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random-thought-depository · 3 years

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Tangent from my last post: reading over this and thinking about it, I’ve pinpointed a disagreement that I think reveals a fundamental disagreement I have with the ideas I was responding to there.

Seph’s essay talks about liberal sexual consent practices as requiring a shift toward a more Culture A style of social interaction; requiring a willingness to actively assert your own interests instead of engaging in Culture B accommodationism. And that’s true, but I immediately recognized that it’s incomplete in a way that I think fundamentally distorts what’s happening, though it took me a while to think out exactly how. Saying “no” involves a degree of Culture A type assertiveness, but respecting that “no” and pro-actively making sure your partner is enjoying things involves an attentiveness to feelings, an accommodationism, and an attentiveness to maintaining harmony that’s more Culture B.

Like, if you drew up two columns, one labeled “Macho Republican Dad Boomerpost Stuff” and one labeled “Softy SJW Stuff,” and started sorting things into those columns by which group they’re more stereotypically associated with (bacon, guns, capitalism, Christianity, complaining about “cancel culture,” and calling people sissies as an insult into the Republican Dad column, tofu, queerness, feminism, socialism, veganism, accusing people of microaggressions, and being a Wiccan into the SJW column, etc.), I think liberal sexual norms placing a high premium on explicit consent would definitely stereotypically belong in the “SJW” column. And in this context I think that’s revealing.

I think what’s happening here is fundamentally orthogonal to Culture A vs. Culture B. I think, like a lot of left vs. right divides, it fundamentally comes down to hierarchy vs. egalitarianism. Liberal sexual norms emphasizing consent are a rejection of the pecking order method of simply resolving sexual conflicts of interests in favor of the person with more power, whether that power is social status, physical strength, emotional intelligence, or just being more willing to press for their interests. Culture A vs. Culture B is fundamentally orthogonal to what’s really going on here; trying to understanding this issue through that lens is at best like trying to understand the US Civil War through the lens of doctrinal disputes between different types of Christianity (you may get some genuine insights, but you’ve mistaken the fringes of the conflict for its core), and at worst like trying to understand the US Civil War through the lens of doctrinal disputes between Sunni and Shia Islam.

Actually I think the “trying to understand the US Civil War through the lens of Christian doctrine disputes” may be a good analogy, because I think this does tie back to the “the left/liberal side of the culture war is waging a war against Culture A” hypothesis in a way that reveals how that idea is not exactly wrong but misses an important dimension of what’s happening. I think what’s happening is that hierarchy is more explicit and explicitly enforced in Culture A, and therefore as society becomes less like a pecking order hierarchy tends to assume Culture B characteristics.

Culture A is where you find the human hierarchies that look the most like actual pecking orders, which are maintained by literal physical pecking. It’s where you find the openly brutal world of bosses screaming “the leads aren’t weak, you are!” into a cringing subordinate’s face, cops quietly taking an uncooperative suspect into a convenient alley and roughing him up a little to “teach him to respect our authority,” gangsters beating somebody up for being insufficiently deferential to them, some 6′3 250 pound guy in the grips of road rage punching some 5′7 150 pound guy in the face over a smashed bumper, teachers disciplining students by giving them hard blows on the palm with a ruler, a swaggering thug threatening a woman with physical violence because she had the effrontery to object to him groping her, and jocks having some fun inflicting casual physical abuse on the nerds in the locker room and on the playground. Hierarchies in Culture A are often maintained by physical violence and the threat thereof and put-downs and other explicit verbal bullying. When somebody in Culture A thinks you’ve gotten a bit above your station and wants to put your in your place, they’re likely to either actually use physical violence against you, explicitly threaten you with it, or explicitly insult you. Abuse in Culture A tends to look like our stereotypical picture of some swaggering thug openly terrorizing somebody who has some sort of vulnerability.

By contrast, hierarchies in Culture B tend to operate under more polite fictions of relative egalitarianism, cooperativeness, and non-violence. Enforcement of Culture B hierarchies tends to be less overtly violent. Culture B hierarchies are more likely to be covert and legible only to somebody with inside knowledge (e.g. you’ve ostensibly got a group of equals, but some are more equal than others because of advantages that mostly aren’t explicitly acknowledged). Culture B tends to have more of an ideal that coercive power can only be legitimately exercised for moral reasons, while Culture A tends to have more of a “master morality” culture where power is seen as worthy of respect in itself (Culture A is what gave us “Chad” and “alpha” as aspirational ideals), which is why bullying in Culture B tends to have a moralistic and fearmongering nature (see: Tumblr call-out posts) while bullying in Culture A tends to follow a more “master morality” logic of “our victim is weak and aesthetically displeasing to us, and that in itself makes them deserve punishment” - though much like “Culture A rewards strength and technical skills, Culture B rewards social skills and popularity” that’s a dichotomy that can easily be overplayed; most human hierarchies come with a hefty dose of community-minded moralism (even if the community is a pirate ship or criminal gang or something like that), and social skills and popularity are hugely important in almost any culture. Culture B is for people who wouldn’t dream of doing anything so barbaric as yelling at you or punching you because they’re mad at you; they’d complain to the human resources department who’d force you to spend a Friday evening listening to somebody lecture you about the need to “make our store a welcoming environment for our valued customers.”

An archetypal abusive Culture A authority figure is the macho thuggish “respect mah authoritay!” cop. An archetypal abusive Culture B authority figure is the gaslighty Nice Lady Therapist. The former is more-or-less open about the fact that he sees himself as above you in the pecking order and if you dispute that he’ll be delighted to enforce the pecking order in approximately the way chickens do it. The latter pretends to be your friend (and perhaps believes themselves to be that), and expends a great deal of effort tailoring their pecking order enforcement to not look like pecking order enforcement - significantly, they might like to be as openly brutal as the “respect mah authoritay!” cop is, but in strong Culture B that social strategy just doesn’t work; their social strategy represents a compromise with socially influential ideals of egalitarianism and non-violence, a tribute that vice pays to virtue (less charitably, it may simply reflect playing to different strengths and trying to minimize different weaknesses, e.g. the thuggish cop may have chosen that social strategy because he’s a physically powerful but not particularly socially intelligent Biff Tannen type, while the Nice Lady Therapist may have chosen that social strategy because she’s a socially intelligent and Machiavellian but physically feeble 4′10 woman).

In short, Culture B tends to both meaningfully soften the blows of pecking order enforcement and obfuscate them. It follows that as equalizing movements gain ground and explicit pecking order logic becomes more taboo, hierarchy will increasingly take on Culture B characteristics. In 1700, if you angered your boss in some petty interpersonal way he might have whipped you, which was his right as your master. Today, if you anger your boss in some petty interpersonal way she might think a little about how to get revenge on you in a way that doesn’t risk blowback if you take it up with the union, and then find some excuse to arrange for you to have to attend some mandatory HR remedial training that isn’t officially a punishment but let’s be real, totally is. Maybe in 2200 you won’t have a boss because you’ll work in an officially egalitarian syndicalist union, but there will be some union members who are “more equal than others” because of personal connections or charisma or some combination of both, and if you anger one of them in a petty interpersonal way they might through whisper networks arrange a quiet campaign to make sure the union votes against your requests for your favorite foods on the workplace lunch menu.

I guess I’m staking out a position as a hedging kind-of partisan of Culture B here. There’s a lot of talk about how Culture B gets an undeserved good reputation and can be just as unfair and cruel as Culture A but in a more insidious way, and I’m sympathetic to that and I think there’s a lot of truth to that, but, y’know, if I had to choose between pecking order enforcement that has to maintain a plausible veneer of being something else and just open undiluted sadistic pecking order enforcement, I think I’d prefer the former. I think even just adding in a requirement of hypocrisy improves things, because it forces pecking order enforcement to optimize for plausible deniability instead of sadism and effective tyranny. Admittedly, as somebody who finds this very relatable I have a strong personal bias here.

An illustrative personal anecdote: the usual stereotype of high school is that bullied kids (or at least bullied boys) suffer a lot of casual physical abuse, but I noticed that in my school there was a lot of verbal bullying but mercifully little physical abuse; the worst that was likely to happen in terms of physical violence was somebody tripping you up or throwing a box of kleenix at you or spitting their drink at you or something like that. I suspect the reason was that blatant physical violence was pretty much the only form of bullying the school administration would reliably punish (though they’d likely punish the victim right along with the perpetrator), and that’s why it usually wasn’t done. I suspect what happened is that stereotype of chronic casual physical abuse reflects what schools were like when the baby boomers were growing up (and boomers then wrote fiction etc. that reflected that experience that shaped the pop culture stereotype), but then anti-bullying reforms came along and by the late ‘90s and early ‘00s they’d achieved one great success: mostly eliminating that schoolyard culture of casual physical violence. And that was a very incomplete fix, just addressing the tip of the iceberg of the problem and probably often redirecting bullying into psychological abuse rather than actually reducing it... but, y’know, I’m really glad my middle and high school experience didn’t conform to that pop culture stereotype of the school dweeb getting regularly beaten up by four or six bigger kids. I had an awful time in middle and high school, but judging from pop culture stereotypes it could have been so much worse, and if suspensions for kids who punched other kids is what created that difference, then I’m profoundly grateful for that reform.

I think the left is kinda-sorta waging war on Culture A as a side-effect of its war on pecking order culture, in which high-status people enjoy the advantages of Culture A while low-status people labor under the disadvantages of Culture B. It’s not an accident that Culture A is associated with men and Culture B is associated with women. Accommodation (sometimes to the point of self-harm) is a survival strategy for low-status people in a social structure that resembles a pecking order; if you’re going to lose the fight, it often makes sense to pre-emptively accept a settlement that favors the interests of the stronger person (often to the extent of trying to anticipate the stronger person’s wants, performing even the brain work of figuring out their preferences for them). Competitiveness is a social strategy for upward mobility in a pecking order society or defense of a place near the top of the pecking order (it also has more pro-social functions so we probably want to keep it around in some form, but social competition is very much part of its function). Women tend to be reluctant to openly advocate for their personal interests because for much of history a woman openly advocating for her personal interests was likely to provoke status-guarding retaliation from men. Men tend to be reluctant to show vulnerability and see doing so as feminine because for much of history other men were likely to perceive a vulnerable man as an opportunity to increase their own social status by lowering the vulnerable man’s social status, and as a rule of thumb to lower a man’s social status was to give him a social status more like a woman’s. In the context of a pecking order society, a lot of Culture B makes sense as social strategies for people at the bottom of the pecking order with little realistic shot of escaping its lower levels, and a lot of Culture A makes sense as social strategies for people at the top of the pecking order and people at the bottom or middle of the pecking order who have a realistic shot at using high-risk high-reward social strategies to move up in the hierarchy. I think there’s some complicating factors around reproductive dynamics that explain why this is a gendered thing instead of just a class thing, but I won’t get into that here. So it makes sense that as society becomes less like a pecking order that process will involve shifts toward Culture A in some areas and shifts toward Culture B in other areas, because those cultures are probably both somewhat maladaptive in a more egalitarian social context.

A relevant example is that for much of history vigorously advocating their own sexual interests was often very risky for women, so Culture B primes women to pre-emptively accept a settlement that favors the man’s sexual interests, so liberal consent norms work better if women develop more assertiveness about their own interests, which looks kind of Culture A-ish. At the same time, women now have more leverage to effectively demand that men perform pro-social Culture B behaviors of accommodation, empathy, and consideration for the feelings and interests of others in the context of heterosexual sex.

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Tangential aside: I think thinking of hierarchy as the fundamental tension point of the left vs. right conflict illustrates a way that post I was responding to might be kind of too meta and you might get an illuminating perspective by stepping back from all that meta-level theorizing about fundamental epistemological differences and looking at the object level.

If you analyze left-wing “cancel culture” at the object level, what does it look like it’s trying to do? It seems to me that it’s trying to lower the social acceptability of what leftists perceive as defenses of hierarchy. Who are the stereotypical targets of campus “cancel culture”? They might be a “race realist” who’s very eager to tell you about how he thinks certain human groups have lower IQs or other congenital traits maladaptive to modern society and darkly hint about political implications. They might be a business libertarian economist who wants to stump for the gospel of the free market. They might be somebody who has a habit of delivering the academic equivalent of boomerposts about kids these days with their coddling and their trigger warnings and their genders. They might be some principled “free speech” type who seems to spend a lot of their energy white knighting for neo-Nazis and other far-right types. They might be somebody who you’d think would be relatively unobjectionable to leftists but who’s said something that can be uncharitably interpreted as bigoted at some point. Besides raw factionalism, the obvious common point is something that can be reasonably interpreted as a defense of hierarchy. The “race realist” at least implicitly says “some groups are smarter or otherwise better than others and may therefore be rightfully deserving of privilege.” The business libertarian economist at least implicitly says “if you’re poor because you can’t get a job or can’t get a job that pays well, that’s basically your problem and the system working as intended; a society with great inequalities of wealth and status may not be ideal but it’s at least better than all the realistic alternatives.” The academic boomerposter at least implicitly says “some people struggle in our education system because of personal emotional sensitivities; their weakness is their own problem and us more functional people have no obligation to accommodate it, if that harms them it may be regrettable but it’s basically the system working as it should to weed out those unfit for it.” The principled free speech proponent at least implicitly says “wanting to kill the Jews and re-enslave the blacks and have white Sharia should be a tolerated opinion in our society, at least insofar as it should not be legally persecuted, and I am willing to devote considerable efforts to defending that principle.” The basically unobjectionable liberal who happens to have a dodgy comment or three in their social media record at least implicitly says “I don’t think I should get too much blowback for once implying that [insert group of concern here] maybe deserves the jackboot to the face.”

And sure, you can dispute the fairness of such judgements, but the over-arching project outlined by these targets seems fairly obvious: to raise the social costs of what leftists perceive as defending pecking orders.

And, like, yeah, there’s some meta-level differences about the role of tolerance and debate too, but I suspect a lot of the disagreement is really more object-level, over how objectionable certain opinions actually are, e.g. a lot of the dispute over “cancelling” the business libertarian guy is probably going to be over 1) how objectionable defense of hierarchy actually is, 2) whether libertarian beliefs are actually defenses of hierarchy.

#people are complicated #my big ideas #leftism #culture #warning: long #cw: bullying #cw: violence #cw: rape #cw: bigotry #politics

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astaroth1357 · 4 years

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How to Calm Your Demon Boyfriend; Vol 2

So You Pissed Him Off, Have You?

Notice: Due to an impending lawsuit for libel and misinformation, Mammoney, Inc. has filed for bankruptcy. All past guides from their company have been revised and re-released. All future printing will be handled Solo Man, Press.

Oh? Is there trouble in your devilish paradise? Well, there’s bound to be a spat or two between lovers but things can get... complicated if one half of your pair could easily wipe out a nation. Attempting to calm down your demon can be tricky, however in this volume of How to Calm Your Demon Boyfriend we will be covering the best methods available for you to do just that! With our instructions and a deft touch, you’ll manage to avoid your boyfriend’s hellish rage and get right back to enjoying that tender, sacrilegious relationship you’ve come to love!

This volume only covers if your demon boyfriend is mad at YOU. If there is SOMEONE ELSE making him mad, please consult Volume One!

Lucifer’s mad at You

You are in a very tricky situation so treat your next actions with the utmost care…

First, ascertain who is at fault for what has occurred. If it’s you, then figure out the severity. A minor infraction can be smoothed over easily enough with some explanation and sincere apology.

More severe breaches of trust will be harder get past. Plead your case but don’t attempt to excuse your actions. Acknowledge fault and, again, apologize. If he seems receptive, attempt to touch him in some way like on the hand or arm but no higher. This a literal demonstration of your attempt to reconnect.

This is the best that you can do for now, but he should acknowledge your efforts as long as you approached it correctly.

If it’s his fault… as far as he’s concerned it’s still your fault, unfortunately. It’s the pride in him speaking.

Ask him what he believes you’ve done wrong and assess from there. Some things may be better to give a brief apology to, but no more. You don’t need to explain yourself for something you didn’t do. It may be best to leave him for a few hours after this and let tensions cool.

If the accusation is too egregious, you have the option to not apologize at all. This will likely anger him further if you give no explanation, though. Explain why you don’t think you should have to say sorry, then leave. Call for his brothers if you need someone there to intervene.

Now you wait. Unfortunately, it's an inevitability. Lucifer will need time to process and do a post-mortem on what happened. If he was truly the one at fault, he’ll acknowledge it to himself but never admit it out-loud. He may extend an olive branch in the form of a gift (the size and expense of which will be directly proportional to how much he messed up) but that will be it.

If you forgive him, then life can return to normal. If not, consult our other material: Can I Breakup with My Demon Boyfriend?

Mammon’s mad at You

It is first important to discern between his usual “anger” and actual anger.

If you see any of these signs: Blushing, stuttering, overly defensive denials, general tsundere-ness then you are likely only dealing with “anger.” Feel free to tease appropriately.

If these signs are not there then something is very wrong. Find out what it is, he will be forthright with a little persistence. (i.e. bug him until he says something. He will likely want to tell you anyway)

Attempt to remedy the problem as quickly as possible. This will no small matter. A truly upset Mammon should not be ignored.

If you have done something wrong, an apology may be in order. Do be sincere if you can because Mammon will appreciate the effort.

Cheer him up with either compliments or physical contact, head pats and cuddles work most effectively. If his face is red, though, you’re likely on the right track in general.

He isn’t one to hold a grudge so this should settle any brief irritation that’s derailed your relationship. Take care not to upset him this much again in the future.

Leviathan’s mad at You

Again, he’s probably jealous but now he’s going to be jealous and possessive. Admittedly, not the best combination.

Stay. Calm. If he’s already hysterical then adding onto the situation won’t do anyone any good. Patience may be difficult to hang onto, but it’s crucial to getting through this on the other side.

Physical contact is still important but NOT TOO EARLY. If he has his guard up he may just slap away your attempts to touch him.

Chances are he’s already built up a narrative in his head. This will not be easy to combat, especially if his suspicions aren’t true.

Denial will be tricky. You don’t want him to accept his false narrative as truth, but there’s going to be only so many times you can say, “No, that didn’t happen” before he stops believing you.

Deny his story first, firmly and with no room for doubt then redirect the conversation to asking why he’s so worried about it. Get to the heart of what’s making him feel so self-conscious and start soothing him from there. He’ll be feeling vulnerable, so a delicate touch is necessary.

NOW is the time for physical contact. He still needs to know you’re there so you should get as close to him as possible. He’ll probably be holding onto you pretty tightly. He won’t mean to bruise you if he does.

Hold him close and don’t even think about letting him go until he’s ready. He needs to know that you'll stay with him even if this is what he has to offer. Your embrace is not just reassurance, it’s a promise. I hope you're prepared to keep it.

For more on how to comfort Levi, please seek out: How to Comfort Your Demon Boyfriend.

Satan’s mad at You

Oh my, aren’t you in a pickle? The focus should be on the immediate concerns first, then the long term. Don’t try to resolve both at once.

The immediate concern is that you have a very ticked off Wrath in front of you and he will make his displeasure known. Apologize. Apologize now. Is it actually your fault? Who knows. That's a long term concern and you should focus first on getting him to calm down fast.

Satan will not listen to reason right now, especially not if you're the only one offering it so don’t even try.

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT attempt to touch an angry Satan. He's going to be far too gone for cuddle time to smooth things over.

You should give him space. He likely doesn't want to be mad at you and is very aware of just how dangerous this situation is for you both. If you take a step back, he'll do what he needs to in order to calm himself down (which is probably going to involve property damage of some kind but better it a bookshelf than you).

Wait until he is no longer shouting, then you may approach and carefully plead your case. You better have some airtight logic if you want to convince him he's actually the one in the wrong about something, but if he is he will apologize.

Of course, if you are at fault then you should apologize and attempt to explain. Even if you don’t have the best justification, you can still win him back if you can prove you had good intentions.

Unfortunately, even if he understands your reasoning he may still be a little miffed... Speaking candidly, if there's still residual anger left it may be best just to f*ck it out. This is not a joke, it's a legitimate way to redirect lingering negative emotions in a relationship. So have at it, I suppose. Just have a safe word ready because you'll need it.

Asmodeus’ mad at You

Again, reason and logic will fail you, especially at the very start. He WILL be upset and he WILL lash out. Likely verbally.

DO NOT engage in a fight of insults with Asmodeus. Not only will you lose but the situation may escalate to the point that your relationship will suffer permanent damage.

Remain calm, but you need not take the abuse. You are well within your right to tell him that you will leave the room if he does not cease the hostility. Don’t mean this idly either because your presence will be very important to Asmo. He hates to be ignored.

If you must leave, do so. Don’t turn back even if he pleads. Wait for him to come to you, because he will, and then a civil conversation can commence. Apologize if necessary.

After his initial anger has passed, Asmo will be very quick to feel remorseful. Despite his ferocity, he should be rather forgiving (at least to you anyway).

He will want make-up sex, for his own comfort if nothing else, but as always he will not force the matter. It may be much sweeter than usual, though, because that’s his way of saying “I’m sorry.”

Beelzebub’s mad at You

Oh dear.... You have either denied/stolen his food, hurt his family, or somehow just really ticked him off...

If you denied him food, get more.

If you hurt his family, plead for mercy.

If you’ve just really, really ticked him off, I’m not even sure what you did but you probably ought to apologize and maybe rethink your life choices... They must not be very good.

Belphegor’s mad at You

This will happen, but again Belphegor is pretty lazy. He’s more likely to give you the silent treatment than he is to blow up in your face.

Your challenge now is to get him to talk to you. Unlike with Mammon, he won’t be itching to say anything so a slight nudge isn’t going to cut it.

Start by trying to be frank about the situation. Attempt to sit him down and say that you wish to talk things out. Be empathetic, approachable, and sincere. This should elicit at least some attention from him for most issues.

If he intends on holding out further, then you have already done your part to the best of your ability. Leave the door open to that discussion, but go about your day until he’s ready for it. It won’t be easy, nor will it feel good, but it’s important to set boundaries and not allow his silence to punish you when things could be worked out more productively.

I assure you, Belphie does love you and he will miss you. It may take a little time, but he will eventually approach you to have that talk. Resolve what happened together and then things can return to normal, cuddles and all.

If you are looking to calm down your demon before he hurts someone else, please consult Volume One: Tame Demons, Save Lives!

#obey me #obey me shall we date #shall-we-date-obey-me #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #obey me headcanons #obey me scenarios

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zenalios · 3 years

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Untamed Seas; 5 - Shadowed

Index (R18+)

Summary

Amphitrite, sea goddess, and daughter of Nereus, is less than willing to marry an Olympian, let alone Poseidon, the very god who overthrew her father. She does so nevertheless, in a desperate move to protect her sisters following Nereus’ absence.

The marriage is beneficial to them both: Poseidon gains legitimacy through a union with her, effectively solidifying his control over the seas, and Amphitrite guarantees her sisters' safety, along with all prestige due her status as queen.

The catch? She finds his domineering personality utterly insufferable, and he, the most fearsome god, resents being stuffed into an unwelcome marriage.

They have all eternity to make it work.

TW // Abuse - Verbal and Physical ; Abusive Relationship ; Forced Marriage

The time had come for the bride’s veil to be removed. Having thoroughly showered the new queen in a flood of fruits and nuts to symbolize fertility and prosperity, along with whispered well wishes, the wedding guests and servants hastily filed out of the throne room.

It was then that Amphitrite, daughter of the sea god Nereus and river nymph Doris, was left amidst the mess, with but a single dolphin as the goddess’s escort to the bridal chamber.

Her heels were sore from standing nearly the entire duration of the feast at Olympus greeting her new in-laws, a wild frenzy which had flown by without any opportunity for her to savour the occasion and her last moments of freedom. This made her rather grateful for the brief respite the palace denizens had granted her in the form of peace and quiet.

Now was a good time to shake out a few nuts from the folds of her skirt, and sweep away into her palm some dried fruits, the latter of which she did not discard, but furtively snuck into her mouth —not that she was hungry, she merely needed something to gnaw at and ease her misery.

“This way, Your Majesty.”

Amphitrite raised her eyebrows, still chewing. Had the creature bowed any lower, it would have tilted over and performed a front flip through the water. The mere thought of it alone caused her to accidentally bite down on her tongue. The bitter taste of ichor briefly filled her mouth; it did not mix well with the dried fruits she had just consumed. At this, her chest heaved. She put a fist to her mouth, another hand cradling her abdomen. She rather wished her stomach would give up its contents.

Maybe she wouldn’t have to meet him then.

Curses, the dolphin had raised its head. The goddess forced her shoulders to relax and unclenched her jaw, staring out into the abyssal hallway ahead. Breathe, she reminded herself. Three deep breaths and a very slow exhale later, however, and she still wasn’t ready. “Your Majesty?” The dolphin’s voice echoed.

“Just—" Amphitrite held up her hand, turning away from the poor beast as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “Just give me a moment.”

“Ah, yes Your Majesty!”

She tried to think of other things instead. Like how Erato had cried upon seeing her once more, how the rest of her sisters had bid her farewell as her wedding procession departed for Olympus, their precious tears glistening against the dancing twilight sky, how many gifts her new subjects had eagerly pressed into her hands as they slowly followed after her chariot, shuffling behind her in droves every step of the way to the ocean’s depths, how thoughtful it had been of Hera, Hestia, and Demeter to decorate the wedding halls with deep blue corals in her preferred colour as opposed to gold the shade of her newly-wed husband’s… hair.

The hand she had raised fell to her side. Poseidon. Her husband.

Amphitrite straightened.

As if she was not miserable enough, the reminder of who it was she had married, and what exactly he had not done, only infuriated her all the more. Granted, she now knew the marriage was also against his wishes —something Demeter had accidentally revealed at the feast —but he had not even been in attendance, had refused to dignify, and accordingly, acknowledge her, and remained so even upon her arrival at his palace. Poseidon had not appeared throughout the entire ceremony at all. Instead, some upstart nymphs were charged with bringing her to the throne room’s hearth, their numbers barely enough. It was a far cry from the utmost care and attention her new sisters-in-law had put into hosting the elaborate feast held prior to her departure.

What really grated at her, however, was that Zeus had travelled to Oceanus in the form of a dolphin to pressure her into this marriage, and now she was still being led by one to consummate it.

Call her stupid for attending that party and gaining her fellow gods’ attentions, but how could a simple nymph like her have expected that the most lecherous member of the triumvirate would go against his word and actually attend. It was supposed to have been a simple affair on an island hosted by Amaltheia and other minor gods, her sisters and herself attending in their missing father’s stead, without the king of gods present, without leading to her being chased, no, hunted down, to her grandfather’s waters, without her sister being taken hostage in exchange for her agreement.

Only a digging sensation in her palms made her aware of how tight she had squeezed her trembling fists. Now released, they left little red crescents where her nails had been. She stared at the imprints a little longer, as if they could tell her who the exact source of her misfortune had been, or what, even, this particular emotion was supposed to be.

The dolphin started as Amphitrite cleared her throat.

“I’m sorry.” She said awkwardly, shooting the creature a quick smile that dropped without even meeting her eyes. Her body was still quivering from the adrenaline that pumped through her unsteady heart. She inhaled deeply once more as she readjusted her veil and allowed the air to slowly slip through her lips.

“Let’s go.”

The passage itself felt suffocating. Though the three Olympian goddesses had painstakingly redecorated Poseidon’s palace to welcome its new mistress, and in accordance with her tastes as well, it still did not change the fact that the goddess herself remained uneager to meet her new husband, let alone be his wife.

At first her escort swam immediately beside her short of grasping her arm, as if fearing her dragging pace meant she planned to vanish midway on their little journey to her husband’s quarters. If only she could. Perhaps it worried she would stall for more time, and delay the ceremony so as to invoke the sea king’s wrath, as to be expected from someone who behaved as though the world revolved around him; this was most likely the case, she realised.

Though Amphitrite had yet to meet Poseidon himself —again, she bore absolutely no inclination whatsoever to consort with someone who had ousted her father, and she could not guarantee that she would not slap him upon making his acquaintance— rumour was it that he lived and breathed the concept of “perfection”. They even went so far as to call him a “god among gods”.

Was it any wonder, then, that her arrival had been more lacklustre than her own family's welcome for a new maidservant? Such a vain god expected time and the world to stop for him, even when he himself would not stop for others. Like father, like son, she thought with distaste. She had already met Zeus, and he was bad enough. Unfortunately, such a god had now become her husband, and she would have to live with it for all eternity.

Small wonder then, that her sisters-in-law had tried their best to ensure a grand festival on her side; they must have known things would fail miserably on her husband’s end.

Amphitrite blinked. The dolphin was now a short way ahead of her in the passage. Did I stop? She couldn’t recall having done so since they had left the throne room and the rest behind.

“It’s alright, Your Majesty.” It spoke before she had the chance to ask. “You will be good for him.” This time, her footsteps did grind to a halt. Amphitrite stared at the creature in disbelief.

“Really.” She noted sarcastically. It was true. She was doing Poseidon a favour, not the other way round.

A minute later the dolphin gasped, as though it had committed some unspoken cardinal sin —really, she could not tell what swam through that sleek grey head, or what the creature was overreacting to. “My apologies for speaking to you without permission.” Oh. So that was why. She nodded .

“Er- Your Majesty,” it hastily added, only adding to her bemused state. What a shame her thoughts of Poseidon had stifled any laughter that might have bubbled. Nevertheless, she could still afford a smile, this one more genuine than the last; now she allowed it to reach her eyes, and it stayed even as her chest grew tight.

“Is that so.” Were those words the truth or merely what the creature thought she wanted to hear? Amphitrite scrutinized the dolphin for a moment, before shaking her head, “I’m sorry.”

At this, the dolphin shot her a quizzical look. She supposed it was not used to being on the receiving end of an apology, least of all from a god, considering just who it was the creature served.

As she opened her mouth to explain, an afterthought struck her from the shadows cast over dim light. Surely it had been a figment of her imagination? Upon second glance at her shape and the dolphin’s streamlined figure flickering against the wall, the bend of a strategically-placed vase curved to reveal the edge of a twitching tail. One that could not possibly belong to her, for she had never possessed a tail, nor the dolphin, whose fins were smooth and sleek —everything this one was not. The longer she stared, the more apparent it soon became to Amphitrite that more tails lay in other similarly inconspicuous locations, each a foreign presence to her.

The young queen now swallowed whatever thoughts she initially possessed of confiding her feelings in the creature. Perhaps she should not even have apologized to begin with. After all, the creature served Poseidon himself, and so did the many pairs of eyes watching her still. And if they all served him, did that not mean they were defectors who had betrayed the memory of her father?

Feeling exposed, she tugged the veil forward to cover her bare arms. It all made sense to her now, she thought miserably. The nymphs that greeted her upon arrival now lay hidden to scorn the daughter of their previous king, their previously whispered words carrying not blessings but ill-wishes. The same sense of grief that had struck her upon departure from her sisters washed over her anew: the realisation that she was well and truly alone in this palace.

Amphitrite grit her teeth, willing herself to endure their stares. “It’s nothing.” In truth, the bridal chamber was not so far away, the greater distance completed when she was escorted to the throne room itself. From there onwards, it was merely a simple trip into the heart of the palace. However, it was still larger than her father’s grotto, and far more stifling owing to the expectant audience that surrounded her.

By the time Amphitrite’s thoughts ground to a halt alongside her own footsteps, the newly-wed bride was utterly dour.

Her escort swam forward, rapping once, then twice, on a looming pair of golden doors. “Her Majesty has arrived.” There was no response. Amphitrite’s scornful frown deepened. Just a cubit away, her ears picked up on chittering from the hidden nymphs. The dolphin cleared its throat. It knocked again, speaking louder this time, “Her Majesty has come for the night.” Amphitrite folded her arms, glancing upwards with an impatient huff; still no answer.

As a result, more whispers were thrown in her direction, wearing Amphitrite’s nerves dangerously thin. Either they knew that she knew they were there, and simply did not care, or they remained blissfully unaware of the fact that their voices had increased in volume, so revealing their presence to her.

Growing up Nereus’s firstborn, the new sea queen was used to being stared at by the multitude, had practically been raised to ignore their presence as she carried about her business. It was the only reason she had been able to cope up till now. But now, their voices were an extremely unwelcome addition in this smothering hallway —her skin crawled with every murmur and response, that even the silk veil placed over her hair tugged at each follicle, further weighing her scalp down with every turn and swish. Her nails bit down on her arms in a desperate attempt to prevent herself from being overwhelmed.

It was the lowest moment of her life after her father’s disappearance, and these upstarts had come all the way to watch her, to laugh at her suffering.

“You’re a goddess now.” Hestia said earlier that morning during the nuptial bath as Amphitrite was being scrubbed down, “I believe you will be a good one.” Sorry, Hestia, a small voice within her apologised, though Amphitrite herself remained unsure what exactly for.

The next time she heard another sound, the sea queen whirled towards that particular column.

“Enough!” She snapped viciously.

One stamp, and the maiden was sent hurtling against the opposite wall with a loud thump.

The only relief such an act of violence brought was release and a small sense of satisfaction as the rest began to scatter away; deep down, she felt sick to her stomach at the way the girl had hit her head, now limp and unmoving.

Only two nymphs lingered behind, hesitating as to whether they should save themselves first or leave their friend to her demise. They flinched when she turned to them.

“Take her and go.” She ground out, waving her hand at the offending nymph. At once, the pair sprung into action, one hurrying forward to grab the girl, the other looping a limp arm around her. Both hastily bowed as they retreated.

Amphitrite released a shaky breath.

Now that the nymphs were truly gone, the goddess was forced to face the extent of her actions. She needn’t have gone that far when a simple “Begone!” would have sufficed to send them scurrying. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her escort raise a trembling flipper to knock once more.

A pang of regret shot through her chest. It was something she imagined only Poseidon would do, and now she had stooped to his level too.

The dolphin’s attempt was met with a hand. This unwanted marriage deserved no such pomp and circumstance: if the groom himself did not care for it, then neither would she. “Enough,” The bride spoke firmly, a trace of bitterness creeping into her words. She tentatively pushed at the door —and winced.

A sudden stream of golden light burst through the darkness.

“I can do it myself."

4 - Enalios, β ; 6 - Brine

#untamed seas #ari writes #snv #shuumatsu no valkyrie #record of ragnarok #snv poseidon #poseidon record of ragnarok #poseidon x oc #poseidon x amphitrite

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babymetaldoll · 3 years

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The bullies of the future (Matthew Gray Gubler/Reader)

Prompt: Imagine school in 300 years

Word count: 2,8K

Summary: Matthew starts rambling about the future over dinner. How do you think school will be in the future... will there be bullies... will our kids be bullied. All the questions reader has no idea how to answer.

Pairing: Matthew Gray Gubler/ Reader

Category: Fluff

Warnings: mention of bulling and cursing

Masterlist

- “I'm just saying, when we have kids, they are going to be homeschooled”- Matthew kept stirring the pot and (Y/N) continued chopping veggies, like what they were talking about was no big deal at all.

Of course, 'cos you and your boyfriend of seven years just happen to talk about your future together every once in... seven years, apparently. And it had to happen casually as you cooked dinner together.

So, (Y/N) took a deep breath and played it cool.

- “Home school? you wanna get our kids tutors?”

- “No, no! god no!”- he made a pause and analyzed the idea- “Well, maybe... I don't trust my math, but I was thinking maybe we could both be in charge of their education.”

Matthew was talking about it like it wasn't a big deal. It was: "Which topping do you want on your pizza today, by the way, let's have kids and homeschool them together!". No biggie, right?

- “Other than the fact we were both bullied in school, why do you want to keep them in our little house bubble all day?”- (Y/N) made her best to sound as casual and cool as possible, though she was freaking out inside.

- “'Cos school sucks”- Matthew simply replied, and both of them fell into a comfortable silence for a few minutes.

- “I wonder what school will like in 300 years”- Gubler was thinking out loud, and (Y/N) found herself staring at the ceiling analyzing the idea.

- “I bet it will still suck”- she added and heard him chuckle.

- “And of course, aliens will be the teachers”- he stated and nodded at his own words- “Maybe they can "ET" us, and put all the knowledge inside our brain just with a finger on our forehead.”

- “So you wanna be fingered by an alien in school?”- (Y/N) looked at her boyfriend and frowned pretending to be confused, but making her best not to laugh. He, on the other hand, was laughing so hard she was sure the whole neighborhood could listen.

- “When you put it in those words... I don't know... maybe if they are hot aliens...”

- “I hope they are cool aliens, not the ones who always try to blow up Earth, or end with humankind”

Gubler stared at his girlfriend, she was taking the dough she had already made and had to rest, and started getting ready to prepare their pizza.

- “Is the salsa ready, Gub?”- he nodded and turned off the stove.

- “Do you think there will be bullies in school 300 years in the future?”- the tone of his voice was a little more serious, (Y/N) noticed it right away. Maybe that's where all the homeschooling idea was coming from.

- “It's more likely, people are and will be assholes forever, why?”- he shrugged and moved to the kitchen island, holding the pot with the tomato sauce he had prepared (it was his own personal recipe, and he was proud of it. It might or may not be taken from (Y/N)'s mom, but that was a fight he was never going to quit).

- “Hon, you know you can't keep kids in a bubble just to stop them from being hurt”

- “I know”- he whispered and focused on (Y/N)'s hand kneading the dough. Somehow, cooking with her felt like a place he could hide in.

If he was honest - which he was in his mind, but no as verbally as people might think- he could spend the rest of his life eating everything and anything that she cooked for him. He could gain a hundredth pounds, and he wouldn't care, he loved her home cooking, 'cos it was in fact, his home.

They had been seven years together, and he was now all of a sudden talking about kids. He didn't understand where that thought was coming from, but he knew he was sure she was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. It wasn't something he had to think about, it was something he felt on the inside every morning when she was the first thing he saw, as soon as he opened his eyes.

- “Wanna talk about what this is really about?”- her words took him from his thoughts, but he shook his head in silence- “Then pick a movie, I'll put the pizza in the oven and we'll be ready in twenty minutes.”

Matthew picked the original Carrie movie for their Saturday lazy date night, and they cuddled on their couch to watch it eating their homemade pizza. They chatted about all their favorite scenes and laughed at the poor special effects, but by the end of it, after an obscene amount of food and a bottle and a half of red wine, Matthew couldn't shake the bully's thoughts away.

- “Would you go all Carrie with your high school bullies if you could?”- his voice was a soft whisper as (Y/N) turned off the tv and the screen went black.

- “I don't think so... I wanted to when I was in school, but I don't think I care so much right now... although who knows what might happen if I get to see one of those assholes again”

The girl turned to her boyfriend, her legs laid on his lap as he sat next to her, covered with the same blanket. He knew he had to admit it, but there was a part of him that kept thinking maybe if he didn't talk about it, it hadn't happened.

- “I bumped into one of my bullies today”- he looked down at his hands, playing with a napkin as he spoke. He didn't want to turn his eyes to her 'cos he knew she would be scared and concerned. Which she was. She couldn't believe something like that had actually happened.

Matthew openly talked about his bullying experience in school in a positive and inspiring way, to help people under the same kind of situation face it and overcome it. But he never let anyone close enough to his trauma so they could understand how bad things had been for him. And it had been bad. The fact no one could call him "Matt", though it was the "go-to" nickname for Matthew was just the tip of that iceberg.

(Y/N) knew most of it after all that time, that's why it shocked her to know her boyfriend had bumped into someone from that dark era of his life.

- “Who?”

- “Chris Sanders...”- Gubler wished he could forget that name, but it was not possible. He didn't have an eidetic memory like his character Reid, but the trauma of years of bullying wasn't easy to erase.

- “Where?”

- “At a coffee shop this morning when I was out getting groceries... it was weird”

- “I bet it was”- (Y/N) moved closer to her boyfriend, wrapping her arms around him and kissing his cheeks several times- “Do you want me to kill him? ask me to kill for you, Gubler, please do”

She joked and managed to make him chuckle. But it only lasted for a second.

- “I know I have to be the bigger man, but I couldn't”

- “You don't have to be anything, honey”- (Y/N) leaned to him and kissed his cheek a few times. Matthew closed his eyes and sighed, the sensation of her lips against his skin was enough to relax him. But the memories he had buried were too clear in his head now, and there wasn't much he could do to wipe them off.

- “He put me in a fucking locker every day for a whole year”- Gubler closed his eyes tighter and held his breath for a few seconds.

- “Son of a bitch!”- just thought of her boyfriend going through that torture as a kid, hurt (Y/N) deeper than she could explain. She would give anything and everything she had, to travel back in time and kick those mother fucker's bully asses.

- “And today, he approached me like we were long lost friends”- Matthew scoffed- “Can you believe that? he walked to me and hugged me yelling "Matt" like I should be surprised and happy to bump into him!”

- “That asshole! and what did you do?”

- “I didn't know what to do, so I panicked and stayed still for a second, and he continued talking and talking about how great he was doing, and how he had seen me on tv, and... I tried to get my coffee and run away, but one thing he said just... made me snap.”

- “What did he say?”- (Y/N) whispered. Matthew sighed and looked down at his hands. Somehow, he felt guilty about what had happened, somehow he felt responsible for being mean to someone who had been cruel to him for years.

- “He said he saw an interview of me thanking every bully for being mean to me, 'cos they made me who I am today...”- Gubler whispered every word, and (Y/N) held his hands, trying to make him feel safe.

- “You did say that, I remember”

- “Yeah, but I was trying to be a positive... he just...”

Matthew was struggling with his words. He was trying to clear his head, but he was so mad, so upset, so... angry with himself for accepting the abuse for so many years, he couldn't think straight.

- “Hey, hey!”- (Y/N) leaned and kissed the tip of his nose- “I'm here, you are home, everything is ok, so come back”- she smiled at him and watched him smile shyly.

- “Yeah... I'm here”- he moved closer to her, and slowly rested his head on her shoulder. (Y/N) instinctively wrapped her arms around his body, and held him close to her, protecting him from his thoughts.

The couple stayed in silence for a few minutes. Matthew didn't want to make a big deal out of the whole thing, but deep down inside, he had bottled up so many feelings, he was having a hard time hiding them from his girlfriend.

- “He said I owe him”- Gubler murmured so quietly, (Y/N) barely heard him. He was hidden in the crook of her neck, trying to focus only on the smell of her skin instead of all the thoughts that kept hunting his mind.

- “What?”- his girlfriend whispered and clenched her fists behind his back. Of all the things she could have imagined that asshole telling her boyfriend, "you owe me" wasn't one of it. It wasn't even in the top 10. "I'm sorry I was a mother fucker with you back in high school" was something he should have said, but "You owe me"? only a real sociopath could make such sick joke.

- “And I... just... snapped”- Gubler bit his lips as he moved and stared at (Y/N), his puppy eyes were so apologetic, it made her feel he was indeed apologizing to her for something bad he had done.

(Y/N)'s hands caressed his cheeks as she smiled at him kindly. Whatever he had done - even it that included beating the shit out of that asshole - she knew he meant no harm. Matthew was a pacific guy, he wouldn't get mad, he would always be nice to everybody, even with people who were annoying or rude.

- “Gub, whatever happened, he totally asked for it”- she reassured him.

- “Yeah...”- but still, he didn't say a word

- “Did you hit him?”- he shook his head and sighed

- “I should have, though”- his voice was a whisper again.

- “Yeah, he deserved it... actually, let's google that asshole, I wanna go and smash his fucking face against a brick wall”- Matthew chuckled and stared at his girlfriend- “I mean it, I want to”

- “Maybe then we can google Jen Bennet, and avenge your shitty high school years as well”

- “So you really want me to go all Carrie on my high school bullies?”- Gubler shrugged smiling, but his response was a bluff and she knew it, he was never going to endorse any kind of violent behavior. Not like she would.

- “I don't want you to do that, never”- Matthew gave her a sweet peck on the lips and rested his forehead against hers. Silence hung between them for a few seconds, until Gubler finally sighed and whispered.

- “I threw my coffee to his face and yelled he was a narcissist son of bitch”

- “And?”- (Y/N) moved, looking into his eyes as she furrowed her brows, not getting the big deal of it- “He deserved it!”

- “Yeah but... maybe I overreacted?”

- “Did you stab him?”- but Gubler shook his head- “You didn't kick his balls, right?”- and he shook his head again- “Then, what's the whole deal?”

- “I burned his face and neck with hot coffee, not to mention the fact I yelled and cursed right onto his face in front of a lot of people”

- “So?”- (Y/N) wasn't getting what was the big deal. Sanders had been a bully to her boyfriend, he deserved worse. He deserved hell, 'cos he had put Matthew through a nightmare. She would hurt everyone who had done anything bad to him if she could. That's how much she loved him. No question asked.

- “So?!”- Matthew was in shock his girlfriend was taking things so calmly.

- “Honey, though I know you are the perfect guy who thinks being nice is better than anything else in the world, I have to burst that bubble for you: sometimes, people are assholes and we have to kick ass, you don't have to be a unicorn all the time.”

- “I'm not a unicorn!!”- he replied looking almost insulted. Matthew turned to the coffee table, poured what was left of their bottle of wine into their glasses and gave one to his girlfriend, who was smiling playfully.

- “Ok... a teddybear then”- she took a sip and sighed. Gubler stared at her biting his lips, probably trying to find something to say, but thoughts were overwhelming at that minute. He felt guilty and honestly bad about how he had reacted. He thought standing up in front of a bully was going to feel better, but apparently, it sucked.

(Y/N) could read on his face all the struggles happening in his mind. Her finger found his hair, and ran slowly through it, knowing it was something that always managed to relax him.

- “I just feel I'm no better than him after what I did”

- “Don't overthink it, Matthew Gray”- he felt her hands tug his hair softly, as a small chuckle left her lips- “You are better than anyone and everyone I know or might know”

- “Are you going to encourage our kids to kick ass?”

- “Yes!”- she answered not giving the idea a second thought- “But only if someone is messing with them”

- “Them?”- Gubler raised an eyebrow and (Y/N) felt her cheeks burning in no time. Had she said too much? no way.

- “You said kids, plural, them, kids, them...”- she poorly explained almost stuttering. The fact they were talking about kids was still too much for her to handle. It scared and excited her at the very same time. It felt like something she wanted to do, and couldn't wait to do, but never knew it until that day.

- “I see... maybe school 300 in the future will have better anti-bullying policies...”

- “We are not having kids in 300 kids, Matthew”- (Y/N) didn't realize what she had gotten into until it was too late- “I mean... I don't think we will be alive in 300 years.”

She made a pause as they stared at each other quietly. Neither of them knew what to say next, so she quickly looked for a way to change the course of the conversation drastically.

- “Anyway, it was a good pizza”

- “Yeah”- he nodded frenetically and blushed.

- “And a great shitty movie”

- “It ain't shitty”

- “The book is better”

- “Nerd”- (Y/N) gasped pretending to be offended and watched how Gubler bit his lips. She still didn't know if he did that on purpose or not, but whatever it was, it had one hell of an effect on her every single time, even after seven years.

- “Finish that wine and follow me upstairs”- her words were a command.

- “Why?”- he raised an eyebrow knowing exactly what she was talking about.

- “I wanna cheer you up for beating up that bully”- Gubler didn't argue with that at all, he finished what was left in his glass and stood up.

- “Are you always going to cheer me up with crazy dirty sex?”

- “Yes”- she turned to him and frowned- “Is that a bad thing?”

- “Did you hear me complain?”- he grinned- “We could have done it on the couch, you know”

- “You can't tie me to the couch”- (Y/N) teased and curled his lips to a dirty smile.

- “I love you”

- “I know.”

#matthew gray gubler #spencer reid #matthew gray gubler fanfiction #fanfic #MGG #spencer reid fanfic #matthew gray gubler fanfic #fluff #dr spencer reid #criminal minds #criminal minds fanfiction #babymetaldoll writes

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xenteaart · 4 years

Text

Design Flaw

Summary: “Today wasn't a good day. Your body was betraying you and you couldn't feel more useless and weak, especially knowing how annoyed the Master would always get at the inconvenience that human biology tended to cause.”

Pairing: Dhawan!Master x Reader

TW: Descriptions of pain ??? but nothing graphic, it’s basically pure fluff

GIF: @moon-in-daylight (i think?? correct me if i’m wrong)

Note: Okay so this is my first ever fic and it’s pretty personal as well because i’ve been struggling with health and feeling powerless for a while now and I can’t really find any fics regarding that so I decided to write one myself lmao. Also English isn’t my first language so be gentle ( but also feel free to give any feedback coz I wanna improoove). Hope u enjoy! Big big thanks to @queerconfusionthings and @ambientstars for being my betas I love you <3

The TARDIS lights went from familiar but mildly aggressive crimson to a warm orange which made it feel a little more welcoming than usual. You had a pretty good relationship with the ship all things considered - she would always lead you to the rooms you needed most and sometimes even hide you away from the Master if you needed some time to be on your own. She knew you were thankful for her looking after you, this time being no exception. Yes, she, because you could never call the TARDIS it after all she'd done for you. A rather weird dynamic to have, especially with something seemingly inanimate.

Today wasn't a good day. Your body was betraying you and you couldn't feel more useless and weak, especially knowing how annoyed the Master would always get at the inconvenience that human biology tended to cause. Travelling with him made you realize that he was, in fact, right, and a human body was way too flawed not to be some kind of cruel joke of a creation. Sometimes you wondered how you humans even made it to 70-80 years old, your lives so ridiculously fragile.

“Go away,” you said moodily, curled up on the sofa in the console room, that exact sofa you had made the Master put there since after days spent on trips and adventures you often couldn't even make it to your bedroom.

You were feeling so ill, your thinking process so heavily disrupted by pain and discomfort, you didn't even think twice about what being rude to the Master could result in. Honestly, you didn't even care and right now you would gladly take some verbal abuse because you felt like you deserved it. Sure, you didn't choose to be born human with a chronic illness but it still felt like a failure on your part.

“Watch your tone, love, I might be tolerating it for now but don't you ever think it became acceptable,” he replied, his voice harsh but his facial expression so much softer. He knelt beside the sofa as he looked over you, assessing the damage and rolling up his sleeves while rather loudly thinking about something. You knew his thinking face all too well.

Sure, he could take you to the most advanced hospital in the universe but at the end of the day - they couldn't "fix" you exactly. There was medication to relieve the symptoms but they couldn't really change your way of being completely, so you were now stuck on the TARDIS with another flare-up, trying to breathe through the pain and waiting for your meds to kick in. You used to think that advanced medicine would allow you to swallow one pill and all of your problems would disappear at the snap of your fingers, but in reality, it was a lot more boring and disappointing. The wonderfulness of new medication was merely the fact that the risk of side effects was close to zero. But it was still no magic pill to suddenly turn you into a super human.

“Why wasn't I born a TimeLord,” you moaned, closing your eyes shut as another wave of abdominal cramps and nausea washed over you. You couldn't even tell what was hurting at this point - you felt like one big miserable mess of ache and fatigue.

The Master looked at you suspiciously.

“What, you think TimeLords can't get sick?” he chuckled quietly as if you were amusing him but you could sense he was just trying to distract you.

“I got this Aaxogon plague once, knocked me out for a few months. Nasty stuff, blocks our ability to regenerate so we have to actually live through the whole thing until it fades away,” he continued, so obviously attempting to get yourself out of your head.

“Yeah but not like that,” you replied, interrupting him mid-sentence, your tone giving away your growing anger and frustration, “you don't get sick like that. Besides, you get to live longer, see more, learn more... And, please, don't tell me it's a curse as much as it's a gift, I'm aware of that and I still wish I could have it.”

He went silent for a whole minute, genuinely surprised at the way you saw things.

Most humans he'd encountered were a lot more proud of their nature, taking actual offense of his degrading comments regarding the human race. You didn't. You agreed with them, simply acknowledging the facts. It wasn't personal, it was basically science, and you were an inferior being.

“Don't compare us, dear,” he finally uttered, gently covering your hand with his own and bringing your knuckles to his lips, brushing over them lightly.

The Master's beard scratched against your skin, making it slightly irritated, but it was nice to feel something other than what you were feeling, your senses overwhelmed with your body's misbehavior.

“I don't think any less of you. It is quite infuriating how dependent you all are on food and sleep and, in your case, more rest and medication, and I do think it's a huge design flaw but I took you in for your mind, not for your body.”

You were grateful he wasn't trying to make you feel better by lying and sugar-coating things. Not that he would ever do that for you anyways, it just wasn't him. A weak smile painted over your features.

“Now be a good girl for me and have some sleep, will you?” he added, his voice noticeably deeper and lower. Oh, you knew what he was doing. He was proving you were still desirable despite your vulnerability. Something in your chest sank, your heart probably. Ouch.

He caressed your jawline with the tips of his fingers as he contemplated whether to move up to your temples, and you were quick enough to notice his hesitation.

“A-uh, I have to give my consent first, remember? Rule number 4,” you said, a tiny bit smug and playful.

“Always so good at remembering rules, are we?” he replied with an equally obnoxious and mischievous grin. You gave him no answer and stared into his eyes, his chocolate-y orbs shamelessly mesmerizing you into obedience. You were too exhausted to put up a fight, or maybe you just wanted to think it was your excuse this time.

“Yeah, okay, fine, do the thing, I consent,” you rolled your eyes and winced very soon after, gritting your teeth at another flash of pain, “but promise you're gonna be here when I wake up.”

“Promise.”

Something wet and warm landed on your cheek and you realized he was kissing you goodnight. The familiar feeling of his mind against yours was slowly taking over and you gave in willingly, allowing him to envelope you with his burning but caring consciousness.

“Being a TimeLord is not as great as it might seem. Especially when you’re the last of them,” he whispered as his telepathy was gently putting you to sleep.

You were already drifting away when you heard him, and with an enormous amount of effort you managed to wrap your hand around his index finger, that being a wordless gesture of support and empathy. The Master knew you would say something if you weren’t already passing out, and looked at your now childishly intertwined hands with a hint of amusement and gratitude.

“My silly human” - echoed in your mind before you completely let go of your consciousness.

#dhawan!master #dhawan!master x reader #dhawan!master x you #dhawan!master/reader #dw imagine #my fic #doctor who imagine #doctor who fanfic

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furiousgoldfish · 5 years

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Recognizing abusive friendship is really hard once you get invested. I've been in so many and I still never recognize it when it starts. Abusers looking for targets will aim at someone who's generally not very-well accepted in their community, struggles with isolation and desire to be acknowledged, is lonely or desperate for friends, because it's easy to make someone believe they got something they desperately want to have.

They will share your interests and opinions, immediately have tons in common with you, make fun, engaging, supportive coversations, tell you stories that make them look good and sweet, make you feel safe and like you have a real chance in having a best friend in them. They will also want to test your compassion by revealing some vulnerabilties and painful events, to see if you will rush to comfort them and try to make them feel better. Once they know enough about you to use your weak spots against you, and to always be able to play the victim and make you feel sorry for them when they hurt you, it's a game of time - either you will eventually realize this person has no empathy for you and is willing to put you thru horrible shit and feel nothing about it, or they will take the last piece of your energy and patience they can and then abandon you brutally, when you need them the most. They will of course, frame it as your fault, because how could you expect them to be your friend.

I'll try to list some of the things I've noticed repeat in abusive friendships:

1. Lack of boundaries. This person will find one way or another to have problem with your boundaries, they might act like your boundaries are hurting them, or criticize you for "not trusting them" or "not caring for them enough" if you want to keep some things private. They will also make you feel like taking distance and space from them is hurting them, and act as if it's an act of aggression or betrayal, and you were supposed to be there for them at all times.

2. Very fast progression. They will want to have won you over in shortest amount of time possible, so they could start getting what they want. They could start acting very affectionate, as if you're already close for a long time, reveal too intimate, too vulnerable details about themselves, and get you to do the same, talk as if they already know all about you, or plan things as if it's already settled that you'll be friends for a long time. They will convince you that they're a perfect person for you right away, and you're the perfect person for them.

3. Feelings of obligation. You feel as if you're the only one who can help this person, only one who they trust to never abandon them. You feel as if you lead this person on to rely on you, to count on your friendship, and you cannot bring yourself to take this away from them. You are the only one who knows how hard they're struggling, how badly they need your help and friendship, and it feels like they're always in some kind of a crisis and desperately in need of you. Even when they hurt you, you feel obligated to care about their situation more than yourself, and put your own feelings in the back to focus on what they're going thru.

4. Fear of being the bad friend. You've heard so much about how others have hurt this person, and you grow scared that you'll become one of those bad people. After comforting this person about their bad experiences, it would feel really bad to cause them another one, and make you look like a hypocrite. It gets so bad that you have to watch out what to say, how to put boundaries, and how to call them out on anything, out of fear that you will hurt them, they seem too fragile and too easily hurt to ever be able to handle even an implication that they're doing you wrong. In the end, you let them get away with anything, convincing yourself they would never be doing it on purpose, and finding yourself unable to let them know out of fear that it would hurt them. If you do tell them, you end up having to listen about how bad they felt about having to hear it.

5. You can't live up to their standards. This person has expectations of you, and if you fail them even a little, there's consequences, and you might find yourself at the receiving end of criticism, verbal abuse, insults, humiliation and blame. There's a narrow frame of who you're allowed to be and how you're supposed to act and feel, and you're not allowed to exist outside these criteria, and you can tell that your friend will either hurt or abandon you completely if you grow and branch out beyond what's acceptable for them. You end up fretting their backlash at any risky action you take, and end up hiding your opinions and general state of mind just to stay safe. You might end up changing for them, subtly, and feeling constant anxiety that they will abandon you if you don't act as required. (Just to be clear, standards of "no racism, no homophobia, no sexism, no trashing minorities, no supporting dictatorships, and being against rape, fascism and genocide" are good standards. All of you should be having those standards. Bad standards are about how you look, what you weigh, what grades you have, how much you earn, how much abuse can you take without breaking, how much shit can you tolerate, which ones of your interests are good, what you're allowed to feel and talk about - nobody should be inflicting those on you. None of that is for your own good.)

6. There are repeating periods of good and bad times. Even abusive friendships can have periods where everything seems just fine, calm, your friend is in a good mood, so you are allowed to be in a good mood as well, you get to have fun and you start to forget there ever was a time when this friendship made you feel awful. These periods are essential for keeping up the friendship, because any person would get away from a friend who made them feel horrible at all times, and abusers know this, and make sure you get nice and relaxed before they decide it's safe to lash out at you, or throw another crisis at you. Friendships are not supposed to have intense ups and downs, they're supposed to be your refuge, your safe place where you can count on things remaining stable.

7. You are getting stressed, insecure, upset and sad. Friendships should not make you feel this way. Of course, there's always a possibility in long term friendships that something happens that gets you upset once or twice, but a new friendship, short friendship or any friendship should never be able to cause you repeated stress, pain, insecurity and drama. If a friend is cause of all these feelings, it is very likely they don't have compassion for you, and don't actually care what kind of effect they're having on your life - which means they're not your friend. Actual friend would care deeply about what they're causing you, and would go far to avoid making you stressed, upset and sad - after all, don't you make sure you're not making their life filled with stress and anxiety?

8. Your instincts are telling you something is wrong. You might be getting surges of anger or feel trapped and repressed, you might notice you're not able to express how you feel, and always have to play down your reactions and responses, you don't feel free to take your time for yourself as you'd want to, you always feel guilty or like you failed your friend, and you know this is not how a friendship should make you feel. Still, you feel a lot of affection and care for this person so you can't just walk away from them, even if things do feel wrong, and you want to give it another chance or wait to see if it gets better, so you bear with it and try to ignore your instincts, at least for a while, because the alternative has became scary for you.

9. You're scared to leave. Even when you realize this friendship is adding stress and pain onto your life, and that it's became toxic for you, leaving it becomes a big, almost impossible task. You're worried about how your friend will cope, how will they react if you tell them, if there will be backlash, if they'll be in the middle of crisis and you'll add onto that stress, if they will start insulting you and telling you that you're just as bad as anyone else in their life, if they'll badmouth you to other people, and worst of all, you're worried if you would deserve all that by leaving the friendship. And no, you wouldn't. You don't have to nurture anyone who hurts you, and you're allowed to walk away from anything that harms your life.

If you thought of someone while reading this, I hope you will know that you have the right to be upset with this person, regardless of weather it would hurt or upset them. You have the right to consider that maybe this person isn't the ideal friend for you, and that you don't owe them your friendship no matter how obligated they make you feel.

I need to mention that you don't have to prove or know that someone is abusive in order to cut them out of your life. There are bad friendships that aren't abusive, sometimes two people just don't mix well and if supporting one person is harming another, that's not working out well, and shouldn't continue. You have the right to demand only good friendships, only positive ones, that bring warmth and care to both you and your friend. You don't have to struggle thru bad ones, you don't owe anyone to make their life better at your own expense. Needing different type of friend is reason enough. There are friendships that are good for both people, and that's the only type you should strive for.

#abusive friendships #toxic friendships #furiousgoldfish #emotional abuse #psychological abuse #controlling behaviour #abuser friends #abusive friends #abusive relationships #abuse #long term abuse #verbal abuse #pressure #boundaries #predatory friends #narcissistic friends #sociopathic friends

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autisticchicc · 3 years

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Autism and Love

TW: Mentions of physical and emotional abuse, drug-related metaphor

Love and obsession, for me, are separated by a very thin line. Even if I weren’t autistic, I know I would still love fiercely, but I also know that autism has a profound effect on the way that I feel and express love.

In my life there have been numerous occasions where I thought I was in love, and I often still debate with myself about whether I have ever been ‘in love’. Nowadays I tend to take the view that love is something very personal, and just because it doesn’t last doesn’t make it any less valid. Being someone who is still on good or even great terms with all of my ex partners, I’d say I absolutely loved them at one point in my life. Maybe I still do love them, but I live a strictly categorised life. That love is now a purely a platonic love that comes from knowing and trusting someone for a long time. That ability to categorise so strictly is something some of my exes have had a hard time coming to terms with, I am quick to move them into the platonic love category and keep them there. Once someone has been placed in the platonic category, they do not leave. I don’t get back with ex-partners, and I don’t actually think its possible due to that strict categorisation.

My very first boyfriend sent me a message the other day asking if I ever still think about him. I replied honestly and said that I do not. I think that this comes from the strict categorisation too. If you are my friend, I think about you, but not that often. I have a lot of things happening in my head at all times, a sensory cornucopia that is exhausting to sort through, a conscious stream of five or six trains of thought, and my special interests. Special interests are a really intriguing factor in the context of autistic love, because I believe that the intense focus and adoration we treat our interests with absolutely translates to the people we fall in love with.

Anyone who has been close friends with me while in a relationship knows how insufferable I am when I love someone. I talk about them at any given opportunity, for longer than the other person probably cares to hear about it at times. When I love someone, they become a source of great inspiration, I find the characters I write resembling them, I could spend hours editing pictures and videos of them, my artwork is littered with their image. Love, for me, is an all-encapsulating thing. It invades every aspect of my life, consciously or subconsciously. They become the most beautiful person in my eyes, I drink in their image as though dehydrated. Curiously, even things I perhaps did not like about them before suddenly become things I look at fondly. Something about that shift from like to love, it is a very powerful shift for me.

Ironically, I’m not very forthright with my expressions of love. After mulling it over for years, I’ve realised that I’ve been conditioned to believe that love and pain go hand in hand. When you love someone, you must expect them to hurt you. At least, that’s what I thought until I deconstructed why I thought that. I had become accustomed to people weaponising my love for them, using it to blackmail me emotionally or to excuse physical abuse. As such, although I feel so deeply for the people I love, I am always very anxious about showing it in ways that can be used against me. I don’t show them the story or the art that I created inspired by them, for fear that they might think me obsessed for spending so much time on something pertaining to them.

I get very embarrassed when performing acts of service for my partners. I enjoy tidying and cleaning a lot, and I often want to do it for my partners to make their lives easier, but I get scared that they will think I’m being subservient and that they can take advantage of me. When I see my partner enjoying something or fostering a talent, I desperately want to invest in it, buy them tools and find resources so that they can develop it further, but am scared that they will think me strange and over-enthusiastic. I’m the kind of partner that loves extremely hard, and wants to express it as such, but I cannot quite get over the shame.

I have only recently been able to engage in non-sexual physical touch without flinching. Learning that touch is your love language when you have been shying away from it for years is a strange thing. It almost feels like a betrayal of sorts. Why was I denied this thing that I love for so long? And the reality is, it was a part of that fear. I have to be vulnerable with someone in order to allow them to touch me. Vulnerability has never come easily for me, although I always desperately wanted it. Finding someone that I can entangle limbs with, that I can kiss and hug on a whim, that I can show physical affection in my ‘weird’ autistic ways with has been very therapeutic for me. For the first time, I feel like I can have vulnerability and touch without it being thrown back in my face. It feels desired and reciprocated, not only do I want to touch and hold this person, but they want to touch and hold me too.

Another lesson within that has been ensuring that while I maintain my tough, outer visage, I am honest about needing to be soft and fragile sometimes. I have always been forced into being strong and resilient, it was never a conscious choice that I made for myself. I was forever pushed to be strong for other people, constantly making sure that those that needed me didn’t have to see me struggling or breaking under pressure. I never had someone I felt I could truly cry in front of, ugly, drunken sobbing type of crying. At least not without feeling judged or treated like a flight risk. Having someone I can be unapologetically sad in front of and they don’t force me to be strong for their own comfort feels so alien to me, but the relief it fills me with is immense. I am no longer pretending, and I am no longer embarrassed to be fragile. I can break down in front of this person and they will never question my strength.

While crying and vulnerability are certainly an obvious hurdle for plenty of people in relationships, for autistic people there is the added stress of getting used to unmasking in front of a partner. I didn’t get diagnosed for a very long time, which will tell you just how good I am at masking. As a Hispanic girl, a lot of my behaviours weren’t reprimanded too much. Being loud and aggressive is normal in Spanish culture, and oftentimes isn’t even interpreted as aggression the way it is in the UK. Conversely, I did terribly with the tactile nature of social interaction in Spain and among Hispanics. I didn’t want to kiss strangers or even family members on both cheeks, I didn’t like having my cheeks squeezed by old women, and I didn’t like people touching, grabbing, or shaking me. But I was unfortunately forced to do it for my own survival. I don’t know if the sentiments around disabilities have changed in Spain, but the way I remember it in the part I grew up in was that they weren’t talked about. I didn’t even know what disabilities were until I came to the UK.

In England, pretty much every aspect of my behaviour was reprimanded; my loudness, my ‘aggression’, my opinionated disposition, my lack of a filter, my inability to understand my classmates’ feelings… The list goes on and on. At a certain point, I learned to just hold in a lot of my personality until I got home. What I didn’t realise that I was actually holding in some instinctive behaviours in privacy as well, I would flinch and stop if I noticed myself stimming, my face would go red when I couldn’t verbalise properly, and I often found myself practicing facial expressions in the bathroom mirror because I was self-conscious that I wasn’t doing them ‘correctly’. I started my own personal journey so to speak about a year ago to completely unmask, alone. I still cringe when I catch my arms pulling up into ‘t-rex’ form or if I start verbally/physically stimming, but I’m slowly becoming less ashamed of myself.

Consequently, unmasking in front of someone else has been incredibly nerve-wracking. The ‘issue’ (I say issue but it’s quite the opposite) is that I’m so comfortable in my partner’s home that I unmask without even realising it. Something I’ve noticed however, is that half the time they don’t. When my fingers twist and rub against each other, I glance up nervously to see if I’m being watched. No one has even glanced at me. I stammer and mess up my sentence, or my mouth fails halfway through, and yet even then no one laughs or looks at me strangely, they just wait for me to rectify or finish the sentence. I wonder if part of me still thinks I’m under the ultra-critical gaze of my secondary school peers, expecting to be torn to shreds verbally over my quirks as I always was, but it never happens. I have to constantly remind myself that I am well liked here, and my quirks are something people are fond of now.

Overall, love as an autistic person is intense and difficult, but an experience that is so all-consuming it feels almost like you’re on some kind of drug. I’m a very logical, science-based person, but love is one of the few things that still feels remotely magical to me. It can draw me out of my cold, black and white world and into an illogical whirlpool of emotion. I rarely act on emotion alone, but love is something that certainly has the power to make me do so. It embarrasses me a lot, it makes me feel out my depth, it makes me behave in ways I normally wouldn’t, but I’ll endure those feelings any day for the reward. I still have a long way to go before I can properly express myself to a partner, but one day I’d really like to be able to show them all my projects inspired by them, and the true level of sappiness I’m capable of (lol).

#autism #asd #aspergers #autism and love #asd and love #love #disability #disability and love #aspiegirl #neurodivergent #neurotypical #neurodiverse #autistic #autism spectrum #autism awareness #autism and relationships

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ladynox · 4 years

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(Fic) Milestones

Fandom: Roswell New Mexico

Relationships: Malexa

Summary: Maria, Michael and Alex have been in a v poly relationship for years. Peacefully cohabiting together. That peace is upended when Maria realizes she's pregnant.

Notes: A thousand hugs to my wonderful beta @beautifulcheat. You are the best!

Chapter 1

Alex’s house was a little small for three people, but they made it work and it was cozy.But as Maria looked at the positive pregnancy test in her hand, she knew cozy wouldn’t really cut it anymore.

“Fuck.” She was sitting on the toilet, panties around her ankles, just staring at the two little pink lines in the results window. “Fuck.”

A fucking baby.

Maria had never been sure babies were in her cards. When her mother was 28, she had already been born. At 28, Maria had only just started not-dating Michael. To be honest, with the specter of a degenerative disease hanging over her, it made more sense to focus instead on earning enough monetary success to take care of her mother, to eventually take care of her when she could no longer do it herself. And all she could do was ignore the looming certainty of her future and hope for a deep connection with someone, a love affair for the ages -- or at least for a decade or two.

In the end, it was the correct decision to stop running from her legacy, to embrace her abilities and their terrifying side effects. In doing so, Maria’s whole future opened up before her in ways she’d never imagined. And here was one of them.

“A baby,” Maria whispered, laughing softly in disbelief.

She finally moved to the sink, splashed cool water on her face and looked at herself in the mirror. She grinned at herself in the reflection, eyes shimmering with tears.

“Michael’s gonna flip.”

They’d been together almost five years now, so they had talked about babies, many times. Michael especially had talked about babies. Maybe fostering some kids too. He wanted a big family. Michael had a huge heart full of love and he wanted, he needed, to share that with others. Even with Maria and Alex, his siblings and friends, that boy had just so much love to give.

Alex was more ambivalent. He managed when dealing with children but there was always an undercurrent of discomfort. The parental role didn’t come as easily to him as the one of a defender, protector. Maria privately thought that Alex worried he’d be like his father. She got it, even if she thought it was ridiculous. Maria wished Alex would talk about it. But even after so many years and all the work he had put into himself and progress he had made, Alex had a hard time talking about Jesse Manes.

But Alex had never vetoed children. He even said he’d be ok with them down the road.

Maria really hopes they’ve gone far enough down the road.

As expected, Michael was ecstatic. He picked Maria up and spun her around the room, then cupped her face in his big, strong hands and kissed her breath away. Held her tight in his arms, swaying and babbling like a baby himself. Alex actually had to swat at Michael so he could have a chance to hug Maria.

“Congratulations,” Alex said warmly, still hugging her as he leaned over to kiss Michael’s cheek.

Maria tried to read Alex. Not just his expression and aura but his mood. Since they were touching, it was easier to do. She could sense apprehension—

Sighing, Alex shifted his gaze slowly away from Michael to Maria. He was looking at her with one of those unfairly perfectly eyebrows arched and expression of patient exasperation, and she knew immediately that she’d been made.

“I mean it,” Alex said, kissing her forehead before adding firmly, “so get out of my head.”

“I’m not in your head,” Maria protested, easing herself out of his emotional space.

She glanced at Michael who seemed close to vibrating, from a combination of excitement over the news and worry over Alex’s feelings on said news. She and Michael had spoken privately about Alex’s ambivalence toward children. Michael, as always, worried too much. Worried that the child he wanted so much would ruin the peace they’ve built here. Alex had left Michael so many times that no matter how many assurances he had since provided (rings, holding hands in public, actual verbal promises), Michael still worried that he’d do something wrong. That Alex will leave. That they both will leave him.

Maria grabbed Michael’s free hand, tangling their fingers together. Alex was holding the other one.

“This is a big change,” Maria pushed.

“Yeah, we’re going to need a bigger house for one.” Alex smiled and Maria laughed.

“You’re right but—”

“It’s ok. I’m happy and excited, Maria. Michael.” Alex looked at Michael now, understanding that Michael was the one that really needed to be reassured.

“It’s not too soon?” Michael asked.

“No.” Alex shook his head. Michael arched an eyebrow. “Ok, I dunno. Maybe? But I don’t think there’s ever going to be a moment where I’m one hundred percent ready.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m ready either,” Michael offered.

“Yeah no shit,” Alex joked but Michael glared at him.

“Alex,” Maria groaned, rubbing Michael’s arm with her free hand. When would they stop with the defensive humor in emotionally heavy situations? Not in her lifetime.

“Ok I’m sorry,” Alex sighed, kissing Michael’s knuckles. “It’s scary. But I’m really ok with it.” He smiled little against Michael’s hand. “I can’t wait to be the cool uncle to your little psychic curly haired terror.”

Michael pulled Alex closer, holding him so, so tightly. Kissed his hair. Maria could see the way Michael’s aura shifted as he slowly relaxed. This was just the first conversation, Maria knew. There would need to be more. Many more.

“They won’t be a terror,” Michael protested.

Alex snorted. “No child of yours will be anything but.”

Alex kissed the pout off Michael’s face.

She could sense the nervousness from him immediately. But also excitement?

It was Michael who made the suggestion, one night after coming home from working late and finding Alex and Maria sitting on the couch, scrolling through the home listings on Zillow. Michael had settled on Maria’s side, put his arm around her (two weeks in and he already couldn’t stop petting her belly).

Maria waited.

“How about a ranch?” Michael finally said, after a few minutes. “I hear the Smiths are selling.”

Alex and Maria glanced at each other, surprised. This wasn’t the first time Michael has mentioned wanting to live on a ranch, however. He talked wistfully often enough about working as a ranch hand. About horses and cattle. Helping mares ready to foal and milking cows. Giving riding lessons. Growing their own food. Being completely self-sufficient.

He started a vegetable garden in the backyard three years ago, which he lovingly maintained (and used the vegetables to create new and interesting dishes for Maria and Alex), and he’d been reading about beekeeping. The only reason there wasn’t a hive out back already was because Alex had vetoed the idea. Maria had agreed because there just was not enough space. She wanted to sunbathe without a colony buzzing next to her.

So yeah, the fact that he wanted a ranch wasn’t the surprise. It was more that ranches weren’t exactly cheap.

Of the three of them, Michael earned the least, which obviously stressed him out. He clearly hated feeling like he wasn’t contributing his fair share. They used to talk (fight) about it a lot, although that had lessened now that they had five years to figure out a system that worked for them, for Michael. But still, all the things Michael did around the house felt at least partially transactional in nature.

“A ranch?” Alex asked, opening up a new tab for the ranch listings. A moment later he was looking at the details for the Smith property.

“It’s not too big,” Michael said. Alex hummed in agreement. “Lots of room for kids to run around. And there’s room to have a garden, maybe some horses, apiary, and even a recording studio for Alex.”

Alex hadn’t re-upped the second time he was eligible for discharge. Instead, after years of performing his songs at open mic night at The Pony, Alex had decided to pursue his dream. By then he had already formed a decent following on YouTube. Maria remembered Alex standing in this very same living room, explaining to her and Michael his plan. Nervous, resolute in his decision, and excited, too, because there were music companies interested in his lyrics. Michael had kissed Alex so hard after yelling out finally!

Maria shook off the memory, smiling. “Do I get anything out of this?” She asked. “You best not say the kitchen—”

Michael kissed her. “Pfft. The kitchen is mine. Ya’ll are both terrible cooks.”

Taking offense to that, Maria grabbed a decorative pillow and hit him. It was a weird angle, so it barely grazed him. He laughed and said, not as apologetically as Maria would like “Ok. Ok! Alex is a terrible cook. You’re passable.”

“You’re just going to sit there and take this abuse?” Maria demanded of Alex, who was still doing research on the Smith ranch, looking at acreage information and checking the place out on Google Earth.

“Nothing he’s said is wrong,” Alex replied.

“Thank you, Alex!”

“Traitor!” Maria accused him, hotly.

Alex shrugged. “And you can finally have a real office, Maria. Even a whole room for all your damn shoes.”

“What is this pick on Maria night?” Maria could feel Michael laughing against her, but the tension psychically radiating off him had not eased. She didn’t want to ignore the elephant in the room for too long.

“I love this idea,” Maria said.

“Me too,” Alex said carefully, glancing at them.

“Ranches are expensive,” she finally said.

Michael sighed but he hadn’t let her go. Ok good.

“Yeah they are…” He agreed. “And I know I can’t contribute as much as I’d like towards the down payment. But I want to give this kid everything y’know?”

Maria squeezed his knee. Alex put his laptop down and shifted closer to them, resting his hand on Michael’s shoulder. Maria was bracketed between them and, not for the first time, she felt like the three of them could do anything, as long as they were together.

Michael took a deep breath, exhaled and continued. “I’m also hoping I can make up the difference in labor—”

“Michael, you’re not our servant.” Alex frowned.

“I know. You’ve said,” Michael replied, dryly. “And that’s not what I mean. I mean like managing the ranch. Like we can rent stable space or horses, and I can give riding lessons. We can get chickens. I can increase the size of the garden and with the apiary too, I can set up a little stand. Sell vegetables, eggs and honey on the weekends. And I’ll still have my day job at Sanders’. I know I wouldn’t be contributing nearly enough for a while even after that but—”

“I’m down,” Maria interrupted. Michael had been speaking so fast, close to tripping over his own words, in an attempt to get it all out as fast as possible.

As if they could ever say no.

“Same.” Alex was looking at Michael so fondly. Maria twisted so she could get a look at Michael’s face. He looked stunned, almost disbelieving.

“Good,” Maria said to Alex. “’Cause I want a steady supply of fresh eggs.”

“I just want to be able to walk around the house without tripping over one of your boots,” Alex replied.

“Dick.” Maria shoved him hard with her foot. “Giving me shit about my shoes. How many guitars do you need Alex? You only have two hands.”

Alex opened his mouth to protest, but Maria cut him off. “And don’t you dare bring Michael into this. He only ever uses the one. You have three more. This is before we even take the keyboards into account!” Michael’s face was pressed into her shoulder now, but both Alex and Maria continued bickering instead of making a big deal of the fact that Michael was clearly crying.

#malexa #malex #miluca #roswell new mexico #this is gonna be nothing but fluff #my fic

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larstenobar · 4 years

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Okay so I mentioned it in the tags but I kinda wanna talk about my experiences with So/uth Pa/rk. I say this as a cis, gay, non-Jewish man. I also say this as someone who used to actually engage with the forums on the main site. I also say this as someone who played. both the two major video game RPGs. So I am speaking not from reaction to other people’s reactions but from my own personal knowledge. This post is incredibly long so it’s under a read more. In it I provide what I believe are the actual effects of South Park on its viewership but I need to stress that I think it’s the wrong energy to blame parents for letting their children watch the show.

Don’t blame the parents, blame the show.

That show is genuinely horrible. I’ve seen a lot of people questioning how anyone could let children watch it - and to that I say you’re not adding anything to the conversation by shaming parents for letting their children watch that show.

My own parents weren’t even out of their twenties when I watched the show, and many other parents grew up with the show as a non-issue. Young parents make mistakes.

At the time it came out and its early years only extremely vigilant parents realized how problematic the show was and the news was hard to spread without social media. At best you could inform your parent friends and hope they listened.

The show’s main characters are children, many parents found/find it hard to believe that a show with children as the main characters could be bad for those children. If the show were exactly the same but the children were college-aged then it would be another raunchy show they could easily see is not meant for their kids.

There’s a good portion of children who watched the show that weren’t actually allowed to watch it because their parents weren’t as tech savvy as them and therefore didn’t know about pirating/streaming until it was mainstream. We who grew up with YouTube knew you could put in [show] episode 1 part 1 and start watching. (this is gonna be another point later btw)

I know that it’s hard for you guys to even know all the reasons it’s problematic because you all barely scratch the surface of it’s problems. But before we even get into the meat of its problems (Science Denial, Homophobia, Transphobia, Ableism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, etc.) we have to look at the very premise of the show.

The main characters begin in fourth grade. Fourth Grade. There’s a phenomena in our culture where we believe that children saying stupid stuff is harmless, and we forget that when children hear children speak - even animated children - they are hearing their peers. And peers learn from each other. This is why the show is so insidious, because it makes it easier for children to digest the messages.

Another thing that’s very important to note is that - while it’s labelled satire, every single joke is played straight, and the straight man character (usually either S or Ky) are ridiculed by the culture they’re surrounded in. Don’t believe me? Think I’m over-exaggerating? Think about the election episode, where they had to pick between a literal piece of shit or a douche. Our Straightmen were constantly saying how ridiculous the situation was, but everyone around them was telling them they were the ones who were stupid for not particpating in the election until they eventually break and submit to the absurdity. This is a light example, but it’s the typical formula. If they aren’t actively participating in the absurdity around them, they’re ridiculed until they break. What this tells the audience isn’t that the people who were particpating were stupid, but that they were right.

Now that we’ve looked at the show premise, let’s get into the details. A note: This is just what I remember from approximately age 5-18, the latter years I’d been turned off from it slowly so I wasn’t as engaged but it was not any better then. Since this is just what I can remember without looking through episodes or looking up articles, this is going to be a small sampling of things that stuck with me. Be assured, there was much, much, much more.

Science Denial and its effects on the viewers.

This is the lightest thing I can recall, and probably going to be the smallest section as it’s mostly centered around their stand-in for global warming, a cryptid figure called M/an/Be/ar/P/ig. Al G/ore was painted as a desperate, raving lunatic for believing in the phenomena, and was even implied to be making it up by having him dress up as the cryptid. I don’t have to explain why this is wrong, but we need to look at the effect this had.

On the one hand it made fans think that Global Warming (as it’s something A.G. believed in) was a hoax. Furthermore, it made them believe that anyone who believed in it was telling lies, which was overwhelmingly the most progressive people. A direct effect of these jokes (which they apologized for but never stopped propagating btw, MBP was still a joke when I stopped watching) was that progressives were seen as over-dramatic and stupid.

Now, I am not saying people watched these shows and immediately thought “oh wow, how fucking stupid of A.G. I don’t believe in climate change anymore.” It’s more like this: “Oh haha, S thinks A.G. is annoying, I like S so I agree, A.G. is annoying. You know, A.G. is kinda annoying with all that global warming, maybe there’s something to him being over-dramatic? Gosh why can’t these progressives see that it’s not that big of a deal. If they trust A.G. then they MUST be blowing other things out of proportion.” That’s the thought processes it trains its viewers to have.

LGBT+ Characters

Okay so there’s actually a lot of things that go into the Homophobia of S/P. And it goes back to the very beginning of the show, and is both explicit and implicit. There is a huge problem with these, but the main problem isn’t so much that they exist, but the show’s attitude towards their own ‘jokes’ and the ways in which fans suck up that thought process.

Before I get into this, there were some things that I need to say in favor of the show - not because I think the show deserve praise, but because there were some things that I latched onto and showed a surprising nuance. There’s like one thing, really but it is, of course, attached to something that’s a much larger issue within the show, so while it is a small glimmer, it’s in no way outshining any of the problems in the show.

For a while, the teacher underwent gender reassignment when he (the teacher currently identifies as male from my last interaction with the show) got breast implants and presumably bottom surgery (I vaguely remember a surgery but honestly that could be an invention) he was in a gay relationship. His then boyfriend had a very heartfelt and difficult conversation about how he still cared about him and how he’ll never hate him for being the woman that he wanted to be, but there was no way that he could pursue a relationship with him. I thought that this was a very mature depiction of a very difficult situation that is never really talked about. However, as I implied earlier, this is attached to a larger issue. Before any of you start having second thoughts about your ideas about S/P’s portrayal of gay and trans people, immediately after getting broken up with the teacher became violently homophobic as a backlash, I vaguely recall a group being formed.

Our main examples of LGBT individuals in the show are these big four (five?):

The afforementioned teacher

The teacher’s boyfriend, who wears leather gear at school and can’t stop talking kink even in front of the child characters

A character called B/ig G/ay A/l who is just as stereotypical as his name implies.

T/weak and C/raig, who are classmates of the focal characters. There’s a lot of reasons this is problematic, none of them being the age of those involved in the relationship - but the portrayal of them is hugely problematic.

Since I’ve already touched on the teacher, we’ll get into them first. When he was introduced, he was a sort of ambiguously gay character who was very bitchy and spoke with a slight lisp that eventually became a canon gay character with his relationship with the Kink Character. He was violently hateful towards his class, verbally abusing them all the time and often particpating in bullying children. Furthermore he’s seen as incompetent. This is problematic not because he’s a gay man doing this (though it’s not great either) but because this taught children that teachers don’t care about them and that they shouldn’t listen to them because they don’t know what they’re talking about anyways. This goes into their anti-intellectual stance mentioned earlier. It enforces the idea that education systems are useless, not because of the institutional problems they have with racism, but because of the incompetence of the system.

Going back to the point of this, still with the same character, let’s further explore the problems they had when the teacher had an arc as a trans woman. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but the show made a point to let you know that the other characters were uncomfortable when Mr. G became Ms. G. The most damning thing about this, however, is the fact that Mr. G detransitioned bc he realized he wasn’t a straight woman, just a gay man. I think this is problematic because it frames transitioning as a sexual strategy. I don’t think I have to go into detail on why that’s problematic. And while this isn’t actually a tie into how horrible their handling of this character is, it should be noted that he’s the character that went on to be their T/rump stand-in.

The next character is the Kink Man.

God, the character’s personality isn’t actually all that bad. He’s loving and caring and empathetic and actually usually on the right side of topics, but. He doesn’t separate his kink from his personal life. He’s always strutting around in leather-daddy gear and has a lisp. His name is literally Mr. S/lave. There was an episode where he shoved a hamster in his ass. To viewers, he represents the dirty gays that keep shoving their sex-life down their throats - and this view is never, ever, ever subverted, so since the show never makes fun of people for having that view it reinforces that idea in their minds.

Honestly the least problematic character of the LGBT characters that I mentioned was BGA. He’s still a stereotype, yeah, he has a gay dog and is super flamboyant and constantly talks about how proud he is but honestly that’s not really all that bad. I can’t directly recall anything bad about him except that he’s incredibly flamboyant, speaks with a lisp, and loves to call things he owns “BGA’s Big Gay [noun].” Relatable. That doesn’t mean there was nothing problematic, it just doesn’t immediately come to me.

Now, for the next most problematic “representation” in the show. First, T&C showed no signs of actually being gay before. I do recall them both being my favorite characters before they became a couple, however. T is a coffee addict which has some suspect aspects we’ll get into later, and C used to flip everyone off. This was why they were my favorites. They became gay literally when fangirls started shipping them in the show. I’m sure there was an actual fandom movement, but their getting together was incredibly forced - that was part of the joke btw, that gay shipping is always forced. What’s horrible about this is that this was in an episode about ya/oi.

Now, let’s try to dissect this issue. First off, what this tells viewers is that being gay was not a natural part of who they were, but was an active choice (if you’re being kind) or something society forced on them (if you’re not.) The two were actively fighting with the narrative that they were gay and in a relationship. I think their actual agreement for being boyfriends was more of a mutual public display than an actual relationship, but it’s a fuzzy memory because that whole episode felt like a fever dream.

What’s worse about this, is that the show actually displayed ya/oi depictions of these children within the show. Nothing NSFW, but clearly sexually charged situations were definitely shown. At the time, they were 5th graders. 9/10 year olds for those not in the states. This emboldened actual CT shippers “If the show could do it, then so can I” was the general mentality on the forums I was on. So we can talk on pedophilia to reasons why this show is awful.

And those are just the named recurring characters. Another commonly recurring character is a prostitute with a deep voice who is very sloppy looking that, from my recollection, is implied to be a transwoman. This might have just been a conclusion I drew when I was young however - but even that is reason to be critical of the character, that such a conclusion could even be drawn means it might have played a factor in the character’s inception.

They also “Solved Overpopulation” with a gay orgy. I don’t have the language to define why this sat so wrong with me, but I remember being very deeply hurt by it. I think it has something to do with the idea that homosexuality is a choice and that it should only be accepted because of the potential benefits it has for population control.

Islamophobia and Racism

Okay so I’m just gonna come out the gate by saying that they fought hard to depict the prophet Mohammad. Like, hard. And they did it twice - one time went almost unnoticed but the second had a huge backlash from the Islamic people. For those who aren’t aware, it’s sacrilege to depict Mohammad. It’s like desecrating a church, maybe worse - I really have no frame of reference for how bad it’s viewed, but however bad it is, it still boils down to being a strict taboo that S/P broke not once, but twice.

Now, as I keep reminding, my memory gets hazy for many things, especially things I wasn’t aware of being insensitive early on. I have vague memories of terrorists being depicted in traditional Sikh garb, and similar instances of directly relating Islam with terrorism. I don’t recall the show ever making fun of anyone for relating Muslims with terrorism, for all those fans out there saying they make fun of everyone.

There was an episode where the characters wore blackface. There’s a black character literally named t/oken b/lack. Sure, that could be satire and maybe even be defended if they subverted the trope, however it should be noted he’s not the only black character in the show! There was an episode where there was a child adopted from Africa whose name escapes me - he was emaciated and devoured food at an alarming rate and generally was a nuisance if I remember correctly.

There was an instance where one of the main character’s father was on Wheel of Fortune. The category was people who annoy you. the letters on the board were ‘N_ggers.’ You know where this is going, the father said the N-word. The word was really naggers, but the rest of the episode was a sympathetic journey with him dealing with being ostracized. He became known as an ‘n-word guy’ which was treated as a worse term within the universe. I say this because a law was passed where the phrase was outlawed and they said you had to have a space of at least 5 words between ‘n-word’ and ‘guy’. Also, the n-word was said multiple times by a number of white characters. Now, I know the argument people make about this episode. They say that we were supposed to find the scanario ridiculous, but the issue I take with it is more that we’re led to feel sympathetic to racists who’ve had their lives ruined for being racist. That’s the issue with South Park’s brand of ‘satire’. It satirizes one issue, but doesn’t touch on the problematic things used to support that satire.

Almost every single Mexican character is a stereotype of some sort. Either a laborer who can barely speak English, a gangbanger, or some other stereotype. There was an episode where they had C’s hand become a famous Latina popstar by singing about Mexican Food themed songs, like the actual songs ‘T/aco F/lavored K/isses’ and ‘T/aco B/urrito’. The hand’s name was Jennifer Lopez, I don’t know of these songs are direct parodies bc I’ve only heard Jenny From the Block.

And while S/P tends to stay away from very direct anti-black jokes, they don’t shy away from other races. There’s an asian character whose business is called ‘c/ity wok’, but he always pronounces it ‘shitty’ because the joke here is ‘oh haha asians have funny accents’ and literally nothing else. I honestly believe that asians receive the WORST treatment on S/P when it comes to facing racism, but I’m not qualified to make that claim. Other examples of anti-asian racism: There was an pokemon episode where they said that Japan was using anime to indoctrinate youth, they literally had the kids operate fighter jets to make an attack on the U.S. What’s worse about this, is that whenever the Japanese execs were questioned about this, every time, they dropped their pants to show how small their penises were and how they should be pitied for it. Another instance, I very strongly remember a depiction of asian characters as being lemon yellow with eyes like this: \ /. There was an episode where they had Asians violently murder whales with glee. They lean into anti-asian racism so much harder than any other form of racism - the only thing they’re worse about is their antisemitism, which will get its own section later.

Antisemitism

God there’s so much. Jew Gold, nazi imagery, the entirety of c/a/r/t/m/a/n as a character and there are so many posts on this website by people much more qualified than me to delve into what exactly is wrong with this and the depictions of it, so I’m mostly just going to catalog what comes to mind and then speak about the actual factual instances of S/P inspired antisemitism I’ve witnessed and been party to.

There was an episode devoted to Jewish people having a secret bit of gold around their necks. This was proven true in the universe when Ky gave up his ‘J*w Gold’ to C.

Ky’s mom is such an overbearing harpy who bulldozes over everyone, this was later explained as her having Jersey-Blood (yes this was a Jersey Shore joke) but before that it was completely because she was a proud Jewish woman.

Ky’s father is depicted as weak-willed and piddling. He always wears a yarmulke no matter the situation.

Ky is often depicted as being whiny and non-commital

OF ALL THE CHARACTERS, KY IS THE ONE WHO IS DEPICTED AS A HYPOCRITE THE MOST

Ky’s cousin with the same name is depicted as in poor health, complains about everything, whines about things not being fair bc they don’t go his way, and has caricatured Jewish features

As mentioned above, there are hosts of Nazi imagery associated with C

C has said every Jewish slur I have ever heard. In fact he introduced me to the concept of antisemitism

Ky, in a Christmas episode, is depicted as wishing he could celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah is depicted as a sort of consolation prize that’s Not As Good.

Ky’s father was an internet troll, and the trolls were. literal trolls. with certain features that are not great.

The following image is the Prophet Moses:

And there’s more and more and more. I will not accept anyone saying that this is just jokes because I know firsthand how insidious their treatment of Jewish people is because this show literally made me think it was okay to engage in Antisemitism. I made greedy jokes, like saying a got J**ed when i was screwed over, or that someone who was being greedy was being a J*w. I am not proud of this, and I think I grew out of it relatively quickly as I dropped that language in middle school.

But not everyone did. Even some of my closest friends were still saying they got J**ed when we were graduating high school. There were no Jewish people at my school, so there was no humanizing face for the Jewish people for us. Thank god for the Nanny or who knows what kind of person I’d be now. There were people even worse than me, I should mention. There was one person in my school who literally used J*w as a stand-in for loser because of this show. This show was the only interaction with the Jewish faith that most of my classmates ever had, and the same is true of many rural towns in America who have only Protestant populations.

Fatphobia

All the most unlikeable characters are fat. C. Ky’s mom. The gun-toting republican. And there are other specific episodes where they equate fatness to not being healthy. In their episode partnered with WoW (don’t forget that happened, y’all) the main antagonist was depicted as a no-life having loser and he was, surprise, fat. This show draws a very direct line between being fat and being unlikeable.

Sexism

God, the portrayal of women is so horrible, literally my only entry here is going to be one single link:

youtube

Note all the other isms depicted in this btw.

Substance Abuse

The prostitute mentioned in the LGBT section would wander into scenes screaming about how she wanted crack. There was an episode where they created a league of basketball players who were comprised entirely of ‘crack babies.’ I’m being generous by not putting that in the racism section because most of the babies were BIPOC which says something about the kind of people that M/att and T/rey think are addicts.

The character T/owelie is supposed to show an addict, but his addiction is literally just weed which means they’re claiming weed is addictive.

I can’t even begin to describe the show’s relationship to alcohol. As a child of an alcoholic, I can say that it’s not fucking cute that they made S’s dad a violent drunk. It’s genuinely scary to see your parent fly into a rage because of their alcoholism and them reducing it to a joke was, I think, one of the points where the ‘it’s just a joke’ mentality started to break for me personally.

While we’re on the subject of parents, C’s mom was literally a crack addict who was also a full service sex worker. The correlation is not sympathetic in the slightest. And even worse was Ke’s parents. They were depicted as abusive, neglectful, drug-addicted rednecks. This was sometimes played to make you sympathize with Ke, and it worked because even now I can hardly think of how Ke himself was problematic rather than the situations he was in. (He’s the one who gets gruesomely murdered every episode) I don’t know if this is because of selective memory, if he was genuinely just the least problematic in the show, or if I’m waxing nostalgic for the show. Regardless, as I said, his situation was mostly played for sympathy. However, it was also played for jokes almost as often.

Pedophilia

The children are put in sexual situations a nonzero amount of times, they make priest molestation jokes, and they made jokes about MJ.

Slurs

Yeah they said them a lot. There was the aforementioned N-Word Guy episode, but there was also an episode that thinly mirrored immigrants coming to America for work and the people (time-travelers) were called ‘Goobacks’. I think the word ch*nk was used a nonzero amount of times, C used every slur for Jewish people in the book. None of these were censored by the show, any censoring was done by networks.

Why make this post?

Because I know people know this show is garbage, but I think it’s important that people know why it’s garbage with specific and nonspecific instances of why the show was problematic.

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folie-lex · 5 years

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A lot has been discussed about “when” it was that James & Teresa started catching feelings for each other. (Thanks to Ryan and Jorge for feeding the fans on twitter and keeping this debate alive at any given chance).

While I think we can all agree that it’s been a gradual process for both and it has certainly not been one sided I think we can also acknowledge that each one worked in a different speed and pace... and I also think it’s safe to say that James was the one who fell first (granted, you gotta cut Teresa some slack here: she was still going through trauma, grieving - or coming to terms that her grieving was unwarranted - and just plain old trying to stay alive.)

Now, this was NOT some “love at first sight” crap. The world in which the show functions and the situations these people find themselves in simply doesn’t allow for that. However, there was a connection between them very early on; something that a true deep romantic relationship could be built upon, and subsequently has.

I’m getting ahead of myself here though, but let’s pick it up from the start because it IS important.

James & Teresa’s first interaction is maybe the furthest thing from a meet-cute (which sidenote: A meet-cute is exactly what she had with Guero). Teresa is being held down, threatened and abused and she’s fighting back like a wild dog. For his part, though clearly not happy with what’s going on, James is being professional, cold, detached and pragmatic. “Just another wayward girl to have around the warehouse... *shrug*... whatever.”

But she offers to do the job and now he worries, because THIS job comes with strings and stakes and responsibilities and needs some level of experience. It doesn’t help that this girl seems to already have enough trouble following her around in the first place. However, she volunteers and Camila is intrigued enough to go along with it. So James is left with no option but to comply and just get the job done, as James does. And as James does, he feels he’ll be the one to clean whatever mess and fallout follows.

He gives her a crash course coaching about their cover story and drives like a pendejo to get her to the airport, because both the job needs to get done, but also, more importantly “that was not the first girl who died and [he] won’t have that again”. And when he insists it’s over and they won’t make it, Teresa digs her heels. She’s doing this.

This is turning point Number 1.

In 2.03 James tells Camila that what he believes in is “survival instinct” and that is what he recognises in Teresa in that moment. And just like that she becomes more than “another wayward girl”. Suddenly she becomes somebody he can communicate with and talk to, on the same level.

And that look... well... it’s far from the full and in-effect “hearteyes level: james valdez” but it’s a precursor to it. It is those mutual core instincts they share that set the foundation of their whole dynamic.

The rest of the mission is spent establishing that rapport. Everything in the airport solidifies that connection. And nothing caps that better than his “I can’t believe she made it and we pulled this off” look after she hands him the last baggie.

Episodes 1.03 and 1.04 continue with this trend, with the layers of James actively trying to ward Teresa off, while she begins to quietly observe how the business works, being added to their dynamic.

What I find very interesting in these two episodes is how passive Teresa seemingly comes off, as she just starts to take everything in, while James is at his most verbal, social and swagger-ish. Which makes sense: she’s educating herself about what it takes to stay alive (all while keeping her cards as close to her chest as possible) and he is preoccupied with feeding her with as much information as he can so she can learn and be prepared for what lies ahead (all while trying to maintain dominance and the upper hand in whatever relationship they are being forced into developing).

However come episode 1.05 things begin to shift again... and quite a lot.

Up until then it’s all about James seeing in Teresa someone he can be straight with. Someone he doesn’t have to sugar coat things for, nor should he. Someone he can (maybe) rely on to pull through, when the going gets tough. But she’s still got the blinders on... or more accurately she persists on not taking them off. Therefore a bigger “lesson” is required. So he takes her to “go kill someone”.

I want to make another sidenote here to point out about this episode that:

From James’ side he actually invites her in his home. We talk a lot about how “closed off and secretive” he generally is. But here we witness as he allows her a glimpse into part of his life outside of work. The way I’ve always interpreted this was as more proof he saw her as someone with the potential to be treated as an equal. (And he does this again in a way in S3 when he offers up his own HOME as their safe haven).

And what needs to be pointed about this episode from Teresa’s perspective is she had the curtain pulled off her eyes about the kind of woman she used to be when she was with Guero, as she sees her past self in Kim, furthering her acknowledgement of how treacherous this world really is.

Moving on...

Before they go to “kill someone” he takes her to get her “dolled up” because the job calls for it.

And look while I’m sure, as a straight man he was aware she wasn’t an unattractive woman, I’m also pretty sure he hadn’t actually put himself in the mindframe to look at her that way. Because that look and that small step back, when she walks down those stairs dressed up to the nines?

That right there is surprise... and turning point Number 2. This is where it hits James: “She cleans up nice... she looks good...”

And yes, fiiiiiine... It is just the shallow, superficial aspect of romance and their relationship is built on so much more than that, I 100% agree. But to be physically attracted to someone is important. And IMO there is something to be said that James bothered to both see and treat her like a potential future equal first, before he even cared to admit she was also a “pretty girl”.

The mission goes as all their missions go: with its ups and downs, but getting the job done; and concludes with their scene in the car, i.e.: turning point Number 3.

Informing her on Eric, his role and what the deal AND plan is, was all James wanted to show her during this excursion. That random guy getting killed was not on the schedule and it throws both of them off.

However it also gives James a glimpse through the first crack in those walls Teresa has very consiously put up since she came in his life. Sure he’s seen her be stubborn before, but actually fight back? For “what’s right”? This was a first. And her persistence in how she comes alive in the car, actually lunging at him to DO SOMETHING is completely new.

After she realises there is nothing more she can do for the guy, and he manages to calm her down, the way he softly looks at her, surprised and taken aback by their proximity, he sees those things he has long given up to be in this world. Those things he misses about himself. Those things he wants to get back when he comes looking for her in S3.

But we’re still at the beginning here. And James, here, is still in that hopeless cynical place in his life, where he believes this naiveté, and this willingness to still try and be somewhat “good” is pointless and will get you killed. One can imagine James, who has this business so well figured out, being confronted with Teresa who while unwilling to lay low, is also still trying to stay true to herself must be overwhelming. And more than that this is the first time she isn’t letting him just boss her around. She talks back. She stands up for herself. She calls him out. She is putting in question his whole world view.

And all this is followed by 1.06 and her “using the time she had to get him out of the cave” which is turning point Number 4. And IMO, it’s his point of no return.

He spends that whole episode trying to bring back their tentative relationship to what it was before their talk in the car at Eric’s. From their drive to the meet, to how he barks orders at her during the shoot-out, to every bit of instruction he gives her while they’re running, that’s all he’s doing: warning her and keeping her alive, with a wee-bit of posturing sprinkled in there.

Still, she comes back for him amidst complete chaos, and that’s when he sees it: She’s not just a survivalist like him. She doesn’t just clean up well. She isn’t just a sweet, kind and somewhat naive girl that’s in way over her head. She’s also loyal.

And here’s the thing: James might only believe in “survival instinct”. However LOYALTY is the only thing he truly values. It is the only thing he considers as his one true redeeming attribute. And it’s a rare currency. Yet she has it.... in spades. But more than that, she just offered it to him, with open hands and no strings attached... and in this hole, in this life he’s found himself in, that’s even more rare. THAT he can’t negate, or dismiss.

So when Charger says “let’s trade her” it’s not even an option in his mind. She is not expendable. Period.

Though that, he won’t admit to himself until 2.04. (But that’s a whoooooole other post).

#qots #queen of the south #jeresa #james valdez #meta #qots S1 #teresa mendoza #I can't believe I finished it...#I've been working on this since forever #my screencaps #my gifs

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niall-is-my-dream · 5 years

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You & Me - Part Twelve

2440 words

Callie's POV

You stayed in Niall's bedroom for an hour after Kim and Sam had left. Curled up with each other on his bed, kissing, talking and kissing some more. Both of you agreed that you couldn't let everything that was happening with Saskia come between you.

Niall had done nothing wrong, they'd dated, he decided to end it and he told her straight and kindly. He didn't ghost her or behave rudely to her, in fact you thought he had been too nice to her over the last few months. When she had turned up at rehearsals and at the Dublin gig, he had been polite to her, even when she was screaming at him for ending it. He had been verbally abused by her on numerous occasions and had taken it.

To say it broke your heart at how much it was affecting him was an understatement. His album was to be released in less than a month, he had interviews and performances to do. But he was a true professional and wasn't going to let it effect the buzz he was feeling at finally sharing his 18 months of hard work.

After the stress of the meeting with Kim and Sam, the group decided to chill out at home for Bex and Willie's last day in L.A. Although Saskia wasn't a physical threat to either of you, you were still worried about him, Mully and Willie going to the grocery store to get some supplies for a bbq.

"We will be fine." He said, as he ran his hands up and down your arms reassuringly before leaning in and kissing you goodbye.

He had been warned that although the court order prevented her from being near him, that didn't mean that she hadn't tipped off other paps to follow him with the prospect of an exclusive. Niall had a strict policy of never talking about his dating life. He was here to be a musician and talk about his music and interests, not his love life.

With the lads gone and the security gate and front door securely locked, you made your way through to the kitchen. You were desperate to talk to Bex alone, she was always the voice of reason.

Making another coffee for you both, you sat down at the kitchen table, the patio doors open letting the lunchtime sun in.

"So the shit hit the fan then!" Bex said trying to lighten the mood.

"Yeah it fucking did!" You laughed. "Honestly you couldn't even make this shit up."

"Only in Hollywood hey?!"

You nodded before taking a sip of your coffee.

"How are you doing?" She asked.

"I'm actually ok. I'm obviously sad and shocked that it's happened but I'm also angry. Like how could she do this to him? I just....... He's an amazing guy and she's ruining him all because he wasn't interested in her anymore."

"I actually feel sorry for her." Bex said and your head shot up. "Hear me out ok?" And you nodded. "These models are told how to look constantly, they work out a lot, they're constantly on a diet. I doubt her mental health is good because of it."

"I guess. She was just so rude and shallow, she thought a lot of herself."

"Yeah and that's what she is use to in the world in which she lives in. It's sad really, I mean does she even have a good set of friends. You and I are lucky we have each other you know? Does she have that? Someone to rely on? I doubt it. It's all fake."

"Doesn't excuse her awful behaviour though? I mean who texts someone and says she's going to ruin them?!"

"Doesn't excuse her behaviour at all. Please don't think I'm sticking up for her or trying to justify her actions. I'm just saying her way of life is very different to ours. Being ahead of the game and ruthless is something she's use to. She probably didn't even batter an eyelid when she messaged him that. Is he doing ok?"

"He says he is but I think it's really got to him. He's worried about telling his parents, he hates worrying them. Plus I need to tell my parents, God I haven't even told them we are dating, now I have to tell them this too. They aren't going to be happy."

"I'd be more worried about Tom." She replied.

You ran your hand down your face and let out a massive sigh at the prospect of telling your older brother that not only had you got involved with Niall, which he had told you not to do. But you also had to tell him that Niall's crazy ex was stalking you both.

"Maybe you should make sure that Claire is with him when you tell him." She smiled.

"Oh God yeah, Claire needs to be there. Think I'll Skype my parents now actually before it gets too late." You said looking at the clock on the wall.

"Ok, well go in the living room and I'll be just in here if you need me."

"Thanks hun."

You were shitting it if you were being honest. You set up your iPad on the coffee table and sat down on Niall's big arse sofa. What was with this boy and his massive sofas? You knew your Mum would be reading on her iPad like she always did in the evening, so would see the request for a Skype call. Within seconds of calling she had answered.

"Hi baby girl!" She said excitedly. "How are you?"

"Hi Mum, I'm good. How are you?"

"Oh you know, same old. What about you? You've got a few days break haven't you? Where are you, in LA?"

You had given your parents a schedule of where you would be while you were away, even adding the time difference for them. Your Mum had panicked one time when you were in Canada for a show with another artist and she had forgotten the time difference. She couldn't work out why it took you 5 hours to reply to her text. You had been asleep in bed, as it was night time there.

"Um is Dad there? Want to talk to you both."

"Yeah he is, hang on." She said before the screen showed the artex ceiling as she made her way over to the sofa where your Dad was sitting.

He waved and blew you a kiss. You were a Daddy's girl, even at 25 your Dad still blew you a kiss when you skyped.

"Hi Dad."

"Hey sweetheart, everything ok?"

"Yeah, I just need to talk to you about something."

You told them that you and Niall had started seeing each other and their eyes widened. They hadn't been expecting that. When you told them about what was happening with Saskia, your Dad took off his glasses and sighed. He ran his hand down his face just like you had done in the kitchen not so long ago.

"So there's a restraining order, so she can't come near you or Niall?" Your Mum asked, her voice laced with worry.

"It'll be just to prevent her from coming near him, but it'll protect me and other crew members since we are all together on tour."

"What about the break next month, when you come home?"

"I'll be with Niall for a lot of that anyway Mum. Look, she's not going to hurt us. She's just not happy that he ended things and wants to make out that he cheated on her with me."

"And did he?" Your dad asked.

"No!" You replied shocked that he had asked you outright.

"Paul!" Mum gasped.

"I had to ask, you've been working with him for what ten months and nothing has happened until recently?"

You internally cringed at having this conversation with your parents.

"Yes, we have always just been good friends. He was single for a few months before we got together."

"So she's just jealous? This is just because she got dumped?" Mum asked.

"Pretty much."

"Wow, she sounds a little bit crazy." Dad said shaking his head.

"She is." You replied.

You heard the front door open, the sound of the lads chatting as they entered the house. Looking up you could see Niall place his bag on the ground and make his way over to you.

"I'm just on Skype with my parents." You said looking at him.

He nodded and came and sat next to you.

"Hi." He said nervously. He hadn't a clue what you'd said or what their reaction had been.

"Hi Niall." Your mum said. Your Dad just nodded, but smiled.

"So I've told them what's been happening." You explained to him.

"Ah." He replied, nodding. You could tell he was nervous. He cleared his throat before continuing. "I'm sorry that I have put your daughter in this position. I had no idea that Saskia was capable of this behaviour. I care about Callie a lot and...... " he paused for a moment. "Hopefully my legal team will be able to prevent her from coming near us and from publishing pictures of us going about our day to day stuff."

"Niall, we are sorry to hear that you've been going through this. Callie said that this girl has been harassing you for weeks. Your family must be worried." Your Mum said, that clear protective motherly tone coming through.

"I called them while I was out actually. My Mam is coming over to London when we get back for a few days to stay with me. They both know I've got a good team who look after me."

"Maybe we could meet you in person, if you have time while you're back?"

Oh god.

"I'd love that. I'll check our schedule and maybe we could all have dinner together at mine." He replied and took your hand in his.

Your Mum was definitely won over by him, she practically swooning at his offer to cook for you all. You could see your Dad ticking everything over in his head.

You ended the call not long after. Closing the iPad and placing it flat on the coffee table, throwing yourself backwards you landed on the sofa and let out a massive sigh of relief.

"They took that pretty well. My Mam freaked out, she's insisted on coming to London."

"Yeah they weren't too bad were they? Sorry they asked to meet you."

"Why are you sorry?" He replied as he crawled up the length of your body and settled himself between your legs.

"Just a big thing isn't it, meeting the parents?"

"Should I not have invited them to dinner to meet my Mam to?" He asked as he leaned down to kiss your neck.

"Mmmm, you know talking about our parents whilst your kissing my neck and rubbing your erection against me is weird."

He laughed against your neck, but carried on regardless. You pushed your hands up through his hair and across the nape of his neck.

"The things you do to me." He mumbled as he rubbed himself against you again.

"For fuck sake you two!" Willie smirked as he walked in the living room. "Get a room!"

"This is a room, in my own house!" Niall said, as he turned his head towards Willie.

Willie just laughed. "Come and get the bbq going you daft twat, there's plenty of time for that later." Before he left the room and headed towards the kitchen you presumed.

"We will finish this later Petal." He said smirking, before standing up and adjusting himself in his shorts.

You all changed into swimwear and grabbed some towels. The lads had brought a pop up football net at the grocery store, along with all the food you would need for the bbq. Niall had got it lit, leaving it to warm up while yourself and Bex got some salad ready in the kitchen.

It seemed almost crazy how easily the whole Saskia fiasco was forgotten as you consumed bbq food that afternoon and played games. Willie and Bex were due to get picked up at 8:30 that night ready for an overnight flight back to London Heathrow.

You always worried about her while you were away. Yes, she had other friends that she spent time with and a busy job, but you two were close. It felt good knowing that she had started dating Willie. While the lads tried to header the ball in the goal before falling in the pool with a splash, you and Bex had a catch up about her and Willie. Things had already got quite serious in the short space of time that they'd been together, similar to you and Niall. They text everyday and saw each other as much as their work schedules would allow. You could see how smitten they were with each other.

When it came to say goodbye to her that evening, you both cried like you always did. However it would only be just over a week before you could see her again back in England.

Over the course of the next few days Niall had a number of interviews and meetings for the album release next month. You kept yourself busy by going to the gym that Mark had recommended to you. Kicking the shit out of the punch bag always made you feel better. You didn't worry about feeling unsafe, it didn't even cross your mind, but Mully insisted on coming with you wherever you went.

With the Mexico leg of the tour cancelled due to an awful earthquake, you only had the Rio show to do before a 3 week break from tour. This was going to be a busy three weeks though with the album release and various interviews and performances.

Niall was on form in Rio, the troubles of what had happened with Saskia over the last few months were firmly locked away and forgotten.

The legal stuff went through without a hitch, she hadn't contacted him and no stories had appeared in the press.

Flying back to london after the show had felt good. Niall had a golf event to attend in Scotland which meant you had a few free days to spend with Bex and Willie playing the third wheel. It also meant it gave you chance to catch up with your brother and sister in law. You'd asked your Mum and Dad not to mention you and Niall to him, as you wanted to tell him face to face. You were not looking forward to it.

Part Thirteen

https://niall-is-my-dream.tumblr.com/post/183397925828/you-me-part-thirteen

#Niall #Niall Horan #Niall fan fic #niall horan fan fic #Niall fan fiction #Niall Horan fan fiction #solo Niall #one direction #flicker sessions #Emily writes #1dff #Niall fluff #Niall smut

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chuffyfan87 · 5 years

Text

Hiding. Part 31a

Cowritten with @disastrousintention. Trigger warnings for discussion of abuse and assault.

-x-

As the morning wore on the next day Duffy became increasingly agitated. She'd told her mum that she and Charlie needed to visit their solicitors - a small white lie so that she would agree to look after the girls while they were out, hopefully they'd be back before the boys returned from school so Kate wouldn't have to deal with all of them singlehandedly.

She fidgeted with the buttons of her suit jacket as they stood in the main foyer of the court.

Charlie was nervous, really nervous. He’d never had to come to court to fight for a child he’d loved before. Thankfully, despite his and Baz’s separation, they’d been civil enough to create a plan so Charlie could still have access to Louis. His hand rested against Duffy's arm, “How are you feeling?”

"Like I'm going to throw up at any moment." She admitted, tucking her right hand into the cuff of her jacket to try and make the bandaging less obvious.

He continued to rub her arm, hoping it would provide some reassurance for her. “We’ve both got this.”

She lent into him, resting her head against his shoulder.

“We’ll be ok.” He reassured, kissing the top of her head.

Andrew chose just that moment to enter the foyer. Despite the protests of his legal team he stormed over to the couple. "What the hell did you bring him for?" He demanded.

Duffy's head shot up. "Um... Er..." She stammered.

“She brought me because I know exactly what kind of a sick bastard you are Andrew.” Charlie replied. “Now I suggest you go over there and sit down!”

"She can't even talk for herself now?" Andrew sneered.

Duffy took a small step so she was more behind Charlie. She'd been advised by her solicitor not to engage with Andrew if he tried to speak to her outside of the hearing.

“Or maybe Duffy’s wise not to engage with a piece of scum like you.” He still had hold of Duffy’s hand. “Now I suggest you stop bothering us and showing yourself up.”

Duffy sighed as Andrew skulked away to the other side of the foyer. "Thank you." She whispered as she rested her head against Charlie's back.

“You don’t need to thank me.” He smiled.

Hearing her name being read out by the Clark she squeezed his hand and began to straighten her clothes. "Let's get this over with."

“Come on.” He took a deep breath. They followed the Clark.

A few minutes later they found themselves seated at a large table. As she'd feared he would Andrew seemed to have lawyers galore. She turned to her solicitor who gave her a reassuring smile.

Charlie squeezed her knee reassuringly. They could do this. Most importantly, /she/ could do this!

Once the formalities were out the way it was decided that Duffy would answer questions first.

Andrew stared at her. He was going to get Jake, he needed custody of Jake to be in control again.

Duffy took a deep breath and met Andrew's look before turning her focus to the custody board representatives.

“Why won’t you let Mr Bower have access to his children?”

"The children are frightened of him. They don't wish to see him."

“And why is that? Because of what you’ve told the children or..?”

"Because of what they've seen him do." She explained. "Jake has told me he doesn't want to see his dad. That he wants to stay with us."

“And what did Mr Bower do in front of the children to warrent this reaction?”

"He verbally abused and assaulted me on several occasions."

“So she says.” Andrew mumbled.

“Your children saw all of this?”

"Yes, both my sons witnessed this."

“So what is your reasoning for stopping Andrew from seeing the children?”

"Concern for their safety and well-being."

“Has Mr Bower ever been violent to the children?”

"Once that I know of."

“And what did he do?”

"He hit my eldest son."

“Can you talk us through the events?”

"We were arguing. My son came downstairs. Andrew raised his fist to me and as he did so Peter ran across to me."

“To protect you?”

"Yes."

“Anything you’d like to add?”

"Not at this moment. No."

“Ok.”

One of the other panel members indicated that they had a question. "You keep speak of 'my' when you refer to your sons rather than 'our' is there a particular reason for that?"

Duffy hesitated and looked to her solicitor for advice.

The solicitor gave a nod of reassurance to Duffy.

"Both the boys are my sons but Andrew is only the biological father of one of my sons." She explained.

“Which one isn’t Andrew’s?”

"Peter. My eldest son."

"Was Mr Bower aware of this fact from the beginning?"

"No." She admitted softly.

“When did he find out?”

"About 6 months ago."

“Thank you.”

"I didn't lie to him! I thought he was Peter's father, I was almost certain he was." She burst out.

“No one is accusing you of lying, Ms Duffin.”

"He thinks I did!"

“She did lie!” Andrew answered back.

"I thought he was yours!"

“No you didn’t. You were too busy being a whore and having it away with anyone who paid you a bit of attention!”

"It was one time!"

“Enough!” One of the other panel members spoke up.

Duffy looked down nervously at her hands that were entwined on her lap.

Charlie found her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“How many times was Andrew abusive to you?”

"I lost count if I'm honest." She sighed.

“Was it often?”

"It would happen in spells. Things would be fine for week, months even, but then something would set him off."

“How bad did it get?”

"He put me in hospital."

“Were your children present at the time?”

"Not that time." She paused. "Well unless you count the fact I was pregnant with my daughter at the time." She added.

“Did he ever hit you when you were pregnant?”

"Yes. That night and once when I was pregnant with the twins."

“Do you believe if Andrew was to gain access to the boys, namely Jake, it would have a detrimental effect on their wellbeing?"

"I do. Jake has suffered months of nightmares as a result of witnessing his father's violent behaviour."

“Thank you.”

Duffy breathed a sigh of relief as the board member turned his attention to Andrew.

"Mr Bower I'd like to start by asking for your comment on your estranged wife's accusations of abuse."

“It’s all a fabrication of her imagination.” He replied smoothly.

"How so? Why would she fabricate such accusations? There is documented medical evidence that has been submitted by your wife's legal representative to co-oberate the injuries she sustained."

“To stop me from seeing my son!” Andrew shrugged, “If she ever received any injuries it’s only because Lisa liked things a bit rough, if you know what I mean.”

"What exactly are you insinuating?"

“You know... Sex.”

"Are you saying that the injuries your wife sustained happened in the pursuit of sexual gratification?"

“Yes.”

"Hers or yours?"

“Both.”

"So you admit to being violent towards her?"

“I’m not violent. She likes it rough.” He reiterated.

"According to written testamony one of the alleged assaults took place in a public park in broad daylight. Do you usually engage in sexual behaviour in such a place?"

“Do I have to answer that question?”

"It is relevant to your defense that any injuries caused to your wife were as a result of the pursuit of sexual gratification."

“On that occasion no.”

"On the occasions that you have, was the partner in question your wife?"

“Are you asking me whether I engaged in extra-marital affairs?”

"Yes."

“Yes.” Andrew admitted.

"How did you feel when you found out that a child you had raised was not biologically yours?"

“I’d always suspected.”

"Did you confront your wife with this knowledge? Did you suspect you knew the identity of the actual father?"

“I always knew the identity of Peter’s real father.”

"Who did you believe to be his father?"

“Him.” He pointed to Charlie.

"What made you believe that? Was it due to their relationship recently becoming of a romantic rather than platonic nature?"

“Their relationship was never purely platonic.”

"Do you have evidence of this?"

“None.” He was forced to admit.

"Then is it not a baseless accusation fueled by jealousy and your perception of your estranged wife as being your possession?"

“No!” Andrew snapped.

"Did the idea of your wife having male friends upset you?"

“Depends what kind of friends they were.”

"Can you expand on that please?"

“Charlie here was never a friend. He was always too busy trying to get into her knickers.”

"Did you ever discuss this matter with your wife? What was her response?"

He shrugged, “She’d have only denied it.”

"So that's a no, you never discussed the nature of your wife's friendship with Mr Fairhead with her at any point?"

“May have discussed it once. I don’t know.”

"Was it this relationship that caused you to assault her last year whilst she was pregnant with her daughter?"

“Maybe.”

"You were angry that the child she was carrying was once again not yours?"

“Of course I was angry! She cheated, again!”

"So you sought to punish her, and the child, once again?"

#chuffy #charlie and duffy #charlie fairhead #lisa duffin

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zenalios · 3 years

Text

Untamed Seas; 4 - Enalios, β

Index (R18+)

Summary

The catch? She finds his domineering personality utterly insufferable, and he, the most fearsome god, resents being stuffed into an unwelcome marriage.

They have all eternity to make it work.

TW // Abuse - Verbal and Physical ; Abusive Relationship ; Forced Marriage

A sharp slap echoed through the kitchen.

“What were you thinking?!”

The Nereid held a hand to her smarting cheek as her mother continued to lecture her. Escaping Zeus had seemed like a great idea until her sisters had returned in hysterics, crying about how the new king of the gods took Erato away before everyone’s eyes. Amphitrite could not bring herself to look at them now since it actually was her fault for walking right into Zeus’s trap. But she hadn’t told them exactly why she had run from the Olympian.

She had only confessed to offending Zeus, and to being the reason Erato was missing —at which Doris grew even more agitated since she had been led to understand that Zeus would not attend.

“His attendance may have been pure coincidence altogether, how you even managed to offend him is beyond me,” Doris ranted at her and to her family and nobody else in particular, throwing up her hands as she spoke. “Gaia above, Nereus, just look at the sort of degenerate your daughter has become!”

A tongue clicked at that.

“Doris,” Tethys, their grandmother, chided. “I’m sure there must be some reason behind it.”

The titaness turned to Amphitrite, her algae veil gently floating along in the sea nymph’s direction. “Isn’t there, Phi?”

Amphitrite bowed her head to stare at the smooth pebbles lining the floor under her feet, “I—”

She truly did not know what to say. Perhaps if it had been her grandmother alone who had asked, she might have told her the truth already: that Zeus asked her to marry Poseidon, her response being to run away. Her vision blurred. It was no use, her mother would not listen anyways.

As if evidencing that fact, a sharp pain suddenly pulled at the back of her skull. Amphitrite yelped, clawing at the hands that had once nurtured her, this time begging for nothing but reprieve. “Give me back my daughter!” Doris seethed.

“Enough!” Tethys roared, rising to her feet, the force of her voice causing Doris to let go. Amphitrite landed on her hands and knees. At once, she scrambled out of her mother’s reach.

Tethys snapped, “She is your daughter too.”

The Oceanid scoffed, “She’s not. She’s his daughter, not mine.”

Amphitrite pressed the edge of her palm to her scalp in an attempt to ease the throbbing. Her first time hearing those words had been painful; after that she had simply learnt to accept the fact that her mother coped with grief through denial and anger, all of which she took out on her eldest daughter. It was futile to argue with Doris, anyways —there was no point trying to convince a lunatic who didn’t want to believe who was and who wasn’t her child.

At that moment, someone burst into the cave.

It was one of Tethys’s sons, Amnisos, who lived on Crete where Mt. Zas had been. “Yes, brother?” Doris snapped at the river god, ignoring the stare her own mother gave her. “Have you come to bring more ill-tidings to us now?”

Amnisos was bent over at the hips, gasping for breath.

“No,” He wheezed, “No, I brought Zeus himself.”

At once a mass of grey hair arose from its place in the corner. The progenitor of all rivers had been sitting quietly, listening and watching all as he always did. “Zeus has come for an apology?”

“I’m not sure.” Amnisos straightened himself. “But he did ask to speak with her before he returns Erato.”

Doris practically jumped for joy upon hearing the name. Now Amphitrite found herself being yanked from her place on the floor, and towards the entrance, the older nymph’s nails biting into her arm.

“Then go already, you wretched thing!” Doris cried, throwing Amphitrite forward into her uncle’s arms, who then steadied her.

Amphitrite nodded gratefully at him. As if I am not also your daughter, Amphitrite thought bitterly. Then again, it would be hypocritical to say that only Doris favoured Erato above all —so did Amphitrite herself, though she doubted Doris would ever let her near the child again.

“Amphitrite.” Her uncle nudged his head at the entrance he had come from. Amphitrite swallowed visibly. “Alright.”

Zeus was seated in a nearby glade she and her sisters had used to conjure up stories for their uncles and aunts. Her heart sank. “Oh, hello, Phi.” Amphitrite cringed at the strange look her uncle gave her —now that was valid cause for concern, she thought sardonically. Outside of family, only lovers used that name, of which Zeus was as of yet neither, and would never be the latter.

“Now, where was I…?” The god trailed off, then slapped his thigh as if he had only just remembered what he’d come here for. “Ah, yes!”

Such a sinister smile. Amphitrite turned away, wishing to see no more of it than she already had at last night’s party. “You. Marry. Poseidon. When?” Zeus dropped each word carefully, as though she were but a child incapable of understanding concepts beyond her years. She tightened her jaw, feeling the shame burn through her cheeks. Behind her, Amnisos sputtered.

Amphitrite grit her teeth. “If my father were here—" She began, only to find herself cut off by the king of the gods. “Yes, yes,” One hand waved dismissively at her; the other prodded at his ear, wriggling his pinky around the hole, and sniffing at the appendage after. Amphitrite wrinkled her nose in disgust. “If your father were here, he would give you a choice.”

“But!” Zeus exclaimed suddenly, leaning towards her as one would when speaking to a child, “Nereus isn’t here anymore, is he?” And whose fault is that?! The young goddess’ fingers curled and uncurled with sheer agony at the way Zeus so casually spoke of her father, his flippant expression causing even Amnisos to look indignant.

“Listen up, Am-phi-tri-te.”

Against her better judgement and folded arms, a heavy shudder tore through her body at the croaking voice that placed emphasis on each syllable of her name, so ominous it seemed to violate her very spirit and leave a crawling sensation behind on her skin. “There are fifty of you Nereids.” He pointed at her.

“You are the oldest, but you’re not the prettiest.”

Her breath halted. Subconsciously, her gaze flickered towards her uncle, where it was met with an equally dumbfounded countenance, if not more so. The Nereid twitched ever so slightly. After everything he’d spouted from his filthy mouth, she did not want to guess what he would say next. Zeus chortled. “Your sister Erato, on the other hand.”

A hand stroked at his short white beard. “She’s very lovely —and so young too.”

“You bastard!” Amphitrite snarled, aggravated enough to lunge at Zeus the same way she had done the night before. Only this time, she was filled with murderous intent. She had moved no further than a step before a pair of arms wound themselves about her, “Amphitrite!”

She faintly registered her uncle’s voice —it was him who held her back, but before she knew it, she had brought her foot down upon his.

“Your Majesty!” His pained voice betrayed a cry of reproach.

Zeus waved his hand at the river god. “Shut up before I remove you from my council."

“Maybe I should make it a point to attend her consummation.” Zeus added, a vicious smile growing again on his features. “Maybe my brother will even let me participate.”

To add insult to injury, he slowly began to form a little circle with his left thumb and index finger, drawing a finger through—

“I’ll do it.”

Amphitrite choked out then. She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling hot tears spill down her cheeks, blazing a trail of molten gold over her cheeks, her sobs hidden only because she had bit down on her lip to keep them in. Her uncle’s arms around her did nothing for the situation; in fact, it made things worse, now that there was one more person to witness her suffering. She flinched at the large hand that clamped down on her shoulder.

“Good.” Zeus said all too cheerfully. “It will be in a weeks’ time then. My wife and sisters will make preparations on your behalf.” The hand tightened briefly. “And I will be coming personally to fetch you, Phi.”

She collapsed to the ground after he left.

Not even the great river father could help her this time. Amphitrite was born of the sea, and now she would belong to the sea, only its depths were no longer on her side.

3 - Enalios, α ; 5 - Shadowed

#untamed seas #ari writes #snv #shuumatsu no valkyrie #record of ragnarok #snv poseidon #snv zeus #poseidon record of ragnarok #zeus record of ragnarok #poseidon x oc #poseidon x amphitrite #tw abuse #tw abusive parent #tw innuendo mention

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rosalind-of-arden · 5 years

Text

Smoke and Iron Reread chapter 8

Time for more Wolfe. Let’s see what interesting details turn up in this chapter. The Artifex makes his appearance. Fuck you, Artifex. Bit of discussion of torture in this one, as we have the Artifex’s threats and a bit of commentary on prison conditions.

“He woke in the dark, disoriented, and for a moment he reached out to touch Santi’s sleeping form, only to hit cold stone.” Break my heart in the first line, why don’t you, Caine? Especially sad when you remember from the journal in Paper and Fire that when he’s at home with Santi, he often wakes up thinking he’s still in prison.

Wolfe’s first reaction to hearing a voice after realizing he’s in prison is to seriously consider the possibility that it isn’t real. That gives us an idea of just how much he must have hallucinated in Rome.

Seriously, Artifex? You wake someone up in the middle of the night and when he doesn’t want to talk right away, you jump right to threatening to murder the person in the next cell over? That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?

So we already have questionable rations on our list of human rights abuses in this prison. Let’s add sleep deprivation now. This shit is torture. Not as violent and gory as what the Library was doing in Rome, but still.

The power imbalance the Artifex creates for this conversation is over the top, and really highlights both his hatred for Wolfe and his fear of Wolfe. There are bars between them. Wolfe has just woken up abruptly. The Artifex is standing while Wolfe is sitting. The Artifex shines a light in Wolfe’s eyes.

Wolfe’s eyes have trouble adjusting to the light. Just age, as he thinks? Or lasting damage from Rome?

Wolfe has guts of steel. Artifex comes to threaten him, and here he is snarking at the Artifex.

Interesting, the terms the Artifex uses to describe Wolfe. He calls him a “bully,” which would seem to fit the Artifex himself better than Wolfe. Wolfe can be manipulative and demanding, but we don’t see the cruelty for its own sake that would go with bullying. And then there’'s the usual: arrogant, insufferable, brilliant, driven, haughty. I suspect “believed he could do anything without penalties” has as much to do with Keria as Wolfe himself. He’s probably gotten away with things over the years because of who his mother was. Wolfe might not even be fully aware of that privilege in some cases.

And Wolfe refers to this barrage of insults as “pleasantries.” The only weapon Wolfe has left is his sarcasm, and he is using it to full effect. He keeps up the snark and the defiance even as he recognizes that the Artifex can see past his indifferent front.

More defiance: refusing to verbally agree to cooperate, just giving a very slight nod. The only reason he cooperates even that much is the threat to other prisoners’ lives.

The Artifex cries while ranting about the dangers of freedom. He really believes in what he’s saying. He isn’t only using his ideals as justification to hurt Wolfe, rather, his ideals drive him to hate Wolfe more.

Look how quickly Wolfe gets tired of debating philosophy. It was fun while he was gloating about having the press and the Artifex’s inevitable downfall, but he does not have the patience to actually argue with the Artifex. And that’s an insult, too: he’s stating that the Artifex’s viewpoint is so wrong that it isn’t even worthy of debate.

How to get Wolfe angry? Use his first name without his consent.

The Artifex was Wolfe’s mentor. Given the attitude toward teachers in the Library, I’m guessing he wasn’t the teacher of Wolfe’s postulant class, although that’s a possibility. I’m thinking more likely someone he went off for specialist training with, or someone he worked with right after graduation.

Either while Wolfe was a postulant or shortly after he graduated, the Artifex sent him on a mission that was a trap. Wolfe nearly died, but he succeeded and earned his gold band. The Artifex got filthy rich. No further details given. This could have been Wolfe’s final test as a postulant. This could be an assignment after that. If Stormcrow is canon, this would have had to happen before that, so when Wolfe was 15-17ish, and it would have had to take place in Alexandria.

Presumably, that assignment is the reason Wolfe and the Artifex ceased getting along. Wolfe resented being used. Wolfe-Jess parallels, anyone?

The Artifex is possibly the closest thing Wolfe had to a father figure. And Wolfe wishes he could block out his memories of that relationship. The only other memories he wants to block are his memories of Rome. Was there anything genuine in that mentor-student relationship at all, or did Wolfe, alone as he was, just not recognize right away that he was being used by someone he thought cared about him?

This is a calculated strike by the Artifex, telling Wolfe now that what he thought was his own accomplishment despite the Artifex was actually the result of the Artifex’s manipulation. It makes Wolfe doubt himself and the foundation of his career, at a time when he’s already shaken.

How much effort did it take for Wolfe to snark about being tortured here? He usually won’t even talk about it.

The Artifex uses a note to tell Wolfe to kill himself. This seems very awkward in an otherwise verbal conversation. Why use paper, which could be kept as evidence, when he’s so sure that there will be no record of his visit to the prison? I suspect that the Artifex wants to make very sure no one overhears his exact offer to Wolfe. Maybe he doesn’t trust the automata really not to be recording. Maybe he’s worries about the other prisoners, guards, or the Scholar with him, overhearing. Regardless, the offer he makes is something that goes against the Archivist’s plans, and he doesn’t want anyone to hear. He can get that paper back from Wolfe, but he can’t do anything about being heard stating his terms.

But then they discuss it out loud. Plausible deniability, though, for the Artifex. He can say anyone reporting what he and Wolfe discussed after reading the note lacked context and misunderstood what was being offered.

Does the Artifex really expect Wolfe to kill himself? I’m not sure about that. The offer to protect Santi in exchange for Wolfe’s suicide seems more like an impossible dilemma for Wolfe than an attempt to persuade him. In order for suicide to be a viable option, Wolfe would have to trust the Artifex’s claim that he has Santi and trust the Artifex to keep his word that he will protect Santi. Wolfe does not trust the Artifex. I think the goal of this visit was more to psychologically torture Wolfe than to convince him to kill himself. Wolfe just isn’t going to trust the Artifex enough to think that killing himself will really save Santi. Instead, he’ll spend the next three days, at least, thinking about what might happen to Santi, doubting the plan he thought he’d figured out, and being plagued by suicidal thoughts. The Artifex mainly wants to hurt Wolfe; driving him to suicide would be an added bonus, but it isn’t the primary goal.

Even with the Artifex presenting Wolfe with a nightmare scenario, Wolfe keeps his composure. He keeps his voice steady, he throws the note, he dismisses the Artifex. Defiance matters a lot to him. He does not want to give the Artifex any kind of victory. Is this how he was in Rome, too? Or is it a response to how badly he fell apart in Rome? Some of both, perhaps.

After this visit from the Artifex, Wolfe is upset. Before, he was certain of the plan and his role in it. Now he has doubts that will gnaw at him, and the Artifex has stirred up fears of Santi being hurt. He’s shaking, he’s upset, and he’s engaging in self harm.

Wolfe hits the wall until his hand bleeds. Rough stone? Or a wrist fracture, as @thegreatlibraryfangirl has suggested? Either way, a sign of just how distressed Wolfe has become.

Timeline stuff: It is not at all clear when this chapter takes place. It could be right after chapter 7. It could be closer to Wolfe’s next chapter, chapter 20. The three days the Artifex gives Wolfe to kill himself could be completely arbitrary, or they could represent the time the Artifex is expecting the ship to take to get to Alexandria. If this is based on ship timing, then this chapter probably comes shortly after Chapter 6, when the ship has been diverted, but the Artifex wouldn’t know it yet. The Artifex’s offer/threat is not mentioned again, so either chapter 20 is less than three days after this, or it is so long past three days that Wolfe has concluded that the Artifex was lying and forgotten about the whole thing. I lean toward thinking this chapter comes closer to chapter 7 than 20, but you could read it either way.

#The Great Library #smoke and iron reread #smoke and iron spoilers #torture

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kagetsukai · 5 years

Text

Drops of Satina: Day 4 - House of Cards

Raphael Trevelyan belongs to @out-of-the-embers

Words: 1187 || Read on AO3

Hannah was in the middle of calculating measurements for yet another Orlesian bridge when a knock at the door made her look up. Thankfully, it was just Krem.

“Hey,” he said in his raspy voice. “Boss wants to know if you’re coming to the tavern tonight.”

She shook her head as her face folded into a grumpy expression.

“Not today. I’m drowning in work,” she told him.

What she didn’t tell him was that she had to quietly correct every single design Master Wardell had done before she sent it out to field engineers. The man’s incompetence was devouring her free time and she hated him for it. The fact that he was considered to be charge only added to the mounting resentment.

“You’ve been drowning in work for the past three days,” Krem said with his characteristic drawl. “You need a break.”

As it stood, Krem was probably right, but the thought of going into the tavern again made Hannah twitch and scowl more.

“I don’t. I’m fine,” she told him, hoping it would stem any potential argument. It didn’t.

“You’ve been hiding and I’m here to pull you out of your hole,” Krem announced and stepped inside. “We can either do this the easy way or I can carry you out of here.”

Hannah stared at him in shock. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“Then you’re an asshole.”

Krem smirked. “But I’m your asshole - who cares about your well-being and is here to make sure you don’t kill yourself with work. Pack it up; we’re going drinking.”

Perhaps this would have been the perfect time to tell Krem what she thought of his forceful behavior, but Hannah found herself lacking enough fucks to give. She set aside her drafting pencil and rubbed at the temple.

“For the record, I still think you’re an asshole,” she told him.

He grinned, clearly sensing a victory. “And yet you put up with me on a regular basis.”

A small grin twitched Hannah’s mouth and she shook her head.

“My mistake, clearly.”

She rolled up all the schematics, packed up her tools, locked everything away, and left the room after Krem.

They walked in silence, enjoying the quiet serenity of the sunset painting Haven in a shock of purples, oranges, and everything in between. It was a gorgeous view and Hannah appreciated the fact that Krem had pulled her away from the desk to see it. Maybe the evening wouldn’t be so terrible after all.

A loud, angry shriek disrupted her peaceful contemplation.

“What the fuck?...” she said out loud and tried to find the source of noise.

After a very brief search, she found - much to her dismay - Raphael Trevelyan with a woman slung over his shoulder, who seemed to beat at his back with her fists.

“Put me down, you brute!” she exclaimed and Hannah recognized the Herald’s voice. “I can walk there myself!”

“You are exhausted!” he refuted her claims just as loudly, but still set her down on the ground. “You’re tripping over your feet!” He paused. “How about a piggyback ride?”

There were more words exchanged, but Hannah couldn’t hear them clearly enough. She turned to Krem, who look rather pleased with himself.

“What’s did I just watch?” she asked.

Krem shrugged and smirked. “Lily has been working herself to the bone and none of us have been able to force her to slow down. It looks like having her cousin around might actually do the trick.”

Before Hannah could make another comment, she heard a whoop of joy from the direction of the Trevelyans, and she watched as Raphael hoisted Lily onto his back and carried her down the path at a brisk pace. They were both grinning, faces so alike and yet so different, that it suddenly took Hannah back to her younger years, when she would wrangle her two younger brothers as they got up to mischief in Highever. The feeling of nostalgia and grief hit her harder than she anticipated, so she wasn’t prepared when Raphael’s eyes met her own.

The effect was immediate; instead of a bright smile that had made Hannah fuzzy around the edges, his expression turned sober as he turned to look the other direction. Lily, oblivious to the whole exchange, continued grinning while Raphael carried her off towards the tavern. The fact that he had reacted so negatively stung Hannah to the core and she felt annoyed she let it get to her so much. Unfortunately for her, Krem was an observant man.

“Well, that was curious,” he said casually. “Dare I ask why Raphael Trevelyan can’t look you in the eye?”

Hannah shrugged. “That’s his problem, I suppose.”

“Did you make it his problem?” he asked as they continued a much slower walk to the tavern.

She paused, not sure how to explain her semi-drunken tirade in a way that didn’t make her sound so… petty.

“I merely pointed out that I will not prostrate myself at his feet simply because his last name is ‘Trevelyan’,” she said. “You know how much I despise nobility and their ridiculous behavior.”

Krem gave her a look of utter confusion.

“Are we talking about the same Raphael Trevelyan?” he said incredulously. “That guy might be a little grumpy, but he’s a walking teddy bear and blushes at a drop of a hat. Besides, he’s not much of a noble.”

Hannah crossed her arms. “He’s a Trevelyan. How is he not a noble?”

“This is what you get for being cooped up in your office,” Krem retorted. “You don’t hear the newest gossip. Raphael isn’t a noble. He divested his title about eight years ago and he’s been on the run since then. Chief says that Ostwick was in an uproar for months after Raphael’s disappearance and caused the family a lot of grief. There’s some seriously bad blood there, but nobody knows in depth details.”

This was unexpected. “He might be lying,” she concluded.

“He’s not. Everything checks out,” Krem said pointedly, then paused. “What’s going on? You seem awfully bent on making him out to be a villain. Did he do something to you?”

“No, of course not,” she said, albeit a little too quickly. “I think... I think, I just don’t like his face. There’s something about him that rubs me the wrong way, alright?”

Krem gave her another one of those long, speculative glaces and Hannah felt her face heat under his scrutiny. She tried to will the blush away, but she wasn’t sure to what degree she succeeded.

“If you say so,” Krem said with a chuckle and let the topic rest.

Which left Hannah to think about the way she had verbally abused Raphael when he had approached her at the tavern several days back. If she hadn’t been so prejudiced - and so cranky and tipsy - maybe she would have let him explain things about himself and maybe they would have been friends by now. Instead, she did a thorough job of alienating the man and, judging by his current actions, there would be no reconciliation anytime soon.

#fanfiction #drops of satina #may-hem #dragon age #da:i #Hannah #Hannah of Highever #Krem #Raphael Trevelyan #Hannah/Raphael #pre-relationship #grumpy Hannah #Lily Trevelyan #male Trevelyan #female Trevelyan #this concludes the 'introductions' of the characters #time to have fun #I hope you're ready

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