Wow, thanks for writing this. It's so important to have this conversation. I think about this a lot, how we can acknowledge the ambiguity in defining rape and consent, but in a way which allows us to make progress and support survivors of rape and sexual assault.

I think it's both true and untrue that consent isn't as clear-cut as we think it is. On the one hand, there's this weird murky area that many people inhabit where they don't consider themselves survivors, don't want to think of themselves as victims, don't hold it against him - but wish so badly that it had gone differently. It's important to look past the dichotomy of good guys versus evil rapists who grab you in an alley, because this lets off the hook all those rapists whose mothers and friends love them, of which there are many. THIS is what rape culture actually means, and so many people don't get that.

One the other hand, sometimes the version of the story that we feel we can live with at a given moment just isn't accurate! It's very hard to acknowledge that you were sexually assaulted, I think maybe because it means that you lose all agency in the narrative of the encounter, which feels like a denial of your own personhood? But doing so helps, eventually, because blaming yourself is such a heavy thing to carry.

Mallory's essay which was posted on The Toast a while ago about men refusing to hear it when you say no was incredibly important for me in figuring out how to feel about my own experiences, because it articulated that anger and sense of betrayal with absolute moral clarity. That's how it was with me: I said that I didn't want to, four times, and he flat-out refused to hear it, and I said "Well okay, I guess" and it happened and was terrible, which, a month or so later, I was absolutely FURIOUS at myself about. So then you think - how much of this anger should I be turning on him? Surely it's justified to direct a little bit on myself, for not putting up a fight? Can I be angry at my friend who didn't really figure out that my attempts to reach out meant that I actually needed her support? And, if you don't talk about it, it sits inside you and makes you feel bitter and isolated and makes forming meaningful personal relationships just that bit harder.

Recently I was with a guy who said "Do you want to?" like he genuinely cared about the answer, and "Hey, I don't have to come" like it was obvious, and it took me by surprise but also, it WAS obvious! This is how we should communicate!

So yeah, there are some bits that are really hard to say (for me the bits that you can't turn into a joke) and I appreciate so much the bravery of the people who choose to make themselves emotionally vulnerable and share their story. I have a lot to say about this but I can't bear the thought of my parents knowing that I spent a significant part of 2014 feeling miserable and lonely because of rape. I expect it would be a very healing conversation but I just don't want to! But hey, baby steps.

(lol I wrote a whole other consent essay in the comments to your consent essay. These things happen sometimes!)

Yeah, I would never have expected watching people make free-standing dessert structures to be that gripping but it really is! Also, I would happily wolf down almost everything on GBBO, including the stodgy puddings and melted ice cream puddles.

Okay, so tennis cake was a monstrosity and sometimes they do produce desserts which look like an unfortunate pile of sludge BUT you have to admit that a lot of the silliest desserts are actually the French ones, like Tower Of Pastry Nuns and Hours Of Labour For Some Crunchy Layers Biscuits.

The second question/answer is reassuring to me because I'm going to graduate soon, and don't really know what profession I want to go into. I'm fairly ambitious but am not sure that I want to go straight onto a graduate scheme which is designed to propel you into a leadership position in a short timeframe.. so it's good to know that other pathways still exist!

Yay, I'm adore this fic writer so I'm always happy to rec her to others :D

Yeah, totally - it makes sense when you describe it as important to the structure of the movie, but I agree with you that it feels like just checking off boxes. Or to me it was kind of like Whedon was treating the characters like blank slates when most of them already come with a lot of their own baggage.

Yeah, making space for character interaction seems like a good idea, but by this point in the franchise most of the Avengers have developed a lot during the earlier movies and an idea like "our heroes are all pining for a rural domestic life" just doesn't jibe with what we know about most of them, especially considering where Winter Soldier left off with Steve and Natasha.

Obviously if you have different writers and directors they're gonna have different takes on the characters, but I really struggled to buy Whedon's versions of the Avengers in AoU in a way I didn't in the first Avengers movie.

I saw Age of Ultron a couple of days ago and I had pretty low expectations, but it was still so confusingly bad. I mean, bad movies get made all the time, but HOW did that bizarre farm interlude end up being such a big part of the film????

Fandom's ability to take a clumsy/sexist/heteronormative narrative and make it into a million different, more richly imagined stories and worlds is one of the things I love most about it. I actually think fanfic writers can be pretty terrible at female characters too, but maybe this is because I mainly hang out in dudeslash fandom. I do think people pay in fandom pay a lot more attention to female characters than they used to!

My favourite Natasha fic is 'love is for children and other lies' (http://archiveofourown.org/works/575215) which is SO much more nuanced and interesting than her AoU storyline, which I am trying not to think too hard about because it was so weirdly handled.

Thanks for the mostly encouraging story! ;) I think it will all turn out fine but wow, they are cutting it fine this time.

Thanks! I was in Russia last semester as well and the visa process worked out fine, but because I'm studying in a different city I have to get a new one now. But if it's super last minute there is the option to pay extra and get it the next day so reckon it will be okay.