#no one should ever let themselves be chained to others' perception of them

[lanibgoode]

*i* think nighttime dan IS the devil baby. like, babies don't stay babies forever. he grew up, got bored of the whole "evil" schtick and decided to move on to his true passion: djing

#ghost files #watcher #watcher entertainment #nighttime dan #devil baby #and you know what? good for him #no one should ever let themselves be chained to others' perception of them

[secret-stash-of-literary-quotes]

The Waves

“I hold a stalk in my hand. I am the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs. Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing.”

“But let me be unseen. I am green as a yew tree in the shade of the hedge. My hair is made of leaves. I am rooted to the middle of the earth. My body is a stalk.”

“Rhoda’s eyes are like those pale flowers to which moths* come in the evening.”

“All my ships are white,’ said Rhoda. ‘I do not want red petals of hollyhocks or geranium. I want white petals that float when I tip the basin up. I have a fleet now swimming from shore to shore. I will drop a twig in as a raft for a drowning sailor. I will drop a stone in and see bubbles rise from the depths of the sea. I have picked all the fallen petals and made them swim. I have put raindrops in some. I will plant a lighthouse here, a head of Sweet Alice.* And I will now rock the brown basin from side to side so that my ships may ride the waves. Some will founder. Some will dash themselves against the cliffs. One sails alone. That is my ship. It sails into icy caverns where the sea-bear barks and stalactites swing green chains.”

“Her shoulder-blades meet across her back like the wings of a small butterfly.”

“This is our world, lit with crescents and stars of light. Things are huge and very small. The stalks of flowers are thick as oak trees. Leaves are high as the domes of vast cathedrals. We are giants, lying here, who can make forests quiver.”

“Let me pull myself out of these waters. But they heap themselves on me; they sweep me between their great shoulders; I am turned; I am tumbled; I am stretched, among these long lights, these long waves, these endless paths, with people pursuing, pursuing.”

“The clouds lose tufts of whiteness as the breeze dishevels them. If that blue could stay for ever; if that hole could remain for ever; if this moment could stay for ever.”

“My shattered mind is pieced together by some sudden perception. I take the trees, the clouds, to be witnesses of my complete integration.” (Louis)

“I have no face. Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say Yes, they say No; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.” (Rhoda)

“I attach myself only to names and faces; and hoard them like amulets against disaster.” (Rhoda)

“I am rocked from side to side by the violence of my emotion.” (Rhoda)

“I often die pierced with arrows to win their tears.” (Rhoda)

“Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.” (Rhoda)

“I am out of breath with running, with triumph. Everything in my body seems thinned out with running and triumph. My blood must be bright red, whipped up, slapping against my ribs. My soles tingle, as if wire rings opened and shut in my feet. I see every blade of grass very clear. But the pulse drums so in my forehead, behind my eyes, that everything dances—the net, the grass; your faces leap like butterflies; the trees seem to jump up and down. There is nothing staid, nothing settled, in this universe. All is rippling, all is dancing; all is quickness and triumph.” (Jinny)

“Now the tide sinks. Now the trees come to earth; the brisk waves that slap my ribs rock more gently, and my heart rides at anchor, like a sailing-boat whose sails slide slowly down on to the white deck. The game is over.” (Jinny)

“I shall get up at dawn. I shall let myself out by the kitchen door. I shall walk on the moor. The great horses of the phantom riders will thunder behind me and stop suddenly. I shall see the swallow skim the grass. I shall throw myself on a bank by the river and watch the fish slip in and out among the reeds. The palms of my hands will be printed with pine-needles. I shall there unfold and take out whatever it is I have made here; something hard. For something has grown in me here, through the winters and summers, on staircases, in bedrooms. I do not want, as Jinny wants, to be admired. I do not want people, when I come in, to look up with admiration. I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.” (Susan)

“I hate darkness and sleep and night,’ said Jinny, ‘and lie longing for the day to come. I long that the week should be all one day without divisions. When I wake early—and the birds wake me—I lie and watch the brass handles on the cupboard grow clear; then the basin; then the towel-horse. As each thing in the bedroom grows clear, my heart beats quicker. I feel my body harden, and become pink, yellow, brown. My hands pass over my legs and body. I feel its slopes, its thinness. I love to hear the gong roar through the house and the stir begin—here a thud, there a patter. Doors slam; water rushes. Here is another day, here is another day, I cry, as my feet touch the floor.” (Jinny)

“But I shall not let myself be attached to one person only. I do not want to be fixed, to be pinioned. I tremble, I quiver, like the leaf in the hedge, as I sit dangling my feet, on the edge of the bed, with a new day to break open. I have fifty years, I have sixty years to spend. I have not yet broken into my hoard. This is the beginning.” (Jinny)

“There are hours and hours,’ said Rhoda, ‘before I can put out the light and lie suspended on my bed above the world, before I can let the day drop down, before I can let my tree grow, quivering in green pavilions above my head. Here I cannot let it grow. Somebody knocks through it. They ask questions, they interrupt, they throw it down.” (Rhoda)

“Now I will go to the bathroom and take off my shoes and wash; but as I wash, as I bend my head down over the basin, I will let the Russian Empress's veil flow about my shoulders. The diamonds of the Imperial crown blaze on my forehead. I hear the roar of the hostile mob as I step out on to the balcony.” (Rhoda)

“I see wild birds, and impulses wilder than the wildest birds strike from my wild heart. My eyes are wild; my lips tight pressed. The bird flies; the flower dances; but I hear always the sullen thud of the waves; and the chained beast stamps on the beach. It stamps and stamps.” (Louis)

“June was white. I see the fields white with daisies, and white with dresses; and tennis courts marked with white. Then there was wind and violent thunder. There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, Consume me.” (Rhoda)

“I dash and sprinkle myself with the bright waters of childhood.” (Louis)

“The best are made in solitude.” (Bernard)

“I am not one and simple, but complex and many. Bernard, in public, bubbles; in private, is secretive. That is what they do not understand, for they are now undoubtedly discussing me, saying I escape them, am evasive. They do not understand that I have to effect different transitions; have to cover the entrances and exits of several different men who alternately act their parts as Bernard. I am abnormally aware of circumstances. I can never read a book in a railway carriage without asking, Is he a builder? Is she unhappy?” (Bernard)

“But you understand, you, my self, who always comes at a call (that would be a harrowing experience to call and for no one to come; that would make the midnight hollow, and explains the expression of old men in clubs—they have given up calling for a self who does not come).” (Bernard)

“Let it exist, this bank, this beauty, and I, for one instant, steeped in pleasure. The sun is hot. I see the river. I see trees specked and burnt in the autumn sunlight. Boats float past, through the red, through the green. Far away a bell tolls, but not for death. There are bells that ring for life. A leaf falls, from joy. Oh, I am in love with life!” (Neville)

“There is some flaw in me—some fatal hesitancy, which, if I pass it over, turns to foam and falsity.” (Neville)

“Something now leaves me; something goes from me to meet that figure who is coming, and assures me that I know him before I see who it is. How curiously one is changed by the addition, even at a distance, of a friend. As he approaches I become not myself, but Neville mixed with somebody.” (Neville)

“The streamers of my consciousness waver out and are perpetually torn and distressed by their disorder” (Louis)

“It is still early morning. The mist is on the marshes. The day is stark and stiff as a linen shroud. But it will soften; it will warm. At this hour, this still early hour, I think I am the field, I am the barn, I am the trees; mine are the flocks of birds, and this young hare who leaps, at the last moment when I step almost on him. Mine is the heron that stretches its vast wings lazily; and the cow that creaks as it pushes one foot before another munching; and the wild, swooping swallow; and the faint red in the sky, and the green when the red fades; the silence and the bell; the call of the man fetching cart-horses from the fields—all are mine.” (Susan)

“I cannot float gently, mixing with other people. I like best the stare of shepherds met in the road; the stare of gipsy women beside a cart in a ditch suckling their children as I shall suckle my children. For soon in the hot midday when the bees hum round the hollyhocks my lover will come. He will stand under the cedar tree. To his one word I shall answer my one word. What has formed in me I shall give him. I shall have children; I shall have maids in aprons; men with pitchforks; a kitchen where they bring the ailing lambs to warm in baskets, where the hams hang and the onions glisten. I shall be like my mother, silent in a blue apron locking up the cupboards.” (Susan)

“I feel myself shining in the dark.” (Jinny)

“This is the prelude, this is the beginning. I glance, I peep, I powder. All is exact, prepared. My hair is swept in one curve. My lips are precisely red. I am ready now to join men and women on the stairs, my peers. I pass them, exposed to their gaze, as they are to mine. Like lightning we look but do not soften or show signs of recognition. Our bodies communicate.” (Jinny)

“I am native here. I tread naturally on thick carpets. I slide easily on smooth-polished floors, I now begin to unfurl, in this scent, in this radiance, as a fern when its curled leaves unfurl.” (Jinny)

“I am rooted, but I flow [...] I flutter. I ripple. I stream like a plant in the river, flowing this way, flowing that way, but rooted, so that he may come to me. Come, I say, come.” (Jinny)

“I shall edge behind them, said Rhoda, as if I saw someone I know. But I know no one. I shall twitch the curtain and look at the moon. Draughts of oblivion shall quench my agitation. The door opens; the tiger leaps. The door opens; terror rushes in; terror upon terror, pursuing me. Let me visit furtively the treasures I have laid apart. Pools lie on the other side of the world reflecting marble columns. The Swallow dips her wing in dark pools. But here the door opens and people come; they come towards me. Throwing faint smiles to mask their cruelty, their indifference, they seize me.” (Rhoda)

A million arrows pierce me. Scorn me and ridicule pierce me. I, who could beat my breast against the storm and let the hail choke me joyfully, am pinned down here; am exposed. The tiger leaps. Tongues with their whips are upon me. Mobile, incessant, they flicker over me. I must prevaricate and fence them off with lies. What amulet is there against this disaster? What face can I summon to lay cool upon this heat? (Rhoda)

Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room. (Rhoda)

How much, let me note, depends upon trousers; the intelligent head is entirely handicapped by shabby trousers. (Bernard)

I need eyes on me to draw out these frills and furbelows. To be myself (I note) I need the illumination of other people's eyes, and therefore cannot be entirely sure what is my self. The authentics, like Louis, like Rhoda, exist most completely in solitude. (Bernard)

I see Louis, stone-carved, sculpturesque; Neville, scissor-cutting, exact; Susan with eyes like lumps of crystals; Jinny dancing like a flame, febrile, hot, over dry earth; and Rhoda the nymph of the fountain always wet. (Bernard)

I begin to be impatient of solitude—to feel its draperies hang sweltering, unwholesome about me. Oh, to toss them off and be active! (Bernard)

My mind hums hither and thither with its veil of words for everything. To speak, about wine even to the waiter, is to bring about an explosion. Up goes the rocket. Its golden grain falls, fertilizing, upon the rich soil of my imagination. (Bernard)

All is experiment and adventure. We are for ever mixing ourselves with unknown quantities. (Bernard)

To be loved by Susan would be to be impaled by a bird's sharp beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door. Yet there are moments when I could wish to be speared by a beak, to be nailed to a barnyard door, positively, once and for all. (Louis)

Rhoda comes now, from nowhere, having slipped in while we were not looking. She must have made a tortuous course, taking cover now behind a waiter, now behind some ornamental pillar, so as to put off as long as possible the shock of recognition, so as to be secure for one more moment to rock her petals in her basin. We wake her. We torture her. She dreads us, she despises us, yet comes cringing to our sides because for all our cruelty there is always some name, some face, which sheds a radiance, which lights up her pavements and makes it possible for her to replenish her dreams. (Louis)

There is Jinny, said Susan. She stands in the door. Everything seems stayed. The waiter stops. The diners at the table by the door look. She seems to center everything [...] Now she sees us, and moves, and all the rays ripple and flow and waver over us, bringing in new tides of sensation. We change. Louis puts his hand to his tie. Neville, who sits waiting with agonized intensity, nervously straightens the forks in front of him. Rhoda sees her with surprise, as if on some far horizon a fire blazed. And I, though I pile my mind with damp grass, with wet fields, with the sound of rain on the roof and the gusts of wind that batter at the house in winter and so protect my soul against her, feel her derision steal round me, feel her laughter curl its tongues of fire round me and light up unsparingly my shabby dress, my square-tipped fingernails, which I at once hide under the table-cloth. (Susan)

We who yelped like jackals biting at each other’s heels now assume the sober and confident air of soldiers in the presence of their captain. We who have been separated by our youth (the oldest is not yet twenty-five), who have sung like eager birds each his own song and tapped with the remorseless and savage egotism of the young our own snail-shell till it cracked (I am engaged), or perched solitary outside some bedroom window and sang of love, of fame and other single experiences so dear to the callow bird with a yellow tuft on its beak, now come nearer; and shuffling closer on our perch in this restaurant where everybody’s interests are at variance, and the incessant passage of traffic chafes us with distractions, and the door opening perpetually its glass cage solicits us with myriad temptations and offers insults and wounds to our confidence—sitting together here we love each other and believe in our own endurance.’ ‘Now let us issue from the darkness of solitude,’ said Louis. (Louis)

The breath of the wind was like a tiger panting (Rhoda)

But you will never hate me,’ said Jinny. ‘You will never see me, even across a room full of gilt chairs and ambassadors, without coming to me across the room to seek my sympathy. When I came in just now everything stood still in a pattern. Waiters stopped, diners raised their forks and held them. I had the air of being prepared for what would happen. When I sat down you put your hands to your ties, you hid them under the table. But I hide nothing. I am prepared. Every time the door opens I cry ‘‘More!’’ But my imagination is the body's. I can imagine nothing beyond the circle cast by my body. My body goes before me, like a lantern down a dark lane, bringing one thing after another out of darkness into a ring of light. I dazzle you. (Jinny)

I shall have riches; I shall have fame. But I shall never have what I want, for I lack bodily grace and the courage that comes with it. The swiftness of my mind is too strong for my body. I fail before I reach the end and fall in a heap, damp, perhaps disgusting. I excite pity in the crises of life, not love. Therefore I suffer horribly. (Neville)

I am never stagnant; I rise from my worst disasters, I turn, I change. (Neville)

I circled round the chairs to avoid the horror of the spring. I am afraid of you all. I am afraid of the shock of sensation that leaps upon me, because I cannot deal with it as you do—I cannot make one moment merge in the next. To me they are all violent, all separate; and if I fall under the shock of the leap of the moment you will be on me, tearing me to pieces. I have no end in view. I do not know how to run minute to minute and hour to hour, solving them by some natural force until they make the whole and indivisible mass that you call life. (Rhoda)

When I came into the room tonight, said Susan, ‘I stopped, I peered about like an animal with its eyes near to the ground. The smell of carpets and furniture and scent disgusts me. I like to walk through the wet fields alone, or to stop at a gate and watch my setter nose in a circle, and to ask: Where is the hare? I like to be with people who twist herbs, and spit into the fire and shuffle down long passages in slippers like my father. The only saying I understand are cries of love, hate rage and pain. (Susan)

When you are silent you are again beautiful. I shall never have anything but natural happiness. When you are silent you are again beautiful. I shall never have anything but natural happiness. It will almost content me. I shall go to bed tired. I shall lie like a field bearing crops in rotation; in the summer heat will dance over me; in the winter I shall be cracked with the cold. But heat and cold will follow each other naturally without my willing or unwilling. My children will carry me on; their teething, their crying, their going to school and coming back will be like the waves of the sea under me. No day will be without its movement. I shall be lifted higher than any of you on the backs of the seasons. (Susan)

I hate Jinny because she shows me that my hands are red, my nails bitten. I love with such ferocity that it kills me when the object of my love shows by a phrase that he can escape. He escapes, and I am left clutching at a string that slips in and out among the leaves on the tree-tops. I do not understand phrases.’ (Susan)

I cannot bear the pressure of solitude. When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing. When I am alone I fall into lethargy. (Bernard)

But I only come into existence when the plumber, or the horse-dealer, or whoever it may be, says something which sets me alight. Then how lovely the smoke of my phrase is, rising and falling, flaunting and falling, upon red lobsters and yellow fruit, wreathing them into one beauty. (Bernard)

Thus my character is in part made of the stimulus which other people provide, and is not mine, as yours are. (Bernard)

I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me. (Bernard)

It is beyond our reach. Yet there I venture. There I go to replenish my emptiness, to stretch my nights and fill them fuller and fuller with dreams. (Rhoda)

They speak now without troubling to finish their sentences. They talk a little language such as lovers use. An imperious brute possesses them. The nerves thrill in their thighs. Their hearts pound and churn in their sides. Susan screws her pocket-handkerchief. Jinny’s eyes dance with fire. (Louis)

How fan the fire so that is blazes for ever? (Neville)

I am now at the zenith of an experience (Neville)

Something lies deeply buried. For one moment I thought to grasp it. But bury it, bury it; let it breed, hidden in the depths of my mind some day to fructify. After a long lifetime, loosely, in a moment of revelation, I may lay hands on it, but now the idea breaks in my hand. Ideas break a thousand times for once that they globe themselves entire. (Bernard)

Reckless and random the cars race and roar and hunt us to death like bloodhounds. I am alone in a hostile world. The human face is hideous. This is to my liking. I want publicity and violence and to be dashed like a stone on the rocks. I like factory chimneys and cranes and lorries. I like the passing of face and face and face, deformed, indifferent. I am sick of prettiness; I am sick of privacy. I ride rough waters and shall sink with no one to save me. (Rhoda)

These, then, are the flowers that grow among the rough grasses of the field which the cows trample, wind-bitten, almost deformed, without fruit or blossom. These are what I bring, torn up by the roots from the pavement of Oxford Street, my penny bunch, my penny bunch of violets. (Rhoda)

Sleep I sing—I, who am unmelodious and hear no music save rustic music when a dog barks, a bell tinkles, or wheels crunch upon the gravel. I sing my song by the fire like an old shell murmuring on the beach. (Susan)

I pad about the house all day long in apron and slippers, like my mother who died of cancer. Whether it is summer, whether it is winter, I no longer know by the moor grass, and the heath flower; only by the steam on the windowpane, or the frost on the window-pane. (Susan)

I have lost my indifference, my blank eyes, my pear-shaped eyes that saw to the root. I am no longer January, May or any other season, but am all spun to a fine thread round the cradle, wrapping in a cocoon made of my own blood the delicate limbs of my baby. (Susan)

But I never rise at dawn and see the purple drops in the cabbage leaves; the red drops in the roses. I do not watch the setter nose in a circle, or lie at night watching the leaves hide the stars and the stars move and the leaves hang still. (Susan)

But no sound breaks the silence of our house, where the fields sigh close to the door. The wind washes through the elm trees; a moth hits the lamp; a cow lows; a crack of sound starts in the rafter, and I push my thread through the needle and murmur, “Sleep”. (Susan)

‘Thus, in a few seconds, deftly, adroitly, we decipher the hieroglyphs written on other people’s faces. Here, in this room, are the abraded and battered shells cast on the shore. The door goes on opening. The room fills and fills with knowledge, anguish, many kinds of ambition, much indifference, some despair. (Jinny)

From us every sort of building, policy, venture, picture, poem, child, factory, will spring. Life comes; life goes; we make life. (Jinny)

‘But we who live in the body see with the body’s imagination things in outline. I see rocks in bright sunshine. I cannot take these facts into some cave and, shading my eyes, grade their yellows, blues, umbers into one substance. I cannot remain seated for long. I must jump up and go. (Jinny)

I cannot tell you if life is this or that. I am going to push out into the heterogeneous crowd. I am going to be buffeted; to be flung up, and flung down, among men, like a ship on the sea. (Jinny)

Now the cool tide of darkness breaks its waters over me. We are out of doors. Night opens; night traversed by wandering moths; night hiding lovers roaming to adventure. I smell roses; I smell violets; I see red and blue just hidden. Now gravel is under my shoes; now grass. (Jinny)

But when you come everything changes. The cups and saucers changed when you came in this morning. There can be no doubt, I thought, pushing aside the newspaper, that our mean lives, unsightly as they are, put on splendour and have meaning only under the eyes of love. (Neville)

I snatched the telephone and the buzz, buzz, buzz of its stupid voice in your empty room battered my heart down, when the door opened and there you stood. That was the most perfect of our meetings. But these meetings, these partings, finally destroy us. (Neville)

But if one day you do not come after breakfast, if one day I see you in some looking-glass perhaps looking after another, if the telephone buzzes and buzzes in your empty room, I shall then, after unspeakable anguish, I shall then—for there is no end to the folly of the human heart—seek another, find another, you. (Neville)

‘The truth is that I am not one of those who find their satisfaction in one person, or in infinity. The private room bores me, also the sky. My being only glitters when all its facets are exposed to many people. (Bernard)

Here am I shedding one of my life-skins, and all they will say is, “Bernard is spending ten days in Rome”. Here am I marching up and down this terrace alone, unoriented. But observe how dots and dashes are beginning, as I walk, to run themselves into continuous lines, how things are losing the bald, the separate identity that they had as I walked up those steps. (Bernard)

How it is not oneself but something in the universe that one’s left with. It is this that is frightening & exciting in the midst of my profound gloom, depression, boredom, whatever it is: One sees a fin passing far out. What image can I reach to convey what I mean? (Bernard)

‘These moments of escape are not to be despised. They come too seldom. (Bernard)

‘In this hot afternoon,’ said Susan, ‘here in this garden, here in this field where I walk with my son, I have reached the summit of my desires. The hinge of the gate is rusty; he heaves it open. The violent passions of childhood, my tears in the garden when Jinny kissed Louis, my rage in the schoolroom, which smelt of pine, my loneliness in foreign places, when the mules came clattering in on their pointed hoofs and the Italian women chattered at the fountain, shawled, with carnations twisted in their hair, are rewarded by security, possession, familiarity. I have had peaceful, productive years. I possess all I see. I have grown trees from the seed. I have made ponds in which goldfish hide under the broad-leaved lilies. I have netted over strawberry beds and lettuce beds, and stitched the pears, and the plums into white bags to keep them safe from the wasps. I have seen my sons and daughters, once netted over like fruit in their cots, break the meshes and walk with me, taller than I am, casting shadows on the grass. (Susan)

I am fenced in, planted here like one of my own trees. (Susan)

At night I sit in the armchair and stretch my arm for my sewing; and hear my husband snore; and look up when the light from a passing car dazzles the windows and feel the waves of my life tossed, broken, round me who am rooted; and hear cries, and see others’ lives eddying like straws round the piers of a bridge while I push my needle in and out and draw my thread through the calico. (Susan)

I stand for a moment under the pavement in the heart of London. Innumerable wheels rush and feet press just over my head. The great avenues of civilization meet here and strike this way and that. I am in the heart of life. But look—there is my body in that looking-glass. How solitary, how shrunk, how aged! I am no longer young. I am no longer part of the procession. (Jinny)

I still live. But who will come if I signal? (Jinny)

I shall look into faces, and I shall see them seek some other face. (Jinny)

‘Little animal that I am, sucking my flanks in and out with fear, I stand here, palpitating, trembling. But I will not be afraid. I will bring the whip down on my flanks. I am not a whimpering little animal making for the shadow. (Jinny)

I am a native of this world, I follow its banners. (Jinny)

Therefore I will powder my face and redden my lips. I will make the angle of my eyebrows sharper than usual. I will rise to the surface, standing erect with the others in Piccadilly Circus. I will sign with a sharp gesture to a cab whose driver will signify by some indescribable alacrity his understanding of my signals. For I still excite eagerness. I still feel the bowing of men in the street like the silent stoop of the corn when the light wind blows, ruffling it red. (Jinny)

I will drive to my own house. I will fill the vases with lavish, with luxurious, with extravagant flowers nodding in great bunches. I will place one chair there, another here. I will put ready cigarettes, glasses and some gaily covered new unread book in case Bernard comes, or Neville or Louis. But perhaps it will not be Bernard, Neville or Louis, but somebody new, somebody unknown, somebody I passed on a staircase and, just turning as we passed, I murmured, “Come”. He will come this afternoon; somebody I do not know, somebody new. Let the silent army of the dead descend. I march forward. (Jinny)

I flung words in fans like those the sower throws over the ploughed fields when the earth is bare. I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams. (Rhoda)

Look at the gradations of healthy colour here on the knuckles, here on the palm. My body has been used daily, rightly, like a tool by a good workman, all over. The blade is clean, sharp, worn in the centre. (We battle together like beasts fighting in a field, like stags making their horns clash. (Susan)

I sit among you abrading your softness with my hardness, quenching the silver-grey flickering moth-wing quiver of words with the green spurt of my clear eyes. (Susan)

I condemn you. Yet my heart yearns towards you. I would go with you through the fires of death. Yet am happiest alone. I luxuriate in gold and purple vestments. Yet I prefer a view over chimney-pots; cats scraping their mangy sides upon blistered chimney-stacks; broken windows; and the hoarse clangour of bells from the steeple of some brick chapel. (Louis)

I walked straight up to you instead of circling round to avoid the shock of sensation as I used. But it is only that I have taught my body to do a certain trick. Inwardly I am not taught; I fear, I hate, I love, I envy and despise you, but I never join you happily. (Rhoda)

I could fancy that we might blow so vast a bubble that the sun might set and rise in it and we might take the blue of midday and the black of midnight and be cast off and escape from here and now. (Rhoda)

Anxiety is at rest. The vainest of us, Louis perhaps, does not care what people think. Neville’s tortures are at rest. Let others prosper—that is what he thinks. Susan hears the breathing of all her children safe asleep. Sleep, sleep, she murmurs. Rhoda has rocked her ships to shore. Whether they have foundered, whether they have anchored, she cares no longer. We are ready to consider any suggestion that the world may offer quite impartially.

[jasontoddiefor]

Retranslation of the Sith Code from a Linguistic Perspective

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Nwûl tash. Dzwol shâsotkun. Through passion, I gain strength. Shâsotjontû châtsatul nu tyûk. Through strength, I gain power. Tyûkjontû châtsatul nu midwan. Through power, I gain victory. Midwanjontû châtsatul nu asha. Through victory, my chains are broken. Ashajontû kotswinot itsu nuyak. The Force shall free me. Wonoksh Qyâsik nun.

Star Wars has a couple conlangs – from Huttese to Ryl, many cultures in a galaxy far, far away have their own words. The, admittedly, most famous conlang is Mando’a, the language of the Mandalorians. It has recently gained even more popularity due to The Mandalorian and the many headcanons about the clones and their culture floating around in fandom. While Mando’a is undoubtedly the conlang with the most extensive vocabulary, it is not the soundest Star Wars conlang from a linguistic perspective. That honor belongs to the version of the Sith conlang that was later amended and developed by Ben Grossblatt.

The Sith Code, as we know it, was developed by David Gaider in 2003 for the game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Grossblatt’s conlang was created seven years later in 2010.

When you consider this, Grossblatt had two options when creating his conlang and translation of the Code. He could translate the Code from English into Sith, or he could pretend the English (or “Basic”) version of the Code resulted from a translation from Sith.

Why does this matter?

[AO3]

This question is easily answered when you think about the various meanings of the words. As every bilingual person knows, translating a text from one language to another isn’t easy because there are no two languages whose vocabulary matches completely. Let’s take an example from the Code:

“asha” (noun) is translated as “victory”.

This translation, however, does not explain what kind of victory “asha” refers to. While English may have only one term for victory, a Sith could differentiate between “victory you achieved on your own” and “victory by decimating your enemies”. Or “victory” might only be one translation of the word and others could be “dominance, control, superiority”. All these words lean into the direction of “victory” through the worldview of the Sith.

Basically, Grossblatt had to decide whether the English version should be the end result or the starting point of his version of the Code in Sith.

In this essay, I intend to treat the English version of the Code as the translation of the original Sith language. This is important because it means that this deconstruction of the Sith Code will be influenced by my own interpretation of the various other meanings as possible Sith word could have, which are not necessarily Canon/Legends based. I will be translating this Code line by line and, in the end, create a new version of the Code which will deviate from the Canon one but hopefully picks up the grammatical cues from the Sith version that the current one is lacking.

TLDR: I don’t want to just explain the grammar, I want to analyze it.

Now, a brief look at the in-universe history of the Code of the Sith to shed some light on the perspective I’ll take into consideration while translating.

The Code itself was allegedly created by the Fallen Jedi Sorzus Syn. It was meant to be a pendant and an update of the Jedi Code simultaneously. While this is technically speaking fine, we do run into some troubles from a historical perspective.

The Code was first authored on the planet Korriban in 6900 BBY. The Jedi Exiles didn’t speak the language of the Sith species, which were enslaved by the Jedi Exiles. They used translation talismans, which granted them the ability to speak and read Sith as if it were their mother tongue.

…

Yeah, that’s stupid. I know. But it’s space fairy tale science fiction, so we’ll accept it and move on.

If you are bilingual, you might notice that you are more capable of speaking about a given topic in one language than in the other. Therefore, it would make sense if it were easier for the Jedi Exiles to talk about the Dark side in Sith, which was uniquely suited to speak about it. However, when the Code only exists as a differentiating point to the Jedi, they were bound to slip into a rhetoric that would be more along the lines of that they’d used as Jedi. That could explain why the Sith Code in Basic/English seems to parallel the Jedi Code so much. My working hypothesis is that the Sith Code – given that it is supposed to reflect Sith philosophy – can stand on its own with its own meaning. Otherwise, the Sith would only ever see themselves in contrast to the Jedi, which, given their superiority complex, is a rather strange view. Therefore, my translation will focus on staying as close to the original Sith language as possible.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Nwûl tash. Dzwol shâsotkun.

Now tackling that first line of the Code. The interesting part here is that Basic translates the two sentences as one. The first sentence – Nwûl tash – consists of two nouns: “peace” and “lie”. The present tense copula (the “to be”) is dropped, leaving the two nouns. When comparing this to the following sentence, we immediately see the first issue. The verb dzwol refers to “to be”. We also know it can be translated as “to exist”, “to abide”. The question that arises at this point is whether the first sentence drops dzwol or another verb referring to “to be” that we don’t know. What becomes clear, however, is that different emphasis is put on the two sentences. Many languages drop the tense copula. When the copula is dropped, the relation between the other constituents (components of the sentence) is understood. So reading the first sentence, you gain the impression that the statement “Peace is a lie” is a fact of life. “Peace = Lie” would be a mathematical way of writing it down.

Another critical thing to mention here is that Sith, as far as we know, doesn’t make use of determiners (a/the), and as such, the statement could possibly also be read as “The peace is the lie” or “A peace is the lie” and so on. But given that we do not have any information on the grammar in that aspect, I will not elaborate any further.

Now, let’s take a look at the second sentence by comparison. Here we have an explicit present tense dzwol. Unlike the rest of the Code, this sentence follows the VSO word order. Given that the rest of the Code uses topicalization, we can conclude that the verb dzwol is the focus of this sentence. Given that we are also given the translations “to exist, to abide”, perhaps it would be a more appropriate choice to use one of these words when translating to properly show the difference between the omitted present tense copula and the explicit one here.

Following this, we have to deal with shâsot and -kun. -kun refers to the adjective “only” and modifies the noun. shâsot is interesting because we are given the translation “passion” in the Code. The vocabulary list, however, translates it as “struggle”. While both have overlapping meanings, I would argue in favor of the “struggle” translation.

“Passion” stems from the Latin “passio” meaning “suffering, enduring”. Nowadays, it is used­ in Christianity to describe the suffering of Christ, but also, citing Merriam-Websters here, “the state or capacity of being acted on by external agents or forces”, as well as being motivated/moved by intense emotions. However, “struggle”, is defined as “to make strenuous or violent efforts in the face of difficulties or opposition” and “to proceed with difficulty or with great effort”. Given that the first sentence of the Code refers to the idea that peace doesn’t exist, I believe an emphasis on the aspect of fighting, which we find in “struggle”, would be appropriate.

Personally, I’d prefer “to exist” over “abide” for the verb as well. “abide” may imply that only the struggle has to be endured. I’d favor a reading that instead emphasizes the contrast that the absence of peace means the presence of nothing but struggle. My translation of the first line of the Sith Code would therefore be:

Peace is a lie. Only struggle exists. Nwûl tash. Dzwol shâsotkun.

Now we can consider the next line: Through passion, I gain strength. Shâsotjontû châtsatul nu tyûk.

Before we can tackle the translation, we have to consider three grammatical construction.

Sith is typically VSO (Verb Subject Object).

Sith has instrumental case, which is marked on the noun with -jontû. Generally, this is translated as “by” or “with” or “using”.

Sith has alethic verb mood, which is marked on the verb with -atul. Alethic mood refers to “the truth in the world” as opposed to epistemic mood, which is “the truth in an individual's mind” (epistemic). While this differentiation is not without criticism, given that all truths in the world are filtered through our perceptions of the world, it is interesting to note that Sith apparently does make this difference.

Now that we have considered these, I will break down the second sentence. The first thing I have to mention is that this sentence and the following ones are topicalized. Shâsotjontû is the word shâsot in instrumental case. As before, I prefer the “struggle” translation. The instrumental case itself is translated as “through” which is an interesting choice as that is not a standard translation. I’d instead go with the “using” translation as it further highlights that a Sith utilizes whatever tools they deem necessary and needed. Objects and people are measured against what value they have for a given person, how useful they are if you want to spell it out. Furthermore, it highlights that the Sith, at one point, actually discussed the Code and the “best” way to use the Dark side.

The verb châtsatul is in alethic mood and translates to “gain”. This, again, also fits well with the “using” translation of the instrumental case. The subject of this sentence is nu the first person pronoun “I”. tyûk translates to “strength”. Here we run into the previously elaborated victory problem as well. The Code gives us no explanation of what kind of strength is meant here. The idea that it’s only physical strength is, of course, ridiculous. It could also cover mental strength and strength in the Force, as well as the words “might”, “courage”, “durability” and so on. This issue concerning the lack of vocabulary will continue to follow us through the complete translation of this text. As I have now elaborated on it twice, I will only make references to it in the future, with perhaps here and there a suggestion for a more appropriate translation.

My translation of the second line, taking -atul into consideration, would therefore be as follows:

Shâsotjontû châtsatul nu tyûk. Using struggle, I necessarily gain strength.

Now we can turn to the third line: Through strength, I gain power. Tyûkjontû châtsatul nu midwan.

The only new word here is midwan, which is translated as “power”. Again, the definition of power in this context isn’t clear. The translation of this line would be:

Tyûkjontû châtsatul nu midwan. Using strength, I necessarily gain power.

We can now turn to the next line: Through power, I gain victory. Midwanjontû châtsatul nu asha.

I already elaborated at length on the various possible definitions of “victory”. I, personally, prefer a reading that equals “victory” to “dominance”. What I also thought was interesting here is that the morpheme “asha” appears to be very common in Star Wars across cultures and languages. There are multiple people named with variations of that morpheme. And then, of course, there is also the planet Ashas Ree, which is deep in the territory of the former Sith Empire and had a Jedi Temple built on top of a Sith Temple. Ashas Ree could be the Basic version of a Sith term. While we do not have the word “Ree”, phonologically, it would be pronounced /riː/, and Sith has the consonant /r/ and the vowel /i:/.

A side note about Sith phonology: Sometime between the Jedi Exiles taking over and the Prequels era, the Sith lost the vowel /e/ or /ɛ/ as the Sith of that time still had words like “jen” meaning “shadow”, “dark”, and “hidden”. As this word, and others making use of it, are apparently still in use today, their vowel probably changed to /i/, /æ/, or /aɪ/. Or maybe the word “jen” is pronounced as it once was as English/Basic does have these vowels, and people can therefore say “jen”.

Returning to our translation, we can read:

Midwanjontû châtsatul nu asha. Using power, I necessarily gain victory.

And now we’re going to look at a line that made me cry:

Through victory, my chains are broken. Ashajontû kotswinot itsu nuyak.

Once more, before we can actually look at the translation, we have to look at the grammar. This is the breakdown Ben Grossblatt made of that sentence:

Ashajontû kotswinot itsu nuyak. Victory+INSTR break+ERG+LG INAM OBJ chain my+PL. Through victory, my chains break.

INSTR refers to instrumental case I already elaborated on.

ERG refers to Ergative. The interfix -win- is added to a transitive verb to indicate ergativity, meaning that the grammatical subject of that verb is its semantic object, while the true semantic agent remains unexpressed.

LG INAM OBJ means “large inanimate object”. This refers to the fact that the verb kots is part of a group of verbs called “handling verbs”. These verbs mark what kind of object is affected by them. -ot is the marker for “large inanimate object”. When searching for languages that use these “handling verbs”, Navajo was one of the first results.

Sith plurals appear to be marked on the articles or, given the lack of such, on the possessive markers: nuyak is therefore “my” and “the object I possess is plural”.

Now that we have tackled the grammar, I will elaborate on how it applies to this sentence. The ashajontû construction should be well-understood by now, so I will not linger on it.

Interesting is here that the possessive marker nuyak also indicates the number of the possessed object. In a way, this enhances the claim on the object as it is more intrinsically connected to it. The possessed object here is itsu, the “chain”, which only gains its plural through the possessive. It would be interesting here to know what the other verb markers are as “chains”, in this context, are categorized as physical objects. At the same time, their meaning is obviously meant to be metaphorical. Knowing whether Sith can make the difference and might choose to do so here would be beneficial when analyzing this line. However, evoking the image of physical chains here, which are broken, makes the act seem more striking.

And now we’ll tackle the verb. The root kots gets inflicted twice by the ergative marker and the object marker. According to Grossblatt, it can be read as “completely shatter” or “completely break”. As the purpose of the object marker -ot has already been elaborated on, I will now focus on the ergative marker.

Ergativity is one possible way of hiding the concrete agent of action without passivizing the sentence. Consider “The window broke” vs. “The window was broken” vs. “I broke the window”.

This makes the overall translation of the sentence rather interesting. The original translation reads “Through victory, my chains are broken” which is passive and not ergative. Therefore, it would be more correct to follow Grossblatt’s reading of “my chains break completely”. Still, the fact that we do not have an overt agent here makes this sentence quite interesting. While the method – ashajontû – is known, the agent could be either the speaker themself, or another person doing it for them. Given that the adverb “completely” is added to the verb, perhaps this sentence suggests that on your own, you can come quite far breaking your chains but not reach that finalized step. For that, you need victory.

Furthermore, this offers an interesting perspective on the Sith and their teachings, especially on the Banite Sith, if you read “victory” as something closer to “dominance”. In this case, the sentence almost seems to imply that by becoming stronger and surpassing another person, perhaps your Master, you manage to break your chains completely. An even deeper reading might allude to how the Sith conceptualize the chains that keep them. They appear to put their own freedom and thirst for power above everything else. Perhaps that is already too much interpretation for one line, but it was worth noting. In any case, my translation of that sentence is:

Ashajontû kotswinot itsu nuyak. Using victory, my chains break completely.

After this heavy sentence, we only have one left!

The Force shall free me. Wonoksh Qyâsik nun.

This sentence is relatively uncomplicated. nun is the accusative pronoun “me” and Qyâsik is the Sith word for Force. wonoksh is the word for “to free” in future tense. The future tense is marked by -oksh and this is the part where we get to the slightly complicated/annoying part of the sentence.

Again, we don’t know if this is the only future tense Sith has or what its exact purpose is. As opposed to English, which technically speaking only has the tenses “past” and “not-past”, Sith marks a definite future. However, this future could also have undertones such as an imperative mood. Sadly, we don’t know anything about it. Now for the future tense. As inquires across the globe have told me, “shall” is pretty outdated. In a modern translation of the Code, you’d probably say:

Wonoksh Qyâsik nun. The Force will free me.

But that detail is relatively minor. Now that I have broken down every line of the Code, let’s put it back together.

Peace is a lie. Only struggle exists. Using struggle, I necessarily gain strength. Using strength, I necessarily gain power. Using power, I necessarily gain victory. Using victory, my chains break completely. The Force will free me.

Does this Code sound better than the original work? Probably not. I have to say, I do prefer the “struggle” translation and I like the first line more in my version, but otherwise, this Code doesn’t sound particularly great. However, it was also not meant to sound good. The purpose was to create a translation closer to the Sith language version, to reverse-engineer it if you want. I do think that this endeavor was worthwhile as, for me, it has shed some more light on the thinking of the Sith.

And also this:

Sources

Star Wars: The Sith

Sith Language

Speak like a Sith article

Sith Code

Ben Grossblatt’s breakdown of his translation

Sorzus Syn, author of the Sith Code

History of the Sith Dynasties

Wookiepedia Search of asha

Translation talisman

Ashas Ree

Temple of Ashas Ree

Grammar

Zero copula

Merriam-Webster on passion

Merriam-Webster on struggle

Alethic modality

Navajo Handling Verbs

Navajo Classificatory Verbs

Ergativity

Instrumental case

Color Coded Version of this Essay

#star wars #sith #jedi #meta #sw #worldbuilding #fanfic #conlang #linguistics

[whereisten]

True Love

A Jeno fic that’s a part of our Halloween Series!

Summary: You, an employee at an entertainment company, are immune to the charms of their biggest star Lee Jeno.

Pairing: Rockstar! Jeno x female reader

Genre: romance, drama, fantasy, suspense

Warning: alcohol use, smut mention, stalking, manipulation 

Word Count: 4.3k

(A/N: Hiya! I’m so sorry for the delay! It’s been so hectic lol! Thank you so much for your support and patience! Hope you enjoy! And shoutout to Krys for keeping me sane and for all of her love and support. I love you! :D)

___

To everyone in the world, Lee Jeno was the epitome of perfection and rock royalty. He was a gifted musician from the very young age of five, having specialized in several instruments in his childhood. However, his heart gravitated to the guitar. He became a trainee at LCF Entertainment and along with four other trainees, they became the world famous rock band, Temptation.

He was ranked in the top 23 in World Magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive this year. He was a walking and talking Adonis with a heartwarming smile.

Jeno was a man of many talents but he certainly didn’t let it get to his head. He was a humanitarian, a UNICEF ambassador, fostered shelter animals, was the proud owner of three cats even though he was allergic, a great family man (funding his siblings’ college tuition and providing for his parents so they could retire early), etc. He did it all and he had it all.

How could anyone be immune to his charms?

People wondered who would be the queen that would reign beside him when he settled down. Frankly, one couldn’t be anything short of a supermodel on the verge of sainthood. So many hopeful contenders were discouraged from pursuing him.

Jeno’s dating life was non-existent, the paparazzi dreaded to inform.

But you were an employee of LCF Entertainment so you knew the truth, as well as the true nature of the famous Lee Jeno. He was basically like any other young man with an inflated ego. He was cocky, a huge flirt when the cameras were off, very picky, and demanding. But no one ever dared speak a word of his true nature to the paparazzi. And you always wondered why. Someone had to bring him down a few pegs.

You were the staff photographer and videographer, in charge of capturing Jeno’s good and “relatable but still unbelievably glamorous” sides. When the camera was on, that was when you felt at ease.

It didn’t help that Jeno liked you either. Although you’d been working with Temptation and the individual members for a few years now, it was only recently that Jeno really was set on it pursuing you.

When you switched off the camera after the recording of Jeno’s backstage vlog, he sat comfortably at his makeup chair and proceeded to ask, “Y/n, will you go out with me now?”

You answered immediately, “No.”

Jeno gave you a sad puppy dog face. “Why not?”

“We’ve gone over this. I would get fired.” You wanted to spare his feelings so that was what you always said when he asked you out.

Jeno groaned. “You would not. I wouldn’t let that happen.”

You snorted. “You think you have that kind of power, Lee?”

He liked when you called him by his last name. “That’s because I do have that power, y/n. The new company building is funded solely out of my earnings from my last solo album.”

You whistled. “There’s that humility I’m always reading about in O!What Magazine…”

Jeno smiled. “You read articles about me?”

“I do when my name is in the article, boss.” You started packing up your equipment, ready to call it a day and head home.

Jeno got out of his chair and stood over you. He smelled of Dior Sauvage, cologne from his latest brand endorsement. He wore his stage clothes from his solo concert rehearsal. A sleeveless jean jacket top that parted down the middle to show his abs. Along his abs, silver chains dangled and added a nice glimmer effect when he was on stage. The entire team was thrilled to see how the audience would eat it up.

He whispered into your ear, “Y/n.”

Truthfully? He was attractive. You’d always had a little crush on him but it was of a shallow nature. You liked him for his looks. Not so much for his personality. You’d known too much.

If Jeno had been any other regular guy, you would’ve been open to a one-night stand.

But Jeno wasn’t just any regular guy.

You tried to hide the fact that shivers ran down your spine. “Stop.”

He chuckled. “But I can see you through the reflection, y/n...You're crossing your legs…”

You’d hoped he wasn’t that perceptive but it turned out he was. You hid away the fact that you were turned on. Your panties were damp but you’d be damned if he ever knew that.

You met Jeno’s perfectly lined eyes as he looked at you unapologetically. Everyone else from the staff already left. Jeno’s manager was waiting downstairs to take him to the radio station J-423 for his upcoming interview.

You were breathless now. “Jeno, you’re going to be late-”

He pulled you into him and kissed you, easily slipping his tongue into your mouth and working magic against yours. You couldn’t help but return his kiss. His mouth was paradise and you wondered what else he could do with it.

He let you go after a few minutes and cupped your face. “So are you going to deny that there’s something going on here?”

You tried to catch your breath as you wiped your lipstick off of Jeno’s mouth. “No, I guess not...But this is where it stops.”

Jeno frowned. “Y/n…”

“I know where I stand. And you know it, too. And Jeno, I don’t like you that way...I’m sorry.” You caressed his face and grabbed your things, leaving Jeno with an unreadable expression on his face.

___

As a member of LCF Entertainment, your ultimate goal was profit. That was what you had to know from the very beginning. There was no such thing as LCF Family or truly prioritizing the idols. Everyone was after themselves. Whoever brought the most money to the company would get the most attention and special treatment. And that was Jeno.

And you, an aspiring film director, were thankful to be on his team because this experience could open doors for you in the future as a director. Sure, Jeno was a diva and he couldn’t stop flirting with you, but the experience wasn’t all that bad. And yeah it was frustrating that the media and the public perceived Jeno to be the nation’s sweetheart. But in the end, he wasn’t hurting anyone.

He was only hurting people’s wallets.

Temptation’s merchandise always sold out quickly but Jeno’s individual merch was always the first to sell out. And it was the first to get resold for twice and sometimes even triple the price. The fanbase was very merciless and selfish with each other. However, the scalpers were the true evil. That was less money going to your company, after all.

Even though frontman Jeno was the most popular member of Temptation, it was Temptation’s drummer Xiaojun that you had a massive crush on for a long time now. You even accumulated a secret collection of his merch. You were two photocards away from completing your Xiaojun album photocard collection.

Xiaojun even admitted to liking you back but you both kept it a secret from everyone else in the world, especially LCF. You two weren’t about to compromise your jobs. However, since Temptation was the biggest moneymaker in the game and the boys had been with the company for quite some time now, their dating ban was lifted.

Which explained why Jeno had been asking you out all week, not caring who listened and it freaked you out.

If Jeno’s fans ever found out he asked you out, they would pin the blame on you.

A week had passed since you told Jeno you weren’t interested in him. You felt bad for hurting him but you were also worried about his mood. He had the power to get you dismissed. You refused to believe he would be so cruel.

And up until this point, you were right. You were still employed and Jeno spoke with you like any other day, talking about camera angles and new concepts for upcoming shoots.

The end of another work week and Xiaojun surprises you on your way to the bus stop.

“Y/n,” Xiaojun pulls up beside you in his Porsche. He looked so elegant in a pale blue sweater and blue jeans. His face was concealed by a mask so he could leave undetected. But you’d recognized those eyebrows anywhere.

“Hey. What are you doing here?”

“I...I think we should finally talk…”

“About?”

He smiled. “About dating.”

You nearly dropped your phone out of your hand from the shock. “Really?”

He said, “Get in so I can drive you home!”

You nodded fervently and got into his passenger seat. Was this really happening?

On the drive home, Xiaojun told you he wanted to take it slow and have indoor dates with you first. You couldn’t agree more. He even surprised you with a brand new pair of AirPods after you told him that your brother took them from you.

The first of many gifts, he told you.

You got home that night and screamed excitedly into your pillow so as not to frighten your roommates

___

It has been a month since you and Xiaojun started seeing each other. You were on cloud nine. He would visit you at your apartment and would play with his dog Bella. Bella loved you a little more than she loved Xiaojun so you two would always bicker and end the night in each other’s arms.

Jeno noticed the spring in your step as you filmed his cooking vlog. He was showing his fans how he cooked breakfast for himself when he had down time. He was in a plain white T-shirt and a pair of drawstring trousers. He looked relaxed and for many, delectable, as his hair was wet from a shower. He was trying very hard to get your attention once again.

He anticipated you averting your eyes and stuttering at the sight of him but nothing. You whistled while you adjusted the tripod’s position.

“What’s got you so happy?” Jeno asked.

You nearly jumped at his question. You decided to be upfront. “I’m seeing Xiaojun.”

Jeno’s cool facade nearly cracked before your very eyes. “Oh?”

You apologized. “I’m sorry, Jeno. I should’ve told you that I liked Xiaojun…”

Jeno was furious. What the hell did Xiaojun have that he didn’t? Jeno was more muscular, taller, more talented, wealthier, more attractive...He was superior to Jeno in every way and everyone else knew it, too.

He honed his acting skills and replied evenly, “Why are you apologizing, y/n? So you like someone else...I’ll live.”

You realized maybe Jeno didn’t like you as much as you thought so you felt relieved to hear his dismissive tone. “Right. Good. I just...thought you should know…”

You and Jeno continued the shoot. He acted like nothing had happened and even behind the scenes, he joked with you and asked you which of the female trainees he should ask out. You berated him because female trainees were not allowed to date and he knew this very well. Jeno was back to his arrogant self and you were relieved.

___

You got a text from Xiaojun that he was finishing up a filming schedule with his bandmates. You wouldn’t be able to see him today because the schedule was running overtime.

He told you to go to dinner with some friends at Osaka Moon. His treat. He was good friends with the chef, apparently. You were on your way to the restaurant to meet your friends.

You were shocked at how down-to-earth Xiaojun still was after achieving so much fame and then he would do things like this. It gave you whiplash but you were having the time of your life with him.

However, you noticed him across the street. Xiaojun always wore different wigs and masks for his disguised outings with you.

But this time, there were no disguises. His side swept blonde hair and his thin framed glasses. There was no mistaking that it was him.

Was the filming for the show at the Downtown Hotel?

You were about to call his name when you saw another woman wrap her arms around him and squeeze his ass. She had long wavy brown hair and a slender frame. She could’ve been a model or a singer. They both entered the expensive hotel. Very bold of him to take her out so publicly when he was still intent on hiding you.

You felt like someone knocked the breath out of you. You shook your head in disbelief.

Immediately, you dialed Xiaojun’s number and there was no answer. You called four more times and nothing.

Son of a bitch, you thought.

He played you. You should’ve known he was no different than any other dickhead A-lister.

You decided to call his bandmates. It turned out that the filming they’d done today wrapped up over two hours ago.

Haechan had no idea where he was. Jisung didn’t either. Jaemin was equally perplexed. Last but not least you called Jeno.

He answered. “Hello?”

At this point, you couldn’t hold back your tears anymore. “Jeno…”

“Y/n? What’s wrong?”

“Do you know where Xiaojun is?”

“Not specifically...he did mention he had a reservation at the Downtown Hotel…”

You sniffled. “He did?”

“I thought he was meeting you…”

“No, he wasn’t…”

“Oh...Oh, shit, y/n. I am so-“

“It’s okay...Thanks Jeno. I’ll see you on Monday…”

You told your friends to have dinner without you and to make sure to spare no expense because your so-called boyfriend was buying. You told them Xiaojun finished at the last minute and wanted to take you dancing.

A total lie so you could wallow at your local bar.

You sat right by the bar and downed a few glasses of beer. Just to feel anything else besides the betrayal you felt.

A half hour later, you were even more buzzed now. A young man sat beside you at the counter.

He started, “Hello, gorgeous.”

You looked at the young man. He was stunning. Another face that belonged on television. Another one of those who was capable of seducing you and tossing you away the very next second.

You flipped the bird. “Bite me.”

The young man scoffed and tried again, “Feisty, aren’t we?”

He got closer to you and you began to feel uncomfortable. “Please leave me alone…”

“Tsk tsk. A beautiful girl like you in tears? You need someone who will bring your smile back.”

“And you’re the man for that job?” Someone interrupted.

You were shocked to find Jeno here. He looked gorgeous in a black leather jacket and dark jeans. His hair was slicked back the way you liked it most and wow, you may have had one too many drinks...A few customers recognized Jeno and started whispering and taking their cameras out.

“Jeno?” You nearly lost your balance as you got up from your chair.

Jeno grabbed you immediately before the other guy could.

The stranger said, “Why do you get to put your hands on her? Just cause you're some pretty boy with mediocre music...I’m sure she’s nothing compared to who you’ve bedded before-“

Jeno socked him in the face and escorted you out of the bar. The stranger cursed you both out as you left. Jeno led you quickly into his manager’s car that he borrowed for the night. You felt a little dizzy.

Jeno fastened your seatbelt.

You smiled at him. “Thanks.”

He looked at you in concern. “Are you okay?”

You shook your head. “Why are men scum, Jeno?”

Jeno sighed. “I’m so sorry about-“

“Don’t say his name...I...never want to see him again...God, now I have to sell all of his merch…”

Jeno frowned in confusion and continued, “I’ll take you home…”

You didn’t want to face your roommates. “No...Can I…Spend the night with you?”

It took all of Jeno’s might not to get out his car and raise his fist in the air. But he composed himself. “Are you sure?”

You nodded, wanting to forget all about Xiaojun and have one thoughtless night with Jeno. “Yes.”

Jeno drove you two to his penthouse suite. He was cautious around you and you were ready to shrug away your inhibitions.

Jeno helped you remove your coat at the entrance. “Take a seat. I’ll get you some water.”

You sat yourself on the couch and opened your legs wide, exposing your panties underneath your skirt. “Jeno, fuck me right now so I can forget his sorry ass.”

Jeno hesitated then but seeing how irresistible you were...He couldn’t help himself.

He asked again. “Are you sure?”

You nodded. You were buzzed but not that buzzed. You wanted to spite Xiaojun. You wanted to acknowledge the part of you that longed for Jeno for so long, too. You’d be stupid to deny that you fantasized about a night with him.

You hesitated before but now you said, why the hell not?  

You and Jeno made love that night. Jeno was over the moon that you were finally in his arms. Sure it was a rebound but the look in your eyes when he was inside you had to mean something. There was a promise there and Jeno held onto that glimmer of hope.

Jeno took you home the next day and he was very cool about the whole night. Right before you returned home. you reminded him about how this was a one night stand and thanked him for a wonderful night.

You were resolute in dumping Xiaojun and simply going back to work. Thankful you only ever worked for Jeno anyway. And as expected, Jeno was his usual self: cocky, flirty, sending his food back for random reasons.

Xiaojun came under the fire for going to a hotel with a potential prostitute. The identity of the woman he was seen with remained a mystery. He tried convincing everyone that the woman was not a prostitute but he couldn’t remember how he met her or what she looked like. That night and along with how crazy Xiaojun sounded caused the company to encourage him to leave. Xiaojun’s contract with LCF Entertainment was terminated.

The week after you and Jeno made love...You started catching feelings for him. Every glance. Every fleeting touch. It drove you mad. And suddenly that one night stand was something you wanted again. And again. And again.

You accompanied Jeno and his manager as he attended a gallery opening. You were in charge of his photos for his social media. He looked extremely dapper in his red suit. You just wanted to rip his clothes off and make love to him in front of all of the guests. Becoming a work of art yourselves.

These thoughts you’ve been having used to scare you but now...you owned them. Tonight, when you got him alone, you would tell him how you really felt. You hoped you weren’t too late.

Jeno’s manager excused himself to get some refreshments. Jeno observed a painting while you took some more photos.

“Stunning,” you said aloud.

Jeno’s eyes grew at your words. “Wow, y/n...All the years we’ve worked together and you’ve never made a comment about my looks…”

Your face grew warm then. “I’m feeling a little bolder these days…”

He grinned. “Is that so?”

“Jeno, I won’t beat around the bush…I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that night…”

“Y/n…”

“I know I said it was a one night stand and...You’ve moved on…”

Jeno started, “I haven’t…”

You were shocked to hear it. “Really?”

He moved closer to you and moved the camera away from your line of sight. “What are you saying, y/n?” His voice was dangerously low.

“I’m saying...that I want to be with you, Jeno.”

Jeno’s smile looked so gorgeous then. He was the true work of art at the gallery. “Well, y/n, I’ve made my feelings abundantly clear for a while now…”

He kissed you then. And the cameras started flashing.

You were on cloud nine. You finally released your suppressed feelings for the rockstar before you.

___

You’ve been together for two years now. He made you feel safe and loved. He showered you with gifts and trips to the most beautiful parts of the world.

As for the response from netizens and the company? Jeno had all the power and he could handle a few naysayers. Your job as his photographer and videographer remained intact. And you were well on your way to transitioning to your own film projects: your dream.

You and Jeno had become a couple to root for. They called you The Prince and The Pauper Turned Princess. You hated your label but whenever you looked at Jeno’s eyes, any anxiety or anger quickly faded.

Jeno had a solo performance in your city tonight and you were seated in a private booth. He was performing so well, moving from instrument to instrument. Driving people to tears with his long low notes. And then he surprised everyone with his announcement.

“Before I perform ‘Changed Your Mind’, I want to give a shout-out to the woman of my dreams, y/n, who is here with us tonight.”

The stadium roared in excitement and many heads turned to you. Your eyes never left Jeno.

“Y/n, I love you so much. We’ve come so far, baby. And I want us to never stop. Which is why…”

He got down from the stage and was escorted by security down to the crowd. He ran his hands past adoring fans as he made his way to you.

He entered your booth with his camera crew and security close by. “Y/n, will you marry me?”

You cried out, “Yes!”

Jeno picked you up and spun you around. You kissed passionately. The crowd’s roars thundered now. It was a celebration. You didn’t care that all eyes were on you now, as well. All you cared about was Jeno. And he loved you more than anything else in the world.

You truly found your soulmate and you couldn’t be happier.

___

Jeno finished his show and was backstage cooling down with a bottle of water.

“Good job tonight,” a woman said as she stood at the door of Jeno’s dressing room.

“Thank you, sis. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Jeno’s older sister Yeeun sat on the couch of the dressing room. “How does it feel to have her in your clutches now?”

Jeno smirked. “Pretty damn great.”

“And I’m here to collect my payment, little brother.”

Jeno sighed. “Really? It’s been two years.”

Yeeun looked at her manicured nails. “I’ve been busy.”

Jeno laughed. “Screwing over taken men? I’m sorry, I meant screwing taken men?”

“Nope. That task was a one-and-done deal. How is that poor boy doing these days?”

“Xiaojun? He’s back at school getting his master’s...He’s happy.”

“Has he tried to contact y/n since then?” Yeeun asked.

Jeno chuckled. “No. Why would he?”

She smiled at him. “They were sweet together. And you tore them apart because you couldn’t take no for an answer, could you?”

Jeno rolled his eyes. “And what about it? I have a right to get whatever I want. Do you know who I am?”

Yeeun sighed. “Yes, you repeatedly tell the family group chat who you are every week. And we all take it because you pay us well…”

Jeno and Yeeun had conspired against you and Xiaojun. Jeno stole Xiaojun’s phone and Yeeun charmed Xiaojun to join her for a night at the hotel. Jeno planned for you to go to Osaka Moon so you could see Xiaojun and Yeeun together.

Jeno watched you as you broke down in tears, calling each of his bandmates. He made sure he was far enough away by the time you called him. He played the part of a concerned friend very well. He had to take up acting, another field he would surely dominate. And with you as his director? It made him hard just thinking about it.

Jeno didn’t coincidentally find you at the bar. He’d been tailing and that stranger who hit on you was only an added bonus. Jeno could play the unsuspecting hero and you would eat it up. And that you did. He was satisfied to know that you wanted to sleep with him. He didn’t care about being a rebound.

Even so, he wasn’t going to take any chances. So after you left his penthouse the next morning, he took the bedsheets you came on and the strands of hair you left behind and got to work.

Did you really think Jeno amassed such success and wealth all on his own? He had a little help from his family and their friends from Hell, of course. Jeno’s family came from a long line of Satan-worshipping witches. Jeno was the youngest of the descendants.

Human sacrifice was only a small token of the Lee family’s appreciation to Lucifer. So Jeno’s deception of Xiaojun was almost nothing in the list of gruesome things Jeno has done to reach the top of his game.

Yeeun was able to literally charm Xiaojun with her own special concoction. Once she and Xiaojun had sex, she wiped his memory of that hour and left him alone at the hotel. Confused. Disoriented. Worried.

As for you? Well, you were the most irresistible creature in this world. Your immunity to his charms was only the first step in his growing feelings for you. You were brilliant and talented at your craft, always capturing his best features on camera. You were gorgeous. He was surprised you didn’t become an idol at LCF yourself. You were warm and sweet and giving. Even if the company was cutthroat, he saw how you’d be with your coworkers and the other idols. You were just a pure, loving girl. And he desperately needed you. Desired you. Craved you.

He simply had to call you his.

With your samples, he was able to create the perfect spell to make you his.

Forever.

That was what Jeno called true love.

[Fin]

#nct #nct 127 #jeno #lee jeno #jeno boyfriend #boyfriend nct #nct dream boyfriend #nct dream au #nct dream x you #Nct dream fic #Nct dream scenario #Jeno scenario #Jeno blurb #Jeno imagine #Jeno x you #Jeno x reader #nct dream x reader #Nct x reader #Nct x you #Nct Jeno #Nct dream Jeno #Nct halloween #nct halloween blurb #nct au #nct imagine #nct scenarios

[adifferenttime]

Andrew Ryan vs. Robert House

On almost every House post I make, someone in the notes will reliably reference Andrew Ryan. I totally get it - they look similar, they're based on the same guy, the parallels are so clear that the NV dev team added an achievement for killing House with a golf club - but I think these commonalities tend to engulf both characters, blotting out some of their more interesting ideological/personal differences. It's useful to examine them in relation to one another, but part of that is figuring out what distinguishes them, which is just what I’ve attempted to do.

It's difficult for me to talk about Randian objectivism because I don't think it's sound enough to address on its own terms, but considering this is the philosophy Andrew Ryan has adopted, I kind of have to. What I’d identify as the core premise of Randian ethics is this: altruism is a moral wrong. Some Randians have argued that isn't really what they believe - that the real point is anything resembling altruism is self-interest in disguise - but they're departing from the beliefs of their icon when they make those claims. Per Rand:

The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute is self-sacrifice – which means self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction – which means the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good.

The way Rand defines altruism is by linking it to self-sacrifice, which she uses to differentiate it from kindness or benevolence. Aiding others at no cost to yourself is benevolent, but not altruistic, and therefore not evil. Sacrificing your happiness to help another human being is, from Rand's perspective, evil, as is any philosophy that prioritizes the other at the cost of the self. This whole idea has been broadly rejected by most scholars on account of it being really fucking stupid. What justifies the leap from "man is naturally selfish" to "selfishness is good"? If selfishness is moral, wouldn't the most moral behavior be to exploit others through whatever means necessary, favoring force over the market? Rand defines happiness as "using your mind’s fullest power," achievable only when you "do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal," but why is this the only definition? What if your only options are self-sacrificial in nature? How do you weigh them if neither sacrifice is linked to values, individual achievement, or "your mind's fullest power" at all? Rand didn't care because she was too busy trying to ethically justify cheating on her man with her best friend's husband, but nonetheless, this is the philosophy Andrew Ryan’s adopted. He claims that "Altruism is the root of all Wickedness," in what's almost a direct quote from Rand herself.

To that end, Ryan builds a system that doesn’t just accept selfishness but actively incentivizes it. Every other principle he expresses is subservient to the ideas that selfishness rules man, and that for Ryan to act on his own selfish impulses is the highest good in the world. His lesser political principles (individual liberties, negative rights, the creation of a stateless society) don’t matter to him as much as the central precept from which they stem: that selfishness is his moral imperative.

What is the greatest lie every created? What is the most vicious obscenity ever perpetrated on mankind? Slavery? The Holocaust? Dictatorship? No. It's the tool with which all that wickedness is built: altruism.

It doesn't come as a particular surprise to me when he starts imprisoning dissidents or executing rivals or banning theft (standard practice in most societies, but not what an egoist would pursue; if you can get away with taking it, you deserve to have it, or so the thinking goes). I’ve seen him described as a hypocrite, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true considering everything he does is in line with his opposition to altruism. He'll adhere to his other principles only if they don’t sabotage his pursuit of personal power. This is evident in the fact that he only adopts a negative perception of Fontaine when his own interests are threatened, but doesn’t give two shits what Fontaine might be doing to sow conflict and harm people before that point. A guy named Gregory asks Ryan to step in against Fontaine early on before Fontaine's fully established himself as a threat to Ryan's power, and Ryan's extremely blase about it.

Don't expect me to punish citizens for showing a little initiative. If you don't like what Fontaine is doing, well, I suggest you find a way to offer a better product.

Contrast this with how he reacts when Fontaine has risen as a genuine business rival. This is from the log titled "Fontaine Must Go."

Something must be done about Fontaine. While I was buying buildings and fish futures, he was cornering the market on genotypes and nucleotide sequences. Rapture is transforming before my eyes. The Great Chain is pulling away from me.

This double standard is the natural outgrowth of his prioritization of self-interest. If your most deeply-held belief is that you should never give up your interests for others, ancillary rules become flexible in times of personal crisis, and Bioshock makes the case that putting someone like that in charge of a city will leave you with a crumbling, monstrous ruin.

Superficially, House has some similarities. Ryan executes political rivals; House has you blow up a bunker of his ideological opponents. Ryan is the highest authority in Rapture; House is the absolute monarch of Vegas. Their goals and moral codes, though, are almost diametrically opposed. When you ask House why you’re expected to trust him when he’s openly admitting to installing himself as the despot of the New Vegas Strip, he says this:

I have no interest in abusing others... Nor have I any interest in being worshipped as some kind of machine-god messiah. I am impervious to such corrupting ambitions.

Most of his resources are devoted to large-scale, impersonal projects, aimed either at building the power of Vegas or securing his long term goal of “progress” as he sees it. He’s rejected selfishness as a moral good because House is very far from Randian objectivism. He's a Hobbesian monarch.

In that respect, he shares an outlook on human nature with Ryan that I deeply disagree with (that human beings are essentially selfish), but in terms of what that means for the structure of a utopian society, House takes a very different position. From his perspective, human nature breeds suffering, not industriousness, and the only way to stamp out conflict - and, in a post-nuclear age, ensure the continued survival of the human race - is through a strong sovereign. The purpose of a state as laid out in Leviathan aligns very, very closely with the one House expresses.

...the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men...

The monarch's successes are reflected in his society and the well-being of humanity as a whole. To subvert his goals is to subvert society's goals, and to doom humanity to the war, death, and suffering that exist in a state of nature. When you destroy his Securitrons/kill him, he doesn't plead for himself or get offended on his own behalf. He accuses you of betraying not him, but mankind.

Single-handedly, you've brought mankind's best hopes of forward progress crashing down. No punishment would be too severe. Fool... to let... personalities... derail future... of mankind? ...Stupid! Slavery... the future of... mankind? What... have you... done?

An important corollary of this idea which again distinguishes House from Ryan appears in Leviathan’s description of the political/moral responsibility of a monarch to his subjects:

...that great Leviathan, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence. For by this authority... he hath the use of so much power that, by terror thereof, he is enabled to form the wills of them all, to peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad.

Hobbes and House give the monarch virtually unlimited power but match it to the monarch's duty, which he lives to fulfill. His obligation is to speak for the people, act for them, and protect them from all threats, internal and external. House generally abides by this, orienting his decisions around his goals for society irrespective of the personal cost (the negative consequences of his actions are a product of his fucked evaluations of what’s best for society, not personal greed). It’s not just a departure from Ryan’s philosophy but a complete refutation of it. He's almost died for what he's misidentified as the greatest good.

Given that I had to make do with buggy software, the outcome could have been worse. I nearly died as it was…. I spent the next few decades in a veritable coma.

This is not the behavior of an egoist. This is the behavior of an extremely arrogant but marginally altruistic (from a Randian perspective lmao) guy. This is some distorted “from each according to his ability” shit if you’ve managed to convince yourself your abilities exceed those of everyone else who has ever lived and that you can get the Mandate of Heaven by being really good at statistics.

The reason these guys develop such similar structures and hierarchies despite the ideological gulfs between them is because both of them are elitists who’ve experienced a massive failure of self-consciousness. They’re unable to conceive of other people as being fundamentally like them. Ryan separates people into the clearly-delineated classes of “producer” and “parasite,” ignoring the fact that everything he’s ever “produced” was reliant on a huge, coordinated effort between workers, architects, accountants, middlemen, and others, all of whom, in conjunction, contributed more to the realization of his dreams that he ever could have alone. Rather than realizing his own position is more parasitic and reliant on other people’s labor than that of anyone else in Rapture, he adheres to his doctrine of selfishness even when it’s not reflective of reality and is ruining the the lives of an entire city of people. He deludes himself into believing he’s a superman among ants instead of one flawed man who is reliant on the goodwill of others to help him survive, as are we all.

House, too, thinks he’s exceptional. Unlike Ryan, he acknowledges the necessity of the worker to a functioning society, but while he’ll accept his reliance on that labor, he doesn’t trust the laborer enough to share political power. House knows he’s invested in humanity’s survival and the creation of a better world, but he refuses to consider that he might not be alone in this goal. He chalks up the existence of the Legion to fanaticism/the ambitions of a sultanistic dictator and attributes everything the NCR has done to greed, without it ever occurring to him that the massive harm these nations have done was partially motivated by the same goals he’s devoted himself to - and that the atrocities he’s committed since his rise to power are, in some respects, very similar. House knows himself to be invested in the well-being of humanity, but he’s too arrogant to ask himself if his methods are wrong or trust other people to build a new path, one that doesn’t necessitate his complete control over the land and people of the Mojave. Ryan and House’s worldviews are distinct, and their flaws, as highlighted by their respective narratives, say some interesting things about how each set of devs view power and the pitfalls of elitism.

Anyway. If you put these two men in a room, they would probably try to murder each other, and I think that’s great.

#Robert House #Andrew Ryan #fallout meta #bioshock meta #fnv #bioshock #fallout new vegas

[cotton-candy-in-a-thong]

Noncon stories, Fantasy vs. Reality, and more. fucking. issues.

Recently, I’ve been hit with some drama as to why I’m a “bad person” by various, anonymous users in this fandom. I thought I’d try to address the claim, address my stance on fics that involve noncon, and what I think about the “Tumblr mentality” after everything I’ve seen of this place. I should also note that I’m going to use the specific words and phrases I’ve been forced to constantly repeat as explaining my stance has been very difficult for me, as I’m a person who’s apparently challenging to understand.

This is going to be a long post, with subjects that's obviously going to trigger people so here's a warning right now..

That being said, I’m going to dive into this with some shit I’ve definitely said before:

“Consensual Noncon” Kink

The Appeal of this Theme in Fanfiction:

I don't think calling fics that involve noncon "rape fics" and those who enjoy it "getting off to rape" is a very good way to put it. Many engaging and well done media pieces often involve some very dark themes. Again, Monster by Meg and Dia is a song that features the main character sexually abusing a girl he met. You COULD call this a "rape song", but acting as if the rape is the only thing that matters in this story would be pretty..naive. The story has to do with an emotionally, and physically neglected/abused boy, who grows up and becomes an attention/love starved monster who's SO starving for validation, that he believes forcing himself upon a girl he knew would "prove" to himself that he's capable of being touched and loved. Of course, the main character eventually realizes that rape is not love, that what he did was wrong, and later kills himself in his own bathtub with kerosene and a match.

However, the assault aspect of this song is still a meaningful and alluring part because it talks about how emotional and physical abuse can warp someone's perspective on reality, to the point where they think forcing someone to "stay" with them is how to create a healthy relationship. That's the same energy I have for noncon fics, especially in the slasher fandom. Many slasher fics that contain noncon often have to do with the slasher preying on the reader because of their own fucked up mind. It's intriguing because, let's be honest, pretty much none of the slashers are in a pretty good mental space lmao. Thus, noncon actually falls more in line with how slashers would go about what they believe is a "good relationship" more often than quite a bit of fans here seem to believe. Again, Michael got boners, Jason chained someone up, Fredddy smooches people against their will, Billy Lenz is a sex offender, Chromeskull makes snuff, yada yada yada, you know the drill. That being said, it's interesting to see noncon being expressed with these characters because it gives us a new perspective on how fucked up they'd likely be if the world of sex and relationships was introduced to these characters.

Now why would some people become sexually aroused by the events of the story? First of all, how does “Consensual Noncon” kink work?

u/Jumbledcode. (2015). ‘Can anyone comment on why people (someone like me) enjoy rape/non-con story lines?’. r/TwoXChromosomes.

“I'd suggest that there are several factors that make up the appeal of non-con fantasies.

Guilt/Self-image: For many people, their sexual/relationship desires don't necessarily match their image of themselves, or alternatively they feel guilt over others' perceptions of those desires. Rape fantasies allow them to mantain some illusion of denial over their desires while still indulging in the idea of them.

Responsibility/Laziness: The appeal of abdicating control isn't limited to avoiding guilt; it's very tempting to want a scenario where you have no responsibility for maintaining your lifestyle/happiness. Similarly to before, it's the appeal of being given what you secretly want without even having to choose it.

Transgressiveness: A rape scenario has overtones of danger and taboo-breaking. These can easily be exciting and can therefore be a turn-on.

Desire: Being wanted is often a huge turn-on, and the idea of someone desiring you enough to break laws and disregard everything to have you plays into this feeling.

To me, it seems that most people who fantasize about being the subject of rape do so due to some mix of these motivations I've mentioned. Of course, there are also those who have experiences which have taught them to associate non-consent with their sexuality, but that's a separate issue”.

What if the Fanfic Only Involves the Act though? Wouldn’t it Encourage Actual Rape?

Let’s differentiate fantasy and reality. Towards those with the noncon kink: it offers arousal because of the ideas listed above (the idea of the reader not having to make any moves and the character doing the “intimate work” FOR them, the excitement of such a taboo sexual encounter, and the feeling to be desired through an altered, brutish encounter). Rape is the use of sex to remove control over the victim’s mind and body. The readers DO have control over whether or not they get to “encounter” (the choice to even read) this fantasy, so right away consent is present in reality, and no actual rape is being done.

Now does this mean that the kinkers are getting off on the idea of rape? Not really.

The thing with self-inserts is that it allows you to be connected to the story. That way, even if the story has you bruised up and begging for mercy, a part of you-you (if you’re a kinker) wants to keep reading it as you find it exciting. That way, as you and story-you are connected, what you really want in such a fantasy is for it to keep going despite the brutish, possessive, however yet desired nature of the character you’re dreaming about dealing with. (repeat: the idea of the reader not having to make any moves and the character doing the “intimate work” FOR them, the excitement of such a taboo sexual encounter, and the feeling to be desired through an altered, brutish encounter). That being said, it’s still entirely possible for kinkers to have their personal space and wishes crossed, and ultimately assaulted. Us enjoying the fantasy of such a reverie sexual encounter does not spell out to real life because (in reality) we’re not horny all the time, we would still like our bodies to be respected when we find it necessary, and we still have feelings as we’re still human.

“Fantasy (including video games) leads to violence” fallacy.

It would be like assuming that shooters in games like GTA fantacise about murder, encourage it, and would do it in real life. Taking fabricated anger out on virtual bodies or NPCs is quite different from the weight of murder (the killing of another human being). One can play video games with lots of violence towards such fabricated characters, while discouraging violence towards human beings. The act of using a game controller to beat up Donkey Kong in Smash, to shoot Nazi zombies in a Black Ops game, or to kill a Geisha in Little Nightmares is incredibly, and immensely different from completely eradicating the life of a person on Earth, and to assume that everyone who plays violent video games would spill out to violence in reality would be to participate in a ridiculous fallacy. Yes, there are outliers who are feeble minded enough to let their fantasies influence their actions towards actual people, but I must repeat that there are also people who utilize these fantasies for their personal satisfaction, while understanding the weight of the real world around them (and choosing not to act so detrimentally). Therefore, it wouldn’t be fair as it would be unnecessary to blatantly say that all fantasies are horrible and should be entirely eradicated if there ARE many people who ARE aware enough to understand that some thoughts are better off staying in fiction.

Now is the time to address what’s been said:

...Firstly, I think it’s very disgusting that random users, on Tumblr of all places, are trying to manipuate random victims of sexual assault into hating something or someone just because these users FEEL like “it’s the right thing to do”.. People, victims of sexual assault aren’t your fucking dogs. They’re not carriage horses, they’re not your work mules, they’re not your guns and swords...they’re just people who normally wanna be left the fuck alone like everyone else. Plus, there ARE people who have experienced sexual assault who take joy in reading such dark storylines. What would these users have to say to them? That they’re not “real” victims? That what they’ve experienced “never happened”? That they’re “just like” their own perpetrators for using the consensual nonconsent to miraculously help them overcome their trauma? Should they really abandon their coping mechanism just because there are other victims who cope in different ways?

..If you seriously believe that all people who have gone through a traumatic event are gonna cope in the exact same fucking way, you literally don’t even know enough about PTSD to even be making a bold statement about cope.

This is the part where I finally realized that people, and especially those on Tumblr, don’t actually care about rape victims as much as they may claim. Many users on here, on this platform and in this fandom, don’t truly give a flying monkey shit about rape victims as people, nor what they have to say about the subject. Rape victims..on this place..seem to be used mainly as a means of figurative weaponry for a group’s subjective morality.

I find the similarity close to radical feminism. Radical feminists often believe that women, from near and far, have to do everything in their power to “destroy” the patriarchy. This would mean disobeying the societal expectation of women, even if there are some women who take joyment in engaging in some societal standards for their personal liking. An example would be sex work. Radical feminists acknowledge the flaws in performing sex work, but believe that NO woman should EVER partake even if the woman wants to do it out of her own free will. In demonizing and ostracizing any woman who doesn’t fall into the radical feminist agenda, radical feminists actually contradict their purpose to “let women be free”. At this point, you realize that radical feminists often don’t actually give a fuck about what any woman wants for herself. Instead, radical feminists want to utilize any woman they can find just to flip off men as a group.

In Tumblr users trying to “stand up” for rape victims for their personal “holier-than-thou” ego, they fail to care enough about the very people they defend to understand the dynamics of some of their coping mechanisms, thus begin to bully some members of the group they claim to protect because of the very narcissism, misunderstanding, and controlling nature going on behind their own “activism”. So now that some users have found something to hate, in this case being noncon stories, they attempt to manipulate victims of rape into ostraciszing and demonizing fantasies and other victims of rape just because the “activists” themsleves don’t like it. Even trying to argue that rape victims have a “duty” to agree with everything these “activists” try to do for them.

Sounds awfully familiar to the attitude democrats have towards any minority when it’s time to vote. “I care about you...but you have to agree with everything I say and believe because I want what I think is best for you. If you disagree with me, you’re ungrateful and a traitor”.

Now...a little about myself.

I’m not sure of everyone else who’s into the noncon type of story, but I use it to get away from my past. In noncon stories, I want to read what happens in the chapters. I want to imagine them for morbid curiosity and arousal I feel at the time being. In reality, my attackers didn’t care when I wasn’t in the mood, and never gave me a choice. In noncon stories, I get to choose the character I want to encounter in the fantasy and NOT have it picked FOR me. In real life, I didn’t get to choose who did some things to me. In noncon stories, I get to stop reading them and do something else whenever I’m not feeling it anymore. In reality? My attackers kept going because, in the situation, it was no longer up to me. After noncon stories, my body doesn’t walk away with bruises, bite marks, and physical reminders every time I take my clothes off or try to masturbate. In real life...that shit can mark you, disease you, and then traumatize you. With the stories, I get to delete my search history, join another fandom, and act like nothing ever happened. For reality? Your own body is a reminder of what happened because it was real. In reality, I’m NEVER gonna fucking forget what happened. I’ll be lucky if my own mind and body doesn’t haunt me for at least one day..

So seeing that someone, and probably multiple people not only tried to use victims of sexual assault for their own “go get em” dogs, but to try and phrase me as someone who loves and encourages such an assault on human beings? After the things I felt? After the things I tasted? After pathetically searching for the support of relatives, just to get shut down with “you’re lying”?..

...All the times I've been held down..threatened..clothes getting snagged off..parts being opened and touched after I've fought to just get the fuck away from certain people...

According to this anon..."she likes rape".

...I guess I just fucking LOVED EVERYTHING THEN.

You know...all my life I’ve been misunderstood by many people. It’s honestly really disappointing that even now when I’m better at explaining myself than ever, I’m STILL being phrased as a “psychopath” by random people who haven’t even taken the time to even know me. Not even from a minute-long conversation through a damn computer screen. And you wanna know the funny thing? I’m probably being laughed at as this is being read. Some of these users, these internet stalkers, are probably giggling, smiling, and saying “Haha YES we GOT the bitch!! Cry you piece of shit SLUT!!”. So maybe explaining my past experiences to help everyone understand why some people may use noncon stories to their fantasy advantage is gonna land me messages going: “You haven’t been raped you lying bitch”, “Maybe you should get raped again”, “You definitely enjoyed it”, and the overused, yet strong “Kill yourself”.

So how am I gonna end this message? With me saying that many of you, who THINK you’re doing the right thing by justifying harassment and trying to manipulate others into joining your little crusade to bully people away from the fandom (over extremely mundane fucking things)...aren’t really good people. At best, in this case...you’re fucking stupid. You will never truly speak for any of the marginalized groups you claim to know like the back of your hand. Simply, you will never. be. a hero.

If by chance, by an astrological chance..that any random user wants to come up and apologize out of the blue for talking such shit and for saying such things..I don't even wanna hear it...just get the fuck out of my face..

#slashers #slasher fandom #tw noncon #consensual noncon #fandom drama #long post #past experiences #anon ask

[fluffyblaire]

why can’t Hawks refuse?

‼️MANGA SPOILERS‼️

Tootooroo~ 🎺Buckle up, folks, it’s time for a Hawks character analysis! 

Today, we’re going to talk about what kind of person Keigo is, how Keigo reconciles with Hawks, how much of the HPSC is inside of Hawks and how all of that comes together to answer the question: “why can’t Hawks refuse?”

Section I: Keigo

Looking at Keigo as a grown up, it can be hard to tell which of his actions are natural to him and which ones are a result of the HPSC’s upbringing. However, there is one place where we can see what kind of person Keigo is at the very core, before the HPSC or any other major societal institution touched him. 

Exhibit A: “Top heroes have stories about them from their school days. Most of their stories have one thing in common: their bodies moved before they had a chance to think.” —All Might

When Keigo was a kid, he saved this entire family. This is his origin story, the story “from [his] school days” if he had gone to school, the story where “[his] body moved before [he] had a chance to think.” As a child, he saved a family from a disaster, and that should tell you a lot more about his character other than just that he was a very physically capable boy.

Keigo has the heart of a true hero, and he had it long before hero society’s influence reached him. He didn’t need the society around him to tell him to be selfless. He didn’t need the media broadcasting heroics every day to tell him helping people is good. He just does. He lived in the slums and if anything, his environment and thief relative would have taught him the opposite: be selfish, that’s how you survive. But he’s not like that. He gives and gives and doesn’t even stick around for recognition. 

This is who Takami Keigo is and while he will lose and gain layers of personality after the Commission recruits him, the core motivations, values, and emotions that compelled him to save this family do not change.

Section II: Hawks

After the HPSC recruits Keigo, Keigo’s heroic heart begins to blend with the tools and habits the HPSC gives him. Keigo, combined with the Commission’s training, becomes Hawks.

Now, what did the HPSC do to Keigo? I don’t think they physically or emotionally abused him for years—at least not in the conventional sense. If that were the case, I believe we would have gotten the details by now. I do think that Keigo must have suffered and that he was taken advantage of by the adults around him in a very strategic and unethical way. Let’s look at all the things I can dissect about Keigo’s upbringing by the Commission.

Exhibit B: “My back just ain’t broad enough to put the people at ease.” —Hawks

The first thing to note is that baby Keigo had big dreams when he was first recruited.

He wanted to be a shiny hero the likes of Endeavor but when we meet Hawks, one of the first major character depth details we find out about him is that he thinks his own back isn’t enough.

Sometime between when he agreed to the HPSC’s training and when he became the No.2 hero, something in Keigo died. A dream died, and he has accepted that he cannot be like his childhood hero. Comparing himself to Endeavor, Hawks thinks himself inferior in more ways than just power stats.

Keigo knows there is a disconnect between what he wanted to be and what he actually became, but he also knows his role well and still tries his best with it even though it isn’t the one he thought he had been promised when the HPSC recruited him. He is unsatisfied but he still does his best. Why? Because after all these years, the kid who flew straight into an automobile disaster to save an entire family is still there underneath the Commission’s manufactured hero. 

He still wants to protect people who can’t protect themselves; his dissatisfaction with how he achieves that didn’t dampen that spirit. This is why he works his ass off but still seems discontent with himself. His role may not be his ideal one but through it, he can protect people, and that’s enough for him to keep doing his best.

Exhibit C: “A special program... to become a special hero.” —Unknown

The second thing to bring up is that if the Commission did not make Hawks like his role model, what did they make him? 

Keigo just wanted to be a flashy hero that saves people from bad guys. A very simple, honest type of hero. The Commission did give him the skills for that, but they also gave him skills that a simple, honest hero should never need: espionage, acting, lying, manipulation, and who knows what else.

Hawks’ hero education was not the same education the UA kids are getting. In this panel, Hawks narrates as if his “negotiation skills” were a convenient coincidence, but come on. What straight forward, honest hero (like All Might, Endeavor, Miruko—you get the type) would need social manipulation skills? The HPSC knew what they were doing when they selected Hawks’ curriculum, and the material came in handy at last when they assigned him this mission that a simple, honest hero should never have to take on. The HPSC never intended to turn Hawks into a simple, honest hero; they wanted to turn him into a hyper-competent soldier to whom they can assign the hardest, dirtiest work that no ordinary hero would be willing to do. 

Judging by the way he joked about the HPSC’s “proposal,” I am led to believe that Hawks is used to his own feelings and concerns not mattering. People, especially children, do not naturally accept that their wants don’t matter, so what does this tell you about how Hawks was raised?

Exhibit D: My Hero Academia ED7

The third thing I need to talk about is this photo. I think one look at this photo of Keigo from ED7 should tell you something was off with his childhood even after he was taken in by the Commission.

Out of all the photos Bones could have shown of baby Keigo, they chose a photo of him in a hospital gown, blindfolded, surrounded by nameless, faceless men in suits with a chain-linked fence in the background of a cold metal training facility. If you look too quickly, you’d think his hands were tied in front of him because of the way his posture and pose is drawn.

This photo choice alone is enough to submit to me that something unethical was going on when the Commission picked Keigo up, and Horikoshi and the producers of the anime want us to read it as unethical. We are meant to read Hawks as a victim here, but we are given no indication in the story that Hawks thinks of himself as a victim. Once again, I am led to believe that he is accustomed to his own feelings not mattering in the grand scheme of things. He has no expectations of being treated more considerately, so he does not view himself as a victim of anything.

Exhibit E: Lonely Birdie

The fourth thing I want to bring up is Hawks’ lack of human connections. The Commission talked as if he had a family when they picked him up, but there’s no mention of that family when we see Hawks as a pro. He leaves his sidekicks behind. He has a professional, frosty relationship with the HPSC, the people who raised him from childhood. He has no one who is a friend close enough that the question of his civilian name would have even come up. The colleague he trusted most with info on his PLF infiltration was Endeavor who he’d only know in person for a few months.

Hawks can be very likable; his approval rating is high and the common folk love him. He is also very perceptive of and constantly thinking of others. And yet he has no close human connections, and the only explanation I can think of for this is that he distances himself from others either consciously or subconsciously.

This tells me either Keigo had no chances/time to seek out human connections on his own as he grew up or he was discouraged from forming those connections altogether. In either case, I doubt he was shown much affection during his training. He was not treated as if a child adopted into a family; he was treated as a new recruit to be guided and whipped into shape. A lack of human relationships while growing up likely led to his lack of relationships as an adult.

Exhibit F: Guilty Birdie

The fifth thing to note is that Hawks blames himself for anything that is not swift, decisive success. He always moves like he’s running out of time and thinks like he must do everything on his own. 

This mindset is very self-destructive and the consistency with which he repeatedly monologues lines like “think of the citizens/think of Japan/if only you did X” tells me this mindset was something that was drilled into him from the outside. These don’t sound like things you would monologue to yourself to psych yourself up. These sound like things a trainer or coach would tell you repeatedly in order to guilt you into working harder. 

Section III: Why Can’t Hawks Refuse?

Accepting that his own feelings don’t matter, distancing himself from others, using guilt to push himself, etc.���I think these are small habits the HPSC strategically instilled in Hawks through his environment as they raised him. The HPSC had an agenda while raising Hawks, but it’s nothing as dramatic as brainwashing. Instead, the Commission focused on building small and seemingly harmless habits like the ones I’ve noted. These habits can be positive if applied correctly but instead, over the years, they’ve subtly broken down Hawks’ sense of self-love and made him a slave to his own heroic heart.

His own feelings don’t matter when it comes to fulfilling his role, so Hawks will never refuse a mission just because he doesn’t like it. He habitually guilts himself with a reminder of who he is doing everything for—the people—so he’ll always work hard and fast. He distances himself from others, so no one will ever get close enough to him to teach him his human value and change his habits. Take these tendencies and make them second nature to a man whose heart is far too giving, and it’s not hard to see how the Commission trapped Hawks without having to actually trap him.

I don’t think the HPSC is doing anything dark like threatening/blackmailing Hawks. They don’t need to. Hawks can’t refuse their request because, deep down, he is simply too kind. If he is given a chance to save people, he won’t let himself abandon the opportunity. If he can take the burden of a dirty job off of someone else’s shoulders, he will. 

Keigo wasn’t a good hero candidate just because of his Quirk. His nature is too kind, especially to those he doesn’t know, and the Commission saw it from the beginning and took advantage of it. They don’t have to brainwash or leash him. All they had to do was teach him some self-destructive but seemingly heroic habits and those along with Keigo’s innate selflessness are more than enough to keep him focused on his role and unable to flat-out say no to the Commission.

Exhibit G: The Diamond

Lastly, let’s talk about how the diamond on Hawks’ hero costume matches the diamond on the HPSC building. It’s subtle, but I think it means something. It’s subtle just as the HPSC’s influence on Hawks is subtle in the form of small personal habits. The habits the HPSC strategically fostered in Hawks won’t disappear just because he has his own agency now and can carry his career alone. The diamond on Hawks’ chest is like a brand. Once property of the HPSC, always property of the HPSC even in the smallest ways.

In conclusion: If the HPSC wanted to indoctrinate Hawks, they could’ve easily done it, and the Hawks we know today who is skeptical of the HPSC and who observed that a villain could be a good person would not exist. Instead, the Commission knew they could make him independent (therefore, low maintenance) and easy to order around when needed if they went the subtler route: shaping not his values, moral code, or motivations but his internal habits. It’s sneaky, it’s shady, it’s unethical, but it’s kind of brilliant. 

#does this make any sense at all people #i spent too long on this #the effort i put in for this boy #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #bnha hawks #hawks #takami keigo #mha hawks #blaire's delusions

[triysn]

more adjl headcanons

because i can

and also, this one is sorta long so proceed at your own risk i'm sorry

I have been reading a LOT about dogs and their ridiculous instinct and I should really be studying BUT

Jake is human, obviously, but he is also, half the time, a Very Large Firebreathing Predator in a way no human being has ever been on the food chain before and he has the Instincts for this

I know I’m toeing the werewolf line here but go with it (I know absolutely nothing about reptiles, forgive me)

Glares at every single (normal) dog they come across in an involuntary pissing contest until Jake establishes dominance over the other. Most dogs are immediately cowed by Jake because they have +10 perception and can sense this is not a normal human they’re dealing with but a very big predator with pointy teeth, but there’s the occasional puppy dumb-ass who will bark and growl at the Weird Thing coming near their human

Fu doesn’t count because he’s pretty much a human stuffed in a dog’s body but which animal isn’t a little wigged out by dragons sometimes they’re literally peak predators they can fly they can swim they can walk they can BREATHE FIRE which is pretty much the ultimate survival mechanism because everything is weak to fire they have deadly claws and armour

Jake’s dad wanted to keep a dog when they were a lot younger but obviously this would expose them because you can’t just expect two, different, highly territorial predator animals to coexist so eventually they convinced him it was too much work and that Fu was pretty much the family dog.

Dragons are pretty much not scared of any animal a normal human being would be rightly terrified of like—wolves, bears, lions, snakes, eagles, anything that’s big and has claws. the only exception would probably be aquatic animals because, unless there’re aquatic dragons, dragons aren’t the natural predator of anything in there. This makes Jake great company on wilderness camping/hiking trips because seriously, what sort of predator is going to attack you when you have the bigger, scarier predator right there with you? Also, family shenanigans where Jake is fighting off various wild animals when his dad’s back is turned.

“Gee whillikers, Jake-arooni, look at the size of these paw prints, must have been a huge bear coming through here last night. Good thing it wasn’t hungry!” *Jake, who woke up at 4am to the sound of this bear going through the remains of their campfire and trying to eat their mess tins, poked his head out his tent and growled at it, causing it to tuck tail and run* “haha, yeah dad… good thing…”

Can’t bring Jake or Haley to the zoo. when Jake was 7, Susan Long, blissfully ignorant mother of her first dragon child, signed off on that permission slip and Chaos ensued. Bringing a young dragon who doesn’t even know he’s a dragon into what’s essentially a compendium of fancy cages of various prey animals? Haha. Long story short, a very confused slightly suspicious elementary school teacher approached her saying that her son allegedly growled at some of the animals (very convincingly and scaring a few of his classmates), causing said animals to run. More concerningly, one of said animals was a tiger. Also, all of the animals at the petting zoo refused to let themselves be petted by him, and one especially terrified rabbit went into shock.

Lesson learnt, no more zoos. At least, not with teachers watching.

Sometimes, when Jake is in dragon form and looking down at his friends or various humans, his vision narrows to the tiny shockwaves of their movements, invisible hooks pulling his line of sight towards their exposed, vulnerable bellies or necks, and he can smell them for miles, more if he’s downwind of them. And the niggling, expanding primal instinct finally making itself known to the human part of his brain wants to hunt, wants to chase any moving animal down and eat.

It’s a very terrifying instinct for a fourteen year old to be having and he’s read YA novels, thank you very much, so he’s “no thanks” and goes to ask gramps. But it’s all just “perfectly normal” for a dragon his age and all he needs to do is “gain mastery” over his instincts.

He can move frighteningly fast and be extremely accurate when he wants to, even in a human body. He’s the kid who can shoot a fly out the air with a rubber band or pull some weird shit in pe. Probably banned by his family from participating too heavily in sports or joining sports ccas because that would be cheating.

TLDR dragons are predators and should probably be treated as such

#adjl #american dragon #american dragon jake long #jake long #meta #headcanons #headcanon #uhhhh yeah that's all i got i am NOT a professional with animals in any way #all my experience comes from my small very timid dog who occasionally goes crazy at the postman #and the water hose #did not beta read and instead wrote this in five minutes pls forgive me #dragons

[fresh-prince-of-denmark]

Analysis of the Devil Ending: Who Died and Left Aristotle In Charge of Ethics? (Pt 5)

Hello and welcome back to me over-analyzing everything in Cyberpunk. If you haven’t read my other posts, please read those first! (V’s Mikoshi Poem, Johnny’s Mikoshi Poem, The Sun, New Dawn Fades).

This part took me a lot longer to complete. Not because it was particularly long…it was just painful. Jesus Christ. I hated every second of this ending. That shit hurted.

There were a few shards located at Arasaka’s estate that I chose to skip, as I did not find ant that were unique to the location. The three the game seemed to want to draw your attention to were actually not scattered as shards, they were spoken-word. The only shard I was able to find was a portion of The Odyssey. The other two pieces of literature are In Kyoto, which is quoted to V by the guard to takes her to the hospital room, and (what I believe to be) a reference to Plato’s The Allegory of the Cave. This section is going to be super theoretical. Like, more theoretical than the rest. So bare with me please.

Let’s start easy. This is the poem that the guard quotes at V as he leads her out of the operating room:

In Kyoto,

hearing the cuckoo,

I long for Kyoto

(By: Basho, translated by Jane Hirshfield)

Ten words. What could ten words amount to? The saddest goddamn words you’ll ever hear, dammit.  This poem is a feeling more than a concept. Ever feel homesick when you haven’t gone anywhere? Lonely when you’re around other people? That’s V. This was supposed to be a victory, supposed to be what they wanted. But now Johnny’s gone, scorned and betrayed, and no one they calls seems to even be able to give V the time of day. This was supposed to be a victory, their way of going back to the way things were, getting their life back, going home. But we can never go back, can’t ever erase our experiences, what we learn, how we grow. As Misty says, we should not fear change in of itself, but who we might change into. This just goes to show what happens when we betray ourselves by rejecting our own growth: all that’s left is bitterness and sorrow.

The next day when V wakes, you can pick up a shard containing a section from Chapter 8 of The Odyssey. Now, I’m not too familiar with the Odyssey. In fact, I hate the Odyssey. So if anyone wants to jump in here and add something more intelligent, I’m all for it. The Odyssey is the tale of Odysseus, who has been trying for ten long years to return to his wife and son after the Trojan war. Odysseus is basically listening to a bard remind him of all his Trojan War trauma, and begins to weep, at which time time people start questioning what’s up with this guy:

Say what thy birth, and what the name you bore,

Imposed by parents in the natal hour?

(For from the natal hour distinctive names,

One common right, the great and lowly claims:)

Say from what city, from what regions toss'd,

And what inhabitants those regions boast?

So shalt thou instant reach the realm assign'd.

In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind;

No helm secures their course, no pilot guides;

Like man intelligent, they plough the tides,

Conscious of every coast and every bay,

That lies beneath the sun's all-seeing ray;

Though clouds and darkness veil the encumber'd sky,

Fearless through darkness and through clouds they fly;

Though tempests rage, though rolls the swelling main,

The seas may roll, the tempests may rage in vain,

E'en the stern god that o'er the waves presides,

Safe as they pass, and safe repass the tides,

With fury burns; while careless they convey

Promiscuous every guest to every bay,

These ears have heard my royal sire disclouse

A dreadful story, big with future woes;

How Neptune raged, and how, by his command,

Firm rooted in a surge a ship would stand

A monument of wrath; how mound on mound

Should bury these proud towers beneath the ground.

But this the gods may frustrate or fulfill,

As suits the purpose of the Eternal Will.

But say through what waste regions hast thou stray'd

What customs noted, and what coasts survey'd;

Possess'd by wild barbarians fierce in arms,

Or men whose bosom tender pity warms?

Say why the fate o Troy awaked thy cares,

Why heaved thy bosom, and why flowed thy tears?

Reading this made me feel just how tired V must be. All this fighting, all this war, and for what? Much like Odysseus, V has been through hell and back (literally, depending on how you see it). And it never seems to end. V has been fighting for so long, yet there’s always something more; the tests the doctor gives her are endless, and they’re always being asked to do more, over and over again, with no results or end in sight. Odysseus is teetering on despair; nothing he does seems to do will ever be enough, just like V. The world will just take and take and take. It’s exactly what V’s poem asserts in Mikoshi; the world cannot be fixed, and resistance is futile. You can’t change how corporations rule the world, and as a protestor states on the TV in the hospital room, the rich have no boundaries or morals, and we are powerless to stop them from taking whatever they want. They can take not only our souls, but our bodies, devour them in order to prolong their own lives. Johnny would, of course, disagree. Even a slap in the face to The Man is better than submitting to a corpo-leash, even if that is the easier path. And in fact, he may be right, since it seems taking Hanako’s offer is the conformist path, and the only one that leads to Saburo coming back.

But Johnny isn’t there anymore to walk the rebel path at their side. No more guardian angel to whisper when they it most to never stop fighting.

There’s a lot more we could go into here with the Odyssey; comparing Arasaka to the story of Polyphemus and the cave, talking about themes of passion vs. commitment, yadayadayada. I hate the Odyssey so that can be someone else’s problem tbh.

The final piece is what the doctor asks V to read as one of their tests. Now, on surface-level, this is foreshadowing if V will choose to stay in their body, or be turned into an engram. It’s laughing at them, really, both pitying and mocking the fact that they believe they have a choice, since either way they’re once again at the mercy of the rich and powerful:

“And it was a sight to behold, he said, how a soul would choose its life; sometimes pitiable, sometimes laughable at times wonderful and strange. For in most cases, the souls made their choice according to the habits of a former life.”

I couldn’t find where this was from, or if it was a quote from anything. But googling it does bring up Plato’s Allegory of The Cave, which I thinks tracks pretty well. I found a quote from this chapter of Plato’s The Republic, which is strikingly similar in meaning. For the sake of my sanity, lets assume that this quote is referencing this one from Plato:

“And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the cave.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the allegory of the cave, it’s a philosophical discussion from Plato’s The Republic. It’s about how human perception is limited, and so true knowledge comes from the self via philosophical reasoning. Much like humans imprisoned in a cave with only shadows as their entire world, we cannot imagine the true world outside the cave until we leave to see it for ourselves.  Those who are freed from this limited reasoning have a duty to go back and free others, subjecting them to the full experience of awakening; both the pain and the triumph it entails. V starts out with a limited perception of things; a surface-level world, never stopping to see the bigger picture, until Johnny comes along and encourages them to question the status quo. In all other endings, V accepts this enlightenment. They challenge Arasaka, and try to follow Johnny’s legacy and Stick It To the Man. Yet if they accept Hanako’s offer in an attempt to return to “the habits of a former life,” they are rejecting this new understanding, refusing to leave the cave and live in ignorant bliss. This, I believe, is where Johnny’s true feeling of betrayal comes from: not because he’s being shredded, and not because he thinks V doesn’t know any better. V learned and changed just as much as he did, and this growth was something they were able to gift to one another. Johnny is proud of his change, proud to be someone trusted by V, proud at a second chance not to fuck things up. When V gives him control to go with Rogue to Arasaka, he’s ecstatic to prove himself worthy of that trust, to prove that he’s changed. Yet V, the person who aided in that change, is now actively ignoring and rejecting their own growth, and thus is betraying themselves. By not using their enlightenment to actively oppose the status quo and rebel, they are choosing the side of the oppressor by default.

Some of her last words if you choose not to sign the contract are to Goro, “You have no idea how good it feels to be free.” But the truth is, V is not free, and now they will never be free. By walking the path they have, they are choosing willful ignorance, stubbornly clinging to the darkness of the cave because it is easier to convince oneself that they are not a prisoner at all than it is to leave the comfort of one’s chains. Either way, they are caged, even if the bars the rich and powerful build around her are clear instead of solid. Her so-called freedom (and knowledge) is pure illusion — shadows depicted on a cave wall.

#in case you needed more confirmation that the devil is not the way to go #this got deeper than anyone is ever going to care #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk #cyberpunk2077 #cyberpunk 2077 v #cyberpunk spoilers #cp2077 #cp77 #cp2077 spoilers #cp project red #cp 2077 #johnny silverhand #v #cyberpunk v #v cyberpunk #the devil #the devil ending #my posts #cyberpunk meta #cyberpunk 2077 meta

[astroninaaa]

Hot take a talk about technoblade:

Okay look I've been part of this fandom since August(thank god cuz i watched it all live and it woukd be a nightmare to caatch up) I bring this up cuz i want to discuss my problem with technos character. I have watched every single techno livestream that he made on dream smp and believe it or not i used to be a techno sympathiser that is until doomsday. (By techno apologist standards i am qualified to talk about his character hooray..)

Now techno like every character is flawed if he wasn't he would be boring fandom. One of his biggest flaws is being a hypocrite. That is not something you realise until you compare what he says all the time so you need to look a little deeper to realise it and i don't blame people for not seeing it.

This wouldn't be that much of a problem because that is a character flaw among with many others but the problem that his character has faced is that he doesn't develop much.

Now i hear techno apologist jump at me every single time noooo he isn't a stagnant character he has developed a lot. I am not saying that he hasn't developed at all the problem is that he has developed very little especially when you consider everything.

His goals his ideas his perception of the world what he believes him everything that makes his character him hasn't changed much and that is not a good thing from a writing perspective. Now why do i bring this up. Firstly I'm not saying this to say techno is a bad writer far from it he can be very good when he puts his mind to it. The problem with keeping a character in this state is that it's very harmful for said character first and to the story and other characters second. Look even at yourselves i can guarantee that you aren't the exact same person you were like five years ago for example because during that time you made mistakes learned from them and you grew. Just like in real life you also can't stay stagnant in fiction.

Okay so that's the main problem with technos character that he is stagnant as a character. Now this wouldn't be as big of a problem if he didn't have the role that he has.

You see techno both c! and cc! are very good at the game basically. Now why do i bring this up. The reason why i bring this up is bc of where this places techno whuch is at the very top of the chain don't try and seny it. This means that he is one of the most powerful people on the server if you are going to try and go against this point just look at lmanberg guys that's living proof of how powerful and how terrifying he actually is. I know a lot of you are gonna say but every can get stacked or play the game but you guys forget that even if you are stacked you just don't have the skill and cc! Techno of the best people when it comes to that which bleeds into his character. Saying that is like looking at the upper class than looking at the lower class saying just get rich like it doesn't work like that.

Because of his role techno is literally the 1% by rl standards which means he can a lit of things free of consequences bc no one can give him said consequences. The butcher army was ig an attempt at that but they failed miserably let's be real here.

Because he is in the 1% is incredibly skilled at pvp and can do anything bc no one can challenge him this places him on a pedestal and creates a power imbalance a very big one at that.

And that leads to his biggest problem he has practically everything as said by Techno himself and is never challenged, but that's not an interesting character. An audience gets tired for a character that always wins or loses. Because if it happens repeatedly it just takes all the suspense oh he will win immediately. He will go and slaughter them problem solved. That's it every time. Something that techno himself confirmed is then when he has a problem he just stabs it (both of these were said during the egg stream).

And if you are going to bring the things he went through to say he's changed don't cuz as long as he doesn't act on it it means nothing. Like examples Red festival killed tubbo an ally. Traumatic experience right? This is a good moment to develop his character and give us more insight. What happens? Techno tries to dismiss it and shows us his anxiety and gives us insight on his character Great! Character development? Starting to question himself just a bit or any sign of that event having an effect on him? Nope! Why? Cuz he doesn't act on it instead he tries to hide the fact that ever happened and changes to a different topic bc there is no justification there and he knows it. Nov 16th c!technos pov he just got betrayed caused some damage wished death upon his former allies and left. Quite a dramatic scene. He feels betrayed time for some good old character development. Him thinking about himself and his actions. Reflecting on them. Great moment! Problem: literally everything that shows this is done off camera and now suddenly he's retired... Okay you know what fine it's alright he would probably expand upon and did a timeskip to explain the ling time he didn't stream. I see where it's comming from. The butcher army ge gets hunted down bc actions have consequences techno and you can't just run away like that not after doing that. Great point from the butcher army. Go give him some consequences his character needs it. And then he gets executed alright a bit too far but i guess that's how it goes in this server. Techno gets his life back immediately.. well that was a bit pointless but alright a cool scene for the animatic fair. Then he kills quackity.. the butcher army lost.. this.. what? But this was the moment of consequences... and quackity didn't get it back like techno the butcer aemy lost more than techno what? Moving along he teams up with tommy aannnd the 50 withers are up and ready of course you didn't fully retire what was i expecting. And now team up with tommy perfect way to learn about dream and give more insight on lmanberg and how dream is a tyrant and everything techno is supposed to stand against. The green festival tommy chooses tubbo over techno techno feels betrayed understandable.... and then he teams up with dream lmanberg is destroyed and the underdogs are beaten to the ground loose everything they ever worked for and are taught to be scared of the anarchists?!?!?!?!

Okay now hold up a sec I'll have to stop you right there. What. did. you. just. do. Cuz there is a limit to the amount of stuff you can let a character get away with. The line was crossed months ago this is not good at all.

Also what are yoi guys talking about consequences. Lives? All 3 home? Right there pets? The ones that died were the ones he brought expecting to not live he brought them there on purpose so they don't count. He is one of the most wealthy peoole on the server (no one beats ranboo lol) what did he exactly loose? Friendships? Was that all the hardships you guys have?

Lmanberg lost their home their lives their wealth their pets their friend everything they loved and lived for everything they stood for they lost a part of themselves in the end.

Look at the last 2 paragraphs and how imbalanced that is. How are you guys blind to this How?! And why did doomsday happen? Because the butcher army failed. And if anything techno proved them that they should have punished him harder with this.

So what was the lesson of doomsday?

That you shoukd obey the people on top and never go against them or you will loose everything you love.

Great lesson guys this is exactly the lesson the rich class and every single tyrant tried to teach society and this lesson is being told by the anarchist great job....

Do you see the problem now. This is the reason techno needs a consequence bc if he keeps going like this he will become a Mary Sue. And that is a horrible direction for a character that has a lot of potential. That potential is why i liked his character that much in the beginning but now it's almost non existent. Anyway I'll end this now cuz this went on for too long. That's basically my opinion on it feel free to share your thoughts.

okay. okay. i read this like three times bc. because look

i agree in some very specific points, but i disagree in very broad manners.

(this entire......... essay is all /rp and /nm!!!!)

anyways. send me hot takes!!!

i like c!techno. i personally think he's one of the most fun characters to watch because i enjoy the mess, the crazyness, the chaos of it all. watching doomsday through c!tommy's eyes was painful. watching doomsday through c!techno's eyes was just so fucking hilarious and exciting and fun. he's just a fun character to watch. he's just Funny. i am a fan. however

for starters: ctechno is, 100%, out of the park, an stagnant character. he has little to no development throughout the story. we see no changes in how he acts. that's not necessarily a bad thing, but considering the type of character he is, watching him develop (be it to an actually full-fledged villain or towards a redemption arc) would be ideal to keep him a character people can actually support.

i wouldn't say he's a hypocrite. c!techno has a very strict moral code and he follows it with no hesitation, with no doubts. the point is that his moral code is flawed and skewed. that doesn't make him a hypocrite, that makes him someone with bad morals.

calling c!techno "the 1%" is a stretch. for one- c!ranboo has as much resources, if not more, as c!techno does. he has dozens of totems, thousands of emeralds, and probably has one of the higher counts of diamond and netherite on the server. why is that never brought up? because it doesnt matter. c!foolish has so much gold and diamonds and netherite and just everything, really, and it's also never brought up/a reason for people to be afraid of him. the dream smp isn't a capitalist universe, there's no "1%". specially bc there's, like, i don't know, 20 players? that makes c!techno 1/20 OR 3/20 if we count c!ranboo and c!foolish. but that's not the point at all: the point is that ctechno is feared bc he's skilled and has a relevant personality, not bc he has resources. c!wilbur has no shit and he's still terrifying, there's no character willing to oppose him. not because of resources, but because of who he is. when c!techno first fled from l'manburg into "retirement" he had no shit either, it took him a while to be rich again. no one attacked him either way.

why, you ask? bc he fought against c!quackity with a fucking pickaxe and won. that's why. c!techno doesn't need resources to be feared. the power imbalance doesn't come from his resources, it comes from others’s fear. and they have a reason for that fear, bc c!techno hasn't been defeated yet. that has nothing to do with "upper class" and "lower class". because, one, not a capitalist system and class disparity isn't as simple as that, and two, even without his "riches" he still wins, bc he's got the skill. if you take out the skill, him being rich means nothing and he wouldve been easily killed by the butcher army or c!tommy or whoever decided to kill him. a good example is, once again, c!ranboo: if he wasn't friends with everyone and someone decided to actually fight him like was done with c!techno, he would've died. easily. being rich in the smp is relative.

c!techno will be challenged when we have a character strong enough to challenge him in a way that matters. it's important to be smart about it. that's why i'd love to see, out of everyone, c!philza turn against him, but that's a how other discussion (WHICH I'M WILLING TO TALK ABOUT.......... everytime i make these and i add little point i dont elaborate on and then say i'm willing to talk about them and no one ever asks me to <//3 PAIN /nm /lh).

i do think he's a character that just Always Win in narrative ways and that's very frustrating. he does need to get pulled a few notches down. again, that will only happen when we have a character that can step up to him and challenge him in a way that matters (woooo c!philza you want to hold c!techno accountable for his bullshit so bad woooo........)

now, onto c!techno's trauma. he doesn't need to show it. he- he doesn't. that's........ not how trauma works, and that's one of the points that make his trauma so forgettable for the viewers. c!techno is, from inside out, a character that hardly shows his emotions, but that doesn't mean he doesn't display symptons of trauma. he does, they're just a lot more subtle than other characters's. that doesn't mean he doesn't have any or that he isn't affect by it. c!techno is, in a lot of ways, a lot like c!tubbo: both of them don't mention the shit they've gone through and don't react to it and bc of that some of the viewers don't see how important some traumatic events were in their characterisation. that's why you analyse those characters's trauma through behavior, not through easily seen displays of trauma.

i do think it's taken a little too far with c!techno. the way he reacted to c!tommy's death was...... disappointing, to say the least. c!techno is an underwhelming character in many ways. as said before, it's because he's stagnant. that definitely needs to be worked on.

about the syndicate? yeah, no. theyre not teaching others to fear them. others just Do That bc of their history on the server, but they have literally talked about how they want to better their reputation, bc they don't want to be seen as murderers or oppressors in any way. are they flawed? yes, very much. they have no indicators of what is or isn't a government and they show no regard around the importance of a difference between an oppressive and a democratic government.

they had no right to show up at c!tubbo's door and interrogate him, because they can't appoint themselves as government police. for starters, that's not how anarchy works (they should've had everyone's permission for that. they obviously don't), but also it's just... stupid. it makes it seem that they're trying to boss everyone around so that they live like the syndicate wants them to, which goes directly against the syndicate's own ideals. however, c!techno thinks he has that right. he thinks this is what he's supposed to do. he's just following his moral code - his moral code is just deeply, deeply flawed. what he says and what he does contradict each other but not for him, not to his interpretation. to his interpretation, he's following his strict moral code.

what happened at doomsday was horrible and c!techno has to be held accountable for it, yes, but, again, no character knows how to work around c!techno enough to hold him accountable for it. that's not c!techno's fault.

l'manburg just deserved better, honestly, but to be fair c!techno has been taken advantage of time and time again (sometimes purposefully, sometimes not) and he's fucked up in the head, god bless LMAOOOOOOO

i agree that things need to change otherwise he's just gonna keep being a stagnant character who can get away with everything. i do think he has more to him than meets the eye, tho. meh idk that's still just analysis!!! we have no way of knowing the intent behind c!techno's characterisation, at least not for now. i hope for the best tho cc!techno don't let me down <3

#c!techno critical #adding just in case #technoblade #c!technoblade critical #hot take ask!!! #i don't excuse his actions i just think things are not that easily said and done. #also didnt say it but i would NOT call him a mary sue. the only server mary sue is ranboo i am so sorry- LMAOOOO #that's not the concept of mary sue at all. it just- no it's just not i'm sorry #but i see where you're coming from anon and i respect your opinion!!! i just added my own since i said from the start #that i'd be saying what i thought of y'all's hot takes. if anyone just wants me to post your hot take and not say anything about it thats #fine! just lmk otherwise i Will comment on it i am a Law Major. i cannot Help Myself from Discussions #LMAOOOOOO

[valntinemorgenstern]

An Ocean of Darkness; an elriel one-shot

Summary: *Set post-ACOSF / post B&M extra* *ACOSF SPOILERS*

Azriel meditates on Nyx's birth and tries to settle with himself what his new future will look like. He encounters Elain in the grounds outside the House of Wind. Angsting and sexual tension proceed.

There was something almost wrong about this feeling. Swaddled in the finest cloth, nestled in his arms, the little body was surprisingly weighty; compact. Hot. Its head was barely as wide as his fist. Its scent, sweet as honeysuckle at twilight, billowed around him as it breathed, the motion barely perceptible through the swaddling. Only if he peered close: there. A flutter against the fabric, delicate as a bee’s wings.

Azriel knew it should not have been like this. But the sight of Nyx sleeping, so effortlessly perfect, unleashed something ravenous inside him. Dark as a moonless night; seeping. It spread with the consistency of newly-spilled of blood. Tangible, like seeing an old acquaintance outlined in the doorway.

His shadows began to rise around him.

Where did this feeling come from? Why was he slipping, just at the sight of an infant? It was as if his foot had slid over ice-smooth rock, where he had expected to feel a foothold. And now he fell. And fell, and fell, it seemed, in every direction.

Everything about this was hard to accept. This improbable creature, only two years ago, could never have existed. The fact that in some long-distant eon of time, he himself would have resembled this miniature thing. This thing so fragile, despite the tips of its wings poking out above the blankets. This thing that knew nothing but the everlasting worship of everyone in their Inner Circle. Mor had held onto him for hours; Azriel had only wrestled her into relinquishing her prize by reminding her that her presence was needed elsewhere.

In that long-distant eon of time, had he, too, shut his eyes so? Slept with such trust, in a stranger’s arms? His cheeks, were they as apple-round, as faintly blushed? His nose as tiny? Surely even he, as a babe, would have been set into the cradle of someone’s arms like this, however briefly. Would they have seen his skin as Nyx’s was? Dusky and glowing. Whole, silk-thin. Unruined.

Azriel brought a fingertip up to his forehead, tracing a reverent line across his skin. The intensity of that softness astonished him. It was like a sun-warmed rose petal, rubbed between your fingers. He had forgotten that this was what children were like: their bodies so foreign, so killingly soft. No wonder this had been beaten out of him.

A scrap of a memory danced before him. A whirling hem of a dress; a hand, thrown backwards. Elegant, and pale. Faint lines of dirt circling the fingernails.

His gaze lifted, as if to follow it.

Instead, his eyes collided with Rhys’, who, it appeared, had been staring at him.

There was no time to tuck away his thoughts. They were breaking the surface even as Azriel straightened, and he knew how gasping-loud they would be. All this time, and I thought it would just be us, together. And now, I am the one alone. The next followed, swimming on its tail, but of course, it would always be this way. This is the way it was always supposed to be. It was always going to be. In the end, there would only ever be him. Azriel would always be there, really, chained on the floor of that dungeon. Head cast back in the stale darkness, seeing only the faint light of his breath on the chilly air.

His brother’s expression was twisted into a wellspring of deep sorrow. For him.

Rhys stepped forwards. “I’m sorry.”

It was like some snag in time: already, the resemblance between father and son was so strong. This was just a vision of what the boy in his arms would be in so many years.

Get out of my head. It surprised him, the anger. Like someone had rushed him by mistake and he stumbled, casting around for who had done it.

“I’ll take him.” Rhys said, coming closer, arms extended.

Azriel glanced down at Nyx, suddenly unable to remember why he had petitioned Mor to hold him in the first place. What did he want with this child, so loved? What did he want with the memories and the feelings he invoked so slickly, so powerfully?

As his arms were relieved of the burden, he considered that he must be the only person in all of Prythian who was not interested in handling the babe. Once the news of Nyx’s existence became widespread — and it was already leaking, fast, his sources informed him — the child would be hunted for the rest of his existence.

Then he was in the air, feeling the wind whip about his wings, whirling up and up. It just this side of dusk, the sky quietly darkening, the horizon splayed plum-purples and blues. Rhys and Cassian, both, now had their mates and their homes, but this was Azriel’s only real home. The empty sky. The smell of the air, turning into night. The soothing cold. Breathing so deep as to let the chill infuse his skin, down to his bones, over and over, as if he could bottle this precious sensation, so that it would be always with him.

Azriel let himself circle, flying aimlessly, until the night stretched itself over the heavens in its full glory. He had seen so many courts, visited so many places — probably even more than Rhysand. But no other could compare to the fabulous majesty of the night court sky, this high, this late. Velvet-black, all-encompassing but for the light of the stars that glittered like drops of crystal inlaid into a seabed of darkness. And just like an ocean, it seemed to move, to breathe a life of its own. A darkness that you could reach into, and it would reach back.

When eventually he returned to the House of Wind, he lingered outside, unwilling to step across the threshold. For there was only his solitary bed, and sleep, mocking him. Taunting him.

From the smell of vacancy about the place, he could tell that Cassian and Nesta were not inside. For once.

Some thrill that felt oddly like freedom curled around him. Or was it rebellion? But how long had he been playing this game with her now? Waiting. Loitering in the grounds. Just on the off-chance. It was never an off-chance.

The rush that coursed through him when he spotted her — curled up on the ground, near a rose bush, her hair like a shadow-splashed coin — was so heady it dizzied him.

She glided to her feet. “Why are you here, Azriel?”

Something inside him seized, at the sound of his name, spoken on her lovely, melodious voice.

She walked forwards. “Why? Why are you here?” This time, the edge in her tone had given way to something else. A pleading.

If he reached out his hand, he thought, he could have had her body, so much more petite than her sisters’, flush against him. And then everything in the world would have melted away apart from the shape and the feel of her. The too-exquisite cloud of her scent that floated around him.

He remembered Rhys’ words. You are to stay away from her.

How terribly he had managed so far. Every day he was only sliding further downhill. And enjoying it so deliciously.

He was about to say, I thought we had an understanding. But of course, there was no understanding. No words about this had passed between them. It was something that was forming, half-knowing, between them both. And neither had the will to stop themselves. What if I lingered here? What if I went down this corridor? What if I allowed myself to look too long? What if I were to drive myself half-mad, searching for an excuse to touch you? “I…could not bare the thought of going to my bed.”

It was like someone else had said the words. He almost checked himself, as if to see that he were actually still master of his own body.

A small nod. And then, suddenly, with no warning, she stepped up, her hand covering the side of his face. “It has been this way for you too long, has it not?” Her thumb was stroking, backwards and forwards, across his cheekbone.

Immediately, he felt his shadows sing, his body begin to thrum with something keener than mere pleasure. Yes. Yes. He had caressed her neck just so, at Solstice. When they had nearly kissed.

The memory swirled in her eyes, too.

Stay away from her.

This feeling, this touch of hers. He could live in it. Eat from it, drink from it. Survive in it. This wildness. He would submit himself to anything for it.

“I have something for you.” A moment later, there was coldness were her hand had been, and she had drawn out something from the pocket of her skirts, holding it aloft.

“What is it?” The liquid inside was some purple-brown, shimmering fluid.

“It will help you sleep.”

“Ah.” He understood. “And I mustn’t take too much, I assume?”

She frowned. “It will not steal consciousness away. It will ease the unquiet inside you, that is all.”

How do you know? He stared into those doe-brown eyes, so large, considering all the different things he could say, and do. In his mind, he laid out the options, and weighed them up. The only one drawing him was the version of events where he dove down into the crook of her neck, and breathed in, open-mouthed, frantic, pulling in her scent; letting his teeth and tongue cover every single scrap of skin he could find. Instead, he said, “We need to stop this.”

“Stop what?”

“This. You know.”

A determined shake of her head. “I have made my choice.” He shook his head, trying to dispel the hazy image of Lucien; playing unsuccessfully with the idea of introducing more space between them.

“It is more than that.”

“Rhysand?” A noise of contempt left her.

He stared. Had she heard the entire conversation he’d had with him, in his office? It was possible. But then, there were other things. “How did you know?”

“Does it not occur to you…What if Rhysand were in your position? Can you imagine him obeying some order to stay away from my sister? No. Never.” She pushed closer, defiant. Heat radiated from her. The effort of not touching her was like sinking underwater, allowing himself to drown. Stopping himself from the urge to throw up his arms and gasp for breath. “I care nothing for his orders.”

This girl, who seemed so pure and innocent; who had been holed away for so long. And yet she seemed to have a more accurate grasp of the High Lord’s character than some who had known him years. “How do you know — all this?”

She made a light shrug. “My power rises in me, still. I see, hear, feel — odd things. But I keep seeing you. Your arm under your head, sheets back. You don’t even shut the curtains, now. You do not even try to close your eyes.”

She had been seeing…him? In his bed?

Before he had time to worry what else she had seen of him, she had grabbed one of his hands, thrusting the vial into his palm. By instinct, his fingers shut around the glass, clasping, too, the edge of her fingers. And then she was ducking her head, pressing a warm, firm kiss to the grotesque half-flayed skin that coated his knuckles. “Please.” Her beautiful eyes implored him. “For my sake.”

#my fanfiction #i have not written a fic in so long #and this one is angsty as hell #coming back to my roots #elriel #azriel #elain archeron #acosf

[odissey061]

Kinktober, day 22

Fandom: Obey me

Lucifer x reader x Simeon + threesome

Simeon pulled the hair on her head, as if he wanted to detach his body from her lips, but he didn’t know what to do. The sheets under him were a sticky mess of his previous orgasms and the air smelled of sex.

Simeon breathed:“Please, stop… I’m so sensitive that it hurts”. Yet his body arched when her tongue licked the head of his cock. Simeon was so close, he could feel another orgasm coming, but she stopped sucking him. Her hands went on his buttocks, grazing the throne inside him. The toy stretched the angel so well and it brought a jolt of pleasure when she started to pull and push it with slow and languid movements. Simeon arched his back and his head leaned on the pillow, she was driving him crazy from the pleasure.

Then she stopped. She planted a soft kiss on his lips and the angel asked confused:“Why... Did you stop?” and she smirked:“You told me that the stimulation was too much for you, so I stopped". Simeon groaned; when he asked her to stop, he didn’t really mean it, otherwise he would have used the safeword and she knew it. She stopped just because she was a teaser and she enjoyed seeing him wrapped around her finger.

“I have to go to my class now, come when you are ready” she smiled innocently and she left the room. Simeon laid on the bed sheets for another ten minutes, then he decided to take a shower to clean himself.

As soon as the lessons finished, they found themselves in Lucifer’s room. The demon stood in front of the bed, the human and the angel sat on the bed. The girl laid on her stomach and her head was on Simeon’s leg. "You need to be punished for what you have done this morning" Lucifer affirmed with a whip in his hands and she tried to slow down the course of the events: "W-Wait, let's talk about this".

Simeon embraced her, whispering in a rich tone of voice:“Why are you so reluctant about this, little lamb? You enjoyed so much teasing me this morning and you know how much Lucy hates being excluded for our activities. You have been a bad girl and you need to receive a punishment”. "Simeon, if you don't want to be punished too, I suggest you to don't call me by that name" the demon advised him, lashing the air with a whip and the angel smiled with a hint of a tease:“That's a shame, you liked it so much back in the Celestial realm”.

As they talked, Simeon's hands roamed across her back, knowing exactly what to do to elicit sweet moans of pleasure. "Enough with the chit chat. I wonder how many times she should be whipped" Lucifer thought as he faked indecision. In his mind, he knew the exact number. "Lucifer, may I suggest seven whips? It's the first time for her" the angel proposed and the demon accepted:“You are too lenient and merciful, Simeon, but I'll do as you wish”.

The truth was that the angel had both of them wrapped around his fingers, no matter how prideful they were. Lucifer was intimidating and his powerful aura naturally led people into submission with fear, but Simeon was able to make people submit only with his voice. The sugar-coated tone was so pleasant that anyone would do anything to keep listening to it. Nobody could resist and he was too perceptive to not understand it.

"Are you ready little lamb? I want you to ask forgiveness for what you did this morning" he commanded with a sweet voice. The first hit suddenly arrived on her back and she gasped from the pain and the skin burned and she was sure that it left a red mark. "I-I'm sorry... forgive me" she said and Simeon caressed her hair. As Lucifer whipped her again, this time on the buttocks, his hands went to her lips, caressing them with a thumb.

When the whips were finished, her back and ass burned, but the pain wasn’t unbearable, after all Lucifer went easy on her. The demon caressed her slit, humming satisfied when he noticed his fingers were wet. “Do you want to say something, darling?” Simeon purred in her ear and she begged:”Please, do me. I need it”.

The angel changed her position, plasming her body like wax. Now her back touched his chest and Simeon’s hand, under her knees, spread her legs apart so that Lucifer could see the wet entrance. Lucifer brushed the tip of the whip on her entrance, gathering her juices on the stick, and brought it in front of Simeon. The angel licked them as if they were the most delicious food.

The angel changed her position, plasming her body like wax. Now her back touched his chest and Simeon’s hand, under her knees, spread her legs apart so that Lucifer could see the wet entrance. Lucifer brushed the tip of the whip on her entrance, gathering her juices on the stick, and brought it in front of Simeon. The angel licked them as if they were the most delicious food.

Lucifer placed himself between her legs and he started to savour her sweet essence. The angel kept her still in his arms, blocking her movement. “Be still, little lamb” he whispered close to her skin, taking advantage of her position to mark her pale skin. She jerked her hips when the demon lapped at her nubs.

Her legs were put on Lucifer’s shoulder and the angel placed a vibrator on her womanhood. She protested, knowing too well what was going to come. Every time Simeon took her pleasure in his hands, he stimulated her until her body was limp and she was unable to lift a finger. She didn’t know if he hid a sadistic side under his angelic nature or if he lived to please her.

“Don’t overdo, Simeon” Lucifer warned him before diving back between her tight. The angel hummed in agreement, but he still set the toy on the highest vibration. In ecstasy, he threw her head back as loud moans and sighs left her lips.

First, Lucifer lapped slowly, enjoying her gasps, but when Simeon inserted the toy, he adopted a quicker pace and the licking became messier, focused on making her climax her soon as possible. So it happened: with a scream, the girl came, her body trembling and the sex toy stll going. Simeon bent her over and now Lucifer held her in his arms. The demon captured her lips in a sinful kiss that took her breath out of her lungs. “It’s not the time to sleep, dear. We haven’t finished yet” he murmured, kissing her again.

And in the next second, her eyes widened as the angel placed a lubed finger in her ass. She gasped at the sudden feeling, holding tight at Lucifer’s shoulder. The demon lifted her hips and, with his dick, he started to pound in her. “Si-Simeon… ah… Lucifer” she moaned feverishly as Lucifer’s thrust hit the toy inside her, adding more pleasure to her nerves. The vibrator brushed against her walls, driving her crazy. She felt another orgasm coming closer and she screamed when Simeon’s cock penetrated her ass. The angel turned her face with a hand and kissed her passionately as he started to move.

“Now now, Simeon. The greed doesn’t suit an angel after all” Lucifer smirked and claimed her mouth in a bruising kiss. The angel, unsatisfied, nibbled her neck with smooches and bites, marking the skin. “You take us so well, little lamb” he purred in her ear. He looked at Lucifer with a gaze of agreement and the two of them started to thrust at the same pace. The human gasped, feeling so well taken by the most beautiful creatures she had ever seen. She felt so lucky to be with them, to be the woman who they wanted to have.

The words left her mouth before she could realize:”I love you”. For a second, their pace slowed down a bit and she feared she had ruined everything with her confession, but Lucifer smirked:”Of course you love us. We knew it” and Simeon did the same:”Do you think I’d have done this if I didn’t love you as well, darling. Honestly, you are so naive”. And the two males started to laugh. “Hey, don’t make fun of me! When you both fell silent I thought I ruined everything” she protested. A thrust particularly rough by Lucifer reminded her what they were doing:“We’ll talk about our feelings later”.

Simeon touched something inside of her womanhood and he took off the vibrator:”I forgot you had this. I don’t think this is no longer necessary, isn’t it?” and Lucifer bit fiercely her neck to mark the point. “N-No, it’s useless now” she stuttered. It was unfair, why was she the one to have squeezed her sanity out of her mind while the two male looked as relaxed as usual? She blamed the supernatural beings’ stamina.

Lucifer let out a groan of pleasure and pain as she pulled his dark hair and Simeon’s hands circled her chest, grazing her breasts. She was surprised when she felt a sudden cold on her breast, but all made sense when she looked down and she saw a pair of nipple clamps around the nubs. It looked like her angel was kinkier than she expected.

Lucifer pulled the chain and her body jerked over in a second. “That’s a good idea, Simeon” he complimented as he gave another yank. That was a horrible idea. With a person as sadistic as Lucifer, she could already feel her chest so much pained that she couldn’t even touch them. But she didn’t expect that her masochistic side would have enjoyed that, so she was surprised when she felt the familiar feeling of coming. Simeon thrust another time, kissing her and breathing her name in a husky voice. She came moaning both their names. The angel followed her after a few seconds and the demon pounded other two times before his release.

The girl collapsed on the angel chest, exhausted. Simeon took her in his arms, transporting her in the bathroom. Hot water filled the tub and, when the angel thought the temperature was fine, she placed her inside. With a gentle smile, he helped her to wash herself. After some minutes, he talked:”What we said earlier was true: both Lucifer and I love you. And I’m glad that you require our feelings as well, Lucifer is too, even if he may have some difficulties to say it”.

Right in that moment, the demon entered in the room too:”I have already changed the bed sheets, so you can lay down” and the other two happily nodded. Lucifer accompanied the human on the bed, as Simeon cleaned himself, and laid down with her. “Simeon is wrong” he talked, “I have no problem admitting my feelings for you”. He held her hands and they both fell asleep.

When Simeon left the bathroom, smiled at the sight before his eyes. He kissed both of his lovers on the cheek and he entered in the bed too.

#obey me simeon #obey me lucifer #Simeon x reader #lucifer x reader #simeon smut #lucifer smut #obey me smut

[captain-cerrillo]

SSV Berlin - The Welcome

from x, before x and x (what are timelines)

Isaac hesitated outside the semi-private hallway just before the wide entrance to the Berlin's CIC. He told himself it had nothing to do with the woman who also waited, intentionally absorbing what little bit of peace and quiet was left as the ever-present chatter from a fully staffed crew had already started to set in.

The quiet thunder of life was only just beginning to rumble in the Berlin’s bones once again. He knew it wasn’t appropriate to stand so close to her but he told himself it didn’t count as long as they weren’t touching.

“Are you ready?” Eva wore all black with the exception of the signature N7 stripe. She smiled over her shoulder at Isaac as she reached up to tie her blonde hair out her face.

“No,” he responded honestly, heart breaking for each the inches between them. Her face fell and he backpedaled.

“Eva,” he breathed her name, not just unwilling to keep it off his lips but, arguably unable. “I-“ He sighed and cast a glance at his favorite eyes. What he saw there broke him.

For days he’d been back and forth, both terrified and hopeful that beyond all of their friendly conversations she might also be crazy enough to want more.

One moment he was certain. As certain as he’d ever been about anything at all. Her slim fingers wrapped around his solid wrist as she led him to slide his fingertip across her skin, sharing parts of herself too intimate to name. If she had held onto him just a moment longer, he would have kissed her then.

Other moments, with wild hair and tired eyes, half hard at the sight of her and wearing his thin grey shorts, she’d look anywhere but at him. But, still, he slept with her Balrog drawing taped to the wall next to his bunk.

“When I was a kid, I used to dream about moments like this,” he blurted suddenly, poking at the stiff collar of his dress blues. “Ten year old me would be very pleased.” He gestured to his uniform, the shining bars on his shoulders, the vague electronic glow of the CIC ahead.

He tilted his head to watch her watch him, blue eyes blazing with questions. “It’s weird to be standing in front of everything you’ve ever wanted only to realize that there’s actually something you want even more.”

He watched her process, golden brows knitting as she chewed on his words.

In what was probably the must irresponsible, impulsive thing he’d collectively ever done, he closed the space between their bodies to rest a hand on the wall next to her head. He had to stare at the wall because the look in her eyes threatened to pull him under. But, this close, he didn’t have to wonder how mutual it was anymore.

If he didn’t do it now, he wasn’t sure he’d ever have the chance again. If he didn’t do it now, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be okay again. But if he did, it might ruin everything.

“Okay,” was all he said.

Her lips were even softer than he’d imagined and he had spent a lot of time imagining. She tasted like cocoa peanut butter protein powder and smelled like flowers and the way her body opened to him made his rigid. He broke away while he still could.

“I need to know you.” His eyes held hers, hesitating for a heartbeat, “As intimately, as you want me to.” He knew she knew that he didn’t mean just physically. He hoped she knew he’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted to hear her sigh his name.

Ensign Davis cleared her throat behind them. “We’re uh. Almost assembled, sir.”

-

He shifted on his feet behind the largest terminal in the CIC, suddenly aware of the familiar burden of duty that had somehow all but escaped him as he had foolishly indulged in infatuation with a subordinate (he could hear his mentor's voice in his head) over the scattered past few days.

But he couldn't find any regrets.

He quit fidgeting with the cuff of his jacket to still with his hands folded in front of him, a practiced perception of calm. He squared his shoulders at the sound of boots approaching.

The wonder and pride in the XO’s wide eyes almost made the reality check worth it. She was a warm leader and Isaac watched her whisper, mumble, and even giggle greetings to the scattered staff who congratulated her and introduced themselves as she made her way past.

Isaac cracked a smile at the way Eva quirked an eyebrow when Marie stopped to look around the illuminated CIC. It wasn’t unlike the expression he imagined on a child finding everything they wanted waiting for them under a Christmas tree.

He tried not to study the figures crowded around the Commander. Just when he wondered if Hunstman set the standard, he met the little one with no shoes and disturbingly perceptive eyes, and then the hulking cretins after that had broken any sort of Phoenix mold he might have formed in his mind.

Isaac waited for Marie to soak in her moment, only gesturing lightly to the empty spot at his side when she finally caught his eyes.

-

“First, I want to say welcome.” He paused to take in the eyes that looked his way and all the ones that didn’t. He wasn’t technically in command of anyone that wasn’t wearing an Alliance uniform but the speech was another task on his checklist, so he droned on.

“The brass has decided that the SSV Berlin is to be our home for a little while and I hope you’ll take that responsibility seriously, with respect to both to her crew and her spaces. Like it or not, we are stuck together for the foreseeable future. Let’s do what we can to make it easy.” He paused for a breath, eyes crinkling at the corners when he scanned over the jittery curly-haired kid.

“Rules and regs are pretty standard but I hope you’ll bear with me for a few exceptions.” He sounded like he was reading a script, present but completely disinterested. He spewed off a list of important things to know about the ship’s structure, performance, logistics and its chain of command - ending with the very important fact that XO Miller, as official Alliance Liaison, would be the only go-to for Phoenix related questions, concerns, or issues of any kind with no exceptions.

He wasn’t allowed to say how much he hoped they’d defer to her for most things but, he hoped that part came through.

“This time tomorrow, we’ll be in the Ismar Frontier, Attican Traverse, on the edge of Outer Council Space for a test run. The Berlin took some damage at Terra Nova a few months ago and we’re not clear for free range until everything checks out. After baseline drills, all boots in, a small team will be selected to run intel recon at a Cerberus lab on a local cluster moon with the XO. That’s as far as our orders go, so far, but I promise to keep you apprised as information becomes available.”

It was possible he’d said all that in one breath.

“Just make sure you let the Ensign know when you’ve settled on a bunk assignment and if you find your assigned station ill-equipped or, lacking in any way," he threw a heavy, pointed look at the new doctor with her gleaming metal arm, "see Requisitions Officer Marazano.”

Isaac was tired but pleasant and a part of him wondered about all the adventures to come. “Marines, your shift schedules and rotations should already be in your extranet mailboxes. Chow’s on in an hour and we can all take the night to settle in.”

He couldn't help the way he glanced over to Eva, stifling the thrill of her eyes. "Dismissed."

#isaac cerrillo #eva novakov #marie miller #luca moreno #kate lyons #he didn't appreciate her shambles comment okay.

[alovevigilante]

(This monologue can be performed with a normal breathing pattern, cause the message is important and should be emphasized accordingly.)

When I was younger I didn’t know from a gay person. I went to a small school, where that wasn’t mentioned. It wasn’t a part of the curriculum in schools in the 80s as it is now. So, when I heard the word, “gay” being used in society it had an entirely different definition from the meaning it takes on today. When I used to use the word “gay” when I was a kid in sentences back in the day to communicate, it was usually to say that something was “uncool”. But that’s grade school for ya. That’s why you’re there when you’re younger, to learn better.

But now at 46, out of school for many years, and after having witnessed, and after getting to know people who define themselves, and identify as “gay” I realize that they are some of the coolest people on this planet. And “gay”, in my new definition, is very very very very (meaning emphasis on very) cool. Cause gay is colorful, all colors, and vibrant. Gay is bright, and fierce. Gay is creative, and brave. And gay is a term to explain certain people’s authenticity; showing themselves to the world honestly, and not afraid to profess and show their love openly.

Being gay is not the issue. The issue is recognizing that all people, no matter who they choose to love, are of LOVE, AND Love is where it’s at! It, in this case, its the feeling of belonging, sharing joy, experiencing happiness. It’s world peace first starting from your internal, individual worldview, and then the world around you. But it starts by leaving the judgement at the door. Because the person that feels the judgement first, is you. And others feel it, if they choose to allow it to affect them. If you don’t like something, and it’s not for you, then don’t do it. We will all be happier by allowing everyone the opportunity to be themselves too, without condemnation, and dipping in others business which isn’t our own. Being responsible for how you feel if we want to stay happy, should be our primary goal. And that’s a big enough job without getting into other people’s lives.

I also forgot to mention, that if you’re at the point in this monologue where you’re not only judging the gays, but you’re judging me for loving and supporting the gays because we’re all human and made of love, please feel free to include yourself in that love. It will help to lift your spirits if you do. Cause when we judge others, we all feel the exclusion. And feeling excluded doesn’t feel good. So please don’t choose a life without love. Choose a more inclusive mindset. Ok? I’ll answer that. Yes it IS ok!

I’m not ok with judgements or hate, cause it hurts the whole of us as a human race. Cause we are all fundamentally the same. Take biology 101 for example. Like the late astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator, Carl Sagan used to say, “we are all made of star stuff.” But the point is, the SAME stuff! Water, skin, muscle, bone and organs… But listen, all science aside, we all have a fundamental need to feel loved, and to belong, no matter how much we fight it sometimes.

Internalizing love, and acting on that inspiration toward all people is needed to change the world in a positive way. And I’M DOWN wIth THAT!!!!!

(Please emphasize the word, “THAT”... say it fast in one syllable, and also, that’s why the “with” in the last sentence, is tiny...)

Let me repeat, I AM DOWN, MEANING in FULL SUPPORT of, the LOVE, and of the GAY NATION because gay people are a part of the whole of who we are as a human race! And no matter how hard one may try, no person is excluded from that. So make it a loving experience.

(Ok, back to a more neutral energy, and for me, that’s not saying much)

So, fellow humans, I’m now also coming out of the closet, to say, that I am extremely JEALOUS in a great way of the gays! (Including the lesbians, cause they’re also under that umbrella term) Because I think they’re AWESOME, and I support them 100%, and I strive to be as cool as they are!!!! Ok?!?! Yeah! It is!!!! So there!!!!! And also, because I love them dearly... 🙈🤷‍♀️💕☺️🥰

*For those of you who read all the way through to judge and rip on my writing, you clearly have missed the point entirely. I chose being gay as a group to use as an example in this case, but sub in any race, and creed, and gender or any group that has been discriminated against at one time or another throughout the history of humanity, and you can get the same result. (Although they are a part of the whole of humanity, hate groups are excluded in this case because, because A. They have excluded themselves with their fear-based, loveless choice of behavior by treating all people as the enemy, and also because some people refuse to sway from their hardened beliefs and B. I’m focusing solely on groups that embrace a loving energy, and don’t wish to harm others.) We are all human. We have all experienced things that have alienated us, and make us feel excluded, no matter how accepted we seem to be outwardly. And we miss out on a lot of wonderful people by excluding them due to our own judgements.

My point of all this writing? To unite people, in human emotions, by my deliberate choice of energy. My message is clear, if you choose to be open enough to glean it. But for those who aren’t, here’s the deal: yes, I am fully aware that my writing isn’t normal. The tactics I use, are unorthodox because it’s a way to get everyone reading on the same side. I’m over separation.

I experiment to try to figure out ways to eradicate the loveless energy. I guess I’m starting to realize that I can’t do it alone. So, some say “choose love”. “Love matters” “Inclusion matters” and it does. But unless we make a conscious effort to change the way we approach our societal norms i.e. comedy, music, entertainment in general, commercialism, big business, government, how we treat one another in our daily lives, and the treatment we accept from others and ourselves, nothing will. The sooner we can internalize that, the better. I guess that’s why I feel that starting with changing myself is the best way to it. You see, I mention all of those things, because they have the biggest platform to influence people. They also have the ability to persuade. If that isn’t utilized for a positive result for all people, we get what we essentially have now; an uneven exchange. And life isn’t fair? That shit, is old school mentality. Life can be anything we want it to be. And that’s the truth. We just have to decide to adjust it.

It’s not easy for me to fully accept myself for some reason. I’m having great difficulty sometimes maintaining a loving outlook. When I judge myself like this. I feel like there must be something fundamentally wrong with me. But there isn’t. We all feel this way from time to time. What I think about me, is what I need to focus on. Because what I feel about everything, comes from that very place. I act according to how I feel. Point blank. When I’m not consciously trying to think differently, cause I’ve been conditioned by myself to think in a fearful way, I also get just as wrapped up in the upset of the outside world as everyone else does, and I feel that life is insurmountable, and that nothing can change from how I’m seeing it at that moment in time. It takes a change in my thinking, my perception, the union of me now, not me from the past focusing on what was and how I didn’t enjoy the experience. It will take the union of me changing my mind about what I observe to make the change. I can’t hold onto the past hurts, and expect a positive change in result of my now or my future. All I can do, is redefine my past, and lose the loveless energy. That will be enough to keep me busy for quite some time.

That’s why I write. I write to cheer myself up. I write to amuse myself. I write to clear out the cobwebs of my past I have in my head, and try to accept where I am now. I write to move myself forward in a peaceful and loving existence. I write to feel better, period. Doesn’t always work. Sometimes I find that being a loving person isn’t the easiest choice, especially when you’re living in your head in past hurts. So, all of this experimentation i do with my own energy is a process that I’m willing to share with whom ever, whatever the consensus may be. My love for me and the love I have for all people is growing, and with it so is my recognition of the dissonance that is us as a human race. That is also being highlighted intensely.

I guess my point is, I understand fully that the change can’t come from just one person to affect the whole. Well, essentially it could, but it’s unlikely due to our vast majority of differences. But, if I change and affect the people in my life positively, that chain reaction could be like a pandemic of love, instead of disease. We can all affect one another, and be infected, by the love virus. Let’s choose to laugh together more often, let’s be together in love as we feel comfortable doing so, let’s stop all the things that aren’t loving to ourselves and others. Let’s decide both individually and together. Let’s choose to “be the change we want to see in the world.” (mahatma gandhi.) And let’s “be the ones to make it different.” (Me, Kari Keillor)

(Please sub the energy of pandemic and fear for the energy of love traveling the world and affecting it positively.)

“so it goes.” -Kurt Vonnegut.

#choose love #love matters #love manifestation #self reflection #self love #self esteem #selfworth #self care #self improvement #self development #self definition #love is all you need #love #selfie #me #Kari Keillor #out and proud #love defined #a love vigilante #love is love #louder than love #love is real #loveislove #rise of the planet of the apes #kurt vonnegut

[theexistentiallyqueer]

It’s been a while, what with me being being more active on Twitter these days, but I had some thoughts churning around in my brain and this felt like a better place to post them rather than threading them over there.

This is a post about Persona 5 and restorative justice. Before I go any further, though, a note: this is meta about restorative justice and prison abolition as ethical philosophies only, how it can be expressed/structured in works of fiction, i.e., Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal, and what the importance of doing so is.

I should also note that I am not a philosopher, a legal scholar, or an activist, I just like to read, and I strongly encourage you to look into the topics I’m discussing in this essay. If you want specific recommendations you can DM me; again, this being meta about a video game, I think linking those titles here would diminish their importance regarding what they’re actually about.

Ready? Okay. Let’s get started.

what is restorative justice?

‘Restorative justice’ is a concept in ethical and legal philosophy that holds itself in contrast to two other kinds of justice: punitive and carceral. Punitive justice is justice as punishment, i.e., an eye for an eye, while carceral justice involves justice as the confinement of criminal offenders. While both have heavy overlaps with one another, they’re distinct in the generality vs the specificity of their outcome: punitive justice can involve the death penalty, property seizure, permanent loss of rights, etc., carceral justice refers strictly just to the incarceration of criminal offenders in institutional facilities (jails, prisons, etc.).

Restorative justice, in contrast, roots itself in the understanding of closing a circle: the best and most holistic way to heal harm one person inflicts on another is to have the person who inflicted the harm make reparations to the person they hurt in a tangible and meaningful way. This can take many forms, and if you’re passingly familiar with restorative justice already, you may have heard about it involving the offender and the victim meeting face-to-face. This does happen sometimes. Personal acknowledgement of the harm you’ve inflicted on someone is important, and direct apologies are important, but these need to also be coupled with actions. The person behind a drunk hit-and-run of a parent could help put their orphaned child through school, or a domestic abuser could be made to take counseling and go on to help deter domestic violence in other households, and so on. 

The vast majority of states across the world use punitive/carceral models, though small-scale community trials of restorative justice have been attempted, to varying degrees of success. No one is going to argue that it would be easy to implement, but it is important. Restorative justice is about recognizing that crime, specifically crimes against other people, are fundamentally still about two people: the perpetrator and the victim. And we have to look beyond the words perpetrator and victim to recognize that they are both human beings and challenge ourselves to build a society where our concept of justice means healing hurts instead of retaliation.

It’s not easy, but it is possible. It requires changing your own perceptions of justice and humanity and society and the big wide entire world to have the kind of mindset that allows it to be possible. But it is possible, and I know that from personal experience, because it’s my own mindset and I’ve been through trauma too.

prison abolition and the god of control

Persona 5 has an authority problem. By which I mean, Persona 5 has a problem challenging authority in any way that functionally matters.

The game is drenched in heavy-handed prison imagery, from jail cells to wardens to striped jumpsuits to cuffs and chains to an electric chair. Throughout the long build-up of the main storyline we’re treated to a confectionery delight of punitive justice, stick-it-to-the-man justice: the Thieves find a bad guy who coincidentally has personally hurt or is actively hurting one of their members, and they take it upon themselves to make the bad guy miserable and then send him off to jail. By the end of the arc you’re meant to feel like you accomplished something heroic, that by locking someone up you’re balancing the scales of justice. In the Kamoshida arc Ann even frames this in restorative justice terms, telling him he doesn’t deserve the easy way out of ending his own life and needs to live with his mistakes and repent, but he’s still sent off to jail regardless and Ann and Shiho are left to struggle through the trauma he put them through without anyone to really support them. This repeats itself, over and over: Madarame, Kaneshiro, Okumura, Shido--expose the bad guy, bring him low, publicly shame him, and then send him away (or, in Okumura’s case, watch him die on live TV to riotous cheers from the public).

And what does this all accomplish, in the end? You get to the Depths of Mementos on Christmas Eve to find the souls of humanity locked away in apathy, surrendered willingly to the control of the state, and your targets right there with them, thanking you for helping them return to a place where they don’t have to think of other people as people any more than they did before. In prison, they can forget that they are human beings and that all of the rest of the people in the world are too. The Phantom Thieves march upstairs and defeat the Gnostic manifestation of social control, that being that masquerades itself with lies as the true Biblical god. And then you go back home and the adults tell you that everything is okay now, the system itself isn’t rotten, and you just have to sit back, stop actively participating in the world, and let them take the reins.

It’s one of Persona 5′s most ironic conceits. “Prison abolition....good?” the player asks, and Atlus swats you on the hand and says, “Silly kids, prison abolition completely unnecessary because you can trust the state to not fuck up anyone’s lives anymore ever.” All while using prison imagery to present prisons as institutions inherently divorced from what might constitute actual justice.

Prisons exist because hierarchies exist, and so long as hierarchies exist, inequality will exist and people will commit harm who otherwise likely would not. But you can’t have your cake and eat it too, Atlus. You can’t frame prisons as an inherently unjust institution used to control people because you didn’t do anything to get rid of the hierarchy. You just gave the hydra a few new heads.

restorative justice and rehabilitation

Rehabilitation is Persona 5′s favorite buzz word, and for all that it’s used the game never really clearly defines what it’s supposed to mean. Yaldabaoth uses it as a euphemism to describe the process by which he creates his ideal puppet, but Yaldabaoth bad, and by the end of the game, Yaldabaoth dead. We get barely any time with Igor after that for Igor to define rehabilitation properly on his terms, which is notable in that Igor is the one who’s supposed to be the spiritual mentor of the wild card within the Persona universe. 

We can only infer from that that it’s the player who’s meant to define what rehabilitation is by the end of the game, but because the game fails to take any concrete stance on its themes that could in any way undermine the idea that society isn’t functionally broken, it’s hard to figure out what conclusion we’re supposed to draw. As I stated above, the game immediately walks back any insinuations that it’s the institutions themselves that are rotten by having Sae and Sojiro step in and assume responsibility for making the world just by continuing to operate within the rules society itself has created. If you can’t beat them....join them?

If anything the closest we can get to coming up with a definitive understanding of what the game wants us to understand rehabilitation as is when the protagonist is in juvie. During those months we’re treated to an extended cutscene of all of your maxed out confidants taking action to get you out of jail, but because you can trigger this scene even if you haven’t maxed out all of your confidants, and because the outcome (getting out of juvie) is the same even if you haven’t maxed out any besides Sae, then we’re right back where we started.

But that cutscene still has a sliver of meaning to it despite it being largely window-dressing, because the game does push, over and over, the argument that it’s through your bonds with others, through building a community, that you’ll rehabilitate yourself and find true justice.

And that’s what restorative justice is about: community.

the truth: uncovering it vs deciding it

I can’t find enough words to convey how infuriating it is that Atlus comes so close to telling a restorative justice narrative and then completely drops the ball on displaying it at all in Goro’s character arc.

Goro’s concept of justice is fundamentally punitive, the textbook “you hurt me so I’m going to hurt you back.” In doing so he goes on to hurt a whole bunch of other people: orphaning Futaba, orphaning Haru, triggering a mental shutdown in Ohya’s partner Kayo, and also killing countless millions other instances of mental shutdowns, psychotic breakdowns, bribery, and scandal that caused people material harm and, in a handful of cases, killed them.

Yes, Shido gave him the gun, but Goro pulled the trigger. And in a restorative justice framework, you don’t bypass that fact: you actively interrogate it.

There’s been a lot of really great meta about what the circumstances of Goro’s life were like, including the Japanese foster care system, the social stigma of bastardy in Japan and the impact it has on an illegitimate child’s outcomes, and the ways in which Shido groomed and manipulated Goro into being the tool of violence he made him into. These things aren’t excuses for what Goro does, however: they’re explanations for it. They are the complex social issues that create a situation where a child feels his best choice, indeed maybe his only choice, is to take the gun being offered to him and use it on other people. If you want to prevent more kids from slipping through cracks into those kinds of situations, you need to understand the social ills that made those cracks appear in the first place and you need to fix them. Otherwise there will always be another kid, and another recruiter, and another bad choice, and another gun. Systemic problems require systemic solutions.

Even so, none of that bypasses the fact that it was Goro’s hand on that gun, that it was Goro who performed the physical action of killing Wakaba’s and Okumura’s shadows, and that, as a result of Goro’s direct actions, Wakaba and Okumura died. You can say Okumura deserved it all you like, but Haru doesn’t deserve to be an orphan. Haru deserved to repair her relationship with her father. Okumura deserved the chance to learn and make direct, material amends to the employees he hurt and the families of those who died on his watch, and they deserved to have him give them a better way to heal.

But this isn’t about the loss of Okumura making amends to his family or his victims: this is about Goro Akechi, and the fact that even in Royal his fraught relationship with Haru and Futaba is never explored, barely even addressed. There’s not even any personal, direct acknowledgement from him of the pain he put them through.

You can say he doesn’t care, and that’s fine that he doesn’t care. And it is. He’s a fictional character, this is a video game, they are anime characters.

But Persona 5 flirts with the idea of restorative justice and never fully explores it, and it’s a weaker game for that.

the thin place, the veil between worlds, the line in the sand

This is the last part, I promise, and I’ll be short and brief here, because the truth is that none of this matters, at least not in the way that you think. Persona 5 is a story. It’s a lie that we buy. It’s all zeroes and ones and electrical signals and optical images on a blank black screen.

But art can be powerful. Art is like magic, the deepest magic, the oldest kind. We human beings are creatures of art and poetry, of images and patterns, of music and words. Good art, really good art, can allow us to explore new ideas and critique our internal assumptions about how the world works.

No, fiction doesn’t affect reality, not the way that you think it does.

But if you’ve gotten this far, I just got you to read an essay on restorative justice and prison abolition in regards to a Japanese role-playing game, and that is something to think about.

How do you define rehabilitation? What kind of justice do you believe in? Is the way you conceive those things really the best way?

And how much more interesting could a story that challenges those concepts be?

#persona #persona 5 #persona 5 royal #goro akechi #akira kurusu #meta #words

[sabraeal]

Desert & Reward, Chapter 10

[Read on AO3]

There’s someone in his room.

The windows are shut against the night air-- Yori, and by that he means Morel, has ideas about air flow and general health that he can’t wait for Miss to hear-- but a faint whisper skates across the stillness. It’s not his own breath; that’s been trapped in his chest since he flinched awake, fully conscious of the shade lingering in the shadows.

How gauche to kill a groom before his wedding night. Everyone knows corpses are only fashionable when found fresh on their marital bed.

But style is the least of his concerns right now. With a conscious effort, every tense muscle eases, his limbs flopping out like a limp starfish. Miss might complain about his sprawl after spending a cold night curled at the edge of the bed, but it was the perfect posture to imply a solid, dead to the world sort of unconsciousness.

There’s only one way to really sell this perfect deception: a snore. Not a dainty, fake one, oh no, but a wall-rattling, chest-and-throat-involved extravaganza of sound. There, obnoxious and oblivious: the perfect victim.

The sound of rustling cloth is muted beneath his act, but Obi hasn’t lasted this long by being a slouch in the perception department. His hand slithers under the pillow, clasping his fingers around a hilt. He hopes his murderer is enjoying the show; it’ll be the last thing they ever see, after all.

“My lord.”

Obi winces. That’s-- that’s much closer than he would have thought. His grip tightens, back tensing--

“My lord,” his attacker whispers again, beleaguered. “Get up.”

“Yori?” His eyes slit open, the dark room viewed from behind the cage of his lashes, and-- ah, there. Yori, his hair oddly askew, shirt glowing white in the dim. Ah, what did he always say? Assassins and domestics.

Obi rolls over, blinks. His valet is half-dressed. “Did you get in a fight?”

“A--? No, my lord.” He sighs, straightening from his servile crouch. “If my lord would be so kind, I’d feel better if you weren’t poised to attack me with cutlery.”

His grip loosens, blade dropping back to it’s place on the mattress. “It’s not cutlery.”

“Well, it’d certainly be more at home in a kitchen than the bedroom,” his valet huffs, hands wrapping around his hips. Mrs Carre will be so pleased to know he was getting a proper scolding even out of her care. “If you’re plan to keep that habit back home, then I’m going to start asking for hazard pay.”

He makes a sound half laugh, half snort, and entirely derisive. “Ah, come on. It’s not like it’s a new...”

His well of words dries up as Yori stares at him, head cocked and curious, arms crossed like a mother waiting for a weak explanation, and--

He hasn’t at Cacciatore. Purposefully, at first; there’s no better way to root out a traitor than to play into the expectation of a hapless lord. But then...

Well, the bedside drawer is just as good a hiding place as a pillow. One the maids were less likely to find, at least. Lili would take a discovery like that with her usual aplomb-- in his experience, Tanbarun made their ladies particlarly unflappable-- but any of the others...

Well, he could only imagine the sort of dressing down he’d get if one of Mrs Carre’s girls cut themselves changing the linen. He might be lord of the manor, but Obi’s under no illusions about whose house he lives in.

“What time is it?” He squints toward the widows. It’s impossible to tell; night’s faded from black to a thick blue, but his room faces west, not east.

“Early,” Yori replies, shirty. “You need to get up.”

Obi groans, throwing his arm over his eyes. If he closes them now, he might have a chance of slipping back into sleep. “We’re in the city, Yori. We keep city hours.”

“I understand, sir, but however--”

He rolls over, burying his face in the pillow. “Wake me up when breakfast is here.”

Yori heaves a long-suffering sigh. “Although there’s nothing I would like more than being able to ignore my duty and return to bed, my lord, there’s a message for you.”

“It’ll keep.”

“Sir--”

He opens a single, dubious eye. “Is something on fire, Yori?”

“No, but--”

“Then it can wait until morning.”

That should be the end of the conversation; it always was when he tried to pester Master-- Zen into action in the wee hours. But instead Yori shuffles, put-out, at the edge of the bed. “It’s from the gate, my lord.”

Obi’s never been one for pulling rank-- it stuck him as a little uppity to expect sirs and milords when he’d been dragged out of the gutter-- but oh, he’s tempted to now. If even the gate guards think they can rouse him in the middle of the night on a whim, it seems prudent to cultivate at least an inkling of noble bearing. “And?”

“Someone’s waiting for you.”

They take the servant’s corridors; the palace’s halls might be empty this time of night-- or morning-- but these are what Obi knows best. He might have a title now, but back in those days, he’d been an up-jumped gutter rat. Even with his shiny messenger tag, the court rested a little easier if the riffraff didn’t sully their air by breathing it.

It’s an advantage now; with no guards to ask their their business, they’ll make better time. From chambers to Starlight and back again, in bed before he can lose his beauty sleep.

“I hope you are aware, my lord--” if only Yori could teach him how to infuse so much derision into a title, Obi would die a happy, if thoroughly stabbed, man-- “that a man of proper breeding would submit to the whole of their toilette before even thinking of stepping foot out of their--”

“You got this robe on me.” A testament to Yori’s powers of persuasion, considering what an eyesore it is. “Don’t push your luck.”

“A banyan is the least you could do.” The crisp cut of his words channels every last stuffy inch of Mr Morel. “You might as well be walking around in your drawers.”

“Aw, come on.” He grins, letting the robe gape; even the peep of pajama brings a frown to Yori’s face. “You know better than anyone that I don’t wear any.”

His valet could teach a master class on sighs. “For someone so devoted to their line of their trouser, you might wear ones where it matters.”

He clucks his tongue. “And ruin the mystery?”

Something utterly intriguing ripples across Yori’s face, pinching his mouth and furrowing his brow, leaving him more Morel than man. “My lord, the trappings of the court may not suit you, but I beg you to concede to at least some form of propriety.”

He glances back at him, waggling his brows. “And why would I do that?”

“Your wife.”

Ah, now that stops him dead in his tracks. “My...?”

Yori squeezes a steeling breath through his nose. “It may have escaped you, my lord, but you are going to marry in the morning.”

All at once, he’s aware of how much his body aches. Last night-- no, only hours ago-- is...foggy, blurred by the patina of alcohol, but he could never forget the warm weight of Miss on his back, of the sweet way she clung to him as they flew through the air-- nor the sickening crack his bones made on that landing. Miss may be light, but unlike snow banks, balconies are hell on the knees.

Miss, who he was only carrying because she was too drunk to walk. Who was only drunk because she’d been at a hen party. Who was only at a hen party because it was being thrown in her honor. An honor she only had because she was due to get married in the morning. The same wedding he’d be having because they were marrying each other.

He needs a minute. A long one. His death grip on the wainscoting isn’t going to be enough to hold him. “It is morning.”

Yori’s mouth pulls thin; not the way Morel’s can, but close enough. “When it is more morning.”

There’s no blush of dawn linger at the horizon, only the mist of its breath, but oh, that is...more than enough. His Majesty sprung this impossibility on him only days ago, and now--

Well, he’d better enjoy his bachelorhood while he can. In a few short hours, he’ll be Miss’s ball and chain.

“And to a margravine,” Yori continues, sulkily keeping pace. “I know you’re content to hide away in the country for the rest of your life, my lord--” a lie, if Obi ever heard one-- “but your wife’ll want to keep a presence at court.”

He tries to picture it, tries to think of Miss weighed down by a dress so bejeweled it practically has its own economy, wearing a courtly mask for every occasion, talking of nothing but the latest fashion or the most shocking scandal and not hating every minute of it--

But it’s impossible. Tanbarun’s king can slap a title on her, but not even Master could make her enjoy it. She might come when a crown calls, but they’ll be prying her out from between the pages of a book.

Yori’ll learn all that soon enough. Or he would, if Miss came to live at Cacciatore. Which she wouldn’t; no reason to halt all her actual, important work for a fake marriage that’ll be nothing more than ashes in the pan in a handful of years anyway.

But Yori doesn’t know that-- can’t know that, if he wants to keep Miss away from whatever plans Tanbarun has for her. So he lets his mouth tilt, lets a sly smile creep up the curve of his jaw. The first rule of being a good gambler is never telling a man when he puts his money on the wrong bird. “You don’t say?”

“Of course I do.” His valet glances at him, cheeks puffed and brows bent, and tells him with all the undue confidence only an umarried man could, “If you’re to be married, sir, you might learn about the wants of women.”

He doesn’t laugh. When all this is over, His Majesty should put a medal on his chest for it. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Yori.” Obi blinks, eyes adjusting the the brilliant flare of the lamps. “This isn’t Starlight.”

His valet sighs. “No, my lord. It is not.”

“But you said there was a message for me--?”

“At the gate,” Yori confirms, beleaguered. “Poet’s gate.”

Obi would rather die than admit it but-- he’s starting to regret the banyan. Well, he’s always regretted the banyan, but the pajamas beneath it--

Well, he’s definitely under-dressed. For whatever this is.

Not that it looks like much. A coach idles at the foot of the stair, paneled all in black, but the rest of the courtyard is empty. Well, save for the swarm of footmen buzzing around, combing the carriage for every last hair of the lord that abandoned it. What sort of sadist arrives in the wee hours, Obi can’t say, but he’s glad all their wedding guests are accounted for, otherwise--

The door shuts, and there, staring him dead in the eye, is the horned hind of Forenzo.

“Obi!” Long limbs flail out from the swarm, and in the first blush of dawn, one of the footmen resolves into more inches than sense.

“Suzu?” He tries to tell himself to walk forward, but his legs stall numbly beneath him. The past three days have felt like a dream-- a nightmare, really-- but the sort he can control, the kind he can choose to wake up from.

“What...?” A foxish face looms just over him, grinning lazily. Suzu’s here now, and it’s all suddenly real. “What are you doing here?”

“I came with Lata,” he says, as if that explains anything. “He had an invitation.”

“Right.” Of course he did; not that Obi had ever expected him to use it. “But what are you doing here?”

“Oh, well, we figured if he was coming, we should go too.” One large hand sweeps over the ill-fitting Forenzo livery. “So here I am.”

Obi blinks. “And Lata just...let you?”

“Oh, no. Definitely not.” He shrugs, sending arms everywhere. “He told us it would be a cold day in Yuris before he let a single one of us show up as his plus one.”

That sounds right, at least. “Mmhm.”

“So we played roshambo for it,” Suzu continues, “and I told him I’d be his servant or whatever.”

“And that...worked?” Maybe this was all still a dream. It’s following the same sort of logic, at least.

“Yeah! Actually--” Suzu rubs at his chin, just the way Shidan does, only with far less reason or facial hair-- “he seemed happy not to have to go and interview people for it.”

That made sense, at least.

“You’re Lord Forenzo’s valet?”

Suzu glances up, blinking at where his own stands, just three steps up from where they’re talking. “Yeah, that sounds like what he said.”

Yori, for his part, looks politely horrified. Obi can’t blame him; Suzu doesn’t give off the air of being in charge of himself, let alone another person, especially one expected to participate in a toilette of some kind.

Still, that’s not the part that bothers him, personally. “But why?”

“Well--” Suzu sucks in a breath, hands hooking around his hips like Yuzuri does right before she lays into him-- “my guess would be his complete lack of social skills--”

“No, not that.” He doesn’t exactly need a primer on Lata Forenzo being a misanthrope. “I mean why did you bother going through all that trouble?”

Obi’s come face to face with a fox once, years ago now. He’d been doing the long walk of shame that came from country kills, no trees to help him along and no reason to hurry back to his cramped quarters, when two foxes darted across his path. Or at least one did, scurrying across into the long grass in a rusty streak. The other--

The other sat there, right in front of him, one paw raised. Like he couldn’t be seen if he didn’t move. Or maybe that the scarecrow staring down at him couldn’t attack as long as he kept him in his sight. Obi had to turn his back before the thing dared to dart away, and only once his friend let out an eerie whimper.

But for that moment, amber burned into gold, and the gulf between human and fox seemed so, infinitesimally small--

Well, it’s what he thinks of as Suzu stares at him, those sharp angles of his cheeks limned in the dawn’s light.

“C’mon.” Suzu’s mouth curls into a sure smile, one fist tapping him on the shoulder. “The best man can’t miss the wedding.”

“Ah...” Obi rubs at the back of his head. “About that...”

“Prince Zen is Marquis Conti’s best man,” Yori offers, strangely bitter. “You know, the second prince.”

Obi cranes his neck back with a scowl. “That’s not my name.”

Yori, with not a contrite bone in his body, says, “Apologies, my lord.”

Obi turns back, a much more sincere apology brewing behind his teeth, but Suzu is too busy frowning over his shoulder to appreciate it. “Who is this guy?”

“Ah...” Obi had left Lyrias with a jaunty wave and a promise to be back before the next snow; he’d thought that a royal reward consisted of a fancy title and some cash, a quick trip down to sweat in the capital before coming back to freeze at the castle.

And then, well--

“I am my lord’s personal valet,” Yori informs him, giving Suzu’s slapdash livery a perusal that could only be described as scathing.

“Oh!” Suzu’s mouth parts in a grin that usually means he’s about to get punched. “You have one of these too? Am I going to get one?”

“Ancestors forfend,” Yori mutters at the same time Obi adds, louder, “I think only lords get them.”

Suzu hums. “Well, I suppose I can’t mind being second fiddle to a guy that is, you know, a prince.”

“It’s political,” Obi assures Suzu with a grimace. “Not personal. If I ever get married for re--”

His teeth clack shut. Ah, so many months out in the country have dulled his edge. Or at least loosened his tongue.

“It’s all right, man.” Suzu’s gaze darts pointedly over his shoulder. “I’ll forgive you this time. I still get to come, right?”

Yori steps in. “The tables are already--”

“Yes.” For the first time in what feels like days, Obi actual smiles. “I’ll make sure there’s room for you.”

He deserves at least one real thing on his wedding day, after all.

“Great!” Suzu’s mouth stretches wide. “I’m famished.”

#obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #desert and reward #ans #here it is #my holiday gift to all of you! #merry christmas to all who celebrate! #i'd been wanted to get to a CERTAIN PART in this chapter #but it would have made this solidly 6K #and I try to keep these until 5K #so i guess it will happen NEXT TIME #when we actually get to the WEDDING for once #....hopefully