Puns Are Life Bro

First of all, Lithuanian grammar and syntax are pretty different from English, so a lot of things cannot be translated word by word (and that’s why google translations often fail miserably or just make you laugh histerically :) ) Among other things, we have 7 noun cases, so sometimes (but not always) addressing a person a word might take slightly different form than just speaking about them in third person or using them as an object of some action and so on. Also, nouns and adjectives are intrinsically gendered. 

But let’s try to overview a few more common endearments. I’ll indicate when addressing form is different from 3rd person form. Disclaimer: opinions on IRL usage are based on personal exposure, hence in no way gives any reliable statistical info and different perceptions might also be valid. :)

Mylimasis - basically “beloved”. Not very commonly used IRL, but I guess neither is “beloved” (compared to “honey” or “darling”). Also, Hannibal does not really speak like mere mortal commoners, so IMHO it suits his flowery aristocratic speech patterns rather well. Can be used as noun and adjective. [female version: “mylimoji”]

Mano meilė [when directly addressing a person: mano meile] - very literally “my love” and used as (un)commonly as that. But I feel fits Hannibal’s pomp.

Brangusis - basically “darling/dear/precious”. I’d say IRL usage is rather close to those of “darling/dear”. Can be used as noun and adjective. [female version: “brangioji”]

Mielasis - literally “cute/lovely/dear”, but in essence close to “honey/sweetheart”. IRL usage is probably a bit less common than “brangusis”, but not strange. Can be used as noun and adjective. [female version: “mieloji”]

Mažius/mažiukas/mažasis [when directly addressing a person: mažiau/mažiuk/mažasis] - literally “the little one”, but could be approximated to “baby/babe”, however, more on the cute side without sexual connotations. Rather commonly used IRL and does not necessarily relate to actual size of a partner (I have a friend who calls her over 2 meters husband that). [female version: “mažė/mažiukė/mažoji”]

Širdelė [when directly addressing a person: širdele] - literally “little heart”, but in essence close to “sweetheart”, I guess. Not very commonly used IRL, but once in a while you might find a poetic sentimentalist who would call their significant other that. 

While English speakers tend to express their affection with sweet things (sweetheart, honey), Lithuanians usually go more direct way for pet names - by actually using animal names. :D It’s actually really common! Almost on the same level as “darling”. But I guess they are pretty cheesy, and I have a hard time imagining canon Hannibal using them. Nevertheless, some fic scenarios might call for that, so here we go:

Zuikis [when directly addressing a person: zuiki] - literally “rabbit”. I don’t even know which English pet name could be used for approximation in meaning, but it’s rather common for Lithuanians, don’t ask me why, I have no idea. Just an affectionate cute pet name. 

Katinas/katukas/kačiukas [when directly addressing a person: katine/katuk/kačiuk] - literally “male cat/kitten. Just another pretty common animal pet name. 

Meškius [when directly addressing a person: meškiau] - basically “bear/little bear” in a cute way. So I guess it approximates to “Teddy Bear”. (Also a rather common name for Lithuanian mongrel hairy dogs.) Not a very frequent thing to encounter in Lithuanian couples, but not a surprise if you do. [mostly used for male partners]

Thank you! This is awesome! 

1. To be honest “heart” does not often feature in Lithuanian endearment speech, but we all know Hannibal is not just anybody. One could use “mano širdis” - literally “my heart” [when directly addressing a person: “mano širdie”]. Given Hannibal’s predilection towards anatomy I’d say It’s likely it could be included in his repertoire of pet names. Also, a sort of male version of “širdelė” is possible: “širdukas” [when directly addressing a person: “širduk”]. Although as endearment “širdelė” could be used for any sex, as a noun it’s intrinsically feminine (‘cause “heart” is a feminine noun in Lithuanian). It should be really strange and not very understandable for speakers of non-gendered languages, but that’s the best I can do to explain it in so many words. So “širdukas” is a sort of masculinized version of “širdelė” (“little heart”), it’s probably not an actual word you would find in a dictionary, but its meaning would be perfectly clear to any Lithuanian speaker. And now that I’ve started, I can’t stop imagining Hannibal teasing Will by addressing him “širduk” (in a more lighthearted, fluffy or cracky context), ‘cause the term is extremely cutesy. :D

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?

And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.

“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.

Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.

(This despite the fact that radical feminists and political lesbians are actually a small fraction of lesbians and wlw, and lesbians do tend, overall, to have positive attitudes towards bisexuals.)

That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..

So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.

Another good source here, also talking about aromanticism as well. Aspec people have been included in queer studies as long as queer studies have existed.

Also, just in my own experiences, the backlash against ‘queer’ is still really recent. When I was first working out my orientation at thirteen in 2000, there was absolutely zero issue with the term. I hung out on queer sites, looked for queer media, and was intrigued by queer studies. There were literally sections of bookstores in Glebe and Newtown labelled ‘Queer’. It was just… there, and so were we!

Yeah, okay, maybe older LGBTs use queer and fag and dyke…but they’re cringey, and you don’t want to be cringe, do you?

I’m not even joking. They strip the loud-and-proud aspects of our history out of all context, remove every bit of blood, sweat, and tears the queer community poured into things like anti-discrimination laws and AIDS research funding, and use those screams of rebellion to say we’re weird, and you wouldn’t want to be WEIRD.

Stop and think about that for a minute.

I found it last year when someone unironically linked my friend to it on twitter like: YOU CAN’T CALL YOURSELF A TRANNY IT SAYS SO RIGHT HERE 

edit: it also claims only Black lesbians can reclaim dyke which…is a helluva claim that I have never seen anywhere but this carrd lol pretty sure that was just to get people to be racist to Black lesbians for no reason

FRUITY IS A DEROGATORY WORD FOR GAY THAT HAS BEEN USED SINCE THE 1900’S

An incomplete list of people who are Not Allowed to Say Slurs:

trans men & transmascs

all non-transfem nonbinary people (incl. AMAB nonbinary people who are not transfem)

bi/pan women

all intersex people

aces & aros

(so so many others I’m not thinking of right now)

and the best part?

I thought I hadn’t experienced as much queer history as others but it turns out I’m vastly wrong

silent rebellions.

I mean don’t get me wrong the loud ones are great too but there is something so poetic about the quiet ones.

Like when a kid hides a pride flag in their room or paints their stuff the colors because they know if its not rainbow their parents won’t know what it means.

or when someone hides a binder in their backpack to change into and out of at school, “plus school takes up most of the time I can bind anyway”

The kids that are never deadnamed at school but in front of their family their classmates will never betray them.

The kids that have secret blogs

the kids that have secret lives

because you simply cant live in a world without some of you in it.

Kids that all flock to the one with supportive parents

the kids that sneak out to pride festivals with their friends

the kids that are secretly themselves

the kids that are secretly heroes

and those secret silent rebellions

are fantastic.

So please

Please

keep it up.

We see you.

We’re waiting until you can join us.

Until then, remember your warrior’s heart and gather your courage.

actually there is, she has one line at the end when she says “how do you know?”

ok I just skimmed though the movie again, and here she is in the beginning, she just doesn’t say anything, and you wouldn’t guess she was a girl because they didn’t do that weird humanizing, tits and longer eyelashes thing that most movies with animals do.

>Remmy is smaller

dad: sure son

remmy: also im tired of eating literal rotted garbage

Remmy: actually dad I’m a boy

Dad: thank you for telling me I support you

The villain smiled and - well. She was stunning. The hero felt like they could stare at the villain for hours, or possibly they wanted to be her. Every conversation they’d ever had left the hero electrified, but this was the first time the two of them had met face to face. 

“Come down to me,” the villain said. Her eyes were radiant, piercing straight through the hero’s skin. She held out a hand. Her voice - oh that voice - it curled silken around the hero’s limbs. It made something in them shiver. It didn’t particularly make them want to move closer.

The hero raised their brows. “What, so you can kill me? How dumb do you think I am? I think I’m better up here out of your reach, thanks.”

The villain blinked. The power in her voice grew. “It would feel good. A release…”

“Lol.” 

The villain scowled at that. Then, at peak frustration, realisation crossed her face. Her head tilted. The power returned full force. 

“Don’t you want to be normal?” 

The hero froze. “Nah.” They kept their voice as light as possible. “I’ll pass.” They weren’t sure if the want, the shame, or the fury burned through them with greater strength. Because that…

“Even if it means you are alone? I know you are lonely. I can see it in your head. You have friends, of course, sometimes you even forget you are lonely, but…that person who has your heart would love you, wouldn’t they? If you were different. What was it that they said to you…?”

“Shut up. I don’t need to be different. Everyone feels like that about something, everyone thinks someone else has it easier. It’s not true.”

“So defensive.” It came out a purr. “Do you convince yourself, darling, if you say it loud enough?”

“Shut. Up.” The hero realised they’d moved closer, hand curled in a fist. They forced themselves to stop on the edge of the precipice, however much they wanted to come closer still and punch. The villain had the advantage in close combat, and that was a long way to fall besides. It would idiotic of them. They still wanted to, just to smack that gloating smile aside. The hero’s throat locked tight. 

Desire was not the only way to draw someone close, nor kill them.

The hero drew in a steadying breath. They were content with their life in a lot of ways, they had people they loved and people who loved them. They knew it didn’t matter. They knew other people didn’t necessarily have it any better or any easier they just - 

“We are rare specimens, you and I,” the villain said. “We look around and there is no like us. I could make anyone fall for me and so they cannot truly love me.” Hunger wove through her words like a calling card. “And you…you want so badly be to be enough. To be loved. To be capable of love.” 

“I am loved. I am more than capable of love, as if that’s what bloody matters anyway. I’d be perfectly fine even if I didn’t want love. It’s not the only thing in the world. And, by the way, fuck you, I am most certainly enough. Get out of my head.” 

It had been funny, at first, watching the villain’s frustration grow as her usual tricks didn’t work. Now…it didn’t feel so funny now. Sirens, in the old tales, were not merely creatures of beauty. They had knowledge too. The kind of knowledge that few lived long enough to hear, the kind of song that could devastate and shape worlds. It wasn’t just a pretty face. 

And want - attraction - was so many things, tangled, for that voice to catch its hooks on. The hero should have been prepared for this, even if the siren hadn’t been.

The siren’s smile dropped. They both glared at each other, hearts pounding.

“Well, then,” the siren said. “I suppose I’ll just have to come to you then. Rip your heart out the old fashioned away.” 

On that note…the hero bolted.

A/N: So I don’t normally A/N my writing, I prefer people make their own conclusions and draw their own thoughts on my work. I’d put this in the tags if tags were not being weird. So. Under the cut. #Sorry not sorry.

Hey, I’d really appreciate if you’d tag this as asexual since as an allosexual aromantic I would like to filter asexual content so I can decide if I feel comfortable seeing it. No hate towards asexuals I promise! It’s just that quite a bit of asexual content I see is very arophobic. Thanks so much!

I thought I was going to let this go, because I don’t want to start to drama and tumblr can have a disturbing habit of dogpiling that I don’t want to perpetuate…but the more I thought about it I just don’t want to let this go. 

I also don’t want to privately message you about it, because you decided to take this to a public forum on my post where everyone has to read your words, so now we’re going to talk about it.

Please note that I am not basing this on your one reply to my post detailed above - I looked into why you might feel this way and noted this on your profile:

“Not all aro’s are ace, just like not all ace’s are aro. We aro’s already deal with so much erasure and hatred and we need solidarity from the ace community instead of hatred toward aro’s who aren’t also ace. The ace community is only recently gaining visibility and support from the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community. Don’t you remember when you were as erased as we are now? I’m not asking for a whole lot here. I’m simply asking people to tag asexual content as such.”

Okay. Do you not see the irony here? No? Let’s unpack. 

In short: your response to my post literally asks asexual people to enable you to erase them, because you find us uncomfortable. You say it is because you do not want aromantic experiences to be erased but you are explicitly coding my identity as a trigger warning and asking it to be treated as such. 

There are two key things here. 

1) You are asking for a lot.  It is not the responsibility of asexual people to make ourselves invisible for you. The mere existence of our identity does not deserve to be a trigger warning. You are responsible for your own consumption of content on the internet. You can ask for your needs to be met, but you don’t get to say that erasing ourselves for you is nothing. That is not and never will be your decision.

2) You went out of your way to post on a post made explicitly about asexuality, by an asexual person, about asexual representation in particular…to tell us that our experience, our existence, is something that should be filtered out and sanitised for you. Maybe you don’t mean that as hate, but it is not okay, and frankly reads rather a lot like ‘no offense, but can you go back to the closet. I don’t hate you, you just make me uncomfortable by virtue of existing.’ 

And that sounds horribly familiar in a way I feel like you should understand. 

I believe you when you say you don’t mean any hate towards asexual people, but the implications of your words were hateful, and reading your reply felt like getting punched in the throat. 

But let’s look some more at the post which you so object to. 

It is very clear from the initial ask at the top of this post that this story/post is going to be dealing with asexuality and an asexual protagonist. Therefore, regardless of the issue of how it is tagged in my original post or any reblogged versions of my post, there is no version of it where the asexuality is going to sneak up on you. It is not hidden. This means that on the most basic level the post does allow you to decide whether to read it or not based solely on the fact it includes asexual content, and therefore you already have control of your experience and the ability and choice to not engage. 

You cannot pretend you didn’t know it was about asexuality because you posted specifically about the fact it was about asexuality.

Therefore, you could have simply skipped and that would have been fine. You do you. Stay safe. 

However, you didn’t do that. 

Which means this is not about your boundaries anymore, it is about you wanting us to stop being there entirely. It is you wanting to erase us even if you are not fully conscious of that. It is you being spectacularly disrespectful to asexual people in the way that you want to avoid for yourself. 

I don’t get to filter you out when you literally come onto my post and force me to get a notification about how much my existence makes you uncomfortable, and I’m not entirely convinced you paused to think or care if your response and requests made me or any asexual seeing it comfortable or not. 

Did you read the story? I’m guessing you didn’t before you told us to be more invisible. 

This post is about how many people try and reduce asexual needs, desires and representation to a joke. It is, despite the fantasy setting, me navigating my personal experiences with my identity that I do not see talked about or reflected a lot. It is me trying not to feel alone. Me trying not to feel invisible and erased. Me trying not to feel like everything I want in my life is wrong. Me still trying to feel like what I am is okay years after coming out, because people like you consistently remind me in quiet little ways that what I am is not ‘normal’ and not accepted in the way that other people get to be. And some days I can breathe past that and some days I can’t and I shouldn’t have to.

To put it bluntly, this post was not made for you. This was our safe space.

Finally, as the added kicker to all of this, if you had bothered to read the story before posting on it, you would have noted that my story explicitly states that regardless of if the romantic asexual protagonist wants love or not…that’s not what’s important. It wouldn’t be wrong even if they didn’t want that. E.g, if they were aromantic, they would still be just as worthy of respect, and they would still be enough.

I’m not aro, so maybe I’m misunderstanding or lacking some deeper nuance, but last I checked I didn’t think that was arophobic. I remember specifically thinking about aro people actually when I was writing that post and thinking ‘hey, I don’t want to act like aro people don’t exist and that romantic love is the end all of end alls because it is not’. 

I didn’t want anyone to feel the way I feel now. The way that you made me feel. 

I’m cis because I’m afab and still identify as a woman. If I was afab and identified any other way, I’d be trans. I’m intersex because my body itself has a mixed bag of secondary sex characteristics and hormones.

The label “intersex” itself isn’t a gender identity as much as it’s a way for people with mixed or ambiguous sex characteristics to define that experience. There are cis men and women who are intersex, trans people of every kind as well. I’m sure there are intersex people who just identify as intersex entirely but most intersex people I’ve met still identify as male, female, or nonbinary. Because your body doesn’t determine your gender identity.