#''the angles cut me when i try to think''

[stllmnstr]

breathing room

⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖⋆.˚⟡ ࣪ ˖

Lee Heeseung is having a hard time breathing. 

Partly because he’s pretty sure he just got the wind knocked out of him. A little bit because of the year-old rib injury he had neither the time nor patience to let heal completely. 

And mostly because there’s a blade being held to his throat. 

Yours, to be exact. 

It’s a nice one, all things considered. Despite its lethality, it’s small, delicate almost. From this angle, he can just make out the detailing on the hilt. A series of vines wrap around each other intricately, forming kaleidoscopic patterns that extend all the way from the blade to where your fingers are wrapped around the hilt, knuckles white from the way your hand is straining. 

Jesus, he thinks. If it takes that much concentrated effort for you to not let the knife press any harder against his skin, draw any blood, then maybe he should start taking the threats you throw his way like extra change a little more seriously. 

Lazily, he lets his eyes trace a line from your fingers to your face. Skipping over the rather boring details of the plain black training shirt you wear, he directs his attention to the way your brow furrows in concentration instead. 

Under usual circumstances, a knife to the throat would encourage all of his senses to narrow in on the sensation of metal against his pulse point. Would spur his brain to work a bit faster through all the biological fight or flight mechanisms in a last ditch attempt at survival. 

But these are not usual circumstances. In fact, ever since the two of you were split into separate training cohorts a handful of months ago, this has become a rarity. And the only thing Heeseung wants to do is enjoy it a little more. 

Without his self-preservation instincts kicking in, his brain has plenty of room for other things. The forgiving surface of a training mat beneath him, slightly soft where he lets his body relax into it. The unusually warm air of the training room, courtesy of a busted air conditioner that no one has gotten around to fixing just yet. 

The way your hair falls around your face as you lean over him, chest still heaving from your recent bout of exertion. Your eyes are pure fire, embers and ashes and every stage in between as you sit atop his ribcage, knees on either side of his torso where you pin him to the mat. 

But even as the lead trainer adds another tally underneath your name for another sparring match won, your gaze doesn’t soften. Doesn’t brighten in the afterglow of victory. After all, victory only tastes sweet when it’s earned. Judging by the way your lips twist above him, Heeseung thinks the victory he just handed you on a silver platter must be horribly bitter. 

Slowly, he raises his hands in mock surrender. There’s a half smile that looks a little too much like a smirk tugging at his lips when he says, “I concede.”

“No fucking shit.” You flick a strand of hair out of your face. Your knife presses a little tighter against his throat. “Did you even try?”

Heeseung maintains eye contact. “I think I’m doing us a both a favor by not answering that one.”

Narrowing your eyes, annoyance makes itself the most prominent of your visible emotions. “Interesting choice of words from someone with a knife to his throat.”

Heeseung all but rolls his eyes. “What are you gonna do? Kill me in front of everyone?” The way he wraps sarcasm up in every syllable is almost as infuriating as the way he just let you win without putting up any semblance of a fight. “You’ve got a mean streak, princess, but that’s a bit much, even for you.”

The pressure on your blade increases, and Heeseung fights a wince as he feels it break the barrier between his skin and blood. It’s a miniscule cut, surface level at most, but he hears the threat all the same. “It’s like you want to die,” you marvel. 

Heeseung’s eyes betray nothing, other than the fact that they can’t quite seem to stray from your own. Does he? No matter how deep inside himself he searches, the answer is always a resounding no. Despite the effort he put into this particular spar, or rather lack thereof, his survival instincts are still kicking. His pursuit of life is still alive and well. 

So no, he doesn’t want to die. Quite the opposite in fact. But if he were to explain in plain terms that he never feels quite as alive as he does in the moments when you’ve got a knife on his throat and hatred in your eyes, he has the distinct feeling you might well and truly make good on your frequent promise to send him to an early grave. 

And it’s not like he means to do it, not really. Heeseung might be a glutton for punishment these days, but there was a time when he tried to get your attention in all the regular ways. As he quickly found out, sweet words did nothing but make you roll your eyes and his skills on a sparring mat were only as impressive as they could be used to hone your own. 

He was a tool, in your eyes. A means to an end as you did your best to work your way up the ranks. 

You never looked at him, the person behind all the hand-to-hand combat training and advanced levels of weapon artistry. At least not until he started annoying the ever-living shit out of you. 

Back then, it had been easy. As new recruits, you were in the same training cohort, which meant you had the same daily schedules. As long as Heeseung had the chance to beat you to the last piece of toast in the dining hall at breakfast or tie the laces of your training boots together the night before an early morning, he was guaranteed at least one of your signature glares and a few choice words that would make his grandmother blush. 

Granted, he knows that one-sided hatred is not a very stable foundation to build anything solid on, but he thinks of it in the same way he thinks of sparring. 

He doesn’t need a knockout. He just needs an in. 

A little bit of breathing room. Something that will have his partner lowering their guard, weakening their defenses just enough for him to strike. Once. Twice. Again. Over and over until the match is won and victory rests on his square shoulders. 

Heeseung’s in this for the long haul, and he’s come to find that he doesn’t really care how many bruises he picks up along the way. 

Across the room, the lead trainer heaves a long sigh. 

“Alright, ___, that’s enough. You’ve earned your tally.” The most of anyone in today’s group. But you’re still glaring at him, and he knows it isn’t enough, not for you. “Heeseung, get it together. I expect better from you next time.”

You scoff. “Don’t hold your breath.” 

Expectations are only met when people are held to them, and you doubt Lee Heeseung has even become acquainted with the concept of a consequence. 

Releasing one final, sharp exhale, you pull your knife away from his throat, tucking it back into the sheath on your upper thigh in one fluid motion. Swinging your leg over his torso, you remove your body from his own, give your anger some space to breathe. Without looking back, you let your strides eat up the distance between you and the exit. 

Someone – you think it must be Jay, or maybe Jungwon, tries to catch your attention on the way out, asking about a maneuver you pulled in the middle of the match. A tricky bit of knife work you’ve been perfecting over the last few weeks. Something that looked stupid as Heeseung did nothing but stand there, as if your blade was nothing but decorative. Made you look stupid as he stood and watched with nothing but a mildly amused expression on his face. 

You hate him for it. Want to show him just how pretty your knife can be stained with the deep crimson he must bleed as surely as anyone else. 

Lips pulled in a taut line, you unsheath the blade at your thigh once again, this time sending it spinning with deadly accuracy towards the line of trees that skirt the outside of the training facility. 

You don’t miss. You never do. 

It still feels like defeat. 

…..

Heeseung notices when you’re not at dinner later that evening. Despite the fact that you no longer train together, the inter-cohort spars have shifted this week's schedule. You should be here, sitting next to Jay and Jungwon, probably, pointedly avoiding his gaze. 

But you’re not. And he can only think of one other place to find you. 

The training hall is dark when he arrives, but Heeseung is no fool. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust, but he sees you soon enough. Silhouette dark against the empty expanse, he has half a mind to intervene before you shred yet another punching bag to irreparable pieces. Instead, he just watches for a moment longer. 

He doesn’t know what to do with the feelings that start to simmer, that always linger. Doesn’t know if it’s admiration or longing or something far worse. 

But he wants to. Wants to examine them until he knows them as intimately as the back of his own hand, until he can recite them by name and express them in ways that don’t make you want to press a knife against his neck. 

And he wants to keep watching, keep looking, keep noticing. 

Even from a distance, even in the dark, he can read the frustration in the set of your shoulders, sense the exhaustion in the way your legs move just behind the rest of your body. 

You need a break. 

He needs an in. 

Across the room from you, Heeseung clears his throat. 

Startled, you nearly fall on your ass mid-kick before you turn to the source. It’s dark, but you know it’s him. Who else would it be? 

Chest rising and falling rapidly with exertion, you finally catch your breath well enough to tell him, “If you’re not here for a rematch, then you have exactly ten seconds to get out of this building.”

A beat passes. 

Another. 

Heeseung exhales. “And if I am?”

Bathed in the dying glow of moonlight, you go still. “Then you better put in your best fucking effort.”

Heeseung is across the room before you can release another breath. It’s ridiculous how quickly he disarms you. And you’re caught off guard, yes, but it doesn’t matter, not really. Your knife in his hands, he throws it to the corner of the room. And then it’s just the two of you. 

Heeseung spares neither time nor effort knocking your legs out from under you, sending you careening towards the mat. Screwing your eyes shut, you brace for the impact of a training mat that never comes, the back of your head cradled in a hand that serves as a barrier between you and the ground below. 

It’s a complete reversal of your earlier roles as he lets his legs fall to either side of you, face inches from your own. There’s no knife on your neck, and he was gracious enough to break your fall, but suddenly find your breath a difficult thing to catch regardless. 

Above you, his eyes are dark. Your noses nearly touch. “This is what you wanted?” he breathes, and you feel his words as much as you hear them. They dance across your cheekbone, your lips. Have your bones feeling molten, all your hard edges malleable. “You want me to fight you like I mean it? To really fucking spar with you?”

You’ve rehearsed your answer too long to deviate, even as your mind screams with sudden uncertainties. “Yes.”

Heeseung doesn’t spare it a second thought. “Too bad.”

“Why? You have no problem f–”

“I was there, you know.” Unbidden, the hand that doesn’t hold your head falls to the bottom edge of your black training shirt. Heeseung pauses there for a moment, lets his fingers trace the seam. Something in the air shifts, tightens, waits. Despite the way he has you caged, your hands are unbound. You could stop this, if you wanted to. Stop him. 

You don’t. 

Slowly, his hand begins to track an upward journey, taking your hem with it. The air of the room is warm, choked with summer heat and the odd sensations that simmer just beneath your skin, but you suppress a shiver anyway  as a sliver of skin is revealed. 

You know what he’s after, where his eyes fall to. It’s his fingers that hesitate. Dangle with uncertainty a hair's breadth from the scar that sits just above your hip bone. 

Heeseung inhales, eyes returning to your own for a moment. They’re searching for permission you won’t give and boundaries you won’t set. If he wants to walk this tightrope, he’ll have to navigate on his own. 

It’s a challenge he rises to. On his breath out, Heeseung lets his fingers find a home on the bare skin of your stomach, trace the jagged line that’s a shade paler than the surrounding area. 

It’s a scar you hardly think of, one you can’t believe he remembers. Gifted to you in your early days of training, when a fellow recruit thought the best way to better his ranking was to discard the strict sparring rules set by your superiors and draw blood as a last ditch attempt at victory.

You’d still won, even with a fresh stab wound on your lower abdomen. And he’d been shown the door, like all recruits that break protocol. 

“So what?” Your voice doesn’t come out nearly as biting as you intend it to. You curse the waver in your words. “I get one scar and suddenly I’m delicate?” 

Heeseung glances up, something sincere in his eyes when he matches your gaze. His hand is still on your skin. “We’re all delicate. And we all have the scars to prove it. I’ve just developed a particular… aversion to seeing evidence of it when it comes to you.”

You’re quick to school your features into neutrality. At least on the outside, you won’t give him the satisfaction of catching you off guard. “That sounds like a you problem.”

“Apparently not,” Heeseung counters. “Since I’m not the one begging for a fight.” He holds your gaze when he adds, “And I have to say, princess, if you wanted me to put you on your back, there are much easier ways to ask.”

It’s as if you’ve been burned submerged in hot water, as if you’ve been burned, when you push him off of you with a speed that’s almost comical. And from the way heat rises in your cheeks, you just might have been. 

Your voice is dangerously low when you tell him, “You have three seconds.”

“Until what?” Heeseung knows better than to be hopeful. 

“Until I find my knife and put it to good use.”

Heeseung doesn’t need to be told twice.

[saltysatellite804]

I figured out what's bothering me so much about the anime adaption (and spoilers it's not the apathy as I previously believed, though it plays a part). But first let me showcase my thoughts. Actually the apathy route could've been done well I think. But this wasn't it.

Let me do a super basic side-by-side for a second.

He is smirking in manga but the expression doesn't come across in anime. He looks dead eyed and his mouth is pretty even. He should be thrilled at an excuse to take a shot at the Soul Palace! He hates them so so much! It's what he's wanted to do for so long! I remember reading this and thinking "wow this is the first joy hes had in two years".

But nah let's make him bored or something. But don't forget that "something". I'll get into it soon.

Not an exact side-by-side this time, but thinking how the anime really made this panel weird?? The vibe in the manga is more fun to watch and kinda scary, even the way he peeks back around the chair creates tension. In anime, he looks like a dog waiting for crumbs at the table.

I just

Who is this guy?? This screenshot particularly looks so weird???

Starting to notice what's going on? The running theme in these expressions? It's not even apathy as I previously thought!

Also why did they choose the most boring angles possible when manga is right there with great ones? Like why the flat side profile here? It looks weird. They did it in Muken and I was bored of it by then too after one use. From a directive perspective, its ugly. This could be forgiven if the rest was fine.

And remember when he is so thrilled to crush Mayuri's toy?

But nah. Let's deliver that line with what borders on a pout of all goddamn things.

Another side-by-side to show how ugly the anime made the scene

So what have I been trying to say? It's how immature and weak Aizen's personality felt in anime. If I had rewatched sooner I would've realized it. It's the way he is fucking pouting the whole time!

Why. Why why why. Why do you have to defang him, it's so annoying. Why is he coming across like a petulant child! I hate this! I contest the people who say he is acting better!

Watching this episode again partially made me so sad. His character feels so empty. The scene is so pathetic. Maybe that's what they wanted but it really sacrificed everything watchable about this scene to achieve it.

Also also was it just me or did they get rid of the line where Aizen's spirit energy was blowing away the energy of all the captains and other soul reapers? What a badass line to cut.

[fishfacedterror]

hey guys

what if sam comes back next season

as a voice on the computer

[selveristsaatan]

yes im eating my computer, crunch crunch crunch, keyboard keys for breakfast, dinner and lunch🗣️🗣️

[frmulcahy]

Did they fucking Binary my boys 🧍🏼

[justdurgeythings]

to elaborate slightly on this idea, regarding gortash recycling durge's brain to use in a steel watcher for his personal use;

if I recall correctly, the steel watcher brains are kind of in a half-unconscious state? Like, barely aware of what they're doing, drifting in and out, to be easily controllable. but he always did like durge having their own free will, didn't he?

can you imagine how bad it would hurt to be fully awake and aware, in a body that isn't flesh, that simply doesn't fit the brain that's controlling it? I think durge would be in absolute agony, and i think that Gortash wouldn't know how to handle that fact beyond deliberately ignoring it. What else is he going to do? Put them out of their misery, after he worked so hard to preserve them?

no. no, he'll just wait it out. They're strong, after all, they're resilient and clever, they can figure out how to cope with the pain if it's so awful.

I just enjoy the image of a Gortash who doesn't know how to let go, who refuses to even consider it. No matter how much that ends up hurting durge.

[sm0k1ng-k1lls]

HOLY SHIT. MAG 65-BINARY. tessa winters talks about how its impossible to upload human brains and consciences and consciousness to the metaverse, to a digital sort of space. what if chester and norris isn't jon and martin. what if theyre *just* chester and norris. no martin, no jon. because the human mind, our thoughts, our feelings are too analog to be digitised? because theyre more than just binary? anyways im not saying that theyre strictly*not* jon and martin, but maybe just a branch of them? like their digital footprint from when they were teenagers? or young adults who also just recently discovered the magnus institute? i meaaan if you think about it i guess!!!!!!?!?!?!??

*the angles cut me when i try to think*

[my-heart-of-heart]

Finally got to the Sergey Ushanka ep in my relisten and y’all weren’t lyin that shit rly does hit different these days huh

[bananonbinary]

im an avatar of the corruption because I have tried to put it into terms and words neurotypicals could understand, and now I stare at it and not a word of it is even enough to fully describe the fact that

I itch.

[bucket-of-mold]

So I am reading through the mechs fiction, and I read Archive Footage, and now I'm thinking about the difference between Ivy's brain and Brian's brain. Based on the way they talk and act, their brains obviously work very differently. Ivy usually talks in statistics and her fiction shows that she stores memory as data, more like a usual computer would. She shows that dilemma of trying to keep messy human thought inside of a binary computer. Brian on the other hand seems to speak more like someone normally would, and I haven't seen anything about his brain working in a similar way to Ivy's (I haven't read all the fiction yet tho so i might be missing something). He does have the morality switch though, which is something Ivy doesn't have. It makes me wonder about how their mechanisms were made for them to both have such different experiences with having a mechanical brain. Maybe because Brian is mostly mechanical, his brain integrates more smoothly with the rest of him, while Ivy's is more stark of a contrast? Or maybe Brian's was an attempt to have a computer brain be more outwardly human, which caused the bi-product of a morality switch that Ivy didn't need? There is much to think about and this is not even scratching the surface of my thoughts on how the mechanisms function, or how Brian and Ivy work in general.

[gyooza]

honestly now that we know it's likely really jon in the computer (unless the emails a red herring) then to me the greatest fear is that they could be going through whatever sergey ushanka was. I just hope he and martin aren't in pain in there

[notafagipromise]

chatGPT going nuts and it has a very "binary"esq feeling to it, someone call Jon for a statement the computers are on it again

[1000fingers]

JONNY SIMS BROKE INTO MY HOME AND KILLED MY FAMILY

JONNY WHY

WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO THEM

[moonrpg]

rewatched mop ending it still made me cry 👍 some thoughts in the tags

[frmulcahy]

I have to submit my proposal for my final essay in this class in a couple days and I just have So Many Thoughts and none of them coherent

[ultimateunidino]

I like to headcannon Pre orbto otto decided to download a chat bot based off the (fictional) spooky myth of sergi ushanka

thinking: lol this is just gonna be a shitty chat bot lol.

And then being so traumatized by being forced to watch a 17 hour video of a guy eating his computer (very reluctantly) that it's one of the many reasons he orbed himself,