#will automatically think that i actually think/want to do these things (which is the complete opposite of the truth!! no i don’t!!!)

[sirfrogsworth]

Let's talk about vintage lenses.

Here is your cool samurai show with modern lenses.

Here is your cool samurai show with vintage lenses.

Hollywood is no stranger to fads.

We are currently in the middle of a "make everything too dark" fad. But that fad is starting to overlap with "let's use really old lenses on ridiculously high resolution cameras."

This is Zack Snyder with a Red Monstro 8K camera.

He is using a "rehoused" vintage 50mm f/0.95 Canon "Dream Lens" which was first manufactured in 1961.

This old lens is put inside a fancy new body that can fit onto modern cameras.

Which means Zack is getting nowhere near 8K worth of detail. These lenses are not even close to being sharp. Which is fine. I think the obsession with detail can get a bit silly and sometimes things can be "too sharp."

But it is a funny juxtaposition.

The dream lens is a cool lens. It has character. It has certain aberrations and defects that can actually be beneficial to making a cool photograph. It's a bit like vinyl records for photography.

[ Peter Thoeny ]

It has vignetting and distortion and a very strange swirly background blur.

[ Gabriel Binder ]

Optical engineers have been spending the last 60 years trying to eliminate these defects. And I sometimes wonder if they are confused by this fad.

"I WORKED 70 HOURS PER WEEK TO GET PERFECT CORNER SHARPNESS!"

And whether you prefer to work with a perfect optic or a vintage one... it is a valid aesthetic decision either way. I think vintage glass can really suit candid natural light photography. You can almost get abstract with these lenses.

[ Peter Theony ]

Personally I like to start with as close to perfect as possible and then add the character in later. That way I can dial in the effect and tweak how much of it I want. But even with modern image editing tools, some of these aberrations are difficult to recreate authentically.

That said, it can be very easy for the "character" of these lenses to become distracting. And just like when someone first finds the lens flares in Photoshop, it can be easy for people to overdo things.

Zack Snyder decided to be his own cameraman and used only vintage glass in his recent movies and it has led to some complaints about the imagery.

I mean, Zack Snyder overdoing something? I can't even imagine it.

Non camera people felt Army of the Dead was blurry and a bit weird but they couldn't quite explain why it felt that way.

The dream lens has a very wide aperture and it lets in a lot of light. But it also has a very very shallow depth of field. Which means it is very difficult to nail focus.

[ Peter Thoeny ]

Her near eye is in focus and her far eye is soft. You literally can't get an entire face in focus.

There is no reason you have to use the dream lens at f/0.95 at all times. But just like those irresistible lens flares, Zack couldn't help himself.

Here is a blueprint that you can't really see.

Extreme close ups of faces without autofocus at f/0.95 is nearly impossible to pull critical focus on.

Looks like Zack nailed the area just above the eyebrow here.

Let's try to find the point of focus in this one.

Ummmm... she is just... blurry. Missed focus completely.

But Zack isn't the only one going vintage. I've been seeing this a lot recently.

Shogun is a beautiful show. And for the most part, I really enjoyed the cinematography. But they went the vintage lens route and it kept going from gorgeous to "I can't not see it" distracting. And perhaps because I am familiar with these lens defects I am more prone to noticing. But I do think it hurt the imagery in a few spots.

Vingetting is a darkening of the corners of the frame.

Light rays in the corners are much harder to control. A lot of modern lenses still have this problem, but they create software corrections to eliminate the issue. Some cameras do it automatically as you are recording the image.

Vintage lenses were built before lens corrections where a thing—before software was a thing. So you either have to live with them, try to remove them with VFX, or crop into your image and lose some resolution.

It's possible this is the aesthetic they wanted. They felt the vignetting added something to the image. But I just found my eyes darting to the corners and not focusing on the composition.

And then you have distortion.

In this case, barrel distortion.

This is mostly prominent in wide angle lenses. In order to get that wider field of view the lens has to accept light from some very steep angles. And that can be quite difficult to correct. So you kind have to sacrifice any straight lines.

And sometimes this was a positive contribution to the image.

I thought the curved lines matched the way they were sitting here.

But most of the time I just felt like I was looking at feudal Japan through a fish's eye.

It's a bit more tolerable as a still, but when all of these verticals are bowing in motion, I start to feel like I am developing tunnel vision.

I love that this is a tool that is available. Rehousing lenses is a really neat process and I'm glad this old glass is getting new life.

This documentary shows how lens rehousing is done and is quite fascinating if you are in to that sort of thing.

But I think we are in a "too much of a good thing" phase when it comes to these lenses. I think a balance between old and new can be found.

And I also think maybe Zack should see what f/2.8 looks like. He might like having more than an eyebrow in focus.

#photography #cinematography #lenses #vintage lenses #shogun #long post

[gothhabiba]

Hi, this is very ignorant. I'm trying to read as much as I can on Palestine and Zionism but there is one point I cannot find an answer for. Given that Zionism is not Judaism, given that at the beginning most Jewish people did not share this view and was actually supported by christians with antisemitic views, given that it was conceptualized as a colonial project that could only be actualized by ethnically cleanse Palestine, one thing I don't know how to disagree with Zionists is the idea that Jewish people do come from that land. Even if European jews are probably not genetically related to the Jewish people from there, I think Jewishness is something that can be constructed as related to that land. This of course does not mean that Palestinians are not natives too and they have every right to their land. However I don't really know how to answer when Jewish (Zionists) tell me that Jewish people fled that land during the diaspora. Other than "yeah but the people that stayed are native that underwent christianization before, arabization later, grew a sense of nationhood in the 19th century and are Palestinians now"

It's a fundamental misunderstanding of what "indigeneity" is to believe that it means "whoever has the oldest claim to the land." Rather, to describe a people as "indigenous" is a reference to their current relationship to the government and to the land—namely that they have been or are being dispossessed from that land in favour of other private owners (settlers); they have a separate, inferior status to settlers according to the law, explicitly; they are shut out of institutions created by the settler state, explicitly; they are targeted implicitly by the laws of the settler state (e.g. Israeli prohibitions against harvesting wild thyme or using donkeys or horses for transportation); the settler state does not punish violence against them; &c. &c.

It is a settler-colonialist state that creates indigeneity; without one, it is perfectly possible for immigrants to move to and live in a new location without becoming settlers, with the superior cultural and legal status and suppression of a legally inferior population that that entails.

If all that were going on were some Jewish people feeling a personal or religious connexion to this land and wanting to move there, accepting the existing people and culture and living with them, not expelling and killing local populations and creating a settler-colonialist state that privileges them at the expense of extant populations, that would be a completely different situation. But any assertion of the land's fundamental Jewish-ness (really they mean white or European Jewishness—the Jewish Arabs who were already in Palestine never seem to figure in these arguments) is a canard that distracts from the fundamental issue, which is a people's right to resist dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

Decolonize Palestine lays out some of the ethnic and cultural history of the region, but follows it up with:

So, what does this all mean for Palestine? Absolutely nothing. Although the argument has many ahistorical assumptions and claims, it is not these which form its greatest weakness. The whole argument is a trap. The basic implication of this line of argumentation is as follows: If the Jewish people were in Palestine before the Arabs, then the land belongs to them. Therefore, the creation of Israel would be justified. From my experience, whenever this argument is used, the automatic response of Palestinians is to say that their ancestors were there first. These ancestors being the Canaanites. The idea that Palestinians are the descendants of only one particular group in a region with mass migrations and dozens of different empires and peoples is not only ahistorical, but this line of thought indirectly legitimizes the original argument they are fighting against. This is because it implies that the only reason Israel’s creation is unjustified is because their Palestinian ancestors were there first. It implies that the problem with the argument lies in the details, not that the argument as a whole is absolute nonsense and shouldn’t even be entertained. The ethnic cleansing, massacres and colonialism needed to establish Israel can never be justified, regardless of who was there first. It’s a moot point. Even if we follow the argument that Palestinians have only been there for 1300 years, does this suddenly legitimize the expulsion of hundreds of thousands? Of course not. There is no possible scenario where it is excusable to ethnically cleanse a people and colonize their lands. Human rights apply to people universally, regardless of whether they have lived in an area for a year or ten thousand years. If we reject the “we were there first” argument, and not treat it as a legitimizing factor for Israel’s creation, then we can focus on the real history, without any ideological agendas. We could trace how our pasts intersected throughout the centuries. After all, there is indeed Jewish history in Palestine. This history forms a part of the Palestinian past and heritage, just like every other group, kingdom or empire that settled there does. We must stop viewing Palestinian and Jewish histories as competing, mutually exclusive entities, because for most of history they have not been. These positions can be maintained while simultaneously rejecting Zionism and its colonialism. After all, this ideologically driven impulse to imagine our ancestors as some closed, well defined, unchanging homogenous group having exclusive ownership over lands corresponding to modern day borders has nothing to do with the actual history of the area, and everything to do with modern notions of ethnic nationalism and colonialism.

I would also be careful about mentioning a sense of "nationhood" or "national identity" in this context, as it could seem to imply that people need a "national" identity (a very specific and very new idea) in order not to deserve genocide. Actually the idea that Palestinians lacked a national identity (of the kind that developed in 19th-century Europe) is commonly used to justify Zionism. Again from Decolonize Palestine:

This slogan ["A land without a people for a people without a land"] persists to this day because it was never meant to be literal, but colonial and ideological. This phrase is yet another formulation of the concept of Terra Nullius meaning “nobody’s land”. In one form or the other, this concept played a significant role in legitimizing the erasure of the native population in virtually every settler colony, and laying down the ‘legal’ and ‘moral’ basis for seizing native land. According to this principle, any lands not managed in a ‘modern’ fashion were considered empty by the colonists, and therefore up for grabs. Essentially, yes there are people there but no people that mattered or were worth considering. There is no doubt that Zionism is a settler colonial movement intent on replacing the natives. As a matter of fact, this was a point of pride for the early Zionists, as they saw the inhabitants of the land as backwards and barbaric, and that a positive aspect of Zionism would be the establishment of a modern nation state there to act as a bulwark against these ‘regressive’ forces in the east [You can read more about this here]. A characteristic feature of early Zionist political discourse is pretending that Palestinians exist only as individuals or sometimes communities, but never as constituting a people or a nation. This was accompanied by the typical arrogance and condescension towards the natives seen in virtually every settler colonial movement. That the early settlers interacted with the natives while simultaneously claiming the land was empty was not seen as contradictory to them. According to these colonists, even if some scattered, disorganized people did exist, they were not worthy of the land they inhabited. They were unable to transform the land into a modern functioning nation state, extract resources efficiently and contribute to ‘civilization’ through the free market, unlike the settlers. Patrick Wolfe’s scholarship on Australia illustrates this dynamic and how it was exploited to establish the settler colony.

#Anonymous #questions #long post / #Palestine #Israel

[fuckyeahisawthat]

There are so many places in the Villeneuve Dune adaptations where he just...takes all the narrative pieces that Frank Herbert laid out and subtly rearranges them into something that tells the story better--that creates dramatic tension where you need it, communicates the themes and message of the book more clearly, or corrects something in the text that contradicts or undermines what Herbert said he was trying to say.

The fedaykin are probably my favorite example of this. I just re-read a little part of the book and got smacked in the face with how different they are.

(under the cut for book spoilers and length)

The fedaykin in the book are Paul's personal followers, sort of his personal guard. They show up after his legend has already started growing (the word doesn't appear in the book until chapter 40) and they are people who have specifically dedicated themselves to fighting for him, and right from the moment they're introduced there is a kind of implied fanaticism to their militancy that's a bit uncomfortable to read. They're the most ardent believers in Paul's messianic status and willing to die for him. (They are also, as far as you can tell from the text, all men.)

In the book, as far as I can remember (I could be forgetting some small detail but I don't think so) there is no mention of armed resistance to colonialism on Arrakis before Paul shows up. As far as we know, he created it. ETA: Okay I actually went back and checked on this and while we hear about the Fremen being "a thorn in the side" of the Harkonnens and we know that they are good fighters, we don't see anything other than possibly one bit of industrial sabotage. The book is very clear that the organized military force we see in the second half was armed and trained by Paul. This is exacerbated by the two-year time jump in the book, which means we never see how Paul goes from being a newly deposed ex-colonial overlord running for his life to someone who has his own private militia of people ready to give their lives for him.

The movie completely flips all these dynamics on their head in ways that add up to a radical change in meaning.

The fedaykin in the movie are an already-existing guerrilla resistance movement on Arrakis that formed long before Paul showed up. Literally the first thing we learn about the Fremen, less that two minutes into the first movie, is that they are fighting back against the colonization and exploitation of their home and have been for decades.

The movie fedaykin also start out being the most skeptical of the prophecy about Paul, which is a great choice from both a political and a character standpoint. Of course they're skeptical. If you're part of a small guerrilla force repeatedly going up against a much bigger and stronger imperial army...you have to believe in your own agency. You have to believe that it is possible to win, and that this tiny little chip in the armor of a giant terrifying military machine that you are making right now will make a difference in the end. These are the people who are directly on the front lines of resisting oppression. They are doing it with their own sweat, blood and ingenuity, and they are not about to wait around for some messiah who may never come.

From a character standpoint, this is really the best possible environment you could put Paul Atreides in if you want to keep him humble. He doesn't get any automatic respect handed to him due to title or birthright or religious belief. He has to prove himself--not as any kind of savior but as a good fighter and a reliable member of a collective political project. And he does. This is an environment that really draws out his best qualities. He's a skilled fighter; he's brave (sometimes recklessly so); he's intensely loyal to and protective of people he cares about. He is not too proud to learn from others and work hard in an egalitarian environment where he gets no special treatment or extra glory. The longer he spends with the fedaykin the more his allegiance shifts from Atreides to Fremen, and the more skeptical he himself becomes about the prophecy. This sets up the conflict with Jessica, which comes to a head before she leaves for the south. And his political sincerity--that he genuinely comes to believe that these people deserve liberation from all colonial forces and his only role should be to help where he can--is what makes the tragedy work. Because in the end we know he will betray all these values and become the exact thing he said he didn't want to be.

There's another layer of meaning to all this that I don't know if the filmmakers were even aware of. ETA: rescinding my doubt cause based on some of Villeneuve's other projects I'm pretty sure he could work it out. Given the time period (1960s) and Herbert's propensity for using Arabic or Arabic-inspired words for aspects of Fremen culture, it seems very likely that the made-up word fedaykin was taken from fedayeen, a real Arabic word that was frequently used untranslated in American news media at the time, usually to refer to Palestinian armed resistance groups.

Fedayeen is usually translated into English as fighter, guerrilla, militant or something similar. The translation of fedaykin that Herbert provides in Dune is "death commando"...which is a whole bucket of yikes in my opinion, but it's not entirely absurd if we're assuming that this fake word and the real word fedayeen function in the same way. A more literal translation of fedayeen is "self-sacrificer," as in willing, intentional self-sacrifice for a political cause, up to and including sacrificing your life.

If you apply this logic to Dune, it means that Villeneuve has actually shifted the meaning of this word in-universe, from fighters who are willing to sacrifice themselves for Paul to fighters who are willing to sacrifice themselves for their people. And the fedaykin are no longer a group created for Paul but a group that Paul counts himself as part of, one member among equals. Which is just WILDLY different from what's in the book. And so much better in my opinion.

#dune #dune part two #adaptation #paul atreides #fedaykin

[comicaurora]

Hey Red, sorry if this was asked already, but do you have any advice on writing a trickster hero? And do you have any favorites yourself?

Huh! This is something I've never really thought too hard about before, but I do have some loose and unformed thoughts!

So the trickster archetype is, broadly, a character who wins by being cunning and tricking the people around them. Typically this is because they are an underdog facing a powerful opponent, and if they face that opponent on the terms that opponent defines, they'll lose. For instance, a physically strong opponent might want to make everything into a contest of raw force; a politically powerful opponent might want to make things a legal battle; a commander of a large army might want to battle on a flat terrain-less battlefield and overpower the smaller enemy force through raw numbers; etc etc.

A trickster doesn't have the raw power to make a scenario happen. Instead, they achieve that scenario by making other characters make it happen, usually by misleading them into thinking it'll have some other outcome they want.

A classic example of this is found in a Brer Rabbit story where Brer Rabbit has been snatched by Brer Fox, and Brer Rabbit begs and pleads with him to not throw him into that briar patch, oh the torment he would experience in that briar patch would be unimaginable, drowning or burning would be bad but still better than that briar patch. Brer Fox naturally throws him into the briar patch, at which point Brer Rabbit vanishes into the underbrush and helpfully clarifies that he was born and bred in a briar patch. He was unable to escape through his own power, so instead he convinced Brer Fox that yeeting him into the briar patch would give Brer Fox something he wanted (Brer Rabbit's unimaginable torment) when in actuality it gave Brer Rabbit exactly the cover he needed to escape. It only worked because Brer Rabbit understood that Brer Fox was fundamentally not just hungry, he was cruel.

Tricksters usually achieve victory through lying, stealing, sneaking around and generally being dishonest. These are usually not seen as heroic traits, but the trickster hero is an archetype of character who is broadly heroic - and uses trickster tactics to win. It's an interesting suite of character traits to balance. In order to make a trickster heroic, them being the underdog usually needs to be played up. It's not really easy to root for someone with power to manipulate people for their own ends, but it's easy to root for someone scrappy and underleveled to manage to gumption their way to a victory over a broadly superior opponent.

A sympathetic trickster usually isn't someone who picks fights. Trouble comes to them, and then they need to find a way to escape or stop it. This is the paradigm that makes Bugs Bunny work as a trickster hero - he starts off basically every adventure minding his own business, and when someone comes around with a blunderbuss and a hankering for rabbit stew, their actions are what prompts him to unleash absolute hell on them by using toon physics and trapping them in ironclad social conventions to completely unbalance them until they're eventually defeated.

If we see a big, loud, powerful jerk try to stomp on someone small and innocuous, we're inclined to root for the small and innocuous person. This setup makes us very eager to see the small and innocuous person use tricks and shenanigans to make a fool of the powerful jerk, and it automatically makes us more okay with the sympathetic character doing on-paper unheroic things like lies and manipulation as long as they're doing them to someone we're primed to dislike.

So trickster heroes are usually fundamentally reactive characters. Something bad happens and they respond by unleashing hell. Another easy way to make a character instantly more heroic is to give them an even weaker, even more sympathetic character to protect or assist. Thus, many trickster heroes have a suite of supporting characters they're protecting who are not tricksters by nature, and are instead just there to be endangered or bullied by Nasty Mean Powerful People. Our trickster heroes stepping in to aid and protect other people thus gives their actions an even more heroic cast, because not only are they reactive to an outside threat, they're selflessly reactive.

This is the framing that's used in Leverage, where every episode has a victim of the week being cruelly taken advantage of by a jerkass of the week, at which point our team of liars, grifters and thieves roll up to ply their trade on the jerkass and award the spoils of war to the victim of the week. Because the person they're tricking is proven unequivocally to be truly awful and completely insulated from legal consequence a solid 98% of the time, we don't feel particularly bad seeing our team of heroes manipulate, gaslight and eventually absolutely destroy them over the course of a crisp 40 minutes. The vileness of the villain combos with the innocent powerlessness of the person they're advocating for, and thus their assorted unheroic qualities become reframed as absolutely heroic due to the circumstances under which they use them.

Crucial to the formula is the horrendous nastiness of the villain of the week, because if we were even kind of sympathetic to them, the schemes of the protagonists would be kinda scary. They are very good at quickly getting the bad guy to trust them and then taking apart everything they've built, and that's only fun to watch if the audience is 100% sure the villain deserves it and is not going to spend too much time thinking "wow, it would be terrifying if that happened to me." The fact that our heroes almost always take them down simply by leveraging (heh) the bad guy's badness is a big part of what makes the formula work. Almost every episode is functionally similar to a Briar Patch scenario - "oh gosh I sure hope no SOULLESS CAPITALIST VAMPIRES take advantage of how MANIPULABLE I am to try and get my MONEY and/or VALUABLES", and then the villain's own established cruelty cascades into their downfall when it runs into the dominos our heroes have set up to expose them. And that does a lot to make the audience sympathize with a crew of four self-admitted terrible people (and Hardison, who's an angel and we're delighted to have him)

Another way to get the audience to root for a potentially nonstandard protagonist is to set them up against a villain who is smug. Smugness is a very dangerous trait for any character to have, because it primes the audience to want to see them break. A villain who thinks they are too powerful or too strong or too smart to be defeated has the audience immediately rooting for them to be proven wrong just so they can watch the expression on their face. This is the strat they use in Columbo.

Every Columbo villain is rich and powerful and very insulated from legal consequences, and we start every episode seeing them arrange and execute an attempt at a perfect murder. We know from the start how they did it and usually why, and because they are smug - they are almost never regretful or reluctant - we become invested in seeing how Columbo figures out what they did, how they did it, and how he can prove it and get them arrested. Columbo is a nonstandard kind of trickster hero, because he is deeply and fundamentally a Lawful Good archetype, but he is also a very casual liar. The only time the audience sees Columbo almost certainly telling the truth is when he's dealing with background characters, his fellow policemen or his dog, or when he's by himself silently putting the pieces together; at all other points in the episode he will typically conceal how much he knows, how he knows what he knows and why he's asking specific probing questions. The audience has a tremendous amount of dramatic irony in terms of information about the perfect murder Columbo has to disassemble; we'll see Columbo zero in on exactly the one small detail that pokes a hole in the supposed airtight alibi, but instead of saying "I think you killed them and I am determined to prove it" he'll dance around why he's focusing on those details - just curiosity, just a desire for completeness, his superiors told him to continue the case and he doesn't know why, his wife is just such a big fan of their work, etc etc.

As a rule, the first time in any given episode that Columbo admits he's suspicious of the villain is the beginning of the last scene of the episode when he proves that they did it and they subsequently surrender. When Columbo is dealing with the villain, absolutely nothing he says can be trusted until that final scene - and it's a rare treat to get a glimpse of Columbo showing an honest emotion, especially something like genuine fury. Most of the time he maintains a very harmless and affable attitude, but sometimes when the villains are very smug and they know he's suspicious of them but can't prove anything yet, his righteous anger peeks through and we see why he does this.

He's a trickster hero because he can't unravel the case, the villain's motivation and the shape of the crime if the villain knows everything he knows and can correspondingly keep up with him. But he is 100% committed to exposing the truth of the situation and making the murderer face justice. Their perfect alibi is supposed to protect them from everything, but it's their confidence and certainty that they could never be caught that Columbo leverages to win. They never know entirely what to make of him, and he's never wholly honest with them - and with the audience - until the very end of the episode. It's good, cathartic payoff to an episode's worth of lies and manipulation from both main players, and it's always fun to see the non-smug party on the side of justice come out on top.

Some trickster heroes are more like standard heroes with trickster tendencies that occasionally surface. These guys are usually pretty straightforward, but in a pinch they can bust out a surprisingly cunning scheme or two - one such moment hits at the climax of Across the Spider-Verse, and it's a great moment of characterization for Miles, who has thus far been a pretty typically heroic guy who has unfortunately spent the entire movie thus far being lied to by people he trusted. It kicks off an enormously long and complicated chase sequence that takes the entire spider-community out of the home base chasing him through an absolutely massive complex and eventually onto a space elevator. It's such a fluid scene, you kind of just accept that it's a desperate chase sequence - Miles is just running. It doesn't occur to the other spider-people that Miles might have a plan beyond running until he basically tells Miguel that, hey, he did just get every other spider-person out of the facility that has the portal to get him home. He wasn't just running away, he was luring everybody away so he can leave.

And this moment is fantastic on a meta-level, because Spider-Man is traditionally a bit of a trickster hero. Most of his enemies are able to physically outpace him, and he needs to use mobility and strategy to take them down, often luring them into environments that work against them - like a fun moment in Spectacular Spider-Man where Spidey defeats the Rhino by luring him into a steam tunnel and basically giving him heatstroke through his armor plating. But because the entire core theme of this movie is "Miles isn't a real Spider-Man," it literally doesn't seem to occur to the other spider-people that Miles's seemingly panicked running might be him pulling a Spider-Man on them. We're so used to being in Miles's head and knowing when he's got a plan or a ploy that this is a very fun moment to watch. He's successfully deceived an entire army of spider-people, and the audience is just as blindsided as Miguel - and a little less electrocuted, so it's a lot more fun for us.

So yea, trickster heroes are a fun little space of character, but you gotta be careful to put them in the right kind of situation, lest their fundamental dishonesty come across as alarming rather than extremely rad.

#I also have a reboot example but I shan't inflict that on you guys without due cause #asks #writing stuff #not aurora

[goldsbitch]

can I request a Lando x reader where the reader’s weakness is when people stroke her hair? Her mind goes completely blank and she falls silent immediately when people stroke her hair and Lando uses it at his advantage.

Fluffy pls and ty🫶🏻

omg, i love this prompt so much - thank you and hope you like it!!

This is one is dripping with sweetness a little too much, don't say I did not warn you. No other warning.

Lando was born a tease, oscillating between clueless and shy, to unapologetic and bordeline dickish. It all depended on the setting, his relationship to the person and how much sleep he got the night before. Sometimes your boyfriend was the sweetest little thing, giggling shyly about everything instead of coming up with an actual response, and the other times he was a walking menace actively seeking every opportunity how to get you into a flustered state.

You and Lando were full on deep in the beginning of your relationship, the sweetest part of the honeymoon phase. To put it bluntly - fucking almost non stop. And the desire was never-ending. Blinding sunshine kissed good morning to every day you two got to wake up next to each other. Problems seem to be non existent. Bliss.

It was the way his hair curled when he got a little bit sweaty, his toned body what you were desperate to explore from every angle and the need to know every little secret trick that worked on him. It became some sort of a game, who would get better at knowing the other. Which one of you found all the buttons to push.

Lando rose up that morning and chose violence. Metaphorical one, of course. Snuggling up to you in order to wake you up as well for some morning work out, as he like to call it. Whispering sweet nothings to your ear and touching you all over your body. But you were just incredibly sore from the past few days, physically unable to keep up.

"Why don't you love me anymore," he pleaded jokingly as you murmured another weak appeal for your sleep.

"Lando, you know I love you more than anything," you replied, still half asleep. But it was hard to distinguish as reality resembled a sweet dream everyday lately.

"I remember when you used to want me, physically," he kept going.

"We literally had sex few hours ago, stop whining," you kissed him between your words. He looked at you with his incredible eyes, little devil dancing in each one of them.

"Exactly, too long ago. Wish I could go back in time when you were not sore and get inside you all over again."

You simply laughed, absolutely smitten with this lovey dovey side of him. His words made you melt like butter sitting under direct sun. You brushed your noses together and then he kissed you.

The best part of romantic relationships is the one that you cannot absolutely share with other people, the almost embarrassing pleas, desire and gross goofiness, simping at each other all the time.

"Fine, if you play by these rules, I'll come back with my own revenge," he said finally as you inevitably had to start getting ready to go to the paddock with him.

Today was the big day. You'd been spotted in public countless of times, the "girlfriend" title officially sitting on your head for weeks now. But this was the first time you were to join him in the paddock as a wag. You were trying to hide your nervousness, but he saw right through you. Before you exited the apartment, he made you stop and took your face in his hands. "I'm happy I get to do this with you. I love parading you around, for everyone to see that we're a team." You smiled, his words hitting like first snowflakes of the year. "Poor Oscar, I can't wait to finally trauma dump the shared misery you bring to our lives," you jokes and locked lips with him once again. "God, it's terrifying how much I like you," you said automatically, without having to think about it.

//

It actually wasn't as bad as you'd expected. It was definitely weird and strange, but not necessarily bad. Having Lando by your side as you passed the gates definitely helped. The photographers were lined up as people at a shooting range would and it did feel like that at first. But as quickly as you were initially overwhelmed, fatigue took over you and you blocked their ever-presence out. Trying to chat up those Lando introduce you to and memorizing the names. You knew how much some of these people meant to Lando, so you were trying to be at your best behavior. The thought that his friends would hate you in the same way as some of his fans haunted you.

In the middle of all the rush, you parted for a moment. To be honest, little peace of quiet and chill was something you appreciated. But remember, Lando woke up and chose violence this morning. And his plan was quite simple, yet bulletproof.

"Y/N! There you are, my love," you heard from coming from behind you. "I have someone to introduce to you! I'm very much sure you'll appreciate meeting him." As you turned, you saw Daniel Ricciardo walking your way with your Lando. You were a little perplexed as to why Lando was so cheerful about that. You clearly remembered him getting very upset when you admitted to him that at some point in the past, when formula 1 was a world far away from you, that you had a minor crush on Daniel. Which obviously went out of the window once you met Lando. That did not mean that Lando was 100% ok with it.

"Y/N, as I'm sure you know, this is Daniel, hell of a driver and good friend of mine," Lando continued and you knew him well enough to know he had ulterior motives. Not sure what to do, you smiles shyly and shook Daniel's hand.

"Hi, Daniel," you said, eyes flinching between him and Lando. You were full on preparing for anything. Lando's smirk almost had a life of his own at that point.

"Nice to finally meet you, Y/N. I've heard quite a lot things about you!" Daniel opened, life of the party as per usual.

You chuckled. "All good things, I hope!" And with that, Lando stepped behind you and put his arm around you.

"Only the best," he said, leaned closed and inconspicuously started to stroke you hair gently. Oh, he did not just go this low.

It was slow, yet like tidal wave. You stopped breathing for a moment. Your body relaxing, as if you'd just taken the world's best sedatives. The way his hands made you feel was etherial. It was the same sensation the luckier ones experienced when listening to ASMR and the less fortunate ones sometimes called an orgasm. Shivers slowly traveling around your whole body, every part becoming sensitive out of nowhere. You weren't able to look at Daniel, let alone continue speaking. Lando was more than aware of what touching your hair did to you. He'd discovered this trick quite early on. And it was his favorite one.

"So, where are you from?" Daniel attempted at small talk. But how could you possibly give a fuck at that moment. Not that your body would even allowed you to respond. The only thing you were able to take in from the outside world were the soft slow movements Lando's fingers were doing, blocking everything out instanteniously.

Daniel stared at you, waiting. From his perspective, this was a very awkward meeting.

Lando answered for you, with a smirk you did not see, but could feel from the tone of his voice. "You have to excuse her, she is bit shy in front of new people."

You could not give less of a fuck at that moment of what these two were saying. Your lips were starting to shiver from getting so sensitive. You took a short breath and someone who would be standing close and knew you well would know, that what escaped your mouth was not a nervous laugh, but something very close to a moan.

Lando and Daniel were saying words, but none of that was important, while Lando's fingers were working his magic. He would only leave your hair alone once he saw Daniel leaving.

You wanted to be mad at him. But you were still sort of high from all the sensation bomb Lando dropped on you. You slowly turned around to face him, coming down from your own personal nirvana.

You took a deep breath while he watched you without a blink and biting hims smile away.

"You promised," you let out air that got stuck in your lungs somewhere along the way. "You promised you would not do this in public." Your brain was slowly wiring up to normal again.

"I told you I'd punish you for the morning," he said as if it was the most amusing thing ever. "Also, if Daniel is my competition, I'm going to use all the advantage I have."

Lando had a way of looking at you that made you unravel instantaneously and there was no way of stopping it. There was just something about his smile that did it for you. As anyone who is properly in love, you could not imagine somebody being able tor resist that. In your love soaked mind, he was irresistible. To a normal mind, he was probably just a regular guy, but that idea was unfathomable to you.

"I'm pretty sure that after what I just pulled, you will not have to worry about Daniel liking me," you chuckled, having to accept that Lando won this one.

"I would never let my guard down...But yeah, I think this one is pretty safe," he chuckled once more. You kissed his overly proud face and promised to yourself to get back at him later, in the privacy of his bedroom.

#lando norris #lando norris x reader #lando norris x you #lando norris fanfic #ln4 imagine #formula 1 #formula one x reader #f1 fanfic #f1 imagine #fluff #lando norris fluff #formula 1 fluff #formula 1 fanfic #ln4 x reader #ln4 x y/n #lando norris x y/n #formula 1 one shot #f1 one shot #daniel ricciardo #f1 requests

[salvatwh0re]

I have officially mastered the void

So this morning (afternoon actually) i decided to tap into the void so I did the 61 points yoga nidra meditation with a subliminal. I didn’t really need the subliminal I was just using it cause my headphones are somewhat noise cancelling and my family was awake so I didn’t want to get distracted. But the meditation was really relaxing. At first I had some trouble staying focused but then I reminded myself why I was doing this and what I was doing it for. So it kept me motivated. After that i affirmed a little bit then I counted down from 100 and then I affirmed some more then I got bored of affirming so i started visualizing and then I got bored of that so I just decided to focus on the darkness behind my eyelids.

I never really took that advice from people when they said it helped cause I didn’t believe them but it actually worked. Out of everything else I did that was the one thing that sent me straight to the void. I think for the most part it was just letting go of that desperate feeling i always have when I try to enter. I always feel like I’m forcing myself to do it so I just let go and kind of forgot about what I was doing while still keeping that intention.

I was getting pretty anxious tho because of the time so I just got out but i did it again and it sent me straight to the void again. So now I know the secret to getting into the void is to just let go of that desperation and to stop forcing yourself, just let it happen. If you feel you’ve affirmed enough stop affirming, if you feel you’ve focused on your breathing enough, go back to your automatic breathing pattern STOP FORCING YOURSELF IT WILL GET YOU NOWHERE!!

and I know a lot of people stress about not being aware in the void and not affirming for your desires but stressing over that is exactly what’s going to make you forget tbh. When you let go of that desperation you let go of those other doubts too, those things that were stopping you from getting there in the first place. I feel like removing yourself from those thoughts is really effective in getting you what you want.

I will say it might help to have a list of things you want either written down or set in your mind because it will be a lot easier to remember what you’re going to affirm. When you’re in the void or even before you tap in completely you’re supposed to be super relaxed so it might be a little difficult to bring up those thoughts but because of how different the void is from the 3D it’s kind of hard to forget. Especially if you’ve been trying for a long time.

The void isn’t really something you question, you know for sure you’re in cause you can’t hear feel see taste or smell anything so it’s pretty identifiable. And because you’ve reminded yourself over and over that that’s what the void feels like, once you feel it you’re going to be like OHHH ok now i know to affirm for my desires. You’ve been training your brain to associate the void with your desires so of course once you recognize that you’re in you’re going to remember to affirm for your desires.

Also I don’t really like using the term void personally, but it’s what I learned it as. I feel like calling it the void just makes it sound so otherworldly and extraterrestrial and scary tbh. I think that’s what was holding me back as well, fear. I know that Neville Goddard refers to it as the I AM state which is a perfect name for it because it really is a state of just BEING like you’re not worried about anything else other than yourself and that’s the beauty of it. I would go on more cause there’s so much I can say but overall i hope you just let you go of that desperation so that you can finally push through and get everything you’ve been wanting because you deserve it.

#void state #void success #the void state #loassumption

[literaila]

a walk

gojo satoru x fem!reader

summary: you, satoru, and the children stumble upon a curse during your walk

warnings: a curse, info on reader's ct, satoru is annoying

last part | next part

*

year five.

your glare aimed at satoru is almost instinctive at this point. 

and so is the wall you’ve put in front of the children, a glowing white only you (and satoru) can see.

your muscles tense automatically, and you make eye contact with the curse standing in front of you. 

the mesh of flesh and bone curse, staring at you and your family like you're a meal, hot and ready for the taking. 

"want some," it says, taking a step towards you, "want some?" 

honestly, you're sick and tired of the weird things they all say. but before you can gesture at satoru--seriously, is he going to just stand there?--it's gone, in just an instant. 

and great. now you're going to have to go look for it. you doubt it'd prove a challenge for you, or satoru, obviously, but still. you're supposed to be taking a walk. hanging out. 

and it's just started raining, which is also probably satoru's fault.

your glare increases, and the two kids watch the two of you as you stare silently at each other. 

you can feel it when tsumiki pushes at your barrier like she's testing something, and you almost smile. 

but then you remember exactly why it’s there in the first place. 

“satoru…” you say, in warning, in indignation, in ‘i’m going to kick your ass as soon as i deal with this.’ 

“what?!” he gasps, looking at you, and he’s already smiling guiltily. “i didn’t do anything. i don’t create curses.” 

his hands are raised in defense and he's taken several steps away from you. 

good, he should know his place. 

“oh, right, what’s the one benefit of the six eyes?” you ask, dryly, still much too close to him. “sensing the curses,” you grind out, an evil look on your face. 

you don't even care that he didn't immediately exorcise it. it's more that he's acting like an idiot, like a regular civilian with no ulterior motives--

satoru waves a hand, nonchalant. “so i missed one.” 

“we both know that you knew it was there.” 

“um, actually,” satoru looks towards the kids—still entrapped in your cage—with a grin. “we both don’t know that.” 

“i’m seriously going to—“ 

“there’s a lot of things to sense,” he argues, crossing his arms. his voice is boisterous, completely irritating. "not like you would know. it takes a lot of work to—“ 

“okay, you can go," you snap, almost eye to eye with him (minus the blindfold that is doing nothing for him). his hair is also ridiculous, dripping from the rain. he looks like a drooping dandelion. 

you should leave him outside until he freezes. 

“what?” 

“shoo,” you tell him, waving a hand. “take the kids and go home. i’ll deal with it.” 

“how is that fair?” 

“it’s fair because i’ll be beating up a curse instead of you.” 

“please," satoru scoffs, shaking his head at you. 

you roll your eyes. “and i can’t teleport, you idiot. take them, please. i don’t want tsumiki to get hurt.” 

you both look at them, standing there watching you, and megumi is shaking his head. you sigh. if only you could limit the sound within your objects. 

you already know what this is going to start up again--

“i don’t think megumi wants that,” satoru tells you, leaning in and smiling. his face is so close to yours that you can see the air he breathes. 

“do you want me to hit you?” 

satoru only looks at you, his face completely unbearable. he's obviously already won this argument, because you're terrible at denying megumi anything--which he knows--and you realize, suddenly, that he probably planned this. 

seriously, he needs to be banned from existence. 

“where’s the curse?” you ask him, voice low. 

satoru’s grin widens, and he doesn’t even pretend to look around. “hiding about a block away.” 

you release your technique, both of the kids immediately fall against nothing but air. tsumiki laughs at the rain that suddenly hits her, and megumi watches the two of you closely. 

you don’t look at them though, your eyes are only on satoru. 

there’s a tug at your side, a pull of your shirt. “can i stay?” megumi asks, his head brushing against your arm. 

he must've learned that pleading look from satoru because it immediately dissolves your anger. you don't even think, about to give in, and then--

“what a wonderful idea,” satoru says. “some light practice.” 

that calm disappears. on instinct, you answer. “no. go home with gojo and tsumiki. i’ve got it, bud.” 

tsumiki is looking around. she understands what curses are—and to the shock of everyone, she can see them—but unlike the rest of you, she has no natural defense from them. 

which means that satoru needs to hurry up and get her out of there. not to mention the fact that she doesn't like your job, and she doesn't really understand the way curses operate. 

and also, she's a bit skittish. 

“but you don’t know where it went,” megumi argues, his voice almost whiny, soft, and pitched. your brow furrows. 

finally, you lose satoru’s gaze and look down at him. “i can see, megumi. i know how to look for curses.” 

“hide and seek with a curse?” satoru chuckles, patting your head. you don't get the chance to slap his hand away before he takes a step back. 

you glare at him again, matching his obvious satisfaction. 

“my dogs can find it,” megumi says. “i want to help.” 

“no, megumi. we don’t even know how strong it is or what it can—“ 

“grade three,” satoru answers, automatically. “it can camouflage, but it shouldn’t be an issue with your traps and the demon dogs.” 

you turn towards him, eye twitching. 

satoru nods, knowingly. “oh, yeah, my eyes are good now. i think i just needed to adjust to the rain.” 

“satoru, i swear—“ 

“i better take tsumiki home,” he looks towards her. “ready, kid?” 

tsumiki barely has the chance to nod before they're both gone. 

you can hear satoru’s distant “good luck!”

every single nerve in your body is automatically on edge, ready to attack him--even though he's literally gone. 

and you would stomp your foot on the ground and throw a tantrum like a literal child except… 

your child is standing right there and there’s a curse roaming around. you don't want megumi here in the first place, and you definitely don't want him lingering around while the curse reeks havoc on who knows what. 

you swallow—preparing a million different punishments for satoru in your head—then look at megumi, immediately softening. 

“i can call satoru to come and get you,” you tell him, gently, trying not to plead. “really. you don’t need to worry about this.” 

megumi rolls his eyes. “why can’t i practice?” 

“because… you’re only eleven, kid. you don’t need to practice. when you’re ready for high school—“ 

“i want to help.” 

you sigh, nodding. of course he does. really, he was raised by two complete masochists with superpowers. he's watched you and satoru fight over responsibility for four years, learning about burdens from the champions of keeping them. 

what more can you expect? 

you would sit there and argue for a little longer. try to convince him that jujutsu isn’t a fun hobby to take part in, not something to mess around with—but, again, there’s a grade-three curse somewhere out there. and it’s raining. 

you're already a bit cold, and you want to get home as soon as possible so satoru doesn't get too comfortable. 

“okay,” you tell him, giving him a small smile. he looks silly with his hair dripping down his face, eyes widening in success. “go ahead.” 

megumi nods, flexing his hands. then he looks back up at you, taking a step back. and then he does it again. 

he repeats this process several times, preparing for something... you guess.

it's a bad enough reminder that you have no clue what satoru's telling him when they go off on their own, acting like the reckless little boys that they are. 

and you’re just about to tell him not to be nervous when he folds his hands together and whispers “demon dogs.” 

you could try to act unimpressed, but it’s pointless. 

really, the shadows responding instantly are amazing. in a single second, there are two puppies there, appearing from nothing more than thin air. 

and you know a lot about summoning, but you've never managed to bring anything to life. walls are entirely boring, you decide, looking at megumi's pets. 

isn't there a saying about your children succeeding you?  

“go on,” megumi tells both of the puppies, fortunately missing your astonished look, patting the black one’s head. “find it.” 

the two dogs respond with succinct barks, and then they’re gone, tails wagging as they listen to megumi's command. 

you wonder if you're going to have to give them both a bath later. you already know satoru will be complaining about the smell of wet dog. 

you turn to megumi with a smile, tilting your head. “now we follow them?” 

“yeah,” he takes a step forward. “this way.” 

you follow after megumi, trying to remind yourself that satoru has taught him about this--that he'll be fine, even if the curse does show up, because you're there. but it's difficult. your entire body is on high alert. 

you haven't felt this tense around a curse since you were fifteen.

megumi, as if sensing this, speaks up suddenly. “do you think i’m weak?” 

you look towards him with wide eyes. “what?” 

megumi continues to walk forward, seeming to listen to soundless signals from his shikigami. he doesn't look back at you.

“is that why you don’t want me to practice my technique? because you think i’ll get hurt?” 

your face falls, guilt seeping through your body immediately. stupid satoru and his impulsive decisions. this is his fault too. 

“oh, megumi, no. of course not.” 

“then why?" he asks, turning to look at you, his face is stern, comprehensive. "gojo thinks i’m ready.” 

you sigh, looking around a corner. this district is completely empty. if you weren't so distracted by satoru and his stupid smiles, you would've noticed the vibe around here earlier. you should've sensed the curse before it could come face to face with you, at least. 

you swallow, shaking your head. “it’s got nothing to do with you, megs.”

he looks at you skeptically. 

“really," you blow a breath out. "i think… your shikigami are very impressive. it’s just that you’re still a kid,” you shrug. “i don’t think you should get involved in jujutsu before you have to.” 

“but i want to.” 

you'd like to tell him about all of the things that you want. all of the things you know you can't have, because they don't make sense. because they're not meant for you. 

but then, you know, that this is meant for him. that he was born with a purpose, jujutsu or not. 

and clearly, he's powerful. at eleven he's got shikigami that listen to his every command. shikigami that would die to protect him. 

and two parents who would do the exact same. 

still, he's your little boy. he's still so young, still so vulnerable. and, yes, you know that you can't keep him away from your curse-filled world forever. you know that megumi should be making these decisions for himself. 

but is it so wrong to want him to stay small and yours? to want to freeze time to keep both of your children protected from everything possible?

“i know—i know. it’s…” you give him a small smile, bizarrely proud of him all of the sudden. his tenacity, his strength. his willingness to ask you this in the first place. “it’s about me, really." you look away from him, sniffing in the rain. 

megumi is lingering at your side now, walking right next to you. you wonder if he's cold. you should've grabbed an extra jacket or an umbrella. 

"when i was your age," you continue, eventually. "i didn’t want to be a sorcerer, and, obviously, i didn’t have a choice. so i guess i just… don’t want to push you into it.” 

“you’re not,” megumi says, automatically, frowning. “why not?” 

“hmm?” 

“why didn’t you want to use jujutsu?” 

you smirk at him a little, a bittersweet feeling filling you, shaking your head. “my technique isn’t as cool as yours, you know.” 

“it’s cool,” he argues, but then he looks away. 

because you both know that he doesn't really understand how your technique works--not his fault, of course, but yours. you've been hesitant to tell him about it. it's not as easy to show as satoru's, and not as useful. 

still, maybe if...

you hold your hand out towards him. “try it,” you tell him, gesturing down. 

megumi furrows his brows but does as you say, reaching his hand toward yours. 

and when his hand is pushed back, kept away from your skin, he frowns. he tries it again, stopping in his tracks. you both pause there, standing in the rain. it doesn’t work, so he does it again. 

and then you release the barrier, grabbing his hand with a grin. it must startle him because he jumps. “see?”

megumi purses his lips, looking up at you. “like gojo?” 

“sort of. it’s more stationary, and it can’t stop any cursed techniques. your dogs could probably get through it if i was tired enough.” 

megumi looks down at your intertwined hands, still frowning. you squeeze his tiny hand in yours, feeling your system relax. 

he hasn't let go yet, so neither do you.

“when i was a kid, i couldn’t control it. someone would try to grab my hand,” you say, swinging his, “and they couldn’t. i thought something was wrong with me.” 

“oh.” 

you take a step into him, dragging him along as you resume walking. “that’s why i didn’t want to be a sorcerer. i thought it was… bad.” 

megumi looks up at you, eyes contemplative. “that’s why you left home?” 

a bit of a euphemism, but you shrug. megumi doesn’t need to know the gory details of being tossed out on the street with nothing but a jacket and some shoes. 

“yup.” 

he looks away, nodding. 

you're less worried about the curse now. he's close enough that you'll keep him safe, and you're assuming that his dogs haven't seen any sign of it yet. 

“i'm always gonna be worried about you going on missions,” you tell him, a bit softer now. completely serious. “but not because i think you’re powerless, or anything of the sort.” 

“really?” 

you laugh, shaking your head at him. 

you really do adore him. it's a shocking feeling, a strange love you wouldn't trade for anything. 

your children might be your greatest gift.

“if you ask me, megumi, and don’t tell him i said this, but i think you’ll rival satoru for strength someday.” 

he looks up at you, his lip twitching. 

“you might even beat him,” you add. 

he’s about to say something when he stops, looking forward again. one of his dogs trails up to him, panting softly. 

megumi looks down, silently communicating with the puppy, and then he gestures his head to the left. “this way,” megumi says, looking around. and this time, you just let him lead. 

you'll keep him safe, you know, and he probably doesn't need your help anyway. 

*

"so, how'd it go?" satoru asks, as soon as the two of you walk through the door. 

you know he's been waiting there the whole time, probably trying to resist the urge to text and make sure that you were both doing okay. 

he's overbearing and completely stupid. 

and his smile is very telling, just a bit hesitant. 

"mom says that i'm better than you," megumi says as he walks past him, making sure to shake his hair out onto satoru's pants. 

the man's jaw drops, looking at you. 

"what?" you say to him, shrugging. "i wasn't gonna lie to him."

*

next part | series masterlist

#gojo satoru #gojo satoru x reader #jjk gojo #gojo x reader #jujutsu gojo #gojo x you #gojo x y/n #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x y/n #gojo satoru fluff #satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo x you #satoru gojo x y/n #satoru x reader #satoru x you #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jjk x y/n #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen #a typical family

[solarmorrigan]

For the angst prompt if you’re still doing it:

“Don’t listen to them. Don’t you EVER listen to them.”

Please

Hello! I'm afraid this one might not have come out quite as seriously as the others (might be channeling all my Serious Angst Energy into my ongoing fic at the moment), but hopefully it's enjoyable, anyway??

[No warnings except maybe some unkind self-directed internal dialogue from Steve]

-

“Y’know,” Eddie drawls, looking Steve up and down where he’s standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the light of the front hall, “correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t look especially busy.”

Steve, caught out in a lie, clearly having been sitting around at home in his sweats when he’d specifically told Eddie that he couldn’t come over tonight because he was busy, does the only thing he can think of: he keeps lying.

“I am,” he says.

“Uh huh.” The way Eddie draws the hum of his agreement out says that he doesn’t believe Steve in the slightest. “And what, if I may ask, are you busy with, dressed in loungewear and sitting at home?”

Scrambling, Steve reaches for the first excuse that comes to mind, something he’d heard his mother say to someone over the phone years ago, when he was still a kid and she’d still made excuses to get out of social engagements and stay home with him.

“I’m washing my hair.”

Eddie bites down on a laugh so quickly and so visibly, Steve is surprised his teeth don’t go right through his lip.

“Are you?” Eddie asks, voice gone high and tight with mirth.

“Yep,” Steve answers.

“Well, damn, I don’t know why you didn’t invite me along to help,” Eddie says, grinning at Steve. “I feel like I’ve proven my skill in that arena before.”

Steve stares at Eddie, mouth working, feeling slow and useless and out of ideas. “Uh…”

With a sigh, Eddie lets his smile drop. “Look, can I come inside?”

The jig is up, so Steve just nods and steps aside to let Eddie in.

“What are you even doing here?” Steve asks as he leads the way back to the living room, where he’d been sitting on the couch and moping.

“Steve, I knew you weren’t busy tonight. You’re kind of a terrible liar,” Eddie says.

And that isn’t strictly true; Steve is a great liar – as long as he doesn’t feel guilty about it. He’s never been good at lying to people he loves.

They sit down; Steve shoves the magazines he’d been pretending he would actually be able to focus on out of the way (more proof of his pathetic attempt at a lie), and Eddie—ever blunt, ever direct—jumps right in.

“So I kind of feel like you’ve been avoiding me lately.”

Steve winces. “Not avoiding you, I’ve just been… limiting my time with you.”

Eddie looks stricken, and Steve would like to die, actually. Why did he phrase it that way?

“Did… I do something, or say something, or, like–”

“No!” Steve rushes to reassure him. “No, no, not at all, it’s nothing you did, you’re amazing, it’s not you, it’s…”

Eddie cocks an eyebrow at him. “It’s not me, it’s you?”

“I mean…” Steve sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Kind of, yeah.”

For a long moment, Eddie sits, brows furrowed, staring at Steve. Steve fights the urge to squirm under the intensity of his gaze.

“I’m trying super hard to figure out what’s going on right now, but I’m kind of coming up blank,” Eddie finally admits. “Are we… Are we breaking up?”

“No!” Steve blurts again, reaching this time for Eddie’s hands, as if he can keep Eddie from realizing what a goddamn idiot he is and leaving if he just holds on tightly enough. “Shit, no, that’s – I’m completely fucking this up, that’s the opposite of what I want to happen, that’s why I’ve been limiting my time with you.”

Though Eddie’s hands have turned in Steve’s grip, automatically holding onto him, he stares at Steve as though he’s lost his mind, which is fair. “Okay,” Eddie says slowly, “I admit you have a little more experience with relationships than I do, but isn’t the point to spend as much time as possible with the person you’re dating? Because you like them?”

“It’s… Usually, I guess, yeah.” Steve shrugs, suddenly wishing maybe that he hadn’t taken Eddie’s hands, because now he can’t get away, can’t duck out from under those dark, searching eyes. He settles for staring down at their joined hands as he speaks. “It’s just – I can be… kind of a lot? I like someone and I just kind of slam my foot on the gas and don’t look back and that’s too much, I know, so I’ve been trying not to, like, overwhelm you, because I really, really don’t want you to get sick of me, and–”

“Who the hell told you that?” Eddie cuts in sharply.

Steve’s eyes snap back up, finding Eddie looking so thoroughly offended that he’s not sure what to make of it. “Told me what?”

“That you’re too much,” Eddie presses, his hands going tighter around Steve’s.

“Uh,” Steve says, uncertain of what kind of answer Eddie’s looking for. The fact that Steve goes all-in too quickly is just common knowledge; the fact that it overwhelms and annoys people is kind of a general consensus.

Eddie shakes his head. “Never mind, it doesn’t even matter. Don’t listen to them. Don’t you ever listen to them,” he says, low and intense. “You’re not going to overwhelm me, Steve. I can’t get enough of you. I don’t think I’ll ever have enough of you, but the only way I’m gonna know for sure is if I get to have you around as often as possible for as long as you can stand me.”

The words, for a moment, don’t make any sense. No one has ever wanted Steve around that much; no one’s ever met him where he is in terms of hunger for companionship.

“You… want me around that often?” he asks, eyes flicking from Eddie’s face to their hands and back again.

“I want you around all the goddamn time. I want you when I wake up and when I go to sleep and when I’m having breakfast and when I’m doing shit around the house and when I’m playing a show and when I’m watching TV,” Eddie rattles off. “I’m not even exaggerating, it’s honestly kind of a problem.”

“A problem?” Steve asks, brows coming together in concern.

“It’s a problem because you’ve been limiting your time, thinking that I’m going to get tired of you.” Eddie disentangles their hands and reaches up to cup Steve’s jaw, palms soft and a little sweaty from their combined grip, but gentle—almost reverent—against his skin. “Sweetheart, I am never going to get tired of you.”

From anyone else, that would be hard to believe, but the way Eddie looks at him, dead-on and so fucking sincere, Steve can’t help but take the promise in with a hopeful flutter in his chest. He leans forward, pressing his mouth to Eddie’s, keeping the kiss chaste and slow before he pulls back to murmur, “Promise?”

“Promise,” Eddie answers immediately. “I promise, I promise, I promise.”

He tugs Steve forward after that, pushing and pulling him until he’s managed to lay out across the length of the couch and has situated Steve over him, lying on his chest like a weighted blanket. He sighs and wraps his arms around Steve, like he still wants to pull him closer.

“Perfect,” he says.

“Yeah?” Steve asks, balancing his chin Eddie’s sternum so he can smile up at him.

“Mhm,” Eddie hums. “Now I just have to figure out how to keep you this close all the time.”

“Might be kinda tough,” Steve says, fighting to keep his smile from growing to ridiculous proportions.

“Eh.” Eddie shrugs, ducking down to press a kiss to Steve’s forehead. “I’m willing to take the time to figure it out.”

And somehow, Steve thinks that might be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to him.

#steddie #eddie munson #steve harrington #stranger things #eddiesteve #eddie is perfectly content to be smothered actually please and thank you #solar wrote #answers from solar #anonymous

[chvoswxtch]

hi um so this is like my first time making a request, like ever. I’m not even sure if this is where I’m supposed to put a request. So I’m really nervous but this idea has been in my head for weeks and I need it to be brought to life? Idk but can I request Matt Murdock with a sort of shy reader? Where he tells her about his abilities and daredevil and everything (established relationship) and she doesn’t really care as long as he’s safe but she has something in her mind and he notices and keeps asking and basically she has a question about his senses, specifically his taste and idk if you know but Matt can canonically know ALL of the ingredients of anything just from a taste and she basically wants to make him taste a bunch of stuff and tell her the ingredients of it so she can make them? I know this is probably WAY too specific so feel free to completely ignore this, I just wanted to get it out.

hi my darling!

so I actually read this request right before going to the grocery store, and while I was looking through produce, it made me think about how matt would absolutely know which produce was the freshest and which ones to avoid. I kinda mixed that in with your idea about being able to tell exactly what ingredients were in something, and I hope this is close to what you were looking for! <3

warnings: tooth rotting fluff and matt being a lil shit word count: 1.3k

lemons.

“Not that one.”

You hand instantly stilled over a lemon that your fingertips had already grazed over. Glancing at Matt over your shoulder, a crease formed between your brows while you looked back down at it.

“What do you mean? This one is perfect-”

“It’s not ripe enough.”

“But…it’s so yellow, like sunshine yellow.”

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Matt’s lips when he felt the way your own pursed into a bit of a confused pout. It was something you always did when you were intensely focused on something, and he found it endearing. Reaching his hand out, he used the pad of his thumb to smooth away the furrow that had creased in the middle of your forehead, and his soft smile curled up into a light smirk catching the flush of heat that immediately coursed through the tops of your cheeks.

“Well, I’m sure it’s a very pretty lemon, but it doesn’t taste ripe.”

Ever since Matt had told you the truth about his vigilante identity and his abilities, you’d had countless questions. You wouldn’t voice them at first, almost as if you were afraid to cross some invisible boundary that Matt might have, but he knew you, and he knew how to dismantle that shy exterior of yours. From the moment the two of you first met, you had been overly polite and accommodating about his disability, but not in a way that made him uncomfortable. You didn’t walk on eggshells around him or call any extra attention to his blindness. In fact, the way you interacted with him was so seamless, it was almost like it came second nature.

If you guys were grabbing coffee with Karen and Foggy, you would automatically place the raw sugar packets within his reach because you knew he preferred it to the artificial sweeteners. If the four of you went to check out a new lunch spot, you always called ahead to check if they had a menu in braille and made sure Matt was given one. There were so many little things you did to make him feel included and normal. It was part of why he fell so hard for you.

You never asked about the origin of his blindness, and even after he opened up and told you about his accident, you were reserved with your questions. He could tell you were curious, and he wanted you to ask. He wanted you to know things about him. You were a bit of a wallflower, and Matt could always feel you silently observing him, but he wanted you to understand him. He quickly realized he would have to flat out grant you permission to be nosey, and so he did.

Out of everyone he had revealed his Daredevil secret to, you had taken it the best. He didn’t know if he would ever get over the surprise of just how well you handled it. You didn’t get angry or yell at him. You didn’t call him a liar or a traitor, or ask him if he was faking his blindness; all reactions he expected. You just sat there in pure confusion, and you were silent for so long, Matt was panicked that he’d sent you into a state of shock. When it finally settled in that it wasn’t a joke, your brows knit together, and Matt could feel the way your face contorted into an expression of irritation when you flat out asked him if he was crazy. The memory of that night never failed to make him smile.

“Um…well, I mean…not in the traditional sense-”

“Matthew, what the hell are you thinking running around on rooftops, going after guys with guns and knives with…sticks? How do you even do that?”

“They’re batons, actually. Look it’s hard to explain, but I have heightened senses that help me-”

“Are those super senses going to keep you out of prison? Because that’s where you’re going if you get caught. What was the point of going hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt for law school if you were just going to wind up a prison cell for doing backflips off buildings in your underwear?”

“Heightened senses. And it’s not underwear. Underwear is comfortable.”

There hadn’t been a hint of anger in your voice. Annoyance, sure, but mainly concern. All you wanted was for Matt to be safe, and he did his best to assure you that he would be. Matt went into as much detail as he could to help you understand his abilities, and the more comfortable you got with asking him things, the more you learned.

Like how he could tell exactly what ingredients were in the lemon bread at the cafe down the street from your apartment that you loved so much, which was currently the reason behind your little trip to the store at the moment. All it took was one bite of the bread, and he knew exactly how to replicate it.

Apparently he could also tell when lemons were at their peak.

Reaching into the pile of lemons, Matt grasped the one that was in perfect condition to him and held it out towards you. Taking the lemon in your hand, you gave it a light squeeze, noticing that it was firm to the touch but easily gave into the gentle force of your fingers testing its density. 

“Feel the rind.”

Following Matt’s instructions, you brushed your thumb along the bright yellow rind. It was smooth to the touch, and somewhat glossy as it nearly reflected the brightness of the overhead lighting in the grocery store. 

“It’s shiny.”

Matt chuckled at your response and lightly nodded his chin in your direction.

“What else?”

“It’s smooth.”

“It’s perfectly ripe. The zest on this one is the freshest. It has the most flavor, and the right amount of juice.”

Arching one of your brows, you stared up at Matt curiously while still faintly squeezing the lemon in your hand.

“You can tell how much juice is in this just by touching it?”

A grin stretched across Matt’s lips, showcasing his dazzling teeth and causing indents to appear in his cheeks. His thick brows rose slightly above the rim of his crimson glasses.

“Are you doubting me, sweetheart?”

“No I’m just…still trying to figure out how you do…what you do.”

A bashful twinge of heat coated your cheeks once again, and Matt thought it was adorable that you diverted your attention back to the lemon shyly to avoid his gaze even though he couldn’t see your reaction. He reached out to tenderly brush his knuckles along the warmth in your cheeks while he smiled in your direction. 

“I’ll try to do better at explaining. Now c’mon, we have more ingredients to get. You know, I think this bread is gonna turn out so well, the one at the cafe might not meet your standards anymore.”

The confidence in Matt’s voice caught your attention, and you couldn’t stop the smile that spread across your lips. Sometimes you forgot that your boyfriend was the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen that everyone was so afraid of. If only they knew that he spent his Saturdays sniffing out ingredients at the grocery store like a bloodhound to help his girlfriend recreate the recipe for her favorite lemon bread.

“You know, if you didn’t love law so much, you could’ve made out like a bandit in a baking competition.”

“Oh I would’ve won with my sob story of being a blind little Catholic orphan alone.”

“Matthew!”

Matt snickered at the disbelief in your tone, but he could also detect the way the edges of your lips twitched, like you weren’t sure if you should laugh at that or not. Snaking his arm around your waist, he pressed a light kiss to your forehead and gently nudged you in the direction towards the spice aisle.

“Come on, we need flour.”

tags: @yarrystyleeza @little-miss-dilf-lover  @avengerstower-houseplant @mars-rants-a-lot @topperthornton @hailey-murdock @neverlandcity @charmedkim @queenofthenoobs @stilldreaming666 @mattymurdock1021 @bubuslutty @ninejlovebot @purrrfect @pennylovey @firesunflamed @oscarisaacsleftknee @ameliaswife @vane28282 @kmc1989 @messymissy @dark-academia-slut @strawberry1042 @utterlynuts

#matt murdock #matt murdock x you #matt murdock x reader #matt murdock x female reader #matt murdock x fem!reader #matt murdock x f!reader #matt murdock fic #matt murdock request #daredevil #daredevil fic #daredevil request

[asmosmainhoe]

Hiii! I had a thought some minutes ago over the fact that some babys fall asleep when you softly rub their bellies, and then, it crossed my mind... ¿What if, in the middle of a cuddle session Mc just starts rubbing the Brothers bellies, thinking about some times when they did the exact same thing for a baby relative, only to find out that somehow it worked and they are fast asleep?, ¿How would they react when teased about it?

Is something dumb, so you don't really have to mind me, but i'd really like to know what you think about it and if you have some headcanons for this silly thought

The brothers fall asleep with belly rubs

Notes: I'm so sorry that it took so long jwnsisbs and it's not dumb!!! I love belly rubs

Gender: neutral

Warnings: none

Masterlist

Lucifer

Usually it takes ages for him to fall asleep and you know it which is the reason you decide to try out something new on him

After a looooong time you feel him relax against you and breathe heavily. Did...did it actually work?

A small brush spread across his cheeks when you tell him about it and he demands for you to pretend that it didn't happen. Yet he's not opposed to you rubbing his belly during the next cuddle session

Mammon

His body automatically reacts to your touch and he moves his stomach away

"I'm sorry. I just meant to rub your belly a bit."

"O-oh yea. Sure. Sorry."

Your presence still makes him nervous so please don't take it the wrong way

His lights are out immediately the second you do your magic and the room is filled with his loud snoring. Mammon's iron grip on you prevents you from leaving so you're trapped between his arms

Leviathan

Imagine Mammon's reaction, but ten times more. Levi's entire body jerks away and his face turns into a tomato from embarrassment

"I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to! Please continue!"

It happens every now and then so you've learned to not pay it too much attention and trust his words

The moment you rub his belly the tail of his demon form starts to shake and you can hear a silent rattle coming from him. It reminds you of a snake. Only a few minutes later he falls asleep, but the sound continues on

Satan

He doesn't like having his stomach touched so you have to wait until he's completely relaxed

"Hey, can I try something on you?"

"Of course."

The feeling of having his belly rubbed is odd and unusual to him, but he quickly grows fond of the sensation, a small smile forming on his lips

It doesn't take too long for Satan to drift off to sleep and clinging onto you some more

Asmodeus

Yes! Give him all the rubs and massages. Asmo never says no to those

Since cuddling sessions are almost an hourly thing for you two you try out the belly rub fairly soon into your friendship/relationship

The moment you touch him you hear him humming from deep within his throat as he falls asleep with a satisfying expression on his face

The moment he wakes up he wants to return the favor

Beelzebub

For you to help him fall asleep by massaging his stomach you need to try to stay awake first though. Beel is incredibly soft and radiates a lot of body heat so he's a pro at making others pass out basically

He doesn't mind receiving belly rubs. I mean, his favorite person is giving attention to his favorite body part. What more can he ask for?

Just make sure that he's not laying on top of you, because once his muscles relax completely he becomes a rock

Belphegor

First of all he falls asleep the moment you wrap your arms around him. Getting him to stay awake long enough to feel your belly rubs is quite the challenge

But when that actually does happen he falls into the coziest and deepest slumber he has ever experienced

For the first time he feels refreshed and awake after waking up from that

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me mc #obey me brothers #obey me headcanons #obey me x reader #obey me lucifer #obey me luci x reader #obey me luci #obey me lucifer x reader #obey me mammon #obey me mammon x reader #obey me leviathan #obey me levi x reader #obey me levi #obey me leviathan x reader #obey me satan #obey me satan x reader #obey me asmodeus #obey me asmo x reader #obey me asmo #obey me asmodeus x reader #obey me beelzebub #obey me beel x reader #obey me beel #obey me beelzebub x reader #obey me belphegor #obey me belphie #obey me belphegor x reader #obey me belphie x reader

[eamour]

a change in self.

every change in the outer world requires a change from within, your inner world — SELF. a change in self means a change in feeling, a change in feeling means a change in state, and that leads to a change in your external reality. but changing self isn’t as hard as you may think it is.

self concept.

your self concept is a summary of all convictions you have accepted about yourself. all beliefs, all assumptions regarding you. your concept of self directs and affects most of the things that happen in the external world as it is the "blueprint" to your experiences.

changing your concept.

the purpose of this post is to make you understand that revamping your assumptions of self doesn’t ask for a lot of effort. no, you do not need to go through a ritual, prepare for all demons to leave your body, sell yourself to the devil, do shadow work, or anything of that kind.

ending and beginning.

just like every living being, there is life and death. there is a beginning and an ending. in order to create new life, old life has to disappear, entirely. for new life to be placed, old life needs to be replaced. and the same way, you go about changing your conceptions of self. you don’t just let go of one-two assumptions about yourself — you let your old self die and surrender COMPLETELY before you make room for your new one. this is so important because you cannot carry with you any conceptions of the old self into the new one. or else you won’t change, you won’t shift self.

when we aim for a change in self, we actually "aim" for two things or do two things at the same time. one thing (1 · letting go of old beliefs) paves the way for the other (2 · claiming new beliefs), so 2 automatically follows after 1.

old concept · "i am poor, hated, dumb and unsuccessful."

new concept · "i am rich, loved, smart and successful."

all you have to do is to claim yourself to be your desired version of yourself. you don’t need to work on beliefs you had about yourself for ages or dip deep, find out what type of traumatic events must have occurred for you to believe yourself to be who you are now. you don’t need to do ANY of that. by declaring that you are who you want to be, you are automatically declaring who you NO LONGER are.

self is god.

you shall never forget your true self. in order to change your assumptions about who you are, who you were and who you are going to be, you need to become clear about who you are — GOD. you are an all-mighty being, and in imagination you can be whoever you want to be. you have permission to adapt and take over any convictions of yourself which you wish you had. you aren’t limited or restricted like a human being but possess power to its fullest. you are the only creator and outside of you, there is no other. you aren’t this garment of disappointment, fear or failure that you have assigned to yourself. you aren’t this one version of yourself just like there isn’t only one version of you that exists. you are everything, at all times. you carry all possible conceptions of self and will continue to own an infinite variety of self concepts to select from because YOU happen to be INFINITE.

with love, ella.

#law of assumption #loa #the law of assumption #loassumption #neville goddard #edward art #manifesting #manifest #manifest it #manifesting it #how to manifest #affirm and persist #master manifestor #spiritual #spirituality #manifestation #manifest your life #manifest your dreams #manifest your reality #manifest your desires #specific person #desired life #desired appearance #desired self #desired reality #eiypo #everyone is you pushed out #feeling is the secret #consciousness is the only reality #imagination creates reality

[a-town-called-hometown]

yippee! apologies if my takes are horrendously bad

my personal take on the matter is that i definitely think the dark worlds can work as a metaphor for escapism without undermining the darkners' personhood. it can be more than one thing, yknow? the darkners are important, their lives matter. and the lightners do go to the dark world as an escape from the problems they face in their own life. but that's not the darkners' whole PURPOSE, yknow? i mean. according to the laws of the universe of deltarune yes darkners' "purpose" is to serve the lightners but like it's not their whole purpose in the STORY.

it's sort of like how, in UNDERTALE, LOVE represents how distant you've become, how easy it is for you to hurt people. but it also literally gives you the power to destroy the world.

i think the biggest reason i believe escapism is at least a part of deltarune's narrative is queen.

queen's whole speech in both of her fights is about how she intends to provide escapism for the lightners (so that they will worship her but also so that they will he happy). she wants to turn the whole world into a dark world, so that everyone can live in bliss and not have to worry about the woes of the light world. she mentions "Staring, Tapping, To Receive Joy. Staring, Tapping, To Avoid Pain." which is like pretty much the definition of escapism

she wants to help Noelle with the problems she faces in the light world ("Noelle. Who Will Be There To Help Her? Her Strange And Sad Searches" and "My One Idea To Help Noelle, Failed") by just... shoving it away for a blissful fantasy world ("Wake? No, She Has Already Awakened Too Much. Let Her Close Her Eyes And Sleep Away, Into A Darker, Darker Dream.")

...i forgot the rest of what i wanted to say!

well first off, thank you for your ask! I'm going to get extremely in depth in my answer, so bear with me here. sorry it took several weeks to write this. the escapism reading of deltarune is pretty deeply entrenched in fandom, and to refute it, I felt it required a full-length essay to completely explain my viewpoint.

yes, "the lightners desire escapism" does not automatically translate to that being the darkners' actual narrative purpose. escapism can be a theme without dehumanizing those who are used in order to escape - in fact, I've read a number of stories that use someone's desire to escape to HIGHLIGHT how they're hurting others in pursuit of that. I believe that toby fox is definitely capable of telling a story about kids having a valid desire to escape, and about them grappling with having inadvertently created a world of real, living people as a result.

(I'll reiterate again that this is not the story arc that generally shows up in fanon. the common consensus is that the game will end in an omori-esque "growing out of" the dark worlds. it's why I have a huge dislike of the fanon escapism reading, given that the darkners are shown as people whose lack of agency parallels kris' own. it would feel cheap if the resolution to that plot was that the darkners were actually never meant to be agents in their own fates. but this is a digression.)

the reason why i DON'T believe that this is a story that toby fox is telling is because of the way the world, themes, and characters are written. put simply, it just doesn't come across as congruent with the story being told.

deltarune's main themes are agency, fate, identity, and control. this is a conflict that shows up in nearly every major character, is baked into the worldbuilding, and is the central struggle involving us, the player. the protagonist of deltarune is literally possessed by us against their will. the darkners are objects that have no choice but to serve and be discarded. over and over again, there is emphasis on roles that characters play - and crucially, roles that are imposed on them.

what would escapism mean, in this thematic context? in real life, escapism can represent any number of things, but in a story, a major narrative theme generally has to dovetail with other major narrative themes in the work. I would argue that escapism in deltarune would likely mean going to a place where characters are able to choose for themselves what roles they embody, or even to discard the notion of roles altogether. a fantasy of control is the only way to escape a reality where you have no agency. and honestly, it's hard to imagine that something could count as an escapist fantasy if you don't even get to choose whether or not you participate in it.

let's talk about kris.

I see a lot of discussions around kris that say that kris goes into the dark worlds to escape. the dark worlds are posited as kris' fantasy of heroism. it's a world where they can seem heroic and cool, a world where they can have friends. this theory makes a decent amount of sense on the surface level, but only until you consider that kris is being controlled in order to go into the dark worlds. and it is not a control that they appear to welcome.

if those worlds represent kris' fantasy, then why don't they get to choose what happens in those fantasies? why are they being controlled by an external force, one that they actively push back against? if it's really an escape, then why does everything about this world reflect their lack of agency? if they really think this world is just a pure fantasy, then why do they care if spamton falls when his strings are cut?

because they're being deliberately obscured to the player, it is hard to say how kris actually feels about many subjects... but I do seriously doubt that they view the dark worlds as an escape. they don't act in a way that is consistent with that. they resist their lack of agency, and what little we do see of their reactions to darkner characters doesn't suggest that they view those characters as part of a disposable fantasy, either. they seem to have complicated feelings on ralsei. and of course, one of their biggest emotional reactions in the game is to the spamton fight. I would argue that that suggests they have empathy for spamton, which is a hard emotional reaction to have if you believe he's just part of a fantasy. not impossible, mind you, but it seems unlikely that kris believes that all this is simply fantasy.

also, considering that snowgrave both actively discredits the idea that the dark worlds are mere fantasy and is actively traumatic for kris... I seriously doubt they'd open another dark world in chapter 3 on a snowgrave run if their motive was purely to escape. on that route, they've seen the damage we can cause in a dark world. they know that berdly has sustained lasting damage due to our actions, assuming he's not outright dead. why would they want to try and "escape" to a place like that again now that they know what can happen?

the only answer is that they have a motive that isn't escapist.

now, as for ralsei... what part does he have to play in all this?

ralsei does play a lot to the fun, fantastical elements of the dark worlds. he delivers the prophecy that kickstarts the adventure. he flatters both kris and susie endlessly when they act appropriately heroic. he welcomes them into the castle and even makes nice rooms for them. he initially seems tailor-made to enable a fantastical experience where no real issues can ever complicate anything, and where the pain of reality can successfully be hidden from. but there's a lot of complications to the idea that he might represent an escapist fantasy.

the first, and what honestly seems the most important to me, is that he doesn't encourage kris and susie to remain in the dark worlds. he is welcoming and kind, but once the adventure is over, he prompts them to return to the light world. he wants them to deal with their more "real" problems like homework. that doesn't feel like he is trying to facilitate escapism in them. a real fantasy would encourage you to stay in it, wouldn't it?

and while ralsei is definitely invested in making sure the lightners are happy, there are always cracks that show. he isn't able to make kris ignore what happened in the spamton fight. he isn't able to convince susie to be peaceful and kind. and in his very essence, he represents a number of uncomfortable ideas. very importantly, he represents a number of uncomfortable ideas to kris.

this probably ain't your first fandom rodeo, so I'm not going to explain all the different ways that ralsei interacts with kris' personal issues. there's plenty of posts on it out there. what i will point out is, once again, it feels odd that a character who seems tailor made to bring up kris' most uncomfortable associations with their lack of agency and their outsider status in their own family would be part of a fantasy of escapism to them. you'd think that they'd prefer something that didn't have an inbuilt hierarchy, a prophecy that denied them autonomy, or especially a person that reminded them how little they fit into hometown.

that doesn't mean kris doesn't care about him at all - it seems very likely that they do. what I mean to say here is that he just seems ill-suited to an escapism reading, both behaviorally and on a conceptual level. it doesn't seem like that's at all part of his servitude towards the lightners.

of course, there is another non-lightner entity that ralsei seems diegetically engineered to serve. but I'll discuss that later.

now as for susie...

yes, susie definitely views the dark worlds as more fun than the light world. and why wouldn't she? the light world sucks for her, and she doesn't seem very aware of the fact that the dark world can also suck. you could definitely make the argument that she views the dark worlds as a fantastical escape from reality... were it not for the fact that she treats her darkner friends with just as much importance as she does kris and noelle.

can someone treat components of an escapist fantasy as real and important? of course. but given deltarune's themes of agency and control, as well as the fact that darkners exist in servitude to the lightners, I feel like you'd have to make escapism tie into forcing others into a lack of agency if you wanted the theme to feel coherent with the rest of the work. this would require susie to be limiting the agency of the darkners around her. and obviously, she doesn't do that. her presence around them might be inherently limiting, just by simple virtue of being a lightner, but she isn't aware of it, and clearly is uncomfortable with the idea of limiting anyone's agency. she encourages ralsei to make choices. and she supports lancer in basically anything he wants to do. her treatment of lancer is integral to chapter 1's narrative, and it seems like that treatment of ralsei is integral to the ongoing narrative as well!

her preference for the dark world feels very rooted in her engagement with it as its own reality. rather than trying to avoid her real-life problems by engaging in a pretense, she seems to simply want to spend time with her friends in a place that isn't cruel to her. she isn't ignoring any of the dark world's problems in service of that, either. she notices when things don't line up. if she thought of it as a fantasy, wouldn't she be inclined to ignore issues that impede the fantasy?

and critically - like kris, she does not intentionally choose her imposed role in the prophecy at first. she steps into the role of bad guy to resist it, but that role is limiting too, and she eventually acquiesces to being a hero. it's never something she's completely on board with, though. she actively pushes back the limitations that the role places on her. I find this important to reiterate when we are discussing the notion of the characters viewing the dark worlds as fantasy.

noelle has a complicated relationship to the dark worlds. susie tells her that it's a dream to make her accept the strange reality she finds herself in, which works well on her. she continues to think of it as a strange dream throughout the chapter. (though, like the others, it is not a 'dream' she entered of her own volition!)

it is also a markedly unpleasant 'dream' at times. she has her agency restricted, is kidnapped, has to evade a controlling monarch, and is even tied up in a weird evangelion cross thing on the hand of a giant robot. it's not purely fun. noelle does like scary things, and while it might be healthy for her to have an experience where she stands up to a controlling adult figure... again, the circumstances make it difficult for me to assume that this is a fantasy she would choose for herself. not impossible, mind you, but it's not the first reading of the situation that comes to mind.

and while she does say she wishes she could dream like this every day in the normal route, that does happen specifically because she was talking to the girl she likes. it makes sense she'd find that pleasant. I don't think that necessarily equates to her finding the dark worlds escapist.

and importantly, this isn't the sentiment that she expresses in every route.

again, there's a lot of analysis on snowgrave, so I won't bother regurgitating it much here. but it's nightmarish for both kris and noelle, and very likely fatal for berdly. noelle needs to believe that the event is a dream, for her own psychological safety, but one of the most important parts of snowgrave...

...is that its events, and the world it took place in, are very, very real.

noelle wants to have the strength to face her problems, both in the regular route and in the snowgrave route. rather than escaping from them, she views the "dream" as a chance to practice dealing with her day-to-day issues. it's just that in the regular route she finds that strength authentically, and in the snowgrave route, that desire is manipulated and pushed until she is forced to kill berdly. she doesn't interpret snowgrave as an escape gone wrong. she views it as a dream that became a nightmare. and those are two extremely different things.

but i haven't even gotten to the biggest thing that undermines the concept that the dark worlds are a metaphor for escapism! which is: this fucking guy is dead wrong about everything.

so full disclaimer - I really love berdly. I think he's slept on a lot in the fandom because he's annoying and weird. which is fair, I suppose, but I think ignoring him hinders a lot of people's understanding of deltarune's overall narrative. because berdly often illustrates a lot of concepts in the game, but his narrative framing as a joke (usually...) prevents the player from taking it completely seriously. he has things to say and ideas to show off, it's just that he's often very loud and kind of dumb in his expression of them. which is kind of the point!

ralsei brings up the idea that the darkners are meant to serve the lightners very seriously in chapter one. by extension, and by way of the literal mechanics involved in a dark world's creation, we can infer that this logic is probably something that also applies to the dark worlds themselves. they are allegedly worlds and characters that only are supposed to fulfill a dream of the lightners. but due to narrative framing and deltarune's themes, we know that that's not the full truth. however dark worlds and darkners are created, they deserve to have their own agency. they can't just exist to fulfill a higher being's wishes.

you know who else undermines that view of the dark worlds? berdly! berdly does!!!!

because berdly is the only lightner in the game so far who does take the dark worlds to be an escapist adventure! he wants to turn cyber world into smartopia. he views this as a chance to be a cool hero. he believes he's going to get the girl, he's going to shape this world to his own liking, and maybe also he's going to get queen to acknowledge him or something so he stops being a forgettable little bluebird. and not only does none of this happen, his steadfast belief that it will happen is continually a joke within the narrative!!

berdly's wishes for uncomplicated escapist fantasy are flat-out denied by the dark worlds themselves. as a lightner, those worlds should be serving him. he should have the power to do whatever he wants within the bounds of an escapist fantasy. these npcs should be singing his praises!

but he doesn't have the power. and this world doesn't sing his praise. because it just isn't an escapist fantasy. he isn't right to view it that way. his wishes for heroism are always going to be thwarted.

so now that I've gotten all that out of the way, let's swing back over to the subject of your original ask. queen.

because, like berdly, queen's entire character arc is about how she's completely wrong about what the lightners actually want.

queen would in fact like nothing more to place the lightners into an escapist fantasy. she believes that that's the best way to serve them and make them happy forever. as a darkner, queen has very much internalized the idea that a lack of control is what actually makes people happy. since darkners have no choice in their destinies and are supposed to be happy in it, and since she personally finds her role as a darkner fulfilling, she believes that that's true of all people everywhere. if you want to make people happy, you just have to remove that pesky personal agency!

so she spends the story trying to force the lightners and particularly noelle into situations where she controls them in order to make them ostensibly happier. she does genuinely believe that this is the right thing to do, but as she finds out eventually, she's just wrong. noelle doesn't want that. queen believes that escapism is why the lightners use the internet... but that's totally wrong too.

while there are other searches mixed in, noelle is trying to use the internet to find her sister. instead of trying to hide from whatever happened, noelle wants to figure it out. queen's thesis about noelle and the lightners is proven wrong even before she personally encounters noelle in the dark world. it's just that queen doesn't realize it due to her limited perspective.

the concept of escapism being brought up with both queen and berdly is not there to say that the dark world is escapist. rather, it's there to say that it isn't. despite the dark worlds being a fantastical place, they are extremely real. to view them as a means of escape is foolhardy at best. you cannot act as though you are above consequences within them.

themes and ideas exist within the story for a sake of an audience. so let's get into the final character I need to discuss here. hopefully this will tie my thesis of deltarune together neatly.

that character is of course us. the player.

when creating a piece of fiction, an astute author will often identify and anticipate an audience's reactions to certain things in their work, and write things in such a way that they elicit the desired reactions. in essence, a writer is directing the "character" of the audience. how we feel and how we are anticipated to react to things is an integral part of nearly every fiction.

that effect is far more overt when dealing with metanarrative fiction that diegetically involves the audience. since the fiction is saying a lot of things about the general 'you,' the audience in aggregate, your reactions to certain things in the story have to be finely cued and anticipated by the author, so that the author can thus commentate on the reactions that you have to the story. the "character" you are assumed to inhabit is posited by the author to have certain traits.

to explain what I mean in plainer terms, I'll use the player of undertale's no mercy route as an example. because undertale is commenting on the way rpgs generally work. the player's behaviors in no mercy are attributed by characters in the story to be the result of us acting like a typical gamer. we kill the characters in the game because we want exp. and more than that, it's because we want to see everything the game has to offer. the role we inhabit in this role-playing game is that of a completionist. you could say that that's assumed to be our "character" in no mercy.

deltarune also posits that certain things are true of its audience. by being written to evoke certain cultural ideas, rpg tropes, and references to undertale, it guarantees that its audience will probably have certain traits, and spends a large amount of its conceptual focus commenting on those traits. one of those traits is nostalgia, which is probably an idea that I'll expound upon in a further essay because it's quite integral to my reading of deltarune. but the main one I mean to discuss here, and why I went off on this tangent about how audiences are dealt with in metafiction, is that we are posited as someone who believes in the logic of certain narratives.

deltarune's writing evokes a lot of portal fantasy narratives. alice in wonderland, narnia, pretty much every story where it's revealed at the end to be all a dream... the story of deltarune superficially resembles a lot of those. this, I think, is responsible for the popularity of the escapism theory. because those stories are often at their end about a child learning to put away fantasy and grow up, people tend to believe that deltarune must be about the same thing. but I truly don't think that deltarune is trying to do anything with that aspect of portal fantasy narratives, at least not directly. its main characters aren't involved in that exact type of coming-of-age arc.

instead, deltarune is very concerned with what happens to characters in fantasy, and specifically fantasy rpgs. if your world is deemed to not matter because it's a dream, what does that mean for you, who has no choice but to live in it? if you are an npc whose role has been predetermined for you via script, then can you ever decide for yourself what you want? what if you want to matter? what if you want to be your own person?

as the major controlling force of deltarune, we are initially cued to believe that deltarune is like a dream. it superficially fulfills so much of what we want from undertale fanon. hometown seems like it's a perfect idyllic town, at least until you start noticing the obvious cracks. and remember what I said about ralsei earlier? he is so reminiscent of asriel, and extremely eager to help us. it's not a stretch to say that making us specifically view deltarune as dreamlike and idyllic is probably part of his purpose in the game.

I would not say that we are posited as escapist. but the idea of escapism as brought up with queen and berdly is meant to strike at the heart of a much deeper idea that deltarune is trying to deconstruct. because if we view deltarune as a dream, escapist or otherwise, then we are inclined to write the internal realities of the characters inside off. the dark world can disappear without it mattering. we can control kris without it mattering. if it's all a dream, what does it matter? why should we care to let its characters go free? aren't we supposed to be in control?

if deltarune is an rpg... what is the significance of us interacting with it?

#deltarune #deltarune analysis #BIG big thanks to tvlandofficiall for being my sounding board and providing the flavor images for this essay #this one gets into some big overarching analysis of deltarunes construction and what it deconstructs. hope u enjoy

[copperbadge]

hi, i had a medium to big question. in your post about the adhd self-help book you mentioned people with adhd being conditioned to be nonconfrontational, but i've never once in my entire life connected the two? can you break down the connection for me so that i can once again (this week, even) have my understanding of my own condition blown wide open?

So, you are not the only person to ask about this, but that's on me for being unclear -- I wasn't trying to assert that kids with ADHD are automatically conditioned to be nonconfrontational, I was more trying to be like "Hey not everyone needs lessons in medical self-advocacy but a lot of nonconfrontational people do." And I think there is a higher population of people with neurodivergence who are deeply confrontation-averse, but I don't have like, numbers for that, it's just an assumption based on other knowledge.

It gets complicated; ADHD is a disease based heavily in acting impulsively against your best interests. But yeah I do think people with ADHD are often conditioned to avoid confrontation because of two main factors: rejection-sensitive dysphoria and executive dysfunction.

RSD, which I hate perhaps more than any other symptom or behavior associated with ADHD, automatically kicks our nervous system into high gear in social situations and encodes embarrassing moments in our memory with high-def clarity. Because RSD naturally causes a level of anxiety around socialization, it tends to make us nonconfrontational simply because a) we don't want to be yelled at, b) we don't want to embarrass ourselves by getting emotional about something that may not warrant it, and c) by the time we realize what's happening our body is already on high alert which means we are likely to go into fight-flight-freeze mode.

Me, I freeze, usually, but none of those three options are great for fast thinking during an argument. I used to lose arguments a lot simply because I couldn't think or react as fast as the neurotypical person I was fighting with, so I simply stopped having fights. Notably, I did not have this problem when fighting with my brother, who is also neurodivergent and has many of the same freeze reactions I do.

If people disagree with me, even when I know I'm right I also know I probably won't be able to vocalize it properly, so I back down. Usually it's trivial so it doesn't matter, and I've gotten strategic about how and when I argue about things that do matter; it's also a lot easier to do with strangers or professionals (like doctors) where I don't have to worry about long-term social repercussions. But yeah, our own nervous system tells us "hey maybe don't pick this fight" about every single fight and if we do pick that fight, it treats our opponent as a dangerous predator.

Executive dysfunction's interaction with nonconfrontation is something I have less problem with because while I do have poor executive function, I've spent a lot of time and energy training myself to cover the Important Stuff. I have mild ADHD so I'm capable of this; I'm not trying to say everyone with ADHD is, because lord knows it's exhausting for me and I've been doing it for roughly thirty years. But essentially, I cover where it counts: if someone needs me to do something I do it, I meet deadlines, I pay bills.

So with that disclaimer in place, a very common issue especially for children with undiagnosed ADHD is that they'll be told or asked to do something and simply be unable to begin or complete it, then when they're asked why they didn't do it they can't explain. Even if they try to explain that they simply couldn't, like they were incapable of doing it for reasons they don't understand, that usually doesn't hold water with a lot of parents and teachers.

"I couldn't bring myself to write this essay," is actually something I told myself a few times in college, but it's not something I'd bother trying to tell someone else, because if you think you're neurotypical that sounds very insane. So I'd lie and say I forgot, or I'd take the fail, or I'd simply drop out of the class. Crucially I would not fight with the authority figure who was questioning me about it, because I knew I wouldn't be able to explain myself, and I'd just end up getting in more trouble for longer.

Our culture is structured for neurotypicals, and it's not even structured for all neurotypicals. Behavior that deviates from Approved Neurotypical even when you think you are Approved Neurotypical is highly punishable. So if your options are passivity, even when passivity leads to pain, or confrontation, most people who aren't Approved Neurotypical will opt for passivity once they've had a taste of where confrontation leads. I know I do.

And the thing is, there's nothing actually wrong with that. It's a strategy calculated to minimize pain. Even when I'm firing on all cylinders on a fresh dose of Adderall, I still generally let fights go unless there will be actual real consequences, because it's just not worth it. But knowing we have ADHD and knowing we fall into this pattern, I think it is good to be aware that sometimes letting a fight go is really going to fuck you, and at that point even being bad at it is better than not engaging.

I'm pretty good at calculating those, but it's a lifelong process, knowing which hills to die on when you assume you will automatically die if you ever get above sea level.

#sam has adhd #jellydishes

[sassydefendorflower]

In case of their death, each Bat has a dedicated spot where they keep their will/private messages to different members of their family/their friends.

It makes sense in their line of work.

Tim's is a hard drive, no surprise there, but he made sure the code to access it was just stupid enough that most of the family would have to come together to crack it (and even then, they still have to call Bart for the final clue) - it’s something stupid and sentimental, something Bruce would never have guessed Tim would choose as a password. Maybe Quadruple Summersault. Or Short Pants. Or Second Mask. Or Always Be Prepared. Or maybe just I Love You.

Babs has a lot of video messages just in case. She wrote code that would automatically send her last words to everyone she cherished (her dad, the Bats, the Birds of Prey, her co-workers at the library) should she forget to enter the I'm Still Alive Code. (she has to stay at the hospital once without her phone and accidentally sends her last words to everyone - Gotham is chaos for a day until people manage to check in on her).

Cass has already hidden all her goodbyes in the rooms of those she thinks deserve it. Once she is gone, she hopes Bruce will find the letter in her nightstand. The one that says "my words are still here, you just have to look for it" - which is a bit ironic, considering most of her letters consist of funny cartoons and nice memories captured in the chicken scratch of someone who might never be a portrait artist but can undoubtedly catch a moment in time with just a few strokes of a pencil.

Dick updates his will every couple of months, just to be safe. And his letters? His final words? Those are usually stored with a civilian friend or two. One batch is definitely kept at Titans Tower. All of these people have instructions to send them once the news of his death has hit the public. His letters are unusually long, filled with jokes and anecdotes, and a lot of things he never quite managed to say before. For someone who likes to talk, Dick is awfully good at saying nothing. But that's not how he wants to die - at least not this time, so long letters it is.

Jason doesn't have a lot of letters, or a lot of anything really. He just has a very detailed will. A binding legal paper that explains exactly what the family is supposed to do with his body. He's not gonna take any more chances with this. At the end of his will, there is only one addendum: I love you. Please let me be dead. Nothing more - nothing less.

Steph is a bit obsessed with the details of her death, maybe because her first close encounter resulted in a complete loss of agency. She wants to plan it down to the smallest bit, and since she knows she cant do that, she plans everything else. Where she wants to be buried, what songs should be played, what kind of food should be offered... and in each of these instructions there is a personal message hidden just within. She wants Bruce and Tim to carry her coffin, carry her one last time. She wants Cass to dance at her funeral, and Babs and her mom to write the speeches. Small love letters hidden in a search for control.

Damian is needlessly good at compartmentalizing, or maybe its because he's just twelve. He should think of himself as immortal, and nothing is crueler than the fact that he doesn't. He has a will, hidden underneath his mattress because he's too young to actually request legally binding documents. And he has letters and paintings and notebooks - in the hopes that when they find them they'll remember him as a boy and not a weapon. For someone so desperately striving for the title of Robin, Damian mostly wants to be remembered as a son.

For a long time Duke didn't partake in this "family tradition". Because he saw himself as outside of them, as someone with parents, as someone with a home. But a dozen close calls, and suddenly mortality becomes something else. So he saves his will on the Batcomputer, addressed to his parents but protected by Bruce. And he writes small notes. Thoughts. Ideas. Things he thinks they will appreciate should he be gone one day. And he leaves them lying around. Maybe the mark he makes is hidden in the small things. The post-it notes and exploded overhead lights. Duke would be fine with that.

And then there is Bruce, who - in a way - cannot die. His legacy is the Cave, his brain a part of the mainframe they use to fight crime. And he knows that. He knows that no matter where he goes, he will never be really gone. So he makes sure that one day - long after he has passed - the Batcomputer destroys itself. To set them free. To leave them with the physical memorabilia of Bruce Wayne, and no longer with the desperation of the Bat. It's the biggest love letter Bruce can imagine writing - the possibility of being free.

#batfamily #bruce wayne #tim drake #jason todd #dick grayson #dc #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #duke thomas #barbara gordon #batman #death tw #grief #mortality #headcanon

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

aita for refusing to drive my sister around unless she pays me?

I (16) am learning to drive right now, and my sister (14) can be really really reckless around anything to do with cars. I'm pretty sure she picked it up from our older brother (18 and 20), neither of which I've ever seen put a seat belt on while driving. My brothers just don't care about safety in any situations, but my sister refuses to put a seat belt on as if she's trying to prove something. Like, she sometimes gets genuinely upset if someone tells her to put a seat belt on. I've tried to ask her about the problem before, and what it comes down to is that she's never been involved in a car crash and consequently doesn't think that there's any real danger.

There's this weird rule my family has had our whole lives that if you don't wear your seat belt during a drive, you owe the driver a dollar. Everyone in my family kinda stopped doing that because kids grow up and are supposed to learn how to be safe without being bribed. Well, I told my sister that whenever I was driving, the rule would be back in place.

The thing is, I don't actually want a dollar from my sister. I just want it to be a motivator and I want her to put her seat belt on.

Well, it didn't work, because the first time I ever drove her somewhere, I learned upon arrival that she had literally unbuckled her seat belt on the way there. I told her that she owed me a dollar and she seemed completely unbothered by that. So I told her that if she didn't buckle it on her way back, she owed me ten dollars instead.

Once again, I don't actually want money from her. She's fourteen and has never had an actual job. I just wanted the money to convince her to put her seat belt on. And it didn't work. She didn't buckle it on the way back. She refused to pay the ten dollars, because she said she thinks that it's a ridiculous amount of money to pay just because she wasn't wearing a seat belt. So the compromise we're currently doing is that she can't ask me to drive her anywhere unless she pays the money from her not buckling it.

Reasons I might be the asshole: She literally has no way to get anywhere if I don't drive her. My parents are always busy unless you plan, like, three weeks in advance, which is difficult at the age of 14. We live in an area where I'd have to drive an hour to get to the nearest public transportation, and there aren't enough sidewalks for her to walk places. We also moved pretty recently and I don't want her to struggle maintaining friendships just because her older sibling refuses to drive her places. And honestly it's not just with her friendships-if I drove my mom somewhere, me being the driver would automatically exclude my sister from participating. Also, money being involved at all makes me feel like I'm just being petty.

Reasons I might not be the asshole: I am not good at driving. I am still learning. I am constantly making turns that are sharper than they need to be, or pressing on the brakes too hard, or any number of things I have to practice with to get better at, and I can literally hear my sister getting thrown around in the backseat when I make mistakes. This is dangerous even if I don't get into a car crash, and I don't think I'm immune to ever getting in car crashes. Also, I have super debilitating anxiety, and if there's anything that immediately takes my focus away from driving, it's the idea that my little sister isn't safe right behind me.

Anyway yeah. AITA for that whole thing

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole