makes its debut at a fashion show in Paris, 1945.
July 6 - Elvis Presley, 19, makes his first record, 1954.
July 7 - Rodger Woodward, 7, falls out of a boat and becomes the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls, 1960.
July 8 - Annual Chesapeake Turtle Derby (turtle races), Baltimore, Maryland,1992.
July 9 - Tom Hanks' birthday, 1956.
July 10 - Fred Gwynne's (Herman Munster) birthday, 1926.
July 11 - Nolan Ryan is the first major league pitcher to strike out 4,000 batters, 1985.
July 12 - For the first time, a woman is ordered to pay alimony to her husband, 1981.
July 13 - Live Aid raises money for Africa's starving people, 1985.
July 14 - Lightning strikes New York City power lines and leaves the city in the dark for 25 hours, 1977.
July 15 - Law is passed requiring health warnings on cigarette packages, 1965.
July 16 - The safety pin is invented,1849.
July 17 - Soviet and American astronauts meet in space to shake hands, 1975.
July 18 - A world record is set for catching a grape in your mouth: 319 ft,8in., 1980.
July 19 - The first personal ad looking for a spouse is printed,1695.
July 20 - Madonna poses nude in Playboy, (What else is new?) 1992.
July 21 - Robin Williams' birthday, 1952.(also mine different year)
July 22 - The first Sony Walkman goes on sale, 1979.
July 23 - Mel Gibson decides to become an actor, 1960.
July 24 - Instant coffee is invented, 1938.
July 25 - The lowest temperature ever recorded is noted, -129 deg,in Antarctica, 1983.
July 26 - The Hula Hoop becomes popular, 1958.
July 27 - The 1ast episode of Taxi airs, 1983.
July 28 - The Hustle hits #1 on disco charts, 1975.
July 29 - Don Juan opens, with the most kisses (127) in a single movie, 1926.
July 30 - The last reported sighting of Jimmy Hoffa is recorded, 1975.
July 31 - America's last Playboy Club closes, in Lansing, Michigan, 1988.
​
August 1 - The song Chopsticks is written, 1877.
August 2 - The elevator is invented,1743.
August 3 - Jay North's (Dennis The Menace) birthday, 1952.
August 4 - Federal income tax is first collected, 1862.
August 5 - American Bandstand premiers, 1957.
August 6 - Santa Monica Skate Board Championships begin.
August 7 - Borden is sued for a Cracker Jack box containing no prize, 1982.
August 8 - The All-American Polka Festival occurs in Vernon, New Jersey, 1992.
August 9 - The first Guinness Book of World Records is released, 1955.
August 10 - Minimum wage jumps from 75 cents to a dollar an hour, 1955.
August 11 - Hulk Hogan's birthday, 1953.
August 12 - The first issue of Sports Illustrated is published,1954.
August 13 - A world record is set for throwing a cow chip 266 feet,1981.
August 14 - Magic Johnson's birthday, 1959.
August 15 - Woodstock festival begins, 1969.
August 16 - Madonna's birthday (Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone), 1959.
August 17 - Woodstock festival ends, 1969.
August 18 - People who passed out at Woodstock realize the festival ended yesterday, 1969.
August 19 - Bill Clinton's birthday, 1946.
August 20 - Robert Plant's birthday, 1948.
August 21 - The first house made entirely of recycled products is finished, Richmond, Virginia, 1973.
August 22 - Nolan Ryan is the first major league pitcher to strike out 5,000 batters, 1989.
August 23 - Supermodel Paulina marries Ric Ocasek. (Go figure.) 1989.
August 24 - Music videos are now on MTV, 1981.
August 25 - Elvis Costello's birthday, 1954.
August 26 - The first roller coaster is built in America, 1929.
August 27 - The first American vomits after riding a roller coaster,1929.
August 28 - Cher gets her third tattoo. (Location unknown.) 1990.
August 29 - Michael Jackson's birthday, 1958.
August 30 - The last episode of The Brady Bunch airs, 1974.
August 31 - The Beatles make their last concert appearance, 1966.
​
September 1 - National Chicken Month begins.
September 2 - The bowling shirt is invented, 1921.
September 3 - The first bowling league is formed in America, 1921.
September 4 - Dick York's (the first Darrin Stevens) birthday, 1928.
September 5 - Hijacking planes becomes illegal, 1961.
September 6 - The last episode of The Alfred Hitchcock show airs, 1965.
September 7 - The last episode of the Beverly Hillbillies airs, 1971.
September 8 - The first Miss America Pageant takes place, 1921.
September 9 - Elvis sings on The Ed Sullivan Show, but is only shown from the waist up, 1956.
September 10 - The last episode of Mr. Ed airs, 1965.
September 11 - Mork and Mindy premiers, 1978.
September 12 - The last episode of Leave It To Beaver airs, 1963.
September 13 - M*A*S*H premiers, 1972.
September 14 - Pope John IV abolishes the 1500-year-old custom of the circular haircut for monks, 1972.
September 15 - In 1968, Presidential candidate Richard Nixon goes on Laugh-In and says, "Sockit to me!"
September 16 - The first baboon heart is transplanted into a human, 1984.
September 17 - Gilligan's Island premiers, 1964.
September 18 - Adam West's (television's Batman) birthday, 1928.
September 19 - National Singles Week begins,
September 20 - The Addams Family premiers, 1964.
September 21 - Bill Murray's birthday, 1950.
September 22 - The ice cream cone is invented, 1903.
September 23 - Ray Charles' birthday, 1930.
September 24 - A world record is set for the longest kiss:17 days, 10 1/2 hrs., 1984.
September 25 - Heather Locklear's birthday, 1961.
September 26 - The Brady Bunch premiers, 1969.
September 27 - The answering machine is invented, 1950.
September 28 - The Beverly Hillbillies premiers, 1962.
September 29 - The Munsters premiers, 1964.
September 30 - The Flintstones premiers, 1960.
​
October 1 - NASA discloses that each astronaut's suit costs $3.4million.
October 2 - The first cartoon strip appears in a newspaper, 1896.
October 3 - A 327 gallon Pina Colada becomes the world's largest cocktail, 1988.
October 4 - Leave It To Beaver premiers, 1957.
October 5 - Ashley-Whippet Dog Frisbee Championships, Washington, D.C.
October 6 - Reverend Jim Bakker is found guilty, 1989.
October 7 - The first perfect World Series game is pitched by Don Larsen of the NY Yankees, 1956.
October 8 - Chevy Chase's birthday,1948.
October 9 - Clarence Birdseye, inventor of the frozen dinner, dies, 1956.
October 10 - David Lee Roth's birthday,1955.
October 11 - Saturday Night Live premiers, 1975.
October 12 - Columbus Day.
October 13 - Sammy Hagar's birthday, 1949.
October 14 - Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier for the first time, 1947.
October 15 - The first televised weather report airs, 1953.
October 16 - The first correct televised weather report airs, 1953.
October 17 - George Wendt's (Norm from Cheers) birthday, 1948.
October 18 - The FDA declares marijuana to be as dangerous as alcohol, 1967.
October 19 - End-Of-Hurricane-Season Celebration, Virgin Islands.
October 20 - The world's largest popsicle is assembled: 5,7501bs., 1975.
October 21 - The annual 48-hour Marx Brothers Film Festival, Tampa, FL.
October 22 - The first used-car dealership opens, London,1897.
October 23 - Johnny Carson's birthday, 1925.
October 24 - Int'l Red Bean & Rice Festival, Jackson, Mississippi, 1992.
October 25 - The Twilight Zone premiers, 1959.
October 26 - Minimum wage is raised from 40 cents to 74 cents an hour, 1949.
October 27 - Boxer shorts are introduced, 1901.
October 28 - The first ticker tape parade is thrown; it honors The Statue of Liberty,1886.
October 29 - The first American ballpoint pen goes on sale, NYC, 1945.
October 30 - World's Ugliest Pick-Up Truck Parade occurs in Chadron, Nebraska, 1992.
October 31 - Halloween.
​
November 1 - The first issue of Playboy is published in Chicago by Hugh Hefner, 1953.
November 2 - The first radio program airs, Pittsburgh,1920.
November 3 - Roseanne Barr Arnold's birthday, 1952.
November 4 - "Laika," becomes the first dog launched into space, 1957.
November 5 - A world record is set for 106 hours of belly dancing, 1984.
November 6 - Saxophone Day.
November 7 - Sadie Hawkins Day.
November 8 - The tube top is invented, 1975.
November 9 - The Berlin Wall is opened, and hundreds of thousands of East Germans run into West Germany, 1989.
November 10 - Sesame Street makes its TV debut, 1969.
November 11 - Demi Moore's birthday, 1962.
November 12 - The first known Happy Hour is held, Ireland,1745.
November 13 - Press-on fingernails are introduced, 1952.
November 14 - The juke box is invented, 1883.
November 15 - The annual Three Stooges Festival, Harrisburg, PA.
November 16 - The touch-tone phone is introduced, 1963.
November 17 - Danny Devito's birthday, 1944.
November 18 - Mickey Mouse's birthday, 1928.
November 19 - The pop tart is invented, 1965.
November 20 - Bo Derek's birthday, 1956.
November 21 - Emilio Onra, the first human cannonball, is launched, 1871.
November 22 - Rodney Dangerfield's birthday, 1921.
November 23 - Vincent Paxton sets a new world record by playing his guitar for 300 continuous hours, 1986.
November 24 - The "Who Shot J.R." episode of Dallas airs to an audience of 83 million, 1980.
November 25 - Christina Applegate's (Kelly Bundy) birthday, 1972.
November 26 - Tina Turner's birthday.
November 27 - The first 3-D movie, Bwana Devil, premiers, 1952. It's Thanksgiving
November 28 - Enrico Fermi, inventor of the atom bomb, dies, 1954.
November 29 - The first Army-Navy football game is played,1890.
November 30 - Dick Clark's birthday, 1929.
​
December 1 - The Pope declares that Catholics are allowed to eat meat on Fridays, except during Lent, 1966.
December 2 - Barney Clark receives the first artificial heart, 1982.
December 3 - The world's largest bar opens,1829.
December 4 - Deely Bobbers become one of the holiday's hottest selling items, 1982.
December 5 - Blue jeans are invented, 1880.
December 6 - In 1983, a world record is set for continuous whistling: 45 hours, 20 minutes.
December 7 - The first instant replay airs during a TV sports event, 1963.
December 8 - Kim Basinger's birthday, 1953.
December 9 - A total lunar eclipse occurs, 1992. (Go moon somebody.)
December 10 - The Mighty Mouse show premiers, 1955.
December 11 - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles becomes one of the top money-making movies of 1990.
December 12 - Bob Barker's birthday, 1923.
December 13 - The clip-on tie is invented, 1928.
December 14 - The South Pole is discovered, 1911.
December 15 - Christine Jorgenson becomes the first person in history to have a sex-change operation, 1952.
December 16 - The first color TV program goes on the air,1953.
December 17 - The Wright Brothers make their first flight,1903.
December 18 - Steven Spielberg's birthday, 1947.
December 19 - The "I've-fallen-and-I-can't-get-up" commercial first airs, 1985.
December 20 - Louisiana Purchase Day, 1803.
December 21 - Phil Donahue's birthday, 1935.
December 22 - "Colo" becomes the first gorilla born in captivity, 1956.
December 23 - Congress passes a tax simplification guide which is 1,379 pages in length, 1985.
December 24 - Christmas Eve.
December 25 - Christmas.
December 26 - National "Return-All-Of-Your-Ugly-Christmas-Gifts" day.
December 27 - The last pair of bell-bottoms is sold, Wichita, Kansas, 1981.
December 28 - Snowboarding Championships, White Bluff Mountain, Colorado.
December 29 - The bowling ball is invented, 1862.
December 30 - The leisure suit officially goes out of style, 1976.
December 31 - New Year's Eve.

Everyone has that special toy they had growing up. A toy that was more than just a plaything, it was a companion. For me, it was Baro, the beast knight. It was an action figure from “Knights of Hukra.” Does anyone remember that anime? This toy was a huge part of my early childhood. I would take it with me anywhere I went; watch cartoons with it – I even took it to school with me. When times were tough, when teachers were mean to me, when bullies messed with me, I had Baro. This, of course, didn’t last. He was ripped from me by a bully and thrown into the woods. Despite days of searching, I could never find him.
A little background on the show. The main characters were the heroic Karo, the flame knight; Nera, the water knight; Drahu, the air knight, and finally, Baro, the earth knight (though he was more commonly known as the beast knight.) Three of the knights used weapons to control their given element. Baro, despite having an ax, couldn’t control earth. Instead, he could turn into animals and communicate with them. He kept his face covered by a mask, and never spoke to the human characters. When he spoke to the animals, it was always at a distance so the audience couldn’t hear him. The anime was a “monster of the week” type show. Said monsters were almost always controlled by a human antagonist. My favorite of them being a kraken that was being controlled by the star magic wielding pirate, Captain Radu Scurvy. Nera had once been a part of his crew. The show had a bit of an environmental message.
The anime was dubbed into English in the early 2000’s and was heavily censored. The man who wrote and drew the manga the anime was based on was inspired by western cartoons, so it didn’t quite look like a standard anime. It ran for 20 episodes before being canceled due to low viewer counts. It spawned a very short-lived and derivative card game and a few toys. It didn’t have much popularity outside of my hometown, Silvervein, which had a large Japanese population.
I wasn’t liked very much. I like to dress like a girl, so I got bullied a lot. Me bringing a doll to school probably didn’t help matters. The biggest jerk I had to deal with was a boy named Tamaki. He was the one who took Baro from me and threw him into the woods. There wasn’t much I could do about him; his dad was close friends with the mayor, so Tamaki could get away with just about anything.
My family left Silvervein after a teenager, her dad, and the mayor were murdered by the teenager’s brother, who is still on the run. The news scared my parents enough to want to leave. We ended up going to Portland, which was on the other end of the state from Silvervein. The move was hard, as they always are. I didn’t miss anyone from Silvervein, but I did miss my toy. My parents got me DVDs of Knights of Hukra. I think they did this to distract me from everything going on.
The new school I went to had an anime club, which I brought my DVDs to. The club members were enamored with the show. There was a bit of an argument about whether it actually was an anime since the character designs were western inspired, but a look at the back of the box settled that argument. Bloody anime purists. I met my three best friends in that club: Amy, Jack, and Richie.
Amy was my closest friend; she used to drag me to the mall to go clothes shopping. She didn’t have any female friends to do that with. I was happy to have someone supportive of my crossdressing. Jack and Richie would make fun of me, of course. However, if anyone else made fun of me, they would throw fists. No one made fun of their friend but them. I ended up teasing them in return, implying they might be hiding a crush on me.
In our last year of high school, my friends saved up and bought me a vintage Baro action figure. When I saw that hunk of plastic in my hands, waves of nostalgia radiated through me like warm sunlight on a cool spring morning. I was happy, yet, I also felt lonely. I didn’t have friends in Silvervein, Baro kind of replaced them. Now that I had friends, I felt weird holding something like this. Still though, I was very appreciative. I hugged them all, even giving the boys a kiss on the cheek each for no other reason than to gross them out.
After high school, Amy and I ended up getting an apartment together while she was in college. She was studying education since she planned on being an English teacher in Japan. I was able to help her study with her Japanese since I was fluent from my days in Silvervein. Well, I was mostly fluent; I was never able to decipher Kanji despite years of study.
I was trying to be an author. I had started about six different novels, but dropped them after a couple chapters. I had a few short stories in various publications, and I started playing tabletop RPGs to help me with my writing. To pay the bills, I ended up dishwashing. It was not a glamorous job, and I ended up smelling like garbage at the end of a shift. My writing was getting stagnant, like the dishwater at my job. I could start a project but couldn’t stick to it for the life of me.
One day, Amy, myself, Jack, and Richie were at a Chinese buffet. Jack was working as a janitor at the orphanage he grew up in, and Richie was working in his uncle’s garage. Things were going alright for the four of us for the most part. We were having fun talking about geek stuff and just unwinding. About an hour into dinner, Amy brought up an idea.
“Gabe, the town you grew up in is mostly Japanese, right?” Amy asked me.
“Yeah, it was founded by Japanese P.O.W.s who escaped from American internment camps after World War 2,” I said.
“Think I could see it?” Amy asked, a smile spread across her lips.
“It’s way up North,” I said, surprised by her request, “it’s almost at the Canadian border.”
“Road trip!” Jack said, throwing his fists in the air, and catching the attention of the other customers. Richie smacked Jack in the stomach with a disapproving glare.
“You want to come with us?” Amy asked, surprised.
“Hell yeah!” Jack said, “Richie can borrow a car from his uncle and we can all go. We could use a vacation.”
“Bold of you to assume I want to come, or that my uncle would lend me a car,” Richie remarked disapprovingly, folding his arms.
“Oh come on, like you’re going to miss the chance of hitting on some sexy Japanese girls,” Jack chuckled, earning him an eye roll from both me and Amy.
“You drive a hard bargain,” Richie smirked. Amy smacked the back of his head. Richie whined, “what? Did you two want some alone time or something?”
“I’m going because I want to expose myself a bit to Japanese culture, not to get my dick wet,” Amy quipped, cocking an eyebrow.
“You don’t have a dick,” Richie retorted.
“That you know of,” I interjected jokingly, doing my best to hold back a chuckle. It escaped when Amy smacked my arm.
The boys teased Amy a good bit after my comment. We ended up agreeing to go on the trip. I figured it would be good to help me stir up my creative juices. Amy had some time off school coming up. Richie and Jack were able to get time off pretty easily and Richie got his hands on a van. I, on the other hand, didn’t have such an easy time. I wasn’t able to get the time off I wanted, so I put in my two-week notice. It was just a dishwashing job; I could get another one elsewhere after I got back. After I served my two weeks, we left.
The trip was glorious. Maine has some really pretty scenery. We ended up taking a longer route so we could hit the beach. Amy convinced me to wear a bikini, which I had been hesitant to do since I was still so body conscious. When I stepped out in the bikini, Jack and Richie gagged, saying they could see my dick. Amy and I kicked sand at them. The four of us spent the day at the beach, drinking beer late into the night and enjoying a nice fire. I don’t think it was legal, but fuck it; we were having fun and the cops were never called.
After Jack and Richie headed back to the hotel to catch some sleep, Amy and I were still on the beach.
“So, Gabey, are you going to miss me when I’m gone?” Amy asked, toasting a marshmallow on a stick.
“Of course I am, I can’t drag those idiots with me to bra fittings,” I teased. I knew she planned on leaving, but I never really thought it through. She had been a constant companion for years now. She would be gone soon though. I think Amy saw my face fall because she put a hand on mine.
“You could come with me,” Amy said, softly.
My heart skipped a beat, I stared into Amy’s emerald green eyes. Her lips were spread into an enchanting smile. I didn’t know how I felt. I kept my emotional distance because I didn’t think she saw me like that. I never really let any feelings flourish. I didn’t know if any actually existed. I looked into the fire. I didn’t know how to answer her question.
“You don’t have to answer right away,” Amy said, then chuckled and added, “I know you’re not too hot on the idea of living in Japan with how bad your Kanji is.”
That got a chuckle out of me. I rubbed her hand with my thumb. Even if my feelings for her weren’t romantic, I enjoyed this. I put my head on her shoulder. “I need some time to think this through,” I told her. We sat there, staring into the fire in silence, just enjoying the cool breeze, the warmth, and crackling of the fire.
It took another couple days to reach Silvervein, it was getting more and more foggy as we drove. The temperature plummeted as we drove, you wouldn’t have thought it was summer. Richie was having trouble seeing the road ahead of him, especially with the windy roads with trees on either side. I looked around at the familiar scenery, it felt wrong. I don’t know why, but I felt like we were being watched. I squeezed Amy’s hand for comfort.
“Fuck, this is unnerving,” Richie said softly, having slowed the van down a bit.
“Damn it, I packed a tent for camping,” Jack groaned.
“Yeah, that ain’t happening, Buddy,” Richie mumbled, distracted by the road.
Jack stared out a window. His brow was furrowed. When I asked him what was going on, he gasped, “I think that deer is following us.”
Amy giggled and kicked the back of his chair, he was riding shotgun while Amy and I were in the back seat. “You little bitch,” Amy laughed.
“I’m serious, I’ve seen that same five point buck like six times in an hour,” Jack snorted.
“How do you know it’s the same one?” I asked.
“It’s got a heart in its fur on the flank,” Jack said.
I stared out the window, after a moment of looking, I saw it. I told Jack so. I saw it again another ten minutes later. What the hell was going on?
“Think it’s a skinwalker?” Richie asked, taking Jack seriously.
“Those things don’t exist,” Amy laughed again, but this time nervously. Even if she believed what she said, she still had to admit the deer was acting weird. She squeezed my hand back.
“Did you bring your gun?” Richie asked Jack.
“Yup, I put it in the glove box, do you think we’ll need it?” Jack replied.
“Doubt it, but better safe than sorry,” Richie said.
“Guys, it’s just a deer,” Amy nervously interjected.
Richie leaned in, a smile spread across his face. Through the fog, the first buildings came into view. Finally, we were in Silvervein. The entire town was blanketed in fog. I half expected no one to be here, but I could see people walking down the sidewalk and going along with their business. We found a place to park and stepped out. It was cold enough that we needed to wear sweatshirts, which sucked because I was wearing short shorts.
We started walking around, people were staring at us weirdly. I was used to that, but I guess the others weren’t. They were getting more and more unnerved. We found a small bar and went inside.
“Welcome to mini-Japan,” I announced to Amy.
Amy went up to the bartender and ordered a round of beers in Japanese, even being careful to say yon instead of shi (for those who don’t know, both words mean four, but shi also means death). She got the standard “Nihongo josu” response, a common and slightly condescending phrase from Japanese people talking to foreigners. I sipped my beer, looking at the people staring at us. People weren’t like this when I was here last. Sure, they weren’t friendly to me, but they weren’t this openly hostile.
I asked the bartender in Japanese “what’s going on? I used to live here as a kid and people didn’t act this suspicious.”
“The animals have been acting weird,” the bartender informed us, speaking in English for the benefit of Jack and Richie, who looked visibly confused.
“We noticed that on our way in, any idea of what’s going on?” I questioned.
“I’m not sure, I think it’s just that there’s something in the air. There’s been some fires up in Canada, so that might be messing with them. The elders think there’s something supernatural going on,” the bartender explained.
We later checked into our hotel. I was unpacking my stuff when I pulled out my Baro action figure. It was missing its head. I cursed, these things were expensive when my friends had got it for me and even more so by now. I looked through my stuff for the head but I couldn’t find it. I looked at the toy, I blinked, something seemed off. I examined the neck. It was cut. This was intentional. The sudden realization made me drop it. I told the others what had happened.
“I thought you locked the van when we were in the bar, Richie!” Jack snapped.
“The back door lock is busted,” Richie explained. Jack cursed, grabbed the keys and ran downstairs to check if anything else had been messed with. Richie looked at Baro and asked, “why would anyone just steal the head of your guy?”
“I have no idea…” I sighed heavily. After losing Baro as a kid, losing him again like this was disheartening. I ran a thumb over the neck. I could feel Amy’s gentle hand rubbing my back, trying to comfort me. Jack returned. He handed me the head, his hand had a small gash.
“A damned crow had it,” Jack explained, “it was sitting on the van, holding the head in its mouth. It pecked me when I took the head away. I tied the back doors shut with a bit of rope from the inside so no one else should be getting in.”
“I’m surprised you were able to catch it,” I remarked as Richie grabbed the first aid kit from his bag.
“It just sat there as I reached for it,” Jack said, “didn’t move even after I took the head.”
“Okay, THAT is weird,” Richie remarked as he started treating the cut.
“Anything else taken?” Amy asked. Jack shook his head. He lifted his shirt. A snub nosed revolver was tucked into his waistband.
“I didn’t notice anything stolen from my stuff,” Richie informed us, “Amy, did anything get taken from you?” Amy shook her head. This was beyond weird. Why would someone break into the van for no other reason than to decapitate my toy?
“I think we should leave,” Amy mumbled softly.
That shocked me. I glanced at her. This whole trip was her idea, but I could understand why she would want to leave.
“It’s a bit late to do that,” Richie said, “let’s leave in the morning, who knows, maybe the fog will lift by then.”
Everyone agreed. Instead of going back out into the fog, we ate some of our packed travel food for dinner. It was getting dark. As we ate and drank, I noticed something on the window sill. I turned and saw a crow. It must have been the one that bit Jack. It pecked against the window, getting the attention of the others. Jack jumped up and went over, smacking the window.
“Get out of here!” Jack snapped at the bird. It didn’t move. It just stared at him. Jack smacked the window again, still getting no reaction from the bird.
“Ignore it,” Amy groaned, offering Jack a pack of peanut butter crackers. He took it and sat down on the bed. The four of us would be sharing the room, we had been doing that over the course of the trip. We were silent, the weirdness of the situation was getting to us.
Later, after we went to bed, the boys managed to get to sleep in their bed. Amy and I were in our bed, still awake. We were holding onto each other, both for warmth, and for companionship. I buried my face into her orange hair. Even with everything going on, I couldn’t help but notice how nice she smelled. She looked back at me with a little smile, she turned so we were facing each other. She ran the back of her hand along my cheek. I kissed her knuckles, my heart skipping a beat. I think I knew then how I felt about her. I could feel Amy shifting closer. Her hand moved to the back of my head. I could feel her pulling me in. I knew what was coming. My heart was racing. I wanted this. I leaned in, about to kiss her.
There was a loud thump. The noise woke the boys up. Jack grabbed the revolver quickly. There were more thumps, accompanied by little scratching noises. Amy and I held each other scared. Richie himself reached for Jack. The noises were getting closer. Whatever it was, it was in the hall, and it was big. I put a hand over my mouth, I was hyperventilating. Jack moved Richie over to Amy and I’s bed and put himself between us and the door. It had to be some kind of animal. Given the size, I could guess it was a black bear, but how the hell did it get in here?
The noises stopped at our door. Amy clutched my hand tightly, we all held our breath. Each second felt like an hour. It was so quiet. Suddenly, we could hear heavy breathing. Richie let out a soft squeak. The animal outside made a grunt. I recognized the noises it was making. It was a bear. Fuck! The door shuddered as the thing was pressing against it. There was no way the door was going to hold under the bear’s weight.
Jack held the gun up, hand shaking. He was breathing heavily, but he was doing a breathing exercise to calm down. The door was bending a little, threatening to either shatter or bust the hinges. Jack pulled back the hammer on the revolver, his hand becoming more steady.
“HEY! GET OUT OF HERE! GET!” we could hear an older man outside shout. Someone was out there trying to scare off the bear. Sure, to someone unfamiliar with the wild, this seems dumb. However, there is a phrase: if it’s black; fight back, if it’s brown; lie down, if it’s white; say good night. Scaring a black bear off wasn’t impossible.
However, like the bartender said, the animals had been acting weird. There was a loud roar. A swift shifting could be heard and then we could hear liquid hitting the floor. The man whimpered. A man was being killed just outside our room. His death cries could be heard through the thin hotel walls. We could be next.
Jack moved to the window quickly and opened it. “Move, move” he whispered, keeping the gun trained on the door. He moved his finger onto the trigger, ready to fire if anything burst through. Amy got up first, pulling my hand. We slipped out the window, my bare feet sending a shock up my body as they touched the cold sidewalk. Richie slipped through next, followed by Jack.
Richie had his phone in his hand, having remembered to grab it before leaving. Richie pulled up the calling app, about to call the emergency services. There was a loud crash as the door hit the floor. The call could wait. Jack fired at the bear and the four of us started running. It was dark enough that we couldn't tell if the bullet hit. Black bears were small, but not small enough to sleep through the window like we did. We were parked nearby, so we started running towards the van. I looked behind us. I had expected to see the bear’s face as it tried to push through.
Instead, I saw darkness still. The noises had ceased. Did Jack’s blind shot strike true? Was it dead? No, that wasn’t right. There was no way Jack did anything other than piss it off. Out from the darkness something flew out, rushing right towards us. It was small and fast. It came from our room where the bear had been. It was a crow, perhaps the same one we had been seeing.
It flew right for Jack.
Jack screamed as the beak sank into his eye, blood streamed down his cheek. He grabbed the bird and struck it with the handle of the gun. Birds aren’t strong creatures, the strike should have killed the crow. The creature continued to dig into Jack’s skull. Richie ran over and grabbed the crow, trying to pull it off. The strength of two people couldn’t get the beast off my friend. Blood was gushing more and more. Jack’s mangled eye fell to the ground. People were coming out of their homes, seeing what was going on.
“HELP!!! DEAR GOD SOMEONE HELP!!!” Amy screamed. She ran over to help Richie.
“GET THIS FUCKING THING OFF OF ME!!!” Jack was crying and begging, he was scared. I ran over and pulled on Jack, trying to save him. The crow was digging its claws into my poor friend’s face, causing yet more blood to spill. Jack’s face would give way before this creature’s grip.
Amy picked up the gun quickly, she put it against the bird and fired. The beast was blasted back, feathers and viscera flying everywhere. Jack was yelling in agony, clutching at his face. Richie opened the side door of the van while Amy and I dragged Jack over to it. I heard someone yell that they called emergency services.
I looked back at the bird. I could see it twitching. It was moving far more than it should be. There’s no way this thing was still alive. There was just no way. The bird shifted more and more, its form growing larger. No, no there was no way. It was changing. The deer, the bear, the crow, they were all the same creature. They were all this creature. The figure stood up, growing to the size of a human. No, not just any figure. I looked on in horror as the creature took the form of Baro. The man stood there in his green leather gear and his animal furs, his white bear mask faced us with dangerous intent. He clutched his ax, ready to bury it in our skulls. However, something looked weird about him. His joints, something was off about his joints.
Amy slammed the door shut as Richie started driving off. Baro turned into the deer form and galloped, slamming its antlers into the side of the van. The antlers actually pierced the van door, stabbing Amy in the thigh and shoulder. She screamed in pain as I pulled her back. Richie put his foot on the gas, trying to escape Baro. I grabbed the gun. The antler piercing the door transformed into a snake and slithered into the van.
I fired at the snake, hitting it straight on. Baro slammed into the door, momentarily stunned. Amy pulled the door open and I kicked it out. Amy and I shut the door again before Baro could shapeshift again. Richie drove off fast. I looked out the back window as Baro turned into the deer again and began chasing us.
“FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS THING!?!?” Richie called out as he drove fast like a maniac. We could hear sirens in the distance.
“It’s fucking Baro!” I gasped, still in absolute shock.
“It’s not a fucking anime character!” Amy snapped. I grabbed the first aid kit from the glove box. There wasn’t much I could do about Amy or Jack, especially not Jack. He was hyperventilating. Amy was trying to keep him calm and conscious.
“Richie, which pocket is your phone in!?” I cried.
“Front right!” Richie said. I reached in and grabbed the phone.
“HA! Gay!” Jack laughed maniacally, trying to focus on a joke rather than the pain.
I called 911 quickly. As soon as I heard someone pick up, I started talking: “POLICE! We have a monster chasing us! I know that sounds crazy but we have a fuck ton of witnesses, it’s a damned monster! It killed someone at the hotel we were at, took my friend’s eye out, stabbed my other friend and is now chasing us! We’re driving down Boar Street! Hurry!”
The van jolted as the deer slammed into it again, shattering the window. We all screamed. There was a loud bang as a bystander with a shotgun fired at the deer. The deer staggered, falling back but continued to chase.
“What the fuck did we do?!” Jack asked no one in particular.
The sirens were getting closer. Help was on the way, but I didn’t know how much help they would be. I noticed Baro ignored the man who had shot him. It wasn’t us specifically. It was getting closer.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT!?” I snapped out the window.
Time seemed to slow as the creature’s mouth opened. It spoke in a raspy and dark voice: “Gabe. Friend.” It knew my name. I stared into Baro’s eyes. They weren’t normal deer eyes, they were human eyes. It knew me. A flash of blue and red appeared as a cop car crashed into the deer, pinning it against a brick wall. We soon lost them in the fog. All we could see was the flashing of lights. We could hear roaring, gunshots, and screams as we drove away.
I looked towards my friends. Richie was busy driving, but Jack and Amy were staring horrified at me. It was clear they were trying to find words. Amy was trembling like a leaf. They were scared for me. They were the ones injured, and they were scared for me. That beast wanted me. I don’t know why it did, but it did.
An ambulance caught up to us, we stopped long enough to get Amy and Jack into it. They drove towards the hospital after alerting us that a police car would be racing to catch up with us and escort us to safety. Richie and I drove off towards the edge of town. After a while of painful silence, I remarked “your uncle’s gonna kill you for wrecking his van.” A slight smirk spread across my lips.
Richie blinked a little and shook his head, “man, fuck that.” Another moment of awkward silence before Richie asked “Gabe, are you okay?”
“I have a shapeshifting anime character chasing me, willing to murder my friends to get to me, what do you think?” I replied sarcastically.
“I think you have a doll chasing you,” Richie said. That comment made me pause. I looked at Richie, shocked. A doll was chasing us? The look on my face must have been incredulous because he added, “the joints are segmented.” I blinked when he said that. I had noticed the joints were weird, but due to the fog, I hadn’t seen what was going on with them.
“A shapeshifting creature is chasing us and you’re looking at its elbows?” I asked, a hollow laugh escaping my throat. I thought back. A Baro doll was trying to get to me. My Baro doll, the one that Tamaki threw into the woods. No, this wasn’t possible. It would explain why it decapitated my other doll; it was jealous. Gabe, friend. The creature wanted its friend back. How did it become like this?
“Richie, drop me off,” I ordered.
“Excuse me, mother fucker? Hell no I’m not gonna drop you off,” Richie said.
“It wants me, not you, if you’re trying to help me escape, it’ll kill you,” I explained, reaching into the back of the van for something I dropped.
“Mate, I’m not…” Richie began as I pressed the gun against his leg.
“You can still drive with one leg, pull over and drop me off before I pull the trigger,” I warned him, my heart racing in my throat.
Richie looked like he was mulling over his options. He knew I wasn’t bluffing, the last thing I wanted was for someone to die for me. I already had a friend lose his eye for me. Richie relented and started to slow down. He pulled over, and came to a stop. I opened the door.
“Gabe, don’t die on me,” Richie said, softly. I nodded and stepped outside. “Also” Richie added, “I could definitely see your dick through that bikini.”
I smirked and replied “get moving before I shove it down your throat, Richard,” before slamming the door shut. Richie drove off. I sighed and leaned against a nearby tree. Baro would be coming soon, so would the police. I thought back to the cops who ran over Baro earlier. I remember the screaming, they were probably dead. My stomach knotted up when I thought of this. I tried to think about how all this was possible.
This was clearly magic so anything could be the answer. Maybe a fairy god mother gave this fucked up doll life, maybe the magic of the forest manifested my loneliness from my early childhood into Baro. Maybe it WAS a skinwalker after all. I thought about it some more. Maybe it was tied to me. He was my toy afterall. Maybe it could only die if… I could hear the sound of hooves on the road getting closer. Baro was here.
I stepped forward, heart racing. I knew it wanted me, I didn’t know what for. Whatever it wanted, I was resigned to my fate. I saw the shape moving closer from the fog. It changed into the humanoid form. It stepped closer. It reached out to me. I moved closer, feeling its fingers touch my cheek. Looking closer, its joints were indeed segmented. The hand even felt a bit like plastic. It was my old toy from my childhood. A tear ran down my face. Richie was fucking right, how the hell did he see this better than I did? It didn’t matter now.
My old friend, my childhood companion, was standing before me. It had been waiting for me to return for all these years. It killed to be with me again. My lip trembled as I looked into the old friend’s eyes. His hand on my cheek wiped the tear away. I could see lights shining behind him. I pulled him into an embrace as the lights got brighter and brighter. The sound of rubber on asphalt grew louder.
“Gabe. Friend.” I said softly, tightening my grip, ready for impact.
Amy, Jack, Richie, move on, and be happy. Don’t make me haunt your dumbasses. Richie, sorry for threatening to shoot you. Jack, your eyepatch looks cool. Amy, follow your dream. I love you all, take care.

Alliteration
Let us begin with something we know Shakespeare stole, simply so that we can see what a wonderful thief he was. When Shakespeare decided to write The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra he of course needed a history book from which to work. The standard work on the subject was Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, but Plutarch wrote in Greek, and, as Shakespeare's friend Ben Jonson later pointed out, "thou hadst small Latin and less Greek."
Despite years at Stratford Grammar School learning pretty much nothing but the classics, Shakespeare could never be bothered with foreign languages. He always used translations.
So he got hold of the standard English translation of Plu- tarch, which had been written by a chap called Thomas North and published in 1579. We know that this is the version
Shakespeare used because you can sometimes see him using the same word that North used, and sometimes pairs of words. But when Shakespeare got to the big speech of the whole play, when he really needed some poetry, when he wanted true greatness, when he wanted to describe the moment that Antony saw Cleopatra on the barge and fell in love with her he just found the relevant paragraph in North and copied it out almost word for word. Almost word for word. Here's North:
she disdained to set forward otherwise but to take her barge in the river Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, howboys, cithernes, viols, and such other instru- ments as they played up in the barge.
And here's Shakespeare:
The barge she sat in like a burnished throne, Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails and so perfumed that The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes.
The thing about this is that it's definitely half stolen. There is no possible way that Shakespeare didn't have North open on his desk when he was writing. But also, Shakespeare made little changes. That means that we can actually watch Shakespeare working. We can peep back 400 years and see the greatest genius who ever lived scribbling away. We can see how he did it, and it's really pretty bloody simple. All he did was add some alliteration.
Nobody knows why we love to hear words that begin with the same letter, but we do and Shakespeare knew it. So he picked the word barge and worked from there. Barge begins with a B, so Shakespeare sat back and said to himself: "The barge she sat in was like a..." And then (though I can't prove this) he said: "Ba... ba... ba... burnished throne." He jotted that down and then he decided to do another. "The barge she sat in like a burnished throne... ba...ba... burned? It burned on the water." And the poop was gold? Not any more: the poop was beaten gold. That's four Bs in two lines. Enough to be getting on with. Shakespeare could have got carried away and written something like:
The barge she basked in, like a burnished boat Burned by the banks, the back was beaten brass.
But that would just be silly. Of course, Shakespeare did write like that sometimes. There's a bit in A Midsummer Night's Dream that goes:
Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade, He bravely broached his boiling bloody breast; But there he was taking the mickey out of poets who use alliteration but don't know where to stop. No, Shakespeare wasn't going to put any more Bs in, he was working on the P North's original had "the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple." That's two Ps already, so Shakespeare decided that the sails would be pa... pa... perfumed. Maybe he stopped to wonder how you would perfume a whole sail, or how you might be able to smell them from the river bank (the Cydnus is quite wide). Or maybe he didn't. Accuracy is much less important than alliteration.
From there on in, Shakespeare was coasting. North had "After the sound" so Shakespeare had "to the tune." North had a whole orchestra of instruments "flutes, howboys, cithernes, viols"-Shakespeare cut that down to just flutes, because he liked the F. So flutes made the "Water Which they beat to Follow Faster, As Amorous of their strokes."
So Shakespeare stole; but he did wonderful things with his plunder. He's like somebody who nicks your old socks and then darns them. Shakespeare simply knew that people are suckers for alliteration and that it's pretty damned easy to make something alliterate (or that it's surprisingly simple to add alliteration).
You can spend all day trying to think of some universal truth to set down on paper, and some poets try that. Shake- speare knew that it's much easier to string together some words beginning with the same letter. It doesn't matter what it's about. It can be the exact depth in the sea to which a chap's corpse has sunk; hardly a matter of universal interest, but if you say, "Full fathom five thy father lies," you will be considered the greatest poet who ever lived. Express precisely the same thought any other way-e.g. "your father's corpse is 9.144 metres below sea level" and you're just a coastguard with some bad news.
Any phrase, so long as it alliterates, is memorable and will be believed even if it's a bunch of nonsense. Curiosity, for example, did not kill the cat. There are no widely reported cases of felines dying from being too inquisitive. In fact, the original proverb was not "curiosity killed the cat" (which is recorded only from 1921), it was "care killed the cat." And even that one was changed. When the proverb was first recorded (in Shakespeare, actually, although he seems to be just referring to a well known bit of folk wisdom), care meant sorrow or unhappiness. But by the twentieth century it was care in the sense of too much kindness-something along the lines of a pet that is overfed and pampered. In a hundred years' time it may be something else that does the pussy- killing, although you can be certain that whatever it is- kindness, consternation or corruption-will begin with a C or K.
Similarly, there was once an old proverb, "An ynche in a misse is as good as an ell," an ell being an old unit of mea- surement of 1.1 miles. So the ell was changed to a mile, and then the inch was dropped because it doesn't begin with an M, and we were left with "A miss is as good as a mile," which, if you think about it, doesn't really make sense any
more. But who needs sense when you have alliteration? Nobody has ever thrown a baby out with the bathwater, nor is there anything particularly right about rain. Even when something does make a bit of sense, it's usually deve ous why the comparison was picked. It takes two to tang but it takes two to waltz as well. There are whole hogs, b why not pigs? Bright as a button. Cool as a cucumber. Dead as a doornail. In fact, Dickens made this point rather bette than I at the opening of A Christmas Carol.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door- nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Except that Dickens knew full well why it is doornails that are dead. Dickens was a writer, and as a writer, he knew that alliteration is the simplest way to turn a memorable phrase. This was, after all, the guy who had written Nicholas Nick- leby, The Pickwick Papers (full title: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club) and, indeed, A Christmas Carol. He knew which side his bread was buttered, as had those who came before him, like Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice), and those who came after him (Where's Wally?) So popular is alliteration that in the 1960s it actually made a grab for political power. In the 1960s a vast radical youth movement began campaigning to do things for the sole reason that they began with the same letter. Ban the bomb. Burn your bra. Power to the people. For a moment there it seemed as though alliteration would change the world. But then the spirit of idealism faded and those who had manned the barricades went off and got jobs in market- ing. They stopped telling people to ban the bomb and started telling them to put a tiger in your tank, chuck out the chintz and use Access-Your Flexible Friend, or perhaps PayPal. And all because the lady loves Milk Tray.
It's enough to get your goat.¹
Alliteration can be brief and obvious-a short, sharp, shock. Or it can be long and subtle. John Keats once wrote fourteen lines of Fs and Ss, and it was beautiful:
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair; Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more By reason of his fallen divinity Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.
Whereas, at almost the same time, Thomas De Quincer famous junkie and prose stylist, got himself all muddled up over this sentence:
At present, after exchanging a few parting words, and a few final or farewell farewells with my faithful female agent.
So muddled was he that he decided to add a footnote apolo- gising for his paroemion (that's the technical name for exces- sive alliteration). The footnote went:
Some people are irritated, or even fancy themselves insulted, by overt acts of alliteration, as many people are by puns. On their account, let me say, that, although there are here eight separate f's in less than half a sentence, this is to be held as pure accident. In fact, at one time there were nine f's in the original cast of the sentence, until I, in pity of the affronted people, substi- tuted female agent for female friend.
"Agent" seems a strange substitution for "friend." But he probably had to do it as he couldn't change "farewell fart wells." It's much too clever to use a word as an adjective and then a noun. In fact, the trick has a name. It's called polyptoton.
​
Own Explanation:
why are not vowels used in alliteration
Consonant sounds tend to create sharper, more distinct sounds compared to vowels, which are produced with less constriction of airflow.
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explain alliteration in one lineChatGPTChatGPT
Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds in close proximity within a phrase or sentence.
​
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939), in the scene where the Scarecrow sings his song "If I Only Had a Brain":
"I'd unravel every riddle For any individ'le In trouble or in pain."
The repeated "r" sound in "ravel," "riddle," "individ'le," and "trouble" demonstrates alliteration, creating a rhythmic and memorable quality to the lyrics.
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"The Shining" (1980), directed by Stanley Kubrick. In one of the iconic scenes, Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, types the same sentence repeatedly on his typewriter:
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
This sentence showcases alliteration with the repeated "w" sound in "work" and "play," as well as the repeated "d" sound in "dull" and "boy." The use of alliteration in this context adds to the eerie and unsettling atmosphere of the film.
​
"Jurassic Park" (1993), directed by Steven Spielberg. In the scene where Dr. Ian Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum, is discussing chaos theory, he says:
"Life, uh, finds a way."
The repeated "f" sound in "finds" and "way" creates alliteration in this memorable line.
​
​
"Goldfinger" (1964), there's a famous line delivered by the character Auric Goldfinger, played by Gert Fröbe:
"Do you expect me to talk?"
To which James Bond, portrayed by Sean Connery, responds:
"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
The repeated "e" sound in "expect" and "me" creates alliteration in this intense exchange.
​
"The Dark Knight" (2008), the character Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, delivers a line with alliteration:
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
The repeated "h" sound in "hero" and "yourself" creates alliteration in this memorable quote.
​

I posted this in another sub and was directed here so I’m trying my luck here. Sorry for how this is worded & formatted, I’ve never posted something like this before and I’m very anxious to. Tbh it’s also quite shameful for me to admit all this
I’ve been w my(25F) partner(28M) for 4 years. Have a 3 y/o child, he’s a good dad, great partner you know the usual story. He’s always made it very obvious he likes big chested women, it’s one of the reasons he was so attracted to me at the beginning. I’ve lost weight since having the baby (including several kilos from my pre baby body) and I’m now down several bra cup sizes, but still big especially for my build. But I’m not gonna talk about everything cause we’d be here for days
Early on - When we first were together he always had big boobied women all over his fyp pages on ig/ tiktok / fb ; he’d try to say he doesn’t know why it’s like that cause he doesn’t like photos like that and id explain you didn’t have to like photos for your algorithm to know that you enjoy looking at them. I ended up sending him a reel where a man explained this, and then he sulked and said ok yeah I do. - He will always look at women’s chests when talking to them, and I’ve told him we always know when someone’s looking. Even if it’s brief. My best friend once pulled me aside and said she was uncomfortable bc he kept looking at her boobs.
More recently - When we moved in together I ended up swapping our mattresses bc his was really stained, and I thought it was because he sweated a lot at night. - He works night shifts, and when he’d get home he’d wake me up, but I’d pretend to be asleep, and then he’d proceed to jack off right next to me, to big titted women, sometimes anime, sometimes just photos of his female friends he’d screenshotted, or sometimes women from YouTube videos . Then he’d finish in his undies and go to sleep. And that’s when I realised what the stains were from. I caught him doing this 10ish plus times before I said anything bc honestly it was just really embarrassing for me. - After this, I decided to go thru his phone and I found soooo many photos of random women, his friends, me, all in his locked folder or recently deleted. - I also found out that he’s paid for onlyfans accounts all throughout our relationship (including while I was giving birth) and one just last month he purchased, which was of a woman I asked him to unfollow on ig bc I was tired of seeing it over his shoulder. - A couple of days ago I found more screenshots of women in his recently deleted so I moved one back to his regular folder and waited to see if he’d say anything. But instead, he’s now deleted everything from there and changed the password to his locked folder (but I guessed it immediately) and he’s gone thru and screenshotted every single photo / video from the onlyfans girl I just mentioned.
I’m happy to go into more detail, but this post is already very long. I don’t know how to bring this up to him without obviously exposing that I went thru his phone, bc now I know he’ll trust me less. I’ve addressed his porn addiction several times and said how unhappy it makes me and how I’m quite against it, and he’s changed certain behaviours but obviously there’s still something wrong up there. He’s been open to counselling before, but he doesn’t know that i know a lot more than I’m letting on. I don’t know what the fuck to do. We’re still young, we have a great life outside of literally just this issue. I feel sick and it’s causing massive harm to my mental health.
Thanks for reading and sorry for being all over the place

Kate and Isla were on a girl’s trip to New York City and after a few hours of wandering around the cold, windy city and a few stops into whatever bar looked appealing on their haphazard route, they ended up at a wine tasting in Chelsea. After their five glass tasting, they decided to venture to a different bar within the same massive winery. Kate sidled up to the bar - this one with a view of the Hudson, taking in her new surroundings, squinting and maybe stumbling a bit as she did. She turned to her friend saying “the bartender is cute.” She couldn’t help herself and didn’t care if he heard.
He was cute, but certainly not the type she normally went for - slighter than the sturdy men she typically liked with one ear full of earrings and a mop of messy dirty blonde hair on his head, not to mention she could tell there were multiple tattoos under that black button down.
She put on her flirtiest smile and grabbed a stemless wine glass on the bar within reach that contained the lids to lots of pretty liquor bottles. “This lid is pretty.” “It goes to a bottle of elderberry liqueur. Would you like a sample?” “Of course,” she said. “I’m Kate.” “Gabriel.” the cute bartender said with a smile that reached his hazel eyes.
Next thing she knew, Kate and Isla had spent all afternoon sitting at Gabriel’s bar, drinking everything from Cabernet to shots of well tequila to fancy elderberry and whatever cocktails. After getting up at 3:45 am for a 6:30 flight to New York, Kate realized she hadn’t eaten anything since half a bagel from an airport Starbucks at 5 am. Isla wisely ordered them a pizza, likely realizing the same thing Kate did.
The afternoon continued to pass in a blur. After some liquid courage, she asked Gabriel where the sexiest places in New York City were. What she meant by that, she had no idea. All she knew was that she needed some fun - whether that was watching or participating. She also knew there was a huge kink community in NYC. With a wink and a grin, he told her about a bar in Brooklyn where patrons could really let loose. It became clear to her that this guy was a little kinky, but she wasn’t exactly sure what his preference might be - men, women or both. He did give her his phone number, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was interested.
Eventually Kate and Isla left, promising to reach out later in the night. They headed to finally check into their cracker box sized hotel room located close to Times Square. “Fuck,” Kate thought. “I should have booked us a room at a boutique hotel in SoHo.” They were both exhausted and it was barely 8 pm. They decided on grabbing burgers at the Shake Shack around the corner and calling it an early night - vowing to take NYC by storm tomorrow.
Kate woke up early the next morning with a horrible headache. She checked her phone and realized at some point she texted Gabriel. She must have fallen asleep before he responded when he got off around 11. She also texted one of her guy friends back home in Cincinnati that she “freed the nipple” at Shake Shack. She cringed reading that very weird text. “This is why one should never look back at drunken messages.” she thought.
Once Isla started showing signs of life, they both got ready and headed out for the day. They took an Uber to lower Manhattan and hit all of the tourist destinations. Kate had been to NYC a few times, but Isla hadn’t, so she was just going with the flow, open to where the day/night took them. At some point she texted Gabriel again- playing it off like she was continuing their conversation from last night. He was working until 11 again that night, but was game to meet after. Typically, she would never have considered meeting anyone that late, but they were in the city that never slept after all.
After accidentally flirting themselves into an uncomfortable situation with a few waiters in Little Italy, Kate and Isla decided to take an Uber to Brooklyn and wait for Gabriel to get off on his side of the East River. He said he’d be back that way eventually after having a drink with a few friends. As she was sitting at a dive bar in Williamsburg, Kate started having second thoughts. She was tired anyway and Isla was clearly really drunk after all those free drinks in Little Italy. She turned her phone off and threw it in her purse, determined to ghost Gabriel. Isla went to the bathroom and when she returned, Kate was going to suggest they go back to their hotel, or at least to Manhattan.
Before Isla got back though, Gabriel walked in the front door of the mostly empty bar. There was nowhere to hide as Kate realized she told him what bar they were at an hour ago. She tried to play it cool, like she wasn’t totally ignoring him. He was wearing all black and rocking a crossbody aka a fanny pack. She shook her head and laughed. Definitely not her type, but it was a look that worked for him, plus he smelled amazing- like cashmere, cedar and fresh rain.
Isla came back from the bathroom, raising her eyebrow in Kate’s direction as she took a seat on the other side of Gabriel. He ordered them a round of drinks - an espresso martini for Isla, a Jack and ginger for himself and a vodka seltzer that tasted like Pine Sol for Kate. After a few more rounds, somehow the topic of sex came up- like it normally does when two people who are attracted to each other are drunk. He told her he was a pleasure dom. His goal in every sexual encounter was always to pleasure his partners. She knew what a dom was of course. Kate was a dominant person by nature, but she loved to submit in the bedroom. He asked her what she was into, but even knowing he was kinky, she was afraid to tell him. How do you tell a stranger you want to be fucked in public, double penetrated by two men at once or held as a sexual slave by a sadistic lesbian? Instead she managed to slur that she had recently gotten a Brazilian wax. At that, he leaned in and kissed her - hard. What. The. Fuck.
This stranger stuck his tongue down her throat in a dive bar in Brooklyn. And she didn’t stop him. Isla winked and made herself scarce. So they just kept kissing.
It was clear that he was as intoxicated as she was - luckily. She could spin this the next day as a silly mistake. The three of them relocated to a different bar and she immediately went into the bathroom. When she came out, there he was pushing her back in. Thank god for complicated (but sexy) bodysuits and being on her period, because if not, she would have let him fuck her right there- risking a disease that you probably can only get from a dive bar toilet. Because of this, she refrained from reaching between his legs and seeing what he was working with- part of her was afraid of what she would find anyway.
“You have a fantastic ass, and you’re a phenomenal kisser.” Gabriel told her. She snorted in response. “Clearly you don’t know how to take a compliment.”
It’s not that she didn’t know how to take a compliment, but it felt weird being complimented by a stranger, one who she also learned was more than a few years younger than her. At 33, Kate had a few wrinkles between her eyes and needed to lose 15 pounds (in her opinion), but she knew despite those things, with her bright blonde hair that fell slightly below her shoulders, aquamarine eyes, straight white smile, huge tits and charming personality, she was still hot AF.
She had no idea where Isla was, but looked at her phone, which at some point she had turned back on and noticed it was 3:45. In the morning. “Fuck we have to get out of here.” she thought through a haze. Meanwhile, Gabriel kept kissing her.
Eventually she got them both out the door and ushered Isla into an Uber, giving Gabriel one last kiss. She fell asleep realizing they never made it to the kinky bar.
Kate woke at 9 am feeling absolutely terrible. She laid in bed until 11, when she had to check her and Isla into their flight home for the next day. Then she forced herself up in search of food, and more tampons. Isla didn’t look like she had any plans of moving anytime soon, so Kate ventured out grabbing them each a slice of pizza and a Dr. Pepper, coming back a little reenergized after scarfing hers down. She showered and got ready for the day, having no idea when Isla was planning to move.
She heard her phone ping, realized Gabriel texted her saying his lunch plans fell through and asked if she wanted to get together. She looked at Isla again, snoring away and texted back “Sure, care for a walk in Central Park?”
She arrived first and decided to take a little nap in the grass - it truly was a beautiful day. She didn’t know how long she waited until Gabriel showed up, grey sweatpants and all. What was it about a man in grey sweatpants? “Sorry I look like this, I just finished teaching a class.” he said, kissing her hello. She forgot he was a dancer in addition to being a bartender. At the same time, they both said “Shall we get a drink?” They found a bar around the corner and next thing she knew she was three Aperol spritzs in, agreeing to go back to his apartment in Brooklyn. She justified it by saying that she wanted to experience the Subway, but was too afraid of getting lost to test it out on her own.
They got back to his apartment and went up to check out Gabriel’s private rooftop right as Isla texted her that she was finally up and moving. Jesus. It was 5 pm and she was just now getting out of bed? Kate told Gabriel that she couldn’t stay long because she needed to get back to Isla. “Then we should get started I guess.” he said, pulling her down onto his lap as he sat on a lawn chair that had seen better days. “I’m on my period!” she blurted out. “I’m not a teenager. Blood doesn’t gross me out.” he retorted.
Oh. My. God. This was really going to happen. They went down to his bedroom and he pushed her down on his bed, kissing her hard as he did so. He struggled to figure out her wrap shirt so she pulled it off for him, cursing herself for wearing a beige bra. He pulled her bra off with ease, freeing her large, thankfully tan due to a quick tanning mouse application the night before she left for the city, breasts. Her nipples were already hard in anticipation. He looked at her with lust in his eyes, pulling one into his mouth, biting down hard and sucking. It hurt, but felt so good. She hadn’t had a man suck her tits in so long, but she wasn’t a stranger to pain. In her 20s, she loved when her partners used nipple clamps on her. Gabriel moved onto the other breast, tugging on her left nipple with his teeth while he palmed the right. After what felt like an eternity, he stood up and looked at her. She was bare from the waist up, but was still wearing her black jeans and shoes. “Take my pants off.” he said roughly. Somehow, his shirt was already off. She didn’t remember when that happened.
She tugged down his grey sweatpants, then his boxer briefs. Holy. Shit. His dick was huge. And beautiful. If a dick can even be called that. It was a smooth, long, thick and his public hair was trimmed to the perfect length. “Do you like sucking cock?” he asked, bringing her back to reality. She muttered a yes and took him into her mouth, a little nervous, not remembering when she last had such a well endowed partner.
She went through her typical dick sucking moves. She knew she was good at this. She took him deep into the back of her throat. She couldn’t fit all of him in her mouth, but she felt his cock’s head touch the back of her throat just as he hissed in pleasure. He pulled out of her mouth and pushed her down again, pulling off her boots, socks and jeans, until she was only in a pair of neon green underwear- again she cursed her choice in undergarments.
As she laid on his bed, he laid himself on top of her, so his dick was level with her mouth. She took him once again, but this time he slid her underwear to the side. “What a pretty pussy.” he said. “You remember something is in there, right?” she retorted, not knowing how to take the compliment to her vagina. “I do.” he said as he rubbed her sensitive clit with one hand, while working his cock into her mouth, likely just to shut her up. As she alternated between sucking Gabriel’s dick and moaning in pleasure, he worked on her clit with his index finger, building her up to a release. “Are you going to be a good girl and cum with my cock in your mouth?” She nodded yes and then felt two fingers enter her…alongside her tampon. He thrust his fingers in and out, as he moved his mouth down to lick her clit. She was trapped under him and could no longer concentrate on pleasing him. She spit his dick out of her mouth and screamed. He rolled off of her and she asked where the bathroom was. He pointed her in the direction and she stumbled down the hall in only her undies. She couldn’t remember if he had roommates, but if he did, they were about to get a show.
After she took her tampon out, buried it in a wad of toilet paper and pushed the bundle to the bottom of his trashcan, she went back into his room. “Do you have a condom?” she asked, hoping he wasn’t one of those guys who didn’t use protection - though she had a feeling this wasn’t the case. “I do. Are you ready?” he said. “Yes.” was all she could pant in reply. He pushed her down until she was on all fours on his bed, rolled on the condom and lined himself up behind her. She was nervous about his size, especially because they were starting from behind. She wouldn’t have a chance to get used to his length and girth. He entered her and she squealed, pulling forward in a halfhearted effort to get away from the extreme fullness she was experiencing. He pulled her back, pushed her down so she was flat on the bed and slammed into her, keeping his right hand firmly pushing down on her upper back as he did so. She wasn’t even sure the sounds she made were human. Pain melted into pleasure then back into pain as he slapped her right ass cheek hard 5 times in succession. “That’s going to leave a mark tomorrow.” she thought. Then he stuck a finger into her asshole, adding a new sensation to the experience. “Is this okay?” he asked. “Absolutely.” she breathed.
As she was getting used to the sensation of being doubly penetrated, he adjusted them so that she was now on top. She rode his cock as he put his hand around her throat, moaning her name. Then he pulled out suddenly, muttering something about the condom rolling down. As she looked down, she saw her blood all over the condom and his lower stomach. He didn’t seem to care as he rolled off the condom and pushed her down once again. “Are you a squirter?” he purred in her ear, inserting God knows how many fingers into her pussy before she could reply.
Yes, yes she was a squirter. Luckily he had laid a towel down under them at some point - likely because of her period- so there was no need to worry about ruining his sheets. She screamed as she squirted all over his hand and the towel. He didn’t give her a moment to pull herself together before he moved to her clit, asking her once again if she would cum for him. This time, she was ready and came soon after he started rubbing her most sensitive part with his finger. She saw stars as she screamed his name, her orgasm coming too soon. He gave her a moment before entering her pussy again with his fingers, making her squirt even more.
Once she had nothing left to give, he rolled on another condom and entered her from behind once more. He spanked her twice- this time on her left cheek and pulled her hair, jerking her head back hard. She could tell he was close by his breathing and the way he was speeding up his rhythm. “Come for me.” she said. “Are you ready?” he asked. She nodded yes, and selfishly she was. She’d already gotten off and at this rate, she wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow, plus she needed to get back to Isla.
He came with a final thrust. She didn’t know why she did it, but she immediately got up and started getting dressed. She was not hanging around for post-sex cuddling, plus she realized he was actually really sweaty. In reality though, she thought that if she stayed longer she would end up begging this man to fuck her again and she was already afraid of her attraction to him. She texted Isla that she was on the way and pulled up her Uber app. Gabriel walked her downstairs and out of his apartment, asking if he would see her again before she returned to Cincinnati. “Probably not.” she answered honestly, kissing him goodbye.
She played it cool, but internally she was a mess. That might have been the best sex she ever had and she was walking away from it. But what else could she do? She was never going to see this guy again. Best not to get attached.
She texted him something about seeing a cute park down the road and they continued to chat a bit, but not much, avoiding talking about what they did. They both knew their very brief, but intense fling was over.
The next day, she boarded Southwest flight 576 back to Cincinnati. When she landed, she deleted her text thread with Gabriel without saving his number, took a deep breath before walking outside with her luggage, and got into her husband’s car.

Y’all my back hurts! It’s a specific pain that seems to compound the heavier my baby gets, is it just me?? Do other moms of young kids feel muscular soreness constantly or frequently from carrying your baby or small child? I have almost tuned it out but a recent massage reminded me I am sore af. It’s not even my low back from bad posture carrying though I’m sure I have some of that too in my hips and lumbar. It’s like a vertical downward crunch around my bra strap unlike any back pain I’ve felt in my life because I’ve never carried 20 some odd pounds in front of me so much! It’s like at a certain point it started maybe 15 lbs and been going on months.
I just feel like the downward weight on my front is an entirely unique demand I wasn’t prepared for physically! I’m going to ask a doctor to X-ray or something make sure I’m just a weakling or something! Has anyone else gone though this where your back has to make a big adjustment to adapt to carrying a baby so much? Am I just old lol?? Usually (pre-pregnancy) I was doing on/off six month live-in full time training cycles of a very intense sport so it’s not like I had zero athleticism but my muscles just feel so tired and sore w carrying — I’ve never used them this way. Def way worse after I went single since I do 99% of the carrying and baby lifting but also this baby eats idk I feel like idk well over a pound of food a day maybe 2 and 85/83 percentile for weight/height so do I just have a big baby and a small frame? Is this my fate or are we all sore? Does anyone fear their super strong baby May soon overpower you lol joking/not joking how do they get this insane baby strength?!
Mine has some separation anxiety rn too AND is teething y solo quiere brazos, only wants to be held and picked up. I see a special chiropractor when I can do it’s not like I’m falling apart here and it’s not debilitating but I feel like I need to weight train for this baby hulk! They’re going to turn into a heavier toddler and probably be taller than me too! Can some moms who went through this and have older kids give some tips or reassurance that my back will feel human again once this baby is mostly walking? I do feel myself getting stronger and it’s not nearly as uncomfy as it was when it started. But I recently got a massage and damn was my upper body jacked up! I need numerous more technical massages for real. In between my ribs???? Has anyone had this child carrying intercostal soreness? Feels like I dead lifted a freight train. Do I just need to work out more and meet the occasion, bc that’s what I feel like. Any exercise tips for this stuff?
Is this just one of the many physical adjustments of motherhood? I remember when they were just born my neck had never been so sore from looking down at them and making sure they were nursing ok. Am I doing this baby carrying all wrong? My pecs are sore af too Any moms who are built a lot smaller than their giant seeming babies? This baby isn’t a year and they’re already almost half my height and clearly have their father’s build. Do I just need to hit the gym more or is this normal as I’m another physical toll on mother’s bodies that doesn’t get talked about as much? Does anyone have the formula for balancing carrying mostly on one side when one side is stronger than the other? I try to rotate to my weaker arm to get it stronger but I always have to switch off pretty soon bc I’m afraid of the muscle failing. Maybe it’s harder because I have a very active and wiggly baby but this is low key kind of an extreme sport sometimes or is it just me??? I’m gonna go deep breathe on the foam roller and hope someone tells me some good news lol thank you!!!!! Bless us all

Hello all, I've been very conflicted about this decision for a while and would like input about people's experiences, thoughts, and advice. I would like to preface this post by saying that I am well aware that it is ultimately my decision and what's going to make me happy; but, I do have some doubts about undergoing the operation and would like a safespace to vocalize my thoughts. I also apologize in advance, I don't know how long this post is going to be, but thank you if you're reading it in its entirety. It means a lot to someone that is currently struggling with a life-changing, life-saving, drastic decision.
​
BACKGROUND
I was born AFAB with a big chest. I'm 22 years old and have the option to have either a drastic breast reduction or top surgery entirely this summer. I'm currently about a 34C (?) and on the heavier side, although I look fine (in my opinion) but would like to lose weight. I'm around ~140-150 lbs, give or take a few, and currently losing. I'm only 4'9", so I'm really short, which impacts the way my size and chest makes me look. I'm built like a square, so I'm not worried about having an "hourglass" figure and no chest and looking weird. I've been questioning my chest for years now, since before I even knew anything about gender non-conformity. I never liked the way it looked or how it made me feel. I hate the thought of having to put on a bra everyday, a sports bra to work out, and the feeling that my breasts give me while working out. Even when I was a childhood athlete working out for 4-5+ hours a day in a bathing suit, I was insecure about how big my chest was. One of my childhood teammates even said something along the lines of, "She's going to have boobs like me when she's older" and it absolutely terrified me because I did not want that.
​
I am still very in-touch with my feminine side (but not femme-presenting) and resonate with being born a woman, socialized as a woman, and pretty much raised by a single mother. I understand and am a part of the struggles that women go through daily, but I myself, do not like to consider myself "a woman." I would say right now, if I had to label it (which I don't) is that I identify more as masc non-binary. I take great pride in presenting masculine and try to do everything I can to present as such; however, by no means do I "look like a man" or am at the point where you can't tell my gender. One of my friends that is very much a she/her, masc lesbian gets "misgendered" more than I do.
​
That being said, I have difficulties with gender. I like to go by any/all pronouns, but have noticed that when people say "she/her" I do pick up and notice it more than I give myself credit. Even though I say "I don't mind it," I think I notice it more than someone who claims that they "don't care" does. It's more the feminine phrases (being referred to directly as a girl, queen, princess, etc.) that bothers me. I still think I'm non-binary and would prefer if people just used they/them, and it gives me great euphoria when people do or even use "he/him," and I definitely notice that it makes me happier and more comfortable when people use they/them opposed to she/her. I don't correct people when they use she/her, though, because I don't care that much, even though I do notice and it can bother me for 0.2 seconds before moving on. I'm not as strict as other trans-masc people about pronouns, but I don't think that minimizes my identity. I simply don't care enough. In addition, my family uses she/her because that's what they know me as, but I don't mind it. I don't think I'd be comfortable with them using anything else, because they're conservative-leaning, but are accepting and will "love me anyways."
​
I just wanted to give a background on my stats/upbringing/insecurities prior to beginning this in-depth questioning and analysis. I'm not super strict about "misgendering" because I don't care, but I personally don't like the way people usually default to she/her or don't even try because of external perceptions. I think I would be more comfortable if it were a little more difficult to notice, or at least take a minute to be like, "Wait... are you a woman?" My ultimate goal is to have people questioning and not immediately be clocked as AFAB, but not be identified or considered "a man" at first glance. I want to achieve a more androgynous, non-gender appearance.
​
PROS
I've been considering top surgery for years now. I never liked the way my chest looked, even prior to being considered gender non-conforming. In about 2020-2021, I seriously considered getting top surgery. It was always in my subconscious and in the back of my mind. In the recent year or two, I've gotten serious about actually doing something about it.
​
I wear giant, oversized hoodies almost every single day. Part of it is because my building is so damn cold, but part of it is because I don't like my profile from the side and the "side boob" that I have when I'm not wearing something oversized. I definitely would say I have some sort of dysphoria when it comes to my chest. I'm constantly pulling on shirts when I'm wearing only t-shirts because I hate the crease that my big chest makes. One of my friends when I wore a t-shirt even said, "I didn't know you had boobs." It made me euphoric to know that people didn't see me with a chest, but also dysphoric at the same time to have someone say something like that and know that I do.
​
I love the way I look, although I could drop a few pounds. All my pictures are front-viewing because you can't usually see my chest, or that I even have one. I love that. Anything that hints at me having a chest at all is an immediate no for me and is automatically deleted from my camera roll. I like when it looks like I have no chest and am just simply a square, as much as I used to hate it. I've grown to like the idea of having a square-ish figure and no chest. The idealization gets ruined when the slightest bit of bump is showing on my chest.
​
I've never had a sexual partner and have only done long-distance dating. I'm exclusively into women. I think I would be considered a stone-top, because the idea of someone touching my chest or squeezing my boobs makes me uncomfortable. I think it would immediately turn me off. I think if I were flat on my chest, I would gain a lot of sexual confidence in being shirtless with someone. If I didn't get any reduction whatsoever where i'm at now, I'd doubt I'd ever take my sports bra/shirt off to have sex. This is a big contributing factor to wanting to have the operation done, I think it would help me be more comfortable with partners, but I've never had one so I can't say for sure. I know that where I'm at now, I'd definitely be uncomfortable regardless. I also have concerns about partners that I'll put in the "Cons" part of the list.
​
I don't have any interest in being pregnant or having to breastfeed children. I know a lot of reddit posts I've seen about regretting top surgery is because they didn't consider the factor that they would not be able to breastfeed. That's of no interest to me, so I wouldn't have that as a dissuading factor.
​
I don't care about nipple sensation if it makes me feel better about myself. Of course, it may help with intimate things and something I'd miss, but I don't have a lot to go off of and don't think it would be something I would miss enough to consider it as a reason to not get top surgery.
​
Being able to workout in a tank top would highly motivate me and make me feel better. Most of the reason I don't work out now is because I hate the sensory feeling of having to wear a tight-fitting bra and the feeling of running with weight on my chest. As is, I don't wear bras with underwires or big cups because I don't like the way it feels. I pretty much wear soft bras with straps.
​
You can still identify as a woman and have no chest. I know that some people are fully women and have top surgery because they simply don't like their boobs. If I weren't so masculine and in-tune with being genderless, I think I would still want to be a woman with no boobs.
​
I think that top surgery would also boost my confidence in the clothes that I wear. Like I said, I wear oversized hoodies as is, and I think if my chest were flatter, I'd wear more tanktops and shirts because I have nice shoulders and would be more comfortable without having a chest.
​
I'm sure that there's more pros that I'm not thinking of, but thats what I have for right now.
​
Cons
Something that really concerns me is that I'm going into the legal profession. I'm concerned about how people perceive me (which is ironic, because the whole reason I'm considering this surgery is because I don't like the way I'm percieved) in a work setting. I don't want to be written off as a "freak" or lose opportunities because of it. I know we are growing and evolving and people are moving away from those ideals, but being in such an old-fashioned, older-dominated industry, I'm concerned about how it will affect me. I don't think I'd wear a dress period ever anymore, I usually dress in a blazer and pants if I have to dress business professional. I don't think my flat chest would be affected, as I would just wear suits, but it is something I consider. Also considering not just business causal events, but events like pool parties, house parties, golfing events, sports events, etc. where it's more lax and you can wear more comfortable clothes. I don't want people to think I'm a "freak," although I know people are going to think what they want, anyways. I know having a flatter chest would make me happier, but I am unsure to what extent.
​
I'm also very concerned about partners and am looking to reddit for real advice. Everybody is going to say "It's their body! I don't care! It doesn't matter!" But that's simply not true. I don't want my future lesbian/bisexual/woman partner to be uncomfortable with me not having a chest. Again, I know a true partner is going to love me for who I am, but I'm not sure how much it plays into the dating pool. I would like opinions on this, whether you've had top surgery and have notice trends (or lack of) or if you're into women, masc-presenting, and if it would impact your decision to date them if they didn't have anything there. I've also heard many femme-presenting women (my type) say that they could care less about their partner's/someone's chest, even if it was a change for them at first, because the confidence is more attractive than ever having anything there would be. I also found a lot of people commenting that, as a femme, they were actually into the masculine bodies and found the top surgery scars attractive. I know I'm going to get flack either way from people, especially conservatives, I just don't want to get flack from the side that I'm a part of and "on the same side of," too.
​
I could just get a significant reduction, I would be happy with anything. My concern is getting a reduction and still not being completely satisfied with a non-flat chest. I know down the road you can always choose to get complete top surgery if I opted for the reduction (and vice versa, breast forms or implants if I wasn't satisfied with top surgery) but I'm just trying to reduce the likeliness of having to go through multiple surgeries; especially relatively back-to-back if I hate the decision I go with. I don't want to get simply a reduction, I know it'll make me happier, but I don't want to "settle." I'm very worried about getting a reduction, going through the healing process (which is extraneous in itself), and then being dissatisfied with the results. I'm also concerned about jumping to "getting everything removed entirely" and being self-conscious about what I've "done to myself," although I know this is bound to happen in the healing stage. It's just a part of it, I just don't want to feel that way long-term and have a stage where I'm "stuck with it" and regretting my decision.
​
I know that things are going to look and fit "different" if nothing is there. That scares me, but so does being stuck with the body that I have right now forever. I just don't know how much the difference is going to affect me and my lifestyle and don't want to make a life-changing decision that I may regret because I'm not happy with the way I look right now. I know I want them smaller and the thought of a smaller chest makes me euphoric, especially completely flat, but I don't know if the offset of the downsides (which I'm not even sure what all the downsides even are) outweigh just getting a simple reduction and still being considered "normal-passing" by society.
​
I'm also concerned about how my body will change as I progress. Is there risk of them coming back if I do get top surgery? Is there a chance that big boobs will grow eventually again if I only get a reduction? I want to work out. I want to gain muscle. I want to get back to where I once was before. My goal isn't to be "jacked" and like a bodybuilder, but I would like a toned stomach and arm muscles that you can see. Not aggressively bulky or buldge-y, but enough to wear you can see I have them, and when I flex, they show. I don't know if there's a risk of growing pecs if I work out a lot. I'm not opposed to the idea of having pectoral muscles like a man, but think it would damage my self-conscious and insecurity if I had stuff there that wasn't a chest and I was just walking around with pectoral muscles as a non-binary person. I don't want to work out and get too bulky around that area and then look weird because I have strong muscles there. I just don't want the chance of pecs to make me look even more out-of-sorts. I want a muscular chest, but don't want to have "man boobs" busting out of a tank top, if that makes sense. I doubt I'd even get to that point, but you never know, and it is something I'm concerned about.
​
Additional Considerations
I'm resorting to Reddit because I'm graduating law school in about a year and wanted to get top surgery as a graduating gift to myself at the conclusion of my 3-year schooling period. After discussing with my Mom (who is supportive, and said she would help with the recovery, but is aggressively suggesting a reduction opposed to "having nothing there at all"), we decided it would be best to have an operation this upcoming summer (Summer 2024) or over winter break compared to when I conclude my schooling and have to focus on taking the licensing examination. This would help reduce the risk of injury and harm when I'm trying to prep for such a big exam.
​
I know that there's post-surgery blues, too. A lot of people that post about "regretting" surgery is in the time period after where it gets to you, then they feel better about it after. There's also people that get past that period and still regret it. I know that the hormone change, surgery, having to be so dependent on someone else, etc. are all going to affect my mood. I think I'm definitely mentally healthy enough at this point to handle the temporary but still definitely there dip in mental health that surgery is going to have.
​
I'm thinking of going to Dr. Charles Garramone for my surgery, he is relatively close to where I am, so I'd be able to go without having to rent a hotel. This will help with expenses. I know he doesn't have the greatest reputation for being friendly and comes off as confident and even "cocky" sometimes, but it's not to say it's not that he's earned it. I'm strongly looking into him because of his consistency and the fact that he does so well with top surgery. I am open to other surgeons, but he's very convenient, known to be "one of the best," and works very well for where I am. I know he doesn't take insurance. I can pay out of pocket for top surgery, that's not a concern to me. What is a concern is if there's issues afterwards and if insurance doesn't cover it and after top surgery, I will then not have as much cushion room to get things "fixed." I'd be "stuck" with the results for an indefinite amount of time until I could make the money to have it revised. I would love opinions on his procedure/process and pricing (I think he's gone up. My mom said she expects $20k, but everything I've seen for him is around $12-15k; this is doable, $20k is a little steep) and how he approaches things.
​
I know being smaller is going to make me happier, whether it's a significant reduction or top surgery in it's entirety. I just don't want to "settle" with going smaller because it's "socially acceptable" and still know deep down I would be unhappy with not having a completely flat chest and knowing something is still there, even if it's small. I could live with it, but when I'm paying $10k-$16k for a procedure, I don't want to "just live with it." I'm also concerned about getting top surgery and "regretting" it and "ruining" or "mutilating" my body. I'm just not sure. I know I'd be happier, I just don't know what the solution is. Again, I know it's ultimately my decision about what's going to make me happy. I would just appreciate outsider opinions, whether it's from first-hand experience, as a lesbian/bisexual person and having a top-surgery partner, aftercare, etc. I'll take anything I can get and any advice on the healing process.
​
TL;DR - I have the option for either top surgery or a significant reduction. I'm scared of being dissatisfied with a reduction and still having weight at all on my chest. I'm scared of getting top surgery and "fucking up my life" and regretting it because I made a decision that I thought would best serve me. I'm concerned about future partners (femme women) and how it'll impact my dating pool. I'm concerned about how my weight-loss, muscle-gain progression will be impacted not having a chest. I'm worried about my future career. I'd like to know advice on dating, procedure, personal experience, healing process, aftercare, and any advice to help reduce scarring and recovery.
​
I greatly appreciate if you read all of this. I will not lie and can admit, I'm scared. I'm so excited to be comfortable in my own body, but want to make sure I'm making the right decisions. I would just like to know what other people think and, at the least, some support. I appreciate it and cannot thank you enough.

Hello all, I've been very conflicted about this decision for a while and would like input about people's experiences, thoughts, and advice. I would like to preface this post by saying that I am well aware that it is ultimately my decision and what's going to make me happy; but, I do have some doubts about undergoing the operation and would like a safespace to vocalize my thoughts. I also apologize in advance, I don't know how long this post is going to be, but thank you if you're reading it in its entirety. It means a lot to someone that is currently struggling with a life-changing, life-saving, drastic decision.
​
BACKGROUND
I was born AFAB with a big chest. I'm 22 years old and have the option to have either a drastic breast reduction or top surgery entirely this summer. I'm currently about a 34C (?) and on the heavier side, although I look fine (in my opinion) but would like to lose weight. I'm around ~140-150 lbs, give or take a few, and currently losing. I'm only 4'9", so I'm really short, which impacts the way my size and chest makes me look. I'm built like a square, so I'm not worried about having an "hourglass" figure and no chest and looking weird. I've been questioning my chest for years now, since before I even knew anything about gender non-conformity. I never liked the way it looked or how it made me feel. I hate the thought of having to put on a bra everyday, a sports bra to work out, and the feeling that my breasts give me while working out. Even when I was a childhood athlete working out for 4-5+ hours a day in a bathing suit, I was insecure about how big my chest was. One of my childhood teammates even said something along the lines of, "She's going to have boobs like me when she's older" and it absolutely terrified me because I did not want that.
​
I am still very in-touch with my feminine side (but not femme-presenting) and resonate with being born a woman, socialized as a woman, and pretty much raised by a single mother. I understand and am a part of the struggles that women go through daily, but I myself, do not like to consider myself "a woman." I would say right now, if I had to label it (which I don't) is that I identify more as masc non-binary. I take great pride in presenting masculine and try to do everything I can to present as such; however, by no means do I "look like a man" or am at the point where you can't tell my gender. One of my friends that is very much a she/her, masc lesbian gets "misgendered" more than I do.
​
That being said, I have difficulties with gender. I like to go by any/all pronouns, but have noticed that when people say "she/her" I do pick up and notice it more than I give myself credit. Even though I say "I don't mind it," I think I notice it more than someone who claims that they "don't care" does. It's more the feminine phrases (being referred to directly as a girl, queen, princess, etc.) that bothers me. I still think I'm non-binary and would prefer if people just used they/them, and it gives me great euphoria when people do or even use "he/him," and I definitely notice that it makes me happier and more comfortable when people use they/them opposed to she/her. I don't correct people when they use she/her, though, because I don't care that much, even though I do notice and it can bother me for 0.2 seconds before moving on. I'm not as strict as other trans-masc people about pronouns, but I don't think that minimizes my identity. I simply don't care enough. In addition, my family uses she/her because that's what they know me as, but I don't mind it. I don't think I'd be comfortable with them using anything else, because they're conservative-leaning, but are accepting and will "love me anyways."
​
I just wanted to give a background on my stats/upbringing/insecurities prior to beginning this in-depth questioning and analysis. I'm not super strict about "misgendering" because I don't care, but I personally don't like the way people usually default to she/her or don't even try because of external perceptions. I think I would be more comfortable if it were a little more difficult to notice, or at least take a minute to be like, "Wait... are you a woman?" My ultimate goal is to have people questioning and not immediately be clocked as AFAB, but not be identified or considered "a man" at first glance. I want to achieve a more androgynous, non-gender appearance.
​
PROS
I've been considering top surgery for years now. I never liked the way my chest looked, even prior to being considered gender non-conforming. In about 2020-2021, I seriously considered getting top surgery. It was always in my subconscious and in the back of my mind. In the recent year or two, I've gotten serious about actually doing something about it.
​
I wear giant, oversized hoodies almost every single day. Part of it is because my building is so damn cold, but part of it is because I don't like my profile from the side and the "side boob" that I have when I'm not wearing something oversized. I definitely would say I have some sort of dysphoria when it comes to my chest. I'm constantly pulling on shirts when I'm wearing only t-shirts because I hate the crease that my big chest makes. One of my friends when I wore a t-shirt even said, "I didn't know you had boobs." It made me euphoric to know that people didn't see me with a chest, but also dysphoric at the same time to have someone say something like that and know that I do.
​
I love the way I look, although I could drop a few pounds. All my pictures are front-viewing because you can't usually see my chest, or that I even have one. I love that. Anything that hints at me having a chest at all is an immediate no for me and is automatically deleted from my camera roll. I like when it looks like I have no chest and am just simply a square, as much as I used to hate it. I've grown to like the idea of having a square-ish figure and no chest. The idealization gets ruined when the slightest bit of bump is showing on my chest.
​
I've never had a sexual partner and have only done long-distance dating. I'm exclusively into women. I think I would be considered a stone-top, because the idea of someone touching my chest or squeezing my boobs makes me uncomfortable. I think it would immediately turn me off. I think if I were flat on my chest, I would gain a lot of sexual confidence in being shirtless with someone. If I didn't get any reduction whatsoever where i'm at now, I'd doubt I'd ever take my sports bra/shirt off to have sex. This is a big contributing factor to wanting to have the operation done, I think it would help me be more comfortable with partners, but I've never had one so I can't say for sure. I know that where I'm at now, I'd definitely be uncomfortable regardless. I also have concerns about partners that I'll put in the "Cons" part of the list.
​
I don't have any interest in being pregnant or having to breastfeed children. I know a lot of reddit posts I've seen about regretting top surgery is because they didn't consider the factor that they would not be able to breastfeed. That's of no interest to me, so I wouldn't have that as a dissuading factor.
​
I don't care about nipple sensation if it makes me feel better about myself. Of course, it may help with intimate things and something I'd miss, but I don't have a lot to go off of and don't think it would be something I would miss enough to consider it as a reason to not get top surgery.
​
Being able to workout in a tank top would highly motivate me and make me feel better. Most of the reason I don't work out now is because I hate the sensory feeling of having to wear a tight-fitting bra and the feeling of running with weight on my chest. As is, I don't wear bras with underwires or big cups because I don't like the way it feels. I pretty much wear soft bras with straps.
​
You can still identify as a woman and have no chest. I know that some people are fully women and have top surgery because they simply don't like their boobs. If I weren't so masculine and in-tune with being genderless, I think I would still want to be a woman with no boobs.
​
I think that top surgery would also boost my confidence in the clothes that I wear. Like I said, I wear oversized hoodies as is, and I think if my chest were flatter, I'd wear more tanktops and shirts because I have nice shoulders and would be more comfortable without having a chest.
​
I'm sure that there's more pros that I'm not thinking of, but thats what I have for right now.
​
Cons
Something that really concerns me is that I'm going into the legal profession. I'm concerned about how people perceive me (which is ironic, because the whole reason I'm considering this surgery is because I don't like the way I'm percieved) in a work setting. I don't want to be written off as a "freak" or lose opportunities because of it. I know we are growing and evolving and people are moving away from those ideals, but being in such an old-fashioned, older-dominated industry, I'm concerned about how it will affect me. I don't think I'd wear a dress period ever anymore, I usually dress in a blazer and pants if I have to dress business professional. I don't think my flat chest would be affected, as I would just wear suits, but it is something I consider. Also considering not just business causal events, but events like pool parties, house parties, golfing events, sports events, etc. where it's more lax and you can wear more comfortable clothes. I don't want people to think I'm a "freak," although I know people are going to think what they want, anyways. I know having a flatter chest would make me happier, but I am unsure to what extent.
​
I'm also very concerned about partners and am looking to reddit for real advice. Everybody is going to say "It's their body! I don't care! It doesn't matter!" But that's simply not true. I don't want my future lesbian/bisexual/woman partner to be uncomfortable with me not having a chest. Again, I know a true partner is going to love me for who I am, but I'm not sure how much it plays into the dating pool. I would like opinions on this, whether you've had top surgery and have notice trends (or lack of) or if you're into women, masc-presenting, and if it would impact your decision to date them if they didn't have anything there. I've also heard many femme-presenting women (my type) say that they could care less about their partner's/someone's chest, even if it was a change for them at first, because the confidence is more attractive than ever having anything there would be. I also found a lot of people commenting that, as a femme, they were actually into the masculine bodies and found the top surgery scars attractive. I know I'm going to get flack either way from people, especially conservatives, I just don't want to get flack from the side that I'm a part of and "on the same side of," too.
​
I could just get a significant reduction, I would be happy with anything. My concern is getting a reduction and still not being completely satisfied with a non-flat chest. I know down the road you can always choose to get complete top surgery if I opted for the reduction (and vice versa, breast forms or implants if I wasn't satisfied with top surgery) but I'm just trying to reduce the likeliness of having to go through multiple surgeries; especially relatively back-to-back if I hate the decision I go with. I don't want to get simply a reduction, I know it'll make me happier, but I don't want to "settle." I'm very worried about getting a reduction, going through the healing process (which is extraneous in itself), and then being dissatisfied with the results. I'm also concerned about jumping to "getting everything removed entirely" and being self-conscious about what I've "done to myself," although I know this is bound to happen in the healing stage. It's just a part of it, I just don't want to feel that way long-term and have a stage where I'm "stuck with it" and regretting my decision.
​
I know that things are going to look and fit "different" if nothing is there. That scares me, but so does being stuck with the body that I have right now forever. I just don't know how much the difference is going to affect me and my lifestyle and don't want to make a life-changing decision that I may regret because I'm not happy with the way I look right now. I know I want them smaller and the thought of a smaller chest makes me euphoric, especially completely flat, but I don't know if the offset of the downsides (which I'm not even sure what all the downsides even are) outweigh just getting a simple reduction and still being considered "normal-passing" by society.
​
I'm also concerned about how my body will change as I progress. Is there risk of them coming back if I do get top surgery? Is there a chance that big boobs will grow eventually again if I only get a reduction? I want to work out. I want to gain muscle. I want to get back to where I once was before. My goal isn't to be "jacked" and like a bodybuilder, but I would like a toned stomach and arm muscles that you can see. Not aggressively bulky or buldge-y, but enough to wear you can see I have them, and when I flex, they show. I don't know if there's a risk of growing pecs if I work out a lot. I'm not opposed to the idea of having pectoral muscles like a man, but think it would damage my self-conscious and insecurity if I had stuff there that wasn't a chest and I was just walking around with pectoral muscles as a non-binary person. I don't want to work out and get too bulky around that area and then look weird because I have strong muscles there. I just don't want the chance of pecs to make me look even more out-of-sorts. I want a muscular chest, but don't want to have "man boobs" busting out of a tank top, if that makes sense. I doubt I'd even get to that point, but you never know, and it is something I'm concerned about.
​
Additional Considerations
I'm resorting to Reddit because I'm graduating law school in about a year and wanted to get top surgery as a graduating gift to myself at the conclusion of my 3-year schooling period. After discussing with my Mom (who is supportive, and said she would help with the recovery, but is aggressively suggesting a reduction opposed to "having nothing there at all"), we decided it would be best to have an operation this upcoming summer (Summer 2024) or over winter break compared to when I conclude my schooling and have to focus on taking the licensing examination. This would help reduce the risk of injury and harm when I'm trying to prep for such a big exam.
​
I know that there's post-surgery blues, too. A lot of people that post about "regretting" surgery is in the time period after where it gets to you, then they feel better about it after. There's also people that get past that period and still regret it. I know that the hormone change, surgery, having to be so dependent on someone else, etc. are all going to affect my mood. I think I'm definitely mentally healthy enough at this point to handle the temporary but still definitely there dip in mental health that surgery is going to have.
​
I'm thinking of going to Dr. Charles Garramone for my surgery, he is relatively close to where I am, so I'd be able to go without having to rent a hotel. This will help with expenses. I know he doesn't have the greatest reputation for being friendly and comes off as confident and even "cocky" sometimes, but it's not to say it's not that he's earned it. I'm strongly looking into him because of his consistency and the fact that he does so well with top surgery. I am open to other surgeons, but he's very convenient, known to be "one of the best," and works very well for where I am. I know he doesn't take insurance. I can pay out of pocket for top surgery, that's not a concern to me. What is a concern is if there's issues afterwards and if insurance doesn't cover it and after top surgery, I will then not have as much cushion room to get things "fixed." I'd be "stuck" with the results for an indefinite amount of time until I could make the money to have it revised. I would love opinions on his procedure/process and pricing (I think he's gone up. My mom said she expects $20k, but everything I've seen for him is around $12-15k; this is doable, $20k is a little steep) and how he approaches things.
​
I know being smaller is going to make me happier, whether it's a significant reduction or top surgery in it's entirety. I just don't want to "settle" with going smaller because it's "socially acceptable" and still know deep down I would be unhappy with not having a completely flat chest and knowing something is still there, even if it's small. I could live with it, but when I'm paying $10k-$16k for a procedure, I don't want to "just live with it." I'm also concerned about getting top surgery and "regretting" it and "ruining" or "mutilating" my body. I'm just not sure. I know I'd be happier, I just don't know what the solution is. Again, I know it's ultimately my decision about what's going to make me happy. I would just appreciate outsider opinions, whether it's from first-hand experience, as a lesbian/bisexual person and having a top-surgery partner, aftercare, etc. I'll take anything I can get and any advice on the healing process.
​
TL;DR - I have the option for either top surgery or a significant reduction. I'm scared of being dissatisfied with a reduction and still having weight at all on my chest. I'm scared of getting top surgery and "fucking up my life" and regretting it because I made a decision that I thought would best serve me. I'm concerned about future partners (femme women) and how it'll impact my dating pool. I'm concerned about how my weight-loss, muscle-gain progression will be impacted not having a chest. I'm worried about my future career. I'd like to know advice on dating, procedure, personal experience, healing process, aftercare, and any advice to help reduce scarring and recovery.
​
I greatly appreciate if you read all of this. I will not lie and can admit, I'm scared. I'm so excited to be comfortable in my own body, but want to make sure I'm making the right decisions. I would just like to know what other people think and, at the least, some support. I appreciate it and cannot thank you enough.

Hello all, I've been very conflicted about this decision for a while and would like input about people's experiences, thoughts, and advice. I would like to preface this post by saying that I am well aware that it is ultimately my decision and what's going to make me happy; but, I do have some doubts about undergoing the operation and would like a safespace to vocalize my thoughts. I also apologize in advance, I don't know how long this post is going to be, but thank you if you're reading it in its entirety. It means a lot to someone that is currently struggling with a life-changing, life-saving, drastic decision.
​
BACKGROUND
I was born AFAB with a big chest. I'm 22 years old and have the option to have either a drastic breast reduction or top surgery entirely this summer. I'm currently about a 34C (?) and on the heavier side, although I look fine (in my opinion) but would like to lose weight. I'm around ~140-150 lbs, give or take a few, and currently losing. I'm only 4'9", so I'm really short, which impacts the way my size and chest makes me look. I'm built like a square, so I'm not worried about having an "hourglass" figure and no chest and looking weird. I've been questioning my chest for years now, since before I even knew anything about gender non-conformity. I never liked the way it looked or how it made me feel. I hate the thought of having to put on a bra everyday, a sports bra to work out, and the feeling that my breasts give me while working out. Even when I was a childhood athlete working out for 4-5+ hours a day in a bathing suit, I was insecure about how big my chest was. One of my childhood teammates even said something along the lines of, "She's going to have boobs like me when she's older" and it absolutely terrified me because I did not want that.
​
I am still very in-touch with my feminine side (but not femme-presenting) and resonate with being born a woman, socialized as a woman, and pretty much raised by a single mother. I understand and am a part of the struggles that women go through daily, but I myself, do not like to consider myself "a woman." I would say right now, if I had to label it (which I don't) is that I identify more as masc non-binary. I take great pride in presenting masculine and try to do everything I can to present as such; however, by no means do I "look like a man" or am at the point where you can't tell my gender. One of my friends that is very much a she/her, masc lesbian gets "misgendered" more than I do.
​
That being said, I have difficulties with gender. I like to go by any/all pronouns, but have noticed that when people say "she/her" I do pick up and notice it more than I give myself credit. Even though I say "I don't mind it," I think I notice it more than someone who claims that they "don't care" does. It's more the feminine phrases (being referred to directly as a girl, queen, princess, etc.) that bothers me. I still think I'm non-binary and would prefer if people just used they/them, and it gives me great euphoria when people do or even use "he/him," and I definitely notice that it makes me happier and more comfortable when people use they/them opposed to she/her. I don't correct people when they use she/her, though, because I don't care that much, even though I do notice and it can bother me for 0.2 seconds before moving on. I'm not as strict as other trans-masc people about pronouns, but I don't think that minimizes my identity. I simply don't care enough. In addition, my family uses she/her because that's what they know me as, but I don't mind it. I don't think I'd be comfortable with them using anything else, because they're conservative-leaning, but are accepting and will "love me anyways."
​
I just wanted to give a background on my stats/upbringing/insecurities prior to beginning this in-depth questioning and analysis. I'm not super strict about "misgendering" because I don't care, but I personally don't like the way people usually default to she/her or don't even try because of external perceptions. I think I would be more comfortable if it were a little more difficult to notice, or at least take a minute to be like, "Wait... are you a woman?" My ultimate goal is to have people questioning and not immediately be clocked as AFAB, but not be identified or considered "a man" at first glance. I want to achieve a more androgynous, non-gender appearance.
​
PROS
I've been considering top surgery for years now. I never liked the way my chest looked, even prior to being considered gender non-conforming. In about 2020-2021, I seriously considered getting top surgery. It was always in my subconscious and in the back of my mind. In the recent year or two, I've gotten serious about actually doing something about it.
​
I wear giant, oversized hoodies almost every single day. Part of it is because my building is so damn cold, but part of it is because I don't like my profile from the side and the "side boob" that I have when I'm not wearing something oversized. I definitely would say I have some sort of dysphoria when it comes to my chest. I'm constantly pulling on shirts when I'm wearing only t-shirts because I hate the crease that my big chest makes. One of my friends when I wore a t-shirt even said, "I didn't know you had boobs." It made me euphoric to know that people didn't see me with a chest, but also dysphoric at the same time to have someone say something like that and know that I do.
​
I love the way I look, although I could drop a few pounds. All my pictures are front-viewing because you can't usually see my chest, or that I even have one. I love that. Anything that hints at me having a chest at all is an immediate no for me and is automatically deleted from my camera roll. I like when it looks like I have no chest and am just simply a square, as much as I used to hate it. I've grown to like the idea of having a square-ish figure and no chest. The idealization gets ruined when the slightest bit of bump is showing on my chest.
​
I've never had a sexual partner and have only done long-distance dating. I'm exclusively into women. I think I would be considered a stone-top, because the idea of someone touching my chest or squeezing my boobs makes me uncomfortable. I think it would immediately turn me off. I think if I were flat on my chest, I would gain a lot of sexual confidence in being shirtless with someone. If I didn't get any reduction whatsoever where i'm at now, I'd doubt I'd ever take my sports bra/shirt off to have sex. This is a big contributing factor to wanting to have the operation done, I think it would help me be more comfortable with partners, but I've never had one so I can't say for sure. I know that where I'm at now, I'd definitely be uncomfortable regardless. I also have concerns about partners that I'll put in the "Cons" part of the list.
​
I don't have any interest in being pregnant or having to breastfeed children. I know a lot of reddit posts I've seen about regretting top surgery is because they didn't consider the factor that they would not be able to breastfeed. That's of no interest to me, so I wouldn't have that as a dissuading factor.
​
I don't care about nipple sensation if it makes me feel better about myself. Of course, it may help with intimate things and something I'd miss, but I don't have a lot to go off of and don't think it would be something I would miss enough to consider it as a reason to not get top surgery.
​
Being able to workout in a tank top would highly motivate me and make me feel better. Most of the reason I don't work out now is because I hate the sensory feeling of having to wear a tight-fitting bra and the feeling of running with weight on my chest. As is, I don't wear bras with underwires or big cups because I don't like the way it feels. I pretty much wear soft bras with straps.
​
You can still identify as a woman and have no chest. I know that some people are fully women and have top surgery because they simply don't like their boobs. If I weren't so masculine and in-tune with being genderless, I think I would still want to be a woman with no boobs.
​
I think that top surgery would also boost my confidence in the clothes that I wear. Like I said, I wear oversized hoodies as is, and I think if my chest were flatter, I'd wear more tanktops and shirts because I have nice shoulders and would be more comfortable without having a chest.
​
I'm sure that there's more pros that I'm not thinking of, but thats what I have for right now.
​
Cons
Something that really concerns me is that I'm going into the legal profession. I'm concerned about how people perceive me (which is ironic, because the whole reason I'm considering this surgery is because I don't like the way I'm percieved) in a work setting. I don't want to be written off as a "freak" or lose opportunities because of it. I know we are growing and evolving and people are moving away from those ideals, but being in such an old-fashioned, older-dominated industry, I'm concerned about how it will affect me. I don't think I'd wear a dress period ever anymore, I usually dress in a blazer and pants if I have to dress business professional. I don't think my flat chest would be affected, as I would just wear suits, but it is something I consider. Also considering not just business causal events, but events like pool parties, house parties, golfing events, sports events, etc. where it's more lax and you can wear more comfortable clothes. I don't want people to think I'm a "freak," although I know people are going to think what they want, anyways. I know having a flatter chest would make me happier, but I am unsure to what extent.
​
I'm also very concerned about partners and am looking to reddit for real advice. Everybody is going to say "It's their body! I don't care! It doesn't matter!" But that's simply not true. I don't want my future lesbian/bisexual/woman partner to be uncomfortable with me not having a chest. Again, I know a true partner is going to love me for who I am, but I'm not sure how much it plays into the dating pool. I would like opinions on this, whether you've had top surgery and have notice trends (or lack of) or if you're into women, masc-presenting, and if it would impact your decision to date them if they didn't have anything there. I've also heard many femme-presenting women (my type) say that they could care less about their partner's/someone's chest, even if it was a change for them at first, because the confidence is more attractive than ever having anything there would be. I also found a lot of people commenting that, as a femme, they were actually into the masculine bodies and found the top surgery scars attractive. I know I'm going to get flack either way from people, especially conservatives, I just don't want to get flack from the side that I'm a part of and "on the same side of," too.
​
I could just get a significant reduction, I would be happy with anything. My concern is getting a reduction and still not being completely satisfied with a non-flat chest. I know down the road you can always choose to get complete top surgery if I opted for the reduction (and vice versa, breast forms or implants if I wasn't satisfied with top surgery) but I'm just trying to reduce the likeliness of having to go through multiple surgeries; especially relatively back-to-back if I hate the decision I go with. I don't want to get simply a reduction, I know it'll make me happier, but I don't want to "settle." I'm very worried about getting a reduction, going through the healing process (which is extraneous in itself), and then being dissatisfied with the results. I'm also concerned about jumping to "getting everything removed entirely" and being self-conscious about what I've "done to myself," although I know this is bound to happen in the healing stage. It's just a part of it, I just don't want to feel that way long-term and have a stage where I'm "stuck with it" and regretting my decision.
​
I know that things are going to look and fit "different" if nothing is there. That scares me, but so does being stuck with the body that I have right now forever. I just don't know how much the difference is going to affect me and my lifestyle and don't want to make a life-changing decision that I may regret because I'm not happy with the way I look right now. I know I want them smaller and the thought of a smaller chest makes me euphoric, especially completely flat, but I don't know if the offset of the downsides (which I'm not even sure what all the downsides even are) outweigh just getting a simple reduction and still being considered "normal-passing" by society.
​
I'm also concerned about how my body will change as I progress. Is there risk of them coming back if I do get top surgery? Is there a chance that big boobs will grow eventually again if I only get a reduction? I want to work out. I want to gain muscle. I want to get back to where I once was before. My goal isn't to be "jacked" and like a bodybuilder, but I would like a toned stomach and arm muscles that you can see. Not aggressively bulky or buldge-y, but enough to wear you can see I have them, and when I flex, they show. I don't know if there's a risk of growing pecs if I work out a lot. I'm not opposed to the idea of having pectoral muscles like a man, but think it would damage my self-conscious and insecurity if I had stuff there that wasn't a chest and I was just walking around with pectoral muscles as a non-binary person. I don't want to work out and get too bulky around that area and then look weird because I have strong muscles there. I just don't want the chance of pecs to make me look even more out-of-sorts. I want a muscular chest, but don't want to have "man boobs" busting out of a tank top, if that makes sense. I doubt I'd even get to that point, but you never know, and it is something I'm concerned about.
​
Additional Considerations
I'm resorting to Reddit because I'm graduating law school in about a year and wanted to get top surgery as a graduating gift to myself at the conclusion of my 3-year schooling period. After discussing with my Mom (who is supportive, and said she would help with the recovery, but is aggressively suggesting a reduction opposed to "having nothing there at all"), we decided it would be best to have an operation this upcoming summer (Summer 2024) or over winter break compared to when I conclude my schooling and have to focus on taking the licensing examination. This would help reduce the risk of injury and harm when I'm trying to prep for such a big exam.
​
I know that there's post-surgery blues, too. A lot of people that post about "regretting" surgery is in the time period after where it gets to you, then they feel better about it after. There's also people that get past that period and still regret it. I know that the hormone change, surgery, having to be so dependent on someone else, etc. are all going to affect my mood. I think I'm definitely mentally healthy enough at this point to handle the temporary but still definitely there dip in mental health that surgery is going to have.
​
I'm thinking of going to Dr. Charles Garramone for my surgery, he is relatively close to where I am, so I'd be able to go without having to rent a hotel. This will help with expenses. I know he doesn't have the greatest reputation for being friendly and comes off as confident and even "cocky" sometimes, but it's not to say it's not that he's earned it. I'm strongly looking into him because of his consistency and the fact that he does so well with top surgery. I am open to other surgeons, but he's very convenient, known to be "one of the best," and works very well for where I am. I know he doesn't take insurance. I can pay out of pocket for top surgery, that's not a concern to me. What is a concern is if there's issues afterwards and if insurance doesn't cover it and after top surgery, I will then not have as much cushion room to get things "fixed." I'd be "stuck" with the results for an indefinite amount of time until I could make the money to have it revised. I would love opinions on his procedure/process and pricing (I think he's gone up. My mom said she expects $20k, but everything I've seen for him is around $12-15k; this is doable, $20k is a little steep) and how he approaches things.
​
I know being smaller is going to make me happier, whether it's a significant reduction or top surgery in it's entirety. I just don't want to "settle" with going smaller because it's "socially acceptable" and still know deep down I would be unhappy with not having a completely flat chest and knowing something is still there, even if it's small. I could live with it, but when I'm paying $10k-$16k for a procedure, I don't want to "just live with it." I'm also concerned about getting top surgery and "regretting" it and "ruining" or "mutilating" my body. I'm just not sure. I know I'd be happier, I just don't know what the solution is. Again, I know it's ultimately my decision about what's going to make me happy. I would just appreciate outsider opinions, whether it's from first-hand experience, as a lesbian/bisexual person and having a top-surgery partner, aftercare, etc. I'll take anything I can get and any advice on the healing process.
​
TL;DR - I have the option for either top surgery or a significant reduction. I'm scared of being dissatisfied with a reduction and still having weight at all on my chest. I'm scared of getting top surgery and "fucking up my life" and regretting it because I made a decision that I thought would best serve me. I'm concerned about future partners (femme women) and how it'll impact my dating pool. I'm concerned about how my weight-loss, muscle-gain progression will be impacted not having a chest. I'm worried about my future career. I'd like to know advice on dating, procedure, personal experience, healing process, aftercare, and any advice to help reduce scarring and recovery.
​
I greatly appreciate if you read all of this. I will not lie and can admit, I'm scared. I'm so excited to be comfortable in my own body, but want to make sure I'm making the right decisions. I would just like to know what other people think and, at the least, some support. I appreciate it and cannot thank you enough.

Hello all, I've been very conflicted about this decision for a while and would like input about people's experiences, thoughts, and advice. I would like to preface this post by saying that I am well aware that it is ultimately my decision and what's going to make me happy; but, I do have some doubts about undergoing the operation and would like a safespace to vocalize my thoughts. I also apologize in advance, I don't know how long this post is going to be, but thank you if you're reading it in its entirety. It means a lot to someone that is currently struggling with a life-changing, life-saving, drastic decision.
​
BACKGROUND
I was born AFAB with a big chest. I'm 22 years old and have the option to have either a drastic breast reduction or top surgery entirely this summer. I'm currently about a 34C (?) and on the heavier side, although I look fine (in my opinion) but would like to lose weight. I'm around ~140-150 lbs, give or take a few, and currently losing. I'm only 4'9", so I'm really short, which impacts the way my size and chest makes me look. I'm built like a square, so I'm not worried about having an "hourglass" figure and no chest and looking weird. I've been questioning my chest for years now, since before I even knew anything about gender non-conformity. I never liked the way it looked or how it made me feel. I hate the thought of having to put on a bra everyday, a sports bra to work out, and the feeling that my breasts give me while working out. Even when I was a childhood athlete working out for 4-5+ hours a day in a bathing suit, I was insecure about how big my chest was. One of my childhood teammates even said something along the lines of, "She's going to have boobs like me when she's older" and it absolutely terrified me because I did not want that.
​
I am still very in-touch with my feminine side (but not femme-presenting) and resonate with being born a woman, socialized as a woman, and pretty much raised by a single mother. I understand and am a part of the struggles that women go through daily, but I myself, do not like to consider myself "a woman." I would say right now, if I had to label it (which I don't) is that I identify more as masc non-binary. I take great pride in presenting masculine and try to do everything I can to present as such; however, by no means do I "look like a man" or am at the point where you can't tell my gender. One of my friends that is very much a she/her, masc lesbian gets "misgendered" more than I do.
​
That being said, I have difficulties with gender. I like to go by any/all pronouns, but have noticed that when people say "she/her" I do pick up and notice it more than I give myself credit. Even though I say "I don't mind it," I think I notice it more than someone who claims that they "don't care" does. It's more the feminine phrases (being referred to directly as a girl, queen, princess, etc.) that bothers me. I still think I'm non-binary and would prefer if people just used they/them, and it gives me great euphoria when people do or even use "he/him," and I definitely notice that it makes me happier and more comfortable when people use they/them opposed to she/her. I don't correct people when they use she/her, though, because I don't care that much, even though I do notice and it can bother me for 0.2 seconds before moving on. I'm not as strict as other trans-masc people about pronouns, but I don't think that minimizes my identity. I simply don't care enough. In addition, my family uses she/her because that's what they know me as, but I don't mind it. I don't think I'd be comfortable with them using anything else, because they're conservative-leaning, but are accepting and will "love me anyways."
​
I just wanted to give a background on my stats/upbringing/insecurities prior to beginning this in-depth questioning and analysis. I'm not super strict about "misgendering" because I don't care, but I personally don't like the way people usually default to she/her or don't even try because of external perceptions. I think I would be more comfortable if it were a little more difficult to notice, or at least take a minute to be like, "Wait... are you a woman?" My ultimate goal is to have people questioning and not immediately be clocked as AFAB, but not be identified or considered "a man" at first glance. I want to achieve a more androgynous, non-gender appearance.
​
PROS
I've been considering top surgery for years now. I never liked the way my chest looked, even prior to being considered gender non-conforming. In about 2020-2021, I seriously considered getting top surgery. It was always in my subconscious and in the back of my mind. In the recent year or two, I've gotten serious about actually doing something about it.
​
I wear giant, oversized hoodies almost every single day. Part of it is because my building is so damn cold, but part of it is because I don't like my profile from the side and the "side boob" that I have when I'm not wearing something oversized. I definitely would say I have some sort of dysphoria when it comes to my chest. I'm constantly pulling on shirts when I'm wearing only t-shirts because I hate the crease that my big chest makes. One of my friends when I wore a t-shirt even said, "I didn't know you had boobs." It made me euphoric to know that people didn't see me with a chest, but also dysphoric at the same time to have someone say something like that and know that I do.
​
I love the way I look, although I could drop a few pounds. All my pictures are front-viewing because you can't usually see my chest, or that I even have one. I love that. Anything that hints at me having a chest at all is an immediate no for me and is automatically deleted from my camera roll. I like when it looks like I have no chest and am just simply a square, as much as I used to hate it. I've grown to like the idea of having a square-ish figure and no chest. The idealization gets ruined when the slightest bit of bump is showing on my chest.
​
I've never had a sexual partner and have only done long-distance dating. I'm exclusively into women. I think I would be considered a stone-top, because the idea of someone touching my chest or squeezing my boobs makes me uncomfortable. I think it would immediately turn me off. I think if I were flat on my chest, I would gain a lot of sexual confidence in being shirtless with someone. If I didn't get any reduction whatsoever where i'm at now, I'd doubt I'd ever take my sports bra/shirt off to have sex. This is a big contributing factor to wanting to have the operation done, I think it would help me be more comfortable with partners, but I've never had one so I can't say for sure. I know that where I'm at now, I'd definitely be uncomfortable regardless. I also have concerns about partners that I'll put in the "Cons" part of the list.
​
I don't have any interest in being pregnant or having to breastfeed children. I know a lot of reddit posts I've seen about regretting top surgery is because they didn't consider the factor that they would not be able to breastfeed. That's of no interest to me, so I wouldn't have that as a dissuading factor.
​
I don't care about nipple sensation if it makes me feel better about myself. Of course, it may help with intimate things and something I'd miss, but I don't have a lot to go off of and don't think it would be something I would miss enough to consider it as a reason to not get top surgery.
​
Being able to workout in a tank top would highly motivate me and make me feel better. Most of the reason I don't work out now is because I hate the sensory feeling of having to wear a tight-fitting bra and the feeling of running with weight on my chest. As is, I don't wear bras with underwires or big cups because I don't like the way it feels. I pretty much wear soft bras with straps.
​
You can still identify as a woman and have no chest. I know that some people are fully women and have top surgery because they simply don't like their boobs. If I weren't so masculine and in-tune with being genderless, I think I would still want to be a woman with no boobs.
​
I think that top surgery would also boost my confidence in the clothes that I wear. Like I said, I wear oversized hoodies as is, and I think if my chest were flatter, I'd wear more tanktops and shirts because I have nice shoulders and would be more comfortable without having a chest.
​
I'm sure that there's more pros that I'm not thinking of, but thats what I have for right now.
​
Cons
Something that really concerns me is that I'm going into the legal profession. I'm concerned about how people perceive me (which is ironic, because the whole reason I'm considering this surgery is because I don't like the way I'm percieved) in a work setting. I don't want to be written off as a "freak" or lose opportunities because of it. I know we are growing and evolving and people are moving away from those ideals, but being in such an old-fashioned, older-dominated industry, I'm concerned about how it will affect me. I don't think I'd wear a dress period ever anymore, I usually dress in a blazer and pants if I have to dress business professional. I don't think my flat chest would be affected, as I would just wear suits, but it is something I consider. Also considering not just business causal events, but events like pool parties, house parties, golfing events, sports events, etc. where it's more lax and you can wear more comfortable clothes. I don't want people to think I'm a "freak," although I know people are going to think what they want, anyways. I know having a flatter chest would make me happier, but I am unsure to what extent.
​
I'm also very concerned about partners and am looking to reddit for real advice. Everybody is going to say "It's their body! I don't care! It doesn't matter!" But that's simply not true. I don't want my future lesbian/bisexual/woman partner to be uncomfortable with me not having a chest. Again, I know a true partner is going to love me for who I am, but I'm not sure how much it plays into the dating pool. I would like opinions on this, whether you've had top surgery and have notice trends (or lack of) or if you're into women, masc-presenting, and if it would impact your decision to date them if they didn't have anything there. I've also heard many femme-presenting women (my type) say that they could care less about their partner's/someone's chest, even if it was a change for them at first, because the confidence is more attractive than ever having anything there would be. I also found a lot of people commenting that, as a femme, they were actually into the masculine bodies and found the top surgery scars attractive. I know I'm going to get flack either way from people, especially conservatives, I just don't want to get flack from the side that I'm a part of and "on the same side of," too.
​
I could just get a significant reduction, I would be happy with anything. My concern is getting a reduction and still not being completely satisfied with a non-flat chest. I know down the road you can always choose to get complete top surgery if I opted for the reduction (and vice versa, breast forms or implants if I wasn't satisfied with top surgery) but I'm just trying to reduce the likeliness of having to go through multiple surgeries; especially relatively back-to-back if I hate the decision I go with. I don't want to get simply a reduction, I know it'll make me happier, but I don't want to "settle." I'm very worried about getting a reduction, going through the healing process (which is extraneous in itself), and then being dissatisfied with the results. I'm also concerned about jumping to "getting everything removed entirely" and being self-conscious about what I've "done to myself," although I know this is bound to happen in the healing stage. It's just a part of it, I just don't want to feel that way long-term and have a stage where I'm "stuck with it" and regretting my decision.
​
I know that things are going to look and fit "different" if nothing is there. That scares me, but so does being stuck with the body that I have right now forever. I just don't know how much the difference is going to affect me and my lifestyle and don't want to make a life-changing decision that I may regret because I'm not happy with the way I look right now. I know I want them smaller and the thought of a smaller chest makes me euphoric, especially completely flat, but I don't know if the offset of the downsides (which I'm not even sure what all the downsides even are) outweigh just getting a simple reduction and still being considered "normal-passing" by society.
​
I'm also concerned about how my body will change as I progress. Is there risk of them coming back if I do get top surgery? Is there a chance that big boobs will grow eventually again if I only get a reduction? I want to work out. I want to gain muscle. I want to get back to where I once was before. My goal isn't to be "jacked" and like a bodybuilder, but I would like a toned stomach and arm muscles that you can see. Not aggressively bulky or buldge-y, but enough to wear you can see I have them, and when I flex, they show. I don't know if there's a risk of growing pecs if I work out a lot. I'm not opposed to the idea of having pectoral muscles like a man, but think it would damage my self-conscious and insecurity if I had stuff there that wasn't a chest and I was just walking around with pectoral muscles as a non-binary person. I don't want to work out and get too bulky around that area and then look weird because I have strong muscles there. I just don't want the chance of pecs to make me look even more out-of-sorts. I want a muscular chest, but don't want to have "man boobs" busting out of a tank top, if that makes sense. I doubt I'd even get to that point, but you never know, and it is something I'm concerned about.
​
Additional Considerations
I'm resorting to Reddit because I'm graduating law school in about a year and wanted to get top surgery as a graduating gift to myself at the conclusion of my 3-year schooling period. After discussing with my Mom (who is supportive, and said she would help with the recovery, but is aggressively suggesting a reduction opposed to "having nothing there at all"), we decided it would be best to have an operation this upcoming summer (Summer 2024) or over winter break compared to when I conclude my schooling and have to focus on taking the licensing examination. This would help reduce the risk of injury and harm when I'm trying to prep for such a big exam.
​
I know that there's post-surgery blues, too. A lot of people that post about "regretting" surgery is in the time period after where it gets to you, then they feel better about it after. There's also people that get past that period and still regret it. I know that the hormone change, surgery, having to be so dependent on someone else, etc. are all going to affect my mood. I think I'm definitely mentally healthy enough at this point to handle the temporary but still definitely there dip in mental health that surgery is going to have.
​
I'm thinking of going to Dr. Charles Garramone for my surgery, he is relatively close to where I am, so I'd be able to go without having to rent a hotel. This will help with expenses. I know he doesn't have the greatest reputation for being friendly and comes off as confident and even "cocky" sometimes, but it's not to say it's not that he's earned it. I'm strongly looking into him because of his consistency and the fact that he does so well with top surgery. I am open to other surgeons, but he's very convenient, known to be "one of the best," and works very well for where I am. I know he doesn't take insurance. I can pay out of pocket for top surgery, that's not a concern to me. What is a concern is if there's issues afterwards and if insurance doesn't cover it and after top surgery, I will then not have as much cushion room to get things "fixed." I'd be "stuck" with the results for an indefinite amount of time until I could make the money to have it revised. I would love opinions on his procedure/process and pricing (I think he's gone up. My mom said she expects $20k, but everything I've seen for him is around $12-15k; this is doable, $20k is a little steep) and how he approaches things.
​
I know being smaller is going to make me happier, whether it's a significant reduction or top surgery in it's entirety. I just don't want to "settle" with going smaller because it's "socially acceptable" and still know deep down I would be unhappy with not having a completely flat chest and knowing something is still there, even if it's small. I could live with it, but when I'm paying $10k-$16k for a procedure, I don't want to "just live with it." I'm also concerned about getting top surgery and "regretting" it and "ruining" or "mutilating" my body. I'm just not sure. I know I'd be happier, I just don't know what the solution is. Again, I know it's ultimately my decision about what's going to make me happy. I would just appreciate outsider opinions, whether it's from first-hand experience, as a lesbian/bisexual person and having a top-surgery partner, aftercare, etc. I'll take anything I can get and any advice on the healing process.
​
TL;DR - I have the option for either top surgery or a significant reduction. I'm scared of being dissatisfied with a reduction and still having weight at all on my chest. I'm scared of getting top surgery and "fucking up my life" and regretting it because I made a decision that I thought would best serve me. I'm concerned about future partners (femme women) and how it'll impact my dating pool. I'm concerned about how my weight-loss, muscle-gain progression will be impacted not having a chest. I'm worried about my future career. I'd like to know advice on dating, procedure, personal experience, healing process, aftercare, and any advice to help reduce scarring and recovery.
​
I greatly appreciate if you read all of this. I will not lie and can admit, I'm scared. I'm so excited to be comfortable in my own body, but want to make sure I'm making the right decisions. I would just like to know what other people think and, at the least, some support. I appreciate it and cannot thank you enough.

Hello all, I've been very conflicted about this decision for a while and would like input about people's experiences, thoughts, and advice. I would like to preface this post by saying that I am well aware that it is ultimately my decision and what's going to make me happy; but, I do have some doubts about undergoing the operation and would like a safespace to vocalize my thoughts. I also apologize in advance, I don't know how long this post is going to be, but thank you if you're reading it in its entirety. It means a lot to someone that is currently struggling with a life-changing, life-saving, drastic decision.
​
BACKGROUND
I was born AFAB with a big chest. I'm 22 years old and have the option to have either a drastic breast reduction or top surgery entirely this summer. I'm currently about a 34C (?) and on the heavier side, although I look fine (in my opinion) but would like to lose weight. I'm around ~140-150 lbs, give or take a few, and currently losing. I'm only 4'9", so I'm really short, which impacts the way my size and chest makes me look. I'm built like a square, so I'm not worried about having an "hourglass" figure and no chest and looking weird. I've been questioning my chest for years now, since before I even knew anything about gender non-conformity. I never liked the way it looked or how it made me feel. I hate the thought of having to put on a bra everyday, a sports bra to work out, and the feeling that my breasts give me while working out. Even when I was a childhood athlete working out for 4-5+ hours a day in a bathing suit, I was insecure about how big my chest was. One of my childhood teammates even said something along the lines of, "She's going to have boobs like me when she's older" and it absolutely terrified me because I did not want that.
​
I am still very in-touch with my feminine side (but not femme-presenting) and resonate with being born a woman, socialized as a woman, and pretty much raised by a single mother. I understand and am a part of the struggles that women go through daily, but I myself, do not like to consider myself "a woman." I would say right now, if I had to label it (which I don't) is that I identify more as masc non-binary. I take great pride in presenting masculine and try to do everything I can to present as such; however, by no means do I "look like a man" or am at the point where you can't tell my gender. One of my friends that is very much a she/her, masc lesbian gets "misgendered" more than I do.
​
That being said, I have difficulties with gender. I like to go by any/all pronouns, but have noticed that when people say "she/her" I do pick up and notice it more than I give myself credit. Even though I say "I don't mind it," I think I notice it more than someone who claims that they "don't care" does. It's more the feminine phrases (being referred to directly as a girl, queen, princess, etc.) that bothers me. I still think I'm non-binary and would prefer if people just used they/them, and it gives me great euphoria when people do or even use "he/him," and I definitely notice that it makes me happier and more comfortable when people use they/them opposed to she/her. I don't correct people when they use she/her, though, because I don't care that much, even though I do notice and it can bother me for 0.2 seconds before moving on. I'm not as strict as other trans-masc people about pronouns, but I don't think that minimizes my identity. I simply don't care enough. In addition, my family uses she/her because that's what they know me as, but I don't mind it. I don't think I'd be comfortable with them using anything else, because they're conservative-leaning, but are accepting and will "love me anyways."
​
I just wanted to give a background on my stats/upbringing/insecurities prior to beginning this in-depth questioning and analysis. I'm not super strict about "misgendering" because I don't care, but I personally don't like the way people usually default to she/her or don't even try because of external perceptions. I think I would be more comfortable if it were a little more difficult to notice, or at least take a minute to be like, "Wait... are you a woman?" My ultimate goal is to have people questioning and not immediately be clocked as AFAB, but not be identified or considered "a man" at first glance. I want to achieve a more androgynous, non-gender appearance.
​
PROS
I've been considering top surgery for years now. I never liked the way my chest looked, even prior to being considered gender non-conforming. In about 2020-2021, I seriously considered getting top surgery. It was always in my subconscious and in the back of my mind. In the recent year or two, I've gotten serious about actually doing something about it.
​
I wear giant, oversized hoodies almost every single day. Part of it is because my building is so damn cold, but part of it is because I don't like my profile from the side and the "side boob" that I have when I'm not wearing something oversized. I definitely would say I have some sort of dysphoria when it comes to my chest. I'm constantly pulling on shirts when I'm wearing only t-shirts because I hate the crease that my big chest makes. One of my friends when I wore a t-shirt even said, "I didn't know you had boobs." It made me euphoric to know that people didn't see me with a chest, but also dysphoric at the same time to have someone say something like that and know that I do.
​
I love the way I look, although I could drop a few pounds. All my pictures are front-viewing because you can't usually see my chest, or that I even have one. I love that. Anything that hints at me having a chest at all is an immediate no for me and is automatically deleted from my camera roll. I like when it looks like I have no chest and am just simply a square, as much as I used to hate it. I've grown to like the idea of having a square-ish figure and no chest. The idealization gets ruined when the slightest bit of bump is showing on my chest.
​
I've never had a sexual partner and have only done long-distance dating. I'm exclusively into women. I think I would be considered a stone-top, because the idea of someone touching my chest or squeezing my boobs makes me uncomfortable. I think it would immediately turn me off. I think if I were flat on my chest, I would gain a lot of sexual confidence in being shirtless with someone. If I didn't get any reduction whatsoever where i'm at now, I'd doubt I'd ever take my sports bra/shirt off to have sex. This is a big contributing factor to wanting to have the operation done, I think it would help me be more comfortable with partners, but I've never had one so I can't say for sure. I know that where I'm at now, I'd definitely be uncomfortable regardless. I also have concerns about partners that I'll put in the "Cons" part of the list.
​
I don't have any interest in being pregnant or having to breastfeed children. I know a lot of reddit posts I've seen about regretting top surgery is because they didn't consider the factor that they would not be able to breastfeed. That's of no interest to me, so I wouldn't have that as a dissuading factor.
​
I don't care about nipple sensation if it makes me feel better about myself. Of course, it may help with intimate things and something I'd miss, but I don't have a lot to go off of and don't think it would be something I would miss enough to consider it as a reason to not get top surgery.
​
Being able to workout in a tank top would highly motivate me and make me feel better. Most of the reason I don't work out now is because I hate the sensory feeling of having to wear a tight-fitting bra and the feeling of running with weight on my chest. As is, I don't wear bras with underwires or big cups because I don't like the way it feels. I pretty much wear soft bras with straps.
​
You can still identify as a woman and have no chest. I know that some people are fully women and have top surgery because they simply don't like their boobs. If I weren't so masculine and in-tune with being genderless, I think I would still want to be a woman with no boobs.
​
I think that top surgery would also boost my confidence in the clothes that I wear. Like I said, I wear oversized hoodies as is, and I think if my chest were flatter, I'd wear more tanktops and shirts because I have nice shoulders and would be more comfortable without having a chest.
​
I'm sure that there's more pros that I'm not thinking of, but thats what I have for right now.
​
Cons
Something that really concerns me is that I'm going into the legal profession. I'm concerned about how people perceive me (which is ironic, because the whole reason I'm considering this surgery is because I don't like the way I'm percieved) in a work setting. I don't want to be written off as a "freak" or lose opportunities because of it. I know we are growing and evolving and people are moving away from those ideals, but being in such an old-fashioned, older-dominated industry, I'm concerned about how it will affect me. I don't think I'd wear a dress period ever anymore, I usually dress in a blazer and pants if I have to dress business professional. I don't think my flat chest would be affected, as I would just wear suits, but it is something I consider. Also considering not just business causal events, but events like pool parties, house parties, golfing events, sports events, etc. where it's more lax and you can wear more comfortable clothes. I don't want people to think I'm a "freak," although I know people are going to think what they want, anyways. I know having a flatter chest would make me happier, but I am unsure to what extent.
​
I'm also very concerned about partners and am looking to reddit for real advice. Everybody is going to say "It's their body! I don't care! It doesn't matter!" But that's simply not true. I don't want my future lesbian/bisexual/woman partner to be uncomfortable with me not having a chest. Again, I know a true partner is going to love me for who I am, but I'm not sure how much it plays into the dating pool. I would like opinions on this, whether you've had top surgery and have notice trends (or lack of) or if you're into women, masc-presenting, and if it would impact your decision to date them if they didn't have anything there. I've also heard many femme-presenting women (my type) say that they could care less about their partner's/someone's chest, even if it was a change for them at first, because the confidence is more attractive than ever having anything there would be. I also found a lot of people commenting that, as a femme, they were actually into the masculine bodies and found the top surgery scars attractive. I know I'm going to get flack either way from people, especially conservatives, I just don't want to get flack from the side that I'm a part of and "on the same side of," too.
​
I could just get a significant reduction, I would be happy with anything. My concern is getting a reduction and still not being completely satisfied with a non-flat chest. I know down the road you can always choose to get complete top surgery if I opted for the reduction (and vice versa, breast forms or implants if I wasn't satisfied with top surgery) but I'm just trying to reduce the likeliness of having to go through multiple surgeries; especially relatively back-to-back if I hate the decision I go with. I don't want to get simply a reduction, I know it'll make me happier, but I don't want to "settle." I'm very worried about getting a reduction, going through the healing process (which is extraneous in itself), and then being dissatisfied with the results. I'm also concerned about jumping to "getting everything removed entirely" and being self-conscious about what I've "done to myself," although I know this is bound to happen in the healing stage. It's just a part of it, I just don't want to feel that way long-term and have a stage where I'm "stuck with it" and regretting my decision.
​
I know that things are going to look and fit "different" if nothing is there. That scares me, but so does being stuck with the body that I have right now forever. I just don't know how much the difference is going to affect me and my lifestyle and don't want to make a life-changing decision that I may regret because I'm not happy with the way I look right now. I know I want them smaller and the thought of a smaller chest makes me euphoric, especially completely flat, but I don't know if the offset of the downsides (which I'm not even sure what all the downsides even are) outweigh just getting a simple reduction and still being considered "normal-passing" by society.
​
I'm also concerned about how my body will change as I progress. Is there risk of them coming back if I do get top surgery? Is there a chance that big boobs will grow eventually again if I only get a reduction? I want to work out. I want to gain muscle. I want to get back to where I once was before. My goal isn't to be "jacked" and like a bodybuilder, but I would like a toned stomach and arm muscles that you can see. Not aggressively bulky or buldge-y, but enough to wear you can see I have them, and when I flex, they show. I don't know if there's a risk of growing pecs if I work out a lot. I'm not opposed to the idea of having pectoral muscles like a man, but think it would damage my self-conscious and insecurity if I had stuff there that wasn't a chest and I was just walking around with pectoral muscles as a non-binary person. I don't want to work out and get too bulky around that area and then look weird because I have strong muscles there. I just don't want the chance of pecs to make me look even more out-of-sorts. I want a muscular chest, but don't want to have "man boobs" busting out of a tank top, if that makes sense. I doubt I'd even get to that point, but you never know, and it is something I'm concerned about.
​
Additional Considerations
I'm resorting to Reddit because I'm graduating law school in about a year and wanted to get top surgery as a graduating gift to myself at the conclusion of my 3-year schooling period. After discussing with my Mom (who is supportive, and said she would help with the recovery, but is aggressively suggesting a reduction opposed to "having nothing there at all"), we decided it would be best to have an operation this upcoming summer (Summer 2024) or over winter break compared to when I conclude my schooling and have to focus on taking the licensing examination. This would help reduce the risk of injury and harm when I'm trying to prep for such a big exam.
​
I know that there's post-surgery blues, too. A lot of people that post about "regretting" surgery is in the time period after where it gets to you, then they feel better about it after. There's also people that get past that period and still regret it. I know that the hormone change, surgery, having to be so dependent on someone else, etc. are all going to affect my mood. I think I'm definitely mentally healthy enough at this point to handle the temporary but still definitely there dip in mental health that surgery is going to have.
​
I'm thinking of going to Dr. Charles Garramone for my surgery, he is relatively close to where I am, so I'd be able to go without having to rent a hotel. This will help with expenses. I know he doesn't have the greatest reputation for being friendly and comes off as confident and even "cocky" sometimes, but it's not to say it's not that he's earned it. I'm strongly looking into him because of his consistency and the fact that he does so well with top surgery. I am open to other surgeons, but he's very convenient, known to be "one of the best," and works very well for where I am. I know he doesn't take insurance. I can pay out of pocket for top surgery, that's not a concern to me. What is a concern is if there's issues afterwards and if insurance doesn't cover it and after top surgery, I will then not have as much cushion room to get things "fixed." I'd be "stuck" with the results for an indefinite amount of time until I could make the money to have it revised. I would love opinions on his procedure/process and pricing (I think he's gone up. My mom said she expects $20k, but everything I've seen for him is around $12-15k; this is doable, $20k is a little steep) and how he approaches things.
​
I know being smaller is going to make me happier, whether it's a significant reduction or top surgery in it's entirety. I just don't want to "settle" with going smaller because it's "socially acceptable" and still know deep down I would be unhappy with not having a completely flat chest and knowing something is still there, even if it's small. I could live with it, but when I'm paying $10k-$16k for a procedure, I don't want to "just live with it." I'm also concerned about getting top surgery and "regretting" it and "ruining" or "mutilating" my body. I'm just not sure. I know I'd be happier, I just don't know what the solution is. Again, I know it's ultimately my decision about what's going to make me happy. I would just appreciate outsider opinions, whether it's from first-hand experience, as a lesbian/bisexual person and having a top-surgery partner, aftercare, etc. I'll take anything I can get and any advice on the healing process.
​
TL;DR - I have the option for either top surgery or a significant reduction. I'm scared of being dissatisfied with a reduction and still having weight at all on my chest. I'm scared of getting top surgery and "fucking up my life" and regretting it because I made a decision that I thought would best serve me. I'm concerned about future partners (femme women) and how it'll impact my dating pool. I'm concerned about how my weight-loss, muscle-gain progression will be impacted not having a chest. I'm worried about my future career. I'd like to know advice on dating, procedure, personal experience, healing process, aftercare, and any advice to help reduce scarring and recovery.
​
I greatly appreciate if you read all of this. I will not lie and can admit, I'm scared. I'm so excited to be comfortable in my own body, but want to make sure I'm making the right decisions. I would just like to know what other people think and, at the least, some support. I appreciate it and cannot thank you enough.