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writingwithcolor · 3 years

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Desexualized Mammy & Strong Black Woman, too busy for “frivolous love”

“Alyse” (Anon Submission) asked:

My science fiction story includes a black woman (Talia) who raises two children that aren’t her own and takes on two young adults as apprentices. One of the children she is raises has Arabic background and was taken into her home upon his father’s death (his mother’s whereabouts are unknown). She was a close friend of his father and the closest thing he had to a relative. The second child has mixed French-Latinx background and was taken in after becoming shipwrecked with no means by which to contact her people. Talia was the first non-hostile individual she encountered and one of the few who would so openly embrace a stranger. Since Talia is Master Medic (the highest medical authority in her community) she is training two apprentices (think residency) and eventually mentors the second child as well. She was once married and passionately in love but lost her husband to illness. In this setting, some technology we take for granted is inaccessible and violence against their people is commonplace. Most have experienced sudden loss. This particular loss was the catalyst that drove Talia into medicine- a desire to protect her loved ones and prevent others from experiencing similar tragedy. She is usually kind (though businesslike) but sometimes succumbs to a frigid, furious depression when, despite all her knowledge and determination, she can’t save someone.

I worry that her maternal association with the two children (one of whom is an outsider) mires her in the mammy trope. On top of that, she hasn’t pursued romance since the death of her husband. I’ve considered giving her a romantic subplot but there are already so many characters to keep track of. Furthermore, I just can’t see her engaging in the frivolous pursuits of new love when she’s dealing with kids, students, and an extremely taxing career.

In terms of race and culture in this story, practically every character can trace their ancestry back to populations displaced through war. Even Talia’s second child was shipwrecked during a botched evacuation from a military science lab. The people who live here have been isolated for generations and no longer have a real concept of their ancestry. Cultures have blended, new religions have formed, and many of our familiar racial/ethnic issues are forgotten. However, new and different but equally toxic ones have replaced them. In this way, Talia’s blackness doesn’t carry the same associations in her world as it would in ours. However, readers may still make these associations. Do you see any issues with her character that I could amend?

So! You have:

A highly educated Black-coded woman (the highest medical authority in the community)

She raises two kids alone

She also looks after two apprentices

She is widowed (not sure the race of the husband, was he Black?)

Having experienced heartbreaking love, Talia's drive to look after, protect and save people through medicine is a great motivation for the way she is. Her experiencing depression and taking losses seriously is also very human and is dynamic characterization.

However, such characterization with Black women is prone to brush across several tropes. You have a Black woman who gives and protects, but what does she get in return? Who cares for her?

Prioritize your Black character’s happiness

"I’ve considered giving her a romantic subplot but there are already so many characters to keep track of. Furthermore, I just can’t see her engaging in the frivolous pursuits of new love when she’s dealing with kids, students, and an extremely taxing career."

Priorities, priorities. Is love a frivolous pursuit in her eyes, or yours? Because I strongly disagree. You probably don't mean to but you, as the author, having an excuse to NOT give the Black woman romance is showing that you do not think she's worth being loved. TV viewers and stans who are uncomfortable when Black women characters have relationships find similar excuses to explain away not wanting BW in relationships.

"She's too strong and independent for a man/relationship"

"I liked her better alone."

"It'll take away from her character."

“A romance doesn’t feel right for her”

These sorts of statements above are grounded in racialized misogyny.

Relationships do not lessen the woman.

Relationships does not lessen Black women.

Love

Whether that love is romantic, familial, or friendship, it can come in many forms. Give Talia love. Because Black women characters deserve it! Either one or all!

Let her have a loyal best friend, a cat, and a girlfriend. Because why not? And not to downplay the love of children to parents, but please provide her love beyond what she gets on a maternal level from the children she looks after.

The stories that Black women are in today severely lack love for us, so why add to the narrative of Black women being all work and no play, and too [insert excuse here] to be loved?

Of course, you didn't provide all the details from your story, but I'm not seeing much of a balance from the struggle. She is a caretaker, teacher, doctor (or doctor-like figure).

Her position and background in itself is okay. It's the Strong Black Woman being presented with seemingly no commentary that strikes me.

Where is her team to help balance the weight of the world?

Who takes care of her when she's depressed from another loss?

What does she get in return from taking an emotional and physical toll to heal her community?

Do those around her recognize all she does for them and offer their friendship?

When does she get to relax and turn off the need to be everything for everybody?

Fitting love into a book with many characters

There are many books with several characters to keep track of. People tend to manage. Also, I'm sure some of those characters are in and/or out of relationships. Even stories that couldn’t be classified as romances have relationships of some sort. It’s unrealistic to have a ton of characters and none of them be in relationship(s) of some sort. Not when there’s so many forms of it and many sexualities.

Friends, frenemies, enemies, romance, affairs.. Relationships make stories (and life) interesting. By no means do I think adding these dynamics harm your tale. And what’s one more for a hard-working Black woman who sacrifices a lot and clearly deserves a shoulder to lean on? And, if you use an existing character to be that friend, family, or lover, then you won’t need to pencil in another character.

For romance specifically - I think a misconception when it comes to including romance in stories is that they have to somehow take over the story. Romance does not have to bombard the plot nor be described in lavish detail. Not every story is a romance and those sort of details aren’t everyone’s style or things they’re comfortable with. A sentence or two establishing relationships does not take away from the story.And how those relationships look and affections expressed will vary based on the characters, sexuality, etc.

Not every character needs to have a deep level of detail.

“Katie and Lisa, a newly engaged couple, walked into the meeting.”

“Jack and Jamie are a married couple in their 40s.”

“The two met in college. After two months of blissful courtship, they eloped, eager to start their happily ever afters. Twenty years together, they were still blissfully in love and never too far from one another.”

Sentences like the above are enough for some characters. You don’t always need to put in paragraphs worth of relationship-establishing details or plot.

When it comes to the characters whose love you would like to highlight, at least a bit, you still don’t have to go over the top.

Use subtle details.

“As soon as Talia’s back was turned, he gave her a longing look before shaking his head and getting back to the patient.”

“He squeezed her hand before taking hold of the stethoscope.”

“She kissed her wife goodbye before racing out the door.”

“You mean the world to me.” he had said, holding her face. Those words stayed with her all day, making her heavy load light as a sack of feathers.

“She soaked his shirt with her tears and he just held her tight, saying nothing, silently holding her together.”

As for Talia specifically…

Talia having the mindset you described, as love being frivolous and not a priority, is understandable knowing her background (I just don't agree with you as the creator using this as a means to keep her alone. Whether she’s romantically alone or without close friendships). She has lost so much, and continues to experience loss with patients. This can be extremely traumatizing. I gave some examples of being subtle, so perhaps that will help with the burden of feeling a thick subplot of romance doesn’t fit in your story.

And as Talia doesn’t strike me as someone who would go looking for companionship, what if she stumbles upon it without trying? Is there someone on the medical team that can offer her friendship? Someone who admires her and feels the urge to care for her that she feels the same for, or has pushed feelings down for? What happens when she can’t hold those feelings down anymore?

Takeaway

Talia deserves healthy love, even if she doesn’t believe it or feel she has time for it. That love can come in any and many forms, not necessarily romantically required, although it is a plus. A struggle-ridden novel is balanced by love, support and rest for characters that hold the weight of the world. If you do not, evaluate why you want to write Black characters in these struggle roles without at least a social commentary.

~Mod Colette

#Black women #Strong Black Woman #Mammy #relationships #romance #asks

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interact-if · 3 years

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Day 2 of Pride Month interviews! You know them, you love them…. give it up for Ames!

Ames, author of Attollo and Metamorphosis

Pride Month Featured Authors

“…and it was a singular, terrible thought, which burrowed itself into your mind like an engorged maggot. This was not a man nor a monster. This was a concept, an ideology, a terrible myth, which had personified itself to stand before you now.You were, to put it simply, screwed.”

After several years of radio silence, you receive a message from your younger sibling that carries a strange sense of urgency to it. Either out of familial concern or boredom, you embark on a journey from your residence to your sibling’s apartment in New Hampshire to see what’s going on and, hopefully, be home before the weekend.

Too bad it’s never so simple.

Demo: Attollo, Metamorphosis (TBA)

Tags: cybernoir, thriller

(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!)

Q1: Tell us a little bit about your project(s)!

Attollo is a cyber-noir horror set in a walled city off the coast of the Atlantic that’s been a victim of a nuclear disaster. After several years of radio silence, you receive a message from your younger sibling that carries a strange sense of urgency to it. Either out of familial concern or boredom, you embark on a journey from your residence to your sibling’s apartment in New Hampshire to see what’s going on and, hopefully, be home before the weekend. Too bad it’s never so simple. Attollo is a 17+ game that deals with heavy topics and a lot of moral questioning; from cults to corrupt government, it has no shortage of monsters in the dark—both metaphorical and literal.

Metamorphosis is a crime/horror story based in the world of crime scene cleanup, where there are three simple steps: Get the call, clean the scene, and don’t ask too many questions. These are the rules that you live by under the employment of Noctua’s Crime Scene Services, and you credit them for keeping you alive.

However, after a routine house call brings forth nightmares of memories that are not your own, you find yourself pulled deeper into Noctua—a city of both monster and man—in a bid to find out the truth behind the murder of Deirdre Callow, and better yet, how her memories came to be yours. Your job mandates that you don’t dig too deep—but could this finally be the exception?

Metamorphosis is 18+ and will have explicit content; follow the last moments of a stranger to find out not only who took her life, but how this connects to the underbelly that Noctua works so hard to hide.

Q2: Why interactive fiction? What drew you to the medium?

Lmaoo, oh man. I think it really all began last summer when I first found examples of interactive fiction. I don’t even remember how I came across it, it might’ve been that I saw it mentioned in a post or I saw it as a tag on Itch.io, but at some point, last summer I began to investigate it more. I think what really drew me in was the ability for the player to control the narrative; it was like playing an old RPG, but modernized, and the fact that I could see a story unfold that was influenced by my decisions was so fascinating to me. Not to mention that IF allows so much more character depth than regular novels, in my opinion.

I’m 99% sure my first exposure to interactive fiction was through the game Crème de la Crème (a fantastic game, by the way) and I just enjoyed it so much that I went haywire for the genre. Then Temple of the Endless Night came out (another fantastic game that I’m looking forward to!), and that was really the turning point for inspiring me to give it a go. Now, almost a year later, here I am working on my own two games!

Q3: Are your characters influenced by your identity? How?

My bisexuality doesn’t have much of a major influence on the game, but I do think it contributed to the way that I view and write relationships. I figured out my sexuality around high school (I kissed a girl in high school and found out I liked it just as much as when I kissed a boy) and since then I’ve been very involved in the LGBTQ+ community of both my hometown and uni town.

I think this involvement, like being able to hear about other people’s experiences and share my own, has made me feel a lot more comfortable writing some of the characters in the game. Although Attollo and Metamorphosis both don’t focus heavily on relationships (both have murder in them, which I feel is a bit more pressing), I do keep the option for any RO’s to be romanced by anyone, regardless of gender or preference, because that’s simply what I’ve become so attuned to. In terms of side characters relationships as well, I think my involvement and my own experiences have allowed me to write far more diverse relationships than I might have, and I think that this has also allowed a more fulfilling experience for players when reading through.

I also have incorporated some struggles that I’ve faced before because of my identity into the games. For example, I and a few others have faced issues with religion due to who we are, and I incorporate this into both games. Dreamwalker, Pariah, and Sysba from Attollo all have shadows of this experience in their character origins, and Ilali and Ariston from Metamorphosis has a major point involving identity and beliefs. Both games also have undertows of ostracization and division between groups, which is also something I’ve experienced in the past. Being able to grapple these moments and control them via a narrative has been eye opening for both myself and others involved, and I’m hoping it can be a learning experience for the readers as well.

Q4: What would you like to see more of in LGBT+ fiction?

I think, now, the amount of progress in LGBTQ+ fiction is expanding at a wonderful rate. There are so many interactive fictions with options to select sexuality, select gender, select beliefs, etc. However, despite this expansion, there’s still a good deal of backlash against some aspects of LGBTQ+ fiction.

For example, as a bisexual woman who has dated men, I know there are some individuals who may not consider me a part of the LGBTQ+ because of this aspect. Not only is this incredibly disheartening, but it’s a viewpoint that I think should be educated against, and fiction is a fantastic pathway to do this. Another example I can think of is a friend of mine who identifies as asexual but is sex-neutral rather than sex-repulsed. Most people can’t believe her when she says this, and she often faces backlash for this declaration as well. This is another thing that I think that, with exposure through a medium such as fiction, can be worked on.

What I’m trying to say here is that I think LGBTQ+ fiction can be a brilliantly educational platform—if used right. Although it already teaches so much with what it has, I think having that representation of different subgroups of sexuality, of their experiences and beliefs, so people can become aware and knowledgeable of these options, is something I’d like to see more of.

Q5: What or who are some of your biggest inspirations?

Oh man, I struggled to list off inspirations because I know I have some, but as soon as someone asks me who they are my brain just goes ‘brrrrrr’ LMAO.

In terms of the games that I write and the worlds that I build, I think David Lynch and Robert Chambers are probably the two that I somehow incorporate. Attollo and Metamorphosis both have a lot of surrealist horror, which are what these two really specialized in. Shirley Jackson is also another person who inspired me a lot when it came to the writing and creation of Attollo, especially the intrapersonal relationships between the characters.

In terms of life, this is something else I really struggle to answer. I don’t really have celebrity inspirations or anything like that, but I do get inspired by my close friends and sister a lot. Seeing them go through the struggles that they face and absolutely thrive really drives me to push through my own struggles. They’re the strongest, most brilliant group of people that I know, and I consider myself incredibly fortunate that I can be a part of their lives. Not only that, but we also all collectively encourage each other to push further and to chase our dreams (as cheesy as that is LMAO) and that’s something that I think is another stroke of good fortune. I struck gold when I met them, and they’re some of the biggest inspirations in my life.

Q6: What’s a super vague spoiler for your current project?

For Attollo, I’d say ‘Home is where the heart is.’ For Metamorphosis, to quote John Berendt, ‘Always stick around for one more drink.’

Q7: Lastly, what advice would you give to your readers?

What advice would I give to you all? Oh my, I’m not exactly a wise woman here, but I’ll do my best to give you something lmaooo. I think what I really want you to walk away with, from both my stories and this interview, is that if you’re passionate about something, then share it with the world. Don’t let anyone deter your passion.

I remember listening to this painter once who commented to his friend how he ‘really liked painting’, and his friend’s first response was ‘but are you good at it?’. He then compared this to the scenario of walking; would you say, ‘but are you good at it?’ to someone who said, ‘I really like walking’? No, because it simply wouldn’t make sense, and it doesn’t make sense to say that to anyone who’s doing something out of passion.

To put it simply—if you love something, then don’t let anyone take that passion from you. I began writing these stories because I’m passionate about Attollo and Metamorphosis; I love each character, each bit of lore, and I share it with you because I want you all to enjoy it as well. Am I the best writer? God, no. Does everyone like what I write? Definitely not. But will I let this stop me from writing, from enjoying what I’m doing? Never, and I want you to do the same.

Explore your passions, embrace your passions, and let what makes you happy continue to do so

#if: events #Pride Month 2021 #pride month #queer authors #queer fiction #queer creators #interactive fiction

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vickyvicarious · 3 years

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Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

#leverage #leverage redemption #leverage spoilers #leverage meta #my meta #this turned into a BIG ol ramble #i planned to write like a couple of sentences for each point but noooo

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worstloki · 3 years

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The Sylvie Show

this got a bit long so i'm putting it under a cut but basically it's episode summaries of what i would do if the loki show had sylvie as the main character instead, since I do think the plot of the show would be better suited to be focused around her rather than 2012 loki. I've tried to keep it so that a lot of existing canon shots/sets/scenes can be reused.

episode 1: the show opens up with young Sylvie on Asgard. The TVA appear and drag her towards a temportal. She wakes up from the apparent nightmare, gasping heavily. cue title card and cool music. a portal opens within a church, sylvie interrupts the man giving a talk on religion, questioning what he's saying with roundabout logic and being generally witty, even managing to incorporate giving a bar of gum she had in a pocket to a child sitting on an aisle seat who is really happy about it. the man is still coming up with an answer to what she said when the doors of the church are broken open and TVA agents start to file in. Sylvie says "about time," and proceeds to have fun slaying the unit and stealing a tempad. She picks up the charge on her way out, sending a blow kiss to the devil mural on the wall on her way out. cut to stepping out of a temportal, throwing the charge behind her over a shoulder (it lands on a mattress) and taking a heavy seat in front of a set of screens which show the inside of a mall. the cameras are mostly empty and where there are people it does not fascinate her (one of them shows someone reloading shelves). she scrutinizes the screens, drumming fingers on the table, but quickly sighs and pulls out her tempad: it flashes with low battery and she rolls her eyes, throwing it into a bin filled with likewise empty devices. she's about to get up when the cameras show a group of agents walking into the store. among them is one with a jacket reading VARIANT in bright orange. "Sh*t," she says, getting up and going to the mattress, rifling through a pile of clothes on the floor next to it "sh*t sh*t sh*t where is it". She pulls out a dark brown jacket, and the camera pans over to the screens again, where the VARIANT turns: it's Loki. A golden portal opens on the beige walls of the TVA, Hunter C-20 stepping through holding a man in 1940s army uniform by the arm and dragging him towards a desk. the man protests but she places a grenade on the counter and tells the deskworker to log it. "it wasn't a dummy," is the explanation she gives. In the background a single guard steps through a portal, looking around and proceeding to the doors out of this room. It's Sylvie, and she walks alone past other guards and rooms labelled Court and Memory Chamber. A group of people run past her saying a variant is loose and she walks faster. She walks past one court room, catching the words "trust me, you can smell the cologne of two Tony Starks," but continues looking around. An analyst (Mobius) rounds the corner in the direction of the court rooms and seems to be in a hurry, and Sylvie takes a sharp turn opening the closest door to her to avoid being seen. She is in a room with a Sacred Timeline screen, and zeroes in on the man closest to her, "what are you--" she places a hand over his mouth and pushes him down into his desk area behind his trolley, shushing him. "Do you know where the Reset Charge Storage Chambers are?" "Why?" *deep breath* *serious face on* "Tell me where the storaGE CHAMBer iS or I'll GUT YOU like a goAT!" "is that... like a fish?" *confusion* "how do you not know what a goat is?!" she spots a poster on the wall with a location guide and pushes Casey away with a hand to the face. "Nevermind." - We see Loki monologuing "the idea that your little club decides the fate of trillions of people across all of existence at the behest of three space lizards, yes, it's funny. It's absurd." an agent walks past in the background pushing a trolley but no attention is brought to it "I thought you didn't like to talk," mobius says. Sylvie pushes a door reading "Storage: Units" open, but looks and finds bodies in little cyro pod chambers lined up. "wrong door," she says, and pulls the trolley across the hall to the door reading "Storage: Charges." She's in a room with shelves filled up with reset charges, and opens the trolley drawer to find it already filled up with useless junk like infinity stones and such. to which she has no reaction. She shoves all that stuff to the side and out of the drawer, making space to

carefully place reset charges there. She individually picks up the two Tesseracts in it though and admires them, saying they're shiny and placing them on lower shelves in the room instead of on the floor. While she loads up the trolley ("a few more should do it") Loki walks past the door in full TVA outfit, happy and carrying a stack of papers that read RAGNAROK in bright red letters. She closes the drawer, takes her Hunter helmet off to shake out her hair and wipe sweat from her forehead, then puts it back on, pushing the trolley towards the door. Mobius has a hand at Loki's back, guiding him out of the Memory Chamber, Loki has clearly been crying and Mobius comforts him "it won't be so bad, you love being useful. and wearing suits." Sylvie walks past, pushing the trolley in the background. Sylvie continues down the hall, and when she sees no one behind or in front she pulls out her tempad and opens a portal, pushing her trolley and herself through. She's already gone and misses Classic Loki with a collar around his neck being escorted through the hall. - Sylvie and her trolley push through the portal and are in a mall, the lights dim and flickering above. Thunder is heard and lightning strikes as she places a reset charge on a shelf, flicking open a panel on it's side, and then walking a bit further and placing another. "May I help you?" a store employee asks, startling her. She considers. "Actually..." and places a hand to the person's temple - it takes a few seconds of effort but her fingertips glow green, and so does the person's eyes and temple, "don't mind if you do." She walks away from the trolley in a rush, and the store worker behind places a reset charge on a shelf. "I'm a bit short on time," she says to herself, pulling out her Tempad. Suspenseful music as the screen fades to black. - Everything cuts to a desert, with a small town in the background. A portal appears high up, and Loki falls from it to the ground. the words "twelve miles east of Puento Antiguo" appear on screen, and we see Loki formed a small crater in the ground, reminiscent of Mjolnir and the one in Stark Tower. "Ow," Loki says, taking the muzzle off with one hand, and then pulling the cuff chains off. The dust settles around him and he's still extricating himself from the hole in the ground and groaning about sand being irritating and getting everywhere when a golden portal opens up (we get a high shot, showing that Loki did indeed land within a larger crater too). Loki puts his hands in the air. "Appears to be a standard sequence violation. Branch is growing at a stable rate and slope. Variant identified." "Beg your pardon but I--" "On behalf of the Time Variance Authority, I hereby arrest you for crimes against the Sacred Timeline." "I didn't meddle with time, that would be the Avengers." "You're coming with us." *agents point pruners at him* "It's been a long day, I'm afraid you'll have to make me." *loki's hands start to glow green but B-15 presses a button, freezing him in place. Any sand blowing in the wind or any dust rising has also now stopped. There is a bird stuck mid-flight. B-15 pulls out a collar and places it around his neck. An agent places a reset charge on the ground and activates it, it starts to fizz purple. Time unfreezes and B-15 drags Loki going "hey!" through a temportal, and it closes, leaving the audience to watch a few seconds of the charge going off and the radius of the charge increasing, washing the ground in a bright neon-ish light.

Episode 2: this one is a combination of the Loki episodes 1 and 2. Basically, Loki goes on trial, the TVA has no reason he's committed a crime, but Mobius who had been at the church crime scene saves him and takes him to the memory chamber to break. What gets him to stop acting as if he actually wanted to rule all of space and whatnot is Mobius bringing up the topic of choice in Avengers 1, and asking if Loki knew the mind stone was effecting him too, along with him explicitly asking about the torture which happened before, even during - he pulls up footage - the invasion. Mobius pulls up footage of Frigga and Loki pickpockets the collar remote etc. everything else remains the same, including most of episode 2, with Sylvie fighting to "I need a hero" etc, but C-20 is left behind after being enchanted. When the TVA show up C-20 is tied up hastily in leather belts and rope. She's mostly out of it saying stuff like "it's real, it's all real" but she also says "we're variants, we're all variants" which Mobius obviously brushes over casually. Loki narrows his eyes though, and says stepping out of the renaissance fair tent would have them winding up dead like the agents scattered around here, B-15 calls bluff and Mobius says to wait but the people walking in front of the ones holding C-20 up to take her to the TVA for medical help fall dead upon stepping out. Loki was stalling for time with the wold anecdote, and doesn't tell how he knew the death thing would happen ("I see a scheme, and in that scheme I see myself" "bullsh*t" "it's true. my reflection looks quite good, too." "you *sshole." *he smiles softly, as if t'were a compliment*), and everyone gets back by opening portals from within the tent. The dots between the gum and the apocalypses is drawn, they see Pompeii, end up going to Roxxcart, where we see Sylvie watching the screens, now in her leather gear. B-15 and Loki split up together, the guy at the 'hurricane sale' placed a charge on the shelf but no attention is drawn to that bc Loki and 'Loki' are talking. Sylvie emphasizes that she holds a grudge because he's a traitor, specifically for working for the TVA because they're "condescending time fascists." Loki assures her he knows, and that he's seen the charges around the place. She comes to the realization that he's been undercover/faking. We're shown Mobius and co. finding the room with screens but it's just got Sylvie's random junk, nothing really useful. They talk some more, no physical fighting but the vessel sizes get bigger and Loki calls it 'real mature'. While they still disagree on what to do with the Time Lizards (destroy or overthrow) Sylvie settles on leaving the portal open for him at the end and giving him a chance. She waits for him to go through first, with Loki looking back at Mobius meaningfully determined and then walking through.

Episode 3: Young sylvie is going through the stripping/signing/temporal aura process. She's sent into the court room. she bites and runs out of the room, putting distance before fiddling with the tempad she took, figuring it out, while Renslayer gets stuck answering the Judge. Sylvie appears back on Asgard, but there's already a Sylvie there playing with her toys. a TVA portal opens and she presses another "Asgard" on the device to escape quickly. "I just want to go home," she says to herself, appearing in the same room, but the child is a bit older (a teen?) and a boy and black and reading instead of playing but he's clearly also in green/gold and a loki. the kid turns after hearing her and she panicks and goes through another portal. another one with adult loki in the same room, she looks hopeful as if she could ask for help but then sif walks in with insults and slaps him but spots her. "who's the kid," sif asks and a portal opens up next to her. Agents step through and Sif punches one that does, asking Loki what trick this is now. Sif/Loki fight them while they're still coming through, sylvie presses another asgard but sees a knocked out agent has a tempad on his belt and takes it before running again. no loki in the room, it's empty, but a group of people rush across, talking hurriedly about 'the goddess of death' and 'odin's real heir' and 'thor and loki dead' and 'seeking refuge in the moutains.' Sylvie looks lost. Cue titlecard and cool music. They step into the TVA. Sylvie is determined, telling Loki to hurry because they won't have much time the TVA remains in disarray from the reset charges everywhere, but stops when he says he needs to get a weapon. "Why didn't you use magic to get some earlier," she asks. "Spares," he smiles, "magic doesn't work here after all." Sylvie notes that it explains her last attempts to infiltrate failing so badly. They fight some guards together on the way to the elevator rather than fighting each other. The elevator to the time keepers opens but Renslayer and a bunch of guards are in it waiting. Sylvie grabs Loki and tries to use him as a bargaining tool. Doesn't work, obviously, and Sylvie is shaken upon coming face to face with the same Hunter who had caught her as a kid, she doesn't react in time to stop Loki taking her tempad and dropping them somewhere. Same plot from here, the two of them fighting over the tempad, with Sylvie wanting to go back and Loki telling her they clearly already failed and she should explain what's going on first. She says she doesn't need to and if he wants to help defeat the TVA he needs to trust her and give the tempad back. He makes it vanish and she gets frustrated, asking if he gives up on everything that easily, and maybe that's why he's the first Loki she's seen working with the TVA. Etc. They need a power source anyway and get to the train hoping it'll lead to the ship that won't get off-planet anyway. Loki acts a fool Sylvie naps, wakes up to singing. Sylvie calls him out for not actually being drunk and also he downs a glass and offers her one, and when Sylvie asks how he's paying for it he says it's on the house and points to the barkeeper (male. we're implying/showing flirting. maybe a wink at him or a cute wave.). It's blatantly clear he's trying to get info on her backstory along the way and she's not falling for it but allowing him to know a bit of stuff. (eg. "I know everything is watered down ale for an Asgardian," "watered-down watered-down, more like. But you know of Asgard? Do go on...") She softens at hearing his backstory, and shares hers too. The people appear and ask to see their tickets, everything is the same from here forward. The episode ends with them watching the ship getting destroyed.

Episode 4: different music when sylvie and loki look into each others eyes since i didn't like that. cue titlecard and song after the TVA portals open on Lamentis. this episode remains the same mostly with Sylvie and Mobius driving the plot. No narcissist comment but Mobius gets to act jelly of what Sylvie and Loki have going on. Instead of it just being a bad memory loop with Sif we get her three times and then it alternates to Thor who is also angry. If he's not already down Thor will punch him (even though Loki is just happy to see him bc he didn't think he'd see him again--) and then tell him to hold still so it'll hurt less. It's framed as bad and Thor will imply it's only a fitting punishment. Thor is only shown twice, the first time the scene cuts at Loki being hit and held down, the second is Thor leaving the room, chuckling about how Loki didn't need to talk to anyone anyway bc he's alone, says he'll heal soon anyway. Loki isn't shown, but Thor's fingers have blood on them where they hold mjolnir. the loop resets and Loki is back to standing in the middle of the room and ghosts a hand over his mouth and then Mobius arrives. Loki calls the repeated memory boring and cruel, says he hates when Thor is drunk and feeling rash, with Mobius saying at least he didn't send him to Thanos or something and gave his crotch a break. Sylvie asks what her nexus event was and Renslayer doesn't remember. The end of the episode is the same, with Sylvie 1v1-ing Renslayer and beheading a Time Keeper, Loki getting pruned. The credit scene remains the same.

#note that i didn't plan this beforehand and was making it up as i went and it took... maybe an hour?#maybe an hour and a half #yeah so #first draft idea.#tell me what you think :)#feel free to add suggestions #i'll probably add/change/rewrite on this as more episodes come out #i have a feeling Sylvie wouldn't've left the gum though?#we'll see #the Loki show #loki spoilers #loki show spoilers #i really took episode 4 making loki irrelevant to plot and not getting him character development either to heart i guess #also #if we're making the TVA evil and bad lets go all out and make loki go in a loop to a myth/comic-accurate punishment while at it :)#at least now we haven't downed the angst factor by playing something JUST for laughs #that's how sif can still crotch shot him #repeatedly

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iimpavidwrites · 3 years

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Benzaiten Steel and the Fragility of Perception

or: reasons why setting boundaries is important #1283

I’ve figured out a reason why Benzaiten Steel stayed with his mother instead of doing the “sensible” thing and moving out. I think that it’s possible, too, that Juno has always been aware of the answer but, in the scope of Juno Steel and the Monster’s Reflection, he isn’t able to face it head-on because it contradicts his black/white, either/or sense of morality.

TL;DR: Despite Juno Steel’s unreliable narration we are able to see clearly the enmeshed relationship Benzaiten had with their mother Sarah and the ways in which that unhealthy family dynamic shaped Juno Steel as a person.

Sources: 50% speculation, 20% lit crit classes, 30% my psychology degree.

Juno’s perception of Ben is shallow and filtered through the limitations of human memory. We all know by now, too, that Juno’s an Unreliable Narrator™. In light of this, we need to ask ourselves why it is that Juno remembers Ben as happy, supportive, and only ever gentle in the challenges he poses to Juno. Throughout the episode, Ben’s memory is clearly acting as a comforting psychopomp: he ferries Juno through the metaphorical death of his old understanding of his mother (and also himself) and into a new way of thinking. He does this through persistent-but-kind questions, never telling Juno what to do or how to do it. This role could have been played by anyone in Juno’s life (Mick and Rita come to mind first) which makes it telling that Juno’s mind chose Ben to fill this role.

Juno’s version of Ben is cheerful, endlessly patient with Juno and Sarah, and above all he is compassionate. He acts as a mediating presence between Juno and Juno’s memory of Sarah and he doesn’t ask a whole lot for himself. If this is Juno’s strongest memory/impression of Ben’s behavior and perspective, then we can draw some conclusions about the roles they each played in the Steel family unit: Juno was antagonistic to Sarah and vice versa, and Ben was relegated to the role of mediator for the both of them.

Juno: She’s just evil. Ben: That’s a big word. Juno: “Evil”? Ben: No, “Just”.

We can see in this exchange that Ben is a vehicle for the compassion Juno needs to show not only to Sarah but to himself, too, in order to move on and evolve his understanding of his childhood traumas.

This is not necessarily an appropriate role for a sibling or a child to hold in a family unit.

In family psychology, one of the maladaptive relationship patterns that is discussed is enmeshment. Googling the term you’ll find a lot of sensational results (e.g. “emotional incest syndrome”) that aren’t necessarily accurate in describing what this dysfunction looks like in the real world. This is in part because enmeshment can present many different ways. So, in order to proceed with this analysis of Benzaiten Steel’s relationship with his mom, I need to define enmeshment.

Enmeshment occurs when the normal boundaries of a parent-child relationship are dissolved and the parent becomes over-reliant on the child, requiring the child to cater to their emotional needs and to otherwise become a parent to the parent (or to themself and/or to other children in the family). This is easiest to spot when a parent confides in a child as if they’re a best friend, disclosing details of their romantic life, expecting the child to give them advice on coping with work stress, and similar. Once enmeshment occurs, any kind of emotional shift in one member of the enmeshed household will reverberate to the others; self-regulation and discernment (e.g. figuring out which emotions originate in the parent and which ones originate in the child) becomes extremely difficult for the effected child and parent. When an enmeshed child becomes an enmeshed adult they often have issues with self-identity and interpersonal boundaries. For example, they may struggle to define themselves without external validation and expect others to be able to intuitively divine their emotions. After all, the enmeshed adult could do this with their parent and others easily due to hypervigilance cultivated by their parent and they may not understand that such was not the typical childhood experience. These adults are often individuals to whom the advice “don’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm” is often relevant and disregarded. They may perceive their own needs as superfluous to others’-- and resent others as a consequence.

Another layer of complication is added when the parent in an enmeshed relationship is an addict, as Sarah Steel was. The enmeshed child often times becomes the physical caregiver to their parent as well and must cope with all the baggage loving an addict brings: the emotional rollercoaster of the parent trying to get clean or the reality of their neglecting or stealing from their child to support their habit or their simply being emotionally absent. Enmeshment leaves children with a lot of conflicting messages about their role in the family, how to conduct relationships, and how to define themself.

We only get an outside perspective on this enmeshment in the Steel family. It’s clear in the text that Juno’s relationship with his mother was fraught. He jokes in The Case of the Murderous Mask that she didn’t kill him but “not for lack of trying”, implying that Ben’s murder wasn’t the first time Sarah Steel lashed out at Juno-- or thought she was lashing out at Juno but hurt Ben instead. During the entire tenure Juno’s trek through the underworld of his own trauma, Juno asks the specter of Benzaiten over and over, “Why did you stay?”. This is a question that Juno himself can’t answer because Ben, when he was alive, probably never gave him an answer that Juno found satisfactory. There are a few possibilities, which I can guess from experience, as to what the answer was:

Ben may never have been able to articulate that his relationship with their mother left him feeling responsible for her wellbeing.

Or, if he ever told Juno that, Juno may have simply brushed off this concern. After all, as far as Juno was concerned, Sarah was only ever just evil. To protect himself from his mother’s neglect and codependence, Juno shut down his own ability to perspective-take and think about the nuances that might inform a person’s addiction, mental illness, abusive behavior, etc.

It is likely that Ben thought either his mother needed him to survive or, alternatively, that he couldn’t survive without her-- as if often the case with children who are enmeshed with their primary caregiver. It was natural and necessary for him, from this perspective, to stay. Enmeshment is a very real psychological trap.

It is often frustrating and hard as hell to love someone who is in an enmeshed relationship because, from the outside, the damage being done to them seems obvious. See: Juno’s assertion that Sarah was just evil. Juno is, even 19 years later, still angry about Sarah Steel and her failures as a parent and as a person. His thinking on this subject is very black-and-white. He positions Sarah as a Bad Guy in his discussions with Ben-the-psychopomp and the childhood cartoon slogan of “The Good Guys Always Win!” is repeated ad nauseum throughout Juno’s underworld journey. This mode of thinking serves two purposes:

First, it illustrates the role Juno played in the household: he was opposed to Sarah in all things and Sarah did not require any compassion or enmeshment from Juno. Juno was, quite possibly, neglected in favor of Ben which would create a deep resentment… toward both Sarah and toward Ben. This family dynamic would reinforce Juno’s shallow moral reasoning and leave him with vague, unachievable ideals to strive for like “Be One of the Good Guys” or “Don’t Be Like Mom” -- ideals that he can’t reach because he is a flawed human being and not a cartoon character, creating a feedback loop of resentment toward his mother and guilt about resenting Benzaiten. That guilt would further bolster Juno’s shallow memory of Ben as being infallibly patient, kind, loving, etc.

Second, Juno’s black/white moral reasoning is an in-text expression of the meaning behind Juno’s name. When “Rex Glass” points out that Juno is a goddess associated with protection, Juno immediately has a witty, bitter rejoinder ready about Juno-the-goddess killing her children. Juno was named for a deity who in some ways strongly resembles Sara Steel and he resents that he is literally being identified as his own mother. Juno-the-goddess has one hell of a temper, being the parallel to Rome’s Hera. Juno is not a goddess (detective) who forgives easily when she (he) knows that a child (Benzaiten Steel) has been harmed. This dichotomy of “venerated protector” versus “vengeful punisher” causes psychological tension for Juno that is only partially resolved in The Monster’s Reflection. The tension is not fully resolved, however, because Juno never gets a clear answer for the question, “Why did you stay?”

The answer is there but it is one that Juno doesn’t like and so can’t articulate: Ben is enmeshed with Sarah who named him, of all things, Benzaiten and that is why he stayed. We’ve already seen that names have intentional significance in the text. Benzaiten is hypothesized to be a syncretic deity between Hinduism and Buddhism, is a goddess primarily associated with water. Syncretic deities are fusions of similar deities from different religions/cultures; their existence is the result of compromise and perspective-taking and acceptance. Water, too, is forgiving in this way: it takes the shape of whatever container you pour it into... not unlike a child who is responsible for the emotional wellbeing of their entire family unit. Not unlike Benzaiten Steel.

Ben stayed with his mother because his relationship with his mother was enmeshed, leaving him little choice but to stay, and this ultimately led to tragedy. Sarah Steel’s failures as a parent are many and Juno still has a lot of baggage to unpack in that regard, especially where Ben is concerned. It’s unlikely that we’ll get the same kind of “speedrunning therapy” episode again but I know that The Penumbra is committed to a certain amount of psychological realism in its character arcs so I am confident in asserting that Juno Steel isn’t finished. Recovery is a journey and he’s only taken the first steps.

#juno steel #benzaiten steel #meta #the penumbra podcast #benten steel #sarah steel #psychology #enmeshment #bad parenting #iimpavid writes #chatter #the monster's reflection #the case of the murderous mask

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whimperwoods · 3 years

Text

Part 9 of Gozukk and Anna

Anna has a doctor’s appointment. Gozukk turns down an offer to join the church. Jak helps out.

[Note: One of the d&d canon things I particularly don’t like is that the ‘evil races’ have their own separate evil gods particular to their race. I’m aware that there are halfling and elf and dwarf pantheons also, but the thing is that those generally have deities of multiple alignments (rather than only evil ones) and those communities seem to be allowed to serve any gods they want, in practice. In my d&d world, orcs can too, and this particular tribe, to the extent to which they’re religious, is affiliated with Kelemvor. Not everyone worships him, and there are some individuals with other faiths, but he’s the god they have a shrine and a cleric for/from. (I’m not sure it matters that much from a worldbuilding standpoint, but I’ve taken an overall position of “no-race-specific deities,” which does also throw Moradin and the like out with the bathwater, but that’s probably alright.)]

The masterpost is here and includes a cheat sheet with character names, since the list of people she’s met in the community just keeps getting bigger.

tw: slavery (past), tw: PTSD, tw: past rape/noncon (barely referenced), tw: past abuse, tw: fantasy religion (no religious trauma), tw: panic attack, tw: drug reference (past), tw: date rape drug (past)

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!

Tag list: @redwingedwhump, @nine-tailed-whump, @thehurtsandthecomfurts @kixngiggles, @bluebadgerwhump, @dragonheart905, @carolinethedragon, @whumpzone, @newbornwhumperfly, @cupcakes-and-pain, @much-ado-about-whumping

****

Anna’s legs shook faintly as the healer shouted for her and her master to enter, but she tried to keep her face steady as she ducked under Gozukk’s arm and in through the flap of the tent.

The space was small but comfortable, the furnishings generally not quite as nice as Gozukk’s, with the exception of a smallish but very fine altar, richly carved from solid wood. A set of heavy brass scales sat on it, held up by a skeletal hand, the same image that was carved along its sides, and that she recognized from the box in Gozukk’s room, and a small collection of candles sat around it.

Gozukk knelt briefly in front of the altar, going down on one knee with a quick bow and then rising to his feet again before turning to the healer, Mukzod. “I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about our newest guest,” he said calmly, as if he hadn’t paused at all. Anna felt certain she should kneel, too, but somehow she found herself frozen, unable to move farther into the tent, or to do anything at all.

Mukzod was dressed in dark grey robes, well-made and clean, with the same skeleton-arm scales embroidered carefully across his chest, but looked fresh-faced, too young for such serious, formal vestments. He was a half head shorter than Gozukk but just as wide, with dark messy hair that flopped into his eyes as he nodded toward her and made her shudder and freeze up. He looked almost nothing like Master Kir, but that hair, the length of it, the little flick of his head to get it out of his eyes - her chest tightened with fear, her breath shortening.

The healer’s smile was warm, but she couldn’t slow her racing heart.

“Hello, guest. Anna, is it? Did I hear correctly?”

Her mouth was dry and she couldn’t answer. Gozukk reached a hand halfway toward her, but then stopped and she suddenly, desperately wished he hadn’t, wished she could bury her face in his chest and not see this new stranger, with his new hair, and his new tent. But that was a foolish thing to wish, wasn’t it?

“Yes,” Gozukk answered, his voice softer now, as if to put her at ease even though he was talking to the healer. “You’ve heard right. I already know she’s wounded, but I want to make sure she isn’t also cursed or marked or being tracked.”

“You know, if you just gave a little bit more of yourself to Kelemvor, you could do it yourself,” Mukzod said jovially. “We all know your piety is genuine.”

Gozukk laughed. “For the last time, cleric, a paladin oath is out of the question. The tribe has to come first. You know that. A holy life is not in my cards.”

Mukzod held his hands up, “I know, I know! I only ask because I know you’d be good at it.”

Anna watched the exchange, trying to follow. Kelemvor was - was a god of - of something. Scales. Justice? But no, that was Tyr, everybody knew that. The skeleton, though - the skeleton - her eyes widened, and her body began to shake.

“I - I didn’t realize you worshipped - umm -” Her voice was thin, tense, and surely one of them would bark at her to speak up. She tensed, awaiting a slap for interrupting, or for doing it poorly, or both. Instead, both men turned slowly to look at her, their posture open, hands away from her.

“It’s alright, Anna,” Gozukk said, “He’s not a god of death. He’s a god of the dead, which is something else.”

Mukzod had his hands up, the palms out toward her. “The chief is right. We don’t kill, not unless we have to. Not unless we’re fighting undead things. I’m more about healing. And curing diseases. And burying bodies we find unattended in the desert, which happens a little more often than one would hope.”

She shivered. She’d seen a body like that, had watched the men in the caravan dragging another man’s corpse away from the hooves and wheels that had crushed him to death, only to leave him lying in a heap alongside their caravan route and keep moving at Master Kir’s orders.

She opened her mouth to ask if they’d found the man from the caravan, if they’d buried him properly, but then she couldn’t. What if they thought she’d had something to do with it? She still remembered the beating she’d gotten after they stopped that night, how unsure she’d been whether her master thought she’d done something to distract the dead man, or whether he was just frustrated. She’d known her place. She hadn’t needed to be reminded. She didn’t need to be reminded now.

She sank onto her knees and felt both safer and less safe, in over her head and drowning in uncertainty.

Gozukk knelt beside her again, taking her hands gently in his own, so gently she could have pulled away, but she knew her place, and maybe soon he would realize she knew it and she wouldn’t have to be so scared.

“It’s alright, Anna,” he said, running his thumb gently over her knuckles. “You don’t have to worship him. Plenty of folks don’t. But I do, and Mukzod does, and he’s got some magic that can help you, if that man did anything that’s lingering.” He scowled, but over her shoulder, not at her. “Anything magical, anyway.”

The cleric placed one hand on her shoulder and the other on Gozukk’s and she flinched heavily before she could stop herself.

“Is it alright if I do a quick magic detection spell? If all is well, I’ll won’t see anything, and we’ll know the human doesn’t have any magical hooks into you. If there is something, I’ll have to do some tests, but we can fix that, too.”

His voice was soothing, but she couldn’t look at him, couldn’t look at the hair falling into his eyes, scraping his shoulders around the back of his neck. She was shaking, and she couldn’t stop. She gripped Gozukk’s hands tighter, hoping he would allow her nearer. He squeezed back gently and she scooted forward on her knees until she was close enough to whisper into his ear.

“Please, Sir -” she flinched, but decided not to correct herself and maybe he wouldn’t notice, “I - can I -” He let go of one of her hands and then reached up and brushed her hair behind her ear, a gesture that was increasingly becoming a familiar one. She steeled herself and caught her breath. “May I put my head on your shoulder again, please? Like yesterday, when I was -” she didn’t have a word for what she was, “Please, Gozukk, I’m sorry I’m weak, I just - I can - I can do this. I can be good, please, I just - I need - please.” Her breath gave out, her body shaking even harder.

Yesterday, she’d leaned into him with both of their hands between them, his pressing hers to his chest. Now, he wrapped one arm around her carefully, keeping hold of her hand with his other one and drawing her just slightly closer. “Is this alright?” he whispered into the space between them, “Does this help?”

She shook, and wasn’t sure how to answer, but she knew what she’d wanted at first, knew what she’d wanted, and thought she still wanted it. She leaned her forehead against his shoulder, her breath coming in deep gasps, and he removed his arm from the small of her back as she kept fighting for air, tracing his fingers through her hair at the temple instead.

“It’s alright,” he said, “I’m here to help.”

After a moment of his arm hovering beside her, he let it fall to his side, not touching her as she knelt up against him, watching him breathe and trying to time her breaths to his.

“Are you ready for the spell?” he asked.

She nodded against his shoulder.

“We’re ready, Mukzod.”

Nothing happened. The cleric said a few words in a language she didn’t understand, and then he fell silent, the air in the room unchanged.

“Nope, all clear,” he said after a moment. “Your pendant’s lighting up like a candle, Chief, and the altar, and some of my stuff, so the spell’s working, but she’s not got any magic on her. Not that lingers, anyway. I can try a dispulsion anyway, but as far as I can tell, there’s nothing there to dispel.”

Gozukk leaned his cheek against her temple, sighing in relief. “There we go. You’re safe. Now we know it for sure.”

“I -” Mukzod cleared his throat. “Can I be of any other service? I’d thought you might have come for healing. Or perhaps a calming spell?”

A calming spell? Anna had never heard of that, but as soon as she thought too hard about it, she found herself remembering the times Master Kir had - what had that been - he’d put something in the wine, she’d known there was something in the wine, but he’d made her drink it anyway, made her drink it, made her choke trying to swallow as he forced it down her throat and then he’d - and then he’d -”

She sobbed, her head suddenly spinning, her entire body tingling like there were bees buzzing just inside her skin, and her head on Gozukk’s shoulder wasn’t enough to keep it at bay, wasn’t enough to keep anything at bay, wasn’t - wasn’t -

She grabbed desperately for the front of his shirt, closing her hand into a fist around the fabric and forcing herself to keep breathing. His free hand came up alongside her head, but he didn’t quite touch her, just kept it hovering there, like he was shielding her from the sun. As another wrenching sob tore itself from her throat, she pulled herself closer to him, into that protection, and everything else be damned.

“We’re done for the day,” Gozukk said, his voice rough-edged with anger, like it never was when he talked to her, and she flinched but didn’t dare pull away, couldn’t afford it when he was the only thing steadying her spinning head, couldn’t afford it when it might make him angry, couldn’t - couldn’t - she couldn’t breathe. She gasped for air.

"She’s allowed to feel what she feels,” he snapped at the cleric, “She’s doing fine.”

His own breathing wasn’t quite as steady as she knew it could be, deepening as if he were holding himself together, holding back the snarl she could hear at the edge of his voice.

But then the snarl was gone, and his voice was velvet-gentle again, his hand stroking carefully through her hair. “It’s alright, Anna. You did well. It’s been a stressful day. You don’t have to do anything more. Mukzod just wants you safe, same as me.”

The gentleness was for her. It was just for her, and she was a fool, and she believed it, and she knew she was a fool, but she could feel herself starting to shake apart, could feel the way the buzz under her skin threatened to become the way she felt in the dark, at night, like a fire burning itself out, like she was dying a piece at a time, reducing herself to ash as she went, and she couldn’t. She couldn’t die now, not while she was in a place she was fool enough to half-believe might be better.

“Do you want me to carry you back home?” he asked, his voice still soft, rumbling through his chest and under her cheek, and when had she twisted her head sideways like this, resting more fully on his shoulder? “Or do you want to wait it out here and then we can walk back together? I think you need some quiet for a little bit. You can take another nap, like yesterday. You’re still healing.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, letting go of the front of his shirt, and he took it as an answer, rearranging immediately to gather her up in his arms and cradle her against his chest.

When he rose to his feet still holding her, she didn’t shudder this time, but she wondered if that was only because to shake any more than she was already shaking might be to shake herself to pieces.

The softness in his voice was gone as he looked up at the cleric and ordered, “Open the flap for me,” all of a sudden in control again, the chief whose feet she had been thrown down in front of. But then he was bending his neck to speak softly in her ear again, the gentleness returned to his voice. “Squeeze my neck when you’re ready for me to walk, and we’ll go. Just tell me when you’re steady.”

She squeezed his neck, desperate to be away from here, as if the bees in her skin would leave her alone out in the sun.

They didn’t, but Gozukk let her bury her face in the side of his neck and kept holding her, his arms solid around her and his breath steady, now, soothing.

Halfway back to the tent, small footsteps joined them, a voice she didn’t recognize piping up from below. “Whoa, Uncle Gozukk, is something wrong?”

“Get the flap when we get to my tent, Jak,” he said, the imperiousness gone again, as if it had never been, his voice warm and normal, but without the particular softness he seemed to save for her, and what did that mean? She sobbed in spite of herself, about nothing, or maybe about everything, but her head was full of bees and her skin was full of bees and she couldn’t think.

“She’ll be alright once she has a little peace and quiet,” Gozukk explained, tone patient, “She’s just a little overwhelmed.”

A small hand patted her dangling ankle and she pulled away instinctively before she realized the boy was no threat.

“Oh,” he said, “That makes sense. Does she need a calm down cloth?”

She could feel Gozukk’s chuckle, deep in his chest. “Yeah, that might not be a bad idea. Why don’t you go get one after you help me inside? And then you can go back to whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing.”

“Got it!” The footsteps sped up, then stopped again, waiting for them to catch up.

Anna clung to Gozukk the rest of the way to the tent, relieved when Jak’s footsteps pattered away as soon as she and Gozukk were inside.

The fine chair he’d been seated in to meet the caravan was inside, now, set behind the table in the front room, and Gozukk settled her into it. She grabbed at its arms, surprised, and squeezed them tighter when Gozukk squatted down in front of her to look in her eyes. She couldn’t get out of the chair and down to his level. He didn’t want that. She had to stay. She had to stay.

Her breathing was still ragged, too fast, and she knew it, but she couldn’t do anything about it.

“Anna, can you hear me?”

Everything was still too much, his words clear enough to make sense, but then immediately gone to her, as if they had never been. She nodded, trying to keep hold of the question.

“Alright. You did a good job this morning. I want to make sure you know that. It’s alright if you need to stay in here the rest of the day. I’ll try to come check on you when it’s time for lunch, but if you get hungry before I come back, you can go find Djaana or one of the twins, and they’ll look after you.”

She was breathing. That, she was sure of. His voice was soothing, reassuring, and the things he was saying were reassuring, and she couldn’t make them mean anything. She nodded. Reassuring. He was being reassuring. She could be reassured. She kept breathing.

Gozukk nodded back. Her breathing eased a little. Good. He was pleased.

Jak came running in, and she got a good look at him for the first time. He had the same dark hair as Djaana and Gozukk, but his eyes were a lighter color, a green she hadn’t expected, and even with some lingering baby roundness to his face, she could tell there was something about his cheekbones that must be like his father. Gozukk stuck a hand out to slow the boy before he could run all the way to her, and he blushed, looking bashful.

“Oh. Sorry. I forgot about the quiet.” He held out a damp, white cloth, in her direction, and she wasn’t sure what to do but take it.

The boy’s green eyes stared at her, his arm drifting behind his back so he could wrap his hand around his elbow, still staring. “Thank you,” she said quietly, aware that her breathing was loud and her voice wasn’t.

“Why don’t you explain to Anna how it works, just in case her mama and grandmother didn’t teach her?” Gozukk asked, something of the softness he always aimed at her in his voice as he addressed the boy.

“Yeah!” Jak said, his face brightening! “It’s easy, Miss Anna! You just put it on the back of your neck, and it’s nice and cool so it feels good, and then you just breathe real steady and think about cooling down and noticing that it feels good, and then when it gets dry, you can go back outside and play or try what you were doing again. Or I guess you can - I dunno. What do you like doing?”

She had no answer, but there wasn’t enough time for it to become awkward. Gozukk laid a hand on Jak’s shoulder. “Why don’t you wait and ask her that in a couple of days? You wouldn’t like it if somebody asked you a bunch of questions while you were trying to calm down, would you?”

“Oh! No!” He mimed locking his mouth closed with a key and tucking it into his pocket, and Anna found herself smiling in spite of everything. She put the cloth against the back of her neck to prove she’d been trying to listen, though there was a lot he said that she hadn’t been able to keep ahold of, the words slipping through her fingers as half of her kept getting wrapped up in her own breath.

He was right. It felt lovely, cool and soft. She closed her eyes, half instinctively, and managed a deeper breath.

She could hear a smile in Gozukk’s voice as he said, “Take all the time you need. We’ll be back to check on you at lunch time.”

Then both sets of footsteps walked away, out the door, and she was alone.

She slid out of the chair and onto her knees, where she felt more herself, but kept the cloth where it was, steadying her breathing as much as she could and thinking about the coolness, the dry air pulling water from the cloth, the dampness sitting against her skin, and nobody touching her.

When the cloth dried, she wasn’t calm, but she was close.

#d&d whump #fantasy whump #hurt/comfort #whump #recovery whump #past slavery tw #past abuse tw #ptsd tw #fantasy religion tw #panic attack tw #drug allusion tw #vague rape/noncon allusion tw #drugging tw #Jak was NOT supposed to be in this he just SHOWED UP #he WAS supposed to be at breakfast but he was NOT THERE #this child i swear #also Anna is triggered by mullets because real triggers are weird sometimes but also bc i am a clown all the time #her other doctor's appointment should be hopefully better but might actually just be weirder who knows #Mazogga's older and wiser than Mukzod but she's also old enough to be the boss of Gozukk so she's gonna do what she's gonna do #does this need some kind of a trigger warning for medical? it really isn't medical but maybe?#anyway jak's a good boy and everybody's trying their best and it's just gonna take some time #gozukk's family believes in AUTONOMY and RESPONSIBLE EMOTIONAL SELF-REGULATION #their enemies think orcs are scary because of the teeth and muscles but ALSO because of the CONFIDENCE and SELF-EFFICACY #or something #idk i just love orcs and i want them to have good things #and anna deserves a loving and supportive community #and they deserve an anna they just don't know it yet because she hasn't come into her own yet #but she will one day #in chapter a billion or something because i keep getting ideas for very tiny increments of time after the previous ones #would you believe i thought this chapter might be her visiting BOTH the healer AND the midwife? a clown

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deerth · 3 years

Text

my first mistake in witchcraft

yes i’m going to be petty over religion for a second here.

i have been slowly inching out of the broom closet as i now consciously move on from the atheist mindset to the pagan one. i was looking for more resources to research my path, and i ended up on a witchy server... woe unto me as i try to fit in once more, for it seems that not even witches are unified.

forget about all that shit about garden, cosmos and whatever witches. the religion actually broadly branches into two practices - Wicca and regular witchcraft. so you are primarily the one or the other, no matter what flavour of ritual you practice.

the primary difference between Wiccans and general witchcraft is your belief of whether religion can be used for harm or not. in short, Wiccans state “an it harm none, do as ye will” (as long as you don’t hurt anyone [including yourself], go bonkers), therefore you will not find Wiccans casting curses or hexes. we know the responsibility of our faith and we know that if you radiate bad vibes, it will come right back around to bite you in the ass later. that said, most Wiccans don’t mind witches who do curse or hex. some cultures use practices like voodoo, and even old eastern European practices were not free of rituals that were made to directly interfere with someone’s will (love spells that were supposed to make someone love you). therefore, a disclaimer: I’m not anti-hex. I would not use a hex because I feel that hate will not solve hate, and as long as you’re an adult, I trust you know what you’re doing with your power. maybe you are of an oppressed culture and have good reason to exact revenge on someone who severely hurt you, especially if you have a long-standing tradition of hexes. even Nina Simone sang “I Put a Spell on You” (albeit this is also a love spell). I know curses and hexes and even spells affecting with another’s free will are an inherent part of witchcraft and I won’t deny it. I follow my doctrine, you follow yours, that is fine by me.

what is NOT fine with me, however, is propagating hex culture among minors. why? because minors are not ready to take on that responsibility!!!! just like they are not truly ready to make healthy decisions about sex, alcohol or other substances, they cannot take true responsibility over causing harm, be it spiritual or otherwise. “what’s a little hex do?” you might ask, if you’re a minor. not to sound like a boomer, but when I was 16, I was edgy as fuck. I hated everyone while claiming to love everyone. I was in NO correct mental state to make decisions about the aforementioned things. even without casting any hexes, I made many mistakes. big ones. I hurt a lot of people. yes, I regret it all deeply. I wish I had thought things over rather than stay stubborn. in fact, most people under 20 are not ready to enter discourse, drama or a vicious cycle of hatred purely because it will always turn into “all bite but no bark”. I purposefully say it that way because although youngsters are admirably spirited and ready to take on the world... they often bite off more than they can chew. I see girlies straight out of high school trying to solve huge problems like racism, and although, again, admiring these young people, they have researched their stuff. to an extent, they know what they’re talking about... but I do believe hate will not solve hate.

one of the moderators of said server retaliated with it not being a universal truth, and claimed my take to be “unverified personal gnosis” (what is a verified gnosis, anyway? how do you measure it? especially in a practice like witchcraft where every bloody individual practises it differently and there are no priests or churches?). if the moderator happens to read this and wishes to elaborate, i’d be welcome for a bit of constructive discussion over what is and isn’t personal gnosis. I acknowledge that “hate cannot be fought with hate” is not a universal truth... that is perhaps where I went to the extreme. but believe me, I did not say it to be holier-than-thou. I was actually shocked to be called out by not one, but two moderators on my behaviour, instantly. I did not read in the rules that one would be forbidden to state their opinion or softly disagree, but perhaps it is so and I did not pay enough attention.

there comes another food for thought: is it possible to socialise without being opinionated in any way? would shutting down opinions truly prevent conflict? because I’m feeling very bitter and left out now. I know everyone on that server is not Wiccan. but to get slapped in the face right after I attempted to be friendly (laconic and feeble as that was), among who I considered to be my own people... I feel conflicted. now mind, I’m not going to leave witchcraft behind. it is my religion, and thanks to this experience, I learned that Wicca is the right thing for me. I don’t want to advocate for violence and a vicious cycle of hatred. my grandfather was Romani, therefore I believe I know a thing or two about mislabeling and hate enacted upon minorities and outcast people. does that mean I want to kill and hex every white in sight? the answer is no. if anything, me being both Wiccan and Romani, it would just add fuel to the fire. especially because Romani are stereotyped as evil witches in the first place, so it would be a double suicide. by propagating violence, I would give these people more reason to hate pagans and Romani people. both cultures are already feared and hated upon as it is. I am not going to give people more opportunity to hate me.

coming back to the minor I disagreed with in the server. I was shocked that the first thing that came to a teenager’s mind was a revenge hex. it screams of naiveté and irresponsible behaviour towards your faith. and not JUST your faith. as I am a student of psychology, I am well aware how mind patterns work, and here’s the funny thing: psychology has proven that witchcraft’s law of returns is somewhat true, not on a magickal level, but on a mental one. if you ponder over violence and revenge excessively, you are reinforcing those neural pathways in your brain. there is a reason why they say “hate breeds hate”. it is the same reason why depression is so hard to deal with. anything you obsessively ruminate over reinforces it again and again until escape seems impossible. I’m not only speaking as a witch, I’m speaking as a human being. is it correct to propagate petty violence among minors when we as adults can do better and guide young people to better paths?

I’m not saying young people shouldn’t use hexes. but I am questioning their ability to take on the responsibility of potentially hurting someone, or even just thinking of hurting someone. you plant a seed of hate and it may just grow. you knock on the devil’s door enough times and he will answer (disclaimer: I’m not Christian either, I just like the saying). soon there shall be nothing left but hate. if the person in question had not been a minor, I would have left it at that. but religion is sacred. a witch’s magick is essentially making something important to you sacred. it’s not a plaything. it’s not to be used light-handedly. it’s not a trend. and hexes should be the last resort if all else fails OR the person you hate has a damn good reason for being hated.

is it wrong to vote for love and peace? yeah, I sound like a hippie, but I think they’re right. love was not born from continuing to fight each other - love was born from unity, from coexisting. how does one fight racism? psychology says see more poc, interact with them, understand their struggles. how to fight religious fear? spend time with people of different views. how to get over homophobia? spend time with the gays and try to understand their views, and like, actually understand them. spending time with someone just to berate them is still bigotry. the interaction I mean here is coexisting with minorities in a shared space and them slowly, but surely becoming more accepted and normalised because we finally see them. even a bigot can’t stay a bigot if they are brought out of isolation. if they’re forced to see people different than them.

unfortunately, not even your own faith can comfort you sometimes, mostly because the community is still divided. there are rules on what should and shouldn’t be done, and woe upon thee if you dare to even peep one of your thoughts. I merely said thank you and sorry and left, as I always do when I feel misunderstood. it was a valuable yet harsh lesson, and I regret hoping for acceptance or even offering me a moment to be understood without being shut down without a second thought. I regret hoping for a little discussion where it is seen as a violation of rules.

again, as long as you are ready to bear the responsibility of harming another, do whatever you want. as a Wicca, I prefer staying benevolent and kind, even to those who traumatised me. you might argue that this essay in itself is not benevolent... after all, Wiccans don’t slander people behind their backs, you might say. but it is not my intent to slander. it is just me expressing sheer confusion over what I expected to be a community to hear out all voices, because why have a community at all if you allow for no discussion? do we shut off discussions entirely in fear of fights? but alas, it is human nature to be opposed, but it’s also human nature to still hold hands despite the differences - one just needs to acknowledge it.

blessed be.

#own post #witchblr #witchy #wicca #laconic and gross oversimplifications to this post will not be accepted.#i am naive in my own way for believing people want to be kind #but i do believe that there can be love and peace on the planet earth. as a survivor of hate #i know it.

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galacticdrift · 4 years

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I find myself a little surprised (though I know I shouldn’t be, and really I know I shouldn’t wade into this at all) by how much strongly defensive/positive sentiment there is out there about the Traveler and Jester being his High Priestess and forming a religion around him.

His relationship with Jester is not healthy.

He’s shaped her life dramatically, but for the worse as much as the better. He didn’t encourage her to sneak out and make a bunch of friends, get some healthy socialization, learn about the world and develop a real, nuanced understanding of it. Instead he encouraged her to keep her head in clouds and dreams and stories, to listen to him and only him about the ~secret truths~ of the world and the hypocrisy of its inhabitants. When she first assumed he was a god, he let her go on believing it, because it made her more malleable to him than if he told her the truth. He appeared to her in ways that positioned her to view him not as the incredibly powerful, incredibly ancient, incredibly experienced being that he is, but instead, deceptively, as someone much more relatable. Her own personal god. Just a little older, a little wiser, knowing a little better, always seeming just within her reach if only she’ll keep striving toward him.

He absolutely, and to be clear I don’t mean this in the sexual sense, groomed her into growing up to be his ideal playmate. (Though, the part I’m not entirely sure about is to what extent said grooming was planned or intentional, as opposed to accidental because Artagan is just Like That and doesn’t know shit about interacting with children.)

The best, most healthy and positive outcome for Jester as a character would be, quite frankly, for her to understand that when she was growing up, yes, the Traveler helped her and was a comfort to her -- but he also hindered (or even harmed) her development because he had his own agenda for her life. And subsequently, for her to understand that any kind of sustainable long-term interactions with him would be better off either in a basis of friendship with no power exchange at all, or grounded firmly in the transactional such as with a warlock pact, rather than the current adoration and devotion she gives him as a cleric.

He doesn’t want to be yoked to the obligations of a god. She doesn’t want to only be able to interact with him via the distance and formality of a follower beseeching a god. It’s a situation that’s making them both unhappy, and it’s ultimately Artagan that got them both into it.

She needs to stop seeing him as The Traveler, the idol of her youth, and start seeing him as the complex and powerful individual named Artagan, an archfey and her friend -- just as she’s stopped seeing Fjord as the immutable idealized object of romantic affection from her stories and started seeing him as his full imperfect self (and, if you ask me, patently not as her romantic interest whatsoever anymore). I think that she will make that much-needed break, especially with Artagan now having admitted the truth to her, but it’s going to be a challenging and painful process for her.

In fact, to bring it around to Fjord parallels in closing, there’s a case to be made that the Traveler could even be considered Jester’s Uk’otoa -- a being of great power that came to someone in a time of need and granted aid...with conditions. At least Fjord was already a mature adult when Uk’otoa entered the picture, and Uk’otoa was more upfront and straightforward about what it wanted and expected. Jester was a child, and Artagan an extremely manipulative, chaotic, and bored ancient archfey. The world is lucky Jester turned out as tolerably well-socialized as she did, honestly.

#critrole c2 #jester lavorre #artagan #don't get me wrong artagan's a super fun character #but in the way that he's a hot mess #and hot mess follows wherever he goes #here I go with another hot take on c2 #critical role

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stupid-damn-harp · 3 years

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Notes for “Rural Boys Watch the Apocalypse”

“Your hand’s in mine”

This poem doesn’t explicitly state the relationship between the two boys, and this adds to it. The two characters could be in a romantic relationship, and this choice comes with a variety of implications given the traditional christian liturgy that’s repeated throughout the poem. If this is the end of the world, where will these two gay boys end up? Are they thinking about their afterlife? Are they wondering if they can stay together? Whether they’ll be with their family? There’s so many questions that these boys might be thinking of if they’re in this sort of relationship. They could also just be very close neighbors. Later in the poem he specifies his “doomsday neighbors,” which might be a sign that the other boy and his family might be the other neighbors, or it might have just been explaining the neighbor’s behavior. Another option could be that they’re best friends that are so comfortable with each other that holding hands feels comforting, but not completely natural because the narrator thought it was important to point it out.

“waters turnin' to blood”

The two boys obviously share the same or similar religious views, and are probably at least somewhat learned or devout in their faith. I grew up reading the scriptures and I can’t say off the top of my head what a biblical apocalypse looks like - but this boy can, and relates it to the other boy, expecting him to also understand.

“But there are only the fallin’ stars”

I’m struck that the “only” thing is the falling stars. It’s almost as if he’s saying that the rest of the world has already ended, already vanished from his view and his mind. All he can see is the stars falling, and it doesn’t matter anymore if the rest of the world or the people around him still exist. He’s somehow writing himself and the other boy off as unimportant in the face of this global catastrophe. This line also stands outside of any stanza, forcing us to pay attention to the entire phrase and inviting a degree of separation from the stanzas before and after. There are only the falling stars, and that’s important. More important than what this boy thought would happen, more important than telling where the initial warning came from. The present events hold more weight.

"'Least the weather channel warned us about it,"

I wonder why the weather channel is the one that predicted this apocalypse? He mentions falling stars, which might be under their jurisdiction, but I feel like higher-up governmental agencies would be in charge of announcing and predicting the literal end of the world.

“are loadin' the back”

If the stars are falling, and this is the end of the world, where do these neighbors think they’re going? Where do they think that they’ll be safe?

“under large whitewashed crosses”

This line is especially striking given the religious imagery throughout the entire poem. Jesus was a middle eastern Jewish man, and that’s something that many Christians in America conveniently forget. Many people in this religion spread around views that those with darker skin are children of ham (as we see in the Poisonwood Bible) or suggest that the native american people are really the descendants of the Lamanites, so their darker skin was a curse from God. These crosses that the neighbors are taking with them embody all of these harmful beliefs. The religion itself is whitewashed. The crosses are described as large, and I’m having trouble modulating that size within my own thoughts. On one hand, they have to be small enough to fit within the back of a pickup truck. But, are these crosses large as in “human sized and could be used for their original purpose”? Large as in “larger than handheld so they seem giant, but they’re best suited for yard decorations”? Either way, I’m taking it as a symbol of how contemporary christians take up the most space in religious discussions in America and quite often interpret anything different from their blatantly obvious beliefs as an attack on their faith. Think Boomers yelling about the “war on christmas” type. These crosses are not only whitewashed but they’re large too, visibly screaming to anyone looking in their direction that the drivers of the truck belong to the Christian faith and that they’re going to be confrontational about it. Everything else is stacked under the crosses, giving them the most significance and the most visibility.

“I wanna see ‘em”

Honestly, this line slightly confused me. These women seem quite knowledgeable about the events foretold in the bible. But it’s also stated in the bible that human beings never see angels or God’s true form because we wouldn’t be able to handle it. Surely they must know that? Do they think that these rules will be lifted simply because the world is ending? Are they hoping to see these wonders even though it would have untold consequences on her own mortal form? Don’t get me wrong, I would also love to see an angel in their full and confusing glory, but I don’t have enough of a death wish to actually follow through with that.

“their calloused hands”

Interesting imagery here. Typically angels are described using delicate and ethereal words, or sometimes words that just remind us that angels are spirits and don’t have physical bodies. But the word “calloused.” Calluses imply hard work. Calluses mean rough hands, dirty feet, and tough love. Calluses mean a physical body that is growing stronger. There’s nothing delicate about calluses. There’s nothing inherently holy about calluses. The working class has calluses, and the so-called “perfect” bodies of models and influencersnever have calluses. But here these heavenly beings are, rough hands and all. Perhaps he’s envisioning someone he knows as an angel, and thus opted for the more human-feeling approach. Perhaps he’s hoping that the people of earth are fighting to stay here, fighting to continue living, and the mere act of carrying these writhing and fiery people causes so much work for the angels that they develop these human characteristics of calluses. Perhaps he’s hoping that he’ll become an angel over some darker fate. I’m not sure what implications were intended with this line, but it feels beautiful and wholly human to me, and I love it for that.

“stupid damn harp”

This is the first of two instances where the narrator uses the phrase “stupid dumb” to describe something of the archangel Gabriel’s. Both times he isn’t describing Gabriel himself, just things that he possesses in traditional stories. This could be a nervous boy making jokes in an unsure time as a coping mechanism, but it also could be the author showing his own disillusionment with the traditional christian stories and traditions.

Additionally, the combination of “stupid” and “damn” here is pretty interesting. In Christian mythology, any deity in heaven (e.g. God, angels, Jesus, etc) possesses all the knowledge in the universe. This boy referring to the archangel’s belongings as “stupid” doesn’t reflect this. It almost feels like he wants to criticize the angel himself but he knows there might be consequences, so he settles for calling his iconic harp and tunic the words he wants to call the angel himself. He’s also using the word “damn,” which in biblical contexts typically has hellish connotations. If someone is damned, then they’ve been condemned to hell. The archangel Gabriel is the literal antithesis of that idea, so it’s interesting to see this word applied to anything involving him at all.

“moanin’ like a sinner in hell”

This comparison continues the interesting dichotomy between heaven/hell that we find throughout the poem. The doomsday neighbors’ truck not only holds large whitewashed crosses, but also sounds like someone suffering in hell. Weirdly enough, it seems to give us a view at the sort of Christians that think they’re doing God’s work (holding the whitewashed crosses), but once they get started towards their destination, it becomes more and more obvious that they’re not being entirely truthful (sounding like a sinner in hell).

I’m also struck by the mildness and neutrality in this sentence. Usually when someone’s talking about those in hell, the verb used is “screaming,” not “moaning.” Is this wishful thinking on the narrator’s part, or just a description of the truck’s engine using terminology he already knows? The narrator doesn’t seem to be passing judgement with this comparison either, it comes across as an observation rather than a condemnation of the neighbors’ actions. His family chose not to leave, their family is leaving right now, and those two actions aren’t compared or judged here.

This poem was chosen for the anthology because of the twisted biblical themes tempered by a slight homoerotic vibe. From the beginning of the Abrahamic religions to today, LGBt+ individuals have been left out of religious contexts at best and damned to hell at worst. Given the author’s experience as a gay trans man, I’m reading the narrator and the other “rural boy” as lovers. The poem contains many instances where the narrator invokes sacred and profane imagery in reference to the same objects or beings, and gives a new sort of “hot take’ on the biblical apocalypse - contributing perfectly to the theme of altered religion.

Bibliographical Information:

This poem was posted on Tumblr, and the original source is reblogged below.

#boykeats #rural boys watch the apocalypse #poetry analysis

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readingsbylibramc · 3 years

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birth chart reading for @silkdust

hello! welcome to your reading. I’m gonna give you a quick overview of what I’m going to analyze about your natal chart. feel free to ask me anything if something isn’t clear, of course. you’ll find out your dominants’ influence on your persona, your physical appearance, impression on others and the way you approach the world; your ego, identity, the real you; your reactions, your desires, inner emotions; your way of expressing your feelings, your mind and ideas; your desires and approach to love; your energy tank, instincts and temperament; in-depth analysis of each house with their rulers and analysis of heavy aspects; love life + soulmates/karmic partners interpretation; your relationship with your friends; your family life; your approach to career and work in general + possible jobs suggestion; your style, fashion sense analysis; life purpose and past life description; basic transits’ analysis to describe your current mood and, last but not least, your secret skills, how to make the most out of your soul and manifest what you desire based on your birth chart.

🦋 chart shape, dominants

your chart is a bucket shape, with saturn as the handle of the bucket. your saturn is in the 9th house, hence matters regarding learning, experiences, knowledge and open-mindness will be your priorities in this lifetime. you may travel and learn a lot. you also have clear ideas about your future and who you want to be. even though you may have different passions and talents you’re capable of only sticking to one and mastering it, giving your all.

your dominant planets are jupiter, venus and the moon. you're a very emotional and empathetic person, you always try to be kind to people and you strive to make others feel comfortable with you. yet, you may be a bit impulsive and say things that you don't actually mean. on the other hand, you're very easy-going and kind-hearted, you hardly ever mean to harm someone.

your dominant sign is sagittarius. you have an amazing sense of humor, your personality is so bubbly that it naturally draws people towards you. you're also extremely open-minded, you rarely have prejudices. you have a knack for spirituality, religion, philosophy... anything that can stimulate you mentally.

your dominant element is fire. you have a warm heart, even though it may be covered by your confidence and indipendence. in fact, you always strive for the first place. people may be intimidated by your presence, as you're a serious competitor. thanks to this competitive nature of yours you may be very positive and optimistic, making you a good and supportive friend/partner.

🌎 ascendant in virgo, 1° / 1st decan ruled by mercury

you have a practical approach to the world. you’re kind of logical, it’s hard for you to improvize. you always want to keep everything neat and organized, at least in your mind. you could have a natural coldness to your face. you may seem a bit older than you are, or at least very mature and responsible, even though you may be more outgoing than you look due to your many sagittarius placements. with your attentive eyes, you pay attention to every single detail you see. you’re a perfectionist, and you always want and try to be at your best state. I would say you’re quite competitive when it comes to your goals, but you don’t really do it to be above others. you do it because your obsession for details kind of stresses you out. improving and proving yourself is a way to boost your self-esteem, you feel fulfilled when you can achieve your goals. you are extremely intelligent and logical, you’re always up for a deep talk or simply for an occasion to gain more knowledge. you like being smart, you always want to know about everything. even the latest, trendy meme counts for you. your nature is very cautious; you’re rarely impulsive, you always think deeply about your decisions, as you don’t want to commit any mistakes. because of that, you can be particularly picky. not only with material things such as movies, books, food etc. but even with people. it’s hard for you to open up to someone you don’t know at all. you take things slow, both in friendships and in relationships, just to preserve yourself. you may come off as kind of snobby, but you’re just misunderstood. you don’t like flaky bonds, you need security in your life. physically, as I’ve already mentioned before, you have this kind of strict look on your face. your eyes may be almond-shaped, and you could have a natural feline gaze. overall, you have something smaller about your features; you could have thin lips, a small nose, small eyes… you could have a smaller frame with thin bones. you may be of average height, and I’ve noticed that most virgos tend to have pretty long legs? no matter if they’re tall or not, their legs will still be longer than their bust. but possibly, due to your heavy sagittarius dominance you may still have something bigger or larger on your body, maybe you have wider hips or shoulder or maybe a wide forehead. you may also have almond-shaped eyes or larger lips.

virgo ascendant square sagittarius mercury: you appear as a very intelligent individual, and people may even feel intimidated by that. you love interacting with others; even if you're not much talkative, you like hearing about others' theories and opinions. you could also do that by reading blogs, books etc. you may sometimes find yourself in conflict with others, as you’re very opinionated and hate it when others’ opinions are baseless. pretty much, you could seem like a know-it-all. on the other hand, you have a nice sense of humor, you're able to light up the room with your words, even though this quality of yours may be overshadowed by introversion at first. it's hard to find a way to make you come off as more gentle, as you have some of the most fiery and blunt signs in your chart. the fact that your mercury is in sagittariurs squaring your mars doesn't help either. you could take advantage of your astute words and sense of humor to get you out of troubles, though! just be careful not to claim that everything hurtful you say is a joke. it's something that sagittarius placements do a lot.

🌞 sun in sagittarius, 18° / 2nd decan ruled by jupiter and mars

in life, you strive for freedom and independency. you are an extremely wise person, and you believe strongly in your beliefs. you rarely change your mind, but most of the time you’re an open-minded person. you love learning about anything, and you may also have a good memory. in fact, it’s common for you to be the one who explains things and possibly even leads a group, and this could unluckily make you seem as a know-it-all. you do take pride in your wisdom, indeed. your deep way of thinking is also where your desire for freedom comes from, as you wish to be able to expand yourself through travelling and new experiences. you may also be attracted to foreign things, such as foreign literature, fashion, art, music etc. it’s another way to travel and open your mind, without actually having to leave your house when you’re busy. when you get angry, you can actually get very rude and offensive, even towards authorities. you’re short-tempered, and you despise being told what to do. you’re also a good, loyal friend, and you’re the type to stand up for them and defend them during a fight. you’re very outgoing, especially with people you feel comfortable with, and you probably love talking. you’re able to put a smile on others’ face just by telling your stories, even though you never truly go in-depth. in fact, you have a shy side to you that makes you more secretive, regardless of your friendliness.

sagittarius sun square virgo moon: you're the type to start lots of projects, always feeling like you need to transform yourself or your routine. you're very self-aware of your identity, as you're constantly in contact with your feelings. you may even appear as too emotional, as the sun brings all your emotions out to see. this placement most likely makes it hard for you to make choices, you are very indecisive; on one side, your sagittarius sun wants to make new experiences, you're all about the risk. your virgo moon, on the other hand, wants everything to be planned, you despise going with the flow as you feel the need to have everything under control. as a result, you may change your mind often, and people could possibly picture you as shallow or unpredictable. you're interested in knowing more about your roots, your childhood, and also about having a family in general. when you were young, you probably were even more energetic than now. you could be the type to look nostalgically at your old pictures, and you care about your mother a lot. you're also very interested in your own culture; you're not afraid to show the world your interests, reactions and opinions. the problem with this square, especially with the moon being in virgo, is that the individual may become so self-sufficient at the point that doesn't let anyone interfer in their life. it's obviously a good thing to do when someone tries to hurt you, but there's the risk it may happen even with people that are trying to help you if not well-developed. last but not least, your parents' relationships might have had impact on your growth. maybe they're divorced, and one of them had to compensate for the missing parent; perhaps, one of them was highly influenced by the other.

sagittarius sun square pisces jupiter: this is a hard aspect, which could make you feel even more proud of yourself due to your sagittarius sun. you may feel like the universe is constantly against you, you may feel unlucky, or even overindulge in things you like to cope with sadness or anger. you may have the tendency to overeat, buy useless things etc. you go from having a low self-esteem, to even looking very bossy without even realizing it. you struggle to keep your identity balanced, even though you might have not been aware of it at first. to achieve fortune and joy in life, you need to work hard for it. to do so, you have to learn your karmic lessons in this lifetime, which probably revolve around family issues and their impact on your interactions with others.

🌙 moon in virgo, 24° / 3rd decan ruled by mercury and venus

this is the most romantic virgo decan. you want to have everything under control, you can't bear not being organized. you most probably write down your appointments and stuff on an agenda, or perhaps even in the notes app of your phone. you're extremely precise, you want everything to be perfect. mixed with your virgo rising as well, you probably care a lot about your appearance; you most likely have a skincare routine, workout... just anything that makes you feel healthy. you love taking care of yourself, especially of your hygiene. you also put a lot of effort in your outfits, you fear not being at your best state. you're a perfectionist, after all. this also project in your home environment; you may clean your house thoroughly, it's most likely all neat. in addition, this mania of yours of being perfect makes you have high standards; in fact, you need people in your life that try as much as you do. you despise lazy people. you probably have a reputation for always being calm and elegant, as you try to avoid conflicts as much as possible. you're very smart and insightful, and you strive for perfection; you want to prove your power to yourself, as it helps you boosting your self-esteem. in fact, it depends a lot on your achievements; if you don't meet your expectations, you start going through a hard time of insecurity and struggles. you love communicating, but you may struggle to find the right words, especially with your mercury squaring mars. your eyes talk for you, though. you're also very introspective, and you're fond of art and creativity in general. you're very critical, both of yourself and of others. you don't do it with malice, though, but as I've already mentioned you want to frequent people that try to be at their best all the time, just like you after all.

virgo moon square sagittarius venus: there are contrasting feelings in your relationships with others; after all, your virgo moon wants to commit to someone and be loyal to them. on the other hand, your sagittarius venus wants to be free. you don't want to feel tied to someone, you still need your independency. those two desires of yours probably contrast each other, stressing you out. you want a calm, almost boring relationship, but with this placement you can't seem to have one. your feelings and self-esteem may depend a lot on your relationships, not only with your lovers, but also with your friends. if someone isn't loyal to you, you immediately start blaming yourself. in your life you may lack intimacy, and while it may make you feel better at first, based on the rest of your chart you actually need someone on your side. you can't do everything on your own. it's very challenging, but you need to find someone that projects your ideals of love. if you need a free-spirit, go look for one. it may take you a while, but if you learn all the lessons you need to learn from your breakups, you'll be able to live a peaceful life with your spouse.

virgo moon opposite sagittarius jupiter: you enjoy making different experiences and living your life to the fullest, making you also a risk-taker. you may lack self-control, even though I don't really think you struggle with being cautious with all this virgo energy in your chart. with this trait you get bored easily, and you may have a reputation for being flaky. you tend to overindulge; you may spend too much money, or even develop eating disorders like binge-eating. at least, you're able to build your life again and have a fresh start, but you risk to get stuck in this cycle. you have the potential to master different talents, but you may struggle to develop them due to this placement. you're a procrastinator, and you find it hard to focus on more things at the same time. you may also attract people with different beliefs and ideas from you, causing you to fall out with them easily. there are also positive sides to this placement, though! you're probably naturally lucky, even though luck may not always be by your side. you have a nice sense of humor, making you more likeable to contrast your scorpio rising.

🗣 mercury in sagittarius, 1° / 1st decan ruled by jupiter

you say things impulsively, you're bluntly honest, and this could often hurt people around you. in addition, you like having the last word, despite being proven wrong sometimes. you have a knack for wisdom, you love being and looking smart. you're the type to spend the whole day reading and analyzing philosophical quotes and then make them your own, applying them to your life. you want to be and feel experienced, hence you may inform yourself about a variety of topics just for the sake of knowing them, perhaps you're not even that much interested in them. you could go from talking about politics to astrology, your mind is quite messy but still very full. you may possibly have a youthful voice, and sometimes you can speak in a loud volume without even realizing it. you may also exaggerate your words a lot, for example you might have got a single scratch on your cheek and call it a gash. you could possibly also be the type to joke over your own feelings, and then obviously get mad at others when they do the same with you. your mercury is also retrograde, hence you're not much talkative, you're more on the introspective side. you may have troubles communicating your thoughts clearly, or maybe you're the one who may misunderstand/mishear what others say to you.

sagittarius mercury conjunct sagittarius pluto: you may become a bit manipulative. you probably don’t even realize it, though, as you have the ability to make people do what you want them to do. you probably love being right, especially during arguments, and you always manage to be so thanks to your skills. your words are like knives for others, they can truly cut deep through their ego. you’re direct and blunt, as you just say what you have in mind with no filters. you can develop a provocative attitude without even realizing it, which can obviously cause you conflicts. you need to be more careful about how you communicate your ideas, otherwise you could seriously damage other people’s self-esteem. on the other hand, if you acknowledge your flaws and work on them, this can actually turn into diplomacy. take advantage of your interest in your inner self to find out how to be a bit more gentle in choosing your words.

❤️ venus in sagittarius, 29° / 3rd decan ruled by jupiter and the sun

people may consider you flaky, as you value freedom above all. you may be the type that likes making new experiences regarding love, and you often date your crushes. yet, you feel too limited in a relationship. you don't enjoy committing to someone if that someone isn't perfect for you, you're only completely loyal to the one you consider your true love. you can't give up your freedom, your thirst for adventure and experiences for someone else. basically, your ideal partner would be a risk-taker, someone loyal but not too clingy, that is down to go on a road trip in every moment. someone impulsive, that could help you stepping out of your comfort-zone. you're probably into those youthful love stereotypes, e.g. high school dates. you want your relationships to be filled with excitement, you despise boring, traditional and cheesy things. you may also find yourself being attracted to unavailable people; that is, you could fall for people that are already taken, or maybe they're physically unavailable, e.g they live abroad or in another city in general. you're also attracted to foreigners, and people that have a wise, yet bubbly aura around them.

sagittarius venus square libra mars: you are very serious when it comes to love. you seek intense, long-lasting relationships, filled with both romance and passion. ironically, you tend to attract people that are the opposite, who are only looking for fun and casual romance. that could afflict your self-worth significantly, as you feel unlucky in love. this is also another placement that indicates that one of your parents, probably your father, or still anyone of the opposite sex probably influenced your approach to romance and sex. there are different scenarios I have in mind, but I'll talk about it later in the family life section.

sagittarius venus square pisces jupiter: you come off as a very positive, happy-go-lucky person. you're extremely friendly, and this makes you good at social relationships. you may have lots of friends, or at least you have the potential to make many if you opened up and talked to them. yet, while this energy gives you positive vibes, some people may take advantage of that, as you could easily be mistaken for naive. people can try to dominate you unconsciously (sometimes even on purpose) not only in relationships but even in friendships. aside from that, I don't think this placement causes you many problems. you may have the tendency to procrastinate and not work. you could be quite lazy and get easily distracted, as you're constantly with your head in the cloud. yet, thanks to your virgo energy, you still manage to find some motivation to do your work.

☄️ mars in libra, 7° / 1st decan ruled by venus

there’s this stereotype that libra mars people are passive-aggressive. it may be true, but only partially. in fact, you try to avoid conflicts exclusively when you’re in public, or maybe with someone you don’t know well. in that case, you can eventually try to avoid the problem. with people you’re close to, you’re pretty much the opposite. you may say the worst of things that you probably don’t even feel, you may even have the istinct to throw hands. you’re driven by a strong sense of justice, and you probably were the class’ snitch during daycare/primary school. you also strive for equality, hence you may get very defensive when it comes to proving your innocence, or just really anyone’s. overall, you’re a fair person with strong morals, who acts based on the situation you’re in.

🏡 houses

your 1st house is in virgo. you appear as someone intelligent, possibly judgmental and critical. in fact, you’re a perfectionist, and most of the time you appreciate it when someone takes care of themselves just as much as you do. you’re also particularly pessimistic, and this could be annoying for those around you. you’re very logical, you probably lack intuition just like you lack water in your chart. you’re very pragmatic, and you may even be judgmental, but this energy is probably mitigated by your jupiter dominance, which makes you more open-minded and flexible. the ruler of the 1st house is in the 4th house: you come off as a very private, yet mature person. you may be quite secretive, or at least you only prefer to share your persona with those around you. you probably love your family, they're the centre of your life and you'll also be very fond of your future family as well.

your 2nd house is in virgo. you have a practical approach to money; even though you may like spending and shopping, I see you being careful with them, and you may even have track of them through an agenda or something like that. you feel the need to be perfect, and that can cause you self-esteem issues. with your heavy sagittarius energy, I assume that this manifests as sudden bursts of insecurity or of confidence, your image of yourself fluctuates a lot. you take pride in your intellect, you are very proud of your ideas, theories and opinions. you could also make money from communication of any kind. you could be a stewardess, as well as a writer, a singer... with mars placed in this house, I feel like you may be very fond of money. you could do something just to earn material things from it, like money or any other good that satisfies your wants. you may be quite materialistic, you enjoy the finer things in life, or at least you want to be financially stable. you like the idea of saving money, but ironically you may be too impulsive when it comes to finances and spend money in random things you may not need. the moon here also gives you materialistic tendencies; you may struggle to show your feelings with words, you tend to show your feelings through material things such as gifts. you're probably the type to say I love you through gestures instead of words. the ruler of the 2nd house is placed in the 4th house: your future career may include 4th house matters; that means that you could follow your parents’ steps and work in their same field, for example, or maybe even follow their studies. you could possibly work with families, e.g as a counselor, or perhaps in real estate. it could also symbolize that you're going to marry someone wealthy, and hence you'll have a rich family.

your 3rd house is in libra. it's most likely common for you to include other people in your thoughs and speech. for example, you may often find yourself talking about your partners, your friends, neighbors, celebrities... you probably also like gossips. this placement, on the other hand, gives you an opinionated, even poetic mind. you could be interested in literature for example, and you most likely were good at school. your mind and words are your energy tank, what satisfy you the most. you may talk a lot about different topics of any kind, from childhood to videogames, but you never get boring. you're always entertaining to listen to. with the ruler of the 3rd house being in the 4th house, you may often talk about your childhood. you may have lots of memories that you're able to remember, and hence you may tell them frequently to your loved ones.

your 4th house is in scorpio, with also your sun, venus, mercury and pluto sitting in this house. your relationship with your family is most likely very intense, but not necessarily good. it could be that your parents were quite overprotective of you, you felt judged and restricted from acting the way you wanted. or perhaps, they were emotionally distant, your childhood lacked affection. you probably had to grow up sooner than other kids, and it could be that you first came in touch with plutonian topics (drugs, spirits, sex, death etc.) at a young age. you were more mature from this point of view. in addition, it's also probably that your parents were particularly overprotective, and hence they could have limited you from making experiences. this challenging childhood of yours is most likely the cause of your unstable self-esteem, and perhaps you also have troubles with long-term goals and dreams too. still, with most of your personal planets in the 4th house, you are still very attached to your family. you may have good memories of your childhood, even though you had to undergo lots of hardships you are still optimistic about it. after all, you learned how to transform and to be a better person through these experiences, making you more mature to approach life.

your 5th house is in the sign of capricorn. capricorn usually brings a feeling of seriousness to the house it’s in. I don’t think it’s your case, though. in fact, neptune, is also placed in this house. you could be a bit more introverted, probably you’re not the type to frequent clubs, parties, etc. you’re more serious from that point of view. your hobbies could actually drain your energy for you; let’s suppose you’re into videogames. you could literally spend the whole day playing videogames, as you take your hobbies very seriously. you’re not the type to start a project and then leave it, and it could be helpful considering that your sagittarius sun gets bored very easily, you’re very resolute. also, you most likely have 'mature’ hobbies; you could be into politics, economy, history… you could be into slower types of music, for example, or perhaps you like reading about world issues. with your children you may be quite strict, as you see them as a responsibility. also, you may often be attracted or attract older or more mature partners. you’re most likely a very romantic and artistic person, you may be fond of music, dancing, singing, acting… anything creative that stimulates your senses. yet, you may be a bit picky when it comes to hobbies; you probably only like reading specific types of books, you only listen to a certain music style, and so on. you may also be into spirituality such as psychology, astrology, law of attraction, yoga, mediation, etc.

your 6th house is in aquarius, with also uranus placed in this house. people with aquarius in their 6th house need to change their routine throughout your life. probably, when you were you younger they taught you things that aren’t healthy for your body and health. you may have to change your diet, your medicines… also, you may sometimes procrastinate in your day-to-day life. I don’t think you do it too often, but it may still happen due to your sagittarius dominance in your chart, but for example you wouldn’t mind skipping a day of school or work to play videogames. this placement also indicates that you may often come across unpredictable events in your daily life. you may often see strange, unordinary things, or perhaps it’s your routine that is like that. you may lack consistency when it comes to diets and health, for example; you may start a diet and keep it for a month, then you get tired and drop it all of a sudden. you could also develop unexpected diseases. you may pursue a career that looks unexpected for you at first, something that you never thought you'd do. it will most likely be a creative, artistic job. it will be a very pleasant job, it won’t even feel like a duty to you as you’ll choose a job that you like and that you’re passionate about. regarding your health, throughout your life you may often come across sudden health problems, illnesses may come out of nowhere.

your 7th house is in pisces, with also jupiter placed in this house. with this pisces descendant, you attract people that are pretty much very intuitive and soft; they could have pisces placements, or at least they’ll be extremely artistic and emotional. yet, you may as well surround yourself with 'broken’ people. that is, people that aren’t exactly in the best state of their health, whether physically or mentally. neptune, the ruler of this house, is in the 5th house. since in your chart the 5th house represents your job too. you’ll most likely meet your future spouse at your work place. you could pursue the same career, they could be a customer of yours… or perhaps, you could meet them in a fun situation, like a party, a vacation, a night out… any situation where you’re supposed to be chilling and having fun, you may meet your future spouse there. with jupiter in this house, you may meet your future spouse at school, or maybe even directly abroad. they may be foreign, or at least they’re able to speak a different language from yours. they could also have a different culture/religion. also, in a relationship you probably hate feeling suffocated. while your pisces descendant may make you enjoy skinship, you may sometimes also need your space, you still need your freedom, especially since your dominant sign is sagittarius. overall, this placement also indicates that you may have more than one marriage, or in general you’ll date many people. you could also be quite lucky when it comes to love, and you only tend to attract the positive side of your pisces descendant.

your 8th house is in pisces. you may have many dreams, you’re very artistic and creative. yet, due to this placement, you struggle to let this side of you out and make it concrete. since you have a strong virgo dominance in your chart, I assume that the reason for this blockage is your rationality. you’re way too logical, and you don’t leave space for your imagination. that’s probably caused by the fact that you’re afriad of being seen as a failure, and hence you don’t really go out of your comfort zone when it comes to your ideas. to reach your state of happiness, you need to turn what you dream about into reality, just like the fact that the ruler of the 8th house is in the 5th house confirms: you have 8th house-related hobbies, such as astrology, horror, occult, sex, psychology… or perhaps, you could work in one of those fields. you may also handle someone else’s money, hence you could work in a bank. this is also another placement that indicates that you're not the type to be extremely extroverted, you'd rather stay alone than in others' company.

your 9th house is in aries, with saturn sitting there. you have a joyful, child-like approach to adventures. you strive for freedom, you want to be your own boss. you don’t want others to tell you what to do, but saturn here may make you struggle to achieve your individuality. perhaps, during your childhood, you were restricted from acting the way you wanted. it’s like your ideas were disrespected, and you weren’t allowed to embrace them, or perhaps you were afraid of the consequences. it may be that when you try to break free from what you consider to be a limitation, you may come across a few struggles that could possibly hurt you. luckily, this is an aspect that will naturally get better time with time as you get more mature. in addition, saturn is well-aspected, so you don’t really have to worry about anything in particular. the ruler of the 9th house is in the 2nd house: you may be interested in foreign languages, and you may actually be able to speak one, or at least you are skilled enough to learn one. you’re also very open-minded. you could actually earn money from this interest in foreign languages and cultures, you may work abroad or maybe as a translator. you could also earn profit from writing of any kind and / or teaching.

your 10th house is in taurus. when it comes to work, you’re quite materialistic. you want to earn a great income from your job, you aspire to be wealthy, and luckily with your virgo dominance you probably don’t lack ambition. yet, as I’ve already mentioned in the previous sections, you shouldn’t procrastinate nor be lazy, you should break free from your limitations and work hard to visualize and achieve your goals, or it may be hard for you to have a stable career life. you may be attracted to artistic careers, such as designing for example, or even stuff like food. you could be a singer, a rapper, a writer… even a therapist or a counsealor, as well as an actor or comedian. you would do well at a variety of things to be honest! but make sure that you understand who you want to be.

your 11th house is in cancer. this placement indicates that your friends, they’re your comfort-zone. you feel understood when you’re with them, they’re pretty much like a family to you. you can tell them anything, you put all of your trust in them. or at least, if you haven’t met anyone like this yet, you’ll surely meet a friend that is like a soulmate to you. they’ll also be very important for your growth. in addition, it could also be that you’re still friends with someone from your childhood or even high school days, and hence you could literally grow up together. you could also have some step-siblings. the ruler of the 11th house is in the 2nd house: since your 2nd house is in virgo, you could befriend people that are quite similar to you, mentally or maybe even physically. your friends may come from abroad, they may be able to speak more than a language just like you do. or at least, they’re also very open-minded and intelligent. you may also meet them in school / college or even work. in fact, you may earn money from or together with your friends, perhaps you may work together. or at least, when you're with your friends you feel much more secure, it's probable that you act more confident when you're with them.

lastly, your 12th house is in leo. this is kind of a tricky placement, as leo rules the self, the ego, and the 12th house rules fears. you could be afriad of being too confident, of feeling worth it, or even just by being in the spotlight. perhaps, you have stage fright. this fear of embracing your persona makes you very insecure, even though you probably don’t show it. also, since your 12th house is the house of dreams, you could often make dreams that involve yourself. you hardly ever dream of someone else, and if you they’re probably your lovers, possibly your friends. you may also make daydreams or sleeping dreams of creative, utopic scenarios. the ruler of the 12th house is in the 4th house: your family may also be somehow involved in spiritual matters; they may be into psychology, astrology, tarots, religion… you may even have sleeping as a hobby, you could sleep a lot to relax. you could also enjoy yoga, meditating and doing charity work. you could also make dreams about children, about your childhood or about your family.

❤️ love life, soulmates

in love you attract scorpio, sagittarius, pisces and capricorn placements. your future spouse will most likely have scorpio and sagittarius traits placements, maybe a scorpio - sagittarius cusp. they’ll be very assertive, bold and confident, but also with a warm heart and a hidden insecurity to them. as I’ve already mentioned before, you may meet them during a fun situation, hence at a party, during a vacation, in a restaurant, at a concert… also, your spouse will most likely be one of your soulmates, and hence once you meet them you’ll probably have this 'I’ve already seen you before’ feeling. they’ll seem very familiar, and you’ll find emotional comfort in them. your children will most likely have strong capricorn or pisces traits: they’ll be very hard-working and ambitious, but also very funny and warm. also, they’ll be extremely creative and more mature as time goes by.

👶🏻 family life

I won’t say much in this section as I’ve already talked about your childhood in the 4th house section. anyways, your mother was probably the most dominant figure in your family. she was very intense, even scary at times, especially when she got angry. she might’ve also been very possessive or overprotective. she could have scorpio, gemini, virgo, leo, libra or aries placements in her chart, as well as taurus. as for your father, he was more laid-back, but probably very stubborn and also quite protective too. he may have taurus or libra placements in his chart. if you have siblings, your relationship with them may be quite pleasant. probably, you used to get along very well with them, it was pleasant for you to hang out and talk to them. they could have libra or taurus placements in their chart.

📊 career

luckily, there are many aspects in your chart that indicate that you’ll be able to earn a big amount of money from your future job. it will most likely allow you to communicate your feelings, and it will also be the key to finally achieve a stable relationship with your self-image and worth. there are strong placements in your chart that point out to acting and writing talent, as well as singing talent. you’re just a very charismatic speaker, so I’d suggest you to take advantage of this natural talent of yours to earn money, luck and self-esteem. as I've already mentioned above, you'd do great at jobs that require teaching, hence you could become a teacher or a professor, as well as writing of any kind, especially creative writing; you may write books, poems, or maybe articles for fashion magazines. careers that allow you to interact with others and talk about feelings are also recommended, hence you may do well as a nurse, as a therapist, etc.

👕 fashion sense, style analysis

your sagittarius energy screams grunge! you probably love 90s/00s aesthetic, with fishnets, black, burgundy, belts, leather jackets... all of this stuff. also, oversized clothes are a must for you. you may especially be fond of wearing tight tops with baggy jeans or viceversa: tight pants, possibly leggins, with big, long sweatshirts and t-shirts. it's very comfortable, but you still make it look trendy and particular with your charisma. you may also love printed things, especially graphic t-shirts. for shoes, I'd say trendy sneakers and boots are a must in your wardrobe.

👁 past life, life purpose

in your past lifetime, you used to put your spirituality aside for a while to focus on finding out your identity here on the earth. you learned how to be responsible, healthy and stable on the earth. you know your values, and they’re already very grounded, you’re very mature from this point of view. in this lifetime, you now need to get more in touch with your spirituality. you need to get close to your higher self, and you may actually be quite skilled at it; probably you may interpret your dreams, you could be interested in religion, what’s beyond the world, and you’re most likely also interested in astrology and other occult matters. you’ll finally be able to reach happiness and fulfill your soul when you start having awareness of your soul’s purpose. since you’ve booked a reading, I’m sure you’re already on the right path, so keep going this way.

🤔 major transits analysis / february 27th

tonight's virgo moon will have huge influence on you as your moon sign is virgo, and it's also conjunct your ascendant! a new moon represents new beginnings, and hence it's the perfect time to start making effort to change your mindset or your appearance, in your case. if you want to start a diet, a workout routine, this is the best time for you. in addition, it's also a good time to evolve your mindset, you could start being a bit more optimistic and it's also a good time to manifest or start manifesting. beware of sudden health issues, though!

🧿 manifest what you want, secret skills

the best way for you to manifest is idealizing and acting at the same time. you have both energies combined in your chart, which is great actually! I’d suggest you to first picture what you want in your life, and then do something concrete to manifest it. for example, let’s suppose you want this gucci bag; first, think about it deeply. then, you could try going into a gucci shop and just walk around, maybe even touch that bag. you’ll get results if you believe it! it’s also great to write and read/listen your own positive affirmations, such as 'I love my gucci bag’, 'the gucci bag my mom gave me is amazing’ and so on.

this is the end! thank you again for booking a reading, hope it resonated <3 -libramc xx

if you want to book a reading like this one, check my pinned post!! :)

#astrology

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oopshidaisyy · 4 years

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July Fic Recs

a little late but here we go!

praying for sparks in the dark (in the heart) by susiecarter "Him," the Bat repeats, in a low and deceptively soft growl. "I don't know who he was," the man says immediately, taking this cue and running with it. "I don't, honest. Honest, I swear to god. Nobody did. He just showed up, that's all. Asking about you, asking everybody what they knew, if they'd ever seen you, what you'd done. Metropolis," the man adds belatedly. "He had that look, you know? Clean. Said his name was—Carr, or Kemp, or something. Something like that." (Or: in a universe where Bruce becomes aware that someone's looking into the Batman, he goes to the effort to track down Clark Kent. It doesn't play out quite the way either of them expected.) Clark/Bruce, 20k, E

having let go forever the fallacy of ever being alone by gyzym This time there are shitty dogeared paperbacks Arthur wouldn't be caught dead reading piled on the coffee table, and half-finished crosswords tucked into the bookshelves, and the far wall is hung with that tapestry they'd bought in a shit part of London on a whim. This time they've spent all day fixing their sink and there's a mug of yesterday's tea sitting on top of the television and it's not just Arthur's living room at all. Arthur/Eames, 16k, E

A Sure Thing by lightgetsin "Okay," Peter says, and there's a rasp in his voice. "Repeat after me: theft is not foreplay." Neal/Peter, 3k, E

perfect strangers by susiecarter Batman and Superman are fucking. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are a great cover for fighting crime, and also might be dating. Bruce and Clark have no idea what they're doing; but they definitely aren't going to be able to talk themselves into stopping. Clark/Bruce, 15k, E

run to the river (dive in) by susiecarter MoS AU: With one successful fishing season already under his belt, Clark's finally getting comfortable on the Debbie Sue. He just wishes this guy Dixon hadn't signed on with them, because the way he watches Clark is really starting to give Clark the creeps. (Or: Bruce goes undercover looking for enhanced individuals before BvS instead of after—and finds one.) Clark/Bruce, 5k, M

Took Me By Surprise and Then by thehoyden After the second surgery in New York, Charles doesn’t anticipate anyone keeping vigil by his bedside — and certainly not Tony Stark. Charles/Erik, 5k, T

as to which may be the true by susiecarter It isn't difficult to go on in the wake of Superman's death. His resurrection, though, poses a problem—especially when it turns out there's no such thing as the right moment to explain that Martha Kent's obnoxious billionaire friend? Is also the man who tried really hard to shove a kryptonite spear through Clark's face. Clark/Bruce, 53k, M

Blue Devils by VillaKulla /blo͞o ˈdevəl/ noun, inf: a feeling of despondency, depression, or low spirits origins: Old American West Billy/Goody, 4k, M

Spree by thingswithwings "So, okay, Britta," Annie says, "this thing you gave me is seriously just a scrap of ripped looseleaf that says 'IOU one shopping spree at A Woman's Touch.' I do not even know what that is." Britta does an excited little leap in the air and claps her hands. "It's me deciding to help you discover your true womanhood." Britta/Annie, 4k, E

embroidery appreciation by Annie D Written for an anon on tumblr who requested Natasha and Tony as brotp, or Steve/Tony being schmoopy in love. This is a bit of both. Tony & Nat, 1k, T

and every map is blank by gyzym It's -- topography, Carlos thinks, of a person, of two people, it's so complicated, it's so much easier to just go it by yourself. He doesn't want to hurt Cecil but he doesn't want to keep any part of himself from Cecil, either, and it scares him that that's true, and it scares him to know it's what Cecil wants. Carlos/Cecil, 7k, T

trothplight by arriviste “What a metaphor,” Grantaire said bitterly. “I may dress your windows, but no more. We’ll greet each other in the streets, but you won’t admit me to your chambers or your hearts. I know all the words, all the empty speeches one needs to mouth for membership – I can rattle them off as well as you. Want me to prate Hébert or praise the Supreme Deity? Quote Rousseau or Marat? I can mum them; I don’t, because I don’t mean them, and because I’m an honest sceptic, I’m untrustworthy.” Enjolras/Grantaire, 4k, E

A-Wing, X-Wing, Y-Wait, B-Mine (Please) by ester_inc Finn keeps finding himself in situations where – no, wait, let's start over. Poe keeps ending up shirtless, nearly shirtless, or soaking wet, and somehow Finn is always there when it happens. The universe is either taunting him with what he can't have or rewarding him for good behavior, and Finn can't decide which is more likely. Either way, he's emotionally unprepared for, oh, let's be honest here: Poe's entire existence. It's fine. No big deal. He's working on it. Finn/Poe, 7k, E

Just Give Me Moments by barricadeur Enjolras comes home from a protest to a not-empty apartment. --- "What happened?" Grantaire says. His other hand grips Enjolras's shoulder, as if to keep him from pulling back, but Enjolras is so tired that the energy necessary to break away seems monumental. He lets Grantaire inspect him, says only, "I hit my head." "On someone's fist?" Enjolras/Grantaire, 1k, T

The Rare Gift by triedunture The prompt was "Dean receives an . . . unusual . . . Christmas gift from Castiel." The gift turns out to be wings. Dean/Cas, 4k, M

i love you now like i loved you then (this is the road and these are the hands) by theappleppielifestyle Somewhere in their phone calls after Derry 2.0, Richie and Eddie had decided to finally take that road trip. Richie would fly in from LA, then they’d drive back there from New York. It’ll be just like it could’ve been, Richie had said once. (Or, Eddie and Richie resume.) Richie/Eddie, 6k, M

i guess i should say thanks or some shit believe it or not, charles has a well-thought-out moral philosophy. he doesn’t follow it. but he has thought it out. alternatively: charles and erik douche it up in amsterdam. Charles/Erik, 17k, M

this is your sword, this is your shield by susiecarter Post-BvS, Diana and Lois start to develop a habit of protecting each other. But sometimes habits become ruts, and every now and then it's a good idea to break out of them. (Or: a whole bunch of times Diana and Lois looked out for each other, plus the time Lois ended up feeling like it might be worth it to be just a little less careful.) Diana/Lois, 9k, T

Family Portrait, c. 1840, oil on canvas by littlerhymes Lestat's latest favourite is a painter. Lestat/Louis, 2k, T

get religion quick (cause you’re looking divine) by brinnanza So it was fine. Even if Crowley couldn’t love him, he clearly liked him well enough, and that was almost the same thing. It no doubt would have continued to be fine, or at least fine-adjacent, were it not for a narrowly averted apocalypse and several bottles of a really quite nice Riesling Aziraphale had found in the back room of his newly restored bookshop. Aziraphale/Crowley, 4k, G

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dommexbritt · 3 years

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FONDUE FOR TWO // ELECTION WEEK ⤷ PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES RECAP

HELLO DEVERUEX! There is a lot going on this week on campus but if you have a moment, it’s time to zero in on the 2021 School Counsel elections. Now, you may or may not know this but for the first time this school has decided to allow students say on the board and that is a BIG deal. Another peg in the growing line of progressive moves for the school and I think I can speak for everyone when I say we are so excited for a change like that!

I’m Brittany, your stunning host and this is Fondue For Two Election Edition. There are three presidential candidates and the cheese is HOT. Let’s get stirring...

Please-- introduce yourselves and tell us why you chose to run for the position!!

- MATEO: Sure. I'm Mateo Weston, first year Dominant. I think education in d/s is beyond important if we're gonna be living together in this society. It's what's gonna make sure we're all safe and aware of possible risks we might encounter and how to deal with them. And I think being involved is also incredibly important, so this is a great opportunity for us to help shape this school. I'm running to make sure everyone's voice gets heard and that this is an environment for everybody to feel comfortable in.

QUINN: Thank you again for this opportunity, Brittany. I appreciate it. I'm Quinn Fabray and I stand for structure and equality. In recent times, we've all experienced what inequality feels like and that should not become a norm at this school. Structure and respect are important notions, but not at the sacrifice of human rights. So, as president, I hope to assure such situations don't arise again and that we can stand up against them together.

BRITT: Amazing. You hear that Devereux Academy? These candidates are here to have your back!

Unfortunately not all the candidates have shown up but their silence will be speaking for them... [a pause for cricket sound effect]

Now, that all sounds very serious but my role here on this show is to truly find and serve the good dish. The extra sides AND the dessert. So I have a few rapid fire questions for you all. Mateo, you’re up first...

Q&A W/ MATEO WESTON -

B: If elected how do you see your ties and affiliations with the people of grimace affecting your presidency? And do you see there being a clear cut line between church and state?

M: I... don't think it will affect it. While I certainly respect everyone's believes, I don't think religion's go much of anything to do with this school. I think everyone can make their own choices as far as that goes but the school is supposed to represent everybody, regardless of what they do or don't believe in. So I'd say in general, I don't see there being a lot of overlap between church and state unless it's something individuals choose.

B: Hypothetical: out of nowhere, picture this... it’s a foggy Sunday morning on a quiet campus when suddenly an alarm blares. First thoughts are hurricane warning but no school announcements quickly clarify that extra terrestrials have landed and are targeting finishing schools in an effort to learn our culture. As a leader, how would you respond?

M: Hypothetically? I would do my best to make sure everybody stays calm and doesn't add to the panic I'm sure would be happening already. I'd then make sure we can all collect somewhere safe, perhaps the cafeteria or somewhere along those lines. Once we're mostly safe and everybody is accounted for, a plan can be formulated. In this very hypothetical and admittedly unlikely scenario, I suppose wanting to learn our culture isn't the worst of intention so perhaps enough contact can be made to satisfy this purpose and encourage them to leave again.

B: And finally, have you ever been in official charge of anything before?

M: I have. There's the basics of sports teams and siblings and responsibilities at my jobs and internships. But I used to volunteer at a finishing school back in Texas for like.. five years and definitely got a lot of experience in being in charge of things as well as a glance into the behind the scenes stuff there. Most of the instances I've 'been in charge' have been with people -- I've had a lot of really close friends I've had mostly platonic d/s relationships with and I've always been very comforted and comfortable being able to take care of someone. In this case, I know it's a lot of someone’s but I'm confident I'll be able to handle that responsibility as well.

Q&A W/ QUINN FABRAY -

B: With almost little to no social media presence you were totally tricky to pin down Quinn, but I think the question that is burning in everyone’s mind is... what really goes on in celibacy club?

Q: You should really take a look at the Cheerleader's Instagram profile -- it's a gold mine if you ask me. But, it does what it says on the label. We come together to discuss our choice to refrain from sex until we're ready for a claim. There's a lot of different reasons for a choice like that and especially at this school, it's not always an easy one. So the club is a safe space for us to talk openly and free of judgement.

B: Speaking of the cheer team... say you get elected do you have plans in the works, with my help if you want, to overthrow the current HBIC Alexis St James for the Cheerio captaincy?

Q: ... Alexis is doing a great job. And besides, I think my presidency would have a few more pressing issues than Cheerio captaincy. But thank you for the confidence, Brittany. I appreciate that and in theory, would make a great captain.

B: If anything like the change up of administration or crack down in the rules were to occur again how do you feel you, as President, would respond? Furthermore, considering of course that this last time the deans we got were said to be hand chosen by YOUR father... would there be any future conflicts of interest should he involved again?

Q: I would hope that as student body president, I would have prior knowledge of such events so an extreme situation like last time can be avoided. I'm aware administration can not always stay the same and that different people may bring different views to the table, but none of those should restrict the freedom of students as strictly as they did last time. And I assure you, there will be no conflicts of interest. While I respect my father and his choices very much, I am my own woman and intend to make my own decisions.

FINAL QUESTIONS FOR EVERYONE -

BRITT: We've heard your main concerns about the campus, is there anything you'd like to add? And also, what is the first action you are planning to take if elected?

MATEO: I still stand by everything I've said before. Student involvement as well as structure to rely on are still two of my biggest focus points that I'm excited to develop further at this school. My first action would be to take stock of where everybody's head is at and see what the student body is currently most in need of and then work out a plan to accomplish that in a way that is suitable for everybody.

QUINN: I would like to say that voting Fabray means electing someone able to look at this school from both angles -- the perhaps more traditional one, as it is undoubtedly known that my family has a history with it as well as the modern one that we are currently pushing towards. I promise students from all aspects of the spectrum that no change will come without consultation and that we are not driving towards extremes in either direction. But we are ready for a mode current approach. As for my first action, I believe there should be a conversation between then elected team of president and vice president as well as administration to review the recent happenings and formulate a plan to deal with such occasions going forward.

BOOKER: [ cricket sounds ]

Well that’s that people!!. From master plans to alien invasion preparation, now you know! The fondue is still sizzling and thank goodness for that because we totally have our Vice President line up next!

Mark down the date now, election day is APRIL 22nd and one of these candidates are waiting for YOUR support!

You’re listening to Fondue For Two and the voice of one Brittany S Pierce! STAY TUNED!

#; Fondue For Two #fft: Mateo Weston #fft: Quinn Fabray #mateo weston #quinn fabray

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nothorses · 3 years

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on anon so I don't get roasted but tbh sometimes I wish I could believe in a religion so I could have some kind of blissfully ignorant notion that my life matters in the grand scheme and that I have some cosmic purpose. I think religion is probably enormously comforting for those who can buy into it because they can feel like someone out there always cares.

Oh, I absolutely have felt that before. There was a long period of my life where I really went back and forth on wanting to be religious in some way, because I felt like it must be comforting to feel like someone was always cosmically looking out for you. And idk, maybe it is for a lot of people! Everyone’s got their reasons and their needs and stuff, and that’s chill.

But I definitely feel that incapability of believing in something like that. I genuinely just do not believe there’s a god. Or gods, or deities, or cosmic forces, or anything like that. I’ve tried, I’ve considered it, and I always reach a point where I think... nah, that’s too much. I don’t think that’s real. I can’t fake it, and I wouldn’t want to anyway.

I think I’m okay with that, though. It wasn’t ever really about needing a purpose in life; I feel like having someone else dictating what I need to do with my life and what path I need to follow would just feel suffocating. My purpose in life is what I decide it is, and I decided a long time ago that I just wanted to be a better person. Keep moving forward in a better direction, however that changes.

It wasn’t about my life mattering; I think whether something “matters” is too subjective anyway. I definitely ascribe to a kind of optimistic nihilism: nothing matters, and that’s great, actually! None of us are bound by anything, none of us have to fulfill any cosmically set standards, and we all get to decide individually what’s important to us. The beautiful part of it is that so many of us decide that what’s important is each other, and community, and happiness. I decide what matters to me, and then I go seek that out. My life matters because it allows me to do the things that I decide matter.

And... I think the idea that I needed a god to care about me was always coming from feeling isolated. I wanted to be understood on a fundamental level, because I didn’t understand myself yet, so neither could anyone else. I wanted to already be connected to someone, because I was afraid to try to connect and get hurt. I wanted someone to already know everything about me without having to tell anyone, because I was afraid of vulnerability.

I can fix those problems myself, though. I can heal and get better and become a happier, healthier person without believing in a god. And I am doing that! And that’s pretty great! It’s hard, it’s taken a really long time, but I am always a happier person than I was a year ago.

I don’t believe everyone needs religion to be happy. I also don’t believe everyone uses religion to fulfill those exact needs, or that everyone would be better off without it. But if you just don’t think you can believe in a god, maybe that’s okay! Maybe there are other ways you can resolve the problems & find the comfort you’re looking for.

#religion #atheism #atheist #not horses #sorry for the essay anon this is just #like literally absolutely my shit #Anonymous

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themissingmarvel · 4 years

Text

Kind Regards, Detective [Part 2]

(I apologize for the delay. I supposed an apocalyptic world often delays ones creative sense for a piece like this. I’m excited to show you folks where this is going, though as usual I worry that people won’t like the sequel the way they liked the first. If you want to be tagged in this, please let me know. I don’t have a tag list of yet. So I’m happy to start. Anyway. Catch Up: [Part 1]

Pairing: Detective Loki (David) x fbi!Reader

Word Count: 2.5k

Warnings: Language, description of death, murder (it’s a crime series what do you want honestly)

+++

The Dover and Birch case had been rough on David, years ago. For a number of reasons, though not the least of which was the fact that he had almost watched a child die. Conyers didn’t really have a lot of deaths, but he’d worked elsewhere. He’d seen bodies. And Y/N had seen bodies, too. But she was never on the front lines.

It was still cold in Pennsylvania and the snow hadn’t disappeared yet, covering the dead earth below. Both were wearing jackets, Y/N’s not nearly as warm as she had hoped. It didn’t matter. Not with what was inside.

The old, small white church with peeling paint and crooked doors had been taped off, a forensic team already taking pictures and dusting for prints. Y/N had an idea that they’d come up empty.

“How long has the church been shut down for?” She looked over at the taller man who was blinking more than a few times, aware of the tic he’d carried with him since the belt that got used in the boys’ home decades ago. Some things you carried with you, he’d learned. Some scars were worn under clothing and others you couldn’t shy from. They betrayed you.

David took a deep breath, inhaling the cold air that reminded him briefly of the burn of smoking a cigarette. He wanted one right now. The burn would feel nice compared to this. “A year or so. Closed down once the larger parishes popped up. Conyers isn’t exactly a place that attracts a lot of heavily religious types, and small towns can’t afford to keep up places like this.”

Religion had always been touchy for Detective Loki. He grew up with it forced down his throat but had found God of his own accord. It was painful what lay inside the building, however, no matter what you believed.

Both stepped inside the church that felt more like an icebox than anything. A coffin, perhaps. Death was palpable. It was in the air.

Looking around, Y/N thought for a moment she was having another one of her nightmares. She could feel this one, though. In her bones. On her skin. And what she saw was something she knew she’d never ever get over. As much as he would hate to admit it, or perhaps he’d do so readily, David knew he’d never get the image from his head. Knowing that this scarred you meant you were still human.

There were little numbers taped to each of the bodies the forensic team had already covered, twelve in total, sitting straight in each pew, alone, standing up straight. It was slow motion as Y/N walked down the aisle, black rose petals lining the floor, her feet hitting a few, the soft petals crumpling beneath her. Each body was staring straight ahead, perhaps at the front, though nothing was there. Nothing except for a note that David knew deep inside was for him.

Y/N was quiet as she held back her trembles, trying to look stern and focused rather than terrified. Her cases had been fairly straightforward so far. Perhaps a few victims, or following crime patterns. She didn’t commonly work with serial killers, and found herself working instead with a variety of criminal patterns. But when she had been tasked with serials, she was often the one who caught the little things. She had a complete success rate. What an odd thing to be proud of, she’d once thought, eating dinner alone.

Looking around, she tried to focus on facts. They were dressed well, formal, even. They had their hands folded in their laps, staring ahead. There were ligature marks on the wrists, but she had known that.

Taking a breath, it was suddenly caught in her throat, her eyes fluttering for a moment as she took it all in. All twelve bodies. More than they had accounted for. Ones they must have missed. Somewhere. Two missing persons they’d find, they were sure. Maybe from an overworked police station that hadn’t thought to log the missing persons. All lives taken. All formally placed with care and consideration, with aisles decorated in those taunting black rose petals. She closed her eyes tightly, those Y/E/C eyes unable to take anymore.

A soft hand was suddenly on the small of her back, pressure to the touch as she heard his voice, deep though soft, “Do you need to go back outside?” David’s voice was kind, now. Perhaps he felt what she did. That same terror, sadness, overwhelming sense of loss and helplessness that left a person rattled to their core. He wanted outside as damned badly.

But instead she swallowed hard, inhaling sharply and straightening her back, “None of them have their wedding bands on, Detective. He set this up like a goddamn wedding, and none of them are wearing their wedding rings,” she looked over at him, finding a way to process the information so she could actually be helpful for once, and not losing her goddamn mind about this entirely terrifying scene.

Detective Loki had been focused as well, trying to keep himself grounded. He had felt off about the whole thing and the air felt… wrong. It was hard to explain. But when he looked over and saw that same confident woman suddenly rattled, he knew it wasn’t just him. If this… shrink, or whatever, was trying to stomach this, he felt at least a little better that he could barely do the same. He didn’t like the idea that she was struggling, however. He didn’t like it because it meant that this was bigger than any of them thought, because she was supposed to be the smart, focused one here but also… also because he hated the idea of seeing her like this.

Her words, after he’d found himself touching her without even thinking about it, startled him a bit. It was true. Every single one, all married, were missing their bands, “Why take their wedding rings? Why prop them in a church and pose it like a wedding?” He was looking over at Y/N, aware that maybe her being here wasn’t such a bad idea. This wasn’t just some abductor or psycho. This was a true sociopath.

Y/N could only shrug, shaking her head as she found herself more grounded the more she focused on the case clinically, “It’s not religiously themed, despite the church. The church is a prop, really. They’re posed. This is a wedding without a bride and groom, though. It doesn’t make sense,” her face turned quizzical. She was puzzled.

A man, looking to be mid-thirties, approached the two, “You need to see this. It gets worse.”

Y/N wasn’t sure that was possible, but as the two followed the officer into the basement of the church, it was clear why.

Looking around felt like being in the Twilight Zone for a moment. There were cots lined up, pictures above each that, from what Y/N knew of the case, were the significant others of the individuals. Each cot was set up to look fairly… well, comfortable, strangely. They were organized closely, but up against the center wall was a large, flat screen television. The TV itself must have cost upwards of five or six hundred dollars, which felt like a strange thing to leave behind. Below was a blu-ray player, stacked with movies. But they weren’t just any movies.

David had made his way towards the cots, curious at the state they were in, which was immaculate. Spare clothes were folded by each, though zip ties on the floor backed up his theory that they’d been bound. Of course they had to be. But Y/N had crouched by the movies, picking them up individually, white latex gloves on her hands as she examined them. Love Actually, Titanic, The Notebook, Pretty Woman, When Harry Met Sally. Her face contorted into confusion, whispering to herself, “They were watching movies… love movies.”

Straightening her posture as she stood, examining the room that echoed something sinister she didn’t quite like but understood, she shook her head, “I was wrong. They were alive. I mean, those bodies out there were barely decayed and that’s nothing to do with the temperature. There’s clothing, movies… Jesus, they’ve been kept alive down here?”

The detective’s startling blue eyes turned to the woman who looked like she was staring at a train barreling down at her. He knew that she was aware of something else. Something more.

From there both individuals spent no more than an hour examining the place. There wasn’t much to see. Nothing of real forensic use. The prints, Y/N suspected, would all belong to those who’d been held captive. Same with fibers and hair. Anything found would be contaminated. Maybe that was the point.

Both drove back to the precinct, separate cars, quiet as the place became silent when they entered. Silent still as they walked into the conference room and closed the door. Silent as the world paused, the town aware that they were once again the target of something terrifying. So much more than before.

Hours had passed with the two staring at pictures and information printed and handed to them. Hours spent sitting silently, so engrossed in their work they didn’t notice the precinct had begun to empty out, the area that housed detectives and other administration becoming dark as the other end of the station, where the night shift cops were, remained alive. Away from them.

Both were startled, suddenly, by the young woman’s phone going off, a soft twinkle alarm waking her from her senses, “Ah, fuck! Shit…” she muttered to herself, grabbing the alarmingly large iPhone from inside her black messenger bag, glancing at it. A reminder, one she had set, for times like this. It wasn’t uncommon for her to become so engrossed she lost track of the time.

David glanced over, also woken from his work coma, “Everything all right?” He looked at her, a looking like he’d been woken from a trance.

Glancing at her phone, able to see the screen, he held back a grin, though the ghost of one danced on his lips, “Hamburger?” He could see the alarm name and the words in bright white, making him curious.

Looking at him, confused, she realized that of course he wasn’t a mind reader. Instead she chuckled, “Oh, yeah. I have a tendency to get focused, and if I focus, I don’t eat. And by the time I’m hungry, I’m sick… so I set the alarm for 8:30pm, not too late, but enough to jar me to eat something. And I figured ‘hamburger’ was pretty obvious. Pizza always seemed so cliche, you know?”

Despite his better judgment David smiled, “Hamburger. That what you gonna go get?” He eyed her, curious now about what she’d do. He knew himself well enough to know he’d be here another few hours before driving home to sneak some sleep in, get up early, and down a few cups of whatever his neighbor Elisa had left for him. A nice woman, older, had taken a liking to David. She took care of him, in a way. One of those ways was buying the man coffee to brew so he wasn’t stuck with that instant crap he’d drink otherwise.

Shrugging, she began to stand, wincing as she realized how stiff she’d been, tucking some files and pictures away into the bag with her laptop she hadn’t even opened yet, “Probably. I saw a Burger King a few miles from the hotel. I mean… it’s no five-star but it’ll do for now,” she forced a smile on her face, trying to focus on something other than the case. On Detective Loki. On his face. On his small little tattoos decorated like freckles on his skin. The way pieces of his hair had fallen to frame his face, his eyes, icy blue, looking fierce and strong as though nothing could waver him.

For a moment it was quiet, David wondering if maybe he should offer to take her to the Chinese place he liked, but he reconsidered. She was still a Fed, and this was still a case. A disturbing case. He guessed they both kind of wanted to think of something else. Be somewhere else. But David couldn’t do that, and Y/N had to. She knew that sitting in a small precinct would only heighten her anxiety. She had to be somewhere contained with actual food in her system.

A moment longer than both were comfortable with passed before David took a breath, “Nothing five-star in this town, Agent Y/L/N, or the next few towns for that matter. Enjoy dinner. And uh… be safe.”

Softly smiling she nodded her tired head, “Of course, Detective.”

He was going to correct her, at that moment. He had considered letting her know that ‘David’ was fine, or even that most called him ‘Loki’ around here. And she had considered the same. Letting him know that Y/N was fine, and ‘Agent’ was what she told people when she wanted to get something done and people weren’t listening. But that moment passed in an instant, leaving Y/N to walk out the door, bag around her shoulder.

It felt eerie, walking to her car and loading her things in, the rental she was provided with so foreign, but she was used to foreign. And as she plugged her phone in, the one filled with pictures she’d taken on her own, with notes and screenshots, she tried to get the face of the detective out of her brain. And it wasn’t that she didn’t like the idea of Detective Loki. She did. She really did. But she didn’t like that he was existing there alongside the case.

A long time ago she had learned to make a mental box. A locker. And in each locker she would put information, separate them from each other. It helped keep things clear. She could put Detective Loki’s face, his attempt at hiding a smile, his small tics and blue eyes, his focus and hardened exterior… she could put it away. And for now, in the locker she needed, the one that was black and filled with something she didn’t want to even name, would be the case. And that… that would be her focus.

If not? She knew she was in trouble.

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