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imagining-in-the-margins · 1 year

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Father Figure (S.R.)

Summary: Spencer discusses daddy issues. His boss, who is also his girlfriend’s father, has a question. Request: Reader is hotch's daughter and after hotch learns that they are dating their interactions are kind of weird in a funny way Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader Category: Fluff Content Warning: Mild awkwardness Word Count: 900

MASTERLIST

The jet ride to a crime scene is rarely a pleasant experience. Each team member holds their folders filled with horrors, and they display an abject apathy. After all, they are quite familiar with the worst side of humanity. Some days, though, when the worst crimes are still hypothetical and the victims are alive, the team can maintain some semblance of their usual personality.

Spencer is usually the first one to share something interesting about the theoretical or identified unsub. This is because he has a broad knowledge on, well, most things, and he also manages to read through the stack of papers much quicker and with a greater detail than the others.

This day, however, Spencer is silent. And everyone knows why.

Because just one measly week ago, Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner found out that Spencer Reid was dating his daughter.

Beyond the initial, incredibly uncomfortable conversation, Hotch had barely spoken a word about it. A fool might think that meant he has no qualms with it, but Spencer knows him better than that.

No, it is infinitely more likely that Hotch is stewing in his rage about his daughter’s Freudian taste in men. Hotch is just too smart to strike without the possibility of maximal damage.

So, Spencer knows to keep his guard up.

But he never could keep a thought to himself, could he?

Derek lets out a deep breath with a soft whistle before he tosses his folder onto the desk beside him. As the others peek up at him, he shakes his head with an enthused but horrified expression.

“Talk about ‘daddy issues,’” Derek mutters.

The others smirk in response, but they say nothing else.

Until, inevitably, Spencer does.

“The correct term would be ‘father complex,’” he says with an attempt to sound disinterested in one of his favorite philosophers, “It was a shared theory between Freud and Jung, and it’s actually very interesting.”

No one says a word. Spencer does not notice the warnings flashing in their eyes because he is too afraid to accidentally look at Hotch.

They all know what’s coming.

He continues, anyway.

“While Freud was more interested in how men might become distrusting or intimidated by older male authorities, Jung extended his analysis to women with emotionally or physically absent fathers.”

Despite the roaring engines and the full cabin, the jet is silent. If Spencer had looked up then, he would have seen how everyone immediately glances over at Hotch.

Hotch, however, maintains his stoic stare. He is looking directly at Spencer, who is still staring at the document in the folder he has already read several times over.

“There’s a more contemporary term for the phenomenon that would probably be more fitting,” Spencer announces.

“Really?” Emily asks. The rhetorical question is dripping with sarcasm in a final attempt to stop him.

Spencer is so lost in thought at this point that he does not even notice. Instead, he marches on to his downfall.

“It’s called ‘Father hunger,’” he explains coolly, “and it explains the over-trust in authority figures and the search for an older man that reminds them of the father they never had.”

“Are you talking about yourself or my daughter?”

Every muscle in Spencer’s body seizes at the question. Quickly, he raises his head to find himself trapped in the paralyzing, disapproving stare of Aaron Hotchner.

“What?” he squeaks.

The man does not answer.

“N-No! No, I was just explaining the origins of the term,” he insists.

He tries—but fails—not to think about you. Just one remark, one casual reminder of your existence makes his skin ripple with goosebumps. Overcome with guilt—but never regret—his mind tugs forward every memory shared between the two of you.

The smell of your perfume, the softness of your lips, the comfort he finds in your arms.

His life is flashing before his eyes and every part of it looks like you.

He raises his hands in surrender before he sputters, “I would never—!”

“Reid,” your father commands.

Your boyfriend flinches.

“It’s a joke,” Hotch says just before he smiles.

Immediately, Spencer is surrounded by familiar smiles. He feels the visceral pain of a joke made at his expense while at the same time, he is cloaked with relief.

“Funny joke,” he says under his breath.

Hotch detects the sarcasm but decides to let it go.

He had won the exchange, after all.

Spencer also tries to let it go. Because if this was the height of Hotch’s rage over the ultimate violation of his home life, he’d basically gotten away with murder.

Still, he can’t shake the burning red blush. That and the trembling from the adrenaline felt almost permanent.

Just as the thought occurs to him, Derek takes a seat beside him.

He leans closer even as Spencer leans away.

Then, in the quietest whisper, he asks, “Which one of you does she call daddy?”

Yes, Spencer realizes. The blush is going to be permanent.

“Stop talking,” he orders with a startlingly amount of finality.

From across the table, Emily provides Derek with the audience he wanted. Her giggles alone assuage his desire to make Spencer’s day just a little bit more chaotic.

The two relent. Spencer is alone with his thoughts again, and he wonders whether he will ever feel at home in his new position.

But then he thinks of you, and he knows that he is exactly where he is meant to be.

(Tell me what you thought about this fic here!)

If you're looking for more to read, check out my full-length smut story "My Boss's Daughter," where Reader is Hotch's daughter that is in love with Spencer!

Thanks for reading!

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid blurb #spencer reid smut #spencer reid fandom #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid/you #spencer reid/reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fic #spencer reid self insert #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds self insert #criminal minds fanfiction

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azenta · 2 years

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sorry for it's not related to anything i just don't know where else to write it. is it normal to feel inherently unable to be fulfilled? i haven't lived for long and my earlier memories are blurry but the things i'm able to recall all have this weak flavor of not being satisfactory enough. i started to be more proactive and moving towards things that i believe will make me feel better but as soon as i reach my goal i find myself wishing for more of that thing or maybe something completely different and go for the next goal without really appreciating what i've managed to earn so far. i have friends i'm close to and i love them dearly and yet it feels we're not close in a way i wish us to be so i try to spend more time with them and really get under their skin in a way that fulfills me but they never seem to let me in like this or be as concentrated on me as i am on them so it's like i'm ultimately alone and unable to have proper relationships with people. i don't consider it depression because i experience the full spectrum of human emotion and can perform just fine it's just that even at my best i'm aware of the fact my happiness is merely a patch covering the ultimate despair just like being full of food is a patch covering the ultimate hunger. even if you try to avoid getting hungry you know it's your natural state to be so and here it's the same with despair being something you can never get rid of. i considered it being so normal no one really talks about it but it felt wrong because there's no way so many would accept it. there's still hope i can actually patch the despair for good and be happy and fulfilled just like everyone around seems to be but it seems naive. at this point it feels like if i can't be fulfilled no matter what i shouldn't care about what i 'want' and just go for whatever will secure me in this world. if i'm destined to be disappointed in what i do i can go for a stable well-paid career instead of the one i personally found interesting and if i'm destined to be disappointed in people i can stop trying to be close to them at all. i could go to killing myself with this kind of thinking considering the existence is ultimately painful but i'm too afraid of pain and death to go through it. and maybe i'm still somewhat hopeful. sorry for the schizo text wall i just wonder if it really is a normal experience and if so how people don't kill themselves even more often.

The state of despair is not "normal" per se, or rather it indicates a myriad of things that I will elaborate on. But the feeling of being unfulfilled can be. The nuance is despair is felt when we get many or some particular needs not met on a regular basis, so it's a chronic feeling of dissatisfaction (feeling unfulfilled).

If you've been privated from some needs, especially for an elongated period of time, when you will encounter those needs, it's normal to "want more" at first. The need hasn't been satiated for so long that it will take time before you feel truly satisfied. You just have to think of someone who hasn't eaten properly for months, even tho they get a full day of eating properly, their body has been lacking in resources in many regards, therefore they will feel more intensely their hunger.

Also, that wanting more stems from a feeling of insecurity, which in itself speak of another crucial need (security). Since you haven't had this need met for so long, then your whole organism have retain that it may again take a while since you meet it again. In itself, it is a need to secure what you have obtained and how to obtain it to be able to fulfill it again. A need is a need, you cannot live without it without degrading your survivability. Nobody wants that.

But there is also another phenomenon I need to mention because it could be a possible reason why the dissatisfaction persists. There is the version where you find "something" that makes you feel like you have fulfilled your need, but it's only creating the feeling of fulfillment and not actually filling the need itself. That creates the phenomenon of addiction, where your need is never met, so you always feel the urge for it, but certain things or actions give you the "result" without really fulfilling the need. Therefore the behavior or object becomes associated with how to fulfill the need, when in reality it doesn't. This create the infernal loop of perpetual dissatisfaction and even the feeling of emptiness. And btw, I don't mean addiction exclusively in term of substance abuse, it can be anything really.

There are also many more things to take into account:

1. Your relation to your emotions.

2. Your beliefs around certain needs

3. Your awareness of your needs

And all of those three are affected by your life experiences and what you had to do to "survive" and strive through your environment.

If you have a poor relation with your feelings and emotions, then you are less likely to be in touch with your needs and therefore, less likely to be able to fulfill them. Emotions and feelings are how our brain tells us when some of our needs are affected (postively and negatively). And your environment might also have been punishing toward the attainment of certain needs and even rewarding toward some, at the detriment of some other too. This leads also to addictive behaviors or simply, maladaptive strategies that make you constantly unfulfilled regarding certain needs.

Since having the knowledge of what are freaking human needs is kinda necessary and practical, I'll use the pyramid of Maslow to give you a basis of what are those human needs. Here is the illustration of the said pyramid, but I will elaborate on each.

So, the first layer, in blue, is all about physiological needs. This is the very basic that we all need to account for if we want to meet anything above. If you eat like shit and sleep poorly, everything above will be difficult to accomplish. You won't have the minimum energy required to secure your work, to maintain a place to live, and even to care for your relationships and maintain a positive self-perception, even less actualize yourself. Let's not mention lacking air, you won't go anywhere without breathing lol. But, more seriously, if you live in a place where air is low quality, borderline toxic, it could be important to take it into account, because it means this primary need is poorly met and will automatically affect the rest. Your ability to work or preserve your other resources will considerably be altered.

The second layer, in light blue, is all about security. It's all about doing the necessary to secure every other needs. It also impact the first layer, as gaining easy access to healthy resources allow the first layer to be better attained as well. That's the need I mentioned earlier as well. This revolves a lot around the notions of accessibility and durability. The more accessible and durable "it" is in time, the more secure I feel. This applies to basic resources but also relationships, and even opportunities for growth in general.

The third layer, in green, is the sense of belonging and intimacy specifically. People underestimate greatly how humans as a species are fundamentally social and thus, dependent on others to survive properly. This is usually the category where shit hits the fan. People nowadays have a poor sense of intimacy and/or of belonging, in big part because most of psychological wounds are impacting this level (ex. Fear of rejection, abandonment, betrayal, injustice, humiliation, etc.) and also come from unmet social needs. Intimacy is the ability to be vulnerable with another and feeling understood and supported. The sense of belonging is the ability to relate and support each other. Those two demand effort and commitment toward people, and they demand a sense of security also to establish those needs and simply a sense of security in regard to the given relationships. If your sense of security is affected, you'll have a hard time being vulnerable and supportive of another, since you'll be more in a state of continuous distrust. You'll also not feel able to maintain those relationships and become either needy or avoidant of relationships. However, if you have poor relationships, it's also harder to maintain a sense of security and stability, since others help by providing access to resources, opportunities and help maintaining it altogether. They can facilitate the establishment of security in one's life (ex: having good relationship or network at work vs bad ones).

Then, the fourth layer, in orange, is all about the Estimation of self, or self-esteem. This evaluation of ourselves is crucial in how to properly survive since this is what help us evaluate our capacity and ability to handle challenges and difficulties. In other words, it informs us on how much we got the ability to survive and strive. If my self evaluation is poor, then it informs on problems at lower levels and it will also affect my ability to simply adapt to challenges. The need for relationships come before because our value depends a lot on the sense of utility we get from how we can provide and support each other. If the feedback we get from people is usually negative, it informs us we are doing something incorrectly. This force us to reevaluate ourselves, and so estimate our value differently. People serve as mirror of ourselves, to help us refine the necessary abilities to survive more easily. Of course, some environments are dysfunctional, toxic or simply inadequate for us as individuals, and this is why it matters to cultivate self-esteem apart from relationships to better recognize where we actually belong and who really deserves our energy and time, and simply with who we can actually cultivate intimacy.

This leads us to the last primary set of needs, in red, actualization. This one is about evolution, how to evolve and not simply survive. This is our drive, where our dreams lie, and what makes us make sense of life and the world around. This is the last one because you need everything else before to be able to construct a sense to life. If you lack food, shelter, or water, life will only appear as a perpetual and tedious battle of survival. If you have no security, same applies, everything will be a fight to stabilize the most basic aspects to survive, since everything will still be a potential threat until you get secure. If you have no one to rely on or to count on, nobody to relate, then things don't get much more purpose than maintaining yourself alive, which doesn't give much substance to life. If your self esteem is down the drain, you won't see your ability to actualize anything and so, won't be able to perceive a greater sense to life else than entertaining your relationships for the sake of it. But even then, your sense of utility will be doubted and you may start asking why you receive all this love or why it even matter. Usually, it even leads to self sabotage and self-destruction of relationship, which will of course worsen the sense given to life. And then, if you do have and believe in your capability but do nothing with them, you'll feel lost and will try naturally to find a purpose with all those abilities. Until it makes you cease to renew and empower yourself because there is no point to empower yourself if there is no use found into those personal abilities. The achievement of actualization also reinforce the self-esteem of ourselves and thus, provide further stability to all the other needs we have.

In the end, all of those needs affect each other mutually, but I do like the pyramid of Maslow because it helps to orient oneself in all of this and to identify our needs, and identify what needs we lack or have a harder time with. If you notice the lower layers are affected, then you can bet the upper ones are as well, and probably even more in deficit than the lower ones. So, this can be a good place to start and to aim which needs require more attention in priority. Like, if you notice your relationships don't give you the intimacy or belonging you crave, but your sense of security is crappy, then your relationships probably suffer from it, and that might be why the intimacy is not striving or satisfying as it should. It means you might be putting up walls without noticing or even lacking proper boundaries since you have no sense of personal space which is related to personal security.

In the end, life is not something simple, but it can definitely be enjoyable and not just a painful experience. Overall, with what you told me, I'd say to start with identifying your needs and working from below to top. I dont want to make this longer, but if you have questions on how to answer certain needs, I will let you ask. Or else I'll end up doubling the length of this already lengthy answer. You'll also certainly encounter personal issues that might be impairing the achievement of some of those needs. What will matter is your willingness to adjust and change to adapt.

Remember we are not static entities. Life is a perpetual movement, a perpetual process, and it is far more powerful than you are. So, if you decide to become an immovable object, be prepared to be broken into pieces. It's far more malleable, but also much more work to assemble back into a bigger stronger entity. However, it is also through adversity we are willing to change, since it is how we experience something is not working and impairing our survivability.

I hope this can help you some bit. Don't hesitate to ask other questions regarding this issue. Remember I'm not acting here as a therapist, so if you ever need more support or help, I'd advise seeking professional one.

#ask #advice #psychological advice #psychology #needs #basic needs #human needs #long post #maslow's pyramid

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one-piece-dumpster-fire · 5 years

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Can you do a scenario for Law being horny while touching his s/o while she's asleep also touching himself or grinding on her, making his s/o wake up surprise but also turned on. Can you make it long and rough NSFW Please.

I know that somnophilia is a kink butsince it’s bordering on being noncon I will put a warning here- don’tread if that kind of thing makes you uncomfortable!!! And also, Ionly do short filth scenarios sorry dear I hope it’s still okay xD

Law filthy mini-scenario: Among the Sleep

Warning for Somnophilia!!!

It was really quite unusual for a night in thesubmarine to be that quiet, but for once it seemed that every member ofthe Heart Pirates went to sleep early, with no one still lingering around the hallways or even having a drunken party in the pantry…. my, what an odd phenomenon.

Well, but this wouldn’t be Trafalgar Law’screw if there wasn’t at least a tiiiny thing off this night.

„(Y/N)-ya… fuck…“ silent cursesand hoarse groans escaped the captain’s lips as he found himself unable tofall asleep and not in the mood to take his sleeping pills this time. No,instead his attention had shifted from the inexplicable tent in his boxers to the woman next to him, and even though he questioned his own sanity and motivesall throughout this act, it was clear that his need for attention andrelief had already clouded his mind. Hands desperately fumbled around with the set of boxers that hid his bulging erection, and even though the question remained where those sudden feelings came from, Law had no issue with beginning to masturbate right there, next to you. Soon enough he found that his hand weren’t enough though and the desperate pumps on his manhood slowed down as he could hear you move around, your nightgown shifting to the side a bit, thus revealing a small area of soft, (s/c) skin, which immediately caught his full perverted interest.

Without any second thought the youngsurgeon crawled closer to you, his eyes focussed on the newlyrevealed skin, and an immense want and hunger was radiating off ofhis body. Law couldn’t help but feel ashamed of himself for evenconsidering to do something so animalistic and depraved to you, all while youwere simply enjoying a good night’s sleep- but once you turned onyour side, fully facing him, and he could see your nipples, who hadprobably hardened because of the chilly air, rubbing against thefabric of your gown… he couldn’t help but to lunge forward, hishand quickly slipping inside of your nightgown to start cupping yourbreasts.

„Mh…“ a small and suprisingly happy moanalmost immediately rolled off your lips and send another shiver downhis body as his manhood began to ache like never before, and Law knewthat what he was doing was wrong already, to touch your body withoutyour permission, but the excitement running through his body made him bold and caused him to keep going, longing to feel more and more.

A hand carefully stroke over your nowsensitive bud before pinching it oh so slightly, causing anothermoan to escape your mouth. A big red blush began to form on the youngman’s cheeks as he studied your reaction and face closely, and theexpression of slight comfort and pleasure playing on your features almost madehim go crazy.

Law continued to touch your sweet bosomfor a couple more minutes, he wanted to make sure that every lastpiece of your sensitive skin received some proper treatment to makeup for his unruly behaviour, while soft gasps and purrs escaped fromyour mouth almost constantly. But eventually his actions came to astop as he noticed your legs rubbing against each other, and thesmall pool of wetness that had formed on the fabric of your lowernightgown and panties.

„Wet already? Seems like I’m not theonly naughty one here, (Y/N)-ya…“ Law whispered hoarsely and placed anapologetic kiss to your cheek as his hand moved down, under yournightgown and slipped right inside your panties. A groan louder thanhe had intended escaped from his lips as he felt the immenseslickness that immediately stained his fingers, and with no time towaste he pushed his index finger inside of your sweet trove, whilehis thumb formed circles on your sensitive clit.

„Ah… Hah…“ the moans thatrolled off your lips started to become more highpitched as your bodyjolted forward almost automatically, seeking out new heights ofpleasure that Law would be giving to you. As the wetness and tightnesssurrounding his fingers increased, Law decided to use his other handto bring some satisfaction to himself, but his dick was alreadytwitching from excitement, signaling that he wouldn’t last long atthis rate.

With an ashamed groan he pulled backhis fingers, making you whine in disappointment, and with no secondthought he turned you on your back, your womanhood now fully exposedand the sheer sight of it send another shudder through his body as hecarefully rubbed against your sensitive skin with his manhood.

The whole room was quickly filled withmoans, and the previously so quiet night had turned into a feast ofdesire as Law continued to rub and grind against you without actuallyentering. No way he would defile your body in such a way without your consent, and even though he was aware of the boundaries he was already pushing, Law liked to remind himself that he had at least some self-control…

That was, until a new sound broke theatmosphere.

„Put it in already, Law…“ a newexpression of shock and suprise settled on his face as Law lookeddown to check that he didn’t hallucinate and that it was really yourvoice he had just heard. Your hips were now beginning to arch upwards and rubbed against his dick as well, and although your eyes were still closed, there was a mocking smile dancing on your trembling lips…

„(Y/N)-ya! You’re… hold on… wereyou awake this whole time?!“ the young surgeon furrowed his eyes,forgetting about the pleasure for a moment as he simply eyed you withdisbelief and uncertainity. Did you… did you really just pretend to sleep during this entire ordeal?!

“I couldn’t sleep… and listening to you masturbate was so hot…” you admitted with a playful voice as a challenging smirk danced on your lips, “If you knew that I was awake you would have made me work for it again, like you always do… so this was a nice chance to get some pleasure for free!”

The surgeon shook his head with a groan as a smirk began to make its way to his lips. Honestly, and here he thought he was the perverted one…

“Then you should have stayed quiet, (Y/N)-ya. Because now I won’t hold back anymore!” Law announced as he pulled away, only to plunge deep into your trove right after, making your whole body jolt upwards. Moans and groans quickly filled the room as both of you were now working towards the sweet release you yearned for…

…and it certainly wasn’t a quiet night anymore.

#one piece #trafalgar law #dirt #op scenario #one piece scenario

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Twilight Is Much Better Than You Think

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The first crush I ever had was on David Bowie’s Goblin King from Labyrinth. He was a big haired, pale skinned other worldly bad boy who wanted to keep teenage Sarah with him forever despite being vastly older than her. I was 9.

So I get Twilight. Based on the series written by Mormon Stephenie Meyer, who at the time proudly confessed to never having seen a horror film, the first of the films came out in 2008 to wild commercial success, almost instantly generating a rabid fanbase of largely (but definitely not only) teenage girls. Nicknamed ‘Twihards’ these fans were obsessed not only with the films and books but also with the stars Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, who at the time were a couple in real life. It was intense. It was a lot.

Four subsequent (and lesser) films followed and while the fans got louder, so did the sneers. Now the series has landed on Netflix and is potentially reaching a whole new generation of viewers, as well as scratching a delicious nostalgic itch for original Twihards more than a decade on. Outside of the cultural phenomenon of the franchise, it’s easy to forget how genuinely intelligent the first film really was. The main reason for that was director Catherine Hardwicke.

Hardwicke gets teenage girls. If you have any doubt about that, watch her feature directorial debut from 2003 Thirteen. Co-written with then 14-year-old co-star Nikki Reed, it’s a painful drama about a destructive teenage friendship that taps perfectly into how achingly important and casually destructive certain things are when you’re that age. Twilight taps into the same thing, focusing on incredibly melodramatic teenager, Bella Swan. Mocking Bella is no smarter than mocking Kayla from Eighth Grade or Tracy from Thirteen. It’s not news: teenage girls can be a bit like that, and Hardwicke sets out her stall from the off.

Indeed the first lines of Twilight are Bella’s voiceover pondering her own mortality, “Dying in the place of someone I love seems a good way to go,” she mopes, with absolute sincerity.

There is no way these films would have been the teenage catnip that they were without the perfect casting of the two leads. Hardwicke found Stewart first, an up and comer at the time who is both preternaturally beautiful but somehow incredibly awkward with it (as a case in point of how this could have gone wrong – take the miscasting of Chloe Grace Moretz in Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie – Stewart would have been far better). Hardwicke ran ‘chemistry tests’ to find her Edward and to say there was chemistry between the two would be an understatement. Stewart carries Bella’s heavy earnestness with empathy while Pattinson is pointy, brooding, pale faced and interesting in all the right ways.

Yep, Catherine Hardwicke gets teenage girls.

Armed with the perfect leads, but only a tiny budget for a blockbuster – $37 million – Hardwicke made a romance fizzing with the kind of burgeoning sexuality coupled with melodramatic obsession that can be so common to pre-teen or teenage fantasy.

Forget the later movies which feature buff werewolves walking around with their tops off. The genius of Hardwicke’s movie is a similar innocence to Meyer’s books. It is pure fantasy.

Edward is the embodiment of the ‘safe’ boyfriend young teens fantasize about – an older, more experienced man who still looks young and handsome. A man who doesn’t like anyone else at all, but loves you completely. A man who desires you endlessly but – and this is crucial – can’t have sex with you. And a man who will love you, and only you for all of eternity.

Bella and Edward do shag, and get married and have a baby later on in the series, which is all somehow less interesting than the tingly but chaste first installment but that’s not to say part one isn’t about sex, because it absolutely is.

Edward wants to eat Bella so badly you can smell it. Or at least, he can certainly smell it – he’s driven crazy by the pheromones she gives off.

While Edward is ‘safe,’ he is also dangerous – he points out very clearly that she is powerless against him. She could never outrun him, he is far stronger than her. In a scene where he asks her to dance and she refuses he even says “I could make you.”

There is something a bit kinky about this, and rightly so. Lest we forget, Twilight was the inspiration for the tame erotica series which began with Fifty Shades of Grey. Bella is the young version of Anastasia, learning that maybe she quite likes being submissive.

There is no reason young teens (of any gender) shouldn’t explore different parts of their sexuality. Love it or hate it, the romance works.

Books

Twilight: What Was The Deal With Jacob and Renesmee?

By Nicole Hill

Rewatched years on and Twilight is a lot more than that though. It’s easy to forget how intentionally funny it is. Though we are on Bella’s side, that doesn’t stop Hardwicke gently poking fun at her. An early scene in science class sees Bella walk in and pose right in front of a fan like it was a wind machine. Later in the same lab, Edward sits in front of a taxidermied owl so he looks like he has literal angel wings. For a girl as melodramatic as Bella, it’s perfect (and if you need any more proof of how utterly melodramatic Bella is take the scene after Edward saves her from a car crash where she tells Edward “Why didn’t you let the van crush me, and save yourself the regret?” As if he would genuinely rather a girl he barely knows was dead…)

Twilight is funny. But Bella isn’t funny. Which is part of what makes it funny. Another weapon Hardwicke has in her arsenal is Anna Kendrick, as Bella’s very lovely friend Jessica. Kendrick is massive now and very clearly has great comic timing but Twilight was a breakout for her. Jessica is the anti-Bella. Cute and comfortable with her cuteness, incredibly tolerant with Bella, she’s a generally speaking well adjusted young woman, and Kendrick nails it. It’s notable, for example, how often she responds to Bella by saying “ha ha yeah, that’s really funny” (and not sarcastically) which actually draws attention to how NOT funny Bella is. Or how, while Bella is mooning out the window pining for Edward, Jessica is commenting on how good her boobs look in the prom dress she’s trying on. She’s a wonderful antidote, and Hardwicke knew exactly what she was doing in casting her.

The elephant in the room is perhaps Taylor Lautner as Jacob. Not the strongest of the cast and less of a breakout post-Twilight than the two leads and Kendrick (though Lautner did prove he can also do comedy with his regular role in Brit show Cuckoo), Jacob did become a counterpart for people who liked their chaps a bit less pasty and a bit more buff.

Hardwicke made Twilight an enormous hit, grossing more than $400 million worldwide and setting up a franchise which would go on to gross over $3.3 billion. But after the first film she was out. Though she was offered part two it was on the proviso that it come out just a year after part one which gave her too tight a turnaround to be able to deliver the film she wanted to make. Instead the rest of the franchise went to male directors.

Talking to Vanity Fair in 2018, ten years after she launched the franchise, Hardwicke points out that her film kicked off a trend of female-led YA movies including the three Divergent films and the four Hunger Games movies none of which were directed by women, saying “that was a heartbreak for me. There are other badass women out there that could have done those.”

Whether you like Twilight or not, it was an undeniably successful movie which truly understood its audience. Years later studios are still trying to capture that magic again – YA romances have come and gone to various degrees of success, but Twilight is the one that endures. Whether teenagers of 2021 discovering the film for the first time will still identify as acutely remains to be seen, but either way, as a cultural phenomenon Twilight is way smarter than a sparkly vampire movie deserves to be.

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The Twilight movies are available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Twilight Is Much Better Than You Think appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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uomo-accattivante · 6 years

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The troupe — a roving band of actors, musicians and directors who produce a variety of plays and entertainment — is centuries old. So why has this generation of stage, television and cinematic impresarios found new resonance in this old form of communalism?

IN “HAMLET,” WHEN the hero wants to put on a play to “catch the conscience of the king,” he engages the services of a band of itinerant actors, a motley troupe of entertainment professionals instructed by the Danish prince to “hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.”

As the Renaissance scholar Siobhan Keenan notes in her 2002 study, “Travelling Players in Shakespeare’s England,” the author of “Hamlet” based that fictitious company on something “he had lived for real.” Troupes of mimes and acrobats, musicians and mummers were ubiquitous in early modern Europe. Their performances were both religious and profane, encompassing everything from passion plays to puppet shows to commedia dell’arte sketches. They cobbled together material from various sources — Shakespeare’s own compositional method — and tailored their performances to local tastes and prejudices. Tradespeople as well as artists, the troupes operated according to a flexible organizational chart. In their working relationships they were companions more than colleagues, forging quasi-familial ties (including love affairs, of course) as they wound from town to town. The whole village would come to the show, and the community onstage, with its exaggerated conflicts and beguiling harmonies, served as a mirror for the audience, binding its members, at least for an evening or two, in common troubles and delights. A few young people might run off with the troupe, further blurring the boundary between the players and their public.

For centuries, these troupes defined popular culture in much of the world. They show up now and then in modern paintings, novels and films: in Seurat’s “Circus Sideshow” and Picasso’s “Family of Saltimbanques”; in novels such as Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven” and Barry Unsworth’s “Morality Play”; in Theo Angelopoulos’s “Travelling Players” and Fellini’s “La Strada.”

Those works evoke nostalgia for the rough magic of a bygone way of life, one that slipped away silently and suddenly, like the circus setting off for the next town at daybreak. Over time, the troupe aesthetic fell victim to the usual forces of modernity. Art, even when it depended on collective labor, became increasingly individualized in Europe after the Middle Ages, and the consumption of art followed the same fate. Culture now travels, for the most part, electronically — reaching the public through the invisible corporate workings of television networks, streaming services and movie studios. Live theater, where it still flourishes, is concentrated in commercial or philanthropically supported institutions. The scrolling credits and the fine print in the playbill record a strict division of labor. Though there is, technically, a “company,” it’s often an ad hoc confection brokered by agents, producers and other offstage dealmakers. The artists are individuals, and so are the members of the audience. The romantic idea of performing artists as a vagabond tribe, commingling with the rest of us and then moving on, has been dissolved in the medium of modern celebrity. And the corresponding ideal of the public — gathering to share in a common treasury of imagination — has withered as tastes have fragmented.

BUT THE HUNGER for that older way of doing things persists. Movie studios and television networks are soulless, monstrous entities, ravenous heads of a corporate hydra. A Broadway theater is an empty shell. There is not much we see that commands our loyalty, or inspires our solidarity. The unsatisfied, atavistic part of ourselves that harbors a dim memory of those wondrous nights in the village square experiences a special frisson, a jolt of recognition and excitement, when we witness the work of players who seem loyal to one another.

This is why we react with a special kind of excitement when we encounter what looks like the work of a genuine troupe in the crowded, highly mediated, aggressively monetized postmodern landscape where we scavenge for beauty, fun and enlightenment. What connects certain television shows, movies and stage productions to ancient folkways is a particular blend of novelty and familiarity. You see the same faces again and again in new disguises. The afternoon’s clown is the evening’s tragic hero; yesterday’s princess is tomorrow’s wicked stepmother.

To be more specific: The young actor Evan Peters, who creeped you out as a sweet-faced, homicidal teenager in the first season of “American Horror Story” on FX, returns in subsequent seasons as a falsely accused murderer, a reanimated fraternity brother, Charles Manson, Andy Warhol and Jesus. This is not an exhaustive list. In the same series — the flagship production of what we might call the Ryan Murphy Troupe — Jessica Lange has been a sinister nun, a witch and a maniacal, musical mistress of ceremonies.

To take another example: Ben Stiller, a fixture of several distinct, overlapping quasi-troupes (including his own), shows up in “Greenberg,” Noah Baumbach’s 2010 romantic comedy, as the misanthropic, underachieving brother of a successful Los Angeles hotelier. He cycles back into the Baumbach universe in 2015’s “While We’re Young,” playing the somewhat less misanthropic, not as spectacularly underachieving son-in-law of a prominent documentary filmmaker. And then, a couple of years later in “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected),” he’s the successful sibling, a financial adviser based in L.A., struggling to keep his misanthropy in check and dealing with the narcissism of his father, played by Dustin Hoffman. (Hoffman was accused late last year by several women of sexual misconduct or assault. He has apologized to one of the women and has denied other allegations through his lawyer.)

If you are a habitual visitor to Baumbach’s galaxy, you are accustomed to seeing some of the same faces in altered guises. Florence Marr, played by Greta Gerwig in “Greenberg,” is not the same person as Frances Hamilton, Gerwig’s character in “Frances Ha” (2013) or Brooke in “Mistress America” (2015). But these young women stand in relation to each other like conjugations of the quintessential millennial verb “to adult.” They are melodies played on different instruments in the same family: clarinet, oboe, bassoon.

After “Greenberg,” Baumbach and Gerwig began writing together (they also now live together). “Frances Ha” and “Mistress America” are the fruits of that partnership, a fusion of complementary, but also distinctive, styles and sensibilities. “It’s like we’re standing on the beach picking up the same kind of rocks,” Gerwig says of their collaboration. (Gerwig’s solo voice as a writer and director burst forth in “Lady Bird,” one of the defining movies of last year.)

“Part of what’s great about working with the same people is that it’s an ongoing conversation that you’re having from movie to movie,” says Baumbach, whose troupe of repeat collaborators includes crew as well as cast. “How can we continue this thing we’ve been developing? And then there’s also the thing of explaining yourself to new people, which is good too. So you want some healthy dose of both.”

Baumbach’s characters are defined by their idiosyncrasies and imperfections, by their snowballing failures of communication, planning and insight. Bringing them to life demands precisely those things in heroic measure, and an enormous amount of work: endless rewriting, numerous takes, an editing process that begins while the script is still being written.

Ryan Murphy, by contrast, likes to surprise his actors, to spring ideas, situations and scenes on them in medias res — midseason and even mid-episode. “It’s always a little hair-raising,” says Jessica Lange. “With ‘American Horror Story’ we often wouldn’t get the first pages of the episode until the day we started shooting. I think anybody who’s worked with Ryan, especially on ‘American Horror Story’ — I mean, it is kind of by the skin of your teeth.”

“He can get sort of uninterested in a story he’s telling,” Sarah Paulson said, “and then decide to take it in an entirely new way that does interest him. So you can be going along, playing a particular thing and then all of a sudden you find out, oh, you really did kill your sister, and you ate her for dinner, and you didn’t realize that because you’d been playing the whole time that you really loved your sister. But it actually adds a beautiful nuance to your work.” The result is an ever-expanding, theoretically limitless multiverse of stories, and a thorough reinvention of the possibilities of serial television. “American Horror Story” derives its coherence not from a stable set of characters and situations but from the opposite. The through line is stated in the title — horror, a property that can be found in serial killers, witches, nuns, Charles Manson and our country’s current political climate. More concretely, it flows through the faces and voices of actors like Peters, Lange and Paulson, who discover, from one chapter to the next, the thrilling and spooky dimensions of their own talent. “It’s an incredible gift that you get to work for four to five months on something very, very intensely,” Paulson says, “just like you would on a film or a play, and then it’s over.”

A TROUPE, YOU will have noticed, is not necessarily a democratic phenomenon. Someone has to be the boss, providing both vision and connective tissue for the work of fellow artists. The current golden age of television has seen the rise of showrunners like Murphy as objects of critical scrutiny and fan obsessions, much in the way that movie directors were elevated to the status of artists during the postwar blossoming of film culture. Previously they had been seen as guns for hire in an anonymous industrial system.

Theater is an older art form, with a more complicated distribution of creative authority. Supremacy is habitually granted to the writer, who is sometimes also the star, and therefore a physical presence on the scene, but who more often is dead long before the curtain goes up. The popular image of what happens backstage involves a flurry of activity involving directors and dramaturgs, producers and impresarios scrambling to boost morale, prevent disaster and keep the bills paid.

Oskar Eustis is all of those things and also something else. The artistic director of the Public Theater since 2005, he leads in the tradition of two great New York showmen: George C. Wolfe, who directed “Angels in America” (1993) on Broadway and “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (2017) for HBO, and Joseph Papp, the Public’s founder, who grew free outdoor performances of Shakespeare into a mighty civic institution. Under Eustis’s aegis, the Public, now housed in the former Astor Library in Lower Manhattan, has incubated such future Broadway hits as “Fun Home” (2015), “Hamilton” (2015) and “Latin History for Morons” (2017). It has been a home base and R&D facility for the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Lynn Nottage and Suzan-Lori Parks. Season after season, it’s a whirring carousel of diverse, ambitious and politically urgent theater.

Eustis’s vision of the Public is of a kind of city within the city, a community open to new arrivals who settle in and stay for a long time. He likes to keep up with old friends and partners and to fold new talent into the mix. His relationships with playwrights like Tony Kushner and Nottage go back decades, predating his arrival at the Public. In the time he’s been there he has gathered in artists like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Oscar Isaac, John Leguizamo, the composer Jeanine Tesori and the playwright and actress Lisa Kron (co-creators of “Fun Home”).

These artists and others collaborate in a process that is intensive and exhaustive, a kind of rolling workshop that can continue for years. Theater, Eustis told me, “has to go through every phase of human experience, from the writer alone in their room chewing on their pencil to the conversations with the director or dramaturg as the piece is written, to the reading aloud with actors once a draft exists. So step by step until finally you have something that literally hundreds of people have been involved in putting together that’s being performed for hundreds of thousands. There is almost no example of a great work of theater that doesn’t involve many great collaborations.”

And that process has a meaning that extends beyond the theater itself. “This is such a transactional, atomized world,” Eustis said at the end of our conversation, “where everything gets a dollar value put on it. Everything is ‘I’ll give you this if you give me that’ and ‘What have you done …’ And to try and really build a counter to that, to say there’s actually a better way of people relating to each other, and while we can’t completely remake the world in our image, we can try to remake the theater in our image, and by doing that hold, as ’twere, a mirror up to nature.”

What we see on the stage and on the large and small screens are reflections of human social interaction. Every play, every film, every television show, is about a group of people — a family, a workplace, a neighborhood, a nation. The purpose of those art forms is to show us to ourselves, in glory and disgrace and at every point on the spectrum in between. The ethic of the troupe provides another, less obviously visible but no less powerful mirror. What we witness in the collective pretending is the result of individuals working together at a common task, in circumstances that, however grueling and disharmonious in the moment, are also utopian. This looks like the opposite of alienated labor, not just because it seems like fun — it’s not called “playing” for nothing — but because it transcends both the narrow individualism and the impersonal corporatism that defines so much of our working lives. The enchantment that we experience, craning forward in the audience, is not just with what we’re seeing, but with what we intuit about how it was made. Look: This is what we can do. This is who we might become.

#oscar isaac #the public theater #adam driver #lin-manuel miranda #evan peters #greta gerwig #sterling k brown #sarah paulson #angela bassett #jessica lange #oskar eustis #ryan murphy #matt bomer #noah baumbach #ben stiller #dustin hoffman #john leguizamo #kathy bates #new york times

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scully-loves-ruthie · 7 years

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Beloved

Part 1

“Scully? What are you doing?”

It’s 2:30 in the morning and you’re wide awake. Sitting on the couch, lap top open files strewn across the coffee table. You were hoping you wouldn’t wake him, his sleeping patterns have always been so erratic he needs to take advantage of the rest while he can.

“I’m just working on something.” He sits down next to you, pulling you against his bare chest before dropping a kiss on the top of your head. You lean into him, enjoying the way that just one of his arms has the ability to over take you so well. Sinking into the smoothness of his skin you almost don’t notice as he begins to thumb at the files.

“Why Agent Scully these wouldn’t happen to be FBI files would they?” You place a kiss on the side of his neck.

“They might be.”

“That’s interesting seeing as these files are from Violent Crimes... and we’re suppose to be on vacation.”

“Mulder when have we ever taken an actual vacation? And yes... these files may be from Violent Crimes. A friend sent them to me, thought I might find them interesting.”

“Scully have we stumbled into some sort of Freaky Friday scenario here? Because if we have, it could have some seriously erotic connotations.” He wags his eyebrows at you, making that puppy dog face you know and love so well. He leans in to kiss you, stopping just shy of your lips.

“Seriously Scully, what’s going on?”

The feeling of him pressed against you, his nose tickling your cheek, his breath hot against your own, almost has you telling him it’s nothing. Almost.

“You remember our old friend Layla Harris?” He moves away from you a few inches, intrigued.

“Yeah.”

“Well she’s still at the bureau and when she found out we were back on The X-Files she sent me these. Thought they might interest us.”

“Really?”

“Really. I think she’s right Mulder, I think there’s something here.”

“By all means.” He gestures for you to sell him on the idea, not even trying to hide an amused smirk.

“Up until recently there had been a string of unsolved homicides across Montana, 19 to be exact. Same M.O. always a male victim, always bludgeoned to death with an ax. The killer always leaving behind one witness unharmed, usually the victims wife or girlfriend. The witness would always be found tied to a chair a few feet from the mangled body of their loved one.”

“And the witnesses could never make an ID?”

“No. The killer always wore a mask.”

“I’m failing to see The X-File here Scully.”

“I’m getting there. All 19 witnesses told police the only thing the killer ever said was, ‘It’s time. Take me. It’s time.’ “

“Cryptic yes, but still not an X-File.”

“Patience Mulder. At every crime scene only one set of unknown fingerprints were found, always on or near the body, nowhere else. The witnesses said that during the actual murder the killer had on gloves, only removing them once the victim was bleeding out. And now, this is where it gets interesting. The fingerprints found at every crime scene match those of a Jonathan Reems.”

“Well there’s your killer.” You shoot him a sly smile, thoroughly enjoying the triumph of your impending revelation.

“You’d think so, except for the fact that Jonathan Reems died in 1949.” Mulder places his hands over his mouth feigning surprise. You smack him in the ribcage with the file unable to hide the amusement on your face.

“It gets better.”

“Oh does it?” You can’t help yourself, you wind your hand around his neck and place a slow deep kiss on his lips. You pull away, brushing an unseen hair from his brow. “Reems’ mother was murdered in 1908, bludgeoned to death with an ax. The police suspected Reems’ father but could never pin it on him. Reems’ himself was at home at the time of the murder, but claims he was asleep and saw nothing. Reems supposedly died in 1949 at the right bold age of 54 from a heart attack. His mother’s murder remains unsolved.”

“Clearly what you’re describing Scully, is someone who has fixated on one defining act of violence. Feeling slighted by the injustice of the original killer going free, while simultaneously looking to punish anyone he feels resembles Reems’ father.”

“So how would you explain the fingerprints Mulder?”

“I’m willing to bet if you dug up Reems’ grave his hands would be missing.”

“Close. Back in 1974 when they first discovered Reems’ fingerprints at a crime scene they exhumed his coffin.”

“And?”

“And it was empty, no body, nothing.”

“You don’t say?”

“It gets better. The man the police currently have in custody, a Mr. Daniel Carter, his photograph is identical to Jonathan Reems’ army photograph. Not only that, their fingerprints are an exact match. What’s even more strange is Mr. Carter keeps insisting that he is in fact Reems, and the local authorities are hard pressed to prove him wrong.” Mulder leans back into the couch offering up a less than enthusiastic round of applause.

“Well Scully, looks like you’ve found yourself an X-File.”

“Really?” You shoot him a skeptical glance.

“Really. There’s definitely something here. I’d say we’re dealing with a classic case of immortality.”

“Immortality?”

“A phenomenon defined simply as the ability to live forever, or eternal life. It would appear you’ve stumbled across a man in possession of what is most sought after, and at the same time believed to be impossible: freedom from death. Life without consequence, the fountain of youth, basically the only thing keeping the entire beauty industry afloat. But come on Scully, we both know what I think. What’s your take on this?”

“Well Mulder I think you’re right. I agree with you.” You can’t help but revel in the look of unadulterated shock on his face. In all your years together you’ve never been so bold as to outright agree with him.

“I’m sorry what?! You agree with me?”

“We’ve seen cases similar to this before, Eugene Tooms, Leonard Betts, Arthur Fellig, that weird lizard monster of yours.”

“Hey I saw him turn back into a lizard...man...thing.” You wrap your arms around his neck, slowly climbing into his lap.

“All I’m saying is I’m open to the possibility. We’ve seen too much over the years for me to simply dismiss the most obvious explanation just because it can’t be explained by conventional science.” He runs his hands up the sides of your thighs, slowing his movements as his fingertips start to pull your shirt up inch by inch. Pulling you in closer against him, his breath hitching as your breasts graze his chest. He runs his lips over the length of your neck, just barley making contact with your skin.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been more in love with you than I am right now.” Your fingernails tick up his ribcage as you slide your lips across his stubble cheek to whisper in his ear.

“I’ve already booked us on a flight in the morning.” He flips you over, your back pressed into the couch, his hips settling between your thighs. His full weight hovering above you, 25 years together and he can still reduce you to a quivering teenager, all hunger and animal instincts. His fingers are between your legs and in an instant all thoughts of telling him the real reason behind this trip disappear.

#xfiles fanfic #Beloved

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amorremanet · 7 years

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For the meme: Hunger Games?

my all-time ultimate fave character: Katniss and Finnick. Like, I have a lot of them who I love, but Katniss and Finnick are tied for my number one spot.

a character I didn’t used to like but now do: Mrs. Everdeen took a while to grow on me, but by the end of Mockingjay, she really had.

a character I used to like but now don’t: tbh, it’s not that I used to like Peeta and now don’t, because I never really liked him and I still wouldn’t say that I dislike him, personally

—but there’s a lot about Peeta, especially with regard to his and Katniss’s relationship, that I find troublesome for various reasons (e.g., the way that Katniss, who is definitely canonically dark-skinned and is written against a backdrop that’s blatantly inspired by the racialized dimensions of classism and poverty, is always contextualized as Not Really Deserving the blonde white boy, who is regularly written in terms that are super not subtle about comparing him to Jesus)

To say nothing of how the text itself seems to agree with this idea, and does shit like go, “Wow, Peeta is oppressed by the Capitol too, like damn Katniss how much of a bitch are you, I mean your family and Gale’s only haven’t very literally starved to death because you and Gale know how to hunt, but wow, damn, Peeta had to help make the goat cheese and apple tarts and he wasn’t allowed to eat them because they were too expensive, that’s totally the same thing as people in the Seam literally starving to death”

Like, I’m not saying that Peeta and his family weren’t oppressed by the Capitol, because they were…… but it’s explicitly established in-text that the Capitol manufactures gradations as part of how they try to keep the Districts all fighting each other instead of fighting them, so yes, Peeta and his family did not experience the same thing as Gale, Katniss, and theirs, and part of that difference was how the Mellarks didn’t need to worry about getting enough to eat, they just couldn’t eat the expensive treats

The thing that bugs me the most, though, is the way that Peeta has supposedly been in love with Katniss since they were kids — except……… how? How can you say that he has truly been in love with Katniss when he, by his own goddamn admission, knew basically nothing about her and never even tried to get to know her for real? I’d buy that he was in love with his ludicrous headcanons about Katniss, but that’s not the same as being in love with Katniss Everdeen: Actual Person

And sorry not sorry, Peeta, but it is NOT true that you, “couldn’t talk to her”; you COULD have talked to Katniss and you chose not to talk to Katniss or deal with her at all in any context where you didn’t have the power of life and death over her (whether it was because she was literally dying of starvation, or because she needed you to make her look sympathetic to viewers in the 74th Games, and you needed her to literally and immediately keep you alive)

……Also, his version of how he fell in love with her has way too much in common with Dante Alighieri’s account of how he first fell in love with Beatrice Portinari for me to be truly okay with it, because Dante is one of the Western Literary Canon’s biggest examples of entitled dudebros who objectify women even while they claim to adore them (because over-idealizing someone is a form of dehumanizing them).

This said, I still don’t dislike Peeta. I just don’t think he’s that great, or that he’s as pure and innocent and cinnamon roll-ish as the books and fandom all make him out to be. Even without my misgivings about Ever*lark, ffs, he is one of the sneakiest, most manipulative characters in the series, and his BS sense of entitlement doesn’t only come out with Katniss

a character I’m indifferent about: Presidents Coin and Snow are both well-executed villains, but I don’t have a lot of feelings about them, personally. They were actually helped by the movies, for me, because Donald Sutherland and Julianne Moore were both really good in their roles, and it made me like them a little more, even if it still didn’t make me have feelings about them or anything

a character who deserved better: Most of them, tbh, but my top six are (in no particular order) Johanna, Madge, Rue, Annie, Finnick, and Gale

a ship I’ve never been able to get into: Katniss/Peeta, see above

But also? Gale/Madge. In my experience, the whole thing only exists so people can have some kind of “uptown girl” fantasy and go, “Look, see, I don’t hate Gale!!! Stop saying that I hate Gale!!! Just let me shove him off to the side and completely mischaracterize the shit out of him and pair him up with Madge for no reason beyond getting him out of the way so I can have Katniss/Peeta!!!!”

Also, Madge Undersee is a lesbian. #sorrynotsorry

Even worse: Effie/Haymitch. For one thing, both of them are gay. I don’t know what books everybody else is reading, but in MY copies of the books, Effie and Haymitch are both gay as fuck, why would you pair up a gay man and a lesbian like that unless it’s like, a situation where Effie and Haymitch get married so no one knows that they’re actually married to Portia and Cinna, respectively

But aside from that (because it’s admittedly a matter of my own headcanons even though I refuse to back down from them), I just??? Effie/Haymitch is just so blatantly a bunch of straight nonsense, pairing the two of them up because he’s a man and she’s a woman and therefore any time they exchange more than two words, it’s ~flirting~ even when Effie has HAPPILY AND ENERGETICALLY been a part of the system that treats all the kids Haymitch as mentored as if their lives mean nothing, and she’s been helping shepherd them to their deaths without getting that this is not good until it affects Katniss and Peeta (which only makes Effie get it because she likes them), and as much as Haymitch’s distaste for Effie is understandable, a lot of his lashing out at her isn’t actually coming from a place of, “I object to you for these fair reasons” so much as it’s coming from a place of Haymitch being a troll for the sake of being a troll, and I just

Why

Why is this ship a THING

Why is it so fucking POPULAR

I only understand this phenomenon in the most cynical way possible (i.e., the way where my explanation for it is, “they are so popular because it’s an M/F ship and, in the movies, both of them are white, even though Haymitch has dark skin and black hair, and the same racialized poverty-coded background as Gale and Katniss, in the books”)

Also, both of them are gay, sooooooo……… #sorrynotsorry

a ship I’ve never been able to get over: Katniss/Johanna, Katniss/Madge, Katniss/Finnick, Annie/Finnick

a cute, low-key ship: Annie/Johanna, and in some AU where Rue and Prim both get to grow up, I think they’d be cute together.

Also, Gale/Peeta. I’m just saying, it’s a perfect solution to the issue of the alleged love triangle because it means neither of them ends up without a ship, but Katniss doesn’t have to be with either of them.

an unpopular ship but I still enjoyed it: dude, my only M/F “ship that deserves to be called an OTP” for Katniss is called a crack ship by most of the fandom, even though she and Finnick have better-written relationship development than Katniss/Peeta and even though Finnick consistently respects Katniss Everdeen: Actual Facts Person and not some shiny pretty pretty princess headcanon about her

Sure, he may not want to be her friend, at first, because he assumes, like she does, that friends are not A Thing that’s going to happen, and if he maybe feels like he has been tasked with babysitting her and Peeta during the Quarter Quell, then… that’s not actually inaccurate, because he was kinda tasked with babysitting them by the other rebels.

Like, helping the two of them to survive and getting them out of the arena was the job that Finnick and Mags were given by the other rebels, and he had to be more hands-on about it than, say, Johanna, since Katniss wanted to have an alliance with Mags, which meant she had to have one with Finnick

So, no. The two of them aren’t exactly cozying up to each other in Catching Fire, because both of them are playing certain parts and performing certain versions of themselves based on a lot of assumptions about How The Fuck This Shit Works and a lot of assumptions about their roles and positions in everything (which admittedly end up being less than accurate… because both of them have been manipulated and lied to by everybody who’s pulling the strings)

Anyway, I shouldn’t go on about this too much more because it will make me get defensive and angry, but Finnick and Katniss are my autistic children and they are not a goddamn crack ship and if I had money, I would pay people to stop saying that so I could look at their tags and only see people tagging everything with them as “BROTP,” as opposed to that plus people calling them a crack ship

Also: Finnick/Gale, Cinna/Haymitch, Annie/Katniss

Also, I didn’t really LIKE Gale/Katniss, but it made me feel more things than Katniss/Peeta (even if I have more thoughts on that one, that’s the thing: they’re thoughts, not Feels; the only thing that I ever really feel about Katniss/Peeta is frustrated), and the whole, “Katniss is all but explicitly suicidal and that’s why she wants to mack on Gale” thing from Mockingjay totally does it for a lot of my angsty catharsis interests

a ship that was totally wrong and never should have happened: Effie/Haymitch. I went, “EEEUGH” out loud when they kissed, when I say MJ2 in the theatre, and I didn’t feel bad about it because: 1. all of the people who loved them collectively when, “AWWWWW”; and 2. eww, can you say, “what the fuck is this hetero pandering bullshit”

my favourite storyline/moment: The entire, “I drag myself out of nightmares and find there’s no relief in waking. Better not to give into it” scene, because I’m a human cliché and Katniss and Finnick are my autistic children. Also, any and every Joniss scene, because I’m garbage and a human cliché and I just want them to be together, is that so bad

a storyline that never should have been written: idk about anyone else, but I personally choose to live in a world where the series-long alleged “love triangle” was between Katniss/Madge and Johanna/Katniss, and the Katniss/Peeta stuff was only ever during the Games and not actually for real, and Gale and Peeta can go do each other or something, because fuck forced hetero love triangles, that’s why

Also? I’m willing to accept that Prim’s death was legitimately necessary for the plot and the narrative, in the same way that I hate Sirius Black’s death but accept that it was necessary for the sake of the story that JKR wanted to tell, so I can just go, “I see your point and I don’t begrudge you this in canon, but I am going to headcanon around it anyway because I don’t like it”

—but there was ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to kill Finnick. See, much like JKR’s senseless murders of Remus and Tonks in DH, Finnick’s death did nothing to make a point that hadn’t already been made multiple times over, and it added nothing to the story. Yea, like JKR before her, SCollins only killed Finnick for the sake of cheap shock value and reaffirming certain ideas about heroism that the rest of the series tried to deconstruct

It was pointless, it was senseless, it wasn’t necessary, and the story, characters, and readers all deserved better than that

Finnick Odair is happy and fine and he’s definitely alive, because all that unadulterated bullshit, “lmao finnick dies” crap never happened

my first thoughts on the series: uh. The first time I tried to read the books, I didn’t even get to the games themselves, because SCollins introduced Madge, introduced the backstory of her and Katniss being like kinda friends but kinda not but they’re not sure, and I was like, “ugh, why. I already know you’re going to make me suffer this bullshit between the two boys, but why would you hand me a totally valid and much more interesting F/F option. Why” and on the other hand, because Katniss reminded me too much of myself at a point when I wasn’t ready to deal with that

my thoughts now: We all deserved better, but I say that all the time about the HP series, too, so me feeling like the series was kind of a let down in various places and criticizing different aspects of it? Isn’t going to stop me from enjoying it

Also, Finnick is fine, Madge is fine, Effie and Haymitch are gay, Gale is bi, and most of my favorite characters are autistic because I said so, that’s why (—I mean, I actually have cases based on canon evidence for Finnick and Katniss, but my real rationale here is, “I want them to be autistic, so they are now, okay peace bye”)

#builttobalance #memes for ts #ask box tag #mine: memes #opinions for ts #criticism for ts #ship disliking for ts #the hunger games #mine: thg

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terassaras · 7 years

Text

Year of the Lion: Zero

A Sangatsu no Lion/March Comes in Like a Lion fic.

Rei contemplates nothingness.

Read below or on AO3. DO NOT repost on any other platforms.

Chapter Warnings: deep introspection, much sadness & loneliness, mild dissociation & depression symptoms, a bit of philosophy thrown in.

Rei?

What a weird name!

But it suits you. No home, no family, no school, no friends.

When I open my eyes, the sunlight is dancing across the ceiling in golden glimmers, reflected by the river flowing under a ribbon of robin egg skies. It’s the only time when the room would fill with warmth and shapes and colors. It’s like being inside a kaleidoscope.

Otherwise, the room is empty. No curtains, no bed, no desk, no sofa. Not even a bottle of cooking oil or a jar of salt on the counters. It doesn’t look like a home.

Maybe it’s because I don’t have one.

There isn’t anywhere in this world where you belong, is there?

Kyoko’s words pierce through my mind like midday thunder—a crack without a warning, a burn across my finger. The curse of a shogi player is a good memory. I can remember every syllable in her words as much as the acid on her tongue. They return every so often, merciless and clear, and each time I would think the same.

It’s all just as she said.

The only odd thing is that I’m not bothered by it.

Rationally speaking, there is no use in agonizing over the truth. It’s as if she had torn my shirt open and seen through my chest, a wicked smile breaking across her beautiful features, delighted at what she’d found. I had no defense—not against her words or—

Not against her.

Kiriyama Rei. That is my name. Class C, Group 1, fifth dan. Age seventeen. Occupation: professional shogi player. Other than that—

You are a zero.

Kiriyama Rei. Age seventeen. First year of high school. Professional shogi player 5-dan. That is all.

As for what I have, well, I have this shogi board that Father gave. It is my most precious possession. Other than that, my apartment is empty. Empty—but with a mesmerizing view of the river.

I like watching the river. It is a wide, blue river that stretches and curves around the city, undisturbed by the motions of people or time, breathing constantly in quiet, peaceful waves.

But lately I felt lost even when I watch the water slowly rise and fall.

Rise, fall.

Rise.

Fall.

Do you know that sensation when you jump from a high place into a pool? Those few seconds before you crash, when you have neither the earth nor your legs to support you, and you suddenly become painfully aware of your own weight?

And you think, “Have I always been this heavy?”

Gravity is pulling you into its core and there’s nothing you can do.

You know you’re going to hit the water. The surface tension explodes and the water suddenly becomes angry slaps running on your skin.

Suddenly you’re inside a different atmosphere. The angry sounds disappear, swallowed by the giant mass of dark water. Light flickers. The water over you won’t let the brightness in. And you are still going down, pulled by your own weight, which you thought was your own.

Your heart makes up for the lack of sound. It is beating wildly between your eardrums as it senses your panic. The adrenaline kicks in, heating your limbs down to your fingers, screaming at you to

Swim! Fight!

Forget everything else!

Breathe!

Do you know that sensation of falling?

That is how I fear I’ll fall

Losing

Sinking

Deeper

As the days pass by

….

……….

……………….

Breathe!

The first gasp of air feels like a cold cut across my lungs. Even when the air stings, even if it burns my throat, even if my limbs feel like lead, I surface and breathe. I must.

So I swim.

And swim.

And somewhere in the darkness of the ocean I’m swimming, under this sky that has only known storm and lightning, I frantically search for a place, a thing.

That’s right. If I can just get there, somewhere, some place where I won’t feel like falling once I stop moving. If I can get there everything will be—

Once I get there, I can stop moving, and there will be nothing. Maybe finally I can stop—stop this endless struggling, falling, thinking, feeling, suffocating, being—

Looking at the shadows of shogi pieces in the vanishing daylight, pieces I haven’t moved since the blurry hours of the morning, I can’t tell if I’m still swimming or if I’ve stopped moving at all.

Rei.

Zero.

A nothing.

Aside from shogi, I don’t have much and I have nothing to offer anybody. The memories of my family are hazy and I don’t remember them much. I might—I might’ve left them that way. And the family that took me in—I left them too, because I could see too clearly what my selfish hands had done to them. And now—

No home, no relatives, no school, no friends.

Well…

I think…

If having nothing means I’m not taking anything from anyone,

If feeling nothing means I’m not hurting anyone,

And if days when nothing happens mean I’m not hurting,

Then maybe it’s better that way.

Maybe I can accept being like this.

…

………

But then—what is this feeling that I’m not—that it’s not okay? That somehow...something’s…

Emptiness.

I might have read the word somewhere, maybe in a middle school literature class, like in a poem or an essay. I didn’t think about it much back then. Maybe it was the day after a match. I was probably worn out, my mind wandering in a too-light feeling.

So I decided to go to the bookstore. I walked into the section bearing guides and tactic books for shogi out of habit. I passed by the magazine section just to glance at the shogi magazines though there’s no reason for me to pick one up. It’s not like reading shogi player interviews can help me win matches.

Then I found the dictionary aisle and looked up. Large books stood in neat rows, their spines almost as wide as my hand, their covers muted and fonts practical. Heavy and silent, the dictionaries seem almost proud, as if each of them held the entire weight of the world’s knowledge.

I shuddered. I suddenly felt so small—overwhelmed by the number of books, the immensity of their wisdom. If I knew nothing, then these pages must list everything. It suddenly seemed impossible to choose just one title. So many books, so many decisions I could make, and I couldn’t figure out what the right move was.

I couldn’t see a winning strategy.

I took a deep breath. I had to calm down. Even in shogi you have to make the first move—and even if it seems like a monumental decision, what follows is more important.

I took another deep breath. Eventually, I picked up a dictionary titled The Great Passage. The title sounded interesting for some reason. I flipped through the pages and found the word:

空【クウ】 (Kuu)

Definitions:

(1) Empty air, sky.

(2) Fruitlessness, meaninglessness

(3) Void

(4) Shunya: emptiness, nothingness; the lack of an immutable intrinsic nature within any phenomenon. Also: dependent creation. Buddhist term.

Emptiness.

Can emptiness mean something?

I looked around for the nearest window. All above me was the monotony of rectangular ceilings and fluorescent illuminations. I got up and for some reason started half-running, half-walking towards the exit—and as I stumbled onto the empty sidewalk, I looked up.

Beyond the static skyscrapers were bright winter skies and not a single cloud.

Nothing in sight.

No, not nothing. I read about this. The atmosphere is made of gas particles that scatter the light at certain wavelengths perceived by the human eye as colors. And then beyond that is the milky way, the outer space, the entire universe, which continuously expands and which vastness is beyond reach and comprehension—

An endless depth. A void.

Huh. But you can’t really see anything up there from here, standing here on solid, concrete earth.

I went back to the bookstore and picked up the dictionary I had left. My head was running around in a hurricane of thoughts. I stared at the word for minutes, reading the definitions enough times for them to burn into my mind. One meaning had caught me.

It was shunya.

I shelved the dictionary back and went to a section I had never been, searching hastily for one kind of book. It was an unplanned decision. It was a book on shunya—on emptiness. It felt odd to buy something other than shogi books or textbooks—but I just felt like I had to. Maybe I was hoping it would help me understand a small part of this world—a small part of myself.

On my walk back to Rokugatsu Town, pressing the solidness of the book’s spine against my beating heart, I kept craning my neck up to the sky till it ached.

Obsessed with emptiness, I tore through the pages of the book like a hungry beast. I was a lion on a huntI was on a silent journey, scanning my surroundings, sometimes running till my chest hurt and sometimes prowling, studying things from a great distance, trying to find things I could claw my desperate mind to. Any formula, any theory, any word that would quell this hunger. I skimmed through the introduction and jumped right to one part.

Shunyata

A Sanskrit word, shunya means “zero,” “nothing,” “empty” or “void.” The root of the word is svi, “hollow,” and the noun form is shunyata, hence, “nothingness.” The Great Buddha describes it as void, the absence of rising and falling, cessation, and calmness. Dew drops, floating bubbles, flash of lightning, reflections in the mirror—these are all said to illustrate shunyata. However, it holds different meanings in different streams of Buddhism.

Although it may seem contrary, shunyata does not suggest some kind of “great void,” as if it were some dimension where nothing can be found. Rather, all existence and all nature are based in shunyata.

In Mahayana, shunyata is the belief that “all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature,” or pratitya prasamutpada. That is, all things dependently originated. Everything we know is just an impermanent concept, they seem to appear and then disappear, when actually it is not so. They are things we thought to have name and a separate existence, when truly there is no real nature, essence, or substance in anything. No “things” or “conditions” appear on their own. Everything is interdependent and exists relatively.

However, that does not mean one’s experience is not real or that one does not exist. It is just that we choose to name and make concepts or boxes out of experiences or objects when they, in fact, are inseparable from everything else and will continue to change. We call a bicycle a “bicycle” but once the parts are taken out, do we still call them a bicycle? There is no one essence or substance that makes up a “bicycle” or stands for what “bicycle” is. Nothing stays as they are forever.

We tend to think of the “self” as “the self” and therefore cling to all emotions, thoughts, and experiences as though they were the most meaningful things. By doing this one would be filled with greed, craving, and suffering as one would be filled with ego. However, when one manifests shunyata or emptiness, one is freed from attachments, and one becomes egoless, or anatta, the non-self. The self is not attached to things and no thing is attached to its meaning as perceived by self. This is the only way to understand the reality of life. Perceived self is impermanent, perceived material is impermanent, and perceived existence is impermanent. Emptiness is the nature of all existence.

Huh. Wait—hold on.

So emptiness is saying that…everything means nothing? It’s just all names and imagination? But then—

Oh, okay, nothing stays as they are forever—so in that sense, maybe things change and so will I. Things will change. I got that…I think.

Okay, so emptiness is not some great void, rather…all existence is…empty?

Wait—what?

Does that mean who am I or what I’m thinking or whatever I’m doing—it all means nothing?

That can’t—I mean—if that’s so, then what have I been doing all this time? What have I been agonizing over all this time!? It can’t all be nothing!

Oh—hold on, it says if we cling to our emotions, thoughts, and experiences as the most meaningful thing, we become filled with greed and craving and suffering…

Huh?

What?

Well I’m—I am suffering! What’s wrong with that? And I don’t even know why!

And what is this part!? It says you must become egoless? The not-self? What the hell is that? If I don’t have self, if I’m really empty, if I really don’t care about what happens or what I do or what I think or feel…

…

…..

I guess the world I’m trying to understand is too different. The words were there but it was as if I was watching everything while hanging upside down. Even though—

Even though the book was called A Monkey’s Guide to Buddhism: Even Monkeys Can Understand!

….

…….

I just don’t get it.

Yeah. I really don’t get it—this emptiness thing.

Okay, I have been thinking about this. How can I agonize so much if I say that I have nothing?

I’ve been trying to read that book. Maybe it’s that dependent creation again. It’s that…maybe who I am now…is because of everything that has happened. That includes every person I’ve met. Don’t they say that people leave an impression on you and that they never really leave you? So in a sense you are never alone.

That means….all the people I’ve faced on the shogi board are part of me. The hundreds, hundreds of people that I won and lost against, in front of that small board.

That also means…Father.

Maybe even Kyouko.

Mom. Dad. Chihiro.

But if that meant I wasn’t alone—it’s still strange. It doesn’t make a difference. It’s not like I can see or touch or talk to them.

The Buddhism book says that you go into this cycle—this samsara--that’s inescapable unless you reach nirvana. Everything just repeats itself over again. And as part of the cycle you can never escape this…grief, this dukka. That’s a part of life.

………

That’s sad, I think. That you can never escape this grief.

But do other people carry this grief too? This grief that just exists because you exist?

…

…I don’t know.

I really don’t know. Is that something you can ask other people?

No, no, no, no—just the thought of speaking to strangers is—and I mean with that kind of topic—there is no way, is there?

But if there were somebody I can ask…

Right—come o think of it, if other people are part of me…that means I would be part of others too.

Huh?

Wait, would I? Have I ever been that kind of person to someone? To anyone?

It was childish and embarrassing, I guess, but I hid that book. I didn’t have many places to hide things in the apartment so I shoved it in a box of off-season clothes and old textbooks.

I didn’t want to see it again. Even the thought of confronting the title, lifting the pages weighed by so much wisdom, the black ink spilling blunt truths onto my hands—

It scares me.

Rather than ponder about all this…emptiness and life cycle and karma and attainment…things I can’t make heads or tails of…

I just want to think about things I can solve.

Yes, like shogi matches. That I can work with. If I just focus on game notations and think about tactics and practice and practice, I can just make out a path.

Yeah. I don’t need to worry about anything else.

Yeah.

Back here again.

The pawns are raring. The knights, bishops, and lances are staring. The generals and the rooks are waiting. The board is standing there, expecting.

And I’m the only one who couldn’t make a move.

Though it’s almost the beginning of the new year, nothing has changed and nothing feels different.

I thought I’ve been swimming frantically all this time. But the truth is I’m slower than time. Most days it’s a struggle to pull myself out of bed and make the heavy thoughts go away.

But I mean—there’s no way I wouldn’t think or worry about things is there? About what I should do, about what I wished I didn’t do, about—

I guess that’s what happens when you have too much time by yourself.

Thinking and worrying so much with no one to talk to, my head just keeps going in circles. The circles keep growing bigger and looser and wilder, like a child drawing with a black crayon, painting pictures not even he can understand.

There, sitting with arms wrapped around knees that throbbed from sitting too long, I’m floating in a giant starless darkness—and though my stomach pleaded and cried to me for food, I stay there, knees glued to my chest, listening to the endless drone of the heater that does nothing to the numbing winter night.

I wake to the ache on my back. The blanket over my shoulder has joined the scattered shogi pieces on the floor. I must’ve fallen asleep at some point and kicked the board in my sleep.

Papers bearing game notations rustle under my hands, crumpling and sticking on my skin, as I rise and look outside to the new year’s sky.

It’s morning.

A grey morning.

A cold, grey morning.

And there’s shogi to do.

Ah, I should probably eat….but making breakfast is a pain.

Hmmm, I should at least drink some water. No, later.

There’s laundry too—when was the last time I did it?

Right, at least I should change my clothes—but maybe later. It’s too much. I’ll just do shogi.

And the next morning will be the same. I’ll do shogi.

And the day after tomorrow will come and it’ll be the same. I’ll do shogi.

And then next year will come and I…

Author Comment:

Things get better, as Rei will learn, but it takes time. Also, there’s nothing like an existential crisis that can get you to read a book on philosophy and/or religion. Just…maybe not a book called A Monkey’s Guide. Word defintion taken from here.

There’s one more chapter planned for January and then one chapter (hopefully) for each month after. Comments, critics, and questions are always welcome.

PS. Did anyone notice the reference to a recent anime?

#march comes in like a lion #3月のライオン #sangatsu no lion #rei kiriyama #fanfiction #saras writes #here i go again making another tough thinking fic #lessee if anybody sticks with it #many thanks if you do #please pray for rei

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years

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Apocalypse Porn Shows Why People Are Horny for the End of the World

In the middle of a months-long global pandemic, economic collapse, climate calamity, and civil unrest unlike anything we've seen in a lifetime, the world—or at least the world as we knew it—feels a little like it's coming to an end.

And people say they're horny for it.

Like giggling at a funeral, getting boned up during the apocalypse feels taboo but ultimately, uncontrollable. Much has been written about how the COVID-19 lockdown has fucked with our sex lives: under forced cohabitation or isolation, we've all gotten a little screwy.

But there's a long tradition of being turned on by the end of the world in porn. As scholars and sex therapists I talked to assured me; and even when we're faced with the apocalypse, feeling these things is as human as it gets.

A Brief History of Apocalypse Porn

Defining "apocalypse porn" is tricky. There's disaster porn, a colloquial term for gawking at ruin, which is something altogether different from what we're discussing here.

There are true apocalypse adult films, like the 2007 film Crescendo 2012, where the premise is that people fuck like there's no tomorrow, because there won't be. Outside of porn, these scenarios are everywhere in pop culture. Britney Spears' video for "Till the World Ends," for example, while not pornographic, falls into this category of world-ending orgy fantasy. So does Prince's "1999." Melancholia, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Armageddon, Last Night—the list of world-ending movies with a sex or romance plot goes on.

Searching "apocalypse" and "end of the world" on porn tube sites like Pornhub or Xvideos returns mixed results. It's mostly riff on the retro Mad Max-style post-apocalyptic style, like Apocalypse X or a parody of Bird Box. Compared to results for, say, cock and ball torture or selfsuck, which have hundreds of video results, apocalypse porn doesn't seem to be as popular or prolific. But what is out there is usually more plot-driven and carefully produced.

Apocalypse sex can happen at the end of the world, or just the end of this world. Coronavirus porn could probably fall under the category of apocalypse porn, since so much of it leans into a dystopian horror flick theme. Then there's post-apocalyptic porn like the 1987 film The Load Warrior, a parody of the second Mad Max film, The Road Warrior. In Load Warrior, men are cows to be milked for the world's most scarce and precious commodity: semen.

In the 1981 Satisfiers of Alpha Blue, people in the far-off future travel to a planet of erotic pleasure to get their needs fulfilled by computers that fuck them perfectly. Of course, one of the characters wrestles with questions of connection, love, and romance versus the cold perfection of artificially-intelligent fuckbots—themes reflected in mainstream pop culture today, with more recent films like Her and Ex Machina still asking the same questions of humanness and sexual connection.

It's not the end of humanity, but the teetering, collapse, and rebuilding of society, that still resonates today.

Within the category of post-apocalyptic porno flicks, the 1982 avant-garde Café Flesh is a favorite of Laura Helen Marks, porn scholar and professor of English at Tulane University. It's set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic future where almost everyone gets violently ill if they have sex, and those who don't are put on stage to perform live porn theatre for the rest.

Marks told me that she sees two divergent approaches to apocalypse porn: lawlessness or breakdown in social structure, and the case of a completely authoritarian world that spawns outcasts and rebels.

"In the former case, there is a good deal of desperation, barter, and primitive economies, which can provide a certain level of danger and excitement—a sense of 'who gives a fuck,'" Marks said. "In the latter case, the films offer a contrasting sense of being controlled or restricted, which similarly augments sexual fantasy though in the opposite direction—toward strict regimes and containment."

Both approaches play around with erotic fantasies of gender, race, and class divides, where identities and power dynamics are either dialed to caricature levels or rendered meaningless.

"We get to indulge in fantasies of subversion of traditional hierarchy, or hyperbolic renderings of those hierarchies," Marks said.

As the whole world struggles to define its "new normal," and we're attending orgies over Zoom and inviting the virtual world into our sex lives more than ever—combined with the uniquely 2020 phenomenon of widespread "skin hunger"—it's no wonder some among us are little horny all the time.

Why We're Drawn to World-Ending Porn

Here in real life, sex at the edge of global collapse is a little more complicated than Prince or Britney made it seem. And the overarching impression that everyone is so horny right now—whether we're getting that from Twitter jokes or all the personal essays floating around on the topic—might not be the whole story of what people are actually experiencing.

"People are definitely being impacted by the state of the world at the moment—all of the uncertainty and unrest can be really hard to cope with," Kristen Mark, director of the sexual health promotion lab at the University of Kentucky, told me. "We’ve noticed in our data that sex lives are, for the most part, being negatively impacted in terms of frequency. But for those who are remaining sexually active, they tend to be more open to trying more adventurous sexual acts. This might be offering distraction from the world around them, something that makes them feel good, the novelty can be helpful."

"Some people cope by seeking out pleasure, intimacy, and connection as a distraction from their anxiety, whereas others experience a loss of libido when overwhelmed with anxiety"

Part of that might be biological. NYC-based psychotherapist and sex therapist Dulcinea Pitagora told me that when people are under higher amounts of stress—say, from a bombardment of tragedy in the news every day, unemployment, or lack of intimacy from lockdown—their brains and bodies look for all possible sources of oxytocin and dopamine.

"People tend to be more susceptible to the phenomenon of falling in love when under intensified stress due to a change in brain and body chemistry, such as heightened cortisol (stress hormone) and adrenaline," they said. "So there’s something happening at the chemical level during natural disasters, but there are also psychosocial factors that go along with the realization that so many people are dying in addition to having to avoid spending as much time with people as we would like. The associated fear within a context of constraint leads many to experience a spike in desire as a coping mechanism."

Pitagora said in their practice, they've seen a couple trends lately. "A benefit of the current heightened unrest is that some people are gaining a heightened awareness of their privilege," they said. "As a result, one thing that’s happening with people in relationships is they are discovering differences in privilege between partners, or in their awareness of or values around their privilege, leading to conflicts and sometimes break ups."

Another thing Pitagora has seen seen is increased and decreased frequency of sex and desire, depending on how the person copes with anxiety. "Some people cope by seeking out pleasure, intimacy, and connection as a distraction from their anxiety, whereas others experience a loss of libido when overwhelmed with anxiety," they said.

Whatever you feel here at the apparent end of the current state of things is probably fine and healthy, sex-wise. "Sexual desire is driven by so many factors. It could be stress, anxiety, exhaustion, uncertainty, relationship context, societal pressure, so just take it as it comes," Mark said. "Sex drive is normal and sex drive fluctuations are a natural part of the experience of desire."

In the process of working out why we feel what we feel right now, perhaps apocalyptic stories and pornography can bring some clarity—or at least some distraction, since we're all inside anyway. Porn can be a mirror for society, even if they're 80's disaster skin flicks. Asking how sex fits into the future can illuminate our desires and values in the present.

"Porn has proven to be an interesting site for such ideas because on the one hand, of course porn is going to grapple with a scenario that relates to sex, but on the other hand most visions of sex in the future are sterile, lacking in intimacy, or couched in some kind of outlaw economy," Marks said. "These kinds of conflicted porn movies are the ones I find particularly interesting, though, and they can sometimes generate an unexpected and surprising level of eroticism, even when simultaneously bleak."

Apocalypse Porn Shows Why People Are Horny for the End of the World syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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nancygduarteus · 5 years

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Get Yourself a Nemesis

No one has more nemeses than the writer Roxane Gay. Since 2011, she has tweeted blind items about various foes in a stream of captivating updates. “All last night, I visualized crushing my nemesis this weekend,” she tweeted in 2013. “My nemesis is having a good year professionally and has clear skin. It’s a lot to take,” she noted last summer.

Gay’s anonymous nemeses have become so well known that, on Friday, Monica Lewinsky declared she would be dressing up as one for Halloween. “Not that i know who it is... just, ya know, generic nemesis costume,” she tweeted.

While having an opponent is nothing new, the more nebulous concept of having a secret digital adversary is a more modern condition. Broadcast-based social-media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have allowed everyone to have real-time updates on other people's biggest accomplishments, and that can make it feel like everyone on the planet is getting married, writing a book, or winning an award. It's easy, when you see someone leading a seemingly perfect life, to want to tear them down.

I must reluctantly admit that my nemesis has been tweeting good stuff lately

— your friend Helen (@hels) July 23, 2018

As a result, the term nemesis is having a cultural moment. The The Huffington Post recently declared a “nemesis Twitter” phenomenon. There are more than 260,000 posts on Instagram including the hashtag #nemesis. And high-profile YouTubers have generated billions of views by declaring feuds then creating diss tracks against their digital competitors.

All these cases suggest that a nemesis is a special kind of foe. It’s not someone you hate with every inch of your being. That’s more of an enemy. A nemesis also isn't a bully. A rival might be a fairer description, but a rival is someone you're pitted against in a naturally adversarial environment, like a sports game. A nemesis, meanwhile, is a worthy foe in any area of life. They require a particular kind of jealousy, because you compete with them, even if they’re unaware of your existence. They can drive you mad with their achievements. But they can also push you to work harder.

You’re only as good as your nemesis.

— Lauren Mechling (@laurenmechling) March 21, 2019

In that latter respect, having a nemesis can be extremely valuable. “It rarely matters who is on your side; what matters is who is against you,” the writer Chuck Klosterman wrote in Esquire in 2007. “You don't need a friend and you don’t need a lover. What you need is one quality nemesis.” One recent study found that long-distance runners are about 5 seconds per kilometer faster when one of their top rivals is in the race. “Something about having an opponent gets us to dig deeper, into otherwise-untapped reserves,” the writer L. Jon Wertheim and the Tufts psychologist Sam Sommers declare in their book, This Is Your Brain on Sports.

The modern nemesis trend seems to be born partly from hater culture. On social media, everyone has an audience, so it’s easy for people to criticize you. They might root against you, or question your success, or troll in your mentions. Over the past few years, many people with large online followings have started encouraging fans to lean into these haters by using them as a form of motivation. As DJ Khaled would say, “they don't want you to” succeed, so it’s up to you to prove “them” wrong. “Everybody have a Great Day,” Ice T recently tweeted. "Make your haters Sick."

Declaring a nemesis can be a way to escape becoming a hater yourself. While hating is about putting others down, a nemesis is about pushing yourself to be better than they are. You still may relish in their failings, but ultimately you value your nemesis. You’d still show up to their funeral.

the real nemesis is the friends i made along the way.

— Gene Park (@GenePark) March 22, 2019

Two weeks ago, I selected a male journalist notorious for his relentless work ethic to be my nemesis. People kept mentioning his writing to me, and I suddenly felt the overwhelming desire to outdo him. Even a member of my own family—who will remain nameless to save this person some embarrassment—wondered if I’d ever achieve as much as he has. Ever since, I’ve noticed myself working harder and putting in longer hours. Seeing my nemesis up at 7:00 a.m. on Twitter has made me more attentive in the morning. I've agreed to squeeze in more media appearances to talk about my work. Even though I may never reach his level of success, mentally competing against him has helped push me to do better.

Rachel Beckman, a multimedia artist in Baltimore, has had the same experience. “I have a nemesis who works in a similar field,” she says. “Checking in on them really ups my confidence somehow. It’s a reminder that just because someone has more recognition doesn't mean they’re better.” Alfred Wang, a writer in New York, who loves break-dancing has benefited, too. He’s had a dance nemesis since the eighth grade. “We haven't spoken in more than a decade, but I’m like, ‘oh he’s getting pretty good, what if he's coming for me?’ and I started practicing harder,” Wang says.

Declaring the proper nemesis is key. Ideally you’ll find someone just slightly more successful than you are. You don’t want to be punching down. And it’s best to keep the name of your nemesis private. Running around talking trash about someone on the internet could lead to a very awkward run-in at a party or getting reprimanded at work. Having multiple nemeses can be useful. You can have a work nemesis, a yoga nemesis, and more. They don't have to be anyone you’ve ever met offline.

To Whom It May Concern: There‘s been an influx of applications to be my nemesis. Know that I’ll be reviewing every submission thoroughly and once a decision has been made the universe will be notified, as will my therapist. Thank you for your interest!

— Natasha Rothwell (@natasharothwell) March 24, 2019

And remember to keep the competition positive. “[A nemesis] can be a healthy form of competition. It can make you step up your game,” says Bea Arthur, a licensed therapist and the founder of The Difference, a therapy service available on Amazon’s Alexa. “As long as you're not actually hating or stalking them. It can be a good way to encourage you to pursue your goals.”

Not everyone will find a nemesis useful. Those who already struggle with self-esteem issues or jealousy can find having one unproductive. Jessica Wakeman, a freelance writer, realized several years ago that a one-sided competition she’d kept up for years was ultimately holding her back. Her nemesis “always seemed a level or two ahead of me,” Wakeman wrote in a story for Glamour. “No matter what I accomplished—a book review in The New York Times, interviews on TV—I felt like a failure in comparison … One of my biggest regrets is that I didn’t let my feelings go earlier.”

My nemesis? Well, it’s a little something you might have heard about: world hunger

— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) March 22, 2019

The journalist Eve Peyser recently wrote in Vice that having a nemesis was antithetical to her mission of being a kinder person on the internet. “Being an asshole online, whether it’s tagging the target of your wrath or subtly hinting at the identity of whoever you’re bashing, can make you seem unhinged and sickly,” she wrote.

There’s a possibility some people rely on the concept of nemeses as a crutch. Jane Solomon, a lexicographer at Dictionary.com, notes that women can be chastised online for being too nakedly ambitious, so she speculates that some might adopt a nemesis as a way of expressing the things they want to achieve. “It’s not always socially acceptable to publicly articulate your own ambition," she says. "It can be seen as wanting things that you shouldn't want. Assigning a nemesis is an indirect way to talk about the things you want for yourself."

Still, for many people, having that everyday opponent seems to provide a healthy outlet. I plan to keep mine, at least until I outdo him. Then, I’ll have to choose my next nemesis.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/03/how-choose-best-nemesis/585712/?utm_source=feed

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ionecoffman · 5 years

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Get Yourself a Nemesis

I must reluctantly admit that my nemesis has been tweeting good stuff lately

— your friend Helen (@hels) July 23, 2018

You’re only as good as your nemesis.

— Lauren Mechling (@laurenmechling) March 21, 2019

the real nemesis is the friends i made along the way.

— Gene Park (@GenePark) March 22, 2019

— Natasha Rothwell (@natasharothwell) March 24, 2019

My nemesis? Well, it’s a little something you might have heard about: world hunger

— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos) March 22, 2019

Still, for many people, having that everyday opponent seems to provide a healthy outlet. I plan to keep mine, at least until I outdo him. Then, I’ll have to choose my next nemesis.

Article source here:The Atlantic

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dietpillswatchdog · 7 years

Text

12 Foods To Help You Lose Weight Quickly

In a modern world dominated by high-fat foods and sedentary lifestyles, weight loss is on the minds of many. Prospective dieters can receive advice from all quarters, with dozens of diets and exercise programs competing for the public’s time, money and attention.

Here at Diet Pills Watchdog, we think all this noise can actually be pretty unhelpful. When looking to lose weight, the most effective, long-term solutions can often be found in small changes to behaviour. Why spend huge chunks of your salary on an impossible-to-maintain crash diet, when you could learn more sensible habits that can last a lifetime?

In the spirit of this, we’ve decided to publish a list of the twelve most common foods that can help us to lose weight quickly. Rather than just focusing on expensive superfoods or unpalatable vegetables (we’re looking at you celery), we’ve decided to pick out good, diet-friendly foods that anyone can find and digest easily. Turbo-charge your diet and look out for these weight loss-friendly foods on your next shopping trip!

1) Eggs

Most of us adore eggs; they’re cheap, easy to prepare and can be enjoyed in a multitude of different ways. They’re also one of the healthiest foods imaginable and are an essential ingredient in any weight loss diet plan.

Eggs are packed with proteins and nutrients, and rank unusually high on the Satiety Index; this means that eggs have been proven to make consumers feel fuller and more satisfied for longer. A normal-sized egg contains just 80 calories, meaning that dieters can enjoy a full and satisfying portion for a relatively small calorie cost.

Research backs up the usefulness of eggs in diet programs. Numerous studies have been conducted to measure the effects of eating eggs for breakfast, with all showing that dieters felt fuller for longer and consequently ate fewer calories in other meals of the day. A 2008 study actually found that egg breakfasts can contribute to a 65% greater increase in weight-loss over just 8 weeks! Source: http://ift.tt/2hbxsjW

Old fears of eggs raising the odds of heart disease due to their cholesterol content has also recently been proven false. In the last 5 years or so, several studies (including a landmark paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition) have shown that the dietary cholesterol in eggs does not raise the risk of heart disease whatsoever (http://ift.tt/249Vm3F). Most global nutritionists now do not recommend limiting your intake of eggs, so enjoy!

2) Grapefruit

Although typically missing from most of our shopping lists, grapefruit has unusual qualities that help it remain a very diet-friendly food.

An interesting study published in the Journal of Medicinal Food found that eating half a grapefruit daily caused noticeable weight loss over 3 months (Source: http://ift.tt/2gUn5o4). The apparent reason for this was grapefruit’s natural ability to lower insulin, a hormone that encourages the body to store fat.

Even without this ability, grapefruit is a great source of protein and vitamins, and its high water content allows consumers to feel full for relatively few calories (a quality it shares with other great citrus fruits like oranges or nectarines). Like many fruits, grapefruit can also be made into a tasty juice or smoothie.

The major downside of eating grapefruit is its reported bitter taste. However, few seem to realise that grapefruit should actually be peeled more thoroughly than something like an orange. To unlock the fruit’s true sweet taste, it’s necessary to peel the skin and the membrane that makes up each “segment” as well, eating only the juicy bits inside.

3) Salmon

Salmon is nutrient-dense and packed with protein, making it indispensable when choosing food items for your diet. Although slightly pricier than some of the other items on this list, fresh salmon is also versatile and easy to pair with salads, snacks or suppers.

The range of nutrients found in salmon is impressive. Most varieties of salmon are packed with niacin, Vitamin B6, Vitamin B12, and the rarely-found Vitamin D. It’s also full of filling and nutritious protein, with a small 3oz serving containing 40% of your RDA for protein with very little fat as extra baggage.

Salmon (and other fish like tuna or mackerel) also contain an excellent weight loss-aid in the form of omega-3 fatty acids. These healthy fats can increase the pace of weight loss experienced when following a sensible diet and exercise plan – think of them as a way to boost already-strong results! Source: http://ift.tt/2tukZyv

4) Peppers

Peppers are perhaps not a vegetable that is typically associated with weight loss, although they actually have some interesting properties that make them excellent candidates for a healthy diet.

Bell peppers of any colour contain some of the largest doses of vitamin C you’re likely to find per serving. Although vitamin C doesn’t cause weight loss directly, studies have found that deficiencies in vitamin C are associated with obesity. It’s thought that having sufficient vitamin C stores help us to oxidise fat whilst exercising; without it, dieters may lose out on as much as 30% of the weight loss they would have experienced through workouts. Source: http://ift.tt/2uylXx2

Incidentally, spicy chilli peppers are also known for their weight loss effects. Chilli peppers contain a chemical called capsaicin (the part that makes them spicy). This chemical is known to create a thermogenic reaction in the body that reduces appetite, raises your metabolism and actively burns fat – some readers may recognise this as the effect that most fat burner supplements claim to mimic! Source: http://ift.tt/2jtkF1j

Chilli peppers are of course far cheaper than most supplements, so try going straight to the source with some hot and spicy food.

5) Beans/Legumes

This listing is slightly broader in definition than some of the others on this list, covering beans, peas, lentils and chickpeas. Although slightly different from one another in terms of nutritional value, these foods are worth grouping together due to their shared ability to reduce cholesterol and boost weight loss outcomes.

One recent study found that adding 130g of beans, pulses or legumes to a daily diet caused modest rates of weight loss, even when other eating habits remained totally unchanged (Source: http://ift.tt/1UD2R0k). The reason behind this? As with many other great foods on this list, beans and legumes ultimately make people feel fuller and help dieters to consume less overall.

Beans, pulses and legumes are often extremely cheap and versatile, and can be easily added to a variety of main meals as a substitute for fatty ingredients like minced meat.

6) Spinach

Spinach (and other leafy greens like kale and collards) are astonishingly low in calories – a cup of raw spinach contains a measly 7 calories. As weight loss is often little more than consuming fewer calories than you spend exerting energy, eating proportionally more vegetables like spinach virtually guarantees that you will lose weight.

Spinach also contains huge doses of useful nutrients like iron, calcium, and Vitamins A, K, C and E. Most usefully, it also contains green leaf membranes called thylakoids, which are known to decrease hunger and massively contribute to weight loss; one Swedish study found that a special spinach extract with thylakoids caused 43% more weight loss than a placebo. Source: http://ift.tt/1yDTFZl

7) Yoghurt

Yoghurts come in many forms and flavours, from Greek yoghurt to kefir. Depending on the form you opt for, yoghurt can stand in as a handy standalone snack or as an accompaniment to a main meal or pudding.

It’s also a clear weight loss program staple. All forms of yoghurt contain probiotic bacteria that help our digestive systems to function properly. It is now thought that the healthy, balanced guts created by probiotic regimes protect against a damaging phenomenon known as leptin resistance (which affects our perception of how full we are, leading to weight gain).

The available scientific evidence also clearly shows yoghurt’s potential for big results. A huge study examining 120,000 people recently identified yoghurt as the food most likely to lead to weight loss, a finding that is thought to be linked to its ability to stave off hunger. Source: http://ift.tt/2uQXuTM

8) Lean Chicken

Plenty of dieters want to enjoy eating meat as part of their diet, but find this to be one arena when calorie numbers start to accelerate a lot. To keep things sensible, try to substitute calorific red meats with more weight-loss friendly meats like chicken or turkey.

The main factor that would lead us to recommend skinless chicken is its incredibly high protein content. 100g of boneless, lean chicken contains a whopping 31g of protein, which can help us to feel fuller for longer. In fact, a 2015 paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition definitively stated that meals containing 25g of protein or more help dieters to manage their weight and stave off hunger – including a lean chicken breast with a main meal can therefore make a lot of difference to your overall results. Source: http://ift.tt/1R3EvKr

9) Soup

OK, so this entry is less about one specific food, and more about how we consume food on a diet. Meals like soups have great potential as weight loss tools due to their ability to make relatively small portions feel much bigger and more filling than they are.

The trick behind this is really just water. Studies have shown that incorporating water into a food (not serving it next to the plate in a glass) makes a huge difference to how satisfied it leaves people. Put simply, those who ate the same meal in the form of a soup were far less likely to eat more at lunch. Source: http://ift.tt/2uRbZXF

10) Oatmeal

One theme you may have noticed from this list is that good weight loss foods are often low-calorie and highly filling, helping dieters to avoid overeating at other meals. One of the best examples of this is the slow-release carbohydrates found in oatmeal.

Oatmeal is low in calories and high in fibre, making it a perfect and filling way to start the day. A cup of plain oats has just 159 calories and tends to pass slowly through the digestive system, meaning that it has been proven to keep you fuller for longer. Add in some berries or other tasty fruit for flavour and you have an almost perfectly healthy breakfast!

For those who are interested, there are of course studies to back up oatmeal’s good reputation as a weight loss food. One 2015 study found that oatmeal helped thin and obese participants to lose more weight compared to cornflakes, mainly because the former helped the dieters to eat less at lunchtime. Source: http://ift.tt/2r4tjot

11) Broccoli

Broccoli is another vegetable that’s high in weight loss potential, whilst also being cheap, easy-to-find and easy-to-use in meals.

The balance of nutrients found in broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables (like cauliflower or cabbage) is as perfect as can be. Broccoli is high in filling fibre, whilst also containing far more protein than the average vegetable. Like other greens, broccoli is extremely low in calories, meaning that dieters can eat cups and cups of it without putting on much weight.

Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli are also known to contain an interesting substance called sulforaphane, which has been found to stimulate fat-burning processes. Source: http://ift.tt/2uQSPBk

12) Cucumber

One of the most important lessons to learn whilst losing weight is the importance of sticking to low-calorie foods. More than anything, this trick is the one that can really guarantee weight loss at the end of the day.

Cucumbers are a great example of an extremely-low calorie food. With just 14 calories per cup, this watery vegetable can be eaten by the almost at will without putting on weight. Like most vegetables, it is rich in vitamins (particularly vitamin C and vitamin K), and has no fat or other unwanted nutritional properties. Try using cucumber sticks to dip into hummus or yoghurt for a tasty mid-afternoon snack!

The post 12 Foods To Help You Lose Weight Quickly appeared first on Diet Pills Watchdog.

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