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out-of-jams · 4 years

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Howl’s Moving Castle || Part One || kth

↠ Howl’s Moving Castle ↞ Part of my Ghibli Yandere Series!

It was an accident: offending the witch. But he didn’t take it lightly, cursing you to age into an old hag overnight. With no way to reverse the spell, you took it upon yourself to hunt down the only person who may have been able to help. But the self-absorbed wizard who lived hidden away in the moving castle wouldn’t be so easy to convince.

Especially when it came to letting you go.

Warnings/Genre: Horror. Soft Yandere!Taehyung. Howl!Taehyung. Magic. Mature themes. Light violence. Some fluff. Explicit language. 18+

Word Count: 7.5k

Part 1 of 3.

A/N: Hey guys. Holy shit did this take a lot longer than I’d originally planned it to. I’ve decided to split it into three parts instead of two so that I could get it out to you guys quicker. Hope you all are staying safe out there! (just a warning, this is unedited haha).

All of my works are purely fiction. Everything I write is my intellectual property and therefore belongs to me. ©out-of-jams. Do not copy or repost without permission.

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In, through. Pull. Around.

The steel needle twisting around your fingertips did so without a second thought. Pushed through the heavy material to stitch together fabric until it resembled something wearable. Your eyes were glazed over as your mind wandered away from your task. Sewing was simple, so-much-so that you could look away from the hat in your hands and still thread it together. It came from the experience of owning a hat shop for most of your life.

“Is that Taehyung’s castle?”

The excitable titering of women’s voices brought you out of your trance-like state and left you blinking down at the half-sewn brown hat in your hands.

“It can’t be.”

You let the grasp you had on the needle falter in order to send a glance at the gaggle of women gathered at the window to the left. Through an archway they stood, with their bright colored dresses and overly large skirts. One of them tapped against the glass windowpane facing the street like the rest of them weren’t already looking.

And you couldn’t help the curiosity that had your head turning back to stare out of the window in front of you. Placed in the wall right above your cluttered work desk. You squinted in an attempt to see through the smog lingering in the air outside to the rolling green hills in the distance. Past the tops of buildings cramping the streets.

You could just barely see it, the giant machine that seemed to almost float across the ground it walked on. Even at its distance you could tell it was big, taller than the top of the highest building in the city. But you’d never seen it up close. No one had and lived to tell the tale of it.

The sight wasn’t common, but it wasn’t quite rare either. The monstrous mechanical structure that just barely resembled a castle had roamed the land for years. Ventured from town to town, city to city, never stopping in one place. Where it went and what it did, you hadn’t a clue. You’d only seen it a total of three times throughout your life.

But never close enough to get a glimpse of the wizard who was rumored to dwell within it. So evil and so powerful that no one dared to go near.

As it disappeared into the fog, you sighed. Turned back to the needle lying between your fingers with distaste. You didn’t hate what you did with your life, making hats day in and day out. But you didn’t like it either. Never had. But you’d been forced into taking over the shop when your father passed away years ago. It was boring, the routine, and you couldn’t help your craving for something more.

For adventure.

“I heard that the last man who saw Taehyung’s face disappeared. Vanished right into thin air.”

You shook your head to snap yourself out of your thoughts and went back to work.

In, through. Pull. Around.

In, through. Pull. Aro--

“I heard that he looks like a monster.”

“A monster? Don’t be ridiculous, Lotty. I heard that he’s quite handsome. Likes to go into towns and seduce women to take as his own. Then he kills them afterwards!”

The needle fell from your fingers to dangle in between your legs by the threat still attached to the fabric. Frustrated at the lack of ability to focus due to the obnoxious women not working, you dropped the unfinished hat onto your work table. And pushed back your wooden stool to stand up.

The four women didn’t turn at your movement, didn’t even acknowledge your presence there. While they loved to gossip up a storm, they were good at what they did. So you didn’t berate them for their lack of work. Just grabbed your bag and slipped out the room and down the stairs. Maybe a few moments to yourself would do you well. You’d been stuck up in that stuffy shop for hours and taking a quick break wouldn’t hurt. Especially when you could barely focus on your work anyway.

The door to the shop closed tightly behind you and you took a moment to pull out a piece of cloth from your bag. Slipping it over your nose, you adjusted the thin straps of the face mask behind your ears until it sat perfectly. It wasn’t safe to step outside without one because the smog in the city was unhealthy to breathe in. Polluted by the airships that flew above your head and cast streaks of black smoke through the sky. From the four-wheeled cars that prowled the cobblestone streets like cats, puffing unbreathable air through the Square.

You hitched your bag higher up onto your shoulder as you took off at a sedated pace. There was a large amount of people crowding the streets, more so than what was usual in a city as large as that one. Perhaps it had something to do with the military parading through the roads on their way to the king’s castle as they returned from wherever they’d been. Taking up space like they owned the place. Like the citizens of Market Chipping actually wanted them there.

No one did. Not when your land of Ingary had been at war with the neighboring kingdom of Strangia for longer than you’d been alive. No one knew why exactly you were at odds with one another. Some debated that it had to do with stolen land, others insisted that the king of Strangia had done something to slight your own king. Whatever it was turned the land into a warzone.

“Hey, watch it!” A sharp elbow found its way into your side. And you stumbled back, a grunt falling from your throat as a short, middle aged man shoved past you with a glare.

He held a flag in his hand with the emblem of the royal family embroidered into it. Either he was on his way to protest the military parading through the city, or he was going to embrace them. While a majority of the people hated the presence of soldiers in Market Chipping, took to the streets to scream at them until they left. Some of the population praised them, welcomed them with open arms like they didn’t leave a trail of dead bodies and burned cities in their wake.

Because wherever the military went, death was soon to follow after.

You knew the main roads would’ve been packed from end to end with people and you didn’t feel like dealing with crowds. With more elbows forcing their way into the grooves of your ribs. So you took a shortcut through one of the alleyways closest towards your shop. They wouldn’t be as congested seeing as how almost all of the citizens poured themselves out into the streets for a reason.

So your journey was quiet. And your shoes scuffed at the ground as you wandered through the mazes between the buildings. The sounds of military vehicles driving through the streets that you could occasionally see through the gaps between buildings filled the silence. Along with shouts from the people pouring out of homes and hanging halfway out of the windows. Who sat on their balconies with heavy frowns on their faces.

A pair of single-manned airships flew above your head with the flag of the king following behind, attached to the backs of the machines to catch the air. You were close to your destination. Just needed to walk through a few more twisted alleyways until you made it.

“Well, well. What do we have here?”

You didn’t stop when the deep growl hit your eardrums. Kept walking in hopes that whoever had tried to talk to you would take the hint and leave you alone.

“Hey!” A rough hand grabbed at the bag hanging from your shoulder and pulled you backwards. And you tripped over your own feet in an attempt to stay upright. “I’m talking to you!”

With another tug, you were sent careening back into someone’s chest. The stench of cigarettes and whiskey hit you like a wall and had you sending a glare over your shoulder. A man towered above you with a blue rimmed hat pulled down low across his forehead. But you could still see the dark eyes that glimmered beneath like a snake.

“You lost, little mouse?” His lips, chapped and thin and unhindered by the facemask pulled down to his chin, lifted up into a smirk that spelled nothing but trouble. The navy blue military blazer on his back didn’t bring you relief. Quite the opposite really. Especially when the backdoor to a pub hanging open behind him spilled out another man that came stumbling to his side.

Caged you in like an animal.

“Let go.” Your jaw clenched as you attempted to pull away from the hand that held onto your bag like a leash.

“What do we have here, Reny? Why don’t you let us help you find your way?” The second man had a dark caterpillar that sat atop his lip in the form of a mustache. He leaned down to fan his heated beer stained breath across your face and it was only the facemask that prevented you from smelling it. “And we’ll only ask for one thing in return. How’s that sound?”

The first man let go of your bag to watch you stumble backwards with an amused flash in his eyes. You bit your lip in an attempt to stop it from quivering. But it did nothing to prevent the fear from flooding your veins and taking hold of your throat.

“I’m not interested. Let me pass, please.” You hoped that they weren’t able to hear how loud your heart was beating.

They were bigger than you, stronger than you. And you didn’t know what they’d do if they got their hands on you. Weren’t sure how far you’d make it if you had to run. The closest main street was farther than you would have liked, to the point where you could barely hear the roar of the crowd.

The second man took a few steps closer towards you. “Aw, don’t be like that sweeth--”

“Are you deaf?” That voice didn’t come from either of the men in front of you. It brushed through your ears with its rich baritone and had you straightening where you stood, tense muscles unconsciously relaxing. Especially when an arm wound itself around your shoulders to settle with a comforting weight, bringing with it warmth that heated your skin. “Or are you just stupid?”

The first thing you saw was a slender hand decorated with a plethora of multicolored rings as it casually adjusted the bag hanging haphazardly from your shoulder. And you followed it up, and up until your eyes landed on who it was attached to.

You could only see his side profile, but that was all you needed to have your breath catch in your throat.

Harsh, but gentle, was the first thought that popped into your mind. His nose, while soft and rounded at the tip, contrasted with the sharp angle of his jawbone. Even his hair followed the same guidelines as the rest of him. It looked silky, smooth, but the dark curls it fell in across his forehead and to the nape of his neck made him appear innocent, and yet not.

“Because I believe that the lady said she wasn’t interested.” The voice that fell from the stranger’s bow shaped lips was deep, strong, and filled with a humorous edge that teased around the syllables.

He wasn’t looking at you, but his arm still around your shoulders gave off the same amount of heat that his gaze more than likely would.

“This has nothing to do with you. Mind your business.” One of the men, you didn’t know which because you’d yet to take your eyes off of the strange man, spoke.

You were sure that you would get a kink in your neck from how much you were straining to look up at the man towering over you. But you couldn’t help but stare, not when a smile perked up around the edges of his soft looking mouth. The stranger tilted his head to the side and the emerald earring dangling from a chain pierced through his ear brushed against tanned his neck.

“Or, here me out.” He lifted a single eyebrow and nodded pointedly at the still opened door to the pub behind the men. “You go back inside and leave this woman alone. How’s that sound?”

They didn’t respond.

Tearing your eyes away from a mole painted onto the tip of the man’s nose, you watched confusedly as the military men suddenly stood up straight. And with their gazes blank and mouths partially opened, they turned on their heels and staggered back inside the building like they’d never left it.

Like they’d been compelled to do so.

“Are you alright?”

You blinked yourself out of your stupor and turned to look back up at the man who’d saved you. With his complete and utter attention now focused on you, the breath that’d caught itself in your throat earlier struggled to remove itself. Which left you floundering with your mouth opening and closing, but no sound escaping.

“Miss?” He leaned in a little closer, brows knitting together in concern. And his eyes. They were the softest blue that you’d ever seen.

Clearing your throat, you nodded. “Yes, thank you for rescuing me.”

He smiled, a box-shaped, gentle thing that had his eyes creasing in the corners. You didn’t even think to wonder why he was outside without a mask. “No need to thank me.”

And then he winked.

Ah, a lady’s man then.

“Well, thank you anyway.” You smiled in return before stepping out from beneath his arm. And with a glance down the alleyway, you gestured over your shoulder. “I should get going.”

His arm dropped back down to his side, hidden beneath the dark blue and grey jacket that hung around his shoulders like a cape. The black, long-sleeve blouse-like shirt he wore stood out even amongst the darkened alley. “Where are you heading? I’ll escort you there.”

“You don’t have to, really. I don’t want to waste anymore of your time.” You tried to argue, not because you didn’t want him to, but because he’d already gone out of his way for you once. And you didn’t want him to feel obligated to do so a second time. “I’ll be fine on my own.”

“Nonsense. It’s no trouble at all.” The man stepped forward to rest a hand on your shoulder once again, only that time he turned you around to start walking down the alleyway. “Besides, someone needs to ensure that no more danger finds you.”

The pressure of his hand on your shoulder was gentle, but firm in the way he guided you. And when he leaned down to whisper in your ear, the look in his eyes was something that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. Maybe if you would have spared a second to take another look, you would have seen it for the warning that it was.

“But just don’t look behind you.” The man’s breath was warm against the shell of your ear. “Because I’m being followed.”

Alarm sprang through you at his sudden admission. “Wha--?”

He merely winked at you and held a finger to his lips before leaning back out of your personal space. And when you tried to turn your head to look behind you, he stopped you with a hand to your cheek.

“Don’t look back. Just walk.”

The alleyway was long. Neverending. It encased the two of you in a bubble where even the loud shouts from the people in the streets couldn’t pierce through.

“Who’s following you?” You asked in a hushed whisper.

Still unnamed, the stranger glanced at you out of the corner of his eye. A lot of different things swam in the ocean that was his iris. Things that you couldn’t discern, things that were hidden just below the surface. And just as he went to part his lips in answer, his attention left you to focus on something behind you.

When you turned to look too, all you were able to see were shadows emerging from the alley walls like ghosts. With long, spindly-like limbs and headless bodies, they filled the spaces where the two of you had just vacated. Crawling over each other in an effort to reach the man at your side.

Fear bubbled in your throat. What the hell were those things?

“Sorry.” If he was trying to reassure you, he was doing a horrible job. “They weren’t supposed to find me so soon.”

Especially when the nameless creatures began to pour out of the walls in front of you like an endless tidal wave.

“Why are they--”

“No time.” The hand he had on your shoulder turned gripping as he quickly turned left at the fork in the alley and dragged you down it. “Just walk.”

Your eyebrows shot up into your hairline, but you did your best to keep up with his brisk stride anyway. A quick glance behind you had another bout of fear surging through you.

They were close.

How had you managed to escape one type of danger, just to wind up in the clutches of another?

You turned back to the front.

And let out a scream.

Because those creatures had cut you off again. Only now they moved faster, with their spider-like arms and gaping maws extended to capture you in their grasp. The man at your side let out a curse before stopping in his tracks to wrap both his arms around your waist.

“Hang on!”

Hang on?

“To what?”

Your question went unanswered. At least verbally.

The only warning you got was the tensing of the muscles in his slim arms before he leapt into their air. But it wasn’t an ordinary jump. Your feet left the cobbled ground and even with your face pressed into the stranger’s chest, you could still see if you looked down. Could see how one of the creature's claws missed your foot by a mere centimeter. Could see how they piled on top of each other as both sides crashed into the other in a wave of black.

You’d thought that the two of you would go falling right down onto them. That they’d devour you whole until you could no longer see the light of day. But you didn’t.

Because you were flying.

At least, that’s what you assumed when you continued to soar through the air like a wingless bird. And when the both of you cleared the rooftop of the building next to the alley, well, you couldn’t help but dig your fingers into the back of the stranger’s shirt.

“H-how is this happening?” Maybe if you weren’t a hundred feet in the air, you would have been embarrassed by the way your voice came out in a stuttered squeak. Or the way you clung to him like a particularly stubborn barnacle. But you weren’t. Because you’d never been so high up before in your entire life.

The man keeping you from falling to your death chuckled. It was a nice sound: smooth, deep and warm with his amusement. He pulled back a little, just far enough to let his eyes meet your own. Though that did little to loosen the death grip you had on him.

“Magic.” His boxy smile made another appearance as his gaze sparkled in mirth. More than likely at the wide-eyed, stunned expression on your face.

“You’re a wizard then?”

He merely winked in response before reaching behind him to grab at your wrists. “Do you trust me?”

“I..,” Your answer got stuck in your throat. Did you trust him? Hell, you didn’t even know his name. But he had saved you and your life was technically in his hands. So what harm could it bring really? To put your faith in a mere stranger? “I suppose so.”

“Then let go.”

“What?” Was he crazy?

His eyebrows raised playfully, disappearing behind his curly bangs. “Trust me. Let go.”

You hesitated, gaze snapping back downwards at the city below. At the streets filled to the brim and packed with people who looked no bigger than ants. If you fell, you’d die. Become nothing more than a splatter on the cobblestoned streets.

As your heart raced in your chest, you looked back up at the man with your bottom lip caught between your teeth. Well, you’d wanted adventure, right?

Ever so slowly, you loosened the tight grip you had on his shirt until your palms were pressed flat against his back. His grip on your wrists was loose, not enough to keep you up should you fall. Taking a deep breath, you removed your hands from him completely.

And didn’t fall.

“See?” You could hear the smile in his voice even when you were too busy staring at your floating feet to look at him. “Now, are you ready for the best part?”

“Best part?” The question left you with a voice filled with wonder.

The stranger hummed and used his grip on your wrists to spin you around until your back was to his chest. His hands on you were barely there, just hovering beneath your fingertips. And when he leaned down to murmur in your ear, the scent of him flooded your senses.

Sweet like freshly mowed grass on a summer evening.

“Yes. Now walk!”

You were positive now: he was absolutely crazy. Magic or not. “But we aren’t standing on anything.”

“Didn’t I say to trust me?” He mused.

Though he didn’t give you a chance to respond because he took a few steps forward, which in turn made you follow. Made a gasp leave your lips when your feet hit something solid that wasn’t there. As you continued to walk through the air like it was completely normal.

Magic. You’d only ever seen it displayed from afar where you could barely make out the details, never up close. Never to the point where you could feel it rippling off the man at your back like it was second nature. It was...it was…

“Amazing.”

“You like it?” The man smiled at you from the corner of your eye. “This is always my favorite part. Look down.”

And you did.

From the ground the city always looked drab. Lifeless. Dull. But from up high, where the pollution didn’t quite reach? It didn’t look so bad. Not when the brightly painted rooftops stood out amongst the grey slated military vehicles, like a beam of light in the dark.

“I believe that this is your stop.” The man’s voice snapped you out of your thoughts. Drew your attention to the fact that the two of you were descending into an area that looked very familiar.

Your feet touched down on a balcony attached to the side of a building. One you’d stood on many times before. When you turned to look at the man who’d just flown you halfway across the city, he had his arms planted on the wooden railing like he belonged there. Despite the fact that he was hovering in the air on the other side.

“Unfortunately, I have some things to go take care of. But I’m sure we’ll run into each other again.” He threw you a charming wink. “So try not to find anymore trouble in the meantime, okay?”

You nodded slowly with a smile forming on your lips. “I’ll try my best.”

Something flashed in his eyes, but it was gone too quickly for you to really see it. “Good girl.”

And then he flew out of sight as if he’d never been there in the first place.

Like the pop of a bubble, the noise of the crowded streets came flooding in. And with the roar of the protesting yells brought a thought to your mind.

How did he know where you were headed? You’d never told him.

The inside of the building was just familiar as the outside. However, unlike the raging streets outside, once you’d closed the balcony doors behind you, you’d been enveloped in silence. Not even the shouts from beyond the four walls surrounding you could enter inside. Which, to be completely honest, gave you a little bit of peace. There was only so much yelling you could take.

Old wooden stairs creaked beneath the weight of your feet as you descended the well worn staircase to the bottom floor. With your facemask safely deposited in your bag, the scent of baked bread hypnotized your nose as you followed the smell. The swinging door to the kitchen swung open underneath your hand with a squeak to announce your presence.

“Hey.” You greeted the man on the opposite end of the room. He stood with his back towards you, the strings of a white apron tied behind his neck and right above his broad shoulders. Before you’d announced your presence, the man had been bobbing his head to a soundless tune as his hands rolled out fresh dough onto the countertop.

“Y/n?” His head turned to look over his shoulder, and once he spotted you in the doorway, his plump lips pulled back into a grin. “It’s been a while.”

You snorted, pushing off the doorframe to walk across the room. “I just saw you like, three days ago, Seokjin.”

“What?” Even though Seokjin had turned back around to continue kneading the dough, you could practically hear the pout on his lips. “Am I not allowed to miss my little sister?”

Despite the fact that he was the older sibling by a few years, sometimes it felt more like the opposite. Shaking your head, you couldn’t help the smile on your face as you leaned your side against the counter. From where you stood in the kitchen, you were just able to see through the glassless window cut out of the wall and into the front of Seokjin’s bakery.

“How’s business been?” You asked, lip caught between your teeth. The front of the shop was empty of customers, leaving the freshly baked sweets to sit beneath the glass case untouched.

A sigh left your brother’s lips and he stopped in his work to send a sad look through the window. “Same as usual.”

It wasn’t that Seokjin was bad at baking or anything. Quite the opposite. However, with the war going on, not many people had the extra money to spend on pastries and things that could be considered “non-essential.” The only reason your brother’s shop was able to stay afloat was from his usual customers that never failed to buy from him.

Hell, you didn’t even know how you managed to keep your hat shop open.

“Things will turn around.” You tried to reassure him, gaining a tiny smile from Jin in return. “The war can’t go on forever.”

“Hopefully you’re right about that one.” He was frowning again, eyes dull as his thoughts drifted away somewhere you couldn’t follow. After a moment he shook his head. “Speaking of, how did you get here with all those people and cars in the streets?”

“I--” Crossing your arms over your chest, you contemplated how to tell your brother that you’d simply flown over the rooftops like a bird. “I...met a wizard.”

Seokjin choked on his spit. “A what?”

You broke eye contact with an awkward clearing of your throat. “A wizard.”

“Y/n.” His tone turned stern like the elder sibling he was. “A wizard? Seriously? You should know better how dangerous they can be.”

Staring down at the toe of your shoe that you dug into the wooden floorboards, you shrugged half-heartedly. “I know, but he saved me, Seokjin.”

Jin released a haggard, deep sigh and you could see his shoulders slump out of the corner of your eye. “Yes well, be more careful next time, alright? It could have been someone dangerous, like you-know-who. Or the Wi--”

Ring!

Both you and Seokjin snapped your heads back to the front of the store just in time to see a man meander through. He had a dark blue hat pulled down low over his eyes and a walking cane clutched in one of his hands. And when the bottom of his long coat brushed across the floor as he approached the front counter, Jin wiped his hands on the front of his apron.

“Hello!” He called to the man looking at the sweets beneath the glass case, an inquisitive expression on his face. Your brother’s hand squeezed your shoulder once as he walked past you towards the front.

This conversation isn’t over. It said. Don’t think I’ll forget.

Well, you’d take that for the dismissal that it was.

Your home was dark, quiet, once the front door was shut behind you.

The hat shop was attached to the bottom of your house, but only you had the key to get upstairs to where you lived. And with the sun long set beneath the skyline and the moon in its place, everyone had gone home. Which left you.

Alone.

Like always.

You knew that if you told Seokjin how lonely you truly felt, how you hated being alone, he wouldn’t hesitate to open his doors for you. But he had enough problems on his own plate and you didn’t want to intrude on him and his fiancé anyway. They’d just recently gotten engaged, so you didn’t even want to think about how awkward it would be if you moved in with them.

Friends weren’t something that you had aplenty of either. If any at all. Not that you were too shy to make any, you just didn’t know how. Living in a city surrounded by people all the time was actually very lonely. And making connections beyond the work relationships you had with your employees was excruciatingly difficult.

So you’d just forced yourself to suck it up. To deal with the aching longing you had deep in your gut.

A sigh escaped your lips as you dropped your bag onto the floor of your bedroom. However, just as you were about to start undressing to change into your pajamas, you felt the fluttering of a breeze brushing against your skin. Frowning, you turned to look questioningly at your open bedroom window. Because you could have sworn that you’d closed it that morning. You never left it open when you weren’t home.

As another gentle gush of wind played with the curtains on either side of the window, you hurried over to slide it shut.

“You really should keep that locked.”

That wasn’t your voice.

With a gasp, you whirled around and pressed yourself back against the glass of the window. Your heart leapt to your throat the second that you caught sight of the man standing in the center of your bedroom. Where you’d just been not only a few seconds ago.

You didn’t recognize him. Had never seen him before. And either he could feel the fear that flooded your veins like white hot fire, or he could tell by the expression on your face, because his dark green eyes flickered.

“Wh--who--” You couldn’t even get the sentence out past your trembling mouth. So you snapped it shut and glanced to the opened door behind him, the one that would lead back out into the hallway by the staircase. Maybe you could make it if you were quick enough.

“Don’t even think about it, little dove.” His voice, while not as deep as you would have expected, was still intimidating all the same. Even with the amused way the words left his mouth. And either he’d read your mind, or you were just ridiculously obvious with your thoughts. “You wouldn’t make it very far, and you’d just piss me off. And you don’t want to piss me off, do you, Dove?”

Swallowing, you shook your head slowly. Watched as the man ran a hand through his neat blond hair. And when he smiled, his eyes scrunched up in the corners. Though it did well to make him appear less threatening, you didn’t believe it for a second.

“What do you want?” God, you silently cursed yourself for not turning the lights on in your room. Because the dark made it so much worse. Made him look like a demon apparating out of thin air.

He didn’t answer. Not right away. Just crossed the room like he owned it and you were the trespasser. Watched the way you pressed yourself further back against the window like it could somehow save you. Even if it was still open, you wouldn’t have been able to survive the three story drop to the ground. But that fact didn’t stop you from trying to pull up the latch anyway.

“You’re not at all what I expected.” He slowed in his approach, head tilting to the side like he was analysing a wild animal. And it seemed as if he were talking to himself, like you weren’t even there. “But that doesn’t matter.”

Just as your fingers lifted the latch on the window, he crossed the remaining feet separating you in a flash and slammed his hand down on yours. A shock of pain shot up through your arm, tearing a gasp from your lips.

“I told you not to piss me off.” The man tutted. He was close enough to look down at you, eyes raking your face as if in search of something. Close enough for his scent to wash over you and threaten to drown you in the pure heaviness to it. Like the pollution that filled the air outside, or the ache of loneliness that would sometimes pang deep within your chest. And when his full lips turned up into a smirk, you swallowed. Hard.

“It seems you’re no good with directions, but no matter.” His free hand came up to grab your chin between his fingers hard enough to dig into your skin. Slamming your eyes shut, you weren’t sure what he was going to do. Kill you maybe. Probably. Most likely.

But what you didn’t expect, was for him to lean forward and press his lips to your forehead in a kiss. Your eyes widened at the softness of his mouth, a stark contrast to the painful grip he had on you, and couldn’t help the confusion that took root in your heart. Especially with the invisible static that drifted off the man in waves.

It was familiar, almost, to the wizard from the alleyway. But not quite. Tinted with a wrongness that raised the hair on the back of your neck.

And when he pulled away with one last squeeze of your chin, his words echoed through your mind like he’d planted them there.

“You really should have let yourself get killed in that alley. How unfortunate for you. But no matter, give Taehyung my regards.”

Your eyes shot open, only to find your room empty.

Or maybe that was just because your world went dark.

Something felt off.

Even with your eyes still closed and your mind barely conscious, you felt it.

Like everything was slow, groggy. Not quite right.

With a groan, you peeled your heavy eyes open and stared blankly at the bottom of your dresser. It didn’t register at first that your cheek was pressed to the wooden floor of your bedroom until a few more moments of empty blinking. Of forcing your eyes back open when they threatened to close.

God, you were so tired.

And the last thing you remembered was hazy, blurry like a well-forgotten dream. No matter how hard you tried to recall the events that lead up to you sprawled across the floor like a dog, you failed. Slipped through your fingers just before you closed your hand around the memories.

Another groan had you shifting to try and sit up properly. Your muscles ached, joints ached, everything ached. And the pounding headache that threatened to turn your brain to mush wasn’t helping.

“What…” The word came out as nothing more than a barely-there whisper, tongue dry and stuck to the roof of your mouth like you’d eaten sand. It wasn’t until you stood up that you caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of your eye.

A scream bubbled up in your throat, but left just as quickly in a whoosh of hot air. Because staring back at you through the reflection in the mirror above your desk, was an old woman. Her face was wrinkled with crows feet and laugh lines, drooping like the flesh was barely hanging on. And she stood hunched over as if she were unable to fully stand up. Though it wasn’t the way her grey hair stiffened around her shoulders that had your stomach dropping.

No.

It was her eyes that caught your attention and refused to let go.

Because they were your eyes. When you blinked, the old woman blinked like a mirror.

It couldn’t...you couldn’t…

With a shaking hand, you slowly lifted your fingers to your face and the old woman echoed the movement.

“Holy shit.” You croaked. And yet again, the old woman did the same.

You were...her...but how…?

Grimacing to fight off the panic that tightened your throat, you closed your eyes in an attempt to think back on how the hell you’d ended up that way. But…

Nothing.

Only a bodiless voice that whispered through your memory on a loop that you could barely hear.

“But no matter, give Taehyung my regards.”

“Tae...hyung?” Your tongue tasted his name like it was something foreign. And you felt a brief flicker of alarm at having said his name aloud. The wizard who lived in the castle whose parents told the children about to scare them from sneaking out of the house.

Your eyes snapped back open in fear. There was a lot of power in a name. But when you met your own gaze in the mirror once again, you blew out a small sigh of relief at your bedroom being empty. However…

...maybe..?

Were you supposed to find him? To have him undo whatever curse had been casted upon you. Was that right? Was that why his name kept repeating on a loop that you couldn’t silence? But he was dangerous, would more than likely outright slit your throat before offering you a favor. Then again, you’d seen no proof to those rumors, so maybe they weren’t true.

Or maybe you were just trying to fool yourself into going off in search of him.

But you couldn’t continue to live life as an old woman. Hell, your lifespan had more than likely been sliced down to almost nothing now. So, it was either die by the sudden onslaught of old age or take your chances with a dark wizard.

What choice did you really have?

The city of Market Chipping wasn’t grand like the Capital. Nor was it as pretty to look at. But you still felt an ache within your chest as you stared down at it from your spot on top of a hill. You’d never left the city before, never had a reason to. And with the tall grass brushing against the exposed skin of your ankles beneath your dress, you felt a certain sadness that you never would have expected.

Shaking your head of the thoughts, you gave one last lingering look to the city and turned your back on it. On everything you had ever known. Hopefully Seokjin would take the note you’d left to be delivered without question. He knew you well, would more than likely believe the lie you wove about wanting to set off on an adventure. With luck, he wouldn’t worry.

But that was unlikely.

The sooner you found Taehyung and convinced him to undo whatever curse had been put upon you that you couldn’t remember, the sooner you could return home. If you survived, that was.

“I will.” You weren’t sure who you were trying to assure: yourself, or the miles of empty grassland around you.

The area beyond Market Chipping was mountainous, filled with tall hills and rocks that sprawled amongst the grass that you never saw within the city. You had a plan in mind, at least the base of one. And while you shuffled along as quickly as your aged body could move--which wasn’t very much at all--you tried to figure out how you were going to find a person who didn’t want to be found.

It was well known that Taehyung moved around alot, given his home of choice. But he’d been within the area yesterday morning, so that had to count for something, right? He couldn't have wandered off very far. At least that’s what you were aiming for.

You weren’t sure how long you’d been walking for. It was difficult to tell time when you didn’t have a watch on you. The only things you’d thought to bring with you was some food and a blanket stuffed into your bag. You’d packed light in hope of not needing to be gone long.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, you hadn’t come across another living being for hours. Not since you’d hitched a ride on the back of a farmer’s wagon up one of the trails. So you were bored, and incredibly exhausted. Such an old body got tired a lot quicker than you were used to. Despite that fact, you had to convince yourself to stop and take a break.

Which was exactly how you found yourself lying back in a spot on the grass, arms stretched out and eyes closed. You hadn’t meant to drift off to sleep, to take a nap right out in the open where anyone could find you. But your breath evened out before you realized it and the sounds of the wind brushing the grass lulled you to sleep.

Psh!

You awoke with a start.

Eyes shooting open, you mentally cursed yourself when you saw that the sun had set. Just how long had you been asleep for? And what, exactly, had woken you?

Slowly sitting up, you cast your gaze around the surroundings that you were able to see beneath the light of the full moon. There were no lanterns, no street lamps that far out into the wilderness, so you weren’t able to make out much.

Psh!

The high pitched whistle of steam had your head snapping to the right. Your eyes narrowed in an attempt to see with the lack of light to no avail. Holding your breath, you refused to move lest you miss whatever it was that you’d heard. Until movement caught your eye near the edge of one of the taller cliffsides.

“That’s convenient.” You mumbled, scrambling to your feet as quickly as you could. Perhaps your luck was beginning to turn around because right before you was the very thing that you’d been searching for.

The castle was huge, bigger than the tallest building in Market Chipping. But it didn’t look like a building, nor did it appear to be a castle. It was stuck somewhere in the middle, with a metal and steel structure that held itself together in a plethora of different shapes. Three legs stuck out of the bottom as it slowly propelled itself in your direction. And steam wafted from two gigantic metal chimneys at the stop of the monstrous castle.

Even though it must have been extremely heavy, the ground barely shook upon impact. And as it slowed to a stop a few meters away, you sucked in a deep breath. Maybe you were getting a little in over your head. Hell, it wasn’t too late to turn back and head home, even if you were in the body of an old woman. Surely that would be better than death at the hands of a dark wizard.

Right?

No, no. You couldn’t turn back now. You refused to be a coward. Besides, you’d think of it as karma from praying for an adventure so many times.

With a loud burst of steam, the castle lowered itself from its great, towering height and closer to the ground. Despite the darkness surrounding you, the door that led inside could be seen almost as clear as day. You took another deep breath. And shuffled forward.

When you came upon the three stepped porch that led up to the door, you grabbed onto the metal railing before you could doubt yourself again. Climbing stairs, even as little as three, was enough to leave you puffing for breath.

And as the heels of your shoes tapped across the wooden porch, and your hand reached out towards the doorknob, you grabbed on.

And swung the door open.

Tagging: @chimchimsauce @naajix @adoreyoukoo @ihaveakoreanseoul @btsarmysvtcarat @red--aren @micchikari @worldwidemochiguy @taebaelou @stardust-and-ashes @callmeyourstarrynight @ddaeng-whispers @kpopgirlbtssvt @byebyebycycle @busangloss @futuristicpinklemur @pjmlylyn @krystle1990 @parkchimchiminie @missseoulite @wannabesoftstanhaha @hxsxxk-180294 @leilalago @doodlesandthings @btsxarii @thedarkwinterrose @saxpam24 @kawaiikiwithefruit @someonewhowannadielol @starrytae @lume0801

#bts #bangtanarmynet #magicshopnet #btsbookclub #ficswithluv #taehyung #taehyung fic #bts fic

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springsummerspring · 3 years

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Our disposition, personality, and behaviour all have a profound effect on the types of relationships we thrive in. A couple doesn’t need to be identical, but the right balance of traits is necessary for compatibility. This new RP theory focuses on two important characteristics: the dominance level of each person, as well as the woman’s dominance threshold.

Your “Dominance Level” (DL) measures attributes such as your natural tendency to assume the lead and how you exercise authority in interactions. DL takes into account all behaviour, it is not limited to actions within a romantic relationship. For the purposes of this post I will use a scale of 0 - 10 to discuss DL, with 10 representing the maximum possible level of dominance one can have. There are separate male and female scales - a woman who is a 6 is not more dominant than a man who is a 5, and a man who is a 10 is more dominant than a female 10.

How are dominance levels expressed in men?

A 10 has 100% alpha traits, and a 0 has 100% beta traits. As you move across the spectrum, the ratio shifts. So a 2 has 20% alpha traits, a 6 has 60%, etc.

Men who are lowest in dominance (0-3.5 on the DL scale) have the highest ratio of beta traits in comparison to alpha traits. They can be easygoing, empathetic, gentle, and considerate. They can also be sensitive, emotional, unconfident, indecisive, and soft. Keep in mind that these are just a few examples, these traits do not define these men nor are they required to be in this category.

The 3.5s-6s exhibit more alpha traits but their nature is that of a “greater beta”. These men are able to provide comfort and leadership as required in a relationship. Most women have men in this category, especially on RPW. If you are looking for a “medium dominance” category, this is where your man belongs (but to be clear, he is still in the "low dominance" category of this system).

Men who are a 6-8.5 on the DL scale have a higher ratio of alpha traits in comparison to beta traits. There are many types of alpha men: apex, renegade, patriarchal, criminal, corporate, political, etc. and they all have different characteristics that allow them to succeed and take charge in their respective environments. One thing they all have in common is an immense amount of masculinity, which can be both good and bad.

8.5 - 10s can fall into any of the alpha subtypes. They also have the highest amounts of Dark Triad traits, and are the rarest group of men.

How are dominance levels expressed in women?

The alpha/beta ratio does not apply to the female dominance scale. There are no easy, clear cut terms for the spectrum, just various dispositions and behaviours. While the ratio of masculinity and femininity plays a role, the DL is not measuring either of those traits directly. I have chosen both positive and negative examples for each type but again, these are generalisations and only a fraction of the possible characteristics one can have.

Women who are in the low dominance category (0-6) are non confrontational, sensitive, and accommodating. They are psychologically feminine, not only with their men but in their everyday lives, automatically. They can be doormats, passive, weak, and insecure if they do not learn how to prioritise themselves first instead of others. This does not mean that they are incapable of having any of the traits that high dominance women have, just that the concentration of H traits lowers as you approach zero (and vice versa with H women and L traits).

High Dominance Women (6.5-10) are more confident, driven, assertive, and ambitious. They can also be more masculinised, argumentative, self serving, and insubordinate. Some women like to think of themselves as “alpha women” but this is a myth, not an RP concept. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that being high dominance is superior. Both categories have their strengths and weaknesses. Feminists have pushed the idea that male characteristics and virtues are a universal ideal that all should strive for so women are encouraged to be high dominance. The only way that high dominance women can have romantic success with a dominant man is if they can master psychological femininity and deference within their relationship.

Your “Dominance Threshold” indicates how dominant your man has to be in order for you to feel attraction, commitment, and love. I will also be using the 0-10 dominance scale when referring to the dominance threshold. For the purposes of this discussion it is assumed that all women have a range of 0-2 points past their threshold where attraction is possible. The threshold is the minimum but most women who prefer a 5.5/10 would not be comfortable with an 8 or higher.

How are dominance thresholds expressed in women?

Women with low dominance thresholds require less alpha, and more beta in their relationships. This means more affection and softness, more obvious and frequent displays of love and care. These women are repelled by or afraid of extreme displays of male aggression, anger, or arrogance. They also do not like strict boundaries or being controlled. They are suited for betas and greater betas.

Women with high dominance thresholds require more alpha, less beta. They crave arousal, displays of power, raw masculinity, etc. from their man and view the same beta traits the low threshold women love as weaknesses. They are perfect mates for all types of alphas.

When a man’s DL is way too low for a woman, she reacts with disgust or infantilisation. If it is merely a point or two lower you’ll see shit tests. If it’s slightly too high, she’ll comfort test, and when it’s way too high she’ll be afraid. This applies to all women regardless of their threshold or dominance level.

Taking the 4 categories into account (low/high DL, low/high threshold) there are 8 possible relationship combinations. Not all are optimal or RP but all of the dynamics exist in the real world. Moving forward we will use these labels within the subreddit in our discussions and the advice we give.

By using a combination of 3 letters (all of which are either H or L) we can refer to each dynamic with ease. The first letter establishes the man’s dominance level, the second the woman’s, and then the third is for her dominance threshold. So a high dominance man (H) with a low dominance woman (L), who has a high threshold (H), would be described as HLH. A low dominance man (L) with a low dominance woman (L), who has a low dominance threshold (L), would be LLL.

Now onto an overview of the dynamics, which will be described with an emphasis on the effect on the woman. They are ordered from least potential to be RP to most potential to be RP, with 3 equally RP dynamics, there is not one universally ideal dynamic. Please keep in mind that these descriptions are all generalisations of what is most likely to happen, there are always exceptions. Note: future posts will help you identify your dynamic, do not fixate on labeling yourself from this introductory post.

High dominance man, high dominance/low threshold woman (HHL) - she vies for dominance and feels little to no comfort or security. Possible violence as she is likely to stir up trouble by constantly challenging her man.

High man, low/low woman (HLL) - she needs more beta comfort and can’t stay motivated when feeling unloved. She feels he is mean or scary. There is also a strong chance of violence in this relationship which only further discourages the LL woman from being her best and creates a cycle where the man is constantly punishing her.

Low man, high/high woman (LHH) - she walks all over him or bosses around. This is a very common dynamic as it is what usually happens when a woman is out of the CC riding/AF phase and has settled for her beta bucks.

Low man, low/high woman (LLH) - she is repulsed and/or can’t respect him, wishes he was more dominant. Whenever you see an RPW post where the OP asks: “How can I get my main to be the captain” or says “I tried captain/first mate but he’s not taking the lead” then you know it’s an LLH situation.

Low man, high/low woman (LHL) - a lot of feminist relationships are like this, and they can work, and people can be happy in them. There is also a chance that the woman walks all over the man and disrespects him and he just puts up with it. It all depends on how attracted the woman is to her man, and how well he is able to maintain that attraction.

High man, high/high woman (HHH) - potential to be RP if the woman respects the man. “Captain and First Mate” as described by RPW is not an adequate description of the dynamics in HHH relationships. This combination can be a power couple, or there can be violence if the woman does not defer to the man (think Chris Brown and Rihanna).

High man, low/high woman (HLH) - potential to be RPW and a classic fantasy that is not seen as much in reality. The woman is naturally submissive and aware of it. She is drawn to a dominant man and requires power over her. There is a strong sense of ownership and there can also be a paternalistic element to the dynamic. This differs from HHH relationships in that the woman is not a partner in crime, but rather a source of support and feminine energy while the man takes on challenges. At its worst, HLH relationships involve the man taking advantage of and abusing the woman.

Low man, low/low woman (LLL) - this is the most common both in and out of the subreddit. Contrary to what many may assume, most rpw are interested in or already with greater betas! When done right, these relationships are the epitome of the captain and first mate concept. The man leads and the woman occupies the traditional female role, but it may not feel like submission or deferment to her because of the lack of power imposed explicitly. If the man fails to take the lead, the woman may feel forced to assume that role and her respect for her man will decline. If no one assumes the lead, arguments are more likely to happen, and again, the woman will lose respect for the man.

Can you change your dominance level?

You can absolutely eliminate the personality traits that hinder your success. If you are a high dominance woman, you may need to work on being less controlling, argumentative, or disobedient. RPW is great for that! If you are low dominance, you can become more assertive, confident, and more. However, men who want the traditional, RP relationships are not interested in women who do not listen to or respect them, so it’s important not to go too far in the other direction.

Can you change your dominance threshold?

Attraction is non-negotiable. It’s important to be aware of and honest about your preferences and select a partner wisely. Understanding how men think can help you become more comfortable with a man that has a DL way higher than your threshold. If you are with a man who’s DL is below your threshold RPW can help you with respect, loyalty, and all of the other issues that come with those dynamics. Your threshold may change naturally over time based on life experiences, as you learn what you actually like in relationships.

What can we do with this information?

As mentioned earlier, this system will be a great way to have everyone on the same page when it comes to discussing relationships and giving advice. We should all be aware of our biases, and our individual dominance levels and thresholds greatly affect the responses we leave about other people’s relationships.

A lot of women with low dominance thresholds can’t understand masculine, dominant men, and that contributes to them advising women to leave their men in certain instances or worrying that something is abusive. The reverse also applies, women with high dominance thresholds are less able to wrap their heads around how other women can stay with and be attracted to low dominance men.

It is important to be aware of our biases and work to overcome solipsism. It’s not about what we would do in their situation, but what they should do in their situation. Hopefully having the language to identify dynamics will help us all provide suggestions that work well with whatever dynamic a user is involved in.

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vajranam · 3 years

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Refuge Prayer

NAMO GURU BEH

NAMO BUDDHA YA

NAMO DHARMA YA

NAMO SANGHA YA

I heard these words of the Buddha one time when the Lord was staying in the Mango Grove in the cool shade of the mango trees along the bank of a river in the land of Magadha. The elders Shariputra and Maudgalyayana had recently passed away. It was the full-moon day of the Uposatha Ceremony and the precepts were recited. The Buddha spread out his sitting mat and sat facing the community. After looking out at those gathered, he said, “As I look at our community, I see a large space left by the Venerables Shariputra and Maudgalyayana. In our Sangha, these venerables were the monks who were the most eloquent in giving Dharma talks, encouraging and instructing all the other monks, nuns, and laypeople. “O monks, people seek two kinds of riches—material riches and the riches of the Dharma. In their search for material riches, they can go to worldly people. In their search for the riches of the Dharma, they could always go to the Venerables Shariputra and Maudgalyayana. The Tathagata is someone who is not searching for anything, whether it is material or the Dharma. “O monks, do not be sad or anxious because Shariputra and Maudgalyayana have passed into nirvana. On large trees, filled with leaves, sumptuous fruits, and flowers, the largest branches always die or are broken first. On jeweled mountains, don’t the highest peaks always erode before the smaller ones? In the Sangha of the Tathagata, the Venerables Shariputra and Maudgalyayana were the greatest students. So it is natural that these venerables would enter nirvana first. Do not give rise to feelings of sorrow or anguish. “All phenomena that are born, exist, and are subject to the influence of other phenomena, in other words, all phenomena that are composite, must abide by the law of impermanence and eventually cease to exist. They cannot exist eternally, without someday being destroyed. Everything we cherish and hold dear today, we will have to let go of and be separated from in the future. In not too long a time, I will also pass away. Therefore, I urge you to practice being an island unto yourself, knowing how to take refuge in yourself, and not taking refuge in anyone or anything else. “Practice taking refuge in the island of the Dharma. Know how to take refuge in the Dharma, and do not take refuge in any other island or person. Meditate on the body in the body, nourishing Right Understanding and mindfulness to master and transform your cravings and anxieties. Observe the elements outside the body in the elements outside the body, nourishing Right Understanding and mindfulness to master and transform your cravings and anxieties. That is the way to take refuge in the island of self, to return to yourself in order to take refuge in the Dharma, and not to take refuge in any other island or thing.” When the bhikshus heard the Buddha offer this teaching, they were all very happy to put it into practice. Samyukta Agama 639 Taisho Revised Tripitaka 99

The Four Immeasurables (with Namo Buddhaya, Namo Dharmaya, Namo Sanghaya)

Namo Guru be

English: I prostrate to the Guru (teacher)

May all beings have happiness and its causes

Namo Buddha ya

English: I prostrate to the Buddha

May all beings be freed from suffering and all its causes

Namo Dharma ya

English: I prostrate to the Dharma (the teachings)

May all beings constantly dwell in joy transcending sorrow

Namo Sangha ya

English: I prostrate to the sangha (community of Dharma practitioners)

May all beings dwell in equal love for those both close and distant.

The refuge is the center of the Buddha Dharma practices, when we take refuge we also purify ourself.

the Buddha went out from the monastery where he was staying and walked towards a great forest. Seeing him going in that direction various people working in their fields called out to him to warn him that in that forest dwelt the dreaded Angulimala.

Little is known for certain about Angulimala but the usual account of his life has him the son of a well-to-do family and at one time a brilliant student at the University of Taxila, then the Oxbridge of India.

At Taxila, other students were jealous of him and succeeded in poisoning their teacher’s mind against him, with the result that the teacher asked of him what he must have believed would be an impossible honorarium, a thousand human right-hand little fingers. Unbelievably, instead of giving up and quietly going home without graduating, the young man set out to collect the fingers and pay the fee. Presumably, he quickly discovered that people were reluctant to willingly give up their little fingers and so he was forced to resort to violence and killing in order to obtain them.

Then he found he had nowhere to store these fingers. He tried hanging them on a tree but the birds stole them so his solution was to string them around his neck. For this gruesome and growing garland of bloody fingers he was nicknamed Angulimala which means ‘finger garland’ or ‘finger necklace’.

This was the man who, peering out from his lair, spotted the Buddha coming towards him and who that day had round his neck nine hundred and ninety-nine little fingers. This powerful and athletic serial killer, who had already successfully resisted several attempts to apprehend him, grabbed his weapons and dashed out to murder the Buddha and complete his score.

He expected to easily overtake him and quickly finish the job but then a very strange thing happened – even though the Buddha was only walking, serene and unhurried, Angulimala, despite his formidable strength and speed, found he couldn’t catch up with him. Eventually, exhausted, angry, frustrated and soaked with sweat, Angulimala screamed at the Buddha to stop.

Then the Buddha turned and with neither anger or fear, speaking quietly and directly, he told Angulimala that he, the Buddha, had already stopped. He had stopped killing and harming and now it was time for him, Angulimala, to do likewise. Angulimala was so struck by these words that there and then he stopped; he threw away his weapons and followed the Buddha back to the monastery where he became a monk.

Later, the King, ignorant of what had happened, came by leading his troops out to arrest Angulimala. Being a very pious monarch, he called to pay his respects to the Buddha and to inform him of what he was up to. The Buddha asked the King what his reaction would be were he to discover that amongst this assembly of monks sat Angulimala.

To the King it was utterly unbelievable that such a foul and evil person could now be a Buddhist monk and seated amongst such exalted company, but were it the case, he answered, he would certainly pay his respects and make offerings. Then the Buddha stretched forth his right hand and, pointing, announced that there sat Angulimala.

When he’d mastered his fear and recovered from the shock, the King, having paid his respects, said to the Buddha how incredible it was that, “What we have tried to do by force and with weapons you have done with neither force nor weapons!” In the course of time, after a period of some trial to himself, Angulimala did eventually succeed in purging his mind of all greed, hatred and delusion and realised for himself the Buddhist goal of Enlightenment.

The story of Angulimala teaches us that the possibility of Enlightenment may be awakened in the most extreme of circumstances, that people can and do change and that people are best influenced by persuasion and above all, example.

The Buddha gave one practice to angulimala was to recite all time the refuge prayer to clear is mind.

The refuge prayer got the double straight of protecting and purifying.

Namo Gurubye prayers was use in the Buddhist origins.

#spirituality #mindfulness #wisdom #meditation #religion #buddhism #self care #visualization #zen #tibet

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tonystarkbingo · 4 years

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TSB Week 7 Roundup!

Badge Earners:

Katling betheflame summerpipedream

And now our fills for this week! Click through to check them out and make sure to leave some love!

Title: Full Spread Collaborator: camichats Link: AO3 Square Filled: A1 - Photoshoot Ship: FrostIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: None Summary: Tony agreed to marry Jotun Prince Loki for the sake of Asgard’s alliance with Jotunheim. They’re home and learning what it means to be together, but the rest of the world wants to know what they’re like too. Pepper convinces Tony to agree to a photoshoot, officially presenting Tony Stark and his husband Loki to Earth. Word Count: 13,238

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Title: Nose Kiss Collaborator: monobuu Link: Tumblr Square Filled: K4 - Nose Kiss Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: None Summary: Some after-battle nose rubs. Word Count: None [Art]

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Title: Crash Landing Collaborator: turtlesse Link: AO3 Square Filled: S3 - Major Injuries Ship: FrostIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: None Summary: Loki should have known his day would get worse. It had started to get better, too, but no. That wasn’t his life. Word Count: 3026

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Title: N/A Collaborator: monobuu Link: Tumblr Square Filled: R5 - May Parker Ship: none Rating: Gen Major Tags: art Summary: Back to the basics for Aunt May!

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Title: Happiness is spelled (without modesty) Collaborator: HogwartsToAlexandria Link: AO3 Square Filled: R4 - No Modesty Ship: Pepperony Rating: Mature Major Tags: sexual content Summary: Now that Morgan is older and summer's rolled around, Pepper and Tony are able to find solace in every little moment they get. Word Count: 566

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Title: N/A Collaborator: Link: Tumblr Square Filled: T3 - Alien Planet Ship: none Rating: Gen Major Tags: art Summary: I love putting Tony and Stars together :

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Title: i crave your mouth, your voice, your hair - Chapter 2: ii. Collaborator: deathsweetqueen Link: AO3 Square Filled: R3 - Afghanistan Trip Ship: PepperStony Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Soulmate AU, Explicit Sexual Content, Indian Tony Stark, Hindu Tony Stark, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Pepper Potts' Mother's A+ Parenting, Smut, Dirty Talk, Self-Esteem Issues, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse Summary: Virginia Potts meets Tony Stark three years after she starts working in the accounting department of Stark Industries. She’s had the name of two soulmates written on her wrists since she was eleven years old. One says Anthony Edward Stark and the other says, Steven Grant Rogers. Virginia knows that Anthony Edward Stark is her boss, her top boss, the guy at the highest end of the totem pole, and she knows that Steven Grant Rogers was Captain America and he’s been dead since 1945. Word Count: 12,284

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Title: Welcome to Chaos Collaborator: trashcanakin Link: Tumblr Square Filled: K4 - Scott Lang/Ant-Man Ship: IronAnt Rating: Teen Major Tags: Dystopian AU, Canon Typical Violence Summary: A “game” called Chaos was created that forcefully sucks people into it, and in order to escape the game, you have to win… but as in all games; there are rules. Word Count: [Moodboard] N/A

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Title: Velvet Glove Collaborator: HogwartsToAlexandria Link: AO3 Square Filled: S3 - Laughter Ship: Tony/Pepper/Nat Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Porn Without Plot Summary: Off-days are far in-between for two members of the Avengers and their CEO wife, so they take advantage of them. Of course they do. Word Count: 910

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Title: Tony Stark, Fairy Godbillionaire Collaborator: RoseRose Link: AO3 Square Filled: S2 - First Date Ship: Stuckony Rating: Teen Major Tags: Alternate Universe - No Powers Summary: Tony Stark receives an invitation to Steve and Bucky's wedding. He has absolutely no idea who they are. For their chutzpah, he decides to pay for everything for their wedding- and hop into the planning to make sure they get the best of the best.They end up falling in love. Word Count: 1020

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Title: [Moodboard] N/A Collaborator: monobuu Link: Tumblr Square Filled: A5 - Adopting a Pet Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: None Summary: Tony: You said you wanted a pet.Bucky: Cat. I said I wanted a cat. Word Count: N/A

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Title: let the soft animal of your body love what it loves - Chapter 12: xii. Collaborator: deathsweetqueen Link: AO3 Square Filled: A4 - damsels (and others) in distress Ship: Stony Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Time Travel, Endgame Steve goes back in time to be with Post AOU Tony, Explicit Sexual Content, Dirty Talk, Past Domestic Violence, Post AOU AU, Breaking Up and Making Up, Marriage Counselling, Superfamily, Team Iron Man, but not Steve unfriendly, he's just a moron, a lot of fighting and arguments, Dubious Consent due to Identity Issues Summary: In 2023, Steve Rogers, after burning his husband's body, goes through the timelines to return each of the Infinity Stones. Word Count: 53,366

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Title: Mornings Like These Collaborator: BennyBatch Link: AO3 Square Filled: A5 - I love you 3000 Ship: FrostIron Rating: Mature Major Tags: Fluff and Smut Summary: Tony Stark never thought he would be so lucky, but here he is--happy, and the man sleeping to his right is the one to thank for it. Word Count: 1437

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Title: Don't Feed The Experiments Collaborator: MagicaDraconia16 Link: AO3 Square Filled: Adopted - Iron Mouse Image Ship: none Rating: Gen Major Tags: Crack ahoy? Summary: When feeding the experiments, please ensure that you don't get blood in their food. Or give them heightened intelligence. Yes, Mr Stark, we're looking at you. Word Count: 300

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Title: Love is Comfortable Collaborator: lbibliophile-mcu Link: Tumblr Square Filled: S3 - limping Ship: Pepper/Natasha Rating: Gen Major Tags: moodboard Summary: As a woman, being beautiful is painful. So when they’re together they prefer to be cozy.

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Title: Swirlin’ On You Babe Collaborator: camichats Link: AO3 Square Filled: T5 - Kink: Stripping Ship: IronWidow Rating: Mature Major Tags: sex worker, lap dance Summary: Tony is hanging out a strip club, and he sees one worker in particular that he'd like to take home. His night gets a hell of a lot better when she says yes. Word Count: 1241

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Title: Tiny Tony Cutie Collaborator: rebelmeg Link: Tumblr Square Filled: A3 - free space Ship: none Rating: Gen Major Tags: fandom craft Summary: Mini Tony Stark cross stitch cutie magnet

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Title: Shenanigans Collaborator: rebirthofaphoenix Link: Tumblr Square Filled: R5 - denial Ship: Rocket/Wade/Tony/Loki Rating: Teen Major Tags: moodboard, human Rocket, idiotic men who don’t realize they’re together, flying humans Summary: peacock - Tony, African Grey - Wade, screech owl - Rocket, crow - Loki

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Title: In My Dreams I Turn You On - Chapter One Collaborator: ceealaina Link: AO3 Square Filled: K4 - Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier Ship: WinterIron Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Alternate Universe - No Powers Summary: Tony’s crushing hard on his new massage therapist, but doesn’t want to be a sleazy businessman. Bucky’s crushing hard on his latest client, but doesn’t want to take advantage of him in a vulnerable position. So they handle it like any sane adults - pretend it’s not happening and refuse to discuss it. At least they both have terrible friends to help them through it. Word Count: 4259

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Title: Surprise! It’s an Omega! Collaborator: alexisriversong Link: AO3 Square Filled: K5 - Kink: Rushed Sex Ship: Stucky Rating: Explicit Major Tags: A/B/O Summary: Setting right after the end of the Beauty and the Beast AU, basically, the same plot as the movie but with alpha/omega/beta and the Avengers team. Not really necessary to read the first fic, but in some places might not make sense without reading that first. Word Count: 1136

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Title: i crave your mouth, your voice, your hair Collaborator: Simi Link: AO3 Square Filled: T3 - IMAGE: Tony has a heart Ship: PepperStony Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Soulmate AU Summary: Virginia Potts meets Tony Stark three years after she starts working in the accounting department of Stark Industries. She’s had the name of two soulmates written on her wrists since she was eleven years old. One says Anthony Edward Stark and the other says, Steven Grant Rogers. Virginia knows that Anthony Edward Stark is her boss, her top boss, the guy at the highest end of the totem pole, and she knows that Steven Grant Rogers was Captain America and he’s been dead since 1945. Word Count: 17,166

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Title: Flying My Way Collaborator: tisfan Link: AO3 Square Filled: S2 - AU: Star Wars Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: None Summary: Word Count: 1484

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Title: Hadid Collaborator: thudworm Link: AO3 Square Filled: S1 - AU: Dragon Riders Ship: IronHusbands Rating: Teen Major Tags: Mutual Pining Summary: An AU of Iron Man 1, now with added dragons. Word Count: 1472

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Title: YSMIR Collaborator: endrega23 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S2 - Dark Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: Light Angst Summary: YSMIR (do not attempt to recreate at home) First, take twenty to thirty tablespoons of challenge. Sprinkle it with a pinch of bet, and add some brotherly competition according to your taste and a slice of one-upmanship. Let it sit and stew, then, at the critical moment, add it to a nightmare-fueled, sleep-deprived inventing binge. Be sure to separate it from any moderating influence, or it won't produce the desired effect. Finally, pour it into a genius, and wait. Word Count: 3593

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Title: Tony Stark Has a Heart Collaborator: thud worm Link: AO3 Square Filled: S4 - [Image] Tony has a heart Ship: N/A Rating: Gen Major Tags: PTSD, Flashbacks Summary: Tony isn’t a complete idiot- he knows that his truckload of issues didn’t begin with the wormhole, even though that was when the nightmares and other symptoms started. But this newest trigger managed to take him completely by surprise. Word Count: 1013

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Title: Work Six Times As Hard Collaborator: camichats Link: AO3 Square Filled: A3 - freespace Ship: IronHusbands Rating: Teen Major Tags: Attempted Sexual Assault, Threat of Rape/Non-Con, Racism, Non-Con Drug Use (as in a white girl drugs Tony’s drink and threatens to tell the cops Tony raped her if they try to say anything and Tony’s underage during this) Summary: Tony Stark was black, first and foremost. He was rich, second. As Maria told him, everyone could glance at him and see the color of his skin right away, but they couldn’t tell how much money he had so he needed to play it safe. It didn’t make a difference. Not in the end. Word Count: 3311

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Title: my body is not their bed - Chapter 1: i. Collaborator: deathsweetqueen Link: AO3 Square Filled: A3 - free space Ship: Bucky/Tony/Steve/Natasha Rating: Explicit Major Tags: soulmates, Fem!Tony, implied/referenced child abuse, explicit sexual content, PTSD, genderswap, gender issues, torture, polyamory Summary: In 1995, the Engineer and the Winter Soldier escape HYDRA and end up, bleeding, on Peggy Carter's doorstep. This is their journey after. This is the story of their victory march. Word Count: 5988

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Title: N/A Collaborator: monobuu Link: Tumblr Square Filled: K1 - Diner / Restaurant Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: art Summary: World-renowned restaurateur Tony Stark prides himself on employing only the best of the best. So when the pastry chef of his most famous New York restaurant, the Avengeur, quits unexpectedly, Tony is left scrambling to find a replacement. The most qualified applicant turns out to be James ‘call me Bucky’ Barnes, and he represents a drastic change from the privileged and elite staff Tony is used to hiring. Tony takes a chance on something new and the decision ends up affecting more than just Tony’s restaurant.

#tonystarkbingo2020 #tsb2020 #weekly roundup #week 7 #week 7 roundup #badge earners

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ladiesofmarvelbingo · 4 years

Photo

Week 29 of round ups!

Title: Pizza for Valentine’s Day Content Creator: remreader Square Filled: M4 - Family Dinner (Chapter 3); M2 - Cabin in the Woods (Chapter 5) Word Count: 2,310 Rating: General Pairing(s): Pepper Potts/Tony Stark Major Tags: Fluff, Valentine’s Day, 5+1 Things, Jewish!Tony Stark Summary: Five times Tony and Pepper had pizza for Valentine's Day + one time they didn't.

A series of short ficlets and drabbles of Tony & Pepper celebrating Valentine's Day - together and apart - from several years before the events of Iron Man 1 through 2020. Link: AO3

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Title: Morgan’s Valentines Content Creator: rebelmeg Square Filled: E3 - Morgan Stark Word Count: 2,100 Rating: General Pairing(s): Pepper Potts/Tony Stark (though not the main focus) Major Tags: Morgan Stark-centric (MCU), Valentine’s Day Summary: Morgan makes a valentine for all the people, creatures, bots, and AI's in her life. Link: AO3

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Title: Start Over Content Creator: AvengersCompound (emilyevanston) Square Filled: M4 - Temporary Death/Presumed Dead Word Count: 2,564 Rating: Mature Pairing(s): Natasha Romanoff/Reader Major Tags: Femslash, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Fix-It, Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Past Violence Summary: As you try and pick up the pieces of your life after the blip and the death of your girlfriend you discover things aren’t as they seem. Link: AO3

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Title: Desperate Times Content Creator: Caiti (Caitriona_3) Square Filled: O1 - AU: Flower Shop Word Count: 1,340 Rating: Teen+ Pairing(s): Darcy Lewis/Brock Rumlow Major Tags: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - The Purge Fusion Summary: In times like these, it never hurts to have an unexpected hero. Link: AO3

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Title: By Any Other Name Content Creator: periwinklepromise Square Filled: W3 - Falling in Love Word Count: 490 Rating: Teen+ Pairing(s): Ororo Munroe/Susan Storm Major Tags: Femslash, Love at First Sight, Getting Together, Misunderstandings Summary: Ororo misunderstands Sue's abilities based on her last name Link: AO3

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Title: Interlude Content Creator: sarahbeniel Square Filled: L1 - Skinny Dipping; D4 - Romantic Gestures Word Count: 5,090 (WIP) Rating: Explicit Pairing(s): James “Bucky” Barnes/Darcy Lewis, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Darcy Lewis Major Tags: Crack Crossover, Established Relationship, Angst with a Happy Ending Summary: Bucky and Darcy are having trouble communicating. When Bucky suggests they take a break, she assumes it's over. But sometimes a break is just what doctor ordered... Link: AO3

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Title: i crave your mouth, your voice, your hair Content Creator: deathsweetqueen Square Filled: N2 - Lace Word Count: 12,284 (WIP) Rating: Explicit Pairing(s): Pepper Potts/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark Major Tags: Soulmates, Alternate Universe- Soulmates, Indian!Tony Stark, Hindu Tony Stark, Howard Stark’s A+ Parenting, Pepper Potts’s Mother’s A+ Parenting, Self-Esteem Issues, Grief/Mourning, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse Summary: Virginia Potts meets Tony Stark three years after she starts working in the accounting department of Stark Industries. She’s had the name of two soulmates written on her wrists since she was eleven years old. One says Anthony Edward Stark and the other says, Steven Grant Rogers.

Virginia knows that Anthony Edward Stark is her boss, her top boss, the guy at the highest end of the totem pole, and she knows that Steven Grant Rogers was Captain America and he’s been dead since 1945. Link: AO3

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Title: It Wasn’t Personal Content Creator: startrekkingaroundasgard Square Filled: A2 - Natasha Romanoff/Tony Stark Word Count: 2,300 Rating: Not Rated Pairing(s): Natasha Romanoff/Tony Stark Major Tags: Mild Sexual Situations, Alcohol, Angsty Ending Summary: It was only meant to be something casual. Stress relief. A bit of fun. As the years pass, though, this thing between Natasha and Tony turns into something more complicated, real and tangible until they reach breaking point. Set from Iron Man 2 through to Civil War. Link: Tumblr

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#round ups

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lederanged · 6 years

Text

INTRODUCING: RODOLPHUS LESTRANGE

helllooooo, so i’m char and i’ll be bringing you this god awful man. i’m super friendly n i want literally everything so definitely hmu to plot. beware, this is very informal but it’s late and i’m a professional slacker

rod was born to two considerably elderly parents, they’d been trying for an heir for an incredibly long time so when he was born it was of the highest importance that they didn’t make any mistakes with him

his childhood consisted of harsh words and learning skill after skill and lesson after lesson in order to shape him into exactly what he needed to be

he was a quiet child, observant and he didn’t openly misbehave and yet there was always something to be punished for - they aimed to teach him discipline and disciplined he became

he inherited the lestrange good looks with his dark hair and shocking blue eyes as well as his father’s cool temperament, this was good news for them

when rabastan was born, he felt a sense of relief, believing some of the pressure would be taken from him but this wasn’t the case and thus he learned to suppress his emotions at an early age

at hogwarts he was very much a ringleader and commanded authority everywhere he went with both his name and natural air of dominance

he was well liked by teachers and never explicitly stated his views on blood purity outside of his circle even though they were heavily assumed

rodolphus always had high aspirations - within the death eaters and out - he had always aspired to be minister for magic and while it something said in jest to friends at school, it was also far from a joke

after his father’s legacy with the death eaters came to an end, the dark lord was eager to welcome rod to his troops upon hearing that he was very much his father’s son

being a death eater provided him with the power and control that he always craved and social situations were always limited in but it also tested his self-control

once he’d had a taste of this new world, it became increasingly difficult to keep his other aspirations in hand and his public image under control so he was forced to reign himself back in - he gained nothing but temporary pleasure from murder and violence, his career would leave more permanent satisfaction

so he made his way up the ranks in both the dark lord’s respect and ministry positions with careful discipline and restrained desires

his marriage to bellatrix was one of convenience and a good choice in terms of status for both of them but surprisingly it works as neither share too much affection for the other - nevertheless, he’s still not too pleased his wife is in love with someone else

for a while, an heir was a priority for him but eventually it become apparent this wouldn’t be the case and he’s slowly started to accept that he and rabastan may be the end of a long line of lestranges

while he believes heavily in blood purity, rod is only loyal to the dark lord on the surface. he sees the bigger picture, the likelihood of a leader dying is reasonably high and he sees himself at the face of the movement if that’s to be the case

the death of his father left him the head on the family and met with challenges that weren’t previously his problem, e.g. his timebomb brother which put a strain on the relationship in recent years

in the past year, he finally made his way up to senior undersecretary to the minister - only one step away from his ambition - which left him in a perfect position to cover up for his fellow death eaters and push an age

with all the added pressure and responsibilities, rod is finally beginning to crack and that’s shown mostly in moments of bloodlust

ANYWAY, thank you for coming to my very long and very delayed ted talk

character inspo: tommy shelby (peaky blinders), elijah mikaelson (tvd/to), tywin lannister (got), frank underwood (hoc), negan (twd), magneto (marvel)

character tropes: villian with good publicity, the chessmaster, aloof big brother, ‘blackmail’ is such an ugly word, cultured badass, noble male, roguish male (with rabastan), tall, dark and handsome, even evil has standards, faux affably evil

character aesthetics: black leather shoes, strong handshakes, whiskey tumblers, paperwork, reading glasses, forced smiles, uncomfortable silences, steely blue eyes, political speeches, daily prophet appearances, cold laughter, chess pieces, bloody hands, muttered incantations, rolling eyes, expensive suits

#yb:intro #this is so late i am so SORRY #i am overworked and underpaid #i will finally do things now

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thesearebobsthoughts · 4 years

Text

May 31, 2020

It’s 11:14 am, and the steady thrum of helicopter rotors is the near-constant soundtrack in my tony Brooklyn Heights nabe. One possible reason for the lack of ambient noise: An estimated 40 percent of my neighbors have fled to higher, safer ground since this all began nearly three months ago.

Over 100,000 people have died from novel coronavirus. 40 million people, including me, are out of a job. And all across the country, people are protesting the killing of an unarmed black man by the police, only to be met with an overwhelming, indiscriminate response from the police. Elected officials can’t or won’t state the obvious truth, and instead are singing from a hymnal that’s been dated since the 60s. Namely, that these acts of civil disobedience and the howling rage have nothing to do with the honest, upstanding citizenry. No, nefarious “outside agitators” are not secretly plotting to rile up the normally-docile locals. It’s bullshit.

Sure, the far-right is jonesing for a race war and the anti-fascists’s hands aren’t exactly spotless, either. But the idea that a good-sized chunk of the population doesn’t crave justice and isn’t roiling with anger is deluded at best. For the last four decades, America has greedily sponsored state-sanctioned violence to defendi profit and capital at all costs. Anything resembling a public sphere has been sold off to the highest bidder and protest itself has been villified. The neoliberal agenda has shredded the social safety net, and, more importantly, the idea that government exists in any substantial way to make the our lives slightly less of a grinding, punishing slog, has been turned into a bleak joke. Of course the result is a failed state, or as Orwell predicted, “a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

Speaking of predictions, here’s Hamilton Nolan in 2018:

These people, who are pushing America merrily down the road to fascism and white nationalism, are delusional if they do not think that the backlash is going to get much worse. Wait until the recession comes. Wait until Trump starts a war. Wait until the racism this administration is stoking begins to explode into violence more frequently. Read a fucking history book. Read a recent history book. The U.S. had thousands of domestic bombings per year in the early 1970s. This is what happens when citizens decide en masse that their political system is corrupt, racist, and unresponsive. The people out of power have only just begun to flex their dissatisfaction. The day will come, sooner that you all think, when Trump administration officials will look back fondly on the time when all they had to worry about was getting hollered at at a Mexican restaurant.

But there is one public utility that hasn’t been defunded and/or ignored to the point of atrophy: the cops, who have been armed to the teeth and unleashed whenever the working class and/or brown people dare to suggest they won’t put up with this nonsense any more. Naturally, that selfsame militarized and unchecked police force is mewling that they’re the one’s who’ve been victimized, actually.

New York City’s feckless mayor, despite being loathed by the cops with the fire of a thousand suns, has dedicated the last 24 hours to spit-polishing their (jack)boots and squealing “Antifa!” Apparently, in addition to being incompetent and wildly corrupt, de Blasio has developed some kind of humiliation kink. All of this reinforces exactly why these protests are so necessary and justified to begin with. And yes, I am terrified that over the next few weeks these communities will be hit with a serious uptick in COVID-19 cases.

I can’t find anything—any words, any noble aspirations or best-laid plans—that might stem the constant, rolling horror and my utter dread that far worse is still to come. Especially when I’m sifting through an absolute deluge of misinformation online.

So, then, amidst the plague and the brutalism and the horror, here are some images and videos from the last few days. Memorializing them, remembering how lost and utterly futile it seems, may not amount to much, and it won’t change a goddamn thing for the bloodied bodies in the street.

(There are links to videos below. You can watch them by clicking on the word “[source]” in a bold font, but they depict graphic acts of violence and therefore I’m not going to directly embed them in this post.)

I feel helpless in the face of this much trauma. So I’m going to stop talking now.

[source]

[source}

[source]

[A tweeted thread which includes many of the vldeos posted above, but seeing them all one after another after a fucking another is its own special kind of awful.]

Finally, because I, for one, needed a mental breath mint, behold: a new frontier in the art of Avant-Garde Standing.

UPDATE [12:39 pm]: Like many of the president’s tweets, he can’t legally do this. (Probably.) He smashed a few buttons on his phone to make himself feel better and throw a slab of red meat at his meathead, racist base. As with [gestures at everything] the consequences, though, will be no less real.

UPDATE [June 1, 12:02 pm]: a few more videos from Sunday and today of wanton police brutality, and direct or implicit state-sanctioned violence.

[source]

UPDATE [July 1, 7:19 pm]: In order to carve out a walkway and snag this photo op, the president ordered the cops and his praetorian guard to tear gas and club peaceful protesters. That’s fascism.

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septembersung · 7 years

Text

A good friend of mine has a graduate degree in art; she’s also a writer. As an MFA (creative writing), I have an appreciation for that complementary formation and we find lots to talk about artistically across mediums. But despite our complementary talents and education, as well as certain ethical similarities, we do not share a common religious conviction. That’s made it difficult to get at what I really want to say when certain subjects come up, notably, the amorality of contemporary art. I almost always write to work out not just what I think, but how and why I think it; ideally after committing this to blog form I’ll be able to explain myself better in conversation...

Under the cut because this became a rambling monster of a post. I’m not great at synthesizing and presenting what, for me, is a cohesive world-view, in clear syllogisms. Practice makes perfect, right? Anyway: the “amorality” of much contemporary art:

The phenomenon of amoral (and therefore, immoral) art I would also call “the ugliness of contemporary art” and “the unartisticness of contemporary art.” These phrases are related but not synonyms; they describe different facets of the same problem.

The most recent example of this unartistic-art subject that came up in our conversation was the widely debated Game of Thrones, as books and a show. I eventually recommended to her, and do the same to anyone reading this, an article called “A song of gore and slaughter.” It is a fantastic breakdown of the underlying problem of which ASOIAF/GoT is just one example, and situates it within the genre as a whole. The author’s essential thesis is that violence, gore, and all manner of immorality - what he sums up as “splatterporn” - have become the center of the genre, and moved way, way beyond shock tactics to prove a point (a debatable tactic on its own, whatever Chuck Palahnuick says,) but are rather lauded as goods in themselves. In short: GoT and similar works are pornography, in the broad sense that encompasses far more than sex. The article examines praise for one such “splatterporn” series and responds,

“Stomach-churning, it happens, is a good physiological description of what I referred to above as ‘objective disgust’. Being revolted until you puke, you see, is good for you now: it is something that you ought to want from a book, and if you don’t, you need to be ‘dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century’ yourself. The horrors of the 20th were not enough; Hiroshima and the Holocaust are, like, so five minutes ago. We shall outdo them all, and you shall like it. That is the gospel according to the up-to-date critic.”

I agree wholeheartedly with the author’s general thesis, and will not reproduce the argument here - really, you should read the whole thing - instead, taking it as a given, what I want to explore on my own terms comes in a paragraph of the author’s towards his conclusion:

The touchstone of Elfland — the most characteristic characteristic of fantasy — is the eversion of symbolism. The One Ring is not merely a symbol of power; it is power. Excalibur is not merely a symbol of kingship; it confers kingship. In these terms, we can say that the recent novels of Martin and Abercrombie (among lamentably numerous others) not only symbolize but are the walls around a concentration camp in Faërie. This is the camp of ‘edginess’, where the gaolers are grimly determined that no memory of sun or moon, tree or flower, stone or sea, goodness, truth, or beauty, shall remain to the inmates, but only the unending, ever-increasing, bloodshot craving for the pleasures of torture and the pornography of pain, suitably euphemized as ‘moral ambiguity’.

The striking thing about the “eversion of symbolism” is that, in less explicit forms, it turns up in all kinds of genres; perhaps because it has - and I am speaking here as a Catholic - a true, real world, counterpart: sacramentality. (For a fascinating, and non-religious, examination of this concept, see Robert Bly’s The Sibling Society.) And that article even names explicitly the trifecta which contemporary art has anathematized: truth, beauty, and goodness. You can’t have one of those three without the others, and they in turn depend, in art as in the life it imitates, on sacramentality.

To understand my point we need to be on the same page regarding what sacramentality actually is, so we begin with Catholic sacramental theology:

A sacrament is an efficacious sign of grace: it actually is and actually gives what it symbolizes. Bread and wine do not “just” symbolize the body and blood of Christ; at His word (”This is my body; this is my blood”), the bread and wine become, truly and substantially, objectively in reality and not subjectively in the mind or body of the communicant, His body and blood. Baptism does not just “represent” spiritual cleansing or “joining the church”; by the power of God given to His priests (e.g. Mt 28:18-20) baptism removes the stain of original sin (and the personal sins of someone above the age of reason) and truly brings that person into the Church, the New Covenant, into a state of grace. Holy orders is not some kind of graduation ceremony, it does not symbolically “set apart” a man as a leader because he’s studied theology. Holy orders truly makes an indelible (unerasable, permanent) mark in the man’s soul, conferring - kind of like Excalibur confers kingship on Arthur - the threefold reality of Christ on him: priest, prophet, king. He is truly “another Christ” (alter Christus), not merely “like” Christ. All of the seven sacraments can be summed up this way: their materials symbolize what their essence is and confers: grace, that is, the life of God.

Sacraments have both matter and form. What the form and matter are vary from sacrament to sacrament. The Eucharist is a clear example of this principle: the matter is unleavened wheat bread and grape wine, and the form is the words that confect the sacrament, in this case “This is my body,” etc.

Sacramentality forms the weft of the nature of reality in four ways:

1) Sacramentality is the consequence of Creation in general and the Incarnation specifically.

We have to unpack this a bit in order for its full significance to become clear in the following paragraphs. Creation means more than just “all this stuff we see around us,” and even more than the flat statement, so apparently unremarkable in our day, “God created the universe.” To put it extremely briefly, Creation is the order of reality, of all that has been made. The Triune God, who exists outside of all things and is complete unto Himself, created all things out of nothing as act of love, and those things are ordered with particular natures and to particular ends. (For an incredible and readable short introduction to the theology of creation, you can’t do better than Pope Benedict XVI’s little book In the Beginning.) Creation in a broad sense is incarnation: literally en-fleshing the thoughts, will, and love of God. The Incarnation is the highest manifestation of this en-fleshing, the “first sacrament” in a sense: God Himself became an enfleshed being, a physical, material person. That which is bigger than all of creation, outside it and above it, became joined to creation, went down into it, and assumed the nature of the created being, a human person. The Incarnation, which began with Mary’s “fiat” at the Annunciation at Nazareth when Jesus was conceived, enervated creation: that which was big and outside, without losing its bigness and outsideness, became inside and little.

In short, physical, material, created things convey God to us.

2) Reality expresses its sacramental nature the seven sacraments proper, as discussed above, administered through the Church, as the active and physical workings of Christ - that is, grace - in the world. The sacraments are the direct consequence of the Incarnation: they are the continued presence of Christ on earth, the fountainhead of all truth, goodness, and beauty in the world. When speak of the sacraments, we are speaking of the Divine Person of Christ.

3) Reality is “sacramental,” in the technical or theological sense, which means a holy object, blessed by a priest, which has no objective power on its own but has a subjective beneficial power. Sacramentals proper include things like holy water, rosaries, crucifixes, and holy/miraculous medals. Sacramentals do not objectively confer grace in the way that the sacraments do because their efficacy is related to the personal devotion and belief of the person using them. For example: an infant, who is incapable of understanding baptism, nonetheless receives the indelible mark of Christ in his soul, is sanctified and made a member of the Church, because baptism is an act of God, whereas the spiritual benefits of using blessed objects, like a rosary, depends on the disposition (in a state of grace or not) and intentions of the person using them.

4) Reality is sacramental because is it is full of sacramentals in the analogous sense: material, physical things and actions both describe an effect and help to cause that effect in those who participate in the thing or the action. This aspect of sacramentality exists because of and depends upon the sacramental reality, Christ.

Sacramentality in this fourth sense - as a created thing which describes an effect ands helps to cause that effect in those who participate in it- is, as you may have seen coming, a beautiful broad definition of art. Art itself is (a) sacramental, in this fourth sense of the word. Art only “works,” only has the effect on us that it does, because reality is sacramental: created objects have meaning, in a meaningful universe, and the form that they take is, and is the means of, their communication of that meaning to us; and at root what they communicate is the trifecta at the heart of all that humans aspire to: truth, beauty, and goodness.

Thus could J.R.R. Tolkien, a devout Catholic, described the work of artists (including writers) as a “sub-creation.” We participate in the creative, incarnational work of God when we make art. Truth, beauty, and goodness are both our subject and our goal, our content and the form of our content.

Thus the creative, incarnational work has the three primary characteristics that describe God himself: it is True, Good, and Beautiful. Art is most successful, most fully itself, when it understands and works with its nature.

(If your immediate objection here is, “but ugliness and darkness are important/valid/necessary/have a place!” I don’t necessarily disagree with you - but hold off, because that is not the point of, and not in contradiction of, what I’m getting at here.)

But human beings what we are, we often fail to understand the nature of things, and to actively act against our nature.

If art is not simply “whatever we make,” or “whatever I want it to be”; if it has shape; purpose; character of its own; then we must see what passes for much of contemporary art in a whole new light. Where contemporary art is amoral, immoral, ugly, and unartistic, it is so because it is unsacramental, indeed, it is anti-sacramental. Another word for this anti-sacramentality is iconoclastic.

And yet it cannot escape its own nature.

With that said, let’s back up to the importance of the Incarnation within the expressed theology of Creation:

As the Father showed his people throughout the Old Testament his presence through physical signs, e.g. leading them through the wildnerness as a pillar of smoke and a column of fire, or settling His presence as a cloud on the tent of the tabernacle, and later, the Temple (which, it should be noted, is fulfilled in the New Covenant with the perpetual physical presence of Christ in the tabernacle in the Blessed Sacrament), just so God makes His presence known and effects his will through matter. Most importantly, this began with Jesus, God-made-flesh. The Incarnation is the fulfillment of God’s promises in the Old Testament; it utterly changed the world.

Then, Jesus Christ, God incarnate, revealed his divinity, his presence, and bestowed his grace, through physical works: The touch of his hand brings the dead back to life; a brush of his garment heals the sick; he gives sight to the blind through the medium of mud and spit; he gives us his divine person as the final, actually efficacious, sacrifice, under the appearances of bread and wine.

As the grace of new Covenant and the breaking down of the old walls between Jew and Gentile made all foods lawful and “clean,” so Jesus appearing as the image of the Father, a face to know and love and caress, turned the old prohibition against “graven images” - idols - inside out. Now the danger of idolatry from made things had passed because the Father had given the true, living image of himself, the Son, Jesus, to us to see and to imitate.

The history of Western art (and to some extent Eastern) from the Resurrection up until the eve of the Reformation is the history of Christendom exploring what that means. It is often said that the Gothic architecture of the middle ages fulfilled the word that the “very stones would cry out” in praise of God.

Christians began creating art, particularly sacred images, even while they were still persecuted; the catacombs are filled with such art. In time, as the Church became, first just legal, and eventually the foundation of society, building Christendom - Catholic culture in nations avowedly Catholic - the developing skill of artists gave us what we see now as the history of art: not just methods and skills, but subjects, purposes. All was for the glory of God. What is true? What is good? What is beautiful? How can we express it? The history of the development of art in Western civilization is the long playing out of the logical consequences of the faith of the Incarnation.

As the spirit of God was given form in the divine person, the man Jesus Christ, so his truth, goodness, and beauty, and that of all the faith which flows from him, Revelation and its logical inferences, overflows into the creations of his followers, for teaching, praising, worshipping, and evangelizing. This art achieved its glory at the height of Christendom: in no small part, it built the great civilization from which our own culture springs.

And then it all started to go wrong.

Henri Daniel-Rops gives a great overview of how the secularization of art began, as one of the roots of and/or entwined with the roots of the Protestant Reformation, in his book The Protestant Reformation. What fascinates me, personally, is that the subjectivization of religion led directly to one of the most violent periods of iconoclasm in history, the Protestant image-breaking, which was practiced across denominations. The reasons behind it went far beyond the oft-cited “idolatry” to cut at the very foundation of the Catholic faith: they rejected sacramentality as such. (Yes, some Reformers and their descendants kept some of the language of the sacraments or quibbled over the number, but even they - and of course this is a generalization as they all disagreed with each other - put forth their interpretations as a direct counter to the Catholic understanding of reality and what “sacraments” and “sacramentality” mean.) Denying the sacramentality of reality ends up with denying the Incarnation, and without the Incarnation, there is no Christianity. Without Christianity, there is no art. We are still living with the descendants of those ideas and their consequences. This post is already a novel so I won’t trace that out in detail; another post for another day. But to paraphrase Hilaire Belloc, the revolt against the Catholic faith begins with “just” the Church, but ends in a revolt against reason, human nature, and reality. We are left without form or matter.

While I do not endorse this vlogger in general or his other videos, I offer this short video as an example of the general problems I’m talking about with contemporary art: Modern Art Insults Me. If you want a sense of what I’m talking about beyond “splatterporn,” that’s the video to watch.

Art that is produced by people and a culture that has utterly rejected not just the Catholic Church, but the rational foundations on which the Faith is built, including the sacramental nature of reality - in all senses of the word - is art that is trying to escape its own nature. Art is trying “to art” by being not-art. It’s still a creation, yes, in that it literally has been made, but it denies its nature and purpose; it has nothing to say about, or actively rejects, truth, beauty, and goodness. In many cases it rejects form (as a poet, and a defender of vers libre, I could go into detail - but in another post) and rather than glorifying matter, instead degrades it. I would go so far as to say what most accept as contemporary art is no such thing, but anti-art - a phenomenon more commonly known by another name: iconoclasm.

Iconoclasm is the opposite of art. Definitions vary; it’s most commonly used to describe the destruction of art and/or the philosophy of people who believe destroying art to be a good thing. Art - that is, a given creative effort - that tries to become destruction in itself, that tries to operate outside of and/or actively rejects the trifecta of truth, goodness, and beauty, is iconoclastic.

In place of real art, we see two primary phenomena today: 1) Self-expression, and 2) Politics.

Don’t misunderstand me: genuine art can be and incorporate self-expression, and genuine art can, and in some cases should, engage with politics.

But what we’re seeing across the majority of mediums today practiced as art is not art, but acts of iconoclasm: acts of deliberate unbeauty, untruth, ungoodness - ugliness, falsehood, evil. The concept of revolution has been enshrined as the only “form” which art may genuinely take; and it proves to be no form at all. “Gritty realism” is the banner cry, because this vision of the world and humanity is one that is without an overarching purpose, a fundamental nature that cannot be violated, without the moral compass of a rational, created, universe. Rather than a cohesive, crafted, universe built out of and predicated on communicative love - gift and grace! -we see cruelty, purposelessness, isolation, and fragmentation as the standard; and not only described, but celebrated. In just a few brief years - speaking from the perspective of history - we’ve gone from the glory of “The Waste Land” to “If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do” (Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel.) The “splatterporn” of ASOIAF/GoT is just one popular pernicious example. The sorts of things created in many art programs also qualify; as my friend described what she and her colleagues were creating at one point, “lumpy,” “ugly,” “blobs” of “stuff.”

I have to wrap this up somehow before it becomes a book. (Give me a few more years; there’s easily a dozen books in this topic.) I’ve made a lot of claims and raised a lot of questions. To pick just two: The “but shock value is so important!” argument isn’t easily laid to rest, even though as noted above, and in that first linked article, it’s actually a separate discussion and far from a certain truth. “But does ugliness and darkness have a place in art?” is the next logical question. The answer is that it does, but again, that’s actually a separate issue from the actual question being considered here, which is: “what is art in its nature and what is its purpose?” My answer is, art is sacramental in nature (and therefore intimately tied to the Catholic faith) and its purpose is to portray and effect truth, beauty, and goodness. Not a novel thesis, certainly, but one that needs a great deal more hearing in a world where the monstrosities that is ASOIAF/GoT is proclaimed “great,” “good,” and - most bitter of ironies - “realistic,” where the actual nature of ourselves and the universe we inhabit is utterly denied - and not only denied, but reviled.

Further reading:

For a fascinating look at “post-iconoclastic icons,” and the paradox - I would say contradiction - of the Incarnation, the natural and indeed essential art of the Christian faith in the Protestant world founded in large part on the breaking of images, Joseph Koerner’s The Reformation of the Image is a great look at the topic from within Lutheranism.

Minimalism Gets It Wrong - don’t be fooled by the title; this article gets at the heart of what I’m trying to say.

And finally, go get yourself a copy of the incredible little book Only the Lover Sings by Josef Pieper. The relationship between feast - celebration - and art, and the perequisites of art - love and gratitude - feature prominently. He writes:

[I]f the disposition of acceptance and love is absent, not only can there be no feast, but no song either! C'est l'amour qui chante, love alone knows how to sing.

Also: I’ve written about these issues before in tags like art and catholicism and theological aesthetics.

#art and catholicism #500 reasons and counting #my catholic thoughts #theological aesthetics #i mean not exactly but that's the tag #Yeah so this is a mess but that's the glory of blogging #Air out that mess and give it a good hearing!

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out-of-jams · 4 years

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Howl’s Moving Castle || Teaser || kth

↠ Howl’s Moving Castle ↞ Part of my Ghibli Yandere Series!

It was an accident: offending the witch. But she didn’t take it lightly, cursing you to age into an old hag overnight. With no way to reverse the spell, you took it upon yourself to hunt down the only person who may have been able to help. But the self-absorbed wizard who lived hidden away in the moving castle wouldn’t be so easy to convince.

Especially when it came to letting you go.

✐ Pairing: Kim Taehyung/Reader

✐ Warnings/Genre: Horror. Soft Yandere!Taehyung. Howl!Taehyung. Dark themes. Kidnapping. Obsessive behavior. Death of minor characters. Magic. Manipulation. Mature themes. Unhealthy relationships. Light violence. Smut. Some fluff. Explicit language. 18+

Comment below if you’d like to be tagged upon release!

In, through. Pull. Around.

“Is that Taehyung’s castle?”

The excitable titering of women’s voices brought you out of your trance-like state and left you blinking down at the half-sewn brown hat in your hands.

“It can’t be.”

But never close enough to get a glimpse of the wizard who was rumored to dwell within it. So evil and so powerful that no one dared to go near.

For adventure.

“I heard that the last man who saw Taehyung’s face disappeared. Vanished right into thin air.”

You shook your head to snap yourself out of your thoughts and went back to work.

In, through. Pull. Around.

In, through. Pull. Aro--

“I heard that he looks like a monster.”

“A monster? Don’t be ridiculous, Lotty. I heard that he’s quite handsome and likes to go into towns to seduce women to take as his own. Then he kills them afterwards.”

“Hey, watch it!” A sharp elbow found its way into your side. And you stumbled back, a grunt falling from your throat as a short, middle aged man shoved past you with a glare.

Because wherever the military went, death was soon to follow after.

“Well, well. What do we have here?”

You didn’t stop when the deep growl hit your eardrums. Kept walking in hopes that whoever had tried to talk to you would take the hint and leave you alone.

“Hey!” A rough hand grabbed at the bag hanging from your shoulder and pulled you backwards. And you tripped over your own feet in an attempt to stay upright. “I’m talking to you!”

“You lost, little mouse?” His lips, chapped and thin, pulled up into a smirk that spelled nothing but trouble. The navy blue military blazer on his back didn’t bring you relief. Quite the opposite really. Especially when the backdoor to a pub hanging open behind him spilled out another man that came stumbling to his side.

Caged you in like an animal.

“Let go.” Your jaw clenched as you attempted to pull away from the hand that held onto your bag like a leash.

“I’m not interested. Let me pass, please.” You hoped that they weren’t able to hear how loud your heart was beating.

The second man took a few steps closer towards you. “Aw, don’t be like that sweeth--”

“Are you deaf?” That voice didn’t come from either of the men in front of you. It brushed through your ears with its rich baritone and had you straightening where you stood, tense muscles unconsciously relaxing. Especially when an arm around itself around your shoulders to settle with a comforting weight, bringing with it warmth that heated your skin. “Or are you just stupid?”

And felt a tiny gasp escape your lips.

#bangtanarmynet #bts fic #taehyung #taehyung fic #yandere taehyung #yandere bts #bts

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anthonypaulh · 5 years

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JOY and PAIN - The Troubled Life and Tragic Death of Marvin Gaye

The song “Joy and Pain” forms the perfect epitaph for Marvin Gaye. Ultimately, the hugely troubled, flawed, sensitive soul lived his all too short life, somewhere between the extremes of the classic Frankie Beverley and Maze soul anthem.

It is often said that fact is stranger than fiction, that with some events you apparently couldn’t make it up. Well, in the traumatic life of the silkiest of soul singers that is absolutely accurate. A complicated, sensitive, and passionate man, Marvin Gaye lived his life overshadowed by his violent father.

The difficult, violent, explosive relationship with his father underpinned everything that followed in the life of Marvin Gaye. Ultimately, and tragically it would end in father shooting son after their final yet fatal bitter argument on April 1st 1984.

The contradictions of Marvin Gaye’s life started on April 2nd 1939 when he was born in Washington DC as Marvin Pentz Gay. He later added an E to his name , in the early 1960’s to ward off teasing about being Gay and also to distance himself from his father’s surname.

His father Marvin Gay was a Reverend in a Hebrew Pentecostal church called the House of God. He imparted a very strict upbringing on Marvin junior and his 3 siblings. He was a brutal man, frequently inflicting physical violence on his children and subjecting his wife to regular beatings. Marvin junior attracted the worst of his father’s violence as he took it upon himself to protect his mother Alberta from the worst his father could do.

Needless to say, this very violent family upbringing, left Marvin Junior scarred for life. He forever craved the love of his father who could never give him that. Despite all of his career achievements and the recognition he earned he never achieved the thing that he needed the most, his father’s love.

Nowadays we all recognise that trauma experienced by any child in their formative years is always going to lead to a troubled adulthood and in fact it is a key factor in addictive behaviour of all sorts. Hardly any wonder then that Marvin would become drug dependent and a manic depressive despite all of his fame.

It was therefore, no surprise that Marvin wanted to escape from his family as soon as possible. His first attempt to break free was in 1956 when aged 17 he enlisted in the US Air Force. But even then, the contradictions that ran through his life surfaced as he faked mental illness to extricate himself from the disciplined air force environment he hated.

He returned to Washington DC and formed a vocal quartet called The Marquees. But after one failed single they were dropped from their recording contract with Okey records a subsidiary of Columbia.

One of the few things that Marvin had seen as a positive from his father was the delivery style of his sermon’s in church. Marvin regularly attended and sang at the services from the tender age of 4. He drew on his father’s preaching style as he developed his own stagecraft and he readily acknowledged that it was something that played a key role in his vocal delivery.

As a singer the young Marvin was influenced by Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles and Billy Eckstine. But success didn’t come quickly. After the initial failure of The Marquees, he continued working in Washington DC on the club circuit and started writing his own songs.

Eventually the impresario Harvey Fuqua spotted Marvin and took him under his wing. Harvey would become the father figure that Marvin had always sought and he would shape the rest of his life and career in so many ways.

As it happens Harvey was a very good judge of talent. He had already discovered the likes of Johnny Bristol, Lamont Dozier, Junior Walker and The Spinners. Just as importantly for Marvin, his new mentor was to introduce him to the woman that would he would marry and that in itself would effectively catapult him to International fame.

In 1959 Harvey Fuqua and his group The Moonglows moved to Chicago where they recorded a few unsuccessful tracks for Chess Records. But with little sign of success the group split up and in 1960 Harvey and Marvin moved to Detroit. It would be the most important move of their lives. Hittsville USA was about to become the Sound of Young America and they would be vital cogs in that machine.

On arrival in Detroit, Marvin became a session musician, a drummer. However, his fate was about to be signed, sealed and delivered when he was invited to the home of Berry Gordy over the Holiday Season of 1960.

Harvey Fuqua had married Gwen Gordy the sister of Berry and he distributed the first record that would become a MOTOWN hit. The record was Barrett Strong’s “Money (That’s What I Want ) and it was released on Anna Records, owned by Harvey and Gwen. Their label was later sold to Berry. Thereafter Harvey Fuqua became a song writer and executive at MOTOWN.

For Marvin, the introduction to Berry Gordy in 1960 would change his life and the history of soul music to boot. He married Anna Gordy, seventeen years his senior, in June 1963. The relationship was intense, passionate and fiery. But they were good for each other and Marvin realised that his marriage kept him close to the ear of Barry Gordy at the “Hit Factory”.

Nonetheless, Berry was always grudging in any praise of his brother in law. He recognised his talent and was especially keen to use Marvin as the leading male vocalist for MOTOWN. He saw Marvin as a cross between a matinee idol and a pop star.

Many studio workers and musicians at MOTOWN recall strenuous arguments between Marvin and Berry. They would often square up to each other in heated squabbles but Berry held the highest cards. Financially Berry called the tune and Marvin sang the songs that Berry wanted (at least to start with). What made things even worse for Marvin was that Berry owned the house that he and his wife Anna lived in. It seemed that Berry controlled his every move.

Undoubtedly, in the early part of his career, MOTOWN wanted Marvin to sing simple, pop songs. Berry Gordy wanted MOTOWN to sell records and not make political and social statements. He didn’t want to alienate the middle of the road, largely white, record buying public.

Berry Gordy did not want to present MOTOWN as in any way threatening. In many ways he was doing with MOTOWN what Brian Epstein did with The Beatles. Keep it clean, don’t threaten, dress sensibly and get the hits. He was selling pop, upbeat, happy music. Selling was his game and money was the driver. Berry Gordy was a ruthless businessman first, second and third.

The first hits Marvin had on MOTOWN reflected the “safe” music that the company ordered. So in 1962 “Stubborn Kind of Fellow” was typical of the type of material that the business demanded. It was absolutely not the music that Marvin dreamed of making but it was successful.

As success followed success Marvin worked with the genius in house MOTOWN production team, Holland-Dozier-Holland, and the hits kept coming. So “Can I Get A Witness”, You’re A Wonderful One” and “How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You “ hit the charts.

Firmly established as MOTOWN’s leading man, Marvin was pushed by Berry to record a series of duets with the leading ladies on the label. Against his wishes, Marvin agreed and although he didn’t really want to cooperate the recordings produced some great moments.

Firstly he recorded with Mary Wells “What’s The Matter With You Baby ?”, then with Kim Weston “It Takes Two”, and most successfully with Tammi Terrell “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing”, and “You’re All I Need To Get By”. Later Berry forced him to record with Diana Ross although they never actually recorded anything at the same time because they despised each other.

The Prince of MOTOWN he may well have been but privately Marvin Gaye was in torment. He was deeply hurt at having to play the tunes that Berry called, and he wanted to record his own more contentious, expansive music. He felt a fraud and in fact some of the duets released under his name with Tammi Terrell were exactly that because due to illness some of her vocals were actually performed by Valerie Simpson.

Following her collapse on stage in Virginia in October 1967, Tammi Terrell was never able to perform or record again so Valerie Simpson stood in her shoes. Marvin was spun the line that he should continue recording with Valerie impersonating Tammi as sales meant money which could pay medical bills for Tammi. Marvin reluctantly went along with it out of respect and love for Tammi. When Tammi died from a brain tumour on 1970 Marvin was broken. He spiralled into depression.

By the late 60’s the relationship between Marvin and Berry could be described as frosty, at best. Typical of the shenanigans was the saga that went on with the classic Norman Whitfield and Barratt Strong tune “ I Heard It Through The Grapevine”. It was recorded by Marvin in February 1967 but MOTOWN rejected it suggesting it be covered by Gladys Knight and The Pips.

Only when released as an album track on Marvin’s LP “In The Groove” in August 1968 did radio stations give it the airplay that demanded it be released as a single. His classic rendition reached number 1 on the pop and RnB charts in the US and became a world wide smash hit. A victory of sorts for Marvin but the next battle of wills with Berry and “the company” was not long in coming.

In May 1969, Obie Benson of the Four Tops started work on a song he intended be recorded by the “Tops’, called “What’s Going On ?”. It was rejected by the Four Tops because it was a protest song. But their loss was to be Marvin’s gain and it would result in arguably one of the most important MOTOWN albums.

Anna Gordy persuaded Marvin to try the song “What’s Going On ?” and it soon became clear that “What’s Going On ?” was perfect for him. From the very first run throughs it was his song, tailor made for him. But even though the studio singers, musicians and engineers were convinced he had to record and release the song, Berry Gordy was annoyed that Marvin was contemplating doing so.

As far as Berry Gordy was concerned, if the Four Tops believed the song to be inappropriate then it WAS inappropriate. It was a “protest” song and MOTOWN did not do anything that might rock any boats. Berry Gordy forbade Marvin to record the song. Effectively Marvin subsequently went on strike, refusing to record at all.

The stand off lasted almost a year, until in June 1970 permission was granted for the single “What’s Going On ?” to be recorded by Marvin for release at an undetermined time. When it was eventually released it was done so without the knowledge or sanction of Berry Gordy.

The strike period had actually given Marvin time to compose a series of songs he wanted to release on a concept album with “What’s Going On ?” as the title track. The contentious piece of work was to become one of the most important records ever made and certainly the most radical of anything put out by MOTOWN. Marvin openly challenged the existing social order on the album. He sang about civil rights, environmental abuse, intolerance and the record became a clarion call for anyone wanting to question the politics of the time. It was definitely NOT MOTOWN neither musically or lyrically.

As a political record, Berry Gordy did not want Marvin to continue with the album and he did not believe it would be a hit anyway. It was far too serious. MOTOWN was light hearted, fun pop. Marvin was talking about climate change before the scientists talked about it and he sang in a more jazz influenced style than RnB/pop that had proven successful for Hittsville USA.

The seminal Marvin Gaye album “What’s Going On ?” was released in May 1971, arguably the most important year in the history of MOTOWN. The album became the biggest selling album on MOTOWN to that point and remains a key piece of work. It fused social commentary, politics, jazz , funk and soul to endure well beyond its’ time. It is still one of the most important records ever made.

Following “What’s Going On ? “ was always going to be a huge challenge but throughout the 1970′s Marvin continued to experiment with jazz, gospel, blues, soul and even more with narcotics. He managed to balance spirituality, commerciality, and experimentation with hits such as “Let’s Get It On”, “Trouble Man”, “After The Dance” and “Got To Give It Up”. He eventually divorced Anna Gordy in 1978 after what can only be described as a pained, strained marriage.

The traumatic separation inspired him to record the album “Here My Dear” and it is probably the most bitter record you will ever listen to. Marvin was leaving no doubt that he was in a deep emotional hole. His drug use fuelled terrible and dangerous mood swings as he lurched from one instability to another seeking some kind of stability and solace.

A short lived second marriage to Janis Hunter lasted only until 1979 with divorce finalised in 1981. Marvin found himself bankrupt financially and emotionally and he attempted to take his own life.

In 1982 with the aid of old friend and mentor Harvey Fuqua, Marvin made something of a comeback. Exiled to Britain then Belgium it was here that he released the single “Sexual Healing” on Columbia Records. The track was taken from the album “Midnight Love” which certainly had some more than decent high moments. As usual for Marvin, he fused a number of different musical influences from reggae, RnB, soul, funk and synthopop.

The success of the 1982 “comeback” allowed Marvin to clear 2 million dollars in back taxes to the US authorities. Sadly off stage, Marvin could never fend off his personal demons. All that damage that he had been caused as a child, all that trauma, all that baggage. Stage fright, paranoia, drug use and ongoing depression eventually confined the “Prince of Motown” to his Los Angeles home. It was a home that he would lose his life in.

As if somehow predestined Marvin Gaye was shot dead by his father on April 1st 1984. Yes indeed, April fools day. You couldn’t make it up could you ? In a violent argument and fight between his mother and father, Marvin tried to intervene and sadly the whole situation escalated quickly into the final, fatal act of the ultimate tragedy.

The Reverend Marvin Gay was charged with first degree murder but eventually the charge was reduced to manslaughter following the diagnosis of a brain tumour. He was sentenced to a six year suspended sentence and probation. He died in 1998 in a nursing home.

In the final analysis, Marvin Gaye will always be remembered as one of the most important voices ever to be recorded. In the pantheon of male vocal greats, he is right up there in the top echelons. He is in the same company as Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Wilson Picket, Otis Redding, Donny Hathaway, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, and now Gregory Porter.

His work remains as relevant today as it was when it was recorded. The sentiment and messages delivered on the “What’s Going On ?” album were years ahead of their time and are probably more important today than ever. Marvin Gaye has often been imitated but never bettered.

Nothing in his successful music career however, could compensate him for the love and recognition he craved from his father. His whole life was a battle to achieve the acknowledgement and attachment his father didn't provide.

In life Marvin Gaye was a restless, troubled, tragic soul. He leaves an incredible body of work and a wonderful musical legacy. Rest in peace Marvin, you will never be forgotten

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southsidestory · 7 years

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For the Love of a Wild Thing: Chapter 3

Chapters: 1 | 2

Rating: Mature

Ship: Rey / Kylo Ren

Summary: For a moment—just a moment—Rey allows herself to imagine a world outside of Jakku. A far away place, green and beautiful, where she could be free.

Warnings: This story includes depictions of child abuse.

Although there is not any non-con in this fic, Rey spends a good part of this chapter worrying that she and Kylo will be forced to have sex. I just want to give a heads up, in case anyone might find that triggering.

CHAPTER 3: Darkness

Rey stands in a humid transparisteel stall, enjoying the spray of hot water. It’s her first shower in a proper ‘fresher, and she takes her time scrubbing the sand of Jakku from her body. Dispensers on the wall give her the option of a half-dozen skin and hair cleansers, an indulgence she could never have imagined before today. Rey tries to distract herself with the funny-smelling soaps and shampoos, but her thoughts keep circling back to the Supreme Leader’s orders.

Kylo Ren will be coming to her bed tonight. She’s expected to open her legs to a complete stranger, a man whose face she hasn’t even seen. To make a child with him. She hadn’t been afraid to leave home, to give up the dreadful life and difficult family she knew, but this—this frightens her.

Now it’s too late to turn back. She’s trapped in a foreign place ruled by dangerous men, and she has no choice but to endure Snoke’s commands if she wants to live.

Rey turns off the water, steps out of the ‘fresher, and dries herself with a fluffy towel. Some industrious service droid gathered her dirty clothes while she showered and left a white slip in their place. She pulls it over her head and shivers at the sensation of some impossibly fine fabric against her skin. The slip is thin, silken, indecently short. Whoever chose this sad excuse for a nightgown neglected to give her any new underwear—not that she’ll need them for what happens next.

She hurries back to the bedroom and crawls beneath the thick blankets, desperate to cover herself. The mattress is far softer than the pallet she’s always shared with Lari and Perra, and even if she wasn’t waiting on Kylo Ren, Rey wouldn’t have been able to sleep on it. She scoots to the very edge of the bed and hugs a plush pillow to her chest, craving closeness in this empty bed, yet dreading the moment she has to share it.

Being compelled to fuck, when he wants it no more than she does, is the worst sort of violence against both of them. Rey doesn’t hate Kylo for this—that she reserves for Snoke alone—but she can’t help but worry about how this night will go. Will he be gentle or rough? Kind or cruel?

She waits and waits, until she wonders whether he’s coming at all. Rey turns off the lights and burrows beneath the blankets, settling into the warmth of this too-soft bed, but she can’t sleep, can’t dispel the nervous knot twisting in her stomach—

The door to her suite opens, and Rey hears heavy footfalls in the sitting room. He stumbles all the way to the bedroom, stomping with none of his even, purposeful grace from before. Then Kylo just stands there, lurking beside her bed like some great beast in the darkness.

There’s a quiet hiss, followed by the clunk of his helmet hitting the durasteel floor, metal on metal. The whisper of rustling clothes and the twin thumps of boots being discarded. Rey flinches when she feels the mattress dip beneath his weight. She can feel the heat of his broad body drawing close, can smell the sharp stink of alcohol all over him.

“Are you drunk?” Rey asks.

“A little,” he says, and she almost jumps at the sound of his naked voice. Unencumbered by the mechanics of that death’s-head mask, but slurred from drinking.

“You reek,” Rey says, and she doesn’t even care that she’s being mean. It’s awful enough that they have to do this without him coming to her bed smelling like a distillery. Part of her rudeness is borne from pure, petty spite, because if he’s allowed to dull the pain of carrying out his master’s commandment, then she should be permitted the same luxury.

“M’sorry,” Kylo mutters. He curls up against her back and nuzzles her shoulder. “I just—I don’t know how to do this.”

“You don’t know how to fuck?” Rey asks, incredulous.

She still hasn’t seen his face—nor any of him at all—but by Kylo’s demeanor and voice she knows he’s a grown man, not a boy.

“I know how it works,” he says shortly, and Rey shivers at the press of his feverish forehead against her shoulder, the damp warmth of his breath tickling her skin.

“But you’ve never done it?” she asks.

He’s silent for a long moment. Then Kylo murmurs, “No. You?”

Rey shakes her head, before she remembers that it’s pitch black and he can’t see her. “No, I haven’t.”

She’s never even been kissed. Potential lovers were few and far between on Jakku, and any boy brave enough to risk her father’s wrath was always more interested in Perra.

“This isn’t what I thought would happen. I dreamed about you, scavenging and starving and sleepless. Your island, I saw it, the green in the middle of all that blue,” Kylo says, babbling now, tripping over his words, speech as ungainly as his drink-clumsy body.

That island was her most precious dream, a silly, private indulgence meant only for her, and Rey hates that she had to share it with this stranger.

“I wanted to take you far away from that place, away from your father, to show you the Force. To be your teacher, not—not this. I didn’t think this would be asked of me.” His words fall against the nape of her neck now, muted confessions that warm her skin.

Something in her is excited by his proximity, his heat, the simple novelty of being so close to a man for the first time. But her interest is overshadowed by fear that his subtle touches will give way to brutal handling, whether or not either of them wants it.

“And—” Kylo murmurs the last of it like the most shameful of secrets: “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I don’t want to hurt you either,” Rey says. It seems absurd to admit—that she’s concerned she could harm this man who’s twice her size and steeped in the power of some mysterious Force.

Still, Kylo is only a man, just as she is only a girl—woman?—and they both deserve better than coercion.

Rey is working up the courage to say as much when he whispers, “I can’t do this.”

Kylo turns away from her, and she breathes out, trembling with a relief she couldn’t have imagined before tonight.

The bed is still too plush, and a strange man lies beside her, the threat of his strong body too real to ignore, but somehow she slips into sleep.

Rey wakes to a room brightened by sunlight, as if the dreamless night before had never happened, alone in an empty bed.

A stormtrooper reports to her quarters within the hour and says he’s been assigned to guard her while she’s among the First Order. Perfect, Rey thinks. A minder to report her comings and goings to the Supreme Leader. Just what I need.

“Come with me. I’m supposed to take you to the medcenter,” he says, and Rey hears something close to sympathy in his staticky voice.

She hurries after him and asks, “What’s your name?”

“FN-2187,” he says.

Rey would think he’s joking if not for his tone of voice—utterly serious and maybe a little ashamed.

“That’s a mouthful,” she says. “Got a nickname?”

She wishes she could see the stormtrooper’s face, because Rey can’t get a read on what he’s thinking when he says, “Sometimes my teammates call me Eighty-Seven.”

“Do you like that?” she asks.

He shrugs. “A number’s a number.”

“Right then. I’m Rey.” She stops, stalling traffic in the middle of a busy hallway, and holds out her hand—because this soldier is going to be watching her every move, and she might as well get on his good side.

FN-2187 shakes her hand, and they continue on to the medcenter. Aphelion Base is huge, industrial, and spotlessly clean, and everything looks the same to Rey. Identical corridors that twist and turn in so many directions that she has no idea how to get back to her quarters.

The medcenter is just as immaculate as the rest of the base, all cold steel and bright lights. FN-2187 waits outside while Rey sits in an exam room, wearing nothing but a long-sleeved medical gown. Somehow she feels naked and swallowed up at once, strangely exposed while she’s smothered in fabric.

Doctor Kezlin is a short, middle-aged woman with brown skin and a gentle smile. She tells Rey that she’s been ordered to give her an exam, to provide her with any medications and vaccinations she may need, and to begin fertility treatments.

“Oh,” Rey says.

Kezlin is kind and careful, but Rey is unnerved by the medical droids, who circle her like dispassionate vultures, scanning her and taking samples of her hair, her skin, her saliva. She doesn’t understand what any of this is for, or why they could possibly need to draw five vials of blood. The droids poke and prod and take pictures of her, and Rey hates it. Having her space invaded this way, being treated like she has no say over her own body.

Kezlin dismisses the droids, then says, “Sorry for the circus. I4 and QT-3 mean well, but they haven’t been programmed to exhibit the best bedside manner.”

Rey rubs at the crook of her elbow. A quick swipe of bacta erased the puncture there, but her skin still feels tender, oversensitive.

She thinks of all the injuries she suffered over the years. Burns, scrapes, welts, and bruises that took days to heal, sometimes weeks. So many hours of pointless pain that could have been foregone entirely if she’d had access to the right medicine.

“Why are you going to so much trouble for me?” she asks.

Unkar Plutt’s primitive painkillers were light-years behind the attention she’s receiving today, and they were still obscenely expensive. These tests must be costing the First Order a fortune.

Kezlin smiles, but she doesn’t look particularly happy when she says, “I’ve been told that your care is my highest priority now.”

Care, Rey thinks. That seems like the wrong word for all of this.

The physical exam is uncomfortable, and she feels vulnerable with her legs spread, her most private parts on display for a doctor she met twenty minutes ago. Rey stares at the wall, the flat expanse of colorless durasteel, and tries not to think about anything.

“Rey, do you need to take a break?” Kezlin asks.

“I’m fine,” she lies.

When it’s over, Kezlin leaves the room so that she can change back into her clothes. But the black uniform that she found in her quarters this morning doesn’t feel like hers, no more than the medical smock she had to wear.

Kezlin gives her a dozen different shots: vitamin boosters to combat malnutrition; bacta to clear up an infection in her lungs and kill the parasites in her intestines; all the common vaccinations that she missed, growing up in a backwards junkheap like Jakku; and the promised injections to bolster her fertility.

“These should help even out your cycle too,” says Kezlin.

Rey hasn’t had her monthly courses in almost a year. Too many mouths to feed, too few portions to go around. (And even when there was enough, her father often sent her to bed hungry anyway. Out of vindictive jealousy, or perhaps just plain meanness.)

Kezlin is logging notes into a computer, gaze focused on the screen before her, when she says, “Fertility treatments won’t do you much good if you’re not having intercourse.”

It’s a simple statement, delivered with bland disinterest, but Rey still stares at the floor, too embarrassed to risk looking at Kezlin. “How did you—could you tell just from examining me?”

“Yes,” she says, and now her voice has taken on a soft, almost motherly tone. “I’m not threatening you, dear, and I won’t tell anyone. But it’s not a secret you can keep for long, if at all.”

Rey understands what Kezlin is trying to say: her independence has been stripped down to nothing, and now the only choice she has left is to settle for the least of the evils around her. Last night was a brief reprieve, not a full pardon, and she can’t expect to escape Snoke’s orders forever.

After night falls and the lights are out, Kylo comes to her again.

He sounds steadier this time, as he takes off his mask and clothes, and when he climbs into bed, Rey only smells soap on his skin. She isn’t sure whether it brings any relief, or simply more fear, that he didn’t resort to drinking tonight.

Kylo lies beside her, still and quiet. His harsh, uneven breathing is the only sound in the hushed darkness of her room, and she can almost feel the anxiety radiating off of him. She thinks he might be as nervous as she is, and that would be comforting if Rey could meet his eyes and know it for sure. But like this, steeped in shadows, she can only see the rough online of a figure by her side. So indistinct that he could be a monster as easily as a man.

Rey waits, and trembles, and swears that she’ll fight him off if she has to. She wore her clothes to bed, so if he tries to strip her, that will buy her some time.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Kylo says. “I’m not going to touch you.”

Rey bites her knuckles, smothering the noise of her sobs. This is a method she developed by the age of eight, because whenever her father caught sight of her tears, he’d say, Dry it up before I give you something to cry about.

But she’s lost her family and freedom, even autonomy over her own body—and it’s so much, too much, more than she can handle. Maybe more than she can survive.

Rey cries herself out, until her nose is stuffy and the ache of grief throbs behind her swollen eyes. She’s thankful for the darkness, that Kylo can’t see what a mess she is. Bad enough that he heard it.

“You won’t touch me,” Rey says. “What about your master? Won’t he punish you when he finds out?”

She hears the rustle of sheets, feels the the bed shift as Kylo turns away from her. “He already knows. He summoned me this morning.”

“And?” she asks. “He didn’t order you to—”

Rey can’t make herself say it out loud. It doesn’t matter; he must remember Snoke’s commands as well as she does.

Kylo’s voice shakes when he says, “He thinks he doesn’t have to. That if I spend enough nights sleeping by your side, that I’ll lose my patience and make you—that I’ll—”

He stops, takes a deep breath, then goes on. “Snoke would rather I raped you of my own volition. He said that, if I cross that line, it might stamp out the worst of my weaknesses. The compassion I shouldn’t feel.”

“Is he right?” Rey asks, and it’s half a miracle, how calm she manages to sound with her heart caught in her throat. “Would you do it?”

“I don’t want to,” he says, with such certainty, such conviction, that it’s some consolation. “The idea of forcing you to—it repulses me.”

This isn’t quite the answer she was looking for, though. Kylo wears his conflicts like a second skin, and Rey understands, somehow, that he’s found plenty of his own deeds sickening. Disgust didn’t stop him from killing innocents, from torturing his enemies.

He must know precisely what she’s thinking, because Kylo says, “I won’t hurt you. I swear.”

Maybe it makes her a fool, but Rey believes him.

Author’s Notes: Thank you, @reylotrashcompactor and @xxlovendreamsxx for all your help with this chapter! You ladies are spectacular betas and even better friends. :)

I hate that it took so long to update this fic. I ended up completely restructuring the outline and taking this story in a totally different direction than I had planned, but I think the changes are definitely for the best. It will be a much looser retelling of East of the Sun and West of the Moon than I’d originally thought, but the spirit of that fairy tale colors it significantly nonetheless.

If you’re still reading, thank you for sticking around! There’ll be more from me on the reylo front soon. <3

#reylo #reylo fanfiction #reylo trash #star wars #star wars fanfiction #trigger warning #child abuse #tw child abuse

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cyberpunkmia · 3 years

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# 002 . ] When The Party's Over

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There's always been this sad feeling to the end of a night alive. You would think it'd end the same way it began the next morning you wake up, but the feeling is far from it, actually. You would think I'd enjoy speaking of it, but the conclusion becomes heart wrenching. It's the truth, after all. As humans we tend to chase after the feeling of being alive, feeling something, anything at that. As we grow older, we seek that in the sensation of feeling numb to the pain that's chased us since the beginning to our lives on this earth. It's not our fault, but feeling low can have its own consequences. We'd rather drink the night away, smoke until there's not a single trace left. The natural instinct is to bury what buried us. Really, there is no end to the obstacles in this life; but we make the most of it. We make our failures, our downs, and our mistakes something beautiful, something unbreakable. It's a strength within, it never stops getting stronger through time. Perhaps time may be the killer, but we revive ourselves through our very own battle scars of our youth. Like throwing fine china at the barren wall to disperse anger, like listening to an angrily punk rock tune in order to get rid of anger within a different breed, we rage against the dying of our light. There's strength in it, refusing to cave.

At the time when partying became something of a two week rebound was around the age of eighteen, going on to nineteen. At the same time as well, I remained faithful to someone I knew I loved deeply. Supposedly, as a woman if you'd go out dressed beautifully in hopes of a magical night, it'd be distasteful. Though arguably, intent means everything. You hold onto your sole intentions, and that's how you levitate about a neon lit room. Anyone who wishes to jeopardize that doesn't know their place, and fails to see yours. There's nothing wrong with it though, souls don't align the same all the time. It's the variety of things we've been through, our stories that differ. Thus being what's at fault, bad timing. That wouldn't be the stop to fighting for mine; my very own story. Like an A24 movie, or an edgy episode short on a Norwegian coming of age tv show, I felt I deserved the right to live it, experience a setting like so. It was for experience with friends, yet at the same time it was also the smell of a perfectly rolled blunt silently calling out to my deadbeat conscience.

Truth be told though, loving wasn't easy at the time, but what was worse was that I was in love deeply. We fight for love, wherever we can find it, because without it, we are ghosts. Similar to fighting for a love that has had one too many blows from an entity of lost hope, no. Loving was never made easy. It makes us feel alive though, and maybe that's what we always tend to chase after. Life. Maybe love inspired me to chase after life, after all. The moments that gave me reason. Anxiety had been what made me afraid to approach the spontaneous moments in life, and strength came from my hope in love. So maybe the man I loved did make me stronger, highlighted and bold-ed me like a statement. Because when the party's over, it'll be my faith in love that saves me from an empty morning. The statement that is me, expands with no end in the depths of glowing brown irises, and a tongue that speaks the same language of love. At a party, the nostalgic feeling never really tends to last, in exchange is the feeling of freedom ultimately, though. The shackles of this life can feel like four walls threatening claustrophobia, and the urge to prowl and rigorously shake this feeling off strengthens. We drink until our eyes will hang low, until the room sways to the beat of the bass. We'll smoke until clouds fill our atmosphere. It all begins with an endeavor, a lust for life. Bring it with you on a night out, and in my opinion you're all set.

There are different endeavors of course, are you searching for love? Or just the feeling of it? Maybe it isn't love you're looking for, maybe it's a drink you unfortunately can't have because you aren't of legal age yet. At the age of nineteen, I came to accept the fact I've found love completely, the endeavor's purpose wasn't to feel love at a party; it was to numb the painful memories that were brought onto me by luck that went rotten, the pieces of glass that threatened to burn out love in my life. There comes rage again, the urge that rolls in. Violence? Never. Beauty in rage is the fact that it can be radiated abundantly through art, through literature, through beautiful photos, most importantly through emotion whether it be newfound, or emotions that has become everlasting. Rage for positivity, for the beautiful moments in life. It's a constant battle, fortunately. If it's an ego you tend to, watch out in all honesty. Dangerous waters, it is you really paddle. As Kendrick Lamar preaches in an iconic track, staying humble in a setting that can sometimes be a shark tank is vitality, so cling onto it until dawn calls.

In the midst, you're in the matrix, dodging temptation back and forth. It's what I ended up doing every time, clinging onto faith, clinging onto love. Intentions I simply had were to dance, to feel excitement. The doldrums of an everyday routine can definitely wear your soul out, so to keep the light lit is what's got to be done. Anyone who falsely accuses me of any intention besides the purest simply doesn't deserve the energy I give. Another obstacle often battled is the fight for happiness itself, yet every time it's washed away we crave for it more- we yearn for it. Partying can manifest itself into a cycle that way, yet I can say for myself that this place never felt like home to me for that reason. Having the highest high be taken away from you in exchange for the daylight repeatedly is sheer robbery, a crime unassigned. The consequence of living through the night is the way people perceive you sober, thus manifesting the temptation to rage and feel alive yet again.

Later on, I realized the night life wasn't for me after all, because of the mess that's brought upon from wanting to fulfill the similar feeling to slammed fine china, or screaming at the top of my lungs. Though at the same time, I'll remember these experiences for life, and I'll smile at my youth the way youth intends to simper as well. We're better in solace, not in rage. I no longer drink heavy liquor the same in present day, so I see the difference of how I perceive emotions that whelm me. It all really depends, I can feel deeply when I drink, but there are times when I feel absolutely nothing but a sinking feeling. It's simply a game of rolling dice, really.

I don't feel this way about love, the act of falling in love. It's bigger, than this feeling of a hungover morning, it's what made me stronger without knowing at such a young age, actually. Conclusion being, I'd trade moments at parties for a conversation with... Let's call my first love, Mr. Cassanova. Perhaps to have experienced the night life would've been better with Cassanova, that way I wouldn't have felt like I missed out on moments with him, but I've gotta carry on. Life stops for nobody, so hold onto you're Cassanova if you've got him, and never make him feel like he's any less because of this temptation of nights alive. Intention is your truth, I'd have to say, so move with gratitude, with love, and turn perceived negativity into redemption for yourself, for future's past- because a party isn't even the beginning to survival, more like a temporary fix to life. Indefinitely.

- 2:53 P.M.

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written by: Mia Rose Sarmiento

5/20/21

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creativityhq · 6 years

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AS LONG AS I AM BREATHING,

Name: Avalon Aquino

Species: Mermaid

Age: appears 32 (is 162)

Gender: Cis-female

Faceclaim: Karla Souza

Powers: Atmokinesis, aquakinesis, immortal, invisibility, shapeshifting (from mermaid to human)

I AM JUST BEGINNING.

All mermaids of Cordellia were under King Loranthe’s rule, and his kingdom expanded all throughout the Norwegian Sea. A demanding king, Lornathe trained his mermaids and mermen to be the best across the world, relentless in their duties and proficient in all magic that he deemed non threatening to him. An intelligent man, he ensured that none of his servants could surpass him in anyway. The most powerful mermaids and mermen, however, Loranathe kept close in order to ensure that they were not conspiring against him.

Avalon belonged to a long line of mermaids and mermen indebted to the king called the Aquino family. Originally hailing from the Chilean Sea, Avalon’s mother, Sirena, heard about a powerful king nearby. An ambitious and cutthroat woman, Sirena and Avalon, only a child at the time, traveled to meet King Loranthe. Immediately, he was pleased with their potential and he gifted Sirena with one of the highest honours within Cordellia: she was in charge of ensuring no outsiders discovered mermaids and mermen. Avalon’s mother took her duty seriously and she created countless protocols. As soon as Avalon was old enough, she began traveling with her mother, learning the trade secrets of maintaining a myth.

Eventually, once Avalon was old enough, King Loranthe retired Sirena from her position and it was passed down to Avalon. She was much less bound by duty and throughout her years in Cordellia, she had noticed how many horrific things King Loranthe demanded. He stole the freedom of mermaids and mermen, and worst of all, Loranthe seemed to enjoy it. Regardless, Avalon began performing her duties, building the king’s trust as she did so. She traveled on land to confirm that no sailors were suspicious of their glorious waters, grateful for the gift of shapeshifting, and she traveled across the Norwegian sea to meet those that began getting curious. If Avalon particularly enjoyed a man or woman that she met, she would gift them with a piece of jewelry, allowing them to breathe below the water and for weeks at a time, they would be her lover. It was a small leave of duty, and if King Loranathe ever discovered the small transgression, he was silent about it.

Avalon spent many years serving the king in such a manner. She wiped humans’ memories and occasionally, with persistent ones, was forced to drown them. All the while, however, Avalon began befriending the seas creatures. She ensured that she earned their loyalty through simple acts of kindness and gifts, things that the king would never think to do. Once Avalon was confident that she had earned their trust, she began experimenting with her powers. Avalon had heard the rumours about how strong the Aquino family was and she had prepared for a long time to witness it herself. First, she began moving the water around her, and on land, she could create it in the palm of her hand. Next, Avalon discovered that she could turn herself invisible, and lastly, that she could control the weather itself. The revelation was shocking and after years of practice, Avalon began to conspire.

Overthrowing King Loranthe would not be simple, but Avalon had the brunt of the sea at her disposal. All of the animals and lesser creatures had sided with her, and a few mermaids had been swayed to her cause. All she needed to do was choose a time where Loranthe would be taken off guard. As she waited, Avalon grew wilder, taking on numerous lovers -- all had ever craved was love and affection -- and exploring the depths of her magic. Unfortunately, her foolishness alerted King Loranthe to the rebellion that was forming and when Avalon was finally prepared to attack, King Loranthe was prepared.

The battle between the mermaids and mermen of Cordellia against all those loyal to Avalon was fierce and lasted over fifty years. The city of Cordellia was destroyed and countless lives were lost, but Avalon did not want to surrender. As she stormed the palace, more of her guard was defeated and King Loranthe gave her one chance to surrender. Avalon refused and Loranthe, ruthless, killed one of her closest friends. Avalon was furious and fought against the king with all her might, controlling the waves, freezing water surrounding Loranthe, but her energy and hope was spent. All her life, she had dreamed of bettering Cordellia and finding companionship and now all of that looked lost.

King Loranthe dealt a brutal blow and Avalon could feel her life fading. She fled and miraculously made it to the Norwegian shoreline, accompanied by several of her trusted allies. It was there that a strange portal opened up before them and desperate, knowing Loranthe was in pursuit, Avalon and her people accidentally traveled to Halloweentown.

It was there that they created a safe haven for themselves, building a small section of the town near the ocean that suited their needs. As everyone paired off and lived contentedly, Avalon only grew more wistful for a peaceful life, one that wasn’t filled with violence and chaos. She had failed in providing her vision, she had lost countless friends and loved ones, and Avalon seemingly had nothing left. She craved love and it evaded her, she craved a peaceful world to thrive within and it had escaped through her fingers. Still, she prevailed, she was nothing if not relentless and one day, Avalon would find all that.

When people began traveling outside of Halloweentown, escaping its easy bliss, Avalon didn’t hesitate to follow. As wonderful as it was, she wasn’t finding what she had been searching for all of her life, and to feel a true sea once again? That was more tempting than she could possibly put into words. Under the easy guise of a witch, Avalon still protected the secret of mermaids, she entered the world and hoped she would finally find peace.

#i forgot this in drafts #avalon aquino #halloweentown #written by alicia

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ethelbertpaul444-blog · 6 years

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Childish Gambino’s ‘This Is America’ Video, Explained

Childish Gambino took the internet by gust this weekend with the liberate of his new single “This Is America” and its accompanying music video laded with haunting personas of black oppression and firearm violence. Fans unpacked the subtle comments on Twitter, with many exclaiming the rapper, whose real mention is Donald Glover, one of the most important point enunciates of this generation. ICYMI, below are some of “the worlds largest” talked-about cites in “This Is America, ” in order of image in the video. Calvin The Second Childish Gambino/ YouTube Viewers initially disorient performer and musician Calvin The Second, who dallies the guitarist in the video’s opening shot, for the father-god of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed pitch-black teenager shot to death in Florida in 2012 by George Zimmerman. Calvin The Second confirmed his appearance in the video Sunday on Instagram: “Got the announce from one of my workers while up at Coachella that they craved me for the shoot on Sunday, drove down and got to be a part of history.” Warehouse Childish Gambino/ YouTube “This Is America” is primed entirely in a drab warehouse, which some viewers interpreted as the country’s footing, built on systemic grey ascendancy and oppression. “Much of this seems to take place in a structure/ store where the foundation and support system( the beams) are principally grey, ” tweeted @JarridGreen. Some veteran Childish Gambino supporters pointed out similarities to his 2011 “Freaks and Geeks” music video, which also takes arrange in a warehouse. Fela Kuti Getty Images/ Vevo The video features a shirtless Childish Gambino donning a gold bond necklace and trousers that give off a ’7 0s vibe. His sound appears to be inspired by the late Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician dubbed “Africa’s provide answers to Handel” by one artistries critic. “Fela Kuti echoes in Childish Gambino’s form, ” civil rights activist Michael Skolnik wrote of the video on Twitter. “It is art at its highest form. Still in awe.” Some indicated Childish Gambino’s review was a nod to the late Richard Pryor, the famous comedian and social critic. Others memorandum the similarities between his heaves and a Confederate soldier’s uniform. African dance Fans were haunted with Childish Gambino’s sign to African moves, including Shoki and Gwara Gwara, a form of dancing popularized in South Africa( and featured in Rihanna’s 2018 Grammys operation ). “Childish Gambino reeks of geniu, ” tweeted @muchman16. “I desired the fraction where those kids moved shoki and gwara gwara.” Others pointed out how dance vogues can distract from the life-or-death situations changing black communities. “Childish Gambino’s #ThisIsAmerica spoke to me as a pitch-black South African maids, ” tweeted @Cpaw2. “Women being hunted and killed while civilization does the gwara gwara.” Jim Crow Justin Simien, the filmmaker behind “Dear White People, ” tweeted a “love letter” to the video on Sunday, breaking down its blacken call of Jim Crow imagery. “Jim Crow inaugurated as one of the first fits of lily-white American culture to address it’s onetime African slaves( and their offsprings) at all, ” Simien wrote. “A minstrelsy mainstay played by lily-white males in pitch-black aspect, and sometimes by pitch-black men in pitch-black face.” “Jim Crow inaugurated as mere pop culture entertainment at the cost of America’s freed slaves and became the means of their persecution, ” he sustained , noting that the character’s mention was eventually lent to statutes executing racial segregation in the U.S. America’s gun obsession Childish Gambino/ YouTube Each go Childish Gambino burns a handgun in “This Is America, ” he passes it off to someone who scoots it apart in a red cloth. Spectators performed these backgrounds as a including references to Americans’ willingness to protect gun privileges over parties, despite the country’s alarmingly high levels of shoot violence. “Because this is America, ” tweeted @Shugah. “We shoot up academies, churches, one another and then we locate the guns tenderly in a cloth to protect them. And then we dance.” Suicide One viewer recommended the apparent suicide stage points to a prevalent mental illness stigma affliction the African-American community. “Does the man rushing to his death that extends predominantly unnoticed because of Gambino’s jigging be used as a reminder that suicide& poor mental health in the African American community is being dismissed, ” asked @JuelzKojoey on Twitter. Charleston massacre Childish Gambino/ YouTube One of the most disturbing stages in “This Is America” features an all-black school choir going shot up with an assault-style rifle. The holocaust appears to be a reference to the 2015 mass opened fire at a religion in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white-hot gunman killed nine black churchgoers. “Childish Gambino really made a reference to the Charleston church killing that had occurred in 2015, ” tweeted @EmanThatKid. “He shows how mass shootings are normalized in America, even if you shooting up a place of worship.” Viral videos of police brutality and racism Childish Gambino/ YouTube In one vistum, pitch-black teens use their telephones to record the chaos revealing below, as their mouths appear to be covered by a white-hot material. Some observers concluded this to be a reference to the rise of viral videos of police barbarism and prejudiced meetings to overcome the figurative muzzling of black people in a white supremacist system. “Kids are read preserving everything on their phones, invoking the use of livestreams in police shootings as a means of documenting and sharing the truth, ” tweeted @thelocalemo. “Gambino’s texts territory,’ this is a celly, that’s a tool.’” White horse Childish Gambino/ YouTube It’s easy to miss the white stallion galloping by in the background on the first see of “This Is America.” Upon closer examination, sees pointed to biblical remarks of a “pale horse” acclaiming the holocaust, which primarily vanishes unnoticed by the characters jigging in the foreground of the video. Karen Civil, a social media and sell leader, pointed out the specific verse from the Bible’s Book of Revelation: “And I looked, and behold a wan colt: and his epithet that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” Traffic stop killings Childish Gambino/ YouTube Toward the end of the video, Childish Gambino jigs atop a blood-red gondola surrounded by other decades-old vehicles with their hazard lights flashing and openings open. Viewers chose connections to the pitch-black beings routinely killed during police during congestion stops, including Philando Castile in Minnesota in 2016. “Do a lot of those gondolas … have their operators side entrance open and threats on cause they’re symbolic of the cars of all the people plucked over and killed by the police? ” wondered Twitter customer @giddy_pony. Others attained fiscal symbolism within the sea of beat-up cars. “I’m having a 4 am finals procrastination epiphany that the mostly parked, unoccupied autoes in #ThisIsAmerica reference to the stopped socioeconomic and government mobility of Black people in America, ” tweeted @izaynab. SZA Childish Gambino/ YouTube R& B singer SZA made an appearance in “This Is America, ” referring her supporters into a turmoil. Viewers mentioned the similarities between her style and the Statue of Liberty’s crown. SZA appeared to confirm the Lady Liberty theories Sunday on Instagram. Liberty .~ ATAGEND A post shared by SZA (@ sza) on May 6, 2018 at 1:22 pm PDT The Sunken Place Anyone who has visualized the movie “Get Out” likely picked up on the ghostly vibes at the end of the video as Childish Gambino attempts to escape the storehouse. It reminded many of “the Sunken Place” seen in the 2017 movie, the mental gap where the primary reputation Chris disappears after he’s been indoctrinated, unable to control his body. “The Sunken Place means we’re marginalized, ” Jordan Peele, the movie’s chairman, interpreted on Twitter in March 2017. “No matter how hard we scream, the system stillness us.” Daniel Kaluuya, who represented Chris in “Get Out, ” feed Childish Gambino’s performance of “This Is America” on “Saturday Night Live.” Ad-libs Twitter user @ _mikepearson hinted “This Is America” peculiarities over a dozen improvised directions from mostly black artists, including Kendrick Lamar and Offset. However, Complex to mention here that the streaming music busines Tidal only rosters Young Thug, 21 Native, Quavo, Slim Jxmmi and BlocBoy JB as donors on the song. 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