OMG. Lighting Strike Videos Have Always Reminded Me Of Something And I Could Never Figure Out What. Today

New Deadloch Fic: In Plain Sight

A slow-build romance leading to polyamory. Rated explicit. Long (84,000 words). Eddie POV. Complete.

Eddie/Dulcie are definitely the main pairing. Eddie/Cath are shown making out once. There is also one Dulcie/Eddie/Cath sex scene at the end but otherwise no Dulcie/Cath or Eddie/Cath is shown (though both are mentioned).

Canon-compliant. Set after the end of the series proper, starting right after Ray’s death. Includes the canon epilogue scene (in which Eddie and Dulcie visit Holly) and then continues after that.

I didn’t like Cath in canon but I think she could get her shit together and be a better person and a better partner, and I’ve leaned into that very hard, while doing my best to also keep her in character.

Important note: the first scene is rough but things don’t stay that way. This is a happy fic overall, with a very happy ending.

See Chapter 1 for content warning.

This was an utter delight to write. Please read and enjoy. I'd love to hear in comments how you respond to it -- all feedback is great, including critique. <3

Lastly, thank you SO MUCH to my absolutely amazing beta, @ratherembarrassing, for help with so many important dialect and character notes. This fic would be such a hot mess without you, and I'm so so grateful for your time and your meticulous attention to detail. <3 <3 <3

This way to the fic :-D

Accurate, this is what happens

Obsessed with Dulcie canonically being some kind of sex god. I think she’d break Eddie.

Maria Filopoulou (Greek, 1964) - The Greenhouse (1996)

I think about this sometimes. How did I learn that there are some things you just don't do to people, no matter who they are or what they've done? I used to think I learned it as a young adult working my first few jobs. I did some childcare and a shitton of foodservice, and in both types of work it was really clear to me that if I didn't do my job right -- if I made a mistake with an allergen, or forgot to lock the child lock on the basement door -- someone could be badly hurt or even killed. That was a heavy thing to realize and it made me so aware of my responsibilities to other people, it really solidified it for me that you don't do to your enemies what you wouldn't do to your friends. But I think I must have learned it earlier. I think I learned it by...needing help from other people, and getting it. I think I learned it from times when I was in trouble, and someone helped me. The people around me had enough empathy for me, enough of the time, that I learned empathy too. Maybe "learned" is the wrong word, even, because it wasn't a thinking process. I think empathy is more like grammar: it's not a sense like sight or touch, it's a thing you can feel if the people around you have it. You absorb it from them via mirror neurons.

It's funny because I know, in a cerebral way, that abuse can damage children's empathy. But it's really different to see and feel how that relates to me, personally, and to the people I know best. I have the empathy that I have because people were decent to me when I was small. That's it, that's the entire reason. And that's so strange because it wasn't something that was in my control. It's not something I had, or have, the power to choose.

Lately it's giving me patience for people. Because no one is born an asshole. And because something that's been damaged can be repaired, sometimes.

really devastating to realize that my belief that “there are some things you can never to do to another person, regardless of who they are and what they’ve done, because they are a person” is held by so few people. they aren’t upset by the unjustifiable, they’re simply unhappy that it happens to the ‘wrong people.’

Yeah and another fun thing is when someone speaks to me and I understand perfectly what they said but I can't for the life of me identify what language it was in

What they don’t tell you about speaking multiple languages is that your brain does not in fact have a box labeled Spanish and another one labeled German. Instead it has a box labeled “Not English” and sometimes when you’re talking or writing in one of the languages you speak it will just start pulling random words from that box.

We never really talked about it but The Ugly Ducking that grew up to be a beautiful swan was still probably pretty fugly from a duck’s perspective

[Image description: tumblr post tags from @mettaworldpiece reading: #misogynoir #transmisogynoir #passing #antiblackness #ppl who say things like this do not consider antiblackness #ALL black ppl are degendered and hypergendered at the same time that is how Black men can be fetishized for their sexual organs but still #be denied manhood and called boys #for Black women womanhood is held as conditional #as in it is placed on them whether they identify w it or not can be stripped away w no consideration for the person affected #even the concept of passing comes from 'white-passing' or from raciallized Black ppl who could move thru white society w/o feeling #the violent conditions of antiblackness #for me there isnt a person who doesnt know im trans as soon as I open my mouth #that does not mean I move with safety when not speaking tho as misogynoir conditions people to take their toll of every Black woman #they come into contact w #for example the suburban constructions who got mad when I walked past their catcalls did not know I was trans #but that didnt stop them from acting like they were going to swerve and run me over when I tried to walk past to work /End image description.]

u look like a giant buff woman idk what u mean "dont pass" lol.

So I wanted to respond to this one, not to evaluate my features as “passing/not passing” but to talk a bit on racialization and transness as a larger Black trans woman. I am going to be speaking on the experience of cis women in addition to trans women.

Yes, I’m 6’2” and 260lbs. There are plenty of cis women my height/weight or larger/taller! It is not inherently a trait of solely trans women to be large. But this also means that I don’t always pass, because a lot of cis women who look like me don’t pass all the time either no matter what they do.

In this outfit running errands, I got hit on a bunch, gendered appropriately a bunch, and honestly felt the most femme I have in a while. Meanwhile, I still had a man start screaming at me on a metro train because he could see up my dress while I was sitting and “I DONT WANT TO SEE THIS MAN’S UNDERWEAR!”

Often, assumption of masculinity for largeness, for height, is something that gets inflicted on tall cis women as well, moreso if they’re an athlete or otherwise buff or “unfeminine”. Many end up with a complex about it that affects their comfort presenting anything less than high femme even as cis women by adulthood, because it’s implied they have to “make up” for their height/frame by being more feminine.

So despite this not being something limited solely to trans women, it does get significantly amplified on trans women when we have other features or traits that may affect it, such as voice, visible stubble, etc.

On top of that, Black women are often racialized as “more masculine” bc of systemic societal antiblackness. While it can happen to anyone that visibly reads as a Black woman, it gets notably worse the darker your skin is and the larger you are. I’m very lightskinned, so while I still experience it, it’s also not nearly as bad as it would be for someone much darker than me with my build.

So for larger Black trans women, we get a double whammy of “passing” tribulations, as we get the misogynistic assumption of “the larger you are, the more masculine you are” and the misogynoiric assumption that as a Black woman, we are inherently more masculine.

Both of these factors are completely out of our control as larger Black trans women. They aren’t something that can be changed by anything we do to try and “pass” because they are baseline societal bigotries currently - fuck, Megan Thee Stallion is quite literally one of the most beautiful cis women on earth while also being larger and she’s still CONSTANTLY accused of being a man/masculine online even in some of her most “feminine” presentations.

So when I say that I “often don’t pass” I’m not commenting on my features, what I think “outs me as AMAB”, etc. im commenting on the baseline societal transmisogynoir that states that someone who looks like me, transfemme or not, often does not pass.

Many people will still gender me appropriately from the jump, hit on me, catcall me, otherwise treat me like a woman - but just as often I will be categorically excluded from even possibly passing for people who have engraved these social bigotries to heart, and recognizing that doesn’t affect whether I’m “valid”, whether I’m attractive (bc I’m a fucking Goddess and stunning), etc. but affects my SAFETY and the likely of experiencing transmisogynistic or transmisogynoiristic harm or violence.

Passing is not about whether you are attractive or not, it’s about safety.

Thinking about the way Eddie stops in their tracks and looks down at their bare toes just for a second there. I love this gorgeous little oddball so much I'm tall and sometimes when someone I love is shorter than me it feels like a present. Like, how lucky, that what I most want to do is scoop you up and squeeze you, and you're the perfect size to be scooped up and squeezed!

Komorebi, Duri Baek