#an Assassin and a preference for the sanctity of life | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

starburstgalexies · 9 months

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thinking about an old modern!assassin!au aenari again. it was a fun mental exercise because at first it was "the twins would make amazing assassins" and then at some point a sniper tighnari snuck in but i realized there was no way tighnari would become an assassin unless he was torn to shreds, destroyed, and put back together so a very angsty plotline took away from my poor half-badass half-sitcom idea.

so the twins are assassins but it's important that aether actually met tighnari in a very mundane setting - a coffee shop tighnari recently decided to frequent. (i can't decide if i wanna keep it entirely mundane so it's just a cafe or is it actually secretly the twins' intelligence hub that tighnari finds and loves for being so quiet and uncrowded all the time because there is an appeal in the irony.)

the main conflict is the fact that aether takes lives for a living and the tighnari is very passionate about sanctity of life right, he is a ranger, a botanist, an activist, he is very adamant on the basic right of every living being to simply live. aether can get away with some suspicious things re: randomly disappearing and keeping secrets, because tighnari thinks he works for the government so there are things he cannot legally reveal to even closest family/spouse and tighnari respects that. still, tighnari feels something is off, and aether feels guilty because he actually does love his job, any moral qualm he might have is relieved behind the knowledge that he kills people he thinks deserves killing, he has a god complex right that (like i'm going to take a pair of celestial twins and turn them into mortals without giving them an actual god complex). tighnari would never understand or sympathize, so he can never know.

initially, aether wants to take attraction run its course, he likes this fox a lot but he considers himself a realist (he doesn't have the most accurate vision of himself), clearly they have an expiration date. but he keeps falling and falling until he is actually planning to ask tighnari to marry him and- well, it's been going so well for so long, getting married will basically only change how they refer to each other at this point, what the hell. he will go for it.

there are three genres this can go - one is action which is inherent and can be focused on easily as part of the plot, one is sitcom, and the other is as angsty as it goes until tighnari is realistically corroded enough to become an assassin. technically all can coexist, angst can come after comedy chronologically, but it would be a DRASTIC tone shift,

the sitcom route is basically aether living this double life, settling nicely into the mundane while juggling his duties as an assassin of an organization. someone is refusing to give tighnari a grant, so aether is uwu so sweetly supportive i'm sure you'll find a way!! she's a dick anyway let's go talk to this other person!! and he turns around and gives her a glare that implies he is considering actually killing her, and she swallows by the sheer threatening aura.

the angst route is having tighnari find out. preferably just before aether's planned proposal for more drama. he has no proof to hand aether to authorities, but he can and sure as hell will dump aether on the spot. tighnari moves on but despite the logic and anger he never really stops missing him, aether doesn't move on or even stop thinking about him for a single day, so it's a couple years of post-breakup pining. up until aether, fully believing he is bleeding to death, calls him to hear his voice for last time. except tighnari is practical and resourceful and he has no time or patience for that hopeless romantic bullshit, so he goes to look for aether, patches him up as much as he can until the ambulance arrives. except at this point aether is unconscious and hanging by a thread. tighnari is still angry but he still doesn't have the heart to not go to the hospital and watch over until lumine arrives at least. he tells himself it's not because he still loves him and he is lying, it is true that he would do it for anyone but also he is so difficult to fall in love that he is also not one to fall out of love easily. thing is, sticking around has him witness the horrible world aether is the part of - aether naturally has a lot of enemies and tighnari definitely didn't know the correct procedure for discretion for an assassin. the said vague enemies are clever and subtle enough that tighnari is ridiculed by the hospital staff for asking for help, and he suspects some of them have been paid off or undercover as well. while tighnari can defend himself from a random attacker on the street and doesn't lack the muscle strength, he is not a trained fighter like these people, either, so he has to find creative ways to fight them off, nothing is off-limits, he even sets traps cuz hey he does that at work every week and he is damn good with his chemicals. he is already exhausted, he definitely made the right choice leaving aether, because even if he could somehow look past what aether really does when he's gone, which he never could-

someone gets to aether.

tighnari doesn't make it in time to stop them from taking off the oxygen mask, and in his rush to put it back on asap and minimize the damage, he tries to knock them unconscious as usual but the blow actually kills them.

to say the accident fucks tighnari up is an understatement.

lumine finally arrives but it's too late, she arranges the cleanup and is very grateful that tighnari saved her brother, she tries to reassure him that it was self-defense but tighnari finds it difficult to believe her, it wasn't self defense, he was defending someone who took who-knows-how-many lives and was going to take even more once he got healed. lumine explains to tighnari what kind of people they go after, but tighnari sees right through the god complex, insists it doesn't make it fair, and leaves. he doesn't know how he will put everything behind but he is eager to try, he won't shy away from therapy if he can figure out how honest he could be in one, just get him miles and miles and miles away right now.

again, though, he didn't know how to be discreet in a way that matters in the assassin world. while he was defending himself and aether in the hospital, he was already seen by many people, he was registered to the hospital with his full ID, and by the persons who were observing undercover, he already made himself known as an ally to lumine and aether. so he gets targeted as well, and he would be easy prey if not for lumine, who offers to provide him sanctuary until the word of him dies down. he doesn't have to do anything, just stay in this area in the middle of nothing, if he feels imprisoned he can walk out anytime he wants, "you saved my brother" pinky promise. he wants to be stubborn, but for the sake of the safety of his family and people around him, not to mention the realization that he can't just live with a constant threat on his life, he eventually takes the risk of trusting her, cursing the day he ever got involved with aether, love be damned.

the rest is a steady collapse of tighnari's self of sense and morality. it's the constant assault of little things. lumine's friendship. the askew normality that comes with living with assassins. talking to people and understanding where they are coming from. realizing those who are threatening him and his loved ones (which begrudgingly includes lumine and aether) are cruel to the point that their entire motivation can be as shallow as eliminating competition or their wealth. he sees the death of certain figures actually help halt their harmful projects. don't misunderstand, he never sympathizes. he is of the opinion that there can always be another way, but he also realizes that the organization is a reaction, not the first strike.

it's not pure observation, of course. lumine does love tighnari, she doesn't want him to get away, not as her friend and not as the love of her brother's life, so she is trying to get him to make peace with the way they live, and she is twisting everything until it's more palatable for tighnari, until he can stomach more and more. miko helps her achieve that, mostly because she is not too keen on housing someone already so against them from within, it's too risky - she can figure out a use for tighnari as long as he can be loyal.

the day their patience pays off is when lumine slips up and returns wounded from a mission. miko is strategically harsh, and mentions aether always covering lumine's back so there are no surprises, until tighnari asks if there is no one who can go with lumine, she can't go on like this, who knows when aether will wake up, if he even does. he gets explained that the twins both being on-site is actually an exception, usually there is a sniper who is the eyes of the operation and covers another assassin when the mission is risky and logistically allows one. if only one of the twins were required to be on-site, usually the other twin would be the sniper. then why would they not assign lumine a sniper? well, you see, the twins get to experience a mundane life because they are a special case. they need to be able to blend in for undercover ops, and the precautions the organization takes to make it possible also lets them have the double-life. however, one of those precautions is keeping their positions a secret even within the organization - not that the organization is that wide to begin with, but everyone tighnari has talked to is part of this tight little circle. as a result, there is actually no sniper who knows lumine, because the twins never needed another assassin to work with them. lumine is ridiculously skilled so working solo has worked out for her so far, but pairing assassins off is to cover unpredictable situations, after all, and even she can be a victim to sheer luck.

it's all a setup for tighnari to volunteer his sharp eyes, because miko still wants to make him useful, and either he is gonna develop the stockholm syndrome toward their little club or get blackmailed into keeping their secrets. either way, he needs to put in the work.

she gets what she wants. because he is concerned about lumine and he gets why the target is forcing their hand, he offers to help, but not without certain conditions. if all they need is an eye to warn lumine, he can do that. he was a ranger, he is agile and he has sharp senses, but he is not killing anyone. and surely they don't need to be worried about him running off with proof of the organization's existence since no one is going to let him leave with any. counter-offer: just take some basic sniper training, you dont have to use it, and even if you do, you can aim at non-vitals, just enough that lumine has time and doesn't get hurt. the whole premise brings tighnari war flashbacks about that hospital night protecting aether, he had again set out to not hurt anyone permanently but ended up actually taking a life, still losing aether anyways, and changed his own life forever. with a little calculated nudging thanks to the manipulative lesbians, he finds the horror actually motivates him. he wants to be in control this time. he is already ten miles deep in this hell, and previously he made a fatal enough mistake that aether is practically dead, it's only lumine's stubbornness keeping his heart beating, and tighnari can at the very least cover lumine this one time.

his past olympic archery skills doesn't exactly translate into using a sniper, but he is still eerily a natural at it. to his relief, he doesn't need to use the weapon that one time.

then the one time becomes two. then three, then four, and suddenly tighnari is officially lumine's partner, tailing her whenever the environment allows for a setup with a scope. just as he eases into doing nothing but watch, something goes awry, and he wounds someone to allow lumine a getaway. this happens once in a while, not often but enough that tighnari is fully assimilated into the morally-righteous-assassin-mindset where they think they are doing this for a purpose within reason so he is "fine" with it. he doesn't believe miko's justifications, but he fully believes in lumine's.

then he kills someone.

a target reveals himself one step ahead of lumine, except he is still going off the old intel that she is working with her twin brother and not an entirely new, dedicated sniper. so he kills him, both to protect lumine and complete the mission before it blows up into something bigger and more public.

he doesn't say a word on the way back.

he has his first mental breakdown that night, visiting aether's room.

he didn't visit much before, he never felt the need to, he is too pragmatic for that. a comatose man is poor company, it would only serve to make tighnari feel worse, so he would stop by maybe once a month, make sure nothing's worse by his novice medical knowledge, and the small heartbreak he gets from reading there is no improvement either is nothing he looks forward to. it doesn't help that he is never not angry with aether, because it is his fault, his stupid phone call - maybe even earlier than that, with discourtesy to not only break up with tighnari in time, but to actually plan a goddamn proposal to tie him further into his stupid fucked up life. and yet tighnari still loves him even though he should at this point despise him with all his being. oddly enough, as tainted as the sweet memories are, tighnari can't find it in himself to loathe them, and the first (technically the second) time he takes a life, he gives up on trying to understand why.

instead, he walks into aether's room, sits by his side, and tells him everything that has happened since he called tighnari that night. it's not nonsensical, he starts, there are studies that prove you can hear me, just no promise that you will remember it, so listen carefully, you owe me that much. halfway through, the lump in his throat gets big enough to suffocate him, and he's gasping for air, he knows he is having a panic attack but he can't think of anything, not one way to make it better. he just buries his face on aether's shoulder, and he doesn't even smell like aether anymore, tighnari knew this of course, he can smell the lack of it every time he visits the room, but there is something so fucking wrong with being this close and still sensing nothing, and he cries, he cries for the life he left behind, he cries because he misses collei, he cries because he misses aether, he cries because he misses himself, because he doesn't know who he is anymore.

looking back, he calls it a temporary insanity, because there is no other way to describe the way he yelled at aether's unconscious face, telling him to wake up, it's the least he can do, they didn't get married because tighnari thought him a monster but now they are both monsters, so please wake up, "don't let me navigate through this wretched world you've brought me into alone, you owe me that much."

tighnari thought aether a cold-blooded killer. earlier today, he killed someone in cold blood too, and he only felt bad about it for himself, because it was the nail in the coffin for his old ethos. he felt scared because he was losing himself, not because of the douchebag he killed.

there is no turning back now. tighnari can accept that. he can get to know himself again, he can survive. but if he is brought into this kicking and trashing, if this is what the adaptation made him become, he deserves not going through this alone.

he asks lumine if he can go home now, if they've cleared everyone after him. lumine tells him that the man he killed was the last one. she thinks she is leaving for good, but then he turns and asks him is there anything he should do to get the same deal as the twins - the pop in for a mission, and then have a normal life in your free time deal. he doesn't want to abandon lumine. he wants to be there if aether ever wakes up.

lumine is surprised, but miko thinks he is so predictable it's boring.

after every mission, he visits aether, and tells him about what happened since the last time he visited, including the mission. it's a bit like confessing his sins, he once jokes to no audience. lumine lives nearby, they go have a coffee or go shopping sometimes. it's weird, but it's comforting.

i only do happy endings, but i will acknowledge that while this ending is the happiest it could be, it is not all too happy, tighnari got throughly shattered and put back together wrong for it, but here goes: aether does eventually wake up, and tighnari supports him through physical therapy, during which they talk. a lot. to say aether is surprised as to everything that happened is an understatement, but he does not agree with tighnari - yes, tighnari's opinion changed, but he himself didn't change. things he went through to get to this point was traumatic, and aether explicitly asks tighnari to lean on him when the Horrors tm come back to haunt him, but... he's still the tighnari aether has fallen in love with, insert lovey dovey yet realistic examples about tighnari's passion and love, he just has a different perspective. tighnari doesn't fully believe him, but enough that he feels a little more relieved, a little better about himself.

their future, post-ending life can still be a sitcom but as an entirely different series with a different tone, with the occasional but necessary angst as tighnari deals with his issues and goes through more character development, sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse. he is loved and supported though, both platonically and romantically. he keeps his relationship with collei, it strained with his disappearance and the trauma she got with it, but they fall back into the rhythm eventually.

#WARNING: THIS IS 3100 WORDS LONG.#it is not that easy to break t.ighnari #feel free to ignore this it's so so so long and so angsty and self-indulgent but i had to type it out for months-old crumbs to make sense #sharing publicly though because what if it resonates with someone #ales of alex #alex impacted #alex has typed

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sandsorghum · 2 years

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Ranked: Realistic Body Counts of the JJK Guys

This headcanon is going to based on actual research and statistics by Sagami, one of Japan's leading condom manufacturers. This article also sheds some light on Japanese attitudes towards sex that I've taken into account. Maybe it sounds unusually factual for a HC, but I still had a lot of fun coming up with these!

It's also going to be canon-consistent as far as possible, and I'll delve into the kind of dynamic they probably prefer/had available to them. From lowest to highest numbers, we have:

Naoya, 2-3

Chauvinism aside (and that's a pretty huge 'aside'), Naoya has another reason to rank lowest on the list - which is a surprisingly conservative attitude about sex, due to the way his clan raised him

He certainly sees females as baby factories, and has been taught to think of sex as a means to an end, such as more heirs/descendants who can inherit cursed techniques

Obsessed as he is with status, he definitely has desires too, but is fairly cautious about indulging them (something about the sanctity of his seed probably hah)

I think he'd be very picky about even his casual partners too, wanting a woman who's truly submissive

It seems like his upbringing was fairly insular and he didn't interact much beyond sorcerer society or his clan, so I'm gonna guess his options were quite limited

Probably had an equivalent of a concubine or similar, maybe even a harem, exclusively for high ranking Zenin men

Geto, 4-5

surprisingly low, I know, for someone so sexy and charismatic

I can already hear the indignation

But Listen, he's married to his job (of countrywide genocide)

Plus he's supposed to be passing as a holy man/monk or smth

so there can only be so many rumours about compromises to his celibacy swirling around

I've no doubt there were dozens of acolytes in his cult willing to be used by him, but Geto doesn't want any of them thinking they're special. It's about the mission, not the messenger

it might have happened a handful of times to take the edge off, always with a different person but he doesn't make a habit of it

More likely to have a casual on/off thing with curse users working under with him, someone whose abilities he actually respects, and he would stick with them for as long as he found it enjoyable

bonus if they met as mercenaries, maybe did ad hoc assassinations for him, but weren't part of his cult. He'd have fun seducing them into his ideology, and them trying to resist his way of seeing things

Higuruma, 6-7

another man married to his work

probably would have had most of his flings as a (marginally less busy) paralegal or law student

being a criminal defense attorney doesn't leave much room for a social life, or opportunity to meet people

Or at least people whom he can sleep with, without a conflict of interest - and hiromi's definitely a principled guy

probably has a few FWBs from previous firms or private investigator agencies

I personally enjoy hc-ing he has a whole hate-sex thing going on with an old flame on the prosecutor's team though (may write smth for this at some point hurhur)

Nanami, 12-15

fuck

He's one of the characters who's spent the most time in secular society, including (I assume) at university

that would have been his foray into intercourse, probably with a couple of girlfriends that didn't last when he started his career

you'd think he'd have similar stats to the previous two as another world-weary workaholic

But the distinction with Nanami is that he doesn't attach any strong moral convictions to his job (as a salaryman at least)

Meaning he's a lot less committed to formalities and procedures than appearances suggest (like what we've seen in him bending the rules as a jujutsu sorcerer, hiding Yuji from the higher-ups)

Furthermore as a foodie, there's essentially evidence Nanami doesn't mind indulging various appetites

Has had a few one night stands after chatting a stranger up or more likely getting chatted up, at a bar

even then he's kinda a traditionalist, no apps for him. Nanami doesn't care for dating either

Has a moderate sex drive, but it's accelerated by the stress of toiling under a capitalistic regime

Can't always be fussed about those civilities of feigning interest in anything beyond carnality that initiating a ONS typically entails

So that's when he might start expressing interest in a set up that affords him more routine satisfaction

Would he pay for company?

I don't think Nanami is fundamentally or philosophically opposed to the idea of an escort; there's a certain efficiency about the concept that could cater to his needs

But some part of him might want a fuller experience beyond sex

maybe something more than a transient, calculated connection, if he's being utterly honest with himself (he won't be)

Cue all the horny fics about office hook-ups

Seriously speaking Nanami would be fairly selective when it comes to choosing partners from this pool

He'd probably try to resist for as long as he could cause he would hate the gossip or office politics or anything messy

but chemistry can't be helped

They'd have to be very much on the same page as him about the limits of the relationship, that it isn't going anywhere long-term

I can imagine some deeper feelings on either end unintentionally developing along the way (c'mon it's Nanami) and he'd have to extricate himself from that

Nanami would do his best to end things amicably though, it's not impossible for the FWB dynamic to be rekindled when he moves to another job

this also applies when he goes back to being a shaman

it's exponentially more stressful, so he'd need someone who's even more discreet, or not particularly prying

and Nanami seems the type to crave a certain degree of familarity, perhaps even predictability (maybe it's nostalgia for normalcy)

with these as his criteria he'd likely opt for someone from his past

Gojo, 30+

Whore <3

I was gonna leave it at that

Just joking, Gojo is in his prime

or at least as best as he can manage in between missions

actually it's convenient that he travels so much, honestly would not be surprised if he has (had) someone in every prefecture

has tried most of the apps, but much prefers to make whoever he sets his sights on flustered in person

especially enjoys the spontaneity of hooking up with strangers

whoever he wants, he gets

plus he's not picky

King of Flings, keeps his crown by not catching Feelings(TM)

He's not particularly sentimental (refuses to be) but sometimes he does like to slow it down, particularly with someone that takes some persuading

so he will go on dates, boardwalk strolls under the stars, split a parfait, kiss you atop a ferris wheel - when he has the time

dips in and out of people's lives, always has multiple options on speed dial

so don't expect anything beyond mere fun with him, you're likely setting yourself up for disappointment

Toji, over 100

Canonically has a slew of sugarmommies

And is a homewrecker

Sex is like breathing, like bleeding to him

Gonna indulge in a little angst and venture he racked up a bunch in the wake of Megumama's passing though - cause what's therapy?

Never the same face at the start and end of the week

but never in his bed at home.

All these senses, sharply honed to pick out curses and for what? Her scent still fades.

He tears up the sheets, haunted anyway

Always a retreating silhouette, barely recognisable - that much is constant, something shared between strangers and his son

sorry this got sad at the end Whumph

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itsevidentvery · 5 years

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Assassin Jared falling in love with his assignment (Richard obvs) PLEASE

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THANK YOU TO YOU (AND TO @byocryptid) FOR INDULGING ME!

Okay, this is - as usual - Too Long For Tumblr, and Extra As Hell, so behold: Chemical Warfare Kingpin Richard Hendricks and Assassin Jared. Content warning for some nasty but pretty stylised and offscreen violence. p>

Intellectually, Richard realises this was on the cards.

You don’t make a move on Gavin Belson’s territory without …

Well, tied up in a chair with a light directly in his eyesis somewhere close to ‘best-case scenario’, frankly. Even with the poundingheadache and the taste of copper in his mouth.

The headache does make it a little harder to concentrate onGavin’s whole ‘I’m you, but stronger’ pitch.

It’s a good pitch, to be fair. Gavin has the size, he hasthe network, he has the clout, he has the resources to take Pied Piper from thatlittle capsicin-based picoparticle that’s done so much promising damage in local Zambian conflicts, to … well, the possibilitiesare endless. Gavin has suits. He owns entire buildings on K Street and rightsto families (dynasties (entire genetic codes)) of politicians and Beltwayinsiders. He has fat government contracts to operate in Afghanistan and Iraqand Pakistan. He could buy Halliburton ten times over with what he makes in aday.

All this he has. What he doesn’t have? Is Pied Piper.

‘No,’ says Richard.

He hears Gavin sigh. Regretful, disappointed, but willing totolerate the tantrums of an excitable but gifted child. ‘Richard, use yourhead.’

‘I am,’ says Richard. ‘That’s – that’s why I’m here, yeah?My head. What’s in it, I mean.’

‘Richard, Pied Piper is an idea. A germ – and isn’t thatappropriate?’

‘No,’ says Richard, ‘it’s a chemical weapon.’

His pedantry has its uses. Gavin’s momentarily derailed, andRichard goes on: ‘A germ would be more like that Zika hybrid that Hooli triedout in, where was it, Nicaragua? Basically inoculated the population?’

There’s a silence – a long silence. Then Gavin speaks. ‘Wewere testing,’ he says, his voice quivering, ‘a vaccine.’

‘That’s what your PR said,’ says Richard, ‘proceeds go tothe Belson Foundation, it’s a great story, yeah? Shave you a couple million intaxes? I mean, you’ll never work for the Opositor again and how much did youhave to beg for the CIA to even give you the, the fucking time of day after,but - ’

‘But they did,’ says Gavin, and he’s suddenly a lot closer, ‘whichis more than they’ll ever do for you. And,’ he says, ‘it’s not like you’ve gota better solution, you little pissant.’

‘I do,’ says Richard.

There’s another silence. Then ‘what?’

‘I do,’ says Richard, ‘it’s, there’s a procedure, I’mworking on it, the first blots are, it’s not much, but they’re, they’repromising, the impact, the rate of transmission, it’s only simulations but - ’

The silence this time is different. Different enough – long enough– for Richard to go from congratulating himself to a complete, full-body Oh fuck.

‘You know,’ says Gavin, ‘I was wrong about you, Richard.’

Richard – too late, his brain’s cursing him – says nothing.

‘I thought that I could make you,’ says Gavin, ‘I thoughtthat we could make the world a better place.’

He sighs – a long, theatrically sad sound. ‘But I listen toyou – your hubris, Richard, your, your sociopathic disregard for the sanctityof life, of institutions, of humanity– and I know there’s only one way you can make the world a better place.’

Another sigh and then ‘By leaving it.’

And there it is. Richard’s almost too distracted by thehistrionics to protest, but he’s gearing his faculties for it when Gavin says –offhand, clearly on his way out – ‘Take care of it, Jared.’

And then Richard hears another voice: calm, pitched deferentiallylow to go with the stooping silhouette Richard can barely make out against theglare of the lamp. ‘It’s Donald, actually.’

‘What?’ says Gavin.

‘It’s Donald,’ says the voice, ‘you called me Jared because –well, I’m not sure why, Mr. Belson – and I never corrected you, but it’sactually Donald.’

‘Fine,’ says Gavin, irritation vibrating in his voice, ‘Donald,then.’

‘Jared’s fine,’ says – Donald? Jared? – ‘I like it better,actually.’ A pause. ‘So thank you.’

And then there’s a snapping sound, and Gavin falls intoRichard’s lap.

Richard yelps, staring into Gavin’s open eyes and a face permanentlyset into a fucking theatrical mask of outrage.

Gavin is very clearly dead. Human necks do not bend thatway.

He starts as he feels hands undoing his wrists.

‘What – who - ’

‘You should go,’ says Jared, stepping away, ‘you don’t havelong.’

‘I – like, there’s others who - ’

‘No,’ and there’s a gentle clickof the tongue in reproof, ‘I’ll take care of them. I mean, I’ll set fire to the place before I leave.’

‘Three commas,’ says Dinesh.

Richard looks at the images on the table. Russ Hanneman, hispersonal bodyguard and the rest of his security detail, laid out in gracefularches, curving toward and away from each other.

He nods.

Dinesh clears his throat. ‘So that leaves us, uh,’ he raiseshis eyebrows, ‘I’ll call Bream Hall and say we’re on, yeah?’

Richard nods again, and turns to Gilfoyle.

‘I don’t know how they knew,’ says Gilfoyle, before Richard cansay anything. ‘It might be a coincidence.’

‘Coincidence?,’ says Richard, ‘coincidence?’

‘Oh, here we fucking go,’ says Dinesh.

‘This is the third time – the third time,’ says Richard, ‘thatsomeone who was, was trying to take us over, or, or kill us, or was just beinga, a douchebag, has been - ’ he gestures to the photo, ‘and you’re still goingwith coincidence?’

‘That,’ says Dinesh, ‘or we’re not looking a gift horse inthe fucking mouth, Richard.’

Gilfoyle shrugs. ‘He comes after security, we’ve got aproblem.’

‘So you agree it’s him!’

‘Until he, or she, or they, do,’ says Gilfoyle, ‘you have aguardian angel.’

‘Some Satanist,’ mutters Richard as they leave.

He opens a folder on his laptop that night.

Three commas. A starburst of the heads of Yakuza Councilmembers. The intestines of a recalcitrant Senator, glistening oily and dark,twisted in the shape of a paperclip.

The poses are – intricate. Thoughtful. A delicate hand haslingered here, shifted there. Carefully. Tenderly. Lovingly.

It’s him. Richard knows it’s him. He knows that Richardknows it’s him. He must. He has to.

‘Jared,’ he says to Gilfoyle. ‘Also Donald, maybe. He, uh,’Richard coughs, ‘He prefers Jared.’

Gilfoyle’s expression – completely unchanging – conveys thathe has never in all their association been less impressed with Richard than atthis moment.

‘Just,’ Richard flaps his hand, ‘Find him.’

Gilfoyle puts enquiries in motion. People are sent afterJared (or Donald). One or two have gotten close, because Gilfoyle knows hisshit. Both of them come back alive, but very disinclined for a repeatperformance.

‘He didn’t kill them,’ Gilfoyle says, ‘so Dick can stoppulling the petals off that flower in his office.’

‘Yeah,’ says Dinesh, ‘your guy told Tracey who told Staceywho told Britney that he like-likesyou.’

Richard doesn’t say anything. Hedoesn’t even ask Gilfoyle’s operatives if Jared (or Donald), like, saidanything about him.

This is honestly dumb. Richard shouldn’t even be here,really, Dinesh could have handled this, but Duncan was being a little bitchabout territory disputes so they thought that it would be a nice gesture for Richardto show his face.

Duncan thinks he’s got an in through the Ukrainian market.He’s been tickling the balls of Richard’s chemical engineers (maybe evenliterally) for two weeks. He thinks he has a staff. He thinks he has anadvantage. He thinks he has a fucking clue.

‘Richard!’ he says, grin splitting open his stupid giantface, ‘so honoured you could join us!’

Richard hunches a shoulder. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘Can we just –we can send you bulk orders for whatever shitty aspirin-piss cocktail you’retrying to pass off as Napalm nowadays, you won’t know which orders are real andwhich are fake, we’ve set up nested shell companies and fake Kremlin procurement- ’

‘- Or is it real,’ says Gilfoyle.

‘Guess you’ll never know,’ says Richard.

‘You’ll never be able to turn them around, you’ll runyourself into the ground trying - ’

‘And all those treacherous fuckwads who ran to you,’ says Dinesh,‘will be shivering in their chaddisin the cold when we’re done.’

‘That means underwear,’ says Gilfoyle.

Duncan’s smile wavers for a moment before switching itselfback on. ‘Yeah?’ he says, and slides a cellphone over to Richard.

Richard picks it up and looks at the image.

A slender male body, tied to a chair. The chest’s bare, withcigarette burns on it. Teeth show over a gag. There’s rope tied to his wrists,ankles and neck.

Richard passes the phone to Gilfoyle, who looks at Duncan. ‘Youshowing us your porn now?’

Duncan’s smile widens. ‘Donald Dunn.’

Richard can feel his vision going grey. Dinesh’s handclutches his shoulder, his voice in his ear hisses ‘Richard? Stay calm.’

‘Or,’ says Duncan, showing his teeth, ‘is it Jared?’

‘Stay calm, Richard.’

Richard gets up. Tosses the cellphone onto Duncan’s desk. ‘We’redone here,’ he says, and zips up his hoodie.

‘Are you - ?’ Duncan seems, like, outraged. ‘You’ve beenhunting high and low for this guy – for months! You telling me you don’t - ’

‘We don’t know who this is,’ says Gilfoyle, ‘we don’t knowwho you’ve got in your little snuff chamber, so - ’

‘One word from me,’ says Duncan, ‘and your little friend startslosing parts.’

‘Your littlefriend,’ says Dinesh. His hand’s still on Richard’s arm; Richard can feel his eyeson his face. ‘We don’t know who the fuck you’ve got there.’

‘Which part you wanna see first?’ says Duncan. ‘Toe? Thumb? Cock?Which one of you takes it, Hendricks? You wanna - ’

There’s a sharp, soft report, and Duncan goes over.

It’s Bedlam for a while, with Duncan’s people lurching intoconfused action and Gilfoyle sweeping Richard and Dinesh behind him as he returnsfire and calls in reinforcements.

When the room stops ringing, Richard looks up at the tall,thin figure standing in front of him. He doesn’t look happy.

‘Jared,’ he says, and he can feel the smile everywhere in hisbody. ‘Jared Dunn.’

‘That was irresponsible,’ says Jared. His voice is stillsoft, but Richard feels his eyelids flutter at its careful calm.

‘I had backup,’ says Richard.

‘You let them get the drop on you,’ says Jared, and his eyesare blazing – Jesus Christ, he’s beautiful – ‘it wasn’t just him, or the detailin the building, he’s got it surrounded - ’

‘He had,’ saysGilfoyle.

Jared gives him a brief nod of acknowledgement beforeturning back to Richard. ‘You let them takeyou.’

‘You let them take you,’says Richard. Jared’s eyes are like frostbite, like ice and the sun and alaser-honed blade of steel.

Jared makes an impatient gesture. ‘What if I hadn’t?’

‘But you did,’ says Richard.

Jared’s eyes snap at him, like actually. ‘You reckless child.’

‘Got you here,’ says Richard – croons Richard. ‘Made youlook.’

‘Frees up budget from looking for you,’ offers Gilfoyle.

‘Frees up Richard from obsessing,’ says Dinesh.

Richard looks into that pale face and thinks No, not that.

He says ‘Want a job?’

#joycecarolnotes #byocryptid #assassin!jared #i get by with a little help from my friends #jarrich #my fic #dinesh chughtai #bertram gilfoyle #gavin belson #silicon valley #silicon valley hbo #sv hbo

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stompsite · 5 years

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disrespecting players

So, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey has this new thing, where you can “romance” whoever you want. In the latest DLC, one playable character, Kassandra, has a baby.

People are upset about this.

Why? It’s completely understandable. Since you can “romance” (okay I hate that word and this essay is about that) anyone you want, you can play Kassandra as a lesbian. In fact, in my playtime, I don’t actually think I’ve come across a single straight romance option. So maybe that’s what you’re supposed to do canonically. But apparently in the DLC, Kassandra is framed as bi, not lesbian, and some people aren’t happy about that.

So, after about 3 hours of sleep this morning, I saw a tweet, and the tweet said, “Ubisoft sorry for shock Assassin’s Creed Odyssey DLC twist which ignores player choice.”

Now, that specific sentence stuck out to me, because it’s something I’ve seen before, and I think there’s an interesting discussion to be had there. I wasn’t focused on the Kassandra issue specifically so much as I was the idea of “when should player choice matter?”

Me being me, I replied to this with my belief that most of the time, player choice isn’t worth respecting. Now, in my thread, I got to the point, but it took me a bit because I did the me thing and worked through the logical build up to my point, because I like establishing a need and then going “so that’s why we need X,” this time, let’s get the point out up front, then work backwards. Not my preferred way to go, but it’s more important to make sense than to be comfortable.

My feeling is, I might be saying something useful, but if I’m not thoughtful about how I say things, people might end up misunderstanding. Since the thing that inspired this thought process was Eurogamer discussing “respecting player choice,” but that choice was about sexuality, it can too easily come across as saying “player sexuality shouldn’t be respected.” And that’s obvious horse shit; player sexuality must always be respected, because that’s an innate quality of the self! You should never shit on identity. But... should “player choice,” as a generalized topic, actually be respected?

So, here’s the thesis: I think the way we talk about player choice is wrong. I think that when players are expressing themselves in terms of appearance, race, gender, sexuality, or whatever other personal trait, we should be supportive of their ability to play the way they want. Ubisoft giving players the opportunity to play as a lesbian character and then, in an expansion, saying “actually you can’t be a lesbian” is a problem. But this doesn’t mean that we should cater to every player choice, and Eurogamer’s specific framing is what bothered me, because I think player choice doesn’t deserve the sanctity that it’s often given.

I think, in some games, players want to be gods, and I think this is something that encourages us to think about the world in an unhealthy way.

Take Dragon Age 2, for instance. In that game, there’s a character named Aveline. Every single romance option in Dragon Age 2 sucks. Aveline is the only good companion character in the entire game... but you cannot “romance” her. I think she’s the only person you aren’t related to that you can’t woo.

I hate using “romance” as a verb. I hate the idea that you can “romance” anyone you see in a game, because that’s not how it works in real life. If I walk up to you and flirt terribly, and you happen to not be into me, you have the ability to turn me down and not enter into a relationship with me, right?

So you cannot “romance” Aveline, which really just means “interacting with her enough that her fuck meter hits max and then you are rewarded with a terrible cutscene of your lifeless dolls dry humping each other and then she stands in your house near your bed and you can interact with her.” I hate elves, so I did everything I could to piss another character, Merill, off, but apparently maxing out your hate means she’ll move into your house and hatefuck you.

It’s so fucking gross to treat sex, in games, as a weird fucking carnival game where sex is the prize. Don’t do any of the actual work of a relationship, just, y’know, max out a meter and you’re owed sex by your subordinates. You can see how that’s… a bit troubling, right?

Now, I could level this criticism at Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. But, hey, this isn’t an essay about how bad Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is at relationships. I mean, it is, because “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey being so bad at relationships they literally invalidate player choice and it’s understandably upsetting people” is the thing that got this started, but what I’m specifically interested in is the way Eurogamer (intentionally or unintentionally) suggested that games need to respect player choice.

I think player choice only needs to be respected when it comes to expression.

I’m making a game where you are a specific person, with specific goals and beliefs. You cannot determine his appearance, gender, or sexuality. This game is a game about seeing the world through his eyes. So, if you play that game, you’re going to invariably be that guy. I like games like this. I like playing Cate Archer in No One Lives Forever. I like being in someone else’s shoes.

But then there’s a whole mess of games where you can more or less act how you want. You can pick what your character looks and acts like, how they perceive the world, and all sorts of other things. You can be yourself in the game world, or, heck, you can be someone you came up with. It’s all good.

That’s really cool! Being able to customize that experience is really awesome. In an earlier essay, I discussed how “being able to visit another world” is a huge part of why I care about games. Therefore, being able to be myself in that other world (or whoever I want to be) is super important.

But I think people conflate “being who you want” and “engaging with the world on your terms” and I don’t think they should do that.

Like I said, I personally care about going to other worlds. Implicit in this is the understanding that for a world to be… believable? For it to exist, or whatever you want to call it, the world has to have its own terms that do not revolve around me.

Take Thief, for instance. Thief is an immersive sim–a genre that’s about existing in another world–based around the idea of being a thief. One of the reasons that Thief is compelling is that… well, you’re a thief, not a warrior, so if you get into a sword fight with one guy, you might lose. If you get into a sword fight with multiple guys, you will most definitely lose. You cannot dictate that all outcomes will be favorable to you regardless of the choices you make.

Thief works because you can make choices that lead to unfavorable outcomes. If you could choose anything and have it work out in your favor every time, the fantasy of being a thief would collapse, and Thief would fail as an immersive sim.

I believe that immersive sims are games that represent worlds. For a world to be realistic, there must be scenarios in which you can make suboptimal decisions–even wrong ones. When people argue that games should always result in a favorable outcome that “respects their decisions,” these people want playgrounds, not immersive games. An immersive game is one that exists regardless of the player, not for the player.

You could say I’m establishing that there are two kinds of games. For the sake of argument, let’s call them playgrounds and simulations.

Neither one is valid, but I think a great deal of people assume all games should be playgrounds and unfairly judge games that don’t allow them to treat all games like a playground. I think immersive sims–or any game trying to let players exist in a world–are necessarily player agnostic. I think these games should acknowledge your decisions but that doesn’t mean respecting them. Sure, you built a character for stealth, but the guy you’re going up against was characterized as paranoid and has cameras everywhere; maybe that level is impossible to stealth. The game isn’t bad because it doesn’t let you play according to your build, it’s giving you a believable, interesting world.

Now, maybe you just want Ultimate Stealth Game Playground, in which case, I’d like to introduce you to Ghost Recon: Wildlands, a wonderful game I’ve put 48 hours into. That is a playground, and it’s a really good one.

I think we should respect choices when they’re about players defining themselves in games that are built around players defining themselves, like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, a game that was heavily marketed as letting you choose your sexuality. I don’t think we need to respect every single player choice because I don’t think the player should have their every whim catered to.

I feel like a lot of this ties into the idea of “power fantasy.” I think power fantasies can be great. Sometimes it’s fun to go all Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on a city and smash things, you know? But I feel that a lot of people… man, I feel like a lot of people want the game to constantly tell them how amazing they are and do anything they want and sometimes that leads to shitty scenarios where players are like “everyone should fuck me if I want them to.” I think that’s gross.

A world cannot be authentic if it can only respond positively to the player’s interactions.

If a player’s agency is absolute, then no other character has any agency, and you cannot meaningfully engage with those characters. They exist to please you and nothing else. You cannot engage with the game and treat them as equal to you; you can only see them as part of a facade. The game world cannot be believable or interesting.

A lot of bad shooters I see tend to be designed in the same way: they exist to fellate the player. They’re not satisfying because you can’t make wrong decisions; you can’t mess up. As a result, there’s no danger. Because the games are so interested in making you feel powerful and strong and good about yourself, you never feel like you earned anything. Your relationship to the world ends up turning you into that creepy kid from the Twilight Zone episode where a creepy kid has godlike powers and can make anyone do anything he wants them to or be whatever he wants.

That’s not an interesting relationship to the experience. It’s not really one I want to have.

So. Yeah. You should be able to define your character. That’s good. You should not be able to determine how the world responds to you, though.

The Ubisoft situation really only refers to the former: you should be able to define your character, and they chose not to respect that. They fucked up. But I feel like a lot of people are using this as a springboard to say that all decisions no matter what should be respected, whereas I think only certain ones (like the decision to define Kassandra’s sexuality) should be respected. I think there are plenty of decisions that should not. I think games are interesting when they’re somewhat player agnostic.

I think you should be who you want, in games that present that opportunity, and I think Ubisoft fucked up by retroactively invalidating choice.

I’m just... feeling like I’m seeing people around this discussion arguing that all games should allow all decisions all the time, the player’s position within games is sacred, games should never ever under any circumstances present players with bad choices, and I’m uncomfortable with that ‘cause I think it leads to weird situations like the one with “Aveline owes me sex in Dragon Age 2 because I want to have it with her” which is weird and gross.

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solivar · 6 years

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WIP: Matryoshka

A slice of life in Hong Kong.

Written for my dearest @exmachinus ‘ natal day. I’m afraid it’s going to have to be a fic in two parts, my fic-daughter, because my brain is running out of coherent sentences.

Hanzo Shimada was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, and, frankly, is was driving Jesse McCree out of his goddamned mind.

For a significant number of years Jesse had cherished a rather fixed idea of who and what Hanzo Shimada was: the sort of man who, at the behest of his clan’s elders, would murder his own brother, then turn around and abandon the whole lot of them to their fate when Blackwatch came calling to end their criminal empire, scampering out ahead of a whole can of asswhup, only to turn up years later as one of the world’s best and most sought after and highly paid assassins, with corporate robber barons, corrupt military officials, and the heads of at least two fairly nasty and dysfunctional states on his confirmed resumé. A coldly self-interested bastard, in short, who valued nothing more highly than the sanctity of his own admittedly very pretty skin and the resources necessary to maintain it in the fashion to which it had become accustomed during his brief stint as kumicho of the Shimada-gumi. That idea had calcified over the years and settled into the bedrock of his preconceived notions with nothing to alter or dislodge it -- particularly not Genji Shimada, the aforementioned murdered brother plucked more dead than alive out of Hanamura and reconstructed as a moderately psychotic cyborg killing machine with knives for ankles and a seething hatred of his brother matched only by his seething hatred of himself, and certainly not the years he spent on the run after the fall of the ‘Watches, trying to avoid the sort of attention that would shorten his own lifespan rather significantly.

At some point in there, though, Genji found religion. Or he found himself. Or he found religion and himself and, upon doing so, decided that he didn’t really want the brother who had wronged him so profoundly dead any longer. Jesse could respect that in a man. Revenge was the sort of vice that lacked any meaningful step-down program and learning that his dearest friend, his brother in all but blood, had decided to forgo it for his own emotional and spiritual good was entirely understandable. Less entirely understandable? When he found himself looking at a combination contractual/emotional blackmail agreement under which he found himself relocating to Hong Kong to act as the bodyguard for said stone-cold snake/coldblooded assassin brother.

The least comprehensible part of all?

The moment he watched Hanzo Shimada, startlingly hot ice-cold rat-bastard, hurrying across the lobby of the ritzy arcology complex in which they lived to help one of his little old lady neighbors with her shopping bags, a thing he seemed to do on the regular. Regularly enough that she greeted him by name -- not his real name, of course, but Kira Ishinomori, the alias he used to all his neighbors and to Jesse himself -- and patted his arm and called him a good boy and gave his hulking giant of an American boyfriend the stink-eye when he came over to help. Hanzo/Kira’s neighbors were more or less evenly split among those who thought that Jesse/Jesse was the best possible thing that could happen to their shy and withdrawn neighbor who clearly wasn’t actually a serial killer despite his weird habit of disappearing at random in the middle of the night and those who wanted him to walk off a balcony in the dark and fall thirty stories to his death because they had cherished some hope of setting said neighbor up with one or more of their grandchildren. Mrs. Takaguchi-Simmons was one of the latter and regarded him with baleful disfavor even as he helped hump approximately six thousand pounds of groceries up five flights of stairs because the lifts were acting up again.

Hanzo/Kira’s neighbors would, each and every one, flatly refuse to believe that he had ever been a gangster-lord, a brother-murdering kinslayer, or was currently a professional assassin, even if they were shown incontrovertible evidence to the contrary -- which, as a matter of fact, they saw at least semi-regularly in the form of elaborate ink because the man didn’t always wear button-down sleeves. Hanzo/Kira was the sort who, when he knew a neighbor or a neighbor’s child was sick, would turn up on the doorstep with a pot of warm okayu and another pot of tea and would sit with the invalid while they ate and do the dishes afterwards. Hanzo/Kira always remembered birthdays and anniversaries -- Jesse knew because Toshokan-in’s calendar was full of reminders -- and he always bought or made at least a card and usually acquired some small but appropriate gift, as well. Hanzo/Kira was respectful of and helpful to his elderly neighbors with the reflexive deference of someone raised from the cradle to honor his elders, even the immensely crotchety Old Man Zheng, who had been the leading proponent of the serial killer explanation for his erratic comings and goings and who had lost quite a bit of money in the arcology betting pool when Jesse showed up to disprove it. Hanzo/Kira could occasionally be found sitting on the balcony smiling wistfully over the antics of the neighborhood children and slipping them candy and small bits of spending money when their parents weren’t looking. Hanzo/Kira interrogated him with immense casualness about his likes and dislikes, the things he preferred and those he merely endured, somehow sussed out his birthday from that information and baked him a cake, bought him a box of his favorite cigars and a fifty year old bottle of bourbon, and watched a John Ford movie marathon with him as they snuggled down together on the kotatsu and got happily shitfaced on forty-thousand dollar hooch.

Jesse was having significant quantities of trouble believing it himself and he knew every bit of it was true. Had trouble since the moment they’d met, when Hanzo/Kira had swooped out of nowhere to literally step on the heads of obnoxious punks causing him grief and seriously testing his desire to avoid attention from local law enforcement. Had trouble since that first morning/afternoon when Hanzo/Kira had floated the obvious explanation for his sudden advent with the word lovers and then took to cultivating the appearance with enthusiasm and verve. Had trouble because nowadays he was waking up every morning with his arms and head and heart all full of him and, oh, was he ever fucked.

Flickers of the sort of cold he’d expected from the start showed through every now and again, but they were few and far between. The most obvious and most persistent was the spare bedroom he’d turned into a walk-in storage and manufacture closet for his weapons, protected from accidental access by its own security system, to which he’d only been permitted entry once, and he had come out with a cold shiver lodged in the base of his spine that had refused to thaw all day. Hanzo/Kira had not, to his knowledge, accepted any side contracts since taking him in, ostensibly to protect him from his numerous enemies both real and fictional. Jesse was legitimately unsure of what he’d do or say if he did, since at least some of the proceeds from that particular profession were fueling his current lifestyle, which involved eating delicious food prepared by a man who really knew how to cook, drinking the best class of booze he had enjoyed in many a long year, indulging his favorite old hobby (photography) and his favorite new hobby (lounging in the sun smoking and playing endless games of Mah Jong with two salty old men), updating Joel Morricone’s blog on a significantly more regular basis, and sleeping safe and warm in the arms of a man who could probably kill him with his toes alone.

(“How much of this comes from…” He’d begun to ask one day only to come to a halt when one of those flickers of cold happened -- Kira’s warm amber-brown eyes icing over and his face going utterly still and he knew he was looking on the last thing at least a few people in the world had ever seen.

“My day job?” Hanzo Shimada had asked, and the silky-cold smoothness of it had sent a chill rolling down his back. “Less than you might think. If it bothers you --”

“Oh no. No. I was just --” He reached over the breakfast table and caught his hand. “A li’l curious, is all.”

“Ah.” A little smile twitched at the corner of his mouth and a certain impish gleam came into his eyes and the cold was gone just like that. “To be honest, before I left Japan I extracted my entire trust fund and moved it into an anonymous offshore account. Genji’s, as well. Once matters settled enough to allow it, I laundered it through a number of different operations, and placed most of it in a highly diversified investment portfolio. I have been living off the proceeds ever since.” He picked up and nibbled at an apricot. “Honestly, the first goal of any Yakuza worth the name is extracting as much profit as possible from any enterprise in which he involves himself. You have no idea how close I am to being a CPA.”

“So, uh,” Jesse had asked, “why the killin’ people?”

“Some people deserve to die,” Had replied Hanzo Shimada and Jesse fell a little bit more in love than he’d been before.)

And, yes, he was in love. Deeply, fucking stupidly in love, with his best friend’s big brother, with whom he was sleeping nightly, chastely, platonically. And it was killing him. Killing him dead. It was not only that he was hotter than the photosphere of the sun, all warm golden eyes and silver-threaded black hair and regal aquiline features you’d find in paintings of Heian court noblemen and a body kept in shape through regular exercise that did not partake of the hellborn abomination known as jogging. It was not only that he seemed perpetually bathed in a gentle, intoxicating blend of cedar-cinnamon-sandalwood-spice that invaded the senses and worked its way into his dreams and likely was the sort of thing that would make men far straighter than himself seriously question their sexuality. It was absolutely not only the cooking.

It was a blend of all the things he’d show himself to be since he’d come into Jesse’s life, or Jesse had come into his, and Jesse was absolutely, one hundred percent certain that Hanzo or Kira or Hanzo and Kira recognized absolutely none of them, because the man could, transparently, only barely stand to live in his own skin.

He had come upon the knowledge, randomly and unexpectedly, in the dead of night, when he was woken from a deep and dreamless sleep by the desperate, pained whimpers of an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Or, at least that’s what he thought it was, as his mind swam up from the depths, and then crashed into reality, which was a cold spot at his side that Hanzo usually occupied and sounds that were half-words and half-not, emanating from where he lay curled around himself at the edge of the bed.

“Kira?” Jesse had asked, thoughts fuzzy and muddled with sleep and then, when some of what the man whispering, over and over like a panic mantra, made its way through, “Hanzo?”

He hadn’t responded, except to curl up tighter and sob aloud, words in Japanese he wished he didn’t know but did, from experiences similar. It had taken him awhile to bring him back down, with soft words and gentle touches, and in the morning he had still been quiet and withdrawn. Kira had spent the next few days making a good attempt at being the Best Human Ever, with not a single glimpse of Hanzo peeking through, not matter how alone they were. Jesse had spent them mulling over the knowledge that, even though Genji was alive and had granted his forgiveness freely, Genji’s brother didn’t think he deserved it and still dreamt of why. Spent even more thinking of Kira and of Hanzo and whether or not Hanzo realized they weren’t two different people, not a role and a real person, but one whole being, because nobody, no matter how dedicated they were to verisimilitude, actually bothered to make friends with other people’s kids unless he really enjoyed it, or made his best girl friend a medicinal rub to make her nasty asshole granddaddy less unbearable, or behaved like a basically decent human as completely and reflexively as he did without actually being one. Wondered if there were anything he could do to make him see it, or believe it.

#WIP Matryoshka

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exradallenum · 7 years

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CONDITIONED BY FEAR

In Africa, most religious centres have an aura of fear around them. The picture of the Almighty is that of a sternly looking man with a terrible sledge hammer, who is always willing to punish every slight slipup. The same conditioning happens in traditional typical homes where there is a *father-jailer* and the *wife(ves)/children-prisoners.* One of the major approaches to a typical African worship is preserving the sanctity or spirituality of the art of worship. For example, giving is presented as the *main* catalyst for receiving from God. In an extreme sense, people are asked to sow seeds of faith in order to ensure their safety, protection and provision. Some even subtly ask them to buy their salvation. The negative repercussions of disobedience is emphasized. The devourers that would gate-check the acts of disobedience are given a lot of emphasis in order to coax people to comply. It happens across all religious divides. At home, nobody is free to express who they are except the father figure, who in some homes is actually the mother. S/he decides the number of grains of rice is good for the health of every other member of the family except him/herself. Everyone is conditioned by his/her preferences. This could span from the choice of TV station to watch, the kind of people to allow to visit, etc. This trend reflects in our social lives where the rich and the affluent feel they have the monopoly of divine generosity and the less endowed should even not have a little bite of what is freely given to everyone by nature. The political positions are used by the holder to regulate the thinking of the people. In extreme cases, one is judged, persecuted and destroyed for thinking outside the box. The African who happens not to be in charge at the helm of affairs in the ecclesiastical, family, political, social, or commercial order is indeed a prisoner of some sort. His thinking and pattern of life are censored and regulated. The picture of God presented by Jesus was that of *a loving Father, who is not willing that anyone should perish but that all would come to repentance.* Giving, as taught by the apostles should be from a willing heart; not out of compulsion or pressure, for God loves a cheerful or a voluntary giver. The home should be the freest place on earth. Everyone should be free to be him/herself at home. The relationship that places the keys of lives of others at the mercy of an individual, no matter what role s/he plays is oppressive. We all met at a particular bus stop in life. We never knew each other before: I mean the father, the mother(s) and children; and most likely, we exit at different points. Marriage and family relationship only exits within the purview of human existence, after which each individual goes into eternity as an individual entities, independent of any family attachment. Our society should be free! There are harassments everywhere. When we see the police, we run away from them, rather than run to them (even when we are in some form of danger). A typical African child lives in fear at home, goes to the school to meet a cane carrying teacher; goes to the religious centre to meet a stern looking cleric...He moves on in life to meet hostile and exploitative lecturers, he graduates to work in an institution where he must always meet the target or get fired. If he sets up a business, he is constantly afraid of the tax collectors and government officials. As a contractor, he is a slave to the bureaucrats. He, the African child is born in the atmosphere of fear. At the point of delivery, if he didn't cry, he would be given a wicked slap on the buttocks. He lives his live in constant fears of different kinds; which includes the fear of being kidnapped, rapped, robbed or assassinated. At the point of death, he is afraid that his eternal destination may not be favourable; and also he is afraid that terrible things might happen to his properties and family members when he is gone. *Exradallenum Olusegun Akinsanya, 08063345539* Share.

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jeremyfrechette · 6 years

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The "Californication" of America

If you have any doubts to the depraved depths progressives what to submerge America, look no further than the once Golden Republic of California. Inundated with 1.3 trillion in debt despite possessing the highest sales tax and marginal income tax rates in the U.S., California is now attempting to borrow from itself to pay outstanding retirement pensions. Why? When counties and cities continuously offer exorbitant employee benefit packages - the over 20,000 residents currently collecting 6 figure pensions - while the taxable revenues/incomes of private businesses and corporations are fleeing suffocating regulations in record numbers, somebody’s trying to eat Prime Rib on a McRib budget. Not to pour salt into insolvency or double dip those $15 minimum wage fries waving in the Western horizon, but Illegal aliens and their dependents cost Californians $25.3 billion per year according to FAIR's 2017 report: The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on California Taxpayers. The state's 3 million illegal immigrants and their 1.1 million US–born children cost the average California household — headed by a U.S. citizen — $2,370 annually. And what special allowances have been granted to those struggling, natural born families who pay must foot the bill of the Democratic Party’s foreign voter adoption and affirmative action estate? Mind your white privilege; even if you’re not white, live paycheck-to-paycheck and still can’t afford to rent a cupboard in San Francisco's Pacific Heights.

Enough about redistribution and devaluing a sentient being’s “worth”. Let’s talk about how California residents can now knowingly infect another person with HIV without informing their partner of their status, but state workers (including teachers and social workers) can be fined or even jailed for using the incorrect “gender” pronouns. In some educational institutions where gender-queer conditioning of elementary kids has becoming mandatory conditioning masked as sensitivity cognition, grade school students themselves can be reprimanded for not indulging their peers’ non-binary, role playing fantasies. In other words, ignore your genitals and reject your biological birth, liberate hate by wearing a dress, because little is more abnormal than just letting kids be kids without the inherited baggage of "sex" obsessed malcontents. But never fear, calling for the assassination of the President, beating peaceful pedestrians expressing political dissent or slandering any patriotic Republican as a Nazi bigot, is both commonplace, if not admirable, on enlightened college campuses and now in the “non-discriminatory” workplace.

Not to invoke the irony of future mugged constituents, California lawmakers recently passed Proposition 57 mandating early release for all “non-violent” criminals”. And what exactly constitutes a non-violent crime worthy of such leniency? Oh, just the rape of an unconscious person, human trafficking involving sex acts with minors, and assault with a deadly weapon. And here I thought legalizing child prostitution was but another attempt to normalize pedophilia among Hollywood benefactors lecturing Middle America about equality and tolerance. Once you breech and discredit one ethical boundary - those societal foundations of gender, family, faith and love of country - people will literally defend the most senseless, soulless acts for their existence is defined by limitless pleasure, perceived entitlement and a glaring inability to think for themselves. "Progress" isn't derived by forcing people to handicap their success, bake a sacrilegious cake to the extortion of financial ruin or purposely exposing innocent children to perverse Gay Pride parades and profane feminist rallies. Progress is realizing living the lifestyle of your choice, the literal sanctity between right and wrong, should never require confiscating the rights and dignity of others solely to validate/advertise one's bombastic beliefs.

With such inane reasoning masquerading as good government, it is of little surprise Governor Jerry Brown declared our immigration laws moot by further investing in sanctuary cities and attempting to obstruct ICE officials from apprehending known fugitives. When you’re more distraught over than the safety and so-called rights of non-citizens than the death of a 32 year-old woman murdered by a man deported 5 times, prudence and justice are antithetical anomalies. Not only are California illegals now eligible for driver’s licenses, they can legally vote in an election if they are officially registered to vote. And what does it take to register to vote in the great state of California? A driver’s license and a personal guarantee you’re a citizen. Yes, you heard me correctly, the legitimacy of our elections, the survival of our 241 year-old republic, is now based entirely on the honor system; or if you prefer perspective over subjective bliss, foreign invaders who consciously broke our laws without a hint of regret, only to be congratulated with a complimentary door prize, the honorary American oppressed immigrant mindset, of leftist socio-economic contempt.

I take umbrage with any self-respecting American, God forbid elected civil servant, who is completely indifferent to the estimated 3 million unlawful votes cast in 2016 simply because they believe small town America values and the electoral college should acquiesce to the moral degradation and militant activism of urban epicenters like San Francisco, Los Angeles or Chicago. Considering California alone accounted for over 10% of Hillary Clinton's final vote total, a 3.4 million difference that exceeded her 2.86 million final popular vote lead, I'm confused as to how those Donald Trump supporters representing over 90% of American territory - or precisely 3,084 counties of all 3,141 U.S. counties - should take a knee with Colin Kaepernick to empower a regressive state that dismisses the rule of law, mocks rural America and remains visibly contentious towards any concept of electoral sovereignty.

There’s also another term for those politicians who willingly subvert the immigration process and disregard our voting statutes to their personal and civic benefit? It’s called sedition, dereliction of duty, treason. If I may, when did defiant trespassers become “Dreamers” and doorbells a humanitarian crisis? Have millions of aspiring Americans from across the globe, for well over a century, not honored the afforded requirements for securing the privilege of becoming a U.S. citizen? Conspiring to invalidate prescribed protocols ratified to ensure legal and orderly naturalization – those measures explicitly enacted to protect America’s citizens and welfare - makes about as much sense as giving convicted felons the right to vote because of “felon disenfranchisement”; i.e., the admitted hearsay of political opportunists salivating over the fact 60% of released California convicts are minorities who deserve the opportunity to vote Democrat.

The same bureaucratic terrorists who forced 53 dairy farmers to go bankrupt and/or relocate to saner pastures due to absurd regulations on cow farts are somehow entirely satisfied with the unsubstantiated word of an undocumented, unvetted immigrant. Surprised? Not unless logic and liberalism share a nonflammable unitard. And while peace activists remain adamant U.S. citizens must undergo extensive background checks to exercise their constitutionally affirmed right to bear arms – naturally excluding those potential militants illegally entering a sovereign country in a post 9/11 world – their unflinching “non-partisan concern” for human life magically ceases at the recognized borders of radical agents like Iran and North Korea; inhumane, totalitarian regimes that globalists duplicitously believe possess an inalienable right to develop nuclear weapons despite vowing daily to destroy Western Civilization. So what’s the common denominator? Rampant, unabridged, unapologetic anti-Americanism.

When voting is no longer our most sacred duty and the integrity of our elections becomes a racist endeavor, as denoted by California’s refusal to investigate massive vote fraud uncovered in November, America becomes a second class citizen unable to defend itself in its own home due to fear of “offending” the same guests who would outlaw our flag, silence free speech and ban the national anthem if given only a fleeting chance. In essence, any policy that strengthens or reaffirms America’s independence, influence and economic vitality is an affront to the liberal narrative America must surrender its identity and founding Constitutional charter for being an evil empire built upon greed and White supremacy. Or in historically accurate terms, a superior culture displacing an ethnocentric population which supplanted other nomadic societies via the auspices of war, commerce, adaptability and/or technological superiority. Whereas California and New York are hopelessly lost to the left’s orchestrated demographic coup d’etat and ideological conditioning of their respective populaces, states like Virginia, Colorado, and Michigan are not far behind.

Regardless of one’s political persuasion, you don’t have to be a historian or even watch the History channel to understand America was erected as a free republic for a moral, self-sufficient people acutely aware of the triggers of tyranny, poverty and religious persecution. Individual liberty, limited government, transparency and accountability were never optional amenities on an academic drug trip to worship the Lenin Statue in Marxist Seattle. These autonomous attributes represented conceptual necessities whose only negotiable features were the exact method and expected integrity of implementation.

Unfortunately for the idyllic state of California, squatting on the world’s sixth largest economy and boasting vast untapped natural resources, its propensity for dysfunction and waste is only superseded by its systemic rejection of America itself. Whenever West Coast socialists are not charging working families and commercial transportation the highest fuel taxes in the nation, environmental terrorists who cannot differentiate between ecology and political alarmism are manufacturing water shortages and sparking unnatural disasters with pseudo-scientific regularity. Fixing the error of your naive ways is near impossible when rogue political fantasy displaces sound judgement and the Constitutional authority of your native country. How else can controlled thinning of excessive forestation designed to reduce the risk of uncontrollable wildfires, similar to the recent devastation which devoured 9,000 homes/buildings and 250,000 acres of habitat, be equated to "clear cutting" or raping the land?

It is also of little surprise California elitists, aka doomsday legislators seeking another excuse to tax common sense, believe Global Warming is not a natural, cyclical occurrence predominantly caused by solar fluctuations and the temperature of the Earth's core. Never mind Antarctic ice levels are far greater than 30 years ago and New York is not submerged beneath Al Gore's "unnatural science" grade point average, if you believe a .03 reduction goal in global temperatures in a century's time at an eventual loss of 2.5 trillion in annual GDP is a winning strategy, than counting cow farts and banning combustible engine cars by 2040 is your golden ticket to getting assaulted on Bay Area Rapid Transit for reading 1984 without a permit. But never fret, Sacramento City Council approved a motion to pay gang members for the conscious decision not to kill one another; or in layman's terms, obey the law and stay in school. And to think millions of decent, hard working Americans are ineligible because of their offensive civilized "privilege".

Although it's mathematically impossible to pinpoint exactly what alternative universe California Democrats reside, our Forefathers would have called for a second armed revolution long ago. No, Really! Whether or not progressives approve of President Trump is a moot point if their own policies and authoritative abuse do not adhere to the prescribed constitutional checks of adopted statehood. Likewise, embodying the fight for state sovereignty by no means justifies endeavoring to become like those impoverished, inept nations your exploding illegal immigrant population is instinctively fleeing. It's hard to fathom how the once "Go West" mantra of American pioneers that catapulted California into an unprecedented wave of prosperity, proud nationalism and a vibrant centrifuge for diversity, has dissolved into an immoral state of cultural Marxism that believes government is god, gender is a fluid state of mind, exploitation a form of education, and patriotism an unjust form of racial oppression.

It is obviously no secret the once predominantly “Red” stomping grounds of Ronald Wilson Reagan has been turned bright blue by an unprecedented wave of immigration and indoctrinated anti-Americanism. That was and always has been the goal of the radical statist quo. Where this nation was forged as a beacon of hope and opportunity for millions of law-abiding aspiring citizens seeking a better life, California has descended into counter-intuitive cesspool that preaches victimization over accountability, reverse discrimination over equality, intolerance over intellectual diversity. No matter how pure your intentions or how strong your faith in the nature of human volition, you cannot coexist with partisans so obsessed with maintaining political supremacy they would gladly surrender their own country to those who tirelessly seek our demise or break any rule to control our lives out of some misplaced sense of social justice that gives no such credence to their own failures and hypocrisy; most, notably, those corrupt, foreign governments globalists so foolishly favor to the liquidation of civility and the downfall of mankind.

While no American wants to witness the secession of California, or more profoundly the dissection of America's legacy and the abandonment of our fellow right-minded countrymen who represent the powerless minority, how long can you spare a cancerous appendage before it spreads, poisons your soul and ultimately takes your life? Will apathy reclaim our revisionist classrooms or assuage the sponsored anarchist war on police and freedom of speech? Once again, the left’s goal is not to coexist under the ideological umbrella that was and is America. Their unrelenting mission is to whitewash history, ensure conformity and redefine America by eradicating all borders, natural human distinctions – symbiotic gender roles and the family paradigm - so the concepts of liberty, individual achievement and morality quickly become outdated manifestations that can no longer threaten the secular supremacy of a progressive state. The systemic decay of California is as much a symbol of our failure as a society, as it is a dire warning to every governor and undaunted patriot that still believes God is the liberty of salvation, character does not fear consequence, and raising respectful, responsible children is by far our greatest contribution to humanity; that indomitable virtue of a free nation born from the bounty of a Judeo-Christian seed but distinctly American creed. If this transcendent republic has any chance to coalesce and preserve the timeless wisdom of a handful of visionaries marked for death by the tyranny of a crown's crest, I believe hope resides in the heartland of an industrious people - a summoned Convention of States faithful to independence and the merits of intelligent debate - still rightfully proud of their heritage and ever cognizant of the evil contempt and complacency breeds.

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