#and other various levels of dumb and irrational ideas | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jaceyneedsabetterusername · 3 years

Text

Gin and Paleta

Pairing: Javier Pena x Reader

Summary: When a storm knocks out the power, you ask Javier to spend the night with you to ease your fear of the dark. A few drinks later, you admit more than you ever meant to.

Warnings: Drunk and emotional reader, a wee bit of angst at one part, anxiety because of the dark, Javier teasing you, mentions of prostitution

Word Count: 5400

A/N: This is my first time writing for Javier and I’m a little nervous about it. Hopefully it’s alright!

__________________

The wind outside howled with an intensity that you hadn’t experienced in a long time. You clutched your hot tea to your chest, allowing it to warm you in the nice cool Bogota night as you watched the rain fall hard and heavy outside your window. Every now and again there was a flash of lightning that crackled across the sky that was followed by a loud rumble. The storm was right over you and the lightning had gotten closer and closer to the apartments the embassy had put you up in when you moved to Columbia.

It really was quite beautiful, this storm that raged across the city. It had been hot and muggy for days leading up to the storm but now the angry gray clouds that blocked out the stars and the pounding rain brought a blanket of coolness to offer refuge from the constant Columbian summer heat. Your favorite scented candle burned on the table, the smell mixing perfectly with the scent of wet earth, asphalt, and trees overtaking your apartment through the small crack in the window you��d left for exactly that purpose. The TV played mindlessly in the background to create further ambience.

Suddenly, there was a loud flash just outside your apartments that lit up the entire street, sparks flying everywhere out your window. You yelped in shock as the power surged and then cut out completely, leaving you in total darkness aside from the flame of your candle. At the same time, there was a deafening rumble and the whole apartment shook with thunder.

Your heart raced and you panted as you walked towards the window to see that the power was across the next few blocks. There was a downed wire in the next street down that still sparked occasionally in the rain. Car alarms went off in the street. Lightning must have struck the wires.

Then the darkness crept in. When you turned to face your apartment, the utter darkness and silence of every corner began to feel suffocating. You reached over to the table and held the candle up as your breathing struggled to stay level. On shaky legs, you made your way over to a set of drawers that held various boxes of matches and a few old lighters before searching the house for every candle and flashlight you could find. After about ten minutes, you had set up candles all across the main room of your apartment but it still wasn’t much light. Small halos of warm yellow light illuminated only a few feet in diameter around each small flame.

For the final, and perhaps most paranoid move of all, you reached to grab your gun but stopped, fingers flexing and clenching into your palm as you tried to calm yourself down. “It’s just the dark,” you told yourself, breathing deeply, “Just the same things that are here in the day time. Stop being ridiculous.”

It was irrational to have your gun on you. What was gonna happen? The boogeyman was going to jump out of your closet and eat you? Maybe Escobar’s men would come and pick you, Steve, and Javier off now that it was dark. They did know where you all lived and they had already shown they had no problem flexing that fact when they killed Steve’s cat. That also was irrational and you knew it. They had better things to do and plot a whole assassination on three Americans during a power outage when God knows they had many other more menacing enemies.

And even so, every little creak from the storm that had previously been endearing now became footsteps of intruders or monsters. Here you were, someone literally trained to take down drug lords, who had been in their fair share of gun fights and seen first hand the horrors that men can do to one another, cowered in the couch trying to stave off a full blown panic attack as you sat alone in the dark.

Maybe you could hang out with Steve and Connie for the night, at least until the power returned, you considered. No… they had Olivia now and you were sure they had their hands full without worrying about a whole grown ass woman who was just scared of the dark. You weren’t close with anyone else in the building except for Javier but that idea made you cringe. He would just make fun of you and you knew it. You already knew how dumb it sounded to be an adult who was scared of the dark. You really needed to just grow up and get over it. That was exactly what you’d resolved to do.

Twenty minutes passed before you gave in. Twenty minutes full of startled gasps when the wind blew some leaves off the tree and into your window, the car alarms were silenced, or the wood floors creaked beneath your feet. Against your initial judgement, you pressed yourself off the couch, scooped up the candle that you’d had placed on the table and made your way downstairs to Javier’s apartment.

You rubbed your arm nervously while you waited for him to answer the knocks, already foretelling all the shit he was about to give you. He opened the door and you noticed the single flashlight in his hand that seemed to be the only light in his entire abode. “Y/N, you alright?” He asked, noticing right away the way you kept peeking over your shoulder with an anxiety that radiated off of you.

You nodded, “Uh, yeah. Your power’s out too?” The question was stupid and obvious and you both knew that. No shit the power was out. There wasn’t a single light on in the entire building.

“Yeah.” He answered simply but there was little intonation in his voice that was certainly mocking you in his typical lowkey asshole way. He leaned against the doorway coolly and if you hadn’t been freaking out so badly, you would have stopped to admire. Maybe it was best that everything but his general outline was concealed in darkness. You’d been pushing down a crush on your friend and partner for months now, knowing it was unprofessional and knowing that he would probably never think of you the same way even if it wasn’t unprofessional. Coming to him like this made you feel like a damsel in distress and you weren’t sure if you liked that analogy, especially considering that you were convinced nothing would ever come of it.

You rocked back and forth on your heels, “I was wondering if, um, maybe you’d be willing to hang out with me until the power comes back on?”

A small smirk appeared on his face with a quirked eyebrow, “Are you scared of the dark, L/N?” He asked, using your last name as if to exaggerate the humor in the fact that a DEA agent who’s been shot at before is scared of something as little as the dark, “How old are you? Eight?”

You rolled your eyes, cheeks burning red but playing it off with a chuckle. “Shut up,” you whined, “Look, I know it sounds stupid but I can offer beer or gin and a few paleta that I need to eat before they melt now.”

Javier looked you up and down in the low glow of the candle that was held between your hands, almost as if you were using it to keep your hands warm. He couldn’t help the little endearing smile that crept on his lips. In all honesty, he didn’t care much that you were afraid of the dark. He just loved to see the way you got flustered when he made fun of you. His jokes were never meant maliciously, especially when directed towards you, and he was glad you could take the jabs and even throw them back. It was one of the things that made him crazy about you.

After a moment, he nodded, “Yeah, I can come hang out for a few. Just let me grab my keys.” He disappeared back into his apartment, flashlight illuminating his couch and table as he grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter. Soon, he was following you down the hall and up the stairs to your apartment.

You hadn’t even locked the door in your hurried state to get down to Javier but you knew it wasn’t going to be a long trip. He noticed the various candles burning around your apartment, lowly illuminating the small space.

“Beer or gin? I got water too if you want that though.” You offered, making your way to the kitchen to hold up your end of the bargain.

“Uh, gin, please.” He walked in and made himself at home like he practically lived there. He had come over often to go over files sometimes over drinks and food late into the night. He was comfortable in your space and you were in his, with the exception of that hyperawareness of your every move when you’re around the person you like. There was a slightly electric feeling in the air for both of you but neither of you knew that the other felt it too.

You brought two glasses of gin, probably a little fuller than they should have been, in and handed one to Javier and one for yourself. The pair of you sat on your tan sofa and you quickly inspected the packaged popsicles in your hand, “I have cajeta and chamoy.”

“Don’t really care.” He shrugged, “sipping” his gin. You looked between the two and picked your favorite, giving him the other one.

Two hours later, the pair of you were two paleta and three-quarters of a bottle of gin down (most of which you had drunk) and things had gotten personal. Topics had bounced from work stuff, to you teasing him about his well-known rendezvous with his informants, to childhood pets, and more. A silence had settled over the pair of you. Neither of you knew how late it was anymore, just that it was silent out save for the rain and the occasional gunshot. It had become evident early on that Javier held his alcohol better than you did but even he was slipping after this many glasses of hard liquor.

“Do you ever get tired of being alone?” You asked out of the blue, staring up at the ceiling.

Javier looked over at you, the way you tapped your nail against the side of the glass with too much focus. He couldn’t tell if you were trying to avoid his gaze after the question or if you really were just that interested in the sound it made in your drunken state. Your partner just shrugged though and deflected the question, “Get a dog or something.”

Your face twisted in an over exaggerated look of thought. “I thought about it but it makes me sad to-,” you hiccuped, “to think about a puppy being stuck inside all day while we’re out chasing Escobar. No yard or anything for them to run around in.”

Javier nodded in understanding, “Guess you’re right. Wouldn’t be a good life at all.”

“See, though, Javi,” You pointed sloppily at him with a lifted finger from your fifth - no sixth - glass of gin, “You and I both know that’s not what I’m asking. But who am I kidding? You’ve always got all those little informants of yours hanging around. You’re probably not too lonely.”

Your partner sighed, used to Steve giving him crap about it but you didn’t usually say much about it. “Yeah, well we all have ways of dealing with the loneliness.” Seeing the prostitutes in town wasn’t his proudest repeat offense and, if he was being honest with himself, he didn’t just see them for the information they had on Escobar. Even for people who had commitment issues, like himself, being alone got really damn hard sometimes.

“It’s so unfair that they don’t have male prostitutes like they have women. What about all the lonely and frustrated women of Bogota?” You complained, taking a sip to punctuate your sentence.

Javier couldn’t help but laugh a little, “You’re telling me you’d really go see a prostitute if there were men out there that did it?” Yeah, right, he thought.

You shook your head and sighed in defeat, “No… I don’t think I would. I think I actually want someone to love, y’know?” You laughed at your own clicheness, “What about you, Javi? I know you have all your lady friends but have you ever loved someone?”

If perhaps you’d been sober, maybe you would have noticed the way he sucked a guilty breath in and backstepped, maybe even might have apologized for prying into his personal life. In your drunk state, though, you had no qualms with your personal questions.

“I, uh, I did. Once.”

“Yeah? What happened?”

He scratched his nose and hesitated. Another one of his less proud moments that he didn’t like to share. The only person he’d told that wasn’t family or a friend from back in Texas was Steve. Nevertheless, he swallowed hard and continued, the drinks even making him loose at this point, “We were supposed to get married but…”

“But?” You pressed, the intoxication making you obnoxiously impatient.

He gave you a vaguely testing look before continuing, “But I never made it to the wedding.”

You gasped, leaning forward and setting your drink on the table, “You left her at the altar?!”

Javier flinched back at your sudden lurch towards him and looked at you with a slightly annoyed expression, “I know it was a shitty thing to do!” While he didn’t appreciate the judgement because he already felt shitty enough about the whole incident, he knew it was more the gin than you to blame for your outburst. He leaned forward and pulled your half-full glass of gin back towards him, not to drink for himself, just to get out of your grasp. “What about you? You ever been in love?”

You bit your lip, “I don’t know. I’ve never really been in love before but there’s this one guy that I know that I think I could be pretty close to it.”

Javier’s chest tightened at the thought of you loving another man. He knew he had no right to your heart but that didn’t stop the pang of jealousy at the thought. Part of him wanted to pry further, just so he could know you were safe (or maybe to fuel some twisted personal hatred for the man he didn’t know). In typical angsty Javier fashion, though, he opted for the aloof, detached, and slightly annoyed response, “Then why are you complaining about being so lonely? Sounds like you have someone.”

You pulled your knees into your chest and threw the blanket that was draped over the couch over your now balled up form. You shrugged, glancing up at Javier with a look he might have noticed was longing if he hadn’t been looking anywhere but at you. “I don’t think he likes me the way I like him. I think maybe that’s why it feels so lonely. Knowing you could have someone but still being alone.”

“If you could have him then get him.” Javier Pena, always the blunt one, especially when his own feelings were in the mix.

You shook your head, “It’s not that simple.”

Suddenly, Javier got a little nervous at your tone, “He better not be one of Escobar’s fucking men.” The thought of you loving someone else made him jealous and angry but the thought of you loving a sicario made him lividly angry. There was no way you could possibly love a monster like that but it didn’t stop the thought from crossing his mind.

Your mouth dropped in offense, “Fuck, Javi, is that how low you think of me?” Your moods had been swinging all night thanks to the gin but you were pretty sure you still would have found the very suggestion just as offensive if you’d been sober.

“What- wait - no. That’s not what I think of you, I ju-”

“Well, clearly it is or you wouldn’t have suggested it.” You stood up off the couch, stepping away angrily but tripping over the low coffee table in the dark. Your slowed reflexes weren’t enough to catch you and crashed to the floor, “Shit…” You groaned, rolling over and trying to push yourself up to a sitting position. Your hair hung messily over your face when you looked down at where your hand met the floor.

Javier jumped up and clumsily made his way to your side, “Shit, Y/N, you alright?” He knelt down and placed a hand on your arm, offering his other one to help you stand. Sparks flew where his skin met yours but you convinced yourself that you were just feeling because of the alcohol.

You waved him off drunkenly and swiped your hair clumsily out of your face. Instead of sitting up, you leaned back and looked up at him, tears welling up in your eyes for who the hell knows why. Were you angry or offended or desperate or just a drunk mess? You couldn’t tell anymore but you weren’t used to losing your emotions like this and Javier wasn’t used to seeing it either. He halted, uncomfortable at the way your eyes shone in the candlelight with your tears.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even suggested that you’d be in love with a sicario. I really don’t think you’d do anything like that.” Javier apologized, a rare occurrence for the man but, gosh, would he say anything if it meant that your tears would dry. Drunk or not, he couldn’t stand knowing that made you cry.

You sniffled, wiping a crocodile tear from your cheek, “Why the hell do we even sit here and make ourselves sad, Javi? Y’know? I mean I sit here every night and pine over a guy who I’ve convinced myself won’t love me. Isn’t that stupid? I convinced myself! How the hell would I even know? So instead of womaning up and actually finding out the truth, I just resign to the thought that there’s no way he could love me. Isn’t that pathetic? I should just learn to be like you. Confident. Women don’t say no to you because… well how could they?”

Javier shook his head and looked down, “No,” He admitted quietly, “It’s not pathetic. It’s different when you’re talking about love versus lust. I pay for twenty minutes with a poor girl who has to do it to survive. If anything, that’s what’s pathetic. Honestly, I’m scared shitless when it comes to love.”

He thought about your words and how much sense they actually made. The reason he hadn’t told you about his feelings for you were partly because he thought you’d never feel the same way. He was convinced that his reputation as a womanizer asshole, that he had rightly earned prior to you moving to Bogota, had turned you off entirely. Besides, wouldn’t he just mess it up? He thought he loved Lorraine but look how that turned out. The logical reason he told himself was the relationships amongst partners would be frowned upon but he knew that was a lie. Since when did Javier Pena follow the rules? The only thing holding him back really truly was himself. So why did it feel so impossible to come clean?

Javier shook the thought from his head. You were drunk and rambling. Even if he were to man up and confess his love for you, this was not the time to do it. He’d be surprised if you remembered anything in the morning. Besides, you were on about some man you loved and he could only imagine who it was. He’d seen your gaze linger a little longer on Carillo than was usual for a colleague. Perhaps that was who it was, the mystery man that you couldn’t have. He was married, after all. It would be a logical road block.

Part of Javier wanted to probe your brain and know the truth. He couldn’t tell if it was something that would make himself feel better or worse. It would put him out of his misery. Maybe if he heard it straight from your mouth that you didn’t love him, he could finally get over you. It would take a while, certainly many drunken nights and a few visits to Freckles, but he could do it. But if he did know, he also knew himself well enough to know he’d harbor some silent resentment for whoever the man was for taking the girl he loved.

He shook his head at his thoughts when he saw the way you swayed a little, as if rocking on a boat despite being on solid ground, your eyes drifting shut while you struggled to stay sitting upright. You weren’t in your right state of mind and to ask you such a personal question would be a total breach of trust and respect. He’d be furious if he found out anybody else had done the same to you.

“C’mon, let’s get you in bed.” Javier swallowed hard before shifting to help pull you up by your arm.

Your body flopped loosely to your feet and you whined, “Noooo! We were just talking! Besides, you’re just gonna leave me in the dark and go back home.” You pouted, head lulling against his as the full blown weight of the alcohol hit you. Any composure you’d managed to maintain, which admittedly was very little, melted away into Javier’s chest as he hoisted you up and carried you bridal style to your bedroom.

He glanced down at your made up bed and laid down your body as gently as he could, though you did roll on your own accord more clumsily than he had hoped. Javier flinched when your hands shot up to grab his shoulders, “Javi! Don’t leave me! It’s dark and scary still.”

He sighed, his hands settling on his hips once he managed to pry your hands off his shoulders, “Just let me grab you some water and you’ll be fine.”

“What if I wake up in the middle of the night and it’s still completely dark!”

“I have a feeling you won’t be waking up for a while, hermosa.” He chuckled at the way your face was already half smashed into the pillow, your hair was laying over your cheek, and your eyes were closed shut, surely already halfway asleep.

You reached up blindly for whatever you could grab, your fingers sliding down his forearm before they managed to hook onto a few of his fingers, “Please, Javi. I gave you popsicles and alcohol! The least you could do is stay the night and keep me company.”

Javier reached down and pulled the blanket that was folded at the end of your bed over your body. “I’ll be right back.” With that he left your room, feeling his way to the kitchen to get you a glass of ice water before returning to find you curled up in the blanket with your eyes closed. A small smile grew on his face, astounded by how you could still be so beautiful even when you looked like such a mess. A few strands of hair had fallen over your face and Javier reached down to gently brush them away from your mouth and behind your ear.

You shifted a little, “You can sleep here.” Your hand stretched out to feel the other half of your queen sized bed.

Finally, Javier decided to give in. “No, I’ll just make up a bed on the couch.”

“There’s plenty o’ bed to share!” You giggled, thinking what you said was way funnier than it really was.

Javier shook his head, “You're drunk, Y/N. I don’t want you waking up in the morning to see me in your bed and you go getting the wrong idea.”

“You have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to wake up to see you in my bed.” You snuggled further into the pillow, your words barely above a murmur.

“What?” Javier’s whole body seized up and he couldn’t look anywhere but you. He shook the thought away. There was no way you meant that. It was the gin and nothing more. He couldn’t get his hopes up, “Nevermind. You just close your eyes. I’ll be on the couch if you need anything.”

You shook your head, “This is why I’m in love with you, Javi. Always the perfect gentleman, even when you’re an asshole sometimes.”

Javier’s breath caught in his throat. He couldn’t deny your words this time. This was different. There was a difference between this is why I love you and this is why I’m in love with you. “In love? With me?” He told himself he wouldn’t pry earlier but the question came out before he could stop it.

“Oh yeah... I’ve had a big ol’ crush on you for a long time. I don’t know what the hell love is but I think I might have it for you.” The wall that kept back your deepest thoughts came crashing down and your sentiments came flooding out like a semi-coherent tidal wave of admittal. “This is why I didn’t want to say anything because I know you don’t like me like that. You got all these beautiful women at your beck and call and I’m just boring old me who’s scared of the dark, spends more time working than living, and couldn’t dream of looking as beautiful as those ladies do.”

Javier struggled to figure out what to say that wouldn’t be crossing the line, “There’s nothing boring about you, hermosa, and you are so much more beautiful than any other woman out there.”

“But you don’t love me.” You insisted, cutting him off.

He chewed the inside of his cheek. This had to be the worst time to be talking about this. If he said he did now, you probably wouldn’t remember it in the morning. Maybe you’d even write off your feelings as just drunken blubbering and he’d have to play along as if nothing had been meant. If he didn’t say it now, would it lock it in your mind that he couldn’t love you? “That’s not true.” He mumbled the words quietly but sincerely. He looked down at your form that was halfway asleep by now and pat your shoulder comfortingly, “Go to sleep. We can finish talking about this when you’re sober.”

By the time the words left his mouth, you were already snoring. With a heavy breath, he looked away from you and walked back into the living room. He kicked his shoes off by the table and laid down on the couch, getting comfortable beneath the blanket that you’d left there earlier. Your conversations ran through his head about a mile and minute and he couldn’t slow them down. You actually loved him- nay, were in love with him. His feelings weren’t one sided. He tossed and turned for a while, battling with himself on how to address this (or even if he wanted to). He wasn’t so drunk that he had no control over what he said but he was just drunk enough to fuel a confidence that made him devise a plan to admit his feelings for you in the morning, even if sober him would most likely back out.

When morning rolled around, neither of you were in the mood for admitting feelings. It took several cups of stove brewed coffee before either you were even able to form any more than a groan. The sunlight killed your eyes, even through the grey clouds. Your head pounded and you felt nauseous for the first half of the day. Javier was just slow and a little grumpier than usual. The two of you ate some tortillas that you’d thrown on the stovetop for breakfast in relative silence.

The power was still out, the constant drizzle outside making it too dangerous for the power lines to be worked on. Thankfully, the sun cast enough light for you to not be freaking out anymore. Around eleven in the morning, you were finally feeling a little better and you looked up at Javier, who still had yet to leave your apartment. “Thanks for staying last night. Sorry for getting wasted.” You laughed a little at your expense.

He sipped his coffee and rubbed his eyes, “Of course. You’re a mess when you drink, you know that?”

You buried your face in your hands, feeling your matted hair. Gosh, you needed a shower. “Yeah, I’ve been told that before. That’s why I don’t get that drunk very often.” You sipped your own coffee, reveling in the scent that a few hours ago made you feel sick to your stomach but now smelled like the best thing on this planet. “You can take a shower if you’d like.”

Javier gestured towards the front door, “I’ll just take one when I get back to my place.”

“Oh right, you live here,” You groaned and chuckled at your stupidity, “Sorry, my brain is still moving kinda slow.”

He smiled down at his coffee, fingers playing with the handle of the orange mug. “I, uh, I wanted to ask you about something, actually.” He began, his confidence from the prior night failing him. Javier could be suave as hell when he was trying to pick someone up at a bar but with you, all he could get was radio static in his brain.

Your face twisted nervously, “Oh gosh, did I say something totally stupid last night?” You were already mentally facepalming. There were about a million things that ran through your mind daily, even sober, that you would be humiliated if drunk you had let slip. Things that ranged from a stupid dream you’d had about strapping bombs to pigeons and flying them into Escobar’s fincas to your unrequited harbored love for Javier ran through your head and you desperately hoped you had dumbly mentioned the former of the two topics. You could handle being teased about pigeon bombs. You didn’t want to lose Javier forever because you had your crush on him slip.

One of Javier’s hands moved to his thigh and ran up and down the rough fabric of his jeans. “No, it wasn’t stupid at all, actually.” His pause made you nervous, expecting only the worst. “You said that you were in love with me.”

Oh gosh. This was it. The moment you feared most.

“I did?” You asked like a deer caught in headlights. You could feel your face visibly pale as you stared at Javier with wide eyes. His eyes flicked from yours down to his coffee and you panicked, “I’m sorry. I didn’t-”

“I love you too.” He interrupted quickly and bluntly, knowing that if he waited any longer either you’d say it wasn’t true or he’d back out and either way it resulted in him never getting the words out. This was his shot at happiness and he was going to take it.

Your mouth moved with failed words before finally sputtering out, “I’m sorry, what?”

“I love you, Y/N. And I’m sorry if you didn’t mean it and I just ruined everything but you said last night that we sit around and make ourselves miserable by convincing ourselves that it could never happen and I just- I just figured I’d try to find a way out of the misery.” Javier wasn’t one for grand gestures or sappy heartfelt speeches but the confidence he’d had last night had returned to him for only a second to give you the closest he’d ever gotten to either.

His words seemed to snap you right out of your foggy hangover haze and you couldn’t seem to take your eyes off him and the way his brown eyes seemed to bore into yours with a depth that made you almost scared to look away. “I-I love you too, Javi.”

His eyes lightened up and his mustaches quirked upwards with his lips in a cautious smile, “Really?”

You nodded, your voice breathy when you whispered out, “Yeah. I just- I never thought you could love me.”

“Hermosa, I don’t know how anyone couldn’t.”

#javier pena #javier pena x reader #javier pena imagines #javier pena fics #javier pena x y/n #javier pena x you #narcos #narcos imagines #narcos fics #narcos drabbles #narcos headcanons #pedro pascal #pedro pascal fluff #pedro pascal imagine #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal x you

110 notes · View notes

murasaki-murasame · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 2nd Season Ep25 [”I’m Different Now”]:

For the season finale [but not series finale, because they’ve already announced a third and final season for next year], we get a huge plot twist that completely changes our perspective on one of the characters, and their various relationships, in a way that has major implications about the future of the story and how things will progress.

Aside from all that, we also get the world’s worst gender reveal party.

Thoughts under the cut.

Just to start off, this episode adapted chapters 96 and 97 like I figured it would, to wrap up this season with a big cliffhanger to hype people up for the final season. And for better or worse, this was a pretty much 1:1 adaptation of these chapters, so there’s not really any differences to talk about that I noticed.

Anyway, I may as well just cut right to the chase and talk about the whole Shocking Gender Reveal Plot Twist[tm], now that that’s out in the open and everyone can stop tiptoeing around it.

It’s not like I’ve really tried to hide it or how I feel about it as a plot point before this, but I really do dislike it on basically every level. There’s a whole lot to unpack about it, but really at the end of the day it’s just one of those old-fashioned plot devices where we’re meant to think that someone being a different gender to what you thought they were is inherently something scandalous and shocking. They could have at least immediately started talking about the idea of her being raised as a man against her will, since that’d at least give it some actual meaning and value, but they don’t, which really says a lot about how that’s actually kinda just a foot-note that the story doesn’t dwell on much, and in practice we’re just meant to be surprised that she’s a girl.

It doesn’t really help that the season just ends right there, when in the manga this whole sequence keeps going in the next chapter, and I think they start touching upon that part of Akito’s backstory then, but the anime won’t get into that until next year at this point, so I think it’s fair to take it as it’s presented right now.

The idea of Akito being a girl is surprising in basically the exact same way that it’d be surprising if we found out that Haru was a Sanrio fan, or something. That is to say, it’d be vaguely surprising, but then we’d all just go on with our lives.

Even at this point you can definitely guess that there’s probably something going on with her being forced to present as a man, but it hasn’t really been explained or touched upon yet, so it’s all pretty nebulous, at least from the perspective of someone like Tohru who barely knows Akitto at all and doesn’t know all the stuff about her past that Kureno does.

In general I’ve never been a fan of this entire trope to begin with, but I think it’s made a lot worse by the fact that, as you get further into the rest of the story, it becomes clear that it’s not even that important, and the majority of what’s going on with Akito’s character has much more to do with the curse situation and how it impacts her relationship with the zodiac members. The whole deal with her character is how being the god of the zodiac from birth forced her to be pretty much raised in seclusion, with her only frame of reference for human relationships being abusive cult behavior. She’s miserable and twisted because she isn’t allowed to live a normal life due to her status, and her possessiveness gets enabled by the people that she clings onto, putting her into a loop of arrested development and mental instability.

And literally none of that has anything to do with her gender, lol. None of it would be different if she was a cis man, or if she had been raised as a woman. Because that whole deal isn’t actually all that relevant to why she is the way she is, why she has the attitude and world-view that she does, and why her relationships are so fucked up. Even if you decided to write out her romantic/sexual relationships with people like Kureno and Shigure by having her be a man, that’d barely change anything about the story as a whole, because even if it was entirely for platonic reasons Kureno would have still decided to stay with Akito and ultimately enable her actions, and Shigure would most likely still more or less do all the same things he’s already done. And obviously to begin with, if Akito was actually a dude that wouldn’t even necessarily mean you couldn’t still have some of these relationships play out this way, so you can’t even really act like the story required her to be a girl for that reason, lol.

And for better or worse, if Akito was written as a gay dude, it could still totally have lead to all the same stuff with her possessiveness over the male zodiac members, and her irrational hatred of the female zodiac members. It’d just be a different, more homophobic sort of trope than what actually happens, in a way that plays out in basically the exact same way. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve gotten a villain who’s a gay dude that irrationally hates women for Reasons [tm], and who has ominous and sinful relationships with men.

Which is also the reason why I don’t exactly think the story would be ‘better’ if she had been written as a gay dude, or as a trans woman, or anything like that. With her whole role in the story to begin with, it’d play out in an obnoxious way no matter what. Mostly I just kinda wish they had completely avoided this sort of outdated, schlocky storytelling to begin with, and just focused entirely on the more interesting stuff about her character.

And in terms of outdated tropes, we haven’t even gotten properly introduced to Ren yet, lol.

I’m also assuming that they’re not exactly planning to change anything about this in the anime, so I’m just going with my existing thoughts about how the manga handled it, since that should still carry over to the anime.

I know that this is all just beating a dead horse with a stick because of how long the series has been out for, but I still just can’t help but be irritated by this whole mess.

I don’t want to spoil it too much, but I think a good comparison to make is the recent Banana Fish adaptation, and how from what I gathered, most people’s reactions to that series’ ending was ‘I know it’s just a product of it’s time, but this is just kinda unironically shitty’.

Ultimately, I think a big part of why this annoys me so much is because I actually really like Akito’s whole character and what the story does with her after this point. I just dislike how it’s shackled to this unnecessary plot twist that ends up dominating the conversation surrounding her even though it’s barely relevant to anything after this in the story.

The stuff with her being the god of the zodiac and how much it fucks up her entire life and all of her relationships is genuinely really compelling, and represents an integral part of the story’s overall message about the nature of abusive families and cults, and the various ways they end up hurting everyone inside them. Her whole arc is about learning how to embrace a life that’s not based around being a god surrounded by their followers, and I think that aspect of it works really well, especially with how it ties into all the stuff with Tohru later on.

I also think that all the stuff with Kureno that gets revealed in this episode is genuinely really interesting, and is ACTUALLY a plot twist that meaningfully shakes things up, and people actually have a reason to be surprised by it. Especially Tohru, since her whole goal at this point is to break the curse, and now she’s literally found someone who’s already had their curse get broken. It’s basically the first major lead she’s found in her whole search for answers, but in the end it kinda just, y’know, gets overshadowed by the gender reveal and her being shocked about that instead.

It’s also still really interesting to me how the Kureno situation is basically the only time where the story seriously talks about the implications of the animal transformation part of the curse, and how someone in the zodiac might internalize that part of themselves. Most of the time, the animal transformation part of the curse is kinda irrelevant, and the series could work in 99% the same way without it. I think Takaya’s literally said before that she didn’t even plan to include that whole aspect of the story until her editor suggested it fairly late into the process, and I think that shows with how it’s kinda just there for some wacky hijinks early on, and then it just gets benched in favor of the actual stuff Takaya wanted to write about.

But with Kureno we actually get a look into what it meant for him to be able to literally turn into a bird, and how losing that ability affected his sense of identity and how he engaged with the world. It’s still ultimately just metaphorical in it’s own way, but it still feels like more of an acknowledgement of the fact that they literally turn into animals than basically any other part of the story, lol. And in general I just think it’s at least compelling on paper that he ends up shackling himself of his own free will, because that sense of freedom and disconnect made him feel obligated to stay with Akito to ‘make up for it’.

I just wish that Kureno as a whole was interesting enough for me to actually care that much about all of this, lol. In the end he’s just kinda intentionally boring, and it’s more interesting to write about his role in the story than it is to actually, like, watch him do stuff as a character. Which I guess is all just part of how much it bugs me that all of the interesting stuff in this episode, and this whole part of the story, feels like it gets overshadowed and drowned out by a dumb shock value plot twist.

There’s also all the thematic stuff with how he’s basically Tohru if she was taken advantage of and had all of her own bad habits enabled until she ended up barely being a functioning adult. He even has his whole personal conflict about feeling like moving on with his life and developing new relationships is an act of betrayal towards someone that he really needs to let go of at this point. But then you just get into the whole Uo thing and how their whole relationship is about as compelling as the whole Cinderella plot that it’s clearly a reference to, and aaaaaaah why is this series so frustrating, lol.

Really, the fact that I can gripe so much about stuff like this just goes to show how much I like the series in general, since I can’t muster up any strong feelings about stuff like this if I just straight up dislike it as a whole. At least for me, stuff like this is much more frustrating when it’s one part of a larger story that I really love. Thankfully there’s more good than bad when it comes to this series, so I can still hold onto it as a personal fave that I just happen to have complaints about.

I’m genuinely really excited for the final season, in spite of all this, since there’s a whole lot I love about the final third of the manga, and in a funny way, the fact that Akito being a girl isn’t actually that big of a deal in the long run, and what actually happens with her as a character after this is more about her status as the god of the zodiac, actually means that I’ll [mostly] enjoy a lot of it. It’s mostly just this specific part where we get the Big Reveal [tm] itself, and the immediate lead-up to it, that bugs me.

Anyway, as a whole, I still think this is a good episode that serves as a fitting cliffhanger for the season. The actual plot twist that most of the episode focuses on is really good, and serves a really meaningful role in progressing the story, and it gives a pretty clear picture of how we’re entering the final act of the story.

Hopefully the final season will start in April next year like the first two seasons did, but it’s entirely possible it might get delayed because of the whole pandemic situation. But I could live with them holding off on starting the final season until it’s ready to come out.

Also, before I forget, they haven’t said anything about it, I’m pretty sure the final season will also be around 25 episodes long. With how many chapters they have left, if they stick to the same two chapters per episode pace that the anime’s had on average thus far, they could easily cover the rest of the story in 22 episodes, which would be a lot easier to expand by an extra two or three episodes, than it’d be to condense it all the way down to 13 or so episodes.

#murasaki rambles #Fruits Basket #can you tell that I have Feelings [tm] about this whole part of the story? lol

16 notes · View notes

pemfscam-blog · 4 years

Text

For what reason Isn't My PEMF Device Helping Me Yet?

As I converse with individuals who buy attractive field frameworks I every now and again get asked "when will I probably observe an outcome?" The other inquiry is "the reason is the gadget not making a difference?"

Both of these inquiries are really related. The appropriate responses require a comprehension of how beat attractive fields work when applied for explicit wellbeing conditions, and thinking about the individual body.

PEMFs, of the sort I normally suggest, regularly infiltrate right through the body without being spent by the body. Nonetheless, similar to a light, the force of the light is most grounded rate next of the light and diminishes as you move away from the light. Something very similar occurs with PEMFs - the power drops off as you move away from the implement. That implies that the aspect of the body close to the implement will get the most noteworthy field force and the opposite side of the body away from the utensil will get a low degree of power. This is a significant thought in where to put instruments and will decide frequently what sort of results will be acquired.

Some medical issues require higher field forces. Some medical issues improve lower field powers. A few issues require a more extensive scope of frequencies, while others improve an insignificant number of frequencies. Thus, choosing the correct gadget gets imperative to accomplish the best outcomes. Each attractive framework will create advantages somewhat. The privilege attractive framework for the conditions will in general produce results quicker. Sadly frequently individuals need to settle on buying choices dependent on reasonableness thus the privilege attractive framework may not generally be conceivable to acquire.

If so, at that point it will probably require some investment for advantages to be accomplished and tolerance will be required.

Numerous individuals get enormous outcomes rapidly and are content with their PEMF framework even in the principal week or so of utilization. For certain individuals the outcomes don't occur rapidly. This is the place we can tweak the treatment program to accomplish better outcomes. I regularly need to remind individuals that the body sets aside effort to recuperate once it's given the fitting sign or improvement for that to occur. For instance, a crack will require 8 to 12 weeks to be sufficient for the unresolved issue ready to be utilized. This doesn't mean the recuperating cycle is done, it is only a more usable body part. Attractive treatment can speed the recuperating rate however it won't be immediate. This is an irrational desire.

PEMFs don't sedate the body into being easy or euphoric. I call that "desensitizing and dumbing." Sometimes medicates are significant during the treatment cycle. One of the objectives of PEMFs is to have the option to diminish the utilization of medications on the off chance that one can and achieve less agony and improved capacity.

PEMFs work somewhere down in the tissues to invigorate normal recuperating measures that have stalled out. It is the mending of the tissues that makes a decrease in torment, and improvement of capacity and wellbeing. This is at last the best arrangement and produces the most economical, most drastically averse to relapse, results. Tragically, we didn't arrive for the time being with our concern/s and it will require some investment for the mending to work. In spite of this, simultaneously,how pemf works different advantages start to occur in the body, that were startling. For instance, rest, mind-set or essentialness, or gut work, and so forth, may improve before the first issue improves.

All in all, what are a portion of the approaches to improve results?

1. Setting desires

Having legitimate desires is truly significant. On the off chance that one is discouraged or entirely hopeless in one's life, little enhancements in an issue may appear to be lacking to improve the general nature of one's life. I see this especially in the old who have so numerous medical problems, among others, that it is difficult for them to value the advantages they might be getting. Imperative to setting desires is understanding the idea of the issue the profundity of the harm or brokenness, the tissue in question and its capacity to recover, the presumable time it will take to recuperate even in good conditions, and the age of the person. Unmistakably a 20-year-old will recuperate a lot quicker than a 80-year-old. The body has greater imperativeness and the hereditary qualities will in general help quicker fix and recuperation. 20-year-olds normally don't have the same number of incessant issues thus intense wounds will in general purpose a lot quicker than interminable issues, which have been around for quite a long time. While regularly extensive assets are being spent on PEMFs we have a danger of setting desires that are excessively high for what the innovation can achieve and the capacity of the tissue to recover.

At the point when desires are too high we are sadly regularly liable to look for enchantment slugs, including medical procedure, anticipating emotional advantages. Infrequently, inexplicable things happen rapidly, however this isn't the standard. All things considered, PEMF treatments are a superior arrangement than presenting the body to hazardous systems or possibly poisonous medications/prescriptions. PEMF treatments or a more common arrangement, more often than not. Regularly, people will look for PEMFs as an answer after they have just been exposed to various methods or medical procedures. This sadly turns into somewhat like assembling Humpty Dumpty back once more. I have seen PEMFs work amazingly well and rapidly in patients who have almost no harm in their bodies for numerous strategies. This can happen even in this last circumstance, if the conditions are correct. More often than not, in any case, it takes effort for recuperating to happen that is probably going to be lasting or reliable. Regularly likewise, PEMFs may not fix or converse the issue yet are fundamental on a proceeding with premise to keep up control of the issue. Something very similar clearly occurs with the utilization of prescriptions, exercise based recuperation, knead, and so on.

2. Recognizing the degree of tissue harm/brokenness

This is a basic piece to seeing how long it is probably going to take for advantages to be seen in treating explicit issues. Issues in the body have degrees of contribution and various tissues are engaged with some random injury. The degrees of contribution can be considered as far as layers or levels. One approach to think about these levels is: the enthusiastic level, the physiologic level, the pathophysiological level, and the pathologic level. At some random time there can be cover in the tissues of these levels, and they can even all be all the while present.

Vivacious level

The similarity I use is that of a typical virus. At the point when a virus is initially starting, numerous individuals feel an ambiguous feeling of malady, or uneasiness, with no particular feeling of where or what the issue is. This is in the lively level.

Physiologic level

When a virus starts to deliver an irritated throat, a slight temperature, a runny nose, wheezing, and so on., the contamination has moved to the physiologic level.

Pathophysiologic level

In the event that the disease proceeds in the body and advances, it might start to create bronchitis, rhinitis, a huge hack, mental fogginess, with a green or yellow sputum, and so on. This is the pathophysiologic level. In this level there are components of a physiologic reaction to a contamination and components of cell obliteration (pathology) with shading changes to the sputum showing disease of the nose, sinuses or bronchial sections. When the disease slides further into the body, intense sinusitis or pneumonia is conceivable. Most ceaseless issues are in the pathophysiologic level, with fluctuating degrees of pathology.

Pathologic level

With noteworthy cell or organ harm, this level is viewed as pathologic. A considerable measure of tissue demise can happen before an organ or the body in general will fizzle. At the very least, various cells have passed on. At the outrageous, there is either finished or halfway organ disappointment or passing of the individual.

Reactions to treatment at each level

Medicines coordinated at a difficult that is at the fiery level are substantially more sensational and prone to create reactions quickly, even in minutes. For physiologic level issues, medicines are bound to create reactions in hours to a few days. Once there is some degree of pathology, that is, at a pathophysiologic level, the impacts of treatment for the most part take longer, and can take days to weeks. The pathophysiologic level in these cases can be shockingly influenced by attractive fields, with regularly emotional outcomes. At the pathologic level, medicines have truly unusual outcomes and may take a very long time to years to create results, if at any time. Valid and complete organ passing is probably not going to be reversible with attractive fields. Attractive fields don't make the "Lazarus impact".

When one realizes what the likely degree of harm to the creature is, it's simpler to foresee how long it might take for these treatments to deliver results. Supernatural occurrences, that is, far superior to anticipated outcomes, are consistently conceivable, nonetheless. Treatment might be aimed at a specific issue of intrigue however improvement may initially be seen for an alternate issue, in light of which layers are included. Since more shallow layers will be bound to react rapidly, these issues will react paying little mind to where the MFs might be coordinated first. This resembles stripping an onion; more shallow issues will be "stripped" away first, more profound next, and so on and most profound will be last. This is the reason comprehensive treatment may take a very long time to years to clear all the layers.

As a doctor, I generally endeavor to decide the degree of harm that is available in the individual I am approached to help. When I have a feeling of the levels in question, I have a vastly improved thought of how long it will take to accomplish huge alleviation or improvement or fix. The level and degree of the issue is by all accounts more significant than the quality of the attractive fields applied, or the frequencies utilized or how much time is dedicated to treatment every day. Improving these factors ought to abbreviate the cycle.

1 note · View note

bentonpena · 5 years

Text

4 Myths About Men and Emotion

4 Myths About Men and Emotion http://bit.ly/30tkJQ1

Several myths abound around the subject of men and emotion.

One is that the traditional quality of masculine stoicism developed for arbitrary, superfluous, indiscernible reasons. In reality, the ability to keep a “stiff upper lip” was necessary for men to carry out their universal roles as fighters and protectors — hunters and warriors. A man who could not hold himself together in the face of a threat became a liability to himself and others. Harsh as it may seem to those who live in privilege and peace, no man wants to be this guy, and no one wants that guy on their team.

Yet a second myth is that males have always been taught to embody this kind of emotional stoicism, about everything. The truth here is that while emotional control was indeed universally expected of men in tactical situations, in many cultures, males were free to be emotionally expressive in less fraught scenarios. Stoicism was a strategic tool, a mask men put on when it was needed, and removed when it was not.

A third myth concerning men and emotions is that, through the beneficence of the feminism movement, men have finally, finally been able to open up; from this perspective, men have become more and more expressive over time, with the liberation of male emotion moving in a steadily progressive arc into the present day. This view, however, is ahistorical.

While it is true that modern men are more emotionally expressive than men of the 20th century, our closest and thus most salient point for comparison, they are in some ways less liberated than the men who inhabited more distant periods.

In antiquity, even the most heroic of figures were unapologetic criers: Odysseus weeps for home, loved ones, and fallen friends; the great warriors in Beowulf and The Tale of Heiki cry buckets over both great spiritual questions and the death of comrades; the writers of the Christian gospels saw no contradiction in painting their savior as both powerful king and inveterate weeper. And it wasn’t just grief that these ancient figures felt free to give themselves over to, but their other passions as well. Achilles, for example, rages and sulks his way through the Iliad. Men in all traditional honor cultures were in fact so sensitive, so touchy, that a mere insult was cause for a duel to the death.

In the Romantic period, men celebrated sentimentality and emotion — even at its most intense and extreme. A bit of madness was taken to be a sign of artistic genius. It was believed that the best music, art, literature, and architecture was inherently moving, and evoked strong feelings of love, longing, horror, awe, or sadness. Men read poetry and stories to intentionally make themselves feel melancholic, wrote flowery love letters to women, and felt much more comfortable being both physically and emotionally intimate with their male peers. Indeed, it was perfectly acceptable for male friends of the 18th and 19th centuries to be openly affectionate with each other in ways that would be foreign to their modern counterparts, whether in the form of giving each other rather cozy embraces like these, or writing letters such as this one from 1763, penned by a recent graduate to his former college pal:

The sun never rose and set upon me since I parted from you, but he brought to my longing imagination the idea of my bosom friend . . . my soul is absorbed in contemplating the past, wishing for a reiteration and longing to pour forth the expressions of friendship, and receiving those that would calm the gloom, soften the horrors, and wholly extirpate the distractions that your absence creates—but I must have done and have scarce time to tell you how much I am your friend.

In truth, male emotionality has not advanced forward in a linear fashion, but instead has waxed and waned according to the period and culture. While these fluctuations depend on various factors, they particularly track the degree to which uncertainty is present in a society. When social norms and expectations are in flux, the playing field doesn’t seem level, the rules of the game aren’t agreed upon, and life generally seems chaotic, people feel more vulnerable. Emotional expression during these times seems risky, and as a result, stoicism as a behavioral strategy, as well as Stoicism as a philosophy, rise in popularity. It seems safer to retreat from the storms without, to what ancient thinkers of the latter school described as a “citadel” within.

A most illuminating example of this can be seen in ancient Rome’s shift from republic to empire. As Rome’s borders and population swelled and diversified, its culture lost its common rites and mores; expectations became more ambiguous, the responses of others to one’s behavior became more erratic, and whether or not certain acts would garner status and rewards became more unpredictable. Social trust eroded. As a result, what had been a traditional, outward-facing, emotionally incandescent honor culture, turned inward and individualistic, stable to the point of being stone-like. Stoicism spread. Feelings became increasingly controlled and hidden behind the walls of one’s inner fortress, so that others could not hurt, manipulate, or take advantage of them.

Given the similarities of this period to our own uncertain and chaotic age, we unsurprisingly find ourselves at one of history’s periodic ebbs in the expansiveness of feeling. The strange paradox of our time is that while we operate with the unexamined assumption that today’s males are more emotionally liberated than ever before, both men and women alike have simultaneously developed a deep skepticism of the value of emotions in general. Stoicism is being rediscovered. Within more pop psychology/philosophy, it’s trendy to say that feelings don’t matter, that feelings don’t count, that we should even “f**k feelings.” Wary young people don’t want to “catch feelings.”

Lacking the agency to control external events, we increasingly focus on managing our internal lives. Cynical and jaded, we have become what C.S. Lewis called “men without chests.”

Overall, we are living through a buttoned-up time that is much more like the mid-20th century in terms of suppression, repression, and the sterility of our emotional landscape than most people realize. This quote from Man’s Search for Himself, which was written by psychologist Rollo May in 1953, could have been penned yesterday:

The feeling of emptiness or vacuity which we have observed sociologically and individually should not be taken to mean that people are empty, or without emotional potentiality. A human being is not empty in a static sense, as though he were a storage battery which needs charging. The experience of emptiness, rather, generally comes from people’s feeling that they are powerless to do anything effective about their lives or the world they live in. Inner vacuousness is the long-term, accumulated result of a person’s particular conviction toward himself, namely his conviction that he cannot act as an entity in directing his own life, or change other people’s attitudes toward him, or effectually influence the world around him. Thus he gets the deep sense of despair and futility which so many people in our day have. And soon, since what he wants and what he feels can make no real difference, he gives up wanting and feeling. Apathy and lack of feeling are also defenses against anxiety. When a person continually faces dangers he is powerless to overcome, his final line of defense is at last to avoid even feeling the dangers.

We are so suspicious of feelings these days, because wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve seems too dicey, exposing as it does the pulse of one’s earnest sincerity to ridicule — the criticisms of the ever digitally-present peanut gallery, the fluctuating whims of fate, the disappointments of an existentially-empty age. Our ability to get ahead seems so precarious that it feels as if one wrong move might get us off track. We must thus make each decision carefully, cognitively, with only the coolest of logic. To be swayed by emotions is to risk making blundering, life-damaging mistakes.

Implicit in this assumption is the final myth associated with men and emotions: that our feelings are inherently irrational. Blind, dumb, instinctual. Forces that just happen to us. When trust in emotion is at a low point, emotion is associated with irrationality, both are associated unflatteringly with women, and men seek to differentiate themselves as the cool, calculating, logical sex.

Emotions certainly can sometimes be unreasonable (just as Stoic principles can sometimes be the right tool for managing them). But emotions, even “negative” ones like anger, can also be perfectly rational and even strategic. Indeed, the ironic thing about the fact that trust in emotion wanes in times of uncertainty, is that the best way to navigate such a landscape is to embrace rather than retreat from them.

To dismantling the essential irrationality of emotions, and unpacking their underappreciated intelligence and value, is where we will turn next time.

The post 4 Myths About Men and Emotion appeared first on The Art of Manliness.

via The Art of Manliness http://bit.ly/2NeG3FZ September 17, 2019 at 05:11PM

#IFTTT #Feedly

0 notes