#and that was me being reminded of arguing on reddit a while back with some guy who | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

moonlightdreamerkisses · 10 months

Text

Here we go again ..

Where to begin. I’m honestly over having the same arguments over and over. Let me start from the very beginning.

June 2021

This was the month my mother passed. I don’t really like talking about it since it still feels like it was yesterday and not much time has passed where I don’t get choked up in talking about it, so I’ll be quick.

How do I go from seeing someone I love everyday and then, they’re not here anymore. Where does my life go from there? It has always been my mom, my brother, and I. No matter what life threw at us, I knew everything was going to be okay cause we had each other. But she’s gone, what do I do now?

And during all of this, you weren’t there for me. In any form. I understand you had a once in a lifetime opportunity to work in another state (New York) and how this could help you advance later in your career. I get it, I really do, but my mom just died and it felt like you could careless. I remember being on the phone with you and I felt like I was just there as background noise. There was this one time, while being on the phone and I couldn’t stop crying you told me to shut up.

Every time, I think about my mom it’s another reminder how you weren’t there for me when I need you the most. You weren’t there, you didn’t even try.

August - September 2021

During this time, I can remember the hurt but I can’t remember the order so here's the events that happened during these months.

I remember one night, something kept telling me to go through your phone. It was around 3am and I couldn’t sleep. I took your phone and sat on the couch. Then suddenly, there it was. You had saved naked photos and videos of a girl on snapchat. My heart sank and soon I started to shiver because I knew there was more. You confessed your love to another girl, even sent her the same memes you sent me, and how you wanted a chance to take her out. Luckily, she left you on read. I saw your Reddit account, you followed nothing but porn.

I didn’t sleep that day. How could I? The person I loved the most was doing these things to me. That morning, you reached over to kiss me and I remember saying “How would you feel if I had nudes from a guy on my phone?” I remember you argued that having nudes in your phone was like collecting Pokémon cards. You had to catch them. I couldn’t believe the dumb shit you were saying. I don’t think you were even buying it. Before I knew it my best friend came and got me. I don’t really remember the rest of that day.

There was another day, you were acting strange with your phone. You kept hiding it or having it in your pocket. You also kept signing out of your Facebook and Instagram, like that didn’t scream a red flag to me. But this particular day, you slipped up, you went outside to clean the patio, where the dog was sleeping at the time, and you left your phone inside the house. I grabbed it, went on Facebook and had seen your Facebook Dating page, I saw some messages with this one girl and it said something like. “What are you looking for?” And you said look at my profile and so I did. It said, “Looking for my better half”

There was another time, where we were still in bed and you were looking at your phone but you were in a weird angle that I couldn’t see your phone. So I slowly took out my phone and started to record what you saw. You were on Reddit, looking at Onlyfans girls. I remember I confronted you at the movie theater, not the best place to have a huge fight.

We broke up. A part of me wishes we stayed broken up.

We were broken up for a week when I had called because I wanted to pick up my things.

You wrote me a letter and explained how it “wasn’t” my fault but yours, but you weren’t even owning up to problem, all you said was how it was my fault for not getting back on my feet when my mom had just died less than three months ago. And that you didn’t like the person you were becoming from this relationship, so you seek validation.

During the time we were broken up, you had an interview for the Las Vegas position. I remember how bad you wanted it prior, you even asked me to move with you.

March 2022

We moved. As much as I loved you, I didn’t believe anything you told me until I had proof. I remember how bad it was getting especially in my head. It didn’t help how glued you were on your phone. I just wanted your attention and most importantly honesty.

With the move I really thought things would get better, I really thought you would just be honest with me, finally. But nothing got better. I would end up catching you watching porn, getting on Tinder, downloading Telegram. There was also this one time you told me “You can love me and lust for others” or the time you said something like, when we have sex you think of other girls. And when confronted somehow it became my fault. It couldn’t have been you because you’re the one with the stressful job, you’re the one who didn’t have time to be on his phone. You’re the one who had all these responsibilities and then there was me, just in the way of YOUR life. I basically didn’t have a say in anything because I wasn’t facing the same things you were. I didn’t have value because I wasn’t making the same amount of money like you.

February - Present 2023

Sometimes I think you hurt me subconsciously because you’re afraid of ending this relationship and you want me to do it. I’ll give you credit, you are doing a little bit better but you still continue to hurt me. I just want one year of honesty and love but I don’t think I’ll ever get that. In April you messaged about five escorts for a qv (quick visit, I had to urban dictionary) I remember I told you I wanted one last day with you before we ended things. But like always, work got in the middle of us. I also went through your snapchat friends and deleted six of them, obviously they were all girls. I wanted to ask you who they were since they had been added the pervious year but all I ever get is an “I don’t know” and I'm tired of hearing the same old bullshit.

Here I am three years later and I still don’t trust you.

0 notes

sunlightandsuffering · 1 year

Note

Just watched this YT video about a Reddit story in which a woman is happily married with kids but finds out about her husbands "hidden Tinder account" and basically him "cheating" on her, and after outing him as a cheater to their shared friends and family and divorcing him (and a whole bunch of events), a year later, finds out it was all their neighbours doing by somehow getting the husband's intimate pictures and using them to catfish women on Tinder, the whole post is about her asking how she could make amends with him and repair their relationship it reminded me of your divorce so much you got no idea lmao 😭 as if I was reading the same story again, literally could felt the same hurt this woman and Mikasa felt over destrying a marriage with the love of their lifes over a false accusation of cheating and them trying to fix their relationships Gotta admit I like your EreMika version better, cuz of how funny it is and cuz the reddit story ends with the marriage broken for good and them split up 😔, mainly cuz the husband felt like after everything that happened their marriage was broken beyond repair (even if they still love each other deeply), and I can't think about that for my beloveds 😣 I like to believe they would find a way to love each other again, even if it takes them a lifetime to do it 🤧 Kinda wishing to see how you would wrap the whole thing tbh, gotta love this au for how angsty it and I just need to know if there is a happy ending for them! (Feel free to ignore this ask if you want to tho! either if you don't want to spoil anything or you simply don't want to talk abt it, I know how you feel about talking about this au ever since your blog got flooded with ppl slandering Mikasa for it) (This a little vent off but Redditors are really a different breed I swear, they left comments on the woman's post blaming her for not being able to foresee the future and realize he wasn't cheating on her, as if she didn't have reasons to believe her husband was cheating, like I understand the husband had it way worse but she was a victim too ffs)

omgggg reddit does always have the wildest stuff I agree lol, like u never know what the fuck ur gonna read. But that's so heartbreaking ugh! But this is kind of what I wanted to achieve in divorce AU, like it's no one's fault, but I wanted angst where no one could really be blamed it was just circumstance and unfortunate misunderstandings! JUST LIKE A SHOUJO MANGA LMFAO !but don't worry i ALWAYS give happy endings, u can count on me for that, I'll never end something with angst I just don't have it in me lol.

but that's so heartbreaking for the couple, hope they fucking sewed that neighbour or something omg like that's awful, he literally broke up a marriage!!! ruined lives!!!

But yeah ur right the whole divorce au idk i haven't touched it in a while bc for a bit there it was getting so heated lol, and I don't get paid enough to field everyone arguing with each other in my ask box and arguing back myself lol, it's just too much effort. I'm definitely down to give it a happy ending though I just need some inspo, I'm like trying to remember where I left off with it and I think the last thing I wrote a drabble for was angst lol?? Where they were fighting in Eren's hallway or bedroom or something? And before that was the seafood drabble LOL!!!!! I'm trying to think of how I could resolve it, I'm down for happy suggestions if you have any anon!!

#divorce au

1 note · View note

zephiesjournal · 2 years

Text

saturday, september 24th, 2022

woke up today with my legs pretty sore so i thought i should relax with the stretches over the weekend, which in hindsight was probably the catalyst for me going extreme “weekend mode” today. very early on i had an intense urge to just ruin my day from the get-go and buy a lot of junk food. i got ice cream and some chilled starbucks coffee because i was still wondering if caffeine was actually harmful for me or just my symptoms but i cared less about whether it was because i preemptively declared the day an off-day. i deleted habitica too and honestly a little because i knew i would die on there soon so there was no point.

i remembered i felt nice after looking at childhood places for a while the other day so i tried it again and kind of went the opposite way! instead of feeling comforted by the reminder that it’s still the same life and existence i was just filled with Yearning. i would like to go back to being small and stupid in the fun way as opposed to the cripplingly depressing way that i am now. i have been very introspective lately and kind of realizing just how big a task it’ll be to unscrew my way of thinking about the world and what i do. i would like therapy please i would like the money to afford it please.

i got rocksmith working at least, just have to use my headphones wired without noise cancelling on which sounds pretty bad. it was late and i didn’t want to be loud so i didn’t play much but the small amount i did got me realizing how much i need to focus on form because i do not know if i am holding this thing remotely right and if it should feel so uncomfortable. will have to look into “justin guitar” that i hear everyone recommend. after that i stayed up late playing zelda and mario run.

there was a lot of uhhh “resetting” of progress today, in different areas. i started reading more reddit posts about the all-or-nothing attitude and saw one person mention that every minute is a chance to start anew, which i disagree with slightly because i will often ruin my ability to start anew so quickly by eating poorly and feeling bad or jerking off. but i suppose i could still try more in a state like that instead of continuing to do nothing or even intentionally worsening it. i thought maybe i should start putting my task lists on these posts every day as well, then argued that if writing a public post about how i did nothing every day wasn’t motivating enough there’s no reason that would help. also it’s just too personal i feel i don’t want to come to tumblr every day to announce that i did or did not jerk cum from my penis.

#september 2022

0 notes

kcatta-wodahs · 4 years

Text

MC Who Does Not Fear Death x OM! Demon Brothers

Or maiming, or apparently any other consequences. You’ve walked into this situation with absolutely no filter and no fear. Time to tear down every structure of Devildom society.

Lucifer

You look at him with a withering stare when he tries to intimidate you into behaving.

“I was summoned out of my trashy apartment to this place, where literally anyone could snap me like a twig on accident. I’m just working on the assumption that I’m already dead.”

He sternly looks at you. “You’re under my protection during your time here. No harm will come to you.”

You snort derisively, which visibly irritates him. “Don’t worry about it. I won’t come back to haunt you if it happens.”

As you continue through your life in Devildom he keeps calling you out for meddling and all that, like usual, and he HATES that you literally *do not care* when he threatens you.

Like HE knows that he wouldn’t hurt Diavolo’s transfer student but YOU are supposed to be AFRAID of him dammit.

His frustration at this ends up turning into a form of respect. You’re about the only person who will stand up to him, and tbh like you’re so fucking fragile but you’ll yell at him all day? That takes guts. Annoying guts. But you’ve got guts.

But also STOP IT. He has enough stress in his life and now he’s constantly terrified that you’ve decided it’s a great idea to adopt a baby balrog

Which you did once. He’s just afraid that “Flamin Hot Cheeto” is going to come back since you somehow managed to imprint on it.

despite the fact that the BABY could easily tear your arms off on accident

Not to mention he gets the flack for EVERY SINGLE ONE of these following stories. You stress him out so much. Please. Please, stop.

He’s almost to the point of begging. The Avatar of Pride is three steps away from either locking you away for the rest of the year or begging on his knees for you to calm down.

But you know you’d find a way out if he locked you up so no worries. It’ll be a good challenge.

Mammon

“Well you WON’T be dead because it’s my job to protect you! Are you doubting the Great Mammon?!”

Stupid human. Yeah, you’re fragile and weak, but that’s why HE’S your bodyguard now, and there’s no way in hell (lol) that he would let you die on his watch.

Lucifer would kill him.

You welcome the challenge, and he thinks it’s funny at first but quickly becomes a flustered mother hen.

“NO, we are NOT going out to Madam Scream’s at 3am! Do ya know what kinda CREEPS are out there at 3am?!”

And you sneak out the fucking window.

He has had more heart attacks in the past week than he has had in the last 100 years of life.

He starts agreeing to your ridiculous adventures JUST because then he can actually keep an eye on you.

He adores the chaos of the laugh that bursts from you every time you narrowly escape death.

He HATES how often you have to NARROWLY ESCAPE DEATH. So he will never tell you.

He almost doesn’t have time for his own shenanigans anymore, because all his time is taken up by trying to make sure you stay alive.

And you’ve figured out that if you turn *any* of your ideas into a money-making one, he will join you whole-heartedly.

So you bribe him because what’s money to you anymore anyway?

Leviathan

I mean he doesn’t leave his room much, so tbh he probably just gets texts from you that make him want to scream.

‘hey uh levi say if someone were to hypothetically be stuck in a succubus’ devil basement to become an unwilling sacrifice to asmo what would that person, hypothetically, do?’

‘probably die’ is usually all he sends back

You always come back, because he always sends a text to the other brothers. In that case Asmo came to rescue you himself and scold the succubus.

You become the friend that he makes funny throwing-shade reddit posts about. (Devvit? Devil reddit? Eh??)

‘Levi so this has nothing to do with anything but is there a cure for a dangerously potent ‘always win at rock-paper-scissors' curse? Asking for a friend’

‘Friend is being held hostage tho so maybe be quick about a response’

He didn’t even know that kind of curse existed. None of them did. What the fuck did you do.

How did you get taken captive by playing rock paper scissors?

He doesn’t know. Nobody does. He expects the play-by-play so he can recommend it as a new anime to his favorite producers.

Somehow your chaotic plans end up with stories almost as great as TSL.

Beelzebub

He physically carries you around.

He’s like “fuck this you can’t get into trouble if I’m holding you.”

If Beel’s on MC watching duty, he’s almost the only one who is successful, just because you physically cannot get away.

But at the same time, he is very easily bribed.

So yes, he’ll go to Madam Scream’s with you at 3am. Sounds like fun.

But he is very protective after losing someone he cares about (who you remind him of so much….) so he keeps you close when you’re out and about too.

If you start getting into a fight with some other demon he literally just takes the fight for you and wins with no trouble at all.

You like having Beel with you.

Especially finding street festivals! You’re in a whole new world and there’s a MILLION things to try. Beel is more than happy to try them with you.

But that leads to arguments about whether deadly creatures to humans are still deadly when dead.

“No, you can’t eat that it’s on fire. I know even small fires hurt humans. I’ll eat it for you.”

“That hot sauce makes every demon I know cry. You really shouldn’t buy a bottle. Please. No, don’t try it. No, that’s too much for one-- oh. Oh no.”

He forgives you as long as you don’t actually get hurt and you give him your leftovers.

Asmodeus

“If I get wrinkles because of you I promise you will never hear the end of it. I will curse you forever.”

He swears on every single one of his lovers that you have started giving him grey hairs.

GREY HAIRS, MC.

Why can’t you just settle down and let them all take care of you? You don’t have to prove anything to the other demons!

But you will. You’re living in Devildom now, and by everything unholy, you are going to live that life to its fullest extent.

He was thrilled at first when you were all for joining him at his nightclubs and parties. Now he hides every party’s date from you.

That time you almost threw yourself off a balcony to try and emulate a very drunk demon’s newest dance move.

“I need to stay TRENDY, Asmo!! I’ll be fine!!”

Ever since learning Demonus doesn’t affect humans you have challenged every single stuck-up tough boy to a drinking contest.

And every single time you win, Asmo has had to *narrowly* save you from being killed by said demon.

And you just say “he deserved it” every time.

And like, yeah okay, he probably did but YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE.

Somehow, you manage to out-party Asmo.

dON’T TELL THE OTHERS but he lives for the times when you practically fall asleep on his shoulder while coming home from a rager. You may not get drunk, but when you’re sleepy, you’re so affectionate and something in his heart melts.

Satan

At first, Satan was all for the rebellious “life life with no restraints” thought process you explained to him.

I mean, he didn’t like the assumption that he and his brothers couldn’t control themselves to not accidentally kill you, but also… fair.

But he didn’t realize that this mindset followed through for EVERY demon in ANY place.

Including RAD, where old and wizened demons were *really* not used to being contradicted

Which led to you “accidentally insulting” your 5000 year old Human Studies professor by giving them a pop quiz on current memes (which they failed).

And left Satan as the one who had to make sure that said professor didn’t kill you.

And the thing is, this keeps happening.

You’ve written all over the school’s library books, pointing out every error.

You *continue* to argue with the demons who threaten to kill you when you say silly things like “No, Solomon did not learn his sorcery at Hogwarts because Hogwarts isn’t REAL.”

(Solomon, meanwhile, refutes you vehemently and seems to grow three inches taller every time you glare at him.)

Satan assures you that he values knowledge and truth and all that, but could you maybe find a less dangerous way to push it?

No can do, Satan, because you already had plans with Mammon to use a curse that writes the history of the actual Sorceric Academy that Solomon attended like 400 years all over the desks in Human Studies. It’s activated by anyone saying “Hogwarts”.

No, no, Satan, it’s brilliant, because you can’t do magic. It can’t be you who did it.

Satan, no don’t tell Lucifer.

I thought you hated him. Satan, wait.

You are the only person in the history of ever who convinces him to come to Lucifer for intervention. You wear that badge with pride and also deep, deep, bitter sadness.

Belphegor

Like, through the plot your willingness to be a thorn in anyone’s side just to get more information really works for Belphie.

He’s like all I gotta do is ask? Sweet. Yeah. Go, human.

But then when he’s all big and threatening and “im gonna kill you” and you just kind of look at him and nod like “yeah, this checks out.”

Frankly, that’s rude, MC.

And then he keeps threatening to kill you and it doesn’t even PHASE you like. You just keep listening to him rant and going “OH i think i get it now”

He liked that you were always looking for more information when he was the one pushing you around, but now?

No. Human, he is going to KILL you here, STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.

And then you do the time-travel bit, and see that he *literally has killed you in one timeline* and you just like

Shrug it off and keep talking about Lilith???????

Tbh what probably stopped him from doing it again is just that you’re fucking insane, MC

“MC, you literally just saw yourself dead in Mammon’s arms”

You wave your hand vaguely in his direction and say, “Yeah okay, but can we talk about the lack of communication in this household because it is tearing this family apart.”

What the fuck MC

When he’s back to normal, tbh he loves that side of you. He loves getting into shit when he’s not sleeping. He will 100% encourage you and be there to make sure that you *don’t* actually die again.

He’s the only one who doesn’t actually try to stop you. Who knew he was so into chaos.

But if you try to drag him to a plan when he should be sleeping he will be like Beel and literally just hold you down while he naps dammit. You brought this on yourself. He needs sleep.

#obey me #obey me!#obey me shitposts #obey me crack #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me beelzebub #obey me asmodeus #obey me satan #obey me belphegor #bast babbles #my writing #obey me headcanons #gender neutral mc #re-reading this makes me vibrate with the need to destroy things #tldr is that humans are fucked up

776 notes · View notes

tittytania · 3 years

Text

Finding ChristBorg: A TED talk about what happened during the Coldharbour Compact.

Reposted from my tes reddit bc I want to see what y’all think.

I can't tell if I'm a genius, completely insane, or if I'm just late to the lore-party. Time to find out I guess. TL;DR at the bottom.

So it has never been explained what Sotha Sil did during the Coldharbour Compact to convince the daedric princes to not manifest on Nirn without an intermediary, and it probably never will be since the mystery of it all is far too cool. But that doesn't mean I can't read into it like literature and look for meaning in the other texts I can compare it to.

To start, Vivec is based off of the Shakta variation of the half female/half male Ardhanarishvara, where the gold-skinned female half is the right side. Both Vivec and Ardhanarishvara represent unity and duality, and looking at some images of Ardhanarishvara, it's kinda hard to argue that Vivec wasn't based off of them. Kirkbride even confirmed that Ardhanarishvara was the inspiration for Vivec in an AMA. Now, Vivec is part of the god trio the Almsivi Tribunal, along with Almalexia and Sotha Sil. Shiva, who Ardhanarishvara is the avatar of, is also part of a god trio, called the Trimurti in Hinduism. So it would make sense if the other members of the tribunal are also based off of one member of a real world religious triad. I have a shaky idea of who Almalexia could be, but my theory for her god-inspiration is nowhere near as solid as my theory for Sotha Sil, who I believe is based on Jesus Christ.

To start, their characterizations have multiple similarities. Both are one branch of a god-triad, with Sotha Sil as part of the Tribunal, and Jesus as The Son in the Holy Trinity. Both serve as a teacher, with Jesus being referred to as Teacher several times in the Bible, and Sotha Sil giving lessons on magic and Mysticism to the Psijic Monks. Also, both are characterized as wise, patient, and celibate. They both talk about moral and philosophical concepts with their followers, neither Jesus nor Sotha Sil are shown as having a temper or raising their voices, and neither of them are shown with a spouse or partner. Sotha Sil is specifically shown as not caring about the Night Mother's attempts to sexually manipulate him in book seven of 2920, The Last Year of the First Era. Now I know that 2920 is considered a work of historical fiction in-universe, but I don't think that matters in this situation since I'm approaching this as a person reading a text, not as a person living inside the lore world.

In terms of specific scenes that connect Sotha Sil and Jesus, the first I will mention is that they both use a makeshift whip to beat intruding wrongdoers and drive them away, while yelling about fathers. In the Truth in Sequence vol. 8 book, it says that "[t]hrough His will alone, Mighty Seht wound the veins (of metal ore) into god-bronze whips, and lashed the Prince pitilessly," saying "[b]ehold the wrath of lost Ald Sotha! Know death at my hands, false-son of a false-father!" In the Bible, Jesus found people doing sales in a place of worship, and then He "made a whip of cords, (and) He drove them all out of the temple," saying “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” (John 2 15-16).

Also, Jesus had close friends and followers who were called his apostles, and Sotha Sil has his own Clockwork Apostles. Sil's apostles reside in the Clockwork Basilica, and while basilica isn't an exclusively Christian term, it is frequently used to describe a type of church architecture, and is a term the pope uses to recognize distinguished churches.

Another similarity that I found was in the plot of Morrowind, where Sotha Sil's death was caused at the hands of Almalexia, who was someone he had once loved and trusted, much like with Jesus and Judas.

The most notable life similarity as it relates to the Coldharbour Compact is that both leave the earthly world in order to make a deal for the benefit of the souls on earth, and then return to the earthly world. This parallel is given extra weight with the descriptions of the scene in the book 2920, The Last Year of the First Era. Sotha Sil returns from Coldharbour by way of someone "rolling aside the great boulder that blocked the entrance to the Dreaming Cavern. This sounds a lot like the scene in the bible of the discovery that Jesus had risen from the dead, where "an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door" (Matthew 28:2). In addition, Jesus said "after He is killed, He will rise [on] the third day," (Matthew 17:23) and after Sotha Sil returned from Coldharbour, he "felt he had been away for months, years, but only a few days had transpired." Perhaps it had been 3?

In addition to the life and behavior similarities, there are similarities in dress. In the 2920 book, Sotha Sil is always described as wearing a white robe or cloak. In ESO, Sotha Sil is shown as barefoot, and wearing a blue sash over his long white robe. In medieval and renaissance art, Jesus is most always depicted as barefoot, and is frequently shown with a blue cloth over his shoulder. In most resurrection art, as well as in almost all 20th/21st century art, Jesus is depicted as dressed in white. While Jesus usually isn't usually shown wearing both the blue sash and the white robe at once like Sotha Sil is, I found one modern interpretation of Jesus that does dress him this way, and several depictions of him in Chinese art that also portray him like this.

I'm feeling almost conspiratorial here, but these similarities are far too many for me to think it's accidental, and therefore I have to think that all of this is meant to suggest that Sotha Sil serves a Christ-figure role in his story, i.e. in sacrificing own life like Jesus did in order to make his deal in the Coldharbour Compact. However I don't think Sil's sacrifice was quite so simple. After he is asked what he offered the Daedra in return for the deal, he states: "The deals we make with Daedra... [s]hould not be discussed with the innocent." This implies that in contrast to the Christ mythos, Sil's sacrifice was not blameless; he did not come out of the deal with his hands clean.

So, a Christ-like sacrifice that isn't quite as pure and selfless as it is in Christianity. What could that be?

My theory is that in order to make the Coldharbour Compact, he sold the lives of Vivec and Almalexia along with his own. Perhaps he told the princes that he knew the tribunal's godhood would end, and in exchange for their cooperation he promised not to tell the other tribunes or make any attempt to prevent his and his companions' demise. (After all, as far as I know he made the mechanical heart for keeping his city functional, not for recreating the divinity the heart of Lorkhan provided.) Or, maybe he offered to do something to assist in bringing the Tribunal down, and losing Sunder and Keening, the tools that helped them maintain their divinity, was intentional on his part. Sil deliberately sacrificing his own life appears to be reflected in Azura's statement after his death. She said "he shed his mortality long ago, and I am certain his death was no small relief to him." Of course she'd know that he let go of his life ages ago if he had willingly sold it to her. Of course she would be certain that he found his death to be a relief, if she'd heard him say so himself when he was explaining why a god would ever offer such a deal.

It would also make sense with Sotha Sil's character, since he allegedly loved the people on Nirn more than Almalexia or Vivec did, and the destruction of Gilverdale could have definitely been a traumatic enough reminder of the destruction of Ald Sotha for him to do something dramatic to prevent it ever happening again. And guilt over sacrificing his friends could have definitely been a contributing factor to the worsening self-isolation and intense depression in his later life. It would also be a definite explanation for why he apparently never met another soul in the 10 years between losing the tools and his death. Not only had he become extremely disillusioned with the imperfections of the world, he had now finalized the deal he made so long ago, and saw no point in continuing to interact with a deeply flawed world he was essentially finished with.

However, I do see some issues with this and how it would work in-universe. Namely the fact that Hermaeus Mora's seekers said the prince received something from every individual on Nirn as part of the deal, which is quite different from what I'm suggesting. A different deal for each prince would also explain why Sil was able to include Clavicus Vile and Mephala in the compact at a much later date. There would be no reason for Vile and Mephala to submit to a collective deal whose terms had already been decided. So if he offered the tribunal's lives as part of the deal, he would have needed to offer other things as well. But for me the most significant in-universe issue I struggled with was that using his death as a bargaining tool would create a massive problem for his ability to enforce the deal in the future. This could explain why both Molag Bal and Mehrunes Dagon manifested on Nirn after Sotha Sil's death, but since I think they were summoned by qualified mortals that could have been a loophole. Either way, making a deal that is meant to last forever by promising something that can never be taken back in the case of a breach of contract seems extremely short-sighted for someone who claims to be cursed with certainty. Especially considering how many of the princes there were known to be cheats and liars.

Unless, that is, you believe this theory I read about the reason why Sil was completely silent as he was killed. My original belief was that he was silent because he'd seen it coming long ago, and knew that nothing he could have said would have changed Almalexia's mind. And while that would be in character for him, now I'm starting to think that it was because he had already uploaded his consciousness elsewhere. This would fit in with the Christ-figure parallels, due to the Christian belief that Jesus is risen from the dead and very much alive. While Jesus returned to life at the same time he emerged from the cave, the completion of Sotha Sil's death sacrifice didn't happen until long after his return via the cave. While I have found no explicit evidence that he's still around, when you find his body in Morrowind he is shown hanging, with his arms outstretched at his sides, in a sort of crucifixion pose. And after the crucifixion comes the resurrection. Perhaps Sotha Sil is still around somewhere in the gears of his city, and he promised the princes he'd never be present or have any influence on Nirn so long as they kept up their end of the deal. Additionally, the 37th sermon of Vivec mentions Sotha Sil as holding "his swollen belly," carrying "[his] daughter." While Vivec's sermons are hardly ever literal, Kirkbride's comments suggest that maybe Vivec was being somewhat literal in this instance. Regarding this concept art, Kirkbride said "note the cosmic baby growing inside Sotha Sil. While Sotha Sil is dead as we saw in the add-on pack “Tribunal”, the child survived." Perhaps one of Sotha Sil's many body modifications made him able to carry and birth a child, and then he created a daughter through self-cloning or some other method that allows him to have enough influence to enforce the compact.

TL;DR - Sotha Sil has a lot of similarities with Jesus, so he's a Christ figure and therefore his sacrifice in the Coldharbour Compact was himself, and Almalexia and Vivec too, and that also means that he may still be around.

Anyways, thanks for reading and sorry if this sounds like I'm putting red strings on a wall as my application essay to the r/SothaSimps fan club. Also, lmk if I'm missing anything obvious. For me right now Reading Lore On The Bedroom Floor is a bit more manageable than playing the games, and there may be something I've just completely looked over.

#sotha sil #tes #the elder scrolls #tesblr #vivec #almalexia #morrowind #elder scrolls online #eso #lord seht

58 notes · View notes

norahastuff · 3 years

Note

the unrequited love thing just bothers me so much. No-one had any issues seeing Cas/Hannah as a valid ship in the show when Cas wasn't even really interested in her. We've had a decade worth of romantic signals from Dean, but somehow destiel is unrequited. such a goddamn tragedy that they couldn't find their way back to each other one last time when that is their whole ~dynamic~

Yes, all of this. Exactly. Honestly, it’s been so frustrating to keep hearing the word unrequited thrown around so much lately. What about this dynamic has ever seemed unrequited? I’ve done this before but I’ve been really annoyed about it lately so should we make a list?

What about Dean feeling so personally betrayed by Cas in The Man Who Would Be King? Or Sam and Bobby walking on eggshells around Dean and taking care to very delicately approach bringing up the possibility of Cas doing something shady because they knew how hard Dean was going to take it? They knew it would be different for him than it would be for both of them.

Or how about Dean keeping Cas’ trenchcoat, and not only keeping it - he could have stashed it at Bobby’s or left it in the trunk of the Impala - but no he kept it with him, moved it from car to car. And this isn’t a last-minute development that they decided to throw into 7x17 when Cas returned, we see glimpses of the coat in other episodes before this, a consistent reminder that Dean’s carrying it around with him. That losing Cas is weighing on him.

How about Dean wondering why he could usually get over things but for some reason with Cas he couldn’t and he just didn’t know why.

For that matter...do you think there is anybody else that Dean would forgive for hurting Sam? For betraying him? Sure Dean is mad at Cas but more than anything he wanted to fix things. Despite everything, he needed Cas to be a part of his life.

How about that time Dean spent a year in purgatory looking for Cas, praying to him every night? In Dean’s mind, Sam is out there alone doing God knows what trying to get him back. I mean Sam didn’t, he’d let Dean go, but Dean assumed he was still looking. And yet Dean didn’t go back to Sam even though he could. He stayed for a year looking for Cas. Because he needed to. He needed him. Purgatory was pure remember? Dean had clarity there. He understood his wants, needs, and emotions.

Or you know just that one little thing about how Dean changed his own memories of what happened when he got separated from Cas because the thought of failing Cas was less painful than the idea that Cas would choose to stay in purgatory instead of leaving with him.

“We need you. I need you.” You know all about this one, I don’t need to say more.

The angels knowing exactly what would hurt Dean, knowing how much he cared about Cas and using that against him:

“The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in hell he was lost!”

“I know you’re hoping Castiel will return to you. I only wish that he felt the same way.”

Miriam: Bieber in there he can do almost anything. Dean: Anything? (and for the first time since Cas died we see Dean experience a moment of hope...and then...) Miriam: Oh sweetie, almost anything. Castiel he’s dead, all the way dead, because of you.

Dean staring wistfully at Cas through a Gas n Sip window for god knows how long. Actually you know what, that whole episode.

Cas being Dean’s Colette. That’s not subtext. You can argue with the execution, but the parallel was spelled out. And actually for that matter in Chuck’s drafts or alternate futures/ timelines or whatever that he was showing Sam, Dean was the one who was broken after losing Cas to the Mark of Cain, Dean was the one who had to bury him in Ma’lak box. Dean was the one who had to stop him. So I mean not only was Cas Dean’s Colette, but Dean was Cas’ Colette too.

Dean reacting very differently than Sam to Cas’ decision to say yes to Lucifer. Dean’s worry. Dean desperately calling out to Cas over and over again to try reach him and get him to eject Lucifer. Dean resisting Amara for Cas. Lucifer and Amara being very surprised by this. Amara using Cas to try to get to Dean.

Dean’s very different reactions to all things Cas in s12. This one would need it’s own post, but let’s just say there was a lot of focus on Dean and Cas in s12 and most of it was on how intensely Dean felt for Cas.

Dean made him a Led Zeppelin mixtape. And then proceeded to get mad at himself for letting Cas use it to come into his room and play him. Which isn’t exactly what happened (though it sort of is) but that’s exactly what went down from Dean’s perspective, and that kind of move would only work if Dean truly cared about Cas. Going into someone’s room and playing on their feelings for you by using a romantic gift they gave you, only works if that person has feelings for you that can be played with.

12x23. Sam having to pull Dean away from Cas at the rift because Dean was intent on chasing after Cas. Dean falling to his knees by Cas’ body unable and unwilling to think about anything else and leaving Sam to face the nephilim. Sam knowing better than to even try to move Dean.

Widower arc. I would elaborate but do I need to?

And finally all of their arc in s15. No part of that was one sided.

I actually can’t believe we have to keep having this conversation. Before it seemed like we kept having to somehow “prove” there was a romantic element to Dean and Cas’ relationship. Now that they have explicitly stated in canon that there is, the conversation seems to have shifted to how it’s one sided. Look I’m as frustrated as anyone that Dean didn’t get to say anything, but we never considered their relationship one sided before. That’s certainly not what I saw in the show. Dude pines after his totes str8 bro friend who’s not into him is not a story I would have had any interest in. Looking at that long list above does it seem like it was one sided?

Whatever Cas felt for Dean, Dean felt it too. This has never seemed like a one sided narrative. Like you said just because the last page of the story was ripped out/wasn’t written (ie whatever you think went down) it doesn’t invalidate years upon years of consistent relationship building and emotional growth. Their story is incomplete not erased.

(And in relation to the Cas and Hannah of it all, a while back I did get curious and look that up, and you’re right. People had no problem with thinking of Cas and Hannah as romantic - when she was played by Erica Carroll. When Hannah returned in a male vessel, both Misha and the new actor Lee Majdoub played their relationship exactly the same way, the same heart eyes, the same gentle touches and soft spoken appreciation, but no one seemed to want to discuss Cas and Hannah’s romantic connection anymore. For reasons. Whatever could they be? I’m putting this in brackets though because I don’t have the sources on that and I have no intention of trawling through reddit/entertainment review sites/wherever I checked last time to find them. I do not have that in me. So there’s a chance I could be mistaken and people did discuss it, in which case I’d love to be proven wrong. Anyway that’s why this point is just at the end in brackets)

#asks #destiel #anon trust me I'm in complete agreement #we're on the same wavelength #my spn thoughts #i got a little carried away #this has just been bothering me lately #love and...love #long post

295 notes · View notes

somebody-909 · 3 years

Text

Yeong-gi was arrested as a kid [I Love Yoo Theory]

In celebration of the return of my favourite webtoon, I thought I'd share the theory I shared on reddit a while ago about our favourite red head (revamped with pictures and extra discussion). This theory was eventually pretty much proven correct in Episode 112.

TLDR: Allusions to violent behaviour, a bad period of time where Yeong-gi was away, and stigmatized treatment resembling how you treat a criminal, lead me to believe that Yeong-gi, having been deeply affected by the events with his mother, developed violent behaviour, that resulted in legal trouble of some sort. He was then sent "away" somewhere for some time, likely either juvie or a rehabilitation centre of sorts for juvenile delinquents.

1. "How long has it been since you got out?"

In episode 16, when Kousuke visits Yeong-gi at Mrs. Lochlainn's (Yeong-gi's granny) place, he asks:

"How long has it been since you got out? Four years, maybe five? I'll stop for today. I know you don't like being reminded of what happened back then."

This suggests that Yeong-gi "got out" of some place/institution. The words "got out" are also quite ominous... (I would even argue that it implies being "locked" away). I find it hard to believe he would be using this for something that wasn't incredibly unpleasant/hard for Yeong-gi to get through. Kousuke proceeds to say, "Four years, maybe five? I'll stop for today. I know you don't like being reminded of what happened back then," confirming this implication.

I have seen a few possible interpretations of where Yeong-gi might've been "away" for a while. I personally think it's most likely something legal (juvie or juvenile delinquent related rehab), although others believe it might've been a mental institution, and others think it was a boarding school.

I see how "got out" could be used for the first two options easily, but the last one is a bit more shaky. "... since you left boarding school" might be a more natural way of referring to that, since it would have to be a really bad boarding school to refer to it in the way Kousuke does.

The following clues lean more towards Yeong-gi being away due to criminal reasons, however.

2. Treated like a delinquent.

The next clue and the biggest is how everyone treats Yeong-gi. His family treats him like a delinquent (I choose this word specifically because of its connotations... not just a troubled, hopeless kid... but more a kid you can't trust because he will be irresponsible and bad).

In episode 19, the students talk about how Yeong-gi hangs out with Soushi (who they think is a delinquent as seen in episode 20 probably bc he's a brown guy with a scar tbh TT)

"His family's got some great connections, that's the only reason I'm being friendly with the dude."

"But what's the point in doing that? He only hangs out with this delinquent from another school."

"You're joking..."

"I'm not! I saw him! Got a scar too... probably got it from a fight..."

"So it's true what they say then... Him being..."

"Shh! Don't say it out loud!"

They think Yeong-gi is hanging out with and is friends with a delinquent who they associate with having been violent. They immediately ask, "So is it true what they say then … Him being …"

What kind of rumour would they think is true if they saw Yeong-gi hanging out with a "thug"?

It would make sense to finish that question with "So is it true what they say then … Him being a criminal" or "a delinquent".

If we were to go with the mental hospital theory, it might work if they said "him being violent" but that doesn't really work as well here in relation to Soushi being a "delinquent."

There is a bit of nuance between what they would associate with someone with a criminal history, in comparison to someone who had been admitted to an institution for mental health issues, even if both possibilities were linked to violent outbursts.

As for his family, they treat him terribly. Like he's a screw up, a troublemaker. Not so much like someone with mental illness. I think by this point its clear that Yeong-gi made a big mistake, but what would be so bad that they treat him like this?

3. Hints of being "away" and having a criminal past.

There are several subtle hints that indicate Yeong-gi did have a criminal past of sorts. Or at least spent some time away.

Episode 79 - significant criminal past

When Yeong-gi and his father meet the lawyer about the assault and drug case in episode 79, the lawyer says:

"Your son does not have a significant criminal past."

Why not just say that he doesn't have "a criminal past" at all, period? Now this seems negligible, but Quimchee has used very subtle hints like this in the past so I wouldn't put it past her (eg. Yui calling Yeong-gi, "kid," and Kousuke "son," to indicate she is related to Kousuke and not Yeong-gi).

Episode 79 - Hansuke couldn't get to know Yeong-gi

Kousuke's cousin, Hansuke, states that he never got to know Yeong-gi back in their college days because:

"I was busy with my residency and [Yeong-gi] was… you know… "

This alludes to Yeong-gi having been unable to hang out because he had something going on...

Kousuke's Corner 2 and Episode 72 - a year behind

Yeong-gi is also a year older than Shin-Ae and his twelfth grade peers... Having any sort of legal trouble could cause a kid to flunk a year.

References to violent behaviour

In Episode 51, Kousuke mocks Yeong-gi, stating that he can have his assistant bring his punching bag if he needed an outlet for his frustrations.

Not being in "control" of his emotions is a recurring motif, with Yeong-gi's family members and even with himself.

Affinity for physical fitness (boxing) as a coping mechanism

I think it's significant that after being alluded to having had violent behaviour, his coping mechanism is something very physical. Boxing, interestingly, imitates violence.

Thematically fits with the end of the Black and White Formal arc

This is more my personal opinion... But I think Yeong-gi punching that pos Sangchul after constantly being passive aggressively criticized for violent behaviour is... cruelly fitting. Him being arrested and possibly repeating what had once happened, and after he had constantly been told not to repeat it, would be a sad parallel to what he once had to deal with.

Possible alternative explanations

TW: mentions of poor mental health and suicide attempts

I think it's most certain that Yeong-gi had legal trouble of some sort, likely due to a violent altercation, and that he was sent somewhere as a result of this incident.

Where he was actually sent to as a result, however, is a bit more shaky.

Since it was a minor criminal past, it's possible could've been simply arrested and not been sent to juvie at all. If his father was heavily involved in his life, he would likely have intervened if juvie became a possibility.

There are some who speculate Yeong-gi had very poor mental health, likely due to what happened with his mother and may have even attempted suicide. While this is possible, there isn't a lot to indicate past depressive or suicidal tendencies. For sure, his violent behaviour was coupled with poor mental health... but not necessarily poor mental health of this nature. I also feel that there is some nuance in how people would talk to Yeong-gi if his time away was precipitated by a suicide attempt. Someone who had self-harming tendencies isn't treated like a thug. Someone who beat up a kid might be though. (depressive tendencies could've been coupled with violence that caused his time "away," but once again, there is not a lot to really hint at severe depressive behaviours).

There are also theories of foster care, if his mother died (which seems to be the most likely scenario with her). I don't think this is the case because we have seen a young Yeong-gi interact with a young Kousuke. The two brothers (and their parents) were aware of each other. There is also his nana.

I think the most likely scenario is that Yeong-gi, having been deeply affected by the events with his mother, developed violent behaviour, that resulted in legal trouble of some sort.

He was then sent somewhere as a result: either juvie or a rehabilitation centre of sorts for juvenile delinquents, or an asylum (due to aggression issues). Regardless, it must have been tied to a violent incident, resulting in legal action and detention and possibly a follow up mental health related thing (rehab/asylum).

Episode 112's confirmation:

There is a vague flashback alluding to a period of time where Yeong-gi was in trouble, specifically stating

"Poor kid. No one is going to want him."

"Why not?"

"...Behavioural and aggression issues".

This alludes both to Yeong-gi getting into trouble for hurting someone, AND for being guardian-less for a period of time (no one "wanting him" seems to reference foster care or adoption).

Later in the episode, Yeong-gi's classmates gossip and say:

"Wasn't he at a detention centre for a bit?"

"I thought he was in an asylum?"

"He was sent somewhere for sure..."

69 notes · View notes

trashlie · 3 years

Note

I'm loving all your ILY posts! I've also seen your comments on reddit and I enjoy reading your insightful analysis there, too. I would like to know your thoughts on Kousuke and Alyssa. Do you think they will become narrative foils? I noticed they were acting awkwardly around each other too (it kind of reminds me of how annoyed Soushi reacts around Maya) and she seems to have a crush on him 👀 I think she'll be used to contrast how he's still capable of redemption. 1/?

I mean Yui groomed them both successfully. They have shown to emulate her behavior, value their reputation over other people's feelings, and refuse to take accountability for their actions against Shin Ae and Nol. But unlike Kousuke, Alyssa has shown no hint of remorse or even guilt. 2/?

Waaahh thank you so much, anon! Isn't it silly that I still go :O when I realize people actually enjoy what I have to say? I started yelling into the void on tumblr because I got worried I was too active on reddit and I was possibly annoying people lmaooooo so I'm actually really glad you're able to find me on both platforms! It means a lot that I'm not just yelling into a total void.

If you don't mind, I'm breaking your ask down into two parts, because I might leave somethin off/this will get too long if I keep it all in one lol. BUT you bring up things I love to think about!!!!! So!!!!!

I think we are deliberately kept in the dark about Alyssa - whether it's to subvert the scheming girl trope, I'm not sure, but there's a lot of things we don't know about her and that's definitely on purpose. She's a character who probably won't be revealed more to us for a while yet, too, which is frustrating if only because I want to know everything NOW, but it does serve to make her more interesting.

Alyssa's interest in Kousuke is so obvious I can't believe I never noticed it in my original reads. I've seen this brushed off as "She just admires him" and I'm just like... she actually sulked for a moment about Kousuke leaving! Meanwhile she was straight up all but telling Nol she'll help him pack his bags lmao.

I feel like the cast of her shadow is deliberate, too, but look at that face. Sulking.

Compare with

There's room to argue that we can't see Alyssa's face when she first tells him she won't stop him, but she kind of makes it abundantly clear that Nol being away doesn't really affect her. And, I mean, look at how their relationship is conducted. She's bragged to Meg that she and Nol are so casual and cool and easy breezy.

(I guess that means there ALSO is room to argue that Alyssa is putting on a front and just saying this to make sure people think her relationship is great, but the only People who know is Meg. And as a people pleaser, if Alyssa felt uncomfortable with the casual nature of her relationship with Nol, wouldn't she actually do more to make the relationship more of what she wants? Notably during the conversation on the balcony, she basically tells Nol this isn't really her dream relationship, which leads to the admission that they are together not for each other but for the benefits they each get so......)

Kousuke is the one who confuses me the most, because it strikes me as really weird that Yui has used Alyssa as leverage before against Kousuke. "You should bring a date, Kousuke, Alyssa will be there." What does this mean? What does it have to do with him and why would it entice him to bring anyone, anyway? I'm still really baffled on this one, tbh. Something that really stood out to me was during the dinner when Nol finally revealed he was planning to attend Oxford, Kousuke was distracted by his own news that the CFO position would be opening. In fact, when Nol mentions attending Oxford later, Kousuke seems to act like this is his first time hearing it.

Nol takes note of Kousuke's state of distraction before he finally starts talking about his plan.

The way quim does the dialogue and suddenly Kousuke's interest returning is.... interesting isn't it? From the moment Nol notes Kousuke's disinterest, we don't see his face again until Rand brings up Alyssa. Quim doesn't do anything without reason - in a movie, you wouldn't waste film on Kousuke's interesting returning at the mention of Alysa unless it meant anything, right?

There's so many little moments that make me go what the heck is going on here, too.

What the heck is up with THIS? Why does Kousuke deliberate SO LONG before he calls Alyssa? Like, do I think he's really so weirded out about calling his younger brother's girlfriend, considering he has one of his younger brother's own friends reporting on him and at his beck and call? You can't convince me that he's hesitant only because Alyssa is the sister of Meg. It just seems too wary.

And yes, this moment here?

It really does have the same tone as Soushi's wariness of Maya, except is Kousuke wary of Alyssa in the same way? Is he wary of her intentions? This one is so hard for me to read, because frankly, at this point it's hard to tell if Kousuke even cares about Nol as a brother or because he was forced to and he feels deep-buried remorse for the way he treated him and doesn't know how to handle it. Is he just aware of Alyssa's keen interest in him and that puts him on edge? Would he even care about Alyssa's keen interest unless she starts to get pushy?

I HONESTLY HAVE NO IDEA and frankly, it drives me nuts, so I love to discuss this and see what other people have to say. I'd never even noticed how long he deliberates before finally calling her until someone on reddit pointed that out.

lmao this so much preamble to get to the point but anyway YES they are absolutely parallels and I do wonder if they would become foils. Again, it's hard to know with Alyssa because we've been deliberately shielded so much of her personality right now and it's hard to tell what's real and what's not with her. The way that she worries about Shinae telling Nol what she did absolutely reads to me as a lack of remorse, but maybe I'm just projecting because we haven't been given much reason to like her lol. Shinae definitely makes it seem like Alyssa never actually apologized and the way Shinae just brushes it off makes me feel like there was never actual, proper closure. What Alyssa did is worse than just causing her injury: it was why she did it and how she reacted like Shinae was something dirty and how dare she even talk to her even though Shinae probably just wanted to know why Alyssa stopped being friends with her. Maybe she was even seeking closure at the time.

In the same way that Nol and Shinae are mirrors, Kousuke and Alyssa are their parallel abusers, grooming victims of Yui, those who care more about their image and reputation than anything else and have hurt others (Nol and Shinae) in their quest to fill the role. We still don't know if Alyssa dated Nol because she genuinely had a crush (doubtful so far) or because she figured out the family he's from and wanted to get closer. I try so hard to give her the benefit of the doubt but narratively we aren't privy to that yet. Also, have you noticed that Nol and Shinae both have a relationship of some kind with each others' abuser? This mirror and their parallel abusers thing is INTRICATELY woven.

That's what makes it so difficult to tell if she'll become a foil or merely a parallel that highlights what Nol and Shinae have been through. We know Kousuke will receive a redemption arc, because he's a main character, and also because I think part of subverting his trope is that he has to take responsibility for his past actions, rather than being loved in spite of the things he's done or whatever. In order for Kousuke to proper and develop further, he has to be held accountable and he has to break free of his family. Can we trust the same for Alyssa? At this point, she doesn't want to lose Nol because she knows if she loses him, she can just as easily lose her career and access to the world she's only just gained access to (and if she were to lose it all right now, it would be worse for her because she'd have all those trainee fees to pay back).

I think both Kousuke and Alyssa are likely in for a very public airing of their sins; for Kousuke it may come in the form of the expose YuJing is working on, collateral damage in the quest to take down Yui. I also think the only way to nudge Kousuke to change is that his image has to take a hit in some form. Is it that Rand isn't his father? Is it a reveal that he abused his brother? Is it whatever happened in the past that Nol got in trouble for was caused by Kousuke and he let Nol take the blame? Likewise, I think the fact that people knew Alyssa in middle school means she's not so safe, either; what if one of the girls from after school duty reveals what happened? Surely there were rumors going around school about what happened - Shinae is out of school, Alyssa is pulled from school, kids talk. Frankly, a scandal like that could ruin her career, and worse, if Nol knew what she had done, would he be able to remain shackled to her?

While I know Kousuke won't immediately take responsibility for his actions, I've always believed that such a catalyst would at least make him start thinking about it and force him to admit it. It wouldn't happen over night, but in time it will. But will Alyssa? Would she deny the allegations? Would she just shift blame, insist that it was all an accident, that it wasn't bullying like you think? (Cos look, I do believe it was an accident, but there's a way to call it an accident and still admit fault and blame; but just as easily you can call it an accident and try to shirk responsibility.)

I do love the idea of her being a foil for Kousuke, an Aesop's fable, if you will, of what happens when you barter with the devil (Yui). I'm not opposed to the scheming female character type, but I do oppose it when they take down others to raise themselves up, and if that's the way Alyssa will end up doing it, then I'll be happy to watch her fall. If she can scheme and use her connections without hurting people then hey power to ya. Unlike Alyssa, Kousuke never had a chance to evade Yui, and being able to walk away from her as an adult will be a choice he can make. Alyssa loses... so much if she breaks her deal.

I guess that's the thing about where she and Nol are in their relationship now - it's been made clear he's hanging in here because he's forced to and as a sort of act of self-sabotage, full well knowing she's here because she's taking advantage of the opportunities that "dating" him brings so... if they're in an agreement, is it okay to watch her climb right now? She leaves me conflicted and I know it's largely because she's one of the characters we know just enough to hate but so little to justify. Could it be that it all just got out of hand for her? At first she just wanted friends, was trying to find a place to belong, something good in a life that deprived her of social connections. And then comes along Yui, seducing her with ideas of fame and fortune? Was the desire to be loved and admired so strong it powered over the need to fit in with friends and she readily cast them off? Did she not anticipate what it would actually mean, thought she could have her cake and eat it, too? The way she responds to Nol's texts, and the fact that Dieter and Soushi ask him about her, means she probably isn't even in touch with them at all anymore. Idk, I really look forward to seeing their dynamic pre-idol Alyssa, because I want to know how she fit with them, what was it like?

And then, because this was supposed to be about foils lmao you have the fact that Shinae basically foils both Alyssa and Kousuke in regard to Nol, both as a person who cares about him and also as "a good friend" vs "the person I'm currently seeing" lmao like, everyone is literally set to juxtapose each other and man, I'll never get over how well this has been done lmao. Compared to Kousuke and Alyssa, Shinae is the one who accepts responsibility even when it's difficult, who knows when and how to swallow her pride (even if she's not the one who should) and I think it's why she is the one seen a the champion at Nol's side - they are the ones who care little for their images and who know how to apologize (even when they aren't the ones who should be) and that's why they are at each other's sides.

So yes, this is a very long essay response lol to essentially say: I'm still undecided if I think Alyssa will become a foil or merely remain a parallel. I would love to see her redeem herself but something tells me not all characters in this story will be redeeamable. Maybe one day we'll understand her motivation, even if we don't agree with it. I hope at the very least she makes peace with Shinae, but I get the feeling she'll be forced into it (as in, her secret gets ousted) and that's not as satisfying, but hey, if it helps Shinae then I'm for it.

A friend of mine has mused that maybe Alyssa will be the one to oust the secret herself and I'm ngl, I like that idea though it does feel kind of vindictive towards her character. Maybe accidentally spilling it to Nol would be the segue to a couple episodes from her POV though!

Gosh this was so long I'm so sorry lmao but please follow up with your thoughts and feelings, too, or if this made you think of anything or what! I think at this point in the story we've been given a lot of information but we just don't have enough of it to totally piece together what we're supposed to be seeing. I think Kousuke and Alyssa's weirdness around each other is very deliberate, though, and I'm not sure "She's Meg's sister" is enough to warrant so many panels of Kou being SO WEIRD about her, you know? Am I missing thing? Is there more to be revealed? Are we just blind? lmao Aaaahhhhhhhhhhh

#I Love Yoo #ILY Brainrot #Alyssa Cho #Kousuke Hirahara #at this point always anticipate a read more cos whew i can't shut up!#BUT I'VE BEEN FIXATED ON THIS FOR A WHILE NOW AND I STILL HAVEN'T COME TO A CONCLUSION I LIKE #AND I'VE BEEN DYING TO TALK A LITTLE ABOUT ALYSSA AND KOUSUKE AS UNREPENTENT PARALLELS AND YUI PUPPETS #the way that Nol and Shinae are mirrors and they each have their own version of Kousuke/Alyssa #and conveniently they each have a relationship of some sort with each others abusers does not escape me #what will Shinae think when she finds out how Kousuke has treated Nol?#What will Nol think when he finds out who Alyssa was during her brief stint at public school #I'm dying for flashbacks with Alyssa because I JUST! WANT! TO UNDERSTAND!!!!!!!#so far it's so easy to villify her because we don't know otherwise #we've been given no reason to justify or forgive her #and you know what i am okay with villifying a character like her in a story with some pretty dimensional female characters #Maya is one such character who was easy for readers to hate but redeemed herself by being mature and honest with Shinae #do I trust Alyssa to be mature and honest?#only if she ever becomes okay with the idea of losing her image #i think that's a big thing for Kousuke and Alyssa?#at some point Kousuke will realize his image is a fraud #something he was manipulated into despite what he likes to believe #and once he comes to that realization after he breaks down and crumbles and rebuilds he will find a new path and build his own image #one of his own making #but Alyssa....? Who or what would she be if she lost her image?#if she couldn't control the narrative?#AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

15 notes · View notes

a-room-of-my-own · 4 years

Text

This isn’t an easy piece to write, for reasons that will shortly become clear, but I know it’s time to explain myself on an issue surrounded by toxicity. I write this without any desire to add to that toxicity.

For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.

My interest in trans issues pre-dated Maya’s case by almost two years, during which I followed the debate around the concept of gender identity closely. I’ve met trans people, and read sundry books, blogs and articles by trans people, gender specialists, intersex people, psychologists, safeguarding experts, social workers and doctors, and followed the discourse online and in traditional media. On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series, set in the present day, and my fictional female detective is of an age to be interested in, and affected by, these issues herself, but on another, it’s intensely personal, as I’m about to explain.

All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.

Months later, I compounded my accidental ‘like’ crime by following Magdalen Burns on Twitter. Magdalen was an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour. I followed her because I wanted to contact her directly, which I succeeded in doing. However, as Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises, dots were joined in the heads of twitter trans activists, and the level of social media abuse increased.

I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.

What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.

I’d stepped back from Twitter for many months both before and after tweeting support for Maya, because I knew it was doing nothing good for my mental health. I only returned because I wanted to share a free children’s book during the pandemic. Immediately, activists who clearly believe themselves to be good, kind and progressive people swarmed back into my timeline, assuming a right to police my speech, accuse me of hatred, call me misogynistic slurs and, above all – as every woman involved in this debate will know – TERF.

If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.

But accusations of TERFery have been sufficient to intimidate many people, institutions and organisations I once admired, who’re cowering before the tactics of the playground. ‘They’ll call us transphobic!’ ‘They’ll say I hate trans people!’ What next, they’ll say you’ve got fleas? Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power really need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species).

So why am I doing this? Why speak up? Why not quietly do my research and keep my head down?

Well, I’ve got five reasons for being worried about the new trans activism, and deciding I need to speak up.

Firstly, I have a charitable trust that focuses on alleviating social deprivation in Scotland, with a particular emphasis on women and children. Among other things, my trust supports projects for female prisoners and for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. I also fund medical research into MS, a disease that behaves very differently in men and women. It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.

The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.

The third is that, as a much-banned author, I’m interested in freedom of speech and have publicly defended it, even unto Donald Trump.

The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.

Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.

The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018, American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:

‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’

Her paper caused a furore. She was accused of bias and of spreading misinformation about transgender people, subjected to a tsunami of abuse and a concerted campaign to discredit both her and her work. The journal took the paper offline and re-reviewed it before republishing it. However, her career took a similar hit to that suffered by Maya Forstater. Lisa Littman had dared challenge one of the central tenets of trans activism, which is that a person’s gender identity is innate, like sexual orientation. Nobody, the activists insisted, could ever be persuaded into being trans.

The argument of many current trans activists is that if you don’t let a gender dysphoric teenager transition, they will kill themselves. In an article explaining why he resigned from the Tavistock (an NHS gender clinic in England) psychiatrist Marcus Evans stated that claims that children will kill themselves if not permitted to transition do not ‘align substantially with any robust data or studies in this area. Nor do they align with the cases I have encountered over decades as a psychotherapist.’

The writings of young trans men reveal a group of notably sensitive and clever people. The more of their accounts of gender dysphoria I’ve read, with their insightful descriptions of anxiety, dissociation, eating disorders, self-harm and self-hatred, the more I’ve wondered whether, if I’d been born 30 years later, I too might have tried to transition. The allure of escaping womanhood would have been huge. I struggled with severe OCD as a teenager. If I’d found community and sympathy online that I couldn’t find in my immediate environment, I believe I could have been persuaded to turn myself into the son my father had openly said he’d have preferred.

When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’

As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman, reflected in the work of female writers and musicians who reassured me that, in spite of everything a sexist world tries to throw at the female-bodied, it’s fine not to feel pink, frilly and compliant inside your own head; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.

I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.

We’re living through the most misogynistic period I’ve experienced. Back in the 80s, I imagined that my future daughters, should I have any, would have it far better than I ever did, but between the backlash against feminism and a porn-saturated online culture, I believe things have got significantly worse for girls. Never have I seen women denigrated and dehumanised to the extent they are now. From the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, to the incel (‘involuntarily celibate’) movement that rages against women who won’t give them sex, to the trans activists who declare that TERFs need punching and re-educating, men across the political spectrum seem to agree: women are asking for trouble. Everywhere, women are being told to shut up and sit down, or else.

I’ve read all the arguments about femaleness not residing in the sexed body, and the assertions that biological women don’t have common experiences, and I find them, too, deeply misogynistic and regressive. It’s also clear that one of the objectives of denying the importance of sex is to erode what some seem to see as the cruelly segregationist idea of women having their own biological realities or – just as threatening – unifying realities that make them a cohesive political class. The hundreds of emails I’ve received in the last few days prove this erosion concerns many others just as much. It isn’t enough for women to be trans allies. Women must accept and admit that there is no material difference between trans women and themselves.

But, as many women have said before me, ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive. Moreover, the ‘inclusive’ language that calls female people ‘menstruators’ and ‘people with vulvas’ strikes many women as dehumanising and demeaning. I understand why trans activists consider this language to be appropriate and kind, but for those of us who’ve had degrading slurs spat at us by violent men, it’s not neutral, it’s hostile and alienating.

Which brings me to the fifth reason I’m deeply concerned about the consequences of the current trans activism.

I’ve been in the public eye now for over twenty years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor. This isn’t because I’m ashamed those things happened to me, but because they’re traumatic to revisit and remember. I also feel protective of my daughter from my first marriage. I didn’t want to claim sole ownership of a story that belongs to her, too. However, a short while ago, I asked her how she’d feel if I were publicly honest about that part of my life, and she encouraged me to go ahead.

I’m mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, who’ve been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces.

I managed to escape my first violent marriage with some difficulty, but I’m now married to a truly good and principled man, safe and secure in ways I never in a million years expected to be. However, the scars left by violence and sexual assault don’t disappear, no matter how loved you are, and no matter how much money you’ve made. My perennial jumpiness is a family joke – and even I know it’s funny – but I pray my daughters never have the same reasons I do for hating sudden loud noises, or finding people behind me when I haven’t heard them approaching.

If you could come inside my head and understand what I feel when I read about a trans woman dying at the hands of a violent man, you’d find solidarity and kinship. I have a visceral sense of the terror in which those trans women will have spent their last seconds on earth, because I too have known moments of blind fear when I realised that the only thing keeping me alive was the shaky self-restraint of my attacker.

I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.

On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity. I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.

Late on Saturday evening, scrolling through children’s pictures before I went to bed, I forgot the first rule of Twitter – never, ever expect a nuanced conversation – and reacted to what I felt was degrading language about women. I spoke up about the importance of sex and have been paying the price ever since. I was transphobic, I was a cunt, a bitch, a TERF, I deserved cancelling, punching and death. You are Voldemort said one person, clearly feeling this was the only language I’d understand.

It would be so much easier to tweet the approved hashtags – because of course trans rights are human rights and of course trans lives matter – scoop up the woke cookies and bask in a virtue-signalling afterglow. There’s joy, relief and safety in conformity. As Simone de Beauvoir also wrote, “… without a doubt it is more comfortable to endure blind bondage than to work for one’s liberation; the dead, too, are better suited to the earth than the living.”

Huge numbers of women are justifiably terrified by the trans activists; I know this because so many have got in touch with me to tell their stories. They’re afraid of doxxing, of losing their jobs or their livelihoods, and of violence.

But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces. Polls show those women are in the vast majority, and exclude only those privileged or lucky enough never to have come up against male violence or sexual assault, and who’ve never troubled to educate themselves on how prevalent it is.

The one thing that gives me hope is that the women who can protest and organise, are doing so, and they have some truly decent men and trans people alongside them. Political parties seeking to appease the loudest voices in this debate are ignoring women’s concerns at their peril. In the UK, women are reaching out to each other across party lines, concerned about the erosion of their hard-won rights and widespread intimidation. None of the gender critical women I’ve talked to hates trans people; on the contrary. Many of them became interested in this issue in the first place out of concern for trans youth, and they’re hugely sympathetic towards trans adults who simply want to live their lives, but who’re facing a backlash for a brand of activism they don’t endorse. The supreme irony is that the attempt to silence women with the word ‘TERF’ may have pushed more young women towards radical feminism than the movement’s seen in decades.

The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people.

All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.

#Jk Rowling #Jkr #Transgender #Terf #Gender critical #Radfem

212 notes · View notes

lastsonlost · 4 years

Text

Oh my God Elon said something we don't agree with. God I hope Apple and Starbucks disagrees with you too.

Owning a Tesla, the luxurious electric car, is a major liberal status symbol. It signals nothing more than good taste — the perfect balance of wealth with care for fossil fuels. But the man behind the brand is crafting a very different persona online that may now prove to be a challenge for his fans.

Elon Musk, the bombastic head of Tesla and SpaceX, exhorted his 34 million Twitter followers on Sunday to “take the red pill.” The comment was quickly embraced by his followers, including Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s elder daughter, who announced that she had taken the pill already.

The exchange referred to a scene from “The Matrix,” the 1999 science fiction action film. But the meaning of “red pill,” and the idea of taking it, have since percolated in online forums and become a deeply political metaphor. And with Mr. Musk and Ms. Trump, the phrase is now lodged more fully into the mainstream.

So Tesla owners are having to grapple with a car that carries a few new connotations.

“Honestly, Musk is becoming a liability and the Tesla board needs to seriously consider ousting him,” wrote Markos Moulitsas, author of “The Resistance Handbook: 45 Ways to Fight Trump.” “And I say that as a proud owner of a Tesla and a SpaceX fanatic who truly appreciates what he’s built.”

So what is the red pill?

[ I hope your fuckings Tesla explodes. You don't have to be in its but you should be forced to walk everywhere.]

In “The Matrix,” the movie’s hero, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is given the option to take a pill that lets him see the truth.

The world he thinks is real turns out to be an entertaining lie; his body is actually trapped in a farm where people are being used as human batteries. Taking the blue pill would let him return to living in the ignorant but blissful lie, while taking the red pill would launch him into an arduous journey through a brutal but fulfilling reality.

The idea of taking the red pill later grew to mean waking up to society’s grand lies. It was embraced by the right, especially by members of its youngest cohort who organized and spent their time in online forums like Reddit and 4chan.

The truth to be woken up to varied, but it ended up usually being about gender. To be red-pilled meant you discovered that feminism was a scam that ruined the lives of boys and girls. In this view, for a male to refuse the red pill was to be weak.

Red Pill forums were often filled with deeply misogynistic and often racist diatribes. The more extreme elements splintered into groups like involuntary celibates (“incels”) or male separatists (Men Going Their Own Way, or MGTOWs). Conferences like the 21 Convention and its sister convention, Make Women Great Again, sprang up to gather red-pilled men. Being red-pilled became a sort of umbrella term for all of it.

As these conversations seeped into the mainstream, pulled along by a host of other internet language from message boards to establishment Republican conversations on sites like Breitbart, the meaning broadened and got watered down. To be red-pilled can now mean being broadly skeptical of experts, to be distrustful of the mainstream press or to see hypocrisy in social liberalism.

What’s going on with Elon Musk?

Mr. Musk has been pretty wild online for years now, which has made him a major internet celebrity with devoted fans who call themselves Musketeers. There are fan pages like Musk Memes with nearly 100,000 followers, and a Reddit page with 200,000 members in constant, extremely active conversation.

Most recently, Mr. Musk has been a prominent skeptic online of the coronavirus, calling the response to it a “panic” and “dumb” and wrongly predicting close to zero new cases by the end of April. As of Tuesday, there were more than 90,000 deaths from the virus and more than 1.5 million cases in the United States alone.

The night before Tesla’s earnings were released last month, Mr. Musk tweeted an anti-lockdown rallying cry: “FREE AMERICA NOW.” He had a showdown with local lawmakers, threatening to move Tesla headquarters out of California and deciding to reopen a Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., despite the local county’s restrictions to prevent the virus from spreading.

When State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez objected on May 9 with an obscene tweet, Mr. Musk responded, “Message received.”

Defending his reopening of the Tesla factory, Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter that he would be on the factory floor and offered himself up to authorities. “I will be on the line with everyone else,” he posted on May 11. “If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”

This month, he and his girlfriend, Claire Boucher, the musician known as Grimes, had a child and named him X Æ A-12. And Mr. Musk announced that Tesla shares were too high and that he was selling almost all his possessions to the point of owning no house.

“We have a phrase, it’s E.M.M. — Elon Moves Markets,” said Bill Selesky, an analyst at Argus Research who tracks how Mr. Musk’s messages impact Tesla’s stock price. “People want to listen to him no matter what he says. He tends to be thought of as a great visionary.”

Mr. Selesky said even Mr. Musk’s detractors parsed every tweet and utterance. “Plus, if you have a Tesla, nobody can ever complain about you because you’re good for society,” he added.

This leads back to Mr. Musk’s message on Sunday, telling his followers to take the red pill.

Do ‘The Matrix’ creators like this?

No. Lilly Wachowski, a “Matrix” co-creator, told Mr. Musk and Ms. Trump in colorful language on Twitter that they could take a hike.

Is ‘red pill’ a Silicon Valley thing?

To some extent.

There has long been a strain of men’s rights activism in Silicon Valley, exemplified by James Damore, a former Google engineer who was fired after writing a memo arguing that the reason there are fewer female engineers is biological differences rather than discrimination.

Mr. Damore became a folk hero for a simmering movement in the technology industry of people who thought the efforts toward 50/50 representation at tech companies were absurd. Cassie Jaye, who calls herself a former feminist, made a 2016 documentary about the Red Pill community and said it had flourished in the tech world.

But the more common phrase in Silicon Valley to signal contrarian thinking is “narrative violation,” which is often used to describe an event that cuts against the mainstream media’s consensus on a topic. The idea is that there is a story being told about the world and how it works, but that the story is too simplistic to be entirely true and an event occasionally pops up to remind people of that.

Why does any of this matter?

Few products today are as deeply entwined with a person’s brand as Tesla is with Mr. Musk, and so his comments can feel personal for Tesla drivers.

“As a Tesla owner, a 47-year-old male recovering from Covid-19, and someone very concerned simultaneously about the environment, the economy, my kids’ and my parents’ future, this ain’t great,” said Jeff Guilfoyle, a product manager at FireEye in San Diego. “This disease is no joke, and the long-term health impacts are unknown for survivors.”

Many have implored Mr. Musk online to stop.

Raja Sohail Abbas, the chief executive of an outpatient psychiatric clinic in Allentown, Pa., wrote: “I am a Tesla owner and love the company. You have to stop being an idiot about this.”

“Tesla owner and Fan here, but this was a disappointing tweet despite the frustrations of and holdups,” added Alex Goodchild, a D.J. in Brooklyn. “Words are weapons especially when used during situations like the one we’re currently experiencing. You sound just like Trump in this tweet.”

The debate has riven the Tesla community.

“The last two months, there’s been this polarization in the Elon Musk fan club,” said Paula Timothy-Mellon, a technology consultant who moderates that LinkedIn-based fan club, which has 22,000 members. “There are those who are believers in these California guidelines and there are those in favor of his push to re-open Tesla.”

Many have implored Mr. Musk online to stop.

Raja Sohail Abbas, the chief executive of an outpatient psychiatric clinic in Allentown, Pa., wrote: “I am a Tesla owner and love the company. You have to stop being an idiot about this.”

The debate has riven the Tesla community.

Driving a Tesla often carries great symbolism for the owner (and observers).

“If you own a Tesla, you feel you are directly connected to Elon Musk and people think that Tesla owners are directly connected to the politics of the C.E.O.,” said Sam Kelly, a Tesla owner and investor based in Spain who posts under the name SamTalksTesla.

He added that he did not think the red pill comment meant any big new political awakening from Mr. Musk.

Asked to explain his thinking, Mr. Musk pasted an image of the Urban Dictionary definition of red pill in an email. It read:

“‘Red pill’ has become a popular phrase among cyberculture and signifies a free-thinking attitude, and a waking up from a ‘normal’ life of sloth and ignorance. Red pills prefer the truth, no matter how gritty and painful it may be.”

Seriously get a refund, buy a prius and

GET THE FUCKS OVER IT!

103 notes · View notes

vespertineflora · 4 years

Link

so the ‘My girlfriend washed my hair today’ reddit post came up in my discord server and @bigolegay issued an open request to see a wangxian version of it with a touch over-whelmed lan wangji 😌

Rating: T Summary: Lan Zhan has had a rough week at work, so Wei Ying decides to do something very sweet for him. (2.1k, Hair Washing/Non-sexual Intimacy, Comfort No Hurt)

~~~

Lan Zhan had just dropped his clothes into the hamper and had been about to step into the shower when the bathroom door opened behind him.

Despite knowing it could only be one person, Lan Zhan still turned his head to look, still found himself a bit breathless to see the bright grin on Wei Ying’s face. They’d been officially dating for nearly six months now (after nearly a decade of friendship and yearning), and Lan Zhan still wasn’t sure he had fully accepted it, the way looking at Wei Ying’s smile was almost like looking at the sun, too radiant to do much more than glance at it without being completely overwhelmed, and the fact that that smile really was meant for him.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying chirped, already tugging his shirt off over his head, already opening the front of his slim fit jeans and wiggling them down over his hips, “I’m gonna join you!”

Wei Ying didn’t phrase it like a question, but he didn’t need to. Lan Zhan couldn’t find it in himself to deny Wei Ying anything, even if showering together wasn’t something they’d done more than once or twice in the last few months, and those times had been primarily because Wei Ying had been overeager to fool around. Outside of that, Wei Ying knew Lan Zhan could be particular about his shower time, so he usually left him alone during it… but if Wei Ying wanted to join him tonight, Lan Zhan wasn’t going to object, not even without being sure of Wei Ying’s intentions.

Continue Reading on AO3 or below the cut

“Mn,” he hummed softly in consent. His eyes trailed languidly across Wei Ying’s skin as Wei Ying finished undressing, still in wonder that this was a view he was treated to most nights, that Wei Ying was his to touch and hold and kiss after so many years spent longing hopelessly. Maybe… maybe someday he’d be used to all this, used to kissing Wei Ying, used to touching him and seeing him, used to loving him. Almost certainly, he’d lose that sense of delighted surprise at every casual touch or kiss someday, but for now… he’d enjoy it for as long as it lasted.

He stepped into the shower and left the curtain open for Wei Ying, who bounced in after him with a light touch of Lan Zhan’s arm, right under the stream of hot water. He immediately let out a content sigh, before reaching up to adjust the nozzle a bit to give Lan Zhan better access as well.

Lan Zhan let out his own slow breath at the calming heat, letting his eyes close as he ducked his head under the stream, the water running in warm rivulets down his back and chest for a moment as he tried to let the heat wash the tension from his shoulders. Work had been stressful in recent weeks; he’d had so much to get done that he’d been bringing it home with him, working hours that extended long beyond the average working day and into the night. He knew things would slow down and sort themselves out soon enough, that this schedule wasn’t forever, but that thought had done little to ease the regular tension he’d found plaguing him recently.

A hot shower was often the best stress relief he could ask for.

He stepped back from the spray and had been ready to launch into his normal routine, reaching for the shampoo bottle, when Wei Ying suddenly interjected with a soft, “Wait.”

Lan Zhan paused, and before he could do anything else, Wei Ying had swiped the shampoo bottle away from his grasp.

“Let me do it,” Wei Ying said sweetly, the smile on his face matching the tone as he proactively squeezed some shampoo into his hands.

Figuring there wasn’t a point in arguing the matter, Lan Zhan let his arms drop to his side, resigned to let Wei Ying do as he pleased—though he would have been fooling himself to say he was prepared for it.

Logically, Lan Zhan knew that at some point in his life, someone else had bathed him. His mother or father or uncle, maybe even his older brother some time in their childhood; he knew he had at some point been incapable of washing himself and that someone else had done such a thing for him, but… those days were ages behind him, and he couldn’t say he remembered far enough back to remember ever being washed by someone else—so while this wasn’t technically a first for him, it…

His eyes closed naturally as Wei Ying’s hands rose to his head and he began to press the shampoo into his hair, but… it wasn’t just that. Wei Ying’s fingertips rubbed circles against his scalp as the shampoo foamed up beneath his touch, working his fingers slowly through Lan Zhan’s hair, across the top, around the sides, down to the back—where his fingers lingered for a little bit longer, trailing down as he pressed those same attentive circles into the back of Lan Zhan’s neck.

Almost immediately, Lan Zhan’s lips parted, his jaw loosened. His scalp… seemed to tingle beneath Wei Ying’s touches, a faint pleasant static that crept down the back of his neck as well, his breathing going a little shallow as he tried to adjust himself to a level of intimacy he hadn’t realized was coming.

Just as the smell of sandalwood and vanilla was filling the air around them, Wei Ying’s fingers made a second slow pass over his scalp. His nails pressed down lightly, moving rhythmically back and forth, gently scratching around his hairline, his ears, the back of his neck, before climbing up the back of his head, the deliberate touches gradually making Lan Zhan’s shoulders loosen and drop.

Wei Ying’s body leaned gently into his, warm water pressing between warm skin that slid easily together as Wei Ying continued to work; Lan Zhan could say with absolutely certain he’d never been touched like this before. He and Wei Ying had already been intimate more times than Lan Zhan could count in the short time they’d been dating and even that was… somehow nothing like this, like the gentle, deliberate swirling of Wei Ying’s fingertips on his scalp as he washed his hair for him.

Even counting Wei Ying’s efforts, Lan Zhan wasn’t someone who had been touched much in his life. He always kept his distance from crowds, he didn’t have many friends, his brother and uncle weren’t tactile people—he’d even been cutting his own hair since his teens, meaning the last time someone else had touched his head like this was some memory so distant that he couldn’t bother pinpointing it.

By the time Wei Ying’s hands pulled out of his hair, Lan Zhan was trembling ever so faintly. He stood still as Wei Ying reached for the showerhead, gently pressing it against his hair to wash out all the shampoo, the heat of the water only contributing to Lan Zhan’s softly buzzing mental state, to the feeling of… calm weightlessness swirling around his head.

He didn’t even bother to open his eyes as the showerhead was put back into place, as he heard the squirting of another bottle, before Wei Ying’s fingers were pushing back through his hair again, taking just as much care to evenly spread the conditioner through the dark strands. He didn’t rush, his fingers moving in those same deliberate back and forth patterns that were slowly making that pleasant tingling sensation creep down his spine.

At some point, Lan Zhan felt a slight pressure behind his eyelids, the faintest of prickling as he felt the moisture welling behind them—he was overwhelmed in the best way possible, and if any tears escaped and slid down his cheeks, he at least hoped they’d be indistinguishable from the water spraying down from overhead.

He focused on his breathing and on Wei Ying, the only important things to him in that moment. In and out, he steadied his shaky breaths and focused on the very real pressure of Wei Ying’s body as it leaned into his own, as his fingers continued their gentle massage for another moment longer.

But even once Wei Ying had finished with Lan Zhan’s hair, he wasn’t done with him. Wei Ying’s body pulled back from his own briefly, but Lan Zhan had barely had time to recover when the familiar herbal scent of his body wash reached his nose, and a moment later, Wei Ying was pressing his washcloth to his skin.

He started at Lan Zhan’s neck and worked his way slowly across his shoulders, his arms, his chest, his stomach, down to his legs and feet, taking his sweet time and dragging each motion out gently and repetitively. Lan Zhan felt dazed, felt like he was floating as Wei Ying dragged the warm washcloth over his skin—he reminded himself sternly to focus on his breathing again as his shallow inhales certainly weren’t going to do anything to temper the warm, lightheaded feeling that was dampening his thoughts.

Then, when Wei Ying stood up again and needed to clean Lan Zhan’s back… he didn’t ask him to turn around. After adding a bit more soap to the cloth, he simply leaned in, pressed their stomachs and chests fully together as his arms wrapped around him and repeated the process.

Though now, as his hands gently rubbed over every inch of skin, his face hovered close to Lan Zhan’s… and after a moment, Wei Ying pressed his lips to the corner of Lan Zhan’s jaw.

Lan Zhan’s breath stuttered in his chest, his eyes stinging anew, and Wei Ying kissed him again and again… As his hands washed his back, Wei Ying scattered slow kisses all along his jaw line and cheek, down to his neck and collarbone, the softest, daintiest little presses of his lips to the skin. Before long, the careful kisses in combination with the gentle movement of his hands overwhelmed Lan Zhan, tugging him down like a current.

The movement wasn’t even fully conscious, felt more like he was just giving in rather than acting on his own; he quickly found his face pressed into the crook of Wei Ying’s neck, his arms wrapping around his back as he held him tightly to his chest.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying cooed softly as he pressed one last kiss to Lan Zhan’s ear. “Are you okay?”

Lan Zhan nodded against Wei Ying’s neck as he swallowed the tears in his throat, taking a slow breath in and out; he felt much more grounded when he could hold Wei Ying like this.

Wei Ying hummed softly, the sound sweet and melodic to Lan Zhan’s ears, and he nuzzled gently against the side of Lan Zhan’s head. “You’ve been working so hard lately, I wanted to do something nice for you,” he said, his tone warm and inviting as his hands continued to gently rub Lan Zhan’s back. “Does it feel good?”

He nodded once more and Wei Ying laughed softly, pausing in his washing to wrap his arms firmly around Lan Zhan. It was easier to breathe, easier to calm down with Wei Ying trapping him in a tight hug, and once Lan Zhan had gone half-limp against him, Wei Ying took a few more precious minutes finishing the task. He let his fingers knead more firmly into the muscles of Lan Zhan’s back as Lan Zhan felt more and more of his weight sinking into Wei Ying, a soft gratitude resting in the back of his mind that Wei Ying was strong enough to support him.

After the thorough washing, Wei Ying carefully untangled himself from Lan Zhan’s grasp. His hands moved to Lan Zhan’s face and neck… and he pressed their lips together. The kiss was delicate, only gentle, almost-familiar movements of their lips that lingered for a while longer as Lan Zhan softly shuddered his way through a few deep breaths.

With one last peck, Wei Ying finally pulled away and reached for the showerhead to rinse the soap from Lan Zhan's skin. The warm, floaty feeling lingered on the edges of Lan Zhan’s brain so powerfully that he could only follow Wei Ying’s guidance as he pulled him out of the shower and carefully patted him dry with a plush bath towel.

Wei Ying didn’t bother letting Lan Zhan recover. He gently tugged him to their bed and tucked the both of them in for the night, snuggling comfortably against his side and supplying Lan Zhan with a few more warm kisses before issuing him a sweet, “good night.”

Wei Ying tucked his head naturally into the crook of Lan Zhan’s neck and it took hardly any time at all for the soft, fuzzy static in Lan Zhan’s head to fade to black as he drifted easily to sleep.

#wangxian #mdzs #mdzs fanfic #the untamed #lan wangji #wei wuxian #the untamed fanfic #vesper posts #wrote a thing

25 notes · View notes

dalgikiss · 4 years

Text

Catch-22 // h. iwaizumi

index

part 14

When you yell, you yell for plenty of reasons but never because you’re angry.

You yell at Oikawa for bothering you and messing up your notes, you yell at Hanamaki for taking your food, you yell at Iwaizumi when he flicks your forehead a little too hard after you lose a bet and it leaves an ugly red mark on your forehead for days to come and you yell at Matsukawa when he teases you about your height and holds your shoes up, just out of your reach.

You yell at a lot of things, but you never mean a word you say, reassuring your boys that it’s all a joke through the teasing lilt in your voice.

You cry a lot too

Matsukawa likes to call you the crybaby of Seijoh, a title you hate but you’ve given up on trying to make him shut up about it because he never lets you win.

(He may call you the crybaby of seijoh, but he always has a pack of tissues kept handy in his blazer and holds you tight against his chest while you soak the front of his shirt)

You once cried so hard while watching Endgame, you almost blacked out from the lack of oxygen and Iwaizumi was busy fanning your face in order to get you to come back to your senses while Oikawa ran around in circles panicking.

In the whole three years you’ve known your friends, you have never done both at the same time, a feat they have found extremely impressive because of how animated you are when you talk.

They know you like the back of your hand, immediately able to decipher your feelings within a moment of hearing the tone of your voice. Sometimes, you wonder if it's a curse or a blessing in disguise.

Hanamaki once said that if anyone ever witnessed you crying and yelling (like actually yelling, he has to emphasize this because you are a loud person) at the same time, it was going to be the end of the world.

If we follow Hanamaki’s theory, the world ends after you retrieve your keys

“If I were a pair of keys, where would I be?” You ask yourself, fully knowing the correct answer to your rhetorical question would be in your bag.

You check the teacher’s podium and the lost and found bin in the front of the room but to your dismay, you find nothing but the teacher’s attendance book on the podium and a few stray gloves and pencils in the bin.

Are you dumb? Iwaizumi’s voice rings in your head and you unconsciously stick your tongue out

Your desk, check by your desk, he chides you, a rough voice that struggles to keep it’s serious tone

Your eyes light up when you spot your key ring on the floor next to your desk, letting out a sigh of relief at the sight of it.

You crouch down to pick it up, pulling off pieces of dust that had gotten stuck on the ridges of your keys.

They say that a sound can travel 1125 feet in still air and while you’ve never thought to argue against it, you find that this does in fact ring true to its words and you still your movements when you hear Ryuoko and Iwaizumi arguing down the hallway.

You tell yourself this is not your conversation to hear but your curiosity is stronger than your common sense and you stay crouched on the floor, legs growing numb with every second you stay.

The argument dies down and you wonder when is the right time to get back up again so you could make your getaway without seeing anyone and once the sound of Ryuoko’s footsteps fades into the distance, you let out a huge sigh, dropping down onto the floor to try and get the feeling back into your legs.

You’re too busy shaking your legs to get the blood rushing back to notice Iwaizumi walk in.

“The floor’s dirty”

You look up, round eyes meeting his green ones. He stares down at you unamused and you hastily stand up, dusting yourself off. “Forgot my keys” You laugh, twirling it around your finger. He watches it make circles around your pointer finger, the volleyball keychain that had been gifted to you by Oikawa, a gift for Aoba Johsai Volleyball Club's biggest fan, swinging around wildly before grunting and turning around to collect his things.

The air between the two of you feels heavy, weighed down by the things unspoken. Within the friendship, Iwaizumi had always been the pillar of support, standing tall and strong behind the four of you to let you grow and you were unsure of what to do. All you know is the way your gut churns with every passing moment, your heart pounding in your ears and was your breathing always this loud?

An unknown force propels you to speak despite all your instincts telling you to run and when you look back at this moment, you reprimand yourself for not listening but you want to get rid of the elephant in the room.

“Is everything okay?” Your voice is so low, even you struggle to hear it.

He shoves his notebook into his bag with a little more strength than needed, refusing to spare you even a glance. “Absolutely perfect”

You bite your bottom lip, pocketing your keys. “Alright, I’ll see you later. Oh, I meant to ask you before class ended but can I please get your notes for the next few days-”

“Everything’s always about you, isn’t it?”

“What?” You stare up at him, wide and unblinking eyes. He slams his bag back down onto the table, the old desk letting out creaks of protest under his strength and for a moment, you get a vivid flashback of young Iwaizumi standing before you again.

“Everything is always about you. From the moment I wake up to the moment I sleep, it’s always about you”

You remember the yellow light that shines in Iwaizumi’s room from his hallway and his mother’s voice- concerned, tired, motherly.

“Every single moment of my life is dedicated towards you. Give me a fucking break for once”

You remember your stiff limbs and your shallow breaths

“Even with my girlfriend, it’s about you. Don’t you get tired of always having someone baby you?”

You remember your scratchy throat and dry mouth and the tears threatening to pool out your eyes.

“Aren’t you tired of being so fucking needy?”

You remember apologizing and it’s almost an exact repeat of the last time he was angry at you, the time he had sworn to you would never happen again but Iwaizumi is only human and humans break promises, no matter how hard they try.

This time, you swore to yourself as you attempted to hold back your tears, this time was going to be different.

“Aren’t you tired of blaming your fucking problems on me?” Your voice is shrill and grates against your throat and you tell yourself to be strong so your voice comes out evenly. “Whatever problems you have with your girlfriend is due to her insecurities, it has nothing to do with me and if you don’t see that then you’re just as blind as she is”

You angrily wipe away your tears with the base of your palm, letting out a wry laugh when you feel your heated cheeks and damp eyelashes. “Matsun was right, I really am the crybaby of Seijoh”

The hiccups force their way out of you and you wonder what you look like in Iwaizumi’s eyes with your sweaty, sticky skin, hair that’s beginning to plaster themselves onto the sides of your face and embarrassingly red cheeks. Pitiful, to say the least.

“But you know what I’m not?” You clench your hands around your keys, feeling pinpricks of pain shoot through your fingers, “I am not some desperate, whiny, attention needing bitch that you’ve made me out to be. I have never asked you to give me attention, never forced you to do things with me when you obviously would much rather be doing something else and never have I ever made you make the focus of your relationship about me”

In the past, you had learned to ride the waves, to be quiet and let them scream and yell because humans were humans and emotions were hard to control. Yelling back only made things worse, their anger taking the reins and leaving behind rationality. A survival tip about getting caught in a riptide off of reddit had been applied to different aspects of your life- after all, why fight against the waves and make it worse for yourself when you could swim with it and wait calmly for help?

You knew better than to fight fire with fire. You knew better than to stoop down to his level and hurl insults at him the same way he did with you, just because you were hurting but it didn’t matter. In that one moment you had decided to argue back, you had lost all logic.

The scowl on his face runs as deeper than it has ever been at your words. When you were younger, this was the face that had made you cry into your mother’s shirt and onto your pillow, the face that made you too nervous to go anywhere near him and had made you paralyzed with fear.

That face still scares you, terrifies you even but your pride refuses to back down.

“I didn’t do anything at all but be your friend. I respected her boundaries and your relationship. Matsun even told you I purposely kept away from you because I wanted your relationship to last. Don’t you dare blame any of your shit on me. I did the right thing, I did what I had to do, even if it meant losing you as a friend”

The way he looks at you reminds you of a documentary you had once seen with Oikawa about mermaids, their dead eyes that held a vicious glint in them never leaving your memory.

“Am I really just your friend?” He asks you and he finally stands up from where he was leaning on the desk. “Are you sure you’re not just lying to yourself?”

Iwaizumi may be leaning on the shorter side of the volleyball team but he is still taller than average and you are painfully aware of it when he stretches to his full height and towers over you but you refuse to submit, crossing your arms and staring straight into his eyes, even if you have to slightly crane your neck to do so.

“If you liked me, you should have said something instead of hiding it like a coward”

The words slap you in the face rendering you speechless. If it’s even more possible, your face seems to get even hotter.

‘“Who says I wasn’t going to?” You shoot back but you don’t sound as intimidating as you want to, voice tapering off and a fresh wave of tears spill out of your eyes and onto your cheeks. “For all you know, I was going to confess to you the same week Ryuoko did. I just never got the chance to”

The memory of Ryuoko holding Iwaizumi, your Iwaizumi’s hand is burned into the back of your eyelids, along with every hickey, every kiss and every hug and you abhor it.

Your voice hitches in your throat and you’re very aware of the ache in your legs from standing so stiffly. You can’t help the small sob that comes out your throat and like a dam breaking, it’s all coming out and you hastily cover your face with your arms and turn away.

Your voice is muffled as you cry into your jacket sleeves, “It already fucking sucks seeing you with her all the time and every moment I wasn’t talking to you or texting you, I had to remind myself that it was over and if I really liked you, I should be happy you’re happy”

You cough, feeling your snot beginning to run and inwardly you tell yourself how gross this all is.

“It already hurt seeing you do all the things that I wanted to do with you with somebody else but you telling me I’m the cause of your relationship going south when every single moment of the day, I was doing my best to respect your relationship is even worse”

Turning back to face him, even with your messed up hair and snotty nose, you pray to any deity in heavens to give you enough strength to say your last few words properly.

“suck my fucking dick, Iwaizumi Hajime”

The door to the classroom sounds much louder than you think, the sound bouncing off the empty hallway walls the same way it does in your head when you slam it close and leave him standing alone in the classroom.

You bite down into your hand, blindly making your way into the restroom and when you catch a glimpse of reflection, you draw out blood from pressing your teeth into your hand just a little too hard.

It takes a few minutes for you to calm down, small buzzes coming from your phone as Oikawa texted you, reminding you they were still waiting.

The eyes that stare back at you in the mirror are swollen and bloodshot and you already know there’s no way you’ll be able to hide it from the sharp eyes of your friends. You draw an x on your throat and two more on your eyelids, taking a deep breath to calm down your shaking body.

“Don’t” you tell yourself, gripping the porcelain countertop for stability, “Don’t”

When you finally find yourself at the landing of the stairs, standing before the exit after a few shaky moments. You can see Oikawa hugging your bag to his chest as he leans against a pillar, Hanamaki still lying on the step where you had left him and Matsukawa in your seat.

With a deep breath and a plastered smile on your face, you open the door and wave your keys in the air, the jangling of the keys adding on to your headache.

“I found it!”

Oikawa already sees your shaky hand that’s stuffed in your pocket and wet jacket sleeves, strong arms reaching out to hold you and when you feel the hot tears pricking the corner of your eyes, you screw them shut to ward them away.

He holds you tight against his chest where you can hear the steady thrum of his heartbeat while you fist his shirt in your hands.

Matsukawa silently hands you a tissue, shoving it into your clenched fist and Oikawa holds you impossibly closer to him when he feels your body shake with every hiccup and muffled sob from your throat.

You ask them if your golf ball sized tears that were somehow produced from your body were just as large as they felt and Hanamaki wipes them away with his thumb and nods in a sore attempt to make you laugh again.

Hanamaki says the day you cry and yell at the same time is the day the world ends and he’s right. The day you cried and yelled at Iwaizumi leaves a big tear in the fabric of your friendship, one that you wished didn’t happen the same day you had to wake up early to take your entrance exam

#iwaizumi scenarios #iwaizumi fanfic #iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi x you #iwaizumi hajime #iwaizumi hq #hq x reader #hq fanfic #hq #hq x y/n #hq x you #haikyuu imagines #iwaizumi haijime x reader #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x y/n #haikyuu x you #iwaizumi hajime x you #iwaizumi hajime x reader #iwaizumi hajime imagine

63 notes · View notes

unculturedmamoswine · 4 years

Text

I just finished rereading Tortall and Other Lands, and made a totally subjective ranking of the stories. I posted it on reddit but I figured, what the hell, may was well post here too. If i could put it under a cut I would but sadly I am on mobile.

11) Time of Proving

It's good and all; I especially like the concept that the protag, Arimu, has to live alone and map new lands for a year to show her value to her people in order to lead them. But I think I like that bit of worldbuilding more than the actual plot. Though I do think it's pretty cute that Arimu comes up with excuses to keep helping Sunflower. An enjoyable story that's just eclipsed by the greatness of much of the rest of the book.

10) Plain Magic

I like this story. I like the thread magic especially. However, I don't think it really shows us anything new from Tammy if that makes sense. The thread magic, the ignorant folks doing stupid things, the cool stranger whisking away a gifted protagonist to a new life, it's all familiar ground for Tammy fans.

9) Lost

It's hard to put this story so low on the list. It has a lot of qualities to love, but much like Plain Magic it seems like it does mostly what we've seen from other Tammy content. Adria is a girl good at math, which isn't that valuable a thing in her society. But people around her recognize that and take her away to a better place for her, Tortall of course. And we get the darkings, which, cute as they are, seem kinda.. OP. They were OP in Aly's books, too. Ah well, despite my complaints it's still really cool and a fun story. And I love the way it shows the effects of years of abuse and how it makes you feel small. The way Adria's father uses fear to control her whole family, and the way Adria gets away from him by showing her courage, those are important things. I feel sure someone out there was helped by this story, you know?

8) Elder Brother

When I did my ranking, I was baffled that this story was so far down. I really like this story. That's the trouble with ranking stuff you really like, I guess. Fadala is a cool character, Qiom is an even cooler one, and I love reading about Qiom struggling to live his new, more confusing life. Reading about him weeping over his last apples is somehow really sad? And it's very cool to read about a totally different part of the world in the Tortall universe.

7) Huntress

It's very cool to read a modern-day story by Tammy! I love the merging of modern times and the fantasy elements of our usual Tammy stories. It's interesting to see how Corey (I don't think we learn her first name?) isn't devout, and arguably isn't even a believer, but the Goddess still comes to her aid anyway. I suppose it's out of respect for her family. I love the touch of the Goddess wearing modern day running gear. But my favorite thing has gotta be the total utter batshit crazy Pride. What completely insane villains. It's very Tammy to cast the murdering freaks as a bunch of privileged rich douchebags who think they can do whatever they want if they prey on the vulnerable and those that society has deemed as valueless. Golly, does that remind you of anything? It's nice that this story takes a fairly strong 'murder is bad' stance, when even in real life plenty of people are ok with rapists and drug dealers getting murdered. And I like that Tammy shows, through the Lions' threats to rape Corey, that they clearly aren't killing 'bad' people in order to be good guys, but just so they can get away with it easier. Though you could argue that the Goddess killing all the kids somewhat undercuts the 'no murder' message...

6) Testing

Admittedly I probably wouldn't like this one as much as I do if it weren't for the context of it being a semi-autobiographical account of Tammy around the time she rewrote Alanna's books as books for teens. That being said, it's a sweet story that looks at how vulnerable kids can come to trust an adult in lives that have been tumultuous and hard. It's honestly such a feel-good yet realistic tale.

5) Student of Ostriches

I think this one appeals to the kid in me. I was always so enchanted by African animals as a kid and that never really went away. Kylaia teaching herself to fight and run using the animals of her home as inspiration is just unbearably cool to me haha. Though it is much the same as I've said about Plain Magic and Lost in that it's well-trod ground for Tammy, Student of Ostriches really works for me. And it's always nice to have a peek into parts of the Tortall-verse we don't often see.

4) Mimic

I think Mimic sticks in my head more than any other story in Tortall and Other Lands. Ri, Mimic, Grandpa, even the dogs and the crow are all great characters. The beautiful setting, with the great plain and the storms, the dragons, the compact between the village and birds, it's all so memorable. I love that it's about choosing to grow up, and how you can't go back but it's worthwhile and necessary.

3) The Dragon's Tale

Call me basic, but I love dragons! It's so nice to see a story about Kitten, so great to see things from her point of view. Not being able to speak for sixteen years sounds like a freaking nightmare, but she handles it pretty well, I'd say. I like that she clearly thinks of Daine and Numair as her parents, and she adores her bestie Spots, it's just so cute! They really love each other, and I will always be a sucker for stories about people who love each other. But it's not just cute, there's some great meat here in the form of new characters like Afra, Uday, and Kawit and, best of all for me, worldbuilding! I really like when we see glimpses of the Tortall universe that we could never have imagined, as with Beka's unusual wild-adjacent magic. Here we get to see Kawit and learn that she's another example of an immortal that humans overlooked when locking them away four hundred years ago (and we get to see more of Tammy's love of opals lol). I like the subtle implication that opal dragons may be almost a link between classic dragons and basilisks, what with the beaded skin and long long tails. We learn more about Kawit's unusual magic. We get an explicit confirmation of the fact that multiple colors of Gift= more powerful Gift. This whole story is just crammed full of fascinating Tortall content with a soft, gooey center.

2) Nawat

This story is heavy, which is why I like it. I enjoy it when non-human characters are actually characterized as being fundamentally different from humans. It's challenging for the reader and the author to connect with a guy who is considering killing his kid, but I think Tammy succeeds here. It's hard to watch Nawat struggle with the different parts of his life coming together, and sad to see him feeling like his heritage is slipping away. It's nice to see that he really will be able to teach his kids about their own crow heritage when Ochobai grows her first quill. It's also fun to see Aly through his eyes.

1) The Hidden Girl

This story is so good that it makes Elder Brother better just by existing. It's really cool to have Fadala and Teky exploring different attitudes with regard to their culture. While Fadala has an almost Alanna-esque rejection of what her society sees as feminine, we also get to see Teky appreciate what powers women in her society are afforded, and also see her work to change some of the things she sees as wrong. While Fadala isn't willing to play by her people's rules and elects to leave them behind, Teky wants something better for everyone in her homeland. Neither of these attitudes is wrong, they're just different reactions to institutionalized inequality. Like Elder Brother, The Hidden Girl shows us new and fascinating Tortall content in the form of the more monotheistic culture on the far side of the world, which is very cool. We've never really seen an oracle before, and it's a cool new 'badass girl' archetype to add to the Tortall roster. It's all just wonderful, knowing women are changing things all over the world in this verse.

#Tortall #Tamora Pierce #Tortall and other Lands #my post #long post

65 notes · View notes